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US says doubts Russia, China vetoes on Iraq MOSCOW/LONDON - The United States said on Wednesday it doubted either Russia or China would veto a new U.N. Security Council resolution designed to pave the way for war on Iraq. The comments, made by a senior U.S. administration official speaking on condition of anonymity, seemed to improve prospects for the resolution, although questions remained over the nine council votes it needs to pass and a possible French veto. Washington's main supporter, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, faced potentially the biggest revolt yet within his ruling Labour Party in a parliamentary vote...

John Hawkins: You're one of the many people (myself included) who have come out and said loud and often that you think Bin Laden is dead. Are you still of that opinion and if so, how do you account for the tape recording from "Bin Laden" that the government says they believe is real? Mark Steyn: First, an audio recording is the easiest form of evidence to fake - easier than paper, easier than video. I got my first job in radio from faking an aircheck in my bedroom when I was 17. So if the only recorded evidence of...

KAPLAN NAILS IT Another insightful piece from Robert Kaplan in TNR, on the creek the Americans seem to have paddled up, over Iraq. The conundrum, by now, is obvious. And Kaplan successfully outlines the Americans' remaining options: either a) being able to present a smoking gun of their own to the Security Council, an "Adlai Stevenson moment," as he calls it; or b) buying off the veto votes on the Security Council somehow; or c) presenting the world with a satisfactory fait accompli after a lightning and easy unilateral conquest of Iraq. While other sites I could mention have posted...

Semantics Once again, the United Nations has produced lots of words, with little if any content. Two reports were presented yesterday, on Iraqi disarmament. One was from Hans Blix, who commands the UNMOVIC, on-the-ground inspection effort; the other from Mohamed El Baradei, chief nuclear inspector, as head of the IAEA in Vienna. The reports were identical in substance (neither contained any interesting or new information), but different in tone. Mr. Blix's report, after 60 days of mostly quick and casual spot checks of locations visited by the previous UNSCOM inspection teams (the least likely places to find smoke or fire),...

CHECHENS FEAR 'WAHHABI' THREAT As the war goes on, fundamentalist Islamists in Chechnya are becoming bolder and more violent. By Umalt Dudayev in Grozny Even for a society used to violent death, the murders of Said-Pasha Salekhov and his son by unidentified assailants in the village of Stariye Atagi, 20 km south of Grozny, caused extreme shock and revulsion. Salekhov, aged 50, was a descendant of the ancient Arab tribe of Kureishi - to which Mohammed himself supposedly belonged - and was one of Chechnya's most respected religious leaders. The locals blame the November 21 killings on militants they call...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Young Americans may soon have to fight a war in Iraq, but most of them can't even find that country on a map, the National Geographic Society said Wednesday.[...more] The society survey found that only about one in seven -- 13 percent -- of Americans between the age of 18 and 24, the prime age for military warriors, could find Iraq. The score was the same for Iran, an Iraqi neighbor. Although the majority, 58 percent, of the young Americans surveyed knew that the Taliban and al Qaeda were based in Afghanistan, only 17 percent could find...

Oh aye... Top Lit Crit Tom Paulin from the BBC2 CULTURE show that nobody bothers to watch because it's so boring [the one with the fat bloke with the glasses, alongside Tony Parsnip and Germaine Bore]... has upset LOTS of USA folk by daring to mumble something interesting about the Israeli situation. Paulin apparently said of the grisly West Bank extreme-Zionist settlers: "They are Nazis, racist. I feel nothing but hatred for them..." Well, fair enough, you might think... but it's created a hell of a stink for Paulin in America - and a prestigious speaking invitation to Harvard has...

