Month: August 2018

Pope Laments Abuse in 1st Post-bombshell Vatican Appearance

Posted on by SeeEU

Pope Francis lamented Wednesday how Irish church authorities failed to respond to the crimes of sexual abuse, speaking during his first public appearance at the Vatican after bombshell accusations that he himself covered up for an American cardinal’s misdeeds.

Francis presided over his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square and spoke about his weekend trip to Ireland, where the abuse scandal has devastated the Catholic Church’s credibility.

The final day of the trip was overshadowed by release of a document from a retired Holy See diplomat accusing Vatican authorities, including Francis, of covering up for ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick despite knowing for years that he regularly slept with seminarians.

The author of the document — retired Vatican ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano — said Francis should resign for his complicity in the McCarrick scandal, which has implicated two decades’ worth of U.S. and Vatican church leaders.

 

Francis referred Wednesday to the Irish culture of cover-up, but he omitted from his remarks a line in his prepared text noting how he had prayed in Ireland for the Virgin Mary to intervene to give the church strength to “firmly pursue truth and justice” to help victims heal.

 

U.S. bishops, as well as rank-and-file Catholics, have called for an independent investigation to find out who knew about McCarrick’s abuse and when, and how he was able to rise through the ranks even though it was an open secret that he regularly invited seminarians to his New Jersey beach house and into his bed.

Francis last month removed McCarrick as a cardinal and ordered him to live a lifetime of penance and prayer after a U.S. church investigation determined that an allegation he groped a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible.

 

Vigano’s 11-page j’accuse alleges that Francis knew of McCarrick’s penchant for adult seminarians starting in 2013, but rehabilitated him from sanctions that Pope Benedict XVI had allegedly imposed on him in 2009 or 2010. The claims have shaken Francis’ five-year papacy.

 

There is ample evidence, however, that the Vatican under Benedict and St. John Paul II also covered up the information, and that any reported sanctions Benedict imposed were never enforced since McCarrick travelled widely for the church during those years, including to Rome to meet with Benedict and celebrate Mass with other U.S. bishops at the tomb of St. Peter.

 

Vigano provided no evidence that Francis had lifted the alleged sanctions, saying only that McCarrick announced after a meeting with the pope that he was going to China.

 

But he said McCarrick had become a close adviser to Francis, who was seeking to appoint more pastorally-minded bishops to the U.S. church, which he believed had become too ideologically driven by right-wingers.

 
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Britain Seeks Ways to Continue Trading with Iran

Posted on by SeeEU

British officials have been turning to Japan for tips on how to dodge American sanctions on Iran, according to local media.

Britain is already seeking from Washington exemptions from some U.S. sanctions, which are being re-imposed by President Donald Trump because of the U.S. withdrawal earlier this year from a controversial 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. The British are especially keen to maintain banking links with Iran and to import Iranian oil.

According to local media, U.K. officials have been asking their Japanese counterparts how they managed in the past to sidestep some aspects of the pre-2015 sanctions regime, which allowed Tokyo to sign oil deals with Iran as well as insurance contracts without incurring U.S. penalties.

Re-imposed U.S. sanctions penalize any foreign companies that deal with Iran by barring them from doing business in America. That threat has already persuaded more than 50 Western firms to shutter their operations in Iran, including French automakers Renault and Peugeot and the French oil giant Total as well as Germany’s Deutsche Bahn railway company and Deutsche Telekom.

Seeking waivers

British ministers have publicly announced that they are hoping to secure waivers from sanctions for oil imports, tanker insurance and banking. There is particular concern, say British officials, about the position of a gas field 240 miles from Aberdeen which is jointly owned by BP and a subsidiary of Iran’s state-controlled oil company.

According to The Times newspaper, British diplomats and Treasury officials have discussed with their Japanese counterparts what options they may have of evading penalties, if British firms continue to trade with Iran. Britain’s Foreign Office hasn’t commented on the specific claims in report. But in a general statement it says: “We are working with European and other partners, to ensure Iran continues to benefit from sanctions relief through legitimate business, for as long as Iran continues to meet its nuclear commitments under the deal.”

Faltering Iranian economy

On Tuesday, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani was grilled by the country’s lawmakers, who for the first time in his five-year tenure called him before parliament to answer questions about the country’s faltering economy amid the tightening U.S. sanctions.

They asked him about high unemployment, rising food prices and the collapsing value of the Iranian currency. Rouhani, who overcame the opposition of hardliners in the first place to sign the 2015 nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers, insisted Iran would overcome the “the anti-Iranian officials in the White House.”

He added: “We are not afraid of America or the economic problems. We will overcome the troubles.” His answers didn’t reassure lawmakers, who voted to reject most of them. Earlier this month the parliament impeached the economy and labor ministers amid growing anger about the economy.

In order to try to keep open financial channels with Tehran and facilitate Iran’s oil exports, the European Union has taken steps to counter renewed U.S. sanctions, including forbidding EU citizens and firms from complying with them.

The European Commission updated a blocking statute on August 7, which bans companies from observing the sanctions — unless expressly authorized by Brussels to do so. It would allow EU firms to recover damages arising from the sanctions. But many companies say they are fearful of losing current or potential business in the U.S.

“Under these conditions it is very difficult,” according to the Director for International Relations at BusinessEurope, a lobby group, Luisa Santos. She says even small and medium-sized businesses which don’t trade with U.S. will face significant challenges because they will need financing from Western banks.

The first round of U.S. nuclear sanctions on Iran officially snapped back into place earlier this month but the more biting sanctions will be re-imposed on November 4 as Washington seeks to pummel the Iranian economy. The first phase U.S. sanctions prohibit any transactions with Iran involving dollars, gold, precious metals, aluminum, steel, commercial passenger aircraft, shipping and Iranian seaports.

 

Earlier in August, Woody Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, cautioned there would be trade consequences for Britain, which he described as the closest U.S. ally, unless London breaks with the EU and abides by the re-imposed sanctions on Tehran.

The envoy also delivered a clear ultimatum to British businesses, instructing them to stop trading with Iran or face “serious consequences.”

Trump’s decision in May to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal, signed by his predecessor Barack Obama, in which Tehran agreed to nuclear curbs in return for sanctions relief, paved the way for the restoration of unilateral American economic penalties on Iran.

The U.S. administration blames Iran for fomenting instability in the Middle East and encouraging terrorism. Trump has described the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as a “horrible, one sided” agreement.

U.S. officials say Iran has used the money going into the country after the 2015 deal, when sanctions were eased, not to improve the lives of ordinary Iranians but to increase spending on the military and proxy forces in the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and militants in Yemen.
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Hawaii Residents Hit by Floods from Hurricane Lane as New Storm Forms

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Flash flood warnings were issued on Tuesday for the Hawaiian island of Kauai, with residents on the north coast told to evacuate and others left stranded by high water as the remnants of Hurricane Lane drenched the archipelago and a new storm brewed in the Pacific Ocean.

Hawaii was spared a direct hit from a major hurricane as Lane diminished to a tropical storm as it approached and then drifted west, further from land. But rain was still pounding the island chain, touching off flooding on Oahu and Kauai.

“It has been a steady rain since after Lane but I got up 2:30 a.m. (Hawaiian Standard Time) to the National Weather Service flash flood advisory and that’s when we put out the release as well as an island-wide telephone call,” County of Kauai spokesman Alden Alayvilla said.

The advisory urged residents near Hanalei Bridge on the north side of the island to evacuate their homes due to rising stream levels. A convoy that had been used to escort residents over roads damaged by historic floods in April between was shut down, leaving many cut off.

“Heavy pounding and hazardous conditions are being reported island-wide. Motorists are advised to drive with extreme caution. Updates will be given as more information is made available,” the Kauai Emergency Management Agency said.

​A flash flood watch also remained in effect for Oahu, home to the state capital Honolulu and 70 percent of Hawaii’s 1.4 million residents.

Micco Godinez, who lives on the north side of Kauai, said he found the only road out of Hanalei, where he lives, barricaded by police vehicles when he tried to leave for work on Tuesday morning. He expected to be stranded for at least another day.

“I can’t get out at all,” Godinez said. “Our little community of Hanalei is isolated and then west of us is even more isolated,” he said.

Even as Hawaii residents sought to recover from Lane, they kept a watchful eye on Tropical Storm Miriam, spinning in the Pacific Ocean some 2,000 miles to the east and expected to become a hurricane by the time it approaches the islands.

“Miriam is supposed to go north and dissipate in the colder waters and drier air, so I’m not really worried about it,” Godinez said. “But it is hurricane season, and there’s another one behind that. You know what they say: Without rain you wouldn’t have rainbows.”
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Pompeo’s Nixed N. Korea Trip Exposes Denuclearization Rift

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The abrupt cancellation of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to Pyongyang reflects growing concern in the Trump administration about North Korea’s unwillingness to denuclearize, experts said.

President Donald Trump on Friday called off Pompeo’s visit to North Korea, days before it was set to begin, because of what the president felt was a lack of progress in denuclearization talks.

“I don’t think the North Koreans were prepared to do what we needed to do. which was to have some kind of declaration [on their nuclear program] or some tangible sign that they were moving ahead,” said Christopher Hill, a chief negotiator with North Korea during the George W. Bush administration.

“They were not moving ahead, so I think rather than having the secretary of state come back empty-handed, the president canceled it,” Hill said.

North Korea is believed to be demanding an official end to the Korean War before taking steps toward denuclearization. The U.S., however, wants North Korea to make concrete steps toward denuclearization, starting with a declaration of its nuclear weapons arsenal, before signing an official peace treaty to end the Korean War. An armistice signed on July 27, 1953, by Chinese, North Korean and United Nations forces ended fighting and established the Demilitarized Zone, which has since separated the two Koreas.

The Washington Post reported Monday that two U.S. officials said Trump canceled Pompeo’s trip after receiving a hostile letter from Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party Central Committee. He had met previously with Pompeo in New York City and in Pyongyang.

The letter stated Pyongyang could not move forward with denuclearization because the U.S. was not ready to step toward a peace treaty, according to a CNN report Tuesday citing people familiar with the matter.

No ‘meaningful steps’ seen

Rob Rapson, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, said, “The secretary stands ready to go, but only when the other side is ready.” But for now, Rapson said, North Korea is “not yet prepared to take meaningful steps toward denuclearization.”

Pompeo’s visit to Pyongyang would have been the fourth this year and the second since Trump’s June summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which has been criticized as having produced no framework for a denuclearization process.

Experts said the lack of movement in the talks resulted from the contrasting expectations that Washington and Pyongyang have about denuclearization.

Ken Gause, director of the International Affairs Group at the Center for Naval Analyses, said North Korea would not relent on its demand for a peace treaty before moving toward denuclearization.

He said Pyongyang would not give up nuclear weapons “within the framework of denuclearization,” and the only way to have North Korea denuclearize was to “couch it in terms of confidence-building measures toward a peace regime.”

Gary Samore, the White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction in the Obama administration, said, “It’s not clear … that the Trump administration has been able to come up with new proposals.”

He continued, “As you know, the whole question of issuing a peace declaration is very controversial in Washington.”

When announcing the cancellation of Pompeo’s trip to Pyongyang, Trump said China was not helping with denuclearization because of its trade disputes with the U.S.

Although Hill said he thought the canceled trip was not particularly related to China’s stance, he said the U.S. should focus on applying pressure to enforce full implementation of sanctions.

“I think it’s an issue where the U.S. lost a lot of its leverage by focusing on the negotiating track to the exclusion of the sanctions track,” said Hill, stressing, “I think it’s time to work full time on ramping up the pressures. I think they lost too much [leverage] because of Singapore.”

China has been calling for sanctions relief for North Korea since the Singapore summit, and its implementation of sanctions has been relaxed, especially along the border it shares with North Korea.

Resumption of trade seen

William Tobey, who participated in the Six Party Talks with North Korea, said calling for sanctions relief was a sign that China will start trading with North Korea.

“Beijing has mostly coddled its ally, and responded to the Singapore summit by calling for an ease of sanctions, which was probably code for, ‘We are going to resume trade with North Korea.’ ”

Because of “huge, gaping holes” in sanctions enforcement, Gause believes Trump’s maximum pressure policy will not work in denuclearizing the North, and because denuclearization is “not a primary issue for China, he said, expecting China to help solve the denuclearization issue is a “non-starter.” 

“They have no incentive even … in normal times to put that much pressure on North Korea. And given the trade war that we have now, they’re going to have even less incentive to play ball on sanctions,” said Gause.

Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, said he thought Beijing, which has quietly eased sanctions and reduced U.S. leverage over Pyongyang, “will not deliver North Korea.”

In a signal of a reversion to its stance before detente with Pyongyang, U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis told reporters on Tuesday that there were “no plans, at this time, to suspend any more exercises” on the Korean Peninsula. The Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises that usually take place in August were halted as a goodwill gesture toward Pyongyang after the summit in Singapore.

Lee Yeon-cheol and Kim Young-nam of VOA’s Korean service contributed to this report.
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Liberal Democrat and Trump-backed Republican to Face Off for Florida Governor

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A liberal Democrat backed by Senator Bernie Sanders pulled off an upset in the Democratic primary for Florida governor on Tuesday, setting up a November showdown with a Republican backed by President Donald Trump.

Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, beat moderate Gwen Graham, a former U.S. representative and daughter of a prominent Florida politician, in a surprising victory after running as an unabashed progressive who backed “Medicare for all,” impeaching Trump and standing up to the National Rifle Association.

Gillum, 39, will face Republican U.S. Representative Ron DeSantis in November in one of the top governor’s races in the country, pitting the Democratic Party’s progressive wing against a conservative who won his primary by touting his closeness to Trump.

The race in the political battleground of Florida will be watched closely by both parties as a possible preview of the 2020 campaign, when Trump could be seeking re-election against a liberal Democrat.

Gillum, who would be the state’s first black governor, trailed in the polls through much of the race but surged in the final stages with the backing of Sanders and high-profile liberal donors like George Soros and Tom Steyer.

“We have shown the rest of the country that we can be the David in the situation where there is a Goliath,” he told supporters after his victory. “That you can be the non-millionaire, you can come from a working class family, and you can make your way to the top.”

The conservative DeSantis easily won the Republican primary by highlighting his enthusiastic loyalty to Trump. DeSantis, who was endorsed by Trump, beat state Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.

“I am not always the most popular guy in D.C., but I did have support from someone in Washington. If you walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, he lives in the White House with the pillars in front of it,” DeSantis told supporters after his win, noting he had spoken to Trump.

Florida also will host one of the country’s top U.S. Senate races between term-limited Republican Governor Rick Scott, who won the Senate nomination against token opposition, and incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. Nelson ran unopposed for the nomination.

Arizona Races

Voters in Arizona were also picking candidates for the November elections, when Democrats will try to pick up 23 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and two seats in the Senate to gain majorities and slam the brakes on Trump’s legislative agenda.

Republican establishment favorite U.S. Representative Martha McSally has led consistently in opinion polls over former state Senator Kelli Ward and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in a three-way battle to prove which candidate is most loyal to Trump, who won Arizona by 4 percentage points in 2016.

The contest could be critical to the balance of power in the Senate in November. The Arizona seat of retiring Republican Jeff Flake, a Trump critic, is considered one of the two top takeover targets for Democrats, along with Nevada.

McSally is seen as a stronger general election candidate than either Ward or Arpaio, both hard-line conservatives.

McSally has already launched advertising aimed at her likely Democratic opponent in November, U.S. Representative Kyrsten Sinema.

The primaries in Arizona and Florida on Tuesday are the last big day of state primaries before November’s elections. After Tuesday’s primaries, only five states remain to pick candidates before full attention turns to the November election, when all 435 House seats and 35 of the 100 Senate seats will be at stake.
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Officials: Trump Backs Off Plan to Roll Back Foreign Aid

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President Donald Trump’s administration backed off on Tuesday on plans to bypass Congress and roll back billions of dollars from the U.S. foreign aid budget after lawmakers pushed back, senators, congressional aides and U.S. officials said.

Reuters reported on Aug. 16 that the White House Office of Management and Budget had asked the State Department and Agency for International Development to submit information for a “rescission” package that would have led to sharp cuts in foreign assistance.

Rescissions cut money appropriated by Congress but not spent. The unusual plan from Mick Mulvaney, the former Republican congressman who heads the OMB, would have defied Congress by eliminating foreign assistance it had already approved.

Trump’s focus on his “America First” agenda has meant fewer funds for foreign aid. His administration has pushed repeatedly to cut the amount of money sent abroad since he took office in January 2017.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the administration at a meeting on Tuesday to abandon the plan in the face of congressional opposition, several sources with knowledge of the situation said. It was a rare pushback against a Trump policy by fellow Republicans, who control Congress.

An OMB spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said cutting a relatively small amount of foreign aid funding made no sense from an administration planning huge spending increases.

He speculated that the White House hoped the suggestion would “rev up” its base before November’s congressional elections but realized pushing the scheme would make it hard to work with angry lawmakers.

“I think they just kind of sat down and realized maybe that wasn’t so smart, and … they were right,” Corker told Reuters.

Loophole in law

Several administration officials had said the OMB was targeting some $3.5 billion in funds no longer needed for their original purpose, taking advantage of a loophole in the law to make cuts at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The cuts could have included more than $200 million Trump froze in March for recovery efforts in Syria.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, welcomed the decision.

“Rescinding funds that had been agreed to by Congress and signed into law by the President, in the waning days of the fiscal year, would have set a terrible precedent and harmed programs that further United States interests around the world,” Leahy said in a statement.

Trump sought to slash foreign aid in this year’s budget, but he ended up signing a budget without those cuts after Congress objected.

The administration then tried to use the rescission process to slash $15 billion in domestic spending, including $7 billion for  children’s health insurance. That plan did not pass Congress.
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US Ready for Talks When It’s Clear North Korea Will Denuclearize

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The United States is ready for talks with North Korea when it’s clear it will follow through on its commitment to denuclearize, the State Department said Tuesday after a planned visit to Pyongyang by top diplomat Mike Pompeo was shelved.

On Friday, President Donald Trump directed Pompeo to delay his trip, which had been slated for early this week, citing insufficient progress on getting the authoritarian regime to abandon its nuclear weapons, as agreed upon with leader Kim Jong Un in June.

Pompeo’s spokeswoman Heather Nauert declined to comment on reports that a tough-worded letter from an aide to Kim had derailed what would have been Pompeo’s fourth visit to North Korea this year.

Nauert said the president and his national security team, including Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, had judged that “now is not the right time to travel.” However, she said diplomatic efforts are “ongoing” though she could not say whether there had been communications between the State Department and North Korea since Friday.

She cited a statement from Pompeo that despite the decision to delay the trip, “America stands ready to engage when it is clear that Chairman Kim stands ready to deliver on the commitments that he made at the Singapore summit with President Trump to completely denuclearize North Korea.”

“The world is united behind the need for Chairman Kim to fulfill that commitment,” Nauert said.

Trump, who views the reduction in tensions with North Korea this year as a major foreign policy achievement, still voiced respect for Kim on Friday and said he looked forward to seeing him “soon.” He laid unspecified blame on China, North Korea’s leading trade partner, for the lack of progress. China is currently embroiled in a trade dispute with the U.S.

But Trump’s tweet marked a shift in his relentlessly upbeat messaging since the Singapore summit, the first ever held between leaders of the U.S. and North Korea. There is growing skepticism in Washington and beyond that Kim intends to denuclearize without first winning concessions such as sanctions relief or a declaration on formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters Tuesday that the U.S. might carry out military exercises with South Korea next spring after having canceled a major exercise this year as a gesture toward advancing diplomacy aimed at eliminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Mattis said no decision has been made on when to resume military exercises, but his statements suggested the recent cancellation might not be repeated.
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Egypt’s al-Azhar Calls for Harsh Penalties for Sexual Harassment

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Egypt’s top Sunni Muslim authority has called for strong penalties against perpetrators of sexual harassment, following a recent increase in reports.

Several incidents, apparently recorded by victims or bystanders during the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday last week and posted on social media, left many Egyptians in shock.

One showed a brawl in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria where a 40-year-old man was stabbed to death when he tried to fend off another man harassing his wife.

Local media said the unidentified 39-year-old attacker was in custody.

In another social media post, a crowd of young men in the Nile delta city of Damanhour fought off a motorbike rider as he tried to rescue three women being mobbed on a public street.

The authenticity of the recordings could not be independently verified, but some local media had reported on them.

In a statement first issued on Monday, al-Azhar said sexual harassment in any form was deviant behavior, and rejected any attempt to blame the way some women dress or behave.

“Al-Azhar has closely followed up the reports of sexual harassment incidents recently circulated by the mass media outlets and social media networks including harassers’ violent attacks on those trying to save women,” the statement, also issued in English on Tuesday, said.

“Al-Azhar asserts that criminalizing harassment and those who commit harassment must be absolute and without any condition or context,” it added.

The statement rejected any attempt to blame women for sexual harassment, saying abuse “violates women’s privacy, freedom and human dignity”.

Al-Azhar demanded the activation of all laws that punish sexual abuse and called for efforts to raise social awareness.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi ordered a crackdown on sexual harassment after he was elected for his first term in office in 2014, following an incident in which seven men were arrested for attacking women near Cairo’s Tahrir Square during his inauguration celebrations,

Earlier this year, an Egyptian court jailed a Lebanese woman for eight years for insulting Egypt and Egyptians after she posted a video on Facebook complaining of sexual harassment.
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Architect Offers New Bridge Design for Hometown Genoa After Tragedy

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Italy’s best-known architect, Renzo Piano, offered on Tuesday to donate the design for a bridge to replace the one that collapsed in his birthplace of Genoa this month, saying he cannot think about anything else after 43 people were killed in the tragedy.

The 80-year-old Piano, who shot to fame with the design of the Centre Pompidou in Paris in the 1970s and decades later designed The Shard in London, lives in France but still keeps an office near Genoa.

The project was announced after a discussion between the regional governor of Liguria, Giovanni Toti, and Piano.

“My commitment is above all moral, to make sure that the new bridge has the traits of Genoa, of our qualities and a little of our parsimony,” Piano told reporters after the meeting. “I can’t think of anything else but that bridge.”

Italy’s populist government has pledged to strip the state concession to the toll road company that managed the bridge, and to have it rebuilt quickly, preferably by the state-controlled Fincantieri.

The collapsed bridge, completed in 1967, was seen as an avant-garde work of engineering at the time, and became a symbol connecting two sides of a city that snaked along the seashore.

“Renzo Piano voluntarily offered, as a competent Genovese, to give this new bridge project as gift to the city,” Toti said. “We happily accepted the help, and he’s already made a few proposals.”
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US Insists Re-Imposition of Iran Sanctions Legal

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The United States on Tuesday defended its re-imposition of sanctions against Iran as a legal and justified national security measure that cannot be challenged by Tehran at the United Nations’ highest court.

U.S. State Department legal advisor Jennifer Newstead urged judges at the International Court of Justice to reject an urgent request by Iran to order the suspension of sanctions re-imposed by President Donald Trump in May.

”The United States does intend, lawfully and for good reason, to bring heavy pressure to bear on the Iranian leadership to change their ways,” Newstead told judges in the court’s wood-paneled Great Hall of Justice. “We do this in the interests of U.S. national security as well as in pursuit of a more peaceful Middle East and a more peaceful world.”

Iran filed a case with the court in July challenging the re-imposition. Tehran alleges that the move breaches a 1955 bilateral agreement known as the Treaty of Amity that regulates and promotes economic and consular ties between the two countries, which have been sworn enemies for decades.

Washington argues that Tehran is attempting to use the 1955 treaty as a pretext to bring before the court a dispute over the 2015 agreement that imposed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting most long-standing U.S. and international sanctions. The 2015 agreement does not include a clause referring disputes to the court in The Hague.

On Monday, Iranian representative Mohsen Mohebi told the court the U.S. sanctions are a clear breach of the 1955 treaty because they are “intended to damage, as severely as possible, Iran’s economy.” He called Trump’s sanctions policy “nothing but a naked economic aggression against my country.”

The 2015 deal came with time limits and did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program or its regional policies in Syria and elsewhere. Trump called the accord the “worst deal ever” and backed out of it in May.

