BEIJING: Lawmakers from at least six countries said Chinese diplomats were pressuring them not to attend a China-focused conference in Taiwan, in what they described as efforts to isolate the self-governed island.
Politicians in Bolivia, Colombia, Slovakia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and one Asian country that declined to be named said they were getting texts, calls and urgent requests for meetings that would conflict with their plans to travel to Taipei. China vehemently defends its claim to Taiwan and views it as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary.
The conference begins Monday and is being held by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC, a group of hundreds of lawmakers from 35 countries concerned about how democracies approach Beijing. IPAC has long faced pressure from the Chinese government: Some members have been sanctioned by Beijing, and in 2021 the group was targeted by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, according to a US indictment unsealed earlier this year.
But Luke de Pulford, the alliance’s director, said the pressure from Chinese officials the past few days has been unprecedented. During past IPAC meetings in other locations, lawmakers were approached by Chinese diplomats only after they concluded. This year, the first in which IPAC’s annual meeting is taking place in Taiwan, there appeared to be a coordinated attempt to stop participants from attending.
The Associated Press spoke to three lawmakers and reviewed texts and emails sent by Chinese diplomats asking whether they were planning to participate in the meeting.
“I’m Wu, from Chinese Embassy,” read a message sent to Antonio Miloshoski, a member of parliament in North Macedonia. “We heard that you got an invitation from IPAC, will you attend the Conference which will be held next week in Taiwan?”
In some cases, lawmakers described vague inquiries about their plans to travel to Taiwan. In other cases, the contact was more menacing: One lawmaker told AP that Chinese diplomats messaged the head of her party with a demand to stop her from going.
“They contacted president of my political party, they ask him to stop me to travel to Taiwan,” said Sanela Klarić, a member of parliament in Bosnia. “They’re trying, in my country, to stop me from traveling ... This is really not OK.”
China routinely threatens retaliation against politicians and countries that show support for Taiwan, which has only informal relations with most countries due to Chinese diplomatic pressure. Klarić said the pressure was unpleasant but only steeled her determination to go on the trip.
“I really am fighting against countries or societies where the tool to manipulate and control peoples is fear,” said Klarić, adding that it reminded her of threats and intimidation she faced while suffering through wars in Bosnia in the 1990s. “I really hate the feeling when somebody is frightening you.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
De Pulford called the pressure “gross foreign interference.”
“How would PRC officials would feel if we tried to tell them about their travel plans, where they could and could not go?” de Pulford said, using the acronym for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China. “It’s absolutely outrageous that they think that they can interfere in the travel plans of foreign legislators.”
Lawmakers from 25 countries were expected to attend this year’s meeting. The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, Beijing criticized Taiwan for its annual Han Kuang military drills, saying that Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party was “carrying out provocations to seek independence.”
“Any attempt to whip up tensions and use force to seek independence or reject reunification is doomed to failure,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters.
China has been peeling off the island’s diplomatic allies, often with promises of development aid, in a long-running competition between the two that has swung in Beijing’s favor in recent years. The Pacific Island nation of Nauru switched recognition to Beijing earlier this year, a move that reduced Taiwan’s dwindling number of diplomatic allies to 12.
But China’s at-times heavy-handed approach has also alienated other countries.
In 2021, Beijing downgraded relations and blocked imports from Lithuania, a member of both the EU and NATO, after the Baltic nation broke with diplomatic custom by agreeing that a Taiwanese representative office in its capital of Vilnius would bear the name Taiwan instead of Chinese Taipei, which other countries use to avoid offending Beijing. The following year, the EU adopted a resolution criticizing Beijing’s behavior toward Taiwan and took action against China at the World Trade Organization over the import restrictions.
The pressure over the IPAC meeting was also triggering backlash.
Bolivian Senator Centa Rek said she submitted a letter of protest after a Chinese diplomat called her and told not to go to Taiwan, saying the island was run by an “imposter president” and that the meeting was hosted by an organization “not accepted within the terms of the policy of mainland China.” When Rek refused, the diplomat said he would report her decision to his embassy, which Rek interpreted as a “veiled threat.”
“I told him that it was an unacceptable intrusion, that I would not accept an order or intrusion from any government,” Rek said. “These were personal decisions and that it seemed to me that he had gone beyond all international political norms.”
Most of the lawmakers targeted appear to be from smaller countries, which de Pulford, the alliance’s director, said was likely because Beijing “feels that they can get away with it.” But he added that the coercive tactics have only made participants more determined to take part in the summit.
Miriam Lexmann, a Slovakian member of the European Parliament whose party head was approached by Chinese diplomats, said the pressure underscored her reason for coming to Taiwan.
We want to “exchange information, ways how to deal with those challenges and threats which China represents to the democratic part of the world, and of course, to support Taiwan,” she said.
Lawmakers from 6 countries say Beijing is pressuring them not to attend conference in Taiwan
https://arab.news/g2stp
Lawmakers from 6 countries say Beijing is pressuring them not to attend conference in Taiwan
- China vehemently defends its claim to Taiwan and views it as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary
- Lawmakers from 25 countries were expected to attend this year’s IPAC meeting, which is taking place for the first time in Taiwan
US prosecutor in Epstein, Maxwell cases abruptly fired
WASHINGTON: A US federal prosecutor who handled the case of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and is the daughter of a prominent critic of President Donald Trump has been abruptly fired, US media reported.
Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, was dismissed on Wednesday from her position as an assistant US attorney in Manhattan, several major US outlets reported.
The Justice Department declined to confirm Comey’s firing to AFP, saying it would have “no comment on personnel.”
Politico published a message Comey, who spent 10 years in the US attorney’s office, sent to her former colleagues in which she said she had been “summarily fired” by the Justice Department with no reason given.
She also encouraged them not to fall prey to “fear.”
“If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain,” Comey said. “Do not let that happen. Fear is the tool of a tyrant.”
Comey’s dismissal comes a week after the Justice Department confirmed it had opened an unspecified criminal investigation into her father, a long-time Trump adversary.
It also comes amid mounting pressure on Trump to release material from the probe into Epstein, who committed suicide in a New York prison in 2019 after being charged with sex trafficking.
Comey was among the prosecutors who handled the case involving the wealthy financier, which never went to trial because of his death.
She also prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell, the only former Epstein associate who has been criminally charged in connection with his activities.
Trump is facing the most serious split in his loyal right-wing base since he returned to power over claims his administration is covering up lurid details of Epstein’s crimes to protect rich and powerful figures.
The Trump-supporting far-right has long latched on to the scandal, claiming the existence of a still-secret list of Epstein’s powerful clients and that the late financier was in fact murdered in his cell as part of a cover-up.
The Justice Department and FBI said this month that there was no evidence that Epstein kept a “client list” or was blackmailing powerful figures.
Comey’s father, the former FBI chief, has had a contentious history with Trump dating back to his first term in the White House.
Trump fired Comey in 2017 as the then-FBI chief was leading an investigation into whether any members of the Trump campaign had colluded with Moscow to sway the 2016 presidential vote, in which the Republican beat Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Since taking office in January, Trump has taken a number of punitive measures against his perceived enemies, stripping former officials of their security clearances and protective details, targeting law firms involved in past cases against him and pulling federal funding from universities.
Slashed US aid showing impact, as Congress codifies cuts
WASHINGTON: The United States’ destruction of a warehouse worth of emergency food that had spoiled has drawn outrage, but lawmakers and aid workers say it is only one effect of President Donald Trump’s abrupt slashing of foreign assistance.
The Senate early Thursday approved nearly $9 billion in cuts to foreign aid as well as public broadcasting, formalizing a radical overhaul of spending that Trump first imposed with strokes of his pen on taking office nearly six months ago.
US officials confirmed that nearly 500 tons of high-nutrition biscuits, meant to keep alive malnourished children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, were incinerated after they passed their expiration date in a warehouse in Dubai.
Lawmakers of the rival Democratic Party said they had warned about the food in March. Senator Tim Kaine said that the inaction in feeding children “really exposes the soul” of the Trump administration.
Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary of state for management, acknowledged to Kaine that blame lay with the shuttering of the US Agency for International Development , which was merged into the State Department after drastic cuts.
“I think that this was just a casualty of the shutdown of USAID,” Rigas said.
The Atlantic magazine, which first reported the episode, said that the United States bought the biscuits near the end of Biden administration for around $800,000 and that the Trump administration’s burning of the food was costing taxpayers another $130,000.
For aid workers, the biscuit debacle was just one example of how drastic and sudden cuts have aggravated the impact of the aid shutdown.
Kate Phillips-Barrasso, vice president for global policy and advocacy at Mercy Corps, said that large infrastructure projects were shut down immediately, without regard to how to finish them.
“This really was yanking the rug out, or turning the the spigot off, overnight,” she said.
She pointed to the termination of a USAID-backed Mercy Corps project to improve water and sanitation in the turbulent east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Work began in 2020 and was scheduled to end in September 2027.
“Infrastructure projects are not things where 75 percent is ok. It’s either done or it’s not,” she said.
The Republican-led Senate narrowly approved the package, which needs a final green light from the House of Representatives, that, in the words of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, will rescind funding for “$9 billion worth of crap.”
The bill includes ending all $437 million the United States would have given to several UN bodies including the children’s agency UNICEF and the UN Development Programme. It also pulls $2.5 billion from development assistance.
Under pressure from moderate Republicans, the package backs off from ending PEPFAR, the anti-HIV/AIDS initiative credited with saving 25 million lives since it was launched by former president George W. Bush more than two decades ago.
Republicans and the Trump-launched Department of Government Efficiency, initially led by tycoon Elon Musk, have highlighted spending by USAID on issues that are controversial in the United States, saying it does not serve US interests.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said that the Republicans were getting rid of “egregious abuses.”
“We can’t fund transgender operas in Peru with US taxpayer dollars,” Johnson told reporters, an apparent reference to a US grant under the Biden administration for the staging of an opera in Colombia that featured a transgender protagonist.
