POLITICS: Iran, Iraq Crises Converge Despite U.S. Hardliners

The agreement last week between Washington and Iran to hold direct talks on Iraq has forged a new linkage between the Iraq and Iran crises.

POLITICS-US: White House Reaffirms “First Strike” Doctrine

U.S. Pres. George W. Bush issued his second-term National Security Strategy Thursday, a document outlining the administration's strategy for using diplomatic, economic, and military tools to deal with global challenges.

POLITICS-US: Most Now Say Iraq Invasion Was a “War of Choice”

Three years after Pres. George W. Bush ordered U.S. troops into Iraq, public confidence in the operation is dwindling ever smaller, as is the belief that Bush's stated reasons for going to war were sincere, according to a new poll released here Wednesday by the University of Maryland's Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

IRAQ: Withdrawal May Not Mean Liberation

Talk of withdrawal has been dogging the administrations of the United States and Britain for months. Recently the Sunday Telegraph in Australia and the Daily Mirror in Britain ran reports quoting a senior British official that the two countries will withdraw by 2007.

POLITICS-US: Forum Over Substance

If the medium is the message, then U.S. Pres. George W. Bush's choice of forum to launch a new public campaign to defend his beleaguered Iraq policy should be troubling to those, particularly in Europe, who had hoped that his administration was moving toward a more even-handed stance in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

POLITICS: US Abuses, Sense of Irony Missing in Rights Report

Foreign policy, legal and human rights authorities are raising serious questions about the credibility of the U.S. State Department's annual report on human rights, released last week.

IRAQ: No Day Is a Woman’s Day

The unrest in the wake of Iraq's failure to form a new government is making life particularly difficult for women.

JAPAN: Koizumi Will Leave Mixed Legacy

When Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi demits office in September, he will leave his successors a legacy of forceful leadership and strong United States-Japan ties.

RIGHTS: U.S. State Dept. Names Iran Among Worst Violators

Releasing the latest edition of its annual human rights "Country Reports", the U.S. State Department Wednesday named Iran and China as among the world's "most systematic human rights violators" in 2005, along with North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Belarus.

POLITICS-US: Old Divides Resurface as Bush Sinks

As U.S. President George W. Bush's standing in public opinion polls plumbs new depths, his fellow Republicans are finding it ever more difficult to maintain their unity on key hot-button issues, such as foreign policy, immigration and civil liberties.

IRAQ: Not Yet a Civil War

Repeated cries in the mainstream press of an unfolding civil war fall on deaf ears of many Iraqis. Only some have begun to use the term 'civil war' to describe the conflict raging around Iraq; many feel the term is inappropriate.

IRAQ: U.S. Officials Downplay Civil War Threat

The George W. Bush administration deliberately played down the seriousness of the threat of sectarian civil war in Iraq following the mass killings of Sunnis in revenge for the destruction of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, despite abundant evidence that even worse sectarian violence is certain to follow the next terrorist bombing.

RIGHTS: Peace Activists Arrested at U.S. Mission to U.N.

New York police arrested four women activists outside the United States mission to the United Nations Monday as they tried to deliver a petition signed by 72,000 people calling for immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq.

IRAQ: Sunnis Press for Peace

As violence continues throughout much of Iraq, many Sunni political and religious leaders continue to urge their followers to resist launching reprisal attacks.

POLITICS: Poll of US Troops in Iraq Underlines Growing Pressure to Withdraw

The findings of an unprecedented poll of U.S. troops in Iraq are certain to add to steadily growing pressures on the administration of President George W. Bush to accelerate Washington's withdrawal from a country that is increasingly seen as being on the verge of civil war.

RIGHTS-US: Bagram – ‘Son of Guantanamo’

Legal, diplomatic, religious and human rights authorities are struggling to be heard on what many consider to be the "Son of Guantánamo" - a secret prison in Afghanistan where the U.S. military is said to have been holding some 500 "enemy combatants" for as long as three or four years without access to lawyers.

IRAQ: Professionals On a Death Row

Professionals like doctors and teachers are being targeted particularly in the crime wave sweeping Iraq.

RIGHTS: Top U.S. General Dismisses Grim Abuses Report

A senior U.S. military commander has branded as "propaganda" a new report from a major human rights group revealing that of the 98 detainees who have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2002, 34 are suspected or confirmed homicides.

IRAQ: Political Motives Behind Attacks Surface

The political motivations behind the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra have begun to surface through several accounts.

IRAQ: Mosque Outrage Brings Solidarity

Widespread sectarian violence generated by the recent bombing of the Shia Golden Mosque in Samarra has also brought widespread demonstrations of solidarity between Sunnis and Shias across Iraq.

IRAQ: U.S. Holds Its Breath in Aftermath of Mosque Bombing

Two days after the bombing of one of Shia Islam's holiest shrines in Iraq, analysts and officials here are holding their breath, desperately hoping that a rapid descent into a sectarian civil war in Iraq can still be avoided, if not reversed.