Francois Hollande has been branded an "amateur" and compared to the emperor with no clothes after his flagship 75 per cent tax rate for France's richest was ruled unconstitutional.

The whole European Union could unravel under David Cameron's plans to claw back powers from Brussels, Herman van Rompuy has warned.

Barack Obama announced he was to cut short his traditional Hawaiian Christmas holiday and return to Washington on Wednesday night in a last-ditch attempt to secure a deal to avoid the US going over the so-called fiscal cliff.

The three NATO Allies which have agreed to provide Patriot missiles to augment Turkey’s air defences – Germany, the Netherlands and the United States - have agreed on the locations where the batteries will be deployed.

Egypt's bitter political tug-of-war entered an uncertain new phase on Tuesday after an electoral commission announced that a new constitution had been decisively approved in a referendum opponents complained was riddled with fraud.

Outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti posted his reform agenda online on Monday, urging Italians to join a debate on their country's future as potentially bitter election campaign gets under way two months before Italy goes to polls.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti resigned as promised on Friday (21 December) after the Italian parliament adopted the 2013 budget.

Germany does not want to push Britain out of the European Union, Wolfgang Schäuble has said, but warned that he would not be "blackmailed" with threats of a British exit either.

Cyprus bonds plunged to a three-month low on Thursday (20 December) after the International Monetary Fund reportedly demanded a Greek-style debt restructuring before agreeing to a bailout.

Romania and the United States on Tuesday inked three additional papers necessary to move ahead with plans to deploy US missile interceptors in the Eastern European state.

Putin is due to arrive in Brussels today (20 December) for an EU-Russia summit that is not expected to produce any accords. As EU diplomats explained, the meetings are designed to foster “positive interdependence” between the EU and its biggest neighbour.

The NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen congratulated Belgium for its important role in NATO-led operations during a meeting with the Belgian Prime Minister Elio di Rupo and Defence Minister Pieter De Crem.

Two kinds of new strategic missiles, which Russian experts develop, should become a response to the deployment of the U.S. missile defense system in Europe.

European leaders have moved closer to an agreement on the EU's long-term budget and should clinch a deal in the spring, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė said in an exclusive interview with EurActiv.

Ukraine's president pulled out of gas price talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the last minute on Tuesday (18 December), raising concern about the reliability of supplies to Europe before a Russia-EU summit.

Still NATO allies represent a formidable economic force in the world. And of course it’s in Russia’s interests to cooperation with that zone of economic strength.

"Over the past two-to-three years a great deal was achieved in Europe, but we are still not at the end of the road, we still have a stretch to go. The road is the right one, even if for many it's a great challenge," Merkel told in Berlin.

Little over a month in office, Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem may become the next Eurogroup chief to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker, as the more experienced French and German finance ministers block each other out.

A legal opinion by the Bundesbank, seen by Der Spiegel magazine, raises concerns over the landmark deal reached last week by finance ministers to put the ECB directly in charge of 150-200 of the largest banks in the eurozone.

Britain must use the upheaval created by the euro zone crisis to forge a new relationship with the European Union, Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday as he fights a rising anti-EU mood at home that could threaten his chances of re-election.

General Knud Bartels paid an official visit to Russia from 12 to 14 December to boost military-to-military cooperation and develop a common understanding on issues of strategic interest with Colonel-General Valeriy Gerasimov.

Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, on Friday approved the sending of two Patriot batteries and 400 soldiers to Turkey as part of a NATO plan to protect the country from any spread of the Syrian conflict.

NATO marked the official opening of a new Special Forces HQ in Casteau, Belgium on 12 December.

EU leaders early Friday (14 December) had different views on how to deepen integration in the eurozone, with Germany insisting that any new budget aimed at rewarding reforms in the eurozone should be at most ?20 billion strong.

NATO Secretary General Rasmussen thanked the Netherlands for its commitment to the Alliance, and in particular its contribution of two Patriot batteries to augment Turkey’s air defences, after talks with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, on 13 December.

Brent Scowcroft believes the world is "at an inflection point but a much different one than end of Cold War."

European leaders will seek to agree on a “deep and genuine European monetary union” during a two-day summit that begins today (13 December), but diplomats say it should not be seen as a “big bang” event.

The 2013 EU budget has been agreed after MEPs signed off on a deal worth ?132.8 billion in Strasbourg on Wednesday (12 December).

EU ministers have declined to open accession talks with Serbia and Macedonia, while criticising Turkey for jailing journalists.

The Government’s confidence in the City’s pre-eminence in Europe is “misplaced”, according to a House of Lords report, which urges David Cameron to “go into battle” against Brussels’ banking union plans.

EU foreign ministers in Brussels said on Monday (10 December) they aim to expand political and economic ties with Ukraine in November next year.

A deal on the planned single supervisor for banks in the eurozone will come about only if it meets German demands limiting the European Central Bank's (ECB) responsibility.

Jagland spoke at a presentation ceremony in Oslo attended by the Presidents of the three main EU institutions and featuring speeches from Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso, the heads of the European Council and the European Commission.

Early elections possible in February.

Exit polls showed Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta's USL social-liberal alliance won a clear victory in the parliamentary election 9 December, strengthening his position in a power struggle with the country's rightist president.

The Dutch government approved a NATO request Friday to send two batteries of Patriot missile defense systems to Turkey, following in Germany’s footsteps, Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said.

The Dutch government on Friday approved deploying Patriot systems to Turkey, in accordance with a NATO decision earlier this week to support its member's request for air-defence assistance against feared Syrian ballistic missile strikes.

European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi on 6 December sought to downplay a clash of views with the German government over the scope of a new banking supervisor by suggesting a bigger role for national supervisors when it comes to small regional banks.

Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Lloyd Austin will be nominated to be the next commander of U.S. Central Command, the Defense Department announced Thursday.

The Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russian-led military alliance of six former Soviet republics, plans to build an integrated air and missile defense system, the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff said on Tuesday.

It will be the European Parliament that "first and foremost" will be given more oversight powers as more economic and monetary powers are given to the EU level.

I’ve spent a good amount of time in this building during the past four years, and I think it was time well spent. The alliance has made great strides.

EU finance ministers will return to Brussels on the eve of the December EU summit next week for last ditch talks on the controversial banking union proposals, after failing to reach agreement on Tuesday (4 December).

Foreign ministers from NATO nations and Russia agreed to increase their cooperation in 2013 during a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) on Tuesday (4 December).

German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble reiterated that no bank recapitalisation could take place until the EU's planned banking union is up and running.

A request by Turkey for NATO Patriot missile defences to be deployed on its territory followed intelligence that the Syrian government was contemplating the use of missiles, possibly with chemical warheads.

Six - including the Czech republic, Sweden and the UK - have confirmed they are not going, while the rest are still making up their mind.

Stephan Werhahn, Adenauer's 59 year-old grandson, has broken his life-long membership of the CDU in March and is now a leading candidate for the "Free Voters" - a conservative, euro-critical party.

The eurozone was dealt a fresh blow as Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the region’s rescue funds and unemployment hit a new record high.

Moscow’s permanent representative to NATO has informed his colleagues in the military alliance that Russia needs clear technical documentation that the US missile defense will not pose a security risk for his country.

MEPs are demanding a say in deciding the chairman and members of a new bank supervisory board as part of their terms for supporting the EU's banking union.

Fourteen others - Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Sweden - voted in favour. The rest, including Germany, until now a firm ally of Israel, abstained.

Germany is privately pressing Turkey to scale back the scope of its request for Patriot missile-defense batteries to defend the country's borders with war-torn Syria, according to a person familiar with negotiations.

A vote in the Bundestag on the recently agreed Greece deal may be delayed or split as the German Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens are asking for more time to study the implications of the package.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said the Patriot missiles to be deployed on the Turkish-Syrian border to counter threats from Syria will be under NATO control.

Sources told EUobserver the Czech republic, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia want to sign the trade and political association treaty at a summit of Eastern Partnership countries to be held in Vilnius in autumn under Lithuania's EU presidency.

The Eurozone has agreed a deal with the International Monetary Fund to unblock the Greek bailout with a package of measures worth ?40bn (£32bn) aimed at bringing an immediate 20pc reduction to the country's debt.

NATO said Monday it is moving its run-down southern command in Italy to a new ?164-million ($212 million) high-tech campus 20 kilometers (10 miles) away.

European bailout funds will pump ?35bn into Spain’s state bank rescue package in return for mass job cuts at four nationalised banks as eurozone finannce ministers meet for the third time to agree on Greek aid.

EU leaders on Friday (23 November) decided to break off the 2014-2020 budget negotiations and postpone them for another summit, as a second compromise attempt failed to reconcile positions between those wanting cuts and those asking for more money.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen rejected Russian criticism on Thursday of the alliance's possible deployment of Patriot missiles near Turkey's border with Syria.

A new NATO land command headquarters, restructured to streamline costs and decision making, will be activated next week in Turkey as the new home for planning how infantrymen from the 28-nation alliance fight together.

The draft paper keeps to the same overall top-line figure of 972 billion stated in the proposal sent to national capitals last week, equivalent to 1.01% of GNI.

Officials in Brussels are preparing for what is expected to be a lengthy, complex and quite probably ill-tempered summit on the EU's 2014-2020 budget. But optimism about reaching a deal has revived to an extent.

Eurozone finance ministers will reconvene next week (26 November) after failing to reach a deal on whether to release the next tranche of Greece's multi-billion euro loan programme.

NATO member states have agreed to supply Turkey with an advanced Patriot missile system to defend against Syrian attacks and talks on its deployment are in the final stage, Turkey's foreign minister said on Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempted to break the ice in the Russia-US relationship during talks on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Cambodia.

Ten years ago today, at the NATO Summit in Prague, seven nations were invited to open accession talks with NATO.

Allies discussed the priorities of the new Georgian government with the Georgian Minister of Defence, Irakli Alasania, and the State Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, Alex Petriashvili, at NATO-Georgia Commission meeting.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is traveling to the Middle East on Tuesday to meet with officials in Israel, Gaza and Egypt to discuss ongoing violence in Gaza, White House officials said.

The agreement was signed by Belgium, France, Greece, Spain, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Norway, which is not a European Union member but works with the European Defence Agency (EDA), the EU's defence arm.

France has suffered a serious blow to its economic credentials after being stripped of its prized AAA credit rating by Moody’s.

The eurozone has the world's second largest shadow banking system after the United States, with assets worth some ?17.2 trillion in 2011.

Eurozone governments and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are making headway in settling a row over how to make Greece's debt manageable, Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Saturday (17 November).

The NATO Secretary General visited the capital Helsinki on 14 and 15 November to discuss how to further strengthen cooperation.

Turkey will formally ask NATO on Monday to set up missiles on its border with Syria due to growing concern about spillover from a 20-month-old civil war in its neighbor, a German newspaper reported on Saturday.

The much vaunted EU financial transaction tax (FTT) is set to be hard-wired into the EU budget, with most of its revenue going directly to the EU.

The foreign and defence ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain issued the call in a joint communique after a meeting in Paris on 15 November.

Germany's economic growth has slowed to a meagre 0.2 percent, as most other eurozone countries are in recession and austerity measures are taking their toll on German exports to southern countries.

The violent protests and strikes that flared up across the European Union on Wednesday are a sign of things to come as frustration grows over austerity measures and Europe’s recession peaks.

Many of Europe's capital cities ground to a halt on Wednesday (14 November) with a series of anti-austerity marches and co-ordinated strikes.

EU spending plans for 2012 and 2013 are in disarray after talks between ministers and MEPs collapsed on Tuesday.

This small contingent is aimed at facilitating joint training exercises on US-made F-16 fighter jets at the Lask air force base in central Poland.

Eurozone finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) clashed publicly on Monday (12 November) evening over how long Greece should get to bring its debt under control.

According to a report by an independent Georgian news service, NATO’s Military Committee has cancelled a planned session in Tbilisi at the end of November because of the detention of three senior opponents of Georgia’s new government.

Member states should take decisions by majority voting, including in sensitive areas like taxation, instead of having a veto right capable of blocking attempts to harmonise rules across the EU, justice commissioner Viviane Reding has said.

Links with Russia and other "questions" regarding the Cypriot financial sector are likely to delay a bailout decision until 2013, the German finance minister has said.

Germany's finance minister has reportedly asked a panel of top advisers to examine France's economic problems amid concerns that weaknesses could spread to the rest of Europe.

Talks to agree the European Union's budget for next year broke down amid rows involving among member states including Britain – sparking a new funding crisis.

A senior Russian diplomat on Thursday said his country wants to join the United States in discussions on short-range atomic armaments.

With Greece (twice), Ireland , Portugal and Spain (its banks) already on the list, Cyprus expects to clinch an EU bailout of up to ?15 billion next week.

Russia hopes that US President Barack Obama will demonstrate a greater willingness to compromise on NATO plans for a missile shield in Europe during his second term of office.

The eurozone economy shows little sign of recovering before the year-end despite an easing of financial market conditions, European Central Bank Mario Draghi said on Thursday (8 November) after interest rates were left at a record low.

The transatlantic bond on which NATO was founded remains as important as ever for peace and security. And president Obama has shown great leadership in keeping it strong.

Turkey is to make an "imminent" official request to NATO to station Patriot missiles along its 910 km (560 mile) border with Syria, a senior Turkish foreign ministry official said on Wednesday.

With a joint statement only saying, “They agreed on the importance of the EU demonstrating that it responds to public opinion, especially in difficult economic times.”

On the eve of the vote, over 100,000 people took to the streets in the Greek capital, with Syntagma square again the scene of violent clashes with riot police.

The EU commission will eventually become a government, the council of member states an "upper chamber" and the European Parliament more powerful, but fixing the eurozone problems is more urgent for now, Angela Merkel told MEPs on Wednesday (7 November).

Russia and NATO are slated to hold discussions early next month after a number of months without contact between high-ranking officials from the former Cold War foes, which are engaged in a long-running dispute over missile defence.

French president François Hollande has bowed to massive pressure for business tax cuts to pull France’s economy out of slump and stave off industrial decline, ditching a core element of his socialist platform.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned France it needs to cut labour costs and taxes or else risk falling behind Italy and Spain, which are undergoing deep reforms.

The EU and Ukraine will "most likely" not hold a summit this year, but diplomats blame it on technical instead of political reasons.

In an unprecedented move, Georgia has published two photos of a Russia-based hacker who, the Georgians allege, waged a persistent, months-long campaign that stole confidential information.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is still hopeful a deal on the EU budget can be reached later this month, seeing the veto threats from several countries as part of the negotiating process.

French leader François Hollande is uncomfortably close to a collapse in credibility. His poll rating has sunk to 36pc. The speed of decline has been shocking.

Thales Raytheon Systems (TRS) has been selected by the French defense procurement agency (DGA) to supply the French Air Force with a Ground Master 406 radar base and provide on-site support at Nice Mont-Agel airbase.

Cyprus is one step closer to the bailout it has been seeking since June when two of its largest banks reported massive losses from a write-down in Greek debt.

MPs voted by 307 to 294 in favour of a Tory-rebel amendment calling for the 2014-2020 EU budget to be "reduced in real terms."

The vote on the EU budget gives MPs a chance to follow in the steps of Margaret Thatcher.

A joint statement by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Stefan Fuele on the parliamentary elections in Ukraine:

Germany has told the UK it is an important and needed member of the European Union, just days after London spelled out its deep ambivalence about its EU future.

A delegation of leaders are to warn Angela Merkel that Germany must agree to Greek debt relief or risk plunging the eurozone into a fresh and more dangerous phase of the crisis.

Parliamentary elections in Lithuania on 28 October look to have unseated Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius' austerity-driven government to make way for a coalition of left-leaning opposition parties.

Greece's lenders are suggesting a further write-down on the country's debt, according to Der Spiegel, with tax-payers to feel the hit for the first time.

The EU and the International Monetary Fund are at odds over how to fund Greece for two extra years, while the Greek government has still not reached a agreement on promised budget cuts needed for the next tranche of bailout money.

Ahead of the parliamentary election in Ukraine to be held on Sunday (28 October),Ashton and Clinton said that the West will be closely watching that the poll is up to the “high standard” of the presidential election held two years ago.

The EU executive published its legislative plans for the final 18 months of the current legislative term on Tuesday (23 October) but MEPs gave only qualified support for the paper.

A French employee will be transferred for work in summer 2013, according a statement released by the French Embassy.

President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday appointed Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko as Russia's new envoy to NATO.

Polish head of the National Security Office Gen. Stanislaw Koziej said the antimissile outlays would begin in 2014 and were necessary as the army at present had no defence against missile strikes.

Offshore funds flowing from crisis-hit Cyprus have helped boost bank deposits in Latvia, strengthening the small Baltic state's position as an offshore banking centre for neighbouring Russia and other ex-Soviet states, recent data reveal.

The EU is set for a budget-showdown between government ministers and the European Parliament after MEPs backed spending hikes for the 2013 settlement and the next seven year budget framework.

Putin took a leading role in the latest tests of Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal, the most comprehensive since the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Kremlin said Saturday.

Moody's ratings agency on 22 October downgraded five of Spain's biggest regions to "junk" status, including Catalonia where independence-driven elections are to take place next month.

