Group items tagged

Top U.S. and Russian diplomats agreed Friday to keep talking in the standoff over Ukraine, even though their meeting produced no movement in the crisis that has seen Moscow mass tens of thousands of troops at the border and the West ramp up supplies of weapons to Kyiv.With fears of an invasion of Ukraine running high and seemingly intractable demands, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met for about 90 minutes in Geneva at what the American said was a “critical moment.”Expectations were low going in, and there was no breakthrough.Blinken told Lavrov the U.S. would give Russia written responses to Moscow’s proposals next week and suggested the two would likely meet again shortly after that — offering some hope that any invasion would be delayed for at least a few more days.

Blinken said the U.S. would be open to a meeting between Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden, if it would be “useful and productive.” The two have met once in person in Geneva and have had several virtual conversations on Ukraine that have proven largely inconclusive.

The Pentagon said the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier and its strike group will participate in a NATO maritime exercise in the Mediterranean, which will continue through Feb. 4 — something that has been planned since 2020, said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby. He said officials considered whether to go ahead with the exercise, because of the ongoing tensions, and decided to move ahead.

Belonging to the anti-war group Code Pink, one of the protesters tried to remind Brennan of children being killed by the drones, another held up a list of victims in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan and another a sign saying "Drones Make Enemies".

The route to drone supremacy has been a surreptitious one relying sometimes on exaggerations of their "surgical accuracy" and precision

Brennan claimed that not a single "collateral" death had taken place as a result of drone strikes in Pakistan. This was proven untrue by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism which looked at 116 secret drone strikes during the period in which 45 or more civilians appeared to have died.

Explorer

hen President Obama first ordered U.S. warplanes into action against the extremists sweeping through Iraq and Syria in 2014, U.S. officials put a three- to five-year timeline on a battle they predicted would be hard. After a rocky start, officials say they are gratified by the progress made, especially over the past six months.

“So far in terms of what we had hoped to do, we are pretty much on track,” said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive subjects. “We’re actually a little bit ahead of where we wanted to be.”

The Islamic State will have occupied those cities for well over two years before the offensives begin, far longer than any of those it has lost so far. The battle for Mosul, long a Pentagon priority, has already been delayed by at least a year

Syria conflict: UN suspends all aid after convoy hit

The UN has suspended all aid convoys in Syria after a devastating attack on its lorries near Aleppo on Monday.

Russia and Syria have both insisted that their forces were not involved.

Kerry urges Trump administration to attend Syria peace talks

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday urged the incoming Trump administration to accept an invitation from Russia to attend Syria peace talks next week.

He said he hoped the meeting would make some progress and lead to a resumption of the Geneva talks, which are aimed at producing a transitional government and an eventual election in Syria.

Pro-Tibet protesters detained as China's Xi arrives in Bern

Police in the Swiss capital of Bern say they've prevented a pro-Tibet protester from setting himself on fire on the sidelines of a demonstration against the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Xi on Sunday kicked off a four-day visit to Switzerland, the first this century by a Chinese leader. It includes planned stops in Geneva, Lausanne and to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Syria’s divided city of Aleppo plunged back into the kind of all-out war not seen in months on Thursday

At least 27 people, including three children and six staff members,

The escalation also threatened to derail renewed attempts at peace talks in Geneva by the United Nations

wo years ago, some European and US experts gathered to discuss China in an elegant English country house. The setting was seductive, but the mood was dark. Two years into Xi Jinping’s presidency, China’s politics were turning away from the liberalising trend of the previous three decades, towards a hard-edged nationalism that was discomfiting China’s immediate neighbours and their western allies.

a global conflict between the systems, values and norms of the pluralist, democratic United States and China’s Communist party seemed inevitable. It would be unpleasant, but nobody doubted that US values would prevail.

The group discussed whether China could succeed. What might go wrong?

REYHANLI, Turkey — When the wounded arrived at the Red Crescent hospital in Idlib at the start of the Syrian uprising — opponents of President Bashar al-Assad who had been shot or beaten by government troops — military police ordered the doctors to just let them die.

Ammar Martini and his colleagues refused.

“This I could not do,” said Martini, a successful surgeon from an affluent family. “I treat all people, of any origin. They are human, and I am a doctor.”

The Obama administration is considering the resumption of nonlethal military aid to Syria’s moderate opposition, senior administration officials said on Thursday, even if some of it ends up going to the Islamist groups that are allied with the moderates.

The United States suspended the shipments last month after warehouses of equipment were seized by the Islamic Fron

some of the Islamists fought alongside the Free Syrian Army in a battle against a major Al Qaeda-affiliated rebel group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

With progress toward a transitional government highly unlikely, the conference will now focus as much on the humanitarian crisis as it will on discussions about Syria's political future.

“If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs.”

Germany is recognized as the first to use chemical weapons on a mass scale, on April 22, 1915, at Ypres, Belgium, where 6,000 British and French troops succumbed

once again emerged as an issue after the massacre in Syria last month, in which the United States says nearly 1,500 people, men, women and children, were killed, many as they slept.

If President Bashar al-Assad of Syria fails to comply with the agreement, the issue will be referred to the United Nations Security Council. Mr. Kerry said that any violations would then be taken up under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes punitive action. But Mr. Lavrov made clear that Russia, which wields a veto in the Security Council, had not withdrawn its objections to the use of force.

Mr. Lavrov said that he had not spoken with Syrian officials while he was negotiating in Geneva. Obama administration officials have argued that the Russia’s role was essential since it has been a major backer of the Assad government.

A significant sign of movement came Friday when the Obama administration effectively took force off the table in discussions over the shape of a Security Council resolution governing any deal with Syria

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Secretary of State John Kerry came up a few disputed words short of closing a landmark nuclear deal with Iran on Sunday in Geneva. Now he is defending the diplomacy that led to that near miss against a rising chorus of critics at home and abroad.

“Having the negotiation does not mean giving up anything,”

“It means you will put to the test what is possible and what is needed, and whether or not Iran is prepared to do what is necessary to prove that its program can only be a peaceful program.”

Kerry’s first foreign-policy speech as secretary, an hour-long defense of diplomacy and foreign aid, was a flop.

The nearly universal expectation was that Kerry’s tenure would be overshadowed by his predecessor’s, for a long list of reasons.

arriving in Foggy Bottom when the country seemed to be withdrawing from the world. Exhausted by two long wars, Americans were wary of ambitious new foreign engagements—certainly of military ones, but of entangling diplomatic ones, too

What are the options going forward for a real US strategy in Syria – where the conflict continues to cast a shadow of destabilization over Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and to some extent Turkey? None particularly obvious.

It’s pretty much a complete and total collapse of the American efforts to back opposition to Assad, whose own forces have put together a string of military victories since the spring, retaking important strongholds and using aid from Russia, Iran and the Lebanese Shiite group, Hezbollah, to do so.

Fact is, the United States and Russia have a joint interest in suppressing and eliminating the Islamist rebels. And that’s it.