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LISBON, Portugal (AP) — A Portuguese court has ruled that a former CIA operative convicted of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric as part of an extraordinary renditions program should be turned over to Italy to serve her six-year sentence there, a court official said Friday. The decision to extradite Sabrina De Sousa after her arrest last October was handed down on Tuesday, the president of the court in Lisbon, Luis Vaz das Neves, told The Associated Press. De Sousa, who operated under diplomatic cover in Italy, was among 26 Americans convicted in absentia for the kidnapping of Milan cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, in broad daylight from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003. Extraordinary renditions were part of the Bush administration's "war on terror" after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Egyptian cleric's kidnapping, which also implicated Italy's secret services, has proven embarrassing to successive Italian governments. De Sousa, who was born in India and holds both U.S. and Portuguese passports, was initially acquitted due to diplomatic immunity, but was found guilty by Italy's highest court in 2014. She was arrested at Lisbon Airport on a European warrant last year as she was on her way to visit her elderly mother in India with a round-trip ticket.

Authorities seized her passport and set her free while awaiting the court decision on her extradition. Manuel Magalhaes e Silva, De Sousa's Portuguese lawyer, told the AP in an email he was officially informed of the extradition decision Friday and intends to lodge an appeal at the Supreme Court. If that fails, he will go to the Constitutional Court, he said. De Sousa has argued against extradition to Italy, telling a Portuguese court after her arrest that Italian authorities tried her in absentia and never officially notified her of her conviction, according to Vaz das Neves. All of the Americans were tried in absentia and were represented for most of the proceedings by court-appointed lawyers who had no contact with their clients. Only toward the end of the trial did De Sousa and another defendant, a member of the military, receive clearance to hire their own lawyers. The Lisbon judge ruled that De Sousa should be sent to Italy so she can be notified of the conviction and possibly demand another trial, Vaz das Neves said. The judge also ruled that if De Sousa accepts her prison sentence, she must be allowed to serve it in Portugal if she wishes, which is possible under European legal procedure, according to Vaz das Neves. De Sousa has said that she had been living in Portugal and intended to settle there.

De Sousa has denied in interviews participating in the rendition and has said she wants to hold the CIA accountable. "If she truly arrives in Italy, she could finally choose to say to magistrates what she so far has only said in interviews," said the lead prosecutor in the case, Armando Spataro. De Sousa has requested a pardon from Italy. Earlier this month, in an act of clemency, Italy's president reduced the sentences of two others convicted in the case. President Sergio Mattarella reduced former CIA base chief Robert Seldon Lady's sentence to seven years from nine. Mattarella also wiped out the entire penalty — three years — faced by another American, Betnie Medero. After being kidnapped Nasr was transferred to Egypt where he claimed he was tortured. After he was released from Egyptian custody, Italian authorities in 2005 issued an arrest warrant for him. He was convicted in absentia by an Italian court in 2013 on decade-old terror charges and was sentenced to six years in prison, although he never returned to Italy to serve the sentence.

A special unit operating under cover and protected by diplomatic immunity, assigned to a very sensitive mission: to spy on the communication of the Italian leadership. That is what top secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published in Italy exclusively by l'Espresso in collaboration with "la Repubblica" reveal. A file mentions the "Special Collection Service " (SCS) sites in Rome and in Milan, the very same service which, according to the German weekly "Der Spiegel ", spied on the mobile phone of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. "Special Collection Sites", reads the file published today by l'Espresso, "provide considerable perishable intelligence on leadership communications largely facilitated by site presence within a national capital". These documents are very important because they contradict recent statements by the Italian Prime Minister reassuring the Italian Parliament. Speaking to the Chamber of Deputies four weeks ago, Enrico Letta said: "Based on the analysis conducted by our intelligence services and our international contacts, we are not aware that the security of the communications of the Italian government and embassies has been compromised, nor are we aware that the privacy of Italian citizens has been compromised". These top secret documents tell a different story, however.

The Special Collection Service is likely one of the most sensitive units in U.S. intelligence. The service deploys teams under diplomatic cover, operating in US embassies around the world to control friendly and enemy governments. The top secret NSA document examined by l'Espresso reveals that "in 1988 [SCS] had 88 sites, our peak". The SCS is assigned to a special mission: monitoring the communications of the political, and likely economical, leaders of host nations. For this reason, SCS teams operate within the heart of power: in embassies and consulates, working in close collaboration with the CIA. Also in Rome, in the US embassy located in via Veneto, from those very same roofs which witnessed the Dolce Vita. Snowden's files reveal that, at least until 2010, the Special Collection Service maintained two sites in Italy: one in Rome, a base staffed with agents, and one in Milan, the capital of the Italian economy where, according to a file dated 2010 and originally published in Der Spiegel, the SCS would run an unmanned site. Two sites in a relatively small country like Italy is unusual: only in Germany -- a prime target for NSA in Europe -- does SCS maintain two bases.

NSA's mass spying activities did not target our leadership and diplomacy alone, but it possibly also targeted millions of Italian citizens. A file on the top secret programme "Boundless Informant" that is labeled "Italy" reveals that between December 10, 2012 and January 9, 2013, the NSA collected the metadata for 45.893.570 telephone calls. Estimates close to this figure had already circulated, but now the actual document indicates the penetration of this monitoring. All of the metadata gathered in our country between December 10^th and January 9^th 2013 as reflected on this slide relate to phone communication, unlike the slides published in Germany and France, where internet communication metadata were targeted as well.

Venetians have voted overwhelmingly for their own sovereign state in a ‘referendum’ on independence from Italy. Inspired by Scotland’s separatist ambitions, 89 per cent of the residents of the lagoon city and its surrounding area, opted to break away from Italy in an unofficial ballot.The proposed ‘Repubblica Veneta’ would include the five million inhabitants of the Veneto region and could later expand to include parts of Lombardy, Trentino and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

The floating city has only been part of Italy for 150 years. The 1000 year–old democratic Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia, was quashed by Napoleon and was subsumed into Italy in 1866. Wealthy Venetians, under mounting financial pressure in the economic crisis, have rallied in their thousands, after growing tired of supporting Italy’s poor and crime ridden Mezzogiorno south, through high taxation.

Campaigners say that the Rome government receives around 71 billion euros  each year in tax from Venice - some 21 billion euros less than it gets back in investment and services.Organisers said that 2.36million, 73 per cent, of those eligible to take part voted in the poll, which is not recognised by the Rome government. The ballot also appointed a committee of ten who immediately declared independence from Italy. Venice may now start withholding taxes from Rome. 

In another important decision on European participation in the US war on terrorism, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued a judgment late last month against Italy for its role in the extraordinary rendition of Egyptian cleric Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, better known as Abu Omar. (An English-language summary of ruling is here; the full decision, presently available only in French, is here.) The ruling not only represents a further contribution to the Strasbourg Court’s growing accountability jurisprudence, but also highlights the United States’ own failure to provide any redress to victims of the torture program that it primarily created and operated. The ECtHR’s decision in Nasr v. Italy concerns one of the most notorious instances of extraordinary rendition (i.e., the extrajudicial transfer of an individual to another country for purposes of abusive interrogation). In 2003, Nasr, who had been granted political asylum in Italy, was abducted in broad daylight from a street in Milan and taken to Aviano air base, which is operated by the US Air Force. Nasr was subsequently taken, by way of the US’s Ramstein air base in Germany, to Cairo where he was interrogated by Egyptian intelligence services. Egyptian authorities held Nasr in secret for more than a year and subjected him to repeated torture before releasing him in April 2004. Approximately 20 days after his release — and after submitting a statement to Milan’s public prosecutor describing his abuse — Nasr was rearrested and detained without charges. He was released in 2007, but prohibited from leaving Egypt.

