Geopolitics Weekly

The murders of Ivo Pukanic and Ivana Hodak, together with a spate of attacks on journalists and businessmen, have confirmed a belief in the minds of many Croats that their country is in the grip of powerful mafia whose roots lie in the international embargo against Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

Robbed of trade revenue and legitimate supplies of weapons, the constituent republics, including Croatia, turned to smuggling. Those criminals of yesteryear became the powerful businessmen of today.

In Vukovar I met respected journalist Goran Flauder, who has written investigative articles about some these men - and been physically attacked six times. "We like to say that where Italy is a state with a mafia, Croatia is a mafia with a state," he says.

Why do you not at least temporarily suspend uranium enrichment, thereby laying the groundwork for the commencement of serious negotiations?

Ahmadinejad: These discussions are outdated. The time for that is over. The 118 members of the Non-Aligned Movement support us unanimously, as do the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. If we eliminate duplication between the two groups, we have 125 countries that are on our side. If a few countries are opposed to us, you certainly cannot claim that this is the entire world.

The composition of the Security Council and the veto of its five permanent members are consequences of World War II, which ended 60 years ago. Must the victorious powers dominate mankind for evermore, and must they constitute the world government? The composition of the Security Council must be changed.

Since then, the reunification movement has faded to the margins of political life. Arcadie Barbarosie, executive director of the Institute for Public Policy, an independent research organization, said only 15 percent of Moldovans would support unification with Romania if a referendum were held now. Political elites, meanwhile, have lost interest for pragmatic reasons.

Since then, the reunification movement has faded to the margins of political life. Arcadie Barbarosie, executive director of the Institute for Public Policy, an independent research organization, said only 15 percent of Moldovans would support unification with Romania if a referendum were held now. Political elites, meanwhile, have lost interest for pragmatic reasons. “Not everyone wants to be second in Bucharest if they can be first in Chisinau,” said Konstantin F. Zatulin, director of the Moscow-based Institute of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

But the question has never been entirely set aside, either. As recently as 2006, President Traian Basescu of Romania said, “The Romanian-Moldavian unification will take place within the European Union and in no other way.” The issue was churned up again by last week’s protests, when Romanian flags were raised at two government buildings. Mr. Voronin has said he can prove that Romanian agents planned and organized the protests.

Moldova’s narrative is complicated by its history of domination: over the last two centuries, the territory once known as Bessarabia was ruled by the Russian czar for 106 years, then by the Romanian king for 22 years and then by the Soviet Union for 51 years.

After nearly two decades of independence, Moldova’s citizens are still at odds over the basic question of who they are. That division boiled over last week, when a huge anti-Communist demonstration turned violent. Its participants, in their teens and 20s, say they are desperate to escape a Soviet time warp and enter Europe. But many of their elders feel more affinity with Russia, and see the protests as a plot by their western neighbor Romania to snatch away Moldova’s sovereignty.

But Claus Neukirch, deputy head of the Moldova mission for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said he did not believe that the demonstrators sought unification with Romania.“It is rather a movement eager for recognition that the two countries have the same roots and the same language — and that Moldova is part of Europe and not part of Russia,” he said. “Bessarabia has been on this fault line through all of history.”

For two hours, the meeting unfolded, laying bare the torments facing any Afghan Pashtuns who might be contemplating defying the Taliban — and the extraordinary difficulties facing American officers as they try to reverse the course of the war.

The meeting in Maidan Shahr, Wardak Province’s capital, tucked into the mountains about 30 miles southwest of Kabul, concerned one of the most unorthodox projects the Americans have undertaken here since the war began in 2001: to arm, with minimal training, groups of Afghan men to guard their own neighborhoods.

The military is borrowing a page from a similar program that helped bring about the recent calm to Iraq, where the Americans signed up more than 100,000 Iraqis, most of them Sunnis and many of them insurgents, to keep the peace.

Several thousand people have been protesting in the Hungarian capital Budapest, over the appointment of a new prime minister, Gordon Bajnai.

Mr Bajnai replaces Ferenc Gyurcsany, who announced his decision to resign in March, saying he considered himself a hindrance to further reforms. Mr Bajnai, a non-aligned figure who had been serving as the economy minister, was sworn in by parliament late on Tuesday.

the anti-government demonstrators in Budapest are demanding that parliament be dissolved and an early election called.

International tensions have remained high after North Korea said it was expelling UN nuclear inspectors and resuming work on its nuclear programme.

North Korea has said it wants to develop its space programme by 2012, which will mark 100 years since Kim Il-sung's birth. It said the launch was a step towards that goal.

the North insists it put a communications satellite into orbit, and reacted angrily to Monday's statement from the UN Security Council condemning the launch. It said the criticism was an "unbearable insult" which debased the North Korean people.

Pirates have used rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons to attack another US merchant ship off the coast of Somalia. The pirates damaged the Liberty Sun, which was carrying a cargo of food aid, but were not able to board it.

Pirates have vowed to avenge the deaths of those killed in recent rescue operations by US and French forces.

Somali pirate leaders - who have generally treated captives well in the hope of winning big ransom payouts - said they would avenge the deaths.

Thousands of opposition supporters in Georgia have begun a fifth day of protests, calling on President Mikhail Saakashvili to step down. The demonstrators gathered outside the parliament in Tbilisi, before marching on to the presidential palace, where they plan to hold an ongoing protest. Correspondents say turnout is falling and the opposition seems increasingly unsure of how to continue its campaign.

Mr Saakashvili says Russian oligarchs are financing the Georgian opposition.

After a brief pause on Sunday, more than 20,000 opposition supporters returned to the Georgian parliament building for a fifth day, chanting "Misha, Go!"

Ahmadinejad's program includes a visit to Isfahan's nuclear facilities on the outskirts of the city, where scientists are working on uranium enrichment. This is one of the mysterious factories the world fears, because it believes that the Iranians are building a nuclear bomb there.

This is the Iranian theocracy that sends shivers down the world's collective spine. For many, Iran is a nightmarish country, a combination of high-tech weapons and a religious ideology based on 1,400-year-old martyr legends that focuses on suffering. It is an isolated and unpredictable country, a wounded civilization whose leaders are taking their revenge on the West by striving to develop nuclear weapons and financing radical Islamists from Hamas to Hezbollah.

The Iranian president is currently under more pressure than usual. He is being asked to venture into new territory and respond to America's offer to relax tensions. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, threatened Tehran with "regime change" of the sort he announced and implemented in neighboring Iraq. Bush refused to so much as negotiate over the Iranian nuclear program and, with the arrogance of a superpower, helped unify the Iranian public against the "USA, the Great Satan." It was Bush who ensured that the relatively unpopular regime of mullahs, despite its mishandling of the economy, could stabilize itself.

he Obama administration and its European allies are preparing proposals that would shift strategy toward Iran by dropping a longstanding American insistence that Tehran rapidly shut down nuclear facilities during the early phases of negotiations over its atomic program, according to officials involved in the discussions.

The proposals, exchanged in confidential strategy sessions with European allies, would press Tehran to open up its nuclear program gradually to wide-ranging inspection. But the proposals would also allow Iran to continue enriching uranium for some period during the talks. That would be a sharp break from the approach taken by the Bush administration, which had demanded that Iran halt its enrichment activities, at least briefly to initiate negotiations.

The proposals under consideration would go somewhat beyond President Obama’s promise, during the presidential campaign, to open negotiations with Iran “without preconditions.” Officials involved in the discussion said they were being fashioned to draw Iran into nuclear talks that it had so far shunned.

An Iranian-American journalist accused of spying in Iran went on trial this week and a verdict is expected soon, an Iranian official has said.

Ms Saberi, 31, is being held in Evin prison near Tehran. The journalist, 31, worked briefly for the BBC three years ago. She has also worked for the American public radio network NPR and the TV network Fox News. She has been in custody in Tehran since late January.

Ms Saberi originally faced the less serious accusations of buying alcohol, then working as a journalist without a valid press card, but last week Iranian prosecutors accused her of spying for the US.

US President Barack Obama has approved measures that will allow Cuban Americans to travel more freely to Cuba, his spokesman has said. Cuban-Americans will also be allowed to send more money to relatives in Cuba.

"The president has directed the secretaries of state, treasury and commerce to carry out the actions necessary to lift all restrictions on the ability of individuals to visit family members in Cuba and to send them remittances," said Mr Gibbs.

Restrictions would also be lifted on US telecommunications companies applying for licences to operate in Cuba, Mr Gibbs added.

North Korea has vowed to walk out on international talks to end its nuclear programme, and said it would restore its disabled nuclear reactor.

Pyongyang described the UN statement as an "unbearable insult".

The North said it would never again take part in the talks, adding that it would restore its partially disabled Yongbyon nuclear reactor - the fuel source for its 2006 atomic test.

North Korea said today it will boycott international talks on its atomic weapons programme in protest at the UN security council's condemnation of the country's rocket launch.

The country also said it would restart nuclear facilities it had begun to dismantle under an international deal.

"We have no choice but to further strengthen our nuclear deterrent to cope with additional military threats by hostile forces," the statement said

A US congressman has had a narrow escape on a visit to Mogadishu after Somali insurgents fired mortars towards his plane as it was about to take off. Airport officials told the BBC one mortar had landed near the airport as Donald Payne's plane was due to fly and five others after his plane departed.

The al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the mortar attack. "We carried out mortar attacks against the enemy of Allah who arrived to spread democracy in Somalia," a spokesman for the group named as Sheikh Husein Ali Fidow was quoted as saying by AFP news agency. "This government is welcoming America, which is our prime enemy and we will never stop attacking them."

Iran, meanwhile, continues to support both Hamas and its Shiite counterpart in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and to pursue an alleged nuclear weapons program that Israelis legitimately see as a threat to their very existence.

No one can say for sure what will happen next within Tehran’s complex political system, but it is likely that the radical faction around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be strengthened by the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. Economically, however, Iran is in a hole that will only deepen as oil prices fall further. Strategically, the country risks disaster by proceeding with its nuclear program, because even a purely Israeli air offensive would be hugely disruptive. All this risk ought to point in the direction of conciliation, even accommodation, with the United States. But with presidential elections in June, Ahmadinejad has little incentive to be moderate.

The democratic governments in Kabul and Islamabad are two of the weakest anywhere. Among the biggest risks the world faces this year is that one or both will break down amid escalating violence. Once again, the economic crisis is playing a crucial role. Pakistan’s small but politically powerful middle class has been slammed by the collapse of the country’s stock market. Meanwhile, a rising proportion of the country’s huge population of young men are staring unemployment in the face. It is not a recipe for political stability.

The bad news for Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, is that he now faces a much larger and potentially more troubling axis—an axis of upheaval.

ultimately I concluded, in The War of the World, that three factors made the location and timing of lethal organized violence more or less predictable in the last century. The first factor was ethnic disintegration: Violence was worst in areas of mounting ethnic tension. The second factor was economic volatility: The greater the magnitude of economic shocks, the more likely conflict was. And the third factor was empires in decline: When structures of imperial rule crumbled, battles for political power were most bloody.

When Bush’s speechwriters coined the phrase “axis of evil” (originally “axis of hatred”), they were drawing a parallel with the World War II alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan, formalized in the Tripartite Pact of September 1940. The axis of upheaval, by contrast, is more reminiscent of the decade before the outbreak of World War II, when the Great Depression unleashed a wave of global political crises.

the United States and its allies have had serious disagreements over North Korea. Japan is prepared to obstruct negotiations until Pyongyang comes clean on the handful of Japanese kidnapped by the North some 30 years ago. The Chinese have wanted to moderate and ultimately change North Korea through reform and sizable economic support, but have little to show for it. Many of the cognoscenti see China as the ultimate arbiter compelling North Korean cooperation. That, of course, has not happened. China has its own interest -- keeping North Korea afloat -- and that's not likely to change. The U.S. and Chinese economies are now so enmeshed that U.S. leverage on China is very limited. South Korea's "sunshine policy," which provided large-scale aid in hopes of ultimately seducing North Korea, was despised by the Bush administration. (Ironically, a new South Korean government abandoned the policy just as the United States was softening its approach to the North.)

The U.S. administration seems content to resume six-party talks where they left off: completing the "phase two" agreement, exchanging fuel oil for disablement of the North's plutonium facilities, and an agreement on verification, the sticking point precipitating the breakdown of negotiations. Preventing North Korea from producing more fissile material makes sense. From there, the going gets increasingly tough.

The weight of evidence suggests that North Korea will be unwilling to give up its nuclear weapons for a long time, if ever. The apparent North Korean interest in trading the dismantling of its plutonium facilities for light water reactors will not likely go down well in Washington. It is not much of a deal.

as Vice President Biden said in Munich and as President Obama made clear during his recent trip to Europe, the United States must never recognize South Ossetian and Abkhazian independence.

That said, bringing those separatist regions back under Georgian control won't happen any time soon. The hope is that Georgia, through political and economic reform, becomes an attractive place for South Ossetians and Abkhazians to some day want to join. That will take time and patience on the part of the Georgian leadership, not traits often associated with Saakashvili.

Finally, the United States has to fix the international impression that its policy is support for "Misha first, Georgia second." It would be a mistake to dump Saakashvili to support any other candidates -- that's for the Georgians themselves to decide. But America should support processes that encourage a level playing field and avoid picking favorites. To that end, the return to Georgia of former U.N. Ambassador Irakli Alasania to join the opposition against Saakashvili has increased the possibility of more effective checks and balances against the government.