Victims of Georgia's attack on South Ossetia in August 2008 may now have an EU-approved document on their hands if they want their cases to be heard at the international criminal court in The Hague. On Thursday the European Parliament supported the findings of a special report which says Georgia “triggered the war” with heavy artillery attack on Tskhinval. It adds that this attack was not an isolated event, but the culmination of years of mounting tensions, for which all sides bear responsibility. Members of the parliament also voted to increase and further support the EU mission in the Caucasus.
II. RADIOSRBIJA - Excellent relations between Serbia and Cyprus
Serbian President Boris Tadić and his Cypriot counterpart Dimitris Hristofias said in Nicosia today the two countries have traditionally excellent relations and consistently support each other in the preservation of territorial integrity. Such relations were additionally strengthened in the years that were hard for Serbia, said Tadic and added Cyprus supports Serbia in its EU integrations and in the defence of its sovereignty and territorial integrity in Kosmet. Cyprus is one of the five EU states that have not recognized the self-proclaimed independence of Kosovo. The Cypriot president said Cyprus would continue extending support to Serbia, adding that the admission of all West Balkan states to the EU would considerably contribute to the stabilization of circumstances in the region. The two presidents stressed it is necessary to intensify mutual economic relations, as last year the trade exchange was not at a satisfactory level.
III. FOCUS - Greece won’t lift barrier for FYROMacedonia
Greek MEP Georgios Komutsakos said that his country will not lift the blockade before Macedonia’s pre-accession talks in the EU until the name dispute is solved, Macedonian Vecer daily reports. According to the MEP, who is former spokesperson of the Greek Foreign Ministry, the meetings between Macedonian and Greek prime ministers – Nikola Gruevski and Georgios Papandreou, are a positive thing but they bring no positive outcome. “There are meetings and talks but no change in the positions,” Komutsakos remarked.
IV. JPOST - Netanyahu pushes for direct talks
Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday met with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, as the Israel-Palestinian proximity talks entered their second round. "Israel hopes that the Palestinians will also try to create a positive atmosphere, and will not try to make international case against Israel, for example the actions they took against Israel to prevent their acceptance to the OECD," Netanyahu’s communications adviser Nir Hefetz said in a statement." Netanyahu has expressed his interest in progressing the proximity talks, so they can reach direct talks as soon as possible," Hefetz added.
As countries debate on a nuclear-free Middle East at a UN conference in New York, the US has declassified a secret report revealing its atomic dealings with Israel in the 1950s-1960s. Political analyst Mitchell Barak believes that supporting Israel’s nuclear weapon capability is still one of Washington’s priorities. “I don’t think it is a secret that it is in the best interest of the United States that Israel possess some nuclear capability,” political analyst Mitchell Barak said. “It is the most stable thing for the region and it will actually help the surrounding countries as well.”
Fresh UN sanctions against Iran along with additional measures taken by governments could force Tehran to change its stance on uranium enrichment, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. He said the proposed sanctions would underscore Iran's isolation and also provide a "legal platform" for countries and organizations, including the European Union, to take tough action against Tehran over its nuclear program. While previous UN resolutions had failed to alter Tehran's policy, "the ratcheting up of what other countries are willing to do on their own using the resolution as a basis does have the potential to change behavior." Iran's elaborate efforts to block the UN Security Council resolution suggested Tehran was worried about the effect of anoher round of sanctions, the defense secretary said. "If the resolution did not have an impact in Iran, it's not clear to me why the Iranians would have made -- are making and have been making such an extraordinary effort to prevent it from being passed," Gates said. "If it were irrelevant as far as they were concerned, I don't think you'd see them expending the kind of diplomatic and other kinds of energy to try and prevent its passage." The fourth round of sanctions would expand an existing arms embargo, measures against Iran's banking sector and ban it from mining uranium and developing ballistic missiles overseas, according to a US official in New York. Gates said "the resolution provides a new legal platform that allows individual countries and organizations, such as the EU, to take significantly more stringent actions on their own that go way beyond, well beyond what the UN resolution calls for in and of itself." France expects a majority of the 15-member Security Council to support the resolution, diplomats said Thursday. Washington and its allies have dismissed a deal brokered by Turkey and Brazil in which Tehran agreed to send around half its stock of low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for more highly-enriched nuclear fuel.
VII. TIMESONLINE - Pope’s Cyprus visit may lead to summit with Russian Orthodox Church
There is growing speculation that the Pope’s visit to Cyprus next month for talks with Orthodox leaders could lead to a long-awaited summit between the pontiff and the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill I to heal the 11th-century schism between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity. In a move toward reconciliation today Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev of Volokolamsk, the head of external affairs for the Moscow Patriarchate, delivered a message of greetings from Patriarch Kirill at a concert of Russian music in the Vatican attended by the Pope. Chrysostomos II, the Orthodox Archbishop of Cyprus, said this week that he hoped to arrange a summit and offered Cyprus as a possible venue. His previous attempts to arrange a papal meeting with the late Patriarch Alexei II were unsuccessful. Metropolitan Hilarion said that there were still outstanding issues between Rome and Moscow, including tensions over the role of Greek Catholics in western Ukraine. “The theological dialogue still has a long way to go,” he said. However a summit meeting was “our desire, it is a hope, and we must work for it”, he said, adding that “People and times have changed”. The Vatican concert, the highlight of several days of “Russian spiritual culture” in Rome, was the fruit of a meeting last September between the Pope and Metropolitan Hilarion, at which they agreed to reinforce cultural links between Catholics and Orthodox Christians as a mark of “shared Christian values”. Metropolitan Hilarion said that an encounter between the Pope and the Patriarch “should be a historic event, not just because it is the first meeting between the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, but especially because such a meeting must be sign of the intention to move our relations forward”. Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, said that a summit would show an increasingly secularised world that the Western and Eastern churches “have the same positions on moral questions”. Archbishop Chrysostomos II this week called on the Orthodox faithful to stay calm during the Pope’s visit from 4-6 June and not to heed “provocative calls” for protests or demonstrations from “irresponsible elements”. He said that the visit posed “not even the slightest danger to our faith”, and rumours that he would sign a theological agreement with the Pope were untrue. Theological dialogue remained the responsibility of the joint Catholic-Orthodox Theological Committee.