LONDON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will discuss efforts to support Ukraine in its war against Russia, as well as the response to the conflict in the Middle East, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other UK officials in London on Tuesday.
In meetings with Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Blinken will also discuss issues including the Indo-Pacific region and the AUKUS defense pact between the US, Australia and Britain, the State Department said.
The trip comes as a senior Iranian official denied reports that Tehran had supplied Russia with ballistic missiles, information a European Union spokesperson described as “credible.”
CNN and the Wall Street Journal reported last week, citing unidentified sources, that Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, as Moscow continues to wage war in Ukraine more than two and a half years after its 2022 invasion.
Thousands of civilians have died in the war, millions of Ukrainians have been displaced and cities and villages have become piles of rubble.
Russian forces have been slowly advancing in eastern Ukraine. A month ago, Ukrainian troops launched their first major assault on Russian territory, capturing a swath of the Kursk region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pleading for Western nations to supply more long-range missiles and lift restrictions on using them to hit targets such as airfields inside Russia.
Blinken’s visit to London also comes a week after Britain suspended some arms export licenses with Israel over equipment that could be used in the war in Gaza.
The administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running to succeed him, is under pressure from critics of the war to suspend some arms deliveries to Israel, Washington’s closest Middle East ally.
While Blinken is in London, he and Lammy will open talks on a UK-US Strategic Dialogue to strengthen ties which deliver growth and security, the British government said.
This will cover key elements of the UK-US relationship, including defense and security, Europe, Ukraine, the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, and other global priorities, it added.
“In a more volatile and insecure world, it is even more important that we are highly aligned nations,” Lammy said in a statement ahead of the meeting.
Blinken to discuss support for Ukraine in meetings with senior officials in London
https://arab.news/nck6k
Blinken to discuss support for Ukraine in meetings with senior officials in London
- Blinken will also discuss issues including the Indo-Pacific region and the AUKUS defense pac
- Blinken’s visit to London also comes a week after Britain suspended some arms export licenses with Israel
Harris holds slight edge nationally over Trump: poll
- The national poll conducted by Siena College and The New York Times found Harris ahead by 49 percent to 46 percent
NEW YORK: Kamala Harris has taken a slim lead over Donald Trump in the US presidential race, a new poll showed Tuesday, as the Democrat slammed her rival for “weakness” during a media blitz four weeks before the election.
Vice President Harris and Republican former president Trump — who was doing a three-hit airwaves blitz of his own Tuesday — are deadlocked as they scramble to get out the vote and reach the sliver of Americans who remain undecided.
The national poll conducted by Siena College and The New York Times found Harris ahead by 49 percent to 46 percent, with registered voters crediting her more than Trump with representing change and caring about people like themselves, but giving the edge to Trump on who is the stronger leader.
The rivals were tied at 47 percent in a mid-September Times/Siena poll shortly after the two clashed in their presidential debate.
The overall result is largely in line with an aggregate of national polling collated by RealClearPolitics.com, which has Harris ahead by two percentage points.
In the seven battleground states seen as likely to determine the election outcome, the race is even tighter.
With Trump critics warning the election is nothing less than a referendum on American democracy, Harris conceded the knife-edge race is keeping her up at night.
“I literally lose sleep — and have been — over what is at stake in this election,” she told radio icon Howard Stern in a 70-minute live interview Tuesday.
“This is an election that is about strength versus weakness, and weakness as projected by someone who puts himself in front of the American people and does not have the strength to stand in defense of their needs, their dreams, their desires.”
Harris, the new poll showed, has begun making inroads with the rival party, with nine percent of Republicans saying they planned to support her, up from five percent last month.
She touched on the issue during a Tuesday appearance on popular ABC television show “The View,” where she talked about campaigning recently with Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney.
There are more than 200 former officials from past Republican presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, as well as officials tied to Republican heavyweights John McCain and Mitt Romney, who have endorsed her, Harris said.
“We really are building a coalition around some very fundamental issues, including that we love our country and that we have to put country before party,” she said.
The Democrat, who turns 60 next week, also accused Trump of “full-time perpetuating lies and misinformation,” and said voters have grown “exhausted” with the strategy.
Trump meanwhile maintained his aggressive posture, attacking Harris as a “very low intelligence person” and claiming she has been “missing in action” over the federal response to Hurricane Helene — even though Harris traveled to the disaster zone last week.
And the 78-year-old Republican insisted on conservative influencer Ben Shapiro’s podcast that he has the stamina to finish strong on the campaign trail.
“I’ve worked about 28 days in a row, I have about 29 days left” before the election, he said, “and I’m not taking any days off.”
In addition to the poll, Harris got another potential boost Tuesday after a pro-Palestinian group threatening to draw votes from her in swing state Michigan came out strongly against Trump.
The Uncommitted movement stopped short of explicitly endorsing Harris, but warned in a video that “it can get worse” under Trump.
Major US pro-Palestinian group comes out against Trump
- Israel’s military offensive has killed at least 41,965 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians
WASHINGTON: Democrat Kamala Harris got a potential boost Tuesday after a pro-Palestinian group threatening to draw votes from her in swing state Michigan came out strongly against her Republican opponent Donald Trump.
The Uncommitted movement stopped short of explicitly endorsing Harris, but warned in a video on social media that “it can get worse” under Trump. One of the group’s co-founders, Lexi Zeidan, said voters should consider “the better antiwar approach” rather than “who is the better candidate.”
The Harris campaign is worried about losing votes in places like Michigan, where anger among the state’s large Arab American community over the White House’s support for Israeli operations in Gaza and Lebanon has threatened to narrow already thin margins for Democrats.
The Uncommitted shift to openly opposing Trump, who is close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will come as some relief to Harris, the vice president.
However, Abandon Harris, another group of anti-war voters, has endorsed fringe Green Party candidate Jill Stein, potentially turning her into a spoiler that would help elect Trump in swing states decided by just a few thousand votes.
Both groups, drawing heavily from Arab, Palestinian and Muslim voters, emerged in protest at President Joe Biden’s backing of Israel despite mounting civilian casualties in Gaza.
Harris has attempted to walk a tightrope on the issue, saying at the Democratic presidential nomination she would get a Gaza ceasefire “done” and ensure Palestinians realize their right to “dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”
But Harris has rejected protesters’ demands, such as an arms embargo on Israel — a longtime key US ally.
Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures, which include hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 41,965 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations has described as reliable.
Pro-Palestinian activists target UK offices of Germany’s Allianz
LONDON: Pro-Palestinian activists targeted the British offices of German financial services firm Allianz on Tuesday, daubing the outside with red paint in protest over the company’s links to Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems.
Palestine Action claimed responsibility for the protest on social media platform X, and said demonstrators had attacked 10 Allianz offices in the UK and “occupied” the insurer’s UK headquarters in Guildford, south of London, overnight.
“Without insurance, Elbit couldn’t operate in Britain,” Palestine Action said in its post.
In addition to urging customers to boycott certain financial firms, demonstrators have expanded protests to include defacing buildings using red paint to symbolize the bloodshed in Gaza.
Allianz is the latest global financial company to have suffered such vandalism. British lender Barclays has also been a target for pro-Palestinian protesters.
Bangladesh’s Yunus says no elections before reforms
- Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus was appointed the country’s “chief adviser’ after a student-led uprising toppled ex-PM Hasina
- The 84-year-old microfinance pioneer is helming a temporary administration, to tackle the challenge of restoring democratic institutions
DHAKA: Bangladesh’s interim leader has refused to give a timeframe for elections following the ouster of his autocratic predecessor, saying in an interview published Tuesday that reforms are needed before polls.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus was appointed the country’s “chief adviser” after the student-led uprising that toppled ex-premier Sheikh Hasina in August.
The 84-year-old microfinance pioneer is helming a temporary administration, to tackle what he has called the “extremely tough” challenge of restoring democratic institutions.
“None of us are aiming at staying for a prolonged time,” Yunus said of his caretaker government, in an interview published by the Prothom Alo newspaper.
“Reforms are pivotal,” he added. “If you say, hold the election, we are ready to hold the election. But it would be wrong to hold the election first.”
Hasina’s 15-year rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.
More than 600 people were killed in the weeks leading up to her ouster, according to a preliminary United Nations report which said the figure was likely an underestimate.
Her government was also accused of politicizing courts and the civil service, as well as staging lopsided elections, to dismantle democratic checks on its power.
Yunus said he had inherited a “completely broken down” system of public administration that needed a comprehensive overhaul to prevent a future return to autocracy.
“Reforms mean we will not allow a repetition of what happened in the past,” he added.
Yunus also batted away criticism at the numerous politicians, senior police officers and other Hasina loyalists arrested on murder charges after her government’s ouster.
The arrests have prompted accusations that Yunus’ caretaker government would hold politicized trials of senior figures from Hasina’s regime.
But Yunus said it was his intention that any criminal trials initiated against those arrested would remain free from government interference.
“Once the judicial system is reformed, then the issues will come forward, about who will be placed on trial, how justice will be carried out,” he said.
At least 25 journalists — considered by Hasina’s opponents to be partisans of her government — have been arrested for alleged violence against protesters since her downfall.
Press watchdog Reporters Without Borders has condemned those arrests as “systematic judicial harassment.”
But Yunus insisted he wanted media freedom.
“Write as you please,” he told the newspaper.
“Criticize. Unless you write, how will we know what is happening or not happening?“
Relations between Jewish and Muslim communities in the UK ‘fragile,’ British imam says
- There has been a “lack of common language to describe the massive onslaught of death and destruction” in Gaza that followed Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, imam said
LONDON: A year after the war in Gaza started, a British imam has described relations between Jewish and Muslim communities in the UK as “fragile and fractured.”
Israel’s military incursion into Gaza and Lebanon is an “apocalypse,” Qari Asim, the chairman of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, told PA Media on Monday.
There has been a “lack of common language to describe the massive onslaught of death and destruction” in Gaza that followed Hamas’ “brutal attack” on Oct. 7 last year, the leading imam said.
He said that although there are “different perspectives” of the conflict, he has had “a number of open and frank conversations” with Jewish faith leaders “about the pain, trauma and heartbreak that British Muslims feel when they hear on their screens the cries of young children.”
Such dialogue has also involved listening to the perspectives of the Jewish community on “the pain and suffering that they’re experiencing because of the horrific attacks on October 7 last year.”
He said: “The relations between Jewish and Muslim communities are currently fragile and fractured.”
However, he also paid tribute to those who have come together to keep communication open between the two communities.
“Despite the extremely aching and traumatic last 12 months, I see that brave members of our respective communities have continued some form of dialogue.
“These encounters and activities show that no matter how fractured interfaith relationships between the two communities may seem in this country, people of all faiths and beliefs stand together when they see a stain on our national moral conscience,” Asim said.
Mourners and leaders around the world on Monday voiced horror and a desire for peace at tearful memorials remembering the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked a year of devastating war in Gaza.
People from Sydney to Rome and Warsaw to Washington grieved for those killed and urged freedom for those taken hostage by Hamas one year ago, while rallies also called for peace in the Palestinian territories.
