Word: deals
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Yellow Handkerchief is one of those small movies that seems to have a great deal going against it - implausibility of action, a contrived caginess and a dangerous need to be regionally evocative - but somehow manages to win you over, sucking you into its peculiar mood...
...Russian President Dmitri Medvedev wound up a three-day state visit to Paris on Wednesday, he had to be pleased with the results. After all, he virtually cinched an unprecedented military deal, bagged a significant gas contract and watched his French host, President Nicolas Sarkozy, dismiss American and European misgivings about his embrace of Moscow by treating Medvedev like his newest best friend forever. There wasn't a whole lot for the Russian leader not to love...
...That goes for military deals. On Monday, Sarkozy confirmed that France was negotiating with Russia over the sale of four Mistral-class assault ships worth a total of about $2 billion - the first deal of its kind between a NATO member and Moscow. It's turning heads for other reasons too. A Russian admiral recently said the amphibious vessels - which can carry 15 helicopters or 70 armored vehicles - would have allowed Russia to complete its August 2008 invasion of Georgia in a matter of hours. Little wonder, then, that the deal has prompted deep concern among American defense officials...
Selling Russia warships is certainly a nifty way of doing that. But some observers think the naval deal is being used as bait by Sarkozy to secure France wider-ranging business deals with Russia. During Medvedev's Paris trip, for example, the Russian energy giant Gazprom signed a contract with Paris-based GDF Suez to give the French company a 9% stake in the Nord Stream natural-gas pipeline and up to 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas by 2015. Nord Stream had previously been exclusively a Russo-German affair - one of many deals that other European countries and companies...
...This is in large part Sarkozy sprinting to close the lead the Germans and Italians got early on by putting politics aside in order to cut energy deals with Russia," says Fabio Liberti, an expert on Russia and European affairs at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Paris. "Sarkozy also knows Europe's defense industry is still largely divided along national lines and appears destined for huge restructuring and consolidation. The nation with the biggest contracts out will get the biggest slice of that consolidated European pie - which is why neither the Mistral deal nor Russia...