A top secret report by a senior Norwegian diplomat on the performance of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been published in Norway. And the diplomat doesn't mince her words, saying that the South Korean secretary-general has failed the UN in many respects. Its not good timing either: He is due to visit Oslo in two weeks time. In the report, senior diplomat Mona Juul, the Norwegian ambassador to the UN, wrote that, "at a time when solutions by the UN and multilateral agencies are more necessary than ever to resolve global conflicts, Ban and the UN are conspicuous in their absence." Juul also wrote that Ban is "battling to show leadership." She said that the United Nations is having difficulty in dealing with the environmental agenda and that Ban has not demonstrated enough leadership during the global financial crisis. Political crises are not Ban's cup of tea either, according to Juul, a former Norwegian ambassador to Israel who played a leading role in brokering the 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. She added that his recent visit to Burma was a clear example of this. The Norwegian UN ambassador goes on to write that most other nations also feel increasingly negative towards Ban, who is half-way through his term. "The tone has changed among the many who felt he should be given more time, that he'd get better once he was warmed up and that comparisons with his charismatic predecessor were just not fair. The mood now is that the time for learning the ropes is over and that (his) lack of charisma is, in fact, a problem." With regard to Ban's personality, Juul also wrote that Ban is given to fits of rage that even experienced UN employees are finding hard to handle.
Turkish jet fighters violated Greek airspace on August 19 2009 in an incursion of more than 30 minutes, the latest in a series of multiple such incidents in recent months, according to Greek media reports. Greek website Zougla, quoted by Bulgarian news agency Focus, said that eight Turkish fighters entered Greek airspace over the island of Farmakonisi in the Aegean Sea. Four flew low and the group left after being intercepted by Greek aircraft. On August 10, Greek daily Kathimerini said that Athens expected Ankara to keep the tension in the Aegean high for the next few months, until the European Union decides in December as to how Turkey is progressing in its bid to join the bloc. "There have been a number of incidents, both in the air and at sea, in recent weeks that have heightened concerns of Greek diplomats about the attitude that Turkey will adopt over the coming months," Kathimerini said. During June and July, Turkish aircraft flew over Greek territory, including islands such as Agathonisi and Farmakonisi, 19 times. A total of 363 incursions into Athens’s Flight Information Region (FIR) were recorded and Greek jets were dispatched 58 times to ward off Turkish aircraft.
Greece's response to UN mediator Matthew Nimetz's latest proposal to resolve the long-standing name dispute between Athens and Skopje was not positive, local media reported on Wednesday (August 19th). Nimetz met on Tuesday in New York with Greek representative Adamantios Vassilakis. According to Greece's Mega TV, Vassilakis said Athens would not accept the proposed name "Republic of Northern Macedonia" even if it is to be used only in bilateral Greek-Macedonian relations. He reportedly insisted instead that the name should refer to a geographical location and should be used internationally.
There was consternation in the ranks of the Defense Ministry yesterday as sources told Kathimerini that a joint military exercise being conducted off the Dodecanese island of Kastellorizo by US, Israeli and Turkish forces had been described by Israeli military authorities as being in Turkish territory. According to Greek defense sources, the Israeli Defense Forces website stated that the exercise, code-named Reliant Mermaid, was “the tenth to be conducted in a Turkish search and rescue region in the eastern Mediterranean.” When Kathimerini accessed the IDF site late last night, the Turkish reference appeared to have been removed. Sources told Kathimerini that the reference had been posted on the Israeli site even though Israeli and US diplomats in Athens had been informed that the region in question falls within Greece’s sovereign domain.
On Aug. 19, police discovered a large cache of weapons in an oil storage tank in the village of Konculj in Bujanovac municipality, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said. He told BETA that the underground tank, which had been welded shut, contained explosives, rocket launchers, rifles, and ammunition. Dacic notified local Albanian leaders and representatives of the international community, KFOR, UNMIK, and EULEX in Kosovo of the seizure carried out by multiethnic police units. Stanisa Mihajlovic, an investigative judge from Vranje, told BETA that hiding such weapons is considered a terrorist act. He went on to say that police discovered the weapons, including three mortars, six rocket launchers, and a recoilless rifle, in Konculj, on the administrative boundary separating Kosovo from the rest of Serbia, early on Aug. 19. Officers also found three machine gun mounts, 21 anti-tank mines, 24 rockets, 150 mortar shells, 139 hand grenades, and 100,000 rounds of ammunition of various calibers. The weapons are believed to have been buried following the fighting in the area of late 2000 and early 2001. The ethnic Albanian village of Konculj was site of the headquarters of the terrorist Liberation Army of Presevo, Bujanovac, and Medvedja, which has since disbanded.
Russian authorities flew the suspected hijackers of the cargo vessel Arctic Sea to Moscow on Thursday and took them for interrogation, dismissing suggestions that the ship may have been carrying weapons. The Russian Navy tracked the ship into the Atlantic after what Moscow has termed an act of piracy and boarded it off the Cape Verde islands in the early hours of Monday, freeing the 15 Russian crewmen. The mass of conflicting details in a saga that began with the ship's apparent disappearance last month have sparked speculation that it may have been targeted because it was carrying a secret cargo of arms or even nuclear materials. The suspected pirates were flown to Russia's Chkalovsky military airfield from Cape Verde aboard an Ilyushin-76 aircraft, then whisked off to the Lefortovo high-security prison. Russia said the Arctic Sea was hijacked on July 24 off the coast of Sweden by eight armed men, who forced the crew to sail for Africa with its positioning systems switched off. The hijackers then threatened to blow up the ship if their ransom demands were not met, the Defence Ministry said, though it was unclear how much they had demanded. Maritime experts note that piracy has been extremely rare in northern Europe since the age of buccaneers in the 17th century. Russia has so far released no detailed account of why pirates would target a ship carrying a relatively low-value cargo of timber in some of the world's best policed seas.
Archbishop of the Church of Cyprus Chrysostomos II has protested the destruction and plundering of Cyprus’ religious sites in the northern Turkish-occupied part of the country and asked for the support of Poland’s Orthodox Church. The Archbishop, who continues his official visit to Poland at the invitation of Polish Orthodox Church leader, Metropolitan of Warsaw and All Poland Sawa, delivered a speech after a service held in the Cathedral of Saint Nicolas Biaystok and sought the support of the Polish Orthodox Church and the Polish politicians for Cyprus. “The ‘civilised’ humanity does not care about principles, freedom and justice. We ask help from you all. First of all in your prayers to God, and if possible, we ask for your intervention to the politicians in your country. A sister Orthodox Church is now faced with real danger for its survival”, the Archbishop stressed. He referred to the Turkish invasion against Cyprus in 1974 as well as to Turkey’s policy to bring illegally to the occupied areas of Cyprus Muslim Turkish settlers from Anatolia, thus changing the demographic structure of the island. The Archbishop said that more than 500 religious sites in the Turkish occupied areas have been converted into stables, stores, hen-houses, mosques and military camps.