87 states join forces to fight antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

21 July 2010
The cooperation agreement between the ITF and the ODIHR gives an enormous boost to Holocaust remembrance and the fight against antisemitism.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Ministry/MFA+Spokesman/2010/Cooperation_agreement_signed_Holocaust_remembrancae_fight_against_antisemitism_21-Jul-2010.htm

This morning (21 July 2010), a cooperation agreement between the ITF (Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research) and the ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) was signed at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem, in the presence of Deputy FM Daniel Ayalon.

The ODIHR – Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights - is an operative branch of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe).

This year, Israel was chosen for the first time to head the ITF. Under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an agreement was signed today that boosts the strength of the forces in the global arena fighting against antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

The agreement will bring about cooperation among 87 countries.

ITF Chairman Dan Tichon – an Israeli – and ODIHR Director Janez Lenarcic – a Slovenian – signed the memorandum of understanding. DFM Ayalon welcomed the signing of the agreement and said that it gives an enormous boost to the fight against the delegitimization of Israel and antisemitism in the world, bringing 87 states for the first time into cooperation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has acted, and will continue to act, against these manifestations of hate and will promote any initiative whose purpose is to eliminate them. Ayalon added that there are elements that deny the Holocaust and are preparing the next one. We must preserve the memory of the Holocaust so that similar horrors and hatred will never be repeated and the world will become a safer place.

The ITF was founded about ten years ago at the initiative of the Swedish government. Israel is heading the task force this year, with Mr. Dan Tichon, past Speaker of the Knesset, serving as the chairman and Ambassador Yakov Rozen as the political coordinator. The ITF, which has as its purpose the preservation of Holocaust remembrance through education, research and memorial sites, currently has 27 members, mostly European, and sees the cooperation agreement as very important.

The ODIHR, which has 57 members, deals with educational programs and follows up on instances of xenophobic, primarily antisemitic, hatred. For this reason, the cooperation agreement is likely to help promote Holocaust remembrance, including the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and the fight against antisemitism.

Ambassador Janez Lenarcic is a senior diplomat who in the past was advisor to the prime minister of Slovenia.

The ODIHR joins six other organizations belonging to the Task Force whose representatives serve as observers: the UN, DPI, UNESCO, the EU, FRA, and the European Council.

Finally a second shoe comes of at the UN Department of Public Information that services the Ban Ki-moon UN Administration. After the replacement of the officer in charge of Media Accreditation, now also a new Spokesperson.

November 30, 2009 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is getting a new Spokesperson – a real professional – Martin Nesirky – that will hail from Vienna where he was not just spokesman for over three years at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) but was also Head of Press and Public Information.

Nesirky will replace Michele Montas of Haiti who served since the beginning of the term of Mr. Ban Ki-moon, January 1, 2007, till now, November 30, 2009, thus leaving one month ahead of the end of a three years contract. Ms. Montas is retiring from the UN.

Mr. Nesirky came to OSCE from Reuters where he served over two decades as an international correspondent and editor. He covered issues the like of  the fall of the  Berlin Wall, events in the Balkans, and nuclear non-proliferation issues. Further, he had a stint as the Moscow Bureau Chief of Reuters with responsibility for coverage of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and as senior editor in London handling political stories, including the Middle East and Africa. He has been posted in Berlin, The Hague, and Seoul, though it is not known if he also speaks Korean, the language of the current UN Secretary- General – the subject of a question from one of the correspondents that remained unanswered.

More recently Mr. Nesirky in his Spokesman capacity at OSCE was instrumental in navigating the Russia backed OSCE Chairmanship for Kazakhstan for 2010. At the UN he may find his personal talents helpful in creating a new persona for the UN Secretary-General whose popularity with parts of the UN have hit a low, at a time that his reelection for a second term will be put on the table.

Ms. Montas whom he replaces had none of such credentials. Prior to her appointment, Montas headed the French unit of UN Radio. From 2003 to 2004, she served as the Spokesperson for UN General Assembly President Julian Robert Hunte, of Saint Lucia, soon after she fled to New York from Haiti. In Haiti, she and her husband were also radio journalists and activists. Her husband was killed in Haiti, and she escaped to New York. We can vouch that in her first several months in the job Mr. Ban Ki-moon set her up, she had no understanding or patience for subjects of climate change – not even when the subject was raised in connection to killings going on in Africa, or the dangers to Small Island Member States of the UN. Not even in matters of the Middle East – she seemed as a fish out of water and effectively harming  positions that the SG might have been more forthcoming. In press conferences of the SG she allowed only questions that she thought he would be interested in while guarding him from such questions as climate change.

The real question is now if Mr. Martin Nesirky will find it acceptable to fit in her shoes and submit to further layers of UN functionaries in a UN Department of Public Information where the Director of News and Media Division is Mr. Ahmad Fawzi who acts as a factotum on Press Accreditation and also whenever there is the need to talk to the press upon fighting in the Middle East. We feel that Mr. Nesirky may be inclined to become his own man in those areas while serving the needs of the Secretary-General.

The announcement about the new Spokesperson was made by Mr. Farhan Haq, of Pakistan, an Associated Spokesperson, third in the ranking below Mr. Nesirky (The second ranking Spokesperson is the Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe of Japan). Farhan started the announcement by saying: “And finally, a message that you’ve been waiting for some time. The Secretary-General today has named Martin Nesirky of the United Kingdom as the new Spokesperson for the Secretary-General,” but when asked by a correspondent if there will be in parallel an appointment for a position called Strategic Communications, he also gave no answer and showed impatience by mentioning that “our guests are here.”

Another correspondent asked nevertheless about the Small Pacific Developing Island States that called upon the Security Council to take up the issue of climate change “as a matter of security, because they say that their islands, their countries, could potentially disappear together for the first time in history, and they’re looking for the Council to develop enforceable emission targets. What does the SG think of this call to the SC to take up the Climate Change issue?”

The anemic answer was: “As you know, the SG has been encouraging all of the relevant bodies to deal with climate change and its effects across a variety of fields.At this stage, however, what the SG is concerned with is making sure that Member states and leaders at the highest level will come to Copenhagen to deal precisely with all of the challenges of climate change and seal a deal that can help resolve all the various problems that member States face.” That was quite a lame answer from the source of “Hopenhagen” and a clear show why finally the UN deserves a professional Spokesperson it was denied during the first three years of the Ban Ki-moon Administration of the UN.

The Correspondent continued with his insistence for an answer:
“There is nothing about the council taking up this matter?”

Final answer from the Associate Spokesperson: “It’s always up to the Security Council which matters it chooses to take up under rubric of peace and security issues.”

From our point of view, will Mr. Martin Nersirky accompany Mr. Ban Ki-moon to Copenhagen, or will it be Marie Okabe?

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N.B. - to be fair to Michele Montas -
Montas was one of the producers of Jonathan Demme’s documentary, The Agronomist, which depicted the life and death of her husband Jean Dominique and his career at Radio Haiti-Inter, the radio station that he founded. She was also involved with MINUTASH – the UN mission to Haiti. Montas worked  as a journalist at that Radio-station and has been  a human rights activist in Haiti and later a consistent international lecturer on Haiti – but the subject matter of the UN extends beyond Haiti and the Aristide government interests. We do not imply that Montas was a negative person as such, only that she was not the right person for her job which allowed Mr. Ahmad Fawzi of Egypt to take over some of the responsibilitires that were hers, and the Under Secretary-General for the UN DPI, Mr. Kyotaka Akasaka, another strange appointment in the Ban Ki-moon cabinet, could really not care less.

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P.S. – On November 23, 2009 Martin Nesirky met the media correspondents to the UN and said:

A couple of things I just wanted to mention.  First of all, I’m really looking forward to working with all of you; getting to know you.  This is a huge challenge, of course, and I’m very keen to try to get to know you so I can help you the best that I can.  That’s the first thing.

The second thing is that, needless to say, I do read what’s being written.  And I think there are a couple of things I’d like to make absolutely clear and very straight at the beginning.  My language skills: I speak German, I speak Russian, I speak English after a fashion, I speak a little bit of Korean and an even smaller amount of French.  I realize that it’s very, very important to be able to speak French. I’m going to be doing as the Secretary-General has done, which is to take extra French classes to improve on that. And that’s really all I wanted to say on that matter.

The other is that I really believe that coming from outside the UN has advantages and disadvantages.  You will have to bear with me as I get to know the system that you, many of you, know far better than I probably will ever do.  But I am very keen to work with you so that you can help me to help you to have the stories that you need to write.

Also, it seems that the UN expects Mr. Nesirky to start his work at the UN on only December 7th, which is coincidentally the day the Copenhagen Conference opens officially, does it mean that he will be there, or it means that Marie Okabe will be there and he will be in New York? We shall see!

Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world – equal in size to all of Western Europe, four times the size of Texas, five times the size of France, and has 16.5 million people. Its present GNP per capita is $6,140. It passed  a Sovereignty Declaration October 25, 1990 and became an Independent State December 16, 1991 claiming to be a fledgling secular democracy – true enough when one judges by it having become a hub where various religions can meet freely – that is like having at the same table leading Jews from Israel, Shiia from Iran, Sunni from Saudi Arabia, and every Christian Denomination, with further participants from the various religions of East and South Asia.

From our website’s angle, we are thinking of the terrible environmental problems that Kazakhstan inherited from the Soviet rulers, the awareness of its people of this environmental damage, and a high potential for the introduction of renewable energy to the country, while at the same time aiming at becoming a hub of peace in its region. Kazakhstan is an important US ally in that part of the world. A Kazakh woman is the head of the Asian Environmental Journalists group.

When we learned about the November 23-24, 2009 New York City, Harvard Club, Conference, we made it a point of interest that we wanted to participate. For those interested in further information beyond what we will be able to bring forward – please look up www.kazakhhembus.com and www.newsdeskmedia.com – organization headed by Alan Spence, that put together this conference – and www.kazakhinvest.com

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This was a pure economic encounter with many companies that already do business in Kazakhstan, in attendance, i.e. IBM, GE, CONOCO Phillips (the President and COO), and Federal Express, and with quite a few officials of Kazakhstan present – Galymzhan Primatov the Vice-President, Bolat Zhamishev, the Minister of Finance, Daniyar Akishev, Deputy Chairman of the National Bank, Nurbek Rayev, Vice-minister of Industry and Trade, Asset Magauov the Vice-minster of Energy and Mineral Resources, Erlan S. Kozhasbay the President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Kairat Umarov, the Deputy Foreign Minister, Erlan Idrissov, the Ambassador to Washington and Richard Hoagland the US Ambassador to Kazakhstan. Also, Mr. Daniel Poneman, the US Deputy Secretary of Energy and Edward Chow, Senior Fellow, Energy and National Security Program at CSIS in Washington DC.

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In these days when everyone thinks about the economic crises first let us see what that meant to Kazakhstan:

“Kazakhstan has stepped into the global economic crisis together with the Western countries and taken steps to come out at the same time with the Western Countries” – told me one of the Kazakh officials.

Today, even in the most prosperous nations, the largest financial and industrial giants are distressed, hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs, and many businesses are closed. Kazakhstan didn’t stay apart from the adverse effect of the crisis, however, it adequately has been coping with its impact.

Similar to the actions of Obama Administration, and earlier Bush Administration, leadership of Kazakhstan is fully aware of global vital risk affecting every single country without exception.
Since crisis is systemic, it is fought on a system basis, requiring program and target approaches.  The key factor is the effectiveness of anti-crisis policy successfully being implemented by the State. The impact of the crisis considerably reduced the possibility of Kazakhstani banks to attract external financial resources, thus, affecting the level of lending in the domestic economy. In addition, sharp jump in world prices of food significantly increased inflationary pressure on the economy.

In fact, in January 2009, immediately responding to the warning signals of global markets, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev has developed and adopted  an anti-crisis program. Further, government has actively pursued its implementation.  The anti-crisis program is focused on five main directions:

- Stabilizing the financial sector;
- Solving problems in real estate;
- Support for small and medium business;
- Development of  the agro-industrial complex;
- Implementation of innovative, industrial and infrastructure projects.

Since the beginning of 2009 the Government of Kazakhstan has spent $15 billion for these purposes.  This amount equals 14% of GDP in Kazakhstan. Globally, the figure amounts 15% of GDP in many countries. So, Kazakhstan is implementing its anti-crisis measures at the level of the developed countries. It is important to draw attention to Kazakhstan’s “know-how” entitled Roadmap Program, which is already bearing fruits. The program contains around 5,000 projects addressing issues of unemployment -  creating new jobs, improving education, supporting youth, food security, etc.

2,203 projects have been implemented to date, and 70% of funds pledged to the anti-crisis measures have been absorbed. As the result of the project 256,000 jobs were created and 231,000 people were employed. Compared with last year the volume of social benefits has significantly increased. Government has signed 8,000 memorandums with private companies, saving jobs to a million people.

Agriculture is one of the priority sectors of the economy. Since the beginning of the year farmers have implemented development projects in amount of $420 million.  The area under cultivation has increased by 1.7 million hectares. The government has secured the country from  food crisis. 40,000 tons of grain are stored in the state granaries. These actions were directed to support macroeconomic stability, business activity in the economy, and the financial system of the country. Decrease in GDP because of worsening inflation, and unemployment, has been stopped.  It is fair to say that Kazakhstan has managed to avoid the worst-case economic scenario, and create the preconditions for post-crisis development.

International experts and analysts have agreed with the anti-crisis measures undertaken by the Government of Kazakhstan.  Rating agency Standard & Poor’s raised the outlook of the Republic of Kazakhstan from “negative” to “stable” followed by the ensuing public policy of banking system stabilization.  According to the analysts of the agency, outlook revision reflects the new strategy of the government to restrict the amount of potential contingent liabilities arising from problems in the banking sector, and providing adequate resources to maintain the confidence of customers, and to enable the banking system to function, supporting the economy, despite any difficulties that may arise in the nearest future.

Director of the Strategic Analysis at the Russian Consulting Company FBK, Igor Nikolayev, believes that timeliness played an important role in the effectiveness of the Anti-crisis Program in Kazakhstan.  “The fact that the program was adopted on 13 January, and not 19 June, as in Russia, already has a great significance as six months delay is fraught with many consequences,” – said the economist. Some of the positive directions of the Kazakh program are saving government investment in infrastructure, support of consumer demand, as well as establishment of a special fund which deals with the purchase of “bad” assets from lending institutions, noted Nikolaev.

Work of the Government of Kazakhstan to support the banking system of the republic has been frequently commended by the international expert community – Kazakhstani Anti-crisis Program is a milestone in the development of the economy. Thus, the current economic situation in Kazakhstan can be characterized by the process of overcoming the most acute phase of crisis, and the need to define a new range of problems – the transition from the rapid action to implementation of the activities in the long term.

It seems that Kazakhstan has stepped into the crisis together with the western economies, and will together come out of it. The current situation proves that the country, having tried for principles based on  values of  democracy, which can be attributed to the Kazakhstan experience, has proven itself.  Decisions of the Kazakhstani leaders in terms of ensuring stable growth of the country’s economy, as a factor in the global economy, were well-timed, helping to establish a positive image of Kazakhstan as a responsible developing country.

——

Chris Robbins, a travel writer who likes to write as literature, authored “Apples from Kazakhstan” and pointed out the importance of the Silk Roads, and when these were replaced by ships it lead to 450 years that Kazakhstan vanished from the West’s eye. Yes, apples came from Kazakhstan, but then nothing happened until the 19th century British push into the region – followed by Russia and eventually the Soviet 90 nuclear tests that chewed up the country. The Scythian gold, Genghis Khan and the Mongols originated from these steps. Now they had 50 synagogues in this basically Muslim country.

On the panel moderated by the Kazakhstan ambassador to Washington was Evan Feigenbaum of the New York Council on Foreign Relations, who pointed out the two main topics for the Kazakh development (a) Developing the Energy Resources and bringing them to the market, and Economic Diversification in such areas as urban transit and highways.

We learned that President Nazarbayev will come to meet President Obama in February 2010, and then again for a major meeting on nuclear issues in April 2010.

But we also learned that the US has moved the five Central Asian States away from the Russian desk at the Department of State, first to their own desk, but now to South Asia. This is significant as we see the attempt to create for these States a joint policy rather with India – and not Russia or China.

This panel was about The Obama’s Administration’s Policy Towards Central Asia. Other members of the panel were the US Ambassador to Astana and the Deputy Foreign Minister – the Kazakh Ambassador’s boss – so above ideas – as well as questions about the SCO, Eurasia, Turkey threw light on the high interest the US has in the region – which was then amplified in the following panel that had its title: “Kazakhstan-US Energy Partnership: From Oil to Renewables.”

On that panel was the President of CONOCOPhillips, John Craig, the US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy Jonathan Elkind, and others mainly involved in oil. I was shocked, when despite the mention of renewables in the topic, and others having spoken on DIVERSIFICATION, this panel had no word for anything but oil. I heard – “oil and gas is “center of our interest.” Fair enough – the US must diversify its dependence on oil from the Gulf area, but why not mention something also about the potential of renewable energy in Kazakhstan – and potential there is indeed?

So I had to raise the question to the panel – “As we heard of concrete examples of US proposals to Kazakhstan in oil & gas, what are the concrete proposals the US took to Kazakhstan in renewables?” The answer made it clear that this panel was not prepared to answer such a question at a time the US has on its own to answer also this sort of “alternate questions” in other locations i.e. Copenhagen, and we know that Washington is working hard on making right this sort of proposals.

GE is developing locomotives in Astana, they work on energy efficiency and electricity. Kazakhstan is destined to develop a rail bridge between Europe and Asia – probably over the Black Sea.

Another energy area is the development of Uranium mines in Kazakhstan – hopefully this time less polluting then in the Soviet days. The Kazakh Vice-minister of Energy and Mineral Resources did say that he found here interest in developing wind energy in Kazakhstan – “someone connected to the UN told him so.” In the South of the country there is up to 3,000 hours solar/year. They have selected sites and work with Ambassadors back home. They also have potential for small hydro in the mountains, he said.

That sounded fine, but why was there no emphasis on this by the US side of the panel? We heard rather about the structure of the oil market the various ways one gets out the oil from Kazakhstan to markets, and about a future that will need also the country’s Uranium. The moderator, Tim Gitzel, Senior VP and COO, Cameco Corporation – a publicly traded nuclear company with 11 operating sites in 3 countries is obviously interested in Uranium.

Then one of the Kazakh delegates asked the President of Conoco about the Caspian Sea being a lake, and the oil project is not insured – what if there is a spill? Good question – not much of an answer!

So, rather then having a well rounded meeting, the US side had its tunnel vision directed to Kazakhstan Oil and Uranium, like it did in the past in countries of the Gulf region, and all we can is to point out to Kazakhstan – beware and diversify according to what you seemed to want to say. The nice volume the Embassy made available has a chapter about the “Curse of Oil” and the effort to avoid it. Yes – this must be part of the furniture at any negotiation table.

Kenneth Mack, the President of America Chamber of Commerce in Kazakhstan, spoke about how the energy of Kazakhstan will turn it into a global powerhouse, but he also spoke of major infrastructure programs to be executed with the help of the World Bank and the US Export-Import Bank. He spoke of efforts at diversification and the creation of a trans-corridor from Western China to Western Europe.

He also mentioned high octane fuel but did not say the word ethanol – something I hope the Kazakhs will   carefully study some more. The Export-Import Bank of the US must by law allocate funds to small businesses also (20%) so, here, there is a way to do some good perhaps?

Doris Bradbury of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kazakhstan told me that only a single one of the 255 members is interested in Renewable Energy  he looks into solar panels.

Lancaster Holding presented a series of industrial parks that are being developed, and FedEx is establishing its hub close to Almaty for the lines Shanghai – Frankfurt and Guangjou – Paris.

GE plans for Kazakhstan are amplified by an Azerbaijan firm planning for a Caspian – Black Sea transshipment Corridor.

Svetlana Dylevskaya, an experienced Central Asian senior environment journalist and Network Editor of the Green Women Environmental Media Agency, Kazakhstan and Central Asian Network for Ecological Journalists(CANEJ) has taken up the role of chair of the Asia Pacific forum of Environmental Journalists(APFEJ).She is also the first women president of APFEJ as well as the first person to become APFEJ president from Central Asia.
The APFEJ new secretariat based in Colombo- Sri Lanka  opens on November 19, 2009.

Following on from its 18th APFEJ World Congress of Environmental Journalists- Colombo,  Sri Lanka, October 19- 22, 2009, APFEJ, announced the newly elected 19-member Administrative Council who will serve for the term 3 year term(2009 October to 2012 October). APFEJ can be rightly proud of the active participation of the attendees, more than 103 Environmental Journalists, opinion makers from 34 countries.

A new APFEJ administrative Council is in place and ready to forward the APFEJ ‘s directives. At the meeting, a new structure for APFEJ  was proposed this includes appointing 45 country coordinators from Asia Pacific countries. As per the constitution of  APFEJ, the administrative Council is elected through its full, associate and individual membership categories. Of the 19 APFEJ administrative Council members there are 8 women representatives.

The Asia-Pacific Forum of Environmental Journalists(APFEJ) is a network and regional association founded in 1988, dedicated to promoting education understanding and awareness of the environment through the honest and accurate reporting of local, regional and international environmental and development issues. It acted as the head of national environmental journalist forums or media organizations of 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

The APFEJ ad hoc committee was formed in 1985 at a regional conference on media and environment in Delhi organized by UN-ESCAP in collaboration with the UNEP.Today, APFEJ,is the oldest and largest organization of professional environmental journalists, contacts over 12,000 members around the world. The mission of APFEJ to build into a strong,independent and committed to promote excellence in environmental journalism worldwide by supporting environmental journalists specially Asia pacific through Professionalism, Freedom of expression, Social responsibility, environmental justice, Networking and training.

The roles of APFEJ administrative Council members has been streamlined and the administrative Council  itself consists only of an administrative body, which co-opts or appoints other members as needed.This is quite a different formation of the APFEJ administrative Council and means that members can feel free to come aboard the Council for
short project specific periods.

The General assembly approved some amendments in the APFEJ constitution.

Secretary General of Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists -NEFEJ, which is a APFEJ founding member Tika Ram Rai says he is very pleased with the appointment of such an experienced and competent Central Asia media practitioner as
Svetlana and the sentiments are followed by APFEJ former chair and APFEJ founding member Dharman Wickremaratne. The new APFEJ administrative Council also sees the return of former APFEJ chair Dharman, who says that he is looking forward to getting involved again.

The new committee is formed by the core administrative group:
Chair: Green Women Environmental Media Agency, Kazakhstan
Vice Chair: Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists, Nepal
Secretary /Chief Executive- Sri Lanka Environmental Journalists Forum,Sri Lanka

Members of the APFEJ administrative Council are follows;
01).President – Ms.Svetlana Dylevskaya, Kazakhstan
(Network Editor of the  Green Women Environmental Media Agency*
and Central Asian Network for Ecological Journalists – CANEJ)

02).Deputy President – Mr.Tika Ram Rai, Nepal
(Convener of the Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists -NEFEJ)*

Regional Directors(5)
03).Central Asia  Director- Ms.Jamila Sujud, Tajikistan
(Coordinator of the Central Asian Journalistic Network on Environment
and Health)**

04).North East Asia Director – Mr.Yasuyoshi Tanaka, Japan
(President of the Japanese Forum of Environmental Journalists -JFEJ)*

05).South Asian Director – Mr.Aftab Zahoor, Pakistan
(Head of the Pakistan Forum for Environmental Journalists -PFEJ)*

06).South East Asia Director: Mr.Quoc Dzung, Vietnam
(Executive Vice President of the Vietnam Forum of Environmental
Journalists- VFEJ)*

07).South Pacific Director – Ms.Nina Ratulele, Fiji
(News correspondent of the Islands Business Magazine and Media consultant) ***

08).Secretary /Chief Executive – Mr.Dharman Wickremaratne, Sri Lanka
(Editor of the Sri Lanka Environmental  Journalists Forum-SLEJF) *

09).Deputy secretary General – Mr. Yang Ming-sen,  China
(Secretary General of the China Forum of Environmental Journalists -CFEJ) *

Executive Members (8)

10)Ms.Souparno Banerjee, India
(Coordinator of the Media Resource Centre, – Centre for Science and
Environment -CSE, Mumbai – India)*

11)Mr.Matai Akauol, Fiji
(Manager & Training Coordinator of the Pacific Island News Association -PINA)*

12)Mr.Owais Aslam Ali, Pakistan
(Secretary General of the Pakistan Press Foundation -PPF)*

13)Ms.Elizabeth Roxas, Philippines
(Executive Director of the Environmental Broadcast Circle, EBC)*

14)Mr. lya Gridneff, Australia***
(Papua New Guinea Correspondent of Australian Associated Press- APP)

15)Mr.Joseph Joh, South Korea***
(Managing Editor – The Seoul Times, South Korea)

16)Mr.Eurico Pereira, East Timor ***
(Senior  producer of Radio Rakambia- East Timor)

17)Ms.Ellaha Sadat, Afghanistan**
(Media Monitor/ Environmental Analyst of IFES/ ASA)

Auditors (2)
18)Mr.EK Visarakhun, Cambodia
(President of the Cambodia Media Forum on Environment, (CMFE)*

19)Ms.Silafaga Lalua, Tuvalu
(Publication Coordinator of the Tuvalu Media Department)**

* Full Member organisation Representatives – 12 (Minimum 10)
** Associate member organisation Representatives -03 (Maximum 05)
*** Individual member Representatives – 04 (Maximum 04)

****APFEJ Past President’s – Year 1985 to 2009
01).Forum of Environmental Journalists of India – FEJI
(February 1985 to January 1988)
Representative: Chanchal Sakar, India – South Asia
Chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee

02). Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists -NEFEJ
(January 1988 to October 1990)
Representative: Aditya Man Shrestha, Nepal – South Asia

03).Philippines Environmental Journalists Inc – PEJI
(October 1990 to August 08, 1991)
Representative: Adlai J Amor, Philippines – South East Asia

04) Malaysian forum of Environmental Journalists(MFEJ)- South East Asia
Chairman of the Steering Group
Representative: Philip Mathews, Malaysia
(August 09, 1991 to April, 1992)

05).Malaysian forum of Environmental Journalists – MFEJ
(April 1992 to November 1993)
Representative: Philip Mathews, Malaysia – South East Asia

06).Philippines Environmental Journalists Inc – PEJI
(November 1993 to November 1995)
Representative: Manuel Satorre Jr, Philippines – South East Asia

07).Singapore forum of Environmental Journalists – ECO
Representative: Ivan Lim Sin Chin, Singapore – South East Asia
(November 1995 to February 1998)

08)China Forum of Environmental Journalists -CFEJ, North East Asia
Chairman of the Steering Group
Representative: Yang Mao, China
(February 06, 1998 to October 17, 1998)

09).Sri Lanka Environmental Journalists Forum – SLEJF
(October 18, 1998 to October 26, 2002)
Representative: Dharman Wickremaratne, Sri Lanka – South Asia

10).Bangladesh Forum of Environmental Journalists (FEJB)
(October 27, 2002  to May 05, 2009)
Representative: Quamrul Islam Chowdhury, Bangladesh – South Asia

11)Sri Lanka Environmental Journalists Forum(SLEJF) – South Asia
Chairman of the Steering Group
Representative: Dharman Wickremaratne, Sri Lanka.
(May 06, 2009 to October 18, 2009)

12).Green Women Environmental Media Agency, Kazakhstan
Representative: Svetlana Dylevskaya, Kazakhstan – Central Asia
(October 19, 2009 to present)

For further information please visit:
 http://www.environmentaljournalists.org

or  contact,
Dharman Wickremaratne
Secretary /Chief Executive
Asia Pacific forum of Environmental Journalists(APFEJ) Secretariat
PO Box 26
434/3 Sri Jayawardenapura
Sri Lanka.
Skype: ejournalists
E-mail: <ejournalists@sltnet.lk>,<ejournalists@gmail.com>
 http://www.environmentaljournalists.org

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/ejournalist…

Instead of having a signed “deal” at Copenhagen, now it seems that the leaders will be happy with a compilation of National promises. By coincidence, the UN Think Tank of UNU hosted today a panel – “PUBLIC POLICY: FROM NATIONAL TO GLOBAL” – it could not have been at a better time – and trust me – it was excellent. For fun, an NGO called Sustainability had Shell Oil Company over to the UN for lunch.

Not all is useless at the UN – just see what thinking people can come up with.

The 150 minutes event, in the basement of the UN building, at the United Nation University – the New York Office – was the second session of a Global Public Policy Working Group that aims to explore how to make public policy become more of a reality at the global level. This second session tried to find philosophical answers to what it means to have public policy at a global level – what are the conceptual, methodological, intellectual, and political challenges to this concept in an institution that caters to sovereign Nations. How do these challenges play out in various areas, such as security, development, and environment? That is really fascinating – specially in these days when we see before our eyes how difficult it is to many National governments to see beyond the length of their noses when trying to tackle the climate change issue. I saw some UN officials, some members of country representations, many NGOs, many young students, and just one other journalist in the room.

The panel was chaired by Dr. Jean-Marc Coicaud, the Director of UNU – Office in New York, and included Professor Andrew Hurrell of the Oxford University, Professor Thomas Pogge of the Yale University, and Dr. Yomo Kwame Sundaram from Malaysia, who was on many faculties in the US and UK and is now UN Assistant SG for Economic Development at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) and member of several panels that look at reforms. At the end there were quite a few questions from the floor.

Policy is what governments do – directly or through agents – this in order to benefit their own citizens. When talking at the global level we have to look at the word – agents – in order to find a way to go around the Sovereignty problem. The Public aspect must involve information, fairness and equality.
The domestic examples are the Public Goods – clean water, electricity, telephone service, education, basic medical care.

Dr. Sundaram reminded us that the San Francisco Conference in 1944, when it started, there was no international organization and Churchill would have preferred a set of bi-lateral agreements. It was Roosevelt who wanted something new and better then the League of Nations. In 1945 with the outcome, the league of Nation was declared dead and multilateralism was born. Then the Marshall plan and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development made allowance for the learning experience why the post WWI experience led to an immediate new resort to war. So – I guess – if you do not want troubles to hit your own citizens, you are wise to help the other side solve its problems also.

From here Dr. Sundaram moved to climate change and mentioned that there were two propositions – one that there be a market for carbon emissions but the Financial Times and the Economist saw immediately that it will not work, and the other – a Global Taxation – but that comes with a huge problem – the increase of the cost of energy. Both suggestions did not as such extend the solution to the need for development. His suggestion is “front loading” – that is pushing now for huge investments – expenditures. If poor countries cannot afford this it is also not good. What he sees is the creation of a Renewable Energy Infrastructure to be created by this Global Development effort.

He sees the current crisis as the chance to kill three birds in one. The current crisis was fueled with cheap credit and we have a tremendous overcapacity and thus no interest in private investment. This is the economic crisis. To get out of this through public spending, do it in one move by developing renewable energy and tackling thus all three problems in one move – the climate change issue – the development issue and the current economic problem.

When the Q&A time came I said that this panel was at the most opportune time as right these days, when the leaders of the UN recognized defeat of their attempt to bring to Copenhagen a Global agreement for all Nations to “seal,” now the talk is to save the event by creating simply a compilation of promises from the individual nations. Dr. Sundaram said that having such compilations is actually a positive element because this compilation can then be used to come up later with a clear agreement, but in this case he is not happy with the outcome – this because it will set a lower bar  to what we already had before. He elaborated about the 450 ppm and the 2 degree warming we had accepted  earlier, and that we know now that those figures are too high – we should go to 350 and 1.5 degrees instead – but we will not find these figures in the compilation and at best the older figures will be kept in the statements. Further, we have now positive changes in the governments of the US, Japan, and Australia, and it seemed possible to go for more then just this compilation. In fact, climate change in the US fell behind the attempt to have a health care program and will be delayed further because of the reorganization of financial regulation that will also get preference.

To another question – “who is the global public?” Prof. Hurrell said that there was the idea of G2 but it creates structural problems. He does not believe in top-down. he rather believes in changing elites among Nations and inside the Nations – with India, China, and Brazil, and their elites will be taken on board. If there is political redistribution it will be in the direction of the emerging powers and their elites. This might open up some normative goals in areas of change. First change will be in Western dominance. The political pressure will be of who speaks to the south? Intellectually, Institutionally, Economically – this is indeed a moment of change.

Asked about Human Rights, Prof. Pogge pointed at the fact that now the poor countries that gain from development polarize internally and this is not a solution for the population at large. The present crisis was for the rich – so there is a chance to create a more unified set of rules. The needs are a policy range of 25 years rather then the 2-3 years that politicians take now as the range of their personal goals.

He also said that Carbon Tax is more solid then the Tobin Tax. People will drive less and save energy – you can then put the money in climate change projects or help on imports. If it causes the poor to have to pay more for energy – let them pay the higher prices and return to them the money in a different way.

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As my reporting conveys, I was enthusiastic about above UNU event, but my daily amount of good feeling ended of sorts when I discovered in that UN basement that an event in the UN basement that was billed, by an entity that calls itself NGO Sustainability, as a meeting with the Ambassador from Kazakhstan, turned out to be actually an event with old Shell Oil Co.

The speaker was Elizabeth “Libby” Cheney, Vice President – Corporate Support of Shell Exploration & Production – to those that might be inclined to ask – she said that she is not related to that other Vice President Cheney.
The star was Ambassador Mrs. Byrganym Altimova who said a few good words about her country – focusing mainly on its natural resources – and left then in her seat another gentleman from her mission. Pity that the Ambassador, a woman, did not mention that, coincidentally, the same day, another Kazakhstan woman became chair for 3 years of the Asia-Pacific Environmental Journaists’ Association hedquartered in Colombo, Sri Lanka (see our posting).

The Shell Oil presentation was well garnished with flowers – oil, gas, LNG, H2 and other renewables. The list included Natural Gas and this was explained as the bridge fuel that emits less CO2. Nothing wrong with that we also contended years ago that NG should be allowed as a bridge fuel – but we said bridge from petroleum to renewable biogas. Those days Shell Oil like all other oil companies wanted no part of this – now they do – but I still did not hear the word biogas.

Further, I heard windmills – though we learned that after they connected 450,000 homes to Wind Mill Power, they stopped increasing the business and are rethinking the project – that is because they look for newer technology. Someone from the audience suggested that the subsidies ended and the effort was because of the harvesting of the subsidies. H2 is actually under study, but luckily nuclear is not. For reasons unclear neither geothermal nor wave power or any other ocean technology is under consideration – several people gasped and asked why does a company that is specialist in drilling holes under water not look into what would come natural to them?

We were shown that the company developed a 3A – AAA – triangle that stands for: AVAILABLE, ACCESSIBLE, ACCEPTABLE – this for its building-reserves system. The other stuff is for the development of an “alternative business.”

Biofuels – read ethanol – came in as a natural she said. But my memory tells me that just 25 years ago they did not want part of ethanol in their tank – this at the time that people were saying that ethanol was the best octane enhancer to unleaded gasoline. So, thanks to the public opinion in the UK,  the mother company did actually change religion and the US daughter company was clever at grabbing the local subsidies for US corn ethanol.
Today Shell Oil has relationships with universities and the IOGEN company, to study cellulose ethanol. That subject is under study for 30 years to my knowledge but nothing serious is yet on the market – just many PhDs were obtained working on this. We sure believe that it will be done someday – but we know it will be done by an IPO working on it in high secret – then sold to the Chinese for development.

The company has also some contacts of making oil from sea algae that grow very fast – they also know with catalysis to make gasoline-like liquids directly from cellulose.

The old rigs – that is also a treasure to be used environmentally – they are now the base for rebuilding coral reefs in areas destroyed by many causes – not just oil drilling.

