Jim Lobe

The administration of President George W. Bush on Monday rallied behind Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in the face of allegations contained in a 13-year-old Pentagon intelligence report that he was a "close personal friend" of drug lord Pablo Escobar and had worked for his Medellin drug cartel. "We completely disavow these allegations about President Uribe," … Continue reading “Bush Rallies Behind Colombian President, Despite Drug Allegations”

WASHINGTON – Amid all the violence and crime that have stricken much of central and southern Iraq in recent months, the northern region of Kurdistan has remained relatively quiet. But beneath that calm, according to a new report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW), lies simmering tensions over conflicting land claims between Kurds, Turkmens, … Continue reading “Simmering Land Disputes in Kurdistan Could Boil Over Into Violence”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Bush administration continues to refrain from calling a campaign of ethnic cleansing against black Africans in Sudan’s western Darfur province “genocide,” although both houses of the U.S. Congress approved non-binding resolutions last week that used the term to describe the situation. Such a determination would require signers of the Genocide Treaty, … Continue reading “Bush Resists Pressure to Meddle in Sudan – for Now”

While the image of the United States has sunk to an all-time low in the Arab world, the Iraq war has also had a devastating impact on U.S. ties to another predominantly Muslim power and one of Washington’s closest and most strategically situated Cold War allies, Turkey, say experts just returned from the region. Ties … Continue reading “Iraq War Straining US-Turkey Ties”

Two-thirds of U.S. citizens believe their government should “never use physical torture” against detainees, and 90 percent reject sexually humiliating prisoners, as was done by U.S. soldiers at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib jail, according to a major survey of attitudes here. The poll, conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), was … Continue reading “Survey: US Public Rejects Torture”

If U.S. President George W. Bush thinks his “war on terror” is winning Arab hearts and minds, he should think about conducting it much differently than he has over the past two years… Beginning with changing his policies. That is the unavoidable conclusion of the latest two in a series of major surveys of public … Continue reading “Arabs: It’s the Policy, Stupid”

WASHINGTON – Capping 18 months of work, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission released its 567-page report here Thursday, and challenged President George W. Bush and Congress to make sweeping changes to the structure of the U.S. intelligence community. The report’s central recommendations called for the creation of a “National Counter-Terrorism Center” (NCTC) that would feature joint … Continue reading “9/11 Panel: Security Overhaul Needed”

A bipartisan group of 41 mainly neoconservative foreign-policy hawks has launched the third Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) whose previous two incarnations mobilized public support for rolling back Soviet-led communism but whose new enemy will be “global terrorism.” The new group, announced at a Capitol Hill press conference Tuesday, said its “single mission” will … Continue reading “Neocons Revive Cold War Group”

Amid reports that the Islamist regime in Khartoum may finally be taking some action to curb a "scorched-earth" counterinsurgency campaign that has forced more than a million people from their homes in the western province of Darfur, Amnesty International has released a new report accusing government-backed Arab militias of using rape "as a weapon of … Continue reading “Rape Added to List of Darfur Atrocities”

In a new effort to exempt the United States from international law, the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives has approved a measure that would ban certain kinds of economic aid to U.S. allies if they fail to sign a bilateral accord forbidding them from transferring U.S. citizens or foreign nationals working for the … Continue reading “House Republicans Fight International Criminal Court”