Arab and Western powers met in London yesterday to push Syrian opposition leaders to attend talks in Geneva next month, but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad poured cold water on hopes of any peace deal.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the London meeting was aimed at persuading Syria’s fractious rebels to have a “united position” for the UN-backed conference in the Swiss city, scheduled for Nov. 23.
US Secretary of State John Kerry is at the talks along with Hague and counterparts from Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, together with opposition leaders.
Photo: Reuters
The Syrian National Council, a key member of the Syrian National Coalition, has already said it opposes the Geneva conference and threatened to quit the umbrella opposition group if al-Assad’s regime takes part in the Geneva 2 conference.
Opposition representatives are due to meet early next month to thrash out their differences.
“The longer this conflict goes on, the most sectarian it becomes and the more extremists are able to take hold,” Hague told BBC radio. “That is why we are making this renewed effort to get the Geneva peace process going.”
The US and Russia have been trying to organize the Geneva conference on the heels of the deal they reached for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons in the wake of a deadly poison gas attack in August.
However, al-Assad dealt an early blow to peace hopes, saying in an interview on Monday that he was willing to run for re-election next year and that the factors are not in place for the conference to succeed.
“No time has been set, and the factors are not yet in place if we want [Geneva 2] to succeed,” al-Assad told Lebanon-based pan-Arab satellite channel al-Mayadeen.
“Personally, I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t run in the next election,” al-Assad said.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of