Month: September 2017

Speaking in Washington on Friday night after four days of testy and inconclusive talks in Brussels with EU negotiators, the British minister overseeing Brexit negotiations, David Davis, offered the admission that Britain is weighing whether to join the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

Such an arrangement could at least be temporary while Britain tries to negotiate a better deal for itself with the EU, the country’s largest trading partner.  

Joining the EFTA would allow Britain to secure access to the EU’s Single Market and customs union, and avoid crippling tariffs and trade restrictions when it exits the EU in March 2019.

His open admission surprised some in the audience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where in a speech, he also appeared to take aim at U.S. President Donald Trump and warned against the West turning its back on globalization and free trade. Without mentioning Trump directly, he said, “It feels to me it is necessary to make the case once more for free trade and capitalism.”

‘Hard Brexiters’ may bulk

It is Davis’ disclosure that Prime Minister Theresa May is considering the possibility of Britain applying for membership of the EFTA, however, that’s likely to prove explosive when it comes to so-called “hard Brexiters” in the Conservative Party and populist nationalists, such as Nigel Farage, who want a clean break from the EU.

“It is something we’ve thought about,” Davis said in reply to a question from Iceland’s ambassador to the U.S., Geir Haarde, about whether Britain could opt for the so-called ‘Norway option.’ But the British minister cautioned “it’s not at the top of the list.”

One drawback with the EFTA for the May government is that it would not offer the same kind of unrestricted access for the country’s lucrative banking and financial services sector as Britain currently enjoys with its EU membership. Also, EFTA membership would prevent Britain from imposing immigration controls on Europeans wanting to live and work in the country — something May and hard Brexiters want to do.

The current members of the EFTA are Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The group has free trade deals with various non-EU countries, including Canada and Mexico.

Joining the EFTA would allow Britain to apply for automatic membership of the European Economic Area, giving it full access to the EU’s Single Market, as currently enjoyed by Norway and two other EFTA members. Some analysts describe the EFTA as “backdoor EU membership.”

Brussels talks stalled

Davis’ admission came after a torrid week of acrimonious Brexit negotiations, which saw the British minister and his EU counterpart Michel Barnier snipe at each other publicly at the end of what is the third round of formal exit discussions between London and Brussels. Officials from both sides concede the two sides are as far apart on key issues as they were before the third round started.

Europeans accuse the British of being unclear about what they want, while the British argue the EU negotiators’ insistence on agreeing on the terms of departure before negotiating a free trade deal is unhelpful. Remaining stumbling blocks include a reported $89 billion “divorce bill” Brussels is demanding to cover budget payments, and project and structural loans that Britain committed to before last year’s Brexit referendum.

On Thursday the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Barnier, said progress was hampered by a “lack of trust” between the two sides. And at a joint press conference with Davis, he evoked the Brexiters’ oft-repeated slogan of “Brexit means Brexit” to ask his adversary whether Britain wasn’t missing the bloc after all.

The British say the EU divorce sums don’t add up, and on Friday in Washington, Davis called the Brexit negotiations “probably the most complicated negotiation in history and our enemy is time… it is getting a bit tense.”

The EU won’t even begin talks on a deal until there has been “sufficient progress” on the divorce terms.

‘More ripples ahead’

With time running out before Britain’s exit, there’s a growing movement within the Conservative Party — and with the support even of some prominent figures who campaigned in last year’s referendum for Britain to exit the EU — for an EFTA option.

The leaders of Iceland and Ireland have been urging Britain for weeks to apply for EFTA membership, and behind the scenes so have major British business leaders, who fear a hard Brexit would see Britain fall off an economic cliff.

This week’s bruising talks triggered in their wake another spasm in the war of words between Europeans and hard Brexiters. Liam Fox, Britain’s minister for international development, accused the EU of trying to extort London, saying “Britain can’t be blackmailed into paying a price.”

And John Redwood, a senior Conservative, and onetime challenger for the party leadership, tweeted: “Mr. Barnier wants the UK to set out its calculation of the exit bill. That’s easy. The bill is zero. Nothing. Zilch.”

The British tabloids and European newspapers have been trading sharp barbs all week, as well. Switzerland’s Der Bund newspaper accused Britain on its front page of being the “Laughing Stock of Europe,” and it described Brexit as “comical.”

Britain’s Sun newspaper headlined: “Michel Barnier and his EU team truly do excel in being the most inflexible and arrogant bunch of people going.”

In Washington Friday, Davis distanced himself from the blackmail comments of his cabinet colleague Fox, but he said, “We are in a difficult, tough, complicated negotiation; it will be turbulent and what we are having is the first ripple, and there will be many more ripples along the way.”
…

China on Sunday hosts the annual summit of leaders from the BRICS countries — the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. They represent 40 percent of the global population, and observers say the talks are aimed at showcasing the nations’ combined economic might as a counter to Western domination of world affairs.

As host, China hopes to make the meeting in the southeastern city of Xiamen a landmark event. However, it is hamstrung by sharp differences among member countries on several issues, as well as lurking suspicions that China is using the Beijing-headquartered group as a platform to advance its political and business interests.

“There is no doubt that Beijing senses an opportunity to burnish its credentials as the ‘sole champion’ of globalization and multilateralism at a time when the United States, under the Trump administration, seems to be turning inward and away from multilateralism,” Mohan Malik, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies at Honolulu, told VOA in an emailed response. “Lacking friends and allies, Beijing is keen to set up as many multilateral forums and financial institutions as possible to bring small- and medium-sized developing countries into its orbit.”

Some in China believe that the BRICS platform offers an opportunity to push for these causes and perhaps enhance Chinese President Xi Jinping’s image as a world leader. The question, however, is whether Russia and India, which have an array of differences with Beijing, are interested in it.

Internal squabbles

Analysts note that Moscow has serious reservations about China’s Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure development project making progress in central Asia, where Russia has plans to implement a similar program, called the Eurasian Economic Union. Separately, China and India have had their disagreements.

This past week, the two Asian giants carefully backed down from one of their biggest disagreements in the Himalayan region in years, agreeing to de-escalate a 10-week-old standoff on their disputed border. India did not confirm that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would attend the Xiamen summit until after the agreement was signed.

Recent years have seen China taking the lead in establishing or expanding homegrown international organizations where Western countries have little or no role. Beijing has also ensured that these organizations are headquartered in China.

In addition to BRICS, there is China’s National Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

BRICS Plus

More recently, China has been pushing a new proposal of BRICS Plus, which aims to bring non-BRICS countries into the organization.

China argues that doing so would strengthen the organization and make it a more potent force.

“BRICS is not an exclusive club. The impact of BRICS cooperation reaches far beyond the five countries,” said Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a recent press conference in Beijing. “I believe the BRICS Plus model will fully release the vitality of BRICS cooperation.”

Not everyone sees the proposal the same way, and it has met with stiff resistance and suspicion.

“China wants to be the leader of the organization, and the other four may not agree and that is why China is pushing to recruit more members,” said Oliver Rui, a professor of finance and accounting at the China Europe International Business School.

Some say China’s push to expand the organization is aimed at strengthening its position in BRICS, instead of making it stronger.

“Wang Yi’s idea of inviting other developing countries to join the partnership under the BRICS Plus concept would potentially unravel BRICS and transform it into just another SCO-like bloc, led and dominated by China [and Russia], that is likely to be anti-West in orientation and bolster Chinese leadership and serve Chinese interests,” Malik said.

For now, Beijing has been forced to abandon its effort to formalize the idea at the Xiamen summit, which begins Sunday and wraps up Tuesday.

Still, Foreign Minister Wang said China would stick to BRICS’ existing practice, which allows the host nation to invite other countries to the summit as a one-time opportunity. He also said that more would be done to help explain BRICS Plus and the rationale behind the idea.

BRICS without mortar

With a divide over expansion and a lack of clarity over the role the organization should play — whether it should have an economic or political agenda or both — some feel BRICS has yet to find that bonding element to hold the five countries together.

“I think the BRICS is kind of falling apart, due to many different kinds of reasons,” Rui said. “First, these five countries, naturally, they should not be a part of one organization.”

The group is not a trade bloc capable of influencing trade flows and decisions in the World Trade Organization. And the organization’s partners often complain of a huge trade balance in favor of Beijing because Chinese business tends to sell a lot more than it buys from these countries.

Beijing, however, is optimistic.

At the press conference, the Chinese foreign minister defended BRICS, saying that it reflects the aspirations of emerging markets and works for strengthening their economic situation. “It also plays an increasingly important role in promoting international peace and development,” he said.

VOA’s Joyce Huang contributed to this report.
…

Russia vowed Friday to respond to a U.S. order to shut the Russian Consulate in San Francisco and offices in Washington and New York, but also indicated that Moscow was not inclined to raise the stakes in the diplomatic tit-for-tat between the two countries.

The Trump administration said the order issued Thursday was in retaliation for the Kremlin’s “unwarranted and detrimental” demand last month that the U.S. substantially reduce the size of its diplomatic staff in Russia.

“The United States is prepared to take further action as necessary and as warranted,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. Still, Nauert said Washington hoped both countries could now move toward “improved relations” and “increased cooperation.”

The U.S. gave Russia 48 hours to comply with the order for the San Francisco consulate and the East Coast offices. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday that Moscow would reply with firmness, but needs time to study Washington’s directive and to decide on a response.

“We will have a tough response to the things that come totally out of the blue to hurt us and are driven solely by the desire to spoil our relations with the United States,” Lavrov said in a televised meeting with students at Russia’s top diplomacy school.

Other top Russian officials also urged caution.

President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told Russian news agencies later Friday the Kremlin “regrets” the latest U.S. move and needs to “think carefully about how we could respond.”

Ushakov also left room for Russia to refrain from retaliation.

“On the other hand, one does not want to go into a frenzy because someone has to be reasonable and stop,” he said.

The closures on both U.S. coasts marked perhaps the most drastic diplomatic measure by the United States against Russia since 1986, near the end of the Cold War, when the nuclear-armed powers expelled dozens of each other’s diplomats.

American officials argued that Russia had no cause for retribution now, noting that Moscow’s ordering of U.S. diplomatic cuts last month was premised on bringing the two countries’ diplomatic presences into “parity.”

Both countries now maintain three consulates in each other’s territory and ostensibly similar numbers of diplomats. Exact numbers are difficult to independently verify.

Several hours after the U.S. announcement, new Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov arrived in Washington to start his posting.

At the airport, Antonov cited a maxim of former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin as he urged caution and professionalism.

“We don’t need hysterical impulses,” Russian news agencies quoted Antonov as saying.

In assessing Washington’s directive, Russian officials and lawmakers said Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump might be getting tough on Russia against his will.

The new package of sanctions against Russia that Congress adopted last month not only hits Russia, but is designed to “tie Trump’s hands, not let him use his constitutional powers to the full to make foreign policy,” Lavrov said.

Nationalist party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who publicly cheered Trump’s election, called the flurry of U.S. sanctions against Russia “an illness that will go away.”

“It’s an illness because (they) are not leaving President Trump alone to run the country and keep coming up with tricks to draw a wedge between America and Russia,” Zhirinovsky said in a video statement that did specify who might be creating such obstacles for Trump.

By Saturday, the Russians must close their consulate in San Francisco and an official residence there. Though Russia can keep its New York consulate and Washington embassy, trade missions housed in satellite offices in both of those cities must shut down, a senior Trump administration official said. The official briefed reporters on a conference call on condition of anonymity.

American counterintelligence officials have long kept a watchful eye on Russia’s outpost in San Francisco, concerned that people posted to the consulate as diplomats were engaged in espionage. The U.S. late last year kicked out several Russians posted there, calling it a response to election interference.

The forced closures are the latest in an intensifying exchange of diplomatic broadsides.

In December, President Barack Obama kicked out dozens of Russian officials, closed two Russian recreational compounds. Russian President Vladimir Putin withheld from retaliating. The next month, Trump took office after campaigning on promises to improve U.S.-Russia ties.

But earlier this month, Trump begrudgingly signed into law stepped-up sanctions on Russia that Congress pushed to prevent him from easing up on Moscow. The Kremlin retaliated by telling the U.S. to cut its embassy and consulate staff down to 455 personnel, from a level hundreds higher.

The U.S. never confirmed how many diplomatic staff it had in the country at the time. As of Thursday, the U.S. has complied with the order to reduce staff to 455, officials said.

The reductions are having consequences for Russia. The U.S. last month temporarily suspended non-immigrant visa processing for Russians seeking to visit the United States and resumed it on Friday at a “much-reduced rate.”

The U.S. will process visas only at the embassy in Moscow, meaning Russians can no longer apply at U.S. consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok.

Even before the cuts at the U.S. mission were announced, typical waiting time for visa applicants in Russia to be interviewed was longer than a month.

Nadezhda Sianule planned to attend her daughter’s wedding in the United States in mid-September and got an appointment in July to be interviewed on Thursday. Now these plans are in disarray.

“I came yesterday and they said that I’m not on the list. They said that the old lists have been canceled,” Sianule said outside the U.S. Embassy Friday morning.

Despite the exchange of penalties, there have been narrow signs of U.S.-Russian cooperation that have transcended the worsening ties. In July, Trump and Putin signed off on a deal with Jordan for a cease-fire in southwest Syria. The U.S. says the truce has largely held.
…

A group in Italy is training migrants — mostly from sub-Saharan Africa — as beekeepers, then pairing them with honey producers who need employees. Aid groups say new efforts by European leaders to stem the flow of migrants from Africa ignores the fact that Europe needs these workers. According to Oxfam, Italy alone will need 1.6 million migrants over the next 10 years.

Back in his native Senegal, the only interaction Abdul Adan ever had with bees was when one stung his mouth while he was eating fresh honey. That day, his mouth was so swollen that he didn’t leave his home in Senegal’s Casamance region. Years later as a migrant worker in Alessandria, Italy, Adan is so comfortable with the insects that he does not even use gloves as he handles their hives and inspects their progress.

“I’m looking to see if the queen is here or not,” he said, as he uses his bare hands to look for the yellow dot that indicates the queen he placed in the hive a week before. “If there was the queen, she would have started laying eggs, but I don’t see any eggs.”

Adan is part of a project called Bee My Job, in which the Italian Cambalache Association trains migrants and refugees as beekeepers and finds work for them in Italy’s agribusiness industry. The association’s president, Mara Alacqua, says they have hosted and trained 107 people — mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa — since launching in 2014.

“Our beds are always full,” she said. “Every time a person leaves the project, and so we have a spare place, that place is covered straight away just within two days’ time.”

The migrants also take language classes as part of the program. Today, Adan is fluent in Italian and, despite his initial fears, he has become one of the most successful trainees.

“The first day that Mara asked me to do the work, I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I said I have never done bee work, I was really scared that the bees would sting me and people would laugh and look at me, but afterward I figured and said I will learn, and maybe one day I can do it in my country.”

Nearly 95,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Italy this year, though in the past two months, numbers have dropped by more than 50 percent compared to last year. Experts attribute the decrease to a more aggressive approach by the Libyan coast guard to turn boats back — and Libya’s increased support from the European Union. While in Libya, Adan says he was held hostage and tortured, and then forced into slave labor before escaping on a boat to Italy.

“To do work with bees, it’s not a work that is hard,” Adan said. “I already passed through stages that are harder than working with bees. If I tell you the Libyans who took us for work, you know how much we had to eat? One piece of bread a day. And we worked hard.”

A need for migrants

Amid ongoing efforts to stem the flow, Oxfam says European leaders are ignoring the need for migrants. According to the UK-based aid group, Italy alone will need an estimated 1.6 million workers over the next decade to sustain its welfare and pension plans.

Francesco Panella, a beekeeper for more than 40 years and president of Bee Life EU, agrees that migrant workers are good for Italy.

“In reality, we have a problem in our country,” he said. “On one side, there is a huge problem with unemployment; but the other issue, it’s not at all easy to find workers for agriculture. So, in reality, Italian agriculture is based on the work of foreigners. The world changes. It’s a world of movement, movement of people.”

In a room filled with crates used to harvest honey, Panella is quick to philosophize about migration, human compassion and more. He adds that both his children are immigrants. One works in the U.S. and the other in the U.K., and his grandfather contemplated migrating to Argentina after World War II in search of opportunities. He said he keeps all these things in mind when employing migrant workers, such as Isamel Soumarhoro, from Guinea.

Soumarhoro has worked in Panella’s beekeeping operations since 2015.

“What makes me happy is the moment when I take out the honey to take back to the house, because it’s a work that is a little difficult. You see, in 2015 when I arrived, there was more honey and the employees were happy,” Soumarhoro said.

According to Panella, one of the main threats to the program is the negative impact climate change and pesticides are having on honey production. Italy’s honey production this year is down 70 percent from normal harvests, he said. Most of the migrants hope the work continues, though they struggle being so far from home.

“I feel very lonely, very very,” Adan said. “Sometimes when I think of my family, it makes me want to go back home, but that’s the story of immigration. I am looking for some means. Maybe one day I go back to my country, or one day I can bring my family. No one knows what the future holds.”

For the migrants, they hope the honey business can make tomorrow at least a bit sweeter.
…