Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe denied on Thursday that talks on a unity government had stalled and called on Western nations to end “illegal” economic sanctions that were inflicting “untold miseries” on Zimbabwe.
In a speech before the UN General Assembly in New York, Mugabe lashed out at critics who sought UN sanctions on his regime this summer, after he refused to step down following presidential elections that observers said were flawed.
Mugabe said it was up to his own country to work toward a unity government, which would include one-time opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, whose party won this year’s parliamentary elections. A long-awaited power-sharing deal was signed last week but has since stalled amid wrangling over Cabinet posts.
“There is no holdup. The United Nations is the holdup,” Mugabe said in an impromptu conference with reporters, who had corralled him on the UN’s media floor after a private interview.
Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), won a first-round presidential election in the spring but pulled out of a runoff against Mugabe after reports that MDC supporters were being killed and intimidated.
Mugabe praised outgoing South African President Thabo Mbeki, who had helped broker a power-sharing arrangement.
Mbeki “did most of the work. The rest is our share,” Mugabe said.
Asked how the elections and power-sharing talks might have affected his international reputation, Mugabe replied “enhanced it.”
In his earlier speech, Mugabe called for reforming the 15-nation Security Council, which he said has long been controlled and manipulated by Western powers.
“I would therefore like to appeal to those members of the international community who have imposed illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe to lift them, so that my country can focus, undisturbed, on its economic turnaround program,” he said.
“This is imperative that the Security Council be democratized by ensuring equitable geographical representation through increasing its membership,” Mugabe said.
He called for two permanent seats for Africa on the Security Council, which currently has five permanent members with veto power.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS