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Pedro Gonçalves

Crisis for Europe as trust hits record low | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...trust-eu-falls-record-low

EU Europe Eurosceptics

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 26 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • "The damage is so deep that it does not matter whether you come from a creditor, debtor country, euro would-be member or the UK: everybody is worse off," said José Ignacio Torreblanca, head of the ECFR's Madrid office. "Citizens now think that their national democracy is being subverted by the way the euro crisis is conducted."
  • The most dramatic fall in faith in the EU has occurred in Spain, where the banking and housing market collapse, eurozone bailout and runaway unemployment have combined to produce 72% "tending not to trust" the EU, with only 20% "tending to trust".
  • In Spain, trust in the EU fell from 65% to 20% over the five-year period while mistrust soared to 72% from 23%.
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  • The data compares trust and mistrust in the EU at the end of last year with levels in 2007, before the financial crisis, to reveal a precipitate fall in support for the EU of the kind that is common in Britain but is much more rarely seen on the continent.
  • Five years ago, 56% of Germans "tended to trust" the EU, whereas 59% now "tend to mistrust". In France, mistrust has risen from 41% to 56%. In Italy, where public confidence in Europe has traditionally been higher than in the national political class, mistrust of the EU has almost doubled from 28% to 53%.Even in Poland, which enthusiastically joined the EU less than a decade ago and is the single biggest beneficiary from the transfers of tens of billions of euros from Brussels, support has plummeted from 68% to 48%, although it remains the sole country surveyed where more people trust than mistrust the union.In Britain, where Eurobarometer regularly finds majority Euroscepticism, the mistrust grew from 49% to 69%, the highest level with the exception of the extraordinary turnaround in Spain.
  • "Overall levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy [declined] across much of Europe, but this varied markedly between countries. It was significant in Britain, Belgium, Denmark and Finland, particularly notable in France, Ireland, Slovenia and Spain, and reached truly alarming proportions in the case of Greece," it said.
  • Aart de Geus, head of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a German thinktank, also warned that the drive to surrender more key national powers to Brussels would backfire. "Public support for the EU has been falling since 2007. So it is risky to go for federalism as it can cause a backlash and unleash greater populism."
Pedro Gonçalves

France24 - Sarkozy admits French 'mistakes' in 1994 genocide - 0 views

www.france24.com/...-visit-france-rwanda-diplomacy

France Rwanda

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 26 Feb 10 - Cached
  • French President Nicolas Sarkozy admitted Thursday at a joint press conference in Kigali with his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, that France had made “mistakes” at the time of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 people, mainly from Kagame's Tutsi minority, were killed.
  • "What happened here is unacceptable, [and] compels the international community, including France, to reflect on the mistakes that stopped it from preventing and halting this abominable crime," the French president told reporters.
  • Sarkozy also acknowledged “mistakes in Operation Turquoise, which stepped in when it was too little, too late,” referring to a June 1994 French military operation launched two months after the genocide began with the intent of halting the massacres. The French president, however, stopped short of voicing an apology. Suggesting neither country should “remain hostage of the past”, Sarkozy said he wanted to “move past this very tragic chapter” and stressed the importance of “building a new partnership”.
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  • Two years ago, Sarkozy already spoke of "failings” and “errors". But his entourage predicted before his trip to Kigali that he would not go as far as Belgium and the United States, who have both presented an apology.
  • The soured relations between the two countries hit a low ebb in late 2006 when Rwanda decided to sever diplomatic ties with France after a French judge questioned Kagame’s involvement in the death of Habyarimana. Rwanda responded by releasing a report accusing around 30 senior French political and military figures of complicity in the genocide. A series of rulings by the French legal system eventually reassured Kigali.
Argos Media

U.S., Russian Scientists Say Missile Shield Wouldn't Protect Europe From Iran - washing... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009051803055.html

US Iran Russia Missile Defense Shield

shared by Argos Media on 20 May 09 - Cached
  • A planned U.S. missile shield to protect Europe from a possible Iranian attack would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran is likely to deploy, according to a joint analysis by top U.S. and Russian scientists.
  • The U.S.-Russian team also judged that it would be more than five years before Iran is capable of building both a nuclear warhead and a missile capable of carrying it over long distances. And if Iran attempted such an attack, the experts say, it would ensure its own destruction.
  • "The missile threat from Iran to Europe is thus not imminent," the 12-member technical panel concludes in a report produced by the EastWest Institute, an independent think tank based in Moscow, New York and Belgium.
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  • The year-long study brought together six senior technical experts from both the United States and Russia to assess the military threat to Europe from Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The report's conclusions were reviewed by former defense secretary William J. Perry, among others, before being presented to national security adviser James L. Jones and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
  • The report acknowledges dramatic technological gains by Iran, and it predicts that the country could probably build a simple nuclear device in one to three years, if it kicked out U.N. inspectors and retooled its uranium-processing plants to make weapons-grade enriched uranium. Another five years would be needed to build a warhead that would fit on one of Iran's missiles, the panel says. U.S. intelligence agencies have made similar predictions; Israel maintains that Iran could build a bomb in as little as eight months.
  • The U.S.-Russian experts say Iran faces limits in developing ballistic missiles that could someday carry nuclear warheads. Its current arsenal is derived from relatively unsophisticated North Korean missiles, which in turn are modified versions of a Russian submarine-launched missile that dates from the 1950s. "We believe that these components were likely transferred to North Korea illegally in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Russia was experiencing major political and economic chaos," one of the U.S. team members said in a separate commentary.
  • the country lacks "the infrastructure of research institutions, industrial plants, or the scientists and engineers that are needed to make substantial improvements."
  • They conclude that it would take Iran at least another six to eight years to produce a missile with enough range to reach Southern Europe and that only illicit foreign assistance or a concerted and highly visible, decade-long effort might produce the breakthroughs needed for a nuclear-tipped missile to threaten the United States.
  • Moreover, if Iran were to build a nuclear-capable missile that could strike Europe, the defense shield proposed by the United States "could not engage that missile," the report says. The missile interceptors could also be easily fooled by decoys and other simple countermeasures, the report concludes.
Argos Media

No Nukes, More Troops: Obama Seeks to Renew Partnership with Europe - SPIEGEL ONLINE - ... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,617341,00.html

US Europe Obama Angela Merkel Nicolas Sarkozy NATO Afghanistan ISAF

shared by Argos Media on 04 Apr 09 - Cached
  • In France and Germany on Friday, US President Barack Obama said he wanted to renew the trans-Atlantic partnership. Part of that alliance, though, involves more European troops for Afghanistan, he said. Unexpectedly, Obama called for a world without nuclear weapons.
  • "In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world." He went on to say that "there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."
  • The US president was coming from the G-20 summit, held on Wednesday and Thursday in London. At that meeting, the world's richest nations agreed to make $1 trillion available to the developing world through the World Bank and the International Monetary fund in addition to tripling the money available to the IMF.
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  • More significantly from a European perspective, the US agreed to significantly strengthen international oversight of financial markets, with particular attention paid to tax havens, hedge funds and ratings agencies.
  • It was a move that both Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy insisted upon -- and one which will go a long way toward removing whispers of friction between Obama and Merkel.
  • Not only did the president pledge a renewal of trans-Atlantic relations -- he also said that he seeks to create a world free of nuclear weapons. "This weekend in Prague," he said, "I will lay out an agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons."
  • "In Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans chose to blame America for much of what's bad…. On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise."
  • At the Afghanistan Conference in The Hague earlier this week, Obama was careful not to make any concrete demands for more troops from his European NATO allies. But on Thursday, he seemed willing to tighten the screws slightly. In addition to warning that al-Qaida still posed a threat, he also said, referring to Afghanistan, that "Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder the burden alone. This is a joint problem that requires a joint solution."
  • The response from Sarkozy, who was standing right next to Obama, was swift. "There will be no French military enforcements," the French president said. "We are ready to do more in the field of policing, of gendarmes, in the field of economic aid, to train Afghans."
  • Other NATO countries on Friday, though, said that they would be willing to send more troops. SPIEGEL ONLINE learned from diplomats attending the NATO summit that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown intends to send several hundred more troops to Afghanistan. Both Belgium and Spain are likewise promising more soldiers, though Spain is reportedly planning to send just 12 additional troops.
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