Month: April 2018

Leaders of Turkey, Russia, Iran Gather in Ankara to Discuss Syria End Game

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosts his counterparts from Russia and Iran Wednesday for a second trilateral summit on Syria. The three, whose countries have a significant military presence in Syria, are increasingly cooperating to resolve the civil war under the auspices of the so-called “Astana Process.”

The deepening cooperation comes in the face of intense rivalries.  

“Since 2011, Ankara’s sole purpose was to dethrone Assad,” said Aydin Selcen, a former senior Turkish diplomat, who served widely in the region. “Whereas, Russia and Iran came to Syria upon Assad’s invitation to keep him in place and this is a contradiction,” he added, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

All sides have so far managed their differences, out of an awareness, analysts suggest, that is based on the realization they need one another’s cooperation in efforts to secure their regional goals and ultimately bring an end to the seven-year conflict.

Under the “Astana Process,” so-called deconfliction zones have been created across Syria, in which rebel groups are concentrated. Ankara, with its close ties to those rebel groups, has worked closely with Moscow within the process. Wednesday’s meeting is expected to focus on the Syrian enclave of Idlib. Turkish forces have been steadily increasing their deployment there, creating observation posts to monitor the deconfliction zone.

The Turkish-led military campaign against the YPG Syrian-Kurdish militia is also expected to be on the agenda of Wednesday’s summit. Ankara accuses the militia of being a terrorist group linked to a decades-long Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.

Last month, Turkish forces ousted the YPG from the Syrian enclave of Afrin, but Erdogan has pledged to expand the military operation across northern Syria up to the Iraqi border. Erdogan is expected to seek to assuage any concerns from Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani.

“The limits of the [Turkish military] operation [in Syria] will depend on the reaction of other actors who are stakeholders in Syria,” predicted Sinan Ulgen of Brussels-based Carnegie Europe, a research institution. With Russian air defenses currently controlling most of Syria’s airspace, Moscow up until now has given its tacit support to the offensive, allowing Turkish jets to fly with impunity in Syrian airspace in support of the operation.

Turkey-Iran tensions

Tehran has called for an end to the Turkish operation. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is expected to press his concerns over the operation in the talks with Erdogan. The two leaders are scheduled for a separate face-to-face meeting.

Analysts point out Iran is likely to be increasingly concerned about the growing number of Turkish armed forces in Syria. Tehran will be aware Turkish forces seldom withdraw once deployed in a neighboring country. Regional rivalries between the two powerful neighbors are exacerbated by sectarian tensions.

“I don’t see any good relation between Erdogan and the Islamic regime of Iran because Sunni and Shia Muslims are fighting for the same land in the Middle East,” warns Iranian expert Jamshid Assadi of France’s Burgundy Business School. “They might agree on not fighting a war, but that is all.”

 

Tehran’s recent cooperation with Ankara over Syria is giving Iran an opportunity to further undermine Turkey’s strained ties with the United States. That, observers say, is important for Iran, given the importance of Turkey in any new sanctions by the U.S. against Iran.

Also Rouhani, like Russia’s Putin, will be aware of the looming confrontation between Turkish and U.S. forces over the Syrian town of Manbij. Erdogan has pledged to oust the Kurdish YPG militia from Manbij, where U.S. forces are also deployed. Washington sees the YPG as a key ally in its war against Islamic State. Sources in Ankara have suggested the Turkish-led operation is as much about removing the U.S. presence in Syria as is the Kurdish militia.

Tehran, like Moscow, is also aware of the important role Ankara is playing in helping to facilitate the movement of rebels toward the region near the Turkish border.

“The Moscow-Tehran-Damascus trio wants all jihadists to seek refuge near the Turkish border, which is an extremely smart move on their part,” wrote columnist Barcin Yinanc of the Hurriyet Daily News. He warned, however, that Ankara could pay a heavy price. “There is no guarantee that these Islamist and jihadist groups will not end up hitting back at Turkey in the future.” Analysts, however, point out the priority for Ankara remains its ongoing campaign against the YPG.

 
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Egypt’s Pioneer of Medical Thriller Genre, Creator of ‘Beyond Metaphysics,’ Dies at 55

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Ahmed Khaled Tawfik, a prominent writer and professor of gastroenterology known for creating groundbreaking medical thrillers, compelling horror and science fiction like “Beyond Metaphysics,” and “Fantasia” was laid to rest in Egypt Tuesday. 

Tawfik died suddenly on Monday. He was 55. A cause of death has not been released.

One of the most prolific and popular authors in Egypt, Tawfik wrote more than 500 paperbacks and titles, which appealed strongly to young Arabs. His instant best-selling “Utopia” is described as a grim and bleak futuristic account of Egyptian society in the year 2023, when Israel builds its version of the Suez Canal and the Middle East oil reserves are rendered worthless by a newly invented U.S. super fuel.  

Living in a dog-eat-dog society

In Tawfik’s Egypt 2023, the middle class disappeared and the future looked more nightmarish than in ‘The Forgotten Planet’ by American writer Murray Leinster.

Breathtaking and suspenseful “Utopia,” which was set for the big screen, takes readers on a chilling journey beyond the gated communities of the northern coast, an isolated U.S. Marine-protected coastal colony created by the rich and famous, where the wealthy are insulated from the bleakness of life outside the walls.

“The middle class, in any society, plays the role of graphite rods in nuclear reactors: they slow down the reaction and, if it weren’t for them, the reactor would explode. A society without a middle class is a society primed for explosion,” explains Tawfik in his critically acclaimed Utopia.

One of his most famous quotes, “the end of despots is something so beautiful, but, alas, we often don’t live to see it,” is widely published in Arabic by young Egyptians on social media.

Master of Escapism

Called “Godfather” by his readers, Tawfik is credited with introducing young Arabs to works by American author and screenwriter Ray Bradbury, British author Sir Arthur Clarke and other sci-fi writers.

“Stories that lean on science or on technology appear as texts or information books to us in the Arab world, and we believe they won’t provide escapism. We have the imagination as a reader, but it’s just not yet developed enough to embrace science fiction and fantasy, or a plot that is weighted in gloom and horror,” he told a UAE newspaper.

Tawfik was one of the earliest Egyptian writers to specialize in horror, science fiction and fantasy, and his work included both illustrated books and novels, wrote the state-run Al-Ahram online in his obituary. His publishers say he is “the Arab world’s best-selling author of horror and fantasy genres.”

He was buried in his home city of Tanta in Western Egypt, where he was born in June, 1962. He is survived by his wife, a pulmonologist at Tanta medical college, and two children.
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Cameroon Calls on Fleeing English-Speaking Citizens to Return Home

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As a campfire burns in a remote village on Cameroon’s northwestern border with Nigeria, seven men and five boys roast cocoa yam for supper.

The eldest among them, 45-year-old Bruno Nfor, says the group has spent at least a week in the bush after violence broke out in the town of Tadu. Armed separatists attacked the town, he says. Then, soldiers began burning houses and arresting people indiscriminately. Many people were tortured or wounded.

Nfor says if he and his friends had the means, they would leave the bush where they are hiding and cross over to Nigeria, because they are not safe in the English-speaking northwest and southwest regions of Cameroon, where they they say they were treated like animals and terrorists before they fled.

In January, Nigerian authorities said they had arrested at least two dozen Cameroonians receiving military training on its territory.  

Nfor says since then, Cameroon’s military has been sweeping through border villages, searching for armed separatists whom they suspect of either going to or returning from Nigeria.

This month, the U.N. refugee agency reported that since mid-2017, tens of thousands of people had fled Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions, where the separatist movements are active. English-speakers there say they are discriminated against by the country’s French-speaking majority.

