China and Russia on Friday vetoed targeted UN sanctions on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe over his disputed re-election, prompting an angry reaction from the US, which cast doubt on Moscow’s reliability as a G8 partner.
The Chinese and Russian envoys joined their colleagues from South Africa, Libya and Vietnam in opposing a US draft resolution in the Security Council, which would have imposed an assets freeze and a travel ban on Mugabe and 13 of his cronies, as well as an arms embargo. Indonesia abstained.
It was the first double veto by Russia and China since January last year, when they vetoed a draft resolution in the 15-member council that would have urged Myanmar to ease repression and release political prisoners.
Voting in favor in Friday’s vote were the US, the UK, France, Burkina Faso, Belgium, Costa Rica, Italy, Panama and Croatia.
“China and Russia have stood with Mugabe against the people of Zimbabwe,” US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad said.
Zimbabwe’s UN envoy, Boniface Chidyausiku, told the BBC that Mugabe was “happy to know that the United Nations is still a body where there’s equal sovereignty of every member of the United Nations and there are checks and balances within the system that protects the weak from the powerful.”
Sponsors of the draft said the sanctions were needed to pressure Mugabe into stopping the violence against his political foes and agreeing to a genuine power sharing deal with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Opponents countered that passage of the text would undermine ongoing South African-mediated talks between Zimbabwe’s ruling party and its opposition and would have run counter to the wishes of African Union leaders at their summit in Egypt earlier this month.
British Ambassador to the UN John Sawers, whose country is Zimbabwe’s former colonial ruler, said the 15-member council “missed the opportunity to impose a legal obligation on Mr Mugabe’s government to end the violence and intimidation which have scarred Zimbabwe.”
Khalilzad singled out Moscow for special criticism.
“The U-turn in the Russian position is particularly surprising and disturbing,” he said, saying it raised questions about Moscow’s “reliability as a G8 partner.”
Chidyausiku expressed gratitude to those council members which he said refused “to be intimidated” by the US and Britain.
The subsidiary of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) in Kumamoto, Japan, turned a profit in the first quarter of this year, marking the first time the first fab of the unit has become profitable since mass production started at the end of 2024. According to the contract chipmaker’s financial statement released on Friday, Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Inc (JASM), a joint venture running the fab in Kumamoto, posted NT$951 million (US$30.19 million) in profit in the January-to-March period, compared with a loss of NT$1.39 billion in the previous quarter, and a loss of NT$3.25 billion in the first quarter of
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
RESOLUTE BACKING: Two Republican senators are planning to introduce legislation that would impose immediate sanctions on China if it attempts to invade Taiwan US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday reaffirmed US congressional support for Taiwan, saying the US and “all freedom-loving people” have a stake in preventing China from seizing Taiwan by force. Johnson made the remarks in an interview with Fox News Sunday on US President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) last week. In an interview that aired on Friday on Fox News, just as Trump wrapped up a high-stakes visit to China, he said he has yet to green-light a new US$14 billion arms package to Taiwan and that it “depends on China.” “It’s a very good
US President Donald Trump yesterday said he would speak to President William Lai (賴清德) as his administration considers whether to move ahead with a US$14 billion weapons sale to Taiwan — a potential arms deal that has drawn criticism from China. “Well, I’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody,” Trump told reporters yesterday when asked if he had any plans to call his counterpart, although he did not offer a time frame for when such a conversation could take place. Trump previously said he would speak to the person “that’s running Taiwan,” without specifying who he meant. “We have that situation very
RSS