excerpt:
Growing nervousness in Washington about the Chinese pipeline was quite palpable. The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a rare hearing in July regarding China's geopolitical thrust into the Central Asian region. Testifying at the hearing, Richard Morningstar, the US special envoy for energy, underlined that the US needed to develop strategies to compete with China for energy in Central Asia.
This was perhaps the first time that a senior US official has openly flagged China as the US's rival in the energy politics of Central Asia. US experts usually have focused attention on Russian dominance of the region's energy scene and worked for diminishing the Russian presence in the post-Soviet space by canvassing support for Trans-Caspian projects that bypassed Russian territory. In fact, some American experts on the region even argued that China was a potential US ally for isolating Russia.
Certainly, 2009 was a turning point in American discourses on Chinese policies in Central Asia. As China's Turkmen gas pipeline got closer to completion, US disquiet began to surface.
read more @ asia times
2. how do i know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? i was in teh room -- with 700+ comments
Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.
China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was "the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility", said Christian Aid. "Rich countries have bullied developing nations," fumed Friends of the Earth International.
The emergence of China, India, South Africa and Brazil as a grouping was the most significant outcome of the climate talks in Copenhagen, the chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said Wednesday.
The Copenhagen Accord _ which urges major polluters to make deeper emissions cuts but does not require it _ emerged principally from President Barack Obama's meeting with the leaders of the four countries, a group referred to as BASIC.
"This is a very significant political development," said Rajendra Pachauri, whose scientific panel shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore in 2007.
Developed countries will "have to deal with the power of this group ... for reaching a full fledged binding agreement in Mexico next year," Pachauri said in his first media briefing since returning from talks in the Danish capital last week.
read more @ taiwan news
No comments:
Post a Comment