Since international influence played a vital role in bringing about democracy in Thailand in 1992, inevitably it is interesting to know, what exactly are the ASEAN, US, UN and EU responses to the recent Thai crisis?

The curious reality is that the 15-nation [Security] council is frequently unwilling to formally acknowledge that it is meeting to discuss the many security crises that land on its door. The problem is that once an issue is officially "placed on the agenda" of the Security Council, it's hard to get it off, granting the U.N. Security Council an open-ended opportunity to play a role in the affairs of a politically sensitive or unstable region.

Fresh sanctions adopted by the United Nations Security Council against Iran on Wednesday should actually be viewed as another chance for further diplomatic effort to break the nuclear impasse through peaceful solutions acceptable to all parties.

Drip by drip, the full story is emerging of last December's global diplomatic debacle in Copenhagen, when instead of setting the world on a new low carbon path and tackling climate change, 130 world leaders ended up with a weak deal and no prospect of a binding agreement for another 18 months.

Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, chaired on Wednesday, the Security Council debate on "Intercultural dialogue for peace and security" at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, in the presence of the UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon, the accompanying delegation, Lebanon's permanent representative to the UN Nawaf Salam, and the British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Alistair Burt.

A conference on Somalia is being convened by the United Nations in Istanbul with the aim of showing support for the Somali people. But observers say the West's half-hearted approach is doing more harm than good.

The summit is just the latest example of the growing tendency of the United States to take important issues – such as financial stability, climate change, and nonproliferation – outside the UN system. The Group of 20 has become the prevailing symbol of this trend of addressing complex international issues in informal settings...

"To release the outcome of the investigation is easy," says Kim Tae-woo, senior North Korea analyst at the Korea Institute. "What to do after that is the most difficult part." Seoul is now likely to seek international action, perhaps by asking for tougher sanctions on North Korea from the United Nations Security Council.