March 24, 2015 UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news.
Mihai Pelin, 24.03.2015, 12:15
An Airbus operated by Lufthansa’s Germanwings budget airline crashed in a remote area of the French Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 people on board. Germanwings confirmed its flight 4U 9525 from Barcelona, in Spain to Duesseldorf, Germany, went down. It was the first crash of a large passenger jet on French soil since the Concorde disaster outside Paris nearly 15 years ago. The A320 is a workhorse of worldwide aviation fleets, being the world’s most used passenger jet. This is the first accident involving a European low-cost company.
Tuesday saw the start of an exercise in the south east of Romania in which more than 2 thousand Romanian, American, British and Moldovan soldiers participate until April. The exercise is part of the operation “Atlantic Resolve” meant to give assurances to the NATO member states in the east of Europe that the American and British allies are ready to intervene on their side. The participation of the Moldovan soldiers comes against the backdrop of the Moldovan president Nicolae Timofti’s declarations that given the situation in eastern Ukraine, caused by Moscow’s interference, Chisinau should get closer to NATO, since its security is at risk. On Monday, the Moldovan Supreme Security Council had decided to draft a new national security strategy that should meet the challenges in the region.
The Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu met on Tuesday in London with his British counterpart, Philip Hammond. On this occasion Minister Aurescu stressed the importance of the efforts deployed by British and Romanian authorities to improve the image of Romanian citizens working in the UK. The two officials hailed the good relations between the two countries based on a Strategic Partnership that focuses mainly on security and defence. Also discussed were the evolutions at the eastern border of the EU, with special emphasis on the situation in Ukraine. Also in London, Bogdan Aurescu participated, as main speaker, in a conference on the issue of defence against ballistic missiles. Bogdan Aurescu said that NATO’s anti-missile shield in Europe is a stability factor and contributes peace preservation on the continent.
The Republic of Moldova, an ex-Soviet state with a majority Romanian-speaking population, is firmly committed to its EU accession effort — the Moldovan ambassador to Brussels reiterated. He told Radio Romania’s correspondent to Brussels that Moldova already felt the positive effects of its pro-European option, thanks to the exports made to EU countries. The Moldovan ambassador underlined that the association and free trade agreements concluded with the EU in 2014 rescued the Moldovan economy, given that the community market opened to the Moldovan farming products and foodstuffs in the context of the Russian embargo imposed on these products.
The US House of Representatives passed a resolution urging President Barack Obama to use the prerogatives given by the Congress in order to supply Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons. The measure would allow an increase in the Ukrainians’ capability to defend their sovereignty. The resolution also claims that Russia alone is responsible for the victims of the Ukrainian conflict. According to one of the resolutions signatories, if they allow any aggression against Ukraine without giving it the possibility to defend itself, they will give the international community a signal that their availability for supporting the world order created after WWII has been reduced.
