British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said on Friday that supplying weapons to Ukraine, an option under consideration in Washington, would escalate the ongoing conflict.
In an interview during the Munich Security Conference, Fallon told Reuters he fully supported a new effort by the leaders of Germany and France to try to halt the Ukraine conflict.
French President Francoise Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel flew to Moscow on Friday to discuss the escalating crisis in Ukraine, reportedly without informingthe US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is currently in Ukraine discussing Kiev’s plea for weapons.
The two leaders, who are part of the so-called ‘Normandy Four’ group along with Moscow and Kiev, agreed on the trip on Wednesday night, an unnamed French government official told AP.
“Together with Angela Merkel we have decided to take a new initiative,” Hollande told a news conference on Thursday.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the leaders would “discuss what specifically the countries can do to contribute to a speedy end of the civil war in southeastern Ukraine, which has escalated in recent days and resulted in many casualties.”
After the meeting on Thursday with the German and French leaders, Ukrainian President Poroshenko said the talks indicated a ceasefire was possible in eastern Ukraine.
A senior French official told local weekly Le Nouvel Observateur on Thursday that the decision to meet with President Vladimir Putin was taken on Tuesday, after the Russian leader called on both sides in the Ukrainian conflict to stop military actions and hostilities.
During his visit to Ukraine, Kerry laid the blame for the conflict’s escalation solely on Russia, and disregarded Kiev’s intensified assault on rebel-held areas.
Russia has long rejected allegations of its troops being engaged in the eastern Ukraine conflict.
“I say it every time: if you are so sure in stating that, confirm it with facts. But no one can or wants to provide them,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in January.
It was a day of bluster and speeches but also paralysis over how to bring the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine to an end.
On one side, hawks in Washington favour supplying “advanced weapons” to Ukraine’s government in Kiev. On the other, cautious European leaders warned it is easier to provoke Vladimir Putin than to scare him.
“I am firmly convinced this conflict cannot be solved with military means,” said Angela Merkel, the German chancellor at the Munich Security Conference.
Mrs Merkel, who is the only major Western leader to have a working relationship with Mr Putin, said a flow of American arms to Ukraine would not intimidate the Russian leader.
“I cannot imagine any situation in which improved equipment for the Ukrainian army leads to President Putin being so impressed that he believes he will lose militarily,” she said. “I have to put it that bluntly.”
President Barack Obama has remained silent so far, but Ashton Carter, his nominee for defence secretary, told a Senate committee last week that he is “very much inclined” to provide arms to Petro Poroshenko’s government.
On Saturday Mr Putin insisted that his country was innocent, saying during a visit to Sochi on the Black Sea: “We are not going to wage war on anyone, we plan to cooperate with everybody.”
“There clearly is an attempt to restrain our development with different means,” he told trade union activists. “There is an attempt to perturb the existing world order... with one incontestable leader who wants to remain as such thinking he is allowed everything while others are only allowed what he allows and only in his interests.This world order will never suit Russia.”
In Munich, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, took the West to task for allegedly escalating the conflict but expressed hope the renewed peace talks would bear fruit. “We believe there is every possibility that we will reach a result and agree the recommendations that will allow the sides to really untie this knot of a conflict,” he said.
Is the Obama Administration interfering in Israel’s upcoming elections? Recent statements and moves by America’s leaders sure would seem to suggest so.
Last week, both Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry announced they would not be in attendance when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of the US Senate dedicated to the threat of a nuclear Iran.
The White House has been furious with Netanyahu over the planned appearance, which Obama officials insist had breached protocol by being organized without their approval and involvement.
Just days after letting everyone know they wouldn’t be on hand to greet and listen to Netanyahu, both Biden and Kerry met with Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich, Germany on Saturday. And this just a month before Israel’s March 17 elections.
The Obama White House has finally released the names of the fourteen Muslim “leaders” who met with the President this past week. Among the group — which included a comedian, along with a hijab-wearing basketball player and a handful of left wing activists — were a select few individuals with disturbingly close ties to the global Muslim Brotherhood.
As previously uncovered by Breitbart News, the White House confirmed that Azhar Azeez, President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), was one of the Muslim leaders that met with President Obama. ISNA was founded in 1981 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial. Federal prosecutors have previously described how ISNA funneled its money to Palestinian terrorist group Hamas (via Investigative Project):
Azeez’s bio also reveals him as a founding member the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Dallas/Fort Worth Chapter. CAIR has also allegedly funneled money to Palestinian terror groups and was also started by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In October, 2014, Azeez signed a letter endorsing Sharia Islamic governance. Under the Sharia, non-Muslims are treated as second-class citizens. The Sharia also endorses the hudud punishments in the Koran and Hadiths, which state that apostasy from Islam is punishable by death.
Hoda Elshishtawy of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) was also in attendance at the Muslim leaders’ meeting with President Obama.
MPAC, just like CAIR and ISNA, was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group has written and often endorsed a paper rejecting the United States’s designation of Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations, and has insisted that the Jewish state of Israel be added as a state sponsor of terrorism. The group’s former president, Salam al-Marayati, has publicly encouraged officials to look at Israel as a suspect in the 9/11/01 attacks.
Mohamed Majid, who serves as Imam of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS), was also in attendance at the White House meeting with the President, and senior advisors Ben Rhodes and Valerie Jarrett.
In 2002, ADAMS was raided as part of a U.S. government initiative called “Operation Green Quest,” where federal agents suspected the group of supporting terrorist organizations. Government documents said that the ADAMS Center was “suspected of providing support to terrorists, money laundering, and tax evasion.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Sunday he would continue to try to defeat an expected agreement between the US and Iran over the latter’s nuclear development program as Washington predicted a handshake on the matter in the coming weeks.
“The [international] powers and Iran are racing forward with an agreement that will allow Iran to arm with nuclear weapons, something that will threaten the existence of the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said before the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu declared that he was ready to go head to head with US Secretary of State John Kerry in order to stop the deal.
“At the end of the week, Kerry and [Iranian Foreign Minister] Zarif announced their intention to complete the framework agreement by the end of March, and that is what gives rise to the urgency in our efforts to try and halt this bad and dangerous agreement,” Netanyahu said. “We will continue to act and to lead the international efforts against the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons and we will act in every way to foil the bad and dangerous agreement that would cast a heavy cloud over the future of Israel.”
The comments came after Kerry stressed to his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, that the US aimed to meet a late March deadline for a deal reining in Iran’s nuclear program when the two men met on Friday in Munich.
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2 comments:
Scott, there is a story in the Drudge Report saying that Alan Greenspan believes that Greece will leave the E.U. He also said this, "Nothing short of a full political union of a United States of Europe can save the Euro from extinction." Do you think this has any prophetic significance?
I do indeed. Big crisis = big change every time. Ultimately we are waiting to see the 10 kings being formed. The question is, what role will this development play? Will the EU impose more draconian form of controlling govt? Will we see a north-south split? Will the 10 member WEU take control? I have to believe this will somehow play a role and we may find out relatively soon
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