Middle East, Foreign Policy | featured news

The United States has evidence that the chemical weapon sarin has been used in Syria on a small scale, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday. But numerous questions remain about the origins of the chemicals and what impact their apparent use could have on the ongoing Syrian civil war and international involvement in it.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry worked Monday to build support for new Arab-Israeli peace talks that would establish an independent Palestinian state and settle many other old Mideast grievances.

In a carefully crafted address in Israel on Thursday that was stopped by continuous applause, President Obama made his case for a future Israel at peace with the Palestinians.

President Barack Obama plunged into the turbulent Middle East on a mission aimed primarily at assuring America's top ally in the region and its friends back home that it will not be forsaken amid bitter domestic political squabbles and budget crises in Washington.

It was a harrowing international debut for Chuck Hagel, whose first trip to Afghanistan as U.S. defense secretary went dramatically off-script and challenged the American narrative about the 11-year-old war.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated Sunday his desire to engage in direct talks with the U.S., on one condition. “Take your guns out of the face of the Iranian nation and I myself will negotiate with you,” he said at an event attended by tens of thousands of Iranians in Tehran’s Azadi Square.

The US defence secretary says for the first time that he supports arming Syrian rebels, a proposal reportedly over-ruled by President Barack Obama.

President Obama will visit Israel, the West Bank and Jordan in the spring, the White House said Tuesday, marking his first visit since becoming president.

I have read the long 35,000-word script of the hearing on the nomination of Senator John Kerry to be the next U.S. Secretary of State. The hearing was held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and in order for us to understand the personality of the new secretary of state, whose appointment will be unanimously approved, we should know that he had already testified before such a committee more than 40 years ago as a soldier returning from the Vietnam War.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday she took responsibility for not adequately protecting U.S. personnel in the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.