Articles

Yemen has settled its territorial disputes with its neighbours, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea, thereby removing the main regional threats to its security. Yet it is enlarging its navy and air force, although it is one of the poorest countries in the world...

The US-imposed Afghan government has begun to unravel. Public works minister Haji Abdul-Qadir, who was also one of three vice presidents, was gunned down in broad daylight in Kabul on July 6.

The war-clouds of Indo-Pak nuclear conflict have cleared temporarily, and so has media attention. The Vajpayee government had to keep the media and public distracted, lest they turn their attention to Gujrat.

Having bludgeoned the Sudanese government into cooperating with the “war on terrorism”, American officials now appear to believe that they can also bully it into accepting their plan to end the 19-year war between Khartoum and southern Sudanese rebels.

The utter subservience of international institutions to the United States was confirmed on July 12, when the UN Security Council accepted American terms for its recognition of the newly-established International Criminal Court (ICC).

Two Hours that Shook the World — September 11, 2001: Causes and Consequences by Fred Halliday. Pub: Saqi Books, London, UK, 2002. Pp: 256. £12.95.

Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga, which opened a day later than scheduled, as the US manipulated events to ensure the election of its favoured candidate as the country’s president, ended with similar farcical scenes on June 19.

In our last issue we published Ayatullah Sayyid Ali Khamenei’s speech at the annual conference in Iran to mark the death anniversary of Imam Khomeini, which was dedicated to the Palestinian struggle. ZAFAR BANGASH was there.

In a speech that appeared to have been written in Tel Aviv rather than in Washington, US president George Bush demanded that the Palestinian people find a leader to replace Yasser Arafat if they hope to have a state of their own in some distant future.

Kuwait lurched deeper into political crisis on June 24, when the country’s parliament began to question Dr Youssef al-Ibrahim, finance minister and minister of planning and managerial development, about allegations that he mismanaged the state’s finances.