Tag: InternationalNews

{{Russia said on Thursday it wanted answers from NATO on its activities in eastern Europe after the Western military alliance promised to beef up defenses for its eastern members.}}

Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region last month has caused the deepest crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War, leading the West to impose sanctions and sparking fear President Vladimir Putin has territorial designs beyond the Black Sea peninsula with its Russian-majority population.

NATO has ordered military planners to draft measures to reassure nervous Eastern European countries – which were under Moscow’s domination until the 1989 end of the Cold War – but stopped short of calls by Poland to base more forces there.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said any increase in NATO’s permanent presence in eastern Europe would violate a 1997 treaty on NATO-Russian cooperation.

“We have addressed questions to the north Atlantic military alliance. We are not only expecting answers, but answers that will be based fully on respect for the rules we agreed on,” Lavrov told reporters at a briefing with his Kazakh counterpart.

Foreign ministers from the 28-nation, U.S.-led NATO met this week to discuss responses to Russia’s Crimea takeover, including sending NATO soldiers and equipment to allies in eastern Europe, holding more exercises, ensuring NATO’s rapid-reaction force could deploy more quickly, and reviewing NATO’s military plans.

Military planners will come back with detailed proposals within weeks, a NATO official said.

NATO military chiefs are concerned that an estimated 40,000 Russian forces near the Ukrainian border may signal plans by Putin to move beyond Crimea into eastern and southern Ukraine, which also have significant Russian-speaking populations.

Russian forces seized Crimea after mass protests toppled Ukraine’s pro-Russian president. Moscow denounced this as a coup driven by right-wing extremists and said it reserved the right to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine, but denied having any intention to move into other areas of the ex-Soviet republic.

Lavrov responded to criticism over the size of the force along Russia’s border with Ukraine by saying Moscow had the right to move troops on its territory and they would return to their permanent bases after military exercises.

He did not give a timeline for when war games would end but said NATO’s concerns were overblown.

“It is necessary to de-escalate rhetoric which overshoots the mark and crosses into the unreasonable,” he said.

reuters

{{French President Francois Hollande’s former partner, Segolene Royal, has joined the government in a major reshuffle by the ruling Socialists.}}

She will serve as environment minister in the cabinet of the new Prime Minister, Manuel Valls.

Mr Valls was appointed to the job after the Socialists suffered a humiliating defeat at local elections.

The Finance Minister, Pierre Moscovici, has left the government, with his job now split between two ministers.

Michel Sapin takes charge of finance while Arnaud Montebourg will be in charge of industry and economy.

Laurent Fabius and Jean-Yves Le Drian keep their positions as foreign affairs and defence ministers in the new cabinet, which replaces that led by Jean-Marc Ayrault.

President Hollande is one of the most unpopular French leaders in decades, having failed to restore the economy.

It is open to question how many of the key new appointments were the choice of Mr Valls alone. Mr Sapin is a long-time close friend of Mr Hollande.

His first task will be to persuade the EU that France is on track after the country again missed its deficit target, our correspondent adds.

While Mr Valls is on the right of his party, the new economy minister is most definitely to the left, having previously accused the EU of damaging growth with its demands for cuts, he says.

{{‘Segolene’s revenge’}}

It is said that Mr Hollande’s most recent official partner, Valerie Trierweiler, had opposed Ms Royal’s appointment to any position in the government.

Mr Hollande and Ms Trierweiler officially split up in January after it emerged he had been having an affair with an actress.

The French daily le Monde ran the headline “The revenge of Segolene Royal” on its web edition. One French blogger wrote on Twitter: “Sego [Segolene] nominated, break with Trierweiler complete.”

The return of Ms Royal, mother of Mr Hollande’s four children, to government follows a long period when she was out of the political spotlight.

She was the Socialist candidate in the 2007 presidential election, but lost to Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr Valls served in the previous cabinet as interior minister, where he became one of few government figures popular among the wider French public.

His replacement as interior minister is Bernard Cazeneuve, who served as a junior minister responsible for the budget under Mr Ayrault.

Two Green ministers from Mr Ayrault’s cabinet both resigned in protest at the appointment of Mr Valls as prime minister, because of his tough record on immigration and other issues.

However, the Socialists still enjoy an overall majority in the lower house of the parliament, the National Assembly.

BBC

{{A surprise decision by President Mahmoud Abbas to sign more than a dozen international conventions giving Palestinians greater leverage against Israel left the United States struggling on Wednesday to put peace talks back on track.}}

The documents Abbas signed, officials said, included the Geneva Conventions – the key text of international law on the conduct of war and occupation.

Palestinians hope it will give them a stronger basis to appeal to the International Criminal Court and eventually lodge formal complaints against Israel for its continued occupation of lands seized in the 1967 war that they want for their state.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who had been piecing together a complex three-way deal to push the faltering negotiations into 2015, cancelled a visit to the de facto Palestinian capital, Ramallah, planned for Wednesday after Abbas’s dramatic move late on Tuesday.

“We urge both sides to show restraint while we work with them,” Kerry told reporters in Brussels, where he was attending a ministerial meeting of NATO.

Palestinian officials signaled the new crisis could be short-lived if Israel made good on its pledge to release more than two dozen long-serving Palestinian prisoners. Israel has said it first wants the Palestinians to agree to extend the talks beyond an April 29 deadline.

Kerry noted that Abbas, after signing the international agreements, had told a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organisation leadership that he would remain in touch with the Americans.

“The important thing is to keep the process moving and find a way to see whether the parties are prepared to move forward. In the end, this is up to the parties,” Kerry said.

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to comment on Abbas’s move.

Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin, a hardliner in Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, said Abbas’s latest step had turned the proposed talks-extension deal into a farce.

{wirestory}