New website to track $30 billion in climate aid

Source: Reuters | by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

A website launched on Friday will help track whether rich countries are keeping a pledge to come up with $30 billion in climate aid for the poor, seen by the U.N. as a “golden key” to progress in talks on global warming.

Tony Blair sees ‘moment of opportunity’ for Middle East peace

Source: Voice of America | By Cindy Saine

Former British Prime Minister and special Middle East envoy Tony Blair spoke to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington Thursday about the prospects for peace in the region. Mr. Blair spoke just days ahead of a closely-watched visit to the White House Monday by new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

G-20 maps road for chaos

Source: Asia Times | By Hossein Askari and Noureddine Krichene*

As the leaders of the Group of 20 (G-20) countries gather in London this week to discuss their latest views on how to get out of the world financial crisis, a damning picture of the progress likely this week emerges from the pledges made by G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors at their own meeting in London on March 14. Then, the promise was that they would act to restore global growth and support lending and reforms to strengthen the global financial system.

US and China kill British proposal for UN Security Council reform

Source: The Washington Post | By Colum Lynch

Having invited the foreign ministers of the four other permanent Security Council nations to London to discuss enlarging the 15-nation council, Britain on Monday called off the Wednesday meeting after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and China’s foreign minister declined to attend, according to key U.N. members.

With Obama and Clinton, a new era for US foreign policy

Source: The New York Times | By David Stout

President-elect Barack Obama called for “a new dawn of American leadership” on Monday as he formally introduced his national security team, led by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as his nominee for secretary of state.

U.N. American agenda after Bush

Source: National Review Online | by Anne Bayefsky

Nobody is happier about the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States than the folks at the United Nations. It is as if they finally discovered kryptonite, and Superman will soon be disabled.

What President Obama inherits…

Source: Good Magazine on YouTube

A world in crisis and foreign policy challenges await President Obama

Source: Reuters | By Caren Bohan

Newly-elected U.S. president Barack Obama will face a daunting array of foreign policy challenges, from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the global financial crisis to the need to shore up the country’s frayed international image.