Turkey’s leaders are closely watching Germany’s elections on September 26th that will mark the end of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s long tenure. For VOA from Istanbul, Dorian Jones reports.
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У посольстві заявили, що «російська сторона як і раніше відкрита для професійної співпраці по лінії профільних відомств, якщо Велика Британія відмовиться від концепції політично мотивованого «призначення» винних»
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У соціальних мережах Навальний 21 вересня заявив, що результати «перемалювали найпримітивнішим чином»
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Минулого тижня речниця президента США Джен Псакі не підтвердила постачання системи «Залізний купол» Україні
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The Australian decision to cancel a $66 billion deal to buy 12 French diesel-electric submarines and to purchase instead at least eight more sophisticated nuclear-powered attack boats from Britain and America continues to reverberate with French officials smarting at what they see as a betrayal by London and Washington.
And there are few signs the dispute will abate any time soon.
European Union leaders are rallying behind France in the dispute over the shelving of the multi-billion-dollar French deal and Canberra’s decision to sign up to a trilateral Asia Pacific security pact, known as AUKUS, with the United States and Britain, an alliance notably excluding Paris.
Speaking after a meeting Monday among EU foreign ministers held in New York on the sidelines of this week’s annual gathering for the United Nations General Assembly, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the foreign ministers “expressed clear solidarity with France.”
Borrell chided Washington and London saying, “More cooperation, more coordination, less fragmentation” was needed among Western powers in the Indo-Pacific region where China is the major rising power and is promoting alarm among its neighbors. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told CNN, “One of our member states has been treated in a way that is not acceptable. We want to know what happened and why.”
French anger
Last week France recalled its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington — a dramatic demonstration of French anger. And France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who has accused U.S. President Joe Biden of continuing the “unilateralism, unpredictability, brutality” of his predecessor Donald Trump, says he does not intend to meet his U.S. counterpart, Antony Blinken, while in New York.
“I myself do not intend to meet the Secretary of State Blinken,” Le Drian told reporters Monday. The French have also been avoiding timetabling a phone conversation between Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron.
France claims not to have been consulted by Australia about the plan to scupper what the French once branded the “deal of the century;” Australia says it did raise concerns with Paris for months over the contract, which was struck in 2016. Australian politicians have been emphasizing that the French contractors had fallen well behind schedule. “This has been a farce from day one,” Stephen Conroy, a former Australian senator, told Australian broadcaster Sky News. “This was a deal that was destined to fail,” he says.
French officials say they were only informed last week in writing just hours before the announcement by Britain, the US and Australia of an agreement that will see Australia become only the seventh state in the world with a nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
France’s reliability in question
While the core Australian decision rested on Canberra’s military assessment of its needs in the Indo-Pacific region, prompting an equipment upgrade, the move to exclude France from the trilateral defense pact, reveals much about Anglo-American suspicions of France’s reliability as a partner, say some former Western foreign and defense ministers and diplomats.
In defense circles in Washington and London, France is often seen as a frenemy, all too ready to grab commercial and diplomatic advantage over the United States and Britain and to exercise an independent mindedness that can make it an unpredictable military ally going back to General Charles De Gaulle’s 1966 decision to withdraw France abruptly from NATO.
Former British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt accused France Tuesday of wanting to have its cake and eat it, having one foot in the U.S.-led alliance while on the other pushing for an alternative French-led European defense alliance and backing an EU investment deal with China which granted better access to Europe’s single market than given to post-Brexit Britain. “France has long believed Europe should build an independent defence capability,” he wrote Tuesday for Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.
An alternative defense arrangement that loosens transatlantic ties with Washington is not conceivable without British backing, he says. The French are “bitterly aware that our central involvement in a new Asian military alliance led by the U.S. makes it much less likely that any European alliance, with or without Britain, would ever be a credible alternative to American leadership,” he says.
Another former British foreign minister, Willam Hague, agrees “the petulant French reaction to the consequent loss of a huge defence contract does little to elicit sympathy.” And he notes in a commentary: “Paris would not have hesitated to do the same the other way round.” But he says that as the AUKUS initiative develops beyond submarines into areas such as artificial intelligence, it should be open for others to join, including Canada and European allies such as France.
But analyst Olivier Guitta, managing director of GlobalStrat, an international security and risk consultancy firm in London, believes Washington and London should have been much more diplomatic, and instead of blindsiding Paris should have consulted and offered the French a slice of the new deal. “There was surely a way to find a consensus between the four allies, even when bringing the U.S. and the U.K. to the table, like splitting the contract in three,” he told VOA.
