Israel and militant Palestinians are locked in deadly battle in the Middle East, but Iran poses the biggest foreign policy challenge in the region to the incoming administration of president-elect Barack Obama, the national security adviser for US President George W. Bush says.
At the same time, the Middle East offers Obama the greatest opportunity to put his imprint on world affairs, Stephen Hadley said, referring to the need for a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace accord that eluded both Bush and former US president Bill Clinton.
Outside the Middle East, it is Pakistan that should command Obama’s keen attention, said Hadley, who has been a senior foreign policy adviser to the president for eight years.
He said the Taliban remains a serious threat in Afghanistan where the US is getting ready to dispatch at least 20,000 extra troops.
Hadley said the US needs to continue to provide equipment, training and greater intelligence to the Pakistani security forces there so they can better police the mountainous border, where insurgents cross into Afghanistan.
On Iran, Hadley said more leverage — in the forms of sanctions — is needed to force Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions and support of extremists. He said the Bush administration has been trying to “shore up and store up leverage” to bequeath to the Obama administration.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
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A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
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