Word: nato
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That's true. And no doubt the issues of any perceived political incorrectness - and potential racial reverberations - are trickier to handle when the offender is the leader of a NATO ally. But Berlusconi's prominence is the point, and as the first black leader of the most powerful nation on earth, Obama is seen as a model by many countries struggling to integrate people of different races and religions. (See pictures of Barack Obama's family tree...
...NATO and the U.N. - whose senior representative to Afghanistan, Norwegian Kai Eide, was accused by his American deputy, Peter Galbraith, of tacitly favoring a Karzai victory following the election debacle (Galbraith was fired this week) - will now be forced to work with an Afghan leader that has not only distanced himself from Western tutelage but also lacks legitimacy in the eyes of his people. (See the top 10 U.N. General Assembly moments...
...acceptance by the U.S. and NATO of a second term of office for Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has raised concerns among many Afghans skeptical of the legitimacy of his re-election. That acceptance was announced in Washington and Brussels on Sept. 29, at least a week before Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission releases its final verdict on a recount of thousands of potentially fraudulent votes that could either confirm Karzai's initial first-round victory or - if his tally falls below 50% - order a runoff vote against his closest challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. But while the Western powers may have...
...Still, the U.S. and NATO have little choice but to work with the leader they have, even if he's not the leader they wish they had. Karzai believed that Washington was trying to get rid of him ahead of the election, and he'll see his victory as a triumph also over those in Western capitals who had sought his ouster. Having secured another term of office, and with the West desperate to save its mission in Afghanistan from collapse, Karzai has the upper hand - and that will make it all the more difficult to cajole him into fighting...
...While many of the comparisons between the NATO mission in Afghanistan and the failed Soviet occupation in the 1980s are flawed, there is an unfortunate parallel in at least one respect: Moscow's insistence that Afghans recognize their puppet government, despite its failure to deliver to the people. "Everyone is focusing on the number of troops the U.S. has in Afghanistan," says analyst Haroun Mir, director of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies. "The Russians had twice as many troops [as the NATO coalition does now] but they failed, not because they were weak, but because the Afghan...