The Palestinians vowed on Wednesday to push ahead with plans to seek UN backing as long as talks are off the agenda, prompting US President Barack Obama to warn it would be a “mistake.”
“I strongly believe for the Palestinians to take the United Nations route rather than the path of sitting down and talking with the Israelis is a mistake,” Obama said in London at a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Since the collapse of direct peace talks late last year, the Palestinian leadership has been pursuing a strategy aimed at securing UN recognition of their promised state on 1967 borders, drawing sharp criticism from Israel and Washington.
“The only way we are going to see a Palestinian state is if Israelis and Palestinians agree on a just peace,” Obama said, warning that peace would only work if both sides agreed to a “wrenching compromise.”
Obama’s remarks came after a week of high-level debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has left the prospects of a revival of peace talks more remote than ever.
Earlier on Wednesday, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said that unless there was a fresh round of peace negotiations, the Palestinians would head to the UN in September in the hope of being accepted as a full member of the world body.
“Our first choice is negotiations, but if there is no progress before September, we will go to the United Nations,” he said in remarks which came a day after Netanyahu had outlined his views on a peace deal with the Palestinians in a speech to the US Congress.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing