The South Asian countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are not usually considered to be a part of the wider Middle East, but last weeks assassination of Benazir Bhutto could trigger a re-assessment of political geography.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will no doubt come under tremendous pressure to find those responsible for the death of former prime minister and leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party Benazir Bhutto who died so tragically Thursday.

More roadblocks have sprung up on the Middle East road map to peace since the grand reunion organized by U.S. President George W. Bush at Annapolis just a few weeks ago, and where Israeli and Palestinian leaders promised to work toward a peaceful settlement of the 60-year conflict.

Like the Bourbons, President George W. Bush, leading Republican candidates to succeed him and their tame cheering section in the American media seem to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing: They are as full of absurdities and insane assumptions about Iraq to day as they were in the fateful months leading up to the invasion of March 19, 2003.

Its been a busy weekend for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. In a matter of hours he played host to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and Australias new prime minister, Kevin Rudd. All came to pledge support in the war against terrorism and voiced their commitment to the NATO-led military initiative against the Taliban.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaida leader who is nominally Osama bin Ladens deputy, is holding an on-line version of the town meetings that have become such a feature of the American political campaign.

Afghanistan was meant to be the showcase for the type of out-of-theater role that a post-Cold War NATO could play. The experiment is going badly and is in danger of becoming a total bust, leaving a huge question mark over NATOs future.

Nothing reveals the current decline of U.S. influence in the Middle East better than Syrias confident defiance of President George W. Bushs would-be thunderbolts of criticism about its latest repression of democracy and human rights activists.

Perhaps something could be said for anarchists after all. In our excessive politically correct Western lifestyles, where almost everything in our life has to be appropriately placed, we are raised to believe that any deviation from the given norms would bring the "wrath of the gods" down upon us and upon our descendants for generations to come.

EDITORIAL: Promoting democracies is a risky business. You might compare it to gambling. In either case, the odds are rarely in your favor.

One of the worlds largest industrial conglomerates announced this week that it would invest some $24 billion in refineries and petrochemical projects in the Gulf states over the coming decade. This announcement, which went almost unnoticed in the Western media, signals the arrival of an important new player in the Middle East.

EDITORIAL: Robert M. Gates, the U.S. secretary of defense, can be a man of few words when the need arises.

There is much to be welcomed in the new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. It discredits U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and the remaining neoconservatives in the Bush administration. It should significantly reduce the dangers of the United States rashly launching a preemptive air strike against Irans nuclear facilities while President George W. Bush remains in office. It has been an unexpected humiliation for Bush who appears to have been taken totally by surprise by its conclusions.

Once more, posturing trumps action. Despite all the hot air expended in U.N. debates and news conferences by Western politicians, the people of Darfur continue to be left to their grim plight.

Optimism is a good thing, but too much optimism can lead to deception. And in a country such as Iraq, an overdose of optimism is outright dangerous. Optimism, particularly in a war zone, is like a narcotic: it helps one get through the bad days. And Iraq has certainly had its fair share of bad days. But again, one must caution not to be too optimistic as it can blur the mind, like a bad drug. This seems to be the case with Iraqs national security adviser, Moaffak al-Rubaaie.

The decision at their Doha summit this week by the leaders of the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council to proceed to a full common market on Jan. 1, 2008 is as ambitious as it is significant.

So the intel community says that Iran is no longer a nuclear threat. Not that this news makes much of a difference to President George W. Bush. He wants to see the international sanctions not only maintained, but increased. It matters little to the president that his 16 intelligence agencies just declared Iran a non-nuclear threat. And that since 2003.

In a widely overlooked dispatch Monday, Adrikronos International cited Saudi Arabias interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz, as saying that his countrys security forces had prevented 180 terrorist attacks in the last few years.

Iran is not trying to build a nuclear bomb, Sudan is not going to flog a hapless British schoolteacher, and Barak Obama is not a closet jihadi. Those seemingly unrelated news items this week unfortunately say much about the state of relations between the West and the Muslim world.

Here we go again. Last time it was a cartoon, or a caricature of the Prophet which led to riots from London to Jakarta. This time its a toy teddy bear that gave the crowds in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, reasons to demonstrate. Indeed, it would seem that it does not take very much to raise the anger and rile the masses in certain Muslim countries.

EDITORIAL: As Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf abandons his military façade yet maintains military rule, international critics accuse him of strategically stalling the Pakistani democratic process. With a tumultuous history that encompasses six generations of military misrule, repeated suspension of constitutional rights and internal instability, Pakistan seems an unlikely candidate for a flourishing civil society.

EDITORIAL: One important but little-noticed feature of the Annapolis talks was that the Quartet of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations no longer seems to have much of a role. The Americans have taken over.

During the cold war life was much simpler than today, politically speaking that is, and especially for people fortunate enough to live in the West.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the possibilities for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement are real: But peace needs to be built step by step rather than in a giant leap.

