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The heat wave is expected to peak between Wednesday and Friday when temperatures are expected to top 40 degrees Celsius from Spain to Poland.
Authorities warned early summer heat waves are especially dangerous because people have not had to adapt to the higher temperatures.
French Health Minister Agnes Buzyn said more than half of France is on alert for high temperatures. Public service announcements on TV, radio, and on buses and trains urged the French to keep an eye out for older family members and neighbors.
Most of France is under an orange alert, the second-highest level on the country’s heat scale. The scale was established after the 2003 heat wave killed some 15,000 people.
The French Education Ministry ordered the national school exams to be postponed to next week. Paris city officials mobilized teams to hand out water to the homeless. The city also extended the hours for city pools, and set up thousands of misting tents and cooling rooms.
Authorities in Switzerland also raised that country’s alert to its second-highest level, especially for regions along the southern and northern borders with Italy and Germany.
Germany’s meteorological agency said temperatures Wednesday could break the current record in June of 38.5 Celsius.
Temperatures also soared in the Baltics, sending scores of people to lakes and rivers to cool down, leading to a spike in drownings. In Lithuania, where the highs reached 35.7 degrees Celsius, 27 people were reported to have drowned.
Heat waves are becoming more common across Europe and are expected to double in frequency by 2050, the French meteorological agency says.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday during a visit to Afghanistan that the Trump administration is aiming for a peace deal in the war-ravaged country by September.
His visit came as American and Taliban negotiators are scheduled to meet in Qatar later this week (June 29) for the next round of talks in their months-long dialogue aimed at finding a political settlement to the Afghan war.
“I hope we have a peace deal before September 1st. That’s certainly our mission set,” Pompeo told reporters at the U.S. embassy in Kabul after his meetings with Afghan leaders. The country is due to hold presidential elections on September 28.
The U.S.-Taliban dialogue process is primarily focused on working out a timeline for the withdrawal of American and NATO forces from Afghanistan in return for assurances international terrorists will not be allowed to use Taliban-controlled areas for attacks against other countries.
The insurgent group controls or contests more than 50% of the Afghan territory and continues to inflict battlefield losses on U.S.-backed Afghan security forces,
“We have made real progress and are nearly ready to conclude a draft text outlining the Taliban’s commitments to join fellow Afghans in ensuring that Afghan soil never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists,” Pompeo noted.
He said discussions with the Taliban regarding foreign troop withdrawal have begun. Pompeo also said insurgent claims that Washington has agreed to pull out of Afghanistan are not true.
“While we’ve made clear to the Taliban that we are prepared to remove our forces, I want to be clear we have not yet agreed on a timeline to do so,” Pompeo explained. He acknowledged the U.S.-Taliban discussions will be the basis for intra-Afghan peace and reconciliation talks.
Pompeo visited Kabul on a day when members of opposition groups held a large public gathering in the city to protest against extension given to President Ashraf Ghani by the country’s Supreme Court. They insisted Ghani’s constitutional five-year term ended in May and demanded the president must step down. The incumbent president is seeking re-election.
“We call upon the former president (Ghani) to withdraw his candidacy if he should continue to hold office as a caretaker president for the purpose of realization of the principles of justice and impartiality,” said a post-rally statement by the Council of Presidential Candidates (CPC).
Pompeo also emphasized the need for a credible Afghan presidential election.
“I urge the Afghan government, the Independent Election Commission, and all political stakeholders to take all necessary steps to ensure that the elections are credible,” Pompeo stressed.
A Kenyan ice hockey team, the only one in East Africa, has hosted an exhibition tournament with teams made up by foreign diplomats. The Kenya Ice Lions hope to bring more attention to the sport and its bid to qualify for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Sarah Kimani reports from Nairobi.
A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that new U.S. sanctions against Iran mark a permanent end to a diplomatic path for resolving tensions between the two countries.
“Imposing fruitless sanctions on Iran’s leadership and the chief of Iranian diplomacy mean the permanent closure of the road of diplomacy with the frustrated U.S. administration,” Abbas Mousavi wrote on Twitter.
He added that U.S. President Donald Trump’s approach is “destroying the established international mechanisms for maintaining world peace and security.”
The comments follow Trump’s move to impose what he called “hard-hitting” new financial sanctions against Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and eight senior commanders in the Iranian military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Trump signed an executive order Monday he said would curb access that Khamenei and Iran would have to world financial markets. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the action would “literally” lock up “tens and tens of billions of dollars” of Iranian assets.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gestures to a crowd at a June 4, 2019 ceremony in Tehran.
Mnuchin also said the United States could also target Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, one of Tehran’s best known figures on the world stage, with sanctions in the coming days.
Trump called his order a “strong and proportionate” American response to Tehran’s shoot-down last week of an unmanned U.S. drone, which Washington says occurred in international airspace near the Strait of Hormuz and Iran claims occurred over its airspace.
The U.S. leader said he imposed the sanctions because of a series of “belligerent acts” carried out by Iran, which U.S. officials say include Iran’s targeting of Norwegian and Japanese ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz with mine explosions days before the attack on the drone.
The executive order is aimed at pushing Tehran back to one-on-one talks with the U.S. over its nuclear weapons program after Trump last year withdrew from the 2015 international pact restraining Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump called the international deal negotiated by his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, “a disaster.”
“We’d love to be able to negotiate a deal,” Trump said.
But he declared, “Never can Iran have a nuclear weapon,” adding, “They sponsor terrorism like no one’s seen before.”
He said, “I look forward to the day when sanctions can be lifted and Iran can be a peace-loving nation. The people of Iran are great people.”
Mnuchin said earlier sanctions imposed when Trump pulled out of the international agreement have been “highly effective in locking up the Iranian economy.”
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies before a House Appropriations subcommittee, April 9, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
He said some of the sanctions Trump imposed Monday had been “in the works” before the drone was shot down, and some were being imposed because of the attack on the drone.
The Treasury Department headed by Mnuchin said that any foreign financial institution that engages in a “significant financial transaction” with the Iranians targeted by the sanctions could be cut off from U.S. financial deals.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the new sanctions as “significant” as he left Washington on Sunday for a trip to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to continue the Trump administration’s effort to build a coalition of allies to counter Iran. Pompeo met Monday with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“The world should know,” Pompeo said, “that we will continue to make sure it’s understood that this effort that we’ve engaged in to deny Iran the resources to foment terror, to build out their nuclear weapon system, to build out their missile program, we are going to deny them the resources they need to do that thereby keeping American interests and American people safe all around the world.”
Iran has defended its missile work as legal and necessary for its defense. Tehran has sought support from the remaining signatories to the 2015 agreement to provide the economic relief it wants, especially with its key oil exports as the U.S. has tightened sanctions in an attempt to cut off Iranian oil shipments.
Senior U.S. officials say they are already busy buttressing the nation’s defenses against foreign interference for the 2020 presidential election. Only they admit the public may be kept in the dark about attacks and intrusions.
Intelligence and election security officials have warned repeatedly that Russia, among other state and nonstate actors, remains intent on disrupting the upcoming elections and that the Kremlin may even have gone easy on the U.S. during the 2016 midterm elections, seeing the ability to impact the 2020 presidential race as the bigger prize.
At the same time, election and security officials have come under increased scrutiny for failing to reveal the size and scope of Russia’s efforts to hack into voter databases and other critical systems.
In April, special counsel Robert Mueller released his report into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as well as allegations of obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump.
Florida representatives
In May, two U.S. representatives from Florida, Republican Michael Waltz and Democrat Stephanie Murphy, wrote to the FBI and Justice Department, demanding a classified briefing on the extent of Russia’s exploits after the Mueller report indicated Moscow managed to infiltrate critical systems in at least one county during the 2016 presidential election.
“Florida voters have the right to know the extent to which foreign actors may have breached our state’s election security systems, and what the federal government is doing to prevent it from happening again,” Murphy said in a statement.
Senior Trump administration officials, however, cautioned Monday they may decide to keep information like that from the public.
“There are hard choices to be made,” one official told reporters while briefing them on efforts to protect the 2020 election from foreign interference.
“The ultimate question is going to be whether the federal or national interests in doing so — publicly disclosing it — outweigh any counter veiling consideration,” the official added.
Intelligence and law enforcement officials said the ability to disclose information can often be limited by the need to protect the sources and methods that discovered the attacks or intrusions in the first place.
Impact on victims
There are also concerns about the impact on the victims.
“Victims who work with the FBI do so because they trust that we’ll protect and handle their information appropriately,” a senior law enforcement official said. “For example, the majority of technical information that we were able to give election officials during the 2016 time frame was initiated from this type of trusted outreach.”
In cases involving foreign influence campaigns, the decision to make them public can be even more difficult.
“Disclosing a foreign influence operation might do more harm than good because it might draw more attention to an operation that would otherwise go unnoticed,” the senior administration official said.
A senior intelligence official agreed that in some cases, the less said, the better.
“It’s less about highlighting for the public that there might be a problem,” the official said. “We actually want to stop it from happening, whether we do that through cyber channels or diplomatic channels or other operations.”
2020 campaign
With the 2020 presidential campaign getting under way, intelligence agencies, along with the Department of Homeland Security and FBI, have set about briefing the candidates and making them aware of the resources available should their campaign come under attack.
There are also increased efforts to reach out to U.S. state and local officials to make sure they have the information they need to protect their voter databases and election systems from attacks.
Officials said there have even been ongoing discussions with the private sector, both those that provide voting machines and other election infrastructure, as well as with social media companies.
The U.S. Treasury inspector general says he will look into why the Trump administration decided to scrap plans to put escaped slave turned abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced the move last month, saying the change is because of “counterfeiting issues.”
But Democratic Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer said he is not satisfied with Mnuchin’s vague explanation, saying it lacked credibility.
He asked the Treasury’s watchdog to investigate the circumstances “including any involvement by the White House.”
“There are no women, there are no people of color on our paper currency today even though they make up a significant majority of our population,” Schumer said.
The redesigned bill was to have entered circulation next year, but Mnuchin said it will be put off until 2028. It is also unclear whether Tubman will still be on the new bill when it is finally rolled out.
He said the “imagery feature” (who will appear on the bill) will not be a matter until long after he and U.S. President Donald Trump are out of office.
The $20 bill currently features a picture of 19th century U.S. President Andrew Jackson. Jackson owned slaves and forced Native Americans out of their ancestral lands in the southeastern U.S. leading to the deaths of thousands of Indians.
The move to replace Jackson, preferably with a historically-important woman, was announced during the Obama administration.
Tubman was chosen from an online poll of Americans.
President Trump is said to be an admirer of Andrew Jackson — not because of Jackson’s racism — but because Trump regards him as a populist and anti-establishment.
Trump called replacing Jackson with Tubman “pure political correctness” and proposed putting Tubman on the $2 bill, which is rarely printed.
Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland as a young woman and returned to the southern U.S. to help other slaves escape and to work as a union government spy during the Civil War.
She was thought to be in her early 90s when she died in 1913.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who criticized China last year for “buying” up his country, will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time on the sidelines of this week’s G-20 meeting in Japan, his office said on Monday.
Bolsonaro, a far-right firebrand, has softened his stance on Brazil’s largest trading partner since taking office in January and will meet with Xi for 40 minutes on Friday morning before the summit of leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies kicks off in Osaka, according to the schedule released by his office.
A representative of China’s embassy in Brazil said the two countries were discussing a bilateral meeting, although the details had yet to be agreed to. Given the packed schedule at the G-20, any bilateral meeting would likely be informal and brief, the diplomat said, speaking on background.
China is by far the largest buyer of Brazilian soybeans and iron ore, and Brazil hopes to upgrade its commodities exports to include products with greater added value.
Bolsonaro expressed concern about Chinese domination during his election campaign. Citing the purchase of electrical assets by Chinese companies, he complained that “China isn’t buying in Brazil, China is buying Brazil.”
But he has dropped his criticisms as the reality of Brazil’s dependence on the Chinese market set in.
His vice president, retired general Hamilton Mourao, visited Beijing in May to resume high-level talks that had stalled under the previous government. Mourao’s visit followed Agriculture Minister Tereza Cristina’s mission to China seeking to widen food sales to China.
Mourao met in Beijing with Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Chief Executive Ren Zhengfei and later told journalists that Brazil had no plans to follow the United States in barring the Chinese telecom company’s participation when Latin America’s largest country launches its 5G network next year.
Washington has asked countries to reject Huawei technology in the development of new mobile phone networks due to security concerns.
Bolsonaro and Xi are expected to discuss a date for the Brazilian leader’s planned visit to Beijing later this year, before Xi visits Brazil in November for the summit of the BRICS leading emerging economies.
Britain appears to be moving closer to U.S. President Donald Trump’s position on Iran and hardening its attitude towards Tehran — the result, diplomats say, partly of talks during the American leader’s recent visit to London, but also because of aggressive Iranian actions.
