Brussels—EU leaders have agreed to enter world
climate talks arguing that poorer nations will
need 100 billion euros a year by 2020 to tackle
global warming, but failed to set levels for
Europe’s contribution, a draft text said Friday.
“The EU is ready to take its fair share of the
global effort by setting an ambi-tious
mitigation target, allowing for offsets and
providing its fair share of public support,”
said the text, drafted for a summit in Brussels,
without saying how big that share might be. “The
European Council endorses the (EU) commission
estimate that the total net incremental costs of
mitigation and adaptation in developing
countries could amount to around 100 billion
euros annually by 2020,” the draft said.
Moscow—Moscow and Washington want to reach a
deal on a key nuclear disarmament treaty before
US President Barack Obama receives his Nobel
Peace Prize on December 10, a Kremlin source was
quoted as saying Friday. The source, quoted in
the Kommersant daily, said the Obama
administration wanted to sign an agreement on
replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
(START) before the Nobel ceremony and that
Moscow was willing to oblige.
Mogadishu—A Somali pirate claiming to speak on
behalf of a group holding a British couple says
they will move the couple to another hijacked
ship with other hostages anchored off the
eastern coast of Somalia. Abdinor, who
identified himself only by his first name, says
Paul and Rachel Chandler are healthy and Somali
pirates took them to rest on land Thursday night
at the coastal town of Harardhere. He said
Friday they have yet to make a ransom demand.
Paris—Former French president Jacques Chirac is
to be tried on allega-tions that he gave 21
political allies false contracts as ghost
workers in Paris city hall, his office announced
on Friday. The office of the 76-year-old
Gaullist — who is once more France’s most
popular politician two-and-half years after he
left office — said he was “calm and de-termined”
to prove his innocence. Before serving as
president, Chirac was mayor of Paris from 1977
to 1995, and stands accused of using the city
pay roll to provide salaries for aides who were
in reality working for his right-wing political
party. As head of state between 1995 and 2007 he
enjoyed immunity from prosecution, but will now
become France’s first former president to face
trial.
THE former Marine officer Matthew Hoh, who
resigned his Foreign Service post in Afghanistan
because he feels the war is pointless and not
worth dying for, de-serves all the attention
he’s gotten and more. The Obama administration
faces hard decisions there, and the man made a
good case against deeper American involvement.
He says that our presence among the Pashtun
people, the rural, religious people, is only
aggravating a civil war between them and the
urban, secular (and, it seems, fraudulent)
government of Kabul, and the role of the Taleban
and al-Qaeda is not central - the real issues
are tribal and cultural.
