BEIJING: Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Sunday congratulated new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on his election, state media reported, the first senior leader in Beijing to do so publicly.
China is “willing to work with the new UK government to consolidate mutual political trust and expand mutually beneficial cooperation,” Li told Starmer, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Their call came after days of silence from top officials in Beijing, with the Chinese foreign ministry saying only that it noted the results of the UK election.
By comparison, Chinese leader Xi Jinping congratulated Iran’s incoming president Masoud Pezeshkian just hours after his election on Saturday.
China was Britain’s fifth-largest trading partner as of 2023, according to the UK Department for Business and Trade.
But diplomatic relations between the two countries have been icy in recent years, with Beijing and London sparring over tightening communist control in former British colony Hong Kong.
The two sides have also traded accusations of espionage, with Beijing saying last month that MI6 had recruited Chinese state employees to spy for the UK.
Xinhua on Sunday said Li told Starmer that the “strengthening of bilateral coordination and cooperation was in the interests of both sides.”
Chinese Premier Li congratulates new British PM Starmer
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Chinese Premier Li congratulates new British PM Starmer
German authorities arrest five men suspected of planning Christmas market attack
BERLIN: German authorities have arrested five men suspected of being terrorist militants planning an attack on a Christmas market in southern Bavaria, police and prosecutors said in a joint statement. There has been a series of vehicle ramming attacks in Germany since a militant rammed a hijacked truck into a Christmas market in central Berlin in 2016. Last December several people were killed by an attack in Magdeburg.
Three Moroccan nationals aged 22, 28 and 30, an Egyptian national aged 56 and a 37-year-old Syrian were detained on Friday at the Suben border crossing between Germany and Austria, according to the joint statement late on Saturday.
Investigators believed that the men intended to drive a vehicle into a crowded market in the Dingolfing-Landau area with the aim of killing or injuring as many people as possible, the statement said, adding that authorities suspected a militant motive.
