French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France is ready to resume normal contacts with Syria once it cooperates in Lebanon by allowing the election of a president, in an interview published yesterday.
"It is from the moment there is a concrete result obtained in Lebanon that we can evisage a real normalization and resumption of a true dialogue with Damascus on all regional subjects and not only on" Lebanon, Sarkozy was quoted as saying in the Saudi daily Al Hayat.
"What we are waiting for is for Lebanese politicians to assume their responsibilities and put into action an Arab plan, beginning with the immediate election of the consensus [presidential] candidate Michel Sleiman," he said.
"That presupposes as well that all regional parties, beginning with Syria, play a positive role in this," said Sarkozy, who was to begin a three-nation Gulf tour in Saudia Arabia yesterday.
Sarkozy ordered normal contacts with Syria broken off late last month, accusing Damascus of failing to match its words about wanting a settlement to the crisis in Lebanon with deeds on the ground.
The government of pro-Western Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has accused the pro-Syrian opposition of repeatedly blocking the vote at the behest of Damascus after the two sides reached agreement on army chief Sleiman as a compromise candidate.
Lebanon has been without a president since pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud stepped down on Nov. 23 with no elected successor because of bitter rivalry between the pro- and anti-Syrian camps.
The Arab initiative is based on a three-point plan that calls for the election of Sleiman as president, the formation of a national unity government in which no one party has veto power and the adoption of a new electoral law.
Although the ruling coalition has given the plan its full backing, the Shiite militant group Hezbollah is insisting the opposition be granted a third of the seats in a new 30-member government so as to have veto power over key decisions.
Sarkozy also called for increased international pressure on Iran over its refusal to halt its contested nuclear program.
"Iran is persistent in not respecting its international obligations, we want to continue to increase international pressure within the [UN] Security Council and European Union, until the country fulfills all its international obligations, that is to say it suspends sensitive activities and implements supplementary guarantees sought by the IAEA," Sarkozy said.
When asked if he thought US President George W. Bush could launch a military strike against Iran before he leaves office next year, Sarkozy said "our objective is a solution negotiated within the framework of a multilateral system."
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late