Romania and Bulgaria keep low profile on Roma expulsions – 26.08.2010 -

 http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/eo20…

Black Sea challenge by U.S. set to keep Russia on edge.

Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (Spanish pronunciation: [mi?t?el ?at?e?let]; born September 29, 1951) is a moderate socialist politician who was President of Chile from 11 March 2006 to 11 March 2010—the first woman president in the country’s history.

She won the 2006 presidential election in a runoff, beating center-right US dollar billionaire businessman and former senator Sebastián Piñera with 53.5% of the vote.

She campaigned on a platform of continuing Chile’s free-market policies, while increasing social benefits to help reduce the gap between rich and poor, one of the largest in the world.

Bachelet, a pediatrician and epidemiologist with studies in military strategy, served as Health Minister and Defense Minister under President Ricardo Lagos.

Bachelet is the second child of archaeologist Ángela Jeria Gómez and Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet Martínez.

Facing growing food shortages, the government of Salvador Allende placed Bachelet’s father in charge of the Food Distribution Office. When General Augusto Pinochet came to power in the September 11, 1973 coup, General Bachelet, refusing exile, was detained at the Air War Academy under charges of treason. Following months of daily torture at Santiago’s Public Prison, on March 12, 1974, he suffered a cardiac arrest that resulted in his death. On January 10, 1975, Bachelet and her mother were detained at their apartment by two DINA agents, who blindfolded them and drove them to Villa Grimaldi, a notorious secret detention center in Santiago, where they were separated and submitted to interrogation and torture.^[13] Some days later they were transferred to Cuatro Álamos (“Four Poplars”) detention center, where they were held until the end of January. Later in 1975, thanks to sympathetic connections in the military, both were exiled to Australia, where Bachelet’s older brother Alberto had moved in 1969.

Her paternal great-great-grandfather, Louis-Joseph Bachelet Lapierre, was a French wine merchant from Chassagne-Montrachet who emigrated to Chile with his Parisian wife, Françoise Jeanne Beault, in 1860 hired as a wine-making expert by the Subercaseaux vineyards in southern Santiago.

In February 1979, Bachelet returned to Santiago, Chile from East Germany. Her medical school credits from the GDR were not transferred, forcing her to resume her studies from where she had left off before fleeing the country. ^{[citation needed]} She graduated as M.D. on January 7, 1983^. She wished to work in the public sector wherever attention was most needed, applying for a position as general practitioner; her petition was, however, rejected by the military government on “political grounds.” Instead, because of her academic performance and published papers, she earned a scholarship to specialize in pediatrics and public health at Roberto del Río Children’s Hospital (1983–1986). During this time she also worked at PIDEE (Protection of Children Injured by States of Emergency Foundation), a non-governmental organization helping children of the tortured and missing in Santiago and Chillán. She was head of the foundation’s Medical Department between 1986 and 1990. Some time after her second child with Dávalos, Francisca Valentina, was born in February 1984, she and her husband legally separated. She is a separated mother of three and describes herself as an agnostic.

In 1990, after democracy was restored in Chile, Bachelet worked for the Ministry of Health’s West Santiago Health Service and was a consultant for the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Health Organization and the German Corporation for Technical Cooperation.

Driven by an interest in civil-military relations, in 1996 Bachelet began studies in military strategy at the National Academy for Strategic and Policy Studies (Anepe) in Chile, obtaining first place in her class.^[2] Her student achievement earned her a presidential scholarship, permitting her to continue her studies in the United States at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, D.C., completing a Continental Defense Course in 1998. That same year she returned to Chile to work for the Defense Ministry as Senior Assistant to the Defense Minister. She subsequently graduated from a Master’s program in military science at the Chilean Army‘s War Academy.

In 1996 Bachelet ran against future presidential adversary Joaquín Lavín for the mayorship of Las Condes, a wealthy Santiago suburb and a right-wing stronghold. Lavín won the 22-candidate election with nearly 78% of the vote, while she finished fourth at 2.35%. At the 1999 presidential primary of Coalition of Parties for Democracy (CPD), Chile’s governing coalition since 1990, she worked for Ricardo Lagos’s nomination, heading the Santiago electoral zone.

On March 11, 2000 Bachelet—virtually unknown at the time—was appointed Minister of Health by President Ricardo Lagos. She began an in-depth study of the public health-care system that led to the AUGE plan a few years later. She was also given the task of eliminating waiting lists in the saturated public hospital system within the first 100 days of Lagos’s government. She reduced waiting lists by 90%, but was unable to eliminate them completely and offered her resignation, which was promptly rejected by the President.  Controversially,  she allowed free distribution of the morning-after pill for victims of sexual abuse.

On January 7, 2002 Bachelet was appointed Defense Minister, becoming the first woman to hold this post in a Latin American country and one of the few in the world. While Minister of Defense she promoted reconciliatory gestures between the military and victims of the dictatorship, culminating in the historic 2003 declaration by General Juan Emilio Cheyre, head of the army, that “never again” would the military subvert democracy in Chile.  She also oversaw a reform of the military pension system and continued with the process of modernization of the Chilean armed forces with the purchasing of new military equipment, while engaging in international peace operations.

A moment which has been cited as key to Bachelet’s chances to the presidency came during a flood in northern Santiago where she, as Defense Minister, led a rescue operation on top of an amphibious tank, wearing a cloak and military cap.

In late 2004, following a surge of her popularity in opinion polls, Bachelet was established as the only CPD figure able to defeat Lavín, and she was asked to become the Socialists’ candidate for the presidency.

According to The Economist magazine the government of Bachelet opted to make social protection and the promotion of equality of opportunity her main priority. Since becoming President, her government built 3,500 crèches daycare for poorer children. It introduced a universal minimum state pension and extended free health care to cover many serious conditions.
A new housing policy aimed at abolishing the last remaining shanty-towns in Chile by 2010 featured grants to the poorest families. Some of them had to pay just US$400 for a house costing about US$20,000.

In October 2009 Ms Bachelet’s popularity peaked at 80 percent according to a public opinion poll by conservative polling institute Adimark GfK., and in March 2010 she showed an approval rating of 84%, and in terms of specific characteristics attributed to Chile’s president, ‘loved by Chileans’ reached a record 96%.

The Chilean Constitution does not allow a president to serve two consecutive terms, so Bachelet left office in March 2010.

Chile’s October 16, 2006 vote in the United Nations Security Council election—with Venezuela and Guatemala deadlocked in a bid for the two-year, non-permanent Latin American and Caribbean seat on the Security Council — developed into a major ideological issue in the country, and was seen as a test for Bachelet. The governing coalition was divided between the Socialists, who supported a vote for Venezuela, and the Christian Democrats, who strongly opposed it. The day before the vote the president announced (through her spokesman) that Chile would abstain, citing as reason a lack of regional consensus over a single candidate, ending months of speculation.

Continuing the coalition’s free-trade strategy, in August 2006 Bachelet promulgated a free trade agreement with the People’s Republic of China (signed under the previous administration of Ricardo Lagos), the first Chinese free-trade agreement with a Latin American nation; similar deals with Japan and India were promulgated in August 2007. In October 2006, Bachelet promulgated a multilateral trade deal with New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei, the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (P4),  also signed under Lagos’ presidency.  She also held free-trade talks with other countries, including Australia, Vietnam,  Turkey and Malaysia. Regionally, she signed bilateral free trade agreements with Panama, Peru and Colombia.

At the beginning of 2010 Chile became the OECD’s 31st member, and its first in South America. This acceptance for OECD membership marked international recognition of nearly two decades of democratic reform and sound economic policies; for the OECD, Chile’s membership was a major milestone in its mission to build a stronger, cleaner and fairer global economy

She speaks Spanish (her native language), English, German, Portuguese and French.

In 2009 Forbes magazine ranked her as the 22nd in the list of the 100 most powerful women in the world (she was #25 in 2008, #27 in 2007, and #17 in 2006). In 2008, TIME magazine ranked her 15 on its list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Eleanor Clift wrote on politicsdaily.com on June 10, 2010 that Michelle Bachelet moved the Chilean Government from Macho – to – Maternal. She was clearly the best qualified person to establish and head the new UN institution that was baptized with the terrible name UNWOMEN. And you know what, letting into the UN building a highly qualified person may endanger the minions working there. That, is what doomed on me today, this because I also learned an additional fact about Bachellet’s Chile, and that is why I write this UPDATE.
 http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/10/…

The additional fact I learned today came from reading material that will appear in an Energy Management Magazine Published in India. The article is by – Ms. Jimena Bronfman, Vice Minister of Energy, Chile , and it deals with Chile moving into leadership position on energy issues – and you guessed right if you said that Dr. Bachelet started this. In effect the Ministry of Energy – which for Chile is a Ministry of Energy Efficiency – was set up at the end of her days in the Presidential Office. We are sure that this was not an easy task to fulfill – but we are sure that it will be one of her most important legacies. We know that Energy Efficiency is not a top priority of the G77 real on-going leadership and this, more then anything else, explains the diatribe we described in our original posting which we updated now.

