WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden said Wednesday he was not seeking conflict with China or Russia as he put a renewed focus on diplomacy in his first address to Congress.
Biden nonetheless pledged to be firm against both powers and pointed to China’s growing strength to promote massive investments at home.
The trillions of dollars in investment “advance a foreign policy that benefits the middle class” but all nations must abide “by the same rules,” Biden told a subdued joint session amid Covid restrictions on attendance.
Biden said he told President Xi Jinping in a two-hour first phone conversation after taking office that “we welcome the competition — and that we are not looking for conflict.”
“But I made absolutely clear that we will defend America’s interests across the board,” he said.
“America will stand up to unfair trade practices that undercut American workers and industries, like subsidies for state-owned enterprises and the theft of American technologies and intellectual property,” he said.
“I also told President Xi that we will maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific just as we do with NATO in Europe — not to start a conflict but to prevent one,” Biden said to applause.
In an aside that was not in prepared remarks, Biden noted his extensive dealings with Xi when both were vice presidents — and warned that China’s most powerful leader in years had firm plans for the future.
“He’s deadly earnest on becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world,” Biden said.
Tensions have sharply risen with China over the past few years as the United States also take issue with China’s assertive military moves and human rights concerns, including what Washington has described as genocide against the mostly Muslim Uyghur minority.
The speech marked a shift from the hawkish nationalism of his predecessor Donald Trump, with Biden repeatedly speaking of global cooperation.
“There is no wall high enough to keep the virus out,” Biden said, alluding to Trump’s cherished wall on the Mexican border.
Biden similarly said he did not seek worse relations with Russia.
In his first three months in office, Biden has imposed sanctions over Russia’s purported poisoning of ailing dissident Alexei Navalny and over its alleged interference in US elections and hacking operations.
But Biden has also proposed a summit in a third country with President Vladimir Putin to bring stability to relations and pointed in his speech to cooperation on climate change and the extension of New START, the last Cold war nuclear reduction treaty.
“I made very clear to Putin that we are not going to seek escalation but their actions will have consequences,” Biden said.
Flipping the language of George W. Bush when used the same platform nearly two decades ago to assail an “axis of evil,” Biden vowed diplomacy on the “serious threat” of the nuclear programs of both Iran and North Korea.
“We’ll be working closely with our allies to address the threats posed by both of these countries through diplomacy and stern deterrence,’” Biden said.
The United States is holding indirect talks with Iran in Vienna in a bid to re-enter a denuclearization accord trashed by Trump.
The Biden administration is separately reviewing policy on North Korea after Trump’s unusually personal diplomacy that included three meetings with leader Kim Jong Un.
Vowing to exert US leadership, Biden also said he was reasserting US priorities by ending “the forever war” in Afghanistan — where he is pulling out remaining troops after 20 years.
US says not seeking conflict with China, Russia but will be firm against both: Biden
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US says not seeking conflict with China, Russia but will be firm against both: Biden

- Says America will stand up to unfair trade practices that undercut American workers and industries
- Vows to maintain strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific, "not to start a conflict but to prevent one”
Russian strike on Ukraine’s Odesa kills two, wounds 14

- Moscow has stepped up drone and missile attacks on Ukraine
- Ukraine has launched retaliatory strikes on Russia throughout the war
Moscow has stepped up drone and missile attacks on Ukraine and peace talks initiated by the United States to end the three-year conflict have stalled.
“Rescuers pulled the bodies of two people from the rubble who died as a result of a hostile drone strike on a residential building,” Odesa Governor Oleg Kiper said on Telegram.
The night-time strike wounded 14 people, Kiper said, adding that “three of them children.”
Separately, authorities in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region said one person was killed and three others were wounded in Russian strikes over the past day.
“Russian troops targeted critical and social infrastructure and residential areas in the region,” the Kherson’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram early on Saturday.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Russia’s offensive, which has forced millions from their homes and devastated much of eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine has launched retaliatory strikes on Russia throughout the war.
The Russian defense ministry said on Saturday its air defense had shot down 31 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Moscow also said it had captured another village in the Donetsk region, which the Kremlin has claimed as part of Russia since late 2022.
Russia has demanded Ukraine cede more land and give up Western military support as a precondition to peace – terms Kyiv says are unacceptable.
Europe bakes in summer’s first heatwave as continent warms
Temperatures are set to rise to 37 degrees Celsius (99 degrees Fahrenheit) in Rome, driving the Eternal City’s many tourists and Catholic pilgrims to the Vatican alike toward the Italian capital’s some 2,500 public fountains for refreshment.
With residents of the southern port city of Marseille expected to have to cope with temperatures flirting with 40C (104F), authorities in France’s second-largest city ordered public swimming pools to be made free of charge to help residents beat the Mediterranean heat.
Two-thirds of Portugal will be on high alert on Sunday for extreme heat and forest fires with 42C (108F) expected in the capital Lisbon, while visitors to — and protesters against — Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos’s Friday wedding in Venice likewise sweltered under the summer sun.
“I try not to think about it, but I drink a lot of water and never stay still, because that’s when you get sunstroke,” Sriane Mina, an Italian student, told AFPTV on Friday in Venice.
Meanwhile Spain, which has in past years seen a series of deadly summer blazes ravaging the Iberian peninsula, is expecting peak temperatures in excess of 40C (104F) across most of the country from Sunday.
Scientists have long warned that humanity’s burning of fossil fuels is heating up the world with disastrous consequences for the environment, with Europe’s ever-hotter and increasingly common blistering summer heatwaves a direct result of that warming.
With peaks of 39C (102F) expected in Naples and Palermo, Sicily has ordered a ban on outdoor work in the hottest hours of the day, as has the Liguria region in northern Italy.
The country’s trade unions are campaigning to extend the measure to other parts of the country.
The heatwave comes hot on the heels of a series of tumbling records for extreme heat, including Europe’s hottest March ever, according to the EU’s Copernicus climate monitor.
As a result of the planet’s warming, extreme weather events including hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves like this weekend’s have become more frequent and intense, scientists warn.
By some estimates 2024, the hottest year in recorded history so far, saw worldwide disasters which cost more than $300 billion.
UK distances new spy chief from ‘Nazi’ grandfather

- The Daily Mail newspaper reported this week that her grandfather Constantine Dobrowolski defected from the Soviet Union’s Red Army to become a Nazi informant in the Chernigiv region of modern day Ukraine
LONDON: The British government has distanced the incoming head of its foreign intelligence service from her grandfather following reports he was a Nazi spy known as “the butcher.”
Blaise Metreweli will in the autumn become the first woman to lead MI6 in its 116-year-old history, the British government announced earlier this month.
The Daily Mail newspaper reported this week that her grandfather Constantine Dobrowolski defected from the Soviet Union’s Red Army to become a Nazi informant in the Chernigiv region of modern-day Ukraine.
The newspaper said German archives showed Dobrowolski was known as “the Butcher” or “Agent No 30” by Wehrmacht commanders.
“Blaise Metreweli neither knew nor met her paternal grandfather,” a Foreign Office spokesperson said in a statement.
“Blaise’s ancestry is characterised by conflict and division and, as is the case for many with eastern European heritage, only partially understood.
“It is precisely this complex heritage which has contributed to her commitment to prevent conflict and protect the British public from modern threats from today’s hostile states, as the next chief of MI6.”
The Daily Mail said Dobrowolski had a 50,000 ruble bounty placed on him by Soviet leaders, and was dubbed the “worst enemy of the Ukrainian people.”
He also sent letters to superiors saying he “personally” took part “in the extermination of the Jews,” the newspaper added.
The head of MI6 is the only publicly named member of the organization and reports directly to the foreign minister.
Metreweli, 47, will be the 18th head of MI6.
Like her predecessors she will be referred to as “C,” not “M” as the chief is called in the James Bond film franchise.
African Union says DR Congo-Rwanda deal ‘milestone’ toward peace

NAIROBI: The African Union said on Saturday a peace deal signed between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda was a “significant milestone” in bringing peace to the deeply troubled region.
For more than 30 years the eastern DRC has been riven by conflict, which has intensified in recent years with the advance of an armed militia backed by Rwanda.
A statement said AU Commission head Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, who witnessed the signing of the deal in Washington on Friday, “welcomed this significant milestone and commended all efforts aimed at advancing peace, stability, & reconciliation in the region.”
It said he “appreciated the constructive & supportive role played by the US & the State of Qatar in facilitating dialogue & consensus that led to this development.”
The agreement comes after the M23, an ethnic Tutsi rebel force supported by Rwanda, sprinted across the mineral-rich east of the DRC this year, seizing vast territory including the key city of Goma.
The deal does not explicitly address the gains of the M23 in the area torn by decades of on-off war but calls for Rwanda to end “defensive measures” it has taken.
Rwanda has denied offering the M23 military support but has demanded an end to another armed group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which was established by ethnic Hutus involved in the massacres of Tutsis in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The agreement calls for the “neutralization” of the FDLR.
13 soldiers killed in a suicide attack in northwest Pakistan: officials

- The suicide attack killed 13 soldiers and wounded 29, including civilians
PESHAWAR: A suicide attack killed 13 soldiers and wounded 29, including civilians, in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, local government officials and police officers told AFP.
“A suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a military convoy. The blast killed 13 soldiers, injured 10 army personnel and 19 civilians,” said a local government official in North Waziristan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
“The explosion also caused the roofs of two houses to collapse, injuring six children,” a police officer posted in the district told AFP.