Cold War

The body in charge in investigating the fearsome secret service of the former communist regime in Romania on Thursday launched court procedures to ascertain whether former president Traian Basescu ever collaborated with the so-called Securitate.

Romania's Attorney General Augustin Lazar said on Monday he is neither a commissioned, nor a non-commissioned officer or informer of the late Securitate political police or any other secret service. He told a news conference that he wanted to make a series of remarks out of respect to his colleagues and to truth, a value he said has always guided his life and professional activity.

The National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS) decided on Thursday to recheck Prosecutor General Augustin Lazar as regards the quality of worker or collaborator of the communist Securitate political police, given the information and the new elements that were debated in the press.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the most successful alliance in human history. Over the past 70 years, NATO has helped to create the most secure, stable, and prosperous period in its members' history.

The collapse of the nuclear arms control regime can open an era even more dangerous than the cold war years, says a scholar. Turkey risks to become the setting of a crisis between Washington and Moscow according to Professor Mustafa Kibaroğlu.
 

In his landmark Foreign Affairs article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" at the beginning of the Cold War, George Kennan laid out the strategy of containment. He noted how important the example America set domestically - economically, in coping successfully with its internal problems - was to the looming geopolitical competition with the Soviet Union.

As Pope Francis readies to visit Romania, the Vatican is trying to find out whether some clergy collaborated with the infamous Securitate under the old regime.

Two years after his breakthrough exhibition at the Benaki Museum on Pireos Street, born-again street photographer Constantinos Pittas has released a book bringing together the images that formed the core of the critically acclaimed show with recently unearthed work from his archive.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this late on Thursday.

Peskov was asked to comment on Russian President Vladimir Putin's statement about the possibility of a nuclear war following the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, TASS reported.

The EU foreign and security policy chief remarked this upon her arrival to the NATO foreign minister's meeting on Wednesday, when journalists asked "should European citizens feel concerned after this stern warning that (US State Secretary) Mike Pompeo launched to Russia?"