The creation of the Ministry of Energy in February 1^st 2010 is an important milestone in this process. The law that is the basis for Chile’s current institutional framework also includes the creation of the Chilean Energy Efficiency Agency, a public private entity that will implement the public policies designed by the Energy Efficiency Division of the Ministry.

Energy Efficiency is one of the main goals of Chile’s national energy policy, families are changing their habits and industries, corporations and local governments are trying to reduce their energy consumption by adopting energy-efficient measures. This fostering environment was recently faced by the February 27^th earthquake and tsunami that devastated several regions of our country. We have taken this catastrophe as an opportunity and a challenge to rebuild our towns and cities using energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The Ministry of Energy is working with other ministries, such as the Ministry of Housing, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education to include energy efficiency measures and non-conventional renewable energies in the reconstruction of health and education infrastructure and emergency housing. We are also developing a pilot project to rebuild a town with the leading best practices in sustainability and energy consumption, so it can be replicated in other parts of the region and world.

Energy Efficiency is key to Chile’s competitiveness and economic growth. According to studies carried out before the earthquake, energy efficiency measures could help reduce Chile’s energy demand by around 14% by 2020. This would have a positive financial impact in the reconstruction process, as public funds saved by reduction of energy consumption can be reallocated to other priorities of the rebuilding program.

Energy Efficiency will also help Chile, whose economy is based on exports, to reduce its carbon footprint and be competitive in a world that is increasingly carbon-conscious. Although Chile’s contribution to global greenhouse emissions is low compared to many other nations, our wines, copper, fruits, fish and wood products are sold in developed markets that will require sustainable production processes.

In order to achieve our goals we are currently developing the Energy Efficiency Strategy for 2020. At the moment a draft proposal is being reviewed by key actors from the private and the public sectors who will be involved in the actual implementation of the strategy. The main objective of this process is to promote a broad discussion of the specific proposals, introduce appropriate improvements and gain comprehensive support for the energy saving goals contemplated in the strategy.  The official version of the E3 will be published after completion of this discussion period, hopefully by the end of November 2010.

Other challenges for this year include the implementation of the rest of our institutional framework, which will be completed by the creation of the Chilean Energy Efficiency Agency, a public-private non-profit entity that will implement the Ministry’s public policies. It will be funded mainly through public funds but will include private sector representatives in its board. The focus of the Agency’s work will be guided by the E3 strategy; however, we shall also aim at developing other important projects such as education. We strongly believe that a crucial driver for change in these matters is highly-skilled human resources. Therefore, education in schools, undergraduate and post-graduate education is needed to introduce strong energy efficiency programs. Other important aspects of energy efficiency lie in smart-grid and net-metering programs.

Another main priority for 2010 is the development of energy efficiency labelling for cars, new houses and domestic appliances. Labelling is currently mandatory for refrigerators and light bulbs, and we aim to expand this initiative so consumers have all the information available to make the right decisions.

We also want to continue growing our international alliances and cooperation. We have already executed collaboration agreements with several countries and organizations worldwide, and we will work to strengthen and deepen those relationships. Energy Efficiency is a global effort that can be fostered by exchanging best practices that will benefit consumers, industries and countries all over the world.

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The China and Developing States, the full name of the G77 that purports speaking for 130 out of the 192 UN Member States, is a UN charade – simply, because there never was a common interest among all these various States Now, with China becoming at least a G2 with the United States, if not the straight Global Economic Super power, for her to use the leadership of this rag-tag bunch and push into leadership positions at the UN – Libya, Zimbabwe, Sudan etc. resulted in turning the whole UN into a laughable enterprise. Bravo to little Palau that walked out on this continuous obstructionist committee circuit that calls for time-out whenever the UN tries to reach some decision. We watched them at climate Change meetings where Saudi Arabia is their representative.

Perhaps there was once s difference between the industrialized European  – North American countries plus Japan, and the rest of the world – this when the UN was created and the decolonizing process was giving birth to many new UN Member States – in effect multiplying by three the total number of global independent States, but since then much has changed.

The Latin ABC, Mexico, Korea, Turkey, India, Indonesia, South Africa have all knocked successfully at the corporate doors of development and entered the G20. The OECD club includes most of these G20 plus most EU States and Israel that is a perpetual  G77 pariah. They have now real interests to defend and not much time for posturing – so we will see slowly a realignment also at the UN. OK, China and South Africa will not want to give up their positions as leaders of the 130. It keeps some of their diplomats in the circuit and the UN will continue the fiction, but how long hence that the AOSIS/SIDS will still play this game? When will they see that Palau was indeed a trailblazer? Will the lack of action on Climate Change by some of the major OECD members who effectively joined the Saudis in opposing real action on climate, push these States back into the G77 arms?

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THURSDAY, JULY 08, 2010
Chile Threatens to Split South Unity in World Body.
Thalif Deen
 http://ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.as…

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 7 (IPS) – The Group of 77 (G77) has historically maintained a united front, vociferously protecting the economic interests of developing countries at the United Nations. But its longstanding solidarity is now being threatened by the continued presence of a single Latin American country which recently joined the ranks of a rich elitist group.

Chile, which was formally inducted last May into the 30-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), described as an exclusive club of industrial nations, has given no indications of leaving the G77, thereby triggering a sharp division of opinion among its 130 members. “Chile wants to have it both ways,” one G77 member told IPS, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It wants to have one foot in the OECD and another in the G77. But this is unacceptable to some of us.”

When Mexico and South Korea broke ranks with the developing world and joined the Paris-based OECD back in 1994 and 1996, respectively, both countries quit the G77, the largest single coalition of developing countries at the United Nations.

Chakravarti Raghavan, editor emeritus of the Geneva-based South-North Development Monitor published by the Third World Network, told IPS if Chile does not voluntarily quit the G77, the group must find a way around its longstanding convention of consensus decisions, and “politely but firmly throw Chile out”.

“This will be in line with the spirit and the intentions behind the formation of the Group of 77 and its functioning over all these years,” he added.

“It is probably about time that the G77 being an informal grouping expel Chile – on the simple ground that you can’t belong to two different groupings,” said Raghavan, who is considered a foremost authority on the G77, and who has written extensively about the Group since its inception in June 1964.

“It is my impression that Mexico, when it joined OECD, initially wanted to be in both camps, but was told it was not possible,” he added.

On North-South economic issues at the United Nations, the G77 and the OECD hold diametrically opposite views – most or all of the time.

The OECD is home to some of the world’s major economic powers, including the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan. Most of the emerging economic powers, including Brazil, India, China and South Africa, are longstanding members of the G77 and not members of the OECD.

But according to the OECD, it is planning to have discussions with Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa – all active members of the G77 – “with a view to possible membership”.

The G77 has lost four other members over the years: Cyprus and Malta (both in May 1994) and Romania (January 2007) when they joined the European Union.

A fourth country, Palau, a small island developing nation in the Pacific, withdrew from the G77 in June 2006, ostensibly for financial reasons.

Besides Chile, Mexico and South Korea, the OECD has also added three other non-G77 members into its ranks: Estonia, Slovenia and Israel.

Speaking off-the-record, a diplomat from a G77 country expressed a dissenting point of view when he told IPS: “There is nothing in the G77 rules or guidelines stating that an OECD member has to quit the G77.”

He said Chile is well within its rights to remain a member of the G77.

“And, while there may be a few in G77 who may not be pleased about Chile remaining in the G77, there are no serious moves afoot to push them out of the grouping,” he said. “Most of us, support Chile remaining in the G77. There will be strong resistance from a number of us if anyone tries to eject Chile from the G77.”

And as an after-thought, he added: “The OECD had made leaving the G77 a condition for Mexico’s entry into the OECD. However, when Chile was applying to the OECD, there was no such condition.”

Moreover, he said, Mexico stated that leaving the G77 should not be a condition for Chile’s entry.

Another G77 delegate told IPS that if Chile does not voluntarily leave the Group, as Mexico and South Korea did in previous years, a divided G77 may be forced to take a decision either way.

Meanwhile the former G8 – the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia – has been expanded into the G20 to include seven developing nations (besides Australia, Mexico, South Korea, Turkey and the European Union).

The seven developing countries – Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa – are still members of the G77.

Chile has argued that G77 members that belong to the G20 should be considered in the same light as G77 members belonging to the OECD. But the G20 is not considered a formal body like the OECD, which is treaty-based and whose decisions are binding on all its members.

According to an OECD statement, the invitation to Chile to become the Organisation’s 31st member came at a time when the OECD is expanding its relations with the region.

As an OECD member, Chile will participate in all areas of the OECD’s work, from economic and financial policy to education, employment and social affairs. It will also join with other OECD countries to share experiences and best practices, setting new standards and developing new governance mechanisms for its economy and society more broadly.

The statement said that during two years of accession negotiations, Chile was reviewed by some 20 OECD committees with respect to OECD instruments, standards and benchmarks.

The invitation to take up membership confirms that Chile is taking appropriate steps to reform its economy including in the areas of corporate governance, anti-corruption, and environmental protection, the statement said.

