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Despite a retooled strategy that links a U.S. troop surge to efforts to build the Afghans' capacity to govern and protect themselves, Western optimism over Afghanistan's prospects has continued to ebb. So, a key task of the Jan. 28 conference convened in London by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and co-hosted by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was to foster confidence that a positive outcome could be achieved sooner rather than later. "Today's conference represents a decisive step towards greater Afghan leadership to secure, stabilize and develop Afghanistan," declared...
Anyone who attended the Jan. 29 session of Britain's Iraq inquiry to watch Tony Blair crumble went home disappointed. When the nation's former Prime Minister returns to center stage, he seldom fails to remind even his sharpest critics of his prodigious political skills - the very same skills that had enabled him to cajole dubious colleagues and a skeptical Parliament into reluctantly supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq. An inquiry panel of career diplomats and academics was never likely to dent his composure. ("They're sitting there like chickens," squawked an exasperated audience member during a break from proceedings...
...that the weapons inspectors had no chance of success no matter how much time they were given - not because there was nothing to find but because Saddam had no intention of cooperating with them, Blair argued in a piece of logic unlikely to assuage his critics - explains the former Prime Minister's unshakable tranquillity. Blair harbors "not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein," he told his inquisitors. "I believe he was a monster...
...will likely undercut agricultural production and soften rural consumer spending. But rapid growth is expected to continue. The World Bank forecasts India's economy will surge 7.6% in 2010 and 8% in 2011, not far behind the 9% rate it predicts for China for each of those years. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, when speaking about his country's more plodding pace of economic policymaking, has said that "slow and steady will win the race." The Great Recession appears to have proved him right...
...marathon brawl at the top of France's conservative political establishment took another dramatic turn Thursday when a Paris court cleared former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of charges he orchestrated a smear campaign to scuttle fellow conservative and arch-enemy Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential hopes. De Villepin's acquittal will allow him to redouble his opposition to Sarkozy - and claim he survived the president's attempt to eliminate him with a trumped-up court case...