PARIS: NATO partners argued Thursday over the alliance’s worth after French President Emmanuel Macron said it was undergoing “brain death,” prompting a fierce defense of the bloc from Germany and the US while drawing praise from non-member Russia.
“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” Macron told The Economist magazine in an interview published Thursday, ahead of a NATO summit next month.
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended the 70-year-old military alliance as “indispensible” and said Macron’s “sweeping judgments” were not “necessary.”
Addressing journalists by Merkel’s side, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned that a weakened transatlantic alliance could “divide Europe,” while the US Secretary of State, also in Germany, insisted NATO was “important, critical.”
In the interview, Macron decried a lack of coordination between Europe and the US and lamented recent unilateral action in Syria by Turkey, a key member of the 70-year-old military alliance.
“You have no coordination whatsoever of strategic decision-making between the United States and its NATO allies. None,” he said.
“You have an uncoordinated aggressive action by another NATO ally, Turkey, in an area where our interests are at stake,” Macron added according to an English transcript released by The Economist.
After talks with Stoltenberg in Berlin, Merkel said Macron “used drastic words, that is not my view of cooperation in NATO.”
She added: “I don’t think that such sweeping judgments are necessary, even if we have problems and need to pull together,” while insisting that “the transatlantic partnership is indispensible for us.”
Stoltenberg said any attempt to distance Europe from North America “risks not only to weaken the Alliance, the transatlantic bond, but also to divide Europe.”
In a recent setback for the alliance, a Turkish military operation against Kurdish forces in northern Syria was staunchly opposed by fellow members like France, but made possible by a withdrawal of US forces ordered by President Donald Trump.
For Macron, “strategically and politically, we need to recognize that we have a problem.”
“We should reassess the reality of what NATO is in light of the commitment of the United States,” he warned, adding that: “In my opinion, Europe has the capacity to defend itself.”
Stoltenberg said he welcomed efforts to strengthen European defense, “but European unity cannot replace transatlantic unity. We need to stand together.”
Pompeo, on a visit to the German city of Leipzig as part of anniversary events for the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago, agreed.
“I think NATO remains an important, critical, perhaps historically one of the most critical strategic partnerships in all of recorded history,” he told journalists.
Macron said it was crucial to seek rapprochement with Moscow, which regards NATO and its expansion into ex-Communist bloc states with huge suspicion given that the alliance was set up to counter the USSR.
“We need to reopen a strategic dialogue, without being naive and which will take time, with Russia,” said Macron, who wants to broker an end to the conflict in Ukraine and has courted President Vladimir Putin as a partner.
He said NATO did not reexamine its role after the collapse of the Soviet Union and “the unarticulated assumption is that the enemy is still Russia.”
And for all the anti-Western bombast from the Kremlin, Putin would find his long-term strategic options limited to “a partnership project with Europe,” the president said.
“If we want to build peace in Europe, to rebuild European strategic autonomy, we need to reconsider our position with Russia,” he insisted.
From Moscow, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova hailed Macron’s “brain death” observation as “golden words... a precise definition of the current state of NATO.”
The French president, seen by many analysts as Europe’s most prominent leader amid Brexit and Merkel’s looming exit in 2021, has sought to stand tall on the foreign policy stage and to implement a vision of reforming Europe.
But he said the European Union was on “the edge of a precipice.”
“Europe has forgotten that it is a community, by increasingly thinking of itself as a market...,” said Macron, who recently blocked expanding the EU to include North Macedonia and Albania.
He also said he wanted European nations to break a “taboo” against using deficits to stimulate growth and investment.
Macron said the world was in turmoil, with a risk of the US and China becoming the sole global powers, and authoritarian regimes emerging in Europe’s own backyard.
“All this has led to the exceptional fragility of Europe which, if it can’t think of itself as a global power, will disappear, because it will take a hard knock,” he said.
NATO allies clash after Macron says alliance experiencing ‘brain death’
NATO allies clash after Macron says alliance experiencing ‘brain death’
- Macron decried a lack of coordination between Europe and the US and lamented recent unilateral action in Syria by Turkey, a key member of NATO
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended the 70-year-old military alliance as ‘indispensible’ and said Macron’s ‘sweeping judgments’ were not ‘necessary’
Legendary drug lord Fabio Ochoa is deported to Colombia after spending two decades in US prisons
- Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade
BOGOTÁ, Colombia: One of Colombia’s legendary drug lords and a key operator of the Medellin cartel has been deported back to the South American country, after serving 25 years of a 30-year prison sentence in the United States.
Fabio Ochoa arrived in Bogota’s El Dorado airport on a deportation flight on Monday, wearing a grey sweatshirt and carrying his personal belongings in a plastic bag.
After stepping out of the plane, the former cartel boss was met by immigration officials in bullet proof vests. There were no police on site to detain him — an indication he may not have any pending cases in Colombian courts.
In a brief statement, Colombia’s national immigration agency said Ochoa should be able to enter Colombia “without any problems,” once he is cleared by immigration officers who will check for any outstanding cases against the former drug trafficker.
Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers amassed a fortune when cocaine started flooding the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to US authorities, to the point that in 1987 they were included in the Forbes Magazine’s list of billionaires.
Living in Miami, Ochoa ran a distribution center for the cocaine cartel once headed by Pablo Escobar. Escobar died in a shootout with authorities in Medellin in 1993.
Ochoa was first indicted in the US for his alleged role in the 1986 killing of Barry Seal, an American pilot who flew cocaine flights for the Medellin cartel, but became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Along with his two older brothers, Juan David and Jorge Luis, Ochoa turned himself in to Colombian authorities in the early 1990s under a deal in which they avoided being extradited to the US
The three brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested again three years later for drug trafficking and was extradited to the US in 2001 in response to an indictment in Miami naming him and more than 40 people as part of a drug smuggling conspiracy.
He was the only suspect in that group who opted to go to trial, resulting in his conviction and a 30-year sentence. The other defendants got much lighter prison terms because most of them cooperated with the government.
Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade.
But the former member of the Medellin cartel was recently depicted in the Netflix series Griselda, where he first fights the plucky businesswoman Griselda Blanco for control of Miami’s cocaine market, and then makes an alliance with the drug trafficker, played by Sofia Vergara.
Ochoa is also depicted in the Netflix series Narcos, as the youngest son of an elite Medellin family that is into ranching and horse breeding and cuts a sharp contrast with Escobar, who came from more humble roots.
Richard Gregorie, a retired assistant US attorney who was on the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa, said authorities were never able to seize all of the Ochoa family’s illicit drug proceeds and he expects that the former mafia boss will have a welcome return home.
“He won’t be retiring a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregorie told The Associated Press earlier this month.
Bill Clinton is hospitalized with a fever but in good spirits, spokesperson says
- “He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving,” Urena said
WASHINGTON: Former President Bill Clinton was admitted Monday to Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington after developing a fever.
The 78-year-old was admitted in the “afternoon for testing and observation,” Angel Urena, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, said in a statement.
“He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving,” Urena said.
Clinton, a Democrat who served two terms as president from January 1993 until January 2001, addressed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this summer and campaigned ahead of November’s election for the unsuccessful White House bid of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Greek lawyers call for further investigation into 2023 deadly shipwreck
- “The case file contains serious gaps and omissions,” they said in a statement, adding that the captain and the crew of the coast guard vessel monitoring the migrant ship had been summoned by the court, but not the coast guard officials supervising them
ATHENS: Greek lawyers representing the survivors and victims of a deadly 2023 shipwreck said on Monday a naval court needed to examine more evidence after a preliminary investigation failed to shed light on the case.
Hundreds died on June 14, 2023, when an overcrowded fishing trawler, monitored by the Greek coast guard for several hours, capsized and sank in international waters off the southwestern Greek coastal town of Pylos.
A local naval court, which opened a criminal investigation last year, has concluded a preliminary investigation and referred the case to a chief prosecutor, the lawyers said on Monday, adding they had reviewed the evidence examined by the court so far.
“The case file contains serious gaps and omissions,” they said in a statement, adding that the captain and the crew of the coast guard vessel monitoring the migrant ship had been summoned by the court, but not the coast guard officials supervising them.
Evidence, including the record of communications between the officials involved in the operation, was not included in the case file, they added.
“The absence of any investigation into the responsibilities of the competent search and rescue bodies and the leadership of the Greek coast guard is deafening,” they said.
The chief prosecutor will decide if and how the probe will progress.
Under Greek law, prosecutors are not allowed to comment on ongoing investigations.
The vessel, which had set off from Libya, was carrying up to 700 Pakistani, Syrian and Egyptian migrants bound for Italy. Only 104 people were rescued and 82 bodies found.
Greece’s coast guard has denied any role in the sinking, which was one of the deadliest boat disasters in the Mediterranean Sea.
Mozambique death toll from Cyclone Chido rises to 120
- The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population
MUPATO: The death toll from Cyclone Chido in Mozambique rose by 26 to at least 120, the southern African country’s disaster risk body said on Monday.
The number of those injured also rose to nearly 900 after the cyclone hit the country on December 15, a day after it had devastated the French Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte.
The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population.
Thousands of people who have entered the island illegally bore the brunt of the storm that tore through the Indian Ocean archipelago. Authorities in Mayotte, France’s poorest territory, said many avoided emergency shelters out of fear of deportation, leaving them, and the shantytowns they live in, even more vulnerable to the cyclone’s devastation.
Still, some frustrated legal residents have accused the government of channeling scarce resources to migrants at their expense.
“I can’t take it anymore. Just to have water is complicated,” said Fatima on Saturday, a 46-year-old mother of five whose family has struggled to find clean water since the storm.
Fatima, who only gave her first name because her family is known locally, added that “the island can’t support the people living in it, let alone allow more to come.”
Mayotte, a French department located between Madagascar and mainland Africa, has a population of 320,000, including an estimated 100,000 migrants, most of whom have arrived from the nearby Comoros Islands, just 70 kilometers away.
The archipelago’s fragile public services, designed for a much smaller population, have been overwhelmed.
“The problems of Mayotte cannot be solved without addressing illegal immigration,” French President Emmanuel Macron said during his visit this week, acknowledging the challenges posed by the island’s rapid population growth,
“Despite the state’s investments, migratory pressure has made everything explode,” he added.
The cyclone further exacerbated the island’s issues after destroying homes, schools, and infrastructure.
Though the official death toll remains 35, authorities say that any estimates are likely major undercounts, with hundreds and possibly thousands feared dead. Meanwhile, the number of seriously injured has risen to 78.
Zelensky says North Korea could send more troops, military equipment to Russia
- More than 3,000 North Koreans killed and wounded, Kyiv says
- North Korean soldiers fighting in Russia’s Kursk region
- Zelensky warns of more N.Korean troops, weapons supplies to Russia
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that more than 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed and wounded in Russia’s Kursk region and warned that Pyongyang could send more personnel and equipment for Moscow’s army.
“There are risks of North Korea sending additional troops and military equipment to the Russian army,” Zelensky said on X after receiving a report from his top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi.
“We will have tangible responses to this,” he added.
The estimate of North Korean losses is higher than that provided by Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), which said on Monday at least 1,100 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded.
The assessment was in line with a briefing last week by South Korea’s spy agency, which reported some 100 deaths with another 1,000 wounded in the region.
Zelensky said he cited preliminary data. Reuters could not independently verify reports on combat losses.
Russia has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Koreans on its side. Pyongyang initially dismissed reports about the troop deployment as “fake news,” but a North Korean official has said any such deployment would be lawful.
According to Ukrainian and allied assessments, North Korea has sent around 12,000 troops to Russia.
Some of them have been deployed for combat in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine still holds a chunk of land after a major cross-border incursion in August.
JCS added that it has
detected signs
of Pyongyang planning to produce suicide drones to be shipped to Russia, in addition to the already supplied 240mm multiple rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled howitzers.
Kyiv continues to press allies for a tougher response as it says Moscow’s and Pyongyang’s transfer of warfare experience and military technologies constitute a global threat.
“For the world, the cost of restoring stability is always much higher than the cost of effectively pressuring those who destabilize the situation and destroy lives,” Zelensky said.
