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Merkel calls Putin again on Ukraine
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the second time in two days on Thursday to discuss how to help resolve the crisis in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin said.
The call took place “at the initiative of the German side” and touched on questions of “monitoring observance of the ceasefire between the sides in conflict, the necessity of extending the truce, the establishment of regular work by the contact group and the freeing of people being forcibly detained”, the Kremlin said.
A German government spokesman confirmed that the call had taken place, with the aim of finding a way to prolong the Ukrainian government’s ceasefire, due to expire at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT) on Friday.
Interfax news agency said Ukrainian rebels had agreed to take part in further peace talks in Donetsk on Friday.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Paris on Thursday that it was “critical for Russia to show in the next hours, literally, that they’re moving to help disarm the separatists, to encourage them to disarm … and to begin to become part of a legitimate process”.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has suggested that he expected a repeat of a four-way call on Wednesday in which he and French President Francois Hollande joined Merkel and Putin.
Western powers have been pressing Putin to rein in the well-equipped but often disunited Russian-speaking militant groups who have taken up arms against the Kiev government, and have threatened to impose more sanctions if he fails to do so.
Putin strenuously denies equipping or abetting the rebels, but has made clear that he sees himself as the defender of the Russian-speaking minority in the industrial east, many of whom say they have been alienated by a wave of Ukrainian nationalism since Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovich was toppled in February.
Putin also drew Merkel’s attention to the worsening humanitarian situation in eastern Ukraine, where some areas have no power or water, and to the flow of refugees to Russian territory – 40,000 of which Russia says have been put into dedicated shelters.
Some of the main rebel groups agreed on Monday to hold their fire until Friday morning, in a meeting attended by former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma as well as representatives of Russia and the Organisation on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
However, there has been no indication that this “contact group” has met again, while dozens of breaches of the ceasefire, including the shooting down of a helicopter, have put pressure on Poroshenko to call the ceasefire off.
Kuchma on Thursday pressed for another meeting of the contact group soon, according to Interfax.
“At a time when the three-way contact group is ready to find a way to secure peace, consultations have not begun, no signals have come from the other (rebel) side,” he said.
Sources close to Viktor Medvedchuk, a leader of the pro-Russian lobby in Ukrainian politics who took part in Monday’s talks, said, however, that the “contact group” was likely to meet again on Friday.
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Merkel calls Putin again on Ukraine
Kerry tells Russia to disarm Ukraine separatists 'in hours'
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on Russia on Thursday to disarm separatists in Ukraine within “the next hours” as the European Union prepared to discuss deeper sanctions against Moscow.
Washington and other Western powers have stepped up pressure on Russia to take concrete action to defuse the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where a ceasefire between Russian-speaking rebels and government forces has appeared to be crumbling.
“We are in full agreement that it is critical for Russia to show in the next hours, literally, that they’re moving to help disarm the separatists, to encourage them to disarm, to call on them to lay down their weapons and to begin to become part of a legitimate process,” Kerry told reporters in Paris.
He added that EU leaders would discuss possible sanctions on Russia at their summit in Belgium on Friday.
Washington has said it also has new sanctions ready to go, but Kerry said the United States would prefer not to be in “sanctions mode” and wanted Russia to take action without pressure.
“We would like to see a cooperative effort between the United States, Europe and Russia and the Ukrainians,” Kerry added.
Separatist rebellions erupted in eastern Ukraine in early April after street protests in Kiev toppled Moscow-backed leader Viktor Yanukovich, and Russia in turn annexed the Crimean peninsula. Eastern rebels have called for union with Russia. Moscow denies Western accusations that it has allowed fighters to cross into Ukraine along with heavy weapons to confront Ukrainian government forces.
The proposed next round of U.S. and EU sanctions would target Russia’s financial, defense and high-tech industries, said U.S. officials.
MIDDLE EAST CONFLICTS
Kerry is on a tour of capitals in the Middle East and Europe to discuss Ukraine, as well as the threat to stability in the Middle East from conflicts in Iraq and Syria.
He will meet foreign ministers from the UAE, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in Paris on Thursday. Earlier he met Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
The rapid advance of Sunni militants across Iraq threatens to split the country and bring more turmoil into a region already hit by the civil war in Syria.
Kerry travels to Saudi Arabia on Friday for talks with King Abdullah in Jeddah. The United States and Saudi Arabia have both been alarmed by the success of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, in Iraq.
U.S. officials have said Kerry will also discuss the possibility of disruptions to global oil supplies from the Iraq crisis during his meetings in Paris and Jeddah.
Brent crude held steady near $114 a barrel on Thursday as traders watched for possible oil supply disruptions. Iraq’s southern oilfields, which produce most of the nation’s 3.3 million barrels a day, remain safe although the conflict has hit the Baiji refinery in the north.
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Kerry tells Russia to disarm Ukraine separatists 'in hours'
China says still trying to evacuate workers from Iraq
China said on Thursday that it was still trying to evacuate a small number of Chinese workers from Iraq, and that it was closely coordinating with the Iraqi government to ensure their safety.
The state-run Beijing Youth Daily, citing unidentified sources, said that more than 1,000 workers for a Chinese machinery company were trapped at a power station and that the Iraqi army had turned some of them away as their bus approached Baghdad.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said it was not true that Iraq was not helping with evacuations, though she declined to confirm or deny the report about the trapped workers.
There are more than 10,000 Chinese workers in Iraq and the “vast majority” are in safe areas, with only a small number in more dangerous parts of the country, Hua told a daily news briefing.
“We are closely coordinating with the Iraqi side to provide security guarantees for the evacuation of these people and ensure that the relevant evacuations can go smoothly,” she said.
“The coordination and communication between China’s embassy in Iraq and the Iraqi government and army is smooth. Our embassy in Iraq is in close touch with the relevant Iraqi bodies to ensure workers at Chinese companies can safety, smoothly and in a timely way be evacuated to safe places,” Hua added.
“Because of security considerations, our first consideration is to ensure these people can be evacuated in a timely manner. I’m sorry but I cannot give any other details.”
PetroChina, the single biggest investor in Iraq’s oil sector, has said that it is pulling some of its staff out of the country but production was unaffected as militant Islamists threaten the unity of OPEC’s second-largest producer.
China is Iraq’s largest oil client, and its state energy firms, which also include Sinopec Group and CNOOC Ltd, together hold more than a fifth of Iraq’s oil projects after securing some of its fields through auctions in 2009.
China has repeatedly expressed concern about the upsurge in violence in Iraq and the march of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which has seized much of the north of the country as Baghdad’s forces there collapsed.
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China says still trying to evacuate workers from Iraq
Japan's KDDI, SoftBank say NTT's broadband plan risks monopoly revival
Japan’s KDDI Corp and SoftBank Corp said bigger rival NTT DoCoMo Inc (DoCoMo) could gain too much control of the wireless telecommunications business should DoCoMo’s parent offer its fibre-optic broadband for resale.
Former state monopoly Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT) in May said it planned to sell its fibre-optic broadband to mobile phone network providers, which can then re-brand the service and sell it together with mobile phone contracts.
At present, NTT sells its fibre-optic broadband independently or in partnership with SoftBank, whereas KDDI offers its own service. Of Japan’s three mobile network providers, only DoCoMo lacks a fibre-optic component.
But NTT selling DoCoMo the service risks reviving the former monopoly of NTT, which is still 36 percent government owned, KDDI and SoftBank said separately. NTT has dismissed the notion.
“The current law doesn’t say anything specifically on wholesale schemes. But one wonders, just because it doesn’t say anything, whether it should be allowed to go ahead,” KDDI Chief Executive Takashi Tanaka said after a news conference on Wednesday.
KDDI earlier this month sent a letter of complaint to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) saying NTT and DoCoMo could end up controlling broadband prices, “leading to a loss of incentives for competitors to invest in infrastructure.”
DoCoMo, 63 percent-owned by NTT, last week said it planned to bundle mobile and NTT broadband services but did not disclose pricing.
Any sales of the package is likely to hurt KDDI as that company’s revenue growth over the past few quarters has been largely driven by its “Smart Value” broadband and mobile bundles, said analyst Peter Milliken of Deutsche Bank in a recent report.
SoftBank said NTT could violate anti-monopoly regulations by offering its fibre-optic broadband for resale without making the terms of any resulting arrangements public.
“The terms of usage should be made clear, so that METI and competitors can check it’s (NTT) not breaking the law,” SoftBank said in a document released earlier this month by METI.
NTT has dismissed any notion of monopolistic practices.
“Of course, we’ll be fair,” Hiroshi Tsujigami, NTT senior vice president of corporate strategy planning, said in a recent interview with Reuters.
“From our position, we want more people to use the fibre network, so we’ll rent it based on the traditional competitive rules.”
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Japan's KDDI, SoftBank say NTT's broadband plan risks monopoly revival
IBM, Lenovo server deal in limbo over security worries: WSJ
International Business Machines Corp’s proposed $2.3 billion sale of its low-end server business to China’s Lenovo Group is in limbo as the U.S. government investigates national security issues, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
U.S. security officials and members of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) are worried that IBM’s x86 servers used in communications networks and in data centers supporting the Pentagon’s networks could be accessed remotely by Chinese spies or compromised, the newspaper reported.
The long-expected acquisition in January came nearly a decade after Lenovo bought IBM’s money-losing ThinkPad business for $1.75 billion, which had also faced scrutiny.
Government officials are also uneasy about the potential sale of servers that may be clustered together to perform like a powerful computer, the report said.
IBM and Lenovo are trying to address CFIUS concerns about server maintenance and have said that IBM will provide maintenance on Lenovo’s behalf “for an extended period” after the sale, the sources told The Wall Street Journal.
IBM and Lenovo have refiled their application for approval of the deal to buy more time, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.
Chinese companies faced the most scrutiny over their U.S. acquisitions in 2012, according to a CFIUS report issued in December.
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IBM, Lenovo server deal in limbo over security worries: WSJ
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