By Nicole Hunt

UN-Arab League Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan is back in Moscow on Monday for a meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Despite a Russian-backed agreement signed in Geneva at the end of June, international action on Syria has been slow-moving ever since, despite the US and the UK taking a strong stance against Syria and China just a week later at the Friends of Syria meeting. Annan’s meeting with Lavrov comes on the heels of a reported massacre in Treimsa on 12 July, in which at least 200 Syrians were killed.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton begins a two-day trip to Israel, where she’ll discuss the Middle East peace process with Israeli and Palestinian officials. The visit is Clinton’s first in two years, and comes ahead of a trip by Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney next week; in addition to the diplomatic meetings, Clinton will surely be hoping to shore up some support for the Democrats from wealthy ex-pat Americans in Israel.

Monday also marks the 70th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv roundup, which saw over 13,000 of France’s Jews deported to Germany, where most ended up at Auschwitz. Paris is marking the anniversary with a Day of Commemoration and the release and exhibition of meticulously kept records related to the roundup. The documents had previously been kept secret to hide the extent of the collaboration between French police and the Germans under the Vichy regime during World War II.

Abd al Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al Nashiri, the Guantanamo Bay detainee charged with the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, appears for a three-day motions hearing on Tuesday. Fifteen motions due to be heard, including one requesting that Judge James Pohl recuses himself or is disqualified from the case, one to dismiss the charges, and one requesting that the proceedings are broadcast via traditional media, rather than the military’s current closed circuit system.

Former US President George W. Bush is a contributor to a new book published Tuesday called The 4% Solution: Unleashing the Economic Growth America Needs. The idea of Bush Jr. sharing his thoughts on economic growth has raised some eyebrows among those who remember that the economy wasn’t exactly the strongpoint of his presidency.

The UN Security Council is due to adopt a resolution on the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) in New York on Wednesday, two days before the mission’s three-month mandate expires. Given that the mission has been suspended since 16 June, and in the wake of ongoing violence and the Houla and Treimsa massacres, any renewal is likely to be dependent on a change in the form the mission takes or tougher sanctions on the Syrian regime.

Indians go to the polls on Thursday to elect their president for a five-year term. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee resigned from his post last month in order to run for the UPA party, and now looks likely to win. Mukherjee has been campaigning hard to convince the electorate to follow tradition and vote for whichever candidate their party leaders back, and indeed to make sure he’s the one smaller parties are throwing their support behind.

The month-long Muslim festival of Ramadan is likely to officially start on Friday, though Muslims will begin to observe it from sundown on Thursday. The exact date for the festival’s beginning is still a bit up in the air, as the beginning of the lunar month is dependent on the sighting of the new moon.

Apple’s iPad goes on sale in China on Friday, the launch having been delayed due to a naming dispute with Chinese firm Proview. China is Apple’s second-strongest market (after its home ground in the US), but while the release of the iPhone 4s last year caused havoc, Chinese analysts are predicting the new iPad won’t fare as well, as cheaper, ‘gray market’ versions have been available from Hong Kong for months.

Francesco Schettino, the skipper of the Costa Concordia who has been nicknamed ‘Captain Coward’ after he allegedly fled the ship as it went down in January, is scheduled to be back in front of the court in Grosseto, Italy on Saturday. The court is expected to be presented with the results of the analysis of data from the ship’s Voyage Data Recorders (or ‘black boxes’). Schettino has recently appeared in several TV interviews, most recently apologising for the disaster and admitting to being ‘distracted’ at the time.

The 19th biennial International AIDS Conference kicks off in Washington on Sunday. Bill Clinton, Elton John, Bill Gates, Whoopi Goldberg and Aung San Suu Kyi (via videolink) are among those attending to discus

s the major challenges facing the global response to AIDS and to preview new scientific research. Norway marks the first anniversary of the 22 July attacks, which saw 77 people killed in a bombing in Oslo and a mass shooting at a Labour Party youth camp on the island of Utoya. Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik , who has admitted carrying out the attacks but claimed they were justified, recently stood trial for the killings; the verdict in his case is expected on 24 August.

The critical nature of coming weeks was acknowledged by the panelists who took part in the Frontline Club’s First Wednesday discussion on Syria on the night that the UN Security Council condemned the government’s violent crackdown in the city of Hama.

"Ramadan was always going to be an explosive month for Syria," said Sue Lloyd Roberts who posed as a tourist in June to film Syrian protesters for BBC2’s Newsnight:

"You can be arrested if a group of people meet in a public place, which is why during Ramadan, when thousands go to their mosques routinely every day, it was going to be a chance to focus political dissent and to set off demonstrations.

