This has been a rough week for Iceland. First, Iceland loses to Turkey and Austria for a seat on the UN Security Council. And yesterday, the International Monetary Fund along with Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Russia pledged to loan Iceland $6 billion necessary to keep its economy afloat. Still, there could be a silver lining to this from Icelanders who seek integration into the European Union.

Some Icelandic authorities have suggested that once matters stabilize, the country should give up having an independent currency, and instead either adopt the euro outright or peg the value of the krona firmly to that of the euro.

Another possibility, rejected in the past, is to join the European Union as a member nation, a proposal that Icelandic conservatives have opposed. Still, Olli Rehn, the union's commissioner for enlargement, told Agence France-Presse on Monday that Iceland would not find it difficult to be admitted to the union.

Nick Kristoff pushes back against this bit of snarky commentary regarding Angelina Jolie's role as a celebrity spokesperson for refugee issues.

Frankly, if a celebrity isn't genuinely interested in poverty and is simply trying to get good press, there are better ways to do it. Traveling to Darfur or Congo is dangerous, expensive and uncomfortable, and the outhouses have bats, scorpions and camel spiders. But if a celebrity is willing to put up with such challenges, he or she can get public attention in a way that no one else can. I once was on a panel where Angelina's eyes filled up as she spoke of Iraqi refugees she had met in Syria; for anybody who was there, that scene was worth 100 of my columns. And ditto for her speech on Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations.

I, too, witnessed this aforementioned moment when Jolie broke done while discussing an Iraqi child she met. It was at last year's Clinton Global Initiative.

...for open seats on the United Nations Security Council. The key race to watch is for the two open seats reserved for the Western Europe and Others Group (in UN-speak, WEOG). Three countries: Austria, Iceland and Turkey are vying for these two slots, making this the only competitive race for open, non-permanent seats on the council. (Yes, Iran is technically running against Japan. But that race won't exactly be tight.)

To win a seat on the council a country must receive the votes of two thirds of the General Assembly. Voting is done by secret ballot and Iceland, Austria and Turkey have been politicking hard. (Read this post on what happens if no clear winners emerge from the first round of voting.) Iceland is touting it's clean energy infrastructure as reason why it deserves a seat. (Iceland's president, though, admitted that its current financial crisis might hurt its chances). Turkey may have received a boost this week by reportedly gaining the support of Latin America. Austria, for its part, is throwing a party at the Metropolitan Club on the eve of the vote.

So far, there is not much action on Intrade. Predictions, anyone?

The diplomacy between the United States and North Korea -- which saw the former "delist" the latter as a state sponsor of terror in exchange for stronger assurances that Pyongyang was halting its nuclear program -- has already resulted in increased access for the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. From State Department spokesman Sean McCormack:

"I understand that the IAEA has resumed its work. It has started to reapply seals," he told reporters.

"I think, as simply put, the North Koreans have started the reversal of their reversal, so they're getting back to that baseline where they were very close to meeting their obligations under the second phase that we're in, in terms of disablement" of North Korea's nuclear complex, he said.

Just to be clear, a "reversal of [a] reversal" is a very good thing when it means dismantling, instead of developing, nuclear weapons.

(Image from flickr user nickwheeleroz under a Creative Commons license.)

James Lamond offers a good rundown of the recent diplomatic back-and-forth between Washington and Pyongyang. The moral of the story: diplomacy may produce imperfect results, but even these can be preferable to a stubborn refusal to negotiate with one's adversaries.

As I've mentioned before -- and as others have articulated in much greater depth -- ICC jurisdiction in Darfur can, if the Security Council authorizes it, be suspended for up to a year. The legal rationale cited to justify this option -- which is supported by countries like China and Russia that contend that pursuing justice through the ICC will impede efforts at peace -- is found in a section of the Rome Statute (the document that established the ICC) called Article 16. However, according to someone who helped negotiate the Rome Statute, this assumption may actually rest on shaky legal ground. Writing in Jurist, the University of Pittsburgh School of Law blog, David Scheffer, who led the U.S. delegation at the Rome Statute talks, explains that those designing the ICC ten years ago had a pretty clear idea of when Article 16 should and should not be invoked.

