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BRUSSELS Fri Oct 31, 2014 4:32pm GMT

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe addresses supporters outside his ZANU PF party headquarters in Harare, October 30,2014.

Credit: Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union will take another step towards normal relations with Zimbabwe from Saturday by ending restrictions on aid, paving the way for 234 million euros (183 million pounds) of new funding, the bloc said on Friday.

The 28-nation EU has been gradually easing sanctions on Zimbabwe to encourage political reform, although it has kept an asset freeze and a travel ban on veteran President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace, as well as an arms embargo.

The EU suspended budgetary support and aid for projects in the southern African country in 2002 in response to human rights violations and what it said were attempts by the Zimbabwean government to prevent free elections.

Ten years later, the EU suspended these sanctions but did not immediately reopen the development aid taps.

The restrictions on EU aid will expire altogether on Saturday, the EU said, enabling the bloc, for the first time since 2002, to make multi-year aid commitments to Zimbabwe and to work with the government on how the money will be spent.

The Zimbabwe government and the EU are preparing a 234 million euro aid programme covering the period until 2020 "aimed at helping Zimbabwe become a more democratic and prosperous country," an EU statement said.

The programme will focus on health, agriculture-based economic development, governance and institution-building.

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European Union to end curbs on aid to Zimbabwe

On November 1, 2014, the new European Commission started its work. One of the priorities of its new president, Jean Claude Juncker, is the digital agenda. The European Union wants to be a leader in the Internet world of tomorrow. Vice President Andrus Ansip from Estonia (some people spell the country name "e-stonia") and Commissioner Gnter Oettinger from Germany will have special responsibilities to implement the big plans. Juncker was elected by the European Parliament, although the green light for his nomination came from the European Council. The European Council is the body where the prime ministers, presidents, chancellors and ministers of the EU member states are sitting together and making final decisions.

Commission, Council, Parliament: Who does What?

It is no secret that the relationships among the three main EU bodies Parliament, Commission and Council are not free from tensions. Juncker, a former prime minster of Luxembourg, has obviously his own ambitions and it remains to be seen, what the problems will be if it comes to policy development for key issues. One test case could be Internet Governance. A resolution on Internet Governance, which was adopted by the EU Council on October 17, 2014, did send already an interesting signal and raises the question how and where future EU Internet Policy will be made.

The fact that the European Council adopted a resolution on Internet Governance underlines that the topic is meanwhile a high priority issue for the EU. The EU Council supports a free, open, secure and unfragmented Internet, based on human rights and puts its authority behind the multistakeholder approach. This is good news. However, the text of the resolution is partly confusing and sends mixed messages which call for more clarification.

Let's start with the good news:

More Clarification is Needed

So far, so good, so clear. But there are some paragraphs in the European Council resolution which are not so clear.

By Wolfgang Kleinwchter, Professor Emeritus at the University of Aarhus and Member of the ICANN Board. In his article he expresses his very personal opinion.

Related topics: ICANN, Internet Governance, Policy & Regulation

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Enhanced Confusion: The European Council and the Governance of the Internet

Final U.S. Marines Withdraw From Helmand Province, Afghanistan
The final wave of U. S. Marines with Regional Command (Southwest) (RC(SW)) departs the Bastion-Leatherneck Complex in Helmand province, Afghanistan October 2...

By: AiirSource

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Final U.S. Marines Withdraw From Helmand Province, Afghanistan - Video

In the preface to "One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War," Bing West announces that "this is my sixth and final book about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." If so, West has clearly left the best for last: a gripping, boot-level account of Marines in Afghanistan during the bloody struggle with Taliban fighters for control of an obscure village called Sangin.

When the longest war in U.S. history is finished (or at least U.S. involvement in it), "One Million Steps" may well stand as a classic account of what it was like to be a grunt in that war, assigned each day to find the elusive enemy and kill him.

West knows the Marine Corps. A Marine officer in Vietnam, he was an assistant secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration. His style is narrative, almost novelistic, capturing the personalities of individual Marines and their roles in the platoon. His reporting comes from walking with the Marines during perilous patrols in an area infested with buried bombs and "murder holes" cut into mud houses so Taliban snipers could attack from ambush.

The Marines depicted are from the 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment. The Camp Pendleton-based battalion had more killed and wounded than any other Marine battalion in Afghanistan: 25 killed in combat, more than 200 wounded, including more than two dozen suffering amputations, during the deployment that stretched from fall 2010 to spring 2011.

"The platoon had depth of leadership," West writes. "Like wolves, they become accustomed to the routine of the hunt. When a leader goes down, another must step forward, be accepted, and be followed." As casualties mounted, the secretary of Defense offered to allow the Marines to withdraw. Marine generals refused.

A sergeant explained to West: "It didn't matter how hard the next fight was. Our attitude was you killed one of us, we kill 20 of you."

"One Million Steps" is shorter than some of West's other books, including "No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah" and "The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan." His approach here is pointillist, sharp colors that blend into a cohesive picture.

West's respect for the young Marines is balanced by a withering disdain for much of the military leadership, including the commander in chief and the Army general who was in charge of the Afghanistan mission until a 2010 story in Rolling Stone by the now late Michael Hastings got him fired.

To West, the U.S. strategy of nation-building, of winning hearts and minds and trying to buck up the Afghan government, is folly. Sangin is a Taliban stronghold where farmers grow the poppy crop used to make heroin and provide profits to support the insurgency against the government in far-distant Kabul. Taliban fighters enjoyed sanctuary in nearby Pakistan. According to West, "Sangin was the inevitable overreach of a strategy blindly willful and excessively ambitious."

He predicts a quick collapse by the Afghan army once the U.S. departs on the timetable declared by the president: "What a tangled web we weave when we deceive ourselves. The war didn't end because Mr. Obama quit. Al Qaeda and the Taliban remained on the battlefield, undefeated."

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A gripping 'One Million Steps' examines Marines in Afghanistan

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By: ATV Xbr

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vitse preziden iran hefte sonu - Video