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The IMF’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva tells CNBC’s Martin Soong that the World Bank and IMF are complementary but yet have differing expertise. “The world needs institutions to work together,” she said in an exclusive CNBC interview on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit.
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Indonesian President Joko Widodo makes a speech during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Minister’s Meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia on July 14, 2023.
Murat Gok | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
A new regional cross-border payment system recently implemented by Southeast Asian nations could deepen financial integration among participants, bringing the ASEAN bloc closer to its goal of economic cohesion.
The program, which allows residents to pay for goods and services in local currencies using a QR code, is now active in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. The Philippines is expected to join soon.
That’s according to each country’s respective central bank.
The move comes after the five Southeast Asian countries signed an official agreement late last year. At the recent ASEAN summit in May, leaders also reiterated their commitment to the project, pledging to work on a road map to expand regional payment links to all ten ASEAN members.
The scheme is aimed at supporting and facilitating cross-border trade settlements, investment, remittance and other economic activities with the goal of implementing an inclusive financial ecosystem around Southeast Asia.
Analysts say retail industries will particularly benefit amid an expected rise in consumer spending, which could in turn strengthen tourism.
Regional connectivity is considered crucial to reduce the region’s reliance on external currencies like the U.S. dollar for cross-border transactions, particularly among businesses. The greenback’s strength in recent years has resulted in weaker ASEAN currencies, which hurts those economies since the majority of the bloc’s members are net energy and food importers.
“The system will forgo the U.S. dollar or the Chinese renminbi as intermediary,” said Nico Han, a Southeast Asia analyst at Diplomat Risk Intelligence, the consulting and analysis division of current affairs magazine The Diplomat.
A unified cross-border digital payment system will “foster a sense of regionalism and ASEAN-centrality in managing international affairs,” he added. “This move becomes even more crucial in light of escalating tensions among major global powers.”
By connecting QR code payment systems, funds can be sent from one digital wallet to another.
These digital wallets effectively act as bank accounts but they can also be linked to accounts with formal financial institutions.
For instance, Malaysian tourists in Singapore can make a payment with Malaysian ringgit funds in their Malaysian digital wallet when making a transaction. Or, a Malaysian worker in Singapore can send Singapore dollar funds in a Singaporean digital wallet to a recipient’s wallet in Malaysia.
Fees and exchange rates will be determined by mutual agreement between the central banks themselves.
For now, a region-wide system like this doesn’t exist in other parts of the world but down the road, the Bank of International Settlements, based in Switzerland, hopes to connect retail payment systems across the world using QR codes and mobile phone numbers.
“The ASEAN central banks’ effort is innovative and novel,” said Satoru Yamadera, advisor at the Asian Development Bank’s Economic Research and Development Impact Department.
“In other regions like Europe, retail payment connection via credit and debit cards is more popular while China is well-known for advanced QR code payment, but they are not connected like the ASEAN QR codes,” he continued.
QR payments don’t impose fees on cardholders and merchants. They also boast of better conversion rates than those set by private payment processors like Visa or American Express.
Micro enterprises as well as small- and medium-sized businesses, or SMBs will emerge as winners from regional payment connectivity, experts say. According to the Asian Development Bank, such companies account for over 90% of businesses in Southeast Asia.
“SMBs can avoid the expenses associated with maintaining a physical point-of-sale system or paying interchange fees to card companies,” explained Han from Diplomat Risk Intelligence.
Marginalized individuals from low-income backgrounds also stand to benefit. As the payment system works via digital wallets and doesn’t require a traditional bank account, it can be used by the unbanked population.
“The system has the potential to improve financial literacy and wellbeing for the underbanked population,” Han noted.
ASEAN’s new system will also enable merchants and consumers to build a robust payment history, and provide valuable data for credit scoring, said Nicholas Lee, lead Asia tech analyst at Global Counsel, a public policy advisory firm.
“That’s particularly advantageous for unbanked and underbanked segments of the population, who traditionally lack access to such credit assessment data.”
Moreover, “increased non-cash transactions would allow policymakers to capture transaction data and trade flow more effectively, assuming these data are accessible,” said Lee.
“This, in turn, could lead to better economic forecasting and policymaking.”
While strengthening payment connectivity within the region has the potential to reduce payment friction and accelerate digital transition, it could inadvertently put pressure on certain currencies, particularly the Singapore dollar.
“The potential scenario of the [Singapore dollar] emerging as a de facto reserve currency within the region poses a challenge that ASEAN states will need to confront,” said Lee.
“With the [Singapore dollar’s] strength and stability, both international and regional businesses may opt to hold more of their working capital in [Singapore dollars], relying on the new payment network for efficient currency conversion,” he explained.
If that happens, it could weaken the purchasing power of other currencies in the region and result in higher imported inflation if central banks don’t intervene.
In such a scenario, authorities may feel the need to impose capital restrictions in order to protect their respective currencies, which could undermine the very purpose of establishing a regional payment network.
Regulations pose another challenge.
Central banks will have to address security and fraud issues, plus undertake the task of educating the public to embrace the new payment system, said Han.
“These factors can collectively contribute to a time-consuming process,” he warned.
This kind of coordinated action will require strong political will from regional leaders and it remains to be seen if ASEAN members can come together to successfully implement such an ambitious venture.
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BEIJING — Chinese leader Xi Jinping is attending a pair of regional summits in Saudi Arabia this week amid efforts to kick-start economic growth weighed down by strict anti-COVID-19 measures.
The Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that Xi will attend the inaugural China-Arab States Summit and a meeting with leaders of the six nations that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. His state visit to Saudi Arabia will end on Saturday.
China is the world’s second largest economy and a major source of outward investment. To fuel massive demand, it imports half its oil, of which half of those imports come from Saudi Arabia, amounting to tens of billions of dollars annually.
China’s economic growth had been on a steady decline for years and was dealt a major blow by rolling lockdowns imposed across the country as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chinese economic growth rebounded to 3.9% over a year earlier in the three months ending in September, up from the first half of the year’s 2.2%, but still well short of the government target.
China’s COVID-19 infection numbers are lower than those of the United States and other major countries. But the ruling party is sticking to “zero-COVID,” which calls for isolating every case, while other governments are relaxing travel and other controls and trying to live with the virus.
China’s ruling Communist Party shares many of the authoritarian tendencies of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, shielding Beijing from criticism over its harsh policies toward Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. More than a million have been sent to detention centers where they report being forced to denounce Islam and swear fealty to Xi and the party.
Beijing denies the charges, saying they have been providing job training and ridding Muslims of extremist, separatist and terroristic tendencies.
The trip to Saudi Arabia marks a further move by Xi to restore his global profile after spending most of the pandemic inside China. Xi was granted a third five-year term in October, but street protests against “zero-COVID” policies last month saw the most significant public challenge to his rule and may have prompted a relaxation of some measures.
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TIRANA, Albania — EU leaders and their Western Balkan counterparts gathered Tuesday for talks aimed at strengthening their partnership as Russia’s war in Ukraine threatens to reshape the geopolitical balance in the region.
The EU wants to use the one-day summit in Albania’s capital to tell leaders from Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia that they have futures within the wealthy economic bloc and give them concrete signs, rather than just promises, that they will join one day.
European Council President Charles Michel, who is jointly chairing the summit, hailed it as a “symbolic meeting” that will cement the futures of the six countries within Europe.
“I am absolutely convinced that the future of our children will be safe and more prosperous with the Western Balkans within the EU, and we are working very hard in order to make progress,” he told reporters.
As proof of the bloc’s commitment, Michel underscored EU energy support to the region in light of the war’s impact on supplies and prices, as well as a mobile telephone roaming charges agreement.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has been repeating that stepping up the bloc’s engagement with the six nations is more crucial than ever to maintaining Europe’s security.
As Europe’s relationship with Russia deteriorates further because of the war, tensions have also mounted in the Balkans and the EU wants to avoid other flashpoints close to its borders.
“The war is sending shockwaves, it affects everybody, and especially this region,” Borrell told reporters in Tirana, adding that the aim of the summit would be to mitigate the consequences of the war in a neighborhood that was torn by conflicts following the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
According to a draft of the declaration to be adopted at the summit, the EU will repeat “its full and unequivocal commitment to the European Union membership perspective of the Western Balkans” and call for an acceleration of accession talks with the incumbents.
In return, the EU expects full solidarity from its Western Balkans partners and wants them fully aligned with its foreign policies.
That particular point has been problematic with Serbia, whose president, Aleksandar Vucic, claims he wants to take Serbia into the European Union but has cultivated ties with Russia.
Although Serbia’s representatives voted in favor of various U.N. resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vucic has refused to explicitly condemn Moscow. His country has not joined Western sanctions against Russia over the war.
“The Western Balkans have decided to embark on the European path, this is a two-way street,” Borrell said. “And we also expect the region to deliver on key reforms, and certainly to show the will to embrace the European Union’s ambition and spirit. Many do, but we see also hesitations.”
Although the progress of the six nations toward EU membership had stalled recently, there has been some progress over the past few months.
This summer, the EU started membership negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia following years of delays. And Bosnia moved a small step closer on its path to joining the powerful economic bloc when the commission advised member countries in October to grant it candidate status despite continuing criticism of the way the nation is run.
Kosovo has only started the first step, with the signing of a Stabilization and Association Agreement. It said it would apply for candidate status later this month.
The EU last admitted a new member — Croatia, which is also part of the Balkans — in 2013. Before that, Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007. With the withdrawal of the United Kingdom in 2021, the EU now has 27 member nations.
“We need the EU to move from words to deeds,” said Kosovo president Vjosa Osmani.
To help households and businesses weather the impact of Russia’s war on energy and food security, the EU has earmarked one billion euros in grants to the Western Balkans, hoping the money will encourage double the investment.
Leaders will also discuss migration issues that remains one of Europe’s biggest concerns in light of the number of migrants trying to enter the bloc without authorization via the Western Balkans, notably through Serbia.
The EU’s border agency Frontex said it had detected more than 22,300 attempted entries in October, nearly three times as many as a year ago.
Around 500 Frontex officers are working along the EU’s borders with Balkan nations but staff will soon be deployed inside the region itself. Serbia’s border with Hungary is a notorious hotspot. Late last month, a man was shot and wounded and a number of others were detained following reports of a clash between migrants in a town on the Serbian side of the border. Europol police agents will also be sent there.
One cause of the movements is that Serbia, which wants to join the EU, has not aligned its visa policies with the bloc. People from several countries requiring visas to enter the bloc arrive in Serbia without such paperwork then slip through. Many from Burundi, Tunisia, India, Cuba and Turkey enter the EU this way.
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Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this story.
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MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday that he will host meetings with U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Mexico City early next year.
López Obrador said the North American summit, scheduled for Jan. 9-10, will also include bilateral meetings with both countries. The Mexican president said in October that Biden had already agreed to make the trip.
Neither the White House nor Canadian government officials have officially confirmed their attendance.
The three leaders met last year in Washington. Such talks usually focus on immigration, security and the economy.
This year, however, both the United States and Canada have filed for consultations, a step that precedes lodging a trade complaint, over López Obrador’s policy of favoring Mexico’s state-owned power company.
Both countries say favoring a domestic company over U.S. and Canadian firms violates the U.S.-Mexico Canada free trade agreement, or USMCA.
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CAIRO — Egypt announced late Thursday the release of 30 political activists from jail, the latest in a series of mass releases from detention amid intensifying international scrutiny over the country’s human rights record.
There was no immediate word on the identities of the activists and it was not immediately possible to confirm how many of them have already been freed.
The announcement came from Tarik el-Awady, a member of Egypt’s presidential pardon committee. He said the 30 had been in pre-trial detention, facing charges related to their “opinions.”
El-Awady later posted photographs, describing them as showing several of the freed detainees hugging family members and friends.
Since 2013, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s government has cracked down on dissidents and critics, jailing thousands, virtually banning protests and monitoring social media. Human Rights Watch estimated in 2019 that as many as 60,000 political prisoners are incarcerated in Egyptian prisons, many without trial.
The issue came to focus during Egypt’s hosting of the two-week world climate summit earlier this month. The conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh was in part overshadowed by the hunger strike of imprisoned Egyptian political dissident, Alaa Abdel-Fattah.
As the summit known as COP27 opened, Abdel-Fattah intensified his monthslong, partial hunger strike to completely stop any calorie intake and also stopped drinking water in an effort to draw attention to his case and others like him.
Then, as concerns for his fate mounted, he ended his strike. He remains in prison.
In the months building up the summit, Egypt had sought to rectify its international image, pardoning dozens of prisoners and establishing a new “strategy” to upgrade human rights conditions.
Rights groups have remained skeptical about whether these moves will translate into any lasting change, with Amnesty International describing the strategy as a “shiny cover-up”’ used to broker favor with foreign governments and financial institutions.
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ISLAMABAD — A breakthrough funding deal at the COP27 conference to help poor countries ravaged by climate change was welcomed Sunday by Pakistan, a nation devastated this year by record-breaking monsoon rains,
Flooding likely worsened by global warming submerged a third of Pakistan’s territory, left 33 million people scrambling to survive, and an estimated $40 billion in losses to the economy.
Pakistani officials, who had framed the country as a victim of climate change and sought compensation from bigger polluting nations, called the funding deal “a step in reaffirming the core principles of climate justice.”
The compensation agreement hammered out early Sunday in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh establishes funding for “loss and damage” suffered by poor countries as a result of global warming.
It is a big win for developing nations that have long called for cash — sometimes viewed as reparations — because they are often the victims of climate-worsened floods, droughts, heat waves, famines and storms despite having contributed little to the pollution that heats up the globe.
It has also long been called an issue of equity for nations hit by weather extremes and small island states that face an existential threat from rising seas.
“Three long decades and we have finally delivered climate justice,” said Seve Paeniu, the finance minister of Tuvalu. “We have finally responded to the call of hundreds of millions of people across the world to help them address loss and damage.”
Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Twitter welcomed the development, calling it the “first pivotal step towards the goal of climate justice.”
Sharif acknowledged the work done on the summit deal by his Cabinet minister for climate change, Sherry Rehman, and her team. He said it’s now up to a transitional committee to build on the historic development.
