The U.S. military carried out air strikes against the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday. President Donald Trump has made it clear the strikes were a retaliation for Assad’s suspected use of chemical weapons April 4, which left about 100 dead, including women and children. But why were the use of chemical weapons a so-called “red line” for Trump? VOA’s Bill Gallo examines.
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Month: April 2017
US Imposes New Sanctions on Eritrea’s Navy Over North Korea Links
Eritrea has once again found itself on the wrong side of international norms as a U.N. report accused the East African country of violating an arms embargo by buying military communications equipment from North Korea.
This marks the third consecutive year that Eritrea has been named by the U.N. panel monitoring sanctions on North Korea, said Hugh Griffiths, coordinator of the panel.
In response, the United States moved to ban all equipment sales or interactions with Eritrea’s navy, under nonproliferation legislation that targets Iran, Syria and North Korea.
Eritrea was one of seven African countries listed as arms-embargo violators for buying weapons, military material or receiving training from North Korea.
In Eritrea’s case, the U.N. panel found that in July 2016 Eritrea imported 45 boxes of encrypted military radios and accessories, including GPS antennas, microphones and clone cables. The equipment was intercepted before reaching its destination.
The U.N. said the equipment was sold by Glocom, which is said to be a Malaysian front company selling North Korean goods in an attempt to avoid detection. A previous report found evidence that an Eritrean government department had received “military and technical support” from a North Korean company named Green Pine.
Marketing to Africa
Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) arms and military expenditure program, said North Korea aggressively markets its military goods and services to African countries.
“North Korea, first of all, wants to export arms because it’s one of the things which they can make and for which at least there is some demand,” Wezeman told VOA. “But it is not surprising that the demand is concentrated in countries with very limited economic resources, because what North Korea is supplying generally is not of high quality.”
Wezeman said most of what North Korea sells is out-of-date or refurbished Soviet-era equipment.
“It’s not the kind of equipment which [buyers] are going to pay a lot of money for,” he said. “So they cannot market this stuff to anyone else except to African states and a few others. Myanmar is a country which in the past was also known to have North Korean equipment. Cuba is also one of those, but generally, these are countries which simply cannot afford too much better than that.”
A history of sanctions
Eritrea’s Ministry of Information denounced the new U.S. sanctions as “inexplicable and unwarranted,” and said they followed a pattern established years ago.
“The pattern is sadly the same,” a ministry statement said. “Fallacious reports are first floated and illicit measures subsequently announced by the same architects who act as the plaintiff, prosecutor, and judge.”
Eritrea was previously accused of aiding the Somali extremist group al-Shabaab in 2009. As a result, the U.N. ordered an arms embargo, travel restrictions and a freeze on assets of military and political leaders.
Another U.N. report five years later found no evidence that the Eritrean government continued to support al-Shabaab, but declined to lift sanctions.
“The Monitoring Group does not, however, rule out the possibility that Eritrea may be providing some assistance to elements within al-Shabaab without detection, but it is the overall assessment of the Monitoring Group that Eritrea is a marginal actor in Somalia,” the U.N. group found.
Matthew Bryden, chairman of Sahan Research, a Nairobi-based think tank focusing on peace and security issues in the Horn of Africa, told VOA in 2016 that the sanctions include a two-way arms embargo prohibiting Eritrea from importing or exporting weapons and supporting armed groups in the region. “Although the focus was initially on al-Shabaab in Somalia, the wording of the resolution appears to have a wider significance,” he said.
Bryden believes that the sanctions regime has been effective “to the degree that Eritrea has opened its stance, has ceased supplying al-Shabaab, has started cooperating on the issue of prisoners of war and is showing a new openness to the U.N., to the sanctions committee and to others. So there’s clearly some progress,” he said.
The monitoring group’s annual report last November said that because Eritrea received foreign support for a new military base and seaport, it violated the embargo. Eritrea has hosted security personnel from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia as they conduct attacks as part of their ongoing campaign in Yemen.
Eritrea feels betrayed
Daniel Ogbaharya is originally from Eritrea and teaches at the Union Institute & University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He thinks Eritrea’s hard-line stance toward international monitors is because of the Asmara government’s feeling that it has been betrayed by the international community in the past.
“I believe [these are] psychological sort of reasons, and on top of that the government does not want to … give credence or relevance to the accusations,” he said.
Ogbaharya added that he believes international sanctions have been imposed in a secretive and unfair manner, and that this gives Eritrea’s unelected leaders a valuable talking point, to argue that the world is against them.
“Even if you disagree with the Eritrean regime on a whole host of things, we know that sanctions actually play into the hands of authoritarian regimes,” he said. “Remember the government’s discourse is that ‘the whole world is against us, not just now, but ever since 1952 or before that,’ so it plays into that discourse.”
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US Strike Group Heads Toward North Korea
The U.S. Navy is sending a strike group toward the Korean Peninsula to bolster the U.S. presence there and send a message to North Korea, which this week conducted a ballistic missile test despite U.N. Security Council resolutions banning such launches.
The Carl Vinson Strike Group was making a port call in Singapore and was scheduled to sail for Australia when U.S. Pacific Command ordered the ships to sail north instead.
“Third Fleet ships operate forward with a purpose: to safeguard U.S. interests in the Western Pacific,” Commander Dave Benham, director of media operations for the U.S. Pacific Command Third Fleet told VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb.
“The No. 1 threat in the region continues to be North Korea, due to its reckless, irresponsible, and destabilizing program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.”
The strike group includes its namesake aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, as well as three guided-missile destroyers.
North Korea defies warning
Pyongyang has repeatedly defied international warnings about conducting missile launches and testing nuclear devices.
This year North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un, have repeatedly indicated an intercontinental ballistic missile test or something similar could be coming, possibly as soon as April 15, the 105th birthday of North Korea’s founding president and celebrated annually as “the Day of the Sun.”
While U.S. President Donald Trump has not set out a clear strategy for dealing with the isolated nation, he has criticized the past administration’s U.S. policy of “strategic patience,” in the face of North Korea’s ongoing efforts to develop long-range nuclear strike capability. Trump has also called on China, one of the few nations with strong ties to Pyongyang, to take stronger action to curb those nuclear ambitions.
Earlier this month, Trump suggested the U.S. might take action unilaterally if China wasn’t willing to do more.
“If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will,” Trump told The Financial Times April 2. “China will either decide to help us with North Korea or they won’t. If they do, that will be very good for China, and if they don’t, it won’t be good for anyone.”
US, China in agreement
Trump reportedly discussed North Korea with Chinese President Xi Jinping when the two met this week in Florida. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the two leaders agreed that the issue of Pyongyang’s arms buildup has reached a very serious stage, however there were no details of what action either nation might take to curtail the program.
Trump’s national security aides have completed a review of U.S. options to try to curb North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. These include economic and military measures but lean more toward sanctions and increased pressure on Beijing to rein in its reclusive neighbor.
Although the option of pre-emptive military strikes on North Korea is not off the table, the review prioritizes less-risky steps and de-emphasizes direct military action.
VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb and Reuters contributed to this report.
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British Foreign Minister Cancels Russia Visit
Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, canceled plans Saturday to visit Moscow, just hours before he was due to depart London, as tensions escalated between the U.S. and Russia over Syria.