The ECtHR ruling centers on Italy’s role in Nasr’s abduction in Milan, his rendition to Egypt where he faced a real risk of abuse, and its subsequent failure to conduct an effective domestic investigation or to provide any redress. The ECtHR found Italy liable for multiple violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including article 3 (the prohibition on inhuman or degrading treatment), article 5 (the right to liberty and security), and article 13 (the right to an adequate remedy). It ordered Italy to pay €70,000 to Nasr and €15,000 to his wife, Nabila Ghali, for the suffering and anguish caused by her husband’s enforced disappearance. The Milan public prosecutor had previously investigated and prosecuted 25 CIA officers, including the agency’s Milan station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, and seven Italian military intelligence officers, for aiding and abetting in Nasr’s abduction and rendition. The United States strenuously opposed the prosecution, warning that it would harm US-Italian relations, and the Italian government successfully challenged much of the evidence on the grounds it could jeopardize national security. The trial court convicted 22 CIA agents in absentia and gave them prison sentences of between six to nine years; a Milan appeals court upheld the convictions and overturned the acquittals of the other three US defendants. Italy’s highest court, however, overturned the conviction of five of the Italian military intelligence agents based on state secrecy grounds. The Italian government has refused to seek the extradition of the convicted US nationals. (For more details, Human Rights Watch has an excellent summary of the proceedings in Italy here.)

The ECtHR’s ruling in Nasr strengthens accountability by reinforcing state responsibility for participation in abuses committed during the war on terrorism. It builds on the Strasbourg Court’s prior decisions in El-Masri v. Macedonia and Al-Nashiri v. Poland/Husayn (Abu Zubaydah) v. Poland, which held Macedonia and Poland, respectively, liable for their role in CIA torture and rendition, including (in the case of Poland) for hosting a CIA black site. Nasr, together with El-Masri and al-Nashiri/Husayn, should help discourage a state’s future participation in cross-border counterterrorism operations conducted in flagrant violation of human rights guarantees. While the deterrent value of legal judgments may be uncertain, the recent line of Strasbourg Court decisions raises the costs of aiding and abetting illegal operations, even in the national security context.

At the EU summit in Brussels, Italy blocked the attempt to extend sanctions against Russia for one year. Rome was also against the extension of sanctions for alleged crimes committed by Russia in Syria. This was confirmed by the participants of the summit. "We had a discussion, which, fortunately, ended without considering the option that would be, in my opinion, erroneous. That is to respond to the situation in Syria and Aleppo with the EU sanctions against Russia", the Prime Minister of Italy, Paolo Gentiloni, said. He also added that most countries agreed with Italy that it would be a mistake to introduce new sanctions against Moscow in addition to those already imposed due to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Italy also was among the countries that opposed the proposal of Poland to keep the existing sanctions against Russia for a year rather than for six months. "Some of our colleagues have sought to extend the sanctions for 12 months, but in reality it was clear from the very beginning that it was still possible to maintain our current format," said the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk. Poland and some other countries were concerned that US president elect Donald Trump might try to ease the pressure on Russia after having taken office the next year. Tusk said it was still too early to say what the Trump’s policy will be.

by MAJOR GENERAL SMEDLEY D. BUTLER, USMC - Retired TWO-TIME Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient FULL TEXT ON LINE FREE

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(Reuters) - The United States urged countries on Tuesday to think twice about signing up to a new China-led Asian development bank that Washington sees as a rival to the World Bank, after Germany, France and Italy followed Britain in saying they would join. The concerted move by U.S. allies to participate in Beijing's flagship economic outreach project is a diplomatic blow to the United States and its efforts to counter the fast-growing economic and diplomatic influence of China. Europe's participation reflects the eagerness to partner with China's economy, the world's second largest, and comes amid prickly trade negotiations between Brussels and Washington.

European Union and Asian governments are frustrated that the U.S. Congress has held up a reform of voting rights in the International Monetary Fund that would give China and other emerging powers more say in global economic governance.

