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President Bush, announcing U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on 24 June 2002, has set the terms of the international response to the conflict for the immediately foreseeable period. Before peace can be negotiated the violence has to stop.

Sierra Leone continues to make remarkable progress in ending its eleven-year civil war. There is no longer active fighting, and the army and police are fully deployed across the country.

With tensions in Kashmir and the confrontation between Pakistan and India appearing to cool in recent weeks, it would be easy for the international community to focus its attention elsewhere.

Sudan’s civil war, already one of the deadliest conflicts since World War II, has entered its most destructive phase to date. Oil revenues have allowed the government to purchase increasingly lethal weapons, more effectively pursue population-clearing operations, and expand the use of its greatest comparative advantage, air power.

In the aftermath of the deeply flawed March 2002 presidential election, Zimbabwe has dropped off the radar screen of most policy-makers and media but its crisis is deepening.

Three years after its establishment, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has not established a safe and secure environment, the rule of law or a meaningful civil administration in north Mitrovica.

Competition for water is increasing in Central Asia at an alarming rate, adding tension to what is already an uneasy region.

Six months after the installation of the transition government, the promises of peace and reconciliation of the Arusha accords have not materialised. The ceasefire negotiations in South Africa, between the government and the various rebel factions, have not produced a single concrete result.

For the first time since the last UN mission left the country in 1995, there is considerable international interest in Somalia, centred on the possibility that the country may become part of the global war against terrorism.

After seven weeks of negotiations at Sun City, a partial agreement was reached on 19 April 2002 between Jean-Pierre Bemba’s MLC (Mouvement pour la libération du Congo) and the government of Joseph Kabila.