Britain seeks urgent talks on peace force for Syria

LONDON: Britain will have urgent discussions with the Arab League over the group’s proposal for a joint peacekeeping force with the United Nations in Syria, Foreign Secretary William Hague said Monday.
  
Hague also welcomed the Arab League’s decision at a meeting in Cairo on Sunday to endorse a “Friends of Syria” group, including Britain, which will meet in Tunisia on February 24.
  
“We will discuss urgently with the Arab League and our international partners the proposals for a joint AL/UN peacekeeping force,” Hague said in a statement.
  
“Such a mission could have an important role to play in saving lives, providing the Assad regime ends the violence against civilians, withdraws its forces from towns and cities and establishes a credible ceasefire.”
  
Hague said Britain would play a “very active part” in the Friends of Syria group, which has similarities to the Libya contact group formed by international partners against Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.
  
The Arab League said in a statement after the Cairo meeting that it would “ask the UN Security Council to issue a decision on the formation of a joint UN-Arab peacekeeping force to oversee the implementation of a ceasefire.”
  
It said diplomats from the league would also open contacts with the Syrian opposition and give them financial and political support against Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
  
Hague said the Arab League had taken “significant steps to increase the diplomatic and economic isolation of the Syrian regime”.
  
“The Arab League could not have sent a clearer message to Syria than the one it sent yesterday and we look forward to working closely with them in the coming days and weeks,” Hague said. AGENCIES

Copenhagen Summit

Latest Copenhagen Summit updates :- Delegates from 192 countries including more than 100 heads of state or government are gathering in the Danish capital Copenhagen for the opening of the long-awaited UN summit on climate change.

Up to 34,000 people from 192 countries have indicated that they will be at the conference, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, British prime minister Gordon Brown and Taoiseach Brian Cowen.

“It’s the biggest show on Earth today, and it must be a success,” said Michael Zammit Cutajar, chairman of a key ad hoc working group. “The time is up for governments to deliver strong commitments,” added UN climate chief Yvo de Boer.

US president Barack Obama’s decision to attend the final day of the talks on December 18th, instead of flying in on Wednesday before going to Oslo to collect his Nobel Peace Prize, is seen as an indication that a “political agreement” is likely to be reached.

“After months of diplomatic activity, there is progress being made towards a meaningful Copenhagen accord in which all countries pledge to take action against the global threat of climate change,” the White House said in a statement.

Mr Obama decided to switch the date of his visit after EU sources and environmentalists expressed surprise at the initial plan, noting that most of the hard bargaining would take place in the last few days.

Oxfam’s climate policy adviser Antonio Hill also welcomed the change, saying Mr Obama “will now be in the right place, at the right time with the right people, reinvigorating the US approach to the climate talks at this defining moment in history.” The summit is taking place against the backdrop of a Nielsen/Oxford University survey of 27,000 internet users in 54 countries, which found that the number “very concerned” about climate change had fallen from 41 to 37 per cent since 2007.

Nielsen found that the number of Americans saying they were “very concerned” had fallen from 34 to just 25 per cent – indicating that Mr Obama faces a tough task in selling any deal.

Meanwhile, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which incorporates the work of up to 3,000 scientists worldwide, has rejected sceptics’ claims that the case for human influence on global warming has been overstated.

Responding to the controversy over leaked e-mails at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which cast doubt on the credibility of its data, the IPCC said it stood by its findings that evidence for global warming is “unequivocal”.

---

Copenhagen Summit was first posted on December 7, 2009 at 12:11 pm.

Iran, India and Pakistan To Hold Gas Talks in January

TEHRAN: Iran, India and Pakistan are likely to hold talks on Peace Pipeline project in January since India declared it is ready to resume trilateral talks on the venture, said Iranian Oil Minister’s special representative for Peace Pipeline Project Hojjatollah Ghanimifard.

He also referred to gas talks held between Iran and Pakistan with the presence of Pakistani Deputy Minister of Oil and Natural Resources Ershad Ahmad Kalim in Tehran and said representatives of Gazprom, Russia state-controlled gas producer, have taken part in talks.

Dialogues mainly focused on Peace Pipeline operation agreement and main points of gas transit to India, he said.

Iran is to pipe its natural gas to Pakistan to meet the country’s needs. The gas will be supplied from Iran’s South pars field.

---

Iran, India and Pakistan To Hold Gas Talks in January was first posted on December 7, 2009 at 1:02 pm.