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SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Apparently, this is a year for close referendums in the Balkans. Earlier this year, Montenegrins voted for independence from Serbia with a 0.5 percent margin of victory. The “yes” vote needed to be 55 percent for the tiny republic to become an independent state. The “yes” campaign carried the day with 55.5 percent. On the weekend of Oct. 28-29, the citizens of Serbia voted in a referendum to approve Serbia’s first non-communist constitution in 60 years. It was another close one. For the constitution to be approved, at least 3.3 million people needed to vote […]

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — While campaigning last April in the National Action Party (PAN) heartland of Los Altos, a dry region east of Guadalajara known for tequila distilling, blue-eyed inhabitants and conservative-Catholic politics, candidate Felipe Calderon scheduled a youth rally, an event that inadvertently highlighted his biggest shortcoming: a lack of charisma. Jaded members of the national press core — who had already been riding the PAN campaign bus for three months and had barely reached the halfway point of their sojourn — described him as gris (gray), a Spanish expression for dull. As he entered the boisterous auditorium that Sunday […]

All the sound and fury over Iraq in advance of the American midterm elections signifies nothing. The United States has been reacting to events — not dictating them — since shortly after the U.S. military seized Baghdad three and a half years ago. President Bush’s press conference Oct. 25 was a political gesture designed to convince the electorate that he is not terminally detached from Iraq’s brutal reality. His relatively clear-eyed description of violence and sectarian divisions were a long-form version of his decision to ban “stay the course” from his vocabulary. But Bush did not unveil a new policy […]

Africa is on the verge of yet another major war. For the past four months, Somalia has been battered by an internal conflict between an Islamic movement and a secular government. In recent weeks, troops from neighboring Ethiopia and Eritrea have entered the country. Thousands of refugees have been fleeing across the Somali-Kenyan border, threatening to overwhelm the Kenyan government. The escalating war in Somalia, coming on top of the conflicts in Sudan and the Congo, underscores the need for the United States to develop an improved means for managing African security issues. For many years, American strategists have argued […]

In the title of an article that appeared in the French weekly Valeurs Actuelles in December 2005, the journalist Michel Gurfinkiel asked “Is Freedom of Speech under Threat in France?” Gurfinkiel’s question was prompted by threats of legal action against French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. In an interview with the Israeli paper Haaretz, Finkielkraut had made observations on last fall’s riots in the French banlieues that his detractors denounced as racist “incitement.” Nearly one year on, and following the judgment of a Parisian court in a high profile defamation case, there is no longer room for doubt. Public discourse in France […]

NANNING, China — A huge sign strung across the entrance to a trade exhibition center in the southwest Chinese city of Nanning blandly says “10+1=11.” But behind this uninspiring piece of sloganeering, and in and around this provincial capital, more exciting things have been happening. The Philippines’ President Gloria Arroyo went for a cruise on the Li River, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong popped up to Sichuan and received a bottled gourd for happiness and prosperity, and deals worth $600 million were signed between Chinese companies and several Southeast Asian countries. There have also been some amusing asides in […]

CARTAGENA, Colombia — Every day, around 860 people are internally displaced in Colombia. In the last 10 months, over 11,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, according to The Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (Codhes), a Colombian NGO that monitors displacement. There are glaring discrepancies between government and NGO displacement figures. But with an estimated 2 to 3.6 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), Colombia is home to the highest number of IDPs in the western hemisphere and has the second largest displaced population in the world, after Sudan. The crisis is a forgotten emergency that receives scant […]

NAIROBI, Kenya — A global consensus is now emerging about the necessity for laws that will support and encourage, rather than stifle, the growing role of private, professional combatants and peace support personnel in conflict zones. But in Africa and elsewhere, the growing role of such private forces has been met with caution and relative hostility. In November, an international gathering will take place under the auspices of the Swiss government and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC) to drum up international support for positive regulation of private military and security companies. Emanuela-Chiara Gillard, an ICRC legal advisor, […]

In a surprising — but typically unexpected — move, North Korea has agreed to return to the Six-Party Talks. Both the United States and North Korea have made concessions, brokered by China, to achieve this long-hoped-for diplomatic reengagement. The United States is not insisting on tangible demonstrations of nuclear rollback as a prerequisite to talks and, to achieve the reengagement, it met in a secret diplomatic forum in Beijing that included only representatives from China and North Korea. North Korea has dropped its insistence that the United States removes its financial restrictions on its overseas monies, being satisfied with U.S. […]