In hiding

Paul Atanga Nji, Cameroon’s minister of territorial administration, says thousands are hiding in bushes and mountains around the border with Nigeria.

Last week, he visited the two English-speaking regions to plead for the displaced populations to return. He says many of those escaping have weapons.

“They have to come out of the bushes, go back to their villages and put down the guns. If they do that, it is fine for them. We have recovered a lot of guns, a lot of weapons, a lot of explosives brought by people who are in the bushes, so we are asking them to repent and go out of those atrocities because you cannot succeed. We have a strong nation, we have solid institutions and there is no hiding place for truants in Cameroon. You cannot hide,” Nji said.

Scared to return

But many of those who fled, like 30-year-old Leslie Ngala, say they are scared of the Cameroonian military.

Ngala says he is escaping Cameroon’s military, especially the gendarmes. He says before he fled, even little children would try to escape whenever they saw a military person because they either had seen or heard how the soldiers mistreated people. He says his motorcycle was seized by people he recognized as being from the Cameroonian military, not separatist fighters.

The military has denied the allegations, saying the separatists are causing the violence.  

Didier Bajeck, a spokesperson for Cameroon’s military, said soldiers have remained professional as they carry out their duties to protect people and property.

Nformi Balla, an elder from northwestern Cameroon, says Nji is turning on traditional rulers because the population still listens to them after losing confidence in the administration and the military.

“We have seen the bloodshed and we ourselves are tired of this war. We too cry for peace and we assured the minister that we shall do everything within our means and powers to facilitate the peaceful return of our people,” Balla said.

In October, the separatists declared what they call the Republic of Ambazonia and asked the military to surrender and join them or leave their territory. So far, hundreds of people and about 30 police officers and soldiers have been killed.

 
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‘Letters from Baghdad’ Shows Iraq Through Eyes of British Spy Who Shaped It

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“Letters from Baghdad,” a documentary on Gertrude Bell, the British writer, explorer, spy and political officer who helped shape modern Iraq, had its first screening in the country on Monday, drawing loud applause from an audience of academics, diplomats, journalists and others.

The documentary shows hitherto unseen footage of Iraq as it was being pulled together into a new state a century ago, with a script taken entirely from Bell’s letters and official documents and read by British actress Tilda Swinton.

It also throws some light on Iraq’s current challenges as it emerges from a war with Islamic State militants and seeks to reconcile its Shi’ite majority with its Sunni and Kurdish minorities.

Mustafa Salim, an Iraqi journalist at the Washington Post Bureau in Baghdad, gave the documentary a thumbs up after the showing at the National Theater in Baghdad.

“It’s a wonderful movie. But as an Iraqi viewer I would have liked it to go deeper into the political and historical aspects and the decisive influence she had in creating the Iraqi state,” he said, referring to the fact that parts of the documentary focused mainly on Bell’s private life.

The theater was hushed throughout the screening, with little or no texting on phones — a sign of a healthily absorbed audience in modern-day Iraq.

“The Iraqi viewer will be immersed in a visual experience of a common past and walk away with a sense of a culturally very diverse and vibrant Baghdad in the early 1900s,” Sabine Krayenbuehl, co-director of the film with Zeva Oelbaum, said before the screening.

Released in 2016, “Letters from Baghdad” was selected for the BFI London film festival and won the audience award at the Beirut International Film Festival.

Its screenings in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq have been organized by the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and coincide with the 150th anniversary of Bell’s birth.

It explains the key decisions made by Bell as a political officer in the British colonial administration ruling Iraq after World War One. Among these were the decision to include Sunni-majority Mosul and Kurdish areas in the north into the Iraqi state being pulled together by the British, and choosing Faisal bin Hussein from the Arabian Sunni Hashemite dynasty as king.

Bell drew up Iraq’s borders based on her knowledge of the local populations she encountered as an explorer, when the Arabian Peninsula and Mespotamia were still under Turkish Ottoman control.

One picture shows her with T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia,” and Winston Churchill near the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

The film also shows scenes of daily life in Baghdad, including families and personalities from its thriving Jewish community.

“Gertrude Bell was a champion of diversity, she loved the different culture she came upon. Iraq during her time was very diverse and Baghdad was a very vibrant city. We feel this is a message that is very important today,” Oelbaum said.

Bell, who died in 1926 and was buried in the city, also founded the Museum of Baghdad to showcase and preserve the Sumerian and Babylonian heritage of Mespotamia.

The museum was plundered during the 2003 U.S.- and British-led-invasion which ousted Saddam Hussein and brought Iraq’s Shi’ites to power.

Baghdad has changed drastically since Bell’s time, as concrete buildings and roads replaced most of its traditional sand brick houses and their typical wooden verandas known as “shanashil.”

“We drove through the streets, we were looking at some of the older parts, seeing some of these old houses are falling apart. I think watching this movie gives an enthusiasm to want to restore and want to protect,” Krayenbuehl said.
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Russia, Iran and Turkey Struggle to Find Common Ground on Syria

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Three foreign powers who have shaped Syria’s civil war – Iran, Russia and Turkey – will discuss ways to wind down the fighting on Wednesday despite their involvement in rival military campaigns on the ground.

The leaders of the three countries will meet in Ankara for talks on a new constitution for Syria and increasing security in “de-escalation” zones across the country, Turkish officials say.

The Syria summit brings together two powers which have been President Bashar al-Assad’s most forceful supporters, Iran and Russia, with one of his strongest opponents, Turkey.

Cooperation between the rival camps raised hopes of stabilizing Syria after seven years of conflict in which 500,000 people have been killed and half the population displaced.

But the violence has raged on, highlighting strategic rifts between the three countries who, in the absence of decisive Western intervention, hold Syria’s fate largely in their hands.

Syria’s army and Iran-backed militias, with Russian air power, have crushed insurgents near Damascus in eastern Ghouta – one of the four mooted “de-escalation zones”.

Turkey, which sharply criticized the Ghouta offensive, waged its own military operation to drive Kurdish YPG fighters from the northwestern Syrian region of Afrin. It has pledged to take the town of Tel Rifaat and push further east, angering Iran.

“Whatever the intentions are, Turkey’s moves in Syria, whether in Afrin, Tel Rifaat or any other part of Syria, should be halted as soon as possible,” a senior Iranian official said.

Iran has been Assad’s most supportive ally throughout the conflict. Iran-backed militias first helped his army stem rebel advances and, following Russia’s entry into the war in 2015, turn the tide decisively in Assad’s favor.

A Turkish official said Ankara will ask Moscow to press Assad to grant more humanitarian access in Ghouta, and to rein in airstrikes on rebel-held areas. “We expect … Russia to control the regime more,” the official told reporters this week.

Rifts over Assad

Ankara’s relations with Moscow collapsed in 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane but have recovered since then – to the concern of Turkey’s Western allies.

Turkey was one of the few NATO partners not to expel Russian diplomats in response to a nerve agent attack on a former Russian agent which Britain blamed on Moscow – an allegation which Turkey said was not proven.

Improved political ties have been reflected in Turkey’s agreement to buy a Russian missile defense system and plans for Russia’s ROSATOM to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant.

Turkey has also expanded relations with Iran, exchanging visits by military chiefs of staff, although its deepening ties with Tehran and Moscow have not translated into broader agreement on Syria’s future.

Iran remains determined that Assad stay in power, while Russia is less committed to keeping him in office, a regional diplomat said. Turkey says Assad has lost legitimacy, although it no longer demands his immediate departure.

