Geopolitics Weekly

The TNS Sofres survey for Le Figaro magazine said Sarkozy's approval rating fell two percentage points to 26 percent in June, while 71 percent said they did not trust him.It was Sarkozy's worst reading since he took office in 2007 and was one of the weakest scores ever registered by a French president in recent history.

This latest decline in Sarkozy's popularity means he has surpassed his predecessor Jacques Chirac's lowest score of 27 percent. However, he still has some way to go before hitting the all time record low of 22 percent registered by former Socialist president, Francois Mitterrand.

Russian diplomats said the timing of the announcement, just days after Obama and Medvedev's June 24 summit in Washington, could be an attempt by U.S. hardliners to torpedo the so-called reset in ties that Obama has championed.

A Kremlin source said Medvedev and Obama's warm relations had allowed the swap deal to be reached so swiftly."This was due to the new spirit set in Russian-American relations and the high level of mutual understanding and trust between the Russian and American presidents that no one will be able to shake," the source said.

Violent anti-government protests have swept India-controlled Kashmir for almost a month. The region is under an army lockdown.

In comments that could reverberate in the talks, Indian officials said the protests may have been incited by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group that Delhi has blamed for the Mumbai attacks.

The meeting comes at a time when India has sent in the army to control weeks of violent anti-government protests in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, at the core of its dispute with Pakistan.

"It is obvious that Iran is moving closer to possessing the potential which in principle could be used for the creation of nuclear weapons," Medvedev told a meeting of Russia's ambassadors in Moscow.

India last year linked Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) with the attacks, saying the perpetrators were "clients and creations" of the agency.But Pillai's remarks are more direct and could find resonance in the foreign ministers' meeting."It was not just a peripheral role," the Indian Express newspaper quoted Pillai as saying. "They (ISI) were literally controlling and coordinating it from the beginning till the end."

India has blamed Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants for the Mumbai attacks. It broke off a 4-year-old peace process with Pakistan, saying reviving the dialogue would depend on action against LeT and its chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.

"[In 2001] it was explained that the Taliban was a terrorist organization and that's why [the invasion] was necessary. Now many years later, it turns out that there's a so-called moderate Taliban -- moderate terrorists -- who can be reintegrated back into power. Does that mean we made a mistake nine years ago and all this time we have been correcting it?"

Ivanov suggested that the invasion of Afghanistan might have been partly motivated Western companies seeking to exploit Central Asian energy resources. "If we look back before the invasion, starting in 1997, a number of American companies were negotiating with the Taliban about putting in a pipeline in Afghanistan ... bringing gas from Turkmenistan south toward India. There were negotiations in Kabul and Houston and Washington. In 2001, those negotiations ended in a deadlock because the American side wanted a bigger pipeline, while the Taliban wanted smaller pipes in order to provide smaller towns and villages with gas. From the American side, the negotiator was Unocal and the negotiator from that company was the employee of that company, Hamid Karzai."

Certainly Sarrazin's book is being hailed as the work of a truth-teller: He sold 800,000 copies in three weeks this summer and his public readings are crammed with fans. I attended one the other day and was shocked to see how a teenage schoolgirl was shouted down and hustled out of the room by security guards for mildly questioning the Sarrazin thesis. Merkel, sensing danger, was quick to condemn at least one passage that seemed to suggest that there was a "Jewish gene."

This is not just about a book. Germany is beginning to realize that there is a gap in the party political spectrum to the right of Merkel's Christian Democrats, but to the left of the virulently undemocratic neo-Nazis. Opinion polls show that a party inspired by Sarrazin's thesis -- a party that would be critical of Islamic expansion in Europe and that seeks to control immigration -- could win 15 percent of the vote, thus seriously shaking up the German political system.

While Merkel reversed course to officially bury multiculturalism, one of her primary coalition partners, Horst Seehofer -- the leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union -- called for a wholesale stop to immigration.

Escalated airstrikes and special operations raids have disrupted Taliban movements and damaged local cells. But officials said that insurgents have been adept at absorbing the blows and that they appear confident that they can outlast an American troop buildup set to subside beginning next July. "The insurgency seems to be maintaining its resilience," said a senior Defense Department official involved in assessments of the war. Taliban elements have consistently shown an ability to "reestablish and rejuvenate," often within days of routed by U.S. forces, the official said, adding that if there is a sign that momentum has shifted, "I don't see it."

The Obama administration's plan to conduct a strategic review of the war in December has touched off maneuvering between U.S. military leaders seeking support for extending the American troop buildup and skeptics looking for arguments to wind down the nation's role.

U.S. officials said the two main branches of the insurgency - the Taliban and the Haqqani network - have been able to withstand the American military onslaught largely because they have access to safe havens in Pakistan.

