UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Sunday began a Mideast trip to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and attend the opening of a Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
Annan met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday and planned to travel to the West Bank yesterday for talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and other top officials.
Annan's spokesman said the UN chief offered to help coordinate peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.
Annan also is expected to meet with many of the 30 world leaders attending ceremonies today and tomorrow for the inauguration of the new Holocaust museum at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem memorial. The presidents of Poland, Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia, prime ministers of France, Italy and the Netherlands and several European foreign ministers are among the scheduled guests.
The trip will take on personal meeting for Annan as well. His wife, Nane, is the niece of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews during World War II before disappearing.
Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for Annan, said that in his talks with Israelis and Palestinians, the secretary-general hopes to help both sides "sustain the momentum that has been generated in the past few weeks."
He cited the Feb. 8 Mideast summit in Egypt, where Sharon and Abbas declared an end to four years of bloodshed, and the international show of support for the Palestinians at a March 1 conference in London. At the conference, international donors pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and other assistance to promote Palestinian reforms.
The UN is one of the "Quartet" of sponsors of the "road map," an internationally backed peace plan that stalled shortly after it was launched in mid-2003. The plan called on Israel to freeze settlement activity in the West Bank, while calling on the Palestinians to dismantle militant groups.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
US President Donald Trump on Friday said Washington was “locked and loaded” to respond if Iran killed protesters, prompting Tehran to warn that intervention would destabilize the region. Protesters and security forces on Thursday clashed in several Iranian cities, with six people reported killed, the first deaths since the unrest escalated. Shopkeepers in Tehran on Sunday last week went on strike over high prices and economic stagnation, actions that have since spread into a protest movement that has swept into other parts of the country. If Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
RSS