Month: March 2017

Montenegro is one step closer to becoming NATO’s 29th member.

Ratification of the treaty on Montenegro’s admission into the alliance cleared a procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate Monday, setting the stage for a final vote later this week. Approving the treaty requires a two-thirds’ vote in the Senate, after which the president can ratify it.

Ninety-seven senators supported the measure.

“It [approval] will enhance our security. It will strengthen the alliance and it will send a strong message of resolve to Russia as it invades its neighbors and the international order,” Sen. Ben Cardin, D-MD, said. “No country outside the alliance gets a veto over who gets to join, especially Russia. So we must send a strong signal.”

A final vote is expected as early as Tuesday.

Tillerson supports addition to NATO

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter to the Senate pressing lawmakers to approve the treaty ahead of a summit scheduled for May that will include NATO heads of state and government.

“Montenegro’s participation in the May NATO summit as a full member, not an observer, will send a strong signal of transatlantic unity, and that no third parties have veto power over NATO decisions,” Tillerson wrote in the letter. He said Montenegro’s membership would give NATO a contiguous border along the Adriatic coast.

Montenegro is in the middle of a clash between the West and Russia over influence in the Balkans. The outcome could determine the way the region is heading: toward NATO and the European Union, or back to Russia’s sphere of influence.

Two senators against expansion

All 28 of NATO’s members must ratify Montenegro’s accession before it can formally join the alliance. Only three members have not finalized their approval. The vote in the U.S. Senate was blocked for months by two Republican senators, Rand Paul and Mike Lee, who oppose expanding the military alliance.

Paul spoke on the floor against ratification of Montenegro’s membership and NATO expansion.

“Admitting Montenegro to NATO will do nothing to advance our national security, and will do everything to simply add another small country to the welfare wagon of NATO. Advocates for expanding NATO believe that unless the whole world joins NATO, Russia will conquer the world. but the truth is more nuanced,” he said. “The same cheerleaders for Montenegro being in NATO want Ukraine in NATO. They want Georgia in NATO. If both Ukraine and Georgia were in NATO today, we would be involved in a world war with Russia.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will not meet members of Turkish opposition groups during a one-day visit to Ankara this week where talks with President Tayyip Erdogan will focus on the war in Syria, senior U.S. officials said on Monday.

Thursday’s visit comes at a politically sensitive time in Turkey as the country prepares for a referendum on April 16 that proposes to change the constitution to give Erdogan new powers.

A senior State Department official said Tillerson will meet with Erdogan and government ministers involved in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.

“It is certainly something we are very acutely aware of and the secretary will be mindful of while he is there,” one State Department official told a conference call with reporters, referring to political sensitivities ahead of the referendum.

American officials expect Erdogan and others to raise the case of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom the government accuses of orchestrating a failed coup last July.

The focus of the Ankara talks is the U.S.-led offensive to retake Raqqa from Islamic State and to stabilize areas in which militants have been forced out, allowing refugees to return home, officials said.

A major sticking point between the United States and Turkey is U.S. backing for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey considers part of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party that has been fighting an insurgency for three decades in Turkey.

But the United States has long viewed Kurdish fighters as key to retaking Raqqa alongside Arab fighters in the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

“We are very mindful of Turkey’s concerns and it is something that will continue to be a topic of conversation,” a second U.S. official said.

Turkey, Russia and Iran have held Syrian peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan, on a ceasefire in Syria. The United States has proposed “areas of stability” where Islamic State has been pushed out and refugees can be returned.

Six years since the start of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, he is winning on the battlefield although the war is far from over. The once stable country is broken into fiefdoms ruled by rebels and warlords.

“We’re looking forward to discussing with Turkey how we can reinforce ceasefire negotiations through the Astana process,” the second U.S. official said.
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The White House will take a lead role in crafting legislation to overhaul the U.S. tax code, eyeing an August target date as President Donald Trump seeks his first legislative victory following the failure last week of a long-promised bill to undo Obamacare.

Trump’s pledge to cut taxes, including a lowering of the rates paid by corporations, was a pillar of his 2016 presidential campaign and provided much of the fuel for the heady stock market rally that followed his Nov. 8 victory.

The White House said Monday it was moving ahead with tax reform, calling it a “huge priority” for the Republican president and “something that he feels very strongly about.”

“Obviously, we’re driving the train on this,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said during a briefing, adding, “We’re going to work with Congress on this.”

Spicer noted that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has talked about August as a target date for tax legislation, but said the timetable could slip depending on how quickly a consensus could be reached.

Getting a broad tax bill passed by Congress and on Trump’s desk to be signed into law will not be easy, especially after intra-party differences torpedoed the health care legislation, after the Trump administration fiercely lobbied for it.

