Day: January 11, 2020

North Korea will not resume nuclear talks unless the United States unconditionally accepts its demands, a senior North Korean official said Saturday.

“We have wasted our time with U.S. for more than a year and a half,” said Kim Kye Gwan, a North Korean vice foreign minister, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

Trump Wishes North Korea’s Kim a Happy Birthday

The U.S. president sent a message to the Kim Jong Un via South Korea’s national security adviser

Kim, a senior diplomat, said Kim Jong Un’s relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump remains positive, noting that Kim recently received birthday greetings from Trump.

“But it is a personal thing and our chairman, who represents the state and works for the benefit of the state, will not make decisions based on his personal relationship,” Kim added.

“For dialogue to happen, the U.S. must unconditionally accept our demands. However, we know that the U.S. is not ready to do so, or cannot do so,” he added.

The North Korean diplomat did not say what North Korea is demanding. North Korea regularly complains about U.S. and international sanctions, as well as joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises and weapons sales.

Trump Administration Gives Korean Leader Benefit of Doubt

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expresses hope Kim Jong Un will ‘choose peace and prosperity over conflict and war’

The U.S.-North Korea talks have been stalled since February, when a Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi ended abruptly over a disagreement on how to pair sanctions relief with steps to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear program.

Kim, the North Korean diplomat, said “there will be no negotiations like in Vietnam, in which we proposed exchanging a core nuclear facility of the country for the lifting of some U.N. sanctions.”

Over the last two years, Trump and Kim have exchanged personal letters. Trump has hinted the two also talk on the phone. Last week, Trump insisted the relationship remains “very good,” despite U.S.-North Korea talks being stalled.

Birthday greetings

The latest reported Trump-Kim interaction came this week, when Trump sent birthday greetings to the North Korean leader, who is believed to have  turned 36 on Wednesday.

South Korea said Friday it had relayed the birthday message following a meeting between Trump and South Korea’s national security adviser.

However, KCNA reported Saturday that North Korea had already received Trump’s greetings directly in the form of a personal letter. KCNA mocked South Korea for attempting to mediate between Washington and Seoul.

“They seem not to know that there is a special liaison channel between the top leaders of the DPRK and the U.S.,” the diplomat Kim said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“It seems [South Korea] still has lingering hope for playing the role of ‘mediator’ in the DPRK-U.S. relations,” he said, saying it is “presumptuous for south Korea to meddle in the personal relations between Kim and Trump.”

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has prioritized dialogue with the North, met with Kim three times in 2018. The inter-Korean relations at least initially helped smooth the way for the Trump-Kim talks in early 2018.

As  U.S.-North Korea negotiations stalled, though, Pyongyang abandoned the inter-Korean talks, apparently in frustration over Seoul’s unwillingness to move ahead with joint projects without U.S. support.

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

North Korea’s Kim Touts Strategic Weapon Amid Stall in Talks

Kim has used the diplomatic stalemate to expand his military capabilities by intensifying tests of shorter-range weapons

Two years into dialogue with North Korea, the only apparent remnant is the occasional Trump-Kim letter. Even that relationship may be at risk, however, if North Korea resumes longer-range missile or nuclear tests, as it has been hinting.

“Personal relationships at the top can get a dialogue going, but personal relations alone don’t result in deals,” said Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based research organization. “This is what Trump doesn’t appear to understand. He’s banking on his ‘friendship’ with Kim to lead the way to denuclearization.”

“Friendship or not, denuclearization left the barn a long time ago,” DePetris added.

Many analysts are pessimistic about the short-term chances for talks.

“North Korea has made clear it will not return to the talks unless the U.S. offers new proposals,” Kim Dong Yub, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said at a Seoul conference Friday.
 
The North Korean leader has not likely abandoned talks altogether, however, Kim said. “The U.S. is the only country that can help North Korea be a normal nation in the international community,” he added.

…

El Salvador has passed a new law on internally displaced people that the U.N. refugee agency says will offer a new lease on life for tens of thousands of victims forcibly displaced by gang violence and organized crime.

