Free Republic

Intransigent face of the Chinese superpower By Victor Mallet Published: January 23 2008 19:42 | Last updated: January 23 2008 19:42 It is remarkable how China the selfish superpower is fading from public view. In its place comes China the peacemaker and potential saviour of the faltering world economy. Western governments look to China as an engine of economic growth. Western banks see it as a source of capital. European leaders, eager for commercial advantage, pay homage to Beijing. In the US, the rise of China – notorious only months ago for purportedly stealing American jobs, destroying the environment and...

A Battle Rages in London Over a Mega-Mosque Plan By JANE PERLEZ Published: November 4, 2007 LONDON — Disputes over mosques have broken out across Europe. Residents from Belgium to France to Germany have expressed unease at minarets competing in the urban landscape with the spires and stones of centuries-old cathedrals.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates launched a charm offensive in Moscow Monday aimed at overcoming Russia's fierce opposition to Washington's plans to extend its missile defences into central Europe. Gates, who arrived early Monday, was to meet President Vladimir Putin, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. The Pentagon plans to station 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a targeting radar in the Czech Republic, countries that lie close to Russian territory and during the Cold War were under Moscow's control. Russia, increasingly emboldened by new oil wealth, has strongly opposed the plans. It regards them as...

Iran wants to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq, including setting up an Iranian national bank branch in Baghdad, a move which could bring Tehran further into conflict with the United States. Iranian Ambassador to Baghdad Hassan Kazemi Qumi said Iran is prepared to offer Iraqi forces training, equipment and advisers for what he called "the security fight". In the economic area, Qumi told the New York Times that Iran was ready to assume major responsibility for the reconstruction of Iraq, an area of notable failure on the part of the United States since American-led forces overthrew...

Nigeria: Compradorism- the Problem With African Leadership, The three principal enemies of Black Africans are Imperialism, Arab Expansionism and Black Compradorism.

Robert W. Kagan FP: Robert Kagan, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Kagan: Thanks. I appreciate your inviting me. FP: I want to get your thought on the terror war and on the recent report made by the Iraq Study Group. But let's first talk about your new book. What motivated you to write it? Kagan: I suppose my interest in the history of American foreign policy began when I worked as a speechwriter for George Shultz in the Reagan years. Although many, especially the so-called "realists", dismissed Reagan as some kind of aberration from American foreign policy -- just as...

Head of the Islamic Republic's Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines, Alinaqi Khamoushi on Saturday said that just as borders are lifted in Europe, the same move should be considered by Islamic states. He made the remark at the fourth conference and exhibition on the strategy of Iraqi market and its executive strategies in Kermanshah. Khamoushi noted that the people of Islamic states are a single ummah and therefore no borders should separate them. "Given the current shortages in Iraq, we should provide the Iraqi people with the facilities available in IRI. We are duty-bound to do our best to...

SAINT PETERSBURG (AFX) - Russia President Vladimir Putin said he would raise questions about UK Labour Party fund raiser Lord Levy if Prime Minister Tony Blair brings up Russia's democracy record when the two men meet today. Putin was asked what he would say to Blair after the British ambassador to Moscow attacked Putin's governance last week. 'We carefully hear out all our partners. We take into consideration their views on such issues but we take our decisions ourselves,' Putin told journalists at the G8 summit. 'There are also other questions,' he told a British journalist. 'Questions, let's say, about...

French Intellectual Says West's Fear of China Is Unfounded By Seo Dong-shin Staff Reporter Guy Sorman speaks at the French Cultural Center in Seoul Tuesday. /Korea Times Photo by Shim Hyun-chul Guy Sorman spent all of 2005 in China meeting with and listening to ``those who were the poorest, most common, and most deeply sunken in silence but were actually brimming with the desire to tell their stories to whomever would listen to them neutrally.’’ The French intellectual also met with various people _ dissidents, journalists, students, businessmen _ who willingly and frankly shared their views on the reality in...

The conflict has little to do with Russia’s neo-imperialism, but a lot to do with Western reluctance to foot the bill of Soviet de-colonisation. • The “genuine democracies” created in the former Soviet Union in the wake of the so-called “colour revolutions” are failing to deliver political stability and economic prosperity. Insofar as they have failed to reduce dependence on subsidised Russian gas, they are also implicitly failing to deliver real independence. • Ukraine’s demands for continued supplies of cheap Russian/CIS gas in effect mean that Kiev is promoting the preservation of Soviet economic structures. Thus, it is implicitly promoting...

