Jordan assumes Security Council chair
Jordan Wednesday took over the United Nation (UN) Security Council presidency, the first day of its two-year stint on a 15-nation body struggling to cope with conflicts in Syria, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Mali and elsewhere.
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Jordan will join Chad, Chile, Lithuania and Nigeria on the council until December 31, 2015. The UN General Assembly elected Amman in early December as a replacement for Saudi Arabia after Riyadh turned down the seat in protest at the council's failure to end the Syrian war and act on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other Middle East issues.
Although Jordan was a last-minute stand-in for the Saudi kingdom, Amman's UN ambassador, Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein, has a reputation at the United Nations for his outspoken stance on human rights issues, UN diplomats say.
In April Zeid helped organise a boycott of a General Assembly meeting on international justice organised by Vuk Jeremic, a Serbian politician who headed the UN General Assembly. The United States called it "inflammatory.”
Several UN Security Council diplomats said Zeid may turn out to be an influential member of the most powerful UN body, even though Jordan, like the other temporary members, will not have the veto power wielded by the five permanent council nations — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
"Although Jordan got into the Security Council by default, Prince Zeid is one of the best-known ambassadors around the UN and a genuinely thoughtful critic of the organization," said Richard Gowan, an international relations expert at New York University. "He could prove to be a surprisingly weighty voice in council debates."
As president of the council for January, Zeid will organise briefings on the delayed destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and the escalating conflict in South Sudan, as well as the situation in Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali and Sudan's Western Darfur region.
Another change in the council's composition is that at least one-third of the Security Council ambassadors in 2014 will be women — Samantha Power of the United States, Maria Cristina Perceval of Argentina, Sylvie Lucas of Luxembourg, Raimonda Murmokaite of Lithuania and Joy Ogwu of Nigeria.
The increased percentage of women could lead to more council meetings like the informal session Luxembourg and Britain are planning that will focus on women's participation in the Syrian transition process - assuming a peace agreement is reached.
But diplomats and analysts says the new composition of the council - including the presence of Jordan - is unlikely to break the impasse over Syria's nearly three-year-old civil war, which the United Nations says has killed over 100,000 people.
Jordan has over 570,000 Syrian refugees on its territory.
The council remains deadlocked on Syria, largely because of differences between Russia, a staunch supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and the United States, Britain and France, which have called on Assad to step down. Russia, along with China, has vetoed three Security Council resolutions condemning Assad's government and threatening it with sanctions.
According to Security Council Report, a think-tank that monitors the council's work, the recent failure, due to a U.S.-Russian disagreement, to get the council to agree on a statement condemning air strikes on Aleppo by Assad's forces highlighted the persistence of the deadlock on Syria.
"The five permanent members still dominate council business, and are not inclined to give the temporary members much leeway," said Gowan. "On first-order issues like Syria, don't expect the change of the council's composition to have much of an impact."BRUSSELS (BELGIUM), JANUARY 1
Romania and Bulgaria EU migration restrictions lifted
Citizens of Romania and Bulgaria can now work without restrictions across the European Union from yesterday.
Transitional controls were imposed by some member states on nationals of the two countries — the poorest in the bloc — when they joined the EU in 2007.
Their rights to work and claim benefits were limited for their first seven years of EU membership.
Some in wealthier western EU nations fear mass migration from the two countries.
The controls were lifted as Greece took over the six-month rotating presidency of the EU.
BBC Europe correspondent Duncan Crawford says that it gives Greece the opportunity to influence the EU's political agenda.
Athens has been making reforms to overcome an acute debt crisis — a condition of a 240bn-euro (£200bn; $331bn) bailout that started in 2010.
The Greek crisis put the future of the eurozone and its common currency, the euro, at risk.
It's a special new year for Romanians and Bulgarians, finally gaining equal rights to work freely across the EU seven years after their accession.
Some, particularly Britain, fear large numbers will come, mindful that a decade ago the government expected 15,000 per year from Eastern Europe but a million and a half came.
No extra flights have been planned from Bucharest but one coach company has tripled services to London.
Many here talk of their hopes of a better life with higher salaries - but nobody knows quite how many will finally leave.
Latvia became the 18th country to adopt the euro on 1 January 2014.
EU commissioner Olli Rehn said joining the eurozone marked "the completion of Latvia's journey back to the political and economic heart of our continent, and that is something for all of us to celebrate".
But some Latvians have expressed scepticism over the move at a time of financial difficulties in Europe, as well sadness at giving up the lat, a potent symbol of the country's independence from the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
The authorities in Bucharest and Sofia say there will not be an exodus, and that many of those who wanted to leave the country to seek work had already done so.
Romanians and Bulgarians were able to travel to other EU states without a visa after the two countries joined the bloc.
However, nine of the 26 other member states imposed temporary restrictions on the kind of jobs they could take.
France, the Netherlands, and Belgium required that they obtain work permits.
In Britain, prospective employers had to apply for work permits and Bulgarians and Romanians migrants for an "accession worker card". Low-skilled workers were restricted to existing quota schemes in the agricultural and food processing sectors.
The UK government is tightening the benefit rules to ensure that migrants cannot claim out-of-work benefits for three months after arriving and will only qualify for support after six months if they have a genuine chance of employment.