Tag: InternationalNews

{{Nato foreign ministers have agreed to suspend all practical civilian and military co-operation with Russia.}}

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region was the gravest threat to European security for a generation.

There could be no “business as usual”, he added.

He had earlier categorically denied reports that Russia was pulling its forces back from its border with Ukraine.

Moscow is believed to have massed tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s eastern border in recent days, causing alarm in Kiev and the West.

Foreign ministers from the 28-member Nato bloc, gathering in Brussels for their first meeting since Russia’s annexation of Crimea, issued a strongly worded statement in which they condemned Russia’s “illegal” annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

They agreed to suspend Nato co-operation with Russia in a number of bodies but added that dialogue in the Nato-Russia Council could continue, as necessary, at ambassadorial level and above “to allow us to exchange views, first and foremost on this crisis. We will review Nato’s relations with Russia at our next meeting in June”.

They are also looking at options including situating permanent military bases in the Baltic states to reassure members in Eastern Europe.

Russia’s actions in Ukraine have caused concern in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were part of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Nato jets will take part in air patrols in the region later in a routine exercise that analysts say has taken on added significance due to the crisis. Several Nato countries, including the UK, US and France, have offered additional military aircraft.

Separately, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to back a bill providing aid to Ukraine and imposing certain sanctions against Russia over the annexation of Crimea. The bill now goes to President Barack Obama for signature.

{{‘Aggression’}}

Announcing the formal suspension of ties, Mr Rasmussen said Nato’s message was clear: it stood by its allies, it stood by Ukraine and it stood by the international system of rules that had developed in recent decades. He urged Russia to be part of a solution “respecting international law and Ukraine’s borders”.

He also said Nato would offer Ukraine greater access to alliance exercises and support the development of its military.

{BBC}

{{The Central Intelligence Agency misled the U.S. government and public for years about aspects of its brutal interrogation program, concealing details about harsh treatment of detainees and other issues, according to a report in the Washington Post.}}

U.S. officials who have seen a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA interrogation program described damning new information about a network of secret detention facilities, also called “black sites”, the Washington Post said.

The Intelligence Committee is responsible for oversight of the CIA. It completed the 6,300-page draft report on the interrogation program more than a year ago but it remains classified.

At the “black sites”, prisoners were sometimes subjected to harsh interrogation techniques even when analysts were sure they had no more information to give, said the report, which the Post said was based on interviews with current and former U.S. officials.

The files reviewed by committee investigators describe previously undisclosed cases of abuse, including the alleged repeated dunking of a terrorism suspect in tanks of ice water at a detention site in Afghanistan. The method bore similarities to waterboarding but never appeared on any Justice Department-approved list of techniques, the Washington Post said.

Officials also said that millions of records show that the CIA’s ability to obtain the most valuable intelligence information, including tips that led to the locating and killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, had little, if anything, to do with “enhanced interrogation techniques”, the newspaper said.

A spokesman for the CIA said the agency had not yet seen a final version of the report and was not able to comment, the Washington Post said.

Some current and former agency officials have privately described the study as marred by factual errors and misguided conclusions, the newspaper added.

In March, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the CIA of searching computers used by committee staffers compiling the report and she questioned whether the agency had broken the law in doing so.

{wirestory}

{{The last words from the cockpit of a missing Malaysian jet were a standard “Good night Malaysian three seven zero”, Malaysian authorities said, changing their account of the critical last communication from a more casual “All right, good night.”}}

The correction more than three weeks after Flight MH370 vanished with 239 people on board was made as Malaysian authorities face heavy criticism, particularly from China, for mismanaging the search and holding back information.

Painstaking analysis of radar data and limited satellite information has focused the search on a vast, inhospitable swath of the southern Indian Ocean west of the Australian city of Perth, but has so far failed to spot any sign of the jetliner.

Search coordinators warned the hunt could drag on for some time yet.

“In this case, the last known position was a long, long way from where the aircraft appears to have gone,” retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the head of the Australian agency coordinating the operation, told reporters in Perth.

“It’s very complex, it’s very demanding and we don’t have hard information like we might normally have,” he said.

The Boeing 777 disappeared from civilian radar in the early hours of March 8 as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Minutes later its communications were cut off and it turned back across Malaysia and headed towards the Indian Ocean.

Malaysia says the plane was likely diverted deliberately, probably by a skilled aviator, leading to speculation of involvement by one or more of the pilots. Investigators, however, have determined no apparent motive or other red flags among the 227 passengers and 12 crew.

“We would like to confirm that the last conversation in the transcript between the air traffic controller and the cockpit is at 0119 (Malaysian Time) and is “Good night Malaysian three seven zero,” the Department of Civil Aviation said in a statement late on Monday.

Malaysia’s ambassador to China told Chinese families in Beijing as early as March 12 that the last words had been “All right, good night”. About two-thirds of the passengers on board were Chinese.

The statement said authorities were still conducting “forensic investigation” to determine whether the last words from the cockpit were by the pilot or the co-pilot. Malaysia Airlines had previously said the words were believed to have come from the co-pilot.

reuters