German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier flew in on a surprise trip to Iraq yesterday, in the first such visit since 1987, Iraqi officials said.
Steinmeier is due to meet Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki during his trip, which comes exactly a week after a surprise mission by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Like France, Germany was an opponent of the US-led invasion of 2003, which toppled former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s regime. Steinmeier was chief of staff to then-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder when the war broke out.
Steinmeier was also expected to open a German consulate in Arbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan in the north of the country, Kurdish press reports said.
Maliki, in an interview published yesterday in Germany’s Bild newspaper, said Iraq’s military capacity had been improved to a level that they could now handle the country’s security on their own.
The US-led coalition was now playing a mainly logistical role in support of Iraq’s security forces, he said.
Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper, quoting German envoys, reported in November before a date was set for the Iraqi visit that Steinmeier would seek to “finally normalize relations with the Iraqi government.” The visit would also “send a signal that the German government supports the Obama policy for the Middle East,” it said.
Meanwhile, roadside bombs struck a pair of minibuses filled with Shiite pilgrims returning to Baghdad on Monday, killing eight people, officials said.
The first bomb rocked a minibus pulling into a busy square in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City killing four and wounding 11 others, a police official said.
The driver said his minibus was filled with pilgrims returning from the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 80km south of the capital.
The second minibus, also coming from Karbala, was hit in the Shiite neighborhood of al-Kamaliya in southeast Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 13 others, the police official said.
All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
In other developments, the US military said yesterday that the number of detainees held in Iraq has dropped to 14,500 as it speeds prisoner releases and transfers to Iraqi custody to meet the requirements of a US-Iraqi security agreement.
The military said in a statement that it has been releasing 1,500 detainees a month — 50 a day — to meet the requirements of the agreement that took effect on Jan. 1.
Under the US-Iraq agreement, US forces in Iraq can no longer hold suspects without charge as they have done since the 2003 invasion. The US military must hand over detainees wanted by the Iraqis and release the rest.
The overall number of detainees has fallen from a peak of 26,000 in 2007 to 14,500 this month.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS