New diplomatic brushfires broke out almost immediately among the plush cottages of the top-scale Sea Island resort, even as US President George W. Bush led Iraq's new interim ruler onto the world stage.
World leaders yesterday wrapped up the latest G8 summit after a new era of trans-Atlantic unity dissolved in just one day into fresh US-France spats and squabbles over Iraq's US$120 billion debt pile.
The summit of G8 industrialized nations had been billed as a chance to consign old animosity over the US invasion to history, after the West closed ranks to pass a new UN resolution on Iraq Tuesday.
Leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US did manage to agree on Bush's controversial reform plan for the Islamic world.
They also endorsed an end-of-July target for an outline deal on the most divisive issues in global trade talks, unveiled measures to halt transfers of nuclear technology and endorsed airline security improvements.
Yesterday, the G8 leaders will meet several counterparts from Africa, including South Africa's Thabo Mbeki and Senegal's Abdulaye Wade, in a bid to head off claims they only pay lip service to the continent's woes.
Then Bush and other leaders will hold final press conferences. The US leader will go straight to Washington to pay his final respects to late former president Ronald Reagan, lying in state in Washington.
Interim Iraqi president Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar's first international bow at the swank private beach resort hosting the rich-nations summit was a world removed from the violence of postwar Iraq.
"Mr President, I'd like to express to you the commitment of the Iraqi people to move towards democracy," he said at his first-ever meeting with Bush.
Bush replied: "I really never thought I'd be sitting next to an Iraqi president of a free country a year and half ago."
But just one day after France signed up to a US-sponsored resolution at the UN on Iraqi sovereignty, the fractious allies were at loggerheads again -- on a handful of issues.
They clashed on NATO's role in Iraq, after Bush called for a greater presence of the Western alliance in the occupation.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
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