Boris Nemtsov, the Russian opposition leader who was gunned down on a bridge near the Kremlin late on February 27, is set to buried on Moscow on March 3
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Dina Eidman, 87, Nemtsov's mother, pays her respects at her son's coffin.
Russians Say Farewell To Boris Nemtsov
Boris Nemtsov, the Russian opposition leader who was gunned down on a bridge near the Kremlin late on February 27, is set to buried on Moscow on March 3. Family members stood by Nemtsov's open coffin as mourners filed into the Sakharov Center, a prominent civil-rights organization in Moscow, to pay their last respects at a public memorial service. Mourners in winter coats filed by the coffin, a few wiping away tears, in a public ritual that has followed the killings of several prominent...
As mourners from around the world gather in Moscow for the funeral of murdered Russian politician Boris Nemtsov today, many unanswered questions still surround his death.
"Боль.Шок.Страх". Россия без Немцова by Радио Свобода
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Убийство Бориса Немцова - это следствие атмосферы войны, человеконенавистничества и особенно ненависти...
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From: Радио Свобода
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| Time: 05:53 | More in News & Politics |
 Lenta.ru |
Кучерена рассказал о работе по возвращению Сноудена в США
Lenta.ru Группа юристов из разных стран занимается вопросом возвращения Эдварда Сноудена в США. Об этом заявил его российский адвокат Анатолий Кучерена, сообщает ТАСС. «Сноуден готов вернуться в США, но на условии, что ему дадут гарантию законного и беспристрастного суда ... Кучерена раскрыл подробности пребывания в Москве девушки СноуденаМосковский комсомолец Кучерена: в Россию не поступали документы об экстрадиции СноуденаРИА Новости Сноуден хочет вернуться в Америку, но учит русский языкВести.Ru Российская Газета -Газета.Ru -Интерфакс Все похожие статьи: 74 » |
Putin Counting on Short Attention Spans of Russians and Especially Western Leaders by paul goble (noreply@blogger.com)
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 3 – In addition to his skillful use of disinformation and outright lies, Vladimir Putin counts on the increasingly short attention spans of Russians and everyone else to get away with his crimes be they the blowing up of the apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999, the Anschluss of Crimea in 2014, or the murder of Boris Nemtsov this past week.
The Kremlin dictator is confident that with the onrush of developments, some of which he may be the author of, fewer and fewer people will concentrate on what he did in the past and more and more will insist that the past, especially if it is “cloudy,” should be ignored in order to deal with whatever is the latest horror.
That is especially true when the number of people who expressed outrage in the first place is small and when leaders face multiple challenges, some of which Putin can promote, and demands from their own populations that they focus on what is most immediately important to them at any particular moment.
Consequently, those who expect any event including the murder of Nemtsov to be a real turning point in Russia are likely to be disappointed, and the author of that murder – Vladimir Putin – is likely to ride out the relatively brief media firestorm and continue his aggressive policies at home and abroad.
Those conclusions are suggested by a commentary offered by Igor Eidman who suggests that Putin, before deciding to murder Nemtsov in order to intimidate all Russians, carefully calculated the risks involved to himself and concluded that “there would not be any serious problems” for his rule (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=54F4939C4BC61).
To be sure, Eidman says, he would have assumed that “several tens of thousands of intelligents with ‘threatening’ posters like ‘There are now words’ would march through the center of Moscow. They have no words, but he has the OMON, the FSB, the special units, and the professional killers.” Given that, “are these demonstrations threatening to him?”
“Putin decided on this crime because he understood perfectly that there would not be a repetition in Russia of the history with the murder of Benigno Aquino which prompted the Philippinos to go into the streets and overthrow the regime of the dictator-murderer Marcos or of that of the scandal with the liquidation by the fascist militants of Deputy Matteoti, who put the Mussolini regime at the edge of collapse.”
Indeed, Eidman continues, “the situation in Italy at the time of Matteoti’s murder very much reminds one of that of Russia today. Then in that country as now in Russia is being completed the formation of a fascist regime. After this murder, Italian society for the last time tried to stop fascism. This didn’t happen, but the Italians unlike [the Russians] at least tried.”
In thinking about whether to murder Nemtsov, Putin undoubtedly concluded that “this will be a sensation of several weeks.” A few people will make noise and march around, but nothing will happen, he clearly concluded. What remains to be seen is whether in this case the Kremlin leader might be wrong.
