New assertiveness in UAE foreign policy
Source: Gulf News, author: Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, Special to Gulf News (Read full story)
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The UAE foreign policy priorities are sensibly changing to accommodate the contemporary global and regional realities. However, external influences aside, the noticeable change in UAE foreign policy is mainly a reflection of the “formal and the informal domestic sociopolitical structures” of the present state.
The UAE has changed massively and beyond recognition since December 2, 1971. The UAE at 40 is no longer the small, young, vulnerable and oil-centred country that it was in 1971. The 21st century UAE is an economic and financial power house, a rising military actor, a regional hub and a global brand that rubs shoulders with big powers and has friends and allies all over the planet. Some might still think of the UAE as a relatively small oil-state, but it is, as the dissertation claims, “a small state with a positively big ego”.
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Amir orders govt to amend electoral law
Source: Kuwait Times (Read full story)
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Kuwait’s Amir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, said yesterday he has ordered the government to amend the controversial electoral law despite threats by the opposition to boycott polls. “I have directed the government to introduce a partial amendment to the voting system” of the electoral constituency law, the Amir said in a televised speech. The decision is highly expected to spark strong reactions from the opposition and plunge the oil-rich Gulf state further into political turmoil.
The Islamist- and nationalist-led opposition has threatened to boycott an upcoming parliamentary election and stage street protests if the law was amended, accusing the government of trying to manipulate the polls results. The law, issued in 2006 after opposition-led protests, divides the Gulf state into five electoral constituencies each electing 10 MPs to the 50-member parliament. Under the law, each eligible voter is allowed to elect a maximum of four candidates and the government amendment will reduce this number to either one or two.
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Emir to visit Gaza tomorrow: Hamas
Source: Gulf Times (Read full story)
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It will be the first visit to the Palestinian enclave by an Arab head of state since it was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. The Emir will be one of the territory’s most high-profile international visitors since Hamas ousted the rival secular Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from Gaza in June, 2007. Abbas heads the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Palestinian official confirmed to AFP the Qataris were in talks with Abbas’s office over the Emir’s planned visit. Qatar in February brokered talks between Abbas and Hamas’s exiled political chief Khalid Mishal in a bid to promote Palestinian unity.
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