Ukraine's EU Deal: 'Not A Good Day For Russia'

Beyond all the bickering over the EU presidency, a bit of history was being made at the summit in Brussels on Friday.

Three former states of the USSR - Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova - signed association agreements with the European Union, formally shifting their countries away from their Soviet past, towards a new, European future.

For Ukraine, this is the culmination of what so many fought for on the Maidan - the local name for the popular uprising in Kiev, which removed president Victor Yanukovych from power.

It was his refusal to sign this very same EU trade deal in November that brought the first of the protesters onto the streets, triggering a movement against a presidency many saw as corrupt and leading their country back to its old Kremlin masters.

The EU flag became one of the symbols of the protest - they flew it from the barricades and wrapped it around themselves - demanding what they saw as European human rights: justice, democracy, and the rule of law.

Petro Poroshenko (R) and EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy shake hands

For all of the sentiment expressed by British politicians of late, it's worth remembering what the European Union means to so many of those beyond its borders in the east of the continent.

I remember one man telling me he considered himself middle class - that he had a nice apartment, a nice car, plenty to lose.

But he wanted a future for his children and grandchildren that would be fairer - that would not be subject to the whim of local bureaucrats or the ability to grease the right palms.

He was realistic about the short-term pain that would follow, but he said it would be worth it.

He wanted a 'European' future for his children.

Of course the reality will not be utopian.

The security situation in the East is deteriorating, Kiev insists, fuelled by the Kremlin.

A ceasefire is supposedly in place in Ukraine

Despite the ceasefire supposedly in place, on Thursday night four Ukrainian servicemen were killed, five wounded, in fighting near Kramatorsk.

The United Nations' refugee agency says 110,000 people have fled across the border into Russia since the start of the year.

The national finances are in a parlous state: the currency has fallen 45% since January, the price of Russian gas is rocketing, and that's before Moscow has enacted the "grave consequences" its deputy foreign minister warned would follow.

For Russia this has not been a good day.

Mr Putin wanted Ukraine to join his own Eurasian Customs Union - watching this 'brotherly nation' instead publicly wrenching itself from the Kremlin's sphere of influence is deeply troubling.

This is not just about losing Ukraine to Europe - it's the prospect of the EU, and with it the old Cold War bogeyman of Nato, expanding East, right up to Russia's border.

Ukraine's success, or otherwise, will depend on Russia's reaction, and western politicians' resolve.

But Friday was an important day - "perhaps the most important day", said President Petro Poroshenko, in the country's post-independence history, "a symbol of faith, and unbreakable will".

He will need both in the months to come.

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Ukraine Risks Russian Wrath By Signing EU Deal

Ukraine's president has signed a trade pact with the EU, seven months after his predecessor set off a crisis in the country by backing out of the same deal.

Petro Poroshenko said it may be "most important day" for Ukraine since it became independent from the Soviet Union.

But the deal has angered Russia, which, according to the Reuters news agency, warned of "grave consequences".

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would take measures to protect its economy if it is negatively affected by the pact.

Shortly after returning to Kiev from Brussels where he signed the pact, Mr Poroshenko announced on his website that Ukraine had extended a ceasefire by government forces against pro-Russian rebels by 72 hours until 10pm on Monday.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a ceasefire to allow talks between Kiev and the rebels.

Mr Poroshenko gives a thumbs up to Angela Merkel at a meeting in Brussels

In Brussels, two other former Soviet republics, Georgia and Moldova, also signed agreements with the EU.

The deals mean businesses whose goods and practices meet EU standards will be able to trade freely in any union country without tariffs.

"Over the last months, Ukraine paid the highest possible price to make her European dreams come true," said Mr Poroshenko, who claimed to have signed the Association Agreement with the same pen his predecessor would have used.

"It's absolutely a new perspective for my country."

Alongside the deal is a long-term plan for Ukraine to adopt EU product regulations, modernise its economy and strengthen the rule of law and independent courts.

Moscow previously warned Ukraine that signing the deal could end its free trade arrangement with Russia.

Meanwhile, the UN's refugee agency reported a sharp rise in the number of people fleeing eastern Ukraine.

More than 16,000 people have fled their homes in the past week, bringing the number of displaced within the country to 54,000.

A decision by former president Viktor Yanukovych last November to turn his back on Europe in favour of closer ties with Russia prompted violent protests on the streets of Kiev.

Mr Yanukovych was eventually ousted in February, before the crisis that saw Russia annexe Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

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Obama Seeks $500m To Support Syria's Rebels

President Barack Obama is seeking $500m from US lawmakers to train and equip "vetted" Syrian rebels, the White House says.

Mr Obama has been under pressure from some lawmakers to bolster assistance to moderate Syrian insurgents. 

If approved, the budget request would mark the first open US military involvement in the Syrian conflict, which began three years ago.

There is already a covert CIA training programme for the rebels, US officials have previously confirmed. 

A prime White House concern has been weaponry ending up in jihadist hands

The $500m is part of a broader $66bn overseas operations request sent by the administration to Congress on Thursday.

White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an emailed statement the money would go towards "appropriately vetted elements" of the opposition.

"These funds would help defend the Syrian people," she wrote, "stabilize areas under opposition control, facilitate the provision of essential services, counter terrorist threats, and promote conditions for a negotiated settlement." 

The insurgency in neighbouring Iraq had focused minds in the administration

It is not clear what type of military equipment would be included under the request.

US officials last year said they had begun shipping small-arms ammunition, as well as non-lethal assistance, to the rebels.

But the administration balked at opposition requests for portable anti-aircraft missiles.

A prime concern for the White House has been that such weaponry could wind up in the hands of jihadists.

Syria's moderate rebels are waging a war on two fronts - against the forces of President Bashar al Assad and Islamist militants.

The Obama administration has renewed its focus on Syria's conflict in recent weeks as it fans an al Qaeda-inspired insurgency in neighbouring Iraq.

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Suarez Gran Sticks Boot Into 'Barbaric' Fifa

The grandmother of footballer Luis Suarez says he has been victimised and treated barbarically, sobbing: "They chucked him out of there like a dog."

Lila Piriz Da Rosa, who has 22 grand-children, wept as she accused the authorities of having "their eyes on him" from the start of the World Cup.

She said: "Everyone knows what they've done to Luis. They wanted him out of the World Cup.

"Perfect, they did it. They chucked him out of there like a dog."

Giorgio Chiellini shows the bite mark

Speaking from Suarez's birthtown in Salto, north-west Uraguay, she added: "This was on purpose. I'm his granny and I love my boy loads.

"They had their eyes on him to see what he does. It's barbaric what they've done to him."

Yesterday, world soccer's governing body Fifa suspended Suarez from all football-related activity for four months.

Suarez holds his teeth after the biting episode

He was also banned from playing in Uruguay's next nine competitive games for biting Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini.

Suarez wears his family affections on his sleeve and was flying home on Thursday. He moved to Montevideo when he was six.

About 500 fans gathered outside Montevideo's Carrasco international airport to express solidarity with Suarez and chant his name.

Some had been waiting for hours, waving Uruguay flags, posters of Suarez and replicas of the World Cup trophy.

Airport authorities said, however, that he was to be whisked out privately and to his home in the coastal resort of Solymar, about 25 miles outside Montevideo.

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US Troops Arrive In Baghdad On ISIS Mission

The first team of American military advisers has arrived in Iraq to help the country tackle the threat from Islamist insurgents.

About 40 of the 300 expected to be deployed to the Middle Eastern country were described by the Pentagon as having "started their mission".

Admiral John Kirby told reporters that two "initial assessment teams" have been deployed in Baghdad.

He said their role would be to assess the Iraqi army and not to engage in attacks on militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who have seized several towns north of Baghdad.

