David Cameron accuses Jeremy Corbyn of being ‘terrorist sympathiser’ | The Guardian |
David Cameron has appealed to Conservative MPs to give him an overall parliamentary majority in favour of military action in Syria by warning them against voting alongside “Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers”.
Amid Downing Street concerns that support among backbench Labour MPs is weakening, the prime minister told a meeting of the 1922 committee that he needed to win the vote solely on the basis of Tory MPs’ support to achieve his goal of securing a clear consensus.
“You should not be walking through the lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers,” the prime minister reportedly told the committee.
His remarks, echoing an attack on Corbyn at the Tory conference in October, were confirmed to the Guardian by a senior MP who attended the meeting and came as the Labour leader accused Cameron of adopting a “bomb first, talk later” approach.
In a Guardian article, Corbyn asks Labour MPs to think of the “terrible consequences” of the wars in the Middle East over the past 14 years.
“David Cameron … knows that opposition to his ill-thought-out rush to war is growing,” Corbyn writes. “On planning, strategy, ground troops, diplomacy, the terrorist threat, refugees and civilian casualties, it’s become increasingly clear the prime minister’s proposal simply doesn’t stack up.
Syria air strikes: PM urges Tory MPs to ‘take a stand’ | BBC News |
Obama: U.S. supports Turkey’s right to defend itself | Reuters |
U.S. President Barack Obama urged Turkey on Tuesday to reduce tensions with Moscow after the downing of a Russian warplane and to seal its border with Syria to choke off the supply of money and fighters to Islamic State militants.
He also raised the specter of Afghanistan in warning Russia against getting bogged down in its military campaign to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
But hopes of the de-escalation called for by Obama suffered a setback when Russia officially announced a list of sanctions to be imposed on Turkey and sources said Moscow may also freeze work on a major gas pipeline project.
Obama met Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Paris, where they have been attending a climate summit, a week after Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane along the Syrian border. Obama stressed that U.S. support for its NATO ally’s security remained steadfast.
“The United States supports Turkey’s right to defend itself and its airspace and its territory,” Obama said. “We discussed how Turkey and Russia can work together to de-escalate tensions and find a diplomatic path to resolve this issue.”
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Obama said he did not expect a quick reversal of Putin’s strategy in Syria, but Moscow may eventually align itself with the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State.“I think Mr. Putin understands that with Afghanistan fresh in the memory for him to simply get bogged down in an inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict is not the outcome that he’s looking for,” Obama told a news conference.
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up a pro-Moscow government but withdrew a decade later after failing to beat Afghan guerrillas.
With Putin committed to keeping Assad in power in Damascus, Obama did not expect Russian warplanes to shift their focus soon to hitting Islamic State rather than other opposition groups. “I don’t expect that you’re going to see a 180 turn on their strategy over the next several weeks,” Obama said.
Turkey and the EU: Old Routine and New Tensions | Carnegie Europe |
Since Turkey started accession negotiations [pdf] with the EU in 2005, a relatively predictable dialogue has unfolded about chapters, which are either opened or blocked, and political criteria, which are fulfilled either sufficiently or less so. Recently, discussions also took place on modernizing the EU-Turkey Customs Union, implementing visa liberalization, and readmitting irregular migrants. As slow or frustrating as it was at times, this comfortable routine remained immune from hard politics.
EU-Turkey relations are now in a different era. The “new Turkey“–the term used by the country’s president after successive presidential and legislative elections–finds itself in a multipronged conflictual situation of prime importance to the EU over the war in Syria, the self-proclaimed Islamic State, and the refugee crisis. At the same time, Ankara is caught in rather tense interactions with the United States over U.S. support for Syrian Kurdish forces and with Russia following Turkey’s downing of a Russian military aircraft on November 24.
On top of their old routine, the EU and Turkey now have much more daunting issues on their plates: Do they work together against the Islamic State, and do they see the refugee crisis as a joint challenge?
At a summit in Brussels on November 29, the two sides are expected to agree on an EU-Turkey refugee action plan. The agreement will provide financial support for refugees in Turkey in the form of humanitarian support, education, and job creation in exchange for better control of human traffickers. The deal will also include a positive EU impulse to reenergize Turkey’s accession negotiations and accelerate visa facilitation talks, both to be implemented within the existing framework of strict conditionality.
Marine Le Pen’s Front National makes political gains after Paris attacks
Looking out across hundreds of flag-waving supporters at a rally in the northern city of Lille, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen told the crowd that the Front National was the only party that could reassure France in this moment of “infinite sadness”.
The deaths of 130 people in the Paris terrorist attacks were, she claimed, the result of government inaction, lies, and, above all, its “crazy, undiscerning immigration policy”. The Socialist president, François Hollande, who had declared war on terrorism, was “a war chief who hasn’t even got the measure of the enemy!” she boomed. Only 10 months after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Paris kosher supermarket left 17 dead, the government had failed to protect French people from another attack and was “more than just responsible” she cried.
The crowd stamped their feet and roared support, chanting “Hollande resign! Hollande resign!”
The political fallout from the Paris terror attacks looks likely to shake France’s Socialist government this Sunday when the country votes in the first round of key regional elections. Even though Hollande has seen his popularity rise since the attacks, this has not helped his wider party and its candidates. Instead, it is Le Pen’s Front National that stands to make the most gains at the ballot box.
