In her years as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine K. Albright popularized the jeweled brooch as an instrument of foreign policy: a sly use of a fashion accessory to deliver messages to America's friends and foes.

Now Albright's habit of encoding diplomatic messages in a pin has become an inspiration for other foreign diplomats. The Interpreter blog at the Lowy Institute, a foreign policy think tank based in Sydney, Australia, is accepting nominees for its second annual Madeleine Awards. The top prize will be awarded for the "best use of symbol, stunt, prop, gesture or jest in international affairs," according to a posting by one of The Interpreter's bloggers.

Albrights' coiled gold snake pin -- which she donned after then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein called her a serpent -- began a tradition of using jewelry to telegraph her mood or convey a harsh or friendly diplomatic message.

For instance, she pinned on a wasp, like the one she wore in a meeting with then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, when "she wanted to do a little stinging and deliver a tough message." Balloons, flowers and butterflies signaled optimism about the prospects for fruitful negotiations.  She drew from a fleet of multicolored turtles to indicate frustration over the slow pace of Middle East negotiations. The grief that followed the Al Qaeda terror attack against two U.S. embassies in East Africa was communicated with a golden angel.

Albright's nearly 300 pins have already been the subject last year of museum exhibits in New York and Washington and of a book by Albright entitled Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection, not to mention numerous newspaper articles and radio and television spots. But the organizers of the Madeleine Award want to encourage nominees to create their own personal style for drawing attention to their nation's cause.

Last year, the Madeleine was awarded to government ministers from the Maldives who dressed in scuba diving suits and held a cabinet meeting on climate change under water. But another early entrant was Nepal, according to Graeme Dobell, founder of the prize, for "dispensing with a centuries old tradition of having five virgin girls bid the head of state goodbye as he left on a foreign visit." Indeed, Dobell, noted, "you can become a Madeleine contender for not doing something symbolic."

Frankly, I think the awardees have missed one of Albright's most memorable diplomatic stunts -- one that may not have improved relations between the U.S. and its long time adversary Cuba -- but which probably helped Albright become US Secretary of State. Let's just call it her "cojones" moment.

On February 24, 1996, two Cuban Air Force MIG-29 fighter jets shot down a pair of unarmed Cessna planes operated by members of an anti-Castro exile group, setting the stage for the Clinton administration's most serious confrontation with Cuba at the United Nations.

Shortly after the incident, Madeleine K. Albright, then the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., oversaw a presentation of radio intercepts of one of the Cuban pilots boasting, in the English translation, "We took out his balls." Referencing the Spanish word for testicles, Albright delivered perhaps her most memorable quote.

"Frankly, this is not cojones; this is cowardice," she told reporters. Albright's statement put her on the political map in Washington and aided her in securing her next job as the country's first female secretary of state. U.S. President Bill Clinton would later say her cojones remark constituted "probably the most effective one-liner in the whole administration's foreign policy."

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The new Republican-controlled House leadership sent a clear message that it intends to place the United Nations at the center of its foreign policy mission, stepping up scrutiny of U.N. spending, setting conditions for continued U.S. financial support, and casting a spotlight on the shortcomings of the U.N.'s human rights council.

The new chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R-FL), arranged for the hearing to begin with a group of prominent critics describing the U.N.'s failings.

Lethinen, who had traveled to Florida to tend to her ill mother, did not attend the long-anticipated session. But in a prepared statement read by Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH), who chaired today's session in her place, Lehtinen vowed to reintroduce legislation that "conditions [U.S. financial] contributions -- our strongest leverage -- on real, sweeping reform, including moving the U.N. regular budget to a voluntary funding basis. That way, U.S. taxpayers can pay for the U.N. programs and activities that advance our interests and values, and if other countries want different things to be funded, they can pay for it themselves."

Lehtinen also pledged to conduct new investigations into allegations of corruption and mismanagement at the U.N. and to insure its interest align with American foreign policy goals. "U.S. policy on the United Nations should be based on three fundamental questions: Are we advancing American interests? Are we upholding American values? Are we being responsible stewards of American taxpayer dollars?," according to her opening statement. "Unfortunately, right now, the answer to all three questions is ‘No.'"

Ros-Lehtinen's funding proposal echoed a similar plan put forward by John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Bush Administration, to make funding to the U.N. multibillion administrative and peacekeeping budgets entirely voluntary. The U.S. is currently responsible for paying about 22 percent of the U.N. administrative budget, and about 27 percent of the U.N.'s peacekeeping costs. The initiative is not supported by the Obama administration, which suspects it would garner little support in the 192-member organization and isolate Washington at a time when it is seeking to mend its diplomatic relations with foreign governments.

