Inter Press Service

The Bush administration has maintained a hard-line policy stance on Syria. It has not had high-level diplomatic relations with the country since the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005. The U.S. has alleged that Syria played a role in the assassination.

Neoconservatives appear to be re-igniting a political narrative that fits neatly with the infamous cast of the "axis of evil". While not explicitly mentioned, Syria has often been designated as a junior partner… more

Civil liberties advocates and Democrats hailed U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' resignation on Monday as a major victory, while most Republicans kept their comments to a minimum.

Gonzales, a long-time crony of President George W. Bush and the first Hispanic citizen to hold a senior Cabinet post, served -- both asWhite House counsel during Bush's first term and as the country's chief law-enforcement officer since January 2005 -- as one of the main promoters of the administration's assumption of sweeping… more

President George W. Bush likened the U.S. presence in Iraq to the Vietnam War last Wednesday, unexpectedly embracing a historical parallel that his administration has downplayed for five years.

Some left-leaning analysts have been drawing parallels between Iraq and Vietnam for years as part of their critiques of the Iraq War. Anew book by a prominent Middle East scholar, however, has suggested that even more important lessons may be learned from looking back even further, to the time of Napoleon.… more

The latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a two-page unclassified version of which was released here Tuesday, found that al Qaeda has largely rebounded from its eviction from Afghanistan nearly six years ago and re-constituted both its central organisation and some of its training and operational capacities, leading to a ‘’heightened threat environment’’ for the U.S. itself. According to the report, which represents a consensus judgment of Washington’s 16 intelligence agencies, the group’s resurgence has been made possible primarily… more

Most analysts said Bush's speech -- including his pledge to provide some 190 million dollars to support Palestine Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and convene a regional conference to support renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks -- was too little, too late and included too many conditions to rally strong Palestinian or Arab support...

Bush's remarks, which were the subject of a protracted internal debate within the administration, were criticised by most analysts here for failing to take account of new realities… more

WASHINGTON, June 20 (IPS) - Reports that U.S. President George W. Bush has asked outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair to act as the Quartet's special envoy for Middle East peace are adding to speculation that Washington plans to intensify peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians, despite last week's takeover of Gaza by Hamas. But whether those peace efforts will include Hamas, as well as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose control over the Palestinian territories has been… more

By most accounts, [Secretary of State Condoleeza] Rice hopes to implement a "West Bank First" strategy designed to bolster [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas and his Fatah party by pouring in aid, persuading [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert to follow through on previous pledges to ease travel restrictions and release Palestinian prisoners...

During his visit to Washington, Olmert indicated his support for the strategy...

The strategy is based on the assumption that a more prosperous and more hopeful West Bank… more

WASHINGTON, Jun 15 (IPS) - Four years after the emergence of the first signs of a serious insurgency in Iraq, U.S. President George W. Bush finds himself beset with major crises stretching from Palestine to Pakistan. With U.S.-backed Fatah forces routed by Hamas in Gaza this week, Bush's five-year-old vision of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict now looks more remote than ever, while a new Pentagon report in Iraq suggests that his four-month-old "surge" strategy is… more

WASHINGTON, May 22 (IPS) - The violence in Lebanon's Nahr al-Bader Palestinian refugee camp that has killed more than 55 people in the past two days is focusing attention on a relatively unknown and shadowy Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam... As the fighting continues, there is a scramble to find out more about the little-known group, which emerged in the refugee camp just north of Lebanon's northern port city Tripoli in November 2006. With an estimated 300 fighters led… more

WASHINGTON, Mar 23 (IPS) - How seriously and to what ends is the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush willing to engage the new Palestinian government of national unity? As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice makes her seventh visit to the Middle East in the last eight months, that is the question that foreign policy analysts and diplomats here are asking, and the answers are as yet far from clear. Is the administration committed to… more