Free Republic

The NATO alliance has drawn up a strategy to defend Turkey if it is attacked along its border with Syria, a Turkish official said Monday. Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz, whose country is a NATO member, said the alliance did that at his government's request as Islamic State militants, who have captured a large swath of Iraq and Syria, are trying to take the Syrian town of Kobani near the Turkish border. "If there is an attack, NATO's joint defense mechanisms will be activated," Yilmaz told reporters.

On July 20, Kyrgyzstan's Ministry of Defense announced that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to arrive on July 25. Rumsfeld will discuss the future of the U.S.-led air base Manas with the new Kyrgyz leadership, in the wake of Moscow- and Beijing-inspired demands to set a deadline on the presence of U.S.-led coalition forces in Central Asia. Meanwhile, French Defense Minister Michèle Aliot-Marie is arriving in Tajikistan on July 22 hoping to firm up the arrangements for French use of the Dushanbe and possibly also Kulob airports. For its part, on July 20 Moscow again urged the Central...

(Kyodo) - A majority of a House of Representatives panel on Japan's Constitution has drafted a final report supporting Japan's proposed participation in international cooperation and collective security activities, panel sources said Tuesday. The support is apparently aimed at Japan's participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations mainly based on U.N. resolutions. The draft report also calls for Japan to maintain the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution, the sources said. The report, which will be submitted next month to House of Representatives Speaker Yohei Kono, showed that a majority approved the continued existence of a system that recognizes the...

Beware visionaries wielding power 14mar03 IN the debate about a second UN resolution authorising a US-dominated invasion and occupation of Iraq, both sides share a common premise. France, Russia and Germany argue that the UN will lose its moral authority if it rubber-stamps a war that the US has decided to wage. The Bush administration argues that the UN will lose its geopolitical credibility if it does not. Both sides are mistaken – the UN has neither authority nor credibility to lose. The UN has never functioned as its founders intended it to do. US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt,...