Chris Patten is used to rudeness. When he was the last governor of Hong Kong, the Chinese used to call him a ‘jade-faced prostitute’ and a ‘tango-dancer for a thousand years’, and other baffling insults. In these very pages he is called EU Marshal Chris Pétain, a byword for general sell-outery. To the neo-conservatives of Washington, he is the consummate Euro-weenie, ever warning us of the dangers of American ‘unilateralism’ and the risks of duffing up Iraq. To a certain kind of British Conservative polemicist, he shows an excessive willingness to listen to the claims of Palestinian terrorists and Irish...

From Belgrade to BaghdadStephen Schwartz on how the Serbs have been providing Iraq with military aid Washington, DC There is a fog of maritime commerce much like the fog of war, and, as October came to an end, a vessel called the Boka Star briefly emerged from it into the bright light of the world media, following the murky wake of the Karine A. The latter ship, one will recall, either was or was not sent by Iran with a load of weapons and ammunition for Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. While the Tehran government came in for a...

My life beyond the paleTwenty years ago Roger Scruton established the Salisbury Review — and almost at once he became a pariah. It is 20 years since the Salisbury Group (a small gathering of old-fashioned Tories, informally chaired by the Marquess of Salisbury, and dedicated to the political vision of his ancestor, the great prime minister) entrusted me with the task of establishing and editing a review, having raised £5,000 among themselves for this purpose. I had just published The Meaning of Conservatism, a somewhat Hegelian defence of Tory values in the face of their betrayal by the free marketeers....

Bush: Iraq must disarm By BARRY SCHWEID-- Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) -- President Bush is urging the United Nations to compel Iraq to disarm, backing his appeal with a hefty document accusing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of a decade of deception and defiance of 16 U.N. resolutions. Bush was making his case against the backdrop of widespread disinclination among U.S. allies to use force against Baghdad and a caution from U.N Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the United States should not to take action against Saddam without U.N. Security Council backing. Efforts by Bush to win congressional support were having...

April 22, 2002 'It certainly makes me quite angry': city councillor National Post, with files from The Canadian Press AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - A crowd of American basketball fans booed O Canada last night before the Detroit Pistons and Toronto Raptors played Game 1 of their first-round NBA playoff series. When the Canadian anthem was played before the tipoff, it was met with a steady stream of boos from the sold-out crowd. Among the crowd in this Detroit suburb were several thousand Toronto fans, who were decked out in Raptors gear and waving Canadian flags. When Toronto, which trailed through...

Melanie Phillips says that the Israelis are victims of terror but are being portrayed as cold-hearted, fascist thugs It has come to something when the Sun becomes so alarmed at the firestorm of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred blazing daily out of the British media that it feels the need to publish a full-page leading article telling its readers, ‘The Jewish faith is not an evil religion’ [....rest of article.

"The Yugoslav parliament's ratification of the law concerning cooperation with the Hague tribunal has led to a wave of suicides among high officials surrounding former president Slobodan Milosevich. One of them tried to shoot himself. Another tried to hang himself. Thursday evening the former head of the Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vlaiko Stoil'kovich, decided to clear up his accounts with life. He shot himself in the head at the Yugoslav Parliament's main entrance." | Rest of article in Russian.

I fear for our grandchildren. How on earth are they going to develop into mature, rounded, balanced and thoroughly decent people like us when the youth culture that envelops them is so bland, so harmless, so hopelessly, hopelessly nice? When I say ‘youth culture’, I mean, of course, pop music. Youth has no other culture, unless you count text-messaging. And today’s pop music, so tasteful that it tastes of nothing, reached its apotheosis last weekend with the election of the Pop Idol. The contest was won either by someone called Will or Bill or Phil, or by someone called Gareth. ...

Early last month, a distinguished American went to see a British regiment. After more than 30 years at the centre of events, Henry Kissinger has an excuse for being blasé about such excursions. Yet there was none of that on this occasion. The helicopter was fog-bound and it is a long journey to Hereford by road, but Dr Kissinger’s hosts at the SAS’s Stirling Lines HQ were delighted by his obvious enthusiasm. In turn, he was ‘tremendously impressed’ by their ‘high motivation and professionalism’. ... [rest]