The GUAM States are Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova – States on the Western Extended Borders of Russia – that have expressed interest in good relations with the West and in adopting Western Ways of Government and joining Western Institutions. They are not part of the EU. Azerbaijan is a Muslim Oil-State in conflict with Russia backed Armenia.

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SPEAKER: Madam Secretary, on behalf of our entire embassy family, we welcome you to the embassy, and welcome you to our garden.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER: Please.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you, thank you. Well, Happy Fourth of July to all of you.
(Applause.)
SECRETARY CLINTON: This is a wonderful way to celebrate the American Independence Day, here in this beautiful garden, and to be with all of you here in Azerbaijan, where independence and the values of freedom and equality and opportunity enshrined in our Declaration of Independence are all the more meaningful for this young, independent country.
This has been a very whirlwind trip, and I thank every one of you who has helped to make it possible. And I thank you, too, for all the work you have done this past year to further and steady our relationship between our country and Azerbaijan, and we are trying to do everything we can to support you, including working for a new embassy compound — although you won’t have a garden like this, I’m afraid. That’s kind of a trade-off, isn’t it?
Earlier today I had a productive meeting with President Aliyev, and assured him of the importance of Azerbaijan to the United States, and that we are committed to working in partnership to enhance global security and promote democracy and stabilize the region.
I just came from a meeting with some young people at the Mugam Club in the historic, beautiful old city, who are working to promote civil society, protect human rights, develop a free media in the country. They are the reason that I come to work every day, because much of what I do is about the next generation. And I was very proud and impressed to listen to them, and especially 5 of the 10 had studied in the United States under the exchange programs that some of you help to run.
We are very focused in the Obama Administration on working to strengthen our relationship, and supporting the modernization, the secularization, the democratization of this very exciting country at this time in history.
I want to thank Chargé Donald Lu for his steady leadership during this past year. He has kept everything running during a difficult time without the help of an ambassador. We are working very hard to get our new ambassador confirmed, and hopefully he will be joining you shortly. And, in the meantime, I welcome Adam Stirling as the new chargé, and will look forward to working with him.
Now, I can imagine that for our locally-engaged staff, who have never celebrated an American Fourth of July — which means that you have never eaten barbeque or gone to a fireworks or gotten sunburned with your family out in some beautiful place — it might seem a little bit distant to be here in Baku, celebrating the founding of our country. But for Americans this is a very special day. And it’s a day that we really do take time out to appreciate the founding of our country 234 years ago, and all that we have had to do over those years to create a more perfect union, to overcome injustice, discrimination, to make sure that the circle of opportunity grew bigger and bigger, so that it could encompass every American.
So, I thank each and every one of you on this Fourth of July for your hard work: our foreign service and our civil service officers, all of our colleagues from other U.S. government agencies, our Peace Corps volunteers, our family members, and especially our locally-engaged staff. We honor your sacrifices and your dedication. And I wish you a very safe and happy Independence Day. But, more than that, I wish you a day every single day of this upcoming year of greater cooperation and partnership to deepen and broaden our relationship.
And I know that when someone like me comes, it adds to your workload. So I am hoping that with the outgoing chargé and the incoming chargé, that maybe they will give you the rest of the Fourth of July off. What do you think? That’s a departmental, Secretary of State directive.

Analysis of national climate action plans of emerging economies – Proposals for quantifiable emission reduction contributions of emerging economies.

Side Event at the UNFCCC Barcelona Climate Talks:

Tuesday, November 3rd 2009 
7.45 – 9.15 pm, Room LENTISCO

 

In this side event Ecofys and the Wuppertal-Institute, two German independent consultants, will present results of a recent analysis of national climate action plans of emerging economies (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea) in regard to mitigation of GHG emissions.

The study includes an update of an ealier sector-based assessment of mitigation potential in 2008. Based on these results the presenters will introduce a preliminary assessment of options on how to integrate national appropriate mitigation actions in particular countries .

This study was commissioned by the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, UBA), an independant scientific body of the Federal Environment Ministry, based in Dessau, Germany.

 

————-

Dr. Guido Knoche
Federal Environment Agency
- Climate Change Division -
D-06844 Dessau-Rosslau
eMail: guido.knoche[at]uba.de

  

nbsp;EUobserver.com – 19.09.2009 ******************************
************

THE FUTURE OF THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY IN THE EU.
The Good Word Seems To Be – Transformation Through Crisis – The start of the thinking process.

WHEN: 8th October 2009 from 9:00 -13:00h
WHERE: Committee of the Regions, Brussels? ‘Open Days’ – Rue Belliard 101,
1040 Brussels
WHO: European and American automotive industries, climate change experts,
transport specialists, regional
authorities, city planners, trade unions, consumers, lawmakers and media

Registration is FREE and is required due to limited number of seats.

Please register on: http://conferences.euobserver.com/auto/i…
(the workshop No is: 08A02)

Turkey Gets Boost from Pipeline Politics.

by Helena Cobban

WASHINGTON, Jul 19 (IPS) – The political geography of the modern Middle East has been affected for one hundred years by the appetite of westerners and other outsiders for the region’s hydrocarbons. Last week, the region’s “pipeline politics” took another step forward with the signing in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, of an agreement to build a new, 3,300-kilometre gas pipeline called Nabucco, running between eastern Turkey and Vienna, Austria.

The project underlines the new influential role that Turkey, a majority Muslim nation of 72 million people, is playing in the Middle East, and far beyond. The new project’s name was chosen, Austrian officials said, after the Verdi opera that representatives of the five participating countries – who include Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, along with the two terminus states – saw together during an earlier round of negotiations in Vienna.

But the name also gives clues to two intriguing aspects of the project’s geopolitical significance. The theme of the opera is the liberation from bondage of slaves held by the ancient Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (‘Nabucco’) – and it is a widely discussed feature of the Nabucco project that many European nations want access to a gas source that is not under the control of Russia. Last winter, several European nations suffered severe gas shortages after Russia, locked in a tariff dispute with transit-country Ukraine, closed off the spigots completely.

But the other implication of the name is more strictly Middle Eastern. The modern-day home of Nebuchadnezzar is Iraq. Washington has given strong support to the Nabucco project – and one of the reasons U.S. officials give for this support is their hope that once Nabucco is up and running in 2015, Iraq can be one of the nations that reaps large profits by feeding gas into it. However, construction of the pipeline is estimated to cost some eight billion dollars, and many officials in the participating countries are still unclear where they will get enough gas to make it economically viable.

The Nabucco participants had been hoping that a key feeder state would be one of Turkey’s eastern neighbours, Azerbaijan. But on the eve of the project’s inauguration in Ankara, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev took the CEO of the vast Russian gas company Gazprom to Azerbaijan, where they signed a contract with the state gas company that will force Nabucco to compete hard against Gazprom for any purchase it wants to make from Azerbaijan. One fairly evident other source for Nabucco’s would be Iran, which is reported to have considerable amounts of new gas coming online in the next five years.

The UN May Have Made The Holocaust Symbol of Man’s Inhumanity To Man – But Then The Stands Nicaraguan Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the current UN General Assembly President, and Some At The UN Security Council Take Against Israel, Negate All Those Nice Words That The UN Proclaimed in 2005 – Its 60th Anniversary Year.

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on January 28th, 2009

by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

Prior to the event, we also had comments about the way it was announced in the UN DPI material,

In UN Fashion – The UN Holocaust event announced for Tuesday January 27, 2009 (The Mandated Day to Remember the Holocaust) is balanced out with an announcement for the Arab Edition on a book on The Question of Palestine. An Interesting Way of Creating What Sick Minds At The Present UN Think To Be Correct Balance.

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on January 17th, 2009

by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

Now we have also the reaction of the Jewish Week: ” In The Name of Our Common Humanity,” The UN commemorates the Holocaust, but the international body – often at loggerheads with Israel – and Jewish leaders appear to differ on some of the lessons they glean from it.” This is the title for the article in the January 30, 2009 issue. See that article it is attached at the end. And we decide thus to write also our own observations in a photo-report.

The event was scheduled for the Great Hall of the General Assembly, but as the building is being prepared for repairs, the Hall was closed and the event was held in the Trusteeship Council Chamber. When I got there – the place tags from the left to the right read: Mr. Leonid Rozenberg, Mrs. Ruth Glasberg Gold, Father D’Escoto Brockmann – President General Assembly, Mr. Kiyo Akasaka – USG (Chair), Ms. Asha-Rose Mgiro – Deputy Secretary-General, Rabbi Yisrael Lau, Ambassador Gabriela Shalev. This according to the announcement, with the exception that UNSG Ban Ki-moon, having left for meetings in Madrid and Davos, was being represented by his Deputy Mr, Mgiro.

The Program:

There was some milling in the room see:

 
Rabbi Arthur Schneier, USG Akasaka, DSG Mgiro

Very few minutes before the start of the event, father Brockmann’s name place was removed, and instead was put a nondescript ACTING PGA sign. You could have heard a sign of relief from the audience that included survivors of the Holocaust and quite a few members of Jewish communities from all over the US, besides the UN diplomats.

In order to convey the reason why Jews from Israel and from the US feel repulsion when encountering Father Brockmann, the Foreign Minister of Nicaragua, I attach the letter of January 14, 2009,From Ambassador Shalev, that explains how in his haste to go after the Israelis, he actually committed an act against rules of the UN – when trying to convene the General Assembly in order to castigate Israel, not according to the right item available to him. Doing it the proper way would have meant a small delay – and that what he tripped upon.

As Ambassador Shalev points out – the GA could not reconvene on an item that is not germane to the issue at hand. Israel has no settlements in Gaza anymore, and the conflict in Gaza is not about settlements.

With Father Brockmann a no-show, in his place, that chair was taken impromptu by the Ambassador of Rwanda, who read Father Brockmann’s statement. Now, Ambassador Joseph Nsengimana of Rwanda, participated the previous Saturday at the Holocaust Memorial Service at Rabbi Schneier’s Synagogue in Manhattan – the Park East Synagogue.

UNSG Ban Ki-moon and Diplomats accredited to the UN came Saturday January 24, 2009, to Park East Synagogue in New York City for a Holocaust Remembrance Day Service.

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on January 24th, 2009

by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

After Mr. Akasaka’s opening and Cantor Matzon’s prayer, Ms. Migiro read the UNSG message: “we must understand why the world did nothing and we must oppose Holocaust denial on this 4th International Day of Commemoration let us re=member – and hope for a better future.”

Sounds good, but we had to remember also yesterday when Ahmedi-nejad spoke at the UN, and we must remember tomorrow when the UNGA picks on Israel again.

Next was the Ambassador from Rwanda reading the Brockmann message. He gave a history of the US resolution to have such a remembrance event, and proceeded saying that the election of an African for America President reflects the acceptance of the “other.”

Our difficult with this statement, as much as we are proud of the long road taken by the US, we find it still irrelevant to a UN that insists in keeping the Jews as a perpetual “other” – and to hear this from the particular left-wing Catholic priest, saying the right thing in the wrong place, this did not do justice either to the Ambassador from Rwanda, who spoke much more to the point when he said his own words – just three days earlier.

The fourth speaker was Ambassador Gabriela Shalev of Israel.

She started saying that the child born today will never meet a Holocaust survivor – our obligation is thus to tell for future generations the story of the holocaust survivors – one by one. She proceeded telling about her own family. With tremor in her voice she started with the grandfather – a successful lawyer in Berlin and columnist in a main newspaper and her father a medical student. Their life was shattered. The medical student became a cook in Palestine. The grandparents on the maternal side did not escape – he was a Rabbi in Kiev. Much later they learned the family was transported to Therensienstadt and from there to Auschwitz. Their fate was sealed because they were Jews. NOT ALL VICTIMS WERE JEWS, BUT ALL JEWS WERE VICTIMS.

We have the responsibility to learn and teach the lessons of the Holocaust and to make sure that it is not repeated against the Jews and other people. WE HAVE THE RESPONSIBILITY TO FIGHT AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM AND RACISM. WE HAVE THE RESPONSIBILITY TO OPPOSE ANY STATE AT THE UN THAT CALLS FOR THE EXTINCTION OF ANOTHER STATE. The hall filled applause.

Mr. Akasaka informed the audience about the footprints being collected from material about victims that perished in the camps (see attached UN Press release), and then proceeded to introduce next speaker as a valiant russian soldier of WWII, who helped free the city of Berlin.

The UN Holocaust event announced for Tuesday January 27, 2009 (The Mandated Day to Remember the Holocaust) is balanced out with an announcement for the Arab Edition on a book on The Question of Palestine. We find this appalling.

//////////////////

From: UN DPI UPDATES (16 – 31 January 2009)

MEETINGS, CONFERENCES AND SPECIAL EVENTS:

Tuesday 27 January 2009

10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.: Memorial ceremony at the UN General Assembly Hall :   “An Authentic Basis for Hope: Holocaust Remembrance and Education”, with keynote speaker Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chairman of Yad Vashem Council.   USG Kiyo Akasaka will open the event, which will include a message from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.   Statements will be made by H.E. Mr. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, President of the 63rd session of the General Assembly, and H.E. Ambassador Gabriela Shalev, Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations. Ruth Glasberg Gold, a survivor of the Transnistria camps, and WWII veteran Leonid Rozenberg will share their personal stories. Cantor Ya’akov Motzen will recite “El Ma’le Rachamim” and “Ani Ma’amin”. The ceremony will also include musical performances by Elisha Abas (piano) and Yoon Kwon (violin). Please register at  holocaustremembrance at un.org or by fax 212-963-0536.    
Wednesday 28 January

1:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.   Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project Book Signing at the UN Bookshop. Mrs. Frances Irwin will present and sign copies of her memoir included in the volume titled “Stolen Youth: Five Women’s Survival in the Holocaust”.   Every January in observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, volumes from the Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project are on display in the Public Lobby and for sale in the Book Shop.   Mrs. Jeannie Rosensaft, one of the editors of the memoirs, will discuss the Project, which is an initiative of Nobel Prize laureate and United Nations Messenger of Peace Elie Wiesel, and Menachem Rosensaft, Chairman of the Project’s Editorial Board.

For further information, please contact  holocaustremembrance at un.org

—————

Thursday 29 January

9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.: DPI-NGO briefing on the experience of Jews in Greece during the Holocaust, in the Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium.   Non-UN grounds pass holders please register at  HU2 at un.org .

6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.:   Film screening, “Forgiving Dr. Mengele”, with statement by Ms. Eva Kor, who makes an inspirational visit to Germany, Israel and Auschwitz to come to terms with her experience.     Venue: Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium.   Please register at  holocaustremembrance at un.org or by fax 212-963-0536.

Contact:  mann at The Question of Palestine and the United Nations (Arabic edition):   The Arabic edition of The Question of Palestine and the United Nations will be published by the end of January.        
Contact:  ueki at un.org

—————–

From: UN DAILY NEWS , UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE
16 January, 2009 =========================================================================

BAN URGES UNILATERAL ISRAELI CEASEFIRE IN GAZA; MEETS WITH PALESTINIAN LEADERS

On the third day of his intensive diplomatic mission to secure a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon conferred today with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah, and called on Israel to unilaterally cease hostilities.

“We have no time to lose,” he told reporters after his meetings in the West Bank on the 21st day of the offensive Israel launched with the stated aim of halting Hamas rocket attacks against it from Gaza. “A unilateral declaration of a ceasefire would be necessary at this time.” He said he would exert his utmost efforts to realize that goal and underscored his full support for President Abbas’s leadership.

“There is increasing hope that flows from the intensive political discussions that are going on, not least by our Secretary-General, which is much appreciated here on the ground,” a top UN official in Gaza reported, speaking to journalists in New York by video link from ground zero from where he has been giving daily briefings on the death and destruction.

“Let’s keep the urgency and momentum moving, because if there were a briefing tomorrow I am sorry to say there are people alive including children right now who will be dead, so that is where the imperative lies, we have to get the ceasefire because every hour that passes without a ceasefire is costing the lives of innocent civilians here,” Gaza Director of Operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) John Ging said.

As of noon New York time the death toll stood at 1,115 dead, including 370 children, with 5,150 wounded, 1,745 of them children, according to Gazan health ministry figures, which UN officials call credible. Mr. Ging said 4,000 more people had fled their homes in the last 24 hours to seek shelter in UN schools, bringing the total to 49,000. Hundreds of thousands of others are estimated to have sought refuge with relatives and friends in less conflict-hit areas of Gaza.

After meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem last night, Mr. Ban told reporters the Israeli Government would make an important decision on a ceasefire and he hoped it would be the right one, with Israel showing the world that it is a responsible member of the UN, abiding by Security Council resolutions. Last week the Council called for an immediate ceasefire.

Following his stop in Ramallah, Mr. Ban travelled to Ankara to meet with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, stressing his determination to work with the Turkish Government to help find solutions to the terrible crisis in Gaza. At the weekend he will go to Lebanon and Syria for talks with Government officials in both countries about the violence in Gaza and southern Israel, before attending the Arab Economic Summit in Kuwait on Monday.

Mr. Ging said UNRWA, which aids 750,000 Palestinian refugees in Gaza, about half the population, is establishing alternative warehouses and is “up and running again” after Israeli shells destroyed the warehouse in its main compound yesterday, sending hundreds of tons of food and medicine up in flames. The fire continued to burn today. “Massive devastation and destruction” was reported in the area of the compound, he added.

“I myself would never have predicted what has happened in full view of the whole world over these past 21 days and nights, but it has happened and continues right now, but I am hopeful, not least because of the efforts of our Secretary-General, which is there for all to see, and I wish others would join him in the degree of commitment and pro-activity that he is bringing to bear.”

