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Venezuela slams U.S. over 'repressive regimes' remarks
7/19/2013 7:38:14 AM
By Daniel Wallis and Enrique Andres Pretel
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro demanded the United States apologise on Thursday after the Obama administration's nominee for envoy to the United Nations said there was a crackdown on civil society in the South American country.
Maduro has often clashed with Washington since winning an April election following the death of his mentor, socialist leader Hugo Chavez. He said Samantha Power's comments to a Senate confirmation hearing had been aggressive and unfair.
"I want an immediate correction by the U.S. government," Maduro said in comments broadcast live on state television.
"Power says she'll fight repression in Venezuela? What repression? There is repression in the United States, where they kill African-Americans with impunity, and where they hunt the youngster Edward Snowden just for telling the truth."
His comment was an apparent reference to the not-guilty verdict handed down in the Florida murder trial of George Zimmerman on Saturday for the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.
Maduro has been the most vocal of three Latin American leaders who offered asylum to Snowden, the 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor wanted by Washington for leaking details of secret surveillance programs.
Since taking office, Venezuela's leader has veered between appearing to want better ties with Washington and denouncing alleged U.S. plots to assassinate him and trigger a coup d'etat.
During her Senate conformation hearing on Wednesday, Power vowed to stand up against "repressive regimes", and said that meant "contesting the crackdown on civil society being carried out in countries like Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela."
Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader who became Chavez's foreign minister and vice president, said the "fascist right" in Venezuela were gleefully applauding her comments.
"And the U.S. government says they want to have good relations? What tremendous relations they want," he scoffed.
In June, Venezuela's Foreign Minister Elias Jaua met U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of a regional summit. That meeting was seen as a sign of improving ties after years of hostility during Chavez's 14-year rule.
But the latest collision came when Maduro became the first foreign leader to say explicitly that he was offering asylum to Snowden, the NSA leaker who has been trapped in the transit zone of a Moscow airport for more than three weeks.
Bolivia and Nicaragua also subsequently offered him sanctuary, but Venezuela's government has said it can do little to help him as long as he remains stuck at the airport.
(Editing by Ken Wills)
U.S. concerned over North Korean arms ship, Panama awaits U.N
7/19/2013 6:03:52 AM
By Lomi Kriel and David Adams
PANAMA CITY/MIAMI (Reuters) - A U.N. team is due to arrive in Panama next month to inspect a North Korean ship which was seized carrying arms from Cuba, a potential breach of U.N. sanctions that the United States said was "incredibly concerning."
The five-member team of U.N. experts will arrive on August 5 to examine the ship, Panamanian government officials said.
The military cargo is suspected of being in violation of a U.N. arms embargo that covers all exports by Pyongyang and most imports. North Korea is under a host of U.N., U.S. and other sanctions due to repeated nuclear and ballistic missile tests since 2006 in defiance of international demands that it stop.
North Korea has asked for the ship and crew to be returned but Panama has not responded, saying the country has no official representation in the Central American nation.
"There are no North Koreans in Panama, and we don't have any plans to respond to them," said Panamanian Security Minister Jose Raul Mulino. "According to Panamanian law they committed a crime. We won't speak with North Korea, period."
The U.S. government has strongly backed Panama's seizure of the ship, the Chong Chon Gang.
"There is a process in place and we are supportive of that process, because the bottom line is that any alleged violation of Security Council sanctions is incredibly concerning to us," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters.
Panama has been at pains to underline it acted alone in seizing the ship, though security experts say the United States, which operated the Panama Canal until a final withdrawal on December 31, 1999, is likely to have provided assistance.
When asked whether information provided by the United States was used, a U.S. intelligence official said: "Yes."
A Panamanian frigate on routine patrol stopped the ship off its Atlantic coast last week and seized its cargo after a tense standoff with the North Korean crew.
The 35 crew members were arrested and charged with attempting to smuggle undeclared arms through the canal.
"No Americans were involved in the operation," said a Panamanian official familiar with the incident.
Officers on the frigate were first alerted by the fact that the Chong Chon Gang was not issuing a transponder signal as required by maritime law, and suspected it was smuggling drugs, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"It was a drug bust that came up with weapons," the official said.
After an extensive search that took several days authorities discovered the weaponry aboard and Cuba later said it was "obsolete" Soviet-era missile equipment, MiG fighter jets and other arms being sent to North Korea for repair.
Panama has 100 police cadets unloading the sugar in sweltering conditions in the port of Manzanillo and have so far only cleared one of the four holds, a Panamanian official said. The U.N. team had initially planned to arrive on Tuesday but delayed their trip to give Panama more time to empty the cargo.
Earlier on Thursday, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations said the U.N. Security Council sanctions committee would examine the case.
The U.N. team of investigators heading to Panama will be drawn from an eight-member panel of experts appointed by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to monitor the sanctions imposed on North Korea, according to diplomats within the Security Council.
TELLTALE SIGNS
Joe Reeder, former chairman of the Panama Canal Commission's Board of Directors and an ex-under secretary of the U.S. Army, said Panama's security apparatus has a history of cooperating closely with U.S. authorities, who may have shared intelligence on the ship.
Mulino, Panama's security minister, was highly regarded by U.S. officials at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, Reeder said.
Officials were alerted by a number of suspicious factors, including where the ship was coming from and the fact that its transponder had been switched off, Reeder said.
"They ... were clearly trying not to be detected," he said.
Panamanian officials said they had found the ship's electrical equipment burned and that access to its storage areas had been blocked when they boarded the ship.
Officials also noted that the ship's draft "was measurably lower coming back from Cuba than it was going out," Reeder said.
He said the raid was sensitive due to the neutrality of the canal, and the decision would not have been taken lightly.
"If (Panama had) busted that thing and there was nothing on it, everybody would have egg on their face," said Reeder, who is now with the law firm Greenberg Traurig in Washington, D.C..
The U.S. Southern Command in Miami, the Pentagon's headquarters for operations in Latin America, declined to comment about the specifics of the Chong Chon Gang case, though incidents involving illegal maritime activity, from drug smuggling to human trafficking, fall within its responsibility.
"It's very routine for us to be working very closely with countries in the region and sharing information with partners," a spokesman for Southcom said.
(Reporting by Lomi Kriel and David Adams; Additional reporting by Alexandra Alper, Louis Charbonneau, Michelle Nichols, Luc Cohen, Lesley Wroughton and Tabassum Zakaria; Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Sandra Maler and Eric Beech)
'Desperate' Cuba voyage is latest scrape for North Korean fleet
7/19/2013 6:03:52 AM
By Paul Eckert
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Even by the standards of North Korea's dilapidated shipping fleet, which often carries contraband and sails vessels until they sink, the recent failed attempt to transport Cuban arms through the Panama Canal was a risky business.
Caught carrying narcotics in Ukraine in 2009, the Chong Chon Gang vessel was already known to law enforcement and was plying waters closely watched by the United States before it was seized in Panama last week.
Just bearing a North Korean flag is enough for a ship to raise suspicions of port authorities and coast guards throughout the world. North Korea is infamous for running one of the world's most unsafe merchant marine fleets, a collection of around 250 rusting ships that are mostly decades old.
With so many eyeballs on North Korea and its vessels, the Chong Chon Gang's voyage "smacks of desperation and stupidity," said Hugh Griffiths of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
"There's nowhere else on the planet, on the high seas, where an interdiction is more likely to occur than in the Caribbean because that is the U.S. backyard and where the highest number of interdictions have happened," added Griffiths, who runs a SIPRI program on countering illicit trafficking.
A U.S. intelligence official said Panama had used information from the United States to help it seize the ship carrying missile equipment, MiG fighter jets and other arms.
North Korean ships are always under close scrutiny because of U.N. sanctions that were imposed after Pyongyang carried out a series of nuclear bomb tests that begun in 2006 and the shipment appears to be a violation of sanctions.
Trips to the Western Hemisphere are rare for North Korean ships, which are mostly workhorses that carry cheap cargo like scrap metal and feed grain in Asian waters.
"The vessels are small and most of their trade is very local to North Korea and it's unusual to see them so far from home," said Richard Hurley of IHS Maritime, a London-based security analysis firm. "It's certainly unusual to see them in the Caribbean and certainly transiting through the Panama Canal," he said.
It is not known why the Chong Chon Gang and its 35 crew members took such a risk in going through the Panama Canal, instead of going home via a longer, less-conspicuous route.
But the fact that it was carrying tons of Cuban sugar in apparent barter payment for missile repairs shows how eager North Korea is for basic supplies.
While North Korea has recovered from a famine in the 1990s, tightening U.N. sanctions and further estrangement from wealthy neighbours South Korea and Japan in recent years have also kept the country short of cash and some food.
