2010: The Disquiet that Troubles the Soul Posted: 2011/01/01 From: Source

A look back on the year 2010 from a Muslim perspective. (For non-Arabic speakers: `Muslim` is an Arabic word, in English meaning: `one who submits to the will of God thus achieving peace`. Salam means Peace. Islam means the way of life that achieves peace.) <a href='http://ads.heyu.net/www/delivery/ck.php?n=aa791ad8&amp;cb={random}' target='_top'><img src='http://ads.heyu.net/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=24&amp;cb={random}&amp;n=aa791ad8&amp;ct0={clickurl}' border='0' alt='' width='300' height='250' /></a> Written by UmmahPulse Team As 2010 ends in damp, foggy squelchiness, the greyness of the sky seems a metaphor for an uneasy feeling that something is not quite right. The 21st century is a celebration of how to live in the moment, with every whim immediately satisfiable, every instant filled with beguiling distraction. The days when information and audiovisual entertainment were only available from a small brown box in the corner of the living room are over and we can now browse "content" on anything from our iPads, netbooks, smartphones or (even if it's a bit old fashioned) desktop PCs. In the snippets of "down time" between the multitude of reality shows and remakes of 1970s and 80s TV schtick, there is social networking, the 24 hour news cycle and, if you are really stuck, online multiplayer computer gaming to fill in any stray moments of "boredom". With all this, our overloaded synapses fire discordantly, our brains unable to contemplate, reflect or ponder. Instead, we are all too often limited to reacting to and rebounding from each new stimulus. For those left unsatiated by this diet of over-processed tat, there is the alluring prospect of "infotainment" that is sold to us labelled as "news and analysis". However, like a cheap pie from the bargain bin that is all pastry and no filling, when one breaks through the glossily tempting but ultimately indigestible crust, one finds nothing more than occasional undercooked morsels of fact, swimming in a watery gravy of superficial comment. As far as meatier portions of assimilation, insight, comprehension and context go, they are entirely missing from this recipe. While this may be dismissed as Luddite-inspired empty moralising, one finds it harder to ignore the internal disquiet that niggles at the back of our minds and poses the question: given all that has happened, and all that may yet happen, what does the future hold for Muslims? To theorise about the future, one must have a firm grip on the past and, as 2010 ticks over into 2011, we should at least start with the events that have affected the Ummah over the last 12 months. The following compilation is by no means a comprehensive anthology of the year, but rather a selection of different themes which had an impact on our writers. Please read, digest and contemplate. Financial Swine Flu Karima Hamdan Europe has a problem. There is a group of people, wedded together by an ideology that is elitist and totalitarian, whose actions have caused atrocities, death, destruction and mayhem on a worldwide scale. They are, however, totally unrepentant. Governments seem powerless to stop them, the public demands action but any attempts by the government to legislate are met with threats. For those peering nervously around for a bearded man (or niqab-wearing woman) with a backpack, don't bother. I am referring to the financial institutions whose cavalier behaviour has shaped the world in which we live and will continue to influence our lives. The financial crisis of 2008 rumbles on into its third year with the deadly "European contagion" metastasizing into the "European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010". The countries most severely affected are the so called "PIGS" of Europe – Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Whether the European contagion could be labelled a "financial swine flu" is another discussion entirely. The PIGS are not isolated in their financial strife. We are told that this is a pan-European problem as these countries are "too big to fail". Is this because of some humanitarian reason, such as the suffering of their entirely blameless citizenry? No. It is because if these countries become bankrupt, the result would be massive sovereign debt defaults, causing almost every bank in Europe to become insolvent, which would in turn cause larger European countries to sink further into the abyss of recession. That is why we, British taxpayers, will each be stumping up our share of a €750 billion financial aid package, just as we kiss goodbye to Child Benefit payments, low university tuition fees and embrace an era of record unemployment. This is despite the fact that our government played no part in the decisions to lend these failing countries the money in the first place. No, those shots were called by the financial institutions, who are entirely unaccountable, unassailable and indeed "too big to fail". The financial crisis is not the only feather in the cap of these financial institutions. This year, they proved what a worldwide force for despair and iniquity they truly are as they precipitated a famine in Niger due to immoral speculation on the worldwide grain market. But not to worry, the traders at Goldman Sachs netted themselves a cool US$5 billion profit purely on the commodities market last year. What is the suffering of 12 million starving people compared to that? Given the devastation of the economic landscape, what kind of sweeping reform of the financial institutions is being enacted by European governments in response to such widespread and catastrophic failure? Not much is the answer. G20 and Eurozone governments have been warned that over-stringent regulation will lead to further bank failures. If quite so many EU politicians dedicated as much time and thought to our economic plight - rather than being obsessed by their current fixation on minaret bans, niqab bans, hijab bans, and sharia bans - then we might get somewhere. Unfortunately, it appears that it is much easier for some European politicians, held over a barrel and molested by over-sized financial institutions, to ignore the difficult economic realities, close their eyes and think of Islamophobia. The Discriminatory Axe of Budget Cuts Ahmad Ashiqilahi 2010 has seen huge cuts to spending announced by the new coalition government as it tries to rein in the burgeoning £962 billion national debt - a debt which weighs heavily on each and every taxpayer alive today, and probably those for a generation to come. Each governmental department will bear an average 19% four-year cut, alongside £7 billion in welfare cuts. Those struggling most in society are likely to be hit hardest with the Institute for Fiscal Studies showing the Coalition's new approach to welfare, the Work Programme, to be regressive in nature. However, there are some that seem to have slipped the axe. Jewish faith schools will receive £650,000 in funds straight away and up to £2m a year from the Department of Eduction. Why? because they are concerned about anti-Semitic threats to their pupils. Other faith schools, or indeed non-faith schools, will not be supported in a similar manner. In fact, capital spending on our ageing schools will be reduced by 60%. Time for the hand that holds the axe to explain itself. Palestine 2010 Wazir Uddin 2010 was the year that the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli apartheid state transcended international powers and states and was taken up by public sentiment across the globe. This was most dramatically expressed in the aid flotilla that crossed international waters to deliver essential items to Gaza, a strip of land which has become a mass prison camp for its inhabitants. Israeli naval commandos, who had boarded six of the ships in the flotilla, murdered ten innocent civilians and injured many more. Despite the PR spin and propaganda that subsequently emerged from the Israeli foreign ministry, the truth could not be drowned out: "Under darkness of night, Israeli commandos dropped from a helicopter onto the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, and began to shoot the moment their feet hit the deck." The UN-appointed panel that was set up to investigate the attack on the flotilla subsequently reported that Israel was guilty of serious violations of international law, "including international humanitarian and human rights law". 2010 was also the year that Latin American states lined up formally to recognise the Palestinian state within its pre-1967 borders. Although in its material effects this move is more symbolic than material, it caused outrage among pro-Israel quarters. The right-wing Israeli coalition government though is deaf to international protests and persists in its racist tyranny against the Palestinian people, and has been relentless in its policy to further occupy Palestinian land and Jerusalem. The Afghanistan War – A Year in Numbers Karima Hamdan 30,000: The number of extra troops ordered into the region by US President Obama, taking the total number of US military personnel there to 100,000. 31%: The increase in the number of conflict-related civilian casualties (including deaths) compared to 2009. 2,000: The number of people killed so far, as a result of drone attacks in Pakistan. Only 66 were Al Qaeda or Taliban militants. 10: The number of civilians who die as "collateral damage" per militant killed in unmanned drone attacks in Afghanistan. 22: The number of minutes it took for President Obama to sack the Commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, after McChrystal claimed Obama was disengaged and intimidated by senior officers. 2014: The year by which the US Vice-President Joe Biden has said that US troops will leave Afghanistan "come hell or high water". Many have predicted that this will cause the Taliban to simply hunker down and wait until the US has left. 3.6m: The number of votes cast in the Afghan elections – the lowest turnout in any post-invasion election. 20%: The proportion of votes rejected as fraudulent in the Afghan election. 19: The number of Afghan election candidates disqualified for outright cheating. 2: The number of times Afghan President Hamid Karzai's mental fitness to rule was questioned this year. Firstly, by ex-UN envoy Peter Galbraith, who accused him of being a mentally unstable drug addict and then by veteran US reporter Bob Woodward who said he suffers from manic depression and doesn't always take his medication. 50: the number of years ago that 34th US President Dwight D Eisenhower said: "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." Natural Disaster Jamal Anderson Following the rising trend, 2010 has been a particularly horrific year for natural disasters. In January, the world saw the destructive power of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti. More than 200,000 died and 1.5 million were left homeless. There were five other major earthquakes in 2010; all but one registered above 6 on the Richter scale. In February, Chile was struck with an earthquake measuring 8.8, the 7th strongest on record and 521 people died. River flooding in South America led to the death of around 15 people with hundreds of thousands of people displaced. Windstorm Xynthia swept across Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and Germany late in February, causing inland and coastal damage which left 2 million homes without electricity. Heavy rains were responsible for extensive flood damage in Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey and Italy. Torrential rain was also witnessed in Madeira and parts of the Portuguese island were flooded killing 40 people. In the US, severe winter storms swept the country, affecting infrastructure in several regions, including Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and parts of southern New Jersey, and resulting in widespread electricity blackouts and disruption to schools, airports, roads and railways. In March, an Icelandic volcano erupted and an ash cloud descended upon most of Europe. Airports were closed causing international air travel chaos. Disasters continued throughout the year with landslides and floods in Bangladesh resulting in fatalities and causing havoc in June with flooding also taking place in China in May. Torrential rain in July resulted in the flooding of Pakistan, on a scale which was barely comprehensible. One fifth of Pakistan - an area the size of England - was flooded, with over 21 million people affected: "The monsoon rains which began to hit Pakistan in late July 2010 were the most severe for 80 years. They caused immediate flash flooding in the mountains of the north west of the country and ultimately flood waters worked their way south through the Indus and other river systems to engulf an area the size of England. Around 21 million people were affected with 10 million seeing their homes damaged or completely destroyed. Disasters Emergency Committee members have helped 1.2 million people already but many survivors continue to face huge challenges." (DEC) "Donor Fatigue" set in as charities saw a drop in donations. As 2010 comes to a close, people are still struggling to manage the consequences of this flood, with many still looking to rebuild their homes. In October, Indonesia was struck by twin disasters: an earthquake (magnitude 7.5) that triggered a tsunami was followed by the eruption of Mount Merapi. The death toll rose to 430. There are too many other disasters to list without causing "disaster news fatigue", but there are many more. Though the casualty toll may not be on the same scale, who can forget "snowmaggedon" in Europe and the US? In the US, FEMA recorded more than twice the average number of natural disasters. As of mid- December, there were 79 recorded incidents compared to the average of 34. There were "rare" tornadoes in parts of America and the largest earthquake to hit New York City for the last 18 years. Despite its own problems, America didn’t fail to offer its support to Israel which was afflicted with a forest fire that killed up to 40 people in December. Most were prison guards. Israel continues to suffer from the drought that began in spring 2010; analysts say this was a contributing factor. International rescue teams flew in from different parts of the world to help contain the fires. If only such demonstrations of compassion could be felt by the children of Palestine who continue, daily, to suffer the effects of a man-made disaster that has lasted decades. Allah is in control of all things and surely there are many lessons for us in these events, if we only stop and reflect. The Obama Con Continues Kamal Nuruddeen The best way to administer poison is with a sugar coating. This is a lesson that Obama knows well. Despite his Nobel Peace Prize credentials, he has expanded the US's belligerent policies in the Muslim world with more soldiers (Afghanistan), more contracted mercenaries (Pakistan), more drone attacks (pretty much anywhere a vassal state will provide political cover) and an expansion of the war (war over what? I can't quite remember anymore) into Yemen. Having exuded the promise of peace, he has done little to match the sugary rhetoric. The underlying venom remains unchanged. However, one cannot accuse Obama of complete duplicity. Having promised Israel his complete allegiance and record sums of money whilst he was campaigning for the presidency, he continued to fulfil those pledges in 2010 with record levels of military aid as well as the now standard political cover for Israeli actions on the international stage. Even so, there is no let up in pressure from the supporters of Zionism, with outrageous accusations of anti-Semitism ensuring Obama does not step out of line. So far, when it has come to Middle East policy, Obama has delivered the same as Bush, but with a better PR spin. The Rise of the EDL - Street Level Politics Karima Hamdan Coming back home - UmmahPulse has commented several times on the growing level of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the media and on the parallel growth of specifically anti-Muslim groups (such as the English Defence League (EDL) in the UK) as well as those who regularly use Islamophobic lies to prop up their political policies (like the Tea Party movement in the US). The fact that these groups are forging links, pooling resources and sharing information on a global scale have made us all pause for thought. The use of a street level army of thugs to form the vanguard of a political movement is a worrying trend that has been seen before. As Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels put it: "Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street." Recent Tory proposals to guarantee that a petition with over 100,000 signatures would be changed to a bill to be debated in the Commons is a worrying development, especially when one sees that the official EDL facebook page has nearly 70,000 members. A policy sold as giving ‘power to the people’ can rapidly degenerate into mob rule, especially when there is a well funded, mostly unregulated, polemic right wing media stoking the flames. Quran Burning Muhammad Tahir "Verily We sent down the Reminder (the Quran) and verily We will definitely protect it." (Quran 15:9) "Verily Allah will assist this religion, even through a sinner." (Bukhari) "Dude, you have no Quran." (Jacob Isom) We here at UmmahPulse believe strongly that those who would wrongly defame and abuse Islam and Muslims should be confronted and challenged. However, the reality is that if we are at all successful in this task, it is only a blessing from Allah. As He reminds us, the protection of the message of Islam is a responsibility that Allah has kept for Himself. We can only ask that He use us to accomplish His task. 2010 saw the emergence of "Quran burning" as a popular Islamophobic bonding exercise. But what was most striking about the most high-profile attempts to do so was their general failure (one right wing group's kerosene-doused Quran was stolen by shirtless skateboarder Jacob Isom) to incite anything other than increased sympathy for Muslims (surely not the desired effect), and claims by American government officials that burning the Quran would put American soldiers' lives at risk (not that occupying foreign countries might also be hazardous, but let's not digress). Just remember: It's not a war against Islam (we just want your resources)! Conclusions - Uncomfortable Parallels Karima Hamdan Much has been said about this current financial crisis being the worst since the Great Depression of the 1920s and 30s. At that time, governments were forced to cut public services while their people were struggling with record unemployment and social deprivation on a massive scale. It is no coincidence that there was a concurrent growth of far right movements across Europe, most notably the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. The parallels with our time are unmistakable, with the Muslim replacing the Jew as the universal symbol of hate to be despised. Having lived for decades in the UK, suddenly every part of our Islamic identity has come under scrutiny - from the food we eat to the way we dress to the way we interact with society. To my mind at least, Muslims are worse off this year than a year ago: increasingly attacked and lambasted, this trend does not seem to be abating. We may look back in the years to come and view 2010 as the time when the seeds of our greatest trial were first sown. Isolated from mainstream society, we will ultimately have to face a stark choice: assimilate and sacrifice our identity in order to remain "safe", or hold true to our ideals and risk ostracism. But as we go forward into this apparent darkness, some unassailable truths provide comfort and reassurance: there is only one God and He will protect and preserve the message He entrusted to His dearest messenger (may peace be upon him). His ancient plan is not the random ‘happenstance’ that it appears to us. The future of the Muslims depends on how they react to this stark choice and how deeply rooted within us is the knowledge that Islam is a train whose journey ultimately ends with Al-lah (English: The-God). It will keep rolling on whether we choose to board it or merely watch it pass by. May He make us among those who assist His religion. "Do men think that they will be left alone on saying 'We believe' and that they will not be tested? We did test those before them and Allah will certainly know those who are true from those who are false." (Holy Quran 29:2-3) {Ed note: Allah is Arabic for The God} "When asked about who suffers the greatest afflictions, the Prophet (sallallaahu alayhi wa sallam) replied: 'The prophets, then those who come next to them, then those who come next to them. A man is afflicted in keeping his religion. If he is firm in his religion his trial is severe, but if there is weakness in his religion it is made light for him and it continues like that till he walks on the earth having no sin.'" (Hadith by Tirmidhi) "The believing man or woman continues to have affliction in person, property and children so that they may finally meet Allah, free from sin." (Hadith by Tirmidhi) "Those who say when afflicted with calamity: 'To Allah we belong and to Him is our return.' They are those on whom (descend) blessings from Allah and Mercy and they are the ones that receive guidance." (Holy Quran 2:156-157) "If any Muslim who suffers some calamity says that which Allah has commanded him: 'We belong to Allah and to Him shall we return: O Allah, reward me for my affliction and give me something better in exchange for it,' Allah will give him something better than it in exchange." (Hadith by Muslim) "How wonderful is the case of a believer! There is good for him in everything, and this is not the case with anyone except a believer. If prosperity attends him, he expresses gratitude to Allah and that is good for him; and if adversity befalls him, he endures it patiently and that is better for him." (Hadith by Muslim) #

