SEOUL: South Korea plans to suspend a military agreement signed with North Korea in 2018 aimed at easing tensions, the presidential office said on Monday, after Seoul warned of a strong response to balloons launched by Pyongyang carrying trash to the South.
North Korea has launched hundreds balloons carried by wind across the border that dropped trash throughout South Korea, which called it a provocation and rejected Pyongyang’s claim it was done to inconvenience its neighbor.
The National Security Council said it would raise the plan to suspend the entirety of the military agreement for approval by the cabinet at a meeting on Tuesday.
Suspending the agreement will pave the way for the South to conduct training near the military border and take “sufficient and immediate measures” in response to North Korea’s provocation, the Council said in a statement.
It did not elaborate what those measures may be.
The pact, which was the most substantive deal to come out months of historic summit meetings between the two Koreas in 2018, had been all but scrapped when Pyongyang declared last year it was no longer bound by it.
Since then, the North deployed troops and weapons at guard posts near the military border.
By continuing to comply with the pact, “there have been considerable problems in our military’s readiness posture,” the Council said.
South Korea has previously said it would take “unendurable” measures against North Korea for sending the trash balloons over the border, which could include blaring propaganda from loudspeakers positioned at the border directed at the North.
North Korea has said the balloons were in retaliation for a propaganda campaign by North Korean defectors and activists in the South, who regularly send inflatables containing anti-Pyongyang leaflets with food, medicine, money and USB sticks loaded with K-pop music videos and dramas across the border.
North Korea has reacted angrily to the campaign because it is worried about the potential impact of the materials on the psychology of the people who read or listen to them and on the state’s control of the public, experts said.
South Korea to suspend military pact with North over trash balloons
https://arab.news/6excz
South Korea to suspend military pact with North over trash balloons
- Suspending the agreement will pave the way for the South to conduct training near the military border
- The pact had been all but scrapped when Pyongyang declared last year it was no longer bound by it
France will support Ukraine ‘as long as necessary’: Macron
WASHINGTON: France will continue to support Ukraine “as long as necessary,” President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday after a NATO summit.
Macron, asked by reporters about his meetings with Joe Biden, also said the embattled US president appeared “in charge” and on top of matters.
‘Hardly anything’ will deter Israel’s Gaza war: S.Africa judge on ICJ case
UNITED NATIONS: A leading South African judge said on Thursday that “hardly anything” will deter Israel’s Gaza offensive, but Pretoria’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice remains vital to highlight the dire situation.
South Africa’s case brought in December 2023 alleges that Israel’s Gaza offensive, launched in retaliation for an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel, breached the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. Israel has strongly denied the accusation.
In an interview with AFP, Nambitha Dambuza, a judge of appeal in the Supreme Court of South Africa, lamented that Israel faces few constraints in prosecuting its war.
“The cause of the state concerned, Israel, is so deep and they’re convinced they’re in the right and they know there’s hardly anything that’s going to happen if they continue with their conduct,” Dambuza said.
“Accountability can be a choice among states and I’m not saying all states are the same. Some are more sensitive to pressure, and they might adjust their conduct accordingly, but others will not,” added Dambuza who was in New York for the UN’s High Level Political Forum.
South Africa’s case, which Spain said last month it would join along with several Latin American nations, has resulted in several rulings against Israel.
Last month the ICJ ordered Israel to ensure “unimpeded access” to UN-mandated investigators to look into allegations of genocide.
In a ruling on January 26, the ICJ also ordered Israel to do everything it could to prevent acts of genocide during its military operation in Gaza.
South Africa has gone to the ICJ several times arguing that the dire humanitarian situation means the court should issue further fresh emergency measures.
On May 24, the court ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the city of Rafah and keep open the key border crossing there for unhindered humanitarian aid.
It also called for the unconditional release of hostages taken by Palestinian militant group Hamas during its October 7 assault that sparked the war.
