A senior team from US President Donald Trump’s administration would begin talks in Saudi Arabia with Russian and Ukrainian negotiators on ending the Ukraine war, US officials said on Saturday.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff are to head to Saudi Arabia for the talks, the officials said.
The move comes just days after Trump announced that he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time since returning to office, and that they had agreed to start talks on a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Photo: Reuters
The officials gave no further details of when the meetings would happen or when the officials would travel.
However, Rubio had already been due to visit Saudi Arabia as part his first tour of the Middle East, which began on Saturday when he arrived in Israel.
Rubio on Saturday had a telephone call with his Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov, in which he “reaffirmed President Trump’s commitment to finding an end to the conflict in Ukraine,” the US Department of State said.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Lavrov and Rubio agreed to work on restoring “mutually respectful interstate dialogue” in line with the tone set by the presidents.
Former property developer Witkoff was heavily involved in a prisoner exchange deal earlier this week that paved the way for the call between Trump and Putin.
Witkoff even traveled to Moscow to bring home US detainee Marc Fogel.
In a social media post announcing the Putin call earlier this week, Trump had said he had tasked Rubio, Waltz, Witkoff and CIA Director John Ratcliffe to immediately get to work on a deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who met with US Vice President JD Vance in Germany on Friday, said Ukraine was not invited to the talks in Saudi Arabia and Kyiv would not engage with Russia before consulting with strategic partners.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to start construction of its 1.4-nanometer chip manufacturing facilities at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP, 中部科學園區) as early as October, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday, citing the park administration. TSMC acquired land for the second phase of the park’s expansion in Taichung in June. Large cement, construction and facility engineering companies in central Taiwan have reportedly been receiving bids for TSMC-related projects, the report said. Supply-chain firms estimated that the business opportunities for engineering, equipment and materials supply, and back-end packaging and testing could reach as high as
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Democratic nations should refrain from attending China’s upcoming large-scale military parade, which Beijing could use to sow discord among democracies, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) said. China is scheduled to stage the parade on Wednesday next week to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. The event is expected to mobilize tens of thousands of participants and prominently showcase China’s military hardware. Speaking at a symposium in Taichung on Thursday, Shen said that Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) recently met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to New Delhi.
FINANCES: The KMT plan to halt pension cuts could bankrupt the pension fund years earlier, undermining intergenerational fairness, a Ministry of Civil Service report said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus’ proposal to amend the law to halt pension cuts for civil servants, teachers and military personnel could accelerate the depletion of the Public Service Pension Fund by four to five years, a Ministry of Civil Service report said. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) on Aug. 14 said that the Act Governing Civil Servants’ Retirement, Discharge and Pensions (公務人員退休資遣撫卹法) should be amended, adding that changes could begin as soon as after Saturday’s recall and referendum. In a written report to the Legislative Yuan, the ministry said that the fund already faces a severe imbalance between revenue
RSS