CFR.org | Rising Moon atop the UN

New UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was known as “slippery eel” by journalists in his native South Korea for avoiding direct answers to difficult questions. But Ban landed himself in hot water on his first day at work over comments during a UN press conference about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s execution last week. Asked whether Saddam should have been hanged, Ban departed from traditional UN opposition to the practice by saying: “The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide.”

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CFR.org | Ford’s Impact on Foreign Policy

America honored Gerald R. Ford Jr., the thirty-eighth U.S. president, with a state funeral on Tuesday, a man credited by presidents past and current for helping shepherd the country through the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. Ford is remembered most for his pardon of predecessor Richard M. Nixon, but his two-and-a-half years as president were also marked by some significant foreign policy developments.

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CFR.org | Probing U.S. Global AIDS Policy

Four years after President Bush launched an ambitious plan to address the global HIV/AIDS crisis, the program’s policies will now face ideological scrutiny. The five-year, $15 billion President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), supports prevention, treatment, and care for the dying and for orphans. The plan requires spending at least a third of prevention funds on abstinence-until-marriage programs—a stipulation that set off a policy debate (PBS). But November’s Democratic congressional victory could spell changes in PEPFAR’s abstinence-until-marriage policy by elevating the chances for passage of the Pathway Bill, sponsored by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). The bill would revise current practice by focusing more on preventing the spread of AIDS among women and girls, and would remove the abstinence-only spending limitations (BosGlobe). AVERT, an international AIDS prevention agency, offers this statistical analysis of PEPFAR policies.

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CFR.org | Which Way Will Turkmen Gas Flow?

Peculiarities marked the career of Saparmurat Niyazov, the hard-line dictator who ruled Turkmenistan for twenty-one years until his unexpected death on December 21 (AP). Even as nearly 60 percent of this gas-rich, largely Muslim Central Asian country lived in poverty, Niyazov funded lavish projects (Guardian), including an ice palace outside the capital, Ashgabat, and a manmade lake in the middle of a desert. But the self-obsessed Niyazov, architect of one of the world’s most bizarre personality cults, failed to name a successor. This raises questions about the prospects of a reprieve for the country’s beleaguered citizens, and leaves in doubt Europe’s energy security (FT).

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CFR.org | Dim Prospects for Six-Party Deal

As Six-Party Talks resumed in Beijing on December 18, North Korea maintained its defiance (Korea Times), going so far as to demand mutual disarmament talks with the United States. But Pyongyang's real objective, which its delegates have made a precondition for any other negotiations, is the lifting of U.S. financial sanctions (Asia Times). On Tuesday, finance officials from both countries met on the sidelines to discuss the U.S. restrictions (BBC), including those imposed on a Macao-based bank linked to North Korean money laundering. Ahead of the meeting, Christopher Hill, the State Department’s point man on North Korea, said he hoped for “significant progress” in the first round, though experts say that is unlikely. 

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CFR.org | Wary Peace in Indonesia’s Aceh

More than a year has passed since the Aceh peace agreement ended three decades of bloodshed that claimed some 15,000 lives. In the wake of the devastating 2004 tsunami, leaders of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) agreed to hand in their weapons and halt their demands for independence for the resource-rich Indonesian province. In return, Jakarta strengthened Aceh’s autonomy, solidified last week in local gubernatorial elections in which former rebel spokesman Irwandi Yusuf came away ahead in the polls (TIME).

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CFR.org | On Trade, A Superpower Summit

A high-profile delegation led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, five other cabinet members, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke applied for trade relief in Beijing this week, a stark reminder for Americans of how the world has changed. Along with the Sino-U.S. trade imbalance, talks tackled China’s undervalued currency, intellectual property rights, and American hopes of opening up (China Daily) the Chinese market to foreign investors. The first semiannual Sino-U.S. economic summit was part of the “strategic economic dialogue” launched by Presidents Bush and Hu Jintao in September. Writing in the Washington Post, Paulson called the summit a “pivotal moment for China and for our relationship with that country.” But the trip yielded few signs of concrete progress. China agreed to allow the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq open offices in Beijing, but there was no agreement on letting the yuan appreciate. "We have a point of view that there's more risk in going too slowly than there is in going too fast, and the Chinese see that differently," (Reuters) Paulson said at the summit's close. This CFR.org Backgrounder examines the major issues—trade imbalance, currency concerns, protectionism, and intellectual property—dogging the Sino-U.S. economic relationship.

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CFR.org | Feeding India’s Energy Fix

The U.S. Congress has reached agreement on a bill approving a landmark deal allowing the United States to provide New Delhi with fuel and technology to expand its civilian nuclear energy program (AP). In July, President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a framework for the pact, which lifts a three-decade U.S. moratorium on nuclear trade with India in exchange for its acceptance on safeguards on its civilian nuclear facilities. While both houses of Congress negotiated a compromise bill, Undersecretary of State Nicholas R. Burns headed to New Delhi to reassure India’s government (Times of India) about the U.S. version of the agreement. The deal still requires approval by India’s parliament. More difficult to secure is the necessary support of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which oversees guidelines for sale of the nuclear materials (Asia Times).

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CFR.org | Backgrounder: Modernizing the People’s Liberation Army of China

As the commander in chief of the massive People’s Liberation Army (PLA), President Hu Jintao plans to reinforce his leadership with his mandate to stamp out corruption among the force’s ranks. The PLA has already undergone major changes, becoming a more professional, modern force—despite its continued allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing now seeks to modernize outdated weapons systems and structures and bring the PLA up to speed with the militaries of other major world powers. But the transformation of the PLA from a large ground force to a multifaceted military capable of projecting power beyond China’s border and coastline prompts concern about Beijing’s strategic ambitions.

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CFR.org | Facing China’s ‘Peaceful Rise’

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson heads to Beijing next week as China’s currency reserves hit the $1 trillion mark and the U.S. dollar slumps. Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, will join the Paulson delegation, which hopes to talk Beijing into opening up its economy (AP), letting its currency rise, and cracking down on piracy. The trip comes as the Bush administration finds itself under pressure to narrow its ballooning trade deficit with China. 

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CFR.org | Bangladesh’s Troubling Feud

A longstanding, bitter rivalry between the two main political parties in Bangladesh has led to widespread unrest, leaving a country typically perceived as a moderate Muslim democracy in a state of chaos. The political crisis threatens to roll back modest reforms in a country still riven by poverty and corruption.

The opposition alliance, led by the Awami League party, has imposed nationwide blockades and called for electoral reform. It accuses the ruling, right-wing Bangladesh National Party (BNP) of machinations to rig the upcoming January 2007 parliamentary elections. Protests began again when the central electoral commission announced a January 21 date for those elections, despite opposition requests to first investigate mass irregularities in voter rolls.

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CFR.org | Measuring the Bird Flu Threat

Almost a decade after the first outbreak of H5N1 (PDF), a highly pathogenic form of avian influenza, researchers and international health organizations continue monitoring the disease as a global health threat. As this new Backgrounder explains, the disease commonly known as “bird flu” already has wreaked economic and animal health havoc, killing hundreds of millions of chickens and spreading beyond its origins in Southeast Asia to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. The human case count remains relatively low at 258, although 2006 has been the deadliest year on record thus far with seventy-five deaths. Scientists and policymakers remain concerned that the virus, capable of spreading from infected birds to humans, could become a lethal pandemic if it evolves to allow for easy human-to-human transmission. 

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CFR.org | Bush Tests His Influence in Asia

In his first international trip since the U.S. midterm elections, a politically weakened President Bush is on a Southeast Asian tour for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Vietnam. After meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard in Hanoi, Bush reflected on lessons learned from the Vietnam War for the conflict in Iraq, saying, "We'll succeed unless we quit." He also stressed the importance of participating in the APEC meeting as a forum to discuss the North Korean nuclear crisis and free trade. But some analysts say his trip will probably do little to boost Washington’s declining influence in Asia (Guardian). A chief U.S.-backed initiative, a huge Asia-Pacific free-trade zone, has been pushed off until next year’s forum in Australia (AP). While U.S. clout shrinks, China’s influence grows. Beijing, fresh off negotiating North Korea’s agreement to return to multilateral talks and playing host to an African summit, has become a sought-after trading partner in the region (BBC).  

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CFR.org | Trouble in the Tribal Lands

A suicide bomb targeting a Pakistani military school (BBC) has claimed at least forty-two lives in Dargai, a village in the North West Frontier Province and a stronghold of a banned pro-Taliban movement. The militant attack was the deadliest suffered by Pakistani armed forces since 2002, when they began efforts to control terrorist elements in the volatile, semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the Pakistani-Afghan border. Federal Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao says the attack was likely retaliation (VOA) for last week’s bombing of a madrassa in nearby Bajaur. Although some Pakistanis speculate U.S. or NATO forces were behind the madrassa attack, President Pervez Musharraf continues to defend what he says was a Pakistani counterterrorism air strike (Dawn).

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CFR.org | Backgrounder: Pakistan's Tribal Areas

Pakistan’s remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas (the tribal lands) have been a training ground for insurgents and a focal point for terrorism fears, particularly since the 9/11 attacks. President Pervez Musharraf finds himself squeezed between U.S. demands to control militants in the tribal lands and opposition from his own army against fighting the region's predominant ethnic Pashtuns, who have strongly resisted Pakistani rule just as they fought British control during colonial times.

Meanwhile, tensions between Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and Musharraf grow. Karzai insists Pakistan increase security and stop incursions by Taliban insurgents into his country, even though the Afghan leader refuses to recognize the disputed common border, which divides tribes of the Pashtun ethnic group on either side of the frontier. As the tribal lands continue to serve as a training base for terrorists and the Taliban, deploying Pakistani troops into the region has harmed efforts to integrate the tribal areas into Pakistan. Bill Roggio, a U.S. veteran who has written from Iraq and Afghanistan, says the uncertainty over how to handle the tribal lands “makes the problems in Iraq look like a picnic.”

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Co-authored by Carin Zissis and Jayshree Bajoria.

CFR.org | Backgrounder: The Surging Vietnamese Economy

More than three decades after a communist offensive reunified Vietnam, the party’s hold on power and civil society remains unchallenged. But twenty years of liberal economic reforms have brought sweeping changes and foreign investment to a nation characterized by increasing industrialization and a reduction in poverty. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is poised to become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in November. Despite improved relations with the United States since the two countries normalized relations during theClinton administration, a holdup in the U.S. Congress could stall Hanoi’s full accession into the WTO.

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CFR.org | The Vietnamese Boom

More than three decades after the fall of the U.S. backed South Vietnamese government in Saigon, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is experiencing an economic boom, and is poised to become the 150th member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Last year China was the only Asian country to surpass Vietnam in terms of GDP growth (NYT). This new Backgrounder takes a look at Vietnam’s startling economic expansion.

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CFR.org | the South Korean Divide

As the global reaction to North Korea’s nuclear test softens from shouts to chatter, South Korea considers cautious steps about how to handle Pyongyang. Seoul remains concerned that strong action against Pyongyang could lead to the collapse of Kim Jong-Il’s regime and a rush of refugees across the border (Reuters). North Korea said the South's proposed travel and trade restrictions would be considered an act of war (BBC), and many South Koreans are reluctant to endorse sanctions they feel will prolong or deepen suffering in the North (NYT). The nuclear test sparked a debate within South Korea about whether it should continue its strategy of engagement known as the “Sunshine Policy” or turn toward a more militaristic approach, which could include developing nuclear missiles (CSMonitor).

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CFR.org | An Alliance at Arm’s Length

At a closed-door meeting between a Chinese envoy and Kim Jong-Il, the reclusive North Korean leader said he would not stage a second nuclear test (BBC). News reports from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) described the mood at the meeting as "friendly," but Beijing has shown increasing signs of irritation with Pyongyang. Should a second test occur, China may take drastic measures and reduce oil exports (NYT), even going beyond recent UN sanctions. This new Backgrounder looks at at Sino-DPRK relations in the wake of the North Korean nuclear test.

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CFR.org | Questions Linger After Sanctions

The UN Security Council passed a unanimous resolution imposing sanctions against North Korea for its October 9 nuclear test, but the document's vague wording raises questions on how it will be enforced. It remains unclear, for example, whether economic activity between North Korea and its main trading partners—namely China and South Korea—would be affected (LAT). Both countries indicated their intention to continue cross-border trade and carry out a number of economic projects already in the works (NYT). Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice travels to the region this week in an effort to press these countries to carry out the sanctions regime (CSMonitor). 

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