PARIS: European countries agreed at a summit in Paris Thursday to ramp up rather than lift sanctions on Russia over its war against Ukraine, as Britain and France began sketching out plans to send a “reassurance” force after any peace.
President Emmanuel Macron hosted the meeting of Ukraine’s European allies and President Volodymyr Zelensky in the latest effort to agree a coordinated policy after Donald Trump shocked Europe by opening direct talks with the Kremlin.
The US claims tentative progress toward a ceasefire to end the three-year conflict sparked by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
But as yet a peace deal appears far off and the meeting of over two dozen European heads of state and government also underlined differences within the “coalition of the willing,” with not all states signing onto the French-British plan to deploy troops postwar.
“He really wants to divide Europe and America, Putin really wants that,” Zelensky said after the summit, adding Kyiv wants Washington to be “stronger” toward the Kremlin.
He warned “everybody understood and understands that today Russia does not want any kind of peace.”
There appeared to be consensus around the table at the Elysee Palace that sanctions imposed against Russia should not be weakened, and rather intensified, until there is peace.
“There was complete clarity that now is not the time for the lifting of sanctions, quite the contrary — what we discussed is how we can increase sanctions to support the US initiative to bring Russia to the table,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said alongside Zelensky.
In a separate briefing, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said lifting sanctions would be a “grave mistake” and “makes no sense” without a truce.
As well as boosting Ukraine’s own armed forces, a key pillar of ensuring security and preventing further Russian invasions could be to deploy European troops to Ukraine, although until now it has been far from clear how this could happen.
Macron said after the summit that France and Britain were leading efforts to send a “reassurance force” to Ukraine after any end to the fighting.
“It does not have unanimity today, but we do not need unanimity to do this,” he added, saying a Franco-British delegation would head to Ukraine in the coming days for talks.
Macron emphasized that members of such a force would not be peacekeepers, deployed on the front line or any kind of substitute for the Ukrainian army.
Also, he said, not all of Ukraine’s European allies would be represented in the force, with some states not “having the capacity” and some reluctant due to the “political context.”
The Franco-British delegation would begin talks over where such a force could be deployed.
It would have the “character of deterrence against any potential Russian aggression,” he said.
Macron added that the summit agreed that he and Starmer would together “co-pilot” Europe’s ‘coalition of action’ for stable and durable peace.”
But Zelensky struck a more downbeat note, warning that “there are many questions” but “so far, there are few answers” about the force, who would lead it and what it can do.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has long made clear her reserves over the troop deployment plan, said she hoped the United States will be involved in the next European meeting on Ukraine and repeated Rome’s refusal to send troops to defend any peace deal.
But Starmer, hailing the summit, said: “This is Europe mobilizing together behind the peace process on a scale that we haven’t seen for decades, backed by partners from around the world.”
Ukraine has offered through the United States a 30-day ceasefire, but Russia has so far failed to respond, with the European allies growing all the more impatient.
Underscoring how far apart the sides remain, Ukraine accused Russia Thursday of violating a US-brokered agreement to refrain from targeting energy infrastructure with an artillery strike that caused a power outage in the city of Kherson.
The Ukrainian army meanwhile rejected Russian claims it had itself targeted energy sites.
“I think there should be a reaction from the US,” Zelensky told reporters in Paris, saying that energy facilities had been damaged in a strike Thursday and that it was “unclear who is monitoring” the pledges to halt such strikes.
Thursday’s meeting comes after the White House said Russia and Ukraine had agreed on the contours of a possible ceasefire in the Black Sea, during parallel talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia.
Paris summit rejects Russia sanctions relief, mulls Ukraine force
https://arab.news/vmv33
Paris summit rejects Russia sanctions relief, mulls Ukraine force
- President Emmanuel Macron hosted the meeting of Ukraine’s European allies and President Volodymyr Zelensky
- The US claims tentative progress toward a ceasefire to end the three-year conflict
Serbia expels Croatian doctor married to Serb over security threat
She said a police officer called and said there was a problem with her residence.
"When I went to the police station I was given a piece of paper that said I was an unacceptable threat to the security of Serbia and its citizens. I was given one week to leave," she said.
"How can you pack up a life in a week?"
Stojanovic Ivkovic is one of about 20 Croatian citizens who have been ordered to leave Serbia in the past three months, according to Croatian embassy data. Dozens of others have been refused entry at the border. Relations between Croatia and Serbia, which fought a bitter war in the 1990s, have been strained in recent months after a wave of anti-corruption protests, which Serbian pro-government media have accused Croatia's security service of backing. Stojanovic Ivkovic said the only thing she can think of that may account for her being identified as a security threat after 12 years of living in Serbia was her support for the student-led protests, which included attending several rallies.
"However, we do not know if this is the real reason," she said. "We as a family we do not deserve this."
She has filed a complaint and hopes she will be allowed to stay with her family.
Serbia's Interior Ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
"We are extremely worried that in three days last week we had five cases of expulsion (of Croatian citizens)," Hidajet Biscevic, the Croatian ambassador to Serbia, said.
UK Supreme Court rules that equalities law defines a woman as someone born biologically female
- Britain’s highest court scheduled to rule whether a transgender person with a certificate that recognizes them as female can be regarded as a woman under equality laws
LONDON: The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the UK equalities law defines a woman as someone born biologically female.
Justice Patrick Hodge said five judges at the court had ruled unanimously that “the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman.”
The ruling means that a transgender person with a certificate that recognizes them as female should not be considered a woman for equality purposes.
The case stems from a 2018 law passed by the Scottish Parliament stating that there should be a 50 percent female representation on the boards of Scottish public bodies. That law included transgender women in its definition of women.
The women’s rights group successfully challenged that law, arguing that its redefinition of “woman” went beyond parliament’s powers.
Scottish officials then issued guidance stating that the definition of “woman” included a transgender woman with a gender recognition certificate.
FWS sought to overturn that.
“Not tying the definition of sex to its ordinary meaning means that public boards could conceivably comprise of 50 percent men, and 50 percent men with certificates, yet still lawfully meet the targets for female representation,” the group’s director Trina Budge said.
The challenge was rejected by a court in 2022, but the group was granted permission last year to take its case to the Supreme Court.
What are the arguments?
Aidan O’Neill, a lawyer for FWS, told the Supreme Court judges – three men and two women – that under the Equality Act “sex” should refer to biological sex and as understood “in ordinary, everyday language.”
“Our position is your sex, whether you are a man or a woman or a girl or a boy is determined from conception in utero, even before one’s birth, by one’s body,” he said on Tuesday. “It is an expression of one’s bodily reality. It is an immutable biological state.”
The women’s rights group counts among its supporters author J.K. Rowling, who reportedly donated tens of thousands of pounds to back its work. The “Harry Potter” writer has been vocal in arguing that the rights for trans women should not come at the expense of those who are born biologically female.
Opponents, including Amnesty International, said excluding transgender people from sex discrimination protections conflicts with human rights.
Amnesty submitted a brief in court saying it was concerned about the deterioration of the rights for trans people in the UK and abroad.
“A blanket policy of barring trans women from single-sex services is not a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim,” the human rights group said.
Bangladesh restores ‘except Israel’ clause in passports after public pressure
- Bangladesh’s previous government dropped the wording in 2021 without public notice
- Immigration says it may take several weeks to finalize procedures to print it again
DHAKA: Bangladesh is reinstating the “except Israel” clause in its passports, the Department of Immigration said on Tuesday, after public pressure to reverse its removal by the previous government.
Bangladeshi passports carried the sentence: “This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel” until 2021, when authorities rolled out a new travel document, the phrase was removed without any public notice.
While authorities justified it by saying it was meant to “maintain international standard,” many people in the country — which has no diplomatic relations with Israel — questioned the move.
The new interim government, which took charge of Bangladesh in August after the ouster of its long-standing prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has decided to undo her cabinet’s decision.
“We’ve received the government’s directive to reinstate the ‘except Israel’ clause in Bangladeshi passports. We are currently working to implement it,” Brig. Gen. Mohammad Nurus Salam, passports director at the Department of Immigration, told Arab News.
“For many years, our passports carried the ‘except Israel’ clause. But the previous government suddenly removed it. We were used to seeing ‘except Israel’ written in our passports. I don’t know why they took it out. If you talk to people across the country, you’ll see they want that line back in their passports. There was no need to remove it.”
Pressure to reinstate the clause has been mounting since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing deadly onslaught on Gaza which began in October 2023.
Over 51,000 people have been killed, 116,000 wounded, and 2 million others face starvation after Israeli forces destroyed most of the region’s infrastructure and buildings, while blocking humanitarian aid from entering.
A clear ban on travel to Israel in Bangladeshi passports was one of the key demands raised during a series of Gaza solidarity protests, which have been held regularly in Dhaka since last month, after Israeli forces unilaterally broke a ceasefire agreement and resumed bombing hospitals, schools and tents sheltering displaced people.
The biggest such protest took place in Dhaka on Saturday, with about 1 million people taking to the streets to call on the international community to “take effective and collective action to end the genocide,” and especially on Muslim countries to immediately sever all economic, military, and diplomatic relations with Israel and to “impose commercial blockades and sanctions on the Zionist state” and begin active diplomatic efforts to isolate it on the international stage.
“People will definitely welcome this new decision. It reflects the feelings of the people of this country,” Salam said, but he was not able to specify when the new passports will be available.
“There are some technical challenges involved with this change. Currently, we import e-passports from Germany under a government-to-government agreement ... It may take another week to finalize the necessary procedures. In the meantime, we are exploring whether there’s any option to modify the existing stock of printed booklets.”
China ‘not afraid to fight’ trade war with US – foreign ministry
- Foreign ministry spokesman: US should stop exerting extreme pressure, stop threatening and blackmailing, and talk to China on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit
BEIJING: China warned Wednesday it was “not afraid” to fight a trade war with the United States and reiterated calls for dialogue, after US President Donald Trump said it was up to Beijing to come to the negotiating table.
“If the US really wants to resolve the issue through dialogue and negotiation, it should stop exerting extreme pressure, stop threatening and blackmailing, and talk to China on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.
Britain’s audit watchdog probes EY over Post Office scandal
- Hundreds of self-employed workers at the state-owned Post Office were wrongly prosecuted or convicted between 1999 and 2015 for false accounting, theft and fraud, because of glitches in a software
LONDON: Britain’s Financial Reporting Council has opened an investigation into EY over its audit of Post Office Limited, it said on Wednesday, amid the lingering fallout from one of the country’s worst miscarriages of justice.
The FRC said in a statement it will focus on the audit firm’s role in approving the Post Office’s financial statements from 2015 to 2018, particularly the Horizon IT system which was at the heart of the scandal.
“We have been notified of the FRC’s intention to open an investigation into the EY audits of Post Office Limited for the financial years ending March 2015 – March 2018,” a spokesperson for EY said. “We take our public interest responsibilities extremely seriously and will be fully cooperating with the FRC during their investigation,” the spokesperson said.
Hundreds of self-employed workers at the state-owned Post Office were wrongly prosecuted or convicted between 1999 and 2015 for false accounting, theft and fraud, because of glitches in a software system that incorrectly showed money missing from accounts.
Some were jailed, lost their marriages or otherwise saw their lives destroyed while others died before their names could be cleared.
Spurred into action last year by public outcry following a television series that dramatized the scandal, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sought to quash the wrongful convictions while a police investigation and public inquiry have also been carried out.