Today's hearing included testimony from four U.N. critics, including Brett Schaefer, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Robert M. Appleton, a former U.N. anti-corruption investigator, and two supporters of the United Nations, Peter Yeo, a former Democratic staffer on the House foreign affairs committee who works for the U.N. Foundation, and  Mark Quarterman, a former U.N. lawyer who served as chief of staff into last year's U.N. probe into the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

It touched on many of familiar political hot button issues -- including concerns about corruption associated with U.N. development programs in outlaw regimes -- that had largely receded from political discussion about the U.N. in Washington during the first years of the Obama administration. Democratic and Republican representatives also raised concern about the large number of resolutions adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council's that criticize Israel's rights record.

Yeo defended the U.N.'s role in advancing U.S. foreign policy objectives, citing the U.N.'s organization of a U.S.-backed independence referendum in South Sudan, and its support of democratic elections in Ivory Coast, where the U.N. has energetically pressed the country's defeated incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, to step down from power. He also cited the passage last year of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran; U.N. support for the U.S.-backed political transition in Afghanistan; and the U.N.'s struggle to "stabilize and reconstruct earthquake shattered Haiti, a country with close ties to America."

"The U.N. is not a perfect institution, but it serves a near perfect purpose: to bolster American interests from Africa to the Western Hemisphere and to allow our nation to share the burden of promoting international peace and stability," he said.  "We must pay our U.N. dues on time, in full, and without threats of withholding our contribution. When we act otherwise, we send a strong and provocative signal that we are more interested in tearing down the U.N. than making it better."

In response to calls by Ros Lehtinen to withhold funds to the UN, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told Bloomberg News last week that he would travel to Washington in the near future to persuade Congressional leaders to maintain financial support for the United Nations. "I think their priorities and my priorities are the same," he told Bloomberg. "The only complaint they may have is the lack of much faster progress than they might have expected."

Ban's effort to promote the U.N. cause was not helped by Richard Falk, a U.N. special rapporteur, who claimed in a post published on his personal blog that the United States engaged in "an apparent cover-up" of the facts behind the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. Falk also faulted the U.S. media for being "unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an Al-Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials."

In response, U.S. ambassador Susan E. Rice condemned Falk's remarks as "so noxious" he should be ousted from his U.N. job. "Mr. Falk endorses the slurs of conspiracy theorists who allege that the September, 2001, terrorists attack were perpetrated and then covered up by the U.S. government and media," she said.

Addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva today, Ban also blasted Falk, noting that the controversial American rights advocate was appointed by the council itself, and that he has no authority to fire him.  "The council decides whether they continue their jobs," he said. But he said "I want to tell you, clearly and directly: I condemn this sort of inflammatory rhetoric. It is preposterous -- an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in that tragic attack."

"Let us be frank. This body has come under criticism from various quarters," Ban continued. "For the human rights council to fulfill its mandate, it must be seen as a place ruled by bias or special interests. It cannot be a place that targets some countries, yet ignores others. It cannot be a place where some members overlook the human rights violations of others so as to avoid scrutiny themselves."

Ban came under fire from Appleton, a former U.N. investigator who led some of the most aggressive anti-corruption investigations ever at the United Nations. Appleton claimed that the U.N's ability to effectively investigate corruption has been undermined by Ban and his top advisors. "I am often asked why there is no will in the organization to pursue such cases, or address them when misconduct is identified," he said in prepared statement. "The short answer is that investigations that uncover fraud and corruption bring bad news, and bad news is not welcome news. The approach of the leadership of the organization is to minimize such issues, and keep them from public view."

Appleton, who was selected twice by the U.N.'s chief oversight official to run the U.N.'s internal investigations, had his appointment blocked by Ban's office on a technicality. Ban's advisors defended the move on the grounds that no female, or non-American, nominees were included on a short list of candidates. Appleton has since filed a grievance with the United Nations on the grounds that he was denied the job because he was an American male.

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The French government issued a formal complaint to the United Nations last week in protest against a decision to use an U.N. airplane to escort an accused Sudanese war criminal to a meeting with government-backed tribal leaders, U.N. based diplomats told Turtle Bay.

Ahmed Haroun, one of three Sudanese nationals - together with President Omar Al-Bashir and Ali Kushayb, a pro-government militia leader -- charged by the International Criminal Court with committing war crimes in Darfur, appeared in an Al Jazeera news report de-boarding a large white passenger plan with the U.N. insignia:

Under a U.N. legal ruling, U.N. officials are supposed to only have with accused war criminals in extraordinary cases. 

The video has alarmed the ICC's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo of Argentina, who had called on the U.N. Security Council last year to facilitate Haroun's arrest. Moreno Ocampo told the council then that the failure to hold Haroun, who now serves as Bashir's governor in Kordofan, accountable for his alleged crimes in Darfur "carries a price," citing fears that he could promote further violence in his new job. "I'm afraid reality is confirming what we predicted in 2010 at the U.N. Security Council," Moreno-Ocampo told Turtle Bay.

In his first two years in office, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon invested enormous personal energy, and political capital, in forging a personal relationship with President Bashir in order to persuade him to restrain his behavior. But Ban has essentially stopped talking to Bashir after the ICC issued a warrant for his arrest. U.S. diplomats, including President Obama's Sudan envoy, Ret. Air Force Maj. General J. Scott Gration, have also avoided direct contacts with the Sudanese leaders.

The violence in Darfur began in 2003, when two Darfuri rebel groups took up arms against Khartoum. The Sudanese government launched a brutal counterinsurgency campaign, relying on government-backed Arab militia -- know as the Janjaweed -- that led to the deaths of more than 300,000 civilians and drove nearly 2 million people from their home. The United States has characterized the government's role in the violence as genocide.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in 2007 against Haroun, a former state minister for humanitarian affairs, and Kushayb, for their alleged role in orchestrating the mass killings of civilians in Darfur. President Bashir was subsequently charged in March, 2009, with ordering the Darfur killings. Bashir's government has since appointed Haroun governor of South Kordofan.

Earlier this month, Ban's spokesman, Martin Nesirky, confirmed the U.N. had transported Haroun to Abyei -- an oil rich region that is linked by ethnicity and geography to South Sudan, though had been excluded from that country's landmark independence referendum in South Sudan earlier this month -- to help prod leaders of the government-backed Misseriya tribe to strike a peace deal with the region's Dingka Ngok tribe. Dozens of people were killed in fighting between the two tribes.

In response to a question from Inner City Press, Nesirky said the U.N. is required under the terms of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the decades long civil war between Khartoum and Southern Sudan, to "provide good offices" to various warring parties to help facilitate peace talks. U.N. officials brought in Haroun, who is close to the Misseriya, to help prod the group to stop fighting.

"In accordance with its mandate," Nesirky said, "the mission will continue to provide the necessary support to those key players in their pursuit to find a peaceful solution."

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Human Rights Watch slammed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other world leaders for relying on "quiet diplomacy" to gently nudge despotic governments to stop brutalizing their people.

The rights group's special report, titled "A Facade of Action: The Misuse of Dialogue and Cooperation with Rights Abusers," acknowledges that Ban has made strong public statements on the poor human rights records of relatively weak countries like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but charges that he has pulled his punches on some of the world's most abusive governments and let major powers like China entirely off the hook.

"He has placed undue faith in his professed ability to convince by private persuasion the likes of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, Burmese military leader Than Shwe, and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa," Kenneth Roth, the executive director, said in an introduction to the report. "Worse, far from condemning repression, Ban sometimes went out of his way to portray oppressive governments in a positive light."

Roth cited Ban's handling of Burma during the run-up to elections last year. "In the days before Burma's sham elections in November, Ban contended that it was 'not too late' to 'make this election more inclusive and participatory' by releasing political detainees -- an unlikely eventuality that, even if realized, would not have leveled the severely uneven electoral playing field."

Roth also chastised Ban for failing to raise concerns about human rights violations in China during a meeting with President Hu Jintao and only addressing the issue in closed-door talks with less-senior officials. The omission, he said, "left the impression that, for the Secretary General, human rights were at best a second-tier priority. In commenting on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Chinese human rights activist, Ban never congratulated Liu or called for his release from prison but instead praised Beijing" for "'join[ing] the international mainstream in its adherence to recognized human rights instruments and practices.'"

In response, Ban's spokesman Farhan Haq told Turtle Bay that "the secretary-general's record to push for human rights speaks for itself. He has spoken up to defend the human rights of people around the world and has delivered statements on human rights in many countries, including Myanmar [also known as Burma] and China in the past or Cote d'Ivoire and Sudan today. Whether by quiet diplomacy or by speaking out, he has personally and insistently sought to protect and defend basic rights, and he will continue to do so."