Hurley used Automatic Identification System information and satellite data to track five North Korean-flagged vessels that transited through the Panama Canal in the last three years.
One ship, the O Un Chong Nyon Ho, passed through the canal and docked in Havana in May 2012. It left North Korea and went "straight out and straight back" the same route as the Chong Chon Gang, which Cuba says was carrying weapons to North Korea to be upgraded.
The other North Korean ships tracked by Hurley moved around the Caribbean and south to Brazil in "normal transit - as normal as any North Korean travel can be assumed," he said.
'NOT INFREQUENT' CAPSIZES
North Korea serves the bottom end of the global shipping market where "they have really bad conditions, the ships are constantly changing ownership - like a bad car that is sold around among various dodgy dealers," said Hazel Smith, a North Korea expert at Britain's Cranfield University.
Reports of North Korean ships capsizing are "not infrequent," Smith said. "They sail them until they actually go down."
The bodies of six North Korean sailors were found washed ashore along the Japanese coast earlier this year after their ship, the cargo vessel Taegakbong, ran out of power and sank in December.
"North Korean vessels are much more likely to be inspected than not for health and safety issues. And that's in China as well, not just in unfriendly states," Smith said.
She mined global shipping databases to produce a detailed study in 2009 of North Korean shipping that found the vessels sometimes lacked proper communication and lifesaving gear and are "in some cases simply not seaworthy."
When she wrote that report the average North Korean cargo ship was 29 years old and Smith said on Thursday it was unlikely that the impoverished state had since upgraded its fleet.
North Korean ships are not owned or operated by the central government, but instead are owned by trading companies associated with different arms of the state, party or military. The affiliation of the Chong Chon Gang is unclear.
"One of the myths is that the government controls everything in North Korea. But there's been so much fragmentation of the economy and encouraging people to engage in semi-licit or licit deals as long as the government gets something from it," Smith said.
Crews are poorly paid, forcing hard-up seamen to do almost anything to raise cash, including smuggling of drugs, counterfeit cigarettes and other contraband.
In 2003, Australia seized 110 pounds (50 kg) of heroin on a North Korean ship named the Pong Su and detained its crew. The North Korean seamen were later tried and found not guilty and deported, but accomplices in Australia were jailed.
Smith and Griffiths believe that despite the seizure of weapons in Panama, the movement of nuclear and missile materials covered by U.N. sanctions is done by air or in disguised shipping containers on unwitting foreign vessels, not rickety boats with North Korean flags.
Most of the questionable cargo like fake Viagra pills and contraband cigarettes that North Koreans are caught with represents efforts to gain hard currency by crews fending for themselves.
"Some of the captains do what they have to do to try to raise income. These are poor men aboard unsafe ships," said Griffiths.
(Reporting by Paul Eckert; Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Beech)
Government says Olympics have paid off with economic boost
7/19/2013 6:28:48 AM
By Keith Weir
LONDON (Reuters) - The economic benefits of hosting the Olympics in London already outweigh the nine billion pounds of public money spent on the Games, the government said on Friday.
A year on, the Games remain a fond memory for most Britons who recall the triumphs of runner Mo Farah and cyclist Chris Hoy but have gone back to their daily routines in a country where the economy is showing signs of life after a long stagnation.
Keen to show that the London 2012 Games had a lasting impact, the government said it calculated Britain had enjoyed a 9.9 billion pound boost to trade and investment from staging the world's biggest sporting event. Spending by foreign tourists also rose by 600 million pounds in 2012.
But while the figures show Britain well on the way to surpassing a target of 13 billion pounds in economic impact set by Prime Minister David Cameron ahead of the Games, economists had previously questioned the basis for government predictions.
They caution that it is difficult to quantify the exact economic impact of major sporting events like the Olympics and that the sums involved tend to be relatively modest.
Britain tried to use the international attention focused on the Olympics to showcase itself as a place to do business. The government ran a series of conferences in parallel with the Games to drive home its message to hundreds of executives who came to the British capital.
"We are harnessing the Olympic momentum and delivering the lasting business legacy of the Games that will help make Britain a winner in the global race," Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement.
A separate report by a consortium led by accountants Grant Thornton said the Games could generate benefits of between 28 and 41 billion pounds by 2020.
HARD TO MEASURE
UK Trade and Investment, the department who produced the government figures said they included 5.9 billion pounds of sales from conferences around the Games, 2.5 billion of additional inward investment and 1.5 billion pounds of contracts for forthcoming Olympics and World Cups with Brazil and Russia.
It included an investment in London's landmark Battersea power station by a Malaysian consortium without specifying how it was directly related to the games. Also listed were projects involving Chinese technology company Huawei, Indian software firm Infosys and U.S. architects Gensler giving no details of the nature of the investment.
Figures aside, Britain looks to be well on the way to finding new uses for the expensive facilities built for the Games in east London, although there has been some grumbling over the deals struck.
Premier League football club West Ham United are to move into the Olympic Stadium in 2016, ensuring that it remains a part of the city's sporting landscape but securing only an initial 15 million pounds for a stadium that will have cost taxpayers more than 500 million.
The stadium has not been used since the Paralympics ended last September but will come back to life next week when it hosts the Anniversary Games athletics meeting which is expected to feature Jamaican sprint champion Usain Bolt.
The most tangible result of the games for now is the changes wrought to a once forgotten and polluted corner of the city's industrial east. Stratford, home to the Olympics and one of the poorest parts of the capital, now boasts Europe's largest urban shopping centre and excellent transport links to the rest of the capital.
(Writing by Keith Weir, editing by Patrick Graham)
Egyptian Christians happy Mursi is gone but remain wary
7/19/2013 6:31:16 AM
By Ulf Laessing
CAIRO (Reuters) - The evening Egypt's army ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, Christian lawyer Peter Naggar celebrated on Tahrir Square with even greater joy than when autocrat Hosni Mubarak fell from power two years ago.
Naggar remains deeply relieved that a year of Islamist rule ended a fortnight ago and yet, as the initial excitement fades, many members of his ancient Christian minority fear Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood will not give up power so easily.
Neither is the Coptic Christian community under any illusion that the army's installation of an interim government devoid of Islamists spells the end to its long-standing grievances, such as difficulties in getting state jobs, equality before the law and securing permits to build churches.
Still, Naggar is happy to see the back of the Brotherhood. "This is the real Egyptian revolution," said Naggar, who had joined mass protests in Cairo on June 30 demanding that Mursi go. "The people stood up against Islamism. This is the end of political Islamism."
Coptic Pope Tawadros II backed the military, standing with liberal and non-Brotherhood Muslim leaders next to armed forces chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi when he announced Mursi's removal on July 3.
Communal tensions and attacks on Christians and churches rose sharply under Mursi, Egypt's first freely-elected president. Many Copts, who make up about a tenth of Egypt's 84 million people, left the country where their ancestors settled in the earliest years of Christianity - several centuries before the arrival of Islam.
Islamists are staging a vigil at a Cairo mosque and regular protests to demand Mursi's reinstatement, and it is dawning on Christians that they could yet return to power when elections are held under a military plan to restore democracy.
Some might even resort to force, they fear. Islamists have killed at least five Copts since Mursi's overthrow, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a rights group.
"It's an improvement that Mursi is gone but I am still not entirely relaxed," said Roman Gouda, visiting with a friend the Egypt's biggest Cathedral in the Cairo district of Abbasiya.
"I am worried because the Brotherhood keep protesting," said his friend Amir Habib.
Habib was one of hundreds of Christian youths at the gated cathedral in April when fighting broke out between Copts and Islamists, who threw petrol bombs and fired birdshot from neighbouring houses into the compound. The Interior Ministry blamed Christians for starting the trouble by torching cars.
Security is tight at the cathedral, which houses the Pope's seat, theological institutes, tailors for religious vestments and a nuns' home. Only one gate is open for the public, manned by security guards and policemen. Few worshippers come as many want to keep a low profile, a church official said.
During Mursi's presidency, Pope Tawadros said he felt Christians were sidelined, ignored and neglected by the Brotherhood-led authorities. Copts were emigrating "because they fear the new regime", he said.
GRIEVANCES
Scenes of people dancing on Tahrir Square when Mursi was deposed were reminiscent of the communal harmony during the 2011 uprising against Mubarak, when Christians protected Muslims at prayer and followers of both religions chanted together, brandishing Bibles and Korans.
Copts are happy that the new interim cabinet, which will rule until elections are held, contains three Christians including liberal Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour in the important investment ministry portfolio. Mursi's cabinet had just one Christian in the post of minister for scientific research.
"This is a government for all Egyptians," said Naggar. "They got appointed because they are competent."
