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 Trump declares North Korea state sponsor of terrorism, triggers sanctions

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President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism on Monday, a designation that allows the United States to impose more sanctions and risks inflaming tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile programs. The Republican president,  said the Treasury Department will announce additional sanctions against North Korea on Tuesday. “In addition to threatening the world by nuclear devastation, North Korea has repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism, including assassinations on foreign soil”, Trump told reporters at the White House. “This designation will impose further sanctions and penalties on North Korea and related persons and supports our maximum pressure campaign to isolate the murderous regime”,  Trump, who has often criticized his predecessors’ policies toward Pyongyang, said the designation should have been made “a long time ago”.

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US Launches Airstrikes in First Operation Targeting Afghan Opium

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The United States has launched its first counter-narcotics military offensive in partnership with local allies in Afghanistan to try to deprive the resurgent Taliban of its largest source of funding. The move follows years of criticism that international forces are not doing enough to curb the opium trade. Speaking in Kabul Monday, General John Nicholson, commander of U.S. troops and NATO’s Resolute Support military mission, shared details of the coalition’s first overnight counter narcotics airstrikes. He said the bombing campaign destroyed major Taliban narcotics production facilities in Helmand, the main poppy producing southern Afghan province, depriving the insurgent group of major revenues. “Our estimates indicate that more than $200 million from this illegal economy was going into the pockets of the Taliban”, the general noted.

 

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Palestinians threatened to suspend all communication if US closes PLO mission

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The Palestinians threatened on Saturday to suspend all communication with the United States if the Trump administration follows through with plans to close their diplomatic office in Washington. The potential rupture in relations threatens to undermine President Donald Trump’s bid for Mideast peace: a mission he has handed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the U.S. decision was “very unfortunate and unacceptable,” and accused Washington of bowing to pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “at a time when we are trying to cooperate to achieve the ultimate deal”. The administration announced late Friday that the Palestinians had run afoul of a legal provision that says the Palestine Liberation Organization cannot operate a Washington office if the Palestinians try to get the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis for crimes against Palestinians. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson determined that the Palestinians crossed that line in September, when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the court to investigate and prosecute Israelis, according to State Department officials.

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Turkish minister: Muslim cleric infiltrated the U.S
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A Turkish minister says the “American system” has been infiltrated by a Muslim cleric blamed for last summer’s failed coup. Foreign Minister M. Cavusoglu told journalists Friday that cleric Fethullah Gulen “has entered American missions here through the local staff,” referring to the arrest of a local staff member of the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul in October for alleged links to Gulen. The minister also said Gulen infiltrated the U.S. judicial system by pointing to purported links in the controversial case of Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, charged by an ex-U.S. attorney for evading sanctions on Iran. Cavusoglu said Preet Bharara was “very close” to Gulen and used the same indictment prosecutors filed against Zarrab in Turkey after corruption allegations shook the country in 2013. Gulen denies involvement in the coup.

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Russia vetoes US resolution on Syria chemical weapons use

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Russia on Thursday vetoed a U.S.-drafted resolution to extend the mandate of experts trying to determine who was responsible for chemical attacks in Syria. Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia then withdrew a rival Russian resolution, which is opposed by the United States and other Security Council members, over Moscow’s insistence that it be voted on second not first as required under council rules. The result of Thursday’s vote on the U.S. draft resolution would mean that the Joint Investigative Mechanism, known as the JIM, will cease operations when its current mandate expires at midnight Thursday. This would be a serious blow to efforts to hold those responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria accountable. Both the U.S. and Russia said they wanted the JIM to be extended, but Russia insisted on changing its mandate, which the Trump administration and other council members rejected.

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Trump skips East Asia summit plenary, but says trip was a success

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Trump left for home from the Philippines after a lunch with the other leaders, as meetings were running about two hours behind schedule. He told reporters on Air Force One that he had delivered his prepared remarks during the lunch instead of the summit meeting. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would attend the plenary session in his place, a senior White House official said. Trump said his trip had resulted in at least $300 billion, possibly triple that figure, of deals being agreed. He did not elaborate. “We’ve explained that the United States is open for trade but we want reciprocal, we want fair trade for the United States”, he said. Trade and concern about possible protectionism under Trump’s “America First” agenda have come up during his visit to the region, which included stops in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam before concluding in the Philippines.

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Medvedev accuses US and its allies of using sanctions as unfair competition tool

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Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has accused the US and its allies of using economic sanctions as a weapon against competitors, adding that the rules regulating international trade were not in step with a rapidly-changing reality. “Despite the booming development of electronic commerce and digital technologies, the regulation in the sphere of international trade still exists in its old framework, in the 40-year-old paradigm, and raw materials markets remain unstable”, Medvedev said at the ASEAN-2017 summit. “Methods of the so-called protectionism are being used more frequently and economic sanctions become just a competition tool”, the Russian PM noted. He also stated that the trade turnover between Russia and ASEAN nations had the potential for a many-fold increase, and noted that the sides were not using all possible opportunities to achieve this.

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Erdogan calls on Russia and US to pull troops out of Syria

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Russia and the US should pull their troops out of Syria following the joint statement adopted by the two countries’ presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, which says that there is no military solution to the Syrian conflict, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said before departing for Russia on Monday. Putin and Trump adopted a joint statement on Syria on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam’s Danang on November 11. The document says that “the presidents agreed that there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria”. “They confirmed that the ultimate political solution to the conflict must be forged through the Geneva process pursuant to UNSCR [United Nations Security Council Resolution] 2254,” the document adds. Putin and Trump “also took note of President Assad’s recent commitment to the Geneva process and constitutional reform and elections as called for under UNSCR 2254”.

 

 

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US accuses Russia of INF treaty violations

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By accusing Russia of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (signed by both sides in 1987), the United States tries to lend legitimacy to its own steps in violation of that document, Chairman of the Russian Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Committee for Foreign Affairs Konstantin Kosachev told reporters on Thursday. The Russian senator stressed that Washington had failed to provide evidence proving that Moscow was violating the INF Treaty. “This treaty applies only to the ground-based weapons, but as it has been reiterated many times, Russia has no need to go back to this kind of weapons since the combat capabilities of our submarines, warships and Aerospace Force allow us to totally ensure the country’s security,” he said.

According to Kosachev, the United States seeks to withdraw from the INF Treaty to continue increasing the capabilities of its Prompt Global Strike system.

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Usa ends protected immigration status for Nicaraguans, but renew the Visa for Hondurans

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The Trump administration has given 2,500 Nicaraguans with provisional residency 14 months to leave the United States, announcing Monday that it will not renew the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation that has allowed them to remain in the country for nearly two decades. But Trump officials deferred a decision for the much larger group of 57,000 Hondurans who have been living in the United States with the same designation, saying the Department of Homeland Security needed more time to consider their fate. The decision was likely to displease immigration hard-liners who have urged the administration to end the TPS program on the grounds that it was never intended to bestow long-term residency to those who may have entered the country illegally. The two groups were shielded from deportation after Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998, and their TPS protections have been routinely renewed ever since.

 

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