HARD TALK

IT use to be a major event when international leaders spoke directly to each other by telephone, sidelining their respective ambassadors in the process. Now such calls are routine, especially between the current US Administration and its global contacts. On Friday night, Secretary of State Clinton spent twenty-five minutes on the line to Kabul finding out what exactly President Karsai had meant by some of the ungenerous and even hostile remarks that he had made in a speech about relations between Afghanistan and the western coalition that believes it is trying to help him to put his country in order. The previous night, President Obama had talked directly for an hour with President Hu Jintao of China in a conversation that seemed to put relations between their countries on a better footing than they have been for the past few months. Mr Hu confirmed that he will attend the summit on nuclear security which Mr Obama is chairing in Washington later this month, signalling that disagreements over climate change, the Dalai Lama and Tibet, arms sales to Taiwan, Google and currency manipulation, while not forgotten, will not be allowed to get in the way of understanding on major matters such as nuclear disarmament. Or Iran? Although China has shown a greater readiness to discuss tougher UN sanctions against Tehran's nuclear programme, it is not yet clear whether it will use or withhold its veto in the UN Security Council.