AFTER RARE VISIT BY BLINKEN China, US see progress but close no gaps

CHINESE leader Xi Jinping said Monday he saw headway in the strained relationship with the United States on a rare visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but the rival powers remained at odds over their core disputes.

In a symbolic sign of lowering the temperature after soaring tensions, President Xi received Blinken in the vast Great Hall of the People and said the two powers had “made progress and reached agreement” on unspecified issues.

“I hope that Secretary Blinken, through this visit, can make positive contributions to stabilizing China-US relations,” Xi told the top US diplomat, the highest-ranking American official to travel to Beijing in nearly five years.

US President Joe Biden, in brief remarks to press during a trip to California, reacted hours later by saying, “We’re on the right trail.”

Both sides had played down prospects for breakthroughs, with Blinken saying his more than 11 hours of talks over two days were more about restoring dialogue.

“We have made progress and we are moving forward,” Blinken told reporters in Beijing, while adding: “None of this gets resolved with one visit.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang agreed to pay a return visit to the United States but Blinken acknowledged limited progress on jumpstarting communication with China’s military, a key priority for the United States as tensions simmer over Taiwan.

“Direct engagement and sustained communication at senior levels is the best way to responsibly manage differences and ensure that competition does not veer into conflict,” Blinken told reporters.

“I heard the same from my Chinese counterparts. We both agree on the need to stabilise our relationship,” he added.

Blinken said the world’s two largest economies would work together to expand flights – still at a bare minimum since the COVID-19 pandemic – and would explore ways to discuss Chinese exports of chemicals that make fentanyl, the painkiller behind an addiction epidemic in the United States.

At the ornate Diaoyutai State Guesthouse earlier Monday, China’s foreign policy supremo Wang Yi told Blinken that the United States and China need to “make a choice between dialogue and confrontation, cooperation or conflict.”

“We must reverse the downward spiral of China-US relations, push for a return to a healthy and stable track,” Wang said, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Wang also issued a warning on Taiwan, the self-ruling democracy claimed by Beijing.

In the past year, China has launched live-fire military drills twice near the island in anger over meetings between top US lawmakers and Taiwanese leaders.AFP

Israeli troops kill Palestinian near occupied Bethlehem in West Bank

ISRAELI troops shot dead a Palestinian the army accused of throwing petrol bombs near the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem late Monday, Palestinian officials said.

Zakaria Mohammed al-Zaoul, 20, was “martyred by live occupation (Israeli) bullets to the head, in the town of Husan,” the Palestinian health ministry said. The Israeli military said troops were “on routine activity” in the city, south of Jerusalem, when “a suspect hurled Molotov cocktails” at them.

“The soldiers responded with live fire. A hit was identified,” the statement added.

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The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported the military used live fire, tear gas and stun grenades during the clashes with young Palestinians.

Zaoul’s death was the latest in a surge of violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has killed at least 165 Palestinians, 21 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian this year.

The tally compiled from official sources includes combatants as well as civilians and, on the Israeli side, three members of the Arab minority.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and its armed forces routinely carry out patrols and raids in Palestinian towns and cities. AFP

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Trump defends mishandling of secret documents

FORMER US president Donald Trump, facing dozens of charges of mishandling classified government secrets, defended himself Monday in an unusually tough interview on conservative-leaning Fox News, saying he had been too “busy” to sort through the documents.

Trump appeared last Tuesday before a judge in Miami to be formally presented with 37 charges brought by the federal government following an FBI search of his Florida mansion last August.

The Department of Justice accuses Trump – who is vying to win back the White House next year – of violating the Espionage Act and other laws when he removed classified documents upon leaving office and failed to give them up to the National Archives.

The 77-year-old told Fox News host Bret Baier, in an interview broadcast Monday evening, that as he quickly left the White House in January 2021, his personal belongings were mixed in with government documents.

“In my case, I took it out pretty much in a hurry, but people packed it up and we left. And I had clothing in there, I had all sorts of personal items in there —much much stuff.”

“I have every right to have those boxes,” he claimed.

When Baier asked why he did not just hand over documents when asked by officials, Trump said: “Because I had boxes —I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over... yet.”

He added: “I was very busy as you’ve sort of seen.”

In its indictment, the Justice Department described evidence including an audio recording from a July 2021 meeting that Trump, who was no longer president, had with an author, a publisher and two of his staff—none of whom had a US security clearance —in which Trump showed them what he called a “secret” and “highly confidential” document.

“This is secret information... See as president I could have declassified it,” Trump said according to the indictment. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.” AFP

When pressed by Baier about the exchange, Trump claimed the thing he had been showing the others “wasn’t a document.” AFP

In Brief

Vietnam holding climate activist incommunicado

A PROMINENT Vietnamese climate activist detained for alleged tax evasion is being held incommunicado and has no access to a lawyer, rights groups said on Tuesday.

Hoang Thi Minh Hong—the founder of now-defunct NGO CHANGE, which advocated for action on climate change and wildlife protection—is the latest environmentalist to be accused of tax evasion by Vietnam’s authoritarian government.

Hong had been widely recognised for her work, joining the Obama Foundation Scholars programme at Columbia University in New York in 2018.

On Tuesday, more than 60 environmental and human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Greenpeace UK and Friends of the Earth US, published an open letter urging former US president Barack Obama to demand her release.

“The government is preparing to prosecute Hong on a false charge of tax evasion,” they wrote.

“She faces up to seven years behind bars and if found guilty, she may be subjected to a prison system that is known for torture and wilful neglect.”

No one has been able to speak to Hong since her arrest on June 1 in Ho Chi Minh City, they said.

The United Nations, the United States and Britain have expressed concerns over the arrest. Hong founded CHANGE in 2013, focusing on mobilising Vietnamese, particularly young people, to take action against pressing environmental issues including climate change, the illegal wildlife trade and pollution. AFP

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries must tackle the “underlying conditions that can lead to terrorism,” such as poverty, to prevent such violence from spreading.

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“While we have made some significant gains over the years, terrorism and violent extremism continue to take root and grow,” he told a conference on the subject in New York.

Guterres called on nations to “stand as one against this global threat.” impacting the world, from the food and energy crisis to climate change and the spread of hatred online, Guterres said: “We must focus on the most effective approach to ending this menace: prevention.”

‘Massive’ overnight drone attack on Kyiv –Ukrainian officials

RUSSIAN forces launched a major drone assault on Kyiv overnight as well as attacking other regions, Ukrainian officials said early Tuesday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

“New massive air attack on the capital,” wrote the Kyiv City Military Administration, adding that it was the first attack on the city in 18 days to use Iranian-made Shahed explosive drones.

“According to the usual tactics for mass UAV attacks, drones entered the capital in waves, heading from different directions. The air alert lasted more than three hours,” it said on Telegram.

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“Al-Qaeda and Da’esh affiliates in Africa are rapidly gaining ground in places like the Sahel and probing southward toward the Gulf of Guinea,” he said, also citing the “brutal legacy” of the so-called Islamic State group (IS) in Syria and Iraq.

“Neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements are fastbecoming the primary internal security threats in a number of countries,” Guterres added.

Stressing that extremism “preys” on the multiple crises

“Prevention means more than just foiling attacks and disrupting plots. It means addressing the underlying conditions that can lead to terrorism in the first place – such as poverty, discrimination, disaffection, weak infrastructure and institutions and gross violations of human rights.”

Guterres also insisted that the fight against terrorism must respect human rights, including the repatriation of foreign jihadists and their families still held in camps following the defeat of IS.

“(I) reiterate my call for all member states to help accelerate the pace of repatriation as an urgent priority. This is a matter of human decency and compassion, and it is also a matter of security,” he added.

“Almost two dozen enemy targets were detected and destroyed by the forces and means of our air defence in the airspace around Kyiv.

“There is no information regarding casualties or destruction at this time.”

In Lviv to the west, “critical infrastructure” was hit by drones, the head of the regional administration Maksym Kozytski wrote on Telegram, without giving further details.

No injuries were reported.

The military administration of Zaporizhzhia said the southern city and its surroundings had been the target of a “massive attack” aimed at civilian targets.

Three Shahed drones were also shot down over the southern region of Mykolaiv, governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram.

The Ukrainian General Staff later said that, of the 30 drones launched by Russian forces overnight, 28 were shot down by Ukrainian air defences. AFP