The U.N. refugee agency reports gang violence has forcibly displaced an estimated 71,500 Salvadorans between 2006 and 2016 within their own country.  Over the last few years, the agency reports the malign grip of organized crime in El Salvador and other countries in Central America has sent an increasing number of people fleeing to the United States in search of protection.  

UNHCR spokeswoman Liz Throssell tells VOA internal displacement as a result of organized crime and criminal gangs continues to be an extremely serious problem in El Salvador and Honduras.

“So, what we are doing is we are welcoming the fact that the Salvadoran authorities are really taking this first step to address the problem of internal displacement,” Throssell said. “I think clearly, if there are efforts to prevent internal displacement, that is also going to have a knock-on effect to external displacement.” 

These are still early days, as El Salvador’s National Assembly just passed the law on Friday and has yet to be implemented.  The law aims to protect, aid and offer solutions to the tens of thousands of victims of forced displacement.  Under its provisions they would gain access to humanitarian aid and have basic rights restored, including effective access to justice.

Throssell says the law could have a lasting positive impact on the lives of the more than 70,000 uprooted by gang violence once it is signed into law by President Nayib Bukele.

“The law reflects the growing momentum in Central America and beyond to recognize and respond to the phenomenon of internal displacement,” Throssell said. “In Honduras, where an estimated 247,000 people have been displaced by violence within their own country, the National Congress is considering legislation similar to the law passed in El Salvador.” 

Throssell says Mexico also recognizes the serious impact of internal displacement and has expressed its commitment to pass similar legislation at the federal level.

…

European powers have rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for them to join him in abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, with several factors pushing them to try to keep the deal alive, analysts say.

After European Union foreign ministers held an emergency meeting in Brussels Friday to discuss escalating Middle East tensions, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said the 28-nation bloc will keep doing whatever it can to save the deal. Under the agreement, world powers offered Iran relief from international sanctions in return for limits on its nuclear program.

Trump had called on the JCPOA’s three EU signatories — Britain, France and Germany, all traditional U.S. allies — to “break away” from the deal in a Wednesday speech detailing his response to Iranian missile strikes on U.S. forces in Iraq the previous day. Iran launched the attacks, which caused no casualties, in retaliation for what the U.S. called a self-defensive strike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad last week.

“The very defective JCPOA expires shortly anyway, and gives Iran a clear and quick path to nuclear [weapon] breakout. The time has come for the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and China to recognize this reality,” Trump said. Iran has long insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

“We want to save this deal if it’s possible,” Borrell told reporters after chairing the EU foreign ministers’ talks in Brussels. “Thanks to this deal, Iran is not a nuclear power,” he added.

Dispute resolution mechanism

Borrell also said the EU powers had not discussed triggering the JCPOA’s dispute-resolution mechanism in response to Iran’s series of breaches of JCPOA limits on nuclear activities in recent months or its latest threat to scrap restrictions on uranium enrichment, a process that can be diverted to nuclear bomb-making.

Diplomats have warned that Britain, France and Germany could activate the agreement’s dispute mechanism if Iran does not return to full compliance. Such an activation could lead to a U.N. Security Council “snapback” of international sanctions on Iran, a move that Tehran has said would prompt it to quit the deal and end any remaining restraints on its nuclear program.

Trump has vowed that he will never allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon and refused to rule out military action to prevent such an outcome.

One factor pushing EU powers to try to keep the JCPOA alive is the fear that triggering a dispute process that leads to a U.N. sanctions snapback could push the U.S. and Iran into a war.

“Any conflict between Iran and the U.S. will happen at the EU’s doorstep, and they will be the ones who will pay a price for it, in the form of waves of refugees and radicalization that would end up on European shores,” said Ali Vaez, an International Crisis Group analyst, in a VOA Persian interview.

EU powers also appear to be waiting for Iran to make the next move in its series of JCPOA breaches.

Tehran has yet to say when and by how much it will expand uranium enrichment, as it threatened to do after the Jan. 3 U.S. killing of Soleimani. Tehran also has said the International Atomic Energy Agency can keep monitoring its nuclear sites and the JCPOA breaches are reversible if European powers help the Iranian economy to circumvent crushing U.S. sanctions.

Hudson Institute analyst Michael Doran told VOA Persian that Iran would have to behave so brazenly in any further breaches of the JCPOA that it generates a backlash for EU powers to feel compelled to trigger the dispute mechanism.

“I think the Iranians understand that it’s not in their interests do that, so they will calibrate their nuclear steps very carefully,” he said. 

Waiting game

As EU powers wait for U.N. inspectors to verify the extent of Iran’s breaches of the JCPOA before deciding their next move, the U.S. may not exercise the same degree of patience. 

A State Department legal opinion reported by the Associated Press last month said the U.S. has a legal avenue to demand a snapback of U.N. sanctions without waiting for the JCPOA’s joint commission to conclude its dispute process. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA in 2018, saying it was not tough enough on Iran.

Trump’s Republican allies in Congress, including Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, have urged him to invoke the U.N. snapback of sanctions in response to Iran’s threat to back out of JCPOA limits on uranium enrichment. U.S. officials have not said whether they will heed that call.

Trump critics have disputed the State Department’s legal opinion, saying the U.S. can only trigger the U.N. snapback if it actively participates in the JCPOA and its dispute mechanism. 

“I’ve talked with the Europeans, Russians and Chinese. No one recognizes that interpretation that the U.S. has, so they don’t take this threat seriously,” Vaez said. 

EU powers also face little pressure from their domestic constituencies to walk away from the nuclear deal. 

“This is not a top priority for the European public,” Vaez said. “There are a lot of other issues they care about more, like the future of trade, the NATO alliance and 5G mobile technology.” 

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
 

…

More than 1 billion animals have been killed in bushfires in the Australian state of New South Wales, according to leading wildlife experts.

Bushfires have had a terrible impact on Australia. Lives have been lost, thousands of homes destroyed and vast areas of land incinerated. The disaster has also had catastrophic consequences for animals. Images of badly burned koalas, Australia’s famous furry marsupials, have come to define the severity of the fire emergency.

The University of Sydney has estimated that more than 1 billion mammals, birds and reptiles, as well as “hundreds of billions” of insects have died in the fires. Experts have warned that “for some species we are looking at imminent extinction.”

They also fear that animals that have survived the fires by fleeing or seeking safety underground will return to areas that will not have the food, water or shelter to support them. 

Saving the zoo animals

At zoos and wildlife reserves, staff risked their lives protecting the animals in their care.

As fires tore through the town of Mogo on the New South Wales south coast on New Year’s Eve, there were grave fears for the animals at the local zoo. Remarkably, they all survived, but the property is badly damaged.

Chad Staples, the head keeper, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about his decision to stay to fight the flames.

“We have a lot of damaged fences,” he said. “The good thing is that we saved every single animal, there is no injuries, there’s no sickness. We had to stay here and protect them. We knew that this was the best place that we, if we worked hard, could make this a safe place. But, yeah, of course, I think everyone, at [a] different point, was scared out of their wits.”

Farm animals perish

Tens of thousands of farm animals also have likely died in the bushfire disaster.

Farmers have been forced to euthanize injured stock. The losses could run into the millions of dollars.

Only when the fires clear will Australia be able to more accurately assess the full extent of the damage on livestock and wildlife.

Dozens of fires continue to burn across several Australian states.

…

Two Eritrean asylum-seekers were shot dead in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, days after the U.N. refugee agency pressed them to leave its facility citing overcrowding.

The UNHCR confirmed the deaths in a statement Friday saying it’s “deeply saddened” by the Thursday deaths in Tripoli.

Three refugees told The Associated Press that the men were among dozens forced out of the UNHCR-run Gathering and Departure Facility 10 days ago. The three spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

The facility was promoted as an “alternative to detention” but when the numbers of refugees increased, the U.N. offered money and pressed new arrivals to leave. The slain refugees were among those who accepted the money and left.

They were among thousands held in Libya’s detention centers where abuses are rampant. The country is a major waypoint for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East to Europe.

…