The original intent underpinning Article 16 was to grant the Security Council power to suspend investigation or prosecution of situations before either is launched if priorities of peace and security compelled a delay of international justice.

He adds:

The negotiators' focus was on situations referred by a State Party or the Prosecutor, not by the Security Council. It would have been very odd to argue we need Article 16 as a check on Security Council referrals.

The situation in Darfur, of course, was referred to the ICC by the Security Council -- on March 31, 2005, to be precise -- so calls to suspend ICC jurisdiction are most definitely not coming before the investigation was launched. This would seem to indicate that the type of scenario in Darfur today is not one for which Article 16 was intended to be used, and, indeed, Scheffer, looking back at the process of negotiation, says as much:

I do not recall any discussion whatsoever among my colleagues, anticipating the kind of scenario that confronts us today with President Bashir...It would have astonished my colleagues and me in 1997 and 1998 to be told that Article 16, which was conceived as a compromise procedure to use at the infancy of a situation before the ICC, would be applied some day to short-circuit a Security Council referral lodged more than three years ago...If that scenario had been presented to the negotiators more than a decade ago, Article 16 never would have been approved by the vast majority of governments.

The implications of Scheffer's testimony here leads to two possible conclusions. One is that it is simply not appropriate to invoke Article 16 to suspend ICC action against Bashir. The other is that, while the framers of the Rome Statute would never have envisioned using Article 16 in this manner, we are in a novel situation that they could not have anticipated and that, essentially, we are treading on new ground. This is undeniably true, but Article 16 was not meant to be bandied about lightly, and the intentions and insight of those who wrote the document should not be overlooked.

As you can see from the video below, Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly I. Churkin is none too pleased with his French counterparts. Here's the backstory: The presidents of France and Russia negotiated a ceasefire agreement last week which is known as the the "six point plan." The French prepared to circulate a draft resolution at the Security Council to formalize the plan, but scraped the idea amid concerns that Russia was not making good on promises to pull back its troops from Georgia.

Then on Tuesday, a draft written by France and backed by the United States and United Kingdom ratcheted up the pressure and called for "an immediate Russian withdrawal to pre-conflict lines, the return of Georgian forces to their bases and full compliance with an already agreed cease-fire." According to Reuters, "Western diplomats said the French draft had been submitted to the council in full knowledge that Russia was likely to reject it. The aim was 'to put the spotlight on the fact that the Russians have not withdrawn,' one Western envoy said."

Well, with the spotlight on him, Churkin lays into the French.

The NY Times has published a cool graphic displaying the history of the Olympic torch. What struck me immediately is the clear delineation between the torches made after 1990 and those made before. Have we just gotten more design conscious, or are the photos of the new torches just better?

Check out this description:

The logo is prominent on the handle!

In comparison, according to the accompanying audio, narrated by reporter Phil Patton, the Beijing torch is "a long, red thin item that resembles a rolled scroll and is decorated by swirling graphics, known as 'happy clouds,' said to reflect 'vivid distance' -- a very good description of how China is presenting itself to the world with this Olympics." was is designed by Lenovo.

The design process for the Vancouver torch has already begun. It's to be the "cleanest and greenest torch ever."

The International Court of Justice (sometimes called the World Court--and not to be confused with the International Criminal Court) is a forum where United Nations member states can hash out legal disputes in a neutral setting. The cases can range from the somewhat banal (like a dispute between Ukraine and Romania over Black Sea maritime rights) to the highly contentious (like Bosnia accusing Serbia of committing genocide in the 1990s).

