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Reforming the UN Security Council |
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If, against all odds, the Security Council were to be expanded, it would still leave open the critical question of whether or not its primary role in the ’maintenance of international peace and stability’ has been strengthened or irreparably weakened as a result. Those who have advocated expansion, including Kofi Annan, have failed to dispel the suspicion that an expanded Council may prove more unwieldy and less effective than current arrangements, however imperfect and unsatisfactory these are generally acknowledged to be.
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Taming Hizbullah |
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Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon presents an opportunity for advancing the pacification of the Middle East. With Egypt and Jordan having signed formal peace accords with Israel, coupled with the nascent Palestinian state that now is at least in sight, a truly free and democratic Lebanon would provide Israel with a kind of strategic depth, being flanked by states with which it enjoyed at least a cold peace. This would open up scope for Israel to normalise relations with other Arab states – including Syria itself. But there are a number of obstacles that still stand in the way of this irenic outcome. Perhaps the most immediate is posed by the militant Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim group Hizbullah.
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Consolidating Europe’s defence industries |
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Further defence consolidation is necessary because European companies have not achieved the efficiencies and economies of scale that governments, as customers seeking value for money, expect. Operating profit margins of the main prime contractors are well below 10%. Lower down the supply chain, companies obtain higher margins even though they take, arguably, less risk. This is an imbalance that should concern both governments and shareholders. It suggests that past mergers have not adequately reduced cost bases – in other words, that there is still overcapacity or inefficient use of capacity.
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Turkmenistan’s trajectory |
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Turkmenistan’s place in the emerging Central Asian strategic puzzle is frequently overlooked: analysts and the mainstream media prefer to concentrate almost exclusively on some of the more colourful aspects of the extravagant personality cult that surrounds president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov. However, Turkmenistan’s domestic political trajectory has significant potential to affect the geopolitics of the Caspian basin and southern Central Asia, while having substantial implications for the supply of gas – and, to a lesser extent, oil – to markets as far apart as western Europe and northern India.
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Small arms and light weapons |
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On 11–15 July 2005, a United Nations-brokered conference will be convened in New York to address the threat to peace and security posed by the proliferation and trade in small arms and light weapons (SALW). The Programme of Action (PoA) agreed at the first UN SALW conference, in July 2001, made some important recommendations, but its results have been mixed. Policy discussions would benefit from a broadening of parameters to include related dangers, such as those posed by the availability of Man Portable Air Defence Systems and Explosive Remnants of War, that are similar in origin and therefore amenable to similar solutions.
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