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Tag: InternationalNews

  • Israeli Prime Minister Threatens to Bomb Iran

    {{Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Iran is moving “closer and closer” to building a nuclear weapon and warned that his country may have to act against Tehran to curb it from achieving its goal before the United States does.}}

    “They’re edging up to the red line. They haven’t crossed it yet,” Netanyahu said on Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

    “They’re getting closer and closer to the bomb. And they have to be told in no uncertain terms that that will not be allowed to happen.”

    Netanyahu went on to say that Israel had a more narrow timetable than Washington, implying it may have to take unilateral action to halt Iran’s controversial nuclear programme.

    “Our clocks are ticking at a different pace. We’re closer than the United States. We’re more vulnerable. And therefore, we’ll have to address this question of how to stop Iran, perhaps before the United States does,” he said.

    Netanyahu said Tehran has been building “faster centrifuges that would enable them to jump the line, so to speak, at a much faster rate — that is, within a few weeks.”

    {agencies}

  • Snowden Puts His Future in Russia’s Hands

    {Snowden at Friday’s meeting, seated next to Wikileaks’ Sarah Harrison, at left.}

    Former U.S. National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden met with Russian human rights activists, lawyers and government officials Friday to seek their support in securing asylum in Russia in order to later travel safely to South America, leaving Russia with little wriggle room to remain neutral.

    “I do intend to ask for political asylum in Russia. I believe that the legal means to stay in Russia safely, to attempt to move to Latin America, is to request asylum in the Russian Federation. I can only at this time formally accept asylum in Russia because of the limitations on my ability to travel,” Snowden told his handpicked audience.

    The meeting took place in an unidentified room of Sheremetyevo Airport’s transit zone, where Snowden has been apparently stuck for three weeks after the United States revoked his passport. Snowden’s guests were followed by dozens of frenzied journalists as they made their way to a special door meant for staff only. The drama reached its peak when the overcrowding on the escalator made it malfunction and journalists had to rush up the frozen stairs.

    Snowden’s plea for Russian protection marks his second attempt to obtain legal status in Russia. On July 2, he withdrew a request after President Vladimir Putin said he could only stay in Russia if he stopped inflicting damage against “our American partners.”

    This time, Snowden reasoned that his request was not at odds with Putin’s condition, as he was not actually inflicting damage against the U.S.

    “He called on the organizations present to intervene in support of his asylum claim. He also said that he did not find Putin’s remark problematic because, as he says, he did not do any harm to the United States and he did not plan to do any,” Tanya Lokshina, senior researcher at Moscow’s Human Rights Watch office, said after the meeting, noting that Snowden “looked like a schoolboy.”

    Snowden also asked for assistance in convincing international organizations to petition the U.S. and European Union to allow him to travel, since such organizations require applicants to come to them, and he is stuck in the airport, Lokshina said.

    The Russian government is clearly watching the situation closely, as representatives of Russia’s secret services were evidently present at the meeting, said Sergei Nikitin, head of Moscow’s office of Amnesty International.

    “If you see men in suits with military bearing and a heavy look on their faces, then who do you think these people are, school teachers?” he said.

    Nikitin also said that whoever was taking care of Snowden seemed to be doing it quite well, as Snowden himself clearly stated that the conditions he enjoyed in Moscow were good. At the same time, according to Nikitin, Snowden said he had not yet been able to improve his Russian despite listening to hundreds of airport announcements each day.

    The head of Russia’s Federal Migration Service, Konstantin Romodanovsky, told Interfax on Saturday that the agency had not yet received Snowden’s asylum application. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s foreign ministers in Kyrgyzstan on the same day that the government was not in contact with Snowden.

    Putin discussed the Snowden situation with U.S. President Barack Obama over the phone Friday, though no details of that conversation have been made public.

    All participants of the meeting, including both pro-Kremlin State Duma Deputy Vyacheslav Nikonov and human rights organizations — the offices of which have been raided by government authorities in recent months — agreed that Snowden had a strong case to seek asylum in Russia.

    The asylum request leaves Russia with fewer options to remain neutral in the matter. The Kremlin has publicly indicated a desire to be rid of Snowden, whose presence in Russia has hurt already strained U.S.-Russia ties, but signals Friday pointed to a possible change in attitude.

