16 16 business daily
March 3, 2014 Friday April 19, 2013
Closing Connery stirred by Scots independence
Spanish minister cuts short Iran trip over crisis
James Bond star Sean Connery yesterday urged his fellow Scots to vote for independence in their referendum later this year, saying it was an opportunity “too good to miss”. The 83-year-old actor, one of the most high-profile backers of the Scottish National Party’s campaign for a ‘yes’ vote in September, said independence would raise Scotland’s profile. This could encourage more investment in the Scottish film sector and lead to the “international promotion of Scotland as an iconic location”, Connery wrote in the Sun on Sunday newspaper.
Spain’s foreign minister yesterday cut short his visit to Iran in order to attend EU talks on the crisis in Ukraine, the Spanish embassy in Tehran confirmed. “He will leave this afternoon for Brussels,” a diplomatic source said. Foreign Minister Jose Manuel GarciaMargallo, who arrived in Tehran on Saturday for a planned four-day visit, is to attend an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers tomorrow. “We are concerned about the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Garcia-Margallo said in a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Ukraine mobilises army as Obama warns Russia On ‘brink of disaster’ says Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk Dmitry Zaks
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kraine said yesterday it would call up all military reservists after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to invade his neighbour drew a blunt response from US President Barack Obama. The stark escalation in what threatens to become the worst crisis in relations since the Cold War came as proRussian forces seized control of key government buildings and airports in the strategic Crimean peninsula – a semiautonomous part of Ukraine. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said his
crisis-hit country was on the “brink of disaster”, accusing Russia of declaring war in a bleak appeal to the international community. “This is the red alert, this is not a threat, this is actually a declaration of war to my country,” he told reporters in English, a day after Russia’s parliament approved the deployment of troops to Ukraine. “If President Putin wants to be the president who started a war between two neighbouring and friendly countries, between Ukraine and Russia, he has reached his target within a few
Lithuania recalls Russia envoy over Ukraine L
ithuania recalled its ambassador from Russia for consultations yesterday after Moscow approved sending troops into neighbouring Ukraine. In a brief statement, the Baltic nation’s foreign ministry said the move was in reaction to “illegal Russian actions against Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”. Russian President Vladimir Putin obtained the green light from parliament on Saturday to use military force in Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, sparking an international outcry. Lithuania and fellow Baltic states Latvia and Estonia broke away from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991 after five decades of communist rule and joined NATO in 2004. They have had rocky ties with Moscow since independence and are jittery about Russian military moves in the region. Lithuania played a key role in efforts to seal a European Union association pact with Ukraine during its stint as EU president last year. Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s rejection of that deal in favour of an aid agreement with Russia sparked the protests.
inches. We are on the brink of the disaster.” US leader Barack Obama has branded Russia’s parliament vote a “violation of Ukrainian sovereignty” and told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a phone call that Moscow’s reported deployment of troops outside bases that it leases from Ukraine in the Crimea peninsula had broken international law. Yatsenyuk yesterday appealed to the international community. “We believe that our Western partners and the
NATO chief says Russia threatens Europe’s peace N
entire global community will support the territorial integrity and unity of Ukraine and will do everything they can in order to stop the military conflict provoked by the Russian Federation,” he said. Russia’s parliament voted on Saturday to allow troops to deploy in its western neighbour. Witnesses said a group of Russian soldiers had also blocked about 400 Ukrainian marines at their base in the eastern Crimean port city of Feodosiya and were calling on them to surrender and give up their arms.
ATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged Russia yesterday to stop its military activity and threats against Ukraine, saying Moscow’s action threatened “peace and security in Europe.” “Russia must stop its military activity and its threats,” he said in a brief statement before opening crisis talks with NATO’s 28 ambassadors. “Today we will discuss the implications for European security.” Speaking as Ukraine’s interim authorities accused Russia of triggering “a red alert” with what was “actually a declaration of war”, Rasmussen said he had convened the North Atlantic Council “because of President Putin’s threats against this sovereign nation.” “What Russia is doing now in Ukraine violates the principles of the United Nations Charter. It threatens peace and security in Europe. Russia must stop its military activities and its threats.” “We support Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. We support the right of the people of Ukraine to determine their own future without outside interference.
Putin said in statement he was responsible for the safety of ethnic Russians in Crimea – home to Kremlin navies for nearly 250 years – and southeastern swathes of Ukraine with ancient ties to Moscow that look on Kiev’s new pro-EU leaders with disdain. The Western-backed interim leadership that took power in Kiev a week ago responded to Moscow’s move toward its first invasion of a neighbour since a brief 2008 confrontation with Georgia by putting the military on full combat alert on Saturday. AFP
Czechs summon Russian ambassador over Crimea C
zech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek said yesterday he had summoned the Russian ambassador over Moscow’s decision to send troops to Ukraine’s Crimea region. “I will meet him at 1300 GMT today [to tell him that]... if this is the beginning of an invasion to occupy Crimea, it’s something with which we have rich experience and we can’t agree with it,” he said in a debate on Czech public television. “There is no way out of the situation but diverse pressure that will persuade Russian officials to abstain from this solution,” Zaoralek said, adding he was not considering recalling the Czech ambassador to Moscow right now. On Saturday, Zaoralek and Czech President Milos Zeman likened Russia’s moves in Crimea to the Soviet-led 1968 occupation of former Czechoslovakia which crushed a widespread democratic reform movement in the country, claiming more than 100 lives. Czechoslovakia shed communist rule in 1989, four years before it split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.