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Putin Warns West Not To Blackmail Russia

Putin Warns West Not To Blackmail Russia

Belgrade (AFP) – President Vladimir Putin accused his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama of a hostile approach towards Russia, warning in a Cold War-style tirade that Moscow would not be blackmailed by the West over Ukraine.

Putin fired off his combative comments shortly before he arrived amid tight security to a red carpet welcome in Belgrade, seeking to cement Russia’s influence in its loyal European ally.

Belgrade is staging its first military parade in 30 years to mark the 70th anniversary of its liberation from Nazi occupation — an event brought forward by four days to coincide with the visit by the Kremlin strongman.

In some of his most pugnacious comments yet on Russia-U.S. ties, Putin took issue with Obama’s speech at the UN General Assembly last month, when he listed “Russia’s aggression” in eastern Ukraine among top global threats, along with Islamic State jihadists and Ebola.

He told the Serbian daily Politika it was “hard to call such an approach anything but hostile”.

“We are hoping our partners will understand the recklessness of attempts to blackmail Russia, (and) remember what discord between large nuclear powers can do to strategic stability,” Putin said.

He branded attempts by the West to isolate Russia over the six-month conflict in Ukraine an “absurd, illusory goal” and accused Washington of meddling in Russian affairs.

Putin, who is to meet Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko in Milan on Friday, called on Kiev to start nationwide dialogue, saying there was a “real opportunity” to halt the war.

Putin reiterated that Moscow was ready to mend fences with Washington but only if its interests are genuinely taken into account.

Putin’s predecessor Dmitry Medvedev spearheaded a “re-set” in ties with Washington but relations have quickly unraveled since Putin returned to the Kremlin for a third term in 2012.

Russia is now facing its deepest period of Western isolation since the Cold War, with U.S. and EU sanctions dealing a blow to its already stuttering economy.

Despite the distinct Western diplomatic chill, Putin was greeted warmly in Belgrade, which has refused to align with the EU sanctions against Moscow.

He and Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic were to lay wreaths at a cemetery where Russian soldiers were killed in the October 1944 battle for Belgrade.

Putin is then expected to make an address at the military parade involving more than 3,000 soldiers and featuring a Russian aerobatics display — but pointedly not being attended by any U.S. officials.

“Our joint obligation is to oppose the glorification of Nazism and attempts to revise the outcome of the World War II,” Putin said in the Politika interview, warning of rising “neo-Nazism” in the Baltics and Ukraine.

The EU, which began accession talks with Serbia in January, has bluntly told Belgrade it should prove its credentials as a future member during the visit.

Since the Ukraine crisis erupted, Serbia has been trying to balance its obligations towards the EU and maintaining good ties with Moscow.

For Russia — which backs Serbian opposition to Kosovo’s independence — it is important that Belgrade’s membership of the European bloc does not go against Moscow’s interests.

“The main goal of the visit is to buttress existing links. Energy will be high” on the agenda, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs magazine, told AFP.

Serbia is one of the countries on the South Stream pipeline, a $22 billion project aimed at reducing Moscow’s reliance on Ukraine as a transit country for its natural gas following disputes with Kiev that led to interrupted supplies to Europe.

The European Commission has said the project is not in line with its rules and threatened to fine member states if they go ahead with construction.

Russia signed the South Stream accord with Serbia in 2008 and plans to begin construction this year, but Belgrade has said it will wait until there is agreement between Brussels and Moscow.

Russia and Serbia are tied militarily, and set up a rapid response base in the southern town of Nis where Russian aircraft were based.

Moscow has also helped Serbia’s devastated economy, providing $1.3 billion in loans for rail infrastructure and to help reduce the country’s record budget deficit.

The two also have a free-trade agreement and Russia is Serbia’s third largest foreign trade partner with two-way business in 2013 at almost $3 billion.

AFP Photo/Alexei Nikolsky

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Khorasan Group Was Planning ‘Major’ Attack: Pentagon

Khorasan Group Was Planning ‘Major’ Attack: Pentagon

Washington (AFP) — A U.S.-led military operation against jihadists in Syria struck Al-Qaeda’s Khorasan group because it was on the verge of executing “major attacks” against the West, a senior U.S. officer said Tuesday.

“Intelligence reports indicated that the group was in the final stages of plans to execute major attacks against western targets and potentially the U.S. homeland,” Lieutenant General William Mayville, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.

The strikes against the Khorasan group early Tuesday were separate from a wave of bombing raids led by the United States and backed by several Arab countries that targeted the Islamic State group.

Earlier the Pentagon had said that U.S. air strikes killed Khorasan members who were a group of Al-Qaeda veterans hatching plots against Western targets.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, had announced that U.S. warplanes carried out eight air strikes against Khorasan group targets west of Aleppo.

Mayville said more than 40 Tomahawk missiles were launched, and that “the majority of the Tomahawk strikes were against Khorasan.”

Speaking of the broader campaign that included Arab states, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said “our initial indication is that these strikes were very successful.”

And he suggested that more U.S. action in Syria was forthcoming.

“I can tell you that last night’s strikes were only the beginning,” Kirby said.

The overnight operation was the first in which the U.S. military’s new F-22 Raptor strike fighter was used in combat.

AFP/Abdurashid Abdulle

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U.S. Alone Among Western Countries On Lack Of Paid Maternity Leave, U.N. Finds

U.S. Alone Among Western Countries On Lack Of Paid Maternity Leave, U.N. Finds

By John Zarocostas, McClatchy Foreign Staff

GENEVA — The United States is the only Western country — and one of only three in the world — that does not provide some kind of monetary payment to new mothers who’ve taken maternity leave from their jobs, a new U.N. study reports.

Two other countries share the U.S. position of providing “no cash benefits during maternity leave,” according to the report, which was released Tuesday by the International Labor Organization: Oman, an absolute monarchy in the Persian Gulf; and Papua New Guinea, a South Pacific nation where the U.S. State Department says violence against women is so common that 60 percent of men in a U.N. study acknowledged having committed a rape.

The other 182 countries surveyed provide either a Social Security-like government payment to women who’ve recently given birth or adopted a child or require employers to continue at least a percentage of the worker’s pay. In 70 countries, paid leave is also provided for fathers, the report said, including Australia, which introduced 14 days of paid paternity leave last year, and Norway, which expanded its paternity leave from 12 to 14 weeks.

The United States also provides for fewer weeks of maternity leave than what other Western countries mandate, the report said.

Under U.S. law, businesses are required to allow a new mother to take as many as 12 weeks of unpaid leave. In New Zealand, the leave is 14 weeks; in Australia, it’s 18 weeks. Switzerland has allowed women workers to take 18 weeks off since 2005; they’re paid 80 percent of their salaries under a government program similar to Social Security in the United States.

Government provides the payments in most the surveyed countries, the International Labor Organization said, with 107 nations making cash benefits available through their national social security plans. In 45 countries, the benefits are paid solely by employers, while in 30 countries employers and social security plans bear the costs.

The International Labor Organization, which has promoted better working conditions since it became the U.N.’s first specialized agency in 1946, said it prefers leave mandates that do not saddle individual companies with the cost, saying such requirements hurt businesses and potentially lead to bias against hiring women.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, requires that mothers receive 14 weeks leave at full pay through a combination of government and employer payments. In Great Britain, a new mother is allowed to take a full year off, the report said, with payments during the first six weeks totaling 90 percent of her salary. After that, the payments are set at the equivalent of $232 per week or 90 percent of pay, whichever is less, for the next 33 weeks. The final 13 weeks of the leave are unpaid.

The report held out the prospect that the United States might one day join the rest of the world through the proposed Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act of 2013, which would establish a national paid family leave insurance program to provide 12 weeks of paid leave to recover from childbirth, serious illness, care for a sick family member, or to bond with a new baby. The legislation was introduced in December by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and has 87 sponsors, but its prospects are uncertain in the Republican-dominated House of Representatives.

Despite what the report described as positive movement over the last two decades in maternity leave policies around the world, the report found that financial support provided in half the countries was “neither financially adequate nor sufficiently long lasting.” It said that 830 million women workers “are not adequately covered in practice, mainly in developing countries.”

Laura Addati, a maternal protection specialist for the International Labor Organization, said that 98 countries worldwide met the organization’s standard of 14 weeks leave and that 74 countries met the standard of providing cash benefits of at least two-thirds of earnings during that time.

The report noted that five U.S. states mandate paid maternity leave — California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island. It said that about 12 percent of women workers in the United States are entitled to mandated paid maternity leave.

“In order to have gender equality, you must have maternity protection,” said Shauna Olney, chief of the International Labor Organization’s gender, equality and diversity branch.

Photo via Flickr