Russian President Vladimir Putin called former spy Sergei Skripal, who was poisoned along with his daughter in the UK, a “traitor” and suggested that the incident was being “artificially blown up” by the media.

Asked at an energy forum on Wednesday in Moscow to comment on the case and its consequences, the Russian President launched into a tirade against Skripal, who was hospitalised along with his daughter Yulia after exposure to a military-grade nerve agent in Salisbury in March, reports CNN.

“I see that some of your colleagues are pushing the theory that Skripal is almost a human-rights activist,” Putin said.

“He’s just a spy. A traitor to the Motherland. There’s such a thing as a traitor to the Motherland. He’s one of them. He’s just a scumbag, that’s all.”

Putin said that the Salisbury affair “is being artificially… blown up” by the media, but added: “It’ll pass, eventually… The sooner it’s over, the better.”

The comments come amid a deepening diplomatic clash between Moscow and the UK, which has blamed the March 4 poisonings on the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.

UK investigators have also formally linked the attack on the Skripals to the June 30 poisoning of Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, a couple living in Amesbury, near Salisbury.

Sturgess died on July 8 after applying a substance to her wrists from a perfume bottle found by Rowley.

The Kremlin has consistently dismissed official British allegations.

(IANS)

Iran will not sit for talks with the US over the existing issues as the conditions are not ripe, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Tuesday.

“I’m not ruling out the prospect of talks (with Washington) provided the necessary conditions for talks, and that is reliability,” Zarif was quoted as saying by Press TV.

“Reliability is that when you sign something you are bound by it. Otherwise, everything will fall apart,” he said, adding that “we are waiting for some sense of realism”.

Iranian authorities have stressed that Tehran will not sit for negotiations under Washington’s threats and sanction pressures.

Following US President Donald Trump’s decision to quit the historic Iranian nuclear pact, Washington vowed to reimpose sanctions lifted under the accord against Tehran and inflict punishments like secondary sanctions on nations having business links with Iran.

Washington’s withdrawal from the landmark Iran nuclear deal was criticized across the world. Some of its major European allies have been working to prevent the 2015 deal from falling apart.

The Trump administration, according to reports, has called for renegotiation of the Iranian 2015 nuclear deal as well as Tehran’s developing missile programme. However, Iran has ruled out possibility of talks over defence plans.

(IANS)

US President Donald Trump’s administration has begun denying visas to unmarried, same-sex partners of foreign diplomats and UN employees, the media reported.

According to a report in Foreign Policy magazine on Monday, the policy affected same-sex partners of diplomats and staffers working at the UN global headquarters in New York. The partner must show proof of marriage by December 31 or leave the country within 30 days.

The majority of 193 UN member countries do not legalize same-sex marriage, meaning diplomats face a tough choice.

The report said the new policy meant at least 10 unmarried UN employees currently in the US will have to get married in order for their partners’ visas to be extended.

Since the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, the US policy has dictated that diplomatic visas are only extended to married spouses.

The US mission to the UN reportedly notified couples of the decision in July and it took effect on Monday, according to the report.

“Same-sex spouses of US diplomats now enjoy the same rights and benefits as opposite-sex spouses,” read the announcement obtained by Foreign Policy.

“Consistent with the (State) Department policy, partners accompanying members of permanent missions or seeking to join the same must generally be married in order to be eligible for a diplomatic visa,” it said.

Former US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power blasted the move as “needlessly cruel and bigoted”.

Alfonso Nam, the President of UN Globe, a UN LGBTI staff advocacy organization, told Foreign Policy that same-sex couples were at risk of prosecution if they return to a country that criminalizes homosexuality or has not legalized same-sex marriages.

Diplomats would be eligible for “limited exceptions” under the Trump administration’s policy if they can prove they are from countries that outlaw same-sex partners, the report said. That exception, however, reportedly does not extend to UN officials.

(IANS)

A Chinese national living in California has been jailed for 46 months over a scheme to smuggle sensitive space and military communications technology to China.

Si Chen, 33, was sentenced on Monday after she pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which restricts the export of certain goods to foreign nations, the Justice Department said in a statement cited by CNN on Tuesday.

Si Chen, a resident of Pomona, a suburb of Los Angeles, was arrested in May 2017 and has been in custody since. She also pleaded guilty to money laundering and using a forged passport, the report said.

Prosecutors say that between 2013 and 2015, Si Chen purchased and smuggled numerous sensitive items to China without the proper export license, including components used in military communications jammers and devices used for space communications.

“This defendant knowingly participated in a plot to secretly send items with military applications to China. The smuggled items could be used in a number of damaging ways, including in equipment that could jam our satellite communications,” said US Attorney Nick Hanna in a statement.

The report said that Si Chen went by several aliases, including “Chunping Ji”, for which she acquired a forged passport and rented an office in Pomona to take delivery of the export-controlled items.

From Pomona, the goods were shipped to Hong Kong and then on to China. Court documents mentioned three unindicted co-conspirators who worked with Si Chen to smuggle the items to Hong Kong.

Her case came a week after another Chinese national, Ji Chaoqun, was arrested in the US over accusations of acting as an “illegal agent” at the direction of a “high-level intelligence officer” of a provincial department of the Ministry of State Security, China’s top spy agency.

IANS

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday replaced his Ministers of Defence and Health, Labour and Welfare in a major Cabinet reshuffle, with an eye on upcoming elections for the upper house of the Parliament in 2019, to be followed by lower house elections in 2021.

This was Abe’s first major reshuffle after he was re-elected as the leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in September.

Abe retained six of the 19 ministers in his Cabinet and named 13 new ministers, out of which 12 were former ministers, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga was cited as saying by Efe news.

The most significant change in the Cabinet was new Defence Minister Takeshi Iwaya, who replaced Itsunori Onodera at a time when the government was set to push a controversial reform to change its pacifist Constitution.

Abe also named Takumi Nemoto as the new Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare, replacing Katsunobu Kato, while veteran politician Yoshitaka Sakurada was appointed as the Minister of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Satsuki Katayama, currently the only woman minister in the Cabinet after Abe replaced two other female ministers, will be the new Regional Revitalization Minister.

Two of Abe’s closest aides, Finance Minister Taro Aso, and Suga himself retained their portfolios, along with Foreign Minister Taro Kono, Economy and Trade Minister Hiroshige Seko and Minister of State for Economic Revitalization and Human Resources Toshimitsu Motegi.

The reshuffle indicated Abe was set to continue with his economic policy or “Abenomics”, that was launched six years ago to revive the world’s third biggest economy.

The leader also reorganized the leadership of his party on Tuesday, naming former Health Minister Kato as chairman of the party’s general council, with the objective of pushing the proposed constitutional amendment.

This was Abe’s fifth Cabinet reshuffle in six years and across three terms.

IANS

The US President Donald Trump reviewed on Saturday in a phone call with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud the oil supply for stability of the market, Saudi Press Agency reported.

The two leaders discussed efforts to maintain supplies to ensure the stability of oil market and the growth of global economy.

Oil supply and prices are common interests of the US and Saudi Arabia.

Media reports said that Saudi Arabia would raise oil outputs in the coming months to deal with the drop in Iranian oil production and might limit outputs next year to balance global supply and demand when the US pumps more quantities of crude.

The two leaders also discussed developments in the region and the world.

IANS

 
The Syrian Ministry of Transportation on Saturday announced the re-opening of the Nasib border crossing with Jordan, which has been closed since 2015.

A ministry statement cited by the state news agency SANA said the border crossing was opened and the movement of trucks and transit to and from Syria resumed.

The border crossing was closed in 2015 when the rebels took over the Nasib area and the crossing in the countryside of Daraa province in Syria.

The Syrian Army captured Daraa and the border crossing in July after the rebels in the province surrendered and agreed to evacuate to rebel-held areas in northern Syria, mainly the northwestern province of Idlib.

Last week, the Transportation Ministry declared raising the transit crossing fees that should be paid by trucks passing in and out of Syria whether they were loaded or empty.

The Nasib crossing is the busiest border crossing in Syria as it is situated on the Damascus-Amman international highway.

The crossing is also considered one of the most important land crossings in the Middle East as it is the main crossing for Syrian exports to Jordan and the Gulf countries.

Lebanon would also benefit from the re-opening of the Nasib crossing as the small Mediterranean country has crossings with Syria only and through Nasib it can do business with Arab markets.

The crossing is important for Jordan which is suffering from economic problems. Since it was closed in 2015, the kingdom suffered heavy losses as 70 per cent of its exports and imports went through Syria, according to Nabil Ruman, head of the investor’s board of the Jordanian Free Zone.

Reports said the losses of the Jordanian transport sector from the border closure was estimated at around half a billion US dollars.

IANS

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has turned the diplomatic snub by Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj at the Saarc meeting into a personal vendetta, making a unprofessional remarks in public about her to the accompaniment of derisive laughter.

“I was quite concerned when I saw the Minister for External Affairs, when I was in the room she looked pale to me,” Qureshi said while laughing. “She looked very worried. I wish, I wish we could have smiled at each other.”

