Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin praised the hospitality and openness of U.S. former President George W. Bush in a telegramme sent hours before meeting his successor Barack Obama. "During the last years we have been working on strengthening Russia-U.S. cooperation. Although there were differences between our countries, I always valued your openness and sincerity," Putin said, congratulating Bush on his 63rd birthday on July 6. "With special warmth I recall your hospitality in the Crawford ranch and your family estate in Kennebunkport," Putin wrote, referring to their 2007 meeting at the Bush family vacation home when the two leaders went fishing and ate lobster. Bush had said he "was able to get a sense of his soul" when he first met Putin and since then their warm rapport has helped limit the damage from a series of rows that returned ties between their administrations to chilly Cold War lows. On Tuesday, Putin, who stepped down as president last year but remains the most influential Russian politician, invited Obama for a "Russian-style" breakfast during their first meeting at Putin's forest residence outside Moscow. Russian agencies, quoting the government's press service, said Putin treated Obama to black caviar with sour cream, smoked beluga with pancakes and tea made in the traditional Russian samovar, a big coal-fired kettle.
Barack Obama ladled on the sugar before delivering the pill. He was lyrical on Russian contributions to the arts and sciences and its war-time suffering. Russia, he said, was a mighty river leaving its eternal mark on the global landscape. Then the medication was drip-fed into the message. Firstly, Russia and the US should co-operate to contain Iran and North Korea's nuclear programme because arms races in the Middle East and east Asia were in nobody's interests. That is more or less digestible in Moscow. The Russian government agrees wholeheartedly on that principle. They are alarmed. It is just the methods – and in particular the usefulness of sanctions – that are in dispute. The Russians agree too that al-Qaida and other jihadist movements are a significant common threat, as Obama insisted this morning in his New Economic School speech. That is why Moscow has agreed to allow the US to use Russian routes to supply its forces in Afghanistan. The bitterest pill came later and was aimed at Russia's sorest spot: its "near abroad". Moscow hates to be lectured to about countries of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, where Russia has centuries of history and lots of unfinished business. It sees the prospect of Nato enlargement into Ukraine and Georgia as a hostile act of encirclement. Russians bristle at Obama's suggestion that the idea of "spheres of influence" is a 19th-century oddity. "That's easy for you to say," is the common Russian response to such suggestions. The US is not surrounded by a foreign alliance. It has not in living memory had the experience of being brutally invaded. And Washington is, after all, in a state of constant friction with Cuba, the one persistently hostile country in its hemisphere. Obama's claim that "in 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonising other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over" will have drawn mirthless laughter in Moscow. That is precisely how many Russians see the US behaving around the world, particularly in the Middle East. If national sovereignty is paramount in Georgia, they routinely ask, why not in Serbia and Kosovo? The speech was not televised on the major Russian channels and the applause inside the lecture hall was polite. Russia is not vulnerable to Obamania. There are hard-nosed deals to be done over nuclear weapons, Afghanistan and possibly Iran. But the visceral attachment to Russia's "near abroad" cannot be severed by a new face and some sweet rhetoric.
NATO members need to reach consensus on which threats tie them together as they look toward the future, said outgoing Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer Tuesday. "NATO cannot thrive as an organization which is trying to take care of too many individual threats at the same time, becoming a sort of jack of all trades, but master of none," he said. "I believe we have allowed NATO to evolve in many different directions, but without producing a 21 century mission statement that make it clear to our public why they still need NATO and what it offers that others organizations do not." Terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction are two threats de Hoop Scheffer sees, both of them more imminent than an invasion of a NATO country. He said there is a sense that the easing of tensions caused by the Iraq war and the change of government in the United States means that all 28 NATO members are on the same page with threat assessment. But, in actuality, most members have different views on what threats. "I, personally, am not so sure," said de Hoop Scheffer. "In my time as secretary general, it has been clear to me that allies have very diverging perceptions on the threats we face." He cited different approaches to Russia and the ongoing operations in Afghanistan as two topics that, in some ways, divide the organization. Part of the process of forging unity should be to restate NATO's joint defence goals, especially to its newer Eastern European members, he said. On a separate note, de Hoop Scheffer called on NATO and the European Union to no longer allow tensions between Turkey and Cyprus to disrupt cooperation between the two groups. Turkey and Cyprus have been engaged in a long-running dispute about the status of northern Cyprus. Turkey is a member of NATO while Cyprus is a member of the EU, complicating relations between the two groups. De Hoop Scheffer is set to step down from his position at the end of the month to be replaced by former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
Greek President Karolos Papoulias on Thursday arrived here for an official visit, where he was warmly greeted by his Serbian counterpart Boris Tadic, who expressed his country's thanks for Athens' standing position regarding the Kosovo issue. "It is with truly great satisfaction, not just personally as president of the country, but on behalf of the entire Serbian people, that the president of the Hellenic Republic is here today in Serbia," Tadic said in greeting the Greek head of state... Greece has not recognised the self-proclaimed independence of Kosovo, and for Serbia this is particularly significant," he added. Papoulias emphasised that Athens considers Serbia as a strategic partner and preferred interlocutor. "(It) is a country that can and should play a stabilising role and substantially contribute to the development and prosperity of the entire region ... It is with great joy that I am here today in Belgrade, in Serbia, a friend and neighbour." He said Serbia's European prospects dominated talks with Tadic, reiterating Greece's standing foreign policy position of supporting Serbia's accession to the European family "as soon as possible, a place where it deservedly belongs." Along these lines, he said Greece is actively backing the ongoing initiative within the EU to lift visa restrictions for Serbian nationals wishing to travel to the Union, while predicting that the matter will be resolved, possibly, within the year. "Regarding the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo, the Greek stance is well known. My country has always been a supporter of the need for a mutually acceptable solution, one based on international law and derived via dialogue and negotiations; a solution that will respect the human rights and minority rights and will not create victors and vanquished."
Die-hard smokers in Cyprus will finally have to curb the habit when one of the last EU smoking havens imposes a January 1 ban on puffing in public places. Lawmakers are poised to pass tough new regulations banning smoking in public places, replacing an existing law which is regularly flouted. Come January 1, smoking will be prohibited in restaurants, bars, nightclubs and workplaces, with planned hefty fines for those caught having a puff. Cyprus is just below the EU-27 average with 29 per cent of the population smoking, according to a 2008 European poll. However the findings of a state survey earlier this year showed Cypriot children to have alarming levels of nicotine in their blood. While the island banned smoking in public places in 2002, the existing law is not strictly enforced and Cyprus ranks second to neighboring Greece with the percentage of the population exposed to smoking at work at 45 per cent. Smokers still light up in bars and nightclubs. Lawmakers have insisted that there would be no half measures or loopholes in the new legislation that would allow it to become exploited by businesses eager to bend the rules. Some Cypriots doubt whether the law could ever be enforced. "Like so many other things in our society, we will probably not follow the rules and neither will the adequate checks exist," 21-year-old Andreas Christodoulides said. The proposed legislation on tobacco smoking in Cyprus threatens hefty fines for those flouting the ban, with smokers and businesses facing fines of up to 2,000 euros for breaking the law.
Calvinism, women priests, and the filioque must go before the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) establishes full Eucharistic fellowship with the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) and recognizes the validity of Anglican orders, His Beatitude Jonah, the Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada, told the ACNA’s founding convocation last week. To complete the work of St Tikhon who hoped the Episcopal Church could be “declared a fellow Orthodox church,” he proposed a dialogue whose goal was a “unity in faith” where it “can be celebrated together in the sacrament of the Eucharist.” To get there, “there are some issues though, we have to resolve,” he said. Anglicans must make a make a “full affirmation” of the seven ecumenical creeds. It must “return the [Nicene] creed to its original form,” removing the filioque. In 589, the Third Council of Toledo added the phrase "and from the Son" – the filioque -- to the Nicene Creed. Credo in Spiritum Sanctum qui ex patre filioque procedit ("I believe in the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and from the Son"). Whilst used by Roman Catholics, Anglicans and most Protestant churches, the addition was rejected by the Orthodox Church. Jonah also asked Anglicans to abjure the heresies of Rome and “reject papal ecclesiology, papal infallibility” and the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. He also said that for the Orthodox, “Calvinism is a condemned heresy” and called for a rejection of the Protestant urge towards iconoclasm --- the rejection of the place and power of icons in Christian life. For a “full restoration” and intercommunion “the issue of the ordination of women has to be resolved,” he said. “I believe in women’s ministry,” he said, “but I do not believe it is in the presbyterate and the episcopacy” as this was the “universal position of the Greek, Roman and non Chalcedonian churches.” These differences, however should be weighed against a common apostolic heritage and common moral ethic, Jonah said. Reactions from the ACNA delegates broke along party lines with one Fort Worth delegate stating there was hardly anything the OCA had proposed that Anglo-Catholics could not accept. However, an AMiA delegate was less sanguine saying rejecting Calvinism was tantamount to rejecting Anglicanism. Turning back on women’s orders was also problematic for many of the evangelical delegates, and is a point of contention within the new province. Archbishop Robert Duncan noted that it was “hard to hear the words” offered by Jonah “of the things that separate us from the Orthodox, because the things that separate us from them separate us from one another.” In his sermon following his investiture as archbishop of the ACNA, Archbishop Duncan said, “We are Calvinist Anglicans. Right? And we are not all agreed about that. And there are women in holy orders and we are not agreed about that. The Lord has brought us together not papering over the differences but to stand and be prepared to talk with brothers and sisters about the truth and unity that comes in Jesus Christ.”
The spiritual leaders of the Orthodox Christian churches in Istanbul and Russia led Sunday prayers together in a show of unity after years of jostling for influence. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I said the two churches must overcome differences, though he stressed his church's status as "first among equals" with the historic role of coordinating between the various Orthodox branches, of which Russia's is the largest. "From time to time clouds have temporarily overshadowed ties between the brethren churches," Bartholomew said after the service, addressing newly elected Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. "These ... must immediately be sent to their places in the pages of history." The two churches have been wrangling for influence over Soviet republics Estonia and Ukraine, with the Moscow Patriarchate struggling to maintain control over all 95 million of the Orthodox believers it claims, out of the world's 250 million Orthodox. The Russian church does not recognize the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church as an autonomous canonical structure, claiming it was created in 1996 by the Istanbul Ecumenical Patriarchate on territory already controlled by Moscow. More recently, the Ukrainian church has been seeking the Istanbul Patriarchate's support for its desired independence from the Moscow Patriarchate after centuries of Russian influence. It is unclear if any of the Moscow Patriarchate's policies might change under Kirill, who was elected in January after the death in December of Moscow Patriarch Alexy II. Alexy had been leader of the Russian church since 1990. The Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul dates from the Orthodox Greek Byzantine Empire, which collapsed when the Muslim Ottoman Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople, today's Istanbul, in 1453. The Istanbul Patriarchate directly controls several churches including the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.