‘World needs Russia’, former French president Sarkozy tells Putin on Moscow trip

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared “the world needs Russia” as he met with the country’s leader Vladimir Putin in a controversial visit to Moscow Thursday.

"I'm happy to be here in Moscow, and you know my conviction that the world needs Russia," Sarkozytold reporters ahead of his hour-and-forty-five-minute-long closed door meeting with Putin at the Russian leader's residence just outside the capital.

"Russia and Europe should work together... To discuss, listen and respect, this is the destiny of Franceand Russia.”

The meeting between the two men, the third since Sarkozy left the Elysée Palace in 2012, comes at a time of fraught relations between the Kremlin and current French President François Hollande over Russia’s involvement in the conflict in Ukraine and recent military intervention in Syria.

Hollande has been one of the most outspoken opponents of working with Putin’s ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in finding a solution to the Syria conflict.

But while the French Socialist government has taken a hard line with Russia, Sarkozy’s centre-right Les Républicains party has increasingly called for closer ties with Moscow.

In a speech before students of the MGIMO, Moscow’s prestigious Institute of International Relations, Sarkozy called on the West to end Russia’s isolation and declared the country an "indispensable" partner in resolving the conflict in Syria.

“We must merge the two coalitions into one," Sarkozy said, referring to the rival US- and Russia-led military campaigns.

"Without Russia, one cannot meet the great challenges of this world," he said, adding that the global role of Putin is "more positive than negative, despite our differences".

A smiling Putin praised Sarkozy for his “impressive” speech.

"I am so happy to see you, Nicolas," Putin said warmly.

Paris blasts Sarkozy’s ‘parallel diplomacy’

The trip has not gone down well with Paris, however.

French junior minister for higher education and research Thierry Mandon said Sarkozy had no business short-circuiting French foreign policy.

“Diplomacy is complicated, he is like a dog in a bowling alley in this affair,” he said on France 2 television.

The vice president of the French parliament’s France-Russia friendship group, Green Party member François Michel-Lambert, said Sarkozy’s “parallel diplomacy” was damaging for the country.

“It is amazing that the former head of state does not have a sense of statesmanship,” he said.

However, others have been less critical, if still cautious over the merits of Sarkozy’s trip.

“Everyone has the right to talk,” Bruno Le Roux, leader of Hollande’s Socialist Party in parliament, told AFP as Sarkozy arrived in Russia on Wednesday. “There is a usefulness in maintaining relationships with all countries.”

"At the same time, in these sorts of moments, the position of France, the position which is that of Europe, must be kept in mind,” he added.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)

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MI5 Boss: IS Planning UK Mass Casualty Attacks

Andrew Parker says the IS threat "shows no sign of abating" after more than 750 British extremists travelled to Syria.

The head of MI5 has said the terror threat level facing Britain is the highest he has seen in his 32-year career.

Andrew Parker, director general of the Security Service, said six terror plots had been thwarted in the last year.

And during a speech in London on Wednesday, he also warned that so-called Islamic State (IS) is planning "mass casualty" attacks on Britain.

He described a "three dimensional threat" at home, overseas and online - with an increasing amount of MI5's casework linked to Syria and IS.

"It (IS) uses the full range of modern communications tools to spread its message of hate, and to inspire extremists, sometimes as young as their teens, to conduct attacks in whatever way they can."

And he warned the threat posed by IS - also known as ISIL - "shows no sign of abating" after more than 750 British extremists travelled to Syria.

Mr Parker also highlighted that al Qaeda groups in South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and parts of Africa remain a threat.

"All of this means that the threat we are facing today is on a scale and at a tempo that I have not seen before in my career," he added.

His remarks come days before the Government is expected to publish a draft of landmark legislation covering spies' activities in the digital era.

And he insisted the security agencies need greater powers to keep the country safe.

"Today the conversations of our adversaries are happening on a bewildering array of devices and digital platforms, often provided by companies based overseas.

"Information gathered from the technology terrorists use, often in the same way as the rest of us, may sometimes be the only way to stop them.

"And so we need the tools to access terrorists' communications online just as much as we intercepted written communications and telephone calls in years gone by."

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Croatia allows thousands stranded at Serbian border to cross

Croatia allowed thousands of migrants who were stuck at the border with Serbia to cross into its territory late Monday afternoon, having earlier dramatically slowed the number of crossings, an AFP photographer saw.

