All Blog Posts from World Watch

This story was filed by CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer in Vienna.

---

Senior diplomats from the U.S., Iran, France and Russia missed a noon deadline Tuesday to start talks aimed at hammering out a historic deal on Iran's uranium stockpile.

At first, the negotiations at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria seemed to hold real promise. After the introductory round of talks late Monday, a senior U.S. official said the Iranians had "engaged constructively".

Officials said Iran forced Tuesday's delay by suddenly announcing that France should be excluded from the talks — apparently the latest twist in a long-running business dispute.

Diplomats are now wondering whether Iran's last-minute objections to France's presence at the table in Vienna are in fact a thinly disguised attempt to derail the whole process.

Read full post…

In an unprecedented effort to deliver a message to Washington, North Korea's Ambassador to the U.N., Sin Son Ho, initiated a call to CBS News and its affiliate, Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), to talk about denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

What followed was a clear message, from North Korea's viewpoint, about what has derailed negotiations with the government of Kim Jong Il: The United States.

"We are not against the dialogue," said Ambassador Sin. "We are not against any negotiations for the issues of common concern," but the failure of these talks, he added, "is not because of us."

CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk reports that, according to Ambassador Sin, Pyongyang is prepared to negotiate directly with Washington about Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program: "We are ready, any time," he said.

But the Obama administration has stuck to the framework of the six-party talks. Those negotiations, involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the U.S., have been unhinged several times, with Pyongyang returning to the development of its nuclear program and the testing of ballistic missiles.

For North Korea, those negotiations will not restart.

"We have already made our position very clear," Ambassador Sin told CBS. "The six-party talks are gone forever. We will never participate in the six-party talks again. Never again."

Read full post…

Hoping to revive the cooperative spirit of the early 1990s, Americans are coming to Russia to end a decade of mistrust.

President Barack Obama is expected in Moscow next week to discuss a wide range of issues with his counterpart Dmitry Medvedev and personally press the "reset" button on U.S.-Russia relations.

Hopes for a breakthrough are running high. Both sides have been unhappy about how low relations sank during the Putin-Bush era. Now, the two young presidents need to prove that cooperation on global issues is more than just words.

"Russia could be a partner, a country that would collaborate and make for better prospects for Obama's policies in both places, in Afghanistan and Iran," Dmitry Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center told CBS News. "Again, there is nothing more serious, nothing more important at this point for the administration than this."

Read full post…

Some Taliban leaders are initiating third-party talks that could lay the groundwork for progress between the U.S. and Afghan governments and the Taliban insurgents. In the video below, Charles Sennott of international news site GlobalPost.com reports on how moderate Taliban leaders are engaged in shuttle negotiations, and have been in contact with Mullah Mohammad Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban.

An agreement would call for a halt of Taliban attacks on schools and on those engaged in reconstruction projects, and the Afghan government would agree to release detainees and halt U.S. military attacks on civilians. Watch the video:

Read full post…

China is walking through this gingerly, like a man whose pockets are loaded up with fragile eggs. The Foreign Ministry spokesman says China is "resolutely opposed" to the North's nuclear weapons program.

And China has been leading the effort at negotiations primarily through the six party talks, involving China, Russia, U.S., Japan and South and North Korea.

But North Korea has now walked away from the talks and China is having a hard time finding an answer to this latest saber rattling.

Beijing is trapped by its own insistence — usually directed at the United States — that one country has no right to interfere in the affairs of another.

Read full post…

Syria's foreign minister said on Monday his country would not go back to peace talks with Israel unless it spells out it would relinquish the Golan Heights and urged the United States to translate its words into actions on the ground.

“We will not return to unproductive talks. When we decide to do so, this means that we will be going in accordance with internationally-recognized bases and formulas, on the basis of the total liberation of the Golan to the 4th of June 1967 borderline,” Walid al-Mouallem told a news conference at the end of a three-day meeting of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference in the Syrian capital.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday after meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington that he was ready to resume the talks with Syria immediately, but indicated he would not make any commitments on land first.

Read full post…

Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said on Monday his country may consider restarting indirect peace talks with Tel Aviv if the Jewish state's next prime minister — to be determined by an election next week — seeks a "comprehensive peace deal."

Read full post…