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While Macedonia has had a reasonably good year, the survival of the state in its present form -- a key element of stability in the fragile Western Balkans -- is still not completely assured.

The crisis provoked by the struggle in late May and early June 2004 for control of Bukavu, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's strategically sensitive South Kivu province that borders Rwanda, is a stark reminder that the political transition agreed in May 2003 is not synonymous with peace.

In a decision hailed by member states of both organisations, NATO announced at its 28-29 June 2004 summit in Istanbul that the Stabilisation Force (SFOR) it leads in Bosnia (BiH) will be replaced by an EU-led peacekeeping force (EUFOR) by the end of 2004.

The five states that comprise the Community of Andean Nations (CAN) -- Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela -- all face serious crises that taken together call the stability of the entire region into question.

The U.S. Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative (BMEI), in preparation since President George W. Bush announced seven months earlier that Washington was adopting a “forward strategy of freedom” and would no longer accommodate friendly but authoritarian regimes in the region, will be launched at the G-8 summit of major industrialised nations on 8-10 June, then expanded upon at U.S.-European Union (EU) and NATO summits later in the month.

Tajikistan's hard-won peace and stability is at risk. Indeed, the agreement that ended the bloody civil war in 1997 seemed briefly under threat in early 2004 when a series of confrontations between President Emomali Rakhmonov and former warlords sharply increased tensions in the country's murky political life.

The city of Ambon, in Maluku (Moluccas), which had been relatively quiet for two years, erupted in violence on 25 April 2004 after a small group of independence supporters held a ceremony commemorating the 54th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of the South Moluccas (Republik Maluku Selatan, RMS).

Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and wealthiest member of the Community of Andean Nations (CAN), is in deep political crisis, with high risk that its democratic institutions could collapse, and some possibility of civil war.

Islamism, terrorism, reform: the triangle formed by these three concepts and the complex and changeable realities to which they refer is at the centre of political debate in and about North Africa today.

Important changes in the outlook of Egyptian Islamic activism in recent years have opened up possibilities for progressive political development, but these have gone unexploited because of the conservatism of the Egyptian government's policies.