Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has responded positively to a letter from U.S. President Donald Trump that encouraged him to promote democracy and improve strained relations between the two countries.
A letter from Hun Sen, dated Tuesday and shared online Wednesday by members of his government, accepted Trump’s invitation to a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders in the United States early next year, as well as an offer for the two countries’ foreign policy teams to hold talks.
Washington has long criticized Hun Sen’s government for its poor record on democratic and human rights. Hun Sen, in power for 34 years, has accused the U.S. of seeking “regime change” to oust him.
Trump’s Nov. 1 letter assured Hun Sen that the U.S. does not seek regime change.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has hosted leaders of Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgency and discussed efforts aimed at finding a negotiated settlement to the Afghan war.
A Taliban spokesman said Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the political deputy chief and head of the insurgent group’s Qatar-based office, led the visiting delegation at the meeting.
FILE – Members of a Taliban delegation, led by chief negotiator Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, center, leave after peace talks with Afghan senior politicians in Moscow, May 30, 2019.
This is the second time Taliban officials have traveled to Tehran since their yearlong peace negotiations with the United States collapsed in early September.
The latest visit also comes a week after the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) alleged that Iran continues to provide the insurgent group with military support in a bid to counter Washington’s influence in Afghanistan.
Iranian official media reported Wednesday that in his discussions with Taliban visitors, Zarif underscored the need to launch an intra-Afghan peace dialogue for “the formation of an all-inclusive government” in the war-shattered neighboring country.
The top Iranian diplomat is said to have voiced Tehran’s readiness to take part in efforts aimed at facilitating such a peace process that would be participated by the Taliban and government officials as well as representatives from other influential political forces in Afghanistan.
Iran’s Press TV reported that Zarif conveyed to the Taliban his country’s support for “any effort by various Afghan forces to find common ground for cooperation towards paving the way for the departure of all foreign forces from Afghanistan” as an outcome of intra-Afghan reconciliation talks.
‘Iranian military support’
The Pentagon released the DIA report on Iran’s military power earlier this month, alleging the Shi’ite nation has provided weapons, training, and funding to the Taliban in a bid to counter U.S. and Western influence in Afghanistan.
It went on to stress Tehran’s “calibrated support” is also meant to combat Islamic State’s affiliates in the country and increase Tehran’s influence in any future government in Kabul that emerges as a result of a political reconciliation among Afghan warring sides.
The Afghan Taliban are “less receptive” to Iranian guidance but still it helps further Iranian regional objectives because they combat common enemies, the report noted.
“Tehran does not seek to return the Taliban to power but aims to maintain influence with the group as a hedge in the event that the Taliban gains a role in a future Afghan government,” it said.
Iran engages both the insurgents and the Afghan government as part of its “dual-track strategy” to achieve its “broader security goals” in the country, the DIA report said.
The Taliban denies allegations it receives military support from Iran or Pakistan, which also shares a long border with Afghanistan. The insurgent group maintains the “propaganda” is an attempt to defame the Taliban and its “jihad” against U.S.-led “foreign occupation” forces in the country.
Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday claimed without evidence that recent protests across the Islamic Republic over government-set gasoline prices rising were part of a “conspiracy” involving the U.S., as authorities began to acknowledge the scale of the demonstrations.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the comment while addressing members of the Revolutionary Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force, which help put down the demonstrations.
Meanwhile, one lawmaker was quoted as saying authorities arrested more than 7,000 people over the protests while a security official claimed demonstrators attempted to take over Iranian state television.
Iran’s government still hasn’t offered any statistics on injuries, arrests or deaths in the protests and security crackdown that followed government-set gasoline prices rising Nov. 15. Amnesty International says it believes the violence killed at least 143 people, something Iran disputes without offering any evidence to support its claims.
In his comments reported by state media, Khamenei said the Iranian people extinguished “a very dangerous deep conspiracy that cost so much money and effort.” He praised the police, the Guard and the Basij for “entering the field and carrying out their task in a very difficult confrontation.”
Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of state, described the protests as being orchestrated by “global arrogance,” which he uses to refer to the U.S. He described America as seeing the price hikes as an “opportunity” to bring their “troops”` to the field but the “move was destroyed by people.”
Wednesday marks the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Basij. Videos from the protest purport to show plainclothes Basij officials and others on motorcycles beating and detaining protesters.
Meanwhile, the moderate news website Entekhab quoted Hossein Naghavi Hosseini, a member of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, as saying more than 7,000 people had been arrested in the demonstrations. He did not elaborate.
Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli also claimed in an interview late Tuesday on state television that “some 500 people” tried to storm Iran’s state television offices. He did not elaborate and no protests had been previously reported in the northern Tehran neighborhood home to the state broadcaster.
Fazli also estimated as many as 200,000 people took part the demonstrations, higher than previous claims. He said demonstrators damaged over 50 police stations, as well as 34 ambulances, 731 banks and 70 gas stations in the country.
“We have individuals who were killed by knives, shotguns and fires,” he said, without offering a casualty figure.
Starting Nov. 16, Iran shut down the internet across the country, limiting communications with the outside world. That made determining the scale and longevity of the protests incredibly difficult. While home and office internet has been restored, access on mobile phones remains rare.
The gasoline price hike came as Iran’s 80 million people have already seen their savings dwindle and jobs scarce under crushing U.S. sanctions. President Donald Trump imposed them in the aftermath of unilaterally withdrawing America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
The dispatch of two Philippine coast guard ships to the Sulu Sea might normally register as a quick blip on the radar of world maritime movement. But shipments of illegal drugs and support for violent Muslim rebels cross that sea from other countries into the Philippines, which struggles to contain both. The Chinese navy is growing stronger not far away, too, and China disputes tracts of sea with the Philippines.
The Philippines has historically had a weak defense, especially at sea. Research database GlobalFirePower.com ranks the Philippine armed forces 64th strongest in the world. Neighbors China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam all rank higher.
Manila’s Sulu Sea patrol, which started November 18 and will also cover the adjacent South China Sea, shows the country is accelerating its defense buildup because of the offshore threats, , analysts believe. The severity of problems that reach the archipelago from abroad are giving officials extra willpower now, they say.
“If it’s not done fast, we won’t have a very potent, a very credible deterrent armed forces or coast guard, so we have to put our money where our mouth is,” said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, a Manila research organization.
Drugs and rebels
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said in March that illegal drug use had worsened in part because supplies were being smuggled in, domestic news website Philstar Global reported. He swore when elected in 2016 to eradicate drugs, and his critics say thousands of drug suspects have already been killed without trial.
FILE – Filipino men place their hands over their heads as they are rounded up during a police operation as part of the continuing “War on Drugs” campaign of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in Manila, Philippines, Oct. 7, 2016.
“Maybe Duterte realized his war on drugs cannot be won without stopping the inflow of drugs coming from Latin America and coming from the Mekong region, because a lot of drugs have been shipped in the back door and it’s quite difficult to police,” said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school. “So, fighting the drug war requires upgrading the coastal capabilities of the coast guard.”
The coast guard said on its website it helped last week detain the captain and crew of a merchant ship carrying 53,000 metric tons of a “toxic substance” from South Korea.
Sympathizers of the Middle Eastern terrorist group Islamic State use the Sulu Sea to reach Muslim antigovernment rebels in the southern Philippines, Duterte said last year. Violence there since the 1960s has killed more than 120,000 people.
Despite a 2014 peace accord with one dominant rebel group and the later creation of a semiautonomous Muslim region, terrorist attacks still flare up around the southernmost major Philippine island, Mindanao. In June, for example, suspected suicide bombers hit a military camp and killed three soldiers.
Checking China
And in the South China Sea, known in Manila as the West Philippine Sea, hundreds of Chinese vessels gathered near a Philippine-held islet in waters the two sides contest. A Philippine fishing vessel capsized in June after colliding with a Chinese ship. The Philippines holds 10 islets in disputed tracts of the sea.
“The fact they put priority into the Sulu Sea is important because it really is probably second only to the West Philippine Sea in importance when you look at it from the perspective of maritime activity,” said Jay Batongbacal: international maritime affairs professor at University of the Philippines. “There’s a lot of activity there, so it’s good that they’re pouring resources into it.”
Long-term modernization
Philippine officials have pledged military modernization since 1995 with an act of Congress approved that year, but budgeting has always been inconsistent. Duterte’s predecessor used arbitration rather than a stronger defense to resist China at sea, Rabena said.
The threats from offshore are giving those pledges extra impetus now, experts say. A three-way deal to patrol the Sulu Sea together with neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia should add to that momentum, Rabena said.
FILE – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte speaks during his fourth State of the Nation Address at the Philippine Congress in Quezon City, Metro Manila, July 22, 2019.
Last year Duterte earmarked $5.6 billion for defense modernization through 2022. Earlier this month an Armed Forces of the Philippines official told a House of Representatives briefing the country should raise defense spending to 2% of GDP, which was $331 billion last year. Its current 1.1% lags the regional average.
An expanding tax base is expected to help fund military improvements, Araral said.
Defense has been “accelerated” further by hardware donations from abroad, he said. Washington has donated military equipment in the past. Japan, another country that wants to hold off China at sea, has pledged to send the Philippines two patrol vessels and lend it five surveillance planes.
The United States is helping the coast guard now develop a training center in several phases. There’s already a classroom, engine maintenance laboratory and barracks for outboard motor maintenance. The U.S. Embassy in Manila said in October. U.S. Coast Guard teams will offer training.
U.S. President Donald Trump learned about a whistleblower complaint regarding his relations with Ukraine before he decided to unfreeze nearly $400 million in military aid, according to a New York Times report published Tuesday.
The Times cited two people familiar with the matter, saying White House lawyers told Trump about the complaint in late August as they worked to determine whether they were required to send it to Congress.
That battle formed the early stages of what has become the focus of the impeachment inquiry now playing out in the House of Representatives. Lawmakers received the complaint in late September and made a version of it public.
Since then, the Democrat-led House Intelligence committee has held both private and public sessions to hear testimony from current and former diplomats and other officials to examine allegations Trump withheld the aid to Ukraine to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to commit to an investigation of one of Trump’s potential opponents in the 2020 election, Democrat Joe Biden.
The House Judiciary Committee, which will decide whether to send articles of impeachment to the full House for a vote, announced Tuesday it would hold its first hearing December 4 and invited Trump to attend.
The hearing will look into what the committee calls the “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment.”
The guidelines established by Democratic leaders say Trump and his lawyers would be given the chance to question the panel of still-to-be-named legal experts who will appear as witnesses.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler sent a letter to the White House inviting Trump to attend, calling it “not a right, but a privilege or a courtesy.”
FILE – Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerrold Nadler waits to speak during a media briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 31, 2019.
“The president has a choice he can make: he can take this opportunity to be represented in the impeachment hearings, or he can stop complaining about the process,” Nadler said in a separate statement. “I hope that he chooses to participate in the inquiry, directly or through counsel as other presidents have done before him.”
Nadler assured Trump that he “remains committed to ensuring a fair and informative process.”
Nadler is giving the White House until Sunday night to respond.
U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland testified last week that a number of senior Trump administration officials were “in the loop” about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine.
They include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
They have balked at testifying. A federal judge ruled Monday that Trump does not have the power to stop former White House counsel Don McGahn from complying with a subpoena to appear before the House committees.
Trump, who insists he did nothing wrong, tweeted Tuesday that he “would love to have Mike Pompeo, Rick Perry, Mick Mulvaney and many others to testify about the phony impeachment hoax,” calling it a “Democratic scam that is going nowhere.”
Trump’s Republican defenders say no matter what the president did, it does not rise to the level of impeachment.
Trump alleges that when Biden was vice president, he threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Ukraine unless Kyiv fired a prosecutor investigating the Burisma gas company, on whose board Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, sat.
No evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens has ever surfaced. Charges of Ukrainian election interference are based on a debunked conspiracy theory that originated in Russia.
