Month: January 2020

Key players in the impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald Trump and his defense argued sharply Sunday whether his efforts to get Ukraine to launch investigations to benefit him politically were impeachable offenses that warranted his removal from office.

Trump’s Senate trial formally opened last week and is set to hear opening arguments on Tuesday. But combatants in the political and legal fight over Trump’s fate waged verbal battles across the airwaves on Sunday morning news talk shows in the U.S. that offered a glimpse of the Senate drama the American public will witness in the days ahead.

Criminal defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz, one of the team of lawyers defending Trump, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that he will tell the 100 members of the Senate, who are acting as jurors deciding Trump’s fate, that “even if the facts as presented are true, it would not rise to the level of impeachment” to convict Trump and oust him from office.

The lawmakers will be deciding whether Trump committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the standard the U.S. Constitution set for removing a president from office. As the trial nears, the Republican-majority Senate remains highly unlikely to convict Trump, a Republican, since a two-thirds vote against Trump would be necessary to oust him from the White House.

Trump last July asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to launch an investigation of one of his top 2020 Democratic challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company, and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine sought to undermine Trump’s 2016 campaign.  The phone call between the two leaders happened at the same time Trump was temporarily blocking release of $391 million in military aid Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Dershowitz argued that Trump’s actions did not amount to criminal conduct. He said that “if my argument prevails” and the Senate decides no impeachable offenses occurred, “There’s no need for witnesses” at Trump’s Senate trial and “the Senate should vote to acquit [Trump] or dismiss” the case against him.

Congressman Adam Schiff, the leader of seven House of Representative managers prosecuting the case against Trump, told ABC News’ “This Week” show, “The facts aren’t seriously contested, that the president withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to an ally at war with Russia, withheld a White House meeting that the president of Ukraine desperately sought to establish with his country and with his adversary the support of the United States in order to coerce Ukraine to helping him cheat in the next election.”

Schiff added, “They really can’t contest those facts. So the only thing really new about the president’s defense is that they’re now arguing that because they can’t contest the facts that the president cannot be impeached for abusing the power of his office.”

On Saturday, both the House lawmakers pushing for Trump’s conviction, and Trump’s defenders, filed legal arguments in the case.

The House managers said it was clear that the “evidence overwhelmingly establishes” that Trump is guilty of both charges in the two articles of impeachment he is facing.

Meanwhile, Trump’s legal team called the impeachment effort against him “a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president.”

His lawyers called the impeachment effort “a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, now just months  away.”

But Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee that heard weeks of testimony about Trump and his aides’ attempts to pressure Ukraine for the Biden investigations, said the White House legal stance is “surprising in that It doesn’t really offer much new beyond the failed arguments we heard in the House.”

“So the only thing really new about the president’s defense is that they’re now arguing that because they can’t contest the facts that the president cannot be impeached for abusing the power of his office,” Schiff said. “That’s the argument I suppose you have to make if the facts are so dead set against you. You have to rely on an argument that even if he abused his office in this horrendous way that it’s not impeachable. You had to go so far out of the mainstream to find someone to make that argument you had to leave the realm of constitutional law scholars and go to criminal defense lawyers.”

The Senate has yet to decide whether it will hear witnesses in the impeachment trial, with new testimony opposed by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

Democrats want to subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and others to testify about their knowledge of Trump’s Ukraine actions. Trump eventually released the Ukraine military aid in September after a 55-day delay without Zelenskiy launching the Biden investigations, which Republicans say is proof that Trump did not engage in a reciprocal quid pro quo deal — the military aid in exchange for the investigations to help him politically.

“We’ll be fighting for a fair trial,” Schiff said. “That is really the foundation on which this all rests. If the Senate decides, if Senator McConnell prevails and there are no witnesses, it will be the first impeachment trial in history that goes to conclusion without witnesses.”

He said, “We don’t know what witnesses will be allowed or even if we’ll be allowed witnesses. The threshold issue here is, will there be a fair trial? Will the senators allow the House to call witnesses, to introduce documents. That is the foundational issue on which everything else rests. There is one thing the public is overwhelmingly in support of and that is a fair trial.”

One of Trump’s staunchest Senate defenders, Sen. Lindsey Graham, on the “Fox News Sunday” show, called the impeachment effort “a partisan railroad job. It’s the first impeachment in history where there’s no allegation of a crime by the president.”

He said if Democrats demand to hear testimony from Bolton, Mulvaney and others, Trump will seek to invoke executive privilege against their testimony to protect the sanctity of private White House conversations.

“Clearly to me any president would ask for executive privilege regarding these witnesses,” Graham said, adding that if they were that important to the House case against Trump, Democrats should have sought their testimony during the House investigation.

Democrats did seek more testimony from White House aides, but Trump ordered them to not cooperate with the impeachment investigation; several aides complied with Trump’s edict while others did not. Democrats dropped their efforts to compel some testimony out of a fear that it would result in a lengthy legal battle that could have been tied up in U.S. for months.

Trump is spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago retreat along the Atlantic Ocean in Florida. Late Saturday, he resumed his almost daily attacks on the Democrats’ impeachment campaign against him, saying on Twitter, “What a disgrace this Impeachment Scam is for our great Country!” 

“Nancy Pelosi said, it’s not a question of proof, it’s a question of allegations! Oh really?” @JudgeJeanine@FoxNews What a disgrace this Impeachment Scam is for our great Country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 19, 2020

Trump’s Senate impeachment trial is only the third such event in the nearly 2 1/2 centuries of U.S. history. Two other presidents — Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago — were impeached by the House but acquitted in Senate trials and remained in office. A fourth U.S. president, Richard Nixon in the mid-1970s, faced almost certain impeachment in the Watergate political scandal, but resigned before the House acted.
 

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Russia’s Vladimir Putin is denying that he’s planning to retain his grip on power when he relinquishes his country’s presidency in 2024.

The 67-year-old Putin dismissed accusations that sweeping constitutional changes he laid out in a speech Wednesday would allow him to retain his grip on a country he’s ruled for 20 years.

Speaking Saturday while on a visit to his hometown of St. Petersburg, Putin said he understood peoples alarm but that he doesn’t want Russia to return to the Soviet-era practice of rulers dying in office without a succession plan.“

In my view, it would be very worrying to return to the situation of the mid-1980s when heads of state one by one remained in power until the end of their days, [and] left office without having secured necessary conditions for a transition of power,” Putin said.“

So, thank you very much, but I think it’s better not to return to the situation of the mid-1980s,” he added.

But many of his critics are skeptical of his assurances.

They worry Putin’s proposals, the first significant changes to the country’s constitution since it was adopted under Boris Yeltsin in 1993, are designed to ensure he keeps a grip on the levers of power after he leaves the Kremlin.

Putin’s term in office is set to end in 2024, and he cannot run again as the constitution prohibits anyone serving more than two consecutive terms.

The proposed constitutional changes he unveiled Wednesday, at this stage still vague, could allow him to retain power as national leader either as prime minister, a maneuver he’s used before to circumvent term limits, chairman of the country’s parliament or as head of a revamped but still ill-defined state council, his critics say.

Political foes have dubbed the proposed shake-up a “constitutional coup,” which would see the presidency reduced in importance. Some former Kremlin advisers say none of the powerful factions within the Kremlin or the country’s oligarchs want Putin to go, for fear his departure would trigger internecine warfare within the governing class.

In a recent interview with VOA, before Putin’s announcement, one of his former advisers, Gleb Pavlovsky, said that to a certain degree he’s trapped within the system he created. Putin can’t quit for fear that everything will fall apart, Pavlovsky said.