When the two giants meet.....

President Barack Obama visiting the Forbidden City at China

BEIJING, 17th Nov.,2009 – President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao promised a determined, joint effort to tackle climate change, nuclear disarmament and other global troubles yet emerged from their first full-blown summit Tuesday with scant progress beyond goodwill.

After two hours of talks and a separate meeting over dinner the night before, the presidents spoke of moving beyond the divisiveness over human rights, trade and military tensions that have bedeviled relations in past decades.

"The major challenges of the 21st century, from climate change to nuclear proliferation to economic recovery, are challenges that touch both our nations, and challenges that neither of our nations can solve by acting alone," Obama said, standing with the Chinese leader in the Great Hall of the People.

Hu, who heads a collective leadership that often has preferred to go it alone internationally, said: "There are growing global challenges, and countries in today's world have become more and more interdependent. "

With each of those big issues — from global warming to the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs — persistent differences bubbled up in the form of indirect barbs during the joint appearance.

Stung by new U.S. levies on imports of Chinese-made tires and steel pipes, Hu said he told Obama that given a still struggling global economy both countries "need to oppose and reject protectionism in all its manifestations in an even stronger stand."

Obama later called on China to relax controls that keep the Chinese currency relatively weak and thus help fuel exports — something Beijing officials have rejected in recent days. Obama also pointedly raised human rights, saying they are fundamental to all.


"We do not believe these principles are unique to America, but rather they are universal rights and that they should be available to all peoples, to all ethnic and religious minorities," Obama said in his only nationally televised remarks on the sensitive issue.

The mixture of promises and lasting differences underscored how intertwined the superpower United States and rising power China are, and the difficult task Obama faces in managing friction with an authoritarian, sometimes testy Beijing.

On his first visit ever to China, Obama said he was mostly striving to better understand China, a geopolitical force on its way to becoming the world's second-largest economy.

"Our relationship going forward will not be without disagreement or difficulty," Obama said. "But because of our cooperation, both the United States and China are more prosperous and secure."

Aside from his meetings with Hu, Obama received a formal welcome. He walked past rows of soldiers in dress uniforms and dined on chicken soup with bean curd, Chinese-style beef steak and roast grouper at a state banquet. He also toured the Forbidden City, the emperors' palace for more than 400 years, and met the head of China's legislature, a former mayor of Shanghai, the commercial hub where Obama started his three-day stay in China.

In a minor advance, the two leaders set a deadline of early next year for resuming an on-again, off-again dialogue on human rights. Charting a new frontier for cooperation, the two agreed to reciprocal visits by the heads of their space programs. Promises were made to step up visits by military leaders to help overcome years of distrust over a Chinese military buildup and U.S. reconnaissance missions in the seas off China.

Headway was made on climate change. The two committed their countries — the biggest emitters of the heat-trapping gases causing global warming — to backing a detailed political agreement at next month's climate-change conference in Copenhagen. In their formula, rich countries would commit to reduction targets while developing ones would agree to meet softer goals that would be monitored.

Yet the positions were not markedly different from those Beijing and Washington held before Obama's arrival.

So it also was with attempts to curb Iran's nuclear program and disarm nuclear-armed North Korea. Though Obama talked of continuing diplomatic efforts on Iran and North Korea, Hu did not endorse the U.S. leader's talk of sterner actions should negotiations falter. Beijing has strong interests in keeping North Korea stable and in maintaining budding energy cooperation with Iran.

"Iran has an opportunity to present and demonstrate its peaceful intentions, but if it fails to take this opportunity, there will be consequences," the U.S. president said. Hu did not mention consequences.

