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JPost.com » Israel » Article Apr 24, 2009 0:14&nbsp;|&nbsp;Updated Apr 24, 2009 13:54 'World leaders must drop their slogans' By DAVID HOROVITZ AND AMIR MIZROCH PrintSubscribe articleTitle = ' \'World leaders must drop their slogans\' '; showOdiogoReadNowButton ('1002,1003,1005,1004,1006,1484,1560,1561,1562,1563,1564,1565,1566',articleTitle,'0', 290, 55); E-mailToolbar + Recommend: What's this? showInitialOdiogoReadNowFrame ('1002,1003,1005,1004,1006,1484,1560,1561,1562,1563,1564,1565,1566', '0', 290, 0); Talkbacks for this article: 117 &nbsp; | &nbsp;Avg. rating 4.61 out of 5</s

The international community has to "stop speaking in slogans" if it really wants to help the new Israeli government work toward a solution to the Palestinian conflict and help bring stability to the Middle East, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, in his first interview with an Israeli newspaper since taking the job.

"Over the last two weeks I've had many conversations with my colleagues around the world," he said. "Just today, I saw the political adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Chinese foreign minister and the Czech prime minister. And everybody, you know, speaks with you like you're in a campaign: Occupation, settlements, settlers..." Slogans like these, and others Lieberman cited, such as "land for peace" and "two-state solution," were both overly simplistic and ignored the root causes of the ongoing conflict, he said.

Several thousand people have been protesting in the Hungarian capital Budapest, over the appointment of a new prime minister, Gordon Bajnai.

Mr Bajnai replaces Ferenc Gyurcsany, who announced his decision to resign in March, saying he considered himself a hindrance to further reforms. Mr Bajnai, a non-aligned figure who had been serving as the economy minister, was sworn in by parliament late on Tuesday.

the anti-government demonstrators in Budapest are demanding that parliament be dissolved and an early election called.

the United States and its allies have had serious disagreements over North Korea. Japan is prepared to obstruct negotiations until Pyongyang comes clean on the handful of Japanese kidnapped by the North some 30 years ago. The Chinese have wanted to moderate and ultimately change North Korea through reform and sizable economic support, but have little to show for it. Many of the cognoscenti see China as the ultimate arbiter compelling North Korean cooperation. That, of course, has not happened. China has its own interest -- keeping North Korea afloat -- and that's not likely to change. The U.S. and Chinese economies are now so enmeshed that U.S. leverage on China is very limited. South Korea's "sunshine policy," which provided large-scale aid in hopes of ultimately seducing North Korea, was despised by the Bush administration. (Ironically, a new South Korean government abandoned the policy just as the United States was softening its approach to the North.)

The U.S. administration seems content to resume six-party talks where they left off: completing the "phase two" agreement, exchanging fuel oil for disablement of the North's plutonium facilities, and an agreement on verification, the sticking point precipitating the breakdown of negotiations. Preventing North Korea from producing more fissile material makes sense. From there, the going gets increasingly tough.

The weight of evidence suggests that North Korea will be unwilling to give up its nuclear weapons for a long time, if ever. The apparent North Korean interest in trading the dismantling of its plutonium facilities for light water reactors will not likely go down well in Washington. It is not much of a deal.

So long as Russia's oil-fueled prosperity soared, people accepted Putin's implicit bargain: government corruption and constricted civil rights in exchange for rising living standards. But today, with Russia's economy in shambles, this social contract is fraying. Ordinary Russians are already taking to the streets demanding the type of change Putin is unlikely to deliver. He epitomizes the KGB old guard who got Russia into this mess. Sooner or later, he will become the Russian financial crash's most prominent victim.

Medvedev, a lawyer by training and instinct, offers perhaps the only realistic hope of turning Russia around, but he can't operate freely while Putin is still effectively in charge. Seemingly aware of this, Medvedev has, in recent weeks, taken steps to distance himself from his mentor and might be setting the stage to force him out of government.

When Medvedev became president in May 2008, the world economic situation seemed stable. Oil was more than $140 a barrel and Russian political leaders were riding high. With living standards rising for most Russians, political elites enjoyed the luxury of not having to make hard choices.

Now the downturn has wiped billions off property prices, thrown thousands of workers out of jobs, and left banks reeling with bad debt.

Equally important, the recession has exposed costly inefficiencies in the Spanish economy such as low worker productivity and high administrative costs that were papered over during boom times. All of a sudden, Spain has turned from a highflier to the sick man of Europe.

Domenech believes more coordination between the Spanish regions is needed to reduce companies' administrative costs. Yet while such reforms would certainly boost efficiency, skeptics question whether provinces such as the Basque Country and Catalonia, which jealously guard their independence, would be willing to give up certain powers to boost the nation's overall competitiveness.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Brown both favor driving on fiscal stimulus, even if the governor of the Bank of England is cautioning his prime minister he can't afford to throw any more money at the problem

Brown and Obama have limited room for maneuver since both their countries have such hefty current account and budget deficits. They just don't have the money to do it themselves, and they may have trouble persuading those who do have the cash to use it.

In an uncomfortable reminder of serious divisions over the Iraq war, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, each with more national traditions than Obama and Brown, and with their welfare states already pumping money into their economies as unemployment increases, are pursuing a different agenda. Blaming "Anglo-Saxon economics" and dodgy banking practices for the mess, they don't want more funds injected.

Speaking before the European Parliament on Wednesday, Mirek Topolanek described the stimulus measures and financial bailouts passed by US President Barack Obama as the "way to hell." He warned that the massive costs of the stimulus plans and financial bailouts would "undermine the stability of the global financial market" and that Obama was merely repeating the errors of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The comments also threatened to unravel the tenuous unity reached by EU member states for a joint response to the economic crisis. Last week, EU leaders reached a carefully constructed political truce designed to bury their differences and agree on a common policy ahead of the London meeting. At last Friday's summit, they pledged an additional €75 billion to finance loans by the International Monetary Fund and to double a credit line for struggling economies of Eastern European member states.

Topolanek may have felt unburdened by diplomatic niceties after his government lost a no-confidence vote in the Czech parliament on Tuesday. The Czech prime minister submitted his resignation the same day, but will continue on as a caretaker of the EU's rotating presidency through June.