I am writing from the newly painted intern office to say that we are at it again. For the past week we have been bugging Congressional staffers incessantly during appropriations week (of all times!) to get them to sponsor H.Res.213, which supports the creation of the U.N. Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS).

To build upon what my colleague Raj wrote earlier on the Bush Administration's 'movement' on the ICC, yesterday revealed a move by the Sudanese government that looks like a step forward but doesn't go anywhere at all.? Am I surprised? Not really.

Sudan announced (for what seems like the hundredth time) that they accept an African Union - United Nations joint proposal for a hybrid peacekeeping force in Darfur. Sudan initially agreed to the force "in principle" at a November 2006 meeting in Addis Ababa with the African Union, then U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, members of the U.N. Security Council, and the Sudanese government. Since then, they have issued several public statements accepting various packages of a three-phase deployment, with the most recent announcement in April.

This afternoon, G8 leaders reached a compromise on climate change. The agreement comes after weeks of tension between the U.S. and European members of the G8 over establishing goals for international action to combat global warming.

Yesterday, President Bush made it clear that the U.S. would not reconsider its opposition to including a concrete global emissions target in the G8 communique.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, as my colleague Scott Paul noted last month, is a breath of fresh air in Turtle Bay. New York Times U.N. reporter, Warren Hoge, picked up Scott's sense on Wednesday.

Mr. Khalilzad, the former American ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, has been welcomed effusively since his arrival six weeks ago, and one frequently mentioned reason is that he strikes people as so different from John R. Bolton, the combative former American ambassador.

Ambassador Bolton not only poisoned the water for U.S. relations during his tenure as our nation's emissary to the U.N., he sent diplomacy back to the Stone Age. While Ambassador Khalilzad is still a key member of the Bush administration, his tone and demeanor - at least during his first six weeks - is already helping repair the damage done by his predecessor. In his story, Hoge quote a long-time observer and expert on the U.N.: