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Warsaw (AFP) Nov 12, 2010 Lawmakers from NATO's 28 member states on Friday kicked off a session of the alliance's parliamentary assembly, which gathers twice a year to debate security policy and international affairs. The five-day meeting in the Polish capital Warsaw comes ahead of a key summit of leaders of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation nations on November 19 and 20 in Lisbon. "This is a critical time with the NATO parliamentary assembly, with the mission ongoing in Afghanistan as well as some of our efforts to strengthen the alliance in general," said John Tanner, a US Democratic congressman first elected head of the assembly in 2008. Other issues on the table include NATO missile-defence plans which have angered Moscow, as well as the alliance's planned new "strategic concept" which rethinks issues from disarmament, deterrence and relations with Russia to cyber-security and counter-terrorism. "We expect our deliberation here in Warsaw to impact the discussions that will take place in Lisbon," Tanner told reporters. The parliamentary assembly groups 260 lawmakers sent by their national parliaments. Also taking part are dozens of deputies from non-member states, mostly from the ex-communist bloc, but also neutral nations such as Sweden and Finland which have close ties with NATO. As at previous sessions, Russian lawmakers are due to attend, holding closed-door talks with their NATO-member counterparts. "It's a very good forum for having frank discussions," said David Hobbs, the assembly's British secretary-general. "I would see it as a contribution to confidence-building. I would say one of the most important things we do is de-demonization," he told reporters. The parliamentary assembly was set up in 1955, six years after the birth of NATO. Rather than a watchdog and policy-maker, it is a conduit between member states' lawmakers and the alliance. "We cannot, quite rightly, call to account NATO or individual NATO members. What we can do is bring transparency to what NATO is doing, which then gets fed into national oversight," said Hobbs.
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Chinese, US leaders vow to work togetherSeoul (AFP) Nov 11, 2010 US President Barack Obama and China's President Hu Jintao pledged to work together Thursday, following a rocky period of trade and currency spats coupled with diplomatic shadow-boxing in Asia. The leaders, meeting in Seoul, put on a public show of comity in their seventh one-one-one talks since Obama took office, in an encounter expected to smooth the way for Hu's state visit to Washington i ... read more |
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