WASHINGTON: US President-elect Donald Trump has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration next month, CBS News reported on Wednesday, citing multiple sources.
The invitation to the Jan. 20 inauguration in Washington occurred in early November, shortly after the Nov. 5 presidential election, and it was not clear if it had been accepted, CBS reported.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump said in an interview with NBC News conducted on Friday that he “got along with very well” with Xi and that they had “had communication as recently as this week.”
It would be unprecedented for a leader of China, a top US geopolitical rival, to attend a US presidential inauguration.
Trump has named numerous China hawks to key posts in his incoming administration, including Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state.
The president-elect has said he will impose an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods unless Beijing does more to stop trafficking of the highly addictive narcotic fentanyl. He also threatened tariffs in excess of 60 percent on Chinese goods while on the campaign trail.
In late November, China’s state media warned Trump that his pledge to slap additional tariffs on Chinese goods over fentanyl flows could drag the world’s top two economies into a mutually destructive tariff war.
Separately on Wednesday, China’s US Ambassador Xie Feng read a letter from Xi to a US-China Business Council gala in Washington, in which the Chinese leader said Beijing was prepared to stay in communication with the US
“We should choose dialogue over confrontation and win-win cooperation over zero-sum games,” Xi said in the letter.
Xie added that the two countries should not decouple supply chains. But Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to Beijing, said in a prerecorded video address that China at times tried to “sugar coat” challenging and competitive relations.
“No amount of happy talk can obscure our profound differences,” Burns said. (Reporting by Jasper Ward, David Brunnstrom, Michael Martina and Costas Pitas; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Trump invites China’s Xi Jinping to attend inauguration, CBS News reports
https://arab.news/8sda3
Trump invites China’s Xi Jinping to attend inauguration, CBS News reports
18 killed in central Myanmar airstrike
- Two bombs were dropped on Tabayin township in Sagaing region
- A rescue worker who arrived on the scene 15 minutes after the strike said seven people were killed on the spot
TABAYIN, Myanmar: Eighteen people were killed in an airstrike on a town in central Myanmar, according to a local official, a rescue worker and two residents who spoke to AFP on Saturday.
Myanmar has been rocked by civil war since the military snatched power in a 2021 coup, and its battles with numerous anti-coup fighters have brought frequent airstrikes that often kill civilians.
Two bombs were dropped on Tabayin township in Sagaing region on Friday evening, with one hitting a busy teashop, according to a local administration official.
He told AFP that 18 people were killed and 20 were wounded in the attacks.
“Deaths were high at the teashop as it was crowded time,” he said. All of the sources who spoke to AFP requested anonymity for their protection.
A rescue worker who arrived on the scene 15 minutes after the strike said seven people were killed on the spot and 11 others died later at hospital.
The teashop — a traditional social hub in Myanmar — and around a dozen houses nearby were “totally destroyed,” he said.
A survivor said he was watching a televised boxing match in the teashop when the bomb hit.
“As soon as I heard aircraft fly over, I got my body to the ground,” he said, adding that the sound from the blast was deafening.
“I saw a big fire over my head... I was lucky, I returned home after that.”
A junta spokesman did not answer a call from an AFP reporter.
Funerals for those killed were held on Saturday, with some victims’ faces covered by towels as they had been rendered unrecognizable, a local resident said.
“I feel very sad because I knew some of them very well,” she said.
A junta airstrike in Sagaing in May killed 22 people, including 20 children, despite a purported ceasefire called after a devastating earthquake hit Myanmar.