Russian leaders, who have dubbed as illegal the U.S. action to punish the government of President Bashar al-Assad for its use of chemical weapons, ramped up the war of words late Friday when the country’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, warned America was “one step away from military clashes with Russia.”
In an apparent show of force, a Russian frigate armed with cruise missiles, reportedly was heading into the Mediterranean. According to Russian state media, the ship, the Admiral Grigorovich, will dock at Tartus on the Syrian coast.
Russia also has pledged to bolster Syria’s air defenses.
News of the cancelation of the British foreign minister’s trip was relayed first by Johnson himself, who tweeted: “I will now not travel to Moscow on Monday 10 April.” He said his priority was to hold talks with Western allies about Syria and Russia’s support for Assad.
British officials say that Johnson’s trip was called off after the British foreign minister consulted his American counterpart, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who himself is due to visit the Russian capital in a few days.
They said Johnson wants to spearhead efforts to help shape a “coalition of support” against Russian activity in Syria. In a statement later, Johnson said, “Developments in Syria have changed the situation fundamentally.”
A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman described the cancelation as “absurd.”
Johnson was due to hold talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and the two diplomats were expected to hold a joint news conference.
“It seems that our Western colleagues live in their own kind of reality in which they first try to single-handedly make collective plans, then they single-handedly try to change them, coming up with absurd reasons,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in a statement.
“Unfortunately, stability, and consistency have long stopped being the hallmark of Western foreign policy,” she added.
As the diplomatic turmoil unfolded, activists Saturday claimed Syrian government warplanes had again struck Khan Sheikhoun, the rebel-held town targeted earlier in the week in an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian regime.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the London-based pro-opposition watchdog that gathers information from activists on the ground, claimed a woman was killed and three people wounded after being machine-gunned by jets in an eastern neighborhood.
The warplanes carrying out Saturday’s alleged raid are believed to have flown from al-Shayrat, the airbase targeted Thursday by the U.S. in a punitive barrage of 59 Cruise missiles strike, the greatest show of America firepower in more than a decade. Tuesday’s chemical attack left scores dead, including children and women, according activists. U.S. officials so far have not commented on the claimed raid. In addition, there was no confirmation by other monitors.
There also was an unconfirmed report of a U.S.-led raid against the Islamic State in the countryside around Raqqa, the terror group’s de facto capital in Syria. The observatory quoted local activists as saying missiles struck the village of Hanida, to the west of the city.
your ad hereTillerson Heads to Moscow Days After US Missile Strikes in Syria Anger Russia
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Moscow on April 12, just days after the United States launched missile strikes on a Syrian airbase in response to a Syrian chemical weapons attack that killed civilians.
Officials say the top U.S. diplomat will urge Russia to rethink its continued support for the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.
Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, said on Saturday he had canceled a visit to Moscow that was scheduled for April 10. “Developments in Syria have changed the situation fundamentally,” said Johnson in a statement.
Secretary of State Tillerson is scheduled to travel to Moscow on Wednesday, after he attends the G-7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Italy from April 9 to 11.
The State Department did not respond to VOA’s inquiry on whether Tillerson’s Moscow trip has been changed or canceled since the U.S. military strikes.
Analysts say Washington needs the diplomatic follow-up, though, after the military action.
The top U.S. diplomat, known as a man of few words, had harsh comments for Russia, which Washington blamed for failing to rein in its ally, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
“Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent,” said Tillerson on Thursday night. He was referring to the Kremlin’s failure to prevent the Assad government from allegedly conducting a poison gas attack that killed scores of people in rebel-held Idlib province.
In 2013, the Syrian government agreed to surrender its chemical weapons under the supervision of the Russia government. Prior to the recent gas attack, Tillerson said Assad’s future would be decided by the Syrian people. After the attack, he took aim at Assad’s government and Russia’s support for him.
Experts said the U.S. military strike could complicate Tillerson’s diplomatic mission to Moscow, and that an escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Russia over the future of Assad also is possible.
“For sure this means further immediate bumps in the bilateral relationship,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst told VOA.
He said despite the fact that the missile strikes were quite limited and Washington had warned Moscow ahead of time so that Russian soldiers would not be in danger, Moscow’s reaction was rather strong.
Herbst, now director of the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, said Russia’s decision to suspend the de-confliction mechanism, which is intended to avoid accidents, was not well considered.
“While de-confliction serves the interest of both U.S. and Russian, it is more important to Moscow” because U.S. conventional forces are far superior and “Russian forces are more at risk in case of an incident,” said Herbst.
“The strikes undoubtedly change the tone of the conversation, given the de-confliction protocols, between Russia and the U.S. have been suspended in Syria,” Michael Kofman from Center for Naval Analyses told VOA.
Professor Doga Ulas Eralp of American University in Washington told VOA on Friday that Tillerson “now has to scramble to broker a deal” that would allow a sustainable coordination mechanism between the two countries “if the U.S. is determined to escalate its military engagement in Syria.”
Middle East Institute scholar Daniel Serwer told VOA the military strikes “shoot the Syria agenda item to the top.” The key question is whether Tillerson can get something going with the Russians on a political solution in Syria,” he added.
Former U.S. officials say the Syrian chemical attack is a major challenge to the nascent relationship between the Trump administration and the Kremlin.
“It is vital that the U.S. corrects course and that the current administration moves quickly from a set of alarming and ignorant comments to having a real policy and strategy for managing and mitigating Putin’s negative impacts on world peace and security,” said former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Daniel Baer.
Alexei Arbatov, director of the Center of International Security at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, told VOA’s Russian service that while the U.S. missile strike in Syria complicates U.S.-Russian relations, “the reaction of the Russian Foreign Ministry thus far has been quite restrained, and it is not rejecting the possibility of agreements and cooperation with the United States.”
While Washington is willing to work with Moscow in areas of practical cooperation, the State Department said Secretary Tillerson will make it clear the U.S. is committed to holding Russia accountable when international norms are violated.
your ad hereBasque Separatist Group Surrenders Arms, Effectively Ending Nearly 50 Years of European Conflict
The Basque separatist group ETA has relinquished its last caches of weapons, effectively ending one of the longest conflicts in contemporary European history.
The International Verification Commission (IVC) confirmed Saturday that the militant group gave French authorities a list of the locations of 12 weapons caches.
“We are disarming one of the longest-surviving armed groups in the world,” Ram Manikkalingam, a mediator with the IVC, told reporters in the southwestern French city of Bayonne.
Saturday’s handover was handled through a series of intermediaries and celebrated by hundreds of people with a morning ceremony in Bayonne.
The weapons stockpiles could include 130 handguns and two tons of explosives, according to French authorities.
ETA, designated a terrorist group by the U.S. government, has been blamed for the deaths of more than 850 people since the late 1960s in its push to carve an independent homeland out of territory in northern Spain and southwestern France.
The group has been weakened by attrition and a string of high-profile arrests in the late 1990’s and 2000’s. The last known murder victim of ETA, an acronym for the phrase “Basque Homeland and Liberty,” was a French police officer killed in Paris in 2010.
The arms handover comes years after the separatists declared a unilateral cease-fire in 2011, but they refused to surrender or lay down their remaining weapons.
While the handover does not mean the end of the group as a political entity, it will end nearly a half-century of political violence in Western Europe.
Spain has expressed doubt, though, that ETA has disclosed all of the details about it weapons caches. Spain also has resisted negotiations that would allow dwindling members of the outlawed group or their supporters to gain legal political status in the Basque region.
Spain has demanded ETA’s full dissolution, but the group has refused, in part out of allegiance to the hundreds of members who remain imprisoned in Spain.
your ad hereAP FACT CHECK: Trump and Lawmakers on Syria, Jobs, Court
Before the U.S. attack on a Syrian air base, President Donald Trump accused his predecessor of doing nothing when Syria’s government used chemical weapons against its population in 2013. Trump is right that President Barack Obama issued what amounted to an empty threat of military action. The circumstances, though, were more complicated than Trump described.
A look at statements on a selection of subjects over the past week by Trump and lawmakers:
TRUMP: In a White House statement after what the Trump administration said was a bombing involving the nerve agent sarin in a rebel-held part of northern Syria: “These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution. President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a ‘red line’ against the use of chemical weapons, and then did nothing.”
THE FACTS: Many in the foreign policy establishment essentially agree with Trump. That’s not to say he told the full story.
When evidence emerged in August 2013 of a large-scale chemical attack in the Damascus suburbs, more than 10 times deadlier than this past week’s, Obama quickly signaled his intention to use military force. But when key ally Britain wouldn’t participate, Obama became uncomfortable about going it alone and sought Congress’ authorization. Lawmakers in both parties balked; he could not win enough support.
Indeed, when Obama had made his “red line” threat a year earlier, Trump himself tweeted: “President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your powder for another (and more important) day!”
It’s also true, though, that Obama could have ordered a military strike without congressional authorization, as Trump did Thursday. Derek Chollet, Obama’s assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, wrote in Politico last year that he was initially shocked when Obama decided to go to Congress, because “it was clear the president had all the domestic legal authority and international justification he needed to act.”
In the end, Obama turned to diplomacy when Russia offered him a way out. Their deal led the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, to own up to chemical weapons stocks and agreeing to have them removed, steps seen as breakthroughs at the time.
It wasn’t “nothing,” as Trump claimed. But neither it did it remove Syria’s chemical weapons threat. Assad’s forces are believed to have conducted a number of deadly chlorine attacks in the years since, with no international punishment. And as is now apparent, Obama’s deal wasn’t enough to spare Syrian civilians from a sarin-like nerve gas this past week.
SEN. MITCH McCONNELL, Senate majority leader, on why he opposed Obama’s proposal for U.S. military action against Syria in 2013 but supports what Trump did: “Secretary (of State John) Kerry, I guess in order to reassure the left-leaning members of his own party, said it would sort of be like a pinprick. You know, really would not be of any great consequence. I don’t know whether he had in mind knocking out a tent and a couple of camels or what.” But Trump’s strike “was well-planned, well- executed, went right to the heart of the matter, which is using chemical weapons. So, had I seen that – that kind of approach by President Obama, I’m sure I would’ve signed up.”
THE FACTS: Actually, what McConnell, R-Ky., said at the time was that Assad’s use of chemical weapons on his own people did not threaten the U.S. “A vital national security risk is clearly not in play,” he said then, responding to a far deadlier attack on civilians than the latest one.
McConnell told the Senate in September 2013 that Obama’s planned action was detached from any strategy to end the Syrian civil war. McConnell said the planned intervention could be too limited to dissuade Assad from further use of chemical weapons – or so broad that it could put those weapons in the hands of extremists, if Assad lost control. His concern not merely, or even principally, that intervention might amount to a “pinprick.”
At the time, McConnell was alone among the top Senate and House leaders from either party in opposing Obama’s proposal. The senator was facing a primary challenge from a Republican who opposed intervening in Syria.
TRUMP, speaking to CEOs at the White House about the nation’s unemployment rate: “We have 100 million people if you look” who want jobs and can’t get them. “You know, the real number’s not 4.6 percent … one of the statistics that, to me, is just ridiculous. … When you look for a job, you can’t find it and you give up. You are now considered statistically employed.”
THE FACTS: He’s wrong about federal jobs data. There’s no category that counts frustrated job-seekers as “statistically employed.”
And there aren’t 100 million of them.
When people give up looking for work, they are categorized as having left the workforce – neither employed nor unemployed.
Trump’s figure of 100 million people uncounted in the unemployment rate is made up largely of high-school and college students, retirees and stay-at-home parents who aren’t looking for work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does ask people outside the workforce if they would want a job, even if they aren’t actively seeking one. The bureau found 5.6 million people fit this category in February, a small fraction of what the president claimed.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, Senate Democratic leader, on the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch: “Senator McConnell would have the world believe that his hands are tied. That the only option after Judge Gorsuch doesn’t earn 60 votes is to break the rules, to change the rules. That could not be further from the truth.”
THE FACTS: McConnell was closer to the truth on this matter.
A Senate rules change, requiring only 51 votes to stop a filibuster instead of 60, did appear to be the lone route that Republicans had to put Gorsuch on the court. It was the route they took in winning his confirmation Friday. To Schumer, D-N.Y., Republicans had the option of ditching Gorsuch and coming up with a more “mainstream” nominee. It’s unlikely, however, that any nominee produced by Trump would win Democrats’ approval.
TRUMP, in remarks to CEOs: “There was a very large infrastructure bill that was approved during the Obama administration, a trillion dollars. Nobody ever saw anything being built. I mean, to this day, I haven’t heard of anything that’s been built. They used most of that money – it went and they used it on social programs and we want this to be on infrastructure.”
THE FACTS: The $787 billion package in 2009 was not an infrastructure bill, but a catchall response to the recession with infrastructure as a major part.
More than one-third of it went to tax cuts, not social programs. Medicaid spending and other help for health care made up the next largest component. Then came infrastructure, followed closely by education. The package mixed economic and social spending, helping states train displaced workers, for example, extending jobless benefits and assisting with low-income housing.
As for being unaware that stimulus money built anything, Trump needn’t have traveled far from Trump Tower to see those dollars at work.
In New York City alone, $30 million went toward repairs and repainting of the Brooklyn Bridge; the Staten Island ferry also got a boost. More than $80 million was earmarked for Moynihan Station, an annex to Penn Station that is meant to return the rail hub to the grandeur of the original Penn Station. Road, bridge and transit projects across the country got a lift.
Trump praised Obama and the package’s combination of tax cuts and spending programs when it passed in February 2009.
“I thought he did a terrific job,” Trump said then. “This is a strong guy (who) knows what he wants, and this is what we need.”
TRUMP, on signing executive action that revived the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada: “I was signing the order and I said where’d they buy the steel? I didn’t like the answer. I said who fabricated the steel? I didn’t like the answer. I said, ‘From now on, we’re going to put a clause, got to be made in America.'”
THE FACTS: This is one of Trump’s favorite stories, a mix of fact and fiction that he told with more accuracy in its latest iteration.
This time, he owned up to the fact that he placed no requirement on the TransCanada pipeline company to use U.S. steel: “They had already bought 60, 70 percent of it, so you can’t be too wild, right?” So a mandate for U.S. steel would be for future pipelines, “from now on.”
It’s not quite right, though, to say he’s insisting that steel or pipelines be “made in America” in the future. His directive calls for the use of U.S. content “to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law,” leaving lots of wiggle room.
TRUMP, on progress against the Islamic State group: “We had a very, very fine delegation come over from Egypt, and also from Iraq. And they said more has been done in the last six weeks than has been done in years with the previous administration.”
THE FACTS: Far more progress was achieved against IS over the past year than in the past six weeks.
Last year Iraqi military forces, supported by the coalition, waged successful battles to oust IS from Fallujah, Ramadi, eastern Mosul and a number of smaller towns along the Tigris River. They also established logistical hubs for the push that began in February to retake western Mosul, which is expected to be the last major battle against IS in Iraq. No major cities have been taken in the past six weeks.
As for Syria, Trump was correct in suggesting that there has been significant progress against IS in recent weeks, as the U.S. deployed hundreds more troops to help prepare local forces to retake Raqqa, the Syrian city that is the militants’ de facto capital.
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McMaster’s Influence on Trump Security Policy Seen in Syria Airstrikes
Eleven weeks into his presidency, President Donald Trump’s response to the chemical weapons attack in Syria is being seen as evidence that mature voices have taken the helm of the administration’s security decision-making.
Veteran observers who spoke to VOA said the apparently successful missile strike on the Syrian air base from which the attack was thought to have originated bore the fingerprints of Trump’s national security adviser, General H.R. McMaster.
“General McMaster, since he replaced [Lieutenant] General [Michael] Flynn, has succeeded in imposing a more regular process on national security decision-making,” said Charles Kupchan, who served on the National Security Council in the Obama and Clinton administrations.
“He has advantaged the foreign policy establishment, the mainstream, at the expense of those who represent more strident views from the far right,” Kupchan said.
McMaster, an active-duty three-star Army general who formerly commanded U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, was named national security adviser in February after the more hard-line Flynn was fired.
Earlier stance
Trump’s action in Syria surprised many, coming just a week after two top officials, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, indicated the administration was content to leave Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in power.
Critics point out that the airstrikes marked a 180-degree turnabout from Trump’s position in 2013, when he issued a series of barbed tweets advising President Barack Obama not to attack Syria after a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs killed more than 1,400 people. In one tweet, he warned, “If you do [attack], many very bad things will happen, and from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!”
This week, the president’s Twitter bursts were less provocative. “Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike …” was all he wrote. Later, he retweeted short clips of McMaster and Tillerson speaking to reporters after the airstrikes.
How events unfolded
A timeline of events leading up to Thursday night’s Tomahawk missile assault shows the evolution of the decision-making.
The president learned of the gas attack Tuesday morning at his daily intelligence briefing and asked for more information. That evening, key members of the National Security Council convened for a review of military options.
Wednesday, Trump spoke of seeing photographs of “innocent people, including women, small children and even beautiful little babies,” who had died from the gas attack. “This is unacceptable to me,” he said during a Rose Garden news conference with Jordanian King Abdullah.
Hours later, another NSC committee convened to consider three possible scenarios.
Thursday, Trump gathered his national security team on Air Force One while flying to Florida to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. Shortly after landing, the president met McMaster, Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to make the final decision.
The next meeting was in a secure room at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort, shortly after his state dinner with the Chinese president. A photo released by the White House shows 15 top Cabinet officials and advisers around a small table for a briefing on results of the strike.
‘Professionalism’ seen taking root
James Carafano, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at Washington’s Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy research group in Washington, said the timeline indicated a textbook decision-making process. He called this “not something you’d expect from a rookie administration.”
“It appears they used the system that was in place, which is bringing together your key people — State, Defense and the national security adviser — in kind of a coordinating role,” Carafano said. “Then you’re basically having all the key operational players make a decision, and everyone is playing their roles.”
Kupchan, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan policy research group headquartered in New York, and also a professor of international affairs at Washington’s Georgetown University, said McMaster’s steadying influence was encouraging. Overall, however, he called the Trump White House decision-making “immature.”
“There are different factions within the White House that are fighting it out on a daily basis, but I think that a certain professionalism is beginning to take root,” Kupchan said. “Early on, decisions seemed to have been shot out of a cannon. Now, even though there seems to be a lot of infighting, it appears that McMaster is, day by day, attempting to implement a steadier and more purposeful process.”
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US Judge Signs Baltimore Police Deal; Justice Department Objects
The U.S. attorney general is not pleased that the police department of the Atlantic coast city of Baltimore, Maryland, has decided to adhere to an agreement negotiated with the Obama administration.
While Jeff Sessions said the consent decree will make Baltimore “a less-safe city,” Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh disagreed, saying “I believe that it makes Baltimore safer.”
U.S. District Judge James Bredar signed the deal Friday, calling the plan “comprehensive, detailed and precise.” The Trump administration had asked Bredar to delay signing the decree to give them more time to review the plan designed to root out racist practices in Baltimore’s police department. Baltimore is 65 kilometers north of Washington.
Rampant police abuse
The consent decree was negotiated during the last days of the Obama administration after a federal investigation found rampant abuse by Baltimore police, including unlawful stops and use of excessive force against African Americans.
Consent decrees are basically contracts local police departments enter into with the U.S. Justice Department to achieve reforms under federal oversight. The contracts are usually the result of the revelation of raging corruption and rights abuses in police departments.
The Justice Department’s investigation into the Baltimore Police Department was prompted by the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American man who suffered a severed spine while being transported in a police van with his hands and feet shackled. Gray’s death ignited the worst rioting in Baltimore in decades.
Gray’s death in 2015 happened amid a wave of deaths of unarmed black men in the U.S. by police, prompting local protests and a national outcry.
Crime rate still high
Baltimore’s crime rate continued to soar after the riots and has not relented. In the first three months of 2017, the city had 79 homicides, compared with 56 for the same period last year.
Under the consent decree, Baltimore’s police officers will receive additional training and will be discouraged from arresting people for minor offenses like loitering and detaining someone for simply being in a high-crime area.
your ad hereUS Rail Industry Focused on US-China Trade Relationship
March was a disappointing month for job seekers, with the U.S. Labor Department reporting that the private sector added only 98,000 jobs last month. But one industry is looking beyond the job numbers and toward distant shores as President Donald Trump meets for the first time with Chinese President Xi Jinping to talk about trade. Mil Arcega reports.
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Tillerson Heads to Moscow Days After US Strikes in Syria Anger Russia
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Moscow, April 12, days after the United States launched missile strikes on a Syrian airbase in response to a Syrian chemical weapon attack that killed civilians. Officials say the top U.S. diplomat will urge Russia to think carefully about its continued support for the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. VOA State Department correspondent Nike Ching has the story.
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VP: Gambia Thankful, Optimistic, but Challenges Lie Ahead
Since the departure of Gambia’s long-time ruler Yahya Jammeh, newly elected president Adama Barrow’s government has been taking steps to restore the economy, rule of law and political reforms after two decades of one-party rule.
Gambia’s vice president recently visited the United States to “thank its partners for the help they provided during her nation’s political impasse,” she said. In an exclusive interview, Fatoumata Jallow Tambajang also told VOA’s Mariama Diallo about the challenges her country is facing, such as a lack of water and electricity, and possible currency depreciation.
