Suspected jihadists killed 16 villagers in northern Burkina Faso on Monday in an incident highlighting the increased presence of Sahel-based Islamists in the area, local and security sources said.
The gunmen came to Pobe-Mengao, about 200 km (160 miles) north of the capital Ouagadougou, threatening to take away children and telling villagers to help them buy weapons, a security source told Reuters.
When they refused, they were shot dead, the sources said. A security source told Reuters that the death toll had reached 16.
An Islamist insurgency with links to Islamic State and al-Qaida has crossed into Burkina Faso this year from neighboring Mali, igniting ethnic and religious tensions, especially in northern regions.
Attacks by Islamist militants as well as clashes between herding and farming communities have surged since, killing hundreds of civilians and soldiers in a country that used to be a pocket of relative calm in the Sahel.
The government did not immediately comment on the killings.
California Governor Gavin Newsom says there are hopes that by later Monday the near historic winds that are driving a huge wildfire in the northern part of the state will “substantially settle down” as some 3,000 people work to put out the blaze.
“We’re not out of the woods, but we are leaning in the right direction,” Newsom said at a late Sunday briefing.
The western U.S. state is commonly hit by numerous wildfires at this time of year with the combination of low humidity and strong winds combining to create favorable conditions for fire growth.
Firefighters had said the Kincade Fire, named for a local road where the flames are believed to have started in Sonoma County, was at 10% containment, but as of late Sunday that had dropped to 5% with the fire at about 22,000 hectares in size.
Cal Fire said the blaze had already destroyed about 100 structures.
California State Senator Mike McGuire said 4,600 people have gone to shelters in Sonoma County.
Statewide, about 180,000 people have evacuated their homes to seek safety from wildfires.
Newsom declared a state of emergency Sunday and said there is “no question” the evacuations have saved lives.
“Go means go,” he said, encouraging people to heed any evacuation orders.
In Southern California, fire officials said a much smaller wildfire in Santa Clarita near Los Angeles was 70% contained, but not before it destroyed several dozen buildings.
The California utility company Pacific Gas & Electric shut off power to nearly 1 million homes and businesses across Northern California, some with little notice, as part of a strategy to try to prevent surges from downed power lines sparking more fires.
Businesses are angry that the power cuts have cost them tens of thousands of dollars, and residents bitterly complain about the inconvenience of going days without electricity, especially those who need power for life-saving medical devices.
California authorities blame PG&E lines for sparking last year’s wildfires that killed 85 people and destroyed entire towns. The utility, facing billions of dollars in lawsuits, was forced to declare bankruptcy earlier this year.
Governor Newsom, who had criticized the utilities, said the state will spend $75 million to help residents and businesses deal with the power cuts. He said the state has a lot of work to do toward putting electrical wires underground and to manage forests in order to prevent both wildfire damage and the need to shut off the power.
Negotiations on a sweeping 16-nation free trade deal and a code of conduct for the hotly contested South China Sea are expected to take center stage at a summit of Asian leaders in Bangkok next month.
The leaders of all 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are due to attend the bloc’s regular year-end summit on Nov. 2-4, along with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva are also expected.
Meetings related to the summit begin Thursday.
RCEP a big deal
As this year’s chair of ASEAN, Thailand is hoping to end its run with negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) all but done. In the works since 2012, the deal is seen by some as China’s retort to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiations for which excluded China and fell apart when the US pulled out.
Taking in all 10 ASEAN countries and six others — Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea — it would cover 45 percent of the world’s population and a third of global GDP.
With India and China still at loggerheads over market access, “signing of the RCEP deal seems unlikely” at the summit, said Peter Mumford, head of Southeast Asia coverage for political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
“But ASEAN hopes to at least be able to announce that substantial progress has been made, to ensure momentum is sustained,” he added.
Prapat Thepchatree, who heads the ASEAN Studies Center at Thammasat University, said Thailand was keen to show progress under its watch, especially in the face of the rising tide of protectionism, not least from the US-China trade war.
Once in place, the RCEP will have “a big impact in terms of financial terms and also in terms of psychological terms. It will give a big push … for all regional countries in this part of the world to hope that we still have a chance to support a liberal economic order, ” he said.
With specific tariff negotiations on 80 percent of goods and services complete, and on most others nearly so, the countries could come very close to wrapping up a deal this year, said Piti Srisangnam, director of academic affairs for the ASEAN Studies Center at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University.
Order in the South China Sea
At its last leader’s summit in June, ASEAN said it also hoped to finish the year with the negotiating draft of a code of conduct for the South China Sea ready for a first reading. The code would set the rules for settling disputes in the busy sea lane, where China has competing claims with several bloc members to teeming fishing grounds and a seabed potentially rich in oil and gas.
Piti said he was hopeful the bloc would announce that the draft was ready for a first reading during the summit, adding that China has raised few complaints with the document of late.
“I am expecting…good news,” he said. “There are some good signals from both [sides].”
Independence from both China and the US
At the last summit, the bloc also adopted the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, a policy plan that aims to give its members a lead role in tying the Indian and Pacific oceans together while resisting the pull of China and the US to fall wholly into either’s orbit.
“I think this document will put big powers in a difficult position to reject it, and in practice … they will have to accept it as a regional principle, and that will [allow] ASEAN to play an important role,” Prapat said. “For the November summit, the task is for ASEAN to convince other big powers to agree to accept this document.”
As part of the balancing act, he said ASEAN will use the summit to try to further link its infrastructure plans with China’s Belt and Road Initiative while urging the US, Japan and other powers as well to invest in more projects across the bloc. Thailand has used its latest term as bloc chair to push for connecting the region digitally as well, he added.
Will President Trump attend?
It remains to be seen whether they will get the chance to make their case to US President Donald Trump himself. Neither the US Embassy in Bangkok nor the Thai Foreign Affairs Ministry, which is organizing the summit, would comment on whether he would attend.
Should Trump choose to stay away, Prapat said it would further embolden China to assert its will over the region.
While his absence has already been factored into expectations, Mumford said, it could still “reinforce the view of some countries in the region that this US administration is less engaged” in Southeast Asia.
Piti said the US president may have a strong bearing on the summit either way — by spurring on those who do attend to see the RCEP through.
“If they conclude the RCEP by this summit, they should thank Donald Trump … because of his trade war policy,” he said.
Conservative President Mauricio Macri conceded defeat in Argentina’s election Sunday night, paving the way for the country’s Peronist center-left to return to power under Alberto Fernandez as frustrated voters rejected the incumbent’s handling of a bruising economic crisis that has sunk many into poverty.
The result would mark a dramatic return to high office of former President Cristina Fernandez, Alberto Fernandez’s vice presidential running mate, former boss and what critics say might be the power behind his throne.
Macri told supports at his headquarters that he had called Alberto Fernandez to congratulate him and invited him for a breakfast chat Monday at the Pink Presidential Palace.
“We need an orderly transition that will bring tranquility to all Argentines, because the most important thing is the well-being of all Argentines,” Macri said.
Authorities said Fernandez has 47.83% of the votes compared to 40.66% for Macri, with 91.21% percent of the votes counted. He needs 45% support, or 40% support with a 10 percentage point lead, over the nearest rival to avoid a runoff vote on Nov. 24.
Macri was elected president in 2015 promising to jumpstart the country’s economy. Argentines rejected at the time a successor chosen by ex-president Fernandez, who along with her late husband dominated Argentina’s political scene for 12 years and rewrote its social contract. But the divisive former leader, who embodies Argentina’s enduring cycle of hope and despair, appears back.
Thousands of the two Fernandezes supporters crowded outside their campaign headquarters in a jubilant celebration waving sky-blue and white Argentine flags.
“I’m so happy. We were waiting for this change for a long time. We’re tired of everything that has been happening,” said supporter Juan Jose De Antonio, 46. “Some of us live a different reality from those suffering hunger, but when you have a friend who lost a job, a neighbor who can’t make ends meet, it hits you.”
Alberto Fernandez greeted sympathizers who gathered outside the gate of his apartment chanting: “Alberto presidente!”
Sunday’s largely peaceful election was dominated by concerns over rising poverty, a sharp depreciation of the currency and one of the world’s highest inflation rates. Voters appear to have rejected austerity measures that Macri insisted were needed to revive Argentina’s struggling economy. Many Argentines have taken to the streets frustrated with cuts to rises in fuel and transportation costs.
The result would mark a triumphant comeback for Cristina Fernandez and a shift leftward for South America, which has seen conservative governments elected in Brazil, Colombia and Chile in recent years. She was considered part of the “pink tide” of leftist governments that arose in the region in the 1990s and 2000s.
Former President Cristina Fernandez, who is running as vice president with center-left Peronist candidate Alberto Fernandez, arrives to vote in Rio Gallegos, Argentina, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2019.
Now a left-leaning government appears set to govern Argentina, and governments in Chile, Peru and Ecuador fueled by discontent over corruption, inequality and slowing growth.
“We Argentines deserve a better country, with work, where we can live peacefully, above all,” said Antonella Bruna, 32, as she voted at the medical school of the National University of Rosario, about 290 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires.
Macri retains wide support among the key farming sector in one of the world’s top suppliers of grains. But overall frustration over the economy has eroded the popularity of the pro-business former mayor of Buenos Aires. It has also propelled the candidacy of Alberto Fernandez, whose surge has sent jitters in the financial markets over a possible return to interventionist polices of Cristina Fernandez’s 2007-2015 administration.
Macri’s camp has tried to capitalize on that unease, portraying her as a puppet master waiting in the wings. But the presidential candidate has dismissed those fears and voters gave him a decisive victory over Macri in August primaries, which are a barometer of support for candidates ahead of the presidential election.
Fernandez served as chief of staff from 2003 to 2007 for Cristina Fernandez’s predecessor and late husband, Nestor Kirchner. He remained in the position during part of her term as president but left after a conflict with farmers in 2008.
Peronism is a broad but splintered political movement in the South American country of 44 million people.
On the election trail, Fernandez has criticized Macri’s decision to seek a record $56 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund, a deeply unpopular institution in Argentina that is blamed for creating the conditions that led to the country’s worst economic meltdown in 2001.
Macri is credited with returning Argentina to international global markets following a break after the 2001 crisis and with helping strike a free trade deal between South America’s Mercosur bloc and the European Union amid global trade tensions and rising protectionism. But he failed to deliver on promises to jumpstart the economy of the recession-hit country, while Argentines continue to lose purchasing power to an inflation rate of more than 55 percent and about a third have been plunged under the poverty line.
On the campaign trail, Macri has pleaded for more time to reverse fortunes and reminds voters of the corruption cases facing Cristina Fernandez, who has denied any wrongdoing and remains a powerful if divisive figure in Argentina.
“It’s important so we don’t go back to the time of the Kirchners, when there was so much robbery, so much embezzlement. That wouldn’t be good for the country,” said Bernarda Nidia Guichandut, who helped her elderly parents into a car to go to vote. “Macri is honest. He’s made mistakes, he’s backtracked, but he’s said: “Fine, I was wrong.”
For the most part, the election atmosphere was calm and turnout large, though the Buenos Aires Province police department said more than 1,000 people were evacuated following 11 reports of bomb threats to schools that were being used as polling stations. No explosives were found.
Argentines are also choosing 130 lower house seats and 24 senators in Congress, as well as regional mayors, governors for three provinces and the head of government for the Argentine capital.
Hundreds of policemen from Haiti’s National Police Force, PNH, took to the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince Sunday, dressed in civilian clothes to protest against what they say are deplorable work conditions.
The police officers, who are demanding officials allow them to form a union, complain they have not been paid for months, while being expected to risk their lives to maintain law and order. This was the first time law enforcement officers have taken to the streets since the nationwide anti-government protests began last summer.
“They are holding 6 months (of) salary they owe us, that’s not good, it’s not logical,” a policeman told VOA Creole. “When we show up somewhere and say we are police, if we don’t have a decent car to ride in they don’t even believe us – they take us for criminals because we aren’t getting paid so we can’t take care of ourselves.”
Another policeman draped in a Haitian flag and wearing a straw hat with Haiti printed in blue and red letters on it told VOA Creole they are defending rights guaranteed under the nation’s constitution.
“The constitution says we have the right to form a union, to defend our rights,” he said. “We want to thank the civilians, our wives, friends and the people of Haiti who are out here with us protesting today. We also send a warning to the police officials to say that if they think they can fire us and continue mistreating us they are wrong. If that happens the entire country will be turned upside down.”
Haiti’s policemen take to the streets to demand justice, better work conditions and the right to unionize in Port au Prince, Oct 27 , 2019. (Matiado Vilme / VOA Creole)
Haiti’s National Police force has been plagued by allegations of corruption and human rights violations. Protesters often allege that men in police uniforms driving unmarked cars have been firing on them with live ammunition. The police claim to only be using rubber bullets during the protests. But the accusation was backed by opposition lawmakers and journalists covering the protests who witnessed the protesters’ injuries. This, in spite of the fact that the United States has spent millions of dollars to help train the force. PNH Officials say the force that exists today is a work in progress and far more professional, but problems persist.
This weekend, the PNH intelligence chief Frantz Georges was fired by police chief Norvil Rameau after an investigation into an incident where an officer under his supervision wound up dead, with his body thrown into the street, according to the Miami Herald.
Jacqueline Charles on Twitter
“Another difficult day of protests in #Haiti with even police officers demonstrating. “When was the last time you heard the police protesting?” a human rights activist said to me.”
Another difficult day of protests in #Haiti with even police officers demonstrating. “When was the last time you heard the police protesting?” a human rights activist said to me.
Senator Patrice Dumont, a member of parliament who is well-respected by colleagues and citizens alike for being a no-nonsense guy who shuns corruption, joined the policemen in the streets.
“I’m out here to show support for the police and to say that they should have access to services that are on par with the service they provide to society,” the senator told VOA Creole. “For example, after having served for years in the police force they should have certain social services available to them such as housing, health care and insurance.” Dumont said policemen should be paid immediately by the government when funds become available.
Opposition leader Rene Civil of the Altenativ Konsansyel pou Refondasyon Leta party (Consensual Alternative for the Refoundation of the State), also joined the policemen in the streets.
“I understand why they are protesting, they are young men and women who, after finishing school, dedicated their lives to serving the nation and they are treated like worthless individuals,” Civil told VOA Creole.
One of the policemen said they will not return to work until their demands are met.
“If they don’t respond tonight, tomorrow morning we will remain arms crossed, we will not go to work, we will not take orders (from higher ups). That’s all I have to say,” the officer, wearing a black cap with POLICE in white printed on the front, told VOA Creole.
Haiti police protest in Port au Prince, Sunday, Oct 27, 2019. Poster says “19,000 (about 1,900 US dollars) Gourdes cannot support a family.” (Matiado Vilme / VOA Creole)
Cape Haitian protest
In Cape Haitian, hundreds of policemen chanted slogans and held up pink posters that echoed the demands of their colleagues in Port-au-Prince for a union, insurance and better work conditions. They marched to the police headquarters and stood in front of the gates chanting.
In Cape Haitian, northern #Haiti policemen are in the streets, just like in Port au Prince, to demand better work conditions and a union to protect their rights. ?Philippe Augustin @VOAKreyol#PNHpic.twitter.com/LmzFTSGQLV
Meanwhile back in the capital, Protestant pastor Prophete Makenson was also in the streets with his followers after church services demanding the president step down.
“I’m just asking for a resignation, that’s why I’m in the street today,” the pastor told VOA Creole. “I’m 33 years old, like many young men out in the streets, we can’t (afford to) eat, we can’t (afford to) drink.”
Protestants joined thousands of anti-government protests for the first time last Sunday when they marched to the affluent suburb of Petionville.
Businesses targeted
The anti-government protest took a violent turn in the afternoon, undeterred by police who were busy protesting as well on the other side of town. Some protesters successfully set fire to business establishments and attempted to burn down the Canadian Embassy. They ran away when the embassy alarm sounded, alerting authorities. No damage was reported.
But in the Delmas neighborhood, the power generator at Banj, a multi-use complex that houses several tech startups was set ablaze.
#Haiti protesters in a separate demonstration against the government set fire to @banjHT power generator. This, in addition to last month’s looting of the multi-use complex housing several startups in Port au Prince. @marcalainbpic.twitter.com/QqrjIeNa3Q
Owner Marc Allain Boucicault tweeted an SOS to the local fire department to rush to the scene to extinguish the blaze, which endangered the building itself. Boucicault later tweeted that the fire had been put out but the generator was destroyed. The Banj building remained intact, he said. Last month, protesters looted the business, taking equipment, furniture and everything else they could get their hands on, incurring thousands of dollars in losses.
