GENEVA (AP) — Indonesia was stripped of hosting rights for the Under-20 World Cup on Wednesday only eight weeks before the start of the tournament amid political turmoil regarding Israel’s participation.
FIFA said Indonesia was removed from staging the 24-team tournament scheduled to start on May 20 “due to the current circumstances” without specifying details.
The decision followed a meeting in Doha, Qatar between Indonesian soccer federation president Erick Thohir and Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, soccer’s world governing body.
Israel qualified in June of last year for its first Under-20 World Cup. But the country’s participation in the official draw for tournament groups, scheduled to be held Friday in Bali, provoked political opposition this month.
Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation and does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel, while publicly supporting the Palestinian cause.
Indonesia’s host status for the tournament was cast into doubt last Sunday when FIFA postponed the draw.
It is unclear who could now host the tournament, which was scheduled to be played in six stadiums in Indonesia. Argentina, which did not qualify for the tournament, is reportedly interested in hosting.
“A new host will be announced as soon as possible, with the dates of the tournament currently remaining unchanged,” FIFA said.
The Indonesian soccer federation could be further disciplined by FIFA. A suspension could remove Indonesia from Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The continental qualifiers start in October.
FIFA seemed to remove all blame Wednesday from Thohir, the former president of Italian club Inter Milan — the team Infantino supports — and a former co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers.
FIFA staff will continue to work in Indonesia in the months ahead, the governing body said, “under the leadership of President Thohir.”
Thohir said as a member of FIFA, Indonesia had little choice but to accept the decision.
“I have tried my best,” he said in a statement. “After delivering a letter from President Joko Widodo and discussing it at length with the President of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, we must accept FIFA’s decision to cancel the holding of the event that we are both looking forward to.”
He said although he’d conveyed all the concerns and hopes of Indonesia’s president, soccer lovers as well as the players from the Under-20 Indonesian national team, “FIFA considered that the current situation cannot be continued.”
Soccer and public authorities in Indonesia agreed to FIFA’s hosting requirements in 2019 before being selected to stage the 2021 edition of the Under-20 World Cup. The coronavirus pandemic forced the tournament to be postponed for two years.
However, the removal of the hosting rights by FIFA has raised concerns within Indonesian soccer.
Arya Sinulingga, an executive committee member of Indonesia’s national soccer association PSSI, was concerned about further repercussions.
“This is a sign that we are not able to carry out what has been asked (by FIFA) … among other things that there should be no discrimination,” Sinulingga said in an interview with a local television, “What we are most worried about right now is that we will be ostracized from international events, especially from world soccer activities.”
He said that “it can happen and it will be very detrimental to us in many ways.”
“We have something that is bigger than losing our right to host the Under-20 World Cup. We have to face it in the near future, and that could effect the future of our sport,” Sinulingga said, “We are now fighting not to get sanctioned, but people should know … this is too hard.”
Israel qualified for the tournament by reaching the semifinals of the Under-19 European Championship. The team went on to lose to England in that final.
Israel plays in Europe as a member of UEFA after leaving the Asian Football Confederation in the 1970s for political and security reasons.
FIFA bills the men’s Under-20 World Cup as “the tournament of tomorrow’s superstars.”
Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi and Paul Pogba are previous winners of the official player of the tournament award, and Erling Haaland was the top scorer at the 2019 edition.
___
Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini and Edna Tarigan contributed to this report from Jakarta, Indonesia.
___
More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
BERLIN (AP) — Lufthansa’s operations were disrupted Sunday at Frankfurt airport because of technical problems, German news agency dpa reported.
Check-in systems on the airline’s website and at the counter, as well as boarding, were affected at Germany’s biggest airport, a Lufthansa spokeswoman told dpa. Some flights were delayed or would have to be canceled because of the problems.
Check-in was still possible using cellphone browsers on smartphones or tablets, and the Lufthansa app.
The technical problems were caused by external IT service providers, dpa reported. Lufthansa asked travelers to check the status of their flights and said it was working with “high-pressure” to resolve the issues.
Sunday’s problems came a day before a national strike in Germany is set to bring the country’s traffic to a standstill with airport, train and public transportation employees all protesting for higher salaries in a one-day walkout on Monday.
Air traffic was already canceled on Sunday at Germany’s second-biggest airport in Munich because of the upcoming strike.
BERLIN (AP) — An increased number of travelers in Germany boarded trains and planes on Sunday, a day before a major one-day strike that aims to bring the country’s transportation system to a standstill.
But even advance travel was met with disruption in some places as Munich airport already shut down because of the impending strike on Monday, and technical problems affecting German airline Lufthansa in Frankfurt led to flight delays and cancellations at the country’s biggest airport.
Munich Airport, the country’s second-busiest, said that the ver.di union was hitting it with two days of strikes and it has no regular passenger or cargo flights on either Sunday or Monday. A total of around 1,500 connections were affected, and takeoffs and landings were only possible for emergency humanitarian flights, German news agency dpa reported.
German unions have called on thousands of workers across the country’s transportation system to stage a one-day strike as employees in many sectors are seeking hefty raises to reflect persistently high inflation.
Ver.di chair Frank Werneke said last week that the service workers’ union is calling for 120,000 workers to walk out. Those will include security and ground workers at all German airports except in Berlin, local transit employees in seven of Germany’s 16 states, harbor employees and workers on highways — the latter a measure that Werneke said is likely to affect some tunnels.
The EVG union, which represents many railway workers, is calling for 230,000 workers at Germany’s main railway operator, government-owned Deutsche Bahn, and others to walk out.
Ver.di is engaged in a series of pay negotiations, notably for employees of Germany’s federal and municipal governments. In that case, it is seeking a 10.5% pay raise. Employers have offered a total of 5% in two stages plus one-time payments of 2,500 euros ($2,700).
It already has staged a series of one-day walkouts at individual airports and in public services, including local transit.
EVG is seeking a raise of 12%. Deutsche Bahn also has offered a two-stage raise totaling 5% plus one-time payments.
BERLIN (AP) — Trains, planes and public transit systems stood still across much of Germany on Monday as labor unions called a major one-day strike over salaries in an effort to win inflation-busting raises for their members.
The 24-hour walkout — one of the biggest in decades — also affected cargo transport by rail and ship, as workers at the country’s ports and waterways joined the strike.
Many commuters opted to drive to work, causing some delays on the roads, while those who could worked from home.
Unions are seeking a pay increase of at least 10.5% and have dismissed offers from employers of about 5% over two years plus one-off payments.
High inflation also seen elsewhere last year has hit many workers hard, said Ulrich Silberbach of the Civil Service Federation.
“We have recorded drops in real wages and these need to be balanced out,” he told reporters in Berlin, adding that some of his union’s members in larger cities are having to apply for state benefits to afford rent.
Silberbach said that he hoped employers would increase their offer in upcoming talks — otherwise, unions might have to consider an open-ended strike.
His colleague Martin Burkert from the EVG rail union lamented that workers’ pay is a fraction of what some top managers earn.
But rail company Deutsche Bahn called the union’s demands exaggerated and warned that millions of commuters would be affected.
“Thousands of companies that normally send or receive their goods by rail will also suffer,” Deutsche Bahn spokesman Achim Strauss said. “The environment and the climate will also suffer in the end. Today’s winners are the oil companies.”
Train tickets that couldn’t be used because of the disruption will remain valid and travelers should check the company’s website for updates, he said.
Three days of talks are scheduled between the two sides. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who represents the federal government in the negotiations, said her side would engage in the discussions in a “tough but also fair and constructive” fashion.
Faeser said she was confident that a good solution can be reached.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — China’s global campaign to win friends and influence policy has blossomed in a surprising place: Utah, a deeply religious and conservative state with few obvious ties to the world’s most powerful communist country.
An investigation by The Associated Press has found that China and its U.S.-based advocates spent years building relationships with the state’s officials and lawmakers. Those efforts have paid dividends at home and abroad, the AP found: Lawmakers delayed legislation Beijing didn’t like, nixed resolutions that conveyed displeasure with its actions and expressed support in ways that enhanced the Chinese government’s image.
Its work in Utah is emblematic of a broader effort by Beijing to secure allies at the local level as its relations with the U.S. and its western allies have turned acrimonious. U.S. officials say local leaders are at risk of being manipulated by China and have deemed the influence campaign a threat to national security.
Beijing’s success in Utah shows “how pervasive and persistent China has been in trying to influence America,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired FBI counterintelligence agent who lives in Utah.
“Utah is an important foothold,” he said. “If the Chinese can succeed in Salt Lake City, they can also make it in New York and elsewhere.”
Security experts say that China’s campaign is widespread and tailored to local communities. In Utah, the AP found, Beijing and pro-China advocates appealed to lawmakers’ affiliations with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon church, which is the state’s dominant religion and one that has long dreamed of expanding in China.
Beijing’s campaign in Utah has raised concerns among state and federal lawmakers and drawn the attention of the Justice Department.
A state legislator told the AP he was interviewed by the FBI after introducing a resolution in 2020 expressing solidarity with China early in the coronavirus pandemic. A Utah professor who has advocated for closer ties between Washington and Beijing told the AP he’s been questioned by the FBI twice. The FBI declined to comment.
‘DECEPTIVE AND COERCIVE’
Beijing’s interest in locally focused influence campaigns is not a secret. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, said during a trip to the U.S. in 2015 that “without successful cooperation at the sub-national level it would be very difficult to achieve practical results for cooperation at the national level.”
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington told the AP that China “values its relationship with Utah” and any “words and deeds that stigmatize and smear these sub-national exchanges are driven by ulterior political purposes.”
It is not unusual for countries, including the U.S., to engage in local diplomacy. U.S. officials and security experts have stressed that many Chinese language and cultural exchanges have no hidden agendas. However, they said, few nations have so aggressively courted local leaders in ways that raise national security concerns.
In its annual threat assessment released earlier this month, the U.S. intelligence community reported that China is “redoubling” its local influence campaigns in the face of stiffening resistance at the national level. Beijing believes, the report said, that “local officials are more pliable than their federal counterparts.”
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center in July warned state and local officials about “deceptive and coercive” Chinese influence operations. And FBI Director Christopher Wray last year accused China of seeking to “cultivate talent early—often state and local officials—to ensure that politicians at all levels of government will be ready to take a call and advocate on behalf of Beijing’s agenda.”
Those concerns have arisen amid escalating disputes between the U.S. and China over trade, human rights, the future of Taiwan and China’s tacit support for Russia during its invasion of Ukraine. Tensions worsened last month when a suspected Chinese spy balloon was discovered and shot down in U.S. airspace.
LEGISLATIVE AND PR VICTORIES
U.S. officials have provided scant details about which states and localities the Chinese government has targeted. The AP focused its investigation on Utah because China appears to have cultivated a significant number of allies in the state and its advocates are well-known to lawmakers.
Relying on dozens of interviews with key players and the review of hundreds of pages of records, text messages and emails obtained through public records’ requests, the AP found China won frequent legislative and public relations victories in Utah.
China-friendly lawmakers, for example, delayed action for a year to ban Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes at state universities, according to the legislation’s sponsor. The Chinese language and cultural programs have been described by U.S. national security officials as propaganda instruments. The University of Utah and Southern Utah University closed their institutes by last year.
00:00
<p>AP correspondent Sam Metz reports that despite warnings that cultural exchanges could be aimed at manipulating lawmakers, China has been customizing its approach in Utah, forming ties with leaders affiliated with the Mormon church.</p>
In 2020, China scored an image-boosting coup when Xi sent a note to a class of Utah fourth-graders thanking them for cards they’d sent wishing him a happy Chinese New Year. He encouraged them to “become young ‘ambassadors’ for Sino-American friendship.”
Emails obtained by the AP show the Chinese Embassy and the students’ Chinese teacher coordinated the letter exchange, which resulted in heavy coverage by state-controlled media in China.
A Chinese state media outlet reported the Utah students jubilantly exclaimed: “Grandpa Xi really wrote back to me. He’s so cool!” Portraying China’s most authoritarian leader in decades as a kindly grandfather is a familiar trope in Chinese propaganda.
Xi’s letter garnered positive attention in Utah, too. A Republican legislator said on the state Senate floor that he “couldn’t help but think how amazing it was” that the Chinese leader took the time to write such a “remarkable” letter. Another GOP senator gushed on his conservative radio show that Xi’s letter “was so kind and so personal.”
Dakota Cary, a China expert at the security firm Krebs Stamos Group, said in making such comments Utah lawmakers are “essentially acting as mouthpieces for the Chinese Communist Party” and legitimizing their ideas and narratives.
“Statements like these are exactly what China’s goal is for influence campaigns,” he said.
SPY AGENCY INTEREST
China’s interest in Utah is not limited to its officials and advocates who are engaged in diplomacy, trade and education. U.S. officials have noted that China’s civilian spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), has shown an interest in Utah, court records show.
In January, former graduate student Ji Chaoqun was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges related to spying for China. The Chicago student told an undercover agent he’d been tasked by his spy handlers “to meet people, some American friends.” He was baptized at a Latter-day Saints church and told the undercover agent he’d “been going to Utah more often lately” before his arrest, according to his Facebook page and court records.
Ron Hansen, a former U.S. intelligence official from Utah, pleaded guilty to trying to sell classified information to China. Hansen said China’s spy service had tasked him with assessing various U.S. politicians’ views towards China. The FBI found the names of Utah elected officials among sensitive files he stored on his laptop, court records show. Hansen was sentenced in 2019 to serve 10 years in federal prison.
Hansen was well known in Utah political circles and helped organize the first ever annual U.S.-China National Governors Forum, which was held in 2011 in Salt Lake City, according to court records and interviews. The U.S. State Department cancelled the forums in 2020 due to concerns about Chinese influence efforts.
‘UTAH IS NOT LIKE WASHINGTON D.C.’
The AP found groups of up to 25 Utah lawmakers routinely took trips to China every other year since 2007. Lawmakers have partially used campaign donations to pay for the trade missions and cultural exchanges, while relying on China and host organizations to pay for other expenses.
On the trips, they’ve forged relationships with government officials and were quoted in Chinese state-owned media in ways that support Beijing’s agenda.
“Utah is not like Washington D.C.,” then Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes, a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, told the Chinese state media outlet in 2018 as the former president ratcheted up pressure on Beijing over trade. “Utah is a friend of China, an old friend with a long history.”
In an interview last month with the AP, Hughes said the trips to China made him “bullish” about the country and prospects of improving trade. However, he said he now believes the visits were pretexts for Chinese officials to influence him and other lawmakers.
“It’s a trip not worth taking,” Hughes said.
Utah doesn’t require public officials to report in detail their foreign travel or personal finances, so it’s difficult to determine lawmaker’s financial ties to China. Some of Utah’s most pro-China legislators, however, have China-related personal business connections.
Sen. Curt Bramble told Courthouse News Service last year that his role as a part-time legislator and as a business consultant sometimes overlap and that he “had clients in China — a dozen at times — some of them on legislative tours, some on consulting.”
In an interview with AP, Bramble said none of his clients are based in China; they only do business there. He declined to name them.
Bramble, a Republican who represents a conservative district, also rejected fears of undue Chinese influence in Utah.
“China’s not going anywhere. China’s going to be a world force. They’re going to be a player for the foreseeable future and trying to understand what that implies for the United States or for the state of Utah and get a concept of that seems to be a valuable endeavor,” he said.
TIES FORGED BY TWO UTAH RESIDENTS
Many of the Utah-China ties have been forged by two state residents with links to the Chinese government or to organizations that experts say are alleged front groups for China, including its civilian spy agency, the AP found.
The two men advocated for and against resolutions, set up meetings between Utah lawmakers and Chinese officials, accompanied legislators on trips to China and provided advice on the best way to cultivate favor with Beijing, according to emails and interviews.
In reviewing the AP’s findings, legal experts said the men’s connections with Chinese officials suggest that they should register with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA. The law generally requires anyone who works on behalf of a foreign entity to influence lawmakers or public perception, but its scope is the subject of significant debate and enforcement has been uneven.
“If I were representing either of these individuals, I would have significant concerns about FARA exposure,” said Joshua Ian Rosenstein, an attorney who handles such matters.
One of the men, Taowen Le, has championed China to religious and political leaders in Utah for decades. Le, a Chinese citizen, moved to Utah in the 1980s and has been a professor of information technology at Weber State University since 1998. Le converted in 1990 to the Mormon faith.
From 2003 through 2017, Le had another job — as a paid representative of China’s Liaoning provincial government. Provincial governments are largely controlled by Beijing and Liaoning has had a longstanding “sister” relationship with Utah.
Le’s advocacy continued after he said he left Liaoning’s payroll, emails and interviews show. He has frequently forwarded messages from Chinese government officials to Utah lawmakers and helped the Chinese Embassy set up meetings with state officials.
After embassy officials tried unsuccessfully last year to get staff for Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to schedule a get-together with China’s ambassador to the U.S., Le sent the governor a personal plea to take the meeting.
“I still remember and cherish what you told me at the New Year Party held at your home,” Le wrote in a letter adorned with pictures of him and Cox posing together. “You told me that you trusted me to be a good messenger and friendship builder between Utah and China.”
State Senate President Stuart Adams turned to Le when Utah was scrambling to obtain large quantities of drugs that Adams thought could be used as potential treatment against the coronavirus in early 2020, emails and interviews show.
Le, who belongs to the same congregation as Adams, said in an email to another lawmaker that he was able to get the Chinese Embassy to assign two staffers to work “tirelessly” on the request until it was fulfilled.
RELIGIOUS SALES PITCH
A hallmark of Le’s approach is to utilize his religion in his pitches to lawmakers. He quoted scripture from the Bible and the Book of Mormon in his emails, text messages and letters, and sprinkled in positive comments that Russell Nelson, the church’s president-prophet, has made about China.
Chinese officials have tried to cultivate friendly ties with the church. When visiting Utah, China’s diplomats and officials often meet top church members as well as lawmakers, emails and other records show.
Expanding to China has been a top goal for the church, which plays a heavy role in Utah politics and the state’s overall identity. Many of the state’s residents lived abroad as missionaries, and several of Utah’s public schools have robust K-12 Chinese immersion programs.
While the church has historically been an outspoken advocate for religious freedom, Le sought to stop Utah lawmakers from supporting religious figures or groups discriminated against by the Chinese government.
When a Utah lawmaker sponsored a resolution in 2021 condemning China’s well-documented and brutal crackdown of its minority Muslim Uighurs, Le chastised the legislator in text messages and compared unflattering media coverage of the Chinese government to that of the church’s founder, Joseph Smith Jr.
“Pray to God and seek guidance from the Holy Spirit as you ponder about these issues instead of solely relying on those biased media reports,” Le said.
The resolution failed that year and a similar one introduced in January did not receive a hearing.
CHINA’S ‘ADVANTAGES’
Le has served as a board member of the China Overseas Friendship Association, which has ties to the United Front Work Department — a Chinese Communist Party organization the U.S. government says engages in covert and malign foreign influence operations.
A United Front publication profiled Le in 2020 after he attended a meeting in Beijing of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a prestigious advisory body controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Le told the AP he was interviewed by the FBI in 2007 and 2018 about his Chinese government ties. He said his advocacy has always been self-directed.
“I don’t consider myself a lobbyist because I’m not a lobbyist. I’m just someone who cherishes the relationship between the U.S. and China,” Le said in an interview in his Weber State office.
Adams, the Senate president, said he feels otherwise.
“I do believe he’s lobbying,” Adams said. “He advocates very hard on China.”
LAWMAKER’S SON TURNED CHINA ADVOCATE
Another Utah resident whom lawmakers said regularly has advocated better relations with China was Dan Stephenson, the son of a former state senator and employee of a China-based consulting firm.
Emails and other records show Stephenson advised the Utah senate president on how to make a good impression with a Chinese ambassador and assisted a Chinese province in its unsuccessful efforts to build a ceramics museum in Utah.
Stephenson has promoted China in Utah for several years and has boasted of being well connected with government officials there.
“I’ve heard more than once from the mouths of Chinese government officials that China is prioritizing their relationship with Utah,” Stephenson told lawmakers at a committee hearing. That testimony came shortly after Stephenson accompanied Republican state Sen. Jake Anderegg on a trip to Shanghai and Beijing that included meetings with officials at China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A few months after that trip, Stephenson provided Anderegg with the draft language for a pro-China resolution the state senator introduced in 2020 expressing solidarity with China during the pandemic, Anderegg told the AP.
The resolution passed with near unanimous approval.
A Chinese diplomat’s efforts to win passage of a similar resolution in Wisconsin failed, with the state’s senate president publicly blasting it as a piece of propaganda.
Anderegg told the AP that he was interviewed by FBI agents seeking information about the Utah resolution’s origins.
“It seemed rather innocuous to me,” Anderegg said of his resolution. “But maybe it wasn’t.”
Stephenson said the FBI has not contacted him and no Chinese government official played a role in the resolution.
TIES TO ALLEGED FRONT GROUPS
Stephenson has links to Chinese groups allegedly active in covert foreign influence operations, documents show.
He is a partner in the Shanghai-based consulting firm Economic Bridge International. The company’s chief executive, William Wang, is a Chinese citizen and council member of the China Friendship Foundation for Peace and Development, according to an online biography. The group is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front.
Stephenson, also once worked for the China Academy of Painting, which has been used by China’s Ministry of State Security as a front for meeting and covertly influencing elites and officials abroad, according to Alex Joske, the author of the recently published book “Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World.”
Stephenson said he worked only briefly — without pay — for the China Academy of Painting. He added he did not witness any spy agency involvement.
WORK ALIGNED WITH CHINESE GOVERNMENT’S DESIRES
Stephenson said he’s never taken any action at the direction of the Chinese government and never accepted compensation from it.
“I work to promote Utah’s economy, to help American companies succeed in China, and to encourage healthy people-to-people and commercial ties,” Stephenson said.
His work sometimes aligned with what Chinese government officials were seeking and in ways experts say likely helped the Chinese Communist Party’s messaging.
Stephenson urged Utah’s elected officials to make videos to air on Shanghai television to boost the spirits of that city’s residents early in 2020 as they battled COVID-19, according to emails obtained by AP.
“You cannot buy this type of positive publicity for Utah in China,” Stephenson said in an email pitching the videos.
The request originated with the Shanghai government, according to Stephenson’s email, and came as officials in China were scrambling to tamp down public fury at communist authorities for reprimanding a young doctor, who later died, over his repeated warnings about the disease’s dangers.
Many lawmakers recorded videos reading sample scripts Stephenson provided, and a compilation of those videos was uploaded to a Chinese social media website. The compilation ends with dozens of lawmakers in unison shouting “jiayou!”- a Chinese expression of encouragement — on the Utah House and Senate floors.
___
Suderman reported from Washington. AP writer Fu Ting in Washington contributed to this story.
Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.
NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s top opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said he was being targeted because he has raised serious questions about Modi’s relationship with the Indian business conglomerate Adani Group.
Gandhi said the objective of his expulsion from Parliament on Friday was to prevent him from speaking in the legislature about his allegation of an infusion of an unaccounted $3 billion into shell companies owned by the Adani Group, headed by Gautam Adani.
”Some of these defense companies are working in drone and missile development and ordnance production. Why is the defense ministry not asking questions,” he said.
Gandhi was expelled from Parliament a day after a court convicted him of defamation and sentenced him to two years in prison for mocking the surname Modi in an election speech.
The actions against Gandhi, the great-grandson of India’s first prime minister, were widely condemned by opponents of Modi as the latest assaults against democracy and free speech by a ruling government seeking to crush dissent. Removing Gandhi from politics delivered a major blow to the opposition party he led ahead of next year’s national elections.
Gandhi said he was not bothered about losing his seat in Parliament. “My job is to defend the institutions of the country and the voice of people,” he added.
A court in the western Indian city of Surat also sentenced him to two years in prison on Thursday. But he won’t go to jail immediately as the court granted bail for 30 days to file an appeal against the verdict.
The court convicted Gandhi for a 2019 speech in which he asked, “Why do all thieves have Modi as their surname?” Gandhi then referred to three well-known and unrelated Modis in the speech: a fugitive Indian diamond tycoon, a cricket executive banned from the Indian Premier League tournament and the prime minister.
On Saturday, Gandhi didn’t indicate how soon his legal team will approach an appeals court seeking to overturn his conviction so he could save his seat in Parliament.
He accused Modi of helping the Adani Group to get contracts in India, Sri Lanka, and Australia.
He also alleged that a Chinese national was involved in investments in Adani’s shell companies. “Why nobody is asking the question who this Chinese national is,” he said. ”Nobody knows where this money has come from. Adani couldn’t generate this money.”
Gandhi has demanded a parliamentary committee probe following a report by Hindenburg Research, the U.S. financial research firm, accusing the Adani Group of stock price manipulation and fraud running into billions of dollars. The Adani Group has denied any wrongdoing and the Modi government has not accepted a call for a parliamentary investigation.
Soon after Gandhi’s news conference, Ravi Shankar Prasad, a top leader of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, rejected Gandhi’s accusations and said his disqualification from Parliament had nothing to do with the Adani Group controversy.
Since Modi became prime minister in 2014, Adani’s net worth has shot up nearly 2,000% to $125 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. He surpassed Amazon boss Jeff Bezos to briefly become the world’s second richest man in September after a surge in the value of his seven listed entities.
Adani’s businesses have won multibillion-dollar contracts to build ports, highways and power plants. The industrialist’s ambitions include developing drones and ammunition, key to the government’s goal of boosting military-related exports to $5 billion while slashing costs for expensive imports.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made a surprise visit Tuesday to Kyiv, engaging in dueling diplomacy with Asian rival President Xi Jinping of China, who met in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin to promote Beijing’s peace proposal for Ukraine that Western nations have all but dismissed as a non-starter.
The two visits, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) apart, highlighted how countries are lining up behind Moscow or Kyiv during the nearly 13-month-old war. Kishida, who will chair the Group of Seven summit in May, became the group’s last member to visit Ukraine and meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after paying tribute to those killed in Bucha, a town that became a symbol of Russian atrocities against civilians.
Xi and Putin announced no major progress toward implementing the Chinese peace deal, although the Russian leader said it could be a basis for ending the fighting when the West is ready. He added that Kyiv’s Western allies have shown no interest in that.
U.S. officials have said any peace plan coming from the Putin-Xi meeting would be unacceptable because a cease-fire would only ratify Moscow’s territorial conquests and give Russia time to plan for a renewed offensive.
“It looks like the West indeed intends to fight Russia until the last Ukrainian,” Putin said, adding the latest threat is a British plan to give Ukraine tank rounds containing depleted uranium.
“If that happens, Russia will respond accordingly, given that the collective West is starting to use weapons with a nuclear component,” he said, without elaborating. Putin has occasionally warned that Russia would use all available means, including possibly nuclear weapons, to defend itself, but also has sometimes backed off such threats.
Putin’s comment referred to remarks Monday by U.K junior Defense Minister Annabel Goldie, who wrote: “Alongside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition, including armor-piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium. Such rounds are highly effective in defeating modern tanks and armored vehicles.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the plan shows that the British “have lost the bearings,” and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said “it marked another step, and there aren’t so many of them left.”
But weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, former commander of Britain’s Royal Tank Regiment, said it was “reckless” of Putin “to try and suggest Britain is sending nuclear material” to Ukraine. He said depleted uranium is a common component of tank rounds, possibly even used by Russia.
“Putin insinuating that they are some sort of nuclear weapon is bonkers,” he told The Associated Press. “Depleted uranium is completely inert. There is no way that you could create a nuclear reaction or a nuclear explosion with depleted uranium.”
Beijing insists it is a neutral broker in Ukraine, and Xi said after his talks with Putin: “We adhere to a principled and objective position on the Ukrainian crisis based on the goals and principles of the U.N. Charter.” The Chinese plan seeks to “actively encourage peace and the resumption of talks,” he said.
In a joint statement, Russia and China emphasized the need to “respect legitimate security concerns of all countries” to settle the conflict, echoing Moscow’s argument that it sent in troops to prevent the U.S. and its NATO allies from turning the country into an anti-Russian bulwark.
“Russia welcomes China’s readiness to play a positive role in the political and diplomatic settlement of the Ukrainian crisis” and the “constructive ideas” contained in Beijing’s peace plan, the statement said. It added: “The parties underline that a responsible dialogue offers the best path for a lasting settlement … and the international community should support constructive efforts in this regard.”
After meeting Kishida, Zelenskyy told reporters his team had sent his own peace formula to China but hasn’t heard back, adding that there were “some signals, but nothing concrete about the possibility of a dialogue.”
Kishida called Russia’s invasion a “disgrace that undermines the foundations of the international legal order” and pledged to “continue to support Ukraine until peace is back on the beautiful Ukrainian lands.”
Hours before Xi and Putin dined at a state dinner in glittering Kremlin opulence, Kishida laid flowers at a church in Bucha for the town’s victims.
“Upon this visit to Bucha, I feel a strong resentment against cruelty,” he said. “I would like to represent the people in Japan, and express my deepest condolences to those who lost their loved ones, were injured as a result of this cruel act.”
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel noted the “two very different European-Pacific partnerships” that unfolded Tuesday.
“Kishida stands with freedom, and Xi stands with a war criminal,” Emanuel tweeted, referring to Friday’s decision by the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Putin, saying it wanted to put him on trial for the abductions of thousands of children from Ukraine.
Kyiv’s allies pledged more support. Washington is accelerating its delivery of Abrams tanks to Ukraine, sending a refurbished older version that can be ready faster, the Pentagon announced. The aim is to get the 70-ton behemoths to the war zone by fall.
The Russia-China front against the West was a prominent theme of Xi’s visit. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov accused NATO of seeking to become the world’s dominant military force. “That is why we are expanding our cooperation with China, including in the security sphere,” he said.
Putin is keen to show he has a heavyweight ally and market for Russian energy products under Western sanctions. He and Xi signed agreements on economic cooperation, noting Russian-Chinese trade rose by 30% last year to $185 billion and is expected to top $200 billion this year.
Russia stands “ready to meet the Chinese economy’s growing demand for energy resources” by boosting deliveries of oil and gas, he said, while listing other areas of cooperation, including aircraft and shipbuilding industries and other high-tech sectors.
Whether China will provide military support is a key question. Western officials “have seen some signs” Putin also wants lethal weapons from Beijing, though there is no evidence it has granted his request, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels.
Further contacts are planned. Xi said he invited Putin to China this year to discuss a regional initiative that seeks to extend Beijing’s influence through economic cooperation.
Moscow and Beijing have both weathered international condemnation of their human rights records. The Chinese government is accused of atrocities against Uighur Muslims in its far western Xinjiang region. The allegations include genocide, forced sterilization and the mass detention of nearly 1 million Uighurs. Beijing has denied the allegations. Russia has been accused of war crimes in Ukraine, charges it denies.
Both China and Japan have enjoyed recent diplomatic successes that emboldened their foreign policy.
Japan, which has engaged in territorial disputes over islands with both China and Russia, is particularly concerned about the Beijing-Moscow relationship. Both nations have conducted joint military exercises near Japan’s coasts.
Beijing’s diplomatic foray follows its recent success in brokering a deal between Iran and its chief Middle Eastern rival, Saudi Arabia, to restore relations after years of tensions. The move displayed China’s influence in a region where Washington has long been the major foreign player.
Kishida became Japan’s first postwar leader to enter a war zone.
Due to its pacifist principles, Japan’s support for Ukraine has been limited to nonlethal equipment and humanitarian supplies. It has contributed more than $7 billion to Ukraine and accepted more than 2,000 displaced Ukrainians, despite its strict immigration policy.
Tokyo joined the U.S. and European nations in sanctioning Russia over the invasion. By contrast, China has refused to condemn Moscow’s aggression and criticized Western sanctions against Moscow, while accusing NATO and Washington of provoking Putin’s military action.
Japan fears the possible impact of a war in East Asia, where China’s military has grown increasingly assertive and has escalated tensions around self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory.
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said of Kishida’s trip: “We hope Japan could do more things to deescalate the situation instead of the opposite.”
___
Associated Press writers Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo, Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Jill Lawless in London contributed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is putting out the word that planned stopovers in the United States by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in the coming weeks fall in line with recent precedent and should not be used as a pretext by China to step up aggressive activity in the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan’s office of the president confirmed on Tuesday that Tsai is tentatively scheduled to transit through New York on March 30 before heading to Guatemala and Belize. She’s expected to stop in Los Angeles on April 5 on her way back to Taiwan. The office did not provide details of her itinerary while in the U.S.
Ahead of Taiwan’s announcement, senior U.S. officials in Washington and Beijing have underscored to their Chinese counterparts in recent weeks that transit visits through the United States during broader international travel by the Taiwanese president have been routine over the years, according to a senior administration official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
In such unofficial visits in recent years, Tsai has met with members of Congress and the Taiwanese diaspora and has been welcomed by the chairperson of the American Institute in Taiwan, the U.S. government-run nonprofit that carries out unofficial relations with Taiwan. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the planned stopovers—administration officials stress they are not official visits—are “business as usual” and consistent with longstanding U.S. policy.
“There’s no reason for China to overreact,” Kirby said about the expected unofficial visit. “Heck, there’s no reason for China to react.”
Tsai transited through the United States six times between 2016 and 2019 before slowing international travel with the coronavirus pandemic. In reaction to those visits, China rhetorically lashed out against the U.S. and Taiwan.
State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said “the unofficial nature of our relations with Taiwan remains unchanged.”
Following Pelosi’s August visit, Beijing launched missiles over Taiwan, deployed warships across the median line of the Taiwan Strait and carried out military exercises near the island. Beijing also suspended climate talks with the U.S. and restricted military-to-military communication with the Pentagon.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, has said he would meet with Tsai when she is in the U.S. and has not ruled out the possibility of traveling to Taiwan in a show of support.
Beijing sees official American contact with Taiwan as encouragement to make the island’s decades-old de facto independence permanent, a step U.S. leaders say they don’t support. Pelosi, D-Calif., was the highest-ranking elected American official to visit the island since Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997. Under the “one China” policy, the U.S. recognizes Beijing as the government of China and doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Taiwan but has maintained that Taipei is an important partner in the Indo-Pacific.
U.S. officials are increasingly worried about China’s long-stated goals of unifying Taiwan with the mainland and the possibility of war over Taiwan. The self-ruled island democracy is claimed by Beijing as part of its territory. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which has governed U.S. relations with the island, does not require the U.S. to step in militarily if China invades but makes it American policy to ensure Taiwan has the resources to defend itself and to prevent any unilateral change of status by Beijing.
The difficult U.S.-China relationship has only become more complicated since Pelosi’s visit.
Last month, President Joe Biden ordered a Chinese spy balloon shot out of the sky after it traversed the continental United States. And the Biden administration in recent weeks has said that U.S. intelligence findings show that China is weighing sending arms to Russia for its ongoing war in Ukraine, but it does not have evidence that suggests Beijing has decided to follow through on supplying Moscow.
The Biden administration postponed a planned visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken following the balloon controversy but has signaled it would like to get such a visit back on track.
The White House on Monday also said officials are in talks with China about possible visits by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo focused on economic matters. Biden has also said he expects to soon hold a call with China’s Xi Jinping.
Kirby said “keeping those lines of communication open” is still valuable.
Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi met in Moscow on Tuesday for a second day of talks, the first face-to-face meeting between the allies since before Russia launched its Ukraine invasion more than a year ago.
The Taiwanese government earlier this month said that Tsai planned stops in New York and Southern California during an upcoming broader international trip.
___
AP journalists Johnson Lai in Taipei and Josh Boak and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed reporting.
___
This story has been corrected to show China lashed out against the U.S., not against China.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday swiftly rejected a compromise proposal aimed at resolving a standoff over his plans to overhaul the country’s legal system, deepening the crisis over a program that has roiled the country and drawn international criticism.
The country’s figurehead president, Isaac Herzog, presented the compromise in a nationally televised address.
Herzog, whose ceremonial role is meant to serve as a national unifier and moral compass, unveiled the proposal after more than two months of mass protests against Netanyahu’s plan. He said he had been consulting with a broad cross section of the country and suggested that Israel’s survival depends on reaching a compromise.
“Anyone who thinks that a real civil war, of human life, is a line that we will not reach has no idea,” Herzog said. “The abyss,” he warned, “is within touching distance.”
But Netanyahu quickly turned it down. “Unfortunately, the things the president presented were not agreed to by the coalition representatives,” Netanyahu said at Israel’s main international airport before departing to Germany. “And central elements of the proposal he offered just perpetuate the current situation and don’t bring the necessary balance between the branches. That is the unfortunate truth.”
Netanyahu’s plan would allow parliament to overturn Supreme Court decisions and give his parliamentary coalition the final say over all judicial appointments.
Netanyahu’s allies say the plan is needed to curb what they claim are excessive powers of unelected judges. Their opponents say it would destroy the country’s system of checks and balances by concentrating power in the hands of Netanyahu and his ruling coalition. They also say Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges, has a conflict of interest.
Herzog’s proposal offered incentives to both sides. Parliament would not be able to overturn Supreme Court rulings. But judges would not be allowed to overturn major legislation known as “Basic Laws,” which serve as a sort of constitution. Basic Laws, however, would require a parliamentary supermajority, instead of a simple majority, to pass.
