Turkey, Armenia agree to establish diplomatic ties

Turkey and Armenia agreed Monday to establish diplomat relations, overcoming a seemingly intractable rift that dates to the early 20th century and was marked by massacres of Armenians under Ottoman rule.

The neighboring countries, which agreed to restart negotiations after mediation from Switzerland, would be setting up and developing relations for the first time, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin said. He said the upcoming talks should last about six weeks, he said. The issue is a major stumbling block to Turkey's aspirations to join the European Union and has strained ties with the United States, with both pressuring Turkey to recognize the killings as genocide.

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A Wet Kiss for Kaddafi

The move to normalize relations between the U.S. and Libya accelerates next month when Muammar Kaddafi makes his first-ever trip to America to address the U.N. The arrival of Kaddafi is already creating problems for New York security officials: he travels with a massive, heated Bedouin tent. Libyan officials recently asked permission for Kaddafi to pitch it in Central Park. "The location for the tent is still an open question," says a senior State Department official who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters. (One alternative: coax Kaddafi, and his retinue of female bodyguards, to pitch the tent on Libyan-owned property in New Jersey.)

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Newsweek article

Obama lifts some sanctions on Syria

Damascus welcomes a Washington measure to ease economic sanctions on Syria pertaining to civilian aviation, the Syrian envoy to Washington said.

Imad Mustafa, the Syrian ambassador to Washington, said the embassy was informed that Washington had lifted economic sanctions related to civilian aviation and the export of communications equipment to Syria, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reports.

The U.S. Congress passed the Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 to punish Damascus for its support of terrorism, occupation of Lebanon and for the pursuit of a controversial weapons program.

Mustafa said U.S. President Barack Obama had suspended several of the sanctions measures, noting more restrictions could be lifted in the future. "We are focusing with President Obama's administration on using the U.S. president's executive authority to suspend the execution of the important articles in the sanctions law," he said.

Mustafa said the effort was part of a growing sign that Damascus was a vital player in the region. Obama has moved to restore U.S. relations in the Middle East as part of a broader policy move toward detente while Damascus pushes its own anti-isolationist efforts.

George Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy to the region, was in Damascus during the weekend as part of a move by Washington to kick-start the Middle East peace process and improve bilateral ties with Syria.

theWashingtonPost

Libya pulls assets from Swiss banks

Libya has withdrawn most of its assets from Swiss bank accounts in a continuing diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
The north African country last year pulled out SFr5.6 billion ($5.2 billion) of its SFr5.75 billion deposited in Swiss banks, according to statistics by the Swiss National Bank. The Swiss foreign ministry said it had no detailed figures on Libyan assets in Switzerland, but a withdrawal had little economic impact. In 2007 Libyan assets made up 0.3 per cent of all foreign assets in Swiss banks.

Relations between the two countries have been strained since one of the sons of the Libyan leader, Moammar Gaddafi, was arrested in Geneva last July, charged with assaulting two domestic employees. Charges against Hannibal Gaddafi and his wife were later dropped, but Libya has been restricting Swiss business activities in the country.

Two Swiss businessmen have also been detained in Libya. They are not allowed to leave the country. In addition, a court case is pending in Geneva. Libya is blocking the arrival of a new chargé d'affaire in Tripoli to replace the Swiss ambassador who retired earlier this year. Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz is seeking a meeting with the Libyan leader in an effort to solve the standoff.

swissinfo.ch

Syria Recognizes Lebanon's Sovereignty After 60 Years

Syria and Lebanon established diplomatic relations on Oct. 15, some 60 years after gaining independence from France in the mid-1940s.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh, who signed the declaration jointly with Syrian Foreign Minister Waleed al-Muallem, said Lebanese-Syrian relations were friendlier than ever.

Syrian politicians, along with a majority of their Lebanese counterparts, say the exchange of embassies is only a formality between the two brotherly states. This may be so, but the fact remains that Syria has never considered Lebanon a sovereign state. On the other hand, it saw Lebanon as an inalienable part of "Greater Syria," which once included the territory of modern Lebanon.

It is true that Syria has played a positive role in Lebanon's recent history, in particular during the 1975-1990 civil war. It deployed 35,000 soldiers to Lebanon to disengage the warring sides and prevent the country's disintegration. However, the Syrians did not leave after the civil war ended, but remained in Lebanon "to keep the peace" until 2005.

This is why some Lebanese see their "Syrian brothers" as liberators, while others curse them as occupiers. Moreover, the ruling Lebanese clans have changed their attitude toward Syria more than once, at times seeing them as friends, and other times as enemies.

Bilateral relations were most recently shattered after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. The West immediately blamed the murder on Syria's military intelligence chief, Assef Shawkat, and declared a boycott of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria's isolation lasted until French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared, at the Mediterranean Union Summit held in Paris last July and attended by the Syrian president, that Syria and Lebanon should establish diplomatic relations.

However, the two countries reconciled only when Lebanon elected a new president, Michel Suleiman, a figure of compromise between the pro-Western majority in parliament – the Mustaqbal movement led by Saad Hariri, the son of the assassinated Rafik Hariri – and the opposition Hezbollah movement, backed by Syrian and Iranian Shiites.

This compromise has cost the pro-Western forces in Lebanon dearly, given that, at a meeting in Doha last May, they gave the opposition the right to veto bills. At the same time, a national unity government of 30 ministers was formed, in which 16 represent the ruling coalition, 11 the opposition, and three are appointed by the president.

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Neighbours to build diplomatic ties

Lebanon's foreign minister said he expects diplomatic ties with Syria to be fully established and ambassadors to be exchanged within two months. Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said the Cabinet will give its approval on the diplomatic ties on Thursday. Later, it will issue a separate decree for an embassy in Syria, he said. Mr Salloukh spoke two days after the presidents of Lebanon and Syria agreed to establish full diplomatic ties for the first time since the two countries gained independence from France more than 60 years ago.

The two countries also agreed to negotiate the demarcation of their border, a long standing demand of the Lebanese as they seek to normalise relations with their dominant larger neighbour.

The agreements on diplomatic ties and the border were announced during a landmark visit by President Michel Suleiman to Damascus for talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad. It was the first visit by a Lebanese head of state in three years.

Will this new union be anything more than a giant photo opportunity?

Some signs are promising. Far from the cameras, there was real diplomacy, promising real results. Even if the timing and details are vague, Assad and his Lebanese counterpart, Michel Suleiman, agreed to open diplomatic offices in the two countries for the first time. And even if Assad refused to shake Olmert's hand and left the room when the Israeli spoke Sunday, the two men communicated indirectly through Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who became a messenger in the ornate hallways of the Hôtel de Crillon.

In an attempt to keep the momentum going, the next meeting - of the 43 foreign ministers - is already scheduled for November. "This was not a one-off," said Eric Chevallier, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry. "This was an important moment and it will be followed by many others. We are determined to keep it going."

Not everyone is so optimistic. Squabbling over whether or not to call Israel a "nation-state" almost deadlocked the union's founding declaration Sunday. In the end, diplomats skirted the issue by referring to two conferences last November, one in Annapolis, Maryland, and one in Lisbon, one of which did and one did not make a reference to the term nation-state. Since no one could agree, sensitive decisions on where the union secretariat will be based and which country will provide the first secretary were postponed until the November meeting.

And even some of the successes, said Dominique Moïsi of the French Institute of International Relations, have more to do with short-term interests than long-term vision. Olmert's political future is in doubt because of corruption allegations at home, reducing his credibility to deliver on long-term promises. Assad, who has been itching to get out of political isolation, wants to return to the center of the Middle East peace process. And Sarkozy, deeply unpopular in France, is in need of a triumph. "The meeting was triumphant, but I am very skeptical about the long-term ramifications," Moïsi said.

IHT