I. TEHRANTIMES - Erdogan slams Sarkozy over Turkey's EU bid
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized French President Nicolas Sarkozy of his opposition to Turkey's bid to join the European Union (EU) in his interview with Euronews channel on Sunday. Pointing to the French president's stance regarding Turkey's EU bid, Erdogan said, “no matter what they do, or what kind of obstacles they put in front of us, we will keep walking, patiently.” Turkey first applied for associate membership in the European Economic Community, a now defunct international organization formed during European countries' integration process in 1959. The EU agreed to launch accession talks with Turkey in October 2005, but progress was slow. Countries hoping to join the bloc must fulfill EU requirements in 35 policy negotiating areas, or chapters. Ankara has so far formally opened 11 chapters, of which it has provisionally completed negotiations on just one, science and research. The 27-nation bloc has also urged Ankara to normalize relations with Cyprus and speed up reforms to improve human rights and democracy.
II. KATHIMERINI - Turks asked to help at border
Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis has written to Turkey’s Interior Minister Besir Atalay, asking for Ankara’s help with Greece’s efforts to curb a seemingly relentless wave of migrants entering Greece illegally in a bid to get to Europe, it emerged yesterday. “Only systematic and close cooperation between Greece and Turkey can curb the flow of illegal immigration to the European Union,” Chrysochoidis reportedly wrote in the letter. According to sources, Chrysochoidis has invited Atalay to Athens to discuss a set of proposals. These include the closer cooperation of Greek and Turkish coast guard officials to ensure that a bilateral pact for the repatriation of migrants is enforced. Turkish vessels currently make no effort to stop smuggling ships, the Greek coast guard says. Chrysochoidis plans to discuss the enforcement of the bilateral repatriation pact as well as pacts between Turkey and the European Union and with countries of migrants’ origin, such as Pakistan and Afghanistan.
UN mediator in the Greece-Macedonia name dispute, Matthew Nimetz, informed authorities in Skopje and Athens that in two weeks he is to meet with countries’ negotiators on the issue – Zoran Jolevski and Adamantios Vasilakis, Macedonian online news edition Forum reports, citing its own private sources from the government. The media also remarks that it is still not clear which of the countries Nimetz is to visit first – Greece or Macedonia, but according to a statement of Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, made a couple of days ago, it is expected for Nimetz to introduce new ideas. According to Forum’s sources, Macedonia will inform the UN diplomat that it will not accept a solution that requires change in the Constitution, neither will it agree on blackmailing on behalf of Greece over change of Macedonia’s identity, nation and language.
IV. BALKANS - Most EU hopefuls face long wait to membership
Stefan Fuele, who is expected to become the European Union's enlargement commissioner, has reaffirmed the bloc's commitment to taking in new members during parliamentary hearings. But most countries hoping to join the 27-country bloc face a long wait. Below are brief portraits of countries looking to join the European Union, the progress they have made so far in their bids and the challenges they face. ALBANIA: applied for candidate status in April 2009. It will be able to start full membership talks only once the European Commission has assessed its readiness, a process which can take years. BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: signed its Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU in June 2008, the first step towards entry. But any hopes of joining the EU are on hold as long as ethnic and political divisions prevent meaningful reforms in Bosnia. That situation is unlikely to change while the threat of violence remains between Bosnia's Muslim population and Orthodox Serbs. CROATIA: hopes to conclude negotiations with the EU in 2010 and join the bloc in 2012. But it must do more to tackle corruption and organised crime, strengthen the judicial system and cut state subsidies to loss-making industries. Zagreb must also prove it is cooperating fully with the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which has requested documents that Croatia has not yet provided. ICELAND: expects to be able to start formal entry negotiations early this year. It applied to join in 2009 after the collapse of its banking system devastated the economy. KOSOVO: In May 2009, Kosovo signed an Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) with the EU. Kosovo needs to strengthen its judiciary and do far more to fight organised crime and graft. The United States and more than 60 other countries have recognised Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia but some EU member states, including EU president Spain, have not. Serbia opposes Kosovo's independence. FYROMACEDONIA: is waiting to start accession negotiations after the European Commission last year recommended the start of talks, five years after Macedonia applied for membership. Its bid may be delayed because of a dispute with Greece over the name Macedonia, which is also the name of a northern Greek province. This dispute has prevented the country joining NATO. MONTENEGRO: a former Yugoslav republic, filed its EU membership application in December. The EU Council of Ministers has yet to decide whether to accept it and open negotiations. SERBIA: applied for membership in December. TURKEY: started EU entry negotiations in 2005 but talks are suspended in several policy areas because of Turkey's failure to open its ports and airports to EU-member Cyprus. Its membership is a divisive issue in Europe. Critics say cultural differences with the predominantly Muslim state will hamper integration. Turkey also has to introduce economic and political reforms and improve its human rights record.
