By Bernhard Schell | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
BEIRUT (IDN) – While the focus of international attention has shifted to Syria, interest in Egypt is on the wane, despite the fact that political stalemate continues there and the country is reeling under the impact of one of the bloodiest events epitomized, among others, by the government crack-down on protests organized by the Muslim Brotherhood outside Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque and at Nahda Square in Cairo.
By Kalinga Seneviratne | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
SINGAPORE (IDN) – Giving a press conference at the end of seven-day visit to Sri Lanka, United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) head Navi Pillay, a South African, said that she was highly offended by comments in the Sri Lankan media accusing her of bias because of her Indian Tamil ethnicity.
“Some media, ministers, bloggers and various propagandists in Sri Lanka have, for several years now, on the basis of my Indian Tamil heritage, described me as a tool of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). They have claimed I was in their pay, the ‘Tamil Tigress in the UN’. This is not only wildly incorrect, it is deeply offensive,” said Pillay at the beginning of the press conference on August 31, 2013.
By R Nastranis | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
GENEVA (IDN) – The United Nations is faced with a mission impossible in Syria. Not only to avert any “punitive action” that holds the risk of triggering a regional conflict in the Middle East, but also alleviating human suffering manifested by streams of refugees seeking safe havens in neighboring countries and a spate of internally displaced persons.
Intensive discussions about the use of military force to punish President Bashar Hafez al-Assad for allegedly approving deployment of chemical weapons reveal the widespread prevalence of a culture of war – as opposed to a culture of peace.
By Jaya Ramachandran | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
BERLIN (IDN) – As drums of war beat louder, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has warned that “resorting to force in the Middle East will ignite a fire, which will be difficult to contain”, highlighted Tehran’s role in encouraging the Syrian government to accept and cooperate with the UN inspectors, criticized President Bashar Hafez al-Assad for some “grave mistakes” and bashed the U.S. for playing into the hands of “radical Takfiri groups that seek intensification of the conflict, violence and sectarianism”.
In an interview with Aseman Weekly (Sky Weekly) in Tehran, Foreign Minister Zarif said Iran had alerted the U.S. in December 2012 that “handmade articles of chemical weapons, including sarin gas,” were being transported into Syria. The warning was conveyed in an official memo to Washington through the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which serves as the U.S. interests section in Iranian capital, he said.
Interview by Manish Rai | IDN-InDepth NewsInterview*
NEW DELHI (IDN) – As the Afghan government prepares for the post-2014 withdrawal of NATO forces, M. Ashraf Haidari, Deputy Chief of Mission of the Embassy of Afghanistan in New Delhi, India, says in an exclusive interview with ViewsAround Editor Manish Rai that the survival of the Taliban in Afghanistan hinges on the support they receive in Pakistan. “Without safe havens, without an operational infrastructure, and without financial means for their sustainment, the Taliban would cease to exist in a matter of a couple of months, if not a few weeks. Once these lines of support are withdrawn from their terror campaign, they would be smashed into easy defeat by the armed forces of Afghanistan,” adds the Afghan diplomat.
Question: What was the main reason for shutting down of the Taliban political office in Doha, Qatar?
By Jayantha Dhanapal and Paolo Cotta-Ramusino*
IDN-InDepth NewsDocument
As an emotional and political roller-coaster about Syria continues, some of the crucial facts and background are being ignored. So that these do not disappear completely from the radar, IDN is documenting the following statement issued on August 29 – Editor.
The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs considers the possession and the use of chemical weapons, as with all weapons of mass destruction, abhorrent. We join with Syrians and people worldwide in expressing our horror at the recent apparent use of some sort of chemical agent against children and other sleeping civilians in the Damascus suburbs.
By Shastri Ramachandaran* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
NEW DELHI (IDN) – Every few years the Indian rupee takes a dive. Every time this happens, there is the usual hand-wringing and the finance minister talking the rupee up.
Invariably, the rupee’s fall triggers the clichéd debate over growth versus inflation, talk of curbing foreign exchange outflows, sucking cash out of the market and a number of other ad-hoc measures. The rupee ‘stabilises’ at a new low. Until it goes for another spin, and the charade is repeated.
It is no different this time with the rupee at Rs 65 to a dollar and forecasts of it being headed towards Rs 70.
As it stands (or, falls) today, the rupee does little credit to India as a rising power. In fact, the rupee does not look like ever becoming a currency of power.
By Neena Bhandari | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
SYDNEY (IDN) – Even as the nuclear-armed countries continue to amass new warheads and build and modernise ballistic missiles, bombers and submarines to launch them, the campaign for nuclear abolition is growing from strength to strength.
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons’ (ICAN) Paper Cranes Project – symbolizing support for nuclear disarmament – is urging governments to begin negotiations on a global treaty banning nuclear weapons this year. More than 190,000 paper cranes have already been delivered to world leaders, and messages of support have been received from the Secretary-General of the United Nations and amongst others national leaders of Australia, Afghanistan, Greece, Kazakhstan, the Marshall Islands, Mozambique, Slovenia and Switzerland. Read in Chinese | Read in Japanese
By Jayantha Dhanapala* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
KANDY, Sri Lanka (IDN) – Suddenly, a cascade of leaks has been affecting the sole superpower in the world. First there was Pfc. Bradley Manning, the American who leaked 700,000 government files to WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange, an Australian and the founder of WikiLeaks. Then in May, Edward Snowden, at the time a United States intelligence analyst, fled with his cache of surveillance program secrets first to Hong Kong and on to Moscow.
Manning has been exonerated of the most serious charge of “aiding the enemy” but has been convicted on other charges and was recently sentenced to 35 years in prison. Assange languishes in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London while being a candidate in Australian Senate elections. The cumulative damage that all three have caused the security of the United States is incalculable, quite apart from exposing to American friends and allies that they have been the subject of cybersnooping or, to put it bluntly, espionage.
By Kaveh L. Afrasiabi* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
TEHRAN (IDN | Iran Review) – Although President Hassan Rouhani is scheduled to participate in next month’s summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, the whole Iranian approach toward this regional, part economic, part security, organization is now under review in Tehran, as part and parcel of a “new foreign policy” promised by Rouhani and his foreign policy team headed by Javad Zarif.
Inducted as observer, along with India, Pakistan and Mongolia, since 2005, Iran has in fact sought full membership in the SCO since 2008, only to be rebuffed by the legalistic argument that the organization’s rules disallow membership by any country that is under the UN sanctions. Clearly, that is giving the UN sanctions too much importance and if China and Russia, the two leading SCO powers, really wanted they could come up with a creative solution, such as a “conditional acceptance” of Iran that would hinge on Iran’s resolution of its current problems with the UN atomic agency, the IAEA.
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