World

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in World Politics

      G7 foreign ministers call on China to ‘respect human rights’ in muted censure

      by

      The G7 group of democratic states ended its foreign ministers summit in London calling on China to “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms”, but drawing back from any decisive action if that fails to take place. Economic considerations, as well as apprehension that even strong language could trigger retaliation by Beijing, led to some member states of the Group successfully limiting the scope of censure. One of the key points of the summit had been a projected alliance of democracies to counter autocratic regimes with China and Russia seen as the main adversaries. But a number of European states are said to have refused calls for a more robust stance by the US, Support for Taiwan, a country facing aggressive Chinese military exercises and threats of invasion, was also muted. The G7said it supported Taiwan’s participation in World Health Organisation (WHO) forums and the World Health Assembly, but there was no criticism of Beijing’s actions. The Group did, however, condemn the Chinese government for “human rights violations” in Xinjiang and Tibet as well as China’s pursuit of an expansionist strategy through “arbitrary, coercive economic policies”. The Chinese government has been accused of promoting debt dependency in the developing world through its ‘belt and road’ construction scheme, taking over territories at times when the borrowing countries fail to pay back loans. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “I think China is more likely to need to, rather than react in anger, it is more likely going to need to take a look in the mirror and understand that it needs to take into account this growing body of opinion, that thinks these basic international rules have got to be adhered to.” The UK, as the host, had invited Japan, India, Australia and South Korea, all countries involved in varying degrees of confrontation with China, to take part in the summit. In the event the Indian foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar had to participated virtually after coming into contact with the suspected cases of covid in his country’s delegation, although he has not tested positive himself. A number of those taking part spoke of how refreshing this summit had been after the acrimony and unpleasantness introduced in previous years by Donald Trump. There was also widespread approval of Britain’s decision to hold an ‘in person’ conference rather than a virtual one.  More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in UK Politics

      ‘Devastating blow’: UK to cut aid to Syria by one-third

      by

      Dominic Raab has announced that the UK will cut aid to Syria by one-third, telling a United Nations donor conference that the government would pledge only £205m to help the country this year, down from the £300m promised in 2020.The UK ultimately gave £400m to Syria last year, meaning that, if no further funds are forthcoming from Whitehall, the decrease will actually be closer to 50 per cent.Mr Raab acknowledged that the Middle Eastern state and its neighbours were under even greater pressure because of the coronavirus pandemic but said Britain had paid out £3.5bn in support of Syrian refugees since 2012 and had had to revise its own priorities in light of Covid-19.The US, EU and Germany are customarily the biggest donors to the country and likewise beset by the impact of the virus on their economies, but none of the three announced cuts to their contributions, with Mr Raab’s Berlin counterpart, Heiko Maas, pledging £480m and the same again in 2022.Under Bashar al-Assad’s leadership, an estimated 90 per cent of the Syrian population are now living in poverty, according to the humanitarian organisation Syria Relief, with 12.4m people suffering from food insecurity and 12.2m lacking regular access to clean water.Read more:Mr Assad faces a presidential election this year that few of the speakers at the UN conference were optimistic would be conducted fairly.“For 10 years, Syrians have endured death, destruction, displacement and deprivation and things are getting worse, not better,” UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said at the video summit, making an appeal for generosity as the body sought to pull together £7.3bn to help the country and its refugees dispersed in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.Mr Raab’s announcement provoked a negative response from international aid agencies at home and abroad.“Cutting funding by almost a third is a devastating blow to the millions of Syrians who fled their homes and had their lives torn apart by 10 years of conflict,” said Oxfam’s head of policy and advocacy, Sam Nadel.“While the violence may have subsided, millions of people are still struggling to survive within Syria and across the region. Aid is needed now more than ever as the pandemic, rising food prices and failing economies have made their lives even more difficult.” More

    • 238 Shares159 Views

      in UK Politics

      Von der Leyen takes swipe at UK over ‘transparency’ and says AstraZeneca must ‘catch up’ on vaccines to EU

      by

      European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has taken a swipe at the UK over “transparency” on vaccine exports, casting fresh doubt on hopes for a resolution to the ongoing dispute between London and Brussels over jabs.Europe’s top official said she had not seen any evidence that any British-made vaccines had been exported, despite EU-made doses going to into the UK.The tone was in start contrast to an earlier joint statement that said Britain and the EU were hoping for a “win-win” to end tensions.Speaking after an oline summit of EU leaders, Ms Von der Leyen said saying AstraZeneca “has to catch up, has to honour the contract it has with the European member states, before it can engage again in exporting vaccines.”She added: “We have worldwide supply chains that have to be intact and it is of the utmost importance that we get back to an attitude of openness.”Read more:Asked about how many vaccines the UK had exported, she told reporters: “I have no knowledge so far of UK exports, perhaps I am mistaken and waiting for their transparency.”So far some 31 million doses of vaccine have been administered in the UK to more than half of the adult population, compared to the more than 60 million jabs given across EU countries containing a total population of 446 million.As a result, the bloc has enacted a policy allowing member states to block shipments of jabs due for export in the event the immunisations are needed within the European Union.Tensions have persisted between the bloc and the UK throughout their respective vaccine rollouts. The UK maintains that it did a better job of securing cast iron vaccine contracts quickly, while the EU side believes Britain should share more with the continent.Read more:Meanwhile, Angela Merkel told the summit the EU was hoping for”a win-win situation … that is, we want to act in a politically sensible way.”Limiting trade in vaccines has proven to be an ideological sticking point in Europe, with some officials believing it serves a necessary purpose while others claim it undermines the bloc’s reputation as a free trading union.Seeking to counter accusations of “vaccine nationalism”, Ms Von der Leyen presented slides showing that 77 million vaccine doses had been shipped from EU plants to over 40 countries since the start of December.Belgian prime minister Alexander de Croo said that he believed the dispute “can be resolved” as he referred to a phone call with Mr Johnson last week.“We think that the discussion we have with the United Kingdom can be resolved based on good agreements,” Mr de Croo told a Brussels press conference.Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte echoed that, saying he was “cautiously optimistic.”“I think that on Saturday or soon after, they could come to an agreement which would be very helpful because we are friends, the UK and the rest of Europe, and we need each other,” he told reporters.Additional reporting by Reuters More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in UK Politics

      Covid vaccines: EU ‘set to block AstraZeneca exports to UK’

      by

      The European Union is set to block exports of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines to the UK, according to reports.Senior officials told Bloomberg news agency that any requests for doses produced in Europe would be reviewed “very severely” until the British-based company fulfilled its contract with the bloc.Any vaccines and ingredients produced in European factories “will for now be reserved for local deliveries,” the source added.The comments were made ahead of a meeting of EU leaders to discuss a possible export ban on Thursday.It comes after defence minister Ben Wallace said any attempt to block Covid-19 vaccine exports to the UK would be “counterproductive”.Mr Wallace added: “The grown-up thing would be for the European Commission and some of the European leaders to not indulge in rhetoric but to recognise the obligations that we all have.”Read more:An EU export ban could delay the UK’s vaccination programme by two months, according to analysis carried out for the Guardian . However the same analysis found the EU programme would only be sped up by a week if it kept the supplies meant for the UK.Reuters reported the vaccine row is focused on a factory in the Netherlands which features in AstraZeneca contracts signed with both Britain and the EU.An EU official claimed that whatever was produced in the plant, run by the subcontractor Halix in Leiden, had to go to Europe.“The Brits are insisting that the Halix plant in the Netherlands must deliver the drug substance produced there to them. That doesn’t work,” the official added.Downing Street declined to comment specifically on the reports.Boris Johnson is expected phone EU leaders early this week to urge them ot to blockade vaccines manufactured in Europe.The EU has complained that AstraZeneca is not respecting its contract to supply vaccines to member countries, while apparently fulfilling its obligations under its contract with the UK.European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said earlier this week that “we didn’t get anything from the Brits while we are delivering vaccines to them”.It follows a diplomatic row earlier this month after European Council president Charles Michel claimed the UK had imposed an “outright ban” on the export of Covid vaccines.Foreign secretary Dominic Raab rejected the suggestion as “completely false”.EU officials say that the UK is using a clause in its supply contract with AstraZeneca that prevents export of vaccines produced in Britain. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in UK Politics

