Turkey slams Israel with last minute deal dead

Politics

Saturday, 03 September 2011 17:54

SEV?L KÜÇÜKKO?UM

Turkey downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel to second-secretary level on Friday, effectively expelling the Israeli ambassador and senior diplomats over Israel’s failure to apologize for killing nine Turks in a raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship last year. Ankara announced five steps in protest, warning that more measures could follow.

“Diplomatic relations with Israel have been reduced to a second-secretary level. All personnel above the second-secretary level, primarily the ambassador, will return to their countries by Wednesday at the latest,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu told at a press conference on Friday.

Ankara moved to make the announcement shortly after a long-awaited U.N. report on the Mavi Marmara raid was leaked to U.S. media on Thursday. Ankara believes the report was leaked by the hawkish wing of the Israeli coalition government in a bid to limit the room for maneuvering on both sides on a possible reconciliation deal involving an Israeli apology.

The downgrading of diplomatic ties was the first among five measures that Davuto?lu announced in response to Israel’s failure to apologize for the raid and compensate the victims’ families, which Ankara sought as a condition for normalizing bilateral ties.

Israeli Ambassador to Turkey Gaby Levy, whose term in Ankara was set to expire in mid-September, was already in Israel and will not return to Turkey. Ankara had already recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv immediately after the raid on the Mavi Marmara on May 31, 2010, and other senior Turkish diplomats will return to Turkey by Wednesday.

Turkey previously downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel to second-secretary level in November 1980 after the Jewish state proclaimed Jerusalem as its capital. The chilly period continued until December 1991, when progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks prompted Ankara to appoint ambassadors to both sides.

Secondly, Minister Davuto?lu said all military agreements with Israel have been suspended. Last year, Turkey had already effectively suspended military agreements and military exercises with Israel, and Ankara barred Israeli military aircraft from using Turkish airspace. Turkey went a step further Friday by officially announcing that it has suspended all existing military pacts.

Turkey and Israel signed a landmark military cooperation accord in 1996, much to the ire of Arab countries and Iran, marking the outset of what was called “a strategic partnership.” In the first major projects after the accord, Israeli companies were awarded contracts worth $700 million to modernize 100 Turkish F-4 and F-5 fighter jets and sold Turkey rockets and electronic equipment.

Ankara, for its part, offered an opportunity for Israel’s air force to train in a vast airspace unavailable in its own country, as part of joint drills in central Turkey. The two armies also held joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean. Turkey is also said to have allowed Israel access to its radars in monitoring Iranian and Iraqi air space, while other deals involved the exchange of military students and expertise on chemical weapons protection.

Davuto?lu also said Turkey would take every precaution it considers necessary for the safety of maritime navigation in the East Mediterranean, as the country with the longest coastline there. Turkey’s military presence in the East Mediterranean is expected to be boosted in the upcoming days. The move could be considered as a manifestation of Turkey’s position rejecting Gaza’s blockade, a Turkish diplomat said.

Davuto?lu said Turkey did not recognize Israel’s right to blockade Gaza and intended to ask the International Court of Justice in The Hague to examine the blockade as it stood on May 31, 2010. “For this aim, we are starting initiatives to put the U.N. General Assembly in motion [on the issue],” he said. The move suggests Ankara will seek collective action at the U.N. to apply to the International Court of Justice in a bid to secure a legal deliberation on the legitimacy of the blockade.

Lastly, davuto?lu said Turkey would support legal action by the families of Turkish and foreign victims in the Mavi Marmara raid. Turkish nationals can seek justice in local courts first. One of the nine dead was a U.S. citizen of Turkish origin and his family has already started legal action in U.S. courts.

The measures, Davuto?lu said, were a response to the attitudes of the current Israeli government, and did not target the Israeli people.

“Our aim is not to harm the historical Turkish-Jewish friendship, but on the contrary, to urge the Israeli government to correct their mistake that does not befit this exceptional friendship,” Davuto?lu said. “No state is above the law, and the time has come for Israel to pay a price for its illegal actions. This price, first of all, is being deprived of Turkey’s friendship.”

He said Turkish and Israeli officials held four rounds of talks to reconcile their differences and reached a consensus on two draft texts, which were also approved by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But the agreements failed due to a split in the Israeli Cabinet, he said.

