BERLIN: Foreign Minister Heiko Maas agreed with his Israeli counterpart on Thursday that an effort must be made to extend a weapons embargo on Iran, while stressing Germany still sees the 2015 deal between Tehran and world powers as the best way to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
With a current UN arms embargo on Iran due to expire on Oct. 18, Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi told reporters in Berlin an extension was needed to prevent Iran from getting “more advanced weapons systems and spreading them around the Middle East.”
“We would like to see the European countries, not just Germany, preventing it,” he said. “It’s not helpful for the stability of the region.”
Ashkenazi was in Berlin to attend a two-day meeting of European foreign ministers at the invitation of Germany, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
The US wants a full extension of the embargo on Iran, which would almost certainly be vetoed by Russia and China in the UN Security Council, Maas said.
Germany and others are currently trying to find some middle ground that would meet with Russian and Chinese approval — and not be vetoed by the US in the Security Council.
“We are trying to reach a diplomatic solution so that there will be an arms embargo on Iran in the future,” Maas said.
At the same time, he said Germany still sees the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed with Iran in 2015, promising the country economic incentives in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program, the best deal to prevent the country from developing an atomic weapon.
Israel is against the deal, and the US pulled out unilaterally in 2018, leaving the others involved — Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China — struggling to keep it alive.
Maas said concerns outside the JCPOA, like Iran’s ballistic missile program and influence in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, need to be addressed, but that “we want to preserve the JCPOA to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
“Iran must change its approach in the region, we are not naive about Iran,” he said. “We know that Iran plays a dangerous role.”
The two ministers met at the House of the Wannsee Conference memorial, a villa in southwestern Berlin where senior Nazis and bureaucrats coordinated plans for the Holocaust in 1942.
Ashkenazi said that as the son of a Holocaust survivor, it was particularly emotional for him to visit the place where the “evil and cruelness” of the genocide of 6 million Jews was plotted.
Maas said anti-Semitism still exists in Germany today, and the memorial serves as a reminder that “we should fight it with available means.”
Germany, Israel agree continued Iran arms embargo important
https://arab.news/58c4u
Germany, Israel agree continued Iran arms embargo important
- Maas said concerns outside the JCPOA, like Iran’s ballistic missile program and influence in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, need to be addressed
UK condemns drone strikes across Sudan and blocking of aid as famine continues to rage
- Drone attacks by Rapid Support Forces include strike on humanitarian convoy that killed aid worker, and another in North Kordofan that killed 24 people, including 8 children
- Famine conditions reported in Darfur towns of Um Baru and Kernoi; British ambassador calls this a ‘devastating indictment’ of how warring factions ‘continue to block life-saving aid’
NEW YORK CITY: The UK on Friday condemned drone strikes by the Rapid Support Forces, one of the warring military factions in Sudan, and accused the group and its rival, the Sudanese Armed Forces, of blocking life-saving aid while parts of Sudan’s Darfur region descend into famine.
Speaking ahead of a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the situation in Sudan, requested by Britain, Bahrain and Denmark, the UK’s deputy ambassador, James Kariuki, told reporters that the latest alert from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification warned of famine conditions in the Darfur towns of Um Baru and Kernoi.
“This is a devastating indictment of how the SAF and RSF continue to block life-saving aid,” he added.
The ways in which they are doing this include blocking trade routes, disrupting supply chains and restricting humanitarian access, Kariuki said. Such actions are deliberately exacerbating the crisis, he warned, and constitute violations of international humanitarian law under UN Security Council Resolution 2417.
“Starvation must never be used as a weapon of war,” he added.
More than 33 million people across the country are now in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, Kariuki said, making the humanitarian crisis in Sudan the worst in the world.
The UK also condemned recent RSF drone strikes across the country, including a reported attack on a World Food Programme convoy on Friday that killed an aid worker. Another RSF drone strike in North Kordofan had killed 24 people, including eight children, Kariuki said.
“Humanitarian workers must be able to deliver the response on the ground without obstruction and without retaliation,” he told the Security Council.
The civil war in Sudan began in April 2023 when fighting erupted between the SAF, led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary RSF, commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti.
Kariuki said authorities in the UK had imposed fresh sanctions last Thursday targeting six individuals suspected of committing atrocities or fueling the conflict in Sudan by supplying mercenaries and military equipment.
“These sanctions send a clear message that all those who perpetrate or profit from the brutal violence in Sudan will be held accountable, no matter how long it takes,” he added.