One of the more contentious cases before the court is Mexico's action against the United States to stay the execution of Mexican nationals being held on death row. The case of one of these Mexican nationals went all the way to the Supreme Court this year. In 1993, Jose E. Medellin confessed to raping and killing two teenage girls in Texas and was sentenced to death. The catch, though, is that under the 1963 Vienna Convention, foreign nationals have the right to notify their consulate when detained. Medellin was not given that right, so Mexico sued the United States at the International Court of Justice on his and other nationals behalf.

In March, the Supreme Court ruled that Medellin's execution can go ahead, despite the World Court's ruling. (Technically, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bush Administration had no right to tell the state of Texas to re-open the case, per the ICJ's direction). Mexico, however, has not given up. The case is still pending at the ICJ and yesterday the court once again ordered the United States to stay the execution of five Mexican nationals on death row.

Julian Ku of Opinio Juris explains some of the technicalities of yesterday's ruling and makes a prediction of his own:

The U.S. Supreme Court will reject any efforts to enforce this ICJ order. Texas will also ignore it and go ahead and execute the said Mexican nationals. In this way, the U.S. will act in admitted violation of its international law obligations under Article 92 and the ICJ Statute, thus further exposing the ICJ's orders as having no domestic legal significance and of relatively little moral significance either. Congress has other things on its mind, and there won't even be a bill introduced to try to give effect to the ICJ order. The presidential candidates won't even be asked about their views on this order. But I suppose Mexico's lawyers have to try everything they can, and I can't fault them for pulling out all the stops, no matter how hopeless.

(Image: The Peace Palace in the Hague, seat of the ICJ. Credit: The Hague Justice Portal)

Yesterday was Le Quatorze Juillet, or Bastille Day as it is more commonly known here. That is the French national holiday, and what better way to ring in the Revolution's 219th birthday than the creation of a new international institution.

Yesterday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy celebrated the creation of the Mediterranean Union--an international group comprised of states surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. From the New York Times:

Leaders of 43 nations with nearly 800 million inhabitants inaugurated a "Union for the Mediterranean" on Sunday, meant to bring the northern and southern countries that ring the sea closer together through practical projects dealing with the environment, climate, transportation, immigration and policing.

But the meeting was also an opportunity for President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to exercise some highly public Middle East diplomacy by bringing President Bashar al-Assad of Syria out of isolation for an Élysée Palace meeting and by playing host to a session between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Somehow this whole project has managed to be off of my radar up until now, but it should prove an interesting study in whether or not the defined priorities can bring together unlikely allies.

The ability of Europeans to use soft power through practically-based international unions to slowly end conflict and spread democracy is exemplified by the success of the European Union, and I hope that this new Mediterranean Union will create the same turn-around in Middle Eastern diplomacy that the European Coal and Steel Community (which later became the EU, of course) created for European diplomacy.

For a government that has been so consistently obdurate -- and so unreservedly vocal -- in its refusal to comply with ICC indictments of two of its nationals, any openness toward the Court's work in Sudan understandably comes as a surprise:

The Sudanese government considered turning over two suspects accused of war crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a senior Sudanese official told Sudan Tribune today.

The official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter said that the leadership of the National Congress Party (NCP) "is getting very nervous over the upcoming announcement by the ICC of new suspects".

...

According to the official, [NCP foreign minister Ali] Karti made a presentation to the NCP leadership in which he outlined the "difficult position" the government will be in if senior officials are charged by the world court of war crimes.

Karti recommended that Haroun and Kushayb being extradited to the Hague "as a protection from further indictments" the official said.

Just three days ago, President Bashir issued this stern rebuke to the prospects of working with the ICC: "I swear to god, I swear to god, I swear to god we will not hand over any Sudanese to the International Court." Previously, Sudan's ambassador to the UN responded to the ICC indictments of his countrymen by asserting that the ICC Chief Prosecutor should himself "be tried in court."

Such aggressive bluster aside, though, the internal machinations of Sudan's ruling cabal seem to indicate that President Bashir and others may be moving toward the more "moderate" camp of Sudanese politicians. If this report is accurate, then it will represent a strong vindication of the Chief Prosecutor's strategy.

Some commentators and analysts have criticized the Chief Prosecutor's suggestion that "the entire state apparatus" of Sudan is guilty of war crimes, arguing that his threat to target government officials higher up the food chain may only increase the regime's stubbornness and impede peace-making and humanitarian efforts. The purpose of making such ambitious proclamations, though, should be analyzed not just as a resolutely ideological pursuit for justice -- which is of course a worthwhile goal -- but also as practical attempts to secure compliance on the no-less-worthy "smaller fish" that the Court is pursuing. If Sudanese leaders feel that giving up the already-indicted suspects will spare them from prosecution, then they will be more likely to comply with the ICC, and, hopefully, to decrease their obstruction of peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts.

The Sudanese government can deny cooperation with the ICC as fervently as it wants, but if this meeting within Sudan's inner ruling circle is any indication, then this prong of the ICC's strategy seems to be working.

(Photo credit: Antony Njuguna/Reuters)

In his Washington Post op-ed this week, Jackson Diehl contends that John McCain's proposal to create a "League of Nations" does not actually originate with McCain himself:

In fact, a league of democracies is not a new but a very old idea. In the past decade it has been promoted mostly by Democrats, including several of Barack Obama's top foreign policy advisers.

Diehl then cites a number of various liberal thinkers who have proposed a "concert," a "community," an "alliance," or any other sort of coalition of democratic nations. The problem, however, is that Diehl does not fully consider the nuances of each of these particular ideas, specifically failing to distinguish between initiatives meant to be an association of democracies under the umbrella of the UN and those that merely mouth adherence to the UN system, but are more likely than not intended to supplant the global body. Senator McCain's proposal, it seems, falls under the latter category, and this, for reasons we've articulated before, is a very unproductive idea.

More broadly, though, the origins of the idea are ultimately moot. Whether Republicans or Democrats have endorsed a version of the concept will not matter much in the eyes of the rest of the world--and it is the 6.3 billion non-Americans who will likely be most affected by the creation of a new global body. Simply because an idea enjoys supposed bipartisan support (which McCain's "League of Democracies" is far from able to claim) does not mean that it should be taken up by both parties. Any idea should be assessed based not on those who support it, but on the merits of the idea itself. And in the case of an idea with so much potential to harm the global order, both parties would be wiser to abandon it entirely.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says it is. South Africa, this month's president of the Security Council, however, doesn't think so. From the AP's Edith Lederer:

[South Africa's] U.N. Ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, insists that Zimbabwe is not on the agenda because the matter is being dealt with by the Southern African Development Community.

SADC leaders held a summit in Zambia that ended before dawn Sunday with a weak declaration that failed to criticize the absent Mugabe. The declaration called for the expeditious verification of election results in the presence of the candidates or their agents "within the rule of law," and urged "all parties to accept the results when they are announced."

South Africa has traditionally been criticized for not pushing Mugabe harder on reform, so punting the issue entirely to a regional organization seems a little suspicious. Kumalo, however, seems to recognize that such a pressing concern -- the stalemate could possibly lead to the end of the Mugabe's 28-year reign -- likely can't avoid mention at such a prominent Security Council meeting, particularly when the U.S., Britain, and France, have all indicated that they intend to discuss Zimbabwe.

'Those are huge countries,' Kumalo said. 'They can raise whatever they want to raise and all I have said was that we don't expect Zimbabwe to be discussed tomorrow (Wednesday). But they can raise anything.'

This is not just a power move by the "huge countries" of the West, of course. At a meeting dedicated to improving the UN's cooperation with regional African organizations, it seems only appropriate to discuss how the UN, AU, and SADC can work together to ensure that Zimbabwe's election results are determined freely, fairly, and transparently.

Continuing the saga of the seemingly perpetually impending peace deal between the Ugandan government and notorious rebel leader Joseph Kony, it appears that Kony is finally going to emerge from the bush to sign a deal tomorrow. Last week, Kony claimed a variety of reasons -- including a lack of toilets -- for delaying his appearance at the remote outpost on the Congo-Sudan border for the signing ceremony. Whether he shows tomorrow or not, one very important question remains unanswered: will the peace last? Reuters hits the nail on the head:

The LRA chief's final intentions remain far from clear.

No outsiders have seen him in months, and even if he breaks cover to sign the final agreement, his fighters have refused to lay down their arms until the ICC warrants are scrapped.

Uganda's government has said it will ask for the indictments to be lifted only after a final deal is reached. It was not clear whether that meant the rebels had to disarm first too.

Disarmament, of course, is always easier said that done, yet it remains the crux of any responsible peace plan. Justice and accountability are important attendant issues as well, as both we and Opinio Juris have emphasized, but the key -- in the immediate term, at least -- is a cessation of violence. Kony and the LRA seem committed enough to combating their ICC indictments -- even acquiring visas to lobby the UN in New York -- to engage in the peace process, but this is a rather tenuous -- not to mention somewhat ironic -- basis for a robust and long-standing accord.

For now, we're waiting for Kony.

Today's Christian Science Monitor asks the very pertinent question of what the 4,000-odd UN personnel in Kosovo are to do in a region whose status as an independent country is, to say the least, still up in the air. A compromise proposal negotiated last year by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari laid out the groundwork to transition from the UN's eight-year stewardship of the region to an EU-monitored independence, but the virulence of the Serbian and Russian reaction to Kosovo's declaration has trammeled any hopes of a smooth handover. From the Monitor:

Unable to recognize the newly declared state without a new mandate from headquarters in New York, workers on the ground are left wondering what exactly their job is -- and how long they'll be here. For now, any work on a planned European Union takeover of police and justice responsibilities is on hold.

"We have received no instructions to proceed with transition," says Alexander Ivanko, the UN's spokesman in Pristina.

EU leaders agreed to send an 1,800-strong police and judiciary mission to Kosovo to replace the UN administrative mission following Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence on Feb. 17, and it is preparing to deploy.

Until the EU actually deploys -- and Serbia is sending signals that it will continue to resist this deployment -- UN personnel remain guided by the mandate of the 1999 Security Council resolution that created the mission, even though the scope of that mandate is clearly out of synch with the tension of the current situation. Caught in this awkward bind, UN staff are unfairly feeling the squeeze of the international showdown over Kosovo's status; Serbs in Kosovo are suddenly supporting the UN as a bulwark against EU presence. To overcome this threat to its impartial presence, the UN Mission in Kosovo needs both clear definition from the Security Council and greater openness from Serbia and Russia to the EU's proposed role.

A new development threatens to derail the recent ceasefire between LRA rebels and the Ugandan government. The snag? Indicted war criminal Joseph Kony and two other LRA leaders -- perpetrators of gross human rights abuses, including mutilation, sexual abuse, and recruitment of child soldiers -- have refused to accept the deal unless ICC arrest warrants are dropped.

This dynamic brings into focus the extremely frustrating tension between securing peace and holding perpetrators of mass violence accountable for their crimes. To draw combatants to the negotiating table, mediators cannot exactly trumpet plans to arrest their leaders. However, whitewashing war crimes out of the urgency to enact a peace accord -- particularly one with groups that have a less-than-stellar history of abiding by ceasefires -- would severely undermine the legitimacy of the peace process, damage the entire notion of accountability, and jeopardize the prospects for post-conflict reconciliation.

