Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir yesterday arrived in Juba calling for an end to three weeks of fighting in South Sudan as mediators struggled to get peace negotiations under way in Ethiopia.
There were reports of ongoing fierce clashes near the rebel-held town of Bor, 200km north of the capital, Juba, with South Sudan’s army pouring in reinforcements in a bid to recapture the area.
“There should be peace and security in South Sudan,” Bashir said as he visited Juba for talks with his counterpart, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir.
“We come so that we can bring peace to South Sudan, to our brothers and sisters in South Sudan. Our relationship is very important,” Bashir told reporters.
South Sudan won independence from Khartoum in 2011 after decades of war, but the north remains a key player — serving as the export route for the South’s oil.
Peace talks, brokered by the East African regional bloc IGAD and aimed at securing an elusive ceasefire, were set to start in Addis Ababa in yesterday afternoon, Ethiopian government spokesman Getachew Reda said.
Despite movement on the diplomatic front, the fighting continued.
Army spokesman Philip Aguer said on Sunday it was only a “matter of time” before Bor was retaken, and said government forces were also on the offensive in the oil-producing Unity and Upper Nile states in the north.
UN officials say they believe thousands of people have already been killed, and both sides are alleged to have committed atrocities.
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
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