U.S.: Bush-Era Bureaucracy Lingers Amid Lengthy Vetting Process

The meticulous vetting process that potential appointees for senior State Department and other posts must undergo is delaying full staffing of U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, even as it faces ever-more urgent crises both at home and abroad.

MIDEAST: Hot Air Brings no Winds of Change

Last November, on the day marking the assassination of Israel's peace-making leader Yitzhak Rabin, the now outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Israelis something which, for decades, not even Rabin had dared say - we must end the occupation of the Palestinian territories and return to the 1967 borders.

MIDEAST: East Jerusalem Settlements Ratchet Up Tensions

As the fires of human misery continue to smolder in Gaza, the situation in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem is emerging as another potentially explosive issue in, and far beyond, the Middle East.

U.S.: Military Dominance in Mideast Proven a Costly Myth

The arguments for maintaining a major U.S. combat force in Iraq at least through 2011, escalating U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and assuming a confrontational stance toward Iran appear to assume that the United States remains the dominant military power in the region.

MIDEAST: The Political Roads Lead to Tehran

The obvious objective of the first visit to the Middle East by the Obama administration's U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was to contain the still potentially explosive situation in Gaza following January's Israeli offensive against Hamas, and to rescue the two-state solution policy in face of the emergence of a far-right administration in Jerusalem.

ECONOMY: Trickle Down Misery

The world's poorest people had nothing to do with the financial gimmickry that has brought the global economy to its knees but they are paying a heavy price for it and relief seems a long way off.

ISRAEL: Slowly Beating Back the Persecution Psyche

A new study shows that Israelis are moving towards an understanding of the Palestinian position on the conflict, even though a vast number still hold on to simplistic notions about good Israelis and bad Arabs.

IRAQ: Stumbling From One Conflict to Another?

When U.S. President Barack Obama announced his plan last week to pull out all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by September 2010, the news did not generate much enthusiasm among Iraqi Kurds.

SOUTH ASIA: Terrorists Aim for Destabilisation, Media Attention

South Asia seems to be caught in a vortex of violence as the countries that form this region - from Sri Lanka at the southern-most tip, Bangladesh to the east, Nepal crowning the north, Pakistan along the west and India in the middle - deal with internal nightmares that their governments routinely blame on neighbours.

MIDEAST: How to Aid Gaza and Not Hamas

"There's no doubt there's been a huge amount of damage done, including whole sectors of private sector buildings which have been razed to the ground and, in any event, given the numbers of people that have died, I find the conversation about proportionality not really a sensible conversation to have. What we've got to do is to find a way of ensuring this doesn't happen again." The pointed comment came from former British prime minister Tony Blair, special international envoy to the Middle East, during his first visit to Gaza after Israel's offensive against Hamas.

KOREAS: ‘Missile Rattling Won’t Work’

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak warned leaders in North Korea on Sunday that it would be counterproductive for Pyongyang to pursue a path involving the development of missiles that threaten its neighbours.

POLITICS-US: Drawdown Plan May Leave Combat Brigades in Iraq

President Barack Obama has given military commanders a free hand to determine the size and composition of a residual force in Iraq up to 50,000 troops, apparently including the option of leaving one or more combat brigades or bringing them from the United States, after the August 2010 deadline for the ostensible withdrawal of all combat brigades now in Iraq.

RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: India Can Help End Civilian Killings

As Sri Lanka's armed forces battle the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in their last stronghold, the island country's influential neighbour, India, is weighing diplomatic options to goad President Mahinda Rajapakse's government to save civilians trapped in the war zone.

MIDEAST: Israel’s Lurch to the Right Could Be Far Indeed

The continuing efforts by Israel's presumptive next prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to assemble a rightwing-dominated government have sparked serious concern about the effects such a government might have on peace efforts with the Palestinians.

MIDEAST: Early Jitters for Netanyahu

He's yet to be installed as Israel's prime minister, let alone starting to govern through the customary 100 days of grace, and already Benjamin Netanyahu is being allowed no respite: neither by those whom he envisages as his potential coalition partners nor by the international community, most pertinently the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.

POLITICS-PAKISTAN: Court Ruling May Deepen Political Crisis

The political chasm in crisis-riddled Pakistan has deepened after a Supreme Court ruling barred from political office opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab - the country's most populous and powerful province.

MIDEAST: The Ball Could be in Israel's Court

Israel's outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rode roughshod over those who piously argue that sport and politics ought not to play in the same arena.

COLOMBIA: A Hundred-Year War on Drugs

The anti-drug, anti-insurgent Plan Colombia is, paradoxically, at the heart of the tragedy involving Awa indigenous people who were murdered this month by the FARC guerrillas.

MIDEAST: Peace Talks on Hold Amid Dual Power Struggles

Negotiations for the political endgame of the recent Gaza war have proven much more difficult than - presumably - the Israeli cabinet imagined last December, when it took the final decision to start the war.

US-ISRAEL: Storm Clouds Ahead?

After eight years of the closest possible relations, the United States and Israel may be headed for a period of increasing strain, particularly given the likelihood that whatever Israeli government emerges from last week's election will be more hawkish than its predecessor.

INDIA/PAKISTAN: Signs of a Thaw

A week after Islamabad admitted that the plot to carry out the Nov. 26-29 attacks on Mumbai was partially planned in Pakistan, and that Pakistani nationals were among the assailants, there are tentative signs that the strained relations between the two neighbours may be thawing.