Just Foreign Policy News October 26, 2006 http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/newsroom/blog/
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Summary: U.S./Top News Russia's foreign minister on Thursday signaled Russian opposition to a draft U.N. Security Council resolution proposed by European nations that would impose sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program, AP reports.
The US and its European allies split Wednesday over the terms of a U.N. resolution calling for a ban on Iranian trade in ballistic missiles and nuclear materials, according to Security Council diplomats, the Washington Post reports.
The draft text for a Security Council resolution against Iran's nuclear program includes the extraordinary step of preventing Iranian students from studying nuclear physics at foreign universities and colleges, the New York Times reports. It was unclear how far-reaching the proposed ban against nuclear education for Iranian students abroad would be. The prohibition would ban any training and education of Iranian citizens if it could eventually contribute to nuclear and ballistic missile programs. But whether such a ban would extend to all physics courses, or even to mathematics and other courses, remained undetermined.
In both parties, a consensus now exists - buttressed by polls - that disaffection with a war grown costly and difficult to manage is the gravest threat to continued Republican rule, the Washington Post reports.
The encyclopedia of Bush administration misfeasance in Iraq will include a lengthy section on the contracting fiascos that wasted billions of taxpayer dollars and turned millions of Iraqis against the American presence, writes the New York Times in an editorial.
Iraq's Prime Minister lashed out at the US Wednesday, saying his government would not bend to U.S.-imposed benchmarks and timelines and criticizing a U.S. military operation in Baghdad that left at least five people dead, the Washington Post reports.
Vice President Cheney confirmed in a radio interview that U.S. interrogators subjected al-Qaida suspects to water-boarding, Jonathan Landay reports for McClatchy Newspapers. Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said.
Arab- and Muslim-American voters are poised to vote heavily Democratic in the Nov. 7 mid-term elections, writes Jim Lobe for Inter Press Service, summarizing two polls released this week.
Iraq The way American officials inform the Iraqi government about raids by coalition forces will be reviewed, a spokesman for the US military command in Iraq said today, after the country's prime minister criticized a US operation against a Shiite militia enclave.
David Phinney reports for Inter Press Service on allegations of abuse of foreign laborers by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A former supervisor for contractor First Kuwaiti acknowledged the company holds passports of many workers in Iraq - a violation of U.S. contracting laws.
Afghanistan Scores of civilians have been killed during NATO operations against Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, according to local officials and civilians, BBC News reports.
Syria Horror in Syria at the bloodshed accompanying the claimed U.S. effort to bring democracy to Iraq has accomplished what Syrian President Assad had been unable to do: silence public demands for democratic reforms, the Washington Post reports.
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