Word: envoys
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...some ways, the Darfur activists' problem over the past few months hasn't been Obama so much as his special envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration. A decorated soldier who commanded the no-fly zone in northern Iraq for 2½ years, Gration campaigned for Obama last year, giving him much needed cachet among the military set. But his Africa experience consists of being raised by American missionaries in the Congo, from where they were evacuated three times - he likes to remind his African interlocutors that he too was once a refugee...
...disagreement between Gration and Rice is symbolic of the fundamental fissure that has paralyzed the Administration's Sudan policy. "There is a war inside the Obama Administration," says Andrew Natsios, the special envoy to Sudan under President George W. Bush from 2006 to 2007. "Gration, with the support of [Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs] Johnnie Carson and [National Security Adviser] Jim Jones are all on one side wanting to use diplomacy to address Sudan's problems. On the other side, you have Susan Rice, Samantha Power, with the former co-chair of the Enough Project, Gayle Smith...
...million people in the streets of Madrid to oppose plans by the country's center-left government to loosen abortion laws (allowing 16-year-old females, for example, to terminate their pregnancies without parental consent). And on Tuesday, in a Vatican meeting with the new European Union envoy to the Holy See, Benedict chided those who deny the "Christian roots" of Europe. Said the Pope: "Europe will not truly be herself if she cannot keep the originality that made her great. When the church reminds Europe of its Christian roots, it is not looking for special status, [but] recalling...
...Karzai emerges the winner of the rushed and incomplete audit process now under way, Afghanistan's internal peace will depend on Karzai's opponents accepting - or at least tolerating - the outcome. Karzai's main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, has said publicly that he does not believe the U.N.'s envoy is neutral. By failing to address the obvious fraud in Afghanistan's elections, the U.N. has lost credibility that is desperately needed for it to act as a postelection peacemaker...
...opportunity for a grand gesture may be developing in the most unlikely of locales: the Middle East. Obama has sent a special envoy, George Mitchell, to launch negotiations, but the Mitchell process has moved slowly and seems to be slouching toward catatonia. The Israelis have refused to freeze their illegal West Bank settlement-building; the Arabs have refused to make any gestures toward recognizing Israel's sovereignty until such a freeze is imposed. Deadlock. At the same time, though, there is the rarest of Middle East commodities - some actual, tangible good news - beginning to bubble up on the West Bank...