Judicial appointments would be made by a committee comprised of coalition and opposition lawmakers, judges and public representatives. Appointments would require a broad consensus, and no single party would wield a veto.
“This is not the president’s draft. It is the draft of the nation,” Herzog said. “There is no side that wins, no side that loses.”
Merav Michaeli, leader of the opposition Labor party, welcomed the proposal and said Netanyahu’s rejection shows he “is not for legal reform but for judicial overthrow.”
Netanyahu’s proposal has sparked weeks of mass protests by tens of thousands of Israelis, drawn criticism from business leaders, economists and legal experts. Military reservists have threatened to stop reporting for duty if it passes. Even some of Israel’s closest allies, including the U.S., have urged caution.
Earlier on Wednesday, a senior delegation of Jewish-American leaders paid a flash visit to Israel to urge leaders to find a compromise. The arrival of some 30 leaders from the Jewish Federations of North America marked a rare foray by the American Jewish community into domestic Israeli affairs and reflected concerns that the turmoil inside Israel could spill over to Jewish communities overseas.
Eric Fingerhut, the president and chief executive of the Jewish Federations, said the 24-hour visit, coming at short notice, illustrated the “grave concern and worry” the Israeli debate has raised among American Jews.
The Federations said the visit was the first time “in recent history” that it has sent such a delegation to discuss Israeli policy with Israeli leaders.
Fingerhut said his group was unable to meet with Netanyahu, but held talks with senior members of Netanyahu’s coalition, opposition leaders and Herzog. He said his group’s message to all sides was to find a compromise and calm the deeply polarized atmosphere.
American Jews tend to hold liberal political positions and identify with liberal streams of Judaism that have struggled for recognition in Israel. An array of Jewish groups have raised concerns that minority rights and religious pluralism could be weakened by the overhaul.
The Jewish Federations of North America represent over 400 Jewish communities across the U.S. and Canada. It raises and distributes more than $2 billion a year to support Jewish communities and vulnerable populations domestically, in Israel and worldwide, making it the largest Jewish philanthropic organization in North America.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A powerful explosion tore through a series of five coal mines interconnected by tunnels and ventilation systems in a rural area of central Colombia, killing at least 11 people and leaving 10 others missing, the government said Wednesday.
Nine other miners who got out of the complex after the blast were taken for medical examinations, and three were still being treated Wednesday evening, officials said.
President Gustavo Petro said on his Twitter account that rescuers were making every effort to reach the missing miners.
The blast, which was attributed to a build-up of methane gas, happened Tuesday night in Sutatausa, a municipality in Cundinamarca department about 75 miles (45 miles) from the capital, Bogota.
Álvaro Farfán, captain of the Cundinamarca fire department, told local media the explosion affected five mines interconnected by tunnels, generating a “chain” blast with a wide impact.
Petro said 11 miners had been confirmed dead. Energy and Mines Minister Irene Vélez said 10 people were unaccounted for.
Six bodies had been recovered by searchers, while five others had been sighted, said Javier Pava, director of the state-run National Unit for Disaster Risk Management.
Explosions and cave-ins are common in Colombia’s coal mines.
BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops on Wednesday defended positions in Bakhmut in eastern Ukrain e amid a relentless push by Russian forces to capture a city that has been turned into a wasteland by seven months of fighting.
Both sides claimed successes in what has become the longest-running battle since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago.
Ukrainian officials said that Ukrainian Ground Forces shot down a Russian fighter jet near Bakhmut and made gains in northern parts of the city.
Meanwhile, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the mercenary Wagner Group, which has spearheaded the Russian assault on the city, said in a social media post Wednesday that Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Zaliznyanskoye and are expanding the encirclement of Bakhmut.
The battle for Bakhmut intensified after Russian forces captured the nearby town of Soledar in January. Russian forces must go through Bakhmut to push deeper into parts of the Donetsk province they don’t yet control, though Western officials say that the capture of the city would have limited impact on the course of the war.
An assessment by the U.K. Defense Ministry over the weekend said that paramilitary units from the Wagner Group had seized eastern parts of Bakhmut, with a river flowing through the city marking the front line of the fighting.
Russian troops have enveloped the city from three sides, leaving only a narrow corridor leading west. The only highway west has been targeted by Russian artillery fire, forcing Ukrainian defenders to rely increasingly on country roads, which are hard to use before the muddy ground dries.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy discussed the situation in Bakhmut with top military and intelligence officials on Tuesday and all agreed on the need to hold and defend the city, the presidential office said.
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s security minister said Tuesday he has asked the country’s National Cyber Security Center to review threats posed by TikTok amid calls for the U.K. to impose a ban on the Chinese-owned social media app.
Security Minister Tom Tugendhat said he was waiting for a review from the government’s cybersecurity experts before deciding on the “hugely important question.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hinted a day earlier that the U.K. could follow the U.S. and the European Union in banning the app from government-issued mobile phones and devices.
“We take security of devices seriously … and we look also at what our allies are doing,” Sunak said during his visit to the U.S. on Monday.
“We want to make sure that we protect the integrity and security of sensitive information,” Sunak told ITV News. “And we will always do that and take whatever steps are necessary to make sure that happens.”
The U.S. government said last month that employees of federal agencies have to delete TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices. Congress, the White House, U.S. armed forces and more than half of U.S. states had already banned TikTok, while the European Commission also temporarily banned the app from employee phones.
The moves were prompted by growing concerns that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, would give user data such as browsing history and location to the Chinese government, or push propaganda and misinformation on its behalf.
Last year, Britain’s Parliament shut down its TikTok account — meant to reach younger audiences with Parliament content — just days after its launch following concerns from lawmakers.
“What certainly is clear is for many young people TikTok is now a news source and, just as it’s quite right we know who owns the news sources in the UK … it’s important we know who owns the news sources that are feeding into our phones,” Tugendhat told Sky News on Tuesday.
In a statement, TikTok said bans by other governments were “based on misplaced fears and seemingly driven by wider geopolitics.” It said it would be “disappointed” if the U.K. imposes a ban, and that it was committed to working with British authorities to address any concerns.
“We have begun implementing a comprehensive plan to further protect our European user data, which includes storing UK user data in our European data centres and tightening data access controls, including third-party independent oversight of our approach,” its statement said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. has begun an aggressive new push to inflict pain on Russia’s economy and specifically its oligarchs with the intent of thwarting the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
From the Treasury Department to the Justice Department, U.S. officials will focus on efforts to legally liquidate the property of Russian oligarchs, expand financial penalties on those who facilitate the evasion of sanctions, and close loopholes in the law that allow oligarchs to use shell companies to move through the U.S. financial system.
Andrew Adams, who heads the U.S. government’s KleptoCapture task force, designed to enforce the economic restrictions within the U.S. imposed on Russia and its billionaires, told The Associated Press that the group is prioritizing its efforts to identify those who help Russians evade sanctions and violate export controls.
“These illicit procurement networks will continue to take up an ever-increasing amount of our bandwidth,” said Adams, who also serves as acting deputy assistant attorney general.
So far, more than $58 billion worth of sanctioned Russians’ assets have been blocked or frozen worldwide, according to a report last week from the Treasury Department. That includes two luxury yachts each worth $300 million in San Diego and Fiji, and six New York and Florida properties worth $75 million owned by sanctioned oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
The U.S. has begun attempts to punish the associates and wealth managers of oligarchs — in Vekselberg’s case, a federal court in New York indicted Vladimir Voronchenko after he helped maintain Vekselberg’s properties. He was charged in February with conspiring to violate and evade U.S. sanctions.
The case was coordinated through the KleptoCapture group.
“I think it can be quite effective to be sanctioning facilitators,” Adams said, calling them “professional sanctions evasion brokers.”
A February study led by Dartmouth University researchers showed that targeting a few key wealth managers would cause far greater damage to Russia than sanctioning oligarchs individually.
Other attempts to inflict pain on the Russian economy will come from the efforts to liquidate yachts and other property owned by Russian oligarchs and the Kremlin, turning them into cash to benefit Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long called for Russian assets to be transferred to Ukraine, and former Biden administration official Daleep Singh told the Senate Banking Committee on Feb. 28 that forfeiting Russia’s billions in assets held by the U.S. is “something we ought to pursue.”
Singh suggested the U.S. should “use the reserves that we have immobilized at the New York Fed, transfer them to Ukraine and allow them to put them up as collateral to raise money.” He ran the White House’s Russia sanctions program when he was national security adviser for international economics.
Adams said the KleptoCapture task force is pursuing efforts to sell Russians’ yachts and other property, despite the legal difficulties of turning property whose owners’ access has been blocked into forfeited assets that the government can take and sell for the benefit of Ukraine.
He stressed that the U.S. will operate under the rule of law. “Part of what that means is that we will not take assets that are not fully, totally forfeited through the judicial procedures and begin confiscating them without a legal basis,” Adams said.
He added that the task force has had “success in working with Congress and working with folks around the executive branch in obtaining authorization to transfer certain forfeited funds to the State Department.”
The Treasury Department said on Thursday that the government is “paving the way” for $5.4 million in seized funds to be sent as foreign assistance to Ukraine.
Additionally, strengthening laws that serve as loopholes for sanctions evaders will also be a priority across federal departments, officials say.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, under Treasury, is expected to roll out rules to address the use of the U.S. real estate market to launder money, including a requirement on disclosing the true ownership of real estate.
Steven Tian, director of research at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, who tracks companies’ disengagement from Russia, said the new real estate rule is long overdue.
