NEWS,19.07.2012

Border strike threatens to disrupt Olympics

 

The British government has warned unions that they risk public anger if strikes by train drivers and passport officials, which threaten to cause major disruptions to the London Olympics, go ahead.The Aslef rail union announced on Thursday that 450 of its members in central England would walk out between August 6-8 in a dispute over pensions, affecting passengers travelling from cities such as Sheffield, Nottingham and Derby to the capital.The decision coincided with a move by border officials to strike on July 26, the day before the start of the Games, potentially delaying thousands of visitors arriving for the showpiece event."They are holding a strike on what is one of the key days for people coming into this country for the Olympic Games," Home Secretary Theresa May said."They risk damaging people's enjoyment of coming through into the UK," she told Sky News. "We will of course put contingency arrangements in place to ensure we can deal with people coming into the country as smoothly as possible."The threat of transport chaos added to pressure on the government, which has already had to call in thousands of extra soldiers to guard the Games after a failed private sector recruitment drive left an embarrassing hole in security.The wet weather, too, has dampened spirits ahead of the sporting showcase, which has earned the nickname the "Soggy Olympics" in the British media.Perhaps it was no coincidence that Police lyrics "sending out an SOS", from the song "Message in a Bottle", blared out before the daily news conference at the Olympic Park in east London.Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt rejected accusations that the buildup to the Games had been a shambles, arguing that for such a major operation preparations had been remarkably smooth."Actually I think it has been a very smooth process," he told reporters, after a barrage of questions on issues ranging from security shortfalls to sanitation at the main Olympic site. "I think it has been an encouraging first week."I think it is very important that people understand that of course you are going to have a few hitches on a project of this scale, but actually things have gone pretty smoothly, and the athletes are getting a fantastic welcome in the village, and I think morale is very high."On the issue of the strikes, he said "It would be completely out of tune with the mood of the British public. This is a moment when Britain wants to show its best face to the world, and that is what the vast majority of the public wants as well."I would strongly counsel any unions thinking of disrupting this very important period, I think they would lose huge amounts of public support if they really tried to do this."The security glitch came after G4S said it could not provide a promised 10,400 security guards to staff Games venues, forcing the defence ministry to call up an extra 3,500 troops to take the armed forces contribution to 17,000.A further 2,000 troops may be required if G4S fails to find a minimum requirement of 7,000 staff, and on Thursday the government said 1,200 soldiers had been put on standby as a precaution.Hunt reiterated government assurances that the Games would be safe in a city where suicide bombers killed 52 people in attacks on the transport system in July 2005.Wednesday's suicide bomb attack on a bus carrying Israeli tourists at Burgas airport in Bulgaria could raise further concerns."Obviously we are monitoring the whole time what's happening with respect to the changing security situation, and we have extremely competent intelligence services who are giving us advice and we are responding to that on an ongoing basis," Hunt said when asked about the Burgas attack."The world can be absolutely certain that we will deliver a safe and secure Olympics. It has always been our number one priority."

China bolsters Africa ties with $20bn loans

 

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday offered $20bn in loans to African countries over the next three years, boosting a relationship that has been criticised by the West and given Beijing growing access to the resource-rich continent.The loans offered were double the amount China pledged for the previous three-year period in 2009 and is the latest in a string of aid and credit provided to Africa's many poverty-stricken nations.The pledge is likely to boost China's good relations with Africa, a supplier of oil and raw materials like copper and uranium to the world's most populous country and second-largest economy.But the loans could add to discomfort in the West, which criticises China for overlooking human rights abuses in its business dealings with Africa, especially in Beijing's desire to feed its booming resource-hungry economy.Hu brushed off such concerns in his speech at the Great Hall of the People, attended by leaders including South African President Jacob Zuma and Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema, a man widely condemned by rights groups as one of the world's most corrupt leaders."China wholeheartedly and sincerely supports African countries to choose their own development path, and will wholeheartedly and sincerely support them to raise their development ability," Hu said.China will "continue to steadfastly stand together with the African people, and will forever be a good friend, a good partner and a good brother", he added at the summit held every three years since 2000.Hu also pledged to "continue to expand aid to Africa, so that the benefits of development can be realised by the African people". He did not provide an amount.Hu said the new loans would support infrastructure, agriculture, manufacturing and development of small and medium-sized businesses in Africa. Critics say China supports African governments with dubious human rights records as a means to get access to resources.The EU has rejected what they call China's "cheque book" approach to doing business with Africa, saying it would continue to demand good governance and the transparent use of funds from its trading partners. Such criticism draws rebukes from China that the West still views Africa as though it were a colony. Many African countries say they appreciate China's no-strings approach to aid."Africa's past economic experience with Europe dictates a need to be cautious when entering into partnerships with other countries," Zuma told the forum."We are particularly pleased that in our relationship with China we are equals and that agreements entered into are for mutual gain," Zuma added."We certainly are convinced that China's intention is different to that of Europe, which to date continues to intend to influence African countries for their sole benefit."China's friendship with Africa dates back to the 1950s, when Beijing backed liberation movements in the continent fighting to throw off Western colonial rule.Chinese state-owned firms in Africa also face criticism for using imported labour to build government-financed projects like roads and hospitals, while pumping out raw resources and processing them in China, leaving little for local economies. "Certainly quite a number of us are thinking we need to move into more value addition," South African's Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies told Reuters."We need to export mineral products in a more processed form ... We need to bite this bullet very seriously." Trade has jumped in the past decade, driven by Chinese hunger for resources to power its economic boom and African demand for cheap Chinese products.China's trade with Africa reached $166.3bn in 2011, according to Chinese statistics. In the past decade, African exports to China rose to $93.2bn from $5.6bn.Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, for example, the world's most valuable lender, has invested more than $7bn in various projects across the continent.

NEWS, 08.06.2012.

EU agrees on border checks in visa-free area

 

European Union nations agreed Friday they can temporarily restore border checks within the visa-free Schengen area in case of a surge of illegal migrants, despite opposition from Brussels.Officials from Denmark, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said home affairs ministers from the 27-nation bloc had unanimously agreed to the move."Disappointed by lack of European ambition among member states", said the EU's home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem, who opposed the move.The agreement will enable the 26 countries in the travel-free Schengen area to restore border controls for up to a year under "exceptional circumstances".Those circumstances, according to demands made by France and Germany earlier this year, are problems related to illegal immigration, which has emerged as one of Europe's most sensitive political issues amid the debt crisis, slow growth and mounting unemployment.Going into the talks, Malmstroem had said: "We cannot accept what is on the table today."She has repeatedly argued that Schengen was never designed to control migration but to ease freedom of movement.The EU's Frontex agency that mans borders said in a report that registered illegal crossings on the outer borders of the Schengen area shot up by 35 percent in 2011.Numbers rose from 104,000 in 2010 to 141,000 the following year, largely due to flows across the Mediterranean from the Arab Spring upheavals.But the second biggest hot-spot was the border between Greece and Turkey, which saw 55,000 detections last year.With low-cost flights to Turkey on the increase as war, chaos and poverty send people fleeing hot-spots from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Somalia, the flow is forecast to increase.Responding to the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, France and Germany in April sent Schengen counterparts a joint letter calling for drastic change.But that was before the May election of socialist President Francois Hollande, who stepped into the shoes of conservative Nicolas Sarkozy.The new French Interior Minister Manuel Valls made no statement on arriving for the talks, but was in a tight spot. Should he have rejected the previous government's stand, his Socialist party would face the ire of the right just as the country heads into parliamentary elections June 10 and 17.Sarkozy, chasing the far-right vote, had threatened to pull out of the Schengen zone within a year failing improved action to keep out illegal migrants.Currently, the Schengen treaty allows renewal of border controls in the case of a terror or security threat thrown up by sports or other events.But the draft approved by the ministers would allow a state within the Schengen area to reimpose border controls for six months, renewable for another six "when the control of an external border is no longer ensured due to exceptional circumstances".

