U.S. Government, Firms Vie for Scarce Mideast Skills
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A U.S. government quest for Middle  East linguists for the "war on terror" is failing to find  enough recruits because of competition from private sector  firms paying much more money for the same scarce skills.
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Israeli and Palestinian negotiators struggled on Monday to get U.S.-sponsored peace talks, stalled by disputes over Jewish settlements, on course before a visit by President George W. Bush.
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Businesses are having difficulty recruiting staff with the right skills, say the British Chambers of Commerce.
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For generations, the United States has selected its diplomats through a two-stage test seen as a model of merit-based rigor. Pass hundreds of questions in a dozen subject areas and a day-long oral grilling by Foreign Service officers, and join the ranks. Fail, and find a different line of work.
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RAMALLAH, West Bank Two unlikely factors - the maneuverings of Hamas, a group the United States considers a chief sponsor of terrorism, and a widespread fear of chaos among Palestinians - are combining to create some hope in the run-up to next month&#39;s
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An ambitious effort to create jobs and pull Egypt's Bedouin out of poverty is falling short.
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Justice on the part of Israel does not come easily, especially with a government led by the historically hard-line Ariel Sharon. It was the job on Sunday of outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell to encourage
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With public attention focused elsewhere, the Bush administration is letting Middle East peace hopes disappear. Israelis rightly complain that peace requires a partner, a role that Yasser Arafat has been pathetically incapable of filling so far.
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Long locked in struggle, Sharon and Arafat both confront fights for survival that could reshape the Middle East
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The Secretary of State believes in the Mideast peace process but the participants themselves appear to have little faith
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WASHINGTON - Teaching local officials in Iraq to govern themselves and provide their citizens with basic services will take "years of steady engagement." It also will rely heavily on the US government's ability to recruit skilled civilians, investigators told a House panel yesterday.
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The Bush administration signaled on Saturday that it may accept limited growth within existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank in a shift that could help embattled Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
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WASHINGTON -- Despite a flurry of hopeful signs in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the death of Yasser Arafat, the Bush administration is keeping a cautious distance from the emerging Palestinian leadership, saying that future political and economic support will depend on whether a new Palestinian president can rein in militant groups.
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The solution to one of the thorniest problems in the Middle East may be taking shape on an anonymous-looking building site in south-west Israel.
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Italy's military electronics, aircraft and military industries are preparing to take off - boosted by heavy injections of American and Israeli expertise.
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Space industry veterans lament that a lack of government foresight that has resulted in a four- to six-year gap between the end of the space shuttle and the availability of a next-generation rocket, the Ares.
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Viewpoint: The Bush Administration appears unable to play Washington's traditional crisis-management role in the Middle East. That may be because it doesn't talk to Israel's enemies