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Leftist Tsipras sworn in as new Greek prime minister

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Syriza party to form coalition with small right-wing party and renegotiate massive bailout agreements.

Alexis Tsipras

by Al Jazeera

Greece’s new prime minister has been sworn in after forming a surprise anti-bailout alliance with a small right-wing nationalist party.

Alexis Tsipras broke with tradition and took a secular oath rather than the Greek Orthodox religious ceremony with which prime ministers are usually sworn in.

The 40-year-old, who drew remarks from some observers for not wearing a tie to the ceremony, becomes the youngest man to hold the post in150 years.

His Syriza party gained the key backing of Independent Greeks after Sunday’s elections, paving the way for a coalition government.

Tsipras won the vote but fell short of the majority needed to govern alone.

“From this moment, the country has a government. Independent Greeks give a vote of confidence to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras,” Panos Kammenos, leader of the Independent Greeks, said.

Kemmenos did not clarify whether he would join a coalition with Tsipras or give support to a minority government.

The two parties have different ideologies and their coalition comes a surprise, which nonetheless boosted stock markets across Europe that had fallen on news of the uncertain election results. Stocks had fallen as much as 4 percent in Athens on Monday morning.

Tsipras has promised to renegotiate Greece’s massive bailout agreements, but has vowed not to take any unilateral action against lenders from other eurozone countries.

Concerns

With 99.8 percent of the vote counted, Syriza had 149 seats in the 300-member parliament with 36.3 percent of the vote. The ruling conservative coalition was on 27.8 percent, and the extreme right Golden Dawn party in third place with 6.28 percent.

Tsipras’ choice to negotiate with the Independent Greeks – a party aligned in Europe with the UK Independence Party – rather than the centrist Potami caused concern that he could take a tough line in negotiations with rescue lenders, reported the Associated Press news agency.

Syriza’s financial planning official, Giorgos Stathakis, confirmed on Monday that the new government had no plans to meet with negotiators from the “troika”, a reference to the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund.

The government would instead seek talks directly with governments, Stathakis said.

Greek voters swung to the once-marginal left-wing party after five years of punishing austerity measures demanded under $268bn bailout deals drove hundreds of thousands of people out of work and left nearly a third of the country without state health insurance.

U.S feels the heat on Palestine vote at UN

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US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Villa Taverna in Rome, Dec. 15, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Evan Vucci)

US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Villa Taverna in Rome, Dec. 15, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Evan Vucci)

by Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: The floodgates have begun to open across Europe on recognition of Palestinian statehood. On Friday the Portuguese parliament became the latest European legislature to call on its government to back statehood, joining Sweden, Britain, Ireland, France and Spain.

In coming days similar moves are expected in Denmark and from the European Parliament. The Swiss government will join the fray too this week, inviting states that have signed the Fourth Geneva Convention to an extraordinary meeting to discuss human rights violations in the occupied territories. Israel has threatened retaliation.

But while Europe is tentatively finding a voice in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, silence reigns across the Atlantic. The White House appears paralysed, afraid to appear out of sync with world opinion but more afraid still of upsetting Israel and its powerful allies in the US Congress.

Now there is an additional complicating factor. The Israeli public, due to elect a new Israeli government in three months’ time, increasingly regards the US role as toxic. A poll this month found that 52 per cent viewed President Barack Obama’s diplomatic policy as “bad”, and 37 per cent thought he had a negative attitude towards their country – more than double the figure two years ago.

US Secretary of State John Kerry alluded to the White House’s difficulties this month when he addressed the Saban Forum, an annual gathering of US policy elites to discuss the Middle East. He promised that Washington would not interfere in Israel’s elections.

According to the Israeli media, he was responding to pressure from Tzipi Livni, sacked this month from Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, triggering the forthcoming election, and opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog, of the centre-left Labor party.

The pair recently made a pact in an effort to oust Netanyahu. Their electoral success – improbable at the moment – offers the White House its best hope of an Israeli government that will at least pay lip service to a renewal of peace negotiations, which collapsed last April. They have warned, however, that any sign of backing from the Obama administration would be the kiss of death at the polls.

US officials would like to see Netanyahu gone, not least because he has been the biggest obstacle to reviving a peace process that for two decades successfully allayed international pressure to create a Palestinian state. But any visible strategy against Netanyahu is almost certain to backfire.

Washington’s difficulties are only underscored by the Palestinians’ threat to bring a draft resolution before the UN Security Council as soon as this week, demanding Israel’s withdrawal by late 2016 to the 1967 lines.

Given the current climate, the Palestinians are hopeful of winning the backing of European states, especially the three key ones in the Security Council – Britain, France and Germany – and thereby isolating the US. Arab foreign ministers met Kerry on Tuesday in an effort to persuade Washington not to exercise its veto.

The US, meanwhile, is desperately trying to postpone a vote, fearful that casting its veto might further discredit it in the eyes of the world while also suggesting to Israeli voters that Netanyahu has the White House in his pocket.

But indulging the Israeli right also has risks, bolstering it by default. That danger was driven home during another session of the Saban Forum, addressed by settler leader Naftali Bennett. He is currently riding high in the polls and will likely be the backbone of the next coalition government.

Bennett says clearly what Netanyahu only implies: that most of the West Bank should be annexed, with the Palestinians given demilitarised islands of territory that lack sovereignty. The model, called “autonomy”, is of the Palestinians ruling over a series of local councils.

The Washington audience was further shocked by Bennett’s disrespectful treatment of his interviewer, Martin Indyk, who served as Obama’s representative at the last round of peace talks. He accused Indyk of not living in the real world, dismissively calling him part of the “peace industry”.

Bennett’s goal, according to analysts, was to prove to Israeli voters that he is not afraid to stand up to the Americans.

Given its weakening hand – faced with an ever-more rightwing Israeli public and a more assertive European one – Washington is looking towards an unlikely saviour. The hawkish foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman used to be its bete noire, but he has been carefully recalibrating his image.

Unlike other candidates, he has been aggressively promoting a “peace plan”. The US has barely bothered examining its contents, which are only a little more generous than Bennett’s annexation option, and involve forcibly stripping hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Israel of their citizenship.

Lieberman, however, has usefully created the impression that he is a willing partner to a peace process. At the weekend he even suggested he might join a centre coalition with Livni and Herzog.

Lieberman is cleverly trying to occupy a middle ground with Israeli voters, demonstrating that he can placate the Americans, while offering a plan so unfair to the Palestinians that there is no danger voters will consider him part of the “peace industry”.

That may fit the electoral mood: a recent poll showed 63 per cent of Israelis favour peace negotiations, but 70 per cent think they are doomed to fail. The Israeli public, like Lieberman, understands that the Palestinians will never agree to the kind of subjugation they are being offered.

The Israeli election’s one certain outcome is that, whoever wins, the next coalition will, actively or passively, allow more of the same: a slow, creeping annexation of what is left of a possible Palestinian state, as the US and Europe bicker.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

A version of this article first appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko warns new Cold War is looming

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Petro Poroshenko

by David Wroe, SMH

Visiting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has warned Europe is sliding towards a new Cold War and urged the world to stand up to Russia for the sake of global law and order.

Speaking in Sydney during a three-day tour as part of closer relations with Prime Minister Tony Abbott in the wake of the MH17 disaster, Mr Poroshenko also vowed that any Australian uranium sold to his country under a possible deal would be safely used.

But Russia – whose dominance of energy exports to Ukraine would be undermined by any deal between Canberra and Kiev – has already raised doubts about the prospect of Australian uranium sales, which Mr Abbott and Mr Poroshenko flagged on Thursday.

A spokesman for Moscow’s embassy in Canberra branded talk of a uranium deal a “political statement” and warned that given the conflict in eastern Ukraine, nuclear material could “fall into the wrong hands” – though Kiev’s adversaries in the conflict are rebels backed by Russia itself.

Mr Poroshenko told Sydney’s Lowy Institute that the crisis resulting from Russia’s aggression towards its smaller neighbour needed to be “tackled” by the world, not just for Ukraine’s sake but for the good of world peace and order.

“Ukraine is burning, and Europe is dangerously close to slipping back to the Cold War,” he said. “This is not a question of Ukrainian or regional security, this is a question of global security because this aggression demonstrates uneffectiveness of the post-war security system based on the Security Council of the United Nations.”

Russia wields considerable power as a veto-holding member of the Security Council but Mr Poroshenko said “we should propose to the world another idea to keep the world stable”.