David Cameron has insisted that Britain will “stick to our guns” in a growing row over his promise to freeze the European Union’s budget.

The visit demonstrated the full commitment of NATO and partner nations to Afghanistan now and beyond 2014, and was an opportunity to see the progress being made in the mission.

A 16-hour EU leadership summit ended on 19 October with the announcement of what is expected to be another marathon meeting of heads of state and government in November, when concrete figures for the 2014-2020 budget will be discussed for the first time.

While Berlin wants fiscal discipline and centralised budgetary oversight before it will open its coffers, Paris wants more solidarity, particularly towards struggling countries - before committing to such ideas.

Spain’s ruling conservative party has held on to control in regional elections in Galicia, giving a boost to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy as he pushes on with tough austerity measures, even as nationalist parties triumphed in the Basque Country.

Speaking during a press briefing on Friday (19 October) at the European Council, he emphasised that deepening integration of the eurozone-17 would also change the nature of Britain's place in the EU.

Angela Merkel reasserted German control over European strategy by insisting that the bail-out machinery would not pay for the past banking debts while also dismissing French plans to spread wealth.

Russia may deliver a "technical response" to NATO over its plans to deploy a European missile defense program, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Thursday.

François Hollande has put the brakes on a German-backed "political union", saying it should only be considered after the 2014 European elections and could not happen before there is agreement on creating banking and "social" unions.

EU leaders in the early hours of Friday (19 October) agreed that a eurozone banking supervisor should come into life next year, opening the way for troubled banks to access bailout money directly.

EU health commissioner John Dalli has resigned "to defend his reputation" in a dispute on tobacco lobbying.

Germany's Foreign Ministry reassured Croatia that the country is on track to join the EU, following a surprising statement from Bundestag leader, who said that the former Yugoslav republic was not ready to join and that EU enlargement should be frozen.

The Labour Party of Russian-born millionaire Victor Uspaskich has emerged as the winner of the parliamentary elections in Lithuania. His party is set to form a government with the Social Democrats of Algirdas Butkevicius.

Belgium is struggling to maintain political unity as a separatist party scored major victories in municipal elections and its leader is set to become mayor of the second city, raising the pressure on a fragmented national government.

European Union governments plan to ratchet up pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme today (15 October), approving new sanctions against Tehran's banks, industry and shipping.

Speaking at a dinner hosted by the Friends of Europe think-tank in Brussels on 11 October, Monti said the economic crisis is "undermining the raw material on which European integration is constructed" and has evoked a "north against the south" split.

A Danish Air Force Tactical Command (FTK) report criticises NATO for its inability to direct bombing raids in Libya last year.

Any transfer of any military equipment to the Syrian regime at this time is very concerning.

NATO plans to refocus its security operation in Kosovo on a mostly Serb northern border region after major contributor Germany said the EU's police force was "on the wrong track" and placing too great a burden on NATO forces there.

The future of Britain’s biggest manufacturer has been thrown into doubt after German Chancellor Angela Merkel personally blocked a proposed £30bn merger between BAE Systems and Franco-German EADS.

Rating agency Standard & Poor's has downgraded Spain's credit rating by two notches, warning that the deepening economic recession is limiting the government's options.

Eleven eurozone countries agreed on 9 October to press ahead with a disputed tax on financial transactions aimed at making traders share the cost of fixing a crisis that has rocked the single currency area.

Member states are warming to the idea of having a eurozone budget on top of the joint EU budget, with the latest draft conclusions ahead of next week's summit clearly separating the two.

Recognising that defence expenditure was constrained by economic necessity, the Secretary General urged Member States to work more cooperatively on planning, training and exercises in an effort to maintain and enhance capabilities.

NATO Defence Ministers discussed the security situation in Kosovo during talks at NATO headquarters on Wednesday (10 October). They affirmed that KFOR continues to play an indispensible role in Kosovo.

The North Atlantic Council has approved the appointment of General John Allen, currently the commander of the NATO-led ISAF mission in Afghanistan, as the new Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR).

Risks to the global financial system have increased as capital flight threatens to tear the eurozone apart, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that political angst could harm EU plans to put the safety of its banks beyond doubt.

Greece is temporarily blocking an EU gas embargo on Iran. But the big question is: are EU sanctions hurting or helping Iranian leader Ali Khamenei?

British conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has said he will block the upcoming EU seven-year budget cycle if it goes against UK interests.

The International Monetary Fund has slashed its growth forecast for large parts of the world economy and warned of a full-blown global slump if policymakers in Europe or the US mishandle serious threats.

Eurozone finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg on 8 October will hold the inaugural session of the permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, which is to have a firepower of ?500bn by next year as countries gradually pay into it.

MEPs have dismissed suggestions that a new parliamentary body should be set up solely for eurozone members stating that “no new accountability structures specific to the euro-area must be established.”

President Hugo Chavez won re-election and a new endorsement of his socialist project Sunday.

Greece cannot have more time to repay its debt to the European Central Bank because it would be illegal and "illogical", board member Joerg Asmussen has said, as he shut the door on pleas for leniency from the bank.

Georgian Dream leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili, met with NATO Liaison Officer in Tbilisi, William Lahue, and reiterated his coalition’s commitment to NATO integration.

Cyprus is reportedly seeking a ?11.5 billion credit line from member states using the euro to help bailout its troubled banks and close its budget gaps.

In a "dramatic" interview, he compared his country's situation with the Weimar Republic and warned of the consequences of unemployment for democracy.

Turkey’s parliament voted Thursday to authorize military cross-border operations into Syria, a day after an apparently errant mortar strike from inside Syria killed five Turkish civilians.

The North Atlantic Council met today, within the framework of Article 4 of the Washington Treaty, and discussed the continuous shelling of locations in Turkey adjacent to the Turkish-Syrian border by the Syrian regime forces.

EU leaders meeting later this month in Brussels will try to iron out disagreements on a new eurozone banking supervisor and consider further steps to deepen the economic union, such as a eurozone budget and binding "contracts" on reforms.

Portugal has announced a raft of new cuts designed to reduce the country's debt load, as finance minister Vitor Gaspar unveiled sweeping changes that will see the average income tax rate rise by 2pc.

Senior officials from Germany and other parts of the eurozone's AAA core have warned Spain privately that angry parliaments are likely to impose stringent conditions on any further rescue loans.

Ivanishvili said that Georgia should aspire to be a regional player and still hopes to join NATO after his party comes to power.

Russia told NATO and world powers on Tuesday they should not seek ways to intervene in Syria's civil war or set up buffer zones between rebels and government forces.

Spain is ready to request a eurozone bailout for its public finances as early as next weekend but Germany has signalled that it should hold off, European officials said.

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation, General Stephane Abrial gave an interview at the organisation’s headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia last week prior to his retirement from the post.

French President Francois Hollande faced his first serious public backlash after up to 50,000 lined the streets of Paris on Sunday in protest against his ?37 billion austerity budget.

Sergei Ryabkov reiterated Moscow’s demand for legally binding guarantees that U.S. and NATO missiles will not be aimed at Russia, warning that otherwise unspecified “compensatory” countermeasures would follow.

Speaking at a book presentation event in Rome on 27 September, he called the euro a "big swindle" and said that it would be no "tragedy" if Germany - which has displayed "hegemony, not solidarity" in the crisis - left the common currency.

Outbursts of violence in both Greece and Spain are not preventing the respective governments from pushing ahead with the further austerity measures asked for by international lenders.

Russia President Vladimir Putin is well on his way to reestablishing Russia as a regional hegemon and the West has been too slow to recognize and deal with Putin's strategy, according to the foreign minister of the Czech Republic.

Spain's debt crisis has returned with a vengeance after Germany, Holland and Finland reneged on a crucial summit deal and scuppered hopes of direct eurozone help for Spanish banks.

De Gucht regretted the announcement by Ukraine that the country intended to raise the limit on the tariffs it can legally impose on more than 350 goods.

Protesters clashed with police in Spain's capital on Tuesday as the government prepared a new round of unpopular austerity measures for the 2013 budget to be announced on Thursday.

The rating agency said that it now expects a 0.8pc contraction in the eurozone in 2012 and zero growth in 2013. This compares with previous projections for growth of -0.7pc and 0.3pc respectively.

State control and European-based jobs are the main sticking points in a planned merger of Eads, the Franco-German company producing Airbus planes and BAE Systems, Britain's biggest defence contractor.

Germany's central bank has launched a blistering attack on the International Monetary Fund, accusing officials of spraying around money like confetti and overstepping their legal mandate.

While Poland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have shelved plans to join the common European currency anytime soon, Latvia announced that it wants to become the 18th eurozone member in early 2014.

Ukraine has told its trading partners it wants to raise tariffs on hundreds of imported goods. EU sources told EurActiv that this could raise “systemic questions” over the country’s relations with the Union.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is slated to discuss a West vs. Russia dispute on missile defence with Moscow's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, next week in New York City.

Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski has called on Britain to abandon its "false consciousness" of euroscepticism and take the lead in EU decision-making.

Spanish banks may need a cash injection of more than ?100bn (£80bn), the results of an official stress test are expected to show this week, placing more financial pressure on to an already explosive political crisis in Madrid.

Cyprus tabled a ‘negotiating box’ for the European Union budget for 2014-2020, to be discussed by European affairs ministers on Monday. According to the paper, ministers are requested to limit their presentations to three minutes.

Chinese leader Wen Jiabao has bluntly told the EU to drop its ban on arms sales.

Over 1 million people took to the streets of Portuguese cities on Saturday in protest at moves to boost social contributions from 11 percent to 18 percent for workers and to lower them from 25 percent to 18 percent for companies.

Russia will reactivate mothballed ballistic missile silos around Moscow as part of deep modernization of a missile defense network protecting the Russian capital, Viktor Yesin said on Monday.

The head of Germany’s Bundesbank has raised eyebrows across Europe after he appeared to compare Mario Draghi’s bond buying programme with the "devil’s work".

Turkey has been a proud ally of the U.S. and a strong and committed member of NATO. To us, the trans-Atlantic alliance continues to be the cornerstone of our security and defense, and that of all allies.

The Chiefs of Defence of the 28 NATO nations elected Air Marshal Sir Christopher Harper of the United Kingdom as the new Director General of the International Military Staff (DGIMS) at NATO Headquarters.

Spain told euro zone finance ministers on Friday it will set clear deadlines for structural reforms by the end of the month, in a move European diplomats said would pave the way for an aid request before long to help it tackle its debt pile.

Spain is digging in its heels against further austerity as protests sweep the country and mounting tensions with Catalan nationalists threaten to split the country.

The European Parliament is fighting for a bigger say in shaping the eurozone banking supervisor in a move which could hurt Spain.

In the biggest shake-up in Europe's aerospace and defence sector in more than a decade, Britain's BAE Systems and Airbus-owner EADS said they are in advanced talks to create an industry giant that would overtake rival Boeing.

Pro-European parties swept to victory in Dutch elections despite concerns that eurosceptics would increase their influence on future decision-making powers.

EU Council chief Van Rompuy on 12 September tabled an 'issues paper' on how to further integrate the eurozone, including a common budget, limited debt mutualisation and a parliamentary assembly.

The Secretary General then responded to a number of questions from journalists. Here is a summary of key points.

Plans for stronger banking supervision in the eurozone are putting non-euro members in a difficult position: they want the euro-crisis to end, but they do not want to endorse a two-speed Europe.

Safeguards proposed by Brussels to stop a newly beefed-up European Central Bank from calling the shots on banks beyond the eurozone are unlikely to satisfy Britain and other EU countries that do not use the common currency.

This is not just an issue for the history books. The situation in the Caucasus remains fraught, and Western leaders need to make sure they do not again misread Russia's intentions.

Greece's foreign lenders have rejected parts of a ?12bn (£9bn) austerity package prepared by the government, Greek officials said on Sunday as the two sides resumed talks after a month-long hiatus.

Members of the delegations discussed key aspects of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reform, prospects of military cooperation within the Ukraine-NATO Military Committee Working Plan, as well as Ukrainian troops’ participation in NATO’s multinational operations

China and Russia sounded the alarm about the state of the global economy at a summit on Saturday and urged Asian-Pacific countries to protect themselves by forging deeper regional economic ties.

The European Central Bank on 6 September announced an "unlimited" bond-buying programme once governments apply for eurozone financial assistance with strict conditions and supervision.

Plans being developed by Council President Herman Van Rompuy, Commission President José Manuel Barroso, Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker, and ECB President Mario Draghi, would see the creation of a new ‘eurozone parliament’.

Plans to buy government bonds from ailing eurozone countries in return for a stricter supervision of their reforms are likely to be endorsed by the European Central Bank's (ECB) governing council on Thursday.

Mario Draghi has delivered his radical bond buying plan to the European Central Bank’s Governing Council in a move designed to equip the eurozone with a powerful new weapon to curb its debt crisis.

The EU has said Russia's Gazprom might be guilty of price-fixing in Europe in a move set to test political relations.

European Commission Vice President Viviane Reding has called for the current Commission President José Manuel Barroso to stay on for an unprecedented third term, following a row with the Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta.

The Defense Ministers of Bulgaria and Romania, Gen. Anyu Angelov and Gen. Corneliu Dobritoiu, met in Sofia Tuesday for the singing of a Bulgarian-Romanian agreement under NATO's Air Policing program.

Exercise Ramstein Rover 2012, a two-week training mission for NATO’s close air support providers, begins Wednesday and runs to Sept. 21 in the Czech Republic.

NATO underlined that Skopje was making a substantial contribution as a partner in NATO-led operations in Afghanistan and in support of KFOR and he welcomed President Ivanov's firm commitment to the NATO accession process.

Moody's has lowered the European Union's long-term issuer rating outlook from stable to negative, saying the move reflected credit risks of the bloc's key budget contributors.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was due to meet European Union and NATO senior officials in a first visit to Brussels as part of France’s drive to relaunch a European defense initiative.

On 1 September, Poland handed over command of NATO’s air policing mission in the Baltics to the Czech Republic.

The European Central Bank will have the "ultimate decision-making authority" on supervising 6,000 euro-area banks, with some day-to-day tasks delegated to national bodies, a commission spokesman has said.

Within hours of the pardon, Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian told an emergency meeting of that country's National Security Council that Hungary had made a "grave mistake," and soon after he announced the interruption in diplomatic ties.

Estonians are becoming more vocal about the NATO air-policing mission on the Baltic States. It is official form now on – it would like to share the air-policing mission with Lithuania, which is currently carried out from Aviation Base in Siauliai.

An extraordinary summit of EU heads of state and governments in November will focus on the European Union budget for 2014-2020, it emerged following a meeting of European Affairs ministers held in Nicosia yesterday (30 August).

The European Commission plans to give the European Central Bank (ECB) oversight of all banks in the eurozone from 2014, said Michel Barnier, in charge of the internal market at the EU executive.

But the mood has since changed and serious plans are underway to create – if not a full political union – then something close to it.

Head of Georgian representation in NATO Nugzar Mgaloblishvili informed the commission about the situation in Dagestan section of the Georgian-Russian border.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was right when he called Russia America's "No. 1 geopolitical foe".

Sweden has sent a formal invitation for Lithuania to join the Sweden-led EU Nordic Battlegroup in the first half of 2015.

France will not use a $1.2 billion contract to build Mistral class amphibious assault ships for the Russian Navy to put pressure on Moscow over the Syrian issue, the country’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.

François Hollande has insisted that the European Union needed more solidarity and a system for debt mutualisation, a position which fell foul of Germany’s insistence that this should only happen after countries agree to greater fiscal oversight.

The United States urged African nations to pool their air force assets in a NATO-style effort to take on terrorists and international criminals rather than struggle to fund costly independent operations.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Tuesday (28 August) said his government has not yet taken a decision on asking for European help in refinancing its debt, pending a key meeting of the European Central Bank next week.

President Vladimir Putin said he was open to the idea of new nuclear arms cuts on a reciprocal basis if the United States addresses his concerns about a U.S.-led missile defense system in Europe.

Conservatives have made rebuilding the military, more international involvement and a more muscular presence in the North key policy touchstones.

NATO has closed more than 200 bases in Afghanistan and transferred nearly 300 others to local forces, a concrete step toward its 2014 target of handing over security responsibility, NATO officers said Sunday.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has appointed Norwegian diplomat Mari Skåre as his Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security.

Central bank financing can be “addictive like a drug”, the president of the Bundesbank has warned, in comments that emphasize the dangerous gulf between Germany and the European Central Bank.

Angela Merkel wants an EU 'convention' to draw up a new treaty for closer European political unification and help overcome the bloc's sovereign debt crisis, the weekly Der Spiegel reported on Sunday (26 August).

The left-wing Socialist party is expected to seize the largest gains in September's Dutch elections, threatening to deprive German Chancellor Angela Merkel of one of her closest allies in response to the eurozone debt crisis.

French president says Greece 'must stay' in the eurozone following talks with the country's prime minister, but stressed Greece needed to prove its commitment to economic reform.

The Finnish defense ministry said on its website on Friday that “a Russian military plane is suspected of violating the airspace of Finland in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland on the evening of August 23, 2012.”

The U.S. is planning a major expansion of missile defenses in Asia, a move American officials say is designed to contain threats from North Korea, but one that could also be used to counter China's military.

Samaras kicked off a European charm offensive on 22 August with talks to persuade eurozone chief Jean-Claude Juncker that the debt-laden nation has the will to ram through unpopular reforms and deserves more time to do it.

The Northern Eagle 2012 naval exercise will be held in four districts in the Norwegian and Barents Seas, and will end on 25 August putting in at Severomorsk.

Angela Merkel is backing Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann in his hard-line stance against further ECB intervention on the bond markets, rather than Germany’s ECB Executive Board Member Jörg Asmussen.

Poland’s recently expressed interest in acquiring an independent capability to counter theater-level missile attacks has much to do with insecurities over whether the United States can reliably be counted on to defend Polish interests.

Socialist leader Emile Roemer, who some polls show on course to become the next prime minister, said Friday the Netherlands would refuse to pay a penalty to the European Union if its budget deficit exceeded 3% of GDP, breaking EU rules.

Germany’s director at the European Central Bank has thrown his weight behind mass purchases of Spanish and Italian debt to prevent the disintegration of the euro, marking a crucial turning point in the eurozone debt crisis.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency awarded Raytheon a $925 million contract for continued work on the advanced Standard Missile-3 Block IIA missile used by the American and Japanese navies to destroy short- to intermediate- range ballistic missiles.

Finland's foreign minister has said his government does not want the euro to break up, but that officials have to be prepared "for any eventuality."

Poland's defence minister said that the new French government is interested in cooperation in the so-called “Polish shield” element of the US-led anti-ballistic missile project in Europe.

The eurozone will slip into recession and won't grow until 2013, according a poll of economists who also don't expect any new aggressive policy response from the European Central Bank.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is next week meeting top EU leaders in a bid to negotiate a two-year deadline extension of the current bailout terms due to the worsening recession.

Poland plans to buy around 30 UCAVs by 2018 to form three squadrons.

Eurozone economies continue to go separate ways, with overall recession of 0.2 percent, while Germany's economy is still growing by 0.3 percent, according to the latest Eurostat data.

A prominent Romanian opposition MEP warned on 12 August of a looming ‘civil war’ in Romania as the conflict between the leftist ruling coalition and the centre-right president reached new heights, prompting fresh reactions from the EU.

Greece plunged deeper into recession official figures showed raising tension over the ?3.1bn (£2.4) Athens needs to raise on the bondmarkets today to avoid defaulting on debt due on Monday.

Seventeen NATO countries have confirmed participation in an extensive air force exercise to be held in the Czech Republic in September, the sole such event the Alliance holds this year.

Poland wants to cooperate with France and Germany on the establishment of its own missile defense system, Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said.

Three years into the eurozone debt crisis, the gravity-defying German economy has stalled and some fear it could fall into recession in the second half of this year.

Finland's prime minister on 10 August proposed a banking sector-funded European crisis fund to recapitalise troubled banks as part of Europe's plans for a banking union to tighten supervision.

The head of the EU commission on Friday (10 August) sent a harsh letter to Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta, urging him to stop political infighting and ensure that top judges can do their work without threats.

Former senator Jim Talent is widely regarded as the top choice for defense secretary in a potential Romney administration.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak confirmed that President Barack Obama recently received a new National Intelligence Estimate report on the Iranian nuclear program, and said that the report has raised the urgency of the issue.

The European Central Bank should not buy Spanish and Italian debt because it "makes no sense" and will take away the pressure on politicians to act, Belgium's central bank governor has said.

Czech outgoing ambassador to NATO Martin Povejsil and his successor Jiri Sedivy emphatically warned against continued decreasing military expenditures in the Czech Republic and other NATO countries, in an interview with CTK.

The North Atlantic Council has approved the nomination by the President of the French Republic of Air Force General Jean-Paul Paloméros as Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.

The prospect of Britain leaving the European Union is increasingly likely according to a leaked strategy paper by banking giant Nomura.

Four years after a war which shocked Europe, Georgia's EU ambassador has said that Russia is becoming "more dangerous."

Munich does, to a great extent, explain the peculiarities of the Czech avatar of Atlanticism, a sentiment shared by Central and East Europeans.

The political crisis in Romania is to drag on until 12 September at least after judges on Thursday (2 August) postponed their decision on the validity of last weekend's referendum.

ECB on Thursday (2 August) said it "may" intervene on the markets to buy bonds to help Spain and Italy lower their borrowing costs, but only if governments first sign reform pledges with the eurozone's bailout fund - a German demand.

With NATO-led coalition looking to exit the Central Asian hotspot in 2014, President Vladimir Putin said the international forces should stay in Afghanistan until their job is finished.

The European Stability Mechanism rescue fund will eventually be granted a banking licence, giving it enough fire power to head off the bloc's debt crisis, Mario Monti said щт 1 August, on the eve of a crunch meeting of the ECB council today.

Francois Hollande, the French president, was the latest to pledge eurozone leaders would do “everything possible” to save the euro today following a meeting with Mario Monti, the Italian prime minister.

This became especially clear during the weekend when reportedly a PLAN escort fleet crossed the Suez Canal, with Cairo’s permission, on their way to the Mediterranean Sea.

France has nominated Gen. Jean-Paul Paloméros, French air chief of staff, as the next head of NATO’s Allied Command Transformation.

Spain has for the first time conceded it might need a full bailout worth ?300 billion if its borrowing costs remain unsustainably high, a eurozone official said.

Romanian President Traian Basescu survived a referendum on his impeachment on Sunday after the voter turnout fell short of the required level and derailed an effort by his opponents to oust him from office.

The European Central Bank has opened the door to emergency support for the Spanish and Italian bond markets, setting off a blistering rally on bourses across the world

A Spanish minister angered Italy and France after claiming the two countries backed Spain in demands for speedier actions by the eurozone to bring down its record-high borrowing costs.

The Turkish Armed Forces have begun working on a project to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Increasingly under pressure by rebels intent on unseating him, Bashar al-Assad has considered using chemical weapons against his enemies but Washington and Moscow have formed an unlikely alliance to force him to abandon such plans.

European Сommission president Jose Manuel Barroso will visit Greece Thursday in his first trip to the country since the outbreak of the financial crisis.

After years of training Europe’s soldiers in on-the-ground tactics, U.S. Army Europe is focusing several echelons higher, training Europe’s senior leaders in the concepts of multinational command.

Three-quarters of Scots believe that an independent Scotland should stay in NATO, according to a new poll published as the SNP considers ending its long-standing opposition to the nuclear defence alliance.

Spain's economy sank deeper into recession in the second quarter, its central bank reported, as investors spooked by a funding crisis in its regions pushed the country ever closer to a full bailout.

The Obama administration has for now abandoned efforts for a diplomatic settlement to the conflict in Syria, and instead it is increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition to forcibly bring down the government of al-Assad.

Stock markets tumbled and Spain's borrowing costs rose again as the country's debt crisis deepened, raising concerns over the wider eurozone.

Italy's divided political parties restated their support for Prime Minister Mario Monti at the weekend, seeking to calm fears of instability that helped drive Rome's borrowing costs to dangerous levels last week.

Greece is in a "Great Depression" similar to the American one in the 1930s, the country's Prime Minister Antonis Samaras told former US President Bill Clinton on Sunday.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels Monday (23 July) are expected to extend sanctions on Syria while trying to clamp down on weapons making their way to the Bashar Assad government.

A gunman wearing an Afghan uniform turned his weapon against foreign trainers working for NATO in the western province of Herat on Sunday, killing three, in a grim 24 hours for the coalition which also saw five NATO soldiers killed.

European Union nations will enforce an arms embargo against Syria by boarding ships and aircraft carrying suspicious cargo to the war-torn nation, an official said Friday.

Ambassador Alexander Vershbow visited Bosnia and Herzegovina on 19 and 20 July 2012. The purpose of the visit was to exchange views with representatives of the Government on the country's commitment to the NATO accession process.

So I know people share my deep frustration and outrage at what’s going on inside Syria, but my job is not just to express outrage.

The Eurogroup today (20 July) announced it would grant a bailout of up to ?100 billion to Spain to recapitalise its banks, following a telephone conference call during which finance ministers gave their backing to the rescue plan.

Eurozone finance ministers on Friday (20 July) are set to iron out the final details of bailout of up to ?100bn for the Spanish banking sector, just as tens of thousands Spaniards took to the streets in protest against fresh spending cuts.

The German Parliament on Thursday (19 July) approved a bailout for the Spanish banking sector of up to ?100 billion, despite criticism that Berlin is funding a "bottomless pit."

UK defense minister delivered a surprising rebuff to European defense leaders: Stop complaining about being abandoned as the US shifts focus to the Asia-Pacific region and prepare to "do much more of the heavy lifting" on security in your own backyard.

The U.S. is building a missile defence radar station at a covert location in Qatar and organising the largest minesweeping exercise in the Persian Gulf in a preparation for possible escalation of dispute with Iran.

A suicide bomber committed the attack that killed eight people in a bus transporting Israeli tourists at a Bulgarian airport, the country's interior minister said on Thursday, and Israel accused Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants of responsibility.

Hague said on 12 July that by 2014 the government would conduct a “comprehensive audit” on the impact of EU legislation on the UK.

Maj. Gen. David R. Hogg, commander of U.S. Army Africa/Southern European Task Force, has been nominated for appointment to the rank of lieutenant general and to serve as the U.S. military representative on the NATO Military Committee in Belgium.

Russian Senators have approved the appointment of Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko as Russia’s new ambassador to NATO. The decision was taken at a closed meeting of The Foreign Affairs Committee at the upper house of the Russian Parliament.

Interoperable solutions are tested regularly through various means, including training and trials such as the “Unified Vision 12” trials held in Ørland, Norway from 18-29 June.

Rasmussen has expressed the hope that Ukraine's leadership will settle the issue of the politically motivated prosecution of Tymoshenko and Lutsenko as soon as possible in order to remove these obstacles in further cooperation with the alliance.

The euro crisis continues to weigh down the global economy, the International Monetary Fund said Monday (16 July), putting pressure on the European Central Bank to lower its interest rate even further and issue more cheap loans to the banks.

The Romanian government has downplayed the urgency of list of measures demanded by the EU commission as it seeks to restore confidence in the country's rule of law and avoid political sanctions.

In an unusually public forum, the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, MI6, has forecast that Iran would likely achieve a nuclear weapons capability within two years, a British newspaper reported Friday.

The conflict in Syria was effectively declared a civil war by the Red Cross on Sunday, as the "most intense" fighting since the start of the uprising was reported in Damascus.

US ratings agency Moody's has cut Italy's debt rating by two notches citing a contagion risk from Spain and Greece as the eurozone crisis continues to rage.

The euro has plunged to multi-year lows against a range of currencies on fears of a deepening slump in Italy and Spain, and ugly disputes between eurozone leaders.

On 11 July, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the ambassadors of all 28 NATO Allies visited KFOR, together with the ambassadors of partner countries which contribute to the mission.

Speaking during a separate meeting with Brussels journalists, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis also commented on the situation in Ukraine, saying the EU needs to make an important promise to Ukraine before the elections.

Romania's current constitutional turmoil may ultimately result in its longed-for entry into the EU's passport-free zone being delayed still further, the European Commission has warned.

The tension between the need for quick eurozone reform and the necessities of democratic scrutiny took a further twist on 10 July when Germany's highest court indicated it may delay a decision on the permanent bailout fund.

Russia despatched a flotilla of warships to its naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus on Tuesday in an apparent show of support for President Bashar al-Assad.

Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt might have to call an election later this year as her centre-left government has lost support from the Red-Green Alliance, whose votes are needed to keep her in power.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande will meet in Notre-Dame de Reims cathedral to celebrate half a century of friendship in a French region deeply scarred by centuries of war with Germany.

The United States stands with our EU partners and urges that Romania uphold and protect the common values and principles that unite the European and trans-Atlantic community of nations.

Hillary Clinton lambasted Russia and China on Friday for blocking efforts to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose much-reviled regime has endured a serious crack in its armor - the defection of a key member of its inner circle.

The Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said that he will take additional steps in the coming days to reduce the country's debt mountain.

Hillary Clinton on Saturday formally designated Afghanistan a "major non-NATO ally," setting the stage for tighter military cooperation even as international troops are on a path to withdraw from the war-torn country by the end of 2014.

Russia pressed Tajikistan on Thursday to accept a deal that would extend Moscow's lease on a military base in the strategically important country, pushing to break a deadlock in negotiations which Russia has blamed on NATO's influence.

Russia has launched a campaign of verbal intimidation against Finland, seemingly aimed at stopping the country from joining NATO. It started with a remarkable speech last month by General Nikolai Makarov, the commander of Russia's armed forces.

The maritime group consists of three frigates registered under three different countries. Turkey’s Gediz, France’s Courbet and Germany’s Bayern have 545 sailors on board in total.

Addressing the European Parliament yesterday (3 July) in Strasbourg, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso slammed British euro-sceptics for their divisive behaviour and taking pleasure in the eurozone's troubles.

"The time will come when the Bavarian government and the CSU can no longer say yes. And I wouldn't then be able to support that personally either," he said. "And the coalition has no majority without CSU's seats," the party chief added.

The resumption of transit arrangements for ISAF supplies through Pakistan demonstrates strengthened cooperation between ISAF nations and our partner Pakistan.

Finland, one of the eurozone’s few remaining AAA-rated economies, has pledged to block Brussels’ celebrated plans to allow its new bail-out fund to buy sovereign bonds in the market.

General Bartels and Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius discussed future challenges for global security and for NATO, the furthering of the Air Policing mission in the Baltic region and economical challenges.

Six constitutional complaints were lodged in Germany against the treaty on fiscal discipline and the establishment of a permanent eurozone bailout fund. The plaintiffs cite a lack of democratic oversight and a denting of budgetary powers.

Under increasing domestic pressure as the eurozone considers major integrative steps, David Cameron has said the UK may have a referendum on the EU, but his couched statement does not go far enough for increasingly restive Conservative eurosceptics.

MDA and U.S. Navy sailors in the USS LAKE ERIE successfully conducted a flight test of the Aegis BMD system, resulting in the intercept of a ballistic missile target over the Pacific Ocean by the newest missile defense interceptor missile SM-3 Block IB.

A network of new-generation Voronezh-class anti-missile radars will enter combat duty in Russia ahead of the approved schedule, officials said on Tuesday.

The US Defense Department is urging Congress to grant its request for one more year of funding for a divisive multinational project to develop new battlefield antimissile technology,

Germany has today caved into demands made by Italy and Spain for immediate eurozone aid to bring down their soaring borrowing costs.

According to a US government source privy to the Nato meeting called by Turkey on Tuesday, Ankara has requested that the alliance draw up contingency plans for a no-fly zone to protect Turkish territory in the event of further acts of Syrian aggression.

The German leader's tough words set the scene for what is likely to be a bruising summit beginning Thursday.

It was only the second time in NATO's 63-year history that members have convened under Article 4 of its charter, after Turkey requested talks about the Iraq war in 2003.

Cyprus on 25 June became the fifth euro country to ask for help from the zone's bailout funds, hours after Spain formalised its request for a bank rescue.

EU officials have drawn up a far-reaching plan that would eventually turn the eurozone into an outright fiscal union, but acceptance by EU leaders - whose powers it reduces - will require a major leap of political faith.

NATO condemned the downing of a Turkish jet by Syria last week as “completely unacceptable” but gave no indication it would take retaliatory action. The prime minister of Turkey, however, said his country would react militarily to any future violations.

Turkey said Monday it would push NATO to consider Syria's downing of a Turkish jet as an attack on the whole military alliance.

Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said that his country would respond decisively to Syria’s shooting down of his country’s military jet on Friday which he said was on a reconnaissance sortie.

Turkey has invoked the softer article four of the Nato treaty after Syria shot down one of its warplanes.

Envoys from NATO member states will meet on Tuesday after Turkey requested consultations over the downing of its military jet by Syria, a NATO spokeswoman said on Sunday.

A high-profile meeting of the eurozone's biggest economies on Friday (22 June) saw commitment to boost growth by adopting measures worth ?130 billion, but disagreement on eurobonds and how to fund ailing banks.

If Turkey has reason to believe that Syria shot down its plane, might NATO respond in a similar fashion? It's not an entirely unreasonable question.

Eurozone ministers are pressing Spain to formalise its bank aid request at the latest by Monday, and promise to send international creditors to Greece to hold talks with the newly formed government.

Monti is hoping to secure a preliminary deal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Francois Hollande, and Spain's prime minister Mariano Rajoy.

A senior NATO source, speaking on condition of inscrutability, suggested that an alliance in search of a vision might well have the answer, either through its existing AWACS or through a suitably modified drone.

Barclays had its credit rating cut by two notches from A1 to A3, while HSBC, Britain’s largest bank by market capitalisation, saw its rating cut one notch from Aa2 to Aa3.

Italy's technocrat government risks a parliamentary mutiny unless premier Mario Monti can secure major concessions from Germany at a crucial summit of the eurozone's Big Four powers in Rome on Friday.

American Forces Press Service announced the start of a joint NATO and US Air Force and Army technical trial, Unified Vision 2012, on 18 June 2012. They will be operating at Oerland Air Station in Brekstad, Norway, and at other locations in Europe and US.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s insistence that the EU should not change the terms of the Greek rescue programme came under thinly disguised criticism on 19 June, ahead of a key eurozone ministers meeting planned at the end of the week.

In the survey by Ilta-Sanomat, 65 per cent of respondents felt that Makarov’s comments did not have any impact on their views. Less than one-tenth estimated that their opinion had become more negatively.

Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr. Nizar Madani visited the NATO headquarters in Brussels Monday and met with Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Not many people would immediately associate NATO with the Euro 2012 Football Championship. But NATO's "Eye in the Sky", the AWACS will be playing an important role in the security of the European teams' competition over the next three weeks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated Moscow's strong opposition to the U.S. missile defense system on Tuesday, saying that President Barack Obama's re-election would not end the dispute and insisting on joint development of the shield.

Russia and China have not agreed to any plan for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad from power but do recognize the danger of an all-out civil war in Syria, U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday

Europe won support from world leaders on Tuesday for an ambitious but slow-moving overhaul of the euro zone, even as pressure built in financial markets for quicker solutions to its debt crisis that threatens the world economy.

"Frankly we are not coming here to take lessons on democracy or on how to handle the economy," said Jose Manuel Barroso ahead of a G20 meeting in Mexico, where the eurozone crisis was expected to play a central part in discussions.

Europe's leaders have vowed to mobilise all possible means to counter the region's escalating crisis after Spain's borrowing costs threatened to spiral out of control.

Greece is expected to ask for a third international bail-out agreement as soon as a government is formed, ramping up the pressure on Germany and Brussels to back the eurozone or break it.

Moscow has sent a ship carrying a small contingent of combat forces to guard Russia’s deep-water port and military base at the Syrian city of Tartus, the US officials said.

The United Nations suspended its monitoring mission in Syria on Saturday, a day after the chief observer there warned that spiraling bloodshed was hindering the ability of his team to fulfill its obligations.

The UK has signalled it accepts that a eurozone banking union will go ahead and that it will not be onboard but warned it will seek "safeguards" to protect its financial sector and the single market.

Germany is powerful but cannot solve the euro-crisis alone, Chancellor Angela Merkel told German lawmakers on 14 June, renewing calls for a political union ahead of a G20 meeting in Mexico and putting pressure on Spain to seal the bail-out deal.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard committed to deepening NATO-Australia security cooperation on Thursday (14 June) after they signed a new accord formalising bilateral relations.

Cyprus could seek as much as ?4 billion in emergency help and is looking to Europe, Russia and China for the best possible bailout terms, according to news reports in a nation that is next in line to hold the rotating EU presidency.

Prime Minister Mario Monti made a dramatic appeal to Italy's politicians on 13 June to back his tough economic medicine to avoid the country becoming the next victim of the euro debt crisis.

The European Parliament on 13 June approved draft laws that would strongly increase Brussels' power over eurozone countries' budgets. But they tempered the previously austere proposals with measures for growth, debt redemption and democratic scrutiny.

Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and the UK participated in the Schriever Wargame 2012 at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada in the Unites States for the first time this April. Canada and Australia also participated.

The European Commission on Tuesday (12 June) confirmed it is giving legal advice on possible capital controls and border checks should Greece leave the eurozone.

The long-range air and missile defense system, worth more than $4 billion, has attracted companies from China, Europe, Russia and the U.S.

Germany's defense minister on Monday rejected the suggestion that military intervention was the way to go in efforts to bring an end to the fighting in Syria.

Mr. Rasmussen said he agreed with the British foreign secretary, William Hague, who told Sky News over the weekend that the crisis in Syria was starting to resemble the sectarian warfare in Bosnia two decades ago.

The UK would be better off staying in the EU, the country's foremost eurosceptic think tank says, amid a growing debate among Conservatives on the merits of a British exit from the European Union.

For example, President Obama announced in Chicago that he has directed the transfer of the AN/TPY-2 radar deployed in Turkey to NATO operational control. The EPAA also includes BMD-capable Aegis ships that can perform many roles besides BMD.

Not many people would immediately associate NATO with the Euro 2012 Football Championship. But NATO's "Eye in the Sky", the AWACS will be playing an important role in the security of the European teams' competition over the next three weeks.

The funds will be channelled directly to a state-run fund for bank rescues in Spain, the Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring, but the Spanish government will sign a memorandum of understanding.

Russia's latest ballistic missile submarine, the Borey class Yury Dolgoruky will complete an initial sea trial on June 7, its maker Sevmash shipyard said on Tuesday.

Fitch downgraded Spain by three notches yesterday, citing a serious mishandling of the debt crisis by European leaders.

Cypriots officials have more than doubled in number in the EU capital, are working Sundays, sleeping little and whittling down their to-do list to euro crisis essentials as the country prepares to take over the day-to-day running of the EU.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will use the gathering of EU leaders at the end of the month to push ahead with plans for a political union, including more sweeping powers to Brussels.

The agreement maps out practical steps where NATO and New Zealand will deepen their cooperation in areas such as intelligence, counter-terrorism, cyber-defence, disaster relief, crisis management and joint education and training.

European leaders are mustering resources to rescue Spanish banks, regardless of Madrid's protestations, amid intensifying pressure from markets and politicians around the world.

European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi on Wednesday (6 June) did not rule out further cheap loans to struggling euro-banks and said that nobody can force Spain into a bail-out.

Military cooperation between Russia and NATO is progressing well and is beneficial to both parties. In contrast, cooperation between Finland and NATO threatens Russia's security.

Announcing the trip next week to Australia only hours before meeting New Zealand Prime Minister John Key in Brussels, Mr Rasmussen said "both countries are making a real difference to our mission in Afghanistan".

Spain has admitted for the first time that it can no longer raise money on the global markets or roll over its sovereign bonds, threatening to set off a dangerous escalation of Europe's debt crisis.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on 4 June said she supports more integration in the eurozone - a veiled reference to pooling debt provided EU institutions gain more supervisory powers.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and John Key, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, pledged closer security cooperation after signing a new partnership cooperation accord at NATO headquarters on 4 June 2012.

The two men spoke alongside Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a press briefing after the 29th regular EU-Russia summit, held on Monday, 4 June in St Petersburg.

Spain's ruling party has begun to crack under pressure, signalling for the first time that the country may need a European rescue to shore up its banking system.

Putin's stance on Syria and appetite for closer ties with the European Union, Moscow's largest trading partner, will be in the spotlight on Monday at his first summit with the EU since he returned to the Kremlin last month.

This will probably strengthen Western suspicions that Iran is "sanitizing" the site of any incriminating evidence before possibly allowing inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into the complex.

According to government sources, Ireland's referendum on the EU's new fiscal treaty is likely to pass by a margin of more than three to two, but with a turnout as low as 50%.

The U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder said the military alliance lacks two key mandates that would allow it to intervene in Syria to stop violence between President Bashar al-Assad and opposition forces.

The head of the European Central Bank hit out at the political paralysis gripping the region as he warned the eurozone's set-up was "unsustainable".

The Obama administration plans to arm Italy's fleet of Reaper drone aircraft, a move that could open the door for sales of advanced hunter-killer drone technology to other allies, according to lawmakers and others familiar with the matter.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has said he is going to push for an "early" plan for further integration in the eurozone, claiming political momentum is on his side.

Obama discussed developments in Europe as well as in Syria on Wednesday in a video conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, the White House said.

McFaul found himself in hot water once again, facing heavy criticism from the Kremlin and the Foreign Ministry over comments suggesting that Russia had “bribed” officials in Kyrgyzstan to pressure them to close a base used by U.S. forces.

Iran’s nuclear chief, reversing the country’s previous statements, said on state television on Sunday that the country would not halt its production of higher-grade uranium, suggesting that the Iranian government was veering back to a much harder line.

As Spain's ten-year borrowing costs neared danger levels following the nationalisation of Bankia, the country's fourth largest bank, Madrid was given assurances that it could count on external assistance if needed.

The cost of insurance against a Spanish default reached another record on Monday, with Italy's borrowing costs also rising sharply amid continued market fears about the fate of the eurozone.

Spanish stocks plunged to a nine-year-low and its borrowing costs rose as traders refused to believe Mariano Rajoy’s claim that Madrid could salvage its banks without a bail-out.

Ilves took the opportunity to reiterate a much-promoted pat on the back for Estonia, which joins an elite minority of alliance members this year by making good on the pledge to allocate 2 percent of its GDP to defense expenditure.

The European Union filed a suit against Argentina's import restrictions with the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 25 May, intensifying the disputes between the South American nation and its trading partners.

Germany has reportedly drawn up a six-point plan to rescue Greece and the eurozone’s other failed economies in the same way East Germany was rebuilt after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The United Kingdom is under no threat of breaking up, according to a survey published on the eve of Friday's official launch of the Scottish separatists’ referendum campaign.

The head of the eurozone’s central bank urged the region's leaders to take a “courageous leap” to safeguard the future of the single currency as clear divisions continued and a Greek exit remained in focus.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called on the European Central Bank (ECB) to help lower his country's borrowing costs as a matter of urgency.

Russia has staged the first successful test-launch of a new intercontinental missile designed to penetrate the defence system now being deployed by Nato despite Moscow's fierce complaints.

The main point of interest - and the one that had resulted in a tit-for-tat exchange between Berlin and Paris ahead of Wednesday's meeting - was the question of mutualising eurozone debt in the form of eurobonds.

EU leaders gathering in Brussels on Wednesday (23 May) evening for an informal summit on how to invigorate the economy are likely to see a sharp exchange of views between France's new President and the German Chancellor on the subject of eurobonds.

Angela Merkel said she finds it “astonishing” that her pro-austerity stance is the cause of controversy, as Germany found itself increasingly isolated on the issue of eurobonds ahead of Wednesday’s European Union leaders summit.

Speaking to press in off-the-cuff remarks after a Nato summit in Chicago, he endorsed three ideas: a massive EU bail-out fund; lower interest rates; and an EU-level strategy on growth.

NATO Allies welcomed in Chicago leaders from partner countries from across the globe in different partnership meetings and thanked them for the contributions they make to the work of the Alliance.

Adopted at the Chicago Summit of NATO on May 20, 2012.

NATO leaders declared that the Alliance now has an interim ballistic missile defence capability at their summit in Chicago on 21 May, marking the first step in the development of a NATO missile-defence system.

A procurement contract for the AGS system was signed on 20 May 2012 in the margins of the NATO Summit in Chicago, paving the way for the the delivery of a vital capability that will be made available to all NATO member nations.

Doorstep statement by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the beginning of the Summit meetings of Heads of State and Government in Chicago.

Le Drian is a vice chairman of the lower house National Assembly defense committee, history graduate and former university lecturer.He has specialized in the French Navy budget.

The German Social Democrats have indicated to French President François Hollande that they will support him in adopting a European pact to boost growth, but that they would like to keep this separate from the fiscal compact treaty.

Spain's economic woes deepened on Thursday (17 May) as 16 of its banks and four regions were downgraded by Moody's ratings agency, while statistics confirmed the country is still in recession.

A tsunami of capital flight from Greece threatens to overwhelm the authorities, forcing the country out of the euro before fresh elections in June.

Last month, NATO conducted a historic exercise: the first comprehensive test of the alliance's new missile-defense capability.

Europe’s financial crisis lurched into a perilous new phase as dire predictions emerged of a collapse in Greece’s economy, with a run on its banks bringing an inevitable end to its membership of the euro.

As eurozone finance ministers gathered on 14 May, the official line was that talk of a Greek euro exit was "nonsense and propaganda". But the discussion has certainly gathered pace as European leaders admit they are preparing contingency plans.

Greek politicians have failed to form a coalition government and fresh elections will be held next month, plunging into chaos the country's future in the euro.

Preliminary results from the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia gave a coalition of the left-leaning Social Democrats and the Greens a majority of around 50.4%.

Eurozone finance ministers will meet in Brussels today amid Greek political chaos and fears over the health of Spain's banking sector.

EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy - the Union's highest official in protocol terms - has told Ukraine's prime minister, Mykola Azaraov, he is not welcome in the EU capital.

France's president-elect has made a low-key debut on the EU stage in talks with EU Council chief Herman Van Rompuy and Irish leader Enda Kenny.

'Radical' leftist Greek leader Alexis Tsipras is meeting the leaders of Greece's mainstream parties to try to form a coalition government, demanded they first agree to tear up the country's austerity programme with the EU and the IMF.

The head of NATO rebuked Russia for a recent remark by its highest ranking military officer that it would move to "pre-emptively" destroy an alliance ballistic missile shield that is in the process of being constructed in Europe.

Greek Conservatives failed to cobble together a coalition on 7 May, with leftist leader Alexis Tsipras set to try and form a government opposing the "barbaric" bail-out, a move that would put into question the country's future in the eurozone.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his government to continue pressing NATO to provide a firm pledge that U.S. missile interceptors planned for fielding in Europe will not be aimed at Russian ICBMs.

The shield, developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has been tested successfully and an incoming ballistic missile with the range of up to 2,000 kms can be destroyed.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Alliance's Secretary General, said he would speak with the new French president immediately amid concerns France would soon announce the withdrawal of its 3,600-strong contingent.

Greek voters on 6 May punished the two ruling parties responsible for the last EU bail-out and its austerity measures by giving the radical left the second highest number of votes and allowing a neo-Nazi party into the legislature for the first time.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stressed the importance of this month’s Chicago Summit to the future of the Alliance and its mission in Afghanistan, in talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on 4 May 2012.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen discussed the security transition in Afghanistan and other key issues on NATO's agenda in the run-up to this month’s Chicago Summit with David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in London on 3 May 2012.

Ambassador Alexander Vershbow endeavoured to reassure that NATO's proposed Interim Capability will provide only a limited defence against a ballistic missile threat and could not, technically, intercept Russia's ICBMs.

Speaking in Saudi Arabia at a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) forum, Clinton said the United States believes “strongly” that “we can do even more to defend the Gulf through cooperation on ballistic missile defenses.

European Central Bank (ECB) chief Mario Draghi has urged eurozone leaders to come up with a 10-year target for the common currency, saying they should accept more transfer of powers if they truly want a fiscal union.

Ankara says it will block EU participation in an upcoming NATO summit unless the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is also allowed to be present.

Britain's George Osborne accused fellow EU finance ministers of trying to water down Europe's bank capital rules and said this would make him "look like an idiot", as talks about a law to stop another financial crisis unravelled in Brussels.

It is especially important for the United States not to walk away from the program early, because MEADS will be part of the European contribution to missile defense, Di Paola said.

Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the military alliance plans to announce its initial operational capacity at its summit in Chicago next month and that tests of the missile defense system show it is working.

Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker has said he "fully supports" German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble to become his successor when his mandate runs out at the end of May.

They discussed the key aims for the Chicago Summit: setting the course for future engagement in Afghanistan; providing the Alliance with the capabilities to deal with the full range of threats; and strengthening NATO’s network of partnerships.

Poland's air force will continue policing the airspace of three Baltic countries as part of its role in a NATO mission, despite one of them — Lithuania — refusing to attend joint talks.

Today’s economic difficulties may tempt European nations to become introverted. But the need for a confident, compelling, outward-looking Europe has never been greater.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stressed the importance of Smart Defence as the answer to pressure on defence budgets in talks with Italian leaders in Rome on 27 April 2012.

Turkey warned Syria today not to repeat border violations, implying that it could use force to protect its border and call on NATO to respond to a potential Syrian attack.

The growing gulf between France and Germany was underlined as the eurozone's two biggest economies clashed over tackling the debt crisis.

Visiting Spain ahead of the Chicago Summit, Rasmussen met with President of the Spanish Government Mariano Rajoy, Minister of Foreign Affairs Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo and Minister of Defence Pedro Morenes, in Madrid on 26 April 2012.

Russian warships will be equipped with NATO navigation and communications systems to improve coordination in anti-piracy missions around the world, Chief of the Russian General Staff Nikolai Makarov said on Wednesday.

If the Obama administration wants Congress to finance a new missile shield in Eastern Europe, it will have to first get NATO to agree to foot part of the bill.

Chiefs of Defence met NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Wednesday for strategic discussion on the Alliance’s priorities and challenges for the medium and longer term.

"We – secure allies in the most literal meaning of the world – have common interests as well as common challenges and we make joint efforts to resolve these challenges," said Toomas Hendrik Ilves, at the meeting of Estonian, Latvian, Polish heads of state

NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow will attend a high-level conference on missile defense in Moscow next week, a senior official for the Western military alliance said Monday.

Nicolas Sarkozy has promised to hold a referendum on Europe's fiscal pact, dealing a hammerblow to Angela Merkel's "non-negotiable" plans to impose austerity on the eurozone.

EU Council chief Herman Van Rompuy has spoken out against the "winds of populism" threatening freedom of movement in the Union - a swipe at anti-immigrant discourse in French elections and on the Dutch political scene.

Inspectors have found no weapons aboard a German-owned ship suspected earlier of carrying arms and ammunition to Syria in breach of an arms embargo, a German government source said on Wednesday.

Greece's central bank governor said his country would have to leave the eurozone if politicians do not stick to the austerity programme after elections due to take place on 6 May.

Angela Merkel launched a staunch defence of Europe's fiscal pact as politicians from the Netherlands, Spain and Greece scrambled to keep their own austerity measures on track.

Nationalist and leftist groups marched on Saturday in a central Russian city to protest a proposal by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to set up a transit hub for goods shipped to and from Afghanistan.

According to the diplomats, support for Afghan security forces would cost, at a minimum, a whopping $4.1 billion per year.

Congressional investigators said the Defense Department is committing to technologies before they are proven and that the administration is risking "performance shortfalls, unexpected cost increases, schedule delays and test problems."

EU leaders share responsibility for the rise in popularity of anti-European parties, the European Commission said Monday (23 April) but rejected the notion that austerity measures are contributing to the trend.

Key working sessions were flagged as ‘NATO Capabilities’ to ensure that “NATO is fit for the future”, Afghanistan moving towards and after the 2014 troop withdrawal and NATO-Russia relations, with Foreign Minister Lavrov in attendance.

NATO has already stressed more than once that such military response steps on the part of Russia do not help promote trust and cooperation.

Foreign ministers from NATO and ISAF partner nations and organisations discussed how they plan to back a successful transition in Afghanistan at talks at NATO headquarters on 19 April.

Although not on the official agenda of today's meeting of NATO Foreign and Defense ministers, the continuing violence in Syria forced NATO leaders to discuss the issue and its impact on the alliance.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen praised His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan for his country’s valued security partnership during talks at NATO headquarters on Tuesday, 17 April 2012.

That timetable puts Australian forces on a quicker withdrawal schedule than Prime Minister Julia Gillard had previously described.

The US is spending more on its military than EU countries, China and Russia put together. Meanwhile, as US President Barack Obama pulls troops out of Europe, the financial crisis is seeing EU capabilities erode.

But the report and more than 300 pages of supporting documents, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times, offer telling new details about shortcomings in planning, staffing and conducting the combat mission, as well as how commanders improvised

Yet despite all the lip service, hardly anything is being done to pool and share. One reason is that governments are loath to weaken their control over anything that involves defense. That would entail ceding some sovereignty and losing some jobs.

A German-owned ship tried to deliver weapons from Iran to the Syrian regime. Once reports emerged, though, the Atlantic Cruiser disappeared for hours on end. The case is dubious and has alarmed politicians in many countries.

Ramms: That's how I see it. I have publicly stated time and again that these discussions about the withdrawal send a false message. It sends a false message to the soldiers, to our own populations, to the Afghan people and also to the Taliban.

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council and the United States have tentatively agreed to build a regional ballistic missile defense system, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed al-Khalifa said on Thursday.

The EU has welcomed Spain's plan to cut another ?10 billion off its yearly budget, but the measure failed to stop speculation the country could be next in line for a bail-out.

“Those who spread ‘the news’ about [the deployment of] ‘NATO bases in the Russian Federation’ are either provocateurs or simply idiots. You may consider it an official statement,” wrote Rogozin, Moscow’s former envoy to NATO.

Afghanistan and the United States reached a deal on Sunday to curb night raids on Afghan homes, giving Kabul a veto over the operations despised by most local people and clearing the way for a wider pact securing a U.S. presence.

A Russian guided-missile destroyer that called in the Syrian port of Tartus last week left it to carry out unspecified tasks near the country’s shores, a military-diplomatic source said.

The Obama administration and its European allies plan to open new negotiations with Iran by demanding the immediate closing and ultimate dismantling of a recently completed nuclear facility deep under a mountain.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s “letter to the French”, unveiled on 5 April, contained no major new ideas on European matters, limiting itself largely to repeating already-announced proposals on Schengen and ‘reciprocity’ in trade.

Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko is to be appointed new Russian envoy to NATO. He will replace Dmitry Rogozin, who returned to Moscow in December last year, in the post.

A Russian newspaper has reported that the military has begun deploying S-400 mobile surface-to-air missiles in Kaliningrad, the Baltic exclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania.

The U.S. Trident ballistic missile program could be seriously impacted if Scotland chooses to evict British nuclear-armed submarines from its territory following a vote in favor of secession from the United Kingdom.

A pensioner committed suicide in the centre of Athens Wednesday (4 April) giving a public face to the hardship endured by many Greeks as the country slashes spending to satisfy international creditors.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined the goals of the upcoming NATO Summit during a speech in Virginia on Tuesday.

Turkey has drawn up plans for safe zones across its border in Syria to help absorb refugees and is preparing to take more aggressive steps to protect Syrian civilians, and the failure of international diplomacy to halt the violence, a senior official said

Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) and a bipartisan group of 53 other House members called on President Obama to ensure that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) invites Macedonia to the group during a planned May summit meeting in Chicago.

Next month, we will take another step in this evolution when President Obama hosts the NATO Summit in Chicago.

The missile -- designed to hit targets at distances greater than 3,100 miles -- includes components nearly as sophisticated as systems used by the United States.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen praised Georgia’s commitment to NATO and to domestic reforms on 3 April as he welcomed President Mikheil Saakashvili to the Alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.

Police in the Netherlands arrested a 60-year old employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who is suspected of taking bribes and transferring classified information to Russian spies, local media reported on Monday.

Senate Resolution 395 expressing support for NATO and the upcoming summit in Chicago was adopted. The resolution had four bipartisan co-sponsors, Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL], Sen. Mark Kirk [R-IL], Sen. Jeanne Shaheen [D-NH], and Sen. Richard Lugar [R-IN].

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave assurances to neighboring Iran that a US radar deployed in Turkey as part of a NATO missile defense system is not a threat to Tehran.

Ukraine initialled a landmark Association Agreement with the EU and a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. Although this is only a technical step before the official signature, the Commission said the move was important.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and five like-minded lawmakers unveiled a new resolution on Syria Wednesday that calls for establishing safe zones inside Syria for civilians and support for arming the opposition against the regime of Bashar al Assad.

Former President George H.W. Bush will formally endorse Mitt Romney’s presidential bid on Thursday, becoming the latest establishment Republican to rally behind the GOP frontrunner

The claxon shrieks at Tampere Air Base in Finland. Four minutes later, two F-18 Hornet fighter jets from the Finnish Air Force take off. Their mission – to intercept an aircraft that is not complying with international air traffic regulations.

Obama’s assurance to Medvedev has raised a reasonable question: What “flexibility” will Obama be prepared to offer on missile defense, given that Putin will not be satisfied with anything short of scrapping the system or giving Russia a veto over its use.

The white paper specifically covers the military’s annual defense spending from 2013 to 2016. A large segment of the proposed annual 7 percent increase in the defense budget over those four years will be consumed by the F-35 acquisition program.

New EU rules currently being worked on to make banks take less risks and hold more capital may have "unintended consequences" on the eastern European economies where companies are more reliant on bank loans than in the West.

France is in talks with the United States and Britain on a possible release of strategic oil stocks to push fuel prices lower, French ministers said on Wednesday, four weeks before the country's presidential election.

Obama voiced doubt on Tuesday on the prospects for progress with Moscow on missile defense until after the November U.S. election as he staunchly defended remarks caught on camera the day before with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The United States is seeking to build regional shields against ballistic missiles in both Asia and the Middle East akin to a controversial defense system in Europe, a senior Pentagon official disclosed on Monday.

The “NATO Corner” is the result of an initiative by the Swedish Defence College and the Anna Lindh Library, in collaboration with the NATO Multimedia Library in Brussels, Belgium.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday called for a written promise that US interceptors planned for deployment around Europe would not be aimed at Russian long-range nuclear missiles.

By the end of 2012, a rapid reaction team (RRT) capability of NATO cyber defence experts will be operational. The technical centre of the NATO Computer Incident Response Capability (NCIRC) is the nerve centre of the Alliance's fight against cyber crime.

European leaders have united to urge Germany to agree to boost the "big bazooka" bail-out fund this week amid fears that markets will turn against Spain, Ireland and Portugal without urgent support.

A very, very important point has been that from the moment Barack became President we upgraded the status of our relations from a strategic partnership to a model partnership, which he also placed a lot of importance on.

“The door is not closed for talks on missile defense,” Medvedev said at a Euro-Atlantic security forum in Moscow. “We still have time, but it is running out. . . .”

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with Prime Minister Igor Lukšić of Montenegro on 21 March 2012 and discussed the growing cooperation between NATO and Montenegro and reform efforts in his country.

The U.S. has never provided Russia with secret information concerning the deployment of its missile shield elements in Europe, a high-ranking U.S. Department of State official told.

The five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany are set on April 13 to join Iran for a new round of discussions on the Middle Eastern nation's atomic activities, U.S. and European Union personnel told Israel on Tuesday.

As the Pentagon gets smaller, the U.S. military is going to need more help from its friends around the world. New legislation introduced by Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) is geared toward expanding that circle of friends, particularly in Eastern Europe.

Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman will meet with her counterparts from the P5+1 group in Brussels this week to prepare for upcoming negotiations with Iran, American and European diplomats tell Yahoo News.

European Union defense ministers endorsed on Thursday projects to develop joint air-to-air refueling capacities and field hospitals as part of a wider effort to share military resources in response to falling defense budgets.

Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Thursday that the issue is a "litmus test" that shows whether the alliance is "ready to consider us an equal partner in defining the structure of international security."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday (21 March) said the eurozone crisis is "not over" yet, but merely in one of its "various phases," even as investor confidence seems to be returning to troubled euro-countries.

The United States said on Wednesday it appears to be on track to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan charting their future relations during or before a late May NATO summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to attend NATO's summit in Chicago due to his busy schedule at home, the alliance's top official said Wednesday.

NATO major-general Marcel Druart, addressing the European Parliament committee on security and defence, said NATO relied heavily on US military expertise on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.

Westerwelle has irked some of his EU colleagues by inviting only a select few to a dinner to discuss the 'future of Europe'.Invited were the foreign ministers of France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Poland, Portugal and Spain

A Russian military unit has arrived in Syria, according to Russian news reports, a development that a United Nations Security Council source told ABC News was "a bomb" certain to have serious repercussions.

NATO’s top commander said Wednesday that Montenegro will soon fulfill the military requirements to become a member of the Western alliance.

The Kremlin expressed willingness on Wednesday to allow NATO to use an airfield in the heart of European Russia, in a city best known as Lenin’s birthplace, as a transit center for moving troops and “nonlethal” cargo into Afghanistan.

The national contribution of the Netherlands will be to upgrade four air-defence frigates with extended long-range “Smart-L” radar systems.

The Obama administration is leaving open the possibility of giving Moscow certain secret data on U.S. interceptor missiles due to help protect Europe from any Iranian missile strike.

The best they can hope for is to limit the scale of the credit slowdown and ensure any withdrawal of western European banks from the region is orderly and doesn’t generate panic among other investors.

EU finance ministers on Tuesday (13 March) approved a controversial funding freeze on Hungary under the bloc's new deficit rules, but some countries, led by Austria, say it was a bit harsh after Spain obtained concessions.

U.S. President Obama and Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin during a telephone conversation on Friday agreed to maintain bilateral talks on missile defense -- an issue that has threatened to derail their nations' high-profile strategic "reset".

Finland's foreign minister has said EU countries are more divided on foreign policy now than before the Lisbon Treaty came along.

Eurozone finance ministers gave their final approval to a second bailout for Greece yesterday (12 March) and turned their attention on Spain, demanding that it adopt tougher deficit targets this year in order to get back on track in 2013.

Hollande repeated his call to pull French troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2012. He said he would maintain France’s nuclear deterrent and its seat on the UN Security Council and would work within NATO to ensure France’s independence of action.

On 8 March a ceremony at the NATO C3 Agency (NC3A) marked the award of the NATO Computer Incident Response Capability, Full Operational Capability contract.

On 5 March, NATO launched a new interactive web platform called WE-NATO.

NATO's special representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia has praised Georgia's cooperation with the alliance, continuing a recent pattern that suggests Georgia will take some sort of step forward at the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago.

The administration is continuing negotiations on a defense technical cooperation agreement with Moscow that could include limited classified data, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Brad Roberts told a House of Representatives' Armed Services subcommit

The Russian president is unlikely to attend a NATO summit in Chicago if the missile defense issue is not on its agenda, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Tuesday.

Less than half of Greece’s international creditors had agreed to a vital ?206bn (£172bn) bond swap on Wednesday night, leaving Athens dangerously exposed to default.

Turkey called for an “immediate opening” of humanitarian aid corridors in Syria as Russia rebuffed efforts to revive a United Nations Security Council condemnation of President Bashar al-Assad.

European stockmarkets plunged as Greece threatened its international creditors with a default.

President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been working hard to present a united front on Iran. But there is no disguising the fact that the two leaders remain sharply divided on the way forward.

Foreign relations spokeswoman Maja Kocjanic told press in Brussels: "The EU looks forward to working with the new Russian President in full support of Russia's modernisation agenda and trusts that the Russian leader is ready to take this forward."

The Dutch Freedom Party has called for a return to the Guilder, becoming the first political movement in the eurozone with a large popular base to opt for withdrawal from the single currency.

Vladimir Putin declared victory in Russia's presidential election, but his historic win was overshadowed by widespread reports of vote-rigging and ballot fraud

“Qatar is an important country and an important partner for NATO, ever since you joined our Istanbul Cooperation Initiative”, the Secretary General said. “And we look forward to an even stronger partnership in the future”.

Finland is set to buy Lockheed Martin cruise missiles for 178.5 million euros ($239 million), the country's defence ministry said, part of the Nordic country's efforts to boost its strike capability.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday acknowledged that the military alliance's negotiations with Russia on missile defense collaboration had come to a standstill.

Ministers released ?58bn (£48bn) of cash designated to smooth the ?206bn bond restructuring but withheld the remaining ?71.5bn allocated to help the Greek government.

Herman Van Rompuy, the Haiku-writing, self-styled "grey mouse" of European politics, has been elected to a second term as head of the European Council.

New measures such as a decision to deploy V-22s to Europe will help the military maintain its ability to respond quickly to a crisis in the region, the head of U.S. European Command told a congressional committee Wednesday.

The ship belongs to the Arleigh Burke-class in the United States Navy, the same class as the four destroyers already designated by the US to be deployed in Rota, Spain, as part of the Ballistic Missile Defence system.

Texeira's crime was to tell businessmen that Yanukovych broke election promises on improving the investment climate - a sore point amid widespread reports of high-level corruption.

As EU ambassadors begin leaving Minsk for home, both sides are already preparing fresh counter-measures against each other.

"We have the forces in place ... at a radar site in southern Turkey," Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling said in an interview at Montenegro's main military airport in its capital.

Germany vote comes as S&P says Greece is in 'selective default'.

Obama hosted Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt for a meeting in the Oval Office on February 24. Denmark has the distinction of being the only Nordic country that is a member of both NATO and the EU, making it an especially valuable partner of the USA.

The world's leading economic powers said they would not stump up more cash to fight Europe's debt crisis until the eurozone members increase their own contributions, in a move that piles pressure on this week's Brussels summit.

A first meeting of the Friends of Syria group has highlighted divisions inside the coalition and among Syrian opposition leaders.

Germany’s interior minister called for Greece to leave the eurozone on Saturday as hopes that the world’s richest countries would stump up more cash to help the International Monetary Fund fight Europe’s debt crisis faded.

Turkey is sticking to plans to buy 100 of Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter jets for $16 billion, with an initial order of two planes for delivery in 2015, its defence minister said, amid concerns about the project's delays and rising costs.

Groups like NATO are crucial in the global effort for stability, but they need updating, MacKay said.

The EU economy is expected to grind to a halt in the 27 member states and to contract by an average of 0.3 percent of the eurozone's gross domestic product (GDP), with recession hitting Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain worst, fresh EU forecasts for this

Russia has warned Norway not to get pulled into a possible area of conflict by bowing to U.S. pressure to equip its naval vessels with Aegis ballistic missile defense system missiles.

Russia’s armed forces will receive over 400 modern intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), more than 100 military spacecraft and over 2,300 new tanks within the next ten years, Prime Minister and presidential candidate Vladimir Putin said.

A battle over an increased eurozone bail-out fund and International Monetary Fund support for the European Union's single currency threatens to derail the latest Greek bailout.

Turkey has been a vital member of NATO for 60 years. Many things have changed in that time. But our commitment to each other has not.

In the run up to Russia's election, presidential candidate and sitting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that he will increase military spending, claiming that NATO plans for a missile shield leave Moscow no choice.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had no intention of intervening in Syria even in the event of a U.N. mandate to protect civilians, and urged Middle East countries to find a way to end the spiraling violence.

The NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen travelled to Athens on 15 February 2012 and met with President Karolos Papoulias and with Prime Minister Lucas Papademos. He also met with Minister of Foreign Affairs Stavros Dimas and Minister of Defence D

The NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, accompanied by the Chairman of the Military Committee General Knud Bartels, visited Ankara on 16 - 17 February 2012 and met with President Abdullah Gul and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoglu.

David Cameron was right to “defend Britain’s national interest” when he vetoed the new European treaty, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has admitted.

NATO forces prepare themselves for Cold Response 2012 – military games, up to 16 thousand people as well as fighting ships and aviation from Great Britain, Denmark, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, France, Sweden and the USA are to take part.

The Greek government offered deeper cuts to public sector salaries and defence spending in a bid to axe ?325m from its budget as the options to stave off bankruptcy narrowed.

Ambassador Alexander Vershbow takes office as NATO Deputy Secretary General. The NATO Deputy Secretary General is the Alliance’s second most senior international civil servant.

Eurozone countries have again postponed the new Greek bail-out despite the country's looming bankruptcy, with a meeting of finance ministers downgraded to a conference call, pending more spending cuts by Athens and written pledges from Greek politicians.

NATO ambassadors and parliamentarians discussed the current situation in Afghanistan. They also reviewed the development of NATO’s Missile Defence system, the Smart Defence agenda and options for NATO to enhance cooperation with partners.

NATO permanent representatives met senior officials from Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates at a seminar at NATO HQ on February 14 to discuss ways to deepen their partnership ahead of NATO's Chicago Summit in May.

A first report by the EU commission looking at macro-economic data across the bloc up until 2010 warns that 12 countries, including Italy and Spain are at risk of new crises due to their public debt and lack of competitiveness.

Pressure is mounting on Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to publicly distance himself from a website, calling on citizens to file complaints about people from central and eastern Europe residing in the Netherlands.

Rasmussen added his voice to the growing regional controversy over the nascent missile defense system, telling Iranians that they have no reason to be worried unless they are planning to attack NATO.

The eurozone crisis and China’s willingness to help debt-ridden European countries will be at the core of a key EU-China summit starting on 14 February in Beijing.

Libya-type military strikes in Syria are still "out of the question," but France, Italy and the UK have backed a call to send in UN peacekeepers.

Yanukovych has sacked Defense Minister Mykhailo Yezhel, replacing him with Dmytro Salamatin.

The Pentagon proposes in its new budget to spend $1.2 billion for the first three NATO-version Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) Global Hawk drones and three additional U.S. Navy-version drones, according to an official.

Politicians in Athens surrendered after a four-day stand-off and approved a tough austerity package in a bid to avoid bankruptcy, but a meeting of eurozone finance ministers said ?325m (£273m) of extra cuts are needed.

I warmly welcome today’s decision by the North Atlantic Council to further authorize NATO Air Policing in the Baltic States with a continuous presence of fighters.

Greek leaders failed on 8 February to agree on a reform and austerity programme, the price of a financial bailout to avoid a messy default, forcing Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos to go to the country's financial backers with an incomplete deal.

EU commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso has given reassurances his institution wants Greece to stay in the eurozone, after one of his commissioners suggested an exit is being considered and another downplayed the devastating effects of such a scenario.

UK foreign minister William Hague has said EU countries may convene a global summit on how to bring down Syrian leader Bashar Assad despite a blockage in the UN.

The Czech Republic has stopped ratification of the controversial anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (Acta), becoming the second EU country to do so after Poland.

Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc resigned together with the entire government in response to several weeks of anti-government protests.

Eight EU countries have joined Italy in noting a sharp drop in Russian gas supplies, in events recalling the massive 2009 crunch.The European Commission on Friday added that Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Romania have also been affected.

NATO Defence Ministers discussed in Brussels ways to make a maximum use of limited financial resources in times of economic austerity.

Russia and NATO are planning to hold joint computer-simulated missile defense exercises in Germany in March, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said on Thursday.

Head of Turkey’s State Scientific Research Institute, recently told reporters that the decision to build the ballistic missiles was made at a recent meeting of the High Board of Technology and in line with a request from Prime Minister Erdogan.

International debt inspectors believe they have found another ?15bn (£12.5bn) black hole in Greece’s public finances caused by the deepening recession, delivering the crippled nation another devastating blow.

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton has predicted there will be a big turnout at a pro-democracy rally in Moscow on Saturday (4 February).

Belgium became the first eurozone country formally to fall into recession in the second half of last year, data showed on Wednesday, paving the way for what is expected to be a tough contraction for the bloc as a whole in 2012.

The treaty is widely seen as part of a grand political strategy to enable Berlin to push through measures to raise its contrbution to EU bail-out funds.

Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom has restricted supplies to Europe, its largest foreign market, to cover an increase in domestic demand caused by a cold snap.

The U.S. Defense Department plans to develop a new conventional ballistic missile for fielding on attack submarines, according to major budget decisions announced on Thursday at the Pentagon .

The new EU treaty on fiscal discipline will be signed by 25 instead of 26 member states after the Czech Republic on Monday (30 January) joined the UK in staying out of the pact.

Only one country is opposed to give observer status to Eastern European non-eurozone countries in the new intergovernmental 'fiscal compact' treaty, diplomats told EurActiv.

A German proposal to put an EU commissioner in charge of scrutinising the Greek budget caused a diplomatic standoff between Berlin and Athens over the weekend as negotiations over a second Greek bailout plan grew tougher.

Belgian authorities are prepared to use a military airfield to receive EU leaders for the extraordinary summit on growth and jobs, as trade unions threatened a mass strike on Monday that is likely to block the Brussels airport.

Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army chief of staff, says the Pentagon will take two heavy armor brigades out of Europe in 2013 and 2014 and eliminate them.

NATO’s Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, met with Bulgaria’s President, Mr. Rosen Plevneliev, on his first visit to NATO Headquarters since his entry into office on 19 January 2012.

On 26 January, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen launched the first ever 'Secretary General’s Annual Report' at a press conference in the NATO HQ in Brussels.

Senator Richard Lugar has commissioned the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to examine the sale of military equipment and technology by NATO allies to Russia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said transferring more powers to EU institutions rather than increasing the size of the eurozone's future bail-out fund is the way to overcome the euro crisis.

Russia plans to deploy Iskander missiles on the European Union's border later this year.

Ukraine’s 2012 military spending will increase by around 30 percent, to about $2 billion or 1.1 percent of GDP, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s financial department said on Wednesday.

A meeting between European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, aimed at bridging differences over Hungary's controversial state reforms, ended up inconclusively.

Ireland may still have to hold a referendum on Europe's new fiscal treaty even if the government decides next month that it does not need a popular vote to sign up to the pact.

The Russian Strategic Nuclear Force is to get two new missile submarines this year. They are the “Yury Dolgoruky” and the “Alexander Nevsky”.

Meanwhile, access to ESM money will be made conditional on countries signing up to a new intergovernmental treaty on fiscal discipline requiring binding legislation on governments to implement a "balanced budget" rule.

As many as 10,000 soldiers — and as many as 25,000 dependents — are expected to withdraw from Europe as the U.S. juggles shrinking budgets and force reductions with maintaining strong relationships with its allies, officials said.

Britain, America and France delivered a pointed signal to Iran, sending six warships led by a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier through the highly sensitive waters of the Strait of Hormuz.

Mitt Romney holds a strong lead nationally in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, with a 2 to 1 advantage over his closest competitors, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Dr Nelson is currently Australia's Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the EU, and the Australian Government's representative to NATO. Dr Nelson's appointment as Ambassador represents a deepening of Australia's engagement with NATO.

Following Friday’s shooting, one of the most deadly for French forces over the past decade in Afghanistan, French President Nicolas Sarkozy suspended his country’s combat operations and threatened to pull out early.

The NATO-Russia Council (NRC) meeting in Brussels has approved a Work Plan for 2012 and discussed ways to deepen cooperation over the following years.

After six years of negotiations and amid an ongoing territorial dispute with Slovenia, Croatia will hold a referendum on Sunday (22 January) to decide whether to become the 28th EU member state.

The latest version of the treaty on EU fiscal discipline says countries cannot get bail-outs unless they sign and apply the pact. It also makes concessions to non-euro countries who want to take part in eurozone summits.

In a telling sign of a bolder strategic engagement between Washington and New Delhi, the US on Wednesday said it was willing to examine the sale or joint production of missile shield systems to help New Delhi guard against nuclear threats.

In just one month's time, on the 18th of February, we will celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Turkey and Greece joining NATO. For six decades, Minister, Turkey has been a pillar of our security. And NATO has been a pillar of your security.

Russia has accused NATO countries of trying to start a war with Syria and foment revolution in Iran - claims backed up by some Western security analysts.

As negotiations on a new inter-governmental agreement on fiscal discipline reach the final stage, MEPs have warned that it risks dividing Europe and widening the democratic gap.

An oil embargo from 1 July, a partial ban on the central bank and a prohibition on trade in gold and gems are among the latest EU ideas on how to stop Iran building nuclear bombs.

According to Russian defense sources, unlike in previous exercised, this year it will also take place inside Georgia’s breakaway regions, Abkhazia and the South Ossetia, as well as in Armenia.

Finland should not sign up to the EU's new fiscal treaty, which is a "at best unnecessary and at worst harmful," Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja has said.

The European Commission has launched legal action against Hungary over its new constitution, amid fears that its right-wing leader has too much control of judges and the central bank.

A U.S.-supplied long-range radar unit has been activated in Turkey's Kurecik province in accordance with NATO plans to establish a ballistic missile shield for Europe.

During his meetings, Lt. Gen. Gantz will discuss the security challenges facing the IDF and the State of Israel, including the challenges of regional threats and the importance of cooperation between Israel and NATO member countries.

Gen. Mieczyslaw Cieniuch last week made his first official visit to the U.S., where he met with a number of U.S. leaders, including Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Finance ministers will next week tackle the thorny little details still to be agreed before EU countries can bless a new pact on fiscal discipline.

The U.S. will likely keep its commitment to place missile interceptors in Poland to counter a military threat from Iran regardless of any opposition from Russia and despite defense cutbacks, a U.S. senator said.

NATO's ability to defend member nations against aggression by a conventional enemy force may be atrophying, Norway's Defense Minister said.

NATO and three alliance members said there are no plans for military intervention in Syria after Russia said it has information about preparations for a no-fly zone over the country.

"Iran is our neighbour," Dmitry Rogozin told reporters in Brussels. "And if Iran is involved in any military action, it's a direct threat to our security."

In an interview on his way to Fort Bliss, Texas, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that the Army will withdraw two brigade combat teams from Europe, while retaining a strong presence in the region via rotational units.

Negotiators from 26 member states have reached broad agreement on the new fiscal treaty, paving the way for a formal agreement by EU leaders at the end of the month.

UK Conservatives have welcomed "clear concessions to Britain" which were included in the latest draft of the European fiscal pact, leaked to the press. The European Parliament rejected the new treaty draft, saying it undermines the EU institutions.

Among 32 nations that possess at least one kilogram of weapons-usable nuclear materials, Australia was ranked as the most secure. It was followed by European nations led by Hungary, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.

Russia received information that members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and some Persian Gulf countries are preparing military intervention in Syria, the head of the Russian Security Council said.

A legal expert who helped write several EU treaties - Jean-Claude Piris - has warned that the new 'fiscal compact' will not be enough to stop the financial crisis.

Less stringent constitutional demands, a weaker role for the EU commission and a provision allowing the UK to join are among the most recent changes to the draft intergovernmental treaty on fiscal discipline, to be signed by leaders in March.

The country's economy minister Margrethe Vestager told press in Copenhagen on Tuesday (10 January): "We would be very reluctant in promoting something that minimises growth and slashes jobs, particularly now during the crisis."

Finland's leading presidential candidate Sauli Niinisto said Monday he will not push for the country to join NATO if he is elected, despite his party's enthusiasm for membership of the military alliance.

Up to 12 of the 16 key western banks in eastern Europe, under pressure from regulators to recapitalise, have resorted to shrinking outside their home markets to beef up capital levels.

"We are very cost-efficient in Denmark, so we want an efficient presidency at a low cost," Danish EU affairs minister Nicolai Wammen told a group of Brussels-based journalists on 9 January in Copenhagen.

The latest in a series of Franco-German meetings saw little in the way of concrete decisions, but Merkel took the opportunity to warn Greece there will be no more money unless progress is made on details of the country's second aid package.

Amid ever-widening disagreement in the Union on how to react to the crisis, David Cameron said on Sunday he would block any attempt to introduce an EU-wide toll, but added that if France wants to go it alone it is "free to do so."

Europe is our principal partner and will remain so for the foreseeable future. At the same time, security challenges persist in parts of Europe and Eurasia, where the US must continue to promote regional security and Euro-Atlantic integration.

European governments have agreed in principle to ban imports of Iranian oil, EU diplomats said, dealing a potentially heavy blow to Tehran just months before an Iranian election.

In his first US address since become UK's defense secretary, Philip Hammond blasted his fellow Europeans for "failing to meet their financial responsibilities to NATO, and so failing to maintain appropriate and proportionate capabilities."

President Obama will pay an unusual visit to the Pentagon for the public rollout of the military's new strategy for countering emerging threats in an era of shrinking resources, according to senior military and administration officials.

The forint hit a record low against the euro on Wednesday (4 January) and Budapest's borrowing costs spiked as the Hungarian government remained defiant on EU and street protesters' calls to roll back controversial constitutional changes.

Greece may have to exit the eurozone if it fails to secure its second EU-IMF bail-out its government has warned, amid new protests against spending cuts.

At the end of a two-day visit to the war-wracked country, Longuet told reporters at Kabul airport that a "treaty of friendship" was being prepared between France and Afghanistan.

Danish General Knud Bartels assumed his position as Chairman of NATO 's Military Committee, for which he was elected by NATO’s 28 Chiefs of Defence on 17 September 2011. Gen. Bartels succeeds to the Italian Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola.

Tens of thousands of Hungarians on 2 January went on the streets of Budapest in protest against controversial constitutional changes enacted one day earlier by centre-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban, with former dissidents accusing him of "dictatorship'

Greece could default if there is no agreement with private bondholders before March. The next three to four months are the most crucial and that is the reason this government exists.

Iowa Republicans will cast the first votes of the 2012 White House campaign later today, with Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul in a high-stakes battle to win the party's kick-off nominating contest.

Eurozone leaders used their New Year's message to highlight the dangers facing Europe's economy in the coming 12 months.

Can we expect the same in 2013? Open Europe lays out its view on three key topics to watch in 2013 – discussions of a ‘Brixit’, the formulation of the new eurozone banking union and, of course, the continuation or otherwise of the eurozone crisis.

The Eurozone has now moved decisively down the road towards banking, financial and ultimately political union, with significant areas of national sovereignty now to be passed to European institutions.

In reality, the report tells us, "None of these alternative worlds is inevitable. In reality, the future probably will consist of elements from all the scenarios."

Like the generals of the First World War, Europe’s leaders seem determined to send wave after wave of their youth into the barbed wire of tight money, bank deleveraging, and fiscal austerity a l’outrance.

The efforts initiated for Defense Europe must be pursued. NATO can make its contribution, but it is up to the Europeans first of all to work on it among themselves.

Three major forces, I believe, will be looming behind the headlines, driving events in 2013: the crisis of the Western order, rising sectarian strife in the Middle East, and worries about American withdrawal from the world.

The European Commission today adopted a Blueprint for a deep and genuine Economic and Monetary Union, which provides a vision for a strong and stable architecture in the financial, fiscal, economic and political domains.

The recurrent theme at the Sir Bani Yas Forum, hosted by the United Arab Emirates and Chatham House here last weekend, was, Where is the United States?

The catch-up boom in China, India, Brazil is largely over and will be followed by a drastic slowdown over the next decade, according to a grim report by America’s top forecasting body.

To protect our people effectively, governments must continue to invest in real security. We need to have the right forces and capabilities to deter and defend against any threat to keep our nations safe.

In the interest of national security, and the preservation of the world order the United States has upheld and benefited from since World War II, Republicans and Democrats must make the necessary compromises.

But once the dust settles, all five issues will require determined presidential leadership to safeguard the security and well-being of the American people.

This Coalition Government is committed to Britain playing a leading role in the EU but I must also be frank: public disillusionment with the EU in Britain is the deepest it has ever been.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China and Russia have been constants in the world. They have been autocratic, resistant to the spread of freedom, occasionally belligerent toward their neighbors, and increasingly prosperous.

A fundamental shift in interests and outlook is leaving the United States and Germany with potentially irreconcilable differences.

Germany has stated its exorbitant price for keeping Greece in the euro and agreeing to mass bond purchases by the European Central Bank.

That contract is essentially simple: NATO must take care of security for both members and partners in and around Europe to ease pressure on the US elsewhere.

If French President François Hollande thinks he can assuage the bond markets by dishing out tax-heavy austerity instead of genuine reform, he has been given very bad advice.

Other than leaving monetary union and defaulting on its euro debts, which for the moment even the rebellious Catalans don’t seem to want, is there any way out for Spain? The answer looks ever more likely to be no.

Read his responses on a range of topics covering NATO’s post-summit agenda, including Afghanistan, the conflict in Syria, relations with Russia, the operation in Libya, Smart Defense, missile defense, and NATO’s role in the Caucasus.

It is eerily familiar to the escalating spat between Wilhelmine Germany and the Franco-British Entente in the lead-up to the First World War. The rise of a new global power is always fraught with risk, and usually mishandled by both sides.

