Tag: InternationalNews

{{Iran said Sunday that it set up its first space tracking center to monitor objects passing in orbit overhead.}}

Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said the center was for Iran’s space-related security but that Tehran would also share the acquired data with other countries, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The report said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was present at the inauguration of the center located near the town of Delijan, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Tehran.

Iran frequently announces technological breakthroughs that cannot be independently verified. It has long pursued space ambitions aimed at putting its own satellite into orbit as well as a manned space flight.

“The base is aimed at securing the country’s space facilities and monitoring space objects especially satellites that pass overhead,” Vahidi was quoted as saying.

The country has nine command and control ground stations for its space program including one in Syria, the country’s main Arab regional ally. The rest are located mainly in the central and southern parts of the country.

Vahidi said the Delijan center used radar, electro-optic and radio tracking.
Iran says it wants to put its own satellites into orbit to monitor natural disasters in the earthquake-prone nation, improve telecommunications and expand military surveillance in the region.

The U.S. and its allies worry that the same technology could also be used to develop long-range missiles.

In one of its most recent high-profile space announcements, Iran said in February that it send a monkey into space.

{wirestory}

French President Francois Hollande said on Saturday the European Union must work with China and called for a balanced resolution to an escalating trade dispute that began with solar panels but has since spread to European wines.

Speaking at a conference with Japanese business representatives in Tokyo, Hollande said France’s goal was to sell more products to the Chinese but that there needed to be clear ground rules and more cooperation between both sides.

“We need to work with China… to develop our economies but also to define rules, principles and to open new areas of cooperation,” Hollande said.

“We need to resolve our trade problems with China through discussion, without advantages being given to one country over another.”

The Chinese authorities this week launched an anti-dumping inquiry into European wine sales, seen as a retaliatory move after the EU moved to impose duties on Chinese solar panels.

The move sparked outrage in France, which in 2012 accounted for more than half of the total annual $1 billion volume of EU wine exported to China, excluding Hong Kong.

Now there are worries that the tit-for-tat dispute will spread to the auto sector. Europe’s official car industry association said on Friday Beijing may look into a complaint about luxury cars imported from the EU.

“I want the Chinese to buy more French products,” said Hollande. “It is up to us to be more competitive and to convince the Chinese that there can be reciprocity.”

{wirestory}

{{U.S. President Barack Obama confronted Chinese President Xi Jinping over allegations of cyber theft on Saturday but they agreed at a shirtsleeves summit in the California desert on reining in North Korea.}}

The two leaders debated how to handle China’s growth as a world power more than 40 years after President Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking visit to Mao Zedong’s Communist China in 1972 ended decades of estrangement between Washington and Beijing.

While Obama publicly emphasized the U.S. desire for a “peaceful rise” by China, privately he laid out some specific examples to Xi of what the United States says is Chinese cyber thievery.

American officials have voiced increasing alarm at cyber spying from China that has hit U.S. businesses and Obama is under pressure to take steps to stop it amid controversy in America about the extent of his own government’s counterterrorism surveillance.

The Washington Post reported recently that China had accessed data from nearly 40 Pentagon weapons programs.

Obama’s message to Xi carried a warning, “that if it’s not addressed, if it continues to be this direct theft of United States property, that this was going to be a very difficult problem in the economic relationship,” White House national security adviser Thomas Donilon said.

Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi told reporters Beijing wanted cooperation rather than friction with the United States over cybersecurity. Xi had told a news conference with Obama on Friday that China itself was a victim of cyber attacks but that the two sides should work together to develop a common approach.

“Cybersecurity should not become the root cause of mutual suspicion and friction, rather it should be a new bright spot in our cooperation,” Yang said.

But while cyber attacks were a sore spot, the two leaders found common ground on North Korea, whose belligerent rhetoric, nuclear tests and missile launches have frustrated its only ally, Beijing, and raised tensions in the Asia Pacific.

American officials came away from the Obama-Xi summit believing that China is ready to work more closely with the United States on North Korea than it has in the past, but offered no specific concrete measures to be taken.

Donilon told reporters that Obama and Xi “agreed that North Korea has to denuclearize, that neither country will accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state and that we would work together to deepen cooperation and dialogue to achieve denuclearization.”

Yang told a separate news conference that Xi had told Obama that China and the United States were “the same in their positions and objectives” on the North Korean nuclear issue.

{reuters}

{{Iran’s eight presidential candidates quarreled about talks with world powers over the country’s disputed nuclear program Friday as they held their final televised debate ahead of next week’s election}}.

Iran’s president does not have control of central issues like nuclear development policy but does generally enjoy a close relationship with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that can prove influential.

The issue also has come to the fore as the Islamic Republic’s ailing economy has emerged as a major focus of campaigning ahead of the June 14 vote.

Iran is suffering from 30% inflation and 14% unemployment. Western oil and banking sanctions over its refusal to stop uranium enrichment have deeply cut its revenues.

The U.S. and its allies fear that Iran may be aiming to develop a nuclear weapon, a charge Tehran denies.

Iran was referred to the U.N. Security Council after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005 with a bombastic style and hard-line platform.

Iran’s former nuclear negotiator, the centrist Hasan Rowhani, suggested a more conciliatory stance at the negotiating table.

“We should look broadly. Once people live under economic hardships, their dignity is undermined. It’s very good to see (nuclear) centrifuges rotating but only when people could make ends meet, when factories and industry could run smoothly,” he said.

“All our problems (under Ahmadinejad) are because all efforts were not made to prevent the (nuclear) dossier from being sent to the Security Council.”

Most of the sanctions, leveled for Iran’s refusal to stop uranium enrichment, have been imposed during the tenure of Iran’s main nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, who also is running for president.

{wirestory}

{{Treading carefully, President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping avoided a direct public confrontation on cybersecurity Friday as they opened a two-day summit aimed at forging closer personal ties between the leaders of the world’s largest economies. Obama described the contentious cyber issue as “uncharted waters.”}}

Obama said he and Xi discussed cyber matters only broadly during their first round of talks, but pledged that a fuller discussion was still to come.

He said it was critical that the U.S. and China reach a “firm understanding” on cyber issues, but stopped short of accusing China of orchestrating the hacking of the American government and business computers.

“Because of the incredible advanced in technology, the issue of cybersecurity and need for rules and common approach for cybersecurity are going to be increasingly important,” Obama said during an evening news conference with Xi on the grounds of a sprawling California desert estate.

Xi, who took power in China in March, claimed no responsibility for China’s alleged actions. He said his nation was also a victim of cyber-spying, but did not assign any blame for the actions.

Hours earlier, with temperatures surging above 100 degrees, the two leaders walked together under a shaded walkway as they marked the start of their desert meetings.

Underscoring the desire for an informal summit free of the formalities that mark official state visits, Obama and Xi greeted one another in white shirts and suit coats, but no ties.

U.S. officials cast the more relaxed California summit as an opportunity for Obama and Xi to hold more candid and free-flowing talks on the myriad of issues that define the relationship between the two countries, including the economy, climate change and North Korea’s nuclear provocations.

However, it’s cyber security that has taken on increasing importance to the Obama administration in its recent talks with China.

Obama said advances in technology have created a need for clear protocols about what is and isn’t acceptable for governments to do.

{agencies}

{{French President François Hollande demanded the immediate release on Friday of two French radio journalists missing in Syria.}}

“We have indeed lost contact with these two journalists, but we do not yet know the exact circumstances,” Hollande, on a three-day visit to Japan, told a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“I demand the immediate release of these journalists because they do not represent any nation. These are men who have worked so the world can get information. Journalists must be treated as journalists,” Hollande said.

The two missing journalists have been identified as Europe 1 radio correspondent Didier François, 53, and freelance photographer Edouard Elias, 22. French business daily “Les Echos” reported that they were abducted by four armed men near Aleppo in northern Syria along with their fixer and their driver, and that the driver was later released.

According to Hollande’s office, the two men were intercepted at a check-point.

“They disappeared, we must be careful. We don’t know who took them, sometimes opposition groups do such things,” a source in the president’s entourage said.

French foreign ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said François and Elias could have been kidnapped “given that they were in an area where the situation is extremely dangerous”.

Europe 1 confirmed that they had lost contact with the two journalists.

{France24}

{{The United Nations warned on Friday that half of all Syrians will need humanitarian aid by the end of 2013 and launched what it said was the largest emergency appeal in history to cope with the civil war crisis.}}

“Syria as a civilization is unraveling,” said the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, announcing the call for some $5 billion before the end of the year.

The joint statement by U.N. agencies coincided with heavy fighting on numerous fronts, as rebels attacked an air base in northern Syria while forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad sought to capitalize on their own recent gains.

Clashes also continued on the Golan Heights, close to the ceasefire line between Israel and Syria, a day after rebels briefly seized the sole crossing between the two foes.

Austria, a major contributor to a U.N. monitoring mission in the Golan, announced on Thursday it was withdrawing from the area because of the violence, jeopardizing an operation that has helped keep the Israeli-Syrian war quiet for four decades.

{reuters}

{{President Barack Obama will complain to Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit on Friday about alleged Chinese hacking of U.S. secrets, even as the White House faces growing questions at home over American government surveillance.}}

Meeting at the luxurious Sunnylands estate near Palm Springs in California, Obama will seek Xi’s assurance that he takes seriously accusations of growing Chinese cyber spying, including snooping on advanced U.S. weapons designs.

“All nations need to abide by international norms and affirm clear rules of the road,” a U.S. official told reporters in previewing the summit. “That’s the backdrop to the discussions that the two presidents will have.”

Dispute over cybersecurity could test the two men’s ability to get along when they meet in the Californian desert in talks that are billed as an informal get-to-know-you encounter.

Obama intends to tell Xi that Washington considers Beijing responsible for any cyber attacks originating from its territory and that it must take action, U.S. officials said.

But in his first meeting with Obama since taking over China’s presidency in March, Xi may not be in a conciliatory mood.

He is expected to voice discomfort over Washington’s strategic “pivot” toward Asia, a military rebalancing of U.S. forces toward the Pacific that Beijing sees as an effort to hamper its economic and political expansion.

And Obama’s protests about Chinese cyber spying might be blunted by news that the U.S. government has been quietly collecting the telephone records of millions of Americans as part of U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

As Obama was flying to California ahead of the summit, more questions were raised about the extent of U.S. government domestic spying when the Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency and the FBI are also tapping into the central servers of leading U.S. Internet companies to examine emails and photos. But major tech companies said they do not provide any government agency with “direct access” to their servers.

Pushing back against years of U.S. allegations of Chinese hacking, Beijing insists it is more a victim than a perpetrator of cyber espionage. China’s top Internet security official said this week that he has “mountains of data” pointing to U.S. hacking aimed at China.

But the U.S. Congress is losing patience, after a report that Chinese hackers had gained access to design plans for U.S. weapons systems like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. China denied that, saying it needed no outside help for its military development.

{reuters}