V. B92 - Bosnia: Police raid Wahhabi village
Police in Bosnia-Herzegovina this Tuesday blocked a village near the town of Brčko where Wahhabis reside. Bosnia’s law enforcement and various other agencies officers detained more than ten Wahhabis, including women, and brought them in for questioning, reports said. A large cache of mostly hunting weapons were also found and confiscated in Gornja Maoča today. Police searched another location, in the Gornji Rahić area, also close to Brčko, seizing computers, cell phones and other equipment from the home of a Wahhabi there. Earlier today, local media reported that police were looking for people who pose a threat to security and Bosnia's constitutional order. Wahhabis are members of a radical Islamist sect. Some 600 state and entity police and security agency officials blocked off the village of Gornja Maoča on Tuesday morning, which has the largest Wahhabi community in Bosnia. The police operation, dubbed Light, is described as the largest in the country since 1995. Bosnia’s federal television reported that this is a large police action aimed at uncovering the identity of persons who represent a security threat to the country. Gornja Maoča is a completely isolated village where the laws of Bosnia-Herzegovina are not in effect. The village is organized according to Sharia law. The road that leads to Gornja Maoča is almost completely unpassable and all of the road signs pointing towards the village are in Arabic. Most of the homes there fly black Islamic flags, and the children study according to the education system of the country of Jordan.
The former US Treasury secretary has accused Russia of trying to undermine the American economy shortly before the global recession. Henry Paulson's newly released memoirs claim Moscow approached China with a plan to devalue the assets of America's key mortgage companies by dumping bonds. It is highly unlikely that Moscow was trying to take advantage of the situation by devaluing the assets of the American companies Russia owned in 2008, believes Vladimir Ismailov, chief financial officer of the Moscow School of Management “Skolkovo”, simply because the timing of the “plot” coincided with Georgia’s intervention in South Ossetia. “During those days, the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia was probably the main conversation topic in Russia’s White House,” said Ismailov. Obviously, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin kept an eye on the economic situation and the financial markets, but it is doubtful it could be his prime focus at the time, added the economist, saying that he would not be surprised if the US – in the guise of Henry Paulson – will try to the blame for the crisis on some other countries as well, not just Russia. Ivan Eland, senior fellow at the Independent Institute in the U.S. says the main problem is not whether there was a deal, but that America got itself to the point where this was possible. Andrew Leung, an International and Independent China Specialist, thinks despite the fact that there is no way to verify these allegations, they might be the truth. “I would not be surprised if these allegations have a degree truth because at that time the relations between the United States and Russia was at a very very low point because of the Georgian situation,” Leung told RT. “But in terms of the dumping of these bonds, I think, as far as China is concerned, China of course would be the first to get hurt, because China has gotten a lot of investment in the US treasuries and [that] represents a large proportion of China’s foreign currency reserve.”
When he moved back home here 12 years ago, the Rev. Moses Berry wanted to settle down to small-town life with his wife and two children. He did not intend to become a one-man racial reconciliation committee. But some residents of this nearly all-white, rural town of 1,400 people 15 miles west of Springfield say that he has done just that. By founding a black history museum here, cleaning up his family’s cemetery and telling his family’s sometimes controversial story, beginning with its roots in slavery, Father Moses, as everyone calls him — an African-American, Orthodox Christian priest in a flowing black cassock — has tried to remind people of a part of the region’s often-forgotten past, and to open up hearts and minds along the way. Father Moses, 59, said he had spent much of his life on a spiritual quest that began in San Francisco in the late 1960s, included nearly a year in jail in Missouri on a drug charge that was later thrown out, and took a positive turn with his conversion to Orthodox Christianity. He was ordained, first in 1988 by an Orthodox church that he now considers “unauthentic” and in 2000 by the Orthodox Church in America. When he returned here in 1998, after the death of an uncle who had willed him a 40-acre family farm, he had no intention of starting an Orthodox church in a town already served by 10 Christian churches of various denominations, let alone opening a black history museum. After he told a few friends that he wanted to have a prayer service in a shed at the cemetery, and a dozen people showed up, he decided to start the Theotokos “Unexpected Joy” Orthodox Christian Church. It has grown into a congregation with about 50 members that holds services in a new cypress building on three acres of his farm. The historical work came about just as unexpectedly, he said, when he started showing the memorabilia his family had collected over the years, and people responded positively. For Father Moses, his church and his historical work are inextricably linked. “It’s all bound up in my faith,” he said. “That is, that we are all children of God and that we do have a shared heritage and not just a national heritage.” The work has not been easy. When he first broached the idea of the museum, some family members and friends said it might be a dangerous undertaking for a black man in a nearly all-white town — even if it was his hometown and he was a priest. The museum opened in 2002, in an 875-square-foot storefront downtown. Father Moses personally escorts visitors through the museum, showing his family’s photos on the walls and explaining the history behind each, including his account of how his great-grandmother Marie Boone, who was of mixed race, was born a slave, even though her father was Nathan Boone, an account that is disputed by some white Boone relatives. There are quilts Marie Boone made to help those traveling north on the Underground Railroad and a slave neck iron that Father Moses’ great-grandfather kept after he was freed during the Civil War. Father Moses always puts the eight-pound iron around his own neck first, then offers to put it around the visitor’s. “I don’t want other people to run this museum because it’s too delicate, this issue of slavery,” he said. “I’ve tried having other people run this, but they get stuck on, ‘Oh, this is a horrible thing the white man did,’ which causes resentment. I want to explain it and bring them from suffering to freedom.” To read more about the Orthodox Church in America, click here; or to read more about Fr. Moses Berry's church, Theotokos "Unexpected Joy" Orthodox Church, click here; and to read more about the Ozarks Afro-American Heritage Museum, click here .