Assad allies bomb Turkish-backed forces amid warning against Aleppo advance

Wednesday 26 October 2016

Forces allied to President Bashar al-Assad in Syria warned Turkey on Wednesday against any advance towards their positions to the north and east of Aleppo, as Turkish officials accused the Syrian government of carrying out a strike on its allies.

It was the first time a direct clash between Syrian forces and the Turkish-backed rebels has been announced. Two rebels were killed and five wounded, the Turkish army said.

The Turkish military said a helicopter "assessed to belong to regime forces" bombed the rebels in a village near Akhtarin, a town 5km southeast of Dabiq, late on Tuesday.

Dabiq is a former Islamic State stronghold which the rebels seized from the militants this month.

"This kind of attack will not stop our fight against Daesh (Islamic State)," said Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu. "This operation will continue until al-Bab. The operation needs to continue, and it will."

The reported attack came as pro-Assad forces warned that any attempt by Turkish-backed forces to would be seen as a breach of "the red lines".

The field commander of the forces allied to Damascus - who was not identified by name, nationality or affiliation - made the comments during a tour of frontlines to the north of Aleppo in a written statement sent to Reuters by an official from the same alliance.

"We will not let anyone use the excuse of fighting Daesh to advance and attempt to draw near to the defences of the allies forces," he said.

The alliance fighting in support of Assad includes the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

On Wednesday, Erdogan emphasised that Turkey's operations in Syria were not intended to stretch to the city of Aleppo.

"Let's make a joint fight against terrorist organisations. But Aleppo belongs to the people of Aleppo, we must explain this ... making calculations over Aleppo would not be right," Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara.

Turkey's incursion into Syria, launched two months ago to drive IS from its border and prevent Kurdish militia fighters gaining ground in their wake, has complicated an already messy battlefield in northern Syria.

As the Turkish-backed rebels push south towards al-Bab, an IS-held town 35km northeast of Aleppo, they face confrontation with both Kurdish and pro-Assad forces, whose frontlines lie close by.

The Syrian military could not immediately be reached for comment, but it said last week that the presence of Turkish troops on Syrian soil was a "dangerous escalation and flagrant breach of Syria's sovereignty".

It warned it would bring down any Turkish warplanes entering Syrian air space.

Turkey launched "Operation Euphrates Shield" two months ago, sending tanks and warplanes into Syria in support of the largely Turkmen and Arab rebels.

Erdogan has also said the operation will continue to al-Bab, which the Kurdish YPG militia is also seeking to control.

Source: Middle East Eye.
Link: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-says-kurdish-militias-should-not-take-part-raqqa-opp-clashes-continue-1869500414.

Venezuela braces for anti-government protests amid crisis

October 26, 2016

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's standoff deepened after congress voted to open a political trial against President Nicolas Maduro for breaking the constitutional order and opposition leaders called for mass protests on Wednesday to drive the unpopular socialist leader from office.

Tuesday's vote by the opposition-led legislature is unlikely to have any legal effect as Maduro still controls other branches of government, including the military and Supreme Court, which has already declared the National Assembly illegitimate. But it raised tensions even further following last week's suspension of an opposition push to hold a referendum to try to recall Maduro.

Opposition legislators argued that Venezuela's leader has effectively abandoned the presidency by neglecting his job and several lawmakers questioned whether he was a dual Colombian national and therefore ineligible to hold Venezuela's highest office. It's an old, unproven claim widely seen as a stretch but one that analysts say is a reaction to the government's own trampling of the constitution in scrapping the recall that offered the best hope of peacefully resolving Venezuela's political and economic crisis.

"If Maduro has dual nationality, he has no constitutional right to govern Venezuela," said Juan Miguel Matheus, an opposition lawmaker. Unlike other countries in Latin America such as Brazil, where Dilma Rousseff was removed from the presidency in August, Venezuela's National Assembly can't impeach the president. That decision lies squarely with the Supreme Court, which has never voted against Maduro.

Maduro, speaking at a rally Tuesday, accused opposition lawmakers of behaving like members of a "circus" and trying to carry out a "parliamentary coup." "The National Assembly has been transformed into a bastion of evil and bitterness, it is useless to the interests of our country and our people," he told thousands of mostly state workers outside the presidential palace upon arriving from a six-day tour of the Middle East and Europe. "It has a single goal: to damage Venezuela."

Maduro's opponents are gearing up for a mass demonstration Wednesday that's been billed the "Taking of Venezuela." In western Venezuela, students clashed with security forces for a second day on Tuesday. In the Andean town of Merida, police used tear gas to squash a small group of protesters that had blocked a major road, injuring eight people, according to reports on social media.

Even as tempers flare, the government and opposition have agreed to embark on an attempt at dialogue to defuse the crisis. The talks, being sponsored by the Vatican and other South American governments, are set to begin Oct. 30 in the Caribbean island of Margarita. Maduro, who met with Pope Francis privately at the Vatican on Monday, said he will travel to Margarita to personally launch the talks.

But having gone down this road before during previous crisis, the opposition has scant hope for a breakthrough. Although Venezuelans overwhelmingly blame Maduro for food lines and triple-digit inflation the ruling party is in firm control of institutions like the military and has shown no interest in yielding to the opposition.

Defense Minister Gen. Vladimir Padrino, who many had been looking to as a potential brake on Maduro, spoke to the nation Tuesday dressed in camouflaged fatigues and surrounded by the top military command urging dialogue but calling on the opposition to respect the constitution.

That earned an angry rebuke from National Assembly President Henry Ramos, who during the special session accused the U.S.-trained military man of abandoning his constitutional duty to uphold Venezuela's democracy.

"How can he talk of respecting the constitution if he has become the foremost pimp of this regime's violation of the constitution," Ramos said, challenging security forces to arrest him when he attempts next week to travel to Washington to denounce Maduro's latest power grab.

Montenegro's long-ruling prime minister to step down

October 26, 2016

PODGORICA, Montenegro (AP) — Montenegro's prime minister Milo Djukanovic, who led the tiny Adriatic nation to independence from Serbia in 2006, will step down after ruling unchallenged for more than 25 years, his party officials said Wednesday.

The Democratic Party of Socialists has named Djukanovic's deputy, Dusko Markovic, as a possible premier-designate after the Oct. 16 parliamentary election ended inconclusively. The pro-Western party won most seats in Parliament, but will need to seek a coalition to remain in power.

The ruling party did not give a reason for Djukanovic's departure and he did not comment. The Adriatic nation of 650,000 people was a rare former Yugoslav republic that split peacefully from Serbia, avoiding bloodshed that followed similar moves by Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Montenegro has since been invited to join NATO and has launched membership negotiations with the European Union, to the dismay of its traditional ally Russia and Serbian nationalists. Djukanovic has billed the last election as crucial for the country's future — whether it will continue on the pro-Western path, or shift back to Russian influence.

Djukanovic suggested Tuesday that Russia was involved in an alleged coup attempt on the country's election day and accused the opposition of collaborating with the Kremlin. He said there was "a strong connection of a foreign factor" in the alleged overthrow attempt on the election day, which was marked by the arrest of 20 people suspected of planning armed attacks against Djukanovic and his supporters after vote results were announced.

The opposition has claimed that Djukanovic wants to cling to power at all costs to avoid prosecution for alleged widespread crime and corruption during his long rule. Djukanovic, 54, has resigned twice in the past, but returned as either prime minister or president.

Once an ally of Serbia's strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Djukanovic became the youngest prime minister in Europe at the age of 29 in 1991. He was elected Montenegro's president in 1998, before again assuming the premier's job in 2002. He left in 2006, saying he has accomplished his task of leading Montenegro to independence, but came back and was elected premier in 2008 and in 2012.

Political analysts believe that Djukanovic might stage another comeback at presidential elections in 2018.

AP Writer Dusan Stojanovic contributed from Belgrade, Serbia.

French authorities declare the Calais migrant camp empty

October 26, 2016

CALAIS, France (AP) — French authorities declared the Calais migrant camp known as "the jungle," empty on Wednesday, after fires set by departing migrants accelerated plans to evacuate people from the burgeoning slum.

Local officials announced the destruction of the camp, where thousands fleeing war and poverty have lived in squalor as they waited for a chance to sneak across the English Channel into Britain. Migrants are being moved to reception centers around France where they can seek asylum.

"There are no more migrants in the camp," said Fabienne Buccio, a local official in the camp. "Our mission has been fulfilled." Migrants were seen milling around after despite the announcement, but authorities said they would stop processing people by Wednesday evening.

Migrants have flocked to the Calais region for decades, but the camp has grown as Europe's migrant crisis expanded. As it evolved into a massive slum supported by aid groups, France finally decided to shut it down.

As the reality of the mass evacuation took hold, fearful migrants from Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea, Syria and Pakistan braced for a new reality. Some pledged to just keep moving. "This jungle is no good," said Muhammad Afridi, 20, from Pakistan. "We go to a new jungle."

The main alley through the camp near the city of Calais burned overnight, leaving skeleton-like hulks on either side of the road. Firefighters delved into the camp's deepest recesses, trying to prevent a massive conflagration.

Gas canisters popped as they exploded in the heat. One aid group's truck burst into flames. Migrants stood and watched. Some laughed. Steve Barbet, a spokesman for the regional authorities, said one migrant was hospitalized. About 100 migrants were evacuated.

The camp once housed 6,300 migrants, according to authorities, but aid groups said the number was much higher.

AP Writer Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to the story.

For UK's Europeans, post-Brexit attacks bring shock and fear

October 27, 2016

HARLOW, England (AP) — When his friend Arek was killed in the street, Eric Hind had sickening evidence that the country he'd come to call home had changed. But the Polish IT consultant had started to feel uneasy even before that, as Britain prepared to vote earlier this year on whether to remain in the European Union.

As debate heated up about the U.K.'s place in Europe, Hind's outsider status was made all too clear to him. It started when an Englishman he knew who had lived in Spain for five years returned to Britain and made an unexpected comment.

"He got back and the first thing he did, before the referendum, was ask me when I am going back to Poland and saying he's going to vote for 'leave,'" said Hind, 33. Hind was among hundreds of thousands of Poles who seized the opportunity when the EU expanded into eastern Europe in 2004 to move to Britain, regarded as a welcoming country with a flexible labor market and relatively high wages.

Twelve years on, he'd settled in Harlow, near London, with a family and a good job. After the June 23 vote, Hind says he received text messages that said things like, "What time is my bus back home, have I got my passport and good luck in Poland."

Free movement among member states is a key principle of the EU, and millions of Europeans have become used to studying, working or retiring abroad. Britain's vote to quit the bloc — after a "leave" campaign that urged people to "take back control" — is in part a renunciation of that borderless ideal.

The support for leaving the EU was swelled by citizens who felt the presence of so many people from other EU countries was making Britain less "British" and making it harder for Britons to find jobs, housing, and medical care.

One campaign poster featured a long line of migrants beside the slogan "breaking point." Anti-racism groups say the vote also unleashed a wave of xenophobia that has brought insults, abuse and physical attacks.

Much of the recorded abuse has been aimed at eastern Europeans, who have come to Britain in the hundreds of thousands over the past decade — and particularly Poles, the largest group, who number a million in the U.K.

"'Polish' has become a derogatory word for anybody who is from Europe," Suresh Grover of the Monitoring Group, a charity that works with victims of hate crime, said. "It's not just against eastern Europeans. We have cases of Germans, Italians and French people," Grover said. "The victims are people who speak a different language."

Britons from ethnic minorities also say they have been getting more abuse. Grover said the anti-immigrant tenor of the Brexit debate "has legitimized unacceptable forms of racism that I thought couldn't exist again."

"We have cases where the n-word is used frequently," he said. Official figures back up anecdotal evidence of a rise in hate crime since the referendum. According to the Home Office, police recorded 1,546 racially or religiously aggravated offenses in England and Wales in the two weeks before referendum day, and 2,241 in the two weeks after it. The total for July was up 41 percent from the same month a year earlier. August's level was lower, but still higher than before for Brexit vote.

Incidents reported around the country include offensive graffiti daubed on a Polish community center; cards saying "no more Polish vermin" left on cars; a Polish man punched and kicked in Yeovil, southwest England; another Polish man beaten by a gang of teenagers in the northern city of Leeds; and a 21-year-old Polish student stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle in the English Midlands town of Telford.

On Aug. 27, a Saturday night, Hind's friend Arkadiusz Jozwik, known as Arek, was involved in an altercation with youths outside a pizza parlor in Harlow, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of London. The 40-year-old was felled by a single punch, hit his head and died in hospital two days later.

Police said they were investigating the death as a hate crime, and arrested six teens aged 15 and 16. Five have been released for lack of evidence, while one remains on bail. Poland's ambassador to Britain, Arkady Rzegocki, said he was "shocked and deeply concerned" by the hostility toward a community whose presence in Britain goes back to World War II, when Polish pilots fought in the Battle of Britain and a Polish government-in-exile was based in London.

"The hospitality of British society was very famous, and we appreciate it," he said. Rzegocki said he is confident that common sense and British decency will prevail. He said the embassy has received many supportive letters from Britons condemning the attacks.

And he points out that Britain is a country with low unemployment whose economy relies on migrants, including armies of Polish plumbers, nannies and fruit-pickers. "I am sure that most of British society is very welcoming to immigrants — especially to the Poles which had, and still have, a huge contribution to the British economy and to the British culture," he said.