In Uganda, the ICC is clearly justified in -- and should be commended for -- issuing indictments to the ringleaders of one of the world's most vicious -- and ideologically incoherent (Kony's only stated goal is the implementation of rule of law based on the Ten Commandments) -- rebel groups. Similarly, in Darfur -- where the ICC is operating for the first time without the consent of the host country -- the ICC's indictments of two senior government officials, Ahmad Haroun and Ali Kushayb, represents a key step in both establishing the staying power of the young international court and achieving a just peace in Sudan.

At the same time, however, the need for peace is paramount. A sustainable end to the long-running conflict in northern Uganda would be a welcome breath of fresh air to a region mired in turmoil. The roadblocks to peace in Darfur are even more substantial than those in Uganda, but there too, Sudanese officials' fear of being brought to The Hague is the primary impetus behind its rejection of the ICC and its stubborn reluctance to allow non-African peacekeepers on its soil.

In both Uganda and Darfur, justice should not be sacrificed for peace; the one simply cannot operate without the other. The ICC cannot be seen as capitulating to war criminals. That said, it would be tragic, for both the court and the people of northern Uganda, if this latest ceasefire were to unravel before it even had a chance to survive.

Since 1999, Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations as a semi-autonomous trustee state. Kosovo's "final status" -- independence from Serbia, integration into Serbia, or something in between -- has been one of the most vexing issues facing international diplomacy. On one side are ethnic Albanian Kosovars, who recently elected a prime minister running on the promise to bring independence to Kosovo. The United States and many European countries also support Kosovo's independence. On the other side are Kosovo's ethnic Serb minority population -- which largely boycotted the election, -- the Serbian government in Belgrade, and the Russians.

Accordingly, progress on Kosovo's final status is stalled. Last March, a compromise plan was put forward in which Kosovo would be granted independence, but under close international supervision and with robust protections for the ethnic-Serb minority. When that plan was sent to the Security Council, it was largely rejected by Russia, which asked for more time for negotiation. Today may very well be the last day of negotiations--and the Security Council is as deadlocked as ever.

What can we expect to happen? Last month, I asked United States Institute of Peace scholar Daniel Serwer. This is what he had to say.

Everyone is talking about the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, stating that American intelligence agencies do not believe Iran has an active nuclear weapons program. The NIE explains what might have dissuaded Iran from its nuclear weapons ambitions.

Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs. This, in turn, suggests that some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might--if perceived by Iran's leaders as credible--prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.

This story in today's Times, reporting the State Department's announcement that a "team of American experts had arrived at North Korea's sole functioning nuclear reactor and begun the work of disabling the facilities," reminded me that I've been wanting to write about John Bolton's recent destructive tactics with regard to North Korea and Iran. Bear with me.

If you haven't been following the Syrian-North Korea story, on September 6 the Israeli Air Force attacked a site inside the borders of Syria that "Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons." According to the same Times article:

Many details remain unclear, most notably how much progress the Syrians had made in construction before the Israelis struck, the role of any assistance provided by North Korea, and whether the Syrians could make a plausible case that the reactor was intended to produce electricity. In Washington and Israel, information about the raid has been wrapped in extraordinary secrecy and restricted to just a handful of officials, while the Israeli press has been prohibited from publishing information about the attack.

But "[t]he Bush administration was divided at the time about the wisdom of Israel's strike, American officials said, and some senior policy makers still regard the attack as premature." The facility was much farther from completion than the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq that Israel hit in 1981.

There has been subsequent debate (well-documented by ArmsControlWonk) about whether the reactor, if it was a reactor at all, was actually based on a North Korean design and, if so, how recently the Syrians received North Korean assistance. This is clearly an important debate, as it has severe consequences for the U.S. nuclear agreement with Pyongyang.

On October 27, the Times reported on a September 2003 photo that showed the Syrian site to be "well under way" and notes that "[a] senior American intelligence official said yesterday that American analysts had looked carefully at the site from its early days." If you'll recall, in 2003, John Bolton's "testimony on Capitol Hill was delayed after a dispute erupted in part over whether Syria was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon" and that was because "[s]ome intelligence officials said Mr. Bolton overstated the Syrian threat."

Given Bolton's certainty in 2003, when he was serving as Under Secretary for Arms Control, that the Syrians had a nuclear weapons program, that "American analysts" had then noted the partially constructed site that Israel would later bomb, and the logical assumption that Israel chose the most advanced site to destroy, it is extraordinarily unlikely that Bolton didn't know about the site in 2003. And, it is also unlikely, given his role in the subsequent seven years as Under Secretary for Arms Control until 2005 and then UN Ambassador, that he wasn't aware of what Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear-proliferation expert at the New America Foundation, said was surprisingly little progress that had been made at the site since 2003.

In other words, it's very likely, even if the North Koreans assisted in creating what may be a nuclear reactor in Syria prior to 2003, that the assistance ended then and should have no bearing on our current efforts in North Korea. It's also extremely likely that Bolton knows all of this.

Therefore it's unconscionable that he is currently lobbying against the Administration's agreement with North Korea to end its nuclear program by using the recent public revelation of (and subsequent confusion over) the Syrian site as ideological fodder.

The facts have not changed since 2003. Neither has new proof of North Korean involvement come to light. He's acting as an ideological opportunist.

This makes the fact that Sunday's Q&A with Bolton is titled "The Diplomat" (without the quotation marks) all the more absurd. Of course it doesn't stop there. In the interview "The Diplomat" says:

I think diplomatic approaches are not going to stop Iran from continuing to perfect its nuclear-weapons programs. Our options are very limited and not all that attractive, one being regime change in Tehran, the other being the use of force.

and

I don't think the world has a correct temperature. It goes up and it goes down. But even if there is global warming, the notion that you are going to reduce carbon emissions enough to have an impact on it is just -- serious people don't believe that's true.

In fact, I believe it's that serious people don't believe that our diplomatic work with Iran has reached the end of the road. This post has run on far too long, but listening to this interview with Barbara Slavin or watching this Frontline piece (both of which are excellent) should convince you that we have quite a bit of room to maneuver diplomatically with Iran. Even if it doesn't, what is the other option? Serious people also believe that attacking Iran or North Korea right now is not an option. Neither is it sane considering the clear progress in North Korea.

The New York Times runs a fascinating interview with Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku, who lets us know that in no uncertain term Kosovo will declare independence in the very near future.

Negotiations on Kosovo's "final status" -- semi-autonomy with Serbia, or as most Kosovar's desire, full independence -- are seemingly terminally stalled. And in August, the Kosovo government declared that if an agreement is not reached by December 10, Kosovo will declare independence unilaterally. Talks resumed today in Vienna, but according to Reuters, "there is no deal in sight." So in all likelihood Kosovo will declare independence next month.

Says Ceku:

"We have no more moral right to say we need more time. If Washington asks us to delay for a short time, we will wait. But if the date is much after December 10, we will say, 'let us go.' It is better to ask for an apology than for permission. The time for a decision has come."

The big question, of course, is how the United States, which in principle backs Kosovo's independence, and Russia, which has close ties to Serbia, will handle the diplomatic crisis that will ensue.

Obviously not getting into the spirit of United Nations Day, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad derided as "piles of paper" UN Security Council resolutions demanding Iranian halt its nuclear program.

"The so-called dossier at the Security Council is a pile of papers that have no value. They can add to those worthless papers everyday because it has no effect on the will of the Iranian nation," state television quoted Ahmadinejad as saying Wednesday.

Ahmidenijad has always positioned himself as the fly in the American ointment. But here, he's not just insulting the United States, but Europe, Russia, and China as well. China, in particular, has increasingly sought to use the Security Council as a locus of its foreign policy priorities so it would seem to me that they have an interest in defending the authority of the Security Council against attacks like this. To the extent that Ahmidenijad has sought to stoke divisions within the Security Council, I have to wonder if his bluster today is ultimately counterproductive.