Western Countries

Lebanese President Amin Gemayel told a French radio network in an interview broadcast today that Western countries whose nationals have been taken hostage in Beirut should rescue them by whatever means is necessary. "Let's get it over with," Gemayel told France-Inter. "We can't leave things hanging like that."

WASHINGTON - Six world powers and Iran agreed to hold talks on Tehran's disputed nuclear program this month in Kazakhstan in the latest attempt to avoid a military confrontation over the issue. After three months of negotiations, Iran's national security council reached agreement with the office of the European Union's foreign policy chief and point person for the six world powers, Catherine Ashton, for a meeting Feb. 26. The six nations - Russia, China, France, Germany, Britain and the United States - have been urging Iran to accept limits on a nuclear program that many countries fear is aimed at developing a weapon.

Abdul Wasi is a success story of sorts since returning to this Afghan village after years of living in a refugee camp in Pakistan. Wasi, 30, is one of several big opium farmers in Hesar Shahi in Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province near the Pakistan border. "I know that growing poppy is against Islamic principles, but I have to, in order to earn a living," he said.

TEHRAN - Iranian officials again threw their support to Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday, backing the peace plans the embattled Assad laid out in a rare televised speech. While European leaders dismissed the speech as nothing new and the U.S. State Department panned the Sunday address as “detached from reality," Iranian officials and some pundits said just the opposite. The ideas raised by Assad are “based on the realities in the Arab state,” Hossein Naqavi-Hosseini, spokesman for an Iranian parliamentary committee on foreign policy, was quoted as telling the official Islamic Republic News Agency on Tuesday.  Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi also praised the plan laid out by Assad to end Syria's 21-month-old civil war, saying it “rejects violence and terrorism and any foreign interference in the country and outlines a future for the country ... through a comprehensive political process," state media reported Monday.

A Russian-led proposal by a coalition of countries to place further government regulation over the Internet has been withdrawn. The plan under consideration by the International Telecommunication Union would have given countries the power to block the Internet from some locations, according to Reuters. Additionally, the plan would have taken control of the allocation of Internet addresses away from ICANN, a U.S.-based organization that is under contract to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Lebanese President Amin Gemayel told a French radio network that Western countries should use whatever means necessary to rescue their nationals being held hostage in Beirut. As U.S. hostage Terry A. Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent of the Associated Press, marked his third year in captivity, Gemayel told France-Inter, a branch of the state-run Radio France Internationale: "Let's get it over with. . . . We can't leave things hanging."

Former President Jimmy Carter met Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Wednesday, with the Soviet leader saying Moscow has no intention of infringing on U.S. interests in the Middle East but warning Western countries not to pursue unrealistic objectives in the region. "We understand that the United States and other Western countries have interests in that region," he told Carter, who is in Moscow on a private visit. "The Soviet Union has no intention of infringing on them. . . .

East European editors, long used to being told what to write by Communist governments, will get advice on how to break old news habits at a conference with Western media heads in Paris next month. The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said in a statement Tuesday that it had arranged the Feb. 27-28 meeting at the request of "several international media organizations."

Turkish Consul General Oguz Celikkol's concern over any "misleading portrayals" in The Times of his fellow upbeat Turks during their current "successful" trade expansion is thoroughly warranted (letter, Aug 28). Certainly incidental policy actions such as continued denial of the 1915 Armenian genocide, the relentless massacre of innocent Kurdistan villagers and, in August, brutally murdering peaceful demonstrators in Cyprus should show the world the honorable character behind Turkey's hopes for "mutually beneficial" commercial, social and cultural relations within the Western countries.

Central and East European leaders get a chance to lobby Western lenders for more money when the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development holds its second annual meeting starting Monday. Given the all-but-impossible task of helping create conditions in the former Soviet Bloc countries that will make Western countries want to do business there, EBRD has begun slowly to finance the overhaul of the region's infrastructure, including telecommunications, roads, financial and legal systems.

Sharp divisions over the future of the Internet were laid bare Friday as the United States and many of its allies spurned a United Nations telecommunications treaty over fears of government meddling with the Web. Getting involved with the Internet would mark a shift for the International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency first created to smooth the sending of telegraph messages from one country to another. With information already flowing freely over the Internet, Western countries and companies have questioned why the international agency should get involved.

A Russian-led proposal by a coalition of countries to place further government regulation over the Internet has been withdrawn. The plan under consideration by the International Telecommunication Union would have given countries the power to block the Internet from some locations, according to Reuters. Additionally, the plan would have taken control of the allocation of Internet addresses away from ICANN, a U.S.-based organization that is under contract to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Re “ Britain wrestles with free speech on the web ,” Nov. 9 Dissent is as important as civility, and Britain, unlike the U.S, at least has attempted to address some of the dangers in how speech is used and abused and how destructive uncivil speech can be. When one listens to pundits on Fox News or some talk radio stations and hears the hatred and fear that is fomented, one can understand why such speech is outlawed in some Western countries....

Hope isn't a strategy. But it was a major part of NATO's decision to launch an air war against Libya's Moammar Kadafi almost three months ago. Back in March, when the bombing began, the leaders of France, Britain and the United States hoped Kadafi's regime would shatter under the shock and awe of modern munitions, and that Libyan military officers would take the advice of their European counterparts and overthrow their leader. None of that happened. Instead, France's Nicolas Sarkozy, Britain's David Cameron, President Obama and their allies are mired in a lengthening war of choice that none of them cared all that much about in the first place.

Italy on Monday formally recognized the rebel government of eastern Libya, dealing yet another blow to the embattled regime of Col. Moammar Kadafi. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Rome would open an office in rebel-held territory and formally recognize the Benghazi-based Libyan National Council as the only representative of the country, which Italy once ruled as a colonial ward and to which it maintains deep cultural and economic ties. Italy joins France as the second Western country to formally recognize the rebel government.

As much of the world once more prepares to celebrate the birth of Christ, it is a melancholy fact that many of the most ancient churches established in his name are being pushed to the brink of oblivion across the region where their faith was born. The culprits are Salafist Islam's increasingly virulent intolerance, the West's convenient indifference and, in the case of Iraq, America's failure to make responsible provisions to protect minorities from the violent disorder that has persisted since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

I'm pleased that Sen. John McCain is out of the hospital and the prognosis is hopeful (Aug. 22), but he and all the other Republican legislators must realize how fortunate he is. If the Senate did not legislate a good insurance plan for members, he might still be waiting for approval from his insurance company to get the treatment he needed. Worse yet, if he didn't have any insurance, like so many working Americans, he would probably not have gone to a doctor because of the cost. Wake up, senators!

The headline in Zimbabwe's Herald newspaper Friday measured the disconnect between hopes and reality: Southern African nations were "to invest $US 2 Billion in Zim," it screamed. But after a meeting of regional finance ministers in Cape Town, South Africa, later in the day, Zimbabwe left with nothing but vague promises.

I'm pleased that Sen. John McCain is out of the hospital and the prognosis is hopeful (Aug. 22), but he and all the other Republican legislators must realize how fortunate he is. If the Senate did not legislate a good insurance plan for members, he might still be waiting for approval from his insurance company to get the treatment he needed. Worse yet, if he didn't have any insurance, like so many working Americans, he would probably not have gone to a doctor because of the cost. Wake up, senators!