Rehman in a tweet said: “It’s been a long 30-year journey from demand to formation of the Loss and Damage Fund for 134 countries. We welcome today’s announcement and joint text hammered out through many nights.”
“We look forward to (the fund) being operationalized, to actually become a robust body that is able to answer with agility to the needs of the vulnerable, the fragile and those on the front line of climate disasters,” she said.
Pakistan suffered huge losses in the floods that affected a third of its 33 million population, who faced unprecedented suffering in terms of human and property losses. More than 1,700 people were killed and nearly 13,000 others injured. Over 13,000 kilometers (8,080 miles) of roadway, 439 bridges and 2.28 million houses were damaged or destroyed.
Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said Pakistan came out a winner as a result of the compensation deal.
“Win for climate justice, win for developing world in honor of 33 million victims of Pakistan floods and millions around the world who suffer from a climate catastrophe they did not create and do not have resources to address,” Zardari said.
The world’s biggest polluters must must now live up to their promises and pay into the fund. A 2009 agreement for a $100 billion fund created by richer nations to pay for the development of poor nations was never fully funded.
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MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Kamala Harris would underscore America’s commitment to defending treaty ally the Philippines with a visit that starts Sunday and involves flying to an island province facing the disputed South China Sea, where Washington has accused China of bullying smaller claimant nations.
After attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Thailand, Harris will fly to Manila Sunday night to meet President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. the next day for talks aimed at reinforcing Washington’s oldest treaty alliance in Asia and strengthening economic ties, a senior U.S. administration official said in an online briefing ahead of the visit.
On Tuesday she’ll fly to Palawan province, which lies along the South China Sea, to meet local fishermen, villagers, officials and the coast guard. She is the highest-ranking U.S. leader so far to visit the frontier island at the forefront of the long-seething territorial disputes involving China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
The Philippine coast guard is expected to welcome Harris onboard one of its biggest patrol ships, the BRP Teresa Magbanua, in Palawan, where she would deliver a speech before coast guard, police, military and government officials, according to coast guard spokesperson Commodore Armand Balilo.
Harris will underscore “the importance of international law, unimpeded commerce and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea,” the U.S. official said and added, in response to a question, that Washington was not concerned how Beijing would perceive the visit.
“China can take the message it wants,” the U.S. official said. “The message to the region is that the United States is a member of the Indo-Pacific, we are engaged, we’re committed to the security of our allies in the region.”
Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Manuel Romualdez said Harris’s trip to Palawan shows the level of America’s support to an ally and concern over China’s actions in the disputed sea.
“That’s as obvious as you can get, that the message they’re trying to impart to the Chinese is that ‘we support our allies like the Philippines on these disputed islands,’” Romualdez told The Associated Press. “This visit is a significant step in showing how serious the United States views this situation now.”
Washington and Beijing have long been on a collision course in the contested waters. While the U.S. lays no claims to the strategic waterway, where an estimated $5 trillion in global trade transits each year, it has said that freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea is in America’s national interest.
China opposes U.S. Navy and Air Force patrols in the busy waterway, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety. It has warned Washington not to meddle in what it says is a purely Asian territorial conflict — which has become a delicate frontline in the U.S.-China rivalry in the region and has long been feared as a potential Asian flashpoint.
In July, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on China to comply with a 2016 arbitration ruling that invalidated Beijing’s vast territorial claims in the South China Sea and warned that Washington is obligated to defend treaty ally Philippines if its forces, vessels or aircraft come under attack in the disputed waters.
China has rejected the 2016 decision by an arbitration tribunal set up in The Hague under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea after the Philippine government complained in 2013 about China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the disputed waters. Beijing did not participate in the arbitration, rejected its ruling as a sham and continues to defy it.
Harris’ visit is the latest sign of the growing rapport between Washington and Manila under Marcos Jr., who took office in June after a landslide electoral victory.
America’s relations with the Philippines entered a difficult period under Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who threatened to sever ties with Washington and expel visiting American forces, and once attempted to abrogate a major defense pact with the U.S. while nurturing cozy ties with China and Russia.
When President Joe Biden met Marcos Jr. for the first time in September in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, he stressed the depth by which the U.S. regards its relations with the Philippines despite some headwinds.
“We’ve had some rocky times, but the fact is it’s a critical, critical relationship, from our perspective. I hope you feel the same way,” Biden said.
“We continue to look to the United States for that continuing partnership and the maintenance of peace in our region,” Marcos Jr. told Biden. “We are your partners. We are your allies. We are your friends.”
The rapprochement came at a crucial time when the U.S. needed to build a deterrent presence amid growing security threats in the region, Romualdez said.
Philippine military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Bartolome Bacarro said last week that the U.S. wanted to construct military facilities in five more areas in the northern Philippines under a 2014 defense cooperation pact, which allows American forces to build warehouses and temporary living quarters within Philippine military camps. The Philippines Constitution prohibits foreign military bases but at least two defense pacts allow temporary visits by American forces with their aircraft and Navy ships for joint military exercises and training.
The northern Philippines is strategically located across a strait from Taiwan and could serve as a crucial outpost in case tensions worsen between China and the self-governed island.
While aiming to deepen ties, the Biden administration has to contend with concerns by human rights groups over Marcos Jr. The Philippine leader has steadfastly defended the legacy of his father, a dictator who was ousted in a 1986 pro-democracy uprising amid human rights atrocities and plunder.
Harris also plans to meet Vice President Sara Duterte, daughter of Marcos’ predecessor, who oversaw a deadly anti-drugs crackdown that left thousands of mostly poor suspects dead and sparked an International Criminal Court investigation as a possible crime against humanity. The vice president has defended her father’s presidency.
Given the Biden administration’s high-profile advocacy for democracy and human rights, its officials have said human rights were at the top of the agenda in each of their engagements with Marcos Jr. and his officials.
After her meeting Monday with Marcos Jr., Harris plans to meet civil society activists to demonstrate “our commitment and continued support for human rights and democratic resilience,” the U.S. official said.
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TUNIS, Tunisia — Leaders of French-speaking countries gathered Saturday on a Tunisian island to discuss debt relief, migration, food and energy shortages, with a soaring cost of living across Africa, Europe and the Middle East due to war in Ukraine as the backdrop.
French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the presidents of six African nations were attending the 18th annual meeting of the 88-member International Organization of Francophonie, which promotes relations among nations that use French as their primary language.
European Council President Charles Michel also was in Tunisia for the two-day summit, the organization’s first gathering in three years following pandemic lockdowns and travel restrictions.
Louise Mushikiwabo, the group’s secretary-general and Rwanda’s former foreign minister, said the participants plan to issue a final declaration on major political, social and economic issues after the summit ends on Sunday.
They will also focus on “ways to boost the use of the French language around Europe and in international institutions as its use declines compared to English,” Mushikiwabo said.
The presidents of Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Gabon, Mauritania, Niger, Burundi and Rwanda are representing more than 320 million French-speaking people across the African continent, including Tunisia, organizers said.
The president of Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, did not attend the summit amid escalating tensions with neighboring Rwanda, President Paul Kagame was in Djerba. The Congolese government tweeted Saturday that Tshisekedi stayed away to condemn “Rwandan aggression.”
Congolese Prime Minister Sama Lukonde traveled to Tunisia in the president’s place, the government said. Lukonde refused to appear in the family photo during the opening session because of Kagame’s presence.
Congolese authorities accuse Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebels, which Rwanda denies. Violence by armed groups in eastern Congo has forced hundreds to flee over the past few months, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the two French-speaking African nations.
The summit and a two-day meeting of the organization’s economic forum next week are taking place amid tight security. Tunisia has been in the grip of a political and economic crisis.
In preparation for the international meetings, authorities also gave Djerba a makeover, building new roads and improving infrastructure around the island that is a major tourist hub and home to several historical sites, including one of Africa’s oldest synagogues.
The meetings are expected to boost the standing of Tunisian President Kais Saied, who has been criticized by the West for granting himself sweeping powers over the past year after sacking the prime minister and dissolving parliament.
Said said the moves were necessary to save the North African country amid protracted political and economic crises, and many Tunisians welcomed them. But critics and Western allies say the power grab jeopardized Tunisia’s young democracy.
Last month, the Tunisian government reached a preliminary agreement with the International Monetary Fund on a $1.9 billion loan that is designed to ease the country’s protracted budget crisis and calm the simmering discontent over soaring food and energy shortages.
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Barbara Surk in Nice, France and Yesica Fish in Dakar, Senegal contributed.
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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Negotiators at U.N. climate talks in Egypt say they have struck a potential breakthrough deal on the creation of a fund for compensating poor nations that are the most vulnerable to climate change, called ‘loss and damage.’
“There is an agreement on loss and damage,” Maldives Environment Minister Aminath Shauna told The Associated Press Saturday. “That means for countries like ours we will have the mosaic of solutions that we have been advocating for.”
It still needs to be approved unanimously in a vote later today.
Saturday afternoon’s draft proposal came from the Egyptian presidency.
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:
— UN climate talks drag into extra time with scant progress
— Despair, lack of progress at climate talks, yet hope blooms
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Two separate drafts released by the Egyptian presidency, on efforts to step up emissions cuts and the overarching decision of this year’s talks, barely build on what was agreed in Glasgow last year.
The texts leave in place a reference to the Paris accords goal of limiting global warming to “well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit)” which scientists say is far too risky.
They also don’t suggest any new short-term targets for either developing or developed countries, which experts say are needed to achieve the more ambitious 1.5 C (2.7 F) goal that would prevent some of the more extreme effects of climate change.
A new proposal on the issue of loss and damage that calls for the creation of a new fund to help developing countries hit by climate disasters said developed countries would be “urged” to contribute to the fund, which would also draw on other private and public sources of money such as international financial institutions.
However, the proposal does not suggest that major emerging economies such as China have to contribute to the fund, which was a key ask of the European Union and the United States.
It also does not tie the creation of the new fund to any increase in efforts to cut emissions, or restrict the recipients of funding to those countries that are most vulnerable.
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Alok Sharma, the British official who chaired last year’s climate talks in Glasgow, declined to comment on criticism of the Egyptian presidency, but made clear that an ambitious outcome to combat climate change was crucial.
“Every presidency runs things in their own way,” he said. “The key issue for me and for the UK is that what we have here at the end of the day is a balanced and ambitious text across all the key pillars,” he said.
“For us it’s also vitally important to not just preserve what we agreed in Glasgow but that we build on that as well,” said Sharma, referring to the recommitment made last year to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) and a pledge to increase efforts to slash emissions cuts.
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Spain’s environment minister said they are willing to walk out if they can’t reach a fair deal at the U.N. climate talks.
“We could be exiting of course,” said Teresa Ribera. “We won’t be part of a result that we find unfair and not effective to address the problem that we are handling, which is climate change and the need to reduce emissions.”
Ribera said she is “concerned” that a draft of the final document may not include a mention of the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming limit target set in Paris in 2015.
She added she didn’t want to see a result “that may backtrack what we already did in Glasgow,” referring to the renewed commitment to the 1.5 C goal at the climate summit last year.
“That’s something that we’d like to see, that there is a strong commitment to the 1.5 target,” said Teresa Ribera.
On the role of the presidency, Ribera said that the process has been “very confusing.”
“It is not clear … and we are running out of time,” she said.
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Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said parties must now “rise to the occasion” in a news conference Saturday morning.
“The issue now rests with the will of the parties,” Shoukry said at a press conference. “It is the parties who must rise to the occasion and take upon themselves the responsibility of finding the areas of convergence and moving forward.”
On a new draft text for the overarching decision at the conference, which was being worked on overnight, Shoukry said that “a vast majority of the parties indicated to me that they considered the text as balanced and that they constitute a potential breakthrough that can lead to consensus.”
He added that “all must show the necessary flexibility” in reaching a consensus, and that Egypt was merely “facilitating this process.”
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New Zealand’s climate minister has said a draft of the final document circulated by the presidency “has been received quite poorly by pretty much everybody,” adding that delegations are going into another round of talks.
Speaking to The Associated Press, James Shaw called the draft “entirely unsatisfactory.”
He added that the proposal “abandons really any hope of achieving 1.5 (degrees Celsius, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit),” referring to the warming limit agreed at the Paris agreement back in 2015.
He said parties will continue to work on the issue as well as look to reach consensus on a loss and damage fund for developing nations who are suffering from the impacts of climate change.
“Everybody wants an outcome on loss and damage and everybody wants to keep 1.5 alive. So that’s what we’re going to keep doing,” he said.
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German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says that responsibility for the fat of the U.N. climate talks “now lies in the hands of the Egyptian COP presidency.”
She said the European Union had made clear overnight that “we will not sign a paper here that diverges significantly from the 1.5 C path, that would bury the goal of 1.5 degrees.”
“If these climate conferences set us back then we wouldn’t have needed to travel here in the first place,” she said.
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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BANGKOK — Leaders from around the Asia-Pacific called for an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine and pledged to steer the region’s economies toward sustainable growth as they wrapped up summit meetings Saturday.
Host Thailand garnered a diplomatic coup in managing to bridge divisions among the 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum by saying that most members had condemned the war. Russia is an APEC member, as is China, which generally has refrained from criticizing Moscow.
The declaration issued by APEC leaders acknowledged differing views on the war and said the forum, which is devoted largely to promoting trade and closer economic ties, was not a venue for resolving such conflicts.
But it noted that the conflict and other security issues “can have significant consequences for the global economy.”
The leaders’ statement said most members had strongly condemned the war in Ukraine, stressing that it is causing immense human suffering and worsening inflation, supply chain troubles, food insecurity and financial risks.
Like a statement issued by the Group of 20 leading economies in Bali, Indonesia, earlier this week, it echoed the wording of a March 2 United Nations General Assembly resolution that “deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and demands its complete and unconditional withdrawal from the territory of Ukraine.”
The meetings Saturday wrapped up a flurry of events in Southeast Asian countries this week that gave leaders opportunities for face-to-face talks that have been rare in the past two years of pandemic precautions.
Much of the activity at such summits occurs on the sidelines and in the interludes before and after the formal meetings.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke briefly on Saturday before the final APEC meeting began. Harris reiterated President Joe Biden’s call, made in a meeting with Xi at the G-20, for both sides to keep lines of communication open.
