Word: visitant
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Obama's visit came in a campaign notable for candidates avoiding various media. Most Democratic candidates, including Obama, largely shunned Fox during the primaries. (Obama has gone on Fox News Sunday.) John McCain canceled on Larry King earlier this week to punish CNN for Campbell Brown's having dared to ask a McCain aide too many follow-up questions about Sarah Palin's foreign policy credentials. And Palin, thus far, has been avoiding all national media interviews, save one with People magazine...
...greater cooperation with U.S. Middle East policy. And France's President Nicolas Sarkozy has sought to align French foreign policy far more closely with Washington's than his predecessor, President Jacques Chirac, had done. So why did Sarkozy show up in Damascus, Wednesday, as the first Western leader to visit Syria since 2005? Playing a diplomatic game that revives France's independent global standing even as it pursues some of the same goals...
...justifying his July invitation to Assad, Sarkozy noted that Damascus had signaled a willingness to work to end its isolation following the Hariri killing. Ahead of Wednesday's visit, meanwhile, French officials cited other examples of improved Syrian behavior, including its hosting of Lebanese prime minister Michel Suleimane last month, and plans for Syria to open its first-ever embassy in Beirut...
...Whereas Chirac had relied on Saudi Arabia as his primary Arab interlocutor, Sarkozy appears to have turned to Qatar as the key intermediary to re-establish contacts and prepare visits and exchanges between Paris and Damascus. Evidence of Qatar's mediating role is clear in the fact that the Gulf State will participate, along with Turkey, in a four-nation summit Thursday during the second day of Sarkozy's Syria visit...
...Whatever its views on the tactics of the visit, the strategic perspective behind Sarkozy's outreach to Damascus is one shared by the Bush Administration: French diplomats detect growing daylight between Damascus and its key regional ally, Iran - and they believe that Damascus could further distance itself from Tehran if Sarkozy can persuade Assad that he has far more to gain by being a cooperative and accountable partner to the West. That would help pursue wider U.S. interests of narrowing Iran's scope for using its ally in Lebanon's Shi'ite Hizballah movement as a proxy, and also...