The UN has named Mauritanian diplomat El-Ghassim Wane as its special representative and head of the peace-keeping mission in Mali.

Mr Wane has 25 years of experience in conflict prevention, mediation and peacekeeping, the world body announced on Monday.

He is taking over from former Chadian Foreign Minister Mahamat Saleh Annadif.

The Mauritanian served as assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations at the UN between 2016 and 2017 and later worked at the African Union (AU) up to 2019.

In recent months, he led a team conducting an independent strategic review of the UN-led peacekeeping operation in South Sudan.

Athens, March 16 : NATO members Greece and Turkey meet in Athens Tuesday to try once more to settle their standoff over eastern Mediterranean borders and energy rights.

Ankara ratcheted up the pressure a notch on Monday with a diplomatic note to Israel, Greece and the European Union.

It told them to seek its permission before assuming work on a proposed undersea power cable in disputed eastern Mediterranean waters.

Both sides cite a range of decades-old treaties and international agreements to support their conflicting territorial claims.

Hostilities flared last year when Ankara sent a research ship accompanied by a navy flotilla into waters near the Turkish coast that Greece asserts are theirs — a claim the EU supports.

Those waters are thought to be a possible source of natural gas reserves.

Turkey is furious that Athens is using its web of islands to lay claim to huge swathes of the Aegean and Mediterranean seas.

Tuesday’s meeting follows one in Istanbul in January, the first direct talks between the two sides on the dispute in nearly five years — and which happened only after pressure from the EU.

But the discussion will also be the 62nd such meeting since 2000, a long series that so far has little to show for it.

Washington, March 16 : Congresswoman Deb Haaland was approved by the US Senate Monday to join President Joe Biden’s administration, making her the first Native American to become a cabinet secretary.

She was confirmed by a vote of 51-40 to the position of Secretary of the Interior, overseeing a massive agency responsible for roughly one-fifth of land in the United States — including its many tribal reservations.

Haaland, 60, who hails from New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo tribe, already made history in 2018 when she became one of the first two Native American women elected to US Congress.

“Rep Haaland’s confirmation represents a gigantic step forward in creating a government that represents the full richness and diversity of this country because Native Americans were for far too long neglected at the cabinet level and in so many other places,” the Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said ahead of the vote.

“In elevating Rep. Haaland to lead the Department of Interior, we reset the relationship between the federal government and tribal nations to one of cooperation, mutual respect and trust.”

Haaland’s appointment was backed by a petition signed by some 120 tribal representatives, who urged Biden to make history by picking the congresswoman.

When her name first began to circulate for the position, Haaland noted she thought it was time for the world to start listening to indigenous communities regarding climate change and the environment.

“My ancestors have sacrificed a tremendous amount to keep my customs and traditions for me,” she told in 2018, during her first Congress run.

“So I want to make sure that I am bringing that perspective to the table in anything I do.”

Haaland has been a member of the House of Representatives since January 2019.

A single mother, she overcame alcoholism in her youth and for a time had to use government food stamps to survive.

Before Haaland, the only other Native American to serve in a US administration was Charles Curtis, Herbert Hoover’s vice president between 1929 and 1933, who liked to say he was “one-eighth Kaw Indian and 100 percent Republican.”

ANKARA, MAR 15 – Turkey, which has the longest continental coastline in the Eastern Mediterranean, has rejected maritime boundary claims made by Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration.

It has stressed that these excessive claims violate the sovereign rights of both Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Instead of opting to solve problems with Turkey through dialogue, Greece has, on several occasions, refused to sit at the negotiation table and opted to rally the European Union to take a tougher stance against Ankara.

In November 2019, Turkey and Libya signed a maritime delimitation deal that provided a legal framework to prevent any fait accompli by regional states. Accordingly, the attempts by the Greek government to appropriate huge parts of Libya’s continental shelf, when a political crisis hit the North African country in 2011, were averted.

The agreement also confirmed that Turkey and Libya are maritime neighbors. The delimitation starts from Fethiye-Marmaris-Kaş on Turkey’s southwestern coast and extends to the Derna-Tobruk-Bordia coastline of Libya.

In response, Egypt and Greece signed an agreement in August 2020, designating an EEZ in the Eastern Mediterranean between the two countries.

Between 2002 and 2016, dozens of rounds of talks were held to try and lay the foundation for full negotiations over the delimitation of maritime zones. After a five-year hiatus, prolonged by a dispute over overlapping claims for energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean last year, the two resumed the exploratory talks on Jan. 25.

The two countries had initiated the talks to discuss the issues in the Eastern Mediterranean on March 12, 2002, in an effort to find a fair, sustainable and inclusive solution.

Talks were regularly held up until 2016, but there have been none since then due to political speculation and the Greek side’s reluctance to sit down at the negotiating table.

Bilateral discussions continued in the form of political consultations but did not return to the exploratory framework.

NATO members Turkey and Greece also participated in deconfliction talks last year, initiated by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, which were designed to reduce the risk of incidents in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The talks facilitated the establishment of a hotline between Athens and Ankara, allowing for conflict resolution at sea and in the air.

But obstacles remain, including what each side is willing to discuss. Greece says it will only address the demarcation of maritime zones in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, while Turkey argues that they should tackle all of the issues between the two sides, including air space and the status of certain Greek islands.

ANKARA, MAR 15 – Turkey is aiming to have its own vaccine by the end of 2021, the country’s industry and technology minister said on Monday.

Speaking at a Competitive Sectors Program event, jointly organized by Turkey and the EU, Mustafa Varank said Turkey will begin human trials of the domestic vaccine after authorization from the Turkish Medicines and Medical Devices Agency (TITCK).

“For the three vaccine candidates — inactive, VLP and adenovirus-based — TITCK has received the applications”, Varank noted.

Noting that the process will take a long time, Varank said there is a “vaccines war” in the world and that poor countries do not receive vaccines.

“Therefore, we know that the vaccine we will develop will be an important success in the fight against the pandemic that will continue for many years, and we are making preparations to share this with other countries.”

He said that there are several projects in Turkish universities, adding: “For example, one of the professors in Kayseri is currently conducting the Phase 2 study of a vaccine candidate, and he is close to moving to Phase 3.”