CIA Director Leon Panetta warned Monday against making his agency a pawn in the nation’s partisan political battles, even as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claim that she was lied to by the CIA continues to reverberate in Washington. Last week, Pelosi accused the CIA of lying to her during a 2002 briefing about interrogation techniques. On Friday, Panetta issued an unusual written statement to agency employees rebutting Pelosi’s claim, and Pelosi later backpedaled. Panetta again warned against making intelligence-related matters a political football. “What I’m most concerned about is that this stuff doesn’t become the kind of political issue that everything else becomes in Washington, D.C., where it becomes so divisive that it begins to interfere with the ability of these intelligence agencies to do our primary job which is to focus on the threats that face us today.”
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday warned Bosnia could again descend into violence unless its leadership takes steps to heal the ethnic divide. Biden arrived early on Tuesday hoping to bolster a country still plagued by instability and ethnic division 14 years after the end of Europe's worst conflict since World War Two. The United States brokered the 1995 peace deal that ended the war that killed 100,000 people, but the country remains divided between its two former adversaries, the Bosnian Serbs and the Muslim-Croat federation. As a U.S. senator during the 1992-95 war, Biden supported arming Bosnian Muslims in their fight against Bosnian Serbs, fuelling suspicion among Bosnian Serbs who fret Washington might seek to lessen their autonomy. War veterans organized peaceful protests in all towns across the Serb Republic at noon, lighting candles and complaining about discrimination against Bosnian Serbs. "With all due respect, and forgive me for saying this in your parliament, but this must stop," Biden said of the divide. The speech was not interrupted by applause.
A missile shield planned by the U.S. to protect Europe from a possible Iranian attack would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran could deploy, according to a study by U.S. and Russian experts. The report said Iran's current arsenal was derived from relatively unsophisticated North Korean missiles, which in turn were modified versions of a Russian submarine-launched missile that dates from the 1950s. If Iran was to build a nuclear-capable missile that could strike Europe, the defense shield proposed by the United States "could not engage that missile," the report says. "The urgent task, therefore, is for Russia and the United States (and other states) to work closely together to seek, by diplomatic and political means, a resolution of the crisis surrounding the Iranian nuclear program," it adds, noting that this "could be helped if the issue of European missile defense were set aside."
The Greek section of South Stream, a Moscow-backed pipeline project to carry natural gas from Russia to Southeast Europe, will cost up to 1 billion euros ($1.36 billion), Greek officials said on Tuesday. "It will cost between 700 million and 1 billion euros, depending on which route the pipeline takes through Greece." Last week DESFA and Gazprom agreed to set up a joint venture with equal stakes, which will build the Greek section of the pipeline from the Bulgarian-Greek border to Greece's western coast. Russia, Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Hungary and Italy are involved in the project, a rival to the European Union-backed Nabucco pipeline which aims to reduce Europe's reliance on Russia for its energy supplies.
Cypriot donkeys are a particularly stubborn lot. Decades after machines replaced them as the backbone of the farming economy, donkeys just refuse to bow out. Wild herds have overrun a remote part of the island, trampling crops, scaring drivers and giving authorities a headache over what to do. The invasion has pitted village communities against environmental activists. The beasts are a peculiar remnant of war, abandoned in 1974 by Greek Cypriot farmers fleeing an invading Turkish army. Despite a lack of human care, the animals have multiplied and thrived in the sparsely populated Karpas peninsula, a largely unspoiled sliver of land sticking out of the Mediterranean island's northeastern edge.
Ferdi Celep sat on a sofa surrounded by the debris of his life, watching city workers empty clothes and furniture from a row of two dozen colourful houses huddled against the Byzantine battlements of Istanbul's old city. Within hours, the last remnants of a thousand years of Rom history were wiped out by bulldozers. Anti-riot police supervised this final phase last week of the demolition of Sulukule, a neighborhood on the European bank of Istanbul once home to a vibrant community of musicians and artists whose rhythmic songs and belly dancing served as the city's musical heart. "A big thank you to the municipality. Thanks to them I will sleep on the street with my wife, my new-born child and the four-year-old. We have no where to go."
In Istanbul, the Head of State is planned to meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and confirm the continuation of Ukraine's dialogue with the Patriarch of Constantinople launched last year. According to the programme of his visit, the President of Ukraine will also meet Secretary General of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos and Secretary General of the BSEC Parliamentary Assembly Alexey Kudryavtsev. Viktor Yushchenko will also attend the UEFA Cup final between Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine) and Werder Bremen (Germany).