Category: EU

Several hundred people have staged a protest in the southwestern Belarusian city of Pinsk, calling for the scrapping of a law imposing a tax on jobless people.

The protest Saturday was the latest in series of demonstrations against the law, despite authoritarian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka announcing that he was suspending its application for one year in order to “correct” it and carry it out next year.

Lukashenka said the law, which is reminiscent of Soviet-era legislation, was needed to fight what he has called “social parasitism.” The legislation has sparked protests across the nation of 10 million. It imposes a special tax on Belarusians who work less than half of a calendar year and do not register at the country’s labor bureaus.

WATCH: Protesters speak out

The law, however, exempts registered job-seekers, homemakers, subsistence farmers and Belarusians working in Russia.

The Pinsk protest, dubbed “The March of the Non-Parasites,” brought together people of various ages, including pensioners, who gathered in the main square of Pinsk.

Some participants were carrying both the current red-green flag of Belarus and the historical white-red-white banner used by the short-lived Belarusian Republic in 1918, before Belarus became a Soviet Republic.

‘Time to take up pitchforks’

Some demonstrators chanted slogans calling for the replacement of the current government and for fair elections.

“It’s time to take up our pitchforks,” one old man told RFE/RL.

“This is a terrible thing that’s happening in Belarus. We have reached the limit. Even under [Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev, we lived a hundred times better,” he said.

RFE/RL correspondents reported that three men in civilian clothes attempted to detain popular video-blogger Maksim Povich, but gave up and ran away when demonstrators shouted at them to leave Povich alone.

Similar rallies are scheduled for Sunday in three more cities — Babruysk, Vorsha and Rahachou. Activists in the capital, Minsk, told RFE/RL that city authorities had given them permission to stage a demonstration as well.

Although Lukashenka announced a suspension of the tax, he also instructed his interior minister to ensure that “perfect order” is established in the country, the BelaPAN news agency reported.

Lukashenka, who the United States has dubbed “Europe’s last dictator,” has ruled Belarus for more than two decades, quashing political opposition, civil society groups, independent media, and other forms of dissent.
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Russia has hinted at involving the United States in a newly-launched regional dialogue Moscow says is aimed at seeking a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan. The move comes as Afghanistan’s national security adviser is due to visit Moscow to discuss the prospects for promoting reconciliation with armed opposition in his country.

Moscow’s stepped up Afghan diplomacy stems from its concerns that a protracted conflict is encouraging Islamic State militants to establish a foothold in the war-torn country and export terrorism to neighboring Central Asian states that ultimately could threaten Russian security.

In December, the Russian government hosted senior foreign ministry officials from China and Pakistan for the first time to discuss ways to encourage direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. The participants also exchanged views on how to collectively work to contain “spillover” effects of terrorism.

Kabul strongly objected being left out of the trilateral meeting, however, while U.S. officials also questioned Russia’s intentions for organizing the talks.

The criticism and skepticism prompted Moscow to expand the format of the dialogue to include Afghanistan, along with Iran and India, in the next meeting it hosted last month.

Involving more partners

“At its next stage we think it will be important to, in a timely fashion, involve in that same process our Central Asian partners as well as the United States,” said Vladimir Safronkov, the Russian deputy ambassador to the United Nations, on Friday. He was addressing a U.N. Security Council meeting on the situation in Afghanistan.

Safronkov reiterated that the consultations are working out “a single regional approach” to “reinvigorate” the Afghan reconciliation process.

He made the remarks on a day when the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that Afghan National Security Adviser Haneef Atmar will visit Moscow March 17 for talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“The officials will discuss the security situation and prospects for promoting national reconciliation in Afghanistan, as well as ways to develop multilateral cooperation within the Moscow format of regional consultations on Afghanistan,” the ministry said.

Russia-Taliban contacts not welcome

While Afghan officials and the U.S. military welcome Russian peace efforts, they are critical of Moscow’s overt contacts with the Taliban.

Russia maintains that “the limited contacts” with the Taliban are meant to encourage the group to join Kabul-led peace efforts and to ensure security of Russian citizens in the country.

But General John Nicholson, U.S. commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, told a congressional hearing last month that Russian attempts to overtly legitimize the Taliban are based on arguments that the insurgents, and not Afghan forces, are effectively fighting IS militants. He dismissed those assertions as misleading and said Moscow is only trying to undermine U.S.-led counterterrorism efforts in the region.

Speaking in India earlier this week, National Security Adviser Atmar said his government continues to warn Moscow that any assistance to the Taliban will not be seen as “a gesture of friendship” toward Afghanistan.  

“They [Russia] are assuring us that this is not the case. All they want to do is to facilitate peace in Afghanistan and second a counter-response to Daesh. There we disagree. We say the best response to Daesh is state-to-state relations and cooperation, you cannot get it from non-state actors. Don’t expect a terrorist to be taking on another terrorist,” explained Atmar, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

Afghan officials in the country’s northern border provinces have also lately alleged that Russia is helping the Taliban establish training camps in their areas.

Russia says allegations ‘absurd’

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday responded to what it dismissed as baseless allegations and U.S. criticism.

“The distribution of such absurd inventions revealed a staged campaign to discredit our country, during which the Afghan and world community is thrown the thesis of Russia ‘undermining’ international anti-terrorist efforts in Afghanistan,” according to a statement published on the ministry’s website.

It went on to assert that the campaign is to “divert attention from accountability for the numerous mistakes in more than 16 years of foreign military presence in Afghanistan.”

Moscow blames the U.S.-led international efforts for the worsening Afghan security conditions that it says allowed IS to find space in the country.

Afghan security forces backed by American airpower have conducted successful major operations against IS over the last year and confined the terrorist group to less than three districts in the eastern Nangarhar province, according to a latest U.S. military assessment. It says the number of IS fighters also has been reduced to about 700 from an estimated 3,000 a year ago.

Speaking on Friday at the U.N. Security Council meeting, though, Russia’s Safronkov challenged those assessments.

“We think that there are some three-and-a-half-thousand active members of [Islamic State] operating in the country. The realistic figure given all the cells operating could be much higher,” he said. The Russian ambassador contradicted U.S. assessments and asserted that IS is active in more than one Afghan province.

“Their main regions of action are Helmand, Kandahar, Faryab, Bagram, Kunduz. So we would call everyone to devote to that problem heightened attention and not to try and somehow gloss it over to ignore it,” Safronkov said..

IS has stepped up attacks in Afghanistan and took credit for Wednesday’s suicide attack on the country’s largest military hospital in Kabul. The assault left more than 50 people dead and scores of others wounded.

Russian envoy Safronkov asserted that the Kabul attack is more proof of the expanding and strengthening structure of IS in Afghanistan.
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The Netherlands barred Turkey’s foreign minister from landing in Rotterdam on Saturday in a row over Ankara’s political campaigning among Turkish emigres, leading President Tayyip Erdogan to brand its fellow NATO member a “Nazi remnant.”

The dispute escalated in the evening as Turkey’s family minister was prevented by police from entering the Turkish consulate in the Rotterdam while hundreds of protesters waving Turkish flags gathered outside demanding to see the minister. Turkey’s foreign ministry said it did not want the Dutch ambassador to Ankara to return from leave “for some time.’

Turkish authorities sealed off the Dutch embassy in Ankara and consulate in Istanbul in apparent retaliation and hundreds gathered there for protests at the Dutch action.

President Erdogan is looking to the large number of emigre Turks living in Europe, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, to help clinch victory next month in a referendum that would give the presidency sweeping new powers.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will do everything possible to prevent Turkish political tensions spilling onto German soil and four rallies in Austria and one in Switzerland have been canceled due to the growing dispute.

Erdogan has cited domestic threats from Kurdish and Islamist militants and a July coup bid as cause to vote “yes” to his new powers. But he has also drawn on the emotionally charged row  with Europe to portray Turkey as betrayed by allies while facing wars on its southern borders.

The Dutch government had banned Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu from attending a rally on Saturday in Rotterdam but he said he would fly there anyway, saying Europe must be rid of its “boss-like attitude.”

Cavusoglu, who was barred from a similar meeting in Hamburg last week but spoke instead from the Turkish consulate, accused the Dutch of treating the many Turkish citizens in the country like hostages, cutting them off from Ankara.

“If my going will increase tensions, let it be … I am a foreign minister and I can go wherever I want,” he added hours before his planned flight to Rotterdam was banned.

Sanctions threat

Cavusoglu threatened harsh economic and political sanctions if the Dutch refused him entry, and those threats proved decisive for the Netherlands government.

It cited public order and security concerns in withdrawing landing rights for Cavusoglu’s flight and said the threat of sanctions made the search for a reasonable solution impossible.

​”This decision is a scandal and unacceptable in every way. It does not abide by diplomatic practices,” Cavusoglu told reporters in Istanbul on Saturday evening.

Dutch anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders, polling second ahead of Wednesday’s elections, said in a tweet on Saturday: “To all Turks in the Netherlands who agree with Erdogan: Go to Turkey and NEVER come back!!”

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said: “This morning on TV (the Turkish minister) made clear he was threatening the Netherlands with sanctions and we can never negotiate with the Turks under such threats. So we decided … in a conference call it was better for him not to come.”

Once the foreign minister had been prevented from landing in Rotterdam, Turkey’s family minister decided to travel to the city by road from neighbouring Germany instead but was stopped by police in the Dutch city.

“We have been stopped 30 metres from our Rotterdam consulate and we are not allowed to enter,” Family Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya wrote on Twitter.

“Nazi remnants, fascists”

Addressing a rally of supporters, Erdogan retaliated to the decision to prevent the Turkish foreign minister from visiting Rotterdam.

“Listen Netherlands, you’ll jump once, you’ll jump twice, but my people will thwart your game,” he said. “You can cancel our foreign minister’s flight as much as you want, but let’s see how your flights will come to Turkey now.”

“They don’t know diplomacy or politics. They are Nazi remnants. They are fascists,” he said.

Rutte called Erdogan’s reference to Nazis and Fascists “a crazy remark”. “I understand they’re angry but this is of course way out of line,” he said.

Erdogan chafes at Western criticism of his mass arrests and dismissals of people authorities believe were linked to a failed July attempt by the military to topple him.

He maintains it is clear the West begrudges him new powers and seeks to engineer a “no” vote in the referendum.

Barred from the Netherlands Cavusoglu arrived in France on Saturday ahead of a planned speech to Turkish emigres in the northeastern city of Metz on Sunday, a Reuters witness said.

Earlier, an official at the Moselle regional prefecture told Reuters there were currently no plans to prevent the meeting from going ahead.

A member of the Union of European Turkish Democrats also said on Saturday via a Facebook post that the Turkish foreign minister would no longer come to Switzerland for a planned event on Sunday after failing to find a suitable venue.

Zurich’s security department, which had unsuccessfully lobbied the federal government in Bern to ban Cavusoglu’s appearance, said in a statement on Saturday evening it was relieved the event had been canceled.
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Hungary’s prime minister on Friday defended a new refugee law that was criticized by the United Nations and human rights groups.

The new rules allow for the detention of all asylum-seekers, including unaccompanied minors older than 14, in shipping container camps on the Serbian border.

UNHCR said the detention of asylum-seekers “will have a terrible physical and psychological impact on women, children and men who have already greatly suffered.”

But Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that the law was in line with European Union legal standards.

Orban disputed the idea that asylum-seekers in the border transit zones, which he compared to those at airports, were being locked up against their will.

“No one is under arrest, so anyone who believes they don’t want to wait in the transit zone for the closure of their case can leave toward Serbia,” Orban said in Brussels after an EU summit. “We are not locking anyone up anywhere.”

Orban, an early supporter of President Donald Trump, also said that while no national leaders attending the EU summit objected to the new Hungarian rules, he expected a debate on the matter with the European Commission.

The new asylum rules, including the automatic deportation to Serbia of any migrant who cannot prove his legal right to be in Hungary, can be applied during a state of emergency because of migration, which was recently extended until Sept. 7.

Regarding repeated reports, including this week from humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders, of dozens of migrants claiming to have been beaten or attacked with dogs by Hungarian border guards, Orban said Hungarian authorities had no evidence of such cases.

“The aim of these press attacks is to discourage the police and soldiers,” Orban said.

Hungary built fences protected with razor wire on the borders of Serbia and Croatia in 2015 to stop the migrant flow and expects to complete a second, sturdier fence along the Serbian border by May 1.
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Kosovo’s leaders must continue European Union-facilitated talks aimed at normalizing ties with Serbia, a European security official said Friday amid rising tensions between the two countries.

The head of the 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe met with senior officials and political leaders in Pristina to express concern about the situation.

“Restoring a positive trend of normalization of relations is key to progress and stability,” Lamberto Zannier said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. “Leaders must remain committed to the implementation of the Brussels agreements and to the EU-facilitated dialogue process with renewed energy and assurance.”

Earlier this week, Kosovo’s president said it planned to transform its lightly-armed security force into an army. Relations between Kosovo and Serbia have been tense recently and the move is likely to make things worse. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, and it has been recognized by 114 countries but not Serbia.

President Hashim Thaci, who prepared the draft law, on Friday urged the government and the parliament to speed up steps to vote on the draft law, adding that “the international community is obliged to convince Belgrade not to interfere in Kosovo’s internal issues.”

NATO and the U.S. have warned they could scale back cooperation with Kosovo’s security services if the government goes ahead with plans to transform its security force into an army without the required constitutional changes.

Constitutional amendments would also need the approval of the ethnic Serb minority in the country, which has long boycotted all institutions following Belgrade’s advice, according to Thaci.

The president assured his citizens “that this process will conclude in 100 percent coordination” with the United States and NATO.

“If the lawmakers do not vote in favor [of the draft law], at that second I would resign,” he warned in an interview to the public broadcaster RTK.

On Thursday, Kosovo’s parliament called on the government to cancel negotiations with Serbia until former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj’s case in France is thrown out. He is awaiting a court decision on whether he will be extradited to Serbia on war crime charges.

Edi Tahiri, Kosovo’s chief negotiator with Serbia, told Radio Free Europe that “the government and me as chief negotiator respect the resolution of Kosovo’s Assembly [parliament]. Since the start of dialogue in 2011 we, the government, have respected all of the Assembly’s resolutions and we remain committed to that direction,” she said, without clarifying what damages Kosovo could suffer from the suspension of dialogue.

“I met with the government and opposition leaders, and I encouraged them to maintain a constructive approach in order to avoid a spillover of tensions,” Zannier said.

Though Western Balkan countries are at different stages of integration within the European Union, tensions exist within and outside their borders.

Serbia, who votes for a new president next month, is deeply split between those seeking pro-Western integration and those wanting a close alliance with traditional Slavic partner Russia.

Relations between Serbia and its former war foes Bosnia and EU member Croatia have soured in recent months, while political instability threatens Macedonia to the south.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the Kremlin on Friday amid promises from both leaders to strengthen ties and tackle vexing issues in the Middle East.

“We are working actively on the settlement of the most acute crises in the world, first of all in Syria,” said Putin in a press conference following the meeting.  

“I am pleased to say that nobody expected this, but at the level of military authorities, intelligence services, we have a very trustful, very effective dialogue,” added Putin.

In turn, the Turkish leader expressed faith in continuing Turkish-Russian cooperation.  

“As far as security matters in our region are concerned, I believe that it takes joint efforts to end bloodshed in Syria,” said Erdogan.

Overcoming rifts

The road to this point was long and winding as leaders dubbed “the Tsar” and “the Sultan” clashed repeatedly over the Syrian conflict and their differing views on the fate of Moscow’s ally, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.  

First, there was the downing of a Russian jet by Turkey in November 2015 amid Moscow’s intervention into the Syrian conflict. Putin called the act “a stab in the back,” and he imposed punitive travel and trade sanctions on Turkey in response.

A failed coup against Erdogan in June 2016, however, changed everything again. The ensuing violence left 280 dead and Ankara angry at its NATO allies over their criticism of a government crackdown against the coup plotters.  

Putin, no stranger to lecturing by the West on human rights, was soon on the phone expressing solidarity. Following an apology by Erdogan over the jet incident, all was forgiven.  

Remarkably, the two sides even began coordinating some military actions in Syria, including against Islamic State and Syrian opposition fighters holed up in Aleppo. The fall of the city to Assad’s forces was a major turning point in the war.

Yet the Russian-Turkish relationship was put to the test again last December, when Russia’s ambassador to Turkey was gunned down in public by a Turkish assassin who claimed he was avenging Russia’s brutal air campaign in the Syrian war.

In fact, tragedy came to mar even today’s meetings.

As talks got underway, news broke that a helicopter carrying an executive of the Turkish Eczabicasi group and four Russians, including the firm’s Russian operations chief, crashed in Istanbul, killing all seven people on board.

Still, Putin used Friday’s summit to assure that Moscow’s differences with Ankara were largely in the past.

“We can not only make up for past blunders but [we can] enter into a new level of cooperation,” said the Russian leader. “At least the Russian side is prepared and ready for that.”

Erdogan clearly agreed, saying now was the time to end any lingering sanctions.  

“We think that there is a noticeable shift in our relations,” said the Turkish leader. “I think that we completed the process of normalization of relations as a result of our meeting today.”

Mideast influence

The talks came one day after Putin hosted talks with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, a sign Russian media touted as evidence of Moscow’s growing influence in the Middle East.  

Kremlin observers largely agreed the optics of back-to-back visits was impressive, but some questioned the extent of Moscow’s true influence in the region.

“Russia has been very successful at creating the impression that it is the player to go to if you want to make a deal in the Middle East,” said foreign policy analyst Vladimir Frolov in an interview with VOA. “But the reality is much more modest.”

Indeed, Russia and Turkey brokered a cease-fire that helped reduce the level of fighting in Syria, and the two sides are now co-sponsors of ongoing peace negotiations in neighboring Astana, Kazakhstan, between the Assad regime and Syrian opposition groups.

Peace talks

Turkey has sought to stem the relentless flow of refugees fleeing the fighting. It also has faced regular terrorist attacks at the hands of IS and what Ankara says are Kurdish militant groups feeding off the chaos in Syria.  

Russia, too, has lost lives to Islamic State. But Moscow is also eager to show its new political clout in the region by delivering what Western powers could not: an end to the six-year-old conflict.

It’s proven to be a tricky pivot for the Kremlin — from onetime backer of the Assad regime to guarantor of peace.  

On Friday, Putin argued that with backing from Turkey and Iran, a shaky cease-fire in Syria had largely held.

“Due to the coordinated actions of Russia, Turkey and Iran, the cease-fire in Syria is generally being observed. The level of violence has decreased significantly,” said Putin.

Yet early signs from the quest for a negotiated peace have not been promising, say observers.

“Yes, Russia inserted itself in Syria and is essential for any sort of a political solution and concluding the military fight against ISIS,” said analyst Vladimir Frolov. “But Russia is having trouble imposing a political solution in Syria that it wants.”

Both Turkey and Russia will have another opportunity when the peace talks resume in Astana next week.
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Pope Francis says the Roman Catholic Church should start considering whether to let married men serve as priests in order to address a shortage of clergy, especially in remote areas.

In an interview with Germany’s Die Zeit magazine, Francis said: “We must think about whether viri probati [married men of proven religious faith] are a possibility. Then we have to decide what tasks they can take on — for example, in remote communities.”

Francis said allowing would-be priests to decide whether they wanted to remain celibate was not something he favored, but he suggested that was an issue for further discussion.

Many Roman Catholics believe that opening a new path to ordination for married men would help address the shortage of clergy in many parts of the world. Certain limited exceptions to the law of celibacy exist: The Vatican accepts married priests in Eastern Rite sects of the church, and it also has recognized married members of the Anglican or Episcopal churches who convert to Catholicism as valid priests.

The Association of U.S. Catholic Priests, whose members serve in American parishes, welcomed the pope’s thoughts as expressed in the article published Thursday.

In his first major interview with a German publication, Francis also was asked whether he ever doubted the existence of God, even briefly. “I, too, know moments of emptiness,” he responded.

The pope noted that such periods of crisis enable spiritual growth, and he added that he would think any believer who does not experience such moments of doubt has an “infantile” religious faith.

Francis spoke out strongly against the rise of populism in the West, as he has in the past. “Populism is evil and and ends badly, as the past century showed,” Die Zeit quoted him as saying, in an apparent reference to fascism and Soviet communism.
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President Donald Trump was not aware that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had worked to further the interests of the government of Turkey before appointing him, the White House said Thursday.

The comments came two days after Flynn and his firm, Flynn Intel Group Inc., filed paperwork with the Justice Department formally identifying him as a foreign agent and acknowledging that his work for a company owned by a Turkish businessman could have aided Turkey’s government. Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday called the action “an affirmation of the president’s decision to ask General Flynn to resign.”

At the White House, asked whether Trump knew about Flynn’s work before he appointed him as national security adviser, press secretary Sean Spicer said, “I don’t believe that that was known.”

Pence said in an interview later with Fox News that he also did not know about Flynn’s paid work.

Flynn and his company filed the registration paperwork describing $530,000 worth of lobbying before Election Day on behalf of Inovo BV, a Dutch-based company owned by Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin. In an interview with The Associated Press, Alptekin said Flynn did so after pressure from Justice Department officials.

The filing this week was the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s first acknowledgement that his consulting business furthered the interests of a foreign government while he was working as a top adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.

Flynn’s disclosure that his lobbying — from August through November — may have benefited Turkey’s authoritarian government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came as Flynn has drawn scrutiny from the FBI for his contacts with Russian officials. Trump fired Flynn last month for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

In paperwork filed with the Justice Department’s Foreign Agent Registration Unit, Flynn and his firm acknowledged that his lobbying “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The lobbying contract ended after Trump’s election in November, according to the paperwork.

A spokesman for Flynn, Price Floyd, said the general was not available for an interview Thursday. Floyd referred the AP to Flynn’s filing in response to questions about why he and his firm had decided to register this week.

Flynn’s attorney, Robert Kelner, declined to comment through a spokesman for his law firm, Covington & Burling. The Turkish Embassy also didn’t respond to questions from the AP.

Spicer said he didn’t know what Flynn had disclosed about his background and lobbying work during the White House’s vetting of him for appointment as national security adviser.

Spicer said Flynn was free to do the lobbying work because it occurred while he was a private citizen.

“There’s nothing nefarious about doing anything that’s legal as long as the proper paperwork is filed,” Spicer said. He declined to say whether Trump would have appointed Flynn if he had known about the lobbying.

After Flynn joined the Trump administration, he agreed not to lobby for five years after leaving government service and never to represent foreign governments. Flynn’s newly disclosed lobbying would not have violated that pledge because it occurred before he joined the Trump administration in January, but the pledge precludes Flynn from ever doing the same type of work again in his lifetime.

Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, U.S. citizens who lobby on behalf of foreign governments or political entities must disclose their work to the Justice Department. Willfully failing to register is a felony, though the Justice Department rarely files criminal charges in such cases. It routinely works with lobbying firms to get back in compliance with the law by registering and disclosing their work.

More than a month before Flynn was appointed as national security adviser, news accounts and Democratic senators had raised questions about potential conflicts of interest regarding Flynn’s work for the Turkish company. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., criticized Flynn’s work and late disclosure again Thursday as troubling.

“Gen. Flynn’s behavior seems to be part of a larger pattern of poor judgment from members of this administration,” she said.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement that Flynn should return any foreign money he received.

“This astonishing admission is more appalling evidence of foreign entanglements and conflicts of interest involving the Trump team,” he said. He said a special prosecutor should be appointed to look into ties between Trump officials and foreign governments.

Alptekin told the AP that Justice Department officials had pushed for Flynn and his firm to register as foreign agents in recent weeks. He said the filing was a response to “political pressure” and he did not agree with Flynn’s decision to file the registration documents with the Justice Department. He also said that he had asked for some of his money back because of his dissatisfaction with the company’s performance.

“I disagree with the filing,” he said in a phone call from Istanbul. “It would be different if I was working for the government of Turkey, but I am not taking directions from anyone in the government.”

Flynn’s consulting firm had previously disclosed to Congress that it worked for Inovo BV, a Dutch-based company owned by Alptekin. But neither Flynn nor his company had previously filed paperwork with the Justice Department, which requires more extensive disclosures about work that benefits foreign governments and political interests.

Flynn Intel and S.G.R. LLC Government Relations and Lobbying pressured congressional aides to investigate a cleric who Erdogan had accused of directing a botched coup last summer. The two firms orchestrated meetings with U.S. officials — including congressional staffers and Arkansas Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, a Republican — as well as journalists. They also worked on research, informational materials and a video on the cleric, Fethullah Gulen.

Flynn met privately in September in New York with two senior Turkish government officials, including the government’s ministers of foreign affairs and energy. Flynn’s company did not name the officials, but the current Turkish energy minister is Berat Albayrak, who is Erdogan’s son-in-law.

Alptekin told the AP he set up the meeting at a New York hotel between Flynn and the two officials while the officials were attending U.N. sessions and a separate conference Alptekin had arranged. Alptekin is a member of a Turkish economic relations board run by an appointee of Erdogan, who has accelerated a crackdown against the nation’s weakening secularist faction since the failed coup last summer.

