Morning Brief, Monday, April 23

Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images News

Middle East

Remember that wall the U.S. military was having built around a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad? It was roundly condemned last week by Iraqi politicians, including President Nuri al-Maliki, but it’s actually one of at least ten “gated communities” in the works.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is eager to meet with her Iranian counterpart during a regional conference to be held next week in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt.

The Kurds are developing extensive ties to the U.S. government, independent of Iraq.

Thousands of Israeli settlers plan to march Tuesday on Homesh, one of two West Bank settlements that were dismantled in 2005 by the Israeli government at great political cost.

Europe 

Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Ségolène Royal will square off on May 6 to determine France’s next president. Turnout in Sunday’s first-round runoff was high at over 84 percent.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is in Moscow to talk the Russians into cooperating over a planned U.S. missile shield in Europe.

Asia 

U.S. intelligence agencies knew that China was going to test an anti-satellite weapon in January, yet the U.S. government chose to remain silent.

Pakistani troops killed six Lashkar-e-Islam militants in a shootout in Khyber Agency, a tribal area southwest of Peshawar. And Pakistan’s prime minister declared that President Pervez Musharraf will be comfortably reelected by the parliament. 

India, meanwhile, launched its first commercial rocket. 

Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew has some advice for the United States about Asia.

Elsewhere 

Nigerian opposition candidates and monitoring groups harshly criticized the conduct of Saturday’s messy presidential election, citing vote-rigging in favor of the ruling party and calling for a new vote. Results are due “later.” All this chaos is bad for business.

An estimated 250 people have been killed in fighting in Somalia over the last six days between the Ethiopian military and Islamist insurgents.

Former high-level staff at the World Bank are calling on Bank President Paul Wolfowitz to resign.

A U.S. group of heavy hitters called for abandoning multilateral tariff-reduction efforts like the Doha round in favor of a “coalition of the willing” approach to free trade.