In world beset by turbulence, nations’ leaders gather at UN

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Written by northsouth

Category: Americas

Published: 20 September 2022

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By EDITH M. LEDERER

The UNITED NATIONS — Facing a complex set of challenges that try humanity as never before, world leaders convene at the United Nations this week under the shadow of Europe’s first major war since World War II — a conflict that has unleashed a global food crisis and divided major powers in a way not seen since the Cold War.

The many facets of the Ukraine war are expected to dominate the annual meeting, which convenes as many countries and peoples confront growing inequality, an escalating climate crisis, the threat of multiple famines and an internet-fueled tide of misinformation and hate speech — all atop a coronavirus pandemic that is halfway through its third year.

For the first time since the United Nations was founded atop the ashes of World War II, European nations are witnessing war in their midst waged by nuclear-armed neighbouring Russia. Its Feb. 24 invasion not only threatens Ukraine’s survival as an independent democratic nation but has leaders in many countries worrying about trying to preserve regional and international peace and prevent a wider war.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the strategic divides — with the West on one side and Russia and increasingly China on the other — are “paralyzing the global response to the dramatic challenges we face.”

He pointed not only to the devastation in Ukraine from nearly seven months of fighting but the war’s impact on the global economy.

Escalating food and energy prices are hitting the world’s poorest people hardest, and nations are “being devoured by the acids of nationalism and self-interest” instead of working together and resolving disputes peacefully, two principles that lie at the heart of the U.N. Charter and underpin everything the United Nations tries to do.

“The General Assembly is meeting at a time of great peril,” the U.N. chief said last week.

For the first time in three years, leaders will be delivering their speeches in person in the vast General Assembly hall. There will be no more COVID-caused prerecorded addresses or hybrid meetings, with one exception: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Over objections from Russia and a few allies, the 193-member assembly voted overwhelmingly Friday to allow the Ukrainian leader to pre-record his speech because of reasons beyond his control — the “ongoing foreign invasion” and military hostilities that require him to carry out his “national defense and security duties.”

The death of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and her funeral in London on Monday, which many world leaders plan to attend, have created last-minute headaches for the high-level meeting. Diplomats and U.N. staff are scrambling to deal with changes in travel plans, the timing of some events and the logistically intricate speaking schedule for world leaders.

Guterres is skipping the funeral to preside over Monday’s “Transforming Education Summit” that he called to create action on a U.N. goal to ensure quality education for all children by 2030 that lost significant ground during the pandemic.

The actual gathering of world leaders, known as the General Debate, begins Tuesday morning with the U.N. chief’s state of the world speech to the 77th session of the General Assembly which began on Sept. 12. Brazil has spoken first for over seven decades because at the early General Assembly sessions it volunteered to speak first when no other country did.

The U.S, president, representing the host country for the United Nations, is traditionally the second speaker. But President Joe Biden is attending the queen’s funeral, and his speech has been delayed until Wednesday morning. Senegalese President Macky Sall is expected to take Biden’s slot.

Nearly 150 presidents, prime ministers and monarchs are on the latest speakers list, a very high number reflecting the importance of the meeting not only for presenting every country’s view of the world but for private one-on-one and group meetings where diplomats say a lot of the world’s business is carried out.

In addition to Zelenskyy, Biden and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, other heads of state coming to the U.N. include the presidents of Turkey, Iran, France, Colombia, South Korea, South Africa, Egypt and Venezuela. Heads of government on the list include Britain’s new Prime Minister Liz Truss, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also making a first appearance, and the prime ministers of Japan, Israel, Iraq and Pakistan. Russia and China are sending their foreign ministers.

For many years, foreign ministers of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — have met on the sidelines for lunch or dinner. Diplomats said no meeting is planned this year.

During typical high-level weeks, thousands of people are in the U.N. complex for speeches and hundreds of side events. But because of the continuing pandemic, this year only the few events organized by the secretary-general and the General Assembly president are being held at U.N. headquarters. Dozens of side events will take place elsewhere in the city.

Richard Gowan, U.N. director of the International Crisis Group, said Ukraine and the food crisis will be the two “overarching themes” and the message from Western leaders is going to be clear: “This is Russia’s war of aggression and this is a huge attack on the U.N. system.”

A highlight will be the U.N. Security Council ministerial meeting on Sept. 22 focusing on the fight against impunity in the war in Ukraine — a topic decided by France which holds the council presidency this month. The meeting could put foreign ministers of the five permanent council nations in the same room with Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, who has been invited.

France’s U.N. ambassador, Nicolas De Riviere, said Friday that “perpetrators will be held accountable” for the “dramatic consequences” that “the Russian war of aggression” has had on civilians in Ukraine. And U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the United Nations faces “a crisis of confidence” brought about by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that violated its neighbor’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, “trampled on human rights” and struck at the heart of the U.N. Charter by pursuing war instead of a negotiated peace.

She told reporters Friday that the response must be to “double down on our commitment to a peaceful world and hold even closer our deeply-held principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, peace and security.”

Thomas-Greenfield insisted the high-level meeting “will not be dominated by Ukraine” because there are conflicts taking place elsewhere as well. That’s why she says the United States is focusing on tackling the food crisis as well as climate change, advancing global health and upholding the U.N. Charter.

The Crisis Group’s Gowan said his organization has seen in recent weeks that African and Latin American countries “have gradually succumbed to Ukraine fatigue,” and there is a feeling in many parts of the U.N. “that countries don’t want to have to constantly attack Russia.” There is a clear understanding among Western leaders, and especially in the U.S., of the need “to keep non-Western countries on board over Ukraine,” he said.

Gowan said he will also be listening for “an undercurrent of discontent” from African nations and countries from the global South about how they’ve been let down on COVID-19 vaccinations and financing to tackle climate change and deal with escalating food prices and the cost of living. He also lamented that crises in Mali, Afghanistan and Yemen won’t be on the front burner.

Secretary-General Guterres, who just visited Pakistan where he said the flooded area is three times the size of his home country Portugal, lashed out at the Group of 20 richest nations, which he said are responsible for 80% of emissions that cause global warming.

“My message to world leaders gathering here is clear: Lower the temperature — now,” he said. “Don’t flood the world today; don’t drown it tomorrow.”

Official: 6 of 43 missing Mexican students given to army

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Written by northsouth

Category: Americas

Published: 27 August 2022

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By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

MEXICO CITY — Six of the 43 college students “disappeared” in 2014 were allegedly kept alive in a warehouse for days then turned over to the local army commander who ordered them killed, the Mexican government official leading a Truth Commission said Friday.

Interior Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas made the shocking revelation directly tying the military to one of Mexico’s worst human rights scandals, and it came with little fanfare as he made a lengthy defense of the commission’s report released a week earlier.

Last week, despite declaring the abductions and disappearances a “state crime” and saying that the army watched it happen without intervening, Encinas made no mention of six students being turned over to Col. José Rodríguez Pérez.

On Friday, Encinas said authorities were closely monitoring the students from the radical teachers’ college at Ayotzinapa from the time they left their campus through their abduction by local police in the town of Iguala that night. A soldier who had infiltrated the school was among the abducted students, and Encinas asserted the army did not follow its own protocols and try to rescue him.

“There is also information corroborated with emergency 089 telephone calls where allegedly six of the 43 disappeared students were held during several days and alive in what they call the old warehouse and from there were turned over to the colonel,” Encinas said. “Allegedly the six students were alive for as many as four days after the events and were killed and disappeared on orders of the colonel, allegedly the then Col. José Rodríguez Pérez.”

The defense department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the allegations Friday.

The role of the army in the students’ disappearance has long been a source of tension between the families and the government. From the beginning, there were questions about the military’s knowledge of what happened and its possible involvement. The students’ parents demanded for years that they be allowed to search the army base in Iguala. It was not until 2019 that they were given access along with Encinas and the Truth Commission.

The commission report says the army registered an anonymous emergency call on Sept. 30, 2014, four days after the students’ abduction. The caller reportedly said the students were being held in a large concrete warehouse in a location described as “Pueblo Viejo.” The caller proceeded to describe the location.

That entry was followed by several pages of redacted material, but that section of the report concluded with the following: “As can be seen, obvious collusion existed between agents of the Mexican state with the criminal group Guerreros Unidos that tolerated, allowed and participated in events of violence and disappearance of the students, as well as the government’s attempt to hide the truth about the events.”

Later, in a summary of how the commission’s report differed from the original investigation’s conclusions, there is mention of a colonel.

“On Sept. 30 ‘the colonel’ mentions that they will take care of cleaning everything up and that they had already taken charge of the six students who had remained alive,” the report said.

In a witness statement provided to federal investigators in December 2014, Capt. José Martínez Crespo, who was stationed at the base in Iguala, said the base commander for the 27th Infantry Battalion at the time was Col. José Rodriguez Pérez.

Through a driving rain later Friday, the families of the 43 missing students marched in Mexico City with a couple hundred other people as they have on the 26th of every month for years.

Parents carried posters of their children’s faces and rows of current students from the teachers’ college marched, shouted calls for justice and counted off to 43. Their signs proclaimed that the fight for justice continued and asserted: “It was the State.”

Clemente Rodríguez marched for his son Christian Alfonso Rodríguez Telumbre, who was a second student identified by a tiny burned bone fragment.

Rodríguez said the families had been told last week before the report was released about the coronel and the six students.

“It’s not by omission anymore. It’s that they participated,” he said of the military. “It was the state, the three levels of government participated.”

He said the families had not been told that any of the arrest orders announced last week for members of armed forces had been carried out yet.

On Sept. 26, 2014, local police took the students off buses they had commandeered in Iguala. The motive for the police action remains unclear eight years later. Their bodies have never been found, though fragments of burned bone have been matched to three of the students.

Last week, federal agents arrested former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, who oversaw the original investigation. On Wednesday, a judge ordered that he stand trial for forced disappearance, not reporting torture and official misconduct. Prosecutors allege Murillo Karam created a false narrative about what happened to the students to quickly appear to resolve the case.

Authorities also said last week that arrest warrants were issued for 20 soldiers and officers, five local officials, 33 local police officers and 11 state police officers as well as 14 gang members. Neither the army nor prosecutors have said how many of those suspects are in custody.

It was also not immediately clear if Rodríguez Pérez was among those sought.

Rodríguez, the student’s father, said Murillo Karam’s arrest was a positive step.

Murillo Karam “was the one who told us the soldiers couldn’t be touched,” Rodríguez said. “And now it’s being discovered that it was the state that participated.”

In a joint statement, the families said the Truth Commission’s confirmation that it was a “state crime” was significant after elements suggesting that over the years.

However, they said the report still did not satisfactorily answer their most important question.

“Mothers and fathers need indubitable scientific evidence as to the fate of our children,” the statement said. “We can’t go home with preliminary signs that don’t fully clear up where they are and what happened to them.”

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has given Mexico’s military enormous responsibility. The armed forces are not only at the center of his security strategy, but they have taken over administration of the seaports and been given responsibility for building a new airport for the capital and a tourist train on the Yucatan Peninsula.

The president has said often that the army and navy are the least corrupt institutions and have his confidence.

Trump search redacted affidavit set to be released

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Written by northsouth

Category: Americas

Published: 26 August 2022

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By ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is set to release Friday a heavily blacked out document explaining the justification for an FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate earlier this month, when agents removed top secret government records and other classified documents.

The document, expected by noon, is likely to offer at least some new details about an ongoing criminal investigation that has brought fresh legal peril for Trump just as he lays the groundwork for another presidential run. Though Justice Department officials are expected to have removed sensitive details about witnesses, and the scope and direction of the probe, the affidavit may offer the fullest explanation yet about the events leading up to the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.

The document being released is the redacted form of an affidavit, or sworn statement, that the FBI submitted to a judge so it could obtain a warrant to search Trump’s property. Affidavits typically contain vital information about an investigation, with agents spelling out to a judge the justification for why they want to search a particular property and why they believe they’re likely to find evidence of a potential crime there. But affidavits routinely remain sealed during pending investigations, making the judge’s decision to reveal portions of it all the more striking.

In an acknowledgment of the extraordinary public interest in the investigation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Thursday ordered the department by Friday to make public a redacted version of the affidavit. The directive came hours after federal law enforcement officials submitted under seal the portions of the affidavit that they want to keep secret as their investigation moves forward.

The redactions proposed by the Justice Department are likely to be extensive given the sensitivity of the investigation, lessening the likelihood that the document will offer a comprehensive look at the basis for the unprecedented search or significant insights about the direction of the probe. Yet even a redacted affidavit can contain at least some fresh revelations about the investigation, and is likely to help explain why federal agents who had tried for months to recover sensitive government records from Mar-a-Lago ultimately felt compelled to obtain a search warrant.

Documents already made public show the FBI retrieved from the property 11 sets of classified documents, including information marked at the top secret level. They also show that federal agents are investigating potential violations of three different federal laws, including one that governs gathering, transmitting or losing defense information under the Espionage Act. The other statutes address the concealment, mutilation or removal of records and the destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations.

It’s possible that the affidavit, particularly in its unredacted form, could shed light on key unanswered questions, including why sensitive presidential documents — classified documents, among them — were transported to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House and why Trump and his representatives did not supply the entire tranche of material to the National Archives and Records Administration despite repeated entreaties.

It could also offer additional details on the back-and-forth between Trump and the FBI, including a subpoena for documents that was issued last spring, as well as a June visit by FBI and Justice Department officials to assess how the materials were being stored.

The Justice Department had earlier contested arguments by media organizations to make any portion of the affidavit public, saying the disclosure could contain private information about witnesses and about investigative tactics. But Reinhart, acknowledging the extraordinary public interest in the investigation, said last week that he was disinclined to keep the entire document sealed and told federal officials to submit to him in private the redactions it wanted to make.

In his order Thursday, Reinhart said the department had made compelling arguments to leave sealed broad swaths of the document that, if disclosed, would reveal grand jury information; the identities of witnesses and “uncharged parties”; and details about the investigation’s “strategy, direction, scope, sources and methods.”

But he also said he was satisfied “that the Government has met its burden of showing that its proposed redactions are narrowly tailored to serve the Government’s legitimate interest in the integrity of the ongoing investigation and are the least onerous alternative to sealing the entire Affidavit.”