Global News Journal

Berlin Wall, 1961-1989, R.I.P

There is something a bit bizarre, yet fascinating, about the way Berlin and the local media mark the anniversaries of the Berlin Wall’s construction on Aug. 13, 1961 and the anniversaries of its collapse on Nov. 9, 1989.

There are many of the same things each time: sombre speeches, fancy ceremonies, countless thousands of stories in the print and TV media and a general consensus that A) the Wall was a horrible thing B) the Communists who built it were loathsome liars C) its collapse was a  glorious moment in German history and D) its memory should serve as a global symbol of  the yearning for freedom. Yet like Berlin itself, which has gone through what are probably the most dynamic changes of any big city in Europe in the last two decades, elements of the commemorations have been shifting over the years and the city’s view of the wall has also been transformed.  Incredibly enough, some Germans now miss the Wall – a few diehards both east and west who feel their standing of living has gone down since 1989 want it back the most (about 10 percent, according to a recent poll) . But many others, especially those too young to remember it, lament that there is so little left of it to see and feel. Indeed, almost all of the Wall is gone. Yet 10 million tourists still come to Berlin each year looking for it. “Where’s the Wall?” is probably one of the most commonly asked questions by visitors. The answer – unfortunate or fortunate, depending on your point of view – is that there’s almost nothing left. It was all torn down in a rush to obliterate the hated barrier in late 1989 and early 1990.  Only a few small segments were saved – one 80 metre-long section, for instance, behind the Finance Ministry that was saved thanks to one Greens politician who declared it to under “Denkmalschutz” – a listed monument. That enraged many Berliners at the time. Despite the lack of Berlin Wall to look at and touch, a thriving cottage industry has grown up at some of the places where it once stood. You can get a “DDR” stamp in your passport if you want from a menacing looking soldier in an authentic East German border guard uniform (who appreciates tips) at Checkpoint Charlie or have your picture taken with others wearing Russian army uniforms. You can buy Wall souvenirs at many of the points where the Wall once stood. Some leaders such as Mayor Klaus Wowereit now admit it might have been a mistake, from today’s point of view, to so hastily tear  down all but a few tiny bits of the Wall in 1989. “There’s a general complaint that the demolition of the Wall was a bit too extensive,” he told me recently. “That’s understandable from today’s point of view and it would probably have been better for tourists if more of it could have been preserved. But at the time we were all just so happy to see the Wall gone.”

Wowereit added, interestingly enough, the biggest divisions in Berlin today are in the media and in the political parties: Easterners still read east Berlin newspapers and west Berliners stick to west Berliner dailies while the Left party is often the strongest in the east and the conservative Christian Democrats are stronger in the west while his Social Democrats do fairly well in both halves of the city. “The typical Kurier reader is from the east and won’t set a foot in the west and the B.Z. reader won’t set foot in the east. The Berliner Zeitung is more in the east and the Tagesspiegel is more in the west. To keep sales up, they obviously have different focusses. It’s rare that they have the same topics on their front pages and I think that’s a bad thing. They play up the east-west differences. What’s typical Berlin and what unites this city is, however, that everyone gets worked up about everything that in the end isn’t anything very important. If there’s talk about tearing down the ICC (conference centre in west Berlin), then they applaud in the east and say ‘Our Palace of the Republic’ (an East Berlin government building) was torn down — it’s sort of like eye for eye. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s Berlin. It’s only a problem when people try to whip up those differences.”

Berlin has taken some steps in the last few years to restore some of the Wall for posterity and the all-important tourists, who bring a lot of badly revenue into the fiscally strapped city.  A whole cottage industry of books about the bits of the Wall that are still left has also emerged — inlcuding “The Berlin Wall Today, Ruins, Remnants, Remembrances.”  One of my favourite ways to see at least where the Wall was and small bits of it is the Berlin Wall Trail,  a 160-km bike path that follows the route of the Wall and offers a fascinating glimpse into the city’s Cold War history.

UNsensational? Five more years of Ban Ki-moon

It’s hard to find a delegate to the United Nations who despises U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. But it’s even harder to find someone who thinks he has the gravitas and charisma of his Nobel Peace Prize-winning predecessor Kofi Annan, who invoked the wrath of the previous U.S. administration when he called the 2003 invasion of Iraq “illegal.” As one senior Western official, who declined to be identified, said about Ban: “It’s not as if he’s lightning in a bottle, but we can live with him.”

