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Medvedev is trying a different approach: invite the activists to the Kremlin. Two weeks ago he met with representatives from 36 of Russia's leading nongovernmental organizations—groups that Putin had practically tried to eradicate with strict registration laws

The president said he regretted that Putin-era laws had been taken as meaning "all NGOs are enemies of the state." On the contrary, Medvedev said, their work is "essential for the health of our society."

The new tolerance goes far beyond the rights groups. State-controlled television has also undergone a marked liberalization. There's been a revival of televised political satire, and in February, Channel One gave serious airtime to Aleksandr Shokhin, head of the influential Russian Businessmen's Union, as he denounced the new charges against Khodorkovsky as a complete sham.

The US and its European allies are ­preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the Guardian has learned.The creation of a new chief executive or prime ministerial role is aimed at bypassing Karzai. In a further dilution of his power, it is proposed that money be diverted from the Kabul government to the provinces. Many US and European officials have become disillusioned with the extent of the corruption and incompetence in the Karzai government, but most now believe there are no credible alternatives, and predict the Afghan president will win re-election in August.

As well as watering down Karzai's personal authority by installing a senior official at the president's side capable of playing a more efficient executive role, the US and Europeans are seeking to channel resources to the provinces rather than to central government in Kabul.

The idea of a more dependable figure working alongside Karzai is one of the proposals to emerge from the White House review, completed last week. Obama, locked away at the presidental retreat Camp David, was due to make a final decision this weekend.Obama is expected to focus in public on overall strategy rather than the details, and, given its sensitivity, to skate over ­Karzai's new role. The main recommendation is for the Afghanistan objectives to be scaled back, and for Obama to sell the war to the US public as one to ensure the country cannot again be a base for al-Qaida and the Taliban, rather than the more ambitious aim of the Bush administration of trying to create a European-style democracy in Central Asia.Other recommendations include: increasing the number of Afghan troops from 65,000 to 230,000 as well as expanding the 80,000-strong police force; ­sending more US and European civilians to build up Afghanistan's infrastructure; and increased aid to Pakistan as part of a policy of trying to persuade it to tackle al-Qaida and Taliban elements.

Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the president of the General Assembly, lashed out at the West in general and the United States in particular on Tuesday, saying that Iran’s president had been maligned and that the indictment of Sudan’s president was racist.

His comments drew a rebuke from several Security Council ambassadors and even from the 33-member Latin American bloc that had nominated him. “He confuses his personal opinions sometimes with those of the General Assembly,” said Heraldo Muñoz, the ambassador from Chile.

Mr. d’Escoto was speaking at a news conference to mark the end of a world tour. He said that he had been struck by the “great respect” shown to Iran by its neighbors and that its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had been unfairly “demonized” in the West.

The United States has stepped closer to a total ban on the use and export of cluster bombs with the signing by Barack Obama of a new permanent law that would make it almost impossible for the US to sell the controversial weapons. The decision was hailed by opponents of the weapons as a "major turnaround in US policy" that overrode Pentagon calls to permit their continued export.

Under the new rules, the air and artillery-deployed weapons, which scatter hundreds of bomblets, are required to have a self-destruct failure rate of less than 1%, which few of the US cluster bombs meet, before being cleared for sale. Despite a temporary ban having been in place, the Pentagon made it clear last year that it was keen to see the export of the weapons again.

The new law comes into force amid growing pressure from Congress for a complete ban on their use, even by the US military. International opposition to cluster bombs, which maim and kill civilians long after they have been fired during conflicts, has been hardening rapidly since the Israeli Defence Forces fired more than 1m into southern Lebanon during the 2006 war with Hezbollah. Last year, a treaty limiting their use was signed by 95 countries, including most of America's Nato allies - but not the US.

First, for all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful "Israel lobby," or who admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much influence, or who thought that the real problem was some supposedly all-powerful "Saudi lobby," think again.  

Second, this incident does not speak well for Barack Obama's principles, or even his political instincts. It is one thing to pander to various special interest groups while you're running for office -- everyone expects that sort of thing -- but it's another thing to let a group of bullies push you around in the first fifty days of your administration.

The decision to toss Freeman over the side tells the lobby (and others) that it doesn't have to worry about Barack getting tough with Netanyahu, or even that he’s willing to fight hard for his own people. Although AIPAC has issued a pro forma denial that it had anything to do with it, well-placed friends in Washington have told me that it leaned hard on some key senators behind-the-scenes and is now bragging that Obama is a "pushover." Bottom line: Caving on Freeman was a blunder that could come back to haunt any subsequent effort to address the deteriorating situation in the region.

David Miliband today described China as the 21st century's "indispensable power" with a decisive say on the future of the global economy, climate change and world trade.The foreign secretary predicted that over the next few decades China would become one of the two "powers that count", along with the US, and Europe could emerge as a third only if it learned to speak with one voice.

Miliband said a pivotal moment in China's rise came at the G20 summit last month in London. Hu Jintao, China's president, arrived as the head of the only major power still enjoying strong growth (expected to be 8% this year), backed by substantial financial reserves."The G20 was a very significant coming of economic age in an international forum for China. If you looked around the 20 ­people sitting at the table … what was striking was that when China spoke everybody listened," Miliband said.

"Historians will look back at 2009 and see that China played an incredibly important role in stabilising global capitalism. That is very significant and sort of ironic," Miliband said. "There's a joke that goes: 'After 1989, capitalism saved China. After 2009, China saved capitalism.'"

a delegation from the Guardian Council's members visited the religious leaders and ayatollahs in Qom to get their public support for the legitimacy of the election and the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term. But an Iranian source told Asharq Al-Awsat: "But praise be to God, the sources of emulation did not support the demands" of the Guardian Council

members of the Guardian Council, the body supervising the election, visited the Shiite seminary in Qom and met the sources of emulation there and that Great Ayatollah Safi Golpaygani, one of the most important sources of emulation in the seminary, was among those they met. The source, which it cannot be identified, said Ayatollah Golpaygani urged the Guardian Council "to be above politics and exercise its role as a neutral arbiter between the political parties and not lean toward one party at the expense of the other."

The Iranian source pointed out that the senior religious leaders in Qom and its seminary prefer to be "above the political tendencies" and they include those with strong influence in Qom and its seminary who have a voice in the decision-making centers in Tehran due to their religious status such as Ayatollah Makarem-Shirazi, Ayatollah Vahidi, and Ayatollah Zanjani. Ayatollahs Amini and Javadi-Amoli took a neutral stand during the present crisis and called for listening to the voice of the Iranian street and reformists and examining the violations and complaints neutrally.

A new study by Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University and Dr. Eran Halperin of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya shows that fear is one of the obstacles preventing the spread of alternative beliefs on resolving conflicts by peaceful means. Such obstacles develop through a selective and distorted processing of information aimed at preserving conflict-beliefs. Take, for example, the belief that "time is on our side." By contrast, the two researchers found that only a small minority of Israelis evaluate the conflict through the ethical lenses of justice and morality.

The researchers therefore assumed that the only way to open Israelis to compromise was to present them with the heavy price they are now paying - and will pay in the future - as a result of their refusal to compromise. This conclusion parallels the findings of Nobel Prize laureate Prof. Daniel Kahneman and the late Prof. Amos Tversky, who assert that people are primarily influenced by fear of losing their assets, rather than the hope for a future profit.

In their research, Bar-Tal and Halperin found that people who were exposed to a scenario emphasizing the price Israel might have to pay for allowing the conflict to continue were more willing to accept new information and compromise, in comparison to those exposed to a scenario based on the fruits of peace. While positive prognoses on the future of Israel and the Middle East did not result in a change of attitude, information on the losses Israel can expect unless a peace agreement is signed soon intensified the wish of those surveyed to consider alternative solutions to the conflict.

SPIEGEL: Is Pakistan now paying for its earlier failures? Why didn't you eliminate the Taliban leadership when they came to Pakistan at the end of 2001 -- above all the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban's highest decision-making council, in the Pakistani city Quetta? Musharraf: The Quetta Shura never existed. Do you really think there is an assembly in a kind of a house where they come and discuss things in something like a regular consultation? Mullah Omar never was in Pakistan and he would be mad if he appeared there. He is much safer in Afghanistan.

SPIEGEL: Over the last eight years, Pakistan has received about $10 billion in military aid from the US. Apparently you didn't spend all that money on the war on terror -- some went to secure your eastern border with India. Is that true? Musharraf: Half of it, $5 billion, was reimbursed to us for services we had already rendered to the US. You have to understand how the Pakistan army operates: The divisions keep moving. If we buy new tanks for $250 million, then they will be deployed in Peshawar as part of the war on terror, but they will also go to the eastern border. But why do you care about that? Why, for heaven's sake, should I tell you how we spent the money? SPIEGEL: The American government would surely be interested in knowing. Musharraf: I also told the Americans that it has nothing to do with them. We are not obligated to give out any details. Maybe I should have said at the time: Ok, you want us to support you, give us $20 billion a year and don't ask what we are doing with it.

Musharraf: I do agree, they do not accept this war as their war. This has something to do with history. Please understand the reason, and you should blame the US for it. From 1979 to 1989, we fought a war with the US in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. And we won mainly because of ISI. Otherwise, the Soviet Union could not have been defeated in Afghanistan. But then the US left us all alone with 30,000 mujahedeen brought by them. Even Osama bin Laden was brought by the US, who else? They all came to fight the Soviet Union. So, did anybody in Washington develop a strategy for what to do with these people after 1989? No, nobody helped Pakistan for the next 12 years until 2001. We were left high and dry, with 30,000 mujahedeen holed up, no rehabilitation, no resettlement for them. No assistance was given to Pakistan -- instead sanctions were imposed against us. Fourty F-16s, for which we had paid money, were denied to us. Four million Afghan refugees had also come to Pakistan. The mujahedeed coalesced into al-Qaida and our social fabric was being completely destroyed. This is why the people of Pakistan felt used by the Americans, and this is why Pakistanis dislike the US and this war.

Cuba notified the Obama administration it was ready to resume talks on migration issues and to negotiate direct postal service between the countries for the first time in decades. It also agreed to cooperate with the United States on counterterrorism, drug interdiction and hurricane relief efforts.

The decisions, conveyed to the State Department on Saturday in diplomatic notes, represent another step in the gradual unlocking of relations under the Obama administration, after nearly 50 years of a trade embargo that many in the hemisphere say has outlived its usefulness.“Greater connections,” Mrs. Clinton said, “can lead to a better, freer future for the Cuban people. These talks are in the interest of the United States, and they are also in the interest of the Cuban people.”

Mrs. Clinton is in El Salvador for the presidential inauguration on Monday of the leftist leader Mauricio Funes. As one of his first acts, Mr. Funes has said he will restore diplomatic relations with Cuba, leaving the United States as the only country in the Americas without such ties.

Jubilant supporters of Lebanon's US-backed ruling coalition took to the streets last night, claiming a decisive election victory. It marks a dramatic reversal of fortunes after polls showed it losing its slim majority to a Hezbollah-led coalition backed by Syria and Iran.

Isolated voting booths, indelible ink and a voter education campaign launched by the interior ministry made the elections a significant improvement on 2005, with turnout averaging more than 50%.

The vote pitted a moderate Sunni-led government, supported by the west, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, against an opposition led by Hezbollah, the Middle East's most powerful militant group, which fought Israel in the devastating 2006 war and is financed by Iran's Shia government.