Washington insists it has not actively discouraged countries from joining the new bank, but it has questioned whether the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will have sufficient standards of governance and environmental and social safeguards. "I hope before the final commitments are made anyone who lends their name to this organization will make sure that the governance is appropriate," Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told U.S. lawmakers. Lew warned the Republican-dominated Congress that China and other rising powers were challenging American leadership in global financial institutions, and he urged lawmakers to swiftly ratify stalled reform of the IMF.

There's more, much more. These four characters - Bersani, Monti, Grillo, Berlusconi - happen to be at the heart of a larger than life Shakespearean tragedy: the political failure of the troika (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund), which translates into the politics of the European Union being smashed to pieces. That's what happens when the EU project was never about a political ''union'' - but essentially about the euro as a common currency. No wonder the most important mechanism of European unification is the European Central Bank. Yet abandon all hope of European politicians asking their disgruntled citizens about a real European union. Does anybody still want it? And exactly under what format?

All hell is breaking loose in the EU. Le Monde insists Europe is not in agony. Oh yes, it is; in a coma. And yet Brussels (the bureaucrat-infested European Commission) and Berlin (the German government) simply don't care about a Plan B; it's austerity or bust. Predictably, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem - the new head of the spectacularly non-transparent political committee that runs the euro - said that what Monti was doing (and was roundly rejected by Italians) is ''crucial for the entire eurozone''.

The verdict is of an Italy ''in the hands of polit-clowns that may shatter the euro or force the country to exit''. Even the liberal-progressive Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin defines Italy as ''a danger to Europe''

Sabrina de Sousa, a former agent for the US Central Intelligence Agency detained in Portugal on Monday pending extradition to Italy, was on Wednesday freed at the order of Lisbon's appeal court, after Italy's president issued a pardon reducing her prison sentence there by one year, her lawyer told Lusa.

An order from the Lisbon court stated that de Sousa should be "freed immediately", at the request of the Italian authorities.   The former spy was to have been extradited on Wednesday to Italy, where she was in 2009 sentenced in absentia to four years in prison for her involvement in the 2003 kidnapping in Milan of Abu Omar, an Egyptian national and radical Islamist. However, Italy's president, Sergio Mattarella, on Tuesday issued a pardon reducing that sentence by one year.   Under Italian law, prison sentences of up to three years may be substituted by community service. As a result the Milan prosecutor handling the case withdraw the European arrest warrant, so cancelling the extradition proceedings.  

LISBON: A former CIA operative convicted of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in Milan as part of the U.S. extraordinary renditions program is fighting against being sent to Italy to serve the six-year sentence she received in absentia there, a Portuguese court official said Friday.Sabrina De Sousa, who has both U.S. and Portuguese citizenship, was arrested at Lisbon's international airport Monday on a European arrest warrant issued by Italy.She told a judge on Tuesday she wants to stay in Portugal, where she has been living recently, Luis Vaz das Neves, president of the Lisbon court handling her case, told The Associated Press on Friday.De Sousa also "expressed a wish to serve her sentence, if she has to serve it, here in Portugal," he said.De Sousa was among 26 Americans, mostly CIA agents, convicted in absentia in the kidnapping of Milan cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003.De Sousa claims she was never notified of the Italian court decision, according to Vaz das Neves.

De Sousa handed both her passports over to the Lisbon court, which gave her 10 days to provide written arguments against her extradition. In the meantime, she must report weekly to a police station.The court believed she was not a flight risk, Vaz das Neves said, since she had a return plane ticket to Lisbon, is a Portuguese citizen and says she wants to settle here.De Sousa, who operated for the CIA under diplomatic cover, was initially acquitted due to diplomatic immunity but was found guilty by Italy's highest court in 2014.The Indian-born De Sousa came out against the U.S. decision not to allow the American defendants to get their own lawyers near the end of the first trial, eventually winning permission to have her own counsel. De Sousa said she was concerned about losing her freedom to visit family in India.