Keeping the differences veiled rather than open was a measure of success of sorts for Obama. With its economy still in trouble, U.S. international prestige still battered and China holding $800 billion in U.S. government debt, Obama came to the Beijing summit with a weaker hand than previous U.S. presidents. That makes the emphasis on practical cooperation all the more needed, Chinese analysts said.

"The Chinese leadership will not worry too much about the U.S. pressure. In the context of the financial crisis and George W. Bush's legacy on the issues of Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. needs China much more than China needs the U.S.," said Yu Wanli, an America expert at Peking University.

At their joint appearance, Hu called on the U.S. to respect China's "core interests" — code for ending support for Taiwan and for the Dalai Lama, in his Tibetan government-in-exile. Obama obliged by saying Tibet was part of China. But he urged China to restart talks with the Dalai Lama's representatives — something Hu did not mention.




SPIN METER: Did Obama grovel?

WASHINGTON – Some conservative commentators seized on President Barack Obama's deep bow to Japan's Emperor Akihito over the weekend, accusing the U.S. commander in chief of groveling before a foreign leader.

So did he?

While it may have been an awkward moment, it wasn't without precedent. And it appeared to be well within protocol guidelines that the State Department issues for foreign service officers working in other countries.

U.S. presidents from both political parties have often been criticized for their attempts at culturally sensitive greetings to high-ranking foreigners.

Former President George W. Bush, a Republican, was mocked for holding Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's hand, a traditional sign of friendship in the Middle East, as they strolled together in 2005.

In 1994, former Democratic President Bill Clinton was criticized for almost bowing to Akihito. The resulting image, The New York Times wrote, was of "an obsequent president and the emperor of Japan."

Former President Richard Nixon, a Republican, can be seen in a Life magazine photo from 1971 bowing to Akihito's father, Emperor Hirohito, who ruled when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Obama's encounter with Akihito was a stumble because it mixed a bow with a handshake — something not normally done. And it wasn't the first time the president, a Democrat in office less than a year, has been criticized for his greeting of a foreign leader. Critics accused him of genuflecting to Saudi King Abdullah at a summit meeting of the leaders of the top 20 rich and developing nations earlier this year.

The current bow comes during a highly charged political moment in the United States. Conservatives are strongly opposing Obama's policies, especially his plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system, and they have seized on any perceived faux pas by Obama, carrying their message on talk radio and blogs.

An online video posted by the University of Connecticut College Republicans juxtaposed a series of upright handshakes between Akihito and other world leaders and Obama's low bow.

Andrew Malcolm, in a blog on the Los Angeles Times Web site, asked, "How low will the new American president go for the world's royalty?"

Obama's bow was compared with photos of former Vice President Dick Cheney giving Akihito a straight-backed handshake and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who oversaw the post-World War II occupation of Japan, standing with his hands on his hips next to Hirohito.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Monday that the bow was "a sign of respect to the emperor."

In an online State Department posting from 2007 titled "Protocol for the Modern Diplomat," envoys are advised to be aware of greeting rituals such as kisses, handshakes or bows and to follow a country's tradition. "Failure to abide with tradition may be interpreted as rudeness or a lack of respect for colleagues," it says. It's not clear whether the guidelines apply to the president.

John Park, a senior researcher at the U.S. Institute of Peace think tank, said it is a respectful tradition for visitors to bow to the emperor in a formal setting.

But, he said, "We're in an environment right now where everything is hypersensitive. Any type of move that you do, there will be some group that sees some sort of message within all that."

The Arab Peace Initiative

George Mitchell, the newly-appointed US Middle East envoy, is likely to use the Arab Peace Initiative as a starting point for negotiations when he meets with Israeli and Arab leaders on January 28.

Mitchell is scheduled to stop in Egypt followed by visits to Israel, the Palestinian West Bank, Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia before heading to Europe.

The Saudi-brokered plan, which was endorsed by the Arab League's 22 members during the March 2002 Beirut summit, outlined comprehensive steps to ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Arab leaders collectively offered Israel recognition of its right to exist and a normalisation of diplomatic ties in exchange for its complete withdrawal from Arab lands captured since 1967.

The plan, first floated by King Abdullah, then crown prince of Saudi Arabia, called for the restoration of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and a "fair solution" for the 3.8 million Palestinian refugees, including but not limited to the Syrian Golan Heights and Israeli-occupied territory in southern Lebanon.

Barack Obama, the US president, said in an interview to the Al Arabiya news station on January 26, that he supports the Saudi peace plan.

He said the US remained committed to protecting its long-time ally Israel, but also believed that there were Israelis who recognised the need for regional peace and would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to achieve that.

Opposition

The Saudi plan received further backing at an Arab League summit in 2007 [AFP] The Saudi plan is based on UN resolutions 242 and 338 which collectively called for Israeli withdrawal in exchange for peaceful ties with its Arab neighbours and the "respect for the right of every state in the area to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries".

It also reaffirmed an Arab League resolution taken in June 1996 at the Cairo Extraordinary Arab Summit that "a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East is the strategic option of the Arab countries, to be achieved in accordance with international legality, and which would require a comparable commitment on the part of the Israeli government".

The Arab League proposed the Arab Peace Initiative at the height of the second intifada in 2002.

Though the plan was supported by George Bush, the then US president, and Tony Blair, the then British prime minister, it was opposed by factions in both the Arab and Israeli camps.

Syria opposed the use of the term "normalisation", while Palestinian factions such as the armed wing of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade rejected the Saudi plan outright.

The plan also did not receive full diplomatic backing as only 10 of the 22 heads of state were able to attend the Beirut summit.

Israeli authorities also barred Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian president, from travelling to Lebanon to attend the sessions when it said it would not guarantee his return to Ramallah, the Palestinian administrative capital.

On the same day the plan was announced in Beirut, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 20 people and injured more than 160 others at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel.

On March 29, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, a massive Israeli military operation in the West Bank, in response to the Netanya attack. Israeli military forces briefly occupied Ramallah, Jenin, and Nablus.

More than 500 Palestinians and 29 Israeli soldiers were killed in the four-week military operation.

Plan re-endorsed

The Saudi-initiated peace plan did not resurface as a viable deal until the Arab League summit in Riyadh in March 2007. This time, 21 heads of state attended the summit (Libya did not send a delegation) and fully re-endorsed the pleace plan.

Though Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, endorsed the plan, Ismail Haniya, the then Palestinian prime minister, abstained.

The European Union, the US and the UN fully backed the plan as the only means forward.

Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general, said: "The Arab peace initiative is one of the pillars of the peace process ... it sends a signal that the Arabs are serious about achieving peace."

Israeli reaction

Though Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, supported the plan, the official Israeli response says there are several items in the Saudi-brokered plan which are unacceptable.

Israeli peace negotiators have objected to the repatriation of some 3.8 million Palestinian refugees.

Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, said in October that Israel would not rule out negotiations with Arab countries on the basis of the Saudi plan.

"We accept the Arab peace initiative in order to bring peace to the entire region," Peres said in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, after talks with Mubarak.

He said that while he does not accept all of the Saudi plan and it "needs to be negotiated" further, its spirit is "correct".

The Solvency Doctrine

The solvency doctrine — Peter Beinart

JAN 24 — To restore American power, Barack Obama needs a foreign policy that recognises its limits.

When it comes to predicting a President's foreign policy, there are basically two ways to go: you can look at the guy, or you can look at the world.

Perspective 1 — which is part biography, part psychiatry — is more fun. The problem is that very often a President's past — and even his campaign rhetoric — is not prologue. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson pledged to keep the United States out of war; in 1940, Franklin Roosevelt promised to do the same. Richard Nixon spent his career as a die-hard anti-communist, but in the White House, he opened relations with China and ushered in détente with the USSR. George W. Bush once said America shouldn't tell the world what to do.

Perspective 2 is more reliable. Instead of looking at the person and extrapolating out, you look at the world he inherits and work back in. The world deals the cards, and a President plays them as best he can.

Obama starts with a bad hand. The Bush Administration didn't just preside over the creation of a financial bubble; it helped build a foreign policy bubble as well. After 9/11, it acted as if America's power were virtually unlimited: our resources were infinite; our military was unstoppable; our ideology was sweeping the world. Bush and Dick Cheney were like homeowners who took on more and more debt, certain that they could cover it because the value of their home would forever rise. They toppled regimes in two countries with little history of competent, representative government. They defined the war on terrorism so broadly that it put the US in conflict not only with al-Qaeda but also with Hizballah and Hamas, with the Shi'ite theocracy in Iran and even with relatively secular autocracies like Syria's. They vowed to no longer tolerate dictatorships in the Middle East, which essentially committed the US to a policy of regime change towards not only our enemies but most of our allies as well.

America's military and ideological commitments grew and grew, far beyond our capacity to carry them out. And now the power bubble has popped. Militarily, savvy and savage guerilla movements have learned how to bleed us of money, lives and limbs. Economically, resources are scarce; it's hard to pay to transform the Middle East when we're deep in debt trying to prop up the Midwest. And ideologically, democracy no longer looks like the inevitable destination of all humankind.

In 1943, Walter Lippmann famously wrote that "foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation's commitments and the nation's power." By that standard, US foreign policy is in Chapter 9. No matter what grand visions Obama may harbour to remake the world, the central mission of his foreign policy — at least at first — will be to get it out of the red. Call it the solvency doctrine.

The power deficit

The most attractive way to balance America's commitments and its power, of course, would be to increase the latter — to do the foreign policy equivalent of growing revenues rather than slashing jobs. But the harsh reality is that in the short term, Obama won't be able to dramatically boost US power. He can enlarge the armed forces, as he has pledged to do, but even if he increases the number of troops and repairs the tanks, the top military brass will still be far more reluctant to use them. So will the public, which wants out of Iraq and isn't that gung ho about an indefinite stay in Afghanistan either. As a result, America's ability to threaten new military action — against Iran, for instance, or in Darfur — has dramatically declined. Our hard power isn't what it used to be — and won't be again anytime soon.

When it comes to soft power — the power to persuade, not coerce — things are little better. True, anti-Americanism is abating as brand Obama rejuvenates brand USA. But popularity is not the same as power (ask Canada or Sweden). In the 1990s, American soft power was based on more than goodwill; it was based on economic and ideological hegemony. There was only one widely accepted path to prosperity — deregulated, American-style capitalism. And there was one central destination for a poor country seeking the investment and aid it needed to travel down that path: Washington. The US and its allies could dangle big financial carrots to get countries to do what we wanted — and turn the screws on those pariahs who held out.

That's no longer the case. American-style capitalism no longer looks as dominant now that Wall Street has blown up. The financial meltdown also means that for the foreseeable future, the US and its European allies will have less money to offer countries they want to influence. There's a lot in Obama's history and rhetoric to suggest he'd love a Marshall Plan-style effort to fight poverty and terrorism in failing states like Pakistan and Yemen. But finding the money is going to be much harder today than it was a few years back. And putting tough conditions on that money will be harder too, since poor countries can turn to China and get cash with fewer strings attached.

All of which is to say that getting to solvency will require reducing the other side of the ledger: the one that lists America's commitments overseas.

Subtracting enemies

The most obvious commitment Obama wants to liquidate, of course, is the war in Iraq. But how can the US draw down its troop levels without letting Iraq spiral out of control? The answer, at least in part, is to end another conflict: America's proxy war with Iran. Since Iran is the other big foreign power with influence in Baghdad, the US needs its help to prevent Iraq from sliding back into anarchy as we withdraw. A better relationship with Iran might also make it easier to achieve calm — if not peace — between Israel and its two non-state foes Hizballah and Hamas, since Tehran arms and bankrolls both terrorist groups.

Getting Iran's help in Iraq — and persuading it to give up its quest for a nuclear bomb — will require abandoning our efforts at regime change, muting our human-rights concerns and accepting an Iranian sphere of influence in the Persian Gulf. Obama's opponents will probably depict that kind of deal as defeatist, an admission of the limits of American power in the Middle East. But those limits already exist; the US just hasn't acknowledged them.

The solvency doctrine also has implications for America's other war, in Afghanistan. Obama wants to send tens of thousands of US and Nato troops there, expand the Afghan army and dispatch boatloads of Western civilians to help build a governmental infrastructure that actually works. He also wants a high-octane diplomatic push across the border into Pakistan, which al-Qaeda and the Taliban have made their home base.

But he still needs to define victory down. Afghanistan is bigger and more populous than Iraq, with harsher terrain and a literacy rate one-third as high. It has no real history of centralised government; a fictional border with Pakistan, which militants cross with ease; an economy based largely on drugs; and a leader who — although still popular in the US —is widely considered a disaster at home.

To make matters worse, public support for the Afghan war has grown noticeably soft. The reason is that to most Americans, the war in Afghanistan has always been principally a war against al-Qaeda — to retaliate for 9/11 and eliminate its safe haven — not a war to build a centralised, democratic state in the Hindu Kush, which is a far harder thing. Obama is right to increase America's military, economic and diplomatic muscle in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan, but that power surge will work only if he also sets more realistic expectations. Ultimately, the US will have to cut a deal — or lots of little deals — with the bad guys to flip those Taliban members who will renounce al-Qaeda from enemies to allies. That will mean empowering local warlords who don't truly report to Kabul and may not win any awards from the ACLU. But that's essentially what we've done over the past two years in Iraq, where the Bush Administration both temporarily increased American power and quietly downsized expectations so we were fighting a small number of jihadist terrorists rather than a large number of conservative tribesmen. Achieving solvency requires subtracting enemies, not only in Iraq and Iran but in Afghanistan too.

A downsized war

The best precedent for all this is what the US did in the wake of Vietnam. By the early 1970s, the containment of global communism had become a foreign policy bubble of its own. The US had committed itself to stopping virtually any leftist movement from taking power anywhere in the world. But in Vietnam, this ideological determination was exacting a toll in money and blood that the American public was no longer willing to pay.

Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan — each in a different way — responded by downsizing containment. Nixon opened up to China, which essentially meant the US was no longer trying to contain the Soviets alone. Carter told Americans not to panic every time leftists overran some banana republic. Even Reagan, although he funded anti-communist guerillas, refused to send US troops to battle communist rebels and regimes in Central America.

Today it's the war on terrorism that has proved too costly. Describing Shi'ite Iran and Sunni al-Qaeda as a unified terrorist threat when they loathe each other makes as little sense as treating China and the Soviet Union as a unified threat in the 1960s, when they were on the brink of war. Even Hamas and Hizballah are fundamentally different from al-Qaeda, since they're national movements, not global ones. They may be terrorists, but politically, socially and economically, they are deeply integrated into their local societies in a way al-Qaeda is not. Our long-term goal should be to transform them from militias into political parties, which means giving them a seat at the table, no matter how odious their ideology, if they give up their guns.

We've done it before. America won World War II and the Cold War not by taking on all the enemies of freedom at once but by shrewdly isolating our greatest enemies, even though that meant cutting deals with some pretty nasty guys. We beat Hitler by allying with Stalin, and we beat Moscow in part by allying with Beijing. Today we need to beat al-Qaeda with the help of Iran, elements of the Taliban, perhaps Syria and maybe one day even Hizballah and Hamas. We need to isolate the violent jihadists who want to attack America rather than isolate ourselves by defining the war on terrorism as America against the field.

The new agenda

Does restoring solvency mean abandoning our commitment to freedom? No, but it means not writing rhetorical cheques that we can't cash. America usually promotes liberty more successfully by luring autocracies into greater engagement with the West rather than by trying to quarantine them. What's more, America's greatest contribution to democracy's spread comes from the power of our example. By defining the war on terrorism as a permanent state of emergency during which human rights and civil liberties don't apply, Bush has harmed freedom's cause far more than his lofty speeches have boosted it. The solvency doctrine may seem coldhearted, but in the long run, restoring America's strategic balance can help restore its moral balance as well.

Finally, downsizing the war on terrorism is crucial to freeing up energy for other things. Since 9/11, the Middle East has swallowed American foreign policy. From Bangkok to Brazil, China has been winning friends and influencing people while the US fights endless wars in the basket cases of the world. Obama's personal story gives him a unique opportunity to remind people in Asia, Latin America and Africa why America can still inspire in ways China cannot. But he can do that only if he and his top advisers take the time to nurture relationships that the war on terrorism has distorted or eclipsed.

If he's very lucky and very good, Obama may be able to get US foreign policy out of the red by late in his first term. If the economy starts growing again, if the US troop presence in Iraq drops without a return to anarchy, if there's a real thaw with Iran and if the outlines of a political settlement take shape in Afghanistan, then Obama will have an opportunity to define his agenda rather than having America's weakness define it for him. If he has the chance, my guess is he'll revive a vision that has intrigued progressive Presidents since Wilson: collective security, the idea that ultimately America's security and prosperity are bound up with the security and prosperity of people across the globe. A collective-security agenda would start with global warming, the ultimate we're-all-in-it-together planetary threat. It might move from there to international financial regulation, so countries can better work together to keep world capitalism from running off the rails. Next might be a new nuclear compact, in which the current nuclear powers begin to disarm while wannabes agree to tighter inspections in return for better access to civilian nuclear power.

This would be a stark departure from the Bush Administration's us-vs-them, neo--Cold War approach to the world, and it would be far better received. It would still be hard to achieve, given that global power is far more diffuse today than it was in the late 1940s, the last time the US helped build a new international architecture for a new
world. But it would be an aggressive, farsighted agenda, launched by an America strong enough to play offence again. If Obama can make US foreign policy solvent, he'll do more than cut our losses. He'll give himself — and us — the power to dream again of a transformed world. — Time

Israel pulls out its military from Gaza Strip

Israel says Gaza pull-out completed
Reported on 21/01/09

Israel's attacks on Gaza left over 1,300 people killed and thousands homeless [AFP]
Israel has said its troops have completed their withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, although forces have redeployed on the territory's outskirts and Israeli vessels remain in Gaza's territorial waters.

The Israeli military said its pull-out was completed before dawn on Wednesday, just hours after Barack Obama replaced George Bush as US president.

"The last soldier left the Gaza Strip this morning," an army spokesman said. "However the army remains deployed all around the Gaza Strip to meet any eventuality."

The army later issued a statement saying the troops had returned to Israeli territory, ending its so-called Operation Cast Lead.

But Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Gaza City, said: "We can still see Israeli naval vessels still very much in territorial waters, and [they] have been heard firing through the course of the morning.

"It's important to remember that it is difficult for eyewitnesses to confirm [the withdrawal].

"There is a 600-metre buffer zone which the Israeli army uses as a no-go, meaning that anyone who owns farmland in the area and tries to access it is often fired upon to try to deter them from approaching any closer."

Deadly attack

Israel has made its full withdrawal from the Strip conditional upon a halt to rocket attacks on southern Israel by Palestinian fighters.

"The [Israeli] military is saying it's still very much keeping a war floating that allows it to attack if they feel threatened or if any rockets come out of Gaza," Mohyeldin reported.

"At the same time, the Palestinian factions have said if these troops are not gone completely gone within a week, they will resume rocket fire."

Palestinian health ministry figures list more than 1,300 people dead from Israel's offensive, including 410 children. Another 5,300 people were wounded, 1,855 of them children. A total of 13 Israelis died, three of them civilians.

Israel launched its massive assault on December 27, bombarding from land, air and sea the narrow coastal strip where 1.5 million Palestinians live.

Gaza War unrelenting!

UN chief in Cairo for Gaza talks

Israel and Hamas have so far ignored the UN
chief's calls for an immediate truce [EPA]


Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has arrived in the Egyptian capital Cairo at the start of a regional tour aimed at ending Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip.

The UN chief met Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, immediately after arrival on Wednesday.

Ban would also meet leaders of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey in course of the tour, but he has indicated he would not have direct contact with Hamas fighters.

Ban has called for an immediate ceasefire, but both Israel and Hamas have ignored his pleas.

The Israeli offensive has so far killed 984 Palestinians while Israel says 10 soldiers and three civilians have died.

Michele Montas, a UN spokeswoman, said Ban would also "demand that urgent humanitarian assistance be provided without restriction to those in need".

"Everybody supported the role that the secretary-general can play. The security council is united ... We think the timing is right," Jean-Maurice Ripert, the French ambassador to the security council, said.

Diplomats said they also expected Ban to discuss with regional leaders reconstruction in Gaza after the violence ends, an effort the United Nations is expected to lead.

The UN chief said that he would send an assessment team to determine the extent of the damage and of humanitarian needs following a ceasefire.

The diplomatic push by the UN chief to end the war came as the president of the UN General Assembly condemned the Israeli assault as "genocide".

"The number of victims in Gaza is increasing by the day... The situation is untenable. It's genocide," Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann told Al Jazeera at the UN in New York.

Arab summit

Miguel Moratinos, Spain's foreign minister, meanwhile met Mubarak as diplomatic efforts to end the Gaza conflict gathered pace.

Moratinos is one of several high profile officials touring the region to secure a ceasfire deal.

Qatar has also asked the 22-member Arab League to hold an emergency Arab summit in Kuwait on Friday.

Diplomats said that Egypt and Saudi Arabia, both key allies of the US, have been cool to the idea of a summit because it could produce little in the way of results and thus make Arab leaders appear ineffective.

However, a statement released by the Saudi Press Agency, said that both Saudi Arabia and Egypt would take part in the emergency summit.

The First Post News

Western liberals prefer to damn Islamofascists’ than make Israel face up to the consequences of its violent behaviour...
- (FIRST POSTED JANUARY 7, 2009)

All over Britain this week people will be confronted by the valiant face of Jewish armed resistance to terror; to whit, the rough-hewn - and to my mind, distinctively Anglo-Saxon - features of the actor, Daniel Craig, staring out at them from film posters.

Craig is starring in a new epic, Defiance, which tells the little-known story of a partisan band of Jewish fighters who, during World War Two, fought back against the Nazis from their hide-out deep in the forests of Belarus.

Apparently, after screenings in the Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn, the audience has simultaneously wept and applauded this debunking of the stereotype of Jewish passivity in the face of violence. Yes, six decades on, no Jew need feel ashamed or impotent anymore.

Even our Foreign Secretary calls for a ceasefire with a fatalistic shrug
You don't need to be as English as Daniel Craig to appreciate the irony that just as one army of Jews are being lauded for their principled act of 'defiance', another is engaged in a more morally dubious feat of arms.

Nor do you have to be as much of a conspiracy theorist as some twisted Islamists to imagine that the producers of Defiance may have been encouraged to time the film's release to coincide with the IDF's invasion of Gaza; the Israeli government - and their supporters - have been engaged in a PR offensive for months now, to soften up Western opinion formers and the wider public, so that when the tanks began to roll we'd all accept it as just another scene in the epic tale of Jewish armed resistance to terror.

I'm not primarily concerned with the rights and wrongs of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict here - to my way of thinking the shards of this viciously shattered hall of mirrors will carry on stabbing at us all until the End of Days - but rather with the boundless willingness of so-called liberals here in Britain and in the US to forgive Israel's behavior.


Coming from any other state, the collective punishment of a civilian population - first with the denial of food and medical treatment, then with bombs and bullets - would be strenuously condemned. Yet even when our Foreign Secretary calls for an immediate ceasefire he does so with a fatalistic shrug of the shoulders, as if to say -Well,what can you do?

Of course, in David 'Helmet Hair' Miliband's case it's absolutely nothing; the impotence of the Quartet powers was never better demonstrated than by their selection of an envoy: not so much a has-been as a never-really-was, the Cheshire Cat of global politics, Tony Blair.

No, there's no room on the diplomatic stage for a Quartet - only the US soloist; which is why President-elect Barack Obama's silence is so depressing at this crucial juncture.

True, Obama set out his compliance to the pro-Israel lobby in the US a long way back on the campaign trail, when he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that under his presidency there would be no negotiation concerning Jerusalem, but still some hoped that he might show more mettle when it came to the actuality. Dream on.

The reality is that some liberals have become impotent apologists. It's a truism that the abused become, in turn, the abusers - but the generation of Holocaust survivors who were so influential in forming the militaristic cast of Israeli society have now quit the stage. Their children - and their children's children - are militaristic by nurture.

Still, a British rabbi interviewed about the anti-Israel demonstrations in London last weekend bemoaned the slackening grip that the Holocaust has on the political consciousness of the West; he pointed to a new wave of anti-Semitism that is engulfing Europe, as if this had no causal connection to any contemporary political realities.There are also those liberals who cleave to the ugly neologism 'Islamofascism'. By pinpointing the anti-semitism, misogyny and authoritarianism of the extremists they can - in their own minds - justify attacks on Muslims who don't support our enlightened moral codes.

Just as one army of Jews are being lauded for their principled act of 'defiance', another is engaged in a more morally dubious feat of arms

The reality is that they are impotent apologists, who, having no need for a fig leaf, have offered it to priapic militarists such as Ehud Barak and Dick Cheney. Moreover, the truth is that AIPAC's donors and supporters are not those who were abused by the Nazis, but those who were comfortably thousands of miles away - their fanaticism born of a strange kind of survivor guilt. My mother was an American Jew, and she told me that there was very little awareness of the extent of the Holocaust in the States in the 1940s.

It is these people - who applaud the machismo of an English actor playing a mittel-European Jewish partisan - that are the huge and muscular tail that wags the Israeli dog; to face them down will require more defiance than Obama has shown so far - let alone Miliband.

Hamas is to be blamed as well !

War is fiendish, war is cruel and the victims are always subject to the citizenry and the innocent hoi-polloi! The children are the most ignorant and sympathetic, fragile and totally unfair before they really see the world had been killed prematurely in the war of this kind created by their ‘holy leaders’! Callously using them as the ante in the war of lulling international compassion towards humanitarian ground - Hamas, is the most inhuman political faction tantamount to terrorist indoctrinated!

Let alone history, Israel is seemed to be fighting a war of survival and retaliated to combat Hamas which opted to declare war first by breaking the peace treaty, by lobbing salvo of rockets into Israel land, killing innocent civilians of Israelis and inflicted great fears for their nationals at the border zone! Any responsible Government will do that to fight back for the sake of protecting the Country and the safety of the Nationals, what’s wrong with Israel, I truly doubt?!

When Hamas became the underdog and the leaders went on hiding, pushed the civilians to the forefront as human shield facing the Israeli shelling, surely inflicted will be the innocent children and civilians as casualties, and casualties are on both sides! Can anyone just blame the upper hand Israel of being merciless when during the war, the strongest survive, to kill and to annihilate is the principle to victory of the war, unwanted though, is the rule of the game!

Sensible leaders and politicians are always taking into consideration the welfare and well beings of their subjects and shall not act like terrorists, despicably lead their Nationals to doom - Hamas is to be blamed for doing the Gaza peoples misfortunes and plights, by inducing the revenge of Israeli air strikes to annihilate the rockets launching site in Gaza Strip and so on!

“When one takes a broad survey of the country, he will find that the most useful and influential people in it are those who take the deepest interest in institutions that exist for the purpose of making the world better.” - Booker T. Washington (1856-1915).

Did Hamas behave alike?

No!

America Rejoins the World

UN: Hope that America Rejoins the World
The World Reacts
By Barbara Crossette

Jubilation should be the order of the day at the United Nations when an American who is also a son of Kenya and a child of Indonesia is elected president of the most powerful country in a world in need of healing. But while there is quiet joy and relief at the victory of Barack Obama, there is also a strong undercurrent of caution. Is the end of an unfriendly Republican era enough in itself to bring the United States back? Or have the Democrats, the heirs of the UN's founders, drifted too far from internationalism?

