After two years in office, Tanzanian President John Magufuli has brought many changes to his country, including economic development and a low tolerance for corruption. But critics say the president acts like a dictator and is undermining democracy. Mohammed Yusuf files this report from Dar es Salaam.
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Month: December 2017
US Officials Warn of Islamic State’s New Caliphate: Cyberspace
The collapse of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate has not diminished the militant group’s ability to inspire attacks on Western targets via the internet, U.S. national security officials told senators on Wednesday.
The Sunni Muslim extremist group has been building its external operations over the past two years and has claimed or been linked to at least 20 attacks against Western interests since January, said Lora Shiao, acting director of intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center.
“Unfortunately, we don’t see ISIS’ loss of territory translating into a corresponding reduction in its inability to inspire attacks,” she told a U.S. Senate committee.
“ISIS’ capacity to reach sympathizers around the world through its robust social media capability is unprecedented and gives the group access to large numbers of HVEs,” Shiao said, using the government’s acronym for homegrown violent extremists.
The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State estimated on Tuesday that fewer than 3,000 fighters belonging to the hardline Sunni militant group remain in Iraq and Syria, where they declared a caliphate in 2014.
ISIS was driven out of Raqqa, the Syrian city it called its capital, in October, prompting President Donald Trump to say “the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight.”
Yet “the elimination of the physical caliphate does not mark the end of ISIS or other global terrorist organizations,” said Mark Mitchell, acting assistant defense secretary for special operations/low-intensity conflict.
As ISIS loses territory it will become more reliant on virtual connections, he said, and continue to inspire “stray dog” attacks by vulnerable people.
Senators questioned the security officials about U.S. efforts to fight online recruitment of potential extremists.
“This is the new caliphate – in cyberspace,” said Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The experts described an evolving threat including ISIS’ ability to adapt its narrative after territorial losses to portray the struggle as a long-term process.
The internet is the primary tool for radicalization and no group has been more successful than ISIS in drawing people into its message, said Nikki Floris, deputy assistant director for counterterrorism at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In a possible reference to Trump’s use of Twitter, Democratic Senator Kamala Harris asked Floris, “Has the FBI examined the role that social media posts or videos from our own government officials affect the online recruitment tactics used by ISIS?”
The answer was no.
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Senate Panel’s Russia Probe Must Run Its Course, Leader Says
The Senate Intelligence Committee has interviewed “well over a hundred” people as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s U.S. presidential election, with more interviews still to come.
Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, praised what he described Wednesday as “unprecedented access to individuals and to intelligence,” but refused to predict when the investigation might end.
“I know exactly how many [people] I’ve got on the deck to interview, I know how many interviews can be done in a week, in a month, so I could project today when I finish those,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many people might get on the deck between now and that time that we didn’t know about.”
Burr admitted to The New York Times late last month that President Donald Trump had asked him to wrap up his investigation “as quickly as possible.”
But speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, he said he stood by what he told Trump about the investigation having to run its course.
“That’s the answer I’d give you,” Burr said. “When we have interviewed everybody that needs to be interviewed, and we feel like we have answered every question that the committee jurisdictionally should, we will finish.”
Lessons for next elections
While Burr refused to say when the Intelligence Committee’s already 11-month-old investigation might be done, he did say the goal was to at least be able to share lessons learned in time to help bolster security for the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.
“If we’re not to a point that we can write a final report with sufficient time for states to be able to handle their primaries this year, then we will probably make a joint decision to release our recommendations on election security by itself so that states can at least have the blueprint that we suggest,” Burr said.
Burr said most of the recommendations involve “common sense” precautions and would not require new laws or help from the federal government.
The Intelligence Committee chair also said he was not bothered by Trump’s apparent reluctance to talk about Russia’s activities in the same way he has addressed Iran and North Korea.
“I think in many cases that’s his art of negotiating,” Burr said. He said he thought the president’s intent in any such discussions was to keep the other side from knowing “where he’s coming from.”
“It is uncomfortable sometimes for members of Congress,” Burr said. “It is uncomfortable sometimes for the American people. It is his style. I don’t think it’s going to change.”
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US House Passes Resolution ‘Condemning Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya’
The U.S. House of Representatives condemned the “ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya” on Wednesday, passing a resolution by a two-thirds voice vote “calling for an end to the attacks” against the Muslim minority in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
The resolution is the first step in congressional action that could eventually include a stand-alone sanctions bill aimed at putting financial pressure on the Burmese military and providing U.S. economic assistance to Myanmar.
“This is a moral issue and a national security issue,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, a Republican from California, said on the House floor Tuesday. “No one is secure when extremism and instability is growing in this part of the world.”
Hundreds of thousands flee
An estimated 600,000 Rohingya have been displaced in recent months, fleeing into Bangladesh and creating a humanitarian crisis.
“Hundreds have been killed,” Royce said as he described the scope of the crisis. “At least 200 villages have been burned to the ground, landmines have been placed inside Burma’s border with Bangladesh, maiming refugees who are seeking safe haven. There are reports of rapes and all types of violence committed against the Rohingya.”
The bipartisan resolution – co-sponsored by Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley of New York and Republican Representative Steve Chabot of Ohio – calls for “an end to the attacks in and an immediate restoration of humanitarian access to the state of Rakhine in Burma.”
The resolution also calls on Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto head of Myanmar’s government, and the Burmese military to work together to implement humanitarian aid and reconciliation.
“The Burmese military’s widespread brutality toward Rohingya civilians over the last few months and its attempts to drive them out of the country are deeply disturbing.” Chabot told VOA in a statement on the passage of the resolution. “That is why Congressman Crowley and I introduced H.Con.Res. 90, to condemn this ethnic cleansing and show the American people’s outrage at these attacks.
“This resolution calls on Burmese authorities to work with the international community to resolve the crisis while also calling on Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson to impose sanctions on those responsible for human rights abuses,” Chabot added.
Tillerson shifted the U.S. approach to the crisis last month when he deemed the violence against the Rohingya ethnic cleansing, saying, “This violence must stop, this persecution must stop.”
Sanctions effort
A bipartisan sanctions bill introduced last month by New York Democratic Representative Eliot Engel, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and by Chabot would end U.S. military ties with Myanmar while imposing harsh sanctions on industries that fund the Burmese military.
If passed, the bill also would reimpose sanctions on the lucrative Burmese gem trade that were lifted last year by then-president Barack Obama in an executive order.
A companion bill in the U.S. Senate is sponsored by Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Todd Young of Indiana, and Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois and Ben Cardin of Maryland.
“If they want to go back to the bad old days when we had all sorts of restrictions on them – economic restrictions, trade restrictions, political restrictions – then we’re forced to go back to those bad old days because if they’re going to perpetuate ethnic cleansing, we don’t want to be complicit,” Engel told VOA in an interview last month.
Chabot told VOA the sanctions bill also provides key economic funding for Rohingya refugees returning to Myanmar.
“The goal here is to get those who have been displaced and in general have gone to Bangladesh to allow them to return to Burma to return to their homes, although a lot of those homes have been burned to the ground by the military, so there’s an awful lot of economic development that’s going to be necessary,” Chabot said.
A source on the House Foreign Affairs Committee told VOA there is strong bipartisan interest in the bill, but that it is still undergoing refinements with outside groups as it collects cosponsors.
With just six working days left in the House legislative calendar and a full congressional agenda that includes funding the government, the bill is highly unlikely to move forward until next year.
But passage of the resolution is a key first step for the U.S. Congress.
“The United States certainly cannot solve every problem in the world,” resolution co-sponsor Crowley said Tuesday. “But there are some things that we can, and that we must do. And imposing sanctions against the perpetrators of atrocities in Burma is one of the things that we must do. Doing so will send an important signal that we are watching, and we are not standing by idly.”
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Russia’s Olympic Ban Strengthens Putin’s Re-election Hand
Opinion polls show Vladimir Putin is already a shoo-in to win a fourth presidential term. But a ban on Russia taking part in the Winter Olympics is likely to make support for him even stronger, by uniting voters around his message: The world is against us.
Putin announced on Wednesday that he would run for re-election in March’s presidential vote, setting the stage for him to extend his dominance of Russia’s political landscape into a third decade.
With ties between the Kremlin and the West at their lowest point for years, the International Olympic Committee’s decision to bar Russia from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games over doping is seen in Moscow as a humiliating and politically tinged act.
Putin, echoing his familiar refrain that his country is facing a treacherous Western campaign to hold it back, said he had “no doubt” that the IOC’s decision was “absolutely orchestrated and politically-motivated.”
“Russia will continue moving forwards, and nobody will ever be able to stop this forward movement,” Putin said.
Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the upper house of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, had been among the first to cast the move as part of a Western plot against Russia, which sees sport as a barometer of geopolitical influence.
“They are targeting our national honor … our reputation … and our interests. They (the West) bought out the traitors … and orchestrated media hysteria,” Kosachyov wrote on social media.
The IOC ruling is also seen by many in Russia as a personal affront to Putin, who was re-elected president in 2012 after spending four years as prime minister because the constitution barred him from a third consecutive term as head of state.
The sport-loving leader cast his hosting of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, at which the IOC says there was “unprecedented systematic manipulation” of the anti-doping system, as a symbol of Russia’s success under his rule.
But Putin has often extracted political benefit from crises, and turned international setbacks into domestic triumphs, by accusing the West of gunning for Russia and using this to inspire Russians to unite.
“Outside pressure on Russia, understood as politically motivated and orchestrated from the U.S., leads to more national cohesion,” Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said on Wednesday.
“Various sanctions are being turned into instruments of nation-building.”
Putin’s popularity, supported by state television, is already high. Opinion polls regularly give him an approval rating of around 80 percent.
But casting the IOC ban as a Western plot to hurt Russia, something he did when Russian athletes were banned from last year’s Summer Olympics in Rio over doping, could help him mobilize the electorate.
Public anger over the IOC move could help Putin overcome signs of voter apathy and ensure a high turnout which, in the tightly controlled limits of the Russian political system, is seen as conferring legitimacy.
There were early signs that fury over the IOC’s decision was duly stirring patriotic fervor.
“Russia is a superpower,” Alexander Kudrashov, a member of the Russian Military Historical Society, told Reuters on Moscow’s Red Square after the IOC ruling.
Without Russia, he said, the Olympics would not be valid. He linked the decision to a Western anti-Russian campaign which many Russians believe took hold after Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
“Choosing between the people in Crimea, who wept when the Russian flag was run up and who were doomed to genocide, and sportspeople taking first place on the podium, I choose the people who couldn’t defend themselves,” Kudrashov said.
‘We soak it up and survive’
Blaming the West is an approach the Kremlin has often used before when faced with international allegations of wrongdoing — over Crimea’s annexation, the shooting down of a Malaysian passenger plane over Ukraine in July 2014 and charges of meddling in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists rebelled against rule from Kiev after Crimea was annexed.
The tactic taps into Russians’ patriotism and makes Putin almost bullet-proof when it comes to scandal. The 65-year-old former KGB agent is regarded by many voters as a tsar-like father-of-the-nation figure who has brought their country back from the brink of collapse.
When at the start of the year it seemed there was a window to repair relations with the West after the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he wanted better ties, the narrative of Russia versus the world was muted.
But when it became clear that U.S. allegations of Russian meddling in Trump’s election precluded any rapprochement, Putin doubled down on the narrative. In October, he launched a stinging critique of U.S. policy, listing what he called the biggest betrayals in U.S.-Russia relations.
Sources close to the Russian government say the IOC ban, along with continued Western sanctions over Ukraine and the prospect of new sanctions, will help the authorities rally voters around the banner of national unity which Putin embodies.
“Outside pressure just makes us stronger,” said one such source who declined to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, set the tone on social media in comments that found ready support from many Russians.
“What haven’t we been forced to suffer from our ‘partners’ in the course of our history,” she wrote. “But they just can’t bring us down. Not via a world war, the collapse of the Soviet Union or sanctions … We soak it up and survive.”
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Whistleblower: Flynn Signaled End to Russia Sanctions Minutes Into Trump Presidency
Donald Trump was just 11 minutes into his presidency last January when his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, texted a former business associate from the steps of the Capitol that an American plan to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East with Russia was “good to go,” a whistleblower’s account says.
Flynn, according to the whistleblower, assured the former associate that sanctions imposed by former President Barack Obama in response to Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election would immediately be “ripped up.”
The account, divulged Wednesday by U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the lead Democrat on the House oversight committee, came less than a week after Flynn pleaded guilty of lying to federal investigators when they questioned him just days after Trump was inaugurated about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to Washington in the weeks before Trump assumed power.
Meeting with associate
Cummings did not name the whistleblower. But in a detailed account, Cummings said the whistleblower later on Inauguration Day, January 20, attended an event where he met with Alex Copson, managing partner of ACU Strategic Partners and the business associate Flynn had purportedly texted from the seats behind Trump as he gave his inaugural address.
The whistleblower, according to Cummings’s account, asked Copson how he was doing, and quoted Copson as saying, “I couldn’t be better. This is the best day of my life.”
Copson told the whistleblower that he had gotten a text from Flynn that the nuclear project that Copson had “been working on for years” was “good to go” and to tell their business associates to “let them know to put things in place,” Cummings wrote in a letter to the House oversight panel’s chairman, Republican Trey Gowdy of South Carolina.
Copson showed the whistleblower his cellphone with the purported Flynn text, although he did not read it. But the whistleblower said he saw that the time stamp was 12:11 p.m., 11 minutes after Trump was sworn in as the country’s 45th president.
Copson told the whistleblower, according to the Cummings account, “Mike has been putting everything in place for us. I am going to celebrate today. This is going to make a lot of very wealthy people.”
Cummings said that after he met with the whistleblower, he found him “to be authentic, credible and reliable.”
Lies cited in firing
Trump fired Flynn 24 days into his service as national security adviser after wiretaps showed he had discussed the sanctions with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump administration officials about the nature of his conversations with Moscow’s envoy.
As it turned out, the Obama sanctions — the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and closure of two Russian facilities in the U.S. — were never lifted. Months later, Russia retaliated by ordering the U.S. to cut 755 of its 1,200 workers at several U.S. outposts in Russia, who in many instances were Russians.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is in the midst of a criminal investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. election. The U.S. intelligence community has concluded the Russian meddling was personally directed by President Vladimir Putin, aimed at undermining U.S. democracy and helping the Republican Trump defeat his Democratic challenger, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Putin has denied Russian interference, while Trump has repeatedly railed against congressional investigations and the Mueller probe into Russia links to his campaign as excuses by Democrats to explain his upset victory over Clinton.
As part of his guilty plea, Flynn has agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation.
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Ukraine Tries to Fend Off Critics as West Cranks Up Pressure on Corruption
Ukraine’s general prosecutor denied on Wednesday that his office was impeding the work of a new anti-corruption body as he sought to deflect charges by Kyiv’s Western backers that Ukraine was backsliding on promises to fight graft.
The United States, the European Union and Canada have thrown financial and diplomatic support behind the leadership that took power in Kyiv after the 2014 Maidan protests ousted the Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovich.
But perceived backsliding on reform commitments has delayed billions of dollars in loans from the International Monetary Fund and tested the patience of Western countries even as Kyiv pushes for closer EU integration and possible membership.
The United States and EU have homed in on concerns that vested interests are trying to undermine the independence of the anti-corruption bureau known as NABU, which was set up after the Maidan protests and has been at loggerheads with other law enforcement bodies.
One recent episode had the General Prosecutor’s office unmasking an alleged sting operation being carried out by NABU against suspected corruption in the migration service. It said NABU had overstepped the law.
General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko told parliament he wanted to address issues around “the relationship between various law enforcement agencies that causes public outrage and rather harsh statements by our strategic international partners — the U.S. and the EU.”
He denied his office was at war with NABU, saying NABU officers must face the legal consequences if they commit offenses.
“Our normal cooperation does not mean that the General Prosecutor’s office can ignore signs that laws have been broken,” Lutsenko said.
Earlier Wednesday, NABU tweeted thanks to international backers for their support, posting statements released this week by the U.S. Department of State and the EU.
Questionable actions
The U.S. State Department said on Monday that recent events in Ukraine, including the disruption of a high-level corruption investigation and the arrest of NABU officials, raised concerns about its commitment to fighting corruption.
“These actions … undermine public trust and risk eroding international support for Ukraine,” a spokeswoman said.
The EU on Tuesday night urged that the work of anti-corruption institutions “must not be undermined but reinforced.”
Britain’s Ambassador to Kyiv, Judith Gough, on Wednesday cited a survey showing corruption within state bodies was the top issue for Ukrainian voters.
“Surely tackling corruption is a vote winner, rather than undermining institutions active in the fight against corruption?” she tweeted.
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Ivory Coast to Retire 1,000 Soldiers to Slim Down Military
Ivory Coast will cut its armed forces by about 1,000 troops by the end of the year, a government spokesman said Wednesday, in a bid to rationalize a costly and sometimes unruly military.
Government spokesman Bruno Kone told reporters after a cabinet meeting that the 997 soldiers had accepted voluntary retirement this year as part of an initiative to conform to “accepted standards,” partly by reducing the ratio of noncommissioned officers to lower ranks.
Ivory Coast does not give details on the size of its military, but security sources estimate there are more than 25,000 troops in a country with a population of about 24 million.
Francophone West Africa’s biggest economy suffered two army mutinies this year that damaged its reputation among investors and forced the government to agree to costly pay increases.
“The distribution of Ivory Coast’s army is out of step with the standards accepted in modern armies,” Kone said.
The former French colony, once known as one of the most stable states in West Africa, is still recovering from a brief civil war fought after President Alassane Ouattara won a disputed election in 2010 but incumbent Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down.
Ouattara has struggled to assert his authority over the army, which was cobbled together in an uneasy merger of the northern New Forces rebels who supported him and the professional troops who had fought against him.
The soldiers being taken out of action include three senior officers, 634 noncommissioned officers and 354 regular soldiers, Kone said.
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Thousands March in Helsinki in Rival Political Protests
Supporters of the far right in Finland and anti-facists staged rival marches in the capital Wednesday as the country celebrated 100 years of independence.
Police in riot gear reinforced by security personnel from around the country made 10 arrests because of scattered fights and misbehavior. About 2,000 people joined the anti-facist march while demonstrations by two far-right groups also gathered up to 2,000 people, the police said.
Anti-immigrant sentiment has been on the rise in the Nordic European Union member country of 5.5 million. About 32,500 migrants and refugees arrived during Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015. The number came down to 5,600 last year.
“No Nazis in Helsinki!” shouted anti-fascist demonstrators.
Far-right marchers promoted the slogan “Toward freedom,” and many carried torches. Last week, a court banned a neo-Nazi group called Nordic Resistance Movement, but it took part in a march as the decision has yet to be implemented.
Finland was part of the Russian empire and won independence during the 1917 Russian Revolution, then nearly lost it fighting the Soviet Union in World War II.
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Six Arrested in Zambia in Crackdown on Illegal Sale of Foreign Aid
Six people, including two pharmacy owners, have been arrested in Zambia and accused of the illegal sale of HIV and malaria testing kits as part of an international crackdown on profiteering from foreign aid, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
The test kits are provided in developing countries like Zambia for free distribution, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Inspector General (OIG) said.
It said the arrests stem from an effort to make U.S. foreign assistance more effective and accountable by investigating complaints of fraud and misconduct in global health programs.
“We coordinate closely with international partners to thwart the work of criminals who prey upon the U.S. government-supported global health supply chain,” said Jonathan Schofield, OIG’s special agent in charge of global health investigations.
“Our recent work with partners in the U.S. Embassy in Zambia and Zambia National Task Force has stopped several offenders who exploited international aid for personal gain,” he said in a statement.
The six people were arrested in Zambia last week on suspicion of illicitly selling the medical kits in its capital, Lusaka.
During a five-month probe, investigators visited pharmacies in Lusaka and found kits on sale that had been provided by the U.S. government and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a public-private partnership, OIG said.
The six people arrested were the main targets of the investigation and remain in jail, it said.
Earlier OIG investigations have rooted out the illegal sale of anti-malarial drugs in Guinea and Malawi, it said.
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Italy’s Former PM Renzi Loses More Allies as Election Nears
Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, whose Democratic Party (PD) is shedding support in opinion polls, suffered a further setback on Wednesday when two allies said they would not contest next year’s election.
Renzi quit as prime minister a year ago after losing a referendum on his planned constitutional reforms. He aims to return to power at the vote due by May, but the PD has split under his leadership and his prospects seem to be dwindling.
On Wednesday Giuliano Pisapia, a former mayor of Milan, announced that his small leftist party called The Progressive Camp (CP), which had been expected to join forces with the PD at the election, was disbanding.
Pisapia said it had proved “impossible to continue talks with the PD”, and complained in particular about Renzi’s unwillingness to push through a contested law making it easier for the children of immigrants to obtain Italian citizenship.
Hours later, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano, leader of the centrist Popular Alternative party (AP) which governs with the PD, said he would not be running at the election, throwing into doubt the future of the party he founded.
The CP and AP have less than 3 percent of the vote each, according to opinion polls, but the latest defections weaken the center-left in which a declining PD is now virtually without any allies.
“The left and the PD are crumbling away,” said Renato Brunetta, lower house leader of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party which is the lynchpin of a center-right alliance that is expected to win most seats at the election.
On Sunday, leftist parties which had already quit the PD joined forces under the leadership of Senate Speaker Piero Grasso to form Free and Equal, a new grouping already credited with around 6 percent of the vote and expected to grow further at the expense of the PD.
Renzi’s PD critics say he has dragged the traditionally left-leaning party to the right and lament what they say is his autocratic, domineering leadership style.
The PD has been steadily losing support since it won over 40 percent of the vote at European elections in 2014. Surveys suggest it would now poll around 25 percent, some 3 points behind the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement.
The center-right bloc is made up of Forza Italia and the anti-immigrant Northern League, each with around 15 percent, and the right-wing Brothers of Italy, on around 5 percent.
While the center-right is seen winning most seats at the election, opinion polls suggest it will not win an absolute majority, making a hung parliament the most likely outcome.
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Botched Saakashvili Arrest Seen as Tarnishing Ukraine’s Image
High drama degenerated into farce with the attempted arrest of Mikheil Saakashvili by Ukrainian authorities on Tuesday, leaving international experts puzzled about the motives behind the move but in agreement on one point—the mishandled operation has so far served mainly to tarnish the image of Ukraine’s government.
Television cameras captured most of the action as riot-clad security forces dragged the one-time president of Georgia from his Kyiv apartment to a waiting police van, only to be blocked by a mob of Saakashvili supporters who eventually helped him escape from the van. The Georgian firebrand-turned-Ukrainian opposition leader then led the crowd on a march to parliament while denouncing his former friend and ally, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
The failed arrest stemmed from charges filed by Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who alleges that Saakashvili financed opposition political activities by conspiring with fugitive Ukrainian oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko—an ally of the ousted former president Viktor Yanukovych, who now lives in self-imposed exile in Russia.
Saakashvili calls the charges a politically motivated fabrication to keep him from seeking public office in Ukraine.
Addressing a panel of regional experts at the Washington-based CATO Institute via Skype from an undisclosed location on Wednesday, Saakashvili denied ever having been in contact with Kurchenko.
“I don’t know who Kurchenko is, I never met him,” he said. “I mean, I’ve heard that he exists, but I never met him.”
Adrian Karatnycky, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, told VOA’s Ukrainian Service the charges against Saakashvili amount to “either the largest libel in Ukraine’s history—dwarfing the spurious charges pressed against [former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia] Tymoshenko by Yanukovych—or Saakashvili has yielded to the temptation to raise funding for the revolution by falling prey to his own thirst for power and political influence.”
Although Saakashvili is a self-declared enemy of Russia, he may not be an enemy of Russian financing, Karatnycky suggested.
“He could have easily thought that he is able to cautiously use Moscow funding in his own interests,” Karatnycky said. “No one is saying that Russia would be trying to support Saakashvili. This could have been Russian influence agents destabilizing the situation in Ukraine.
“At the same time, Saakashvili’s driving motive is to find the means to reach what he has seen as his goal – that is saving Ukraine, rebuilding it in the way that he thinks is right.”
Rise and fall
Saakashvili, the hero of Georgia’s “Rose Revolution,” led demonstrators to storm the Georgian parliament in 2003, ending the post-Soviet rule in Tbilisi of one-time Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze. For years he was welcomed in Washington as a hero of Western-style democracy.
After introducing sweeping reforms to reduce official corruption, his rule became tainted by allegations of increasing authoritarianism. The 2008 routing of Georgian forces in the country’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions by Russian troops prompted a steady decline in Saakashvili’s popularity. By the end of his second and last term in office, his party had lost control of parliament, and soon afterward he left the country in the face of what he dismisses as trumped-up criminal charges.
To the rescue came his old friend Poroshenko, who provided him not only a Ukrainian passport but also a post as governor of the southwestern region of Odessa. Looking to burnish his own reformist credentials in Ukraine’s post-Euromaidan upheaval, Poroshenko placed Saakashvili, along with a handful of ex-Georgian democratic revolutionaries, in Ukrainian government sectors tainted by graft.
But Saakashvili gradually fell out with Kyiv’s leadership, leading him to resign the governorship and announce the formation of a new political movement last fall.
Although the source of funding for Saakashvili’s movement has not been clear, Karatnycky says the lack of financial transparency is typical for Ukrainian political parties of all stripes.
“For years we have been saying that the funding sources for Saakashvili’s political activities are unknown,” said Karatnycky. “Despite that, there is [a broader] lack of attention to transparency. No one attempted to audit his operations. How much have the protest actions cost? Offices? Staff? Busing participants? If there were a more balanced and thorough monitoring of the authors of radical anti-corruption slogans, there would have been less space for a rigged game.”
Ukraine’s credibility at stake
If it can be proven Saakashvili conspired with Russian interests, Karatnycky said, it would bolster Poroshenko’s claims of rampant Russian meddling in Ukraine’s domestic politics. If, however, the charges cannot be proven, the botched arrest and unproven charges may exacerbate political infighting and dueling accusations of political corruption.
Neither outcome, he added, bodes well for Ukraine.
“I think that we can see the crisis of trust not only on behalf of the society, but also on behalf of the Western countries, which would want to see Ukrainian people quickly issue new governance mandates for the country,” Karatnycky said.
Taking to Twitter Tuesday morning, Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister who co-chairs the European Council on Foreign Relations, was more succinct.
“News from Ukraine is distinctly disturbing,” he said. “Political arrests will radically diminish the country’s credibility in the West. That’s a security issue at the end of the day.”
“Trying to arrest Saakashvili on the pretext that he’s some sort of Russian agent looks extremely amateurish,” Bildt added. “Who will believe that story?”
Economist Anders Aslund of the Washington-based Atlantic Council said the eruption of protests following Saakashvili’s arrest indicate growing distrust of Ukrainian law enforcement.
“The SBU [security service] and the prosecutor general’s office are seen as the most unlawful corporate raiders by active Ukrainians,” he told VOA. “The clumsy attempt to arrest Saakashvili was seen by many as an attempt to use law enforcement to reduce political freedom.
“The big civil society disappointment has been that the judicial reform has failed as 25 of the 113 new Supreme Court judges were verified as corrupt,” he said. “In the last two weeks the SBU and the general prosecutor have pursued a lawless campaign against the new Anticorruption Bureau, which has aroused suspicions that the government wants to eliminate it.”
State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said U.S. officials are monitoring the situation in Kyiv closely.
“As you know we have a good relationship with the government of Ukraine, but it doesn’t mean that we agree with them on absolutely everything,” she said during a press briefing in which she urged Kyiv officials to deescalate tensions and called on all sides to avoid violence and honor international commitments.
She referred all further details of Saakashvili’s case to the government of Ukraine.
This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian Service. Ia Meurmishvili of VOA’s Georgian Service contributed original reporting.
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Nigerian Migrants Return From Libya With Tales Of Horror
Some knelt and placed their foreheads to the ground in prayer. Several carried small children. After being stranded in Libya on a failed attempt to reach Europe, more than 400 Nigerian migrants were brought home and began sharing stories of abuse and fear.
“If they lock you up in a room, you hardly eat, that’s number one,” Ejike Ernest, one of the returnees, told The Associated Press on arrival late Tuesday in Lagos. “You’ll urinate there, you’ll defecate there and every morning, let me say three times a day, you will be severely beaten” until you can pay the money to be freed.
Nigeria’s government, its president appalled by recent CNN footage of a slave auction in Libya where migrant Africans were “sold like goats,” has committed to bringing its citizens home, along with a number of other African nations.
After disembarking from a plane chartered by Nigeria, the European Union and the International Organization for Migration, some of the newest arrivals looked exhausted, some clutching sleepy children. Some were astonished by the way they had been treated.
“It’s heartbreaking, especially when I see a 13-year-old come with a baby,” said Abike Dabiri-Erewa, senior special assistant to Nigeria’s president on diaspora and foreign affairs. “One 14-year-old girl said to us she doesn’t know how many men have slept with her, she can’t count … You look at them and wonder whether their lives can ever be the same again.”
The African Union and member states will repatriate more than 15,000 migrants stranded in Libya by the end of the year amid outrage over the slave auction footage, the AU’s deputy chairman said Tuesday.
Between 400,000 and 700,000 African migrants are in dozens of camps across the chaotic North African country, often under inhumane conditions, AU Commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat told a summit of European and African leaders last week.
The AU has a six-week plan to “access all detention centers in Libya and repatriate all those who want to return home,” Mahamat said Wednesday on Twitter.
Europe has struggled to stem the flow of tens of thousands of Africans making the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean. But many Africans still make the journey, risking death and abuse, saying high unemployment and climate change leave them little choice.
Another Nigerian recently repatriated told the AP about his ordeal.
“I paid 500,000 naira ($1,600) to one Nigerian called Mr. Fix It in 2016 to facilitate my illegal journey to Europe through Libya across the Mediterranean Sea. But on getting to Libya, he abandoned all of us to our fate,” the man said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fears for his security.
He said he and others were detained by Libyan militia members and kept in a makeshift prison where they were tortured and starved. More than 10 Nigerians, including girls, were sold as slaves. He was lucky to be rescued by security forces, he said, and was repatriated in July.
African and European leaders last week drew up an emergency evacuation plan for migrants, agreeing to airlift at least 3,800 stranded in one of more than 40 detention centers across Libya. Morocco, France, and Germany will provide the air carriers, according to Gambian senior foreign affairs official Ebrima Jobe.
Jobe criticized the “African brothers” who act as middlemen for the smugglers. “Our criminal justice system should without delay initiate the prosecution of all those Africans involved,” he said.
Other African countries are now joining in on repatriations, including Ivory Coast and Cameroon.
Amnesty International has criticized Europe, saying its primary aim is to close the Mediterranean route and leave hundreds of thousands of migrants trapped in Libya and facing horrific abuses.
John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Director for Europe, said: “Plans which overwhelmingly prioritize the ‘voluntary’ return of people now stuck in Libya to their country of origin without an effective system for assessing and meeting asylum needs or offering more resettlement places will end up as a mechanism for mass deportation.”
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Trump to Announce Decision to Recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital
U.S. President Donald Trump will announce his decision on whether to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a speech Wednesday. During his presidential campaign Trump has promised to make that move. The Palestinians, the Arabs and the United Nations warned Tuesday that making a unilateral decision would undermine the Middle East peace process. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Fentanyl Fueling US Opioid Crisis: Experts
Fueling the increase in opioid addiction and overdoses in the U.S. is a little known synthetic opioid called fentanyl. In this segment of the series “State of Emergency – America’s Opioid Crisis,” we take a look at what the introduction of fentanyl into the drug supply has done to the community of Louisville, Kentucky. Jeff Swicord reports.
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Congress Weighs Condemning Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing
The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on a resolution this week condemning the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Burma, also known as Myanmar. VOA’s Congressional reporter Katherine Gypson has more on the U.S. Congress’ efforts to stop the crisis, including a tough sanctions bill cracking down on the Burmese military responsible for the violence.
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Supreme Court Hears Gay Wedding Cake Arguments
The Chief Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in one of their biggest cases of the year Tuesday, a five-year-old controversy over whether a baker should have been obligated by law to provide a wedding cake to a same-sex couple.
The case centers on the boundaries of free speech and free exercise of religion, in light of laws that ban business owners from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, sexuality, or other factors.
Interest groups are backing each side.
The gay couple, Colorado residents Charlie Craig and David Mullins, have their support from the American Civil Liberties Union, arguing that the couple should have been able to purchase their custom wedding cake from the Masterpiece Cakeshop.
The owner of the cake shop, Jack Phillips, is backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, which argues that Phillips, who designs the cakes, is an artist, making his products exempt from public accommodations laws.
The case before the Supreme Court is an appeal brought by Phillips and his supporters, after the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld an original ruling requiring Masterpiece Cakeshop to provide custom cakes for same-sex couples and change company policies and training to reflect the change.
Phillips has refused to comply with the order and instead stopped making wedding cakes, a move he has said cost him a great deal of business.
One of the arguments the justices considered on Tuesday was whether a wedding cake should be considered a product or an expression of free speech. Phillips, a conservative Christian, says making a cake for the couple would amount to expressing his support of their marriage.
A ruling in the case is not expected before 2018.
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Nigeria Ramps Up Crusade Against Human Trafficking
By rewarding whistleblowers, boosting prosecutions and challenging beliefs in black magic, Nigeria is ramping up its crusade against human trafficking, backed by millions of pounds of British aid, anti-slavery and government officials said.
Thousands of Nigerian women and girls are lured to Europe each year, making the treacherous sea crossing from Libya to Italy, and trafficked into sex work, the United Nations says.
The number of female Nigerians arriving in Italy by boat surged to more than 11,000 last year from 1,500 in 2014, with at least four in five forced into prostitution, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
To tackle this rise, Nigeria’s anti-trafficking agency NAPTIP is stepping up efforts to catch traffickers and support victims, backed by a 7 million pound aid package announced last week by Britain’s foreign aid department (DFID).
“We have embarked on more aggressive campaigns to create awareness,” Julie Okah-Donli, NAPTIP’s director, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We are covering all the schools and rural areas because this is where they get the girls from.”
The agency is also rewarding whistleblowers with a share of traffickers’ gains.
“Since the policy was adopted in October, we have had more than 50 people coming to us with information,” Okah-Donli added.
Britain’s latest pledge for Nigeria follows a promise in September to double its spending on global projects tackling slavery and trafficking to 150 million pounds.
The money will create jobs in sectors such as hospitality, technology and farming in Nigeria, and support victims with safe houses, rehabilitation and training for counselors, DFID said.
“We are giving vulnerable people more choices to earn a living in their own country and reducing the chances of their suffering from modern slavery,” Penny Mordaunt, Britain’s international aid minister, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Battling black magic
More than nine out of 10 Nigerian women trafficked in Europe come from Edo, a predominantly Christian state of 3 million people, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC).
Edo’s governor, Godwin Obaseki, who came to power last year, said his office is tackling the problem.
“We have established a local task force to … increase surveillance intelligence and arrest traffickers,” he said, adding that a bill to give the task force powers to prosecute traffickers has been sent to the state parliament for approval.
Obaseki said his office was also trying to dispel fears around black magic, known as “juju”, which traps thousands of Nigerian women and girls in sex slavery in Europe.
Victims of trafficking fear that witchcraft rituals performed by spiritual priests could cause them or their relatives to fall ill or die if they disobey their traffickers, go to the police or fail to pay off their debts.
“We have gone to (the traditional priests) and asked them to reverse the juju,” said NAPTIP’s Okah-Donli, adding that the agency shows trafficked women photos of these priests to convince them that any curses cast upon them have been lifted.
The trafficking and enslavement of African migrants has been in the spotlight after footage broadcast by CNN last month appeared to show Africans being sold in Libya, sparking a global outcry and protests across Europe and Africa.
Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari said last week his government had started bringing stranded citizens home from Libya, referring on Twitter to the situation of people being sold into slavery as “appalling and unacceptable.”
IOM data shows that Nigerians made up 20 percent – the biggest share – of a record 181,400 migrants who reached Italy by boat from Libya last year seeking a better life in Europe.
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Mexican Acquitted of Murder in San Francisco Faces Gun, Immigration Charges
U.S. authorities on Tuesday charged a Mexican man with new immigration and gun violations less than a week after a San Francisco jury acquitted him of murder for the shooting death of Kate Steinle, a case that helped fuel a fierce national debate on immigration.
A federal grand jury in San Francisco indicted Jose Ines Garcia Zarate Tuesday on one count each of felon in possession of a firearm and of “being an alien illegally and unlawfully in the United States” in possession of a gun and ammunition, according to the indictment.
A San Francisco jury last week convicted him of a state charge of felon in possession of a firearm after acquitting him of murder and assault for the July 1, 2015 shooting.
The state conviction carries a maximum sentence of three years in jail. He has been in jail since the day of the shooting. His public defender Matt Gonzalez said Garcia Zarate will ask a judge to toss out the state conviction. Garcia Zarate is to be sentenced in state court Dec. 14
San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon on Tuesday defended his office’s handling of the case. He said he still believed Garcia Zarate should have been convicted of Steinle’s murder.
Legal experts have said prosecutors overreached by asking for a first-degree murder conviction because the fatal shot ricocheted off the ground, supporting Garcia Zarate’s defense that the shooting was an accident. Jurors could also have convicted Garcia Zarate of second-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter but chose not to.
Jurors left court last week without speaking publicly about their verdict and Gascon said they have not spoken with prosecutors either.
Garcia Zarate said he found a gun under a chair on a San Francisco pier. He said it fired accidentally when he picked it up.
President Donald Trump frequently brought up the case last year during his presidential campaign to criticize efforts in the U.S. to combat illegal immigration.
Garcia Zarate had been deported five time before the shooting. The San Francisco sheriff’s department also released him from jail several weeks before the shooting despite a request from federal immigration officials to detain him for deportation.
San Francisco is a so-called sanctuary city and local officials are limited in the cooperation they can give with federal deportation efforts.
Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding from cities with similar policies.
Gascon on Tuesday called Trump a “madman” for a series of tweets deriding the jury’s verdict.
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Officials: Jihadist Plot to Kill British Prime Minister Thwarted
Two men were charged Tuesday in London with terror offenses over an alleged plot to kill British Prime Minister Theresa May, according to British government officials.
Both will appear before a court Wednesday in the British capital in connection with what officials say was a conspiracy to launch a suicide-knife attack on Downing Street, the official home of the prime minister.
News of the foiled assassination plot broke shortly after the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, Andrew Parker, had briefed the cabinet on the terrorist threat and informed ministers that his service had thwarted nine terrorist attacks this year.
He informed ministers of the plot during the briefing, although the information was held back from the media for several hours.
Both of the conspirators were arrested last week in raids by counterterrorism officers in London and Birmingham, according to police officials. One of the men, named as Naa’imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, is accused of preparing acts of terrorism.
He was allegedly carrying two improvised explosive devices, which were inert, when he was arrested November 28 in London. His suspected co-conspirator was named as 21-year-old Mohammed Aqib Imran. He was seized 90 minutes later in a raid on a house in Birmingham in the English Midlands.
Imran also is accused of previously trying to secure a fake passport in a bid to reach Libya to join the Islamic State affiliate in the North African country.
According to officials, both men were plotting a bomb assault on the security gates protecting the entrance of Downing Street. Rahman then allegedly planned to storm Number Ten, wearing a suicide vest and using pepper spray and a knife, in an effort to kill Theresa May.
A Downing Street spokesman said earlier that Parker had told cabinet ministers that while Islamic State had suffered serious defeats in Iraq and Syria, “this did not mean the threat is over, rather it has spread into new areas, including trying to encourage attacks in the U.K. and elsewhere via propaganda on social media.”
Missed opportunities
The disclosures about the Downing Street plot came hours after an official report was released on last year’s Manchester bombing and other terror attacks on the British capital. According to the report undertaken by David Anderson, British security forces had missed opportunities to thwart the Manchester attack. The report confirmed that the ringleader of the London Bridge knifing spree had been under investigation by MI5.
The Anderson report revealed that the Manchester suicide bomber, British-Libyan Salman Abedi, had been flagged for closer scrutiny by the security services and that his bombing of the audience at an Ariana Grande concert in which 22 people died could have been averted “had the cards fallen differently.”
He said MI5 investigators had misinterpreted intelligence on Abedi. His case was due to be considered at a meeting scheduled for nine days after his May 2016 attack at the Manchester Arena.
But Anderson, a former terrorism law reviewer asked by the government to review the recent spate of terror attacks, concluded there is “no cause for despair.” Most terror plots continued to be foiled before they are launched, he said.
Downing Street security
Downing Street is heavily protected by fortified gates and armed police officers. Analysts say the chances of the men gaining entrance to the prime minister’s residence would have been remote.
Stringent protective measures were first put in place in the 1970s, and were tightened during the 1980s when Irish republicans launched attacks on the British mainland.
In 1991, the IRA managed to breach security, launching a homemade mortar bomb attack on Number 10. The mortars fell in the garden, but the explosions prompted officials and ministers to dive for cover.
The nearest the IRA got to killing a British prime minister was in 1984 when they targeted the hotel Margaret Thatcher and top officials were staying in for that year’s annual Conservative party conference in Brighton on Britain’s south coast. Thatcher was uninjured, but several ministers were seriously wounded in the bombing.
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US House Passes Measure to Limit Aid to Palestinians
The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to sharply reduce the annual $300 million in U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it take steps to stop making what lawmakers described as payments that reward violent crime.
The House backed by voice vote the Taylor Force Act, named after a 29-year-old American military veteran fatally stabbed by a Palestinian while visiting Israel last year.
The measure is intended to stop the Palestinians from paying stipends, referred to as “martyr payments,” to the families of militants killed or imprisoned by Israeli authorities. The payments can reach $3,500 per month.
“This perverse ‘pay-to-slay’ system uses a sliding scale.
The longer the jail sentence, the greater the reward. The highest payments go to those serving life sentences – to those who prove most brutal,” Republican Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said before the vote.
Force’s attacker was killed by Israeli police, and his killer’s family receives such a monthly payment.
To become law, the measure must also be passed by the U.S. Senate and signed by President Donald Trump. Similar legislation has been passed by two Senate committees, but there was no immediate word on when the Senate might take up the bill.
Its passage reflected strong pro-Israel sentiment in Washington.
Separately on Tuesday, Trump told Israeli and Arab leaders that he intends to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, changing decades-old U.S. policy, despite the Palestinians’ desire to have their capital in East Jerusalem.
Trump’s fellow Republicans control majorities in both the House and Senate.
Palestinian officials have said they intend to continue the payments, which they see as support for relatives of those imprisoned by Israel for fighting against occupation or who have died in connection with that cause.
The measures moving through Congress now are not as severe as had been proposed. The legislation passed by the House had been amended to allow exceptions such as continued funding for water projects and children’s vaccinations
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France’s War on Waste Makes It Most Food Sustainable Country
A war on food waste in France, where supermarkets are banned from throwing away unsold food and restaurants must provide doggy bags when asked, has helped it secure the top spot in a ranking of countries by their food sustainability.
Japan, Germany, Spain and Sweden rounded out the top five in an index published the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which graded 34 nations based on food waste, environment-friendly agriculture and quality nutrition.
It is “unethical and immoral” to waste resources when hundreds of millions go hungry across the world, Vytenis Andriukaitis, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said at the launch of the Food Sustainability Index 2017 on Tuesday.
“We are all responsible, every person and every country,” he said in the Italian city of Milan, according to a statement.
