Indonesian President and G20 Chairman Joko Widodo yesterday set off to Europe where he said he plans to visit Russia and Ukraine and meet with the countries’ leaders to urge peace talks.
Widodo departed for Germany to attend the G7 summit as a guest yesterday and today, after which he plans to go to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“The mission is to ask ... President Zelenskiy to open a dialogue forum for peace, to build peace because the war has to be stopped,” Widodo told a news conference in Jakarta.
Photo: Reuters
The two leaders would also discuss the food supply chain “that needs to be reactivated” soon, Widodo said.
After Kyiv, Widodo is to visit Moscow and meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The visit to Moscow is planned for Thursday, Indonesian authorities said earlier.
“With the same mission, I will ask President Putin to open a dialogue and to immediately have a ceasefire and to stop the war,” he said.
In April, Widodo announced he had called Zelenskiy and invited him to join world leaders as a guest at a G20 summit in Bali in November.
Indonesia holds the rotating presidency of the G20 this year and has been pressured by Western countries, led by the US, to exclude Russia from the meeting.
However, Widodo did not rescind the invitation to Russia and said that Putin has expressed his intention to attend the November summit.
Indonesia, like most major emerging economies, has tried to maintain a neutral position and has called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Widodo refused to send weapons to Ukraine in response to a request from Zelenskiy, instead offering humanitarian aid.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion