Eyes of Middle East, Arabs on King Charles III as moment to shine arrives at last

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Updated 09 May 2023
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Eyes of Middle East, Arabs on King Charles III as moment to shine arrives at last

LONDON: His moment to shine, his moment to step out of the shadows, has come at last.

Following the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II last year, the UK’s King Charles III ascended the throne he knew he would inherit from a very young age.

His instant ascension to the head of the British monarchy on Sept. 8 came amid a somber period of mourning and respectful reflection in the UK and globally, but his coronation on May 6 promises to be an altogether more celebratory affair.

As the eyes of the world turn to London for an event bristling with centuries of history, tradition and pageantry, not witnessed for 70 years, so too will those of interested Arab observers from afar and those who call the UK their home.

Given its inextricable links with Britain’s imperial past, the scars of which can still be seen and felt in the Middle East, it is perhaps inspiring that the UK monarchy has for decades cultivated warm ties with the region, especially with the monarchies of the Gulf region.

This has been aided, in no small part, thanks to Charles’ admiration for the Middle East and, in particular, the Islamic religion; he has read the Qur’an, signs his communication with Arab and Muslim leaders in Arabic, and, as Prince of Wales, chose Jordan and Egypt for his first overseas trip after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted.

In a rare break from constitutional rules that demand a strictly apolitical stance, Charles has also openly expressed sympathy for the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

It is a region close to his heart.

And for some, Charles’ coronation will mark the beginning of even closer ties between Britain and the Arab world, something symbolized by the warmth and good wishes expressed by regional missions and organizations in the UK.

In an opinion piece for Arab News, Prince Khalid bin Bandar, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UK, wished Charles a “long, prosperous and happy reign” and thanked him for “all he has already done over his long life of service to build bridges between our two nations.”

The UAE’S Ambassador to the UK, Mansoor Abulhoul, extended his “warmest congratulations” to King Charles on behalf of his country, and described the event as “a time of celebration” for everyone in Britain. 

“The king’s dedication to environmental protection, tackling inequality, and fostering interfaith relations has been demonstrated throughout his time as HRH Prince of Wales. His passion and conviction are a major asset in his important role (in) representing the British nation,” Abulhoul said, as the UAE prepares to host the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) later this year.

“The UAE and UK have always been close allies and partners with a shared history and mutual interests in security, defense, trade, education and the environment,” he added. “But let us also pause to celebrate that we are tied together by something more profound in this critical year of renewal — our royal histories, our personal friendships, and many cultural ties, as well as our common values.”

Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian mission in the UK, said he looked forward to working with the king “on resolving the Palestinian issue, an issue for which the UK has a unique historical responsibility and in whose resolution we hope will play a unique and progressive role.”

Commenting on Charles’ “historic visit” to the occupied Palestine territory, he said: “During his trip, he walked through the streets of Bethlehem with Palestinian Christian and Muslim leaders, underscoring not only his message of unity, but also showcasing the multi-faith nature of the Palestinian people.

“We sincerely hope King Charles will visit again as monarch to an independent and free state of Palestine. We join with him in his wish, expressed in 2020, that we, the Palestinian people, should also enjoy freedom, justice and equality,” he added.

Jordan’s ambassador to the UK, Manar Dabbas, described the coronation ceremony as “a new promising era that builds on centuries of a great legacy.” He said his country regards the event as “a beginning of a renewed promising chapter of the strategic bilateral relations between Jordan and the UK — a partnership that entered its second centennial two years ago.”

Highlighting Jordan’s work to host the second largest number of refugees per capita worldwide and its several initiatives to combat climate change, Dabbas added: “It is a moment of victory for international advocates of climate, biodiversity, protecting refugees, promoting civilizations and religious connectivity and coexistence, and advancing humanity.

“Indeed, his majesty’s globally recognized efforts and his unwavering passion pertaining to these issues is a beacon of hope for hundreds of millions around the globe.

“King Charles III played a massive role, even during his previous capacity as Prince of Wales, to fortify this longstanding and deep-rooted partnership (and) I am certain that their majesties King Abdullah II and King Charles III will take our relations to new horizons and levels,” he added.

Sheikh Fawaz bin Mohammed Al-Khalifa, Bahrain’s ambassador to London, said Charles would build on the legacy of Queen Elizabeth II, “who was such a source of strength and inspiration for countless millions around the world.”

He added: “With over two centuries of deep and broad-based cooperation, Bahrain and the UK share a unique and enduring bond, reinforced by the longstanding friendship between the two royal families, I have no doubt that during the reign of King Charles, these ties will strengthen further at all levels.”

Bandar Reda, secretary-general and CEO of the Arab British Chamber of Commerce, said “the accession of the new monarch marks a new era for Britain and for the British people and it underpins the unfaltering unity of the nation.” 

Reda added: “The coronation will be eagerly watched by people around the world, including the Arab world where King Charles is greatly respected for his positive role in fostering closer Arab-British relations across all fields.”

Omar Bdour, CEO of the London Arabia Organization, said that Charles “clearly has a love for the Arab world” and “personally values the relationship” with the region.

Bandar Reda, secretary-general and CEO at the Arab British Chamber of Commerce, said the coronation would “mark a new era” for Britain, and would be “eagerly watched by peoples around the world, including the Arab world, where (Charles) is greatly respected for his positive role in fostering closer Arab-British relations.”

And George Kanaan, CEO of the London-headquartered Arab Bankers Association, congratulated the king on his coronation, saying: “As Prince Charles, the king made numerous visits to the Middle East, and we are deeply grateful for the work he has done to strengthen ties between the UK and Arab states, and to enhance our commercial and cultural ties.”

He added: “While we remain saddened by the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, we look forward with optimism and confidence to the reign of King Charles III, and pray that it may be long and happy.”

Reem Alkharji, the chairwoman of the Saudi Students Club in London, said: “On behalf of all the Saudi students studying in London, we wish him a pleasant and prosperous reign, and we look forward to a bright future under his leadership.”

She added: “We are grateful for his support and commitment to the younger generation, and we hope to contribute to the flourishing relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom.”

That sense of optimism is shared by UK-based Arabs.

Richard Jabara, a Lebanese-Italian investment banker, plans to be at Westminster Abbey to witness the “iconic moment in British history” and believes Charles will continue the work of his mother in giving the monarchy a solid foundation and Britain a symbol of stability.

“I think there is a lot of respect between King Charles and the Middle East,” he said. “It will be great having a monarch who understands Middle Eastern culture. Hopefully he can inspire more people from the UK and globally to learn about the Middle East,” he added.

Mohammed Al-Derbasti, a Qatari student at London’s City University, told Arab News he would definitely be tuning in to watch the coronation.

“I do believe that King Charles’ admiration for Islam will create a closer bond between the UK and the Middle East,” he said. “His trip to the occupied West Bank and the public show of sympathy are examples of that.”

Palestinian Janan Kawash, a student at University College London, agreed, adding that she believed Charles would leave behind a “more inclusive” Britain to his heir, William, Prince of Wales.

“When Charles visited the West Bank (in 2020) and expressed his sadness over the suffering of the Palestinian people, that was an unprecedented show of support by a Western leader, let alone a British royal family member,” she told Arab News.

Domestically, it is hoped that the king’s “defender of the faith” role as head of the Church of England, coupled with his self-proclaimed commitment to being a “defender of all faiths,” could herald a healing of divisions in a deeply divided British society.

“From his charitable work at the Prince’s Trust and his accepting of different faiths and cultures, I think King Charles’ reign will be known for more understanding between the UK’s ethnic groups and a reduction in hate crime,” Al-Derbasti added.

However, Charles and his reign will not be without detractors, and there are some Arabs living in the UK who share a different outlook. For some, his role as nothing more than a powerless figurehead will make him ineffective in making a genuine impact.

“I personally won’t be watching (the coronation),” Lebanese-British trainee solicitor Yara El-Hage said. “Practically speaking, he won’t have an impact on UK-Middle Eastern relations.”

She added: “Despite his verbal expressions of solidarity with causes across the Arab world, Charles’ role as king is nothing more than symbolic power; he lacks the authority to effect change based on his political views,” she added.

In an era of ever-increasing isolationism and polarization, the rapidly changing and evolving Middle East finds itself at the vanguard of almost every sector, while the UK and the wider Western world continue to face challenge after challenge.

Whatever their opinion of Charles, Arabs from across the region, and those living in the UK, will no doubt keep a watchful eye on how the new monarch guides a Britain — vastly different to the one his mother inherited — through such tests and what sort of role he might play on the global stage.


India’s Modi arrives in Kashmir to open strategic railway

Updated 9 sec ago
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India’s Modi arrives in Kashmir to open strategic railway

  • Modi is launching a string of projects worth billions of dollars for the divided Muslim-majority territory
  • His office broadcast images of Modi at a viewing point for the Chenab Bridge, a 1,315-meter-long steel and concrete span
SRINAGAR, India: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Kashmir on Friday, his first visit to the contested Himalayan region since a conflict with arch-rival Pakistan last month, and opened a strategic railway line.
Modi is launching a string of projects worth billions of dollars for the divided Muslim-majority territory, the center of bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947.
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan fought an intense four-day conflict last month, their worst standoff since 1999, before a ceasefire was agreed on May 10.
His office broadcast images of Modi at a viewing point for the Chenab Bridge, a 1,315-meter-long (4,314-foot-long) steel and concrete span that connects two mountains with an arch 359 meters above the river below.
“In addition to being an extraordinary feat of architecture, the Chenab Rail Bridge will improve connectivity,” the Hindu nationalist leader said in a social media post ahead of his visit.
Modi strode across the bridge waving a giant Indian flag to formally declare it open for rail traffic soon after his arrival.
New Delhi calls the Chenab span the “world’s highest railway arch bridge.” While several road and pipeline bridges are higher, Guinness World Records confirmed that Chenab trumps the previous highest railway bridge, the Najiehe in China.
The new 272-kilometer Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla railway, with 36 tunnels and 943 bridges, has been constructed “aiming to transform regional mobility and driving socio-economic integration,” Modi’s office says.
The bridge will facilitate the movement of people and goods, as well as troops, that was previously possible only via treacherous mountain roads and by air.
The railway “ensures all weather connectivity” and will “boost spiritual tourism and create livelihood opportunities,” Modi said.
The railway line is expected to halve the travel time between the town of Katra in the Hindu-majority Jammu region and Srinagar, the main city in Muslim-majority Kashmir, to around three hours.
More than 70 people were killed in missile, drone and artillery fire during last month’s conflict.
The fighting was triggered by an April 22 attack on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir that New Delhi accused Pakistan of backing – a charge Islamabad denies.
Rebel groups in Indian-run Kashmir have waged a 35-year-long insurgency demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.

Six-year-old girl among Myanmar group arrested for killing retired general

Updated 3 min 7 sec ago
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Six-year-old girl among Myanmar group arrested for killing retired general

Myanmar’s military has arrested a six-year-old child as part of a group it labelled “terrorists” for the daytime killing of a retired military officer and diplomat last month, a junta-run newspaper reported on Friday.
Cho Htun Aung, 68, a retired brigadier general who also served as an ambassador, was shot dead in Myanmar’s commercial capital of Yangon on May 22, in one of the highest profile assassinations in a country in the throes of a widening civil war.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power in a February 2021 coup, overthrowing an elected government led by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and triggering widespread protests.
The junta’s violent crackdown on dissent sparked an unprecedented nationwide uprising. A collection of established ethnic armies and new armed groups have wrested away swathes of territory from the well-armed military, and guerrilla-style fighting has erupted even in urban areas like Yangon.
“A total of 16 offenders — 13 males and three females — were arrested,” the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
In an accompanying graphic, the newspaper carried the image of the six-year-old child, identified as the daughter of the alleged assassin.
Her face was blurred in an online version of the newspaper seen by Reuters, but visible in other social media posts made by junta authorities.
A junta spokesman did not respond to calls seeking comment.
Golden Valley Warriors, an anti-junta insurgent group, said they killed the retired general because of his continued support for military operations, including attacks on civilians, according to a May 22 statement.
The junta claims the group is backed by the National Unity Government — a shadow government comprising of remnants of Suu Kyu’s ousted administration that is battling the military — and paid an assassin some 200,000 Myanmar Kyat ($95.52) for a killing, the state newspaper reported.
NUG spokesperson Nay Phone Latt denied the shadow government had made any such payments. “It is not true that we are paying people to kill other people,” he told Reuters. Since the coup, Myanmar’s junta has arrested over 29,000 people, including more than 6,000 women and 600 children, according to the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, an activist group.
Fatalities among civilians and pro-democracy activists verified by AAPP during this period amount to more than 6,700, including 1,646 women and 825 children.

Russia sees bleak prospects for expiring nuclear arms pact given ‘ruined’ ties with US

Updated 16 min 4 sec ago
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Russia sees bleak prospects for expiring nuclear arms pact given ‘ruined’ ties with US

  • President Vladimir Putin in 2023 suspended Russian participation in New START, blaming US support for Ukraine
  • But Russia would remain within the treaty’s limits on warheads, missiles and heavy bomber planes

Russia sees little chance of saving its last nuclear accord with the United States, due to expire in eight months, given the “ruined” state of relations with Washington, its top arms control official said in an interview published on Friday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also told TASS news agency that President Donald Trump’s proposed Golden Dome missile defense project was a “deeply destabilizing” factor creating formidable new obstacles to arms control.

His comments were among Moscow’s bleakest yet about the prospects for the New START agreement, the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the two countries, which caps the number of strategic warheads that each side can deploy.