Much has been written in recent years about America "rejoining the world." Nowhere more than at the UN have Washington's bullying tactics and stunted, provincial vision of global challenges cast such a pall over international cooperation. Here, the United States is close-up and personal. After the naming in Washington of a new secretary of state, the appointment most eagerly awaited at the UN is that of the next American ambassador.

Peter Maurer, Switzerland's ambassador to the UN, says that what he hears among his diplomatic colleagues is a plea for trust to be restored between the US and the UN. There are the wounds of the Iraq war, and there is skepticism about the motives of Washington when politicians talk about UN reform. "The new administration will find a kind of window of opportunity because there is enormous goodwill around the UN to see and to hear some new voices" Maurer said. But the UN as well as the US will have to work on closing the rift, he added.

The world of the United Nations is divided into two distinct camps. The people of the headquarters Secretariat and the various agencies are recruited or appointed international civil servants who are expected to leave their nationalities behind and work for a global constituency. Many of them fail to meet that test, but that's another story. Separate from them are the diplomats who represent the 192 member nations. Their missions are in essence embassies to the UN and their views, at least formally, would reflect those of their governments.

To the foreign diplomats based in New York, perhaps surprisingly, the ambassadors sent to the UN by the Bush administration have generally been respected and liked, from John Negroponte and John Danforth to Zalmay Khalilzad, the first Muslim to represent the US in New York. John Bolton was the exception, but his period as ambassador was relatively brief and he was regarded as competent even by some who found him undiplomatically abrasive and driven blindly by his distrust of internationalism and rigid defense of American sovereignty.

Samir Sanbar, a former UN under secretary general for communications who now publishes a gossipy newsletter, unforum.com, describes the mood in the Secretariat this week as "caught between hope and apprehension." He says that the organization remembers the Clinton years, when the White House backed away from some important international commitments and crudely dumped a secretary general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, out of what appeared to be domestic political skittishness.

Middle Easterners (Sanbar is from Lebanon) also see no real possibility of change in regional policy in the Mideast, he said. Not long ago, before the election, a Brazilian diplomat remarked that there is concern about the Democrats' aversion to free trade. A lot of Indians liked the Republicans because they gave New Delhi a nuclear supply deal that may have killed the nonproliferation treaty.

Maurer, an expert in international law, said that a hoped-for thaw in US-UN relations would need to translate into action. "We all know what some of the concrete issues are, where many delegations would hope that a new administration would eventually set some priorities," he said. "This goes from climate change to engagement on a balanced nuclear disarmament, nonproliferation, policy. It goes to a new engagement for multilateral human rights, approaches which we certainly missed. New ideas, new approaches might be extremely welcome."

A list of international agreements rebuffed by the US awaits the Obama-Biden administration, beginning with the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty against nuclear weapons development, which the Clinton Administration shrank from sending to a hostile Congress. Also under Clinton, the US signed but never ratified the 1998 treaty creating the International Criminal Court, the first permanent tribunal designed to deal with perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In 2001, the Bush administration rescinded even the US signature and set out to undermine the court. Now, without standing in the court, Washington is in the awkward position of wanting the president of Sudan to be tried there for the horrors of Darfur.

The United States also opted out of joining the Human Rights Council, created in 2006 to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission. An early decision will have to be made on whether to vie for a seat in the new year.

On climate change, the US has not joined the Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding targets for reducing greenhouse gases in industrialized countries. The agreement, due to expire in 2012, is scheduled to be renegotiated next year at a global conference in Copenhagen. Strong leadership and active American participation will be needed to draw in major developing nations that have so far refused to be bound by internationally agreed limits.

The UN seems to have been a bone thrown by Washington to the ideological right. After the Security Council refused to endorse the American invasion of Iraq, Republicans excoriated the UN and Secretary General Kofi Annan for his opposition to the war and on whom, with more than a hint of revenge, they tried to pin responsibility for corruption in the Iraqi "oil for food" program a few years later. That the secretary general had no authority over the Security Council and that almost all the corruption turned out to have been found in corporations operating outside the formal system, whose rules Council members failed to enforce, were conveniently overlooked.

Sanbar says that the current secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, whom the US (and particularly Bolton) propelled into office in 2007, may be wondering what will happen when and if he seeks a second five-year term. He will have to open channels to the Democrats.

The UN Population Fund may have the most to gain in the short term from the Democratic victory. Since 2002, the Bush administration has barred American contributions to the fund, known as UNFPA, on specious claims that it was involved in programs in China that included forced abortions--claims the State Department argued were not true. The cumulative loss to UNFPA neared $300 million this year, at a time when maternal mortality remains high and family planning programs, in great demand in poor nations, are falling well behind funding campaigns for fighting HIV-AIDS.

In the Senate, Obama and Joe Biden have been supportive of programs for women--Biden co-authored the Violence Against Women legislation--and the ban on UNFPA is expected to be lifted early, along with what is known as the "global gag rule" introduced at a population conference in Mexico City in the Reagan administration that prevents US aid to any organization worldwide that condones abortion.

With the new administration, the broader American opposition to social programs in the UN system may end or be greatly diminished. The US has been in league with the Vatican and conservative Islamic countries on women's reproductive rights. It has failed to ratify the 1979 Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (along with nations such as North Korea and Iran) and is only one of two countries (Somalia is the other) not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Maurer said diplomats who watched the presidential debates this year with great interest noticed that the UN did not figure in the candidates' foreign policy messages. Ignoring the UN has become bipartisan. Reluctance to make commitments "went far beyond the President Bush administration," he said. "There has to be something in the American political fabric which produces these opinions."

Advances in universal human rights, international criminal law and accountability in the UN system all depend on American involvement, Maurer said. "There is no doubt that if you want to have functioning multilateralism you have to have the United States engaged and on board. If this is not happening, you are immediately in the vicious circle because then the results of negotiations will always be weaker if the US is not pushing within the institution, at the table."

Barack Obama won the Presidency of USA

Barack Obama crowns his victory by giving his children a puppy

Barack Obama's two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, have double reason to celebrate their father's historic victory in the American presidential elections today. For as a gift for all their help and support on the campaign trial, they are to be rewarded with a furry friend.

Taking a break from the flag-waving and the applause in Grant Park, Chicago, where Obama made his acceptance speech, he said to his children: "I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House."

Obama did not go into details about a name or breed of the dog, but he is sure to become the focus of intense media interest. The Bush family had two Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley, who are arguably the most photographed animals in the history of animalkind. Lyndon Johnson's mutt Yuki, who he found at a gas station, often appeared in the photos with the president in the Oval Office. The Kennedy family took things a little further, keeping a pony, Macaroni, in the garden. Perhaps the most famous pet of all, however, was Richard Nixon's dog Checkers. After he ran for vice-president in 1952, he was accused of receiving illegal campaign contributions and said he was keeping the dog no matter what. It became known as "The Checkers Speech."