“It is relatively normal to have African countries lacking certain infrastructure development … but it’s hard to understand that a small country of the size of 1.8 million people at this stage of development lack electricity and water. In the rural areas women are still using the well system; water and sanitation are poor, the health sector has been really been fragmented.”
Aid cuts
On proposed cuts in international aid from the U.S., Jallow Tambajang said “America’s the Big Brother. If America has a cold and sneezes, everybody gets a cold, so it is important that they realize that many in the rest of the world are looking up to them in terms of democratic culture … financial, economic and policy support.”
Her position joins many in asking the new administration to reconsider “particularly … USAID, which is usually present in many developing countries, has been playing a critical role in supporting the development agenda of countries and cutting budgets would obviously affect those institutions.”
Jammeh & ICC
She says former President Jammeh’s 22-year rule was challenging.
“There were no freedom of expression, freedom of association, institutions were dormant because of his dictatorial handling of the state. There were lots of political persecutions,” she said.
Jammeh, who lost the election in December to Barrow, first congratulated his opponent and later refused to accept the result.
He only stepped down after pressure from regional leaders, who sent troops to Gambia to force him to leave, and the international community’s outcry.
While Jammeh had said his country would get out of the International Criminal Court, the new administration has indicated its commitment to staying with the body, not because of one individual, but because of what it does and what it stands for,” Jallow Tambajang said.
Critics have said the former leader was given a clean slate just to get him to leave and it will be hard to prosecute him for the alleged crimes committed.
Jallow Tambajang says a person is never guilty until proven guilty in the eyes of the court … “prosecuting Jammeh should be confined to the legal system. This new democratic government doesn’t want to interfere with the other arms of government and wants a clear distinction between the executive, legislative and judiciary.”
ECOWAS / African Union
She says it was the work of members of the Economic Bloc of West African States (ECOWAS) under the leadership of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the African Union that played a critical role by using the traditional African dialogue but also the U.S., Britain and other bilateral donors.
Jallow Tambajang says it’s important to indicate that during the crisis, Barrow was inaugurated at the Gambian embassy in neighboring Senegal.
“We owe his Excellency Macky Sall and the people of Senegal a big thank you because they’ve shown the brother and sisterhood that exist between the two countries is real. They share the same culture and traditions. It also demonstrated that Africans can handle their own problems.”
On reports that the former president left the country with lots of cash, Jallow Tambajang says “the experience we’ve had is that he has acquired a lot of assets but we won’t make a statement on the magnitude of the misappropriations simply because we want to make it an evidence-based matter.”
This new administration, which won through a coalition of eight political parties “is not here to perpetuate itself and has a 3-year agenda to create a new foundation for democracy where people will have opportunities to work, where the private sector can be provided with an environment to grow and be the engine for development,” she pointed out.
Women & transition
Gambia’s vice president credits women for playing a critical role in the peaceful transition of power after December’s elections. In general, after being involved in women’s issues for more than 30 years, “women are progressing and their status is improving. Of course that’s not a call for complacency,” she said, but “when you look at it from the economic status, women have predominantly occupied the informal sector but are increasingly being visible in the formal sector. For many years they’ve taken the back seat but they are now creating their own space and are no longer accepting to be silent.”
Despite some successes in sub-Saharan Africa, Jallow Tambajang, who is also the country’s Minister of Women’s Affairs, says gender equality and women’s empowerment was universally adopted within the framework of the United Nations. Hence, governments have to be held accountable because it’s their responsibility to ensure there is progress on an annual basis.
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Longtime Opposition Party Wins Gambia’s Parliamentary Elections
Gambia’s United Democratic Party (UDP) has won a majority of seats in parliament after decades in the opposition.
The win means the party now controls both the legislature and the presidency after President Adama Barrow’s election victory in December over long-time leader Yahya Jammeh.
The UDP won 31 seats in the 53-seat National Assembly, allowing Barrow to move ahead with promised reforms, including overhauling the government and security forces.
Party leader Ousainou Darboe said he and the president “are on the same page on virtually everything.”
Jammeh party reduced to five seats
The former ruling party, the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC), led for decades by Jammeh, was reduced from 43 elected seats to five, according to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).
Commission chairman Alieu Momar Njie announced Friday at IEC headquarters that, in addition to 31 seats for the UDP and five seats for the APRC, the 14 remaining parliament seats were won by various other opposition groups that had united in support of Barrow’s candidacy against Jammeh last year.
More than 880,000 people were eligible to vote in Thursday’s parliamentary elections, choosing among candidates from 10 parties. Turnout was low at 42 percent, according to Njie, who said more civic education is needed to persuade people to come out and vote.
Barrow a surprise
Barrow’s victory in the December 1 presidential election was a major political surprise in Gambia, since Jammeh had ruled the small West African state for 22 years, since taking power in a coup.
Jammeh initially promised to heed the voters’ verdict, but changed his mind days later and refused to yield power, blaming the IEC for alleged mistakes in the vote count. Gambia’s neighbor states and African regional leaders eventually persuaded the longtime president to step down and go into exile, but not before Senegal mobilized troops on the two countries’ border to pressure him to concede defeat.
Earlier this month, Gambia’s new administration said it would set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and offer reparations to victims of Jammeh’s government, which has been accused of torturing and killing its opponents.
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Congo’s Kabila Names Opposition Figure Tshibala PM
Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila named a former member of the largest opposition party as prime minister on Friday, a move likely to further divide Kabila’s opponents after talks to negotiate his exit from power broke down.
A statement from the presidency named Bruno Tshibala as prime minister in a new transitional government meant to organize a presidential election by year-end following Kabila’s refusal to step down when his mandate expired in December.
Opponents of Kabila, who has ruled Congo since his father’s assassination in 2001, suspect he intends to repeatedly delay elections until he can organize a referendum to let himself stand for a third term, as his counterparts in neighboring Congo Republic and Rwanda have done.
Kabila denies those charges, saying the election delays are due to challenges registering millions of voters and budgetary constraints.
Security forces killed dozens of civilians in protests over election delays last year. Worsening militia violence in recent months has meanwhile raised fears of a backslide toward the civil wars of the turn of the century that killed millions.
Under a deal struck with the opposition in December, Kabila can stay in office until after an election required to be held by the end of this year. But negotiations to implement the pact collapsed last week and Tshibala’s nomination is almost certain to weaken fledgling efforts to make Kabila abide by it.
Tshibala’s nomination escalates tensions ahead of a mass march his former party, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), has called for next Monday in the capital Kinshasa to protest delays implementing the deal.
Tshibala was expelled from the UDPS last month after he and other prominent opposition leaders contested the designation of successors to veteran leader Etienne Tshisekedi, who died in February.
Tshisekedi’s son, Felix, who replaced his father as president of the main opposition bloc, said Kabila violated the deal by not naming a candidate of the alliance’s choosing.
“We continue to demand the application of the Dec. 31, 2016 accord,” he told Reuters. “The nomination of Bruno Tshibala is a departure from the accord.”
Tshibala will be confronted immediately with stern security and economic tests. Congo’s franc currency has lost nearly half its value since last year and militia violence has worsened across the country in the wake of Kabila’s decision to stay on.
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Sierra Leone Grapples with Mental Health Impact of Ebola
With the recent Ebola crisis, officials in Sierra Leone have seen a rise in mental health concerns. Mustapha Kallon’s problems are typical. He survived Ebola but lost many family members during the epidemic.
