August 30, 2014
A roundup of domestic and international news.
România Internațional, 30.08.2014, 12:00
Romanian President Traian Basescu is taking part in a special meeting of the European Council held in Brussels today. Ukrainian crisis and sanctions against Russia are high on the meeting’s agenda. On Friday, Traian Basescu announced he would call on the European partners to support the Ukrainian army with military equipment and to impose fresh sanctions on Russia. He motivated his decision by saying that for the past week, Russia had been supplying the rebels with military technique and experts.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is today taking part, in Brussels, in the opening of the European Union Summit. According to political analysts, this is an indication of the European leaders’ support for Ukraine. Ukraine called on Friday for full NATO membership its strongest plea yet for Western military help, after accusing Russia of sending in armoured columns on behalf of pro-Moscow rebels. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he respected Ukraines right to seek alliances. Rasmussen called on Russia to cease its illegal military actions in Ukraine.
The Romanian Foreign Minister, Titus Corlatean is taking part in an informal meeting of the EU foreign ministers, held in Milan, Italy. Approached at the meeting are the recent developments in Ukraine, the conflicts in Iraq and Syria and the peace process in the Middle East.
Cultural events staged simultaneously in Romania, the Republic of Moldova and the Romanian communities in the diaspora are marking, as of today, the Romanian Language Day, celebrated on August 31st. Bucharest is hosting, on this occasion, book launches and concerts while in Chisinau will be held an international conference dubbed “The Romanian Language — a European Integration Language”. In Cernauti, in western Ukraine, a country that is home to almost half a million Romanian ethnics, the 25th anniversary of the Society for the Romanian Culture is celebrated. The Romanian Cultural Institute offices all over the world also mark the Romanian Language Day this weekend. Set up last year by the Parliament in Bucharest, this day is also celebrated in the Republic of Moldova, with a majority Romanian-speaking population. On August 31, 1989, with the communists still in power, the Parliament in Chisinau was picketed by about 750 thousand people, and had to declare Romanian as the countrys official language and switch to the Latin Alphabet from the Cyrillic one, imposed by the Soviets in 1940.
The Social Democratic prime minister of Romania, Victor Ponta, is today taking part in a meeting of the leftist European leaders, staged in Paris at the initiative of the French President Francois Hollande. The meeting is aimed at coordinating the positions of the leftist governments in the process of nominating the European institutions’ leadership.
