Новини

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said Thursday will have a plan ready to respond if investigators identify someone responsible for a nerve agent attack against a former Russian double agent.

“There is nothing soft about the UK’s response to any sort of state activity in this country,” she told the BBC. “You may not hear about it all, but when we do see that there is action to be taken, we will take it.”

British counterterrorism police have said Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent Sunday in the normally quiet town of Salisbury.

A police officer who was part of the initial response to the incident was hospitalized. Rudd said Thursday the officer remained in serious condition but was able to talk.

“This is being treated as a major incident of involving attempted murder by the administration of a nerve agent,” Metropolitan Police counterterrorism chief Mark Rowley said. He would not identify the exact substance used or how it was delivered.

The poisoning is threatening a full-scale security and diplomatic crisis for Britain, with lawmakers demanding the government launch an urgent inquiry into more than a dozen recent suspicious deaths in Britain, all potentially tied to Russian intelligence services.

Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, are fighting for their lives after being found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping mall. Police have been examining CCTV footage and reportedly have focused their attention on a man and woman spotted nearby.

On Tuesday, Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, prompted sharp Russian rebuttals when he assured British lawmakers the government would get to the bottom of the mystery and threatened the imposition of new sanctions on Russia, if the Kremlin were found to have been responsible. Johnson said while he was not pointing the finger at this stage, he described Russia as “a malign and disruptive force.”

His remarks were characterized by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as “wild.” Russian diplomats in London accused Johnson of “demonizing” their country.

Mark Edele, a Russia analyst at the University of Melbourne in Australia, told VOA investigators may never know who was responsible.

“If Russia is behind this, they will certainly deny it. If they’re not behind it, they will also deny it,” Edele said. “And the only way to really find out would be to catch whoever did this, which given the level of professionalism involved is probably unlikely.”

The incident is drawing comparisons to Alexander Litvinenko, a highly public critic of President Putin and a Russian KGB officer-turned-British intelligence agent, who died agonizingly, days after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210 in a London hotel in 2006. British doctors struggled in that case to identify the substance that killed him.

A British inquiry concluded the Russian leader probably approved the killing. The conclusion was dismissed angrily by the Kremlin as a politically motivated smear.

An eyewitness to the discovery of Skripal and his daughter, Jamie Paine, told British reporters the woman was passed out, frothing at the mouth and her eyes “were wide open, but completely white.” He said, “The man went stiff, his arms stopped moving, but he was still looking dead straight.” Adding to alarm, one of the emergency service workers who attended the pair has also been hospitalized.

Skripal, who served in Russia’s military intelligence agency, GRU, was exchanged in a Cold War-type spy swap in 2010 on the runway at Vienna’s airport. After serving four years in prison in Russia for spying for Britain’s espionage service, MI6, he was one of four Russian double agents exchanged for 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States, including Manhattan socialite and diplomat’s daughter Anna Chapman.

At the time, Putin, a former KGB officer, issued televised threats against those who had betrayed Russia. “Traitors will kick the bucket. Trust me. These people betrayed their friends, their brothers-in-arms. Whatever they got in exchange for it, those 30 pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on them,” he said.

In 2006, a new Russian law was adopted formally permitting extra-judicial killings abroad of people Russian authorities deemed extremist or terrorists, allowing the Russian president alone to order a killing.

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Skripal had spied for Britain during the 1990s and continued to communicate with MI6 after his retirement in 1999 from the GRU, while working at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Moscow.

Russian prosecutors said Skripal received at least $100,000 for his collaboration with MI6, according to Russian news outlets. At his trial he admitted selling the names, addresses and code names of “several dozen” Russian agents operating in Europe to MI6 over a period of 10 years. British intelligence officials say Skripal identified as many as 300 Russian spies and moles.

A year after the spy swap, he bought a house in Salisbury for $360,000. He lived apparently quietly there with his wife, Lyudmila, until her death from cancer five years ago. But a relative told BBC Russia, “From the first day, he knew it would end badly, and that he would not be left alone,” he said.

As British investigators piece together what happened to Skripal, senior British lawmakers say other suspicious Russia-linked deaths during the past two decades need to be re-examined.

Among them: former oligarch Boris Berezovsky; Scot Young, a businessman impaled on an iron fence after a fall from a window; Badri Patarkatsishvili, a Georgian oligarch who died of an apparent heart attack in 2008; Yuri Golubev, an outspoken Putin critic, and Alexander Perepilichny, who fled Russia for London and gave evidence of high-level corruption to Swiss authorities.

VOA’s Jamie Dettmer, Victor Beattie and Chris Hannas contributed to this report.
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A number of eastern European states have ramped up their opposition to a new gas pipeline linking Russia with Germany.

The Nord Stream 2 project will bring Russian gas directly to Western Europe, but critics say it will increase dependence on Russia and enrich its state-owned energy firms, at a time when Moscow stands accused of undermining European security.

The $11 billion, 1,225-kilometer pipeline is on schedule for completion next year. It is a private project backed by Russian state-owned Gazprom and five energy companies from Germany, France, Britain and the Netherlands. It also has the strong backing of the German and Russian governments.

“We support the implementation of this project which is undoubtedly, absolutely free from politics. This is a purely economic and moreover purely commercial project,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters after meeting the Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, last week in Moscow. Kurz also offered his support for the project.

Doing business with Putin

Many eastern states, however, say Europe should not be engaged in big business with President Putin. Some of the most vocal critics have been the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, whose foreign ministers traveled to Washington last week to meet Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

“Security these days is increasingly indivisible. There’s no clear division between internal and external security and also geographically,” Estonian Foreign Minister Sven Mikser told reporters in Washington ahead of the meeting.

The United States is opposed to Nord Stream 2, having sanctioned Russian companies over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, along with foreign companies involved in Russian energy exploration. So far, those sanctions don’t affect the new pipeline.

The European Commission also opposes the project but says there are no legal grounds to prevent the private investment from going ahead.

WATCH: Europe Split on Nord Stream 2 Pipeline as US Warns Against Dependence on Russian Gas

Softening sanctions

Opponents fear any additional revenues for Russia from Nord Stream 2 would soften the impact of sanctions. Many Eastern European states also question whether the new pipeline will benefit them economically, says Noah Gordon, analyst at the Center for European Reform, a London-based research group.

“There could be bottlenecks through central Europe and Eastern Europe, and those places could see prices rise and they might be more exposed to a Russian political gas cutoff. Ukraine would lose about $2 billion a year in transit fees.”

Currently, more than half of Russian gas exports to Europe are routed through Ukraine. Supporters of Nord Stream 2 say it would increase security of supply, citing recent price disputes between Moscow and Kyiv.

The EU hopes to mitigate the risk of increased dependence on Russia by investing in connecting pipelines across European borders.

“The goal is a resilient gas market where gas flows freely across borders,” Gordon said. “For two years, Ukraine hasn’t bought any gas from Russia. Instead they buy gas, Russian gas usually, indirectly from European traders like Germany, like the Dutch. So if the European gas market was in a strong enough state and if Europe was more energy efficient and used less gas, Russian or otherwise, Russia wouldn’t be able to meddle or use gas as a weapon ever again.”

Poland and Lithuania, which vehemently oppose Nord Stream 2, have built terminals for liquefied natural gas, or LNG. The United States wants to boost its LNG exports to Europe.

Both Europe and the U.S. hope that a diversified supply will help reduce Russia’s ability to use gas as a political weapon.
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The International Monetary Fund and European leaders pushed back Wednesday against U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, saying it would provoke a calamitous global trade war.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde told a European radio interviewer, “If international trade is called into question by these types of measures, it will be a transmission channel for a drop in growth, a drop in trade and it will be fearsome. In a trade war that will be fed by reciprocal increases of customs tariffs, no one wins.”

Lagarde said the IMF is “anxious” that U.S. tariff increases not be imposed, saying, “We are urging the sides to reach agreements, hold negotiations, consultations.”

Trump boasted last week that trade wars “are good and easy to win” after he announced plans for a 25 percent U.S. tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent levy on aluminum exported to the United States.

The proposal has drawn widespread criticism from his normal Republican colleagues in Congress and U.S. foreign allies, but support from economic nationalists in the United States and a handful of Democratic lawmakers in manufacturing states whose fortunes could be boosted by the tariffs protecting their metal industries.

EU retaliation

European Council President Donald Tusk rebutted Trump’s contention about trade conflicts, saying, “The truth is quite the opposite: Trade wars are bad and easy to lose. For this reason I strongly believe that now is the time for politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to act responsibly.”

The European Commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation European Union, detailed retaliatory tariffs it plans to impose on prominent U.S. products if Trump carries out his plan to impose the metal tariffs, taxing Harley-Davidson motorcycles, bourbon, blue jeans, cranberries, orange juice and peanut butter.

Trump has claimed the United States needs to impose the steel and aluminum tariffs to protect its national security, but European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem dismissed his rationale.

“We cannot see how the European Union, friends and allies in NATO, can be a threat to international security in the U.S.,” Malmstroem said. “From what we understand, the motivation of the U.S. is an economic safeguard measure in disguise, not a national security measure.”

Denmark Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said if a trade war starts between the United States and the European Union, “at the end of the day, European and American consumers will pay for it. That is the signal we have to send to Trump that it is not a path we should follow.”

Moody’s Investors Service said the planned tariffs “raise the risk of a deterioration in global trade relations.”

Despite the criticism, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump is “on track” to make the formal announcement on the tariffs by the end of the week.

Cutting the trade deficit

Trump said on Twitter that since former President George H.W. Bush was in the White House 30 years ago, “our Country has lost more than 55,000 factories, 6,000,000 manufacturing jobs and accumulated Trade Deficits of more than $12 trillion.”

Trump claimed the United States last year had a trade deficit of “almost $800 billion,” significantly overstating the actual figure of $566 billion, which still was the biggest U.S. trade deficit in nine years. A new report Wednesday said the U.S. trade deficit in January – the amount its imports exceeded its exports – reached $56.6 billion, the highest monthly total since October 2008.

“Bad Policies & Leadership. Must WIN again!” Trump said.

In another tweet, Trump said the United States has asked China “to develop a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States. Our relationship with China has been a very good one, and we look forward to seeing what ideas they come back with. We must act soon!”

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the planned steel and aluminum tariffs were “thought through. We’re not looking for a trade war.”

He said the Trump administration could take a “surgical approach” to new tariffs, exempting some countries, specifically Canada and Mexico, if revisions are reached in the ongoing negotiations over changes in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.

Ross added that it is “not inconceivable that others could be exempted on a similar basis.”

Stocks prices fell in the U.S. markets with the turmoil over the tariffs and the resignation Tuesday of Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic adviser, an economic globalist who had opposed the steel and aluminum tariffs, but lost the internal White House debate.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 key stocks dropped a half percentage point in early Wednesday trading and other markets dropped too.

Trump promised to quickly replace Cohn, saying, “Many people wanting the job — will choose wisely!”
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China and Russia are working to expand their influence across Africa, hoping to outspend or out-compete the United States, U.S. officials warn, describing it as part of a larger effort by both countries to reshape the world order.

For months, top national security officials have been talking about the reemergence of what they describe as a great power competition, calling out China and Russia as the two countries doing the most to counter the United States.

Officials say the efforts by Beijing and Moscow are both regional and global, with both pursuing strategies to deny the U.S. access to conflict zones in times of crisis and to commercial markets in times of peace.

And in Africa, both are trying to portray themselves as viable, if not essential, alternatives to the United States.

On Tuesday, the commander of U.S. forces in Africa told lawmakers it is now critical for African countries to know Washington can and will remain a steadfast partner.

“It’s important that we’re there, that we’re present and that the African people see our commitment,” U.S. Africa Command’s Gen. Thomas Waldhauser told the House Armed Services Committee.

China’s expanding influence

Concerns about China’s ever-expanding reach into Africa are not new. U.S. intelligence warned this past September (2017) that Beijing’s first overseas military base, at Doraleh, in the east African nation of Djibouti, was likely to be the first of many.

“China seeks to build [military bases] around the world, creating new areas of intersecting, and potentially conflicting, security interests between China and the United States,” an intelligence official said at the time.

For U.S. Africa Command, perhaps no situation is as concerning as the one in Djibouti, home to Camp Lemonnier, the only permanent U.S. military installation on the African continent and a hub for U.S. counterterror operations.

Gen. Waldhauser described the Chinese military base at Doraleh as, “right outside our gates.” And despite some efforts to work with the Chinese, in areas like medical aid and training, U.S. defense officials remain wary.

“We are not naïve,” said Waldhauser Tuesday. “We are taking significant steps on the counterintelligence side so that we have all the defenses that we need.”

But China’s military might in Africa, including its approximately 2,500 peacekeepers, is not what has U.S. defense, intelligence and diplomatic officials most concerned.

Rather, they point to the way Beijing relies on economic aid and promises of development to bring countries like Djibouti into its sphere of influence.

“The Chinese there are building facilities. They’re building a shopping mall. They built a soccer stadium,” Waldhauser said. “They built the infrastructure for communications in Djibouti.”

“When we talk about influence and access, this is a classic example,” he added. “We’ll never outspend the Chinese.”

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday went as far as to accuse China of “encouraging dependency” in its approach to the continent.

WATCH:  Tillerson Touts Africa As Key to Global Security

“Chinese investment does have the potential to address Africa’s infrastructure gap but its approach has led to mounting debt and few, if any, jobs in most countries. When coupled with the political and fiscal pressure, this endangers Africa’s natural resources and its long-term economic, political stability,” noted Tillerson in a speech hours before leaving on a five-country African trip.

Other U.S. officials have also raised concerns about the high levels of debt some nations are incurring as they increasingly accept Chinese loans. By some U.S. estimates, Djibouti, which is home to the U.S. military base, owes more than $1.2 billion to Beijing.

That has sparked fears among some U.S. lawmakers that China could make a play to take control of Djibouti’s key port, the Doraleh Container Terminal.

Djibouti took control of the port citing a contract dispute with the former operator, Dubai-based DP World.

“Reports that I’ve read say that they didn’t seize it for purposes of operating it for profit, but that they actually intend to gift it to China,” Republican Representative Bradley Byrne (from Louisiana) said during Tuesday’s hearing with Africa Command’s Gen. Waldhauser.

“The Chinese aren’t there for purely charitable reasons,” Byrne said. “We all would recognize that.”

U.S. defense officials admit that if China does take over the port and decides to impose any restrictions, the consequences could be significant – impacting the military’s ability to refuel ships and to resupply Camp Lemonnier and other outposts across Africa.

Russia’s focus on Africa

Russia, too, is making Africa more of a focus.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visits Africa this week, starting with a stop in Zimbabwe, where Moscow has been cultivating economic ties, including a $3 billion investment in platinum mining, while also pursuing deeper military ties.

There has also been extensive Russian outreach to northern African nations, particularly countries like Libya which border on the Mediterranean.

“Our concern would be their ability to influence and be on the southern flank of NATO, and also them to kind of squeeze us out, if you will, by them taking a prominent role,” said U.S. Africa Command’s Waldhauser.

Russian officials say they have no plans to back down.

“African countries view the development of cooperation in the military and technical sphere as an instrument of ensuring their sovereignty, independence and countering the pressure of Western countries,” Andrei Kemarksy, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Africa Department told the Tass news agency last month.

“We are training both military and police personnel for peacekeeping operations,” Kemarksy added.

 
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The Eiffel Tower will light up to honor women’s rights and promote the French equivalent of the Time’s Up movement.

The message “Maintenant On Agit” (“Now We Act”) will be displayed all Wednesday evening on the Parisian monument ahead of International Women’s Day on Thursday.

In a short ceremony, Culture Minister Francoise Nyssen and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo are set to make a speech alongside members of women’s rights associations to support the movement.

Launched by the Foundation of Women, the movement aims to raise funds for associations helping women pursue cases before justice, “so that no woman ever again has to say (hash)MeToo.”

Over 160 French actresses have already joined the movement.

 
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The European Union is cool to the idea of Britain’s “associate membership” in various agencies of the bloc as proposed by London to make Brexit less disruptive for British business.

Britain started a process to leave the EU last year because it no longer wants to accept the authority of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the free movement of workers, and it does not want to contribute to the EU budget.

But it is keen to keep most of its other links with the EU, especially unfettered access to the EU’s market.

EU officials call this approach “cherry-picking,” where London chooses the areas it wants for closer association but does not accept the obligations linked to it in other areas. 

Last Friday, Prime Minister Theresa May floated the idea of Britain’s remaining an associate member of the European Medicines Agency, the European Chemicals Agency and the European Aviation Safety Agency after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.

She said London understood this meant abiding by the rules of those agencies and financial contributions. But EU officials involved in the negotiations on the terms of Britain’s exit from the bloc and deciding on the future trade relationship were not impressed.

“It is not so much ‘how’ they participate. That’s a technicality. The bigger question is ‘if’ they should participate. Why would we let them in?” one official said.

“The bottom line is that the U.K. approach is cherry-picking.

“The EU has a vast number of agencies, and I think we’d think twice to let the U.K. ‘associate’ itself with a selected number they choose because they have an interest,” the official said.

Brussels officials pointed out that an “associate membership” — a status that does not exist yet and would have to be created especially for Britain — would not give London the kind of access to the EU single market it sought.

“It is not possible to accept ECJ oversight in only some segments of business in the EU and not in others,” a second EU official said. “The single market is not made of bits and pieces you can pick and choose.”

An “associate membership” status would also likely involve complex legal work in the EU to create it.

“The willingness to change regulations in order to accommodate the U.K.’s wishes … is limited because it entails lengthy legislative procedures,” a third official said.

The chairman of EU leaders, Donald Tusk, will present draft guidelines for the EU’s future trade deal with Britain in Luxembourg on Wednesday.

‘Freedom implies responsibility’

The closest to an “associate membership” the EU has now is with countries in the European Economic Area but not EU members — Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland — which can take part in meetings, but they do not have voting rights.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said last November that the work of the EU agencies was based on EU laws, which Britain no longer wants to accept and should then go on and build its own.

“The same people who argue for setting the U.K. free also argue that the U.K. should remain in some EU agencies. But freedom implies responsibility for building new U.K. administrative capacity,” Barnier said.

“On our side, the 27 will continue to deepen the work of those agencies, together. They will share the costs for running those agencies. Our businesses will benefit from their expertise. All of their work is firmly based on the EU treaties, which the U.K. decided to leave,” he said.

May argued in her speech last week that every trade agreement, which focused on some aspects of an economy more than on others, was some form of “cherry-picking.”

“With all its neighbors the EU has varying levels of access to the single market, depending on the obligations those neighbors are willing to undertake,” she said.

“What would be cherry-picking would be if we were to seek a deal where our rights and obligations were not held in balance. And I have been categorically clear that is not what we are going to do,” she said.

But EU officials said that Britain would get the trade agreement it sought with the EU only if it agreed to balance the rights and obligations in a way that would not pick apart the EU single market.

The bloc would also have to make sure that the deal is less attractive than EU membership.

“Nobody asked after the EU trade agreement with Canada, or Korea: ‘Why can’t we be like Canada or Korea?’ The point is that also after Brexit, nobody should ask themselves: ‘Why can’t we be like Britain?’ ” the second official said.
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The Vatican on Tuesday signaled its concern over the results of Italy’s national election, which saw sharp gains for populist and anti-immigrant parties.

The biggest winners were the League — the largest party in a center-right grouping that employed the most fiery anti-migrant rhetoric during the campaign — and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, was asked on the sidelines of a conference on immigration if the Holy See was worried about the results.

“The Holy See has to work in whatever conditions arise. We can’t (always) have the society that we would like to have, or the conditions that we would like to have,” he told the Catholic news agency SIR.

It was the Vatican’s first public reaction to the results and its most authoritative because Parolin, its top diplomat, ranks second only to Pope Francis in the Holy See’s hierarchy.

During the campaign, League leader Matteo Salvini clashed with the pope several times over immigration.

When Francis backed a proposed law that would have granted Italian citizenship to children born in Italy of immigrant parents — something the League vehemently opposed — Salvini said Francis could house the children in the Vatican if he wanted to.

Political squabbling blocked discussion of the law before parliament was dissolved ahead of the elections.

Salvini also criticized the pope for promoting dialogue with Islam. Many of the Africans who made the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean to reach Italy are Muslim.

Parolin said at the conference that the Vatican realized that the election results meant it would have to continue “a work of education” about the dignity and rights of immigrants.

Surveys show Italians are increasingly uneasy after more than 600,000 migrants reached Italy by boat in four years. Last month, a neo-Nazi wounded six migrants in a shooting spree in central Italy.

“Citizens must feel safe and protected but at the same time we can’t slam doors in the faces of people who are fleeing violence and threats,” Parolin said.

The pope, who was born in Argentina of Italian immigrant stock, has championed the cause of migrants since taking office in 2013.

Last year he called for a radical change of attitude towards immigrants, saying they should be welcomed with dignity and denouncing the “populist rhetoric” he said was fueling fear and selfishness in rich countries.

The center-right has vowed to deport hundreds of thousands of migrants if they are able to form a government. 5-Star has also vowed to step up deportations of illegal immigrants.
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At least 21 Libyan migrants who were trying to make the dangerous Mediterranean Sea journey to Italy late last week are missing and feared drowned. 

The U.N. migration agency said Tuesday that they were part of a large group who had set off from Libya aboard a wooden boat and a rubber dinghy and had to be rescued at sea.

Survivors said there was a panic on one of the vessels and people fell overboard, but the details of what happened were unclear.

The Libyan Coast Guard returned some to Libya while a Cypriot commercial ship picked up others. They arrived at the Italian port of Pozzallo on Tuesday.

The number of migrants trying to reach European Union nations from Libya is down substantially from the same time last year, in part because of an agreement between Libya and Italy to immediately return most of those picked up at sea.

U.N. migration officials said 421 people had died trying to sail to Italy so far this year, compared with 521 at the same time in 2017.

But they said more than 100 had died trying to reach Spain in an equally dangerous western sea journey.
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As U.S. influence in Islamabad wanes, Pakistan’s former adversary Russia is building military, diplomatic and economic ties that could upend historic alliances in the region and open up a fast-growing gas market for Moscow’s energy companies.

Russia’s embrace of Pakistan comes at a time when relations between the United States and its historical ally are unravelling over the war in Afghanistan, a remarkable turnaround from the 1980s, when Pakistan helped funnel weapons and U.S. spies across the border to aid Afghan fighters battling Soviet troops.

Though the Moscow-Islamabad rapprochement is in its infancy, and it is neighbor China that is filling the growing void left by the United States in Pakistan, a slew of energy deals and growing military cooperation promise to spark life into the Russia-Pakistan relationship that was dead for many decades.

“It is an opening,” Khurram Dastgir Khan, Pakistan’s defense minister, told Reuters. “Both countries have to work through the past to open the door to the future.”

Watching Islamic State

The cosier diplomatic ties have so far focused on Afghanistan, where Russia has cultivated ties to the Afghan Taliban militants who are fighting U.S. troops and have historic links to Islamabad. Moscow says it is encouraging peace negotiations.

Both Russia and Pakistan are also alarmed by the presence of Islamic State (IS) inside Afghanistan, with Moscow concerned the group’s fighters could spread towards central Asia and closer to home. In Pakistan, IS has already carried out major attacks.

“We have common ground on most issues at diplomatic levels,” Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told Reuters. “It’s a relationship that will grow substantially in the future.”

During a trip to Moscow last month by Pakistan’s foreign minister, Khawaja Asif, the two countries announced plans to establish a commission on military cooperation to combat the threat of IS in the region.

They also agreed to continue annual military training exercises that began in 2016 and followed the sale of four Russian attack helicopters to Pakistan, as well as the purchase of Russian engines for the Pakistan Air Force’s JF-17 fighter jets that Pakistan’s military assembles on its own soil.

India voices concern

The detente has been watched with suspicion by Pakistan’s neighbor and arch-foe India, which broadly stood in the Soviet camp during the Cold War era. In the last two decades, the close Russia-India relationship has been underpinned by huge arms sales by Moscow to a country it calls a “strategic partner.”

“If the Russians start backing the Pakistanis in a big way at the political level, then it creates a problem for us,” said Sushant Sareen, a leading expert on India’s relations to Pakistan and Afghanistan with New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.

India’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Russia’s ties with Pakistan, but has previously said that its own relations with Moscow have stood the test of time, and that the two nations are building up defence and energy relations, including collaboration on nuclear reactors in India.

Pivoting east

Russian overtures to Pakistan offer a badly needed diplomatic lifeline for the South Asian nation as it faces growing friction with Western powers over its alleged links to militants.

At U.S. urging, and with backing from Britain, France and Germany, a global financial watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), last month decided to place Pakistan back on its watchlist of countries with inadequate terrorist-financing controls, potentially hurting Pakistan’s fragile economy.

The U.S. move, which Islamabad angrily dismissed as an effort to “embarrass” Pakistan, followed Washington’s announcement in January to suspend $2 billion in military assistance.

Asif, Pakistan’s foreign minister, said his nation made a historical error by “tilting 100 percent” to the West and was now eager build alliances closer to home with the likes of China, Russia and Turkey.

“We want to correct the imbalance of our foreign policy over 70 years,” Asif told Reuters. “We are not divorcing that relationship (with the West). But we want to have a balance in our relationships, we want to be closer to our friends in our region.”

Defense minister Khan said Pakistan’s military, which has historically been heavily reliant on U.S. weapons and aircraft, may have no choice but to ramp up purchases from the likes of Russia.

Cooling relationship

The cooling relationship with Washington is already pushing Islamabad closer to China, which is investing about $60 billion in infrastructure in Pakistan. But analysts say Pakistan is wary of becoming overly dependent diplomatically on Beijing.

Pakistan is among several nations that have been courted by Moscow after falling out with Washington, including the Philippines and Qatar, but Russia’s long-term aims for the Pakistan relationship are unclear, according to Petr Topychkanov, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

“It’s not very transparent, even in Russia,” he said. “There is no serious public debate, there is no detailed explanation to the Russian public about what Russia wants in Pakistan.”

Russia’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Moscow’s increasingly close relations with Pakistan.

Huge power projects

Russia and Pakistan are negotiating potential energy deals worth in excess of $10 billion, according to Pakistani energy officials.

Asif said four to five huge power projects “will cement our relationship further.”

Russia last month appointed an honorary council in the Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, where its companies are in talks to build an oil refinery and a power station.

But the biggest deals focus on gas supply and infrastructure to Pakistan, one of the world’s fastest growing liquefied natural gas (LNG) import markets.

“On a strategic basis, Russia is coming in very fast on the energy side,” said a senior Pakistani energy official.

In October, Pakistan and Russia signed an inter-governmental agreement (IGA) on energy, paving the way for Russian state-giant Gazprom to enter negotiations to supply LNG to Pakistan.

The talks are expected to conclude within three months and Gazprom is considered “one of the front-runner” to clinch a long-term supply deal, according to the Pakistani official.

$9 billion deal

Based on two monthly LNG cargo deliveries, that deal would be worth about $9 billion over 15 years, he added.

There is also growing confidence that a gas pipeline due to be built by Russia, stretching 1,100 km (680 miles) from Lahore to the port city of Karachi, will go ahead.

U.S. sanctions against Russian state conglomerate Rostec, as well as a dispute over North-South pipeline transport fees, have held up the $2 billion project since it was signed in 2015.

The North-South pipeline would be the biggest infrastructure deal by Russia since early 1970s, when Soviet engineers constructed the Pakistan Steel Mills industrial complex.

A Russian company, according to defense minister Khan, is eying up a deal to take over the disused Soviet-built steel mills.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday she would work with France to tackle pressing issues such as trade policy, the war in Syria and competition with China after the Social Democrats (SPD) approved joining a coalition with her conservatives.

Merkel welcomed the vote by a clear majority of SPD members that ended more than five months of political deadlock after an inconclusive election, and she said the right-left government must quickly get to work.

“What we’re seeing and hearing every day is that Europe needs to step up and Germany needs to have a strong voice there along with France and other member states [of the European Union],” said Merkel during a brief statement to reporters.

Priorities included international trade policy, on which many jobs in Europe’s largest economy depend, ensuring open competition with China and dealing with the “scary situation” in Syria.

“It is important that we start working as soon as possible,” Merkel said.

U.S. President Donald Trump last week stunned his European allies with plans to put tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, triggering a warning by the European Union that it would retaliate with counter-measures.

Sunday’s SPD vote result brought relief to German businesses and European capitals, which say the euro zone would benefit from Merkel being able to partner with French President Emmanuel Macron on ambitious plans to reform the single currency bloc.

But discord within the coalition could hamper Merkel’s ability to tackle challenges like eurozone reforms, Trump’s protectionist policies, and China’s rising dominance. The war in Syria, which could result in more refugees arriving in Germany, is also a prime concern.

Both Merkel’s conservatives and the SPD are under pressure to appear distinctive to voters in a coalition borne out of necessity rather than choice, making it difficult for Merkel to balance conflicting demands.

More than 6 in 10 Germans said in a poll published Monday they believe the coalition will serve a full four-year term.

And more than 56 percent of Germans believe Merkel will serve the full four years, a separate poll conducted for the Bild newspaper showed.

Former Greens Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer urged the coalition to speed up eurozone reforms and digitalization, saying that Europe risked losing out politically and economically as China accelerated its technology developments.

“I hope they step on the gas pedal, when it comes to Europe. It’s a very un-Green demand, I know, but in this case, it’s warranted,” he told reporters.

‘No opposition in government’

Senior conservative Jens Spahn, seen as one possible successor to Merkel, warned the SPD not to obstruct government policy in a rerun of the coalition that has ruled since 2013.

Spahn, a champion of the right in Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), told Deutschlandfunk radio: “The SPD must decide: Either we rule together or some will try to play opposition within the government.”

SPD leaders, under pressure to revive their party after suffering their worst result in September’s election since Germany became a federal republic in 1949, have vowed to fight the conservatives on major issues.

SPD secretary general Lars Klingbeil said his party wants the government, expected to be in place this month, to make social issues such as pensions, education and family policy and strengthening rural areas, its top priority.

But Volker Kauder, parliamentary leader of the conservatives, said his bloc would focus on curbing immigration.

Despite agreeing on broad policy outlines, the two blocs are divided on how to implement policies on immigration, car emissions, labor rules and welfare.

Merkel also faces the challenge of easing tensions within her own conservative bloc, comprising her CDU party and their Christian Social Union (CSU) Bavaria-based partners.

The CSU on Monday spoiled her election pledge to have a cabinet equally split among men and women by naming three male politicians to the transport, development and interior posts.

Deputy SPD leader Malu Dreyer told the RND newspaper chain the CSU move was “disappointing” 100 years after women gained the right to vote.

The CDU have appointed three men and three women to fill their six cabinet posts under the coalition agreement and the SPD are expected to do the same. This means that the 16-strong cabinet, including Merkel, will have seven women and nine men.

Merkel was weakened by her 2015 decision to welcome hundreds of thousands of people seeking asylum, which helped fuel the rise of a far-right party that stole conservative voters.

In power since 2005, she has led Germany and the EU through the financial and debt crises, but her waning authority at home could complicate efforts to deepen integration in the eurozone.
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Ibrahim, a 35-year-old Moroccan who hawks bracelets weaved out of multi-colored fabric in front of Milan’s cathedral, teared up when he spoke of the family he left behind and which relies on the money he sends home.

“I really hope they don’t make it even more horrible to stay in this country,” he said. “I want to stay here.”

Up and down Italy on Monday, migrants, both legal and not, were pondering their future after the anti-immigrant League surged in popularity in elections the day before.

Ibrahim, who declined to give his last name, is one of the lucky ones. He has permission to stay because he once worked in a factory, but it comes up for renewal every two years.

“It often happens that we have problems, that people shout at us ‘go back to your country’,” he said.

That is precisely what the League, which shot up 14 percentage points from the 2013 national election, and its three center-right coalition partners, would like to see happen: immigrants going back where they came from, by force if necessary.

The center-right has vowed to deport hundreds of thousands of migrants if they are able to form a government, even though that promise will be hard to keep.

Surveys show Italians are increasingly uneasy after more than 600,000 migrants reached Italy by boat in four years. Last month, a neo-Nazi wounded six migrants in a shooting spree in central Italy.

‘Pick them up’

“These 600,000 people, we will pick them up using police, law enforcement and the military,” former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, of the Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party, said during the campaign.

League leader Matteo Salvini said irregular migrants would be rounded up and sent home “in 15 minutes” if he and his allies take power.

League supporters were thrilled that they had overtaken Berlusconi’s party as the largest in the center-right bloc for the first time since he entered politics nearly a quarter of a century ago.

“With Salvini in government, the problem of immigration can and must be resolved,” said Severino Damiolini, 43, an office worker from Sellero, near Brescia in northern Italy.

The immigration debate also highlighted splits between immigrants who have been in Italy for years or decades and more recent arrivals, with the former fearing that their reputations are tainted by the newcomers.

“The League should not lump all of us together – Indians, Asians, Africans,” said Kris Sumun, 35, who came from Mauritius when he was five years old and has worked as a concierge in a Milan building for 11 years.

“They have to understand that there are many people like me who have been here for years and are a resource for the country.

People who have a different skin tone are all treated like we are all wretched and poor,” he said. “I think it will get worse now.”

Next to Rome’s Tiburtina train station on Monday, buckets of rain poured onto tents that are home to hundreds of migrants who made their way to the capital after making the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean from North Africa.

“Very few politicians have told the truth about migration,” said Andrea Costa, who oversees the site for a charity.

“There is no invasion in Italy. It’s not a siege. It’s not a crisis. It’s an issue that has to be governed like all other issues,” he said.
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France’s foreign minister arrived in Tehran on Monday for meetings with the country’s president and his Iranian counterpart, Iran’s state TV reported, with talks likely to focus on Syria’s years-long war and French criticism of Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Jean-Yves Le Drian’s one-day trip highlights the balancing act Paris finds itself in after Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

While French leaders, including President Emmanuel Macron, have criticized Iran’s missile program, French companies like oil giant Total SA have bullishly entered the Iranian market after the atomic accord, complicating any possible sanctions.

Ahead of Le Drian’s trip, the French Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying he would pursue “a frank and demanding dialogue with Iran.”

Iran’s ballistic missile capacity and position “worries us enormously,” Le Drian said last week at a news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “Having such tools is not uniquely defensive, given the distance they can reach.”

Le Drian faced immediate pushback over French concerns about Iran’s ballistic missiles, starting with Iranian students waving signs at Iran’s Mehrabad International Airport protesting his comments.

That continued with Iran’s armed forces spokesman Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, who this weekend said Tehran only would give up its missiles when the West abandons nuclear weapons.

“The country’s defense capabilities will continue non-stop and foreigners do not have the right to enter this field,” Jazayeri said Monday, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

France, the United States and the United Nations say Iran supplies ballistic missile technology to Shi’ite rebels in Yemen, who have fired the weapons into Saudi Arabia. Iran denies supplying the rebels with that and describes its ballistic missile program as only a defensive weapon.

Le Drian first met Monday with Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. Shamkhani, a former chief of Iran’s navy, made a point to wear his military uniform to the meeting.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force that answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, runs the country’s ballistic missile program.

Le Drian had been scheduled to visit Tehran earlier but postponed his trip after protests across Iran in late December and early January that saw at least 21 people killed.

Macron praised the demonstrations as “the free expression of the Iranian people,” though he did not offer a full-throated encouragement of them like President Donald Trump.

Macron also has said he wants to see the emergence of an accord limiting Iran’s regional presence. The Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah is notably fighting in Syria at the side of President Bashar Assad and has a prime political role in Lebanon, where it is based.

During his visit, Le Drian is also to inaugurate an exhibition called “The Louvre in Tehran” at the Iranian National Museum.
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