 

Euro Commission wants Greece to close banks

The European Commission is pressing Greece to wind down certain banks, possibly including its fifth-largest lender ATEbank, European Union sources said. Although it is the responsibility of Greece's central bank to close a struggling lender, the EU's executive also has a say under state-aid rules, which allow it to refuse a request to rescue a bank if the commission considers it too costly to save - effectively forcing the bank to be wound up. Throughout the crisis, the commission has rarely used the full extent of its state-aid powers and few European banks have been closed. If it were to use them in Greece, it would mark a more aggressive stance in tackling weak European banks at the heart of the crisis. It could use the same powers to wind up banks in Spain and Portugal, one of the sources said.A balancing act"We are moving into a new phase with Greece, Portugal and Spain," said one of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "Some banks are going to be squeezed. Some are going to be closed down. "It is always a balance," the source said, explaining that if a bank is central to a country's financial stability it might need rescuing, but otherwise it may have to be let go. "If you have a financial stability component, then you could be prepared to rescue a bank, but we are beyond that point now in a number of countries," the official said. "ATEbank will have to be closed or wound down over time." ATEbank and the Greek central bank declined to comment. Having declined to comment, the Greek finance ministry later denied the report. ATEbank management has in the past proposed merging all state-controlled banks, including the Hellenic Postbank, into one. If ATEbank were shuttered, it would not mean that the whole of Greece's banking system was collapsing. Other key Greek banks are not in the same danger and could benefit from any refocused capital. No decision till after electionsNo decision will be taken until after Greece holds elections on June 17. The outcome of the vote, which polls suggest could be won by a far-left coalition opposed to Greece's EU/Internationl Monetary Fund bailout, could fundamentally change Greece's ties to the EU. Last month, Greece's four biggest banks  National Bank , Alpha, Eurobank and Piraeus Bank  received €18bn in capital under the joint EU/IMF bailout, a €130bn programme that involved writing down the value of Greece's privately-owned debt, including sovereign bonds held by Greek banks. ATEbank, a state-owned agricultural lender founded in 1929, did not get money under the bailout after failing to present a plan for its own longer-term commercial viability. It is now the focus of concern, the sources said. The Greek authorities have started to make early preparations to wind down ATEbank, a process of liquidation that would not mean immediate closure but which is expected to begin in the second half of the year, one of the sources said. A Greek government source said shutting down the bank was a likely scenario, but reiterated the importance of the elections and said it would be some time before a decision was taken. A spokesperson for Joaquin Almunia, the EU's competition commissioner, said a restructuring plan for ATEbank, approved last year, envisaged further steps to restore the bank to health. This could include recapitalisation measures. "We expect new aid measures to be notified to the commission. When this is the case we will assess the situation of the bank," the spokesperson said. No major banksUnder any winding-up depositors, who had more than €17bn at the bank as of September last year, would be protected by the country's deposit guarantee scheme, which protects the first €100 000 of any deposit. The resources to pay for the winding down, which could include setting up a bad bank for risky loans, would come from the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund, at least in part. The fund was set up in July 2010 to help restabilise Greece's banking system. Any closure of a bank in Greece, whose future could determine the survival of the euro, would be highly sensitive. None of the country's major banks were wound up in the crisis. But officials believe the money left in the country's aid programme  around €7bn currently, with the possibility of €25bn more from the EU/IMF bailout funds  is insufficient to recapitalise all banks and that some must be sacrificed to secure the most important lenders. Greek banks suffered heavy losses on the government bonds they own when the country negotiated a writedown of its debt, known as private sector involvement (PSI), earlier this year. "This is such a dire situation," said another source. "PSI left Greek banks with huge write-downs and many have negative capital as a result. Wecannot recapitalise all the banks." Failed stress testSome in the Greek administration fear that closing a bank could send an unwelcome signal. "At this particular moment, you have the issue that the closing of a bank can trigger higher depression because of the perception," said one Greek official. "They are going to create even more destabilisation in the economy." ATEbank, which failed a Pan-European stress test last July, had customer loans of more than €20bn in September 2011, the most recent records available. The bank, which expanded beyond its agricultural roots into mainstream commercial banking between 2000 and 2009, racked up heavy losses on bad loans to farmers and consumers and suffered a large write-down in the value of its Greek government bond holdings. In the absence of a Pan-EU framework to wind down banks, the commission's power under the state-aid regime has made it the bloc's de facto resolution authority for troubled lenders. Winding up a bank in Greece would be left chiefly to the country's central bank and the European Central Bank. While the US has closed hundreds of banks since the sub prime mortgage crisis, European countries have been reluctant but there has been a gradual shift in this thinking. "In Europe, weak banks one way or another have been taken over by bigger banks," said a central bank source. "However, I think there are some cases where this is difficult because the condition of the banks is such that it doesn't make sense to keep the bank alive." Ireland's Anglo Irish Bank and Germany's WestLB are among the rare examples of banks that were shuttered in the crisis. Denmark also closed a number of small lenders.