Protesters also targeted the Coin restaurant on the Delmas road, setting fire to the building. In the affluent suburb of Petionville, protesters set fire to a car parked at the Ponp Sol Sent Terez gas station.
The protests were initially sparked by a fuel hike in July 2018, and outrage over a corruption report that implicated the president’s businesses. Double-digit inflation, unemployment and the president’s seeming incapability to put order to the chaos that has engulfed the nation have also roiled the nation. The weekly demonstrations have paralyzed the country, shuttering businesses and schools. The U.S. and Canada have published advisories discouraging their citizens from traveling to Haiti.
Late Thursday, the U. S. Embassy in Haiti issued a statement late urging Haiti’s leaders and stakeholders to enter into dialogue to try to resolve the crisis, but the opposition, anti-corruption activists and most protesters rebuffed the call saying the international community has no business meddling in the country’s affairs.
For now, President Jovenel Moise shows no signs of conceding to protesters’ demands to resign, so the opposition and anti-corruption activists have called for a new series of protests to keep up the pressure.
Joe Biden called it “improper” for President Donald Trump for having his daughter and son-in-law hold positions in the White House, suggesting in a CBS interview Sunday that Jared Kushner is not qualified to weigh in on the complex affairs assigned by his father-in-law.
That assessment, which the Democratic presidential hopeful offered in a wide-ranging “60 Minutes” interview, ratchets up the rhetoric between Trump and Biden over each other’s adult children and family business affairs.
Biden told CBS that he doesn’t like “going after” politicians’ children, but he said none of his children would hold White House posts, even as he continued to defend his son, Hunter, against Trump’s charges that the Biden’s are corrupt because of the younger Biden’s international business affairs while his father was vice president.
“You should make it clear to the American public that everything you’re doing is for them,” Biden said, according to a CBS transcript, when he was asked about Ivanka Trump and Kushner, her husband, in White House posts with significant policy portfolios.
“Their actions speak for themselves,” Biden said of the Trump family. “I can just tell you this, that if I’m president get elected president my children are not gonna have offices in the White House. My children are not gonna sit in on Cabinet meetings.”
Asked specifically whether he thinks Kushner should be tasked with negotiating Middle East peace agreements, Biden laughed. “No, I don’t,” he said. “What credentials does he bring to that?”
Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine and China remains an emphasis of Trump’s broadsides against Biden, a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. The younger Biden took a post on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm after his father became the Obama administration’s point man on U.S.-Ukraine relations.
Trump’s focus on finding information about the Biden’s Ukraine connections is now at the heart of a House impeachment inquiry against the president. Ukrainian investigators have found no legal wrongdoing by either Biden.
Noting that, the former vice president blasted social media giant Facebook for allowing the Trump campaign to distribute online ads framing the Bidens as corrupt.
“You know, I’m glad they brought the Russians down,” Biden said, noting Facebook’s recent decision to shut down accounts that were distributing misinformation, including about Biden. But, the former vice president asked, “Why don’t you bring down the lies that Trump is telling and everybody knows are lies?”
Hunter Biden in a recent interview said the only thing his father said to him at the time he took the post at Burisma was, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
The elder Biden told CBS he never got into any details over the firm, which had been the focus on Ukrainian corruption inquiries.
“What I meant by that is I hope you’ve thought this through. I hope you know exactly what you’re doing here,” the elder Biden said. “That’s all I meant. Nothing more than that because I’ve never discussed my business or their business, my sons’ or daughter’s. And I’ve never discussed them because they know where I have to do my job and that’s it and they have to make their own judgments.”
And turning the issue back on the president, Biden repeated a line he’s started using on the campaign trail, urging Trump to release his tax returns. “Mr. President … let’s see how straight you are, okay old buddy?” Biden said. “I put out 21 years of mine. You wanna deal with corruption? Start to act like it. Release your tax returns or shut up.”
Trump’s attacks have not displaced Biden as a duel Democratic front-runner alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But it has nonetheless raised new questions about Biden’s argument that he’d be the best Democrat to take on the Republican president in a general election. And the Biden attack ads Trump and Republicans have financed in early nominating states, combined with Biden’s own lagging fundraising, have led some of his wealthy supporters to openly discuss the possibility of launching an independent political action committee.
