US-INDIA: State Visit by Singh Could Smooth Bumpy Relations

The close of U.S. President Barack Obama's trip to Asia this week brought rampant speculation about what a new U.S.-China relationship will look like, but next week's state visit by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will broaden the focus on the rising powers which Obama must balance during his administration.

U.S.: Obama Returns to Greater Middle East Mess

As Barack Obama arrives home from his weeklong tour of East Asia, he confronts a growing list of ever more urgent problems in the Greater Middle East that he inherited from George W. Bush's "global war on terror".

POLITICS: Iran Began Preparing for U.S. Bombing in 2002

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published new evidence Monday that Iran had been building "contingency centres" in the event of a U.S. bombing attack as early as 2002, years before it began building the second enrichment facility at Qom.

POLITICS: Big Breakthroughs May Elude Obama’s Asia Trip

U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in Tokyo Thursday for the first stop of his four-nation trip to Asia, but an ongoing disagreement over realignment of U.S. forces in Japan, new roadblocks to a free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea, and continuing tussles over climate change, trade and currency issues with China have led the White House to downplay goals for the northeast Asian legs of the trip.

MIDEAST: Lessons from the Karine A -Deja Vu All Over Again

As Israeli Defence Forces munitions experts sorted through 300 tonnes of weapons found on a German-owned, Cypriot-operated cargo ship flying the Antiguan flag, Israeli politicians were sifting through the various talking points that could be offloaded from the vessel.

POLITICS: On Nuke Disarmament, It’s Still “You First”

Is the ongoing controversy over Iran's nuclear programme helping to advance the United Nations' agenda on nuclear disarmament? To a number of diplomats and experts who have participated in past U.N. discussions on the spread of nuclear weapons, the answer is, yes – although not necessarily for the expected reasons.

MIDEAST: ‘France, U.S. Pushing Arabs Into Nuclear Race’

The decision by the oil-rich United Arab Emirates to build nuclear reactors has unleashed frenetic, politically backed competition between giant corporations from France, the U.S., Japan and South Korea to win contracts estimated at more than 40 billion dollars.

POLITICS: NIE Reveals Qom Facility Followed 2007 Bush Threats

The Barack Obama administration claims that construction of a second Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Qom began before Tehran's decision to withdraw from a previous agreement to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in advance of such construction. But the November 2007 U.S. intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear programme tells a different story.

U.S.: Clinton Calls for Strengthened IAEA Powers

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday called for strengthening the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect suspected nuclear-related facilities and ruled out lifting sanctions against North Korea until it took "verifiable and irreversible" steps toward denuclearisation.

US-IRAN: Congress Begins Pressing Sanctions Legislation

As the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama prepares for a critical series of talks about the fate of Iran's nuclear programme, Congress has begun moving long-pending legislation to impose new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

POLITICS: Obama (and Everyone Else) "Surprised" by Nobel

Friday's announcement that U.S. President Barack Obama had been awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize barely nine months into his presidency drew an outpouring of formal congratulations from around the world, amid scepticism and speculation over whether the prize would ultimately prove an asset or liability.

U.S.: Public Sceptical and Hawkish on Iran

Despite strong support for diplomatic engagement with Iran, most U.S. citizens believe such efforts will ultimately fail and that Washington should be prepared to use military force to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to a new poll released here Tuesday by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press.

POLITICS: Leaked Iran Paper Based on Intel that Split IAEA

Excerpts of the internal draft report by the staff of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published online last week show that the report's claims about Iranian work on a nuclear weapon is based almost entirely on intelligence documents which have provoked a serious conflict within the agency.

NORTH KOREA: China Seeks to Jumpstart Stalled Nuke Talks

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's decision to personally greet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the Pyongyang airport Sunday is being taken as a positive sign that North Korea may be willing to restart talks on nuclear disarmament.

US-IRAN: Geneva Talks Seen as Potential Breakthrough

While experts here are being deliberately tentative in their assessments of Thursday's meeting in Geneva between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany (P5+1), there appears to be a growing sense that the results could lay the basis for a long-sought diplomatic breakthrough.

POLITICS: U.N. Session Marked by Highs and Lows

The two-week long high-level segment of the U.N. General Assembly, which concluded last week, was characterised by historic moments, political controversies, and at times, routine boredom.

IRAN: Non-Western Big Powers Enjoy Growing Influence

Thursday's seven-party talks in Geneva on Iran's nuclear programme resulted in a breakthrough agreement on Russian enrichment of materials Tehran needs for nuclear-medical work.

POLITICS: New Doubt Cast on U.S. Claim Qom Plant is Illicit

An Iranian assertion that construction on its second enrichment facility began only last year and further analysis of satellite photos of the site have cast fresh doubts on the Barack Obama administration's charge that the construction of the plant near Qom involved a covert decision to violate Iran's obligations to report immediately to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on any decision to build a new facility.

POLITICS-US: Nukes Agency Pushes New Bomb Production

Despite statements by U.S. President Barack Obama that he wants to see the world reduce, and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration continues to push forward on a programme called Complex Modernisation, which would expand two existing nuclear plants to allow them to produce new plutonium pits and new bomb parts out of enriched uranium for use in a possible new generation of nuclear bombs.

POLITICS: U.S. Story on Iran Nuke Facility Doesn’t Add Up

The story line that dominated media coverage of the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility last week was the official assertion that U.S. intelligence had caught Iran trying to conceal a "secret" nuclear facility.

POLITICS: U.N. Chief Weighs in on Iran, Libya and Afghanistan

Addressing his monthly press conference Tuesday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon refused to back a Western endorsement of a premature election victory for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, implicitly criticised Libyan Leader Muammar el-Qaddafi for denigrating the U.N. charter, and faulted Iran for lack of transparency in its nuclear programme.