“It is quite ironic that Biden has pushed away France since in the past few months France has been one of the most sanguine to oppose China’s influence in the region,” he says. “Indeed, back in March China complained about French military activities in the disputed South China Sea, after it sent two warships there,” Guitta said.
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Справу щодо підпалу автівки водія програми «Схеми: корупція в деталях» повернуть в суд першої інстанції та розглядатимуть заново
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Police in Britain said Tuesday they have enough evidence to charge a third Russian in the 2018 nerve agent attack against a former Russian spy in the city of Salisbury, England.
Authorities identified the third suspect as Sergey Fedotov, also known as Denis Sergeev, and said he was a member of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service.
They said the list of possible charges includes conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, possessing and using a chemical weapon, and causing grievous bodily harm.
Prosecutors have already charged two other suspected military intelligence members in the attack that used the nerve agent Novichok to target Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, who both survived.
A British woman later died from contact with the nerve agent, and a police officer became critically ill.
Russia has denied involvement in the attack.
In a separate development Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia was responsible for the 2006 killing of former agent Alexander Litvinenko.
Litvinenko died after drinking tea at a London hotel laced with Polonium 210, a rare radioactive isotope.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the court’s conclusion Tuesday, calling the ruling unfounded.
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Скотланд-Ярд заявляє про отримання Європейського ордеру на арешт
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«Ми шукаємо рішення Донбасу і Криму на всіх майданчиках. Так, організація ООН – це один із головних майданчиків», – сказав президент
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Зустрічі місії відбуватимуться в онлайн режимі
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Склад Палати громад мало зміниться у порівнянні зі складом, який з’явився після виборів 2019 року
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The United States, United Kingdom and Australia on Thursday announced what the Royal Australian Navy describes on its website as an “enhanced trilateral security partnership” known as AUKUS (Australia, U.K. and U.S.). It says Australia will get at least eight nuclear-powered submarines, to be built domestically using American technology.
The use of nuclear-powered Australian submarines in the Indo-Pacific has angered China by threatening to curb its expansion in the same waterways, experts say.
The three-country security deal came after Australia pulled out of an earlier deal with France for diesel-electric submarines, angering Paris. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian even went as far as to describe Australia’s decision to back out of the deal as a “stab in the back.” On Friday, France recalled its ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia.
Analysts point to the partnership as the latest Western effort to vie with China for control over seas that Beijing calls its own despite territorial spats with other Asian governments, including Western allies. One disputed waterway is the resource-rich South China Sea.
Nuclear-powered submarines mean stealthier, faster-moving vessels, while Britain’s participation suggests a wider program and not just another U.S.-led effort targeting China, scholars say. The subs are expected to be ready by 2035.
“Operationally, it should bother the Chinese, because if Australia does get nuclear subs, then it can stay on station in places like the South China Sea or East China Sea for more or less permanent deployments,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative under the Washington D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Submarines won’t come online right away, he said, but for the first five to 10 years, what is important is “what (the partnership) says about Australia’s posture and willingness to stand up to China and whatever the posture changes are for the U.S.,” Poling said. Washington might eventually increase military rotations and exercises with Canberra, he said.
China’s maritime conflicts
Beijing claims about 90% of the South China Sea, where it has angered Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines by building artificial islets and passing ships through the contested waters. It vies with Japan over sovereignty in parts of the adjoining East China Sea.
Western countries have taken new notice of their former Cold War foe as the Chinese navy grows rapidly and its ships turn up as far away as Alaska.
AUKUS calls for the sharing of military-related automation, artificial intelligence and quantum technology. Quantum technology can help detect submarines and stealth aircraft. Australia, Britain and the United States have committed to a “comprehensive program of work” over the next 18 months, the Australian navy says.
‘Worst possible contingencies’
Nuclear-powered subs based in Australia could reach the South China Sea in a day and stay indefinitely, said Malcolm Davis, senior analyst in defense strategy and capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra. Alternatively, they might enter the Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea or Southwest Pacific, he added.
He said Australia, in pitched political and trade fights with China since 2015, intends to help the United States defend any Chinese movement that’s “inimical” to Australian allies.
“These subs are primarily to boost Australian defenses against a rising China that is challenging not only the U.S. in the region but also all our countries, including Australia, and there is a growing military challenge from China that is very real, and we are preparing for all sorts of worst possible contingencies, including the prospect for a major power war between the U.S. and China over Taiwan some time in this decade,” Davis said.