DPI UPDATES (16 – 31 January 2009)

• Monday 26 January 2009

• Tuesday 27 January 2009

• Wednesday 28 January

• Thursday 29 January

New Fascism Hunts Roma.
David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Nov 13 (IPS) – A political ideology based on the desire to exterminate Roma gypsies is emerging in parts of Europe, a Brussels conference has been told. Following a number of violent attacks on Roma by skinheads and other extremists in Bulgaria, it was announced during August 2007 that the far-right National Guard party was being established. The ‘anti-gypsyism’ advocated by its leader Vladimir Rasate could be compared to the anti-Semitism that helped bring the Nazis to power in 1930s Germany, according to Michael Stewart, professor of anthropology at University College London. “With the National Guard party, the disposing of the Roma is seen as a basis for national renewal,” said Stewart, who has worked extensively with Roma communities in former communist countries. “This is a new phenomenon in Europe that has not existed before. It is a real danger.” Stewart’s comments, delivered to a hearing in the European Parliament Nov. 13, echo the findings of a recent report on hate crime against Roma by Human Rights First. The New York-based organisation stated that for Roma in some countries “the newly virulent anti-gypsyism is an eerie reminder of the Porrajmos, the Romany Holocaust during the Second World War that killed more than half of Europe’s Roma population. “When senior European political leaders publicly discuss ‘solutions’ to the ‘Roma problem’, advocating the use of dynamite, electrified fences, mug shots, fingerprinting of men, women and children, and deportations, historical parallels inadvertently come to mind.” The hostility against Roma has been particularly acute in Italy, where parties in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling coalition have openly tried to portray all Roma as criminals. In May, the Italian government introduced a ‘security package’ which provided for the dismantling of Roma camps and the automatic deportation of migrants who cannot prove they have regular employment.

Discrimination against Roma in Italy is “unrivalled by any other country in Europe,” said Monica Rossi, researcher at the University of Rome, explaining that Roma are denied the official status of a minority and are unable to claim Italian citizenship. Programmes ostensibly aimed at allowing Roma children go to school have failed, she said. “After 40 years of having schooling projects, we have got 20 underage Roma who are in secondary schools. That is out of a population of 15,000 people.”

Graziano Halilovic from Xoraxane Rrom, Italy’s Roma federation, described the conditions in the camps where his people live as “pretty extreme”.

“It’s a shame for the Italian nation to allow Roma to live in such conditions,” he added. “What’s even worse is that Italy is a part of the European Union. Italy’s shame can readily become the shame of the European Union.”

During September, the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, hosted a Roma summit, which heard calls for the development of an EU strategy on Roma inclusion. Estimated to comprise between 12 and 15 million people, the Roma are frequently described as the largest ethnic minority in Europe, up to nine million of which live within the EU’s 27 countries.

Valeriu Nicolae, secretary-general of the European Roma Grassroots Organisation, said Roma are not properly consulted when policies affecting them are being formulated. “The main body dealing with Roma issues in the European Union — which is the European Commission — does not employ any Roma or any Roma policy expert,” he said.

Jan Jarab, a Commission official dealing with social policy, said the EU’s executive is willing to increase its efforts to ease the plight of the Roma. But it is reluctant, he added, to simply “repackage” previously introduced laws against discrimination and “put on the label ‘strategy’.”

At the moment, policies in EU countries on Roma are often based on either a ‘laissez-faire’ approach or repression, he said. He cited Spain as a country where success has been registered in providing Roma with decent jobs and housing.

Marian Nedelica, a teacher in the Romanian city Craiova, said that although his country has enacted a law guaranteeing access to education, some 27 percent of Roma children do not attend school. Penalties should be introduced against school authorities that allow discrimination to occur, he argued.

Livia Jaroka, a Hungarian member of the European Parliament of Roma origin, said that her people suffer from an “extreme sub-Saharan Africa type of poverty.” Instruments to punish EU governments that fail to enforce the Union’s anti-discrimination laws are needed, she added.

Gabriela Hrabanova, an official with the Czech ministry of labour and social affairs, said that there is a “lack of coordination” between the EU’s member states on issues concerning the Roma. “In many member states, there is nothing going on at the local level, although on paper it looks like everything is great.”

[EUobserver Comment] No easy answers to the status of Ossetia, Abkhazia and others – 24.10.2008.

The collapse last week (on the first day!) of EU backed peace talks between
Georgia and Russia to resolve the crisis in the breakaway regions of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, with the sides unable to enter the same room, serves
merely to illustrate that there are no easy answers to the question of the
status of Ossetia, Abkhazia, and indeed many other territories in the
world, writes MEP Richard Corbett.
 http://euobserver.com/9/26983/?rk=1

===============

Strained relations between Russians, EU monitors in Georgia – 24.10.2008.

Russia is not informing the EU mission of their deployment of troops, nor
is it allowing observers to enter Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Hansjorg
Haber, the head of EU’s civilian monitoring mission to Georgia (EUMM) has
said.
 http://euobserver.com/9/26993/?rk=1

==============
 Romania opens door to Gazprom pipeline – 24.10.2008.

Romania is open to investing in the Gazprom pipeline South Stream, not just
the EU Nabucco project, designed to reduce energy dependency on Russia,
Romanian minister of economy Varujan Vosganian said on Thursday as general
elections loom.
 http://euobserver.com/9/26988/?rk=1

[Comment] Transport – go green or go under.
RUPERT WOLFE MURRAY, from Romania – an Olinion on EUobserver, September 10, 2008.

EUOBSERVER / COMMENT – Are there any political leaders in the EU who say we must (urgently) move towards renewable-energy-transport and that road-building can no longer be our top transport priority?

The issue is getting urgent and we must prepare for the risk of oil depletion and global warming, which could result in a six-metre rise in sea levels.

(Rupert Wolfe Murray is an independent consultant based in Romania.)

Even a small risk of oil running out should be enough to make us urgently review our transport sector. The economic arguments are powerful: There is big money to be made by “electrifying” Europe’s transport fleets and the car industry is indeed quietly moving towards the electric car. But the political will is missing.

The “Peak Oil Theory” of global oil supplies “peaking” in 2012 was not taken seriously by the mainstream until recently. That attitude is starting to change. Shell Oil recently sponsored an advert in Time Magazine that quoted a former US energy secretary as saying: “We can’t continue to make supply meet demand for much longer. It’s no longer the case that we have a few voices crying in the wilderness. The battle is over. The peakists have won.”

If oil did peak, the consequences for our transport system, food supply and economic system would be devastating. Although there is growing interest in renewable energy, it is still considered somewhat marginal, uncompetitive and untested. There is no sign of a “rush to renewables” that could be compared to the “dash to gas” that took place in the UK during the 1980s. We are still tinkering at the margins.

The EU’s new transport policy must be based upon renewable energy. The first challenge is a conceptual one: People need to understand that a transport system can function on electricity just as efficiently as it now does on oil. The case for a renewable transport system needs to be communicated to the public and a massive investment plan worked out.

It is becoming increasingly clear that a combination of wind, solar, hydro and nuclear power could provide us with a carbon-free power supply. The most exciting developments seem to be taking place in the solar energy industry, where prices are falling rapidly.

***

European electrical grid to northern Africa:

A German utility recently commissioned a study into extending the European electrical grid to northern Africa – a potential major supplier of solar energy. Apparently Morocco could provide all of Europe with electricity if three percent of the country was covered with solar panels. Cost is a major barrier here, but if we consider that global companies will spend $3.4 trillion on IT this year according to Gartner, a consultancy, it is clear that the cash is available.

Another barrier to the development of electricity as a replacement fuel is the challenge of storing electricity. The electric car could provide a solution to this problem. The concept is simple: electric cars would charge up at night, when electricity is cheap, and during the day the grid could draw off some electric power from individual cars, when extra power is needed.

According to the Zero Carbon Britain group, if Britain’s car fleet became electric, it would provide the grid with more than enough reserve energy to meet any surges in demand.

Electric cars, bicycles and improved public transport could take care of almost all transport requirements at the urban level. But what about long distance transport? There is talk of biofuel and hydrogen fuelled planes, but the future for these fuels does not look promising.

***

The train from Naples to New York:

A strong transport policy would confront the energy and transport lobbies and phase out aviation altogether, replacing it with high-speed trains and wind-powered ships. A French train recently broke the 500-km-an-hour speed record.

If the Russians and Americans took the plunge, they could build an “Intercontinental Peace Bridge” across the Bering Straits and it might be possible to one day get a train from Naples to New York.

What about freight? Our economic system has become so dependent on big trucks that it is hard to think what could replace them. Europe’s freight-train infrastructure has become so neglected – with the exception of Germany – that upgrading it would cost trillions of Euros.

But there is another alternative: the airship. Interest in airships is currently growing and scientists say that future “freight airships” could pick up containers directly from a factory yard, fly across the world and deliver inside another factory yard. We need to urgently develop these future forms of transport before it is too late.

Rupert Wolfe Murray is an independent consultant based in Romania and author of the blog: www.productive.ro/blog

———–

Melting ice cap pushes Arctic up EU agenda.
New transit routes across the Arctic present great commercial opportunities and enormous environmental risks.
LEIGH PHILLIPS, EUobserver, September 10, 2008.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The rapid melting of the polar ice cap in the Arctic offers Europe a “first-time opportunity” to access new trade routes and massive oil and gas deposits, the European Commission has said – developments that are pushing the EU’s polar strategy up the policy agenda.

