Foreign Minister
Taiwan tells China to ‘back off’ as airspace ‘incursions’ rise
Taiwan on Tuesday demanded that China “back off” and accused it of threatening peace, after recent incursions and a Beijing official openly rejecting a largely respected marine boundary. Foreign Minister Joseph Wu urged Beijing to “return to the civilised international standards” after a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said there was no so-called median line in the Taiwan Strait “as Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory”. The tension between China and the island Beijing claims as its own is at its highest in years, with Taiwanese fighter jets scrambling to intercept the Chinese aircraft last week. “The median line has been a symbol of preventing military conflicts and maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait for many years,” Wu told reporters. “The Chinese forei...
Tehran, Brussels reject Donald Trump’s ‘snapback’ plan for Iran sanctions
Iran and the European Union have both rejected United States President Donald Trump’s plan to trigger the “snapback” mechanism in the Iranian nuclear deal to impose sanctions on Iran. “The Americans got out of the atomic deal in May 2018 and they know very well that the implementation of the snapback is something illegal and, therefore, absolutely unacceptable,’’ Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said on Sunday, according to state media. The snapback was granted to the participants in the 2015 Vienna nuclear agreement between major world powers and Iran in the event that Tehran violates it. However, under Trump, the United States withdrew unilaterally from the agreement in 2018. “Since Washington withdrew from the agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of...
Former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa passes on at 81
Former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa has died age 81 in a Dar es Salaam hospital, the government announced Friday. He was the country’s third president after independence from Britain in 1962 and ruled from 1995 to 2005. “I’m saddened by the death of the third president of Tanzania and that is a big loss for us as a country. Let’s pray for him and more information will follow later,” said President John Magufuli in a short televised speech. He did not reveal the cause of death. Mkapa was born in 1938 to a poor family in south-eastern Mtwara. He earned a degree in English in Uganda and later worked as a journalist before being appointed the press secretary for the country’s first president Julius Nyerere. He held several cabinet posts, such as foreign minister and information minister ...
Iran’s OPEC governor dies of brain haemorrhage
Iran’s OPEC governor Hossein Kazempour-Ardebili has died of a brain haemorrhage two weeks after falling into a coma, the oil ministry said on Saturday. “Kazempour-Ardebili, who had gone into a coma over a brain haemorrhage two weeks ago in a hospital in Tehran, has passed away,” a ministry statement said, without giving further details. He died on Saturday morning aged 68, according to state news agency IRNA. The veteran politician was appointed governor to the OPEC oil cartel in 1985. He had also served as Iran’s ambassador to Japan from 1990 to 1995. Ardebili was a survivor of the 1981 bombing of the Islamic Republic Party headquarters in Tehran which killed 73 top Iranian officials. He was serving as trade minister at the time, appointed the year before. The bombing was blamed on the Pe...
- 1
- 2
