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Tag: International agreements

  • Biden walks tightrope with support for Israel as allies and the left push for restraint

    Biden walks tightrope with support for Israel as allies and the left push for restraint

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    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden told a crowd of Democratic donors over the weekend about a decades-old photo he took with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an aside that seemed intended to illustrate his long support of Israel and track record of speaking bluntly with the conservative Israeli leader.

    Biden said he’d written on the photo of himself as a young senator and Netanyahu as an embassy hand, “Bibi, I love you. I don’t agree with a damn thing you say.’” He told donors at a Friday night fundraiser that Netanyahu still keeps the photo on his desk and had brought it up during Biden’s lightning visit to Tel Aviv last week.

    As expectations grow that Israel will soon launch a ground offensive aimed at rooting out Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip, Biden finds himself facing anew the difficult balancing act of demonstrating full-throated support for America’s closet ally in the Middle East while trying to also press the Israelis to act with enough restraint to keep the war from spreading into a broader conflagration.

    Biden has literally, and figuratively, wrapped Netanyahu in a warm embrace since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. He’s repeatedly promised to have Israel’s back as it aims to take out the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip and carried out the brutal attacks that killed 1,400 Israelis and captured more than 200 others.

    But he also increasingly is paying greater public heed to the plight of Palestinians and the potential consequences of a hardline Israeli response.

    White House officials say Biden, during his visit to Tel Aviv last week, asked Netanyahu “tough” questions about his strategy and the way forward. Biden himself told reporters on his way back from Israel that he had a “long talk” with Israeli officials “about what the alternatives are” to a possible extended ground operation. U.S. defense officials were also consulting with Israel on the matter.

    “We’re going to make sure other hostile actors in the region know that Israel is stronger than ever and prevent this conflict from spreading,” Biden said Thursday in a nationally televised address on assisting Israel and Ukraine in their wars. “At the same time … Netanyahu and I discussed again yesterday the critical need for Israel to operate by the laws of war. That means protecting civilians in combat as best as they can.”

    The pressure on Biden for a balanced approach comes from Arab leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and beyond who have seen large protests erupt in their capitals over the crisis in Gaza. It also comes from European officials, who have expressed horror at the most brutal attack on Israeli soil in decades, but also underscored that the Israelis must abide by international and humanitarian law. Biden also faces scrutiny from people in the younger and more liberal wing of his Democratic Party, who are more divided over the Israel-Palestinian issue than the party’s centrist and older leaders.

    Less than week into the war, dozens of lawmakers wrote to Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging them to ensure the protection of Israeli and Palestinian civilians by calling for Israeli military operations to follow the rules of international humanitarian law, the safe return of hostages, and diplomatic efforts to ensure long-lasting peace. That was followed by more than a dozen lawmakers introducing a resolution urging the Biden administration to call for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire.

    Three members of the Democratic caucus — Reps. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — wrote to Blinken last week about the “lack of meaningful information” about the status of U.S. civilians, particularly those in Gaza and the West Bank. The administration has said some 500 to 600 U.S. citizens may be in Gaza.

    Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has suggested that the administration has demonstrated a double standard when it comes to valuing the lives of innocent Israelis and Gaza residents. Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign has killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. Many of the victims are women and children.

    “How do you look at one atrocity and say, ‘This is wrong,’ but you watch as bodies pile up as neighborhoods are leveled?” Omar asked at a news conference. “Israel has dropped more bombs in the last 10 days than we dropped in a whole year in Afghanistan. Where is your humanity? Where is your outrage? Where is your care for people?”

    Inside the administration there has been debate over whether Biden is pursuing a policy too closely aligned to Israel’s.

    Last week, at least one department official resigned, saying he could no longer support what he called a “one-sided” policy that favors Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.

    “I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be short-sighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse,” Josh Paul, an 11-year veteran of the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, wrote in a statement posted to his LinkedIn account on Wednesday.

    Other State Department officials have expressed similar concerns and some of them spoke at a series of internal discussions for employees that were held on Friday, according to people familiar with the events who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Many of those comments were angry and emotional, these people said.

    Blinken sent a department-wide memo Thursday urging employees to remember the administration’s broader goals for equal justice and peace for both Israel and the Palestinians.

    Biden administration officials, meanwhile, in their interactions with their Israeli counterparts have witnessed trauma — and rage — that is palpable.

    The most significant announcement to come out of Biden’s visit to Israel this past week was getting Egypt and Israel to agree to allow a limited number of trucks carrying food, water, medicine and other essentials into Gaza via the Rafah border crossing

    While the agreement to allow some aid into to Gaza appeared to be minor considering the enormity of the humanitarian crisis, U.S. officials said it represented a significant concession in the position Israel held before Blinken’s meeting with Netanyahu on Monday and Biden’s talks with the Israeli leader on Wednesday.

    During the Blinken-Netanyahu talks, U.S. officials familiar with the discussions said they had become increasingly alarmed by comments from their Israeli counterparts about their intention to deny even supplies of water, electricity, fuel, food and medicine into Gaza, as well as the inevitability of civilian casualties.

    Those comments, according to four U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, reflected intense anguish, anger and outright hostility toward all Palestinians in Gaza.

    The officials said that members of the Israeli security and political establishment were absolutely opposed to the provision of any assistance to Gazans and argued that the eradication of Hamas would require methods used in the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II.

    One official said that he and others had heard from Israeli counterparts that “a lot of innocent Germans died in WWII” and had been reminded of the massive deaths of Japanese civilians in the U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Similarly, Biden and his top aides heard deep anguish from some of the high-ranking Israeli officials involved in the private talks, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

    As he wrapped up his 7 1/2-hour visit to Tel Aviv, Biden compared the Oct. 7 assault to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people and he recalled the rage Americans felt and the desire for justice by many in the United States. He also urged the Israelis to remember American missteps after 9/11, an era that left the U.S. military ensconced in a 20-year war in Afghanistan.

    “I caution this: While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it,” he said. “After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”

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  • Philippines says its coast guard ship and supply boat are hit by Chinese vessels near disputed shoal

    Philippines says its coast guard ship and supply boat are hit by Chinese vessels near disputed shoal

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    MANILA, Philippines — A Chinese coast guard ship and one of its militia vessels separately bumped a Philippine coast guard ship and a military-run supply boat Sunday off a contested shoal, Philippine officials said, in a serious flareup that could heighten fears of an armed conflict in the disputed South China Sea.

    A top Philippine security official told The Associated Press there were no injuries among the Filipino crew members and an assessment of the damage to both vessels was underway.

    The official added that the incidents near the Second Thomas Shoal could have been worse if they were not able to maneuver rapidly away from the Chinese ships. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to a lack of authority to publicly discuss details of the incidents.

    The United States, a longtime treaty ally of the Philippines, immediately condemned the actions by China’s ships. The Philippine government also condemned the latest confrontations in “the strongest degree” and called them a violation of Manila’s sovereignty.

    The Chinese coast guard said the Philippine vessels “trespassed” into what it said were Chinese waters “without authorization” despite repeated radio warnings, prompting its ships to stop them. It blamed the Philippine vessels for causing the collisions.

    “The Philippine side’s behavior seriously violates the international rules on avoiding collisions at sea and threatens the navigation safety of our vessels,” the Chinese coast guard said in a statement posted on its website.

    The U.S. Ambassador to Manila, MaryKay Carlson, said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “the United States condemns the PRC’s latest disruption of a legal Philippine resupply mission to Ayungin shoal, putting the lives of Filipino service members at risk.”

    She used the initials for China’s formal name, the People’s Republic of China, and the name the Philippines uses for the Second Thomas Shoal. She added that Washington was standing with its allies to help protect Philippine sovereignty and to support a free and open Indo-Pacific region.

    A Philippine government task force dealing with the South China Sea disputes said the collisions occurred as two Philippine supply boats escorted by two Philippine coast guard ships were heading to deliver food and other supplies to the atoll in the face of a years-long Chinese blockade.

    The task force said it “condemns in the strongest degree the latest dangerous, irresponsible, and illegal actions of the Chinese coast guard and the Chinese maritime militia done this morning in violation of Philippine sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction.”

    The actions by the Chinese ships were “in utter blatant disregard of the United Nations Charter, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea” and international regulations that aim to prevent sea collisions, said the Philippine task force, which includes the country’s defense and foreign affairs departments, the military, national security council and the coast guard.

    Near-collisions have happened frequently as Philippine vessels regularly deliver supplies to Filipino marines and sailors stationed on the disputed shoal. But this was the first time Philippine officials have reported their country’s vessels being hit by China’s ships.

    In the first incident that happened Sunday morning, “dangerous blocking maneuvers of China coast guard vessel 5203 caused it to collide with the Armed Forces of the Philippines-contracted indigenous resupply boat Unaiza May 2,” the task force statement said. It said the “provocative, irresponsible, and illegal action” of the Chinese coast guard ship “imperiled the safety of the crew.”

    The Chinese coast guard gave a different version and said the Philippine supply boat deliberately crossed the bow of its ship, which was on a routine law enforcement patrol, “resulting in a slight collision.”

    Separately, Philippine coast guard ship BRP Cabra’s left side “was bumped by Chinese maritime militia vessel 00003 while it was lying to” northeast of the Second Thomas Shoal, the statement said.

    The Chinese coast guard said the Philippine ship “deliberately provoked trouble” by reversing its direction, causing its stern to collide with the Chinese vessel and “heating up the situation at the scene.” In the past, Chinese officials have played down claims that the Chinese vessels were military militia ships meant to look like fishing boats.

    Despite the Chinese coast guard blockade, one of the two Philippine navy-manned boats managed to maneuver past the Chinese vessels and deliver supplies to the small contingent stationed on board a long-marooned but still actively commissioned warship, the BRP Sierra Madre, the task force said.

    It was the latest flare-up in long-simmering territorial disputes in the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest trade routes. The conflicts, which involve China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei, are regarded as a potential flashpoint and have become a delicate fault line in U.S.-China rivalry in the region.

    In early August, a Chinese coast guard ship used a water cannon against one of two Philippine supply boats to prevent it from approaching Second Thomas Shoal. The move, which was caught on video, outraged President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and prompted the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila to summon the Chinese ambassador to convey a strongly worded protest.

    Washington reacted by renewing a warning that it is obligated to defend the Philippines as a treaty ally.

    The Chinese Foreign Ministry accused Washington of “threatening China” by raising the possibility of activating the U.S.-Philippine mutual defense treaty. Beijing has repeatedly warned the U.S. not to meddle in regional territorial disputes.

    Later in August, the Philippines again deployed two boats that got past the Chinese coast guard blockade and delivered supplies to the Filipino forces at Second Thomas Shoal. Two Philippine coast guard ships escorting the supply boats, however, were prevented by Chinese coast guard ships from maneuvering closer to the shoal. A U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft flew in circles in support of the Philippine vessels as the standoff continued for more than three hours.

    A 2016 arbitration ruling set up under the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea invalidated Beijing’s claims on historical grounds to virtually the entire South China Sea. China refused to participate in the arbitration sought by the Philippines, rejected the decision and continues to defy it.

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    Associated Press journalist Huizhong Wu contributed to this report from Bangkok.

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  • CEO of tech conference resigns amid backlash for statements over Israel-Hamas war

    CEO of tech conference resigns amid backlash for statements over Israel-Hamas war

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    NEW YORK — Paddy Cosgrave, the chief executive officer of a prominent European tech conference called Web Summit, resigned from his role on Saturday amid backlash for his public statements that suggested Israel was committing war crimes.

    A spokesperson for Web Summit, which organizes one of the world’s largest tech conferences every year, said in an e-mailed statement sent to The Associated Press that it will appoint a new CEO, and the conference will go ahead next month in Lisbon as planned.

    Cosgrave, the Irish entrepreneur who is also founder of Web Summit, said in a statement Saturday that his personal comments “have become a distraction from the event, and our team, our sponsors, our startups and the people who attend.”

    “I sincerely apologise again for any hurt I have caused,” he said.

    Cosgrave’s resignation is a prominent example of the fallout from the Israel-Hamas war that has spilled into workplaces everywhere, as top leaders of prominent companies weigh in with their views while workers complain their voices are not being heard.

    Islamic rights advocates say much of the corporate response has minimized the suffering in Gaza, where thousands have died in Israeli airstrikes, and created an atmosphere of fear for workers who want to express support for Palestinians. Jewish groups have criticized tepid responses or slow reactions to the Oct. 7 Hamas rampage that killed 1,400 people in Israel and triggered the latest war.

    Web Summit faced a growing number of industry giants — including Intel, Meta and Google — pulling out of the conference even after Cosgrave released a long message denouncing the Hamas attacks and apologizing for the timing of his initial tweet while defending his overall views on the conflict.

    Cosgrave posted on his X account, formerly known as Twitter, on Oct. 13 that he was “shocked at the rhetoric and actions of so many Western leaders & governments, with the exception in particular of Ireland’s government, who for once are doing the right thing. ”

    “War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are,” he added.

    Two days later, he updated his tweet calling “what Hamas did is outrageous and disgusting” but adding, “Israel has a right to defend itself, but it does not, as I have already stated, have a right to break international law.”

    In a later apology that was posted Oct. 17 on the Web Summit blog and shared on his X account, he said, “What is needed at this time is compassion, and I did not convey that,” he said. “My aim is and always has been to strive for peace.”

    He went on to say that “I also believe that, in defending itself, Israel should adhere to international law and the Geneva Conventions – i.e. not commit war crimes. This belief applies equally to any state in any war. No country should breach these laws, even if atrocities were committed against it.”

    His last post on X read: “Bye for now. Need some time off this platform.”

    ______

    Follow Anne D’Innocenzio: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio

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  • CEO of a prominent tech conference resigns amid backlash for public statements over Israel-Hamas war

    CEO of a prominent tech conference resigns amid backlash for public statements over Israel-Hamas war

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    NEW YORK — Paddy Cosgrave, the chief executive officer of a prominent European tech conference called Web Summit, resigned from his role on Saturday amid backlash for his public statements that suggested Israel was committing war crimes.

    A spokesperson for Web Summit, which organizes one of the world’s largest tech conferences every year, said in an e-mailed statement sent to The Associated Press that it will appoint a new CEO, and the conference will go ahead next month in Lisbon as planned.

    Cosgrave, the Irish entrepreneur who is also founder of Web Summit, said in a statement Saturday that his personal comments “have become a distraction from the event, and our team, our sponsors, our startups and the people who attend.”

    “I sincerely apologise again for any hurt I have caused,” he said.

    Cosgrave’s resignation is a prominent example of the fallout from the Israel-Hamas war that has spilled into workplaces everywhere, as top leaders of prominent companies weigh in with their views while workers complain their voices are not being heard.

    Islamic rights advocates say much of the corporate response has minimized the suffering in Gaza, where thousands have died in Israeli airstrikes, and created an atmosphere of fear for workers who want to express support for Palestinians. Jewish groups have criticized tepid responses or slow reactions to the Oct. 7 Hamas rampage that killed 1,400 people in Israel and triggered the latest war.

    Web Summit faced a growing number of industry giants — including Intel, Meta and Google — pulling out of the conference even after Cosgrave released a long message denouncing the Hamas attacks and apologizing for the timing of his initial tweet while defending his overall views on the conflict.

    Cosgrave posted on his X account, formerly known as Twitter, on Oct. 13 that he was “shocked at the rhetoric and actions of so many Western leaders & governments, with the exception in particular of Ireland’s government, who for once are doing the right thing. ”

    “War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are,” he added.

    Two days later, he updated his tweet calling “what Hamas did is outrageous and disgusting” but adding, “Israel has a right to defend itself, but it does not, as I have already stated, have a right to break international law.”

    In a later apology that was posted Oct. 17 on the Web Summit blog and shared on his X account, he said, “What is needed at this time is compassion, and I did not convey that,” he said. “My aim is and always has been to strive for peace.”

    He went on to say that “I also believe that, in defending itself, Israel should adhere to international law and the Geneva Conventions – i.e. not commit war crimes. This belief applies equally to any state in any war. No country should breach these laws, even if atrocities were committed against it.”

    His last post on X read: “Bye for now. Need some time off this platform.”

    ______

    Follow Anne D’Innocenzio: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio

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  • At Cairo summit, even Arab leaders at peace with Israel expressed growing anger over the Gaza war

    At Cairo summit, even Arab leaders at peace with Israel expressed growing anger over the Gaza war

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    CAIRO — Egypt and Jordan harshly criticized Israel over its actions in Gaza at a summit on Saturday, a sign that the two Western allies that made peace with Israel decades ago are losing patience with its two-week-old war against Hamas.

    Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who hosted the summit, again rejected any talk of driving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians into the Sinai Peninsula and warned against the “liquidation of the Palestinian cause.” Jordan’s King Abdullah II called Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza “a war crime.”

    The speeches reflected growing anger in the region, even among those with close ties to Israel who have often worked as mediators, as the war sparked by a massive Hamas attack enters a third week with casualties mounting and no end in sight.

    Egypt is especially concerned about a massive influx of Palestinians crossing into its territory, something that it fears would, among other things, severely undermine hopes for a Palestinian state. Vague remarks by some Israeli politicians and military officials suggesting people leave Gaza have alarmed Israel’s neighbors, as have Israeli orders for Palestinian civilians to evacuate to the south, toward Egypt.

    In his opening remarks, el-Sissi said Egypt vehemently rejected “the forced displacement of the Palestinians and their transfer to Egyptian lands in Sinai.”

    “I want to state it clearly and unequivocally to the world that the liquidation of the Palestinian cause without a just solution is beyond the realm of possibility, and in any case, it will never happen at the expense of Egypt, absolutely not,” he said.

    Jordan’s king delivered the same message, expressing his “unequivocal rejection” of any displacement of Palestinians. Jordan already hosts the largest number of displaced Palestinians from previous Mideast wars.

    “This is a war crime according to international law, and a red line for all of us,” he told the summit.

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Authority, a government exercising semi-autonomous control in the occupied West Bank, called for Israel to stop “its barbaric aggression” in Gaza. He also warned against attempts to push Palestinians out of the coastal territory.

    “We will not leave, we will not leave, we will not leave, and we will remain in our land,” he told the summit.

    Israel says it is determined to destroy Gaza’s Hamas rulers but has said little about its endgame.

    On Friday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant laid out a three-stage plan in which airstrikes and “maneuvering” — a presumed reference to a ground attack — would aim to root out Hamas before a period of lower intensity mop-up operations. Then, a new “security regime” would be created in Gaza along with “the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip,” Gallant said.

    He did not say who would run Gaza after Hamas.

    Meanwhile, Israel has ordered more than half of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate from north to south within the territory it has completely sealed off, effectively pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians toward the Egyptian border.

    Amos Gilad, a former Israeli defense official, said Israel’s ambiguity on the matter is endangering crucial ties with Egypt. “I think a peace treaty with Egypt is highly important, highly crucial for the national security of Israel and Egypt and the whole structure of peace in the world,” he said.

    Gilad said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to speak directly with the leaders of Egypt and Jordan, and say publicly that Palestinians will not be entering their countries.

    Two senior Egyptian officials said relations with Israel have reached a boiling point.

    They said Egypt has conveyed its frustration over Israeli comments about displacement to the United States, which brokered Camp David Accords in the 1970s. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

    Egypt worries that a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Sinai, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the peace treaty.

    Arab countries also fear a repeat of the mass exodus of Palestinians from what is now Israel before and during the 1948 war surrounding its creation, when some 700,000 fled or were driven out, an event Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Those refugees and their descendants, who now number nearly 6 million, were never allowed to return.

    At Saturday’s gathering, the anger extended beyond the fears of mass displacement.

    Both leaders condemned Israel’s air campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 4,300 Palestinians, including many civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza. Israel says it is only striking Hamas targets and is abiding by international law.

    The war was sparked by a wide-ranging Hamas incursion into southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which over 1,400 people were killed, the vast majority of them civilians.

    Abdullah, who is among the closest Western allies in the region, accused Israel of “collective punishment of a besieged and helpless people.”

    “It is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. It is a war crime,” he said.

    He went on to accuse the international community of ignoring Palestinian suffering, saying it had sent a “loud and clear message” to the Arab world that “Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed.

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  • Spain’s leader mulls granting amnesty to thousands of Catalan separatists

    Spain’s leader mulls granting amnesty to thousands of Catalan separatists

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    BARCELONA, Spain — Barcelona accountant Oriol Calvo ran afoul of the law when he was arrested in 2019 during a mass protest by supporters of Catalonia’s independence from Spain that turned violent. A court found him guilty of public disorder and of aggressive behavior toward a police officer — offenses he denies.

    The 25-year-old is among several thousand ordinary citizens who faced legal trouble for their often tiny part in Catalonia’s illegal secession bid that brought Spain to the brink of rupture six years ago.

    Now Calvo hopes his conviction and those of many others will be wiped clean if Spain’s acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, follows through and issues a sweeping amnesty for the separatists in exchange for their movement’s political parties helping him form a new government in Madrid.

    Calvo’s sentence of 18 months was suspended since it was his first offense, but it is still a stain on his record and has affected his willingness to participate in politics. He has stopped going to rallies for independence for fears that it could complicate his legal situation. He also felt betrayed.

    “I became very bitter,” Calvo said. “I felt betrayed by the justice system, but also I thought about all the efforts that the movement had made in the fight to achieve independence that had gotten us nowhere.”

    Sánchez, who has granted pardons to several leaders of the movement in the past, says that the amnesty will be positive for Spain because it will further reduce tensions inside Catalonia. Yet no one doubts that he is doing it only out of political necessity given how divisive the Catalan independence movement is both inside Catalonia and the rest of Spain.

    A national election in July left no party close to an absolute majority and with Sánchez in need of the support of several smaller parties to stay in power. Those include two pro-secession Catalan parties who led the unsuccessful 2017 breakaway attempt and who now find themselves holding the key votes in Parliament that Sánchez requires.

    Given the chance to play kingmaker, the two separatist parties are using their leverage. They have made an amnesty law as a prerequisite for supporting Sánchez.

    The clock is already ticking. Sánchez has until Nov. 27 to form a government, otherwise new elections will be triggered for January.

    Sánchez and his center-left Socialist party have tried to keep as quiet as possible on the amnesty question, but the leader has acknowledged that talks are on-going with the Catalan parties, including one led by the fugitive former regional leader of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, who fled Spain for Belgium after his dream to carve out a new state in northeast Spain collapsed.

    Spain’s courts are still trying to have Puigdemont extradited. Given that Puigdemont is considered an enemy of the state for many Spaniards, any deal that could benefit him is politically toxic.

    Tens of thousands of people rallied in downtown Barcelona on Oct. 8 against a possible amnesty in a sign of the danger that Sánchez runs.

    An amnesty “would be shameful because Spain can’t be governed by people who want to split from the country,” said 23-year-old Pablo Seco, an aeronautical engineer who attended the rally.

    For Montserrat Nebrera, professor of constitutional law at the International University of Catalonia, the negotiations between Sánchez and the separatist leaders are a “hall of mirrors” wherein both sides try to appear that they have the upper hand, when in reality they need one another.

    “Pedro Sánchez needs the amnesty law to pass so he can get the four votes he is lacking,” Nebrera told the AP. “The secessionists, however, also need to show their people that they are not only interested in saving the necks of their leaders … but also of the people who disobeyed authorities or damaged public property and whose punishments, while not huge, have greatly complicated their lives.”

    Spain’s conservative party, which lost a bid to form a government last month, is already bashing Sánchez for what it describes as selling Spain out to stay in power. Former Socialist prime minister Felipe González has also said that the amnesty is not merited.

    Spain granted a sweeping amnesty during its transition back to democracy following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. But legal experts are divided over the constitutionality of an amnesty for the Catalan separatists.

    The pro-independence Catalan organization Omnium Cultural says that an amnesty should benefit some 4,400 more people, mostly minor officials and ordinary citizens who either helped to organize an illegal 2017 referendum or participated, like Calvo, in protests that turned ugly.

    But Omnium and the two Catalan separatist parties say they want much more than just a clean slate for people in trouble with the law: they want the terms of the amnesty to establish a legal pretext for Catalonia eventually holding a binding, authorized referendum on independence.

    “For us, the amnesty is not the solution to the conflict, it is the starting point from which the conflict can begin to be resolved,” said Xavier Antich, president of Omnium Cultural.

    That going-for-broke position, however, may run the risk of wrecking the whole operation, as well as leaving people like Calvo in the lurch.

    “They have already tried to have a referendum authorized and it has not worked,” Calvo said. “So I believe that trying to force something that we know isn’t going to happen is useless and could derail the amnesty talks.”

    ___

    Videojournalist Hernán Muñoz contributed to this report.

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  • How international law applies to war, and why Hamas and Israel are both alleged to have broken it

    How international law applies to war, and why Hamas and Israel are both alleged to have broken it

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    LONDON — Hamas and Israel have both been accused of breaking international law during their latest conflict, and the United Nations says it is collecting evidence of war crimes by all sides.

    Enforcing the law amid the fog of war is difficult. Holding perpetrators to account once conflicts are over has often proved elusive.

    Here is a look at some of the issues.

    WHAT ARE THE RULES OF WAR?

    The rules of armed conflict are governed by a set of internationally recognized laws and resolutions, including the United Nations charter, which prohibits aggressive wars but allows countries the right to self-defense.

    Battlefield behavior has international humanitarian laws including the Geneva Conventions, drawn up after World War II and agreed on by almost every nation.

    The four conventions agreed upon in 1949 set out that civilians, the wounded and prisoners must be treated humanely in wartime. They ban murder, torture, hostage-taking and “humiliating and degrading treatment” and require fighters to treat the other side’s sick and wounded.

    The rules apply both to wars between nations and conflicts, like that between Israel and Hamas, in which one of the parties is not a state.

    Another key document in the law of war is the founding Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court, which defines as war crimes acts including intentional attacks on civilians, civilian settlements or humanitarian workers, destroying property where not militarily necessary, sexual violence and unlawful deportation.

    Other agreements ban certain types of weapons, such as chemical or biological munitions. Most but not all countries have signed up to these.

    HAS HAMAS COMMITTED WAR CRIMES?

    Hamas has fired thousands of rockets at Israeli towns and cities, and on Oct. 7 sent hundreds of gunmen across the border from Gaza. They attacked and killed civilians – including children and elderly people — in their homes and neighborhoods and kidnapped scores of others. Israel says at least 1,400 people died and 199 others were abducted.

    Haim Abraham, a lecturer in law at University College London, said the evidence of crimes is clear.

    “They massacred civilians at their homes. They kidnaped civilians, taking them hostage. All of these things are clearly war crimes,” he said.

    Jeanne Sulzer, a lawyer with the Commission for International Justice of Amnesty International France, said the Geneva Conventions state that “civilians should never be taken hostage. If they are, that may be characterized as a war crime.”

    HAS ISRAEL’S RESPONSE BEEN LEGAL?

    The Israeli military has pounded Hamas-ruled Gaza with airstrikes, blocked deliveries of food, water, fuel and electricity and told people to leave the northern half of the strip ahead of a possible ground invasion. Gaza authorities say 2,800 people have died and 11,000 have been injured during days of bombardment.

    Critics accuse Israel of collectively punishing Gaza’s 2 million residents.

    The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross has said the instruction for hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes, “coupled with the complete siege explicitly denying them food, water, and electricity, are not compatible with international humanitarian law.”

    The Israeli army says it follows international law and strikes only legitimate military targets as it seeks to root out militants who embed themselves among the civilian population.

    Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using munitions containing white phosphorus. The incendiary substance is not banned, but its use in densely populated areas has been widely condemned. The Israeli Defense Force has denied using white phosphorus as a weapon in Gaza.

    CAN LAWBREAKERS BE HELD TO ACCOUNT?

    A United Nations Commission of Inquiry says it is “collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes committed by all sides” in the current conflict. That evidence could be added to an ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court into the situation in the Palestinian territories.

    The Netherlands-based ICC has the power to prosecute nations’ officials for violations and order compensation for victims. But some countries – including the United States, Russia and Israel — do not recognize the court’s jurisdiction, and the ICC does not have a police force to execute arrest warrants.

    ARE THERE ANY OTHER ROUTES?

    While the ICC is the only permanent international tribunal set up to prosecute war crimes, other international courts including the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights can hear cases related to alleged violations. So can domestic courts in Israel or elsewhere, Under U.S. law, American victims could try to bring claims for compensation against Hamas in U.S. courts.

    As with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the prospect of prosecuting war crimes in the current conflict seems remote. But Amnesty International’s Sulzer said “legal initiatives are already a reality.” She said French national and dual citizen victims of the Hamas attacks have already filed complaints in French courts.

    Breaches of international law can also trigger sanctions – such as those imposed on Russia by the United States, the European Union and others over the invasion of Ukraine – and in rare cases draw U.N.-authorized military intervention.

    ___

    Associated Press Writer Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed to this story.

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  • Biden didn’t make Israeli-Palestinian talks a priority. Arab leaders say region now paying the price

    Biden didn’t make Israeli-Palestinian talks a priority. Arab leaders say region now paying the price

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    WASHINGTON — From its first months in office, the Biden administration made a distinctive decision on its Middle East policy: It would deprioritize a half-century of high-profile efforts by past U.S. presidents, particularly Democratic ones, to broker a broad and lasting peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

    Since Richard Nixon, successive U.S. administrations have tried their hands at Camp David summits, shuttle diplomacy and other big-picture tries at coaxing Israeli and Palestinian leaders into talks to settle the disputes that underlie 75 years of Middle East tensions. More than other recent presidents, Joe Biden notably has not.

    Instead, administration officials early on sketched out what they called Biden’s policy of quiet diplomacy. They advocated for more modest improvements in Palestinian freedoms and living conditions under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government, which has encouraged settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and which includes coalition partners that oppose the U.S.-backed two-state solution. The less-ambitious approach fit with Biden’s determination to pivot his foreign-policy focus from Middle East hotspots to China.

    But the long-term risks of sidelining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict exploded back into view with the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel’s heavy bombardment of Gaza in response. The United States’ angry Arab partners are pointing to America’s failure to actively engage as Israeli-Palestinian violence roars back to center stage.

    Hamas militants’ bloody breakout from Gaza and Israel’s military escalating response have killed thousands of civilians in Israel and Gaza, prompted Biden to deploy carrier strike groups to the region, and threatens to spill conflict and flows of Palestinian refugees across borders.

    In Cairo this weekend, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi was one of a succession of Arab leaders to warn Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is scrambling through Middle East capitals to try to contain the conflict, that the Israel-Gaza war threatens the stability of the entire Middle East.

    Biden is likely to hear the same as he meets with leaders of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority in Jordan on Wednesday, after he travels to Israel.

    Sissi, who fears the Israeli military offensive will push Gaza’s 2.3 million people across the border into Egypt, cast blame on the near-disappearance of any international pressure on Netanyahu’s government and Palestinians to return to negotiations.

    Sissi cited “a buildup of outrage and hatred for more than 40 years” and the lack of any “horizon to solve the Palestinian cause; one that gives hope to the Palestinians” for a state with a capital in East Jerusalem.

    Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, pointed to Saudis’ “repeated warnings of the danger of the explosion.”

    Arab leaders “are very aware this is going to keep blowing up. And they might ride it out this time, they might ride it out next time, as they have in the past,” said Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon.

    “But it’s not actually a comfortable position for them to be endlessly living in,” with endless cycles of Israeli and Palestinian wars that threaten the region’s peace and economies, said Sayigh, who accused the U.S. of encouraging Netanyahu to think there was no need to address Palestinian concerns.

    Underscoring his administration’s diminished emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Biden’s call to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas this past weekend amid the building Gaza war was the American leader’s first since taking office.

    In 1973, Arab nations’ surprise attack on Israel, and Arabs’ devastating oil embargo on the U.S. and other countries for their support of Israel in that fight, convinced U.S. leaders that a lasting resolution to Palestinian demands for statehood was in America’s strategic interest.

    But after some early successes, recurring violence, the disappointments of past failed mediation efforts, and the scale of the disputes helped derail the U.S. push. By the time Biden, a strong supporter of the state of Israel, took office, any support for major negotiations among Israelis was faint.

    To be sure, there’s little to suggest ambitious engagement by Biden on Israeli-Palestinian issues would have made immediate progress, or done anything to discourage the attack by Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel.

    Even after a 2021 burst of fighting between Hamas and Israel, administration figures argued that a big push on peace efforts would undermine more easily won goals, like cease-fires with Hamas.

    Instead, Biden has enthusiastically followed the new path that predecessor Donald Trump had laid out on Middle East peacemaking: lobbying for so-called normalization deals with Arab countries, absent any Israeli-Palestinian accord.

    Under Trump, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco all signed normalization deals establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.

    Up until Oct. 7, Biden appeared to be fast closing in on brokering a normalization deal with the biggest prize of all, regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia.

    Then, Hamas’s breakout from Gaza shattered what National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had hailed as a period of Middle East calm. The violence has been the deadliest of five wars between Hamas and Israel, killing more than 1,400 people in Israel and nearly 2,800 in Gaza.

    It’s not clear what happens to Biden’s normalization push now. Despite their angry comments and varying degrees of popular support among their public for the Palestinian cause, America’s Arab partners are pragmatists, and like the U.S. and Israel, adversaries of Hamas and other Iran-backed groups.

    Additionally, the Biden administration’s immediate and all-in rallying to Israel’s mounting defense after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacres may only heighten Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s desire to lock in that kind of security alliance with the U.S. for the kingdom, many analysts are arguing.

    “I think Gulf partners are looking at the quick, decisive response that the U.S. has provided Israel, and are incredibly jealous,” said Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security think tank.

    Brokering those alliances would stabilize the Middle East in themselves, no Israeli-Palestinian peace accord needed, supporters have argued.

    The nightmare unfolding now for Israeli and Palestinian civilians argues differently, when it comes to Biden’s approach, critics say.

    “As long as the core issues stay unresolved, ignoring them does not make them go away,” said Yousef Munayyer, who heads the Palestine-Israel program at the Arab Center, a Washington think tank. “And I think that’s a lesson for everybody.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Sam Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.

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  • Israel-Hamas war upends China’s ambitions in the Middle East but may serve Beijing in the end

    Israel-Hamas war upends China’s ambitions in the Middle East but may serve Beijing in the end

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    WASHINGTON — In June, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted the Palestinian president in Beijing and invited the Israeli prime minister for an official state visit. Benjamin Netanyahu accepted, and China was on track for a bigger role in the region.

    Then came the Hamas attack against Israel, which has made Netanyahu’s late October trip uncertain and put Beijing’s Middle East approach to the test. China’s stated neutrality on the war has upset Israel, but Beijing may gain in the long run by forging closer ties with Arab countries, experts said.

    “For a while at least, Beijing’s Middle East policy is paralyzed by the war,” said Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Beijing-based Renmin University of China. “The U.S., which strongly supports Israel, is directly or indirectly involved. Who is there to listen to China?”

    That hasn’t stopped China from trying to be heard.

    Its Middle East envoy, Zhai Jun, talked to Palestinian and Egyptian officials by phone this past week, calling for an immediate cease-fire and humanitarian support for the Palestinian people.

    Zhai also called Israeli officials to say China “has no selfish interests on the Palestinian issue but has always stood on the side of peace, on the side of fairness and justice.” He said that “China is willing to work with the international community to promote peace and encourage talks.”

    Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, came out more strongly for the Palestinians, saying “the crux of the matter is that justice has not been done to the Palestinian people.”

    “This conflict once again proved in an extremely tragic manner that the way to solve the Palestinian issue lies in resuming genuine peace talks as soon as possible and realizing the legitimate rights of the Palestinian nation,” Wang said during a call with an adviser to the Brazilian president.

    China has long advocated for a two-state solution that allows for an independent Palestinian state.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while traveling in the Mideast over the weekend, called Wang to ask China to use whatever influence it has in the region to keep other countries and groups from entering the conflict and broadening it, according to the State Department, which declined to characterize Wang’s response. China is known to have close trade and political ties with Iran, which in turn supports Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

    The conversation was the first high-level U.S. contact with China over the Mideast situation since the Hamas attack.

    Beijing, by trying to maintain a delicate balance, wants to position itself as a mediator and exert its influence in the region, said Maria Papageorgiou, a lecturer in politics and international relations at University of Exeter, and Mohammad Eslami, a researcher at University Minho, in joint email.

    The U.S. support for Israel will give China an opportunity to expand its arms sales to dissatisfied Arab countries, but China also wants to resolve the crisis to protect its economic interests in the region, they said.

    “China’s engagement in the Middle East is set to increase during this conflict. Beijing will play an enhanced role in efforts to end the war and secure its economic interests and wants to capitalize on the Arab states’ frustration with U.S. to establish itself as a great power in the region,” the researchers wrote.