But the Copts' long-standing complaints persist. "You cannot get a job in the police or also in many other state positions," said Habib, who works at a jewellery shop, a business line which has long attracted Christian traders.
Many Christians, like Muslim Egyptians, hated the brutality and corruption of the Mubarak era, but say they felt safer under the man who jailed Islamists during his 30 years in power.
Nevertheless, life was never entirely secure for the community even before the Brotherhood's time in office. One campaign group, the Mosireen collective, has documented how troops shot Christian protesters in late 2011 during direct military rule between Mubarak's fall and Mursi's election.
Christian leaders acknowledge that some of the community's problems such as access to state jobs also affect Muslims in a country known for corruption and a weak legal system.
HIJACKED THROUGH THE BALLOT BOX?
Youssef Sidhom, a prominent Christian commentator, said he was disappointed with the interim leadership's constitutional decree. This reinstated an article in last year's constitution, drafted by Islamists and boycotted by the church and liberals, which said laws derive from principles of Islamic law.
"That was very worrying and annoying and I think that bitter criticism has reached our interim president," said Sidhom, editor of the Coptic newspaper al-Watani.
The biggest threat was that liberals and moderate Muslims will fail again to overcome their divisions, he said. This could hand another electoral victory to Islamist groups which have won every vote since Mubarak's overthrow and remain better organised than their opponents.
"Our revolution may get hijacked for the second time by the Muslim Brotherhood through the ballot box so we have to be there. We have to stay united," said Sidhom, who has reported up to 50 attacks by Islamists on Copts since June 30.
Moderate Copts fear a radicalisation of their own youth who believe some Muslim hardliners want to get rid of Christianity. "We Christians have been always discriminated against and tortured," said Michael Georges, another late-night cathedral visitor. "I don't see any change," he said, before riding off with his motor bike.
(Editing by Yasmine Saleh and David Stamp)
Former CIA boss says aware of evidence Huawei spying for China
7/19/2013 5:56:38 AM
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The former head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency said he is aware of hard evidence that Huawei Technologies Co Ltd has spied for the Chinese government, the Australian Financial Review newspaper reported on Friday.
Michael Hayden, also the former head of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), said in an interview with the paper that Huawei had "shared with the Chinese state intimate and extensive knowledge of the foreign telecommunications systems it is involved with".
"I think that goes without saying," he was quoted as saying.
The newspaper reported Hayden said intelligence agencies have hard evidence of spying activity by the world's No. 2 telecoms equipment maker. It did not detail that evidence.
Huawei, founded in 1987 by former People's Liberation Army officer Ren Zhengfei, has repeatedly denied being linked to the Chinese government or military or receiving financial support from either.
Hayden is a director of Motorola Solutions, which provides radios, smart tags, barcode scanners and safety products. Huawei and Motorola Solutions Inc had previously been engaged in intellectual property disputes for a number of years.
Huawei Global Cyber Security Officer John Suffolk described the comments made by Hayden as "tired, unsubstantiated defamatory remarks" and challenged him and other critics to present any evidence publicly.
"Huawei meets the communication needs of more than a third of the planet and our customers have the right to know what these unsubstantiated concerns are," Suffolk said in a statement emailed to Reuters. "It's time to put up or shut up."
The report came a day after Britain announced it would review security at a cyber centre in southern England run by Huawei to ensure that the British telecommunications network is protected.
In October 2012, the U.S. House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee urged American firms to stop doing business with Huawei and ZTE Corp., warning that China could use equipment made by the companies to spy on certain communications and threaten vital systems through computerised links.
The Australian government has barred Huawei from involvement in the building of its A$37.4 billion (22.5 billion pounds) National Broadband Network.
(Reporting By Jane Wardell; Editing by Paul Tait)
Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy returns home, joins poll campaign
7/19/2013 5:39:03 AM
By Prak Chan Thul
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy returned home from exile on Friday after a royal pardon removed the threat of a jail term and he immediately joined the campaign to unseat long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen in this month's election.
"I come to rescue the nation with you, brothers, sisters and nephews," Sam Rainsy, speaking through a microphone on the back of a pickup truck, told thousands of supporters lining the road from Phnom Penh airport.
The crowds brought traffic to a halt and forced some passengers to leave the airport on foot with their luggage.
Sam Rainsy, a former finance minister, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in absentia in 2010 on charges of spreading disinformation and falsifying maps to contest a new border agreed by Cambodia and Vietnam.