Vaz das Neves said De Sousa was trying to fly to Goa, a one-time Portuguese territory in India, to see her 89-year-old mother when she was arrested. She was due back in Portugal on Oct. 27.Asked why De Sousa was not caught earlier, Vaz das Neves said Portuguese authorities were aware of the warrant but police had no record of her residing here.De Sousa's lawyer in Lisbon said neither he nor his client would give interviews until the extradition case was resolved.But De Sousa acknowledged in published comments that she had endangered her freedom by trying to travel across a border."I knew I was taking a risk, but at some point I want to live (in Portugal) as a free citizen, and this needs to be resolved," De Sousa told Vice News in an article Thursday.After De Sousa presents her arguments, the court has 10 days to respond. The Portuguese Constitution prohibits the extradition of nationals, but Vaz das Neves said the court will also have to take European Union laws into account.

The UN Charter still designates Italy, Germany and Japan as enemy states to the United Nations. In legal terms this means that any U.N. Member State can launch a “preemptive” military aggression against these nations without a declaration of war. Seldom discussed, this enemy State status is today, arguably, one of the greatest obstacles for a lasting peace in Asia and in Europe.

Since the end of WW II none of the G-4, that is China, UK, USA, and the USSR / Russia have taken steps to abolish the Enemy State Clause from the Charter of the United Nations. The UN Charter still designates Italy, Japan and Germany as enemy States to the United Nations. This fact is generally omitted from the public political discourse; that is, both in the G-4 nations as well as in Italy, Japan and Germany. The implications and the lack of the sovereignty (e.g. the jus ad bellum) are, arguably, one of the greatest obstacles with regard to achieving a lasting Asian and European peace. A few examples should amply demonstrate why.

The situation of German governments is further complicated by the fact that Germany still has no peace treaty and that Washington and London do all that is in their power to maintain that status quo. No post WW II government in Germany has dared to touch upon this “hot potato”, Red – Green coalitions included. Even The Left (Die Linke) avoids the issue as much as possible. German governments have, generally speaking, used two strategies. 1) To push for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council to force the hands of the G-4. 2) To assert German power within the European Union; at considerable expense for the German economy in form of bail outs etc.

A former CIA counterterrorism officer who has spent nearly a decade trying to clear her name over her alleged role in the infamous rendition of a terrorism suspect was detained in Portugal this week after trying to leave the country.Sabrina De Sousa, 59, was en route to see her mother in India on Monday when she was stopped by law enforcement authorities at Lisbon Portela Airport on an outstanding European arrest warrant issued in Italy. Days before she was detained, VICE News had been with De Sousa in Lisbon filming a documentary about her ordeal and the rendition case. De Sousa's husband informed VICE News of her arrest, which we independently confirmed through diplomatic and law enforcement sources in Portugal, who declined to discuss the case on the record.De Sousa told VICE News Thursday that she was detained overnight at the main police headquarters in Lisbon. A hearing was held before a Portuguese prosecutor and a judge at the Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa Tuesday to determine whether she should remain in custody. De Sousa, a dual US and Portuguese citizen, said she was advised by her attorneys not to discuss details of the hearing, but that the judge freed her and seized her US and Portuguese passports while a decision is made about whether she should be extradited to Italy, which is expected in about 10 days. 

In a landmark 2009 ruling, De Sousa and nearly two-dozen other CIA officers were convicted in absentia in Italy on kidnapping and other charges in connection with the February 2003 abduction of Osama Mustapha Hassan Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, a radical cleric whose fiery anti-American speeches in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 attracted the attention of the CIA.

After Abu Omar disappeared, an investigation spearheaded by a Milan prosecutor revealed that he was taken off a Milan street in broad daylight by CIA and Italian intelligence officers and rendered to Egypt, where the cleric says he was brutally tortured during interrogations about his alleged plans for recruiting jihadists to fight against Americans.It was the first prosecution and conviction involving American intelligence officers connected to the CIA's highly controversial rendition, detention, and interrogation program. De Sousa was sentenced in absentia to a five-year prison term in Italy.But De Sousa, who had been operating under diplomatic cover at the US Consulate in Milan at the time the rendition was carried out — she was officially listed as a State Department employee — has for years maintained her innocence. On the day the operation took place, she said she was on a ski trip with her son. She acknowledged that she served as a translator for the CIA snatch team and Italian intelligence that planned the abduction, but she said she was "cut out" of the operation long before it took place.

German prosecutors have opened an investigation into the alleged monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone by the U.S. National Security Agency, officials said Wednesday, in a move that could again complicate diplomatic relations between the two allies. It was not immediately clear what the new investigation might mean in terms of possible prosecutions of Americans. Documents provided by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden indicated in October that the U.S. was monitoring Merkel’s cellphone conversations, as well as those of 35 other foreign leaders. Merkel expressed outrage and accused Washington of a grave breach of trust. In the ensuing diplomatic fallout, President Barack Obama acknowledged Germany’s anger and promised that new guidelines would cut back on such monitoring, except in the case of a national security interest. “The leaders of our close friends and allies deserve to know that if I want to learn what they think about an issue, I will pick up the phone and call them rather than turning to surveillance,” Obama said at the time.

Following the news of the German probe, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said the U.S. believes direct dialogue between the two countries rather than an investigation is the best way to address Germany’s concerns. “We believe we have an open line and good communication” with Merkel and her team, Rhodes told reporters aboard Air Force One as Obama flew to Brussels for a meeting of the Group of Seven nations. After mulling for months whether to open a formal probe, Chief Federal Prosecutor Harald Range determined “that sufficient factual evidence exists that unknown members of U.S. intelligence services spied on the mobile phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel,” his office said. In a similarly thorny diplomatic case, Germany got as far as issuing warrants for 13 unidentified CIA agents suspected of kidnapping a German terrorism suspect and taking him to a detention center in Afghanistan. The case was shelved in 2007 after the U.S. Justice Department said extraditing the agents would harm “American national interests.”

In his Wednesday announcement, Range’s office said he was not opening a formal investigation of wider allegations of blanket surveillance of telecommunications data in Germany by U.S. and British intelligence, saying that there was not yet sufficient factual evidence of concrete crimes. His office said that will remain under consideration. Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, declined to comment on Range’s decision or on whether the government fears it will weigh on relations with the U.S. The government didn’t exert any influence on the prosecutor, Seibert told reporters. “I am not going to evaluate here the decision he has made,” he said. Separately, the German Parliament earlier this year set up a committee to investigate the scope of spying by the NSA and other intelligence services in Germany.

Russian money is so important that even as European leaders are taking a tougher line with Mr. Putin, none want to damage the broader economic ties with measures that go beyond targeted sanctions.Continue reading the main story Unlike the days when Russians were cloistered behind the Iron Curtain, today they are so ensconced in Europe that more punitive steps would be likely to inflict the greater damage on still-weak European economies.That is so especially, but not only, in Italy. Like Germany, Italy is a major consumer of Russian natural gas, but ties go far beyond energy. Once a favorite summer spot of Italian industrialists, Forte dei Marmi has survived the economic downturn since 2008 largely because of Russian money.Russian tourism has grown rapidly in Italy, increasing by 25 percent in 2013 alone. According to Italy’s Foreign Ministry, 747,000 Russians visited Italy in 2013, while 52,000 Italians visited Russia. Russians are also roughly tied with Japanese as the biggest spenders among tourists, averaging €150 to €175 a day, roughly $195 to $225, according to Italy’s Foreign Ministry.

Savings accounts in Spain, Italy and other European countries will be raided if needed to preserve Europe's single currency by propping up failing banks, a senior eurozone official has announced.

The new policy will alarm hundreds of thousands of British expatriates who live and have transferred their savings, proceeds from house sales and other assets to eurozone bank accounts in countries such as France, Spain and Italy. The euro fell on global markets after Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch chairman of the eurozone, told the FT and Reuters that the heavy losses inflicted on depositors in Cyprus would be the template for future banking crises across Europe.

