Poppies for Peace: Reforming Afghanistan's Opium Industry
Afghanistan, which could be slipping back into chaos, must turn the tables on the opium crisis. The international community should establish a pilot project and investigate a licensing scheme to legalize the production of medicines such as morphine and codeine from poppy crops to help it escape.
The new battleground: Central Asia and the Caucasus
The new U.S. strategic emphasis on Central Asia and the Caucasus; Russia's domestic economic priorities; and Moscow's increasingly assertive, neo‐imperial foreign policy are likely to test the very limits of the strategic partnership between Moscow and Washington.
Analysis: The Agenda 2007 Proposals: Evolution or Revolution?
On 10 February 2004 the Commission published its proposal for the financial perspective 2007-2013. A week later it adopted the third report on economic and social cohesion. These two documents form the basis of the so-called ‘Agenda 2007 reforms’. They will be the greatest challenge for the enlarged EU after the intergovernmental conference, since they will determine the financial basis for EU policy-making until the middle of the next decade. The Agenda 2007 proposals certainly hint at courageous reforms, because they place a previously unheard-of emphasis on performance and quality. Under the proposals, structural operations should generate value for money, and the funds should focus on projects which generate added value at a European level. Overall the Commission’s proposals point in the right direction, because they balance, on the one hand, solidarity for the new Member States and weak regions in the old Member States with, on the other hand, investments in future tasks. Moreover, they constitute a paradigm shift. For the first time, the Common Agricultural Policy will not be the dominant expenditure category. Now it is up to the Member States to examine the proposals politically and find a compromise between sometimes very divergent interests. It is to be hoped that, during the debate over expenditure limits and division of funds, national interests do not outweigh European interests.