Tag Archives: John Kerry

Britain, European Union, Iraq, Middle East, Politics, Society, United Nations, United States

Former diplomats lead calls for Tony Blair to be axed as Middle East Peace Envoy…

TONY BLAIR

Intro: An open letter led by ex-diplomats, and signed by thousands more, calls for the former British Prime Minister who went to war on a lie and based on a false prospectus to be axed as Middle East peace envoy

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THREE former UK ambassadors to the Middle East have joined a new demand and are campaigning for Tony Blair to be removed from his role as Middle East ‘peace’ envoy.

Signatories to an open letter, led by Mr Blair’s former ambassador to Iran Sir Richard Dalton, describes his achievements in the region as ‘negligible’, criticising his money-making activities and accuse him of trying to ‘absolve himself’ of responsibility for the crisis in Iraq.

Other former diplomats lending their weight to the letter are Sir Oliver Miles, Britain’s ambassador to Libya when relations were severed after the death of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, and Christopher Long, ambassador to Egypt between 1992 and 1995. Joining more than 4,000 signatories are human rights barrister Michael Mansfield QC, former London mayor Ken Livingstone and former Conservative prisons minister Crispin Blunt.

The letter has been organised by the makers of Respect MP George Galloway’s film The Killing of Tony Blair. It has been deliberately timed for this week’s seventh anniversary of Mr Blair’s appointment as envoy on the Middle East for the ‘quartet’ of the UN, the EU, Russia and the US, and is addressed to John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, and to the EU’s ‘foreign minister’.

It argues that Mr Blair’s 2003 invasion of Iraq is to blame for the rise of “fundamentalist terrorism in a land where none existed previously” and that he should be removed from his position.

The letter says: “We are appalled by Iraq’s descent into a sectarian conflict that threatens its existence as a nation, as well as the security of its neighbours. We are also dismayed at Tony Blair’s attempts to absolve himself of any responsibility for the current crisis by isolating it from the legacy of the Iraq war.”

It is alleged that Mr Blair ‘misled the British people’ by suggesting Saddam Hussein had links to Al-Qaeda. It adds: ‘It is a cruel irony for the people of Iraq that perhaps the invasion’s most enduring legacy has been the rise of fundamentalist terrorism in a land where none existed previously.

‘We believe Mr Blair, as a vociferous advocate of the invasion, must accept a degree of responsibility for its consequences.’

Criticising the former prime minister’s business interests, the letter alleges that his ‘conduct in his private pursuits also calls into question his suitability for the role’, and accuses him of ‘blurring the lines between his public position as envoy and his private roles at Tony Blair Associates and the investment bank JPMorgan Chase’.

The letter adds to growing calls for Mr Blair to stand down. In the last few days the former foreign secretary Lord Owen criticised Mr Blair for his claims that the 2003 invasion was not a factor in the current unrest in Iraq. “Tony Blair should no longer be allowed to speak for the EU on the Middle East, and someone else found for helping Palestine without his past record and crusading messianic fervour,” he said.

A spokesman for Mr Blair said: ‘These are all people viscerally opposed to Tony Blair with absolutely no credibility in relation to him whatsoever. Their attack is neither surprising nor newsworthy… They include the alliance of hard Right and hard Left views which he has thought against all his political life. Of course he completely disagrees with them over the Middle East.’

People are being urged to support the call for Mr Blair to be removed by signing the petition at www.change.org.

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Britain, European Union, Foreign Affairs, Government, Russia, Society, Ukraine, United States

Ukraine: Any further acts of Russian aggression must be dealt with by the West…

FEARS OF AN ESCALATION IN UKRAINE

The warning by John Kerry, US Secretary of State, that Russia is actively seeking to destabilise yet more of Ukraine – with a view to staging another Crimea-style military intervention – increases significantly the prospects of a deeper escalation inside the country. Mr Kerry has directly accused the Kremlin of using provocateurs and undercover agents to encourage pro-Russian activists to seize control of key cities in the eastern part of the country. This is a view equally shared by William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, who claims the latest flare-up in violence bears ‘all the hallmarks of a Russian strategy to destabilise Ukraine’.

