Thursday, 27 August 2020

US Secretary Of State Mike Pompeo Heads Home After Pushing Israel Deal On Mideast Tour

 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo headed home Thursday after a Middle East tour aimed at encouraging Arab countries to follow the UAE's move and normalise relations with Israel.

However, stops in Bahrain, Oman and Sudan failed to produce any public commitments to recognise the Jewish state, after the landmark US-brokered deal with the United Arab Emirates announced earlier this month.


"Met today with Omani Sultan Haitham bin Tarik Al-Said on the importance of building regional peace, stability, and prosperity through a united Gulf Cooperation Council," Pompeo tweeted as he left Oman, the last stop on his itinerary.


"Grateful for our strong security partnership and economic ties."


The official Oman News Agency said that "aspects of the existing bilateral cooperation between the sultanate and the United States were reviewed within the framework of the strong relations that bind them," but made no reference to relations with Israel.


Pompeo was the first high-level Western official to meet Sultan Haitham, who succeeded Sultan Qaboos on his death in January after some five decades in power.


Oman has long had dialogue with Israel and welcomed the UAE's August 13 announcement that it had normalised ties, while reaffirming its support for the Palestinians.


The US chief diplomat had said he was hopeful other nations would follow the UAE, which became only the third Arab country to establish relations with Israel, after Egypt and Jordan.


However, Sudan's transitional government on Tuesday dashed hopes for a speedy breakthrough, saying it has "no mandate" to take such a weighty step.


And Bahrain echoed the sentiments of its ally, regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia, that an accord with Israel would not materialise without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.


An anti-climax?


"After American and Israeli officials spent days hyping the prospect that other Arab countries would soon follow the UAE in normalising relations with Israel, the lack of any additional public commitments during Secretary Pompeo's regional tour looks like an anti-climax," Hugh Lovatt of the European Council on Foreign Relations told AFP.


While in Israel on the first stop of the tour, Pompeo made a symbolic video in Jerusalem for the Republican National Convention in which he touted the Trump administration's support for the Jewish state.


The issue will likely feature prominently in campaigning for the US presidential election in November.


The UAE's controversial recognition of Israel has been met with criticism from some parts of the Arab world, with the Palestinian leadership condemning it as a "stab in the back". Even US allies in the region have been cautious in their response.


For Saudi Arabia, not only would a formal recognition of Israel be seen by Palestinians and their supporters as a betrayal of their cause, it could also hurt the kingdom's image as the leader of the Islamic world.


During a brief stop in the UAE on Wednesday, Pompeo held talks with Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan and national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, and congratulated them "on the monumental achievement" of the Israel deal.


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied reports that the UAE deal hinges on the sale of US F-35 stealth fighter jets to the Emirates, saying he opposes a move that could reduce Israel's strategic edge in the region.

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Tuesday, 25 August 2020

France Says Russian Opposition Leader Victim Of "Criminal Act"

 France on Tuesday said that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in hospital in Germany after allegedly being poisoned in Siberia, had been the victim of a "criminal act" and urged Moscow to carry out a swift investigation.

"France expresses its profound concern over this criminal act perpetrated against a major figure in Russian political life," the foreign ministry said in a statement.


It called on Russia to "carry out a swift and transparent investigation which will enable the circumstances in which this act was committed to be established.


"Those responsible for this act must be identified and brought to justice," the statement added.


The 44-year-old Navalny, who is one of the fiercest critics of President Vladimir Putin, is being treated at Berlin's Charite hospital after falling ill on a flight in Siberia last Thursday.


His supporters claim Navalny was poisoned by something in his cup of tea at a Siberian airport before taking a flight to Moscow, and point the finger at Putin.


The German clinic said Monday that clinical tests "indicate poisoning with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors," substances that are used in nerve agents as well as some medicines and insecticides.


But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian medics had diagnosed Navalny's condition in a similar way to German doctors but did not know what caused it.

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Two European Patients Re-Infected With Coronavirus

 Two European patients are confirmed to have been re-infected with the coronavirus, raising concerns about people's immunity to the virus as the world struggles to tame the pandemic.

The cases, in Belgium and the Netherlands, follow a report this week by researchers in Hong Kong about a man there who had been re-infected with a different strain of the virus four and a half months after being declared recovered - the first such re-infection to be documented.


That has fuelled fears about the effectiveness of potential vaccines against the virus, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, though experts say there would need to be many more cases of re-infection for these to be justified.


Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst said the Belgian case was a woman who had contracted COVID-19 for the first time in March and then again in June. Further cases of re-infection were likely to surface, he said.


"We don't know if there will be a large number. I think probably not, but we will have to see," he told Reuters, noting that COVID-19 had only been in humans for less than a year.


"Perhaps a vaccine will need to be repeated every year, or within two or three years. It seems clear though that we won't have something that works for, say, 10 years," he said.


Van Ranst, who sits on some Belgian COVID-19 committees, said in cases such as the Belgian woman's in which symptoms were relatively mild, the body may not have created enough antibodies to prevent a re-infection, although they might have helped limit the sickness.


GENETIC TESTING


The National Institute for Public Health in the Netherlands said it had also observed a Dutch case of re-infection.


Virologist Marion Koopmans was quoted by Dutch broadcaster NOS as saying the patient was an older person with a weakened immune system.


She said cases where people have been sick with the virus a long time and it then flares up again were better known.


But a true re-infection, as in the Dutch, Belgian and Hong Kong cases, required genetic testing of the virus in both the first and second infection to see whether the two instances of the virus differed slightly.


Koopmans, an adviser to the Dutch government, said re-infections had been expected.


"That someone would pop up with a re-infection, it doesn't make me nervous," she said. "We have to see whether it happens often."


WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a U.N. briefing in Geneva regarding the Hong Kong case that, while anecdotal reports of reinfections had surfaced now and then, it was important to have clear documentation of such cases.


Some experts say it is likely that such cases are starting to emerge because of greater testing worldwide, rather than because the virus may be spreading differently.


Still, Dr David Strain, a clinical senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and chair of the British Medical Association's medical academic staff committee, said the cases were worrying for several reasons.


"The first is that it suggests that previous infection is not protective," he said. "The second is that it raises the possibility that vaccinations may not provide the hope that we have been waiting for."

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