Responding to the report's findings in a press conference, Haq said that Ban "values the role" of Human Rights Watch and other rights advocates. But he said Ban's view is that "diplomacy and public pressure are not mutually exclusive.… The secretary-general has applied public pressure when he has considered it the most likely means to achieve results." Haq said Ban has achieved such results through the use of quiet diplomacy, citing Ban's role in freeing a jailed gay couple in Malawi. "On Sri Lanka, the secretary-general appointed an advisory panel which will present its report to the SG soon," Haq said. "It would not be proper to prejudge the value of its work in promoting accountability and, more importantly, preventing human rights violations in Sri Lanka and other countries in the future."

The report looks beyond the U.N., citing ASEAN's "tepid response to Burmese repression"; India's "pliant posture toward Burma and Sri Lanka"; the European Union's "obsequious approach to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan"; the "soft Western reaction to certain favored  repressive African leaders such as Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia"; and the "weak United States policy toward Saudi Arabia."

"The EU seems to have become particularly infatuated with the idea of dialogue and cooperation, with the EU's first high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Catherine Ashton, repeatedly expressing a preference for 'quiet diplomacy' regardless of the circumstances," Roth wrote. "Leading democracies of the global South, such as South Africa, India, and Brazil, have promoted quiet demarches as a preferred response to repression. The famed eloquence of US President Barack Obama has sometimes eluded him when it comes to defending human rights, especially in bilateral contexts with, for example China, India, and Indonesia."

The report was written before Hu's visit this month to Washington, where Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton did more forcefully raise concerns about China's human rights record. The report also did not address Ban's handling of the electoral crisis in Ivory Coast, where Human Rights Watch has praised his repeated public complaints about rights abuses by followers of Ivory Coast's defeated former president, Laurent Gbagbo, who is seeking to cling to power.

The report's release comes just days after Ban delivered a statement at a Holocaust commemoration underscoring the U.N.'s obligation to speak out against atrocities. "It is a day to speak out, to speak out against those who would deny the Holocaust, who would diminish it or explain it away," Ban said at the Manhattan Park East Synagogue. "Let us also remember: The United Nations was created, in part, to prevent such a thing from ever happening again."

"As United Nations secretary-general, I never forget this fundamental mission: to stand, to speak out, for human rights and human decency," Ban said.

In his response to Ban's speech, Roth send out this comment on Twitter suggesting that Ban's commitment doesn't extend to abuses by the permanent five members of the Security Council: "Ban says UN has duty to speak out on human rights," Roth tweeted. "Great! But not when the offender is a P5 member of [the] Security Council."

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Sri Lanka has cut off direct talks with a U.N. panel set up in June to promote accountability for war crimes during the final stages of the country's bloody 2009 offensive against Tamil separatists, U.N. officials told Turtle Bay.

The panel had been planning a trip to Colombo to question senior officials responsible for addressing massive rights violations during the conflict, but that visit is now unlikely.

Sri Lanka's deputy U.N. ambassador, Maj. Gen. Shavendra Silva, who commanded troops during the war, wrote to the office of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this month to say that going forward his government would only hold talks with Ban's advisors, not with the panel investigating war crimes. U.N. officials say they fear Sri Lanka's action, which comes one month after Sri Lanka's U.N. ambassador, Palitha Kohona, invited the panel to Colombo, may be calculated to run down the clock on talks on a visit until the panel's mandate expires at the end of February.

The dispute centers on the terms under which the visit would take place. Sri Lanka has agreed to a visit by the U.N. panel on the condition that its activities be limited to testifying before the Sri Lanka Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up by President Mahinda Rajapaksa last year to address the conflict and promote reconciliation between the country's ruling Sinhalese and minority Tamils. The panel has demanded broader freedom to talk to a range of Sri Lankan officials.

President Rajapaksa agreed to invite the panel to Sri Lanka during a meeting with Ban in New York along the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly debate last September, Sri Lanka's U.N. envoy, Palitha Kohona, told Turtle Bay. "The understanding at that point was the panel will come to Sri Lanka and make representations to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission," he said. Kohona claimed the panel has sought to unilaterally "expand the scope of that understanding." U.N. officials have privately challenged Kohona's account of Ban's agreement with Rajapaksa, saying Ban did not agree to limiting the scope of the panel's activities in Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lankan army mounted a brutal military offensive in 2009 against the country's rebel Tamil Tigers, decisively defeating the 33-year-old separatist insurgency that pioneered the use of suicide bombers and assassinated a Sri Lankan president, Ranasinghe Premadasa, in 1993 and former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

In their last stand, the separatist Tamil Tigers embedded themselves in a displaced community of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians, forcing them to serve as human shields. The Sri Lankan military, meanwhile, fired indiscriminately into crowds of civilians, killing as many as 30,000.