Australia and Ukraine have been drawn together by the downing of flight MH17, for which Kiev and the West believe Russian-backed rebels were responsible. Fighting continues in eastern Ukraine with what are believed to be Kremlin arms and troops steadily encroaching on the region.

Mr Poroshenko said Ukraine would welcome further help from the West, including Australia, in military technology for communications, reconnaissance and intelligence “to defend ourselves” but did not need weapons.

Australia is already supplying Ukraine with non-lethal military equipment and clothing.

Mr Poroshenko also vowed the safety of any Australian uranium exports to his country, saying: “We have state of the art technology to keep it safe.”

Ukraine already has a nuclear power sector, with 15 reactors supplying about half the nation’s electricity.

But talk by Mr Abbott of supplying uranium and coal to Ukraine sends a strong political signal because it would unshackle the country from its heavy dependence on energy, including uranium and gas from its adversary Russia.

Russian embassy spokesman Alexander Odoevskiy said Australia should bear in mind that eastern Ukraine was “a conflict zone”.

“Given Ukraine’s current geopolitical situation, can it provide enough security for this nuclear industry and safeguards so [uranium] doesn’t fall into the wrong hands? I’m not sure about whether the government institutions in Ukraine are capable of providing these stringent controls.”

Putin, blocked by Europe, turns to Turkey for Gas Pipeline

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin.(RIA Novosti / Alexey Druzhinin)

President of Russia Vladimir Putin.(RIA Novosti / Alexey Druzhinin)

by Juan Cole

The Russian annexation of Crimea and heavy interference in the Ukraine has had a significant consequence for its hydrocarbon industry. President Vladimir Putin has been forced to cancel a planned natural gas pipeline that would bring the fuel to southern Europe, because of European Union pressure for boycotting Russia. Moscow will not suffer very much economically, however, since it can sell as much natural gas to Turkey as it had been planning to sell to southern Europe, though perhaps at a bigger discount (Turkey has 75 people and is the world’s 17th largest economy. Greece has 11 million people and a small economy.)

The Ukraine crisis was in some ways provoked by aggressive expansionism by the EU and NATO into former Russian spheres of influence, in contradiction to promises made by the West to Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in the early 1990s. But be that as it may, Russia’s unilateral annexation of the Crimea and heavy interference in eastern Ukraine is inconsistent with international law.

Turkey plans to grow its economy substantially in the coming decade and is energy hungry, lacking much in the way of gas or oil itself, though it has coal. Slightly discounted Russian natural gas seems a good deal to Ankara. Moreover, Turkey has been rudely rebuffed in its bid to join the European Union, and this deal with Russia is a way for the Turks to remind the Europeans that if the EU had wanted Turkey to join its consensus, it could have admitted Turkey. As things now stand, Ankara is a free agent, and glories in its independence. Russian natural gas also has advantages for Turkey at the moment over Iranian natural gas, since the US has been pressuring countries not to deal with Iran or to allow bank transfers of money from Iran.

The significant political differences between Turkey and Russia on the Crimean Tartars and on Bashar al-Assad in Syria appear to have proved no bar to these economic deals.

Environmentally, burning natural gas is bad, but it isn’t nearly as bad as burning coal; some consider it half as carbon-intensive as coal, but that idea probably underestimates the methane emitted in drilling for gas. And, Turkey has big plans for coal. A Greenpeace study [pdf] observes:

“According to the World Resources Institute, Turkey plans 50 coal-fired power plants with a total installed capacity of 37,000 MW. This will rank Turkey first among OECD countries investing in new installed coal capacity and fourth globally, behind only China, India and Russia. Some projections suggest up to 86 new coal plant projects, when accounting for those that are in the process of permitting and those that have failed the application process.

In 2011, Turkey’s overall energy mix was comprised of 31% coal, 32% natural gas, and 27% petrol, with the remaining 10% composed of hydropower, wood/biofuels and wind. The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resource’s energy vision for 2023 predicts a near doubling of total energy sources, with the only significant difference that use of gas would decrease in relative terms to 23% and the use of coal would increase to 37%. In absolute terms this would mean a 2.3-fold increase of coal use in just 12 years.”

A person can only hope that the diversion of Russian natural gas to Turkey will forestall the building of some of those 50 or 85 coal plants, which are an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. Why sunny and windy Turkey doesn’t initiate a crash program of renewables is a huge mystery, since then their fuel would be free and their economy would really take off.

