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Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Americas | US 'backs Danish PM as Nato head' - 0 views

  • The US is prepared to back Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to be the next secretary general of Nato, US and alliance sources say.
  • The current secretary general, Dutch diplomat Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, steps down at the end of July. Mr Rasmussen, Denmark's premier since 2001, is already reported to have the backing of France, Germany and the UK.
  • Mr Rasmussen is a strong supporter of Nato's mission in Afghanistan, sending a contingent of 750 Danish troops
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  • However, he has not confirmed his candidacy and the appointment needs the unanimous backing of all 26 Nato member states. Turkey is said to have misgivings about Mr Rasmussen over his refusal to apologise for the publication of cartoons in a Danish newspaper in 2005, one of which depicted the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
  • Traditionally the post of secretary general is usually held by a European while the Nato's military commander is American.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - Israeli PM Netanyahu pulls out of US nuclear summit - 0 views

  • Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has cancelled a visit to the US where he was to attend a summit on nuclear security, Israeli officials say.Mr Netanyahu made the decision after learning that Egypt and Turkey intended to raise the issue of Israel's presumed nuclear arsenal, the officials said.
  • Israel's Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor will take Netanyahu's place in the nuclear summit, Israeli radio said.
  • According to Israeli officials, Turkey and Egypt are planning to call on Israel to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). "These states intend to exploit the occasion in order to slam Israel," said a senior Israeli source.
Pedro Gonçalves

Syria says no peace partner in Israel Asharq Alawsat Newspaper (English) - 0 views

  • Syria's president said Tuesday that there is no "real partner" in Israel to make peace, stressing that a halt to Jewish settlements is essential to restart peace talks with the Jewish state.
  • Syria has said it is willing to resume indirect peace talks mediated by Turkey as long as they focus on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.
  • But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is not willing to cede the territory Syria wants. He has also refused U.S. demands to halt settlement construction in the West Bank, hampering efforts to resume peace negotiations.
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  • "What Syria is proposing for peace is not conditions but rather they are rights that cannot be negotiated or abandoned," Syria's official news agency SANA quoted President Bashar Assad as saying. "The problem is that there is no real Israeli partner to make peace."
  • Assad stressed that the lifting of Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip and a halt to building settlements in the West Bank are "first steps to discuss peace," SANA reported. Syria and Israel held four rounds of indirect peace negotiations through Turkish mediators last year. But Syria suspended them in December over Israel's military offensive against the Gaza Strip's militant Hamas rulers in December and January.
  • Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said his country wanted to resume Turkish-mediated indirect peace talks with Israel before initiating direct negotiations with the Jewish state. But he questioned Israel's willingness for peace."Regarding resuming direct talks (with Israel), we still believe that resuming indirect talks through Turkey is the best way to move toward direct talks that can lead to results. But beforehand we want to be sure (if) there is a political decision in Israel to achieve peace," al-Moallem told a joint press conference with Steinmeier.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Turkey attacks China 'genocide' - 0 views

  • Turkey's prime minister has described ethnic violence in China's Xinjiang region as "a kind of genocide"."There is no other way of commenting on this event," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
  • The death toll from the violence there has now risen from 156 to 184, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reports. More than 1,000 people were injured.
  • "The event taking place in China is a kind of genocide," Mr Erdogan told reporters in Turkey's capital, Ankara. "There are atrocities there, hundreds of people have been killed and 1,000 hurt. We have difficulty understanding how China's leadership can remain a spectator in the face of these events."
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  • The Turkish premier also urged Beijing to "address the question of human rights and do what is necessary to prosecute the guilty".
  • Mr Erdogan's comments came a day after Turkish Trade and Industry Minister Nihat Ergun urged Turks to boycott Chinese goods.
  • Beijing has so far not publicly commented on Mr Erdogan's criticism. But it said that of the 184 people who died, 137 were Han Chinese.
  • Earlier on Friday, the Chinese authorities reimposed a night-time curfew in Urumqi. The curfew had been suspended for two days after officials said they had the city under control. Mosques in the city were ordered to remain closed on Friday and notices were posted instructing people to stay at home to worship.
  • Meanwhile, the city's main bus station was reported to be crowded with people trying to escape the unrest. Extra bus services had been laid on and touts were charging up to five times the normal face price for tickets, AFP news agency said. "It is just too risky to stay here. We are scared of the violence," a 23-year-old construction worker from central China said.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Europe | Nato leaders mull Afghan 'test' - 0 views

  • Big European powers had backed Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to replace Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who steps down at the end of July. But Turkey expressed opposition, based on Mr Rasmussen's stance over the publication in 2005 by a Danish newspaper of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - Profile: First EU President Herman van Rompuy - 0 views

  • A veteran politician from Belgium's Flemish Christian Democrat party, he has been outspoken in the past in opposition to Turkey joining the EU. He warned it could dilute Europe's Christian heritage. "Turkey is not a part of Europe and will never be part of Europe," he said as an opposition politician five years ago.
    • Pedro Gonçalves
       
      Does Rompuy's election signal the end of Turkey's aspirations to join the EU?
Pedro Gonçalves

GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians' communications at G20 summits | UK news | The Gua... - 0 views

  • Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.
  • The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings. Named targets include long-standing allies such as South Africa and Turkey.
  • According to the material seen by the Guardian, GCHQ generated this product by attacking both the computers and the telephones of delegates.
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  • The documents suggest that the operation was sanctioned in principle at a senior level in the government of the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, and that intelligence, including briefings for visiting delegates, was passed to British ministers.
  • A detailed report records the efforts of the NSA's intercept specialists at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire to target and decode encrypted phone calls from London to Moscow which were made by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and other Russian delegates.
  • Another document records that when G20 finance ministers met in London in September, GCHQ again took advantage of the occasion to spy on delegates, identifying the Turkish finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, as a target and listing 15 other junior ministers and officials in his delegation as "possible targets". As with the other G20 spying, there is no suggestion that Simsek and his party were involved in any kind of criminal offence. The document explicitly records a political objective – "to establish Turkey's position on agreements from the April London summit" and their "willingness (or not) to co-operate with the rest of the G20 nations".
  • A second review implies that the analysts' findings were being relayed rapidly to British representatives in the G20 meetings, a negotiating advantage of which their allies and opposite numbers may not have been aware: "In a live situation such as this, intelligence received may be used to influence events on the ground taking place just minutes or hours later. This means that it is not sufficient to mine call records afterwards – real-time tip-off is essential."
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - End of empire for Western universities? - 0 views

  • The forecasts for the shape of the "global talent pool" in 2020 show China as rapidly expanding its graduate numbers - set to account for 29% of the world's graduates aged between 25 and 34.
  • The biggest faller is going to be the United States - down to 11% - and for the first time pushed into third place, behind India.
  • The US and the countries of the European Union combined are expected to account for little more than a quarter of young graduates.
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  • Across the industrialised world, graduate numbers are increasing - just not as quickly as China, where they have risen fivefold in a decade.
  • This changing world map will see Brazil having a bigger share of graduates than Germany, Turkey more than Spain, Indonesia three times more than France.
  • The UK is bucking the trend, projected to increase its share from 3% in 2010 to 4% in 2020.
  • "There are more students in China than ever before - but they still use Western mechanisms to publish results, they accept the filters," says Prof Mayer-Schonberger.
  • The maps also reveal how much Africa and South America are losing out in this new scramble for digital power.
  • "Each era has its own distinct geography. In the information age, it's not dependent on roads or waterways, but on bases of knowledge. "This is a new kind of industrial map. Instead of coal and steel it will be about universities and innovation."
Pedro Gonçalves

Ship raid censure clouds Israel PM as he eyes Iran | Reuters - 0 views

  • "The decision-making process by the prime minister was carried out without any orderly, coordinated, authorised and documented staff work," said the 158-page report of the May 2010 interception of the Mavi Marmara.
  • Lindenstrauss said Israeli discussions on stopping the Mavi Marmara was largely limited to one-on-one meetings that Netanyahu held with Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.Israel's security cabinet, which the prime minister is obliged by law to consult before major military endeavours, convened only five days before the raid.Its members "were unaware of the purpose of the debate and did not have enough time to prepare for it", the report added.
  • A U.N. inquiry involving Israeli and Turkish representatives last September largely exonerated Israel's Gaza strategy and interception of the Mavi Marmara, though it faulted the navy for excessive force. Two previous internal Israeli probes, by the military and a government-named commission of inquiry, reported limited tactical and planning errors in the raid's execution.
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  • "The state comptroller's determination that the decision-making process was faulty does not mean the results could have been different," the Lindenstrauss report concluded."But (we) see the Turkish flotilla as an example from which we must take away lessons about the way decisions are made in future incidents - not necessarily the next flotilla."
Pedro Gonçalves

Whatever euro's fate, Europe's reputation savaged | Reuters - 0 views

  • Whether the euro lives or dies, the chaotic way Europe has tackled the crisis could undermine the region's geopolitical clout for years to come and leave it at a distinct disadvantage in a rapidly changing world.
  • "The Europeans are completely consumed with a battle to save the euro zone," says Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. "It's a deep and ongoing crisis bigger than any they've experienced in decades... it's an environment where European leaders could hardly be expected to prioritise anything else."That could leave the continent being increasingly sidelined as emerging powers - not just the BRIC powers of Brazil, Russia, India and China but other states such as Turkey, Indonesia and South Africa - grow in importance.At the very least, it could undermine the ability of the continent's leaders to persuade the rest of the world to take them seriously on a range of issues, from trade to the importance of democracy and human rights."Europe probably isn't going to stop preaching to the rest of the world," says Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the US Naval War College. "But it's much less likely that others are going to be inclined to listen."
  • At the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, European states suffered the indignity of being outside the room when the final deal was struck between the United States and emerging powers. In the aftermath of the euro zone crisis, it's a position European leaders may simply have to get used to.
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  • for the rest of the world, it's not just the continent itself that is rapidly losing its shine. The whole European political model - generous welfare systems, democratic decision-making, closer regional integration and the idea of a currency union as a stabilising factor - no longer seems nearly as appealing to other, still growing regions.
  • "If the euro dies, it will mark the end of the European experiment in forging closer financial and political integration. But it will also have wider international implications."
  • Chellaney argues the demise of the euro might help secure the primacy of the dollar - and therefore perhaps of the United States itself - for years to come.But others believe a European collapse would be a sign of things to come for the US as well.
  • "The health of the euro or the EU, for that matter, will have a marginal impact on gold and power that is tending any way towards Asia, especially China,"
  • Washington takes the potential threat of Europe's unravelling very seriously. In the short-term, the Obama administration is clearly concerned over the electoral fallout should the crisis in Europe cross the Atlantic before November's presidential election.But in the longer term, whether the euro survives or not US planners are beginning to face up to the fact that the continent will likely be poorer and rather more self-centred than Washington had hoped.
  • While Britain and France took the political lead in Libya last year, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates complained European NATO forces were in fact almost entirely dependent on US munitions, logistics and other backup.
  • But the change in European thinking and the additional defence spending Washington called for now looks all but impossible in this time of austerity.
  • "It's doubtful any future US Defence Secretary is even going to bother to make that kind of pitch," says Gvosdev at the US Naval War College. "We'd hoped Europe could take the lead in some parts of North Africa as well as the Balkans and Eastern Europe. That now looks very unlikely."
  • Washington's military "pivot " towards Asia, he said, had been based in part on the assumption that Europe would remain stable and wealthy and the US now had little or nothing to worry about on its North Atlantic flank. A weakened Europe could make US planners much less confident of that, particularly if China extends its influence.
  • Beijing has upped its investments in Europe in recent years, including major port projects in Greece and Italy.
  • Some waning of Europe's international influence was always likely, experts say, with an ageing population chewing up ever more resources and emerging economies inevitably growing faster. But the current crisis could supercharge its decline. Whether the continent's leaders realise that, however, is another matter.
  • "Europe's main source of influence (should) be the success of its political and economic model in providing high living standards and democratic freedoms," says Jack Goldstone, professor of international affairs at George Mason University near Washington DC "If the current crisis undermines both of those as well, Europe will look like a rather weak, badly run system of ageing and economically stagnant states. Irrelevance awaits."
Pedro Gonçalves

Syria wants Brazil to help Mideast peace: report | Reuters - 0 views

  • "In my view, the combined effort of Brazil and Turkey in the Iranian nuclear question has raised Brazil's role to a new level," Assad said. "For this, we hope Brazil can act to stabilize the Middle East."
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