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For too long, the international approach to the crisis in the western Sudanese region of Darfur has been defined by tough rhetoric followed by half-measures and inaction.

As he visits Washington six months after his appointment as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and more than 100 days after his election as President of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is in a difficult position.

Serbia has used the first months of 2005 to good effect, instituting a major policy change on cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY) and sending signals that it is somewhat more willing to engage both the international community and Kosovo Albanians in dialogue about that province's status.

The continued existence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of 8,000 to 10,000 Hutu rebels with links to the 1994 genocide in their home country, Rwanda, is a key source of regional instability.

Despite the passage of important resolutions by the UN Security Council in the last week of March 2005, the situation in Sudan remains grave. In Darfur, where as many as 10,000 people or more, overwhelmingly civilians, continue to die each month, stronger measures are still needed to restore security and prevent further mass deaths.

The peace process aimed at ending the eighteen-year old conflict in Northern Uganda is in critical condition because neither the Ugandan government nor the insurgent Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) appears fully committed to a negotiated solution.