Foreign & Security Policy

The EU should readjust its relations with Russia. In this it must bear in mind that Moscow no longer rules out military confrontations as a means of pursuing its interests. Accordingly the EU has to more clearly define its external policies. Should a country like Georgia, which has strategic importance for the West, be left to a Russian sphere of influence?

The international community has to put pressure on Russian, the Georgian and South Ossetian parties to de-escalate the situation as soon as possible. Only this could avoid the recurrence of the bloody events of early 1990s in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The three decades of conflict in Afghanistan have taken the lives of more than a million people and the country and its people have suffered the gravest violations of human rights.

Two journalists who participated in a media workshop in September/October 2005, organized by the Lebanese American University and supported by the Beirut office of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, were murdered within less than a year by gunmen in the Northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Both Sarwa Abdul-Wahab and Sahar Hussein Ali Al-Haydari were passionate journalists who lived and died to recount their country’s agonizing story.

This dossier contains summaries of regional roundtable discussions and background information on international approaches to the crisis over the Iranian nuclear programme.

The latest Arab Summit, held in the Syrian capital Damascus on March 29 and 30, 2008, was preceded and accompanied by intense diplomatic wrangling and threats of a boycott, all geared to pressure the Syrian hosts to change their position towards the political crisis in Lebanon. The Syrian analyst Sami Moubayed provides a political appraisal of this summit.

Large numbers of Iraqi live in neighbouring countries, especially Syria and Jordan. This report attempts to give an overview of the origin and magnitude of the crisis, probes the likelihood of substantial numbers of refugees returning in the near future, and assesses the responsibility of international actors towards the refugees.

On 18 February 2008, the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung hosted a dinner discussion with Knesset member Yossi Beilin in Berlin which was attended by politicians, journalists, diplomats, and academics. According to Beilin, the real danger of an Iranian nuclear weapons capability will be the shifting balance of power in the Middle East rather than an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel.

German fractions in the debate about military deployment of international and German troops always pretend to care about the Afghans´opinion. In fact they seem to ignore their real interests. A study of the Berlins Free University´s political science department comes to similar conclusions.

He who wishes to avoid the fatal alternative: “to bomb or to accept”, must therefore focus on a combination of overtures and pressure when dealing with Iran.