The U.S. decision to pull out was motivated by “an acute, long-standing and growing concern about the national security threat posed by Iran,” Newstead said. “The sanctions that the United States has re-introduced are lawful and appropriate in the face of Iran’s activities, past, continuing and threatened.”

She stressed that the sanctions exclude humanitarian activities in Iran.

Iran’s case challenging the legality of the re-imposition of sanctions is likely to take months or years to complete. The world court is holding hearings this week into Tehran’s request to judges to urgently order a suspension of the sanctions while the underlying case is being heard.

A decision on the urgent request is likely to take weeks.

Rulings by the world court, which settles disputes between nations, are final and legally binding. However, it remains to be seen if the U.S. would abide by a court order to suspend sanctions on Iran.

The case in The Hague came as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani failed to convince parliament that his plans will pull the country out of an economic nosedive worsened by America’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

 

 
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WHO: Rapid Response Needed to Stem Ebola Outbreak in DR Congo

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The World Health Organization (WHO) reports the next seven to 10 days are critical in controlling the spread of the Ebola virus in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Its latest update reported 111 cases of Ebola, with 83 confirmed and 28 probable, including 75 deaths.

The WHO reports it is continuing to rapidly scale-up its response to the Ebola outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, including in Oicha, a town difficult to reach because of security concerns.

More than 100 armed groups are operating in these areas, putting some places, known as Red Zones, off limits because of the dangers. But, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told VOA health workers have had access to all places they need to go with the help of MONUSCO, U.N. peacekeepers acting as escorts.

“Between Beni and Oicha there is a Red Zone,” he said. “Oicha, itself is not a Red Zone, but also getting to Oicha is possible with the help of MONUSCO, and we are very thankful for that.”

Oicha is believed to be surrounded by Ugandan Islamist militias, who are blamed for a series of killings and abductions.

Lindmeier said the next week is critical in efforts to prevent Ebola from spreading to areas that cannot be reached.

“The quicker we can respond and in which we can get to people, to talk to them about how to protect themselves, how to prevent infection, how to deal with infected family members and loved ones, the better it is for any future control,” he said. “So, the earlier we get to any place where this outbreak could possibly reach, the better.”

The World Health Organization said 4,130 people have been vaccinated against Ebola, including 726 health care or frontline workers and more than 900 children. It noted more than 7,000 additional doses of vaccine have been transported to Beni and more doses are in route to DRC from the United States.
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Iran Says Maintain Military Presence in Syria Despite US Pressure

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Iran will maintain its military presence in Syria despite U.S. pressure for its withdrawal, a senior Iranian official said on Tuesday, revealing more details about a military cooperation deal that Tehran and Damascus signed this week.

Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami visited Damascus on Saturday for talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and senior military officials. He signed a deal for military cooperation in a meeting with his Syrian counterpart, but details of the accord were not revealed.

“The continued presence of Iranian [military] advisers in Syria was part of this military cooperation agreement between Tehran and Damascus,” the state news agency IRNA quoted Tehran’s military attache to Damascus, Abolqassem Alinejad, as saying.

“Iran will help Syria in clearing minefields in different parts of the country… Iran will help Syria to rebuild the military factories that were damaged in the war,” Alinejad said.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have sent weapons and thousands of soldiers to Syria to help shore up Assad during the seven-year-long civil war there.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton reiterated last week Washington’s call for Iran to remove all its forces from Syria.

The United States has reimposed economic sanctions against Iran partly over its involvement in conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen as well as over its nuclear and missile programs.

Israel has also long called for its arch foe Iran to withdraw from its neighbor Syria. The Israeli air force has carried out scores of air strikes against Iran’s allies there.

“The pact between Syria and Iran for rehabilitating the Assad army is an excuse and a facade meant to grant legitimacy to the Iranian forces remaining in the area,” Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told Ynet TV on Tuesday. “But as far as we are concerned, no machinations keeping the Iranians in the area will be acceptable.”

A senior Israeli official said in an anonymous statement to reporters that Israel’s military “will continue to act with full determination against attempts by Iran to transfer military forces and weapons systems to Syria.”

Iran has repeatedly said its military presence in Syria is at the invitation of the Assad government and that it has no immediate plans to withdraw. More than 1,000 Iranians, including senior members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, have been killed in Syria since 2012.

The Guards initially kept quiet about their role in Syria.

But in recent years as casualties have mounted they have been more outspoken, framing their engagement as an existential struggle against Sunni Muslim fighters of Islamic State who see Shi’ites that form Iran’s majority as apostates.
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Uganda’s Former Police Chief Released on Bail

Posted on by SeeAF

Uganda’s former police chief, General Kale Kayihura, has been released on bail after 76 days in military custody on charges of failure to protect war materials and aiding and abetting kidnapping.

Kayihura is charged with allowing arms and ammunition issued to police units to be given to gangs and paramilitary organizations, and with kidnapping for his involvement in the forced illegal repatriation of Rwandan exiles and refugees to Rwanda. Kayihura faces a maximum penalty of death if convicted.

In seeking bail, Kayihura’s lawyers argued the 62-year-old is not well and requires medical attention outside Uganda. 

Analysts say that as police inspector general, Kayihura had worked more to suppress political opposition and protect the power of President Yoweri Museveni, rather than on actual policing.

But political analyst Patrick Wakida argues that because Kayihura is a military official, his alleged quest for power was misconstrued as resistance to the government from within the army, which led to his persecution and prosecution.

“And what lies underneath these cases that they have put on him is a power struggle,” Wakida said. “And I can tell you that power struggle will continue. Even those who are actually prosecuting him are asking themselves, ‘What comes next to us?’ Does it only prove what everybody says, ‘That there is only one emperor in this country? The rest are servants of that emperor.'”

One of Kayihura’s lawyers, Jet Tumwebaze, says his arrest and continued detention by the army is an injustice. He adds any actual lawbreakers are still in the ranks.

“You can see, they promised to charge General Kale [Kayihura] with 19 counts and the other day they only could manage a miserable three, which are also service offenses,” Tumwebaze said. “If I am the head, and my lieutenants abused their firearms, go for them. So if any officer working under General Kale, kidnapped or misused the gun, please [arrest] the guys still [in] the confines of this republic. Let the law take its course.”

Kayihura must remain in Kampala and Wakiso, and may not leave Uganda without permission of the military court and army leadership.
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Russia’s Putin Hints He’ll Dilute Unpopular Pension Reform

Posted on by SeeEU

President Vladimir Putin hinted on Tuesday he was ready to soften an unpopular proposal to reform the pension system which has pushed his approval rating down to its lowest level in more than four years.

He said he would deliver his views in a public statement on the issue, perhaps as soon as Wednesday, adding he was aware of public unhappiness about the proposed reform and decisions had to be undertaken cautiously.

“I ask you not to forget that our decisions will affect the fates of millions of people and must be fair. One should not act mechanically, formally, but only take a balanced and cautious approach,” Putin said.

Lawmakers, in a preliminary vote in July, backed a government proposal to sharply raise the retirement age, part of a controversial budget package designed to shore up state finances.

Putin, who once promised never to raise the retirement age, had until now been careful to distance himself from the proposed reforms, which envisage raising the retirement age to 65 from 60 for men and to 63 from 55 for women.

Polls show that around 90 percent of the population oppose the proposed reform.

But on Tuesday he told a government meeting in the Siberian city of Omsk that he would soon intervene.

“In the nearest future, maybe even tomorrow, I will formulate my attitude [to the reform] in detail and will make the respective statement.”

Putin said any decision on the pension system had to be balanced and cautious. He said he was aware of the public’s extremely negative reaction to the proposed reform.

“Of course, all this has drawn a predictable reaction, a rather sharp discussion in public,” Putin said, adding that any changes in the pension age must provide a decent standard of living for Russia’s 147 million-strong population.

‘Politically sensitive’

The retirement age proposal is politically sensitive for Putin, who was re-elected in March, because it has prompted a series of protests across Russia since it was announced on June 14, the day Russia played the first match of its soccer World Cup.

According to opinion polls, Putin’s approval ratings have fallen to levels last seen before Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea which provided the Russian leader with a popularity boost.

Putin’s spokesman on Tuesday dismissed speculation that Putin had been pushed into addressing the issue by a drop in his approval ratings, however.

While Putin said authorities could not act “routinely” and “formally” when it came to reforming the pension system, he made clear that some kind of reform was needed though.

“… We need to take into account the current situation in the economy and the labor market, we must understand what the future holds for the country in 10, 20 and even 30 years,” Putin said.

He said he had asked the government to consult with political parties, public organizations and regional administrations to review the legislation before its second reading in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

Lawmakers passed the bill in the first reading in July. To become law, the bill must pass three readings in the State Duma and must then be approved by the upper house and finally signed into law by the president.

 
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Russia Reinforces Naval Forces in Mediterranean Off Syrian Coast

Posted on by SeeEA

Russia has deployed several frigates to the Mediterranean via the Bosphorus, an analysis of shipping traffic showed, part of what a Russian newspaper on Tuesday called Moscow’s largest naval buildup since it entered the Syrian conflict in 2015.

The reinforcement comes as Russia’s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is believed to be considering an assault on the last big rebel-held enclave, Idlib in the north.

Russia has accused the United States of building up its own forces in the Middle East in preparation for a possible strike on Syrian government forces.

On Saturday, the Admiral Grigorovich and Admiral Essen frigates sailed through Istanbul’s Bosphorus towards the Mediterranean, Reuters pictures showed.

The day before, the Pytlivy frigate and landing ship Nikolai Filchenkov were pictured sailing through the Turkish straits that connect the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. The Vishny Volochek missile corvette passed through earlier this month.

The Izvestia newspaper said Russia had gathered its largest naval presence in the Mediterranean Sea since it intervened in Syria in 2015, turning the tide in Assad’s favor.

The force included 10 vessels, most of them armed with long-range Kalibr cruise missiles, Izvestia wrote, adding that more were on the way, and that two submarines had also been deployed.
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Water Crisis Looms as Syria Military Conflict Winds Down

Posted on by SeeEA

Seven years after civil war erupted in 2011, it appears Syria is beginning to emerge from a dark period of death and destruction. Any recovery may be hampered, however, by what analysts say are signs of a crisis that is looming over water and how it is managed, which could mean the difference between peace or new conflicts — internal and regional — in the future.

Land along the Euphrates River, which runs through modern-day Turkey, Syria and Iraq — also known historically as the Fertile Crescent — has been hit by water shortages, drought, and poor crop yields.

To increase hydro-electric production and improve irrigation in arid parts of Anatolia, Turkey began building a series of 23 dams starting in the 1980s, reducing the amount of water that could be used for agriculture downstream in Syria and Iraq.

Turkish leaders unilaterally annulled a water-sharing agreement with both Syria and Iraq in 2014.

“They were supposed to allow 500 cubic meters per second of water through to the Euphrates and they reduced that down to 200 meters,” Marcus King, a specialist on environmental security at George Washington University in Washington, told VOA.

Decreased flow from Turkey, seven years of fighting, and mismanagement of water resources in many parts of the country, have hit farming hard in Syria. A severe drought from 2006 to 2010 also caused tens of thousands of Syrians to give up agriculture, creating an army of idle young men that may have helped ignite the conflict that began in 2011.

Joshua Landis, who heads the Middle East program at the University of Oklahoma, said the four-year drought “caused immense suffering in Syria,” and forced more than a million people to leave their farms in eastern Syria and to migrate to cities or the edge of cities. “It was that population,” Landis said, “that in many ways laid the groundwork for civil war.”

The drawn-out conflict has damaged or destroyed water networks and infrastructure in Syria’s two largest cities, Aleppo and Damascus, as well as in the provinces. Militant groups that controlled water plants and reservoirs upstream periodically used those assets to blackmail their opponents in urban areas.

“There have been various sub-national actors [who] have monopolized water for their own purposes, mismanaged water,” said King. He argues the Kurds, who hold sway over large swathes of northern and eastern Syria, control large segments of the Euphrates River, including the Tabqa Dam and Lake Assad.

Observers say the Syrian government did not allocate water resources equally to all regions of the country before the war, giving more to some sectarian groups, such as President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect.

To avoid future conflicts, he says, the government must avoid favoritism when it rebuilds and repairs its water network.

“If the reconstruction isn’t done in an equitable way, this will lead to further tensions and cleavages within Syria itself as it begins to recover from conflict,” King said.

Syrian analyst Nabil al-Samman agrees. In a recent article in the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, he wrote that water could be the catalyst for future conflicts between regional states, including Syria and Turkey.

Syria and Turkey already fought a long guerilla war, starting in the 1970s, using the Kurdish PKK militia group as a proxy.

Joshua Landis recalls that former Syrian President Hafez al- Assad “gave [Abdallah] Ocelan, the PKK leader, an office in Damascus and helped the Kurds in their insurgency in [Turkey’s] eastern Anatolia,” he said. “That [was] a war and it was done in part because Turkey began to dam up the Euphrates, and Assad was angry and he did not know how to get them to stop.”

Recognizing that empty reservoirs and parched land are a threat to all people, the United Nations voted in 2010 to make access to water a human right, and most nations now resort to international law to mediate water disputes

That option broke down, though, as regional powers entered the fray of Syria’s civil war, when the country’s many militia groups, often armed and supported by neighboring countries, preferred force over negotiations.

Going forward, Marcus King worries more about internal than external conflict for Syria. “What worries me,” he said, “is some of the sub-national factors, some of the internal inequities and cleavages and disagreements that could lead to conflicts over water.”

Tempering concerns about the frictions between Turkey and Syria, King and others note the last war fought exclusively over water in the Levant dates back to antiquity, and he doubts a new one is likely.

 
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Threats Mount Over Dutch Cartoon Contest With Bounty Placed on Wilders

Posted on by SeeEU

A Pakistani cricketer has offered a reward for the murder of firebrand anti-Muslim Dutch politician Geert Wilders for organizing a cartoon contest depicting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

The incendiary bounty offer is adding to fears in the Netherlands that the cartoon competition, which was announced June 12, will lead to targeted violence, either in Holland or against Western targets in Pakistan, by religious militants including so-called Islamic State (IS) or assassins inspired by the terror group.

In 2015, two French militants who had sworn allegiance to al-Qaida massacred 12 people at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s offices, ostensibly for the printing of cartoons of Muhammad.  The attack was the first in a wave of terrorism in France that has left more than 240 dead during the past three years.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 protesters in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, were prevented earlier this month from pelting the Dutch embassy with stones.  Protesters say the contest is sacrilegious.

Khalid Latif, who last year was banned from playing cricket for five years in a spot-fixing scandal, announced a $24,000 bounty on Wilders and his far-right party colleagues on Facebook.  Spot-fixing is predetermining the outcome of a particular passage of play, as opposed to fixing the outcome of a match.

Wilders has said he has more than 200 entries for the contest, which will be judged by American cartoonist and former Muslim Bosch Fawstin.

Because the judge is an American, Pakistani Islamists say the United States should also be blamed for holding the contest.  The Islamist party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), which has demanded Islamabad break diplomatic ties with the Netherlands, says “strict measures should also be taken against the U.S.”  

Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan, a former international cricketer, has acknowledged the growing furor, promising in his maiden speech this week in the Pakistani Senate that he will raise the issue of blasphemous caricatures in the U.N. General Assembly.  “Very few in the West understand the pain caused to Muslims by such blasphemous activities,” said Khan.

Wilders’ Dutch Party for Freedom, which opposes Muslim immigration to the Netherlands, is the second-largest in the Dutch parliament.  Wilders tweeted he had received clearance from the Dutch counterterrorism agency to hold the competition in the PVV’s parliamentary offices.

Wilders’ Dutch critics say the contest is needlessly provocative and Prime Minister Mark Rutte has denounced the competition as “not respectful,” but he has refused Pakistani demands for the contest to be banned, arguing the Netherlands values freedom of speech.

Three years ago, the Dutch parliament turned down Wilders’ plan to hold an exhibition of anti-Islam cartoons inside the legislature’s complex, saying “exhibitions in parliament must focus on the role of parliament and should not offer a platform to party political statements or be controversial.”

Khan says he will campaign for a global ban on cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.  A pledge secular-minded critics of the new prime minister say is playing politics with religion.  Khan has condemned religious killings, but he supports an article in Pakistan’s constitution mandating the death penalty for any “imputation, insinuation or innuendo” against Muhammad.

