Diplomatic Briefing
Your exclusive news aggregator handpicked daily!Archive for August 29, 2014
Newsline: Russian Foreign Ministry Accuses Ukraine of Detaining Embassy Employees
In a sign of escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine, Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Friday accused Kiev of targeting its diplomats by detaining embassy employees. Calling on Ukrainian authorities to “stop provocations against Russian diplomatic institutions in Ukraine and against Russian diplomats,” the ministry said in an online statement that an unspecified number of embassy personnel had been detained on Thursday. “Kiev has committed the latest outrageous act against security personnel of the Russian Embassy, including the ambassador’s personal security guard. Despite presenting their diplomatic passports, they were detained upon exiting a cafe under a false pretext: they supposedly were in possession of grenades,” the statement read. The ministry called on authorities in Kiev to immediately release the embassy’s employees and to cease such “violations of international conventions on diplomatic immunity.” Kiev has not commented on the incident.
Newsline: South Korea Sends Diplomat to Palestine Separate from Israel
A diplomat representing the Korean government has been officially dispatched to Palestine. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 28, Park Woong-cheol, the newly appointed representative to the State of Palestine, began working around the clock at the office in Ramallah, the de facto administrative capital, from the 25th with one local employee. Although the Korean government opened a representative office in Palestine in 2005, there was no full-time diplomat and instead a counselor at the Korean Embassy in Israel crossed the border twice a week to perform the necessary work. The main reason the government assigned a full-time diplomat in Palestine separate from Israel has to do with the fact that it is aware of the increasing importance of the Arab World to Korea in terms of trade opportunities other than energy. The government recently offered to donate US$1 million to the Palestine government to help rebuild the Gaza Strip that was severely damaged by Israeli airstrikes.
http://koreabizwire.com/korea-sends-separate-diplomat-to-palestine-separate-from-israel/17777
Newsline: Estonian embassy opened in Azerbaijan
Estonian embassy has been opened in Baku, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry reported. Charge d’Affaires of Estonia to Azerbaijan, Jaap Ora held a meeting at the ministry on August 29, the ministry said. During the meeting, Ora informed the Azerbaijani side on the embassy’s opening. Earlier, Estonia was represented in Azerbaijan through its embassy in Turkey. Azerbaijan has an embassy in Tallinn. Over 2,500 Azerbaijanis live in Estonia.
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