Day: July 10, 2019

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Katherine Ahn contributed from Washington.

Qatar’s emir has used his visit to Washington this week to highlight his nation’s growing economic and defense ties with the United States, but has said nothing about his apparent bid to mediate U.S.-Iran tensions.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani met President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday and Acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper at the Pentagon a day earlier, with both sides praising what they called “increasingly close” strategic and defense relations. They cited Qatari purchases of and agreements to buy U.S.-made aircraft, jet engines and missile defense systems, the joint development of a Qatari petrochemicals complex and Qatar’s expansion of the Al Udeid Airbase hosting U.S. forces.

But the U.S. readouts of Al Thani’s meetings with Trump and Esper made no explicit mention of Iran, whose long-running tensions with Washington have soared in recent months. Neither did Trump nor Al Thani say anything about a Qatari desire to mediate between the United States and Iran, as the two leaders spoke to reporters ahead of their White House talks.

Qatar not only serves as a U.S. ally by hosting the U.S. military’s Central Command forward headquarters at the Al Udeid Airbase, but it also serves as Shi’ite-majority Iran’s best friend among Sunni-led Gulf Arab nations that have largely shunned Tehran in retaliation for its support of anti-Sunni insurgencies in the region. Doha has boosted its economic and diplomatic ties with Tehran since 2017, when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain imposed a land, sea and air blockade on Qatar for its perceived support of terrorism and advocacy of improved ties with Iran.

In a report published Tuesday, Qatari news agency Al Jazeera, founded by the emirate’s ruling family, quoted Qatar University politics professor Majed al Ansari as saying Doha is “actively working in mediation between Iran and the United States.” Al Ansari, a former Qatari foreign ministry official, also described that mediation as likely to be a “main topic” of Al Thani’s meetings with U.S. officials in Washington.

In a Tuesday press briefing at the State Department, spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said U.S.-Qatari cooperation in dealing with what she called Iran’s “destabilizing activities” in the region would be on the agenda of Al Thani’s meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday.

But some analysts say Al Thani faces multiple obstacles in any effort to mediate U.S.-Iran tensions that have escalated since last year, when Trump withdrew from a 2015 deal in which world powers offered Iran sanctions relief in return for limits on its nuclear program. 

Trump reimposed U.S. sanctions on Iran and called on it to negotiate a new deal, saying the existing one did not do enough to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons or engaging in other malign behaviors, such as developing ballistic missiles and supporting U.S.-designated terrorist groups. 

Tehran has called its nuclear ambitions peaceful and vowed to continue those behaviors. It also claimed responsibility for downing a U.S. drone over the Persian Gulf last month, while denying U.S. accusations that it attacked six foreign oil tankers in the region with mines since May. 

“I expect Iran to be the thorniest of all the issues that the emir and Trump discuss,” said Varsha Koduvayur, a senior researcher at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in a VOA Persian interview. 

“Unlike Oman or Kuwait, two Gulf Cooperation Council countries that have officially declared themselves to be neutral, Qatar sent its ambassador back to Tehran in 2017, shortly after the Gulf blockade began, and trade with Iran is just continuing to rise. In my view, this doesn’t put Qatar in any sort of neutral, mediating light,” she said. 

Speaking separately to VOA Persian, Matthew Brodsky, a senior analyst at the Security Studies Group in Washington, said he believes the Trump administration is not interested in any foreign mediation of U.S. tensions with Iran at the present time. 

“The point of the (U.S.) strategy is to create the maximum amount of tension so that the leaders in Tehran reach a decision point (that) would lead them to the table to negotiate over not just their nuclear program but their ballistic missiles and of course their very bad regional behavior,” Brodsky said. “So a lessening of the tension … plays against the White House strategy to bring the leaders in Iran to a decision point, and that requires tension,” he added. 

Iranian intransigence is another barrier to mediation, in the view of James Phillips, a senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. 

“I doubt that Qatar could play a significant role in easing tensions between the U.S. and Iran, because Iran does not want tensions to be eased right now,” Phillip said in another VOA Persian interview. “As long as Tehran wants to continue escalating this slow-motion crisis, I doubt third party efforts will make much of a difference. But if Iran should change its mind, there may be an opening for such a role,” he said. 

