The new head of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen says he is ready to open a dialog with moderate Taliban elements. His comments come amid reports that western soldiers were killed by insurgents in Afghanistan on Saturday. READ MORE

Followers of the Moldovan elections can be forgiven for feeling the results have been something of an anticlimax. READ MORE

European companies are meeting in the German city of Munich to sign a memorandum of intent over plans to harness solar power to feed Western energy needs. READ MORE

Persistent long-term struggle of “Gazprom” against potential construction of Nabucco pipeline has failed. In Ankara the Heads of Turkish, Austrian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Romanian Governments signed an intergovernmental agreement on the project of the gas pipeline that will deliver gas from Caspian region to Europe round Russia. Meanwhile Germany also engaged with this project didn’t put its sign under the agreement as it is not a transiting state. READ MORE

One of his first foreign visits as new President took Barack Obama to Ankara for a high-profile meeting with Prime Minister Recep Erdogan and other leading Turkish officials. Obama engaged in classical “horse trading” wheeling and dealing. “I give you support for Turkey’s EU membership; you open the diplomatic door to Armenia,” appears to have been the core of the deal. What other inducements the US President gave in the case of Turkish influence within NATO and such is secondary. Obama’s goal was to break a political deadlock in Turkey to construction of a major gas pipeline to Germany and other EU countries in direct opposition to Russian Gazprom’s South Stream pipeline. READ MORE

On July 3 the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has demonstrated its rare decisiveness: it adopted the resolution "Reuniting the divided Europe: encouragement of the human rights and civil liberties in the OSCE region in the 21st century." There were convicted both totalitarian regimes of the past age – Nazi’s and Stalin's, member states were called to reveal their historical and political archives, to fight with xenophobia and aggressive nationalism. It was also offered to condemn totalitarianism clearly and unconditionally, and to consider the August 23rd – day of the signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact – as a day of memory of the Stalinism and Nazism victims. READ MORE

Transcript of the Press Conference by Belarus Foreign Minister Sergei Martynov following the meeting of the EU Troika and Belarus, 28 July 2009 (Brussels) READ MORE

The Union for the Mediterranean, launched a year ago, was meant to revive cooperation between the EU and countries bordering on the Mediterranean. But little progress has been made on pressing issues in the region. READ MORE

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel headed large governmental delegations for bilateral talks on July 16 in Munich. The process, known as Russo-German inter-governmental consultations, involves informal semi-annual summits at which leading business representatives join the cabinet ministers on either side. The Munich meeting reviewed ongoing cooperation projects and considered new ones. READ MORE

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