Poland looks to Silesia for energy diversification - Krakow Post

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The Krakow Post
P O L A N D
FEBRUARY 7-FEBRUARY 13
R E G I O N A L N E W S
Czech WWII wartime hero
Jan Paroulek dies
Distinguished Czech World War II veteran Jan
Paroulek has died in hospital at the age of 85, the
CTK agency reported late last week.
Paroulek fought in the liberation of Europe after
escaping to Britain from France at the start of the
war, aged 17. He was later made a Knight of the
Legion of Honor by the French state, awarded the
Czech medal for heroism and Honored with the promotion
to brigadier-general in 2005 for his wartime
action.
Like many of his counterparts who fought with
the western allies, Paroulek was later persecuted by
the Communist regime after it gained power in his
country in 1948. He was dismissed from the army
and was given two prison sentences, one a 12-year
punishment, of which he served 10 years, for alleged
spying and treason.
Paroulek died in hospital in the eastern Czech city
of Prerov after a long illness. (AFP)
U.S. citizen stabbed to death in
Prague suburb: police
A 45-year old U.S. citizen was stabbed to death in
a Prague suburb late last week, police said.
“The man received stab wounds,” Prague police
spokesman Ladislav Bernasek told AFP, adding that
he died on the spot from his wounds.
A 27-year-old man, who has not been identified,
was later arrested, he added.
Police refused to confirm media reports that the
victim was an off duty soldier and the attacker a police
officer, apparently drunk on duty.
The U.S. embassy said it was checking reports of
the incident. (AFP)
Russia criticizes Western
pressure on Belarus
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticized
Western countries late last week for putting pressure
on Belarus, considered “the last dictatorship in Europe”
by the U.S.
Meeting his Belarusian counterpart Sergei Martynov
in Minsk, Lavrov said that Western diplomatic
and economic sanctions against Belarus were “counterproductive
and short-sighted.”
“We are concerned about the pressure on Belarus
from certain Western countries, which is aimed at
changing the political system in the republic,” Lavrov
said.
The U.S. last year blacklisted Belarus’s petrochemical
monopoly Belneftekhim and has imposed
visa bans against Belarusian leaders. The EU has
also set visa bans.
Russia is one of the few supporters of authoritarian
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko,
who has also sought to forge ties with anti-U.S.
leaderships in Iran and Venezuela.
“Belarus believes that the criticism and unilateral
measures of force are unfounded. We are trying to
neutralize these issues so that the economic sanctions
are removed,” Martynov said. (AFP)
Czech president calls EU climate
measures tragic mistake
Right-wing Czech President Vaclav Klaus
slammed the EU’s sweeping new measures to fight
climate change as a “tragic mistake” in an interview
with a German newspaper late last week.
“I believe that our government and others will
stand up against these bureaucratic ideas,” Klaus
told the Handelsblatt business daily.
“This package is without doubt a tragic mistake, a
misunderstanding of nature and an unnecessary limitation
of human activity,” the outspoken Euroceptic
leader added. “For me it is almost a tragedy.”
Klaus has previously compared German Chancellor
Angela Merkel’s pro-environmental platform to
Soviet-era centralized planning and described evidence
of global warming as bogus.
He said the measures presented by the European
Commission would threaten economic growth and
limit personal freedom.
The energy blueprint is designed to cut carbon dioxide
emissions by 20 percent by 2020, compared to
1990 levels, by setting targets for industry.
It also stipulates that the use of renewable energies
like biomass, wind and solar power have to
make up 20 percent of all energy forms by 2020.
The EU aims to enact the new measures by the
spring of 2009.
The Czech Republic is due to hold the rotating
EU presidency for the first half of 2009, followed by
Sweden. The Czech parliament will next week begin
to elect a new president as Klaus’s term expires in
March. He faces a challenge from Czech-American
professor Jan Svejnar. (AFP)
Ukraine grants political asylum
to Russian reporter
A Russian opposition newspaper journalist, Alexander
Kosvintsev, has been granted political asylum
in Ukraine, officials said late last week.
Kosvintsev will have most rights afforded to
Ukraine’s citizens, not including the right to vote, an
officer of the state migration service in Lviv region
told journalists. Kosvintsev worked as editor in chief
at the western Siberian Kemerovo region’s newspaper
Rossiyski Reporter and published investigations of
corruption and criminal activities involving regional
authorities. He applied for asylum in Ukraine in February
2007, claiming to be the victim of intimidation
in Russia. The Lviv regional assembly’s chairman
Myroslav Senyk pledged to help the reporter, whose
articles “made it clear that corrupt Russian authorities
decided to punish an independent journalist.”
Kosvintsev also worked at Russian opposition
newspaper Novaya Gazeta, whose correspondent
Anna Politkovskaya, who covered the Chechen conflict
and criticized the poor human rights record in the
republic, was murdered in October 2006. (AFP)
Poland among top
EU-supporting nations
Daniel Szysz
Poland entered the Schengen Zone on Dec. 21.
Michal Wojtas
staff journalist
Poland continues to rank near the top of the EU
nations whose citizens are big supporters of the
EU.
Seventy-one percent of Poles see EU membership
as a plus and 62 percent say they trust the
EU’s institutions and leadership, according to the
latest Eurobarometer survey. It was conducted
among citzens of all EU countries between September
and November 2007.
Only four countries’ citizens show more support
for the EU – Luxemburg, with 82 percent; the
Netherlands, with 79 percent; Belgium, with 74
percent; and Ireland, with 74 percent.
The lowest backing was Britain’s 34 percent.
The average level of support for the 27 countries
in the EU was 58 percent.
Although Poles’ level of trust in the EU remains
high, it dropped six percentage points from the 68
percent recorded in early 2007 to the 62 percent
seen in the September-November survey. It is
still almost double the 33 percent of Poles who
said they trusted the EU in 2004, the year Poland
joined.
agence france-presse
Some 50 Ukrainian protesters
early this week blocked a
crossing point on the border
with Poland calling on the
Poles to ease visa requirements.
The protest took place in
the Lviv region in western
Ukraine, where the demonstrators
blocked the only road
serving the Rava-Ruska border
crossing, according to a
spokeswoman for the regional
border guards, Tetiana Guerasimtchuk.
Last month there were similar
protests along the border
by Ukrainians demanding that
Kiev and Warsaw sign an accord
that would allow border
residents to enter Poland without
needing a visa.
Kiev hopes to conclude such
an accord at the end of this
month during a visit to Ukraine
by Poland’s new prime minister,
Donald Tusk.
In December Poland joined
Europe’s open borders Schengen
zone, comprising 22 EU
members states plus Iceland
and Norway. At the same time,
Warsaw made it tougher for
Ukrainians to obtain visas.
Those living in western
Ukraine had been used to traveling
to Poland to work and
conduct business, often on the
black market.
Twenty-one percent of Poles in the latest survey
said they don’t trust the EU and 11 percent
were undecided.
Poles’ trust in the EU is much higher than it is in
their own governmental institutions. Last autumn
only 10 percent said they trust their parliament – a
record-low among EU countries.
The coalition government of then-Prime Minister
Jaroslaw Kaczynski didn’t fare much better.
Only 17 percent of Poles said they trusted Kaczynski’s
Law and Justice Party-led government,
which ended up taking a trouncing in elections in
late October.
Poles also are the EU’s biggest backers of the
notion that the EU should continue to be enlarged,
with 76 percent voicing support. The average EU
score was only 46 percent.
Austrians showed the lowest support, 24 percent.
Germans were close behind, giving the idea
of enlargement only 28 percent support.
Poles are becoming more skeptical about making
the euro their national currency, however.
Only 49 percent support the idea, compared with
54 percent in early 2007.
EU citizens’ backing as a whole is 61 percent.
The fact that unemployment in Poland has
fallen substantially in the last two years has led
to Poles listing health care, and not joblessness, as
their Number 1 concern.
Seventy-four percent listed unemployment as
their biggest concern in 2004, 71 percent in 2005
and 68 percent in the fall of 2006. Last fall only
32 percent of Poles listed joblessness as their main
concern, however.
Health care has become the top concern, with
half of the Poles surveyed in the fall of 2007 listing
it as their biggest worry.
The percentage of Poles who say they are satisfied
with their lives remains slightly below the EU
average. Seventy-six percent of Poles say they are
satisfied, compared with 80 percent EU-wide. The
Polish figure is just one percentage point lower
than in early 2007.
Scandinavians are the happiest EU citizens,
with 98 percent of Danes, 96 percent of Swedes
and 95 percent of Finns saying they are satisfied
with their lives. Norwegians are not in the EU.
The lowest satisfaction scores come from new
members of the EU. Only 38 percent of Bulgarians
are happy, followed by Romanians at 49 percent,
Hungarians at 52 percent and Portuguese at
55 percent.
Poland,
U.S. agree
in principle
on military
cooperation
agence france-presse
Poland said late last week it has reached
an “agreement in principle” with Washington
on modernizing its air defenses as part
of talks to deploy a controversial U.S. missile
shield on Polish territory.
Amid concerns about the potential risks
of hosting U.S. missile interceptors, Warsaw
has been pressing the U.S. to help upgrade
the Polish armed forces, and notably
to boost the country’s air-defense system.
“We are not at the end of the road as regards
negotiations,” Poland’s visiting Foreign
Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said when
asked if he had received reassurances about
U.S. aid to modernize Polish air defenses.
“We’re in the middle of the road. We
have an agreement in principle,” Sikorski
told a press conference with U.S. Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice.
“There is still a great deal of work for
our experts,” he added.
“And, as I mentioned, the prime minister
and the president will approve of whatever
is done in the meantime, but yes, I’m satisfied
that the principles we have argued for
have been accepted,” Sikorski said.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently
demanded extra U.S. security guarantees
should Poland host the shield, possibly in
the form of a Patriot missile air defense
system similar to one already deployed in
neighboring NATO-member Germany.
In an interview published in Warsaw,
Sikorski said Poland wants a bilateral military
accord with the U.S. if it agrees to host
elements of a U.S. missile shield.
He said the accord should be separate
from Poland’s affiliation with the U.S. as
joint members of NATO.
Sikorski told Rzeczpospolita that Poland’s
agreement to host the missile shield
“depends on the course of negotiations.”
Washington and Warsaw are in talks
regarding the possible installation of 10
interceptor missile sites in Poland by 2012
to ward off potential attacks by so-called
“rogue states,” notably Iran.
The plan, which calls for associated radar
stations in the Czech Republic, is strongly
opposed by Russia.
Ukrainians block border crossing with Poland
Kyiv, Ukraine.