Ireland’s finance minister rejected the European Commission’s demand that it retroactively collect 13 billion euros in taxes from Apple, saying this was not Dublin’s job in an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) newspaper.

In the interview, extracts from which the FAZ published on Wednesday, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said the tax rules from which Apple benefited had been available to all and not tailored for the U.S. technology giant. They did not violate European or Irish law, he added.

“We are not the global tax collector for everybody else,” the paper quoted him as saying. The European Commission last year ruled that Apple paid so little tax on its Ireland-based operations that it amounted to state aid.
…

Britain’s most advanced and biggest warship, the 65,000-ton aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, berthed for the first time at its home port of Portsmouth on Wednesday.

The 280-meter (920-foot) vessel entered the harbor on England’s southern coast at 0610 GMT, greeted by thousands of spectators.

HMS Queen Elizabeth is the largest warship ever built for the Royal Navy, according to the Ministry of Defense.

“Today we welcome our mighty new warship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, to her home for the very first time,” said Defense Secretary Michael Fallon. “She is Britain’s statement to the world: a demonstration of British military power and our commitment to a bigger global role.”

The ship is currently undergoing sea trials. It cannot yet deploy planes, but flying trials from its deck are due to begin in 2018.

It took eight years to build HMS Queen Elizabeth, with construction taking place in six cities and involving 10,000 people.

Along with its sister ship, HMS Prince of Wales, it is part of a defense program worth 6 billion pounds ($7.65 billion).

Commanding officer Captain Jerry Kyd told the BBC that the carrier “sends the right signals to our allies and indeed potentially to our enemies that we mean business.”
…

British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday there was no equivalence between fascists and those who opposed them, a rare rebuke of U.S. President Donald Trump by one of his closest foreign allies.

Trump inflamed tensions after a deadly rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, by insisting that counter-protesters were also to blame, drawing condemnation from some Republican leaders and praise from white far-right groups.

“There’s no equivalence, I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them and I think it is important for all those in positions of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them,” May told reporters when asked to comment on Trump’s stance.

WATCH: May responds to Trump’s comments

On Monday, May’s spokesman had said that while Britain condemned racism, what the U.S. president said was “a matter for him”.

May has been widely criticized by domestic political opponents for her efforts to cultivate close ties with Trump, who she visited at the White House days after his inauguration and invited for a state visit to Britain.

Her openly critical comment on Wednesday was an unexpected shift from May, who is keen to cement what she and many other Britons see as a “special relationship” between London and Washington as Britain prepares to leave the European Union.

The invitation to Trump to make a state visit to Britain sparked immediate controversy in Britain when the U.S. head of state announced his widely-criticized ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries just hours after May left the White House.

Trump’s stance on the Charlottesville violence drew renewed calls for Trump’s state visit, which would be hosted by Queen Elizabeth and involve lavish pageantry, to be cancelled. May had rejected similar calls after previous Trump-related controversies.

“Donald Trump has shown he is unable to detach himself from the extreme-right and racial supremacists,” said Vince Cable, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats. “It would be completely wrong to have this man visit the UK on a State Visit.”

No date has been announced for the visit.
…

Firefighters battled wildfires raging northeast of Athens for a third day on Tuesday as Greece asked for help from its European partners to prevent them from spreading.

The fire started in Kalamos, a coastal holiday spot some 45 km (30 miles) northeast of the capital, and has spread to three more towns, damaging dozens of homes and burning thousands of hectares of pine forest. A state of emergency has been declared in the area.

“The blaze is advancing with great speed. Because of the scale and intensity of the wildfires, the country submitted a request for aerial means,” fire brigade spokeswoman Stavroula Maliri told a press briefing.

Cyprus offered a group of 60 firefighters, and a Greek air force plane was headed there to pick them up. But a request for two pairs of CL-415 firefighting aircraft was turned down by France as it had to deal with its own wildfires, she said.

Three firefighting planes and six water-throwing helicopters operated through the day, assisting 210 firefighters and about 100 military personnel battling the blaze on the ground near the town of Kapandriti.

Rugged terrain dotted with small communities made the fire-fighting difficult, with winds rekindling the blaze at many spots. Thick, billowing smoke rendered operations from the air difficult.

Across Greece, firefighters were battling more than 55 forest fires, an outbreak fed by dry winds and hot weather that fanned blazes in the Peloponnese and on the Ionian islands of Zakynthos and Kefalonia.

Arson?

On Zakynthos, an island popular with foreign tourists, a dozen fires burned for a fifth day. Authorities declared a state of emergency there on Monday. A government minister said there was no doubt the fires had been set deliberately.

“It’s arson according to an organized plan,” Justice Minister Stavros Kontonis, the member of parliament for Zakynthos, told state TV.

Late July and August often see outbreaks of forest and brush fires in Greece, where high temperatures help create tinder-box conditions.

In Kalamos, community president Dimitris Kormovitis told Reuters TV: “If we don’t manage to cut it off today, there will be terrible consequences. There has been devastation of a biblical scale in our area, which is one of the last lungs of the Attica region.”

Andreas Theodorou, a local councilor in Kalamos, said the blaze had damaged several dozen homes. “Help did not arrive fast enough, and if you don’t stop a forest fire so large as soon as it breaks out, it’s very hard to put it out,” he said.

In the Peloponnese region of Ilia, blazes that broke out in three areas Monday and looked tamed early Tuesday flared up again, fanned by winds. In 2007, the same area was the site of Greece’s worst fires, with more than 70 people killed.

“We asked for the evacuation of the village of Peristeri. The fire has gotten very close, it cannot be contained due to strong winds,” Ilia vice prefect George Georgiopoulos told SKAI TV.
…

Italy’s interior minister said on Tuesday he saw light at the end of the tunnel for curbing migrant flows from Libya after a slowdown in arrivals across the Mediterranean in recent months.

But a United Nations investigator said that Italy’s recent effort to draw up a code regulating the operations of humanitarian ships rescuing migrants at sea would cause more deaths.

The subject of immigration is dominating Italy’s political agenda ahead of general elections due before May next year, with public opinion increasingly hostile to migrants. Almost 600,000 migrants have arrived in Italy over the past four years.

“We are still under the tunnel, it’s a long tunnel, but I start seeing the light at the end of it,” Interior Minister Marco Minniti told a news conference.

Small drop in migrant arrivals

After a surge in migrant arrivals from Libya at the start of the year, the numbers have slowed. Data from the Interior Ministry on Tuesday showed that 97,293 people had reached Italy so far in 2017, down 4.15 percent from the same period in 2016.

Minniti said that these trends would continue in August but did not comment further.

Italy has approached the migrant problem with a dual track strategy, strengthening Libya’s efforts to fight smuggling and at the same time putting pressure on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in rescue operations.

“It was important to intervene on the other side of the Mediterranean and we have focused on Libya. It seemed difficult, but it now appears that something is moving,” he added.

Italy offers instruction, upgrades

In Libya, Italy has trained members of the coastguard and upgraded its fleet, in line with the EU’s investments to support search and rescue operations at sea as well as those along its borders.

Minniti said that attention would also be given to the conditions of migrants brought back from sea to Libya and that Italy would start distributing aid in the cities of Sabratha and Zowarah, two hubs for the smuggling of migrants.

At home, the Italian government has introduced a code of conduct for the operations NGOs, demanding that armed police travel on their boats to help root out people smugglers.

Five out of the of eight groups operating in the southern Mediterranean agreed to the terms so far. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has refused to sign so far.

‘Code of conduct’

Hours earlier, a member of the United Nations largest body of independent experts said Italy’s policy could restrict the NGOs’ life-saving work and result in more deaths.

“This code of conduct and the overall action plan suggest that Italy, the EU Commission and the EU Member states deem the risks and the reality of deaths at sea a price worth paying in order to deter migrants and refugees,” Agnes Callamard said in a statement.

Minniti said he would meet his counterparts from Libya, Chad, Niger and Mali on Aug. 28 and that he would soon meet in Rome the mayors of the main Libyan cities involved.

“A democratic country (like Italy) does not chase migrants flows, but governs them … ungoverned flows threaten a country’s democracy,” Minniti said. “Italy is not retreating but remains firmly committed to rescues at sea.”

 
…

In a rare visit, the head of Iran’s armed forces is in Turkey. The two neighbors have found themselves increasing rivals in Iraq and Syria, but both sides are trying to find common ground.

The chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, Major General Mohammad-Hossein Baqeri, arrived in Ankara, leading a high-ranking military and political delegation, for three days of talks. It is the first visit by Iran’s chief of staff since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Regional rivalries

Former Turkish ambassador to Iraq Unal Cevikoz now heads the Ankara Policy Forum. He says conflicts in Iraq and Syria have exacerbated regional rivalries.

“Iran is becoming a very important actor in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria,” he said. “It seems Iran has certain intentions. And when we look at the Turkish Iranian relations pertaining to the situation in Iraq and Syria, it is obvious Turkey and Iran are not on the same page.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has positioned himself as an advocate of Sunni Muslim rights in the region and has been in the forefront of criticizing Tehran’s policy in Iraq and Syria.

Erdogan has strongly criticized the treatment of Sunnis by Iraqi militia backed by Tehran. Ankara is one of the main supporters of Syrian rebels fighting the Damascus government supported by Iran.

The Iranian general’s visit comes as Tehran, Ankara and Moscow are cooperating in what is called the Astana process to resolve the Syrian civil war. The conflict is expected to be discussed during the visit.

Idlib enclave

Political columnist Semih Idiz of the Al Monitor website says talks will include the Syrian enclave of Idlib, one of the last areas the rebel forces control.

“Idlib is a potential hornets nest. There is infighting there between two radical Islamist groups,” said Idiz. “One is considered nominally more moderate and supported by Turkey and the other one more close to ISIS in sentiment. It is not clear how that is going to play out in Idlib and [Syrian President] Assad is going to take advantage of that.”

Idlib borders Turkey, and there are growing concerns in Ankara that if it is overrun by Syrian government forces Turkey could experience a major refugee influx, which could include many radical jihadists. Last week Ankara closed its border crossing into Idlib due to security concerns.

The aspirations of the region’s Kurds is also expected to be on the Iranian general’s agenda in Ankara, with both countries having large and restive Kurdish minorities. Next month’s independence referendum by Iraqi Kurds will provide common ground, with Tehran and Ankara strongly opposing the vote.

 
…

With four weeks to go before an election that is too close to call, Norway’s Conservative prime minister, Erna Solberg, pledged on Monday to cut taxes to boost growth and job creation if she was re-elected.

In power as head of a minority coalition government since 2013, Solberg is attempting to become the first right-wing prime minister to win re-election since 1985.

While taxes, unemployment and a rural backlash against government reforms are hotly debated, opinion polls show a near dead heat between Solberg’s right-wing coalition and center-left parties seeking to replace it in a Sept. 11 vote for parliament.

Support for the main opposition Labor Party, which seeks to raise taxes on high earners and the wealthy, has slipped slightly in recent weeks, erasing the narrow lead held by the center-left in most polls during spring and early summer.

“We must get across the message that Norwegian politics won’t have to go left when it’s so obvious that the economy is improving and jobs are being created,” Solberg told Reuters on the sidelines of a news conference.

She highlighted spending on education and transport, as well as “growth-enabling tax cuts” as key priorities ahead.

The price of oil, Norway’s key export, fell by more than 70 percent from 2014 to 2016, lifting unemployment to a 20-year high of five percent last year, but crude has since staged a partial recovery and the jobless rate has eased to 4.3 percent.

The government increased spending from Norway’s $975 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, to aid the recovery, but the growth in public spending should moderate now that growth is normalizing, Solberg added.

Labor leader Jonas Gahr Stoere reiterated a plan to raise income and wealth taxes by up to 15 billion Norwegian crowns ($1.89 billion) to pay for public services while avoiding becoming too dependent on the wealth fund’s cash.

“It’s fair and necessary to do this,” he told independent broadcaster TV2, adding the money would be used to hire more teachers, improve care for the elderly and help combat climate change.

A survey published by TV2 on Monday, asking eligible voters who they believed would win, showed 50.3 percent expected Gahr Stoere to become prime minister, while 48.4 percent of those polled thought Solberg would stay in power.

An Aug. 11 poll by Respons on behalf of the newspaper Aftenposten showed Labour and two key backers, the Center Party and the Socialist Left, obtaining a combined 44.6 percent support, down from 46.3 percent in June. The government and its backers rose to 47.1 percent from 46.3 percent.

