Global Europe

Nuclear talks with Iran in sight? Reuters reports:

Iran and the United States sent positive signals on Wednesday about the possibility of fresh talks on the Iranian nuclear program, which Washington suspects aims to develop atomic weapons.

Iran has given an assurance that it would stop enriching uranium to 20 percent purity if world powers agreed to a proposed nuclear fuel swap, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Istanbul.

The offer, conveyed to Davutoglu on Sunday, could bode well for an expected resumption of talks in September between Iran and major powers on the Islamic Republic’s atomic program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes and not for bombs.

Asked about Davutoglu’s comments, the U.S. State Department said Iran had often sent mixed signals but that the United States was “fully prepared” to resume talks among the six major powers and Tehran about Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran last met the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia in Geneva in October, when they discussed Iran sending some low-enriched uranium abroad in exchange for fuel for a Tehran reactor that makes medical isotopes.

“We hope to have the same kind of meeting coming up in the coming weeks that we had last October,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters. “We are interested in a process — more than one meeting.”

A U.S. official said Iran may be trying to “have their cake and eat it too,” by swapping some low enriched uranium for nuclear fuel while continuing to enrich at some level. “A lot depends on the details,” of what Iran is willing to do, he added, saying the West had responded coolly to Iranian initiatives earlier this year because they seemed designed to stymie U.N. Security Council sanctions that passed in June. “Now that that process is completed, if Iran wants to engage on these subjects we are more than happy to have that conversation,” the official said.

Reuters also reports that Catherine Ashton is pushing for nuclear talks as well:

Stalled talks between Iran and world powers should begin again as quickly as possible but must focus on Tehran’s nuclear program, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Wednesday. “I’ve made it clear…that we would like those talks to resume quickly and that we would be very clear that the issue on the table is Iran’s nuclear weapons capability and approach,” Ashton told reporters at a conference in Rome. “That is the issue. All other issues can be discussed later.”

US pushing for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks. Politico’s Laura Rozen reports:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been “burning up the phone lines” the past five days to try and lay the groundwork for a transition from indirect to direct Israel-Palestinian peace talks, aides say. Clinton’s phone calls with Arab and Israeli leaders come in advance of a meeting Thursday of Arab foreign ministers to decide if they will give their blessing to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for direct talks with the Israelis, rather than U.S.-mediated proximity talks. (…)

In the last five days, Clinton has spoken “multiple times” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, twice with the Jordanian and Egyptian foreign ministers, as well as with the Saudi foreign minister, Qatari prime minister, Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair, EU foreign policy chief Baroness Catherine Ashton, and with Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell and the National Security Council throughout, the official said.

Serbia: diplomatic offensive against Kosovo’s statehood. Reuters reports:

Serbia launched a diplomatic offensive on Wednesday to contest Kosovo’s independence, asking the United Nations General Assembly to decide about the future of its former southern province. (…) In a draft resolution the Serbian government acknowledged the court’s ruling but said that “unilateral secession cannot be an acceptable way of resolving territorial issues.” “(The government) calls all the parties involved to find a mutually accepted solution … through peaceful dialogue in the interest of peace, security and cooperation in the region,” the draft said.

Last week the Serbian government announced it would send envoys to 55 nations to stop more countries recognizing Kosovo. Ambassadors in another 40 capitals will do the same.

In the resolution, the Serbian government asked the U.N. General Assembly to put an item on “further activities after the adoption of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice” on the agenda of its 66th session. Also on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic flew to the United States to meet UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

However, Kosovo said it would renew its campaign to lobby for recognition from more countries than the present 69 and help it to secure membership of the United Nations. Kosovo deputy foreign Minister Vlora Citaku said Serbia should let go of “the mentality of the past and … recognize the new situation.” “We repeat our offer to Serbia about cooperation and dialogue on issues of mutual interest, but Serbia should know that the independence and territorial integrity are untouchable,” she told Reuters.

Serbia could risk progress toward its goal of joining the European Union if it maintains its defiance on Kosovo, blocking Pristina’s membership in regional bodies and stopping goods and people with Kosovo documents from entering its territory.

Ashton’s plans for Bosnia. The Daily Telegraph reports:

A confidential paper, tabled by Europe’s foreign minister this week, has urged the creation of a powerful European envoy this autumn, based in Sarajevo, to push through a new constitutional order for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Key to the political reforms, demanded as a condition of EU entry for Bosnia, is a strengthening of a multi-ethnic federal state, mainly controlled by Muslims and Croats, at the expense of Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb government.

To overcome Serb blocking tactics, Lady Ashton is demanding that her new Bosnian envoy, part of her newly created diplomatic service, be given new powers by the Council of EU foreign ministers to impose travel bans and asset freezes on opponents.

“In the case of non-compliance… for example challenges to fundamentals of the Bosnia and Herzegovina state, the [envoy] will be able to recommend to the EU High Representative [Lady Ashton] that Council impose travel bans and/or the freezing of assets in the EU,” said the paper seen by The Daily Telegraph. “This option should be made more accessible by a Council decision to impose a travel ban on those individuals who have challenged key provisions.”

European diplomats have confirmed that the new measures will be used against “anyone deemed to be obstructive”, including Milorad Dodik, the elected prime Bosnian Serb prime minister, who backs independence from Bosnia. “Dodik will not be a happy bunny but he will have to watch his Ps and Qs,” said a senior EU diplomat. (…)

Lady Ashton’s policy paper, “Next steps in Bosnia and Herzegovina through stronger EU presence and a reinforced EU policy”, sets out a plan for European officials to be take over the running of Bosnia “soon after” Bosnian elections in October. “The approach it advocates would prepare the EU to take over the leading international role in Bosnia,” the document said.

Since the Dayton peace agreement in 1995 ended the Bosnian war, Bosnia has been overseen by an Office of the High Representative (OHR) charged with helping the country become a “peaceful and viable democracy on course for integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions”. The new proposals envisage taking “the mandate and functions” of the OHR into the new European diplomatic service, creating “a single EU representative”, also overseeing peace keepers and a policing mission in Bosnia. Bosnia’s European envoy would report to a new “managing director” for Russia and the EU eastern neighbours, a new high-ranking post in Brussels to be appointed in Lady Ashton’s diplomatic service this autumn.

New EU diplomatic service “harmstrung from the start”? Quentin Peel writes on the FT Brussels blog:

Lord Ashdown, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, has emerged as a Lady Aston’s favourite for the job supervising the Bosnia envoy as part of EU’s overall strategy in the Balkans.

If the optimists are right, the service will be anything but boring. It’s the most important single invention to come out of the Lisbon treaty, say the true believers. It will give the European Union the eyes and ears to forge a genuine foreign policy, and the voice to put it into effect.

On the other hand, eurosceptics are convinced it will just be a vast and expensive new bureaucracy, merely duplicating the role of national embassies. So the battle to keep its wings clipped may also be anything but boring.

The 27 member states sit somewhere in the middle – not quite sure they believe in what they are creating, wanting to keep it under control, and no doubt trying to do it all on a shoe-string. In the end, their attitude will determine if it’s a success or a failure. (…)

But national capitals never like giving up their powers, and foreign ministries are no exception. The British have refused to allow the future EU delegations to take on a consular role. What chance is there that national embassies will be slimmed down as the EU delegations are built up? (…)

At a time when every member state is taking an axe to public expenditure, it certainly won’t be popular to spend a whole lot more on the EAS – unless cuts can be made on national diplomatic services. The danger is that the grand old foreign services, like the French and British, will fight a furious rearguard action to protect their patches, and keep funding of the EAS to a minimum. If they do, then the most important creation of the Lisbon treaty will be hamstrung from the start.

From the think tanks: Cristina Barrios, EU cooperation with the African Union: Problems and potential. FRIDE, here.

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Obama on Afghan leaks. The BBC reports:

“While I am concerned about the disclosure of sensitive information from the battlefield that could potentially jeopardise individuals or operations, the fact is these documents do not reveal any issues that have not already informed our public debate on Afghanistan,” Mr Obama said at a press conference in Washington. “Indeed they point to the same challenges that led me to conduct an extensive review of our policy last fall.”

“For seven years, we failed to implement a strategy adequate to the challenge in this region,” he added, pointing out that it was from Afghanistan that the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington and other terror plots originated. “That’s why we have substantially increased our commitment there, insisted upon greater accountability from Afghanistan and Pakistan, developed a new strategy that can work. Now we have to see that strategy through.”

Moscow condemns EU’s sanctions against Iran. The BBC reports:

Russia has branded EU sanctions against Iran as “unacceptable”, saying they undermine international efforts to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

“This not only undermines our joint efforts to seek a political and diplomatic settlement around Iran’s nuclear programme, but also shows disdain for the carefully calibrated and co-ordinated provisions of the UN Security Council resolutions,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. The use of sanctions outside of the UN Security Council framework is “unacceptable,” the statement said.

Reuters has some background:

The comments show that despite a deterioration in ties between Tehran and Moscow this year, significant disagreements with the West remain.

“If the West wants something more from Moscow, beyond the UN sanctions it supported, it will have to earn it,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the Russia in Global Affairs journal. Yet, Moscow’s criticism of the West does not automatically mean better ties with Iran, he said. “Russia’s opposition to unilateral sanctions is a position of principle, it does not amount to Russia supporting Tehran.”

Russia’s decision to back U.N. sanctions in June represented a shift from years of support for Iran. Sharp words from Moscow and Tehran in recent days show relations remain tense. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made his toughest comments yet on Iran’s nuclear program in July, saying that Tehran was moving closer to having the potential to create nuclear weapons. Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said those comments were part of a “propaganda play” orchestrated by Washington. The Russian Foreign Ministry hit back on Monday, accusing Ahmadinejad of “fruitless, irresponsible rhetoric”.

Ashton must “energise” EU’s Western Balkan policy, the Economist’s Tim Judah says in the Financial Times:

Compared with solving the problems of the Middle East or Afghanistan, the western Balkans are easy. Every country in the region has EU membership as its strategic goal, and all understand that there is much to be done in order to achieve that aim.

The granting of visa-free travel to Europe’s Schengen zone to citizens of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia last December is a perfect example. Given a clear target, the three countries introduced modern and secure databases, integrated border management systems and passed the test.

With the exception of Croatia, which could join the EU as early as 2012, no other western Balkan country (Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Montenegro and Albania) is likely to be ready for membership before 2020. So those now opposed to enlargement, primarily Germany, must be reassured. Enlargement is not for tomorrow, but keeping the Balkan states moving forward is vital.

It is important because the EU is a promise of stability and the rule of law for a region that needs both, and which without them will radiate instability and organised crime.

So, what is to be done? Lady Ashton needs to energise a process that has stagnated in recent months. When it comes to Kosovo, Europe can move things forward, especially in partnership with the US. We do not need a final settlement now, but we do need compromises and constructive ambiguity from both sides. Europe is and always has been full of oddities in terms of territories and sovereignty. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Serbia, which applied for membership last year, needs to be moved to candidate status as soon as possible, as do Montenegro, Albania and Bosnia. Macedonia needs a date to start talks on accession. The European Commission has recommended that Bosnians and Albanians are ready for visa-free travel to the Schengen zone. This needs to be granted now.

An idea launched by the European Stability Initiative think-tank recently needs to be given traction. After almost 19 years of dispute between Greece and Macedonia over the latter’s name, the two should agree to a change, but it should become effective on the day that Macedonia joins the EU. Greece has always held that the name implies a territorial claim to its own northern province. This is nonsense, but if Athens dropped some of its more extreme demands and accepted a simple geographical suffix, for example “Northern Macedonia”, then both countries could be transformed from antagonists to partners.

None of this is very complicated. There are some 22m people in the western Balkans, roughly the same amount as in Beijing. Difficult though their problems may be, they are eminently resolvable. Let’s hope that Lady Ashton’s low profile until now was just her induction period. These are problems you can solve, so come on Catherine, speak for Europe.

EU needs to set agenda on Kosovo, says Misha Glenny in the IHT:

Kosovo and Serbia are in a special situation, and both have a particular incentive for resolving their differences — the prospect of E.U. membership. If they can resolve their problems the door to Brussels will swing open.

Catherine Ashton, the E.U.’s foreign minister, was quick to recognize this. “The E.U. is ready,” she said in a statement on the ruling, “to facilitate a process of dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade. This dialogue would be to promote cooperation, achieve progress on the path to Europe and improve the lives of the people.”