One third of all food produced worldwide, 1.3 billion tons per year, is wasted, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
Food releases planet-warming gases as it decomposes in landfills. The food the world wastes accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than any country except for China and the United States.
“What is really important is the vision and importance of [food sustainability] in these governments’ agendas and policies,” Irene Mia, global editorial director at the EIU, told Reuters. “It’s something that is moving up in governments’ agendas across the world.”
Global hunger levels rose last year for the first time in more than a decade, with 815 million people, more than one in 10 on the planet, going hungry.
France was the first country to introduce specific food waste legislation and loses only 1.8 percent of its total food production each year. It plans to cut this in half by 2025.
“France has taken some important and welcome steps forward including forcing supermarkets to stop throwing away perfectly edible food,” said Meadhbh Bolger, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe. “This needs to be matched at the European level with a EU-wide binding food waste reduction target.”
High-income countries performed better in the index, but the United States lagged in 21st place, dragged down by poor management of soil and fertilizer in agriculture, and excess consumption of meat, sugar and saturated fats, the study said.
The United Arab Emirates, despite having the highest income per head of the 34 countries, was ranked last, reflecting high food waste of almost 1,000 kilos per person per year, rising obesity and an agriculture sector dependent on depleting water resources, it said.
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Turkey’s President Says New York Trial is US Conspiracy
Turkey’s president says the New York trial of a Turkish banker is a U.S. conspiracy being staged to “blackmail” and “blemish” his country.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke Tuesday in Ankara, Turkey. His comments came as the trial of Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla continued in its second week.
Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab described criminal activities he was forced to divulge after he pleaded guilty to seven charges in October and became a government cooperator. His testimony likely will win him leniency at sentencing.
The defense says Atilla is “not corrupt.”
Erdogan says the trial is a ploy to distract Turkey while Washington hatches plans to strengthen Syrian Kurdish groups Turkey considers to be terrorists.
U.S. prosecutors say claims the trial resulted from political maneuvering are “ridiculous.”
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US Calls for Immediate Cease-fire in Yemen
The United States has joined the United Nations in urging all sides in Yemen to refrain from violence and restart political talks to end the civil war, amid worries that tensions may escalate after rebels killed the country’s former president and their former ally, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
“We are incredibly concerned about the violence there,” said State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert on Tuesday during a briefing.
A State Department official told VOA the U.S. is urging all parties in Yemen to stop fighting and not invoke the killing of Saleh to escalate the conflict.
“All sides must end the fighting and return to U.N.-mediated negotiations toward a comprehensive political agreement,” said the official.
Saleh was killed by the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels after switching sides in the civil war. He had broken with the pro-Iranian militia group last Saturday by offering to negotiate with the Saudi-led coalition.
Following Saleh’s death, his son Ahmed Ali vowed to lead a campaign against the Houthis.
In a statement, Ali said that he would “confront the enemies of the homeland and humanity, who are trying to obliterate its identity and its gains and to humiliate Yemen and Yemenis.”
In New York, the United Nations Security Council called Tuesday on all sides in Yemen to “de-escalate, to recommit and re-engage without preconditions” in a U.N.-led political process to achieve a durable cease-fire.
Humanitarian dangers
Yemen’s civil war sparked a humanitarian crisis.
After U.N. Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed briefed the Security Council during a closed-door meeting, Japanese ambassador to the U.N. and Security Council President for December, Koro Bessho, said, “Yemen stands on the brink of catastrophic famine” with “8 million people facing extreme food shortages and suspected cholera cases at over 970,000.”
The United Nations says millions of people may die in one of the worst famines of modern times, as warring parties block food supplies.
“The latest developments in Yemen create a period of maximal risk, a zone of all dangers both on the humanitarian and military front,” said France’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Francois Delattre on Tuesday. “Our first priority is to silence weapons and to allow a complete and immediate humanitarian access on all Yemen and via all its ports and airports.”
Britain’s Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Jonathan Allen said the escalation in fighting “couldn’t have come at the worse time for the people of Yemen.”
“We need humanitarian access, we need commercial access and this is critical,” according to Allen.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric earlier told reporters the death of former President Saleh “adds an extreme level of complexity to already a very difficult political situation.” Dujarric said the world body stands ready to broker a negotiated halt to the conflict that has left 10,000 people dead and millions in desperate need of humanitarian aid in Yemen since 2014.
Streets as battlegrounds
The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, called for a humanitarian cease-fire on Tuesday to allow civilians to seek assistance. “The streets of Sana’a city have become battlegrounds and people are trapped in their homes, unable to move out in search of safety and medical care and to access basic supplies such as food, fuel and safe water.”
Saleh ruled Yemen for more than three decades before he was ousted under popular and political pressure in 2012, but continued to wield power behind the scenes, forming an alliance with the Iran-backed Houthis as they seized control of Sana’a in 2014 and forced President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi into exile.
Arab League chief Abul Gheit warned Tuesday that Saleh’s killing could bring an “explosion in the security situation in Yemen.”
Saleh’s death Monday capped a dramatic stretch of days that followed him denouncing the Houthis and suggesting restoring ties with Saudi Arabia, which for two years has led a military coalition in support of Hadi.
“He was martyred in the defense of the republic,” said Faiqa al-Sayyid, a leader of the General People’s Congress, blaming Houthi rebels for Saleh’s killing in south Sana’a.
The rebels said Saleh was on his way to Saudi Arabia when he was killed, calling his death the foiling of what they claim was his attempt at a “coup” against “an alliance he never believed in.”
In a televised speech, Houthi leader Abdul-Malek al-Houthi called Saleh’s killing a “dark day for the forces of the coalition.”
Hadi, in his own address from Saudi Arabia, called on Yemeni people in Houthi-controlled areas to rise up against the rebels.
Clashes between fighters loyal to Saleh and the Houthis first erupted last week when Saleh accused the rebels of storming his giant mosque in Sana’a and attacking his nephew, the powerful commander of the special forces, Tarek Saleh.
Jamestown Foundation senior analyst Michael Horton told VOA on Tuesday that while Saudi Arabia is “not capable of launching the kind of all-out ground invasion that is necessary to defeat the Houthis,” the Saudis are likely to intensify the bombing. He said this would “exacerbate the already dire humanitarian situation in Yemen.”
“An escalation by Saudi Arabia could, in turn, cause the Houthis to seek a closer relationship with Iran — as it is now, this relationship is limited at best.”
VOA’s Victor Beattie in Washington contributed to this report.
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