North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is interested in meeting Donald Trump again only if the US comes to talks with the right attitude, state media said on Saturday, after the US president floated the idea.
Related: The art of the no deal: how Trump and Kim misread each other | Julian Borger
Continue reading...Trump’s decision to recognise Israeli sovereignty over territory it seized from Syria sets a troubling precedent, experts fear
Under intense questioning about why the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights was good but the Russian seizure of Crimea was bad, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, told senators that there was an “international law doctrine” which would be explained to them later.
It turned out there was no doctrine. The state department’s clarification of Pompeo’s remarks contained no reference to one, and experts on international law said that none exists.
Continue reading...US president tweeted a picture of people waving Trump banners at the Israeli leader’s election celebrations
Donald Trump welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu’s election victory by underlining the personal alliance between the two men, tweeting a picture of people waving Trump banners at the Israeli leader’s celebrations.
Related: 'The future is dark': Palestinians react to Israel's election
Continue reading...Baghdad in talks with US to receive remnants of terror group held in detention centres in Syria
Baghdad and Washington are in talks to transfer and place on trial tens of thousands of suspected Isis fighters and their families from detention centres in Syria to prison camps in Iraq, with Iraqi officials seeking a multibillion dollar fee to receive remnants of the terror group captured over five years of war.
Discussions about what to do with Isis members, among them thousands of foreign men, women and children, have been pushed intensively by US officials, who have also lobbied coalition partners to remove their citizens from two cramped detention centres in Syria’s north-east, which one former senior US official described as a “volcano”.
Continue reading...Statement marks first time US has formally labeled another country’s military a terrorist group
The United States has designated Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards as a foreign terrorist organization, Donald Trump said on Monday, marking the first time Washington has formally named a branch of the armed forces of a foreign government as a terrorist group.
In a statement, Trump said this unprecedented step, “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft”.
Continue reading...The Israeli PM’s West Bank annexation idea is likely to have had the nod from Trump
Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to expand Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank was short on specifics. It looks, at first glance, like a typical piece of Bibi electoral gamesmanship, designed to attract rightwing and nationalist voters – and boost his hopes of tipping the balance in Tuesday’s closely fought national polls.
But Netanyahu is not simply playing politics. He has previously flirted with annexation of Judea and Samaria, as the Israeli government calls the West Bank, as part of an apparent drive to prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state. A Haaretz poll last month found 42% of Israelis supported West Bank annexation. Netanyahu also recently suggested that Israel, in extremis, might reoccupy the Gaza Strip.
Continue reading...Fatou Bensouda wants to open investigation into alleged war crimes, including by US troops
The US has revoked the visa of the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor in response to her intention to investigate potential war crimes by US soldiers in Afghanistan.
A statement from the office of Fatou Bensouda, a Gambian national, said she would continue to pursue her duties for the court, in The Hague, “without fear or favour” and that she would continue to travel to the US. She has not been restricted from visiting the UN headquarters in New York.
Continue reading...Countries fear that legal standard of states being ‘unwilling or unable’ to deal with terrorism could be used in Latin America
Latin American states are mounting a challenge to the acceptance of a legal standard promoted by the US, UK and their allies to justify military operations in the Middle East, fearing the same standard could eventually be used to justify intervention in their own hemisphere.
The Mexican government is spearheading an effort at the UN to bring greater transparency to the formal legal justifications presented by western powers for military operations in Syria and elsewhere.
Continue reading...Policy bans aid going to foreign groups that support abortion rights as secretary of state Pompeo says: ‘This is decent and right’
The Trump administration has expanded its ban on funding for groups that conduct abortions or advocate abortion rights, known as the global gag rule, and has also cut funding to the Organisation of American States for that reason.
Related: How Trump signed a global death warrant for women | Sarah Boseley
Continue reading...Israeli forces and Hamas exchanged rocket fire on Monday night amid fears of a new conflict in Gaza.