At a meeting in Russia two months ago, boycotted by the leadership of Syria’s opposition, delegates agreed to set up a committee to rewrite Syria’s constitution and called for democratic elections.

Turkey says Wednesday’s meeting will discuss setting up the constitutional committee, humanitarian issues and developments in Syria’s northern Idlib region, which is under the control of rival rebel factions and jihadi groups, and where Turkey has set up seven military observation posts.

“There are issues where all three countries have different policies in Syria,” another Turkish official said. “In this regard, an aim is to find middle ground and create policies to improve the current situation.”

 
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Saudis, UAE Draw Praise for Pledging Aid to Yemen

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Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates drew praise Tuesday at a U.N. conference for offering hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for Yemen, where their air campaign against Houthi rebels has killed thousands of civilians and their crippling blockade has hindered aid delivery.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the one-day conference co-hosted by Sweden, Switzerland and the United Nations had collected pledges of more than $2 billion by midday — with contributions still coming in. Speaking to reporters, he acknowledged that some donors were also “parties of the conflict.”

“We all know who … the parties to the war (are),” he said. “But the two things need to be seen separately, independently of the fact that there is a war. There are humanitarian obligations that are assumed by countries.”

With the situation worsening — Guterres called it “catastrophic” — the conference easily surpassed the funding pledges of $1.1 billion at a similar event last year. Overall, the U.N. has appealed for $2.96 billion to provide assistance and protection to people in Yemen in 2018.

“Several countries have already announced that there will be more donations from now until the end of the year,” the U.N. chief said. “So we are quite optimistic.”

Guterres added that “as important as the financial contributions to this conference is the commitment of the parties to the conflict to come together to put an end to the war.”

He said information gleaned by his new special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, during a trip to the region led him to believe there were “positive perspectives” that could possibly lead to an “effective intra-Yemeni dialogue” at some point. Guterres cited an “opportunity to be seized.”

A Saudi-led, Western-backed coalition has been at war with Iran-allied Shiite rebels known as Houthis for three years in a conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people and left 22.2 million people needing humanitarian aid. The conflict has fanned the world’s worst recent cholera outbreak and put many on the brink of starvation. Some 8.4 million people do not know how they will get their next meal, according to U.N. estimates.

Health and sanitation systems are teetering in Yemen. Guterres noted that a child under 5 dies every 10 minutes from preventable causes.

In his prepared remarks, Guterres noted how Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — who have given military backing to Yemen’s government, notably with air power and a sea blockade of rebel areas — had “generously provided” $930 million toward the humanitarian response plan even before the conference began.

The United States announced nearly $87 million in additional humanitarian aid, while the European Union pledged ?107.5 million in new funding this year.

Thomas Staal, counselor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, said the United States extended its “gratitude” to Saudi Arabia and UAE “for their significant contributions to the United Nations’ coordinated response.”

Ken Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, said any humanitarian contribution was welcome amid such severe suffering.

“But that shouldn’t absolve or change the subject from the Saudi-led coalition’s primary responsibility for Yemen’s humanitarian crisis due to its blockade and repeated bombing of Yemeni civilians and critical Yemeni infrastructure,” Roth wrote in an email

“Sending remedial aid doesn’t exculpate Saudi Arabia and the UAE for their war-crime strategy of blockading and bombing Yemeni civilians,” he added.
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Tributes Pour in After Death of Winnie Mandela

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In South Africa, tributes to the late anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela continue to pour in. She died Monday in Johannesburg following a long illness. Her passing will be marked by a state funeral and memorial service later this month.

 

Lioness, heroine and mother of the nation — these are the words being used to describe the late Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. She died at the age of 81.

 

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who visited the Mandela family on Monday, described her as a voice of defiance and resistance in the face of repression.

“We have declared that Winnie Mandela will have a national official funeral, which will be held on the 14th of April and there will be an official memorial service, on the 11th, but then again there will be many other memorial functions right across,” said Ramaphosa.

 

Winnie Mandela was a prominent figure in the battle to end white minority rule alongside her late ex-husband, Nelson Mandela. They were married for nearly four decades.

 

After her husband was jailed in 1962, she held fast through harassment, arrests, restrictions and imprisonment by the apartheid regime.

 

However, she could be a polarizing figure. After her divorce with Nelson Mandela in 1996, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated crimes committed during the apartheid period, concluded that she had been involved in assault, murder and abduction.

She was also later convicted of fraud and slapped with a suspended sentence.

 

To mourners who have streamed to her home since her passing on Monday, she remains a revered activist for freedom.

 

Johannesburg resident Susan Matlodi said she will forever missed.

“She was a true heroine that lady because she stood up against apartheid. She stood by her husband Tata Mandela when he was at Robben Island, raising up kids alone, and she fought for us as ladies, so I’m really saddened about her passing on,” she said.

 

The ruling ANC at the party level has also expressed its grief. The party said Winnie Mandela’s resilience and courage inspired freedom struggles not just in South Africa but across the continent. The South African Communist Party chose to describe her as an activist for gender equality and a democratic revolutionary.

​And the Nelson Mandela Foundation said all South Africans are indebted to her, whether they acknowledge it or not.

 

The South African religious community is also paying tribute. Njongonkulu Ndungane, is a former Archbishop of the Anglican Church in South Africa.

“She touched our hearts, and I think that she championed the cause of the poorest of the poor and being the voice of the voiceless. She became commonly known as the mother of the nation. She was just at the heart of giving us youngsters the hope for the future,” he said.

 

The African Union Commission in its tribute statement said Winnie Mandela will be remembered as a fearless campaigner who sacrificed much of her life for freedom in South Africa.
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Zimbabwe’s Leader Thanks China’s Xi, Pledges to Boost Ties

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Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday for Beijing’s political support and pledged to strengthen ties with the Asian giant on his first visit since his dramatic rise to power last year.

Xi welcomed Mnangagwa to Beijing when they met following a formal welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People.

“You are an old friend of China and I appreciate your efforts to develop relations in all areas,” Xi said in opening remarks. Xi praised Mnangagwa’s efforts to “improve people’s lives” in Zimbabwe, though he did not go into specifics.

“As Zimbabwe’s good friend and partner, we are very happy about this,” Xi said.

Ahead of an election scheduled for August 2018 at the latest, Mnangagwa is under pressure to bring back foreign investors and resolve a severe currency shortage, mass unemployment and dramatic price increases.

Mnangagwa, who along with members of his delegation wore a scarf in the colors of Zimbabwe’s flag, thanked Xi for his reception and recalled his military training in China in 1963-64. In the 1960s, China helped train and supply guerrilla fighters from the Zanu’s military wing in the fight for liberation. Mnangagwa, 75, was part of that effort after he joined the fight against white minority rule in then-Rhodesia.

Mnangagwa congratulated Xi on his re-election as president and on the establishment of his political theory, simply referred to as “Xi Jinping Thought.”

“I will take this mantra to Zimbabwe and hope to develop some socialism in Zimbabwe with Zimbabwean characteristics,” Mnangagwa said.

Part of ‘Belt and Road’ initiative

The trip is Mnangagwa’s first since longtime leader Robert Mugabe resigned in November under pressure from the military. Mugabe’s government maintained warm relations with Beijing but was accused of widespread corruption.

Some of that ill-gotten wealth was reported to have gone through China, which became increasingly enmeshed with Zimbabwe’s government and economy as Western nations withdrew over human rights concerns and mismanagement of the once-prosperous country.

Among those projects is the 300 megawatt expansion of the Kariba South by China’s Sinohydro in a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Chinese companies were also major players in Zimbabwe’s diamond fields until the government canceled all licenses to make way for a state monopoly in 2016.

Since then, Zimbabwe has continued to face huge economic challenges, including severe cash shortages and dramatic increases in the price of food and other household items that have prompted it to look to China for loans and investment.

At the time of Mugabe’s resignation, China said it still considered him a “good friend” who “has long been committed to friendship between China and Zimbabwe.”

However, questions were raised as to whether China had played a role or been notified in advance of the move against Mugabe because of a visit days before by Zimbabwe’s army commander at the time, Gen. Constantino Chiwenga, to Beijing.

Analysts said China had increasingly considered Mugabe a liability. Beijing has said only that Chiwenga’s visit was a “normal military exchange.”

Zimbabwe is among the African countries targeted by China’s trillion-dollar “Belt and Road” initiative promising roads, ports, and other infrastructure. That’s widely seen as providing the continent’s economy with a much-needed boost, although some have questioned the long-term ability of recipient nations to pay for the projects.

Most recently, the United States has sounded the alarm that the Chinese money flooding Africa risks bringing dependency, exploitation and intrusion on nations’ basic sovereignty.

Former U.S. secretary of state Rex Tillerson said last month in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, that while Chinese investment is “badly needed,” African countries should “carefully consider the terms.”
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French Rail Workers Launch Strike

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French railway workers went on strike Tuesday in the first of a series of planned work stoppages in protest of the government’s plans to institute reforms to the system.

Only a fraction of trains were running across the country, leaving platforms packed with people and roads clogged with commuters who normally rely on rail travel instead.

French President Emmanuel Macron wants to strip away job guarantees and other benefits for new hires for the railway system.

The government says the reforms are necessary to keep the services economically competitive and in line with European Union rules.

The main rail unions plan to strike two days out of every five for the next three months.
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Trump Proposed White House Meeting With Putin

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White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says President Donald Trump proposed the White House as a potential place to host a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The suggestion came during a March 20 call between the two leaders. Trump said after that call he hoped to meet with Putin “in the not too distant future,” both sides have said planning has not gone any further.

Sanders did not give additional information about plans for the meeting to take place.

“We have nothing further to add at this time,” she told reporters Monday.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov also said Trump floated the idea of hosting Putin for talks at the White House.

Trump is under scrutiny as a special counsel investigates potential ties between his presidential campaign and Russia. The U.S. intelligence community has assessed Putin directed an influence campaign aimed at the 2016 election that brought Trump to office.

Trump says there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia.

Since the March 20 phone call, relations between the two countries became more complicated with the United States expelling 60 Russian diplomats and ordering the closure of a Russian consulate in response to the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal in Britain. Russia denies it was responsible for the attack, and responded to the U.S. move by expelling U.S. diplomats and closing a U.S. consulate.

 
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US Raises Prospect of Trump-Putin Meeting at the White House

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The Trump administration says it is amenable to a White House meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, raising the prospect of the Russian president’s first Washington visit in more than a decade even as relations between the two powers have eroded.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the White House was among “a number of potential venues” discussed in Trump’s telephone call last month with Putin. The Kremlin said earlier Monday that Trump invited Putin during the call.

Both sides said they hadn’t started preparations for such a visit.

If it happens, Putin would be getting the honor of an Oval Office tete-a-tete for the first time since he met President George W. Bush at the White House in 2005. Alarms rang in diplomatic and foreign policy circles over the prospect that Trump might offer Putin that venue without confronting him about Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election or allegations that Russia masterminded the March 4 nerve agent attack on a former Russian double agent.

“It would confer a certain normalization of relations and we’re certainly not in a normal space,” said Alina Polyakova, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Nothing about this is normal.”

Much has happened since Trump and Putin spoke in the March 20 phone call. Trump said afterward he hoped to meet with Putin “in the not too distant future” to discuss the nuclear arms race and other matters. But their call was followed by reports that Trump had been warned in briefing materials not to congratulate the Russian president on his re-election but did so anyway.

Since the call, two dozen countries, including the U.S. and many European Union nations, and NATO expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats in solidarity with Britain over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, the former spy, and his daughter Yulia. Moscow has denied any involvement in the nerve attack and retaliated by expelling the same number of diplomats from each nation.

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters Monday that when the two leaders spoke by phone, “Trump suggested to have the first meeting in Washington, in the White House,” calling it a “quite interesting and positive idea.”

Ushakov voiced hope that tensions resulting from the diplomatic expulsions wouldn’t derail discussions about a summit.

Trump has said maintaining a strong personal relationship with Putin is in the U.S. interest and has signaled to allies that he trusts his own instincts in dealing with the Russian president.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions, said Trump raised the possibility of a White House meeting in a “casual, open-ended” fashion during the call. The official reiterated that no extensive preparations had taken place.

Talk of a White House summit comes as Trump is preparing to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at an undetermined location. White House welcomes are typically reserved for friends and allies.

Trump has avoided criticizing Putin personally even as his administration has crossed Moscow by providing Ukraine with lethal weapons and upholding Obama-era sanctions against Russia and its shuttering of diplomatic outposts.

Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, said the “symbolism of Putin standing in the East Room with the president at a news conference” would be a major goal for the Russian leader. “The only reason you should do it is if you’re going to obtain a concrete objective that serves America’s national security interest before the meeting,” he said.

McFaul said he feared that Trump “thinks that a good meeting with Putin is the objective of his foreign policy with Russia. That should never be the objective. That should be the means to achieve things that are actually of importance to the United States.”

Trump had already fallen under sharp criticism from some Republican lawmakers for congratulating Putin on his re-election during the call and for not raising the ex-spy’s poisoning. The fact that Trump also extended a White House invitation during that call was likely to increase concerns that Trump, when in direct contact with Putin, is inclined to offer olive branches and reluctant to raise difficult issues.

“I worry that Trump wittingly or unwittingly may be sending a more positive signal to Putin than he deserves,” said Nicholas Burns, a top State Department official during the Bush administration who also served as U.S. ambassador to NATO.

Russia’s disclosure of the invitation came the day before the leaders of three Baltic countries – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – were to visit the White House. The three NATO nations are seen as a bulwark against Russia’s aspirations of extended influence west of its border.

Trump has met Putin twice as president, at the Group of 20 summit in Germany last summer and briefly at the Asia-Pacific economic summit in Vietnam in November.

Putin, who was president of Russia once before, visited the White House in 2005, when Bush welcomed him in the East Room as “my friend.”

Putin has been to other parts of the U.S. frequently in recent years, including a visit to the Bush family compound in Maine. Putin’s meetings with Obama occurred at international summits and along the sidelines of the United Nations gathering in New York.

Obama met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the White House in 2010, when the pair also chowed down on burgers at a popular hamburger joint outside the capital.
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Trump to Meet Baltic Leaders as Tension with Russia Escalates

Posted on by SeeEU

U.S. President Donald Trump and leaders of Baltic states are set to discuss how to strengthen security, business, trade, energy, and cultural partnerships between the United States and these three NATO allies when they meet Tuesday at the White House.

The White House says Trump and the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will also highlight the countries’ recent success in meeting NATO’s defense spending pledge.

Trump has repeatedly criticized NATO member countries for not contributing their fair share to the alliance and not meeting their two percent defense spending benchmark. In a speech to NATO members last year, he noticeably failed to reiterate U.S. commitment to NATO’s Article 5 pledge of mutual defense, rattling NATO allies.

Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have grown increasingly worried about Russia’s regional military buildup and the possibility that they could suffer a similar fate as Crimea.

The countries have since pledged to boost their defense spending, counting on NATO allies to provide military assistance should Russia take any action.

Latvian President Raimons Vejonis told Latvian Television last week that he expects Washington to publicly commit to the region’s security. “It is planned to adopt a declaration, from which we expect a very strong political message from the U.S. expressing support for strengthening Baltic security and expressing, once again, support for the independence of the Baltic states,” he said.

The U.S.-Baltic summit comes amid heighten tensions between Russia and the West.

Last week, the United States and more than two dozen countries — including the three Baltic States — expelled a total of more than 150 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity over the poisoning of a former Russia spy in Britain. Russia responded by announcing the expulsion of more than 150 foreign diplomats, including 60 U.S. diplomats.

In addition to the expulsions, the U.S. and the Baltic states have been accusing Russia of conducting a barrage of cyberattacks and spreading fake news, propaganda, and disinformation online in an effort to meddle in European countries’ political systems and sway public opinion in favor of Russia’s agenda. Top U.S. intelligence officials have accused Russia of interfering in 2016 US presidential election and is taking steps to undermine the 2018 midterm elections.

“I think what we have seen in the past four or three years is the community of democratic nations is under the attack,” Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics recently told the VOA Russia Service, referring to Russian interference.

 

“The very basis of our democratic institutions are under attack through social media by fake news, and also through the influence of money, and it is very important that we stick together,” he said.

Russia test-fired its new liquid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile Sarmat on Friday. Latvia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday it was concerned by a sudden announcement from Russia that it will test-fire missiles in the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Sweden on April 4 and 6.

Last month, President Trump congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin on his re-election victory during a phone call and said the two agreed to hold talks in the “not-too-distant future.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday they discussed the meeting could take place “at a number of potential venues, including the White House.”
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German Prosecutors Ask to Extradite Former Catalan Separatist Leader

Posted on by SeeEU

German prosecutors have asked a regional court to allow the extradition of former Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, who faces a rebellion charge in Spain for organizing an independence referendum.

Puigdemont initially fled Spain to Belgium after the vote, but has been held in Germany since being arrested there on March 25.

He said during an interview with a German news website that those who want independence for the northern Spanish region are not criminals.

“We want to decide our own future — is that a crime? We used ballot boxes — is that a crime?” Puigdemont asked during the jail cell interview. “We were elected by the people, so what is the problem with the Spanish authorities? Why don’t they start politics in order to solve a political problem?”

The French News Agency reported Puigdemont’s attorney has appealed against the Spanish Supreme Court’s decision to prosecute him on the rebellion charges. The lawyer argued the charge implies Puigdemont advocated an uprising by violence. He said any violence that followed the October referendum was isolated and does not justify the charges.

Twenty-four other Catalan separatist leaders are also facing rebellion charges.

Pro-independence lawmakers won a slim majority in December’s parliamentary elections in Catalonia. But parliament has been unable to name a new president since Puigdemont fled, and the future of independence is murky.

Catalonia, in northeast Spain, and its capital Barcelona are major tourist magnets. It has its own language and distinct culture. But the separatist crisis has hurt tourism and the regional economy.

Catalan separatists call the region a powerful economic engine that drives Spain, and they have demanded more autonomy.

Those who want to stay united with Spain fear the region will sink into an economic abyss without the central government, its ties to the European Union, and its numerous existing bilateral relations.
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Uganda Pressed for Land Amid Refugee Influx

Posted on by SeeAF

The refugee population in Uganda stands at more than 1.4 million and growing, thanks to conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. The influx is forcing Uganda to rethink its decades-old policy of allocating refugees plots of land to live on and farm. For VOA, Halima Athumani reports from Kyangwali refugee settlement in western Uganda.
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South Africa Mourns Death of Winnie Mandela

Posted on by SeeAF

Politicians, rights activists and supporters from around the world have paid tribute to South African anti-apartheid campaigner Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who died Monday at the age of 81. Mandela, a former wife of the first South African black president, Nelson Mandela, was a prominent member of the ruling African National Congress Party and has held several government positions. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Asian Markets Move Lower After US Stock Plunge

Posted on by SeeUS

Stock markets in Asia fell Tuesday, but did not suffer losses as steep as those Monday in U.S. markets where continued fears about a U.S.-China trade war and a verbal attack on an online retailer by President Donald Trump sent stocks lower.

Markets in Japan and Hong Kong fell by more than one percent in early trading, but by midday had rebounded to make back half the losses.

The U.S. Down Jones Industrial Average closed down 1.9 percent Monday, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 2.3 percent and the NASDAQ fell nearly three percent.

Trump has strongly criticized online giant Amazon three times in the last few days. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post, whose revelatory stories on Trump and his administration frequently draw the president’s ire.

The U.S. leader says Amazon’s large-scale operations are detrimental to the business success of small retailers that cannot compete with its high-volume sales. Trump has also complained that the fees Amazon pays to the U.S. Postal Service to deliver merchandise the retailer sells are too low, costing the quasi-governmental agency hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, although the Postal Service says its contract with Amazon is profitable.

“Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon,” Trump said in his latest broadside against Amazon. “THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country…not a level playing field!” 

Since Trump started verbally attacking Amazon, the company has lost more than $37 billion in market value.

China’s announcement that it is increasing duties on 128 categories of U.S. imports worth $3 billion in annual trade also worried investors. They fear Beijing’s response to the Trump tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports could spark an all-out trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

“The importance of tariff announcements by both the U.S. and China lies in what they may portend for overall bilateral trade and investment relations between the two countries,” said Atsi Sheth, an analyst for Moody’s Investors Service.

Late Monday, White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters issued a statement saying, in part, that China needs to stop “its unfair trading practices which are harming U.S. national security and distorting global markets.”
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Morocco Threatens UN Buffer Zones in Disputed Western Sahara

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Morocco’s government is threatening to take control of U.N.-monitored buffer zones in Western Sahara amid concerns that the mission is failing to keep out Polisario Front independence fighters.

 

The warning Sunday came as U.N. Security Council members received Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ annual report on the situation in Western Sahara and the 27-year-old U.N. peacekeeping mission in the mineral-rich territory claimed by both Morocco and the Polisario.

 

Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said Sunday that the Polisario recently moved members to the U.N.-controlled areas of Bir Lehlou and Tifariti. He also said Polisario members are again entering the Guerguerat area near the Mauritanian border, despite a U.N.-brokered deal to leave after tensions erupted there in 2016.

“If the U.N., its secretary-general and the Security Council are not ready to put an end to these provocations, Morocco will have to act out its responsibility and intervene in the buffer zones,” Bourita told reporters after an emergency parliament session to address Western Sahara.

 

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Monday that members of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, known as MINURSO, “have not observed any movement of military elements in the northeast territory.”

 

“MINURSO continues to monitor the situation closely,” he added.

 

Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit said, “Morocco is ready to do everything to preserve its Sahara.”

 

Bourita said Morocco has alerted the Security Council to its plans to step in the deserted land, but declined to specify what kind of intervention or when it would begin.

 

Peru’s U.N. ambassador, Gustavo Meza-Cuadra, the current council president, told reporters Monday that he received a letter from Morocco’s U.N. ambassador that has been circulated to the 15 council members.

 

He called it an “informative letter” and said “no action has been taken yet.”

 

Morocco annexed Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, in 1975 and fought the independence-seeking Polisario Front. The U.N. brokered a cease-fire in 1991 and established a peacekeeping mission to monitor it and to help prepare a referendum on the territory’s future that has never taken place.

The U.N. secretary-general expressed concern at escalating tensions and urged the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front to refrain from actions that could impact the cease-fire in their 42-year conflict over the Western Sahara, pointing to the escalating dispute over Guerguerat area in the buffer zone on the Morocco-Mauritanian border.