“Less than a week in office, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has made blasphemy one of his first issues, empowering militants and initiating international moves, long heralded by Saudi Arabia, that would restrict press freedom by pushing for a global ban,” argues James Dorsey, an analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

On Monday, Pakistan’s Senate approved a unanimous resolution condemning the caricature contest, saying that it “considers the proposed competition tantamount to inciting hatred, racial prejudice, unrest, conflict and insecurity in a world that has already seen much bloodshed, racism, extremism, intolerance and Islamophobia.”

The furor over Wilders’ contest echoes Muslim protests 13 years ago against a Danish newspaper for publishing cartoons depicting Muhammed in bad light.  The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen editorial cartoons in 2005, saying it was an attempt to contribute to the debate about criticism of Islam and self-censorship. One of the cartoons showed the prophet with a bomb in his turban. Anger about the publication built up over time.

Now, as then, hardline Islamists began to jump on the controversy.

Last week, the head of an influential madrassa in Lahore, radical spiritual leader Mufti Muhammad Abid Jalali, warned, “In the name of so-called freedom of speech, the West continues to publish blasphemous texts and images.  Even certain animals are sometimes used, while knowing how sensitive that is in Islam.  If the West perseveres in this, it can expect an appropriate response.”

He told Dutch reporters, “Islam is above all a religion of peace, and we condemn all terrorist groups that commit violence on behalf of Islam.  But if non-Muslims have no respect for the prophet, peace with him, or ridicule Islam, as is happening in the Netherlands, we have no choice but to respond.”
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Russia to Hold Biggest War Games in Nearly Four Decades

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Russia will next month hold its biggest war games in nearly four decades, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday, a massive military exercise that will also involve the Chinese and Mongolian armies.

The exercise, called Vostok-2018 (East-2018), will take place in central and eastern Russian military districts and involve almost 300,000 troops, over 1,000 military aircraft, two of Russia’s naval fleets, and all its airborne units, Shoigu said in a statement.

The maneuvers will take place at a time of heightened tension between the West and Russia, which is concerned about what it says is an unjustified build-up of the NATO military alliance on its western flank.

NATO says it has beefed up its forces in Eastern Europe to deter potential Russian military action after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014 and backed a pro-Russian uprising in eastern Ukraine.

The war games, which will take place from September 11-15, are likely to displease Japan which has already complained about what it says is a Russian military build-up in the Far East.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is due to attend a forum in Vladivostok over the same period, and a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said on Tuesday Tokyo always paid attention to shifts in Russian-Chinese military cooperation.

Shoigu said the war games would be the biggest since a Soviet military exercise, Zapad-81 (West-81) in 1981.

“In some ways they will repeat aspects of Zapad-81, but in other ways the scale will be bigger,” Shoigu told reporters, while visiting the Russian region of Khakassia.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has said that Chinese and Mongolian military units will also take part in the exercise.

‘A more assertive Russia’

When asked if the cost of holding such a massive military exercise was justified at a time when Russia is faced with higher social spending demands, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said such war games were essential.

“The country’s ability to defend itself in the current international situation, which is often aggressive and unfriendly towards our country, means [the exercise] is justified,” Peskov told reporters on a conference call.

When asked if China’s involvement meant Moscow and Beijing were moving towards an alliance, Peskov said it showed that the two allies were cooperating in all areas.

China and Russia have taken part in joint military drills before but not on such a large scale.

NATO spokesman Dylan White said that Russia had briefed the alliance on the planned exercise in May and that NATO planned to monitor it. Russia had invited military attaches from NATO countries based in Moscow to observe the war games, an offer he said was under consideration.

“All nations have the right to exercise their armed forces, but it is essential that this is done in a transparent and predictable manner,” White said in an emailed statement.

“Vostok demonstrates Russia’s focus on exercising large-scale conflict. It fits into a pattern we have seen over some time: a more assertive Russia, significantly increasing its defense budget and its military presence.”

Shoigu this month announced the start of snap combat readiness checks in central and eastern military districts ahead of the planned exercise.

“Imagine 36,000 armored vehicles – tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored infantry vehicles – moving and working simultaneously, and that all this, naturally, is being tested in conditions as close as possible to military ones,” Shoigu said on Tuesday.

 
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Berlin Offers Police Help After Violent Far-Right Protest

Posted on by SeeEU

Germany’s top security official offered to send federal assistance to the eastern state of Saxony on Tuesday following violence during a far-right protest in the city of Chemnitz that left at least 18 people injured.

The protest late Monday, sparked by the killing of a 35-year-old German man in an altercation with migrants over the weekend, erupted into clashes between neo-Nazis and left-wing counter-protesters. Opposition parties criticized police for failing to prevent the violence.

“The police in Saxony are in a difficult situation,” Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said. “Should it be requested, the federal government will provide police support.”

He was backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who condemned the violence.

“Should Saxony need help to maintain law and order, and to uphold the law, the federal government stands ready,” she said.

Saxony’s police chief Juergen Georgie acknowledged authorities had underestimated the size of the protest. Initial estimates had forecasts about 1,000 far-right protesters and half that number of counter-protesters would descend on Chemnitz, he said.

In the end, some 600 officers struggled to prevent 6,000 supporters of the far-right from breaking through police lines. Footage showed demonstrators performing Nazi salutes and chanting “the national resistance is marching here!”

Georgie said the police presence in Chemnitz would be stepped up in the coming days, with more protests planned.

Green lawmaker Konstantin von Notz urged Seehofer to consider resigning, accusing him of fanning anti-migrant sentiment over the past year. Von Notz told the news portal t-online.de that the violence in Chemnitz recalled events elsewhere in eastern Germany during the early 1990s, when authorities failed to stop far-right mobs from attacking migrants.

The state of Saxony has long been a hotbed of anti-migrant sentiment, with some accusing police of turning a blind eye to sympathizersin their own ranks. The far-right Alternative for Germany party received almost a quarter of the vote in Chemnitz last year.

Chemnitz police said they have arrested a 22-year-old Syrian and a 21-year-old Iraqi on suspicion of manslaughter in the stabbing death of the German man after a street festival early Sunday. Prosecutors said the killing was preceded by a verbal confrontation that escalated.

Saxony’s governor slammed far-right extremists for using the man’s death as a political tool and for spreading false information online about it. While the influx of migrants to Germany in recent years has resulted in a rise in violent crime, experts have noted that this is largely due to demographic factors: young men, who make up a large share of the migrant population, are generally more likely to commit crimes, whether they’re German or foreign-born.

Governor Michael Kremtscher said authorities would swiftly and thoroughly investigate the killing but will also come down hard on those who had stoked violence in its wake, including attacks on migrants on the sidelines of the protest.

“We will show that we have a strong state,” he told reporters in Dresden, noting that pastfar-rightattacks in the state had demonstrated the need for grassroots efforts to prevent extremism.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas expressed concern that Germany’s reputation could suffer as a result of violent far-right protests.

“We have to keep in mind that these are pictures that will be seen abroad,” Maas told reporters in Berlin. “But I don’t think that what was seen there even comes close to reflecting the reality in Germany. I firmly believe that the majority of people living in this country want an open and tolerant country.”
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Rebel Leader Machar Refuses to Sign South Sudan Peace Deal

Posted on by SeeAF

South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar and other opposition party leaders have refused to sign the latest draft of a Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS) to end a five-year civil war.

Machar and President Salva Kiir signed a cease-fire and power-sharing deal last month in Khartoum, but put off making a decision on the contentious issue of the number of states and their boundaries. One delegate at the talks Monday night confirmed the issue has been referred to the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) heads of states to make a final decision.

Rita Lopidia, a member of the South Sudan women’s coalition, said after the talks resumed last weekend the parties could not agree on Article 4 of the revitalized 2015 peace deal because each party insisted on its previous position regarding states and their boundaries.

“The opposition, including the government, have not agreed on some of these articles that have been introduced. That is why it has been referred to the IGAD heads of state to look into it. And a letter has been drafted by the special envoy today, ” Lopidia told South Sudan in Focus.

Lopidia said the parties did make progress on other disputed issues, including the responsibility of the first vice president, naming of the new five ministries, and the National Constitution Review Commission and issues related to the judiciary reforms.