To who cannot guess – actually we think that Shell and BP (the other oil company with strong US presence and that is UK headquartered) are our favorites among the oil companies – so we appreciate the fact that Roma Y. Stibravy saw to it that they get a UN hearing. In fact, it was a past CEO of Royal Dutch – Shell Oil Co. that was instrumental in organizing the UN Global Compact, that under UNSG Kofi Annan was formed to bring big corporations into social and environmental  workings of the UN. Our website did follow their activities with positive interest – we even found some genuine feelings on part of the Shell group even though the effort was clearly promoted by plain Public Relations goals.

After some softballs, came also good questions from the three journalists present. Matthew Russell Lee from Inner City Press had to know what Shell did in Nigeria and drove the lady to say that she did not do it. Others wanted to know about “Peak Oil” as she was all roses about production at least to the end of the century. I felt I had to remind her that King Hubbert was the science head of Shell Oil and he was the one to invent the Peak Oil concept. He was fired, and I wanted to know if today someone would say something different from what she presented – he would be fired also? The third journalist present was from the ABC network. Present was also a group of graduate students in International Affairs from Columbia Universlty – clad in black – like future US diplomats. They also asked questions.

OK, Shell has now “Sustainability Integrators” to learn from the Niger Delta experience. Aha! people in Niger are criminals & terrorists – People in Nigeria are family to us – those are the employees of Shell. We had to shut down production. Matthew wanted to know about local opposition and was told that if it is not Shell it is the government.

Next Question – What is Shell going to do in the Polar bears area of Alaska?

From:  haertl at oiip.at

Role and Potential of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Regional Affairs

by Bolat Kabdylkhamitovich NURGALIEV (Secretary General of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation)

Welcome: Gerhard REIWEGER (Deputy Director of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna)

Moderation: Markus KORNPROBST (Chair of International Relations, Diplomatic Academy of Vienna)

After the Lecture the Embassy of Kazakhstan kindly invites to a reception.

Wednesday, 22 July 2009
7.00 p.m.
Festsaal of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna
Favoritenstraße 15a, 1040 Wien

Programme

Registration : Please fax (no: 01/504 22 65) or send an e-mail to info@da-vienna.ac.at

In cooperation with the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Austria, the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna and the Academic Forum for Foreign Affairs.

www.oiip.at

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We recommend this event as a chance to ask about Kazachstan trying to be part of an economic grouping with Russia and Belarus, while also trying to be seen as a European and Asian state at the same time. Is this a planned pivotal position or will they be seen as a Russian satelite?

Heard the one about the rabbi, the imam, and the Buddhist monk?

Reuters

Religious leaders met for discussions at the Palace of Peace and Accord.

Kazakhstan was the unlikely host of a conference uniting the world’s faiths. Jerome Taylor reports from Astana.

The Independent, Monday, 6 July 2009

As a man who was born and raised within the secularism of the Soviet Union and has ruled his nation with a velvet-gloved iron fist for the past two decades, Nursultan Nazarbayev is an unlikely pin-up for religious tolerance.

Like so many other Central Asian dictators, Kazakhstan’s President was perfectly positioned to take over the running of his new country after the implosion of the Soviet Union precisely because he was an apparatchik of the avowedly secular Communist Party.

Decades of Soviet domination deliberately stifled overt displays of religious expression in Central Asia – particularly for the region’s majority Muslim population – and many of Mr Nazarbayev’s neighbours have continued in the same vein, treating religion as a potential political threat which needs to be closely monitored.

But the 68-year-old grey-haired President, who rose from being a humble metalworker in a factory to become the leader of Central Asia’s largest and most stable country, is increasingly styling himself as a former Communist with whom the faithful can nevertheless do business.

For two days last week he ensconced himself in an astonishing-looking, purpose-built steel pyramid – designed by the British architect Norman Foster – in his pharaonic capital Astana. He was there to host what was quite possibly the largest gathering of the world’s religious leaders in recent times. A list of those seated in front of the giant round table at the grandly titled Palace of Peace and Accord reads like a Who’s Who of the world’s religions. Robed Buddhist monks chatted to bearded imams who exchanged pleasantries with rabbis and priests. Top delegates to the snappily titled “Third Congress for Leaders of the World and Traditional Religions” included the Israeli President Shimon Peres, two chief rabbis, and the leader of the highly influential Al Azhar university in Cairo, generally regarded as the world’s most authoritative Islamic institution.

Yet despite the unmistakably Soviet-sounding name of the conference – and a somewhat embarrassing hiccup when an Iranian delegation walked out during Mr Peres’ speech – the discussions were centred around the delightfully un-Communist notion of using religion to win world peace.

Whether such deliberations will hail a new era of harmony is a moot point, according to Nicholas Baines, the Anglican Bishop of Croydon who travels regularly to Kazakhstan.

He has watched Mr Nazarbayev transform himself from an open atheist into pro-religion leader who has even made the Haj pilgrimage.

“I admit at times these conferences feel a bit Soviet, but there is lots of good work being done,” Bishop Baines says.

“The unique contribution here is that the Kazakhs have been able to bring together some phenomenally responsible people from world religions under one roof and they have to sit and listen to each other as well as talk … Where else would you have two chief rabbis of Israel sitting in the same room as top Muslims, and they’re having to listen to each other and not just walk out or argue?”

Supporters of Mr Nazarbayev say their leader’s new-found enthusiasm for promoting religious tolerance is governed by the remarkably mixed ethnic background of his country. The more cynical believe it is simply shrewd pragmatism, aimed at avoiding the inter-ethnic fallouts that have disrupted neighbours such as Tajikistan.

Either way, it is impossible to ignore the fact that Kazakhstan is becoming an increasingly religious place under his rule. Tomash Peta, the Catholic Archbishop of Astana, says the government’s favourable stance towards religion means that the atheist attitudes of the Soviet era are fast disappearing. Church attendance is also rocketing. In Kazakhstan nowadays there are very few people who actively reject religion,” he says. “People are suddenly rediscovering their connection to God.”

Newly-built churches and mosques have sprung up all over the country. When Kazakhstan gained its independence there were just 68 mosques to administer to the nine million Muslims who make up 57 percent of Kazakhstan’s population. Currently there are 2,300 mosques and 10 madrasas, most built in the past five years on the back of the enormous wealth generated by Kazakhstan’s oil exports.

Whilst Kazakhs are keen to shed their Soviet atheism, they are simultaneously happy to keep the social advantages that came with Russian domination – especially in the cities. At Friday prayers in the main mosque in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s former capital which remains its financial and artistic hub, it is not unusual to see women in miniskirts temporarily hiring a robe for prayers before hitting the city’s notoriously raucous bars or clubs.

But whilst Kazakhstan may like to portray itself as an island of ethnic and religious harmony, there are some denominations or sects which have fallen foul of the regime. Baptists, Evangelicals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Ahmadi Muslims and even Hare Krishna devotees have all created growing communities in the country. This is much to the annoyance of both Mr Nazarbayev and mainstream religious leaders who fear such “foreign sects” are damaging Kazakhstan’s historical identity. Minority religious groups frequently complain they are targeted by hostile officials.

Bennett Graham, an expert on Kazakhstan at the Beckett Fund, an American human rights group which monitors religious tolerance, says the Kazakh government’s insistence that freedom of worship is absolute should always be taken with a pinch of salt. “I wouldn’t want to be overly critical, as I want to encourage steps in the right direction,” he says.

“But I have yet to see President Nazarbayev exemplify robust religious tolerance in his own country towards minority religious groups, and until then, will maintain scepticism about the sincerity of the Kazakh efforts to promote religious tolerance and respect around the world.”

Noticeably absent from this week’s inter-faith conference were any of those religious groups that the Kazakh state has been accused of suppressing. But Bishop Baines believes that ultimately Kazakhstan is light years ahead of some of its neighbours.

“Every prediction was that of all the republics formed when the Soviet Union collapsed, Kazakhstan was the one that would fall apart because of its ethnic and religious constituency and it history,” he says. “Yet that break-up hasn’t happened. That is a remarkable legacy. They are a young country and they’re heading in the right direction.”

Kazakh parliament approves Kyoto Protocol

AFP/File  â€“  Close up of a melting glacier. The Kazakh parliament Thursday approved the Kyoto Protocol on fighting  â€¦

ASTANA, Kazakhstan (AFP) – The Kazakh parliament Thursday approved the Kyoto Protocol on fighting global warming, making it the last signatory to the UN-led treaty to ratify the measures other than the United States.

Kazakhstan, whose economic growth over the past decade had been the strongest in Central Asia, had resisted ratifying the landmark climate change conventions.

“This is an important step for Kazakhstan. For ten years we couldn’t reach a decision, because for the past ten years the government had more important things to consider, like the financial code,” Environment Minister Nurlan Iskakov said.

“But these ten years didn’t pass in vain. Now the document will be sent to the president for him to sign, and if he passes it into law it will attract more investment to the country.”

Kazakhstan signed the treaty in 1998, but had not signed it into effect until Thursday.

The US administration of then president Bill Clinton signed the Protocol but never ratified it and his successor George W. Bush in 2001 withdrew the United States from the Protocol, saying it would cripple the US economy.

The Turkish parliament had on February 5 overwhelmingly approved the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol requires signatory countries to reduce or stabilise their emissions of six “greenhouse” gases blamed for heating up the planet, the principal of which is carbon dioxide.

The protocol expires in 2012. On average it requires nations to reduce their emissions 5.2 percent below their 1990 level between 2008 and 2012. This would represent a 29 percent cut in overall emissions compared to levels expected by 2010.

The Japan Times online, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2009.

Central Asia’s giant is waking up.

By MARCEL DE HAAS
THE HAGUE — The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) brings together almost half the world’s population, several members own nuclear weapons, many are big energy suppliers, and it includes some of the world’s fastest growing economies. Yet few outside Central Asia have heard much about it.

The SCO emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union in 1996. Today, its members are Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, while Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan and India are observers. Russia and China remain the lead actors. Since its launch, the SCO’s military exercises have become increasingly ambitious, growing from largely bilateral to inclusion of all members. The SCO is also beginning to work together in the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime.

Until recently, the SCO’s members addressed energy issues only bilaterally. But, in order to coordinate energy strategies and strengthen energy security, last year the organization launched a club that unites energy-producing and energy-consuming states, transit countries, and private companies. The SCO promotes free trade, too, and aims to build essential infrastructure such as roads and railways to link its members and boost commerce between them while also harmonizing customs systems and tariffs.

Yet cooperation within the SCO remains focused on national rather than collective objectives, because its members’ interests vary so much.

China, for example, seeks markets for its products and further energy resources, while Russia aims to use the SCO to promote its anti-Western agenda. The group’s other members — led by China and Kazakhstan — want to strengthen their already robust levels of economic cooperation with the West. Thus, for example, at the SCO summit in August, Russia did not get the support of other members regarding the Georgia conflict.

These diverging objectives make it hard to believe that the SCO will ever evolve into an eastern version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. True, its members have held joint military exercises and have expressed a desire to build the SCO into a more mature security organization. But the SCO still lacks many essential elements of a full-grown NATO-style security organization.

The SCO has no integrated military-political structure, and no permanent operational headquarters. It has no rapid-reaction force and does not engage in regular political deliberations. NATO’s focus is on external security risks, while the SCO’s members target security issues within their own territories.

It makes sense for the West, particularly the European Union, to seek cooperation with the SCO, as this would also help counter Russia’s attempts to use it as a tool for its anti-Western policies. It would also prevent the SCO from turning into a militarized entity.

These may look like negative reasons for the EU to engage with the SCO, but there are also ample positive reasons for encouraging cooperation. Europe needs energy supplies from Central Asia, and Central Asia needs European investment.

Another sphere of mutual interest is Afghanistan. At present, the EU offers financial support to the Afghan government and helps to train its police and judiciary. The SCO has established a contact group with Afghanistan. Both sides want to do more, and they might be able to make a greater impact by working together rather than separately. The EU has money and the SCO organization, most of whose members border Afghanistan, has trained personnel and direct experience in the region.

Cooperation with NATO looks strategically wise. Given China’s importance in military and economic matters, growing energy and trade ties between Central Asia and the West, and the reasonable assumption that Central Asia’s security will continue to have great significance for Western security, cooperation between the SCO, the EU, and NATO looks inevitable. This is all the more true in view of common security threats faced by NATO and the SCO in Central Asia, such as al-Qaida and Taliban- sponsored terrorism and drug trafficking.

But both NATO and the SCO have so far hesitated to engage in closer contact. It is hard to discern whether NATO has any opinion at all about the SCO. At best, NATO seems to regard it as being neither a problem nor an opportunity.

Reaching out to the SCO would certainly seem to support NATO’s stated objectives. After 9/11, the alliance came to the conclusion that threats may need to be dealt with on a worldwide basis, which explains NATO’s presence in Afghanistan. As a part of this global strategy, NATO strengthened its relations with partners elsewhere, including in Southeast Asia which is the SCO’s chief area of responsibility.

Perhaps inevitably, the SCO — with Russia and China as its leading members — regards NATO’s increased presence in the region with some mistrust. As long as NATO remains reluctant to enter into a dialogue with the SCO, such a cautious attitude looks set to linger, and may even intensify. Consideration also needs to be given, therefore, to the establishment of a NATO-China Council, along the lines of the NATO-Russia Council, and to the creation of arrangements that would facilitate greater cooperation with the SCO as a whole.

Such cooperation would not bridge the main differences between SCO members and the West over issues like democratization and human rights. Cooperation would also need to comprise much more than mere joint policy development, and should involve the practical pursuit of mutually beneficial, smaller-scale ad hoc projects. NATO and the SCO could work together on neutralizing antipersonnel mines in Afghanistan, as well as other possible types of confidence-building measures, such as joint police training and counter-narcotics operations.

If security cooperation is to be a success, politically sensitive issues should be avoided, with the emphasis squarely on practical measures. This approach would serve the interests of the EU, NATO, SCO members and, not least, Afghanistan.

Marcel de Haas is a senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael.

The Drylands, Deserts, and Desertification – 2008 Conference. December 14-17, 2008, Sede Boqer Campus, The Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Israel.

www.desertification.co.il

THE PROGRAM As Available on November 18, 2008. There might be still Changes and Additions, as well –   further Poster Sessions.

Download this schedule: detailed_program_sessions_1611_publish.doc

Please note that the list of presentations is still not final.

Asia-EU Summit to Address ‘Financial Tsunami.’
Analysis by Antoaneta Bezlova, IPS, October 23, 2008

BEIJING, Oct 22 (IPS) - Cast in the role of global saviour in the unfolding financial turmoil, China is playing host to a meeting of Asian and European leaders in Beijing this week that is expected to castigate the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism and press for a reshaped global economic order.

“Can Asia be global economy’s best hope,” asked an editorial in the Economic Observer last week. Noting that Asia hardly played any role during the global economic recovery after the Great Depression of 1929, the paper suggested that the continent’s established and emerging economies constituted the world’s best chance for recovery after the “financial tsunami”.

“And even if the Wall Street demise does not instantly signify the triumph of Mahathir’s Asian model, it is the beginning of a much-needed readjustment of economic power in the world,” it concluded.

More than 40 leaders will converge in the Chinese capital for the 7th Asian European Meeting (ASEM) summit from Oct. 24 to 25 to discuss the global financial crisis and a plan for joint action.

Aside from the 27 EU countries, 10 ASEAN countries, the European Commission, China, Japan and South Korea, the summit will be attended by three other Asian countries — India, Pakistan and Mongolia. The talks will be co-chaired by France, which holds the European Union’s presidency, and China.

***

“China maintains that the international community should strengthen cooperation and jointly handle the current financial crisis on the basis of equal consultation,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in Beijing on Tuesday. But he warned that “developing countries’ interests and concerns should be fully respected and safeguarded.”

China — a major emerging economy which sits on 1.8 trillion US dollars worth of foreign exchange reserves — has been looked upon as an important player to lead the way out of the global financial meltdown.

U.S. Treasury Department officials and politicians have all called on Beijing to show a pro-active attitude and join efforts with the Western world to fight the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Qin Gang said Beijing had adopted a “responsible and constructive attitude” in dealing with the crisis. But few details have emerged over the role China is expected to play. Latest economic figures show that the country’s economy is also vulnerable to the effects of the global economic slowdown.

The National Statistics Bureau said on Monday the economy expanded by just nine percent in the third quarter, the slowest rate in five years. By comparison, the economy grew 10.6 percent in the first quarter and 10.1 in the second quarter of 2008. The slowdown was blamed on plummeting demand for Chinese goods as consumers in the U.S. and Europe cut back on spending.

In recent weeks Beijing has grown more critical over the lack of financial surveillance in developed economies, which it blames for the spiralling crisis. The deputy governor of China’s central bank, Yi Gang, who took part in the emergency G20 meeting in Washington earlier this month, chastised the International Monetary Fund for allowing too much leverage in the system and failing to exert control of big Western financial institutions.

He told the media that “weak financial-policy discipline resulted in excess global liquidity and disorderly capital flows”. The line has been echoed in a numerous articles and columns in the Chinese media attempting to dissect the reasons for the downfall of Wall Street powerhouses. Some have sung an “eulogy to U.S. capitalism” while others have proclaimed the end of the “era of Washington consensus”.

But there has been less certainty about what would replace the current order of international capitalism. “The demise of Wall Street Anglo-Saxon model doesn’t signify the victory of China’s financial modus operandi,” said a commentary in the 21st Century Economic Herald.

“Even as we criticise Wall Street’s excesses, we should be aware that China’s model of financial operation is not necessarily the answer,” it said. “True, Chinese banks are stable and they don’t pursue excessive profits blindly. But they are far from free from red tape and administrative interference.”

According to Qin Gang the ASEM summit offers the “perfect platform” for leaders to discuss ways of dealing with the crisis.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed a global system of financial supervision that would empower international bodies including the International Monetary fund to monitor global markets and act as early warning systems. French President Nicolas Sarkozy — one of the summit’s coordinators — has pledged to use the meeting as a platform to persuade Asian nations to take part in a plan for the rebuilding of international capitalism.

“What has happened is an act of treason against the values of capitalism; it is not a result of the market economy,” said Sarkozy during a speech Tuesday at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

“The most simple solution” for the global summits would be to bring the G8 (group of eight) largest industrialised nations together with the five biggest emerging economies, led by China and India, he told European politicians.

Chinese analysts anticipate that the summit may produce an agreement for the establishment of a joint trust fund between Asia and Europe, similar to the one launched during the second ASEM summit in London in 1998, to combat the Asian financial crisis.

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The update comes October 31, 2008 to the original posting of October 25, 2008 and it deals specifically with the place of Mongolia in all of the above. This because of a breakfast meeting at the Asia Society in New York today, October 31, 2008 – the traditional Halloween day, and I will mention after a few further lines why I say this.

The meeting today had the title – Mongolia Rising: The Incredible and Continuing Story of Mongolia’s Emergence as a Free Market Democracy.

At the breakfast meeting spoke the US Ambassador to Mongolia, Mr. Mark C. Minton, and in the audience sat also Ambassador Ms. Enkhtsetseg Ochir, the Permanent Representative of Mongolia to the UN. Jamie F. Metzl, the Exec. VP of Asia Society chaired.

Strangely, when I looked up the website of the Asia Society, I found that on October 31, 2005   The Asia Society   Washington DC Center had a meeting on Mongolia. Here the strange coincidence of the Halloween date repeating itself exactly three years later and my possibility to compare the progress of relations between the US and Mongolia in the last three years – to the date.

The information from 2005 - http://www.asiasociety.org/speeches/us-m…

Strangely, already at that first meeting there was a reference to Halloween, but that was a very serious meeting – “US-Mongolia Relations: History and Future Prospects.” That meeting, according to the pdf had a large cast of Ambassadors participating, including Tony Lake, and it was arranged before President Bush trip to Mongolia – the first Summit of a US President with a Mongolian President. Since then there was a return visit – a Summit of the presidents in the Washington DC White House in 2007.

Mr. Mark Minton, a career member of the US Foreign Service got to UlaanBataar in December 2006 after having served in Korea and Japan, so he was in Mongolia for the last two years of the US- Mongolia rapprochement.

So why Mongolia? It is a country, the size of Alaska, of 3 million people, and 45% live now in the capital area urban environment. Culturally they are close to Tibet and are of the same religious belief as the Tibetan Buddhism, thus I would assume also close culturally to Bhutan, but they were a nomadic people.

In the 20th century that brushed with Soviets, Chinese and Japanese occupation and are fiercely intent on preserving their freedom. Being geographically wedged in between China and Russia, they want that “third neighbor” that geography did not give them. So thy go the long distance and want the US as their third neighbor. To reach the US they developed their democracy so they can interact with countries beyond their two immediate neighbors. They reorganized their army as a peace making army and they participate in UN peace missions like Sierra Leone, and with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. in exchange the US established an AID program involved in preventive health care and in construction workers education as the transformation from the nomadic lifestyle created needs for new skills in the housing sector; further the US Peace Corps are active in Mongolia – it is actually the largest per capita Peace Corps location. But obviously the US does not have Mongolia to itself, the Japanese foreign aid is the largest in Mongolia and the EU, Australia, and Canada are also active.

Democratization made large progress – there is transparency, a judiciary, there are elections and they have a market economy and the leaders are involved in diplomacy. They are visited often by the Dalai Lama and the university is in exchange with the University of Alaska.

Obviously, the US is interested in Mongolia’s mineral resources – so is China. Peabody Coal and Rio Tinto International are active in Mongolia. Hilton International opened this year. Mongolia is becoming a middle income country. It is landlocked but is starting to take advantage from its location by becoming a country of transit between China and Russia.

In the democracy department there was a blemish recently when after the summer elections there were riots. The Ambassador explained those as inexperience because they have an army but not good police service. The fact was that the army, that was trained for peace work, did not know how to act when called in after the opposition protests about the elections. The authorities panicked and the army was inefficient.

An adviser to Nature Conservancy criticised the ambassador as he said nothing about the environmental problems and the mining industry. Further there are issues resulting from foreigners buying up grazing land for meet production and farming.

The nuclear issue came up as Mongolia wants to be part of the six Party talks on North Korea programs. Further, what was not mentioned is that Mongolia declared its nuclear-weapon-free status. In effect I have in front of me UN General Assembly document A/c.1/63/L.28 where Kazakhstan, Morocco, and Mongolia brought up together Mongolia’s rejection of nuclear weapons. Also, in recognition of their specific situation, Japan let Mongolia host one of the six-Party talks commissions.

Japan is also looking into the problem with desert dust from Mongolia reaching Japan.

From all this material, what is China doing when insisting in bringing in Mongolia to the meeting they hosted between the 27 EU countries and the four major Asian economies, when besides Japan, India and Korea, they also invited Pakistan and Mongolia? We understood Pakistan as sort of balance to India, but now we also figure that bringing in Mongolia has more to do with trying to redirect this country towards Europe and weakening a runaway relationship with the US directly, or via Japan.

The bottom line is that because of size and economic potential, Mongolia is a country with much higher importance then it might be assumed from the mere 3 million people. China night then want to keep it in its own orbit and to guard it from   “third neighbors’” exaggerated footholds.

THEN ESCAP URGES the SPECA CENTRAL ASIA TO STRENGTHEN TIES WITH REST OF CONTINENT FOR GREATER SECURITY. The above has clearly political implications by bundling non-Arab Islamic States.

Greater cooperation between Central Asia and the rest of Asia is essential to achieve sustainable development for the whole continent, given the current climate of global financial instability and food and energy insecurity, a senior United Nations official, ESCAP’s Executive Director   stressed today of all places – right in Moscow.

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) stands ready to facilitate technical and regional cooperation and provide a neutral forum for engaging in policy dialogue, Executive-Secretary of ESCAP Noeleen Heyzer told a gathering of senior Central Asian policymakers in Moscow.

“We are gathering here against the backdrop of a gloomy economic environment with pressing challenges in food and energy security, as well as the need for greater financial stability,” Under-Secretary-General Heyzer warned participants at the UN Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA) meeting.

“By adopting the South-South cooperation modality, SPECA can provide home-grown solutions and policy options to achieve inclusive and sustainable development,” she told officials from the seven SPECA member states – Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

SPECA aims to strengthen sub-regional cooperation, mainly in the areas of energy and water, transport, trade, technology, gender and the economy, in Central Asia, as well as its integration into the world economy with support from the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE).

Asia Society’s 2nd International Business Conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, will be the premier Central Asian business event of 2008, coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the capital city of Astana. Co-organized with the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Keleshek Kazakhstan Foundation and building on the success of Asia Society’s June 2005 conference in Almaty, this conference will take a closer look at key investment challenges and issues of economic reform and growth as Kazakhstan prepares for accession to the World Trade Organization.

By bringing together business, government, and thought leaders, this conference will provide an important forum for examining Kazakhstan’s emergence as a global economic player. Kazakhstan’s rapid expansion presents advantages as well as challenges to establishing long-term economic prosperity and stability in the region. This conference aims to promote a deeper understanding of the key aspects of Kazakhstan’s development and to identify future priorities and strategies. Kazakhstan has a pivotal role to play in fostering and strengthening partnerships with its neighboring countries and the broader pan-Asian community. As Central Asia becomes increasingly important, Kazakhstan is poised to become a strategic destination for investment and a bridge for trade between Asia and the West.

For questions, please email  Astana2008 at asiasoc.org.

KAZAKHSTAN: THE LAND THAT DISAPPEARED FROM HISTORY FOR QUITE SOME TIME. Asia Society event, New York City, Monday April 21, 2008.

Closed to foreigners under Tsar and Romanov rule, Kazakhstan has remained largely hidden from the world, a remarkable feat for a country the size of Western Europe. Few would guess that Kazakhstan—a blank in Westerners’ collective geography—turns out to be diverse, tolerant, and surprisingly modern, the country that gave the world apples, trousers, and even, perhaps, King Arthur. Christopher Robbins enjoyed unprecedented access to the Kazakh president while crafting this travelogue, and he relates a story by turns hilarious and grim. He finds Eminem-worship by a shrinking Aral Sea, hears the Kazakh John Lennon play in a dusty desert town, joins nomads hunting eagles, eats boiled sheep’s head (a delicacy), and explores some of the most beautiful, unspoiled places on earth. Observant and culturally attuned, Robbins is a master stylist in the tradition of travel writing as literature, a companion to V. S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux.

Christopher Robbins is the author of five non-fiction books: Assassin, Air America (turned into a TV series and film starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey, Jr.), The Ravens, The Test of Courage, and the award-winning Empress of Ireland. His journalism has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Times Magazine (UK), the Guardian (UK), and many other publications. He lives in London.

Meet The Author of “Apples are from Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared” – Christopher Robbins at

The Asia Socirty New York, Monday, April 21, 2008.
6:00—6:30pm: Registration
6:30—8:00pm: Program
8:00—9:00pm: Reception and Book Signing

Asia Society and Museum
725 Park Avenue at 70th Street, New York City

A NAGORNO-KARABAKH FOREIGN MINISTRY IN DISCUSSIONS WITH THE EU?

The Nabucco pipeline – the EU hopes construction will begin in 2010
(Photo: Nagorno-Karabakh foreign ministry)

Turkmenistan to cut EU dependence on Russian gas.

April 14, 2008 – By Renata Goldirova, for the EUobserver.

Turkmenistan has agreed to supply 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas to the European Union each year – something that should cut the energy-hungry bloc’s dependence on gas from Russia.

“The president [Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov] gave us assurances that 10 bcm will be set aside for Europe in addition to possibilities in new fields to be tendered,” EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told the Financial Times on Sunday (13 April).

Ms Ferrero-Waldner described the deal as “a very important first step” in energy cooperation, although she acknowledged the amount agreed by the two sides does not represent a “vast quantity”.

The former Soviet Republic in Central Asia has the world’s fifth largest reserves of natural gas and substantial deposits of oil. It annually produces 60 billion cubic metres of natural gas, but two-thirds are exported to Russia’s state-run Gazprom.

Demand for energy is sharply rising in the European Union. By 2020, it is expected to import at least 360 bcm – out of 500 bcm consumed – from third countries.

The 27-nation bloc has been trying to diversify its energy supplies away from Russia and is currently pushing for a new energy corridor, the Nabucco pipeline.

The pipeline – connecting Turkey with Austria, via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary – would enable the transportation of Caspian energy resources to the European market. Main gas supplies could come from countries such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan or Egypt.

Speaking about the fresh deal with Turkmenistan, Ms Ferrero-Waldner called on European business to invest in infrastructure in order to bring the project to life.

It is still unclear how Turkmen gas will be imported to Europe, with the commissioner suggesting three possible short-term scenarios in the interview with the Financial Times.

Under the first one, a 60-kilometre gap between Azeri and Turkmen offshore installations could be closed with a mini-pipeline.

Secondly, an onshore link to Kazakhstan could be built to connect with a route to Azerbaijan.

Under the third option, the gas could be compressed into liquid form and taken by tanker across the sea.

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Russia questions value of Nabucco energy pipeline.

April 18, 2008 – By Renata Goldirova from Brussels for EUobserver:

Moscow has questioned the viability of the EU-backed Nabucco energy corridor, a pipeline designed to lessen the bloc’s dependency on Russia.

“I know few things about political geography. The only way to fill the Nabucco pipeline is to rely on Iranian gas,” Russian ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov told journalists earlier this week (15 April). He added: “But then, it’s up to the West, I would not tell the EU, to make up its mind how to deal with Iran. Either bomb Iran or buy its gas.”

Mr Chizhov’s blunt comments came only hours after Turkmenistan had agreed to supply 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas to the EU each year – something that should cut the energy-hungry bloc’s dependence on gas from Russia.

The European Commission considers Nabucco to be “essential” to the EU as it is designed to bring gas from non-traditional suppliers via a new transport route.

The pipeline – connecting Turkey with Austria, via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary – would enable the transportation of gas from the resource-rich Caspian region to the European market.

Its capacity amounts to 31 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year. The bulk of the supplies are expected to come from countries such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan or Egypt.

The EU is also hoping to secure natural gas from Iraq, with Baghdad earlier this week pledging to provide five billion cubic metres of gas each year. The two sides are set to sign a so-called energy security memorandum of understanding in coming days.

In response to Mr Chizhov’s statements, the commission said that a list of source countries was yet to be defined. It addmitted, however, that once the problems with Iran are solved, Tehran can be taken into consideration on the longer term.

Meanwhile, Moscow – the world’s largest producer of natural gas – has been pushing for its own project, the South Stream pipeline. It should connect Russia’s Black Sea coast and Italy, with Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Serbia already saying they will take part in the project.

According to the Russian ambassador to Brussels, there will be enough room for the South Stream, Nabucco and perhaps for another pipeline due to growing energy consumption in Europe – but only in the long run.

In the short run, the defining difference is that the South Stream can rely on real gas supply, whereas Nabucco does not have gas, Mr Chizov said.

The South Stream project is seen by some as a rival to Nabucco, with the European Commission saying “it is not promoting it actively” because the pipeline will bring more gas from Russia.

“The two projects are complementary, not contradictory,” reads the commission’s official line on the issue. The EU needs 80 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year on top of current consumption.

But some experts on EU-Russia energy relations have also suggested that Moscow has made a valid point.

According to Marco Giuli from the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, the Nabucco pipeline is “economically viable only with Iranian gas”.

He cited political tensions in Central Asia, the proximity of Chinese market as well as the US’ tough stance on Iran among those factors that cloud Nabucco’s prospects.

Within the 27-nation EU, France and the UK seem to have the toughest position towards the Iranian regime, wanting to stop its nuclear ambitions not only through dialogue, but also via sanctions.

On the other hand, Italy’s oil and gas producer ENI is set to undertake some investments in Iran – something, Mr Guili says has been endorsed by the country’s outgoing as well as incoming political leadership.

2008 Goldman Environmental Prize Raises the Stakes.

SAN FRANCISCO, California, April 14, 2008 (ENS) - Seven grassroots leaders who are challenging government and corporate interests and working to improve the environment and living conditions for people in their communities have won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize this year. In 2008, each individual Prize award will be increased from $125,000 to $150,000.

The winners are being awarded the Prize at an invitation-only ceremony this evening at the San Francisco Opera House and will also be honored at a smaller ceremony on Wednesday at the National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, DC.
“This year’s Prize recipients exemplify the astounding environmental work being done by ordinary people around the world,” said Goldman Prize founder Richard Goldman. “Their commitment to bettering both the lives of people living in their communities and the environment around them has received our attention and praise.”
This year’s recipients include two people from Ecuador who are fighting oil giant Chevron to bring justice and environmental recovery to an area devastated by oil pollution.

2008 Goldman Prize recipients: front row from left: Luis Yanza, Rosa Hilda Ramos, Marina Rikhvanova; second row from left: Feliciano dos Santos, Jesus Leon Santos, Ignace Schops, and Pablo Fajardo Mendoza. (Photo courtesy Goldman Environmental Prize)

A Mozambican activist-musician who brings education about sanitation and clean water systems through performance and community-based outreach to one of the poorest nations in the world was chosen by the Goldman Prize jury.

Other recipients include a Puerto Rican grandmother working to protect a precious marshland, an indigenous Mexican farmer utilizing pre-Columbian agriculture techniques to transform a barren area into rich farmland, a Belgian environmentalist who campaigned to secure the country’s first and only national park, and a Russian woman working to protect Siberia’s Lake Baikal from oil and nuclear interests.

The Goldman Environmental Prize, now in its 19th year, is awarded annually to grassroots environmental heroes from each of the world’s inhabited continental regions and is the largest award of its kind.

The 2008 Goldman Prize recipients addressed some of the world’s most pressing environmental issues through grassroots efforts, helping to educate and motivate local communities to get involved in the effort to protect the natural environment around them and to stand up for their rights.

This year’s winners are:

• Pablo Fajardo Mendoza, 35, and Luis Yanza, 46, Ecuador:
  In the Ecuadorian Amazon, Fajardo and Yanza lead one of the largest environmental legal battles in history against oil giant Chevron, demanding justice for the massive petroleum pollution in the region.
• Feliciano dos Santos, 43, Mozambique:
  Using traditional music, grassroots outreach and innovative technology to bring sanitation to the most remote corners of Mozambique, Feliciano dos Santos empowers villagers to participate in sustainable development and rise up from poverty.
• Rosa Hilda Ramos, 63, Puerto Rico:
  In the shadow of polluting factories in Catan’o, a city across the bay from San Juan, Ramos leads her community to permanently protect the Las Cucharillas Marsh, one of the last open spaces in the area and one of the largest wetlands ecosystems in the region.
• Jesús León Santos, 42, Mexico:
  In Oaxaca, where unsustainable land-use practices have made it one of the world’s most highly-eroded areas, León leads a land renewal program that employs ancient indigenous practices to transform depleted soil into arable land.
• Marina Rikhvanova, 46, Russia:
  As Russia expands its petroleum and nuclear interests, Rikhvanova works to protect Siberia’s Lake Baikal, one of the world’s most important sources of fresh water, from environmental devastation brought on by these polluting industries.
• Ignace Schops, 43, Belgium:
  Raising more than $90 million by bringing together private industry, regional governments, and local stakeholders, Schops led the effort to establish Belgium’s first and only national park, protecting one of the largest open green spaces in the country.

The Goldman Environmental Prize was established in 1990 by San Francisco civic leader and philanthropist Richard Goldman and his late wife, Rhoda Goldman. It has been awarded to 126 people from 72 countries.

Prize winners are selected by an international jury from confidential nominations submitted by a worldwide network of environmental organizations and individuals.
Previous Prize winners have been at the center of some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, including seeking justice for victims of environmental disasters at Love Canal and Bhopal, India; leading the fight for dolphin-safe tuna; fighting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; and fighting against mountain-top removal mining in America’s coal country.
Since receiving a Goldman Prize, eight winners have been appointed or elected to national office in their countries, including several who became ministers of the environment. The 1991 Goldman Prize winner for Africa, Wangari Maathai, won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.
For more about the current and past Goldman Environmental Prize recipients, click here.

Why some reserves are going untapped
SHAWN MCCARTHY, Globe and Mail, March 26, 2008.
OTTAWA — Under the original optimistic plans, nearly half a million barrels a day of crude oil should now be flowing from Kazakhstan’s Kashagan field, which contains the world’s largest untapped reserves.

A project that was supposed to come on stream in 2005 is now slated to start up in 2011, assuming no further delays by its much-criticized operator, Italy’s Eni SpA, which is partnering with Western giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC.

The problems facing the Kashagan project are increasingly common in today’s global oil industry. Despite a six-year runup in crude prices, which hit a record $110 (U.S.) a barrel last week, oil companies – both publicly traded and state-owned – are having difficulty keeping up with rising world demand.

There are myriad reasons for the surprisingly weak supply response to high prices: a paucity of major discoveries in the past several decades; the more costly and complicated nature of developing resources from unconventional sources like oil sands and deep-water fields; the rise of nationalism in resource-rich countries; and the innate conservatism of oil industry executives, who have been burned by oil price collapses in the past.

But higher prices themselves may actually discourage the addition of new supply in some circumstances, analysts at Swiss investment bank UBS Ltd. say in a study released yesterday.

“Price inflation has created new obstacles as companies and governments try to make sense of project costs,” they said.

“You just see some deeply ingrained conservatism in what oil price forecast you use when you are pursuing future projects,” Mr. Kirsch said. “And I don’t see that culture changing over night.”

Subject: Women In Great Numbers Descend On The UN for CSW 52 – that is the yearly take-over of the UN by the Commission on the Status of Women. EXXONMOBIL Takes A Ride.

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The Commission on the Status of Women is Having its meeting at the UN – and the UN wants to have us believe that it is all about “Violence Against Women.” The reality is that for the week, a yearly event, women’s organizations take over the UN; the UN will be used for many other purposes, besides the one expressed by the UNSG, as well.

This article picked up first the official statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and the very good reporting by Edith Lederer from the Associated Press – based on that UN official position. But then we wish to single out one “Parallel Event” held on February 25, 2008, at the Church Center across the UN. We went to that event because we were sent a flyer that mentioned as a panelist: “EXXON MOBIL CORPORATION – Speaker to be announced.” This was enough to trigger our curiosity and the appetite to devour that unnamed speaker for a named company – this while all other members of the panel were right there named in the open.

The title of that event was – “CORPORATE FEMINISM: ENHANCING CORPORATE INFLUENCE THROUGH WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT.” The Conveners of the event were The International Council of Jewish Women and cosponsored by: Soroptimist International. The first body is represented in the US by the National Council of Women, the second body came to CSW 52 with the theme – “Financing for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women.” We will have much more about all of this, but as said, we will first introduce the two postings we mentioned in the previous paragraph.

UN Urges End to Violence Against Women

By EDITH M. LEDERER | Associated Press Writer
11:41 PM CST, February 25, 2008

UNITED NATIONS – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has launched a global campaign to intensify efforts to end violence against women, specifically calling on men to combat the problem.

“At least one out of every three women is likely to be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime,” he told the opening session of the Commission on the Status of Women on Monday. “Through the practice of prenatal sex selection, countless others are denied the right even to exist.”

Ban said he will form a global network of male leaders to assist him in mobilizing men in government, the arts, sports, business and religion, as well as boys, to speak out against the scourge.

“I call on men around the world to lead by example: to make clear that violence against women is an act perpetrated by a coward, and that speaking up against it is a badge of honor,” he said.

According to the U.N., the most common form of violence experienced by women globally is physical violence inflicted by an intimate partner. World Bank data show women aged 15-44 “are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, motor accidents, war and malaria.”

In every war zone, violence against women has been reported during or after armed conflict. As examples, the U.N. said, between 250,000 and 500,000 women were raped during the 1994 Rwanda genocide and between 20,000 and 50,000 women were raped during the Bosnian conflict in the early 1990s.

Ban said the campaign will continue until 2015 to coincide with the target date to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goals aimed at combatting poverty.

He said he will personally approach world leaders “to spur action through national campaigns,” and will urge all countries to ensure that violence against women is always a crime. He said he will also urge the media, the U.N. system, non-governmental organizations and women’s groups worldwide to set priorities and targets to end violence against women.

“We know that violence against women compounds the enormous social and economic toll on families, communities, even whole nations,” Ban said.

The secretary-general said he will propose that the U.N. hold an event in 2010 to review the campaign’s accomplishments and to map out steps to make further progress by 2015.

World leaders at a U.N. summit in 2005, the U.N. Security Council, and the General Assembly have pledged to combat violence against women, but the secretary-general said much more needs to be done.

The U.N. said the campaign — Unite to End Violence Against Women — will try to mobilize public opinion to pressure policy makers to prevent and eradicate violence against women.

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CSW 52 had nothing to do with the will of the UNSG. As said this is an event organized by the Commission on the Status of Women – though, clearly, it is highly possible and we would say probable, that the UNSG has suggested a topic for this years meeting of the CSW. This is clearly a very welcome move on his part and it comes after we saw so many cases when even UN Peacekeeping forces are accused of rape – not just combatant forces that had to be kept apart by these UN forces. So, besides the global humanitarian problem, there is here also a UN problem – and it could not be soon enough for the UNSG to step into this breach of confidence in the UN.

Further – the UNSG in the words of his Spokesperson:

We ‘cannot wait’ to end violence against women – Secretary-General Ban.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launches campaign to End Violence Against Women.

25 February 2008 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today kicked off a multi-year global campaign bringing together the United Nations, governments and civil society to try to end violence against women, calling it an issue that “cannot wait.”

“At least one out of every three women is likely to be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Through the practice of prenatal sex selection, countless others are denied the right even to exist,” Mr. Ban said in his address at the opening in New York of the latest session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

Violence against women impedes economic and social growth, and thus the new campaign will run until 2015, the same target year as the internationally agreed aims known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Noting that weapons of armed conflict today include rape, sexual violence and abduction of children to be conscripted as soldiers or sex slaves, the Secretary-General recounted his visits to war-torn areas and his conversations with survivors of violence.

“This is a campaign for them. It is a campaign for the women and girls who have the right to live free of violence, today and in the future,” he said. “It is a campaign to stop the untold cost that violence against women inflicts on all humankind.”

Mr. Ban called on the cooperation of the world’s youth, women’s groups, men around the world, the private sector and Member States to help the new initiative succeed.
He acknowledged that there is no “blanket approach” to tackling the scourge, noting that each country must formulate its own measures to address violence against women.
“But there is one universal truth, applicable to all countries, cultures and communities: violence against women is never acceptable, never excusable, never tolerable,” the Secretary-General stated, adding that he hopes to hold a high-level event in 2010 to review progress.

But there is one universal truth, applicable to all countries, cultures and communities: violence against women is never acceptable, never excusable, never tolerable.

As part of today’s campaign launch, Rachel N. Mayanja, the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, held a press conference together with a number of other activists, both male and female, working to end violence against women and are slated to participate in other discussions on the subject at UN Headquarters.

“While everybody professes that women hold up the sky and women’s contributions are critical to development – to everything – it hasn’t been demonstrated concretely.” Ms Mayanja said. “And here we are, halfway through the Millennium Development Goals projected period, and we are still lagging behind.”

Many women have been left out of development efforts because of the violence that is continually being inflicted on them, she said. The Secretary-General’s campaign, she added, would bring a new sense of urgency to bear on this tragic issue.

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News Tracker: past stories on this issue

Saudi Arabian women need support to help advance society – UN expert

Video | Audio

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Further, the press conference, as well as the main meeting itself, included male witnesses talking freely about their own experience of having attacked women. Specially was impressive in his presentation one male from the US that after 20 years of counseling came to the conclusion that the three cases of him attacking women were based on the male culture in his neighborhood. A man is supposed to be aggressive he said, and this translated in the way he dealt with women. Men go to war – successful – they become heroes. He finally recognized that this was his personal problem and now he counsels other delinquent males so they recognize the wrong motivation them act the way they do.

But then the UN has not reached yet the level of self criticism reached by above man who by now is rather a gentleman. The question of rape in the field, and exploitation of women and girls in the field, by UN personnel, was never raised at this event – not even the fact that the UN building itself harbors soft porno and smut. So, the only remaining good investigative journalist at the UN – the man called by all – Matthew – did bring this up. Please his post:

Soft Porn Sold in UN Lobby, Despite Gender Advisor’s Complaints to UN Management.

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, February 25 — As the UN on Monday launched its Campaign to End Violence Against Women, in the lobby of UN Headquarters, soft porn remained for sale. At the newsstand next to the elevator to the Secretary-General’s offices on the building’s 38th floor, titles such as Curve and Smooth and King, along with Dirty South, were on display, with oiled-up women vamping for the camera.

Following a press conference at noon at which time apparently did not permit Inner City Press to ask this question despite a hand raised high throughout the question and answer period, the question was put to the UN’s Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, Assistant Secretary-General Rachel N. Mayanja. “I am glad you are raising it,” she told Inner City Press. “I am very appalled. I had already raised it to the Department of Management and had been assured they were going to ask them to take it down.”

Inner City Press asked how long ago the request had been made to the Department of Management, headed by Under Secretary General Alicia Barcena. “At least six months ago,” Ms. Mayanja said. “I am going to go back to them. It should be removed.”

Ban Ki-moon launches Campaign to End Violence Against Women, soft porn not shown

While the sale of soft porn on the newsstand in the United Nations lobby may raise First Amendment issues, it appears to be the UN’s position that while the UN is in the United States, it is international territory to which the U.S. Constitution does not apply. Perhaps then it is Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that has constrained the UN from removing the pornography from the newsstand it licenses in its lobby. Recently, the Department of Management and Ms. Barcena have had no problem condemning journalistic coverage of a death at the UN as causing “complete shock and outrage,” as being “insensitive” and “clearly transgress[ing] accepted boundaries of professional journalism.” Soft porn which the UN’s own Special Adviser on Gender Issues six months ago asked the Department of Management to have removed, however, has generated no such shock or outrage within the Department of Management, nor apparently even a letter to the newsstand.

Footnote: to the UN’s credit, even when time or a moderator deny a journalist a question, most (but not all) UN officials are willing to slow down and provide at least some answer to a question, if a reporter is persistent enough. The matter of soft porn in the lobby is one that Inner City Press has wanted to ask ASG Mayanga about for some time. And despite obstacles on Monday, the question was asked, and now we’ll see what happens. Watch, if not the UN lobby, this site.

Having reported the above, let us see now the CSW 52 Parallel event on Corporate Feminism // Women’s Empowerment, and let us say right front that we do not begrudge women that pushed for equal rights to advance on the corporate ladder. We were friends with such power houses like Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan. Years ago, we hosted them at events of “The Theatre for Ideas” – in Manhattan and in East Hampton, Long Island, New York.
Sure, this is a different level of women’s rights from what the UNSG had in mind in his dealing with the physical protection of women – but then the right of women according to the UN Declaration on Human Rights extends also to equal rights for women’s advancement on corporate ladders. So, naturally, I thought that the panel will be dealing with what was achieved and where we go from here. But what about ExxonMobil? It did not let me bypass the event.

Going to http://www.soroptimistinternational.org I found that Soroptimist International is a worldwide organization for women in management and professions, working through service projects to advance human rights and the status of women. Even better – Soroptimist International is a launch partner for this vital UNIFEM internet global advocacy campaign which will run until 8 March, International Women’s Day. One in 3 women and girls may be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in their lifetime.

Greater resources are urgently needed to halt these shameful statistics. The UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women, managed by UNIFEM, supports local initiatives, such as work to prevent human trafficking, assisting survivors of domestic violence, or helping to implement laws against rape.
On 22 January, the United Nations Foundation announced a Challenge Grant. It will donate $1 to the UN Trust Fund for each of the first 100,000 signatures to UNIFEM’s “say NO to violence” campaign.
UNIFEM needs YOUR help now! (obviously I signed the petition the day of the meeting) I also met Margaret Lobo, the Australian 2007-2009 International President of the Soroptimists.

Margaret Lobo

A message from the Soroptimist International President:
“As International President, I am privileged to represent an organization that has been committed to advancing the status of women and human rights for all for over 85 years. With its 90,000 members in 125 countries and territories serves its local, national and international communities through Awareness, Advocacy and Action.
I hope that you will share the passion and enthusiasm of our members as you read about our projects and will want to join us in building a better world for girls and women. We look forward to hearing from you.”

A flyer describes their projects – I will just mention a very small sample: a project “Independence” to help rebuild lives of women in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Rwanda, through education, job training and micro-credit loans for small businesses; “Limbs for Life” that provides prostheses for victims of landmines in Angola, Georgia, Afghanistan; “SIAM” in Northern Thailand villages to develop income-generating activities and AIDS education in order to decrease the number of women entering the sex trade; SI/SIGHT clinics in Bangladesh to prevent blindness in children under 5; anti-malaria bed-nets for children under 5 in Ze, Benin; care, nutrition, education for abandoned children in Vietnam; help for women AIDS victims in Uganda and Ukraine….

Margaret Lobo was not involved in setting up the program of that panel. She told me that this was done by the local organizations in New York. She gave me a second flyer explaining what the organization does -

The other sponsoring organization was The International Council Of Jewish Women with about 50 member organizations is represented in the US by The National Council of Jewish Women ( http://www.ncjw.org ). A faith-based volunteer organization that works to improve the quality of life for women, children, and families and to ensure individual rights It is a politically savvy organization. For over a century, NCJW has been at the forefront of social change. NCJW members are outspoken champions for progressive policies at the federal, state, and local levels. Over the years, NCJW’s collective voice has changed the world for the better – improving the lives of women, children, and families in the US and Israel.

The Moderator of the panel was Meryle Kaplan, Vice President of Advisory Services at Catalyst. www.catalyst.org “CATALIST was founded in 1962 as a nonprofit corporate membership research and advisory organization working globally with businesses and professions to build inclusive environments and expand opportunities for women and business.” This according to their flyer. They are “connected to business and its changing needs.” Offices in New York, San Jose, Toronto, and Zug, Switzerland. They work with 340 leading corporations, firms, business schools, and associations – they honor exemplary business initiatives that promote women’s leadership with an annual Catalyst Award. The New York office is on Wall Street and I was not impressed.

Meryle Kaplan told me that she asked her speakers to talk about in-house corporation advancement of women, and as well, about involvement of the corporations in their environments – the interaction with the communities where they do their business.

Elizabeth Cottam, Managing Director, Global Leadership and Diversity at Goldman, Sachs &Co., and Carolyn Buck Luce, Senior Partner, Global Accounts Group, at Ernst & Young, LLP were excellent examples of female leaders in their corporations. Their presentations were indeed examples of what women have achieved in that old fight for advancement within their corporations. They spoke about how funds were created in their companies to help promote the female employees, and how now they are finding new targets for their fights inside the company. Having achieved an increasing percentage of top jobs, though still a minority – they want now also part of the say in the philanthropic funds that these companies have established. This because women may have different interests in the way those funds are distributed. There was a lot of interesting material in their short presentations and much more further information was provided at Q&A time. Their presentations were indeed good examples of how women executives evolved and are now an important factor in the economy as wellas in the social fabric of developed countries that can also help women in developing countries.

Carolyn Buck Luce also teaches at Columbia University a course on “Women in Power” at the School of International and Public Affairs. Corporations want now to put their women into leadership positions in the community – dealing with economics, safety, health – in the community. One point she made is that it still happens that when women succeed they may yet get laid off. this because people are afraid of power. She started out at the US Department of State in the Soviet Union. She wrote about the promotion of minority women. She is a mother of four. She said that by looking at her success she inspired also her sons in their own career development – a comment that was very appropriate to her presentation.

Elizabeth Cottam, working with an Investment Bank, a financial institution that deals only with high net-wealth individuals, governments, corporations, financial institutions, is in an organization were there is an internal competition for who gets to work with the best clients. These competitive women want more career development in house programs. They know that there must be a business rationale for helping the women employees. 2004-2007 she was the company head of Human Capital Management Asia. Now she heads the Global efforts.

Amy Hall, Director of Social Consciousness, Eileen Fisher, Inc., a company that manufactures clothes overseas – in places like China, Korea or Thailand. In those factories 80% of the workers are women. She helps the company carry out the company’s commitment to practicing business responsibly in its relations to these women employees. It is her job to develop community partnerships and oversee the commitment to ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY. She came to Eileen Fisher, Inc. after a fundraising career with Asian-American cultural, educational and social service organizations in New York City. (today we posted also an article about women in Bangladesh that grew with the garment trade – this is clearly a subject with high importance to developing countries’ women empowerment.)

The ExxonMobil leaf says correctly that an EWGI   (Educating Women and Girls Initiative) yields higher rate of return for society than any other investment available in the developing world – so it says “ExxonMobil is doing this in order to accelerate progress toward international objectives, including the Millennium Development Goals. “

Exxon EWGI programs fund activities in Angola, Chad, Colombia, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Qatar – and when Ms. Luxbacher spoke – she also included Washington DC among places they operate.   Now this makes sense – in the countries she mentioned, a very real hodge-podge of dissimilar places in the world, that are all affected by Exxon drilling   for oil and gas – and Washington DC where the drilling is for government favors – all this to the sound of   $11 million grants through 2007 in areas including a long list of activities that most probably had very little application in a country like Qatar, where the paper says that they provided vocational and life-skill training for what amounts there to middle age – to older women (ages 18-45).   Also, remember please that Qatar has little oil but has a long term large reserve of gas. After the US had to abandon its air force bases in Saudi Arabia, the bases were moved to Qatar and located right on top of those gas fields. Qatar is a safe place for a US Oil and Gas company, and doing some limited favors to the government does not hurt. There is no work here with girls – there maybe some work with grown up women, under good supervision, and no chance of causing those women to start demanding rights. That surely would not have been allowed in an Arab country – even Qatar.

In Indonesia, they work in the oil rich semi-independent Aceh region, where the interest by the US oil company was a cause to a rebellious movement. In Colombia they helped fund seemingly a UNICEF   improved Water and Sanitation effort for schools (that is a US Administration affiliated Ms. Veneman effort with good US business savvy activity). Good for Colombian schools in the Cartagena and Santa Maria areas where Exxon is active. Similarly UNICEF related activities go on in Chad (you remember that infamous pipeline that brought about an attempt to divide the country and a war?) and Equatorial Guinea – another trouble spot. To get into activities in Angola and Nigeria would sink us into sand-holes. ExxonMobil does not do any philanthropic work in Venezuela – actually they may nearing the point that they lose all work in Venezuela. Seemingly Venezuela might yet do philanthropic work in Washington DC as they already do in South Bronx, New York City.

This leaves us only with Kazakhstan, where strong local government will simply not let ExxonMobil do as it pleases – so, in order to obtain some favors, under conditions that they must compete for business with European companies,   they may actually do something that is important to the local people, and to US government initiatives. There they work with USAID on a micro-finance program that helped also 1,760 women with their first business training. We hope that with the supervision of the local Enterprise Development Center (EDC) that they actually helped establish, they are now a positive force in the effort, of interest to the Kazaks, to move their past-Soviet style economy, now on a   path more close to private enterprise.

Except for Kazakhstan and Qatar, the other 5 countries mentioned are all hot spots of ExxonMobil caused dissensions, where local people oppose the environmental damage that the oil company has caused and is causing. Who is interested there in their philanthropy outstretch?   This is great business for public relation firms – you see we do some good there with the few peanuts we are throwing in the direction of the local poor, while we feast with the local government that will be happy to exchange the future of their people, for the present pay-outs to the ruling few. Now – that is oil business at its best and it needs really very little planning – it needs good technical expertize to get the oil and gas out of the ground, and deliver it to pipelines and shipping terminals. We must have a good PR firm to bring us to the UN, and put us on a panel with others that do good.

Now, with above things in mind, I decided to ask an outright killer question at this meeting of well-to-do women.

My question went something like this:   As the only man in this room ( I was immediately told that I was wrong – there were three more men in the room and close to one hundred women) I want to express my male point of view.

I know that men are supposed to be those that are propelled to advance on corporate ladders, and that they do wars, and everything that is bad, but the old concept was that women do good by bringing up the children, worry about the environment, and are inclined to do all the good things in general. So my question to the woman from ExxonMobil is what does ExxonMobil do for the environment, for the health and quality of life of the local people on whom their activities have an impact, for the children, for next generation? For their own children’s future? What does Exxon Mobil do about climate change? Is it fair to say that a company that had profits pushing $50 billion   last year, $11 billion last quarter, throwing a miserable sum of 11 million dollars at the problems they leave behind, is it not a very meager feat of PR?

All what Ms. Luxbacher, the General Manager of ExxonMobil Corporate Planning was able to say was that they spent more then $11 million. She said she was ready to talk to me later. The moderator said she wanted to go back to women’s questions, and I insisted that my question was a women’s question because it dealt with children and the future.   For the rest of the session the lady from ExxonMobil did not say a word. To my discredit, I confess here, that I did not speak with this lady when the session was over, but had rather much more fruitful discussions with other ladies in the room – some that said to me that I did ask the right question that had to be asked indeed. I think that I made some friends – though I am not naive to think that I did not also make some new enemies for life.

I hope that some of the true Soroptimists will send me now material about efforts they wish to be posted, and I really do not feel any obligations to those that just used the UN for the ride.

Renata Goldirova reports for EUobserver from Brussels – “Germany highly critical of EU energy package:”
As a start – The European Commission president has thrown his weight behind a sweeping reform of the EU energy market, which ultimately should see the break-up of the bloc’s energy giants.

“The commission is clear that the status quo cannot continue…Without change, distortion of competition and fragmentation of the market will continue”, Jose Manuel Barroso said on Wednesday (19 September), after the commission gave the green light to the package.

Mr Barroso has also urged the EU capitals as well as European lawmakers “to move quickly to agree these proposals”, arguing “EU citizens have every right to expect that we act to energize Europe”.

Brussels has clearly spelled out its preference for full ownership unbundling, requiring a company to split its production and transmission wings.   “This is by far the most effective approach”, the commission chief said, adding an increasing number of member states are already going down this route.

This could be achieved in two ways – companies may either sell their transmission networks to an independent investor or form new separate business through a shares split.

Although Mr Barroso anticipated that the negotiations on package will be “tough, long and difficult”, Germany’s reaction was unusually critical of the proposals. German economy minister Michael Glos said “the high quality and security of German electrical power networks should not be put in danger -The package is all in all too bureaucratic and leads to a high regulatory burden,” he said.

Germany “strictly rejects” ownership unbundling, said Mr Glos adding that he is “very sceptical whether through the focus of the commission on ownership unbundling, a way for more competition is found.”

“The contrary is more likely,” he stated. Germany, along with France, had been the strongest opponents of the unbundling option in the run up to the publication of the proposals.

A ‘Gazprom clause: ‘ The commission also received criticism from elsewhere – albeit more veiled – for another part of the proposal on protecting the EU energy market.

Reacting to Brussels’ energy package, Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom indicated it would present its evaluation of the way these measures will affect security of supply, the competitiveness of European energy markets as well as energy prices in Europe.

“Gazprom has an important contribution to make to the debate about regulation of the energy sector in Europe and feels certain that its voice will be heard”, the company’s Sergei Kupriyanov said in a written statement.

He has also rushed to remind Europe that “Gazprom is a reliable gas supplier to the European Union and a major investor in the infrastructure which brings gas to Europe”.

Under the proposed restrictive rules, foreign buyers who wish to purchase an EU network will have to follow the same unbundling requirements as the union’s own firms.

“This is about fairness; it is about protecting fair competition. It is not about protectionism”, he said.

A quarter of the bloc’s gas as well as quarter of its oil originates from Russia.

Despite the expected difficulty of the negotiations, the European Commission believes an agreement could be thrashed out under France’s six-month EU presidency, starting in July 2008 – with Mr Barroso firmly putting the ball in member states’ court.

“Today we put everyone before their responsibilities. If the results are lacking it will not be because of a lack of ambition on the part of the commission”, he concluded.