Unfortunately, the evidence so far points in the other direction. As Aleksandr Minkin pointed out, even the marches following Nemtsov’s murder attracted only tiny fractions of the population: only half of one percent of the residents of Moscow, for example, took part in the memorial protest march (mk.ru/politics/2015/03/02/zabud-pro-demokratiyu.html).
Moreover, Putin’s ratings remain high, and despite shunning him earlier, Western leaders are rushing to meet with him or his minions in the name of reaching some agreement, behavior that builds him up in Russian eyes and makes any change in Russia or Russian policy much less likely (nr2.com.ua/column/alexander_shchetinin/Zabudte-o-peremenah-v-Rossii-91267.html).
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Among those who viewed him were US Ambassador John Tefft and former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who has gone into opposition.
Russian deputy prime ministers Sergei Prikhodko and Arkady Dvorkovich also attended, according to Russian news reports.
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Moscow has Already Begun Hybrid War against Latvia, Riga Journalist Says by paul goble (noreply@blogger.com)
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 3 – In words that some will dismiss as being like those of the little boy who cried wolf and that others will see as a cry of despair, Latvian TV journalist Olga Dragilyeva says that Moscow has launched a hybrid war against Latvia by using its media to generate “dissatisfaction and illusions” among the residents of Latvia.
“For many years,” she said today, “Russian-language media controlled by the Russian government and NGOs connected with Russia have been cultivating dissatisfaction among the Russian-speaking part of the population” in order to “manipulate” Latvia from the outsidenvesti.lv/news/general-v-shoke-95-mestnyh-russkih-protiv-ukrainyand topwar.ru/70146-latviyskie-smi-v-latvii-nyne-nablyudaetsya-4ya-stadiya-gibridnoy-voyny.html).
Dragilyeva says that the solution to this is to be found in the creation of a Latvian-organized television channel in Russian with its own correspondents “in Kyiv and Moscow, Washington and Latgale” and a commitment to providing the kind of accurate and reliable information about events in all those places that Russian-controlled channels don’t.
But some Latvians worry such a step may be too little too late. Martins Kaprans of the Latvian ministry of culture, says that Riga must take stronger measures against what he called “illegal satellite television.” Former MVD General Ainars Pencis adds that at a minimum Russian TV channels must be closed down for at least six months.
Commenting on this, former Latvian General Guntars Abols acknowledged that Latvia today is “in a nervous situation,” one in which it is unclear “where there is peace and where there is war” given that Russia is exerting so much pressure on it and Latvia has relatively few resources with which to respond.
“Let us be realists,” he says. “Even if we introduced obligatory military service, we would not be able over the next 10 to 15 years to create armed forces capable of standing up to such an opponent who has overwhelming power in the conventional sphere” not to speak of anything else.
Instead, Latvia must work with its allies and must be prepared at the first appearance of “’little men’ without designations on the uniforms” to fight. No delay is possible.
This discussion highlights two fundamental problems which many do not want to take into consideration. On the one hand, Latvia does face a real and ongoing threat because of the impact of Russian media, something that has been ongoing and that by failing to build a Latvian Russian-language media that country has only compounded.
And on the other, while ignoring this threat would be a mistake, talking about it in any but the most careful way may have exacerbate relations between various groups and regions in Latvia and thus may unintentionally play into the hands of the Moscow authors of Russia’s latest version of hybrid war in a television-saturated age. Indeed, that may be part of their strategy.
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EU Commission Ponders Neighborhood Policy, Closer Ties With Russia by noreply@rferl.org (RFE/RL)
The European Commission is questioning whether to drop its European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) and appears open to the possibility of closer cooperation with Russia.
Thousands of mourners and dignitaries file past the white-lined coffin of slain Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov ahead of funeral
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A new video titled I'm A Russian Occupier defends Russia's occupation of neighboring countries and warns the world not to "mess" with Russians.
Mourners pay their respects to opposition politician Boris Nemtsov on Tuesday ahead of his funeral in Moscow. He was shot on Friday night near the Kremlin while walking back from a restaurant. Nemtsov's girlfriend, Anna Duritskaya, who was with him when he was shot, has flown home to Boryspil in Ukraine before the funeral, which she will not attend. Her mother says Nemtsov was the love of her daughter's life Continue reading...
