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Kasznár Attila politológus, Kína-szakértő kötetét mutatták be a Honvédelmi Minisztériumban január 25-én, szerdán. A szerző munkája főként a Kínát vizsgáló új szempontok miatt hívta fel magára a figyelmet.

Armenians have violated ceasefire with Azerbaijan 7 times.

January 29, 2017 (JUBA) - The new head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), David Shearer held a meeting with South Sudan President Salva Kiir, during which the former reiterated the mission's commitment to supporting peace efforts in the young nation.

David Shearer (Getty Images)

Shearer, a U.N spokesperson said, also assured the South Sudanese leader that the U.N and UNMISS are there to support the Government and help the people of war-torn South Sudan.

The senior U.N official reportedly state that he was in South Sudan with an open mind and would leave the East African nation if conditions in the country permit UNMISS to leave.

Shearer, who doubles at the special representative of the Secretary General in South Sudan, also met with the South Sudanese minister of cabinet affairs, Martin Elia Lomuro and that he was pleased to hear the minister reiterate South Sudan Government's commitment to the deployment of the Regional Protection Force (RPF) mandated by the U.N Security Council in August 2016.

UNMISS was deployed in July 2011 after South Sudan's independence from Sudan. Currently, there are 13,000 uniformed personnel and over 2,000 international and local civilian staff.

South Sudan descended into turmoil in mid-December 2013 when rival forces loyal to President Kiir bitterly fought with those loyal to his former deputy Riek Machar. Since then, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced in a crisis that has produced one of the world's worst displacement situations with immense suffering for civilians.
(ST)

Quatre soldats ukrainiens et un combattant rebelle ont été tués dimanche dans l'Est de l'Ukraine dans les affrontements les plus meurtriers depuis l'instauration d'une nouvelle trêve fin décembre. Le conflit entamé en 2014 a déjà fait plus de 10 000 morts selon l’ONU. Pendant ce temps, le pays s’inquiète des sympathies de l’administration de Donald Trump envers la Russie.  

The conference dedicated to the results of the third year of implementing the “State program on socio-economic development of Azerbaijani districts in 2014-2018” has kicked off in Baku, APA reports.

At least two law enforcement officers and three militants have been killed during a police operation in Russian Chechen Republic.

This week’s revelations in the Canard Enchaîné.

Not a good week for French democracy. It started with the communication of false figures from the first round of the Socialist primary, followed by the verdict sending Sarkozy’s former minister Claude Guéant to jail for his ‘automatic cash teller’ practices while in office. It ended up overshadowed by what is now known as #penelopegate, the scandal around the ‘fake jobs’ of François Fillon’s wife Penelope.

A week that looked almost like it was ordered on amazon by Marine Le Pen. Plenty of evidence for the oh, so tempting ‘Tous pourris!’ theory about an establishment that is not only disconnected, but corrupt to the bones. The Front National did not even have to make particular efforts to send the message home: indignation was running high even without them fanning the flames, and they were not too keen on reviving the story of their own MEP assistants paid for working in France for the party…

What is almost touching about the French political class is the stubbornness with which they simply don’t get the point. They seem to live forever in the golden age of the early Fifth Republic, when uninterrupted growth gave them the feeling they were entitled to help themselves to their piece of the cake. Or two. Or three.

Today, especially for candidates who promote strict austerity and collective effort in difficult economic times, all this is no longer acceptable. But like kids caught with both hands in the candy bag, they don’t understand what’s wrong. Listening to the way they defend themselves – from ‘but this is perfectly legal!’ and ‘they mix up gross and net salaries’ (Fillon) to ‘things have always been like this!’ (Guéant) – is a travel back in time. To an epoch when France was entirely impregnated by Catholicism, a place in which sinners were sure to be forgiven and where the accumulation of little benefits and pleasures was considered petty stuff to be dealt with tongue-in-cheek.

This place is no more. Research on consumer behaviour has shown that over the last fifteen years there has been a slow, but continuous change in French consumer’s attitudes which may be linked to an increasing sensitivity to ‘protestant values’ in French society. While it is always risky to stick such labels on movements of social change, there is no doubt that increasing interdependence with a global environment dominated by Anglo-American values has produced some observable shifts.

There was indeed a new sensitivity was not only reflected in increased interest of consumers for environmental issues, organic products, fair trade, but which has also had significant repercussions on the country’s political culture. Traditional cultural auto-stereotypes – a good dose of machismo, disrespect of the law, understanding for petty corruption – were increasingly put into question. There were new laws for gender parity in politics; civil society pressed for tackling the problem of the obscene yearly death toll on the roads; anti-corruption judges adopted a zero-tolerance attitude, including against tax evasion.

True, there is still a large lenience when it comes to extra-marital affairs, but these are rather considered an amusing relic of Versailles court life. François Hollande did not risk an impeachment for having a secret affair with an actor. But he did lose a lot of esteem for spending all this time getting rid of his mistress while buying the breakfast croissants for another, while the middle-class was told to wait patiently for the end of the tunnel.

Those were the days. The Fillon family poses for Paris Match in front of their home near Sablé-sur-Sarthe (2013).

Today, after being told for decades the country was in an economic crisis, the French are fed up with the lack of transparency, accountability, and integrity. The generous self-serving practices of the past – hiring one’s wife with an indecent salary for unclear tasks (Fillon) or taking one’s sons in the government jet to watch a Champions League final in Berlin (Valls) are simply no longer acceptable. As the excellent radio columnist Thomas Legrand pointed out this week, the ‘voracious’ manner in which Mitterrand and Chirac benefitted from the privileges that come with life at the top of the state would today be ‘assimilated to kleptocracy’. Public opinion has moved, while politicians, as if they wanted to provide evidence for just how disconnected they are in their Paris power bubble, have not moved an inch. Many of them even refuse to implement the law prohibiting the age-old practice of serving several mandates concurrently (the famous cumul des mandats’)!

Fillon, and all the others, will have to learn it the hard way. It is difficult to imagine that the strategy mix of self-victimisation and conspiracy theory will work over a three-month campaign. Perhaps with some die-hard party followers. But not with the mainstream French middle class he was courting so desperately with his image of ‘probity’ and ‘rectitude’.

The harm is already done, as two recent polls attest: a SOFRES poll for Le Figaro had Fillon down to only 22% of intentions for the first round of the presidential elections and, worse, credited him with a mere 60-40 win in a potential face-off with Marine Le Pen. And according to an Odoxa poll for France Info, Fillon’s approval rate has gone down from 54% to only 38% since last November. Even in his own party, only 48% consider him ‘honest’…

Not a good week for French democracy. Unless, of course, the events and their consequences finally sound like a wake-up call to the French political class, ideally with tangible effects beyond the election deadlines. In which case, it would have been a good week after all.

Albrecht Sonntag
@albrechtsonntag

This is post # 10 on the French 2017 election marathon.
All previous posts can be found here.

The post France 2017: Protestant protests appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Armenian Defence Minister Vigen Sargsyan will visit Iran.

Germany should not accept the asylum requests of 40 former Turkish soldiers allegedly linked to the July 15 defeated coup.

"Iran's foreign ministry called the decision 'illegal, illogical and contrary to international rules'."

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order calling for the Pentagon to submit a plan for the defeat of Daesh to him in the next 30 days,APA reports quoting Sputnik.

Bulgarian environmental groups are staging a protest in front of the Presidency on Monday, calling on President Radev to veto recent legal changes that they say will harm the country's national parks.

Non-profit media await a final decision on their appeals for funds from Croatia's new culture minister - but some fear she will continue the controversial policies of her predecessor.

Newly released photographs of Serbia's Health Minister as a young man in the company of notorious gangster have prompted fresh calls for a probe into his relations with the Zemun Clan.

Romania's Justice Ministry started a limited public debate on Monday on controversial decrees that would pardon convicted politicians and decriminalize abuse of office.

January 29, 2017 (KHARTOUM) - The United People's Front for Liberation and Justice (UPFLJ), a group from eastern Sudan, has called on the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the killing incident known as “Port Sudan Massacre”.

Over 20 people were killed in Port Sudan, capital of the Red Sea state on 29 January 2005 when thousands of protesters called for the end of an armed conflict in the impoverished province and to provide job opportunities.

A delegation from the UPFLJ including its chairwoman Zaineb Kabashi and her deputy Osama Saeed has met with a number of officials from the office of the ICC chief prosecutor in the Hague.

In a statement extended to Sudan Tribune on Sunday, UPFLJ said the meeting discussed the ICC role to prosecute Sudanese officials wanted by the tribunal and on top of them President Omer al-Bashir.

The ICC has issued two arrest warrants against President al-Bashir in 2009 and 2010 for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed in Darfur.

According to the statement, the delegation presented an integrated vision that the ICC has jurisdiction to prosecute the “Port Sudan Massacre”, saying “the special force which had committed the massacre in cold blood was brought to disperse peaceful protests”.

The statement pointed that the ICC has jurisdiction individuals for crimes against humanity, saying the tribunal shall have the jurisdiction “when national courts are unable or unwilling to investigate the defendants”.

It pointed that the Sudanese courts are unwilling to institute the proceedings in relation to “Port Sudan Massacre”, accusing the Sudanese regime and security services of obstructing any moves to file a lawsuit in this regard.

“Accordingly, the delegation requested [the ICC] to file a lawsuit against the perpetrators of the massacre,” added the statement.

It further said the two sides agreed to hold a second meeting to allow the UPFLJ to hand over a complete dossier to the ICC to file the lawsuit.

The UPFLJ is a splinter faction of the Eastern Front that signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government in October 2006.

The group says Khartoum government didn't implement the Eritrean government brokered agreement which provides to establish a $600 million development fund to be paid over four years.

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January 29, 2017 (JUBA)- South Sudan President Salva Kiir has issued an order removed Lam Akol Ajawin from the ministry of agriculture, several months after his resignation from the position.

Lam Akol, chairman of South Sudan's main opposition party (AFP/Samir Bol Photo)

Akol, an influential opposition leader, resigned his position august 2016 from the unity government formed in line with the 2015 peace agreement which the government and armed and non-armed opposition signed to end the over three years destructive war.

He described the agreement as “dead” following renewed rounds of fighting between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and former First Vice President Riek Machar, in the capital Juba in July 2016.

“Since the agreement is dead and there is no free political space in Juba, the only sensible way to oppose this regime so as to restore genuine peace to our war-torn country is to organize outside Juba,” Akol told journalists in the capital of neighboring Ethiopia, Addis Ababa,

Akol was one of two ministers in the unity government that was neither part of Kiir's SPLM nor Machar's opposition, known as the SPLM-In-Opposition (SPLM-IO). He was representing the alliance of non-armed opposition parties in unity government. When he left, the group was expected to convene a meeting at which they would deliberate on who should be the replacement.

His deputy, who hails from the alliance, has been acting and the new order from the president effecting removal of Akol from the position did not elevate him to full ministerial capacity and did not appoint a new official, continuing to create an administrative vacuum at the ministry.

South Sudan was plunged into civil war in December 2013, when Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup to overthrow him, resulting in the eruption of war in which tens of thousands were killed and more than 2 million displaced in the civil war, with sporadic outbreaks of fighting even after a peace agreement was brokered in August 2015. Machar returned to the capital to re-take up the post of First Vice-President in April.

Last July, the rival forces clashed in Juba, resulting in the loss of more than 270 lives and tens of thousands of residents fleeing to neighbouring Uganda. Machar fled the capital with his forces as a result and Kiir issued a 48-hour ultimatum for him to return. When Machar failed to show, Kiir swore in Taban Deng Gai, as the new First Vice-President until Machar returned. The appointment was rejected by Machar as illegal.

Upon his resignation, Akol said he would to align with like-minded compatriots” in order to build a national coalition, saying the South Sudanese would no longer tolerate a “callous, totalitarian and ethnocentric regime that seems to thrive on the suffering of its own people,”

He later formed a national democratic movement which pledged to work with other remove the government under the leadership of President Salva Kiir from power.

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January 29, 2017 (JUBA) - The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has reiterated its call on all the warring parties involved in South Sudan's conflict to immediately cease hostilities and fully implement the peace agreement.

UNMISS troops from India patrol the UNMISS compound in Juba, South Sudan recently (UN MISSION/AP)

UNMISS, in a statement issued Sunday, said was deeply concerned about the outbreak of fighting between the South Sudanese army (SPLA) and SPLA in Opposition (SPLM-OI) in and around Malakal town, including intermittent shelling that has been reported over the last few days.

The situation in Malakal town, according to the mission, remained tense following clashes between rival factions.

“The mission continues to patrol regularly in Malakal and reports that the town is largely deserted,” reads the statement issued by the U.N mission in the young nation.

The acting SPLA spokesman, Santo Domic Chol said Wednesday that the two rival forces clashed near Malakal, the Upper Nile state capital after government forces were allegedly attacked by militias under the command of Johnson Olony.

He neither gave details on the exact location where the clashes occurred nor unveil information on any casualties from the Malakal incident.

UNMISS, however, said it will continue to act within its capacity to protect South Sudanese civilians in imminent danger and calls on all the country's warring parties in the conflict to silence the guns to enable the movement of humanitarian aid and personnel to affected areas.

South Sudan has experience violence since December 2013 when political disagreements between President Salva Kiir and Machar saw the nation split along ethnic lines. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced in South Sudan's worst ever outbreak of violence since independence from neighbouring Sudan.

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January 29, 2017 (KHARTOUM) - Sudan's Foreign Ministry on Sunday has summoned the U.S. Chargé d'Affaires in Khartoum Steven Koutsis to protest against the decision by President Donald Trump restricting entry for Sudanese nationals to the United States.

President Trump on Saturday issued an executive order temporarily banning refugees and travellers to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries – Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

In a press release extended to Sudan Tribune Sunday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Gharib Allah Khidir said Foreign Ministry Under-Secretary Abdel-Ghani al-Nai'm has expressed to Koutsis his government resentment over the ban against Sudanese nationals.

He described the move as a “negative signal” in light of the recent positive developments in relations between the two countries following the ease of economic sanctions imposed on Sudan and the joint cooperation in the fight against terror.

A week before the end of his second term, President Barack Obama signed an executive order easing economic embargo imposed on Sudan since 1997.

According to the press release, al-Nai'm underscored Sudan's keenness to continue the dialogue and cooperation with the American side at all joint levels as well as regional and international issues of common concern.

He added that Sudan awaits the U.S. government to lift its name from the list of states sponsors of terror very soon; saying they also expects the U.S. to reconsider its decision to ban Sudanese nationals from entering its territory.

The US State Department added Sudan to its state terror list in 1993, accusing Khartoum of harboring local and international militants including for a time AQ leader Osama bin Laden.

Since Washington admitted Sudan's cooperation in the anti-terror war but continues to maintain the east African nation name on the list.

Last September, the State Department spokesperson praised Sudan counterterrorism cooperation with the United States. "In recent months, Sudan has taken important steps to counter ISIL and other terrorist groups and has sought to prevent their movement into and through Sudan," said John Kirby.

Countries on the list of state sponsors of terrorism cannot receive U.S. economic aid or buy U.S. weapons and a raft of restrictions on financial and other dealings. The list currently includes Sudan, Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria and Yemen.

According to the sudanese foreign ministry, Koutsis pointed that he would convey Sudan's government message to his government, saying the U.S. is keen to continue dialogue and cooperation to promote ties between the two countries in light of the positive moves that have been achieved during the past six months.

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Benoît Hamon a remporté dimanche le second tour de la primaire à gauche, suivez l’après scrutin avec toute l’équipe du direct politique.