Word: scant
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...scant has the Iraqi government's progress been toward reversing the country's negative slide that senior U.S. officials are reportedly now expressing doubts that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki can get the job done. But how likely is it that anyone else could do better? There's no longer anything on the event horizon to suggest any prospect of imminent turnaround. Previously, U.S. officials could reinforce the Bush Administration's "stay the course" message by pointing to forthcoming handovers of power or elections, the creation of a national unity government or the killing of the terrorist Zarqawi as potential...
...Maliki governs at the head of a coalition of Shi'ite religious parties friendly with Iran, deeply mistrustful of U.S. intentions and with scant interest in following Washington's advice on accommodating the Sunnis, whom they see as the backbone of the old regime under which the Shi'ites suffered. Those parties also happen to command the very Shi'ite militias that the U.S. wants disbanded. The assessment that Maliki is unlikely to do what the U.S. asks of him is probably correct. But there's little reason to expect that any other elected or electable leader in the current...
...riggers and ward-heelers charged with wrongdoing during Chirac's city hall tenure - two of Chirac's closest aides are among those already convicted in connection with kickback and party financing charges. As President, Chirac enjoys immunity from prosecution, but new elections are set for May, and there is scant chance that Chirac will run again, let alone win. That was why the opposition howled in protest when the government on Wednesday named a close legal advisor to Chirac, Laurent Le Mesle, as chief prosecutor of Paris. The new job will give Le Mesle a key role in deciding whether...
...camp is burning in slow motion. While scant food supplies are a big problem at this hastily-built settlement at Anaka, a 2-km-square mess of tightly packed huts protected by government soldiers in the north of Uganda, a bigger one is spontaneous combustion. Here, [an error occurred while processing this directive] explains a leader in the camp, where some 23,000 people displaced by the region's civil war make their homes, at least one thatched hut ignites every day. So many are burning, in fact, that most residents remove their belongings when they leave each morning...
...defense. "The problem for this force is it's going to be there with the consent of Hizballah, essentially," says Tim Williams of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London. France's hesitancy could compel the U.N. to sharpen its approach, but there is scant room for maneuver. In the end, President Jacques Chirac may find it hard not to beef up France's U.N. contingent to uphold two of his long-cherished principles: multilateralism and an independent Lebanon...