March 24, 2015
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România Internațional, 24.03.2015, 12:00
An Airbus A320 plane with 148 people on board has crashed today in the region of Barcelonette, in the south of the French Alps. According to France Press, the plane belongs to the Germanwings company, the low cost branch of the Lufthansa airlines. The flight was linking Barcelona to Dusseldorf.
Tuesday will see the start of an exercise in the south east of Romania in which more than 2 thousand Romanian, American, British and Moldovan soldiers will participate until April. The exercise is part of the operation “Atlantic Resolve” meant to give assurances to the NATO member states in the east of Europe that the American and British allies are ready to intervene on their side. The participation of the Moldovan soldiers comes against the backdrop of the Moldovan president Nicolae Timofti’s declarations according to which, given the tension in the east of neighboring Ukraine, caused by Moscow’s interference, Chisinau should get closer to NATO, since its security is in danger. On Monday, the Moldovan Supreme Security Council decided to draft a new national security strategy that should meet the challenges in the region.
The Romanian foreign minister, Bogdan Aurescu, is today paying a visit to London where he will talk with his British counterpart, Philip Hammond, about bilateral relations, European and security issues. Bogdan Aurescu will also meet with representatives of the Romanian community in Great Britain. The Romanian foreign minister will participate, as a main speaker, in a conference on the issue of defense against ballistic missiles. Bogdan Aurescu will speak about the Romanian- American project of placing elements of the American anti-missile defense shield in Romania.
The Republic of Moldova, an ex-Soviet state with a majority Romanian-speaking population, is firmly committed to its EU accession effort — the Moldovan ambassador to Brussels reiterated. He told Radio Romania’s correspondent to Brussels that Moldova already felt the positive effects of its pro-European option, thanks to the exports made to the EU countries. The Moldovan ambassador underlined that the association and free trade agreements concluded with the EU in 2014 rescued the Moldovan economy, given that the community market opened to the Moldovan farming products and foodstuffs in the context of the Russian embargo imposed on these Moldovan products.
The US House of Representatives has passed a resolution urging President Barack Obama to use the prerogatives given by the Congress in order to supply Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons. The measure would allow an increase in the Ukrainians’ capability to defend their sovereignty. The resolution also claims that Russia alone is responsible for the victims of the Ukrainian conflict. According to one of the resolution signatories if they allow any aggression against Ukraine without giving it the possibility to defend itself, they will give the international community a signal that their availability for supporting the world order created after WWII has been reduced.
