Iran
The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said Monday night that the international talks on the Iranian nuclear program do “not fill me with confidence,” reiterating his hard-line position about all options — including an independent Israeli attack — remaining on the table, despite mounting criticism from the security establishment here and a growing sense abroad that a diplomatic solution may be possible. – New York Times
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his reactionary agenda tend to be unpopular among the urban middle classes, but he is enjoying a rare surge of support even in those inhospitable quarters in the growing dispute with Iran’s Persian Gulf neighbors — one that he touched off by making a surprise visit to the island last month, a first by an Iranian president. – New York Times
A Koran burning conducted by Terry Jones, the inflammatory pastor from Florida, has angered Iranian politicians, with one calling for Jones’s execution. – New York Times
As hundreds of thousands of bookworms converge on this capital, Iranian writers are pleading with the government to loosen its grip and allow a banned publisher into the Tehran International Book Fair. – LA Times’ World Now
Syria
Syria’s official media reported a series of attacks against government buildings on Monday, including two bombings that targeted two security headquarters in the northern city of Idlib and a small rocket assault on the Central Bank in downtown Damascus. – New York Times
Suicide blasts on Monday and a series of other bombings across Syria have renewed concerns that unrest there is giving extremist Islamist groups room to grow, a scenario Western officials fear will make it more difficult to contain the crisis. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Mr Dimashki’s claim chimes with anecdotal evidence that Syrians have been able to get around some of the punitive financial action against them through means ranging from creative importing practices to sourcing more goods from non-hostile countries such as China. It is part of a murky broader picture suggesting that while some sanctions are hurting the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the president, and its alleged associates, they are also hurting ordinary Syrians without spurring opposition to the government. – Financial Times
Syrian rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad say they are shifting tactics towards homemade bombs, hoping to even the odds between their outgunned forces and his powerful army. – Reuters
Josh Rogin reports: There is no formal planning going on inside NATO to prepare for defending Turkey from the violence spilling over from Syria, even though Turkey is considering whether to formally invoke NATO’s chapters on collective defense, a top Obama administration official said Monday. – The Cable
Egypt
Egypt enters the last stage of its first democratic presidential race on Monday with its field narrowing to a two-horse race between the urbane former head of the Arab League and a charismatic Islamist medic jailed for years under Hosni Mubarak. – Reuters
Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh was jailed by Hosni Mubarak but has emerged as a front-runner for his old job as president of Egypt, staking claim to the political centre in this nascent democracy with a moderate Islamist platform that has found broad appeal. – Reuters
The 75-year-old former head of the Arab League has vowed to serve just one four-year term if elected Egypt’s president, but Amr Moussa’s Islamist rivals, who see him as a relic from Hosni Mubarak’s era, say he doesn’t even deserve that long. – Reuters
Editorial: Though Egypt has scheduled a two-round presidential election for this month and next, it remains unclear whether a promised transition to democratic civilian rule by July 1 will take place. One thing is certain: The Obama administration has lost much of its leverage over the Egyptian military — and its credibility with Egyptian democrats. – Washington Post
Gulf States
A Bahraini court on Monday ordered retrials for a political activist who has been on a hunger strike for nearly three months and 20 others who were convicted by a military tribunal for their participation in protests last year against Bahrain’s ruling monarchy. – New York Times
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has said Gulf states are ploughing ahead with plans for closer political union, amid Arab fears of the threat from neighbouring Iran. – Financial Times
Analysis: Distrust among Sunni Gulf Arab states has scuppered the installation of a joint missile shield which Washington has long urged as the best means of defense against any strike by Iran. – Reuters
North Africa
Austrian officials are investigating the mysterious drowning of Shukri Ghanem, Libya’s former oil minister, after his body was found floating early Sunday in the Danube River in Vienna. – Wall Street Journal
Libya has honored a deadline to hand in a detailed plan on the destruction of its aging stockpile of mustard gas, left from the Gahdafi regime, the world’s chemical weapons watchdog said April 30. – AFP
Morocco’s justice minister said he would not stop the trial of an outspoken rapper charged with insulting the authorities in one of his songs, despite an outcry from rights campaigners who say the case is an attack on freedom of expression. – Reuters
Yemen
Yemen said it killed 12 militants linked to al Qaeda in the country’s restive south on Monday, while insurgents reported killing seven soldiers in the same battle. – Reuters
Iraq
Iraq’s fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi and some of his bodyguards have been charged with murdering six judges and a series of other killings, a judiciary spokesman said on Monday. – Reuters
Israel
In exchange for $680 million for Israel’s Iron Dome short-range rocket defense system, Washington wants “appropriate rights” to the Israeli-developed technology and U.S.-based coproduction of the system’s high-speed intercepting missiles. – Defense News
Israeli military leaders plan to greatly expand the nation’s elite commando force to accommodate intensifying demand for stealthy, surgical, strategic missions far from Israel’s borders. – Defense News
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would win an election if it were held now, an opinion poll showed on Monday as he weighs strategy towards Iran’s nuclear program and speculation grows that he will seek a renewed public mandate. – Reuters
Jonathan Schanzer writes: Obama is missing an opportunity to promote positive change in a government over which the United States has much more leverage: Mahmoud Abbas’s increasingly repressive fiefdom in the West Bank. On the same day as the White House issued its executive order, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported an explosive story detailing how Palestinian officials have “quietly instructed Internet providers to block access to news websites whose reporting is critical of President Mahmoud Abbas.” – Foreign Policy
China
The White House scolded China on its human-rights record on Monday as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prepared to depart for Beijing on a mission that holds the potential to redefine the Obama administration’s relations with China. – Wall Street Journal
Activist Chen Guangcheng’s apparent unwillingness to leave China could complicate any negotiations between Washington and Beijing over his fate, bringing the two sides into territory that has been largely uncharted in previous bids by Chinese dissidents seeking U.S. help. – Wall Street Journal
The fate of exiled Chinese dissidents like Xu could prove instructive for Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer who escaped effective house arrest last week and is believed to have taken refuge in a U.S. Embassy building in Beijing. Though Chen has told friends he wants to remain in China, political asylum in the United States seems a likely outcome, China experts say. – Washington Post
Though [Bo’s] son, 24, is known to lead a lavish lifestyle, many of the details in the public account of that evening turned out to be incorrect, according to interviews with the son; Abby Huntsman Livingston, a daughter of the ambassador, Jon M. Huntsman Jr.; and three others present at the dinner. – New York Times
A woman at the centre of China’s biggest political scandal in two decades, wife of deposed political leader Bo Xilai, had once dressed as a military commander last year in a bizarre episode that shines new light on the collapse of Bo’s inner circle. – Reuters
U.S. and Chinese officials are ironing out a deal to secure American asylum for a blind Chinese legal activist who fled house arrest, and an agreement is likely before Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrives this week, a U.S. rights campaigner said Monday. – Associated Press
China’s growing capabilities in space could undercut any U.S. military response if Beijing resorted to force to bring self-ruled Taiwan into its fold, a study released April 27 by a congressionally mandated U.S. commission said. – Reuters
FPI Executive Director Jamie Fly writes: China’s future lies in the activism of those like Chen, not the sclerotic leaders with whom the Obama administration is so desperate to curry favor this week at the Strategic and Economic Dialogue. By showing a little passion for the cause and standing up for Chen’s rights, President Obama can take a small step toward beginning to make right three years of what has been a failed democracy and human-rights policy. – The Corner
FPI Director of Democracy and Human Rights Ellen Bork writes: The U.S. cannot separate principle from its China policies. The role that the U.S. is being asked to play in the protection of Chinese human rights activists conveys both a compliment and an obligation. The way the administration handles this case will have resounding implications for China’s human rights community. It has the potential to help them reverse the dynamic of deterioration in human rights of the past several years. – Foreign Policy Initiative
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) writes: America’s reputation as a beacon of freedom — the “last best hope of man on Earth” hangs in the balance. The Obama administration must rise to the occasion and allow the U.S. Embassy in China to fulfill its obligation as an island of freedom in a sea of repression. – Foreign Policy
Yang Jianli writes: Simply put, it is the Chinese political system that creates the economic system and trade imbalances the dialogue seeks to redress. That is the source of the export colossus U.S. companies and workers now engage on unequal terms. Repair the rights deficit, and you begin to repair the trade deficit, the trust deficit, the moral deficit and the political deficit. The question is: Will U.S. leaders raise the issue at the table next week and stand up for people like Chen Guangcheng? – Washington Post
Sophie Richardson writes: Segments of Chinese society have had enough of officialdom’s abusive, predatory behavior, and they see the prospect for change in Bo’s fall and in Chen’s persistent activism. At the end of the day, the fate of these men may not rest in U.S. hands. But there is real merit in foreign governments demonstrating unequivocally that their concern for relations with the government are matched by their concern for growing demands inside China for justice and the rule of law. – Foreign Policy
South Asia
More than three years after Pakistani militants sailed into Mumbai and launched a series of attacks that killed 166 people, India is still struggling to put in place counter-terror measures that would help authorities prevent and respond to future threats. – Washington Post
Three children were killed and three wounded in cross-fire on Monday when Taliban insurgents attacked a team of American soldiers in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said. – New York Times
Pakistani officials are considering pulling out of NATO’s annual summit in Chicago next month in protest over Sunday’s U.S airstrike along the country’s border with Afghanistan. – DEFCON Hill
Pakistani officials on Monday condemned the U.S. for carrying out its first drone strike in the country since parliament demanded they end two weeks ago but qualified that it should be seen in light of the presence of Islamist militants on Pakistani soil. – Associated Press
The military is under-reporting the number of times that Afghan soldiers and police open fire on American and other foreign troops. – Associated Press
Dov Zakheim writes: If the United States truly hopes for a cooperative relationship with Pakistan, it must do all it can to shed the light of modern education on the darker corners of that country’s psyche. Nothing less will do, and no action at all would constitute a tragedy, for Pakistan, for the entire region, and for the United States as well. – Shadow Government
K. Anis Ahmed writes: Bangladeshi politicians are too often willing to accept any politically expedient measure—even if patently unethical or unlawful—when in power. They forget that every innovation in misrule may come back to haunt them in due course. If Bangladesh is to remain a democratic country, then extrajudicial killings and disappearances must cease immediately. – Wall Street Journal Asia (subscription required)
East Asia
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said there was a “great possibility” that North Korea would follow its recent rocket launch with a nuclear test in the near future in what would be a duplication of prior moves. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
President Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, both facing electoral pressures at home, steered clear of controversial trade and military announcements during a joint press conference Monday, focusing instead on their long-term partnership. – DEFCON Hill
President Barack Obama voiced support on Monday for Japan joining talks with the United States and eight other countries on a free trade agreement in the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region, but said no final decision had been made. – Reuters
South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak on April 30 vowed a strong response to any military provocations by North Korea amid threats by Pyongyang to wage war on Seoul’s rulers. – AFP
The United States, South Korea, Japan and European nations have submitted to the U.N. Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee lists of individuals and firms they want blacklisted after Pyongyang’s recent rocket launch, envoys said on Monday. – Reuters
Southeast Asia
The party of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi backed down on Monday in a dispute over Myanmar’s oath of office, agreeing to enter Parliament for the first time and reviving hopes for the country’s reconciliation program. – New York Times
The Malaysian police pledged on Monday to investigate violence at a rally supporting free elections that spiraled out of control when protesters broke through barricades and the police fired tear gas in central Kuala Lumpur. – New York Times
The Philippines, lamenting the poor state of its armed forces, appealed April 30 for U.S. and international help in building a “minimum credible defense” amid an escalating territorial dispute with China. – AFP
Editorial: Washington shouldn’t be shy about expecting Hanoi to improve its rights record as a condition of the closer strategic cooperation that Vietnam’s government holds dear. – Wall Street Journal Asia (subscription required)
Russia
A struggle for position and power in Vladimir Putin’s new government has been intensifying as liberals vie with conservatives, insiders say, ahead of the planned unveiling of the new cabinet next week. – Financial Times
Ukraine
European leaders are increasing the pressure on Kiev over the jailed ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko, canceling previously scheduled visits to Ukraine unless there are improvements in her situation. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Ukraine described threats by European powers to shun the Euro soccer championship it will host in June as a return to Cold War tactics on Monday, after several leaders called off their visits over the treatment of a leading opposition politician. – Reuters
Former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s health has deteriorated during her hunger strike and her family is hoping the government will take action so she will stop the protest, Tymoshenko’s daughter said on Monday. – Reuters
United Kingdom
Britain’s defense ministry said it is considering putting surface-to-air missiles on the rooftops of apartment buildings and at other locations in East London during this summer’s Olympics, a stark reminder of the scale and intensity of the security operation surrounding the Games. – Wall Street Journal
NATO
Since 2001 America’s share of NATO’s budget has climbed steadily upwards from 50 percent to 75 percent. With the NATO summit coming to Chicago in less than three weeks and the Obama White House’s top NATO advisor speaking publicly about the alliance’s goals, it seemed a good time to ask when the enormous gap between America’s contribution to the alliance would start moving in the other direction. – AOL Defense
United States of America
The people advising Mitt Romney suggest the presumptive GOP nominee would be more in line with the pragmatic George H.W. Bush than the 41st president’s hawkish son on the global stage. – U.S. News and World Report
South America
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made his first live public appearance in two weeks on Monday to announce a new workers’ law prior to his return to Cuba for more cancer radiation therapy. – Reuters
Argentina’s new ambassador to London ambushed Britain’s foreign minister over the disputed Falklands Islands on Monday, asking him at a public meeting whether he was ready to “give peace a chance” by opening talks on the islands’ future. – Reuters
West Africa
Gunfire rang out over this West African capital Monday night as soldiers loyal to the president who was deposed in a coup in March appeared to be attempting a countercoup against the ruling military junta. – New York Times
Rebel armies that have overrun Mali’s desert north are conducting a campaign of mass rapes, kidnappings and looting, a human-rights group cited witnesses as saying. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
An apparent suicide bomb attack meant for a state police commissioner in eastern Nigeria killed 11 people on Monday, the latest in series of near-daily attacks by militants. – Financial Times
Gunfire and explosions rang out through Nigeria’s main northern city of Kano on Tuesday as Nigerian forces battled Islamist militants in a raid on one of their hideouts, witnesses and the military said. – Reuters
Mali’s military junta said on Tuesday it remained in control of key sites in and around the capital after an attempted counter-coup backed by foreigners, according to a message aired over state television. – Reuters
East Africa
Sudanese fighter jets bombed South Sudanese positions overnight Sunday and early Monday, South Sudan said, as the two sides drew closer to a full-scale war over the unresolved issues of oil transit fees and their contested border despite international efforts to ease tensions. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Ugandan officials are renewing a claim made with some frequency over the years: That rebel leader Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army are receiving backing from the government of Sudan. – Associated Press
China and Russia are resisting a Western push for the U.N. Security Council to threaten Sudan and South Sudan with sanctions if the two countries fail to comply with demands to halt their escalating conflict, U.N. envoys said. – Reuters
