NUSA DUA, Indonesia: President Joe Biden objected directly to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions” toward Taiwan during the first in-person meeting of his presidency with Xi Jinping, as the two superpower leaders aimed on Monday to “manage” their differences in the competition for global influence.
The nearly three-hour meeting was the highlight of Biden’s weeklong, round-the-world trip to the Middle East and Asia, and came at a critical juncture for the two countries amid increasing economic and security tensions. Speaking at a news conference afterward, Biden said that when it comes to China, the US would “compete vigorously, but I’m not looking for conflict.”
He added: “I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War” between America and the rising Asian power.
Biden reiterated US support for its longstanding “One China” policy, which recognizes the government in Beijing — while allowing for informal American relations and defense ties with Taipei, and “strategic ambiguity” over whether the US would respond militarily if the island were attacked. He also said that despite China’s recent saber rattling, he does not believe “there’s any imminent attempt on the part of China to invade Taiwan.”
Xi, according to the Chinese government’s account of the meeting, “stressed that the Taiwan question is at the very core of China’s core interests, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-US relations, and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-US relations.”
Biden said he and Xi also discussed Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and “reaffirmed our shared belief” that the use or even the threat of nuclear weapons is “totally unacceptable.” That was a reference to Moscow’s thinly veiled threats to use atomic weapons as its nearly nine-month invasion of Ukraine has faltered.
Chinese officials have largely refrained from public criticism of Russia’s war, although Beijing has avoided direct support of the Russians, such as supplying arms.
While there were no watershed breakthroughs, the Biden-Xi meeting brought each side long-sought, if modest, gains. In addition to the shared condemnation of Russian nuclear threats, Biden appeared to secure from Xi the resumption of lower-level cooperation from China on a range of shared global challenges. Meanwhile, Xi, who has aimed to establish China as a geopolitical peer of the US, got symbolic home turf for the meeting as well as Biden’s forceful One China policy commitment.
The White House said Biden and Xi agreed to “empower key senior officials” to work on areas of potential cooperation, including tackling climate change and maintaining global financial, health and food stability. Beijing had cut off such contacts with the US in protest of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in August.
China and the US are the world’s worst climate polluters, and their one-on-one climate contacts are seen as vital to staving off some of the most dire scenarios of climate change. Biden’s first stop on his long overseas trip was in Egypt for a major climate conference.
The two leaders agreed to have US Secretary of State Antony Blinken travel to Beijing to continue discussions.
Xi and Biden warmly greeted each other with a handshake at a luxury resort hotel in Indonesia, where they are attending the Group of 20 summit of large economies.
“As the leaders of our two nations, we share responsibility, in my view, to show that China and the United States can manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming anything ever near conflict, and to find ways to work together on urgent global issues that require our mutual cooperation,” Biden said to open the meeting.
Xi called on Biden to “chart the right course” and “elevate the relationship” between China and the US He said he wanted a “candid and in-depth exchange of views.”
Both men entered the highly anticipated meeting with bolstered political standing at home. Democrats triumphantly held onto control of the US Senate, with a chance to boost their ranks by one in a runoff election in Georgia next month, while Xi was awarded a third five-year term in October by the Communist Party’s national congress, a break with tradition.
But relations between the two powers have grown more strained under successive American administrations, with economic, trade, human rights and security differences at the fore.
As president, Biden has repeatedly taken China to task for human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities, crackdowns on democracy activists in Hong Kong, coercive trade practices, military provocations against self-ruled Taiwan and differences over Russia and Ukraine.
The White House said Biden specifically mentioned US concerns about China’s actions in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and the plight of Americans it considers “wrongfully detained” or subject to exit bans in China.
Taiwan has emerged as one of the most contentious issues. Multiple times in his presidency, Biden has said the US would defend the island — which China has eyed for eventual unification — in case of a Beijing-led invasion. But administration officials have stressed each time that the US China policy has not changed.
Pelosi’s trip prompted China, officially the People’s Republic of China, to retaliate with military drills and the firing of ballistic missiles into nearby waters.