 

In a report to the Security Council obtained Monday by The Associated Press, Guterres called on the Polisario Front to withdraw from Guerguerat. And he urged Morocco to reconsider its refusal to send an expert mission as part of the U.N.’s effort to address questions raised by the Guerguerat situation.

 

“I call on both parties to exercise maximum restraint and to avoid escalating tensions, and to refrain from taking any action which may constitute a change in the status quo at the buffer strip,” Guterres said.

 

He said he was encouraged by steps his new personal envoy, former German President Horst Koeler, has taken to relaunch political negotiations and urged additional steps by the parties, neighboring countries and other key players.

 

Kohler has sought to broaden the discussions on the territory’s future.

 

The Saharans’ envoy to Algeria, Abdelghafour, said Polisario members in the buffer zones are under surveillance by U.N. forces, and accused Morocco of violating the cease-fire.

 

“Morocco is threatening everything,” he told The Associated Press. “It’s obvious that these maneuvers are aimed at influencing the next U.N. Security Council meeting to stop it from taking practical, effective measures.”

 

Morocco considers the mineral-rich Western Sahara its southern provinces and has invested heavily in development programs, and proposed giving the territory wide-ranging autonomy. Polisario insists that the referendum can only take place based on the principle of self-determination for the local population, which it estimates at between 350,000 and 500,000.

 

In 2016, Moroccan forces and Polisario Front fighters moved into Guerguerat in the buffer zone but pulled out in April 2017.

 

Guterres said the area remained free from supporters of either side until January, when the Polisario Front established what its leaders described as a daylight-hour “monitoring post” manned by a small group of its “unarmed civilian ‘police.'” The secretary-general said the post has remained.

 

Also in 2016, Morocco expelled over 70 people working for the U.N. mission in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO, after then-U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon used the word “occupation” in talking about Western Sahara.

 

Guterres recommended that the Security Council extend MINURSO’s mandate until April 30, 2019.

 

“The conflict over Western Sahara has lasted for too long and must be brought to an end for the dignity of the population … including those who have been displaced for more than four decades, as well as for the stability of the wider region, which is facing myriad political, economic and security challenges,” he said.
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US vs. China: a ‘Slap-Fight,’ Not a Trade War — So Far

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First, the United States imposed a tax on Chinese steel and aluminum. Then, China counterpunched Monday with tariffs on a host of U.S. products, including apples, pork and ginseng. 

On Wall Street, the stock market buckled on the prospect of an all-out trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. But it hasn’t come to that – not yet, anyway.

“We’re in a trade slap-fight right now,” not a trade war, said Derek Scissors, resident scholar and China specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

China is a relatively insignificant supplier of steel and aluminum to the United States. And the $3 billion in U.S. products that Beijing targeted Monday amount to barely 2 percent of American goods exported to China.

But the dispute could escalate, and quickly. Already, in a separate move, the United States is drawing up a list of about $50 billion in Chinese imports to tax in an effort to punish Beijing for stealing American technology or forcing U.S. companies to hand over trade secrets. 

China could respond by targeting American commercial interests uniquely dependent on the Chinese market: the aircraft giant Boeing, for example, and soybean farmers.

The possibility that the U.S. and China will descend into a full-blown trade war knocked the Dow Jones industrial average down as much as 758 points in afternoon trading. The Dow recovered some ground and finished down 458.92 points, or 1.9 percent, at 23,644.19.

For weeks, in fact, President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade actions have depressed the stock market.

But many trade analysts suggested that the Wall Street sell-off may be an overreaction. 

China’s swift but measured retaliation to the U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs is meant to show “that it will not be pushed around but that it does not want a trade war,” said Amanda DeBusk, chair of the international trade department at the law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed. “It is possible for the countries to pull back from the brink.”

“It seems to be pretty measured and proportional,” agreed Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade official who is now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “They didn’t seem to overreach, and they didn’t hit our big-ticket items like planes and soybeans.”

Even if China’s tariffs don’t have a huge impact on America’s $20 trillion economy, they will bring pain to specific communities. 

Take Marathon County in Wisconsin, where 140 local families grow ginseng, a root that is used in herbal remedies and is popular in Asia. Around $30 million – or 85 percent – of the area’s ginseng production went to China as exports or gifts. The county, which gave Trump nearly 57 percent of its vote in 2016, holds an international ginseng festival in September, crowning a Ginseng Queen and drawing visitors from China and Taiwan.

China’s new 15 percent tariff on ginseng is “definitely going to hit the growers hard if this happens,” said Jackie Fett, executive director of the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin. “It is the livelihood of many people. … We’re still holding on to a little bit of hope” that the tariffs can be reversed.

Jim Schumacher, co-owner of Schumacher Ginseng in Marathon, Wisconsin, said the 15 percent tax will hurt: “You’ve got to be price-competitive, even if you have the top-quality product. We’re definitely concerned. We hope something can be resolved.”

Trump campaigned on a promise to overhaul American trade policy. In his view, what he calls flawed trade agreements and sharp-elbowed practices by China and other trading partners are in part responsible for America’s gaping trade deficit – $566 billion last year. The deficit in the trade of goods with China last year hit a record $375 billion.

In his first year in office, Trump’s talk was tougher than his actions on trade. But he has gradually grown more aggressive. In January, he slapped tariffs on imported solar panels and washing machines. Last month, he imposed duties on steel and aluminum imports – but spared most major economies except China and Japan.

Now he is moving toward steep tariffs to pressure Beijing into treating U.S. technology companies more fairly. In the meantime, his administration has lost two voices that cautioned against protectionist trade policies: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and White House economic adviser Gary Cohn. 

“Given the increasingly hostile rhetoric backed up by tangible trade sanctions already announced by both the U.S. and China, it will take a determined effort on both sides to come up with a mediated compromise that tamps down trade tensions and allows both sides to save face,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University.

If the dispute escalates, China can pick more vulnerable targets. In the year that ended last Aug. 31, America’s soybean farmers, for instance, sent $12.4 billion worth of soybeans to China. That was 57 percent of total U.S. soybean exports.

Brent Bible, a soybean and corn farmer in Lafayette, Indiana, has appeared in TV ads by the advocacy group Farmers for Free Trade, calling on the Trump administration to avoid a trade war. 

“We’re kind of caught in the crossfire,” he said.
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French Rail Unions in Showdown with Macron in Rolling Strike

Posted on by SeeEU

France faces a first wave of rolling railway strikes Tuesday that are expected to bring travel chaos in a test of President Emmanuel Macron’s resolve to modernize the French economy.

The four main rail unions have called two days of strikes in every five days for the next three months to protest a shake-up of the national SNCF rail monopoly before it is opened up to competition as required by EU law.

The last time a French president squared off against rail unions over workers’ benefits, it ended badly. The strikes of 1995 paralyzed Paris and forced prime minister Alain Juppe to pull the reforms, a defeat from which he failed to recover.

French unions are, however, weaker than in 1995 and divided in their response to Macron’s social and economic reforms. More than half of French people view the strike plan as unjustified, according to an Ifop poll published Sunday.

“French people don’t want to put up with three months of chaos that has no justification,” Transport Minister Elizabeth Borne told weekend newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

The SNCF expects one the biggest strikes in years, with nearly one in two staff saying in advance they would take part.

Commuter lines into Paris will be hit hard and only one in eight high-speed TGVs will operate, the SNCF has said.

International train services also face disruption: no trains will run between France, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. One in every three trains to Germany will operate, while the Eurostar service connecting London, Paris and Brussels will operate three out of every four trains, the SNCF said.

