Tag: InternationalNews

{{Canada threatened on Wednesday to take the European Union to the World Trade Organization over its plans to label Canadian oil sands as dirty, but promised not to delay a bilateral trade pact.}}

The issue has overshadowed relations as Canada and the EU try to deepen economic ties through a trade deal that could generate $28 billion a year in new business and commerce.

Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, on a week-long lobbying trip to Europe, accused the EU of breaking international trade rules and discriminating against Canadian exports.

“We are going to take whatever action we need to, and we may well go to the WTO,” Oliver told a news conference. “We will defend our interests vigorously.”

The WTO has the power to order the EU to change its rules if they are found to be unfair, but the process is lengthy.

Canada’s oil sands are the world’s third largest crude reserves, but most are in the form of tar sands. Extraction from the clay-like deposits takes more energy than pumping conventional oil and results in higher carbon emissions.

The European Commission has proposed labeling oil from tar sands as “highly polluting” to help implement an EU goal to cut the carbon intensity of its transport fuels by 6 percent by 2020.

The Commission denies that it is singling out Canadian oil as its proposal also defines other unconventional sources of oil as carbon-intensive.

Asked whether the trade deal could be signed even if the EU goes ahead with its fuel labeling, Oliver said: “Yes … These issues are entirely separate.”

He said Canada did not intend to use the issue as a bargaining chip.

Talks on a free trade deal began in 2009 and are in the last stage, diplomats say, but have stumbled over a series of issues.

Canada, which is anxious to find new markets for its oil and gas outside the United States, argues that Europe should embrace it as a stable, reliable energy producer.

Yet many in the environment lobby say long-term investment in new heavy crude infrastructure and development would badly undermine attempts to limit climate change.

Twelve climate scientists and energy experts said in a letter to Oliver this week that Canadian policy was delaying the transition to an economy that was less reliant on carbon.

“We are at a critical moment,” the group, among them academics from Harvard in the United States, and from British Columbia and Queen’s universities in Canada, wrote in the letter, seen by media.

“The responsibility for preventing dangerous climate change rests with today’s policymakers.”

A report on Wednesday indicated the European Commission’s tar sands proposal would shift investment towards lower-carbon oil sources and could save up to 19 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year – equivalent to removing 7 million cars from Europe’s roads.

{{Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday berated the Cabinet for poor execution of his landmark decrees where he sought to make good on his campaign promises.}}

He started out a Kremlin meeting by acknowledging several achievements, but then poured cold water on the ministers for most of his speech.

The meeting was to review how Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s Cabinet worked to implement the decrees that Putin signed on the day of his return as president last May.

“It’s understandable that it took time to appoint the Cabinet and get this quite complicated mechanism underway,” Putin said, referring to the implementation of the decrees. “But now is the time to slog away in order to achieve the goals that we set before ourselves.”

Putin endorsed the Cabinet about two weeks after his inauguration. His decrees seek to increase government support for families, health care and education and streamline bureaucracy to spur economic growth, among other things.

As the Cabinet’s successes, Putin on Tuesday listed “good demographic metrics,” greater allowances for well-performing students, higher real incomes and increased salaries for school teachers.

He then adopted a harsher tone.

Putin accused ministers of extending inadequate support to regional authorities in implementing the decrees.

Doctors staffing outpatient clinics and ambulances have largely not received the promised additional payouts of upward of 3,000 rubles ($100) because the local governments had no federally-approved procedure of dispensing the money, Putin said.

In another barb, he said the Cabinet did not back with sufficient funding the program it recently approved to develop the Far East.

“The question is why you approved the document if it’s not clear how it will be implemented. It won’t do to work for the sake of appearance,” Putin said, according to a transcript of his speech on the Kremlin website. “Why are we deceiving ourselves?”

He also lashed out at inefficient government services, officials that manipulate numbers to make for rosy performance reports, and delays in implementing the decrees.

Putin also noted that he would not accept complaints that the worsening global and domestic economy hampered progress on the decrees. “We need to do everything we planned,” he said.

Medvedev did not sound offended by the upbraiding.

“The goals stated in the presidential decrees, which were signed one year ago to the day, are really very ambitious and very complicated,” Medvedev said at the meeting. “We’ll have to work very hard to achieve them, a point that Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] made absolutely well.”

Medvedev continued by saying that various branches of government must help each other and use all available means in moving toward the goals.

“The existing shortcomings must be remedied — and again, in a consolidated, collaborative way,” he said.

On a more practical note, Medvedev said he supported a call to give one more year to Russians who are still undecided about their pension savings.