MOSCOW, April 19 (RIA Novosti) - The chief of the General Staff said Wednesday that Russia would honor its commitments on supplying military equipment to Iran. "We discussed supplies of military equipment to Iran, including the Tor M1, in the framework of bilateral cooperation, but it does not fall into the category of strategic weapons," Army General Yury Baluyevsky said after talks in Moscow with NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe General James Jones. "And I can assure you it will be delivered under the control of the relevant organizations," he said. At the end of 2005, Russia concluded...

Last week’s saber rattling by Hugo Chavez, a blunt threat to remove the Dutch from the Netherlands Antilles islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, clearly demonstrates the existence of a misguided national policy that can only result in an armed conflict in the Caribbean. The fabricated territorial and maritime claims against the Netherlands by the current Venezuelan government are certainly a recipe for disaster. But by also seeking to expel what he refers to as the other “colonial powers” of France, the United Kingdom and the United States from their possessions in the Western Hemisphere, he risks armed confrontation with...

China: Bachelor bomb Dudley L. Poston Jr. and Peter A. Morrison International Herald Tribune WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2005 SANTA MONICA, California In a trend fraught with troubling political and social implications, China will soon find itself with a marriage-age population remarkably out of balance, with about 23 million more young men than women available for them to marry in this decade and the next - what demographers term a "marriage squeeze." This impending surplus of unattached young men could be a driving force behind increased crime, explosive epidemics of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and even international threats to...

Russia and China launched their first joint military exercise yesterday in a show of force calculated to dissuade the US from presuming a dominant role in global security. Fighter planes, bombers and more than 10,000 troops will take part in the week-long war games in Vladivostok and the Yellow Sea. While analysts say the exercises are mainly an excuse for Russia to showcase aircraft to its biggest military hardware client, the two countries are keen to erode Washington's image as a world policeman. Moscow and Beijing's interests converge in central Asia, where both hope to quell Islamic extremism, preserve trade...

The Chinese energy firm Cnooc yesterday abandoned its $18.5bn (£10.5bn) bid for US oil and gas firm Unocal, citing "unprecedented political opposition" from Washington. The bid by Cnooc, which is 71% owned by the Chinese government, sparked a furious outcry in Washington where politicians denounced the offer as a threat to national security. Some of the more fiery rhetoric characterised the bid as the beginning of a frantic grab by the Chinese for control of the world's energy supplies. California congressman Richard Pombo warned that the deal could have "disastrous consequences for our economic and national security". Cnooc's decision to...

According to the Pentagon, the China's People's Liberation Army is acquiring arms from Russia and developing new weapons systems. These include: Missiles: 100 short-range missiles, directed at Taiwan, a year. It currently has 650 to 730. The DF31, a mobile intercontinental missile and a submarine-based ballistic missile, the JL2. Air: A Russian-built advanced fighter aircraft, plus launching its own F10 this year. Acquiring and developing precision strike weapons. Adding to its fleet of unmanned aircraft. Naval: Two new Russian-built guided missile destroyers, with two more on the way. Two new classes of diesel submarine, one can carry submerged-launch missiles. More...

WASHINGTON -- A Chinese company's attempt to take over California-based Unocal threatens U.S. security and would give China political leverage in areas where the oil company has resources, lawmakers said Wednesday. "The simple fact is that energy is a strategic commodity," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Hunter, R-Calif., said Unocal's holdings _ from drilling rights to exploratory capabilities in Asia and elsewhere _ "represent strategic assets that affect U.S. national security."

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Chinese counterpart Thursday in a bid to strengthen ties between the former Cold War rivals and to quadruple trade now worth about $20 billion a year. The two leaders were upbeat, noting Beijing and Moscow had progressed on several issues in recent years. Chinese President Hu Jintao's four-day trip reflects the strategic importance Beijing places on ties with Russia. ``Our countries signed a strategic accord on cooperation and resolved our border issues. Russia and China are actively cooperating on the international arena,'' Hu noted in talks late Thursday with Putin. Hu...

TBILISI, June 27 (Reuters) - Georgian police are hunting three men who may know who threw a grenade during a speech by U.S. President George W. Bush in May, an interior ministry spokesman said on Monday. U.S. officials said the grenade failed to explode only because of a malfunction and had landed within 30 metres (100 feet) of the president as he spoke to tens of thousands of people in Tbilisi's Freedom Square. The security scare blighted a trip intended to show Bush's support for the former Soviet state's West-leaning government, which came to power after a democratic revolution a...

