Charles Recknagel is standards editor for RFE/RL.
Iran's new president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, is 48 years old and a generation younger than his defeated presidential rival Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, age 70. As RFE/RL reports, that makes Ahmadinejad's victory in some respects a "changing of the guard" in Iran between two generations of Islamic revolutionaries.
A bloc of Arab Sunni parties has reached a deal with leaders of Iraq's Constitutional Committee regarding how many Sunni Arab representatives will participate in drafting the country's new constitution. The agreement comes after weeks of dispute, and now clears the way for writing a document intended to represent the interests of all of Iraq's communities.
Frontrunner Rafsanjani has hinted at opening negotiations with the U.S. The run-up to Iran's presidential election on 17 June is being closely watched in Western capitals. It could augur for some changes in Iranian foreign policy over the next four-year presidential term. But, at the same time, any of the candidates who wins office would have to work within the tight constraints imposed by Iran's conservative establishment.
Global military spending in 2004 exceeded the equivalent of $1 trillion, according to a new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in Sweden. The spending came as the world saw 19 armed conflicts, each with more than 1,000 battle deaths.
Prague, 6 June 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Signs are mounting that Saddam Hussein could be put on trial within the next two months. A top aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Ja'fari says that Saddam could face 12 charges, including alleged crimes committed in Iraqi Kurdistan, where tens of thousands of people died as part of a government crackdown in the late 1980s.
EU headquarters in Brussels The resounding Dutch 'no' to the EU constitution (1 June), close on the heels of French rejection (29 May), poses a challenge to not only the European Union. It also presents the governments of some would-be member states with problems. Can countries like Croatia, Turkey, and Ukraine still convince their publics and opposition groups to back EU reforms in hopes of eventually joining the bloc? Or will new doubts about Brussels' ability to realize its goals begin to undermine the transition process of potential future member states?
Egyptians vote today on whether to change the constitution to allow future presidents to be directly elected in a contest with several candidates, rather than being nominated by parliament. Washington and Cairo are hailing the referendum as a step toward democracy in Egypt and the Middle East. But Egyptian opposition parties are calling the exercise a farce. They say the government has set such tight conditions on who could compete in the multi-candidate polls that the ruling party is guaranteed to stay in power.
Some 500 Uzbek refugees who have fled Andijon are gathered in a camp on the Kyrgyz side of the Karadariya River. RFE/RL talked today to Bob Deen, the representative in Osh for ACTED, a Paris-based NGO, about conditions in the camp. [For more on these events, see RFE/RL's dedicated webpage: Unrest in Uzbekistan --> /specials/uzbek_unrest/ ]
Almost as soon as violence broke out in Uzbekistan last week, regional government leaders blamed the unrest on Islamists seeking to subvert the rule of law. The immediate attribution of blame from Tashkent, Bishkek, Dushanbe, and Moscow placed the events squarely in the framework of the global war on terrorism. But the swiftness with which blame was assigned also fits another pattern -- an almost reflexive tendency to pin all domestic unrest in the authoritarian Central Asian republics, not on economic or political conditions, but on renegade groups. [For more on these events, see RFE/RL's dedicated webpage: Unrest in Uzbekistan --> /specials/uzbek_unrest/ ]
Uzbek authorities claim 30 killed, while others say as many as 500 Dozens of questions surround the recent events in Uzbekistan, from who was behind the violent 13 May protest in Andijon, to why security forces opened fire, to how many people were killed. Those questions may take more time to answer fully. But one certainty is that the violence poses one of the toughest challenges yet to Uzbekistan's authoritarian ruler, Islam Karimov. [For more on these events, see RFE/RL's dedicated webpage: Unrest in Uzbekistan --> /specials/uzbek_unrest/ ]
Iran's Hassan Rohani (file photo) The stakes are rising in the world's two nuclear-arms crises. North Korea says it is using a nuclear reactor to produce weapons-grade material and plans to expand its atomic arsenal. And Iran says it may resume some suspended activities Washington says could be used to produce bomb-making material in the future. RFE/RL looks at the latest challenges to hopes of limiting global nuclear proliferation and how the international community is responding.
U.S. troops are engaged in one of their largest offensives against insurgents since last year's incursion into Al-Fallujah as they attack rebel strongholds in west-central Iraq. The campaign is producing some surprises, including signs that the rebel fighters are better trained and equipped than in previous engagements. That raises new questions about how much progress Washington and Baghdad are making in the now two-year-old effort to quell the insurgency.
Kurdish peshmergas in Iraq number in the tens of thousands (file photo) Iraqi insurgents have carried out one of their deadliest attacks to date in the heart of Kurdish-administered northern Iraq. The bomb attack yesterday killed some 60 people the day after Iraq swore in a new government that gives the Kurds their most prominent role ever in national politics. So is the insurgent attack a direct challenge to the Kurds' resurgence and how will the Kurds respond?
Iraqi oil wells Much of the focus on Iraq these days concerns efforts to form a new government. But day-to-day life is ruled more by economic and security problems than political issues. Billions of dollars have been pledged or allocated for projects to revitalize Iraq's economy, but relatively little has so far been spent.
IAEA Director-General Muhammad el-Baradei (left) and Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi. (file photo) The United States says Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says it is not. But the task of inspecting Iran's nuclear sites falls to the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The heart of that international inspection effort is a laboratory complex near Vienna, Austria. That's where the IAEA examines samples of materials taken from Iranian facilities to determine whether Tehran is engaged in a purely peaceful pursuit of nuclear technology. RFE/RL recently visited the facility to learn more about how the IAEA monitors Iran's nuclear activities.
When Iraq was ruled by Saddam Hussein and was under United Nations sanctions, malnutrition in children was a major concern. To help offset the danger, the UN instituted the oil-for-food program to deliver supplementary food to Iraqi families under a ration system. Now, two years after the toppling of Saddam and the lifting of sanctions, one might expect the threat of malnutrition to have disappeared. But UN surveys show it still exists.
One of Washington's stated priorities in Iraq is the handover of responsibility for security in that country to the new Iraqi army. Recently, U.S. forces took a major step in that direction by turning over the job of patrolling some of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods to Iraqi soldiers. The transfer is intended to test the new army's abilities and reduce the presence of U.S. forces on the capital's streets. But while the Iraqi army is becoming more visible in Baghdad, it remains a fledgling force. RFE/RL looks at the progress of the Iraqi army to date and some of the challenges it faces.
There are signs that the difficult process of forming a new Iraqi government may finally be nearing an end. The two biggest blocs in Iraq's new National Assembly – the Shi’a and the Kurds – are signaling they now agree on the candidates for most top positions, and have only a few remaining issues to resolve.
Will current Prime minister Iyad Allawi continue as a caretaker for the forseeable future? So far, about the only thing that Iraq's political parties have been able to agree on is that the newly elected National Assembly should convene by 16 March. But even that decision did not come easily. The new legislature's first meeting has already been put off twice. Yet it is still uncertain whether the parties will be able to come to the first assembly meeting with an accord on who will fill senior posts in the new government.
Public opinion against Italian participation in Iraq continues to grow Italy is burying secret service agent Nicola Calipari today. Calipari was killed on 4 March by fire from U.S. forces as he escorted Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport immediately after she was freed by militant captors. The fatal shooting has shocked the Italian public, in part because it spoiled what appeared to be a happy ending to Sgrena’s one-month captivity.
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