‘Beat the Jews, Save Russia’ – An Ugly Old Slogan Returns in Putin’s Russia by paul goble (noreply@blogger.com)
Paul Goble
Staunton, March 3 – The climate of fear and hatred that Vladimir Putin has created in Russia which first was directed against Chechens and then immigrants and gays, is now to the surprise of no one familiar with Russian history and with the propensity of those in any country who hate to find additional objects for their hatred being directed at Jews.
In an article entitled “Beat the Jews and Save Russia” on colta.ru, Svetlana Reiter tells the story of two women in St. Petersburg, one a Jew and one someone only connected with Jewish activities, and the rising tide of anti-Semitism they and others now face from some within the population and worse from some within the police (colta.ru/articles/society/6475).
Leokadiya Frenkel, program coordinator at the Jewish Community Center in the northern capital, describes her experiences while teaching Russian to migrant workers from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, an action that Russians and especially Russian nationalists might be expected to approve of.
But that is far from the case. She reports that a group calling itself “Morality” on the VKontakte social network attacked her efforts, posting 161 pictures of her and denouncing the notion that “a Jew-liberal social group should be going to meetings and teqching ‘black’ children the Russian language.”
The group, which has more than 4,000 followers, is “absolutely fascist and anti-Semitic,” Frenkel says. “They constantly write that migrants commit a large portion of crimes in Russia, that ‘black’ children go into our schools and defile out children, that the children of migrants are wild beasts” and so on.
When the site learned that “a Jewish woman was teaching immigrants,” its leaders concluded that they were dealing with what in their lights was “pure evil.” They posted information not only about her but about her son and her husband, and they declared that neither Jews nor immigrants “have a place in our society.”
Mikhail Kuzmin, 28, the founder of the “Morality” site, is a graduate of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Academy of Law and a member of the local section of the Great Russia party. He has attracted attention in the past for attacking lesbian and gay activists with his fists.
In one of the pictures posted on the site, Frenkel says, Kuzmin is shown in a policeman’s uniform, although she said that she doesn’t know whether he really is one. Another photograph shows him standing alongside notoriously obscurantist Duma deputy Milonov.
“The most terrible thing, of course,” she continues, is that Kuzmin “not only is operating in social networks. He is walking around the streets. I complained to the VKontakte administration, but they responded that ‘if you don’t like this group, then don’t look at its materials. We close only those groups which directly threaten someone’s life.”
Frenkel continues: “It is difficult for me to say whether people from ‘Morality’ threaten my life.” But among its thousands of followers, it is not impossible to imagine that there are some who would. Moreover, she says, “I am really afraid for my family” given “the insane level of aggression” in Russian society.
She adds that her center does not have any guns to defend itself. “The only thing” she says she can do is to talk about this group in public and hope that shining a bright light on this evil will cause others to be as appalled as she clearly is.
The second person with whom Reiter spoke is Tamriko Apakidze, an ethnic Georgian who used to teach at the Petersburg Institute of Judaism before deciding that the situation there was too uncomfortable and moving to Germany. She recounts how she found herself in a police station because she had carried signs declaring “Crimea is Ukraine” and “Make Love Not War.”
Initially she was intrigued having never been detained before. But when the police took her documents and refused to allow her to call anyone, she says she realized that this was no laughing matter. Moreover, her interrogator became angry when she said that she worked at the Institute of Judaism.
He began to “ask what I taught there and how long I had worked there.” She says she was then released, handed a protocol and told to wait for notification of her court date. But the next day, she found out that this was hardly the end of it. It turned out that sitting near her at the police station was Kuzmin of “Morality” and that he shared all this with his VKontakte group.
Although she had said that she was a Georgia, Apakidze reports, her work at the Institute of Judaism was enough for him. He posted some 25 pictures of her, a screenshot of the institute itself, along a photograph of himself in a Nazi uniform with the words that she wasn’t a homosexual but she supports them.
Apakidze’s husband wrote Kuzmin, denounced him as a Nazi and demanded that he remove all the picture of her, she says. To that Kuzmin responded: “I am not a Nazi because all Nazis are kikes.” There was no reason to continue the discussion, she adds, but she indicates that she never expected to encounter anything like that in her life.
She and her spouse asked VKontakte to take down the site. But it didn’t, and she became “very afraid,” Apakidze says, especially when she saw the photograph of the institute. Indeed, she acknowledges, all this made her paranoid especially since it gave rise to “the suspicion that Kuzmin is working in connection with the police.”
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Ceremony for murdered Boris Nemtsov, Russian opposition leader and sharp critic of Vladimir Putin
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3 марта в Москве простились с оппозиционным лидером Борисом Немцовым, который был убит в центре российской...
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From: Радио Свобода
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| Time: 02:01 | More in News & Politics |
A Russian minister has proposed sanctions against French-based satellite company Eutelsat in retaliation for Paris' failure to deliver a helicopter-carrier warship last year.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Moscow "sees all the signs of genocide" in the murder of a group of Egyptian Coptic Christians by the Islamic State militant group.
Crowds applauded as the coffin containing the body of Boris Nemtsov was carried to the hearse before heading to the cemetery on March 3. The opposition leader, killed on February 27, was subsequently buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery on the outskirts of Moscow. (RFE/RL's Russian Service)
 New York Times |
Russians stand in line to mourn by coffin of slain Nemtsov
Reuters MOSCOW (Reuters) - Thousands of Russians, many carrying red carnations, on Tuesday filed past the coffin of Boris Nemtsov, the Kremlin critic whose killing last week, friends say, showed the hazards of speaking out against Russian President Vladimir ... Mourners pay respects at Boris Nemtsov's funeral in RussiaCNN Nemtsov's Partner Says Russia Held Her Against Her WillNew York Times Russians bid farewell to murdered politician NemtsovBBC News The Guardian -CBS News all 1,828 news articles » |
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Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka met in Moscow on March 3 to discuss the future of the Union State that links their countries.
A Moscow court has ordered mandatory psychiatric treatment for a Moscow teenager it found killed two people in a rare Russian school shooting last year.
Six Detained For Illegal Border Crossing In Kyrgzystanby noreply@rferl.org (RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service)
Kyrgyz officials say six people have been detained for illegally crossing the border from Uzbekistan.
Israeli PM to Make Case Against Iran's Nuclear Ambitions to Congress by webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to escalate his campaign against international diplomatic efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran during a speech before a joint meeting of Congress in Washington Tuesday. Netanyahu, who said he is privy to emerging details of the ongoing negotiations, fears the U.S. and its other world partners will give Iran too many concessions. Iran is sponsoring terrorism across the world -- enveloping the world with its “tentacles of terror,” Netanyahu said Monday during a speech to AIPAC, the leading American pro-Israeli lobbying group. “Imagine what Iran would do with nuclear weapons,” he added. Netanyahu is expected to use even harsher rhetoric on Capitol Hill. Iran sanctions He has said he thinks the so-called P5+1 group of global powers is planning to ease international sanctions without the ironclad safeguards needed to deny Tehran a nuclear bomb. The U.S. administration says that is just not true, and warned that Netanyahu could unravel the negotiations if he mobilizes US lawmakers in the Republican-held Congress against it. The White House is also wary of Netanyahu revealing any of the closed-door negotiations designed to curb Iran's nuclear drive. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf warned Netanyahu against revealing details of the deal shared in confidence in classified briefings with the Israelis. "Any release of any kind of information like that would, of course, betray that trust," she said Monday. President Barack Obama on Monday appeared to wave off any prospect the bedrock U.S. alliance with Israel might be ruined by the rancor. "I don’t think it's permanently destructive," Obama told Reuters in an interview. "I think that it is a distraction from what should be our focus. And our focus should be, ‘How do we stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?’ " Netanyahu denied his acts had harmed the traditionally close US-Israeli alliance. "Reports of the demise of the Israeli-US relations are not only premature, they're just wrong,” he said. Upcoming Israeli elections Also on Monday, Netanyahu voiced frustration his speech to Congress on Tuesday has created such controversy, in Israel and the U.S. He insisted his speech to Congress was not meant to show any disrespect toward Obama or the Oval Office, nor did he wish to make Israel part of a partisan debate. "Israel and the United States agree that Iran shouldn't have nuclear weapons. But we disagree on the best way to prevent them from developing those weapons,” Netanyahu said. The prime minister said his speech would simply be about his nation’s survival survival. “I plan to speak about an Iranian regime that is threatening to destroy Israel, that's devouring country after country in the Middle East, that's exporting terror throughout the world and that is developing, as we speak, the capacity to make nuclear weapons - lots of them,” Netanyahu said Monday. Adding to the controversy, the speech comes just two weeks ahead of a tight national election in which Netanyahu is fighting to hold onto his job. Obama does not plan to meet with Netanyahu while he's in Washington, saying he wants to avoid any perception that he is meddling in Israel's election. As many as 40 members of the House and more than a handful of senators are expected to skip the speech, which many have labeled a partisan political stunt. Vice President Joe Biden, president of the Senate, also won't be there. He's on a trip to Central America and his seat on the dais will be filled by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, president pro tempore. Many Democrats will be in the audience, however. Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia said he would attend “to find out more about the prime minister's point of view on this.” Hatch, from Utah, said Monday that Congress should complement the prime minister's address with the threat of more sanctions. “I am deeply troubled that our president's solution won't work,” Hatch said. “This administration has opted for a policy of conciliation that does nothing to curb this growing threat. And all the while, the threat to Israel grows stronger every day.” Nuclear negotiations Thousands of miles from the political storm unfolding in Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met early Tuesday after two brief negotiating sessions on Monday. Their morning talks lasted two hours, but they were expected to resume again in the afternoon with the negotiations due to stretch into Wednesday. Both sides said they were making progress. “We're working away, productively,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters. However, a deal with Iran is far from guaranteed, given U.S. assessments that more than a decade of carrot-and-stick diplomacy with Iran might again fail to clinch a final accord. "I would say that it's probably still more likely than not that Iran doesn't get to yes," Obama told Reuters. "It is more likely that we could get a deal now than perhaps three or five months ago. But there are still some big gaps that have to be filled." Mark Heller, a political analyst at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, says that after years of warning about the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran, it is hard to imagine what new angle Netanyahu will pursue on Tuesday. "He's been over this ground before many times and... if he doesn't come up with something truly explosive it's going to be a big letdown," he told the French news agency AFP. "I think he's going to have to pull some kind of rabbit out of the hat and reveal some information that's not out there in the public domain." Material for this report came from Reuters, AFP and AP.
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WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday called for prompt action to change police practices across the country after the deaths of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island at the hands of white officers exposed frustrations about law enforcement in minority communities.
Mr. Obama, unveiling the recommendations of a White House task force created in the wake of the killings, said local law enforcement agencies should consider requiring independent criminal investigations and independent prosecutors in cases where the use of force by police officers results in injury or death.
He also said police departments should take additional steps to build trust with communities. They include adopting policies to address racial profiling, relaxing their approach to mass demonstrations and collecting more data on shootings and deaths by the police.
“The moment is now for us to make these changes,” Mr. Obama said at the White House, where he met with members of the task force. “We have a great opportunity, coming out of some great conflict and tragedy, to really transform how we think about community-law-enforcement relations so that everybody feels safer and our law enforcement officers feel, rather than being embattled, feel fully supported. We need to seize that opportunity.”
Mr. Obama said that some of the recommendations, including requiring independent investigations when the police use lethal force, would be “controversial,” and that others would be difficult to put into effect. But he said he would push the Department of Justice to press forward on them.
“It will be good for police and it will be good for the communities involved, and as a consequence it will be good for the country,” Mr. Obama said. “Everybody wants our streets safe, and everybody wants to make sure that laws are applied fairly and equitably.”
In an interim report of more than 100 pages, the panel offered 63 recommendations, including the creation of a National Crime and Justice Task Force to guide a broad overhaul of the criminal justice system.
The panel, led by Charles H. Ramsey, the commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department and president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, and Laurie O. Robinson, a former Justice Department official who is a professor of criminology and law at George Mason University, also offered more specific recommendations.
It called for the creation of a federal initiative to diversify law enforcement agencies so they better reflect their communities’ demographic makeup, and suggested that federal funding be tied to those efforts.
The panel also recommended that police departments be required to collect and post on their websites information about stops, frisks, summonses, arrests and crimes, broken down by demographics. It called for less confrontational practices by the police and steps to “minimize the appearance of a military operation” when dealing with large protests.
That could include wearing “soft look” uniforms and removing riot gear “as soon as practical,” the panel said.
The task force did not recommend that all officers be required to wear body cameras, although it said their use had been shown to reduce the use of force and complaints against officers. Mr. Obama has requested funding for the purchase of 50,000 such cameras. But the panel said use of the cameras could raise concerns about privacy and costs.
“Law enforcement agencies and personnel also need to recognize that technology is only a tool for doing their jobs,” the report said. “Just because you have access to technology does not necessarily mean you should always use it.”
The panel also called for the elimination of policies that require officers to issue a predetermined number of tickets, citations, arrests or summonses. The task force said police officers should be required to obtain consent — ideally a written acknowledgment — before searches and explain to people that they have the right to refuse in the absence of a warrant or probable cause.
