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Ukraine-NATO Drills Worry Russia
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Photo shows activists protest in front of police as they try to stop the opening ceremony of US-Ukrainian Navy exercises ÒSea Breeze-2008Ó in Odessa on July 14.
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Russia said on Friday it was concerned by joint NATO-Ukraine naval exercises in the Black Sea, saying the leaders of the ex-Soviet state were trying to force their people into NATO membership against their will.
Russia, sensitive to NATO expansion towards its borders, has warned of serious consequences if Ukraine and fellow ex-Soviet state Georgia join the military alliance, Reuters reported.
The 11th Seabreeze naval drills got under way this week. Sixteen countries are taking part in the 12-day exercise during which service personnel take part in a mock peacekeeping operation and mass evacuation of non-combatants.
Russia said the drills included intelligence work, searches for enemy submarines and test firing of munitions. “The character of the maneuvers, the attempts to present them in an anti-Russian tone, and also the participation of non-regional powers cannot but create questions and a certain concern,“ Russia’s foreign ministry said.
Proposal to Join
Meanwhile, NATO has proposed holding joint mine-sweeping exercises in the Black Sea with the Russian Navy, the country’s Black Sea Fleet said on Saturday.
German Navy Commander Eike Tammen, who heads the Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 2, put forward the proposal, the fleet said in a statement.
“Tammen proposed to Russian naval officers that joint mine-sweeping exercises be held in the Black Sea,“ the statement said.
Warships from NATO members Germany, Greece, and Turkey are currently visiting the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk as part of the NATO-Russia Council cooperation schedule for 2008.
During their visit, officers from the NATO ships will meet with top officials in the Russian city, and with Vice-Admiral Sergei Menyailo, commander of the Novorossiisk naval base.
Paternalism
The wargame will practice such maneuvers as reconnaissance, search for a submarine, navigation control, as well as landing and training firing, the ministry said.
“It seems that Black Sea countries can by themselves - without any ’paternalistic’ involvement from outside - solve the tasks related to security and stability in the Black Sea based on existing cooperation mechanisms,“ Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department said in a statement published on Friday.
Multiple protest actions staged by local residents accompany the exercise, the statement says.
“The mass protest actions against the exercise reflects Ukraine’s public opinion about the course of the current administration toward joining the Alliance, a course that does not contribute to the strengthening of neighborly relations with Russia,“ the statement says.
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Moscow Supports
Germany’s Georgia Plan
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov softened earlier criticism of a German peace plan aimed at resolving a conflict with Georgia Friday, saying it offered a potential basis to break the deadlock.
Lavrov said after talks with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Moscow that Berlin’s initiative was “extremely helpful for looking for compromises and a way out of the crisis“, AFP reported.
“We believe that the logic of your plan is absolutely the right one,“ Lavrov told Steinmeier at a joint news conference.
During Steinmeier’s talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, “it was stressed that the only way out of this situation is mutual obligation not to use force, guarantee security and withdrawal of Georgian troops from the Kodori gorge,“ the Kremlin said.
Germany chairs the so-called UN Group of Friends of the Secretary General seeking to reverse a sharp rise in tensions in a long-simmering conflict between Georgia and the Russian-backed breakaway region of Abkhazia.
Separatist leaders have blamed Georgia for a recent series of bombings accompanied by growing friction between Moscow and Tbilisi.
The first step of Berlin’s plan would entail an end to violence, confidence-building measures over the next year that could lead to the resumption of direct talks between Georgia and Abkhazia, and the return of about 250,000 Georgian refugees to Abkhazia.
The second stage would involve developing joint reconstruction projects take. The Abkhaz rejection or acceptance of the plan is just a political game, and we all know very well that in fact Russia stands behind the Abkhazians,“ Bakradze said.
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Japanese March Against
US Nuke Warship
More than 10,000 people marched by a US navy base near Tokyo on Saturday, calling for the Japanese government to stop the deployment of a nuclear-powered warship for the first time to Japan, rally organizers said.
The protest by local residents and activists against basing the aircraft carrier USS George Washington in Yokosuka, 45 km (28 miles) southwest of Tokyo, came amid growing concerns safety after a fire on the ship in May, Reuters reported.
“The US military does not disclose any information on the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier’s structure, as well as its navigation and accident records,“ said Masahiko Goto, a lawyer who participated in the protest.
“This is the same as bringing a nuclear reactor into another country. Something is wrong here. The Japanese government is sacrificing the local residents’ safety for its national interests.“
The USS George Washington was originally scheduled to be deployed to Yokosuka in August, but its arrival is likely to be delayed due to the fire, which left one sailor with minor burns, Japanese media have reported.
It will become the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to be stationed in Japan, the only country to suffer atomic bombing at the end of World War II.
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More Troops On Thai-Cambodian Border
Cambodia and Thailand continued to reinforce their troops along a disputed border area near an 11th century temple Saturday, even as they prepared for talks to avert a military confrontation.
Some 300 more Cambodian soldiers and 100 Thais were seen by Associated Press reporters arriving near the Preah Vihear temple late Friday, although commanders declined to confirm those numbers, AP reported.
Earlier, Cambodian Brig. Gen. Chea Keo said Cambodia had about 800 troops as against 400 Thai soldiers in the area as the standoff entered a fifth day.
The countries are to meet Monday in an attempt to defuse the conflict over territory surrounding the ancient temple, which escalated when UNESCO recently approved Cambodia’s application to have the complex named a World Heritage Site. Thai activists fear the new status will undermine Thailand’s claim to nearby land since the border has never been demarcated.
Chea Keo said troops from the opposing forces were on the brink of a shoot-out Thursday night when Cambodian monks gathered to celebrate Buddhist lent at a pagoda about 220 yards from the ancient temple.
The incident occurred when Thai troops tried to evict about 50 Cambodian soldiers from the compound of the Buddhist pagoda, where they sought to camp for the night to provide security for the monks.
The two sides raised their rifles at each other, but the standoff ended with the Cambodians eventually pulling back, Chea Keo said Friday.
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Uranium Leak
The French nuclear giant Areva on Friday confirmed there was a radioactive leak from a broken pipe at a nuclear fuel plant in south-eastern France.
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America Complicating Global
Effort to Curb Illicit Arms
Diplomats from the world’s governments met throughout this week on agreements to cut the global illicit trade in small arms, but their work was curtailed in part by the near-boycott of the meetings by the United States.
According to “The New York Times“, the tone of the meetings underscored the political complexities of gaining full support for international small-arms agreements from the United States. The American view has balanced recognition of the dangers of illegal proliferation with the government’s own arms-distribution practices and with the American gun lobby’s resistance to the United Nations’ proposals.
Since 2001, the UN member states have endorsed a broad but loosely defined initiative, called the program of action, for a collective effort against illegal arms circulation. The agreement in part encourages governments to tighten controls on manufacturing, marking, tracing, brokering, exporting and stockpiling small arms and to cooperate to restrict illicit flows, particularly to regions perennially in armed conflict. It addresses hundreds of millions of weapons, ranging from pistols to shoulder-fired rockets, that the United Nations says are in circulation worldwide.
Nepal to Elect First President
Nepal was set to elect its first president on Saturday, from a marginalised ethnic community whose violent demand for a greater say in running the government once threatened a peace deal with Maoist former rebels.
Nepal abolished its 239-year-old monarchy and became a republic under a 2006 deal with the rebels, who ended their decade-long civil war and scored a surprise win in an election in April for a special assembly to write a constitution, Reuters reported.
But the peace pact was threatened by unrest in the country’s southern plains bordering India, where ethnic Madheshi groups began protesting against their marginalisation. At least 50 people were killed in those protests. Though a ceremonial post, the election of a Madhesi president is seen as a formula to appease the marginalised group and enlist its support for a new coalition possibly headed by former rebel chief Prachanda.
All three candidates for the post hailed from the Madhesh region, also called the Terai.
The election of the president will pave the way for the Maoist former guerrillas to form a new government, three months after they emerged the largest group in the assembly polls.
The Maoists say they are in talks with other political parties for support, as they do not have parliamentary majority.
US Fires Long-Range Missile in Defense Test
The United States fired a long-range target missile over the Pacific on Friday to test an array of radars and other sensors in its missile defense system, the Pentagon said.
The test was supposed to have involved an attempted intercept, but that was delayed until December following the discovery of a flaw in a device used to gather telemetry and other data from the interceptor missile, the head of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency said earlier this week, AFP reported.
The target missile was fired from Kodiak island in Alaska at 2247 GMT with a mock warhead and countermeasures, the agency said in a statement.
“This was the most challenging flight test of the missile defense system’s command and control software to date,“ the agency said.
The target missile was tracked by radars on an Aegis destroyer, a deployable mobile ground based targeting radar, a sea-based targeting radar, and an upgraded early warning radar at Beale Air Force Base in California. The agency said command centers were able to successfully generate an intercept solution, and operational crews simulated the launch of an interceptor missile from Vandenberg Air force Base in California.
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