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By J Nastranis
NEW YORK (IDN) — UN Secretary-General António Guterres has made his "good offices" available for a peaceful solution to the looming "disastrous confrontation over Ukraine between Russia and Western countries of the NATO alliance", pledging he "will remain fully engaged in the hours and days to come" and will "leave no stone unturned" in the search for ways to defuse tensions.
Viewpoint by Shastri Ramachandaran *
This article was issued by WION and DNA, and is being re-published with the writer's permission.
NEW DELHI (IDN) — India’s diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing this week was another balancing act of a piece with its position on Ukraine in the UN Security Council meeting last week. In both cases, the Government of India made a virtue of not taking a stand by appearing to take a stand.
Viewpoint by Sugeeswara Senadhira
COLOMBO (IDN) — The United States, Britain, Canada and a few other Western so-called champions of human rights will press their unreasonable demand at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) next month to initiate an international probe into alleged human rights violations in the last phase of the separatist war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) terrorists 13 years ago.
The 49th Regular Sessions of the UNHRC are due to begin on February 25, 2022.
Arms Control Is Key to the Solution
By Daryl G. Kimball and Oliver Meier
Daryl G. Kimball is the Executive Director of the Arms Control Association. Olivier Meier is a Senior Researcher at the Berlin office of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH).
WASHINGTON, D.C. | HAMBURG (IDN) — A senior group of American, European, and Russian security experts warn that: “The tensions between Russia, Ukraine, and NATO create the potential for a disastrous war that can and must be avoided through serious and deft diplomacy.”
A Memo to Congress
Viewpoint by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies
NEW YORK (IDN) — While the Biden administration is sending more troops and weapons to inflame the Ukraine conflict and Congress is pouring more fuel on the fire, the American people are on a totally different track.
A December 2021 poll found that a plurality of Americans in both political parties prefer to resolve differences over Ukraine through diplomacy. Another December poll found that a plurality of Americans (48 per cent) would oppose going to war with Russia should it invade Ukraine, with only 27 per cent favouring U.S. military involvement.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — Are the West's chickens coming home to roost? If the Western powers had gambled 2% of NATO's budget and met the Soviet Union's economic needs in President Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost era there would have been a much less de-stabilising transition and today, there would have been a recognisable democracy.
Viewpoint by Allison Lau and Lauren Gonitzke *
This article was produced by Local Peace Economy, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
NEW YORK (IDN) — In mid-December 2021, South African comedian Trevor Noah used “The Daily Show” to target China when he aired a segment titled “Why China Is in Africa”. While this segment was advertised as an informed, nuanced overview of the complex international relationship between China and many African states, it mainly reinforced the debunked myth of “debt-trap diplomacy” to its American audiences, ending with a throwaway line about #StopAsianHate.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — In his first speech to the nation since the overthrow of President Roch Kabore, the new military leader of Burkina Faso promised a return to the normal constitutional order "when the conditions are right".
Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba, who led the ouster of President Kaboré, blamed the president for failing to contain violent extremists. An attack last November that left almost 50 military police officers dead is considered a key event that led to the coup.
Viewpoint by Alice Slater
The writer is a Member of the Board of Directors of World BEYOND War. She is also the UN NGO Representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. www.warbeyondwar.org
NEW YORK (IDN) — It seems hard to believe that in these possible end times in the midst of a global pandemic with an endless succession of catastrophic climate disasters and thousands of nuclear weapons poised and pointed in the US and Russia, ready to destroy life on earth, we are beset by a bought, corrupted mainstream media that assaults us with the “wrongdoings” of Russia and China, and most recently North Korea, with barely a mention in their assaultive reporting of how the US might be a cause.
Viewpoint by Alexey Gromyko*
This article was issued by the European Leadership Network on January 20, 2022.
MOSCOW (IDN) — The current discussions between Russia and NATO pivot on Russia’s requirement for the Alliance to provide legally binding security guarantees: specifically, that the alliance will not expand east, which will require revoking the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit decision that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO”.
IDN-InDepthNews offers news analyses, features, reports and viewpoints that impact the world and its peoples. It has been online since 2009. Its network spans countries around the world.