The following is from an AP article that appeared today on the prospect of UN-imposed sanctions on Iran. Russia and China, which have traditional economic and strategic ties with Tehran, seem likely to resist U.S.-led efforts for a quick response, which means sanctions do not loom immediately. And the following is a translated extract from [...]
Many – both self-declared and real – "stakeholders" in the Middle East peace process have greeted France’s decision to contribute altogether up to 2000 troops to the reinforced UN force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) as grounds for satisfaction and optimism. The leaders of Hezbollah presumably see the decision in the same light. The following is a [...]
According to the account provided by German authorities, the two "suitcase bombs" found on German regional trains three weeks ago are supposed to have contained "propane-gas canisters" surrounded by plastic bottles filled with gasoline. The latter are supposed in turn to have been connected by light-bulb wire to detonators fashioned from alarm clocks. In an [...]
In its Tuesday edition, the NYTimes published a characteristically uninformative article on the alleged plot to set off bombs on two regional trains in Germany. The piece amounts to little more than a brief summary of the spin being offered by the relevant German authorities. American anti-terror and police authorities would undoubtedly be most pleased [...]
Some details of the alleged attempt to explode "suitcase bombs" on two regional trains in Germany seem to have escaped attention in the English-language media. The bombs, as is well known, did not go off. According to Germany’s Federal Office of Criminal Investigations (BKA), this was due to a "technical defect": presumably deriving from a [...]
In an interview that appears in the Sunday-Monday (13-14 August) edition of Le Monde, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy elucidates the two key points upon which France insisted in negotiations over UN Resolution 1701 on the situation in Lebanon.
Last month, in my article on "France’s New Poverty" on TCS Daily, I noted the curious fact that when the New York Times went to speak with homeless persons in the tent encampments that have sprung up around Paris, it managed to find in the tents not French persons, but almost exclusively Poles: that is, [...]
How long ago April seems, when the EU announced that it was "suspending" aid to the Palestinian territories in response to the electoral victory of Hamas and the formation of a Hamas government. In fact, from the start this "suspension" of aid was merely partial, with more than half of the habitual EU aid package [...]
The following extract from an interview in yesterday’s Le Figaro with Trad Hamadé, Minister of Labor in the Lebanese government and member of Hezbollah. Throughout the interview Hamadé speaks in the name of Hezbollah and he is here responding to the question "Does Hezbollah support the idea of an international stabilization force that would be [...]
