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December 18:
India and Russia, former Cold War allies, have begun to formalize
plans for a joint moon mission sometime between 2011 and 2012,
China’s Xinhua news agency reports. The Chandrayaan-II mission
is being backed by the Indian Space Research Organization and
Roskosmos, Russia’s Federal Space Agency. The mission will follow
India’s first planned trip to the moon, Chandrayaan-I, which is
slated to take place in 2008. Over a two year period, the maiden
voyage will “survey the lunar surface to produce a complete map of
its chemical characteristics and 3-dimensional topography,” the news
agency reports.
December 19:
Defeat at the hands of the Taliban is a real possibility for NATO
forces in Afghanistan. That, at least, is the conclusion of some
NATO officials, who fear that the Coalition has been shackled by
alliance restrictions, troop and equipment shortfalls, rising
civilian casualties, and the Taliban’s resilience. The unstable
security environment has hampered the work of UN development
agencies, and NATO officials are increasingly concerned that while
tactical victories pile up week after week, strategic victories
remain elusive. According to Kees Rietvold a veteran consultant on
Afghanistan, “It is now like 1984-85, we have lost the countryside,
Afghans cannot work for us… and in the next couple of years, allied
countries will start dropping out and then it will be the end.” Not
all observers are as pessimistic, however. A senior Western diplomat
admits to Reuters: “the signs are bad, but there is a growing
awareness of what the remedies are.”
December 26:
After flirting with negotiations to settle the long-running conflict
in Sri Lanka, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has opted for a hard-line
approach toward the Tamil Tigers. Violence has escalated since the
collapse of a ceasefire between the Tigers and the government in in
Colombo back in 2005, and
the Agence France Presse reports that government forces retook a
contested eastern province earlier this year. Rajapaksa’s
administration has vowed to press forward with the offensive, with
an eye toward Tiger strongholds in the country’s north. At a recent
ceremony, the president declared that “[t]here is no point in
talking about a political solution without militarily crushing
terrorism.”
South Korea has elected a new President and, like the latest
elections in France and Germany, the prospects look to be good for
Washington. Lee Myung Bak sailed to the presidency in Seoul on a
campaign platform emphasizing pro-growth policies, stronger ties to
the U.S., and a repudiation of his predecessor’s “sunshine” policy
toward the North,
according to the International Herald Tribune. Koreans
from across the political spectrum had grown visibly tired of what
Lee referred to as the former president’s strategy of “avoiding
criticism of North Korea [while] unilaterally flattering it.” The
new president, who has pledged to put North Korea’s human rights
record back on the table, joins the regional diplomatic arena at a
particularly sensitive time: the much-publicized denuclearization
deal struck last year between the Washington and Pyongyang is under
strain after a series of missed deadlines and backtracking from the
North.
December 27:
British intelligence agents are at the center of a firestorm in
Afghanistan following revelations that MI6 agents made secret
attempts to contact, and negotiate with, the Taliban. The charges
have been denied by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, but the
London Telegraph reveals that intelligence sources
familiar with the matter admit meetings took place with “up to a
dozen Taliban or with Taliban who had only recently laid down their
arms.” MI6 agents also reportedly offered “mentoring” for the
Taliban in one of the half-dozen meetings that took place in Helmand
province. |
