Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain travels to Europe and the Middle East this week ahead -- including a stop in Iraq -- to burnish his senior statesman credentials while Democratic rivals brawl back home.
The Arizona senator, who touts his foreign affairs experience over Democratic rivals senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, will lead a congressional delegation starting tomorrow to meet the leaders of Jordan, Israel, Britain and France, his campaign office said.
But off the official schedule was a trip to Iraq yesterday, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, where he will see firsthand the effects of the troop "surge" for which he has been such a fervent advocate, even as US public support for the war in Iraq has slumped further.
The delegation was to meet with US military officials and Iraq's leaders to assess the success of the surge strategy that deployed more soldiers to Iraq, the Post said.
CLOSE LOOK
Observers said the trip would give several heads of state a closer look at one of the three candidates battling for the White House.
"The people he's going to meet with are going to try to find out from him what he would do as president," Jim Steinberg, a dean of public affairs at the University of Texas, told the Post.
McCain, who has staked his presidential hopes on Iraq, was making the latest of several trips to the war-ravaged country where more than 3,988 US forces have been killed since the March 2003 invasion.
OFFICIAL BUSINESS
He stressed that the overseas trip was part of his role as the top Republican in the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"I do want to emphasize again that the three of us are going as members of the Armed Services Committee," McCain was quoted as saying in Saturday's New York Times. "And we will emphasize that at every stop."
Yet there were political elements to the trip that were hard to ignore.
McCain's campaign will likely use the meetings with Jordanian King Abdullah, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to convey that the senator is at home on the world stage.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS