WASHINGTON: Three of Beijing’s outposts on contested South China Sea reefs are close to being ready for the deployment of military assets including mobile missile launchers, a US think tank reported Thursday.
Analizing satellite photographs, the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative said Beijing’s Fiery Cross Reef base in the Spratly Islands now has 12 hardened shelters, four more than seen in February, with retractable roofs that can house missile launchers.
At Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief Reef bases, China has expanded its communications and radar arrays with multiple radar towers on each.
And new construction of “very large underground structures, four at each reef, is underway, which AMTI said a likely designed to house munitions and other essential goods.
“Major construction of military and dual-use infrastructure on the ‘Big 3’ ... is wrapping up, with the naval, air, radar and defensive facilities that AMTI has tracked for nearly two years largely complete,” the group said.
“Beijing can now deploy military assets, including combat aircraft and mobile missile launchers to the Spratly Islands at any time.”
AMTI, part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, said the air bases on the three islands, and a fourth on Woody Island in the Paracel Islands, allow Chinese military aircraft to operate over almost the entirety of the South China Sea.
In December AMTI reported that large anti-aircraft guns and other defense systems had been installed ont he islands.
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea despite partial counter-claims from Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.
But the United States has warned it against militarizing the region or threatening international sea lanes.
“We oppose China’s artificial island construction and their militarization that features in international waters,” US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Sydney in early June.
Beijing’s South China Sea outposts nearly set for missile deployment: report
Beijing’s South China Sea outposts nearly set for missile deployment: report
Gabon votes yes to new constitution, says interior minister
LIBREVILLE: Gabonese voters approved a new constitution by a landslide 91.8 percent, the interior minister said on Sunday, after a referendum that the junta in power promised would be a steppingstone to democratic rule.
Speaking on state television, Minister Hermann Immongault said turnout was an estimated 53.5 percent.
General Brice Oligui Nguema, who is interim president, has touted Saturday’s vote as a sign of the government’s commitment to a democratic transition, tentatively scheduled for summer 2025.
Military officers seized power in a coup in August last year. The Gabonese largely welcomed the ouster of President Ali Bongo. His family’s poor management of the central African country’s oil wealth had led to a stagnant economy and a third of the population living in poverty.
The proposed new constitution introduces a two-term limit on the presidency, each lasting seven years. It removes the position of prime minister and recognizes French as Gabon’s working language.
The draft does not bar Nguema from running for the presidency, raising concern for some commentators about the junta’s ambitions.
France, UK and Poland reaffirm support for Kyiv as Russia targets Ukraine’s power facilities in massive missile attack
- UK’s Starmer allies have to double down now to support Ukraine for as long as it takes
- Missiles against Russia ‘a language Putin understands’, says Poland's FM
BUENOS AIRES/LONDON/WARSAW: France, Britain and Poland on Sunday reaffirmed their support for Ukraine as Russia staged its biggest missile attack since August, targeting Ukraine's power facilities with the winter setting in.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the relentless air barrage showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “does not want peace and is not ready to negotiate.”
The priority for France was to “equip, support and help Ukraine to resist,” Macron told reporters as he prepared to leave Argentina to attend the G20 Summit in Brazil. “It’s clear that President Putin intends to intensify the fighting,” he added.
He declined to comment on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s call with Putin on Friday, stressing that Ukraine’s allies “must remain united .... on an agenda for genuine peace, that is to say, a peace that does not mean Ukraine’s surrender.”
He added that he would only consider a call with the Russian leader when the “context” was right.
In London, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that he has no plan to speak with Putin as he pledged support for Ukraine as the UK’s top priority at this week’s G20 summit.
Speaking with reporters on the way to the meeting in Brazil, Starmer said he wouldn’t speak to Putin as Scholz did on Friday.
The call between the two leaders, which the Kremlin said was initiated by Germany, was the first publicly announced conversation between Putin and a major head of a Western power in almost two years.
Ukraine's Zelensky criticized the call and said it would only make Russia less isolated.
Ukraine’s allies fear that the election of President-elect Donald Trump, who has questioned US aid sent to Kyiv and spoken favorably about Putin, could alter support from Washington, its biggest backer.
Starmer said allies have to double down now to support Ukraine for as long as it takes.
“We are coming up to the 1,000th day of this conflict on Tuesday,” Starmer said. “That’s 1,000 days of Russian aggression, 1,000 days of huge impact and sacrifice in relation to the Ukrainian people and recently we’ve seen the addition of North Korean troops working with Russians which does have serious implications.”
The UK has committed $16.15 billion in aid to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Also on Sunday, Poland welcomed news that US President Joe Biden had cleared Ukraine to use long-range missiles against military targets inside Russia, something Kyiv had been urging for months.
“With the entry into the war of North Korea troops and (Sunday’s) massive attack of Russian missiles, President Biden responded in a language that (Russian President) V.Putin understands,” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski posted on X.
“The victim of aggression has the right to defend himself,” Sikorski added in his post. “Strength deters, weakness provokes.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has long pushed for authorization from Washington to use the powerful Army Tactical Missile System, known by its initials ATACMS, to hit targets inside Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that approval would mean that NATO was “at war” with his country — a threat he has made previously when Ukraine’s Western backers have escalated their military assistance to Kyiv.
Rising Islamophobia poses threat in UK amid ‘bleak and dystopian’ political climate, warns head of race equality think tank
- Shabna Begum said political rhetoric had fueled the problem
LONDON: The UK is witnessing an escalation in Islamophobia that risks becoming “brutally divisive,” with failure to address its underlying causes potentially leading to more racist riots, according to the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust think tank.
In an exclusive interview with The Guardian newspaper, Shabna Begum, who took the helm of the race equality group earlier this year, highlighted how political rhetoric has fueled the problem.
“The way politicians talk about Muslims now is so derogatory, it’s in the most brutally divisive terms,” she said, adding that British political discourse had evolved beyond Sayeeda Warsi’s “dinner table test,” a phrase coined by the Conservative peer in 2011 which claimed Islamophobia had become socially acceptable.
Referring to last summer’s riots, Begum warned that without change, such violence could become recurrent.
“(The unrest) was the ugliest representation of the years of racism that have been manufactured through the political media conversation. And if we don’t do something differently, that ugliness will become just a regular feature of our politics,” she said.
The Runnymede Trust’s report on Islamophobia, launched with backing from Warsi, Amnesty International UK, and the Muslim Council for Britain, documented increasing hostility faced by British Muslims.
It cited Tell Mama’s findings of a 335 percent spike in hate incidents in the four months up to February 2024, with women disproportionately affected.
Police figures indicated that nearly 38 percent of religious hate crimes targeted Muslims, and anti-religious hate crimes reached a record high last year, coinciding with the Israel-Gaza conflict, which broke out on Oct. 7 last year.
Begum emphasized that the issue extended beyond physical attacks to “state-sponsored Islamophobia” embedded in policies and narratives, without naming specific politicals, and added that the ruling Labour Party and the Conservatives had both been guilty of feeding a “bleak and dystopian” hostile climate for British Muslims.
She also highlighted the double standard faced by Muslims in public life, saying: “Whether it’s through being governors at schools, as we see through the Trojan horse affair … we are seen trying to take over and hijack local schools.”
She continued: “Or when we go on protest marches, along with many other people, we are described as hate marchers and Islamist extremists. And when we use our vote to express our political preferences, we’re described as sectarian and divisive.”
Drawing on her personal history as the daughter of Bangladeshi migrants who grew up in Tower Hamlets in London, Begum described how her upbringing had shaped her understanding of systemic discrimination.
After more than two decades as a teacher, she moved into academia, ultimately leading her to running the Runnymede Trust.
While she welcomed a recent £15 million ($18.9 million) community recovery fund introduced by the UK government, she called for more substantial investment to combat structural racism.
“What we’re objecting to is a dispersal of insecure funds to community groups... There’s no point saying all Muslims are all bad, but go and have a cup of tea with them in your local community.”
Biden authorizes Ukraine’s use of US-supplied long-range missiles for deeper strikes inside Russia
- Biden's decision follows Russia's reported use of North Korean troops in its war against Ukraine
- The US had previously allowed Ukraine to use ATACMS only for limited strikes just across the border with Russia
MANAUS, Brazil: President Joe Biden has authorized the use of US-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine to strike even deeper inside Russia, the latest easing of limitations meant to prevent the conflict from further spiraling, according to one US official and three people familiar with the matter.
The decision allowing Ukraine to use the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMs, for attacks farther into Russia comes as thousands of North Korean troops have been sent into a region along Ukraine’s northern border to help Russia retake ground and as President-elect Donald Trump has said he would bring about a swift end to the war, expressing skepticism over continued support by the United States.
Biden's decision came hours after Russia launched a massive drone and missile attack on Ukraine, described by officials as the largest in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and killing civilians.
The attack came as fears are mounting about Moscow’s intentions to devastate Ukraine's power generation capacity ahead of the winter.
It is the second time the US has permitted the use of Western weapons inside Russian territory within limits after permitting the use of HIMARS systems, a shorter-range weapon, to stem Russia's advance in Kharkiv region in May.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia had launched a total of 120 missiles and 90 drones in a large-scale attack across Ukraine. Various types of drones were deployed, he said, including Iranian-made Shaheds, as well as cruise, ballistic and aircraft-launched ballistic missiles.
Ukrainian defenses shot down 144 out of a total of 210 air targets, Ukraine's air force reported later on Sunday.
Zelensky and many of his Western supporters have been pressing Biden for months to allow Ukraine to strike military targets deeper inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles, saying the US ban had made it impossible for Ukraine to try to stop Russian attacks on its cities and electrical grids.
Some supporters have argued that this and other US constraints could cost Ukraine the war. The debate has become a source of disagreement among Ukraine’s NATO allies.
Biden had remained opposed, determined to hold the line against any escalation that he felt could draw the US and other NATO members into direct conflict with Russia.
But North Korea has deployed thousands of troops to Russia to help Moscow try to claw back land in the Kursk border region that Ukraine seized this year. The introduction of North Korean troops to the conflict comes as Moscow has seen a favorable shift in momentum. Trump has signaled that he could push Ukraine to agree to give up some land seized by Russia to find an end to the conflict.
As many as 12,000 North Korean troops have been sent to Russia, according to US, South Korean and Ukrainian assessments. US and South Korean intelligence officials say North Korea also has provided Russia with significant amounts of munitions to replenish its dwindling weapons stockpiles.
Trump, who takes office in January, spoke for months as a candidate about wanting Russia’s war in Ukraine to be over, but he mostly ducked questions about whether he wanted US ally Ukraine to win.
He also repeatedly slammed the Biden administration for giving Kyiv tens of billions of dollars in aid. His election victory has Ukraine’s international backers worrying that any rushed settlement would mostly benefit Putin.
America is Ukraine’s most valuable ally in the war, providing more than $56.2 billion in security assistance since Russian forces invaded in February 2022.
Worried about Russia’s response, however, the Biden administration repeatedly has delayed providing some specific advanced weapons sought by Ukraine, only agreeing under pressure from Ukraine and in consultation with allies, after long denying such a request.
That includes initially refusing Zelensky’s pleas for advanced tanks, Patriot air defense systems, F-16 fighter jets, among other systems.
The White House agreed in May to allow Ukraine to use ATACMS for limited strikes just across the border with Russia.
Ukrainian drones strike Russia
A local journalist died Sunday as Ukrainian drones struck Russia's embattled Kursk region, its Gov. Aleksei Smirnov reported.
Moscow’s forces have for months strained to dislodge Ukrainian troops from the southern province after a bold incursion in August that constituted the largest attack on Russia since World War II and saw battle-hardened Ukrainian units swiftly take hundreds of square miles (kilometers) of territory.
In Russia’s Belgorod province, near Ukraine, a man died on the spot after a Ukrainian drone dropped explosives on his car, local Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov reported.
Another Ukrainian drone on Sunday targeted a drone factory in Izhevsk, deep inside Russia, according to anti-Kremlin Russian news channels on the Telegram messaging app. The regional leader, Aleksandr Brechalov, reported that a drone exploded near a factory in the city, blowing out windows but causing no serious damage. A man was briefly hospitalized with a head injury, Brechalov said.
COP29 success requires G20 ‘leadership’: UN chief
- Annual UN climate talks in Baku deadlocked at midway point
RIO DE JANEIRO: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday called on G20 leaders gathering in Rio de Janeiro to rescue stalled concurrent UN climate talks in Azerbaijan by showing “leadership” on cutting emissions.
“A successful outcome at COP29 is still within reach, but it will require leadership and compromise, namely from the G20 countries,” Guterres, who will attend the summit of the world’s biggest economies starting Monday, told a press conference in Rio.
The annual UN talks in Baku are deadlocked at the midway point, with nations no closer to agreeing a $1 trillion deal for climate investments in developing nations after a week of negotiations.
The talks are stuck over the final figure, the type of financing, and who should pay, with Western countries wanting China and wealthy Gulf states to join the list of donors.
All eyes have turned to Rio in the hope of a breakthrough.
“The spotlight is naturally on the G20. They account for 80 percent of global emissions,” Guterres said, calling on the group to “lead by example.”