“Whenever I think of my parents, I feel depressed,” he said.
Kallon said he turned to alcohol to cope with his grief. He was still receiving care in the Ebola treatment unit when his parents died from the virus. He didn’t get to say goodbye and doesn’t even know where they are buried.
Sometimes Kallon goes with fellow Ebola survivors when they visit the graves of their loved ones.
‘I always cry’
“I feel like dying … I always cry when I am there,” he said. “I always feel pity, because I can’t find their graves.”
The corpses of people infected with Ebola can be very contagious. During the epidemic, burying the dead quickly and safely was so important to stopping transmission that proper records were not kept and some graves were left unmarked.
From 2014 to 2016, the regional Ebola epidemic killed just over 11,000 people. Nearly all of them were in West Africa, with about 4,000 in Sierra Leone.
Those who survived the virus have faced stigma. Kallon was shunned by his community. It was only through support from the Sierra Leone Association of Ebola Survivors that he started to heal.
“When I am among my colleague survivors, we explain to ourselves what we go through, and that helps us to forget about the past and face the future,” he said.
Many of the Ebola survivors in Sierra Leone are going through similar struggles, said Dr. Stephen Sevalie, one of the country’s only psychiatrists.
“Our data has not been analyzed yet, but I can tell you that mental health symptoms are quite high among Ebola survivors,” he said.
Scientists are studying a host of symptoms now known collectively as post-Ebola syndrome. Symptoms include loss of eyesight, joint pain and fatigue, as well as mental health issues like depression and anxiety.
Mental health, however, is a much wider problem in Sierra Leone. An estimated 240,000 people in the country suffer from depression.
Help within communities
Florence Baingana, who heads the mental health team with the World Health Organization in Sierra Leone, said that as a result of the Ebola epidemic, the Ministry of Health, with the support of the WHO, has trained 60 community health officers.
“So we are trying to get services down to as many people as possible,” she said. “We are training health workers in psychological first aid so they can recognize and do some listening and helping.”
Baingana added that it’s not just Ebola survivors who have been suffering since the epidemic. Health care workers, burial workers and others involved in response efforts have also reported mental health concerns.
Nadia Nana Yilla, who volunteered in communities to help raise awareness about Ebola, said hearing people’s painful stories took a toll at times.
“I cried endlessly,” she said. “For me, that’s my way of dealing with depression. I just isolate and seclude and cry it out … so sometimes if you cry, it really helps. If you can’t cry it out, you have to find someone to talk to.”
And that is the message on this World Health Day, April 7: People need to talk to someone if they are feeling depressed.
Kallon said that had he not reached out to others, he might not have been able to get through his depression. And although it’s still hard at times, having that support around him helps, he said.
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Ethiopia Declares Another Diarrhea Outbreak
Ethiopia has declared an outbreak of acute watery diarrhea, also known as AWD, in the country’s Somali region, where people are already struggling to cope with a persistent drought.
Dr. Akpaka Kalu, the World Health Organization representative to Ethiopia, told VOA on Friday that 16,000 cases of AWD had been recorded in the region since January.
The total number of deaths is uncertain.
Regional President Abdi Mohammed Omar said Friday that 19 children had died of AWD in Dollo zone, an area near the southern border with Somalia. This week, residents of a remote village, Qorile, told VOA’s Somali service that dozens had died and more than 700 had received treatment for the illness.
Omar said some of the treatment centers set up to address the outbreak were making headway.
“We have managed to control the worst effects of the disease by establishing temporary emergency medical posts in remote villages,” he said.
Federal authorities have deployed 500 nurses and 68 doctors to fight the disease, in addition to 700 trained health officers, he told VOA’s Amharic service.
Additionally, the WHO has deployed teams on the ground and set up treatment camps to address the outbreak.
Kalu said a U.N. team regional coordinator, WHO representatives and a few others would go to the Somali region, also known as the Ogaden, on Saturday to assess the situation.
“From WHO, for example, we have nearing 40 people on the ground right now. A team went there today in addition to the team that’s been on the ground for some months now,” he said over the telephone. “So we are there working, supporting them to bring it under control.”
Managing the outbreak
Ethiopian officials insist on describing the outbreak as one of AWD, not cholera, which has similar symptoms.
On Monday, a woman who told VOA Somali that she had lost five relatives to cholera and that hundreds of people were suffering from the disease was reportedly arrested by Ethiopian authorities. She was released Wednesday.
In neighboring Somalia, government officials have reported more than 13,000 cases of cholera and 300 deaths since January. WHO said cholera cases were five times greater than what the country experienced last year.
It is not clear what is causing the outbreak in Ethiopia. But Kalu said the government was assessing the situation to try to determine the cause.
Asked whether it was a cholera outbreak, Kalu said, “Cholera is a laboratory diagnosis. You have to test the stool to confirm the cause of the acute watery diarrhea. The government of Ethiopia has declared it acute watery diarrhea. The [assessment] is going on to confirm the causes of acute watery diarrhea, and government is doing that.”
Projects suspended
The outbreak comes as Ethiopian authorities attempt to deal with a dire regional drought. An estimated 5.6 million Ethiopians are in need of emergency food aid. Another 6 million people face starvation in neighboring Somalia and the breakaway republic of Somaliland.
This week Somaliland decided to suspend development projects to focus on drought response and related disease emergency assistance.
Ethiopia and Kenya have partially diverted funds from infrastructure investments to finance drought relief efforts. U.N. humanitarian coordinators have requested close to $1 billion to provide food, water and sanitation assistance in Ethiopia.
The World Food Program announced it needs $268 million to provide food assistance in Ethiopia from now until July.
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Americans Ask Questions About Global Policeman Role
The suspected sarin chemical attack on Syrian civilians and the subsequent missile strike by the U.S. has many asking what’s next. Others look back to the Obama administration and wonder whether the situation could have been handled differently. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti talks with Americans about what happened and what the future holds.
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Ugandan Girls Make Reusable Sanitary Pads to Stay in School
Providing sanitary pads to schoolgirls is a controversial subject in Uganda.
During the 2016 election campaign, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni pledged to buy sanitary towels for girls in need. The government estimates that 30 percent of Ugandan girls from poor families miss school because of lack of sanitary towels.
But in February this year, the first lady, who is also the minister for education, told parliament the government didn’t have enough funding for the president’s $4.4 million initiative.
This angered Makerere University researcher Stella Nyanzi, who created Pads for Girls Uganda on the social media site Facebook to collect donations of sanitary towels. Soon, however, she found herself in a police interrogation room accused of insulting the first lady online.
“The interrogation was about four hours,” Nyanzi said. “By the time I was out, my sister, who had my mobile phone number, said, ‘By the way, you are almost getting to your one million pads.’ The following day was Women’s Day and, surprisingly, we got one million sanitary pads within two days.”
Nyanzi continues to push the government to make sanitary pads for girls a priority. Public debate about the subject continues, and the government recently announced that sanitary pads are now to be sold free of value-added tax.
Girls at the Parents Care Infant Academy, in the slum area of Makindye, have taken matters into their own hands.
At the back of the class, there are four sewing machines that students use to make reusable sanitary towels. Large pieces of pink cloth are laid on the table as some of the girls carefully measure and cut, then place a piece of cotton in between and stitch with pins. Ready to be sewn, it is then passed onto the tailors, who include 14-year-old Nantume Catherine.
