Foreign Relations

Beyond triggering a growing chorus of international criticism, China's detention of an Australian mining executive is a reminder that doing business here carries risks not found in other major economies. The controversy has sparked heated exchanges between Chinese and Australian officials in recent days, with Australians complaining that the Chinese have not released any evidence backing the charges against Stern Hu, an iron ore negotiator for mining giant Rio Tinto.

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.

Israel has warned for years that it might carry out military action to prevent Iran from building an atomic bomb. But as the United States and other powers prepare to confront Iran in talks this week, the message from Jerusalem is more restrained. Israeli leaders say they are willing to wait as President Obama plays out his strategy of negotiating with Iran while threatening stronger sanctions if talks fail. They say last week's disclosure of a previously secret nuclear enrichment plant under construction in Iran strengthened the case for harsh international measures.

As he embraces direct talks with Iran and weighs his strategy in Afghanistan, President Obama is facing a new political threat from Republicans: Be hawkish on foreign policy or risk letting your party be painted as weak in next year's midterm elections. Top Republicans have adopted that line of attack in recent days, led by congressional leaders and at least two of the party's possible 2012 presidential contenders. Their warnings to the president mark a shift in tone and tactics for a Republican Party that had been largely supportive of Obama administration policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. and Russia may be able to find common ground on the key issues of missile defense and nuclear arms reductions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday. Lavrov and Clinton spoke positively, if cautiously, after meeting in Geneva in an effort to ease tensions between the countries. "We did not agree on everything, of course, but we agreed to work on every issue," Lavrov said.

President Obama's conversation with Africa is unlike any dialogue in history between that continent and the U.S. government for one reason: It is being led by a black American president with African roots. And Obama, who often cites his father's homeland of Kenya, clearly sees his background as an advantage in pursuing new policies.

A senior U.S. diplomat accused Iran of transferring weapons to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, speaking in Paris, said Tehran was funding insurrections across the Middle East -- and "even transferring arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan." Tehran denies the accusation. In Afghanistan last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have agreed to meet Wednesday to formulate a joint vision of a peace deal to be presented at a November conference in the United States, their aides said. Abbas and Olmert have met five times in recent months, but the two sides remain far apart on how specific the document should be. The Palestinians want to take a detailed framework agreement to the conference, while Israel wants a shorter and vaguer statement.

There are just two weeks left in his presidency, but down in San Diego County the heavy machinery is grinding away at one last grand project from the administration of George W. Bush. As The Times reported Sunday, your tax dollars are paying for contractors to move mountains of earth and make canyons disappear at the U.S.-Mexico border. New fences are rising and a no-man's land is being carved into the Earth.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin struck a deal early today with the European Union on supervising the flow of natural gas through Ukraine, paving the way to restart shipments to fuel-starved European customers. The price dispute that first drove Russia to cut off gas to Ukraine on New Year's Day had yet to be resolved, and there was no word on how soon gas deliveries to Europe would start up again. There was no immediate response from Ukraine.