While Putin’s proposal has prompted outrage from rights activists, liberals and his political foes, ordinary Russians, even those critical of Putin, seem resigned, with many saying they’d never expected he’d relinquish power in four years’ time.

“I feel indifferent,” Ekaterina, a 28-year-old financial adviser told VOA. “Most of my friends are just making jokes about it” because they feel impotent, she added.

In 2011-2012 tens of thousands of people took to the streets following Putin’s return to the presidency for his third term, Ekaterina and others of her age group say they doubt large-scale protests to Putin’s plan will happen now. In August a series of protests were mounted against rigged elections to Moscow’s city council, but they have fizzled.

Some opposition politicians say Putin’s proposals would see Russia gravitate to a Central Asian model of governance. They accuse Putin of wanting to prolong his state leadership by following the model of Kazakhstan, where Nursultan Nazarbayev, left the presidency last year but has maintained his iron grip on his Central Asian country as chairman of an all-powerful Security Council.

“It is a complete ideological switch on the part of the ruling class from a Western ideology to something else — an Eastern one or an Ancient Roman one,” said Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank.

The Russian leader’s “reform” proposals include also abolishing the primacy of international law now enshrined in the country’s current constitution. That possible change is alarming Russia’s beleaguered civil society groups, which are already seeing a tightening of restrictions on their work.

“As a member of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Russia is bound by international standards on human rights, civil liberties and the rule of law — including democratic elections, protections from arbitrary imprisonment, and freedoms of the media, assembly, and association,” wrote opposition politician and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza in the Washington Post Friday.

Those commitments have long been ignored, “but by establishing the primacy of domestic statutes, the Kremlin intends to free itself from its remaining formal commitments under international law, signaling yet another milestone in its growing isolation,” he said.

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The head of the World Economic Forum says it’s “reassuring” that U.S. President Donald Trump and climate activist Greta Thunberg will both return to its annual meeting in Davos this year, noting that concerns about the environment will be a key topic.

WEF founder Klaus Schwab sees vast changes in business, society and culture over the 50 years since he created the yearly gathering in the Swiss Alps, which initially was a forum for business leaders but now is a key stop for policymakers and activists as well.

Following another year of extreme heat, out-of-control wildfires and melting ice sheets, environmental issues are considered to be the top five long-term risks confronting the global economy, WEF said last week, citing a survey of more than 750 decision-makers.

It said catastrophic trends like global warming, climate change and the extinction of animal species would top the agenda at the meeting that begins Tuesday.

The forum is shifting its focus of recent years from how technology is transforming lives to the environment and responsible business practices that promote jobs, fight climate change and work for social good along with profit-making.

The focus on environment could make for an uncomfortable subject for Trump, whose administration has called for expanded use of carbon-spewing coal, stripped away environmental protections and played down concerns among scientists about man-made climate change. Trump has also moved to take the U.S. out of the landmark 2015 Paris accord to fight climate change.

Schwab says Trump is welcome because of his role on the world stage while Thunberg will keep the focus on the environment. Both will speak Tuesday on the opening day.

“I think both voices are necessary,” Schwab said Sunday in an interview with The Associated Press. “The environment will play a particularly important role during this meeting.”

Schwab pointed to the forum’s 160 “lighthouse” projects on inclusion and equality; economic development; technology governance; regional development; corporate leadership and ecology, including a project to plant a trillion trees.

“So if Greta comes this year, she will see that we have made substantial progress,” he said, alluding to her debut at the forum last year.

Time magazine chose Thunberg as its “Person of the Year” for 2019.

Schwab claimed the forum has helped air concerns about the environment since the 1970s, but said public awareness about climate issues has now exploded.

“Now we have recognized the urgency, because we know the window to act [on climate change] is closing,” he said, adding he hoped to inject “this sense of urgency into the meeting.”

He said many companies are increasingly seeing the benefits of “ESG” — environmental, social and governance — concerns in their business models.

 “Companies recognize … doing good … it’s a precondition for some long-term survival,” Schwab said.

On Friday, Schwab and the chairmen of Bank of America and Dutch nutrition company Royal DSM sent a joint open letter to corporate leaders on hand this year to set “a target to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner” if their companies haven’t done so already.

The forum chief said nearly all European Union leaders will be on hand this year, including  German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  He said the EU has a chance to lay out its vision for the future and turn the corner after three years of haggling over Britain’s departure from the bloc, which comes at the end of this month.

He also brushed aside critics who have faulted the forum as an overly exclusive vacation for the world’s out-of-touch elites.

“If I am particularly proud of something during the last 50 years, it is of having created many years ago the community of young leaders,” Schwab said, citing 10,000 young “Global Shapers” in over 400 cities who he said are engaged in issues on the ground. “We try — and I think quite successfully — to integrate the bottom-up, young generation very much.”

The Davos gathering has battled a reputation of being a haunt for the rich, powerful and famous over its five decades. Over the years, the forum has hosted celebrities like Hollywood stars Shirley Maclaine and George Clooney, Nobel Peace Prize laureates Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat, and former South African presidents F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, and business gurus like Davos regular Bill Gates.  

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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “expressed outrage” to Egypt’s president on Sunday at the death of an American citizen who insisted he had been wrongfully held in an Egyptian prison, according to a State Department spokeswoman.

Pompeo’s sharp remarks signal the U.S. government was putting the death of Mustafa Kassem, 54, following his protracted hunger strike last week, high on the diplomatic agenda.

Pompeo raised his concerns to President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi about Kassem’s “pointless and tragic death” on the sidelines of an international peace summit in Berlin that aims to end Libya’s civil war.

The death of the auto parts dealer from Long Island, New York prompted an outcry from human rights groups, as well as accusations of medical negligence in Egypt’s prisons.

The case also touched a nerve in Washington, which has cultivated close security and diplomatic ties with Egypt despite growing unease over its human rights violations under general-turned-president el-Sissi.

Activists and foreign affairs experts have called for the Trump administration to penalize its staunch Middle Eastern ally by slashing millions of dollars in security assistance. The U.S. grants $1.2 billion in annual military aid to Egypt.

Kassem was detained by Egypt in 2013 in what his lawyers described as a vast dragnet during the violent dispersal of an Islamist sit-in that killed hundreds of people. He was later sentenced to 15 years under a contentious anti-protest law that the government often uses to silence dissent. He maintained his innocence throughout his detention and started a hunger strike last year in protest.

El-Sissi came to power in the summer of 2013 and has overseen a sweeping crackdown on dissent, jailing thousands.

…

Dozens of anti-government protesters gathered in Lebanon’s rainy capital on Sunday, as security forces braced for more rioting after a night of violence left hundreds wounded.

Security forces, including Lebanese military, were heavily deployed across downtown Beirut after the worst violence since the unrest erupted three months ago. They spent the day reinforcing concrete barriers and stringing coils of razor wire across main thoroughfares, ahead of calls from protesters for more rallies.

Lebanon’s public prosecutor ordered Sunday the release of 34 people detained in clashes between security forces and anti-government protesters that wounded hundreds in the capital the previous night.

The public prosecutor said all those detained during the riots would be released except those with other pending cases, the official National State News agency reported.

At least 377 people were injured in Saturday’s clashes, according to the Red Cross and the Lebanese Civil Defense. More than 120 of those were treated in hospitals, including a protester who sustained an eye injury, as well as security force members. Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces said 142 of its members were injured, including 7 officers, some with serious concussions.

The clashes took place amid a rapidly worsening financial crisis and an ongoing impasse over the formation of a new government. The Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned in late October.

Security forces and the military were girding themselves for more violence, following protester calls for more rallies on Sunday.

Government forces blocked access to some buildings in central Beirut with razor wire, closing off access to areas that included a popular tourist site. Workers also welded fencing together across roadways that lead to Parliament to make it harder for demonstrators to push through.

On the quiet, rainy streets Sunday, shopkeepers, banks and other businesses swept up broken glass and boarded up windows. Workers at one bank took down the large sign with its name to remove any identifier and avoid soliciting anger from protesters, who smashed the windows and the facade of Lebanon’s Banking Association headquarters with metal bars the previous night. The demonstrators widely blame Lebanese financial institutions, alongside government corruption, for the crippling economic crisis.

Nearby soot and ashes still littered the ground where security forces burned the tents of the protesters’ sit-in during the chaotic melee.

Riot police had fired volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets late into the night Saturday to disperse the thousands of demonstrators. The protesters, who came from the country’s north, east and the capital itself, clubbed security forces with tree branches and metal bars and fired flares and fireworks, while lobbing stones and other projectiles at them.

The clashes also took place on the steps of a mosque downtown. The top Muslim Sunni Fatwa office called it “inappropriate”‘ and said protesters had taken refuge inside the mosque and were taken care of.

The pitched street battles lasted for nearly nine hours, with both protesters and the government trading blame for the violence.

Interior Minister Raya El Hassan said that security forces were ordered to protect peaceful protests. “But for the protests to turn into a blatant attack on the security forces, public and private properties, this is condemned and totally unacceptable,” she tweeted Saturday.

However, Human Rights Watch described the security force response as brutal and called for an urgent end to a “culture of impunity” for police abuse.

“There was no justification for the brutal use of force unleashed by Lebanon’s riot police against largely peaceful demonstrators in downtown Beirut,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at HRW. “Riot police showed a blatant disregard for their human rights obligations, instead launching teargas canisters at protesters’ heads, firing rubber bullets in their eyes and attacking people at hospitals and a mosque.”

The protesters have been rallying against the country’s political elite who have ruled Lebanon since the end of the 1975-90 civil war. They blame politicians for widespread corruption and mismanagement in a country that has accumulated one of the largest debt ratios in the world.

Panic and anger have gripped the public as their local currency, pegged to the dollar for more than two decades, plummeted. The Lebanese pound lost more than 60% of its value in recent weeks on the black market. The economy has seen no growth and foreign inflows dried up in the already heavily indebted country that relies on imports for most of its basic goods.

Meanwhile, banks have imposed informal capital controls, limiting withdrawal of dollars and foreign transfers.

Prime Minister-designate Hassan Diab had been expected to announce an 18-member Cabinet on Friday, but last minute disputes among political factions scuttled his latest attempt.

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Forces loyal to Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar blocked oil exports from the war-ravaged country’s main ports Saturday, raising the stakes on the eve of an international summit aimed at bringing peace to the North African nation. 

The move to cripple the country’s main income source was a protest against Turkey’s decision to send troops to shore up Haftar’s rival, the head of Tripoli’s U.N.-recognized government, Fayez al-Sarraj. 

It came ahead of Sunday’s conference in Berlin that will see the United Nations try to extract a pledge from world leaders to stop meddling in the Libyan conflict — be it through supplying troops, weapons or financing. 

“All foreign interference can provide some aspirin effect in the short term, but Libya needs all foreign interference to stop,” U.N. Libya envoy Ghassan Salame told AFP in an interview. 

Call for ‘protection’

But Sarraj issued a call for international “protection troops” if Haftar keeps up his offensive. 

“Such a protection force must operate under the auspices of the United Nations. Experts will have to advise who should participate, such as the EU or the African Union or the Arab League,” he told the Die Welt newspaper on Sunday. 

The presidents of Russia, Turkey and France as well as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are to join the Sunday talks, held under the auspices of the U.N. 

Haftar and Sarraj are also expected, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas confirmed Saturday, ahead of the first gathering of such scale on the conflict since 2018. 

After months of combat, which has killed more than 2,000 people, a cease-fire took effect on January 12, backed by both Ankara and Moscow, which is accused of supporting Haftar. 

Drastic cut in crude production

But Saturday’s blockade raised fears over the conflict. 

The disruption to oil exports is expected to more than halve the country’s daily crude production, to 500,000 barrels from 1.3 million barrels, translating to losses of $55 million a day, Libya’s National Oil Company warned. 

“Our line at the U.N. is clear. Don’t play with petrol because it’s the livelihood of the Libyans,” warned Salame just hours before the blockade. 

…

Cameras “miles in the sky,” a countdown and then “boom”: US President Donald Trump has recounted the final moments of Iran’s powerful military leader, Qassem Soleimani, in an American drone strike. 

Trump delivered the account Friday night to Republican Party donors at his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, for a fundraising dinner, U.S. media said. 

CNN on Saturday broadcast an audio recording in which the president gave new details about the January 3 strike at the airport in Baghdad. It killed the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander and members of Iraq’s Hashed al-Shaabi, a paramilitary force with close ties to Iran. 

“He was supposed to be invincible,” Trump said. 

Democrats and other critics have questioned the timing of the strike, the month before Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, and the administration’s shifting reasons for launching it. 

In the audio released by CNN, Trump did not refer to an “imminent” attack that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said Soleimani was planning. Nor was there a reference to “four embassies,” which Trump later alleged were being targeted.

‘Saying bad things’ 

“He was saying bad things about our country. He was saying like, ‘We’re going to attack your country. We’re going to kill your people.’ I said, ‘Look, how much of this s*** do we have to listen to?’ ” Trump told his guests. 

He then described the scene, relaying the words of the military officers giving live updates to him in Washington. 

“They said, ‘Sir’ — and this is from, you know, cameras that are miles in the sky — ‘they are together, sir. Sir, they have two minutes and 11 seconds.’ No bulls***. ‘They have two minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They’re in the car. They’re in an armored vehicle, going. … Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir … 30 seconds, 10, nine, eight … .’ Then, all of sudden, boom. ‘They’re gone, sir.’ ” 

Trump acknowledged that the U.S. strike “shook up the world” but said Soleimani “deserved to be hit hard” because he was responsible for killing “thousands of Americans.”  

Iran vowed revenge for the U.S. strike, raising fears of war, and later launched missiles at bases in Iraq housing U.S. troops. None were killed. 

…

President Donald Trump’s legal team issued a fiery response ahead of opening arguments in his impeachment trial Saturday while House Democrats laid out their case in forceful fashion, saying the president had “abandoned his oath“ and betrayed the public trust. 

The dueling statements previewed arguments both sides intend to make once Trump’s impeachment trial begins in earnest on Tuesday. Both sides are seeking to make their case for a Republican-led Senate and for an American public bracing for a presidential election in 10 months. 

The House’s 111-page brief pulls together the private and public testimony of a dozen witnesses — ambassadors and national security officials at high levels of government — who raised concerns about the president’s actions with Ukraine. Stripped of legalese and structured in plain English, the document underscored the extent to which the impeachment proceedings are a political rather than conventional legal process. The Trump team similarly offered a taste of the rhetoric expected to be deployed by the president’s defenders in the Senate. 

Senate’s responsibility

In their brief, the House managers overseeing the prosecution wrote that it is clear that the “evidence overwhelmingly establishes“ that Trump is guilty of both charges. “The only remaining question is whether the members of the Senate will accept and carry out the responsibility placed on them by the Framers of our Constitution and their constitutional Oaths,“ the brief states. 

The Trump team, meanwhile, called the Senate’s formal summons to two articles of impeachment passed by the House last month “a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president.” 

“This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, now just months away,“ the filing states. 

Trump’s legal team, led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, is challenging the impeachment on both procedural and constitutional grounds, claiming Trump has been mistreated by House Democrats and that he did nothing wrong. 

Trump’s attorneys argue that the articles of impeachment are unconstitutional in and of themselves and invalid because they don’t allege a crime. Trump was impeached by the House on one count each of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Under the Constitution impeachment is a political, not a criminal process, and the president can be removed from office if found guilty of whatever lawmakers consider “high crimes and misdemeanors.” 

Trump’s answer to the summons was the first salvo in what will be several rounds of arguments before the trial formally begins on Tuesday. Trump will file a more detailed legal brief on Monday, and the House will be able to respond to the Trump filing on Tuesday. 

Two added to defense team

Trump on Friday named Ken Starr, the prosecutor whose investigation two decades ago led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, and former Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz to his defense team. 

The additions bring experience in the politics of impeachment as well as constitutional law to Trump’s legal team. Both Starr and Dershowitz have been fixtures on Fox News Channel, Trump’s preferred television network. 

Dershowitz said he would deliver constitutional arguments defending Trump from allegations that he abused his power. Trump is also accused of obstructing Congress as it sought to investigate pressure he applied on Ukraine’s president to announce an investigation into Trump’s political rivals as the president withheld the security aid and a White House meeting as leverage. 

Trump says he did nothing wrong and argues that Democrats have been out to get him since before he took office. 

A legal brief from the White House laying out the contours of Trump’s defense is due by noon Monday, and White House attorneys and Trump’s outside legal team have been debating just how political the document should be. 

Some in the administration have echoed warnings from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, that the pleadings must be sensitive to the Senate’s more staid traditions and leave some of the sharper rhetoric exhibited during the House proceedings to Twitter and cable news. 

Dershowitz is a constitutional expert whose expansive views of presidential powers echo those of Trump. Starr is a veteran of Washington’s partisan battles after leading the investigation into Clinton’s affair with a White House intern. The House impeached Clinton, who then was acquitted at his Senate trial. Trump is expecting the same outcome from the Republican-led chamber. 

Still, the lead roles for Trump’s defense will be played by Cipollone and Sekulow, who also represented Trump during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. 

Dershowitz sought to play down his role in the case in the hours after he was named to the team, saying he would be present for just about an hour to make the constitutional arguments. 

“I’m not a full-fledged member of the defense team,“ he told “The Dan Abrams Show“ on SiriusXM. 

Epstein association

White House lawyers succeeded in keeping Trump from adding House Republican lawmakers to the defense team, but they also advised him against tapping Dershowitz, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions. They’re concerned about the professor’s association with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who killed himself in a New York City jail cell last summer while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. 

A Fox News host said on the air that Starr would be parting ways with the network as a result of his role on the legal team. 

Other members of Trump’s legal defense include Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general; Jane Raskin, who was part of the president’s legal team during Mueller’s investigation; Robert Ray, who was part of the Whitewater investigation of the Clintons; and Eric D. Herschmann of the Kasowitz Benson Torres legal firm, which has represented Trump in numerous cases over the last 15 years. 

Giuliani, a former New York-based federal prosecutor as well as the city’s former mayor, told The Associated Press the president had assembled a “top-notch” defense team and he was not disappointed at being excluded from it. 

Giuliani, who many in the White House blame for leading Trump down the path to impeachment by fueling Ukraine conspiracies, had previously expressed interest in being on the legal team. But he said Friday that his focus would be on being a potential witness. 

Trump was impeached by the House in December. Senators were sworn in as jurors Thursday by Chief Justice John Roberts, who will preside over the trial. 

Starr, besides his 1990s role as independent counsel, was a U.S. solicitor general and federal circuit court judge. 

Removed at Baylor

More recently, he was removed as president of Baylor University and then resigned as chancellor of the school in the wake of a review critical of the university’s handling of sexual assault allegations against football players. Starr said his resignation was the result of the university’s board of regents seeking to place the school under new leadership following the scandal, not because he was accused of hiding or failing to act on information. 

Dershowitz’s reputation has been damaged in recent years by his association with Epstein. One of Epstein’s alleged victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, has accused Dershowitz of participating in her abuse. Dershowitz has denied it and has been battling in court for years with Giuffre and her lawyers. He recently wrote a book, Guilt by Accusation, rejecting her allegations. 

Giuffre and Dershowitz are also suing each other for defamation. 

…

Canada’s federal government will help Newfoundland on the Atlantic coast dig out in the wake of a massive winter blizzard that buried cars and left thousands without power, a Cabinet minister said Saturday.

The storm dumped as much as 76.2 cm (30 inches) of snow on St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland, and packed wind gusts as high as 130 km per hour (81 mph). The snowfall was an all-time record for the day for St. John’s International Airport.

St. John’s Mayor Danny Breen said earlier that a state of emergency declared Friday remained in effect. Businesses were closed, as was the international airport.

Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan said military reservists might be called in, but details of the assistance had yet to be worked out. The immediate priority will be snow removal and clearing roads to the snowbound hospital, he said.

“We have a real issue right now with access to the hospital,” O’Regan told reporters in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is meeting for two days in what it has called a retreat.

Commenting on the scale of the blizzard, O’Regan said: “It’s snow and a hurricane, and snow and a hurricane shuts down a city.”

The public safety and defense ministers, who were en route to Winnipeg, would be able to provide more details later, O’Regan said. Earlier, the provincial premier asked the government for support, including “mobilizing the Canadian Armed Forces.”

Thousands remained without power, and social media showed people had begun to literally dig out of their homes after snowdrifts blocked their doorways.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) confirmed a report of an avalanche slamming into a home in St. John’s Battery neighborhood, which sits at the entrance to the city’s harbor on the slopes of a steep hill.

A picture of the home on Twitter showed the living room filled with snow. The CBC also said a 26-year-old man has been reported missing after having set out to walk to a friend’s house on Friday during the blizzard.

“Help is on the way,” Trudeau tweeted.
 

…

The U.S. National Archives, home to foundational documents such as the Bill of Rights, apologized Saturday for altering images critical of President Donald Trump at an exhibit on women’s fight for voting rights and said it had removed the display. 

The entrance to the Washington exhibit had featured interlaced photographs of a 1913 women’s suffrage march and the Women’s March that took place on January 21, 2017, each visible from a different angle. In the 2017 photograph, the word “Trump” had been blurred in at least two signs carried by demonstrators, including one that originally read “God Hates Trump.” 

The word “vagina” and other anatomical references were also obscured. 

No repeat pledged

“We apologize, and will immediately start a thorough review of our exhibit policies and procedures so that this does not happen again,” the archives said in statement. 

The photo editing was first reported by The Washington Post on Friday and witnessed by a Reuters reporter on Saturday at the same time as demonstrators attending this year’s Women’s March strolled through downtown Washington in the cold and drizzle. 

The Post reported Friday that the archives had said in a statement last week that as a nonpartisan agency it had altered the image “so as not to engage in current political controversy.” 

Roughly an hour after Reuters witnessed the altered image, however, the archives issued a public apology in which it said it had removed the display and would replace it as soon as possible with one that uses the unaltered image. 

“We made a mistake. As the National Archives of the United States, we are and have always been completely committed to preserving our archival holdings, without alteration,” it said. 

Along with its popular Washington museum, which includes exhibits of founding documents, the agency preserves government records and oversees research centers and presidential libraries in dozens of locations across the United States. 

“Public access to government records strengthens democracy by allowing Americans to claim their rights of citizenship, hold their government accountable and understand their history,” its mission statement reads. 

Not easy to spot

The altered 2017 image was easy to miss, visible only from the side of the display at an angle of around 45 degrees. From the front, only the 1913 suffrage march — part of the movement that led to women winning the vote in 1920 — was visible. 

Trump has been criticized for his behavior toward women, including for taped comments that surfaced in 2016 in which he can be heard bragging about groping and having sex with women. 

At the time, Trump dismissed the tape as locker room banter. 

…

Russia is rapidly expanding foreign arms deals worldwide, with Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin confirming to the Russian military’s newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda December 20 that Moscow has signed military cooperation pacts with 39 countries in the last five years, many of them in Southeast Asia, including Laos, which has not been buying Russian weapons on this scale for decades.

The expansion is raising eyebrows and comes as relations between Russia and NATO have broken down.

Analysts said old Cold War alliances with countries such as Laos, Moscow’s appetite for barter deals, and the potential for access to railroads under construction that will provide access to seaports and trade routes along the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Thai coasts, appeal to Moscow, and the arms sales are part of a larger effort by Russia to strengthen its links with these countries.

“Moscow’s motives appear to be a combination of commercial and the perhaps disruptive, in the sense that any erosion of U.S. or European defense interests is a de facto win,” Gavin Greenwood, an analyst with A2 Global Risk, a Hong Kong-based security consultancy, told VOA.

He said Russia had accounted for 25% of major arms sales in Southeast Asia since 2000, and according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Moscow sold $6.6 billion in arms to Southeast Asia between 2010 and 2017, as much as the U.S. and China combined.

The institute also says Russia accounted for 60% of arms sales across Asia and Oceania between 2014 and 2018.

However, Russia also needs to offset falling sales to India, and the MiG-29 and Sukhoi-30 fighters purchased by Malaysia in 1995 are nearing the end of their life. Greenwood said any replacement was unlikely to be procured from Russia, as they are also considering deals with U.S. and European suppliers.

Southeast Asia focus

As a result  of declining arms sales to India, Russia is falling further behind the U.S. in global arms sales, analysts say,  but it has remained the dominant player in Southeast Asia, where analysts said  South China Sea disputes, terrorism   and competition among rival states is increasing demand for high-tech weaponry.

Fomin said progress in developing military cooperation with traditional partners China and India had been made alongside fresh efforts with Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.

“Their efforts to sell are obviously increasing and there’s a sense from some quarters that this is a strategic effort by Moscow – while others would say probably not, it’s commercial,” Greenwood said.

Russia remains a primary supplier to Vietnam, accounting for 60% of all military sales to that country – including submarines – and is seeking opportunities in the Philippines while stepping up sales to Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar.

Meanwhile, strategically important Laos, which forms a buffer between China and Southeast Asia, has increased its spending, acquiring Russian T-72B tanks, BRDM-2M armored vehicles, YAK 130 fighter jets and helicopters.

In addition,  Russia and Laos last month launched the nine-day Laros 2019 exercise, their first joint military exercise, with more than 500 soldiers taking part alongside the recently acquired tanks, which was seen as part of a greater effort to deepen military ties with Southeast Asia.

Analysts said further joint military exercises with Laos are now in the offing together with more arms and training for Laotian officers in Russian military academies.

The timing could be related to Chinese railway construction, “which will connect southern-southwest China to Thailand,” Greenwood said, which would provide further seaport access.

Ukraine sanctions

Increased weapon sales worldwide can be traced to Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine six years ago. Sanctions followed and the ruble collapsed, sparking a three-year financial crisis.
 
Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales said military technology is one of Russia’s much-needed strengths.

“Annexation of the Crimea was accompanied by very punishing sanctions by the United States and Russia went through a phase of trying to recover by developing its domestic market.

“That didn’t work, and they had to do overseas exports and the one thing the Russians have is military technology,” Thayer told VOA, echoing Greenwood.

Meanwhile, the issue for most Southeast Asian countries is that access to high-tech weaponry is limited to the U.S., which ties sales to human rights, and Russia, which offers soft loans, state-backed credits, barter deals, spares and servicing with a no such strings attached.  

Don Greenlees, senior adviser at the Asialink think tank at the University of Melbourne, said U.S. costs and conditions, coupled with sanctions, mean easier options are available in Russia.

“If you want really high-level military technology and you’re a Southeast Asian country you’ve either got to go to Moscow or you’ve got to go Washington. And Washington hasn’t made it terribly easy in recent years for a lot of these countries to obtain the best kit,” he told VOA.

“And it’s also more expensive to buy it from Washington,” Greenlees said. “So Russia, for many of these countries, is the arms supplier of choice.”

The big picture

Thayer said Moscow also must act against any isolation spurred by sanctions and establish itself with Vietnam, with which it has always been a strategic partner, as a natural conduit in developing relations in Southeast Asia, but Laos  “is just one small peg in the larger picture.”

Greenlees said Russia’s regional reemergence was still in its early days but from a big-picture geopolitical point of view, it’s the Sino-Russian alignment that concerns everyone.

So far,  China has not complained about Russia’s push into its traditional sphere of influence.  Moreover, it also could benefit from potential sales to countries alienated by the U.S. linkage of sales to issues like human rights, which analysts said could lead to a stronger alliance between Moscow and Beijing in Southeast Asia.    

“If that leads to a hardening of East-West ‘camps,’ that would be a concern to the region. It could force the issue of ‘taking sides and reduce the opportunities for small to medium sized powers to play the great powers off against each other,” Greenlees said.

…

It looks like any other cooking class in yuppie Tel Aviv. Sleek kitchen utensils, baskets of fresh vegetables, participants sipping wine and beer. The first hint that this is a little different is the beer Asmara from Eritrea.

Yael Ravid, co-director of Kitchen Talks, explains how her cooking events make a special connection between Israelis and the Africans seeking refuge in their country.

“As we cook together shoulder to shoulder, we literally break bread, not as a metaphor but as a real happening together. I’m hoping they will enjoy the holiday feast we’re preparing for the Eritrean Christmas and they will get a chance to know Asmayit, our Eritrean cook, and to ask her questions about her life, her home kitchen, how she grew up, how she came here,” she says.

Chef Asmayit Merhatsion is a 30-year-old asylum seeker from Eritrea. As she chops and stirs, she tells her story, starting with her imprisonment in Eritrea.

“When I was in college I was arranging for women or girls to pray. They catched [caught] us and asked who organized? I organized. They are thinking our meeting is political but it’s not political, it’s religious. That’s why I was in prison,” she explains.

After two short stints in prison, she escaped to Sudan, then to Libya, hoping to make it to Europe. But after Europe closed its doors, she decided on Israel, paying smugglers to get her across the Sinai desert.

That was almost nine years ago. Today she is married and has a young daughter. She works for the AIDS task force. And she is a chef with Kitchen Talks to share her love for Eritrean food and culture.

“It’s a vegetarian dish, five types of food we do and the traditional bread we have here I make it at home. This one is not bread it’s injera, it’s made of teff flour growing in Eritrea or Ethiopia…it’s non gluten, its healthy, that’s why we are not fat,” she says.

Participants paid about $50 for the collaborative cooking event and were enthusiastic when they tasted the results. Many said it was their first time meeting with an asylum seeker and eating their exotic food.

“You can form an opinion based on things that you don’t know or things that you fear. Then once, like even seeing here people interacting, and then once you know somebody, like get to know them and speak with them, and all of a sudden you’re like, they’re people just like me and deserve rights just like I do’,” says Adi Cydulkin, a cooking class participant.

“They are here, they exist here, we can’t ignore it, we should help especially the young children to become good citizens here in Israel,” says Eli Levy.

Participants agreed that they will take home, not only empathy for African asylum seekers like chef Asmayit, but also some of her tasty recipes they learned tonight.

…

Thousands of women are planning to march in cities across the United States Saturday for the fourth annual Women’s March to advocate for a host of issues, including gender equality and women’s human rights.

Rallies are planned in dozens of cities, including Washington, where the first Women’s March in 2017 drew hundreds of thousands of people the day after President Donald Trump was sworn into office.

The march has included a political message since it began three years ago when many protesters wore the knitted pink hats that have become a symbol of women’s anti-Trump sentiments.

Politics continued to be a strong theme at the Women’s March in all subsequent years, including in 2018 when the organizers moved the march to Nevada, a battleground state for the midterm elections that year, as well as in 2019 when the march returned to Washington and heralded the record 102 women who had been recently elected to the House of Representatives.

Several of the Democratic candidates for president in 2020 are planning to attend Women’s March events across the country this year. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, will attend the Women’s March in Reno, Nevada, while former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is planning to be at a rally in South Carolina. Senator Michael Bennet and businessman Andrew Yang will attend Women’s March events in New Hampshire and Iowa, respectively.

Since its first march, the Women’s March has faced controversy, including its leaders facing accusations of anti-Semitism. The organizers have repeatedly denied the claims. Three of the four original co-chairs of the organization have left the group, and the organization has appointed a new board that includes three Jewish women.

Current co-president of the Women’s March, Isa Noyola, noted in a statement ahead of this year’s march that it will be the last march before the 2020 election.“

In 2020, we have a chance to finish what we started three years ago and remove Trump from office,” she said.

…

Chinese authorities are continuing to detain foreign nationals of Uighur descent, which experts charge is part of an effort by Beijing to prevent any outside access to Xinjiang province.

 VOA interviewed several ethnic Uighurs of different nationalities who said they or their family members faced detention upon arriving in China. The detained foreign citizens were allegedly jailed, put under house arrest or even sent to the so-called reeducation camps, while some others were repatriated to their home countries.

Hankiz Kurban, a Turkish citizen from Istanbul, told VOA that her parents, Yahya Kurban, 54, and Amina Kurban, 51, both Turkish citizens originating from the region of Xingjian, have been detained since Sept.11, 2017, when they were on a trip to operate a clothing business in Urumchi, the capital city of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
  “
I received my mother’s voice message asking me, in a trembling voice, to contact the Turkish embassy in Beijing and do something for them,” Hankiz said, recalling the moment Chinese authorities arrested her. “It was the last day I heard from my parents.”
 
Working on release

Kurban and her siblings have attempted to find their parents to no avail. The Turkish embassy has told them officials there are still working with Chinese officials to secure the parents’ release.
 
Another Turkish citizen of Uighur origin, Muyesser Temel, told VOA that her brother, Mehmet Emin Nasir, 40, was arrested in late 2017 in Kashgar, where he owned a Turkish curtains store.
  “
We kept calling [the] Turkish Embassy in Beijing, Turkish Foreign Ministry in Ankara, and Turkish Presidential Office. Their answer has been, ‘Wait, we are working on this case,’” Temel said.
 
VOA contacted Turkey’s foreign ministry and embassy in Beijing but has not received a comment.
 
Responding to a parliamentary question regarding incarcerated Turkish citizens in China, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu last April said his government was using its diplomatic means “in every level” to bring them home.
  “
The problems faced by our citizens around the world and the complaints received in this context are closely monitored through our foreign representatives. Every diplomatic and legal tool is used in order to solve their problems, and the necessary legal, economic and social support is provided to our citizens,” Cavusoglu said in a written response.  
 
Uighurs are ethnically Turkic and religiously Muslim with a worldwide population estimated to be 12 million.  More than 90% of them are believed to live in their ancestral home of Xinjiang in China’s northwest region. The remaining Uighurs reside in neighboring central Asian states like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan as well as Turkey and Western countries.

Since 2017 China has been accused of detaining almost 1.8 million Uighurs and other minority Muslim groups in mass incarceration camps where they are forced to abandon their religion. Those outside the camps are believed to be under strict government surveillance with no access to the outside world.
 
China first denied the detention facilities existed but later said they were only for “reeducation and vocational training” purposes. Beijing has tied its policies in the region to fighting “the three evils of terrorism, extremism and separatism.” It recently claimed that all “students” from “training centers” had “graduated” without giving any more details.
 
Leaked document
 
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in November released several official Chinese government documents it had obtained, revealing that officials in 2017 directed border officials and police to hand-pick and arrest foreign nationals of Uighur descent.
 
The documents showed that Chinese officials kept track of about 1,535 people from Xinjiang who had citizenship from various foreign nations, with about 75 confirmed to be in China and about 560 whose location was undertermined. Of the 75 “red-flagged” people, 26 were Turkish, 23 Australian, five Canadian, five Swedish, three American, three Uzbek, three Finnish, two British, two New Zealanders, one French, and one Kyrgyz.
  “
Personal identification verification should be inspected one by one, for those who have already canceled their citizenship and for whom suspected terrorism cannot be ruled out, they should be deported. For those who haven’t canceled their citizenship yet and for whom suspected terrorism cannot be ruled out, they should first be placed into concentrated education and training and examined,” the document suggested.
 

Sadam Abdusalam is one of the Australian Uighurs whose family has been stranded in China since early 2017. His wife, Nadila, a Chinese citizen, was applying for her Australian spousal visa in late 2016 when Chinese officials confiscated her passport. Their son, Lutfi, was born a few months later.
  “
My son, even though an Australian citizen, has not been allowed to unite with me in Australia since the day he was born and I haven’t seen my son for his entire life,” he told VOA.

According to Nurgul Sawut, Campaign for Uyghurs’ director of the board for the Oceania region, three Australian Uighur children and one Australian mother are trapped in China so far.
  “
Except for Sadam’s son, two other Australian children were taken to China for family visit by their grandmother. An Australian permanent resident, who was placed in house arrest and her passport was confiscated after arriving in China,” she told VOA.
 
Detained, repatriated

Hayrullah Muhammed, an Australian Uighur detained at Chengdu airport in western China in July 2017, told VOA that he was incarcerated in Xinjiang for almost a month before being repatriated. The release, he said, came after the Australian embassy in Beijing intervened.
  “
I was under arrest by special police from Xinjiang at Chengdu airport and was flown to Urumqi and interrogated for at least seven times in three weeks in a detention center before I was let go,” he said.
 
Omir Bekali, a naturalized Kazakhstan citizen of Uighur heritage, told VOA that he was arrested by five Chinese police while he was visiting his family in Xinjiang in April 2017.
  “
They put shackles on my hands and feet and my head was covered by a black hood when they took me,” Bekali said, adding that he had lost 130 pounds, almost half of his body weight, because of the harsh conditions in captivity.
  “
Thanks to my wife’s efforts to speak up about my disappearance to the media, Kazakh authorities and U.N. office in Kazakhstan, I was released after seven months of going through food and sleep deprivation, beating and interrogation,” he said.
 
Some experts charge that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) considers Uighur ethnics from foreign countries particularly concerning, seeing them as potential agents from adversaries. Such people, they say, could play an effective role in exposing China’s secretive actions in Xinjiang.   

Timothy Grose, an assistant professor of China Studies at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana, told VOA that CCP officials hope that introducing stricter rules would intimidate Uighurs outside China into silence.
  “
Conceivably, CCP officials assume that Uighurs who have changed their citizenship have also fundamentally shifted their loyalties away from the party, China, and the Zhonghua minzu and to other social, religious, and/or national collectivities and are therefore deemed potential political threats,” said Grose.   
 
As the CCP further restricts outside contact with Uighurs inside China, “officials hope to ‘sterilize’ the region from outside influence while they construct, unimpeded, a narrative about combating ‘terrorism,’ ‘extremism,’ and ‘poverty,’ he added.

VOA’s Ezel Sahinkaya contributed to this story from Washington.

…

South Korea pushed back firmly Friday on comments by U.S. Ambassador Harry Harris, who called on Seoul to consult with Washington about the South’s attempt to resume individual tourism to North Korea.  

Harris said Thursday that South Korea should run the plan through a joint working group to “avoid a misunderstanding later that could trigger sanctions.”

An official with South Korea’s presidential office called those remarks “very inappropriate,” while stressing Seoul continues to coordinate with Washington.

“The issue of [inter-Korean] cooperation is a matter for our government to decide,” the official said.  

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles relations with the North, refused to directly respond to Harris’ comments, but a spokesperson said the country’s policy regarding North Korea “falls under our sovereignty.”

U.S.-South Korea relations have already been strained by U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand that Seoul pay substantially more of the cost of the U.S. military presence here.  

The current military cost-sharing deal expired at the end of the year. A sixth round of talks ended this week without a breakthrough and U.S. officials have warned “residual funds” being used to cover the gap are running out.

The issue has created unusual friction in a nearly 70-year-old alliance that both sides regularly portray as “ironclad.”

Inter-Korean ties

Despite a stalemate in U.S.-North Korea nuclear talks and the consequent retention of sanctions that have prevented implementation of most aspects of inter-Korean agreements, the administration of South Korean President Moon Jae-in has said it is looking for ways to independently improve inter-Korean ties. North Korea has rejected the efforts.

Harris said he thinks Moon’s “continued optimism is encouraging,” adding that it is not Washington’s job to approve South Korea’s decisions.

“I think his optimism creates hope, and that’s a positive thing,” Harris said Thursday. “But with regard to acting on that optimism, I have said that things should be done in consultation with the United States.”

Sanctions are just some of the hurdles that South Korea’s plans for tourism must clear. Another obstacle is North Korea.

“Even if South Korea did attempt to restart tours, North Korea won’t accept the proposal right now,” said Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at South Korea’s Handong Global University. “This effort is one-sided for the time being.”

North Korea last year ruled out any further dialogue with the South, accusing Seoul of prioritizing its relationship with Washington over Pyongyang.
 

…

Hundreds of mismanaged infrastructure projects have stalled in Kenya and it will cost around $10 billion to revive them, the IMF said in a report whose findings point to a growing power struggle at the heart of government.

Amid mounting public anger over ballooning state debt and a series of graft scandals, President Uhuru Kenyatta on Tuesday confirmed acting finance minister Ukur Yatani in the post after its previous incumbent, Henry Rotich, was charged with financial misconduct — an accusation he denies.

The government has acknowledged that some past investment projects did not pass muster, and Yatani told a budget preparation meeting on Wednesday that available resources would be “dedicated only to projects and programs that will ensure higher economic and social returns.”

Yatani, an ally of Kenyatta while Rotich was closer to Deputy President William Ruto, has won support from voters since provisionally taking over at the ministry in July.

The International Monetary Fund report, published on Wednesday, lays bare the scale of the task Yatani now faces. It said an estimated 500 projects — around half of the total v had ground to a halt due to “non-payment to contractors, insufficient allocation of funds to projects, and litigation cases in court.”

The state would need to raise around 1 trillion shillings ($10 billion) to complete them, the report said.

Kenya has ramped up public investment projects since 2010. But that increase “occurred without enough screening for project viability and readiness before they entered the budget,” the IMF said.

“There has been a subsequent squeeze on ongoing projects in the absence of fiscal space, which is now accruing large costs to the government.”

The fund named no specific projects, but construction of roads, markets and stadiums has stalled all over the country. Unpaid bills from the infrastructure department to suppliers and contractors totaled 78 billion shillings as of June, the IMF said.

Yatani said the government was reconstituting its planning and project monitoring unit to “ensure timely completion of projects and realization of value for money.”

His confirmation as finance minister was part of a government reshuffle that adds to signs of a rift between Kenyatta, who must step down when his second five-year term finishes in 2022, and Ruto, who considers himself the heir apparent but has begun to fall out of favor.

…

In April, just weeks after his summit with U.S. President Donald Trump collapsed in Hanoi, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un decided to ramp up the pressure on Washington.  

“We will wait for a bold decision from the U.S. with patience till the end of this year,” Kim said in a speech to North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly.

Just three weeks later, Kim launched his first missiles in nearly a year and a half and would conduct 12 more rounds of launches in 2019, underscoring the urgency of his year-end deadline.

At one point in early December, North Korean state media published near-daily warnings of Kim’s deadline, including one threat from a Foreign Affairs Ministry official regarding a potentially sinister “Christmas gift” for the U.S.

The top U.S. Air Force general in the Pacific region said he expected North Korea’s gift to be a long-range missile launch. The U.S. increased surveillance flights around the Korean peninsula, apparently on alert for weapons tests.

The Christmas gift never came, though.  

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

With Nuclear Talks Stalled, N. Korea Says Up to US to Select ‘Christmas Gift’

North Korea wants sanctions relief before making concessions

Maybe, some analysts said, North Korea was waiting for Kim’s annual New Year’s speech to unveil a major, provocative announcement.  

That didn’t really happen either. Kim’s New Year’s comments were relatively restrained, striking a more pessimistic than provocative tone.  

All of this raises questions. Why did North Korea steadily raise tensions for much of 2019, only to let them apparently fizzle out once the deadline passed, and what does that say about how North Korea will act in 2020?

North Korean ‘strategic patience’

The short answer is that nobody knows.  

One big clue is Kim’s New Year’s remarks, which came at the end of an important meeting of ruling party politicians in Pyongyang.  

Kim warned the world would soon witness a “new strategic weapon” and said he no longer feels bound by his moratorium on long-range missile and nuclear tests, which he unilaterally declared in April 2018, just as his diplomacy with Trump was beginning.

Kim did not formally abandon nuclear talks, though. Instead, he said their progress depends on the U.S. — progress that won’t likely come anytime soon, he added. North Korea, he said, should be prepared for a “long-term” standoff with Washington.

That could be North Korea’s version of “strategic patience,” according to North Korea analyst Koo Kab-woo. That is a reference to former U.S. President Barack Obama’s attempt to apply carefully calibrated economic and military pressure until Pyongyang was ready to make concessions at the negotiating table.

For North Korea, strategic patience includes emphasizing “self-reliance, an increase in its nuclear deterrent, and stronger diplomacy that could bring about the denuclearization [of North Korea] if the U.S. lifts its confrontational policies,” said Koo, a scholar at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, at a recent conference.

While that strategy may include more weapons tests, as hinted at in Kim’s speech, North Korea may be reluctant to cross any “red line” that would prompt a major reaction by Washington, Koo said.  

An intercontinental ballistic missile or nuclear test could also upset China and Russia when both countries are pressuring the U.S. to relax sanctions on North Korea, analysts have said.  

As a result, North Korea may not fully provoke or fully engage the U.S. in the near future — a policy of intentional ambiguity, Koo said.

Bigger moves coming?

Not everyone agrees with the strategic patience analogy, though.

“Strategic patience implies that North Korea has expectations from U.S.-DPRK diplomacy,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, an analyst for the North Korea-focused NK News online publication, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  

According to Lee, Kim’s New Year’s comments signaled he has “little to no hope” for a diplomatic breakthrough.

“My feeling is that he is buying time for himself, not because he is hopeful of concessions from the U.S., but because he is not ready to showcase the ‘new strategic weapon’ yet,” she said.  

There’s still a possibility that North Korea may act more forcefully this year, Lee said.

“It could be that Kim feels it’s not the right time to provoke. It could be the China factor, it could be that Kim is waiting for the right moment in the U.S. presidential election, or it could be that he wants to see some progress on the problems on the economic front,” she said.  

Status quo

If North Korea is reluctant to upset the status quo for now, though, that may be just fine for Trump, who is entering a more intense phase of his reelection campaign and has been focused on other foreign policy issues, such as Iran.

“As long as North Korea doesn’t launch long-range missiles and doesn’t test nuclear devices, I think Trump can claim that everything is alright,” said Artyom Lukin, an international relations scholar at Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia.

Trump’s reelection campaign has portrayed the North Korea talks as a major foreign policy win, and Trump remains publicly optimistic about their eventual success, even as North Korea stormed away from talks and conducted a near-record number of weapons tests in 2019.  

However, there does appear to be a limit for Trump. Last month, he signaled he would be disappointed if Kim resumed ICBM or nuclear tests. “He knows I have an election coming up. I don’t think he wants to interfere with that, but we’ll have to see,” Trump said.

Trump may be employing his own version of strategic patience, according to Lukin, describing the approach as: “We are ready to talk when you are ready, but we can wait.”

Who will move first?

If both the U.S. and North Korea are showing signs of “strategic patience,” the big question is: Who can afford to wait longer?  

In Lukin’s view, the situation is much more urgent for North Korea.

“Any radical move they make is only going to make their position worse. If they start testing long-range missiles, it will carry all sorts of risks for them. If they start real denuclearization, it’s also a very risky thing,” Lukin said.

“The only thing that’s left for Kim Jong Un is to wait, wait, and wait. But you could wait a long time — you could wait forever and nothing could happen, actually,” he added.  

Signs of frustration

One sign of North Korean frustration came last week, when senior North Korean Foreign Affairs Ministry official Kim Kye Gwan accused the U.S. of taking advantage of the relationship between Trump and Kim.

Though the Trump-Kim relationship remains “not bad,” it is also not enough to ensure the talks progress, he said. 

“Although Chairman Kim Jong Un has … good personal feelings about President Trump, they are, in the true sense of the word, ‘personal,'” the diplomat said.  

Nuclear talks can only resume, Kim said, once the U.S. agrees to totally accept all of North Korea’s demands. 

“But we know well that the U.S. is neither ready nor able to do so,” he added.
 

…

High on the wall of a German church where Martin Luther once preached, an ugly remnant of centuries of anti-Semitism is now at the center of a court battle.
    
The so-called “Judensau,” or “Jew pig,” sculpture on the Town Church in Wittenberg dates back to around 1300. It is perhaps the best-known of more than 20 such relics from the Middle Ages, in various forms and varying states of repair, that still adorn churches across Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
    
Located about 4 meters (13 feet) above the ground on a corner of the church, it depicts people identifiable by their headwear as Jews suckling on the teats of a sow, while a rabbi lifts the animal’s tail. In 1570, after the Protestant Reformation, an inscription referring to an anti-Jewish tract by Luther was added.
    
Judaism considers pigs impure, and no one disputes that the sculpture is deliberately offensive. But there is strong disagreement about what consequences that should have and what to do with the relief.
    
A court in the eastern city of Naumburg will consider on Tuesday a Jewish man’s bid to make the parish take it down.
    
It’s the second round in the legal dispute, which comes at a time of mounting concern about anti-Semitism in modern Germany. In May, a court ruled against plaintiff Michael Duellmann, who wants the relief put in the nearby Luther House museum.
    
Judges in Dessau rejected arguments that he has a right to have the sculpture removed because it formally constitutes slander and the parish is legally responsible for that. Duellmann appealed.
    
The relief “is a terrible falsification of Judaism, a defamation of and insult to the Jewish people,” Duellmann says, arguing that it has “a terrible effect up to this day.”
    
Duellmann, a former student of Protestant theology who converted to Judaism in the 1970s, became involved in the issue in 2017, the year Germany marked the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. He says he joined vigils in Wittenberg against the sculpture and was asked if he would be prepared to sue when it became clear that the church wasn’t prepared to take it down.

‘Culture of remembrance’
    
Luther is said to have nailed his 95 theses to the door of another church in Wittenberg in defiance of Roman Catholic authorities in 1517, starting the German Reformation. He also is known for anti-Jewish invective, from which Germany’s Lutheran church has distanced itself.
    
Luther preached at the Town Church, now a regular stop for tourists visiting Wittenberg.
 
When the church was renovated in the early 1980s, the parish decided to leave the sandstone sculpture in place, and it was also restored. In 1988, a memorial was built on the ground underneath it, referring to the persecution of Jews and the killing of 6 million in the Nazi Holocaust.
    
In addition, a cedar tree was planted nearby to signify peace, and a sign gives information on the sculpture in German and English.
    
Pastor Johannes Block says the church is “in the same boat” as the plaintiff and also considers the sculpture unacceptably insulting. The parish, he says, “also is not happy about this difficult inheritance.”
    
However, he argues that the sculpture “no longer speaks for itself as a solitary piece,” but is embedded in a “culture of remembrance” thanks to the memorial. “We don’t want to hide or abolish history, but take the path of reconciliation with and through history,” he says.
   
 “The majority of the Town Church parish doesn’t want this to become a museum piece, but to warn and ask people to remember history on the building, with the original,” Block says.
    
Duellmann isn’t impressed. “The ‘Jew pig’ is not weakened” by the memorial, he says. “It continues to have a terrible anti-Semitic effect in the church and in society.”

World Heritage site

There are mixed opinions in the church, too. Last year, the regional Lutheran bishop, Friedrich Kramer, said he favors taking down the sculpture from the church wall and exhibiting it in public at the site with an explanation. He doesn’t favor putting it in a museum. He praised the 1988 memorial but said it has weaknesses, including a failure to address Luther’s anti-Semitism.
    
If judges do order the sculpture removed, that may not be the end of the story. Block says the church would ask authorities to assess whether it is possible to remove it from a building that is under a preservation order, and more talks with the court would probably follow.
    
The church is a UNESCO World Heritage site, a status that it gained in 1996.
    
Plaintiff Duellmann has little sympathy with the church’s preservation order dilemma. He contends that authorities deliberately failed to mention the offending sculpture at the time of the application in order not to endanger it.
    
Whatever the outcome, Block says he regrets that the case went to court.
   
 ‘We are not advocates and initiators” of the sculpture, he says. “We are heirs and are trying to deal very conscientiously with this inheritance.”

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