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Photo: Tayé-Brook Zerihoun, Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, briefing the Security Council on the situation in the Middle East on 5 January 2018. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

UN Asks Iranian Authorities to Address Legitimate Concerns of the Population

By Tayé-Brook Zerihoun

Tayé-Brook Zerihoun is the Assistant Secretary-General for United Nations Department of Political Affairs. The following are extensive excerpts from his ‘briefing’ to the Security Council on ‘The Situation in the Middle East’ on 5 January 2018.

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – The protests in the Islamic Republic of Iran started on 28 December 2017 when hundreds of Iranians gathered, in a largely peaceful manner, in Mashhad, the country’s second-largest city, chanting slogans against economic hardship.

Over the following several days, protests occurred in other urban areas, including Tehran, as well as many rural areas. Some of the slogans also expressed disappointment at slow or limited change in social strictures and political freedoms, and criticized what demonstrators decried as the privileged position of the clergy and elements of the country’s security establishment. In some cases, demonstrators demanded that Iran cease costly involvement in the region.

: UN Bureau; THE WORLD; Middle East; 08 January 2018

EU and 79 ACP Countries Plan a 'Modernised Partnership'

By Reinhardt Jacobsen

BRUSSELS (IDN) – As the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States (ACP) gear up for talks on future relations between the two groupings after the Cotonou Agreement expires in February 2020, some areas of agreement on their respective stances have emerged.

The agreement that was signed in June 2000 in Cotonou – Benin’s largest city – is the most comprehensive partnership treaty between developing countries and the EU. Its fundamental principles include equality of partners, global participation, dialogue and regionalisation.

: Reinhard Jacobsen; GLOBAL GOVERNANCE; ACP Group of States; 07 January 2018

Photo: Prime Minister Narendra Modi shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Credit: PTI

India Looks Forward to Hectic Diplomacy in 2018

By Shastri Ramachandaran*

NEW DELHI (IDN) – The world could be too much with us in 2018, in a sense that Wordsworth may never have foreseen. In fact, the New Year would begin with a lot of the world in India when leaders of 10 ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations), governments come as Republic Day guests to commemorate 25 years of India-ASEAN relations. Never before has the R-Day had so many international guests.

That may set the tone for another year of hectic diplomacy when Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be supping at the high tables of the G20 (Group of 20), SCO (The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the East Asia Summit (EAS) even as the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) may have to deal with serious challenges looming large in the neighbourhood. It is a moot point whether 2018 would be better than 2017.

: Shastri Ramachandaran; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 06 January 2018

Photo: The Vatican Conference in session. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri | IDN-INPS.

Landmark Vatican Conference on Nuclear Disarmament Brings a Breeze of Expectation

By Ramesh Jaura

The following article is based on an interview with Hirotsugu Terasaki, the Director General of Peace and Global Issues of the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (SGI), in Tokyo, Japan. SGI was the sole Buddhist organization that participated in the Vatican Conference on nuclear disarmament on November 10-11, 2017.

BERLIN | ROME (IDN) – There was an air of surprise when religious leaders and representatives of civil society, officials of State and international organizations, eminent academics, Nobel Laureates, and students, gathered in the Vatican City against the backdrop of an escalating face-off between the U.S. and North Korea.

Surprise because for the first time the Vatican's newly created Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development was hosting a Conference on the 'Perspectives for a World Free from Nuclear Weapons and for Integral Disarmament'.

: Ramesh Jaura; SUSTAINABILITY; Peace & Justice; 05 January 2018

Photo: Patrice Nganang by Georges Seguin (Okki) - Own work, 28 March 2010, Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Jailed U.S.-Cameroonian Professor and Writer Wins Release

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – A New York-based university professor jailed for his writings critical of President Paul Biya of Cameroon has been released from prison after an outpouring of support from free speech activists, students and academics around the world.