The outcome of the vote could ultimately be decided by the results for several small parties, including the right-leaning Liberals, the far-left Reds and the unaligned Green Party. All are battling to surpass a four-percent election threshold.

Leaders of all eight parties that currently hold seats in parliament, as well as the Red Party, are due to hold their first televised debate of the campaign at 1930 GMT.

($1 = 7.9371 Norwegian crowns)
…

Firefighters battled more than 90 forest fires across Greece on Monday, an outbreak fed by dry winds and hot weather that saw blazes burning near Athens, in the Peloponnese, and on the Ionian islands of Zakynthos and

Kefalonia.

The fire near Athens was burning unchecked for a second day, damaging dozens of homes. It had started in Kalamos, a coastal holiday spot some 45 km (30 miles) northeast of the capital, and spread overnight to three more towns. A state of emergency was declared in the area.

On Zakynthos, an island popular with foreign tourists, several fires continued to burn for a fourth day and authorities declared a state of emergency. One minister said those fires had been set deliberately.

“It’s arson according to an organised plan,” Justice Minister Stavros Kontonis, who is the MP for Zakythnos, told state TV when asked to comment on the dozen fires burning on the island. “There is no doubt about it.”

It is not clear what caused the fires, and no investigation has begun into possible arson. Late July and August often see a outbreaks of forest and brush fires in Greece, where high temperatures help create tinder-box conditions.

Near Athens, authorities ordered a precautionary evacuation of two summer camps and homes in the area and evacuated a monastery after flames reached its fence on Monday. Hundreds of Kalamos residents fled, heading to the beach to spend the night.

“It was a terrible mess, that’s what it was. You could see homes on fire, people running, people desperate, it was chaos and the fire was very big,” a resident told Reuters TV.

Andreas Theodorou, a local councillor, said the blaze had damaged “several dozens of homes.”

“Help did not arrive fast enough, and if you don’t stop a forest fire so large as soon as it breaks out, it’s very hard to put it out,” he said.

The fire brigade said rugged terrain dotted with small communities made the fire fighting difficult.

In the Peloponnese region of Ilia, the site of Greece’s worst fires in 2007, which killed more than 70 people, blazes broke out in three areas on Monday, prompting the evacuation of a village.
…

Russia’s top domestic security agency said Monday it has thwarted suicide bombings in Moscow planned by the Islamic State group in Syria.

Four people have been arrested on suspicion of plotting attacks on Moscow transit system and shopping malls, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said in a statement.

Those arrested included two would-be suicide bombers along with an Islamic State envoy and an expert in explosives. One of them is a Russian national and three others are from ex-Soviet Central Asia, the FSB said.

The agency released a video in which its agents inspect a house used by the group to make explosives while two suspects lie down on the floor in handcuffs. It didn’t say when the arrests took place.

The FSB said the attacks were planned by two senior IS militants who fight with IS. The agency didn’t give their nationalities, but their names given by the FSB appear to indicate they hail from the former Soviet Union.

In May, the FSB arrested another group of suspected IS members in May who were also accused of plotting terror attacks in the capital.

The arrests follow a suicide bombing in St. Petersburg’s subway that left 16 dead and wounded more than 50 in April.

President Vladimir Putin said in April that some 9,000 militants, about half of them from Russia and the rest from ex-Soviet Central Asian nations, have joined the Islamic State in Syria.

He emphasized that a key goal for the Russian military operation in Syria is to crush them there and prevent them from coming back home.
…

In a wood-paneled stateroom in the Philippine presidential palace, Rex Tillerson sat across from a leader who boasts of hunting down drug dealers to personally kill. Whether he’d confront his host for letting police kill thousands — and how forcefully – was being closely scrutinized for proof the Trump administration has any commitment to human rights.

When the secretary of state ultimately broached it last week with President Rodrigo Duterte, he backed into it, rattling off U.S. death tolls and addiction rates that tell the story of America’s opioid crisis. Then he noted matter-of-factly that Americans have voiced concern about Duterte’s approach to his country’s drug war. He offered U.S. help, two of the meeting’s participants said.

To Tillerson’s critics, it was the latest underperformance by a secretary of state they see as abdicating traditional roles and aspirations of American diplomacy. To Tillerson, aides said, it was a concrete solution to a problem, rather than grandstanding for grandstanding’s sake.

Since taking office in February, Tillerson has earned praise from President Donald Trump despite policy differences, top Cabinet members and even some Democrats, including those who take solace in the tempering role he plays in an otherwise frenetic and unpredictable administration.

Yet he’s also stoked deep doubts about his leadership among many U.S. diplomats and the traditional foreign policy establishment, with a daily drumbeat of editorials like “Why Has Rex Tillerson Belly-Flopped as Secretary of State?” and “How Rex Tillerson is Wrecking the State Department.”

And so difficult has Trump made Tillerson’s job at times that it’s sparked talk of a “Rexit,” a potential early departure from the job. As with the histrionic headlines, Tillerson has brushed it all off, calmly telling reporters last month, “I’m not going anywhere.”

This account of Tillerson’s first six months draws on interviews with roughly two dozen State Department officials, foreign diplomats and other Tillerson associates. Some weren’t authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In private conversations, Tillerson has taken issue with the approach of his predecessors, and especially John Kerry, whose high public profile, constant travel and impulse to plunge himself into every crisis became a running State Department joke.

Tillerson has told those in his orbit he can get more done if countries know they can negotiate in confidence without their positions being dissected in the press.

That argument hasn’t caught on among the chorus of diplomats and foreign policy scholars who have piled on, claiming he’s squandering the only real tool in his arsenal. After all, diplomats don’t have weapons at their disposal, only words.

There are questions about why he took the job if he doesn’t have a particular mark he hopes to leave on the world. In a Washington Post column entitled “Rex Tillerson is a Huge Disappointment,” former Bush administration official Michael Gerson asked, “Who would want to be known as the secretary of state who retreated from the promotion of justice and democracy?”

Many past secretaries reached eagerly and early for Nobel Peace Prize-worthy achievements. Tillerson’s most enthusiastic focus has been streamlining the State Department’s inner workings, a project expected to extend the rest of the year or longer.

“I think he came to the job with a feeling that America was approaching foreign policy with too much of a missionary zeal. We were telling the world what they ought to do,” said John Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where Tillerson served 11 years on the board. “He’s not a missionary for grand causes. He’s a pragmatist.”

Two decades ago, as Tillerson was rising through Exxon’s management, the oil company merged with Mobil to become the world’s biggest, with revenues exceeding many countries’ economies. Tillerson has told aides the State Department redesign is tougher than the merger ever was.

“This takes time,” said R.C. Hammond, a senior Tillerson adviser. “We’re not changing one light switch. We’re rewiring an entire house.”

On his first day as America’s top diplomat, Tillerson spoke in the marbled lobby of the State Department’s Harry S. Truman Building headquarters. He told assembled employees that he knew the election was “hotly contested” and that while all were entitled to their beliefs, it mustn’t overwhelm “our ability to work as one team.”

Much of the diplomatic corps was deeply suspicious of the new administration’s worldview. An astonishing 900 signed a rare “dissent memo” – before Tillerson even arrived – objecting to Trump’s initial travel ban on people from seven mainly Muslim countries.

Tillerson, the Exxon Mobil CEO until just weeks earlier, represented to some the prospect of a sober, levelheaded “adult in the room” for Trump’s national security decisions. As Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat, put it in Tillerson’s confirmation hearing, “You don’t strike me as someone likely to be naive.”

Addressing State Department workers, Tillerson emphasized honesty, respect and accountability for all – themes borrowed from the Boy Scouts of America that he once led.

Then he started talking about efficiency. He predicted “changes to how things are traditionally done.” The mood in the room changed.

“Change for the sake of change can be counterproductive, and that will never be my approach,” Tillerson said. “But we cannot sustain ineffective traditions over optimal outcomes.”

When, two months later, Tillerson embraced a 37-percent cut to foreign aid and diplomatic spending, lawmakers of both parties balked, accusing him of weakening diplomacy and U.S. influence. Trump’s final proposed budget softened the cuts somewhat, but still calls for roughly one-third less money, fewer workers and consolidation of many offices.

Tillerson locked in his reputation as an under-the-radar secretary on his first trip abroad, when he told the one reporter allowed to travel with him he was “not a big media press access person” and said, “I personally don’t need it.”

In Texas, that approach paid off for Tillerson, and Exxon flourished. Corporations are rarely harmed by their CEOs avoiding the limelight.

But in Washington, the same approach has denied Tillerson the chance to define his own narrative — or to effectively calm the inevitable concerns when a workforce of 75,000 is told big cuts are coming.

“I will say this: It’s very Rex,” said Paul Tetreault, director of Washington’s Ford’s Theatre, where Tillerson was involved for a decade. “He is disciplined, he is methodical, he has a plan. You, me, we may not know what that plan is, but I think he does.”

Still, the vacuum has been filled by a steady stream of rumors, leaks and reports about impending changes that, left largely unchallenged by Tillerson, have reached sky-is-falling proportions. Among them:

– That promotion of a just and democratic world may be removed from the State Department’s mission statement. An early draft that relied on employee feedback didn’t include it, but officials say the final version likely will.

– That Tillerson wants to move passports and visas to the Homeland Security Department. Outside consultants recommended it, but Tillerson and Deputy Secretary John Sullivan oppose the move.

– That a micromanaging Tillerson has taken back all authorities previously delegated to subordinates. In fact, Tillerson rescinded a few, left most in place and issued a dozen-plus other new ones.

“There are elements of truth in some of these stories,” Sullivan, Tillerson’s deputy, said. “But then they’re twisted in a way that makes it sound as though the secretary is out of touch, mismanaging, whatever. I see him, when he’s in town, three or four times a day. The guy is committed to the mission.”

On one critique, even Tillerson agrees.

So slow has Trump’s administration been to staff the State Department that nearly the entire upper echelon of assistant secretaries who oversee specific regions and functions is vacant. Foreign embassies, reluctant to publicly criticize Tillerson, privately complain they have no point person- or only an “acting” official with limited authority.

“No,” Tillerson said last month when asked if he’s satisfied with the pace of hiring. “I’d like it to go faster.”

The empty offices are due in part to Trump, in part Tillerson. While political spats with the White House have stalled some of Tillerson’s preferred picks, in some cases he’s leaving positions vacant because they might be eliminated or combined with other posts in the overhaul.

Many “special envoys” and issue-specific offices are expected to be merged into related State Department bureaus. That’s sparked concern among some lawmakers and special interest groups but also enjoys support from some diplomats who have long complained about a notoriously unwieldy bureaucracy.

No secretary before Tillerson has faced the unique challenge of working for a president like Trump. So often does Trump contradict or undermine him that foreign diplomats have struggled to determine when Tillerson truly speaks for his boss.

No sooner had Tillerson tried to calm the nation by downplaying prospects for a North Korea military conflict than Trump reaffirmed his “fire and fury” threat and boasted about U.S. nuclear weapons.

But Trump also defends Tillerson, saying Friday they were “totally on the same page.” Tillerson often downplays signs of incongruity between their messages, and on North Korea, Tillerson says boss was merely “trying to support our efforts by ensuring that North Korea understands what the stakes are.”

There have been similar divisions over Qatar, Iran and the Paris climate accord.

In the Cabinet, it’s Tillerson who’s made the most concerted effort to translate Trump’s “America First” mantra into cohesive policy. In a May speech, Trump said alliances remain critical but that as the world changed economically and militarily over the last two decades, things grew “out of balance” and no longer serve U.S. interests as well.

What Tillerson said next fueled growing concerns that traditional values of human rights, democracy and global well-being were falling away under Tillerson and Trump. The secretary said America’s values are not its policies, and that forcing values on others too heavily “really creates obstacles” for U.S. interests.

Tillerson’s aides argue he’s actually promoting those values more effectively than his predecessors, by using a “light touch” and offering specific solutions or help rather than issuing demands or self-righteous lectures. In each case, aides said, Tillerson emphasizes why doing the right thing advances another country’s self-interests.

Six months in, Tillerson presides over a State Department deeply uneasy about its future, but still hopeful he’ll lead American diplomacy more successfully than the panicked editorials predict.

Insigniam, a consulting firm Tillerson hired for the department’s redesign, warned in a 110-page report that prolonged uncertainty would have negative repercussions. Tillerson says he’s mindful of that but hopes the uncertainty will ebb as the redesign takes shape.

“It’s to be expected that we will go through some morale issues early on,” Tillerson said this month. But, he added, “I cannot change what we’re doing from a policy standpoint, if that’s what’s behind people’s unhappiness.”
…

Seeking leverage with Russia, the Trump administration has reopened consideration of long-rejected plans to give Ukraine lethal weapons, even if that would plunge the United States deeper into the former Soviet republic’s conflict.

The deliberations put pressure on President Donald Trump, who’s fighting perceptions he is soft on the Kremlin amid investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Moscow to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.

The proposal, endorsed by the Pentagon and the State Department, reflects his administration’s growing frustration with Russian intransigence on Ukraine and a broader deterioration in U.S.-Russian ties. The tensions were seen most recently in Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s order for America to eliminate more than half its diplomatic personnel in Russia.

Awaiting Trump and his closest advisers is an authorization to provide Ukraine with anti-tank and potentially anti-aircraft capabilities, according to U.S. officials familiar with the plan. It’s not dramatically different from proposals rejected by President Barack Obama, who feared an influx of U.S. weapons could worsen the violence responsible for more than 10,000 deaths in Ukraine since 2014 and create the possibility of American arms killing Russian soldiers. Such a scenario could theoretically put the nuclear-armed nations closer to direct conflict.

While Obama was still in office, Trump’s campaign also rejected the idea of arming Ukraine, preventing it from being included in the Republican platform.

Now, however, it’s under discussion by Trump’s senior national security aides, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk about the matter publicly. While there is no deadline for a decision and one is not expected imminently, the debate is going on as U.S. and Russian diplomats prepare to meet as early as this coming week to explore ways to pacify eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have fought the central government for three years.

“The Russians have indicated some willingness to begin to talk with us about a way forward on Ukraine,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said after seeing his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, last week in the Philippines.

Tillerson noted his recent appointment of a special representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, who will coordinate with Russia and European countries to give “full visibility to all the parties that we’re not trying to cut some kind of a deal on the side that excludes their interests in any way.”

Russia hawks in the U.S. and uneasy American allies have feared such a prospect since Trump took office after a campaign in which he questioned NATO’s viability and repeatedly expressed his wish for a new U.S.-Russian partnership. At one point, two years after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region, Trump even challenged the notion that the Russians would “go into Ukraine.”

Volker has proposed a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Putin ally Vladislav Surkov, before the end of the month. Lavrov said after his talks with Tillerson that the meeting would be in Moscow. U.S. officials say no venue has been determined, with the neutral venues of Geneva or Vienna also in play.

Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who is known as a Russia hawk, supports arming Ukraine. Such action, he says, would boost the U.S. negotiating position in the east and offer Kiev the means to defend itself against any future aggression. Unsurprisingly, Russia opposes such assistance and warns of consequences.

“I hear these arguments that it’s somehow provocative to Russia or that it’s going to embolden Ukraine to attack. These are just flat out wrong,” Volker told an interviewer last month as he visited Europe on his first trip in his new post. He argued that arming Ukraine would help rather than hurt efforts to stop Russia from threatening or interfering in its neighbor’s territory.

All proposals in recent years have focused on arms that are deemed “defensive” in nature and none would appear to give Ukraine any strategic edge over Russia’s vastly superior military forces.

“We have not provided defensive weapons nor have we ruled out the option to do so,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Aug. 3. “That’s an option that remains on the table.”

A White House official would not comment on internal administration deliberations but noted that since the crisis began in 2014, the U.S. has provided Ukraine with support equipment for its forces and training and advice to further defense reforms.

Some U.S. officials say the idea is gaining currency because of Washington’s impatience with Russia and its start-and-stop implementation of a 2015 agreement designed to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The Minsk Accords were agreed to by Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia with the goal of enforcing a cease-fire in the east and introducing political reforms to give the area more political autonomy.

While the Obama administration allowed Europe to take the lead on the Minsk process, Volker has been empowered to make the U.S. a player in the effort.

The objective now is to change Russia’s strategic thinking, one official said, and providing defensive weapons to Ukraine would be one way to do that.
…