Tag Archives: middle-east

Dealing with Hamas: Can the U.S. Avoid It Much Longer?

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised the U.S. Congress on Wednesday to “work tirelessly with you for peace in the Middle East.” But Britain clearly has some ideas of its own about how to move the process forward, and those ideas clash with the orthodoxies still in place in Washington. Even as Brown spoke on Capitol Hill, his government announced that it has scrapped its boycott of Hizballah, and would hold talks with the Iran-backed Lebanese Shi’ite movement, whose militia is on its — and Washington’s — list of terrorist organizations.

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UK lawmakers meet with militant groups

At least three British lawmakers have been holding unofficial meetings with militant groups in the Middle East for the past two years, one of the legislators told CNN Thursday. The lawmakers met high-ranking officials from Hezbollah and Hamas, said Michael Ancram, one of the legislators involved. The British government officially considers both Hezbollah and Hamas to be terrorist organizations, as does the United States.

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Clinton warns of Iranian threat to Europe, Russia

Iran poses a threat to Europe and Russia, both from Tehran’s direct efforts and its support of terrorist groups, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday. The Tehran government is intent on interfering in the Middle East, she told reporters aboard her flight to Brussels from the region

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Intelligence Lapses: The Risks of Relying on ‘Chatter’

If early last September you’d parked outside Lehman Brothers’ Manhattan headquarters with a cell-phone scanner and listened only to some of the “chatter” coming out of Lehman’s front office, you almost certainly would have realized that Lehman was going under. But to understand the wider consequences, how capitalism was about to do a somersault into the watery abyss, you would have needed to understand how Lehman fit into the global financial system

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Clinton: Mideast peace talks await new Israeli government

The United States will wait until a new Israeli government is in place before it addresses key issues that have stalled the peace process with the Palestinians, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday. But Clinton also vowed that President Obama will not be slow to make the issue a top priority. “We cannot afford more delays or regrets about what might have been had different decisions been made in the past,” Clinton said at a joint news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

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U.S. offers $900 million to Palestinians

The United States has offered more than $900 million to help the Palestinian people, particularly those in Gaza, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Monday. “Only by acting now can we turn this crisis into an opportunity that moves us closer to our shared goals,” Clinton said at a Gaza donors conference hosted by Egypt in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh

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In the Aftermath of Gaza, Hamas Becomes Harder to Ignore

When Senator John Kerry visited Gaza last week, he made certain to emphasize that he had no contact with Hamas, and demanded that the militants stop firing rockets into Israel. Still, Kerry’s visit — one of the first to the coastal strip by an American legislator since Hamas took power there in 2007 — wasn’t exactly the kind of publicity that Israeli officials wanted.

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