“Oh, this hole, it’s used to put there cotton, that cotton to hold blood to not come out. You remove it, you throw and you wash it through this hole,” she said.
Sarah Sanyu is the headmistress of the school.
“It was very, very difficult for these girls to stay in public without having these pads,” Sanyu said, “so when we got this idea of making sanitary pads, we bought the materials for ourselves, then we got someone to come and teach us.”
The school also held a special class to teach the girls about menstruation.
Some question the cleanliness of reusable pads, but health officials assure VOA they are safe if properly washed with soap and water. However, access to clean water is not a guarantee in some parts of Uganda.
So important are sanitary pads to keeping girls in school that the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) has distributed 50,000 disposable pads in 14 districts of Uganda since November of 2015.
“It has been very difficult to keep girls in schools, especially in Karamoja, where they have to use leaves,” said Dr. Edson Herbert Muhwezi, assistant representative at UNFPA Uganda. “There are no rags to use, some of them even sit in the sun hoping to dry. They are kept there isolated, staying four days and nights in the bush. It’s really dehumanizing.”
Nyanzi says that is unacceptable. She visits schools to pass out the pads donated to her Facebook group, urging the girls not to let their circumstances hold them down.
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US Officials: Military Hotline with Russia Remains Open
The United States and Russia will maintain a hotline aimed at preventing midair collisions of their warplanes in Syria, senior U.S. military officials said Friday, contradicting Moscow’s claims that it has suspended the “deconfliction” talks in protest of America’s cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base.
The officials also said they’re looking into whether Russia participated in the chemical weapons attack in Syria earlier this week that prompted President Donald Trump’s order for a retaliation. They said Russia has failed to control the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons or to account for chemical agents that were supposed to have been eliminated under a 2013 agreement, and may have been complicit in Tuesday’s horrifying strike that involved the use of a sarin-like nerve gas.
In Moscow, the Russian government on Friday announced its own swift response to the American intervention against its Arab ally. It said it would cut the hotline that was established after Russia joined Syria’s civil war in 2015 to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government against opposition groups. The hotline’s primary intent is to ensure Russian planes conducting combat missions in Syria’s skies don’t stumble into an accident or confrontation with aircraft flown by the U.S.-led coalition fighting an Islamic State insurgency in the north of the country.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reportedly said later Friday that Moscow would consider reactivating the memorandum with the United States on preventing air incidents in Syria.
“Today, everyone heard the statement of the Defense Ministry, which gave a clear assessment of this step and what motivated it,” she was quoted as saying on Russian television station NTV. “We will proceed from the real situation.”
But the senior U.S. military officials, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity, said U.S.-Russian discussions have continued since Thursday night’s attack on the Syrian military base. They said American officials asked to make sure the military talks would continue, and the Russians said they would.
Pressed on whether the Russians were actively participating in the safety calls, one official said conversations were ongoing.
Neither side had previously expressed an interest in severing the line of communication. Even when the U.S., under President Barack Obama, briefly halted talks with Russia on a Syrian peace process, both sides maintained the military communications. Eliminating the hotline could enhance the risk of an accident involving the two nuclear powers.
The U.S. officials, however, said they were also reviewing evidence to see if Russia was complicit in the attack on the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, where more than 80 people were killed.
They said a drone belonging either to Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack Tuesday after it happened. The drone returned late in the day as citizens were going to a nearby hospital for treatment. The hospital was bombed shortly afterward, officials said, possibly in an effort to cover up evidence of chemical weapons usage.
The U.S. says a sarin-like nerve agent was used. Syria denies the claim. And the Kremlin says Syria’s government wasn’t responsible.
The U.S. officials also said they’re aware of Russians with chemical weapons expertise who’ve been in Syria.
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South Africa Denies Non-Compliance Over al-Bashir
The International Criminal Court held a hearing Friday on South Africa’s refusal to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited the country in 2015. The ICC wanted South African authorities to detain and hand over the Sudanese leader, who is wanted on charges of genocide.
South Africa told the International Criminal Court it was under no duty to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he came to Johannesburg in 2015.
The ICC filed a complaint against South Africa for non-compliance after authorities there refused to detain Al-Bashir.
The legal representative for South Africa, Dire Tladi, told the court that South Africa has immunity clauses in every inter-governmental agreement for conferences.
“There is no duty in international law, in general and in particular under the Rome Statue, on South Africa to arrest of a serving head of an non-state party, such as Mister al-Bashir,” said Tladi.
One hundred twenty-four countries, including South Africa, are state parties to the Rome Statue, the agreement that grants the ICC its authority and jurisdiction.
The Sudanese president was on South African territory for two days during a summit of the African Union, hosted by South Africa. He hastily left the country from a military airport, after local courts and the ICC requested his arrest.
ICC prosecutor Julian Nicholls says South Africa’s non-compliance is so severe that the issue should be referred to the United Nations Security Council.
“The obligation to arrest and surrender a suspect wanted on ICC warrants is one of the highest obligations a state party has to the court,” he said. “Without state parties fulfilling that obligation, it’s impossible for the court to exercise its most important functions and powers, its ability to put on trial those for whose warrants have been issued for the most serious crimes of concerns.”
The ICC does not have its own police force and relies on states to arrest and surrender those who are warranted by the court.
Although Sudan never signed up to the ICC, a U.N. resolution referred the Darfur issue to the court in 2005. Prosecutors of the ICC charged al-Bashir with crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide for his role in the long-running Darfur conflict, a western region of Sudan.
ICC judges are expected to make a decision about South Africa and its alleged non-compliance within the next three months.
your ad hereTrump: ‘Tremendous Progress’ Made with China’s Xi
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters Friday he’s made “tremendous progress” with Chinese President Xi Jinping during talks at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Trump said Xi and his representatives have been “really interesting” to talk to and he believes the two sides will continue to make progress in solving issues between the two sides.
“The relationship developed by President Xi and myself I think is outstanding. We look forward to being together many times in the future and I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away,” Trump said.
Xi said he received a warm reception from members of the Trump administration and the two sides came to “many understandings” after holding “in-depth and lengthy communications.”
“I believe that with the passage of time we will make efforts to bear our great historical responsibility for promoting the development of Sino-US relations, to create prosperity for both countries and their people and to uphold global peace and stability,” he said.
Trump and Xi are expected to continue discussing the North Korean nuclear threat and trade, among other things, officials said.
On Thursday, Trump and members of his administration made it clear they hope to pressure Beijing into doing more to rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons development.
In remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said the roughly $310 billion U.S. trade deficit with China is high on the agenda.
“We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years. So that’s one of the things we’re going to be talking about.”
But he also appeared to link that issue with U.S. concerns over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
“The other thing, of course, is going to be North Korea, and somehow they will mix. They really do mix. So we’re going to be talking about trade, North Korea, and many other things,” he said, without elaborating.
China supplies North Korea with almost all its fuel oil, imported foods, consumer goods and the raw materials used to construct its weapons program.
But China also has grown weary of the militaristic aspirations of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has yet to visit Beijing during his six-year rule. A series of U.N. sanctions against North Korea have not deterred it from a string of missile tests, the latest this week.
