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Leading Indicators
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Leading Indicators: Off-the-Radar News Roundup
Judah Grunstein
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08 Mar 2010
- China's foreign minister said that the China-Russia oil pipeline will be completed by the end of 2010. The Chinese section of the pipeline will be fully operational in 2011.
- Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is facing opposition from coalition partner Social Democratic Party regarding plans to promote nuclear energy as part of a climate change bill. Hatoyama's popularity has plummeted and his coalition is experiencing tension on a variety of fronts. that makes for a pretty short honeymoon for a party taking power for the first time in 50 years.
- Iran's state TV reported that the country had launched production of a short-range cruise missile capable of destroying targets of up to 1,000 tons. As the National article drily notes, "Iran frequently makes announcements about new advances in military
technology that cannot be independently verified." I would add, less drily, that "new advances in military technology" could be replaced by "election results," "its nuclear program," and any number of other subjects without impacting that sentence's accuracy.
- Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was in Syria for talks with President Bashar al-Assad and other high-level Syrian leaders. There was a time not so long ago when that would be suggestive of various foreign policy threads, but given recent relations between Turkey, Syria, Israel and the U.S., it's anyone's guess what the agenda of the meetings was this time.
- Plans emerged over the weekend for a European Monetary Fund as a way of addressing debt crises in the euro zone without recourse to the IMF. Significantly, the proposal was first made by Germany's finance minister before being quickly embraced by the EU's monetary affairs commissioner.
- Ecuador's foreign minister is currently in Iran for two days of talks, before continuing on a Middle East tour that will also bring him to the UAE and Turkey. The Tehran visit fits into the narrative of expanding Iran-South American ties, but the real story here is the other two stops, which indicate Quito's thoughtful selection of partners. Of all the Chavezistas, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa seems to be the savviest in terms of advancing national interests without falling prey to his own rhetoric. Ecuador has always been the little country that couldn't, but if it manages its resources and its development and trade relationships well, there's no reason it can't become the little country that could. Correa seems like he's on that track.
- Nigeria's government once again sent in troops to contain sectarian violence in the northern Jos region, where 500 people were reportedly killed, just weeks after hundreds died in violence in the same region.
Researched by Kari Lipschutz.