WIN SOME, LOSE SOME -- Almost the same day that foreign ambassadors in Washington received invitations to attend Wednesday's presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan ruler, they got letters from the Chinese ambassador urging them to boycott the ceremony. Predictably, the decision to honor the Dalai Lama has drawn strong protests from the Chinese government, which controls his mountainous country.
The presentation was initiated by the U.S. Congress, and is supported by the Bush administration. But Congress also has plans to declare the death of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey in 1915 as genocide, and that initiative has been vigorously -- and so far unsuccessfully -- opposed by the administration.
The Armenian resolution has sparked a serious crisis in U.S. relations with Turkey, a key ally in the Iraq war. In practical terms, Ankara's anger could hamper severely the supply lines to U.S. forces in Iraq: 70 percent of all airborne supplies to Iraq pass through Turkish airfields, for example. The mounting tension between Washington and Ankara over the resolution has also reduced the Bush administration's power to influence Turkish plans for an incursion into northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish separatists.
The Armenian community in America has been lobbying unsuccessfully for this resolution for years. Critics of the resolution say the time suddenly became ripe when Nancy Pelosi, whose California district has a large number of Armenians, became Speaker of the House.
IL SENATORE -- If Renato Turano is really a senator, why does he spend much of his time in Rome? The reason is that Turano, a Stone Park, Ill., businessman, represents North America in the Italian Senate. In the 2005 Italian elections, the government in Rome launched a scheme to give the huge number of Italian expatriates around the world representation in Italy's parliament. As a result, there are now a half-dozen senators and about twice that number of members of the lower house elected by Italians in Australia, North America, South America (except Brazil, which has its own representation), and Asia.
It was Turano's election that actually gave the ruling center-left coalition their one-seat majority in the Italian senate. Before the votes from overseas were counted, the conservatives and the center-left were neck and neck. Turano, who holds both U.S. and Italian citizenship, told Corridors he spends most of his time in Rome these days because "I'm practically the government's majority in the senate, so we all need to be there to vote."
Turano was elected as a member of L'Ulivo (The Olive Party) in the coalition. But the senator said all the overseas parliamentarians hold informal cross-party meetings to discuss the interests of their expatriate constituents. What's surprising is how quickly the legislators from all over the world were accepted in the Italian parliamentary system. Or perhaps, given the byzantine complexities of Italian politics, this new twist was hardly noticed.

CONDI IN MOSCOW -- By all accounts the Moscow visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to discuss (among other things) the Bush administration's new missile defense plans that have so riled the Russians was another object lesson in Russian ascendancy, with President Vladimir Putin lecturing the Americans in public (but apparently being more business-like in private). Two Russia specialists recently put forward reasons why, after the uncertainties of the 1990s, the Russians are once again feeling their oats.
"There's a degree of stability [in Russia], many Russians are prosperous; many Russians have a sense of pride," declared Richard Lugar, the Indiana senator who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a week ago. Lugar said an energy boom has brought wealth to the Russian economy. When he received some Russian visitors in his office recently, "they said, 'we're rich! we're rich!'" he related. Also, "A lot of [Russians] like Putin's leadership," Lugar told a foreign policy gathering at Washington's Brookings Institution this week.
Meanwhile, democracy continues to lose its grip in Russia, and that trend is not likely to be reversed soon. Veronika Krasheninnikova, author of a new book (in Russian) called "America-Russia: Cold War of Cultures," said Monday that "Democracy in Russia will take on a Russian face. If today democratic elections were held in Russia, Putin would stay in office for a third term. . . . Sixty-four percent of Russians don't see any problem in changing the constitution so that Putin could stay in the Kremlin."

SPENDING WISELY -- According to recent reports, the U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad will cost $144 million more of U.S. taxpayer's money than its original estimate of $592 million, and the work is both behind schedule and, in some completed areas, too shoddy to pass muster. When finished, the massive structure in the relative safety of the Iraqi capital's Green Zone will be the largest U.S. overseas diplomatic mission by far.
Iraqis can take comfort in the fact that Iraq's new embassy on Washington's Massachusetts Avenue was acquired in the summer for a mere $5.8 million. But a Washington radio reporter actually asked Iraqi ambassador Samir Sumaidaie whether he considered the new embassy too costly. When -- perhaps thinking of what the United States was spending on its own embassy -- the ambassador looked a little nonplussed, the reported explained: "At a time when Iraq is struggling to rebuild itself" wasn't this too much? Not at all, he replied, saying, on the contrary, that the embassy will be "an asset for Iraq." Besides, Iraq has all that oil . . .

EU OPTIMISM ON WARMING -- More on climate change. The already prepared draft conclusions of the EU environmental ministers meeting scheduled for Oct 30 contain what amounts to the EU's response to the Bush administration's efforts to lure European governments away from the rigid Kyoto Protocol emissions reduction targets. The statement voices optimism -- unrealistic, according to some experts -- that if member states accelerate implementation of the Kyoto rules, the EU will reach the target of pushing back greenhouse gas emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels before the end of the protocol's timeframe. The statement says that, in 2005, emissions for all 27 EU countries taken together were 11 percent below the 1990 target.

"World Politics Review Exclusive" 17 Oct 2007