Free Republic

Rice warns North Korea over nuclear talks (Filed: 10/02/2005) Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, has called on North Korea to return to talks on nuclear disarmament following the country's first public admission that it has nuclear weapons. A North Korean propaganda poster Earlier, the North Korean foreign ministry issued a statement saying that it had suspended participation in talks for "an indefinite period" after scrutinising George W Bush's inaugural and state of the union speeches. Dr Rice who is in Luxembourg as part of her European tour, said: "We are trying to give the North Koreans a different...

The European Union is resuming trade talks with Iran, 18 months after they were halted over Tehran's nuclear programme. Negotiations are restarting after Iran's agreement in November to suspend the enrichment of uranium. The European Commissioner for External Relations said the resumption of talks was a clear signal that the EU wished to work with Iran. Discussions in Brussels will also encompass human rights and security. The Iran-EU trade talks, which were launched in December 2002, were suspended in mid-2003 amid mounting tensions, particularly over Tehran's refusal to allow snap inspections of its nuclear facilities. But despite the latest move,...

European leaders gathering in Brussels are expected to agree to start EU accession talks with Turkey, at a summit which opens on Thursday. European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso has urged them to reject any half measures when they discuss the Turkish membership bid. Mr Barroso said if the EU was to start talks, it should be on full membership, with no last-minute conditions. But he urged Turkey to "go the extra mile" and recognise EU member Cyprus. Mr Barroso asked what kind of message Turkey was sending if it did not recognise all the members of the club it...

France has said it will ask Turkey to acknowledge the mass killing of Armenians from 1915 as genocide when it begins EU accession talks. French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said Turkey had "a duty to remember". Armenians say 1.5 million of their people died or were deported from their homelands under Turkish Ottoman rule. France is among a group of nations that class the killings as genocide. Turkey denies any organised genocide, claiming they were quelling a civil uprising. Mr Barnier said France did not consider Turkish acknowledgement a condition of EU entry, but insisted his country would raise the...

Excerpts: ""We're learning fast, but part of what we're learning is the climate system is really complicated. . . . I don't think we'll ever make the kind of prediction Bush would want," said Wallace S. Broecker, a geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Broecker believes the United States has to act quickly to counter its contribution to global warming. "If we don't pick up the pace, we're not going to get there." . . . "Scientists have also refined their understanding of other factors that could accelerate or temper climate change. At one point, researchers thought warming would...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has won U.S. agreement to hold an international peace conference on the Middle East in London early next year, the Daily Telegraph reported on Monday. The newspaper, quoting unidentified senior diplomatic sources for its information, said British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) would discuss details with Israeli and Palestinian leaders during a visit to the Middle East this month. No immediate comment was available from British officials on the report, but Blair has made a resolution of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians a foreign policy priority and has linked it to fighting...

OSLO (Reuters) - A decade after the world pledged to prevent "dangerous" global warming, 194 nations meet next week to review whether rare heatwaves and a fast Arctic thaw may signal that the planet is nearing the brink. The Dec. 6-17 U.N. talks in Buenos Aires will also seek ways to persuade the United States to rejoin a U.N.-led fight against climate change and also try to involve developing nations like China, India or Brazil. Ministers will review the U.N.'s 1994 climate change convention, signed by ex-U.S. President Bush (news - web sites), and its goal of limiting greenhouse gases...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A group of 38 Shiite Muslim political parties broke off negotiations Tuesday with backers of Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, claiming a candidate list under discussion was dominated by religious extremists. "We don't want to be an extension of Iran inside Iraq," said Hussein al-Mousawi, spokesman for the Shiite Political Council. "We found out that the top 10 names in the list are extremist Shiite Islamists who believe in the rule of religious clerics." Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has assigned a committee of six of his aides to try to put together a unified Shiite ticket...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's supreme leader rejected a long-term suspension of uranium enrichment on Wednesday and threatened to withdraw from talks with European negotiators if they insist on such a suspension. "A long term suspension of enrichment is a discussion without logic," state-run television quoted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying. Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, made the comments as Iranian diplomats ended a second round of talks with officials from Britain, France and Germany without agreement. At the talks in Vienna, Austria, the key three European powers offered Iran a trade deal...

RACINE, Wis. - On jobs, John Edwards (news - web sites) says "outsource George Bush (news - web sites)." On health care, the Democrat claims that the president's plan is "pray you don't get sick." And then there's the North Carolina senator's riff about prescription drug advertisements — the ones that suggest that if you take their medicine, "that night you and your spouse will be skippin' through the fields holding hands." The Democratic vice presidential candidate's speeches on the campaign trail are full of lines that bring laughs and cheers, boos and hisses. The zingers play well with every...

The United States will not accept North Korean demands as "conditions" for the resumption of stalled talks on resolving the Korean nuclear deadlock but Pyongyang is free to raise them if it returns to the table, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said today. Mr Powell, in Japan on the first leg of a three-nation Asian tour that will also take him to China and South Korea, said North Korea would not win rewards for simply agreeing to attend a next round of the so-called "six-party talks." "Anything they wish to talk about we should talk about in the six-party...

When the cat's away, the mice will play. In this case, the cat is America and the mice are two members of George W Bush's "axis of evil", Iran and North Korea. While not exactly absent, the cat is distracted by the third member of the axis, Iraq, and its own presidential election on November 2. In the breathing-space before that poll, the mice are proving ever more defiant over their long-term ambitions to become nuclear-armed powers. The lack of progress within the six-nation forum discussing North Korea and the heightened confrontation between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency...

Putin rules out Chechen talks as crowds rally September 07 2004 at 02:32PM By Elizabeth Piper and Richard Ayton Beslan - Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected any dialogue with Chechen separatists, blamed for at least 335 deaths in the school hostage siege, as hundreds of thousands joined rallies against terrorism. "Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?" Putin said in a meeting with foreign journalists late on Monday. "You find it...

Crisis talks on French hostages The journalists were last heard from more than a week agoFrench Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin says Paris will step up its efforts to secure the release of two French journalists being held in Iraq. His comments came after French ministers held emergency meetings to discuss how to respond to the kidnapping of the pair. Arabic TV station al-Jazeera broadcast footage of the two men on Saturday. It said the group holding them was demanding that France drop its ban on Muslim headscarves in state schools. The BBC's Angus Roxburgh in Paris says the French government...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea (news - web sites) described President Bush (news - web sites) Monday as a tyrannical political imbecile who put Adolf Hitler in the shade and said Pyongyang could see no justification for talks with his administration. Six-party working-level talks on the communist North's nuclear weapons ambitions had been planned for August but have yet to materialize. The September date for more senior talks is also in question, although diplomats note Pyongyang often raises its rhetorical voice before attending talks or compromising. South Korea (news - web sites)'s foreign ministry said Monday its top nuclear negotiators...

Blasts, Gunfire Shake Najaf As Talks Drag Sunday August 22, 2004 11:16 PM By ABDUL HUSSEIN AL-OBEIDI Associated Press Writer NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - Explosions and gunfire shook Najaf's Old City on Sunday in a fierce battle between U.S. forces and Shiite militants, as negotiations dragged on for the handover of the shrine that the fighters have used for their stronghold. Late Sunday, U.S. warplanes and helicopters attacked positions in the Old City for the second night with bombs and gunfire, witnesses said. Militant leaders said the Imam Ali Shrine compound's outer walls were damaged in the attacks. The U.S....

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Talks aimed at persuading the rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to withdraw from Najaf collapsed yesterday, paving the way for a resumption of the bloody battle for control of the city. Iraq's national-security adviser, Muwaffak al-Rubaie, said he was "overcome with deep sorrow" by the failure of the negotiations, launched late last week in a bid to avert a potentially explosive showdown between al-Sadr's black-clad militia fighters and the joint U.S.-Iraqi force ringing the ancient city.

LAS VEGAS - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry (news - web sites), seeking votes in this swing state, told fire and rescue workers Tuesday that he opposes storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain because of the safety, security and economic risks it poses. "But this isn't just a Las Vegas issue or a Nevada issue. It's an American issue," Kerry said in prepared remarks. "Under the Yucca Mountain plan, more than 50,000 shipments of waste would travel just yards away from homes, hospitals, parks and playgrounds in states across this country." Kerry talked about nuclear waste after leaving his last...

KINGMAN, Ariz. - John Kerry (news - web sites) pledged that a Democratic White House would listen and respond to financially strained families as he wound down a Southwestern train trek and steered his coast-to-coast campaign into Nevada and California. "There's some people working two or three jobs, trying to make ends meet, put food on the table," Kerry said. "That's what this fight is about." Kerry's campaign made this stop in Kingman along the historic Route 66 highway after five days aboard a train that cut through the Midwest into the Southwest. Kerry is challenging Bush, who plans to...

New US offer at N Korea talks Washington wants the North's nuclear facilities dismantled The United States has a new proposal to end the North Korean nuclear crisis, as fresh talks opened in Beijing. The US, China, Japan, Russia and both Koreas have already held two rounds of talks with little success. But this time, the US is reportedly ready to offer Pyongyang energy aid if it freezes its nuclear facilities as a first step towards full dismantlement. "We are prepared for serious discussion and we have a proposal to offer," US negotiator James Kelly said. Mr Kelly did not...