Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON, Mar 2 (IPS) - In a move that has surprised many foreign policy analysts here, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has appointed a prominent neo-conservative hawk and leading champion of the Iraq war to the post of State Department Counselor. Eliot A. Cohen, who teaches military history at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) here and has also served on the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board (DPB) since 2001, will take up the position next… more

WASHINGTON, Feb 16 (IPS) - Karl Rove, then White House senior political advisor for President George W. Bush, received a copy of the secret Iranian proposal for negotiations with the United States from former Republican Congressman Bob Ney in early May 2003, according to an Iranian-American scholar who was then on his Congressional staff...

The Iranian proposal for negotiations, which suggested that Iran was willing to consider far-reaching compromises on its nuclear programme, relations with Hezbollah and Hamas and support for… more

Meet Richard Wade Vague -- tall; friendly; with a firm, confident handshake and a ready, if surprisingly modest, smile; dressed in a dark, finely tailored suit -- he looks like the quintessential successful 51-year-old self-described conservative corporate executive that he is.Co-founder and CEO of First USA Bank, which, until he sold it, was the single largest credit card firm in the United States, he not only voted for President George W. Bush in 2000, he raised a lot… more

WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (IPS) - In a new blow to the dwindling number of hawks in top administration positions, U.S. President George W. Bush Monday accepted the resignation of his ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

The resignation came less than three weeks after Bush had resubmitted Bolton's nomination to the Senate for confirmation, a move that was apparently designed to reassure his hard-line constituency that he would stick by them despite the Democrats' sweeping victory in the Nov.… more

WASHINGTON, Nov 29 (IPS) - Despite a growing and virtually universal consensus both here and abroad that the United States must engage Syria and Iran if it hopes to stabilise Iraq, U.S. President George W. Bush appears determined to ignore Baghdad's two key neighbours as long as possible....

But they may yet be hitting home with Bush, who apparently is not yet ready to accept the increasingly widely-held view that Washington's position in Iraq and the region as a whole has… more

Amid signs that the U.S. remains unwilling to take stronger steps to get Israeli-Palestinian peace talks back on track, a growing number of prominent figures are calling for a new international mechanism to set the framework for a comprehensive settlement between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Such a mechanism, according to an appeal published Wednesday by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) and signed by some 135 former world leaders, politicians and Nobel laureates, should be modeled on the 1992 Madrid… more