Given the evidence, these warnings need to be taken seriously. Pro-Moscow activists have attempted to occupy government buildings in eastern cities such as Donetsk, Kharkiv and Lugansk. Similar tactics were employed by Moscow in the build-up to last month’s illegal annexation of Crimea. It is also known that the FSB, Russia’s overseas intelligence service, is active in the region, with its agents encouraging ethnic Russians to revolt against the Ukrainian government. The interpretation by Secretary of State Kerry is that Vladimir Putin is no doubt seeking to lay the foundations for a broader intervention aimed at annexing more of Ukraine’s territory.

The West needs to make clear that it will not tolerate any further occupation of European soil by the Kremlin. The seizing of Crimea led to a fairly limited response from the US and EU, through the targeting of assets of a small group of government officials and oligarchs, due to accusations that they had orchestrated the operation. Any further acts of aggression, however, by Moscow towards its vulnerable neighbour should result in Western powers implementing a broad range of sanctions and penalties. That would not only inflict severe damage on the Russian economy, but deepen Moscow’s status as an international pariah.

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Britain, European Union, Foreign Affairs, Government, Military, NATO, Politics, Russia, Society, Ukraine, United Nations, United States

Russian troops amass on Ukraine’s border…

UKRAINE

Intro: As world leaders tell Vladimir Putin to back off, 80,000 Russian soldiers have amassed on Ukraine’s borders. The fear now is that there could be a full-scale invasion…

Ukraine has warned that 80,000 Russian troops have amassed on its borders and could invade. World leaders have told Vladimir Putin to back off.

A senior security chief in Kiev said Moscow could launch a full-scale invasion and Russian troops would be in the Ukrainian capital within ‘two or three hours’ of the order to advance.

Photographs of Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers close to Ukraine’s borders are adding to the tensions.

British officials have been receiving reports about Russian troops massing on the border since Tuesday and are concerned by the show of force.

British intelligence is unsure whether the movements are intended to back up the annexation of Crimea, preparation for an invasion or simply defensive.

Moscow’s show of force started earlier this week as Ukraine’s prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, met Barack Obama in the Oval Office and NATO continued military exercises in Poland.

During a week of rising tensions, G7 leaders, including David Cameron and Mr Obama, warned Russia not to annex the Crimea after a referendum in the province, tomorrow, which has been taken over by pro-Putin troops.

Their statement warns the Russian president to ‘cease all efforts to change the status of Crimea contrary to Ukrainian law and in violation of international law’ and threatens ‘further action’ if Moscow seizes Crimea.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Russian MPs who voted to use force in Ukraine and Kremlin officials behind the invasion would be hit with asset freezes and a travel ban to the European Union – most likely to be issued at a Brussels summit on Monday.

But the main concern of Western leaders is to deter Russia from seizing the rest of Eastern Ukraine.

Andriy Parubly, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, has said that even Kiev may not be safe from Putin’s troops, who were regrouping in ‘an offensive manner’.

Mr Parubly claimed that forces massing included ‘over 80,000 personnel, up to 270 tanks, 180 armoured vehicles, 380 artillery systems, 18 multiple-launch missile systems, 140 combat aircraft, 90 combat helicopters and 19 warships and cutters’. He added: ‘Critical is the situation not only in Crimea, but along the entire north-eastern frontier. In fact, Russian troop units are two or three hours of travel from Kiev.’

Former Putin adviser Andrey Illarionov has predicted that in addition to Crimea, Putin may move to annex other major cities in Ukraine – including Kharkov, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, Kherson and Odessa.

Pictures of Russian armoured vehicles on the move in regions close to the Ukrainian border include motorised infantry vehicles and tanks. The military movements are also said to include Grad BM-21 multiple rocket launch vehicles. Tanks have also been pictured being carried by rail in Belgorod, and are reported to be parked in a village just 12 miles from the border.

The moves came as the Russian armed forces announced a huge military exercise by its airborne troops. The three-day exercise ordered by Putin involved a vast ‘landing operation’ by 4,000 paratroopers.

NATO has conducted its own show of force to reassure countries in Eastern Europe. The US and Poland began war games during the week that involved at least 12 American F-16 fighter jets. A joint naval exercise of US, Bulgarian and Romanian naval forces in the Black Sea also started.

Events have been building to a crunch point when tomorrow Crimea will vote on whether to join Russia. If Putin recognises the province as Russian, sanctions will follow.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met in London yesterday, but as expected those talks failed to make any progress on the crisis.

Infographic:

Geo-political infographic of Ukraine and of Crimea.

Geo-political infographic of Ukraine and of Crimea

 

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