U.S. officials say they’ve been cheered by the stiffening of Britain’s public rhetoric in support of Trump in the precarious standoff with Tehran.
They contrast that with British criticism of Trump’s decision last year to pull out of a 2015 deal, co-signed by his predecessor Barack Obama, in which Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement, citing concerns that Tehran had done nothing to curb expansionist behavior in the region and was still determined to eventually build nuclear weapons.
British officials had also bristled at Trump’s reimposition of sanctions on Iran and had been searching with other European powers ways to circumvent the U.S. sanctions so they wouldn’t impact European businesses.
Britain is still calling for a “de-escalation” in the Persian Gulf, but has been more forthright than France or Germany in condemning Iran for aggression in the Strait of Hormuz, including mining tankers and downing a U.S. drone — as well as for Tehran’s threats to step up nuclear activities and to breach the cap on uranium stockpile limits set by the 2015 accord.
Britain’s foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said Monday he was worried an accidental war could be triggered, adding, “we are doing everything we can to ratchet things down.”
Hunt said Britain is closely in touch with the United States over the “very dangerous situation in the Gulf” and is “doing everything we can to de-escalate.”
But he did not rule out the possibility Britain would consider a request for military support from its “strongest ally,” and would consider backing the U.S. in the Gulf “on a case-by-case basis.” That might include greater British support in protecting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
FILE – An oil tanker is seen burning in the sea of Oman, June 13, 2019. Two oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz were recently attacked, with the U.S. blaming Iran.
Britain blames Iran for strains
And Hunt put the onus on Iran for the dramatic rise in tension.
“We do strongly believe that the solution is for Iran to stop its destabilizing activity throughout the Middle East and we are very concerned about the sabotaging of tankers that has happened recently, which is almost certainly Iran,” he said.
Concern about a potential armed confrontation between the U.S. and Iran has mounted since Washington blamed Tehran for mine attacks on a pair of oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic sea passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
Tehran denies it mined any ships.
Last week, Trump said he had canceled a retaliatory airstrike against several Iranian targets, including anti-aircraft missile batteries, for the downing of a U.S. drone, on the grounds that it would have been disproportionate because of the loss of life it would entail.
But according to U.S. news accounts, Trump approved cyber-warfare disruption of Iranian intelligence computer systems used to control missile and rocket launches.
The U.S. president has been criticized in Washington by some in his own party as well as Democratic Party foes for ordering a retaliatory airstrike and then calling it off. Hawks in his own party fear the about-turn makes him look like a “paper tiger;” Democrats says it demonstrates confusion and “strategic incoherence.”
But Trump’s restraint appears to have calmed British fears of the president being reckless, with some officials saying it demonstrates his determination to calibrate his responses. Trump has said he wants to force the Iranians to return to negotiations in order to hammer out a better and more sustainable nuclear deal, in which the Iranians agree to curtail expansionist activity in the region.
“We certainly don’t want to give the Iranians any encouragement or make them think that their threats or aggression will drive a wedge between us and Washington,” a senior British diplomat told VOA.
“Tehran is calculating that it can use brinkmanship to isolate Trump and to get the Europeans en masse on side against Washington, hoping to weaken the American sanctions regime. We need to set them straight. One can dispute whether the U.S. should have withdrawn from the nuclear treaty in the first place, but we are where are,” he added.
The change in Britain’s tone appears to have been noted in Tehran. On Sunday, officials there said they were disappointed in the talks they held with a junior British foreign minister, Andrew Murrison, describing the discussions as “disappointing and repetitive.”
Speaking in the Iranian capital, Murrison said Iran “almost certainly bears responsibility for” the mining, but added, “I was clear that the UK will continue to play its full part alongside international partners to find diplomatic solutions to reduce the current tensions.”
Britain also signed on to a joint statement Monday with the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates expressing “their concern over escalating tensions in the region and the dangers posed by Iranian destabilizing activity to peace and security both in Yemen and the broader region.”
Ethiopian security is hunting for the leader of the failed coup in the northern Amhara region where security is tight, as well as in the capital, Addis Ababa.
An internet shutdown remains in force across the country, following the assassinations of Amhara’s governor and an adviser in the regional capital, Bahir Dar, Saturday. Later in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s military chief was shot dead by his own bodyguard who also killed a visiting retired general.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said that Brig. Gen. Asamnew Tsige masterminded the plot. Ethiopian officials said that Asamnew has not yet been arrested.