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WASHINGTON — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel heads to Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning to issue a high-profile warning against what he considers an ill-advised nuclear deal withIran, culminating a drama that has roiled Israeli-American relations for weeks.
In an implicit challenge to President Obama, Mr. Netanyahu plans to address a joint meeting of Congress to outline his case for a tougher strategy to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and to dissect the flaws of an agreement that has been emerging from American-led negotiations.
Mr. Netanyahu’s address, by far the most anticipated speech to Congress by a foreign leader in many years, has generated resentment and reinforcement from different quarters while driving a partisan wedge between Democrats and Republicans. Even Mr. Netanyahu on Monday seemed surprised by all the attention. “Never has so much been written about a speech that hasn’t been given,” he told a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac.
For Mr. Netanyahu, the stakes could hardly be higher. Coming just two weeks before Israeli elections, the speech offers an opportunity to build support at home for another term while rallying opposition abroad to a diplomatic accord that he sees as a threat to his country’s security.
It will be, said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, “the most important speech of his political life.”
For Mr. Obama, however, it is an extra complication as he seeks to draw Iran into a pact by late March, a complication he worries may embolden lawmakers into intervening.
“I’m less concerned, frankly, with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s commentary than I am with Congress taking actions that might undermine the talks before they’re complete,” he told Reuters on Monday.
In a bit of counterprogramming, the White House announced on Tuesday morning that at 11:30 a.m., around the time when Mr. Netanyahu may be wrapping up his speech, Mr. Obama will hold a conference call with European leaders.
At the heart of the dispute between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu is a debate over the best way to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The United States, along with European allies, Russia and China, has been negotiating a potential deal in which Iran for at least 10 years would restrict the number of centrifuges it has for enriching uranium and open its program to international inspection.
The goal would be to limit Iran’s capacity so that it would take at least a year to build a nuclear weapon should it choose to violate or break the agreement. In theory, that would give the West enough time to respond. In exchange, international sanctions that have hampered Iran’s economy would be eased.
Mr. Netanyahu argues that Iran cannot be trusted given its history of cheating and hostile statements about Israel. The deal contemplated by the American-led negotiations would give away far too much, he contends. Instead, Mr. Netanyahu and other critics have advocated tightening sanctions and demanding that Iran give up all uranium enrichment.
“I plan to speak about an Iranian regime that is threatening to destroy Israel, that’s devouring country after country in the Middle East, that’s exporting terror throughout the world and that is developing, as we speak, the capacity to make nuclear weapons — lots of them,” Mr. Netanyahu told the Aipac conference on Monday. “Ladies and gentlemen, Israel and the United States agree that Iran should not have nuclear weapons, but we disagree on the best way to prevent Iran from developing those weapons.”
Mr. Obama and his team said they shared the concerns but considered Mr. Netanyahu’s approach unrealistic.
What the United States and Iran want out of discussions over Iran’s nuclear development.
OPEN Graphic
Simply insisting that Iran forgo enrichment altogether “is not a viable negotiating position,” Susan E. Rice, the president’s national security adviser, told the Aipac conference on Monday evening. And military strikes often favored by hawks would only temporarily set back Iran’s program, she said.
“We cannot let a totally unachievable ideal stand in the way of a good deal,” she said.
Ms. Rice vowed to hold out for a truly verifiable pact. “Our approach is distrust and verify,” she said, in a twist on a phrase made famous by President Ronald Reagan during negotiations with the Soviet Union. And she reassured Israel of Mr. Obama’s support. “We have Israel’s back, come hell or high water,” she said.
Mr. Netanyahu’s speech divided American lawmakers. Speaker John A. Boehner invited the Israeli leader without consulting the White House, seeing Mr. Netanyahu as a forceful voice challenging Mr. Obama’s foreign policy.
“This is an important message at an important time, and the prime minister is the perfect person to deliver it,” Mr. Boehner said in a video previewing the event released on Tuesday morning.
Democrats bristled at what they saw as a partisan maneuver, and at least 55 House and Senate Democrats planned to skip the address, according to the newspaper The Hill.
Few congressional appearances by foreign leaders have generated such controversy. Mr. Netanyahu has addressed Congress twice before, in 1996 and 2011, without such a ruckus, and his speech on Tuesday will be the eighth time an Israeli leader has spoken to the House and Senate together.
The only other foreign leader to have spoken to Congress three times was Winston Churchill, the British prime minister during and after World War II. In honor of that, Mr. Boehner plans to present Mr. Netanyahu with a bust of Churchill.
The flap has raised Mr. Netanyahu’s profile in the United States, but he remains a polarizing figure. Early last month, Gallup, the survey firm, found that 45 percent of Americans have a positive view of him, a 10-point jump since a similar poll in 2012, compared with 24 percent who view him unfavorably. But the views broke down sharply along party lines, with Republicans favoring Mr. Netanyahu three to one and Democrats evenly split.
In a separate poll by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News late last month, 48 percent of voters disapproved of inviting Mr. Netanyahu to address Congress without checking with the White House first, compared with 30 percent who approved.
The speech became a hot ticket. Mr. Boehner’s office reported that demand for seats in the galley were the highest since he became speaker in 2011. Interest was so overwhelming that both the House and Senate set up alternative viewing locations. Among the guests invited by Mr. Boehner was Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
One person not clamoring to see the address, either in person or on television, will be Mr. Obama. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said, “I doubt that he will spend his whole time watching the speech.”
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WASHINGTON — President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel offered radically divergent approaches to the perils of a nuclear-armed Iran on Monday even as they tried to cool down the personal nature of a long-distance dispute that has inflamed relations between the United States and Israel for more than a month.
On the eve of Mr. Netanyahu’s hotly debated address to Congress, the two leaders separately disclaimed personal animosity while laying out what amounts to the biggest policy schism between the two countries in years. Mr. Obama defended his diplomatic efforts to negotiate a deal with Iran while Mr. Netanyahu presented them as dangerously naïve.
“I have a moral obligation to speak up in the face of these dangers while there is still time to avert them,” Mr. Netanyahu told thousands of Israel supporters in Washington. “For 2,000 years, my people, the Jewish people, were stateless, defenseless, voiceless.” He added: “Today, we are no longer silent. Today, we have a voice. And tomorrow, as prime minister of the one and only Jewish state, I plan to use that voice”
In an interview a few hours later, Mr. Obama said that he and Mr. Netanyahu had a “substantial disagreement” over how to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But he suggested that Mr. Netanyahu was an alarmist, saying that the Israeli leader had been unduly skeptical of a preliminary accord intended to slow the Iranian nuclear program during negotiations aimed at a longer-term resolution.
“Netanyahu made all sorts of claims — this was going to be a terrible deal, this was going to result in Iran getting $50 billion worth of relief, Iran would not abide by the agreement,” Mr. Obama told the Reuters news agency. “None of that has come true.”
Mr. Obama said that any deal would have to ensure that Iran was not capable of building a nuclear weapon in less than a year, and that the agreement must stand for at least 10 years. “If they do agree to it,” he said, “it would be far more effective in controlling their nuclear program than any military action we could take, any military action Israel could take, and far more effective than sanctions will be.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, coming just two weeks before Israeli elections and three weeks before a deadline in the Iran talks, has polarized politicians in both countries. The prime minister’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Tuesday — arranged by Speaker John A. Boehner without consulting the White House — immediately took on a partisan flavor, and Mr. Obama refused to meet with Mr. Netanyahu because his visit comes so close to the Israeli elections.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and more than 50 Democratic lawmakers plan to skip Mr. Netanyahu’s speech. While the White House has not publicly encouraged a boycott, it sent an email late Monday inviting House Democratic aides to a trade meeting at the White House on Tuesday at a time that would make it hard for them to attend the speech. Advocates on both sides have published incendiary newspaper ads in recent days, including one attacking Susan E. Rice, the president’s national security adviser.
The president expressed grievance about the speaking invitation, which the White House has interpreted as a way of bashing Mr. Obama and undercutting the Iran talks. In the Reuters interview, Mr. Obama said it would be as if Democrats in Congress invited the French president to speak after opposing President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. “I guarantee you that some of the same commentators who are cheerleading now would have suggested that it was the wrong thing to do,” he said.
But the president and his team also seemed intent on tamping down the intensity of the dispute. Secretary of State John Kerry, in Geneva for more talks with Iran, made a point of defending Israel before the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday. And Mr. Obama sent Ms. Rice andSamantha Power, his ambassador to the United Nations, to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington.
“This is not a personal issue,” Mr. Obama said. “I think that it is important for every country in its relationship with the United States to recognize that the U.S. has a process of making policy.” Even though Ms. Rice said last week that the issue could be “destructive” to bipartisan support of Israel, Mr. Obama said Monday that it was a distraction and would not be “permanently destructive.”
Mr. Netanyahu, appearing before an estimated 16,000 supporters of Israel at the Aipac conference, characterized the disagreement over Iran as a “family” fight that would ultimately be overcome, and he expressed gratitude to Mr. Obama for his support of Israel over the years.
What the United States and Iran want out of discussions over Iran’s nuclear development.
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“My speech is not intended to show any disrespect to President Obama or the esteemed office that he holds,” Mr. Netanyahu told the crowd, which greeted him with standing ovations. “I have great respect for both.”
He said he was sorry if anyone interpreted his visit as a political shot at Mr. Obama. “The last thing anyone who cares about Israel, the last thing that I would want, is for Israel to become a partisan issue,” he said, “and I regret that some people have misperceived my visit here this week as doing that. Israel has always been a bipartisan issue. Israel should always remain a bipartisan issue.”
But he emphasized that the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran looked different from Jerusalem than it does from Washington. “American leaders worry about the security of their country,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Israeli leaders worry about the survival of their country.”
Some supporters said they hoped Mr. Netanyahu’s measured language might defuse some of the anger of recent weeks. “I think he did well and lowered the temperature,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who had called on Mr. Netanyahu to cancel the speech because of the fallout. “He could have pepped them up. He did not. It was an important message.”
Opponents of Mr. Netanyahu said he had done lasting harm. “I’m here to do damage control,” said Erel Margalit, a Labor member of Parliament who attended the Aipac conference. “I’m here to say we, too, are very concerned about Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state, but we’re interested in getting the discussions back to where they were.”
Republicans maintained that it was Mr. Obama who had done the damage by making a fuss over a speech rather than paying attention to the substance of Mr. Netanyahu’s message. “The address is an opportunity for you to hear from the leader of one of our closest allies about the grave threats we face from radical Islam and Iran,” Mr. Boehner’s office said in an email.
The tension of the moment was reflected at the Aipac conference before Ms. Power’s speech, when the audience was advised to “treat all our speakers as guests in our home.” Ms. Power and Ms. Rice both used their speeches to reaffirm Mr. Obama’s support for Israel and his determination to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
But Ms. Rice encountered skepticism when she laid out the argument for a possible deal, with the audience applauding the goal of barring Iran from nuclear enrichment altogether even as she called that unrealistic. “Sound bites won’t stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” Ms. Rice said. “Strong diplomacy backed by pressure can.”
Correction: March 3, 2015
An earlier version of this article misquoted one word in a speech by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference. He said, “Today, we are no longer silent. Today, we have a voice. And tomorrow, as prime minister of the one and only Jewish state, I plan to use that voice,” not “I plan to use that state.”
An earlier version also misstated who the White House invited to a trade meeting at the White House on Tuesday at a time that would make it hard for them to attend Mr. Netanyahu’s speech. It is House Democratic aides, not House Democrats or their aides.
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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address U.S. lawmakers at 11 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, speaking before a joint meeting of Congress in a controversial address just two weeks before his country’s elections.
Netanyahu’s speech, which came at the invitation of House Speaker John Boehner, is expected to criticize the prospect of a nuclear agreement with Iran. The Obama administration, which is participating in talks with Iran, was infuriated by the invitation to Netanyahu. The White House wasn’t consulted about the invitation, and some Democrats plan to boycott the address.
Netanyahu will speak to senators and members of the House of Representatives from the podium in the House chamber. It will be his third speech to a joint meeting of the Senate and House.
In a sign of the rift between the Obama administration and Israel, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said last week the planned speech by the prime minister was “destructive” to ties between the two countries. President Barack Obama has no plans to meet with Netanyahu during the prime minister’s U.S. visit, and Vice President Joe Biden will be traveling Tuesday.
Rice was one of the Obama administration officials scheduled to speak at a meeting of the pro-Israel group AIPAC this week. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power spoke to the group Monday morning, saying the bond between the U.S. and Israel “should never be a partisan matter.” She said the U.S. would not let Iran develop a nuclear weapon.
Netanyahu spoke at the group’s meeting Monday morning as well. He said his speech to Congress is not intended to show any disrespect toward Obama or the office he holds.
“I have great respect for both,” he said. He said his purpose is to speak up about a potential deal with Iran that could threaten the existence of Israel.
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