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  johnpi 8:51 am on January 24, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: diplomacy, Pakistan (568), public diplomacy (2), Robert Gates, US foreign policy (62)

  US Defense Secretary Robert Gates current trip to Pakistan has been a total disaster.

  The message his mission inadvertently sent was that the US is now increasingly tilting to India and wants to put it in charge of Afghanistan security; that Pakistan is isolated; that he is pressuring Pakistan to take on further counter-insurgency operations against Taliban in the Northwest, which the country flatly lacks the resources to do; and that Pakistani conspiracy theories about Blackwater were perfectly correct and he had admitted it.

  In baseball terms, Gates struck out. In cricket terms, Gates was out in the most embarrassing way a batsman can be out, that is, leg before wicket.

   

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  johnpi 1:46 am on January 13, 2010 | 6 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: diplomacy, international affairs (6), international relations (188), Israel (349), Turkey (65)

  

  Turkey demands Israeli apology for petty public humiliation of its ambassador as ties worsen.

  Turkey summoned Israel’s ambassador to Ankara Tuesday to demand an apology over the treatment of its own envoy to Tel Aviv as a row between the regional allies over a television drama series escalated.

  Israel’s ire had been sparked by the broadcast of an episode of the Turkish espionage drama, Valley of the Wolves, which the foreign ministry said depicted “Israel and Jews as baby-snatchers and war criminals.”
  ….

  Rather than summoning Celikkol to the ministry as is the norm, Ayalon saw him in his parliamentary office after making him wait in the corridor and telling staff to remove the Turkish flag and refreshments from the table.

  “The important thing is that people see that he’s sitting low down and we’re high and that there is one flag,” Israeli television aired Ayalon telling invited photographers and camera crews in Hebrew.

   
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  johnpi 10:00 am on January 7, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: conspiracy theories (24), diplomacy, international relations (188), Pakistan (568), whacked out conspiracy theories (10)

  The US embassy in Pakistan issued a rare public protest about harassment of its diplomats as a US congressional delegation arrived in the country.

  U.S. officials say they need more room and people to help disburse a $7.5 billion humanitarian aid package to Pakistan, whose cooperation Washington needs to fight al-Qaida-allied militants along the Pakistan-Afghan border.

  But suspicion of U.S. motives abounds among Pakistanis: Many believe the U.S. is simply flooding the country with more spies whose ultimate aim is destabilizing Pakistan and taking over its nuclear program.

  The bogeyman of the RAW/Rand/CIA/Mossad/Blackwater/Pakistani-Americans-traveling-on-visas axis raises its ugly head again.

   
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  aziz 10:20 am on January 16, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: diplomacy, Doha (5), Egypt (94), Israel (349), saudi arabia (135)

  Qatar has cut ties with Israel, and Syria calls for other Arab nations to follow. But Egypt and Saudi Arabia seem unlikely to join in – and their absence from the Doha conference is telling.

   
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  thabet 2:00 pm on January 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: diplomacy, foreign policy (237), Hamas (53), politics (765)

  Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s former ambassador to the UN, offers some insightful comments about Hamas who he views not as a ‘rejectionist’ party, but a ‘grievance-based’ group that can be negotiated with. Some, of course, may be unhappy with Greenstock’s views.

  (Scroll past The Poodle’s yapping to around the 3:00 minute mark.)

   
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  aziz 9:14 am on May 3, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: diplomacy, iran (364)

  Whether carrots or sticks, it seems we have entered a more mature phase of dealing with Iran than the Bush-Cheney “axis of evil” and “mad mullahs of Tehran” rhetoric.