Stony Brook professor Patrice Nganang, who has dual citizenship in Cameroon and the United States, was facing five years imprisonment for “insulting the president”. He had been held for almost a month before being expelled from the country on December 27, 2017 and sent back to the U.S. where he teaches culture studies and comparative literature at the New York State University at Stony Brook. He is a published novelist and poet.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 05 January 2018

Photo: Testing of the Peacekeeper re-entry vehicles at the Kwajalein Atoll. All eight fired from only one missile. Each line, if its warhead were live, represents the potential explosive power of about 300 kilotons of TNT, about nineteen times larger than the detonation of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Former ICBM Launch Officer Calls for Reforming Presidential Nuclear Launch Authority

By J C Suresh

TORONTO | WASHINGTON, DC (IDN) – Cofounder of the organization Global Zero, and a former Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile launch officer has called for major changes to prevent a U.S. President from ordering the use of nuclear weapons.

In a new article published in the forthcoming issue of Arms Control Today, Bruce Blair, who is also a member of the Princeton University research faculty, provides an authoritative summary of current U.S. nuclear launch protocol and its dangerous liabilities. The article includes new information about the process, including who is involved and how a nuclear use order would be executed.

: UN Bureau; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 04 January 2018

Photo: General view of the Security Council meeting on non-proliferation by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on 15 December 2017. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias.

UN Security Council to Discuss Confidence-building Measures and Weapons of Mass Destruction

By Alyn Ware

Alyn Ware is Global Coordinator of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament (PNND).

NEW YORK (IDN) – Kairat Umarov, President of the UN Security Council for January, has announced that Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev will chair a special session of the Council on January 18 on the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Confidence Building Measures (CBMs).

The session is being called in order to provide a focus on the resolution of political issues that give rise to States relying on weapons of mass destruction – especially nuclear weapons.

"Today we should pay more attention to the building of trust and confidence among political leaders and among countries," Kazakh Ambassador Umarov told a press conference at the UN on January 2, announcing the session. "Without this, none of the issues will be solved. This is what today's world is lacking."

: Alyn Ware; UN INSIDER; 04 January 2018

Photo: Ambassador Kairat Umarov (centre, on dais), Permanent Representative of Kazakhstan to the UN and President of the Security Council for the month of January, briefs journalists on the Council’s programme of work for the month on January 2 at the UN Headquarters in New York. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe.

Security Council under Kazakh Presidency has a Content-Rich Agenda for January

By J Nastranis

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Two days after the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued "a red alert for our world", the new Security Council President Kairat Umarov has presented a content-rich agenda for the January programme of work of this vital organ of the world body which bears primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.

Umarov is Permanent Representative of Kazakhstan to the UN in New York – the first Central Asian country ever to chair the Council for January. Kazakhstan joined the Council as non-permanent member on January 1, 2017 for two years.

: J Nastranis; UN INSIDER; 03 January 2018

Photo: Roberto Savo, the author. Credit: Opera Mundi.

A Time Bomb Waiting to Explode

Viewpoint by Roberto Savio

The writer is publisher of Other News, an eminent proponent of "information that markets eliminate" and founder of IPS-Inter Press Service News Agency. This article is being reproduced courtesy of Other News with the writer's permission. He can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and his articles and comments can be read on Facebook @robertosavioutopia

ROME (IDN) – In the year that has just ended, the world's 500 richest people increased their wealth by one trillion dollars, rising by 23 percent to top a comfortable five trillion dollars, outstripping even the US federal budget which stands at 3.7 trillion dollars.

What lies behind the figures for the world’s billionaires published in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index is the not widely known fact that the amount of money circulating stays the same …no new money has been printed to accommodate these 500 billionaires but, more importantly, this means that the rest of world’s population actually lost those trillion dollars!

: Roberto Savio; OPINION; 03 January 2018

Photo: New President of Liberia, George Weah. Credit: Daily Post, Nigeria

An Encounter with a Star Footballer Now President of Liberia

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – It was late 2003, the Liberian war was winding down after taking the lives of 250,000 civilians, spawning a small army of deadly child soldiers, and I was sitting at lunch in Monrovia inside the president’s palatial office and residence with the American ambassador on my right and George Weah, Fifa’s World Footballer of the Year, on my left.

When I introduced myself to the ambassador he made it clear he didn’t want to talk. He wasn’t happy having ended up with a journalist next to him. Every 15 minutes an aide would rush up to him with the latest news on the fighting. We could hear the sound of rifles cracking. I asked him if he was nervous. He ignored me. But Weah was more than ready to chat.