Gas Deal Still Eludes Ukraine and Russia at EU Talks

(Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak)

(Reuters) - Ukraine and Russia bargained late into the night on Wednesday but European Union officials trying to broker a deal to resume gas supplies to Kiev as winter sets in said there was still no accord to announce.

At talks in Brussels hosted by energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger two days before he makes way for a new EU executive team, officials cancelled an evening news conference at which they had hoped to announce a deal after months of negotiation.

"Negotiations are ongoing and likely to continue until late in the evening," the European Commission said in a statement at 9 p.m. (1600 ET). "In case of agreement, the press conference is envisaged to take place tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m."

With Kiev and Moscow locked in conflict over pro-Russian rebellions in Ukraine and over the former Soviet state's move to bind itself closer to the West, the European Union, which also depends heavily on Russian gas, is trying to help overcome wrangling about payments that threatens to disrupt supplies.

Russian state utility Gazprom (GAZP.MM), whose chief executive was attending the talks with Oettinger along with the Russian and Ukrainian energy ministers, halted supplies to Ukraine in June, citing Kiev's unpaid gas bill, which Moscow says is around $4.5 billion.

The EU, which has lending facilities to Ukraine along with the IMF, is looking at releasing more funds. And Germany, a key ally for Ukraine's pro-Western leaders, has spoken of providing international "bridging finance" to see Kiev through the winter.

For months, the gas cut-off has had little impact. But pressure is mounting for a deal as temperatures start to drop below freezing and Oettinger, who has been mediating, prepares to leave office on Friday, making way for a new Commission.

Ukraine Looks to Reform with an Eye on Europe

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- As Ukraine's most ardently pro-European parties pocketed a resounding collective election triumph Monday, thoughts turned to a reform agenda that promises pain and progress in equal doses.

Although the outcome of Sunday's vote is in part fruit of a surge in anti-Russian sentiment, Moscow says it will recognize the result and urged Ukraine's new order to grapple with the country's most pressing problems.

With 72 percent of the vote counted Monday, the three main Western-leaning parties alone stood to win a combined 54 percent of the vote. Coalition negotiations were already underway.

Parliament is now largely purged of the loyalists of former President Viktor Yanukovych, who sparked months of protests - and eventually his ouster in February - with his decision to deepen ties with Russia instead of the European Union.

Of the European-minded parties, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's Popular Front had 21.9 percent of the vote while President Petro Poroshenko's party had 21.5 percent. A new pro-European party based in western Ukraine was running third with 11 percent.

The Fatherland party of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who has argued strongly for NATO membership and is likely to join a pro-Europe coalition, had 5.7 percent of the vote.

Poroshenko last month laid out an ambitious agenda envisioning significant changes to Ukraine's police, justice and tax systems, defense sector and health care - all to be completed by 2020. Among the tougher decisions ahead will be allowing the cost of utilities in the cash-strapped country to float in line with market dictates.

"Ukraine is pregnant with reforms," said political analyst Oleksiy Haran. "The elections showed that both the government and voters expect structural changes to bring Ukrainians closer to the European Union."

Haran said measures to simplify regulations for private enterprise and to attract investment need to be adopted first.

Hopeful businessmen in Ukraine complain that if excess red tape doesn't kill their ventures at birth, corruption does so further down the road. For that reason, initiatives to curb graft and overhaul the justice system should follow suit, Haran said.

Poroshenko has also said he wants to see Ukraine become more self-reliant for its energy needs and farm out more powers to local government.

The precise recipe of policies to be pursued is subject of coalition negotiations.

Messages from Western governments congratulating Ukraine on its election pressed the reform theme further.

George Soros: Russia Poses Existential Threat to Europe

George Soros has warned that Russia’s expansionism poses an existential threat to the EU and called for greater material support for Ukraine.

The investor and philanthropist argues that Vladimir Putin’s mix of authoritarianism and aggressive nationalism represents an alternative model to western liberal democracies, referring to the admiration for the Russian president expressed by the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, the president of France’s Front National, Marine Le Pen, and Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

“Europe is facing a challenge from Russia to its very existence. Neither the European leaders nor their citizens are fully aware of this challenge or know how best to deal with it,” Soros writes in an article published in the New York Review of Books.

“Now Russia is presenting an alternative that poses a fundamental challenge to the values and principles on which the European Union was originally founded. It is based on the use of force that manifests itself in repression at home and aggression abroad, as opposed to the rule of law.”

Soros told the Guardian: “There is a general dissatisfaction with the EU as a result of the euro crisis, which has perverted the initial impetus for forming a union of like-minded democratic states. The euro crisis was mishandled and lasted a long time, and it turned a voluntary union of equals into something quite different.”

EU nominee bows to lawmakers' snub as Juncker team near complete

(Reuters) - The incoming head of the EU executive, Jean-Claude Juncker, was in urgent talks with Slovenia's prime minister on Thursday to find a replacement for the Slovenian who quit his team after a humiliating rejection by the European Parliament.

Party political wrangling, in both Ljubljana and Brussels, was holding up a new nomination from Slovenia for its seat on the 28-member European Commission after Alenka Bratusek withdrew as vice president-designate for energy.

Aides to Juncker said the process could disrupt a timetable by which the new executive is due to take office on Nov. 1. At a single plenary vote scheduled for Oct. 22, parliament must approve the whole Commission in order for it to take over.

"There is a risk that if these political discussions do not come to an end soon then the whole calendar will be extended," Juncker's spokesman Margaritis Schinas told a news conference.

Juncker said of Bratusek's resignation: "She is helping me to finalise the composition of the European Commission. I am in close contact with the prime minister of Slovenia ... and the leadership of the European Parliament."

EU and national party haggling played a role in Bratusek's downfall and continue to dog efforts to name a substitute, even as Juncker welcomed the patching up of a broad left-right coalition in parliament that saw the remainder of his 27 choices approved in a series of committee votes late on Wednesday.

Bratusek had always appeared vulnerable. As a former prime minister and a woman, she fitted a profile Juncker had favoured for a team he wants to focus on regaining the trust of voters who turned massively toward anti-EU parties at elections in May.

But having nominated herself while serving out her term as a caretaker following an election defeat, Bratusek lacked support from the new government in Ljubljana. And as a centrist, she had risked being caught in the crossfire between the two biggest groups in the EU legislature, the centre-right and centre-left.

A stumbling performance during her confirmation hearing before a parliamentary committee on Monday sealed her fate. In a non-binding committee ballot on Wednesday, lawmakers voted by an overwhelming 113-12 to ask Juncker not to give her a job.

U.S. pressing Turkey to join anti-IS coalition

The United States is pushing Turkey to join the fight against Islamic militants, amid frustration and wariness in both governments heightened by Ankara's unease at helping besieged Kurdish communities.

Retired US general John Allen, and the US pointman on Iraq, Brett McGurk, will Thursday begin two days of talks in Ankara seeking to squeeze commitments from Turkey on what role it will play in the US-led coalition battling hardline Islamic militants, who have seized control of a large swath of its southern neighbours Iraq and Syria.

"There is frustration and anger among the Americans, and yet at the same time, they realise that the Turks are in a difficult position," said Bayram Balci, an expert with the Carnegie think-tank in Washington.

"They know that the Turks have 'good reason' not to intervene," he added.

Syria-based Kurds are fighting against the Islamic State (IS) group in the besieged town of Kobane.

The Kurds, fighting with People's Defense Units (YPG), are affiliated with PKK militants who have fought the Turkish authorities for the last three decades in an insurgency that has claimed 40,000 lives.

Since the start of the Syrian civil war over three years ago to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey has been caught in the cross-hairs. It has taken in some 1.5 million Syrian refugees, and also sought to expel foreign fighters trying to cross into Syria.

But there is US dismay that, despite a parliamentary green light last week, Turkey has not yet committed its well-equipped and well-trained military to the fight.

Battle Between Isis and Syrian Kurds for Kobani sparks unrest in Turkey

Protesters take to the streets in Ankara. Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images

Fighting between Kurdish forces and Islamic State (Isis) militants for the Syrian border town of Kobani fuelled rising tensions inside Turkey on Tuesday as thousands of protesters took to the streets to voice anger and frustration about the inaction of the Ankara government.

In a graphic illustration of the domestic and regional impact of the deepening crisis, demonstrations turned violent and Turkish police used teargas and water cannon. Curfews were imposed on several towns in the province of Mardin.

Following a warning from the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, that Kobani was “about to fall”, one man was reported to have been killed by a bullet to the head in Varto in the eastern province of Mus when police allegedly fired live ammunition.

Erdoğan, speaking in the eastern city of Gaziantep, said that a ground operation was needed to defeat Isis – sidestepping accusations that he is unwilling to allow Kurds in Turkey to help their embattled kinfolk in Syria or to deploy the army across the border to fight Isis because of the country’s historic enmity towards Kurdish separatists – in addition to ongoing peace negotiations with them.

“I am telling the west – dropping bombs from the air will not provide a solution,” the president said to cheers from crowds of Syrian refugees in a speech that was translated into Arabic. Erdoğan also tested the readiness of the US, Britain, France and other allies by calling for a no-fly zone and a secure land zone as well as training for moderate Syrian rebels.

The Turkish parliament last week authorised the government to take military action against Isis. But Turkey has not announced plans for any operations, with Ankara apparently seeking a commitment from the west to move decisively against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, as well as the jihadis. Erdoğan said he wanted to fight both Isis and the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK).