Georgia Makes the Call: Russian Discrimination based on Ethnic Grounds. Bad Press from Reporters Without Borders.

Human Rights Violations

Georgia’s Foreign Ministry has made a complaint with the UN High Commisioner for Human Rights.

The complaint has to do with Russia’s crackdown on illegal migrants of Georgian descent, which followed Georgia’s detention of four Russian diplomats last month. Russia’s response has been adequate in terms of foreign policy — the country has exercised restraing and not acted with military force (as, Israel did, this summer). Domestically, however, Russia has failed miserably exercising a policy of ethnic-based discrimination, going as far as asking schools for lists of Georgian students.

Press Freedom Index

Reporters Without Borders published its list of dangerous places to be a journalist. While North Korea has topped the list yet again, Russia does not have a favourable position either: the former super-power was 147 (out of 168 countries). The most recent example of the danger being the murder of Journalist Anna Politkovsaya.

It’s been a week of bad PR for Russia. And rightly so.

No Korean Commitment

Apparently, the Korean leadership never apologized for the nuclear test, nor made commitments to not carry out further ones. This is what the Chinese foreign ministry has stated today.

China has also made it clear, they will not go as far as the US in punishing Pyongyang.

This is not unexpected — while everyone wanted to believe the media reports about Kim Jong Il’s remorse, these were just reports, not more. Today’s announcement, however, is a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The first one since a Chinese envoy was sent for dialogue with Kim Jong Il.

Mohamed ElBaradei for Dialogue

Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency has urged for talks, not sanctions, with North Korea and Iran.

Unalarmed by Iran’s testing of new uranium-enrichment technology, the IAEA chief made it clear that he favors dialogue. The statments come after ElBaradei met with Condoleezza Rice, who just completed a tour of Asia (with a stop in Russia) to garner support for implementing Resolution 1718 and perhaps prepare harsher sanctions on North Korea, unless talks resume.

The Secretary of State’s verdict on the situation is still pending. Some sort of announcement should happen this week.

British Voters Want out of Iraq

The Guardian published a poll suggesting that the majority of British voters want their troops out of Iraq. This poll is published just a day after Deputy PM Saleh pleaded with the international community (and Tony Blair specifically) to not bail on Iraq.

In terms of electoral politics, the kind of numbers that the Guardian has printed (61% of voters want the troops out within the year, regardless of mission completion) would make withdrawal inevitable. If Labour is to be re-elected, they must respond to electoral demands. However, things are not as clear-cut. Blair is serving his last term as PM and in that sense may bail on his party, which forced him to announce his resignation recently. In his last year as PM, Blair will want to leave a mark and staying in Iraq could be his way of doing it (though this does not appear to be the case).

The two main questions are how loyal is Blair to his party and how loyal is he to the mission that he started with George W. Bush in 2003?