“I would point out that it’s not just unique to Russian oligarchs. As you know, the real estate market makes use of shell companies in the United States, period,” Tian said.
Erica Hanichak, the government affairs director at the FACT Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes corporate transparency, urged the administration to put the rule forward by late March, when the U.S. co-hosts the second Summit for Democracy with the governments of Costa Rica, Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia.
“We’re viewing this as an opportunity for the United States to demonstrate leadership not only in addressing corrupt practices abroad, but looking to our own backyard and addressing the loopholes in our system that facilitate corruption internationally,” she said.
ROME (AP) — Italian coast guard and navy vessels on Saturday ferried hundreds of rescued migrants toward shore, while elsewhere in the Mediterranean Sea thousands of migrants overflowed from a shelter on a tiny tourist island.
The influx of sea arrivals came in the face of a crackdown by Italy’s right-wing government on people smugglers announced only two days earlier.
The coast guard said in a statement that overcrowding on two vessels and adverse sea and weather conditions had complicated rescue operations that began on Friday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria.
A 94-meter (310-foot) -long coast guard vessel took 584 migrants aboard, while two smaller coast guard motorboats took on 379 and then transferred them to an Italian naval vessel, which was headed to Augusta, a port in eastern Sicily, as migrant shelters in Calabria quickly filled up.
A fishing boat with some 500 migrants enters the southern Italian port of Crotone, early Saturday, March 11, 2023. The Italian coast guard was responding to three smugglers boats carrying more than 1,300 migrants “in danger” off Italy’s southern coast, officials said Friday. Three small coast guard boats were rescuing a boat with 500 migrants about 700 miles off the Calabria region, which forms the toe of the Italian boot. (AP Photo/Valeria Ferraro)
Separately, a boat carrying 487 people, intercepted by Italian vessels some 60 nautical miles (112 kilometers) off Crotone in Calabria on Friday, was aided by two coast guard motorboats and a border police boat. The migrants disembarked in Crotone’s port before dawn on Saturday.
A beach in Cutro, a town south of Crotone, is where where survivors and bodies were found on Feb. 26 after a wooden boat, crowded with migrants who had set out from Turkey days earlier, broke apart on a sandbank.
The known death toll from the shipwreck climbed to 76 on Saturday after the bodies of two children and an adult were recovered, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Eighty passengers survived, but others were reported missing and are presumed dead.
Italian prosecutors are investigating whether authorities should have swiftly launched a rescue operation after a patrol plane operated by Frontex, the European Union’s border protection agency, spotted the wooden boat, hours before it broke apart dozens of meters (yards) from the beach.
Police check a fishing boat with some 500 migrants in the southern Italian port of Crotone, early Saturday, March 11, 2023. The Italian coast guard was responding to three smugglers boats carrying more than 1,300 migrants “in danger” off Italy’s southern coast, officials said Friday. Three small coast guard boats were rescuing a boat with 500 migrants about 700 miles off the Calabria region, which forms the toe of the Italian boot. (AP Photo/Valeria Ferraro)
Some 5,000 people, walking behind a bearer of a cross fashioned from the boat’s wreckage, joined a procession to the beach in Cutro, demanding increased efforts to save migrants at sea.
Meanwhile, on tiny Lampedusa island, an Italian fishing and tourist location south of Sicily, some 3,000 newly arrived migrants overflowed from a shelter meant to hold less than 350. Hundreds of migrants spent the night sleeping on mattresses on the fenced-off grounds of the shelter.
Plans to ease some of the overcrowding on Lampedusa by transferring hundreds of migrants aboard a ferry were complicated by high winds whipping the island, making it impossible for the ship to dock on Saturday morning. Italian media reported that some 140 migrants were then transferred from the island by air.
Authorities on Lampedusa said many of the migrants arriving on the island, which is closer to northern Africa than to the Italian mainland, had sailed from the port of Sfax, in Tunisia, a route increasingly used by smugglers.
The U.N. migration agency estimates some 300 people have died or are missing and presumed dead along the perilous central Mediterranean route this year.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A crisis over suspected poisonings targeting Iranian schoolgirls escalated Sunday as authorities acknowledged over 50 schools were struck in a wave of possible cases. The poisonings have spread further fear among parents as Iran has faced months of unrest.
Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi on Saturday said, without elaborating, that investigators recovered “suspicious samples” in the course of their investigations into the incidents, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. He called for calm among the public, while also accusing the “enemy’s media terrorism” of inciting more panic over the alleged poisonings.
On Sunday, Raisi told the Cabinet, following a report read by Intelligence Minister Ismail Khatib, that the root of the poisonings must be uncovered and confronted. He described the alleged attacks as a “crime against humanity for creating anxiety among student and parents.”
Vahidi said at least 52 schools had been affected by suspected poisonings. Iranian media reports have put the number of schools at over 60. At least one boy’s school reportedly has been affected.
Videos of upset parents and schoolgirls in emergency rooms with IVs in their arms have flooded social media. Making sense of the crisis remains challenging, given that nearly 100 journalists have been detained by Iran since the start of protests in September over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. She had been detained by the country’s morality police and later died.
The security force crackdown on those protests has seen at least 530 people killed and 19,700 others detained, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran.
The children affected in the poisonings reportedly complained of headaches, heart palpitations, feeling lethargic or otherwise unable to move. Some described smelling tangerines, chlorine or cleaning agents.
Reports suggest at least 400 schoolchildren have fallen ill since November. Vahidi, the interior minister, said in his statement that two girls remain in hospital because of underlying chronic conditions.
As more attacks were reported Sunday, videos were posted on social media showing children complaining about pain in the legs, abdomen and dizziness. State media have mainly referred to these as “hysteric reactions.”
Since the outbreak, no one was reported in critical condition and there have been no reports of fatalities.
Attacks on women have happened in the past in Iran, most recently with a wave of acid attacks in 2014 around the city of Isfahan, at the time believed to have been carried out by hard-liners targeting women for how they dressed.
Speculation in Iran’s tightly controlled state media has focused on the possibility of exile groups or foreign powers being behind the poisonings. That was also repeatedly alleged during the recent protests without evidence. In recent days, Germany’s foreign minister, a White House official and others have called on Iran to do more to protect schoolgirls — a concern Iran’s Foreign Ministry has dismissed as “crocodile tears.”
However, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted that Iran has “continued to tolerate attacks against women and girls for months” amid the recent protests.
“These poisonings are occurring in an environment where Iranian officials have impunity for the harassment, assault, rape, torture and execution of women peacefully asserting their freedom of religion or belief,” Sharon Kleinbaum of the commission said in a statement.
Suspicion in Iran has fallen on possible hard-liners for carrying out the suspected poisonings. Iranian journalists, including Jamileh Kadivar, a prominent former reformist lawmaker at Tehran’s Ettelaat newspaper, have cited a supposed communique from a group calling itself Fidayeen Velayat that purportedly said that girls’ education “is considered forbidden” and threatened to “spread the poisoning of girls throughout Iran” if girls’ schools remain open.
Iranian officials have not acknowledged any group called Fidayeen Velayat, which roughly translates to English as “Devotees of the Guardianship.” However, Kadivar’s mention of the threat in print comes as she remains influential within Iranian politics and has ties to its theocratic ruling class. The head of the Ettelaat newspaper also is appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Kadivar wrote Saturday that another possibility is “mass hysteria.” There have been previous cases of this over the last decades, most recently in Afghanistan from 2009 through 2012. Then, the World Health Organization wrote about so-called “mass psychogenic illnesses” affecting hundreds of girls in schools across the country.
“Reports of stench smells preceding the appearance of symptoms have given credit to the theory of mass poisoning,” WHO wrote at the time. “However, investigations into the causes of these outbreaks have yielded no such evidence so far.”
Iran has not acknowledged asking the world health body for assistance in its investigation. WHO did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
However, Kadivar also noted that hard-liners in Iranian governments in the past carried out so-called “chain murders” of activists and others in the 1990s. She also referenced the killings by Islamic vigilantes in 2002 in the city of Kerman, when one victim was stoned to death and others were tied up and thrown into a swimming pool, where they drowned. She described those vigilantes as being members of the Basij, an all-volunteer force in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
“The common denominator of all of them is their extreme thinking, intellectual stagnation and rigid religious view that allowed them to have committed such violent actions,” Kadivar wrote.
HONG KONG (AP) — A Hong Kong pro-democracy group on Sunday said the national security police stopped activists from joining a highly-anticipated protest that was canceled last minute by the organizer.
The League of Social Democrats said police questioned four of its members on Friday and warned them not to participate in the march that was planned by the Hong Kong Women Workers’ Association.
“The League of Social Democrats is very angry about being threatened and hindered by the national security police over joining a legal protest. But it has decided to be absent under such pressure,” the group said
Police said in an email response to The Associated Press that when they take any action, they handle it “in accordance to the actual situation and the law.”
During the pandemic, major protests were rare under anti-virus controls. In addition, many activists have been silenced or jailed after China’s central government imposed a sweeping national security law following massive protests in 2019.
On Saturday night, the women’s association announced in a Facebook post that it had regrettably decided to call off the march that planned to call for labor and women’s rights, and gender equality, without specifying why. It did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
Half an hour later, Acting Senior Superintendent Dennis Cheng said in a news briefing that the organizer notified them they would cancel the march after weighing the pros and cons.
Asked if the police had told the organizer to cancel the protest to avoid embarrassing Beijing during the annual session of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, Cheng said police respected the organizer’s decision and believe it had struck the balance. He refused to comment further.
Cheng said that some violent groups wanted to join the protest and warned the public against taking part. He did not identify the groups. The police letter of approval for the protest was then ruled invalid and authorities warned that anyone who attempts to assemble on Sunday would be considered to be joining an unauthorized rally.
In Beijing, meanwhile, Premier Li Keqiang said that China had made fresh progress in work related to Hong Kong and exercised overall jurisdiction over the southern city.
Critics say China has eroded freedoms promised to Hong Kong’s political, social and financial institutions at the handover from Britain in 1997.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Paul Pierrilus was deported two years ago from the U.S. to Haiti where he has been trying to survive in a chaotic and violent country where he wasn’t born and had never lived.
Both his parents are Haitian but they emigrated to the French Caribbean territory of St. Martin where Pierrilus was born. The family did not apply for citizenship for him in either Haiti or St. Martin and later moved to the U.S. when he was 5. He grew up in New York speaking English.
Deported — after a long delay — because of a drug conviction two decades ago, Pierrilus is now in Haiti where he does not speak Haitian Creole, has been unable to find work and has little savings left as he hopes for a way to leave the increasingly unstable country.
“You have to be mentally strong to deal with this type of stuff,” Pierrilus said. “A country where people get kidnapped every day. A country where people are killed. You have to be strong.”
The 42-year-old financial consultant spends most of his days locked inside a house reading self-help, business and marketing books in a neighborhood where gunshots often echo outside.
Lawyers for Pierrilus in the U.S. are still fighting his deportation order, leaving him in legal limbo as the Biden administration steps up deportations to Haiti despite pleas from activists that they be temporarily halted because of the Caribbean country’s deepening chaos.
His case has become emblematic of what some activists describe as the discrimination Haitian migrants face in the overburdened U.S. immigration system. More than 20,000 Haitians have been deported from the U.S. in the past year as thousands more continue to flee Haiti in risky boat crossings that sometimes end in mass drownings.
Cases like Pierrilus’ in which people are deported to a country where they have never lived are unusual, but they happen occasionally.
Jimmy Aldaoud, born of Iraqi parents at a refugee camp in Greece and whose family emigrated to the U.S. in 1979, was deported in 2019 to Iraq after amassing several felony convictions. Suffering health problems and not knowing the language in Iraq, he died a few months later in a case oft-cited by advocates.
Pierrilus’ parents took him to the United States so they could live a better life and he could receive a higher quality education.
When he was in his early 20s, he was convicted of selling crack cocaine. Because he was not a U.S. citizen, Pierrilus was transferred from criminal custody to immigration custody where he was deemed a Haitian national because of his parentage and ordered deported to Haiti.
Pierrilus managed to delay deportation with several legal challenges. Because he was deemed neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk, he was released, issued a work authorization and ordered to check with immigration authorities yearly.
He went on to become a financial planner.
Then, in February 2021, he was deported without warning, and his lawyers don’t know exactly why his situation changed.
Lawyers for the nonprofit Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization in Washington have taken up his cause. “We demand that the Biden administration bring Paul home,” organization attorney Sarah Decker said.
French St. Martin does not automatically confer French citizenship to those born in its territory to foreign parents, and his family did not seek it. They also did not formally seek Haitian citizenship, which Pierrilus is entitled to.
Though he could obtain Haitian citizenship, his lawyers have argued that he is not currently a Haitian citizen, had never lived there and should not be deported to a county with such political instability.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a brief general statement to The Associated Press that each country has an obligation under international law to accept the return of its nationals who are not eligible to remain in the U.S. or any other country. An ICE spokeswoman said no further information about Pierrilus’ case could be provided, including what proof does the U.S. government have that he’s an alleged Haitian citizen and why 13 years passed before he was suddenly deported.
In 2005, the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed an appeal by Pierrilus’ previous attorneys to halt his deportation, saying “it is not necessary for the respondent to be a citizen of Haiti for that country to be named as the country of removal.” Decker, his current attorney, disagrees with that finding.
Pierrilus said that while he was being deported he told immigration officers, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not from where you’re trying to send me.”
Overpowered and handcuffed, he said he stopped resisting. As he boarded the flight, he recalled that women were screaming and children wailing. Inside, he felt the same. Pierrilus did not know when and if he would see his family or friends again.
After being processed at the airport, someone lent Pierrilus a cell phone so he could call his parents. They gave him contacts for a family friend where he could temporarily stay. Since then, gang violence has forced him to bounce through two other homes.
Warring gangs have expanded their control of territory in the Haitian capital to an estimated 60% since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, pillaging neighborhoods, raping and shooting civilians.
The U.N. warned in January that Haitians are suffering their worst humanitarian emergency in decades. More than 1,350 kidnappings were reported last year, more than double the previous year. Killings spiked by 35%, with more than 2,100 reported.
Pierrilus says he saw a man who was driving through his neighborhood get shot in the face as bullets shattered the windows and pock-marked the man’s car.
“Can you imagine that? This guy is swirling around trying to flee the area. I don’t know what happened to the guy,” he said.
As a result, he rarely goes out and relies on his faith for hope. He says he stopped going to church after he saw a livestreamed service in April 2021 in which gangs burst into the church and kidnapped a pastor and three congregants.
Pierrilus talks to his parents at least once a week, focusing on the progress of his case rather than on challenges in Haiti.
He hesitated to share his first impressions of his parents’ homeland upon landing in Haiti two years ago. “I had mixed feelings,” he said. “I wanted to see what it looked like on my time, not under these circumstances.”
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A court on Friday sentenced Belarus’ top human rights advocate and one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize to 10 years in prison, the latest move in a yearslong crackdown on dissent that has engulfed the ex-Soviet nation since 2020.
The harsh punishment of Ales Bialiatski and three of his colleagues was delivered in response to massive protests over a 2020 election that gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a new term in office.
Lukashenko, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who backed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, has ruled the ex-Soviet country with an iron fist since 1994. More than 35,000 people were arrested, and thousands were beaten by police amid the protests, the largest ever held in the country.
Belarus is an outlier in its support of the year-old Russian invasion, with other countries in the region not backing Moscow publicly.
Bialiatski and his colleagues at the human rights center he founded were convicted of financing actions violating public order and smuggling, the center reported Friday.
Valiantsin Stefanovich was given a nine-year sentence; Uladzimir Labkovicz seven years; and Dzmitry Salauyou was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison.
During the trial, which took place behind closed doors, the 60-year-old Bialiatski and his colleagues were held in a caged enclosure in the courtroom. They have spent a year and nine months behind bars since their arrest.
In the photos from the courtroom released Friday by Belarus’ state news agency Belta, Bialiatksi, clad in black clothes, looked wan, but calm.
All four activists have maintained their innocence, the Human Rights Center Viasna said after the verdict. Viasna is Belarusian for “spring.”
In his final address to the court, Bialiatski urged the authorities to “stop the civil war in Belarus.” He said it became obvious to him from the case files that “the investigators were fulfilling the task they were given: to deprive Viasna human rights advocates of freedom at any cost, destroy Viasna and stop our work.”
Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called the verdict “appalling.”
“We must do everything to fight against this shameful injustice (and) free them,” Tsikhanouskaya tweeted Friday.
Memorial, the prominent Russian human rights group that shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize with Bialiatski and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, in an online statement denounced the verdict as “an undisguised lawless reprisal for their human rights activities as part of a campaign of terror against civil society and the entire people of Belarus.”
Oleg Orlov, co-chair of Memorial, attempted to fly to Minsk to support Bialiatski on Friday, but was prevented from boarding the flight, with airline representatives telling him Belarus had barred him from entering the country. “Crimes are better committed without witnesses,” Orlov remarked.
Volodymyr Yavorsky from the Center for Civil Liberties told The Associated Press that Ukrainian human rights advocates express solidarity with Bialiatski and demand his release.
“This verdict shows that the highest level of repression in Europe is in Belarus,” Yavorsky said. “Ukraine is currently resisting the very totalitarian model that the Kremlin tries to impose on the entire former Soviet space.”
The punishment also elicited outrage in the West.
The Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a nongovernmental human rights organization, said that it was “shocked by the cynicism behind the sentences.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock labeled the trial and sentencing “a farce.”
“This is just as much a daily disgrace as Lukashenko’s support for Putin’s war,” Baerbock tweeted Friday. “We call for the end of political persecution and freedom for the more than 1,400 political prisoners.”
Condemnations of the verdict also came from the Council of Europe rights watchdog and the U.N. Human Rights spokesperson.
Bialiatski is the fourth person in the 121-year history of the Nobel Prizes to receive the award while in prison or detention.
___
Associated Press writers Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark; Geir Moulson in Berlin; Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
NEW DELHI (AP) — Top diplomats from the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations ended their contentious meeting in New Delhi on Thursday with no consensus on the Ukraine war, India’s foreign minister said, as discussions of the war and China’s widening global influence dominated much of the talks.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said there were “divergences” on the issue of the war in Ukraine “which we could not reconcile as various parties held differing views.”
“If we had a perfect meeting of minds on all issues, it would have been a collective statement,” Jaishankar said. He added that members agreed on most issues involving the concerns of less-developed nations, “like strengthening multilateralism, promoting food and energy security, climate change, gender issues and counterterrorism.”
China and Russia objected to two paragraphs taken from the previous G-20 declaration in Bali last year, according to a summary of Thursday’s meeting released by India. The paragraphs stated that the war in Ukraine was causing immense human suffering while exacerbating fragilities in the global economy, the need to uphold international law, and that “the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.”
Host India had appealed for all members of the fractured Group of 20 to reach consensus on issues of particular concern to poorer countries even if the broader East-West split over Ukraine could not be resolved. And while others, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, chose to highlight their roles in addressing world crises, the divide was palpable.
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, center, speaks during the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi Thursday, March 2, 2023. (Olivier Douliery/Pool Photo via AP)
Last week, India was forced to issue a chair’s summary at the conclusion of a G-20 finance ministers’ meeting after Russia and China objected to a joint communique that retained language on the war in Ukraine drawn directly from last year’s G-20 leaders summit declaration in Indonesia.
Thursday’s talks began with a video address to the foreign ministers by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He urged them not to allow current tensions to destroy agreements that might be reached on food and energy security, climate change and debt.
“We are meeting at a time of deep global divisions,” Modi told the group, which included Blinken, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and their Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, saying their discussions would naturally be “affected by the geopolitical tensions of the day.”
“We all have our positions and our perspectives on how these tensions should be resolved,” he said. “We should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way of those we can.”
In a nod to fears that the increasingly bitter rift between the United States and its allies on one side and Russia and China on the other appears likely to widen further, Modi said that “multilateralism is in crisis today.”
An armed soldier stands guard during the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi on March 2, 2023. (Photo by Arun SANKAR / AFP) (Photo by ARUN SANKAR/AFP via Getty Images)
ARUN SANKAR via Getty Images
He lamented that the two main goals of the post-World War II international order — preventing conflict and fostering cooperation — were elusive. “The experience of the last two years — financial crisis, pandemic, terrorism and wars — clearly shows that global governance has failed in both its mandates,” he said.
Jaishankar then addressed the group in person, telling them that they “must find common ground and provide direction.”
Blinken, according to remarks released by the State Department, spent much of his time describing U.S. efforts to bolster energy and food security. But he also told the ministers pointedly that Russia’s war with Ukraine could not go unchallenged.
“Unfortunately, this meeting has again been marred by Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine, deliberate campaign of destruction against civilian targets, and its attack on the core principles of the U.N. Charter,” he said.
“We must continue to call on Russia to end its war of aggression and withdraw from Ukraine for the sake of international peace and economic stability,” Blinken said. He noted that 141 countries had voted to condemn Russia at the United Nations on the one-year anniversary of the invasion.
Several members of the G-20, including India, China and South Africa, chose to abstain in that vote.
NEW DELHI, INDIA – MARCH 02: A general view of the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhi, India on March 02, 2023. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also attended the meeting. The G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting started with a moment of silence for those who lost their lives in the earthquakes in Turkiye. (Photo by Cem Ozdel/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Blinken and Lavrov talked briefly Thursday in the first high-level meeting in months between the two countries. U.S. officials said Blinken and Lavrov chatted for roughly 10 minutes on the sidelines of the G-20 conference.
In addition to attending the G-20 and seeing Modi and Jaishankar individually on Thursday, Blinken met separately with the foreign ministers of Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa, and was also scheduled to hold talks with the foreign ministers of the Netherlands and Mexico.
As at most international events since last year, the split over the war in Ukraine and its impact on global energy and food security overshadowed the proceedings. But as the conflict drags on past 12 months, the divide has grown and now threatens to become a principal irritant in U.S.-China ties that were already on the rocks for other reasons.
A Chinese peace proposal for Ukraine that has drawn praise from Russia but dismissals from the West has done nothing to improve matters as U.S. officials have repeatedly accused China in recent days of considering the provision of weapons to Russia for use in the war.
Blinken said Wednesday that the Chinese plan rang hollow given its focus on “sovereignty” compared to its own recent actions.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a press conference on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi on March 2, 2023.
OLIVIER DOULIERY via Getty Images
“China can’t have it both ways,” Blinken told reporters in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, before traveling to New Delhi. “It can’t be putting itself out as a force for peace in public, while in one way or another, it continues to fuel the flames of this fire that Vladimir Putin started.”
He also said there is “zero evidence” that Putin is genuinely prepared for diplomacy to end the war. “To the contrary, the evidence is all in the other direction,” he said.
China on Thursday hit back at those comments, accusing the U.S. of promoting war by supplying Ukraine with weapons and violating Chinese sovereignty with support for Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory.
“The U.S. says it wants peace, but it is waging wars around the world and inciting confrontation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters in Beijing.
“While emphasizing the need to respect and maintain the international order, the U.S. has vigorously pursued illegal unilateral sanctions, putting domestic law above international law,” she said. “What the U.S. should do is to reflect on itself, stop confusing the public and making irresponsible remarks, earnestly shoulder its responsibilities, and do something to promote the de-escalation of the situation and peace talks.”
In the meantime, Moscow has been unrelenting in pushing its view that the West, led by the U.S., is trying to destroy Russia.
Ahead of the meeting, the Russian Foreign Ministry slammed U.S. policies, saying that Lavrov and his delegation would use the G-20 to “focus on the attempts by the West to take revenge for the inevitable disappearance of the levers of dominance from its hands.”
Associated Press writers Sheikh Saaliq and Krutika Pathi contributed to this report.
CROTONE, Italy (AP) — Rescue teams pulled more bodies from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the death toll from Italy’s latest migration tragedy to 65, as prosecutors identified suspected smugglers who allegedly charged 8,000 euros (nearly $8,500) for each person making the “voyage of death” from Turkey to Italy.
Authorities delayed a planned viewing of the coffins to allow more time for identification of the bodies, as desperate relatives and friends arrived in the Calabrian city of Crotone in hope of finding their loved ones, some of whom hailed from Afghanistan.
“I am looking for my aunt and her three children,” said Aladdin Mohibzada, adding that he drove 25 hours from Germany to reach the makeshift morgue set up at a sports stadium. He said he had ascertained that his aunt and two of the children died, but that a 5-year-old survived and was being sheltered in a center for minors.
“We are looking into possibilities to send (the bodies) to Afghanistan, the bodies that are here,” he told The Associated Press outside the morgue. But he complained about a lack of information as authorities scrambled to cope with the disaster. “We are helpless here. We don’t know what we should do.”
At least 65 people, including 14 minors, died when their overcrowded wooden boat slammed into shoals 100 meters (yards) off the shore of Cutro and broke apart early Sunday in rough seas. Eighty people survived, but many more are feared dead since survivors indicated the boat had carried about 170 people when it set off last week from Izmir, Turkey.
Aid groups at the scene have said many of the passengers hailed from Afghanistan, including entire families, as well as from Pakistan, Syria and Iraq. Rescue teams pulled two bodies from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the toll to 65, police said.
Premier Giorgia Meloni sent a letter to European leaders demanding quick action on the continent’s longstanding migration problem, insisting that migrants must be stopped from risking their lives on dangerous sea crossings.
“The point is, the more people who set off, the more people risk dying,” she told RAI state television late Monday.
Meloni’s right-wing government, which swept elections last year in part on promises to crack down on migration, has concentrated on complicating efforts by humanitarian boats to make multiple rescues in the central Mediterranean by assigning them ports of disembarkation along Italy’s northern coasts. That means the vessels need more time to return to sea after bringing migrants aboard and taking them safely to shore.
But aid groups’ rescue ships don’t normally operate in the area of Sunday’s shipwreck, which occurred off the Calabrian coast in the Ionian Sea. Rather, the aid groups generally operate in the central Mediterranean, rescuing migrants who set off from Libya or Tunisia — not from Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean.
Crotone prosecutor Giuseppe Capoccia confirmed investigators had identified three suspected smugglers, a Turk and two Pakistani nationals. A second Turk is believed to have escaped or died in the wreck.
Italy’s border police said in a statement that organizers of the crossing charged 8,000 euros (around $8,500) each for the “voyage of death.”
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi pushed back at suggestions that the rescue was delayed or affected by government policy discouraging aid groups from staying at sea to rescue migrants.
The EU border agency Frontex has said its aircraft spotted the boat off Crotone at 10:26 p.m. Saturday and alerted Italian authorities. Italy sent out two patrol vessels, but they had to turn back because of the poor weather.
Piantedosi told a parliamentary committee that the ship ran aground and broke apart at around 5 a.m. Sunday.
“There was no delay,” Piantedosi told Corriere della Sera. “Everything possible was done in absolutely prohibitive sea conditions.”
The Italian Coast Guard issued a statement on Tuesday saying Frontex had indicated that the migrants’ boat was “navigating normally” and that only one person could be seen above deck.
It added that an Italian border police vessel, “already operating in the sea” set out to intercept the migrant boat.
“At about 4:30 a.m., some indications by telephone from subjects on land, relative to a boat in danger a few meters from the coast, reached the Coast Guard,″ the statement said.
At that point, a Carabinieri police boat which had been alerted by border police “informed the Coast Guard about the shipwreck.”
In contrast to similar cases of migrant vessels in distress, “no phone indication ever came from migrants aboard” to the Coast Guard, the statement noted.
Not rarely, migrants aboard a vessel in distress contact Alarm Phone, a humanitarian support hotline which relays indications of boats in trouble in the Mediterranean to maritime authorities.
When briefing lawmakers, the interior minister cited figures supporting Italy’s long-held frustration that fellow European Union nations don’t honor pledges to accept a share of asylum-seeking migrants who reach Italy.
Piantedosi said that while these pledges covered some 8,000 migrant relocations from June last year through this month, only 387 people actually were transferred to other EU nations, with Germany taking in most of them.
