Special to WorldTribune.com WASHINGTON — North Korea was believed to have sent chemical weapons technology to Syria. A United Nations panel and Western analysts agreed that Pyongyang was shipping CW technology to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. They said the CW assets could have facilitated non-conventional weapons attacks against the Sunni revolt over […]
Special to WorldTribune.com NICOSIA — The Syrian opposition has reported a horrific chemical weapons attack by the regime of President Bashar Assad. The opposition said at least 600 people were killed in CW operations by the Syrian Army. The attack on late Aug. 20 consisted of the firing of artillery shells tipped with CW warheads […]
Special to WorldTribune.com WASHINGTON — The United Nations has been urged to procure unmanned aerial vehicles to monitor the disputed border area between Sudan and South Sudan. UN special envoy to South Sudan Hilde Johnson said UAVs could help help international peacekeepers monitor the Sudanese border. Ms. Johnson told the Security Council that UN and […]
John J. Metzler PARIS — Spiraling sectarian violence, expanding regional destabilization, and the looming danger of proxy conflict between the United States and Russia, are among the dangers in the widening Syrian civil conflict which has taken over 93,000 lives. Equally an escalating humanitarian disaster continues to engulf a country where now approximately a third […]
Special to WorldTribune.com WASHINGTON — The United States, after weeks of stalling, has acknowledged that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons in attacks on Sunni rebels. The administration of President Barack Obama said the U.S. intelligence community determined that Assad was believed to have fired CW munitions at rebel strongholds in […]
Special to WorldTribune.com WASHINGTON — Libyan weapons have been proliferating at an alarming rate, the United Nations said. A UN report asserted that Libyan weapons were fueling conflicts throughout the Middle East and Africa. The Security Council’s Group of Experts said Libya has become the key source of heavy weapons, including anti-tank systems, in North […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — The increasingly ballistic bluster pouring out from Pyongyang and threatening South Korea, Japan and the USA, with nuclear attacks has jolted East Asia into “paying attention.” Perhaps that’s the real intent of Kim Jong-Un, the new and untested Marxist monarch of the quaintly titled “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — When the Security Council passed a package of uncharacteristically tough sanctions on North Korea over the communist regime’s nuclear weapons tests and missile proliferation, the Pyongyang leadership went rhetorically ballistic. Pyongyang’s pro forma rants and raves towards South Korea and the United States were notched up to include scrapping […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — All of Syria’s five neighboring countries sensed a quiet pleasure in seeing the rebellion against the Damascus dictatorship start two years ago. Many observers, knowing the authoritarian political pedigree of the Assad family rule, probably assumed Syria’s entrenched but moribund political system would be swept away by the winds […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — “Oops, they did it again,” to paraphrase the old Britney Spears song. Indeed North Korea’s baby-faced dictator Kim Jong-Un decided to test another nuclear weapon, and thrust his reclusive but reckless country back into the headlines. In terms of political disruption, Kim’s tantrum seemed to have worked, but in […]