He had chosen exile the previous year rather than face trial for what U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said at the time were politically motivated charges that showed Hun Sen was "no longer interested in even the pretence of democracy".
In power for 28 years, Hun Sen seems likely to retain power with his Cambodian People's Party (CPP). But the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), formed through a merger last year including the Sam Rainsy Party, is mounting a strong campaign.
Hun Sen asked King Norodom Sihamoni to pardon Sam Rainsy this month, a move that may have been aimed at fending off criticism from the United States, European Union and others after allegations by his opponents of electoral misconduct.
In the letter carrying the request, which has been read out on state television, he said this was based on "national reconciliation" and the fact that Sam Rainsy's return would ensure the July 28 election was democratic and free.
It is still not clear if Sam Rainsy will be able to contest a parliamentary seat, but he will lead the CNRP campaign around the country over the coming week.
The CNRP said between 30,000 and 40,000 people, including Buddhist monks, had turned out to welcome him back. Thousands more were joining the crowd as it moved towards the centre of town, following his vehicle.
Supporters with stickers bearing the party's "rising sun" logo on their cheeks chanted" "Change, change!"
"I came here just to see him, I miss him and I love him," said Kong Oun, 66, who had travelled from Prey Veng province in the southeast. "He is the cleanest person in the nation and the CNRP will win the election if there is no cheating."
On June 8, after a CPP-dominated committee had expelled 29 opposition lawmakers from parliament, the U.S. State Department called for "a political process that includes the full participation of all political parties on a level playing field".
The parliamentary committee had said the 29 were not eligible to sit since the parties for which they were elected no longer existed.
(Editing by Alan Raybould and Ron Popeski)
Russian opposition leader freed temporarily to await appeal
7/19/2013 7:14:07 AM
KIROV, Russia (Reuters) - A Russian court temporarily released opposition leader Alexei Navalny from custody on Friday, but placed him under travel restrictions, while he awaits the outcome of an appeal against his sentence to five years in jail.
Prosecutors unexpectedly asked for Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin's biggest critics, to be allowed to await the appeal decision at home in Moscow after his conviction on theft charges in the city of Kirov.
The move could be intended to appease opposition activists who protested in their thousands against the verdict in several cities on Thursday, and to head off the danger of social unrest. Dozens of people were detained during the rallies.
(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, writing by Timothy Heritage, editing by Elizabeth Piper)
Crosby expected to drop tobacco work amid lobbying row
7/19/2013 7:31:09 AM
By Ian Dunt
Lynton Crosby is expected to drop his work for private firms, amid a continued row over whether he convinced David Cameron to drop plans for plain cigarette packs.
The prime minster has repeatedly said that he was not "lobbied" by the election guru on the issue, but he refuses to answer questions about whether they discussed it.
"I've been very careful to say what I've said which is that [Lynton Crosby] hasn't lobbied me on any of these issues," he said again yesterday.
The careful use of the distinction between 'lobbying' and 'conversation' has not escaped Labour's notice.
"At least 12 times he has refused to give a straight answer," Jon Trickett, shadow Cabinet Office minister, said.
"It's astonishing the prime minister won't be clear about what conversations he has had with a man who is being paid by a big tobacco company at the same time as he is being paid by the Conservative party.
"The prime minister needs to stop taking the public for fools, and start being straight with people. If he has never had a conversation about tobacco policy with Lynton Crosby, he should just say so. If he has, then he needs to stop dodging and admit it right now."
Media reports this morning suggest Crosby intends to drop his extra-curricular work in January until after the 2015 general election.
The strategist is expected to work exclusively for Cameron in the last 15 months or so of the campaign.
Cameron made an effort to turn the tables back on Labour yesterday by comparing the Crosby row with Tony Blair's private operations.
"Tony Blair is someone who does lobby me from time to time on things like the Middle East peace process," the prime minister said.
"Do I have to know who all Tony Blair's other clients are? If I did that, I don't think I've got enough paper in my office to write them all down on."
That comment earned a stern rebuke from Blair, who has typically gone out of his way to be polite about his successor in public.
"Tony Blair does not 'lobby' David Cameron," a spokesperson said.
"You cannot seriously compare Tony Blair's role as quartet representative, which requires him to talk to governments around the world about the Middle East peace process, to that of a lobbyist."
A lobbying bill was published by the government this week, but it earned poor reviews on all sides of the debate.
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