"Everybody who was here has gone through," said the photographer at the Berkasovo crossing, where between 2,000 and 3,000 people had been stuck waiting to cross in cold and wet conditions.

Czech volunteer Jan Pinos at the scene also told AFP that Croatian police had "opened the gate and let all refugees who where there in".

Since Sunday, the numbers being allowed into Croatia on their journey to northern Europe had sharply slowed after Slovenia let limited numbers cross into its territory, causing delays further down themigrant trail.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) estimated earlier Monday that more than 10,000 refugees and migrants were stranded in Serbia, as Croatia allowed only a trickle across.

About 3,000 had massed at the Serbian border in heavy rain, causing alarm among volunteers who said humanitarian assistance and food was scarce.

It was not immediately clear why Croatia suddenly permitted the mass entry.

Before the weekend, migrants had been passing from Croatia into Hungary, but Hungarian authorities shut off that border crossing with razor wire early on Saturday, so the migrants were redirected through Slovenia.

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EU launches operation to halt migrant traffickers in Mediterranean

European warships in the Mediterranean launched a new operation Wednesday to catch migrant smugglers as the leaders of Germany and France were to push for further EU action to cope with the refugee crisis.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Francois Hollande will give a joint speech to the European Parliament, the first of its kind since 1989, in a bid to present an image of solidarity at a time of deep divisions in the EU.

The military mission dubbed Operation Sophia involves six naval vessels in international waters off Libya with the power to stop, board, seize and destroy traffickers' boats in a bid to curb the worst crisis of its kind since World War II.

Around 3,000 people have died making the perilous crossing over the Mediterranean to Europe this year, while over half a million have made the voyage, mostly landing in Greece and Italy.

The first phase of the operation, which involved monitoring trafficker networks and rescuing refugees from rickety boats crossing the Mediterranean, has been running since June.

"Assets will conduct boarding, search, seizure and diversion, on the high seas, of vessels suspected of being used for human smuggling or trafficking," the EU mission said in a statement.

- 'We want to arrest them' -

An Italian aircraft carrier, a French frigate and one British, one Spanish and two German ships are all involved in the mission, which follows in the footsteps of EU anti-piracy operations on the Horn of Africa.

"We follow the traffickers and want to arrest them and seize their ships," Captain Stefan Klatt, who commands the Werra, one of the German ships that is taking part in the operation, told AFP.

The EU gave the go-ahead for the operation in international waters in September, but its ships are not, for now, allowed to pursue traffickers into Libyan waters.

At least three other vessels supplied by the Belgian, British and Slovenian navies are expected to arrive in the area at the end of October to complete the force, which also include four aircraft and 1,318 personnel.

But the operation is a drop in the ocean compared to the huge scale of a problem that has seen 630,000 migrants illegally enter the EU this year as people flee conflict in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Turkey is now the main launching point for migrants trying to enter Europe, and the EU on Tuesday offered Ankara a plan under which it would resettle more refugees if the Turks establish new camps and boosts its coastguard.

- Berlin Wall -

With the European project creaking under the strain of the huge movement of desperate people, Merkel and Hollande were to issue a rallying cry in their speech to European lawmakers in Strasbourg.

The last time the leaders of France and Germany stood together in parliament was 26 years ago when Francois Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl gave a similar speech just weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

They are expected to highlight a common and multifaceted solution to the crisis that calls for admitting tens of thousands of genuine refugees, tightening EU external borders and cracking down on smugglers.

But Europe has been deeply divided over how to respond to the crisis, which in addition to the Mediterranean has seen a new front opening over the summer in Hungary and Croatia as migrants cross the Balkans

Plans to relocate 160,000 refugees to other EU nations from overstretched Greece and Italy were only adopted last month after EU leaders overrode objections from eastern European states.

The crisis has also fuelled the rise of nationalist and eurosceptic parties, as well as feeding the debate over Britain's membership of the EU, which is set to be put to a vote before the end of 2017.

Two Iranians were arrested and remanded in custody after having walked through the Channel Tunnel from France to Britain, police said Wednesday, the latest in a series of breaches.

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Disunity on migrant crisis would be ‘end of Europe’, Hollande warns

France’s François Hollande and Germany’s Angela Merkel delivered passionate pleas for greater European unity in tackling the continent’s many challenges on Wednesday in a landmark joint address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

The speeches by the French president and the German chancellor came 26 years after the last joint address by the leaders of the bloc’s two largest countries, when France’s François Mitterrand and Germany’s Helmut Kohl both spoke to EU lawmakers.

Speaking in turns, Hollande and Merkel delivered a strong defence of the Franco-German partnership and its role in driving EU integration and tackling the many challenges the continent faces today.

They singled out Europe’s migrant crisis, the Ukrainian conflict and Greece’s debt woes as examples of the two countries’ ability to overcome disagreements for the benefit of the 28-member bloc.

More Europe, not less

Striking an ominous tone, Hollande warned against nationalist reactions on refugees, the euro and other crises, arguing that failure to find a united response would spell “the end of Europe”.

"We need not less Europe but more Europe. Europe must affirm itself; otherwise we will see the end of Europe, our demise," he said, to heckles from the parliament’s many eurosceptic members.

Hollande said it would be a "tragic error" to call into question Europe's open borders. Instead, he said, the member states need to come up with a coherent asylum policy.

Merkel, whose government has pledged to take in up to 800,000 refugees this year, urged EU members to reform the bloc's “obsolete” rules on asylum.

"In the refugee crisis, we must not succumb to the temptation of falling back into national action," said the German chancellor, who has struggled to persuade her EU partners to share the burden of hosting refugees.

Both leaders gave ample space to the migrant crisis, recognizing that Europe had reacted too slowly to the turmoil on its borders that has produced a huge wave of refugees.

"I acknowledge that Europe was slow in understanding that tragedy in the Middle East or Africa could not but have consequences for Europe itself," Hollande said, adding that the EU had not provided sufficient help to Turkey, Lebanon and other countries who have accepted millions of refugees from the civil war in Syria.

“We have to help Turkey if we want Turkey to help us,” said the French president, arguing that if Europe fails to help countries flooded by refugees “they will come to us”.

‘Total war’

Calling for urgent efforts to tackle the roots of the refugee crisis, Hollande said all interested parties, including the EU, Russia and Iran, needed to find a political solution to the conflict in Syria.

"What's happening in Syria concerns Europe because what is going on there will determine the balances of power in the region for a long time," he said.

"If we let the recent religious confrontations between Shiites and Sunnis get worse then don't think that we won't be affected. It will be a total war, a war that will also affect our territories and we must act."

Hollande also reiterated the Paris line that any solution for Syria had to be based on an alternative to Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad.

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Int’l anti-ISIS coalition flawed, you can't fight evil with illegal methods – Lavrov

The international coalition fighting against Islamic State “has no reason” to reject cooperation with the Syrian government, according to Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who said that “one can’t fight evil with illicit wars.”

"Unfortunately, we consider the [international] coalition to be built on a flawed basis. We of course share the principles of combatting terrorism, but you cannot fight evil with illicit wars," Lavrov said.
"We support every action that leads to weakening the terrorist threat in the region, but any action must be taken strictly in accordance with international law," Lavrov said. He called attention to the fact that the UN Security Council, as well as the UN's human rights protection bodies, have called for action that will not let "the fight on terror turn into lawlessness."Lavrov's views were supported by Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu.

“To ignore the capabilities of the Syrian army as a partner and an ally in the fight against IS [Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL], means sacrificing the security of the whole region to some geopolitical schemes and expectations,” Lavrov said on Thursday after a meeting with his Turkish counterpart, RIA Novosti reported.
Russia’s foreign minister said the Syrian authorities are countering the militants’ aggression, and the country’s president is commander-in-chief of “probably the most competent ground forces combatting terrorism.”

“Our partners have a choice: either continue persisting that President Assad's resignation will save the region from the terrorism threat – I don’t think anyone needs convincing of how utopian that idea is,” Lavrov said, adding that another option is to start collaboration in order to “prevent the disintegration of this historically-treasured region.”source

'Europe’s Guantanamo': Refugees in Hungary fed 'like animals in pen' (VIDEO)

'Europe’s Guantanamo': Refugees in Hungary fed 'like animals in pen' (VIDEO)

Dramatic footage has emerged showing people at Hungary's main refugee camp on the border with Serbia being fed like wild animals. Crowds of refugees, children and women among them, shout to get the officers' attention, struggling to catch the bread thrown to them through the air.

Some 150 people can be seen at Roszke camp in a fenced-in enclosure inside a big hall as Hungarian police, equipped with helmets and hygiene masks, throw bags of sandwiches at them.

The video was shot secretly by an Austrian volunteer who visited the flashpoint camp earlier this week. The footage, which was uploaded on YouTube late Thursday, had over 25,000 views by Friday afternoon.