The parties have held several weeks of talks in the Sudanese capital in an attempt to reach a comprehensive peace agreement to end a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people.

Lopidia said Monday that despite the drawn-out peace negotiations and the challenges that remained during the latest round of talks, all parties have shown a commitment to achieving lasting peace in the country.

“It has been a very tedious process and a very difficult one. But eventually after a very tough time and tough negotiations, parties have really reached some sort of compromise to get to where it is today. But still a lot of work needs to be done because there still is a need to build trust among the parties,” Lopidia said.

‘Confusing peace process’

A spokesman for the SPLM In Opposition said the group is eager to end the civil war. But Mabior Garand De Mabior told VOA the government has not been negotiating in good faith.

“It has been a very confusing peace process for many people. I can only tell you what we know as the facts. We are dealing with Chapter 1 and 2 of the revitalized ARCSS and are waiting for IGAD to give us direction on what we are going to do with the rest of the chapters,” Mabior told VOA.

The parties signed an agreement in June aimed at ending the fighting, but Machar opposed a proposal to have three different capitals in order to distribute power.

In 2015, the Kiir administration changed the number of original states from 10 to 32.

Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, who on Monday met in Washington with President Donald Trump, said he and other IGAD leaders are committed “together with our brothers and sisters to ensure that peace and stability returns to South Sudan.”

In an exclusive interview with VOA, Kenyatta said, “We will try anything that will achieve that because for most of us in the region, our greatest concern is not about the leadership of the country, but to ensure the people of South Sudan, who have had to endure untold suffering for many years after struggling to achieve their independence,” are able to be free.

He said IGAD leaders will continue to pressure the leadership of South Sudan to acknowledge that it is their responsibility to “ensure they come together and find a framework that works to restore peace, stability, and human dignity to the people of South Sudan.”

VOA’s Esther Githui Ewart and James Butty contributed to this report.
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Top Court Nominee’s Support for Surveilling Americans Raises Concern

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Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has frequently supported giving the U.S. government wide latitude in the name of national security, including the secret collection of personal data from Americans.

It’s a subject Democrats plan to grill Kavanaugh about during his confirmation hearings scheduled to begin next Tuesday. Beyond his writings as an appeals court judge, some senators suspect Kavanaugh was more involved in crafting counterterrorism policies during the George W. Bush administration than he has let on.

Kavanaugh stated in past congressional testimony that he wasn’t involved in such provocative matters as warrantless surveillance and the treatment of enemy combatants in the years immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But legal experts say he could shift the court on national security issues, if he is confirmed to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor whose expertise includes national security and counterterrorism, cites opinions he says show Kavanaugh “is a lot less willing (than Kennedy) to look at international law as a relevant source of authority and constraint.” He said on matters such as Guantanamo detention, Kavanaugh is “much more deferential to the executive branch in this context than Kennedy would have been.”

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, calls Kavanaugh “incredibly well-qualified.” The former U.S. trade representative and White House budget director knows Kavanaugh from their time together in the Bush administration. He said Kavanaugh “believes strongly in the Constitution” and the Bill of Rights.

“I think he’s in the mainstream with regard to these issues, and frankly, I don’t think it’s a difference with any meaning between where he is and where the court is currently,” Portman said.

Democrats facing an uphill battle in blocking Kavanaugh’s nomination have focused less on his judicial counterterrorism record than whether he misled senators about his role in Bush policies while testifying in 2006 confirmation hearings.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and Vermont Sen. Pat Leahy are among Democrats who want to see more records from Kavanaugh’s White House days, saying news media accounts after he was seated on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia raised new questions.

White House spokesman Raj Shah said Durbin has been doing the misleading by taking Kavanaugh’s answers out of context.

“As several colleagues have stated, and Judge Kavanaugh accurately said in his 2006 testimony, he was not involved in crafting legal policies that formed the rules governing detention of combatants,” Shah said in an emailed statement.

After meeting recently with Kavanaugh, Durbin said the judge “acknowledged that he was involved in conversations involving enemy combatants.”

Shah responded with a tweet saying Kavanaugh was truthful, and that the conversations Durbin referred to “were about public litigation, not the legal framework or policies that formed the rules governing detention of combatants.”

Kavanaugh’s confirmation got past a potential obstacle when libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., endorsed him last month.

Paul had cited Kavanaugh’s 2015 defense of the National Security Agency’s widescale secret collection of telephone metadata — records of callers and recipients’ phone numbers and times and durations of the calls. But after meeting with Kavanaugh, Paul said he’s confident Kavanaugh will “carefully adhere to the Constitution and will take his job to protect individual liberty seriously.”

The NSA program didn’t include capturing conversations themselves, and Kavanaugh wrote that it served “a critically important special need — preventing terrorist attacks on the United States … In my view, that critical national security need outweighs the impact on privacy occasioned by this program.”

Larry Klayman, founder of the conservative group Freedom Watch and lead plaintiff in the NSA case, said Kavanaugh approved what a U.S. district court judge had called government use of “almost Orwellian technology.”

Kavanaugh defended the NSA program in an opinion attached to a procedural ruling in which he and his colleagues agreed not to rehear the case, so there was no pressing need for him to weigh in.

University of Louisville law professor Justin Walker, a former Kavanaugh clerk, said that’s not unusual for the judge. For example, Kavanaugh added his opinion to a procedural ruling in a case that led to a Supreme Court decision for a drug suspect who had a police-placed GPS tracker on his car.

The high court found in USA vs. Antoine Jones that Jones’ Fourth Amendment rights were violated, with a majority opinion that incorporated Kavanaugh’s observation that police intruded on the defendant’s personal property: his car.

“I’ve been surprised that his one short opinion (in Klayman) has not been seen in a broader context with more perspective,” Walker said, adding that when senators study Kavanaugh’s complete record on civil liberties, “they’re going to like what they see.”

But Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based organization dedicated to digital privacy rights, worries that “he has a very broad view of the government’s ability to do mass surveillance and specifically in the context where the government is claiming national security.”

Cohn has pursued a lawsuit alleging illegal NSA surveillance of “millions of ordinary Americans,” among cases she said could eventually reach the Supreme Court. She questions whether Kavanaugh supports “real checks and balances on the power of the executive branch” on privacy issues.

Kavanaugh discussed judicial restraint on national security in an 87-page 2010 opinion. That one went against a Yemeni citizen U.S. forces captured in Afghanistan.

“Put simply, Congress knows how to limit the executive’s authority in national security and foreign policy; there is no reason or basis for courts to strain to do so absent such congressional direction,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Vladeck pointed to such cases as Kavanaugh’s 2011 ruling for turning over a U.S. citizen linked to al-Qaida terrorism in Iraq to Iraqi authorities the man said were likely to torture him, and in 2009 joining in a 2-1 vote against plaintiffs who wanted to sue private contractors they accused of beatings, dog attacks and other abuse at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

There are still 40 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. naval base, with the possibility of more.

In a 2013 lecture, Kavanaugh talked about his appeals court’s rulings in cases involving Guantanamo detainees and counterterrorism, saying he disagreed with people who believed “the courts should be creating new rules to constrain the executive — that this new kind of war requires new rules created by the courts.”

“He’s incredibly smart; he’s a thoughtful and thorough judge,” said Vladeck. “He just has pretty exceptionally conservative views about the role of the federal courts in the kinds of cases that I work on.”

 

 
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Tributes for McCain Pour in, Trump Reaction Criticized

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A group of current and former U.S. officials from across the political spectrum is set to take part in Saturday’s memorial service for Senator John McCain, one of the last in a string of services honoring the longtime lawmaker who died Saturday at the age of 81.

The service at the National Cathedral in Washington will feature eulogies by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Former Senator Joseph Lieberman will also speak.

Serving as pallbearers will be former Vice President Joe Biden, former Defense Secretary William Cohen, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and former Senators Gary Hart, Russ Feingold and Phil Gramm.

McCain will be buried Sunday at his college alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

The tributes will start however in Arizona, the state he represented first in the House of Representatives for two terms beginning in 1983 before moving to the Senate in 1987. McCain will lie in state in the Arizona State Capitol on Wednesday.

Since his death, world leaders and McCain’s former colleagues in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, have shared their favorite memories of McCain, and extolled his status as a senior statesman on the world stage. They have remembered his military service as a naval aviator, especially his valor in enduring beatings and torture during 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war at the hands of North Vietnamese captors at the height of the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

But U.S. President Donald Trump, who frequently engaged in political taunts with McCain and three years ago said McCain was only deemed a hero because he was captured as a POW, was criticized after his initial reactions to McCain’s death only expressed condolences to his family and didn’t mention his military service or political career.

The White House, according to a Washington Post report Monday, prepared a statement extolling McCain’s life and calling him a hero, but Trump rejected issuing it.

Flags at the White House were lowered to half-staff over the weekend in McCain’s honor, but back at full-staff on Monday. Trump ignored reporters’ repeated questions about McCain at White House gatherings on Monday, but late Monday afternoon the flags were lowered again to half-staff.

At the same time, the White House released a statement from the president in which Trump said that, despite differences on policy and politics, he respects McCain’s service to the U.S. and ordered flags be flown at half-staff until his internment.

The statement also said Trump asked Vice President Mike Pence to offer an address at a ceremony honoring McCain on Friday, and that three cabinet members represent the Trump administration at services for McCain later this week.

At a dinner Monday night, Trump included a brief mention of McCain in his remarks, saying “we very much appreciate everything that Senator McCain has done for our country.”

As he prepared for the end of his life, McCain said he did not want Trump at his funeral, instead favoring attendance by Pence, with whom he served in Congress.

McCain, even as he neared death, disparaged Trump’s presidency, rebuking the U.S. leader for his seeming embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position at last month’s Helsinki summit that Russia had not meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump, when he returned to Washington, altered his stance, but almost daily assails the investigation into the election interference.

“The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate,” McCain said at the time. “But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.” 

Previously, the White House posted tributes from numerous Trump officials praising McCain, who as the Republican nominee, lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama. The tributes singled out McCain’s military service and heroism as a POW and his independence as a political leader.

All five living former U.S. presidents issued statements praising McCain.

Outside the United States, world leaders lauded McCain’s role and presence abroad.

“John McCain was a true American hero,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. “He devoted his entire life to his country. His voice will be missed. Our respectful thoughts go to his beloved ones.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May said McCain “embodied the idea of service over self.”

McCain for years has promoted closer ties between Vietnam, which imprisoned him, and the United States.

WATCH: John McCain obit

​On Monday, Vietnam Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh wrote in a condolence book at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, “It was he who took the lead in significantly healing the wounds of war, and normalizing and promoting the comprehensive Vietnam-U.S. partnership.”

A monument to McCain on the shores of the Hanoi lake where was he was captured after his plane was shot down in 1967 has turned into a de facto shrine to him as news of his death reached Vietnam. Flowers, incense, flags and other tributes to McCain have been laid there.
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Balkan, Caucasus Nations Mourn Loss of Close Friend McCain

Posted on by SeeUS

The death of Senator John McCain after a year-long battle with brain cancer has drawn an outpouring of condolences from every corner of the globe, some of the most poignant and diverse of which came from southeastern Europe, where the Arizona Republican’s unique brand of personal diplomacy forged bonds with democratic leaders and irritated illiberal regimes.

Known for packing Congressional recesses with extensive global travels, McCain, a war hero, statesman, and international human rights advocate, used his office to shed light on conflicts underreported by major Western news outlets.

“If I learned one thing from John it’s that you cannot protect America sitting in Washington,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who accompanied McCain on nearly 50 trips to Iraqi and Afghan war zones, told Josh Rogin of The Washington Post. “You can’t learn how this world works watching cable news.”

His August 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “We Are All Georgians”—published upon the ceasefire that followed Russia’s invasion of Georgia’s breakaway enclave of Abkhazia—was a dire warning against Western diplomatic complacency. 

“For anyone who thought that stark international aggression was a thing of the past, the last week must have come as a startling wake-up call,” he said of the first major cross-border military invasion on European soil in nearly half a century. “The world has learned at great cost the price of allowing aggression against free nations to go unchecked.”

Penned in the latter stages of his last failed presidential bid, the editorial proved prescient in Ukraine upon Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

“Sad news for all Ukrainian people—a great friend of Ukraine, Senator John McCain, has died,” tweeted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, whose nation routinely hosted the U.S. legislator.

“We will never forget his invaluable contribution to the development of democracy and freedom in Ukraine and the support of our state.”

Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman lauded McCain as “a real friend and the embodiment of a principled politician,” and Oleksandr Turchynov, Ukraine’s Secretary of National Security and Defense, credited McCain with Kyiv’s ongoing U.S. aid.

 

“It was thanks to his efforts that Ukraine finally began to receive military aid from the U.S. He was strong and honest person, he always professed his beliefs. We will always remember,” he tweeted.

​

Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili called the Arizona senator “a national hero of Georgia whom our people will never forget.”

Margvelashvili’s top diplomat, Davit Zalkaliani, called McCain “a defender of small countries worldwide, fighting for freedom, peace, security and democracy,” echoing sentiments conveyed by Georgia’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili, who issued a video condolence calling McCain’s passage “an unbelievable loss for Georgia, and a very huge lost for the world.”

“If 1/3 of the leaders of the west had such a strong willpower [and] bravery, no Russian aggression would have followed in Ukraine and Syria,” tweeted Grigol Vashadze, a presidential candidate for Tbilisi’s opposition United National Movement.

In Moscow, often the target of McCain’s ire, social media commemorations by state officials ranged from stoically frank to outright pugnacious.

“He was neither a friend nor ally of Russia, on the contrary, he was our ardent opponent,” said Russian parliamentarian Leonid Slutsky, a subject of U.S. sanctions, according to The Washington Post. “McCain was an outstanding American hawk.”

Russian legislator Alexei Pushkov used McCain’s own words to ridicule the late senator’s calls to oust Syrian autocrat Bashar al Assad.

“‘Gaddafi is on the way out, next in line with Bashar Assad,’ John McCain said 7 years ago, in August 2011,” wrote Pushkov. “Assad’s overthrow and death did not wait for McCain. Politics and fate decided otherwise. McCain’s plans to restructure the world under the total hegemony of the United States will not come true.”

McCain’s support for expanding NATO by adding members from eastern Europe – some former Warsaw Pact nations while under Soviet control – won him friends there as well. 

“The Senator’s bravery and wisdom were inspiring for Montenegro and a big voice of support in the period when we were making democratic progress towards NATO membership,” said Prime Minister Duško Markovic in an official statement. “Senator John McCain was first of all a sincere friend of Montenegro and we will be forever grateful to him.”

Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, who is currently pushing for the passage of a referendum that would open the doors to NATO membership, posted comments on Facebook, lamenting that the world has “lost one of the most dedicated politicians who truly believed in democracy.”

Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic offered condolences to McCain’s family on Twitter, while Sarajevo’s Mayor Abdulah Skaka vowed to organize a formal commemoration of the later senator. 

“The Bosnian people especially remember his noble engagement to stop the Bosnian war,” Skaka said. “When he called things by their real names, when he asked for just solutions. We highly appreciate his contribution to the overall help that the U.S. provided for Bosnian people.” 

“People of #Kosovo & myself join the family, friends of @SenJohnMcCain, as well as entire American nation, in mourning his passing,” tweeted Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi. “One of his last foreign trips was in 2017 in #Kosovo, when I bestowed him our highest order of merit. He was one of the last true heroes of our era.” 

Albanian President Ilir Meta and Prime Minister Edi Rama said Albanians were also mourning the loss of a good friend.

“Sen. McCain was a staunch supporter of Kosovo’s freedom and independence,” he wrote on Facebook. “He was one of the main supporters of Albania joining NATO. … Albanians will be forever grateful to him.”

This story originated in VOA’s Eurasia Division. 

 
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Kenyatta: Kenya Wants to Boost Trade, Investment Partnership With US

Posted on by SeeUS

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta says his country wants to increase bilateral trade with the United States and attract more U.S. investors. U.S. President Donald Trump received Kenyatta at the White House on Monday for talks that focused on trade and security. Ahead of the talks, Kenyatta told VOA African Service in an interview that his country is battling corruption and boosting security to create the right environment for foreign investment. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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