ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

French president says France will continue operations in north Mali with the intention to leave the country in time. After stopping in Timbuktu, French President Francois Hollande visited Mali's capital, Bamako, where he held formal talks with his Malian counterpart Dioncounda Traore on the eventual hand-over of the French operation to a UN-backed African force. Hollande, accompanied by his ministers for defence, foreign affairs and development, was on a one-day trip to the Sahel nation to support French troops who in three weeks have ousted fighters allied with al-Qaeda from Mali's main northern towns. The French president said that his country's operation, which has 3,500 soldiers on Malian soil backed by warplanes, helicopters and armoured vehicles, aims to make way eventually for a UN-backed African force, which is still being deployed. Hollande told the French soldiers on Friday that he was happy with their efforts "but the fight is not over and it would be a mi...

Iranian Foreign Minister Salehi says nuclear talks with world powers will be held in Kazakhstan on February 25. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has said that talks with world powers on Iran's nuclear drive would be held in Kazakhstan on February 25. "I have good news, I've heard yesterday that 5+1 or EU3+3 will be meeting in Kazakhstan 25th of February," Salehi said during a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday. Iran and six world powers - the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia - held three rounds of talks last year aimed at resolving the standoff over Iran's nuclear activities. Reacting to an offer by US Vice President Joe Biden in Munich on Saturday to hold two-way talks with Iran on its nuclear programme, Salehi said Washington must come to the table with "authentic intention". "We have no red line for negotiations, bilateral negotiations when it comes to negotiating over a particular s...

Meetings in China set to start on Monday after intensified fighting between the two sides. Myanmar's government and ethnic Kachin rebels have said they will hold peace talks in China in the coming days after some of the worst fighting between the two sides in the country in years. The talks will begin on Monday in the Chinese border town of Ruili, officials from both sides said. The meeting comes after the army captured several strategic guerrilla-held hilltops this month in the hills around the town of Laiza, which serves as a headquarter for the rebel movement in Kachin state. The army used fighter jets, helicopter gunships and intense artillery barrages to seize the rebel outposts during its offensive. There has been speculation that the government launched the assault to strengthen its hand at the negotiating table. Laiza has been largely quiet since government troops took control of Hka Ya Bhum, the highest hill in the area, on January 26. However, Kachin Independence Army...

At least 30 people killed after gunmen and suicide bomber attack police complex in the city of Kirkuk. An attack on a police headquarters in northern Iraq has killed at least 30 people and wounded 70, officials say. Gunmen stormed the headquarters in the city of Kirkuk after a car bomb was detonated by a suicide attacker on Sunday, police said. Witnesses said the vehicle that was detonated was painted to appear as though it was a police car, and the fighters who sought to seize the compound were dressed as policemen. Natah Mohammed Sabr, the head of the city's emergency services department, said the attackers were armed with guns, grenades and suicide vests and were trying to force their way into the police headquarters after the turmoil caused by the car bomb. He said the explosion damaged nearby buildings. Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf, reporting from Baghdad, said she was receiving "conflicting reports on what exactly happened in the attack". "This attack took p...

The Earth has been getting warmer -- but how much of that heat is due to greenhouse gas emissions and how much is due to natural causes? A leaked report by a United Nations’ group dedicated to climate studies says that heat from the sun may play a larger role than previously thought. “[Results] do suggest the possibility of a much larger impact of solar variations on the stratosphere than previously thought, and some studies have suggested that this may lead to significant regional impacts on climate,” reads a draft copy of a major, upcoming report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The man who leaked the report, StopGreenSuicide blogger Alec Rawls, told FoxNews.com that the U.N.’s statements on solar activity were his main motivation for leaking the document. 'The main premises and conclusions of the IPCC story line have been undercut by the IPCC itself.' - StopGreenSuicide blogger Alec Rawls “The public needs to know now how the main premises a...

The Pentagon and the White House focus on the core Defense budget, but that’s not the half of it By David Cay Johnston February 02, 2013 " Information Clearing House " - Soon, we will get the president’s proposed fiscal 2014 spending plan. Much attention will focus on Social Security and Medicare, which have been flashpoints lately. Meanwhile, if coverage in years past is any guide, we can expect stories from many news outlets that will significantly understate a third huge slice of spending—the real costs of military and other national defense spending. Chuck Hagel, on the griddle now as President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, famously called the Defense Department “bloated,” in a 2011 interview with Financial Times. But budget stories then and now tend to report on the base budget from the Department of Defense, leaving readers with the impression that that is the full cost of fulfilling the Constitutional mandate to “provide for the common defence.” It isn’t....

By Pepe Escobar February 02, 2013 " Information Clearing House " - To quote the immortal line in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, as filmed by John Huston, "Let's talk about the black bird" - let's talk about a mysterious bird made out of gold. Oh yes, because this is a film noir worthy of Dashiell Hammett - involving the Pentagon, Beijing, shadow wars, pivoting and a lot of gold. Let's start with Beijing's official position; "We don't have enough gold". That leads to China's current, frenetic buying spree - which particularly in Hong Kong anyone can follow live, in real time. China is already the top gold producing and the top gold importing nation in the world. Gold accounts for roughly 70% of reserves held by the US and Germany - and more or less the same for France and Italy. Russia - also on a buying spree - is slightly over 10%. But China's percentage of gold among its whopping US$3.2 trillion reserves is only 2...

By Ben Schreiner Harnessing Asia's growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests. - Hillary Clinton February 02, 2013 " Information Clearing House " - France’s military intervention into Mali may at first glance appear to have little to do with the U.S. “pivot” to Asia. But as a French mission supposedly meant to bolster a U.N. sanctioned and African-led intervention has gone from “a question of weeks” to “the total re-conquest of Mali,” what may have begun as a French affair has now become a Western intervention. And this in turn has drawn wider strategic interests into the conflict. Strategic interests, it is becoming clearer, shaped by the imperatives of the U.S. Asia pivot. Widening Intervention The geopolitical posturing over the crisis in Mali, coming as France's intervention fans out across the region , is no more evident than in the public statements coming from both London and Washington. As British Prime Minister David C...