Morning Brief, Tuesday, September 19

United Nations General Assembly Bush and Ahmadinejad will apparently be avoiding each other in the UN hallways but, says an unnamed U.S. official, "nobody's going to body block Ahmadinejad if he comes up with outstretched hand." Bush adds to the pressure on Sudan's government by naming a new special envoy: former USAID administrator Andrew Natsios. But China's ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

United Nations General Assembly

United Nations General Assembly

Bush and Ahmadinejad will apparently be avoiding each other in the UN hallways but, says an unnamed U.S. official, "nobody's going to body block Ahmadinejad if he comes up with outstretched hand."

Bush adds to the pressure on Sudan's government by naming a new special envoy: former USAID administrator Andrew Natsios. But China's foreign minister meets with Sudanese president Bashir and says he understands their opposition to UN peacekeepers.

On the eve of the Assembly meeting, Kofi Annan goes out on a limb and warns that Iraq is on the brink:

If current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the mist of full-scale civil war.

Pope on the Ropes?

The pontiff is dispatching emissaries to clarify his message as anger simmers and calls for a clearer apology grow louder.

In the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum contends that there have been quite enough apologies, thank you very much: 

…nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all.

Elsewhere

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson alights in China, where he'll strive to say enough to satisfy Congressional China hawks but not so much that he actually sours relations. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman made a plea for restraint:

We should follow the spirit of mutual respect and equal dialogue to further communicate on this issue and understand each other on this issue instead of interfering with the whole development of Chinese-U.S. economic and trade cooperation or politicizing the economic issues between our two countries.

Japan and Australia tire of waiting for the rest of the world to act on North Korea. They just slapped their own sanctions on the regime. China, in response, once again called for restraint.

Hungary experiences violent protests after a recording emerged in which the PM admitted lying about the economy. China called for restraint—no, just kidding.

 

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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