Defence and foreign ministry officials from NATO’s 28 member nations are meeting in the capital of Slovakia this week to quietly explore how they will pursue nuclear deterrence policies embraced last May at an alliance summit in Chicago.

Achieving security in the 21st century must be a truly cooperative endeavour. We need partners – here, in this region, and across the world – partners who share our values and our desire for security.

Is this a sign of permanent decline in the sense of “Atlantic community,” or is it a temporary blip on the Euro-Atlantic radar screen, perhaps a case of Euro-fatigue?

Republicans are leaving little doubt that the U.S. government’s ballistic missile defense priorities would be revamped again if Mitt Romney is elected president.

China’s industrial output is contracting at the fastest pace since the depths of the global financial crisis, with knock-on effects spreading across the Far East.

Despite some setbacks, NATO’s extra-regional campaigns can serve as convincing evidence that the Alliance is the only multinational security institution capable of conducting sustained, high-intensity combat operations worldwide.

From diplomacy and trade to defense and human rights, Republicans would summon the will, the wisdom, and the national confidence to lead more actively in the world -- not from behind, but from the front.

Either Israel is engaged in the most elaborate ruse since the Trojan horse or it is on the cusp of a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

If the looming global oil crunch has been postponed for another decade or two as widely alleged, this is far from obvious in today’s commodity markets.

EU leaders may soon have to choose between keeping the euro and maintaining democracy.

For all these reasons, however, this may well be the moment to begin to take action to limit the risk of war as much as possible. To be specific, there are three actions the United States could take.

An important period of European history is at an end. A more likely outcome is disaggregation and the restructuring of Europe.

NATO must contend with two inner-realities: a schism in Alliance strategic culture and concept, driven by deepening divisions over the world view and the future of the Euro; and the austerity-driven need for shrinking armed forces.

The reason why Spain’s ?100bn bank rescue has failed to stem the crisis is because the EU summit deal in late June has proved to be a sham. It did not break the deadly link between banks and sovereigns, as originally claimed.

Confronted with the danger of a nuclear Iran, with an unpredictable North Korea, and with an increasingly confrontational government in Moscow, NATO finally found nuclear realism.

For too long we believed they were behind us on the march to freedom but were heading in the same direction. Syria marks the end of these illusions and the post-Cold War period that went with them

The last thing the US needs at the end of a difficult election year is a massive crisis over federal spending and national security - one triggered by the 2011 Budget Control Act, which mandates roughly $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over ten ye

In short, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, U.S. Middle East policy is once again subject to larger great power issues, and in this case, what amounts to a de facto veto by Moscow, backed by Beijing.

The crisis of the euro zone is a geopolitical as well as an economic event. While Europe may yet find a path out of its economic quagmire, it will turn inward for some time. The world will not stand still while this happens.

The popular belief holds that the future of NATO rests on the strength of the Euro-Atlantic bond, any weakening of which is interpreted as a potential death knell for the Alliance.

The exact circumstances and timing of Greece’s ejection from monetary union no longer have any systemic importance for global finance. The damage has already been done. Formalising it changes little.

Obama is not up to the job in Syria. The gravest risk of American involvement is that his administration and Iran might find common ground in the Middle East chess game.

The commonly held belief that U.S. forces are in Europe to protect European allies from a threat that no longer exists is wrong. In fact, forward-basing U.S. troops in Europe is just as important now as it was during the Cold War.

In the years ahead, the security of the transatlantic community will be affected much less by military conflict than by the effects of climate change, nuclear proliferation, or the disruption of energy supplies.

The US, Europe and Arab nations are mounting a concerted effort to convince Russia that it can maintain its alliance with Syria without Bashar al-Assad at the helm.

Perhaps, some say, it will be Assad’s Srebenica. Maybe. But not if Obama keeps deferring to the Russians.

What really connected the G-8 and NATO meetings was a growing realization that the biggest threat to the alliance – and, for that matter, to Obama’s re-election hopes – is the euro zone crisis.

Spain is spiralling into the vortex of debt-deflation. This has nothing to do with Greece. It is not the result of fiscal extravagance over the past decade, or other such Wagnerian myths.

Does the 63-year-old Alliance still matter today? In advance of the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago, The Atlantic Council and Foreign Policy asked politicians, scholars, and other observers from both sides of the Atlantic to weigh in.

The fact is that NATO remains the West's foremost—and, for many European members, the only—anchor of security.

We understand the future that could have befallen not only Europe, but the entire world, if North America had not helped Europe in its hour of need. And we know that those landings created a unique bond between our continents.

Russia's new president, Vladimir Putin, has recognized that he does not belong at the G-8 summit. The G-7 should take him at his word.

Whether NATO can avoid the "dim and dismal future" Bob Gates warned about "will largely be determined by the quality of leadership demonstrated by its largest and most influential allies: the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Turkey.

If the Chicago summit is to have one principal, overarching purpose, it should be to provide credible reaffirmation of the Transatlantic Bargain.

To avoid the Chicago summit ending up as a total bust, Obama must push NATO leaders to address those three major issues on the agenda.

But the current era is different, because European integration moved to a different stage. Liberalisation was replaced by a massive shift of competencies from individual member states to the European Union’s “commanding heights” in Brussels.

The most striking sentence of President Obama’s eloquent speech to the nation Tuesday night came very near the end: “This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end.”

So what is to be done? First, we should show a bit more humility and tolerance, both within Hungary and internationally. After all, we are all on the same side.

Europe's political centre is starting to crumble, replicating the pattern of the early 1930s as the crisis ground into its third year under a similar mix of fiscal and monetary contraction.

What is needed is a European Marshall Plan similar to that the Americans funded at the end of World War Two to rebuild Europe’s war-torn economy.

Today, in the case of Syria, any military action needs to be carefully thought through, but we should not refuse to act simply because of the worst-case scenarios being raised by the Pentagon.

Leaders of NATO will meet for a summit in Chicago this May to conclude their Deterrence and Defense Posture Review, which was intended to be a vehicle for resolving key questions about the future role of nuclear weapons in NATO policy.

These three problems—lack of lack of defense spending, lack of new critical capabilities, and lack of strategic coherence—must be immediately tended to should NATO wish to remain a viable security alliance in the 21st century.

Europe will instead hurtle towards its great, final, and obliterating crisis, cursed by sheer lack of imagination. The Project will be defended by its fanatics in the bunkers.

Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's peace plan for Syria could be a step in the right direction. The plan calls for a Syrian-led political process under UN supervision to bring about a cessation of armed violence across the country.

On which of “all these issues” — Syria, Iran, Eastern Europe, Georgia, human rights — is Obama ready to offer Putin yet more flexibility as soon as he gets past his last election?

NATO is in crisis because the European security market now runs a very real risk of losing its most important purveyor of military power: the United States.

We are all familiar with what is on the agenda for the Chicago Summit. The concept of Smart Defense will be a focal point, as it should be. As we have seen in Libya and Afghanistan.

The strategic partnership will make clear to the Taliban that it cannot wait us out and win on the battlefield, thus fostering real reconciliation on terms favorable to the Afghan government and to us.

When David Cameron meets with President Obama this week, their discussions about Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran will dominate headlines. Also important, though less high profile, is the two allies' preparations for NATO's May Chicago Summit.

The following five principles should guide U.S. policy toward NATO. Without these core principles, NATO will cease being the most capable security alliance the world has ever known.

If the West were to persist with the reset, it would mean de-emphasizing criticism of Putinism, while Putin himself escalates attacks on domestic opponents and the West, and thwarts a responsible international security agenda.

As a result, the ailing NATO-Russia relations are most likely to become the first major flashpoint in the renewed diplomatic hostility between Putin’s Russia and the West.

Europe’s road has now been chosen. With today's signing of the European Fiscal Stability Treaty who knows where the road will eventually lead. However, the inference is clear – fiscal union.

Drawing from an analysis and distillation of official statements, six key observations emerge on the administration’s “red lines,” and how the United States will respond to Iranian actions that are perceived to cross them.

Lucas Papademos, the Greek prime minister, hailed Tuesday’s bailout package as an “historic day” for the country. But this is a “Horrible History”, not one to celebrate.

The heavyweight President of the German Constitutional Court, said in a recent speech: “It would be tragic and fatal if we were to lose democracy on the road to saving the euro.”

The international system is not static. It responds quickly to fluctuations in power. If the United States were to cut too deeply into its ability to project military power, other nations could be counted on to respond accordingly.

The “Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative” set out to identify the practical steps needed to secure the region’s future.

On 26 January, Anders Fogh Rasmussen launched the first ever ‘Annual Report’, which gives a brief overview of NATO’s principal achievements and challenges in 2011.

The United States can, in recognizing this unique opportunity, lead NATO towards a new force structure which puts European allies squarely in the lead.

NATO is currently preparing for its summit in Chicago in May 2012. This event was originally planned as a sort of "routine meeting“. However, recent developments in the Arab world and the international financial crisis have changed the agenda.

At the Lisbon summit last year, the Alliance agreed to enter into a long-term Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR).First results will be presented at the Chicago Summit in May 2012.

Is the United States now on a path to becoming a much diminished global power? Unless the President and Congress work together to quickly change the Pentagon’s new trajectory, the answer is "Yes."

The U.S. has been restructuring its Europe-based force since the end of the Cold War, when there were about 300,000 troops in Europe. There are about 80,000 today, and the drawdown continues with at least one brigade scheduled to return by 2015.

'Euro-Atlantic Ukraine' wish all of you Happy New 2013 Year and a Meryy Christmas!

Britain could leave the European Union and enter into a looser economic relationship with it as the eurozone moves towards becoming a federal state, Jacques Delors said today.

Washington has issued a blistering attack on China for persistent breaches of world trade rules and abuse of industrial secrets, accusing Beijing of failing to abide by treaty obligations.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his EU hosts avoided the prickly subjects - human rights, energy - at dinner in a stately home in Brussels on Thursday (20 December).

Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi and Thei Sein head Foreign Policy magazine's list of Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2012. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at Number 12, is the highest-ranking European.

The White House has warned Britain that its position on the world stage could be significantly weakened by leaving the European Union.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has conceded that withdrawal from the EU is "imaginable," in the latest indication that the Conservative leader is preparing the ground for a radical change in the country's EU status.

France’s François Hollande and Germany's Angela Merkel broadly agreed on a roadmap for deepening the economic and monetary union (EMU) during a two-day summit, which ended in Brussels on 14 December

European finance ministers have agreed a deal to give the European Central Bank new powers to police eurozone banks, embarking on the first step in a new phase of closer integration to help underpin the euro.

Italy has only one serious economic problem. It is in the wrong currency.

Eurozone countries would lose the right to set their own budgets and end up surrendering economic sovereignty to Brussels under a blueprint to “complete” the European Union’s single currency.

NATO has agreed to deploy Patriot missiles along the Turkey-Syria border to protect Turkish airspace and territory, while making clear no escalation is intended.

Turkey’s request for NATO to augment its air defence capabilities, cooperation with key partners Russia and Georgia, and progress in the Afghan mission top the agenda at the two-day December NATO Foreign Ministerial which starts on Tuesday.

London should be stripped of its status as Europe's main financial hub and sidelined to allow the eurozone to “control” transactions within the 17-nation bloc, the governor of the Bank of France has said.

Two foreign ministers from the “Future of Europe Group” argued at a public forum in favour of an overhaul of the European Union, while several speakers from the centre-left advocated the need to act rapidly within the existing treaties.

The 52-page blueprints emphasises the need for the eurozone to be able to "integrate quicker and deeper" than the rest of the EU.

David Cameron should ask the British people if they want to stay in the European Union, Italy's prime minister has said.

Catalans have set their region on the road to independence, voting in pro-separatist parties that will push for a referendum on breaking away from Spain.

Talks on a new European Union budget have collapsed as David Cameron accused Brussels of 'living in a parallel universe' and said there could not be a 'deal at any cost.'

European leaders voiced pessimism on Friday on reaching a deal on a trillion-euro EU budget, as gruelling talks pushed into a second day with little prospect of bridging bitter divisions.

Eurozone finance ministers on Tuesday are set for a final round of talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about how to deal with Greece's ballooning debt.

Germany, Holland, and the creditor states of northern Europe have not lost a single cent on eurozone rescue packages, so far.

Keynote speech by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Prague on 12 November.

Workers angry over austerity cuts and tax rises have launched a Europe-wide string of rallies and strikes on Wednesday, shutting transport, grounding flights and closing schools.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel braved hostile crowds in Portugal on Monday to show unflinching support for the country’s austerity ordeal and plead for patience as social cohesion frays.

CIA Director David H. Petraeus resigned Friday and admitted to having an extramarital affair, bringing a shocking end to his brief tenure at the spy agency and highly decorated national security career.

China’s Communist Party is to stick "unswervingly" to state control over Asia’s largest economy, dashing hopes for deep free-market reform over the next decade.

Angela Merkel has urged David Cameron to resist the growing pressure from the Conservative Party and keep Britain inside the European Union.

Barack Obama was elected to a second presidential term Tuesday, defeating Republican Mitt Romney and by remaking himself from a hopeful uniter into a determined fighter for middle-class interests.

The Heritage path looks to beef up transatlantic relations with the UK, Poland and the Czech Republic and with Nato rather than with the EU as such.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on Sunday night began a frenzied final 24 hours of campaigning across the battleground states that will on Tuesday decide which man is to be the world's most powerful leader.

Greece’s debt-load is rising much faster than expected as the country spirals into a sixth year of depression, ratcheting up the pressure on Germany and Europe’s creditor states to accept debt-forgiveness for the first time.

International observers to the parliamentary elections in Ukraine have accused the authorities of “abuse of power” and “excessive role of money” in the campaign, while the EU issued a more carefully worded statement.

Germany is not immune to the contraction in the eurozone, as the European Central Bank's Mario Draghi defends bond-buying and Greece claims an austerity victory.

The EU-IMF Troika in charge of Spain's ?60bn (£48bn) bank rescue is to demand much tougher action by the country's authorities to clean up toxic debts, risking a clash that could deter Madrid from requesting a full sovereign bail-out.

It has a taken two decades but we can almost all see now that a free and self-governing Britain can no longer be part of the Project.

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s rhetoric at the EU summit differed from that of other leaders, using the opportunity to reiterate that Britain wants to seek a "fresh settlement" with Europe.

Turkey has called on the US, Britain and other leading countries to take immediate action to intervene in Syria to prevent a looming humanitarian "disaster" that threatens the lives of millions of people and refugees as winter approaches.

As yet, I can see no clear proposal on the table in any EMU country – from any major movement, party, or political leader – that offers a way out of the current impasse.

EU leaders have agreed plans to complete the European banking union by January 2014, after the general elections in Germany. The concession was made to Angela Merkel who argued for "quality" over "speed" in putting in place the new supervisory system.

Thursday's gathering of EU leaders is being billed - by the Germans at least - as a "stepping stone" summit that should lead to firm decisions in December on how to deepen eurozone political integration. But others want answers on key issues now.

A far more aggressive President Obama showed up for his second debate with Mitt Romney on Tuesday, and at moments their town-hall-style engagement felt more like a shouting match than a presidential debate.

France is sliding into a grave economic crisis and risks a full-blown “hurricane” as investors flee rocketing tax rates, the country’s business federation has warned.

The International Monetary Fund has demolished the intellectual foundations of Europe's debt crisis strategy.

The International Monetary Fund has issued a veiled warning that Spanish bond spreads could surge to a record 7.5pc and push the country into a deeper crisis if premier Mariano Rajoy continues to drag his feet on a bail-out request.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has stamped her seal of approval on Greece's austerity plan and vowed to stand by the country as "partner and friend", signalling almost certain approval for the next tranche of EU-IMF Troika aid.

Missions in Afghanistan, Kosovo and improving defence capabilities top the agenda of a two-day NATO defence ministerial meeting which starts on Tuesday (9 October) at Alliance headquarters.

The top echelon of Mitt Romney‘s national security transition team is largely in place and it includes both hawkish and centrist GOP foreign-policy professionals.

On Friday, prime minister Antonis Samaras warned that Greece was plunging into an economic and social crisis as desperate as Germany under the Weimar Republic.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney squared off in their first face-to-face presidential debate Wednesday, battling for more than an hour over the future of the economy, the federal budget, tax cuts, education, health care and even the future of Big Bird.

Elections in the Baltic states provide a valuable avenue for the Kremlin to undermine political parties that oppose its regional ambitions.

The rule of Georgia's incumbent President Mikheil Saakashvili is facing one of its toughest challenges as voters go to polls on Monday (1 October).

General Paloméros, we are all grateful that, once again, France has nominated an exceptional officer to lead this important command.

In short, the Euro-Aristocracy are creating is a political Frankenstein, something Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski rather forgot in an anti-British speech he made in Oxford last week. We, the citizens?

We are moving from the financial phase of this crisis to the full-blown political phase. It really is playing out like the 1930s.

Excerpts from Atlantic Community sponsored Q&A with Deputy Secretary General of NATO Ambassador Alexander Vershbow.

The ruling parties of Catalonia have sought guidance from Brussels on the legality of secession from Spain, requesting a “route map” for membership of the European Union and the euro as an independent state.

The group - containing ministers from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain - published its communique on the "Future of Europe" after a meeting in Warsaw.

Germany's highest court has cleared the way for ratification of the eurozone bail-out fund but capped German contributions and fired a cannon shot across the bows of the European Central Bank.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso used his third annual state of the union speech on Wednesday (12 September) to call for a "federation of nation states."

In Chicago, the Alliance followed through on its promise to deploy capable defenses against the most dangerous twenty-first century threats. We announced that NATO had achieved an Interim BMD Capability.

We all know by now about the simmering leadership crisis in China. The Bo Xilai affair has lifted the lid on a hornet's nest.

Europe's debt crisis is undermining the common values that once united the continent and the single currency risks opening up new rifts across the European Union, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said.

The cold douche begins. Markets will now learn that the European Central Bank's bond plan is a devout wish, not a done deal. Europe's political minefield lies ahead.

The European Central Bank's ground-breaking plan for mass purchases of Spanish and Italian bonds is fraught with political risk and may soon be overwhelmed by nationalist anger in the crisis states.

Mario Draghi has defied German opposition and launched an “unlimited” bond buying programme by the European Central Bank that he said would provide a “fully effective backstop” to the stricken eurozone economies.

Spain has issued a veiled warning that it will not accept a full bail-out from Europe if the terms are too harsh, a move that would paralyse the European Central Bank and call the euro’s survival into question.

Pressure is mounting on the European Central Bank to water down emergency measures to prop up Spain and Italy, after reports that the chief of Germany’s Bundesbank threatened to quit in protest at the plan.

The former Massachusetts governor pledged to the party gathering in Florida that he would “restore the promise of America” by replacing Barack Obama's hollow message of “hope and change” with job-creation and economic competence.

Europe's politicial and economic leaders clashed today over debt crisis resolutions, underscoring the sense of chaos and disunity between Brussels and the key eurozone economies.

Greece has “one last chance” to meet its bail-out conditions, according to Jean Claude Juncker in comments that crushed hopes for an imminent change of strategy for Athens and the eurozone.

Eurozone leaders will this week begin a round of shuttle diplomacy focussed on debt-stricken Greece amid reports that Athens' deficit problems are greater than previously thought.

German eurosceptics quietly hope that Finland will become the first creditor state to storm out of monetary union in disgust, opening the way for others to break free.

Ukraine has selected ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell to develop its Skifska hydrocarbon field in the Black Sea, choosing the American and Dutch companies over Russia's Lukoil for the ?8.15-billion project.

Finland is preparing for the break-up of the eurozone, the country’s foreign minister warned.

Today, at a time of financial crisis and reductions in defence budgets, it is more important that ever for the two organizations to strengthen cooperation, spend more intelligently, and improve the complementarity of their defence capabilities.

Much of the debt will have to be written off. Whether this done by inflation (1945-1952) or default (1930-1934) will be the great political battle of this decade. Pick your side. Pick your history.

Mitt Romney announced Saturday he's selected Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his vice presidential running mate.

The European Central Bank disappointed markets as it said yesterday (2 August) that it is prepared to buy Italian and Spanish bonds on the open market but only after eurozone governments have activated bailout funds to do the same.

Italy’s leader Mario Monti is to make a last-ditch effort tomorrow to persuade Spain to swallow its pride and accept a formal rescue, hoping to clear the way for double-barrelled action by bail-out funds and the European Central Bank.

Mario Draghi has promised the moon. The European Central Bank’s council had better deliver on his pledge this week. If it does not, the crisis will surely escalate out of control in August or soon after.

Germany's prized AAA credit rating was put under threat on Monday night after a day of turmoil across the global markets.

Germany must draw the proper conclusion: either abandon the euro or accept the revolutionary step towards a European superstate.

Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy has raised VAT sharply in a humiliating volte-face and pushed through ?65bn of drastic austerity measures to comply with a European Union ultimatum, risking a downward spiral into full depression.

My message today is that NATO will be a key part of the answer. In this time of uncertainty, a strong NATO is a source of confidence. It is an essential contributor to wider international security and stability.

Spain make thrilling advertisement to the world over how football should be played.

Eurozone leaders in the early hours of Friday morning (29 June) agreed to allow bailout funds to recapitalise banks directly and to buy bonds for "well-behaving" countries - states which are pursuing reforms but suffering from market pressure.

The North Atlantic Council, which includes the ambassadors of all 28 NATO Allies, will meet on Tuesday 26 June, following a request by Turkey under article 4 of NATO's founding Washington Treaty.

Mohamed Morsy of the Muslim Brotherhood sets about building a civilian administration for Egypt on Monday that can heal a divisive history of oppression and coax a mistrustful army into relaxing its grip on power.

Italy's technocrat government risks a parliamentary mutiny unless premier Mario Monti can secure major concessions from Germany at a crucial summit of the eurozone's Big Four powers in Rome on Friday.

A three-party coalition was formed in Greece on Wednesday (20 June) with Antonis Samaras sworn in as new prime minister, a precondition for any negotiations on the second bail-out to take place.

The Euro end game is upon us. Last night President Hollande said at the G-Empty summit in Los Cabos that the bail-out fund should be used to ease the cost of Spanish and Italian borrowing.

"I am relieved. I am relieved for Greece and Europe. As soon as possible we will form a government," New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras said Sunday night, adding he would seek a grand coalition with "no preconceptions", including with the Syriza party.

A classified draft of next week’s EU summit conclusions is the first step on an emerging “roadmap” to a banking union, pooling debt via eurobonds and political union via EU treaty change over the next 10 years.

George Osborne unveiled a £140 billion emergency scheme to try to avoid a second credit crunch caused by the ongoing chaos in the eurozone.

The Obama administration said Tuesday that Russia is sending attack helicopters to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime and warned that the Arab country's 15-month conflict could become even deadlier.

Europe has lit the fuse on an economic and financial bomb. The rescue package for Spain cannot plausibly be contained to ?100bn once it begins, given the subordination of private creditors and collapse of global confidence.

Spain became the fourth and largest country Saturday to ask Europe to rescue its failing banks, a bailout of up to ?100 billion ($125 billion) that leaders hoped would stabilize a financial crisis that threatens to break apart the 17-country eurozone.

David Cameron promises to 'protect' Britain from German plans for a eurozone superstate with common banking and political systems.

The euro has essentially broken down as a viable economic and political undertaking. The latest rush of events reeks of impending denouement.

The euro faces 'disintegration' unless European governments do much more to work together, the European Commission has warned.

Spain is facing the gravest danger since the end of the Franco dictatorship as the country is frozen out of global capital markets and slides towards an epic showdown with Europe.

Irish voters are heading to the polls on Thursday (31 May) to decide on the budget-balancing fiscal discipline treaty, amid a stark warning by Prime Minister Enda Kenny that to reject the document would see the country's borrowing costs soar.

The leaders of France, Germany, Spain and Italy will meet in Rome after the June Greek election to discuss the eurozone crisis, the Italian press reports, as talk of Greece leaving the single currency gain momentum.

This political-military project is one the most important achievements in NATO’s post- Cold War history and goes far beyond the technical aspects of a very unique and complex defense system.

The former Belgian premier added he would work on a report for the June summit with the heads of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the chairman of eurozone finance ministers.

Adopted by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Chicago on 20 May 2012

NATO leaders concluded a decisive summit in Chicago on 21 May, taking key decisions on the Alliance’s future engagement in Afghanistan, military capabilities and worldwide partnerships.

Issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Chicago on 20 May 2012.

It stands to reason the NATO Summit in Chicago becomes imperative for Ukraine which is an integral part of Euro-Atlantic international security, defense and stability area.

But while Europe contributes more to its security within its borders, it must also contribute more beyond them. Europe needs to retain a global perspective and the capabilities to act globally when required.

Socialist Francois Hollande is sworn in as France's president before naming a prime minister and dashing to Germany to battle with Berlin over how to tackle Europe's debt crisis.

Eurozone finance ministers are to hold a "very political" meeting on Monday (14 May) amid intensified speculation of a Greek exit from the single currency and worries over the deficit implications of the Spanish bank rescue.

13 countries have been invited to NATO's upcoming summit in Chicago to attend "an unprecedented meeting to discuss ways to further broaden and deepen NATO’s cooperation with partner nations."

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen held talks to prepare for this month’s Chicago Summit with US President Barack Obama at the White House on 9 May 2012.

Francois Hollande is to be the next president of France after initial results showed that around 52 percent of voters cast their ballot for the socialist and self-styled Monsieur Normal.

Russia does not exclude preemptive use of weapons against NATO missile defense systems in Europe but only as a last resort, the Russian General Staff said on Thursday at a missile defense conference in Moscow.

Some 20 million French people tuned in on Wednesday evening (2 May) to watch a tense and insult-laden debate between the two candidates in Sunday's presidential election. The discussion was almost three hours long but produced no clear winner.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte resigned on Monday after his coalition failed to gain support from the far-right Freedom Party for budget-cutting measures aimed at bringing the deficit down to three percent of GDP by next year.

Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy will go through to the second round of the French presidential elections following Sunday's vote which saw French voters flock to Belgian news outlets to get the news ahead of time.

The defence and foreign ministers of NATO’s 28 member states gathered at the Alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on 18 April, 2012 for two days of talks to prepare the forthcoming NATO Summit in Chicago.

Barack Obama's "shrug your shoulders" Syria policy, faithfully imitated by Britain and the rest of the do-nothing NATO crew, is no longer sustainable politically, strategically or morally.

With the ICJ ruling, the legal and political path is clear to complete Macedonia’s accession, and that would in itself place pressure on Greece to accept a compromise solution and put to rest a poisonous ethnic dispute.

The North Atlantic Treaty--the first peacetime military alliance ever concluded by the United States-was signed by the foreign ministers of the twelve signatory nations on April 4, 1949.

In just over six weeks from now, we will gather to renew the vital bond between European and North American Allies, and to strengthen the bonds with our partners across the globe.

Resolution expressing the sense of the Senate in support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the NATO summit to be held in Chicago, Illinois, from May 20 through 21, 2012.

The alliance and the leadership of the former Soviet republic are holding informal consultations regarding the issue on both political and technical levels, Koziel said.

He painted the "black scenario" in a speech to MPs in Warsaw on Thursday (29 March), at a time when other EU leaders are saying the worst of the financial crisis is over.

A group of 36 foreign policy advisers to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney have sent an open to letter President Obama concerning the troubling assurances he gave to his Russian counterpart at a meeting in Seoul, South Korea.

Recently, President Obama announced a new focus in the US defence posture towards the Asia-Pacific region. Some are concerned this will take place at the expense of Europe and the transatlantic relationship. But I see it differently.

Finally, Obama doesn't seem at all aware of how inappropriate his whole line of discussion with Medvedev was.

What Obama intends to do with the “space” and “flexibility” of his second term isn’t clear exactly. But it certainly suggests a change of course on missile defense.

“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space,” Obama can be heard telling Medvedev, apparently referring to incoming Russian president — and outgoing prime minister — Vladi­mi

President Dmitry Medvedev said the West was running out of time to secure Russia's consent to set up a U.S.-led missile defense shield in Europe and warned that continuing deadlock would prompt an unspecified Russian response.

A Russia-NATO summit, which was scheduled in May, is cancelled. However, the experts believe that this step is caused by disagreements of the parties concerned over the European missile defence system.

“Is it now the policy of NATO that we will stand by as rulers kill their people by the thousands, and our alliance won’t even discuss what we might do to help stop them?” McCain said. “This is shameful.”

"By 2017-2018 we must be fully prepared, fully armed," Medvedev said in broadcast remarks.

President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron reaffirmed their commitment to continue close cooperation on defense as the United States and United Kingdom build their Armed Forces for the future.

Russia and the United States have failed to narrow their differences over a planned U.S. missile shield and stand practically no chance of reaching a compromise at the NATO summit in Chicago in May, a top Russian official said Tuesday.

U.S. Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN) has introduced the NATO Enhancement Act, a bill to encourage further enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and to deepen U.S. strategic partnerships with NATO allies.

After a marathon seven-hour meeting, the International Swaps & Derivatives Association (ISDA) tonight dramatically declared a "credit event had occurred" and billions of euros of credit default insurance will have to be paid out.

The Greek government on Friday (9 March) said it has secured the voluntary participation of 85.8 percent of bondholders in a debt restructuring deal allowing it to avoid a messy default and to receive the second bail-out.

At the request of the Syrian National Council, the Free Syrian Army, and Local Coordinating Committees inside the country, the United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria.

This fact, however, has not stopped Putin, either as prime minister or as candidate for his old job, from turning up the anti-Western rhetoric and positioning his government as standing up to the West.

European leaders are braced for the eurozone’s first ever sovereign default this week as Greece’s efforts to secure a ?206bn (£172bn) “voluntary” bond swap looks increasingly unlikely.

A two-day EU summit starts Thursday evening (1 March) in Brussels with EU leaders set to look at statistics showing where each country stands in terms of public deficit, labour taxes and retirement ages.

The NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen met in Washington, DC with Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta and Tom Donilon to discuss a range of issues related to the upcoming Alliance summit scheduled for 20 - 21 May in Chicago.

On Tuesday, 28 February, Allies discussed preparations for the Summit at the annual seminar organized by NATO’s Allied Command Transformation which this year focused on capabilities.

Robert Zoellick, the outgoing President of the World Bank, has warned that Greece's latest ?130bn bailout would merely buy it time, adding that a European recession would hamper crucial reforms needed to lift the area out of the crisis.

Greece will default. That is the verdict of ratings agency Fitch, which has just downgraded the country two notches to "C" on the back of the "haircuts" announced yesterday in Greece's bailout package.

The eurozone has agreed a second ?130bn Greek bailout after asking private investors to take bigger losses on Greece's debt and by further stripping the country of sovereignty over its finances.

Angela Merkel's political authority has suffered a major blow after Germany's president was today forced to resign after prosecutors asked for his immunity to be lifted as part of a corruption investigation.

Greece fears it is being pushed out of the euro after eurozone ministers delayed a decision on its second bail-out for another five days.

US-based ratings agency Moody's has downgraded six eurozone countries, including Spain and Italy. It also warned that Britain and France may lose their triple-A rating, citing doubts over the bloc's capacity to cope with the debt crisis.

The 199-74 vote was passed amid some of the most serious violence seen on the streets Athens and spread to other Greek towns and cities, including the holiday islands of Corfu and Crete.

The real long-term risk to NATO is that gaps will appear in the European force structure that the US won’t be able to fill, and that the alliance will be unable to act in a future crisis. That risk needs to be faced squarely at the NATO summit in Chicago

The NATO meeting in Brussels comes a week after Panetta previewed a defense budget that calls for slashing American force numbers in Europe, part of a new U.S. military strategy that puts Asia and the Middle East as top priorities with Europe a lowly thir

Of the 1.4 million current US military personnel, only 90,000 are in Europe, or about 6.4 percent. That’s less than one-third the number stationed in Europe in 1991.

Is this Cameron’s Munich? No, not yet…but it could become so.

European leaders agreed on a permanent rescue fund for the eurozone, and 25 out of 27 EU states backed a fiscal pact for stricter budget discipline in the eurozone, while a deal on Greek debt is expected in "days".

To that end, the EU's first summit of 2012 will focus on finding ways to kickstart growth and create jobs across the Гnion, which is on the brink of recession and has average unemployment of 10%, rising to 45% among the young in countries such as Spain.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has revealed her long-term vision for Europe, saying the debt crisis is forcing eurozone countries towards a federalist model and placing her on a collision course with the more eurosceptic UK.

Obama laid out a blueprint for a “fairer America” in his annual State of the Union speech last night, pledging to make millionaires pay higher taxes and setting out his stall for one of the most divisive US elections in living memory.

EU foreign ministers have set the clock ticking on an Iran oil embargo in six months' time despite fresh threats of naval retaliation.

An estimated 42 percent of people voted making it among the lowest recorded turnouts in comparable EU accession referendums

“These Russian statements are of course a matter of concern for NATO allies,” he told reporters in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius.

The Eurozone's bail-out fund was downgraded by one notch to AA+ by the US ratings agency Standard&Poor's - a move likely to put an extra financial burden on contributing nations, many of whom were themselves downgraded last week.

US-based ratings agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) has cut France's triple-A rating and trashed the EU's new fiscal treaty.

Europe’s on-going debt crisis will have a dramatic impact on NATO’s future defense operations. After years of shrinking defense budgets, more cuts are expected, further restricting the continent’s ability to defend U.S. and European interests abroad.

The European Union might appear a military superpower, at least on paper. It has more uniformed personnel than the United States and overall EU defense spending outstrips Russia or China.

What this change in US policy must also do is prompt Europe to think harder about its own capabilities.

New START Treaty implementation is going pretty well but U.S. representatives used to say that New START is just a first step. The U.S. wanted to discuss with Russia further reductions not only of strategic nuclear weapons but also of non-strategic.

Denmark took over the six-month EU rotating presidency on Sunday (1 January), kicking off what is expected to be another traumatic year for the eurozone and its single currency.