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EHUD BARAK ON WHERE HE WOULD SPEAK TO HAMAS — Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was in Paris at the end of January and he gave an interview to the French daily Le Figaro. This is what he had to say about an Egyptian proposal to hold four party talks on Gaza involving Israel, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas: I don’t see how we can accept the Egyptian proposal. We have nothing to say to Hamas. We speak to them when we interrogate them in our prisons. But this is a fundamentalist group that says openly that it has […]

As Kosovo prepares for new Prime Minister Hashim Thaci to declare its independence in the days or weeks ahead, Kosovo society is wracked by corruption and organized crime. According to the estimate of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), organized crime accounts for some 15-20 percent of the Kosovo economy: a figure that would presumably be far higher if one subtracts the substantial portion of Kosovo GDP made up of foreign aid. Some of Kosovo’s leading politicians, moreover, have been accused of connections to the organized crime networks. Citing unpublished intelligence reports, recent reports in the German media have […]

WASHINGTON — Indonesia’s strongman Suharto was many things to many people. As the debate rages over Suharto’s mixed legacy, he was ultimately an enigma to his protégé, vice president and successor Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie. When Suharto was forced to resign on May 21, 1998, after 32 years at the helm, he did not say a word to Habibie. They had once been close. Habibie had nicknamed his mentor “SGS” — “super genius Suharto” — to gain his favor. Suharto, a devotee of mysticism, was drawn to Habibie’s preacher-seer father whom he met quite by chance as a young military officer […]