The following are editorial opinions from newspapers from around the world which may be of interest to Royal Gazette readers.

The Times, London, –on US-Afghanistan relations

President Hamid Karzai's astonishingly crude attacks on the US, after President Barack Obama's first visit to Kabul, make patent the breakdown in relations between the two men. In a deliberately mendacious misreading of US policy and strategy in Afghanistan, Karzai accused the West of perpetrating a "vast fraud" by trying to deny him victory in last year's presidential election.

He said that Afghans would trust their leader only if he showed he was not a puppet. And he gave a warning that if "foreign pressure" continued, he might even join the Taliban. ...

It is clear that the prickly and mercurial Afghan president was humiliated by Obama's six-hour night-time visit and furious not only at being ordered to do more to confront the corruption in his government but at the subsequent US disclosure of Obama's frosty meeting.

Karzai knows that Afghans have an atavistic mistrust of foreigners and an instinctive resentment of foreign forces, however committed they are to ending the misery, poverty and violence that Afghans have endured for the past 30 years ...

Washington has made its frustration clear. The US wants changes in place by September, when Afghans vote for a new parliament. It now has a shrewd grasp of Afghanistan's tribal politics. Karzai may soon find that, caught between the Taliban and Nato, he is eminently dispensable.

Wilmington North Carolina Star-News,–on offshore oil and gas exploration

As the Obama administration opens parts of the East Coast to energy exploration, let's hope the president keeps those words in mind.

President Barack Obama has generally been opposed to offshore drilling, and the move is seen as a concession to Republicans as the president tries to craft a comprehensive energy bill that focuses on renewable energy.

Even those who support offshore drilling will find little in this bill to get excited about. The areas being opened for drilling — including waters off North Carolina — are not especially promising. For example, the tracts opened off Virginia are estimated to hold 130 million barrels of oil. That's how much the US imports from all foreign suppliers in two weeks. ...

In North Carolina, the most likely sites for exploration are off the Outer Banks region, which is almost completely reliant on tourism and is home to an especially fragile ecosystem and a large commercial and recreational fishing industry ...

Even if offshore wells were up and running, there has been little interest in building petrochemical processing facilities in North Carolina. So don't count on an economic boon for North Carolina coastal counties. Meanwhile, the damage caused by a spill could be devastating to local economies."