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Venezuela faces ‘rocky future’ without dialogue, warns OAS chief
By Mick Krever, CNN
Venezuela faces a “rocky future” unless all parties can agree to dialogue, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
“The only way in which the deep economic and political crisis that is happening can be solved is either they get along, and they try to settle things through a dialogue, or the possibility of having some foreign mediation,” Insulza said.
The stand-off between Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the opposition is heading for a perfect storm, with worrying signs that the worst protests in a decade could eventually lead to total economic collapse.
In an interview with Amanpour in Caracas earlier this month, President Maduro said that Venezuela did not need outside mediation.
“I think what we need is cooperation,” Maduro said. “We are not in despair. Venezuelans have a long history, so we are able to listen to each other, to talk to each other.”
But the two sides aren't talking to each other, and now more than three dozen people are dead – most recently a 28-year-old woman shot in the head after her bus was stopped at an opposition barricade.
The OAS itself has come under criticism for its inability to intercede in the crisis.
The Great Escape that still inspires
By Lucky Gold
Russia's land grab in Crimea has heightened tensions throughout Eastern Europe, rekindling memories of World War II, when Stalin's Red Army carved up countries like Poland, and devoured them with its Axis partner, Nazi Germany.
Now imagine a world where one bright memory from that same dark time still quickens the blood in the cause of freedom.
Survivors gathered and flowers were laid to remember 70 years ago, when some 76 allied prisoners slipped out of their prisoner of war camp with forged documents and improvised civilian clothing – hoping to make it to freedom.
It was called the great escape, and it was famously depicted in the Hollywood blockbuster of 1963, starring Steve McQueen.
It showed how hundreds of prisoners of war planned and executed the daring breakout.
West should have put boots on the ground in Libya, says former prime minister
By Mick Krever, CNN
Western countries exercised “bad judgement” in failing to put troops on the ground during the Libyan revolution, Former Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview that aired Tuesday.
“There was bad judgement on [the] part of the West for not putting too many troops on the ground,” Zeidan said through an interpreter.
Amanpour clarified whether he believed that, in retrospect, he wished that the West had “put boots on the ground, forces to maintain security.”
“Any means to have security will be accepted in Libya,” he said. If Libya wants stability, “we should have forces that are part of the United Nations, regional or Middle Eastern troops, or countries that have relations or connections in Libya – and if this takes place under the international community, under the United Nations, it will be accepted.”
Three years after Moammar Gadhafi was forced from office and killed, control of Libya is largely in the grip of militias.
Zeidan himself was forced from office by a parliamentary vote earlier this month and fled the country.
He insists that he is still the prime minister.
Egyptian official urges mass death sentence be put ‘in perspective’
By Mick Krever, CNN
An Egyptian official urged on Tuesday that a death sentence for 528 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood be put “in perspective.”
The people in question were “implicated in acts of sabotage and violent offenses,” Salah Abdel Sadek, chairman of Egypt's State Information Service, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
“There is the right to challenge the verdict.”
An Egyptian court on Monday sentenced the defendants on charges related to violent riots in the southern Egyptian city of Minya last August, including the murder of a police officer, the country's official news agency said.
The riots took place after a deadly crackdown by security forces on two large sit-ins in Cairo, where demonstrators were supporting ousted President Mohammed Morsy.
Sadek insisted that the Egyptian judiciary is independent, free from interference of “executive authority.”
“Egypt does not have an independent judiciary”, Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution, and author of “Temptations of Power,” told Amanpour. “It’s a very politicized judiciary.”
'Unprecedented' oppression in Egypt
Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution tells Christiane Amanpour there is "bloodlust" in Egypt.
“And let’s recall [the judiciary] played a very active role in supporting the military coup on July 3rd [2013]. So we can’t treat Egypt as a normal democratic state, where there’s a separation of powers.”
Hamid called the decision the “largest mass death sentence in modern Egyptian history.”
Web extra: Despite Putin claim, Kosovo bears ‘no resemblance’ to case of Crimea, says former U.S. diplomat
By Mick Krever, CNN
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week cited the “well-known Kosovo precedent” in justifying his country’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
Strobe Talbott, who served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State during the Kosovo conflict, under U.S. President Bill Clinton, called that analogy “bizarre.”
“That couldn’t be further from the truth,” Tablott said.
“Kosovo, remember, was a Muslim-dominated part … of Serbia, where the central government – dominated by the Serbs – were carrying out acts of virtually genocide. They were certainly doing ethnic cleansing, they were massacring people.”
“And it was a result of that there was an international invention, an armed intervention, to stop the killing.”
It was only years later peace was brokered – brokered with the assistance of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Talbott said – that Kosovo gained independence from Serbia.
“It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the case of Crimea and Ukraine.”
‘Embarrassingly old math’ used to pinpoint plane route
By Mick Krever, CNN
The implementation may have been new, but the technique a British satellite company used to say that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean is “embarrassingly old math,” Inmarsat Senior Vice President Chris McLaughlin told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
“It’s a technique for the first time, but the technology is ancient,” he said. “It’s a method of trigonometry.”
“It’s not a new technology. It’s an old technology. It’s called science.”
Why then, Amanpour asked, had it taken so long to report this information?
“We reported on the Tuesday the 11th our suggestion of the north/south route,” he said.
“It is an immensely complicated thing to have to go into the network and look at other flights and build a picture, and that has taken the last six or seven days, which our engineers have been working very hard on to create a model. It hasn’t been done before.”
Click above to watch the whole interview, and hear how McLaughlin says issues like this could be solved “tomorrow.”
Russian standoff in ‘11th hour,’ says first post-Soviet Russian foreign minister
By Mick Krever, CNN
The standoff between Russia, Ukraine, and the West has reached the “eleventh hour,” Andrei Kozyrev, the first post-Soviet Russian foreign minister, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
“The [stakes are] still very, very high,” he said. “Let me just remind whoever concerned that Russia is still [a] nuclear superpower. So the [stakes] might be life and death. And maybe sooner than somebody is thinking.”
“It’s [the] eleventh hour for Russians, and for anybody else, to reconsider.”
A week after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, there is still considerable concern and uncertainty about what Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next move might be.
Russian military forces are massed along Ukraine’s eastern border. NATO’s top military official called them “very, very sizable and very, very ready.”
Ready for what exactly is not clear.
“We can only guess what actually happens next,” Kozyrev said. “It’s very much an impromptu kind of show.”
Journalists join campaign in support of press freedom
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ61sxkMh8M?rel=0&w=430&h=242%5D
With Al Jazeera journalists on trial in Egypt, news presenters around the world - including CNN's Christiane Amanpour - join a campaign in support of freedom on the press. Click above to watch.
Crimea is just Putin’s ‘opening game,’ says Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt
By Mick Krever, CNN
Russia’s annexation of Crimea could be just the first move in President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical chess match with Ukraine, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
“I think that Crimea is the opening game,” he said. “It is not that President Putin is primarily interested in Crimea. He is interested in Ukraine.”
“If you read carefully what President Putin said in his big speech in the Kremlin the day before yesterday, what he says there about sort of historical claims and those sorts of things, apply not only to Crimea but also to southern parts of Ukraine.”
“That is where we should be extremely alert at the risk of President Putin moving further, even militarily, beyond Crimea.”
Bildt: Putin's agenda is Kiev, not Crimea
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tells Amanpour he believes President Putin is playing a "long game" for Ukraine.
And in terms of his play for influence in Ukraine, Bildt thinks Putin’s goals know few bounds.
“I’m pretty convinced that his real agenda is not Crimea, but Kiev.”
“I think he is prepared to use both economic measures, subversion, destabilizing issues, [and] economic issues – but at the end of the day what we have seen during the last few weeks is that he is also prepared to use military instruments. And that is what is scary and what is deeply worrying.”
It may not happen immediately, Bildt said, but Putin is “prepared to play this long.”
WFP Director Ertharin Cousin: C.A.R. 'teetering on the brink of a catastrophic humanitarian disaster'
By Ertharin Cousin, United Nations World Food Programme
Ertharin Cousin is the Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme which is currently providing food assistance to 300,000 people affected by the crisis in the Central African Republic. She has just concluded a two-day fact-finding visit to the country.
People often laugh when I say I like to meet smiling, chubby babies when I’m out looking at World Food Programme operations in the field. But it’s true. A happy, healthy baby is the most obvious sign that we’re getting things right.
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that we are going to get things right all of the time, everywhere in the world. The desperate situation I’ve witnessed these past few days in the Central African Republic shows the dangers of ignoring the warning signals for far too long.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89C_tHG-LuE?rel=0&w=430&h=242%5D
It is not overstating the facts to say that C.A.R is teetering on the brink of a catastrophic humanitarian disaster. A political crisis aggravated the already fractious relationship between Christian and Muslim communities and exploded into inter-communal fighting that has driven hundreds of thousands from their homes.
In the past 48 hours I’ve seen the human impact of this tragic conflagration and it is etched on the faces of the children who have been innocently drawn in to a conflict being fought between marauding groups of young men, armed with machetes, knives and automatic rifles.
Too many have already been killed in this crisis, but the biggest danger stalking the young in C.A.R at the moment is malnutrition. At a health centre, just outside the capital, Bangui, I met two children who exemplified different sides of this evolving humanitarian disaster.
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