In The News

Foreign Ministers Meet on North Korea Nukes

Choi Soung-ah March 29, 2004
The third round of the six-party negotiations on the North Korean nuclear “standoff” is scheduled for June 2004 in Beijing. In preparation for the negotiations, South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-moon paid an official visit to Beijing to meet with his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing. With Ban addressing the issue of North Korean defectors detained in China and Li relaying the outcome of his...

Clearing Clouds Over the Karakoram Pass

Ziad Haider March 29, 2004
Over the latter half of the 20th century, relations between China and Pakistan were anchored in large part on both countries' strategic interest in balancing India as a regional power. The Karakoram Highway, which runs for 500 miles between the two nations, is representative of those collective interests. However, says Ziad Haider of the Henry L. Stimson Center, since the Highway was...

'We should remain calm'

Eckart Lohse March 26, 2004
In an interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, interior minister Otto Schily says Germans know they are living in a "threatened community." While terrorism poses an "epochal threat” which will last for a long time, Schily says he doesn't want people "to lead lives filled with fear and worry, and to lose their zest for life." He claims the...

Terror Fight to Intensify

William Pratt March 26, 2004
Official anti-terror plans emerge in Germany following a report that three Moroccans suspected of planning the Madrid bombings had lived in Germany. The three men had previously been identified by German officials as “potentially violent Islamists”. With the fear that Germany could be used as a potential base and/or target for future terrorist attacks, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has begun...

UN Inspection in Iraq Was No Sham

Jessica Tuchman Mathews March 26, 2004
Despite White House claims that United Nations inspections of pre-war Iraq were a "sham", the post-war evaluation of Iraq's weapons programs - or lack thereof - reveals that international inspections met with significant success. Jessica T. Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq international...

Averting 9/11: How Close We Came

Faye Bowers March 25, 2004
Collecting accurate intelligence and building strategic alliances with front line states in Asia and the Middle East are quickly emerging as the indispensable tools for preventing future terrorist attacks. In the on-going 9/11 hearings in Washington, high ranking officials from the Clinton and the current Bush Administrations agree to the inherent difficulties in taking forceful action against...

Korean Bodyguards to Train Iraqi Police

O Youn-hee March 23, 2004
Despite the South Korean government's decision not to send troops to Iraq due to security concerns, a Korean private security firm, NKTS, still plans to send bodyguards to help train Iraqi police. Sending up to 150 bodyguards, NKTS, which has also guarded Jordan's royal family, will train the Iraqi police in bomb removal, martial arts, small arms, and common courtesy. The training...