March 31, 2008

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad (AP)

Faced with an embarrassingly low turnout of heads of state at this weekend’s annual Arab summit in Damascus, the Syrian hosts at least escaped being singled out for blame in the latest progress report into the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister.

The report, released by a UN commission investigating the February 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, stated that the former Lebanese premier was killed by a "network of individuals" also suspected of being linked to some of the other assassinations to have plagued Lebanon in the past three years.

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“We knew at the outset that the task would be difficult. We acknowledged that publicly and privately. We knew this would be a road with many bumps— and there have been many bumps—and that continues to this day. But we are not deterred. We are, to the contrary, determined more than ever to proceed to realize the common objective, which we all share, of a Middle East that is at peace with security and prosperity for the people of Israel, for Palestinians, and for all the people in the region. We will continue our efforts in that regard, undeterred and undaunted by the difficulties, the complexities or the bumps in the road.”—George Mitchell, special envoy for Middle East peace, remarks with Prime Minister Netanyahu, September 29, 2010

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The U.S. Agency for International Development and Conflict: Hard Lessons from the Field

May 17, 2011, 12:00pm – 1:15pm

From Afghanistan and Iraq to Pakistan, Somalia, and South Sudan, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, is engaged daily in trying to help some of the most troubled nations on the planet make a lasting transition to stability, open markets, and democracy. Few areas of the agency’s work are more challenging or more controversial.

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