Admiral Kirby said: "This isn't about rushing to the rescue.

"These teams will assess the cohesiveness and readiness of the Iraqi security forces ... and examine the most effective and efficient way to introduce follow-on advisers."

Pentagon spokesman Admiral John Kirby

In addition to the first 40, about 90 troops are thought to have arrived to set up a joint operations centre. Another 50 are expected to join them shortly.

It came as Iraqi air strikes killed at least 38 people in their battle to hold off the advancing ISIS forces.

Militants had launched a push to seize Iraq's largest oil refinery, located near Baiji, but the attack was repelled.

The refinery provides up to 50% of Iraq's demand for petroleum products until it stopped production as Sunni fighters launched attacks on the site.

Jihadists from ISIS have overrun several towns and cities in the north of the country.

Security forces, who turned and ran when the invasion started, are struggling to hold ground.

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Passenger Dies As Gunmen Fire At Landing Plane

A woman passenger has been killed after gunmen opened fire at a plane landing at Peshawar airport in Pakistan.

Five bullets hit the Pakistan International Airlines aircraft as it was about to touch down at the airport in the country's volatile northwest.

A female passenger on board the plane died in hospital, said Mashood Tajwar, a spokesman for the airline.

Two other people were also wounded on board the flight, which was on its way from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia with more than 170 passengers on board.

Mr Tajwar told AFP: "The shots were fired from outside the airport, one lady passenger and two stewards were wounded, the woman later died in the hospital." 

Peshawar airport is in the volatile northwest of the country

Authorities were scouring the area around the airport to find whoever was responsible.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but suspicion is likely to fall on militants that the government has been fighting in the country's northwest.

On June 15, the military launched an operation against militants using the country's North Waziristan tribal area to attack targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

More than 300 people described by the government as militants have been killed.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees have poured out of North Waziristan since the operation started.

People across Pakistan have been bracing for reprisal attacks ever since the operation started.

The operation came after the Pakistani Taliban and an Uzbek militant group attacked the hospital in the southern port city of Karachi.

During the audacious attack, gunmen battled with airport security and other law enforcement authorities for roughly five hours.

The mayhem at Pakistan's largest airport shocked the country and raised questions about the security of other airports around the country.

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Jihadist's Mother Pleads For Him To Return Home

Faith Lost In Iraq PM Amid Political Limbo

Updated: 5:46pm UK, Friday 20 June 2014

By Sam Kiley, Foreign Affairs Editor, in Baghdad

The US President, Shia politicians, Sunni chieftans and none other than the Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani has joined the clamour for Iraq's Prime Minister to move fast and form a government.

The nation has languished since elections on April 30 in a political limbo that arguably undermined faith in the central government, even among the Shia-dominated armed forces.

That might, partly, explain their rapid collapse in the face of far fewer forces from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) plus their allies.

But now that Iraq's supreme court has ratified the results of the elections what possible reason could Nouri al Maliki have for delay?

One explanation may simply be political.

His stewardship over previous years has entrenched sectarian divisions and seen an explosion in corruption.

His party bloc won 92 of the 328 seats in Iraq's parliament and he'll need 165 to form a coalition administration.

He, therefore, has to get involved in some serious horse trading with other Shia parties to build his coalition.

But they are now losing faith in him. Particularly in his apparent refusal to reach out to Sunni parties and offer them stakes in the central government - such as a security portfolio and a ministry which would give them access to patronage systems such as an education or public works - so that they feel both secure and that they have an investment in the future political structures.

A more conspiratorial thesis, fuelled by the conspiratorial utterances of lame duck ministers left over from the previous administration, is that Iraq's latest travails are the fault of external forces.

Jordan, Saudi Arabia (both Sunni countries), the US and others are being blamed for manipulating the Middle East and somehow creating ISIS.

There is evidence of Saudi individual, and possible state funding, for extremist militant groups in Syria, which may include ISIS.

And Jordan has played a significant role in trying to boost the fortunes of the non-extremist Free Syrian Army.

But Mr al Maliki may have calculated that he can either weather the latest storm - or let ISIS form an impoverished caliphate in the desert north of his country which would leave the Shia with Baghdad and the south.

It's the south, after all, that holds the lion's share of the world's second largest oil reserves.

It can ship its oil out through the Gulf, via Kuwait, or via Iran.

A Shia state or semi-state would not only be self-sufficient - it would be spared the burden of sharing Iraq's spoils with other sectarian groups like the Sunni and the Kurds (who already have their own autonomy and oil industry).

Such a move, or allowing events to drift to this reality, would place the south of Iraq firmly inside Iran's imperial embrace.

That is not something that Saudi Arabia would be able to tolerate in the long term as it vies with Iran for influence in the Middle East.

Nor is it anything that a rump Sunni 'caliphate' would be able to live with - the extremists within it would forever plot how to steal it back by force.

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'Spread Of Terror' Fears As ISIS Tightens Grip

Faith Lost In Iraq PM Amid Political Limbo

Updated: 5:46pm UK, Friday 20 June 2014

By Sam Kiley, Foreign Affairs Editor, in Baghdad

The US President, Shia politicians, Sunni chieftans and none other than the Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani has joined the clamour for Iraq's Prime Minister to move fast and form a government.

The nation has languished since elections on April 30 in a political limbo that arguably undermined faith in the central government, even among the Shia-dominated armed forces.

That might, partly, explain their rapid collapse in the face of far fewer forces from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) plus their allies.

But now that Iraq's supreme court has ratified the results of the elections what possible reason could Nouri al Maliki have for delay?

One explanation may simply be political.

His stewardship over previous years has entrenched sectarian divisions and seen an explosion in corruption.

His party bloc won 92 of the 328 seats in Iraq's parliament and he'll need 165 to form a coalition administration.

He, therefore, has to get involved in some serious horse trading with other Shia parties to build his coalition.

But they are now losing faith in him. Particularly in his apparent refusal to reach out to Sunni parties and offer them stakes in the central government - such as a security portfolio and a ministry which would give them access to patronage systems such as an education or public works - so that they feel both secure and that they have an investment in the future political structures.

A more conspiratorial thesis, fuelled by the conspiratorial utterances of lame duck ministers left over from the previous administration, is that Iraq's latest travails are the fault of external forces.

Jordan, Saudi Arabia (both Sunni countries), the US and others are being blamed for manipulating the Middle East and somehow creating ISIS.

There is evidence of Saudi individual, and possible state funding, for extremist militant groups in Syria, which may include ISIS.

And Jordan has played a significant role in trying to boost the fortunes of the non-extremist Free Syrian Army.

But Mr al Maliki may have calculated that he can either weather the latest storm - or let ISIS form an impoverished caliphate in the desert north of his country which would leave the Shia with Baghdad and the south.

It's the south, after all, that holds the lion's share of the world's second largest oil reserves.

It can ship its oil out through the Gulf, via Kuwait, or via Iran.

A Shia state or semi-state would not only be self-sufficient - it would be spared the burden of sharing Iraq's spoils with other sectarian groups like the Sunni and the Kurds (who already have their own autonomy and oil industry).

Such a move, or allowing events to drift to this reality, would place the south of Iraq firmly inside Iran's imperial embrace.

That is not something that Saudi Arabia would be able to tolerate in the long term as it vies with Iran for influence in the Middle East.

Nor is it anything that a rump Sunni 'caliphate' would be able to live with - the extremists within it would forever plot how to steal it back by force.

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Italy: Pope Denounces 'Evil' Crime Syndicate

Pope Francis has described an Italian crime syndicate as "the adoration of evil", adding Mafiosi "are excommunicated".

He was speaking about the 'ndrangheta group during a Mass in southern Italy.

It was the strongest attack on organised crime since the late Pope John Paul hit out at the Sicilian Mafia in 1993.

Francis made the comments after meeting the father and two grandmothers of a murdered three-year-old in the courtyard of a prison in the town of Castrovillari.

Coco' Campolongo was shot along with one of his grandfathers and the grandfather's companion in an attack blamed on drug turf wars in the nearby Cassano allo Ionio.

The father was in prison at the time of the killings in January. 

The Pope greets residents of Cassano allo Ionio

The gunmen also torched the car with the three victims inside. The Pope publicly expressed his horror at the attack and promised to visit the town.

Francis embraced the father, who asked him to pray for the boy's mother, who was said to be under house arrest.

According to a Vatican spokesman, Francis told him: "May children never again have to suffer in this way."

"The two grandmothers were weeping like fountains," the spokesman added.

Calabria is the power base of the 'ndrangheta, a global drug trafficking syndicate whose activities also include extortion and blackmail.

After greeting 200 male and female inmates at the prison, Francis met patients at a hospice and had lunch with underprivileged people and drugs addicts at a rehabilitation facility.

The 77-year-old appeared to be coping well despite the hectic schedule and scorching temperatures.

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MI6 Fears 300 Islamist Fighters Back In UK

Faith Lost In Iraq PM Amid Political Limbo

Updated: 5:46pm UK, Friday 20 June 2014

By Sam Kiley, Foreign Affairs Editor, in Baghdad

The US President, Shia politicians, Sunni chieftans and none other than the Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani has joined the clamour for Iraq's Prime Minister to move fast and form a government.

The nation has languished since elections on April 30 in a political limbo that arguably undermined faith in the central government, even among the Shia-dominated armed forces.

That might, partly, explain their rapid collapse in the face of far fewer forces from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) plus their allies.

But now that Iraq's supreme court has ratified the results of the elections what possible reason could Nouri al Maliki have for delay?

One explanation may simply be political.

His stewardship over previous years has entrenched sectarian divisions and seen an explosion in corruption.

His party bloc won 92 of the 328 seats in Iraq's parliament and he'll need 165 to form a coalition administration.

He, therefore, has to get involved in some serious horse trading with other Shia parties to build his coalition.

But they are now losing faith in him. Particularly in his apparent refusal to reach out to Sunni parties and offer them stakes in the central government - such as a security portfolio and a ministry which would give them access to patronage systems such as an education or public works - so that they feel both secure and that they have an investment in the future political structures.

A more conspiratorial thesis, fuelled by the conspiratorial utterances of lame duck ministers left over from the previous administration, is that Iraq's latest travails are the fault of external forces.

Jordan, Saudi Arabia (both Sunni countries), the US and others are being blamed for manipulating the Middle East and somehow creating ISIS.

There is evidence of Saudi individual, and possible state funding, for extremist militant groups in Syria, which may include ISIS.

And Jordan has played a significant role in trying to boost the fortunes of the non-extremist Free Syrian Army.

But Mr al Maliki may have calculated that he can either weather the latest storm - or let ISIS form an impoverished caliphate in the desert north of his country which would leave the Shia with Baghdad and the south.

It's the south, after all, that holds the lion's share of the world's second largest oil reserves.

It can ship its oil out through the Gulf, via Kuwait, or via Iran.

A Shia state or semi-state would not only be self-sufficient - it would be spared the burden of sharing Iraq's spoils with other sectarian groups like the Sunni and the Kurds (who already have their own autonomy and oil industry).

Such a move, or allowing events to drift to this reality, would place the south of Iraq firmly inside Iran's imperial embrace.

That is not something that Saudi Arabia would be able to tolerate in the long term as it vies with Iran for influence in the Middle East.

Nor is it anything that a rump Sunni 'caliphate' would be able to live with - the extremists within it would forever plot how to steal it back by force.

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