22 February
Monday, February 20, 2012 at 11:47PM
The Troika seen from Dublin by Martyn Turner of the Irish Times
Greece gears up for tough reforms under new bailout
Blind people were protesting against the cuts in Athens on Tuesday
The Greek cabinet is to meet for talks on launching the painful reform process stipulated by creditors in return for a massive bailout and debt write-down.
Loans of more than 130bn euros (£110bn; $170bn) and a write-down of at least 107bn were agreed overnight at marathon talks in Brussels.
Eurozone leaders said the deal had saved Greece from a default.
But Greeks face new spending cuts and state sector job losses in order to slash national debt within eight years.
Austerity measures implemented under the 2010 bailout, which was worth 110bn euros, sparked violent protests.
News of the deal was greeted with a mix of resignation and anger among the Greek public, correspondents say.
Responding to a remark by Prime Minister Lucas Papademos that it was a "historic day for the Greek economy", blogger Zoe Mavroudi tweeted: "Every time our unelected banker PM Papademos says 'historic day' please replace 'historic' with 'black'."
International financial experts have warned that Greece will need more help if it is to meet its debt reduction target.
Under the deal hammered out in Brussels ·
- · Greece's economic management will be subjected to permanent monitoring by eurozone experts on the ground
- · Greece will amend its constitution to give priority to debt repayments over the funding of government services
- · Greece will set up a special account, managed separately from its main budget, that must always contain enough money to service its debts for the coming three months
'Embarrassed to be Greek'
The country has just over a week to approve a round of spending cuts of more than 3bn euros tied to the bailout.
Tax and pensions will be affected, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos told reporters.
A meeting of the Greek coalition cabinet has been called for Tuesday evening, after which the cuts may be tabled to parliament for a vote on Wednesday.
While the cuts should be passed by the current parliament, it is unclear how the constitutional amendment on debt repayment will fare when it comes before MPs within the next two months.
An early general election is expected to be held in April, putting pressure on Greece's mainstream socialist and conservative parties.
Trade unions have called for new street protests on Wednesday and the head of the opposition Communist party has vowed to oppose new cuts.
"We insist on daily struggle to thwart the measures and this struggle cannot be a defensive one," said Aleka Papariga.
The prospect of permanent eurozone monitoring is also seen by many Greeks as a blow to national pride, and many question whether the austerity will actually improve the economy.
"The measures are just going to make us sink further into recession. We'll be worse off this year than last," Agelos Sotirchos told the BBC as he walked through Athens' main meat market.
Another shopper, Vasilis Bouzianis, said the bailout appeared to be the only option for Greece.
"There are a lot of difficulties for all the people; we lose more money, we pay more taxes, but if we went ahead with bankruptcy, the problem would be much bigger," he said.
'Greek problem'
The German and Dutch parliaments will vote on the bailout next week, amid strong reservations over lending more money to Greece.
Jose Manuel Barroso: "I am aware of the heavy burden that the Greek people are having to bear"
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble recently caused an outcry by suggesting that Greece was a "bottomless pit".
But European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said on Tuesday the new loans package would prevent "an uncontrolled default with all its grave economic and social implications".
Greece, he added, had no alternative but to pursue fiscal consolidation and structural reform.
Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs the eurogroup of finance ministers, said the bailout would "secure Greece's future in the euro area".
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, himself a technocrat brought in to turn around his country's finances, said: "It's an important result that removes immediate risks of contagion."
Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg said that while the Greeks remained "stuck in their tragedy" the talks had "reduced the Greek problem to just a Greek problem".
The agreement was thrashed out over 13 hours at talks involving the international "troika" of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission.
Analysis
Mark Lowen BBC News, Athens
It was a fraught few weeks in the run-up to the eurozone meeting. Athens saw the worst rioting in years as parliament passed the latest austerity package; there were furious words exchanged between Greece and other eurozone governments, mistrustful of this country's commitment to reform; endless deadlines came and went as Greece teetered towards bankruptcy.
Greece is a resilient nation, well-versed in surmounting obstacles through their history. But that resilience is being sorely tested. The country has been living with punishing austerity for much of the past two years: unemployment has reached record heights at over 21%, the economy contracted by 7% in the last quarter of 2011. And now, with the bailout deal approved in Brussels, the cuts are set to get deeper still.
And Greeks are growing ever more doubtful that the path ahead will lead them out of this crisis. The government is acutely aware that support for the bailout and the austerity measures is costing it dearly in the opinion polls.
Strauss-Kahn held in prostitution ring inquiry
The car carrying Dominique Strauss-Kahn arrives at a police station in Lille
Former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been detained for questioning by French police investigating a prostitution ring.
Mr Strauss-Kahn, once a front-runner for the French presidency, could be held for 48 hours at a police station in Lille, northern France.
Investigators have already questioned a number of prostitutes who have admitted having sex with Mr Strauss-Kahn.
He insists he did not know that the women were prostitutes.
"I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman," his lawyer Henri Leclerc has told French television.
Mr Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in May 2011 after he was charged in New York with the attempted rape of a hotel maid. The case was later dropped.
In this separate inquiry, French police have already arrested eight men on suspicion of organising a prostitution ring and misusing corporate funds to pay for sex in a scandal known as the "Carlton affair" because of a Lille hotel where clients were allegedly supplied with call-girls.
Three of the suspects were said to have been close to Mr Strauss-Kahn, who is said to have taken part in sex parties in Paris and Washington in late 2010 and early 2011.
Analysis
The BBC's Christian Fraser, in Paris, says that although consorting with prostitutes is legal in France, supplying them to others and misusing company funds to pay for them are not.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn had been tipped as a potential Socialist candidate in the April presidential elections until his arrest in New York in May last year.
One of the sex parties, allegedly organised by two of the eight suspects, Fabrice Paszkowski and David Roquet, is believed to have taken place in the US shortly before he was detained.
Mr Strauss-Kahn returned to France in September 2011 although the hotel maid involved in the case is pursuing a civil action.
'Ear infection'
The former IMF head said nothing as he arrived at a Lille police station in a car that was immediately surrounded by dozens of journalists.
A lawyer acting on his behalf, Frederique Beaulieu, arrived some time later.
Four investigators are involved in the questioning, Le Figaro reports, and have three police cells and four offices at their disposal.
Mr Strauss-Kahn is reported to have an ear infection and has the right to request a doctor's examination while in custody. The doctor could, theoretically, call for questioning to be suspended although that is considered unlikely.
Christian Fraser BBC News, Paris
Mr Strauss-Kahn finds himself again in the midst of a rather sleazy investigation.
He has asked to be interviewed after a number of headlines were written about him and the so-called "Carlton affair".
It is alleged that he took women to orgies to which he was invited. A number of sex-workers from France and Belgium have come forward who said they slept with Mr Strauss-Kahn, a fact that he is not disputing.
He is disputing that he knew they were prostitutes.
It is also alleged that they were paid for out of corporate funds from a large construction company. It is illegal for a public official to receive gifts of any kind, including sex.
Hawk eyed Steve sent to WoW
"I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman," his (DSKs) lawyer Henri Leclerc has told French television.
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Sarkozy and Le Pen clash over Halal meat claims
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his far-right election rival Marine Le Pen traded blows on Tuesday over claims that all meat in the Paris region is halal, prepared according to Islamic law.
The National Front’s Le Pen, trailing both Sarkozy and Socialist frontrunner François Hollande ahead of the April 22 vote, made the claim at a rally on Saturday and pledged
to file a legal complaint for "misrepresentation of products".
Campaigning on Tuesday in Rungis, home of the main wholesale food market serving the Paris metropolitan area, Sarkozy accused Le Pen of creating an artificial controversy and getting her facts wrong.
"There is no controversy here. Every year we consume 200,000 tonnes of meat in the Paris region and 2.5 per cent of it is kosher or halal," Sarkozy said.
Le Pen, whose party plays on fears of growing Muslim influence, cited a recent public television documentary that said all abattoirs in the greater Paris region use halal methods but do not always label the meat as such.
"It turns out that all the meat distributed in Ile de France is, unbeknownst to the consumer, exclusively halal meat," she said on Saturday. "This is a real deception, the government has been aware of this for months."
On Tuesday she clarified her comments to say that all meat distributed in the region could be suspected of being halal, as without a label "neither I nor you know which is halal and which is not".
Halal meat is slaughtered according to Islamic rules that, among other requirements, ban the practice of stunning animals before they are killed.
Some animal welfare campaigners say this is more cruel than standard European practices.
"Widespread animal suffering, in violation of French and European law, is not trivial," she said on France Inter radio in response to Sarkozy.
"The fact that a majority of French people are being misled about what they buy is not a trivial controversy," Le Pen said.
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Montpellier: 250,000+ € worth of equipment stolen from hospital
Medical equipment worth between 250,000 and 300,000 euros was stolen from the regional cancer at Val d'Aurelle in Montpellier on Tuesday according to a police source.
On Tuesday morning hospital staff found eight bags of equipment including endoscopes and other specialized equipment, had been stolen from a cabinet.
No break-in was observed.
The theft allegedly was committed between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, according to preliminary investigations of the crime squad from Montpellier police station.
All examinations and procedures which should have been carried out on Tuesday were cancelled.
Most foreign troop killings not work of Taliban, Nato admits
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Taliban infiltrators have been responsible for very few of the attacks on foreign troops by Afghan soldiers, a Nato official says. The deaths of four French soldiers last month led President Nicolas Sarkozy to announce that France’s troops would pull out early because its supposed allies were unreliable.
