Geopolitics Weekly

The United Nations Environment Programme predicts widespread water shortages across Africa, Europe and Asia by 2025.

Improving agricultural productivity globally is one way to tackle the problem, he adds. At present, 30-40% of all crops are lost due to pest and disease before they are harvested. Professor Beddington says: "We have to address that. We need more disease-resistant and pest-resistant plants and better practices, better harvesting procedures. "Genetically-modified food could also be part of the solution. We need plants that are resistant to drought and salinity - a mixture of genetic modification and conventional plant breeding.

"I announce my withdrawal from the 10th presidential election," Mr Khatami said in a statement released after a late-evening meeting with his supporters and campaign officials.

he entered this campaign reluctantly and unenthusiastically, adds our correspondent, and it soon became clear that many of those in power in Iran did not want him to return as president. One city prevented him from campaigning with the excuse that it would cause traffic jams.

in a meeting with the Defense Ministry's top staff, Medvedev said Russia needed to push ahead with the changes because "serious potential for conflict remains in many regions." He cited the threat of terrorism and local crises such as the war with Georgia in August, as well as "attempts to expand the military infrastructure of NATO near Russia's borders."

government's plan to drastically reduce the number of officers, who now account for nearly one of three Russian soldiers. By eliminating hollow units that are supposed to call up conscripts in the event of war, the government plans to cut the officer corps from about 355,000 to 150,000, shedding more than 200 generals, 15,000 colonels and 70,000 majors. Meanwhile, the number of ground force units would be slashed from nearly 2,000 to less than 200.

Dozens of military academies, research institutes and hospitals would also be shut, and the overall size of the military would fall from about 1.13 million to 1 million.

Medvedev said the changes would address serious flaws in the military exposed by the Georgian war, the first time Russia has sent its forces to fight abroad since the fall of the Soviet Union. Though Russia easily triumphed in the five-day conflict, analysts say the Kremlin was alarmed by problems with aging weapons, communications and equipment, as well as the command structure.

Medvedev said arms procurement would be "almost entirely preserved" this year despite a budget shortfall but added that "large-scale rearming" would have to wait until 2011. Serdyukov said up to 90 percent of the weapons and equipment used by the military are outdated, and he pledged to bring that figure down to 70 percent by 2015.

He said the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on war crimes charges was lamentable because it would undermine Darfur peace talks. A request by the African Union and the Arab League for the Security Council to suspend the indictment for a year should be respected, he said. The indictment “helps to deepen a perception that international justice is racist” because the case is the third to be brought against Africans, Mr. d’Escoto said.

Ruhakana Rugunda, the Ugandan ambassador and a Security Council member, said, “I do not consider that decision racist.”

Mr. d’Escoto supported Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s criticism of the United States for falling about $1 billion behind in its United Nations dues. Describing the United States’ attitude toward the Council, Mr. d’Escoto said, “ ‘You either give me the green light to commit the aggression that I want to commit, or I shall declare you irrelevant.’ ” Mark Kornblau, the spokesman for the United States Mission, said, “It’s hard to make sense of Mr. d’Escoto’s increasingly bizarre statements.”

Mr. d’Escoto tends to draw support from countries at odds with Washington, while Western nations accuse him of being stuck in a leftist, Sandinista mind-set. Mr. d’Escoto, a Roman Catholic priest, was Nicaragua’s foreign minister from 1979 to 1990.

China's communist rulers have said they are prepared to offer more stimulus spending in order to achieve the 8% growth target. But the bank said this may not be the right approach and the government should nurture reserves in case growth falls further.

According to the latest World Bank global forecasts, published in December, the world economy is set to expand at a weak annual rate of 0.9% in 2009, with a 0.1% contraction in developed economies offset by growth in developing countries of 4.5%. A Chinese government think tank this month forecast first-quarter growth would slow to 6.5%, from a 6.8% pace in the fourth quarter last year.

Under a deal reached in June last year, the US agreed to distribute 500,000 metric tonnes of food to North Korea - 400,000 through the UN World Food Programme and the rest through NGOs.

The United Nations said on Monday that 6.9 million North Koreans have not received food aid they desperately need. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the reclusive state in a famine in the 1990s, and the North has relied on outside food aid ever since.

Pyongyang recently put its military on full combat alert and shut its border with the South, in what it said was retaliation for the recent annual military exercise by US and South Korean forces. In January, the North scrapped a series of peace agreements with the South over Seoul's decision to link bilateral aid to progress on de-nuclearisation.

Addressing bishops from South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia and Lesotho who had travelled to the Vatican for papal audience, he said: "The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids."

More than two-thirds – 67% – of the global total of 32.9 million people with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Africa is the fastest-growing region for the Roman Catholic church, which competes with Islam and evangelical churches.

Benedict dismissed claims that he was facing increasing opposition and isolation within the church, particularly after an outreach to ultra-conservatives led to him lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop."The myth of my solitude makes me laugh," he said

Pakistani analysts, too, said Mr. Sharif could prove to be a useful partner as Washington tried to talk to what it considered reconcilable elements in the Taliban. “Who from Pakistan can talk to a faction of the Taliban? It’s Nawaz,” said a senior Pakistani politician

But Mr. Sharif has to play a delicate game because if he is seen as doing Washington’s bidding, he will be discredited among much of his constituency, the politician said.And Mr. Sharif could also turn out to be unwilling to back some of the tough steps that Washington wants.

One encouraging sign for Washington was the role played in the crisis by the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who let Mr. Zardari know that he could not rely on soldiers to confront the protesters who were threatening to descend on Islamabad to demand the return of Chief Justice Chaudhry.

Another positive sign was the nature of the support Mr. Sharif garnered after he drove out of his house in a suburb of Lahore on Sunday through barbed-wire barriers, in defiance of a detention order.

The support of such a broad range of people is considered a first for Mr. Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, which has generally ceded street power to the Pakistan Peoples Party, and it underscored Mr. Sharif’s political instincts, said Farrukh Saleem, a columnist for The News, a daily newspaper. “He understood the pulse of the country,” Mr. Saleem said.

Under the deal announced Monday, Mr. Kaira said, the Pakistan Peoples Party would embark on discussions with Mr. Sharif’s party on a range of political reforms proposed under the Charter of Democracy, a document signed by Mr. Sharif in 2006 with Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, who was assassinated in 2007.

His party would also have four other ministers in the cabinet, including national security minister, as well as the post of deputy foreign minister.

Netanyahu has said the current peace talks with the Palestinians will not succeed and that he would rather pursue an "economic peace", by which he means financial investment in the occupied West Bank.

The agreement between Netanyahu and Lieberman gave a taste of the policies that would follow. "Toppling the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip will be an Israeli strategic goal," the agreement said. The new government would act "with determination" to stop rocket fire by militants in Gaza.It also said: "The government will not conduct political negotiations with terrorist organisations or terrorist elements."Settlements are likely to continue to grow – Lieberman himself lives in Nokdim, a settlement south-east of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

Lieberman, 50, a Russian-speaking immigrant born in Moldova, resigned from the government in January last year in protest at the restarting of peace talks with the Palestinians, saying: "Negotiations on the basis of land for peace are a critical mistake ... and will destroy us."He is an unashamed hardliner who campaigned on the promise of a new law aimed at the country's Arab minority which would require Israelis to swear an oath of loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state or lose their citizenship.He also advocates carving out part of the Galilee that is home to Arab Israeli villages and handing it over to Palestinian control, stripping the residents of their Israeli citizenship. Those policies proved popular enough for him to come third at the polls, but the oath of loyalty is thought unlikely to come into law.

He also intends to make Iran the centre of his foreign policy. The agreement said: "Israel will make every effort, especially with regard to the international community, to prevent the nuclear armament of Iran, while emphasising that a nuclear Iran, representing a danger to Israel, countries in the region and the entire free world, is unacceptable."

Riad Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, said: "We have to declare that sadly there is no partner on the Israeli side to negotiate with."

Lieberman, an immigrant and former nightclub bouncer from former Soviet Moldova, does not talk about Palestinian independence. Instead, his party's vision on the two-state solution states: "Israel needs to explain that the demand for a Palestinian state and the refugees' right of return is a cover for radical Islam's attempt to destroy the State of Israel." Lieberman was a member of the current Israeli government, but walked out in January last year as soon as peace talks restarted with the Palestinians.

Britain, in particular, is critical of Israel's settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, all of which are illegal under international law. But that cause might be harder to argue in future given that the almost 500,000 Israeli settlers include Lieberman and his family, who live in Nokdim, deep inside the West Bank.

Lieberman's main target has been his country's own Arab minority, who make up a fifth of the population, and of whom he has said: "Israel is under a dual terrorist attack, from within and from without. And terrorism from within is always more dangerous than terrorism from without."

It was this campaign, particularly his call for Arabs to swear an oath of loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state, that won him so much support in the elections. He has even suggested that some elected Arab MPs in the Israeli parliament should be tried for treason and then executed.He also appeals to more secular Israelis, arguing in favour of civil marriages, as well as advocating a more presidential style of government.

Maj Gen Abdul Aziz Mohammed Jassim, head of military operations at the Iraqi defence ministry, told Reuters news agency he believed the plane's entry into Iraq had probably been a genuine error. "It crossed 10km into Iraq," he said. "It's most likely that its entrance was a mistake."

The Ababil 3 is a reconnaissance drone. Israeli forces reported downing several Hezbollah Ababils during the 2006 Lebanon War.

Egypt has been brokering the indirect talks. Hamas are demanding the release of more than 400 of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Reports from the talks say one of the issues dividing the sides was Israel's wish to deport some of these prisoners, fearing they would be a security risk if released to the West Bank. Hamas representatives have said the group rejects the deportation proposal on principle.

The outgoing prime ministers has also said he wanted to make Sgt Shalit's release a precondition for a wider ceasefire agreement with Hamas, under which Hamas wants the crossings into Gaza fully opened to allow rebuilding after the recent Israeli operation.

"We are at the low end of the production line for the global economy," he said. "We produce products and these products are consumed by other countries, especially the developed countries. This share of emissions should be taken by the consumers but not the producers," he said.

Mr Li also criticised proposals by the US to place carbon tariffs on goods imported from countries that do not limit those gases blamed for a rises in global temperatures. "If developed countries set a barrier in the name of climate change for trade, I think it is a disaster," Mr Li said.

Working out quite how to put Mr Li's suggestion into practice would be a logistical nightmare, other delegates in Washington said, even if the idea was ever agreed in principle. Asking importers to handle emissions "would mean that we would also like them to have jurisdiction and legislative powers in order to control and limit those," top EU climate negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger said.

Japan's chief negotiator Shinsuke Sugiyama pointed out that whatever deal emerged from Copenhagen, it was vital that it involved the US and China this time around. "Japan will not repeat Kyoto," Mr Sugiyama said. "At Kyoto we were not able to involve the biggest emitters in the world by now - and that means the United States of America and China," he said.

Earlier, Mr Rajoelina had called for the arrest of the president and won public backing from the self-declared head of the armed forces.

Our correspondent says Mr Rajoelina has wrapped himself in the cloak of democracy, but he wants to replace an elected head of state without going to a ballot.

The opposition leader, a 34-year-old former disc jockey, says the president is a tyrant who misspends public money.

Mr Rajoelina said he wanted a transitional government that would organise elections in the next 18 to 24 months "at the very latest". "I have the mandate of more than 60 political parties in Madagascar to lead this transition, so it isn't a coup at all," he said. Col Andre Ndriarijaona, who last week said he had replaced the military chief of staff, told AFP news agency that soldiers had seized the presidency "to hasten Ravalomanana's departure".

The army has traditionally remained neutral during periods of political volatility since independence from France in 1960. Col Ndriarijaona claimed it was now almost wholly behind the opposition.

Under President Ravalomanana, Madagascar's economy has opened up to foreign investment, particularly in the mining sector. But 70% of the 20 million population still lives on less than $2 (£1.40) a day and correspondents say the opposition has tapped into popular frustration at the failure of this new wealth to trickle down.

Mr Hutton said: "They haven't actually got a civil nuclear power reactor. So people are right to raise eyebrows about their programme."

He added: "We have got to be clear with Iran about the consequences of them not complying. The clock is ticking on all of this... "The offer is still on the table for the Iranians to take up this extraordinarily generous and, I think, unprecedented offer to help them with their [civil] programme."

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is facing elections this year, has shown little sign of wanting a "deal" to put the country's nuclear programme under international supervision in return for the lifting of sanctions and financial assistance.

According to International Atomic Energy Agency forecasts, more than 30 nuclear reactors will have to built every year if the world is to meet its target of halving carbon emissions by 2050.

But the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Riabkov, said suggestions in the media that the naval exercises signal a return to Cold War politics in Latin America were misguided. "There is no geo-political connotation whatsoever," he told the BBC.

Between 2005 and 2007, Venezuela spent around $4bn (£2.6bn) on military equipment - most of it from Russia.

Ties between the two superpowers have become strained because of Washington's plan for a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic - something Moscow is firmly opposed to. Indeed President Medvedev, has said he will deploy missiles in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, between Poland and Lithuania, if the US initiative goes ahead in its present form.

Mr Chavez recently took a delegation of Russian top brass to inaugurate a gas platform in the Gulf of Venezuela, co-owned by their respective state-run energy companies - PDVSA and Gazprom.

During the trip, the Russian government also signed joint agreements on issues as diverse as gold and bauxite mining, ceramics and fishing. It is a combination Russian technology and know-how coupled with Venezuela's resources and manpower.