US official Sullivan to visit China next week: White House

Jake Sullivan’s visit on August 27-29 comes as the US is in the middle of a presidential campaign in which both democratic and republican presidential candidates adopted tough-on-China positions. (File/AFP)
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Updated 23 August 2024
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US official Sullivan to visit China next week: White House

  • Sullivan and Yi are expected to lay the groundwork for a potential meeting with US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping

BEIJING: Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, will visit China next week in a new bid to manage tensions months before US elections, the White House said Friday.
Sullivan will travel to Beijing from August 27 to 29 in the first visit by a US national security adviser to China since 2016, although other senior officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken have visited over the past two years.
The visit comes months ahead of US elections in November in which Vice President Kamala Harris, running to succeed Biden, is expected to campaign on continuing to seek dialogue with China while also maintaining pressure.
Her rival Donald Trump at least rhetorically has vowed a harder line, with some of his aides seeing a far-reaching global showdown with China.
A senior administration official told reporters that the Biden administration’s engagement with China did not indicate any softening of approach and that it continued to believe that “this is an intensely competitive relationship.”
“We are committed to making the investments, strengthening our alliances, and taking the common step on tech and national security that we need to take,” she said, referring to sweeping restrictions on US technology transfers to China imposed under Biden.
“We are committed to managing this competition responsibly, however, and preventing it from veering into conflict,” she said.
The official did not indicate that the United States expected breakthroughs on the trip, in which Sullivan will meet with China’s foreign policy supremo Wang Yi.
The official said Sullivan will reiterate US concerns about China’s support for Russia in its major expansion of its defense industry since the Ukraine invasion. Beijing counters that, unlike the United States, it does not directly give weapons to either side.
Sullivan will also speak to Wang about North Korea and the Middle East, where China has criticized US support for Israel and the United States has sought to call Beijing’s bluff by urging it to use its relations to rein in Iran.


Iran-linked hackers claim cyberattack on Albanian parliament

Updated 4 sec ago
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Iran-linked hackers claim cyberattack on Albanian parliament

  • Albania hosts several thousand members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI or MEK), an organization that Iran has denounced as 'terrorist'
  • Albania’s IT services were targeted, in 2022, prompting the Balkan country to sever diplomatic ties with Iran
TIRANA: Albania’s parliament on Tuesday said it had been hit with a “sophisticated cyberattack,” after Iran-linked hackers claimed to have stolen lawmakers’ data.
A group called “Homeland Justice,” which has previously been linked to Iran and claimed responsibility for past cyberattacks in Albania, announced the hack on Telegram.
“All conversations and correspondence of corrupt MPs from recent months are in the hands of Homeland Justice,” the post said.
“We are much closer to you than you think.”
Albania hosts several thousand members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI or MEK), an organization that Iran has denounced as “terrorist.”
Experts have warned that as the war in the Middle East continues, highly capable hackers linked to Iran have broadened their activities.
In a statement, the Albanian parliament said its computer systems had been hit with a “sophisticated cyberattack aimed at deleting data and compromising several internal systems.”
“It was found that information had been deleted from several accounts belonging to administration employees,” it added, saying “the main working infrastructure” did not appear to be affected and that measures had been taken “to neutralize the attack.”
The country’s National Cyber Security Authority said it had teams investigating the attack.
“Further information will be made public after the technical assessment is completed,” the authority’s director, Saimir Kapllani, told AFP.
In June, Homeland Justice also attacked the information technology services of the Albanian capital, Tirana.
In 2022, Albania’s IT services were also targeted, prompting the Balkan country to sever diplomatic ties with Iran.