    Beijing’s approach, though, risks alienating Israel.

    Tuvia Gering, a researcher at the Israel-China Policy Center at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, described Beijing’s position as “pro-Palestine neutrality,” much like its position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has signaled support for the Kremlin.

    “You cannot be neutral in something like this. Silence is acquiescence,” Gering said. “The problem, I think, the biggest one we have, is that China, instead of being the responsible major power that it claims to be, it is exploiting this conflict for geopolitical benefits.”

    He said China was looking to win the support of Arab countries on contentious issues such as Beijing’s treatment of the Muslim ethnic Uyghurs in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

    Under Xi, Beijing has pursued a proactive, sometimes assertive, foreign policy. It has sought closer ties in the Middle East, the source of much of the oil China needs and a nexus in the Belt and Road network, Xi’s massive infrastructure-building project to connect markets around the world through railways, roads, seaports and airports and to extend Beijing’s influence.

    This year, Beijing helped restore diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran, building its credentials as an alternative to the United States in brokering peace deals.

    Wang Yiwei, another international relations professor at Renmin University, said China is better positioned than the U.S. to help resolve conflicts, whether between Saudi Arabia and Iran, Russia and Ukraine or Israel and the Palestinians.

    “If you’re just on one side, and make another side hate you, you cannot be a broker,” he said. “So that’s the reason China did not join the West to sanction or contain Russia in the Ukraine war. Because we need to be the bridge.”

    But China’s proposals to end the war have been seen as benefiting Russia.

    In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “China’s stance might be more about projecting an image of a neutral and responsible global player rather than acting like one,” said Dale Aluf, research director at Sino-Israel Global Network and Academic Leadership, an Israel-based think tank.

    China’s continued insistence on a two-state solution is “disconnected from reality,” Aluf said. China also has displeased Israel by refusing to join the U.S. and other countries in designating Hamas a terrorist organization, seeing it instead as a “Palestinian resistance movement.”

    Since the war began, Chinese state media have come down hard on Israel. They have cited Iranian news outlets in reporting the illegal use of white phosphorous bombs by the Israeli military. And they have blamed the U.S., Israel’s strongest supporter, for fanning the tensions in the region.

    Bombarded with hostile messages, the Israeli mission in Beijing now filters the comments on its Chinese social media account.

    There has been a surge of antisemitic sentiment in the Chinese internet, said Yaqiu Wang, research director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at Freedom House.

    “On the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Chinese government has always propagated a narrative that places the blame squarely on Israel, a key U.S. ally, because this aligns with a key objective of (the ruling Communist Party’s) propaganda: to undermine the U.S. in the international community. This time, it is no exception,” she said.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu and researcher Wanqing Chen in Beijing and AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.

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  • US defense secretary is in Israel to meet with its leaders and see America’s security assistance

    US defense secretary is in Israel to meet with its leaders and see America’s security assistance

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    TEL AVIV, Israel — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived Friday in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv to meet with senior government leaders and see firsthand some of the U.S. weapons and security assistance that Washington rapidly delivered to Israel in the first week of its war with the militant Hamas group.

    Austin is the second high-level U.S. official to visit Israel in two days. His quick trip from Brussels, where he was attending a NATO defense ministers meeting, comes a day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the region on Thursday. Blinken is continuing the frantic Mideast diplomacy, seeking to avert an expanded regional conflict.

    Austin is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, and the Israeli War Cabinet.

    His arrival comes as Israel’s military directed hundreds of thousands of residents in Gaza City to evacuate “for their own safety and protection,” ahead of a feared Israeli ground offensive. Gaza’s Hamas rulers responded by calling on Palestinians to “remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm” against Israel.

    Defense officials traveling with Austin said he wants to underscore America’s unwavering support for the people of Israel and that the United States is committed to making sure the country has what it needs to defend itself.

    A senior defense official said the U.S. has already given Israel small diameter bombs as well as interceptor missiles for its Iron Dome system and more will be delivered. Other munitions are expected to arrive Friday.

    Austin has spoken nearly daily with Gallant, and directed the rapid shift of U.S. ships, intelligence support and other assets to Israel and the region. Within hours after the brutal Hamas attack across the border into Israel, the U.S. moved warships and aircraft to the region.

    The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group is already in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and a second carrier was departing Friday from Virginia, also heading to the region.

    Austin declined to say if the U.S. is doing surveillance flights in the region, but the U.S. is providing intelligence and other planning assistance to the Israelis, including advice on the hostage situation.

    A day after visiting Israel to offer the Biden administration’s diplomatic support in person, Blinken was in Jordan on Friday and held talks with Jordanian King Abdullah II. They did not speak to reporters after the meeting. Blinken then went on to a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has a home in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

    In the meeting with the king, Blinken discussed Hamas’ attack last Saturday and efforts to release all hostages the militants seized, as well as efforts to “prevent the conflict from widening,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

    Blinken “underscored that Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination and discussed ways to address the humanitarian needs of civilians in Gaza while Israel conducts legitimate security operations to defend itself from terrorism.”

    The monarch rules over a country with a large Palestinian population and has a vested interest in their status while Abbas runs the Palestinian Authority that controls the West Bank.

    According to a palace statement, Abdullah stressed the need to open humanitarian corridors for medical aid and relief into Gaza while protecting civilians and working to end the escalation of the conflict.

    He appealed against hindering the work of international agencies and warned against any attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza and elsewhere, or to cause their internal displacement.

    Earlier on Friday, Israel’s military had told some 1 million Palestinians living in Gaza to evacuate the north, according to the United Nations — an unprecedented order for almost half the population of the sealed-off territory ahead an expected ground invasion by Israel against the ruling Hamas.

    The king also urged for the protection of innocent civilians on all sides, in line with shared human values, international law, and international humanitarian law.

    Later Friday, Blinken is to fly to Doha for meetings with Qatari officials who have close contacts with the Hamas leadership and have been exploring an exchange of Palestinian prisoners in Israel for the release of dozens of Israelis and foreigners taken hostage by Hamas during the unprecedented incursion of the militants into southern Israel last weekend.

    Blinken will make a brief stop in Bahrain and end the day in Saudi Arabia, a key player in the Arab world that has been considering normalizing ties with Israel, a U.S.-mediated process that is now on hold.

    He will also travel to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt over the weekend.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Omar Akour in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

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  • UN envoy: Colombian president’s commitments to rural reforms and peace efforts highlight first year

    UN envoy: Colombian president’s commitments to rural reforms and peace efforts highlight first year

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    UNITED NATIONS — UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s commitment to transform long-marginalized rural and conflict areas and new peace efforts were the highlights of his first year in office, the U.N. special envoy for the South American country said.

    But Carlos Ruiz Massieu condemned the killing of nearly 400 former combatants who signed a 2016 peace agreement and called for “urgent and concrete measures from the authorities for their protection, as well as that of social leaders and human rights defenders.”

    He told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that lagging progress in implementing rural reforms has limited the transformation in rural and conflict areas that the 2016 peace accord between the government and Colombia’s then-largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was expected to bring.

    “While a great distance still remains to attain the ambitious goals of the agreement in this respect,” he acknowledged “the increasing government efforts under way to bring about these reforms.”

    The 2016 peace agreement ended more than 50 years of war in which over 220,000 people died and nearly 6 million people were displaced. More than 14,000 FARC fighters gave up their weapons under that agreement, but violence between some rebel groups has grown in parts of Colombia.

    Colombia’s Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva told the council that various forms of violence persist and “our efforts and renewed commitment to peace must be maintained and must be our highest task.”

    He said it hasn’t been easy and requires perseverance to implement the 2016 agreement, but it must be “inviolable.” He added that Colombia’s decision to ask the Security Council to establish a political mission to verify implementation of the 2016 agreement — which it did in a resolution endorsing the peace deal — “attested to the desire at that time to achieve irreversible reconciliation.”

    As the seventh anniversary of the agreement approaches, he said President Petro will in the next few days assume direct responsibility in a unilateral state declaration for fulfilling the commitments in the Security Council resolution.

    “I wish to underscore the fact that the dialogues which are currently underway with the various groups and armed actors are a fundamental tool to achieve peace throughout the country, and to alleviate the humanitarian impact of the armed and criminal violence,” Leyva said.

    He said the government recognizes that this must go hand in hand with implementing its National Development Plan.

    Leyva said the council resolution states that the justice component should apply to all who participated directly or indirectly in the conflict. But the government believes “it should apply to those being investigated or sentenced for the crime of rebellion or other crimes related to the conflict, even if they did not belong to rebellious armed organizations,” he said.

    In early August, the Security Council unanimously authorized the U.N. political mission to help verify implementation of a cease-fire agreement between the government and the country’s largest remaining guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, known as the ELN.

    The council also expressed willingness to do the same if a cease-fire is reached with another armed group, the FARC-EMC, which is led by former FARC commanders who refused to join the 2016 peace deal.

    U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood expressed concern at the ELN central command’s ability to maintain the cease-fire “at a time when various fronts under its command continue to express discontent.”

    He cited a recent media report indicating that 40% of ELN members would reject a peace deal with the government “because they continue to see lucrative earnings from drug trafficking and illegal mining.”

    Wood called the FARC-EMC’s recent announcement that it would cease offensive operations against the Colombian military and police and begin a 10-month cease-fire “a positive development.”

    “But we need to see more progress in this effort before the council considers further expanding the mandate,” he said.

    Wood reiterated the U.S. commitment to working with Colombia to implement the 2016 peace agreement.

    Achieving its commitments will help bring security and stability, strengthen the protection of human rights, help bring truth and justice to victims of decades of conflict, and enhance economic development and equality in rural and urban areas, the U.S. envoy said.

    Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward also welcomed the government’s recent progress on rural reform and restitution of land to Indigenous communities.

    She stressed that full implementation of the 2016 agreement “remains central to peace and reform in Colombia” and echoed U.N. envoy Ruiz’ strong condemnation of violence against ex-FARC fighters, human rights defenders, women leaders and members of the Afro-Colombian communities.

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  • Myanmar military accused of bombing a displacement camp in a northern state, killing about 30

    Myanmar military accused of bombing a displacement camp in a northern state, killing about 30

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    BANGKOK — Myanmar’s military was accused of launching an airstrike on a camp for displaced persons in the northern state of Kachin late Monday that killed about 30 people, including about a dozen children, Kachin militants and activists and local media said.

    Col. Naw Bu, a spokesperson for the Kachin Independence Army, said 29 people including 11 children under the age of 16 were killed and 57 others injured in the attacks carried out by air and artillery. The casualties occurred at the Mung Lai Hkyet displacement camp in the northern part of Laiza, a town where the headquarters of the rebel KIA is based.

    A spokesperson for Kachin Human Rights Watch gave slightly different figures, saying 19 adults and 13 children were killed in the attack, which occurred shortly before midnight.

    Laiza is about 324 kilometers (200 miles) northeast of Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-biggest city.

    Myanmar’s National Unity Government, the main nationwide opposition group that considers itself the country’s legitimate administrative body, said a kindergarten, school, church and many civilian houses were destroyed at the camp.

    “This deliberate and targeted attack by the terrorist military council on civilians fleeing conflict constitutes a blatant crime against humanity and war crime,” it said.

    Myanmar’s military government “has taken advantage of the moment of the international community’s attention on the recent developments of the Israel-Hamas conflict to commit yet another crime against humanity and war crime,” it added.

    Naw Bu said it was unclear how the attack was carried out because people did not hear a jet fighter on a bombing run. The absence of such a sound, familiar in many parts of the countryside, could indicate that the camp was hit by air-to-ground missiles fired from a distance or by an armed drone.

    He said the army used artillery to shell an area including the camp and nearby villages where about 400 people live.

    In a statement over the phone to state television MRTV, military government spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun denied responsibility for the attack but said the military is capable of attacking the headquarters of all of Myanmar’s insurgent groups.

    Zaw Min Tun said the area where the explosions occurred may have been used to store bombs for drones and unmanned aircraft for the Kachin fighting forces.

    It was impossible to independently confirm details of the incident, though media sympathetic to the Kachin posted videos showing what they said was the attack’s aftermath, with images of dead bodies and flattened wooden structures.

    Myanmar Witness, a non-governmental organization that collects and analyzes evidence related to human rights incidents, said it confirmed the camp was damaged but that it was still investigating the cause.

    Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, triggering widespread popular opposition. After peaceful demonstrations were put down with lethal force, many opponents of military rule took up arms, and large parts of the country are now embroiled in conflict.

    The military government in the past year has stepped up the use of airstrikes in combat against two enemies: the armed pro-democracy Peoples Defense Forces, which formed after the 2021 takeover, and ethnic minority guerrilla groups such as the Kachin that have been fighting for greater autonomy for decades.

    The military claims it targets only armed guerrilla forces and facilities, but there is considerable evidence that churches and schools have also been hit and many civilians killed and wounded. Artillery is frequently used.

    The Kachin are one of the stronger ethnic rebel groups and are capable of manufacturing some of their own armaments. They also have a loose alliance with the armed militias of the pro-democracy forces that were formed to fight army rule.

    In October last year, the military carried out airstrikes that hit a celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the Kachin Independence Organization, the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army, near a village in Hpakant township, a remote mountainous area 167 kilometers (103 miles) northwest of Laiza. The attack killed as many as 80 people, including Kachin officers and soldiers, along with singers and musicians, jade mining entrepreneurs and other civilians.

    “Killing us en masse like this is a criminal act. The international community needs to know and take action. I would also like to ask the U.N. organizations to take action,” KIA spokesperson Naw Bu said Tuesday.

    Monday night’s incident came a few days before the military government is scheduled to host an event in the capital, Naypyitaw, to mark the eighth anniversary of the signing of a ceasefire agreement between the previous military-backed government and eight ethnic rebel armies.

    The larger ethnic rebel armies, including the Kachin and the Wa, refused to sign the ceasefire agreement.

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  • Hong Kong eyes stronger economic and trade ties with Thailand to expand its role in Southeast Asia

    Hong Kong eyes stronger economic and trade ties with Thailand to expand its role in Southeast Asia

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    Hong Kong’s leader says the city will seek to strengthen its economic and trade ties with Thailand after a meeting with the country’s prime minister

    ByKANIS LEUNG Associated Press

    October 10, 2023, 12:49 AM

    FILE – Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee speaks at a reception following a flag raising ceremony for the celebration of 74th National Day of the People’s Republic of China at the Golden Bauhinia Square in Hong Kong on Oct. 1, 2023. Lee said Tuesday, Oct. 10, the city would seek to strengthen its economic and trade ties with Thailand after a meeting with the country’s prime minister, as the Chinese financial hub looks for more business opportunities in Southeast Asia. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei, File)

    The Associated Press

    HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s leader said Tuesday the city would seek to strengthen its economic and trade ties with Thailand after a meeting with the country’s prime minister, as the Chinese financial hub looks for more business opportunities in Southeast Asia.

    Chief Executive John Lee said at a weekly press briefing that he and Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin agreed during a meeting on Monday that the two sides have “good and close relations” and that they would promote more exchanges between their people.

    Lee’s administration wants to expand the city’s role in Southeast Asia to boost economic growth for the financial hub after years of COVID-19 restrictions. It aims to position the city as a bridge between mainland China and the international community.

    Lee said Hong Kong will work to deepen regional cooperation and strengthen its work on economic, trade and investment activities with countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Since 2010, ASEAN has been the second-largest trading partner for Hong Kong, the government said.

    Srettha arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday for a three-day trip. He met with officials and business leaders including Bernard Chan and Allan Zeman, according to his post on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter.

    In a press statement on Monday, Lee also thanked Thailand for supporting Hong Kong’s early entry into the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a major 15-nation trade agreement that took effect last year. The deal slashes tariffs on thousands of products, streamlining trade procedures and providing mutual advantages for member nations.

    Members of the trade bloc hope the initiative, encompassing about a third of world trade and business activity, will help power their recoveries from the pandemic.

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  • UN-backed probe into Ethiopia’s abuses is set to end. No one has asked for it to continue

    UN-backed probe into Ethiopia’s abuses is set to end. No one has asked for it to continue

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    GENEVA — A U.N.-backed probe of human rights abuses in Ethiopia is set to expire after no country stepped forward to seek an extension, despite repeated warnings that serious violations continue almost a year since a cease-fire ended a bloody civil war in the East African country.

    While the European Union led talks on the issue, in the end, no resolution was submitted to extend the mandate of the independent International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia before a deadline expired Wednesday at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

    The probe will therefore be disbanded when its mandate expires this month.

    The commission’s experts all but pleaded on Tuesday with the council to extend the investigation, warning that atrocities continue in Tigray, Ethiopia’s war-battered northernmost province.

    The experts say Eritrean troops allied with Ethiopia’s military are still raping women and subjecting them to sexual slavery in parts of Tigray. They also cited reports of extrajudicial killings and mass detentions amid new fighting in Amhara, Ethiopia’s second-most populous state,

    “There is a very real and imminent risk that the situation will deteriorate further, and it is incumbent upon the international community to ensure that investigations persist so human rights violations can be addressed, and the worst tragedies averted,” said commission member Steven Ratner.

    European countries had previously supported the probe as a means of ensuring accountability for war crimes committed during the two-year civil war in Tigray.

    Ethiopia has long opposed the commission, preventing its experts from conducting investigations in Ethiopia and criticizing it as politically motivated. As a result, it was forced to work remotely, from an office in Uganda.

    The commission was established in December 2021 after a joint report by the U.N. and Ethiopia’s state human rights commission recommended further independent investigations into abuses. Since then it has published two full-length reports.

    It concluded that all sides committed abuses during the Tigray war, some of them amounting to war crimes. Its first report accused Ethiopia’s government of using hunger as a weapon of war by restricting aid access to the region while rebels held it.

    In their second report, published last month, the commission experts said a national transitional justice process launched by Ethiopia “falls well short” of African and international standards.

    On Tuesday, the European Union announced a 650-million-euro ($680 million) aid package for Ethiopia, the bloc’s first step toward normalizing relations with the country despite previous demands for accountability first.

    A diplomat from a EU country acknowledged that the bloc had agreed not to present a resolution, and called on the Ethiopian government to set up “robust, independent, impartial and transparent” mechanisms to foster transitional justice in light of the “extreme gravity of crimes” and rights violations in Ethiopia.

    “We expect quick and tangible progress in the coming months,” the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the subject. “Lack of progress could jeopardize the ongoing gradual normalization of relations between the EU and Ethiopia.”