      ‘Utter hypocrisy’: Iran’s foreign minister attacks Boris Johnson over nuclear weapons plan

      by

      It was an opportunity to pounce, and Iran’s outspoken foreign minister seized it. The United Kingdom has announced it is set to remove Cold War-era limits on its stockpiles of nuclear weapons, even as it is demanding that the Islamic Republic constrain its own atomic programme.Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused prime minister Boris Johnson of “utter hypocrisy” for announcing plans to increase Britain’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction while chastising Tehran for its decades-long attempt to master nuclear technology.Mr Johnson told British MPs on Tuesday that the government is planning to reverse a planned reduction of its nuclear weapon stockpile. Under the new proposal, Britain will increase its number of warheads to 260. It had previously agreed to reduce the number to 180.In a note posted to his Twitter feed and tagging Mr Johnson, Mr Zarif mocked the British leader for saying he was “concerned about Iran developing a viable nuclear weapon” on the very same day as announcing that “his country will increase its stockpile of nukes”.He added: “Unlike the UK and allies, Iran believes nukes and all WMDs are barbaric and must be eradicated.”Iranian state television widely covered Mr Zarif’s remarks, which came before Russia also denounced London’s decision on Wednesday. Both China’s and Russia’s official media have focused on the UK’s plan to up its nuclear arsenal, describing it as hypocritical.“Citizens are demanding that Boris Johnson look under his feet, fight against the coronavirus and street crime,” state-guided NTV’s London correspondent Liza Gerson said in a broadcast, referring to the murder of Sarah Everard. “People are demanding safe streets and lamps in parks in London, not warheads in Scotland.”The UK decision comes at a particular tense moment in the arena of global arms control.Iran is currently locked in a diplomatic statemate with the United States and the so-called E3 – the UK, Germany and France – over an attempt to re-establish the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear deal forged by Tehran and world powers but abandoned by the Trump administration in 2018.After abiding by the terms of the agreement for a year, even as the US upped crushing sanctions, Iran began to expand its nuclear programme beyond the strict limits set by the JCPOA. The new administration of president Joe Biden has said it would like to restore the terms of the nuclear deal, but insists that Iran first roll back its production and stockpile of enriched uranium that could be used as fissile material for a bomb.Iran insists that its nuclear programme is meant for peaceful civilian purposes only, though arms-control experts and intelligence professionals believe Iran is at least aiming to achieve nuclear weapons capability, if not the bomb.On Monday, Reuters reported that the United Nations nuclear watchdog had confirmed Iran had begun feeding uranium gas into a second advanced device that can more efficiently produce fissile material than the ones permitted under the JCPOA.Iran has insisted the US first remove sanctions, since it was Washington that first breached the deal. On Wednesday, a senior official in Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s government confirmed that Tehran had received indirect communications from Washington regarding a possible return to the JCPOA. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in UK Politics

      Russia condemns UK plan to increase nuclear weapons as threat to ‘international stability’

      by

      Russia has condemned the decision by the UK government to boost its arsenal of nuclear weapons, saying the move would harm international stability.The UK will increase the cap on its nuclear warhead stockpile by more than 40 per cent, prime minister Boris Johnson revealed as part of his foreign and defence policy review on Tuesday.Moscow described the British plans – which ends decades of gradual disarmament since the fall of the Soviet Union – as a serious blow to arms control.“We are very sorry that Britain has chosen the path of increasing the number of nuclear warheads,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “This decision will harm international stability and strategic security.”Russia said it would take Downing Street’s move into account when working on its own military planning, the RIA state news agency reported the country’s foreign ministry as saying on Wednesday.The UK had previously been committed to cutting its stockpile to 180 Trident programme warheads by the mid-2020s. However, the review by Mr Johnson’s government said the policy would now be to increase capacity to 260 warheads.Increasing the stockpile would be a violation of international law, campaigners and experts have warned – pointing to the UK commitment to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.Mr Johnson’s review also stated that the UK reserves the right to withdraw assurances that it will not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear armed state “if the future threat of weapons of mass destruction … or emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact makes it necessary”.British foreign secretary Dominic Raab claimed the UK’s stockpile of Trident programme warheads were the “ultimate insurance policy” against threats from hostile states.Keir Starmer questions ‘purpose’ of increasing number of nuclear warheadsAsked why the government wanted to end three decades of gradual disarmament, Mr Raab told the BBC: “Because over time, as the circumstances change and the threats change, we need to maintain a minimum credible level of deterrent.“Why? Because it is the ultimate guarantee, the ultimate insurance policy against the worst threat from hostile states.”The Labour opposition criticised the plans to increase the size of the stockpile, though the party supports the renewal of Trident nuclear programme in general.Labour leader Keir Starmer said the plan “breaks the goal of successive prime ministers and cross-party efforts to reduce our nuclear stockpile,” adding that Mr Johnson had failed to explain the “strategic purpose” behind the move. More

