EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commission Olli Rehn:
“It is important that the EU in the course of next week comes to a more specific conclusion, specific political conclusion about the European framework for coordinated and conditional action, if needed and required”.
Gorilla:
“The Rehn on Spain is mainly a Greek gain (Wolfgang, he’s got it!)”
As has been obvious for some time, Russia’s not terribly interested in new sanctions against Iran.
In fact, they’re going ahead with building a nuclear plant in Iran.
And it appears that a bilateral deal to scrap nuclear weapons will be contingent upon what happens to the US missile defense program, as well as what happens with Iran.
President Obama’s hosting a “nuclear security” summit next month and it was hoped a new US-Russian treaty would be ready. Now, it’s not so clear.
Negotiating with the Russians these days is not easy. They’re still adjusting to the loss of influence that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union, and therefore seize on any opportunity to demonstrate they must be taken seriously. Russia is at best a regional player in the world diplomacy game, the Chinese clearly are the big boys on the block.
The US is also adjusting. Missile defense remains nothing more than a Pentagon jobs program; it should have been scrapped long ago. Isolating the Russians won’t make Eastern Europe less wary of them. Not cutting a bilateral deal with Iran means years of waiting in vain for the Russians and Chinese to care.
Gorilla thinks: “Bilateral baby steps are the only way forward, multilateral approaches are fine if you like lowest common denominators!”
Tony Blair, a man whose credibility is, to put it charitably, non-existent in the Middle East now says he hopes a new package of unannounced steps will get peace talks back into indirect nothingness.
Yes, that is a mealy mouthful.
What would a genuine package look like?
It would have the US tell the Israelis that future aid will be tied to Israeli behavior. Settlements going up mean aid’s going down.
It would tell the Palestinians that they must decide once and for all, perhaps via referendum, on whether they want peace and are ready to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
There’s zero chance of this happening at present, or perhaps ever, but until the US is an honest broker, and the two sides are genuinely serious about peace, there’s little point in dispatching clowns like Tony Blair and George Mitchell to tell us what we already know.
Gorilla says: “It’s 1948 all over again, wait til next year!”
