“Self-confident”, “smart” and “rhetorically brilliant” – just some of the adjectives the media have lavished upon Germany’s favourite politician as he has covered thousands of miles traversing the globe on his country’s behalf since Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new centre-right administration took office late last month.

But Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is not in charge of foreign affairs — a position usually associated with voter popularity. He is defence minister.

Already nicknamed ”the other foreign minister“, the 37-year-old Guttenberg, a conservative former economy minister who cut his teeth on foreign policy, has won praise for his fluency in English, his directness and his ability to outshine more powerful counterparts on the international stage.

Watching the aristocratic AC/DC fan from the sidelines has been the new foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, whom newspapers have mocked for adopting a cautious, defensive approach that critics say is more redolent of, well, a German defence minister.

In fact, Westerwelle, 47, has already travelled thousands of miles further than his predecessor Frank-Walter Steinmeier over the same period. By the time the first month in office has passed he will have journeyed to some 15 states, including Israel, Afghanistan and the United States. Steinmeier managed only 10 and did not get beyond Europe in that time, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Germany might be the winner if its diplomatic duel helps it towards a more assertive foreign policy — something it has struggled to achieve in the long shadow of the Nazis.

But it could also find itself giving mixed messages to the outside world, to say nothing of potential tensions within the new coalition. Guttenberg belongs to the Bavarian CSU and Westerwelle heads the pro-business FDP — parties that have clashed on a range of policies in the past.

PHOTO: German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle (R) chats with Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg during a session of the German lower house of parliament Bundestag in Berlin, November 11, 2009. REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz

More than six decades after World War Two and the Holocaust, and just when it is starting to take a more assertive role on the world stage, Germany has been confronted by its Nazi past - again.

Retired U.S. auto worker John Demjanjuk, 89, has been deported to Germany and prosecutors in Munich want to put him on trial for assisting to murder at least 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943. With most Nazi criminals dead, it is likely to be the last big Nazi war crime trial in Germany.

The case raises a number of questions which affect the way Germans look at themselves and relate to the world around them. The deafening silence from politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, says a lot about how intent Germans are on viewing the case as a purely legal matter.

Demjanjuk’s health poses one problem. While his family says he is is too frail to stand trial, some Germans argue it will not do their justice system any good to have a sick old man in the dock and that he could even end up winning sympathy - a potentially embarrassing outcome.

Others simply ask what purpose his trial would serve. Born in Ukraine, Demjanjuk was a prisoner of war who, his defenders say, was forced to become a death camp guard. He played his part in the enormous horror of the Holocaust but many Germans are all too aware that other major war criminals have escaped justice. Some fled to live in exile and others received light sentences.

It is surprisingly difficult to pin down figures of the number of Germans tried or convicted of war crimes since 1945 but most experts agree with the Simon Wiesenthal Center that the number of criminals brought to justice is way below the total of those involved in the Holocaust.   

Some reports say that of an estimated 200,000 Germans and Austrians involved in the Holocaust, about 106,000 were investigated by German prosecutors and of those, only 6,500 were convicted.

Although a series of war crimes did take place, thousands of war criminals either escaped prosecution or got away with light sentences and a 1968 law made it easier for defendants to argue that they had only been following orders.

Nazi hunters in Ludwigsburg are still looking for war criminals and Germans have done a good deal more than other countries, especially Austria, to confront its past but many experts say it is the knowledge of the failure to punish Nazis soon after 1945 that has led to cases like Demjanjuk drawing so much attention now.

To survivors and their families, it is a matter of principle that people like Demjanjuk are brought to justice, however old they are. Germany’s Central Council of Jews spelled this out, saying all living Nazi war criminals can have no mercy, regardless of their age.

In many ways, Germany has moved on from its past.  It has sent soldiers on combat missions abroad and is getting more involved in world diplomacy. Young people here want to be part of a more self-confident state at the heart of Europe. There is relatively little public debate about the Demjanjuk case, just a weary resignation that it is happening.

But while people like Demjanjuk live, there will be no escape from the past for Germans.

By C. Bryson Hull

Sri Lanka’s army has the Tamil Tigers on the run with a string of convincing military victories. Many people are asking if one of Asia’s longest-running civil wars is near its end after 25 years.

 Sri Lankan tanks patrol near the town of Kilinochchi (REUTERS/Buddhika Weerasingh)

Fresh from capturing the separatist rebels’ self-declared capital last week, soldiers are busy squeezing the last piece of the northern Jaffna Peninsula the Tigers still hold, hitting it from the north and south. The military and analysts say the Tigers are moving their heavy guns and toughest fighters east to the port of Mullaittivu for a final showdown .

 The Tigers say they are confident they will reverse their losses, as they have done in the past. Many also fear the Tigers will carry out more suicide bombings and guerrilla attacks in the south to compensate for the shrinking northern battlespace. 

The Tigers are now confined to a wedge of the northeast, starting to the east of the A-9 road which bisects the north, the ocean on one side and jagged line roughly following the A-34 road that terminates in Mullaittivu.

One challenge that could complicate the military offensive there is the fact that most of an estimated 230,000 civilians are located in poor conditions, which rights groups say are aggravated by both the Tigers and the government.

 Sri Lankan  commandos patrol on a military vehicle near Kilinochchi on Jan. 4 (reuters/Buddhika Weerasingh)

 Sri Lankan  commandos patrol on a military vehicle near Kilinochchi on Jan. 4 (reuters/Buddhika Weerasingh)

 Sri Lankan  commandos patrol on a military vehicle near Kilinochchi on Jan. 4 (reuters/Buddhika Weerasingh)

 Sri Lankan  commandos patrol on a military vehicle near Kilinochchi on Jan. 4 (reuters/Buddhika Weerasingh)

 Sri Lankan  commandos patrol on a military vehicle near Kilinochchi on Jan. 4 (reuters/Buddhika Weerasingh)

Add into this mix President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s apparent plans to call an early election to capitalize on the military success and 2009 is looking to be a monumental year on the Teardrop of India. With so much at stake after 25 years of combat, where do you think the war, Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers are heading?

President-elect Barack Obama has been getting a lot of advice these days on how to deal with Muslims and Islam. He invited it by saying during his campaign that he either wanted to convene a conference with leaders of Muslim countries or deliver a major speech in a Muslim country "to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular”. But where? when? why? how? Early this month, I chimed in with a pitch for a speech in Turkey or Indonesia.  Some quite interesting comments have come in since then.

(Photo: Obama image in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)

Two French academics, Islam expert Olivier Roy and political scientist Justin Vaisse argued in a New York Times op-ed piece on Sunday that Obama's premise of trying to reconcile the West and Islam is flawed:

Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that “Islam” and “the West” are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between “civilizations” or “cultures” concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden’s narrative.

Instead, Mr. Obama, the first “post-racial” president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the United States and become a “post-civilizational” president. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like.

Also on Sunday, the Istanbul newspaper Sunday's Zaman ran a piece by sociologist Dogu Ergil who spelled out what he thought "moderate Muslims" expected of Obama.

(Photo: Blue Mosque in Istanbul, 9 Dec 2008/Tan Shung Sin)

Moderate or non-ideological Muslims expect Mr. Obama to support democratic trends in their countries, but not to push them from above using ruling elites that will never adopt a democratic agenda but rather will simply play for time, making only cosmetic changes. This will, in turn, further reinforce the power of autocratic regimes that are threatened by genuine democracy.

Muslim moderates look at religion as a cultural affair, wanting to render it autonomous of politics so that it will be protected from political power and in the same way, preventing it from seeking political power. So they want the Obama administration to press their governments to enact reforms that will pave the way to democratic politics and legal changes that will allow for more individual freedoms. They do not want a hypocritical stance from an America which advocates democracy but supports the most authoritarian regimes in the Arab world for the sake of oil deals and other strategic ends. The Bush administration set a very bad example of paying lip service to democracy, which, in fact, worked as a vehicle to blackmail Arab regimes and served America's strategic interests.

Michael Fullilove at the Brookings Institution made a pitch for an Obama speech in Indonesia in the New York Times while several Moroccan blogs have been running a campaign (including a petition with a long list of reasons) to have him speak there. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an exiled Egyptian sociologist and human rights who is a visiting professor at Harvard and Indiana universities, made the case for Indonesia or Turkey in the Washington Post.

Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador in the United States and Britain, has a long list of suggestions for a reformed U.S. policy towards the Muslim world in the Harvard International Review.  The list is fairly extensive, although it would have been even more informative if it had included suggestions for what should change in the Muslim world.

(Photo: Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, 21 Dec 2007/Mohsin Raza)

How Obama manages issues in the Muslim world will determine the success or failure of his foreign policy...

In the Muslim world ... perceptions have been shaped by decades of uneven handed policies and by US double standards that placed the security of Israel and the need for cheap oil above considerations of international law and justice for the Palestinians. In essence, Muslims regard US policies as responsible for the trust gap between the United States and the Islamic world. In the West, opinions concerning the cause for the gap with the Muslim world are more mixed. The most common view attributes this rift in relations not only to US policies but also to factors internal to the Muslim world-- to the weakness and contradictions in those societies and particularly to the democratic deficit, which allows radicals to build support for their cause. This, in fact, inspires the idea that the United States should lead efforts to restructure the Muslim world. Irrespective of the reality, both perspectives urge the need to review and recast US foreign policy.

My vote for the most interesting argument goes to Roy and Vaisse, who ask the basic question of what role religion actually plays in the big issues facing Obama.

The truth is, Islam explains very little. There are as many bloody conflicts outside of regions where Islam has a role as inside them. There are more Muslims living under democracies than autocracies. There is no less or no more economic development in Muslim countries than in their equivalent non-Muslim neighbors. And, more important, there exist as many varieties of Muslims as there are adherents of other religions. This is why Mr. Obama should not give credence to the existence of an Islam that could supposedly be represented by its “leaders”.

(Photo: Olivier Roy, 4 Dec 2007/Charles Platiau)

Who are these leaders that President Obama would convene anyway? If he picks heads of state, he will effectively concede Osama bin Laden’s point that Islam is a political reality. If he picks clerics, he will put himself in the awkward position of implicitly representing Christianity — or maybe secularism. In any case, he would meet only self-appointed representatives, most of them probably coming from the Arab world, where a minority of Muslims live.

Do you think Obama should launch a special initiative aimed at the Muslim world, or, as Roy and Vaisse argue, assert that "American values are universal and do not suffer any kind of double standard, and that they could be shared by atheists, Christians, Muslims and others"?

Now here's an interesting question. The New York Times reports that President-elect Barack Obama wants to make "a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office." But from which one? As NYT staffer Helene Cooper explains, it's a question that's fraught with diplomatic, religious and personal complications. After a day of calling around Washington, she found a consensus:

It’s got to be Cairo. Egypt is perfect. It’s certainly Muslim enough, populous enough and relevant enough. It’s an American ally, but there are enough tensions in the relationship that the choice will feel bold. The country has plenty of democracy problems, so Mr. Obama can speak directly to the need for a better democratic model there. It has got the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that has been embraced by a wide spectrum of the Islamic world, including the disenfranchised and the disaffected.

(Photo: Obama image in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)

That's a diplomatic answer, the kind you'd expect to get inside the Washington Beltway. Let's look at this more from the point of view of religion. If the American president gives a major speech in a Muslim country, it will be seen as an indirect comment on the type of mosque-state relations found in that country. It's not for him as a non-Muslim to endorse a certain type of Islam over another, say Sunni over Shi'ite. But as a politician from a country where church-state relations are a lively issue, one could expect him to ask what message his choice will send concerning the political relationship with religion in the state he chooses.

There is no obvious answer. There are Muslim states with close or distant links to violence in the name of religion, which should rule them out from the start. There are Muslim states that do not respect full equality for women, religious minorities and other groups -- that's a strike against them. Others Muslim states seem stuck in a time warp, or are politically unacceptable because they are not even barely democratic. This is where the diplomats start to see some daylight. But there is also overlapping among these groups, so no model candidate emerges. The world is a complicated place, an insight that should now return to U.S. foreign policy after eight years of denying this reality.

Seen that way, the diplomats Cooper consulted seem too cautious. While there is no ideal candidate, two Muslim countries seem to represent more of what Obama might want to see than Egypt -- Indonesia and Turkey. On Indonesia, Cooper writes "the very fact that Mr. Obama once lived and went to school there would make choosing it seem like cheating." Says who? It's the most populous Muslim nation in the world and it has an Islamist problem that it is fighting better than many others.

Cooper also rules out Turkey because a Turkish diplomat told her his country had no problem with its Islamic identity but it had a secular system. Turkey's certainly not perfect, but isn't it trying more than many other Muslim countries to harmonise its faith, its past and its future in a globalised world?

(Photo: Saudi women pose with Obama cutout in Jeddah, 6 Nov 2008/Susan Baaghil)

So those are my picks. Where do you think Obama should deliver this speech?

NEW YORK -  When her eight years in the Bush administration end on Jan. 20, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to write a book about U.S. foreign policy.

Asked in a Reuters interview on Friday if it would be a tell-all memoir and reveal secret meetings in the build-up to the Iraq war, Rice replied: “Tell-all? What’s a tell-all?”

The former Stanford University academic said it would look at America post-Sept. 11, 2001, and how those attacks shaped security issues worldwide.

Rice plans to sprint to the finish in her last months as secretary of state, tackling North Korea and Iran’s nuclear programs and trying to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

“There are still quite a few accounts out there that deserve my attention and need my attention and I have to go worry about a couple of them now,” she said, ending the interview.

