Madrid
Enlisting France against ETA: Spain and France will create a joint police force to go after the Basque terrorist group ETA, officials from both countries said this week. ETA, which is fighting for a separate homeland for ethnic Basques, carries out attacks mostly in Spain. It has killed more than 800 people since 1968. But two weeks ago, ETA militants killed two Spanish policemen in southern France, and French police took a lead role in the investigation. “We owe France much more than gratitude for its attitude of collaboration,” said Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero.
Lisbon, Portugal
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E.U.-Africa summit peters out: A summit of 70 European and African leaders ended this week with no breakthrough on trade and no agreement on ending the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region. The E.U. wanted to sign “economic partnership agreements”—essentially free trade accords—with African countries, but many countries contended that the agreements would hurt their domestic industries. The summit was overshadowed by controversy over the attendance of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has violently suppressed political opposition in his country. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown boycotted the summit in protest of Mugabe’s participation, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel used her speech to condemn Mugabe as a “trampler” of human rights. Zimbabwe’s official newspaper, The Herald, responded by calling Merkel a Nazi.
Paris
Welcoming Qaddafi: Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi pitched his Bedouin tent in Paris this week for his first official visit to the West since 2003, when Libya was welcomed back into the international community. That year, after intensive U.S. and British diplomacy, Libya ended its pursuit of nuclear weapons and took responsibility for the bombing of a 1988 Pan Am flight. But Libya still has a poor human-rights record, and several members of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s own Cabinet boycotted the official dinners and meetings. Sarkozy said Qaddafi deserved encouragement. “If we don’t welcome countries that are starting to take the path of respectability, what can we say to those that leave that path?” he said. French authorities said that while Qaddafi had erected his heated tent in the garden of the official guest mansion, they were unsure whether he actually slept there or in the house.
London
Harnessing the wind: All British homes could be powered by offshore wind farms by 2020, Business Secretary John Hutton said this week. Hutton acknowledged that his plan, which calls for installing some 7,000 turbines, would blight the coastline and cost more than current methods of energy production. But he stressed that it would not contribute to global warming. Right now, only 2 percent of British power comes from renewable energy sources. Alan Duncan, a leading member of the opposition Conservatives, supported Hutton’s proposal. “We’re an island nation,” Duncan said. “There’s a lot of wind around.”
Oslo
Gore accepts Nobel: Former Vice President Al Gore called on the U.S. and China to act now on climate change “or stand accountable before history.” In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Gore told the world’s two largest polluters to “stop using each other’s behavior as an excuse” for inaction. Gore, 59, shared the $1.5 million prize with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “It is unfortunate that our nation, which should be the natural leader of the world community, has been the principal obstacle to progress in solving the climate crisis,” Gore said. At the U.N. summit on climate change taking place in Bali this week, the U.S. and China are the only two countries still balking at setting specific goals for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.
Berlin
Ban on Scientology: Germany will seek to ban the Church of Scientology, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said this week. Police from Germany’s 16 states, in their latest report on extremism, have said Scientology violates human rights, “such as the right to develop one’s personality and the right to be treated equally.” Schäuble has instructed the states to provide him with evidence of rights violations, so he can initiate the ban. Sabine Weber, leader of Berlin’s Scientology chapter, said Schäuble had taken a few tenets of her religion out of context. “I can also find hundreds of quotes in the Bible that are totalitarian,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I will demand the ban of Christianity.” The Los Angeles–based Church of Scientology was founded in 1954 by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. It has some 6,000 adherents in Germany.
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