1. Without a new multilateral effort, the risk of a new nuclear arms race and of rogue states and terrorist organizations getting their hands on nuclear material could bring the world back to the brink of nuclear war.
2. Nuclear disarmament is one of the most important issues of our time. As long as the United States and Russia between them have more than 11,000 nuclear warheads deployed, they have little credibility to persuade unrecognized nuclear weapons states like Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea to scrap their arsenals, and perhaps even less to get Iran to trade in its enrichment uranium program for any form of economic or other incentives.
3. Under Article 6 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the five declared nuclear powers on the United Nations Security Council are committed to phasing out their arsenals.
4. The Russian Foreign Minister criticized U.S. plans for a missile defense system with element in Eastern Europe to protect against the threat posed by Iran, saying the system «has little in common with its declared goal». Russia strongly opposes the idea, saying Iran is decades away from developing missile technology that could threaten Europe or North America, and it says the U.S. bases will undermine Russia's own missile deterrent force.
5. NATO and Russia agreed in 2010 to cooperate onthe missile shield, which is supposed to protect Europe from attacks from rogue states like Iran, but Moscow insists on operating it jointly – a proposal the Western alliance rejects. The Russian Foreign Minister reiterated that Moscow’s concerns that the shield threatensRussia’s nuclear capacity are justified.
6. The United States has reached agreements to place 24 interceptor missiles in Romania, as well as a sophisticated radar system in Turkey. Russia believes that that system could be used against its intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Russian president said new Russian strategic ballistic missiles «will be equipped with advanced missile defense penetration systems and new highlyeffective warheads» and he reiterated Russia’s warning that it would deploy tactical missiles to the western territory of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland.
7. The last time the leaders met, when Mr Blair was on a state visit to Moscow in April, Mr Putin rebuffed his attempts at reconciliation by refusing to lift UN sanctions and mocking the possibility that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq.
8. Tehran’s test launches of medium-range ballistic missiles last week were seen in Washington as provocative and poorly judged, but both the Pentagon and the CIA concluded that they did not represent an immediate threat of attack against Israeli or US targets.
9. Israel, which regards Iran as its most dangerous enemy, has repeatedly dropped hints recently that it reserved the right to attack Iranian military targets if it concluded that Iran had the capacity to construct a nuclear weapon. «We don’t have a decision or a date for taking such a decision. Iran has repeatedly denied that its nuclear fuel enrichment activities are for military use, saying they are meant only for civilian energy and medical purposes».
10. Washington and its allies have long suspected North Korea of developing long-range missiles powerful enough to deliver a warhead to targets as far away as North America. North Korea also was believed to be developing technology to mount nuclear warheads atop its missiles, though analysts doubt that the country has mastered the know-how.
11. Washington has designated North Korea as a leading risk of missile proliferation as the country owns a large arsenal of ballistic missiles and exported its technology to Iran and other Middle East nations. North Korea is believed to have deployed intermediate-range missiles that can hit targets as far away as American military installations in Guam, according to South Korean defense officials.
12. The United States Friday called upon Macedonia's Slavs and ethnic Albanians to «cease fighting and focus on a political solution» to the violent conflict between Albanian extremists and government forces.
13. The US launched a military air strike in Somalia to go after a group of terrorist suspects, defence officials said today. Somali police said three missiles hit a Somali town held by Islamic extremists, destroying a home and seriously injuring eight people early today.
14. The American soldier accused of massacring 16 Afghan civilians -mostly women and children - is on his way back to the United States where he will be held before trial, the soldier's lawyer and defense officials said today.
15. Germany said yesterday it had arrested three Islamic militants suspected of planning «imminent» and «massive» bomb attacks on Frankfurt's international airport and a nearby US military base, preventing what would have been the most devastating terrorist attack on an American target since 11 September 2001. Chancellor Merkel's government has repeatedly warned that Germany faces the real threat of a terror attack.
16. In 2001, Islamist attacks were still a novelty in the US and the UK though not in France, which was one of the first European countries to recognize the threat posed by political Islam. Now we are growing used not just to the existence of an Islamist terror network in Britain, consisting both of young men who were born here and others from Pakistan and the Middle East, but of the inchoate rage which fuels it.