The White House said Biden “raised US objections to the PRC’s coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan, which undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the broader region, and jeopardize global prosperity.”
In the meeting, Biden said China’s economic practices “harm American workers and families, and workers and families around the world,” the White House said.
The meeting came just weeks after the Biden administration blocked exports of advanced computer chips to China — a national security move that bolsters US competition against Beijing.
Xi’s government said he condemned such moves, saying, “Starting a trade war or a technology war, building walls and barriers, and pushing for decoupling and severing supply chains run counter to the principles of market economy and undermine international trade rules.”
Although the two men have held five phone or video calls during Biden’s presidency, White House officials said those encounters were no substitute for an in-person meeting. They said sitting down with Xi was all the more important after the Chinese leader strengthened his grip on power with a third term and because lower-level Chinese officials have been unable or unwilling to speak for their leader.
White House officials and their Chinese counterparts spent weeks negotiating details of the meeting, which was held at Xi’s hotel with translators providing simultaneous interpretation through headsets. Each leader was flanked by nine N-95 mask-wearing aides, and in the case of Xi, at least one official newly elevated in the recent Congress to its top leadership.
US officials were eager to see how Xi approached the meeting after consolidating his position as the unquestioned leader of the state — whether that made him more or less likely to seek out areas of cooperation.
Biden said Xi was as he’s always been.
“I didn’t find him more confrontational or more conciliatory,” Biden said. “I found him the way he’s always been, direct and straightforward.”
Biden, Xi clash on Taiwan but try to ‘manage’ differences
https://arab.news/bbs47
Biden, Xi clash on Taiwan but try to ‘manage’ differences
- Both leaders stress the need to manage differences and avoid conflict
Pope to visit Jakarta’s Istiqlal mosque in push for interfaith harmony
- Pope Francis arrives on Tuesday in Indonesia on the first leg of his trip that will also take him to Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Singapore
- Indonesia has been visited by two popes before — Pope Paul VI in a 1970 trip to Jakarta and Pope John Paul II in 1989
JAKARTA: When Pope Francis visits Indonesia next week, he will stop by a mosque in Jakarta that has an unusual feature — a tunnel connecting it to the city’s Catholic cathedral, as part of a push for interfaith harmony on his 12-day Asia-Pacific tour.
The 28.3-meter “Tunnel of Friendship,” connecting the iconic Istiqlal mosque to the Our Lady of the Assumption cathedral, was built by the government in 2020 as a symbol of religious harmony, a theme the global head of the Catholic church has also emphasized on his travels during his 11-year reign.
Pope Francis, 87, arrives on Tuesday in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, on the first leg of the longest trip of his papacy that will also take him to Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Singapore. The plans have drawn concerns over his increasing health problems.
The pope is scheduled to participate in an interfaith meeting at the mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia, and to visit the tunnel, which features windows to let in light and inscribed art on the walls but is not yet open to the public.
“It’s extraordinary that the Catholics’ number one figure is coming,” said Nasaruddin Umar, the grand imam of the Istiqlal, whose vast parking lot is often open to churchgoers during major events. “Whatever your religion is, let’s respect our guest.”
Only about 3 percent of Indonesia’s population of 280 million are Catholic, while nearly 90 percent are Muslim.
The pope is scheduled to meet outgoing President Joko Widodo and hold a mass service at a Jakarta stadium, which is expected to be attended by more than 80,000 people, said Rev. Thomas Ulun Ismoyo, an Indonesian church official.
The visit has excited Indonesian Catholics, who have not experienced a papal visit in more than three decades.
“If I could meet him, I could only bow before him. I couldn’t even bring myself to hold his hand,” said Maria Regina Widyastuti Sasongko, a 77-year-old Catholic woman who sells items such as statues and t-shirts bearing the pope’s face.
Indonesia has been visited by two popes before — the first, Pope Paul VI in a 1970 trip to Jakarta and in 1989, Pope John Paul II, who visited Jakarta and four other cities.
Symbol of friendship; chequered past
Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, Indonesia’s religious affairs minister, said the pope’s visit was a symbol of friendship among people of all religions in Indonesia.