Ms. Ashton is too skilled a diplomat to say it, but the implication of her statement should be clear to both Belgrade and Pristina. Kosovo must cease looking to secure its future by getting close to Washington, as Prime Minister Hashim Thaci appeared to be trying to do last week. And Belgrade must stop clinging to Russian objections to Kosovo’s independence. Serbia’s foreign minister, Vuk Jeremic, sometimes gives the impression that this is indeed Belgrade’s central policy.

The European Union needs to set the agenda on Kosovo and the Balkans, a region whose members have already been guaranteed eventual membership. If the Union fails in its own backyard, then it can bid farewell to any idea of exerting its influence elsewhere.

Along with the active dialogue that Ms. Ashton promises, Brussels needs to do two things. First, it should improve the system of incentives offered to the Balkan countries that are still outside the Euopean Union. Second, Brussels should act to silence those forces in Washington and Moscow that clearly do not want a compromise solution to tensions in northern Mitrovica — the primary Serbian enclave in Kosovo — and the other problems dogging Pristina.

Meanwhile, the Serbian electorate should be asking why the government in Belgrade shot itself in the foot by bringing such a narrow issue to the international court with the overconfident assumption that the court’s ruling would be in Serbia’s favor. Who should be held accountable for this miserably failed strategy?

Serbs and Kosovo Albanians alike also would like to know how their leaders intend to accelerate moves toward E.U. membership and entrenching the rule of law. Kosovo’s government needs to pay particular attention to this latter goal, especially as the chief of the Central Bank in Pristina was arrested on Friday by the E.U. legal administration in the territory for money laundering, bribe taking and other forms of financial malfeasance.

Kosovo’s government will doubtless feel buoyed by the international court’s ruling, but this will not magically resolve the enormous challenges it faces.

Serbia and Kosovo find themselves confronted by the prisoner’s dilemma. Either they cooperate in their quest for E.U. membership or they remain outsiders, with disastrous consequences for themselves, the region and E.U. diplomacy.

Given their enmity, the idea of Belgrade and Pristina actually cooperating may appear far-fetched. But we can all take heart from the exceptionally fruitful regional and bilateral ties that have developed in the Balkans over the past five years. Just 10 years ago, Serbia and Croatia regarded each other as bitter enemies. Though they still face outstanding issues arising from the wars of the 1990s, they have shown a tremendous willingness to work together on the most pressing regional questions, like the struggle against organized crime.

Whether contact between Serbia and Kosovo comes via the organs of regional cooperation; whether it is established through discreet back-channels; or whether the European Union fashions an Oslo-style peace process does not matter greatly. But the two must start talking. Not just about unilateral declarations but about things that ultimately will matter much more to their citizens.

What role for the new EU diplomatic service? The EU Observer reports:

With the fight to have the service established largely over, the focus is now likely set on the extent to which member states, several of whom jealously guard their foreign policy prerogatives, will allow a coherent foreign policy to thrive.

Big countries have been keen to stress the service will not impinge on their foreign policy sovereignty, a point illustrated by the extent to which they are prepared to consider closing their own embassies in certain countries and use the EU embassy.

According to France’s Europe minister, Pierre Lellouche, some countries may consider saving money through using EU embassy facilities but this should not be the case for France. “I am the secretary of state, and I do not speak for France [but] I think it is desirable that France continues to maintain a global network. It is one of the few countries to do so, ” he said, according to Le Monde.

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EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels. A press release summarizes the “Foreign Affairs Council”:

The Council adopted a comprehensive package of EU sanctions against Iran, implementing and accompanying UN Security Council requirements and targeting people, companies and sectors directly involved in Iran’s nuclear programme and other areas. It also adopted conclusions reiterating the EU’s continuing commitment to the goal of a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.

The Council had a broad strategic discussion on the EU’s future relations with Sudan and adopted conclusions underlining the need for the full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

The High Representative briefed the Council on her recent trip to the Middle East, particularly her visit to Gaza. The Council underlined the need for the revival of the economy of Gaza and repeated the EU’s call for the proximity talks to lead as soon as possible to the resumption of direct peace negotiations leading to a settlement on the basis of a two-state solution within 24 months.

Ministers discussed the Western Balkans over lunch. They stressed the need to recreate momentum for change in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the elections in October. The also discussed Kosovo, following the International Court of Justice’s ruling of last week.

The Council adopted a declaration condemning the execution of the French citizen Michel Germaneau who had been held hostage by the Al-Qaida Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI).

The Council also adopted conclusions on Kyrgyzstan and the European Neighbourhood Policy and a decision extending the mandate of the European Union monitoring mission in Georgia (EUMM Georgia) by twelve months.

More details here.

Meeting also as “General Affairs Council”, EU foreign ministers adopted a decision establishing the European External Action Service (EEAS) and setting out its organisation and functioning. The decision can be downloaded here. The press release adds:

The creation of the EEAS is one of the most significant changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, which entered into force on 1 December 2009. It is aimed at making the EU’s external action more coherent and efficient, thereby increasing the EU’s influence in the world.

The EEAS will assist Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, in fulfilling her mandate. It will work in cooperation with the diplomatic services of the member states and comprise officials from relevant departments of the General Secretariat of the Council and of the Commission, as well as staff seconded from the national diplomatic services of the member states.

The “General Affairs Council” also gave green light for opening membership talks with Iceland.

On the EU Iran sanctions, see a New York Times report. For more press reports about the EU foreign ministers meeting, go to Global Europe’s News&Views section (”EU foreign affairs”), here.

Turkey to ignore EU sanctions on Iran. The Financial Times reports:

Mehmet Simsek, the finance minister, told the Financial Times that Turkey would not shy away from promoting closer trade links with Iran. “We will fully implement UN resolutions but when it comes to individual countries’ demands for extra sanctions we do not have to,” said Mr Simsek. (…) “The facilitation of trade that is not prohibited under UN resolution should and will continue.” If a trade deal needs to be financed, added Mr Simsek, “we will have to find a way to pay for it”. (…)

His comments came as the International Energy Agency confirmed that a state-owned Turkish refiner, Tupras, had stepped in to supply Iran after several international companies stopped selling the country refined petroleum.

Meanwhile Turkey’s foreign economic relations board said the country’s ports, notably Mersin and Trabzon, would try to handle some of the trade with Iran that has been going through Dubai. The Gulf emirate is steadily restricting its economic ties with Tehran. Samet Inanir, a strategy counsellor at the economic relations board, said Istanbul could also offer an alternative to Dubai for Iranian investors in real estate. He noted that more than 120 Iranian companies based in Dubai had recently applied to their country’s embassy for information about doing business in Turkey. (…)

People close to the Turkish government suggest that Ankara will watch the behaviour of Russia and China to gauge the extent to which it can afford to ignore unilateral US sanctions. Chinese companies have also been supplying Iran with petroleum.

Cameron strongly backs EU membership for Turkey. The BBC reports:

David Cameron is to argue strongly for Turkey’s membership of the European Union, saying he is “angry” at the slow pace of negotiations. On his first visit to Turkey as prime minister, Mr Cameron will say he will “fight” for Turkey’s bid to join the EU and to become a “great European power”. (…)

Mr Cameron – who arrived in Ankara on Monday – is expected to agree a new strategic partnership with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan during his visit.

In a speech on Tuesday, Mr Cameron will say he wants to “pave the road” for Turkey to join the EU and criticise those who want to delay the process. A European Union without Turkey at its heart is “not stronger but weaker….not more secure but less…not richer but poorer,” he is expected to say. “I’m here to make the case for Turkey’s membership of the EU. And to fight for it.”

Referring to former French leader General de Gaulle’s efforts to block British membership of the EU in the 1960s, he is expected to make an apparent swipe at some other EU countries’ attitude to Turkey. “We know what it’s like to be shut out of the club. But we also know that these things can change.” “When I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a Nato ally, and what Turkey is doing today in Afghanistan alongside our European allies, it makes me angry that your progress towards EU membership can be frustrated in the way it has been…” “My view is clear. I believe it is just wrong to say Turkey can guard the camp but not be allowed to sit inside the tent.” (…)

Describing himself as the “strongest possible advocate” for greater Turkish influence in Europe, Mr Cameron will say that those who oppose EU membership are driven by either protectionism, narrow nationalism or prejudice. “Those who wilfully misunderstand Islam. They see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists. They think the problem is Islam itself. And they think the values of Islam can just never be compatible with the values of other religions, societies or cultures.” “All of these arguments are just plain wrong. And as a new government in Britain, I want us to be at the forefront of an international effort to defeat them.”

While praising Turkey’s secular and democratic traditions, Mr Cameron is likely to stress that Turkey must continue to push forward “aggressively” with economic and political reforms to maintain momentum towards EU membership.

Stressing the vital role Turkey plays in the region, he will say it has a “unique influence” in helping to build a stable Afghanistan through political and economic co-operation and fostering understanding between Israel and the Arab world.

He will also deliver a firm message to Iran, further sanctions against whom Turkey opposes, saying there is no other “logic” to Tehran’s uranium enrichment programme other than to produce a bomb. “So we need Turkey’s help now in making it clear to Iran just how serious we are about engaging fully with the international community,” he will say.

Ashton on the EU’s new diplomatic service. Catherine Ashton has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in which she presents the EAS:

Let me start with a confession: The European Union’s critics are sometimes right. The EU can be too slow, too cumbersome and too bureaucratic. I want to help to put that right in the way the EU works with the rest of the world.

Our project has an ungainly name, the European External Action Service (EAS), but a bold and simple purpose: to give the EU a stronger voice around the world, and greater impact on the ground.

In my first six months as the EU’s high representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, I have seen for myself what the EU can do when we pull together: In Gaza where EU-funded schools are giving an education and dignity to hundreds of girls and boys, and where we are ready to do more to help end the blockade; in Haiti where we are giving shelter to the homeless and helping the government with its strategy for long-term reconstruction; in the Balkans where we are promoting political and economic reforms and preparing the region’s countries to join the EU; and in East Africa where we our naval operation is deterring and capturing pirates at sea while our teams are working on-shore to help bring stability to Somalia and development to the region.

We do a lot to promote security, to protect the vulnerable, and to root out poverty. But too much depends on ad-hoc arrangements and the creativity of individuals. We achieve comprehensive strategies despite our structures, not because of them.

Until now, EU work around the world has been guided by two masters: the External Affairs Commissioner and the Council’s High Representative. There has been one chain of command for our development efforts, and a completely separate chain of command for our security activities. Too often good people have been hampered by poor systems.

That is why it matters that the 27 member states of the European Union, each with a proud history in foreign affairs, have given their backing to the creation of a unified EAS, following the earlier endorsement by the European Parliament and the European Commission.

It is not easy to get the EU’s three main institutions to agree. All the more so when it comes to setting up a new structure, moving people into new roles, adjusting budgets, and changing the way we prepare and take decisions. Usually in the EU, institutional change of this order only happens once every 25 years or so.

But the real significance of yesterday’s decision lies outside Brussels. Our aim is to do foreign policy in a modern way, differently and better. Not to compete with or duplicate what our member states are doing, but to add value and play to our strength of acting as a union. That is how we can best make a difference on the ground and, over time, enhance global security and stability.

In particular, we need to tackle the two main areas where we are under-performing: First, get more unity amongst EU member states to bring our combined political weight to bear; second, develop more integrated strategies, so that we are more effective on the ground.

If we can do both, Europe will be able to play its full part in addressing the many challenges that affect global security and prosperity. The key word in that sentence is global. We live in a world where challenges and change are global in nature, as are their consequences. Terrorism, organized crime and the proliferation of weapons; energy security, climate change and the competition for natural resources; trade, investment and financial flows: These are all global phenomena. All of them also happen to be complex and interlinked.

So to respond to challenges that are global and complex, only integrated strategies will do. The value of the EAS will lie in its being able to bring together the many levers of influence that the European Union has—economic and political, plus civil and military crisis management tools—in support of a single political strategy. More than any other actor in the world today, the EU will be able to mobilize such a wide a range of instruments, with the weight and legitimacy of 27 democratic countries behind it.

This is not, as some critics say, a grab for power; but it is, unashamedly, a grab for effectiveness. The EAS can make a positive difference—and I am determined that it will.

Wikileaks on Afghanistan: Nothing new, commentators say. Richard Cohen writes in the Washington Post:

The news in that massive data dump provided by the dauntingly mysterious Wikileaks (who? what?) to one American and two European publications is that there is no news at all. We already knew that the war in Afghanistan was not going well. We already knew — or, in the words of the New York Times, “harbored strong suspicions” — that Pakistan’s military spy service was aiding the Taliban (with friends like this . . .) and we already knew that Afghanistan’s army and police would be reformed and able to stand up to the Taliban some time around when pigs fly or Washington balances the budget. No need to wait by the phone.

Andrew Exum (Center for a New American Security) says in the New York Times:

Anyone who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance.

Fred Kaplan comments at Slate:

Just because some documents are classified doesn’t mean that they’re news or even necessarily interesting. A case in point is the cache of 92,000 secret documents about the Afghanistan war that someone leaked to WikiLeaks, which passed them on to the New York Times, Britain’s Guardian, and Der Spiegel in Germany. (…) Some of the conclusions to be drawn from these files: Afghan civilians are sometimes killed. Many Afghan officials and police chiefs are corrupt and incompetent. Certain portions of Pakistan’s military and intelligence service have nefarious ties to the Taliban. If any of this startles you, then welcome to the world of reading newspapers. Today’s must be the first one you’ve read.

Daniel Markey (Council on Foreign Relations) says:

The online release of a mountain of U.S. intelligence documents is tantalizing for being stamped “secret,” sensational because of WikiLeaks’  impressive media strategy, and politically relevant because it arrives in an atmosphere of increasing disillusionment over prospects for victory in Afghanistan. But very little in these documents is fundamentally new or different from what we’ve been hearing for years. Above all, anyone shocked to learn that the Taliban have supporters in Pakistan, including elements within the Pakistan intelligence services, has not been paying attention.

The leaks might nevertheless have an impact on the Afghan war efforts. The New York Times reports:

The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.

Afghanistan not “the graveyard of empires”. Christian Caryl writes at Foreign Policy:

It’s the mother of all clichés. Almost no one can resist it. (…) Afghanistan, we’re told, is “the graveyard of empires.” The Victorian British and the Soviet Union, the story goes, were part of a long historical continuum of arrogant conquerors that met their match in the country’s xenophobic, fanatical, trigger-happy tribesmen. Given a record like that, it’s obvious that the effort by the United States and its NATO allies to stabilize the shaky government in Kabul is doomed to fail. (…)

As Thomas Barfield pointed out to me the other day, for most of its history Afghanistan has actually been the cradle of empires, not their grave. Barfield, an anthropologist at Boston University, has been studying Afghanistan since the early 1970s, and he has just published a book — Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History — that takes issue with the hoary stereotypes that continue to inform our understanding of the place.

One of those myths is that Afghanistan is inherently unconquerable thanks to the fierceness of its inhabitants and the formidable nature of its terrain. But this isn’t at all borne out by the history. “Until 1840 Afghanistan was better known as a ‘highway of conquest’ rather than the ‘graveyard of empires,’” Barfield points out. “For 2,500 years it was always part of somebody’s empire, beginning with the Persian Empire in the fifth century B.C.”

ICC ruling on Kosovo: A right to secession? At Project Syndicate, Robert Howse and Ruti Teitel say that the UN world court’s ruling has been widely misinterpreted:

The World Court’s recent ruling on Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence is being widely touted as giving a green light to secessionist movements to gain statehood. According to Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu, “The decision finally removes all doubts that countries which still do not recognize the Republic of Kosovo could have.” But this reading is largely wishful thinking by those who support secession. The Court’s non-binding advisory opinion responded to a narrow question posed by the United Nations General Assembly: whether declaring independence is legal under international law. The judges rightly held that there is no international rule preventing a group from stating its intention or wish to form a state. But they said nothing about the terms and conditions that apply to following through on this intention – i.e., the act of secession itself.

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EU foreign ministers to give green light for tough Iran sanctions. AFP reports:

The European Union will hit Iran with tough sanctions against its vital oil and gas industry on Monday in a bid to lure Tehran back to the negotiating table over its disputed nuclear programme. (…)

The new EU sanctions include a ban on the sale of equipment, technology and services to Iran’s energy sector, hitting activities in refining, liquefied natural gas, exploration and production, diplomats said.

The EU will ban dual-use goods that can be used for conventional weapons. It will also step up vigilance of the activities of Iranian-connected banks operating in the EU and bar them from setting up branches.

“A number of (EU) member states have had to overcome considerable problems with their economic interests in order to adopt this package,” the European diplomat said. “It will be in some way the most substantive and far-reaching autonomous sanctions package which the EU has adopted against Iran or any other country,” he added. (…)

“These sanctions are surprisingly strong,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the nonproliferation programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “They go much further than the UN sanctions.”

See also a report at the EU Observer.

Iran chief nuclear negotiator to meet with Ashton. The New York Times reports:

Iran  has agreed to meet with the European Union’s foreign affairs chief in early September, after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Speaking before a lunch on Sunday with his counterparts from Brazil and Iran, Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said that Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, would meet the European Union official, Catherine Ashton, most likely in Istanbul, according to Turkey’s semi official Anatolian News Agency.

Ms. Ashton extended the invitation to meet Mr. Jalili last month, after Turkey and Brasil negotiated a nuclear swap deal with Iran that foresees the return of 2,646 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Turkey for 265 pounds of 20 percent-enriched uranium. Ms. Ashton will represent a group known as the P5+1 nations — the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany — all of which remain highly suspicious of the intent of Iran’s nuclear program.

EU foreign ministers seek to end division on Kosovo, AFP reports. The ICJ ruling has put pressure on the five EU member states that do not yet recognise Kosovo. EU foreign ministers will discuss the issue today:

The European Union hopes to finally speak with one voice on Kosovo after a UN court backed Pristina’s independence claim, piling pressure on the five EU states that still refuse to recognise it. Spain, Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia and Romania are the only countries in the 27-nation bloc to have refused to recognise Kosovo’s secession from Serbia, fearing it would inspire other separatist movements. (…)

The ruling has “put European nations that still do not recognise Kosovo in a difficult position,” a high-ranking European diplomat said on condition of anonymity. Another diplomat said: “The debate on the recognition of Kosovo will restart with the conclusions of the court.” “There is now room for manoeuvre for a recognition (by the five EU states),” the diplomat said ahead of a meeting of foreign ministers on Monday during which Kosovo will be discussed.

Spain, Cyprus and Romania reiterated their refusal to recognise Kosovo, but pressure is mounting.

“Kosovo has been functioning as an independent state for two-and-a-half years. I encourage other states that have not so far recognised Kosovo now to do so,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague urged.

The EU’s 27 states did overcome their differences to release a single statement after the UN court ruling saying the future of Serbia and Kosovo alike “lies in the European Union” and offering to broker talks. “The clear message which comes out of that statement… is that the accession paths of both countries are linked and the EU wants to help them both move forward,” another EU diplomat said. Getting to an agreement on the wording of text “wasn’t easy,” he said. “But I think the fact that in the end we got the agreement of the 27 shows that difficult though it is, the EU recognises… it needs to get its act together on Kosovo and on Serbia.” (Read the statement here.)

It will take time before any of the five EU stragglers will join the rest of the bloc since they are not legally-bound to follow the UN court’s opinion, an analyst said. “They still have the option. They can stay in their status quo position or they can move. It’s an open question,” said Michael Emerson, senior research fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies, a Brussels think tank.

The UN court’s opinion could help to resolve the debate in the five countries. “Of those countries, if some of them have internal debates for or against, this could encourage them to take a new and positive decision to recognise Kosovo,” Emerson said. “One or two of them may follow this course in a year or so,” he said, arguing that Slovakia and Romania could be the first to change their minds since they do not face the same separatist pressures as the others.

Moving towards a recognition of Kosovo would be hardest for Cyprus, an island divided between a Turkish south and Greek north, and Spain, which faces its own separatist pressures in Catalonia and the Basque region, he said.

European governments sought to ease concerns that other separatist movements could seize on the UN court opinion. “It’s a unique decision in a unique situation with a unique historical background,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told reporters in Nicosia after talks with his Greek Cypriot counterpart, Markos Kyprianou. “It has nothing to do with any other cases in the world,” he said.

EU foreign ministers to put pressure on Sudan. AFP reports:

The European Union will urge Sudan on Monday to cooperate with the International Criminal Court which has warrants out for the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir, according to a draft text. The draft, obtained by AFP and expected to be approved by EU foreign ministers Monday, comes after Bashir travelled to Chad this week in defiance of warrants for his arrest on charges of genocide and war crimes in Darfur.

The document “recalls that war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of genocide are the most serious crimes of concern to the international community and that impunity for these crimes can never be accepted.” “The council (of foreign ministers) reiterates its support for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and calls upon the government of Sudan to cooperate fully with the ICC in accordance with its obligations under international law,” it says. (…)

The EU will also urge all parties to speed up preparations, including voter registration, for a referendum on the independence of south Sudan in January 2011.

The ministers want to send an EU election observer mission and will voice “concern about a pattern of increasing political repression and the deteriorating environment for civil and political rights in all areas of Sudan.” “It is, in this respect, deeply concerned about the recent closure of newspapers and the arrests of a number of journalists,” according to the document.

Other topics on the agenda of today’s EU foreign ministers meeting (”Foreign Affairs Council”): Besides Iran sanctions, Kosovo in the light of the ICJ’s ruling and Sudan, EU foreign ministers will discuss Bosnia, Georgia and the Middle East peace process, as well as the strategic partnerships with India and Brazil.

New documents on Pakistani cooperation with Taliban. The New York Times reports:

Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public Sunday.

The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place. But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable. While current and former American officials interviewed could not corroborate individual reports, they said that the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence.

The classified documents on the Afghan war have been leaked to Spiegel (a short summary here), the Guardian (a comprehensive special here) and the New York Times (special here). In a first reaction, Laura Rozen writes at Politico:

Some 92,000 secret U.S. military documents on Afghanistan and Pakistan acquired by a controversial whistleblower site earlier this year have emerged – in reports published Sunday night in the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel. The takeout, from a first, fast reading: the U.S. is frustrated by evidence of continued Pakistani support for Afghan insurgents, and the war is not going well, according to the soldiers fighting it.

Neither of those facts is breaking news to anyone who’s been paying attention to the war, but the coordinated delivery of the stories to outlets in three of the largest troop-contributing nations to Afghanistan and sourced by the media-savvy WikiLeaks suggests the goal here is to catalyze an emerging consensus against the war.

Leslie Gelb comments at the Daily Beast:

What do the secret documents released by WikiLeaks tell us about U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan? It has to be said right off that they don’t tell us anything important we didn’t already know. There have been “informed” stories for years detailing how Pakistani military intelligence has been providing arms, money, and intelligence to the Afghan Taliban, who in turn have been killing American soldiers.

So, why are these leaked military and intelligence documents now threatening to shake the very foundations of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan? Because it’s now much more difficult to deny or dodge the truths that we’ve all been well aware of.

Character of EU foreign policy. Timothy Garton Ash in a discussion at Chatham House (transcript here):

We’re actually light years away from the point at which the EU foreign policy mechanisms will actually stop people doing things they  want to do. If major European member states in a matter important to them in the course of relationships, they won’t be stopped, they’ll go on doing what they want. What these institutions give you is the potential on a whole slate of sort of sort of middle range issues where most member states either broadly  agree or don’t know what they think. And many member states on many, many issues don’t really know what they think. That’s the nature of the European Union, to forge a common analysis, to identify your common interests, your common instruments, and then to go forward. So it will be an enhancer in that respect.

From the think tanks: J. Scott Carpenter, Racing Against Time: Reform in North Africa and Transatlantic Strategies. GMF, here — Nicoletta Pirozzi, The EU’s Contribution to the Effectiveness of the UN Security Council: Representation, Coordination and Outreach. IAI, here.

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UN court: Kosovo’s declaration of independence legal. The New York Times reports:

Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 did not violate international law, the United Nations’ highest court said Thursday in a ruling that Kosovo heralded as a victory but that legal experts warned could spur separatist movements around the world.

Legal experts said that while the International Court of Justice had ruled that Kosovo’s declaration of independence was legal, it had avoided saying that the state of Kosovo was legal under international law, a narrow and carefully calibrated compromise that they said could allow both sides to declare victory in a dispute that remains raw even 11 years after the war there.

Political analysts said the advisory opinion, passed in a 10-to-4 vote by the court judges, is likely to spur other countries to recognize Kosovo’s independence. Of the 192 countries in the United Nations General Assembly, so far only 69, including the United States and a majority of European Union nations, have recognized Kosovo.

Reading the nonbinding opinion, whose political consequences could reverberate far beyond Kosovo, Hisashi Owada, president of the International Court of Justice, said that international law contained no “prohibition on declarations of independence” and consequently that Kosovo’s declaration “did not violate international law.” (…)

James Ker-Lindsay, a Balkan expert at the London School of Economics, said the court had trod carefully in weighing the right of a people to self-determination over the right of a sovereign state to territorial integrity, and had decided to sidestep the issue altogether. “It has essentially said that Kosovo’s legitimacy will be conferred by the countries that recognize it rather than by the court,” he said. (…)

“The court invariably is very prudent and avoids making political decisions,” said Bert Barnhoorn, an expert at the Asser Institute for International Law, a policy organization in The Hague.

The FT’s Gideon Rachman comments:

The International Court of Justice seems to have done its utmost to sit on the fence over the legality of Kosovo’s secession from Yugoslavia. It has ruled that Kosovo’s declaration of independence was legal, but it has not pronounced on the legality of the secession as such. This feels to me like an evasion. Common sense and the norms of free speech suggest that, of course, they are allowed to proclaim their independence. The question is whether the rest of us should recognise an independent Kosovo as a legal entity.

The ICJ’s evasion of this issue is, however, politically convenient. If the court had positively declared Kosovan secession legal, then secessionist movements across the world would have taken huge heart. But if they had declared secession illegal, then it would have been a severe embarrassment to those western nations who took part in the Kosovo war – as well as to the 69 nations that have now recognised Kosovan independence.

At Foreign Policy, David Bosco writes:

There was less at stake in the ICJ decision than it seemed. Kosovo is effectively independent, and no court decision was going to change that (the ruling was an advisory opinion without binding legal force, in any case). For all its anger, Serbia has no appetite to physically challenge Kosovo’s status. NATO troops still walk the beat in the disputed province, and Serbia has ambitions of joining the European Union, which would frown severely at any aggressive moves. In fact, most Serbian politicians probably breathed a quiet sigh of relief today. A decision questioning Kosovo’s independence would have forced them into a nationalist posture; now they will be able to move past an issue that’s been a continuing obstacle to joining the EU.

The decision mattered most in the recognition game. While more than 60 countries have recognized Kosovo, many were sitting on the fence, awaiting the ICJ’s decision. Today’s ruling will likely push many of them to forge relations with Kosovo, a development that will simplify its diplomatic, trade, and economic relations. “No country now has any reason not to recognize Kosovo,” Thaci told me today. Nearby, his finance minister theatrically checked his email to see whether any recognition announcements had arrived.

The Economist’s Tony Judah writes about reactions in Serbia and Kosovo:

Serbia’s strategy of attempting to outmanoeuvre its former secessionist province through the international court lay in ruins.

In Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, cars began hooting in celebration. Cheers erupted from bars and cafes, where people had gathered to watch the judge deliver the court’s opinion. Shkelzen Maliqi, a well-known intellectual and commentator, summed up what most Kosovars were thinking: “Perfect. Who would have expected such a clear answer?” In Belgrade there seemed no room for doubt either. “It was a classic knockout,” said Braca Grubacic, an analyst. “I don’t know how the government can get out of this.”

To date 69 countries have recognised Kosovo’s independence, including the US and 22 of the 27 EU member states. But Russia, China, Brazil, India and many other important countries have refused to follow suit. Whether a flood of new recognitions will follow today’s ruling remains to be seen, but would not be surprising. It is, however, unlikely that China, with its eyes on Taiwan and Tibet, Russia, with its problems in Chechnya, and other countries in the world with secessionist movements will recognise Kosovo any time soon. (…)

The court had been widely expected to give an ambiguous answer. The fact that the opinion is heavily in Kosovo’s favour leaves open the question of what Serbia will do now. It had planned to go to the General Assembly of the UN to demand new talks. Now that plan appears in jeopardy, if not doomed. The EU, however, has been planning talks between Kosovo and Serbia on technical matters.

Serbia’s government will be rocked by this result. The Serbian Orthodox Church has called for bells to be rung out this afternoon and a protest rally has been called by Serbs in the divided northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica. In the last few weeks there have been three violent incidents there, resulting in one death. Mitrovica’s Serbs have been preparing an armed response in case jubilant Albanians try to cross the river Ibar, which divides the city. In the wake of the opinion helicopters from the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo have been circling above the city. (…)

Serbia’s president, Boris Tadic, is due to address the nation. Mr Jeremic has declared that the struggle will continue. Kosovo’s president, Fatmir Sejdiu, jubilantly declared: “God bless Kosovo!” But after the party Kosovo will remain one of the poorest parts of Europe, a country that does not control all of its territory and one that is riddled with corruption. Until now, Kosovo’s leaders have been able to blame Serbian intransigence for their failure to implement reforms and improve living standards. That excuse will now lose some of its potency, especially if more countries recognise the state.

Serbia too faces problems. Its EU accession process has slowed of late. As Mr Grubacic points out, Mr Tadic had promised Serbs both the EU and Kosovo. Now neither looks likely. Yet while Serbia’s EU bid may be stymied for now, it is certainly not dead. Dreams of Kosovo are another story.

CSIS analyst Janusz Bugajski says that Russia is still a key player on Kosovo, and that the US should now use its leverage on Moscow:

The Serbian government will continue to campaign against Kosovo’s membership in multi national organizations, but its obstruction would be significantly reduced if it lacked strong backing from Russia. Because Kosovo’s legitimacy and Balkan stability correspond with U.S. security interests, Washington can more effectively use its outreach policy toward Moscow to reverse Russia’s opposition to Kosovo’s entry into the UN. Without international institutional inclusion and economic integration, Kosovo and several neighboring states, including Serbia itself, could become trapped in a new spiral of conflict over territories and minorities. Settling Kosovo’s international position and stabilizing Balkan borders presents a valuable opportunity for Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to demonstrate his declared commitment to European security.

The EU Observer looks deeper into the question of whether the ruling might embolden separatist movements elsewhere:

The court’s finding is likely to encourage more states to welcome Kosovo into the international community of independent states, but it is also likely to embolden separatist movements in other regions of the world.

However, analysts reckon that recognition of states has less to do with international law than realpolitik, and the key is not winning court cases, but winning a majority of the right kind of other important states on board.

“Lots of pints will be drunk in Catalan, Scottish and Quebecois bars tonight,” Richard Gowan, an analyst with the European Council on Foreign Affairs, “but alongside the hangover they wake up with, they will wake up with the realisation that not much has changed.” “How many countries have indicated that tomorrow they would recognise an independent Basque Country or Catalonia?” he said. “It’s just about zero.” “Whether a region establishes itself on the international stage is fundamentally a political rather than a legal issue at root.”

He noted that Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the breakaway regions that declared independence from Georgia in 2009, have only been recognised by Russia, Nicaragua and Nauru. “And in the case of Taiwan, the number of countries that recognise it have dropped year after year as they recognise the hegemony of Beijing.” “The key for Kosovo was that countries had indicated before the fact that they would recognise them. Ten years ago when they first tried it, no one was with them.”

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has made the following statement:

The EU welcomes the publication of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. We are studying it with great care.

The advisory opinion opens a new phase. The focus should now be on the future. The future of Serbia lies in the European Union. The future of Kosovo also lies in the European Union. This is in line with the European perspective of the region and the relevant Council conclusions.

Good neighbourly relations, regional cooperation and dialogue are the foundations on which the EU is built.

The EU is therefore ready to facilitate a process of dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade. This dialogue would be to promote cooperation, achieve progress on the path to Europe and improve the lives of the people. The process of dialogue in itself would be a factor for peace, security and stability in the region.

EU envoys endorse sanctions against Iran, AFP reports:

The European Union reached agreement Thursday on a package of sanctions against Iran which targets Tehran’s energy sector over its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear work, an EU diplomat said. Ambassadors from the 27 EU member states met in Brussels to endorse the sanctions, which include measures against the oil and gas industry and must be approved at a meeting of foreign ministers on Monday to come into force. “The text on the restrictive measures against Iran have been adopted,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

EU urges Chad to arrest Beshir, AFP reports:

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton urged Chad on Thursday to arrest Sudan’s visiting President Omar al-Beshir and hand him over to an international court to face genocide charges. Ashton “urges Chad to respect its obligations under international law to arrest and surrender those indicted by the ICC (International Criminal Court),” her press office said in a statement. She said Chad was a signatory of the Rome Statute, the founding document of the ICC, obliging it to arrest any person on its territory wanted by the court.

Ashton’s office did not indicate whether the EU could act against Chad if it did not meet her request.

Kremlin has lost patience with Lukashenka, the Economist says:

The Kremlin makes no secret that Mr Lukashenka has finally exhausted its patience. For years it subsidised his regime with cheap gas and duty-free crude oil, which Belarus refined and re-exported; it stood by him when he rigged elections and cracked down on protesters. But it feels it got little in return. Mr Lukashenka would not sell Belarusian refineries to Russian firms, he refused to recognise the independence of the breakaway Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and he sheltered Mr Bakiyev.

His obstinacy over the customs union was the last straw. Russia sees the union as a linchpin of its “zone of privileged interest”, its economic alternative to the European Union. Instead of helping Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, in his historic mission to reunite the parts shattered by the Soviet collapse (a quest compared by one Putin loyalist to the reunification of Germany), the maverick Belarusian president has become an obstacle.

To increase the pressure on him, Russia has now raised gas prices and slashed its supply of crude. If Mr Lukashenka’s entourage feel that Moscow has ditched their boss, they may abandon ship. Russia is also stirring up the Belarusian opposition. “For the first time in 16 years people in Belarus are looking to Russia with hope,” says Andrei Sannikov, an opposition leader.

This hope may be premature. Mr Lukashenka has often outmanoeuvred his Russian sponsors, who are wary of losing Belarus to the West. Russia’s offensive could be aimed at threatening Mr Lukashenka rather than deposing him. No opposition politician in Belarus would consider integration with Moscow as a serious alternative to the EU.

France and Germany to coordinate defence spending cuts, the EU Observer reports:

German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and his French counterpart Herve Morin on Wednesday (21 July) agreed in Paris to set up a working group to look into the matter, with a first meeting set for beginning of September.

From the think tanks: Clara Marina O’Donnell, A transatlantic defence market, forever elusive? CER, here.

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ICJ ruling on Kosovo expected today. In the European Voice, Toby Vogel puts the case in context and discusses potential consequences (subscribers only):

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague will today (22 July) issue an advisory opinion on the legality of Kosovo’s independence. The court’s ruling is likely to make uncomfortable reading for 22 of the European Union’s 27 states that have already recognised Kosovo following its declaration of independence on 17 February 2008: it could well advance a political settlement between Serbia and its former province that would severely test the EU’s tenets that borders are not to be changed and that ‘ethnic cleansing’ must not stand.

The opinion from the court was requested by the United Nations General Assembly. It is not legally binding on anyone except the UN’s own bodies, but James Ker-Lindsay, a researcher on south-east Europe at the London School of Economics, argues that “you cannot ask the world’s 15 pre-eminent jurists to rule on the legality of an issue and then ignore their opinion”.

He describes the case as “the most important case that has ever come before the ICJ”. Vuk Jeremic´, Serbia’s foreign minister, says that politically, this is a “moment of truth”.

The ICJ may well come out with an opinion that is either closer to Serbia’s position or somewhere halfway between Serbia’s stance and that of Kosovo’s government. Serbia believes that either result will, in due course, force the authorities in Kosovo to seek an accommodation with Belgrade. That accommodation, a senior Serbian government insider has told European Voice, will work only if it includes the partition of Kosovo. (…)

The Serbian source believes that the government of Kosovo will not trade territory as long as the US and a few European countries keep telling it that more countries will recognise its independence. That promise, he suggested, is about to be exposed as hollow: the ICJ’s opinion will not lead to a new wave of recognitions. The five EU member states that have hitherto withheld recognition – Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain – did so primarily for domestic reasons. That equation is not going to be changed by a court ruling. “Once the Albanians realise that nothing is going to change, they will come around,” the Serbian source said.

According to this insider, the Serbian government understands that it cannot control Kosovo effectively again. “You cannot rule 1.5 million people against their will,” he said, referring to Kosovo’s overwhelming ethnic Albanian majority. “We know, we tried it.”

What Belgrade wants instead, he said, is the region north of Mitrovica with its ethnic Serb majority, and some kind of international control of holy Serbian sites in the rest of the country, where Albanians are in the majority. “Read the Serbian constitution,” he said. “It does not define Kosovo’s borders, although it describes it as an integral part of Serbia. As long as we have something inside Serbia that is called ‘Kosovo’ we are fine.”

Ker-Lindsay supports the idea of partition. “We have already partitioned Serbia [when Kosovo declared independence], so saying that partition is out of the question is nonsense,” he says. He points out that the region north of Mitrovica was added to Kosovo by Tito, Yugoslavia’s strongman, only in 1959 in order to create a new demographic reality on the ground. Detaching it now should not be seen as a major breach of territorial integrity or other legal principles, but as a pragmatic solution to a festering problem. (…)

The Serbian insider said that in his government’s analysis, the US and the EU would accept partition if it were the outcome of direct negotiations between Pristina and Belgrade. Ker-Lindsay says that Kosovo’s putative partition would merely recognise a reality that already exists on the ground, with an almost entirely Serb region in the north that is under Belgrade’s de facto control. Partition would not require any population shifts in order to work, which would make it far more palatable to outsiders, he said, a view also advanced by the Serbian source. “The [ethnic Serbs] displaced from Kosovo know that they will not return,” he said. The bigger political and moral challenge, however, might be the ethnic Albanians who were expelled from the north during the 1998-99 war. (…)

See also a New York Times report on US and Kosovo’s views of the case. It says that Kosovo’s Prime Minister Thaci choose to be in Washington on the day of the ruling.

Richard Gowan (ECFR) comments on the EU position on Kosovo:

The EU has a 2,800-strong police and justice mission in Kosovo. But the Union is split between a majority of countries that recognise the state and a minority that does not (Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Spain and Slovakia). The EU police claims to be “status neutral”.

This is a clever but rather silly phrase, meant to imply that it’s possible for the EU to help police Kosovo without knowing if it’s a country or not. That’s rather like American teenagers claiming that they “just hang out” rather than date – comforting for those in the relationship, but really irritating for those (i.e. the Serbs) who can see what’s going on.

Freed Cuban dissidents urge EU not to change position. The BBC reports:

Eleven freed Cuban dissidents have urged the European Union not to soften its long-standing demands for democratic change in Cuba. The group, who arrived last week in Spain, said their release was not a gesture of good faith but “a desperate action” by the Cuban government.

Cuba has agreed to free 52 political prisoners under a deal agreed with the Catholic Church and Spain. A further nine freed dissidents are expected to arrive in Spain this week.

The EU should not change its Common Position on Cuba, the dissidents said on Monday. This refers to the policy from 1996 that calls for advances in human rights and democracy, before relations with Cuba can be normalised. There had been no clear decision by the Cuban government to move towards democratisation, a statement from the group said. “For this reason we ask European Union member states to not soften their demands for democratic changes in Cuba, so that all Cubans can enjoy the same rights that European citizens have,” they said.

The dissidents’ position is at odds with remarks made by Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, who took part in talks with the Cuban government. Speaking after the planned releases were announced on 7 July, Mr Moratinos said the EU should soften its stance on Cuba. Mr Moratinos said the largest release of Cuban dissidents since 1998 “opened a new era” in European ties with Cuba.

AP adds that the EU is unlikely to shift its position, despite Spanish pressure:

Spain’s foreign minister predicted Wednesday that Cuba’s release of dozens of political prisoners could eventually lead to a thaw in U.S. relations and the lifting of a decades-old embargo against the Communist-run island.

Speaking in Parliament, Miguel Angel Moratinos said the freeing of some 52 Cuban prisoners would prompt a shift in European Union policy toward Cuba “and it will have political consequences in U.S. relations with Cuba, (such as) the lifting of the embargo.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Madrid said, while the U.S. welcomed the release of the Cuban political inmates, it was too early to say whether that would have any effect on the embargo. And officials from France and Germany didn’t share Moratinos’ optimism that the release of the 52 would trigger an EU policy shift. (…)

Moratinos has said his European Union counterparts had conditioned any change in EU policy toward Cuba on getting the political prisoners released and he now expects the 27-nation bloc to end its “common position” on Cuba. That policy, which dates from 1996, calls for advances in human rights and democracy before relations with the island can be normalized.

But Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, said it was too early to say if the bloc is ready to shift direction on Cuba. She said all countries needed to be back any move and it was not clear if they all share Spain’s enthusiasm. “We will have a better feeling on Monday” when foreign ministers may talk briefly about the prisoners’ release, she said. But no decision is likely until September.

An official with Germany’s Foreign Office said it “welcomes the current development” but added that “the EU countries have always stressed that the overall human rights situation in Cuba has to improve.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with policy.

A French diplomat said Wednesday that the releases are a positive first step, but that the EU wants Cuba to free all its political prisoners.

Parliament presses Commission on EU-Morocco deal, the European Voice reports (subscribers only):

A controversial fishing deal between the European Union and Morocco may lapse if the Moroccan government fails to produce evidence that the deal benefits people in the disputed Western Sahara region, Maria Damanaki, the European commissioner for fisheries, has warned.

Damanaki contacted the Moroccan government in February to ask for proof that the EU-Morocco fishing agreement benefits people who live in the disputed territory of the Western Sahara. “They have to prove that the agreement gives real benefits to local people… If they do not give us the data then we will not have a protocol,” the commissioner said in an interview with European Voice.

The EU-Morocco fisheries partnership – a fish-for-cash exchange – was signed by Damanaki’s predecessor, Joe Borg, in 2005. The EU will pay the Moroccan government €144 million over four years, until 2011, for the right to fish in Moroccan and Western Saharan waters.

But the inclusion of the territorial waters of Western Sahara has long concerned lawyers and human-rights campaigners. Morocco annexed the Western Saharan territory in 1978, a few years after the demise of Spain’s colonial administration. Estimates vary, but according to the European Commission, 90,000 Saharawi people live in refugee camps in harsh conditions without basic resources. The United Nations has repeatedly expressed concerns about human rights in Western Sahara.

A legal opinion from the European Parliament last year advised that the EU- Morocco deal did not conform with international law, because it ignored the rights of the Saharawi people to control their national resources. The Parliament’s lawyers also called on EU vessels to stop fishing in Western Saharan waters.

The EU-Morocco deal is up for renewal in February 2011, putting pressure on the Commission to change the terms of the deal.

Isabella Lövin, a Swedish Green MEP, said that a new agreement was urgently needed. “The present agreement is in violation of international law because it allows Morocco to sell resources that belong to the Western Saharawi people.” She said that the “logical” solution would be for the agreement to be suspended or re-negotiated to exclude the waters of Western Sahara. “The EU is one of the most important political forces in the world and it should not strike agreements with countries that violate human rights,” she said.

Damanaki said she was concerned about the human-rights situation in the region. The commissioner has promised to make human rights part of all future fishing agreements. “I think that we can improve the framework for the agreements [with] a new type of agreement that takes care of the human-rights situation.” She maintains that the current EU-Morocco deal “provides real benefits to people, whatever their name”.

Sara Eyckmans, co-ordinator of Western Sahara Resource Watch, a private group, said she had not seen any evidence that the Saharawi people benefit from the agreement. She said: “The Commission always tends to focus on benefits, but they never go into the question of the wishes [of the Saharawi people], which is central to international law.”

Hautala urges Ashton to speak up on human rights. The chairwoman of the European Parliament’s sub-committee on human rights, Heidi Hautala, has called on Catherine Ashton to be more outspoken about countries that violate human rights, the European Voice reports (subscribers ony):

Heidi Hautala said Ashton’s use of “quiet diplomacy” was insufficient for the EU to be treated as a serious player on the world stage. She said the EU and Ashton should be speaking out more aggressively on rights violations in China, Russia, Israel and the Palestinian territories. “We have to be very vocal on these things at the moment,” Hautala said, adding: “I have to some extent disputed her first statements that she believes in quiet diplomacy.”

At the outset of her term as foreign policy chief, Ashton told MEPs that she would pursue a discreet style. “Sometimes talking to people without full publicity can be more effective,” Ashton told the Parliament at her confirmation hearing.

Hautala said that while low-key, behind-the-scenes negotiations could be effective in certain delicate cases involving imprisoned human-rights activists, many of the cases in China or Russia were “the type where vocal public statements can mean more”.

The Finnish Green MEP said that the EU’s current human-rights “dialogues” on fundamental rights, which it conducts with some 40 countries, including China, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan and Cuba, were in “close to a crisis situation” because they were not producing any changes in behaviour. “They risk becoming empty rituals that the other party does not take very seriously. This is an issue we need to look at,” Hautala said.

Hautala said Ashton had to ensure that the national governments and the European External Action Service (EEAS), which is being set up this year, pursued a more effective human rights policy. (…)

Ashton’s spokeswoman rejected Hautala’s criticism, arguing that the foreign policy chief had been “quite vocal” in the media on human rights while at the same time working behind the scenes to push EU interests.

Hautala said that the EU had to come up with a more transparent human-rights policy, so that MEPs could name and shame those member states that do not toe the line on certain policies and positions. Hautala said the Parliament should have more access to confidential documents from foreign services and the EEAS on member state positions. “The game is quite dirty sometimes and we need to know which countries are playing for human rights and which are playing against,” said Hautala.

Cameron wants to reorient British foreign policy towards economic interests, the BBC reports:

Speaking in New York on the last day of his trip to the US, the prime minister said he wanted diplomats to use every opportunity to win orders for UK firms.

He announced that he was appointing a civil servant with expertise in business to head the Foreign Office. The department would also recruit a commercial director, Mr Cameron said. (…)

The prime minister told reporters: “I want to refashion British foreign policy, the Foreign Office, to make us much more focused on the commercial aspects… making sure we are demonstrating Britain is open for business.” “I think it is a big opportunity. As we come out of recession and into recovery we have got to pay our way in the world and I want to reorientate the Foreign Office to be much more commercially minded.”

He added: “I want us to be much more focused on winning orders for British business overseas, attracting inward investment back into Britain.” “I want to make sure that whenever any British minister, however junior, is meeting any counterpart, however junior or senior and for however short a time, they have always got a very clear list of the commercial priorities we are trying to achieve, whether that is pushing forward British orders, attracting inward investment or promoting bilateral or unilateral trade talks.”

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Afghanistan donor conference in Kabul. The New York Times writes:

The most concrete commitment was a promise to increase to 50 percent the proportion of international development funds to be disbursed through Afghanistan’s own budgeting process, a change to be made over the next two years and a huge shift from the current situation. Now, many donor countries send money directly to individual ministries or to nongovernmental organizations, undercutting the government’s ability to plan how to use the funds. Critics of the move pointed out that most Afghan ministries had proved unable to spend the money they already got.

For Catherine Ashton’s speech at the conference go here.

Ashley Jackson (Oxfam) comments at the Huffington Post:

Today’s Kabul Conference lasted approximately six hours, with four-minute speeches by each delegate. While today’s proceedings may have been well choreographed, it offered little more than recycled promises.

Each of the nine international conferences on Afghanistan in the past nine years have increasingly focused on creating the appearance of progress without actually demonstrating any. Conference after conference has laid out new strategies, new plans and new pledges of support. Yet few have been followed through and delivered upon.

Bruce Jones (Brookings) adds:

All such conferences are a form of theater. On stage, each actor has their part. The western donors pledge billions of dollars of aid, only a modest fraction of which they will ever actually commit to the country, let alone disburse. They applaud the government for its important successes, chide it for its occasional lapses, and point to the amount of work still to be done. They make solemn commitments to coordinate more effectively with one another—pledges they’ll break before their planes leave the next day. The government in turn thanks the donors for their generosity, gently chides them for pledging more than they’ll actually give, and promises to do more on—whatever the checklist has on offer, be it anti-corruption, gender issues, human rights, what have you. Everyone knows that both sides are posturing for audiences foreign and domestic.

Saudi-Arabia’s nuclear ambitions. A growing number of countries across the Middle East are seeking to establish civilian nuclear energy programs. Last week, three leading nuclear industry-related firms announced a joint initiative to build and operate nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia, Mark Hibbs (Carnegie) reports. He explains the political background:

Iran’s ambitious and ambiguous nuclear drive has shown states in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, that having nuclear energy facilities—particularly fuel cycle facilities—gives a country a sense of prowess and strength. Setting up their own nuclear programs give states long-term hedging options, particularly in light of concerns that U.S. security guarantees to its allies will become weaker. Some Saudi diplomats complain that, since 2003, the United States has permitted Iran to gain in influence in the region at the expense of Saudi Arabia and other states with Sunni majorities.

If Iran obtains nuclear weapons, some regional analysts and Western government officials assert that Saudi Arabia will react by entering into a nuclear defense pact with Pakistan, which tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and is now expanding its atomic arsenal. U.S. and European officials say privately that they are concerned about how Saudi Arabia would respond to a nuclear-armed Iran, given a lack of transparency in Saudi government decision making and the country’s precarious security situation.

The Saudi government has denied recurring rumors of murky nuclear relations with Pakistan and allegations of non-peaceful intentions. But as recently as this month, officials from the United States and Europe raised concerns that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program may have received financing from Saudi Arabian sources. Making a closer relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia more troubling are fears that China would take the opportunity to project its strategic interest in the Middle East through its close relationship with Pakistan.

Given Saudi Arabia’s limited human resources and science and technology infrastructure, however, Western governments do not appear worried that the country will any time soon be able to itself develop a nuclear weapons capability.

Labor unrest in China signals political change, says Minxin Pei (Carnegie):

For years, Western observers have been disheartened by the lack of political change in China. Modernization theory predicts that rapid economic progress should help liberalize the political system, but this hasn’t occurred in China since 1989. Until now. (…)

What’s interesting about this new political reawakening is that on the surface it doesn’t look all that political. Instead of calling for democracy and freedom, participants in these activities focus on issues directly related to their economic interests, property rights and social justice. Examples include fighting off local governments’ attempts to build polluting factories, seize farmers’ land without compensation and evict urban residents from their homes. Criticism of government policy and performance in delivering public services and protecting social justice are routine in Chinese publications and on-line venues. And, of course, the ostensibly apolitical nature of such civic activism makes it much harder for the Communist Party to suppress it with brutal force.

China is world’s biggest energy consumer. The BBC reports:

China has overtaken the United States to become the world’s top energy consumer for the first time, a new report says. Provisional figures from the International Energy Agency indicate that China’s energy demand has doubled in a decade. The IEA said China had taken first place because it was hit less hard than the US by the global financial crisis. China challenged the report’s findings, saying its figures were unreliable.

Turkish foreign minister meets Hamas leader. The BBC has the story:

Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu has met with exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria, Turkey’s official news agency reports. The pair discussed ways of improving relations between Hamas and Fatah Palestinian groups, according to Anatolia news agency. The Hamas website said they also spoke of how to break Israel’s Gaza blockade.

Turkey’s moves away from the West not Europe’s fault, says Henri Barkey (Carnegie) in the Los Angeles Times. Instead of criticizing the EU for “having lost” Turkey, Washington should push Ankara to pursue domestic reform, which would help bringing the country closer to the EU.

In an interview this month with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, President Obama suggested that the European Union’s continued reluctance to accept Turkey  into its ranks has pushed Turkish leadership to “look for other alliances” and move toward closer relations with other Muslim nations in the Middle East. These comments echoed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who last month blamed Europe  for Ankara’s  movement away from the West.

Both men are wrong. They are wrong in their analyses of Turkish behavior and wrong on the policy prescriptions implied by their statements. Fully engaging with and understanding Turkey is of critical importance for this administration, and blaming Europe oversimplifies the situation and could lead to unintended consequences. (…)

The Turkish government’s increasing overtures toward non-Western governments is driven in part by an over-inflated sense of its importance on the world stage. Turkish leaders believe their country should be among the premier world powers, and that its strategic location, economic prowess, historical ties and cultural affinities with the Muslim world are assets that can be marshaled behind an activist foreign policy designed to further enhance Ankara’s importance. This ambition weighed down by an unhealthy dose of hubris is one of two drivers of the new foreign policy.

The second is Turkey’s commercial interest. A forceful export drive and an appetite for foreign investment have fueled growth and made Turkey the 16th largest economy in the world. As President Obama acknowledged, trade benefits were one of the factors that drove the Turks to side with Tehran and against the U.S. in the U.N. Security Council vote on sanctions. Turkey is in a constant search for new markets for its wares and its Middle East policy has helped open new opportunities and consolidate existing ones. (…)

When it comes to the EU, Turkey has two fundamental and difficult problems that are unlikely to disappear anytime soon and will remain the main impediments to progress for EU membership. The first is the Kurdish question. (…) The second problem is that although Turkey is a country of laws, it does not embrace the rule of law. (…)

Both of these impediments will take years, if not decades, to deal with. Therefore, to blame Europe for Turkey’s difficulties is unfair and unnecessarily alienates the Europeans. It made sense for the U.S. to push the Europeans on Turkey in the 1990s when Europe was pushing Turkey away. Now, however, a process has been put in place for Turkey to pursue EU membership. The current U.S. rhetoric and silence on domestic issues relieve Turkish leaders from the burden of reform and from being honest with their public about the travails ahead for EU membership. It does not do Turkey any favors; on the contrary, it solidifies the distance between Turkey and the EU. A smarter American policy would focus on pushing the Turks to reform. The faster Ankara institutes reforms, the closer it will get to EU membership.

Shale gas “revolution” unlikely in Europe. A new source of gas, found naturally in rocks, has already transformed the US energy market. Shale gas has the potential to make Europe self-sufficient, ending its energy dependency. But given the many technical and political obstacles, the prospects for a shale revolution in Europe look thin, says Paul Stevens (Chatham).

From the think tanks: Álvaro de Vasconcelos (ed), A strategy for EU foreign policy. ISIS, here. — Michael Emerson/Piotr Maciej Kaczyński, Looking afresh at
the external representation of the EU in the international arena. CEPS, here. — Muriel Asseburg, Ending the Gaza Blockade – But How? SWP, here.

Read today on Global Europe: Drifting apart? Europe must do more to get a seat at the top Asian table. By Shada Islam, a Senior Programme Executive at the European Policy Centre (EPC) in Brussels.

To sign up for the Global Europe Morning Brief, please send an email to globeurope@gmail

EU plans to tighten sanctions on Iran. The New York Times has the story:

The European Union is considering tough new sanctions against Iran to protest its nuclear program, including banning investment in the oil and gas sector and tightening restrictions on shipping and finance.

The new measures, which are subject to agreement by European Union foreign ministers, cover dozens of senior Iranian officials and companies, and aim to put new pressure on the government in Tehran by cutting off Europe’s investment in major sectors of the Iranian economy.

A draft of the proposed new measures names 41 Iranian people, 57 companies or other entities, 15 additional companies thought to be controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and three deemed to be under the control of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines.

Senior European diplomats will discuss the proposed sanctions on Thursday. If approved, they are likely to represent a significant tightening of Europe’s economic pressure on Tehran.

“These are tough, substantial measures,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the nonproliferation and disarmament program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “The prohibitions on investment in and transfer of equipment and technology to the oil and gas sector is particularly important, as are the draft prohibitions on various financial services, including provision of insurance and reinsurance.”

Last month, European Union leaders agreed in principle to go ahead with tighter measures as part of a two-track strategy to try to deal with Tehran’s nuclear program. While trying to tighten the economic screw, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, has also made it clear she is ready for talks with Iran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili.

Thursday’s meeting of European Union diplomats will give the first indication of whether national governments inside the bloc will exert pressure on it to water down its plans. But discussion at a summit meeting of the bloc in June led to a swift agreement on the sectors to be the focus of penalties. “Under these circumstances, new restrictive measures have become inevitable,” the bloc’s leaders said then in a statement.

At Foreign Policy, Marc Lynch argues that “the argument for a military strike (on Iran) is no stronger now than it has been in the past — and in many ways it is considerably weaker.”

Afghan conference in Kabul today. The conference will focus on increased Afghan responsibility and ownership of its own security, governance and development, the so-called “Kabul process”, according to a press statement from Catherine Ashton’s office.

HR/VP Ashton will at the conference present plans for continued EU engagement in Afghanistan, stressing the priority areas which include sub-national governance; reform of the justice and police sectors; and human rights. The EU fully supports the peace and reconciliation process and is standing ready to support Afghan efforts to reintegrate those ready to renounce violence.

On the margins of the Kabul conference HR/VP Ashton will also meet with President Karzai and Foreign Minister Rassoul of Afghanistan, as well as with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. She will attend a meeting with Afghan women’s organisations alongside US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Danish Foreign Minister Lene Espersen.

“The EU is keeping its promises to Afghanistan. We have a multi-annual commitment and will take steps to further align this assistance with the Afghan Government’s priorities. We plan to raise our level of support in line with the new EU Action Plan.” HR/VP Ashton said ahead of the Kabul Conference.

But she added: “Afghanistan’s problems cannot be solved without stronger governance and respect for the rule of law. The key challenges are to extend the Government’s authority into the provinces, and to stamp out the culture of impunity and corruption that undermine the whole governance and development process. That is why our future package will put a special focus on strengthening public administration and in particular on aiming to reform of the justice sector which will complement the EU’s work with the Afghan police – helping to improve law enforcement at all levels”.

The EU Action Plan, which was approved by the EU Foreign Ministers last October, highlights governance and rule of law as areas for enhanced EU engagement in Afghanistan in the years ahead. In the run up to the Kabul Conference, the EU underlined the importance of rolling out good governance to provincial and district level and stressed that this affected progress across the range of political, social and economic sectors.

See also a backgrounder on EU-Afghanistan relations issued by the Commission, here. The New York Times has a curtain-raiser.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, secretary general of NATO, writes in the IHT, ahead of the Kabul conference:

On Tuesday, an international conference on Afghanistan in Kabul will bring together more than 70 countries, international and regional organizations and financial institutions to support a plan for development, governance and stability. The meeting will result in a clear way forward for the transition to Afghan responsibility and ownership. In short, it will be a milestone in the process by which Afghans are finally becoming masters of their own house. (…)

All these developments point in the same direction: a gradual transition to Afghan lead. This transition will not be done on the basis of an artificial timetable. It will be done on the basis of clear assessments of the political and security situation in each area. Where and when we do it, it will be irreversible.

Starting the transition does not mean that the struggle for Afghanistan’s future as a stable country in a volatile region will be over. Afghanistan will need the continued support of the international community, including NATO. It is important that we send a clear message of long-term commitment. The Afghan population needs to know that we will continue to stand by them as they chart their own course into the future. (…)

We now have a new commander of the I.S.A.F. mission, Gen. David Petraeus. But our strategy hasn’t changed, because it is the right one. Our objective is clear: to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for terrorism. (…) We are building Afghans’ ability to resist terrorism and extremism on their own. We are changing the political conditions in the key strategic areas of Afghanistan; we are protecting the population; we are strengthening the capability of the elected government; and we are training the Afghan Army, to enable Afghanistan to look after its own security.

Political change to come in Egypt? Theodore May reports at Global Post:

“It’s a turning point in Egyptian history,” said Alaa Al Aswany, a prominent Egyptian author and public intellectual. “We are in a very similar moment to 1949, when the people realized that the old system is no longer valid, but they don’t yet know what form the new life will take.”

As the public dissatisfaction grows, however, the man who is supposed to be leading the opposition is now floundering to unite his ranks. And skepticism over the potential of his fledgling campaign for political change in Egypt has begun to emerge.

Many in the media and the political opposition swooned when Mohamed ElBaradei arrived in Egypt in February promising to push for change. He had international credibility, having served as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency for 12 years — a fact that would make it difficult for the Egyptian government to discredit him.

But Egypt’s opposition is made up of an eclectic mix of communists, democrats, Islamists and others. And ElBaradei is under fire from all corners for running what they view as a meek campaign. ElBaradei has a “quarter million fans on Facebook, but on the ground, how does this translate?” asked Hossam el-Hamalawy, a prominent Egyptian blogger, activist and government critic.

ElBaradei does make public appearances, but his criticism of the ruling National Democratic Party has been tempered and his own policy positions have been vague. He said he would only run for president during elections in the fall if electoral reform happens first. On top of that, ElBaradei has continued to split his time between Egypt and Europe, drawing complaints that he is trying to lead a revolution in absentia. (…)

There is cause, though, for ElBaradei to advance his campaign cautiously. Egypt’s ruling party has a history of cracking down on opposition groups. (…)

Despite disagreements within the ranks of the opposition, ElBaradei’s camp insists that the campaign is going as planned and says that disagreements within Egypt’s opposition are to be expected. “In fact, we were not surprised by the reaction of many Egyptian opponents,” said Abdulrahman Yusuf, head of an online Facebook group aimed at boosting ElBaradei’s candidacy. “There are different agendas and there are conflicting ideologies. We are betting on the street and on the simple, ordinary Egyptian citizen who I think never let us down until now.”

With the presidential election planned for late 2011, ElBaradei has just over a year to win over his skeptics in the opposition, capture the imagination of the ordinary Egyptian citizen and deliver on the change so many are expecting from him.

Israel should hand over Gaza to the EU, says Shlomo Avineri in Haaretz:

Even those who are not fans of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman must admit that his plan to invite European foreign ministers to visit the Gaza Strip is a creative and positive step. The initiative could also symbolize Israel’s final disengagement from Gaza, the consummation of a process that was never completed, primarily due to opposition raised by a defense establishment that has tended to look at the Gaza issue solely from a narrow security perspective, while ignoring the tremendous damage that the blockade has caused to Israel. (…)

Though we might quibble over Lieberman’s motives, it is now his turn to lead a complex series of steps that might bring to an end a policy that Ariel Sharon initiated, with wide public support: freeing Israel from control and responsibility in Gaza.

After evacuating Israeli settlers from Gaza, we found ourselves locked in an absurd predicament. Israel no longer occupies Gaza, but since it demanded that control over crossing points and the coast remain in its hands, it has created a situation that has no parallel in the world: Israel has no control, but is regarded as being responsible for Gaza. Similarly, the ludicrous idea of enforcing a blockade on 1.5 million people in order to “pressure” Hamas into releasing Gilad Shalit is a proven, unmitigated failure that is tainted by a fundamental moral flaw. And the notion that any sort of Israeli policy will determine who rules the Palestinians, and will weaken or strengthen Hamas or Mahmoud Abbas, is nothing more than sheer hubris.  (…)

Should the foreign minister’s plan win the support of the prime minister and the defense establishment and be implemented, Israel would allow the European Union to take responsibility for infrastructure development in Gaza and supervision of the cargo entering the region, in coordination with Israeli security officials. (…)

Israel’s left should support the idea of the European Union’s taking effective responsibility for the development of the Gaza Strip, even if Lieberman is the one who proposed it. Anyone who wants to view this idea as European neocolonialism is free to do so. The important point is that after reaching a strategic decision to disengage from Gaza, and after coming to the brink of a civil revolt as a result of this decision, Israel should finish the job. And if the European Union is so concerned about humanitarian aspects of life in Gaza, it should take the reins of responsibility with its own hands.

Who is winning Eastern Europe’s great game, Katinka Barysch asks at the CER blog:

The US is withdrawing from the former Soviet space; the European Union struggles to be taken seriously there. Does that leave Russia free to strengthen its influence in the countries around its borders? Not necessarily, for the situation in the region is complex. (…)

While much of America’s attention has moved elsewhere, the European Union hardly has a foothold in the region. The EU’s neighbourhood policy has proved rather ineffective, and the 2009 ‘Eastern partnership’ has not yet had time to make much of a difference. Ukraine, still smarting that the EU has never offered the prospect of membership, appears to be turning towards Russia. Moldova looks keener than ever to get closer to the EU – with few people in Brussels and other capitals taking notice. The EU’s Central Asia strategy has lacked political backing and consistency. In the Caucasus and Central Asia, the EU is a rather new player and its traditional approach of exporting norms and values as the basis for bilateral relations has not been received well. The fact that the EU’s foreign policy machinery is currently in bureaucratic paralysis does not help.

In theory, US neglect and European weakness could leave Russia free to consolidate what President Medvedev likes to refer to as a ‘sphere of privileged interests’. Russia is certainly trying. But success has been patchy at best.

Although by far the most populous and prosperous country in the region, Russia does not necessarily have the means to project power into the neighbourhood. Its tools looked more formidable before they were actually used. Now some of them have turned out to be blunt.

Russia’s use of military force in Georgia last year backfired when even Moscow’s staunchest allies scrambled to become less reliant on their dangerous-looking big neighbour: Belarus turned to the EU, Armenia started talking to Turkey and not a single one of the former Soviet countries has followed Moscow in recognising the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russia has repeatedly used trade embargoes and other economic means to put pressure on its neighbours, in particular smaller ones where Russia’s own business interests are limited, such as Georgia or Latvia. But there is arguably not a single instance where the use of economic sanctions has got Russia what it wanted.

This leaves energy as the most promising tool of Russia’s neighbourhood policy. Russia has used pipeline plans, nuclear projects, gas prices and oil deliveries to get what it wants from its neighbours. But even here, Russia’s success rate is mixed. (…)

The perceived withdrawal of the US and the ineffectiveness of EU policy in the region has not so far played into Russia’s hands. Russia (like the EU and other players in the region) has had to learn that the former Soviet Union does not constitute a homogenous neighbourhood. There are cocky and cash-rich energy suppliers such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and there are poor and divided countries such as Moldova and Armenia. Russia can cajole and coerce in one place but it has to plead and please in another. All countries in the region will benefit from being less dependent on Russia, in trade and energy terms as well as in politics. While the US might pay less attention to the region, the EU should redouble its efforts, while also taking more account of the the specific situations of individual countries.

Ten events that shaped Russia’s recent foreign policy, listed by Fyodor Lukyanov in the Moscow Times.

EU starts association talks with Armenia. AFP reports:

The European Union on Monday launched talks with Armenia on a pact that would strengthen political and economic ties between the bloc and the former Soviet republic.

“The agreement will deepen Armenia’s political association and economic integration with the EU,” the EU’s chief negotiator Gunnar Wiegand told reporters in Yerevan. “It is a historic step and very ambitious agreement that will make Armenia more attractive to European investors and foster trade and democracy in the country.”

Armenia’s deputy foreign minister Karine Kazinian said the talks would take a long time. “It is a very protracted process and it is hard to say when it will be finalised. The talks started and we are ready to finalise them successfully,” she said.

Association agreements are treaties between the bloc and non-EU countries that create a framework for closer political ties and economic integration. Negotiations on agreements usually take from one to four years. Such talks are also ongoing with the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

German economy back on track, Spiegel reports:

The German economy has indeed come roaring back to life this summer. Two years after the outbreak of the financial crisis, the auto industry is adding extra shifts once again. The machine building, electronics and chemical industries are all reporting a rapidly growing number of orders. Total unemployment is expected to drop below the 2.8 million mark this fall, the lowest level since 1991.

For the first time in decades, the former “sick man of Europe” is back to being an engine for economic growth. According to an internal government assessment, the country’s gross domestic product increased by more than 1.5 percent in the second quarter of this year. In their last prognosis, completed in April, government officials had predicted only 0.9 percent GDP growth. Production in the manufacturing industry increased by 5 percent over the previous quarter. The government assessment also shows that exports grew by more than 9 percent in May.

If the trend continues, say the experts, the German economy will grow by well over 2 percent this year, or almost twice as much as in most neighboring countries. Economists are already proclaiming a second economic miracle, while a former French foreign minister is complaining that Germany is “number one in Europe” once again.

Ashton’s diplomacy too quiet? In the Guardian, George Lyon, Liberal Democrat MEP for Scotland, says that the EU foreign policy chief must become more visible and audible on major issues:

In December, Cathy Ashton, the new EU high representative for foreign policy, said: “I believe that a lot can be achieved with quiet diplomacy.” Unfortunately, Lady Ashton seems to have mistaken quiet diplomacy for deafening silence.

In seven months in the job, she has been faced with an aid crisis in Haiti, international furore after Israel boarded ships on their way to Gaza, and most recently an unprecedented oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In all of these situations we haven’t heard a peep, not a whimper from the person charged with representing the EU on the world stage. This has left many MEPs wondering why they voted to confirm Ashton’s candidacy in January.

Ashton has been widely criticised for not visiting Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake. This was her first real test in the job and by not showing solidarity with Haitians it gave the impression that she, and by extension the EU, was disengaged from the disaster.

I am sure that Ashton was co-ordinating aid shipments and speaking with foreign ministers by phone, but shouldn’t this be done by diplomats in her team? As EU foreign minister, isn’t it her job to do the work that people can see? Even Nixon was greeted by Brezhnev on the tarmac in Moscow occasionally.

In fairness, Ashton did meet with all 27 foreign ministers from the EU in the aftermath of the Gaza aid ship shooting that saw nine people killed. But everyone knows that Ashton is not the story when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict. (…)

While there are many foreign policy issues where the merits of quiet diplomacy can still be seen, not least in efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions, in the post-cold-war era we expect our leaders to step into the spotlight and express our collective compassion, indignation or reservations. If Ashton is to stay in this role for the full five-year term, then she must abandon the silence of quiet diplomacy and instead start to make some noise.

From the think tanks: Franco Zallio, Direct Investments and Institutional Cooperation in the Euro-Mediterranean Region. GMF, here.

Read today on Global Europe: Coalitions of the weaklings. Why the EU states must continue to play a global role. By Richard Gowan, an Associate Director at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, and a Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

To sign up for the Global Europe Morning Brief, please send an email to globeurope@gmail

Ashton calls for opening of Gaza crossing. AFP reports:

The European Union’s top diplomat Catherine Ashton called for the further easing of Israel’s four-year blockade of the Gaza Strip during a visit to the impoverished Hamas-run enclave on Sunday. “The answer here is opening the crossings,” Ashton told reporters on her first visit since Israel’s deadly May 31 seizure of a Gaza-bound aid fleet sparked international demands to lift the closure.

“People here recognise and understand the security needs of Israel,” she said at a news conference held at a UN-run school for Palestinian refugees. “But that should not prevent the ability to be able to see the free flow of goods into and out of Gaza in order that houses can be rebuilt, children can go to fully functioning schools and businesses can flourish.”

On Ashton’s trip to the Palestinian territories and Israel see also a New York Times report and a BBC report. Ashton’s statement after meeting Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad here, her statement after meeting Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman here.

A group of EU foreign ministers will visit Gaza in early September, AFP reports:

Italy’s foreign minister Friday said EU ministers would travel to the Gaza Strip in early September to verify Israel’s easing of a blockade of the territory.

The visit is “a delicate mission that we are preparing carefully,” Franco Frattini said, according to the ANSA news agency. “We will go to Gaza with a group of European ministers who share with me the need to observe and to help the people who live in Gaza, people who are suffering,” Frattini said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman last month invited Frattini to lead an EU delegation to Gaza, and last week Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Frattini and his Spanish and French counterparts would visit in July. Paris later indicated Germany and Britain would also participate.

“Israeli authorities will grant access and will not pose any conditions on the visit, but we are posing one condition: we will not meet with Hamas, but only with the Palestinian Authority,” Frattini said.

Europe’s economic crisis over? The New York Times reports:

Just two months ago, Europe’s sovereign debt problems seemed grave enough to imperil the global economic recovery. Now, at least some investors are treating it as the crisis that wasn’t.

Spain held an auction of 15-year bonds last week that went off without a hitch, raising 3 billion euros, or about $3.8 billion, at a relatively favorable interest rate of 5.116 percent. That was up from 4.434 percent on a debt sale in late April, though the latest one was far more heavily subscribed. Also last week, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Portugal’s credit by two notches, citing the nation’s debt burden and poor growth prospects, a sign that the country’s underlying problems are not over. Yet investors, rather than punish assets linked to Portugal’s economy, seemed to take the news in stride. (…)

“Europe has had a pretty good crisis,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “In the short term, it made a number of very constructive decisions that had the effect of calming down the markets or shifting market attention elsewhere.”

Indeed, there has been a string of calming news of late: well-subscribed bond auctions in Portugal and Italy, a deal to freeze wages in Greece as it tries to rein in its public spending, and signs that German industry, so important for the rest of Europe, is growing more strongly than expected, according to data for May.

Afghan poll: NATO does not provide security. 68 percent of Afghans believe that NATO forces do not protect them, Reuters reports.

US envoy: ICG arrest warrant complicates Sudan efforts. At Foreign Policy, Josh Rogin reports:

As Sudan speeds toward a January referendum that could lead the splitting of the country or, in the worst case, all-out war, President Obama’s special envoy is complaining that his job has been made more difficult by new charges leveled against the Sudanese president.

On Monday, the International Criminal Court issued a second arrest warrant for Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, this time on three counts of genocide. In March 2009, the ICC had indicted Bashir for five counts of “crimes against humanity.” The Obama administration has always said that war criminals should be brought to justice, but at the same time is pursuing a policy of engagement with Bashir’s government while avoiding direct contact with the Sudanese leader himself. On Tuesday, Obama said he was “fully supportive of the ICC.”

But the president’s point man on Sudan, retired Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, said this week that the new charges will have a damaging effect on his ability to work with Bashir’s government. Speaking at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Tuesday, he expressed dissatisfaction with the ICC’s latest move.

“The decision by the ICC to accuse Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir of genocide will make my mission more difficult and challenging especially if we realize that resolving the crisis in Darfur and South, issues of oil and combating terrorism at a 100 percent, we need Bashir,” Gration was quoted as saying by Radio Sawa, an Arabic language radio station run by the U.S. government.

War with Iran more likely? Walter Russel Mead argues that most observers get Obama’s view on Iran wrong:

There is a significantly greater chance that President Obama will lead the United States into a war with Iran than many observers think — and that chance is growing rather than shrinking as the confrontation wears on. (…)

The failure to grasp the real possibility that Obama may confront the mullahs reflects the difficulty that many foreign policy experts have in understanding the way that President Obama’s world view differs from a conventional realist perspective. (…) As laid out in the 2010 National Security Strategy and as President Obama has made clear on many occasions, the United States has a president with a vision for the kind of world he wants to build, and as he made plain in his Oslo Nobel speech, there are things for which he is willing to fight. (…)

In many ways a classic example of the Wilsonian school of American foreign policy, President Obama believes that American security can best be safeguarded by the construction of a liberal and orderly world. (…) The essence of the Wilsonian project is to turn the system of Westphalian, sovereign states into a society of states under the rule of some basic laws and principles governing how they behave internationally and at home.

Think of the European Union blown up to a global scale; in the Global Union nations would have their own governments and their own laws, but an increasingly dense framework of commonly agreed-upon laws and norms, and an increasingly complex and effective web of global institutions would supplement and in many cases replace the authority of national governments. (…)

President Obama doesn’t think that creating the Global Union is going to be accomplished under his leadership, nor is he, I think, entirely certain that the world can ultimately reach even a modest version of this goal. But he does believe that there is no other way to make the United States (and the other nations of the earth) secure, and he believes that the core strategic challenge facing American foreign policy is to gradually move the world in the direction of a post-Westphalian peace. (…)

The consequences of the Iranian nuclear drive for the President’s Wilsonian project are deadly; the Iranian nuclear program can fairly be called an existential threat to the Wilsonian ideal. In particular a nuclear Iran will kill the two dreams at the heart of President Obama’s foreign policy and indeed of his view of the world: the dream that the genie of nuclear weapons can be forced back into the bottle and the dream that the nations of the world can build a post-Westphalian international order in which the world’s governments are bound by deepening networks of laws. (…)

Make no mistake about it. If Iran gets nuclear weapons on his watch, the dream of non-proliferation comes to an end and Barack Obama will go down in history as the president who lost the fight to stop nukes.

Ashton not a key player on Turkey’s EU membership, says Amanda Paul (EPC) at Today’s Zaman:

The recent visit of EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and European Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Füle to Turkey was supposed to reassure Ankara over its troubled membership bid. Ashton and Füle met with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and chief EU negotiator Egemen Bagis. At the joint press conference, Mrs. Ashton said that trust and friendship were the foundation of the relationship between Turkey and the EU given that both share the same goals for peace and prosperity. Very nice words, but then that is what this relationship is increasingly about — words rather than actions.

So one visit by Ashton to Turkey and we are supposed to believe that everything will be ok? Perhaps I am being too cynical, but she will convince nobody working on this issue. While Mrs. Ashton’s comments are welcome, at the end of the day it is not her who will decide. It is the 27 member states (and at the very end the European Parliament). They are the ones taking part in the various council meetings and working groups and it is they who have the power to block or open a chapter. If even one country decides (for whatever reason) a chapter should not be opened, it won’t be. (…)

Ashton’s and Fule’s visit was little more than an EU PR exercise and will change nothing. The truth is the EU has no appetite for Turkey and at the same time, with elections on the horizon, Erdogan will do nothing that will endanger his popularity. The dead or almost dead horse will continue to be flogged.

EEAS top jobs. The EU Observer reports:

Foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton is to shortly unveil the names of 31 new heads and deputy heads of EU delegations. But the 10 top jobs in the European External Action Service (EEAS) are to be doled out in October.

The British baroness is currently conducting interviews with the final two or three candidates for each of the 31 diplomatic posts and will announce the results en bloc before the EU’s summer recess. (…)

Ms Ashton plans to advertise the top 10 posts after EU foreign ministers sign off on the legal blueprint for the EEAS on 26 July. But she will be unable to make the appointments until EU institutions clear the 2010 salaries budget for the new body – worth €9.5 million – in a move expected in September.

The 10 posts are the EEAS secretary general; two deputy secretary generals; an official in charge of budgets and personnel; the chair of the Political and Security Committee (PSC); the head of the SitCen intelligence-sharing bureau; and four directors general (DGs). One DG will handle a “thematic” directorate handling issues such as human rights and UN relations. The others will each take charge of a “geographic” directorate, splitting the globe into industrialised countries, developing countries and a final set including post-Soviet states, the Western Balkans and the Middle East.

Another 10 or so second-tier posts will come up for grabs at the same time.

Ms Ashton is considering a classic EU recruitment process consisting of joint interview panels with member states, EU commission and Council officials. But due process is likely to be outweighed by political considerations. “Member states have been lobbying vis-a-vis Ms Ashton from day one. She has a pile of papers on her desk proposing candidates,” a contact in her inner circle told this website.

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Merkel presses Russia on democracy and human rights. Judy Dempsey reports in the New York Times:

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany spoke out strongly on human rights during her talks with President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia on Thursday as German companies signed an array of deals worth billions of dollars.

Mrs. Merkel, ending a two-day visit to the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, where the two countries were holding consultations, said Russian modernization could not be separated from democracy. “There’s an almost inseparable link between modernizing the economy and making civil society more democratic,” she said. (…)

Mrs. Merkel, who has made the defense of human rights and freedom the hallmarks of her administration, also raised the case of Natalya Estemirova, a prominent Chechen human rights activist who was killed a year ago. Ms. Estemirova had been kidnapped in her native Chechnya, where she had been a vocal critic of the Kremlin-backed regional leader, Ramsan Kadyrov. Her body was dumped in neighboring Ingushetia.

‘‘It is important that Russia continues to investigate that murder,” Mrs. Merkel said at a news conference with Mr. Medvedev. ‘‘In order to feel security in the legal system it is important that such high-profile and public cases be successfully solved.” She said that ‘‘in matters of human rights, there are clearly differences of opinion between our two countries.” Mr. Medvedev responded that the killer of Ms. Estemirova had been identified and an investigation was in ‘‘full swing.” (…)

Mrs. Merkel’s stance on human rights issues has not hurt trade ties, despite concerns by some German companies and lobbies that her comments would be counterproductive.

During the visit, the German company Siemens signed a $2 billion contract to supply more than 200 regional trains to Russia. Siemens also announced a venture with two Russian partners to produce wind turbines and help develop the Skolkovo complex, a Russian equivalent of Silicon Valley. Russia is also negotiating with Airbus to supply 11 Airbus A330s to Russia for $2.2 billion, or about $2.8 billion.

Last year, German exports to Russia amounted to $20.5 billion, a fall of 36 percent from 2008 because of the global financial crisis. Imports from Russia amounted to $24. 9 billion, a decline of 30 percent. But there are signs that trade is picking up, according to the Federal Bureau of Statistics in Germany.

Ashton launches association agreement with Georgia. Azerbaijan and Armenia to follow. AFP reports:

The European Union boosted Georgia’s hopes of building closer ties with the West Thursday by launching talks on an association pact that would strengthen relations with the ex-Soviet republic.

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said at a joint press conference with President Mikheil Saakashvili that the eventual association agreement will “build a foundation to bring Georgia closer to the European Union.” “The agreement will provide the framework for a new relationship,” she said in the Georgian Black Sea city of Batumi.

“I strongly believe that by strengthening the relationship between Georgia and the European Union we can contribute to Georgia’s democratic development, its long-term stability (and) prosperity,” she said. “It’s good for you and it’s good for us. Stability and prosperity here enhances stability and prosperity in the European Union,” she added. (…)

Ashton’s office said in a statement that talks on association agreements will also be launched with Georgia’s neighbours Azerbaijan on Friday and Armenia on Monday. Similar talks are already taking place with Ukraine and Moldova. But the launch of the talks, with Ashton in attendance, is of special importance to Georgia, which more than any other country in the region has sought closer ties with the West.

Ashton to negotiate with Iran? At the World Politics Review, Johan Bergenäs, says that Catherine Ashton and Irans nuclear negotiator Jalili “are currently involved in a diplomatic dance over resuming talks on Tehran’s nuclear program”:

If the talks do indeed come to fruition, Ashton could assume the negotiating role previously played by her predecessor, Javier Solana. While Solana’s diplomatic efforts ultimately did not bear fruit, the circumstances that hampered his attempts to resolve the Iranian nuclear standoff — namely, the lack of U.S. participation and Iranian perceptions that the country had little to gain by talking with Europe — have since improved and could be capitalized on by Ashton. (…)

Solana could not ensure what Iran desires most: a credible guarantee of national security. One senior European diplomat directly involved in the negotiations said that the E3/EU negotiation team was unable to put the words “security guarantee” into the various offers because “the Americans were either not in agreement or, while accepting to discuss [this option], could not accept that this would be in the offer itself.”

Hassan Rohani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator throughout most of the E3/EU-Iran talks, has admitted that besides playing for time, Iran did not have much to gain from negotiating with the E3/EU. Middle East expert Dr. Chen Kane, in analyzing a speech made by Rohani in 2004, wrote that the Iranian official “regard[ed] the Europeans’ offers to support Iran’s membership in the World Trade Organization, to invest in Iran’s civil aviation, agriculture, and oil and gas industries, and to conclude a new trade agreement with Iran as providing ‘no immediate benefit for [Iran].’”

Now, although tensions between Iran and the West continue to run high, the prospects for negotiations, should they take place, are significantly improved by two promising developments. First, in contrast to his predecessor, U.S. President Barack Obama considers engagement with Iran a fundamental component of the American strategy vis-à-vis Tehran’s nuclear program. (…)

Second, on the same day that Ashton received Jalili’s reply, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, became the first senior Iranian official since the new U.N. Security Council resolution was adopted to admit that international and unilateral sanctions could slow progress in the country’s nuclear efforts. Salehi said that while sanctions “will not stop” Iran’s nuclear program, “[o]ne can’t say sanctions are ineffective.” The statement is in stark contrast to Iran’s usual rhetoric, which consistently denies that outside pressure has had an impact.

If in fact these new circumstances can be capitalized on, Ashton’s overtures to Iran represent a significant first step. (…)

Of course, the prospects for new talks may simply be the result of yet more Iranian posturing, drawn from Tehran’s past nuclear playbook of deceit, obfuscation and stalling. However, if Tehran does come to the negotiation table, its negotiators will not only see a new face in Ashton, they will also be confronted with a fundamentally different dynamic than under Solana’s diplomatic quest. This is an opportunity that Ashton and the P5+1 should pursue without delay.

At Time, Joe Klein thinks that a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities is back on the table.

UK foreign policy. “Britain has to do more with less”, says Timothy Garton Ash at the Globe and Mail.

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