The United States has no plans to join the U.N. stabilization force destined for southern Lebanon, but the Bush administration is pressing the international community to speed up troop deployment if the fragile cessation of hostilities has any chance of becoming durable. Technically, it is the U.N.’s responsibility to recruit and shape the 15,000-strong force, but World Politics Review has learned that on Wednesday foreign ambassadors in Washington were called to the State Department where a senior U.S. official called for more haste in pledging and sending contingents. Diplomats who attended the meeting, which was not publicly reported, said the [...]
Editor’s note: This week we bring you the second installment of a new weekly column, in which we look back at the week’s opinion pages. The column will be posted every Saturday by noon. Condoleezza Rice says the U.N. resolution ending violence in Israel and Lebanon will be a major setback for Syria and Iran. No. Think again. The biggest winner was Iran. Hezbollah’s boss now has his sites set on the Lebanese presidency, and it’s only a matter of weeks before the Israeli prime minister is ousted. Op-eds and commentary this week were dominated by such assertions. But first, [...]
ACCRA, Ghana — Taking a break from work, hotel desk clerk Augustine Kumi, 23, briefly wondered aloud why he and many fellow Ghanaians are poor. After all, his stable country enjoys a democratically elected government and, he pointed out, it boasts valued natural resources such as gold, timber and cocoa. That doesn’t account for the high inflows of foreign aid, perhaps comprising more than 40 percent of the annual budget. But then Kumi answered his own question. “We don’t have good leaders,” he said. “They are greedy.” Kumi’s gripes, in part, are tied to his frustrations with President John Kufuor’s [...]
