David Cameron in discussions with Barack Obama in Washington last week.

Cameron described Britain as America’s ‘junior partner’. Photograph: Getty Images

If you’re determined to tell it how it is, it’s important to know it how it is – and on the evidence of his travels in foreign parts this week, it is uncertain whether David Cameron really does. Regarding Turkey and Europe, Israel and Gaza, and India and Pakistan, the inexperienced British prime minister’s blunt interventions left a trail of overseas outrage as well as surprised approbation. Fans admired his plain talking. Critics said he plainly doesn’t know what he’s talking about – and risked damaging Britain’s interests.

Cameron stood his ground in Delhi, vowing always to speak his mind frankly. In fact, his truth telling has been highly selective. Turkey’s EU membership, for example, could advance more swiftly if it fulfilled prior undertakings on Cyprus. He barely mentioned that – or discrimination against minority Kurds. Pakistan’s behaviour might be less paranoid and duplicitous if India were less threatening. In deference to Delhi’s hypersensitivity, Cameron eschewed all mention of Kashmir – an incendiary issue overdue for open, international discussion, as proposed long ago by Robin Cook.

Read More http://www.guardian.co.uk/

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Obama challenged after Afghan leak

US soldiers rush for cover through an opium poppy field in Kandahar province [Getty] US legislators opposed to the Afghan war have pushed to pull US forces out of Pakistan in a blunt challenge to President Barack Obama. As the US Army opened a criminal investigation into a huge leak of military files to the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, Obama said the documents showed he was right to craft a new Afghan war-fighting approach and vowed to stick with it. “We have to see that strategy through,” said the president on Tuesday, who declared the roughly 92,000 newly revealed documents “don’t reveal any issues that haven’t already informed our public debate on Afghanistan.” His comments came as the House of Representatives geared up for votes on an emergency spending bill to pay for his plan to turn around the faltering campaign and on a measure calling for a withdrawal from Pakistan. “Wake Up America. WikiLeaks‘ release of secret war documents gave us 92,000 reasons to end the wars. Pick one,” Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, author of the Pakistan measure, said as debate began. Debate on funding

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By Andrew Wander

At least 52 prisoners have disappeared from a Syrian jail following disturbances in 2008 that left 22 people dead, human rights groups have said.

Families of the missing men say they have not been heard of since violence broke out at the Saydnaya Military Prison on July 5, 2008.

Read More  http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2010/07/20107465823578458.html

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