Month: February 2019

After seven years detained at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo and ex-youth leader Charles Ble Goude are free men — but there’s a hitch. 

Presiding judge Chile Eboe-Osuji read out the unanimous verdict of the five-judge appeals panel.  

“The conditions set out in the written judgement are imposed to Mr. Gbagbo and Mr. Ble Goude upon their release to a state willing to accept them on its territory and willing and able to enforce the conditions.”

It’s a small victory for ICC prosecutors, after the court’s stunning acquittal of both Gbagbo and Ble Goude last month. Judges said the prosecution’s case was “exceptionally weak” in trying to link the men to election-related violence in Ivory Coast in 2010 and 2011 that left roughly 3,000 people dead.

​Both ICC prosecutors and the chief lawyer for the victims, Paolina Massidda, had argued for the two men’s conditional release. Massidda warned they presented flight risks and said their unconditional release might impact victims’ safety. 

“Victims remain very concerned about the possibility the commission of further crimes and attempts to compromise the integrity of the proceedings if the defendants are released without conditions,” Massidda said.

Gbagbo’s lawyer Emmanuel Altit unsuccessfully argued that conditional release went against the very principle of his client’s acquittal.

He said liberty is an essential human right, and Gbagbo should be freed since he was acquitted. 

Last month’s acquittal has intensified criticism of the ICC, which has convicted only four people in nearly 20 years of operation. One of them — former Congolese vice-president Jean Pierre Bemba — was later acquitted on appeals. 

Critics say the court is ineffective and overly focused on African cases. Supporters note the so-called “court of last resort” is probing other regions of the world — and say the court has insufficient means to realize a daunting mandate.
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The United States on Friday fired a diplomatic warning shot at Russia, making good on threats to begin its withdrawal from a key arms control agreement and thus taking the next step toward what some politicians and analysts see as a burgeoning arms race.

In a statement, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. was suspending its compliance with the decades-old Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, accusing the Kremlin of willfully breaking the deal.

“For far too long, Russia has violated the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with impunity, covertly developing and fielding a prohibited missile system that poses a direct threat to our allies and troops abroad,” Trump said.

“We will not remain constrained by its terms while Russia misrepresents its actions,” he added.

But later Friday, speaking to reporters, Trump left open the possibility of a deal.

“I hope that we are able to get everybody in a very big and beautiful room and do a new treaty that would be much better,” he said. “Certainly, I would like to see that. But you have to have everybody adhere to it.”

The INF treaty, signed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1987, was the world’s first arms control pact to prohibit an entire class of weapons, banning ballistic and ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,420 miles). 

INF violations

Yet the U.S. has been become increasingly vocal about what it says are blatant Russian violations.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials charge those violations date to at least 2014, when Russia began deploying its 9M729 missile following years of tests designed to skirt the treaty’s constraints.

Now, officials say, Russia is fielding multiple military battalions that are equipped with the missile in question.

WATCH: US Backs Away From Key Arms Treaty

“We must respond,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Friday. “We can no longer be restricted by the treaty, while Russia shamelessly violates it.

“We provided Russia an ample window of time to mend its ways and for Russia to honor its commitment. Tomorrow that time runs out,” he said.

Saturday, the U.S. will provide the Kremlin and other former Soviet states with formal notice of its intent to withdraw from the INF Treaty, triggering a six-month window.

Officials say if Moscow refuses to verifiably destroy the missiles, as is expected, the treaty will terminate, and the U.S. will be free to pursue its own intermediate range, ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles.

Russian denial 

Russian officials reacted quickly to the announcement, denying any treaty violations, while alleging it is Washington that wants to expand its missile arsenal.

The U.S. withdrawal deals “a serious blow to the international arms control system and the system of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which exist for now,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters.

Ryabkov also suggested other arms control agreements, like the New START Treaty, which limits both countries to fewer than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads, could be in jeopardy.

“What will come next is a huge question,” the deputy foreign minister told Russian television. “I fear that the New START may share the fate of the INF Treaty.  It may just expire on February 5, 2021, without an extension.”

New arms race?

But U.S. officials held firm, insisting the onus is on the Kremlin to ease tensions.

“Let’s be clear: If there’s an arms race, it is Russia that is starting it,” a senior administration official said Friday.

“We simply cannot tolerate this kind of abuse of arms control and expect for arms control to continue to be viable,” the official said. “We cannot permit a scenario where we are unilaterally bound to a treaty, we are denied the ability to have a military capability to deter attacks.”

Concern, support for US action

In a statement issued shortly after the U.S. announced its plans to withdraw from the INF Treaty, NATO said its members “fully support this action.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter:

At the United Nations, officials expressed concern.

“For the secretary-general, his hope [is] that the parties will use the next six months to resolve their differences through dialogue,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters. “The INF is a very important part of the international arms control architecture.”

Trump’s decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty also garnered a mixed response from U.S. lawmakers.

“Russia’s repeated violations over the years demonstrate that the INF is no longer in the best interest of the United States,” Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, lead Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. 

But the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, was wary.

“The Trump administration is risking an arms race and undermining international security and stability,” Pelosi said in a statement.

“Russia’s brazen noncompliance with this treaty is deeply concerning,” she said. “But discarding a key pillar of our nonproliferation security framework creates unacceptable risks.” 

Few good choices

Still, some analysts caution that Russian President Vladimir Putin has given the U.S. and its European allies few good options.

“Putin’s decision to build weapons that violate this important arms control treaty is another of his attacks on the peace in Europe,” according to Jorge Benitez, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a global affairs research group in Washington.

“Russia is an aggressive military,” he said. “Europe needs to strengthen deterrence to further dangerous behavior from Moscow.”

The U.S. has already started spending on such deterrence — $48 million on research to develop its own intermediate-range, ground-launched missiles. And officials say there have already been some initial discussions with allies.

“We are some time away from having a system that we would produce, that we would train soldiers or airmen or Marines to deploy,” the senior administration official said, adding that for now, nuclear-armed missiles were not under consideration.

“We are only looking at conventional options at this time,” the official said. “Nothing the United States is currently looking at is nuclear in character.” 

The pursuit of the new missiles, though, could also give the U.S. additional options in countering growing threats from China and Iran. 

Neither Beijing nor Tehran was subject to the INF Treaty, and U.S. officials believe each country has more than 1,000 intermediate-range, ground-launched missiles in its arsenal. 

But some experts warn any increase in the number of such missiles, by the U.S. or Russia, will only escalate missile production and tensions in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. 

VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer and VOA’s Wayne Lee contributed to this report.
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The Kremlin may have helped Venezuela’s embattled socialist leader Nicolas Maduro swap gold for cash, transporting Venezuelan bullion deposited in Moscow to the United Arab Emirates and then flying U.S. currency into the Venezuelan capital, an investigative newspaper has claimed. 

The report in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta is adding to the fears of pro-democracy activists in Venezuela that the Kremlin will try to make good on its pledge to stand by Maduro to help him survive a popular uprising against him.

Russian officials have condemned U.S. sanctions imposed last month against Venezuela’s vital oil sector, a move aimed at depriving Maduro of the funds he needs to pay his army, which has so far remained loyal to him. The Kremlin says the sanctions are illegal meddling in Venezuela’s domestic affairs. And it rejects, too, the widespread Latin American and European endorsement of the popular protests against Maduro.

Gold swapped for dollars?

Citing unnamed sources in the United Arab Emirates, the newspaper alleged that on Jan. 29, a Russian-operated Boeing 757 cargo plane took Venezuelan gold stored in Russia’s central bank to Dubai. The bullion was replaced with containers full of U.S. dollars and the aircraft, which is owned by the Russian company Yerofei, took off again and flew via Morocco to Venezuela, the paper said.

The director of Russia’s central bank, Elvira Nabiullina, denied the allegation, saying the bank was holding no Venezuelan bullion.

On Friday, a senior Venezuelan official told the Reuters news agency that Caracas plans to sell 29 tons of gold to the UAE in return for euros and said the sale of the nation’s gold began with a shipment of three tons on Jan. 26, following the export last year of $900 million in unrefined gold to Turkey. But the official said Moscow was not involved in the gold-for-cash operation. 

Social media theories

Turkey has been refining and certifying Venezuelan gold since last year after Maduro switched operations from Switzerland, fearing Venezuelan bullion could end up being impounded. 

The Jan. 29 flight, though, is the second unexplained Russian plane to have landed in Caracas since the high-stakes standoff began between opposition leader Juan Guaido and Maduro. A Boeing 777 belonging to a Russian charter company called Nordwind flew from Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on Monday to the Venezuelan capital, according to flight tracking data. Nordwind normally only flies Russian tourists to vacation destinations in the Mediterranean and southeast Asia.

The arrival of the Nordwind jet in Caracas triggered an avalanche of social media theories about what it was doing in the Venezuelan capital. Some anti-Maduro lawmakers claimed that it brought Russian mercenaries to help guard the socialist leader. One theory that prompted jubilation among street protesters was that it was there to spirit Maduro into exile.

The flight also prompted Venezuelan lawmaker Jose Guerra, who previously worked as an economist in Venezuela’s central bank, to warn in a tweet: “We have received information from officials at the Central Bank of Venezuela: A plane arrived from Moscow, with the intention of taking away at least 20 tons of gold. We demand that the Central Bank of Venezuela provide details about what is happening.”

‘Fake news’

Dmitry Peskov, press spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters midweek the reports about Venezuelan gold and the Kremlin were inaccurate and urged journalists to “deal carefully with fake news’ of various kinds.” 

He dismissed Guerra’s claims, saying, according to TASS, “Russia is prepared to promote a settlement to the political situation in Venezuela without meddling in that country’s internal affairs. Russia is categorically against any meddling by third countries in Venezuela’s internal affairs.”

For Moscow and Beijing, the high-stakes standoff between Guaido, who declared himself interim president in late January, and Maduro represents a geopolitical headache. Both Russia and China have lent billions of dollars to Maduro. Russia’s oil-giant Rosneft has stakes in five onshore oil projects, according to Bloomberg News, and has loaned the Maduro government more than $7 billion, which is meant to be repaid in oil deliveries.

The Bank of England this week refused a Venezuelan request for the return of more than one billion dollars’ worth of gold it has on deposit. The refusal came after the United States urged Western countries to block the Maduro government from accessing any assets outside Venezuela’s borders.
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The Trump administration is poised to announce Friday that it is withdrawing from a treaty that has been a centerpiece of superpower arms control since the Cold War and whose demise some analysts worry could fuel a new arms race.

An American withdrawal, which has been expected for months, would follow years of unresolved dispute over Russian compliance with the pact, known as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty. It was the first arms control measure to ban an entire class of weapons: ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 500 kilometers (310 miles) and 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles). Russia denies that it has been in violation.

U.S. officials also have expressed worry that China, which is not party to the 1987 treaty, is gaining a significant military advantage in Asia by deploying large numbers of missiles with ranges beyond the treaty’s limit. Leaving the INF treaty would allow the Trump administration to counter the Chinese, but it’s unclear how it would do that.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in early December that Washington would give Moscow 60 days to return to compliance before it gave formal notice of withdrawal, with actual withdrawal taking place six months later. The 60-day deadline expires Saturday, and the administration is expected to say as early as Friday that efforts to work out a compliance deal have failed and that it would suspend its compliance with the treaty’s terms.

The State Department said Pompeo would make a public statement Friday morning, but it did not mention the topic.

In a tweet Thursday, the chief spokeswoman for NATO, Oana Lungescu, said there are no signs of getting a compliance deal with Russia.

“So we must prepare for a world without the Treaty,” she wrote.

Withdrawal takes six months

Technically, a U.S. withdrawal would take effect six months after this week’s notification, leaving a small window for saving the treaty. However, in talks this week in Beijing, the U.S. and Russia reported no breakthrough in their dispute, leaving little reason to think either side would change its stance on whether a Russian cruise missile violates the pact.

A Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, was quoted by the Russian state news agency Tass as saying after the Beijing talks Thursday, “Unfortunately, there is no progress. The position of the American side is very tough and like an ultimatum.” He said he expects Washington now to suspend its obligations under the treaty, although he added that Moscow remains ready to “search for solutions” that could keep the treaty in force.

U.S. withdrawal raises the prospect of further deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations, which already are arguably at the lowest point in decades, and debate among U.S. allies in Europe over whether Russia’s alleged violations warrant a countermeasure such as deployment of an equivalent American missile in Europe. The U.S. has no nuclear-capable missiles based in Europe; the last of that type and range were withdrawn in line with the INF treaty.

​Global concern

The prospect of U.S. withdrawal from the INF pact has stirred concern globally. The mayor of Des Moines, Iowa, Frank Cownie, is among dozens of local officials and lawmakers in the U.S., Canada, Europe and elsewhere who signed a letter this week to President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin expressing worry at the “unraveling” of the INF treaty and other arms constraints.

“Withdrawing from treaties takes a step in the wrong direction,” Cownie said in a telephone interview. “It’s wasn’t just Des Moines, Iowa. It’s people from all around this country that are concerned about the future of our cities, of our country, of this planet.”

Unleashing new arms race

The American ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, set the rhetorical stage for Washington’s withdrawal announcement by asserting Thursday that Russia has been in violation for years, including in Ukraine. She said in a tweet and a video message about the INF treaty that Russia is to blame for its demise.

“Russia consistently refuses to acknowledge its violation and continues to push disinformation and false narratives regarding its illegal missile,” she said. “When only one party respects an arms control treaty while the other side flaunts it, it leaves one side vulnerable, no one is safer, and (it) discredits the very idea of arms control.”

Nuclear weapons experts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in a statement this week that while Russia’s violation of the INF treaty is a serious problem, U.S. withdrawal under current circumstances would be counterproductive.

“Leaving the INF treaty will unleash a new missile competition between the United States and Russia,” they said.

Kingston Reif, director for disarmament at the Arms Control Association, said Thursday the Trump administration has failed to exhaust diplomatic options to save the treaty. What’s more, “it has no strategy to prevent Russia from building and fielding even more intermediate-range missiles in the absence of the agreement.”

Reif said the period between now and August, when the U.S. withdrawal would take effect, offers a last chance to save the treaty, but he sees little prospect of that happening. He argues that Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, is “unlikely to miss the opportunity to kill an agreement he has long despised.”
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French adventurer Jean-Jacques Savin is 36 days into his attempt to cross the Atlantic in a specially built orange barrel.

With no engine, sails or paddles, the unusual craft relies on trade winds and currents to push him 4,800 kilometers from the Canary Islands to Caribbean in about three months.

On Wednesday, he reported awaking to an early spring morning and clear sky with a beautiful crescent moon. However, he said there was not a lot of wind, which was slowing his travels.

He described his journey as a “crossing during which man isn’t captain of his ship, but a passenger of the ocean.”

Savin spent months building his bright orange, barrel-shaped capsule of resin-coated plywood that is strong enough to withstand battering waves and other stresses.

The barrel is 3 meters long and 2.10 meters across. It has a small galley and a mattress with straps to keep him from being tossed out of his bunk by rough seas.

Portholes on either side of the barrel and another looking into the water provide sunlight and a bit of entertainment. The unique craft also has a solar panel that generates energy for communications and GPS positioning.

As he drifts along, Savin is dropping markers in the ocean to help oceanographers study ocean currents. At the end of the journey, Savin will be studied by doctors for effects of solitude in close confinement.

He also posts regular updates, including GPS coordinates tracking the journey, on a Facebook page. 

Savin’s adventure, which will cost a little more than $65,000, was funded by French barrel makers and crowdfunding.

Savin hopes to end his journey on a French island, such as Martinique or Guadeloupe. “That would be easier for the paperwork and for bringing the barrel back,” he told AFP.
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