People now have until next year to decide whether they will deposit a portion of their pension contributions with asset management companies, or make them part of the government’s Pension Fund.

He also said he was confident the government would meet the goals on building more kindergartens. The federal budget is giving regional authorities a total of 50 billion rubles ($1.61 billion) this year for this sort of construction, he said.

Wrapping up the meeting, Putin again needled the Cabinet, saying it took its time in following his orders.

“Many things have been started,” he said. “But let me be straight with you, there are still very few specific changes.”

Putin said he would hold one-on-one meetings with every minister at the end of the year to look at their performance.

{The Moscow Times }

{{A Cuban intelligence agent who spent 13 years in a U.S. prison said Monday he still has affection for America and hopes to see the two countries reconcile, but added that he does not regret for a moment his decision to spy for Cuba.}}

Rene Gonzalez also told The Associated Press he would welcome an exchange of prisoners that would send a jailed U.S. government subcontractor home in return for freedom for four other Cuban agents serving sentences in America.

Speaking soon after renouncing his U.S. citizenship, Gonzalez called on President Barack Obama to show “courage” in changing U.S. policy toward the Communist-run island.

“I would like to think that the North American government will meet the hopes of the whole world, which is telling it to change its policy toward Cuba,” Gonzalez said. “Courage is what President Obama needs now.”

The interview, conducted in the presence of his lawyer and a Cuban government representative, was Gonzalez’s first since U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard ruled Friday that he could remain on the Communist-run island in return for renouncing his U.S. citizenship.

Gonzalez had asked for permission to do so several times, but the U.S. government initially refused.

Lenard had earlier granted the 56-year-old leave to travel to Cuba to attend a memorial for his father, the second trip home he had been allowed to make since his release in 2011.

{AP}

{{A spokesman for a Palestinian militant group in Syria says it has received a nod from President Bashar Assad’s regime to attack Israel following the back-to-back Israeli airstrikes over the weekend.}}

Anwar Raja of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command says the regime has given “a green light” for the group “to attack Israeli targets” from the Syrian-controlled part of Golan Heights.

Raja did not elaborate on how the alleged approval was conveyed to PFLP-GC fighters but he stressed that there was no official government note. The Palestinian official spoke to media on Tuesday.

Most Palestinians in Syria remained on the sidelines of the 2-year-old conflict, but PFLP-GC has fought alongside government troops against the rebels trying to topple Assad.

{{China is using espionage to acquire technology to fuel its military modernization, the Pentagon said on Monday, for the first time accusing the Chinese of trying to break into U.S. defense computer networks and prompting a firm denial from Beijing.}}

In its 83-page annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments, the Pentagon also cited progress in Beijing’s effort to develop advanced-technology stealth aircraft and build an aircraft carrier fleet to project power further offshore.

The report said China’s cyber snooping was a “serious concern” that pointed to an even greater threat because the “skills required for these intrusions are similar to those necessary to conduct computer network attacks.”

“The U.S. government continued to be targeted for (cyber) intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military,” it said, adding the main purpose of the hacking was to gain information to benefit defense industries, military planners and government leaders.

A spokeswoman said it was the first time the annual Pentagon report had cited Beijing for targeting U.S. defense networks, but China dismissed the report as groundless.

The U.S. Defense Department had repeatedly “made irresponsible comments about China’s normal and justified defense build-up and hyped up the so-called China military threat,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.

“This is not beneficial to U.S.-China mutual trust and cooperation,” Hua told reporters. “We are firmly opposed to this and have already made representations to the U.S. side.”

China’s defense build-up was geared towards protecting its “national independence and sovereignty,” Hua said.

On the accusations of hacking, Hua said: “We firmly oppose any groundless criticism and hype, because groundless hype and criticism will only harm bilateral efforts at cooperation and dialogue.”

Despite concerns over the intrusions, a senior U.S. defense official said his main worry was the lack of transparency.

“What concerns me is the extent to which China’s military modernization occurs in the absence of the type of openness and transparency that others are certainly asking of China,” David Helvey, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, told a Pentagon briefing on the report.

He warned of the “potential implications and consequences of that lack of transparency on the security calculations of others in the region.”

The annual China report, which Congress began requesting in 2000, comes amid ongoing tensions in the region due to China’s military assertiveness and expansive claims of sovereignty over disputed islands and shoals. Beijing has ongoing territorial disputes with the Philippines, Japan and other neighbors.

Beijing’s publicly announced defense spending has grown at an inflation-adjusted pace of nearly 10 percent annually over the past decade, but Helvey said China’s actual outlays were thought to be higher.

{agencies}