DDMA Headline Animator

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Turkey offers $50 million loan to Ukraine, urges protection of Crimean Tatars

By Natalia Zinets
March 20, 2015

KIEV (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan offered a $50 million loan to Ukraine and called for the rights of Crimean Tatars to be protected during a trip to Kiev on Friday, but avoided outright criticism of trade partner Russia.

In a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Erdogan said Turkey was also offering $10 million in humanitarian assistance on top of the loan, which is meant to help Ukraine cover its budget deficit.

"We have expressed our support for the territorial integrity, political union and sovereignty of Ukraine, including Crimea, in every platform," Erdogan said, voicing support for the Minsk ceasefire brokered by Germany and France in February.

"We also wish for the continuation of Ukraine’s stance of protecting the rights of all ethnic and religious minorities, especially Crimean Tatar Turks, who have proved their loyalty to their country during this crisis," he said.

Turks have close kinship bonds with the Muslim, Turkic-speaking Tatar minority in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine a year ago. Erdogan has repeatedly warned that the instability could have regional repercussions.

But Turkey has deepening trade ties with Russia and has been reluctant to openly criticize Moscow's actions in Ukraine. Erdogan spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, discussing energy deals and the Ukraine crisis.

Russian gas exporter Gazprom said in January it planned to build an undersea gas pipeline via the Turkish-Greek border -- a project informally known as "Turkish Stream" -- as it seeks to supply Europe while by-passing Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials had been expected to seek assurances from Erdogan and Energy Minister Taner Yildiz during their trip that those ties will not harm Ukrainian interests.

Asked at the press conference about the Turkish Stream project, Erdogan gave no new details, saying simply that Turkey found the Russian proposal "reasonable" and that Russia remained its biggest natural gas supplier.

A senior Turkish official said ahead of the visit that Ukraine's ambition to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on the Black Sea coast would be on the agenda, but that Ankara still opposes the project on environmental grounds.

"Nobody should expect from this visit a step from Turkey that could strain ties with Russia," a second official said ahead of the meetings with Poroshenko.

(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Humeyra Pamuk and Ece Toksabay in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Thousands of Afghan refugees facing harassment flee Pakistan

March 16, 2015

TORKHAM, Afghanistan (AP) — Crossing back into his native Afghanistan from Pakistan, Nezamuddin wept as he recounted the hardships his family of 11 had faced in their years as refugees, troubles that only grew insufferable after a recent terror attack there killed 150 people.

"Whenever there was a bomb blast they would arrest us for it, beat us up, take our money," said Nezamuddin, who goes by one name like many Afghans. "Now I don't know how I am going to look after my old father, myself and my mother."

Since January, almost 50,000 Afghans like Nezamuddin's family have passed through Torkham, double the amount of all refugees returning through the border town in 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration. Many like Nezamuddin say they fled Pakistan over increased harassment by police who told them to return to Afghanistan, a country many have never even seen, putting new pressure on both countries to find solutions to the decades-old flow of refugees.

There are some 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan — and up to an estimated 1.5 million unregistered Afghans live there, said Abdul Quadir Baloch, the Pakistani minister responsible for refugee issues. Exact figures remain elusive as tens of thousands cross the border daily.

Pakistan initially welcomed waves of Afghan refugees after the 1979 invasion by the Soviet Union. But as years progressed, attitudes hardened. Many now see Afghan refugees as criminals or militants — or taking jobs from Pakistanis.

Then came the Dec. 16 Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar, in which 150 people, most of them children, were killed. Suddenly, Afghan refugees reported increased harassment by authorities checking their documents, demanding bribes and telling them they had to return to Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said.

At Torkham, Afghan refugees now pour over the border with little more than the clothes on their backs. Some arrive on foot, others in rented trucks with family members huddled between bags, boxes, mattresses and suitcases.

Awal Khan, a father of seven, spent 35 years in Pakistan, arriving as a baby when his parents fled after the 1979 invasion. Khan said he worked as a daily laborer, earning just enough to feed his family.

Serious harassment began after the school attack, he said. "They went house to house, looking for Afghan refugees. They forced us to leave," he told The Associated Press. "I have no house to live in and no money to rent one. We will have to live in a tent."

Syed Liaqat Banori, who heads the Islamabad-based Society for Human Rights and Prisoners' Aid, said authorities often harass Afghan refugees following security incidents but this time was much worse. "They are not asking them to leave the country but if they are harassed, they are asked to leave their houses, they are asked to leave the schools, colleges and close their businesses," Banori said. "What they will do?"

The Pakistani government denies systematic harassment targets Afghan refugees. "No harassment whatsoever is going to be cast on the unregistered Afghan refugees who are living here," said Baloch, the government minister. "We are going to take care of them."

Pakistani officials announced last week that they plan to register all unregistered Afghans in the country. Pakistan and Afghanistan also have discussed new financial incentives to get more refugees to return home.

Sayed Hussain Alemi Balkhi, Afghanistan's minister for refugees and repatriation, told journalists Saturday that registration of Afghan refugees in Pakistan will begin with a month. "The Afghan government wants all Afghan refugees to come back to their country, but returning all Afghans at once would create many problems," he said.

But even the current flood of returnees is proving overwhelming for aid groups like the International Organization for Migration at Torkham, spokesman Matthew Graydon said. "The capacity here was designed for maybe 10 to 15 families a day and we are having much more than that," he said. "What we have here is a large gap in assistance that we are struggling to meet."

Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana in Islamabad and Lynne O'Donnell in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

Arabs make unprecedented gains in Knesset

18 March 2015 Wednesday

The Joint Arab List – a coalition of four Arab political groups led by Aiman Ouda – won 14 seats in Tuesday's polls, coming in third after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party and the center-left Zionist Union alliance.

The 14-seat win will mean the largest Arab presence in Israel's Knesset since the first Knesset polls in 1949, which were held one year after Israel's establishment on occupied Palestinian territory.

The Arab Alliance is comprised of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash), the National Democratic Assembly (Balad), the Islamic Movement in Southern Israel, and the United Arab List.

Dov Khenin, a left-leaning Jewish politician who ran on the Joint Arab List's ticket, managed to clinch a seat at the new assembly.

Israeli-Arab parties won 11 seats in 2013 polls, before early elections were ordered in late 2014 due to rifts within Netanyahu's coalition government.

Nearly 1.6 million Arabs live in Israel, accounting for more than 20 percent of the self-proclaimed Jewish state's roughly eight-million-strong population.

Israeli-Arab party leaders note that Arab turnout in previous Knesset polls had usually hovered at around 50 percent.

The Palestine Liberation Organization, for its part, expressed disappointment over the victory of Netanyahu's Likud.

Veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said earlier Wednesday that the poll results had "buried" the Palestine-Israel peace process.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/news/156721/arabs-make-unprecedented-gains-in-knesset.

Split of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood blow to regional group

March 16, 2015

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood has formally split after 70 years — a breakup blamed on long-running ideological disputes, but also on a government attempt to further weaken what was once the country's main opposition group.

The split deals a new blow to the region-wide Brotherhood movement, which has been outlawed as a terror group by close Jordan allies Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In Jordan, some warned that the government's apparent divide-and-control policy could backfire by pushing more Brotherhood supporters into the ranks of extremists like the Islamic State group, seen as the main threat to the country's stability.

The new, officially licensed Brotherhood offshoot defines itself as a strictly Jordanian group, saying it cut ties with the regional movement to avoid being branded as militant. "We were concerned that we would be considered as a terrorist organization if we continued to be a branch of an organization branded as a terrorist group," the group's leader, Abdel-Majid Thnaibat, told The Associated Press.

The larger Brotherhood faction, still loyal to the regional movement, alleged the government engineered the division to weaken the group. "This is a coup sponsored by the regime," spokesman Murad Adaileh told the AP.

Jordan's government has declined to address the allegation. The split was formalized earlier this month when the government licensed Thnaibat's breakaway faction, and the core movement promptly expelled the defectors.

The status of the second faction now remains unclear. A government official said that while Thnaibat's group registered with the authorities, the other faction "did not correct" its status, suggesting it is legally vulnerable. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with reporters.

It's not clear if Jordan's authorities eventually will outlaw the original movement, which is deeply rooted in Jordanian society through its social outreach and welfare system. There have been some signs of a crackdown in recent months, including the arrests of about two dozen activists and the sentencing of the group's No. 2 — Zaki Bani Ersheid — to 18 month in prison for criticizing the Emirates.

The problems have put the Brotherhood in Jordan at its lowest point in years. It has no representation in parliament because of self-imposed election boycotts and is losing some of its young to extremist groups.

"The Brotherhood, by relative standards, is fairly innocuous, it's not a significant threat to the kingdom," said David Schenker of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank. "Many are asking what (is the) utility of kicking the Brotherhood when it is down."

The division was preceded by long-running ideological disagreements between "doves" and "hawks," exacerbated by 2007 Gaza takeover of the Islamic militant Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood.

The doves emphasize their Jordanian identity, want to keep Hamas at arm's length, appear more willing to play by the restrictive rules set by the monarchy and want to focus on "dawa," or preaching. The hawks criticize government policies more openly, particularly Jordan's peace treaty with Israel, embrace Hamas and see the Brotherhood as a transnational movement.

Tribal identities also appear to play a role, as Thnaibat and some of his key supporters are members of Jordan's Bedouin tribes, while some of the leading hawks are descendants of Palestinian refugees.

For years, the Brotherhood was Jordan's largest and most cohesive opposition group, seeking political reform, but stopping short of seeking the ouster of the king. With the hawks in charge, friction between the Brotherhood and the government has grown in recent years.

At the same time, the Jordanian Brotherhood has been weakened by regional developments in recent years, including the growing ideological competition from Islamic extremists following the outbreak of the Arab Spring uprising in 2011.

Some warn the government crackdown could radicalize Brotherhood supporters and help swell the ranks of the Islamic State group. Jordan has taken on a high-profile role in a U.S.-led military coalition that carries out airstrikes against the militants, after they burned a captive Jordanian pilot to death in a cage. Jordan's King Abdullah II has framed the battle as an ideological fight to the finish.

Others say the Brotherhood is responsible for losing supporters. "The Muslim Brotherhood failed to deal with the young generation and to lead them in the right direction," said Mahmoud al-Kharabseh, a pro-government legislator.

Analyst Labib Kamhawi said the Brotherhood's troubles offered an opportunity for the government to encourage the split. "Jordan is simply trying to trim the Brotherhood in power and size, to be able to manage it easily," he said.

It's not clear how the rival factions will now deal with each other, and whether court battles over the Brotherhood brand and the movement's properties, such as hospitals and real estate, are looming.

Adaileh alleged that trying to entangle the Brotherhood in legal battles is part of the government's alleged strategy of weakening the movement. Thnaibat left open the possibility that his group will participate in future elections after the Brotherhood boycotted the last two rounds over claims the system favored tribal candidates. He also said his group would try to persuade the rank and file to join them.

"We are going to contact our Brothers in the provinces to explain to them why a Brother shouldn't stay in an illegal organization," he said.

Daraghmeh reported from Ramallah, West Bank.

Officials: Tunisian gunmen trained in Libya, known to police

March 20, 2015

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — The two gunmen who killed 21 people at a museum in Tunis trained in neighboring Libya before carrying out the deadly attack and were known to authorities, Tunisian security officials said Friday.

The attack at the National Bardo Museum Wednesday has raised concerns about the spread of extremism in North Africa and particularly in Tunisia — the only country to emerge from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings with a functioning democracy.

In the country's capital Tunis, hundreds citizens on Friday thronged the main avenue where demonstrators overthrew dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali four years ago, celebrating independence day in defiance of the attacks that left 17 cruise ship tourists dead.

Some danced draped in Tunisian flags and others held aloft hand-written signs that read "JeSuisBardo" for "I am Bardo," a slogan that has captured attention as an anti-terrorism rallying cry on social media.

"We are here to say 'no' to terrorism," said Astal Marwen, a 19-year-old political science and law student, at the rally. "The attackers are part of a small minority, and they have the wrong conception of what Islam is."

The attackers slipped out of the country in December and received weapons training in Libya which is awash in well-armed militias fighting for control, said Rafik Chelli, a top official in the Interior Ministry in a TV interview late Thursday.

One of them, Hatem Khachnaoui, 26, was from the central city of Sbeitla and had previously been arrested on terrorism charges before being released, according to Sabhi Jouini, a leading figure in the police union and a terrorism expert.

Sbeitla, home to some splendid Roman ruins, is in an impoverished region not far from the Algerian border where an al-Qaida-linked Tunisian group has carried out several attacks. Khachnaoui's father and sister in Sbeitla were arrested Thursday along with two others from the region on suspicion of supporting the attackers. Another five people with direct connection to the attack were picked up around the capital.

Khachnaoui's associate, Yassine Laabidi was only 20 years old and had less of a record with police, though he is known to have worked in a travel agency and hails from the working class Tunis neighborhood of Ibn Khaldun.

The Islamic State group, based in Iraq and Syria, has claimed responsibility for the Bardo attack. Several well-armed groups in Libya have pledged their allegiance to the Islamic State. Confronted with a poor economy, young Tunisians have disproportionately gone abroad to fight with extremist groups in Libya, Syria and Iraq, including some affiliated with the Islamic State. Tunisian authorities have estimated that of the 3,000 young people who left the country to fight with radical groups, about 500 have returned.

In claiming responsibility for the attack, IS issued a statement and audio on jihadi websites applauding the dead gunmen as "knights" for their "blessed invasion of one of the dens of infidels and vice in Muslim Tunisia."

Analysts cautioned against seeing every such attack as evidence of a well-organized, centrally controlled entity spanning the Middle East, saying instead that small groups could merely be taking inspiration from the high-profile militant group.

Early Friday, victims' families continued to arrive at Tunis' Charles Nicolle hospital to help identify the dead and recover their bodies. The latest tally of victims included four Italians, three Japanese and three French, two Spanish and two Colombians and one citizen each from Britain, Poland and Belgium, said Samar Samoud, medical adviser to the Tunisian health minister. The nationalities of three victims remain unclear.

French President Francois Hollande confirmed the French dead and said two others were in intensive care while five were only lightly wounded and would be returning to France tonight. Two of the cruise ships that had passengers killed or wounded in the Tunis attack sailed into Spanish ports on Friday, with disembarking passengers telling reporters chilling tales of how they just missed being victims.

In Palma, Spanish cruise ship passenger Catalina Llinas told reporters she and her husband luckily chose a day trip Wednesday to the Roman ruins of Carthage near Tunis instead of the museum excursion. The couple's tour bus, she said, passed by the Bardo museum just 10 minutes before the attacks.

"It could have been us," she said. The deaths of so many foreigners will damage Tunisia's tourism industry, which draws thousands of foreigners to its Mediterranean beaches, desert oases and ancient Roman ruins. The industry had just started to recover after years of decline. The two cruise ship lines who had passengers killed in Tunis on Wednesday announced they were dropping Tunis from their itineraries for now.

Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report.

Thousands gather for anti-austerity rally in Spain

March 21, 2015

MADRID (AP) — Thousands of demonstrators from across Spain gathered at one of Madrid's main squares Saturday to protest against the way the government has tackled the financial crisis by implementing harsh austerity measures.

Organizers had hoped to attract 20,000 protesters to the event, labelled Marches for Dignity, and Saturday evening much of Colon Square and part of Paseo de Recoletos boulevard were packed with people carrying republican flags and banners calling for a general strike.

Hairdresser Dolores Cerezo, 32, who had arrived from southern Sevilla, said the government had cut back "savagely" on public services such as education and the national health service, "but we are seeing many of them now appearing in court suspected of fraud and corruption, of stealing money."

Scuffles broke out after the main rally ended. Riot police clashed with about 200 protesters who had attacked a bank and a police car.

S. Korea, China, Japan revive talks after history disputes

March 21, 2015

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Meeting for the first time in three years, the foreign ministers of South Korea, China and Japan agreed Saturday to work together to improve ties strained by historical and territorial issues and restore trilateral summit talks among their leaders.

Anti-Japan sentiments in South Korea and China have grown sharply in recent years over what is seen as Tokyo's push to obscure Japan's brutal colonization of the Korean Peninsula and invasion of China in the first half of the 20th century. Three-way talks among the countries' top diplomats had been subsequently suspended, and there has been no trilateral meeting of the countries' leaders since 2012.

The foreign ministers said in a joint statement after Saturday's meeting in Seoul that they would make efforts to resume trilateral summit talks "at the earliest convenient time for the three countries."

"The three foreign ministers, based on the spirit of looking squarely at history and moving forward to the future, have agreed to make joint efforts to properly resolve related issues, improve bilateral ties and strengthen trilateral cooperation," South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said at a joint news conference.

Despite the agreement, it remains to be seen whether the summit talks can be realized anytime soon. "The problems related to history are not about the past, but are about the present," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at the news conference. He said the countries should not allow their relations to be hurt further by historical issues.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida avoided talking about contentious issues during the news conference. Analysts say getting the summit talks back on track is crucial to prompting more high-profile bilateral talks where sensitive issues can be discussed.

Since taking office in early 2013, South Korean President Park Geun-hye has never held official one-on-one talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, although U.S. President Barack Obama brought them together for a three-way meeting last year in The Hague.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met Abe last November on the sidelines of a regional conference that Beijing hosted in their first meeting since both took power in late 2012, but the meeting ended without a breakthrough. Park and Xi have met five times.

Despite their harsh history, the three countries are closely linked economically, with China the biggest trading partner of both South Korea and Japan. They are also members of now-stalled regional disarmament talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

During Saturday's meeting, the three foreign ministers agreed to continue their efforts to restart the nuclear disarmament talks to produce substantial progress in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The rifts among the three nations have been a source of concern for the United States, which wants a stronger alliance with its key allies South Korea and Japan to better cope with a rising China and the increasing nuclear threats from North Korea.

Japan and South Korea host 80,000 U.S. troops, the core of America's military presence in the Asia-Pacific, while China is the main backer of South Korea's chief rival, North Korea.

Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim contributed to this report.

Clashes rage in Ukrainian town, making mockery of truce

March 23, 2015

SHYROKYNE, Ukraine (AP) — To reach rear-guard government positions in the seaside town of Shyrokyne, Ukrainian soldiers gingerly wind their off-roaders through private gardens hugging a precipice along the Azov Sea.

The truce announced in mid-February has never taken here, so traveling by the main roads is too dangerous. Government and Russian-backed separatist forces face off in daily gun and artillery battles across an unseen line cutting through the town. The skirmishes are fierce, but contained — for now. Still, the enduring unrest arouses deep anxieties that a conflict which has already claimed more than 6,000 lives in eastern Ukraine could flare up again across the entire 450-kilometer (280-mile) front line.

Shyrokyne itself is not much of a prize. It is the industrial port city of Mariupol, 10 kilometers (6 miles) further west, that Ukrainian forces want to defend from the rebels at all costs. Residents and government troops alike believe the separatists' ultimate aim is to take Mariupol — and eventually create a land bridge between Russia and Crimea, which Russia annexed last March. Crimea has no physical link to Russian territory now and a bridge being discussed is years away from completion.

Government forces in Shyrokyne are only truly at ease behind three defensive lines separating them from the heat of fighting in the center. At a makeshift garrison installed there, on the grounds of a restaurant near the shore, two tanks stood parked Sunday under a striped awning.

Several hundred meters away, mortar shells landing in the sea sprayed up columns of water. "They are hurling anti-tank shells at the lighthouse. Another one just came this way," said a bearded, barrel-chested fighter with the government's Azov Battalion who gave only his nom de guerre, Al.

As reports came that two enemy tanks had been spotted, Al's thoughts turned to the combat ahead. "It is all about to start," he said. To proceed closer to the area where the battle is fiercest, soldiers abandon their cars and race on foot toward a school, climbing through a hole in the fence. The asphalt on the road had been torn up by explosives, so only armored vehicles could get through with ease.

The responsibility for defending Shyrokyne is shared between the Azov and Donbass battalions, who take weekly turns to serve in the town. Coordination is sometimes poor, however. As Azov troops jogged for cover behind the school Sunday, one soldier shouted: "What are you doing? Are you crazy running like that? There are booby traps there."

Another soldier corrected him. "Nah, the booby traps are over there," he said, waving his hand vaguely to the left. "The Donbass guys put them there." Inside the school, children's drawings still decorated the walls. One man fried sausages and another chowed down on boiled oats as a mobile phone blared out music by a Russian death metal band. Underfoot, amid the spent bullet cartridges and shrapnel, students' art collages lay covered in fallen plaster.

As the sound of mortars grew more intense, all the men ducked inside for cover. "There they go, they've started again," said an Azov spotter with the nickname Mathematician. A cease-fire between Ukrainian and rebel forces was forged after marathon negotiations between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France on Feb. 12. Under the truce, fighting was supposed to stop and heavy weapons were to be pulled back from the front line. Responsibility for verifying the cease-fire lies with monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Mathematician said the rebels always wait for the OSCE teams to leave before resuming their attacks. "As soon as the OSCE leaves, the firing starts," he said. Separatists accuse Ukrainian forces of similar deviousness, and it's hard to know definitely even at the front line who started any specific round of firing.

The head of the OSCE monitoring mission on Monday demanded that his teams be granted secure access to Shyrokyne. "Both sides in this area continue to violate numerous provisions of the (cease-fire) agreements, including those related to cessation of fire, prohibition of attacking moves, withdrawal of heavy weapons, and deployment of (airborne drones)," said Ertugrul Apakan.

Later on Sunday afternoon, sounds resembling outgoing mortars could be heard from a nearby field. Soldiers refused to give an AP reporter access to the area. "We don't have any mortars," Mathematician said, smiling. "They only allow us to have small arms. But when they (rebels) get really brazen, we call in support and flatten them."

Many in the Azov Battalion have unabashed Ukrainian nationalist sympathies, prompting rebels to label them neo-fascists. From time to time, Azov fighters in Shyrokyne greeted one another with ironic Roman salutes and then grinned at their own humor. That kind of idle larking and the battalion's flirtation with neo-Nazi symbolism is seized upon as confirmation of their critics' worst fears.

The infamy appears only partly deserved, however. Some embrace fervent Ukrainian nationalism as a repudiation of the heavily Russian-dominated Soviet legacy, all while serving with fighters from a wide array of political and ethnic backgrounds. Chit-chat switches casually from Ukrainian to Russian and back again.

The best view of the skirmishes raging inside the village is from the House of Culture, a stolid building of a style popular across the Soviet Union during Josef Stalin's rule. From there, fighters unleashed salvos from an automatic grenade launcher and 73 mm caliber anti-tank guns.

Ukrainian forces hold the elevated sections of Shyrokyne, giving them a tactical advantage. Smoke could be seen billowing from houses in the lower-lying buffer zone. One shell apparently flying in from rebel positions landed by a church.

All at once, the men on the House of Culture roof cried out in a jubilant chorus, pointing toward the village. "Did you see those flames? We hit a tank. Two direct hits," one government fighter said. By the day's end, the final Ukrainian tally was at least one enemy tank destroyed and two relatively light injuries among their ranks.

Almost every day brings new casualties — on occasion, some fatal — but their determination to stop the rebel advance along the Azov Sea coast is intense. One Azov fighter calling himself Tantsor — Russian for dancer — said the rebels were clearly hoping to take Mariupol by stealth.

"They are violating the cease-fire everywhere and using any chance they get to advance even by one centimeter toward peaceful Ukrainian towns," he said.

France swings to the right as Europe retrenches

March 23, 2015

PARIS (AP) — France, long the land of the left, is making a right turn.

The top two parties in weekend local elections were the conservative UMP and the far right National Front. And even the governing Socialists are adopting traditionally right-wing policies: reducing labor protections, expelling immigrants and rounding up trouble-makers.

The election result is the latest sign of a long-running change in attitudes, as many Europeans shift amid economic uncertainty and security fears. That, along with disillusionment with mainstream leaders, is pushing voters in new directions, from Greece to Spain and Britain.

In France, surging support for the National Front has forced mainstream conservatives and leftists to consider ideas that once seemed authoritarian. And a deadly rampage in January by French Islamic extremists is swaying the conversation about security, immigration and integration.

"What seems most striking to me is the bar swinging to the right on the political chess board," said Frederic Dabi of France's Ifop polling agency. That's in part because of shrinking support for Europe's open borders and shared currency, which far right groups decry. But Dabi said it's also because voters from all political backgrounds want to punish the party in charge.

In the voting Sunday for local councils in France, former President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative UMP and its allies won 29 percent of votes in first-round balloting. Next came Marine Le Pen's National Front, with 25 percent. President Francois Hollande's governing Socialists and their allies trailed with 21.5 percent, according to official results.

That means that in about a quarter of runoff races March 29, voters will have a choice between the right and the hard right. It's a wake-up call for the French left, which boasts several political parties and whose defense of worker rights and the welfare state long set the overall national agenda. It's bleeding support amid Hollande's failure to create jobs and reinvigorate the economy.

Many even expected the National Front to come out on top in Sunday's vote, since its support has steadily surged over recent years under Le Pen. With her eye on a 2017 presidential bid, she wants to close France's borders and rails against the "Islamization" of Europe.

Sarkozy's conservatives dominated the Sunday elections instead — in part because they have increasingly been borrowing from the far right playbook to win votes. Under Sarkozy's presidency, authorities expelled tens of thousands of immigrants annually. Hollande's Socialist administration has kept up the rhythm, expelling about the same number each year as under Sarkozy.

The French Parliament's vote in January to extend airstrikes against extremists in Iraq was telling: The Socialist-led National Assembly gave Prime Minister Manuel Valls a standing ovation when he declared "war" on terrorists, and approved the extension by 488-1.

After the January attacks, Hollande's administration deployed more than 100,000 security forces, and authorities rounded up dozens in a crackdown on hate speech. The government is now pushing to legalize broad surveillance of terrorism suspects, a move activists consider a major blow to France's famed "liberte."

And on the financial front, the economy minister stands accused of betraying his Socialist roots by loosening up labor rules and allowing more stores to open Sundays. Moving to the right isn't helping the Socialists electorally, however.

France's latest elections showed a sharp rise in "anti-system" voters, said political scientist Thomas Guenole of Vox Politica. "It's the intersection of two things: a deep economic crisis, and a system that cut France in two — the France of insiders and the France of outsiders," he said.

In Spain, radical leftists and centrists gained on mainstream parties in elections Sunday. In Britain, concerns about immigration and a loss of sovereignty to the European Union are pushing the political conversation to the right. Upcoming British elections could weigh on the entire continent's direction.

Al Clendenning in Madrid and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.