International and Bilateral Issues

NATO is winding downs its mission in Libya after a seven-month campaign that saw the United States hand the helm to Europe for the first time in the history of the alliance.
"It is a new model, a more realistic one," he added. "A great success, a triumph to the political courage of (British Prime Minister David) Cameron and (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy."
The price is, we'll never get another one of these through the United Nations in the foreseeable future. NATO exceeded the UN mandate, from save Benghazi to get Kadhafi
With nations involved concerned "to halt the operation in orderly fashion", as one diplomat put it, the 28-member alliance may maintain some naval and air capacity over the next two weeks "to ensure capability for intervention should the situation require".
But only weeks into the campaign Europe's austerity-hit armies began to feel the pinch, running out of munitions and personnel, forced to rely on US hardware -- drones, refuelling planes and intelligence -- decisive to the strikes.
with Washington increasingly looking to secure its strategic interests in Asia and turning away from NATO, European nations will need to beef up military spending to keep the machine running.

After being critical of Pakistan over its links with Taliban militants, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said his country would stand by Islamabad in the event of hostilities with any nation, including the U.S. and India.
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Mr. Karzai's comments came against the backdrop of increased tensions between Pakistan and the U.S. on the issue of tackling terrorist groups like the Haqqani network, which use bases in Pakistan's tribal belt to carry out attacks on the U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan.

Military commanders in the Libyan city of Misrata said on Saturday that no post-mortem would be carried out on the body of Muammar Qadhafi despite concerns over how the toppled dictator died.
Qadhafi's widow, Safia, who fled to Algeria in August, called on the United Nations to investigate the circumstances of her husband's death

The heir to the Saudi Arabian throne, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud, died while undergoing treatment for illness in New York. He was 85.
Sultan, who was also Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister, struggled with health issues for years, though officials never confirmed he had cancer.
For the first time the mechanism of picking the next crown prince is not entirely clear though the end result is in any case likely to be Prince Nayef.
Traditionally the king names his successor.
Saudi Arabia has been ruled since 1953 by the sons of its founder, King Abdul-Aziz, who had over 40 sons by multiple wives.
Nayef is 78, and the youngest of the Abdul-Aziz sons seen as qualified to rule were born in the 1940s.

Nine months after the end of the dictatorship of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali following a popular uprising, Tunisians will head for polling stations on Sunday for an election
The election is expected to lay the foundations of democracy in Tunisia
The polls will lead to the formation of a Constituent Assembly, which will draft a new Constitution, select a temporary executive and hold presidential and parliamentary elections, probably within a time frame of one year.
During the run-up to the election, the initiative has been seized by the Ennahda party, which, on the footsteps of Turkey's AK Party, seeks to find compatibility between democracy, secularism and Islam.
They said Islam is the enemy of democracy, women, arts and creativity, but we will increase women's rights.