POLITICS: Blair’s Mideast Message Echoes Past Failure

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been touring the Middle East with one clear message - to make peace in the Middle East, Iran must be isolated.

POLITICS-US: Public Ever More Pessimistic on Iraq War

The findings of a spate of polls taken since last week's release of the Iraq Study Group's (ISG) recommendations for U.S. policy show a sharp drop in public confidence both in President George W. Bush's handling of the war and in the chances that the U.S. will prevail there.

POLITICS-US: Public Found Likely to Support Baker Report

With the administration of President George W. Bush under mounting pressure to alter U.S. strategy in Iraq and the Middle East, a new public opinion survey quietly released this week found strong popular support for pursuing new diplomatic avenues as proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG).

POLITICS-US: Baker Group Urges Major Policy Overhaul

Calling the situation in Iraq "grave and deteriorating," the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) Wednesday urged a major overhaul of U.S. policies both in Iraq and the larger Middle East.

POLITICS-US: Neo-Cons Move to Preempt Baker Report

To have read the neo-conservative press here over the past month, one would think that former Secretary of State James Baker poses the biggest threat to the United States and Israel since Saddam Hussein.

POLITICS: U.S. Envoy’s Abrasiveness Failed Him at U.N.

As one critic mockingly remarked, the outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton would have done better as an architect or an urban planner than an international diplomat.

POLITICS-US: Bolton Resigns in New Defeat for Hawks

In a new blow to the dwindling number of hawks in top administration positions, U.S. President George W. Bush Monday accepted the resignation of his ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

POLITICS-US: Rice&#39s Iran Strategy Fizzles, Cheney Waits in Wings

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's months-long diplomatic effort to get five other powers to agree to a tough United Nations Security Council resolution on sanctions against Iran now seems certain to fail, because of Russian and Chinese resistance.

POLITICS-US: Bush Seems Determined to Stay the Course

Despite a growing and virtually universal consensus both here and abroad that the United States must engage Syria and Iran if it hopes to stabilise Iraq, U.S. President George W. Bush appears determined to ignore Baghdad's two key neighbours as long as possible.

BOOKS-US: Former Prosecutor Imagines Bush’s Judgment Day

The scene is a U.S. federal grand jury room. There, impaneled ordinary citizens listen intently as a veteran federal prosecutor asks them to return an indictment unique in U.S. history.

MIDEAST: In UN Vote, U.S. Snubbed for Defending Israeli Aggression

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on Friday deploring Israeli military aggression against Palestinian civilians in the occupied territories.

POLITICS: Ideology Widening Muslim-West Divide

The key reasons for the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies are not religious but political, concludes a report presented to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Monday in Istanbul, Turkey.

POLITICS-US: Iran Is Key to Course Change on Iraq

Two political earthquakes hit the United States this week. On Tuesday, the Democrats took control of Congress, and the following day, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was replaced by Robert Gates, a member of the senior Bush's foreign policy team.

POLITICS-US: Neo-Con Nadir?

Less than a week from mid-term elections that are expected to bring at least one house of Congress under Democratic control, neo-conservatives, whose foreign policy ideas dominated most of the first half of the administration of George W. Bush, are having a hard time.

POLITICS-US: Hillary Urges Talks with Syria, Iran, North Korea

In a major policy address, Sen. Hillary Clinton Tuesday called for a "sea change" in U.S. foreign policy that would include direct talks with Syria, Iran and North Korea and greater U.S. engagement in promoting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

POLITICS-US: Bush Under Growing Pressure to Engage Syria

While U.S. President George W. Bush appeared this week to reject suggestions that Washington directly engage the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, pressure both here and in the region for Washington to work out some accommodation with Damascus is rising.

POLITICS: U.N. Passes Arms Trade Treaty Over U.S. Opposition

United Nations member states voted Thursday to create an international treaty to curb the illicit trade in guns and other light weapons, despite strong opposition from the United States and other big powers.

MIDEAST: 50 Years After Suez, U.S. Hegemony Ebbing Fast

As the Middle East prepares to mark the 50th anniversary on Oct. 29 of the Suez Crisis that effectively ended European colonialism, a half century of U.S. hegemony in the region also appears to be coming to an end, according to a growing number of analysts here.

POLITICS-US: Public Wants “New Approach” on Foreign Policy

More than 70 percent of the U.S. public, including nearly half of self-identified Republicans, say they prefer candidates for Congress in the Nov. 7 mid-term elections who will pursue a "new approach" to U.S. foreign policy, according to a new survey released here Friday by the Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

POLITICS: The Baker Saviour?

For the many, many foreign policy experts who have reached an advanced state of despair over the ever-plunging image and influence of the United States after nearly six years of the presidency of George W. Bush, the name James Baker III has an almost talismanic quality.

POLITICS: U.S. Neo-Cons Call For Japanese Nukes, Regime Change

Encouraging Japan to build nuclear weapons, shipping food aid via submarines, and running secret sabotage operations inside North Korea's borders are among a raft of policy prescriptions pushed by prominent U.S. neo-conservatives in the wake of Pyongyang's nuclear test.