"Victory is impossible in Afghanistan. Obama is right to pull the troops out. No matter how difficult it will be," Mr Gorbachev said

He said before the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, an agreement had been reached with Iran, India, Pakistan and the US. "We had hoped America would abide by the agreement that we reached that Afghanistan should be a neutral, democratic country, that would have good relations with its neighbours and with both the US and the USSR. "The Americans always said they supported this, but at the same time they were training militants - the same ones who today are terrorising Afghanistan and more and more of Pakistan," Mr Gorbachev said.

"I am very concerned, we're only half way down the road from a totalitarian regime to democracy and freedom. And the battle continues. There are still many people in our society who fear democracy and would prefer a totalitarian regime." He said the ruling party, led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, "has been doing everything it can to move away from democracy, to stay in power".

A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming recently reported that its data-crunching effort produced results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view on climate change.

Kohl believes his political legacy -- the euro and European unity -- is in danger, and he is not just blaming the policies of the Greeks and Portuguese, but Merkel as well. What the chancellor is doing is "very dangerous," Kohl recently complained, according to one visitor. Then Kohl added: "She's destroying my Europe."

Kohl reacted to the original, German version of this article by stating in an interview with Bild newspaper published on Monday that the comments ascribed to him were "totally fabricated." In the interview, he went on to say Merkel's predecessor, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, was partly to blame for the crisis because he had agreed to a softening of the Stability Pact on fiscal discipline in the euro zone, and had allowed Greece to join the euro in the first place.

No CDU government leader has been cooler towards Brussels than Angela Merkel. To her, Europe isn't a question of war and peace but of euros and cents. Her policy so far has consisted of cheerless repair work, of plugging holes and putting out fires.

the scope of land in question thwarts the possibility of exchanging areas in a peace settlement, according to the formula presented by U.S. President Barack Obama on May 19. This is because on the western side of the Green Line there is not enough open land to compensate the Palestinians for such an extensive annexation, according to examinations carried out during previous talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

the work procedures of the administration's team, dubbed "Blue Line," for demarcating state lands in the West Bank. He writes that the team's major task is to examine the state's declarations of ownership on lands mainly in the 80s and 90s. But the team, which has been working since 1999, is also examining the possibility of declaring lands with undefined ownership as state lands.

The document says the team gives priority to territories whose ownership is subject to a court debate or to dispute between settlers and Palestinians and between Palestinians and the state. The team also gives priority to advancing building public institutions, schools, parks and "other matters classified as urgent by the authorized bodies."

Only a fool could want Europe to return to the divisive feuds and nationalist horrors of the 19th and early-20th centuries. Any student of the Balkans knows that such horrors are never far below the surface. But a monetary union that denies nations the freedom to breathe and adjust their economies in their own way over time runs just this risk of regressive reaction.Each step towards "ever-closer union" has brought reaction nearer

The Greeks are rebelling in their humiliation, and the Germans are rebelling in their generosity.

The Greeks are rebelling in their humiliation, and the Germans are rebelling in their generosity.

In 2004 Norway celebrated a century of independence, not with fireworks and self-congratulation but a voluminous study of its constitution's health. It took five years and yielded 50 books, forming an astonishing Domesday survey of democracy in one country. Like apiarists round a beehive, scholars studied every minute facet of political life and party affiliation, every local association, newspaper, lobby and minority group.

the EU must combine greater stability, financial transfers, and mutual solidarity if the entire European project is to be prevented from collapsing under the weight of the ongoing sovereign-debt crisis.

For a long time, Merkel fought this new EU tooth and nail, because she knows how unpopular it is in Germany – and thus how politically dangerous it is to her electoral prospects. She wanted to defend the euro, but not to pay the price for doing so. That dream is at an end, thanks to the financial markets.

The markets issued an ultimatum to Europe: either embrace more economic and financial integration on a federal basis, or face the collapse of the euro and thus the EU, including the Common Market. At the last moment, Merkel chose the sensible option.

when the People's Daily, the party's mouthpiece, declares that China can no longer generate "blood-smeared" GDP, a rubicon has been crossed.

The internet is proving an instrument that not even the authoritarian Chinese can control.

China, as I once was memorably told by a group of lawyers in Beijing, is a volcano waiting to explode. It is difficult for those not familiar with the country to comprehend the scale of corruption, the waste of capital, the sheer inefficiency, the ubiquity of the party and the obeisance to hierarchy that is today's China. The mass of Chinese are proud and pleased with what has been achieved since Deng Xiaoping began the era of the "socialist market economy". But there is a widespread and growing recognition that the authoritarian model has to change, a fact that every disaster dramatises.