China claims sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan and regularly sends military planes into its airspace. Taiwan’s government, opposed to unification with China, has found growing support from the West.
“Taiwan will have a side (of its population) that cries out, ‘That’s great. England, America and Australia are coming to do a check and balance against China,’ said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the international affairs college at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
British officials joined the tech-sharing deal as part of their “idea of global Britain” following their departure from the European Union, Poling said. Its participation as a non-Indo-Pacific country angers China particularly, Huang said.
AUKUS follows other Western-spearheaded efforts such as the 16-year-old Quadrilateral Security Dialogue among India, Japan, Australia and the United States. Western-allied countries periodically pass ships through the South China Sea on their own. China normally protests.
Stern words, deeds in China
China calls the AUKUS deal a danger to the Indo-Pacific region. “For the United States, U.K. and Australia to launch nuclear submarine cooperation severely disrupts regional peace and stability, increases the arms buildup race and wrecks the hard work of international disarmament,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Thursday.
Asia’s chief superpower isn’t standing by either. On September 1, China implemented its Revised Maritime Safety Traffic Law to counter foreign ships that pass near its coasts. The law tightens Chinese control over the East and South China seas by giving Beijing power to stop a range of foreign vessels.
“The United States Navy, if it was ordered to conduct a freedom of navigation (operation), that just sets up a confrontation, because how are you going to stop an American warship?” said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
China could follow up AUKUS further by restricting additional Australian imports, Davis said. Canberra, however, has already found new foreign markets for its all-important coal and wine because of earlier friction with China.
your ad hereУ Міністерстві оборони Малі заявили, що «відмова» Франції від підтримки Малі означає, що «треба розглянути всі варіанти, щоб убезпечити країну»
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На острові Ла-Пальма триває виверження на вулканічному пасмі Кумбре-Б’єха, що спричинило евакуацію людей із околиць місця виверження
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Його відкрили за частиною 1 статті 111 ККУ (держзрада). Воно стосуватиметься громадян України, які «беруть участь в організації незаконних виборів, надають допомогу іноземній державі в проведенні підривної діяльності проти України»
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Як мовиться в заяві верховного представника ЄC Жозепа Борреля, ЄС не визнає анексії Криму, тому й не визнає так звані вибори на окупованому півострові
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BloLab is converting plastic jerricans into computers using recycled components.. Anne Nzouankeu visited the startup in Cotonou, Benin in this story narrated by Moki Edwin Kindzeka.
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The United States said Monday that starting in early November it will ease its coronavirus restrictions for foreign travelers arriving in the country.
Foreign travel to the U.S. had been largely curbed during the 18-month pandemic, even as European nations in recent months eased restrictions on American travelers ahead of the summertime vacation season.
Under the new U.S. policy, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said foreign travelers will again be allowed into the country if they can demonstrate proof of being fully vaccinated before they board a flight and show proof of a negative COVID-19 test administered within three days of their flight.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson applauded the U.S. action, saying foreign travelers will be able to get to the U.S. before its annual Thanksgiving holiday, celebrated this year on November 25.
“That’s a great thing,” Johnson said. “I thank the president (Joe Biden) for progress we have been able to make.”
The U.S. Travel Association trade group also welcomed the move, saying it will “help revive the American economy.”
“This is a major turning point in the management of the virus and will accelerate the recovery of the millions of travel-related jobs that have been lost due to international travel restrictions,” U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Roger Dow said in a statement Monday.
Fully vaccinated travelers to the U.S. will not be required to be quarantined, as has been the case in some foreign countries.
But Biden’s administration, in its effort to push millions more Americans to get inoculated, said unvaccinated Americans returning from overseas will need to be tested within a day of their flight and again after they return home.
More than 181 million Americans have been fully vaccinated, according to government health officials, but it is estimated that 70 million people eligible for the vaccine have so far declined, for one reason or another, to get vaccinated.
The new policy replaces a patchwork of restrictions first instituted by former President Donald Trump last year and tightened by Biden earlier this year that restricted travel by foreigners who in the prior 14 days had been in Britain, the European Union, China, India, Iran, Brazil or South Africa.
Zients said the new policy “is based on individuals rather than a country-based approach, so it’s a stronger system.”
He said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will also require airlines to collect contact information from international travelers to facilitate contact tracing if there is a coronavirus outbreak related to foreigners arriving in the U.S.
It is uncertain under the new policy which vaccines would be acceptable to U.S. authorities, with Zients saying that would be left up to the CDC. Vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are used in the U.S.
Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some information also came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
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