Word: diplomatic
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Syrian President Bashar Assad had planned to attend the 2005 World Summit at the U.N. last week as part of a novel policy, in the words of a Syrian diplomat, of "dealing with international affairs and contacting world leaders." But without a word of explanation, Assad nixed his New York City trip. Diplomatic sources tell TIME that he failed in his attempts to arrange tête-à-têtes with the Presidents of Russia and Turkey. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also pointedly left Assad out of a meeting with European and other Middle Eastern leaders. (The only one willing to meet...
...generally regarded as a colossal mistake. L. Paul Bremer--the newly arrived administrator of the U.S. government presence, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)--disbanded the Iraqi army and civil service on Rumsfeld's orders. "We made hundreds of thousands of people very angry at us," says a Western diplomat attached to the CPA, "and they happened to be the people in the country best acquainted with the use of arms." Thousands moved directly into the insurgency--not just soldiers but also civil servants who took with them useful knowledge of Iraq's electrical grid and water and sewage systems. Bremer...
...opposition to their marriage, because he is Muslim and she is Hindu; but this is Kashmir, and love triumphs over religion. Before they can have a child, however, their village gets a visitor: the American ambassador to India. Since this is a Rushdie book, he isn't just a diplomat; he's also the scion of a cultured Ashkenazi family, a hero of the French Resistance and a chum of Marlon Brando's. This is the kind of preposterous, over-laden detail that bends and almost cracks the novel at various points. Yet the plot somehow works. The ambassador falls...
...Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, have tried to forge a strategic alliance with Tehran, even seeking to have Iranians recognized as a minority group under Iraq's proposed constitution. "We have to think anything we tell or share with the Iraqi government ends up in Tehran," says a Western diplomat...
...true. But Iran shows every sign of upping the ante in Iraq, which may ultimately force the U.S. to search out new allies in Iraq--including some of the same elements it has been trying to subdue for almost 2½ years--who can counter the mullahs' encroachment. The Western diplomat acknowledges that Iran's seemingly manageable activities could still escalate into a bigger crisis. "We've dealt with governments allied to our enemies many times in the past," he says. "The rub, however, is, Could it affect [counterinsurgency efforts]? To that I say, 'It hasn't happened...