EU-DIGEST

Dick Cheney in Georgia: Europe has weak hand in game of power - by Carl Mortished

"Where there is oil and where there is trouble, you can expect to find Dick Cheney - and the US Vice-President arrives today in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, for a brief tour of the Caucasus, taking in Georgia as well as Ukraine, three states in the front line of the West's struggle for Asian energy supplies. Mr Cheney is a veteran of this conflict and he is back, trying to rally support for a failing strategy. He has been a key supporter of the Caspian region as an alternative supplier of oil and gas to the West. Sandwiched between troublesome Iran to the south and overbearing Russia to the north, the oil and gas reserves of Azerbaijan, Khazakhstan and Turkmenistan were promoted as an energy safe haven, with independent links to the West via pipelines through the Caucasus. That Caucasian lifeline has been shown to be tenuous, its fragility exposed when President Sakashvilli, of Georgia, blundered into South Ossetia last month, guns blazing, to attack Russian separatists.

Today, it seems almost incredible that this chaotic region of gangsters, warring tribes and uncertain borders was trumpeted as an energy umbilical cord to the West."

Labels: Cheney, EU, Georgia

Cheney Still Pressing for Iran War, If Not Removed - by Jeffrey Steinberg

If there was any doubt that Vice President Dick Cheney still presides over a powerful war party faction inside the Bush White House that is committed to engineering a military confrontation with Iran, Tuesday's meeting of the President's key foreign and national security advisors proved the point.

If Vice President Cheney has his way, the United States will be in a shooting war with Iran—a war that the U.S. military and intelligence establishment strongly oppose, and that powerful voices within the British Establishment are also now attacking as dangerous folly.

Labels: Cheney, Global warming, Iran, USA