The Palestinian question dominates the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli struggle, preoccupying the world since the early 1920s when the judaization of a predominantly Arab country began.

Had they been animals, there would be loud protests in the streets of almost all western capitals to save them. Leaders of the ‘civilised’ west would be vexed over this tragedy and call it an affront to humane values.

Torture, beatings, deceit and theft are the stock in trade of the Zionist occupiers of Palestine. Now Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, a subcontractor for the Israelis, has also joined the cruelty bandwagon agains the Palestinian people.

United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan has sent an information-gathering six-member panel to Algeria on the invitation, and conditions, of the Algerian government in the hope that it would generate ideas on how the world body might help end Algeria’s crisis.

Tribal and regional divisions, official corruption and Saudi machinations continue to bedevil a country that is traditionally unruly and had a civil war only four years ago.

‘Reformasi’ or reform, has become the rallying cry of opponents of prime minister Mahathir Mohamed in Malaysia since his unceremonious sacking of deputy prime minister and finance minister Anwar Ibrahim on September 2.

Simmering divisions among congressional Republicans came to the surface on July 3 when the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee decided to indefinitely postpone a religious monitoring act requiring American administrations to punish foreign countries deemed as permitting or endorsing ‘religious persecution.

America is a land of contradictions. It calls itself ‘the land of the free and the brave’ but the reality is very different, as far as Muslims are concerned. They have been targeted as the ‘new enemy’ and harassed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)...

The Kremlin rulers continue to speak with forked tongue when dealing with the Chechens. Russian prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko met president Aslan Maskhadov of Ichkeria on August 1 in Nazran, the Ingush capital, and promised to pay for rebuilding the devastated Caucasus republic.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has once again come to the rescue of Russia as it teeters on the edge of a precipice of financial meltdown. On July 22, the 24-member IMF executive board approved a US$11.2 billion rescue package to help Russia...

Displaying characteristic arrogance and imperial over-reach, the US not only sent its troops for exercises into Uzbekistan but also got such arch-rivals as Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey to join in what were billed as Nato’s "Partnership for Peace" programme.