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Mark Mardell, North America editor

Mark Mardell North America editor

Come here for America in all its glory - my take on the twist and turns of the presidency, electoral races and life beyond Washington

23:19 UK time, Wednesday, 23 May 2012

Eurozone crisis: White House holds its breath

US President Barack Obama has at least some sympathy with the eurozone leaders who find it so difficult coming up with a concrete plan that they can sell to their individual parliaments.

He said, at the end of the Nato meeting in Chicago: "I think about my one Congress, then I start thinking about 17 congresses and I start getting a little bit of a headache."

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00:25 UK time, Tuesday, 22 May 2012

Milestone or millstone?

The Chicago Nato summit marked a "milestone". That was the word chosen to spin the summit.

It is a more than usually evocative and revealing word. "Milestone" makes me think not of the end of a journey, but of the long slog still ahead. Nearly there, but not quite.

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20:01 UK time, Monday, 21 May 2012

Mark added analysis to:

Nato upbeat on Pakistan dispute

When the Obama administration was first getting to grips with the complexities of war in Afghanistan you'd hear people say the strategy should be called, not "Af-Pak" but "Pak-Af".

They had been persuaded that the key to the whole situation lay in Pakistan. That it was the new real safe haven for the militants, who'd been driven out of Afghanistan.

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03:08 UK time, Monday, 21 May 2012

Mission, sort of, accomplished

You won't hear anyone say "mission accomplished". That was the banner that hung behind George W Bush on an aircraft carrier as he declared the Iraq war won. Just before it spiralled into chaos.

But the message that the leaders want to go out from the Nato summit is that war is, nearly, over. For the West at any rate.

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About Mark

Covered British politics from the fall of Thatcher to Blair's last election victory as political correspondent, Newsnight Political editor, BBC Chief Political Correspondent and diarist for This Week.

The BBC's first Europe editor covering the impact of EU laws on people in and beyond the European Union's 27 countries, from illegal immigration to Poland to environmental change in Spain.

Grew up in Surrey, educated at Kent University in Canterbury, worked in commercial radio on Teesside Leeds and London before joining the BBC.

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