Pope Francis has lifted the suspension imposed in 1983 on Nicaraguan priest and poet Ernesto Cardenal, the Vatican’s ambassador to Nicaragua said in a statement Monday.

Nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag said in a statement that Francis removed the canonical censures following a request from the 94-year-old Cardenal, who has been hospitalized for more than a week.

Pope John Paul II suspended Cardenal from his priestly duties because he had become culture minister in the leftist Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega after the rebels toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza.

John Paul II said that priests could not assume political posts and he was irked by a movement of pro-revolutionary priests such as Cardenal accused of ignoring instructions from the more conservative hierarchy and of mixing leftist ideology into theology.

John Paul II famously criticized Cardenal publicly at Managua’s international airport during a visit in 1983. In a widely circulated photograph, Cardenal knelt and reached to kiss the pope’s hand, but John Paul pulled his hand back and pointed his finger at Cardenal.

“Father Cardenal has been suspended from exercising the ministry for 35 years due to his political militancy,” the nuncio’s statement said. “The priest accepted the canonical punishment that was imposed on him and followed it without performing any pastoral activity. Furthermore, he had abandoned many years ago all political commitments.”

Cardenal’s personal assistant Luz Marina Acosta said he was in delicate, but stable condition in a local hospital, where Sommertag joined him in celebrating Mass on Sunday.

 “It was very moving and the father was very happy,” she said.

Cardenal, like many priests in Latin America in the 1960s, felt the pull of the leftist liberation theology that focused on ministering to the poor and liberating the oppressed.

Years after the revolution, however, he was among several Sandinista leaders who distanced themselves from Ortega.

He was easily identifiable in his signature black beret and loose white peasant shirts.

Among Cardenal’s works are “Epigrams” and “Zero Hour.” He has been nominated four times for the Nobel Prize in Literature since 2005.

The same suspension was imposed on Cardenal’s brother Fernando, who served as the Sandinista education minister and Miguel D’Escoto who was that government’s foreign minister. However, those priests had their suspensions lifted years ago.
…

Nearly a week after Russia’s lower house of parliament approved a preliminary measure aimed at safeguarding internet operations in case of a foreign cyber attack, Kremlin critics and some lawmakers seem to agree the entire enterprise is beyond the country’s technological capabilities.

The bill, which proposes the creation of “Runet,” a domestic network that would be designed to function independently of the global internet, has drawn comparisons to China’s “great firewall.”

Russian state-run media say the legislation was drafted in response to tensions with Western nations that accuse Moscow of perpetrating cyberattacks via social media platforms to wreak havoc in foreign elections.

Critics, however, call the legislation a Kremlin ploy to control domestic cyber-infrastructure, all part of a broader campaign to expand censorship and blunt online political mobilization campaigns.

The bill calls for Russian web traffic and data to be rerouted through points controlled by the state and for the creation of a domestic Domain Name System that would allow the internet to continue functioning in Russia even if it is cut off from foreign infrastructure.

During last week’s first reading, the proposed law sparked exasperation from some minority lawmakers who feared it would trigger a dysfunctional “internet Brexit,” whole others questioned how Russia would build the technical infrastructure required to support the legal provisions. By Brexit, they were drawing comparisons to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.

No IT experts among MPs

“How many of you are IT experts here, raise your hand. One? Then how can we vote for a bill we don’t understand?” said Valery Gartung, a lawmaker with the Kremlin-loyal Just Russia party.

“Russia doesn’t manufacture any IT hardware except cables; maybe some people should hang themselves on them,” said MP Sergei Ivanov of the nationalist LDPR, President Vladimir Putin’s former chief of staff.

One of the bill’s authors is Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer and one of the key suspects in the 2006 murder of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in Britain. Lugovoi dismissed the critics, emphasizing the massive cyber threat he says the U.S. poses.

“This isn’t kindergarten!” he shouted at the reading. “All of the websites in Syria” have been turned off by the U.S. before.

In a 2014 interview with Wired magazine, U.S. surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden alleged that the National Security Agency accidentally cut off Syria’s internet while attempting to infiltrate it in 2012.

Concern about US cyber aggression

Andrei Soldatov, who co-authored The Red Web, a history of internet surveillance in Russia, said concern about U.S. cyber aggression is just the latest pretext for political censorship campaigns that can be traced to the Soviet era.

“Look at the text of the legislation,” he said. “Censorship and filtering is an essential part of it. It calls for new equipment to be installed with all internet service providers” that alters or impedes traffic flows and filters content. “This has nothing to do with protection against the U.S.; I don’t buy this explanation that it’s all about protecting the Russian internet users or the Russian internet against possible U.S. aggression.”

“The government is now mostly concerned with one thing: the mobilizing capability of the internet,” he said, explaining that Kremlin-led efforts to gain control of the internet since Russia’s historic 2012 street protests have scored preciously few successes. “So they actually want to strip in the internet of this capability.” During Soviet times, he said, the idea was to seal the country completely in order to stop the spread of uncensored information.

“But today, even with the filtering we have now, if you want to get access to some sensitive information on the internet, you can get it quite easily,” he said. “The idea is to prevent social platforms and the internet as a whole from being used by political activists to start unrest.”

Although an isolated Russian net will compromise prospects for international digital commerce, Soldatov said officials aren’t likely concerned, as the country’s nearly decade-long “climate of internet uncertainty” has already forced some Russia IT companies to flee the market.

Kremlin officials long ago decided to put security before commerce, Soldatov said.

“Two years ago, Putin signed a new draft of the information security doctrine. And if you check the text, you can see the main idea there is that Russian telecommunication and IT companies should check first with Russian security services before introducing new technologies, he said. “So it’s clear that security comes first and technological progress comes second, and that’s not good for business. It means that you first have to go to the FSB and ask them whether they’re happy with this or that new technology.”

Internet freedom

Asked if it will be possible for free speech and internet freedom advocates to circumvent impending restrictions, Soldatov voiced optimism.

“Yes, absolutely. It’s already clear that this kind of system would have gaps. The system would be quite porous, because we are talking about the internet itself, and it’s a technology that by definition was designed to find a way for traffic to go,” he said.

“And this is the case for many countries, like in China, [where] entire communities of activists could find a way,” he added. “The problem is for the rest. So you sort of see an internet divided, with, say, 70 percent or 80 percent of people who live in a situation they accept, and then you have some activists who would find a way, and that’s what might happen.”

In an interview with Riga-based Meduza news outlet, Stanislav Shakirov of the digital censorship watchdog “Roskomsvoboda” said Russia, unlike China, lacks the domestic investment infrastructure to develop its own tech startups, a fact that would be likely to doom the commercial prospects for an independent Russian internet.

“Not only are Russian internet users accustomed to having their pick of Western online services, but Russia’s domestic market isn’t big enough to sustain competition in isolation, and its unfriendly business climate remains a major hindrance,” he said.

But Ekho Moskvy radio anchor Alexander Plushev, who has reported on internet freedom issues in Russia for years, says supporters of the bills aren’t concerned with security, commerce or censorship.

“I think it’s just corruption, just to get money, to build their own independent network,” he said, explaining that it is primarily Russian government contractors who stand to profit from a privatized Russian internet. “That’s the main reason for this law.”

(Some information is from AFP.)
…

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is not saying whether or not he nominated Donald Trump for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, but the question may be moot: the U.S. president has been put forward by others for the prestigious award.

During a White House news conference on Friday, Trump said the Japanese premier had given him “the most beautiful copy” of a five-page nomination letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Since then Abe has declined to say whether he had done so.

Regardless, Trump has already been nominated by two Norwegian lawmakers.

“We have nominated him of course for the positive developments on the Korean Peninsula,” Per-Willy Amundsen, who was Justice Minister in Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s Cabinet in 2016-2018, told Reuters.

“It has been a very difficult situation and the tensions have since lowered and a lot of it is due to Trump’s unconventional diplomatic style,” he added.

Amundsen, who is a member of the rightwing Progress Party, wrote a letter to the award committee together with his parliamentary colleague Christian Tybring-Gjedde, he said.

The letter was submitted in June, immediately after a summit Trump held in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Unaimed at easing tensions and tackling Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

Tybring-Gjedde, who sits on the Norwegian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, also confirmed the joint nomination of Trump when contacted by Reuters.

“A possible award would of course depend on the talks leading to a credible disarmament deal,” he said.

A wide range of people can nominate for the Nobel Peace Prize, including members of parliaments and governments, heads of state, university professors of history, social sciences or law and past Nobel Peace Prize laureates, among others.

The deadline for nominations for the 2019 prize, which will be announced on Oct. 11., was Jan. 31.

The five-strong Norwegian Nobel Committee, which decides who wins the award, does not comment on nominations, keeping secret for 50 years the names of nominators and unsuccessful nominees.

Still, it did say earlier this month that 304 candidates were nominated for this year’s prize, of which 219 are individuals and 85 are organizations.

Last year’s prize was jointly awarded to Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege and Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad.

 
…

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki canceled his plans to attend a meeting of central European leaders in Israel starting Monday amid new tensions over how Polish behavior during the Holocaust is remembered and characterized.

Morawiecki informed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s of his decision by phone Sunday, Michal Dworczyk, who heads the prime minister’s chancellery, said. Poland’s foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, plans to attend instead, he said.

It “is a signal that the historical truth is a fundamental issue for Poland, and the defense of the good name of Poland is and always will be decisive,” Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek explained.

Netanyahu said Thursday during a Middle East conference hosted by the United States and Poland that “Poles cooperated with the Nazis” – wording suggesting that some Poles participated in killing Jews during the German occupation of Poland.

He was initially quoted by some Israeli media outlets as saying not “Poles” but “The Poles” cooperated, phrasing which could be taken as blaming the entire Polish nation.

Netanyahu’s office said he was misquoted. The Polish government summoned the Israeli ambassador on Friday and later said it was not satisfied with the explanation of the Israeli leader being quoted incorrectly.

Netanyahu was supposed to meet with the leaders of the four central European countries known as the Visegrad Group — Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia — during the two-day meeting in Israel.

This incident follows a major spat that Warsaw and Jerusalem had last year over a new Polish law that makes it illegal to blame the Polish nation for collaboration in the Holocaust.

At the height of the crisis, Morawiecki at one point equated Polish perpetrators of the Holocaust to supposed “Jewish perpetrators.”

Now, with general and European elections later this year, Morawiecki bowed out of the Jerusalem trip because he “has to think about the far-right and anti-Semitic electorate,” said Tomasz Lis, the editor of the Polish edition of Newsweek and a critic of the government.

Germany occupied Poland in 1939, annexing part of it to Germany and directly governing the rest. Unlike other countries occupied by Germany, Poland did not have a collaborationist government.

The prewar Polish government and military fled into exile, and an underground resistance army fought the Nazis inside the country and tried to warn a deaf world about the Holocaust. Thousands of Poles also risked their own lives to help Jews.

Because of that history, Poles find references to Polish “collaboration” to be unfair and hurtful.

However, individual Poles did take part in killing Jews during and after the war. Many Holocaust survivors and their relatives carry painful memories of persecution at Polish hands. In Israel, there has been anger at what many there perceive to be Polish attempts today to whitewash that history.

The dispute last sparked an explosion of anti-Semitic hate speech in Poland, and there were signs of another spike in recent days.

 
…

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has rebuked European allies for their stance on Iran and Venezuela, in a speech Saturday at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. As Henry Ridgwell reports from the conference, the United States brought its largest delegation in decades and called on Europe to apply economic pressure on Iran to give the Iranian people peace and security.
…

French prosecutors have opened an investigation Sunday into anti-Semitic comments made by Yellow Vest protesters against a renowned philosopher and intellectual a day earlier.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said Sunday an investigation was launched into “public insult based on origin, ethnicity, nationality, race or religion,” the Associated Press reported. A video broadcast on multiple French news channels shows peple hurling insults such as “dirty Zionists” and “France is ours” at Alain Finkielkraut.

Finkielkraut, 69, told French media that he had approached the protesters, who have held demonstrations in Paris for 14 consecutive Saturdays, out of curiosity. Finkielkraut had initially supported the movement, but called the protests “grotesque” after Saturday’s incident.

French president Emmanuel Macron was among a wide range of politicians who denounced the comments.

“The anti-Semitic insults he has been subjected to are the absolute negation of who we are and what makes us a great nation. We will not tolerate them,” Macron said on Twitter.

The protesters gained their nickname from the fluorescent vests they wear while marching, which are safety vests French drivers are required to keep in their cars.

Protests around the country began November 17 against a planned fuel tax increase. The demonstrations have transformed into protests largely against  Macron’s liberal economic reform policies. Macron made tax and salary concessions in December, but protests have continued.

Saturday’s insults came amid reports of a stark increase in anti-Jewish offenses, which police estimate are up 74 percent from last year.

Fourteen political parties, including Macron’s ruling La Republique en Marche, have called for symbolic gatherings next Tuesday to rally against anti-Semitism.
…

Far-right lawmakers are set to be elected to Spain’s parliament for the first time in nearly four decades, two opinion polls showed Saturday, forecasting that no single party would get a majority in a snap election on April 28. 

Spain’s Socialists, who have been in power since June with a minority government, are set to gain more seats than any other party but fall well short of a majority, the surveys showed. 

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the early election on Friday after Catalan pro-independence parties who had previously backed him joined opposition parties in defeating his 2019 budget bill this week. 

The far-right party Vox would win up to 46 seats out of 350, according to a GESOP poll published by the El Periodico newspaper, while the GAD3 polling firm for the La Vanguardia newspaper forecast 16 seats. 

Vox is a newcomer on the Spanish political scene, and pollsters had underestimated its score in a regional election in Andalusia in December, where the anti-immigration party won 12 seats. 

Memories of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who died in 1975, meant Spain had long been been immune to the growing popularity of far-right parties in much of Europe. 

The polls show a fragmented political landscape in which the political identity of the next government is yet unclear. 

Sanchez’s Socialist Party would win 115 to 117 seats in the election, according to the GESOP poll. The conservative Popular Party would get 75 to 77 seats. 

With such an outcome, one of the two main parties would need the support of at least another party to secure a majority. 

The center-right Ciudadanos would win 44 to 47 seats, in a tight race with Vox to be the third-largest party. 

The polls were the first published since elections were called.
…

British regional airline Flybmi has gone into administration and canceled all flights immediately, the company said in a statement Saturday, blaming Brexit uncertainty as one of the reasons for its collapse. 

A spokesperson for British Midland Regional Ltd. said the company had made the decision because of increased fuel and carbon costs and of uncertainty arising from Britain’s plans to leave the European Union on March 29. 

The airline, based in the English East Midlands, operates 17 planes flying to 25 European cities. It employs 376 people in Britain, Germany, Sweden and Belgium. 

“We sincerely regret that this course of action has become the only option open to us, but the challenges, particularly those created by Brexit, have proven to be insurmountable,” the company said. 

Spikes in fuel and carbon costs had undermined efforts to move the airline into profit. 

It added: “Current trading and future prospects have also been seriously affected by the uncertainty created by the Brexit process, which has led to our inability to secure valuable flying contracts in Europe and lack of confidence around bmi’s ability to continue flying between destinations in Europe.” 

The airline, which said it carried 522,000 passengers on 29,000 flights in 2018, advised customers with bookings to contact their bank or payment card issuer to obtain refunds. 
…

China on Saturday rejected German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s appeal to join a Cold War-era arms control treaty that the United States accuses Russia of breaching, saying it would place unfair limits on the Chinese military. 

Fearing a nuclear arms race between China, Russia and the United States after the collapse of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the United States is withdrawing from, Merkel made her call for a global treaty. 

“Disarmament is something that concerns us all and we would of course be glad if such talks were held not just between the United States, Europe and Russia but also with China,” Merkel told the Munich Security Conference. 

Russia and the United States are the signatories to the 1987 INF Treaty that bans land-based missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometres (300-3,400 miles) and which U.S. President Donald Trump started the six-month withdrawal from this month, blaming Russian violations. 

Moscow denies any wrongdoing, but the United States and its NATO allies want Russia to destroy its 9M729 nuclear-capable cruise missile system, which Washington says could allow Russia to strike Europe with almost no warning. 

Merkel’s suggestion of involving China in a negotiation is seen by European NATO diplomats as a potential way out of the impasse because a new treaty could address American concerns about a growing military threat from China and Russia. 

China ‘doesn’t pose a threat’

But China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi, who spoke on a panel in Munich, said that Chinese missiles were defensive. 

“China develops its capabilities strictly according to its defensive needs and doesn’t pose a threat to anybody else. So we are opposed to the multilateralization of the INF,” he said. 

China’s stated ambition is to modernize its People’s Liberation Army by 2035, improve its air force and push into new technologies including very high-speed cruise missiles and artificial intelligence. 

Its defense budget grew nearly 6 percent between 2017 and 2018, according to the London-based International Institute for Security Studies (IISS). 

Retired Chinese Gen. Yao Yunzhu told delegates a new arms control agreement would work only if it included sea- and air-launched missiles, as well as land, because most of China’s military technology is ground-based and the country would not want to put itself at a disadvantage. 

Cheaper to build, more mobile and easier to hide, ground-based rocket launchers are an attractive option to China as it develops its armed forces, experts say, whereas the United States operates more costly sea-based systems to comply with the INF. 

“China is traditionally a land power and the Chinese military is a ground force,” Yao said. 

“If China is to enter into these kinds of negotiations, I think it ought to be more comprehensive to include not only land-based but also air- and sea-based strike capabilities … and that would be hugely complicated,” she said. 
…

The Vatican said Saturday that Pope Francis has defrocked disgraced former U.S. cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

In July of last year, Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals following allegations he had sexually abused minor and adult seminarians over a period of decades.

The Vatican said in a statement that in January 2019 it had found McCarrick guilty of “. . . solicitation in the Sacrament of Confession and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.” (The Sixth Commandment says ‘Thou shall not commit adultery’ and is one of the Ten Commandments the Bible says were given by God.  The Commandments are fundamental to Judaism and Christianity.)

McCarrick appealed the decision expelling him from the priesthood, but it was upheld and McCarrick was notified of the decision Friday. .

The Vatican statement said its decision “is definitive and admits of no further recourse or appeal.”

McCarrick had been a highly respected and longtime ambassador of the Catholic Church was was a confident of popes and U.S. presidents.

The 88-year-old McCarrick was ordained a priest in 1958.  His appointments included:  auxiliary bishop of New York, bishop of Metuchen, archbishop of Newark, and archbishop of Washington.  

In 2001, McCarrick became a cardinal.
…

A Russian court has decided to prolong the detention of American investor Michael Calvey, founder of Baring Vostok Capital Partners, a Moscow-based private equity group.

Late Friday the court moved to extend Calvey’s arrest for at least 72 hours and called for a second hearing Saturday.

Four other defendants in the case have been ordered to remain in pretrial custody for two months.

A spokeswoman for the Moscow district court Friday announced that Calvey had been detained along with other members of the firm Thursday on suspicion of stealing $37.5 million (2.5 billion rubles), a charge that carries of a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Private equity group partner

Calvey, 51, is a senior partner who founded Baring Vostok in 1994. According to the firm’s website, the private equity group holds more than $3.5 billion in committed capital and is a controlling shareholder in Russia’s Vostochny Bank, which focuses on Siberian and Far Eastern markets.

A statement on the Baring Vostok website said the company “believes that the detention of its employees and the charges that have been brought are a result of a conflict with shareholders of Vostochniy [sic] Bank. We have full confidence in the legality of our employees’ actions and will vigorously defend their rights. Baring Vostok’s activities in the Russian Federation are fully compliant with all applicable laws.”

Before launching Baring Vostok, Calvey worked for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and for Salomon Brothers. Since arriving in Moscow in the mid-1990s, he’s become a prominent and highly visible member of Moscow investment community. He is a board member of the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

​Pleas from investment community 

The announcement of Calvey’s detention sent shockwaves through the international investment community, prompting numerous pleas for his immediate release.

Herman Gref, head of Sberbank, Russia’s biggest state bank, issued a statement calling Calvey a “decent, honest man,” while Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s $10 billion sovereign wealth fund and a close contact of Russian President Vladimir Putin, described Calvey as “committed to the highest ethical standards accepted in the investment community.”

Kremlin officials Friday said Putin wasn’t aware of the charges being brought against Calvey.

“We are aware that a U.S. citizen was arrested on February 14, 2019, in Russia, a State Department spokesperson said Friday. “We have no higher priority than the protection of U.S. citizens abroad. Due to privacy considerations, we do not have any additional information at this time.”

Calvey is the third Westerner to face prosecution in Russia since Dec. 31, when American citizen Paul Whelan, a former Marine, was jailed on accusations of spying. Last week a Russian court sentenced Dennis Christensen, a Danish adherent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion, to six years in prison for “organizing the activity of an extremist organization.”

Although Russia has jailed foreign investors who were vocal opponents of the Kremlin, Calvey has no such record of public political opinions.

Russia is “a do-it-yourself market,” Calvey told The Washington Post in 2011. “You can’t rely on outside service providers.”

In that interview, Calvey said his group operates with 20 investors, four full-time lawyers and three government relations managers, along with a host of accountants and administrative support. At that time, all 10 of his partners were Russian nationals.

“International firms aren’t equipped for Russia,” he told the Post. “And they usually have a low tolerance threshold for uncertainty and no sense of humor for Russian surprises,” which he described as surprise audits, seizure of assets for back taxes, and sudden, sometimes seemingly arbitrary, business license reviews.

‘The final straw’

Vocal Kremlin critic and Hermitage Capital co-founder Bill Browder was denied entry into Russian in 2005 after his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, began investigating governmental misconduct and corruption in response to suspicious tax evasion charges brought against Hermitage by Russia’s Interior Ministry.

Magnitsky died under suspicious circumstances in Russian custody in 2009.

“The arrest of Mike Calvey in Moscow should be the final straw that Russia is an entirely corrupt and [uninvestable] country,” Browder said in a tweet Friday. “Of all the people I knew in Moscow, Mike played by their rules, kept his head down and never criticized the government.”

Pete Cobus is VOA’s acting Moscow correspondent. State Department correspondent Nike Ching contributed reporting from Washington. Some information is from Reuters.
…

Disgraced former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been expelled from the Roman Catholic priesthood following allegations against him, including sexual abuse of minors, the Vatican said Saturday.

McCarrick, who in July became the first Roman Catholic prelate in nearly 100 years to lose the title of cardinal, has now become the highest profile church figure to be dismissed from the priesthood in modern times.

The defrocking was announced ahead of next week’s meeting at the Vatican between the heads of national Catholic churches to discuss the global sexual abuse crisis.

McCarrick had appealed the decision, but it was upheld and Pope Francis said no further appeal would be allowed.

The allegations against McCarrick date back decades when he was still rising to the top of the U.S. church hierarchy.

McCarrick, who became a power-broker as Archbishop of Washington, D.C., from 2001 to 2006, is living in seclusion in a remote friary in Kansas.

He has responded publicly to only one of the allegations, saying he has “absolutely no recollection” of an alleged case of sexual abuse of a 16-year-old boy more than 50 years ago.
…

Spain will elect its third government in less than four years after Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s fragile socialist government acknowledged Friday its support had evaporated and called an early general election.

Sanchez’s eight-month-old administration met its end after failing to get parliament’s approval for its 2019 budget proposal earlier this week, adding to the political uncertainty that has dogged Spain in recent years.

“Between doing nothing and continuing without a budget, or giving the chance for Spaniards to speak, Spain should continue looking ahead,” Sanchez said in a televised appearance from the Moncloa Palace, the seat of government, after an urgent Cabinet meeting.

The ballot will take place on April 28. It is expected to highlight the increasingly fragmented political landscape that has denied the European Union country a stable government in recent elections.

The 46-year-old prime minister ousted his conservative predecessor Mariano Rajoy last June, when he won a no-confidence vote triggered by a damaging corruption conviction affecting Rajoy’s Popular Party.

But the simple majority of Socialists, anti-austerity parties and regional nationalists that united against Rajoy crumbled in the past week after Sanchez broke off talks with the Catalan separatists over their demands for the independence of their prosperous northeastern region.

Sanchez saw the Catalan separatists join opposition lawmakers to vote down his spending plans, including social problems he had hoped would boost his party’s popularity.

Sanchez had the shortest term in power for any prime minister since Spain transitioned to democracy four decades ago.

Without mentioning Catalonia directly, Sanchez said he remained committed to dialogue with the country’s regions as long as their demands fell “within the constitution and the law,” which don’t allow a region to secede. He blamed the conservatives for not supporting his Catalan negotiations.

Popular Party leader Pablo Casado celebrated what he called the “defeat” of the Socialists, attacking Sanchez for yielding to some of the Catalan separatists’ demands.

“We will be deciding [in this election] if Spain wants to remain as a hostage of the parties that want to destroy it,” or welcome the leadership of the conservatives, Casado said.

Catalonia’s regional government spokeswoman, Elsa Artadi, retorted that “Spain will be ungovernable as long as it doesn’t confront the Catalan problem.”

Opinion polls indicate the April vote isn’t likely to produce a clear winner, a shift from the traditional bipartisan results that dominated Spanish politics for decades.

Although Sanchez’s Socialists appear to be ahead, their two main opponents — the Popular Party and the center-right Ciudadanos (Citizens) — could repeat their recent coalition in the southern Andalusia region, where they unseated the Socialists with the help of the far-right Vox party.

Vox last year scored the far-right’s first significant gain in post-dictatorship Spain, and surveys predict it could grab seats in the national parliament for the first time.

Vox’s leader, Santiago Abascal, vowed to use the election to “reconquer” the future, a term that refers back to how Spanish Catholic kings defeated Muslim rulers in 15th-century Spain.

Meanwhile, the Socialists are unlikely to be able to form a new government even if they come to a coalition deal with the anti-establishment Podemos [We Can] party, so a third partner will likely be needed.

Sanchez’s options are limited. On the right, a deal with the Citizens party seemed off the table, as its leader Albert Rivera has vetoed any possible agreement with a Socialist party led by Sanchez himself.

And the prospect of Catalan nationalists joining any ensuing coalition is remote, both in the light of the recent failed talks and the ongoing trial of a dozen Catalan politicians and activists for their roles in an independence bid two years ago.

“The Socialists don’t want an election marked by Catalonia because the issue creates internal division, but right-wing parties will use it as a weapon,” said Antonio Barroso of the Teneo consulting firm.

He said polls have erred in recent elections and that clever campaigning could swing the vote significantly.

“The only certainty … is that fragmentation is Spain’s new political reality,” he said.
…

Sitting in her living room, 65-year-old Tatyana Rybalchenko goes through a stack of black-and-white photos from more than 30 years ago. In one of them, she is dressed in a nurse’s coat and smiles sheepishly at the camera; in another, she shares a laugh with soldiers on a road with a mountain ridge behind them.

The pictures don’t show the hardships that Rybalchenko and 20,000 Soviet women like her went through as civilian support staff during the Soviet Union’s 1979-1989 invasion of Afghanistan. Although they did not serve in combat roles, they still experienced the horrors of war.

As Russia on Friday marked the 30th anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the memories are still fresh for the nurses, clerks and shopkeepers, predominantly young, single women who were thrust into the bloody conflict.

Rybalchenko enlisted on a whim. In 1986, she was 33, working in a dead-end nursing job in Kyiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine, and was going through a breakup. One day, she joined a colleague who went to a military recruitment office. The recruiter turned to Rybalchenko and asked if she would like to work abroad — in Afghanistan.

She recalls that she was fed up with her life in Kyiv, “so I told him: ‘I’d go anywhere, even to hell!’ And this is where he sent me.”

Family and friends tried to talk her out of it, telling her that Afghanistan is where “the bodies are coming from.” But it was too late: She had signed the contract.

At least 15,000 Soviet troops were killed in the fighting that began as an effort to prop up a communist ally and soon became a grinding campaign against a U.S.-backed insurgency. Moscow sent more than 600,000 to a war that traumatized many young men and women and fed a popular discontent that became one factor leading to the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

Rybalchenko, who worked as a nurse at a military hospital in Gardez, was stunned by the many casualties — men missing limbs or riddled with shrapnel. But there was so much work that she found herself shutting off her emotions.

“At the end, I did not feel anything anymore. I was like a stone,” Rybalchenko said, shedding her normally perky persona.

Friendships helped, and she befriended a young reconnaissance officer, Vladimir Vshivtsev.

He once confided to her that he was not afraid of losing a limb, but he would not be able to live with an injury to his eyes. She recalled him saying “if I lose eyesight, I’ll do everything to put an end to it.”

In November 1987, the hospital was inundated with casualties from a Soviet offensive to open the road between Gardez and the stronghold of Khost, near the Pakistani border.

One of the wounded was Vshivtsev, and Rybalchenko saw him being wheeled into the ward with bandages wrapped around his head. She unwrapped the dressing and gasped when she saw the gaping wound on his face: “The eyes were not there.”

She persuaded her superior to let her accompany him to a bigger hospital in Kabul as part of a suicide watch. She stayed friends with Vshivtsev, and he later became a leading activist in the Russian Society for the Blind. Decades later, he briefly served in the Russian parliament.

Raising awareness

Alla Smolina was 30 when she joined the Soviet military prosecutor’s office in Jalalabad near the Pakistani border in 1985. It wasn’t until 20 years later that Smolina started having nightmares about the war.

“The shelling, running away from bullets and mines whizzing above me — I was literally scared of my own pillow,” she said.

She put her memories on paper and contacted other women who were there, telling the stories of those who endured the hardships of war but who are largely absent from the male-dominated narratives.

She is trying to raise awareness of the role the Soviet women played in Afghanistan, believing they have been unfairly portrayed or not even mentioned in fiction and nonfiction written mostly by men.

The deaths of Soviet women who held civilian jobs in Afghanistan are not part of the official toll, and Smolina has written about 56 women who lost their lives. Some died when a plane was shot down by the Afghan mujahedeen, one was killed when a drunken soldier threw a grenade into her room, and one woman was slain after being raped by a soldier.

In an era when the concept of sexual harassment was largely unfamiliar in the Soviet Union, the women in the war in Afghanistan — usually young and unmarried — often started a relationship to avoid unwanted attention from other soldiers.

“Because if a woman has someone, the whole brigade won’t harass you like a pack of wolves,” Rybalchenko said. “Sometimes it was reciprocal, sometimes there was no choice.”

She said she found boyfriends to “protect” her.

Denied war benefits

While the war grew unpopular at home, Soviet troops and support staff in Afghanistan mostly focused on survival rather than politics. While Afghans largely saw Moscow’s involvement as a hostile foreign intervention, the Soviets thought they were doing the right thing.

“We really believed that we were helping the oppressed Afghan nation, especially because we saw with our own eyes all the kindergartens and schools that the Soviet people were building there,” Smolina said.

After Rybalchenko came home, she could hardly get out of bed for the first three months, one of thousands with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder.

When she asked officials about benefits for veterans and other personnel in Afghanistan, she faced hostility and insults. She said one told her: “How do I know what you were actually up to over there?”

In 2006, Russian lawmakers decided that civilians who worked in Afghanistan were not entitled to war benefits. Women have campaigned unsuccessfully to reinstate them.

Rybalchenko eventually got an apartment from the government, worked in physiotherapy and now lives in retirement in Moscow, where her passion for interior decorating is reflected by the exotic bamboo-forest wallpaper in her home.

Smolina, who lives in Sweden, is wary of disclosing all the details about her own Afghan experiences after facing a backlash from other veterans about her publications.

“Our society is not ready yet to hear the truth. There is still a lingering effect from the harsh Soviet past,” she said. “In Soviet society, you were not supposed to speak out.”
…

Pressure is mounting on the British government to decide whether it will repatriate — and prosecute when possible — dozens of the Islamic State group’s surviving British-born recruits, currently held by U.S.-led Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.

Britain, like other European countries, has been reluctant to take back IS recruits, whether male fighters or so-called jihadi brides as well as their children. A small number have been repatriated to their countries of origin, but hundreds are awaiting political or legal resolution of their cases as their appeals for help have largely been ignored.

The discovery this week in a refugee camp of a pregnant 19-year-old British woman who joined the militant group along with two girlfriends in 2015 has reignited a furious debate in Britain about what to do with surviving IS recruits, especially those who joined when still teenagers.

Public pleas for repatriation of male fighters, as well as IS brides languishing in overcrowded refugee and detention camps in northern Syria, weren’t helped this week by the defiance of Shamima Begum, who is nine months’ pregnant with her third child. She was a schoolgirl when she sneaked off from her home in east London and joined IS in Syria. She and two friends married IS fighters, in her case a Dutchman who converted to Islam.

She expressed no remorse in an interview with The Times newspaper for joining IS, telling a reporter, “I don’t regret coming here.” She said the sight of a severed head of a captured fighter that had been discarded by a jihadist “didn’t faze me at all.” The pregnant teenager did speak of the deaths from malnutrition and illness of her first two children, saying she fled to the Kurds hoping to be returned to Britain for the sake of her still-to-be-born child so her infant can receive proper medical care in Britain’s national health service.

“I’ll do anything required just to be able to come home and live quietly with my child,” she said. She said IS deserved to be defeated. “There was so much oppression and corruption that I don’t think they [IS] deserved victory.”

Her family, along with the relatives of her friend Amira Abase, have called on the British government to allow both of them back, saying they represent no threat and should be forgiven for their youthful errors. They say they were groomed by IS and too young to be held responsible. Kadiza Sultana, the third girl, was killed in an airstrike in 2016.

“I have no doubt the government should let them back in and teach them, so they learn from their mistakes,” said the father of Amira Abase. She is believed still to be with IS forces. Begum’s elder sister, Renu, told a British broadcaster she hoped her sibling would be allowed back to Britain. She added that her sister is “pregnant and vulnerable,” adding “it’s important we get her … home as soon as possible.”

Warning from Britain

There’s little public sympathy for the girls’ plight, however, and Begum’s interview has prompted a media firestorm. In a poll by Britain’s Sky News, 76 percent of respondents said the girls should be barred from returning.

Britain’s security minister, Ben Wallace, has said the government won’t help with Begum’s repatriation, although as a British citizen she has the right to return.

But he warned in a statement, “Everyone who returns from taking part in the conflict in Syria or Iraq must expect to be investigated by the police to determine if they have committed criminal offenses, and to ensure that they do not pose a threat to our national security. There are a range of terrorism offenses where individuals can be convicted for crimes committed overseas and we can also use Temporary Exclusion Orders to control an individual’s return to the U.K.”

London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan has said that Begum should not be allowed back into Britain, if the security services believe she poses a risk to national security.

But the reporter who interviewed her, Anthony Loyd, said he believes Begum is an “indoctrinated jihadi bride” and urged against “judging her too harshly.”

In December, a Belgian judge issued an order for the repatriation of half a dozen children and a pair of Belgian mothers, both IS recruits, from a Kurdish-controlled camp in northeast Syria. The women, Tatiana Wielandt and Bouchra Abouallal, both in their mid-20s, are being held in the al-Hol camp, one of several housing about 584 jihadi brides and 1,250 children, the offspring of IS fathers, most of them foreign fighters.

​US  position

Meanwhile, U.S. officials are now threatening to transport British IS fighters detained by the Kurds to the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay for prosecution before military commissions. Washington is especially keen to prosecute two alleged members of the so-called “Beatles” terror gang, Londoners El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, for their suspected participation in the torture and beheadings of Western journalists and aid workers, including American reporters James Foley and Steve Sotloff. 

An estimated 800 captured IS foreign fighters are being held by the Kurds. Officials from France, Britain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have said for more than a year that they are highly reluctant to accept the repatriation of IS foreign fighters or their wives, despite appeals by the Kurds and the Trump administration to do so. U.S. officials fear the fighters will be able to slip away, if they are not returned to their home countries.

European officials say they represent security risks and that there would be technical and legal difficulties in prosecuting them. Repatriated foreign fighters and their wives would try to use the courts for propaganda purposes, if prosecutions were mounted, they fear. Official British figures show that only one in 10 British IS fighters who managed to return home has been prosecuted. Most have been required to join rehabilitation programs.
…

The European Union will give Ireland some leeway to establish new border arrangements with Northern Ireland in case of a no-deal Brexit, sources in the bloc’s political hub Brussels said.

But they said Dublin would soon have to come up with a plan to ensure the integrity of the EU’s single market or face checks on its own goods coming into the rest of the bloc.

“Ireland can get transition periods or some temporary opt-outs on the border in the worst-case scenario,” a senior EU diplomat said.

“But soon enough it will have to face up to the fact that either there is a border on the island or a border between Ireland and the rest of the EU,” the person added.

EU diplomats and officials dealing with Brexit admit it is impossible to set up full border controls overnight as should theoretically be the case if the United Kingdom leaves the bloc without a divorce settlement on March 29.

The issue of a “hard border” on the island of Ireland has hung over Brexit negotiations from the start and is threatening to sink the divorce deal put together over months of painstaking EU-U.K. talks as the British parliament opposes the Irish “backstop” part of it.

The “backstop” is meant as a last resort, a way to prevent full-blown border controls on goods crossing between EU-state Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland.

But without a U.K.-EU free trade deal, yet to be negotiated, that would tie the latter to the bloc’s trade rules — anathema to hardline pro-Brexit supporters in Britain and British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Northern Irish allies who say it would weaken the province’s links with the rest of the country.

Many in Britain, Ireland and the rest of the EU also fear the return of border checks could reignite violence and make checkpoints a target.

In 1998, Britain and Ireland made the Good Friday Agreement to end 30 years of sectarian violence over whether Northern Ireland should remain British or join the Irish Republic. With both states in the EU, checks along the 500-km (300-mile) land border ended.

“The Irish-Irish border is a European border. The Brexit issue is not a bilateral question between the Republic of Ireland and the U.K. It’s a European issue,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said after talks with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Brussels this month.

Asked to comment on the matter in the Irish parliament Thursday, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said: “Deal or no deal, there is an obligation on the Irish and British governments, and the EU to try and work together to find a way of avoiding physical border infrastructure on this island.”

Hard choice

But an EU official familiar with the bloc’s preparations for a no-deal Brexit said: “In a no-deal scenario, Ireland would have to choose between setting up a physical border with Northern Ireland and de facto leaving the single market.

“If there is no physical border, the customs checks would have to take place on all goods coming from Ireland.”

The EU has made a point of publishing contingency plans for areas from transport to social benefits to university exchanges as the risk of an abrupt split grows. But it has kept silent on the Irish border.

Varadkar’s stark warning last month that the army may have to be deployed to the border “if things go very wrong” highlighted the risks.

The threat that Ireland could lose at least some access to the EU market is not lost on Varadkar who in Brussels spoke of Dublin’s readiness to protect the bloc’s common economic area.

“It’s core to our economic and industrial strategy, core to our prosperity,” he said standing side-by-side with Juncker, promising Ireland would not become a “back door” to the EU.

But while Ireland is promising the EU it would implement border checks, Varadkar also said: “We are making no preparations, no plans for physical infrastructure on the border.”

EU and Irish sources say the only way to ensure customs controls while avoiding border infrastructure is the backstop.

It envisages that many checks would be carried out away from the actual frontier — in market places or production sites.

“It is not possible to erect a border. It’s just impossible and a different solution needs to be found,” said a second EU official dealing with Brexit. “The backstop is our template. It is a solution that is ready and it works.”
…

The European Parliament urged Saudi Arabia on Thursday to abolish its male guardianship system, under which women have to seek permission from their guardian on issues such as getting married, saying it and other rules reduce women to second-class citizens.

Parliamentarians also expressed concern over “government web services” that allow male guardians to track women when they cross borders. A Saudi application called Absher notifies men when women travel.

Although male guardianship has been chipped away at over the years it remains in force. Under the system, every Saudi women is assigned a male relative — often a father or husband but sometimes an uncle, brother or even a son — whose approval is needed if she is to marry, obtain a passport and travel abroad. In their resolution, approved by more than two thirds of the assembly, EU lawmakers urged the Saudi government to immediately abolish the system.

Current rules in the kingdom effectively make women “second-class citizens,” the document said. EU states should continue pressuring Riyadh on improving women conditions and human rights, lawmakers said.

Resolutions by the parliament are not binding but can influence decisions made by EU governments and EU institutions. The resolution passed a day after the EU executive commission added Saudi Arabia to its blacklist of countries that pose a threat because of lax controls on money laundering and terrorism financing.

The bloc’s relations with Saudi Arabia have cooled since the murder of Washington-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate on October 2.

Despite reforms introduced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that have reduced discrimination, such as the lifting of the driving ban for women, lawmakers said “the Saudi political and social system remains discriminatory.”

They urged the release from Saudi prisons of women’s rights defenders, including some who were arrested after campaigning to end the ban on women driving.

Lawmakers also called for an immediate moratorium on the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, where it is still applied to punish non-violent offenses, such as drug smuggling, treason, adultery and apostasy, they said.

The EU parliament passed a resolution in October urging an international investigation into Khashoggi’s killing and called on EU states to stop the sale of weapons to the kingdom.
…

Tensions appear to be surfacing between Russia and Turkey just hours into a three-way summit on the Syrian conflict being hosted in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

According to Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Russia has told Turkey it lacked authorization to create a “safe zone” inside Syria without the express consent of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“The question of the presence of a military contingent acting on the authority of a third country on the territory of a sovereign country, and especially Syria, must be decided directly by Damascus,” she told reporters during a press conference. “That’s our base position.”

While Russia and Iran, whose president also is participating in the summit, are close allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—Turkey, like the United States, which already is beginning to withdraw equipment from the country as part of a recently announced troop withdrawal—supports differing Syrian rebel factions.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has long insisted that Syria’s territorial integrity will be compromised so long as U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish YPG militants, whom Ankara considers terrorists, remain in the area.

All three countries have made efforts to coordinate military forces on the ground, but contradictory military objectives—and competition for natural resources in Syria’s oil-rich northern regions, has created friction between Moscow and Ankara in particular.

President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement of a U.S. troop withdrawal has been welcomed by Russia, Turkey, Iran and Syria, though the sudden shift has left Astana trio leaders unclear about how to reconfigure their objectives in the absence of U.S. forces.

Some high level U.S. officials have anticipated that diplomatic differences between Ankara and Moscow could undermine progress at the summit.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday the three presidents would discuss the formation of a committee that would be tasked with drafting a postwar constitution for Syria.

Lavrov did not discuss whether Syrian officials would be involved in that process.

Pete Cobus is VOA’s acting Moscow correspondent.
…

The European Commission added Saudi Arabia, Panama, Nigeria and other jurisdictions to a blacklist of nations seen as posing a threat because of lax controls on terrorism financing and money laundering, the EU executive said Wednesday.

The move is part of a crackdown on money laundering after several scandals at EU banks but has been criticized by several EU countries including Britain worried about their economic relations with the listed states, notably Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi government said it regretted the decision in a statement published by the Saudi Press Agency, adding: “Saudi Arabia’s commitment to combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism is a strategic priority.”

Panama said it should be removed from the list because it recently adopted stronger rules against money laundering. Despite pressure to exclude Riyadh from the list, the commission decided to list the kingdom, confirming a Reuters report in January.

Financial relations complicated

Apart from damage to their reputations, inclusion on the list complicates financial relations with the EU. The bloc’s banks will have to carry out additional checks on payments involving entities from listed jurisdictions.

The list now includes 23 jurisdictions, up from 16. The commission said it added jurisdictions with “strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing regimes.”

Other newcomers to the list are Libya, Botswana, Ghana, Samoa, the Bahamas and the four United States territories of American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam.

The other listed states are Afghanistan, North Korea, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and Yemen. Bosnia, Guyana, Laos, Uganda and Vanuatu were removed.

Bad for business?

The 28 EU member states now have one month, which can be extended to two, to endorse the list. They could reject it by qualified majority. EU justice commissioner Vera Jourova, who proposed the list, told a news conference that she was confident states would not block it.

She said it was urgent to act because “risks spread like wildfire in the banking sector.”

But concerns remain. Britain, which plans to leave the EU March 29, said Wednesday the list could “confuse businesses” because it diverges from a smaller listing compiled by its Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which is the global standard-setter for anti-money laundering.

The FATF list includes 12 jurisdictions — all on the EU blacklist — but excludes Saudi Arabia, Panama and U.S. territories. The FATF will update its list next week.

​Saudis lucrative for EU

London has led a pushback against the EU list in past days, and at closed-door meetings urged the exclusion of Saudi Arabia, EU sources told Reuters.

The oil-rich kingdom is a major importer of goods and weapons from the EU and several top British banks have operations in the country. Royal Bank of Scotland is the European bank with the largest turnover in Saudi Arabia, with around 150 million euros ($169 million) in 2015, according to public data.

HSBC is Europe’s most successful bank in Riyadh. It booked profits of 450 million euros in 2015 in the kingdom but disclosed no turnover and has no employees there, according to public data released under EU rules.

“The UK will continue to work with the commission to ensure that the list that comes into force provides certainty to businesses and is as effective as possible at tackling illicit finance,” a British Treasury spokesman said.

Missing ‘washing machines’

Criteria used to blacklist countries include weak sanctions against money laundering and terrorism financing, insufficient cooperation with the EU on the matter and lack of transparency about the beneficial owners of companies and trusts.

Five of the listed countries are included on a separate EU blacklist of tax havens. They are Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago and the three U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam and U.S. Virgin Islands.

Critics said the list fell short of including several countries involved in money-laundering scandals in Europe. 

“Some of the biggest dirty-money washing machines are still missing. These include Russia, the city of London and its offshore territories, as well as Azerbaijan,” said Greens lawmaker Sven Giegold, who sits in the European Parliament special committee on financial crimes.

Jourova said the commission will continue monitoring other jurisdictions not yet listed. Among the states that will be closely monitored are the United States and Russia.

 
…

Italian news agency ANSA says a monsignor who had worked years as a Vatican accountant has been convicted of corruption in connection with a failed cash-smuggling plot

Italian news agency ANSA says a monsignor who had worked as a senior Vatican accountant has been convicted of corruption in connection with a failed cash-smuggling plot. 

ANSA said a Rome appeals court Wednesday convicted the Rev. Nunzio Scarano of corruption and sentenced him to three years in prison.

In 2016, a lower court had acquitted Scarano, who had worked for years at a Vatican office that handled Holy See investments. Italian prosecutors in 2013 accused him of plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) into Italy from Switzerland aboard an Italian government plane. 

Scarano’s lawyer has said friends asked the monsignor to help them recover funds given to a broker to invest. But the alleged scheme never was realized, purportedly when the broker reneged on the arrangement.
…

With the Russian border little more than an hour away, the desolate grey sky burst open with an explosion of fire and a plume of smoke. If the scene evoked the Cold War, it was intentional.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo trekked Wednesday to the Polish town of Orzysz to witness NATO live-fire exercises in an unmistakable sign to Warsaw that the United States has its eye on Russia.

Pompeo walked through drizzling rain with senior Polish officials over frozen soil and patches of snow to a reviewing stand as several hundred troops stood at attention.

Pompeo, a West Point graduate who served as a U.S. Army cavalry officer in Germany when Poland was on the other side of the Iron Curtain, said little had changed except, he joked, that back then he was listening to cassette tapes of Van Halen.

The U.S. top diplomat likened Orzysz, around 70 kilometers (45 miles) from Russia’s Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad, to divided Germany’s infamous Fulda Gap — where NATO feared that Soviet tanks could penetrate its defenses.

“Today, the gap in which we stand occupies the same priority focus for NATO commanders that the Fulda Gap did back then — once again because of Russian aggression,” Pompeo said in reference to the so-called Suwalki Gap.

He said that the concern was not theoretical, denouncing Russian President Vladimir Putin for the 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula and ongoing support for separatists in Ukraine, as well as Moscow’s war a decade earlier with Georgia.

“We take seriously those concerns that Russia may one day try to open a front along a line right here,” Pompeo said.

Simulated battle

Pompeo then advanced with senior Polish officials including Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz to observe exercises by troops from the five countries at the base — the United States, Poland, Britain, Croatia and Romania.

Amid startling shots from rocket launchers, 20 troops sprinted from a corner for a display of hand-to-hand combat, simulating punching and kicking one another as if in the throes of battle.

Pompeo watched with a smile as Bradley armored vehicles rolled by and a dozen soldiers jumped out before him and squatted with their rifles, shooting metallic targets in the shape of enemy bodies.

A Polish officer provided a running, dispassionate narrative in precise English, explaining, “The snipers wait patiently for the enemy soldier to present the opportunity for the perfect shot.”

Wooing the US

Putin has accused the United States of trying to contain Russia and has pledged to boost Moscow’s own military, including by deploying nuclear-capable Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has voiced admiration for Putin and mused that NATO — which considers an attack on any of its 30 members an attack on all — cheats the United States out of money.

Believing a permanent U.S. presence would be the ultimate deterrent, Poland has offered to contribute to building a US base — which it has cheekily suggested could be called Fort Trump.

Asked about a troop increase, Pompeo said the United States was “taking a look at it.”

NATO promised Russia in 1997 not to station significant forces in the former eastern bloc. As tensions have grown however, the alliance has instead rotated troops through front-line countries.

Poland offered an additional sweetener on Wednesday. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, also in the country, said Warsaw would buy $414 million worth of U.S. mobile rocket launchers — good news for the transaction-minded Trump.
…

The British government on Wednesday downplayed a report that its chief Brexit negotiator said lawmakers will have to choose between backing Prime Minister Theresa May’s unpopular divorce deal and a delay to the U.K.’s exit from the European Union.

An ITV News correspondent, Angus Walker, said he overheard negotiator Olly Robbins in a Brussels bar saying the government would ask Parliament in late March to back her agreement, rejected by lawmakers last month, or seek an extension to the Brexit deadline.

Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay insisted the government was not planning a delay, saying “the prime minister has been very clear that we are committed to leaving on March 29.”

Lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected May’s Brexit deal with the EU last month, and she is now trying to secure changes before bringing it back for another vote. The EU insists it will not renegotiate the legally binding withdrawal agreement.

If a deal is not approved by the British and European parliaments before March 29, the U.K. faces a messy sudden Brexit that could cause severe economic disruption.

Barclay said the government wants to secure a deal, but is also preparing for a “no-deal” Brexit.

Opposition politicians have accused May of trying to fritter away time as the clock ticks down, in order to leave lawmakers with a last-minute choice between her deal and no deal.

On Tuesday, May urged lawmakers to give her more time, promising Parliament a series of votes on the next steps in the Brexit process on Feb. 27 if she has not secured changes to the Brexit deal by then.

“What the prime minister is up to is obvious,” Labour Party Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer said Wednesday. She’s coming to Parliament every other week, pretending there’s progress and trying to buy another two weeks, edging her way toward March 21, when the next EU summit is, to try to put her deal up against no-deal in those final few weeks.

“Parliament needs to say ‘That’s not on.'”

 
…

The United States and Poland are kicking off an international conference on the Middle East on Wednesday amid uncertainty over its aims and questions about what it will deliver.

Initially it was billed by President Donald Trump’s administration as an Iran-focused meeting, but the organizers significantly broadened its scope to include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the fight against the Islamic State group, Syria and Yemen. The shift was designed in part to boost participation after some invitees balked at an Iran-centric event when many, particularly in Europe, are trying to save the 2015 Iran nuclear deal after last year’s U.S. withdrawal and re-imposition of sanctions in its self-described “maximum pressure campaign.”

Yet the agenda for the discussions contains no hint of any concrete action that might result beyond creating “follow-on working groups,” and many of the roughly 60 countries participating will be represented at levels lower than foreign minister.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will attend along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his counterparts from numerous Arab nations, France and Germany are not sending cabinet-ranked officials, and E.U. foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini is staying away.

Russia and China are not participating, and the Palestinians, who have called for the meeting to be boycotted, also will be absent. Iran, which is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution this week, has denounced the meeting as a “circus.”

Pompeo predicted that the conference will “deliver really good outcomes” and played down the impact of lower-level participation. He told reporters in Slovakia on Tuesday that this “is going to be a serious concrete discussion about a broad range of topics that range from counterterrorism to the malign influence that Iran has played in the Middle East towards its instability.”

According to the agenda, Pence will address the conference on a range of Mideast regional issues, Pompeo will talk about U.S. plans in Syria following Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops and Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner will speak about his as-yet unveiled Middle East peace plan.

“We think we will make real progress,” Pompeo said. “We think there’ll be dozens of nations there seriously working towards a better, more stable Middle East, and I’m hoping by the time we leave on Thursday we’ll have achieved that.”

He did not, however, offer any details about specific outcomes.

Pompeo’s co-host for the conference, Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz, also steered clear of describing potential results. And, he made note of differences between the United States and Europe over the Iran nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, that also exist among Washington and Warsaw.

“Poland is a part of the E.U., and hence we are of the opinion and we accept the policy of JCPOA,” Czaputowicz told a joint news conference with Pompeo on the eve of the conference. “We consider this to be a valuable element on the international arena.”

In a joint opinion piece published Wednesday by CNN, Pompeo and Czaputowicz said they did not expect all participants to agree on either policies or outcomes but called for an airing of unscripted and candid ideas.

“We expect each nation to express opinions that reflect its own interests,” they wrote. “Disagreements in one area should not prohibit unity in others.”

In fact, three of America’s main European allies, Britain, France and Germany, have unveiled a new financial mechanism that the Trump administration believes may be designed to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is attending the Warsaw conference, but his main interest is in a side meeting on the conflict in Yemen, according to diplomats familiar with the planning.

Since Pompeo first announced the conference as a vehicle to combat increasing Iranian assertiveness during a Mideast tour in January, he has steadily sought to widen the program’s focus with limited success. Despite his efforts, Iran is still expected to be a major, if not the primary, topic of discussion, notably its nuclear ambitions, ballistic missile program, threats to Israel and support for Shiite rebels in Yemen and Bashar Assad’s government in Syria.

The Trump administration has repeatedly denied allegations that it is seeking regime change in Iran. And yet, mixed messages continue to come from Washington.

Earlier this week, Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton released a short video on the anniversary of the Iranian revolution in which he called Iran “the central banker of international terrorism” and accused it of pursuing nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them and of “tyrannizing its own people and terrorizing the world.” The video ended with a not-so-veiled threat to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: “I don’t think you’ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy,” Bolton said.

Such rhetoric has prompted criticism from Europe and elsewhere but also from Obama administration veterans who have vocally opposed Trump’s attempts to wreck the nuclear deal, which was one of their signature foreign policy achievements. One group of former Obama officials, National Security Action, said the Warsaw conference was little more than an “anti-Iran pep rally” that underscored Trump’s isolation.

“We expect to see again this week an American approach to Iran that will showcase our alienation,” it said in a statement. “More than merely embarrassing, the administration’s stated ‘maximum pressure’ approach is incoherent, as America lacks allies willing to support such a strategy. Not a single E.U. country has endorsed pulling out of the Iran deal, unsurprising given that the Trump administration’s own intelligence chiefs testified earlier this month that Iran remains in compliance.”

 
…

On a cold day in January, Ivanka Angelova was at home with her daughter and four grandchildren when the village mayor arrived and advised them to leave.

Two neighbors – brothers aged 17 and 21 – were accused of beating up a local resident. The victim, a soldier, had been hospitalized.

Angelova, who like the brothers is from Bulgaria’s minority Roma community, said the mayor told her that villagers were out for revenge. He was concerned her family might be attacked.

She and most of the 76-strong Roma community fled Voyvodinovo village that evening, Jan. 6, and headed 10 kilometers to Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second-largest city.

“We were spread all over the place like a broken egg,” said Angelova, a widow, wiping away tears.

Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007 and is its poorest member, has one of the bloc’s largest Roma minorities.

As in other EU countries, many Roma live on the fringes of society and struggle for work – with those in small settlements facing legal problems when it comes to land ownership, says the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC), a human rights group.

After Angelova and her family fled, the authorities started to demolish the cluster of 17 small homes at the village’s edge.

When the Thomson Reuters Foundation visited three days later, three houses had been destroyed and several others damaged.

Notices were pasted to the other homes to notify residents that theirs would be demolished too.

No Title, Few Rights

According to the 2011 census, there were 325,000 Roma people comprising about 5 percent of Bulgaria’s 7.3 million people. The European Commission, however, estimates there are more than twice as many Roma – about 750,000 people.

In the week following the assault on the local resident, nationalist and far-right groups held nightly gatherings in Voyvodinovo.

And at a Jan. 8 press conference, Krasimir Karakachanov – the deputy prime minister and head of the nationalist VRMO party – referred to the incident when he said “gypsies … have grown exceedingly insolent.”

In a statement posted on its Facebook page, the BHC expressed “grave concern about multiplying cases of racist hate speech from Bulgarian government officials and frequent collective punishments for Roma communities.”

The BHC said the local authorities’ treatment in this case mirrored “many similar cases” of forced evictions of “illegal Roma settlements without providing adequate alternative housing, leaving those people homeless.”

Election Links

Other rights groups are also concerned about how the Roma people are treated in Bulgaria.

The Equal Opportunities Initiative Association (EOIA), which works on Roma development and rights issues, said in a 2017 study that one in four Roma homes were “illegal” – lacking land title, building permits or both. It noted other researchers had put the figure far higher.

Between 2012-2016, the EOIA said, information provided by three in every five municipalities revealed that 399 out of 444 housing demolition orders affected the sole residences of Roma families.

Daniela Mihaylova, a lawyer who co-authored the report, said in an interview that the data showed a correlation between the timing of elections and the number of demolition orders carried out – with nationalist parties using “the general anti-Roma trend in society to motivate more voters.”

Such targeting of the Roma by the right-wing alliance of United Patriots were “part of a strategy of distraction” and a way to deflect attention from corruption scandals, said Ognyan Isaev, country facilitator for The Roma Education Fund, and a Roma rights activist.

Retaliation

BHC chairman Krassimir Kanev said he was shocked that residents were chased from their homes in sub-zero temperatures, and that the demolitions were hastily carried out without allowing time for residents to gather their belongings. 

He said Bulgarian law required residents be given notice, time to prepare an appeal, and the right to demolish their own homes and salvage the materials.

He said the BHC had helped residents appeal the removal orders. In the meantime, the municipality was forced to stop demolishing homes until the court considers the appeal. That could take weeks, he said.

In a case brought by the BHC to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the court ruled in 2012 that in seeking to evict Roma from a community in the capital Sofia, the Bulgarian authorities had violated one’s “right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.”

Kanev said the ECHR recognized that “you cannot evict people on an arbitrary basis leaving them without any shelter.”

In 2015, the ECHR called on the Bulgarian authorities to halt forced evictions of Roma families or provide them with alternative housing, the Open Society noted at the time.

However, they have repeatedly failed to do so, said Kanev.

Meanwhile, he added, a number of other cases brought by Roma are pending adjudication at the ECHR.

‘Nowhere to Go’

Angelova said she had lived in her home since childhood.

But, said the mayor of Voyvodinovo, Dimitar Tosev – a former police chief – the land belonged to the municipality, and the Roma families had been warned they would have to move.

And, he added, villagers had demanded the municipality solve what they regarded as a long-standing problem.

“There have been a lot of issues – issues like integration,” he said.

“(Villagers) wanted to see action from the municipality,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that the Roma had been left alone until the fight sparked outrage, and he felt compelled to act.

Those whose homes had been demolished, he said, “have places to go, and they will go where they should go.”

In Angelova’s case, she headed to Plovdiv’s Stolipinovo district, where 50,000 people inhabit densely-packed apartment blocks and small houses.

She and her family are staying at a friend’s apartment that is now crowded with 18 people.

In the village, she said, she and her Roma neighbors worked on an occasional basis earning 2.50 Bulgarian levs ($1.45) an hour harvesting crops. There she had a home and a life.

“(Now) we have nowhere to go, we have no work and no money … I don’t know how I will survive,” she said.
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The British Broadcasting Corporation asked the White House for a review of security arrangements on Tuesday after a BBC cameraman was assaulted at a Donald Trump rally.

BBC cameraman Ron Skeans was attacked by a Trump supporter yelling anti-media slogans during the U.S. president’s rally in El Paso, Texas, Monday night.

Skeans was unhurt and the man wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat was restrained and removed from the riser where the media had assembled.

Paul Danahar, the BBC’s Americas Bureau Editor, said in a tweet that he had asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders for a “full review of security arrangements after last night’s attack.”

“Access into the media area was unsupervised,” Danahar said. “No one in law enforcement intervened before, during or after the attack.”

BBC Washington correspondent Gary O’Donoghue, who was covering the El Paso event, said his cameraman was pushed and shoved by the unidentified assailant “after the president repeatedly goaded the crowd over supposed media bias.”

He said the man attempted to smash the BBC camera.

“Happily, Ron is fine,” O’Donoghue said.

Trump paused his remarks following the commotion in the crowd and — pointing at the media – asked “You alright? Everything OK?”

Trump repeatedly denounces the media as the “enemy of the people” and frequently condemns critical reports about his administration as “fake news.”

New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger urged Trump during an interview last month to tone down what he called his “potentially dangerous” rhetoric towards the press.

 
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Russian lawmakers backed tighter internet controls on Tuesday to defend against foreign meddling in draft legislation that critics warn could disrupt Russia’s internet and be used to stifle dissent.

The legislation, which some Russian media have likened to an online “iron curtain,” passed its first of three readings in the 450-seat lower chamber of parliament.

The bill seeks to route Russian web traffic and data through points controlled by state authorities and proposes building a national Domain Name System to allow the internet to continue functioning even if the country is cut off from foreign infrastructure.

The legislation was drafted in response to what its authors describe as an aggressive new U.S. national cybersecurity strategy passed last year.

The Agora human rights group said earlier this month that the legislation was one of several new bills drafted in December that “seriously threaten Internet freedom.”

The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs has said the bill poses more of a risk to the functioning of the Russian internet segment than the alleged threats from foreign countries that the bill seeks to counter.

The bill also proposes installing network equipment that would be able to identify the source of web traffic and also block banned content.

The legislation, which can still be amended, but which is expected to pass, is part of a drive by officials to increase Russian “sovereignty” over its internet segment.

Russia has introduced tougher internet laws in the last five years, requiring search engines to delete some search results, messaging services to share encryption keys with security services, and social networks to store Russian users’ personal data on servers within the country.

The bill faces two more votes in the lower chamber, before it is voted on in the upper house of parliament and then signed into law by President Vladimir Putin.
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NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg cautioned Tuesday the military alliance will respond to “more Russian missiles” following the collapse of a key Cold War-era arms treaty but will not deploy more nuclear missiles in Europe.

Stoltenberg called on Russia to return to compliance with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which the alliance insists Russia violated by developing a new missile system Moscow calls Novator 9M729.

The U.S. began the six-month process of withdrawing from the treaty on Feb. 2, claiming Russia’s missile system violates the treaty’s range requirements. The U.S. believes Russia’s new missile system could enable Moscow to launch a nuclear attack in Europe with little or no warning.

The INF, which ended a buildup of warheads in Europe, bans the production and deployment of land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500-5,500 kilometers. Russia contends the ground-fired cruise missile has a range of less than 500 kilometers, and that U.S. target practice missiles and drones violate the pact.

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty by announcing it would also pull out. Also, Putin’s defense minister announced plans for new missiles, prompting a vow from U.S. President Donald Trump to outspend Russia. 

Stoltenberg said ministers will meet Wednesday in Brussels to discuss the “steps NATO should take to adapt to a world with more Russian missiles.” Stoltenberg added: “We don’t have to mirror what Russia does, but we need to make sure we have effective deterrence and defense.”

While Washington and Moscow are at odds over the INF, the treaty does nothing to constrain China, whose fast-growing military depends on medium-range missiles as a key aspect of its defense strategy.
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The European Court of Human Rights has dealt Turkish human rights activists a significant blow in its refusal to hear a pivotal case stemming from a Turkish military operation that left more than 100 civilians dead. The military campaign took place in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast between December 2015 and February 2016 as the security forces sought to oust PKK separatist fighters from towns and cities across the region.

The European Court cases focused on Cizre, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said Turkish security forces “deliberately and unjustifiably killed about 130 people — among whom were unarmed civilians and injured combatants — trapped in the basements.” Ankara strongly condemned the allegations, maintaining that civilians were not deliberately killed.

Two civilians, Orhan Tunc and Omer Elci, were among the casualties in Cizre. Last Thursday, the court ruled that their cases were inadmissible because all “domestic remedies” had not been exhausted.  That means lawyers had not taken their case to Turkey’s Constitutional Court. The decision is a crucial legal victory for Ankara, but casts a shadow in the minds of many in Turkey over the integrity of the European court.

Town centers turned to ruins

During the military campaign in southeastern Turkey, the military, using tanks and artillery, turned many city and town centers to ruins, killing thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands more homeless. More than 600 members of the Turkish security forces were also killed.

“Human rights groups documented unlawful and mass killings, destruction of property and displacement, and so far there has been no effective criminal investigation into any aspect of what occurred,” said Turkey senior researcher Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch. 

Lawyer Ramazan Demir, representing Orhan Tunc, whose burned remains were found with his brother Mehmet in Cizre, said the case was the last hope for legal redress. “They (families of the killed) were hoping that the (European) Court would rule on the facts of mass crimes committed by security forces. They are abandoned to Turkish judiciary once again by the court.”

The court’s rejection of the cases validates Ankara’s argument the Turkish judiciary remains independent and functioning, according to analysts who say the ruling will also likely end hopes of dozens more similar pending cases. 

“The European Court of Human Rights has become an apologist for the Turkish Constitutional Court, claiming that the Turkish Court provides an effective remedy,” tweeted law professor Yaman Akdeniz and freedom of speech activists.

‘Demise of judiciary independence’

International human rights organizations and the European Union have sharply criticized Ankara for undermining the independence of the judiciary.

Since a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, 4,400 judges and prosecutors have been jailed or arrested. Two constitutional court judges are also languishing behind bars.

“In the history of the republic, it has never witnessed such demise of the judiciary independence,” said political scientist Cengiz Aktar.  “The judiciary was always under the heavy influence of the executive, but never at the level, we are witnessing now. The regime is installing a new concept of law in Turkey.”

Ankara defends the purge, saying those behind the attempted coup have an extensive network of followers within the judiciary and security forces.

The mass arrests and dismissals within the judiciary and the Turkish presidency’s greater powers to appoint high-level judges, including to the constitutional court, are adding to growing pressure on the European Human Rights Court to accept cases without going through the Turkish legal process. This is a power the European court has seldomly used.

Court has limitations

Analysts warn such a move threatens to bring the court to a standstill. “There are so many violations (in Turkey) of the European Convention of Human Rights, if the courts accepted all those cases it would be overwhelmed,” said Aktar, adding, “It would stop the work of the court. This is why the court is so careful in accepting cases.”

Aktar points out it’s essential to understand the court’s limitations.

“The European Court of Human rights is not a tribunal to ensure the change of non-democratic countries into democratic ones,” said Aktar. “The court is conceived to redress of small deviations from the rule of law.  In Turkey, Azerbaijan and Russia, these are non-democratic countries. The court can’t help there.”

Demir said he fears the door is closing on the last hope of legal redress for victims of injustice in Turkey. “The court has always been final hope for the victims,” said Demir. “However, they (Court) prefer not to disappoint the (member) states nowadays…”
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Hungary is facing “many interconnected human rights challenges,” including laws targeting civic groups, backsliding on women’s rights and the systematic detention of asylum-seekers, the Council of Europe’s human rights chief said Monday.

Commissioner Dunja Mijatovic, who visited Hungary last week, also expressed concerns about the independence of Hungary’s media and judiciary.

“The space for the work of NGOs, human rights defenders and journalists critical of the government has become very narrow and restricted,” Mijatovic said in a statement, calling on Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government to “reverse its worrying course” on human rights.

Orban’s government said Mijatovic’s criticism was “not unexpected” and called it a “political attack” related to Hungary’s “zero tolerance” position on immigration. It said it expected further criticism ahead of the European Parliament election in May.

“As the elections approach, we can expect a rather sharp rise in the number of such political attacks against Hungary,” the government’s International Communications Office said. “However, Hungary will continue its migration policy, because… the Hungarian people have declared their opinion and their will: they do not want to live in an immigrant country.”

Last year Hungary approved jail sentences for people convicted of aiding asylum-seekers and put taxes on grants or contributions from foreign sources.

Mijatovic said the new laws had “a continuous chilling effect on the human rights work of civil society organizations.”

On women’s rights, she noted that 28 percent of Hungarian women age 15 or over have experienced physical or sexual violence.

“There is an urgent need to raise awareness of violence against women in Hungary,” Mijatovic said, urging the government to ratify the Istanbul Convention on combating domestic violence, while acknowledging that the country was expanding support services to address the problem.

Mijatovic also said Hungary should stop detaining asylum-seekers at border transit zones, since that blocks them from being able to “apply for refugee protections guaranteed under international and European law.”

 
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Battling a sharp rise in food costs, Turkish authorities opened their own markets on Monday to sell cheap vegetables directly to shoppers, cutting out retailers who the government has accused of jacking up prices.

Crowds queued outside municipality tents to buy tomatoes, onions and peppers in Istanbul’s Bayrampasa district, waiting for an hour for items selling at half the regular shop prices.

The move to set up state markets follows a 31 percent year-on-year surge in food prices in January and precedes local elections next month in which President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party faces a tough challenge to maintain support.

Traders blamed storms in southern Turkey’s farming region for food price inflation, as well as rising costs of labor and transport. Authorities called it “food terror” and said they would punish anyone trying to keep prices artificially high.

“This was a game. They started manipulating prices, they tried to make prices skyrocket,” President Tayyip Erdogan said in a campaign speech on Monday.

“This was an attempt to terrorize (society),” Erdogan said.

Under the government initiative, municipalities are selling vegetables at around 50 percent of prices recorded by the Turkish Statistical Institute in January. A maximum of three kilos of goods per person is allowed.

The move will be extended to rice and pulses such as lentils, as well as cleaning products, Erdogan said.

The project is currently taking place only in Istanbul, where around 50 sites are selling the cut-price goods, and in the capital Ankara. That means it is unlikely to have a direct impact on national inflation figures, but could mitigate the price rises for residents of Turkey’s two largest cities.

Barely managing

Mustafa Dilli, 55, said he was struggling to make ends meet and hoped shops would follow suit by lowering their prices. “I think I can only shop here from now on,” he said. “We barely make it through to the end of the month.”

Several shoppers in Bayrampasa said they hoped the sales would carry on after next month’s vote. “I am curious whether this will continue after the elections,” 43-year-old housewife Nebahat Deniz said as she bought spinach and eggplants.

Agriculture Minister Bekir Pakdemirli, visiting a tent set up by the Ankara municipality, said the project would continue as long as it is needed, and could become permanent.

Last week, authorities inspected fresh produce wholesalers and imposed fines totaling 2 million lira ($380,000) on 88 firms for setting unreasonably high prices, according to the Trade Ministry.

At an Istanbul food market in a covered parking lot, traders complained that they could not compete with municipality stalls they said were subsidized by taxpayers and had been set up to win votes.

Standing behind an array of peppers, tomatoes and fresh greens, one trader said he was being hit by rising costs across the board.

“Prices in the food market are affected by the price of plastic bags, employee wages, stall fees, taxes, fuel prices.

All of them are increasing the cost of the goods,” said the trader, who only gave his first name, Yusuf.

“The government does not have these costs,” Yusuf said. “All of their costs are paid from the money out of our pockets.”

Another vendor, Erkan, said municipality sales were aimed purely at maximizing votes. “After the election, municipality sales will halt,” he said.

Erkan said the profit margin at his own stall, which supports three or four families, was very tight. “If we buy for 8 liras per kilo from the wholesaler we sell with little profit. We sell the goods for 9 liras for example,” Erkan said.
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