Free Republic

Anti-corruption officials in Brussels have failed to investigate reports of squandered EU funds at a training institute in Greece, a German paper reported Friday. Well-connected teachers were allegedly paid up to €610 per hour for up to 225 work hours per month. The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) has reportedly ignored repeated tip-offs about squandered European Union funds in Greece, according to an article in the Friday edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The German daily reports that a Greek civil servant uncovered multiple cases of nepotism and vastly inflated salaries while inspecting the finances of a vocational training institute. Officials in...

An Israeli spokesperson stressed that the Washington Post story claiming that there were intense “spy wars” between Turkey and Israel was not serving any Israeli purpose, denying that David Ignatius’ source was Israeli officials. “Ignatius does not have sources in Israel to [be able to] publish such a story. From an observer’s perspective, the [information was not leaked] from here,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor, at a Tuesday press briefing to visiting Turkish journalists. Palmor neither denied nor confirmed the report that Turkish intelligence had disclosed to Iranian intelligence the identities of up to 10 Iranians who had...

The Navy wants four missile corvettes to defend Israel's exclusive economic zone. The Israel Navy is preparing a plan to procure four missile corvettes to protect the gas rigs in Israel's exclusive economic zone in the Mediterranean. The ships cost an estimated $400 million and systems that will be installed on them cost an additional $200 million. A senior Navy officer says that the plan is due to be presented to the government for approval in a few weeks. The corvettes were priced after a long process in which the Navy obtained quotes from several foreign shipyards, including in Germany,...

At a meeting with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu promised that Israel would continue to maintain good ties with Cyprus, regardless of its newly-rekindled relationship with Turkey. Netanyahu met with the newly-elected Anastasiades on Sunday night, before he departed for China. At a press conference after the meeting, Anastasiades said that Israel and Cyprus had “embarked on a strategically important dialogue with a view at enhancing and further developing our bilateral ties, which are founded on common principles and values.” In an interview with Channel Two, the Cyprus president said that he and Netanyahu had agreed, among...

TEL AVIV, Israel, May 9 (UPI) -- Israel's rapprochement with onetime strategic ally Turkey is a vital element in Ankara's drive to become the intercontinental east-west energy hub in the Mediterranean and many expect it to produce an energy alliance that will transform the region. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan has, since taking power in 2002, transformed his country's economic prospects through a wide-ranging diplomatic drive aimed at restoring Turkish leadership in the region. He has long sought to transform Turkey, which has no energy resources of its own, into the unassailable central hub for transporting oil and gas...

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Cyprus' offshore natural gas deposits are enough to warrant the construction of a gas processing plant to export excess supply, regardless of whether Israel decides to be a partner in the project, the island nation's foreign minister said Wednesday. Ioannis Kasoulides said Cyprus is continuing talks with Israel, which has also discovered its own offshore gas deposits, on ways the countries can best exploit their mineral reserves. Cyprus is particularly keen, hoping its future gas wealth will help pull it out of a crushing economic crisis that has forced it to ask for an international bailout....

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described offshore gas drilling by estranged ally Israel and Cyprus as "madness" on Wednesday, raising the stakes in a confrontation over potentially huge deposits in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The quarrel over gas has escalated in recent weeks, just as relations between Israel and Turkey abruptly broke down over Israel's refusal to apologize for its raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla last year in which nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists died. (snip) "The Greek Cypriot administration and Israel are engaging in oil exploration madness in the Mediterranean," Turkish state news agency Anatolian quoted Erdogan as telling...

Cypriot President Demetris Christofias has warned Turkey to stop its warships shelling the strip of water dividing the Cypriot and Israeli gas exploration zones in the eastern Mediterranean. Debkafile's military sources report Wednesday that Turkish warships began turning their guns on the strip dividing Israel's Leviathan gas field from Block 12 of Cyprus's Exclusive Economic Zone-EEZ, where a large gas field was recently discovered. Neither Israel nor Cyprus reported the Turkish attacks, which are staged in international waters, but both reinforced their naval units around the gas fields. It was the Cypriot president who broke the silence Friday with a...

Increasingly assertive Turkey is setting the scene for clashes in the eastern Mediterranean. Since Thursday, Sept. 29, Turkish warships have been harassing Israeli merchant vessels in waters off Cyprus, DEBKAfile's military sources report. They come close enough to establish wireless communication and caution the Israeli vessels they are in contravention of international law and ordering them to change course. The Israeli crews mostly ignore these "orders", treating them as Ankara's latest bid to assert Turkish naval mastery of the Eastern Mediterranean. But the situation is getting explosive enough to spark a major incident. Over the weekend, Israeli Air Force planes...

The eastern Mediterranean will no longer be a place where Israeli naval forces can freely exercise their “bullying” practices against civilian vessels, a Turkish official said Friday. The official said this would be the outcome of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s statement earlier in the day that “Turkey would take every precaution it deems necessary for the safety of maritime navigation in the eastern Mediterranean.” Davutoğlu’s statement about providing maritime safety in the eastern Mediterranean grabbed the most attention among the various sanctions against Israel the foreign minister announced Friday. He did not further elaborate, however, on what he meant by...

Moscow has reiterated its vivid interest for Cyprus’ natural gas by expressing once again its interest for the exploitation of the reserves in the island’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The interest was expressed during a meeting in Moscow between the Cyprus House President Yiannakis Omirou and Russian Deputy Minister of Energy Yury Sentyurin. The meeting lasted two hours and was also attended by the members of the parliamentary party delegation which accompany Omirou, as well as by representatives of Russian natural gas companies, NOVATEK and Gazprom Bank. Omirou arrived in Russia this morning, for a two-day official visit, heading a...

SINIRUSTU/SYGKRASI, Cyprus -- Turkey began exploratory drilling for oil and gas Thursday in the Turkish-occupied north of ethnically divided Cyprus, heightening a dispute over who is entitled to the Mediterranean island’s potential fuel riches. The move counters an offshore gas search by rival Greek Cypriots in the island’s internationally recognized southern half that has touched off vociferous protests from Ankara and Turkish Cypriots. Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz joined Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu to inaugurate the start of drilling by Turkish Petroleum company TPAO at the Turkyurdu-1 borehole in this northwest village. The Cypriot government says any fuel search...

- The flow of natural gas from Israel’s Tamar reservoir in the Mediterranean to the Ashdod reception facility was inaugurated on March 30, 2013, ushering in a new era in Israel’s energy sector. Israel will not only become independent in being able to supply its own energy needs, but it is likely to become an energy exporter as its maritime gas fields are further developed. - On January 17, 2009, Israel’s economy and even its strategic stature changed when a team led by the Texan firm Noble Energy discovered gas in the Tamar field in the eastern Mediterranean, which is...

Turkey would consider annexing northern Cyprus, which is technically EU territory, if talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots fail to reach a deal on reunification of the island, Turkey's European Affairs Minister Egemen Bağış told a Turkish Cypriot newspaper. Greek Cypriot leader Dimitris Christofias and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart Derviş Eroğlu have made little progress in negotiations to reunite the island, divided in 1974, since the United Nations persuaded them to renew efforts late last year. … Turkey has stationed troops in the north since invading in 1974, after a coup in Cyprus orchestrated by a military junta in Athens....

While Americans have focused their attention on a number of domestic issues, things have been going downhill fast between Turkey and Israel.  The “Arab Spring” looks to be followed by an Islamist winter, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan wants to be Old Man Winter.  The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has even gone so far as to warn Erdogan not to muscle in on their action.It didn’t take long for Turkey to go bad after it was pulled from the fridge of secular rule, and left on the countertop of Erdogan’s Islamist party.  Erdogan views the recent United Nations report...

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir famously lamented that Moses led the children of Israel for forty years of wandering in the desert until he found the only place in the Middle East where there wasn’t any oil. But could Moses have been smarter than believed? Apparently the Canadians and the Russians think so, as both countries are moving to step up energy relations with a tiny nation whose total energy reserves some experts now think could rival or even surpass the fabled oil wealth of Saudi Arabia. Actual production is still minuscule, but evidence is accumulating that the Promised Land,...

LARNARCA, Cyprus, June 24 (UPI) --Financially strapped Cyprus is looking at allowing Russian military aircraft to use an airbase in Paphos, the country's defense minister said this weekend. Cypriot Defense Minister Fotis Fotiu told the Nicosia daily Fileleftheros the country was "studying the possibility of providing in certain cases" the use of the Andreas Papandreou Air Force Base for Russian military aircraft. He also indicated allowing Russian warships to use the port of Limassol was under consideration, less than two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the restoration of a permanent presence for the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean.

RAF Typhoon fighters won a mid-air showdown with two Syrian warplanes heading towards Britain’s main base in Cyprus, the Sunday People reports. The dramatic confrontation came after President Bashar Al-Assad’s air chiefs sent two Russian-made Sukhoi Su-24s to probe British air defenses, the report said. The Syrian bombers refused to respond to repeated attempts by the control tower at the UK’s Akrotiri air base to contact them. RAF pilots flying the advanced combat jet were scrambled before the Sukhois could enter our 14-mile air exclusion zone. The Typhoons – which can scream from runway standstill to seven miles high in...

It is a welcome sign of changing times in the Middle East that a mission of 65 industry associations and representatives from 17 member states of the European Union is visiting Israel for two days in late October on a "mission for growth." The mission is led by Antonio Tajani, the Italian politician who was a cofounder of the Forza Italia party in 1994 and was the former spokesman for the government of Silvio Berlusconi, and who is now European Commission vice-president responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship. The aim of the mission is to strengthen business relations between the EU...

A team of archaeologists, headed by Associate Professor Aneliya Bozhkova with the National Archaeological Institute with Museum with the Bulgarian Academy of Science, and Petya Kiyashkina with the Ancient Nesebar Museum, discovered a perfectly preserved cellar with amphorae from the V BC, over the last days of the archaeological excavations in the Bulgarian coastal town of Nesebar, the press office of Nesebar Municipality announced. The research is organised under a project of the Ancient Nesebar Museum, financed by the Ministry of Culture, with the participation of experts in archaeology. The ancient amphorae warehouse was dug in deep into the ground...