Latest Articles about Middle East
PUTIN’S MÉNAGE À TROIS IN KALININGRAD
Over the weekend of July 3-4, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted French President Jacques Chirac and German Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder for a summit in Kaliningrad, supposedly to celebrate the city's 750th anniversary. Putin conspicuously declined to invite Polish and Lithuanian leaders to this event,... MORE
THE PRESIDENTIAL VERTICAL ECONOMY AND THE OIL SHOWER
Russian economic policy has never been so entertaining as in recent weeks, particularly in comparison with the dull and monotonous political discourse. Every weekly meeting of the government delivers a new verbal clash of economic titans often sparkling with rich metaphors. Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov... MORE
BUSINESS-STATE RELATIONS IN RUSSIA: THE HIGH ROAD AND THE LOW ROAD
On June 25 President Vladimir Putin met in St. Petersburg with 12 business leaders from the United States, including the leading executives of Conoco-Philips, Alcoa, Intel, and United Technologies. The next day he met with a dozen corporate leaders from Germany, representing companies such as... MORE
RUSSIA CANCELS BORDER TREATY, ASSAILS ESTONIA
On June 27, merely six weeks after signing the border treaty with Estonia, Russia announced that it is revoking its signature, withdrawing from any obligations stipulated in that treaty, and demanding renegotiation from scratch. Those points are contained in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs... MORE
CIS MILITARY STRUCTURES SEEN SHRINKING AT DEFENSE MINISTERS’ MEETING
The Council of Defense Ministers of CIS member countries met in a depleted format on June 24 in Dushanbe, with Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov in the chair. The host, Tajikistan's President Imomali Rakhmonov, noted the "negative impact of disintegration processes" -- a reversal of... MORE
RUSSIA, CHINA ANTICIPATE BOOMING BILATERAL INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Investment and energy issues will top the agenda of the bilateral Russo-Chinese summit Moscow later this month. Although Beijing has demonstrated a willingness to continue its economic expansion in Russia, Moscow is apparently trying to avoid an over-reliance on China. Beijing has reiterated that energy... MORE
New Jihadist Group Emerges in Syria
The Syrian news agency (SANA) reported on June 9 that security authorities had been engaged in a three-hour armed confrontation resulting in the death of Abu Umar, the leader of a cell of the previously unknown Tanzim Jund al-Sham lil-Jihad wal-Tawhid, (Organization of the Army... MORE
Prominent al-Qaeda Ideologue Killed in al-Qaim
A June 23 posting to an Islamist website presented the text of an announcement from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi concerning the death of Sheikh Abdullah Mohammad Rashid al-Rashoud in the Iraqi town of al-Qaim. In customary fashion the statement, as posted on the jihadist Al-Qal'a forum,... MORE
Latest Video from al-Zawahiri Challenges Political Reforms
The latest al-Qaeda video, aired in part by al-Jazeera television on June 17, and the first to appear since last February, bore the stamp of a commentary of the political reform-related events currently occurring in Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Palestine. As such it is... MORE
FROM CIS TO CSTO: CAN A “CORE” BE PRESERVED?
At the Moscow summit of the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and in its wake, Russian officials have publicly acknowledged the fragmentation of the "post-Soviet space" and announced some corresponding decisions on two levels: the lexical and the political-military (see EDM, June 24 and... MORE