Daily Media Digest

N. Africa and the Middle East


Protests spreading in Libya. Live testimonies about the events: http://audioboo.fm/feb17voices
Tunisia seeks Ben Ali extradition
The unrest in Morocco continues
Egypt: Banks and pyramids are now open. Will be the new government preoccupied by acquiring nuclear weapons?

Israel monitoring Suez-bound Iran ships

Asia


Failure of the Jasmine Protests?
Philippines: Remember People Power
ASEAN meeting trying to solve the border dispute


Europe


France: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, possible competitor for Sarkozy?
EU: More money for the Mediterranean countries?
Hungary: Structural reforms not on table
Russia asks Serbia to do not join NATO


Australia

Gillard, to meet Obama soon

Africa

Somalia: Suicide car-bomb near Mogadishu

Latin America

Cuba: News about the latest release of prisoners
The Chile-Peru dispute on Wikileaks
Peru: crack-down on illegal gold miners in Amazon

Iran, the struggle continues

Strong condemnation of the Iranian regime by Nicolas Sarkozy

The opposition calls the release of detainees

Lebanon rules out talks with Israel

The Jerusalem Post
March 18

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman on Wednesday ruled out the possibility that his country would hold direct talks with Israel and said a regional peace conference would be the best way to resolve the differences between the two nations.

"We have always refused to hold direct talks with the Israelis," Suleiman was quoted by Reuters as saying at the end of a three-day visit to France.

"We have always said that we would be prepared to accept a peace conference based on the Madrid conference and also on the international legal texts," Suleiman went on to say.

According to the news agency, Lebanon's president expressed hope that the Palestinians would also attend such a conference, saying that he had invited French President Nicolas Sarkozy to work toward a global approach for the solution of Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

"We have also called for that to happen in the framework of an international conference to which all the parties involved would be invited," Suleiman told reporters.

In July last year, Suleiman said that should diplomacy fail to return "Israeli-occupied land" to Lebanon, the Lebanese army (LAF) would take it by force.

Suleiman was speaking at a press conference after meeting Syrian President Bashar Assad on the sidelines of a Mediterranean conference in Paris. He stressed, however, that the military option was the last resort.

Germany, France to present joint economic initiative

After a relative low profile in the last year, the Franco-German cooperation is getting a new impetus, culminating with the agenda of 60th NATO anniversary summit, to be held in Kehl and Strasbourg. In a joint column, published February 3, Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung, chancellor Angela Merkel and president Nicolas Sarkozy are calling for a common vision in the main EU security challenges following the changes of approach from Washington DC. During the mandate of the W. Bush, the two countries represented the core of the opposition to the Iraq war - what then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, called not on a friendly voice "the old Europe", in comparison with the new allies from Central and Eastern former communist Europe - and supported the plan to boost the European defense by creating an EU rapid reaction force.


February 7
Reuters

Germany and France will present a joint initiative to help Europe better cope with crises like the current economic turbulence, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Saturday.

"We will approach the Czech presidency (of the European Union) with a joint initiative by Germany and France on how we can emphasise Europe's strength in these difficult times," Merkel told reporters in Munich.

Sarkozy, who was attending the Munich Security Conference together with Merkel, said the initiative would aim at strengthening Europe's unity and reactivity.

The two leaders gave no further details.

France and Germany, the eurozone's two largest economies, have been hit by the economic crisis.

Merkel's government expects the German economy to shrink by 2.25 percent this year, and France's Economy Minister Christine Lagarde has said she would be very surprised if 2009 was a year of positive growth.

See also:

Le Monde - The joint column signed by Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel - Security, Our Common Mission

Need of an EU common policy on China

China postponed the EU-China summit scheduled for December 1, one of the main reasons being the coming meeting between French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Tibetan spiritual leader, Dalai Lama. This meeting will take place in Poland, December 6, France being the president of the six-months EU rotating presidency.

According to Francois Godement, Director of the European Council for Foreign Relations -Asia Centre at SciencesPo in Paris:
"China's decision to cancel its scheduled summit meeting with the EU is a spectacular gesture and an unprecedented step in the bilateral relationship. In blaming Nicolas Sarkozy's upcoming meeting with the Dalai Lama, China takes its policy of routinely cancelling human rights dialogues with European officials to the highest political level. This aggressive move from China's diplomacy has been facilitated by the scurrilous divisions between EU countries themselves. Throughout the year, senior European leaders have scandalously failed to coordinate on the issue of Tibet and the Dalai Lama. The sorry spectacle of European disunity over the financial and economic crisis has confirmed to China's leaders that Europe is not a unitary actor and can be publicly provoked at no significant political cost. It is urgent for Europeans to realise the steep political price for their failure to agree on common principles and practice for their China policy."