Xi said he viewed his talks with Biden as a step toward a “next stage” in ties between the two largest economies, according to a Chinese government summary of the meeting.
Relations have deteriorated recently amid friction over trade and technology, Chinese claims on the separately governed island of Taiwan, human rights and other issues. But Harris told Xi the U.S. “does not seek confrontation or conflict with China.”
She received a “handover” in the form of a symbolic “chalom” bamboo basket from the APEC host, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha. The U.S. will host next year’s APEC summit in San Francisco, with preliminary meetings to be held in other cities throughout the year.
Though summit meetings are often sidetracked by other more urgent concerns, APEC’s long-term mission is promoting closer economic ties, and Prayuth opened Saturday’s meeting by urging the leaders to push ahead with APEC’s agenda of free trade in the Pacific region.
“We have to give priority to turning this plan into action,” he said.
Security risks are not on the formal APEC agenda, but Prayuth said North Korea’s numerous recent missile launches were discussed and “everybody shares concern on that issue.”
On Friday, Harris and leaders of Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea met separately to air concerns about the North’s launch earlier in the day of an intercontinental ballistic missile that landed near Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido.
Both at APEC in Thailand and at the G-20 meeting in Indonesia, officials appear to have chosen to agree to disagree about the war in Ukraine while voicing anguish over its deepening impact. In both Bangkok and Bali, countries that have refused to condemn the invasion refrained from blocking the release of statements harshly criticizing Moscow.
APEC members account for nearly four of every 10 people and almost half of world trade. Much of APEC’s work is technical and incremental, carried out by senior officials and ministers, covering areas such as trade, forestry, health, food, security, small- and medium-size enterprises and women’s empowerment.
The leaders’ declaration released Saturday also called for promoting more use of clean energy and more secure, environmentally sustainable food systems, among an array of goals that also address illegal, unregulated and unauthorized fishing, illegal logging, marine waste, improvements to public health and better access to vaccinations.
Other APEC members include Brunei, Chile, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was to represent the Association of Southeast Asian Nations but did not attend after getting COVID-19.
The summit venue, at Bangkok’s main convention center near a vast parkland, was cordoned off with some streets closed to traffic. Riot police stood guard behind barricades at major intersections to keep protesters well away.
On Friday, police clashed in another area of Bangkok with demonstrators who took the opportunity of the APEC meeting to renew calls for democratic reforms in Thailand and accuse the government of promoting policies to APEC that favor big business over ordinary people. Several people were injured and a number of arrests made.
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Associated Press journalists Elaine Kurtenbach, Tian McLeod Ji, Grant Peck, Jerry Harmer and Tassanee Vejpongsa contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s APEC coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific-economic-cooperation
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BANGKOK — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke briefly with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Saturday in another step toward keeping lines of communication open between the two biggest economies.
A White House official said Harris and Xi exchanged remarks Saturday while heading into a closed-door meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum’s summit in Bangkok.
The official said Harris echoed President Joe Biden’s comment to Xi at an meeting between the two leaders earlier in the week that China and the U.S. must keep lines of communication open to “responsibly manage the competition between our countries.”
The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to be able to speak to the media.
Relations between Washington and Beijing have suffered frictions over trade and technology, China’s claims to the separately governed island of Taiwan, the pandemic and China’s handling of Hong Kong, human rights and other issues.
On Friday, Harris pitched the U.S. as a reliable economic partner, telling a business conference on APEC’s sidelines, “The United States is here to stay.”
Harris told leaders at the APEC summit that the U.S. is a “proud Pacific power” and has a “vital interest in promoting a region that is open, interconnected, prosperous, secure and resilient.”
After receiving news that North Korea had fired an intercontinental ballistic missile that landed near Japanese waters, Harris convened an emergency meeting of the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Canada in which she slammed the missile test as a “brazen violation of multiple U.N. Security resolutions.”
“It destabilizes security in the region and unnecessarily raises tensions,” she said.
“We strongly condemn these actions and again call on North Korea to stop further unlawful, destabilizing acts,” Harris said. “On behalf of the United States I reaffirmed our ironclad commitment to our Indo-Pacific alliances.”
Her remarks at the broader APEC forum capped a week of high-level outreach from the U.S. to Asia as Washington seeks to counter growing Chinese influence in the region, with President Joe Biden pushing the message of American commitment to the region at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Cambodia and the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia.
Many Asian countries began questioning the American commitment to Asia after former President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which had been the centerpiece of former President Barack Obama’s “pivot” to Asia.
The Biden administration has been seeking to regain trust and take advantage of growing questions over strings attached to Chinese regional infrastructure investments that critics have dubbed Beijing’s “debt trap” diplomacy.
Biden and Harris have also highlighted Washington’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, launched earlier this year.
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David Rising contributed to this story.
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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister says they have concerns about an EU proposal on loss and damage funding for countries vulnerable to climate change made late Thursday at U.N. climate talks.
Molwyn Joseph, who spoke on behalf of small island states, said there are parts of the EU’s offer that need “adjusting,” without adding more details.
“We will wait until we meet and bilaterally to discuss the areas of concern,” he said.
Joseph met Friday with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock for talks on operationalizing loss and damage financing and said he will also hold separate talks later with China and the United States.
“We need an agreement at COP right now. That’s what we need, an agreement among all the parties,” Joseph said, adding there is a “strong possibility” to achieve an agreement on loss and damage funding by Saturday.
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Dozens of nations spearheaded by island nation Vanuatu say they will seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on countries’ legal obligations to protect people who suffer from the impacts of climate change.
Vulnerable nations and other states, including New Zealand and the Alliance of Small Island States, supported the move.
“AOSIS will benefit greatly from this initiative … The moment of this advisory legal opinion is now,” said Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister Molwyn Joseph, who spoke on behalf of small island sates.
Vanuatu environment and climate minister Ralph Regenvavu welcomed the growing coalition of nations in support of the move.
On U.N. climate talks, which are set to end today although likely to go into the weekend, Regenvavu said there was renewed hope following an EU proposal late Thursday night for a loss and damage fund.
“Overnight circumstances changed and we hope for a loss and damage deal today,” he said. “We are happy with the progress made so far.”
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:
— Crunch time for UN climate talks as Friday deadline looms
— EU shakes up climate talks with surprise disaster fund offer
— Confusion, finger-pointing, opposing views at Egypt’s COP27
— Politics, climate conspire as Tigris and Euphrates dwindle
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German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Friday morning that the EU’s proposal late Thursday on a fund for vulnerable countries suffering the impacts of climate change was “a big step” in U.N. climate talks in Egypt.
The talks, set to end today but likely to go into the weekend, were buoyed by the EU offer that tied loss and damage funding for nations vulnerable to climate change with cuts to planet-warming gases.
Asked whether China will participate in such a loss and damage fund, Baerbock replied: “We are arguing massively for it.”
Baerbock said that “industrial nations carry responsibility for the past” and their wealth was built on using fossil energy. She added that “now we want to take our responsibility for the future together and that’s why we are arguing so much for countries such as China but also other big emitters also to participate in the future in supporting the weakest in the world together.”
