Trade talks among the World Trade Organisation’s four most powerful members have failed because of their inability to agree on farm subsidy cuts, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said on Thursday. ”It was useless to continue the discussions based on the numbers that were on the table,” Amorim said at a news conference.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the United States on Wednesday of restarting the arms race with its plans to build a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe. ”I think that those who are professionally aware of this problem understand that there is nothing ludicrous about this issue because the arms race is starting again,” Lavrov said at a press conference.
Differences between the United States and other Group of Eight (G8) industrialised countries were highlighted on the closing day of an environment ministers’ conference in Potsdam near Berlin that ended on Saturday. While no negotiations were conducted in Potsdam, the delegates prepared the ground for the G8 summit in June.
Environment ministers from 13 nations responsible for most of the world’s greenhouse-gas pollution began a two-day meeting near Berlin on Friday, seeking a way forward in the global-warming crisis. The meeting at the Cecilienhof chateau gathers the Group of Eight countries and five major developing nations: Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.
The arrest of suspected rightists in connection with the brutal beating of an Ethiopian-born German citizen is fuelling fears that neo-Nazi violence could overshadow the football World Cup being held in Germany. Germany’s federal prosecutor said the attack, which left the 37-year-old father of two in a coma, had probably been carried out due to ”hatred towards foreigners”.
Sixty years after the end of World War II, Germany is still nowhere near completing the job of destroying thousands of tonnes of unexploded bombs, shells, mines and grenades. In the eastern state of Brandenburg, encircling Berlin, a 4Â 000km chunk of land is contaminated with leftover bombs, shells and other potentially dangerous and ageing munitions.