Saudi Bombshell III, Ayodhya, and UN Crapshoot...

The demolition of the Babri Masjid (mosque) by Hindu fanatics on December 6, 1992, at Ayodhya in the northern province of Uttar Pradesh is a blot on India's contemporary history. It exposed the underbelly of dirty communal, caste and minority politics that peaked in the 1990s even as some tapering of this vicious agenda has taken place over the past four to five years. This week, 17 years after being appointed on December 16, 1992, to probe the conspiracy leading to the destruction of the mosque, M S Liberhan, then a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, submitted his findings to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. A tryst with India's communal past by Siddharth Srivastava

More than 18 months after the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the United Nations has begun a formal international inquiry into the "facts and circumstances" surrounding the traumatic day of December 27, 2007, in Rawalpindi. That the inquest into the killing of Bhutto while she was on the campaign trail took so long to take off makes clear that the UN's three-member team is entering a political minefield with no guarantee of success in identifying the plot and masterminds of the killing. A UN crapshoot in PakistanBy Sreeram Chaulia

SAUDI BOMBSHELLS, Part 3FBI chief defended SaudisBy Gareth Porter
Part 1: Al-Qaeda excluded from suspect list
Part 2: Why US officials blamed Iran