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Raid of Ukraine gas company escalates political war

16 03 09 - 04:48 Raid of Ukraine gas company escalates political war



By Fred Weir



Moscow - Masked and heavily-armed secret service agents raided the Kiev headquarters of Ukraine's state-owned natural gas company Naftohaz Wednesday, in what commentators see as an escalation of the political war between President Viktor Yushchenko and the ambitious populist Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

The fresh turmoil could threaten domestic supplies of Russian gas - pumped through Naftohaz's pipeline system - and possibly even reignite the harrowing midwinter gas shutdown that left 18 European countries literally out in the cold in January. "It's not between Ukraine and Russia this time, but a consequence of the internal struggles in Ukraine," says Oleksandr Sushko, an analyst with the independent Institute for Euro-Atlantic Integration in Kiev. "But it can have serious consequences, and could badly disrupt the flow of gas."

The raid by agents of the SBU security service, which is controlled by Mr. Yushchenko, seized dozens of documents, including original copies of Naftohaz's supply contracts with the Russian state gas monopoly Gazprom, as part of what an SBU spokeswoman described as a criminal investigation of corruption at the company.

In January, Ms. Tymoshenko negotiated a deal with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that effectively doubled the cost of gas for Ukraine, but ensured that large quantities of Russian gas being held in underground Ukrainian storage facilities would be turned over to Naftohaz to meet Ukraine's domestic needs.

The SBU spokeswoman suggested that Wednesday's raid was part of an investigation into an attempt by unnamed conspirators to "divert" more than 6-billion cubic meters of that stored gas, worth almost $900 million.

But Ms. Tymoshenko, who is responsible for the Ukrainian gas industry, told journalists that Yushchenko was trying to sabotage her work.

"This is an act of intimidation on the part of the president and his pocket services against all those who want to stand up against corruption," she said Wednesday. "There is no way [this raid] could have taken place without direct orders from the president."

Former allies in the pro-democracy Orange Revolution, Yushchenko and Tymoshenko have been locked in a bureaucratic power struggle that has virtually paralyzed Ukraine's government machinery in recent months, as the Monitor reported in this story.

In an interview published in the Paris daily Le Monde Wednesday, Tymoshenko argued that the only way out of the crisis is to bring forward Ukraine's presidential elections, currently slated for the end of 2009, and hold them "as soon as possible."

While Ukraine's top politicians have been warring, the country's economy has nosedived (for details, click here), and some experts warn that mass popular protests could erupt if conditions don't improve. Used tags: , , , , , , , , ,

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Oil lingers in Alaska waters on 20th anniversary of Exxon Valdez spill

Monday 30 March 2009 at 10:09 am Oil lingers in Alaska waters on 20th anniversary of Exxon Valdez spill



By Heather Lockwood




Washington - Keith Colburn, captain on the Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch," brought a surprising piece of Alaska to Washington Tuesday, the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Colburn, who has been a fisherman in Alaska for two decades, brought a glass jar full of oily rocks and sand to Capitol Hill. The blackened artifacts taken from Alaska's Prince William Sound coast a month ago were a small sample of the oil that remains from what Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, called a "tragedy."

"I mean, literally, you can just start to dig like that, and boom it's right there," Colburn said as he scooped away imaginary sand from the air. more

Is access to clean water a basic human right?

Saturday 21 March 2009 at 09:16 am By Yigal Schleifer





Istanbul, Turkey - With fresh water resources becoming scarcer worldwide due to population growth and climate change, a growing movement is working to make access to clean water a basic universal human right.

But it's a contentious issue, experts say. Especially difficult is how to safely mesh public-sector interests with public ownership of resources - and determine the legal and economic ramifications of enshrining the right to water by law. more

Scientists: Sea-level rise worse than thought

Thursday 19 March 2009 at 4:30 pm Scientists: Sea-level rise worse than thought



By Eoin O'Carroll




Climate scientists meeting in Copenhagen warned that sea levels could rise to almost three times that of the official worst-case estimates, threatening hundreds of millions of people.

The landmark 2007 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that sea levels would rise 18 to 59 centimeters - about 7 to 23 inches - by the end of the century. That would be enough to submerge several small island nations, and would inundate low-lying and densely populated deltas in Africa, East Asia, and on the Indian subcontinent. more

Raid of Ukraine gas company escalates political war

Monday 16 March 2009 at 04:48 am Raid of Ukraine gas company escalates political war



By Fred Weir



Moscow - Masked and heavily-armed secret service agents raided the Kiev headquarters of Ukraine's state-owned natural gas company Naftohaz Wednesday, in what commentators see as an escalation of the political war between President Viktor Yushchenko and the ambitious populist Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

The fresh turmoil could threaten domestic supplies of Russian gas - pumped through Naftohaz's pipeline system - and possibly even reignite the harrowing midwinter gas shutdown that left 18 European countries literally out in the cold in January. more