A planned South African peace conference involving Nobel laureates has been postponed over Pretoria’s refusal to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama, organizers said yesterday.
“The convenors have therefore decided in the spirit of peace to postpone the South African peace conference to ensure it is held under conducive conditions,” said Irvin Khoza, a top official for the South African organizers of the 2010 World Cup, which was sponsoring the conference.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former South African president FW de Klerk withdrew from the conference on Monday after the Dalai Lama was denied a visa.
Tutu accused the government of “shamelessly succumbing to Chinese pressure.”
The Dalai Lama was part of a top billing of Nobel laureates, Tutu, de Klerk and former South African president Nelson Mandela, who had been due to participate in the conference on the power of soccer to fight racism and xenophobia.
“In processing of the visa application by the Dalai Lama the South African government persuaded the Dalai Lama to postpone his visit to South Africa at this stage,” Khoza told reporters at a press conference in Johannesburg.
“Given that the purpose of the conference is peace the convenors do not wish to put the Nobel peace committee under circumstances that would create conflict between the committee and its laureates,” he said.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee also said it would boycott the conference unless South Africa reconsidered its decision to deny the Dalai Lama a visa.
The government has denied interference by China in the decision, but a Chinese embassy official in Pretoria told the Sunday Independent that Beijing had asked Pretoria not to grant the visa.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS