Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his first public statement on the U.S. elections, offering President-elect Barack Obama congratulations on his victory and calling on Obama to implement a foreign policy of “non-interference.” The BBC says Ahmadinejad’s gesture is the first official message of goodwill to an American leader from an Iranian president since the country’s Islamist revolution in 1979.

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Both Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) outline their views on U.S. policy toward China in a new edition of the American Chamber of Commerce in China’s China Brief magazine. Both candidates call for increased trade cooperation with China and say the United States should work more closely with China to fight climate change and nuclear proliferation.

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Several of the world’s leading papers focused their news coverage today on the overwhelming response U.S. presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has garnered thus far on his tour of Europe. Germany’s Deutsche-Welle says Obama received a welcome the country “usually reserves for rock stars and soccer players.” Der Spiegel says the candidate displayed the full range of his charisma in a moving speech in which he invoked a transatlantic “shared destiny” and promised to restore U.S.-European relations. In a news analysis, the New York Times says Obama’s speech was vague on diplomatic specifics, but says the emotional response his tour has prompted represents Europe’s hope for a “more flexible, less ideological America.”

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In a major speech Thursday at Berlin’s Victory Column, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) recounted the historic relationship between the United States and Europe and said the “burdens of global citizenship” will continue to bind the two powers together. A “true partnership” between Europe and the United States will require “sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace,” Obama said. Read more »

Ahead of Tuesday’s nominating contests in Ohio and Texas, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) attacked Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for her record on Iraq. Clinton “won’t even admit” that her vote in favor of the 2002 authorization of the war in Iraq “was a mistake, or even that it was a vote for war,” said Obama at a town hall meeting in Westerville, Ohio.

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Responding to CFR.org’s Daily Analysis Brief, After Kosovo’s Secession, reader Dan Darling writes:

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