He notes that for Europe, the 20th century was the era of "borders and protectionism — and it wasn't a good century in European history." No one is arguing that the referendum introduced prejudice to Britain — earlier groups of immigrants, from Jews 100 years ago to West Indians after World War II, also experienced hostility. In the 2014 British Social Attitudes survey, about a third of people admitted to being a little or very prejudiced against other races.

"You've only got to hear people's conversations on the bus over the years, saying 'What's all these foreigners coming in?'" said Dorothy Spriggs, an 85-year-old who has lived in Harlow for almost 50 years.

Harlow is a post-World War II "new town" whose first residents included bombed-out Londoners. Over the years they've been joined by others — Chinese, Indians and more recently eastern Europeans, whose shops and delis sit alongside the town's fish-and-chip shops, Indian restaurants and kebab takeaways.

Spriggs stopped recently beside a makeshift memorial near the spot where Jozwik died: bunches of flowers, a candle and three large stuffed animals lined up neatly on benches. "I think people should be more tolerant," she said.

That appeal may be too late to keep Hind in Harlow, or in Britain. He's stopped going into town after 6 p.m. He's planning to leave the U.K., so his 2-year-old British-born daughter can grow up somewhere she will feel safe.

"When I first moved to the U.K. I felt like it was a dream come true," he said with quiet sadness. "It's the country where there are no differences, people just get on with each other, there are no questions asked about where you're from.

"But now I just have to watch my back. People are worried to use their own language in the streets. It's not what it is supposed to be like, or what it was like before." Hind worries he won't be allowed to remain in Britain even if he wants to. The government has refused to guarantee that the estimated 3 million EU nationals in Britain can stay unless U.K. citizens elsewhere in the EU get the same right. Europe's borders are firming up again.

"It's just not nice to live in a country where you don't know where you stand ... if you don't know what will happen tomorrow, if someone will come to your door and say, 'OK, time for you to pack your bags and go home,'" Hind said.

Rival Cyprus leaders to continue peace talks in Switzerland

October 27, 2016

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — The leaders of ethnically divided Cyprus' Greek and Turkish speaking communities have agreed to conduct a key phase of reunification talks in Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, next month, a United Nations spokesman said Wednesday.

Aleem Siddique said Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and breakaway Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci will concentrate in talks set for Nov. 7-11 on how much territory each side will administer under an envisioned federation. Other related issues may also be discussed.

Shifting negotiations abroad is aimed at lowering the risk of leaks undercutting the talks' momentum amid concerns of a backlash by some Turkish Cypriots who may have to relocate. Siddique said in a statement the leaders expressed hope that the Switzerland meeting "will pave the way for the last phase of talks in line with their shared commitment to do their utmost in order to reach a settlement within 2016."

A 1974 Turkish invasion in response to a coup aiming to unite Cyprus with Greece resulted in the island's division into an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south and a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north. Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence and maintains more than 35,000 troops in the north. Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004, but only the south enjoys full membership benefits.

Anastasiades and Akinci have made significant headway since the U.N. facilitated talks resumed nearly 18 months ago, but important differences remain. A key sticking point is Turkish military intervention rights that Turkish Cypriots see as vital to their security while Greek Cypriots view that as a threat.

The territory issue is considered pivotal to a peace deal. Greek Cypriots argue the more people are able to reclaim homes and property lost during the war, the greater the support a deal will receive from the majority Greek Cypriots when it's put to a vote in simultaneous referendums in both communities. Additionally, the projected cost of a settlement would drop substantially if more people reclaim homes and property and forego compensation for their loss.

Anastasiades said Tuesday negotiations are at a "truly crucial juncture" and that how talks will fare territory will indicate whether or not an accord is within reach. A peace deal would help unlock energy cooperation on east Mediterranean gas deposits, lift obstacles to Turkey's troubled bid to join the European Union and usher in a degree of stability in a tumultuous region.

Lithuania signs missile agreement with Norway

by Geoff Ziezulewicz
Vilnius, Lithuania (UPI)
Oct 24, 2016

Lithuania has signed an agreement worth $108 million with Norway for the procurement of the Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or NASAMS.

The deal, signed last week by the ministries of defense for each country, covers the sale as well as future support Norway would render to Lithuania in developing midrange air defense capabilities, the Lithuanian ministry said in a statement.

This acquisition and others will combine into an air defense system that offers Lithuania aerial surveillance and control, early warning for ground units and the ability to destroy targets if needed.

Two defense batteries will be acquired under the deal.

The midrange NASAMS equipment is scheduled to be delivered to Lithuania by 2020.

NASAMS was co-developed by Norwegian company Kongsberg and Raytheon...

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Lithuania_signs_missile_agreement_with_Norway_999.html.