    • 175 Shares179 Views

      in UK Politics

      Syria civil war: UK imposes sanctions on key Assad allies after ‘decade of brutality’

      by

      The UK has imposed sanctions on six allies of Syria’s ruler Bashar Assad a decade after the country’s brutal civil war began.The asset freezes and travel bans are a response to the Assad regime’s “wholesale assault” on the Syrian people, foreign secretary Dominic Raab said, as the country marks 10 years of conflict.“The Assad regime has subjected the Syrian people to a decade of brutality for the temerity of demanding peaceful reform,” said Mr Raab. “Today, we are holding six more individuals from the regime to account for their wholesale assault on the very citizens they should be protecting.”Those sanctioned include foreign minister Faisal Miqdad, presidential adviser Luna al-Shibl, and financier Yassar Ibrahim – who the Foreign Office claimed acts as a front for Assad’s hold on the Syrian economy.Businessman Muhammad Bara’ al-Qatirji and military officers major general Malik Aliaa and major general Zaid Salah will also be hit by the asset freezes and travel bans.It marks the first measures taken in relation to Syria under the UK’s new, autonomous sanctions regime, which came into force following the end of the Brexit transition period. The British government has joined allies in the UN Security Council in pushing the regime to engage in peace talks in Geneva and release those held in arbitrary detention.Monday marks the 10th anniversary of the peaceful protests against Assad’s government, which erupted in March 2011 and touched off a popular uprising that quickly turned into a full-blown civil war.Despite a decade of fighting and a broken country, Assad remains firmly in power, having been propped up by Russia and Iran.Syria is economically devastated and divided. An al-Qaida-linked group dominates the northwestern Idlib province, with Turkey-backed rebels controlling small stretches along the Turkish border.US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces hold around a quarter of the country in the north-east, while the Assad regime controls the rest. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in World Politics

      Live international debate on female leadership to take place today

      by

      A live debate across nine countries is taking place today by leading women across business and politics on whether more women leadership would help the world move faster out of the pandemic crisis.The founder and CEO of Athena40’s global conversation Elizabeth Filippouli leads the discussion by saying “we cannot ignore the fact that women have been affected disproportionately and in multiple ways:  financially, mentally, physically, professionally”.The former television journalist told those joining the debates today: “Paving the way for more women into leadership positions is our only chance to recover fast from social and financial setbacks and it is also critically important for the emotional and psychological balance of our societies.”HRH Princess Sumaya Bint El Hassan, president of the Royal Scientific Society, will open the global conversation.The speakers covering five continents include: Margery Kraus, Founder & Executive Chairman of APCO Worldwide; Mary Carlin Yates, former ambassador of the US Department of State; Ivana Gažić, President of the Management Board of Zagreb Stock Exchange; Tsitsi Mutendi, Co-founder of African Family Firms, May Chidiac Former Minister & President of May Chidiac Foundation; Tram Anh Nguyen, Co-founder of the Centre for Finance, Technology & Entrepreneurship (CFTE); Leonor Stjepic, CEO of the Montessori Group; Diana Moukalled, Editor of Daraj Media, Hajara Kabeer, Founder of the Girl in STEM Initiative.BBC’s news journalist and presenter Tim Wilcox will introduce and compere the global conversation.Mary Carlin Yates, Ambassador (ret.) of the US Department of State, said:“During my experience of 30 plus years as a diplomat, I witnessed civil wars and crises from Burundi to Liberia, Sudan to Somalia just to name a few. I can unequivocally testify that the contributions and leadership of women during such times was undeniably critical.”Catherine Bolzendahl, Director of the School of Public Policy, Oregon State University, said:“Women’s empowerment benefits everyone in society and continuing progress on gender equality cannot be abandoned in times of crisis.” More