Today's Paris Summit.

Today Foreign Ministers including John Kerry of the US and Sergei Lavrov of Russia are meeting Paris, France. This meeting was scheduled in advance to discuss Lebanon and Libya. Of course by extension any discussion of Lebanon and Libya immediately leads onto a discussion about Syria. As result the Iranians have allowed a weapons shipment to Gaza to be captured by the Israelis and a number of Gulf States have expelled Qatari Ambassadors amid allegations they've been meddling in the internal affairs of their host nation. The Libyan "Nation" party of course borrow their colour scheme from the Qatari flag and their name from an English language Qatari newspaper.

The problem is that this summit is in serious danger of being over taken by recent events in Ukraine. Essentially the US is going to try and use this summit and tomorrow's EU meeting to bully the EU into accepting the recent coup in Ukraine and recognising the self-appointed government in Kiev. The US then expects the EU to fund the Kiev government in order to stop it collapsing.

As a result, although I've got a lot of work to do - mainly involving Rihanna's disastrous decision to be in Paris - I'll be trying to keep a low profile.

In the meantime though I hope that I don't need to point out to anyone that the early election of a non-representative government will only serve to further deepen divisions within Ukraine increasing the need for Russian troops to remain in order to stabilise the nation. 

(Originally Posted) 14:00 on 5/3/14 (UK date).