Ethiopian military have set up checkpoints in the capital and in the Amhara region.
Flags are flying at half-mast Monday which has been declared a day of national mourning following the four killings.
A plate-hurling, screaming quarrel with his latest girlfriend has turned the spotlight fully on where Boris Johnson’s advisers didn’t want it — on his character and chaotic private life, which even his friends have described as “unruly.”
The altercation, recorded by neighbors in south London who phoned the police, has thrown a wrench into Johnson’s smooth-running campaign to succeed Theresa May as Britain’s prime minister, which commentators say is his race to lose.
His bid to win a leadership contest, which is now in its final stages after lawmakers whittled down in knockout ballots the succession choice to two candidates for the party’s 160,000 members to vote on by mail, has been built on avoiding television debates and dodging journalists.
Johnson has refused to answer questions about the screaming match in the apartment of his girlfriend, 31-year-old Carrie Symonds, but calls are mounting on the 55-year-old to address questions about the altercation on Friday.
Johnson ended a 25-year-long marriage, his second divorce, to move in last year with the younger Symonds, but his unruly private life has been marked by serial relationships, children fathered out of wedlock and terminated pregnancies.
The quarrel has allowed his remaining opponent in the leadership race, the country’s current and normally mild-mannered foreign minister, Jeremy Hunt, to pile on the pressure and to launch Monday an uncharacteristically personal attack on his rival, accusing him of being a “coward” by trying to avoid public scrutiny and “slink through the back door” of Downing Street.
Johnson, who was finally backed by more than half of Conservative lawmakers to be the new party leader has appeared on only one TV debate and granted a single short broadcast interview and one newspaper interview. Hunt says the public want a “fair and open contest, not one that one side is trying to rig to avoid scrutiny.”
He added: “One of the strengths of our system is that we scrutinize our politicians with more intelligent ferocity than anywhere else in the World. But in this case it just isn’t happening. Nothing could be worse for a new prime minister in these challenging times than to come to power with a fake contest.”
Hunt’s aides say it is especially important for May’s successor to be scrutinized closely as they will be entering Downing Street not via a general election but through a party vote with their democratic legitimacy questioned because the country as a whole would not have had any say in their selection.
Hunt says he doesn’t want to quiz Johnson, a former two-term London mayor and short-lived foreign minister, about his private life, but about his claim that he can “guarantee” Britain will leave the European Union by October 31, the latest deadline for the country’s exit from the bloc.
But while Hunt is avoiding focusing directly on Johnson’s character, some of his aides are happily fanning the flames and briefing reporters behind the scenes that the frontrunner’s highly colorful private life represents a security risk. It could leave him vulnerable to leaks about past behavior and even open to blackmail by foreign powers, they charge.
The accusation has infuriated Johnson supporters, who say the explosive argument between Symonds and Johnson was just a normal domestic “tiff” apparently provoked by Johnson spilling red wine on a sofa. They maintain the quarrel was blown out of proportion by neighbors who are politically motivated. The police left without charging anyone.
Nonetheless, the dispute, which is depressing Johnson’s poll numbers, is contributing to a picture of a Conservative party in disarray and fearful that it is facing an existential crisis because of Brexit. It comes as pro-European Union Conservatives have started to plot a strategy to wreck a Johnson-led government, if he seeks to take Britain out of the European bloc without an exit deal approved by Brussels.
Sharp divisions between Brexiters and pro-EU lawmakers wrecked Theresa May’s prime ministership and there are growing signs that it might quickly upend Johnson’s, too, if he wins the leadership race.
Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May speaks to the media outside her official residence of 10 Downing Street in London, April 18, 2017.
May’s fate was sealed when the British House of Commons declined three times to approve a Brexit Withdrawal Agreement she negotiated with Brussels — a deal vehemently opposed by a third of her own parliamentary party on the grounds it would keep Britain subservient to EU regulations and rules and prevent it from negotiating trade deals bilaterally with non-EU countries.
Europhiles are also opposed to the deal. Several top Conservatives who want to retain close ties with the EU have warned they could join opposition parties in a non-confidence vote in the House of Commons and bring down a Johnson government.
A former Conservative attorney-general, Dominic Grieve, said: “If the new prime minister announces that he is taking the country on a magical mystery tour towards an October 31 crash-out, I don’t think that prime minister is going to survive very long.”
Even Britain’s current top finance minister, Philip Hammond, has warned the next prime minister “will not survive,” if they seek to leave the EU without a deal. He has declined publicly to rule out that he would vote with opposition parties against Johnson, if he sought a no-deal Brexit.
Britain’s fractious Conservatives are ruling as a minority government, and they rely on the support of a Northern Irish party to give them a working majority of just three in the House of Commons. A handful of Conservative standouts could trigger a chain of events leading to an early election the Conservatives are unlikely to win.
Johnson’s supporters say he remains the favorite of party activists because he has the star quality the party needs to win elections and curb both the populist threat from Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party and combat Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn.
They also claim he has the political inventiveness to break the Brexit deadlock that has turned traditional British politics upside down and might even have the ability to persuade hardline Brexiters to accept a compromise and something short of their objective to break completely with the EU.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is urging Hong Kong authorities to “consult broadly before passing or amending” an extradition bill or “any other legislation,” as protests in the autonomous territory continue.
Speaking at the opening of a three-week session of Human Right Council in Geneva, Switzerland, Michelle Bachelet also said that she continues to discuss with China issues related to Xinjiang, including allowing “unfettered access” to the western region, and other matters.
U.N. observers and activists say that about one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are held in detention centers in Xinjiang. The international community has condemned China for setting up such complexes which Beijing describes as “education training centers” helping to eradicate extremism and give people new skills.
Hong Kong protesters blocked access to a Hong Kong government office building for about two hours Monday and plan another demonstration Wednesday to raise awareness among leaders attending the G-20 summit this week in Japan.
Thousands of student protesters dressed in black have been marching in Hong Kong for weeks, demanding the full withdrawal of the controversial extradition bill and the resignation of the territory’s pro-Beijing leader Carrie Lam.
Last week, Lam offered an apology for the political crisis and unrest sparked by the proposed law.
The Hong Kong protests pose the greatest challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping since he took office in 2012. The Chinese government had supported the extradition proposal, and accused protest organizers of colluding with Western governments.
The U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said President Donald Trump plans to discuss the Hong Kong issue with Xi at the upcoming G-20 summit.
VOA’s national security correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
The United States is set to introduce new sanctions against Iran on Monday, seeking to put additional pressure on the country’s economy in order to extract changes in behavior from its government.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the new measures “significant,” but declined to give specific details to reporters ahead of the official announcement.
He spoke just before embarking on a trip to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to continue the Trump administration’s effort to build a coalition of allies to counter Iran. Pompeo met Monday with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“The world should know that we will continue to make sure it’s understood that this effort that we’ve engaged in to deny Iran the resources to foment terror, to build out their nuclear weapon system, to built out their missile program, we are going to deny them the resources they need to do that thereby keeping American interests and American people safe all around the world,” Pompeo said.
Iran has denied working on nuclear weapons and signed an agreement in 2015 with the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany to allay those concerns by limited its nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief.
But U.S.-Iran relations have deteriorated under President Donald Trump’s tenure, particularly since his decision last year to withdraw from the nuclear deal and put in place new economic sanctions.
Trump objected to the deal as being too weak and not including limits on Iran’s ballistic missile program.
US Iran sanctions
Iran has defended its missile work as legal and necessary for its defense. And it has sought support from the remaining signatories to the 2015 agreement to provide the economic relief it desires, especially with its key oil program as the U.S. has tightened sanctions in an attempt to cut off Iranian oil exports.
Pompeo said the new sanctions Monday “will be a further effort to ensure that their capacity not only to grow their economy but to evade sanctions becomes more and more difficult, and it will be an important addition to our capacity to enforce sanctions against Iran to ultimately achieve the objective that we’ve laid out.”
Trump said in a series of tweets Saturday about the sanctions that he looks forward to the day when “sanctions come off Iran, and they become a productive and prosperous national again — The sooner the better!”
He also said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that he is “not looking for war” with Iran and is willing to negotiate with its leaders without preconditions.
The comments came after a week of intense actions between the United States and Iran.
Concern about a potential armed confrontation between the two countries has been growing since U.S. officials recently blamed Tehran for mine attacks on two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, allegations Tehran denies, and Iran’s downing of of a U.S. drone.
Trump said that late Thursday he had canceled a retaliatory strike against several Iranian targets. But on Thursday, according to U.S. news accounts, Trump also approved U.S. Cyber Command attacks on an Iranian intelligence group’s computer systems used to control missile and rocket launches.
World powers have called for calm after the incidents.