Trump and Xi, who oversee the world’s two largest economies, met for the first time.
Several protests were held in Florida during Xi’s visit. One was organized by the Vietnamese Community of Central Florida. The group’s president, An Chau, told VOA’s Vietnamese Service that it was one of the largest protests put on by the group, with more than 500 people taking part.
He said a smaller group of several dozen people counter protested and voiced support for Xi.
Khanh An of VOA’s Vietnamese Service contributed to this report
your ad hereSyria Faces Panic, Bluster and Uncertainty in Wake of US Retaliation
First there was panic, then bluster.
The alert the U.S. military gave Russia on Thursday of an upcoming cruise missile strike was quickly circulated by Russian officials to their Syrian counterparts. Fearing the al-Shayrat air base might not be the only target, many fled Damascus or hustled their families out of the Syrian capital, according to a Syrian businessman with links to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
The reaction, he told VOA, was much the same back in August 2013 when Assad loyalists had expected then-U.S. President Barack Obama to match words and deeds and order airstrikes on government targets in the capital as punishment for the use of sarin gas on a rebellious Damascus suburb.
As the sun rose Friday in Damascus and the cruise strike appeared to be over, panic turned into bluster.
Syria’s information minister, Ramez Turjman, shrugged off the strike.
“I believe this strike was limited in time and space, and it was expected,” he told Syrian state television in a phone interview.
State media relayed a terse statement from the country’s military command, accusing the United States of an outrageous act of aggression as it confirmed the missile strike had targeted an air base in central Syria, “which had led to losses.”
The governor of Syria’s Homs province, Talal Barazi, also interviewed on Syrian state television, and again by phone, said the strike and any further targeting by the U.S. wouldn’t divert the government. “Syrian leadership and Syrian policy will not change,” he said.
Shift in dynamic
In its broader outlines, say analysts, maybe the war policy of the Assad regime won’t be changed because of one barrage of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. But at the very least, it will give the regime pause before using chemical weapons again, says Charles Lister, an analyst at the Middle East Institute, a Washington research institution.
Like other analysts, Lister argues the dynamic in Syria has been shifted. While the intervention — punishment for the alleged use earlier this week of sarin gas by the government on a town in Idlib province that left more than 80 dead and hundreds injured — may have been limited, he says, the strike is “a big development.”
“Regional states will feel empowered to re-back opposition” to Assad, he added.
It also leaves Damascus guessing about whether the missile strike is just a warning, or marks a turning point. And U.S. officials appear to want to keep the Assad government off balance. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Friday that he hoped Assad’s government had learned a lesson but added it was ultimately “the regime’s choice” if more U.S. military action would be needed in the future.
Airfield damage
For all of the regime’s bluster, the attack on al-Shayrat will have hurt militarily, say analysts. While the full scale of the damage that was inflicted by the U.S. remains unclear — U.S. officials say they are still assessing the results — it does appear extensive. “The places we targeted were the things that made the airfield operate,” said Davis.
A pro-Assad Emirates-based news outlet, al-Masdar, reported that cruise missiles struck both runways and a hangar. It said that 15 fighter jets had been damaged or destroyed and that fuel tankers exploded, causing several large blasts and a massive fireball that was still raging several hours after the strike.
Some reports suggest that at least one of the two main runways is now unusable.
Turkish presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın talked about “the destruction of al-Sharyat air base,” saying Friday in Ankara, “It marks an important step to ensure that both chemical and conventional attacks against the civilian population do not go unpunished.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based watchdog that relies on activists on the ground for its information, says the base, which covers an area more than eight square kilometers and has two runways as well as dozens of buildings, silos and storage facilities, was “almost completely destroyed.” The attack damaged more than a dozen hangars, a fuel depot and an air defense base, the observatory said.
If true, then the Syrian military will feel the loss of the base and likely face a severe challenge in the coming days in operations in northwest and central Syria. Al-Sharyat has been crucial in recent weeks in the regime’s efforts to repel a rebel offensive in Hama.
For the opposition, the missile strike holds out the hope that its cause is not totally lost — despite U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson telling reporters that the strike did not mean the wider U.S. policy on Syria had changed.
The Syrian National Coalition, the main political opposition group, welcomed the U.S. attack, saying it puts an end to an age of “impunity” and hoped it was just the beginning.
Strike’s consequences
Questions remain about what the consequences of the attack will be. If it is a one-only action, then it may only limit the Assad government’s use of chemical weapons and nerve agents. However, analysts — and no doubt regime strategists, too — are trying to fathom whether the strike will draw the U.S. deeper into the Syrian war. Will other red lines be drawn by the Trump administration, for example, when it comes to barrel bombs being dropped on civilians?
And what will be the impact on the effort by the U.S. and its allies to expel Islamic State fighters from the terror group’s de facto capital of Raqqa? U.S. airstrikes on IS, and a ground presence of hundreds of U.S. Marines and special forces in northern Syria, have benefited from an arrangement among the U.S., Russia and Syria established to avoid their warplanes tangling in the crowded airspace over northern Syria.
The Kremlin said Friday it is suspending an air safety agreement with the U.S. in response to the missile strike, and the Russian military announced it is reinforcing Syrian air defenses.
Other uncertainties are thrown up by the cruise strike.
Alberto Fernandez, a former U.S. ambassador, warns there could be an impact in the battle for Mosul, Iraq, and says “Iraq bears careful watching.
“That is where Iranian proxies could orchestrate a response,” to the U.S. cruise attack, he said.
Iran, a staunch Assad ally, condemned the U.S. missile strike, warning it was “dangerous.” Mosul is Iraq’s second-largest city. IS militants took control of Mosul in 2014 and, in October of last year, Iraqi military forces launched an offensive to retake the city.
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Trump Critics Support Syria Strikes but Say Congressional Approval Needed for More Military Action
President Donald Trump’s decision to authorize cruise missile strikes on a Syrian government airbase drew broad support from U.S. senators from both parties, even though some expressed concern that he did not first seek Congressional approval for the military action.
Several of President Donald Trump’s strongest political opponents backed the action. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the airstrikes “the right thing to do” in light of the alleged chemical weapon attack carried out by Syria’s military. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called it “a proportional response.”
U.S. military leaders said the 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles targeted the airbase that they say was responsible for the alleged Sarin gas attack in Idlib province that killed at least 72 civilians, including women and children.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the action sent a powerful message to both U.S. allies and adversaries.
“I think it also reassures our Sunni Arab allies that America is back, in terms of playing a leadership role, and trying to be constructive in a variety of different places around the world, as well as a message to Iran, and North Korea, and the Russians, that America intends to lead again,” he said.
Lawmakers were more divided over Congress’ role.
The Obama and Trump administrations have relied on Congress’ authorization of military force following the September 2001 terror attacks to carry out strikes against terror groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaida. But some lawmakers suggested Friday’s strikes against the Syrian government require new Congressional authorization.
“If the President intends to escalate the U.S. military’s involvement in Syria, he must come to Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force which is tailored to meet the threat and prevent another open-ended war in the Middle East,” said Minority Leader Pelosi.
Republican Senator Rand Paul criticized Friday’s strikes, saying prior U.S. interventions in Middle East conflict “have done nothing to make us safer.”
“The President needs Congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution,” he said in a statement.
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