Middle East, Foreign Policy | featured news

While foreign policy became an unexpected pivotal point in last week's town-hall style presidential debate, Monday's final showdown will focus entirely on international affairs.

Iran followed the United States on Sunday in denying that the two countries had scheduled direct bilateral negotiations on Iran's controversial nuclear program. The New York Times, quoting unnamed U.S. administration officials, had said on Saturday that secret exchanges between U.S. and Iranian officials had yielded agreement "in principle" to hold one-on-one talks.

What the Republican nominee’s campaign billed as a major foreign policy address didn’t have much new in it and left some analysts unimpressed. The speech, they said, was much like Romney’s previous swings at laying out a foreign policy -- couched in broad ideology and big ambitions and lacking the specifics for how he’d bring any of them about.

The address mostly repackaged things Romney has said before, sometimes with greater precision. The Republican, who has stumbled in past efforts to articulate his foreign policy, offered few specific ways he would change the Obama administration’s current approach. Although he made broad critiques of Obama’s “passivity,” Romney did not call for any new armed intervention in any Mideast conflict.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday vowed to pursue a full accounting of the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi "wherever that leads," but cautioned that it could take time for a complete picture to emerge.

Leaders of a House committee said Tuesday that U.S. diplomats in Libya made repeated requests for increased security for the consulate in Benghazi and were turned down by officials in Washington.

The White House criticized Republican claims that President Obama called an ambassador's death a 'bump in the road." White House press secretary Jay Carney said Obama was referring to Middle East unrest in general, and called the GOP claim "both desperate and offensive."

President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney traded shots in high-profile interviews with Romney saying Obama hasn't supported Israel strongly enough and Obama asking if Romney was trying to start a war in the region.

A senior Palestinian official says Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is undermining hopes for peace and democracy in the Middle East. A senior Palestinian official says Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is undermining hopes for peace and democracy in the Middle East.

A new video clip of Republican US presidential challenger Mitt Romney shows him telling a private meeting of donors that the Palestinians have no interest in peace with Israel.