But Baerbock did not think an agreement would could quickly.
“I packed my suitcase for the whole weekend,” she told German television.
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EU climate chief Frans Timmermans said Friday that a proposal made by the bloc on funding for loss and damage and mitigation is “a final offer” that seeks to “find a compromise” between nations as negotiators seek a way forward at the U.N. climate talks in Egypt.
The EU Executive Vice President made a surprise offer late Thursday on tying compensation for climate disasters to tougher emissions cuts.
Timmermans said he was “encouraged” by immediate reaction to the proposal and more engagement on the offer is expected Friday.
“This is about not having a failure here,” said Timmermans. “We we cannot afford to have a failure. Now, if our steps forward are not reciprocated, then obviously there will be a failure. But I hope I hope we can avoid that.”
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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BANGKOK — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris arrived Thursday in Thailand, where she plans to affirm America’s commitment to Southeast Asia and drive home the message that the region can count on the United States.
Harris’ visit for a two-day Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit comes just after U.S. President Joe Biden attended a Southeast Asian summit in Cambodia and Group of 20 meetings in Indonesia.
She and other APEC leaders are expected to discuss the Ukraine war, soaring inflation, food and energy shortages and a more assertive China. Chinese President Xi Jinping is also attending the summit, which is taking place in a heavily guarded venue in Bangkok.
Harris is standing in for Biden, who returned to Washington to host his granddaughter’s wedding at the White House.
A senior U.S. administration official said the trips to Southeast Asia by Biden and Harris show the deepening of America’s engagement with the region, and that it is a friend and partner that can be counted on. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak more freely.
Harris will also deliver a speech to a business conference on the summit sidelines. Officials said she will outline priorities for next year’s APEC summit, which the U.S. will host.
Leaders of the 21 countries and territories in APEC, whose official mission is to promote regional economic integration, are meeting formally in closed-door sessions Friday and Saturday. Most of APEC’s work is technical and incremental, carried out by senior officials and Cabinet ministers, covering areas such as trade, tourism, forestry, health, food, security, small and medium-size enterprises and women’s empowerment.
Over the weekend, Harris will hold talks with Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha that are expected to focus on expanding cooperation on climate change, clean energy and sustainable development. They may also discuss the situation in Myanmar, where violence has escalated since the military seized power last year.
She will host a roundtable discussion with activists and business leaders on climate change and the Mekong region before departing for the Philippines.
Biden held highly anticipated talks with Chinese President Xi during the G-20 summit earlier this week in which they attempted to manage their differences, including over Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory. They expressed a “shared belief” that the use or even the threat of use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war was “totally unacceptable,” Biden said.
The White House said they also agreed to resume cooperation on a range of shared global challenges including climate change, health and food stability. Beijing had cut off such contacts in protest after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August.
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Associated Press journalist Christopher Megerian in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Sherry Rehman, climate minister for Pakistan, said developing countries would continue to press hard for a deal on the issue of ‘loss and damage’ at this year’s U.N. climate talks in Egypt.
Rehman told reporters Thursday that the group of countries she chairs, known as G77 and China, wants “at the very least a political announcement of intent” on rich polluters providing new financial aid to poor nations for the effects of global warming.
She made clear that she didn’t not expect “a slew of finance” to result from the meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh but added that “if this continues to be kicked down the road we will see it as a climate justice denied.”
Rehman said she was aware that some countries “are anxious about liabilities and judicial proceedings.”
“I think we can work around all those anxieties,” she said. “The idea here is not to make any one country or group of countries uncomfortable or put them in an adversarial position.”
But she said the recent devastating floods in her own country, causing tens of billions of dollars in damage, showed how people who have done little to cause climate change are being hit hard.
“That dystopia that came to our doorstep will come to everyone’s,” she said. “So before it comes to that point, let’s learn to work together and bring some focus and real ambition for climate justice and delivery on joint goals.”
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:
— Lines in the sand need redrawing to reach climate deal
— Women lead climate talks’ toughest topic: reparations
— Scientists try to bolster Great Barrier Reef in warmer world
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Senior western officials have met with the Egyptian diplomat chairing this year’s U.N. climate talks amid concerns that negotiators may not be able to reach an agreement.
Alok Sharma, the British official who chaired last year’s talks in Glasgow, the EU’s climate chief Frans Timmermans and Canada’s Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault told Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry that “there are still lot of gaps remaining” in the draft decisions.
Sharma’s office said the three officials told Shoukry that the recent pledge made by the Group of 20 major developed and emerging economies in Bali “should be the baseline and not a ceiling” at the climate talks, known as COP27.
“The last thing anyone wants is for this COP to end without consensus,” they said, according to Sharma’s office.
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A draft decision proposed by host Egypt for this year’s U.N. climate talks has surprised negotiators who say it includes ideas never previously discussed at the two-week talks.
This includes a call for developed countries to achieve “net-negative carbon emissions by 2030” — a far tougher target than any major nation has so far committed to and which would be very hard to achieve.
Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, say the 20-page draft released early Thursday is far more bloated than what would normally have been expected at this stage of negotiations.
The talks are due to wrap up on Friday but it is not unusual for the annual meeting to go into overtime.
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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BANGKOK — The war in Ukraine, great power rivalry Asia, inflation and food and energy shortages are on the agenda as leaders prepare for the third back-to-back gathering this week, a Pacific-Rim summit taking place in a heavily guarded venue in Thailand’s capital.
Leaders from the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum will meet formally in closed-door sessions Friday and Saturday. For some, it will be at least the third such opportunity for face-to-face talks in the past two weeks, though the U.S. is represented in Bangkok by Vice President Kamala Harris, who is attending instead of President Joe Biden.
APEC’s official mission is to promote regional economic integration. Most of the business conducted happens on the summit’s sidelines in meetings such as a planned meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
The two Asian powers have a history of tense relations, a legacy of Japan’s World War II aggression compounded by territorial disputes and China’s growing military might. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, said the encounter would “carry great importance.”
Xi, Harris and French President Emmanuel Macron will also speak at a business conference held just ahead of the summit meetings that is mostly closed to media apart from outlets sponsoring the event.
The APEC meetings are being held in downtown Bangkok’s main convention center, which is cordoned off with some streets in the area completely closed to all traffic. Rows of riot police stood guard behind the barricades at a major intersection nearby, underscoring host Thailand’s determination to ensure the summit suffers no disruptions.
“The APEC meeting this year takes place amidst a dual jeopardy. We need not be reminded of the severe security conflicts that know not what victory looks like. Meanwhile, the world is staring at the hyper inflation married to recession, a broken supply chain and scarcity and climate calamities,” Don Pramudwinai, Thailand’s foreign minister said in opening a meeting of foreign ministers and commerce ministers who were working on draft statements due to be issued after the summit.
Apparently alluding to Russia and recent condemnation of its war on Ukraine, he also said there was a growing “cancel mentality” that makes “any compromise appear impossible.”
Before the summit, Thai officials said they were hoping to steer APEC toward long-term solutions in various areas, including climate change, economic disruptions and faltering recoveries from the pandemic.
“What we are going to do is to have all economies agree on a set of targets … climate change mitigation, sustainable trade and investment, environment resources conservation and, of course, waste management,” said Cherdchai Chaivaivid, director-general of Thailand’s Department of International Economic Affairs. “This is the first time that APEC is going to talk about this. This is the first time that we are going to open a new chapter in how trade, business, investment should be done.”
APEC’s official mission is to promote regional economic integration, which means setting guidelines for long-term development of a free trade area. Most of its work is technical and incremental, carried out by senior officials and ministers, covering areas such as trade, tourism, forestry, health, food, security, small and medium-size enterprises and women’s empowerment.
Leaders from the 21 economies on both sides of the Pacific Ocean often take the opportunity to conduct bilateral talks and discuss side deals. The Latin American contingent comes from Chile, Mexico and Peru. Other members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Biden are no-shows this year. Putin has been avoiding international forums where he would be showered with criticism over the invasion of Ukraine. Biden will be hosting his granddaughter’s wedding at the White House.
That leaves Chinese leader Xi as the star attendee in Bangkok, where he also is making an official visit to Thailand just after obtaining a rare third term as top leader at a once-in-five years Communist Party congress.
Biden is giving ground to China in the competition for friends and influence in Southeast Asia by skipping the APEC meetings. But U.S. officials say Washington has demonstrated its seriousness in relations with the region through frequent visits by Cabinet members including Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and other key senior officials.
As host, Thailand invited three special guests to the meeting: the French president Macron; Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the prime minister of Saudi Arabia, and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was to represent the Association of Southeast Asian Nations but will not attend after getting COVID-19.
For Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the most welcome visitor may well be the Saudi leader, who is making an official visit to help restore friendly relations with Thailand after decades of disruption due to a theft of Saudi royal jewelry and the unsolved murders of Saudi diplomats in Bangkok.
“This is a good opportunity, that Mohammed bin Salman is visiting Thailand and both countries will resume a good economic relationship after over 30 years,” the chairman of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, Sanan Angubolkul, told The Associated Press. “To have the French president join us also shows how important this region is.”
The war in Ukraine remains a likely thorn in APEC’s consensus-oriented efforts. None of the earlier APEC meetings this year issued statements due to disagreements over whether to mention the conflict.
Like Indonesia, which hosted the Group of 20 summit in Bali this week, and Cambodia, which hosted the ASEAN meetings, Thai officials have put the best possible face on the situation, contending that agreement on other points will allow APEC to move forward regardless.
Skeptics doubt the meeting will accomplish much.
“This APEC is only a photo opportunity for leaders. Its agenda has drawn much less attention than the ASEAN summit and G-20,” Virot Ali, a political scientist at Thailand’s Thammasat University, told The Associated Press.
“I don’t think we will see any progress from APEC. The current geopolitics, trade war, COVID-19, and Russia-Ukraine war are the issues that people are paying more attention to and feeling more impact from,” he said.
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Associated Press journalists Grant Peck and Tassanee Vejpongsa contributed to this report.
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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea launched a short-range ballistic missile Thursday toward its eastern waters, South Korea’s military said, hours after the North threatened to launch “fiercer” military responses to the U.S. bolstering its security commitment to its allies South Korea and Japan.
South Korea’s military detected the launch from the North’s eastern coastal Wonsan area at 10:48 a.m., the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. It said South Korea has boosted its surveillance of North Korea while maintaining a military readiness and a close coordination with the United States.
It was North Korea’s first ballistic missile firing in eight days and the latest in its barrage of tests in recent months. North Korea previously said some of the tests were simulations of nuclear attacks on South Korean and U.S. targets. Many experts say North Korea would eventually want to enhance its nuclear capability to wrest bigger concessions from its rivals.
Earlier Thursday, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui warned that a recent U.S.-South Korea-Japan summit accord on the North would leave tensions on the Korean Peninsula “more unpredictable.”
Choe’s statement was North Korea’s first official response to U.S. President Joe Biden’s trilateral summit with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts on the sidelines of a regional gathering Sunday in Cambodia. In their joint statement, the three leaders strongly condemned North Korea’s recent missile tests and agreed to work together to strengthen deterrence, while Biden reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea and Japan with a full range of capabilities, including its nuclear arms.
“The keener the U.S. is on the ‘bolstered offer of extended deterrence’ to its allies and the more they intensify provocative and bluffing military activities on the Korean Peninsula and in the region, the fiercer (North Korea’s) military counteraction will be, in direct proportion to it,” Choe said. “It will pose a more serious, realistic and inevitable threat to the U.S. and its vassal forces.”
Choe didn’t say what steps North Korea could take but said that “the U.S. will be well aware that it is gambling, for which it will certainly regret.”
South Korea’s Defense Ministry responded later Thursday that the purpose of the trilateral summit was to coordinate a joint response to curb and deter advancing nuclear and missile threats by North Korea. Spokesperson Moon Hong Sik told reporters that security cooperation among Seoul, Washington and Tokyo was contributing to solidifying a U.S. extended deterrence to its allies.
North Korea has steadfastly maintained its recent weapons testing activities are legitimate military counteractions to U.S.-South Korean military drills, which it views as a practice to launch attacks on the North. Washington and Seoul have said their exercises are defensive in nature.
In recent months, South Korean and U.S. troops have expanded their regular exercises and resumed trilateral training with Japan in response to North Korea’s push to enlarge its nuclear and missile arsenals. Those drills involved a U.S. aircraft carrier and U.S. B-1B supersonic bombers for the first time since 2017. In the past several years, annual military training between Seoul and Washington had been scaled back or canceled to support now-dormant diplomacy with North Korea and guard against the COVID-19 pandemic.
In her Thursday statement, Choe said “the U.S. and its followers staged large-scale war drills for aggression one after another, but they failed to contain North Korea’s overwhelming counteraction.”
There have been concerns that North Korea might conduct its first nuclear test in five years as its next major step toward bolstering its military capability against the United States and its allies.
U.S. and South Korean officials say North Korea has finished preparations to conduct a nuclear test explosion in its remote testing facility in the northeast. Some experts say the test, if made, would be meant to develop nuclear warheads to be placed on short-range missiles capable of hitting key targets in South Korea, such as U.S. military bases. They say North Korea would ultimately aim to use its boosted arsenal as a leverage to pressure the United States into making concessions in future negotiations and recognize it as a nuclear state.
Thursday’s launch came a day after members the Group of 20 leading economies ended their summit in Indonesia. The summit was largely overshadowed with other issues like Russia’s war on Ukraine. But Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol used their bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping to raise the issue of North Korea. The two had a trilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and discussed North Korea before coming to Indonesia for the G-20 summit.
In their respective bilateral talks with Xi, Biden noted all members of the international community have an interest in encouraging North Korea to act responsibly, while Yoon called for China to play a more active, constructive role in addressing the North Korean nuclear threats.
China, the North’s last major ally and biggest source of aid, is suspected of avoiding fully enforcing United Nations sanctions on North Korea and shipping clandestine assistance to the North to help its impoverished neighbor stay afloat and continue to serve as a bulwark against U.S. influences on the Korean Peninsula.
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JOHANNESBURG — South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has called for the African Union to be included as a permanent member of the Group of 20 leading economies.
The representation would allow African countries to more effectively press the G-20 group to implement its pledge to help the continent to cope with climate change.
Ramaphosa made the call Tuesday at the G-20 summit in Indonesia. The G-20 meeting is taking place at the same time as the U.N. climate summit in Egypt.
“We call for continued G-20 support for the African Renewable Energy Initiative as a means of bringing clean power to the continent on African terms,” Ramaphosa said.
“This can be best achieved with the African Union joining the G-20 as a permanent member,” he told the gathering.
The African Union represents the continent’s 54 countries. The G-20 is composed of the world’s major industrial and emerging economies and represents more than 80% of the world’s gross domestic product.
Ramaphosa expressed concern at the “lack of progress in key issues” at the multilateral negotiations at the climate conference.
“Industrialized countries in the G-20 need to demonstrate more ambitious climate action and must honor their financial commitments to developing economies,” he said.
South Africa is currently the only African member of the G-20.
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PRZEWODOW, Poland — NATO member Poland and the head of the military alliance both said Wednesday a missile strike in Polish farmland that killed two people did not appear to be an intentional attack, and that air defenses in neighboring Ukraine likely launched the Soviet-era projectile against a Russian bombardment that savaged its power grid.
“Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” said Polish President Andrzej Duda. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, at a meeting of the 30-nation military alliance in Brussels, echoed the preliminary Polish findings, saying: “We have no indication that this was the result of a deliberate attack.”
The initial assessments of Tuesday’s deadly missile landing appeared to dial back the likelihood of the strike triggering another major escalation in the nearly 9-month-old Russian invasion of Ukraine. If Russia had deliberately targeted Poland, that could have risked drawing NATO into the conflict.
Still, Stoltenberg and others laid overall but not specific blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.
“This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears ultimate responsibility,” Stoltenberg said.
Before the Polish and NATO assessments, U.S. President Joe Biden had said it was “unlikely” that Russia fired the missile but added: “I’m going to make sure we find out exactly what happened.”
Three U.S. officials said preliminary assessments suggested it was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian one. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
That assessment and Biden’s comments at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia contradicted information earlier Tuesday from a senior U.S. intelligence official who told The Associated Press that Russian missiles crossed into Poland.
Ukraine, once part of the Soviet Union, maintains stocks of Soviet- and Russian-made weaponry, including air-defense missiles, and has also seized many more Russian weapons while beating back the Kremlin’s invasion forces.
Ukrainian air defenses worked furiously against the Russian assault Tuesday on power generation and transmission facilities, including in Ukraine’s western region that borders Poland. Ukraine’s military said 77 of the more than 90 missiles fired were brought down, along with 11 drones.
Russia said it didn’t launch the missile. A Defense Ministry spokesman said no Russian strike Tuesday was closer than 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the Ukraine-Poland border. The Kremlin denounced Poland’s and other countries’ initial response and, in rare praise for a U.S. leader, hailed Biden’s “restrained, much more professional reaction.”
“We have witnessed another hysterical, frenzied, Russo-phobic reaction that was not based on any real data,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Still, Ukraine was under countrywide Russian bombardment Tuesday by barrages of cruise missiles and exploding drones, which clouded the initial picture of what exactly happened in Poland and why.
The Polish president said the projectile was “most probably” a Russian-made S-300 missile dating from the Soviet era.
“It was a huge blast, the sound was terrifying.” said Ewa Byra, the primary school director in the eastern village of Przewodow, where the missile struck. She said she knew both men who were killed — one was the husband of a school employee, the other the father of a former pupil.
In Europe, NATO members Germany and the U.K. laced calls for a through investigation with criticism of Moscow.
“This wouldn’t have happened without the Russian war against Ukraine, without the missiles that are now being fired at Ukrainian infrastructure intensively and on a large scale,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “This is the cruel and unrelenting reality of Putin’s war.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it “a very significant escalation.” On the other end of the spectrum, China called for calm and restraint.
Damage in Ukraine from the aerial assault was extensive and swaths of the country were without power. Zelenskyy said about 10 million people lost electricity but tweeted overnight that 8 million were subsequently reconnected, with repair crews laboring through the night. Previous Russian strikes had already destroyed an estimated 40% of the country’s energy infrastructure.
The Russian bombardment also affected neighboring Moldova. It reported massive power outages after the strikes in Ukraine disconnected a power line to the small nation.
Tuesday’s assaults killed one person in a residential building in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. It followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes — the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.
With its battlefield losses mounting, Russia has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine’s power grid, seemingly hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark.
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AP journalists Vanessa Gera and Monika Scislowska in Warsaw; Lorne Cook in Brussels; John Leicester in Kyiv, Ukraine; Zeke Miller in Nusa Dua, Indonesia; Michael Balsamo and Lolita Baldor in Washington, James LaPorta in Wilmington, North Carolina, contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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BEIJING — U.S., Japanese, Australian and Canadian warships are currently staging extensive joint drills in Japanese and international waters, the U.S. Navy said Wednesday.
Without mentioning China directly, the 7th Fleet said the two-week biennial “Keen Sword” exercises include scenarios designed to “challenge the critical capabilities required to support the defense of Japan and stability of the Indo-Pacific region.”
Growing Chinese assertiveness is seen by the U.S. and its allies as the key military challenge in the region.
The drills also come as heads of the Group of 20 leading economies were meeting in Indonesia, among other high-profile regional forums.
The G-20 gathering allowed the first face-to-face meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping since Biden took office, leading to hopes of a start of a reduction of tensions that have lately spiked over trade, technology and Taiwan.
The drills include extensive anti-submarine warfare drills, and the guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold fired its 5-inch gun on Sunday as part of live-firing exercises, the 7th fleet said in a statement. Three Japanese destroyers, two Canadian frigates and one Australian destroyer also took part, it said.
Participation by the Australian and Canadian navies this year helped “enhance readiness and interoperability to support the security interests of allies and partners in the region,” it said.
“Regional security is a team effort now more than ever,” Cmdr. Marcus Seeger, commanding officer of the Benfold, said in the statement. “We share a sense of collective resolve. The first wave of crisis response will share the same allies present in this year’s Keen Sword.”
China has the world’s largest navy by number of ships, which it has been using to assert its claim to virtually the entire South China Sea, a crucial route for global trade.
China has eschewed formal alliances but has taken part in some multinational drills on a very limited level. It has established its first overseas base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti and is believed to be working with Cambodia on establishing another such facility facing the Gulf of Thailand. Both countries have denied the allegation.
China has also signed a security agreement with Solomon Islands, raising concerns that Chinese forces will gain a foothold in the South Pacific.
Mutual exchanges between China and the U.S. have been especially tricky for reasons including deep mutual suspicion and Washington’s support for Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory to be brought under its control by force if necessary.
China reacts strongly when the U.S. sails naval ships close to Chinese-held islands in the South China Sea, many of which Beijing has equipped with landing strips and other military facilities.
Attempts to implement agreements on avoiding unexpected incidents at sea and in the air have had limited success, and the U.S. disinvited China from a major biennial exercise known as Rim of the Pacific because of the militarization of its South China Sea islands.
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