The United States sees the importance of the Southern Gas Corridor, said in statement of Acting Deputy Spokesperson of Department of State Patrick Ventrell. READ MORE

British Prime Minister David Cameron has held talks with President Nursultan Nazarbaev and other senior officials during the first visit by a serving British prime minister to Kazakhstan. 

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On the second day of a visit to Georgia, the North Atlantic Council met with President Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi and praised Georgia’s role as a special partner of the Alliance. READ MORE

Back in 2011 the NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen issued a public warning, noting that the aggregate reductions in military spending in Europe totaled USD 45 billion, which is jeopardizing the viability of the Alliance and the US-European relations. Since then, bogged down in the Afghan war and faced with the economic downturn and the need to reduce budget deficits, military spending of the EU countries decreased even more. The U.S. share of total expenditures NATO has grown from 63% in 2001 to almost 75% today. Military budgets of the Alliance from 2009 to 2013 declined by about 8.5%, and tend to decrease in the future. If in 2009 the total level of defense spending in Europe amounted to USD 256 billion, in 2013 - USD 234,3 billion of the 28 NATO countries only the United States, Britain and Greece held its own requirements on the amount of military spending at 2% of GDP. Even Britain and France were forced to go on ways to reduce defense appropriations. As a result, last year for the first time Asian military spending exceeded European. READ MORE

The widely discussed post-crisis settlement in the financial sector, the European sovereign debt situation and the Cypriot banking crisis have experts of all kinds riveted to financial issues, while the new Grand Game in Asia is attracting attention from all over. A relatively mature banking sector in Kazakhstan, attempts to overcome uncertainty in Kyrgyzstan and isolationism in Turkmenistan, the obvious dependence of credit institutions in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on administrative interference – these are part of the diverse set of characteristics that inevitably undermine the strategic initiatives of Russian banks, driving them to clusterization in capital and caution. Are there any opportunities being overlooked and are the market risks really that high? READ MORE

Latvia joins the euro. Croatia joins the European Union. Serbia enters EU accession talks and Kosovo expands its ties with the bloc. A sense of optimism ruled at the two-day EU leaders summit. READ MORE

Gazprom’s Head Miller stated that Russia will never pump gas from into Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities (UGSF) whatever beneficial terms Kiev would suggest. It’s noteworthy that on the eve Gazprom decided to grant Ukraine 1 billion USD as the advance payment for the transit which shall be used to purchase gas for UGSF. READ MORE

As of July 1, the affairs of the European Union will be in Lithuania's hands. It's the first time that the small Baltic nation takes over the presidency of the European Council, and major tasks await. READ MORE

The cooperation in energy sphere is one of the most important parts of relations between Azerbaijan and the EU, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Friday at the joint press conference in Brussels, with the president of European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, the EU official website reported. READ MORE

The G8 Summit agenda is as good a snapshot as any of the preoccupations of the global elite. Over the past few years, the summits offered opportunities for the leaders of world’s largest industrialized economies to reflect — and occasionally even to commit to new actions — on international terrorism, the global financial crisis, and other issues of the moment. So what does it mean when an important topic is dropped from the official agenda, as happened last week in Northern Ireland when climate change failed to make the cut? READ MORE