Tag: InternationalNews

{{Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner says she has asked for the Pope’s intervention in the Falklands dispute between her country and the UK.}}

Visiting the Vatican, Ms Fernandez said she had asked the Pope to promote dialogue between the two sides.

Argentine Pope Francis was elected last week and will be formally installed as pontiff at a Mass on Tuesday.

In the past he has said the Falkland Islands, a UK overseas territory, belong to Argentina.

Before Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected, the 76-year-old was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Relations between him, Ms Fernandez, and her late husband and predecessor as president, Nestor Kirchner, were tense.

“I asked for his intervention to avoid problems that could emerge from the militarization of Great Britain in the south Atlantic,” Ms Fernandez told reporters after a 15-20 minute meeting and lunch with the Pope.

President Kirchner says she wants dialogue between Argentina and the UK

“We want a dialogue and that’s why we asked the pope to intervene so that the dialogue is successful.”

{wirestory}

{{A top Russian diplomat says the United States’ cancellation of a critical part of its European missile defense system plan doesn’t mollify Moscow’s opposition.}}

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last week announced that plans to place missile interceptors in Poland and possibly Romania are being abandoned and that interceptors would be placed in Alaska instead.

The interceptors were to be the final phase of a program that Russia contends aims to counter its own missiles. Washington says the system is meant to stop missiles from Iran and North Korea.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by the Kommersant newspaper Monday as saying that “We feel no euphoria in connection with what was announced by the U.S. defense secretary and we see no grounds for correcting our position.”

Hagel’s announcement made no reference to Russia’s objections to the plan, but the move initially raised expectations it could boost prospects for U.S.-Russian arms control negotiations.

Ryabkov was not quoted as commenting directly on arms control issues, but his comments showed Moscow was not appeased.

“This is not a concession to Russia and we do not see it as such,” he said. “We will continue a dialogue and seek the signing of legally binding agreements that all elements of the U.S. missile-defense system are not aimed at Russian strategic nuclear forces.”

The United States resists such an agreement, which would almost certainly fail to get the necessary Congressional approval.

Missile defense has been a contentious issue since President George W. Bush sought to base long-range interceptors in Central Europe to stop Iranian missiles from reaching the U.S. Russia believed the program was aimed at countering its own missiles and undermining its nuclear deterrent.

Bush’s successor Barack Obama reworked the plan soon after taking office in 2009.

He canceled an earlier interceptor planned for Poland and radar in the Czech Republic, replacing the high-speed interceptors with slower ones that could stop Iran’s medium-range missiles.

Under Obama’s plan, the interceptors were to be upgraded gradually over four phases, culminating early next decade with those intended to protect both Europe and the United States.

AP

{{Two Quebec inmates climbed up a rope into a hovering helicopter to make a daring daylight escape from a jail northwest of Montreal, authorities said, but both were later recaptured.}}

Quebec provincial police said early Monday they arrested four people about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of the Saint-Jerome jail from which the inmates escaped on Sunday.

Two of those arrested were 36-year-old inmate Benjamin Hudon-Barbeau and 33-year-old inmate Danny Provencal.

Hudon-Barbeau was arrested Sunday and later in the evening police had located Provencal, establishing a security perimeter around a building where he had barricaded himself.

Quebec Provincial Police Sgt. Benoit Richard said just before midnight that negotiations were continuing with Provencal and by early Monday Richard said Provencal had surrendered peacefully.

Earlier on Sunday, police received a call from the staff at the Saint-Jerome jail, reporting the escape around 2:20 p.m., Richard said.

The jail’s warden told police that Hudon-Barbeau and Provencal had grabbed a rope dropped from the helicopter to make their getaway, Richard said.

Quebec provincial police tracked down the helicopter used in the escape on Sunday afternoon to Mont-Tremblant, about 53 miles (85 kilometers) away from the jail but only the chopper’s pilot was still at the scene.

He was taken to a local hospital and was treated for shock, Richard said. He called the pilot “an important witness” in the case.

According to a provincial police report, Hudon-Barbeau was arrested in November on two firearm related charges and associating with people who have a criminal record. The arrest came as part of an investigation of a double murder in Quebec.

A Montreal radio station, 98.5 FM, said it received a call Sunday from a man claiming to be Hudon-Barbeau, who said he was “ready to die” as he tried to evade police.

“The way they’re treating me in there, it’s unreal,” the man told the radio station. “They won’t let me be. They put me back in prison for nothing.”

Authorities did not immediately respond to the claims made in the radio station interview.

Yves Galarneau, the correctional services manager who oversees the Saint-Jerome jail, said he’d never seen anything like the dramatic escape in more than three decades on the job.

Galarneau said there are no security measures in place at the jail to prevent a helicopter from swooping down from above.

“As far as I know, it’s a first in Quebec,” he told reporters at the scene. “It’s exceptional.”

Although the tactic may have been a first for Quebec, using a chopper to break out of jail has a long and colorful history, and not just in the movies.

A New York businessman, Joel David Kaplan, used a chopper to escape from a Mexican jail in 1971, and went on to write a book about it.

Pascal Payet, a French prisoner, used a helicopter to escape on three occasions, only to be caught by authorities every time.

The jail at the center of Sunday’s escapade in Quebec is a provincial detention center with a maximum-security wing.

Saint-Jerome jail, located about 37 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of Montreal, experienced a mini-riot by about a dozen prisoners a little over a month ago.

In that incident, police were called in to secure the outside of the jail, which holds about 480 inmates, and jail staff used pepper spray to disperse the mob.

{Wirestory}

{{China has bypassed Britain as the world’s fifth largest arms exporter, a Swedish think tank said Monday.}}

The volume of Chinese weapons exports rose by 162 percent in the five years 2008-2012, compared to the previous five-year period, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in its report.

That means China’s share of all international arms exports increased to 5 percent from 2 percent, and the country climbed to fifth from eighth in the rankings.

The largest buyer of Chinese weapons was Pakistan, which accounted for 55 percent of the country’s exports, followed by Myanmar with 8 percent and Bangladesh with 7 percent, SIPRI said.

“China’s rise has been driven primarily by large-scale arms acquisitions by Pakistan,” said Paul Holtom, director of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme.

“However, a number of recent deals indicate that China is establishing itself as a significant arms supplier to a growing number of important recipient states.”

Such deals include the sale of three frigates to Algeria, eight transport aircraft to Venezuela and 54 tanks to Morocco, SIPRI said.

The U.S. remains the world’s top arms exporter during the 2008-2012 period, with 30 percent of the global volume. Russia is second with 26 percent, Germany third with 7 percent, and France fourth with 6 percent, SIPRI said.

China’s move into the top-five means Britain (now in sixth place) dropped off the list of the top five for the first time since at least 1950, the earliest year covered by SIPRI data.

The institute said Asia dominated the global imports of weapons, with the top five importers all located in that region.

Here’s SIPRI’s list of the top 5 arms exporters in 2008-2012 (share of international exports in parenthesis):

1. United States (30 percent).

2. Russia (26).

3. Germany (7).

4. France (6).

5. China (5).

The top 5 arms importers in 2008-2012 (share of international imports in parenthesis):

1. India (12 percent).

2. China (6).

3. Pakistan (5).

4. South Korea (5).

5. Singapore (4).

{{Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed on Sunday a hard-line former military chief as the country’s new defense minister.}}

Moshe Yaalon, a former army commando, has said Iran’s suspect nuclear program is Israel’s top security concern, though he has been vague about whether Israel might carry out a military strike on Iran.

He also has voiced skepticism about the chances for reaching peace with the Palestinians.

Yaalon, widely known by his nickname “Bogie,” was Israel’s military chief from 2002 to 2005.

He oversaw Israel’s army operations during the bloody years of the second Palestinian uprising when Palestinian bombers killed Israeli civilians and Israel’s army conducted military incursions into Palestinian cities.

Yaalon also prepared Israel’s military for the country’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. He did not support the decision to remove Israel’s military installations and settlements from the Palestinian territory, and retired shortly before the withdrawal took place.

After retiring, Yaalon briefly served as an expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

For the past four years, Yaalon served as both vice premier and strategic affairs minister in Israel’s outgoing government.

In those positions, Yaalon was a member of Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet, which dealt with sensitive matters and played a leading role in monitoring Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel believes that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon — a charge that Tehran denies.

Netanyahu has repeatedly hinted that Israel might strike Iran’s nuclear facilities if it concludes that international sanctions and diplomacy have failed to curb the Iranian nuclear program.

Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran a mortal threat, citing Iranian calls for Israel’s destruction and its support for anti-Israel militant groups.

{Agencies}

{{France is adopting a “determined and discrete” approach to safeguard the lives of eight French hostages kidnapped by extremist groups in and near Nigeria, an official said Saturday.}}

Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister, made the comment to reporters at the international airport in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, after a closed-door meeting with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan as part of a West Africa trip that also took Fabius to neighboring Cameroon, where seven of the eight hostages were captured.

He declined to offer any update about the hostage-taking, emphasizing that discretion is needed to secure their freedom, especially since young children are involved. “The youngest (hostage) is less than 5 years old,” Fabius said in French, “so it is in the name of humanity that they need to be freed both quickly and well.”

A video posted on YouTube three weeks ago showed armed men holding the French family of three adults and four children taken from outside a national park in Cameroon’s Far North Region on Feb. 19.

The captors said they belonged to Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group that has been waging a campaign of bombings and shootings across Nigeria’s north. Authorities believe the hostages were brought to Nigeria after being seized from Cameroon.

Two months earlier, more than 30 assailants kidnapped a French engineer from his home during a raid that left two Nigerians dead in a quiet town in Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north, where the engineer was working on a renewable energy project for the French firm Vergnet SA.

That was the first Nigeria kidnapping believed to be linked to France’s military intervention in Mali. Other French hostages have been kidnapped elsewhere in the region since France announced its intention to launch its Mali offensive aimed at helping the West African country’s embattled government rid its vast north of militants imposing harsh Islamic rule.

Nigeria’s foreign minister, Olugbenga Ashiru, thanked France for its “decisive intervention” in Mali during Saturday’s news conference in Abuja. “If the French had not taken the step they took at that time,” Ashiru said, “Mali would have today become a terrorist country, and if that happens the target would be to further destabilize the sub-region.”

The French minister’s visit came days after European diplomats said the seven foreign workers who had been kidnapped from northern Nigeria on Feb. 16 had been killed by their captors.

However, Nigeria’s government has not commented on the killings, which stoked fears about extremists’ readiness to execute their captives in a country better known for quick ransom kidnappings.

The hostages included two Lebanese, one citizen each from the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy, and two people now believed to have been Syrian. The kidnapping and subsequent killings were claimed by Ansaru, a splinter group of Boko Haram.

AP

China’s new premier says his government is committed to strong relations with the U.S. and sees a strong outlook for trade and investment between the sides.

Li Keqiang told reporters at a Sunday news conference that despite their differences, conflict between the world’s first and second largest economies is not inevitable.

China’s new leaders “attach great importance” to relations with the U.S. and will work with Barack Obama’s administration to move ties into a new stage, Li said.

Two-way trade hit almost $500 billion last, although disputes linger over Chinese trade practices, opposition to Chinese investment in the U.S. and complaints over alleged Chinese computer hacking.

Li was speaking in his first news conference since being appointed premier last week with primary responsibility for running the Chinese economy.

AP