- PSG held by Nice to leave Monaco clear at top of Ligue 1
- AC Milan fall at Fiorentina after De Gea's penalty heroics
- Lewandowski treble for leaders Barca as Atletico held
- Fresh Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Sucic stunner earns Real Sociedad draw against Atletico
- PSG draw with Nice, fail to reclaim top spot in Ligue 1
- Gudmundsson downs AC Milan after De Gea's penalty heroics for Fiorentina
- 'Yes' vote prevails in Kazakhstan nuclear plant vote: TV
- 'Difficult day': Oct 7 commemorations begin with festival memorial
- Commemorations begin for anniversary of attack on Israel
- Lewandowski hat-trick powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- 'Nothing gets in way of team,' says Celtics' MVP hopeful Tatum
- India maintain Pakistan stranglehold as Windies cruise at Women's T20 World Cup
- 'We will win!': Mozambique's ruling party confident at final vote rally
- Tunisia voting ends as Saied eyes re-election with critics behind bars
- Florida braces for Milton, FEMA head slams 'dangerous' Helene misinformation
- Postecoglou slams 'unacceptable' Spurs after 'terrible' loss at Brighton
- Marmoush double denies Bayern outright Bundesliga top spot
- Rallies worldwide call for Gaza, Lebanon ceasefire
- Maresca hails Chelsea's 'fighting' spirit after draw with 10-man Forest
- New 'Joker' film, a dark musical, tops N.America box office
- Man Utd stalemate keeps Ten Hag in danger, Spurs rocked by Brighton
- Drowned by hurricane, remote N.Carolina towns now struggle for water
- Vikings hold off Jets in London to stay unbeaten
- Ahead of attack anniversary, Netanyahu says: 'We will win'
- West Indies cruise to T20 World Cup win over Scotland
- Arshdeep, Chakravarthy help India hammer Bangladesh in T20 opener
- Lewandowski's quickfire hat-trick powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Man Utd fire another blank in Aston Villa stalemate
- Lewandowski treble powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Russian activist killed on front line in Ukraine
- Openda strike briefly sends Leipzig top of Bundesliga
- Goal-shy Man Utd have to 'step up', says Ten Hag
- India bowl out Bangladesh for 127 in T20 opener
- Madueke rescues Chelsea in draw with 10-man Forest
- Beckett's belief rewarded as Bluestocking storms to Arc glory
- Trump on the stump, Harris hits airwaves in razor-edge US election
- Flash flooding kills three in northern Thailand
- Kaur leads India to victory over Pakistan in Women's T20 World Cup
- Juventus held by Cagliari after late penalty drama
- In France's Marseille, teen 'stabbed 50 times' then burned alive
- Ruthless Gauff beats Muchova in straight sets to win China Open
- India restrict Pakistan to 105-8 in Women's T20 World Cup
- England target repeat of Pakistan Test whitewash
- Penrith Panthers win fourth straight NRL title after downing Storm
- Weary Sinner happy for day off after battling into Shanghai last 16
- Pakistan's Masood warns England still a force without Stokes
- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Israel pounds Lebanon ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
Not so SWIFT: EU energy concerns spark Russia sanctions rift
The West has agreed an onslaught of sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but resistance from key EU nations fearful of severing their power sources has resulted in them holding off on banishing Moscow from the SWIFT banking transfer system.
Ukraine has expressly called on Western allies to expel Moscow from the system that banks rely on to transfer money.
But US President Joe Biden revealed this week that while it remains an option, "right now that's not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take."
Former European Council President Donald Tusk lashed out at EU capitals over their failure to agree on the toughest sanctions such as cutting Russian banks off from SWIFT, exposing a rift within the bloc over its response.
"In this war, everything is real: Putin's madness and cruelty, Ukrainian victims, bombs falling on Kyiv. Only your sanctions are pretended (sic)," Tusk tweeted.
"Those EU governments, which blocked tough decisions (i.e. Germany, Hungary, Italy) have disgraced themselves."
But German Finance Minister Christian Lindner laid out starkly the preoccupation of Europe's biggest economy: suspension of SWIFT "would mean that there is a high risk that Germany will no longer receive gas, raw material supplies from Russia".
Lindner told public television he was "open" to including SWIFT "in the course of possible further toughening of sanctions" while adding that allies would "have to be aware of the consequences."
With 40 percent of gas consumed in Europe arriving from Russia, Germany's fears about the possibility of severe disruptions are well founded.
Austria, Hungary and Italy are also reluctant, pitting them against Poland, the Baltic states and non-EU member Britain.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban alluded to his key concern -- energy prices -- as he announced sanctions agreed by the EU late Thursday.
"These sanctions do not extend to energy; so, despite the sanctions, energy supplies to Hungary and the other member states of the EU are guaranteed," he said.
- Not Iran -
Founded in 1973, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, does not actually handle any transfers of funds itself.
But the system is used by banks to send standardised messages about transfers of sums between themselves, transfers of sums for clients, and buy and sell orders for assets.
A country that is shut out of the system could still arrange for settlements of payments or transfers on a case-by-case basis.
But it would be severely crippled in its ability to trade with others, as Iran had seen when it was disconnected from the system between 2012 and 2016 over its nuclear programme.
Yet Lindner said the jury was out on whether the sanction would indeed hurt Moscow as much as it did Tehran.
"I fear that Putin has already built up an alternative to this SWIFT system," he said.
Calls for Russia to be excluded from SWIFT had already been made in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and Moscow has since sought to build up its own system.
The Russian System for Transfer of Financial Messages connects 400 Russian banks and being booted out of SWIFT could well accelerate its development.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer also cited experts' estimates that exclusion from SWIFT "won't bring the necessary success" as opposed to the EU package agreed on Thursday, which he said directly hits 70 percent of Russian banks.
For now, the option remains on the table, although French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has said that removing Moscow from SWIFT is a "last resort".
Asked what kind of further aggression must come from Russia against Ukraine before the EU would cut it off from SWIFT, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's spokesman suggested that not including it in Thursday's package partly came down to the question of the expediency of implementation.
Such a move would be "technically complex to prepare" and have "severe consequences on the transactions traffic in Germany and for German companies doing business with Russia, but also for energy delivery payments, and all that must be well prepared," said Steffen Hebestreit.
Meanwhile the Baltic countries, which directly border Russia, said they had not given up hope on the adoption of the measure.
"We will try and try again to persuade our partners to switch Russia off from SWIFT... if not in this sanctions package, maybe in the next one. We don't have to wait until there are gunfights in the streets of Kyiv and dead bodies lying around," Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics told reporters Friday.
M.Fischer--AMWN