Hillary Clinton offers handshake of friendship to Syria

It was a brief but significant gesture: in the hubbub of the Gaza donor’s conference in Egypt, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, shook hands and exchanged a few words yesterday with Walid Mouallem, her Syrian counterpart.

In the Middle East, where even the slightest gesture is closely scrutinised, the brief encounter was seen as a sign that Washington was prepared to mend fences with Syria, whose leader, Bashar Assad, was treated as a pariah by the Bush Administration.

Mr Mouallem said afterwards that the meeting “was short but very pleasant”, and that he was “happy it happened”. With the strict protocols at summits, such encounters rarely happen by chance; they are more frequently designed to send subtle but powerful messages. The Syrian Foreign Minister was standing at the door to the banquet room as delegates filed in for lunch at the conference to pledge more than $5 billion (£3.6 billion) for the reconstruction of Gaza. Mrs Clinton, on her first official trip to the region, had just promised to breathe new life into the peace process. She stopped in front of Mr Mouallem, shook his hand and exchanged a few words with him.

The meeting was all the more significant as Mrs Clinton had just told Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister, that she doubted that Iran – Syria’s main ally in the region – would respond to President Obama’s offer to engage with it after years of enmity. “We’re under no illusions,” Mrs Clinton said, according to an aide. “Our eyes are wide open on Iran.”

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the weekend that Iran had enough uranium to complete its nuclear weapons programme – an ambition Tehran has always denied. “We think they do, quite frankly,” the admiral said. “And Iran having nuclear weapons, I’ve believed for a long time, is a very, very bad outcome – for the region and for the world.”

If Iran does not respond to US overtures, the new Administration may try to lure Syria away from its partner, opening the door to a return to the diplomatic fold at a time when Syria’s economy is suffering from years of isolation.

Times Online

Russia, Libya boost energy ties

Signalling a revival of Soviet-era strategic ties between Russia and Libya, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi said in Moscow on November 1 his country will enhance cooperation in the oil and gas sector with Russia, the word’s leading energy exporter. “We consider cooperation with Russia in the oil and gas sector as very timely at this moment ... Moreover, we have common approaches to the oil and gas policy,” Gaddafi said during talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Gaddafi visited Moscow just two months after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was his guest in Libya. During the Moscow visit, Gaddafi pitched a Bedouin tent in a Kremlin garden and invited Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for tea. Qadhafi’s Moscow visit came six months after then President Putin opened a new chapter in relations between Russia and Libya by becoming the first Kremlin leader to visit Tripoli. Russia’s energy giants, such as Gazprom, Tatneft, Tatneftegeofizika, LUKoil and Stroitransgaz are operating in Libya’s oil and gas sector. Their projects range from geological surveys, offshore exploration and development to oil refining and pipeline construction. In July, Gazprom offered to buy all of Libya’s natural gas production.

“We think alike about gas and oil policies,” Interfax quoted Gaddafi as saying. Gazprom head Alexei Miller and Libya’s National Oil Corporation chief Shukri Mohamed Ganem reached agreement to hold trilateral talks with Italy’s ENI later this month on joint projects, including a new major gas pipeline running under the Mediterranean from Libya to Europe. For now, Libya and Algeria compete with Russia to supply gas to southern Europe. Libya already supplies gas to Italy directly or through Tunisia. Meanwhile, Algeria’s Energy Ministry on November 3 confirmed that work on the undersea Medgaz pipeline between Spain and Algeria was already edging closer to completion.

The Russian authorities are also negotiating to provide Libya with a civilian nuclear research reactor and signed a framework agreement on nuclear cooperation. The civil nuclear pact signed by the nuclear energy chiefs of Russia and Libya provides for the construction of reactors in Libya and cooperation in medicine and nuclear waste disposal, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelrahman Chalgham, who accompanied Qadhafi to Moscow, was quoted by the press as saying.

http://www.neurope.eu/articles/90512.php

Turkey to ease dependence on gas

Turkey opened a bid Monday for the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant, part of a plan to reduce the country's dependence on gas supplies from Iran and Russia. Turkey's electricity agency said in a written announcement that bids will be accepted until Sept. 24 for the planned plant in the Mediterranean port city of Mersin. The government assured potential investors that it would buy all the electricity produced by the plant for its first 15 years.

The plant is the first of three that the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to build by 2015 to meet the country's growing energy needs. Turkey has limited energy resources, relying on natural gas supplies from neighbors Iran and Russia.

Energy Minister Hilmi Guler has said that nuclear power is one of the best options Turkey has for increasing its energy security, and that nuclear power should supply 20 percent of the nation's needs within two decades.

Environmentalists have criticized the plan, raising security concerns and warning that the site is in an earthquake-prone area. Guler has said concerns over both issues would be taken into consideration in the plant's construction.

The Associated Press

Egypt-Russia trade grows 50% in 2007 to $2.1 bln

Egyptian-Russian trade grew 50% year on year in 2007 to $2.1 billion, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Sunday. The Egyptian president made this statement on the eve of his visit to Russia, which will take place on March 24-25.

"Visits at the highest level gave a strong impetus to bilateral cooperation," Mubarak said in an interview with RIA Novosti. According to the Egyptian president, 1.5 million Russians visited Egypt last year, allowing Russia to take the first place in terms of the number of tourists visiting the North African country.

"There are big opportunities for expanding cooperation in the sphere of trade, investment, energy and tourism between our countries," Mubarak said. During his visit to Russia, the Egyptian president is expected to sign a framework agreement on bilateral cooperation in the civilian nuclear energy sector. According to Egyptian officials, the U.S. is pressurizing Egypt to place its nuclear program under U.S. control to protect the security of Israel.

Ria Novosti

Egypt, too choses nuclear

Egypt's president announced plans Monday to build several nuclear power plants — the latest in a string of ambitious such proposals from moderate Arab countries. The United States immediately welcomed the plan, in a sharp contrast to what it called nuclear "cheating" by Iran.

President Hosni Mubarak said the aim was to diversify Egypt's energy resources and preserve its oil and gas reserves for future generations. In a televised speech, he pledged Egypt would work with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency at all times and would not seek a nuclear bomb. But Mubarak also made clear there were strategic reasons for the program, calling secure sources of energy "an integral part of Egypt's national security system."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. would not object to the program as long as Egypt adhered to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and International Atomic Energy Agency guidelines.

Jordan, Turkey and several Gulf Arab countries have announced in recent months that they are interested in developing nuclear power programs, and Yemen's government signed a deal with a U.S. company in September to build civilian nuclear plants over the next 10 years.

Algeria also signed a cooperation accord with the United States on civil nuclear energy in June, and Morocco announced a deal last week under which France will help develop nuclear reactors there.

AP

N Korean ship 'linked to Israel's strike on Syria'

A suspicious North Korean freighter that re-flagged itself as South Korean before off-loading an unknown cargo at the Syrian port of Tartous is at the centre of efforts today to investigate Israel's recent airstrike on Syria.

An Israeli on-line data analyst, Ronen Solomon, found an internet trace for the 1,700-tonne cargo ship, Al Hamed, which showed the vessel started to off-load what Syrian officials categorised as "cement" on Sept 3. This was three days before Israeli jets attacked a site in the north eastern desert of Syria, not far from its border with Iraq.

Since leaving Tartous, one of Syria's main ports on the Mediterranean, the ship's trace has disappeared and it is not known whether western intelligence agencies are tracking the vessel. "I became suspicious after the first reports from Syria about the attack so I traced all traffic into Syrian ports in the days prior to the incident," Mr Solomon said.

"There were five ships but the interesting one was the one with a connection to North Korea - the Al Hamed." He said he cross-referred to other maritime databases to establish the ship was not a regular visitor to the Mediterranean but had come through the Suez Canal in late June. It had registered itself for the Suez transit as a South Korean vessel but Mr Solomon said this was standard procedure for North Korean ships seeking to avoid international constraints on North Korea.

Records showed the vessel docked at Tartous on July 28 before going back to sea and then returning to the port on Sept 3. "Since then there is no trace so I have no idea if she has gone up into the Black Sea or is still in the Mediterranean or whatever," Mr Solomon said.

Last week, US officials suggested that North Korea had sought to export some of its nuclear technology and equipment to Syria but the Israelis had been tipped off, so they arranged a pre-emptive strike on a sensitive shipment.

Mr Solomon said the Al Hamed was owned by a North Korean business until a few months ago when ownership changed hands to an as yet unidentified new owner.