organization:british foreign office

  • Britain stopped its « secret program » in Syria. - The peace news
    http://thepeacenews.com/britain-stopped-secret-program-syria

    La guerre (en #Syrie) : une bonne affaire. (Heureusement, c’est pas en France qu’on verrait des horreurs pareilles !)

    British newspaper The Times reported a report by Billy Kanber highlighting “Britain’s suspension of a secret aid program in Syria” after allegations that “the money that was paid to the contractor was very high and it was up to the so-called Mujahideen.”

    “The British Foreign Office suspended financial support for the £ 1 million project funded by the Adam Smith International Foundation,” the report said, adding that the project was intended to fund civilian police in Syria in areas controlled by moderate dissidents.

    “The funds that were supposed to fund the AJAX project were in the hands of the hardliners,” a BBC documentary said on Sunday.

    The Times separately saw leaked documents confirming that the British taxpayer was paying £ 850 a day to foreign workers working for the project, although none of them could ever go to Syria for security reasons.

    “Syrian citizens who worked in Syria for the project received only £ 68.50 per day,” the paper said.

    “The Ajax project, which began at the end of 2014 with funding from Britain and many other countries, aims to train and fund the Free Syrian Army police in Idlib and Aleppo,” the report writer said.

    “Britain contributed an estimated £ 13 billion,” he said.

    “The documents I have seen revealed that a Turkish employee stole from Ajax about US $ 45,000 in February, and the matter was pursued and only US $ 1400 was recovered.”

  • British PM May warns Netanyahu: Palestinian land-grab bill is unhelpful
    After Netanyahu announces vote on bill which would legalize expropriation of privately owned Palestinian land to go ahead, May says it will make things more difficult for Israel’s friends.
    By Barak Ravid | Feb. 6, 2017 | 8:09 PM
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.770065

    LONDON – British Prime Minister Theresa May told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that an Israeli bill legalizing the expropriation of privately owned Palestinian land is unhelpful and would make things more difficult for Israel’s friends around the world, Haaretz has learned.

    After his meeting with May on Monday afternoon, Netanyahu told reporters that the vote slated for Monday on the bill will go ahead as planned. He added that he had informed the White House of his intention of putting the legislation to a vote and said he will return from the U.K. on Monday night to participate.

    “I never said that I want to delay the vote on this law,” Netanyahu said. “I said that I will act according to our national interest. That requires that we do not surprise our friends and keep them updated – and the American administration was been updated.”

    Minutes before the meeting, May’s spokesman told the British press that the prime minister planned to tell Netanyahu she opposes settlement activity in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

    While Netanyahu said that May did raise the issue of construction in the settlements, he stressed that the issue “was not discussed in detail, to say the least.” He said he told her that the settlements are not an obstacle to peace and that preoccupation with them is a distraction from the main problems in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    At the start of their meeting, May told Netanyahu that the British government is committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu told May that he shares her desire for peace in the region, but avoided voicing an explicit support of the two-state solution.

    Netanyahu also asked May to stop the British Foreign Office from funding left-wing Israeli organizations, first and foremost the veterans’ group Breaking the Silence, which responded to Netanyahu’s remarks by saying the British government does not currently provide them with any funding.

    Netanyahu and May’s meeting was their first since May took office in July after her predecessor David Cameron stepped down over the results of the Brexit vote held the previous month. Besides the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the two leaders discussed Iran, the war in Syria and Israeli-British relations following the Brexit.

    The bill would allow the state to declare private Palestinian land on which settlements or outposts were built, “in good faith or at the state’s instruction” as government property, and deny its owners the right to use or hold those lands until there is a diplomatic resolution of the status of the territories.

    The purpose of the bill, the revised version says, is to “regulate settlement in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and allow its continued establishment and development.”

    The measure provides a mechanism for compensating Palestinians whose lands will be seized. A landowner can receive an annual usage payment of 125 percent of the land’s value as determined by an assessment committee for renewable periods of 20 years, or an alternate plot of land if this is possible, whichever he chooses.

  • Ce détail, au détour d’un article sur les comportements extrêmement partisans des journalistes qui couvrent Genève : The media war at Syria peace talks
    http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-syria-geneva-media-20160204-story.html

    Meanwhile, the opposition’s massive media support team, with professionals from a Washington-based public relations firm, the British Foreign Office and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, helped coordinate a steady flow of interviews with various opposition spokesmen well into the night. The Syrian government contingent struggled to keep up.

  • Two charts showing that ’deterring’ migrant boats is failing

    Late last year the Italian government scrapped its Mediterranean search and rescue operation the #Mare_Nostrum after funding shortages. The project was partially replaced by Operation #Triton - but the service is far more restricted than its predecessor, both in geography (the patrols only go up to 30 miles off the Italian coast) and budget (roughly a third of Mare Nostrum). Critics have said it could leave tens of thousands of migrants at far greater risk.

    The most common argument for the shift was deterrence. Previously, proponents argued, the migrants in the boats and their smugglers could be fairly certain that they would be rescued by one of Mare Nostrum’s ships.

    Baroness Anelay, British Foreign Office minister, argued at the time that such rescue missions only encouraged more people to make the treacherous journey.

    Yet if the ending of Mare Nostrum was intended to be a deterrent, so far it has failed. There has been a spike in the numbers of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean; to around 7,000 so far in 2015 from 3,338 in the same period in 2014, according to the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR (see chart below).

    http://www.irinnews.org/report/101142/two-charts-showing-that-deterring-migrant-boats-is-failing
    #graphique #migration #asile #réfugiés #Méditerranée #mourir_en_mer #statistiques #appel_d'air #dissuasion #2014 #2015

    cc @reka

  • #UK grants #Israel's Livni diplomatic immunity ahead of diplomatic visit
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/uk-grants-israels-livni-diplomatic-immunity-ahead-diplomatic-visi

    Israeli Justice Minister #Tzipi_Livni has been granted temporary diplomatic immunity for an upcoming visit to the United Kingdom, in order to protect her against arrest for her alleged war crimes, British media reported on Tuesday. The British Foreign Office confirmed it had granted “special mission” status to Livni, The Guardian wrote, ahead of a planned meeting between the Israeli politician and Foreign Office ministers in London. read more

    #Palestine #Top_News

  • UN, servants to the world - English edition
    http://mondediplo.com/blogs/un-servants-to-the-world

    It’s almost a century since it was proposed (by the British Foreign Office, not that they remember) that those sent to staff the League of Nations “are no longer servants of the country of which they are citizens”. The idea of an impartial international service, accountable to governments but working exclusively for the global good has proved both potent and fragile. It was Franklin Roosevelt’s favourite thing about the #United_Nations, where it was enshrined in the Charter; he told his inner circle he might resign the American presidency to run it.

    #ONU