Middle East & North Africa
After four long years of protracted negotiations, a proposal for a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the strife-torn Middle East remains in limbo – and perhaps virtually dead. But United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a relentless advocate of nuclear disarmament, is determined to resurrect the proposal. “I remain fully committed to convening a conference on […]
Bill Miller is the accredited Washington International journalist covering the U.N. and is the producer/moderator of Global Connections Television. The writer can be contacted at: millerkyun@aol.com
This week’s video-taped beheading of a U.S. journalist by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has spurred renewed calls for President Barack Obama to broaden Washington’s military efforts to strike the terrorist group, including in Syria. While Obama himself has long resisted pressure from neo-conservatives and other hawks to intervene more directly in […]
The United Nations was founded “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights. To meet that objective, the Preamble of the U.N. Charter provides “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be […]
United Nations officials and human rights organisations have characterised Israeli attacks on civilian targets during the IDF war on Gaza as violations of the laws of war. During the war, Israeli bombardment leveled whole urban neighbourhoods, leaving more than 10,000 houses destroyed and 30,000 damaged and killing 1,300 civilians, according to U.N. data. Israeli forces […]
U.S. President Barack Obama’s authorisation of limited military action in northern Iraq, announced in a national television address late Thursday night, has so far received support – albeit highly qualified in some cases — from across the mainstream political spectrum. While Republican hawks have welcomed the move in hopes it may presage a much broader […]
There is an age-old axiom in politics, says a cynical Asian diplomat, that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. But that longstanding adage never applied to Israel, which although sustained militarily by the United States, has had no compunction at lashing out at Washington if the U.S. is ever critical of illegal settlements […]
IPS Daily Report