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Relentless global warming threatens the potential success of a sweeping set of goals established by the United Nations to tackle inequality, conflict and other ills, officials said on Tuesday.

Climate change imperils food supplies, water and places where people live, endangering the U.N. plan to address these world problems by 2030, according to a report by U.N. officials.

Member nations of the U.N. unanimously adopted 17 global development goals in 2015, setting out a wide-ranging “to-do” list tackling such vexing issues as conflict, hunger, land degradation, gender inequality and climate change.

The latest report, which called climate change “the greatest challenge to sustainable development,” came as diplomatic, business and other officials gathered for a high-level U.N. forum to take stock of the goals’ progress.

“The most urgent area for action is climate change,” said Liu Zhenmin, U.N. Under-Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs, in the report.

“The compounded effects will be catastrophic and irreversible,” he said, listing increased extreme weather events, more severe natural disasters and land degradation. “These effects, which will render many parts of the globe uninhabitable, will affect the poor the most.”

Progress has been made on lowering child mortality, boosting immunization rates and global access to electricity, the report said.

Yet extreme poverty, hunger and inequality remain hugely problematic, and more than half of school-age children showed “shockingly low proficiency rates” in reading and math, it said.

Two-thirds of those children were in school.

Human trafficking rates nearly doubled from an average 150 detected victims per country in 2010 to 254 in 2016.

But it was unclear how much of the increase reflected improved reporting systems versus an increase in trafficking, said Francesca Perucci of the U.N.’s statistics division, who worked on the report.

“It’s hard to exactly distinguish the two,” she said at a launch of the report.

But climate change remained paramount.

Greenhouse gases have continued to climb, and “climate change is occurring much faster than anticipated,” the report said.

At this week’s goals summit, 47 countries were expected to present voluntary progress reviews. Almost 100 other countries and four cities including New York have done so.

Earlier U.N. reports said the goals were threatened by the persistence of violence, conflict and lack of private investment. Outside assessments have also cited nationalism, protectionism and insufficient funding.

The cost of implementing the global goals has been estimated at $3 trillion a year.

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In the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, nine “water plazas” have been created that soak up excess rainfall while offering people a green space to meet and children to play.

The city is also planting gardens and putting solar panels on a growing area of its nearly 20 square kilometers (8 square miles) of flat roofs.

Paris, meanwhile, is redesigning and opening green schoolyards as cooler places for locals to escape extreme heat, while in New Zealand, Wellington is rolling out neighborhood water supplies to keep the taps on when an earthquake hits.

More than 70 cities that are part of the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) network, set up in 2013, have crafted “resilience strategies” that include about 3,500 activities designed to combat shocks and stresses – everything from floods to an influx of refugees.

The United Nations estimates that by 2050 nearly 70% of the world’s population will live in cities, which are increasingly impacted by extreme weather and sea level rise, while producing about 75% of planet-warming emissions.

Michael Berkowitz, president of 100 Resilient Cities, told a gathering of the network’s cities in Rotterdam on Tuesday that efforts to build resilience had now become established as an approach to improving quality of life in cities.

Those efforts to keep people safe and well in the face of rising climate, economic and social pressures will continue, despite the closure this month of the organization that helped them craft those plans, officials said.

At the end of July, 100RC will shut its offices after the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation said in April it would no longer fund the body, having given about $176 million for its work.

That funding helped pay initial salaries for chief resilience officers in member cities, for example, though about 80% of the cities now have made the role a part of their staff, 100RC officials said.

The Rockefeller Foundation said on Monday it would provide an additional $8 million over 18 months to help 100RC cities and their chief resilience officers transition to a network they will lead themselves.

“Ultimately, we aim to ensure continued collaboration and sharing among cities to address some of their most pressing challenges,” Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah said in a statement.

Expansion Ahead?

Krishna Mohan Ramachandran, chief resilience officer for the Indian city of Chennai, which has just launched its resilience strategy, said he was relieved it would be able to carry on with planned projects.

Those include conserving scarce water, putting vegetable gardens in schools, and finding less risky but nearby locations for flood-threatened communities, among others.

Rotterdam chief resilience officer Arnoud Molenaar, who led colleagues in lobbying for extra funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, said resilience work had garnered more support and created more value in cities than was often appreciated.

The Rockefeller bridge grant meant the network would now have time to raise more money from donors and others to stand on its own, and expand partnerships with politicians, communities and businesses, Molenaar said.

Elizabeth Yee, who moved from 100RC to The Rockefeller Foundation to manage its climate and resilience work, said there was a “huge” amount of money looking for resilient urban infrastructure projects, but cities often struggled to meet investor requirements.

She said a key to finding funding was to design a bus rapid transit system or a clean power plant, for example, to also create local jobs and make communities more economically secure.

“I am hopeful that we can keep helping cities develop those projects and getting them ready for bigger, broader investment,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of the conference in Rotterdam.

Cities in the 100RC network have so far raised $25 billion from their own budgets, businesses and other sources to put their resilience plans into practice, 100RC’s Berkowitz said.

In a decade’s time, he said, he hoped urban resilience – with its holistic approach to multiple, modern-day stresses – would have become “an absolutely essential part of city government.”

For now, as cities rapidly expand and climate threats grow, much more such work will be needed, he said.

“Even 100 cities is a ridiculously small number of cities, compared to the world’s 10,000 cities,” he said. “We need more effort if we’re going to really win the battle of the 21st century, which is going to be fought in cities.”

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The organizers of the beleaguered Woodstock 50 festival said on Tuesday they still hoped to get a permit for the event due to take place next month despite being turned down at a second site.

Authorities in the town of Vernon in upstate New York turned down the organizers’ application to stage the three-day event, marking the 50th anniversary of the famed 1969 “peace and music” festival.

Oneida County Administrator Anthony Picente Jr. told Hollywood trade publication Variety that efforts to stage the festival at Vernon Downs for some 65,000 people at short notice had been “chaotic.” Picente said he thought the chances of it taking place were “highly unlikely.”

However, Woodstock 50 producers said they would appeal.

“With a venue chosen, financing assembled and many of the artists supporting Woodstock’s 50th Anniversary event, the organizers are hopeful that their appeal and reapplication” will prevail, the producers said in a statement.

Tickets have yet to go on sale.

The Aug. 16-19 festival was originally due to take place at the Watkins Glen motor racing venue in upstate New York with a line-up including Jay-Z and Miley Cyrus.

Watkins Glen in June pulled out, throwing the festival into further uncertainty after the original investors withdrew their support, citing problems with permits and arranging security and sanitation.

Woodstock 50 announced in March that more than 80 musical acts, including 1969 festival veterans John Fogerty, Canned Heat and Santana, would take part. Some 100,000 fans, including campers, were originally expected to attend, but that number was later reduced to 60,000.

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The United States would hope to see a freeze in the North Korean nuclear program as the start of a process of denuclearization, the State Department said on Tuesday, ahead of fresh talks with Pyongyang supposed to take place this month.

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had a surprise meeting at the end of June in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas and agreed to resume a working-level dialogue, stalled since a failed summit in Vietnam in February.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the talks would likely happen “sometime in July … probably in the next two or three weeks.”

The Trump administration has dismissed a New York Times report that said an idea was taking shape among U.S. officials to seek to negotiate a nuclear freeze by North Korea, rather than its complete denuclearization, thereby tacitly accepting it as a nuclear state.

“(A) freeze, you know, that would never be the resolution of a process. That would never be the end of a process,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told a regular news briefing.

“That would (be) something that we would certainly hope to see at the beginning. But I don’t think that the administration has ever characterized a freeze as being the end goal. That would be at the beginning of the process.”

North Korea has frozen nuclear bomb and missile testing since 2017, but U.S. officials believe it has expanded its arsenal by continuing to produce bomb fuel and missiles. They are keen to see a freeze in this production too.

Ortagus said Washington’s goal remained the complete elimination of all of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction.

She said the U.S. special representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, would meet his South Korean counterpart during a visit to Europe this week to discuss ways to achieve this.

The DMZ encounter, initiated by a spur-of-the-moment tweet by Trump that Kim said took him by surprise, showed a rapport between the two men but policy analysts said they appear no closer to narrowing the gap between U.S. demands for denuclearization and North Korea’s demand for sanctions relief.

The two sides have yet to even agree a common definition of denuclearization, which North Korea has taken to include the U.S. nuclear umbrella protecting Japan and South Korea.

Washington has demanded that Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons unilaterally.

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