European Union nations bickered openly over migration policy Thursday in an east-west divide centered on several nations that refuse to accept refugee quotas.

The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia announced that they planned to spend around 35 million euros ($41 million) to beef up EU borders after the four countries — known as the “Visegrad Four” — were criticized for failing to show solidarity with the rest of the bloc.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte still thought it was “shameless” and said shirking responsibility by not taking in their share would wither the EU. 

“If we allow this then we get an EU where people go to shop for whatever they like,” and give little back, he said.

​Funding not enough

Greece and Italy have had to play host to tens of thousands of migrants who landed there after crossing the Mediterranean or Aegean seas, severely stretching the two countries’ resources. They have called for help from EU partners.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country has taken in the largest number of refugees, said the announcement by the Visegrad nations was welcome but not enough.

“We need solidarity not just in regulating and steering migration … on the external borders. That is good and important, but we also need internal solidarity,” Merkel said. “In my opinion, there cannot be selective solidarity among European member states.”

EU Council President Donald Tusk said the divide “when it comes to migration, it is between east and west.” He said there have been complaints that eastern members were happy to get aid from their richer western partners but unwilling to live up to their part of the bargain of being in a joint endeavor.

“The European Union is not only an ATM when you need support,” said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. “Cooperation means solidarity and responsibility.”

Border funds

The issue of migrants and refugees was high on the agenda of a two-day EU summit in Brussels that started Thursday — and some saw the border funding move by the four nations as a cynical ploy to avoid accepting refugee quotas.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said their contribution will help save European funds. And, he added, “if we will see good projects in the future, first of all projects that are effective, we are ready to spend even more money because we really want to show solidarity.”

Despite the tensions, the discussion at the summit dinner table remained within bounds, Rutte said. “It was fine because we can all take a little hit. If it is the spirit of ‘I like your drawing if you like mine,’ we get nowhere.”

Hungary saw tens of thousands of Syrian refugees and others pass through its territory in 2015 looking for shelter in richer northern European nations. Prime Minister Viktor Orban ordered the construction of a border fence to keep migrants out.

Orban said Thursday that the border funds will help defend the EU’s borders with the outside world and will also contribute to EU work in Libya, where many migrants leave for Europe.

Visegard Four

After more than 1 million refugees entered Europe in 2015, the EU introduced a refugee-sharing plan to help overwhelmed Greece and Italy.

The four Visegrad nations voted against the quotas, but were legally bound to accept refugees as the decision was made by a majority vote. Still, Hungary and Poland have taken in no refugees under the plan, while the Czech Republic has accepted 12.

The EU Commission wants to introduce a permanent mechanism that would oblige countries to take in quotas of refugees if a migrant surge hit one or more EU nations. The Visegrad nations remain firmly against migrant quotas.

“Quotas do not work. They are ineffective,” Fico said. “The decision on quotas really divided the European Union.”

Disagreement over how to manage the migrant challenge has created distrust between EU neighbors and fueled anti-migrant parties across Europe, slowly threatening to undermine the entire European project.

French President Emmanuel Macron said it is important not to get bogged down in old disputes and solidarity can take different forms.

“We need to be able to express solidarity without getting trapped in any excessive roadblocks” about the past, he said. “I think everyone needs to make an effort.”
…

President Donald Trump thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for remarks he made Thursday “acknowledging America’s strong economic performance,” the White House said. 

The two presidents spoke by phone following Putin’s annual press conference in Moscow. 

They discussed ways to work together to address North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic weapons program, the White House said. 

In an equally brief statement, the Kremlin said in addition to North Korea, Trump and Putin discussed relations between their two countries and agreed to stay in contact. The Kremlin made a point of noting that Trump initiated the call. 

During his remarks in Moscow, Putin accused those investigating potential collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign of damaging the U.S. political situation, “incapacitating the president and showing a lack of respect to voters who cast their ballots for him.” 

Putin also warned the U.S. against using force against North Korea. Trump has repeatedly said that all options remain on the table.
…

Two people were killed and three injured Thursday night in two stabbing incidents in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht, authorities said.

Police said in a tweet that one suspect had been detained on suspicion of involvement in the incidents. They released no details on the suspect or the victims.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte said it was not a terror attack, echoing comments from the police.

“It is terrible what happened there. People were killed and others were injured,” Rutte said at an EU summit in Brussels.

The incidents happened in a residential neighborhood in the north of Maastricht, a city 215 kilometers (133 miles) south of the capital, Amsterdam, and close to the Netherlands’ borders with Belgium and Germany.

Police said a man was stabbed to death during a fight around 9 p.m. (2000 GMT) and a suspect fled the scene. Ten minutes later a woman was fatally stabbed and two men injured about a kilometer (about a half mile) away from the first incident. A third wounded person was later found at a local mosque.

Police said the investigations are continuing.
…

The European Union’s leaders are due to say Friday that the Brexit talks with Britain can move on to the next phase to include the key topic of trade, according to a draft statement seen by The Associated Press.

The progress comes after the sides reached a deal on the preliminary divorce issues, such as the status of Britain’s physical border with EU member Ireland. The EU had long said it wanted a deal on Britain’s exit terms before broadening the talks to include the subject of future relations.

British Prime Minister Theresa May will address EU leaders at a two-day summit on Thursday evening and welcome progress in the Brexit talks. But she is not expected to remain in Brussels on Friday when the leaders give the green light to broaden the negotiations.

The draft statement says that progress made in Brexit talks “is sufficient to move to the second phase” to discuss future relations and trade.

In the statement, which could be modified before Friday, the leaders emphasize the importance of organizing a transition period, probably of around two years, to ease Britain out of the EU from 2019.

That would buy time for all sides. Britain will leave the EU on March 29, 2019 but the Brexit negotiations must be wrapped up by the fall of 2018 to leave time for individual EU parliaments to endorse any agreement.

During a transition period, Britain will have no seat at the EU’s table, no lawmakers in the European Parliament, and no judges in the bloc’s courts. But it will still be bound by European law, without having any say in decision-making, and the European Court of Justice will remain the final arbiter of any disputes.

Britain during this period “will no longer participate in or nominate or elect members of the EU institutions, nor participate in the decision-making of the Union bodies, offices and agencies,” the draft statement says.

Ahead of the summit, Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator said Thursday that a situation in which the U.K. crashes out of the EU without a deal has become “massively less probable” because of a preliminary agreement reached last week.

Brexit Secretary David Davis told lawmakers that a “no-deal” Brexit was now extremely unlikely, although “we continue to prepare for all outcomes.”

The British government is hailing progress in Brussels, but faces trouble at home over Brexit. Late on Wednesday, lawmakers won a House of Commons vote giving Parliament the final say on any deal with the EU.

 
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday rejected allegations of Russian interference in last year’s U.S. presidential election and said opponents of U.S. President Donald Trump spread the accusations to undermine his legitimacy.

Speaking at his annual marathon news conference in Moscow, Putin expressed hope that U.S.-Russia relations will normalize.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded Putin ordered a campaign meant to influence the U.S. vote with a preference for Trump to defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.Trump has said his campaign did not collude with Russia.

Putin said Thursday that Russia is worried about the United States pulling out of arms control agreements, while his country will continue to abide by the pacts.He also said Russia’s military will develop as it needs to without getting into an arms race with the United States.

On North Korea, Putin said a use of force by the United States would have “catastrophic consequences.”He said Russia does not accept North Korea’s nuclear status and blamed the United States for provoking North Korea to develop its nuclear program.

A week after the International Olympic Committee ruled Russian athletes cannot compete under the country’s flag at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Putin said the ban is politically motivated.

The Russian leader told reporters the country should have a more competitive political system and that when he runs for re-election next year he will do so as an independent candidate instead of under the United Russia party.

Putin has served as either prime minister or president of Russia since 1999 and announced last week his plan to run for re-election for a term that would run through 2024.He is widely expected to win.

He said the government needs to focus on health care, education and infrastructure development.He said opposition parties lack a strong candidate to go against him in the elections.

Opponents have accused Putin of using law enforcement and the judicial system to stymie rivals.
…

An international landmine watchdog says new uses of the weapon are “extremely rare” but that fighting in Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and Yemen has led to a second consecutive year of high casualties.

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines said in an annual report Thursday there were 8,605 casualties, including 2,089 deaths, from mines in 2016. That includes improvised explosive devices and unexploded ordnance that are triggered like mines.

Of those casualties, 78 percent were civilians, and the total included the most child casualties ever recorded. They took place in 52 countries.

“A few intense conflicts, where utter disregard for civilian safety persists, have resulted in very high numbers of mine casualties for the second year in a row,” said Loren Persi, casualties and victim assistance editor of Landmine Monitor. “This shows the need for all countries to join the Mine Ban Treaty and for increased levels of assistance to mine victims.”

​1999 international treaty

Under a 1999 international treaty, countries agree to not use or produce antipersonnel mines, to destroy their existing stockpiles, provide assistance to mine victims and clear their territory of mines within 10 years of joining the pact.

On Wednesday, the ICBL welcomed Sri Lanka as the 163rd country to be fully bound by the treaty and said it hopes others in the region will join as well.

Thursday’s report said Myanmar and Syria had the only government forces that actively planted mines during the past year. Neither is a party to the mine ban treaty.

The report cites 61 states and areas contaminated with mines as of November, and while 33 of those are a part of the treaty, only Chile, Mauritania, Peru and the Democratic Republic of Congo are on track to meet their deadline for clearing territory of mines.

Algeria and Mozambique completed their clearing operations during 2017. Worldwide, the report says a total of 170 square kilometers was cleared during 2016, and the vast majority of that work took place in Afghanistan, Croatia, Iraq and Cambodia.

Much work yet to be done

Still, large areas of mine contamination are believed to exist in a number of countries. Those include Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Croatia, Iraq, Thailand and Turkey.

International efforts linked to the treaty also extend to assisting victims, educating people about the risks of mines, destroying stockpiles and monitoring mine use. The report says monetary contributions rose sharply in 2016 to $480 million to support that work.
…

Revenge is sweet for the makers of France’s traditional “calisson” candies, who have won a months-long legal battle with a businessman who trademarked the product’s name in China.

The lozenge-shaped sweets, made of a mixture of candied fruit and ground almonds topped with icing, are widely enjoyed in France’s southern Aix-en-Provence region.

Their makers were none too pleased when Chinese entrepreneur Ye Chunlin spotted a sweet opportunity in 2015 to register the “Calisson d’Aix” name for use at home, as well as its Mandarin equivalent, “kalisong”.

The trademark was set to be valid until 2026, sparking angst among Provence’s sweetmakers who worried Ye’s move could have barred them from entering the huge Chinese market.

But China’s copyright office rejected Ye’s claim to the brand name in a decision seen by AFP on Wednesday, which said his request to use the label “could confuse consumers on the origin of the products”.

Laure Pierrisnard, head of the union of calisson makers in Aix, hailed the news as “a real victory”.

The union has fought the case for months in the name of 12 sweetmakers, accusing Ye of “opportunism.”

It is not uncommon for Western brands to try to crack the Chinese market only to find that their name or trademark has been registered by a local company.

An enterprising Chinese businessman in 2007 registered the brand name “IPHONE” for use in leather products, to the great displeasure of Apple, which lost a court case against him.

The courts similarly backed a Chinese company that wanted to use the name of sneaker brand New Balance.

Ye, who is from the eastern province of Zhejiang, did not respond to the French sweetmakers’ objections to Chinese authorities.

But he insisted in late 2016 that he acted in good faith, telling AFP he was “a salesman who does business within the rules.”

As far as French producers are aware, calissons have never rolled off a factory line in China.

Some makers, dreaming of the international success enjoyed by their rival the macaron, are seeking to expand abroad, including to the enticing Chinese market.

The Roy Rene chain – owned by Olivier Baussan, the entrepreneur behind Province’s best known brand internationally, L’Occitane cosmetics — has stores in Miami and Canada, and is eyeing Dubai.

The company says it has been contacted by several investors over the course of the Chinese court case seeking to bring the sweets to China.

The affair has also re-energized makers of the dainty candies in their bid for special European status as a product that comes specifically from Provence.

Beijing has already recognized the status of 10 such European foods, including France’s Comte and Roquefort cheeses and Italy’s Parma ham, as well as 45 different wines from Bordeaux.

Aix-en-Provence produces about 800 tons of calissons every year.

 
…

European Union leaders will grapple Thursday with one of the most divisive issues ever to face the 28-nation bloc; how to collectively share responsibility for the tens of thousands of people arriving on Europe’s southern shores in search of a better life.

Ahead of an EU summit in Brussels, fresh tensions have surfaced over the perceived need for national refugee quotas. So far, solidarity with front-line nations Greece and Italy, where the refugees land, has been limited. A mandatory quota scheme was opposed mainly by eastern European nations — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

For Europe, the political crisis over migrants is existential, despite the fact that migrant arrivals have dropped dramatically this year.

As hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees trekked northward from Greece in 2015, some EU nations erected fences, launched police crackdowns and closed borders, forcing migrants onto their neighbors. ID checks were reintroduced in parts of Europe’s passport-free travel area, hampering trade, business and tourism.

That fueled anti-immigrant parties and the far-right made significant political inroads.

“The migration crisis was a kind of character test for the EU,” Roderick Parkes, senior analyst at the EU’s Institute for Security Studies, wrote Wednesday.

It has tested the EU’s “capacity to lead in the field of refugee reception, to seize the economic opportunities of immigration and to share the burden borne by Turkey, Lebanon or Kenya by resettling refugees. And the EU failed the test, on all counts,” he wrote.

At the center of Europe’s migrant malaise are refugee quotas. In response to the arrival of more than 1 million migrants in 2015, EU nations voted by a large majority to share 160,000 of those fleeing conflict or persecution to help ease the burden on overwhelmed Greece and Italy.

Hungary challenged the quotas at Europe’s top court but lost.

In an effort to clear the air, EU Council President Donald Tusk, who will chair the two-day summit in Brussels, has put the issue at the top of the agenda. But in branding the scheme ineffective, he has angered Europe’s top migration official and lawmakers involved in drawing it up.

“The issue of mandatory quotas has proven to be highly divisive and the approach has received disproportionate attention in light of its impact on the ground; in this sense it has turned out to be ineffective,” Tusk wrote to the EU leaders.

But EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos slammed the note as “unacceptable. It is anti-European and it denies, it ignores, all the work we have done during the past years.”

“This paper is undermining one of the main pillars of the European project; the principle of solidarity. Europe without solidarity cannot exist,” he said. “It is a duty — moral and legal — to protect refugees.”

Greens lawmaker Ska Keller said “Tusk is undermining the prospects of a solidarity-based refugee policy in Europe” and that “without a fair redistribution of refugees, European asylum policy will remain vulnerable to crisis.”

The European Commission says 32,000 people from the asylum scheme have found homes. But that figure — less than a quarter of the original target — masks the legal challenges, abuses and suffering as thousands of migrants and refugees have languished in the Greek islands.

The main reason for the drop in migrant numbers is the EU’s agreement with Turkey, which saw the bloc mobilize its financial might to convince Ankara to stop Syrian refugees from crossing the sea to nearby Greece and to take back thousands already there.

Spurred by that success, the EU is leveraging its considerable development aid as it draws up other outsourcing arrangements, mostly with Libya’s poor neighbors to stop Africans unlikely to qualify for asylum from heading there to take treacherous sea journeys to Italy.

Tusk wants Thursday’s summit discussions to promote mutual understanding about the migration challenges that the EU’s neighbors face. He also wants the leaders to endorse plans to make migration a part of the EU’s long-term budget, rather than rely on ad-hoc contributions.

No concrete decisions will be made Thursday. The future of mandatory refugee quotas for nations should be made clearer next June.

“It is important to look at what has — and what has not — worked over the past two years, and draw the necessary lessons,” Tusk wrote. “The migration challenge is here to stay.”
…

A prosecutor urged United Nations judges Wednesday to overturn the acquittals of a prominent Serbian ultranationalist on atrocity charges, saying that failure to do so would inflict lasting damage to the legacy of a groundbreaking war crimes tribunal.

Prosecutor Mathias Marcussen told a five-judge appeals panel that the 2016 acquittals of Vojislav Seselj on nine war crimes and crimes against humanity charges were so deeply flawed that they must be reversed or a new trial ordered.

“Justice has not been done,” Marcussen said. He argued that the three-judge trial bench that found Seselj not guilty at the end of his marathon trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia made critical errors of fact and law and failed to properly evaluate all the evidence.

At trial, prosecutors accused Seselj of crimes including persecution, murder and torture and demanded a 28-year sentence for his support of Serb paramilitaries during the region’s bitter, bloody wars in the early 1990s. Prosecutors argue that Seselj’s actions were part of a plan to drive Croats and Muslims out of large areas of Croatia and Bosnia that leaders in Belgrade considered Serb territory.

Marcussen said that allowing Seselj’s acquittals to stand would be “not only an affront to the victims of the alleged crimes, it would also seriously undermine the credibility” of the tribunal and the institution called the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals which has been established to deal with appeals and other legal issues left pending when ad hoc tribunals like the Yugoslav court close their doors for good.

A tribunal that prosecuted cases arising from Rwanda’s genocide has already closed and the Yugoslav tribunal formally shuts down at the end of December. Seselj’s appeal is being handled by the new mechanism.

Seselj, who is a Serbian lawmaker, did not attend Wednesday’s hearing. Judges gave him 10 days to respond in writing after he receives a transcript of the hearing in his native language.

Trial judges acquitted Seselj in a majority decision, saying there was insufficient evidence linking him to crimes. One of the three judges dissented, saying the acquittals ignored international law and the tribunal’s own jurisprudence.

Among the trial chamber’s most controversial findings was that operations in which non-Serbs were bussed out of territory were a “humanitarian mission” and not illegal deportations.

Marcussen called the finding, “an insult to the victims and witnesses who testified” at trial.

Presiding Judge Theodor Meron said the appeals panel would issue a ruling, “in due course.”
…

Ruined houses, shell craters and deserted streets — this is a typical scene in the Oktyabrsky district of Donetsk, the largest city of Ukraine’s pro-Russian rebel region that bears the same name.

The self-styled Donetsk and next-door Luhansk “people’s republics” broke away from central rule in 2014 after months of violent street protests in Kyiv toppled Ukraine’s Moscow-leaning president and propelled pro-Western nationalists to power.

In this calm suburb of Donetsk, many people stood aloof of politics. But then fierce clashes broke out between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian separatists for control over the nearby Donetsk Airport.

A glistening air hub of steel and glass, specially built for the UEFA Euro 2012 soccer tournament, for which Donetsk was a venue, the local airport was leveled to the ground, and many of the buildings in Oktyabrsky shared its fate.

Restored water and electricity supplies to local homes, with some households enjoying even gas supplies and heating, give a slight relief to some of the lucky locals as winter cold starts to bite.

“I try to keep away from politics. I only care about my family,” said Marina, 30. The woman, her husband and three children, one of whom is seriously ill, lost their house in 2014 when an artillery shell hit it.

“With no money, we were left in the street, with absolutely nothing. Everything burned, nothing was left … even spoons and forks were gone,” she said.

Her family changed several apartments, moving from one friend to another, before deciding that they would restore their house, using the bricks that had remained intact to build new walls. But they fast ran out of cash to buy construction materials.

Gunshots, explosions

The fragile cease-fire agreed upon in 2015 is often shattered by outbursts of gunfire and explosions of shells.

More than 8,000 private homes and more than 2,000 apartment houses were badly damaged in Donetsk, according to data provided by its administration. Most of these homes are uninhabitable and cannot be rebuilt.

Sixty-four temporary shelters for those who lost their homes in the war have been organized in various parts of Donetsk, a city of about 1 million residents.

Sometimes, student hostels accommodate the homeless. They include Alexandra Nikolayevna, 68, who survives with her several grandchildren at “University Hostel No. 4” mainly because of handouts of humanitarian aid.

The fourth year of this ordeal has failed to shatter her political views. “We must be only with Russia, we only hope for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to take us under his wing,” she said. “Anyway, everyone says it’s Russian land.”

The feeling of relative normalcy that prevails in most parts of Donetsk, dissipates when you realize the city center is just slightly more than 10 kilometers (6.3 miles) from the front line.

The war is felt in the volatile rates of several currencies circulating in the city, in low wages, and in the poor quality of local food.

And it is felt in the families who lost loved ones in the war that has claimed more than 10,000 lives so far.
…

Russia’s Olympic Committee agreed on Tuesday to support its athletes who choose to compete in next year’s Winter Games in South Korea as neutrals following a ban on the Russian national team.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) last week banned Russia from the Games, due to take place in Pyeongchang in February, for what it called “unprecedented systematic manipulation” of the anti-doping system.

But it left the door open for Russian athletes with a clean history of non-doping to be invited to compete as neutrals under an Olympic flag, not a Russian one.

President Vladimir Putin said last week Russia would not prevent its athletes from competing, dismissing calls by some for a boycott, and a Russian Olympic official said on Monday most Russian athletes still wanted to attend.

The Russian committee (ROC) agreed on its position at a meeting on Tuesday attended by sporting figures including the national men’s hockey team, figure skaters, speed skaters and the presidents of winter sports federations.

“All the participants were of the same opinion — our sportsmen need to go to Korea, need to compete, achieve victory for the glory of Russia, for the glory of our motherland,” ROC President Alexander Zhukov said.

Zhukov said Russia would do its best to support Russian athletes competing under a neutral flag and hold serious talks with the IOC in the near future to discuss the problems and practicalities of the arrangement.

He did not say what form this support would take.

“Russian sportsmen have stated their readiness to take part in the Olympic Games, despite the difficult conditions and decision of the IOC, which is undoubtedly unfair in many ways,” he said.

Zhukov added that Russia would also support the athletes who had decided not to compete in Pyeongchang.

Senior Russian Olympic official Vitaly Smirnov, who heads Russia’s state-backed anti-doping commission, said the country had made the “right decision” not to boycott.

“A boycott is not a solution,” Smirnov said. “That [would mean] new sanctions and problems for our athletes.”

In recent weeks, more than 30 Russian athletes who competed at the 2014 Sochi Games have been banned for life from the Olympics for allegedly breaching anti-doping rules.

And the IOC slapped lifetime bans on six Russian female ice hockey players a few hours after the Russian announcement Tuesday.

Russian authorities have vehemently denied any state support for doping and have pledged to cooperate with international sports bodies to counter the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs.

Russia’s athletics federation, paralympic committee and anti-doping agency RUSADA remain suspended over doping scandals.

‘Olympic Athlete from Russia’

Sitting in the front row of the Russian Olympic Committee auditorium ahead of the meeting, hockey star Ilya Kovalchuk said he would not mind competing at the Games as an “Olympic Athlete from Russia,” the term the IOC uses to designate the Russians who will go to Pyeongchang.

“We are athletes from Russia, after all,” Kovalchuk told reporters. “They took the flag away but they can’t take away our honor and our conscience.”

Kovalchuk, one of the first to call for athletes to compete in Pyeongchang after the IOC ban, thanked authorities for taking the opinions of athletes into consideration.

“Thank you for having heard us, for having believed us,” Kovalchuk said. “I think that every athlete who takes part in the Olympic Games in Pyeonchang will do everything possible.”

Olympic fencer Sofya Velikaya, chair of the ROC’s athletes commission, called on the Russian public to respect athletes’ decisions to go to Pyeongchang amid concerns that some could be branded traitors for agreeing to compete without the country’s flag.

“The athletes will show their love for their motherland and their patriotism through their results, through their accomplishments and medals,” Velikaya said.
…

Congress will allow the deadline on reimposing sanctions on Iran to pass this week, congressional and White House aides said Tuesday, leaving a pact between world powers and Tehran intact at least temporarily.

In October, Trump declined to certify that Iran was complying with the nuclear agreement reached among Tehran, the United States and others in 2015. His decision triggered a 60-day window for Congress to decide whether to bring back sanctions on Iran.

Congressional leaders have announced no plans to introduce a resolution to reimpose sanctions before Wednesday’s deadline, and aides say lawmakers will let the deadline pass without action.

By doing that, Congress passes the ball back to Trump, who must decide in mid-January whether he wants to issue a waiver to keep old sanctions from being imposed on Iran.

If Trump doesn’t issue the waiver, the nuclear deal would collapse. That course is opposed by European allies, Russia and China, the other parties to the accord, under which Iran got sanctions relief in return for curbing its nuclear ambitions.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and denies it has aimed to build an atomic bomb. It has said it will stick to the accord as long as the other signatories respect it, but will “shred” the deal if Washington pulls out.

A senior administration official said Tuesday that the White House planned on leaving the sanctions issue to Congress for the moment and was not asking for sanctions to be reimposed.

Efforts to find common ground with Europe on the Iran deal were complicated again last week, when Trump announced Washington would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, breaking with international consensus.

‘Worst deal ever’

Trump has called the Iran pact the “worst deal ever” and has threatened to pull the United States out of it.

His fellow Republicans control both chambers of Congress but their Senate majority is so small that they need some Democratic support to advance most legislation. Senate Democrats, even those who opposed it two years ago, do not want to tear up the nuclear accord.

Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declined to say whether he thought Trump would carry through on a threat to tear up the nuclear pact in January if Congress did not pass legislation to further clamp down on Iran.

Corker told reporters he and Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland met national security adviser H.R. McMaster last week to see “if there’s language that fits the bill here within Congress but also … keeps [the Europeans] at the table with us and not feeling like we’ve gone off in a different direction.”

Corker declined to elaborate on specifics of the discussions.

Trump threatened to withdraw from the nuclear agreement if lawmakers did not toughen it by amending the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, or INARA, the U.S. law that opened the possibility of bringing sanctions back.

Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations panel, has said he would not support changes to the nuclear pact that are not supported by Europe.

Democrats also insist that, while sanctions should be imposed over Iran’s ballistic missile program or human rights violations, they must be separate from the nuclear agreement.
…

French President Emmanuel Macron is hosting an international summit Tuesday to mark the second anniversary of the Paris climate agreement, hoping to inject the pact with new energy after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from it.

The accord reached two years ago set goals for slowing the rate of climate change by reducing the emissions that contribute to melting Arctic ice, increasing sea levels and changing weather patterns across the globe.

While some critics have questioned whether the summit will accomplish more than drawing attention to France’s media-savvy president, celebrities, corporations, environmental groups and others are preparing to make a string of announcements there.

The issues expected to come up at the event range from research to corporate pledges.

Green cash

Poor countries are waiting to hear how the United Nations’ goal of raising $100 billion dollars for climate-related measures will be achieved by 2020.

The target was set in 2009, but commitments so far from rich nations only will cover about two-thirds of the fund.

The money is intended to help developing countries invest in green energy projects and avoid the path taken by wealthy countries decades earlier that saw massive growth in the use of fossil fuels.

Scientists say ending fossil fuel use, also known as `decarbonization,’ needs to happen worldwide by 2050, but poor countries only would be able to reach the goal with financial help.

Climate campaigner Mohamed Adow of the group Christian Aid says one important step would be for the World Bank, which is co-hosting Tuesday’s meeting, to switch its investments from fossil fuels to renewable energy in developing countries.

Corporate Commitment

Dozens of companies have signed a joint call for governments to maintain momentum on implementing the Paris accord and set long-term strategies for cutting carbon emissions.

The companies _ including insurer Allianz, tire maker Michelin and consumer goods giant Unilever _ said Monday they are committed to a greener economy that includes imposing levies on carbon emissions.

Allianz CEO Oliver Baete said in the statement that “business requires stable regulatory frameworks and an adequate price on carbon.”

Financial institutions such as Allianz also want greater transparency on climate-related data to help them make sound investment decisions, Baete said.

New research

The Paris summit takes place while the American Geophysical Union is holding its fall meeting in New Orleans.

Scientists are expected to present new research on climate changes and ways to keep global temperatures from rising beyond 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F.)

Separately, Microsoft says it will let researchers use its artificial intelligence technology to monitor and model the planet’s climate.

The technology giant says its commitment _ worth about $10 million a year _ could also help companies use vast amounts of data to reduce carbon emissions, by reducing waste, making power grids more efficient and improving weather predictions.

Star scientists

Macron has invited U.S.-based climate scientists to apply for generous grants and relocate to France, a direct response to Trump’s rejection of the Paris accord.

The French president was announcing the first grant winners on Monday. Overall, the French government and research institutions plan to fund about 50 projects with 60 million euros ($70 million)
…

In their third meeting in a month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Ankara. The talks primarily focused on Syria, but Putin’s visit coincides with U.S.-Turkish relations, reeling from a crisis sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“Regarding Jerusalem, I have observed that we share common opinions with Mr. Putin, and we’ve come to an agreement that we will sustain our decisiveness in this matter,” Erdogan said in a joint press statement with Putin, referring to the Russian president as his “dear friend.”

“The resolution by the U.S. to move the American embassy to Jerusalem is far from helping the settlement of the situation in the Middle East,” Putin said. “It is destabilizing the already complicated situation in the region, which is difficult as it is today.”

In a move that will add to Washington’s unease over Ankara’s warming relationship with Moscow, the Turkish president announced that a controversial purchase of a Russian missile system should be finalized this week. NATO strongly opposes the sale, claiming it is incompatible with its systems.

Putin’s visit is just the latest move in what some analysts call a careful and well-played strategy by Russia of building influence and sowing discord amongst its rivals. Before meeting Erdogan, Putin met with another U.S. ally, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in Cairo. Prior to the meeting with Putin, Erdogan ratcheted up his rhetoric over Trump’s Jerusalem move.

“With their decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the United States has become a partner in the bloodshed,” Erdogan said. 

Throughout the year, Turkish-Russian relations have blossomed as U.S.-Turkish ties have plummeted. The latest meeting between Putin and Erdogan is the eighth this year. The two leaders are increasingly cooperating over Syria. Monday’s talks focused on the planned Syrian National Congress on National Dialogue, an event Moscow hopes will bring together the Syrian government and the opposition. Putin said the Congress would address the adoption of a constitution, the parameters of a future Syrian statehood, and the organization of elections under the control of the United Nations.

Even though Moscow and Ankara back opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, analysts say that with the war approaching an endgame, both sides have something to gain in cooperation.

Putin has successfully exploited Ankara’s anger and mistrust over Washington’s backing of the YPG Syrian Kurdish militia in its war against the Islamic State. Ankara calls the YPG terrorists, claiming they are linked to a Kurdish insurgency in Turkey.

But Moscow, too, has been backing the YPG and its political wing, the PYD. Putin is pressing for the YPG to be included in meetings to end the cvil war, which Ankara bitterly opposes. Last week, images appeared of Russian and YPG forces openly collaborating in a military operation against the Islamic State.

“We’ve seen Ankara critical of the photo of Russian military representatives and the YPG,” said analyst Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels. “But this cannot be compared to the policy of the U.S., which is providing heavy weapons to the YPG.” 

Turkish-Russian relations could be further boosted by Putin’s announcement of the partial withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria. 

“Ankara would look at this as an opportunity to expand its influence across the border,” said Ulgen. 

Turkish forces remain massed on the border of the YPG-controlled Syrian Afrin enclave.

“As things stand, Afrin remains under Russian protection. But if indeed Russia were to pull back its troops, this would certainly give more room to Turkey to contemplate military action against Afrin,” Ulgen predicted.

Putin may be wary of abandoning the Syrian Kurdish militia, which Moscow has been developing ties with over several years. Analysts point out that the powerful militia could be useful in helping protect Moscow’s interests in the region from other potential regional rivals, including Turkey and Iran, especially as it winds down much of its military presence in Syria. But such a move would likely test Moscow’s currently successful balancing act —managing its conflicting policies in Syria.
…

Free-trade talks between the European Union and South American trade bloc Mercosur still face hurdles over beef and ethanol, and an expected deal announcement this week might not happen, officials involved in negotiations said on Monday.

Mercosur diplomats involved in the talks on the sidelines of the World Trade Organization minister’s meeting in Buenos Aires said EU officials had not presented improved offers on EU tariff-free imports of South American beef and ethanol as promised.

“Basically, they want us to show our cards before they show theirs,” a senior diplomat from a Mercosur country told Reuters, asking not to be named due to the sensitive stage of the negotiations.

Resistance by some EU member states to agricultural imports, such as Ireland and France, has delayed negotiation of the free trade agreement with Mercosur that seeks to liberalize trade and investment, services and access to public procurement.

Brazilian President Michel Temer, speaking to reporters after attending the opening of the WTO meeting on Sunday, said an announcement of the framework political agreement for the

EU-Mercosur deal might have to wait until Dec. 21, when the bloc’s presidents meet in Brasilia.

A spokeswoman for the Argentine Foreign Ministry said agreement on the conclusion of the negotiations that have gone on for almost two decades could still be reached by Wednesday in Buenos Aires or, if not, next week in Brazil.

Besides disagreement over the tonnage of beef that EU countries would allow in each year free of tariffs, EU diplomats have said rules of origin still have to be included in the provisional political accord.

Brazil has said that can be worked out in the coming months before a final agreement is signed sometime in mid-2018. Brazil’s foreign ministry played down the hurdles to a deal.

“There is very little left to negotiate and they are not fundamental issues,” said an official, who requested anonymity. “There will be a deal and it will be announced when it is struck, here or in Brasilia.”

Mercosur members Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay are pushing for an improvement on the EU offer of tariff-free imports for 70,000 tons a year of beef and 600,000 tons of ethanol a year.

They complain that it is lower than the 100,000-tons beef offer the EU made in 2004, though EU negotiators say Europeans eat less meat today.

The Irish Farmers Association has called the deal “toxic” and opposes any increase.

 
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin, making his second visit to Egypt in as many years, held talks Monday with his Egyptian counterpart on their countries’ rapidly expanding ties.

Egypt’s general-turned-president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, has visited Russia three times since the ouster of his Islamist predecessor in 2013. After taking office, el-Sissi has bought billions of dollars’ worth of Russian weapons, including fighter jets and assault helicopters.

The two countries are also in the late stages of negotiations over the construction by a Russian company of Egypt’s first nuclear energy reactor.

Also, Russia last month approved a draft agreement with Egypt to allow Russian warplanes to use Egyptian military bases, a deal that would mark a significant leap in bilateral ties and evidence of Moscow’s expanding military role in a turbulent Middle East. That deal, if it goes through, will likely irk the United States, until now a top Egypt military ally.

Putin flew to Cairo after a brief and previously unannounced visit to a Russian military air base in Syria. The air base has served as the main foothold for the air campaign Russia has waged since September 2015 in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad against armed groups opposed to his rule.

El-Sissi met Putin at Cairo’s international airport and the two leaders later went straight to the presidential Ittahidyah palace in Cairo’s upscale Heliopolis suburb where talks got underway.

Egypt’s currently close ties with Russia harken back to the 1950s and 1960s, when Cairo became Moscow’s closest Arab ally during the peak years of the Cold War.

Egypt changed allies in the 1970s under the late President Anwar Sadat, who replaced Moscow with Washington as his country’s chief economic and military backer following the signing of a U.S.-sponsored peace treaty with Israel. Egypt has since become a major recipient of U.S. economic and military aid.

In what would have been unthinkable during the Cold War, Egypt has under el-Sissi been able to maintain close ties with both Russia and the United States.

Egypt, however, has not been able thus far to persuade Russia to resume its flights to Egypt, suspended since October 2015 when a suspected bomb brought down a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board. Egypt has since spent millions of dollars to upgrade security at its airports and undergone numerous checks by Russian experts to ascertain the level of security at the facilities.

The suspension of Russian flights has dealt a devastating blow to Egypt’s vital tourism industry. Britain, another major source of visitors, has since the Russian airliner’s crash also suspended flights to Sharm el-Sheikh, a Red Sea resort in Sinai from which the Russian airliner took off shortly before it crashed.

“Your Excellency: When will Russian tourism return to Egypt?” read the front-page banner headline in a Cairo daily loyal to the government, in both Arabic and Russian.

There have been speculations that el-Sissi and Putin might during the visit finalize and announce a deal on the construction of the nuclear reactor on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast after months of wrangling over technical and financial details.

Egypt and Russia have already initialed an agreement for a $25 billion Russian loan to finance the construction.

Egypt has quietly supported Russia’s military involvement in the Syrian civil war, a policy that had clashed with the position taken by Saudi Arabia, Cairo’s chief ally and financial backer. The Saudis, however, have gradually softened their opposition to Russian involvement there and taken a host of steps to thaw decades of frosty relations with Moscow.

Both the Saudis and Egyptians, according to analysts, are now hoping that Russia’s presence in Syria would curtail the growing influence there of Shiite, non-Arab Iran, whose expanding leverage in the region has been a source of alarm to both Cairo and Riyadh.

Egypt, meanwhile, has been raising its own profile in Syria, negotiating local cease-fires between government and opposition forces with the blessing of both Damascus and Moscow.

 
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday he has ordered his military to withdraw a “significant part” of Russia’s forces from Syria.

He made the announcement during a surprise visit to Russia’s Hemeimeem airbase in Latakia province, where he also met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Russian forces joined the Syrian conflict in late 2015 in support of Assad’s military.

Putin said Monday that Russian and Syrian forces had defeated the “most battle-ready group of international terrorists,” in an apparent reference to the Islamic State group.

Syrian state media said Assad thanked Putin for Russia’s role in the fight against terrorism in Syria and that the Syrian people will not forget what the Russian military achieved.

Russia plans to keep Hemeimeem airbase as well as a naval facility in Tartus.

The visit to Syria was Putin’s first, and came on his way to talks to Cairo.

Russia’s intervention in Syria helped stabilize Assad’s effort to defeat rebels who have fought since 2011 to force him from power. The conflict started as peaceful protests that were met with a strong government crackdown and eventually led to a civil war that also included the emergence of the Islamic State group in large areas of eastern Syria.

Forces opposing Islamic State have made large gains during the past year in both Iraq and Syria, including pushing the militants out of their major strongholds in Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria. The United States has led its own coalition of militaries providing airstrikes and other support to fighters on the ground in both countries.

Multiple efforts to bring about productive peace talks to end the fighting in Syria have proven unsuccessful as millions of people fled their homes. The latest attempt at finding a negotiated peace is going on in Geneva, led by the United Nations.
…

France has ordered banned the sale and ordered a recall of several baby formula milk and baby food products made by French dairy giant Lactalis after the discovery of salmonella bacteria, consumer protection agency DGCCRF said in a statement.

The recall includes products for export, including to China, Taiwan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco, Lebanon, Sudan, Romania, Serbia, Georgia, Greece, Haiti, Colombia and Peru.

Some were also destined for regional markets, including Africa and Asia.

The agency said that Lactalis, the world’s largest dairy company, had not managed contamination risk and has been ordered to conduct a product recall and halt the sale and export of several baby food products made at its Craon plant in western France since Feb. 15.

The recall follows 20 cases of salmonella infection of infants in France during early December, which had already prompted a limited recall of 12 Lactalis products.

This week five new cases were reported of infection with the “salmonella agona” bacteria. One of the infants had consumed a Lactalis product that had not been on the first recall list. The infants have now recovered, the agency said.

Lactalis spokesman Michel Nalet said on BFM Television that the products can be exchanged in pharmacies or supermarkets. He said that any salmonella bacteria would be killed by boiling the milk for two minutes.

A full list of the products concerned is available on the agency’s website.
…

Thousands in Ukraine rallied Sunday in protest of the arrest of opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili, calling for his release and the impeachment of President Petro Poroshenko.

Ukrainian officials have accused Saakashvili, whom they arrested Friday, of abetting an alleged “criminal group” led by former President Viktor Yanukovych — who was pushed from power in 2014 and fled to Russia — and have suggested that his protests are part of a Russian plot against Ukraine.

A day after he declared a hunger strike, his supporters took to the streets of Kyiv to demand his release.

“The authorities have crossed a red line. You don’t put opponents in prison,” said Saakashvili’s wife, Sandra Roelofs, as marchers brandished anti-government and anti-corruption slogans.

Saakashvili, 49, is also wanted in his native Georgia, where he served as president from 2004 until 2013, for alleged abuse of power.

Saakashvili became a regional governor in Ukraine in 2015 at the invitation of President Poroshenko. However, the two men later had a falling out, with Saakashvili accusing the president of corruption and calling for his removal from office.

 
…

Spain’s maritime rescue service says it has saved 104 migrants trying to make the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea to Europe from North Africa.

The service says its rescue craft Guardamar Concepcion Arenal intercepted two boats carrying 53 and 22 migrants each overnight and early Sunday in the Strait of Gibraltar. The same rescue vessel also took on board another 25 migrants that a Civil Guard patrol craft had picked up at sea.

Another rescue craft, the Salvamar Denebola, later spotted a tiny rubber boat carrying four more migrants that it took to shore.

Tens of thousands of migrants try to reach Europe each year in small smugglers’ boats unfit for the open sea, with thousands dying in the attempt.
…

Winners of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize warned that the world was “one impulsive tantrum” away from destruction, urging nuclear nations to adopt a U.N. treaty banning atomic weapons.

“Will it be the end of nuclear weapons, or will it be the end of us?” Beatrice Fihn, who accepted the award on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), asked in her speech following the group’s acceptance of the award.

Fihn warned that in particular, warlike threats exchanged between North Korea and the United States amid nuclear tests by Pyongyang were forcing the world to live “under the conditions where our mutual destruction is only one impulsive tantrum away.”

The Geneva-based group, which received the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year, consists of about 500 organizations in more than 100 countries that are working toward global nuclear disarmament.

The Nobel committee praised ICAN’s efforts toward securing the 2017 U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. A total of 122 nations adopted the deal — but none of the nine known nuclear powers signed up.

In a break from tradition, the three western nuclear powers — the U.S., France and Britain — sent second-ranking diplomats rather than their ambassadors to Sunday’s ceremony.

Receiving the award with Fihn was 85-year-old Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and now an ICAN campaigner, who described horrible scenes in the aftermath of the atomic bomb in 1945  when she was 13 years old.

“Listen to our testimony. Heed our warning. And know that your actions are consequential,” Thurlow said during her speech at the ceremony.

The nine nations that have nuclear weapons boycotted the U.N. treaty negotiations, which began in February. They are Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.

Nearly three decades after the end of the Cold War, the debate between disarmament versus deterrence is still being fought.

 
…

The head of the Arab League has called on the nations of the world to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that he will recognize the city as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. Embassy there.

Ahmed Aboul-Gheit made the call Saturday at the beginning of an emergency meeting of foreign ministers of the Arab League. He added that the U.S. decision “amounts to the legalization of occupation.”

He also said it raised a question mark about the United States’ role as a peace negotiator in the Middle East and beyond.

Some Arab diplomats have also suggested submitting a draft resolution condemning the U.S. decision to the U.N. Security Council.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said he expected the Arab League to “immediately act in presenting a draft resolution to the Security Council that rejects this American decision.”

Saturday’s meeting in Cairo took place after three days of street protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as protests at Al-Azhar Mosque in the Egyptian capital.

​’US has crossed red lines’

Further, the heads of the largest Christian church in Cairo and Al-Azhar University have said they will not meet with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence when he visits Cairo on December 20. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has also announced he will not meet with Pence, saying “the U.S. has crossed red lines” on Jerusalem.

A statement from the Coptic Orthodox Church called the Trump decision “inappropriate and without consideration for the feelings of millions of people.”

In Paris, pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched ahead of a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday. Netanyahu is to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron, who has called Trump’s decision “regrettable.”

Pro-Palestinian rallies also took place Saturday outside the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Demonstrations took place Friday in Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Pakistan, Lebanon, Malaysia and Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.

Earlier Saturday, Israeli airstrikes killed two men in the Gaza Strip. Hamas said it lost two gunmen in those airstrikes.

An Israeli army statement said the targets of the strikes were “two weapons manufacturing sites, a weapons warehouse and a military compound.”

Criticism of Washington

Some of the United States’ oldest allies turned their backs on Washington’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital during an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday.

More than half the council’s 15 members requested the open meeting, and delegations from other member states packed the chamber, indicating the importance Jerusalem’s status holds around the globe. 

Security Council members criticized the Trump administration decision, saying it risked prejudging the outcome of final status issues and threatened the peace process. They also expressed concerns it could be exploited by extremists and radicals, fueling tensions in an already turbulent region.

Trump’s announcement defied decades of diplomacy in the quest to bring peace to Israel. Jerusalem has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the quest, and it was widely believed that a solution would be found in peace negotiations.

The White House has denied that the president’s announcement on moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem means his administration is pulling out of the Middle East peace process.

No other country has immediately followed Trump’s lead in planning to relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something the White House has acknowledged.

Ed Yeranian in Cairo contributed to this report.
…

A senior Russian general who was accused in a recent investigation of being a coordinator of separatist forces in eastern Ukraine and of possibly playing a role in the downing of a civilian airliner in July 2014 has said he plans to sue the authors of the report for defamation.

Retired General Nikolai Tkachyov told Novaya Gazeta on Saturday that he will sue the Bellingcat investigative collective and the independent website The Insider over their report, in which they used digital voice analysis to identify Tkachyov as a man codenamed Delfin (dolphin) who appears on intercepted communications with separatist fighters.

Tkachyov denies that he was Delfin or that he was in eastern Ukraine in 2014. He said he has spent the last few years in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg busying himself with the “patriotic education of youths.”

Bellingcat and The Insider published their investigation on Friday. In it, they reported that they had enlisted two independent analytical centers — one in the United States and one in Lithuania — to compare the intercepted audio from 2014 with recordings of Tkachyov made under the pretext of interviewing him for another story.

The two centers, using various digital analytical methods, independently determined it was “highly probable” that the man on the recordings and Tkachyov were one and the same.

According to the report, Delfin was a Russian general who was based in the Ukrainian town of Krasnodon in the summer of 2014 with the task of coordinating disparate separatist militia units in parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team (JIT) has identified Delfin as a person of interest in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in July 2014.

The JIT determined in 2016 that it was shot down from separatist-held territory in the Donetsk region by a BUK antiaircraft system provided by the Russian military. The JIT report says the BUK entered Ukraine near Krasnodon and was spirited back into Russia immediately after the airliner was shot down, killing all 298 people aboard.

Russia denies interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs, despite compelling evidence that Moscow has provided military, economic, and political support to separatists fighting against Kyiv. Russia and the separatists deny shooting down MH17 and have offered several other theories to explain the incident, all of which have been rejected by investigators.

Tkachyov, 68, is a decorated veteran of both Russian campaigns in Chechnya. He was released from military service in 2010.

After his retirement, however, he served in 2011-12 as a military adviser to the government of Syria. After his return, he was assigned to the Central Military District and based in Yekaterinburg.

In May 2014, he attended the Victory Day parade in Yekaterinburg. He appeared again in public in August 2014 at an event celebrating Orenburg Cossacks.

Novaya Gazeta contributed to this report.
…

Ukrainian opposition politician and former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has declared a hunger strike, his lawyer told journalists on Saturday.

Attorney Ruslan Chornolutskiy released a letter from Saakashvili calling on supporters to protest in Kyiv on Sunday and to call for the impeachment of President Petro Poroshenko.

Also Saturday, a spokesman for the Prosecutor-General’s Office said prosecutors would ask a court to place Saakashvili under house arrest with electronic monitoring pending trial.

Ukrainian officials have accused Saakashvili of abetting an alleged “criminal group” led by former President Viktor Yanukoych — who was pushed from power in 2014 and fled to Russia — and have suggested that his protests are part of a Russian plot against Ukraine.

Saakashvili has dismissed the claims.

Saakashvili was arrested in the Ukrainian capital late on Friday, prompting hundreds of his supporters to demonstrate for his release.

The firebrand activist’s supporters gathered in a narrow street outside the police station where he was taken late on Friday, not far from the parliament building, shouting “Shame” and “Kyiv, get up!” while a large number of police in riot gear stood guard.

Close ally and fellow Georgian David Sakvarelidze called on Kyiv residents to take to the streets to protest Saakashvili’s recapture, which he blamed on President Poroshenko.

“Today Poroshenko broke all records and went down in history as a dictator who does this to political opponents,” Sakvarelidze told TV channel NewsOne.

Three associates of Saakashvili told RFE/RL that he was arrested at a friend’s apartment where he was visiting earlier Friday. Sakvarelidze said the agents were from the state security agency SBU.

Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko said in a post to his Facebook page that “everything was done to avoid bloodshed.”

“The detainee is placed in a temporary detention facility,” he wrote. 

Hours earlier, Saakashvili called on Ukrainians to demonstrate in Kyiv on December 10. In a Facebook post, Saakashvili told supporters he had lost his voice and was running a temperature but would “be by your side again” at a midday march to Kyiv’s Independence Square, which was the site of the monthslong 2013-14 protests that ousted the country’s pro-Russia president. 

Saakashvili, who became governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region in 2015 but quit a year later and is now a vocal opponent of Poroshenko, thanked backers for their support in the tumult of recent days.

Law-enforcement officers searched Saakashvili’s apartment in Kyiv on December 5, dragged him off the roof, and bundled him into a car. But supporters blocked the streets and pulled him from the vehicle, and he led a march to parliament.

A day later, police raided a protest tent camp near parliament, but Saakashvili was not detained and a 24-hour deadline for him to turn himself in passed without visible action by the authorities.

The search of Saakashvili’s home was conducted two days after his Movement of New Forces party organized a rally in Kyiv calling for Poroshenko’s impeachment and for legislation that would allow it to take place. 

Poroshenko late on December 8 said international experts may help justice officials investigate the charges against Saakashvili, adding that he was sure Saakashvili would get a fair trial in Ukraine.

“I don’t exclude that the inquiry may ask for extra expertise, including from international organizations, to enhance trust,” Poroshenko told reporters during a visit to Vilnius to meet with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite.

Saakashvili “has to answer to investigators and to society regarding the accusations against him,” Poroshenko said. “If he doesn’t answer, it only means that these accusations are well-founded.”

“If he flees from the investigation, this undermines his credibility,” Poroshenko said.

This story first appeared on RFE/RL’s website.

AFP, AP and Reuters contributed to this story.
…

A new exhibition aims to show how the art world has responded to the global changes since the terror attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Age of Terror: Art since 9/11 at London’s Imperial War Museum brings together 40 artists from across the world whose works reflect on conflict and society since that day. Henry Ridgwell reports.
…

The environmental group EcoWatch estimates that at least 1 million sea birds, and 100,000 marine mammals are killed every year by ingesting plastic or getting caught in it. It is an environmental nightmare, and it’s getting worse every year. But this week, more than 200 countries signed an agreement to begin dealing with the problem. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

There was relief in London and Brussels Friday after Britain clinched an initial agreement on its terms of divorce from the European Union, opening the way for the next — and even harder — phase of negotiations over the country’s future trade relations with the economic bloc.

“Let us remember that the most difficult challenge is still ahead,” Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, warned after the overnight deal was struck. “We all know that breaking up is hard. But breaking up and building a new relation is much harder.”

‘Give and take on both sides’

Welcoming Friday’s deal, which guarantees the rights of Europeans living in Britain and Britons residing in EU countries, as well as committing not to reestablish a customs border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a bleary-eyed British Prime Minister Theresa May said there had been “give and take on both sides.” 

Her aides say the deal was a triumph for her.

But many of the red lines she had laid down previously were crossed to pull off the breakthrough, analysts say. 

To clinch the deal, May had to agree that the European Court of Justice will oversee the rights of EU citizens in Britain, for at least a minimum of eight years after Britain formally breaks from the EU, which is scheduled next year. She also agreed on an expensive exit bill, which will amount to $47-$53 billion.

​’Regulatory alignment’

And to the anger of Brexiters, May also agreed that Britain will maintain “regulatory alignment” with the EU to ensure there doesn’t have to be a “hard border” or regulatory barriers between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That suggests to them that Britain is likely heading for a so-called “soft Brexit,” whereby it remains entangled with the EU.

The former leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, scathingly described the 15-page draft agreement — it still has to be endorsed by EU national leaders next week — as “pathetic.” 

He added: “The British prime minister had to fly through the middle of the night to go meet three unelected people who condescendingly are now saying ‘Jolly well done, May. You’ve met every single one of our demands. Thank you very much, we can now move on.’”

May and Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, had originally planned to agree on a first-phase deal on Monday, but it was thwarted in a chaotic breakdown between the British prime minister and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who May needs for her parliamentary majority. 

The DUP objected to some of the border commitments May was making.

​Terms a tough sell?

For May, the challenge now may be to sell the terms of the divorce agreement to her own Conservative party. 

Brexiters within her cabinet, including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Environment minister Michael Gove, who both challenged her for the party leadership last year, were supportive of May publicly Friday.

“How long she will retain their backing? I wouldn’t like to place a wager on that,” remarked a Conservative lawmaker.  

The promise that Britain will maintain close regulatory alignment with many of the EU single market’s rules and regulations for the sake of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, even after leaving the economic bloc, quickly attracted criticism from other Brexiters Friday.

Former official has concerns

One former Conservative minister, Owen Paterson, tweeted his concern over the alignment pledge — as well as divorce bill — saying they “must be debated and resolved.” He warned ominously, “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” 

Other Brexiters said the agreement to maintain regulatory alignment between Britain and the EU was inconsistent with May’s pledge that “Brexit means Brexit.” 

They argue by entangling Britain with EU regulations, it will make it harder for Britain to strike out and to negotiate bilateral trade deals with other countries. 

They are suspicious also that, despite May’s insistence, Britain will leave the bloc’s customs union — which she is on course to keep Britain in — pushed to do so by ministers who want to retain a close relationship with the EU and opposition lawmakers in the House of Commons opposed to Brexit.

No ‘hard Brexit’

Their fears might not be misplaced. A former head of the British Foreign Office, Simon Fraser, says Friday’s deal makes it less likely there will be a sharp “hard Brexit” from the EU. But he says trade discussions will prove even harder than the first phase with “much bigger and more complicated negotiations.”

“We need a much clearer understanding of what our negotiating strategy is,” he told Britain’s Sky News.  

For all sides in the Brexit divide roiling British politics there remains much to fight over, including the biggest of all questions: What should Britain’s future relationship with the EU look like? The first-phase deal is full of ambiguity and fudge and leaves more questions unresolved than it answers, analysts say.

According to former Conservative lawmaker and newspaper columnist Matthew Parris, “Theresa May’s supposed victory merely prolongs the illusions and postpones the hard decisions.”
…

The European Commission said Friday enough progress had been made in Brexit negotiations with Britain and that a second phase of negotiations should begin, ending an impasse over the status of the Irish border.

The Commission announced its verdict in an early morning statement after intense talks, which resulted in British Prime Minister Theresa May taking an early morning flight to Brussels to announce the deal alongside Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

The Commission’s recommendation that sufficient progress has been made will now go to the European Union summit of leaders taking place next week. May said she expected a formal agreement to be approved at the summit.

“Prime Minister May has assured me that it has the backing of the UK government. On that basis, I believe we have now made the breakthrough we need. Today’s result is of course a compromise,” Juncker told a hastily arranged news conference.

The commission said it was ready to begin work immediately on Phase Two talks, which cover trade and long-term relations with the bloc.

Moving to talks about trade and a Brexit transition is crucial for the future of May’s premiership, and to keep trade flowing between the world’s biggest trading bloc and its sixth-largest national economy after Britain leaves on March 30, 2019.

Border with Ireland

May says an agreement between Britain and the European Union ensures there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit. 

She says Northern Ireland has “a set of unique circumstances” because it has the U.K.’s only land border with an EU country. 

The border issue has been threatening to derail the divorce talks. 

Earlier this week, a Northern Ireland party that propped up May’s government scuttled a deal between the U.K and the bloc, prompting frantic diplomacy. 

Business interests

London Mayor Sadiq Khan says he is disappointed by parts of the deal, but that May did what was necessary to get to the next stage of Brexit talks.

Khan says the government must accelerate progress to avoid further delays. He says it is critical that business leaders gain clarity on any interim plans to prevent companies from putting contingency plans in place to leave.

Germany’s main business lobby group agrees that the negotiations must pick up speed.

Joachim Lang, a top official with the Federation of German Industries, or BDI, said Friday that German businesses were “relieved about the breakthrough.” 

He warned that “the most difficult part of the negotiations lies ahead of us” and businesses need clarity “as quickly as possible” about future relations between the European Union and Britain. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The White House on Thursday denied that the president’s announcement on moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem meant his administration was pulling out of the Middle East peace process.

“In fact, in the president’s remarks, he said that we are as committed to the peace process as ever, and we want to continue to push forward in those conversations and those discussions,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. “And hopefully the ultimate goal, I think, of all those parties is to reach a peace deal. And that’s something that the United States is very much committed to.”

WATCH: Protests Against US Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital Continue

​No other country has immediately followed President Donald Trump’s lead in planning to relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something the White House is acknowledging.

“I’m not aware of any countries that we anticipate that happening at any point soon,” Sanders said. “I’m not saying that they aren’t, but I’m not aware of them.” 

A day after the president’s declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, the Russian ambassador in Israel, Alexander Shein, said Moscow could move its embassy to West Jerusalem “after the Palestinians and the Israelis agree on all issues of the final status of the Palestinian territories.”

​Russian statement

The Russian Foreign Ministry, in a statement viewed as a surprise by Israelis, said it considered “East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

In response to Trump’s announcement, Palestinian factions announced that Friday would be a “Day of Rage,” while the Islamist group Hamas called for an uprising against Israel.

The Israeli military said one of its aircraft and a tank had targeted two militant posts in the Gaza Strip after three rockets were launched at Israel.

The Al-Tawheed Brigades — which has ignored the call of Hamas, the dominant force in Gaza, to desist from firing rockets — claimed responsibility for the launches.

Stone-throwing Palestinian protesters have clashed with Israeli troops, who responded by firing tear gas, rubber bullets and live bullets, on Gaza and the West Bank in response to Trump’s announcement. 

Trump said Wednesday that he was directing the State Department to begin drawing up architectural plans for a U.S. embassy in the holy city. But the actual relocation of the embassy would take years, according to White House officials.

Both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis expressed concern about the timing of Trump’s announcement, according to U.S. officials. 

Asked by VOA whether the president’s declaration had been delayed at the request of the two Cabinet members in order to put in place adequate security at U.S. embassies, Sanders said the decision was made only after “a thoughtful and responsible process” and that “components of the decision went through the full interagency process.”

Palestinian officials said Trump’s decision had disqualified the U.S. as an honest broker in the peace process.

Many U.S. allies also disagreed with the move. The U.N. Security Council and the Arab League plan to meet soon to discuss the action.

​’Recognizing the reality’

Tillerson defended the decision on a visit to Vienna.

“All of Israel’s government offices are largely in Jerusalem already, so the U.S. is just recognizing the reality of that,” the secretary of state said. He noted, however, that Trump “also said the U.S. would support a two-state solution if that is the desire of the two parties, and he also said this does not in any way finalize the status of Jerusalem.”

The Russian foreign minister, with whom Tillerson met Thursday in Vienna, warned that if Washington prematurely moved its embassy to Jerusalem, it could endanger the two-state solution.

“We have asked them to explain the meaning of the decisions on eventually moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” Sergei Lavrov told reporters. “We have asked to explain what consequences of this move the Americans see for the efforts taken under the U.N. aegis and by the Quartet of international mediators.”

The Quartet, established in 2002, consists of entities involved in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The members are the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia.

Robert Berger in Jerusalem and Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is challenging suggestions of illegal conduct in an undercover sting operation targeting allegedly corrupt government officials in Kyiv, which the FBI conducted in concert with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).

The United States and European Union have provided logistical support and training for NABU investigators tasked with ferreting out government graft in the Eastern European country. The support is part of the financial and diplomatic backing of the leadership that took power in Kyiv after the 2014 Maidan protests, which ousted the Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych.

But Ukraine’s top prosecutor says NABU investigators overstepped the law in a recent probe of suspected corruption in Ukraine’s migration service.

‘Absolutely illegal’

General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko told parliament he wanted to address issues around “the relationship between various law enforcement agencies that causes public outrage and rather harsh statements by our strategic international partners — the U.S. and the EU.”

“A joint [FBI-NABU] operation … is an absolutely illegal action without the relevant legal procedures,” Lutsenko said in a recent television interview, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

In an interview with VOA, NABU Director Artem Sytnyk defended actions of his undercover agents, as well as the agency’s cooperation with FBI.

“This is about the survival of the corrupt elite,” he said. “It further proves that it is impossible to investigate corruption at the highest level and not run into resistance.”

In a statement to VOA, FBI spokeswoman Samantha T. Shero said the law enforcement agency entered into a June 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with NABU to provide investigative assistance, training and capacity building for NABU and Ukraine’s Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

“The FBI abides by host nation laws and never operates outside the MOU,” she said, explaining that FBI personnel are temporarily assigned on a rotational basis at the NABU in support of this relationship.

“These special agents and analysts are not operational, and any statements to the contrary are not true,” she said. “Rooting out corruption is a priority for the FBI and we routinely work with our foreign law enforcement partners across the globe to investigate corruption and provide assistance when requested. We value our relationship with the NABU and SAPO, and have found their staff to be professional and trustworthy. NABU and SAPO are young organizations that face enormous challenges in the work that they are doing in Ukraine.”

The FBI, Shero added, will continue to provide NABU and SAPO with support and assistance in their “important work for the Ukrainian people.”

Committee chair dismissed

On Thursday, an opposition legislator who chairs the Ukrainian parliamentary anti-corruption committee was dismissed by fellow lawmakers, in what critics of President Petro Poroshenko’s ruling party are calling an open assault on NABU, the country’s only independent corruption watchdog.

The office of Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s and Poroshenko’s government have come under increasing pressure in recent weeks amid perceived backsliding on reform commitments, which has delayed billions of dollars in loans from the International Monetary Fund and tested the patience of Western countries, even as Kyiv pushes for closer EU integration and possible membership.

Ukraine’s general prosecutor on Wednesday denied that his office was impeding the NABU’s work as he sought to deflect charges by Kyiv’s Western backers that Ukraine was coming up short on promises to fight graft.

This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian service. Some information came from Reuters.
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