Erdogan has accused cleric Gulen of orchestrating the aborted coup and called for his extradition from the U.S., where he lives in a compound in Pennsylvania.

According to the filing, Flynn Intel’s work involved collecting information about Gulen and pressuring U.S. officials to take action against the cleric.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is single-handedly trying to undermine democracy in the United States and Europe and rupture their decades-old NATO alliance by meddling in their elections, foreign affairs analysts and Estonia’s former president told a congressional hearing Thursday in Washington.

One of the experts, Peter Doran, executive vice president of the Center for European Policy Analysis, a group promoting closer ties between central and eastern European countries and the United States, said U.S. lawmakers “should have no doubt, Russia is a rival to the United States.”

Doran declared, “The Russian government is sharpening its use of state-sponsored propaganda against Western democracies.  This puts democratic states and NATO at risk.  The strategic aims of the Russian government are fundamentally incompatible with American interests in Europe.”  

Doran added, “Russia wants to establish a sphere of privileged influence in Europe and to do so, [it] must weaken America’s links to our allies, divide NATO and, if necessary, use force.”

Repeating President Donald Trump’s signature campaign slogan, Doran said, “I think it is very obvious that Putin does not want to ‘make America great again.’  In fact, Putin has the opposite goal, however our allies do.  Allies like front-line states, the Baltic states, Poland and others, neighbors of Russia, they actually want us to succeed.  Russia does not [want them to].”

Former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Putin “in all cases” wants “anti-European Union, anti-NATO forces” to win European elections in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands this year.

“The Dutch,” Ilves said, “are so afraid” of Russian attacks on their electronic voting that the Netherlands has “gone back to paper balloting because they are afraid of what might happen.”

‘Our democracy is being tested’

The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Putin tried to interfere in November’s U.S. presidential election with cyberattacks.  Now, U.S. investigators and several congressional panels are probing the details behind the findings of the Central Intelligence Agency and examining contacts Trump aides have had with Russian officials.

Moscow’s cyberattacks targeted the computer of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief, John Podesta, with the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks subsequently releasing thousands of his emails in the weeks before the election that showed embarrassing, behind-the-scenes efforts by Democratic operatives trying to help Clinton win the party’s presidential nomination before she ultimately lost to Trump.

Lincoln Bloomfield, a former assistant U.S. secretary of state for political military affairs, told the congressional panel that the overall consequences of the Russian interference in the election have yet to be determined.

“But it’s very important to realize that our democracy is being tested,” he said.

Daniel Baer, a former U.S. representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said it is possible to track Russian disinformation campaigns aimed at Western democracies from Moscow’s intelligence agencies through its propaganda arms “to a set of intermediaries disguised as independent sources.”

He said purported news accounts that appeared in the United States last year might have described themselves in a way to “legitimize and make them attractive to target audiences.  For example, those targeting Trump supporters may have, ‘Make America Great Again,’ or ‘Christian, patriot, USA’ in their profiles.  Never mind that they might in fact be sitting in a troll factory in St. Petersburg.”

Baer said the stories that started in Russia were “then amplified through technical means or bots that send many thousands of tweets with the same false stories accompanied by hashtags.”

He said the “burst of activity puts the hashtags on Twitter’s trending list and then then the story is picked up by genuine supporters of a candidate or cause, who share it on Twitter or Facebook.  Little does the person in Hamilton, New Jersey, or Brea, California, know that what they just shared by their friends and family is junk that was written by a Russian agent.”
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Presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron thinks he has the magic tool for liberating France’s blighted suburbs from poverty, violence and discrimination: turn jobless youth and drug dealers into legitimate entrepreneurs.

The hurdles are high. Disillusioned residents of housing projects in towns like Les Mureaux, west of Paris, are deeply skeptical of campaign promises and the political elite. French presidents have tried for decades to fix the suburbs, and repeatedly failed.

But that’s not deterring Macron, increasingly labeled by polls as the front-runner in France’s two-round April 23-May 7 election. He played with schoolchildren and huddled with community activists this week in Les Mureaux, where the projects bustle with people of Arab and African origin, joblessness is high and voter turnout low.

“Those who live … where social and economic difficulties or migration are concentrated do not receive the same chances as elsewhere to succeed,” Macron said, encouraging young residents to build their own businesses instead of aspiring to become sports stars.

Unrest in Paris suburbs

Macron’s visit came as unrest has shaken suburban Paris in recent weeks, aggravated by the alleged rape of a young black man with a police baton.

Some 50 young people were put in custody Tuesday in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, for allegedly throwing stones at police cars, setting fires and lobbing smoke bombs into a school. The reason for the violence was not clear, but the alleged rape has sparked many angry protests that have turned violent.

Most were released without charges Wednesday night. Eight minors were scheduled to appear before a juvenile court judge Thursday in the nearby town of Bobigny on charges of violence, “armed gathering” and “rebellion.”

“A dyke seems to have given way yesterday,” Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said.

Conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon, whose campaign is entangled in its own legal cases, said what happened in Saint-Denis was “a real riot, followed by an urban guerrilla in the streets.”

In Les Mureaux, Ely Mbareck of the Helping Hands association said many suburban youth turn to crime and violence for lack of options.

“It’s not an excuse, but we should ask questions,” he said after meeting with Macron. “Often it’s due to a lack of jobs, a social misery that put them totally on their knees, and the only outcome they see is criminality, unfortunately.”

Le Pen offers ‘zero tolerance’

Mbareck is worried about rising support for far-right, anti-immigration candidate Marine Le Pen, whose platform includes banning headscarves worn by many Muslim women in the suburbs.

“Here in Les Mureaux, there is a big population coming from migration. They are as patriotic as the others. Now, Marine Le Pen? She is stigmatizing us every day,” Mbareck said.

Reacting to the latest suburban violence, Le Pen’s party issued a statement Wednesday saying, “In the face of gang violence, the state must be unyielding and respond with zero tolerance. Marine Le Pen is the only presidential candidate to propose breaking with this culture of permissiveness.”

Youth unemployment is a problem nationwide, with 24 percent of people under 25 registered as jobless last year, compared to the overall national 10 percent rate. But in 751 low-income communities designated by the government as needing priority help, primarily in the suburbs, youth unemployment reaches 45 percent.

An unlikely savior

At first glance, the 39-year-old Macron seems an unlikely savior of the suburbs. A blue-eyed former investment banker, he routinely quotes French philosophers and looks like a product of the coddled white elite.

But he has been trying to remedy suburban problems since well before the presidential campaign. As economy minister from 2014-2016, he encouraged startups and social media platforms such as Uber, which allowed many young men from French suburbs with limited educations to earn a living.

Macron also tried to allow hairdressers to work legally out of their homes since many women, especially in suburban immigrant communities, already run unofficial home hair salons. The proposal ran into opposition from established businesses.

Macron’s campaign platform continues in that vein, pushing for more flexible labor rules and support for entrepreneurs.

Changes change little

Les Mureaux was among many suburbs, or “banlieues,” that saw vicious riots in 2005 as youths rose up to protest the death of two teenage boys fleeing from police. In the ensuing years, governments injected money into suburbs like this one, tearing down crime-ridden projects and putting in parkland and new school programs.

But entrenched problems remain.

Left-wing politicians have generally done well in the suburbs but there’s no groundswell of support this year for Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon or far left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon. Apathy feels more widespread, and while some Mureaux voters are inspired by Macron’s fresh face, others plan to cast a blank ballot — or not vote at all.
…

A leader of an ethnic Albanian party in Macedonia said the political crisis in the country could drag on for years and could be used by some politicians to ignite an ethnic conflict.

The president has refused to back a coalition of the Social Democrats and ethnic Albanian parties after an election in December, arguing its pledge to allow wider official use of the Albanian language amounted to foreign interference in Macedonia’s affairs.

Their coalition agreement triggered street protests in several cities in which nationalists marched and waved Macedonian flags. Ethnic Albanians make a third of the population in the former Yugoslav republic.

“This is a political crisis and should be resolved with political means and not be made an inter-ethnic problem for the gains of some political parties,” Ali Ahmeti, leader of the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), told Reuters late Tuesday.

Ahmeti said the deadlock could continue for “up to four years,” when the next election is due.

The constitution is not clear on what happens if the president refuses to give mandate to a party, nor does it give a deadline for forming the government.

Ahmeti’s DUI, the biggest ethnic Albanian party in parliament, emerged as kingmaker following the Dec. 11 poll after neither of the two biggest parties — the nationalist VMRO-DPMNR and the Social Democrats — won enough votes to form the government themselves.

The DUI, which had been in coalition with VMRO-DPMNE for eight years from 2008 until 2016, announced it would support the Social Democrats led by Zoran Zaev.

Ahmeti, a former guerrilla commander, said that according to the coalition deal, Albanian would be used in state institutions and on banknotes. He also said the parties had agreed to elect an ethnic Albanian as speaker of parliament for the first time since the Balkan state seceded from former Yugoslavia in 1991.

Macedonia’s relations with its Albania minority have long been difficult. It reached the brink of civil war during an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001 before EU and other diplomacy defused the situation.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, last week asked the president, who is close to the VMRO-DPMNE, to reverse his decision and urged political leaders to step back from a dispute that risked sparking conflict.
…

A rock structure, known as the Azure Window, which had featured in countless Malta tourism brochures collapsed into the sea as Malta was hit by rough seas and stormy weather.
…

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin says U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has assured him that Washington will continue to support Kyiv in its standoff with Russia.

Klimkin spoke to reporters after meeting at the State Department Tuesday with Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO who now serves as President Donald Trump’s top diplomat.

Their meeting came amid ongoing concerns in Ukraine, and among its supporters in the West, that Trump could soften the U.S. line on Russia, given his stated desire to repair relations with Moscow.

Trump’s new administration, however, has so far publicly supported the continuation of sanctions imposed on Russia following its 2014 seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, and its support for separatists in the country’s east.

Ukraine a ‘key partner’ of U.S.

“[Tillerson] assured me that the United States would consistently continue to support Ukraine in its struggle against Russian aggression, that Ukraine is a key partner of the U.S. in the region, that the U.S. would also consistently support Ukraine on its path of reforms,” Klimkin said, adding that their talks included “a wide range of questions” about U.S.-Ukrainian cooperation.

“We also discussed … what we can do to change the situation when Russia does not fulfill the Minsk Agreements,” Klimkin told VOA. “We have discussed a couple of options. We will continue discussing that, but today I want to stress specifically that the U.S. wants to stay engaged in this process. Some additional details will be known soon.”

No sign of sanctions easing

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Tillerson told Klimkin the U.S. sanctions against Russia would remain in place until “aggression is ceased,” until the Minsk peace deal to end fighting between Kyiv’s forces and Russia-backed separatists is implemented, and until Moscow returns to Kyiv control of Crimea and separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner confirmed the main points of Ukraine’s summary of the diplomats’ discussions.

“Secretary Tillerson reiterated the strong U.S. commitment to Ukraine and our commitment to ensuring that all sides fulfill their Minsk commitments,” Toner told reporters at a briefing. “And that includes Russia.”

The spokesman added that the Klimkin-Tillerson discussions included “domestic issues within Ukraine” as well as the United States’ “continued concern” about compliance with the Minsk peace deal.

Russia denies support for rebels

Russia rejects accusations by Kyiv, NATO, the EU and the United States that it is backing the separatists with weapons and personnel, despite substantial evidence of such support.

More than 9,750 people have been killed in the war in eastern Ukraine since April 2014. More than 40 died during the first two months of this year, when hostilities in the conflict suddenly surged.

Trump suggested during last year’s U.S. election campaign that he would consider lifting sanctions imposed on Russia by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Since Trump’s inauguration, however, Tillerson and other senior U.S. officials have publicly voiced a tough stance, saying that Russia must return Crimea to Ukraine and de-escalate violence in eastern Ukraine.

Early Tuesday, Trump took to Twitter to criticize Obama for supposedly failing to resist a strong Russian leadership when Moscow’s role in the Ukrainian conflict began.

“For eight years Russia ‘ran over’ President Obama, got stronger and stronger, picked off Crimea and added missiles. Weak!” Trump tweeted, directing his note specifically at a Fox News program he is said to be fond of watching.

Senate hearing later

Several hours after his meeting with Tillerson, Klimkin told a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing that the secretary of state gave him a strong signal that Ukraine would not become a bargaining chip in any push for rapprochement between Moscow and Washington.

It was a “very strong message of support for Ukraine, and that any kind of tradeoffs are not possible,” the Ukrainian visitor told senators, adding that his president, Petro Poroshenko, has received similar assurances in conversations with Trump.

Before his testimony, Klimkin told VOA that Ukraine’s position is that “Russia should not be trusted, and that Russia has violated all fundamental principles of international law and political commitment.”

Myroslava Gongadze of VOA’s Ukrainian Service contributed reporting for this story.
…

Swiss firms from food and beverage giant Nestle to banking groups UBS and Credit Suisse pledged new goals on Tuesday for supporting and promoting women.

While Switzerland has Europe’s second-highest proportion of women in the workforce, it trails global standards on gender diversity in boardrooms and in management positions.

Consultancies EY, Deloitte and PwC and staffing agency Adecco all committed to increase female leadership in their Swiss businesses to between 20 and 35 percent by 2020.

This follows a recent survey by EY that found Swiss firms with at least 20 percent women in top management rated their financial situation as better, while studies by UBS have found companies with greater gender diversity consistently outperform.

Women represent just 6.7 percent of Swiss executives, according to Credit Suisse, compared with a global average of 13.8 percent and European average of 12.6 percent. They occupy one out of eight board seats, half the European average.

Hiring plans

Swiss women-in-business initiative Advance has spearheaded the move, with Credit Suisse’s domestic business saying it would strive for equal hiring in campus recruitment, while Nestle committed to grow the proportion of women in management positions worldwide every year.

Siemens Switzerland pledged to reach equal pay in the next three years, while IKEA Switzerland improved its paid paternity leave to two months.

Switzerland was the second-to-last European country to embrace women’s suffrage in 1971, more than half a century after Norway, Germany, Canada and the United States. And it took two decades more for the Swiss supreme court to force one canton to let women take part in local votes in 1990.

IKEA Switzerland head Simona Scarpaleggia, one of just four female CEOs out of 78 in Credit Suisse’s study, helped found Advance in 2013 and says the Swiss system needs to change to make things more straightforward for working mothers.

“Either you give up your time, which happens most often, or you get private support, which is very expensive. It wouldn’t be so complicated to change this system, as many other countries are doing,” said Scarpaleggia, who also co-chairs the U.N. High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, said.

Policy positions

The Swiss government hopes women will help fill a growing shortfall of skilled labor, but it eschews many policies, such as quotas and more parental leave, that promote women elsewhere.

It is among the handful of developed countries that give new fathers no time off, meaning infant care falls largely on women.

High child care costs mean many new mothers opt out of their professions or return part time, generally not returning to full time until children reach age 9, statistics show.

Many women step off the ladder later in their careers, tired of being pigeonholed and passed over for promotions.

“Companies are surprised that, if they look at the statistics, it’s often women between 45 and 50 who are leaving,” said Nia Joynson-Romanzina, who left UBS in 2015 to found consultancy iCubed.

The Advance initiative is seeking to “change Switzerland one company at a time,” Citi Country Officer Kristine Braden said.

“I’m quite optimistic because, despite the conservative approach, Swiss people are very pragmatic,” Scarpaleggia said.
…

Macedonia’s president appealed Tuesday to international leaders to condemn demands by minority ethnic Albanians for enhanced constitutional rights that he says threaten his country’s existence.

President Gjorge Ivanov argued that a common platform signed in Albania in January by three of his country’s ethnic Albanian parties endangers Macedonia’s sovereignty and independence.

The platform “implies changes to the constitution of the Republic of Macedonia that would jeopardize the unitary character of the state,” he said in a letter to the European Council, NATO and the U.S. and Turkish presidents.

Macedonia is in a deepening political crisis, sparked by a massive wiretap scandal two years ago that put the two main political parties at each other’s throats.

An internationally brokered attempt to ease tensions through an early election in December left neither former prime minister Nikola Gruevski’s VMRO-DPMNE conservatives of the main opposition Social Democrats with the support to govern alone.

The three ethnic Albanian parties want Albanian designated as Macedonia’s second official language as a condition for joining any coalition government. It is already recognized as an official language in northwestern minority-dominated areas.

Gruevski’s party rejected the demands, while the Social Democrats tried to form a coalition with the Albanians but were refused a mandate to govern by Ivanov, the president, who accused them of trying to destroy Macedonian independence.

VMRO-DPMNE on Tuesday advocated fresh elections as a way out of the impasse.

Albanians are about one-fourth of Macedonia’s population, and have had a rocky relationship with the majority Macedonians since the country gained independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1999. In 2001, the country narrowly avoided civil war after an uprising by armed ethnic Albanian groups seeking greater rights.

The language demand has triggered daily protests in Macedonia’s main cities for more than a week.

Also Tuesday, vandals damaged a museum dedicated to the Albanian alphabet in the southwestern city of Bitola. Police said the front door and windows were broken, while petrol bombs were thrown inside, causing little damage. No arrests have been made.

Macedonia’s main parties condemned the attack, with the main opposition Social Democrats accusing VMRO-DPMNE of “provoking violence and creating divisions among citizens.”

Albania’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling for calm and restraint.

“We believe such attacks are actions from a small group of people motivated by extreme nationalist feelings, fear, lack of information and the recent damaging rhetoric,” it said.

“We call on all the sides to preserve calm and stop rhetoric against Albanians which only distracts attention from the country’s real problems, [and] damages inter-ethnic relations in the country.”
…

The trauma of a perilous boat journey to Greece still fresh in her mind, Tolay performed a ritual she’d felt too unsafe to undertake for the previous three months.

“When I put on my makeup, I was crying,” Tolay, said a transgender woman from Iraq in one of her first acts on European soil to reclaim her identity.

“It was like I was dreaming.”

For the 26-year-old, as for many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex refugees and migrants who have found themselves in Greece, the promise of Europe is not just of safety, but acceptance, amid the challenges of having to adapt to a new way of life.

Now, efforts are gathering pace to build support systems and a sense of community for those unable to move on from a country that has been home to around 62,000 refugees since border closures early last year.

Fighting for a decent life

Tolay’s story includes a period of happiness in Damascus, Syria, where she found a sense of peace.

It was a peace that did not last, however, and she eventually fled the Middle East after her abduction and gang rape at the hands of a militia in Iraq.

Having made it to Greece, Tolay recently attended her first “LGBTQI+Refugees Greece” fundraiser and party, a chance for people to have fun and be themselves. Tolay, a former dancer, said it was “like oxygen coming back into my body.”

The group meets regularly on a more formal basis to discuss everything from theatrical projects to allocating funds to members. It was set up last June by Suma, a transgender woman.

In 2015, Suma fled a Middle Eastern country she doesn’t want to identify when a trans friend died after being tortured in police custody. But she found little assistance or sympathy in Turkey, where she lived for a year.

Fleeing to Greece by boat, she escaped a refugee camp there, fearing for her safety. She went to Athens but found little in the way of support from refugee-focused organizations.

So she decided to create a group that now has around 25 members and places an emphasis on involving all in decision-making.

“No one seemed to consider us as vulnerable cases,” said Suma. “No one will give us safety and a decent life, so we should ask, and sometimes even fight, for it.”

More getting involved

It appears the work by such grassroots networks is resonating more widely as more aid organizations become involved.

The U.N. refugee agency already seeks to identify LGBTQ refugees and migrants. It has backed a new campaign by Greek NGO “Solidarity Now” that offers LGBTQ-specific assistance, including psychological support and housing.

Identifying members of a community that has learned the hard way it can be better to pass unnoticed, remains one of the biggest challenges.

“How can we help them if we don’t know they exist?” asked Solidarity Now’s Margarita Kontomixali, who is coordinating efforts.

Kontomixali was also quick to point out discrimination is not limited to communities from which refugees and migrants have fled.

“We are not Germany, or the Scandinavian countries, we are far behind,” she said, referring to acceptance of the LGBTQ community in Greece.”Things are changing here, but only very gradually.”

A new start?

In the case of Suma, this has proven all too true. Having set up the group and facing continuing discrimination, she smuggled herself to Sweden in November.

Those remaining in Greece face the discrimination that comes with their LGBTQ status, along with the daily stress of life in a country they never intended to make their home; but, for some, there is now the sense that a new start may be possible.

Eliot is a part of the group Suma founded. Syria’s war turned his life upside down.

Images were found on his phone at a checkpoint in Damascus revealing his homosexuality, and Eliot told VOA he was repeatedly raped by some of those guarding the checkpoint.

The 30-year-old said he is dismayed by UNHCR efforts to relocate him to Romania, where he fears he will face more discrimination than in Greece.

As he appeals the decision, Eliot lives with Tolay in a house provided by Praksis, one of the few NGO’s to offer LGBTQ assistance last year.

“Here, I can feel free, I don’t have to be shy, or worry about someone killing me while I sleep,” he said.

He also has a steady boyfriend, “He’s lovely, and he respects me,” said Eliot.

“Maybe I won’t find my dreams,” he added, “but I am happy to find something small. I just want a normal life.”

Tolay and Suma’s full names have not been used in order to protect their identities.
…

Albania’s opposition boycott of parliament has delayed the launch of justice reform despite warnings from the European Union that such a move would hamper the country from launching full membership negotiations with the bloc.

The Democratic Party on Monday boycotted an extraordinary parliamentary session intended to be the first step before creating the vetting bodies to evaluate the personal and professional backgrounds of some 800 judges and prosecutors.

The opposition would have three out of six committee members.

The parliament postponed the session, asking the people’s advocate, who collected the applications for the vetting bodies, for a week to reconsider applicants.

The justice system reform that was approved unanimously last year, is intended to ensure that judges and prosecutors are independent from politics, and to root out bribery. Judicial corruption has plagued post-communist Albania, hampering its democratic processes.

EU and U.S. experts were involved in drafting the judicial reform.

For more than two weeks, opposition Democrats have blocked the main boulevard in the capital, Tirana, calling for a caretaker government to take the country to the June 18 parliamentary elections.

It is not clear when the parliament will convene again on this issue, as the opposition has made it clear its boycott is definite.

Last week EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told the opposition that its boycott was hampering the country’s ability to integrate with the bloc and therefore join the EU.

Mogherini said that reforming the justice system and holding free elections were two steps needed to convince EU members to launch full membership negotiations with the country.
…

On March 8, 100 years ago, a revolution erupted in Saint Petersburg that ended the monarchy in Russia and set up a provisional government that was overthrown by the Bolsheviks just months later.  That led to the rise of the Soviet Union and the spread of communism globally.  

But there are still Russians today who defend the monarchy as sacred, and a few who even hope for its return.

Once loyal subjects of the Tsar, factory workers revolted over corruption as World War I took a toll on living standards.  

Some 30,000 workers from the Putilov Plant, now called the Kirov Factory, joined the uprising.  

“The workers of the Putilov Plant, like all other Petrograd [Saint Petersburg] workers, took part in the strikes and riots caused by their dissatisfaction at the economic situation in the country,” says Kirov Factory Museum director Igor Savrasov.

“It was the third year of the war.  There was not a big difference among the workers.  There was a shortage of bread for everyone.”

Russia’s “February Revolution”, which took place in March according to the Gregorian calendar, saw Tsar Nicholas the Second abdicate in the face of a popular uprising.  

When the Bolsheviks seized power from a provisional government, aristocratic and wealthy families fled.

But some returned to join the new regime. 

“My parents did not become truly Soviet, but my sister and I were more assimilated,” says Ivan Artsishevskiy, whose father was from a line of military nobles.  “I served in the Soviet army, so I fully went through the system.  In my family, we all believed in being with Russia whether it’s for good [times] or for bad.”

Respect for monarchy remains

Artsishevskiy helped in the reburial protocol for Russia’s last royal family, the Romanovs, who were executed by the Bolsheviks after the revolution and canonized in 2000.

A descendant of nobility, he teaches etiquette to Russia’s next generation.  

“As the result of the Soviet achievements, a huge part of our genetic pool was destroyed, and the selection was of negative character.  So now, we must correct it,” says Artsishevskiy.

A century after the Russian monarchy fell the Russian Imperial House, keepers of the Romanov legacy, wants legal recognition.  

“We continue to stick to our monarchical convictions.  And we continue to believe that monarchy for Russia is a historically natural mode of existence,” says director of the Russian Imperial House Alexander Zakatov.  “Russia was a monarchy for more than a thousand years before the revolution, which brought us a lot of misfortunes.”

Zakatov acknowledges there is no present condition for the monarchy’s restoration in Russia – a grand understatement for most Russians.  

Defend Saint Nicholas

But underscoring the sensitivity about the monarchy, a Russian film titled “Matilda,” about the last Tsar’s affair with a ballerina, is being criticized even before its release later this year.

“Judging by the images that I have seen in the trailer, we may say that it doesn’t correspond to real history,” says Zakatov.  “It gives a twisted image of Tsar Nicholas the Second, and in many aspects it is blasphemous, because he is a saint ascribed to sainthood.”

Monarchist and Orthodox groups have deemed the film insulting.  Natalya Poklonskaya, the former Kremlin-appointed Crimean prosecutor-general and current State Duma deputy, argues the film will upset religious feelings and in November called for a criminal investigation.  

A group called “Orthodox State-Holy Russia” called for a ban and allegedly threatened to set fire to cinemas that show the film, earning a rare rebuke from the Kremlin.

“This organization is not registered with the Justice Ministry.  So, in fact, this concerns the threats by anonymous extremists,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to the TASS news agency.  “Such actions are absolutely inadmissible,” he added.  “The president said that the state will respond harshly to these manifestations.”  

As Russia marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution, few will mourn the loss of the Russian monarchy.

But many will remember the Bolsheviks who seized power, the destructive civil war that followed, and the Soviet empire they established. 
…

Russia this year is marking 100 years since the Russian Revolution, which ended centuries of monarchy and led to the rise of a new empire — the Soviet Union.  Russia’s “February Revolution,” which was in March in the Gregorian calendar, saw Tsar Nicholas the Second abdicate in the face of a popular uprising.  But, as VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Saint Petersburg, there are still Russians today who defend the monarchy as sacred, and a few who even hope for its return.
…

If there are hooligans planning to crash the 2018 World Cup football (soccer) finals in Russia, a Russian lawmaker thinks he has a solution.

Parliament member Igor Lebedev has even drawn up rules for what he calls “draka” – the Russian word for “fight.” There would be 20 unarmed fighters on each side taking on one another in a stadium at a scheduled hour. He said these fights between different fan groups could attract thousands of spectators.

“If visiting fans, for example, begin picking fights they receive an answer — your challenge is accepted. Let’s meet at the stadium at the set time. You can acquaint yourselves with the rules on our site,” Lebedev wrote on his party’s website. Russia would be a pioneer in a new sport, he said.

Last year, organized groups of Russian football fans, many with martial arts training, fought English fans on the streets of Marseille during the European Championship.

Some fan groups in Russia already hold illicit fights along similar lines of what Lebedev is proposing, typically pre-arranged mass brawls in rural locations, away from police. A Russian Premier League game on Saturday between CSKA Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg was marred by clashes between groups of rival fans who fought one another and tried to break through a security fence.

Lebedev, who represents the opposition Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, is also on the board of the Russian Football Union.

His comments come only 15 months from the kickoff of football’s 2018 World Cup which will be hosted by Russia with 12 venues in 11 cities.

 
…

Four top European leaders hold talks Monday on the future of the European Union, at a time when it faces multiple crises that are sparking doubts about its very existence. 

Hosted by French President Francois Hollande at the iconic Versailles palace outside Paris, the dinner meeting that brings together German, Italian and Spanish leaders comes amid heated discussion about how to move forward the deeply troubled European Union in the face of Brexit, rising nationalism and an EU-skeptic Trump administration in Washington. 

Those issues will be hashed out during a broader EU summit March 25, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the Rome Treaty that lay the now-crumbling foundations for the future bloc. 

“The EU is in a very dangerous situation.It could collapse,” said analyst Philippe Moreau Defarges, of the French Institute for International Relations, in Paris, echoing the concerns of a number of other experts and politicians.

Last week, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker offered a framework for the broader European discussions, laying out five possible paths for the 28-member bloc, soon to be 27, with the departure of Britain. They range from even tighter integration, to the idea of a “multi-speed” Europe, with groups of “willing” countries moving ahead in specific areas like defense.

Yet like many other issues, EU members cannot agree on the options, and the limited-attendance Versailles meeting may not have much impact. All four leaders are in a weakened position, starting with host Hollande, who has only weeks left in his presidency. 

“It’s not a political meeting, it’s a sentimental and emotional meeting to say, ‘This European Union is very important and we must save it,” Defarges said. “Even if they agree on something practical, they don’t have the capacity to implement it.”

In Brussels, the two EU leaders also are in a fragile position.European Council President Donald Tusk’s bid for a second term this spring is opposed by his own Polish government, although many member states support it. Jean Claude Juncker, who heads the EU executive arm, says he will step down in 2019.

Speaking to the European Parliament last week, Juncker urged governments to “stop Brussels-bashing, stop EU-bashing.”

But doing so may prove challenging, and the bloc’s problems may deepen depending on the outcome of key elections in several member states. 

Populism a threat

In France and the Netherlands, far-right, anti-EU parties are leading in the polls. The results are particularly crucial when it comes to France, whose post-war coal and steel pact with Germany lay the foundations for the future bloc. 

Far-right National Front head Marine Le Pen, favored to win the first round of French presidential elections in April, calls for renegotiating France’s relationship with the EU and holding a “Frexit” referendum if that fails. 

In the Netherlands, far-right candidate Geert Wilders has pledged to leave the euro and the EU. Both populists favor closing their national borders and rejecting the kinds of global trade agreements the EU supports. 

One of the top EU champions, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, also faces rising populism and a tough election year, although her key Social Democratic rival, Martin Schulz, is the former EU parliament head and also pro-Europe.

Within the bloc, there are also deep divisions over what kinds of reforms are needed. Several Eastern European and Balkan nations oppose creating a “multi-speed” Europe, fearing they will be left behind. 

“We categorically declare ourselves against the creation of the so-called core of Europe and the rest, the periphery,” Bulgaria’s interim Deputy Prime Minister Denitsa Zlateva said last week. 

The four leaders meeting in Versailles support the concept.

“There needs to be a multi-speed Europe,” agreed analyst Moreau Defarges, offering the example of the euro currency, embraced by some but not all EU members. “The problem is are these four countries able to create a European hard core? My feeling is no.”

Whatever reforms EU members do agreed on will inevitably take time.Juncker has set out a starting calendar of 2019, by which time Britain presumably will have quit the bloc. That is too slow, some say. 

Europe “needs to go much more quickly and much more strongly,” Guillaume Klossa, founder of Europa Novaa think-tank told France’s Journal du Dimanche. 

What kind of deal the EU strikes with Britain will also be key. A so-called ‘hard Brexit’ without any trade deal between the two sides, would be deeply damaging, many say. 

“It would be a disaster,” Moreau Defarges said, “for the European Union and for Britain.
…

Sinn Fein, the Irish nationalist party, has fallen just short of becoming the largest party in elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly.

In results declared early Friday, the Democratic Unionist Party led with 28 seats, just one more than Sinn Fein’s total.

At stake in the outcome from Thursday’s snap election is the revival or demise of power-sharing between Irish Catholics and British Protestants, the central objective of the U.S.-brokered Good Friday peace accord nearly two decades ago.

Seeking to be No. 1

Sinn Fein was seeking to overtake the Protestants of the Democratic Unionists and become the No. 1 party for the first time in Northern Ireland, an achievement that would have given Sinn Fein the right to the top government post of first minister.

Sinn Fein’s new leader in Northern Ireland, 40-year-old Michelle O’Neill, was mobbed by supporters as the results rolled in.

O’Neill, the daughter of an Irish Republican Army veteran with childhood memories of the conflict that claimed 3,700 lives, represents a leadership shift within Sinn Fein to the first post-war generation following the IRA’s 1997 cease-fire and 2005 disarmament.

Thin margin of core support

Friday’s final Northern Ireland-wide total of first-preference votes, the core measure of party popularity, showed the Democratic Unionists narrowly on top with 28.1 percent, down 1 point from the last election 10 months ago. Sinn Fein trailed with 27.9 percent, up 4 points, the narrowest sectarian gap in Northern Ireland electoral history.

Commentators credited the Sinn Fein surge to Catholic voters’ anger at the Democratic Unionists, especially outgoing First Minister Arlene Foster, who was blamed for overseeing a wasteful green energy program and for fostering a culture of insults and disrespect toward Sinn Fein.

Voter turnout reached nearly 65 percent, 10 points higher than last year.

Former Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness triggered the election by resigning in January, declaring the vote a referendum on Foster’s leadership. McGuinness, a former IRA commander recently diagnosed with a rare and often fatal disease, didn’t seek re-election. 

 
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Cardinal Joseph Zen, the most senior Roman Catholic figure in China, says he is deeply skeptical about a reputedly imminent agreement between Chinese leaders in Beijing and Pope Francis in the Vatican.

Zen, the former bishop of Hong Kong, told VOA he is most concerned about the possibility that a rapprochement between China and the Vatican will give China’s government a role in the nomination of Catholic bishops there.

A deal between the church and the communist government would be seen by many as a diplomatic coup for Pope Francis, after more than six decades of difficult relations with China. But it is feared such an agreement could carry with it a resolution in China’s favor of the highly controversial issue of selecting bishops.

Pope choice of bishops is key

Reports of an agreement between the church and the Chinese leadership have been building for months, but details of what that agreement might consist of are still unverified.

Zen, who retired in 2009, freely admits he is an outspoken opponent of China’s communist-dominated system of government. 

“In the present situation,” he told VOA, “I cannot see how there might be a good deal” to be struck between the Vatican and Beijing.

In earlier interviews, the 85-year-old senior cleric has spoken more pungently, telling Britain’s Guardian newspaper, for example, that giving Beijing’s secular authorities a role in choosing Catholic bishops would be a “surrender” by the Vatican, and that “the people sooner or later will see the bishops are puppets of the government and not really the shepherds of the flock.”

Zen, interviewed by telephone from Hong Kong, told VOA the only acceptable way to include Chinese authorities in the choosing of new bishops is “if nomination starts and ends with the pope.”

If Beijing accepts the primacy of the Vatican in ecclesiastical matters, Zen said, “there’s hope to have a good agreement. But if it begins with the government, it is not acceptable.”

Troubled church-state history

China expelled Catholic missionaries after the Communist Party took power in 1949 and broke relations with the Vatican in 1957. Since then, the government has allowed Catholics to practice only in churches overseen by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, an official organization staffed in part by communist officials.

“Patriotic Catholics” do not recognize the pope’s authority in the appointment of bishops or other church matters, despite Catholic doctrine that requires bishops to be named and appointed by the Vatican. Bishops in China are, in effect, appointed by the government.

That dilemma prompted many Chinese Catholics loyal to the pope to go underground years ago.

The Catholic News Agency reported that an agreement with China is a major effort of the current pope, and the highly charged issue of which entity will have greater say in appointing bishops is central to talks that have been under way for months. Those talks hit a bump in December, however, when a bishop supported by the Beijing government but not approved by the Vatican ordained a new group of senior Chinese clerics.

The current leader of the Hong Kong diocese, Cardinal John Tong, wrote in his diocesan newspaper three weeks ago that if Beijing and the Holy See agree that both sides have a role in appointing bishops, Chinese Catholics will have “essential freedom” but lack “entire freedom.”

‘Genuine or fake freedom’?

Zen likened this stance to elections in Hong Kong, where voters want universal suffrage and the right to directly nominate candidates for the former British territory’s chief executive. China insisted that candidates would not be chosen by a popular vote, but rather picked by a pro-Beijing committee. 

“It is the question of genuine or fake freedom, not the question of full or partial freedom,” Zen told VOA.

Zen said he believes Catholics who remain loyal to the pope and who have long worshiped underground are concerned that the Vatican may abandon them. 

“If there’s a bad agreement, the underground believers, and even some priests and believers belonging to the official church in China would feel that they have been betrayed … because they have suffered for so long just for being loyal to the Roman Church and the Holy See.”

To Zen, the key issue in China-Vatican relations centers on whether Beijing is willing to relinquish control of religious affairs.

“The government is going to control the church, which is a big problem,” he said. “The government has no plan, or will, to give up control over the church. They have been doing so for so many years, so how can they let it go? There’s absolutely no reason, right?

“The most important thing for the Communist Party is to control,” he said. “You can only do what the party allows you to do.”
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Georgia, responding to an intervention from a European court, on Friday suspended a ruling from a domestic court that had placed the country’s biggest independent TV station under the control of a close ally of the government.

The country’s supreme court on Thursday ordered broadcaster Rustavi 2 returned to its former co-owner, businessman Kibar Khalvashi, in a move critics at home and abroad called an attempt to muzzle the media.

Rustavi 2’s attorneys challenged the ruling at the European Court of Human Rights, which on Friday ordered its temporary suspension.

“We will follow this procedure,” Justice Minister Tea Tsulukiani told reporters, adding that the Strasbourg-based court had also instructed the government to abstain “from interfering with the broadcaster’s editorial policy in any manner.”

Government officials have accused the popular TV station of bias, while critics fear Khalvashi — a close supporter of the ruling Georgian Dream party — will silence the only strong media voice critical of the government.

President weighs in

President Giorgi Margvelashvili, who is at odds with the ruling party, on Friday added his voice to earlier U.S. and OSCE criticism of the ownership change.

“The international community perceives the process … not as a court case, but as a political process, which impacts media freedom and the pluralistic environment in Georgia,” he said in a televised statement.

Tsulukiani said the European court’s interim measure was in force until March 8, when it would examine the case further.

The TV station has been fighting court battles in Georgia since August 2015, when a lower court found in favor of Khalvashi, who says he was forced to give up his controlling stake under the former government of Mikheil Saakashvili.

The Supreme Court judgment confirmed that ruling Thursday.

Georgian Dream defeated Saakashvili’s party in an election in 2012 and strengthened its hold on power in another ballot in October 2016.
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Nationalist Serbian lawmakers booed the European Union’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini on Friday as she addressed their parliament during tour aimed at addressing concerns about rising tensions in the Balkans.

Mogherini’s trip to all six Western Balkans states, still scarred by wars fought in 1990s along political, ethnic and religious lines, is meant to lay the groundwork for an EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday and a summit on Thursday.

Several EU leaders have expressed alarm at a variety of problems there and some blame Russia for seeking to destabilize the region, EU officials say.

At Mogherini’s speech to the Serbian parliament, members of the Serbian Radical party chanted: “Serbia! Russia! We don’t need the [European] Union!”

Four deputies from the nationalist Dveri party held banners reading: “Serbia does not trust Brussels.”

Playing down the heckles during a speech that focused on the EU accession talks which Serbia hopes to complete by 2019, Mogherini later told reporters: “It is not nice to be rude to a lady!”

Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s pro-EU coalition has a comfortable majority in parliament but the popularity of pro-Russian nationalists is on the rise. In 2016, the Radicals returned to the Serbian assembly after several years.

Next Week’s Summit

At their summit next week, EU leaders are expected to reaffirm their commitment “to support stability and to deepen political and economic ties with and within the region,” according to an early draft of their joint statement.

That is despite weariness in EU states including France and the Netherlands where eurosceptic parties pose a challenge to the status quo in their own elections in coming weeks.

The EU has made Serbia’s accession conditional on normalizing its ties with Kosovo but tensions have been on the rise this year. Serbia’s ally Moscow refuses to recognize the 2008 independence of Kosovo, which has an association agreement with the EU.

Their neighbor Macedonia – which aspires to join both EU and NATO – has not been able to form a government since elections in December as the president has refused to give a mandate to a coalition that includes ethnic Albanians.

A genocide lawsuit that Bosnia lodged against Serbia at the International Court of Justice angered Bosnian Serbs as well as officials in neighboring Serbia.

In Montenegro, both pro-Western and anti-Western opposition parties are boycotting the parliament following a recent vote in which they say people were intimidated to back the government.

Russian Influence?

Russia opposes the accession of Balkan states into the EU has accused Europe and NATO of meddling in Macedonia’s political crisis.

The EU believes Moscow is encouraging Bosnia’s Serbs to seek independence and may have encouraged a move to unseat Montenegro’s leader as he seeks to join NATO.

A border dispute between ex-Yugoslav EU members Croatia and Slovenia, adds to the mix of instability, EU officials say.
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Irish government investigators said Friday that up to 800 remains of babies have been discovered in a mass grave at a former Catholic home for unmarried mothers.

The discovery confirmed a local historian’s claim that the children may be in an unmarked grave at the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in the western Irish town of Tuam.

Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes Commission said excavations revealed an underground structure that contained “significant quantities of human remains.”

The commission said DNA analysis confirmed the ages of the children ranged from 35 weeks to three years. Records show the babies died between 1925 and 1961, the last year the home was open.

Burying the remains of babies in unmarked graves was a relatively common practice at Catholic-run homes in Ireland when there were high mortality rates in the early 20th century.

The government launched an investigation in 2014 after local historian Catherine Corless found death certificates for nearly 800 children who resided at the facility, but a burial record for only one baby.

“Everything pointed to this area being a mass grave,” Corless said. She recalled how boys playing in the area had reported seeing a pile of bones hidden in an underground chamber in the mid-1970s.

The Catholic church operated many of Ireland’s social services in the 20th century. Some housed tens of thousands of unmarried pregnant women, including rape victims.

Unmarried women and their babies were then viewed as a stain on Ireland’s reputation as a fervently-Catholic country.

The fathers of some of the babies were powerful figures, such as priests, the wealthy, and married men.

The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone, said the news was “sad and disturbing.” She added that an investigation would continue and a decision would be made to determine what should happen with the remains.
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