MOSCOW (AFX) - Russia is withdrawing its signature from a land and sea border treaty with Estonia that the two countries signed in May, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, adding that the two sides would have to restart negotiations. 'Since the Estonian side has not fulfilled its obligations, we withdraw our signature from this accord,' Lavrov said, quoted by Russia's RIA-Novosti news agency, during a visit to Helsinki. 'There will be no accord... In order to regulate border issues, we will have to restart negotiations,' Lavrov said, adding that he hoped the dispute would not affect relations between Russia...

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS Moscow, 25 June: Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a message of congratulations to Mahmud Ahmadinezhad, who has won the presidential election in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Russian president's press service said today. "I am confident that now that you have been elected [president] as a result of the Iranian people expressing their will, continuity in the development of long-term multi-faceted partnership and cooperation between our states will be secured," the message says. "These relations have been developing vigorously of late. The volume of trade has for the first time...

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti commentator Pyotr Goncharov) - Russia will not lose no matter who wins the second round of the presidential election in Iran. It has a fair chance of preserving its priority standing in Iran's foreign policy under any president - Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, technocrat and pragmatist, or his rival, the ultraconservative Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, who produced a furore with his surprise success at the election. This is the unanimous opinion of most Russian experts. Unlike Washington, which said the election in Iran was undemocratic and would not create a legitimate...

Hong Kong, 23 June (AKI) - This week's Middle East tour by Chinese foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, is a rare visit by a top Beijing official to the region, signals China's growing diplomatic ambitions and its quest to secure oil supplies for its energy-hungry, rapidly expanding economy. It's a change of focus for Beijing; for decades, China's communist rulers, including Mao Tse-tung, focused their diplomatic attentions on Africa, where China promoted itself as a sort of guiding light for the Third World and a bulwark against the neo-colonialist tendencies of the West. China also sought to isolate its tiny rival,...

Beijing (VNA) - President Hu Jintao said both China and Russia want to further promote their strategic partnership. In an interview with ITAR-TASS in Beijing on June 21, President Hu said that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin have established a close and friendly relationship. The two leaders have met each other eight times to frankly exchange their views. China and Russia have supported each other on important issues relating to national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Cooperation between the two countries in the areas of politics, economics, trade, and military has increasingly expanded. Two-way trade increased by more than 20...

HONG KONG - The United States expressed concern Friday about Hong Kong's leadership change - a switch some legal experts and companies fear might mark the erosion of a legal system that has made the Chinese territory one of the best places in the world to do business. Washington avoided the blunt language it used before when it accused China of chipping away at the high degree of autonomy Hong Kong was supposed to enjoy after returning to China in 1997. Instead, U.S. Consulate General spokeswoman Susan N. Stevenson conveyed America's worry by citing the importance of the rule of...

PARIS, March 18 (Xinhuanet) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said here Friday that China has the right to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity and to realize national reunification. "Both the former Soviet Union and Russia have all along supported China's efforts to maintain territorial integrity," Putin told reporters after his summit meeting with the leaders of France, Germany and Spain. "We understand the endeavor of the Chinese leadership in this regard. Our position remains unchanged," Putin said, commenting the Taiwan question and an anti-secession law adopted recently by China's parliament, the National People's Congress. As for the arms embargo...

PARIS. March 18 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed Russia's support for the idea of China's territorial integrity. "The Soviet Union and Russia have always been in favor of China's territorial integrity. We have not changed our position and think that China has a right to fully restore its territorial integrity. We understand the Chinese authorities' efforts to resolve this problem," Putin told a press conference in Paris on Friday. "We assume this problem will be resolved by peaceful methods," Putin said.

`HISTORIC' VOTE: Supporters of the resolution against China's new law were jubilant, saying the vote will give Rice more leverage when she locks horns with Beijing. The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly condemned China's new "Anti-Secession" Law in a vote that one of the sponsors of the House resolution called a "victory of historic proportions," as the Senate prepared to follow suit in the next day or so. By a 424-4 vote, the House approved a resolution calling the Anti-Secession Law a matter of "grave concern" to the US, and urging the Bush administration to "direct all appropriate officials" to...

BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Russia is against any secessionistactivities of "Taiwan Independence" in any form and will stick to the one-China policy, said Russian Chief of General Staff Yury Baluyevsky here Thursday. Baluyevsky made the remarks during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Liang Guanglie. He arrived this morning, three days after the country's parliament approved the Anti-Secession Law aimed at preventing "Taiwan independence" from the country. The two army chiefs also highlighted the importance of cooperation between the two armies. Building and developing the Sino-Russian strategic partnership of cooperation is the choice of both nations and Russia's strategic...

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Syria and Russia, one-time allies driven apart by the collapse of the Soviet Union and brought closer again by American policies, both stand to gain from a relationship reinvigorated by Syrian President Bashar Assad's visit to Moscow. The four-day visit, which began Monday, is the first by the young Syrian leader to Moscow since he took office in 2000 after the death of his father, the late President Hafez Assad, who ruled for three decades and was a close ally of the Soviets in the 1970s and 1980s. Already, Bashar Assad has clinched a debt-reduction package that...

KIEV, January 19 (Itar-Tass) - Viktor Yushchenko is planning to speak at a European Parliament session in Strasbourg on January 25 in his capacity as Ukraine’s elected president, Ukrainian parliament deputy Oleg Rybachuk reported on Wednesday. According to Rybachuk, who heads Yushchenko’s chancellery, he will outline a five-year plan of steps towards Ukraine’s entry into the European Union. Meanwhile, European Commission’s spokeswoman Francoise Le Ball has confirmed in Brussels that Ukraine’s entry into the European Union is not on the agenda, but at the same time made it clear that the policy of neighbourhood may in the long run bring...

A European Parliament (EP) decision paving the way for Ukraine's membership with an overwhelming majority have led to discussions regarding whether or not Kiev will become a European Union (EU) member before Turkey. Despite its application to the EU many years after Turkey, Croatia was assigned a date by the EU within two years and March 2005 was designated as the starting date for membership negotiations. While Croatia's acceptance as a member before 2010 has been discussed, it is now thought that Ukraine could follow the same process and will be able to join the Union before Turkey. Many Europeans...

ASTANA (Reuters) - Russia rejected on Wednesday U.S. criticism of sweeping political changes proposed by President Vladimir Putin, saying this was strictly Moscow's business. "First of all, the processes that are under way in Russia are our internal affair," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, referring to comments by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Lavrov, speaking in Kazakhstan on the sidelines of a meeting of ex-Soviet states, said Washington had no right to impose its own model of democracy on anyone else. "And it is at least strange that, while talking about a certain 'pulling back', as he (Powell) put it,...

A senior Russian nuclear official said on Wednesday that an atomic reactor Moscow is building for Iran, long a stumbling block in Russian-U.S. relations faced further delays. Diplomatic sources and experts in Moscow have said President Vladimir Putin's growing recognition of Washington's concerns over Iran's nuclear programme have pressured the Kremlin into delaying until a United Nations body declares Iran clean. But the Russian official, speaking just days before U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meets in Vienna to discuss Iran, said the delay was of a technical nature and had nothing to do with U.S. pressure...

According to the Associated Press, a Russian foreign minister says Moscow respects Lebanese sovereignty. In a veiled swipe at the United States and its United States allies such as Israel, Russia's foreign minister said Sunday his country opposed a Security Council resolution demanding free presidential elections here and a Syrian troop withdrawal out of Moscow's respect for Lebanese sovereignty. Sergey Lavrov made his comments after meeting Lebanese President Emile Lahoud in Beirut, marking his latest high level meeting during a Middle East tour that has included talks with the leaders of Egypt and Syria. He is expected to arrive in...

"The Russians are coming...The Russians are coming..." Well, that could have been the headlines in Israeli newspapers until a few days ago, before Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov came to Israel. Now, after meeting with Israeli officials, the headlines could be, "Russian FM: Chechen Muslim terror evil, but justifies support for PLO Terror State and help for Iranian Nukes." The day before the Russian Foreign Minister came to Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin, to express his shock at the seizure of the Russian school in Beslan. Sharon told Putin that, "We must concentrate political and...

Listen to David Gollust's report (RealAudio) Gollust report - Download 380k (RealAudio)   AP Beslan residents dig graves for those killed in assault on school The United States Tuesday reaffirmed its "absolute solidarity" with Russia in its fight against terrorism, but also reiterated its support for a political solution to the Chechnya conflict. The comments followed charges by Russian President Vladimir Putin that U.S. meetings with Chechen separatists undermine Russia's efforts against terror. Officials here are defending past U.S. contacts with Chechen separatists in the face of sharp criticism by Mr. Putin following the terrorist attack last week that killed...

CONFRONTATION: Defense sources say that Beijing appears to be preparing for a sovereignty claim on reefs or islets near Penghu island, perhaps to test Taipei's resolve China has been actively collecting data on the aquatic environment surrounding Taiwan, prompting the military to suspect that Beijing could be planning a claim sovereignty over a reef off Penghu island, defense sources said yesterday. The rationale behind the move remains unclear, sources say, but a desire in Beijing to set a precedent for further sovereignty claims and a perhaps an attempt to test Taipei's resolve could be behind the action. The South China...