Republicans for seven years had promised to dismantle Democratic former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare, and the Trump administration made it its top priority when Trump took office in January.

But the effort collapsed on Friday when members of the Freedom Caucus, the most conservative lawmakers of the House of Representatives, refused to support the bill, which was also backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan.

The stinging defeat alarmed investors who began reassessing the chances for passage of the tax agenda this year. Major U.S. stock indexes opened sharply lower on Monday before paring losses, with the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 ending only moderately down.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, the top House Republican tasked with tax reform, said over the weekend that the White House should start with proposals already in the House instead of crafting a separate bill.

“My point is that the Trump tax plan and the House Republican plan started at 80 percent the same. I think it’s grown to 90 percent or better,” Brady told reporters Monday.

“I think it’s critical for the White House and Republicans in Congress to agree on pro-growth tax reform together and move forward together as well,” he added.

Democrats might be open to talks

Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicted in a research note that a tax bill, “if passed at all, could be a very watered-down version of current proposals.”

The White House over the weekend dangled the idea of a compromise tax restructuring that could win support from moderate Democrats. White House chief of staff Reince Priebus on Sunday said such a package could include middle-class tax cuts.

Spicer on Monday remained vague on how much Trump would allow the federal deficit to grow as a result of the tax cuts.

“It’s a really early question to be asking at this point,” Spicer said.

The U.S. tax code has not undergone a major overhaul since 1986, during the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan.

Democratic Senator Christopher Coons signaled his party would be open to discussing tax legislation if it was not merely a giveaway to the rich. Democrats had fought former President George W. Bush’s tax policies for that reason.

“If we have a move toward tax reform that could strengthen manufacturing, strengthen our exports and provide tax relief to the middle class — not overwhelmingly to the wealthiest — there’s a menu for us to start talking about it,” the Delaware senator told MSNBC’s Morning Joe program.

Although winning over Democrats may be tough, the alternative — getting Republicans to vote as a bloc — could be a hard road in light of the health care rebellion by Republican lawmakers.

“Trump is stuck. He can’t cajole the arch conservatives in the Republican Party, and at the same time, my sense is the Democrats don’t want to throw him a bone either, so it is going to be difficult,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago.

One Republican lawmaker, Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, suggested Congress focus first on such things as getting a “realistic budget” done and passing legislation to raise the national debt ceiling.

“And then start on tax reform,” Cole said on MSNBC. “But start with real hearings and start in a way that everybody at least at the outset is a potential player.”

Representative Ted Poe of Texas, who resigned from the Freedom Caucus after the health care debacle, said that getting an infrastructure spending package — another key piece of Trump’s legislative agenda intended to spur economic growth — through Congress will be no “slam dunk.”

“It’s going to be very, very difficult,” Poe told CNN’s New Day program.
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Key members of the Trump administration are joining U.S. Congressional leaders for the opening of Washington’s three-day annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as pro-Israel lobbyists and supporters voice hope for bipartisan U.S. support for an array of Israeli objectives.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was scheduled to address the AIPAC conference Sunday in a speech expected to center on warming ties with the Jewish state and support for new U.S. sanctions against Iran for its ballistic missile program and its widely alleged push to develop nuclear weaponry.

The conference opened just days after a bipartisan coalition of U.S. senators introduced legislation calling for new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, targeting Tehran’s ballistic missile testing and its alleged support of terrorism.

In opening remarks Sunday, Israel’s U.S. Ambassador Ron Dermer voiced hope for improved bilateral ties under President Donald Trump, saying “there was a meeting of the minds” when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Trump last month at the White House.

“This has made me even more confident that our alliance will be considerably stronger in the years ahead,” Dermer said in comments widely quoted in Israeli media.  

Outside the conference venue, several hundred protesters from the anti-Israeli occupation group “IfNotNow” marched, some of them carrying placards and banners denouncing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

One banner read: “Jews Won’t be Free Until Palestinians Are.  Reject AIPAC, reject Occupation.”

 
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President Donald Trump will sign an executive order this week scrapping Obama cuts in power plant emissions, Trump’s environmental chief says.

EPA director Scott Pruitt told ABC Television’s This Week broadcast Sunday that Trump believes the U.S. needs what he calls a “pro-growth and pro-environment approach.”

“For too long…we have accepted a narrative that if you’re pro-growth, pro-jobs, you’re anti-environment; if you’re pro-environment, you’re anti-jobs or anti-growth,” Pruitt said.

He said the Trump plan to lift restrictions on emissions by plants that burn coal and other fossil fuels will be both pro-growth and pro-environment, but within the rules spelled out by the the Clean Air Act.

Pruitt pointed out that innovation and technology, particularly in coal and natural gas, have brought the country’s carbon footprint to pre-1994 levels. He said Trump’s move will also bring down also electricity rates for consumers.

Trump has already alarmed environmentalists by ordering completion of the controversial Keystone oil pipeline, promising to revive the moribund U.S. coal industry, and asking the EPA to reconsider rules regulating clean water and fuel economy for cars.

Trump also threatened during his campaign to tear up the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The deal calls on most signatories to cut greenhouse gas emissions,  blamed for global warming, by 2025 at the latest.

While the future of U.S. participation in the deal is still uncertain, Pruitt calls it a “bad deal.”

“China and India…the largest producers of CO2 internationally, got away scot-free. They didn’t have to take steps until 2030,” he said.

Pruitt says the U.S. has penalized itself through lost jobs by signing the agreement.

 
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Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame hailed Rwanda-Israel friendship Sunday in an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference.

He was the first African head of state ever to address the pro-Israel forum that brings together thousands of activists, experts and elected officials.

“My message today is simple: Rwanda is, without question, a friend of Israel,” said Kagame,who is credited for putting an end to the 1994 genocide in his country.

In a refence to the genocide perpetrated against the Jews in Europe during World War II, he told an audience of close to 18,000 delegates that the shared history of tragedy has brought Israel and Rwanda much closer.

“No tragedy is so great, so vast that human ingenuity and resilience cannot give rise to a better future.” he said. “The survival and renewal of our two nations testifies to this truth.”

AIPAC, with more than 100,000 members from across the United States, works to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship. It opened its three-day annual conference in Washington on Sunday.

David Victor, AIPAC’s past president, hailed Kagame for ushering his people beyond the tragedy of the past to the promise of the future. “He has transformed his nation, grown its economy, redeveloped its infrastructure and reunited its people,” he said.

Victor said he was struck by Kagame’s strong connection to Israel’s story. Last year Kagame hosted Benjamin Netanyahu during the Israeli prime minister’s historic visit to Africa.

For Rwanda and many other countries in Africa, Kagame said, engaging productively with Israel has opened new horizons.

While on an African tour last year, Netanyahu announced his intention to hold an Israel-Africa summit in October.

“We are happy that Israel is engaging with Africa, has come back to Africa and Africa is responding in a good way,” said Kagame.

He said when countries share complementary capabilities and mutual interests there should be no obstacle to pursuing these together.

In 2014, when Rwanda sat on the United Nations Security Council, Kigali abstained from a resolution that advocated the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Explaining the vote, Kagame said, “We thought this was going to be prejudicial to other things that had to be addressed – allowing people to determine without allowing the parties concerned to sit and agree on what the way forward should be.”

“It doesn’t mean that when you are a friend of Israel, that you are an enemy of someone else.”

Kagame said Israel has the right to exist and thrive, as a full member of the international community.

“This is not an infringement on the rights of any other people, and should not be seen as such.”

 
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The gunman in a fatal shooting on the Las Vegas Strip who barricaded himself inside a public bus has surrendered peacefully after shutting down the busy tourism corridor for hours, police said.

The standoff began about 11 a.m. local time Saturday with a shooting that killed one person and injured another. It happened on a double-decker bus stopped on Las Vegas Boulevard near the Cosmopolitan hotel-casino.

Two people were taken to the hospital after the shooting, University Medical Center spokeswoman Danita Cohen said. One died, and the other was in fair condition, Cohen said. That person suffered minor injuries, police said.

Las Vegas Police officer Larry Hadfield said just before 3:30 p.m. that the man had a handgun and surrendered without incident. Police did not open fire. Crisis negotiators, robots and armored vehicles were on the scene.

Police said they believe the man is the only suspect and that they have ruled out terrorism or any relationship to an earlier robbery nearby that shut down a part of the Bellagio hotel-casino.

The casino properties in the area had been cooperating by keeping people from exiting through their front doors onto the Strip, Hadfield said. The boulevard will remain closed until further notice as investigators clean up the scene.

Former NBA player Scot Pollard who is staying at the Cosmopolitan told The Associated Press by phone that he was at a bar at the hotel-casino around 11 a.m. when he saw several people, including staff, running through the area toward the casino and repeatedly screaming “get out of the way.” After he was told that the area would be closed, he went back to his room, which oversees the Strip.

“We can hear them negotiating. We can hear them saying things like `No one else needs to get hurt,’ ‘Come out with your hands up. We are not going anywhere. We are not leaving.’ ”

The bus is operated by the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada.
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