Josep Borrell
Fury over Belarus airliner ‘hijack’ set to dominate EU summit
Fury over the forced landing of a Ryanair plane in Belarus has upended the agenda of a European Union summit dinner on Monday, where leaders were due to discuss relations with Russia and Britain but will now also consider punitive steps against Minsk. Belarusian authorities scrambled a fighter jet and flagged what turned out to be a false bomb alert to force the civilian aircraft to land on Sunday and then detained an opposition-minded journalist who was among the passengers on board. The diversion of a plane owned by an EU company that was flying between two EU capitals was “an inadmissible step”, the bloc’s foreign policy chief said, and it would be raised at the summit. “The EU will consider the consequences of this action, including taking measures against those responsible,” Josep Bor...
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...
