NEWS,30.06.2013

Kazakhstan trade trip test for Cameron

British prime minister David Cameron flew into Kazakhstan on Sunday to help inaugurate the world's costliest oil project and seal new business deals, but faced immediate pressure to denounce the country's poor human rights record.
Cameron's visit, the first by a serving British prime minister, is seen by the Central Asian government as a coup it hopes will cement its status as a rising economic power and confer a degree of legitimacy from the West it has long sought.
It comes just days before the 73rd birthday of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled the former Soviet republic with a tight grip for over two decades.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair's consultancy firm already advises Nazarbayev, a former Communist party apparatchik who tolerates no dissent or opposition.
"We are very honoured and privileged to have such attention on the part of two prime ministers - Tony Blair and David Cameron," Kazakh foreign minister Erlan Idrissov told reporters in a phone call before the visit.
"We cherish and enjoy the support of developed countries."
Cameron, who is accompanied by a British business delegation, is expected to oversee the signing of about a dozen contracts involving British firms and to cut the ribbon on infrastructure elements of the Kashagan offshore oilfield.
Royal Dutch Shell has a 16.81% stake in the facility, which is in the Kazakh segment of the Caspian Sea. Nazarbayev said last week consortium members had so far invested $48bn, making it the most expensive oil venture in the world.
It is due to produce its first oil in September.
Cameron is also hoping to persuade Kazakhstan to expand transit rights for British military forces relocating equipment from Afghanistan between now and a planned withdrawal next year. Nazarbayev has already granted overflight rights, but Cameron is looking for land transit rights too.
As Britain's trade with the euro zone suffers because of the currency bloc's debt woes, it is looking further afield to forge business links with countries that have enjoyed rapid economic growth in recent years.
Tempting target
With a $200 billion economy, the largest in Central Asia, and deep oil and gas reserves, Kazakhstan is a tempting target. Britain is already among the top three sources of foreign direct investment, according to Kazakh officials.
Since its 1991 independence, officials said British firms have invested about $20bn in their economy, part of a total $170 billion ploughed into Kazakhstan since then. But more high profile trade links carry political risks.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said Cameron had a duty to use his trip to denounce human rights abuses.
"We are very concerned about the serious and deteriorating human rights situation there in recent years, including credible allegations of torture, the imprisonment of government critics, (and) tight controls over the media and freedom of expression and association," it said in a letter on Friday.
Cameron told reporters in Islamabad on Sunday he never shied away from having difficult conversations on such trips.
"In all the relationships we have there's never anything off the table and we raise and discuss all these issues, and that will be the case with Kazakhstan as well," he said.
"It is important to make this visit. It's very much something I chose and wanted to do."
Kazakhstan was a key market for British firms, he added, saying that other European leaders had visited and it was "high time" a British prime minister did too.
In another awkward twist for Cameron, the London-based daughter of a jailed former Kazakh businessman, Mukhtar Dzhakishev, has urged him to raise her father's case when he meets Nazarbayev.
But it is the case of Vladimir Kozlov, a jailed opposition leader, that activists most want Cameron to mention.
An outspoken critic of Nazarbayev, Kozlov was jailed for seven-and-a-half years in October for colluding with a fugitive billionaire in a failed attempt to rally oil workers to bring down the government. Kozlov denied the charges.
Idrissov, the foreign minister, said criticism of his country was overdone.
"We do not claim that we have got everything right," he said. "It was never going to be possible to turn a country with no democratic institutions or culture into a Jeffersonian democracy in two decades."

Europeans demand answers over bugging

The European Union angrily demanded answers from the United States on Sunday over allegations Washington had bugged its offices, the latest spying claim attributed to fugitive leaker Edward Snowden.
The report in German weekly Der Spiegel is likely to further strain relations between the United States and Europe, shortly after they launched formal negotiations to create what would be the world's biggest free trade area.
Der Spiegel said its report, which detailed covert surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) on EU diplomatic missions, was based on confidential documents, some of which it had been able to consult via Snowden.
"We have immediately been in contact with the US authorities in Washington DC and in Brussels and have confronted them with the press reports," the European Commission said in a statement.
"They have told us they are checking on the accuracy of the information released yesterday and will come back to us."
One document, dated September 2010 and classed as "strictly confidential", describes how the NSA kept tabs on the European Union's mission in Washington, Der Spiegel said.
Microphones were installed in the building and the computer network infiltrated, giving the agency access to emails and internal documents.
The EU delegation at the United Nations was subject to similar surveillance, Der Spiegel said, adding that the spying also extended to the 27-member bloc's Brussels headquarters.
It said the leaked documents referred to the Europeans as "targets", in intelligence activity reminiscent of the Cold War.
US Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes refused to be drawn into commenting directly on the allegations in a briefing in Johannesburg on Saturday, but said it was "worth noting" the US was "very close" to EU security services.
In another report on Sunday, Der Spiegel said leaked documents showed that the US secret services targeted Germany more than any other EU country.
Citing figures from NSA documents, the magazine said that half a billion forms of communication phone calls, emails, text messages and Internet chat entries were monitored in Germany every month.
The Spiegel reports are the latest in a series of allegations about US spying activity revealed by Snowden, a former NSA contractor who is holed up in a Moscow airport transit zone after the United States issued a warrant for his arrest and revoked his passport.
Speaking before the latest Spiegel revelations on Sunday, EU powerhouse Germany said the United States must quickly say whether the spying allegations were true or not.
"It's beyond our imagination that our friends in the US consider the Europeans as enemies," Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement.
"If the media reports are accurate, it is reminiscent of actions among enemies during the Cold War."
European Parliament president Martin Schulz said he was "deeply worried and shocked" by the claims.
"If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US relations," he said in a statement, demanding full and speedy clarification from the US authorities.
The US authorities issued an arrest warrant this month for Snowden after he revealed details of NSA's so-called PRISM programme which collects and analyses information from Internet and phone users around the world, with access to data from Google, Yahoo! and other Internet firms.
US officials say the information gathered is vital in the fight against global terrorism but the scale of the programme raised deep concerns around the world.
Der Spiegel also referred to an incident more than five years ago when EU security experts discovered telephone and online bugging devices at the Justus Lipsius building.
In 2003, the EU announced it had found phone taps in the building targeting the offices of several countries, including Britain, France and Germany. It was not immediately clear if Der Spiegel was referring to this case.
Even before the most recent allegations, EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding wrote to US Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this month calling for answers about its Internet spy programme, saying: "Fundamentally, this is a question of trust."
Snowden himself remains in political limbo at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after flying in from Hong Kong last week, unable to fly on without legal travel documents or exit the airport without a Russian visa.
Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said that US Vice President Joe Biden had asked Quito to reject any asylum request from the 30-year-old who is wanted by the United States on charges including espionage.
But he said Snowden's fate was in Russia's hands as Quito could not process his asylum request until he was on Ecuadoran soil.
"We have not sought out this situation," said Correa, saying it was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who recommended he seek asylum in Ecuador.
Assange, who is wanted for questioning in Sweden on sexual assault allegations, took refuge at the Ecuadoran embassy in London a year ago to avoid Britain putting him on a plane to Stockholm.
French MEP Jean-Luc Melenchon said Sunday that France should grant Snowden asylum and called for a suspension of all trade negotiations with the United States.
Earlier this month, Brussels and Washington formally launched negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement which would add tens of billions of dollars to the EU and US economies.

Kerry in last-minute push on Mideast peace

US Secretary of State John Kerry made a last-minute push on Sunday to revive Middle East peace talks as Israeli media said that days of exhaustive shuttle diplomacy had failed to break the deadlock.

Kerry has spent 13 hours with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since Thursday, with the latest session between the two men and their aides lasting until nearly 04:00 (01:00 GMT) at a hotel suite overlooking Jerusalem's Old City.

A sleep-deprived Kerry was to head to Ramallah in the West Bank on Sunday morning to consult for the third day in a row with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, a US official said. His previous two meetings with Abbas took place in Amman.

Israel's army radio painted a grim picture of Kerry's initiative, saying that he has apparently failed in his goal of restarting direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations after a gap of nearly three years.

The last face-to-face negotiations broke down quickly in September 2010, with Abbas accusing Israel of refusing to talk substance.

Sign on commitment

The Palestinian leader is pushing Israel to free the longest-serving Palestinian prisoners as a sign of commitment to peace, to remove roadblocks in the West Bank and to publicly agree to making the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war the baseline for negotiations.

But army radio said that Netanyahu was willing to consider just the first two conditions - but only after talks were under way, and even then in stages.

So far, Israel has flatly refused to countenance any return to the 1967 borders.

Army radio also said an Israeli committee was likely to push through the construction of another 900 new homes in annexed east Jerusalem, in a meeting scheduled to take place on Monday.

The committee had given final approval to around 70 homes in the same area on Wednesday, on the eve of Kerry's visit.

Palestinian leaders have accused Israel of a lack of sincerity by moving ahead on construction in east Jerusalem - which they want as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

A top priority

Kerry has made the elusive goal of Middle East peace a top priority. He is paying his fifth visit to the region since taking on the role of top US diplomat in February.

But he is running against the clock.

Kerry is scheduled to attend a meeting of southeast Asian leaders in Brunei on Monday, at which he will also hold talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the Syrian crisis and a row over the presence in Moscow of US leaker Edward Snowden.

Kerry - whose predecessor Hillary Clinton had made Asia a defining focus - also plans to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and to hold three-way talks with Japan and South Korea, US allies whose relations have recently been sour.

US officials said Kerry was dedicated to seeking progress in the Middle East and plans to speak before flying out. He cancelled a dinner on Saturday in Abu Dhabi on the Syria crisis to spend more time shuttling between Netanyahu and Abbas.

"Kerry is willing to put in the legwork necessary to move this process forward in a meaningful way," a US official said on condition of anonymity.

Tight-lipped about meetings

US officials have been tight-lipped about the substance of Kerry's meetings, fearing that any public statements could put at risk his efforts.

On Kerry's all-night meeting with Netanyahu and senior aides, a US official said only that the two men discussed a "wide range of issues related to the peace process" over a dinner of hummus, pita and sea bream.

Netanyahu had a tense relationship with President Barack Obama during the US leader's first term, with the Israeli leader resisting calls to renew a freeze on settlement construction as part of efforts aimed at leading to a Palestinian state.

Israel had observed a 10-month freeze on new West Bank construction which expired shortly after direct negotiations began in September 2010, with the renewal of settlement building causing the talks to collapse.

While some ministers and aides have described Netanyahu as increasingly pragmatic, he emerged from January elections with a coalition of hardliners, many of whom oppose a Palestinian state.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the far-right Jewish Home party, recently described the Palestinian issue as "shrapnel in the buttocks" a problem Israel simply had to keep suffering through but threatened to quit if the government agreed to a Palestinian state.

Abbas also faces internal dissent with the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the impoverished Gaza Strip, strongly criticising him for pursuing talks.