“The pope’s visit makes Indonesia the barometer of peace and a pillar of tolerance,” he told Reuters.
Still Indonesia has had a chequered history with religious harmony.
Catholicism came to the country by way of Portuguese missionaries in its eastern area in the 16th century, but historians say it was banned during Dutch colonial rule for about two centuries in favor of Protestantism.
The Vatican officially named a diplomatic representative in Indonesia in the 1940s.
And in modern Indonesia, officially a secular state, minority religions can still face discrimination.
The US religious freedom watchdog has said that “Indonesia’s religious freedom conditions remained poor” in 2023, citing several regulations including ones that led to closures of places of worship, including churches.
Andreas Harsono, the Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the roots of religious intolerance, and church closures, were the laws that facilitate them.
But for Sasongko, the Catholic woman selling papal merchandise, the arrival of the pope signifies hope for unity.
“His visit can transform people to love one another,” she said.
China pushes rivals’ limits in regional disputes
- China has in recent months deployed military and coast guard vessels in a bid to eject the Philippines from a trio of strategically important reefs and islands in the South China Sea
- China has for years sought to expand its power in the South China Sea, brushing aside an international ruling that its claim to most of the waterway has no legal basis
BEIJING: China’s campaign of confrontation, from remote reefs in Southeast Asia to Taiwan and far-flung Japanese islands, is designed to wear down regional rivals competing with it for contested territories, analysts say.
Beijing in recent years has asserted its claims in the long-running disputes far more boldly as its military strength has grown.
The escalating actions — over islands in the East China Sea claimed by Japan, the self-ruled territory of Taiwan and the South China Sea — have also come as Beijing’s rivals have drawn closer to the United States.
“(China) believes its strong-arm tactics are paying dividends,” Duan Dang, a Vietnam-based maritime security analyst, told AFP.
China has in recent months deployed military and coast guard vessels in a bid to eject the Philippines from a trio of strategically important reefs and islands in the South China Sea.
“The number of fronts where an accident could spiral suddenly is very real,” Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told AFP.
The latest flashpoint is Sabina Shoal, just 140 kilometers (86 miles) west of the Philippine island of Palawan and roughly 1,200 kilometers from China’s nearest major landmass, the island of Hainan.
On Monday, Beijing said it took “control measures” against two Philippine Coast Guard ships that “illegally” entered the waters near Sabina Shoal.
Manila countered that Chinese vessels had stopped Philippine ships from resupplying their own coast guard vessels in the area — slamming Beijing as the “biggest disruptor” to regional peace.
China has for years sought to expand its power in the South China Sea, brushing aside an international ruling that its claim to most of the waterway has no legal basis.
It has built artificial islands armed with missile systems and runways for fighter jets, and deployed vessels that the Philippines says harass its ships and block its fishers.
In 2012, Beijing seized control of Scarborough Shoal, another contested area close to the Philippines.
And in June, Chinese coast guard personnel brandishing weapons boarded Philippine vessels near the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, a confrontation in which Manila said one of its sailors lost a thumb.
The recent incidents have come as the Philippines has strengthened ties with traditional ally the United States, with which it has a mutual defense treaty.
Duan said the pact might “deter outright war,” but Beijing still saw a chance to tighten the screws on Manila while Washington was distracted by the ongoing Middle East conflict and the uncertainties around its own presidential election in November.
However the Philippines on Thursday flagged the possibility of US escorts for its resupply missions.
Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore (NUS), told AFP China was trying to “wear down” Filipino resolve.
Beijing is posing a “direct challenge to the Philippines’ ability to administer and make use of its exclusive economic zone,” he said.
They are “trying to push the envelope (but stay) below the threshold of aggression,” he explained.
“They don’t want to lose control of the escalation.”
China’s recent assertiveness has extended far beyond the South China Sea.
Around Taiwan, it has sent increasing numbers of fighter jets, drones and naval vessels as part of a strategy that analysts say is designed to keep the democratic island exhaustingly vigilant against a possible invasion.
Beijing says Taiwan is part of its territory and has refused to rule out using force to unify with it.
China has also in recent years ratcheted up pressure over a disputed island group controlled by Japan in the East China Sea.
Tokyo in June protested after four Chinese vessels that were believed to be armed approached the islands, known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan.
And this week Japan said a Chinese military plane flew into its airspace for the first time, a “serious violation” of its sovereignty.
Beijing has not admitted the incursion near the uninhabited Danjo Islands — uncontestedly Japanese territory — but has said it would have been unintentional.
However, analysts said it may have deliberately aimed to probe Japan’s air defense network and collect electronic intelligence.
“People sometimes look at the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea... as isolated,” said Chong, of NUS.
“They are not. These are all areas where (China) hopes to be able to establish more control,” he said.
“They’re trying to see how far they can push.”
With men at the front lines, women watch over Ukraine’s night sky for Russian drones
- The women come from all walks of life — stay-at-home moms to doctors like Angelina — and call themselves the “Witches of Bucha,” a nod to their role of keeping watch over the night skies for Russian drones
KYIV, Ukraine: When the air raid siren bellows in the dead of night, the women in arms rush to duty.
Barely two months since joining the mobile air-defense unit, 27-year-old Angelina has perfected the drill to a tee: Combat gear fitted, anti-aircraft machine gun in place, she cruised behind the wheel of a pickup, singing along to a Ukrainian song about rebellion.
The rest unfolded in seconds: Under a tree-lined position near Kyiv’s Bucha suburb, she and her five-woman unit mounted the gun, checked the salvo and waited. The chirp of crickets filled the silence until the Russian-launched Shahed drone was shot down — on this August night, by a nearby unit — another menace to near daily life in Ukraine eliminated.
To shoot down a drone brings her joy. “It’s just a rush of adrenaline,” said Angelina, who like other women in the unit spoke to The Associated Press on condition only their first names or call signs be used, in keeping with military policy.
Women are increasingly joining volunteer mobile units responsible for shooting down Russian drones that terrorize Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure as more men are sent east to the front line.
While women make up only a tiny fraction of the country’s armed forces, their service is vital. With tens of thousands of men reportedly recruited every month, women have stepped up as crucial operations from coal mines to territorial defense forces accept them to fulfill traditionally male roles.
At least 70 women have been recruited into the Bucha defense forces in recent months for anti-drone operations, said the area’s territorial defense commander, Col. Andrii Velarty. It’s part of a nationwide drive to attract part-time female volunteers to fill the ranks of local defense units.
The women come from all walks of life — stay-at-home moms to doctors like Angelina — and call themselves the “Witches of Bucha,” a nod to their role of keeping watch over the night skies for Russian drones.
Some were motivated to volunteer by the Russian massacre of hundreds of Bucha residents during the monthlong occupation of the Kyiv suburb by Russian troops soon after the February 2022 invasion. Bodies of men, women and children were left on the streets, in homes and in mass graves.
“We were here, saw these horrors,” said Angelina, who treated wounded residents, including children, during the Russian occupation.
So when she spotted a sign calling for female recruits on a highway while driving in June with her friend, Olena, also a doctor, “we didn’t hesitate,” she said.
“We called and were immediately told ‘Yes, come tomorrow,’” she said. “There is work that we can do here.”
A grueling training
At a training session deep inside Bucha’s forest this month, female recruits ranging in age from 27 to 51 were being tested on how quickly they could assemble and disassemble rifles. “I have eighth graders who can do this better,” their instructor shouted.
The recruits were taught about a variety of weapons and mines, tactics and how to detect Russian infiltrators — their skills adapted to a war in which their enemy’s methods are always changing.
“We train no less than men,” said Lidiia, who joined a month ago.
A 34-year-old sales clerk with four children, Lidiia said her main motivation was to do her part to protect her family. Her children have looked at her differently since she began wearing army fatigues, she said.
“My younger son always asks, ‘Mom, do you carry a gun?’ I say, ‘Yes.’ He asks, ‘Do you shoot?’ I say, ‘Of course I do.’”
“I’ve always been the best for them, but now I’m the best in a slightly different way,” she said.
On July 31, she was on duty when Russia launched 89 Shahed drones, all of which were destroyed. Lidiia was an assistant machine-gunner that night.
“We got ready, we went to the call, we found that there were a lot of targets all over Ukraine,” she said. “We had night-vision devices so it was easy to spot the target.”
What did she feel as her unit shot down three of the drones? “Joy and some foul language,” Olena said.
After shooting down drones, the day job begins
When the sun rose, Angelina and Olena removed their heavy combat gear and went home to slip on surgical scrubs. Another shift, this time at the intensive care unit at the hospital where they work, was about to start.
By midnight, they would be back near the tree line, waiting for incoming Russian drones. “Today I slept for two hours and forty minutes,” Olena said.
There is no escape from the war for both women.
Their boyfriends are soldiers, and Angelina, an anesthesiologist, met hers at the hospital where he was recovering from a combat wound to his foot.
Seeing the numbers of wounded Ukrainian soldiers was one reason she decided to volunteer.
“To bring our victory closer. If we can do something to help, why not?” she said.
Angelina’s boyfriend worries every time she is on duty and the air raid alarm sounds. He texts her, “be careful” and when it ends, “write to me” — despite it being much scarier on the front lines, she said.
‘We are no longer women, we are soldiers’
The Russian drone attacks are typically more intense at night, but daytime attacks are just as deadly. The drone unit spends entire nights driving back and forth from their base in the forest to the position. Sometimes they stand there for hours waiting to shoot.
“There is nothing easy about it. In order to shoot it down, you have to train constantly,” Angelina said. “I have to train all the time, including on simulators.”
Their platoon commander, a confident woman with long braided hair who goes by the call sign Calypso, leads training in shooting, assault skills and combat medicine every Sunday.
There’s no difference between the male and female volunteers, she said.
“From the moment we come to serve, sign a contract, we are no longer women, we are soldiers,” she said. “We have to do our job, and men also understand this. We don’t come here to sit around and cook borscht or anything.”
“I have a feeling the girls and I would shoot down these Shaheds with our bare hands, with a stick, if we had to — anything to stop them from landing on our children, friends and family.”
The women in the mobile-fire units are on duty every two or three days. They work in groups of five, with a machine gunner, assistant, fire support, a driver and commander.
“Of course, war is war, but no one has canceled femininity,” Calypso said. “It doesn’t matter whether you hit a Shahed with painted eyes or not, the work is still going on. And not everyone has a manicure.”
As more women are trained to join the ranks of the territorial defense forces, the safer Ukraine’s skies will be, Angelina said.
“This means that I can make at least some small contribution to the fact that my mother sleeps peacefully, that my brothers and sisters go to school peacefully and they can meet their friends peacefully,” she said.
“So that my godsons can also grow under a relatively peaceful sky.”
Trump ‘disrespected sacred ground’ at US military cemetery, VP Harris says
- “Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,” Harris said.
- In one image, Trump is standing with family members of a fallen Marine, posing among headstones while grinning broadly and giving a thumbs-up
WASHINGTON: Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said Saturday that her Republican rival Donald Trump “disrespected sacred ground” at a US military cemetery during a contentious pre-election visit.
Trump’s presence at the hallowed Arlington National Cemetery — intended to provide a campaign boost ahead of the November 5 vote — has instead mushroomed into a public dispute consuming the candidates and the military.
In Monday’s incident at the cemetery across the Potomac River from Washington, Trump broke rules barring photography for political purposes, posing with relatives of US service members killed in Afghanistan in content that was later shared by his campaign on social media.
“Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,” Harris said.
In one image, he is standing with family members of a fallen Marine, posing among headstones while grinning broadly and giving a thumbs-up.
“If there is one thing on which we as Americans can all agree, it is that our veterans, military families, and service members should be honored, never disparaged, and treated with nothing less than our highest respect and gratitude,” Harris wrote on X.
