Israel’s Pairing Prisoner Release and Settlements Angers Many

JERUSALEM — As Israel released a group of 26 long-serving Palestinian prisoners early Tuesday, with another announcement of new construction in West Bank settlements expected soon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced sharp criticism from all corners, including conservative members of his own coalition. Palestinian leaders threatened that any new settlement activity could lead them to seek membership and sue Israel in the International Criminal Court, a move they had promised not to take during peace talks that started this summer. European diplomats warned the Israelis in a series of high-level meetings over the past week against pairing the prisoner release with a construction announcement, as was done twice before. Even the Israeli right-wing forces that Mr. Netanyahu aimed to appease with the settlement initiative distanced themselves from the plan, denouncing any linkage between prisoners and construction as unfortunate or even immoral. “He is wrong because he tries to please all sides; the result is nobody is happy with his steps,” said Eitan Haber, a veteran Israeli commentator, invoking a Hebrew idiom about how a bridegroom cannot dance at two weddings. Mr. Haber, who was a close adviser to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, added, “If you are a true leader, a real leader, you must choose your way, and go and try to implement your ideas.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/world/middleeast/israel-prisoner-release-settlements.html?_r=0

Deadline for removing Syria's chemical weapons will not be met

28 December 2013 – The deadline set for the removal of the most critical chemical weapons material from Syria for destruction will not be met owing to technical difficulties, the Joint Mission of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the United Nations said on Saturday. Preparations continue “in readiness” for the transport of these materials, the Joint Mission said in a statement issued in the Syrian port city of Latakia. “However, at this stage, transportation of the most critical chemical material before 31 December is unlikely.” At the end of October, the Syrian Government destroyed critical chemical weapons production equipment, rendering it inoperable.

 By doing so, Damascus met the deadline set by the OPCW Executive Council to complete the destruction of such equipment by 1 November. According to the plan approved by the OPCW, Syria's chemical weapons will be transported outside its territory to ensure their destruction in the “safest and soonest manner,” and no later than 30 June 2014. The 31 December date for the removal of the most critical chemical weapons material from Syria for destruction was the first “intermediate milestone” set by the OPCW. “A number of external factors have impacted upon timelines, not least the continuing volatility in overall security conditions, which have constrained planned movements,” said the Joint Mission.

Read full story: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp/http%3Cspan%20class=%27pullme%27%3EIt%20has%20become%20increasingly%20clear%20that%20disasters%20are%20setting%20back%20efforts%20in%20development%20%E2%80%93%20they%20can%20cripple%20the%20economy,%20destroy%20infrastructure,%20and%20plunge%20more%20people%20into%20poverty%3C/span%3E:/www.unisdr.org/www.unicef.org/html/story.asp?NewsID=46843&Cr=Syria&Cr1=chemical#.UsLrutJDuE4

Syria blamed for missed deadline on chemical arsenal

The Obama administration Monday called on Syria to honor promises to surrender its chemical weapons stockpile, a day after international experts acknowledged delays in removing some of the most lethal toxins from the country.

U.S. officials conceded that a Tuesday deadline for ridding Syria of hundreds of tons of liquid poisons would not be met, citing stalled progress in transporting the chemicals across war-ravaged countryside to ships that will carry them out of the region. But the officials insisted that the overall effort to destroy President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical arsenal was on track.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/syria-blamed-for-missed-deadline-on-chemical-arsenal/2013/12/30/8356c350-719d-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html

Bombings- security threat ahead of Winter Olympics

Moscow: Vladimir Putin's daring bid to host the Winter Olympics in the politically dicey Caucasus Mountains was his way of showing to the world that he had created a stylish, fun-loving country, a Russia that had defeated violent separatism once and for all. It was a gutsy gamble - and the remaining separatists vowed to do whatever they could to disrupt the pageant.

The potential costs of failure were driven home Monday when an apparent suicide bomber shredded a crowded trolley bus in the city of Volgograd. That came on the heels of a bomb attack on the city's railroad station the day before. The two explosions killed 31 people and injured dozens more. Security at the site of the Olympics is watertight, so Islamist extremists have vowed to bring violence to the Russian heartland. Volgograd, only about 400 miles from Sochi, and a city storied in Russian history, offers itself as a tempting target.

Russia has been engaged in an enduring and violent struggle with extremists ever since it defeated a separatist movement in Chechnya in the 1990s. After the war ended, a growing number of separatists turned radical, evolving into Islamist extremists who have launched sporadic terrorist attacks on the country, from Moscow to the hinterlands. They have also carried out a low-grade battle with authorities, now centered in the southern region of Dagestan, inflicting casualties among Russian interior forces that are more numerous than the U.S. military suffers in Afghanistan.

 Putin has staked his prestige on hosting a successful winter Games in Sochi, and demonstrating in the process the safety of the resorts at the western end of the Caucasus mountain range.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/a-second-bombing-in-russia-shows-security-threat-ahead-of-winter-olympics-20131231-hv77j.html#ixzz2p4KstEtY

Terrorist bomb Russia-Olympic fears

Two terrorist bombings hit Volgograd, killing more than 30 people The attacks raised concerns about security at the Olympics in February
 -- Another suspected suicide bombing struck the southern Russian city of Volgograd on Monday, killing at least 14 people and further highlighting Russia's security challenges as it prepares to host the Winter Olympics in less than six weeks. The explosion hit a trolleybus near a busy market during the morning rush hour, a day after a blast at Volgograd's main train station killed 17 people and wounded at least 35. Vladmir Markin, a spokesman for the country's federal investigation agency, told the state-run news agency RIA Novosti that both explosions were terrorist attacks.

"This strike, which was cynically planned for the period of preparations for New Year's celebrations, is one more attempt by terrorists to open a domestic front, sow panic and chaos, and trigger religious strife and conflicts in Russian society," said a statement Monday by Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry. "We will not back down and will continue our tough and consistent offensive" against terrorists, the ministry's statement said, adding that such an enemy "can only be stopped by joint efforts" involving the international community.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/30/world/europe/russia-volgograd-explosion/

Pat Buchanan and Putin?

“Is Putin One of Us?,”

Just in time for Christmas, Pat Buchanan has come along to alert us to the shifting alliances in the conflict between tradition and modernity. While Buchanan’s pugnacity in the culture wars has long since ceased to be news, his latest entry is jaw-dropping nonetheless. Writing last week on a right-wing Web site , he announced he’d found a new star in the paleoconservative firmament: Vladimir Putin.

 In the article “Is Putin One of Us?,” Buchanan noted that while a “de-Christianized” United States has been embracing “homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values,” Putin has stood up for the old-time virtues.

 Indeed, Putin sounds increasingly like Buchanan himself. Tolerance for gay sex, Putin has said, is an “acknowledgement of the equality of good and evil.” This “so-called tolerance,” he continues, “is genderless and infertile.” And the United States, having committed itself to the “destruction of traditional values” and the promotion of “abstract ideas” (Equality? Democracy? The pursuit of happiness?), has set itself against the greater part of humankind and religious orthodoxy everywhere.
Buchanan wasn’t content just to acclaim Putin for his “moral clarity.”

In embracing Putin, he suggested that a new global conservative bloc may be, and certainly should be, forming. Though many Americans are “still caught up in a Cold War paradigm,” he wrote, “the 21st century struggle may be horizontal, with conservatives and traditionalists in every country arrayed against the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-pat-buchanan-vladimir-putin-and-strange-bedfellows/2013/12/24/f8159f22-68bf-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html

iran persists in nukes production

Iran's nuclear chief said the Islamic Republic was making plans to mass produce new centrifuges for uranium enrichment, Iran's media reported him as saying on Thursday. The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi said the "new generation" of centrifuges still had to undergo various tests before they could be produced. A new generation of centrifuges is being built, but they should undergo all tests before mass production," Iran's Tasnim news quoted him as saying. Salehi added that his country currently has 19,000 centrifuges. He also lauded Iran's capability of "conducting the full fuel cycle of the nuclear fuel production from discovery to mining and from there to turning uranium to nuclear fuel,” according to Iran's official IRNA news agency. As part of a deal reached in November with six world powers in Geneva, Iran agreed to limit its enrichment capabilities and reduce the number of operational centrifuges already installed at the Fordow and at Natanz enrichment facilities. Iran was also to refrain from installing new centrifuges, and will be required to freeze all enrichment beyond 20 percent, according to the agreement with the P5+1 world powers.
http://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/Iranian-nuclear-chief-Islamic-Republic-designing-new-centrifuges-336351

Leader Says Iran Wants to Repair Relations With U.S.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says he wants to rebuild diplomatic relations with Western powers, even as he insists the country will “never never give up our right to nuclear energy.” Rouhani’s comments, in an op-ed in a German newspaper on Monday and accompanying Twitter messages on an account associated with him, came during a Christmas break in talks over Iran’s nuclear program. “We want to rebuild and improve our relations to European and North American countries on a basis of mutual respect,” Rouhani wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Reuters reports. “We are striving to avoid new burdens on relations between Iran and the United States and also to remove the tensions that we have inherited.” “We must now concentrate on the present and orientate ourselves towards the future,” read the messages on a closely followed Twitter account that has never been verified as belonging to Rouhani but has broken news of his policy positions and actions before. “We’ll never give up our right to #nuclear energy. But we’re working towards removing all doubts and answer all reasonable questions.”
http://world.time.com/2013/12/23/leader-says-iran-wants-to-repair-relations-with-u-s/

Lawmakers resign amid Turkey fraud scandal

Three Turkish legislators, including a former minister, from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have resigned and accused the Turkish government of putting pressure on the country's judiciary, as a widening corruption scandal continues to grip the country. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party is being directed by "arrogance," former Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay said in a news conference on Friday announcing his resignation, adding that he was parting ways with the AKP. The resignations came after the Council of State, an Ankara court that rules on administrative issues, rejected an attempt by the government to force police officers to disclose the results of investigations to their superiors. The government's efforts to control police investigations amounted to "a clear breach of the principle of the separation of powers, and of the constitution," said the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors on Thursday, a day before the ruling. Twenty-four people, including the sons of two ministers and a state-owned bank's chief were arrested last week as part of an investigation into corruption in Turkey. The months-long probe was kept secret from top commanders, who might have informed the government.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/12/lawmakers-resign-amid-turkey-fraud-scandal-201312271460679884.html