Month: September 2017

Amid rising German-Turkish diplomatic tensions, Ankara has allowed seven German lawmakers to visit German servicemen deployed at Turkey’s Konya NATO air base. For several months, Ankara had banned such visits, saying the climate in bilateral relations was inappropriate. “The way the Turkish side is billing it is that it’s a multilateral visit, it’s not bilateral,” said political columnist Semih Idiz of the al-Monitor website. “They say this visit comes from NATO, therefore Turkey has to oblige, being a NATO member.” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reportedly had been lobbying intensively to allow the German lawmakers’ visit. The ban on German lawmakers …

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Britain announced Thursday it is stepping up support of the Lebanese army, providing funds for defensive barriers to be used along Lebanon’s border with Syria. The move is being seen as a vote of confidence by London in the Lebanese army and encouragement of the ambition of its commanders to emerge as the dominant military force on the frontier with Syria — a goal that would complicate Iran’s forging of a so-called ‘land bridge’ through Iraq and Syria and of assisting its allies in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said Thursday, “Our ambition is for Lebanon to have …

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Hungary’s prime minister says that a ruling by the European Union’s top court upholding the relocation of asylum-seekers opens the way to a “mixed culture and population” on the continent.  Prime Minister Viktor Orban says Hungary, which is refusing to take part in the EU scheme to temporarily relocate refugees from Greece and Italy, is not an “immigrant country” nor does it want to be one.   Orban has kept immigration on top of his political agenda since 2015. He said Friday on state radio that he “took note” of the European Court of Justice ruling which rejected legal arguments …

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Spain’s Constitutional Court on Thursday blocked the prosperous Catalan region’s plan to vote on independence from Spain. The ruling was expected after Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy vowed earlier in the day to “stop at nothing” to prevent the independence referendum called by the regional leaders from taking place. According to court regulations, the suspension lasts five months while judges come up with a ruling. The pro-independence coalition ruling Catalonia claims that the universal right to self-determination overrules Spain’s laws. The regional parliament on Wednesday approved a law to legitimize the independence vote and set an October 1 date for it. …

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Germany said on Thursday that Russia was planning to send more than 100,000 troops to war games on NATO’s eastern flank this month, disputing Moscow’s version that only 13,000 Russian and Belarussian servicemen would participate. The Sept. 14-20 exercises known as Zapad, or “West,” in Belarus, the Baltic Sea, western Russia and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, are stirring unease in NATO despite Moscow’s assurances troops would rehearse a purely defensive scenario. “It is undisputed that we are seeing a demonstration of capabilities and power of the Russians,” German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen told reporters at an EU …

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Forensic experts began searching a ravine in central Bosnia on Thursday for the remains of around 60 Bosnian Muslims and Croats killed by Serb forces early in the 1992-95 war. The search began hours after the Bosnian war crimes court ordered the exhumations at Mount Vlasic where between 160 and 220 prisoners of war were shot dead on August 21, 1992. Bosnian Serbs told the prisoners from detention camps for non-Serbs near the town of Prijedor that they would be released in a prisoner exchange but instead drove them away by bus, lined them up by the edge of a …

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French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that the International Monetary Fund should step back from its role in European bailouts – breaking with a widely accepted policy adopted when Greece sought international help seven years ago. On a two-day visit to Athens, Macron said the eurozone rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, should play the lead role in financial rescue within the currency zone.   France, Europe’s No. 2 economy, had previously backed Germany’s insistence in involving the IMF to enforce austerity measures that came with bailout programs in Greece and other rescued economies including Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus.   …

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Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerrilla fighter who has twice stood trial for war crimes, was chosen Thursday to form a new government in Kosovo, ending a political deadlock that has persisted since elections on June 11. President Hashim Thaci gave Haradinaj the mandate after his coalition struck an agreement with a smaller party that paved the way for them to take power. Haradinaj’s PAN coalition comprises his AAK party and others made up of former guerrillas who fought Serbian forces in 1998 and 1999. That campaign led to accusations of war crimes against him, but he was acquitted twice by …

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