NEWS,06.02.2012.

Palestinians take step toward unity

After months of wavering, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas took a decisive step Monday toward reconciliation with the Islamic militant group Hamas, a move Israel promptly warned would close the door to any future peace talks.In a deal brokered by Qatar, Abbas will head an interim unity government to prepare for general elections in the Palestinian territories in the coming months. The agreement appeared to bring reconciliation — key to any statehood ambitions — within reach for the first time since the two sides set up rival Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza in 2007.Monday's deal, signed in the Qatari capital of Doha by Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, put an end to recent efforts by the international community to revive long-stalled negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on the terms of Palestinian statehood. Abbas appears to have concluded that he has a better chance of repairing relations with Hamas, shunned by the West as a terror group, than reaching an agreement with Israel's hardline Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.Netanyahu quickly condemned the Doha deal. "It's either peace with Hamas or peace with Israel. You can't have them both," he said in a warning to Abbas, who has enjoyed broad international support. In moving closer to Hamas, Abbas risks losing some of that backing and hundreds of millions of dollars a year in aid.Qatar, awash with cash from vast oil and gas reserves, assured the Palestinians that it would help limit any political and financial damages, according to Palestinian officials close to the talks.Qatar is willing to spend as much as $10 billion to help repair the damage of the rift, including settling mutual grievances by supporters of Hamas and Abbas' Fatah movement who at the height of tensions fought bloody street battles, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the closed-door meetings with reporters. The figure could not be confirmed independently. Whether the Palestinian Authority loses any of the roughly $1 billion in foreign aid it received each year may partly depend on the interim government's political platform and Hamas' willingness to stay in the background.The new government is to be made up of politically independent experts, according to the Doha agreement. If headed by Abbas, devoid of Hamas members and run according to his political principles, it could try to make a case to be accepted by the West. Abbas aides said they were optimistic they could win international recognition.The Quartet of international Mideast mediators — the U.S., the U.N., the European Union and Russia — has said it would deal with any Palestinian government that renounces violence, recognizes Israel and supports a negotiated peace deal. Abbas has embraced these principles, while Hamas rejects them.Top Abbas aides Nabil Shaath and Azzam al-Ahmed said they are confident the new government will be based on the Quartet principles. In any case, they said, the interim government's focus will be to prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections, not to negotiate with Israel. Such elections won't be held in May, as initially envisioned, they said, but could take place several months later.In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. was seeking more information about what was agreed, and that reconciliation was an internal matter for Palestinians.” What matters to us are the principles that guide a Palestinian government going forward, in order for them to be able to play a constructive role for peace and building an independent state," Nuland said.” Any Palestinian government must unambiguously and explicitly commit to non-violence," she said. "It must recognize the state of Israel. And it must accept the previous agreements and obligations between the parties, including the road map. So those are our expectations."Nuland declined to say if the Fatah-Hamas arrangement would advance or hurt peace talks with Israel. She also appeared hesitant to address Netanyahu's warning to Abbas that the Palestinians can have "peace with Hamas or peace with Israel.""We maintain that both of these parties ought to stay committed to this process," Nuland told reporters.The European Union offered qualified support Monday, saying it considers Palestinian reconciliation and elections as important steps toward Mideast peace. The EU, a major financial backer of Abbas' Palestinian Authority, "looks forward to continuing its support," provided the new government meets the Quartet demands, said Michael Mann, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

Last year, Abbas and Mashaal struck a reconciliation deal that later became bogged down in disagreement over who would head an interim government. Hamas strongly opposed Abbas' initial choice of Salam Fayyad, the head of his Palestinian Authority. Fayyad, an economist who is widely respected in the West, said Monday he welcomed the new deal even though it would cost him a job he has held since 2007.The breakthrough came after two days of meetings between Abbas and Mashaal, hosted by Qatar's emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. After the signing, Abbas said that "we promise our people to implement this agreement as soon as possible."Mashaal also said he was serious "about healing the wounds ... to reunite our people on the foundation of a political partnership, in order to devote our effort to resisting the (Israeli) occupation."Abbas and Hamas have had bitter ideological differences, with Abbas pursuing a deal with Israel and the violently anti-Israel Hamas dismissing such talks as a waste of time. The rift deepened with Hamas' 2007 takeover of Gaza, which left Abbas with only the West Bank.However, some of those differences seem to have narrowed in recent months.Abbas has lost faith in reaching a deal, at least with Netanyahu. Low-level Israeli-Palestinian border talks last month — an attempt by the international community to revive formal negotiations after more than three years of paralysis — only highlighted the vast gaps.The Palestinians want the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, with minor border adjustments, for their state. Israel's outline of a border deal, presented last month, meant it wants to keep east Jerusalem and large chunks of the West Bank, not enough concessions to keep Abbas engaged.Mashaal, meanwhile, has been prodding Hamas toward a more pragmatic stance that is closer to that of the group's parent movement, the pan-Arab Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood scored election victories in Egypt and Tunisia in the wake of the pro-democracy protests of the Arab Spring, and has urged Hamas to moderate and reconcile with Abbas.However, Mashaal represents Hamas in exile and appears to have had differences with the movement's more hardline leadership in Gaza, which stands to lose influence and jobs in a reconciliation deal. Some of the Gaza leaders have resisted Mashaal's push for unity and moving closer to the Brotherhood, Hamas officials have said privately.It remains unclear how much resistance Mashaal will now face from the Gaza leaders of the movement. One of the biggest challenges of reconciliation — how to blend the two sides' separate security forces — remains unresolved.Still, a delegation from Gaza was present in Doha for the signing, a possible sign of Qatari pressure on the hard-liners. Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister of Gaza, said he welcomed the agreement.The agreement calls for rebuilding Gaza, which has been largely cut off from the world as part of an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade imposed after the Hamas takeover. The blockade was eased in the past year, but not enough to revive the Gaza economy, including the vital construction industry, and many large-scale projects remain on hold.Al-Ahmed and Shaath, the Abbas aides, said they expect the composition of the new government to be announced during a Feb. 18 meeting of Palestinian political factions in Cairo.They said Abbas would set an election date 90 days after the Central Elections Commissions has updated voter records in Gaza, a process that could take several weeks. The initial reconciliation pact envisioned elections in May, but this is no longer realistic, the aides said. Shaath said he believes the voting could take place by July.