Middle East peace conferences tend to invite hyperbole and absolutism in the worlds media, particularly those of the U.S. and the Arab world. Predictions abound. Wishful thinking – both pro and con – tends to substitute for cautious analysis. Annapolis is proving no exception.

Syria announced it will participate in the Annapolis Middle East peace summit called at the behest of the United States to try and revive the all but dead Palestinian-Israeli peace initiative.

The sharp criticism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad by an Iranian newspaper close to Irans supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has understandably attracted world-wide attention.

There is never a good time to hold a conference to try and settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, only lesser bad times. Or, as Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group put it recently, "It depends whether you see the glass as one-third full or two-thirds empty."

The U.S. government invitation to Saudi Arabia to attend the Annapolis peace conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a welcome development, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice still has far to go to dispel the all too unjustifiable suspicion around the region that this invitation is just pro forma. Washington cannot make any substantive progress on the peace process unless Saudi Arabia actively supports it. And that will only happen if Riyadhs real interest and concerns are truly recognized and accommodated.

When crossing the Rubicon into Gaul, Julius Caesar ventured into unchartered territory. The Bush administration is crossing its own Rubicon next Tuesday when it convenes the much anticipated Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

Blowback. Even the most casual observer of U.S. foreign policy in recent years is familiar with the concept, if not the term. The word comes from the world of espionage and refers to an operation that blows up in the faces of those who planned it. Al-Qaida, an offspring of the U.S.-backed anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, is a classic example. The Cold War-era fight against the Soviets was the foreign policy equivalent of the old American medical joke, the operation was a success but the patient died.

The problem with leaders who favor strong-arm tactics - besides all the obvious inconveniences they cause to a modern society vying for democracy - is that unlike freely elected leaders the autocrats simply cannot blend back into society when it is time for them to go.

The OPEC summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this weekend comes as oil trades at above $90 a barrel, which is filling the coffers of OPEC members to the tune of $2 billion a day, over $700 billion a year. But the OPEC summit does not intend to discuss increasing their supply of oil, which could lower the price. They will leave that for further discussions next month among the oil ministers of the 12-country oil-exporting club.

It may just be a coincidence, but as they often say in the intelligence industry, there are no coincidences in this business. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the election of the Lebanese president is being repeatedly postponed and the date pushed back to the very limit allowed under the Lebanese constitution, November 21. And it may even go to November 24, the day the current president is to leave office.

Wisdom can come from the most unexpected places. But when Ephraim Halevy, the long-time head of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, urges the United States and Israel to open serious dialogs with Iran and Syria, we agree with him.

"Historic opportunity." How many times has that phrase been uttered over the years in connection with the Arab-Israeli conflict? Unfortunately, the corollary, "historic breakthrough," rarely follows. It would be nice to think that the name Annapolis will, like Camp David, one day become a synonym for peace. But there is, alas, little reason for hope.

Ahmad Raza Khan Qasuri, a close adviser to Pakistans President Pervez Musharraf told the Middle East Times that full democracy will return to Pakistan by February. But February might as well be light years away given the state of turmoil the country finds itself in today.

The good thing that may be said about the Annapolis meeting is that the expectations are gloomily but realistically low. There are not many illusions left in the Middle East, and little is expected from yet another U.S.-brokered summit between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Throughout history, human beings have found meaning in our lives through positive identification with what we know: our family, our tribe, our community, our nation, our culture, our politics, our religion—and by negative reference to "others."

For some 60 odd years the Arab-Israeli conflict has been percolating, periodically exploding into open conflict then returning to a simmering position on the back-burner of world politics, usually after intense diplomatic efforts.

As the Annapolis summit on the Israeli-Arab conflict looms closer, the impression becomes stronger that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is "winging it" - pushing ahead with an ambitious, maximalist agenda she has no chance of achieving. {/bo

Quagmire. That old Vietnam-era adjective is back in the geopolitical lexicon, thanks to the Iraq war.

The George W. Bush administration must stop its bellicose public denunciation of Iran and exhaust all diplomatic options first before considering any other coercive measures to bring Tehran to heed.

Late in the day though it is, the George W. Bush administration is discovering diplomacy.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan isnt just talking the talk on responding hard and fast against guerrillas operating from the US-protected Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq; he is also prepared to walk the walk.

The US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 has created the Middle Easts second-largest refugee crisis in the regions modern history. The first came about with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the mass exodus of Palestinians tha

Preparations for the Middle East peace conference, planned to be held in Annapolis, MD, sometime in mid-November, are in full swing. Prime Minister Olmert of Israel and President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority (PA) have held several private mee

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants to be the 21st centurys first Middle East peacemaker. But the most glamorous secretary of state in American history has yet to show she is ready to put in the hard work necessary for the job.

Mass killings, whatever the label, must always be condemned. But when such condemnations carry the potential to cause more loss of life, it is time to give pause.