​Remove US military bases from Latin America - UNASUR chief

The Summit of the Americas on April 10 and 11 is to be attended by regional leaders, with 31 nations already confirming attendance. UNASUR Secretary-General Ernesto Samper suggested that the summit would be a good place to “reassess relations between the US and South America.”

“A good point on the new agenda of relations [in Latin America] would be the elimination of US military bases,” the former Columbian president told the news agency EFE.

He added that the bases were “a leftover from the days of the Cold War and other clashes.”

READ MORE: 5mn Venezuelans sign petition against US aggression & interference

Samper also blasted Washington’s habit of taking unilateral steps to pursue its goals in Latin America. The latest example is the US declaration of Venezuela as a threat to its national security, he said.

“In a globalized world like the present one, you can't ask for global rules for the economy and maintain unilateral rules for politics. No country has the right to judge the conduct of another and even less to impose sanctions and penalties on their own,” he stressed.

The Panama meeting has already been declared historic as it will be the first one attended by Cuba since 1962, when it was expelled from the Organization of American States (OAS), the event’s organizing body. In 2014, the US and Canada blocked the proposal to readmit Cuba, which drew criticism from UNASUR and a boycott of last year’s summit of the Americas by Ecuador and Nicaragua.

This year Cuban President Raul Castro will have an opportunity to meet his US counterpart Barack Obama, marking progress in the restoration of US-Cuban relations after decades of alienation.

Samper said that the Cuban-US rapprochement should not overshadow Washington’s conflict with Caracas, which is also sending a delegation to the Panama summit, the continued operation of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, US militarization of the continent and other issues.

The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) is a regional integration organization that includes 12 members and two observer nations. It was formally founded in 2004 and became fully functional in 2011, when its Constitutive Treaty entered into force following ratification by member states. UNASUR is headed by a president chosen from heads of member states, but the secretary-general performs the bulk of the organizational work.

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Russia charts new course for BRICS nations as presidency begins

MOSCOW, April 1. /TASS/. Grand plans have been outlined for the BRICS emerging market nations as Russia begins its presidency of the group on Wednesday.

Transforming the BRICS assembly of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa into "a full-scale mechanism of strategic interaction on key issues of global policy and economics" is a "top priority" for Russia’s presidency, which is expected to culminate at a summit in the Russian city of Ufa in early July, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

There are plans to open new tracks for multilateral industrial cooperation, the ministry said after a meeting on Tuesday. The main goal is to launch the group’s development bank and currency reserve pool as outlined in the Strategy for Economic Cooperation of the BRICS countries established until 2020, it said, referring to the plan proposed by Russia at the BRICS summit in Brazil.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s special envoy, Vadim Lukov, noted that some Western partners had already started to explore the possibility of joining the BRICS New Development Bank, noting that: "This is the first time that such institutions have been created without Western countries’ involvement."

Speaking about the tasks of the bank, Lukov pointed out that the new structure would operate on commercial principles.

"Shareholders [of the BRICS New Development Bank] believe that all projects should be profitable. This is not a mutual benefit society and not an association providing grants," he said. "The New Development Bank will be based on commercial principles."

The head and the board of directors of the new bank are expected to be appointed before the BRICS summit in Ufa, scheduled for July 9-10.

A distinguishing feature of Russia’s presidency of BRICS is involvement of civil society groups and young people in the assembly’s work. Moscow will host the BRICS Civil Society Forum in June, while on July 1-5 the inaugural youth forum will open in the Russian city of Kazan. Discussions will focus on youth interaction in culture and economy, alongside prospects for cooperation between young diplomats.

Among the most immediate upcoming events during the Russian presidency is the first official meeting of the BRICS countries’ natural resources ministers on April 22 and consultations between deputy foreign ministers in April-May.

Georgy Toloraya, executive director of the Russian National Committee on BRICS Research, said the most import thing was to enlist the moral support of the BRICS bloc in terms of opposing unilateral sanctions and double standards against Russia.

"In this regard, we enjoy the backing of these countries. We hope that this support will also be declared quite clearly at the summit in Ufa," Toloraya said, adding that it would be much more difficult for Russia to stand alone against the West.

The BRICS agenda under the Russian presidency includes plans to strengthen strategic stability and international information security, reinforce the non-proliferation regime, and combat international terrorism.

The BRICS countries collectively represent about 26% of the world’s geographic area and are home to 42% of the world’s population. In 2013, the share of the BRICS countries reached 16.1% in global trade, 10.8% in military spending and 40/2% in production of non-renewable energy resources. The BRICS consumer market is the largest in the world and is growing by $500 billion a year.

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Russia extends winter package of gas prices for Ukraine

MOSCOW, April 1. /TASS/. Russia is again offering Ukraine a $100 discount per 1,000 cubic meters of gas, extending the so-called winter package into the second quarter.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has supported this proposal. The gas price for Ukraine with the discount from April 1 will be $250 per 1,000 cubic meters, an almost 25% decrease from the first quarter of 2015.

At the meeting with the president late on Tuesday, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that the government had decided to meet the respective demand of the Ukrainian side and Gazprom.

In turn, Kiev has to strictly comply with all the conditions, and namely the payment of the remaining debt to Gazprom which including penalties is $2.477 billion.

Ukraine has secured the discount upon the request of the European Commission.

The winter package of Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine was agreed between Russia and Ukraine with the EU’s mediation in Brussels in October 2014. Ukraine paid its outstanding debt of $3.1 billion for previous supplies.

One of the key issues now is the return of a take-or-pay term in the second quarter.

Russia insists on returning to the take-or-pay term despite the extension of the winter package conditions, a source close to the negotiations told TASS on Tuesday.

Gas supplies to Ukraine in the second quarter should be implemented in accordance with the currently effective contract between Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz, which stipulates the take-or-pay condition, the source said.

On March 20, after the trilateral gas talks between Russia, Ukraine and the European Union Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that the take-or-pay regime would be resumed for Ukraine from April 1 as Naftogaz and Gazprom were currently considering the issue in the arbitration court.

According to Ukraine’s gas pipeline operator Ukrtransgaz, Ukraine has recently increased imports of Russian gas by almost 50% On March 29, Ukraine’s import of Russian gas totaled 17.15 million cubic meters, though the average gas offtake was around 10 million cubic meters in March.

The venue and date of the new round of trilateral talks on gas have not been yet announced. The talks are to discuss the injection of 12-15 billion cubic meters of the Russian natural gas to Ukraine’s underground storages, guarantees of the reliable transit of the Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine and financial assistance of the European Commission to Ukraine for gas procurements.

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Both Russia's president, government focused on anti-crisis plan — Kremlin spokesman

MOSCOW, March 31. /TASS/. The Kremlin is not afraid of high ratings of President Vladimir Putin, the Russian president’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said on Tuesday after a roundtable discussion at TASS reviewing Putin’s 15 years in power.

"The president has said it more than once that he is not in the habit of being preoccupied with his ratings. If one is always absorbed in trying to foretell how his or her future actions might impact the rating in this or that situation, no efficient work is possible," Peskov said. "Hence, the president is focused not on his ratings but on concrete actions. Both the government and the president are now focused on the implementation of the anti-crisis plan. No one is afraid of any ratings."

The presidential press secretary said he thought the roundtable discussion was rather interesting. He said expert opinion had been useful. "But, on the other hand, only he who does nothing, who has no ambitious plans, never makes mistakes," Peskov noted. "And we know that the president always puts forth ambitious plans. Not all of them are implemented as comprehensively and as promptly as we would like them to, but no one casts any doubt on purposeful, gradual progressive movement over these 15 years, which has entailed quality changes in the life of the country and each Russian."

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Russia completes its Gonets orbital group — company president

MOSCOW, March 31. /TASS/. The launch of three Gonetsk satellites from the Plesetsk space center Tuesday has completed the formation of the orbital group of the eponymous satellite communications system, Gonets Satellite System company president Dmitry Bakanov said Tuesday.

"After the launch of this block of three Gonets-M space apparatuses, the group will consist of 12 Gonets-M satellites and one Gonets-D1. Thus, for the first time over the entire history of Gonets system creation, the orbital group has reached its regular strength," Bakanov told TASS.

"Control of the apparatuses was established immediately after the marker signal was received," he said.

Earlier it was reported that a Rokot carrier rocket was launched from the Plesetsk space center in northwestern Russia’s Arkhangelsk Region at 16:48 Moscow Time [13:48 UTC] on Tuesday. Initially, it was supposed that the Rokot would blast off March 3, but on the eve of the day, the launch was postponed indefinitely, and the carrier rocket was sent to undergo an additional engine check.

The Rokot light rocket was created under the conversion program on the basis of decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missile RS-18. The first launch of the Rokot rocket took place from the Plesetsk space center on May 16, 2000. The Defense Ministry plans to stop using these rockets from 2016 in favor of the light rocket Angara and Soyuz-2.1v. Rokot rockets have been launched from Plesetsk 22 times.

Gonets-M satellites are a product of the Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems (ISS) company. Each such apparatus has a mass of 280 kilograms and 14 data transmission channels. Its life cycle in orbit is five years.

At the moment the orbital cluster consists of nine Gonets-M satellites of the second generation and one Gonets-D1 first generation satellite. The previous trio of satellites was put in space in summer 2014. The Gonets system provides personal communications services and transmits various types of data, including that for the GLONASS information system.

Gonets is Russia’s only satellite communications system. It is designed for global exchange of various types of information with rocket and space equipment, as well as for organization of retransmission channels for various purposes.

The use of the Gonets system in particular makes it possible to transfer GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System) coordinate data from a mobile object to remote monitoring and communications centers regardless of the subscriber’s location.

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