Turkish companies may take part in building venues for the 2018 World Cup.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed this and other issues in a telephone conversation on Wednesday.
On December 2nd, Russia won the right to host the 2018World Cup.
There will be new stadiums, hotels and infrastructure faculties in 13 Russian cities.
via Turkey to help Russia prepare for World Cup: Voice of Russia.
A young Russian woman working for a British lawmaker is facing deportation after security services detained her on suspicion of espionage, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday.
The paper reported that Katia Zatuliveter, 25, secretly worked for the Russian intelligence as a “sleeper” agent.
She had been working for Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock who sits on parliament’s defence select committee which examines defence policy but has no access to secret material.
Hancock, who is also an MP for Porstmouth in southern England where there is a large naval base, denied his research assistant had done anything wrong.
“She is not a Russian spy. I know nothing about espionage, but she has been subjected to a deportation order,” Hancock said in a statement. He said she would appeal moves to deport her.
The lawmaker said that the domestic security service, MI5, had never raised any concerns about her with him.
“No one has ever said to me under any circumstances whatsoever that she has been involved in anything like that,” he said. “It is now in the hands of her lawyers. I am sure that in the end she will be proved to be right.”
Hancock told the BBC in an interview she was arrested on Thursday morning and taken to an immigration detention centre in London, before being moved to another centre where she is being held and putting her appeal together.
“Nobody has shown me any evidence to support the view that she is any way a threat to the United Kingdom,” Hancock said.
He said his assistant, who had worked for him for close to three years, had passed strict security vetting procedures to work in parliament.
The paper said her removal was approved by Home Secretary (interior minister) Theresa May after being briefed about her activities.
The Home Office said it could not comment on individual cases or confirm deportation orders were in place. London’s Metropolitan police referred all queries to the UK Border Agency, who was not answering calls.
The Russian embassy in London could not be reached for comment.
A security source told the Sunday Times Zatuliveter’s presence was not “conducive to national security”, and the intention was to “show her the door”.
The paper said it was the first time since the end of the Cold War that someone working in parliament had been accused of spying for the Russians.
Toronto Sun
By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, December 1 — As the new Wikileaks of US State Department cables were the buzz at the UN on Wednesday, from Sri Lanka war crimes to Russia’s “Mafia state,” the UN Secretariat did all it could to dodge questions about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s directive that the UN and its officials be spied on.
But at a Turkish Mission reception on Wednesday evening, a European Ambassador told Inner City Press that the leaks were going to cause trouble within countries all over the world. “Why did the US distribute these cables so widely?” he asked. “When I have information, I write only to my minister and his chief of staff, no one else.”
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to sue the American diplomats who cabled home that Erdogan has secret bank accounts in Switzerland. But well placed sources tell Inner City Press that the origin of the Swiss bank detail is the “Turkish minister who covers the European Union process.”
So maybe the lawsuit, if there is one, should be filed in Turkey itself.
After Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met with Clinton in Astana, the UN said only that “they discussed… the complications caused by the recent massive leak of US diplomatic cables.”
Inner City Press asked the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Executive Director Mike Smith about calls to designate Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange as part of a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” Video here, from Minute 17:40.
Smith said he would “leave it up to the countries that are talking about that to work it out through these systems, I’m not going to comment on that.” Of course, it is within Smith’s and the UN’s stated job to speak on the misuse of terrorism laws and designations.
Footnote: beyond Ban Ki-moon’s meeting with Hillary Clinton, the UN on Wednesday afternoon confirmed to Inner City Press what it had asked about Ban’s meeting with South Korea’s foreign minister. Yes they met, including about two conferences in Seoul. But there was apparently no meeting with Ukraine’s president, despite Ukrainian press reports that there would be.
via Inner City Press: Wikileaks Buzz from Turkey to UN, But Ban Quiet with Clinton, Assange as Terrorist?.
While Turkey is getting closer to realizing its first nuclear power plant, to be constructed by the Russian state-controlled Atomstroyexport JSC in Turkey’s southern province of Mersin, Turkish public opinion seems to be growing uneasy concerning the level of technology the Russians have to offer to Turkey and the overall safety conditions of the nuclear reactor they are to build, since the bitter memories of the Chernobyl disaster are still fresh in people’s minds.
On April 26, 1986, the world witnessed the worst nuclear power plant disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. After the incident the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) created the International Nuclear Safety Advisor Group (INSAG) to investigate the causes of the disaster. It determined the accident was caused by gross violations of operating rules and regulations. “During preparation and testing of the turbine generator under run-down conditions using the auxiliary load, personnel disconnected a series of technical protection systems and breached the most important operational safety provisions for conducting a technical exercise,” stated the INSAG report. The Soviet-constructed nuclear energy plant’s catastrophic disaster was due to a lack of knowledge of nuclear physics and faulty engineering in the construction and operation of the nuclear reactor.
Since the Soviet example of a nuclear plant disaster is etched in history, concerns about the safety of Russian (formerly Soviet) nuclear technology have arisen due to the Chernobyl disaster, bringing up an obvious question: Has Russia improved its expertise and technology in this field?
‘Nothing to worry about’
Speaking to Sunday’s Zaman, Sinan Ülgen, who is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels and chairman of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM) in İstanbul, said Russian technology is considered to be sufficiently safe. He noted the reactor offered to Turkey is from a totally different generation than the infamous Chernobyl design. “The only caveat in this respect is that there is as of yet no operational track record for the proposed reactor in Akkuyu. By the time the reactor is built, however, a similar reactor will have already been completed and started operation in China,” added Ülgen.
Ülgen stated the French Areva group has probably the most advanced technology in the world but underlined that Areva’s problem is that their reactor design is too expensive. He points out that in terms of technology, Japan, the US and South Korea come on the heels of France. China is also rapidly advancing in the field of nuclear energy, but it is particularly interested in meeting its own energy demand rather than exporting its technology.
Nuclear power sine qua non
Separately, Ülgen also touched on Turkey’s effort to construct its first nuclear power plant. The chairman of EDAM said Turkey needs to diversify its energy sources and include nuclear energy in its portfolio of electricity generation methods. “The construction of a nuclear power plant would enable Turkey to increase its technological knowhow in this crucial field. The question is really whether allowing Russia to construct the first nuclear power plant serves the purpose of improving Turkey’s energy security in view of the already high dependence on Russia in terms of natural gas supplies. Yet these doubts can be laid to rest in view of the model adopted for the construction of the Akkuyu plant in which Russia has taken on all the financial risk of building and operating the plant. Thus, Russia will not merely be a supplier as is the case with natural gas but a significant investor undertaking a significant commercial risk,” said Ülgen. “Therefore, from this perspective one can argue that this investment increases the interdependence between the two countries rather than making Turkey more dependent on Russia.”
In May of this year Turkey reached an agreement with Russia to construct its first nuclear power plant in Mersin’s Akkuyu district. According to the agreement, the Russian state-led company Atomstroyexport JSC will construct the Akkuyu nuclear plant and have a controlling stake in the project. The project is estimated to cost about $20 billion and was approved by Parliament in mid-July.
ISTANBUL – Anatolia News Agency
‘I believe our cooperation with the Russian Federation on this nuclear power plant project will boost mutual trade,’ Turkey’s Energy Minister Taner Yıldız says. AA photo
Turkish officials will meet their Russian counterparts later this month to push the button on the actual launch of a nuclear power plant project, Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yıldız told reporters Friday.
Yıldız is set to meet Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin on Dec. 13 or 14 to discuss details of works required to set up a project company.
In May, Turkey and Russia signed a deal detailing the construction of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant on the southern coast.
“The nuclear power plant project is moving toward becoming an actual process. Once the project company is established we will be engaged in licensing the land in Akkuyu, delivery of the construction site and developing solutions to possible problems on the site,” Yıldız told reporters at an energy conference in Istanbul.
“I believe our cooperation with the Russian Federation on this nuclear power plant project will boost mutual trade,” he said.
Turkey is also set to initiate talks with Japan regarding the construction of a possible second nuclear power plant on the northern coast of the country, after talks with South Korea failed.
Turkish officials are preparing to meet Japanese officials next week to discuss the project, Yıldız said. “I think energy talks with Japan would bring an expansion in relations, especially in transportation and cultural cooperation.”
WASHINGTON — The leaders of Russia and Turkey blasted the Obama administration Wednesday over leaked U.S. diplomatic cables, the most concrete signs yet that the disclosures are rattling America’s strategic relationships.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin condemned comments attributed in cables to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, saying the defense secretary was “deeply misled,” while Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said an U.S. apology for cables alleging financial improprieties was insufficient.
“The United States is responsible for those diplomats’ false claims and their smears,” Erdogan said.
The comments showed how the controversy is increasingly touching sensitive domestic politics in foreign countries and entangling individual U.S. officials. While top U.S. officials continue to play down the cables’ effect on foreign policy, other voices suggest that the damage may be widespread, as the more than 250,000 other communiques are gradually released.
“I’ll be very surprised if some people don’t lose their lives,” former President Bill Clinton said in an appearance in North Carolina. “And goodness knows how many will lose their careers.”
The angry reactions came from key governments that previously had sought to play down the significance of the cables released on Sunday by the WikiLeaks website.
WikiLeaks itself was on the defensive on several fronts Wednesday, scrambling to remain on the Internet and post more documents while its fugitive founder, Julian Assange, was targeted by a European arrest warrant on Swedish rape charges.
Amazon.com prevented WikiLeaks from using the U.S. company’s servers, WikiLeaks said Wednesday.
Covering the politics of the Lowcountry, South Carolina and the nation.
The WikiLeaks site was unavailable for several hours before it moved back to servers owned by its previous Swedish host, Bahnhof.
At the same time, Swedish officials intensified legal pressure on Assange by asking European police to arrest him on rape allegations that have shadowed him for weeks.
Swedish Director of Public Prosecution Marianne Ny said that the European arrest warrant had been issued for Assange in connection with the allegations filed against him in that country.
The White House said Wednesday it was taking new steps to protect government secrets after WikiLeaks released thousands of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
via Russia, Turkey express anger | The Post and Courier, Charleston SC – News, Sports, Entertainment.