The aid cuts come a week after the State Department laid off more than 1,300 employees after Secretary of State Marco Rubio ended or merged several offices, including those on climate change, refugees and human rights.
Rubio called it a “very deliberate step to reorganize the State Department to be more efficient and more focused.”
Senate Democrats issued a scathing report that accused the Trump administration of ceding global leadership to China, which has been increasing spending on diplomacy and disseminating its worldview.
The rescissions vote “will be met with cheers in Beijing, which is already celebrating America’s retreat from the world under President Trump,” said Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Russian crew member of ship sunk by Houthi militants undergoing treatment in Yemen
- The Houthis have attacked more than 100 ships since November 2023 in what they say is an act of solidarity with the Palestinians over the Gaza war
A Russian crew member of a Greek cargo ship sunk by Houthi militants is undergoing treatment in Yemen, Russia’s state RIA news agency said on Thursday, quoting a source.
RIA identified the Russian mariner as Aleksei Galaktionov, one of several crew members picked up by the Yemeni navy after the ship was sunk. It quoted a highly placed source as saying the man, who had suffered wounds in the attack, was now in a markedly improved condition.
Maritime security sources had earlier reported that 10 mariners — eight crew members and two security guards — had been rescued and taken to Saudi Arabia. The sources said all the crew were Filipino, except for one Russian.
The sources said the Iran-aligned Houthis had sunk the Liberia-flagged Eternity C, with 22 crew and three armed guards on board, after attacking the vessel with sea drones and rocket-propelled grenades over two consecutive days.
The remaining 15 people who were on board were considered missing and a privately run search to find them has been called off.
The Houthis have attacked more than 100 ships since November 2023 in what they say is an act of solidarity with the Palestinians over the Gaza war.
‘Benign’ vein issue behind Trump’s swollen legs: White House
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has been diagnosed with a chronic but benign vein condition after seeking medical examination for swollen legs, the White House said Thursday.
The presidential physician found Trump, 79, has “chronic venous insufficiency” — a condition where damaged leg veins fail to keep blood flowing properly — Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, calling it a “benign and common condition.”
Responding to speculation over recent photos showing bruising on Trump’s hand, Leavitt said “this was consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin, which is taken as part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen.”
Trump became the oldest person in history to assume the presidency when he began his second term this January, replacing Democrat Joe Biden, who stepped down at 81.
The Republican frequently boasts of his energy levels and the administration recently even posted an image depicting him as Superman.
In April, Trump said after undergoing a routine medical check-up that he was in “very good shape.”
Leavitt’s revelations follow viral online discussions about the president’s visibly swollen ankles and discolored right hand.
She said he had undergone “a comprehensive examination, including diagnostic vascular studies. Bilateral lower extremity venous doppler ultrasounds were performed and revealed chronic venous insufficiency, a benign and common condition, particularly in individuals over the age of 70.”
“Importantly, there was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis or arterial disease,” she said.
All Trump’s test results “were within normal limits,” she said and he had a “normal cardiac structure and function, no signs of heart failure, renal impairment or systemic illness.”
The hand issue, she said, was linked to the aspirin he takes in a “standard” cardiovascular health program.
Afghan data breach unmasked UK spies, special forces: reports
- The information was included in the mistakenly released spreadsheet
- A UK official had accidentally leaked a document containing the names and details of almost 19,000 Afghans
LONDON: The details of more than 100 Britons, including spies and special forces personnel, were included in a massive data breach involving thousands of Afghans, UK media reported on Thursday.
The information was included in the mistakenly released spreadsheet, British newspapers reported, citing unnamed defense sources.
The leak was only revealed to the public earlier this week after a news blackout imposed by the previous Conservative government was finally lifted.
“It’s longstanding policy of successive governments to not comment on Special Forces,” a ministry of defense spokesperson said in a statement.
“We take the security of our personnel very seriously and personnel, particularly those in sensitive positions, always have appropriate measures in place to protect their security.”
But reports in the British media, including the Guardian newspaper and the BBC, said members of Britain’s intelligence service and special forces were among those listed on the spreadsheet.
Britain’s government disclosed on Tuesday that a UK official had accidentally leaked a document containing the names and details of almost 19,000 Afghans who had asked to be relocated to the UK.
It happened in February 2022, just six months after Taliban fighters seized Kabul, Labour’s Defense Secretary John Healey told parliament.
The breach and the resettlement plan to protect those involved from potential repercussions only came to light after a court-issued super-gag was lifted.
The nearly two-year-long court ban secured by the previous Conservative government prevented any media reporting of the leak.
In addition, parliament was not briefed and there was no public knowledge of the resettlement plan and the costs involved.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that Tory ministers have “serious questions to answer” over the secret resettlement plan while parliamentary Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said that the affair raised “significant constitutional issues.”
Some 900 Afghans and 3,600 family members have since been brought to Britain or are in transit under the program known as the Afghan Response Route, at a cost of around £400 million ($535 million), Healey said.
Applications from 600 more people have also been accepted, bringing the estimated total cost of the scheme to £850 million.
They are among some 36,000 Afghans who have been accepted by Britain under different schemes since the August 2021 fall of Kabul.
