Morning Coffee - 19 October 2009

Welcome to Morning Coffee, brought to you by Lindsay Beyerstein with additional links from the UN Dispatch team. Every morning we survey foreign affairs and foreign policy news so you don't have to. We begin with the "Starting Five" items of the day -- these may not always appear on A-1, but they *are* the kinds of stories that will be buzzing in foreign capitals, the UN and wherever foreign policy minds roam.
Starting Five
HOLD UP! - President Obama has asked four countries to delay introducing a UN resolution to take nuclear weapons to a lower alert level. Observers speculate that the Obama administration wants to avoid voting against the resolution. On the campaign trail, Obama pledged to work with Russia to scale back nuclear readiness. Link
MEXICAN OFFICIAL EXPOSES MILITARY, SEEKS U.S. ASYLUM - A Mexican human rights official was taken into U.S. custody last week after exposing human rights abuses by the military. Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson was detained by U.S. customs on Thursday after announcing that he had proof of over 170 human rights abuses in his home state of Chihuahua. In a bizarre twist, his lawyer says that his client was not seeking political asylum when officials recognized him at a border crossing. "He didn't want political asylum," Spector said, "He wants to continue working for the Human Rights Commission." Link
KARZAI CRITICIZES UN PROBE - Surprise: Afghan President Hamid Karzai is highly critical of the UN election commission that blames Karzai's side for massive election fraud. He claims that the commission used the wrong formula to calculate the final totals. The Electoral Complaints Commission is set to announce today whether there will be a runoff election between Karzai and second-place finisher Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. Karzai needs at least 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff. Link
TERROR ATTACK KILLS IRANIANS - Two suicide bombings in southeast Iran killed 29 people including several members of the elite revolutionary guard. The attacks coincided with high-level meetings between members of the guard and tribal elders. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but many suspect Jundallah, a militant Sunni group that has previously resorted to suicide attacks. Link
THE PEOPLE'S COURT MEETS CANDID CAMERA - In Italy, life imitates reality TV. A television station owned by Italian president Silvio Berlusconi sparked controversy by secretly taping a judge who ruled against him in a bribery case. Reporters from Berlusconi's Channel 5 ran hidden camera footage of the judge walking around and visiting the barber. The voiceover told viewers that the judge seemed nervous, chainsmoking and wearing "strange" turquoise socks. Link
Provocateurs
Eric Schmitt in NEW YORK TIMES
"The Taliban in Afghanistan are running a sophisticated financial network to pay for their insurgent operations, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from the illicit drug trade, kidnappings, extortion and foreign donations that American officials say they are struggling to cut off. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have imposed an elaborate system to tax the cultivation, processing and shipment of opium, as well as other crops like wheat grown in the territory they control, American and Afghan officials say. In the Middle East, Taliban leaders have sent fund-raisers to Arab countries to keep the insurgency’s coffers brimming with cash. "
Angela Castellanos in RH REALITY CHECK
"In Chile, women’s rights are perhaps even more contested than in other countries in Latin America. It is the only country in the region where the law grants men the right to “manage the patrimony” of their marriage. It was the last country in the region to legalize divorce. And it is one of the few countries in the world where therapeutic abortion is criminalized. On April 4th 2008, the Constitutional Court of Chile banned free distribution of the emergency contraceptive (EC) pill in the public health system. "
Kaveh Afrasiabi in WORLD POLITICS REVIEW
"On Oct. 19, at a multilateral meeting in Vienna focused on nuclear transparency, U.S. and Iranian representatives will meet for the second time in a month in the hopes of working out the modality by which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will inspect Iran's newly revealed enrichment facility known as Fardo, near the holy city of Qom. This particular issue is relatively straightforward, and the negotiations will likely result in the Fardo facility being placed under the IAEA's regular regime of inspections, already firmly in place with respect to Iran's other nuclear facilities. But it is nonetheless tied in with the more complicated issue of Iran's request for assistance with its medical research reactor in Tehran, which will run out of nuclear fuel by the end of 2010. The request was initially floated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his recent tour of the United Nations in New York."
Water Cooler

Last week, Foreign Policy published a blog post by former Bush USAID official Jose R. Cardenas arguing that negotiations to restore Honduran president Mel Zelaya to power were an affront to democracy. Mr. Cardenas is entitled to his opinion, however, he failed to disclose that he is a lobbyist for one of the major backers of the coup, the Asociacion Hondurena de Maquiladores, a coalition of pro-coup factory owners.


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