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WASHINGTON — Eight years ago, the Senate declined to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) following President Clinton’s signature and endorsement. Even today, though, many lawmakers, analysts, and voters continue to push for it and the treaty remains on the calendar of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As nuclear politics have increased in importance — especially following developments in Iran and North Korea — Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) is reportedly attempting to revive a debate on the treaty by attaching a “sense of Congress” resolution to the annual defense authorization bill, now being considered in Congress, which will express […]

Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur. Over 200,000 Sudanese refugees live in eastern Chad, having fled the violence in Darfur. The region likewise serves as staging grounds for the Darfur rebels fighting against the Sudanese government. During his three weeks traveling in the region, Pelda kept a diary, which provides a portrait of the Darfur conflict that is perhaps unrivaled in its detail and nuance. In daily installments through the beginning of August, World Politics […]

PERUGIA, Italy — Back in the good old days, European unity was all about energy. The European Union’s original ancestor was the European Carbon and Steel Community, established in 1951. Six years later, on March 25, 1957, leaders signed Euratom, an agreement on atomic energy, along with the other, better-known Rome Treaty. Fifty years of peace and wealth are a testament to a convergence of fundamental interests, which would be better represented by a common European energy policy than by tomato quotas. Yet today, while the agricultural trade restrictions remain in place, energy policy has taken a back seat in […]

HIRED GUNS IN IRAQ — Two years ago, the United Nations set up the U.N. Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, hoping to discourage the use of private armies, and to push more nations to sign the 1989 U.N. Mercenary Convention. Mercenaries in the classic definition of proxy fighters are not very much in evidence these days, but the United Nations has broadened the term to include hired guns for protection — and that business is booming. Some 48,000 foreign civilians are employed as security guards in Iraq alone, where they provide protection for government officials, businessmen, journalists, industrial […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — After seven years of ineffective drug policies, Colombia is questioning whether America’s coca fumigation strategy is really the answer to their drug problem. From sharp criticism in the Colombian media to Colombia’s own defense minister admitting that the country’s drug progress resembles a “stationary bicycle,” new solutions are rapidly being sought. Since 2000, under the banner of, “Plan Colombia,” the American government has spent $4.7 billion fighting drugs and helping the Colombian military counter armed groups in the country. More than 900,000 hectares of coca, the base for cocaine, have consequently been fumigated or manually eradicated. Yet, […]

Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur. Over 200,000 Sudanese refugees live in eastern Chad, having fled the violence in Darfur. The region likewise serves as staging grounds for the Darfur rebels fighting against the Sudanese government. During his three weeks traveling in the region, Pelda kept a diary, which provides a portrait of the Darfur conflict that is perhaps unrivaled in its detail and nuance. In daily installments through the beginning of August, World Politics […]

Paradoxically, the Libyan supreme court’s verdict Wednesday confirming the death sentences of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor found guilty of infecting children with the AIDS virus may be the beginning of the end of their eight-year ordeal and not the final step towards their death. The five nurses — Snazhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo, and Kristina Valcheva, and the Palestinian doctor, Ashram Juma Hajuj, were arrested in 1999 and charged with injecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood in a hospital in the Libyan coastal town of Benghazi. Fifty-six of the children have since died. At […]

African heads of state displayed their disconnection with reality when they met in Accra, Ghana, June 25 to July 3 to talk shop about an idea tritely called the “United States of Africa.” Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi led the charge. He has fruitlessly spent copious energy and resources flogging the idea, originated by Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah, an incurable Pan-Africanist. Not surprisingly, the meeting yielded no concrete commitments toward a united African government. It served as a searing reminder of how far ahead of his time Nkrumah was when he championed the idea in the 1960s. The African Union’s […]