"It was like animals being fed in a pen, like Guantanamo in Europe," Alexander Spritzendorfer, whose wife, Michaela filmed the scenes, told AFP. The couple came to Roszke to bring food, clothes and medication to the refugees.

"It was inhumane and it really speaks for these people that they didn't fight over the food despite being clearly very hungry,"Michaela Spritzendorfer-Ehrenhauser said.

"It was around 8 o'clock and they were giving dinner to people," she said. "There were maybe 100 people trying to catch these plastic bags with sausages... They were not able to organize a camp and treat them like human beings," Reuters quoted Spritzendorfer-Ehrenhauser as saying.

Hungarian police said Friday they had launched an urgent investigation into the video.

Meanwhile, government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs claimed that people were spending only a few hours in an "optimal case" at this detention center. But they can remain there for up to two days under a procedure permitted by the EU.

"I can see policemen who have been performing their duties for months, trying to take care of 23,000 migrants arriving continuously day by day, while there is no cooperation whatsoever on their part," Kovacs told Reuters. "I can see they are trying to maintain order among those who are unable to line up for food."

With Europe experiencing an escalating refugee crisis, Hungary is bearing the brunt of the latest influx as thousands of refugees flee violence in the Middle East and North Africa. Tens of thousands of asylum seekers are entering the European Union, using Hungary as a transit country as they seek to reach better-off countries such as Germany, Austria and Sweden.

On Wednesday, a journalist for Hungary’s N1TV channel, associated with the far-right Jobbik party, was fired after her colleagues filmed her kicking and tripping up migrants, including children, fleeing from the police. Camerawoman Petra László was filming at a migrants’ center near the village of Roszke on the Hungarian-Serbian border when hundreds of migrants broke through a police cordon in a field.

At one point, she found herself in the middle of a throng of people running from the police. After a couple of migrants accidentally bumped into László, she moved to one and aimed a kick at a young refugee girl passing by. Later on, filming a police officer trying to detain a man carrying a young boy, the journalist apparently deliberately stuck her leg out and tripped the man up, causing him to fall on the ground along with the child.

Russian aircraft are delivering military supplies as well as humanitarian aid to Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed on Thursday, but denied that Moscow had increased its activities in the war-torn country.

Russian aircraft are delivering military supplies as well as humanitarian aid to Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed on Thursday, but denied that Moscow had increased its activities in the war-torn country.

The United States and NATO have expressed concerns in recent days about a possible Russian military buildup at a Syrian airfield.

Russia has backed the regime of President Bashar al-Assad since the 2011 start of Syria's civil war, providing weapons and military experts to help train Syria's military throughout the more than four-year-long conflict.

Lavrov on Thursday once again confirmed that Russia has military personnel in Syria, but said that current deliveries were in line with existing contracts when asked about Russian planes flying to the airfield near the Syrian city of Latakia.

"Russian planes are sending to Syria both military equipment in accordance with current contracts and humanitarian aid," Lavrov told reporters.

The State Department said that Secretary of State John Kerry had aired the US concerns to Lavrov for a first time on Saturday, telling him that if there was indeed a Russian buildup, "these actions could further escalate the conflict". Kerry spoke to Lavrov for a second time on Wednesday to discuss "the problems of regulating the conflict in Syria", the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement, without providing further details.

Three Russian military transport planes landed in Syria and new housing units had been set up at the airport in the port city of Latakia, US officials said on Tuesday, moves that suggest a possible increase in Russia's military support for Assad's regime.

But Moscow denies that its activities in the country have gone beyond its known deliveries on commercial contracts and activities at the Soviet-era naval facility in the coastal city of Tartus.

'Hundreds' of people

At least three Russian aircraft landed at the airport in Latakia on Syria's Mediterranean coast over the past several days, US officials told AFP on Tuesday on condition of anonymity. Two of the aircraft were giant Antonov-124 Condor planes and a third was a passenger flight, one officials said.

The Russians have installed modular housing units -- enough for "hundreds" of people -- at the airport, as well as portable air traffic control equipment.

"All of this seems to be suggesting that Russia is planning to do some sort of forward air-operating hub out of this airfield," the official said.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook was quick to condemn the reported moves, saying that any "effort to bolster the Assad regime right now would potentially be destabilizing".

Syria has also denied the reports of increased military activity by Russian troops on its soil.

(FRANCE 24 with AP and AFP)

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