    Critics decried the inaction at the 47-member-country council.

    Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said the failure to renew the mandate in essence allows Ethiopia to drop off the council’s agenda, and amounts to “a scathing indictment of the EU’s stated commitment to justice.”

    “It’s yet another blow to countless victims of heinous crimes who placed their trust in these processes,” she added.

    The U.N. probe was the last major independent investigation into the Tigray war, which killed hundreds of thousands and was marked by massacres, mass rape and torture.

    In June, the African Union quietly dropped its own probe into the war’s atrocities, after extensive lobbying by Ethiopia — which has played up its own domestic efforts at transitional justice after the cease-fire.

    ___

    Muhumuza reported from Kampala, Uganda.

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  • Colombia’s government issues long awaited apology for extrajudicial killings during armed conflict

    Colombia’s government issues long awaited apology for extrajudicial killings during armed conflict

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    BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia’s government issued a long awaited public apology on Tuesday for the extrajudicial killings of 19 civilians who were slain by the military and registered as rebel fighters during one of the most violent periods of the nation’s civil war.

    The apology comes as Colombia’s government attempts to make amends with communities affected by decades of armed conflict and broker peace deals with rebel groups that are still fighting the military in rural areas despite a 2016 peace deal between the government and the nation’s largest rebel group.

    “These (killings) should have never happened,” Defense Minister Iván Velásquez said at an event in front of the nation’s congress attended by the victims’ relatives.

    “We ask you to forgive us for these crimes that embarrass us in front of the world,” Velásquez said in a speech. The killings took place between 2004 and 2008 as Colombia’s military intensified its campaign against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — the rebel group that made peace with the government in 2016.

    The killings involved young men from poor neighborhoods who were lured away from their homes with false promises of jobs in other parts of the country. Once they arrived at their destinations, the victims were shot by soldiers who dressed their corpses in camouflage, or placed weapons next to their bodies, and presented them to their superiors as rebels killed in combat in order to secure promotions and vacation time.

    Courts in Colombia have been ordering the government to apologize for these cases – known here as “false positives” — since 2015, as part of a set of reparation measures which also included prison sentences for some of the soldiers and officers involved.

    But the administrations of Presidents Juan Manuel Santos and Iván Duque had skirted around the orders to apologize in public because they were reluctant to recognize that during the nation’s armed conflict the military committed war crimes that were just as serious as those carried out by rebel groups, said Gimena Sanchez, a Colombia expert at the Washington Office on Latin America – a human rights group.

    Sanchez said the recently elected government of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, has been more willing to collaborate with investigations into war crimes, including those undertaken by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a transitional justice system created by the 2016 peace deal.

    “This is incredibly important to the victims families,” Sanchez said. “Those family members had to deal with the stigma of supposedly being family members of guerrillas.”

    According to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, Colombia’s military committed at least 6,402 extrajudicial killings between 2002 and 2008, as commanders pressured their troops to provide more results on the battlefield, and placed an emphasis on increasing the number of enemy casualties.

    The peace tribunal recently charged a former commander of Colombia’s army for the murders of 130 civilians between 2002 and 2003 in Antioquia province.

    At Tuesday’s event, the mothers, sisters, sons and daughters of the 19 victims were invited to speak.

    Many carried photos of the victims, and wore t-shirts with their names.

    While the relatives thanked Velásquez, the defense minister, for attending the event and issuing an apology, most said they were not ready to forgive.

    And they said the ones who should be apologizing to them are the politicians that were leading Colombia when the murders of their relatives occurred, including Santos, who was Colombia’s defense minister between 2006 and 2009.

    “Santos should be the one who shows his face here and asks for forgiveness,” said Florinda Hernández, whose son Elkin Gustavo Hernández, was murdered by the military in January of 2008. “We don’t want this to happen again, and we are still seeking justice for the murders of so many people.”

    The public apology comes as Colombia’s government attempts to broker peace deals with the nation’s remaining rebel groups.

    Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the government’s decision to apologize for extrajudicial killings helps the military build trust with communities that have been afflicted by human rights violations.

    “If we manage to get an agreement with any group what’s going to be key to (sustain) that is the trust that the security forces have with the civilian population,” Dickinson said.

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  • Schumer to lead a bipartisan delegation of senators to China, South Korea and Japan next week

    Schumer to lead a bipartisan delegation of senators to China, South Korea and Japan next week

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    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is leading a bipartisan congressional delegation to China next week, traveling to the country amid heightened tensions and after several members of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet visited

    ByMARY CLARE JALONICK Associated Press

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., walks into a closed-door caucus meeting after the House approved a 45-day funding bill to keep federal agencies open, Saturday, Sept. 30, 2023, in Washington. The measure now goes to the Senate. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

    The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is leading a bipartisan congressional delegation to China next week, traveling to the country amid heightened tensions and after several members of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet visited over the summer.

    Schumer, along with Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, is visiting government and business leaders in China, South Korea and Japan “with the goal of advancing U.S. economic and national security interests” in the region, his office said Tuesday.

    Schumer — a long time critic of China — plans to talk to Chinese officials about human rights, concerns about Chinese-made fentanyl in American cities and China’s “role in the international community,” his office said, as well as areas for potential cooperation.

    Since the administration resumed direct Cabinet-level visits to China this summer after the Chinese spy balloon floated over the country, the two sides have been working to arrange another summit between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Despite continued U.S. unhappiness with China’s at least tacit support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and its increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea, a new Biden-Xi meeting is expected in mid-November on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to be held in San Francisco.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in June, followed by visits of Treasury and Commerce secretaries Janet Yellen and Gina Raimondo as well as climate envoy John Kerry.

    Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan also held two days of talks with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Malta last month. Wang is expected to visit Washington before the end of October on a trip that officials will nail down the date and venue of the expected Biden-Xi summit.

    Joining Schumer and Crapo on the trip will be Democratic Sens. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Jon Ossoff of Georgia, along with Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Kennedy of Louisiana.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

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  • Things to know about the Nobel Prizes

    Things to know about the Nobel Prizes

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    STOCKHOLM — Fall has arrived in Scandinavia, which means Nobel Prize season is here.

    The start of October is when the Nobel committees get together in Stockholm and Oslo to announce the winners of the yearly awards.

    First up, as usual, is the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, which will be announced Monday by a panel of judges at the Karolinska Institute in the Swedish capital. The prizes in physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics will follow, with one announcement every weekday until Oct. 9.

    Here are some things to know about the Nobel Prizes:

    The Nobel Prizes were created by Alfred Nobel, a 19th-century businessman and chemist from Sweden. He held more than 300 patents but his claim to fame before the Nobel Prizes was having invented dynamite by mixing nitroglycerine with a compound that made the explosive more stable.

    Dynamite soon became popular in construction and mining as well as in the weapons industry. It made Nobel a very rich man. Perhaps it also made him think about his legacy, because toward the end of his life he decided to use his vast fortune to fund annual prizes “to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”

    The first Nobel Prizes were presented in 1901, five years after his death. In 1968, a sixth prize was created, for economics, by Sweden’s central bank. Though Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, it’s always presented together with the others.

    For reasons that are not entirely clear, Nobel decided that the peace prize should be awarded in Norway and the other prizes in Sweden. Nobel historians suspect Sweden’s history of militarism may have been a factor.

    During Nobel’s lifetime, Sweden and Norway were in a union, which the Norwegians reluctantly joined after the Swedes invaded their country in 1814. It’s possible that Nobel thought Norway would be a more suitable location for a prize meant to encourage “fellowship among nations.”

    To this day, the Nobel Peace Prize is a completely Norwegian affair, with the winners selected and announced by a Norwegian committee. The peace prize even has its own ceremony in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel’s death — while the other prizes are presented in Stockholm.

    The Nobel Prizes project an aura of being above the political fray, focused solely on the benefit of humanity. But the peace and literature awards, in particular, are sometimes accused of being politicized. Critics question whether winners are selected because their work is truly outstanding or because it aligns with the political preferences of the judges.

    The scrutiny can get intense for high-profile awards, such as in 2009, when President Barack Obama won the peace prize less than a year after taking office.

    The Norwegian Nobel Committee is an independent body that insists its only mission is to carry out the will of Alfred Nobel. However, it does have links to Norway’s political system. The five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, so the panel’s composition reflects the power balance in the legislature.

    To avoid the perception that the prizes are influenced by Norway’s political leaders, sitting members of the Norwegian government or Parliament are barred from serving on the committee. Even so, the panel isn’t always viewed as independent by foreign countries. When imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the peace prize in 2010, Beijing responded by freezing trade talks with Norway. It took years for Norway-China relations to be restored.

    One reason the prizes are so famous is they come with a generous amount of cash. The Nobel Foundation, which administers the awards, raised the prize money by 10% this year to 11 million kronor (about $1 million). In addition to the money, the winners receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma when they collect their Nobel Prizes at the award ceremonies in December.

    Most winners are proud and humbled by joining the pantheon of Nobel laureates, from Albert Einstein to Mother Teresa. But two winners refused their Nobel Prizes: French writer Jean-Paul Sartre, who turned down the literature prize in 1964, and Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho, who declined the peace prize that he was meant to share with U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger in 1973.

    Several others were not able to receive their awards because they were imprisoned, such as Belarusian pro-democracy activist Ales Bialiatski, who shared last year’s peace prize with human rights groups in Ukraine and Russia.

    Historically, the vast majority of Nobel Prize winners have been white men. Though that’s started to change, there is still little diversity among Nobel winners, particularly in the science categories.

    To date, 60 women have won Nobel Prizes, including 25 in the scientific categories. Only four women have won the Nobel Prize in physics and just two have won the economics prize.

    In the early days of the Nobel Prizes, the lack of diversity among winners could be explained by the lack of diversity among scientists in general. But today critics say the judges need to do a better job at highlighting discoveries made by women and scientists outside Europe and North America.

    The prize committees say their decisions are based on scientific merit, not gender, nationality or race. However, they are not deaf to the criticism. Five years ago, the head of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said it had started to ask nominating bodies to make sure they don’t overlook “women or people of other ethnicities or nationalities in their nominations.”

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  • Muscogee Nation judge rules in favor of citizenship for slave descendants known as freedmen

    Muscogee Nation judge rules in favor of citizenship for slave descendants known as freedmen

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    OKLAHOMA CITY — A judge for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma ruled in favor of citizenship for two descendants of Black slaves once owned by tribal members, potentially paving the way for hundreds of other descendants known as freedmen.

    District Judge Denette Mouser, based in the tribe’s headquarters in Okmulgee, ruled late Wednesday in favor of two Black Muscogee Nation freedmen, Rhonda Grayson and Jeff Kennedy, who had sued the tribe’s citizenship board for denying their applications.

    Mouser reversed the board’s decision and ordered it to reconsider the applications in accordance with the tribe’s Treaty of 1866, which provides that descendants of those listed on the Creek Freedmen Roll are eligible for tribal citizenship.

    Freedman citizenship has been a difficult issue for tribes as the U.S. reckons with its history of racism. The Cherokee Nation has granted full citizenship to its freedmen, while other tribes, like the Muscogee Nation, have argued that sovereignty allows tribes to make their own decisions about who qualifies for citizenship.

    Muscogee Nation Attorney General Geri Wisner said in a statement that the tribe plans to immediately appeal the ruling to the Muscogee Nation’s Supreme Court.

    “We respect the authority of our court but strongly disagree with Judge Mouser’s deeply flawed reasoning in this matter,” Wisner said. “The MCN Constitution, which we are duty-bound to follow, makes no provisions for citizenship for non-Creek individuals. We look forward to addressing this matter before our Nation’s highest court.”

    Tribal officials declined to comment further.

    The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole nations were referred to historically as the Five Civilized Tribes, or Five Tribes, by European settlers because they often assimilated into the settlers’ culture, adopting their style of dress and religion, and even owning slaves. Each tribe also has a unique history with freedmen, whose rights were ultimately spelled out in separate treaties with the U.S.

    Mouser pointed out in her decision that slavery within the tribe did not always look like slavery in the South and that slaves were often adopted into the owner’s clan, where they participated in cultural ceremonies and spoke the tribal language.

    “The families later known as Creek Freedmen likewise walked the Trail of Tears alongside the tribal clans and fought to protect the new homeland upon arrival in Indian Territory,” Mouser wrote. “During that time, the Freedmen families played significant roles in tribal government including as tribal town leaders in the House of Kings and House of Warriors.”

    A telephone message left Thursday with plaintiff’s attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons was not immediately returned, but he said in a statement that the case has special meaning to him because one of his own ancestors was listed on the original Creek Freedmen Roll.

    “For me, this journey transcended the boundaries of mere legal proceedings,” he said. “It became a poignant quest to reclaim the honor and dignity that anti-Black racism had wrongfully snatched from us.”

    Solomon-Simmons has argued that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s constitution, which was adopted in 1979 and included a “by-blood” citizenship requirement, is in clear conflict with its Treaty of 1866 with the U.S. government, a point raised by Mouser in her order. She noted the tribe has relied on portions of the treaty as evidence of the tribe’s intact reservation, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in its historic McGirt ruling in 2020 on tribal sovereignty.

    “The Nation has urged in McGirt — and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed — that the treaty is in fact intact and binding upon both the Nation and the United States, having never been abrogated in full or in part by Congress,” she wrote. “To now assert that Article II of the treaty does not apply to the Nation would be disingenuous.”

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  • Bahrain says attack by Yemen rebels kills a Bahraini officer and a soldier on the Saudi border

    Bahrain says attack by Yemen rebels kills a Bahraini officer and a soldier on the Saudi border

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A drone attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels killed a Bahraini officer and soldier who were patrolling Saudi Arabia‘s southern border early Monday, Bahrain’s military command said.

    The statement, carried by the official Bahrain News Agency, says “a number” of Bahraini soldiers were also wounded in the attack, without elaborating.

    The tiny island nation of Bahrain is a close ally of Saudi Arabia, which has been at war with the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels for several years. A cease-fire had largely stopped the violence, and the two sides have appeared close to a peace agreement in recent months.

    It was unclear if the attack would derail those efforts or prompt retaliation by Saudi Arabia and its allies. There was no immediate comment from the Houthis or Saudi Arabia.

    “This terrorist attack was carried out by the Houthis, who sent aircraft targeting the position of the Bahraini guards on the southern border of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia despite the halt of military operations between the warring sides in Yemen,” the Bahraini military statement said.

    Yemen’s war began in 2014 when the Houthis swept down from their northern stronghold and seized the capital, Sanaa, along with much of the country’s north. In response, a Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognized government to power.

    The fighting soon devolved into a stalemated proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, causing widespread hunger and misery in Yemen, which even before the conflict had been the Arab world’s poorest country.

    Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations earlier this year in a deal brokered by China, further raising hopes for an end to Yemen’s conflict. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia welcomed a Houthi delegation for peace talks, saying the negotiations had “positive results.”

    A U.N.-brokered cease-fire had already largely halted the violence, and Yemen has seen only sporadic clashes since the truce expired nearly a year ago. But diplomats have warned that the situation remains volatile.

    Yemen’s internationally recognized government condemned the attack. Foreign Minister Ahmed Bin Mubarak said he spoke by phone with Bahrain’s chief diplomat, Abdullatif al-Zayani, offering his condolences and solidarity with Bahrain.

    Bahrain, an island nation in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Saudi Arabia, was rocked by an uprising in 2011 inspired by the Arab Spring protests elsewhere in the region. Many from the country’s Shiite majority called for the overthrow of Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy. Bahrain quashed the revolt with aid from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and blamed much of the unrest on Shiite-majority Iran.

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  • Iran’s president urges US to demonstrate it wants to return to the 2015 nuclear deal

    Iran’s president urges US to demonstrate it wants to return to the 2015 nuclear deal

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    Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi says that his country will never give up its right “to have peaceful nuclear energy” and urged the United States “to demonstrate in a verifiable fashion” that it wants to return to the 2015 nuclear deal

    ByEDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press

    September 20, 2023, 12:22 AM

    Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi holds a Quran as he addresses the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

    The Associated Press

    UNITED NATIONS — Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said Tuesday that his country will never give up its right “to have peaceful nuclear energy” and urged the United States “to demonstrate in a verifiable fashion” that it wants to return to the 2015 nuclear deal.

    Addressing the annual high-level meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, Raisi said the American withdrawal from the deal trampled on U.S. commitments and was “an inappropriate response” to Iran’s fulfillment of its commitments.

    Then-President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the accord in 2018, restoring crippling sanctions. Iran began breaking the terms a year later and formal talks in Vienna to try to restart the deal collapsed in August 2022.

    Iran has long denied ever seeking nuclear weapons and continues to insist that its program is entirely for peaceful purposes – points Raisi reiterated Tuesday telling the high-level meeting that “nuclear weapons have no place in the defensive doctrine and the military doctrine” of the country.

    But U.N. nuclear chief Rafael Grossi said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press that the Iranian government’s removal of many cameras and electronic monitoring systems installed by the International Atomic Energy Agency make it impossible to give assurances about the country’s nuclear program. Grossi has previously warned that Tehran has enough enriched uranium for “several” nuclear bombs if it chose to build them.

    The IAEA director general also said Monday he asked to meet Raisi to try to reverse Tehran’s uncalled for ban on “a very sizable chunk” of the agency’s inspectors.

    Raisi made no mention of the IAEA inspectors but the European Union issued a statement late Tuesday saying its top diplomat, Josep Borrell, met Iran’s Foreign Minister on Tuesday and raised the nuclear deal and the inspectors as well as Iran’s arbitrary detention of many EU citizens including dual nationals.

    At his meeting with Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the EU said Borrell urged Iran to reconsider its decision to ban several experienced nuclear inspectors and to improve cooperation with the IAEA.

    Borrell again urged the Iranian government to stop its military cooperation with Russia, the EU statement said. Western nations have said Iran has supplied military drones to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine, which Tehran denies.

    Raisi spoke to the General Assembly a day after Iran and the U.S. each freed five prisoners who were in jails for years. The U.S. also allowed the release of nearly $6 billion in Iranian frozen assets in South Korea for humanitarian use. The five freed Americans arrived in the U.S. earlier Tuesday.

    The Iranian president made no mention of the prisoner swap.

    Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan walked out of the assembly hall when Raisi got up to speak, carrying a sign with a picture of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in police custody in Iran last year, sparking worldwide protests against the country’s conservative Islamic theocracy.

    ___

    Nasser Karimi contributed to this report from Tehran

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