In The News

Key Pakistani Is Said to Admit Atom Transfers

David Rohde February 2, 2004
Pakistan's official inquiry into the transfer of nuclear technology has yielded its most substantial finding yet. The founder of the country's nuclear weapons program, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted on Sunday that he had worked with Libya, North Korea, and Iran to help develop those countries' nuclear programs. The scientist said he had helped facilitate the transfer of designs...

As It Wields Power Abroad, U.S. Outsources Law and Order Work

Andrew Higgins February 2, 2004
The US seems unwilling to face the hardships of maintaining a police force in Iraq. Instead, it has delegated the charge of keeping order to DynCorp, a multinational police contractor headquartered in California. DynCorp was subcontracted by the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, or INL, a division of the US State Department. Since 1994, the INL has dispatched...

For Bush, a Tactical Retreat on Iraq

Dana Milbank February 2, 2004
Without going as far as to admit being wrong, US President George W. Bush has agreed to create an independent review committee to investigate US intelligence failures in Iraq. Last week David Kay, the former US chief weapons inspector in Iraq, said that there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction before the US attacked Saddam Hussein's government and called for an independent...

Earthquake Narrows US-Iran Rift

Roshanak Taghavi January 30, 2004
A devastating earthquake in the city of Bam, Iran, may help to bring the United States and Iran closer together. Washington's offer to provide humanitarian aid to help over 40,000 quake victims marks the first open cooperation between the US and Iran in a quarter-century. According to this article in Egypt's Al-Ahram Weekly, however, Iran is skeptical about pursuing warmer relations in...

Turkish-German Integration Smooths Cultural Divisions

Peter Badenhop January 30, 2004
In an interview with Germany's F.A.Z. Weekly, the Turkish ambassador to Germany, Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik, discusses the importance of integrating German Muslims of Turkish descent, Germany's largest immigrant group, into mainstream German society. The erroneous perception of all Muslims as religious fundamentalists inhibits integration, he says, and it undermines their contribution to...

Ex-Arms Monitor Urges an Inquiry on Iraqi Threat

Richard W. Stevenson January 29, 2004
Dr. David Kay, who stepped down recently as the head of the Iraqi Survey Group, has announced that his organization has yet to find evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime indeed possessed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Instead, Kay expressed concern over the faulty intelligence that led the Bush Administration to justify a war against Saddam Hussein on the basis of such a program. The...

Turkey at the Crossroads

Mohammed Ayoob January 22, 2004
An Islamic party that supports Turkey's admission into the EU and the military that is lukewarm on troop deployment suggest paradoxes in Turkish politics. Mohammed Ayoob explains these paradoxes as the result of a general change in Turkey's political landscape and the particularities of the situation: the Kurdish insurgency has diminished, the military's influence has waned, and an...