On July 10, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), which had conducted WMD inspections in Iraq, formally ceased operating when its staff contracts expired. Two weeks earlier, on June 29, the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) had voted to dissolve the commission. This Security Council decision was a mistake. The UNSC should instead establish a small force of WMD inspectors that could assist with current WMD monitoring tasks and could rapidly expand to lead future U.N.-authorized inspection missions. UNMOVIC was the immediate successor to the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), established by the UNSC in 1991 to oversee the postwar […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column on the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. MEDICS’ DEATH PENALTY CONVICTION UPHELD — The Libyan Supreme Court decided Wednesday to uphold earlier convictions of five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor on charges of intentionally infecting over 400 Libyan children with the HIV/AIDS virus. The court’s ruling was widely expected and — as it signals the official end to the appeals process — paves the way for an out-of-court settlement to financially compensate the children’s families and bring an end to the […]

Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur. Over 200,000 Sudanese refugees live in eastern Chad, having fled the violence in Darfur. The region likewise serves as staging grounds for the Darfur rebels fighting against the Sudanese government. During his three weeks traveling in the region, Pelda kept a diary. By virtue of the author’s firsthand observations and his numerous conversations with local Sudanese and Chadians, foreign aid workers and Darfur rebels, Pelda’s diary provides a portrait […]

Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur. Over 200,000 Sudanese refugees live in eastern Chad, having fled the violence in Darfur. The region likewise serves as staging grounds for the Darfur rebels fighting against the Sudanese government. During his three weeks traveling in the region, Pelda kept a diary. By virtue of the author’s firsthand observations and his numerous conversations with local Sudanese and Chadians, foreign aid workers and Darfur rebels, Pelda’s diary provides a portrait […]

LONDON – Three militia generals found guilty for their roles in Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war are expected to be sentenced Monday in the first step towards winding down the four-year, $90 million proceedings at the ad hoc war crimes tribunal. “The AFRC committed untold horrors — mutilations, rapes, massacres, abductions — throughout the towns and villages of Sierra Leone,” Human Rights Watch researcher Corinne Dufka told WPR, who herself documented scores of cases of abuse by those under the command of the generals in custody. “They effectively waged war against the civilian population, leaving a trail of loss and […]

TARIN KOWT, Afghanistan — On June 15, a suicide bomber struck a Dutch army education delegation in the town of Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan, killing one Dutch soldier and 11 Afghan children. The blast was the opening salvo in a five-day battle pitting hundreds of Taliban fighters against the 3,000-strong Dutch-led Task Force Uruzgan and hundreds of Afghan police and militia. At stake was control of a key valley connecting Pakistan’s Taliban bases to the opium production centers in Helmand province.<<ad>>The Tarin Kowt battle represented the first major fighting for the Dutch army in decades. Since […]

KABUL, Afghanistan — The first question Zebulon Simentov asked his uninvited guest, eyes wide open at the prospect: “Are you Jewish?” There was a tinge of disappointment when the reply came back negative, but the last Jew standing in Afghanistan didn’t miss a beat. “Humanity is one, religion doesn’t matter,” he said. Moments later, a Muslim friend entered the room, unfurled a prayer rug in the corner and bowed toward Mecca. An open box of Manischewitz motsas sat next to an empty bottle of booze on a table nearby. Locals refer to Simentov, 47, simply as “the Jew.” Originally from […]

A strange but very revealing little spat broke out between Israel and the Arab League in recent days. On the surface, the disagreement over the most minor of issues looks less than trivial. What shows through its thin cloth, however, is one of the most insidious reasons why peace between Israel and Arabs has remained so stubbornly elusive. Here is what happened: In what was undeniably a landmark event, the 22-member Arab League decided on July 8 to send a delegation to Israel for discussions about peace prospects. Israelis could hardly contain their excitement. For decades the Arab League stood […]

President Bush’s meeting with Vladimir Putin last week found U.S.-Russian relations in a far different state than six years ago, when President Putin was the first leader to call the Oval Office and pledge his support following September 11. While there is yet no real basis for proclaiming a new Cold War, a long list of thorny issues includes sanctions against Iran, location of the proposed U.S. missile defense system, and the unresolved question of Kosovar independence. Perhaps the most important recent change U.S.-Russian relations, however, is Russia’s much greater reluctance to support the Bush administration’s Middle East and Europe […]