| Return of the Mediator
The Review spoke to Ambassador Dennis Ross in May 2001, a bare six months after he was a central player in the US Clinton Administration’s last-ditch attempt to create an Israeli-Palestinian peace in December 2000. At the time, he remained the unflappable diplomat’s diplomat, controlled and punctilious in speech. But amid the carefully parsed phrases he was also clearly developing and exploring in his own mind what went wrong in the 12 years of efforts which he devoted to Middle East peacemaking on behalf of two American administrations. Ross was later to publish many of his conclusions in his groundbreaking memoir, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, which remains the best overall work on the history of the Oslo peace process available to this day.
Yanukovych will agree with any CC verdict
The PM of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych hopes that the Constitutional Court of Ukraine will soon bring verdict concerning the Presidents decree on the VRU dissolution. He told in Strasburg after the meeting with the PACE President. Yanukovych noted that he will accept any verdict of the CCU. We will admit any CCU decision as legal, he said. According to Yanukovych, political processes in Ukraine are being held within democratic principles. He is convinced that the way out of this situation will be negotiations based on the Constitution. Today the CCU starts considering case on Presidents decree of April 2, 2007 On early parliament dissolution. .
Arbitration was unlikely to end fight, Times says
The Seattle Times Co. said Wednesday it decided to settle its four-year legal fight with The Hearst Corp. in part because it was "fairly certain" the costly struggle would have dragged on even after a climactic binding-arbitration trial decided the matter. The statement raised another question: Who would have pressed the fight? "We really don't want to get into that," Times spokeswoman Jill Mackie said. "We want to focus on the future." .
Minnesota judge to handle 'water war' mediation
The new federal judge overseeing the tri-state water war will decide how to handle an on-going, closed-door mediation to divide the waters of the Chattahoochee River. According to a status report filed Friday in the U.S. District Court of Northern Alabama, the three states have agreed to let U.S. District Judge Paul A. Magnuson decide what to do about the mediation that started last April. Earlier this month, lawsuits filed by Georgia, Alabama and Florida were bundled into one case and handed over to Magnuson, a neutral judge from Minnesota with experience in water litigation. The mediation was ordered by a federal district judge in Alabama in hopes the three states could agree on how to share the water without further litigation. Several deadlines passed without an agreement, including one Friday.
The US breaks out of its Middle Eastern isolation
For the past few years, the United States has been in a self-imposed diplomatic isolation in the Middle East. But two paths out of that wilderness are becoming visible, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is moving cautiously down each one. The first path leads toward a regional solution to the nightmare problem of Iraq. Rice will take a crucial step next month when she meets with foreign ministers of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria. This regional conference, which will take place May 3-4 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, follows a preliminary meeting last month in Baghdad that ended the US diplomatic quarantine of Iran and Syria.As she prepares for this "Iraq neighbors" meeting, Rice has been gathering advice from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, among others.
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