    State Duma speaker and strong Putin ally Sergei Naryshkin told Rossia 24 television that he thought Russia should grant Snowden asylum, assuming he fulfilled the condition set by Putin. And lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, a member of the Public Chamber who has represented outspokenly pro-Putin film director Nikita Mikhalkov and United Russia lawmaker Iosif Kobzon, said he had agreed with Snowden to help him in preparing his asylum request, according to Interfax. The application process would take between two and three weeks, he said.

    Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, said Friday that “providing a propaganda platform for Mr. Snowden runs counter to the Russian government’s previous declarations of Russia’s neutrality and [claims] that they have no control over his presence in the airport.”

    It was unclear from Snowden’s statements regarding his attitude toward the U.S. whether he intended to stop leaking secret U.S. documents, for which the United States wants to charge him with espionage, or whether he believes that he is actually helping the U.S. by leaking the information.

    United Russia parliamentarian Alexei Pushkov, who heads the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, said on Twitter that Russia had acted correctly in not extraditing Snowden.

    “Russia did the right thing in not giving up Snowden. There are things more important than a momentary gain. Pragmatism in foreign policy is not the same as cynicism,” Pushkov wrote.

    {Journalists swarming around lawyer Genri Reznik ahead of Snowden’s appearance at Sheremetyevo on Friday. }

    The Moscow Times

  • Detained Iranian Diplomat Released on Bail

    {{A senior Iranian diplomat linked to Iran’s reformists was released from a Tehran prison on bail on Sunday after four months in detention, sources familiar with the case said.}}

    Bagher Asadi, who has been a senior diplomat at Iran’s U.N. mission in New York and was recently a director at the secretariat of the so-called D8 group of developing nations in Istanbul, was arrested in mid-March in the Iranian capital, the sources told Reuters in April.

    The same sources, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said that an Iranian media report published on Sunday about Asadi’s release was accurate.

    They said it remained unclear why he was arrested in the first place and what the status is of the case against him.

    The sources said they doubted Asadi’s release from prison represented a move by Iranian authorities to relax what analysts and Western diplomats have described as a crackdown on dissidents in Iran ahead of the June presidential election.

    The 61-year-old diplomat was held at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison in solitary confinement for months and without access to a lawyer for his entire detention, the sources told media.

    reuters

  • Greenpeace activists break into French nuclear plant

    {{Over 20 Greenpeace activists climbed fences to break into an EDF nuclear power plant in southern France on Monday and demanded its closure, the environmental campaign group said.}}

    The activists, dressed in red, broke into the Tricastin plant at dusk and unfurled a yellow and black banner on the wall saying above a picture of President Francois Hollande: “Tricastin, nuclear accident – President of the catastrophe?”

    “With this action, Greenpeace is asking Francois Hollande to close the Tricastin plant, which is among the five most dangerous in France,” Yannick Rousselet, in charge of nuclear issues for Greenpeace France, said in a statement.

    A spokeswoman for EDF denied the activists had reached two of the plant’s reactors and said that by 0630 GMT, 17 of them had been arrested for unauthorized access. Others clung onto metal structures and ladders, she said.

    Hollande pledged to cut the share of nuclear energy in the country’s electricity mix to 50 percent from 75 percent by 2025. He also said he wanted to close the country’s oldest plant at Fessenheim, near the German border, by 2017.

    Greenpeace said to honor his promise, Hollande would have to close at least 10 reactors by 2017 and 20 by 2020. The campaign group said this ought to include Tricastin, which was built over 30 years ago.

    reuters

  • Guatemala ‘to extradite drug lord’ to US

    {{An appeals court in Guatemala has ruled that the suspected drug lord, Waldemar Lorenzana, can be extradited to the US, where he is wanted for his alleged links to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.}}

    Washington accuses Mr Lorenzana of working with the Sinaloa gang to smuggle tonnes of cocaine to the US.

    The Guatemalan national, who has said he is innocent, was arrested in 2011.

    Mexican cartels have stepped up their influence in Guatemala, a transit country for Colombian cocaine.

    The extradition of the alleged drug trafficker was ratified by the First Chamber of the Court of Appeal, after a lower Guatemalan tribunal ruled in August 2012 that he could be extradited. No date has yet been set.

