Brunei is one of the world’s richest countries due to its oil and gas industry. For nearly 100 years, oil has provided generously for its 400,000 citizens.
It has also kept at bay, for now, any attempts to exploit the virgin rainforests which cover a large part of the country. But there are fears that may change as oil reserves begin to run out.
Divya Gopalan reports from Brunei.
Manouchehr Mottakir, Iran’s Foreign Minister, has submitted his government’s latest proposals to the envoys of the six countries involved in nuclear talks. The proprosal comes as Tehran has been threatened with harsher sanctions over its nuclear ambitions.
Diplomats will be studying the Iranian message for signs that Tehran is really interested in taking up the offer of economic and political concessions in return for a halt to its uranium enrichment programme.
The proposal is not expected to lead to a breakthrough in the nuclear dispute. Many observers see Iran’s new proposal package as a way to freeze the clock on further sanctions. Indeed, the US has dismissed the Iranian proposal.
Will Tehran in the end bow to growing international pressure? Would sanctions work? And will the proposal help end Iran’s isolation?
More on the American response to the Iranian nuclear proposal from the Los Angeles Times:
The State Department rejected Iran’s latest proposal for international talks Thursday in another sign of trouble for the Obama administration’s top-priority effort to engage Tehran in nuclear negotiations.
A five-page Iranian proposal distributed to foreign diplomats Wednesday “was not really responsive to our greatest concern, which is obviously Iran’s nuclear program,” said P.J. Crowley, the senior State Department spokesman.
At the same time, Crowley said, “We remain willing to engage Iran.”
The administration faces an approaching deadline on whether to pursue a diplomatic opening with Iran, which was one of President Obama’s trademark foreign policy ideas during his presidential campaign.
U.S. officials say Obama will decide by the end of the year whether to continue his offer of negotiations or withdraw it, and step up sanctions to force the Islamic Republic to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
In the letter, Iranian leaders pledged to “embark on comprehensive, all-encompassing and constructive negotiations,” but did not name the nuclear program as an issue for the talks. A copy of the letter was obtained by the nonprofit news organization ProPublica.
Tehran insists it has the right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to process uranium as part of a peaceful nuclear energy program, but U.S. and European officials allege Iran seeks to develop atomic weapons.
Though U.S. officials insisted there was still reason for hope, warning signs are mounting. Glyn Davies, the American ambassador to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, said Wednesday that Iran was now capable of quickly enriching its low-grade uranium to bomb-grade material if it wished.
Pressure is increasing on the Obama administration from conservatives and pro-Israel groups to take a harder line on Iran. Lawmakers are moving ahead with legislation to penalize companies that help Iran refine or import gasoline. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said after meeting with visiting Jewish leaders Thursday that he planned to move ahead with the bill.
The administration is quietly resisting the bill, arguing that it wants to hold off on tougher sanctions until it is sure that Iran cannot be persuaded to join in talks.
Meanwhile, a number of Iran specialists say the hard-line Ahmadinejad government’s preoccupation with political rivals at home has made it less inclined to negotiate.
Senator Sanders of Vermont talks about healthcare reform and the fallout from the economic crisis.
Security continues to elude Afghanistan eight years into US-led war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York led to the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. However, as Washington turned its attention to Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated.
The Taliban and its allies are now resurgent controlling perhaps as much as 80% of the country. Supplied and operating from bases in Pakistan, the Taliban is well financed by the opium crop and from remittances from the Oil sheikdoms in the Gulf.
And while the US has all along stressed a strategy for a better living standard for Afghans, for many there has been little improvement, with poor or non-existent electricity supplies and complaints of little investment in agriculture.
Eight years on, and with a high number of US and NATO casualties, US President Obama has said the conflict is still worth fighting, saying it is essential to the defence of the United States.
As Al Jazeera’s Tom Ackerman reports from Washington, the war former President George Bush began shows no signs of ending in the near future.
If of interest, please read Stanford Professor Terry Lynn Karl’s book, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Boom and Petro-States.
The Paradox of Plenty explains why, in the midst of two massive oil booms in the 1970s, oil-exporting governments as different as Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, Algeria, and Indonesia chose common development paths and suffered similarly disappointing outcomes. Meticulously documented and theoretically innovative, this book illuminates the manifold factors—economic, political, and social—that determine the nature of the oil state, from the coherence of public bureaucracies, to the degree of centralization, to patterns of policy-making.
Karl contends that oil countries, while seemingly disparate, are characterized by similar social classes and patterns of collective action. In these countries, dependence on petroleum leads to disproportionate fiscal reliance on petrodollars and public spending, at the expense of statecraft. Oil booms, which create the illusion of prosperity and development, actually destabilize regimes by reinforcing oil-based interests and further weakening state capacity.
Karl’s incisive investigation unites structural and choice-based approaches by illuminating how decisions of policymakers are embedded in institutions interacting with domestic and international markets. This approach—which Karl dubs “structured contingency”—uses a state’s leading sector as the starting point for identifying a range of decision-making choices, and ends by examining the dynamics of the state itself.
The Pakistani military has said it has arrested Muslim Khan, one of the Taliban’s highest-ranking officials, during a raid in the Swat Valley. Khan had a bounty of more than $120,000 on his head.
During the recent offensive to clear the Swat of the Taliban, the Pakistani military reportst that more than 2,000 Taliban fighters and 300 soldiers have been killed.
More on the arrest of Muslim Khan from the Times of India:
In the first major arrest of Taliban commanders of Swat, Pakistan Army on Friday said it had arrested Muslim Khan, the spokesman for the Taliban in the restive valley, along with a prominent militant and three others.
Muslim Khan and senior Taliban commander Mehmood Khan, for whom authorities had offered rewards of Rs 10 million each, were arrested by security forces “in a successful operation in Swat”, the army said in a statement.
Three other militants – Fazl Ghafar, Abdul Rehman and Sartaj – were also apprehended, army said.
Muslim Khan is the first senior Taliban leader from Swat to be captured by the military.
The army claims it has killed over 1,800 militants in a four-month-long campaign in Swat and other parts of the Malakand division though the top militant leadership, including local Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah, continues to evade them.
Though the army has wrested control of most parts of Swat valley from the Taliban, but its plans to withdraw the bulk of the forces has been stalled due to sporadic clashes which are continuing in the region. The Taliban has also mounted several suicide attacks in the past few weeks.
The military’s failure to capture or kill the top militant leaders has sparked fears that the Taliban could regroup and stage a comeback in Malakand division.
Garrick Utley of the State University of New York and Charles Sennott of Global Post discuss the major foreign policy challenges facing the Obama Administration: Iran’s nuclear ambitions and troop numbers in Afghanistan.