My advice to Greece and other southern European countries that Putin has just by-passed for natural gas is to turn to renewables rather than seeking to replace Russian gas with Qatari. Italy gets 7% of its electricity from solar. Greece so far has little wind or solar power, its main renewable source for electricity being hydroelectric. About half of its electricity comes from dirty lignite coal. A quarter is from gas. Greece has enormous solar and wind potential but its government hasn’t promoted it. Putin wants to maneuver Turkey into reselling Russian gas to southern Europe, so as to sidestep sanctions. But if Turkey and Greece initiated a crash program of renewables they would save money and remove themselves from the geopolitical cross fire.

80 percent Catalans vote for independence from Spain

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catalonia-independence-vote-spain

by RT

An overwhelming majority of Catalans have said “yes” to independence and secession from the central Spanish government in Madrid in a highly-anticipated but symbolic referendum poll on Sunday.

Some 80.72 percent voted to form a state independent of Spain, Joana Ortega, vice president Catalonia said shortly after midnight, with over two million Catalans reportedly turning out for the unofficial referendum. Ortega could not immediately give an official turnout rate since there was no formal electoral roll for some 5.4 million registered Catalan voters.

Voters were given two questions to answer, “Do you want Catalonia to be a state?” was the first and in the case of a positive response, voters were asked: “Do you want Catalonia to be an independent state?”

“Yes-no” response obtained 10.11 percent; “no-no” 4.55 percent; and blank votes accounted for 0.56 percent, with 88.44 percent of the votes counted.

President of Catalonia, Artur Mas, called the symbolic vote on independence “a complete success” with “clearly more than two million people” participating despite the veto imposed by Madrid.

“Let no one forget, especially the Spanish government, that Catalonia has once again shown that it wants to govern itself,” he said at a hearing in Barcelona after the vote. It is “a giant step in our legitimate aspiration to peacefully and freely decide our future.”

A message clearly not understood in Madrid, where the Minister of Justice, Rafael Catala, on behalf of the Spanish government, defined the vote as “political propaganda organized by pro-independence forces.”

After Spain’s High Court ruled the independence referendum proposed by Catalan leader Artur Mas unconstitutional last month, the Madrid government has also issued a ban on the informal poll, forbidding Catalans from making any public show of support for independence.

In response to Catala’s statement, Mas said he feels bad for the people in central government who missed “a golden opportunity to understand the message of Catalan will,” recalling the examples of referendums held recently in Scotland as well as Quebec province of Canada in 1995.

Earlier, the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, stated the vote “will not have any effect.”

But that did not stop some 41,000 volunteers from organizing the election with over 1,300 polling centers set up for the historic vote.

In the meantime, Mas said his government will push for an official referendum.

“We deserve the right to vote in a definitive referendum and this is something that maybe is understood in Madrid, but if it is not understood in Madrid our will is to go on with this process,” he said after casting his ballot.

As for Madrid, Catala said, that the central government would evaluate the facts of Sunday’s vote and decide whether or not to begin legal proceedings against the regional government.

Historically Catalonia, which already enjoys significant autonomy from Madrid, has been one of Spain’s better-off regions and the local population has resented having to send their taxes to the capital to help support poorer areas of the country. However, the area of 7.5 million people is currently €57.1 billion euros ($78.5 billion) in debt, which is the most of any of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions.

Catalonia, which accounts for one-fifth of Spain’s economic output, has had no problem in attracting foreign investment, which grew by 31.5 percent in 2013 according to figures from Spain’s economy ministry.

Europe’s bird population has fallen by over 420 million in three decades

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Some rarer birds have grown in number over last 30 years due to conservation efforts while some well known species have fallen

A skylark, one of the 144 species looked at in the study. The skylark population has fallen by 46% since 1980. Photograph: Michael Finn/PA

A skylark, one of the 144 species looked at in the study. The skylark population has fallen by 46% since 1980. Photograph: Michael Finn/PA

by Azeen Ghorayshi, The Guardian

Bird populations across Europe have decreased by over 420 million in the past 30 years, according to a study that brings together the results of scientific surveys in 25 countries While some rarer species have seen an increase in numbers due to concerted conservation efforts, more common species across Europe are facing a steep decline.

Some of the birds that have suffered the most alarming declines are the most well known species including the house sparrow which has fallen in number by 147m or 62%, the starling (53%) and skylark (46%).

The study looked at 144 species across Europe between 1980 and 2009. Dividing the species up into four groups, from extremely rare to most common, analysts found that a small number of common species declined by over 350 million –over 80% of the total population decline of birds in that time period overall. Rarer birds, in contrast, increased by over 21,000 in the same time period.

The results indicate that efforts at conserving rarer species seem to be having an impact but may be too narrow an approach, possibly at the expense of more common species.

“The focus up to this point has very much been on conserving rare species,” says the lead author, Richard Inger, from the University of Exeter. “That’s what it should be, in many ways, but the issue there is that if you’re not careful, you can spend all of your conservation dollars on just protecting the rare things. You can take your eye off the ball, if you will.”

Birds which increased over the course of the study include the blackcap (up 114%), common chiffchaff (up 76%) and wren (56%).

A male blackcap. Photograph: Andrew Darrington/Alamy

The issue is complicated by the fact that conserving rare bird species is relatively easy in comparison to more widespread efforts required to conserve common ones.

“If the species is very localised, there may be very strong conservation measures,” says Graham Madge, a spokesman for the Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds, which collaborated on the study. “Whereas for a species like the skylark, which will occur in most countries across Europe, it’s much harder to bring in a rescue measure because it requires the rollout of broad, landscape-scale conservation measures.”

The most commonly cited reason for this vast decline in bird species is agricultural intensification which has squeezed out areas that birds need for feeding and nesting.

But Inger emphasises that this can’t be seen as the only problem. “People have tended to concentrate on farmland, but some of these species that don’t use farmland habitats at all are also declining. It’s a sign of wider scale environmental issues, such as increases in urbanisation, and the only way we’re going to protect these widespread species is a more holistic approach to how we manage the environment in general.”

Nevertheless, Madge and Inger agree that wildlife-friendly farming schemes like the UK’s will be necessary to focus conservation efforts beyond token rarer species. But the repercussions extend beyond just bird biodiversity, as birds play vital roles in ecosystem processes such as decomposition, pest control, pollination, and seed dispersal. Since common species exist in higher numbers, they play a bigger role in maintaining the ecosystem as well.

“This was a bit of a wake-up call really,” says Inger. “We knew we were going to see a big decline in bird populations, but to see how big that number really was and how focused the declines were on this small number of common species was really very surprising.”

Century old legacy of Islamic practice in Austria under threat

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Austria-mosque

by Sakeena Suliman, Cii News

Austria intends to establish an Austrian Islam. Echoing the 2013 sentiments of warmonger Tony Blair to create an Islam that Europe and the West will be pleased with, Austria has amended its 102 year old law on Islam.

Institutionalised in 1912 to safeguard the rights of Muslims and independently recognised by the government, fear of “extremisim” has led to the state’s extremist draft.

The amendments include banning Muslim organisations from receiving finances from abroad, the Quraan is to get a unified German-language translation and 70 of the 300 Imams in Austria will be outlawed for being employed by foreign countries.

Islam has so far existed in Austria on equal terms with other religions like Catholicism, Lutheranism, Judaism and Buddhism. There has been strong criticism for the state’s singling out Islam, practiced by almost six percent of the 8.6 million Austrians.

Cii Radio spoke with Doctor Farid Hafez, born in Austria but working and living in Vienna. Hafez earned an MA and PhD at the Department of Political Science, University of Vienna and an MSc in civic education at the University of Krems and Klagenfurt. He currently lectures at different universities and colleges in Austria. Part of his research includes the role of Islamophobia in Austrian party politics and Islamic political theory.

Hafez says until recently the legal recognition allowed Austrian Muslims much more independence than Muslims living elsewhere in Western Europe. “The masses of the Muslim people were quite astonished about what is going on here. Also because the Islamic Council [of Austria] did not really inform the Muslim people what was happening behind the scenes.”

The draft for a new Islam law has been an interest of the Islamic Council since 2003 but did not materialise because of the tense political atmosphere that worsened due to the far right’s use of Islamophobic slogans during their elections campaigns.

“… Generally speaking in the society Islamphobic attitudes have become more widespread. Therefore this draft for a new Islam law could not be implemented because there was no political party that said it was going to push something more liberal for the Muslim people. Now due to the discourse of the so called Islamic state in Iraq and Syria there was a possibility for the government to say they are going to bring this new draft for Muslims, there are going to say it’s good for them but on the other hand they are going to get tougher with the Muslims and show them the borders of action,” explained Hafez.

The draft, presented by a few leading government parties, among them the Social Democrats and the Conservative Party, is actually the implementation of institutionalised Islamophobia.

“What is going on here these days is that you have many, many, many discriminations… Twenty five percent of Imams in Austria are paid by the Turkish Government through an organisation which is connected to the ministry of religious affairs in Turkey, they want to restrict the Turkish influence. It also has to do with the general suspicion against the Turkish government, Erdogan, and on the other side they want to have an Austrian Islam,” said Hazfez.

“Muslims also want to have an Austrian Islam but it’s not an Islam dictated by the Austrian government but it’s an Austrian Islam that’s coming from bottom up. That’s where the difference lies, and it’s a crucial difference.”

The draft is undoubtedly driven by a general suspicion against Muslim people. While the draft has not yet gone so far as to control topics delivered at Friday sermons, Hafez said “the debate for that is already alive” with government declaring that Imams be trained at the University of Vienna.

“The Islamic council has no right to say who it wants or not so it’s possible that a non-Muslim could train the imams. In addition to that the training of Imams is something that, you can have theology in a university but the training of Imams is very much connected to the history and the institution of Islamic life. We see here in the draft it looks like the state wants to create an Imam it wants, together with the Islamic Council but it will have the main say in it and that’s a dangerous development it looks like the state wants to create its own Austrian Islam according to its own vision and that’s against the Austrian constitution because the Austrian constitution.”

UN refugee chief says Europe must open borders

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Syrian-Refugee

– by Aya Batrawy, Associated Press

Sharjah: The head of the United Nations refugee agency on Wednesday urged countries, particularly in Europe, to review their laws to allow entry to more Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war.

Antonio Guterres said on the sidelines of a conference in the United Arab Emirates that a refugee crisis across the Middle East is a global security threat. He urged more legal avenues for Syrian refugees to resettle in Europe, and avoid risking their lives with smugglers.

“This is not only the worst humanitarian crisis in the last decades, it is also the biggest threat to regional peace and security,” he said. “It’s a global threat.”

The U.N. estimates that nearly 2.7 million Syrians have fled abroad, mostly to neighboring countries, and another 6.5 million are internally displaced.

Guterres said that on average, a child is forced to flee his or her country in the Arab world every minute.

“It breaks my heart to see a Syrian family, that has suffered so much, leaving their country and putting themselves in the hands of smugglers to cross the Mediterranean,” he said. “It’s essential to have more legal avenues for Syrians to be able to enter Europe.”

Also in attendance was Queen Rania of Jordan, which hosts some 600,000 Syrian refugees, forming 10 percent of the country’s population. Jordanian officials estimate the real number to be closer to 1.3 million.

“The world has a major role in supporting all countries hosting refugees, because that is a guarantee of our region’s stability,” she said. “There is however, a clear deficit in our global humanitarian capacity. The needs are far greater than the support offered.”

Arab League Secretary General Nabil Alaraby noted that Iraqi, Libyan, Yemeni and Palestinian refugee children are also at risk of not receiving proper education, as well as health and mental care.

“The bloodshed witnessed by the Arab world today in different areas in Syria, in Libya, and also in Yemen, require political solutions,” he said. “But political solutions are difficult and take a great deal of time, and so they require a new approach for the region.”

The conference was hosted by Sharjah ruler Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi and his wife Sheikha Jawaher.

The United Arab Emirates, along with the five other energy-rich nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, have been criticized by rights groups for not opening their borders to refugees from the myriad of conflicts across the region.

Guterres said he is calling on all countries, everywhere, to do more.

“This is not a responsibility for Jordanians, for Lebanese, for the Turks. This is a responsibility for the whole international community,” he said.

Revealed: Europe’s "discreet" cooperation with Israel’s nuclear industry

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José Manuel Barroso (left), the European Commission president, has a “discreet” chat with Benjamin Netanyahu. (European External Action Service)

José Manuel Barroso (left), the European Commission president, has a “discreet” chat with Benjamin Netanyahu. (European External Action Service)

– by David Cronin, Electronic Intifada

The European Union has been cooperating furtively with Israel’s nuclear industry for at least six years.

An internal document that I recently obtained states that an accord on “joint and cooperative initiatives relevant for the peaceful use of nuclear energy” was signed between the EU and Israel in 2008. “This is a discreet agreement that has not been given publicity,” the paper adds.

The document (published below) was drawn up ahead of an October 2013 visit to Israel by Antonio Tajani, then Italy’s member of the European Commission.

It is not hard to understand why the Union wishes to keep this cooperation “discreet.” The agreement was reached with Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission — the body that runs the Dimona reactor, where Israel’s nuclear weapons were developed.

Israel introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East and has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has refused to permit international inspection of all its nuclear activities.

In 2006, Ehud Olmert, then Israel’s prime minister, acknowledged that Israel possessed nuclear weapons. The US Defense Intelligence Agency estimated in 1999 that Israel had between 60 and 80 nuclear warheads.

Hypocrisy

These facts put Israel in a very different category to Iran, supposedly a major threat to world peace.

Unlike Israel, Iran has no nuclear weapons. The National Intelligence Council — a group advising the US president — expressed “high confidence” in 2007 that Iran had halted its weapons development program a few years earlier.

Despite that explicit statement, both the EU and the US have slapped punitive sanctions on Iran (after some sanctions had been relaxed, America imposed new restrictions on business with Iran last week). The official narrative behind these sanctions is that everything must be done to stop Iran acquiring the bomb.

Yet the European Union is happy to cooperate with Israel, a nation that actually has the bomb. Is it any wonder that Brussels officials don’t want attention drawn to this hypocrisy?

Military links

I asked the EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) — which is tasked with implementing the “discreet” agreement — why it is cooperating with Israel, a known threat to world peace. A JRC spokesperson tried to present the “scientific collaboration” involved here as benign.

The research with Israel concerns the “medical application of radionuclides, radiation protection, as well as nuclear security related to the detection and identification of nuclear and radioactive materials,” according to the spokesperson. “It does not cover any activities related to reprocessing and enrichment.”

I asked the spokesperson if any guarantees have been provided that Israel will not use the fruits of its research with the Union for military purposes. Not surprisingly, I didn’t receive a reply to that question.

When I asked how much had been spent on nuclear cooperation with Israel, the JRC would only say that the research in question is “not jointly funded as each institution covers its related activities.”

As well as overseeing the development of nuclear weapons, Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission has strong links to the conventional arms industry.

Apart from Dimona, the commission also runs the Soreq research center. Soreq’s own website says that it develops equipment with “homeland security” applications — a euphemism for surveillance technology and weaponry. When journalists have been given guided tours of that center, its scientists have bragged of inventing lasers to assist snipers.

The JRC — the European Commission’s in-house science service — has been cooperating more directly with Israel’s weapons industry, too.

In December 2010, it teamed up with Elbit, the Israeli arms company, for what it called a “small boat detection campaign” in Haifa. The purpose of this exercise was to see how drones can be used for maritime surveillance, principally to stop asylum-seekers from entering Europe.

Elbit is one of the leading suppliers of warplanes to the Israeli military. This means that it is providing some of the key tools that Israel used to inflict death and destruction on Gaza this summer (and in previous attacks). By hosting the “boat detection” exercise, the EU indicated its eagerness to deploy Israel’s tools of mass murder against refugees.

Greenwashing

Although the EU has tried to keep the nuclear research “discreet,” it has openly celebrated more palatable forms of engagement with Israel.

José Manuel Barroso, the outgoing European Commission chief, posed for photos with Benjamin Netanyahu, when the two men approved an energy and water cooperation agreement in 2012. The JRC tried to sell that accord as ecologically sound by stressing that it concerned renewable energy and resource conservation.

Environmental campaigners have a name for tactics designed to rebrand a villain as a tree-hugger: “greenwashing.”

Cooperation on “clean” energy provides scant comfort to Gaza’s people, whose only power plant was bombed by Israel this summer. Nor should it be forgotten that Israel attacked a center for autistic children that had solar panels on its roof. So much for Israel’s commitment to renewable energy.

Israel is a nuclear-armed rogue state. I’m sure that many decent people would be horrified to learn that the EU is liaising with the very agencies that developed Israel’s nuclear weapons — even if this cooperation is “discreet.”

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