President Vladimir Putin in 2023 suspended Russian participation in New START, blaming US support for Ukraine, although he said that Russia would remain within the treaty’s limits on warheads, missiles and heavy bomber planes.

But if the treaty is not extended or replaced after it expires on February 5 next year, security experts fear it could fuel a new arms race at a time of acute international tension over the conflict in Ukraine, which both Putin and Trump have said could lead to World War Three.

The Federation of American Scientists, an authoritative source on arms control, says that if Russia decided to abandon the treaty limits, it could theoretically increase its deployed nuclear arsenal by up to 60 percent by uploading hundreds of additional warheads.

Ryabkov described Russia-US ties as “simply in ruins.”

“There are no grounds for a full-scale resumption of New START in the current circumstances. And given that the treaty ends its life cycle in about eight months, talking about the realism of such a scenario is increasingly losing its meaning,” Ryabkov told TASS.

“Of course, deeply destabilizing programs like the Golden Dome – and the US is implementing a number of them – create additional, hard-to-overcome obstacles to the constructive consideration of any potential initiatives in the field of nuclear missile arms control, when and if it comes to that.”

Trump said last month he had selected a design for the $175-billion Golden Dome project, which aims to block threats from China and Russia by creating a network of satellites, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, to detect, track and potentially intercept incoming missiles.

Analysts say the initiative could sharply escalate the militarization of space , prompting other countries to place similar systems there or to develop more advanced weapons to evade the missile shield.

Ryabkov’s comments came in the same week that Ukraine stunned Moscow by launching drone strikes on air bases deep inside Russia that house the heavy bomber planes that form part of its nuclear deterrent.

Russia has said it will retaliate as and when its military sees fit.


Bolivia justice minister accuses Morales of ‘terrorism’ over road blockades

Updated 25 min 11 sec ago
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Bolivia justice minister accuses Morales of ‘terrorism’ over road blockades

  • Supporters of the former president have began blocking roads leading to La Paz, the seat of government
  • Protests have snowballed into a wider revolt over President Luis Arce’s handling of a deep economic crisis
LA PAZ: Bolivian Justice Minister Cesar Siles accused ex-president Evo Morales of “terrorism” on Thursday for allegedly ordering his supporters to cut off supplies to La Paz after he was banned from contesting August elections.
Siles said the government had filed a complaint against Morales for “terrorism, public incitement to crime and attacks on the security of public services,” among other crimes, over the campaign of road blockades that has paralyzed central Bolivia since Monday.
Supporters of the former president – who served from 2006 to 2019 – began blocking roads leading to La Paz, the seat of government, over the electoral authorities’ refusal to allow Morales to run for a fourth term in August 17 elections.
The protests have since snowballed into a wider revolt over President Luis Arce’s handling of a deep economic crisis, marked by severe shortages of hard currency and fuel.
Many of the protesters have called on Arce, an ally-turned-foe of Morales, to resign.
A leaked audio message on Thursday appeared to capture Morales calling on his supporters in the country’s agricultural heartland to shut down two key roads leading to La Paz.
The government reported more than 40 blockades nationwide on Thursday, which the minister of economy said were causing daily losses of $100 to $150 million.
Around 30 police officers have been injured in clashes with protesters since the beginning of the week, according to Gabriela Alcon, deputy minister of communication.
Morales, 65, was barred by the Constitutional Court from seeking re-election but attempted in vain to register as a candidate last month.
He faced a similar situation in November 2019 when the government of right-wing president Jeanine Anez accused him of “sedition and terrorism.”
Morales had allegedly called on supporters to maintain blockades which caused food and fuel shortages in La Paz.
Morales is also wanted on charges of human trafficking over his alleged sexual relationship with a minor while in office.
He has firmly rejected the charges as a case of “judicial persecution.”

Polish foreign minister takes aim at Musk after Trump clash

Updated 26 min 39 sec ago
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Polish foreign minister takes aim at Musk after Trump clash

WARSAW: Poland’s foreign minister poked fun at Elon Musk late on Thursday, returning to a social media spat from March after the Tesla and SpaceX boss spectacularly fell out with US President Donald Trump.
Warsaw’s top diplomat Radoslaw Sikorski found himself embroiled in an extraordinarily public clash with Musk and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March after he said Ukraine may need an alternative to the Starlink satellite service.
Amid a flurry of posts on his social media platform X, Musk had told Sikorski to “Be quiet, small man.”
On Thursday simmering tensions between Musk and Trump exploded into a public feud, as the president threatened to cut off government contracts to companies run by the world’s richest man. Musk suggested Trump should be impeached.
Sikorski took aim at Musk in a post on X, saying “See, big man, politics is harder than you thought.”
There was no immediate response to the post from Musk.