NEW YORK: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cautioned last month that Russia would manufacture a pretext for invading Ukraine. He also warned that Moscow would fabricate allegations about chemical or biological weapons to justify violent attacks against the Ukrainian people.
“The world is watching Russia do exactly what we warned it would,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, told fellow members of the Security Council on Friday.
The emergency meeting was called by the Russian delegation after allegations from Moscow that its troops had uncovered evidence of US-funded biological-weapon programs in Ukraine, including documents it said confirmed the development of “biological weapons components.”
The Russian defense ministry claimed that the US “planned to organize work on pathogens of birds, bats and reptiles in Ukraine in 2022.”
During Friday’s meeting, Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia repeated accusations by the ministry that Washington is supporting military-related biological research in Ukraine and Georgia with the goal of creating “bio-agents capable of selectively targeting different ethnic populations.”
Thomas-Greenfield said the Russian delegation called the Security Council meeting with the sole aim of legitimizing disinformation and deceiving the world in an attempt to justify “President (Vladimir) Putin’s war of choice against the Ukrainian people.”
She also accused China of spreading disinformation in support of Russia’s claims.
“I will say this once: Ukraine does not have a biological-weapons program,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “There are no Ukrainian biological-weapons laboratories supported by the United States — not near Russia’s border or anywhere.”
She added that Ukraine owns and operates its own public-health laboratories to detect and diagnose diseases, including COVID-19.
“The United States has assisted Ukraine to do this safely and securely,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “This is work that has been done proudly, clearly and out in the open. This work has everything to do with protecting the health of people. It has absolutely nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with biological weapons.”
Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN’s disarmament chief, told members of the council that no evidence has been found to support the Russian claims of biological-weapons development in Ukraine.
Thomas-Greenfield also accused Russia of long maintaining its own biological-weapons program, in violation of international law, and having a well-documented history of using such weapons.
She highlighted as evidence of this the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny by Russian operatives, and Moscow’s continued support of President Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria and its efforts to “shield it from accountability when the UN and the (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) have confirmed that Assad has repeatedly used chemical weapons over the past several years.”
The US envoy said her country is deeply concerned that Russia’s call for the Security Council meeting is a “potential false flag effort in action.”
A false flag operation is an action performed with the aim of disguising the true culprit and instead blame another.
“Russia has a track record of falsely accusing other countries of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “And (we) have serious concerns that Russia may be planning to use chemical or biological agents against the Ukrainian people.
“The intent behind these lies seems clear and it is deeply troubling. We believe Russia could use chemical or biological agents for assassinations, as part of a staged or false-flag incident, or to support tactical military operations.
“From the beginning, our strategy to counter Russia’s tactics has been to share what we know with the world, transparently — and, candidly, we have been right more often than we’d like.”
She vowed not to allow Russia to “get away with lying to the world or staining the integrity of the Security Council by using this forum as a venue for legitimizing Putin’s violence.”
Russia has attacked homes, schools, orphanages and hospitals, Thomas-Greenfield said.
“Their forces are laying Ukrainian cities under siege,” she added. “Hundreds of thousands of civilians now don’t have access to electricity for heat, or drinking water to stay alive. Russia is the aggressor here.”
She stressed that despite Moscow’s efforts to spread disinformation, it cannot “paint over” newspaper stories or “cover up” the work of the Ukrainian and international journalists on the ground in the country who are reporting the reality of civilian suffering and deaths.
Meanwhile, the Russian media alleged that a pregnant woman pictured being carried on a stretcher while a hospital in Mariupol was evacuated after a Russian attack was an actress.
“Even Russia’s own citizens are tiring of such lies,” said Thomas-Greenfield. “Russian athletes are writing ‘no war’ on their shoes and on TV cameras. Russian citizens are marching in the streets and protesting Putin’s war of choice. And even Russian state-TV pundits — Putin’s own propaganda arm — have called for Putin to stop the military action.”
Thomas-Greenfield again called on the Russian president to end this “unprovoked, unconscionable war against the Ukrainian people.”
US denounces Russian claims of Ukrainian biological weapons as a ‘false flag’
https://arab.news/9vfke
US denounces Russian claims of Ukrainian biological weapons as a ‘false flag’
- American envoy told UN Security Council that Moscow has a track record of falsely accusing others of the very crimes it is guilty of itself
- The emergency meeting was called by Russia after allegations by the Kremlin that Washington is funding biological-weapons labs in Ukraine
African Union ‘dismayed’ US withdrawing from WHO
Trump has repeatedly criticized the WHO over its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic
ADDIS ABABA: The African Union expressed dismay Wednesday over President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, urging his administration to reconsider.
Just hours after taking office on Monday, Trump signed an executive order directing the US to withdraw from the UN agency, which threatens to leave global health initiatives short of funding.
African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat said in a statement he was “dismayed to learn of the US government’s announcement to withdraw” from the Geneva-based WHO.
Washington is easily the biggest financial contributor to the organization and the pullout comes as Africa faces a range of health crises, including recent outbreaks of mpox and Marburg viruses.
“Now more than ever, the world depends on WHO to carry out its mandate to ensure global public health security as a shared common good,” Moussa Faki said, adding he hopes “the US government will reconsider its decision.”
He said Washington was an early supporter of the Africa CDC, the African Union’s health watchdog which works with the WHO to counter present and emerging pandemics.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the WHO over its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and said prior to his inauguration that “World Health ripped us off.”
The United States was in the process of withdrawing from the WHO during Trump’s first term, but the move was reversed under Joe Biden.
Tom Frieden, a former US senior health official, wrote on X that the withdrawal “weakens America’s influence, increases the risk of a deadly pandemic, and makes all of us less safe.”
It comes as fears grow of the pandemic potential of a bird flu outbreak, which has infected dozens and claimed its first human life in the United States earlier this month.
WHO member states have been negotiating the world’s first treaty on handling future pandemics since late 2021 — negotiations now set to proceed without the US.
In Itaewon, Seoul’s Korean Muslim minority finds a sense of belonging
- Muslims make up only around 0.3 percent of South Korea’s 51 million population
- Seoul Central Mosque in Itaewon is South Korea’s first and largest
SEOUL: Tucked away behind the main avenue of Seoul’s central Itaewon district, the signs along “Muslim Street” — which features the Korean alphabet Hangul and Arabic script side by side — is the first giveaway of the neighborhood’s soul.
A little walk up the street, visitors would then find the Seoul Central Mosque — the country’s first and largest — that for decades has served as a beating heart for South Korea’s minority Muslim community.
“Korean Muslims are one of the smallest minority groups in Korea … In Itaewon, no one thinks I am weird when I tell them I am Muslim, or when I pray at the mosque or dress in Arab clothes. It gives me a sense of tranquility. And it also satisfies a big portion of the loneliness I feel as a Muslim,” Eom Min-a, a 35-year-old government official, told Arab News.
“When I meet friends in Itaewon, or when I pray in the mosque with other Muslims, I feel that I am not alone in this country. That makes me keep wanting to go there.”
In South Korea, Muslims make up only around 0.3 percent of the country’s 51 million population, according to the Korea Muslim Federation. Migrant workers from Muslim countries make up the bulk of the Korean Muslim community, as around 70 percent of them are foreigners.
For Koreans like Eom, being Muslim is often a lonely and alienating experience. She deals with microaggressions from time to time and often feels excluded from the larger society.
But whenever she visits Itaewon, she feels liberated. It is also the place where she meets her Muslim friends — most of whom are foreigners — and eats Arab food.
“When you go to Itaewon, you can see the mosque on top of the neighborhood’s highest hill. You feel a sense of pride,” she said. “I feel liberated and I find a lot of emotional comfort there.”
Though small, the growth of the Muslim community in Korea is often traced back to when the Seoul Central Mosque was built in 1976, with funding from Saudi Arabia.
Since then, Muslims in and around Seoul have visited the mosque in Itaewon especially to get together and celebrate the main holidays in Islam, Eid Al-Adha and Eid Al-Fitr.
“Before my child was born, I would go to the central mosque in Itaewon during Ramadan or Eid and participate in the prayers,” business owner Kim Jin-woo told Arab News.
“From our point of view as Muslims, the neighborhood and the Central Mosque feel like home … In our heart, it is a place like home.”
Kim’s visits to Itaewon are also related to household needs at times, including buying halal or Arab ingredients. From dates to homemade hummus to falafel, the shop Kim goes to carries more Arab products than Korean ones.
“My family also goes to Itaewon to shop for groceries. My wife mostly cooks Moroccan food at home, and the shopping center there has a large assortment of Arab groceries and halal meat,” he said.
Over the years, Seoul’s Muslim neighborhood has grown into a beacon of diversity and peaceful coexistence even for other Itaewon residents, including for 83-year-old Kim C., a non-Muslim who has run a shop in the area for over 40 years.
“I have hired foreign Muslim employees myself. They are genuine people,” Kim told Arab News. “They are no different from my other neighbors.”
200,000 intl troops needed to secure any Ukraine peace: Zelensky
- Zelensky said that given the small size of the Ukrainian army compared to that of Russia, “we need contingents with a very strong number of soldiers” to secure any peace deal
- “From all the Europeans? Two hundred thousand. It’s a minimum. Otherwise, it’s nothing“
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said any peace deal agreed with Russia would require at least 200,000 European peacekeepers to oversee it, according to comments published Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has raised the spectre of some kind of halt in the fighting after he vowed to end the war — though he has never explained how.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos a day earlier, Zelensky said any deal to end the conflict would need to be overseen by a large foreign contingent of peacekeepers.
Zelensky said that given the small size of the Ukrainian army compared to that of Russia, “we need contingents with a very strong number of soldiers” to secure any peace deal.
“From all the Europeans? Two hundred thousand. It’s a minimum. Otherwise, it’s nothing,” he said.
He said any other arrangement would be akin to the monitoring mission led by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in eastern Ukraine that disintegrated when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“They had offices and that’s all,” Zelensky said, underscoring the need from the Ukrainian perspective for an armed force to prevent further Russian attacks.
The Ukrainian leader has repeatedly said that Ukraine must be represented at any talks with international parties to end the conflict and that only robust security guarantees can dissuade Russia from attacking again.
Ukraine’s fear that Moscow would use a truce to rebuild its military stems partially from the decade that followed peace agreements between Kremlin-backed separatists and Kyiv in 2014 which failed to halt Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
In an earlier address at Davos, Zelensky called on Europe to establish a joint defense policy and said European capitals should be prepared to increase spending, while calling into question Trump’s commitment to NATO, the US-led security bloc.
Trump on Tuesday indicated he would consider imposing fresh sanctions on Russia if President Vladimir Putin refuses to negotiate a deal to end the war in Ukraine.
Afghan suspect arrested after two killed in knife attack in German park
- The Afghan suspect was detained at the scene in Schoental park
- A 41-year old man and a two-year old boy were fatally injured, police said
BERLIN: A 28-year-old man from Afghanistan has been arrested following a knife attack in a park in the German city of Aschaffenburg on Wednesday in which two people were killed, including a toddler, police said.
The suspect was detained at the scene in Schoental park, an English-style garden in the Bavarian city, where the attack occurred at around 1045 GMT.
A 41-year old man and a two-year old boy were fatally injured, police said in a post on social media platform X. Two seriously injured people were receiving hospital treatment.
Police said there was no indication of further suspects and no danger to the public.
The stabbing adds to a string of violent attacks in Germany that have raised concerns over security and stirred up tensions over migration ahead of parliamentary elections on Feb. 23.
A doctor was arrested after a car-ramming attack at a Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg on Dec. 20, in which six people were killed and around 200 injured.
Macron says Europe must protect sovereignty in face of Trump’s return
- Macron made the remarks at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
PARIS: More than ever, Europeans, including France and Germany, must protect their sovereignty in the face of the return of US President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday.
He made the remarks at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Paris, adding that it was important to support the automobile, steel, chemical sectors, among others.
“After the inauguration of a new administration in the United States, it is necessary more than ever for Europeans and for our two countries to play their role of consolidating a united, strong and sovereign Europe,” Macron said.
