Oman Observer - Analysis

THE Nuclear Suppliers Group’s decision to allow trade in fissile materials and technology with India ending a 34-year ban is an acknowledgement of India’s position as a responsible nuclear weapons state and would boost the global nuclear industry, officials and analysts said yesterday. The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a body that controls all international trade..............

BELEGUERED Bri-tish Prime Minister Gordon Brown will launch a fresh bid to revive his government’s dire fortunes this week, but deepening economic gloom and growing party sniping threaten any fightback. Brown is expected to address the annual conference of Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC), but his popularity is so low that he is not even guaranteed................

JAPAN'S race for prime minister has turned into a referendum on free-market reforms in the world’s second largest economy, which is teetering on recession. Taro Aso, a flamboyant former foreign minister seen as the front-runner, promises a return to some of the old ways of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which long tapped public money to develop the countryside.

CZECH President Vaclav Klaus, an outspoken EU critic, once warned that his nation would dissolve in the European Union like a sugar cube in a cup of coffee. Now that the Czechs are about to chair the European Union, the government has turned the cube into a sweetly subversive symbol of its scepticism toward the European Union.

By Amal Jayasinghe in Colombo
SRI Lankan troops have moved closer to dismantling the Tamil Tigers’ de facto state after months of heavy clashes, but the battles ahead could be even bloodier, officials and analysts say. Monsoon rains expected to intensify in the coming weeks could bog down tanks and make artillery less effective in soggy terrain, forcing both sides to engage in close combat.............

Celebrity touch

By Aubrey Belford in Jakarta
WITH his sculpted abdominals proudly displayed on his Facebook profile, male model Adrian Maulana cuts a very different figure to the ex-generals and dynastic heirs who dominate Indonesian politics. He is at the forefront of a new push by Indonesian parties to field celebrities and other tabloid favourites — collectively known as “artis”— as candidates...............

Awaiting justice

By Suy Se in Phnom Penh
WHEN they ruled Cambodia, overseeing one of the worst chapters of the 20th century, this probably wasn’t how the leaders of the Khmer Rouge envisioned their senior years. Just 50 metres away from the UN-backed courtroom where they are scheduled to be tried on war crimes charges later this year, five senior leaders of the regime are locked up in a one-storey yellow bungalow.