The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: the hague
Obama: Lessons Of World War I ‘Speak To Us Still’

Obama: Lessons Of World War I ‘Speak To Us Still’

By Kathleen Hennessey, Tribune Washington Bureau

BRUSSELS — President Barack Obama laid a wreath at the World War I memorial at Flanders Field on Wednesday, noting the war that tore apart Europe still echoes in conflicts 100 years later.

“The lessons of that war speak to us still,” Obama said in his first stop since arriving in Belgium late Tuesday.

The president is in Brussels for a summit with European Union leaders. He’s also slated to meet with NATO’s secretary-general and deliver a speech at the Palais des Beaux-Arts.

The itinerary, like much of Obama’s European trip this week, is expected to be dominated by talk of a new threat on Europe’s doorstep. Obama and European leaders are to discuss Russia’s armed seizure of the Crimean peninsula and how the West can prevent Moscow from moving further into Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Obama repeated threats of more painful economic sanctions if Russian President Vladimir Putin sends troops into other regions of the former Soviet state. But the president also acknowledged that, for now, Crimea is likely to remain in Russian control. “There’s no expectation that they will be dislodged by force,” he said in a news conference in The Hague.

Still, Russia’s neighbors are looking for assurance that NATO will make good on its obligations to defend them. Other European nations are worried about the effect that broader sanctions would have on their own fragile economies. Obama’s remarks later Wednesday are expected to address such concerns, while avoiding the divisive and dated rhetoric of the Cold War era, officials have said.

The president’s visit comes 100 years after the outbreak of World War I, an anniversary being widely marked in Europe. Nearly 400 of the more than 1,000 Americans killed in Belgium in World War I are honored at the grassy, six-acre battlefield at Flanders.

In a morning ceremony at the cemetery west of Brussels, Obama, Belgian King Philippe and Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo placed wreaths at a monument erected to the missing dead. In remarks afterward, all three leaders made reference to lessons of the war that apply today.

“Our countries have learned the hard way that national sovereignty quickly reaches its limits when met with heavily armed adversaries,” said the king, who noted that his great-grandfather, King Albert, fought in the war.

Di Rupo warned that “those who ignore the past are taking the risk to relive it.”

Noting that chemical weapons were used to “devastating effect” on Flanders Field, Obama said that today, in Syria and elsewhere, the world still struggles to eradicate their use.

“We thought we had banished their use to history, and our efforts send a powerful message that these weapons have no place in a civilized world. This is one of the ways that we can honor those who fell here,” Obama said. “This visit, this hallowed ground, reminds us that we must never, ever take our progress for granted.”

The president also read from the poem that famously memorialized the fighting at Flanders. Written by John McCrae, a Canadian army doctor, the verse called on history to carry the legacy of the war forward:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

AFP Photo/Robin van Lonkhuijsen

Obama Winds Up Nuclear Summit With 35-Nation Pledge

Obama Winds Up Nuclear Summit With 35-Nation Pledge

The Hague (AFP) – Thirty-five countries pledged Tuesday to step up nuclear security, backing a global drive spearheaded by U.S. President Barack Obama to prevent dangerous materials falling into the hands of terrorists.

Wrapping up the third biennial Nuclear Security Summit (NSS), which gathered together 53 countries, Obama urged world leaders to work closer together to stop nuclear terrorism that he dubbed “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security”.

“It is important for us not to relax but rather accelerate our efforts over the next two years, sustain momentum so that we finish strong in 2016,” said the U.S. leader, when he will host a return meeting.

“Given the catastrophic consequences of even a single attack, we cannot afford to be complacent,” he stressed.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, hosting the talks, said that “major steps” had been taken in terms of the three main goals of the summit: reducing the amount of dangerous nuclear material; improving the security around this material and bolstering international cooperation on the nuclear issue.

And in a joint statement unveiled with much fanfare on the sidelines of the NSS, 35 of the 53 countries pledged to work closer together and submit to “peer reviews periodically” of their sensitive nuclear security regimes.

The nations — including Israel, Kazakhstan, Morocco and Turkey but not Russia — vowed to “realize or exceed” the standards set out in a series of guidelines laid down by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to safeguard nuclear materials.

These are the “closest things we have to international standards for nuclear security,” U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told reporters as he presented the pledge.

But experts cautioned that the deal lacked teeth without the agreement of other powers with large nuclear stockpiles.

“The absence of Russia, Chain, Pakistan and India — all nuclear weapons states with large amounts of nuclear material — as well as others, weakens the initiative’s impact,” said the Fissile Materials Working Group, a collection of more than 70 experts on the nuclear issue.

Miles Pomper, an expert at the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said the statement was “the most important accomplishment of the summit.”

But he added: “We need to get the rest of the summit members to sign up to it, especially Russia, and we need to find a way to make this into permanent international law.”

According to the final statement, leaders will push to reduce stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, which can be used to make an atomic bomb, and convert it to safer lower enriched uranium.

Obama said leaders should consider transforming the current summit format to a more permanent body run by ministers and officials in order to “synch up the NSS with existing institutions like the IAEA, interpol.”

The summit was overshadowed by the crisis in Ukraine, with Obama gathering his G7 allies on Monday to effectively expel Russia from the top table by scrapping a G8 meeting planned in the Russian resort of Sochi in June.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that the West’s failure to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression should not be seen as an invitation to other states to acquire nuclear weapons.

Ukraine gave up its huge Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in exchange for guarantees from the West and Russia that its sovereignty would be safeguarded.

These assurances have been “seriously undermined,” said Ban. “This should not serve as an excuse to pursue nuclear weapons, which will only increase insecurity and isolation.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters that Russia’s actions were “definitely a very bad example internationally.”

But Obama said he was glad that Kiev had given up its nuclear weapons because otherwise “the difficult situation we are dealing with in Ukraine now would be even more dangerous.”

The first NSS was held in Washington in 2010, with a follow-up summit in Seoul before this year’s event in The Hague.

The United States will again host the final summit in 2016.

afp photo / Patrik Stollarz

Ukraine Leader, Opposition Sign Deal To End Crisis

Ukraine Leader, Opposition Sign Deal To End Crisis

Kiev (AFP) – Ukraine’s leader and opposition on Friday signed a deal to end the splintered country’s worst crisis since independence after three days of carnage left nearly 100 protesters dead and the heart of Kiev resembling a war zone.

President Viktor Yanukovych’s dramatic decision to hold early elections and form a new unity government was met with caution by the tens of thousands gathered on central Kiev’s main square for a protest that began exactly three months earlier.

The deal was signed in the presidential palace’s Blue Hall in the presence of EU envoys by Yanukovych and and three top opposition leaders who included the charismatic boxer turned lamaker Vitali Klitschko.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin’s representative pointedly missed the meeting and his name card was taken off the table at which the leaders gathered for the signature ceremony.

The peace pact met the demands the opposition had laid down at the start of the protests: the balance of political power would shift back to parliament — as it had been before Yanukovych assumed the presidency in 2010 and took the nation of 46 million on a course away from the West and toward Russia.

It would also create an opposition cabinet with the authority to reverse Yanukovych’s decision in November to ditch an historic deal that would have put Ukraine on the path to eventual membership of the EU, which many Ukrainians see as their protector from centuries of Russian domination.

But the opposition has radicalized since police used live ammunition to mow down dozens with snipers and Kalashnikov rifles.

The chant of “death to the criminal” — a reference to two later-pardoned convictions for petty crime Yanukovych received in the Soviet era — rose over Kiev’s iconic Independence Square overnight Thursday.

“I think that Yanukovych must leave now, and never come back,” said a middle-aged protester named Lyudmila.

“We do not need any elections. He should not be allowed to run.”

– Frantic negotiations –

Three EU foreign ministers and a Russian envoy flew in for emergency talks on Thursday amid growing anxiety about a crisis that has turned Ukraine into a prize fought for with Cold War-era gusto by Moscow and the West.

The foreign ministers of EU powers France and Germany — as well as Ukraine’s culturally-close ally Poland — then went into separate talks with the opposition leaders in order to convince them to back the pact.

Klitschko is the closest of the deeply fragmented protest movement has to a single leader who can articulate the demonstrators’ demands.

But limits to his sway over the most militant elements of the opposition that has roots in the nationalist west of Ukraine has been repeatedly exposed in the course of the crisis.

– EU sanctions –

The shocking scale of the bloodshed prompted EU officials to slap travel bans against Ukrainians responsible for ordering the use of force.

Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said an agreement was also reached at an emergency EU meeting in Brussels to impose asset freezes on those with “blood on their hands”.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday warned Yanukovych in a telephone conversation that Washington was ready to impose sanctions on officials guilty of ordering troops to fire on protesters.

Ukraine’s former master Russia blasted the sanctions as “bullying”.

Kiev authorities have put the death toll from the past few days at 77.

But opposition medics said more than 60 protesters were shot dead by police on Thursday alone — a toll that combined with the 28 victims on Tuesday put the final count at nearly 100 dead.

Life appeared to be returning to normal in much of Kiev as the city’s vital metro network resumed service after being shut down to keep protesters from reaching Independence Square on Tuesday night.

But many protesters told AFP that the deal represented too little and came much too late.

“These steps were what we needed but I think it is now too late after all the blood that has been spilt,” said 58-year-old Sergiy Yanchukov.

“It was a crime against humanity and Yanukovych should be sent to The Hague (home of the International Criminal Court).

AFP Photo/Louisa Gouliamaki

Serbia Arrests Last War Criminal

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — The last fugitive sought by the U.N. Balkan war crimes tribunal was arrested by Serbian authorities Wednesday, answering intense international demands for his capture and boosting the country’s hopes of becoming a candidate for European Union membership.

Former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic was taken into custody as he met a man delivering him money in a forest in a mountainous region of northern Serbia where many of his relatives live, authorities said. He had dramatically changed his appearance and was armed but did not resist, they said.

Hours later, Hadzic was brought in for questioning at the war crimes court in the capital Belgrade, a key step toward his extradition to the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. His lawyer said Hadzic will not appeal the process, paving the way for a quick extradition, possibly within the next few days.

State TV footage showed Hadzic entering the courtroom escorted by guards. He walked slowly, slightly hunched, wearing a gray shirt, short hair and a mustache. His black beard had been shaved.

An unknown figure before the 1991-1995 ethnic war for control of Croatia, Hadzic suddenly rose to prominence through his links to Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s secret police. Put in charge of the self-styled Serb ministate in eastern Croatia, he was seen as a pawn of criminal gangs that collaborated heavily with the secret police and made huge profits from smuggled cars, gasoline and cigarettes.

The Hague tribunal indicted him in 2004 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including the murder, torture, deportation and forcible transfer of Croats and other non-Serbs from the territories he controlled.

Less than two months after the capture of Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, Serbia’s Western-leaning president announced live on national television that “Serbia has concluded its most difficult chapter in the cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.”

“It was our moral duty,” President Boris Tadic said. “We have done this for the sake of citizens of Serbia, we have done this for the sake of the victims amongst other nations, we have done this for the sake of reconciliation, we have done this for the sake of establishing credibility of all societies, not only Serbian society.”

In his indictment Hadzic is accused of responsibility for the 1991 leveling of Vukovar, said to be the first European city entirely destroyed since World War II.

In one of the worst massacres in the Croatian conflict, Serb forces seized at least 264 non-Serbs from Vukovar Hospital after a three-month siege of the city, took them to a nearby pig farm, tortured, shot and buried them in an unmarked mass grave.

A month before about 20 kilometers (12.43 miles) southwest of Vukovar, about 50 Croats who had been detained for forced labor were made to walk through a minefield to render it safe for the Serbs, according to the indictment.

“Upon reaching the minefield, the detainees were forced to enter the minefield and sweep their feet in front of them to clear the field of mines,” it said.

Hadzic worked with paramilitary forces that became notorious for their brutality, including the “Tigers,” led by Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan. In that same month of October 1991, Arkan’s men captured 28 civilians from a police facility in Dalj, tortured them and threw their bodies in the Danube. Arkan was assassinated in a Belgrade hotel in 2000.

Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said the arrests of Mladic and Hadzic “mark a long-awaited step forward in Serbia’s cooperation.”

EU leaders immediately welcomed the arrest and saluted “the determination and commitment” of Tadic’s government.

“This is a further important step for Serbia in realizing its European perspective and equally crucial for international justice,” said a joint statement by EU president Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barrios and foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

A tribunal statement said Hadzic will be transferred to The Hague as soon as judicial procedures are completed in Serbia. That normally takes several days.

He will then be brought before a judge to hear a reading of the 14 charges against him. He may enter a plea or delay for a month.

Tribunal president O-Gon Kwon said the arrest was a milestone in the history of the court, which has indicted 161 leaders from the former Yugoslavia since it was created in 1993 at the height of the fighting.

The tribunal has been under U.N. pressure to wind up its cases and close its doors.

Serbian security police found out that Hadzic was meeting a money courier and arrested him Wednesday morning outside the village of Krusedol, Serbian war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told reports.

Until this week, Tadic said, Serbian officials did not know where Goran Hadzic was, despite suspicions that he had been sheltered by former allies.

In the past, Hadzic had narrowly escaped arrest, apparently due to tips from within the Serbian security authorities. Serbia’s post-war authorities have for years faced accusations that they are not doing enough to hunt down the war crimes suspects.

Serbia, widely viewed as the main culprit for the wars in the Balkans, has been working to reintegrate into the international community following years of sanctions and pariah status in the 1990s.

Milosevic was extradited to the Hague tribunal in 2001 and died there in 2006, while on trial for genocide.

Along with Mladic, Serbia has also arrested war crimes fugitives Radovan Karadzic. Both are currently facing war crimes charges in the Hague.

Dusan Stojanovic and Slobodan Lekic contributed.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press