A bid by Qatar to relocate the UN’s civil aviation agency from Montreal, Canada, to the emirate has angered Canada, where politicians from all sides vowed on Friday to band together to fight the proposed move.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which sets international civil aviation standards, has been in Montreal since its founding in 1946. Qatar presented the ICAO with an unsolicited offer last month to serve as the new permanent seat of the organization, beginning in 2016.
The proposal included construction of new premises, paying to move materials and staffers, and paying for all expenses resulting from staff terminations and severance packages, the UN agency said. Qatar did not tell Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird about the bid when he visited the Gulf nation last month.
“They didn’t do us the courtesy of raising this with us directly when the minister was in Qatar last month,” Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Rick Roth said.
He said that the way Qatar has acted “demonstrates why they are not a suitable host for a United Nations organization.”
Baird reiterated with a jab about the Gulf country’s climate.
“I, for one, would much rather have four seasons, rather than a crushing humid temperature of more than 40oC 12 months a year,” he said, speaking in French during a news conference in Montreal, where Baird presented an unusually united front with a minister from Quebec’s separatist provincial government.
The prospect of losing the UN agency from Montreal is so alarming that Quebec Minister of International Affairs Jean-Francois Lisee said Qatar’s bid to take the ICAO may have prompted “one of the greatest political reunions in the history of Quebec and Canada.”
Lisee said Qatar has noted Montreal’s cold winters as a reason to move the ICAO.
“So we have counter-arguments and we will not be shy about the fact that winter is something that you can enjoy and it doesn’t last all year,” Lisee said. “And when you look at the heat in Doha all year, if you want to talk weather, we’ll talk weather.”
Qatar, one of the world’s richest countries, with vast oil and gas reserves, has been pushing to become a major global player in the past few years. It shocked the sporting world by beating out the US and others to host the soccer World Cup in 2022 and is looking to host the 2020 summer Olympic Games. It also has taken a role in Middle East politics, providing weapons and funding to the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, promoting peace in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region and pushing for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion