Current Affairs: International Affairs -January 2013

• No plans to run for Presidency in 2016: Hillary
  Virtually putting to rest all speculations about her contesting the next US presidential elections, outgoing secretary of state Hillary Clinton has said she has absolutely no such plans and is just focussing on finishing her term in office. "Well I have absolutely no plans to run for presidency. Right now, I am trying to finish my term as Secretary of State," she told CNN in an interview when asked about reports of her contesting the elections of 2016. "I don't know everything I'll be doing. I'll be working on behalf of women and girls, and hopefully be writing and speaking. Those are the things that I am planning to do right now."Clinton said she does not know what her new life entails for her, when there are no appointments for her.


• New levels of horror in Syria, says UN
  The Syria war has reached 'unprecedented levels of horror', UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said after dozens of men were killed in a grim new massacre. Brahimi told the divided UN Security Council that it must now act to halt the carnage epitomised by the nearly 80 young men killed with a single bullet and dumped in a river in the battlefront city of Aleppo. Syrian rebels blamed President Bashar al-Assad's government for the killings, but state media said an Islamist opposition faction was to blame. Syria "is breaking up before everyone's eyes. Only the international community can help, and first and the foremost the Security Council," Brahimi told the council's 15 ambassadors, apologising for sounding like a broken old record. Twenty two months of conflict have now left well over 60,000 dead, according to the UN, which will seek $1.5 billion in humanitarian funding for beleaguered Syrians at a conference in Kuwait,


• China urges Japan to foster normal ties
  China urged Japan to create conditions for the normal development of bilateral relations, saying the two sides should "properly handle tensions" over the sovereignty of the disputed Diaoyu islands. Foreign ministry spokesman Hong lei said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had suggested that a summit between Japan and China was necessary to mend bilateral relations hampered by recent territorial disputes, Xinhua reported. Hong said China attaches importance to developing relation with Japan, and stressed that Beijing hopes that Tokyo will make joint efforts to overcome major difficulties so as to push bilateral ties back to the track of normal development.

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