Israeli forces carried out strikes against what they called “Hamas terror targets” across the Gaza Strip, after an earlier rocket attack that destroyed a family home and wounded seven people in a neighbourhood north of Tel Aviv. The army also said it was reinforcing troops along the Gaza border and calling up reserves.
Continue reading...Russia-flagged cargo plane and airliner spotted at Caracas airport as Moscow boosts under-pressure Maduro regime
Russian military officials have arrived in Venezuela to discuss equipment maintenance and training, and strategy, an official in Caracas has said.
The statement came after a Russian-flagged cargo plane and an airliner were spotted at Maiquetia airport outside Caracas guarded by a contingent of Venezuelan national guardsmen.
Continue reading...Kurdish-led group says last of militants cleared from stronghold of Baghuz
After almost five years, the battle to dismantle Islamic State’s brutal “caliphate” has ended with an announcement from US-backed forces that the militants have been driven out of their last stronghold of Baghuz.
Isis had held out for months against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the small oasis town on the Euphrates river, clinging on to an area of land less than 700 sq metres wide despite fierce coalition bombing. But on Saturday an SDF spokesperson, Mustafa Bali, tweeted that the town had been liberated.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has announced that he is ordering the withdrawal of recently announced North Korea-related sanctions imposed by the US treasury department.
Related: North Korea warns US sanctions could derail plans to denuclearise
Continue reading...Russia, Iran and Turkey condemn US president while Syria vows to recapture territory lost in 1967 war
Syria has vowed to retake the Golan Heights as Donald Trump’s call for the US to recognise the occupied territory as part of Israel elicited strong responses from Russia, Turkey and Iran.
The president ended half a century of US foreign policy and broke from post-second world war international consensus that forbids territorial conquest during war with a tweet on Thursday that said it was time “to fully recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights”.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has announced that the US will recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, in a dramatic move likely to bolster Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes to win re-election, but which will also provoke international opposition.
Previous US administrations have treated Golan Heights as occupied Syrian territory, in line with UN security council resolutions. Trump declared his break with that policy in a tweet.
Continue reading...A US navy veteran has been sentenced to 10 years in an Iranian prison, his family’s lawyer said, after he was arrested last July while visiting an Iranian woman in the city of Mashhad.
Related: Reporter Jason Rezaian on 544 days in Iranian jail: ‘They never touched me – but I was tortured’
Continue reading...Venezuela’s chief prosecutor has asked the country’s supreme court to open an investigation into opposition leader Juan Guaidó for alleged involvement in the “sabotage” of the country’s power grid.
Related: US pulls all staff from Venezuela as Maduro blames blackout on 'demonic' Trump plot
Continue reading...Exclusive: account exposes failures of US intelligence, which put $10m bounty on Mullah Omar
The Taliban’s elusive one-eyed leader Mullah Omar lived within walking distance of US bases in Afghanistan for years, and American troops once even searched the house where he was hiding but failed to find a secret room built for him, a new biography claims.
The account exposes an embarrassing failure of US intelligence, which put a $10m bounty on Omar’s head after the 9/11 attacks in the US. Officials repeatedly suggested that, like the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, he was hiding in Pakistan and died there.
Continue reading...US position hardens after Hanoi summit collapse, warning that any launches at missile sites would violate Kim Jong-un’s promise
The US is demanding North Korea destroys all its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons before receiving any sanctions relief, as positions harden on both sides in the aftermath of last week’s failed Hanoi summit.
The US clarified its demands after satellite images showed the North Koreans had completely rebuilt a space launch site they had partially dismantled after the first summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in June last year.
Continue reading...Reach of extremist groups could spread to Ghana, Togo and Benin, says US military chief
A rapid and alarming deterioration of the security situation in Burkina Faso is threatening to spread to its three southern neighbours, a senior US military figure has warned, heralding the potential destabilisation of a vast area of west Africa.
Related: Kidnapped Canadian found dead, Burkina Faso officials say
Continue reading...