The European Union is a club with a long line out the door. Just ask Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, or Turkey. But for one Balkan country, the biggest problem is showing the right ID at the velvet rope. Seven former communist countries were able to enter both NATO and the EU by the end of the Bush years. But last year the Greek government blocked the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia from joining NATO, citing bad neighborly relations, and is determined to torpedo its EU bid as well. The reason? It's all in a name. FYROM, perhaps due to the unwieldiness of its acronym, has tried to enter as just "Macedonia," the name of the ancient empire of Alexander the Great. But Greece also has a northern province called "Macedonia" and worries that Skopje has expansionist ambitions. Ethnic Albanians, Turks, Roma, Serbians, Bulgarians, and Greeks are all packed together in a state the size of Vermont. Last month, the government unveiled plans to erect an $8 million, 72-foot statue of Alexander the Great atop his horse, Bucephalus, in the capital square. Never mind that the historical Alexander's actual capital was located inside modern Greece. More troubling are the maps in "Macedonian" textbooks that show their ancestral homeland stretching far into present-day Greece (as well as Bulgaria and Albania) and describe Thessaloniki, the capital of the northern province of Greece, as occupied territory. These are irredentist claims that justifiably worry the Greeks. Imagine how Californians would feel if Baja California wanted to be called simply "California"? Or how Swedes would react if Norway changed its name to "Scandinavia"? It's no accident that the EU and NATO both require prospective members to have no outstanding border disputes, but the government in Skopje has exacerbated tensions with Greece. It has renamed its airport, streets, and squares after Hellenistic heroes and interferes with the internal affairs of Greece by claiming there is a "Macedonian" ethnic minority living there under duress.
North Korea launched a scathing personal attack on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday after she likened the leadership in Pyongyang to "small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention." At a meeting of southeast Asian nations in Phuket, Thailand, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman blasted Clinton for what he called a "spate of vulgar remarks unbecoming for her position everywhere she went since she was sworn in," according to the state-run KCNA news agency. The spokesman called Clinton "by no means intelligent" and a "funny lady." "Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping," the statement said. The verbal tussle between the two countries culminated with the reclusive communist state making it clear that six-party nuclear talks, stalled for over a year, were effectively finished. Clinton had earlier warned that North Korea's refusal to discuss its nuclear program could escalate tensions and provoke an arms race in northeast Asia. "The United States and its allies and partners cannot accept a North Korea that tries to maintain nuclear weapons, to launch ballistic missiles or to proliferate nuclear materials," Clinton said. "We are committed to the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner." The United States has also expressed concern that military cooperation between North Korea and Myanmar could destabilize the region.
Archaeologists in Cyprus found evidence that inhabitants of the Mediterranean island may have abandoned a nomadic lifestyle for agriculture-based settlements earlier than previously believed. The excavations at the Politiko-Troullia site, near the capital Nicosia, unearthed a series of households around a communal courtyard, and proof of intensive animal husbandry and crop-processing. The dig revealed copper metallurgy and sophisticated ceramic technology during the middle part of the Bronze Age, or between 4,000 and 3,500 years ago. Cyprus, the third-largest island in the Mediterranean, is thought to have been first settled around 8,800 B.C.
Israel on Thursday rejected calls by France to freeze Jewish settlement building and to reopen border crossings into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. "A solution to the settlements can only be reached through a comprehensive and final peace agreement," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP. "In order to promote peace, France would do well to persuade the Palestinian Authority to resume negotiations" with Israel which have been frozen since the end of last year, he added. Palmor said Israel's blockade of Gaza was the result of "the state of war imposed by Hamas" as well as the "detention for more than three years of (Israeli-French) soldier Gilad Shalit." Shalit was captured by militants from Hamas and two smaller groups who had tunnelled out of Gaza on June 25, 2006 and attacked an army post, killing two other soldiers. Israel's ambassador to France Daniel Shek was summoned to the French foreign ministry on Thursday, where the head of political affairs Gerard Araud served him with the demands. Araud told the envoy that Paris wants "an immediate freeze on settlement activities, including in east Jerusalem," ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said. Israel must also re-open border crossings into Gaza blocked since the Islamist Hamas took power in 2007, "on a regular basis to allow Gaza to rebuild itself and life to return to normal," Chevallier said. Israel has defied international criticism of plans to build 20 new apartments on the site of a former hotel in the Arab sector of Jerusalem and has rejected calls from the United States, the European Union and Russia to freeze settlements in east Jerusalem.
United Nations experts are set to censure energy-rich Azerbaijan over its human rights record after suggesting it was in denial over violations of global rights pacts. "After comments made by committee members this week, it is clear they are going to be tough over attacks on independent journalists, on freedom of expression and on state control of judges," said one official, who asked not to be named. The 18-member committee, a body made up of independent academics and lawyers from developed and developing countries, met on Monday and Tuesday to quiz an Azeri government team on what was happening. An official U.N. report on the session said the committee questioned the team on killings and arrests of journalists and suicides of others in police custody, on bans on opposition rallies, on violence against women and attacks on homosexuals. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with offices in Baku, including the chairman of an Azeri group on protection of journalists, told reporters after the session that the country appeared sliding back to Soviet-era practices. The committee session was held as a top-level delegation from the European Union, with which Azerbaijan is seeking to boost economic relations especially in the energy sector, was expressing alarm in Baku about rights. But at a Geneva news conference, NGOs said they feared the EU was unlikely to go beyond words in its criticism of Azerbaijan, a key supplier of oil and gas from Caspian Sea fields offering an alternative to energy from Russia. "In our experience, the countries most likely to take a strong stance are the United States and (non-EU member) Norway -- they have their own oil," said Florian Irminger of the Geneva-based Human Rights House Foundation.
Iceland formally applied Thursday to join the European Union but said it would not accept a "rotten deal" for its fishing industry, a key sector of the island nation's troubled economy. The small North Atlantic country of 320,000 residents already meets most of the EU membership criteria, but tough negotiations await over fishing rights. The independent-minded Icelanders are concerned that the 27-nation bloc's common fisheries policy would give other European fleets access to Iceland's rich waters. In 2007, fishing employed 4 percent of Iceland's work force, just over 7,000 people. But seafood accounted for almost half of Iceland's exports and 10 percent of its gross domestic product. The EU has to approve the accession, after which Iceland would have to hold a referendum on membership. The fishing issue is not Iceland's only hurdle, however. The Icelandic Parliament, which only narrowly approved the EU application, has yet to approve an international agreement to repay Dutch and British depositors who put money in the offshore division of failed Icelandic bank Landsbanki. If the assembly says 'no' to the deal it will complicate Iceland's membership talks with the EU.
The head of EU enlargement has said that the accession process of Turkey also depends on the Halki school, an institution for the formation of the clergy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, closed since 1971. The government remains silent, while the debate grows in the media. The real issue is the recognition of the status of the Patriarchate. It all began when Oli Rehn, head of EU enlargement, and thus also of Turkey's accession to the EU, in a meeting with journalists in Brussels, June 10 last, said that this process also takes into consideration the reopening of Halki. He also made known to press, concerns expressed to him by the Holy See regarding the level of religious freedom in Turkey. Influential journalists, writers and professors, like Baskin Oran, Murat Belge, Ali Birant, Kanlı and Orhan Kemal Cengiz, have come out in favour of the reopening. The latter, in an article in Today's Zaman entitled "Is the Ecumenical Patriarchate waiting for Godot?” describes, as never before, the shameful and persistent behaviour of the Turkish authorities, bent on the complete extinction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, through methods of persecution including insidious legislation, even arriving at accusing the Patriarchate because, in his opinion, it left its appeal to the court in Strasbourg too late and is guilty of trusting too much to the periodic promises made by the Turkish authorities. “In short it’s the same old story," says a senior lecturer in history, a Greek from Istanbul, Dimitri G., one of the last remaining members of the almost non existent Orthodox community in the city. “Every time the issue of Halki arises, particularly during the visits of Heads of State to Ankara, not least the recent visit of Obama, Ankara, caught unprepared by its interlocutors, raises the question of reciprocity with the Muslim community in Greece, and so it avoids dealing with the issue”. "But what kind of reciprocity are they speaking about?" continues Dimitri G. "In Greece there is a community of Greek citizens of Muslim religion about 140 thousand people of different ethnic origins: Turkish, Pomak (Slavs converted to Islam) and gypsies, who are flourishing, with clergy and mosques, Islamic schools and cultural activities, according to the dictates of religious freedom. All this funded by the Greek State and also by the EU, because they are nationals of an EU Member State. And rightly so. In Turkey, on the contrary, following the systematic purging of the past years, from 100 thousand souls that existed in 1923 - which according to the Treaty of Lausanne were to be treated as the Muslim minority in Greek Thrace, for the principle of numerical reciprocity, wanted and ordered by Turkish authorities themselves - we have been reduced to barely a 3 thousand. The historic status of the Ecumenical Patriarchate has never recognized and it must raise funds by its own means. The Mufti in Greece are public employees. And, again, is right. Therefore, any invocation of reciprocity from the Turkish side is unacceptable, because it is they who have deliberately and systematically violated it”. Father Distheos, head of external relations for the Ecumenical Patriarchate, a German citizen, but Greek of Constantinople, very esteemed in the international arena for his perspicacity, said in this regard to AsiaNews: "with all this fuss that has been created in the media regarding the possible reopening of Halki - magisterially orchestrated as is usual with the media in Turkey - there is the risk of obscuring the essence of the fundamental question, which is much more important. Namely that of the status of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Regarding Halki, the solution is simple: return to the status prior to 1971. It is up to the authorities to restore it”. As to the statements of Prime Minister Erdogan that they had not received any request from those directly involved Father Dositheos reports that Patriarch Bartholomew on the occasion of courtesy visits made in 2007 both to President Gul and other Turkish authorities, he certainly raised all issues of concern, including that of Halki, and they "simply replied that they would take them into consideration..”.