SNCF boss Guillaume Pepy, who backs the reforms, has warned of widespread disruption.

“I want to be very clear … the strike action will no doubt be widely adhered to and is going to make the lives of a lot of people very difficult,” he said in a radio interview.

Showdown

Macron wants to transform heavily indebted SNCF into a profit-maker. Unions say he is paving the way for privatization.

If Macron triumphs over the unions, it will set the tone for other key reform plans including revamping the education system and overhauling pensions. He has already stared them down over easing labor laws.

SNCF workers fear they could lose job-for-life guarantees, automatic annual pay rises and a generous early retirement policy.

Borne has sought to ease tensions with assurances that current SNCF employees that have to move to a competitor in the future would keep most of their advantages.

The Communist-rooted CGT wants the strike to spread beyond the rail sector. Energy sector workers plan to join the strike action from April 3 to June 28, to protest the planned liberalization of the power sector.

The CGT has called for public and private sector workers nationwide to strike April 19, but in a sign of union division private sector unions have so far declined.
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China Increases Tariffs on US Products, Effective Immediately

Posted on by SeeUS

China has increased import duties up to 25 percent on a list of U.S. goods, including pork, fruit and other products, amounting to $3 billion.

The tariffs, which took effect immediately on April 2, were announced late Sunday by China’s finance ministry, who said the country was responding to a U.S. tariff hike on steel and aluminum that took effect on March 23.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement Monday it was suspending its obligations to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to reduce tariffs on 120 U.S. goods, including fruit and ethanol. The import duties on those products will be raised by an extra 15 percent.

The retaliatory tariffs come as the trade tensions between Beijing and Washington escalate.

Economic observers said the immediate impact should be limited, but investors have feared a full-blown trade spat between the two countries may depress global commerce and subsequently be damaging for world growth.

Even if China’s tariffs don’t have a huge impact on America’s $20 trillion economy, they will bring pain to specific communities.

“It’s hard to say exactly how this will impact U.S. pork producers. We export pork to more than 100 countries around the word,” Jim Heimerl, president of the National Pork Producers Council, told VOA.  “We are the most competitive pork-producing nation in the word. We produce the highest quality, the safest, and the most affordable pork in the world. And when we can compete on a level playing field, we do very, very well. Obviously, with a 25 percent tariff in China, we are at a very significant disadvantage.”

Heimerl said China was a particularly significant market for the U.S.

“It was our No. 2 U.S. pork export market. Last year, we sent $1.1 billion worth of pork to China, and that’s out of a total of nearly $6.5 billion of U.S. pork exports. That’s a significant share of our export market,” he said.

Concern over the tariffs was also felt by much smaller businesses such as the Yao Family Wines of St. Helena in Napa Valley, California. Thomas Hinde, president of the winery, said although they sell very little of their wine in China, he is concerned that the extra 15 percent tariff on U.S. wine will slow down their effort to develop that market.

“Largely half of the wine consumed in China are from France. France pays the 42 percent duty now, but they won’t have the additional 15 percent,” he said.

In the meantime, U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to also impose tariffs on more than $50 billion worth of Chinese goods. The move is intended to punish Beijing over U.S. accusations that China has systematically misappropriated American intellectual property. Beijing has repeatedly denied such allegations.

Beibei Su and Teng Xu of VOA’s Mandarin Service contributed to this report.
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An Atypical US Terror Case Comes to Close with 20-Year Sentence

Posted on by SeeUS

It was July 2015 when the FBI, scrambling to contain a surge in Islamic State group propaganda, first visited an Egyptian-American newspaper deliveryman in Maryland.

Agents needed to ask Mohamed Elshinawy why his phone number had surfaced in an investigation involving IS group extremists and how he came to receive a $1,000 Western Union transaction from Egypt.

During hours of questioning, Elshinawy first suggested the money was from his mother. Next, he said it was for an iPhone purchase for a friend. After being reminded it was a crime to lie to federal agents, he proceeded to tell a different story — that he had, indeed, received money from the Islamic State group but that he was actually scamming the group instead of planning an attack. 

It was a pivotal moment in a monthslong FBI investigation that ended Friday with Elshinawy being sentenced to 20 years in prison on terrorism-related charges. 

The case had a chilling twist: Officials say that among the roughly 150 IS-linked cases U.S. authorities have brought since 2014, this is the only prosecution they’re aware of in which money was transmitted from IS group operatives abroad to someone in the U.S. The more common model is money from America being sent to fighters in Syria.

The investigation stretched from a modest townhome northeast of Baltimore across multiple continents, unveiled a shadowy network of illicit payments and shell companies, and revealed a direct link to an IS group hacker who was killed in a drone strike in Syria just before Elshinawy’s arrest.

Red flags, questions, fear

Law enforcement officials involved in the case spoke to The Associated Press about it in detail, recounting a high-intensity investigation that required constant surveillance, the scouring of money transfers and concern that funds sent to Elshinawy would fund an attack.

Brian Nadeau, a Baltimore FBI assistant special agent in charge, said the case raised a lot of red flags.

“Why is the money coming this way? Who is this person? What level are they at?” he said. The FBI, he said, “can’t let someone who’s receiving ISIS [Islamic State] money be out running around. Who knows if we’re in the middle of it, the beginning of it, the end, and what their plan is?”

Elshinawy’s lawyers didn’t return messages seeking comment, but they have argued that his social media and other communications — such as his claim that he was an IS group soldier and was committed to violent jihad — were protected by the First Amendment, were not directed by the Islamic State and were merely aspirational.

Under a plea agreement, Elshinawy admitted conspiring with the IS group, but he defended himself at his sentencing hearing, saying, “I am not a terrorist,” according to the Baltimore Sun.

It’s not clear how close Elshinawy came to an attack, though FBI officials said they believed the threat of violence was real. Elshinawy’s lawyers said in a sentencing memorandum that he was provided little to no specific direction, but Elshinawy had told authorities he was given multiple options for violence, including a suicide bombing, and images of individuals who were potential targets, court papers say.

Childhood friend

The Islamic State group generally doesn’t need to fund attacks in the U.S. given the inexpensive nature of the violence it advocates and its reliance on social media to motivate followers. But officials in this case believe jihadists exploited a personal connection: a childhood friend of Elshinawy’s from Egypt who fled to Syria, joined the Islamic State, communicated with him on social media and encouraged him to pledge allegiance to the group.

His technological know-how and skill in covering his electronic tracks — he used encrypted communications applications and proxy servers — likely made Elshinawy a natural conduit, officials said.

All told, officials say, he received nearly $9,000 in money transfers, including through PayPal accounts, and used the funds for phones, a laptop and a virtual private network for communication with militants overseas.

The funds, disguised as money for printers, were routed throughout the globe in a web of wire transfers. Much of it came from a United Kingdom-based IT company run by Siful Sujan, an IS group computer hacker killed in December 2015 airstrikes in Syria.

“I think they thought they were going to just have a run-of-the-mill ISIS case, and when they pulled back the onion, they realized that [Elshinawy] was a key node,” said Seamus Hughes, deputy director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, who has written about the case.

The FBI’s first interview with Elshinawy came amid heightened alertness of IS-inspired extremism, weeks after an attempted rampage at a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest in Texas and one day after shootings at military facilities in Tennessee.

Officials say he deflected questions about the money transfer with answers they knew were untruthful. Officials say he pulled out an iPhone to display a Facebook conversation in Arabic, but the English translation he provided was clearly improvised, the FBI said.