Speaking in Ilulissat, Greenland, on Tuesday (9 September) to a conference of the Nordic Council of Ministers dedicated to Arctic issues, the EU’s fisheries and maritime affairs commissioner Joe Borg said: “As the ice recedes, we are presented with a first-time opportunity to use transport routes such as the Northern Sea Route.

“This would translate into shorter transportation routes and greater trading possibilities, and will provide a better opportunity to draw upon the wealth of untapped natural resources in the Arctic,” Mr Borg told the council, an intergovernmental forum for co-operation between the Nordic countries established after the Second World War.

The Nordic Council brings together EU member states Denmark, Finland and Sweden alongside Norway and Iceland – both outside the bloc – as well as the autonomous territories of Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Aland Islands.

:

In his speech, Mr Borg also highlighted a document published earlier this year by the commission jointly with the EU’s chief diplomat, Javier Solana, that mapped out the latest thinking from Brussels on the security implications of climate change.

The seven-page paper authored by Mr Solana and commissioner for external relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner, distributed to EU government leaders in March, argued that the European Union should boost its civil and military capacities to respond to “serious security risks” resulting from catastrophic climate change.

The paper, Climate Change and International Security, underlined the risks and opportunities presented by the melting Arctic, alongside concerns about increased numbers of migrants, territorial disputes, water shortages in Israel and decreases in crop yields in the broader Middle East. Political radicalisation as a result of climate insecurity, sea-level rises and extreme weather events also present security challenges, according to the report.

Commissioner Borg emphasised the centrality of the Arctic in EU security thinking: “This document highlights the growing geopolitical importance of the Arctic region … [with the] opening up [of] new waterways and international trade routes, and the increased accessibility to the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region.

“This accessibility, in conjunction with territorial claims, is changing the geo-strategic dynamics of the region with potential consequences for international stability and for European security, trade and resource interests,” he added.

Regional governance:

Later this year, the commission is to present a communication dedicated to the Arctic region that will tackle issues related to climate change as well as regional governance.

The communication is to propose three main actions. Firstly, the commission is to propose measures supporting scientific research and monitoring with the aim of safeguarding the Arctic environment.

The commission is also interested in the exploitation of Arctic resources such as hydrocarbons and other commodities. The commissioner underscored that this must be done in a sustainable manner, but he also said that the communication hopes to outline how all regions that border the Arctic could gain equal access to such bounty.

“We should seek to apply the principles of a level playing field and reciprocal market access in the Arctic,” he said.

The commissioner also said the EU should seek to ensure equal access to any new fishing opportunities via new regulation and work towards an international fisheries conservation and management scheme for the Arctic – something which has never been implemented.

The third element of the commission’s new thinking on the Arctic is developing the governance of the region.

Noting that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and work performed by the Nordic Council, the Arctic Council and other bodies have already played something of a function in this area, the commissioner said: “Nevertheless, we should be open to develop this system further,” he said, adding that international environmental treaties that apply to the Arctic should be revisited.

In June, the Nordic Council published an extensive study of EU-Arctic policies, and called on the bloc to establish a self-standing Arctic-dedicated unit within the European Commission. The document also suggested the EU needed to “establish, intensify and possibly formalise international co-operation with Arctic regional bodies”.

‘Crazy situation’

Environmentalists agree with the commission that the melting ice cap is a brute fact and that in the absence of appropriate governance, there could be a ‘scramble for the Arctic’ without movement by the EU in this direction.

“There is no environmental management framework for the Arctic,” Neil Hamilton, the director of the WWF’s Arctic programme.

“There is overlapping legislation in various countries, but nothing Arctic-specific, with a result that everyone is looking to Arctic exploitation instead of sustainable development.

“We have a crazy situation where every one is rushing to get into fishing, shipping and oil and gas, but no one’s looking at the manner in which it will occur.”

“It’s not that there should be no exploitation at all,” qualified Mr Hamilton. “Instead, there should be effective management, which we take to mean collaborative management between the different countries.

“Done right, it could be a model for oil and gas extraction for the world.”

But green groups are clear that the emphasis should be on sustainable development, rather than the rush for resources.

“On the other hand, if you open up shipping routes, it could have significant global implications.

“The worst-case scenario would be oil spills in the Arctic, which are impossible to clean up, given the conditions there. And a spill in the Arctic would be catastrophic.”

The EU Must Reengage in the Moldova’s Transnistria (Trans-Dniester ) Problem To Avoid a Russian-Ossetian Type of Intrusion. What is at Stake here Is the Clear Return to a Reasserting Russia That Has Throws a Shadow Reading   Cold War II. Front-line Countries are the GUAM Countries: Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova. The Latter Is The Only One That Does Not Border Russia – But Is In Danger of Becoming Another Belarus.

——–

[Comment] The EU should re-engage with Moldova’s ‘frozen conflict.’
Nicu Popescu, August 30, 2008, The EUoserver.

EUOBSERVER / COMMENT – Recently, the EU has learned that a war over an obscure place such as South Ossetia can shatter the arrangements of post-Cold War Europe. The armed conflict between Russia and Georgia has reverberated even more shockingly across the post-Soviet space. Without stronger engagement with its neighbours, the EU might end up with a bi-polar Europe, not a “ring of friends” in its neighbourhood.

In addition to Abkhazia and South Ossetia [in Georgia], Transnistria is a third “frozen conflict” zone supported politically, economically and militarily by the Russian Federation and used to exert influence on Moldova. The war in Georgia is beginning to have an impact in Moldova. The danger is not that of another war, but of unsustainable peace and the transformation of Moldova into a second Belarus.

***

At just 100 kilometers from the EU border, Transnistria is the closest unsolved secessionist conflict to the European Union. This conflict undermines Moldovan statehood, threatens Romania and Ukraine’s security and complicates EU-Russia relations. In the last years the EU has significantly stepped up its engagement in Moldova. The EU offered Moldova a visa-facilitation agreement and trade liberalization as well as making Moldova the second biggest recipient of EU assistance in the European neighbourhood (after Palestine). The EU also appointed an EU Special Representative, introduced a travel ban against Transnistrian leaders, and launched an 120 people-strong EU Border Assistance Mission to reduce the smuggling on which Transnistria thrived. The EU efforts are partly effective, but they need time, which might be in short supply.

***

On the wings of a military victory in Georgia, Russia’s president Dmitri Medvedev convoked his Moldovan counterpart, Vladimir Voronin, to a summit in Sochi. Russia offered Moldova a settlement in Transnistria on Russian terms, or to face gradual recognition of Transnistrian independence. Russia wants a return to the “Kozak Memorandum” – a 2003 deal on Transnistria that the EU and Moldova refused for fear of entrenching Russian military presence in Moldova. Russia also wants Moldova to interrupt virtually all its cooperation with NATO, condemn Georgia, possibly end the presence of the EU Border Assistance Mission in the region and accept a dysfunctional federalisation agreement.

The Moldovan government has been ready to accept some Russian conditions, but not a Russian military presence in the reunified Moldova. It also wants Russian peacekeepers to be replaced with international civilian monitors, but has little EU support on that. On this really tough issue Moldova is left pretty much on its own with Russia.

***

The EU has an enormous, but untapped potential in Moldova. This country is on the EU’s fringe, but 1,000 km away from Russia. Moldova wants to join the EU. The EU accounts for over half of Moldovan external trade, while Russia has roughly 15 percent. Still, many EU member states have been too hesitant to support stronger EU involvement in Moldova.

The EU’s biggest failure is to push for the transformation of the Russia-dominated and biased peacekeeping operation in Moldova. The EU discussed this twice. In 2003, the idea was refused by Russia. But in 2006 a few EU member states killed the scheme for fear of irritating Russia. This approach now has to be revisited in the light of the Georgian crisis.

***

There are four things the EU should do to send a symbolically powerful signal of engagement. The first, is for EU High Representative Javier Solana to visit Moldova, a country he has not been to since 2001. In the aftermath of the war in Georgia, European heads of state and foreign ministers have visited Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan to show solidarity, but not Moldova (except for the Romanian president).

The second, is for EU member states to urgently agree on a mandate to launch negotiations on a new enhanced EU-Moldova agreement, a process that is already underway with Ukraine and even Russia. The negotiations themselves on this agreement could start after the Moldovan elections in March 2009. Despite some problems with democracy, Moldova along with Ukraine still remains one of the most pluralistic post-Soviet states.

Thirdly, the EU should agree internally that the current peacekeeping format in Transnistria is biased and should launch an initiative to internationalize the force, while offering a comprehensive EU civilian presence upon Moldovan invitation.

Fourth, the EU should offer to discuss a road-map for a visa-free regime between the EU and Moldova. This would be the strongest signal for both Moldova and Transnistria that they have a future in a Europeanised and reunified country. And it would also be a good demonstration of the EU’s ability to prevent future instability and conflict in its neighbourhood through soft, not hard, power.

Nicu Popescu is research fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, London office

This weekend, as expected, the TV was plastered with the Russians in Georgia and the Beijing Olympics.

President Bush and Secretary Condaleezza Rice said that Russia will not get away with this like it happened in Hungary.

On CNN, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the man with the Kosovo and Bosnia experience, said this was not Kosovo. The Russians were ready to stage this action already two years ago. It happened now because there was a Russian provocation and there has been indeed a real ethnic cleansing going on in Ossetia and in Abkhazia that caused many thousands of refugees pouring continuously into Georgia. The US says the number is 150,000 displaced people.

Holbrooke looks back into history and thinks of Budapest of 19956, Prag of 1966, Afghanistan of 1968 – so this is the invasion of Georgia that was executed in similar methodology.

Dmitry Simes, President of the Washington DC Nixon Center, and Rose Gottemoeller, Director of Carnegie, Moscow, agree to the above and say that the fact that this happened again at the time of the Olympics, just shows the Putin self confidence and that Putin does not worry that this will harm Russia’s Sochi Winter Olympics of 2014. That area is in fact just across the border from were fighting was going on now.

Governor Bill Richardson stressed that this is not time for high US talk, simply, “we have no leverage on Russia,” so we have to engage them and not isolate them. He knows the area, problems, has been there – all as part of his UN Ambassadorship.

Georgia was incorporated into Russia in 1801 and stayed under Russian rule for 190 years. They re-emerged as an independent state only in 1991. The Ossentians always considered themselves different from the Georgians – and also not similar to the Russians. The same goes for Abkhazia and Azaria as per Rick Stengel, editor of Time Magazine, who was this Sunday’s coordinator of the GPS program that is usually brought out by Fareed Zakaria.

So, can one ostracize Russia from world business? Will this bring about a renewal of the Cold War?

He does not think that Russia has become a revisionist State and that it is fighting for a larger Russia. His idea is that the area is specially complicated – something like the Balkans, and that there were many reasons to what went on.

———

***

Cold Friends, Wrapped in Mink and Medals.

By BILL KELLER
Published in The New York Times August 16, 2008

Writing in The Financial Times last week, Chrystia Freeland recalled Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay “The End of History?,” which trumpeted the definitive triumph of liberal democracy. The great nightmare tyrannies of last century — the Evil Empire, Red China — had been left behind by those inseparable twins, freedom and prosperity. Civilization had chosen, and it chose us.

Related
Map
Russia Marches, Neighbors Check Their Cards (The New York Times, August 17, 2008)
Specter of Arrest Deters Demonstrators in China (The New York Tines, August 14, 2008)

Chrystia Freeland’s Article: The New Age of Authoritarianism  www.ft.com August 12, 2008)

So much for that thesis. Surveying the Russian military rout of neighboring Georgia and the spectacle of China’s Olympics, Ms. Freeland, editor of The Financial Times’s American edition and a journalist who started her career covering Russia and Ukraine, proclaimed that a new Age of Authoritarianism was upon us.

If it is not yet an age, it is at least a season: Springtime for autocrats, and not just the minor-league monsters of Zimbabwe and the like, but the giant regimes that seemed so surely bound for the ash heap in 1989.

The Chinese have made their Olympics an exultant display of athletic prowess and global prestige without having to temper their impulse to suppress and control. From the dazzling locksteps of that opening ceremony, to the kowtowing international V.I.P.’s, to the carefully policed absence of protest, this was an Olympics largely free of democratic mess.

Individualism has been confined between lane markers. The pre-Olympics promises that attention would be paid to international norms of behavior went unredeemed. The New York Times’s Andrew Jacobs followed one citizen who decided to take up the government’s Olympic offer of designated protest zones for aggrieved parties who had filed the proper paperwork. Zhang Wei applied for the requisite license and was promptly arrested for “disturbing social order.” Take that, International Olympic Committee.

The striking thing about Russia’s subjugation of uppity Georgia was not the ease or audacity but the swagger of it. This was not just about a couple of obscure border enclaves, nor even, really, about Georgia. This was existential payback.

It turns out that if 1989 was an end — the end of the Wall, the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire, if not in fact the end of history — it was also a beginning.

It gave birth to a bitter resentment in the humiliated soul of Russia, and no one nursed the grudge so fiercely as Vladimir V. Putin. He watched the empire he had spied for disbanded. He endured the belittling lectures of a rich and self-righteous West. He watched the United States charm away his neighbors, invade his allies in Iraq, and, in his view, play God with the political map of Europe.

Mr. Putin is, in this sense of grievance, a man of his people, as visitors to the New York Times Web site can see in the sampling of breast-beating commentary from Russian bloggers. It is safe to assume that Mr. Putin’s already stratospheric popularity at home has grown to Phelpsian proportions, not least among the long-suffering military.

In China, 1989 was the year that a spark of liberal aspiration flickered on Tiananmen Square, and was decisively extinguished. That was another beginning, or at least a renewal: of Chinese resolve. In May of that year, in the midst of the Tiananmen euphoria, Mikhail S. Gorbachev visited Beijing, and two visions of a new communism stared each other in the face.

The protesters on the Chinese pavilion held banners welcoming Mr. Gorbachev as a champion of the greater freedom they sought. Meanwhile, the visiting Russian delegation marveled at the abundance in Chinese stores, the bounty of a policy that chose economic liberalization without political dissent.

The Chinese and Russians scorned each other’s neo-Communist models, but in some ways they have evolved toward one another. Both countries now tolerate a measure of entrepreneurship and social license, as long as neither threatens the dominion of the state. Both countries have calculated that you can buy a measure of domestic stability if you combine a little opportunity with an appeal to national pride. (The Chinese “street” felt no more sympathy for restive Tibetans than the Russian blogosphere felt for Georgia.) And both have discovered that if you are rich the world is less likely to get in your way.

President Bush was mocked from both sides for his seeming impotence. Neoconservatives were appalled by photos of President Bush sharing a laugh with Mr. Putin in Beijing while Russian armor gathered at the Georgian border. For a president who has made the export of democracy his signature doctrine, that looked to the stand-tough crowd like a “Pet Goat” moment.

Others argued that this was a crisis Mr. Bush tacitly encouraged by talking up Georgia’s rambunctious president as a friend and NATO candidate. By midweek, possibly goaded by the wailing of neoconservatives and the aggressively anti-Putin rhetoric of Senator John McCain, Mr. Bush had abruptly amped up his opprobrium and dispatched an American airlift of humanitarian aid. And by the weekend there was a cold war chill in the air.

But Mr. Bush’s predicament is not just his. The question of how to deal with these reinvigorated autocracies bedevils the Europeans and will surely rank high among the legacy issues that confound Mr. Bush’s successor.

This time it is not — or not yet — the threat of nuclear apocalypse that limits the West’s options toward our emboldened Eastern rivals. The Chinese, in fact, are acting as if they have gotten past the saber-rattling stage of emerging-power status; they lavish diplomacy on Taiwan and Japan, and deploy the might of capital instead. The Russians may be in a more adolescent, table-pounding stage of development, but Mr. Putin, too, prefers to work the economic levers, bullying with petroleum.

The United States, meanwhile, is mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, estranged from much of the world, and bled by serial economic crises.

History, it seems, is back, and not so obviously on our side.

Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, covered the last years of the Soviet Union for the newspaper.

***

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The New Age of Authoritarianism.
By Chrystia Freeland
Published: August 12 2008 in The Financial Times.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, democracy was on the march and we declared the End of History. Nearly two decades later, a neo-imperialist Russia is at war with Georgia, Communist China is proudly hosting the Olympics, and we find that, instead, we have entered the Age of Authoritarianism.

It is worth recalling how different we thought the future would be in the immediate, happy aftermath of the end of the cold war. Remember Francis Fukuyama’s ringing assertion: “The triumph of the west, of the western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to western liberalism.”

Even in the heady days of 1989, that declaration of universal – and possibly eternal – ideological victory seemed a little hubristic to Professor Fukuyama’s many critics. Yet his essay made such an impact because it captured the scale, and the enormous benefits, of the change sweeping through the world. Not only was the stifling Soviet – which was really the Russian – suzerainty over central and eastern Europe and central Asia coming to an end but, even more importantly, the very idea of a one-party state, ruthlessly presiding over a centrally planned economy, seemed to be discredited, if not forever, then surely for our lifetimes.

That collapse brought freedom and prosperity to millions of people who had lived under Soviet rule. Moreover, the implosion of Soviet communism inspired hundreds of millions of others around the world to embrace freer markets and demand more responsive governments. The great global economic boom of the past 20 years, which has brought more people out of poverty more quickly than at any other time in human history, would not have been possible had the Soviet way of ordering the world not been discredited first.

Yet today, in much of the world, the spread of freedom is being checked by an authoritarian revanche. That shift has been most obvious in the petro-states, where oil is casting its usual curse. From Latin America to Africa to the Middle East, the black-gold bonanza has given authoritarian regimes the currency to buy off or to repress their subjects. In Russia, oil has fuelled an economic boom that prime minister Vladimir Putin, and some of his foreign admirers, mistakenly attribute to his careful demolition of the chaotic democracy of the 1990s.

For Russians, that argument is strengthened by the fact that the rising economic power of the moment – China – is unashamedly sticking to its faith in one-party rule. The end of the cold war made it tempting to believe that as countries opened up their markets, and became richer in the process, they would inevitably open up their societies, too. George W. Bush, US president, reiterated that hopeful thesis on his Asia tour last week, insisting: “Young people who grow up with the freedom to trade goods will ultimately demand the freedom to trade ideas.”

