United Nations

It is an annual ritual: The United Nations today will vote to condemn the U.S. embargo on Cuba, much as the world organization has done for nearly two decades. This will be the first time, however, that the call to end the policy will come with Barack Obama as president, giving rise to spirited debate on how his administration, having promised a "new beginning" in Latin America, is handling one of Washington's most problematic foreign policies. In recent months the Obama administration has taken steps to ease some of the sanctions that successive U.S. governments employed against Cuba.

The top United Nations official in Afghanistan on Thursday issued an unusually pointed warning to President Hamid Karzai to enact major political reforms or risk losing the support of the international community. "There is a belief among some that the international commitment to Afghanistan will continue whatever happens because of the strategic importance of Afghanistan," Kai Eide, the U.N. special representative, said at a news conference. "I would like to emphasize that this is not correct.

India signed a pact opening its civilian nuclear plants to U.N. inspections, a condition of a deal allowing it to import nuclear materials and technology. It will be required to allow inspections at 14 of 22 reactors by 2014 under the deal with the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency. IAEA oversight was stipulated when the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group agreed in September to lift a ban on nuclear trade with India, imposed after its first nuclear test in 1974 and for its refusal to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

North Korea told two U.N. agencies it planned to launch a communications satellite between April 4 and 8, a rare disclosure that was seen as an attempt to fend off international worries that the launch is really a test of long-range missile technology. The U.S. and other governments have said that any rocket launch, for a satellite or a missile test, would violate a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution banning North Korea from ballistic missile activity. The U.N. agencies said North Korea informed them of the details by letter.

The United Nations has declared that the continued detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi violates Myanmar's laws as well as those of the international community, a legal document says. Although the ruling is unlikely to win Suu Kyi's release from detention, it is uncommon for the world body to accuse a member country of violating its own laws. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has spent 13 of the last 19 years under house arrest, with the ruling junta extending her detention each year despite international outcries.

Iran's top leader demanded an end to U.N. Security Council oversight of the country's nuclear program during a meeting Saturday with the chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, state-run television reported. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran, told International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei that the IAEA should exclusively handle Iranian nuclear questions -- not the Security Council.

Saudi Arabia, appearing Thursday for the first time before a United Nations women's rights panel, faced tough questions over restrictions on "virtually every aspect of a woman's life" in the kingdom. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women monitors adherence to a 1979 international bill of rights for women. Saudi Arabia ratified that pact in 2000, with the proviso that Islamic Sharia law would prevail if there were any contradiction with its provisions.

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.

It's a bleak day for humanity when one of the architects of the genocide in Darfur gets a promotion. In a gesture of supreme defiance of decency and international law, the Sudanese government announced Monday that it had appointed Musa Hilal, a militia leader who recruited and mobilized the janjaweed militias responsible for the carnage in Darfur, to be a special advisor to the president on ethnic affairs. It gets worse.

In a bid to ratchet up pressure on Iran to end its uranium enrichment program, six leading world powers agreed Tuesday to introduce a new United Nations resolution likely to tighten sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Ending months of impasse with Russia and China, the agreement clears the way for the United States, Germany, France and Britain to submit a new resolution to the Security Council to increase political and economic constraints on Tehran.