The ferocity of the reaction in the German media to the fortress-like new U.S. embassy in Berlin, which former U.S. President George Bush will inaugurate on Friday, strikes me as a reflection of the strains in German-U.S. relations since 2003’s Iraq conflict.

It underlines just how long gone the days of the Cold War really are. Then, when Berlin was the front line in the Cold War, America was West Germany’s best friend and U.S. soldiers were welcome across the country.

Architectural crticis in Germany have slammed the boxy building with narrow windows as being reminiscent of Baghdad’s Green Zone.

The embassy is a picture of a country traumatised by 9/11 and by the consequences of globalisation, of a nation with such heavy armour that it can no longer see the world,” wrote conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung earlier this year.

Other critics have been just as hostile, deriding it as a discount supermarket, a prison, a bunker and like Fort Knox.

Admittedly, the beige building — in the heart of the city next to the Brandenburg Gate and just metres from where the Berlin Wall used to stand — looks rather bland and the metal bollards emphasise the barrier between the embassy and Berlin’s residents and tourists. But it isn’t so different from U.S. embassies in other European capitals which have boosted security.

Germans who fondly remember former U.S. President John F. Kennedy declaring “Ich bin ein Berliner” in 1963 and former President Ronald Reagan calling on the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in 1987 long for an improvement in trans-Atlantic relations.

U.S. officials hope the new building will show America’s “warmer, fuzzier” side, although whether either the embassy building or November’s U.S. election will herald a significant improvement in ties is another matter.

And as if the embassy, which cost about 80 million euros and only went ahead after a protracted and ugly public dispute with Berlin officials about how to make the embassy secure without moving two busy nearby streets 30 metres away, hasn’t courted enough controversy, Michael Reagan, son of the former president, was this week reported as saying Berlin should commemorate his father’s contribution to bringing down the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall. Here’s the piece from Der Tagesspiegel.

The Cold War is over. There is a chill in German-U.S. relations.

There is a running joke among Western journalists, diplomats and other foreigners based in Iran who have the task of trying to understand what is going on behind the scenes: the longer you stay here, the more opaque Iranian policy making becomes.

It may be said lightheartedly, but it contains more than a grain of truth. The longer you spend trying to peel back the layers of the Iranian establishment to understand what the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is thinking, the more layers you discover.

And, frankly, as a Westerner — and even for Iranian journalists — there’s a very real limit to how many layers you are ever going to penetrate.

But penetrate you must because it’s Khamenei’s thinking that is the key.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be the most public — and often most worrying to Western capitals — voice out there. But he is just one of the layers. One constituency contributing towards consensus. When national decisions are taken, however, Khamenei will be behind them.

So determining Iran’s nuclear policy, the most sensitive of issues in the Islamic Republic, often seems to present more questions than answers. Does Iran want negotiations that will end the standoff with the West? Or is talking just a way to buy time to master nuclear technology? Has the establishment calculated that it can survive military strikes on its nuclear facilities? Or is it looking for the “red line” so it can pull back from the brink at the last minute? And, perhaps, one of the more worrying questions is: does the Islamic Republic know where that “red line” to prevent military action really is?

There are analysts who look at Washington and say, after more than a quarter of century without an embassy in Tehran, the U.S. ability to understand Iranian policy calculations has been deeply eroded. But the same too can be said of Iran, which under the shah was — Israel aside — Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East but now is a sworn enemy. Set together, the possibility that both sides will end up talking past each other is real.

Some analysts also describe a big gap between a U.S. policy approach that tends to want straight talking and the Iranian preference for pondering its path in drawn out negotiations. The stereotype again may not be so far from reality: the cowboy with his six-shooter versus the carpet seller in the bazaar working out a price over endless cups of tea.

So now, six world powers — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — have again offered a range of incentives, such as state-of-the-art civilian nuclear power technology and trade benefits, if Iran agrees to suspend uranium enrichment (Enrichment is the real worry to Western capitals because, despite Iran’s denials, they fear the process will be used to make nuclear bomb material not fuel for power plants).

We’ve been here before. The deal is not so very different from one offered in 2006, and which was roundly rejected by Iran. Some Western diplomats chatter that senior Iranian officials have been making more positive noises. Others are more sceptical. But everyone is wary of predicting which way it will go. And with good reason. It’s those layers, you see. To change the metaphor, what most of us following Iran are able to learn about the Islamic Republic’s decision-making are the outer ripples from a stone that has been thrown into a pond. What that stone looks like is well below the surface.