    The suspected drug trafficker, nicknamed the Patriarch, has been sought by the US since 2009.

    Washington says he is the ringleader of a group of drug traffickers that operates in eastern Guatemala, and plays a key role in facilitating cocaine trafficking between Colombia and Mexico.

    BBC

  • South American Countries ‘to recall’ Envoys Over Bolivia Plane Row

    {{Four South American countries say they will recall some of their ambassadors after the Bolivian president’s plane was banned from European airspace.}}

    Evo Morales’ plane, returning from Russia, was rerouted to Austria, amid rumours that American fugitive Edward Snowden was on board.

    Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Uruguay say the incident violated international law.

    Envoys will be recalled from France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, they say.

    Mr Snowden, a former CIA contractor, is wanted by Washington on charges of leaking secrets about US surveillance schemes.

    {{‘Hostile act’}}

    Speaking at a summit in Montevideo, the Uruguayan foreign minister, Luis Almagro, said the actions of the European governments were “groundless, discriminatory and arbitrary”.

    He went on: “The gravity of the situation – which is a typical neo-colonial practice – is an unusual, unfriendly and hostile act which violates human rights and affects the freedom of transit, displacement and immunity that is enjoyed by every head of state.”

    The European countries have called the incident a “misunderstanding”. France has apologised, blaming “conflicting information” while Spain said it had been told Mr Snowden had been on the plane.

    On Friday, Mr Snowden said he sought asylum in Russia as he was unable to travel to Latin America.

    {agencies}

  • More UK Soldiers Commited Suicide than Afghan Deaths

    {{More British soldiers and veterans took their own lives in 2012 than died fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan over the same period.}}

    An investigation by British media indicated that 21 serving British soldiers killed themselves last year, along with 29 veterans.

    The Afghanistan death toll was 44, of whom 40 died in action.

    Some of the soldiers’ families say the men did not get enough support. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said every suicide was a “tragedy”.

    The 21 figure was obtained through a Freedom of Information request to the MoD.

    The MoD said that rates of suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within the serving military were lower than comparative rates in the civilian population.

    Seven serving soldiers have been confirmed as having killed themselves last year, and inquests are pending for a further 14 deaths where suicide is suspected.

    The British government, unlike its American counterpart, does not record the suicide rate among ex-soldiers.

    But media has independently established that at least 29 veterans took their own lives in 2012.

    It wrote to every coroner in the country to ask for the names of soldiers and veterans who killed themselves last year and also analysed newspaper reports of coroners’ inquests.

    BBC Panorama

  • France & Germany Disagree over EU Banks Plan

    Germany and France were split on Friday over European Union plans for a new agency to wind down troubled banks, with Berlin saying they go too far in centralizing control in Brussels.

    The body would form part of a banking union designed to underpin confidence in the euro zone and end the previously chaotic handling of cross-border bank collapses.

    But German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a letter to the EU official in charge of the plans that the European Commission is trying to pocket too much power.

    Schaeuble wrote in his letter to Michel Barnier, Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, that the proposal for the Commission to make the final decision on whether to wind down banks was out of step with European Union law.

    “The proposal published by the Commission regrettably envisages too high a degree of centralization with regard to the boundaries of the existing (EU) law,” reads the letter, which was seen by Reuters on Friday and is dated July 11.

    “The proposal does not match the current legal, political and economic realities and would create major risks,” Schaeuble wrote, adding that the transfer of powers to the Commission was not backed by EU treaties.

    French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici welcomed the proposal, saying it would be a pillar of the euro zone’s new banking union.

    “Now we have to work out the details of the mechanism for resolving banking crises within the euro zone, which requires the capacity to respond quickly,” Moscovici said in a statement.

    The Commission on Wednesday presented plans for an agency to salvage or shut troubled banks, in which it would call the final shot. This would be the second of three pillars of the ‘banking union’ meant to galvanize the response to the euro zone crisis.

    As Europe’s biggest country, Germany’s support is crucial for the proposal to become law. But looming federal elections make it unlikely the government will sign up to anything which could be seen as exposing it more to the euro zone’s troubles.

