Diplomacy

The U.S. and Cuba built sudden momentum Friday toward easing half a century of hostility as President Obama met Havana's willingness to discuss sensitive topics, including human rights, with a declaration that he was ready for a "new beginning" in relations. One official acknowledged that the Obama administration was caught off guard by Cuban President Raul Castro's willingness to discuss issues long considered off-limits by the communist leadership.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates renewed his call Tuesday for more spending on U.S. diplomacy and international aid, saying the U.S. government risks "creeping militarization" of its foreign policy by focusing its resources on the Pentagon. With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in attendance, Gates said in a speech that the government's civilian institutions, especially those with the tasks of diplomacy and development, had been undermanned and underfunded since the end of the Cold War. Gates has made the argument before, most notably in November in an address at Kansas State University.

For his next magic trick, Dale Salwak is going to attempt to pull international diplomacy out of his hat. That is the plan for the La Verne college professor, who has found that getting in and out of North Korea requires some sleight of hand. Salwak teaches English literature by day at Citrus College and performs illusions at night at places such as Hollywood's Magic Castle. His skill at floating mysterious zombie balls in the air and turning silk scarves into exploding flowers earned him an invitation earlier this year to visit the secretive Asian nation.

He talked dinosaurs with the British prime minister's sons and bonded with the young Russian president over their shared coming of age in the post-Cold War years. He elicited an embrace from the physically standoffish leader of Turkey. At one point in President Obama's overseas charm offensive, one world leader confided that he'd never felt able to personally "connect" with the previous American president.

When President Obama takes the podium in Cairo this week for his much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world, he'll stand before them as an American leader born of an African Muslim father and raised partly in Indonesia, as well as a politician who cut his political teeth in an Illinois political culture that has a sizable Muslim population. And he will talk, aides say, about those roots he shares with the Muslim world.

Honduras' ousted president and the officials who exiled him have agreed to try to resolve their conflict through a U.S.-endorsed mediator, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Tuesday. Signaling an expanding U.S. effort, Clinton said the two sides had agreed to talks supervised by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1987 for his efforts to broker peace accords in Central America.

Eight years ago, George W. Bush's stay-at-home proclivities, seen by some as evidence of a lack of interest in the world beyond U.S. borders, became a troublesome issue as he ran for the White House. As the president approaches his final year in office, his agenda is so heavily booked that he is already scheduled to touch down on every continent except Australia and Antarctica.

A top architect of the Bush administration's policy of greater diplomatic engagement announced his resignation Friday amid signs that U.S. efforts on key issues have been losing momentum. R. Nicholas Burns, the State Department's third-ranking official and one of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's closest aides, said he would leave his post in March for personal reasons.

A former congressman indicted on charges that he accepted stolen money from an Islamic aid group also has acted as a broker between U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Sudan's president on Darfur, according to diplomats and the onetime representative. "While my involvement is by no means secret, we have tried to make it private because of the sensitivities involved with the U.N. and Sudan," Mark D. Siljander wrote in an e-mail Friday.

Serbia will use economic, political and diplomatic measures to stop Kosovo from declaring independence Sunday, but will avoid violence, Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic told an emergency Security Council session Thursday. Jeremic said at the closed-door meeting that allowing the province to secede would do "irreparable harm" to the notion of sovereignty, and would trigger secession by other disaffected territories.