The United States says it is willing to help India and China improve their relations and welcomes a greater involvement by New Delhi in East Asia, AFP reports.

"We support an improvement in dialogue between India and China, and we would seek to take steps to facilitate that as we move forward," Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia said.

“What young people want is political dignity. Democracy may enhance that. But political dignity also encompasses ethnic or national self-determination, religious self-definition, and human and social rights. All of this now takes place in a wired world where the youth are acutely aware of economic, racial, and social inequities.”

“Nationhood is not an abstract phenomenon. It is a work continuously in the making; a work that requires effort and dedication, vision and leadership; most importantly, it requires the collective free will of the people.

“Today’ world is different from the 19th century … where force could be used, at will, to unify a vast land or impose a cultural or linguistic identity upon a diverse group of peoples.”

“To forge a free nation today you need the assent of all. No identity can be unduly imposed anymore.

Preliminary official results from South Sudan’s independence referendum show that more than 99 percent of voters in the plebiscite want secession.

The Economist reports that, despite reports of discrepancies between voting numbers and registration lists in 60 counties (over half of the states in the South), the vote has been praised by observers: “there is little doubt that the process is indeed representative of the will of the Southern Sudanese people.”

“Exclusive reliance on quiet dialogue and cooperation [with abusive states] becomes a charade designed more to appease critics of complacency than to secure change. … A key offender has been the European Union.

“Defending human rights is rarely convenient. But if [Western] governments want to pursue other interests instead, they should have the courage to admit it, instead of hiding behind meaningless dialogues and fruitless quests for cooperation.”

“Over the years you see an increase in ‘important’ defendants, indicted for more serious crimes: the higher you climb up the power hierarchy, the more serious the crimes in the indictments are.”

- Dr. Frederiek de Vlaming, who has studied the careers of three international prosecutors of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

“Southern Sudan is just the beginning. The world may soon have 300 independent, sovereign nations ... and that's just fine.”

“It is less likely that [states that are internally diffuse and often intentionally unevenly developed] will gather the competence, capacity, and will to become equitable modern states than that they will continue to inspire resistance to the legacies of centralized misrule.”

It has become routine in much analysis of international affairs to position China as an opponent of the West (i.e. not just a competitor), and as prioritizing state sovereignty and non-interference in a state’s internal affairs above other international principles.