Human rights groups fear that Sri Lanka's successful, though highly brutal, military campaign will become a model for other governments seeking to crush insurgencies. They have pressed Ban to ensure that Sri Lankan war criminals are held accountable.

Ban exacted a pledge from Rajapaksa in May 2009 to ensure that war criminals on both sides of the conflict be held accountable. The government has since set up the Lessons Learnt Commission to promote reconciliation between the Tamils and Sinhalese, but the commission has been criticized by human rights groups and foreign dignitaries as inadequate.

Frustrated with the lack of progress, Ban established a three-member panel in June to advise him on how to ensure rights violators are held accountable for possible war crimes. In a statement, Ban said the panel hoped to cooperate with Sri Lankan officials in Sri Lanka.

The panel is chaired by Marzuki Darusman of Indonesia, Yasmin Sooka of South Africa, and Steven Ratner of the United States. It has a mandate to examine "the modalities, applicable international standards and comparative experience with regard to accountability processes, taking into account the nature and scope of any alleged violations in Sri Lanka." It is also supposed to advise Sri Lanka on ensuring Sri Lankan war criminals are held accountable.

Sri Lanka initially accused Ban of exceeding his authority and refused to provide the panel members with visas to enter the country. Sri Lankan authorities are concerned that the panel, which will produce a report with recommendations, may call for the establishment of a commission of inquiry, a frequent first step before an international prosecution.

In July, Sri Lanka's minister for housing and construction, Wimal Weerawansa, led a group of pro-government protesters that ringed the U.N.'s Colombo headquarters, harassing U.N. employees, preventing staffers from entering and exiting the U.N. compound, and burning U.N. Secretary-General Ban-Ki moon in effigy. Sri Lanka officials essentially ignored the panel's repeated requests for visas to travel to Colombo.

But in December, Sri Lanka's U.N. ambassador, Palitha Kohona, invited the panel to lunch and offered an invitation to visit Colombo. A subsequent letter made it clear that the panel's visit would be restricted to sharing their views on accountability before the Lessons Learned Commission: They would not be permitted to question the commission or conduct interviews with key Sri Lankan officials, including the attorney general, responsible for pursuing justice in the case.

"The Sri Lankan mission had initially indicated they would be amenable to the panel meeting with it to make whatever representations it may wish to make, but it seems now that such a visit has still not been decided," said a senior U.N. official. "I am not sure if this is a simple matter of the Sri Lankan side prevaricating. The panel is nevertheless open and keen on any appropriate interaction with the LLC."

"The Sri Lankans have sought to keep their interaction through the secretariat, specifically the EOSG [the executive office of the secretary general]," the official said. "We have, however, been asking them and the panel to deal with each other directly and shall continue to do so."

(H/T to Inner City Press, which referred to Sri Lankan reversal in this Jan. 18 post)

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Germany joins a short list of middle powers -- including Brazil, India, Nigeria, and South Africa -- hoping to leverage their temporary stints on the 15-nation Security Council into permanent membership in the world's premier security club. Germany touts its status as one of the world's economic powerhouses, a top contributor to the United Nations budget, and a key leader in the European Union.

But Germany faces special hurdles. The council's P-5, as the five veto-wielding council members are known, already includes two European powers. The United States, which openly supported German candidacy for a permanent seat during the Clinton administration, has stopped promoting the German bid, favoring a seat for India and Japan.

In an interview with Turtle Bay, Germany's U.N. ambassador, Peter Wittig, made his case for his country's role as a player on the Security Council, citing its economic prowess, its tradition of supplying overseas assistance, and its far-flung diplomatic corps that can supply the council with independent analysis and intelligence on events around the world.

Germany approaches conflict resolution in Africa with "less of a power angle" than other key council powers, Wittig said. "We are a European country, and we would certainly see common ground with other European countries," he continued. "But we want to be playing a constructive balancing role … [to] prevent rather than promote antagonisms on the council."

Part of Wittig's job is to show that Germany can play a relatively independent role on a range of issues, from the Middle East to African conflict resolution, while at the same time assuring key powers, principally the United States, that it can work productively on the big issues. "We have, like the United States and others, a universal network of missions and embassies abroad," he said, noting that Germany has a presence in most of the trouble spots being addressed by the Security Council. "We don't have to rely … on other countries [for information], nor on secondary sources. This is a tremendous asset."

The last time Germany served on the council in 2003 and 2004, Germany's then-ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, played a vigorous role in organizing the 10 elected nonpermanent members of the council, the so-called E-10, against American efforts to secure a resolution authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In fact, Pleuger allowed the council's lesser powers to meet in his country's secure room at the German mission to the U.N. so they could be assured that their consultations on Iraq strategy were not being listened to by the United States or anyone else. In the end, the United States and Britain withdrew their war resolution and proceeded with the invasion without it.

In the end, Germany's refusal to support the U.S.-led invasion was vindicated by revelations that Washington's key pretext for toppling Saddam Hussein -- the need to dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program -- was unfounded. But the Bush administration resented Germany's position and withheld any support for its bid to secure a permanent seat on the Security Council. The Obama administration -- which maintains cordial relations with Germany -- has likewise not offered any support for Germany's bid, though it has not explained why.

Wittig recalled that the U.N. Security Council was "very polarized" during the run-up to the Iraq war. "The E-10 really ganged up together under the able leadership of my predecessor." Wittig said he expected that this time around the E-10 "will probably consult each other on a regular basis, but I don't expect any ganging up."

Germany will be responsible for managing the council's schedule and leading the Security Council's 1267 committee, which enforces sanctions on members of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Wittig said Germany will use its position to promote reconciliation between Hamid Karzai's government and Taliban insurgents who put down their arms. Germany is hoping to make headway this year in restoring greater responsibility to Afghans and to begin withdrawing German troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2011. "Germany will live up to its international responsibilities," Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a recent statement. "But it also stands for a culture of military restraint."

Germany is also planning to promote Security Council debate on peace building and climate change. Former British Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett introduced council discussion of global warming as a threat to international security in April 1987, but the council has never issued a formal statement on the matter. "We are very sympathetic with [the British climate initiative]," Wittig said. "Whether it can be turned into a project, we will see. But it has to be handled with care."

Wittig said the struggle to contain the spread of nuclear weapons, particularly in Iran and North Korea, remains "one of the huge challenges of our time" and underscored the increasing importance of cooperation between the United States and China. He said that the council's imposition of sanctions on Iran succeeded "against some odds" and despite "some skeptics who said we will never get it done. I think the bilateral relationship between the United States and China plays a very important role."

North Korea, he said, "is a different story," citing the council's failure to confront North Korea following its military attack on the South Korean warship Cheonan and a subsequent artillery attack on a South Korea island. "Some of the actors made clear right from the start of this new crisis that the council should not have a role. And then it did not happen."

Looking ahead, Wittig said he is eager to ensure that the U.N. Security Council remains "the supreme legitimate body" responsible for addressing the world's security challenges. He noted that other emerging groups, including the Group of 20, may seek to encroach on the council's turf. "Will there be competing configurations that take away some of the relevance of the Security Council? Those are some of the questions on the horizon," he said. The G-20, he said, "has been evolving very rapidly … and we could well imagine it would not stop issue-wise where it is, but would rather be expanding in the scope of the issues that it touches on."

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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton telephoned Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday, marking the first U.S. Cabinet-level conversation with the Nobel Peace laureate in more than 15 years, according to U.S. officials and Burma experts.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley announced the call on his Twitter account. He said in an e-mail that Clinton wrote to Suu Kyi after the Burmese leader was released from house arrest in November and followed up with Wednesday's call, in which she "pledged to support [Suu Kyi] in her efforts to strengthen civil society and democracy in Burma."

Crowley added: "They talked briefly about what Aung San Suu Kyi has been doing since her release. The Secretary indicated that, both through the Embassy in Rangoon and from Washington, we would have further conversations on specific ideas." Read rest of my article at the Washington Post.

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The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to reinforce the U.N. mission in Ivory Coast with 2,000 additional peacekeepers, escalating an international campaign to pressure the country's longtime ruler to step down from power.

The council's action came as another round of African Union mediation failed to dislodge President Laurent Gbagbo, who was defeated in a U.N.-certified Nov. 28 presidential runoff election by opposition leader Alassane Ouattara.

U.N. officials warned that the ethnically divided West African country - which emerged only seven years ago from a bloody civil war between Gbagbo's army and rebel forces - could return to war."We remain gravely concerned about the possibility of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Cote d'Ivoire," the U.N. secretary general's special advisers on the prevention of genocide, Francis Deng and Edward Luck, said in a joint statement. Please read the rest of my story in the Washington Post.

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