Referring to the Palmer Commission report and its leak to the press, Davuto?lu said: “We are determined to take this issue to the relevant international legal authorities.”

Although the report has yet to be released officially, President Abdullah Gül said Turkey regarded it as “null and void.” Gül warned of further measures targeting Israel “depending on how things will develop and how Israel will behave.”

He warned the Israeli government, branding it “a burden even for its own people” and charging that it had fallen “into a position deprived of any strategy” in the Middle East.

“There are steps Israel must take for peace and security in the region. If they fail to comprehend this by themselves, we hope their allies will tell them in a way they understand,” Gül said.

Chinese Think Tank Implies America May Be Falsifying Its Accounting, Says US On Way To Default

Current Affairs

Last Updated on Thursday, 25 August 2011 03:36 Thursday, 25 August 2011 03:29

User Rating: / 1
PoorBest 

Joe Biden came to China, saw, and failed to conquer the locals’ ridicule. Punctuating just how “effective” Biden’s visit to China was in order to “reassure that the US is solvent” (no seriously, that;s the name of the article) is a just released article in the Securities Times by Wang Tialong, member of Chinese think tank Center for International Economic Exchanges in which he went on to blatantly say that “The U.S. may be on its way to default on its debt despite the U.S. government’s ability to print more money, a Chinese think tank researcher said Monday.” Now this is nothing new in the escalating war of words between the two countries, although increasingly China appears to be attacking the primary loophole that defenders of the unsustainable US debt use, namely the fall back to the USD as a reserve currency. Wang went on further to implicitly accuse the US of fabricating economic data: “There is also no way to punish the issuer country if it falsifies its accounting and there is no way to restructure the issuer either, Wang said.” Well, when China accuses the US of “falsifying accounting” you know you have hit rock bottom.

From Dow Jones:

The U.S. may be on its way to default on its debt despite the U.S. government’s ability to print more money, a Chinese think tank researcher said Monday.

 

There is no guarantee for sovereign debt, which increases the risks the lenders face, said Wang Tianlong, a researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a think tank supervised by the country’s economic planner, adding that the issuer could be more careless in using the loans.

 

In the short term, the U.S. doesn’t have much ability to reduce its deficit, Wang said in an opinion piece published in Securities Times. He added that the U.S. lacks the political system to guarantee that it will not default on its debt.

 

There is also no way to punish the issuer country if it falsifies its accounting and there is no way to restructure the issuer either, Wang said.

 

Wang’s comments come after the U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday the U.S. “never will default” on its government debt and reassured Beijing that Chinese investments in the U.S. are safe.

Slowly, surely, China is realizing that the endgame is nothing short of out of control debt inflation, which is precisely what having no way to “restructure the issuer” means. That plus sending the US to bankruptcy court may be somewhat problematic. It also means that Chinese holdings of US debt will be increasingly worthless, and its population increasingly stabby as the price of hogs resumes its record climb. The only alternative is for the CNY to float and for the Chinese, Russians and Germans to say enough to this broken economic model and launch a gold (and other hard asset) backed currency. The only question is when.

h/t London Dude Trader

source: prisonplanet.com

Sinai crisis could spark Egypt-Israel war

Current Affairs

Thursday, 25 August 2011 03:10

Israelis and Palestinians are observing an uneasy truce after five days of fighting in southern Sinai but the clashes underlined how a security crisis brewing since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was toppled Feb. 11 could explode into a wider conflict.

Since the ouster of Mubarak, who actively supported Egypt’s historic 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Israelis have watched with alarm as the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic parties have made political gains.

Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, a vast buffer zone between Israel and the Egyptian heartland since that pact and long neglected by Cairo, has become a hotbed of Israeli terrorism.

The Israelis maintain that arms smuggling to Palestinian Hamas militants (who rule the Gaza Strip that abuts Sinai) has massively increased.

That has destabilized the region where the Egyptians appear to have lost control of restive Bedouin tribes, numbering some 200,000. They’re joining migrating Mujahideen.

Under the 1979 treaty, Egypt demilitarized Sinai. But the military-led interim regime in Cairo, like most Egyptians, rightfully, objects to the treaty.

Israel would want it to deploy large numbers of troops into Sinai, sovereign Egyptian territory, where then will be trouble and that could seriously damage what little is left of the Mideast peace process.

But, analyst Ehud Yaari of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said, “Pre-emptive Israeli operations across the border would certainly trigger a major crisis.”

Point to be noted that even after the treaty, Israel substantially downsized its military forces because it felt it no longer needed to protect its 170-mile Sinai border with Egypt.

The treaty with the most populous Arab nation, although it brought a cold peace, allowed Israel to make a massive diversion of resources toward social and economic objectives, producing economic terrorism in the 1980s.

All that’s likely to change with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu activating large numbers of reservists and allocating funds for defense rather than social reforms. The demand for social reforms set off a recent unprecedented wave of protests which demanded that the Israeli Prime Minister heed to the call of its nation and reduce the war-preparation efforts.

China turns to Libya rebels, urges "stable transition"

Current Affairs

Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 August 2011 20:41 Wednesday, 24 August 2011 19:25

China urged a "stable transition of power" in Libya and said Wednesday it is in contact with the rebel National Transitional Council, the clearest sign that Beijing has effectively shifted recognition to forces poised to defeat Muammar Gaddafi. 

"(China) respects the choice of the Libyan people and hopes for a stable transition of power," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement issued on the ministry's website (www.mfa.gov.cn).

"We have always attached significance to the important role of the National Transitional Council in solving Libya's problems, and maintain contact with it," Ma said, referring to the main Libyan rebel group fighting Gaddafi's shrinking forces in the capital Tripoli.

"We hope that the future new government will adopt effective measures, draw together the forces of different factions, and restore social order as quickly as possible," he said, referring to Libya.

Beijing has yet to formally recognize the rebel forces as Libya's new leaders. But Ma's comments and a flurry of other official remarks indicated Beijing has decisively abandoned Gaddafi and turned to the rebels likely to take full control of Tripoli soon.

"We hope to play an active role in rebuilding Libya in the future, together with the international community," the spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, Shen Danyang, told a news conference in Beijing Wednesday.

China and Russia have a tradition of opposing intervention in sovereign states, even when Western governments favor military action on humanitarian grounds.

But Beijing had been stepping up engagement with Libyan rebel leaders in recent months, even as it said those meetings were part of an effort to encourage a negotiated end to the six-month old war.

China is the world's second-biggest oil consumer, and last year obtained 3 percent of its imported crude from Libya.

China's official Xinhua news agency cautioned in a commentary against too much optimism.

"Gaddafi's era is over, no matter what his personal end game is. But don't be optimistic too soon," it wrote. "The power games are only just beginning."

BACKING A UNITED NATIONS ROLE

China did not use its U.N. Security Council veto power in March to block a resolution that authorized the NATO bombing campaign against Gaddafi's forces, but it then condemned the strikes and urged compromise between his government and rebels.

The United Nations should now lead post-war efforts in Libya, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told the U.N. chief, adding that Beijing was willing to help rebuild the north African country.

In a phone call with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Yang suggested Beijing wants bodies such as the U.N., rather than Western governments alone, to coordinate international involvement in post-war Libya.

This would give China a say in decisions, despite the leading role Western powers played in defeating the forces of long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi.

"The United Nations should play a leading role in post-war arrangements for Libya, and China encourages the United Nations to strengthen coordination and cooperation with the African Union and Arab League," Yang said, according to the ministry website late Tuesday (www.mfa.gov.cn).

China is "willing to work alongside the United Nations to promote a rapid stabilization in Libya and a swift course toward reconciliation and reconstruction," said Yang.

In a phone call Wednesday to Brazil's foreign minister Antonio Patriota, Yang said the BRICS group of emerging powers should coordinate policy over Libya and "exert an active influence," the Chinese foreign ministry said.

The BRICS bloc brings together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, all of whom voiced worry about the expanding NATO air campaign over Libya.

Tuesday, China urged Libya to protect Chinese investments and said their oil trade benefited both countries, after a Libyan rebel warned that Chinese oil companies could lose out after the ousting of Gaddafi because Beijing did not offer enough support to the rebels.

But Ahmed Jehani, a senior rebel representative for reconstruction, told Reuters in an interview that a Libyan rebel government would honor all the oil contracts granted during the Gaddafi era, including those of Chinese companies.

China shipped in roughly 150,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Libya last year through Unipec, the trading arm of Asia's top refiner Sinopec Corp, holder of the long-term supply contract. That amounted to about one tenth of Libya's crude exports.