The former South Korean foreign minister is in the final year of his first five-year term and is widely expected to run for another stint as the supreme U.N. official. The formal re-election process is likely to commence in the coming months. In the meantime, Ban is visiting the capitals of key U.N. member states to gauge his chances of keeping his job. Those chances, U.N. diplomats say, are excellent. So far, no country has nominated any candidate to oppose him. “I’d put my money on Ban Ki-moon getting a second term,” said a Security Council diplomat.

The 15-nation Security Council nominates the secretary-general, though the choice has to be confirmed by the 192-nation General Assembly. Despite the veneer of democracy, it is the five veto-wielding permanent council members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — who choose the top U.N. bureaucrat in New York. And none of the five has any serious objections to a second and final term for Ban, diplomats say.

Some people say that running the United Nations is the toughest job on earth. With little real power, he spends his time mediating and negotiating behind closed doors, getting blamed for member states’ failures and receiving no credit for his off-camera successes. National lobbyists push and pull him in all directions. The five permanent Security Council members, known as the “P5″, regularly insist that he acquiesce to their demands, often pressuring him to reserve a healthy portion of top U.N. jobs for their nationals or preferential treatment for themselves or their allies. Journalists harangue the secretary-general to disclose the details of sensitive negotiations, which he usually tries to keep secret under the label of “quiet diplomacy.” Human rights groups routinely skewer him for not being tough enough on the rulers of despotic countries, which are, after all, member states like all the others and don’t take kindly to criticism.

Ban has been no exception. He has been publicly clobbered for not congratulating jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo for winning the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize or raising his detention with President Hu Jintao during a recent visit to China. He was hung out to dry for not being tough enough on Sri Lanka’s government and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide in Sudan’s western Darfur region. Arab and other delegations from the developing world accuse Ban of being a U.S. lackey, noting how often his statements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other issues echo those of the U.S. State Department or White House.

As much as Ban has sought to please his P5 kingmakers, he has managed to run afoul of each of them in the past. In 2008 Russia accused him of siding with the United States, France and Britain in supporting the secession of Kosovo from Serbia, which Moscow fiercely opposed. U.N. officials said at the time that Russia even threatened to block his second term over Kosovo (Ban made it up to them later). Both China and Russia complained that Ban had voiced public support for Egyptian demonstrators calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, who resigned last week. The United States, Britain and France were annoyed with Ban in 2009 for departing from past practice and not referring to the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia as part of Georgia. The Georgian ambassador accused Ban of succumbing to pressure from Russia, which fought a brief war against the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008. Ban denied the charge.

Ban’s unwavering stance against Ivory Coast’s incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to recognize U.N. certified election results from November 2010 that say he lost to rival Alassane Ouattara, surprised many U.N. watchers who are more accustomed to seeing him sitting on the fence on tough issues. Philippe Bolopion of Human Rights Watch, who has been one of the secretary-general’s toughest critics, welcomed Ban’s “swift and unequivocal reaction” to Gbagbo, who ordered U.N. peacekeepers out of the world’s top cocoa producer. So far the secretary-general has refused to withdraw his blue helmets and the deadlock continues.

WikiLeaks Scandal: Is the United Nations a Den of Spies?

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has dismissed suggestions that her diplomats are part-time spies, as suggested by the latest batch of documents released by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.   “Let me be very clear — our diplomats are just that, they’re diplomats,” Rice told reporters at the United Nations where she was peppered with questions about the latest chapter in the WikiLeaks scandal. “Our diplomats are doing what diplomats do around the world every day, which is build relationships, negotiate, advance our interests and work to find common solutions to complex problems.”   She didn’t exactly deny the charges of espionage. But the top U.S. diplomat in New York did reject the idea that there would be any diplomatic fallout from the release of thousands of documents obtained by WikiLeaks, some of which have been published by The Guardian and other newspapers.   One U.S. diplomatic cable published by The Guardian shows how the State Department instructed diplomats at the United Nations and elsewhere around the world to collect credit card and frequent flyer numbers, work schedules and biometric data for U.N. officials and diplomats. Among the personalities of interest was U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as were the ambassadors of the other 14 Security Council member states.    There is nothing new about espionage at the United Nations, but it’s always embarrassing when classified documents proving it happens surface in the media.   Most Security Council envoys declined to comment on the WikiLeaks documents as they headed into the council chambers on Monday for a meeting on North Korea. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, however, told reporters, “Surprise, surprise.”   Churkin should know. One of the diplomats in his charge was implicated earlier this year in a high-profile Russian espionage case in the United States in which nearly a dozen people were accused of being part of a Russian spy ring that carried out deep-cover work in the United States to recruit political sources and gather information for Moscow. The U.S. Justice Department said that an unnamed diplomat at the Russian mission to the United Nations had delivered payments to the spy ring.      And then there was the man known as “Comrade J”, a Russian spy based in New York from 1995 to 2000. Working out of Russia’s U.N. mission, Comrade J directed Russian espionage activity in New York City and personally oversaw all covert operations against the United States and its allies in the United Nations. According to a book about his exploits, Comrade J eventually became a double agent for the FBI.   Nor does the history of U.N. espionage end there. In 2004, a former British cabinet minister revealed that British intelligence agents had spied on Ban Ki-moon’s predecessor Kofi Annan, who fell afoul of Washington and London by opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq.       Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was also the victim of a phone-bugging operation, according to media reports from 2004. He had also opposed the invasion of Iraq and angered the United States by saying that their intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged revival of his nuclear arms program was not only incorrect but partly based on falsified evidence. U.S. officials pored over transcripts of ElBaradei’s telephone intercepts in an attempt to secure evidence of mistakes that could be used to oust him from his post, the reports said. Not only did they fail to unseat him, he went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

Can export bans be challenged at the WTO?

Russia’s ban on grain exports as a heat wave parches crops in the world’s third biggest wheat exporter has raised questions whether such export curbs break World Trade Organization rules. Russia is not a member of the WTO, and it remains to be seen how its new grain policy will affect its 17-year-old bid to join. But other grain exporters, such as Ukraine, which is also considering export curbs, are part of the global trade referee.

WTO rules are quite clear that members cannot interfere with imports and exports in a way that disrupts trade or discriminates against other members. But in practice most WTO rules aim to stop countries blocking imports – shutting out competitor’s goods to give their own domestic producers an unfair advantage.

from Tales from the Trail:

Senate Republicans ask: What’s the hurry on the new START treaty?

When it comes to ratifying President Obama's nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Russians, Senate Republicans say: don't rush us.

Obama has said he would like to see the Senate ratify the new START treaty with Moscow this year. But he will need some Republican support to get the 67 votes required for ratification. And Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says Republicans don't yet have the answers to their questions about the agreement and related concerns about how much money will be spent modernizing U.S. nuclear forces.

"The only way this treaty gets in trouble is if it's rushed," McConnell said in an interview with Reuters. "My advice to the president was, don't try to jam it, answer all the requests, and let's take our time and do it right," he said.

The new START treaty would cut the arsenals of deployed nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia by about 30 percent.

McConnell said he had not yet decided how he would vote on the treaty, but that he would be strongly influenced by whatever Senator Jon Kyl, the Republican whip, decides. Kyl is considered something of an expert on nuclear weapons.

Kyl is pushing the administration to modernize the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. The White House has proposed spending over $80 billion to do this over the next ten years. But McConnell suggested that some evidence of the administration's commitment will need to be written into appropriations bills pending in Congress to convince Kyl.

"All they have to do is find enough money to satisfy Senator Kyl that they are prepared to do what they said they would do," he said.  "If it's important to you, you can find a way, in an over a trillion dollar discretionary budget to fund it. In my view they need to do that, because without that I think the chances of ratification are pretty slim," McConnell said.

from Tales from the Trail:

Senate Republicans keeping powder dry on START treaty

There appears to be no rush among Senate Republicans to finish what President Barack Obama STARTed when he signed the new arms reduction treaty recently with Russia's Dmitry Medvedev.

