IRAQ: Was Cairo Meet First Step Toward Peace Talks?

The final communiqué of the Cairo Conference of Iraqi political groups last week appears to be a tentative first step in a process that could eventually lead to a peace settlement in Iraq.

POLITICS: New Japan-US Ties Set to Make or Mar Asian Affairs

Japan-U.S. relations, following President George W. Bush’s whirlwind Asian tour, earlier this month, are set to play a strong role in political manoeuverings in the region, say analysts, many of whom express misgivings over the strengthened bilateral alliance.

DEVELOPMENT: Iraq Warned Against “Straitjacket” Oil Deals

Oil exploration deals currently being negotiated between the Washington-backed Iraqi government and multinational oil companies could cost Iraqis up to 194 billion dollars in lost revenues and transfer more than two-thirds of the country's oil reserves to the control of foreign firms, a new report warns.

IRAQ: Life Goes On in Fallujah’s Rubble

A year after the U.S.-led "Operation Phantom Fury" damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools and 65 mosques in Fallujah, Iraq, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction and high rates of illness.

POLITICS-US: A Close Call for Al-Jazeera?

The White House emphatically denied a report by a British tabloid Tuesday that U.S. President George W. Bush considered bombing the headquarters of the al-Jazeera satellite television station in Qatar during the U.S. Marine assault on Falluja in April 2004.

POLITICS-US: Cheney Tries to Raise the Stakes

Amid growing pressure to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and mounting charges by Democrats that senior administration officials misled the nation into war there, Vice President Dick Cheney appears to have taken charge of defending his boss and taking on the critics.

IRAQ: Int’l Probe into Torture in Iraqi Prison Urgently Needed, Says UN

The United Nations has called for an urgent international investigation into the conditions of detainees in Iraq, after the discovery last weekend of a Baghdad prison where detainees were tortured.

U.S.: The Politics of Pushback

On Veterans' Day, Nov. 11, President Bush told troops gathered at Pennsylvania's Tobyhanna Army Depot that, "It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war [in Iraq] began."

SYRIA: That Iraq Feeling Comes

The Rawda cafe in the centre of Damascus is reputed to be an opposition hang-out, and not many patrons are given to defending the Syrian government. The increasing international pressure from the UN investigation into the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri has brought widespread dismay among the tea-sipping and backgammon playing crowd. "It will hurt Syria," was the consensus.

POLITICS-US: More Wheels Spin Off Iraq Policy

In a major new blow to President George W. Bush's determination to "stay the course" in Iraq, an influential Democratic hawk with close ties to the uniformed military has called for Washington to begin withdrawing U.S. troops immediately.

POLITICS-US: Elites Chastened by Iraq War

U.S. opinion leaders who expressed strong confidence in Washington's global leadership in the late 1990s have been chastened by the Iraq war, which has also spurred a sharp rise in isolationist sentiment in the general public, according to the latest in a series of surveys released here Tuesday by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press.

POLITICS-US: Business Booms for Contract Interrogators

This summer, dozens of people converged in the high desert town of El Paso, Texas, en route to spending six months in Iraqi prisons.

RIGHTS: The Harsh Education of an Iraqi Feminist

Zainab Salbi was 11 years old when her father was handpicked to serve as Saddam Hussein's personal pilot, regularly ferrying the former Iraqi president from Baghdad to his hometown of Tikrit.

POLITICS: North Korea Threat Props Up Japan-US Alliance

By pledging U.S. support for efforts to resolve the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea, visiting President George W. Bush, on Wednesday, hinted at the importance of the alliance in countering Japan’s biggest security threat and also in tackling troubles elsewhere in the world.

POLITICS-US: Republicans Cut and Run from Iraq and Bush

Although he dislikes foreign travel and formal summits, U.S. President George W. Bush must be relieved to be spending this week as an honoured guest in several Asian capitals. According to the stereotype, Asians are unfailingly polite.

CORRUPTION: Iraq Oil Connection Leaves Greasy Marks

Questions continue to hover above 180 French firms said to have profited illegally from the oil for food programme in Iraq.

POLITICS-US: Congress Sends Mixed Signals on Detainee Rights

As U.S. President George W. Bush's poll numbers plummet, questions about how his administration "sold" the invasion of Iraq to the public and its treatment of prisoners seized in the "war on terror" continue to dog the beleaguered president, stalling his second-term agenda.

RIGHTS: U.N. Food Expert Condemns U.S. Tactics in Iraq

Jean Ziegler, the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, made waves last month when he accused U.S. and British forces of using food and water as weapons of war in besieged cities in Iraq.

MEDIA-US: Controversial WMD Reporter and NY Times Divorce

Was she an innocent dupe who was played mercilessly by exile chieftain Ahmed Chalabi and his neo-conservative and Pentagon backers who led the march to war with Iraq in March 2003?

POLITICS: Viet Cong Advice for Iraqi Resistance

Is Iraq another Vietnam? Tran Dac Loi should know. The Secretary-General of the Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation grew up in Hanoi dodging bombs dropped by the United States Air Force, while his father fought in the successful guerilla war in the country's central highlands.

HUMAN RIGHTS-US: Exporting Torture

The U.S. government prohibits torture on its own soil, but operates secret prisons in various parts of the world where human rights are regularly violated, maintained political analyst Roberto Montoya and rights activist Miguel Ángel Calderón in interviews with IPS.