Voters in Colombia are reluctantly preparing for life without the man they view as the nation’s savior. On May 30, they will go to the polls to elect a successor to President Alvaro Uribe, the leader they chose eight years ago in a bold break with tradition. It was a decision that paid off spectacularly for a country that stood perched on the brink of catastrophe. But Uribe’s success in tackling the nation’s problems and his resulting sky-high approval ratings created a dangerous challenge for the country’s democracy. Colombians pondered the prospect of granting their president an unprecedented third term. [...]
On April 16, a Chadian helicopter with at least three people aboard crashed in Adre, a town abutting the border with Sudan in the desert region shared by the two countries. One person died in the crash, while two were injured. The incident was an unwelcome reminder of five years of conflict between the two impoverished nations — even as that conflict finally shows signs of winding down. On April 17, the two countries re-opened their official border crossings. “Sudanese taxis are going back and forth and so are the people,” a government official in Adre told AFP. Until a [...]
Now that the Nuclear Security Summit will become a recurring event, with the next one scheduled for 2012 in Seoul, national governments will need to integrate this new mechanism with the existing major multinational efforts designed to counter nuclear terrorism. Despite differences in membership, emphasis, and other dimensions, three prominent initiatives directly support the summit’s objective of enhancing international cooperation to prevent nuclear terrorism: the Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Mass Destruction, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540, and the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. Last week’s summit documents endorsed their activities, without specifying how the [...]
