All Blog Posts from World Watch

Pakistani officials reacted angrily Thursday night to U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s remarks earlier in the day in which she said, she found it "hard to believe" that no one in Pakistan’s government, including the country’s "military security establishment," knew where al Qaeda leaders were hiding.

Left: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is escorted by Pakistani Rangers at the Iqbal Memorial in Lahore, Pakistan, Oct. 29, 2009. Clinton is on a three-day state visit to Pakistan.

The controversy could overshadow Clinton’s first visit to the country as Secretary of State, especially as her remarks will be seen questioning the sincerity of the influential military, Pakistani officials said.

Read full post…

Two journalists who were held for nearly five months in a North Korean prison gave a first-hand account of their arrest and detention that was published Tuesday evening by the Los Angeles Times and Current TV.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who work for Current TV, describe their attempt to cross the frozen Tuman River in order to document the route used by human traffickers who smuggle North Koreans over the border to China. The journalists followed a guide in the area, but saw no indications of an international border, such as a fence or barbed wire.

"We didn't spend more than a minute on North Korean soil before turning back, but it is a minute we deeply regret," Ling and Lee wrote. "To this day, we still don't know if we were lured into a trap. In retrospect, the guide behaved oddly, changing our starting point on the river at the last moment and donning a Chinese police overcoat for the crossing, measures we assumed were security precautions. But it was ultimately our decision to follow him, and we continue to pay for that decision today with dark memories of our captivity."

Ling and Lee said that they when they became uncomfortable about where they were, they turned around to head back to China. When they saw North Korean soldiers following them, they instinctively ran.

Read full post…

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il issued a "special pardon" today for two jailed American journalists, following talks with former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Read full post…

CBS News security analyst Juan Zarate says North Korea stands to gain just as much as America by the surprise visit of former President Bill Clinton.

Clinton's arrival comes amid a steadily worsening standoff between Washington and Pyongyang over the communist regime's refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons program, but his primary objective is to bring home two American journalists serving jail time in the isolated country.

Zarate told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith that "both sides are looking to win" with Clinton's entry into the fray.

Read full post…

With two American journalists' freedom at stake, former President Bill Clinton has arrived in Pyongyang to talk to the North Koreans. Laura Ling and Euna Lee were arrested by North Korean authorities near the border with China and were sentenced to 12 years in a prison camp for illegal entry and "hostile" acts.

Thus far, negotiations with Kim Jong Il's regime have lead North Korea to ban International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, walk away from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and restart its nuclear testing — even during the days of direct engagement under the Clinton Administration.

Hillary's tricky mandate for Bill: Return with the American journalists and reduce tension between the two countries, without compromising the Obama administration's commitment to the six-party talks. No small task.

Read full post…

Cuban President Raul Castro says he remains ready to talk about everything and anything with the United States but that Cuba’s political system was not on the negotiating table. Castro’s remarks came during a speech to the closing session of the Cuban parliament Saturday afternoon carried on national television.

He specified that discussion meant talking about issues in the United States as well as in Cuba. After affirming that there have been no cases of torture in Cuba since rebel forces led by his older brother Fidel Castro drove Fulgencio Batista from power in 1959, he corrected himself to note that there had been torture in the US Guantanamo Naval base—still considered an integral part of Cuba by the Castro government—and that he was willing to discuss that with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He said the international demand for the closing of the prison in Guantanamo should be heeded but that Washington should not stop there. Guantanamo, Raul Castro stressed, should be returned "unconditionally" to Cuba.

Castro also said that those who are reportedly waiting for the "biological solution" to the Cuba issue - the death of its aging leadership—were mistaken to think it would provoke changes in the country’s socialist system. Instead, he claimed, the younger generations were as committed as the revolution’s historic leaders to maintaining their socio-political system. However, Castro noted at various points in his address that economic changes would have to be made to cope with the current crisis and those changes would include the elimination of the dual currency system imposed in the 1990s when the collapse of Cuba’s socialist allies brought the island’s economy to a virtual standstill.

The ground under U.S. policy toward Cuba took a significant shift today.

Mauricio Funes was inaugurated as President of El Salvador and, as announced previously, he immediately restored diplomatic relations with Havana. That left Washington as the odd man out, the only country in the Americas without normal relations with its Caribbean neighbor and long-time thorn in its side.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in San Salvador for Funes' assumption of power, was nevertheless very upbeat in remarks to the press. She described the Obama administration's May 22 offer to resume bilateral migration talks with Cuba as "part of our effort to forge a new way forward on Cuba that advances the interests of the United States, the Cuban people and our entire hemisphere," adding that the Administration was "very pleased" with the Cuba's acceptance of the offer.

Read full post…

When I first saw the images of bloodied bodies and heard the tales of severed heads coming out of Mexico, I was riveted. It reminded me of Iraq, the shock value of chopping off heads and leaving the bodies on display, as powerful in Mexico as it was on the streets of Baghdad or Mosul or Falluja.

But when I went to Mexico, what I discovered was even more disturbing, as unsettling as the savage nature of the violence is to anyone.

Read full post…

The White House is gearing up to reveal its Afghan policy by the end of the week.

There won't be any new name for the White House's new Afghan strategy – one official here at the Pentagon told me they tried but it really isn't anything new – "just more of the same of what we're already doing."

American troop presence could go as high as 70,000 – that's 10,000 more than currently planned. That means more U.S. troops training Afghan troops, more patrols to provide more daily security for ordinary Afghans, and more social and civil outreach by NATO and the U.S. State Department.

Read full post…

Lost amid the hubbub of St. Patrick's Day cheer at the White House Tuesday was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's not-so-subtle request for European help with Guantanamo detainees during her meeting with Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin yesterday.

Read full post…