World

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Brussels on Thursday formally approved the release of EU funds of up to 137 billion euros ($148 billion) to Poland after Warsaw made progress on judicial reforms.

The decision reflects a change of tone after new pro-European Union Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk took office in December.

Tusk is seeking to reverse contentious policies introduced by the previous administration of the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) that had been seen by Brussels as backsliding on democracy.

Those policies included a controversial disciplinary chamber that had power over judges in Poland’s supreme court, and a refusal to recognise that EU law had supremacy over national legislation.

They challenged EU principles on the rule of law, earning Poland daily fines and a freeze on billions of euros earmarked for the country from a Covid recovery fund and programmes on development, farming, domestic and maritime affairs.

The European Commission also triggered a last-resort measure that, theoretically, could have suspended Poland’s right to vote in meetings of EU governments.

Tusk’s government has scrapped the disciplinary chamber and committed to respecting EU laws.

It has also agreed to join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), which investigates and prosecutes cross-border crime involving EU funds.

Taken together, Brussels viewed these changes as sufficient to unlock the first disbursements from the 60 billion euros of frozen Covid recovery money and some 76.5 billion euros in other EU funds, which have been earmarked for Poland up to 2027.

Poland had “fulfilled” three crucial “milestones”, strengthening the independence of judges and the national audit and control systems.

Once EU member countries have agreed to the commission’s decision, Brussels can release 6.3 billion euros in coming weeks from the Covid recovery fund, the EU executive.

Poland should receive around 600 million euros from the other EU programmes over the same period, an EU official said.

The official added that EPPO-appointed prosecutors were expected to start work in Poland in the summer, adding that all funding was contingent on Warsaw standing by its reform promises.

Although Tusk is intent on bringing Poland back into alignment with EU laws and principles, he is challenged by the country’s conservative president, Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally.

Duda is required to sign off on new laws.

The prospect of him blocking the new government’s reforms prompted Tusk in early February to say he would be open to calling early elections if the president stood in the way.

MOSCOW — Pro-Russian rebel officials in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria appealed to Russia for “protection” on Wednesday, amid fears the territory could become a new flashpoint in Moscow’s conflict with neighbouring Ukraine.

The thin sliver of land has been de facto controlled by pro-Russian forces since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but is internationally recognised as part of Moldova.

At a special congress in the region — only the seventh in its history — lawmakers passed a resolution asking Russia’s parliament to “protect” Transnistria from mounting Moldovan pressure.

They said the Moldovan government in Chisinau had unleashed an “economic war” against Transnistria, blocking vital imports in the aim of turning it into a “ghetto”.

“The decisions of the current congress cannot be ignored by the international community,” the breakaway republic’s foreign policy chief Vitaly Ignatiev told the meeting.

The resolution comes just a day before President Vladimir Putin was set to make an annual address before Russian lawmakers and as Ukraine suffers setbacks on the battlefield.

The separatist territory last held a congress in 2006, when deputies announced a referendum on integrating with Russia. The vote resulted in an overwhelming majority in favour.

The call for help from Moscow has fuelled comparisons with February 2022, when Russian-backed militants in eastern Ukraine called for protection against what they said was relentless attacks and shelling by Kyiv’s forces.

Delegates at the conference on Wednesday made little mention of Ukraine, according to accounts of the session in state-run media, instead aiming their ire against Moldova, who they blamed for the territory’s economic woes.

A Moldovan government spokesman downplayed concerns ahead of the rare meeting.

“From Chisinau, things look calm... There is no danger of escalation and destabilisation of the situation in the Transnistrian region. This is another campaign to create hysteria,” they said in a post on Telegram.

Tensions 

Moldova has accused the Kremlin of stoking tensions in Transnistria, a primarily Russian-speaking region that depends heavily on Moscow for support.

Since Moscow began its full-scale assault on Ukraine, Chisinau has been concerned the Kremlin could use Transnistria to open a new front in the southwest, in the direction of Odesa.

The tiny region was rocked by unexplained blasts in 2022 that military analysts believe may have been a Russian attempt to drag the region into the conflict.

Then, in March 2023, Transnistria’s pro-Russian leadership accused Kyiv of an assassination attempt on their leader, an accusation that Ukraine rejected.

The Kremlin has around 1,500 soldiers permanently stationed in the region, and has warned Ukraine and Moldova that attacking them would incur serious consequences.

Russia still props up Transnistria’s economy with supplies of free gas, but the breakaway republic has found itself increasingly isolated from Moscow since the conflict in Ukraine.

The gathering of Transnistrian officials comes as Ukraine faces intense pressure on the frontlines, where it has recently lost ground to Russia amid mounting ammunition shortages.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Albania on Wednesday for a summit of south-eastern European nations, where he was expected to renew his calls for more aid.

DETROIT — Just over 100,000 people in Michigan voted “uncommitted” in the swing state’s Democratic primary, provisional results showed on Wednesday, after a protest movement urged voters to punish President Joe Biden over his support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

Though Biden handily won the vote, the uncommitted ballots, representing 13 per cent of votes cast on Tuesday, sent a “clear and resounding message that we demand a permanent ceasefire now”, Layla Elabed, an organiser of the Listen to Michigan campaign, told a press conference.

The midwestern state is home to a large number of Arab and Muslim Americans, previously firmly part of the Democratic fold that helped elect Biden in 2020.

Whether Biden could change tack — and also whether voters who protested in the primary will continue to do so in November — could be key as the United States heads toward a likely rematch Biden and former president Donald Trump.

Though the percentage of uncommitted votes was similar to that seen in 2012 during Democrat Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, where it hit 11 per cent, that only represented some 20,000 votes.

Joining in the pressure campaign against Biden were elected officials, with local mayors as well as Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American representative in Congress, casting uncommitted ballots.

Previous victories in Michigan — seen as crucial to winning the country as a whole — have been narrow: Donald Trump won by about 10,000 votes in 2016; Biden won by some 150,000 in 2020.

“It is my hope, Mr president, that you listen to us,” said Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, a Detroit suburb home to a large number of Arab Americans.

“That you choose democracy over tyranny. That you choose the people of America over [Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Asked about the risk of electing Trump in November, Hammoud said that was a question should be posed to Biden.

“President Biden is the one seeking the highest of office and he is the candidate who’s facing off against Donald Trump,” he said. “He has to earn the votes of the constituency that he’s trying to serve.”

In a statement Tuesday night after his victory was declared, Biden thanked “every Michigander who made their voice heard today”.

It did not mention the protest vote.

“Quite frankly, his statement last night did not unite,” said Abbas Alawieh, a Listen to Michigan spokesman, adding the president “ignored” the 100,000 uncommitted voters.

“This community here in Michigan needs him to change his policies before he comes back and asks for our votes.”

BERLIN — Police arrested a fugitive member of Germany’s notorious far-left militant group the Baader-Meinhof gang after more than 30 years on the run for attempted murder and other crimes, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Daniela Klette, 65, was part of a trio from the group, officially known as the Red Army Faction (RAF), which carried out several bombings, kidnappings and killings in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.

Klette was arrested on Monday in the German capital, a spokesman for prosecutors in Verden said, without giving further details.

Along with fellow RAF members Ernst-Volker Staub and Burhard Garweg, Klette is being investigated by the prosecutors in Verden for attempted murder and various serious robberies between 1999 and 2016.

The trio are believed to have been financing their lives on the run through robberies of money transporters and supermarket cash heists.

They are suspected of being behind the failed robbery of a money transporter in 2016 near the northern city of Bremen, among other offences.

In that incident, masked attackers armed with AK-47 automatic rifles and a grenade-launcher opened fire but fled without cash when security guards locked themselves inside the armoured vehicle, which was carrying about 1 million euros ($1.1 million).

Plane hijacking 

The anti-capitalist RAF emerged out of the radicalised fringe of the 1960s student protest movement.

The group, which had links to Middle Eastern militant organisations, declared itself disbanded in 1998.

At the height of its notoriety in 1977, the group kidnapped one of Germany’s top industrialists after opening fire with a machine-gun on his Mercedes.

After ambushing Hanns-Martin Schleyer’s convoy, they held him hostage for six weeks as the West German state negotiated for his release.

On October 13, four militants of the RAF-allied Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked Mallorca-Frankfurt flight LH 181, demanding the release of 11 RAF members.

During a five-day odyssey which included seven refuelling stops in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the cell’s leader, who called himself Captain Martyr Mahmud, shot dead the pilot, Juergen Schumann.

German anti-terror commandos eventually stormed the Lufthansa jet in Somalia, shot its Palestinian hijackers and freed 90 hostages.

Schleyer, a former SS officer who became the head of Germany’s employers’ association, was then found dead in the boot of a car in eastern France.

‘Third generation’ 

Though the so-called German Autumn of 1977 marked the beginning of a long period of decline for the RAF, the group continued to operate for another two decades.

Staub, Garweg and Klette, alleged members of the RAF’s so-called “third generation” active during the 1980s and 1990s, are the chief suspects in a 1993 explosives attack against a prison under construction in Germany’s Hesse state.

In the attack, five RAF members climbed the prison walls, tied up and abducted the guards in a van, then returned to set off explosions that caused about 600,000 euros worth of property damage, according to German prosecutors.

Klette is also a suspect in two previous RAF operations.

Ten days ago, an alarm was raised in Wuppertal when a man on a regional train was mistaken for Staub.

However, it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity, and he and Garweg remain on the run.

Although far-right extremism has been a bigger focus for Germany in recent years, far-left attacks have also continued to keep the authorities busy.

A court in Dresden in May sentenced a left-wing extremist woman to more than five years in jail for attacking neo-Nazis, with Germany’s interior minister warning against “vigilante justice”.

The defendant, identified only as Lina E., and three other suspects were convicted of participating in a “criminal organisation” that carried out several assaults against right-wing extremists between 2018 and 2020.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday faced uneasy reactions from European allies and a warning from the Kremlin after he refused to rule out the dispatch of Western ground troops to Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.

Macron said after a conference of European leaders on Monday that "everything that is necessary" must be done to ensure the defeat of Russia, including deploying troops.

The Kremlin warned of the "inevitability" of confrontation between NATO and Russia if troops from the alliance were deployed in the conflict, which would break a major taboo the West has so far been reluctant to challenge.

Macron hosted the conference just over two years to the day after Russia invaded Ukraine — seeking to rally greater support for Kyiv, which faces increasing battlefield challenges and dwindling munition stocks.

He painted a grim picture of Russia under President Vladimir Putin, arguing there had been a “change of posture” even in recent months that had seen a hardening of its stance both domestically and in Ukraine.

While there was “no consensus” on the sending of Western ground troops to Ukraine, “nothing should be ruled out. We will do whatever it takes to ensure that Russia cannot win this war”, Macron added.

‘No plans for combat troops’ 

Macron had refused to say more about France’s position, citing the need for “strategic ambiguity” but saying the issue was mentioned “among the options”.

“We are convinced that the defeat of Russia is indispensable to security and stability in Europe,” Macron said.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, accused by critics of being too cosy with Moscow, said after the meeting that there was disunity on the issue among European leaders.

“There are countries that are ready to send their own soldiers to Ukraine, there are countries that say never — Slovakia is among them — and there are countries that say that this proposal should be considered,” he said.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson of Sweden, which is set to join NATO, poured cold water on the idea, saying “it’s not on the cards at all for the moment”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “What was agreed from the beginning among ourselves and with each other also applies to the future, namely that there will be no soldiers on Ukrainian soil sent there by European states or NATO states.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that if NATO troops appeared in Ukraine “we need to speak not about a possibility but of the inevitability” of confrontation.

“This is absolutely not in the interests of these countries, they should be aware of this,” he added.

A NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, emphasised “there are no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine” despite the “unprecedented military support” from the alliance.

However, the UK issued a somewhat more circumspect reaction, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman saying there were no plans for “large-scale” troop deployment to Ukraine.

‘Specific activities’ 

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Tuesday reaffirmed Macron’s comments, saying: “You can’t rule anything out in a war.”

Macron had also taken an apparent swipe at Germany, which was mocked in the first months of the war for its relatively soft promises of military support.

“I recall that two years ago many around this table said we will offer sleeping bags and helmets and now they say we need to do more and quicker to have missiles and tanks.”

Macron argued that the hardening of Russia’s approach had been “cruelly” manifested in the death in an Arctic prison on February 16 of President Putin’s top opponent Alexei Navalny.

“Russia is adopting an attitude that is more aggressive not just in Ukraine but against us all in general.”

It is understood that any Western troops eventually sent to Ukraine would have no mandate to fight Russian forces but work on priorities outlined by Macron in his news conference, including de-mining, securing neighbouring countries such as Moldova and thwarting cyber attacks.

“We are not talking about soldiers on the front line, in combat, but about specific activities, far from the front,” said Rym Momtaz, consultant research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

LAHORE, Pakistan — The daughter of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif took control of Pakistan’s most populous region on Monday, becoming the country’s first woman to govern a province.

Maryam Nawaz Sharif was elected chief minister in her family’s long-time power base of Punjab province, after Pakistan held national and provincial polls on February 8.

Her father — widely known as the “Lion of Punjab” — served as Pakistan’s prime minister three times, his last stint ending in 2017.

Her uncle Shehbaz, also a previous premier, looks set to rule again after the family’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party agreed to govern in coalition with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

The alliance also saw the PPP’s Punjab lawmakers back Maryam for the chief minister’s office, where she will preside over the province of 127 million Pakistanis — more than half the national populace.

Maryam said Monday that her appointment was “the making of history”.

“It is a victory for every woman, a triumph for every daughter and mother,” she told regional lawmakers after they elected her to the role.

“It is proof that being a woman and being a daughter cannot constrain your dreams,” she said, ahead of a swearing-in ceremony scheduled for later that day.

Nepotism and cronyism are entrenched in Pakistani politics, with family connections sometimes boosting elite daughters into power despite social conservatism shutting most women out.

Benazir Bhutto became Pakistan’s first female leader in 1988 but the opportunity was credited to her lineage in the Bhutto dynasty which has historically rivalled the Sharifs, rather than social progress.

Only around a dozen women were elected to national office in this month’s elections. Most female lawmakers enter parliament in seats reserved for women and religious minorities.

Female politicians also face sexist criticism in patriarchal Pakistan, and Maryam has in the past been targeted over her appearance and taunted with suggestive remarks.

Punjab proving ground 

Analysts suggest the 50-year-old is being groomed to succeed the Sharif brothers, who are in their 70s and have suffered ailing health.

Both served as Punjab chief minister before leading the country. Maryam’s cousin Hamza Shahbaz also recently held the post.

Like her father Nawaz, Maryam has been jailed in the past over graft.

PML-N had been tipped to win this month’s polls after securing the backing of the powerful military establishment.

But jailed ex-prime minister Imran Khan delivered a surprise result at the polls, with candidates loyal to him securing more seats than any other party despite a crackdown which crippled their campaign.