The UN Security Council has canceled a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as envoys from five key members planned further talks on a new round of sanctions against Iran, diplomats said on Friday.
The official reason for the cancellation was the ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano that has caused air travel chaos across Europe, a UN spokesman said.
Several diplomats, however, said on condition of anonymity that intensifying talks on a fourth round of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program also played a role.
“The Americans are very keen to get a resolution finished this month,” one diplomat familiar with the negotiations said. “It’s no coincidence that the [six] are meeting again Monday. It was a consideration in the decision to cancel the trip.”
Diplomats from the five permanent Security Council members — the US, Britain, France, China and Russia — and Germany are meeting almost daily as they struggle to agree on what punitive measures could be included in a resolution to put to the 15-nation Security Council.
It was not immediately clear if the Security Council would attempt to reschedule the canceled trip to the DRC.
Security Council members had planned to meet in Kinshasa with Congolese President Joseph Kabila, who has been pressing for a swift withdrawal of UN peacekeepers from the vast central African country with the approach of the 50th anniversary of independence this year and elections next year.
Kabila wants the DRC peacekeeping mission, known as MONUC, to start withdrawing within months and the last blue helmet out next year.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has proposed a slower three-year phased withdrawal.
Council members had hoped to press him in person to allow a more gradual exit of MONUC, which diplomats and UN peacekeeping officials say is vital to maintaining peace in the country’s turbulent east.
Since its establishment in 1999, MONUC has become the world body’s largest force with 22,000 troops and police, and assumed many of the responsibilities of the Congolese state, which was torn apart by a 1998-2003 war that killed millions.
However, local and Rwandan Hutu rebels still roam much of the two Kivu provinces in the east. Ugandan rebels continue to wage a campaign of terror in the remote northeast and a new rebellion has emerged in recent months in Equateur Province.
Meanwhile, all eight Red Cross staff workers kidnapped in eastern DRC last week have been released unharmed, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday.
The eight, a Swiss citizen and seven Congolese, had been held by a faction of the Mai Mai militia since they were seized during a mission last Friday to assess the needs of displaced civilians in South Kivu.
“It was an unconditional release as we have wanted all along and we are all very relieved that they are out without any harm to them,” said Inah Kaloga, communications coordinator at the ICRC in the DRC.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS