Section: theSun (Malaysia)
Cautious Merkel on verge of biggest risk with ‘Grexit’
BERLIN: “If you break it, you own it,” former US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned President George W. Bush before his invasion of Iraq. Whether it will ever be fair to blame Angela Merkel for “breaking” Greece is debatable. But if the euro zone’s weakest link does default this week and is eventually forced out...
Armenia president suspends electricity price hike after protests
YEREVAN: Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian (pix) on Saturday suspended a controversial hike in electricity prices but the move failed to appease protesters who vowed to keep up with the largest anti-government demonstrations the ex-Soviet nation has seen in years. Thousands have taken to the streets of the capital Yerevan since June 19 to...
MH17 tribunal idea is ‘counterproductive’
MOSCOW: A senior Russian official on Friday rejected calls for the establishment of a UN tribunal to try those responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine last year. “We are against it,” deputy foreign minister Gennadiy Gatilov was reported by Russian news agencies as saying. “We think it is...
Nearly half of MH17’s wreckage still in Ukraine, says rebel
KIEV: A top pro-Russian rebel said Wednesday that nearly half the wreckage of the Malaysia Airline jet shot down over Ukraine last year remain strewn across fields controlled by the separatists. Insurgency leader Andrei Purgin said about 40% of the plane’s charred parts were left behind by international investigators and recovery teams....
Japan announces dates for G7 summit in 2016
TOKYO: Japan will host a summit of the Group of Seven industrial democracies on May 26-27 next year, its top government spokesman said Tuesday. The thorny question of whether or not Russian President Vladimir Putin gets an invitation “is undecided yet,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters. The crisis in Ukraine is...
Russia to prolong Western food embargo
MOSCOW: Moscow prepared Monday to prolong its embargo on Western food imports, expressing disappointment at the extension by the EU of sanctions which it blamed on a “Russophobic lobby.” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev tasked one of his deputies with helping put together a formal appeal to President Vladimir Putin to prolong Russian...
NATO head says alliance to more than double size of rapid response force
BRUSSELS: Nato head Jens Stoltenberg said Monday the alliance will approve plans this week to more than double the size of its rapid response force, having already created a special spearhead unit in the fallout from the Ukraine crisis. “Nato defence ministers … (will) take a decision to further increase the strength and capacity of...
Moscow powerless to stop Russians from fighting in Ukraine: Security chief
MOSCOW: The secretary of Russia’s security council said Monday it is impossible to stop Russians from going to fight in Ukraine because they are guided by “emotions.” Nikolai Patrushev, the hawkish former chief of the federal security service (FSB) who currently sits at the helm of President Vladimir Putin’s group of...
After midnight in the library, Putin sets out his world view
ST PETERSBURG, Russia: It was two minutes before midnight when Russian President Vladimir Putin finally entered the meeting room in the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, more than three hours late, to be interviewed by a dozen exhausted journalists. His retinue seemed wearily accustomed to the late-night regimen, but Putin himself – after...
UN: 60m forced to flee in ‘era of displacement’
GENEVA: The world has entered a phase in which multiple crises have caused refugee numbers soar to unprecendented levels, with the international community failing to contain the situation, UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres said Thursday in Geneva. Another post-World-War-II record was set last year as 59.5 million people were counted as refugees...