Biden’s CBS interview was taped before his recent decision to reverse his previous opposition to such a Super PAC, a move that Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders have indirectly criticized. Biden did address his campaign’s cash balance being dwarfed by Warren and Sanders, saying he’s “not worried” about raising enough money.
As to just how he can withstand Sanders’ and Warren’s grassroots fundraising juggernauts, he replied, “I just flat beat them.”
Tens of thousands of people are marching in Barcelona to protest the separatist movement in the northeastern Catalonia region that has produced Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.
Barcelona’s police say 80,000 people have rallied Sunday on one of the city’s main streets, with many carrying Spanish and Catalan flags.
One poster read in English: “We are Catalonians too, stop this madness!!”
The rally in favor of Spanish unity comes after several days of protests – some of which have spiraled into violent clashes with police – by Catalan separatists. They are angered by a Supreme Court ruling that sentenced nine of separatist leaders to prison for a failed 2017 secession attempt.
Polls say the 7.5 million residents of the wealthy Catalonia region are roughly evenly divided on the secession question.
Pakistan’s ailing former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was jailed on money-laundering and corruption charges, has remained in a government hospital where he was taken last week after suffering a heart attack.
Maryam Aurangzeb, a spokesman for the ex-premier’s Muslim League party, says Sunday that Sharif’s health condition won’t allow for him to be moved to another hospital.
Mahmood Ayaz, the hospital’s top official, said its medical board hasn’t approved moving Sharif and he himself hasn’t requested it.
Islamabad’s High Court Saturday granted temporary freedom to Sharif until another two-judge panel decides Tuesday whether Sharif’s seven-year sentence on a corruption conviction should be suspended due to his illness.
Sharif served three times as prime minister. Supreme Court removed him from office in 2017 on corruption allegations.
Thousands of supporters of an ultra-religious party are gathering in Karachi to start a large anti-government march on Pakistan’s capital farther north.
Mufti Abrar Ahmed, spokesman for the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, says its leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman will lead the protesters’ caravan setting off later on Sunday.
The beginning of the JUI protest also marks the anniversary of the start of the conflict over Kashmir, a province both India and Pakistan claim. Separate, anti-India protests are planned across Pakistan.
Ahmed said supporters from Karachi and surrounding areas will travel in buses and vans toward the capital. He said the caravan plans to reach Islamabad on Oct. 31st, to protest Prime Minister Imran Khan’s “illegitimate” government which the Islamist party says came to power through the army’s support.
Pope Francis has thanked Amazon regional bishops for their “candor” at a meeting which called for ordaining married priests and other changes to help the Catholic church’s far-flung flock in that part of South America.
In his homily Sunday at a Mass to conclude weeks of discussions at the Vatican on the needs of the Amazon’s faithful, Francis didn’t mention the bishops’ vote to press the Vatican to allow married men to become priests in special circumstances.
A day earlier, Francis told bishops he would draw his conclusions in a document he hoped to write by year’s end.
Allowing married men to be ordained in remote Amazon areas that are facing severe shortage of priests would chip away at the Catholic Church’s nearly millennium-old teaching upholding priestly celibacy.
An Afghan politician confirms that U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad is in Afghanistan’s capital for his first visit since talks between the U.S. and Taliban collapsed last month.
Sayed Hamid Gailani, leader of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, posted on his Twitter account late Saturday that he met with Khalilzad and his team in Kabul to discuss the country’s recent presidential elections and peace efforts.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, an Afghan official also confirmed Sunday that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had met with Khalilzad.
He said that the meeting took place at the presidential palace on Saturday.
Khalilzad’s visit to Kabul follows a meeting in Moscow he held with representatives of China, Russia and Pakistan, over restarting peace talks to end Afghanistan’s 18-year-old war.
An ex-White House aide who’s supposed to testify before House impeachment investigators on Monday is seeking guidance from a federal court about whether to comply with a House subpoena or follow President Donald Trump’s directive against cooperating.
Former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman has asked a judge in Washington to instruct him on whether to accede to House demands for his testimony or to assert “immunity from congressional process” as directed by Trump.
Kupperman argues that he cannot satisfy the competing demands of the legislative and executive branches.
Testifying Saturday was Philip Reeker, the acting assistant secretary of state for Europe.
