Category: South Asia

Former foes ‘to tackle militants’

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, have agreed to boost military cooperation against Islamic extremists.

The meeting in Ankara was hosted by the Turkish President, Abdullah Gul.

Afghan officials have previously said that insurgent attacks inside Afghanistan are planned in Pakistan.

A BBC correspondent says relations have improved since President Zardari came to power but Turkey’s role as a broker could further improve ties.

The meeting between the two leaders comes a day after 70 countries committed themselves to more effort in reconstructing Afghanistan at a conference in The Hague.

Mr Gul said the involvement in the meeting of Pakistani and Afghan military and intelligence chiefs had been important.

Mr Karzai picked out Turkey for particular praise in his address to the conference.

The BBC’s international development correspondent, David Loyn, says this Muslim country that looks to the east and the west was a natural place to host the first meeting between Pakistan and Afghanistan since President Obama announced his new strategy for the region last Friday.

Mr Karzai has a much closer working relationship with Mr Zardari than with the previous administration in Islamabad.

Zardari vulnerable

But democratic government in Pakistan is not deep-rooted and Mr Zardari has not yet been able to convince the US that his security services have stopped their former support for militant groups fighting in Afghanistan.

He remains vulnerable to any suggestion that his government is being pressurised to act by Washington.

That is why, our correspondent says, Turkey may prove useful in the role of an honest broker.

The US demand for better regional cooperation on Afghanistan received what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said was a promising response from Iran.

The head of the Iranian delegation in The Hague, Mehdi Akhundzadeh, had a brief meeting with US regional envoy Richard Holbrooke and offered assistance in stopping drug smuggling across the Afghan border.

In a meeting in Turkey last December, Mr Karzai and Mr Zardari agreed to form a joint strategy to fight militant groups operating in their border regions.

The Afghan-Pakistani border is believed to be a safe haven for the Taleban and al-Qaeda militants.

The US says insurgents use the territory to launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7975822.stm

April 1, 2009
RUSSIA: MOSCOW HOSTS CONFERENCE ON AFGHANISTAN

RIA Novosti

Russia is ready to actively contribute to normalization of the situation in Afghanistan, President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday in a welcome message to the participants of an international conference, RIA Novosti reports.

The Moscow conference on Afghanistan was held under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – a regional security organization comprising Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The conference participants – SCO ministers and representatives of G8 members, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Iran, the UN, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the OSCE, the EU and NATO – gathered to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and in the Middle East and work out a strategy of fight against terrorism and drug production.

The CSTO comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

“I am convinced that the conference results will become a weighty contribution to the efforts by member countries and observers of the SCO, other states and international organizations to assist Afghanistan,” said the president’s message, which was read by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“For its part, Russia is ready for active joint steps aimed at normalizing the situation in the country and ensuring its peaceful and creative development,” it said.

Medvedev said the conference was a very important event and noted that its participants would have to discuss a number of serious problems touching upon the interests of Afghanistan and other countries.

The president said Russia is interested in wide cooperation with the international community to resolve Afghanistan’s problems.

Lavrov, heading the Russian delegation, said the SCO and CSTO proposed forming belts of drug, terrorist and financial security in Afghanistan.

The Foreign Ministry said Lavrov would attend an international conference on Afghanistan in The Hague on March 31, which will bring together foreign ministers of states involved in Afghanistan, as well as representatives of international organizations.

“The minister will outline the main results of the conference on Afghanistan in Moscow,” the ministry said.

At Friday’s conference in Moscow, a Chinese deputy foreign minister said China had provided $180 million assistance to Afghanistan and written off all its outstanding debts.

The Turkish foreign minister said Turkey intended to contribute to SCO efforts on an Afghan settlement and an Iranian deputy foreign minister said it was time to switch over from declarations to actions in the Afghan settlement.

March 30, 2009
A New World Order

An end of hubris

Nov 19th 2008
From The World in 2009 print edition

America will be less powerful, but still the essential nation in creating a new world order, argues Henry Kissinger, a former secretary of state and founder of Kissinger Associates

Reuters

The most significant event of 2009 will be the transformation of the Washington consensus that market principles trumped national boundaries. The WTO, the IMF and the World Bank defended that system globally. Periodic financial crises were interpreted not as warning signals of what could befall the industrial nations but as aberrations of the developing world to be remedied by domestic stringency—a policy which the advanced countries were not, in the event, prepared to apply to themselves.

The absence of restraint encouraged a speculation whose growing sophistication matched its mounting lack of transparency. An unparalleled period of growth followed, but also the delusion that an economic system could sustain itself via debt indefinitely. In reality, a country could live in such a profligate manner only so long as the rest of the world retained confidence in its economic prescriptions. That period has now ended.

Any economic system, but especially a market economy, produces winners and losers. If the gap between them becomes too great, the losers will organise themselves politically and seek to recast the existing system—within nations and between them. This will be a major theme of 2009.

America’s unique military and political power produced a comparable psychological distortion. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union tempted the United States to proclaim universal political goals in a world of seeming unipolarity—but objectives were defined by slogans rather than strategic feasibility.

Now that the clay feet of the economic system have been exposed, the gap between a global system for economics and the global political system based on the state must be addressed as a dominant task in 2009. The economy must be put on a sound footing, entitlement programmes reviewed and the national dependence on debt overcome. Hopefully, in the process, past lessons of excessive state control will not be forgotten.

The debate will be over priorities, transcending the longstanding debate between idealism and realism. Economic constraints will oblige America to define its global objectives in terms of a mature concept of the national interest. Of course, a country that has always prided itself on its exceptionalism will not abandon the moral convictions by which it defined its greatness. But America needs to learn to discipline itself into a strategy of gradualism that seeks greatness in the accumulation of the attainable. By the same token, our allies must be prepared to face the necessary rather than confining foreign policy to so-called soft power.

Every major country will be driven by the constraints of the fiscal crisis to re-examine its relationship to America. All—and especially those holding American debt—will be assessing the decisions that brought them to this point. As America narrows its horizons, what is a plausible security system and aimed at what threats? What is the future of capitalism? How, in such circumstances, does the world deal with global challenges, such as nuclear proliferation or climate change?

America will remain the most powerful country, but will not retain the position of self-proclaimed tutor. As it learns the limits of hegemony, it should define implementing consultation beyond largely American conceptions. The G8 will need a new role to embrace China, India, Brazil and perhaps South Africa.

The immediate challenge

In Iraq, if the surge strategy holds, there must be a diplomatic conference in 2009 to establish principles of non-intervention and define the country’s international responsibilities.

The dilatory diplomacy towards Iran must be brought to a focus. The time available to forestall an Iranian nuclear programme is shrinking and American involvement is essential in defining what we and our allies are prepared to seek and concede and, above all, the penalty to invoke if negotiations reach a stalemate. Failing that, we will have opted to live in a world of an accelerating nuclear arms race and altered parameters of security.

In 2009 the realities of Afghanistan will impose themselves. No outside power has ever prevailed by establishing central rule, as Britain learnt in the 19th century and the Soviet Union in the 20th. The collection of nearly autonomous provinces which define Afghanistan coalesce in opposition to outside attempts to impose central rule. Decentralisation of the current effort is essential.

All this requires a new dialogue between America and the rest of the world. Other countries, while asserting their growing roles, are likely to conclude that a less powerful America still remains indispensable. America will have to learn that world order depends on a structure that participants support because they helped bring it about. If progress is made on these enterprises, 2009 will mark the beginning of a new world order.

Source: www.economist.com, Nov 19th 2008

“New World Order” transmutes into “Age of Compatible Interest”

March 29, 2009
KEYNOTE SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF TURKEY

KEYNOTE SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY AT THE EUROPEAN BUSINESS SUMMIT

(BRUSSELS, 26 MARCH 2009)

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me to participate in the Seventh European Business Summit. I am confident that, the Summit will provide to the business community yet another occasion to address important problems that face Europe, at present.

Business people will better know that, the “fine line” between success and failure is the ability to shape perceptions according to changing conditions. I believe that the same applies to international affairs.

To influence global developments, we should be able to renew our perceptions about political, social and economic challenges.

The European Union was conceived by such visionary leaders as Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman: They have changed the perceptions about the future of Europe by launching the idea of a united continent.

This project started as a marriage of coal and steel. However, today, the same project has reached the dimension of a political, economic and social integration process. The dream of a “European Union” is today a reality.

Furthermore, the European Union is now poised to be a major force to run world affairs in the 21st century.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

While the EU is now a global economic and political powerhouse, it is not immune to global challenges.

Quite the opposite!

The most immediate challenge the EU, together with the world community, faces is the recent global financial and economic crisis. This is a testing time for Europe. But Europe has faced other challenges in the past. It has always succeeded in overcoming them. Europe should be confident in its capacity to overcome today’s ordeal and emerge from it even stronger.

The EU today draws its strength from the sense of common destiny, with its common values, policies and institutions. It is well equipped to face present challenges.

I have no doubt that at the end, thanks to the truly European spirit of debate and compromise, we shall emerge from this crisis stronger than before. Such a debate has already started to produce creative ideas.

The EU’s greatest achievements of the last decades, from the “Single Market” to “enlargement”, have all been the results of acting collectively and responsibly in an inclusive way. Today, the EU, employing the same principles and instruments, is finding the right path to its political and economic future.

No one can claim that, in the face of today’s economic, political and social crises, an inward-looking, divided, weak or smaller EU would be better off.

Distinguished Guests,

Turkey, as an accession country, a member of the G-20, and the sixth largest European economy, is uniquely placed to work hand in hand with the EU to overcome the global economic crisis which started out in the financial markets.

Turkey is ready to do its share in order to deal with this global economic crisis and to provide sustainable solutions. Indeed, Turkey went through such a financial crisis in 2001. We lost almost one fourth of our GDP. As a result, we made extensive structural reforms focused on strengthening the regulatory bodies. This proved to be an expensive but valuable lesson. At least today, our banking system is very sound.

We all know that the basis of economic activity is transparency and trust. Therefore, while reforming the financial system, this basic tenet must be upheld. We share the consensus view that governments, central banks and the business world must engage in strong collective action in this direction.

We must also stimulate economic growth while keeping inflation under control. Therefore, it is essential to support the real economy and at the same time promote social solidarity.

We need to give much thought to a new global financial architecture based on supervision and regulation. It is a positive development, that such issues are now being dealt with, not only at the national level, but also at the supranational level. In this direction, the World Bank, the IMF and other financial organizations need to be restructured to answer the requirements of modern economic times.

A well-regulated free market economy should definitely continue to be our main point of reference. We should never overlook the productivity brought about by private sector activity. Although the shares of some financial institutions have been or will have to be transferred to national treasuries, these shares should come back to the hands of the private sector whenever conditions permit.

Protectionism is also a dangerous trend. In the medium to long term, it is our own people, the consumers, who pay the price of protectionist policies. At the end of the day, such policies hurt everybody.

In this respect, Turkey is ready to cooperate with the EU at the G-20 and the Doha Round.

I hope that the EU will also stand up for the basic principles which have made it a great economy.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let us consider some of the major challenges facing Europe today:

Economic recession; Unemployment; Demographic decline; Illegal immigration; Terrorism; Energy security; Climate change and others.

I am convinced that all of these challenges will be tackled much more effectively when the EU finally enlarges to Turkey. The ties that bind Turkey and the EU together are already strong and deep-rooted:

– Our common values, like democracy, rule of law and human rights,

– Our strong economic partnership framed by a highly successful Customs Union,

– Our shared interests on matters like energy security, good governance, effective regulation of the free market and the fight against poverty,

– Our joint objectives of expanding peace and stability in our region and beyond.

The interests of Turkey and the EU overlap in a vast geography and across many areas.

Turkey’s geography and its historical ties in a large region covering the Balkans, the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia give it unique opportunities. Out of the thirteen European Security and Defense Policy missions worldwide, seven are being conducted in Turkey’s neighborhood. Turkey is the largest non-EU contributor to ESDP missions.

On issues as diverse as Iran, Iraq, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Georgia, Kosovo and others, Turkey’s efforts directed at facilitating dialogue and compromise are clearly constructive. Just to cite a few examples:

– Israel and Syria began indirect peace talks under Turkey’s auspices.

– Turkey, together with Egypt, is actively working for inter-Palestinian reconciliation.

– My trips to Baghdad two days ago and to Teheran two weeks ago are indications of our efforts to contribute to international peace and stability.

– Next week, we shall bring together the Presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan together with their military and intelligence officials in Ankara.

– My first-ever trip to Armenia last year and our initiative for the Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform have been part of our commitment to a better atmosphere in the Caucasus region.

In short, Turkey is a force for good in a number of the world’s principal pressure points. Clearly, increased synergy between Turkey and the EU will be to our mutual benefit.

Therefore, obstacles preventing benefits of such a synergy, like the Cyprus issue, should be removed before wasting more time and losing more opportunities. Turkey and Turkish Cypriots have already done their share for a peaceful settlement of this issue. We are committed to continue in the same line. Our vision is to create another strong pillar of Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean among Turkey, Greece and the island of Cyprus once a comprehensive settlement has been reached.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Energy is yet another area of interest for all of us. It is obvious that energy security is closely associated with prosperity and stability.

In this respect, let us not forget that Turkey is close to nearly 70 percent of the world’s energy resources. It has a strategic location along the main transport routes of the oil and natural gas resources of the Middle East, Central Asia and Caspian regions.

Turkey’s energy security strategy overlaps with the EU’s policy of diversification of energy supply routes. Indeed, Turkey is aiming at becoming Europe’s fourth artery of natural gas after Russia, Norway and Algeria. Following the realization of the main projects of the East-West Corridor, we are now working with our partners to realize the Southern Energy Corridor which includes natural gas pipeline projects going through the territory of Turkey.

In this context, the Nabucco Project is a priority of our energy strategy. It will play a crucial role in moving gas further towards European markets.

Distinguished Guests,

I have outlined some of the main areas where Turkey is uniquely placed to help address the challenges faced by Europe. Turkey is a negotiating candidate country determined to join the EU. Turkey continues on its path to accession and an enormous transformation process is also taking place. The comprehensive political reforms enacted in the past six years have enhanced our democratic system. We are determined to take them further ahead.

We will continue the negotiations in good faith with the shared objective of accession as clearly stated in the negotiating framework of the EU. It is essential that Turkey’s accession process be continued objectively, fairly, in a foreseeable way and according to the rules of the game.

Distinguished Guests,

Strategic vision is no longer confined to military or geopolitical considerations alone. Strategic approaches now aim for common values, intercultural dialogue and mutual harmony. Such a strategic approach implies Turkey’s accession to the EU.

Turkey’s accession will carry within it some keys to solving many of the EU’s political, social and economic problems. I shall remind you that tomorrow’s Turkey will be a much different and stronger country compared to what it is today. When Turkey becomes a member, it will shoulder some of the burdens of Europe.

Turkey is proof that a well-functioning secular democracy in a predominantly Muslim society can prosper, preserve its traditional values and also be a part of Western institutions.

None of these are new concepts in defending the cause of Turkey’s accession to the EU. However, their importance increases as the challenges confronting us gain urgency with every day going by.

The case is a rather simple one: The world needs the EU’s soft power. And to become a global power, the EU needs Turkey. For such a successful “peace project” involving 500 million people, Turkey’s integration is the most viable way forward.

Distinguished Guests,

The EU needs to approach this matter with a sense of vision.

It must take the vision of its own Founding Fathers who aimed to eliminate barriers which divided Europe and not create new barriers. Therefore, I wish to recall the Czech Presidency’s motto: “Europe without barriers”.

Thank you for your attention.

March 26, 2009
Opposing of Iran’s Nuke Weapons

March 11, 2009 Turkish President Abdullah Gul said Turkey opposes Iran’s attempts to acquire nuclear weapons, Today’s Zaman reported March 11. Also, Gul said the new U.S. administration under President Barack Obama signals that “a new era has begun.” He added, “It is important for world peace and stability that everyone is prepared for a new era like this to emerge.” Gul said Iran and Pakistani-Aghan relations were important challenges in the “new era.”

March 14, 2009
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ÜYE AİDATLARI, BAĞIŞLAR VE KİTAP SATIŞLARI

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March 14, 2009