"If there is a risk in a bank, our first question should be 'Okay, what are you in the bank going to do about that? What can you do to recapitalise yourself?'," he said. "If the bank can't do it, then we'll talk to the shareholders and the bondholders, we'll ask them to contribute in recapitalising the bank, and if necessary the uninsured deposit holders." Ditching a three-year-old policy of protecting senior bondholders and large depositors, over €100,000, in banks, Mr Dijsselbloem argued that the lack of market contagion surrounding Cyprus showed that private investors could now be hit to pay for bad banking debts.

ussia’s Gazprom, Greece’s DEPA, and Italy’s Edison have signed an agreement of cooperation in St Petersburg that envisages joint efforts aimed at establishing a southern route for gas supplies from Russia to Europe, which will run across Turkey and Greece to Italy. The three companies said in a press release on June 2, “they would coordinate the development and implementation of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project and of the Poseidon project from the Turkish/Greek border to Italy, in full compliance with relevant applicable legislative framework”. In addition, the agreement formalises the arrangements on expanding cooperation in the field of Russian gas deliveries.

NAPLES, Italy — Rather than a quick and relatively painless affair, any effort to dismantle Syria’s air defenses as part of enforcing a no-fly zone would be tantamount to a declaration of war, cautioned NATO’s new military chief, Gen. Philip Breedlove. “It is quite frankly an act of war and it is not a trivial matter,” said Breedlove, NATO’s new supreme allied commanderr and head of U.S. European Command, during a recent Thursday to Naples, Italy.

As the debate continues about whether the U.S. and its European allies should begin to arm rebel forces in Syria and possibly impose a no-fly zone over the country to help those forces in their fight against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, Breedlove cautioned that such actions also carry risks. “It would absolutely be harder than Libya,” said Breedlove, referring to NATO’s 2011 air bombardment that resulted in the ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. “This is a much denser, much more capable defense system than we’d faced in Libya.” While some political leaders, such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have been vocal about the need for the U.S. to arm rebel forces and support a no-fly zone, the Obama administration has so far been cautious about military involvement or sending lethal aid to rebels amid concerns that some of those fighters have ties to al-Qaida-like groups.

There is a widespread perception that setting up a no-fly zone is simply a matter of sending in some planes, Breedlove said. “I know it sounds stark, but what I always tell people when they talk to me about a no-fly zone is … it’s basically to start a war with that country because you are going to have to go in and kinetically take out their air defense capability,” Breedlove said. Any no-fly zone plan would be further complicated if Russia goes ahead with plans to provide Syria with advanced anti-aircraft missiles, Breedlove said. On Thursday, Assad told a Lebanese television outlet that some of Syria’s weapons contracts with Russia had been implemented, but he did not specifically mention the sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft system. Russian media later reported that Syria would not receive the first shipment for several months.

BRUSSELS — Amid a growing outcry over American snooping on foreigners that threatens to cloud European-U.S. trade talks and President Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin, the European Union’s top justice official has demanded in unusually sharp terms that the United States reveal what its intelligence is doing with personal information of Europeans gathered under the Prism surveillance program revealed last week.

Viviane Reding, the Union’s combative commissioner of justice, told Attorney General Eric Holder in a letter sent on Monday evening that individual citizens of European countries had the right to know whether their personal information had been part of intelligence gathering “on a large scale.” In the letter, seen Tuesday by the International Herald Tribune, she also asked what avenues were available to Europeans to find out whether they had been spied on, and whether they would be treated similarly to U.S. citizens in such cases. “Given the gravity of the situation and the serious concerns expressed in public opinion on this side of the Atlantic, you will understand that I will expect swift and concrete answers,” Mrs. Reding wrote.

Speaking for a continent where snooping carries ghastly echoes of fascist or communist regimes, Mrs. Reding challenged Mr. Holder to answer a list of detailed questions by Friday, when they are expected to speak face-to-face in Dublin at a ministerial meeting scheduled before the Prism spy operation came to light. In Berlin, where Mr. Obama will speak next week before the Brandenburg Gate, privacy is a highly sensitive political issue and the Prism revelations have stirred a furor. “You can be sure that this will be one of the things the chancellor addresses when President Obama is in Germany,” said Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Angela Merkel, who grew up in the former Communist East.