After several hours, and an admonishment to come clean, he admitted receiving the money from the Islamic State but said he was scamming the group because he never intended to commit violence, officials said. He said that his cleverness should be rewarded and that he should be hired by the FBI to help untangle the IS group money network, officials say. 

Dreams for jihad

The interviews continued over two weeks, and the results from search warrants and subpoenas yielded insights that alarmed officials further.

Elshinawy had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in February 2015 and, in conversations with his friend, pronounced himself ready for jihad and asked for advice in bomb-making, court papers say.

“I do not have dreams or aspirations in this world except the Jihad … I want just to go to Jihad and be with the Islamic State,” he wrote in an April 2015 message to his friend.

He responded to the unrest in Baltimore that followed the death of Freddie Gray by praising violence against police. And, the FBI says, he attempted to recruit a brother in Saudi Arabia to join the Islamic State group.

Elshinawy has been in custody since his 2015 arrest.

Agents searching his home found articles about IS attacks. His laptop held an image of a severed head next to an IS flag, and he accessed on his phone images of government buildings in Baltimore that officials believe were potential targets.

“If this turned out to be successful,” said Hughes, “it would be a whole different way of looking at ISIS external operations in the U.S.”
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Trump Muddles DACA Program in Anti-immigrant Twitter Comments

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While President Donald Trump has said illegal immigrants heading toward the United States are trying to take advantage of an Obama-era policy that shields certain people from deportation, the program known as DACA is actually not open to new entrants.

At issue is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which the Republican president last September ordered rescinded. Under DACA, hundreds of thousands of young adults dubbed “Dreamers” who were brought into the United States illegally as children have been shielded from deportation and given work permits.

On Sunday, apparently in reference to a caravan of 1,500 Central Americans who are journeying through Mexico toward the United States, Trump wrote on Twitter: “These big flows of people are all trying to take advantage of DACA. They want in on the act!”

But there is no “act” to get in on. Newly arriving illegal immigrants cannot win protections under DACA, created in 2012 by Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, for two reasons.

Anyone admitted into the program had to have been living continuously in the United States since June 15, 2007, along with other requirements. In addition, Trump himself ordered an end to the program, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is not accepting new applicants.

Under Trump’s action, DACA was supposed to have begun winding down last month. But courts have ruled that Trump acted improperly and that the hundreds of thousands of immigrants currently enrolled still qualified for protections while the legal fight over DACA unfolds.

When he announced he was ending DACA, Trump urged Congress to come up with a legislative fix. Referring to the Dreamers, Trump said, “I have a great heart for the folks we’re talking about, a great love for them.”

Seven months later, DACA participants are living with the uncertainty over whether they will be protected or targeted for deportation. 

Meanwhile, following a series of failed negotiations with Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, Trump has been fuming over the refusal of lawmakers to fully fund a $25 billion wall he wants to build on the U.S.-Mexican border. The wall became a bargaining chip in DACA replacement legislation.

“NO MORE DACA DEAL!,” Trump said on Twitter as he blamed Democrats for the situation. “DACA is dead.”

Matthew Wright, a government professor at American University in Washington, called Trump’s tweets “not connected to reality.” Wright noted that Trump rejected several Democratic offers to address DACA, including at one point a deal that would have provided $25 billion for his wall.

Last month, Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said Trump’s rejection of that offer was the “high-water mark” for the wall’s prospects in Congress, where support for it is tepid at best.
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Saudi Crown Prince Says Israelis Have Right to Their Own Land

Posted on by SeeEA

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land in an interview published on Monday in U.S. magazine The Atlantic, another public sign of ties between Riyadh and Tel Aviv appearing to grow closer.

Asked if he believes the Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland, Mohammed bin Salman was quoted as saying: “I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations.”

A common threat

Saudi Arabia — birthplace of Islam and home to its holiest shrines — does not recognize Israel. It has maintained for years that normalizing relations hinges on Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war, territory Palestinians seek for a future state.

“We have religious concerns about the fate of the holy mosque in Jerusalem and about the rights of the Palestinian people. This is what we have. We don’t have any objection against any other people,” said Prince Mohammed who is touring the United States to drum up investments and support for his efforts to contain Iranian influence.

Increased tension between Tehran and Riyadh has fueled speculation that shared interests may push Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together against what they see as a common Iranian threat.

“There are a lot of interests we share with Israel and if there is peace, there would be a lot of interest between Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries,” Prince Mohammed added.

New airspace rules

Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel last month, which an Israeli official hailed as historic following two years of efforts.

In November, an Israeli cabinet member disclosed covert contacts with Saudi Arabia, a rare acknowledgment of long-rumored secret dealings which Riyadh still denies.

Saudi Arabia condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel last year, but Arab officials told Reuters at the time that Riyadh appears to be on board with a broader U.S. strategy for an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan still in its early phases of development.
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Dueling US-Russia Consulate Closures Leave Ordinary Citizens Feeling the Pain

Posted on by SeeEU

Last week’s tit-for-tat closure of U.S. and Russian consulates over the death of a former spy in Britain was intended to punish officials and diplomats, but ordinary citizens of both countries are already feeling the impact.

The fallout is most severe for Russian citizens and travel-minded Americans in the U.S. Northwest, who would normally seek visas, passport renewals and other documents at the Russian consulate in Seattle, which shut down Friday.

With Russia’s San Francisco consulate having already been closed in September, that leaves residents of the Seattle area with a minimum four-and-a-half-hour flight to the nearest functioning Russian consulate in Houston, Texas, some 3,000 kilometers (1,860) miles) away.

Gayane Yaffa, head of Russian visa services in Seattle, said her phone rang non-stop all week after the March 26 White House announcement.

“People started calling at 7 a.m. asking what to do now,” said Yaffa. “Many had already planned their trips and purchased tickets. People kept asking what to do. It was impossible to reach the consulate in Seattle, and those who succeeded were told there was no point in coming because the employees only gave out the ready passports with visas in them.”

Russia responded later last week by ordering the United States to close its consulate in St. Petersburg, the second busiest one in the country. But the impact of that closing will be less severe, since the U.S. consulate in Moscow — less than 700 kilometers (435 miles) to the southeast — will continue to operate.

Russian national Yuri Dukhovny, a Los Angeles resident, says he believes the exchange of closings is going to have a disproportionate impact on Russians.

“All conflicts between states first affect average citizens,” he said. “Many Russians need to renew passports and deal with paperwork. Not having any Russian consulates on the West Coast affects them greatly. Everything will now take forever.”

Script writer Jeremy Iverson, an American who says he moved to Russia a year ago to seek adventure, echoed that view, saying it is average Russians who ultimately will pay the price for the diplomatic gamesmanship.

“The closure of the (St. Petersburg) consulate isn’t actually going to impact American citizens  they’ll still have to go through the ILS system to mail in your documents needed for obtaining a visa,” he said. “It will impact Russian citizens who need consular services, those who are here and are trying to get passports changed, to get documentation  things like that. It’s going to be an issue for them.”

Moscow responded to the U.S. order to close the Seattle consulate with a Twitter poll asking Russian citizens which U.S. consulate should be closed in response.

What seemed like a sarcastic joke, said Russian political analyst Alexandr Konfisakhor, was actually a political tactic that appeared to shift responsibility for the decision to the will of the Russian people. Konfisakhor suggested it was a way for the Russian government to respond to the U.S. but not overdo it.

“You can get to Moscow from St. Petersburg in just a couple of hours. It means that everyone who needs a visa can easily get one. Closing a consulate in Yekaterinburg or Vladivostok would have been a much more serious inconvenience,” he said.

This story originated from VOA’s Russian Service. 
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