Activists will demonstrate in Beijing during the Olympics to press China to help end bloodshed in Darfur, a group said yesterday, adding to the government's public relations headaches as it tries to quell protests in Tibet.
The announcement came as two US-based groups released a report that accused Beijing of blocking efforts to compel the Sudanese government to end fighting in its western Darfur region.
"We are planning some actions during the Games themselves in Beijing," Dream for Darfur executive director Jill Savitt said in a conference call with reporters.
Savitt said the group was keeping details secret "for fear we would not be able to pull off those events."
Activists are calling on Beijing, a diplomatic ally of Sudan and buyer of its oil, to help end fighting in Darfur.
They have been pressing Olympics sponsors to lobby Beijing for action or face pickets at their headquarters or other protests.
In their report, Dream for Darfur and Save Darfur rejected Beijing's assertions that it has been trying to bring peace to the region.
They accused China, a permanent Security Council member, of blocking or weakening UN measures to compel Sudan to end the violence while supplying Khartoum with weapons.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
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