Michael's Afternoon 7 - 08 May

I. Does Obama not like other world leaders?

I understand Obama's desire to change, and Bush-style personal diplomacy certainly doesn't seem suited to his temperment, but I worry when the U.S. president seems to want to treat other world leaders like students coming in for office hours. Nobody's suggesting they play a round of hoops, but 20 minutes each just doesn't seem like enough face time to give the leaders of two countries that are vital to U.S. security, no matter what he might think of them. During his campaign, Obama argued to voters that speaking with other leaders doesn't imply support or agreement. 100+ days in, it's not clear when all that talking is going to start. For a president who came into office promising to stop neglecting America's allies, Obama doesn't seem particularly excited to talk to them. Critics have charged that Obama has seemed more chummy with Hugo Chávez and Dmitry Medvedev than with staunch U.S. allies like Brown, Sarkozy, and Karzai, but I think the more pertinent point is that Obama seems to be basically friendly to all other world leaders without developing a close relationship with any of them.

II. Croatian lawmaker convicted of war crimes

A Croatian court convicted an opposition lawmaker of war crimes on Friday, but he vowed in a video statement to avoid imprisonment.
Branimir Glavas is Croatia's first senior politician to be held responsible for atrocities committed during the 1991 Serbo-Croat war. During the 1991 war, Glavas was a member of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union and formed a paramilitary unit in eastern Croatian town of Osijek, where he was seen as a warlord. Judge Zeljko Horvatovic said Glavas ordered the detention, torture and killing of six Serb civilians, whose bodies — bound and gagged — were dumped in a local river. Glavas also failed to prevent the killings of two other Serbs, one of whom had been forced to drink battery acid before being sprayed with bullets, the judge said.

III. Serbia: French minister behind Ceku extradition

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner was blamed in the Serbian media on Friday for blocking the extradition of former Kosovo military commander and prime minister Agim Ceku. Ceku was arrested in Colombian city of Cartagena on Wednesday, based on a Serbian arrest warrant for crimes allegedly committed against Serbs and other non-Albanians during Kosovo's rebellion against Serbian rule in 1999. He has been accused by Serbian authorities of war crimes. However, Colombian authorities said that according to local law, Ceku could not be extradited to Serbia for acts committed before 2005. The authorities instead extradited Ceku to France and banned his re-entry for ten years. Paris, in turn, allowed him to travel to Croatia because he has a Croatian passport. Ceku fought on Croatian side against the Yugoslav army in 1991-1995 war that followed the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and acquired a rank of general in the Croatian army.

IV. Bosnian minister defends NATO role, Serbs critical

Bosnia's defense minister on Friday defended the country's decision to send troops to join NATO exercises in Georgia, a move that has provoked new tension with the Bosnian Serb leadership. The international peace envoy in Bosnia and the U.S. embassy also weighed in on the dispute with unusually strong criticism Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik. Bosnian Serbs are allies of Serbia, which boycotted this week's NATO exercises, condemned by its ally Russia. "Bosnia has chosen the path of Euro-Atlantic integration that sometimes includes difficult decisions with short-term effects but long-term benefits," Defense Minister Selmo Cikotic said about the decision to join the war games. "Any withdrawal would bring more harm then benefits." Dodik on Thursday urged Bosnian Serb members of the 16-strong army unit not to travel to Georgia.

V. Turkey plays politics with EU pipeline scheme

Turkish President Abdullah Gul signed a declaration promising to close an inter-governmental agreement (IGA) in June on building the Nabucco gas pipeline through his country. But he linked the IGA deal to the EU's opening the energy chapter of Turkey's accession negotiations, blocked by Cyprus due to a long-standing territorial dispute. "Turkey is not formally linking Nabucco to Cyprus blocking the energy chapter in the Council [the EU member states' secretariat], but it is part of their understanding of the issue," he said. "It is a political play within the Council."

VI. Turkish consul's alleged anti-German comments spark tempest

At the centre of the controversy is the ongoing campaign to save one of the world's oldest Christian monasteries, Mor Gabriel, in south-eastern Anatolia, where the Orthodox institution is enmeshed in a land dispute with local villagers. Supporters of the monastery invited Kivanc to the lunch. Despite a request that the meeting be kept confidential, participants made a record from memory, in which Kivanc is quoted as saying that if Germans had their way, they would tattoo a "T" on everyone from Turkey and do to them what the Nazis did to the Jews. If you cut open a German, Kivanc is alleged to have said, the spilled blood would be brown - the colour associated with Germany's Nazis. Kivanc is said to have concluded that Germans should not be trusted, and that Turkey was the only country that would protect all the Turkish people living in Germany.

VII. Jerusalem Affairs: Marketing the Holy Land

Israel has the sun; it has beaches, and beautiful girls in bikinis. But all of those assets - which are available elsewhere, and often at a lower cost - are "by-products," and not "the reason why" most tourists come here. "What we have that no one else has is the Holy Land, with Jerusalem at its center." Seeking to hone in on the three key tourist groups - evangelicals, Catholics and Russian Orthodox - planning a worldwide tour this summer to meet with key evangelical and Catholic leaders this summer to promote tourism.