OPINION

Photo: The Twin Towers ablaze after the second plane crashed in to the Twin Towers. Credit: Dr Palitha Kohona, former Sri Lankan Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York.

9/11 – The Morning That Changed The World I Knew

By Dr Palitha Kohona*

COLOMBO (IDN) - It was another sunny September morning. The sky was a brilliant blue. As I gazed out of my kitchen window while having breakfast, in Mid Town Manhattan, the twin towers were glistening in the morning sun. I noted, as I often had, that they were still there, a familiar reassuring sight. The cute young blonde in the apartment across the street was drying her wet hair, as usual, by her plate glass window. The walk to the UN and my office on the 32nd floor of the Secretariat was uneventful. Not that I expected anything untoward to happen. A pre-scheduled closed-door management meeting began on time.

: Dr. Palitha Kohona; THE WORLD; USA and Canada; 11 September 2017

Stop Trump From Abandoning the Iran Nuclear Deal

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - The big mistake, apparently about to be made by President Trump, in undoing the nuclear agreement made by President Barack Obama with Iran is not just that he intends to go backwards, it is that he doesn’t intend to go forwards. (To be fair, neither did Obama.)

What the Iranians negotiated about was not so much the “bomb” – to be or not to be – but about their pride and their position in the world and their right to become a thriving economic and political power inured from sanctions or military threats. (Sanctions were imposed before the nuclear issue came to the fore.)

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 05 September 2017

Two UN Agencies Hold First Ever Asia-Pacific Ministerial Summit on the Environment

By Shamshad Akhtar and Erik Solheim*

“Resource Efficient and Pollution Free Asia-Pacific” is the focus of the UN ESCAP- UNEP's First Asia-Pacific Ministerial Summit on the Environment from September 5-8 September 2017 in Bangkok, which is purported to motivate policy makers to embark on sustainable development pathways that will achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and contributions under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

BANGKOK (IDN) - The high-level meeting is a unique opportunity for the region’s environment leaders to discuss how they can work together towards a resource efficient and pollution-free Asia-Pacific.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 05 September 2017

Photo: The ministers of foreign affairs of the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, France, China, the European Union and Iran (Lausanne, 30 March 2015). Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Scrapping the Iran Nuclear Deal Will Create Yet Another Nonproliferation Crisis

By Daryl G. Kimball*

The author is the Executive Director of the Arms Control Association. This article first appeared on August 29, 2017 in the Arms Control Today as a Focus Editorial with the caption Don’t Abandon the Iran Nuclear Deal, and is being republished by arrangement with that monthly journal on nonproliferation and global security. – The Editor

WASHINGTON (IDN-INPS) - Although his administration is already struggling with one major nonproliferation challenge – North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile capabilities – President Donald Trump soon may initiate steps that could unravel the highly successful 2015 Iran nuclear deal, thereby creating a second major nonproliferation crisis.

: Daryl G. Kimball; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 03 September 2017

Photo: Kofi Annan (second from left) and Aung San Suu Kyi (right of Annan) introducing the report of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State.

Complex Realities of the Rakhine Issue in Myanmar

By Ye Htut*

Ye Htut was the Minister for the Ministry of Information of Myanmar (formerly Burma) from 2014 to 2016 and spokesperson for the President from 2013 to 2016. He previously served as a Lieutenant Colonel in Myanmar Army.

NAYPYIDAW (IDN-INPS) - On August 23, 2016 Myanmar’s de facto leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi announced the formation of an Advisory Commission on Rakhine State. This Commission, established on September 5, 2016, is led by former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and with three international and six Myanmar experts as members of the Commission.

: IDN-INPS Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 01 September 2017

Photo: UK aid and UNFPA support the construction and rehabilitation of eight health care facilities in Sierra Leone in July 2017. UNFPA Sierra Leone representative is in the centre. Credit: UNF PA Sierra Leone.

UN Responding to the Humanitarian Crisis in Sierra Leone

Interview with Dr. Kim Eva Dickson, Representative of the UNFPA Sierra Leone

NEW YORK | FREETOWN (IDN) - UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is paying specific attention to the needs of women and girls affected by the floods and mudslides in the country's capital city Freetown that killed over 495 people on August 14, 2017. Joan Erakit, UN correspondent of IDN, flagship agency of the International Press Syndicate (INPS) Group, spoke with Dr. Kim Eva Dickson, Representative of the UNFPA Sierra Leone. Following is the full text of the interview.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; THE WORLD; Africa; 30 August 2017

Photo: View of Shahr-i-Zohok (the "Red City") in Bamyan Province. The color comes from the red clay used in construction; the dry climate has allowed for the remarkable preservation. Source: CIA Factbook.

America Should Get out of Afghanistan Before it's Tool Late

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - It’s the most repeated maxim in all the reporting on Afghanistan: “The Americans have the watches, the Taliban have the time.”

Dead right! This is America’s longest war ever, 16 years and counting. President Donald Trump, admitting he was reversing his campaign call for pulling out, has now decided to stay in, sending to Afghanistan another 3,900 troops to reinforce the 8,400 there now.

Trump doesn’t claim it will do the job of defeating the Taliban. In fact he lays out no long-term strategy at all. It’s not difficult to imagine that in a decade the same stalemate will exist.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 29 August 2017

Photo: A Qantas Airways Boeing 747-400 passes close to houses shortly before landing at London Heathrow Airport. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The Sound of Rain and Bees Murmuring – Not Noise, Please

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - Everyone has their favourite sounds – a ball on a cricket bat on a summer’s afternoon, birds singing, waves breaking on the beach, the coffee pot perking on the stove, children playing scoobydoo. Mine are the quiet sounds of the English Lake District- William Wordsworth’s:

'“A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by one after one; the sound of rain and bees murmuring; the fall of rivers, wind and lakes, smooth fields; white sheets of water, and pure sky.”

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 22 August 2017

Photo: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the nation from the ramparts of the historic Red Fort on the occasion of Independence Day on August 15 in New Delhi. Credit: PTI/PIB | The Wire

India Sliding Into Deadly Peril Two Years Ahead of Next General Election

Analysis by Prem Shankar Jha

Prem Shankar Jha is a senior Indian journalist and the author of several books including Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger: Can China and India Dominate the West? This article is being reproduced courtesy of The Wire which carried it on August 17 with the headline: Modi Is Taking India to a Dangerous Place. – The Editor

NEW DELHI (IDN-INPS) - There was a discernible note of self congratulation in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day (August 15) speech this year. As usual, it was replete with claims – “In our country everyone is equal”, “Those who have looted the nation and looted the poor are not able to sleep peacefully today” – and exhortations – “Bharat jodo“, “Let us create a new India” – that are entirely devoid of content.

: IDN-INPS Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 17 August 2017

Trump Should Learn From Reagan, Stop Nuclear Sabre-Rattling

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - Does President Donald Trump ('also known as' Fire and Fury) have an idea what a nuclear war would be like? I ask the question because President Roland Reagan confessed he did not until he decided to look at some movies (once an actor, he was a cinema man), like “On the Beach” that depicted a nuclear war. The exercise changed his thinking and he became an anti-nuclear-weapons militant. Together with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev they cut their nuclear stockpiles sharply. They also came near an agreement to destroy all their nuclear weapons.

The blasts at the end of the Second World War in Hiroshima and Nagasaki can now be repeated hundreds of thousand times. The remains would not just be the broken arches of the Caesars, the abandoned viaducts and moss-covered temples of the Incas, the desolation of one of the pulsating hearts of Europe, Dresden, but millions of square miles of uninhabitable desolation and a suffering which would incorporate more agony than the sum of past history.