On Thursday, the US Army issued a rare statement confirming that a cemetery staff member had been “abruptly pushed aside” after asking Trump’s team to stop filming in a burial section for those killed in recent wars, where photography for political purposes is banned.
Trump’s campaign team has gone on the offensive by describing the employee as a “despicable individual” and claiming she was suffering a mental health episode.
But the military said the staff member had “acted with professionalism” and it condemned the incident as “unfortunate.”
Trump spoke at length at a rally Friday night about the cemetery incident and Afghanistan and said it was families of fallen troops who asked to have their picture taken with him.
“I said ‘Absolutely.’ I wasn’t doing it for — I don’t need publicity, I get a lot of publicity. I would like to get a lot less publicity,” Trump said in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Trump blamed the White House for the criticism he is drawing.
“Joe Biden killed those young people because he was incompetent. And then they tell me that I used their graves for public relations purposes. And I didn’t. And I’ll tell you what, it was a disgrace,” Trump said.
Trump has made criticism of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the US retreat from Afghanistan a keynote of his campaign, arguing that he would have managed it better.
He visited the cemetery with families of some of the 13 service members killed in a 2021 bombing in Kabul during the last, chaotic hours of the US withdrawal.
Trump’s relationship with the military has long spawned controversy.
While often touting his support for the armed forces, he privately mocked the war dead while he was president and did not want to be seen near military amputees, according to his former chief of staff.
Harris’s blunt response Saturday appeared to underline her determination to take the fight directly to Trump in what is shaping up to be a bruising presidential election.
Trump has repeatedly mocked Harris’s name, intelligence, appearance and racial identity, while the Harris campaign has replied that the former president is “weird,” an aspiring dictator, and “out of his mind.”
Harris earlier faced withering criticism over the cemetery incident from Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance.
Apparently responding to a mistaken report that Harris had already reacted to the visit, Vance accused her of feigning outrage and said, “She can go to hell.”
“Don’t focus on Donald Trump showing up to grieve with some people who lost their children. Focus on your own job. Don’t do this fake outrage thing,” he later told the Washington Post.
At that point Harris had not publicly mentioned the cemetery visit.
Kevin Carroll, who served as a senior aide to Trump’s homeland security chief John Kelly, voiced scathing criticism of Trump’s behavior in an opinion piece published Friday in The Guardian newspaper.
“The photo of a grinning Trump giving a jaunty thumbs-up over these patriots’ graves is an indelible image of narcissism risen to the point of sociopathy,” Carroll wrote.
UNICEF issues emergency tender to secure mpox vaccines
- Depending on the production capacity of manufacturers, agreements for up to 12 million doses through 2025 can be made, according to the statement
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has issued an emergency tender to secure mpox vaccines for crisis-hit countries in collaboration with the Gavi vaccine alliance, Africa CDC and the World Health Organization, the organizations said in a joint statement on Saturday.
Depending on the production capacity of manufacturers, agreements for up to 12 million doses through 2025 can be made, according to the statement.
Under the tender, UNICEF will set up conditional supply agreements with vaccine manufacturers, the statement said.
This will enable UNICEF to purchase and ship vaccines without delay, once financing, demand, readiness and regulatory requirements are confirmed.
The collaboration — which would also include working with the Vaccine Alliance and the Pan American Health Organization as well as with Gavi, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and WHO — would facilitate donations of vaccines from existing stockpiles in high-income countries.
The statement added that WHO is reviewing information submitted by manufacturers on Aug. 23, and expects to complete a review for an emergency use listing by mid-September.
The agency is reviewing applications for emergency licenses for two vaccines made by Bavarian Nordic and Japan’s KM Biologics.
Earlier in August, the WHO declared mpox a global public health emergency following an outbreak of the viral infection in the Democratic Republic of Congo that spread to neighboring countries.
More than 18,000 suspected cases of mpox have been reported in Congo so far this year with 629 deaths, while over 150 cases have been confirmed in Burundi, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Sweden and Thailand have confirmed cases of the clade Ib type of the virus, outside of the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries.
