'foreign affairs' - tagged features

Angela Merkel this week became the first German Chancellor to address the Israeli Parliament. Merkel's three day visit aimed to upgrade ties between Israel and Germany and was described by both countries as exceptional. Seven German ministers also accompanied the Chancellor for a joint sitting with the Israeli cabinet - a level of consultation Germany usually reserved for a small number of EU states. Paying tribute to the "special relationship" between the two countries Chancellor Merkel said the genocide by the Nazis filled Germans with shame. However, more than sixty years after World War two an address in German in the Israeli parliament remains controversial. 

Russia is about to enter a new political era with last weekend’s presidential election. Or is it? President Putin is stepping down after serving two terms in office, as dictated by the Russian constitution and Dmitry Medvedev is taking over. Mr Medvedev has been plucked from relative obscurity to continue the path taken by his mentor, Vladimir Putin. However Mr Putin isn’t planning on retiring anytime soon – it’s expected that he’ll stay on as Prime Minister, raising fundamental questions about who will really be in charge of Russia. Emma Simpson has more from Moscow. 

Kosovo's independence was celebrated by tens of thousands in the new country's capital Pristina on Sunday the 17th of February. Posters were plastered across the city thanking the US and the European Union for their support. But as you might expect, that's not the story across the border to the north in Serbia. Many Serbs are angry with the US and Europe for blessing Kosovo's independence. Slovenia couldn’t be much further away from Serbia these days, in the political sense. It was the first province to break away from the Yugoslav union back in 1991. And it's come a long way since then. It currently holds the rotating EU presidency, and is something of a darling in the west. while Serbia remains more or less a pariah state. Within the EU opinions are divided over Kosovo’s independence, and whether Serbia’s right or wrong to complain about it so bitterly. Critics of the west’s media coverage of the move say Serbia’s been getting an unfairly bad press. And arguably, the country’s had a difficult rapport with the rest of Europe since the Balkan wars of the 1990’s. Our Brussels correspondent Vanessa Mock believes Europe’s relationship with Belgrade just got even more complicated. 

Back in November Network Europe reported on the case of 6 convicted French aid workers from the Zoe’s Ark group. Zoe’s Ark is a French charity that tried to evacuate orphaned children from the war-torn Darfur region of western Sudan. In the middle of this so-called rescue attempt in October they got caught in Chad with 103 children. At the end of December, a Chadian judge sentenced them to 8 years in jail with hard labor. Thanks to an agreement between France and Chad, the six were transferred to France to serve out their sentences, and a couple of weeks ago, a French judge held a hearing to figure out how to convert the sentences—as hard labor doesn’t exist in France. He’s now decided they’ll spend eight years in prison in France. 

The EU has finally decided to send a military force to eastern Chad to shore up its border with Sudan and try to protect the refugees in the area. But the mission is still beset with delays and fears that the region is too unstable for a peace-keeping force. So what do our leaders in Brussels believe they can achieve with this mission? Vanessa Mock reports that, on the military side there are signs of disorganization. 

When the Polish Liberal party won in October, one of the first decisions the new government took was to withdraw the country’s troops from Iraq by the end of this summer. The move has been approved by the president. That doesn’t mean Polish troops won’t be stationed around the world, on other foreign missions. 

Will last weekend go down in the history books? The landmark summit between the European Union and Africa was supposed to bring the two continents closer together. Some 80 leaders gathered in Lisbon, Portugal to forge closer ties and find new ways to cooperate on areas like poverty, migration and climate change. But disagreements over human rights and trade, sidelined talks of new partnerships. So was it all watered down or will it go down as a watershed in Afro-European relations? Vanessa Mock was our reporter on the spot. 

NATO defence ministers met this week to discuss the future of the International Security Assistance Force or ISAF in Afghanistan. Violence there has sharply increased over the past two years, and there've been numerous calls to beef up troops. But many NATO allies are reluctant to send additional soldiers. Sweden is part of ISAF and early next month 350 Swedish soldiers are being sent to northern Afghanistan, to replace the Swedish force currently serving there. Radio Sweden visited the unit as they're preparing for their mission. 

This week the European Union stepped up pressure on the military regime in Myanmar, which is called Burma by the democratic opposition. For a decade now the EU has imposed sanctions on Burma including a travel ban on leading politicians, a freeze on their assets and a trade ban with large state companies. Now, EU foreign ministers have ramped up sanctions to stop the import of Burmese wood products, timber, minerals and precious stones. But not petrol and gas, an important source of revenue. One of the main foreign companies doing business in the country is the French oil company Total. 

Another decision EU ministers took on Monday in Luxembourg was to sign a new agreement with Montenegro, the world's newest state which seceded from its union with Serbia in May 2006. The Stabilisation and Association Agreement is a first step on the road to EU membership. 

A big topic which is up for discussion at the United Nations shortly is Kosovo. The Security Council is due to vote on the province's future on December 10th. Russia is expected to veto the UN's autonomy plan for the breakaway Serbian province. And Kosovo says it will declare independence after the December 10 deadline. But Serbia says it won't accept losing its southern province. In the latest round of diplomatic efforts, the Dutch Minister for European Affairs, Frans Timmermans, traveled to the region this week to ease tensions and to try to forge a compromise before a new meeting between Serbs and Kosovars in Brussels on Sunday. 

Meanwhile, European businesses in China often complain that they're the victims of unfair competition with local companies. They accuse Chinese judges of bias when arbitrating disputes and say competitors receive concealed subsidies from Beijing. And patent rights are also a problem - European companies claim their Chinese rivals make no bones about stealing their ideas. Well the European Commissioner for Competition Nelie Smit-Kroes is in China this week to discuss the problems. Radio Netherland's Beijing correspondent Karen Meirik asked Ms Kroes if the Chinese see her as an ally in getting their goods to the European market. 

Some European leaders talk of a “strategic partnership” between China and the EU, yet some major stumbling blocks in what some describe as a marriage, if not, at least an engagement, are standing in the way. One of them is the Weapons Embargo, imposed by the EU after the massacre by the People’s Liberation Army of unarmed civilians, around Tiananmen Square in June 1989. It’s now 18 years later, and the embargo is still in place. I asked RFI’s Brussels’ correspondent if the embargo isn’t a bit outdated by now? 

This week the Swedish parliament decided to scale down the number of countries it helps with foreign aid. It wants aid to be more closely tied to democracy and human rights in recipient countries. The number of recipient countries will be cut in half, from 70 to 33—Though the total amount of money will remain the same. Radio Sweden's Azariah Kiros has more. 

Europe’s biggest story this week was the return home of a group of Bulgarians who moved abroad in the 1990’s only to find themselves facing death sentences for crimes they didn’t commit. The 6 Bulgarian medics repatriated by Libya on Tuesday captured headlines across the continent. They’d been jailed for deliberately infecting children with HIV but had always protested their innocence. There were jubilant scenes at Sofia airport as the medics landed on their French government plane. 

Behind the scenes in Brussels questions are being asked about French coercion and threats to switch off Libya’s anti-missile shield. And there’s been fevered speculation as to exactly how the deal to free the Bulgarian medics was made, and who knew about it. Before the champagne corks in Sofia had even started popping difficult questions were being asked about the contents of the deal with Colonel Gaddaffi’s government. 

In the Netherlands recent news of Dutch soldiers being killed and wounded in Afghanistan has led the Dutch people to question their role in NATO’s operation there. A year ago Dutch troops were thought to be on a reconstruction mission - but as more of them get killed it's becoming clear there’s lot of hard fighting to be done. But it's not that NATO's stated aim in Afghanistan has changed. It hasn’t. It’s the Dutch public who’ve had a rude awakening to the realities of a new war. So why didn't they realise this was always going to be an offensive operation? Were Dutch voters hoodwinked by politicians into supporting a fighting force dressed in the sheep's clothing of peacekeepers? When deliberating on whether to get involved in the mission, the Dutch government put the emphasis on reconstruction. It was the prospect of helping rebuild Afghanistan which won over a majority of MPs. 

The G8 Summit this week, geared up to discuss global warming – but in contrast, it was "geopolitical cooling" alongside the widespread protests that made headlines. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s fiery broadside at US plans to deploy an anti missile defence system in Eastern Europe caused a stir. But is Putin following a international or domestic Russian agenda? Helen Seeney put that question to Duetsche Welle’s Moscow correspondent Bill Gasperini. 

Just how useful are G8 summits? What do they achieve? Are they worth the huge amounts of money paid out for security and infrastructure?  Two Network Europe correspondents have different views on the worthiness of the G8. 

On Wednesday the much-heralded, long awaited Swedish Embassy opened in Second Life.. The ceremony took place both in the real world, at the Swedish Institute in central Stockholm, and within Second Life. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt cut the virtual ribbon at the real world press conference. An added attraction is that people in the embassy can listen to Radio Sweden’s daily broadcasts! 

Serbia has a golden opportunity to boost its international image when it assumes the rotating presidency of the Council of Europe next month. But Serbia's critics say the country isn't fit to lead Europe's foremost human rights body - certainly not without extraditing the indicted General Ratko Mladic. War crimes prosecutors in The Hague have criticized Belgrade for not cooperating in the hunt for Mladic, and the issue has long soured relations with the European Union. The Dutch lawyer Phon van der Biesen told Radio Netherland's Sebastiaan Gottlieb why Serbia shouldn't chair the Council of Europe. 

Now, from organizations buying political influence we move to selling influence in return for letting someone set up a military base in your backyard. That someone is, of course, the US and the proposed new military bases would be built in Poland and the Czech Republic. The plans have prompted lively debate there and have angered Russia considerably. Radio Prague's Rob Cameron has the story. 

A top EU official has warned that the European Union will soon be facing massive arrivals of illegal immigrants. EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini urged member states at a two-day meeting of EU justice and interior minister in Dresden, Germany, which ended on Tuesday, to step up cooperation in cross-border controls and data exchange to handle the influx of would-be migrants. 

The European Commission has unveiled an ambitious energy package, in a bid to combat climate change and reduce Europe's dependency on foreign energy sources. The move came just days after Russia turned off the taps on a key pipeline, running through Belarus to the Czech republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Moscow finally resumed oil supplies to Europe on Wednesday, but this new standoff with Russia's President Vladimir Poutin, highlights once more the urgent need for Europe to diversify its energy resources. reports from Brussels. 

Congolese victims can now take their Congolese torturers to court in France. This week the French Supreme Court overturned a stay on the case of the "disappeared of the Beach". In 1999, 350 refugees returning home to Brazzaville, in the Republic of Congo, were taken away by public authorities and "disappeared". Families of the victims, along with two survivors, started proceedings in French courts against some of the Congolese officials involved. The French Supreme Court's decision to allow the investigation to continue, affirms the concept of Universal jurisdiction. This means that for crimes involving torture, individuals can file a case in a foreign country for crimes committed abroad. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said relations between his country and Britain were unaffected by the British police investigation into the murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. His comments came as British police officers in Moscow conducted interviews with key witnesses to the bizarre poisoning case that has been going on for weeks. 

Opinion polls show that 65 per cent of the population of the Republic of Moldova favor European integration. In the Pouchkine park in the heart of the capital, Chisinau, many strollers told us they will be like children in front of a candy store, when their neighbor Romania joins the European club next year. 

The leaders of NATO's 26 member states gathered in the Latvian capital Riga this week for their annual summit. It's the first meeting the alliance held in an ex-Soviet state. Afghanistan was at the top of the agenda, as NATO-led forces there have faced fierce resistance from Taliban fighters in the south of the country in recent months. NATO commanders were now calling for more troops and more flexibility in the deployment of their forces in Afghanistan. 

The Security Council voted unanimously last week to impose sanctions against North Korea. But some analysts have questioned the wisdom behind the resolution and are asking if this is the best method to deal with the issue. One of the vocal critics is Sweden's Hans Blix, former chief weapons inspector in Iraq and now Chairman of the independent Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission. He tells Azariah Kiros that he sees the Security Council sanctions as understandable but hardly advisable. 

North Korea's nuclear ambitions are clear but how is the international community responding? Japan took action while the United Nations weighed sanctions against North Korea and the US, Britain and France sought a resolution under Chapter VII (7) of the U.N. Charter to make sanctions mandatory. And without sanctions? Experts fear a slippery slope. Joining me on Network Europe now is Shannon Kile from SIPRI the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 

We're going to take you to the hot spot. Sweden, along with Switzerland has had a presence in the demilitarized zone separating the north and south since 1953. On Wednesday, Radio Sweden's Dave Russell asked Commander Mats Fågelmark to describe the current situation on the ground -- he's the Deputy Head of the Swedish Delegation of the Neutral Nations Supervising Commission in Pamenyan, Korea. 

General elections took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina last weekend but many Bosnians are still trying to work out what the results mean for their country's future. The winners seem to be split between those who want to reform the country and its divisions, and those who want to retain the ethnic divide between Bosnian Serbs on the one hand and Croats and Muslims on the other. The international community is planning on handing over power to local politicians next year, but says that first, controversial reforms need to take place. From Sarajevo, DW's Nicholas Walton reports. 

For years, the world seemed to ignore Somalia’s military and political battles. When the United States tried military intervention, it ended with a hasty retreat as clan warlords ordered dead American troops be dragged through the streets. Now there is renewed interest in trying to find a settlement and see the creation of a viable government. It’s fuelled by fears of a country without a real government becoming the perfect hiding place for terrorists and fanatics. Then there are worries over the conflict spreading beyond Somalia's borders - and the river of illegal arms flowing into the country, despite a UN weapons embargo. 

... is in top gear. Paris has been careful to adopt a balanced approach, sending ministers both to Lebanon and Israel. And this week the French president outlined a detailed plan for a durable ceasefire. But does the Lebanese community in Paris approve of the French approach? Radio France International's Nick Champeaux takes up the story. 

Round table discussion from Radio Polonia with Krzysztof Bobinski, a specialist in EU affairs, from the Poland-Union magazine and Dmitriy Babich, a journalist and political analyst of the Russia Profile monthly, in Moscow.