Word: border
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...None of that offered much hope for change. North Korea is already the world's most isolated country. The only thing that would meaningfully "deepen" that isolation would be for China to shut down trade entirely across its border - something Beijing has never given any indication that it's prepared to do. The idea that Kim Jong Il's regime even cares if the nation's isolation "deepens" is dubious at best. As for the U.N., it met in emergency session just after the long-range missile launch in April and gently tightened sanctions that were already having no demonstrable...
...location may have been the first hint. The 23rd European Union-Russia summit on Friday was held in the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk, a former Tsarist army outpost just a few dozen miles from the Chinese border and 5,000 miles east of Western Europe. The location seemed more aimed at inducing jet lag and awe at Russia's size than at forging agreement on energy, an issue that has consistently soured relations between the two powers over the past months - and which the summit failed to resolve...
After completing a highway from its desert border, the Islamic Republic next door bankrolled an extension linking Herat city to Afghanistan's remote northern provinces. Later this year, a host of Iranian-built schools, clinics and industrial parks around the city will be connected to the Iranian interior thanks to an $80 million railroad spur currently under construction. Homayoun Azizi, the head of Herat's provincial council, says he's grateful for the "huge impact" Iran has had in accelerating economic growth in the region, "But," he asks, raising an eyebrow, "what are they doing beneath it all?" (See pictures...
More recently, Afghan security forces found a cache of Iranian-made explosives near the Bakhshabad Dam in Farah province, a $2.2 million coalition-sponsored project set to boost power and water supply in the area. Gen. Malham Pohanyar, chief of the West Region border police, says other comparable findings abound. He says his men gave chase last week to arms smugglers who detonated their load as they fled in the dark.However, he concedes there is lack of hard proof implicating the Tehran regime...
...Iran has other levers at its disposal. After promising to stop deportations of Afghan refugees - one million of whom still live in Iran - Tehran has resumed sending waves back over by force. Shipments of school text books offensive to Afghanistan's majority Sunni Muslims have also started crossing the border from Shi'a Iran in greater number, according to Rafiq Shahir, head of the Herat Professionals' Council, who claims that mounting communal tensions could boil over because of Iranian influence. "We need to have good relations because we are neighbors, with deep economic and cultural ties," Shahir says...