At a closed-door meeting Wednesday on Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans listened to arms experts and leaders in their caucus discuss the deal, a follow-on to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

But the general feeling in the room was that it was way too early to decide whether the new START merited a thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the Senate, some participants said.

"I think everybody wants to see the full language before making a decision," said Senator George LeMieux of Florida after the meeting.

"There are all the appendices (to the treaty) that we have not seen," he said. Those are expected to be sent to the Senate by the Obama administration next month, along with the treaty itself.

Senator Jon Kyl, the Republican party's whip in the Senate, told Reuters it would "undoubtedly" be months before he announces his decision on whether to back the new START.

"There is a long way to go before anybody can really make an informed judgment about the treaty," he said.

U.S., Russia in push to crack down on UN Security Council leaks

The United States, Russia and China are quietly backing moves to  exclude “unnecessary” elements from closed meetings of the U.N. Security Council to prevent leaks to the media on sensitive issues like Iran and North Korea, U.N. officials and diplomats told Reuters. They also support moves to reduce reporters’ contact with delegates outside the council chamber. But the new measures have sparked a furor among journalists and less powerful members of the United Nations, who argue that the steps are discriminatory and will make what they say is a secretive Security Council even less transparent.

The measures were suddenly implemented this week after the council moved to a temporary new space, to allow for a $1.9 billion renovation of the 40-story U.N. secretariat building overlooking New York City’s East River. Unless they get special permission to attend, note-takers from the office of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman, Martin Nesirky, will no longer be allowed into closed-door consultations. Peacekeeping officials and other departments in the U.N. secretariat will also be shut out due to what U.S. and other diplomats say is limited space in the new chamber. Non-council members suspect other motives.

“The U.S. wants everyone they see as unnecessary out of the room, people who they think might leak information to reporters on Iran or North Korea or other topics,” said a diplomat on condition of anonymity. “They’re using the move as an opportunity to make big changes to the council that they’ve long wanted to make. It’s a clean-up operation.” The diplomat’s comments were confirmed by several others, who said Russia and China were on the same page as Washington. The other two permanent Security Council members — France and Britain — have kept a low profile in the discussions, U.N. diplomats said, though French and British diplomats have told reporters that they oppose restricting press access to delegations.

“This is all about the P5,” another diplomat said, referring to the five permanent council members. “The P5 call the shots and they want to keep it that way.”

The most controversial proposal for the press is one barring reporters from a stairway near the council chamber out of fears that it would not be safe to allow journalists and diplomats to use the same steps. U.S. officials deny supporting this measure, which they attribute to safety concerns raised by the U.N. Department of Safety and Security, run by the former director of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service, Gregory Starr. But several diplomats said the United States, like Russia, favors barring reporters from the steps and is trying to blame the measure on U.N. security.

A further exclusionary measure is that the 177 U.N. member states that are not on the council will no longer be allowed to sit directly outside the council chamber during closed-door sessions. They have been banished to a hallway area where the reporters are confined. U.S. officials say the justification for that was a lack of space in the smaller quarters the council will be occupying for the next few years. The end result, diplomats from countries not on the council say, is a further decrease in the council’s transparency.

Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, vehemently denied that Ambassador Susan Rice and her delegation were involved in any push to make the council more secretive or limit reporters’ access to delegations. But he acknowledged that Washington supported steps to ensure that closed consultations of the council are exactly what they are supposed to be — closed.

Lapland’s part in EU foreign policy

Last weekend, Finland’s foreign minister gathered six of his colleagues and the EU’s foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, in the frozen far reaches of Lapland for two days of talks on the future of European foreign policy.

As informal ministerial gatherings go, it was a rather jolly (if cold) affair, complete with a ‘family photo’ taken with a pair of nervous reindeer, a chance to see the northern lights and activities such as skiing, sledging and snow-mobiling. Some of the ministers even brought along their families.

But as well as a relaxing weekend staying in luxurious cabins 250 km inside the Arctic Circle in the village of Saariselka, what exactly is the point?

Alexander Stubb, Finland’s young and energetic foreign minister, well know for doing triathlons and for his near-permanent grin, says such retreats help foreign ministers get to know each other better and allow them to discuss critical issues without outside pressure. First, they don’t have to worry about reaching hard-headed decisions, and equally they don’t have advisers whispering in their ears or minute-takers holding them to their every word. It’s an open-ended chat among colleagues about topics close to their heart.

France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, and his Italian counterpart, Franco Frattini, certainly backed up that impression as they relaxed in jeans and open-necked shirts and chatted openly with a handful of journalists  also invited along. They went snow-mobiling and celebrated Frattini’s 53rd birthday. 

In terms of discussions, the participants — who also included the foreign ministers of Sweden, Spain, Turkey and Estonia — covered everything from the EU’s role in the world to sanctions on Iran, developments in the Middle East and the setting up of a European diplomatic corps. Over dinner of reindeer steaks and Lapland cloudberries, they sought to put the world to right.

But at the back of their minds, they were also worrying about their own futures.

Does Siemens’ move send a message on Iran sanctions?

When it comes to further sanctions on Iran, the clock is ticking relentlessly, even if those leading the drive – the United States, Britain, Germany and France — are giving little away in terms of timing or what might be targeted under any new, U.N.-agreed package.

Still, companies that do business with Iran appear to be getting the message that time is running out.

On Tuesday, German engineering group Siemens announced it would reject any further orders from Tehran, although it will meet exisiting ones. Siemens, which with French scientists began building Iran’s first civilian nuclear reactors at Bushehr in 1974, had sales of around 500 million euros in Iran last year, so its decision, while a tiny proportion of its global revenues, is not immaterial.

Siemens made its announcement less than 10 days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel made it clear she would back further, tough sanctions on Tehran, and two weeks after Swiss oil trading giant Glencore halted fuel sales to Iran as momentum towards tighter restrictions, made a priority by U.S. President Barack Obama early this year, gathered pace.

European Union foreign ministers met on Monday to discuss the issue, saying afterwards that an offer for Iran to export low-enriched uranium and have it converted into fuel abroad remained on the table, but that in the meantime Iran remained in violation of U.N. resolutions and that ”time was running out”. Talks are to begin soon in New York on drawing up the specifics of any sanctions package.

So what exactly could the P5+1 (the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — plus Germany) do to try to bring its influence to bear on Tehran?

EU diplomats have hinted that any new package could include further restrictions on Iranian trade-finance banks, such as Bank Melli, possible moves against the central bank, the targeting of “companies and individuals” suspected of involvement in proliferation, and a ban on the export to Iran of technical equipment used in its oil export industry. Iran’s imports of petrol would not be targeted.

Russia’s security proposals – about much more than security

Western responses to President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for a new European-Atlantic security body that stretches from Vancouver to Vladivostok have ranged from dismissive to lukewarm. None have been enthusiastic.

But some inside and outside Russia argue it would be unwise for Europe and the United States to reject the proposal out of hand, not least because, as one Russian official put it, this is one of the few occasions where Russia isn’t disagreeing but coming up with something constructive.

Yes Moscow’s draft treaty has gaps, they concede, yes it is almost entirely focused on security in the military sense and yes it doesn’t give much weight to liberal democracy and human rights as envisioned in modern perceptions of security – but it is a starting point for discussion.

Shutting Russia out plays in to the hands of those in Moscow, Washington and other capitals who prefer the simplicity of the Cold War’s zero sum game. It does no favours to modernisers in Russia who want to build cordial international relations, promote democratic society and build Russia’s economy away from its over-reliance on natural resources.

Russia needs stability outside its borders in order to modernise at home.

Twenty years after the collapse of communism, Russia and the rest of Europe are still struggling to establish a relationship of mutual trust and respect. They are bound by commerce – Europe is the prime market for Russian energy exports – but even that relationship is rarely straightforward. The annual Russia-Ukraine-EU gas drama is just one example of how fraught the relationship can be.

On a political and diplomatic level the complications are even greater. One need look no further than the 2008 war in Georgia when preconceptions and stereotypes dictated responses on all sides. Western media and many politicians condemned Russia outright. It was only with the publication of an EU commissioned report into the war this year that a fuller story was told. NATO’s steady expansion towards Russia’s borders has angered Moscow, where it has been noted that the Baltic states and central Europe became far more openly hostile to Russia once they had NATO and EU membership in the bag.