Poland’s defence minister has condemned a gas pipeline project which will link Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea but bypass Poland.

Radek Sikorski reportedly compared the deal to a pre-World War II Nazi-Soviet pact dividing up Poland.

He said the move by Germany raised questions about the feasibility of a common European foreign policy.

The $5bn (£2.7bn) pipeline, agreed in September 2005, will connect Babayevo in Russia to Greifswald in Germany.

The 1,200km (744mile) pipeline is now under construction and will deliver Russian gas to Germany – and eventually to other Western European nations – by 2010.

But it is set to bypass Poland, prompting concern in Warsaw that the new pipeline could be used to divert energy away from Poland for political purposes.

‘Deals above our head’

Speaking at an international conference in Brussels, Mr. Sikorski said the move by Germany did not bode well for plans for more integrated European Union cooperation on foreign and security affairs.

He said Germany should have consulted Poland before the deal. “Taking the discussion first and consulting us later is not our idea of solidarity,” he said.

Poland was sensitive to “deals above our head”, he said.

“That was the Locarno tradition, that was the Molotov-Ribbentrop tradition”, he said quoted by Reuters news agency, referring to a 1939 pact between Stalin and Hitler which divided Poland up between Russia and Germany.

And he explained why Poland was worried. “The Russian ambassador to Belarus said last week when the Baltic pipeline is built, Gazprom will be able to cut off

Belarus without cutting off Germany. That means Poland too”.

The BBC’s Jonathan Marcus says energy security is now one of the principal issues driving international diplomacy.

Russia’s emergence as an energy superpower, ready and willing to use its market strength as a diplomatic tool, makes less powerful countries like Poland worried, he says.

The Baltic pipeline episode underscores the difficulty of separating energy diplomacy from old-fashioned power politics, our correspondent says.

Text 4.8 Aging Turkish immigrants pose new tests for Germany

By Mark Landler

International Herald Tribune, Monday, March 26, 2007

Duisburg, Germany: The last cups of Turkish black tea had been drained, the platters of olives and goat cheese cleared, but the snowy-haired Turks lingered at the table.

“Of course I always think about going back,” said Yusuf Mermer, 69, who left Ankara in 1969 for the Ruhr, where he operated a forklift. He now lives in a nursing home here. “I have nieces and nephews in Turkey, but I would just be a burden on them.”

His voice cracked and tears trickled down his creased face.

“Looking back, I don’t even know why I came to Germany,” he said.

“Things were going fine for me in Turkey.”

Four decades after the first Turks arrived as guest workers, they are reaching retirement in a land that still feels foreign. For Mermer and many others, it is a break time with the recognition that they will live out their days in a place where they had planned to stay only a few years.

Germany never planned for them to stay, either, and now it faces a social and financial burden. Of its 2.7 million people of Turkish origin, 320,000 are of retirement age. That number is expected to double by 2020.

Many of these immigrants, particularly older women, do not have the savings or pension and health benefits to afford nursing homes with round-the-clock care. The government has to pick up the shortfall – an unexpected payback for the long years of service of these gastarbeiter, or guest workers.

Socially isolated after decades of living in Turkish enclaves, these accidental Germans often speak little or no German. And having toiled in low-paying, physically taxing jobs, they are in poor health relative to native Germans of comparable age.

“For the first time in our history, we have to deal with considerable numbers of immigrants who are elderly,” said Berlin Institute for Population and Development. “They age differently from Germans. They have different medical problems.”

But they do share one thing with Western Europeans: They cannot rely on their busy children to take care of them. Three cities are trying different approaches to help them.

In Berlin, the first private nursing home in the country exclusively for Turkish people opened last year. Called Turk Huzur Evi, or the Turkish House of Well-Being, it will eventually offer beds for 155 people. It has a Muslim prayer room, with a visiting imam who preachers regularly, and serves Turkish food and meat prepared according to Islamic rules.

In Frankfurt, the state of Hesse finances a retirement home with a section for Muslims.

In Duisburg, the nursing home, known as Haus am Sandberg and run by the German Red Cross, has 15 Turkish residents – eight women and seven men – and nearly 80 Germans. They share airy quarters around a two-story atrium. Ralf Krause, the director, said it made little sense to segregate the Turkish residents, since they were already a diverse group: Sunnis and Kurds, Anatolians and people from Istanbul, devout Muslims and acolytes of Ataturk, Turkey’s great nationalist leader.

There is plenty of room for friction. “It’s not even as if they all eat olives and goat cheese,” he said, referring to the traditional Turkish breakfast served each Tuesday.

On a recent morning, however, there was quiet harmony in the breakfast room. Young women, some in head scarves, served food to their parents. A little girl scampered about, chattering in German.

