Month: October 2017

Several prominent German foreign policy experts on Thursday urged the incoming German government not to turn away from the United States despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s unilateral “America First” stance. The group of leading experts published a manifesto in the weekly Die Zeit saying the “success and security of Germany and Europe is based on the system” of a liberal, international order and multilateral institutions, which Trump is fundamentally questioning with his “power-based, nationalist politics.” They wrote that because of America’s current course, Germany – which recently held national elections and is still in the process of forming a new …

READ MORE

Spain is holding its annual national day celebration Thursday under the cloud of the country’s biggest political crisis since a failed coup four decades ago. Spaniards lined the streets of Madrid carrying national flags as unionists used the holiday military parade to show unity in the face of moves by Catalonia to declare independence. The wealthy region’s intention to break away has plunged Spain into its worst political crisis since an attempted military coup in 1981. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy issued Wednesday an ultimatum to Catalonian President Carles Puigdemont to clarify by Monday whether he has formally declared independence for …

READ MORE

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, said on Thursday a landmark arms control treaty that helped end the Cold War was in peril and called for a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to save it. Gorbachev, 86, said U.S.-Russia relations were in the throes of a “severe crisis” and that the treaty, which banned all Soviet and American short and intermediate-range land-based nuclear and conventional missiles, was now at serious risk. Gorbachev signed the pact — the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty — in 1987 along with then U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Washington. Russia, …

READ MORE

Nerves are fraying in the Brexit talks, negotiators are trying to work out if the other side is bluffing about walking away, and a ticking clock is fast narrowing British options come March 2019. Philip Hammond, Britain’s finance minister, echoed recent EU assertions when he said that a transition period to some new relationship was a “wasting asset,” the value of which would “diminish significantly” for both sides if its form remains unclear to businesses much after the start of the New Year. As negotiators in Brussels make little progress before Prime Minister Theresa May meets EU leaders next week, …

READ MORE

Turkey is calling for a normalization of relations with the United States following rising diplomatic tensions between the NATO allies. “Our wish is that relations between the two allies get back to normal soon. We, as Turkey, will not give up on common sense at a time when regional and global tensions have been rising,” said Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in a speech to provincial governors in Ankara. Relations are deeply strained following the arrest of local U.S. consulate employee Metin Topuz on terrorism and espionage charges in relation to a failed coup last year against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. …

READ MORE

Russia’s domestic security agency said Wednesday it detained six people in Crimea accused of involvement in an extremist organization, a move described by one of the suspects’ lawyer as part of Moscow’s crackdown on the Crimean Tatars. Emil Kurbedinov, a lawyer for one of the six detainees, said that police also rounded up nine other Crimean Tatars who protested the detentions in the Crimean town of Bakhchisarai. The Federal Security Service or FSB, the main KGB successor agency, said it has stopped the activities of a local cell of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamist group which Russia and several other ex-Soviet …

READ MORE

There have been four outbreaks of highly pathogenic H5N8 avian flu in farms in central and northern Italy since the start of the month and about 865,000 chickens, ducks and turkeys will be culled, officials said on Wednesday. The biggest outbreak was at a large egg producing farm in the province of Ferrara. The outbreak was confirmed on Oct. 6 and about 853,000 hens are due to be culled by Oct. 17, the IZSV zoological institute said. Another outbreak involved 12,400 broiler chickens at a smaller farm in the province of Vicenza. The other two were among a small number …

READ MORE

The Danish government wants to increase its defense budget by 20 percent over the next five years in response to Russia stepping up military activity in eastern and northern Europe. Much of the West has been troubled by Russia’s actions since its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula Crimea and its support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine in a war that has killed more than 10,000 people. Baltic countries have grown increasingly alarmed. Last year Russia, saying it was part of routine drills, moved ballistic nuclear-capable missiles to its enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea and deployed …

READ MORE

The Council of Europe is asking Italy to explain what its naval ships are doing off Libya’s coast amid concerns that Europe-bound migrants who are sent back to Libya face “a real risk” of torture or inhuman treatment. In a Sept. 28 letter published Wednesday, the council’s human rights commissioner, Nils Muiznieks, warned Interior Minister Marco Minniti that Italy again risked violating the European Convention on Human Rights. The convention prohibits exposing people to “torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Italy announced in July it was sending naval units to Libya’s coast to help the local coast guard …

READ MORE

Dinner at the Barcelona home of Catalonia-born Montserrat Armisen, an independence supporter, can be a tense affair. “He criticizes us and doesn’t let us eat in peace,” said Armisen of her husband, Gustavo Gomez, a Colombian who favors keeping the Spanish state intact, and their children, Jordi, 18, and Nicolas, 27. “We go to our protests, return and don’t say anything, but he just carries on,” said Armisen, 55. “It bothers us because there is no respect for us from his part.” For many in Spain, the Catalonia crisis that threatens to fracture the country is also tearing at ordinary …

READ MORE

Russia accused the United States on Tuesday of pretending to fight Islamic State and of deliberately reducing its airstrikes in Iraq to allow the group’s militants to stream into Syria to slow the Russian-backed advance of the Syrian army. The Pentagon strongly denied the accusations, saying that the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State posts data every day on the number and result of strikes for the public to see. In the latest sign of rising tensions between Moscow and Washington, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the U.S.-led coalition had sharply reduced its airstrikes in Iraq in …

READ MORE

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan pledged gas, investment and support for the Balkans on Tuesday, in an apparent bid to expand influence in a region frustrated by the slow pace of EU accession. His two-day trip to Serbia — a mainly Orthodox Christian country at fierce odds with Turkey during Yugoslavia’s bloody collapse — could help grow Turkey’s role in a region that spent centuries under Ottoman rule and remains susceptible to big-power rivalries. Turkish influence is already strong among fellow Muslims in Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo. Serbia is Russia’s closest ally in the Balkans. “Together with Serbia and with the …

READ MORE