summitry

Arab leaders openly feuded over the region's most intractable problems at their annual summit on Tuesday, particularly the inability to resolve Syria's civil war and anger at Qatar for its support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

President Obama and six other world leaders said Monday that they would not meet at the so-called Group of Eight summit in June in Sochi, Russia, and instead would convene at that time in Brussels, without Russia, to discuss the “broad agenda we have together.”

Stephen Harper called for a “complete reversal” of President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and suggested Russia should be booted out of the Group of Eight nations when he visited Ukraine. 

Cuban President Raul Castro called on Latin American and Caribbean leaders Tuesday to work together on pressing regional problems at a gathering of all Western Hemisphere nations except the U.S. and Canada.

Non-governmental organizations, together with government institutions have been major stakeholders in Turkey’s African initiative. Humanitarian assistance, development aid, humanitarian diplomacy, and exchange diplomacy are central to Turkey’s existing involvement in Africa.

The United Nations has uninvited the Iranian government from participating in Geneva peace talks aimed at ending the Syrian crisis. Iran had initially been one of ten nations invited to take part in the peace talks, which are scheduled to start on Wednesday, but that invitation was later rescinded after the United States and other Western countries expressed anger at the decision.

The United Nations says Iran has been invited to attend a meeting of foreign ministers In Switzerland on Wednesday ahead of internationally brokered peace talks between Syria's warring factions. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters Sunday afternoon that Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has pledged that his country "would play a positive and constructive role" in the meeting to be held in the Swiss city of Montreux.

January 17, 2014

The Geneva II Middle East peace conference, to be held on January 22, will take place against a backdrop of singularly appalling numbers: Syria’s brutal civil has left an estimated 130,000 dead, 2.3 million refugees registered in neighboring countries, and some four million more internally displaced.

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