World powers pressed Sudan on Tuesday to accept a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur to replace an ill-equipped African Union force that has been unable to stem the violence that Washington calls genocide. The UN and aid agencies also urged donors at talks in Brussels to finance the 7 000-strong AU force for a few more months.
The European Commission slapped Microsoft on Wednesday with a new fine of €280,5-million for failing to fully respect a 2004 antitrust ruling, but the software giant vowed to appeal. Raising the pressure on Microsoft, the European Union competition watchdog also threatened additional fines of €3-million ($3,82-million) a day from the end of the month if the company continued to defy the ruling.
The European Commission is to step up pressure on Microsoft on Wednesday to respect a 2004 antitrust ruling, by slapping huge new daily fines on the defiant software group. With an irritated Microsoft flaunting the ruling, the EU’s competition watchdog is poised to impose fines as high as â,¬2-million ($2,55-million) per day backdated to December 15.
Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ari Larijani warned on Tuesday that a ”long road” remains ahead before Tehran’s atomic stand-off with the West can be solved, after his latest talks with European officials. ”We had very wide-ranging discussions. We were following up on the Tehran negotiations,” he said after talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
The European Commission is due to fine Microsoft on Wednesday as part of a hard-line approach towards getting the software giant to comply with antitrust sanctions that appears to be bearing fruit. The extent of Microsoft’s new-found cooperation in the face of a penalty that is likely to reach hundreds of millions of euros is impressing even the Americans, until now highly critical of Brussels’ approach.
Iran rebuffed Western hopes of a breakthrough in the Iran nuclear crisis on Thursday, saying it has no plans to respond in talks in Brussels to an international offer to curb its atomic plans. A senior Iranian official made the comment hours before Tehran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, was due to have dinner with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
The European Union (EU) executive commission hopes to convince member states to spend more than â,¬6-billion on regional infrastructure in Africa from 2008 to 2013, a Commission official said. The executive has drawn up maps of road, energy, water and information technology networks in Africa, highlighting missing links which could be closed with EU financing, the official said.
The United States ”expects” Iran to respond next week to an international offer to defuse the nuclear stand-off between Tehran and the West, the number three in the US State Department said on Friday. US Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said he hopes for the response next Wednesday.
The European Commission is to propose making South Africa a ”strategic partner” by forging a pact similar to ones already struck with the United States and China, EU sources said on Tuesday. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, has set out its ideas for a partnership in a document to be considered by the EU’s 25 member state governments and EU lawmakers.
Hundreds of elite North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) troops backed by fighter planes and warships will storm a tiny volcanic island off Africa’s Atlantic coast this week in what the Western alliance hopes will prove a potent demonstration of its ability to project power around the world.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Wednesday he had held "constructive" talks with Iran’s main nuclear negotiator in his first contacts with the Iranians since he visited Tehran last week. "I had a phone conversation today [Wednesday] with Mr Ari Larijani. It was a constructive conversation," Solana told reporters in Brussels.
The commander of a European Union force helping to provide security for elections next month in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) expressed confidence on Tuesday that his mission will be successful despite rising ethnic tensions ahead of the poll. But critics say the mission is largely a promotional exercise.
The European Union is keen to trumpet its latest role in easing the Iran nuclear crisis, but strains and institutional limbo are clouding the bloc’s efforts to punch its diplomatic weight, officials admitted on Thursday. EU foreign policy head Javier Solana stands ready to return to Tehran to negotiate with the Islamic republic over a package of trade and political incentives.
At least 115 trade unionists were murdered for defending workers’ rights in 2005, while more than 1 600 were assaulted and about 9 000 were arrested. Nearly 10 000 workers were sacked for their trade union involvement, and almost 1 700 detained, according to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions’ (ICFTU) annual survey.
The African Union has asked Nato to prolong its mission in Sudan’s violence-wracked Darfur region to help back a peacekeeping operation there, an alliance spokesperson said on Wednesday. ”The AU has asked Nato to extend its current support to the end of September,” said spokesperson James Appathurai.
European Union defence ministers were on Monday seeking to fill gaps in the military force they are planning to send to the Democratic Republic Congo in support of United Nations peacekeepers during key elections across the vast African nation.
The European Union is preparing a bold offer for Iran, including economic, nuclear, and perhaps security guarantees, to try to curb its atomic ambitions, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Monday. "It will be a generous package, a bold package, that will contain issues relating to nuclear, economic matters, and maybe, if necessary, security matters," Solana said.
Europe faces an increasing threat from attacks with long-range missiles and could help avert the danger by building a missile-defence network, a senior North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) official warned on Wednesday. "There is a growing threat of long-range missile attacks," said Marshall Billingslea, head of Nato’s Conference of National Armaments Directors.
The government of Serbia was staggering towards collapse recently because of the continued liberty of General Ratko Mladic, Europe’s most-wanted man and genocide suspect. The European Union called off talks on Serbia’s integration with the EU after Belgrade reneged on its promise to arrest the fugitive former Bosnian war commander.
The European Union on Wednesday suspended talks on forging closer ties with Serbia, punishing Belgrade for failing to cooperate fully with UN prosecutors hunting Ratko Mladic and other war-crimes fugitives. Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said the talks on a stabilisation and association agreement — a precursor to any membership talks — were postponed mainly because Mladic, the former Bosnian-Serb commander wanted for genocide, remained at large.
Microsoft said at the start of a final day of hearings with European Union (EU) regulators on Friday that it was more optimistic about its antitrust battle and still hoped to stave off fines of â,¬2-million (,4-million) a day. The hearing is the company’s last chance to defend itself before the EU decides whether to levy the fines.
The European Union approved on Wednesday a blacklist of nearly 100 airlines considered to be unsafe, nearly all of which will be banned from EU skies, officials said. Most of the carriers are based in Africa and there are blanket bans on airlines from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia and Swaziland.
The European Union will sign a deal on Monday with the United Nations granting â,¬64-million (-million) in urgent aid for the Palestinians, but much more in future funding is under threat after the formation of a government by Hamas, a group the Europeans consider a terrorist group.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said here on Monday she hoped international sanctions on the country’s forestry and diamonds sectors would soon be lifted. Once one of Africa’s most prosperous nations with abundant timber, rubber and mineral wealth, Liberia lies in ruin after more than 14 years of civil war.
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/ 17 February 2006
Volkswagen warned recently that it could axe up to 20 000 jobs at its core VW brand and close several loss-making German plants in a restructuring designed to restore profits. CE Bernd Pischetsrieder told VW’s 103 000 German employees that their productivity was low, plants recorded high losses and some component operations were uneconomical.
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/ 15 February 2006
European experts scrambled on Wednesday to hammer out a response to a fast-developing bird-flu threat, as the lethal H5N1 strain spread into Germany, the latest country to be hit by the virus in days. The H5N1 strain has killed at least 90 people mostly in eastern Asia, but also in Turkey and northern Iraq.
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/ 7 February 2006
Hundreds of thousands of businesses raced on Tuesday to snap up ".eu" internet domain names, with "sex.eu" taking the prize for the most sought-after address on the first day companies could apply. Within the first hour, sex.eu domain had received 23 applications, followed by schumacher.eu with 15, realestate.eu with 12 and business.eu also with 12 applications.
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/ 1 February 2006
European Union regulators are still waiting for details from Microsoft on an offer to reveal secret computer code to meet an EU anti-trust ruling, competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said on Tuesday. "We have not yet received full details from Microsoft. When we do, we will review the information carefully," she told the European Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee.
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/ 30 January 2006
The European Union warned Hamas on Monday that it will have to fundamentally change to win support from the 25-nation bloc, which has long been the Palestinians’ biggest aid donor. The warning to Hamas came from EU foreign ministers, who were meeting to discuss the militant Islamic group’s shock election win last week.
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/ 25 January 2006
The European Commission approved on Tuesday the €3,1-billion takeover of United State giant Reebok by its German rival Adidas to create the second biggest sports goods firm in the world. Adidas-Saloman immediately hailed the decision, which gives a green light for the transaction nearly six months after it was first announced last August.
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/ 23 January 2006
It may not have the Eiffel Tower’s global renown, but Belgium’s hi-tech Atomium hopes to super-charge its pulling power when it reopens next month, in all its shiny glory after a two-year renovation. In fact, the parallels with the world-famous Paris monument are striking: the steel-and-aluminium Brussels landmark was built for a World Fair; and it attracts hordes of foreign tourists.
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/ 23 December 2005
A decomposed body discovered in a Brussels canal a week ago is that of a Rwandan former minister indicted by a United Nations tribunal on charges of genocide, a family lawyer said on Thursday. The naked body was discovered by a passer-by in the Brussels-Charleroi canal in the heart of the Belgian capital.