Articles

Russian president Vladimir Putin signed three major decrees in one week last month, making important changes to the Russian occupation regime in Chechnya...

Laurent Desire Kabila, the assassinated president of the Congo Democratic Republic, is finally buried, and his son, Joseph, is to succeed him.

One of the oft-repeated cliches about Kashmir is that the issue is complicated and cannot be resolved quickly. The premise is false, although the conclusion may be correct.

The trusted adviser of Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev on oil-matters, economic planning, education, investments, health-care, pensions and communications is an American deal-fixer who shuttles between his offices in Almaty (the Kazakh commercial capital) and the New York headquarters of his company, Mercator.

The Turkish army’s drive to crush the country’s Islamic movement continues unabated. The latest episode is the postponement of a debate on a constitutional amendment that would make it difficult to close political parties.

Rogue States: the Rule of Force in World Affairs by Noam Chomsky. Pub: Pluto Press, London, 2000. Pp: 252. Pbk: UK£10.99.

US president Bill Clinton earned plaudits around the world on new year’s eve when he announced that he had signed the International Treaty agreed in Rome in 1998 which set out the parameters for the establishment of a standing International War Crimes Tribunal.

ZAFAR BANGASH, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT), discusses the US’s latest proposals in the Middle East ‘peace process’, and the best way forward for the Palestinians.

In Algeria the year 2000 was one of undiminished violence and bloodshed, very different from the harmony that president Abdul-Aziz Bouteflika claims to have ushered in by his offer of amnesty to the country’s armed groups.

The Emir of Bahrain, Shaykh Hamad bin ‘Issa al-Khalifah, announced in a speech marking the country’s National Day on December 16 that he will be taking the country another step towards democracy. But, like everything about politics in the Gulf Arab states, the Emir’s notion of political reform is of a controlled process in which freedom and participation are not rights of the citizenry but rather favours granted by the ruler.