Lithuanian energy minister said that diversification of the gas market in Lithuania will eliminate the need for ties to the Russian energy sector by 2020, news agency UPI reports.

• August 30, 2010

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych faced a tough grilling over press freedom in an interview with the German media before a visit to Berlin on Monday. The president had hoped to focus on economic issues.

• August 30, 2010

Russia, Greece, Iran and Iraq will officially not be posing any threat to Turkey soon. Turkish media said that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan intends to considerably revise the national security strategy in October 2010. The head of the Turkish government will reportedly exclude the above-mentioned countries from the list of external threats.

• August 30, 2010

Diversification of the gas market in Lithuania will eliminate the need for ties to the Russian energy sector by 2020, the Lithuanian energy minister said.

• August 30, 2010

When Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada was in Delhi a few days back for the fourth round of strategic dialogue between Japan and India, he made it clear that negotiations on a civilian nuclear cooperation pact are going to be rather difficult.

• August 30, 2010

Israeli and Palestinian leaders were looking forward to direct talks this week in Washington with both hope and apprehension. The two sides have agreed to hold direct peace talks beginning Thursday, the first such talks since 2008.

• August 30, 2010

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Sunday opened the Russian section of a long-awaited oil pipeline that will carry Russian crude to China in a bid to diversify its oil exports away from Europe.

• August 29, 2010

On June 11-12 2010 the member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) held their annual Summit in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, under the auspices of the (rotational) Uzbek presidency. The previous SCO Summit was held in 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, where the agenda of the member states was dominated by the search for the right exit strategies out of the global economic-financial crisis, particularly those that would serve to minimise its nefarious consequences upon SCO members. In Tashkent, the agenda of SCO member country leaders was dominated by the following issues:

• Enhancement of regional stability and security
• Coordination of the intergovernmental struggle with international terrorism, extremism and separatism
• Contemporary problems relating to the above, including ongoing crisis in Afghanistan (a regional thorn for all of the SCO members) and the fallout of the political-security crisis in Kyrgyzstan
• Coordination of national and intergovernmental efforts to counter organised crime and narco-trafficking. READ MORE

• August 29, 2010