He made the remarks at the Asia Society here on Friday, a day after Sushma Swaraj had refused to interact with him at the South Asian Association Regional Cooperation (Saarc) ministerial meeting and left after delivering her speech without staying on for his address.

Most people in the audience, which included a large number of people of Pakistani descent, did not join his laughter.

With exaggerated gestures, Qureshi added: “I could see the immense strain and when she left, she wasn’t even willing to engage with the media. I had no problem, but I could see the pressure, but I could see the political pressure on her, politics, nothing else, politics, domestic politics.”

After the Saarc meeting on Thursday he had insinuated to the Pakistani media that may be she was feeling unwell, according to Samaa TV.

Sushma Swaraj, however, went on to have her scheduled meetings with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono and Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Walid al Muallem.

India had initially agreed last week to recently-elected Prime Minister Imran Khan’s request for holding talks between Sushma Swaraj and Qureshi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting.

However, New Delhi cancelled the talks a day later after three Indian police personnel were killed in Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan issued a stamp honouring a terrorist leader.

In keeping with India’s resolve not to engage diplomatically with Pakistan while the terrorism issue persisted, Sushma Swaraj has steadfastly refused to engage with Qureshi even informally while in New York for the UN General Assembly meeting.

Asked by a Pakistani journalist about why the talks didn’t take place, Qureshi replied alluding to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party, but without naming them.

“Why are they reluctant? Simply, sir, politics, elections, elections, the scare of the electorate. They have taken the pendulum, they have swung the pendulum to such an extreme, now they are finding it difficult to bring it back.”

“And with elections around the corner and they felt it could boomerang, that’s why they were shy,” he added.

But recalling Khan’s offer in his first speech after the election to take two steps for every step India took, Qureshi reiterated Islamabad’s keenness for talks.

“Whenever you are ready, our message is loud and clear, Pakistan will never shy away because we want to move on, we want the region to develop,” he said.

Qureshi said the Pakistan election that brought Khan to power was a turning point for the nation.

“People of Pakistan are clear that extremism has to be reversed, militancy is not what we need. Terrorism has hit us more than anyone else.”

About the growing ties between New Delhi and Washington, Qureshi said: “Today India is a strategic partner of the US, (but) we have no problem with that.”

However, displaying a sense of insecurity, he added: “… But why lose old friends? Have new ones, why lose old friends.”

In return for continued help to the US in Afghanistan, he wanted Washington to pressure India on relations with Pakistan.

“If the US wants us to help (in Afghanistan) and we want to help in our own interest, because we want peace in the region, then they have to tell their new strategic partner to give us ease on the eastern side so we can concentrate on areas of mutual interest,” he said.

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday held up India as an example to the world of a country that successfully lifted millions out of poverty while upholding democracy and freedom.

Addressing the General Assembly, he said India was part of a “beautiful constellation” of countries working for a common future.

In speech that emphasised his America First policy with a declaration that he rejected the “ideology of globalism” for a belief in patriotism, he reiterated his hardline against countries such as China, Iran and Venezuela.

He demanded that Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut their “horrible prices.”

IANS

India will make a “sovereign decision” on Russian defence purchases, which are facing possible US sanctions, according to Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“I understand that India will be taking sovereign decision (on) how to proceed and what kind of weapons it needs,” he said at a news conference here on Friday.

Asked by a reporter if the proposed $8.5 billion defence deal with Russia, which includes a missile defence system, that was expected to be signed next month during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India was on hold, Lavrov said: “I haven’t heard anything about the timing, about postponement, about putting anything on hold.”

In response to another question if Russia would be adding “checks and balances” to its defence deals with India in the light of the controversies over the purchase of Rafale jets from France, Lavrov said he was not aware of the allegations of corruption and added, “We participated in the deal for the delivery of that (but) we did not get it.”

Six manufacturers, including Mikoyan MiG-35, competed for the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) tender. The MiG-35 was eliminated in an initial round and Dassault’s Rafale emerged the winner for the contract.

The Countering Americaa¿s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) passed last year by the US Congress imposes sanctions on some Russian companies as well as on their customers and this could impact India’s defence deals with Russia.

India will need exemptions from CAATSA to buy the S-400 Triumf missile defence system as well as frigates and helicopters.

While India raised the issue during the recent 2+2 Strategic Dialogue between the Defence and External Affairs Ministers of India and the US Secretaries of Defence and State in New Delhi, a categorical exemption is yet to be made.

When the Congress tried earlier this year to prevent President Donald Trump’s administration from granting exemptions, Defence Secretary James Mattis made an appeal citing India to allow the administration to exempt deals and finally prevailed.

So the Trump administration continues to have the power to exempt India.

(IANS)