LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson cleared the way Thursday for a long-awaited parliamentary report into alleged Russian interference in British politics to be published “as soon as possible.”
A government spokesman said parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC) will be re-formed next week, and will then be free to publish its findings into concerns about disinformation and meddling in the 2016 Brexit vote.
The committee finished the 50-page report in March last year and the report was cleared by the intelligence agencies in October.
But Johnson failed to authorize its publication before the committee was disbanded ahead of the December general election, and it was then delayed until the committee was restored.
The nominations for the new committee members are expected to be published later Thursday and put to a vote by lawmakers next Monday and Tuesday. The new members will then elect their own chairman.
Committee members have to be approved by the PM.
Johnson’s spokesman said publication of the Russia report “will be a matter for the new committee but we would encourage them to publish it as soon as possible.”
The ISC launched the investigation in November 2017, in response to concerns about attempts by Russia to influence the 2016 US presidential election and fears of meddling in Britain’s referendum vote the same year to leave the European Union.
Then prime minister Theresa May had accused Russia of “planting fake stories” to “sow discord in the West and undermine our institutions.”
The 2018 poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English town of Salisbury, which London and its Western allies blamed on Moscow, only added to the ISC’s concerns.
Former ISC chairman Dominic Grieve had accused Johnson of deliberately delaying the report until after the election — something Downing Street denies.
Politicians in the main opposition Labour party have alleged the report could contain evidence of links between Johnson’s Conservative party and Russian billionaires.
UK PM Boris Johnson clears way for Brexit ‘Russian meddling’ report
https://arab.news/2b7q7
UK PM Boris Johnson clears way for Brexit ‘Russian meddling’ report
- The committee finished the 50-page report in March last year
- Report was cleared by intelligence agencies in October
After nearly 7 weeks and many rumors, Bolivia’s ex-leader reappears in his stronghold
- Morales was Bolivia’s first Indigenous president who served from 2006 until his fraught 2019 ouster and subsequent self-exile
- He dismissed rumors fueled by local politicians and fanned by social media that he would try to flee the country
LA PAZ: Bolivia’s long-serving socialist former leader, Evo Morales, reappeared Thursday in his political stronghold of the tropics after almost seven weeks of unexplained absence, endorsing candidates for upcoming regional elections and quieting rumors he had fled the country in the wake of the US seizure of his ally, Venezuela’s ex-President Nicolás Maduro.
The weeks of hand-wringing over Morales’ fate showed how little the Andean country knows about what’s happening in the remote Chapare region, where the former president has spent the past year evading an arrest warrant on human trafficking charges, and how vulnerable it is to fears about US President Donald Trump’s potential future foreign escapades.
The media outlet of Morales’ coca-growing union, Radio Kawsachun Coca, released footage of Morales smiling in dark sunglasses as he arrived via tractor at a stadium in the central Bolivian town of Chimoré to address his supporters.
Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president who served from 2006 until his fraught 2019 ouster and subsequent self-exile, explained that he had come down with chikungunya, a mosquito-borne ailment with no treatment that causes fever and severe joint pain, and suffered complications that “caught me by surprise.”
“Take care of yourselves against chikungunya — it is serious,” the 66-year-old Morales said, appearing markedly more frail than in past appearances.
He dismissed rumors fueled by local politicians and fanned by social media that he would try to flee the country, vowing to remain in Bolivia despite the threat of arrest under conservative President Rodrigo Paz, whose election last October ended nearly two decades of rule by Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism party.
“Some media said, ‘Evo is going to leave, Evo is going to flee.’ I said clearly: I am not going to leave. I will stay with the people to defend the homeland,” he said.
Paz’s revival of diplomatic ties with the US and recent efforts to bring back the Drug Enforcement Administration — some 17 years after Morales expelled American anti-drug agents from the Andean country while cozying up to China, Russia, Cuba and Iran — have rattled the coca-growing region that serves as Morales’ bastion of support.
Paz on Thursday confirmed that he would meet Trump in Miami on March 7 for a summit convening politically aligned Latin American leaders as the Trump administration seeks to counter Chinese influence and assert US dominance in the region.
Before proclaiming the candidates he would endorse in Bolivia’s municipal and regional elections next month, Morales launched into a lengthy speech reminiscent of his once-frequent diatribes against US imperialism.
“This is geopolitical propaganda on an international scale,” he said of Trump’s bid to revive the Monroe Doctrine from 1823 in order to reassert American dominance in the Western Hemisphere. “They want to eliminate every left-wing party in Latin America.”
