JOHANNESBURG: The top decision-making body of South Africa’s ruling ANC will meet on Monday following days of talks over President Jacob Zuma’s expected departure from office, a party spokeswoman said Sunday.
“An NEC (national executive committee) meeting is scheduled for tomorrow in Pretoria,” ANC spokeswoman Khusela Diko told AFP, declining to reveal the meeting’s agenda.
South Africa’s president-in-waiting Cyril Ramaphosa has said negotiations should be concluded within days.
But Zuma, whose presidency has been tainted by graft scandals, has clung to power after rejecting a request by senior officials of the African National Congress to resign a week ago.
The stalemate over Zuma leaving office has left South Africa in limbo, with a series of public events canceled last week including Thursday’s State of the Nation address to parliament in Cape Town.
Zuma’s hold over the ANC was shaken in December, when his chosen successor — his former wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma — narrowly lost out to Ramaphosa in a vote to be the new party leader.
Ramaphosa will address a major ANC party rally in Cape Town on Sunday.
The rally is part of ANC celebrations marking 100 years since Mandela’s birth, as Ramaphosa tries to revive the party’s tarnished reputation.
South Africa’s ANC to meet Monday as Zuma deadlock tightens
South Africa’s ANC to meet Monday as Zuma deadlock tightens
Sri Lanka hospital releases 22 rescued Iranian sailors
- Sri Lankan authorities said the survivors from the Dena were being handled according to international humanitarian law
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka discharged from hospital 22 Iranian sailors who were plucked from life rafts after their warship was sunk by a US submarine, officials said Sunday.
The sailors were treated at Karapitiya Hospital in the southern port city of Galle since Wednesday after the IRIS Dena was torpedoed just outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters.
“Another 10 are still undergoing treatment,” a medical officer at the hospital told AFP.
He said the bodies of 84 Iranians retrieved from the Indian Ocean were also at the hospital.
Those discharged from hospital overnight had been taken to a beach resort in the same district.
Sri Lankan authorities said the survivors from the Dena were being handled according to international humanitarian law, and the government had contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross for assistance.
The island is also providing safe haven for another 219 Iranian sailors from a second ship, the IRIS Bushehr, that was allowed to berth a day after the Dena was sunk.
Sailors from the Bushehr have been moved to a Sri Lanka Navy camp at Welisara, just north of the capital Colombo, and their ship taken over by Sri Lanka’s navy.
Sri Lanka announced it was taking the Bushehr to the north-eastern port of Trincomalee, but an engine failure and other technical and administrative issues had delayed the movement, a navy spokesman said.
Sri Lanka has denied claims that it was under pressure from Washington not to allow the Iranians to return home, and said Colombo will be guided solely by international law and its own domestic legislation.
A US State Department spokesperson said the disposition of the Bushehr crew and Iranian sailors rescued at sea was up to Sri Lanka.
“The United States, of course, respects and recognizes Sri Lanka’s sovereignty in the handling of this situation,” the spokesperson told AFP in Washington.
India, meanwhile, said Saturday that it had allowed a third Iranian warship, the IRIS Lavan, to dock in one of its ports on “humane” grounds after it too reported engine problems.
The three ships were part of a multi-national fleet review held by India before the war in the Middle East started last week.
“I think it was the humane thing to do, and I think we were guided by that principle,” Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday.
The Lavan docked in the south-west Indian port of Kochi on Wednesday.
“A lot of the people on board were young cadets. They have disembarked and are in a nearby facility,” Jaishankar said.
