The World
Shockwaves From North Korea's Dud
For weeks, North Korea had weathered intense pressure from its few close friends, including China and Russia, to refrain from test-firing its long-range missile. Still, Pyongyang launched seven missiles last week, defiantly insisting that such tests are its "legal right." Six were older, short-range models. The seventh was the Taepodong-2 missile, which could potentially reach the West Coast of the United States with a light payload. This time, however, the missile traveled for only 42 seconds before falling into the sea, suggesting a catastrophic failure. (A similar 1998 test missile traveled farther but was also a failure.) "They might have intended this to be a demonstration of their capability," says one U.S. official, "but, if anything, it was the opposite." Still, the North Koreans could glean useful lessons from the failure.
The launch was perhaps most embarrassing for officials in Beijing and Moscow, who had been very public in their opposition. Even so, they continued to resist U.S. pressure for U.N. sanctions on the North Korean regime. North Korea might be angling for concessions from Washington, including one-on-one negotiations. But President Bush continues to insist that any talks must be part of the six-party multilateral framework that has been stalled for the past several months.
Mexico's Messy Democracy
With some 41 million votes cast in Mexico's presidential election, the margin of victory came down to just 243,934 votes for the ruling National Action Party's Felipe Calderon. His leftist opponent, former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, claimed fraud and vowed to challenge the outcome with street demonstrations and at the Federal Electoral Tribunal, which has until September 6 to review complaints and formally declare a president-elect. The next president begins his single, six-year term on December 1.
The Darfur Peace Deal is in Trouble
It was a blog blast heard round the world. Jan Pronk, the U.N. special envoy to Sudan, set off a diplomatic grenade by warning on his weblog (www.janpronk.nl) that the nascent Darfur peace accord faces "a significant risk" of collapse. One reason: growing opposition from the war's victims, those living in Darfur's displaced-person camps. The peace deal has drawn criticism that the United States and other mediators pushed rebel leaders to sign without allowing enough time to sell the deal to their followers, who now see it as favoring the Sudanese government and the tribes allied with the murderous Janjaweed militias. Meanwhile, Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir is standing firm against allowing U.N. peacekeepers to take over from the weak, understaffed African Union monitors.
Damage Control in the Green Zone
The U.S. military in Iraq has been rocked by a series of allegations that individual soldiers have killed civilians and detainees. But it's the latest instance, a brutal case where U.S. soldiers allegedly raped and murdered a young Iraqi girl in a village south of Baghdad, that has provoked by far the most intense reaction inside Iraq. The outrage has reached such intensity in Baghdad that U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and top U.S. commander Gen. George Casey took the unusual step of issuing a joint statement condemning the March 12 incident in Mahmoudiya. U.S. diplomats say that the brutality of the crime and its appearance of premeditation provoked the passionate Iraqi reaction. According to a federal affidavit, then Army Pfc. Steven Green and at least two other soldiers drank alcohol, abandoned their checkpoint, changed out of their uniforms, and headed for the victim's house.
When Spooks Are Dragged Into Court
A scandal has erupted in Italy over the CIA's alleged "extraordinary rendition" of a terrorism suspect, Egyptian Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, who was seized on a Milan street in 2003 and spirited out of the country. (Nasr ended up in Egypt, where Italian officials believe he was tortured.) Italy faced up to its own complicity last week, arresting two Italian intelligence officers for their alleged role. One of the Italians, Marco Mancini, is a senior official who ran the antiterrorism division of the intelligence service at the time. Prosecutors also issued arrest warrants for four Americans, spurred on in part by a change in Italy's government that resulted in the departure of former prime minister and close Bush ally Silvio Berlusconi. The episode has been uncomfortable for officials on both sides of the Atlantic, exposing a deep rift over which tactics are acceptable when going after suspected terrorists.
With Kevin Whitelaw, Dan Morrison in Cairo and Associated Press
This story appears in the July 17, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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