Speech by Lord Owen in The House of Lords, 16 October 2014
My Lords, I have been involved in business in Russia since 1995—mainly with a steel firm in Stary Oskol, some 600 kilometres south of Moscow—because I believed then and believe now that through business relations we will best establish good relations between the United Kingdom and Russia. I have also been a very strong believer in the Budapest memorandum, which relates to the subject of this debate, feeling it absolutely essential that countries which give up nuclear weapons should be strongly supported and feel that they have some form of military guarantee. It is of course nowhere near as strong as an Article 5 NATO agreement. I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said just now: it is a great mistake to expand NATO to either Georgia or Ukraine. We were advised about this many years ago by George Kennan; he was completely correct…
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October 17th, 2014 |
Filed under: International, Other International |
Tags: International outlook, Russia
Article by Lord Owen, published in The Guardian 26 August 2014
If the presidents of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine meet as planned in Minsk tomorrow, it will inevitably recall the time leaders of those same republics met to dissolve the USSR at the Belavezha hunting lodge in Belarus on 8 December 1991.
Then, the key figure was the president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin. Now it is Vladimir Putin. In 1991, George HW Bush was still striving to keep the Soviet Union together, and he was not sure which way Yeltsin would move. Today, Obama will be hoping for a settlement, but is very unsure of the outcome…
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August 27th, 2014 |
Filed under: International, Other International |
Tags: International outlook, Russia
Article by Lord Owen, Published in The Huffington Post 17 March, 2014
Territorial disputes are only solved after long, hard negotiations. The only recent exception in Europe has been the very successful velvet divorce conducted without referendums or threats of violence by politicians in what was Czechoslovakia. Let us not forget either that that was achieved in the teeth of opposition from European governments and the Russian Federation who wanted no change in boundaries…
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March 18th, 2014 |
Filed under: International, Other International |
Tags: International outlook, Russia
Published in The Evening Standard, 14 August, 2013
When Hamas won fair elections in the West Bank and Gaza, the EU made a great mistake in brushing the results aside and refusing recognition. Unless we are very careful we will make the same mistake again over the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
It was very good that EU High Representative on Foreign Policy Catherine Ashton visited President Morsi in Cairo: this did much to correct the language and attitude that Tony Blair has used as the Spokesman for the Quartet over the military coup. The sooner this grouping of the US, Russia, EU and UN is wound up, or its spokesman changed and strictly limited to its mandate to improve the Palestinian economy the better…
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August 14th, 2013 |
Filed under: International, Other International |
Tags: International outlook
