Category: Eastern Europe

US urges EU to diversify energy supplies

BRUSSELS, Belgium: Russia’s fight with Georgia has added new urgency to the Europe Union’s need to find alternatives to Russian oil and gas imports, the new U.S. ambassador to the EU said Monday.

“Russia’s willingness to defy the international community, act in violation of international law, (and) be threatening in its neighborhood is a reminder of why progress on this issue is so important,” ambassador Kristen Silverberg said.

At an emergency summit on the Georgia conflict early this month, EU leaders called for a study into how the 27-nation body can find alternative energy sources to diminish growing dependence on Russia, which currently supplies a third of EU oil imports and more than 40 percent of the natural gas European Union countries buy from abroad.

Silverberg told reporters the EU should work with Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia and other nations to diversify sources of energy and supply routes for oil and gas from the Caspian and Central Asian regions.

“We hope that Europe will engage with active outreach with some of the supplier countries, the Azeris for example,” she said. “We have always thought that it was in Europe’s interest to diversify its supply routes generally.”

In particular, the EU should work closely with Turkey to develop pipelines and other infrastructure to ensure oil and gas can flow westward through routes not controlled by Moscow, she told reporters Monday.

“We hope that Europe will work closely with Turkey to help make sure that Turkey is a viable and active transit route for Caspian gas,” Silverberg added.

“That involves negotiating with Turkey over reasonable terms for a transit agreement. It means working with Turkey on helping to improve its infrastructure so helping to make sure its an efficient transit route.”

One project under consideration is the so-called Nabucco pipeline, which would deliver gas from Turkmenistan and other Central Asian and Caspian countries westward through Turkey while bypassing Russia.

The project, however, has been slowed by high costs and uncertainty over sources of supply, and Russia is promoting rival routes through its territory as a cheaper and safer alternative.

International Herald Tribune 22 September 2008

September 22, 2008
The KHAZARS/ Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital

Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital

By MANSUR MIROVALEV, Associated Press Writer Sat Sep 20, 2:13 PM ET

MOSCOW – A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.

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Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.

By law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said. The general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmed in medieval chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.

“The discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe’s first feudal state is of great significance,” he told The Associated Press. “We should view it as part of Russian history.”

Kevin Brook, the American author of “The Jews of Khazaria,” e-mailed Wednesday that he has followed the Itil dig over the years, and even though it has yielded no Jewish artifacts, “Now I’m as confident as the archaeological team is that they’ve truly found the long-lost city,

The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea.

Itil, about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied 0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Vasilyev said.

It lay at a major junction of the Silk Road, the trade route between Europe and China, which “helped Khazars amass giant profits,” he said.

The Khazar empire was once a regional superpower, and Vasilyev said his team has found “luxurious collections” of well-preserved ceramics that help identify cultural ties of the Khazar state with Europe, the Byzantine Empire and even Northern Africa. They also found armor, wooden kitchenware, glass lamps and cups, jewelry and vessels for transporting precious balms dating back to the eighth and ninth centuries, he said.

But a scholar in Israel, while calling the excavations interesting, said the challenge was to find Khazar inscriptions.

“If they found a few buildings, or remains of buildings, that’s interesting but does not make a big difference,” said Dr. Simon Kraiz, an expert on Eastern European Jewry at Haifa University. “If they found Khazar writings, that would be very important.”

Vasilyev says no Jewish artifacts have been found at the site, and in general, most of what is known about the Khazars comes from chroniclers from other, sometimes competing cultures and empires.

“We know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jews wrote about them, and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, to name a few,” said Kraiz. “But from the Khazars themselves we have nearly nothing.”

The Khazars’ ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited number of Jewish religious artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David found at other Khazar sites prove that ordinary Khazars preferred traditional beliefs such as shamanism, or newly introduced religions including Islam.

Yevgeny Satanovsky, director of the Middle Eastern Institute in Moscow, said he believes the Khazar elite chose Judaism out of political expediency — to remain independent of neighboring Muslim and Christian states. “They embraced Judaism because they wanted to remain neutral, like Switzerland these days,” he said.

In particular, he said, the Khazars opposed the Arab advance into the Caucasus Mountains and were instrumental in containing a Muslim push toward eastern Europe. He compared their role in eastern Europe to that of the French knights who defeated Arab forces at the Battle of Tours in France in 732.

The Khazars succeeded in holding off the Arabs, but a young, expanding Russian state vanquished the Khazar empire in the late 10th century. Medieval Russian epic poems mention Russian warriors fighting the “Jewish Giant.”

“In many ways, Russia is a successor of the Khazar state,” Vasilyev said.

He said his dig revealed traces of a large fire that was probably caused by the Russian conquest. He said Itil was rebuilt following the fall of the Khazar empire, when ethnic Khazars were slowly assimilated by Turkic-speaking tribes, Tatars and Mongols, who inhabited the city until it was flooded by the rising Caspian Sea around the 14th century.

The study of the Khazar empire was discouraged in the Soviet Union. The dictator Josef Stalin, in particular, detested the idea that a Jewish empire had come before Russia’s own. He ordered references to Khazar history removed from textbooks because they “disproved his theory of Russian statehood,” Satanovsky said.

Only now are Russian scholars free to explore Khazar culture. The Itil excavations have been sponsored by the Russian-Jewish Congress, a nonprofit organization that supports cultural projects in Russia.

“Khazar studies are just beginning,” Satanovsky said.

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September 22, 2008
No Caucasian Ceasefire until Russia Achieves its Aims

DEBKAfile Special Report and Analysis

August 11, 2008

Prime minister Vladimir Putin toys defiant Georgia

By Monday, Aug. 11, the fourth day of the Caucasian conflict, which first erupted over the breakaway province of South Ossetia, the pro-American Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili sounded hopeless in the face of overwhelming Russian might.

International condemnation of Russian behavior as “unacceptable and disproportionate” did not ease his country’s plight or stop the continuing violence.

Saakashvili’s third commitment to a ceasefire, signed in the presence of the French and Finnish foreign ministers, was brusquely rejected by the Kremlin before the would-be mediators had a chance to present it later that day. The Russian NATO ambassador said his government would not deal with the “war criminal” Georgian president, confirming Saakashvili’s charge that one of Moscow’s objects was to oust him as president.

DEBKAfile’s military analysts reported Sunday, Aug. 10:

Russian president Dimitry Medvedev said Sunday, Aug. 10, the war would go on until Tbilisi withdrew its forces unconditionally from South Ossetia and pledged never to attack the region again. This would mean Georgia’s acceptance of its truncation and its surrender to Russian hegemony.

The gap between the claims of both sides attested to the war of words accompanying the battles on the ground. While the Georgians claimed to have killed “several hundred” Russian troops and downed “80 planes,” Moscow admitted to the loss of 18 soldiers and four warplanes.

Civilians, especially in South Ossetia and at least three Georgian towns pummeled by Russian jets, are bearing the brunt of this conflict. Saturday and Sunday, they pounded Gori, the Black Sea naval, military and oil port of Poti, and Zugdidi on the Abkhazian border.

The Red Cross reports that the conflict has displaced at least 40,000 people from their homes. The South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, now a ghost town, is controlled by Russian forces.

That the Georgian town of Gori was pounded from the air for three days is attested to by witnesses. The numbers of the city’s dead and displaced certainly run into hundreds.

DEBKAfile reports that the Russians pulverized Gori to punish Georgia for invading the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali last Thursday, Aug. 7.

Sunday night, Russian planes dropped bombs near Tbilisi’s international airport and a nearby military air installation shortly after the US began flying hundreds of Georgian troops home from Iraq. The intention appeared to be to leave the Georgian reinforcements nowhere to land.

During the day, too, the Russian navy imposed a sea blockade on Georgian’s Black Sea ports and later claimed to have sunk a Georgian vessel during an attack.

In the face of President George W. Bush’s demand for an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops and support for international mediation, Moscow poured an additional 10,000 men and armor into South Ossetia Sunday as well.

DEBKAfile’s military analysts: By flouting US demands to accept mediation, Moscow highlighted America’s lack of leverage for helping its embattled Georgian ally.

The Bush administration finds itself trapped in its foreign policy commitment to dialogue and international diplomacy for solving world disputes, but short of willing opposite numbers.

Russia is following Iran’s example in exploiting Washington’s inhibition to advance its goals by force. Therefore, the Caucasian standoff has profound ramifications for the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Moscow’s disdain for Washington’s lack of muscle will further encourage Tehran and its terrorist proxies to defy the international community and the United States in particular.

DEBKAfile’s military analysts reported Saturday, Aug. 9:

Tiny Georgia with an army of less than 18,000, having been roundly defeated in South Ossetia, cannot hope to withstand the mighty Russian army in Abkhazia.

Therefore, President Saakashvili, whose bid to join NATO and the European Union infuriated Moscow, will have to write off both breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as lost to Russia.

This is Moscow’s payback for the US-NATO action to detach Kosovo from Serbia and launch it on the way to independence. It is also a warning to former Soviet bloc nations, Ukraine, the Caucasian and Central Asian peoples against opting to join up with the United States and the NATO bloc in areas which Moscow deems part of its strategic sphere of influence

After severing South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, four follow-up Russian steps may be postulated:

1. The two separatist provinces will proclaim their independence, just like Kosovo.

2. Russia will continue to exercise its overwhelming military and air might to reduce the pro-American Saakashvili to capitulation.

3. The Georgian president will not be able to face his own nation after losing two regions of his country and causing its humiliation. Moscow will then make Washington swallow a pro-Russian successor.

4. Moscow’s trampling of Georgia will serve as an object lesson for Russia’s own secessionist provinces, such as Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, and a warning not to risk defying Russian armed might.

4. Western plans to develop more oil and gas pipelines to bypass the Russian network to the West, in addition to the Caspian line which carries one million barrels a day from Baku through Georgia to Turkey and out to the West, will be held in abeyance pending an accommodation with the rulers of the Kremlin.

September 21, 2008
Russia, China, Germany reject US evidence of Iran’s covert nuke program

DEBKAfile Special Analysis

September 20, 2008, 1:30 PM (GMT+02:00)

Euphrates pipes for destroyed Syrian reactor designed to be part of Iran’s military program

Russia, China and Germany refuse to countenance tougher sanctions against Iran notwithstanding the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report from Vienna that its inspections of suspect activities and covert projects were stalled by Tehran’s non-cooperation. Diplomats for the five permanent Security Council members and Germany, meeting at the State Department Friday, Sept 19, therefore failed to agree on a new round of sanctions ahead of their foreign ministers’ meeting at UN Center next week.

The meeting avoided discussing the timing and content of a fourth round of sanctions, only broadly calling on Iran – for the umpteenth time after numerous rejections – to accept the incentives on offer for halting uranium enrichment and cooperating with UN inspections.

The nuclear watchdog reported that Tehran had stalled its efforts to establish whether or not Iran was developing nuclear warheads, enriching uranium for military purposes, testing nuclear explosives or building nuclear-capable missiles.

Tuesday, Sept 16, the UN watchdog gave a closed meeting of the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency photos and documents proving Iran had tried to refit a long-distance Shehab missile to carry a nuclear payload. The also produced calculations and diagrams from Iranian missile and nuclear experts’ computers on nuclear detonations and how to build nuclear-capable missiles.

The next day, Wednesday, CIA chief Michael Hayden disclosed that the destruction of the Syrian reactor – as a result of intelligence collaboration with a “foreign partner” who first identified the facility’s purpose – spoiled a project “that could have provided Syria with plutonium for nuclear weapons.”

He did not name the foreign partner, but the reference to Israel was obvious. He also said the reactor was similar to the North Korean model.

“We were able last year to spoil a big secret, a project that could have provided Syria with plutonium for nuclear weapons,” Hayden said, adding: “When pipes for a massive cooling system were laid out to the Euphrates River in the spring of 2007, there would have been little doubt this was a nuclear reactor.”

The Bush administration released all this data in order to back up the IAEA report and tell the international community that the US and Israel were furnished with more intelligence confirming Iran’s covert nuclear projects and the clandestine partnershipn between Tehran, Damascus and Pyongyang. North Korea was also made aware that Washington had not missed its preparations for re-activating its nuclear reactor.

Nuclear watchdog officials asked Tehran to explain why its experts were busy making calculations for military projects, claimed to be non-existent. No answer has been forthcoming as yet. The Iranian representative only said the materials had been forged by certain parties as a provocation.

Nonetheless, Russian, Chinese and German diplomats attending the IAEA board meeting last Tuesday insisted that the evidence they saw did not prove Iran was engaged in developing nuclear weapons.

Despite the fact that leading world powers have tied themselves in knots to avoid keeping nuclear weapons out of Iran’s hands, Israel’s prime minister Shimon Peres plans to deliver a speech at the UN General Assembly next week announcing that Israel is against resorting to military action against Iran and relies on sanctions.

DEBKAfile’s political circles stress that the Israeli government has never confirmed the position embodied in his address.

Ahead of his address to the General Assembly, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, grandstanding as always, challenged the American presidential candidates to a public debate “over global issues, in the presence of the media at the UN. He also said that while “some say the idea of Greater Israel has expired, I say the idea of lesser Israel has expired, too.”

September 21, 2008
10 Russian warships deployed in Syria

Ten Russian warships have been deployed at the Syrian port of Tartus based on an accord reached by the two sides after the August south Caucases conflict.

Rear Admiral Andrei Baranov, head of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s operations directorate, said Friday the Russian engineering crew was at Tartus to expand the capacity of the harbor to host additional fleet vessels.

The teams will also be working on expanding Latakia, another Syrian port, possibly for aircraft carriers or guided missile cruisers, said Baranov.

On Sept. 12, nearly one month after the south Caucases conflict broke out, Russia and Syria reached an agreement that would provide Moscow with a long-term base rights at Syrian ports.

Military sources reported that Israeli military leaders were stunned at the news of the Russian fleet being deployed near Israeli shores.

Source: www.daily.pk, 20 September 2008

September 21, 2008
Russians moving into Syria

Strategic alliance include fleet, missiles

Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND.

The coast of Syria, where Tartus is located

Just as Russia has reasserted its power in the Black Sea, it now plans to make waves in the Mediterranean Sea by establishing a major base in Syria, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

This decision not only will allow a permanent presence of Russia’s nuclear-armed Black Sea fleet in the Mediterranean, but it also offers the potential for future confrontations between Russia and Israel, as well as with the United States.

The Russian navy has begun to upgrade facilities in Tartus, Syria, and already has backed this up by moving to Syria a flotilla of its powerful warships led by the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov. The flotilla includes the Russian navy’s biggest missile cruiser Moskva and some four nuclear missile submarines.

From 1971 to 1992, the former Soviet Union operated a naval maintenance facility at Tartus. It then fell into disrepair. Only one of its three floating piers remained operational.

But the facilities now are being restored.

“It is much more advantageous to have such a facility than to return ships that patrol the Mediterranean to their home bases,” said former Black Sea Fleet commander Admiral Eduard Baltin.

The establishment of the permanent base also is viewed as Moscow’s response to the upcoming installation of U.S. missile interceptors along Poland’s Baltic coast at Redzikowo. Such an agreement was signed last month between the U.S. and Poland.

Syria, meantime, also is considering a request from Moscow to base missiles in the country due to tensions between Russia and the West over its invasion of Georgia in the Caucasus.

Russia would send in the surface-to-surface Iskander missile which Moscow says is capable of penetrating any missile defense system.

With a NATO code name of the SS-26 Stone, the Iskander is a road-mobile system. It has a range of 300 kilometers, or 186 miles, giving Damascus the capability of striking Tel Aviv in Israel.

Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin is the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

Source: www.worldnetdaily.com, September 19, 2008

September 21, 2008