    Sources close to Berlin say the government is confident it could line up enough support from others to shoot down the Commission proposal, if necessary.

    agencies

  • Guantanamo Prisoners Suspend Hunger Strike

    {{Most prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay have resumed eating, the US military has said.}}

    The inmates of the army-controlled detention centre ended, or at least paused, the hunger strike on Friday as 99 of the 102 prisoners have now eaten at least one meal in the past 24 hours.

    They are still considered hunger strikers because the military requires several days of sustained eating and a minimal caloric intake before a prisoner is removed from the list.

    It was not clear whether prisoners intended to abandon completely the protest that has roiled Guantanamo for more than four months and prompted President Barack Obama to renew his efforts to close a prison that holds 166 men.

    Navy Captain Robert Durand said it had been unusually peaceful in the camps, largely free of conflict between guards and prisoners since the start of Ramadan.

    “We are just pleased that they are for the most part eating and for the most part we are having good order and discipline in the camps,” Durand said.

    Prison officials issued a “pardon” that erased the men’s accumulated disciplinary infractions and permitted many of them to pray together this week after having spent recent weeks largely isolated from each other.

    Durand declined to speculate about whether the hunger strike might flare again after Ramadan.

    “I don’t pretend to understand the psychology of the detainees and they don’t always necessarily declare their motives.”

    agencies

  • Corruption in Russian Army Rises 450%

    {{Corruption in the armed forces cost the state budget more than 4.4 billion rubles ($135 million) in the first six months of the year, showing a 450% increase, Chief Military Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky told a meeting of law enforcement officials Thursday.}}

    While the overall number of crimes in the armed forces is declining, the amount of violations involving corruption have soared, showing a 5.5 time increase in the first half of 2013 compared to the same period last year.

    Prosecutors managed to return more than 1.3 billion rubles ($40 million) of the stolen funds to the state budget, however, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported.

    In what many will see as a worrying trend, every fifth crime in the military is related to corruption, and the number of incidents involving fraud linked to abuse of authority grew by a half in 2013, the report said.

    Fridinsky offered a vague explanation of the trend, attributing the growth of violations to the “insufficient activity of institutional financial monitoring.”

    A member of the Defense Ministry’s public council said the violations revealed in 2013 were likely a throwback to former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov’s rule between 2010 and 2012, saying they were only discovered in 2013 because “checks take a long time,” he told RIA Novosti.

    Fridinsky was not particularly forthcoming about the measures being taken to fight the trend, saying only that as a result of the meeting, “certain measures aimed at fighting corruption in the army and the improvement of cooperation between state agencies [were decided on].”

    Alexander Kramchikhin, an expert at the Institute of Political and Military Analysis, dismissed Fridinsky’s promises to fight corruption, telling media “there can be no real fight against corruption in a separate sphere when the whole system of state government is based on corruption.”

    Military General Eduard Vorobyov, who served as former first deputy commander of the ground forces in the 1990s and later worked as deputy head of the State Duma’s Defense Committee, said the fight against corruption at the Defense Ministry consisted of “isolated cases” and that “systemic measures are needed.”

    “This [fight against corruption at the army] is done only to support the public opinion that something is being done,” Vorobyov said by telephone.

    However, “there is hope that if the new team undertakes systemic measures, there may be results, but not in the next couple of years,” he said.

    Part of the measures required would be “unheralded control” of military units, publicized results of the checks and mandatory punishment.

    The financial loss of 4.4 billion rubles cited by the Prosecutor General’s Office was incurred by more than 7,000 violations related to corruption, with the majority of them in the sphere of defense procurement.

    Of the people involved in corruption violations in the military in the first half of the year, more than 1,100 were convicted of administrative offenses and received punishment, while 505 people became suspects in criminal cases.

    One category of corruption violations this year were committed by state employees and civilians employed in the army.

    A large number of offenders violated requirements for preparing assignments for state tenders, usually done in order to hire fly-by-night companies and remove competitors on formal grounds.

    Violations related to the use of state real estate were a frequent practice as well, along with violations related to the catering of military officers and supply of heating and electricity to military towns.

    Corruption schemes were uncovered in the construction of military facilities when unperformed work was paid for from the state budget using fake documents.

    The Defense Ministry’s decision to hand the maintenance of military facilities over to specialized organizations led to the state budget losing hundreds of millions of rubles.

    {The Moscow Times }