But the Chinese mandarins and the Russian siloviki are taking a different view – and acting on it. As China scholar David Shambaugh recounts in his new book, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation , the CCP studied the collapse of Soviet communism with great care. And rather than seeing it as proof of the inevitable, global triumph of western liberalism, the Chinese comrades treated the Russian example as a textbook case of what a ruling Communist party ought not to do.

In this version of history, sinologist Andrew Nathan tells me, 1989 is also a turning point, but not because that was when communism’s most notorious wall came down. Instead, the key event of that year was the bloody suppression of protesters in Tiananmen Square: “As a propaganda position they have put it out that we had a crackdown in 1989 and we saved the party and we saved the country,” he says. “We didn’t have a failure of will like the Russians. Without that, we wouldn’t have been a great, modern power.” That’s a point of view Mr Putin has embraced, too, describing the collapse of the Soviet Union as a tragedy and his own reconstruction of a neo-authoritarian state as the only way to restore Russian “greatness”.

The west has been remarkably sanguine about this resurgence of authoritarianism, and one reason is that, this time, the comrades have money. Even as the Kremlin repeatedly confiscates the assets not just of its own businesspeople but of foreign ones, too, investment bankers, and plain old investors, are flocking to a Moscow flush with petro-roubles. The same is true of the Gulf states. China, on a path to become the world’s largest economy, is the most attractive of all.

But the Age of Authoritarianism is bad news for all of us, not just the human rights campaigners that businesspeople and practitioners of realpolitik love to dismiss. Like all overly rigid objects, authoritarian regimes conceal a tremendous fragility in their apparent strength – and their leaders know it. It is this realisation that has driven Mr Putin’s systematic destruction of all forms of civil society – an eminently pragmatic measure, although it has mystified some outside observers, who wonder why so popular a leader needs to be so heavy-handed. China’s chiefs have figured this out, too, hence their anxiety about everything from the Muslim Uighurs to the internet to the former Soviet Union’s “colour revolutions”.

Of course, another way to ensure popular support for your authoritarian regime is by playing up nationalist sentiment. We are more tolerant of our home-grown bullies if we think we need them to fight our enemies abroad – as even democratic America has demonstrated in recent years. Mr Putin has understood this all along, launching a brutal attack on Chechnya even before his coronation as president in 2000.

Russia’s expert taunting of the hotheads in Georgia, followed by immediate and massive retaliation the moment Tbilisi took the bait, is the latest evidence that, for the Kremlin, neo-imperialism is an essential bulwark of neo-authoritarianism. Bringing down the walls really did make the world safer. Now that so many leaders are building them back up again, figuring out how to contain the 21st century’s monied authoritarians is our most pressing foreign policy dilemma.

 chrystia.freeland at ft.com

Small-scale farmers struggle for EU funds.

21.05.2008 – 11:10 CET | By Leigh Phillips for the EUobserver.

From BRUSSELS – While large EU states are scrapping over how to get more environmental bang for the EU’s agricultural buck, in the southeast corner of the EU, small-scale farming – which contributes the most to biodiversity – is not getting the support it needs.

This is the initial conclusion of a series of studies jointly realised by the WWF and the Dutch government which were presented to European Commission on Thursday (15 May).

The EU has made some €2.6 billion available for supporting rural development and the environment in Bulgaria and Romania up to 2013, but not much of this finds its way to subsistence farmers, according to the investigation.

There are currently 4 million subsistence farmers in Romania with less than 2 hectares of land that are not eligible for any kind of support.

In Bulgaria, there are 139,00 semi-subsistence farmers, of which only 30 percent are eligible for area-based payments.

“[These farmers] make a significant contribution to securing environmental benefits and services, from biodiversity to drinking water and flood management,” said Yanka Kazakova of the WWF Danube-Carpathian Programme.

In the Danube-Carpathian region, many local species and their characteristic habitats depend upon continued good management of small farms to sustain diversity.

This sort of farming depends on low-input farming practices and tend to be a more environmentally friendly form of agriculture than its industrialised cousin.

The highest concentration of well-maintained high nature value areas is in the countries of Central and South Eastern Europe, largely due to the traditional farming practices that remain in use. In Bulgaria, roughly one-third of the farmland is considered of high nature value.

EU agricultural support is supposed to help precisely this sort of farming, but instead is mostly directed at large landowners and agribusiness.

The WWF studies found that the basic problem is the focus on the economic viability of farms – effectively disqualifying the subsistence and semi-subsistence farms.

The investigation also found that although EU funding programmes include measures for supporting high nature value farmland, many farmers cannot apply for these or indeed any support as their land is not officially considered as agricultural land, although it may be rich in biodiversity.

Another problem plaguing many areas of the region is unclear land tenure. As a result, farmers can often apply only for funds for considerably less land than they actually use.

“The fact that high nature value farmland payments exist at all in these rural development programmes is noteworthy,” Ms Kazakova said. “Now they just need to be targeted more effectively.”

“It is essential that EU as well as national policy makers take into account not only economic but also environmental and social benefits of EU funding programmes,” she added.

 

{But what is economic benefit in a world that will become less petroleum based? What about the benefits of subsistem farming and local/decentralized markets – the so called farmers markets that survived even the Soviet collectivization drive? Is now the EU going to “Americanize those remaining vestiges of real private enterprise – the family agricultural plot? www.SustainabiliTank.info comment}

Half of EU citizens on the net, but rural Europe left behind. Out of the half a billion EU citizens, more than 250 million regularly use the internet, according to newly released figures.

A European Commission report on the results so far for i2010, the EU’s digital-led strategy for growth and jobs, further showed that of this number, 80 percent have access to some form of broadband connection.

April 18, 2008, By Leigh Phillips for EUobserver:

Additionally, says the report – released on Friday (18 April) some 60 percent of public services in the EU are fully available online, with two thirds of schools and half of doctors making use of high-speed internet connections.

“It is a welcome change of political direction that today, information and communications technologies, the main driver of European growth, are being promoted by all 27 EU member states in their national policies,” said Viviane Reding, EU information society commissioner.

“However, some parts of the EU are still lagging behind and are not fully connected,” she warned.

The report notes that nearly 40 percent of Europeans do not use the internet at all. While in Denmark only 13 percent of the population do not use the internet, Romania is at the other end of the scale with 69 percent of its population offline.

The report notes that the EU-wide average for DSL broadband penetration is nearly 90 percent (DSL networks are used by 80 percent of EU broadband subscribers, and so are used as a proxy by the report’s analysts for broadband more generally, although cable and wireless broadband services do also exist).

However, the report also says that figures for national broadband coverage also “hide a gap between rural and urban areas in several countries,” noting that full coverage remains a challenge in a number of countries.

Greece, Slovakia, Latvia, Italy, Poland, Lithuania and Germany show “a large gap”, between coverage in urban and rural areas.

Germany has a broadband coverage rate of 94 percent overall, but only 58 percent of rural areas have access to high-speed internet.

Greece, with its island geography comes in last on both scores, with under 20 percent of the country being serviced with broadband, and only ten percent having access in rural areas.

Wherever this rural-urban split happens, it is due to difficulties and increased costs involved with the provision of new technologies to areas with challenging topographies and population densities that make offering these services unattractive to companies that sell internet access.

UNI Telecom, the international union federation representing telecoms workers, argues that this is where the market liberalisation in the telecommunications sector is shown to fail, as private firms cherry-pick urban, population-dense and wealthy areas to build service infrastructure.

In the past, they argue, public service provision would have used the ‘postage stamp’ model where profitable urban areas subsidise the more expensive provision of service to rural areas.

The current situation however leaves rural, remote and poor areas with substandard service or even none at all, says the union. Urban zones with high concentrations of elderly citizens, who can have less of an interest in the internet, are also sometimes underserved.

A commission spokesperson conceded that this is the case, but countered that this is why EU rules on state aid permit public financing or partnerships to deliver broadband or other new technologies to such areas, ensuring universal service provision.

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.

“There have been some euphoric comments about Turkmenistan,” the ambassador said, stressing that the volume agreed by the two sides is “not enough”. In addition, he questioned the ability of Azerbaijan, another potential source, to fulfil the union’s sharply rising energy demand.

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.

Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.       www.alde.eu
ALDE public hearing “Republic of Moldova and its European future.”

This event is organised by ALDE MEPs: Cristian Busoi, Magor Imre Csibi,
Jelko Kacin and Istvan Szent-Iványi

06/05/2008, 15:30 – 18:30, ASP 5G1, European Parliament, Brussels

To register please contact  willem.vandenbroucke at europarl.europa…. and
visit our website http://www.alde.eu/index.php?id=96

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ALDE Seminar “Arctic Governance in a global world: is it time for an Arctic Charter?”
07/05/2008

Event date: 07/05/08 16:30 to 19:00
Organizer:
Location: Room A3G3, European Parliament, Brussels
For more information
Krings Thomas – Tel: +32 2 284 32 42