Children and grandchildren are the main reason these Turkish immigrants stay. With the passage of time, many of them have few friends or family members left back home.

The German government, which has struggled with immigration policy in general, has yet to come to grips with aging immigrants. In the 1980s, it tried to entice people to return home by paying them cash.

About 250,000 foreigners – mostly Turks – did leave by 1984, but the flow soon dwindled because there were few jobs in Turkey then.

With only 4,000 Turks a year returning home these days, the German government and Turkish groups will have to share the burden of providing culturally aware nursing homes and caring for the growing number of retirees, said Faruk Sen, director of the Center for Turkish Studies in Essen. There are signs of that. In another part of Duisburg, a Turkish group that is building one of Germany’s largest mosques has included plans for a small retirement community across the street. The German and Turkish residents of Haus am Sandberg are experiencing genuine integration for the first time, after a lifetime in what social scientists have called “parallel societies”. Frieda Fuchs, a 90-year-old German, said her Turkish neighbors made life more interesting.

Multicultural living is not without its crossed wires, however. A few weeks ago, the staff brought together the groups for a dinner with cuisine from both countries.

Sitting across the table from the Turks, the Germans broke into a quavering chorus of “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,” the former lyrics of Germany’s national anthem.

“Maybe they were rattled because we were playing Turkish music,” Azcan said, wincing at the memory. “This is a process. We’ll see as we go along which model works best.”

Text 4.9 The band plays on as communist Cuba embraces heart of capitalism

The cigars are out, the beer flows and it's BMWs all round as Bavaria puts aside ideological differences in $500m deal with Castro regime

Kate Connolly in Munich

The Guardian Friday May 18, 2007

In front of a picture of a skinny boy in his underpants hugging a water pump and flanked by a 1950s car, Thomas Lang, a Bavarian businessman, proudly describes his delight at striking a deal with the Cuban government.

“We've been asked to send 808pumps to help the country's infrastructure get on its feet,” he tells an audience at Munich's chamber of trade and industry (IHK), noting the dearth of clean drinking water for the Caribbean island's 11.4 million inhabitants.

Mr. Lang's firm, Wilo-EMU, represents one of hundreds of companies in this most capitalist of German states that have agreed to help communist Cuba’s command economy, which, despite the United State's embargo, has of late found a new lease of life, largely thanks to help from Venezuela and China.

In its blurb to businesses, the IHK claims: “Cuba has far more to offer than beautiful beaches and cigars. Its rotten infrastructure offers German companies splendid business possibilities.”

Cuba has a thirsty need for German technology to replace its rusting Soviet-era equipment. Bavaria even has its own ”ambassador” to Cuba to oversee developments and before his recent illness Fidel Castro held through-the-night talks with German engineers about diesel motors and electricity generators prior to deals being struck.

A $500m (£250m) agreement has been struck between the Free State of Bavaria and Cuba, under which the German companies are providing the island with an array of generators, antennas, motors, and medical technology. By comparison, the US had just $340m trade with Cuba last year, mostly in agriculture.

The most delicious part of the deal for Bavarian traditionalists is the request for the luxury carmaker BMW to provide all of Cuba’s ambassadors with its Series 1, 3 and 5 models. Even Raul Castro, who is standing in for his sick brother, is to get a Series 5 car.

As far as the Cubans are concerned, Bavarians have proven themselves to be loyal participants in the revolution. By improving infrastructure they are helping to put socialism on a solid footing for the post-Castro generation.

“There are many points of the Cuban revolution that are interesting for Bavarian firms,” Eduardo Escandell, deputy trade minister, tells the suits. “We're happy you want to take part.” And please, he adds, continue buying Cuban cigars, rum and honey in return.

His words sealed a “memorandum of understanding” between the Cuban government and Bavaria this week as part of the island’s attempts to broaden its international interests - as well as thumbing its nose at the 45-year-old US embargo. “For 50 years we've suffered from the blockade but we've also survived without America for 50 years,”Mr. Escandell told the Guardian.

“We will continue this fight. We need products, and we’re happy that Bavarian companies can provide them. It's not about politics, because trade is trade.”

Text 4.10 Latin America’s oil rebels rebuff EU

· Venezuelaand Bolivia use summit to hail ‘new era’

· Blair urges responsible approach to energy stocks

Duncan Campbell and agencies

The Guardian, Saturday May 13, 2006

The presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia, Latin America’s most outspoken leaders, yesterday rebuffed demands by the European Union and other leaders at asummit in Vienna to temper their policies on foreign investment and energy, declaring that a new political era had arrived.

Tony Blair, who attended the summit of European Union, Latin American and Caribbean countries, called for a “responsible approach” to the debate.

“Neo-liberalism has begun its decline and has come to an end,” the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, said at the gathering of nearly 60 heads of state, according to Reuters. “Now a new era has begun in Latin America. Some call it populism, trying to disfigure our beauty. But it is the... voice of the people that is being heard.”

Interest in the summit which continues today, has been heightened by the recent decree by the new Bolivian president, Evo Morales, who announced on May 1 plans to nationalize his country’s natural gas fields. Mr. Morales is part of the new “pink tide” of leftist politicians who have recently been elected in Latin America.

“What countries do in their energy policy when they are energy producers like Bolivia and Venezuela matters enormously to all of us,” Mr. Blair said yesterday. “My only plea is that people exercise the power they have got in this regard responsibly for the whole of the international community... people are worried about energy supply in the future.”

The summit, which was called to discuss a series of issues of mutual concern, has so far been dominated by energy. Addressing the issue, and concern from the Spanish and Brazilian governments about their energy interests in Bolivia, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, said investors needed guarantees of long-term stability.

“Without that assurance you may be disrupting all economic activities,” he said.

Brazil’s foreign minister called on Bolivia to compensate Brazilian state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro, or Petrobras, if Bolivia takes control of the company assets there, according to the Associated Press.

“If investments [assets] are passed to a different owner, they need to be compensated,” Celso Amorim told reporters at the summit. Mr. Morales met various leaders separately, including Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, over his new policy.

In a letter of clarification sent to the Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, and handed to reporters, Mr. Morales said: “We hope that in the term of 180 days we can establish to decide new contracts of mutual interest... with all the necessary conditions, so true and lasting legal security exists for companies.”

Text 4.11 Watch your step: fashion industry told to ‘grow up’

over models’ health and safety

· Size zero just one issue for wide-ranging inquiry

· Catwalk queens and designers have their say

Hadley Freeman, deputy fashion editor

The Guardian, Tuesday May 22, 2007

The fashion world was issued with a firm command yesterday to “just grow up” by the woman in charge of cleaning up an industry which has come under heavy fire for its use of size zero models.

Lady Kingsmill, chair of the Model Health Inquiry - an independent body created by the British Fashion Council to look at whether models are endangering their health in an industry which notoriously puts style over comfort - said action was needed on a range of issues.

The committee, made up of high-profile members of the fashion industry including designers, models and managers, was created last March when public concern about the size zero debate reached a peak. Members of the panel will be talking to colleagues about the problems and will issue guidelines this year on how to improve current practices.

Committee member and model Erin O’Connor held a focus group yesterday with other models to discuss the issue; designers Betty Jackson and Giles Deacon will be talking to fellow designers about the preference for thin models in the shows, and Sarah Doukas, founder of the model agency Storm and the woman who discovered Kate Moss, has been speaking to other models’ agents. The outsider on the panel is Adrienne Key, a consultant psychologist and clinical director of the eating disorders unit at the Priory hospital in Roehampton, south-west London.

However, Lady Kingsmill was keen to stress that the inquiry was “not just about size zero, but about health and safety within the industry as a whole”, and she compared her current task to her previous roles in implementing health and safety measures in the construction industry.

“It might seem odd to compare fashion and construction, but when I started to look at working conditions in the construction industry in the 80s it was an extremely dangerous industry with little regulation. Now the British construction industry is one of the safest in the world.”

There are almost no regulations regarding models’ working conditions and Lady Kingsmill said the panel had heard “some terrible anecdotes from models, such as girls being taken out for late-night shoots in the middle of nowhere, and then left there, with no money for a taxi home.” She added: “Fashion is an enormously important economy and should not be thought of as something fluffy, or just part of your Saturday shopping. It is time for the fashion industry to just grow up and accept that it is a real industry and to look after the health and safety of the people who work within it.”

The panel aims to publish its recommendations in September, in time for the next London fashion week. Although there will be no legal obligations for designers and agencies to follow the recommendations, Lady Kingsmill said that “changes can be implemented from recommendations”.

She added that some lawyers said that in future, models could sue designers and editors if they felt their health had been endangered.

But even if the inquiry does iron out the kinks in the British fashion industry, it will not resolve the problems within the industry as a whole. Anecdotal evidence, said Lady Kingsmill, suggested that “pastoral care of models” in Britain was better than it was elsewhere.

Models in New York, Milan and Paris fashion weeks are nearly always notably thinner than those on the catwalks in London because the major designers tend to show abroad and there is an almost subconscious belief in the business that the slimness of the models has a direct correlation to how upmarket a label or magazine is.

Lady Kingsmill said she would speak to magazine editors about this soon. “These are all problems that we will be looking at and I shall be talking to the fashion councils in New York, Milan and Paris about this very issue,” she told the Guardian.

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