There have been several cases of fatal attacks on international troops by Afghan National Army (ANA) members, but only one of them has been proved to have been by a Taliban infiltrator, according to Brigadier-General Carsten Jacobson a spokesperson for the Nato-led international force, Isaf.
A Nato inquiry had revealed that only a few can be put down to a real infiltration strategy, he told the French daily Le Monde this week.
Two French foreign legionnaires were killed by an Afghan soldier and on 20 January another four were murdered by a man they were training.
“There are links with the insurrection,” French army spokesperson Thierry Burkhard assured reporters at the time.
But Jacobsen contradicts him, telling Le Monde that neither of the attackers was a Taliban member and that the explanation was arrived at after the facts.
Even a videoed confession, distributed by the Taliban, by a man who wounded three Australians and two Afghans in November was just a case of the rebels exploiting an incident they had not organised, he said, pointing out that the movement claims responsibility for nearly all attacks on foreign troops or representatives of President Hamid Karzai’s government.
Sarkozy, who faces an election in less than 60 days time, responded to the 20 January attack by declaring that France “can't accept that a single one of our soldiers be killed by our allies”. He later decided to bring French troops home in 2013, a year earlier than the pull-out date agreed by Nato at the US’s instigation.
Jacobsen’s statements do not undermine Sarkozy’s argument, although they do make it seem even more unlikely that Afghan security forces will be able to control the country after the planned withdrawal.
But cynics might judge the president’s apparent surprise at the unreliability of the Afghan state apparatus disingenuous and point out that the “allies” were brought to power by an international intervention that France supported.
Anyway, the unreliability of new army recruits is the Nato powers’ fault, according to Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak.
With US President Barack Obama anxious to quit the country by 2014 and his allies even less keen to hang around, they have forced the ANA to increase its numbers too quickly, he told Le Monde.
Nato itself now admits that the main cause of attacks was insensitivity by foreign troops and trainers towards local traditions and Muslim beliefs and practises.
The participation in the international force is unpopular in France and Sarkozy’s chief rival in the presidential poll, Socialist François Hollande, has promised to wrap it up by the end of this year “at the latest”.
So Sarkozy’s announcement, which caught Nato and US officials by surprise, was undoubtedly influenced as much by the electoral combat in France as by the military one in Kapisa, the Afghan province that French troops are responsible for.
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In the light of the inquiry into the killings, Nato will change its tactics:
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In any case, the handover to Afghan security forces will continue, even though US special forces and drones will remain, as the Wall Street Journal recently revealed.
The invading coalition may be racing to the door at the moment but the US, at least, is not going to leave a country that is strategically placed in resource-rich central Asia and next door to China, Pakistan and Iran entirely to its own devices.
French press review
What now for Europe after the debt deal for Greece was approved by eurozone finance ministers in Brussels Monday night and the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei are the issues making the front pages in the French media.
Le Figaro figures that it will cost 350 billion euros to save Greece.
Europe gave Athens 110 billion last May, which just about saw the moussaka munchers to the end of the month. Now they need another 130 billion to keep the wolf from the door, and they'd like the private banks who are due 100 billion additional sponduliks to quietly kiss that money goobye.
All of this, sadly, won't make any real impact on the fundamental problem which is that Greece has no proper state administrative aparatus and is run like a black market on a national scale.
The average Greek is very angry at being told he has to live on bread and water for the foreseeable future in order to pay the national debt; the same average Greek will now have to accept bankers from Brussels who will take up residence in the Finance Ministry in Athens and dole out the latest rescue money with a small spoon.
Expect more fighting in the street.
Europe's money woes are on the front page of communist L'Humanité too. The communist daily wants left wing deputies to vote against the European Stability Pact, due to be discussed in the French parliament this very day.
Officially, the pact is an attempt to establish a savings fund, to which rich European countries will contribute and from which poor European countries will scrounge. France, for example, should contribute 143 billion euros to the pot.
L'Humanité says the proposals, concocted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, will do nothing but imprison the people behind the bars of hardship, as austerity becomes not a reaction to a passing crisis but a permanent way of living in the straitjacket of poverty.
Libération has the Chinese artist and dissident, Ai Weiwei, on its front cover, with incidental comments throughout the paper from the man much feared by Beijing.
When he describes himself as a worker in the fields of "fantasy, suspicion, discovery, subversion and criticism," you can understand why the politburo gets nervous every time they let Weiwei out of jail.
Opposite an article on "The struggle for power in Senegal", for example, Libé quotes Weiwei's 2010 observation that there are only two forms of government . . . they are, democracy which encourages criticism, and dictatorship which is interested only in its own survival.
Abdoulaye Wade would know a thing or two about that.
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