Free Republic

Construction or preliminary work has begun on three new pipelines designed to flow new supplies of natural gas from Azerbaijan to consumers in Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy. For more than a decade, companies have been announcing proposals to build new natural gas pipelines to connect natural gas resources in Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East with consumers in southern Europe. In contrast to the three new pipelines considered in this article, most of these projects have failed to advance. These three new or expanded pipelines would reach from Azerbaijan's eastern edge on the Caspian Sea to Italy's southeastern...

Bush, Roh have testy exchange at summit By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer President Bush's talks with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun ended on a sour note Friday not over the war in Iraq, but rather the Korean conflict that ended with a truce more than five decades ago. As Bush began to wind down his stay at the Asia-Pacific summit, Roh challenged him to make a declaration to end the Korean War. That conflict ended in a truce in 1953, not a peace treaty, so the two sides technically remain at war. The awkward exchange occurred during the first...

John Boehner’s Speakership was a setback for Congressional ethics. He backslid on a number of important reforms, and helped to return the Ethics Committee to its traditional role of covering up wrongdoing by incumbent members of Congress. Boehner ally Rep. Charles Dent (R-PA), the Chairman of the Ethics Committee, is currently orchestrating a whitewash of apparent House rules violations related to a junket by ten House members to Azerbaijan in 2013. On July 31, the Ethics Committee announced that it had found “no evidence” that broke House rules. It plans “no further action regarding this matter and considers it...

After more than a week of sustained protests over increasing electricity prices, Armenian activists have demonstrated a new sense of empowerment in the face of an increasingly embattled government. But it is actually the broader implications of this unrest in Armenia that is much more significant, for two distinct reasons. First, although this wave of protests is clearly rooted in a set of underlying problems reflecting the unique socioeconomic and political conditions of Armenia, the discontent and dissent in Armenia have already reverberated well beyond the borders of this small, landlocked country. More specifically, the trajectory of the protests have...

United States Congressman Louie Gohmert revealed Thursday that the Obama administration had “outed” an active Israeli spy mission in Iran. Israel, he said, had infiltrated Israeli spies into mainland Iran via cargo boats. He dropped the bombshell in a speech at EMET’s 9th annual “Rays of Light in the Darkness” gala dinner. Rep. Gohmert, who is one Israel’s fiercest and truest friends on Capitol Hill, stated: “We are on the brink of disaster.” He listed a stream of virulently anti-Israel actions taken by President Obama which included the “outing” of the Israeli spy mission, and the Obama Administration’s disclosing of...

   Summer 2000 (8.2) Scandinavian AncestryTracing Roots to Azerbaijan by Thor HeyerdahlAbove: Thor Heyerdahl with Peruvian children who still construct traditional boats made of reeds, the principle material that enabled early migrations on trans-oceanic voyages. Courtesy: Thor Heyerdahl.Archeologist and historian Thor Heyerdahl, 85, has visited Azerbaijan on several occasions during the past two decades. Each time, he garners more evidence to prove his tantalizing theory - that Scandinavian ancestry can be traced to the region now known as Azerbaijan.Heyerdahl first began forming this hypothesis after visiting Gobustan, an ancient cave dwelling found 30 miles west of Baku, which is ...

(Aug 2, 2012) POLISH officials have unveiled a statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, honouring two men widely credited in this Eastern European country with helping to topple communism 23 years ago. The statue was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, in the presence of about 120 former Solidarity activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s for their roles in organising or taking part in strikes against the communist regime. The bronze statue, erected in the lush seaside President Ronald Reagan Park, is a slightly larger-than-life rendering of the...

Soviet Communism, the dark tyranny that controlled nearly 40 nations and was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 100 million victims during the 20th century, suddenly collapsed 20 years ago without a shot being fired. In just two years--from 1989 to 1991--the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and Marxism- Leninism was dumped unceremoniously on the ash heap of history. There was dancing in the street and champagne toasts on top of the Brandenburg Gate. For 40 years, the United States and the West had been following a policy of containment, détente, accommodation. Ronald Reagan decided it was...

Washington • The state-owned oil company of Azerbaijan secretly funded an all-expenses-paid trip to a conference at Baku on the Caspian Sea in 2013 for 10 members of Congress and 32 staff members, according to a confidential ethics report obtained by The Washington Post. Three former top aides to President Barack Obama appeared as speakers at the conference. Lawmakers and their staff members received hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of travel expenses, silk scarves, crystal tea sets and Azerbaijani rugs valued at $2,500 to $10,000, according to the ethics report. Airfare for the lawmakers and some of their spouses...

Sen. Ted Cruz promises a bold shift in U.S. foreign policy if he's elected president that would cancel President Obama's arms deal with Iran and move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. On the eve of remarks to the Republican Jewish Coalition, the White House contender laid out bullet points for his approach to the Middle East in an interview with the Washington Examiner that would sharply rebuke Obama's eight years. Cruz's call to get tough with enemies of the United States, especially Tehran, and prioritize relationships with key allies like Israel should go over well with the 800...

Operatives of a secretive Iran-backed terrorist network in Turkey scouted the area hosting a radar site in Malatya's Kürecik district that is part of a NATO early warning radar system, an ongoing investigation has revealed. According to an 854-page police investigation on the Tawhid-Salam terror network obtained by Today's Zaman, witness testimony provided to the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office on March 22, 2013 indicated that suspects tied to Iranian intelligence had collected information about Kürecik. The witness said many front companies with the cover of legitimate businesses such as real estate agencies or bookstores had been established in Malatya by...

Last week, 10 Senate Democrats who had persistently expressed concern over President Barack Obama’s concessionary policy to Iran over its nuclear weapons program, announced via a letter to the President that they would desist from seeking to pass new legislation to reimpose sanctions in the event of a failure in nuclear talks. Under reportedly enormous pressure from the White House, the senators said that they would await the March 24 deadline for a negotiated framework for an agreement with Tehran, despite their doubts that any such agreement would be forthcoming. This delay is a serious mistake, because one of the...

"In our petition we rely, among other sources, on an Amnesty International report that was published in 1995... "There was tension in Rwanda as early as January of 1994. Several of the world's most powerful states imposed international arms control regulations and on May 17 1994 there was a UN embargo. Israel breached the embargo, as did Russia, Belgium, South Africa, France, Spain and others. Many of the planes that transported the shipments were British. The last license to export arms was issued by the Israeli Ministry of Defense in October 1993, about half a year before the massacres began....

An Azerbaijani official has lashed out at the United States after a U.S. diplomat sharply criticized the government over the closure of RFE/RL's bureau in Baku. Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of President Ilham Aliyev's administration and director of its Foreign Relations Department, responded on December 29 to earlier Twitter posts by U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Daniel Baer. Baer wrote on December 27 that Baku's decision to shut the U.S.-government-funded broadcaster's office was "the behavior of a weak, insecure, corrupt" leaders. Mammadov, on his Twitter feed, accused U.S. diplomats of "losing their sense...

Police in Azerbaijan have detained a dozen journalists working for US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty amid an ongoing crackdown on the outlet that Washington and rights groups decry. The Baku offices of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty were sealed on Friday after prosecutors and armed police confiscated equipment and computers during a raid. The US State Department said it was "deeply disturbed" by the action, and called on Azerbaijan to respect its "international commitment to protecting media freedom." Ramping up pressure on the organisation's Azerbaijan station, Radio Azadliq, police descended upon the homes of its journalists Saturday and took many in...

...its lowest levels against the dollar for almost a year, amid investor nervousness about emerging markets. By evening trade in Istanbul the currency had fallen beyond TL2.30 to the US dollar, more than 1 per cent down on the day and the weakest level since January, when the Turkish central bank moved to increase interest rates -- a dramatic shift in policy that at the time halted a precipitous drop in its value. ...Turkey is far from alone in being affected by strong US economic data that has heightened expectations of a US Federal Reserve interest rate rise and so...

Russia's railway authorities have announced the cancellation of all passenger rail services to Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan for 2015. All international passenger rail services to these countries will cease to run on 14 December, with the cancellation of services set to last for at least one year - TASS reports. Officials have said the decision to cancel these rail routes was taken due to their low profitability. Passenger services between Russia and Belarus, Moldova and Uzbekistan will reportedly continue.

As the US and world powers approach a November 24 deadline on nuclear talks with Iran, governmental sources in the Islamic regime have reported that they are conducting secret talks with America about renewing diplomatic ties for the first time in 35 years. Iranian government advisers spoke to the British Times, and said secret talks with American officials have centered around the possibility of opening a US trade office in the Iranian capital of Tehran if a nuclear deal is reached. Those talks are to continue this week, and according to the officials will take place in the Azerbaijani capital...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said economic isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) should be ended. Putin has signaled for concrete steps to be taken in this regard. Russian President hosting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an "honorary guest" in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi noted, the "meaningless" embargo imposed on TRNC must be lifted and his country will have direct contacts with both the Turkish and Greek Cypriot societies on the island. The two leaders emphasized their opinions overlapped on many issues. "The first thing we must do is to solve the problem...

Turkey's energy minister has declared a gas pipeline a "peace corridor" linking the Caucasus with the Balkans. "We open the project as a peace corridor that is the result of 15 years hard work by Turkey and Azerbaijan. Through the South Caucasus pipeline and its backbone, the Trans-Anatolia pipeline, we connect the Caucasus with the Balkans. I wish every country could understand the true value of these projects and contribute with us," Taner Yıldız said while speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony of the South Caucasus pipeline in Baku on Sept. 20. The minister said energy security "ranks as one of...