17. Syria's foreign ministry said on Friday the government would cooperate with special UN envoy Kofi Annan while at the same time fighting "terrorism". "The Syrian government is determined to protect its citizens by disarming the terrorists and continues to search for a peaceful solution to the crisis," it said in a letter addressed to the UN.
18. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd of army recruits in the city of Baqouba on Tuesday, killing at least 28 people, Iraqi police said. At least 47 recruits were injuredin the blast at military camp in Baqouba.
19. The Russian Foreign Minister said Russia would use its position on the United Nations Security Council to veto any United Nations authorization of military strikes against the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The United Nations has repeatedly called for Syria end a crackdown on opposition demonstrators, which Arab League monitors say resulted in hundreds of deaths over the past month. Mr. Lavrov said foreign governments were arming «militants and extremists» in Syria, and he gave a bristling response to the American ambassador to the United Nations, who on Tuesday expressed concern about possible Russian arms shipments to Syria.
20. It is the first time Addis Ababa has warned of action since March last year when it accused Asmara of trying to destabilise Ethiopia by backing rebels, and also supporting Islamist militants in Somalia. Eritrea's envoy to the African Union rejected Ethiopia's latest allegation. Ethiopia said the four hostagesmight have been taken across the frontier into Eritrea.
21. Twenty people, including two army officers, were reported killed across Syria on Thursday, adding to a death toll of more than 600 since the Arab League observers arrived. The Arab League monitoring mandate was expiring on Thursday night, with the foreign ministers at odds over how to respond to the turmoil in which thousands of people have been killed.
22. NATO was authorised by the UN Security Council to protect civilians in Libya from attacks by the Gaddafi regime during the uprising of last year, but drew criticism for what many described as going further than the terms of the mandate. A NATO official said yesterday that, despite the Alliance's best efforts – including the cancellation of two-thirds of intended strikes because of the risk of casualties – its «goal of zero civilian casualties is highly unlikely».
23. At least 10 people were killed and 20 people were wounded in southwestern Pakistan, when an explosion struck a crowd in a parking lot near a Shiite mosque. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for what was believed to be a suicide car bombing, but sectarian attacks are frequent in the capital of Baluchistan Province.
24. The Obama administration has not halted plans to deploy anti-missile defences in Europe. It merely rearranged them, deploying anti-missile elements on vessels around Spain and in Romania and Turkey, instead of on Polish and Czech territory. Turkey is even closer to the Russian border than the Czech Republic, and Russian analysts still believe the US anti-missile shield is aimed at countering the Russian nuclear deterrent. Nato has refused to present Russia with written guarantees that the missile shield would not threaten it.
25. More Afghans fled the country and sought asylum abroad in 2011 than in any other year since the start of the decade-long war, suggesting that many are looking for their own exit strategy as NATO troops prepare to withdraw.
26. The death toll in Syria was estimated in the dozens in a conflict that has lasted 10 months and, according to the United Nations, caused more than 5,400 civilian deaths. Syria’s Interior Ministry said that it had killed «big numbers of terrorists» in the eastern suburbs, according to the state news agency.
27. A suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at a police parking lot in central Kandahar, killing at least seven people, including five police officers and a child, in the fourth attempted or successful suicide bombing there in less than a month. The attack came just a day after the United Nations reported that more civilians died in 2011 than in any previous year of the war, mainly because of an increase in killings by insurgents, including more frequent and precise suicide bombings.
28. The surge in violence in Syria prompted the US to close its embassy in Damascus and pull all American diplomats out of the country.
29. The agreement, however, did nothing to halt the violence in the nearly year-old conflict, whose death toll has risen sharply in recent weeks. Activists and journalists reported clashes between opposition fighters and the army in Idlib.
30. Syrian forces bombarded Homs today, killing 50 people in a sustained assault on several districts of the city. The bombardment came a day after the United States promised harsher sanctions against Damascus in response to Russian and Chinese vetoes of a draft U.N. resolution that would have backed an Arab plan urging Assad to step aside.
