Word: diplomat
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...occupation is traumatic. Perhaps the most poignant observation on Iraq in the past year was made by the Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations representative in Baghdad, shortly before he was killed in a bombing last August. "Who would like to see their country occupied?" Vieira de Mello said to an interviewer. "I would not like to see foreign tanks in Copacabana." Time after time, the humiliation of occupation outweighs any good intentions that an imperial power may have. (Imperial powers always insist their true mission is a civilizing one, as if they aimed...
...Pakistani forces suffered constant harassment. According to one Islamabad-based Western diplomat, "the Pakistanis would come along the road with 200 trucks lined up, and within minutes, every al-Qaeda and Taliban knew they were here." Other tribes joined the Wazir in raids against government troops, raising fears that a prolonged campaign could escalate into a full-blown tribal uprising all along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. There was never a sign of bin Laden, nor was there a sighting of his No. 2, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, rumored, wrongly as it turned out, to be in Waziristan...
...Privately, Pakistanis grumble that the U.S. and its coalition partners are pushing too hard and as a result the Pakistani army rushed headlong into Waziristan unprepared for the resistance it faced. "Yes, we're impatient," conceded one Western diplomat in Islamabad. "But we're operating against the unknown deadline of a major terrorist attack in the U.S. That's what drives us." Another Islamabad-based diplomat claimed that lately Western intelligence was picking up "lots of chatter" from its electronic eavesdropping and informants that "something very nasty was being planned out of Pakistan...
...other governments. So far, two deadlines for registration have come and gone, the latest on May 7, and no one has come forward. Americans say the scheme is useless. "We certainly don't expect to see Osama bin Laden walking in to put down his name," joked one Western diplomat in Islamabad...
...geopolitics have left a murky situation. That Australia is rich and East Timor is poor counts for nothing. Yet the new nation's recent tragic history - neglected Portuguese colony and brutalized invaded territory - gives the talks a profound moral dimension. John Howard's government spent considerable political capital and diplomatic effort on Timorese independence; it sent 5,700 troops and led the U.N.'s interfet peacekeeping force. "Having helped to liberate East Timor, Australia is obliged to see it succeed," says a western diplomat in Dili. Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown went to Timor during the talks to speak with...