While ICJ rulings are legally binding, the court has no concrete means to enforce them. Dambuza said that even bringing the case publicized the situation and drew attention to the alleged violations.
“It did bring pressure,” she said. “Although the process didn’t result in any tangible relief... putting these issues out in the public, society gets to see justice — or attempts at justice.”
The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 38,345 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Turning to ecological problems, Dambuza, chair of the Africa Judicial Network on Environmental Law, called for an international environmental court to be set up.
She also said traditional courts, which are run by community leaders and are common in rural South Africa, had an important role to play in adjudicating environmental disputes globally.
US missiles in Germany signal Cold War, Kremlin says
MOSCOW: The United States’ plan to periodically station long-range missiles in Germany will lead to Cold War-style confrontation between Russia and the West, the Kremlin said Thursday.
The White House announced the decision on Wednesday during a NATO summit in Washington, arguing the stationing of long-range weapons including Tomahawk cruise missiles in Europe acts as a deterrent.
“We are taking steady steps toward the Cold War,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a state TV reporter.
“All the attributes of the Cold War with the direct confrontation are returning,” he said.
He added Washington’s decision gave Russia “a reason to pull together” and “fulfil all the goals” of its military campaign in Ukraine.
NATO countries spearheaded by the United States have bolstered their defenses in Europe in the wake of Russia’s 2022 offensive against neighboring Ukraine.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed the planned deployment of the US weapons in his country, calling the move a “necessary and important decision at the right time.”
Covid still kills 1,700 a week: WHO
GENEVA: Covid-19 is still killing around 1,700 people a week around the world, the World Health Organization said Thursday, as it urged at-risk populations to keep up with their vaccinations against the disease.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sounded a warning on declining vaccine coverage.
Despite the continued death toll, “data show that vaccine coverage has declined among health workers and people over 60, which are two of the most at-risk groups,” the UN health agency’s chief told a press conference.
“WHO recommends that people in the highest-risk groups receive a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of their last dose.”
More than seven million Covid deaths have been reported to the WHO, though the true toll of the pandemic is thought to be far higher.
Covid-19 also shredded economies and crippled health systems.
Tedros declared an end to Covid-19 as an international public health emergency in May 2023, more than three years on from when the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.
The WHO has urged governments to maintain virus surveillance and sequencing, and to ensure access to affordable and reliable tests, treatments and vaccines.
Man guilty of killing four Indigenous women in Canada
MONTREAL: A Canadian man was found guilty Thursday of first-degree murder for killing four Indigenous women whose bodies he dumped in landfill sites.
The case is seen by many as a symbol of the plight of Indigenous women in a country where they face disproportionate violence that was called “genocide” by a national public inquiry in 2019.
Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran were raped, killed, dismembered and thrown out with the trash in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Police believe their remains are buried deep inside the Prairie Green landfill.
The partial remains of another victim, Rebecca Contois, were found in two places — a garbage bin in the city and in a separate landfill.
The body of a fourth, unidentified, woman in her 20s, is still missing.
Jeremy Skibicki, 37, was found guilty of all four counts of first-degree murder, Justice Glenn Loyal said in his judgment, adding that the accused was criminally responsible despite mental health issues.
The accused had the mental capacity to understand that the murders he committed in March and May 2022 were reprehensible crimes, the judge said.
As the verdict was announced, applause and cheers broke out in the court, including from the victims’ families, some with tears in their eyes.
“I’m flooded with emotions. I’m extremely happy and I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Justice was served today,” said Jorden Myran, a relative of Marcedes.
Skibicki targeted Indigenous women he met in homeless shelters, prosecutors told his trial, which began in late April.
At the time of his arrest, the then-minister of crown-indigenous relations Marc Miller said the case was part of “a legacy of a devastating history” of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous women “that has reverberations today.”
Indigenous women represent about one-fifth of all women killed in gender-related homicides in the country — even though they are just five percent of the female population.
