Negotiations to settle a long-running guerrilla conflict finally produced an agreement, which voters promptly rejected. Now that the government has pushed through the pact anyway, will it stick?

Angola's rulers are faced with the rise of a generation that does not accept the political logic of the war, whereby dissent equaled treason.

Whichever way the impeachment train rolls, the … crisis has opened new fissures in a democratic system that has been in place only since 1985.

As 2002 came to an end, the Argentine economy seemed to have touched bottom after contracting more than 10 percent. But a robust recovery during 2003 will be blocked by many of the same forces that helped create Argentina's economic catastrophe: the hard-line stance of the IMF, the muddle that is Argentine politics, and a dispirited and politically disaffected populace.

The Argentina crisis will not provide an opportunity to make a break with the past and take the imf in the new directions that director Horst Köhler has enunciated. Instead, the fund needs to accept that the humanitarian crisis in Argentina demands quick disbursement with relaxed conditionality.