SEOUL: Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a new partnership that includes a vow of mutual aid if either country is attacked, during a Wednesday summit that came as both face escalating standoffs with the West.
It could mark the strongest connection between Moscow and Pyongyang since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Putin’s visited North Korea for the first time in 24 years, as the US and its allies express growing concerns over an arms arrangement in which the country provides Moscow with badly needed munitions for its war in Ukraine in exchange for economic assistance and technology transfers that could enhance the threat posed by Kim’s nuclear weapons and missile program.
The details of the partnership deal were not immediately clear, but both leaders described it as a major upgrade of their ties.
Kim said that the deal was the “strongest ever treaty” between the two nations, putting the relationship at the level of an alliance, and vowed full support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Putin said that it was a “breakthough document” reflecting shared desire to move relations to a higher level.
Putin said that security and international issues took up a large part of the talks with Kim, according to Russian state media. He was also quoted to say that Russia would not rule out developing military-technical cooperation with North Korea under the deal.
Kim was quoted as saying that the agreement was of a peaceful and defensive nature. “I have no doubt it will become a driving force accelerating the creation of a new multipolar world,” he was quoted to say.
Russia and North Korea also signed agreements on cooperation in the fields of health care, medical education, and science, Russian state media reported, citing the Kremlin’s website.
Putin was met upon his nighttime arrival by Kim, who shook his hands, hugged him twice and rode with him from the airport in a limousine in a huge motorcade that rolled through the capital’s brightly illuminated streets, where buildings were decorated with giant Russian flags and portraits of Putin.
After spending the rest of the night at a state guest house, Putin attended a lavish welcoming ceremony at the city’s main square, where he and Kim saluted an honor guard and walked across a red carpet. Kim then introduced key members of his leadership including Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui; top aide and ruling party secretary Jo Yong Won; and the leader’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong.
The square was filled with what appeared to be tens of thousands of spectators, including children holding balloons and people wearing coordinated t-shirts in the red, white and blue of the Russian and North Korean flags. Huge crowds lined up on the streets to greet Putin’s motorcade, chanting “Welcome Putin” and waving flowers and North Korean and Russian flags.
As the talks began, Putin thanked Kim for North Korea’s support for his war in Ukraine, part of what he said was a “fight against the imperialist hegemonistic policies of the US and its satellites against the Russian Federation.”
Putin hailed ties that he traced back to the Soviet army fighting the Japanese military on the Korean Peninsula in the closing moments of World War II, and Moscow’s support for Pyongyang during the Korean War.
Kim said Moscow and Pyongyang’s “fiery friendship” is now even closer than during Soviet times, and promised “full support and solidarity to the Russian government, army and people in carrying out the special military operation in Ukraine to protect sovereignty, security interests and territorial integrity.”
Kim has used similar language in the past, consistently saying North Korea supports what he describes as a just action to protect Russia’s interests and blaming the crisis on the US-led West’s “hegemonic policy.” It wasn’t immediately clear what that support might look like.
North Korea is under heavy UN Security Council sanctions over its weapons program, while Russia also faces sanctions by the United States and its Western partners over its aggression in Ukraine.
US and South Korean officials accuse the North of providing Russia with artillery, missiles and other military equipment for use in Ukraine, possibly in return for key military technologies and aid. Both Pyongyang and Moscow deny accusations about North Korean weapons transfers, which would violate multiple UN Security Council sanctions that Russia previously endorsed.
Along with China, Russia has provided political cover for Kim’s continuing efforts to advance his nuclear arsenal, repeatedly blocking US-led efforts to impose fresh UN sanctions on the North over its weapons tests.
In March, a Russian veto at the United Nations ended monitoring of UN sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear program, prompting Western accusations that Moscow is seeking to avoid scrutiny as it buys weapons from Pyongyang for use in Ukraine.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Pyongyang that the two leaders exchanged gifts after the talks. Putin presented Kim with a Russian-made Aurus limo and other gifts, including a tea set and a naval officer’s dagger. Ushakov said that Kim’s presents to Putin included artworks depicting the Russian leader.
Russia media said earlier that Kim will host a reception, and Putin is expected to leave Wednesday evening for Vietnam.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Putin’s visit to North Korea illustrates how Russia tries, “in desperation, to develop and to strengthen relations with countries that can provide it with what it needs to continue the war of aggression that it started against Ukraine.”
The North may also seek to increase labor exports to Russia and other illicit activities to gain foreign currency in defiance of UN Security Council sanctions, according to a recent report by the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank run by South Korea’s main spy agency. There will likely be talks about expanding cooperation in agriculture, fisheries and mining and further promoting Russian tourism to North Korea, the institute said.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest point in years, with the pace of both Kim’s weapons tests and combined military exercises involving the United States, South Korea and Japan intensifying in a tit-for-tat cycle.
The Koreas also have engaged in Cold War-style psychological warfare that involved North Korea dropping tons of trash on the South with balloons, and the South broadcasting anti-North Korean propaganda with its loudspeakers.
Russia and North Korea sign partnership deal that appears to be the strongest since Cold War
https://arab.news/mjjgf
Russia and North Korea sign partnership deal that appears to be the strongest since Cold War
- Russian leader hails ‘close friendship’ between the two countries based on ‘equality and respect of mutual interests’
- North Korean state media described the meeting between the leaders as a historic event
Italian funeral for Palestinian woman evacuated from Gaza becomes call to ‘make noise’
The funeral of Marah Abu Zuhri, attended by several hundred people, was interrupted repeatedly by chants of “Free Palestine” and featured speeches by local authorities denouncing Israel’s policy in Gaza and expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people.
As Palestinian flags fluttered, mourners stood in prayer before Zuhri’s coffin, which was was draped in a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh scarf in the town of Pontasserchio, near Pisa.
Zuhri, 19, had been evacuated to Italy with what Israel had called leukemia, but Italian doctors said they found no initial evidence of that and instead found “profound wasting” and an undiagnosed or misdiagnosed condition.
The United Nations and partners have said 22 months of war have devastated Gaza’s health system, and food security experts have said the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out.” Israel is moving ahead with a new military offensive on some of the territory’s most populated areas,
Mayor Matteo Cecchelli said he wanted to honor Zuhri’s life with a public service in the town’s Park of Peace, to “make noise” about what he called a political and humanitarian “catastrophe” in Gaza.
“The reality is that every day in the Gaza Strip, people are dying in the deafening silence of world governments,” he said to applause. “We cannot remain silent today in this field of peace. There are those who have decided to make noise and have decided to be here to express their dissent toward this genocide.”
Israel asserts that it abides by international law and is fighting an existential war in Gaza after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed some 1,200 people and took more than 250 others hostage. Israel has rejected genocide allegations related to its war in Gaza and called them antisemitic.
Zuhri arrived in Italy overnight on Aug. 13-14 as one of 31 sick or injured Palestinians evacuated on an Italian humanitarian airlift that has brought nearly 1,000 ill Palestinians and their families to the country since the war began.
Israel said she had leukemia and had been offered an evacuation earlier but claimed that Hamas had exploited her case, without offering evidence. The UN World Health Organization, which coordinates patients’ evacuations, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Gaza’s Health Ministry has asserted that evacuations are often delayed or canceled by Israeli authorities. It says over 18,000 patients and wounded require treatment outside Gaza.
Zuhri was admitted to the hematology ward of Pisa University’s Santa Chiara Hospital, a known oncological hospital in Tuscany, but died there on Aug. 15.
The hospital said she arrived with a “very complex/compromised clinical picture and in a state of profound wasting.” She suffered a sudden respiratory crisis and subsequent cardiac arrest, which killed her, it said.
The head of the hematology department at the Pisa hospital, Dr. Sara Galimberti, said Zuhri arrived with a diagnosis of suspected acute leukemia, but tests the hospital conducted came back negative, with no signs of the “bad cells” that would indicate leukemia.
Galimberti told reporters that Zuhri likely had been misdiagnosed, and that her condition was nevertheless seriously compromised and had been for a while.
“The patient was in a complete condition of wasting, and completely bedridden despite being 19 years old,” she said.
The hospital conducted a nutritional consultation and began a hypercaloric therapy and transfusional support, but Zuhri died before a full diagnosis was possible, Galimberti said.
The doctor said the woman’s mother, Nabeela Abu Zuhri, declined an autopsy on religious and personal grounds.
The mother, who accompanied her daughter on the flight, spoke briefly at the funeral, thanking Italy for trying to save her daughter and asking for prayers for Palestinians. She said she was “leaving a part of my heart, a part of me, with you” before returning to Gaza.
The imam of Pisa, Mohammad Khalil, who translated for her, tried to calm the crowd and focus on Zuhri, but he also spoke of food shortages and hunger in Gaza.
The United Nations has said starvation and malnutrition in Gaza are at their highest levels since the war began. The UN says nearly 12,000 children under 5 were found with acute malnutrition in July — including more than 2,500 with severe malnutrition, the most dangerous level. The World Health Organization says the numbers are likely an undercount.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly asserted that no one in Gaza is starving, with “no policy of starvation in Gaza.”
AP reporting has found that malnourished children were arriving daily at a Gaza hospital, with some dying from hunger, including ones with no preexisting conditions.
UK set for more legal challenges over migrant hotels
- The local authority sought the ruling following several weeks of protests outside the hotel, some of which have turned violent
- The demonstrations erupted after a resident was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl
EPPING: Britain’s government was considering Wednesday whether to appeal a court ruling blocking the housing of asylum seekers in a flashpoint hotel, as it scrambled to come up with contingency plans for the migrants.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour administration braced itself for further legal challenges from local authorities following Tuesday’s judge-issued junction that has dealt it a major political and logistical headache.
Anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage indicated that councils run by his hard-right Reform UK party, leading in national polls, would pursue similar claims as he called for protests outside migrant hotels.
Security minister Dan Jarvis said the government was weighing challenging high court judge Stephen Eyre’s granting of a temporary injunction to stop migrants from staying at the Bell Hotel in Epping, northeast of London.
The local authority sought the ruling following several weeks of protests outside the hotel, some of which have turned violent. The demonstrations erupted after a resident was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.
“We’re looking very closely at it,” Jarvis told Sky News of a possible appeal.
The interior ministry had tried to have the case dismissed, warning it would “substantially impact” its ability to provide accommodation for tens of thousands of asylum seekers across Britain.
“We’re looking at a range of different contingency options,” Jarvis told Times Radio, adding: “We’ll look closely at what we’re able to do.”
Several Reform-led councils, including in Staffordshire and Northamptonshire in the Midlands area of England, announced on Wednesday that they were exploring their options following the court ruling.
Protests, some of them violent, broke out in Epping in mid-July after Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 41, was charged. He denies the allegation and is due to stand trial later this year.
Hundreds of people have since taken part in demonstrations and counter-demonstrations outside the Bell Hotel. Further anti-immigration demonstrations also spread to London and around England.
Several men appeared in court on Monday charged with violent disorder over the Bell Hotel protests.
Epping Forest District Council argued the hotel had become a risk to public safety and that it had breached planning laws as it was no longer operating as a hotel in the traditional sense.
The judge gave authorities until September 12 to remove the migrants.
Writing in the right-wing Daily Telegraph newspaper, Farage said the “good people of Epping must inspire similar protests around Britain.”
He said peaceful demonstrations can “put pressure on local councils to go to court to try and get the illegal immigrants out.”
In Epping, an attractive market town connected to London by the underground, residents appeared to broadly welcome the imminent removal of the asylum seekers.
“It has made people feel unsettled, especially with schools being down there,” 52-year-old Mark Humphries, who works in retail, told AFP on the high street.
Carol Jones, 64, said she was relieved at the decision but wondered whether it would ever be implemented.
“They shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but where are they going to go?” the retiree told AFP.
Labour has pledged to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers before the next election, likely in 2029, in a bid to save billions of pounds.
The latest government data showed there were 32,345 asylum seekers being housed temporarily in UK hotels at the end of March, down 15 percent from the end of December.
Numbers hit a peak at the end of September 2023 when there were 56,042 asylum seekers in hotels, and the center-right Conservatives were in power.
Starmer is facing huge political pressure domestically for failing to stop irregular migrants crossing the Channel to England on small boats.
More than 50,000 people have made the dangerous crossing from northern France since Starmer became UK leader last July.
Under a 1999 law, the interior ministry “is required to provide accommodation and subsistence support to all destitute asylum seekers whilst their asylum claims are being decided.”
Enver Solomon, chief executive of Refugee Council, urged the government to “partner with local councils to provide safe, cost-effective accommodation within communities” rather than use hotels.
“Ultimately, the only way to end hotel use for good is to resolve asylum applications quickly and accurately so people can either rebuild their lives here or return home with dignity,” he said Tuesday.
Pakistan, China and Afghanistan hold summit in Kabul to boost cooperation
- Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says the talks will cover a wide range of issues, including political and economic cooperation
- Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs notes that Dar’s discussions will focus on trade, regional connectivity, and counter-terrorism efforts
ISLAMABAD: Top diplomats from Pakistan, China and Afghanistan are meeting on Wednesday in Kabul for a trilateral summit aimed at boosting political, regional and economic cooperation, officials said.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi were received by Taliban officials on arrival in the Afghan capital, according to separate statements issued by Islamabad and Beijing.
Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement said the talks, hosted by Kabul, will include “comprehensive discussions” on a wide range of issues, including political, economic and regional cooperation.
According to Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dar’s discussions at the meeting would focus on expanding trade, improving regional connectivity and strengthening joint efforts against terrorism.
The last round of the dialogue took place in May in Beijing.
The latest development comes more than a month after Russia became the first country to formally recognize the Taliban’s government in Afghanistan. While no country, except from Russian, has offered formal recognition, the Taliban have engaged in high-level talks with many nations and established some diplomatic ties with countries including China and the United Arab Emirates.
Indonesia to make plastic recycling mandatory for producers
- Indonesia started to ban imports of plastic waste from developed countries on Jan. 1
- Indonesians are the top global consumers of microplastics, according to a 2024 study
JAKARTA: Indonesia, one of the world’s nations most affected by plastic pollution, will make recycling mandatory for producers, the government has announced in a new move to tackle the crisis, following a ban on shipments of plastic waste from developed countries.
Indonesia produces around 60 million tonnes of waste annually, government data shows, around 12 percent of which is plastic. Less than 10 percent of waste is recycled in the country, while more than half ends up in landfills.
Indonesians are also the top global consumers of microplastics, according to a 2024 study by Cornell University, which estimated that they ingest about 15 grams of plastic particles per month.
“Plastic is problematic for the environment, especially the single-use ones. It creates various problems, and contains hazardous toxic materials,” Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq told reporters earlier this week. Nurofiq was speaking after a UN summit in Geneva failed to produce the world’s first legally binding treaty to tackle plastic pollution.
“We are making an intervention through the Extended Producer Responsibility, or EPR, which is still voluntary at the moment, but we are working to make it mandatory.”
The rules of EPR are in place under a 2019 Ministerial Regulation, which requires producers in Indonesia to take full responsibility for the plastic waste generated by their products.
But the mechanism also encourages producers to design environmentally friendly products and packaging, said Muharram Atha Rasyadi, urban campaigner at Greenpeace Southeast Asia.
“EPR is not only about recycling, it’s also about prioritizing reduction schemes from the very start of the production process, including redesigning the products or transitioning to reuse alternatives,” he told Arab News on Wednesday.
“The producer responsibility scheme should be made into an obligation that needs to be regulated in the management of plastic pollution and waste. If it’s voluntary in nature as we currently have with the 2019 Ministerial Regulation, implementation will be slow and less than ideal.”
As both a major producer and consumer of plastics, Indonesia has poor waste-management practices that has contributed to its plastic pollution problem over the years.
The country of more than 270 million people is the second-largest ocean plastic polluter, just behind China, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Science.
As the government seeks to tackle the crisis by 2029, it started to ban imports of plastic waste on Jan. 1. This comes after years of being among other Southeast Asian nations receiving this plastic scrap from developed countries including the US, UK and Australia.
Indonesia has also introduced measures to reduce single-use plastics, including Bali province’s 2019 ban on single-use plastic bags, straws, and Styrofoam, and a similar one enforced in the capital, Jakarta, in 2020.
Former US embassy guard in Norway on trial for spying for Russia, Iran
- The man, who is in his late 20s, is accused of having supplied information on embassy activities between March 2024 and November 20
OSLO: A Norwegian who worked as a security guard for the US embassy in Oslo went on trial Wednesday, accused of sharing information with Russian and Iranian intelligence, media reported.
The man, who is in his late 20s, is accused of having supplied information on embassy activities between March 2024 and November 20, the date of his arrest, according to the charge sheet.
In return, he was paid in euros and bitcoin.
He is accused of having supplied either the Russians or the Iranians — or both — with the contact details of diplomats, embassy staff and their families.
He is also accused of having supplied the diplomatic license-plate numbers of vehicles used by the embassy.
The charge sheet also alleges he handed over floor plans of the embassy, security routines and a list of couriers Norway’s intelligence service used.
On the first day of his trial, prosecutors presented evidence in the form of an email to the Russian embassy where the man wrote that he had “information that could be useful to you,” public broadcaster NRK reported.
The trial is scheduled to take eight days.
“He acknowledges the facts of the case but denies criminal liability. He is sorry for what he has done, but he is not a spy,” Inger Zadig, the defendant’s lawyer, told news agency NTB.
If convicted of the charges, he could spend up to 21 years in jail, the prosecution service told AFP in July.
Norway’s intelligence service has regularly accused Russia, Iran and China as being the greatest threats to the country so far as spying is concerned.
A member of NATO, Norway shares a land border with Russia in the Arctic.