"This is what has happened and the army was waiting for it to happen and my god have they retaliated in a brutal way."

Malik Al-Abdeh, a former BBC journalist and chief editor of Barada TV a London-based Syrian opposition satellite channel, said if the regime was to emerge stronger than it is now then we could see the beginning of a civil war in Syria.

He added that the slogan from the beginning of the revolution has been ‘death over indignity’ and said many of the protesters would prefer to die than to continue to live under Bashar al-Assad:

"There is no going back as far as the protesters are concerned. They know that if they go back they will all be arrested because there is still a network of informers. However, after Ramadan, if the regime is visibly weakened, then it could well spell the beginning of the end for Bashar al-Assad, so the next three weeks will be crucial."

Christopher Phillips, Syria analyst in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Middle East team, agreed that the Syrian uprising was "at a key juncture". This is the the moment that "the gloves have come off" and the regime had given up all pretence of being reformist, he said:

 "There’s no pretence any more that Bashar in particular is some kind of reformer, or is unwilling to use violence. He is clearly involved in this and he is clearly willing to use force."

But Phillips said he was uncertain if there would be a civil war because that would require another side to fight back.

"One of the reasons movement is peaceful is because they know full well that if ever they give the regime a genuine opportunity to crush them, a genuine justification, they will be smashed. The only arms that can be got hold of are small arms, they would be absolutely crushed. It’s not like Libya where you have large segments of the military with hardware that would switch sides."

Ammar Waqqaf, a member of the British Syrian Societ, who insisted that the uprisings were of a sectarian nature, also said the country was already in a state of civil war: "This is why the regime has toughened up because if it hadn’t then the other side is going to take matters into its own hands," he said.

Daniel Pye, a Damascus-based freelance journalist who has worked as deputy editor of a Syrian current affairs magazine since February 2011, said he had heard only occasional sectarian slogans at anti regime demonstrations. "Maybe one person in a crowd shouts something and everyone else has said ‘No, this isn’t what we’re about, we’re one people against the regime’," he said, adding that there was a growing movement of people in Syria that the world should take notice of:

"It may be disorganised and chaotic and have many different elements to it but there is a movement of people that people all over the world should listen to and do everything they can to understand."

Watch the one and half hour event for a full briefing on Syria here or download the podcast here. The hashtag for this event was #FCSyria.

Monday is the beginning of a new month and the beginning of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

In Saudi Arabia, the date is doubly significant: following the 18 June beheading of Indonesian maid Ruyati binti Sapubi and the near-beheading of another maid known as Darsem, an Indonesian moratorium on sending domestic workers to the country comes into effect.

There have also been whispers of another women’s driving protest to coincide with the first day of Ramadan, but so far nothing as organised as the 28 June attempt.

Tuesday is debt ceiling day in the US. While one hopes that the increasingly heated negotiations will lead to a solution before then, there remains the increasingly real possibility that the US could default on its $14tn debt.

In Cape Town, Mziwamadoda Qwabe and Xolile Mngeni are due to go on trial over the 13 November, 2010 murder of British honeymooner Anni Dewani. Mngeni was unable to attend the last hearing, reportedly due to surgery to remove a brain tumour, and is unlikely to be in attendance.

All eyes on Egypt on Wednesday, as the trial for ousted President Hosni Mubarak and his sons Alaa and Gamal is due to begin, but looks likely to be postponed. Former Interior Minister Habib al Adly is also tried, after his trial was postponed from 25 July so he could be heard alongside the Mubaraks.

Less dramatic is a Supreme Court hearing taking place in Sydney, where the Australian government is taking legal action against former Guantanamo inmate David Hicks over his 2010 book Guantanamo, My Journey. The government says Hicks is illegally gaining commercial benefit from a crime.

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) monthly Food Price Index is released on Thursday, with the July figures of interest as drought and famine continue to ravage the Horn of Africa. US

President Barack Obama celebrates his 50th birthday as the week begins to wind down.

Following the excitement around the final Atlantis mission in July, NASA launches Jupiter explorer Juno on Friday, the first solar-powered spacecraft designed to operate so far from the sun.

Saturday marks the 66th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A commemorative ceremony takes place at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, and nuclear disarmament campaign groups hold events worldwide.

Voters go to the polls in Cape Verde on Sunday to elect their next President. Incumbent Pedro Pires, who won by less than one percent in the 2006 elections, is not a candidate.