Month: January 2018

Key Republicans voiced strong support Sunday for special counsel Robert Mueller’s handling of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but split on whether Congress needs to approve legislation to block President Donald Trump from firing Mueller.

Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine, breaking with some of their Republican colleagues in Congress, stated in separate Sunday news shows that they support legislation, mostly favored by Democratic lawmakers, to require a judicial review if Trump were to attempt to dismiss Mueller.

Two prominent Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives — Kevin McCarthy of California and Trey Gowdy of South Carolina — both said they approve of Mueller’s performance in the ongoing criminal investigation. But McCarthy said he sees no need to enact a law to protect Mueller, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mueller’s fate is at the forefront of the Russia investigation after news accounts surfaced in recent days that Trump ordered White House lawyer Don McGahn to fire Mueller last June. but backed off after McGahn threatened to quit over the would-be ouster.

Trump has denied on several occasions in recent months that he had even thought about firing Mueller and branded last week’s story, first reported by The New York Times, as “fake news,” his favorite censure for stories he does not like.

Graham said he would be glad to pass legislation to protect Trump from trying to oust Mueller, who is in the midst of negotiations with Trump’s lawyers over terms of Trump’s possible testimony under oath about the Russian election interference and whether Trump obstructed justice by firing former FBI director James Comey, who at the time was heading the law enforcement agency’s Russia probe before Mueller took it over.

But Graham said regardless of whether legislation is approved or not, “I see no evidence that President Trump wants to fire Mr. Mueller now. It’s pretty clear to me that everybody at the White House knows that it would be the end of President Trump’s presidency if he fired Mr. Mueller.”

Gowdy said he supports Mueller’s handling of the probe “100 percent, particularly if he’s given the time, the resources and the independence to do his job.”

Trump last week reiterated his long-standing contention that there was “no collusion” between him and Russian interests to help him defeat his Democratic challenger, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and also said there was “no obstruction” of the investigation. He attributed his actions in trying to limit the investigation to “fighting back.”

He said he is looking forward to testifying before Mueller’s lawyers and would do it under oath. But his lawyers subsequently said discussions with Mueller’s team are still ongoing about the terms of any interview of Trump and what topics would be discussed.

Comey, in notes he compiled from several meetings with Trump, says that the president urged him to drop his investigation of former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was fired by Trump after less than a month on the job for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia’s then-ambassador to Washington in the weeks before Trump assumed power. Trump has denied Comey’s account of their talks.

Trump, who unsuccessfully asked Comey for a loyalty pledge, dismissed him in May. A day later, Trump told Russian officials in a White House meeting he had relieved himself of “great pressure,” describing Comey as “crazy, a real nut job.” A few days later, Trump told Lester Holt of NBC News that he ousted Comey because of “this Russia thing,” saying the investigation was “a hoax” perpetrated by Democrats to explain his upset election victory.

White House legislative affairs director Marc Short told Fox News he knows that Trump is “frustrated” by the investigation, that “millions of dollars have been spent with no evidence of collusion.”

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump touted the continued growth of the U.S. economy on Sunday, saying it is “better than it has been in many decades.”

“Businesses are coming back to America like never before,” Trump said in a Twitter remark, a likely theme of his State of the Union address on Tuesday. “Unemployment is nearing record lows. We are on the right track!”

He said, “Chrysler, as an example, is leaving Mexico and coming back to the USA,” an exaggeration of Chrysler’s expansion plans. Fiat Chrysler, the world’s eighth biggest auto manufacturer, says it is investing $1 billion to manufacture its profitable Ram pickup trucks in the midwestern state of Michigan, shifting the production from Mexico, but at the same time is not cutting any of its vehicle manufacturing jobs in Mexico.

The U.S. jobless rate has held steady at 4.1 percent for the last three months, the lowest figure in 17 years. The U.S. economy, the world’s largest, advanced at a 2.3 percent pace last year, Trump’s first year in office, up from 1.5 percent in 2016.

The U.S. economy, however, slowed in the last three months of 2017, expanding at a 2.6 percent annual rate, down from the 3.2 percent figure in the July-to-September period.

Attack on Jay-Z

In praising the U.S. economic performance, Trump also attacked Jay-Z, after the rap musician had assailed Trump in a Saturday news talk show over the president’s recent reported vulgar descriptions of people from Haiti and Africa as he seeks to block their immigration to the United States.

“Somebody please inform Jay-Z that because of my policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER RECORDED!” Trump said. The black unemployment rate in the U.S. has fallen to 6.8 percent, which is still higher than the 3.7 percent figure for whites.

Jay-Z told CNN interviewer Van Jones that economic advances for blacks do not outweigh Trump’s attacks on predominantly black countries.

“Everyone feels anger, but after the anger, it’s really hurtful because he’s looking down on a whole population of people. And he’s so misinformed because these places have beautiful people,” Jay-Z said, adding, “It’s not about money at the end of the day. Money doesn’t equate to happiness. It doesn’t. That’s missing the whole point.

“You treat people like human beings,” he said.

 
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A second group of refugees to be resettled in the United States from Australia’s offshore immigration centers has left Papua New Guinea. Washington has agreed to take up to 1,250 migrants held in Australian-run processing camps in the South Pacific. In return, Canberra will accept a small number of Central American refugees.

On Tuesday, 58 refugees flew out of Papua New Guinea (PNG), most having been held at the Australian-run detention camp on Manus Island for more than four years. The migrants, mostly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, had been told they would never be allowed to settle in Australia — part of Canberra’s long-running policy to combat human trafficking.

Last year, 54 refugees from Australia’s two offshore immigration facilities, on Manus Island and the tiny Pacific republic of Nauru, were resettled in the U.S. Another group of 130 refugees on Nauru is expected to leave the island for the U.S. in the coming weeks.

The resettlement deal was brokered between Australia and the Obama administration in 2016, and although derided as “dumb” by U.S. President Donald Trump, it has seen several hundred refugees fly to the United States.In return, Australia will offer a home to a small number of Central American migrants from U.S.-run camps in Costa Rica. So far, about 30 people have reportedly moved to Australia.

Canberra recently rejected an offer made by New Zealand to take 150 of the men being held in Papua New Guinea.

About 2,000 refugees and asylum-seekers remain in Australia’s offshore system, including several hundred men who are living in community housing on Manus Island after the Australian camp was officially closed last October.

One of them is Abdul Aziz Muhammad, a refugee from Sudan.

“This morning we had 58 of our friends, our close friends that have we spent so much time with them – and this morning they were so, so lucky that they got on the planes and they are leaving to [the] U.S. and the main question that now we have [is], why only the government want us to go to United States and not New Zealand, because the New Zealand offer is still there on the table? Why cannot the government accept the New Zealand offer to facilitate for all of us?” he said.

Australia’s refugee quota has remained steady over the past two decades, with about 13,000 people accepted each year.

Since 2013, asylum-seekers intercepted trying to reach Australia by boat have been sent to migrant camps in the South Pacific. Officials say the policy is meant to deter others from making the same perilous sea crossing, often from Indonesia, where hundreds of people are thought to have drowned over the years.

Critics, though, say Australia’s offshore processing program is overly punitive and that detaining asylum-seekers indefinitely has caused great psychological damage.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Russia of using energy as a “political tool” in Europe as he held talks with his counterpart Saturday in Warsaw, Poland.

At a news conference with Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz following the discussions, Tillerson said the U.S. is opposed to the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, a proposed project that would connect Russia and Germany. Some Eastern European countries are also against the pipeline, which would give Russia a larger share of the natural gas market.

“Like Poland, the United States opposes the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,” Tillerson said. “We see it as undermining Europe’s overall energy security and stability and it provides Russia yet another tool to politicize energy as a political tool.”

Tillerson’s visit to Poland comes at a time when the U.S. is boosting exports of American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to central Europe and taking on Russia’s stronghold on energy supplies.

Senior U.S. officials have said Washington will help European nations diversify their energy supply so they will not be solely dependent on Russia.

On June 7, 2017, the first U.S. LNG shipment to Central Europe arrived in Poland. The State Department said at that time Washington “has worked closely with European partners to diversify European energy supplies through new sources of natural gas.”

Talks between Tillerson and Czaputowicz were held before Tillerson placed a wreath and made remarks at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument to commemorate the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Tillerson said the genocide that occurred at German concentration camps in Poland must never be repeated.

“On this occasion it reminds us that we can never, we can never, be indifferent to the face of evil. The Western alliance which emerged from World War Two has committed itself to ensuring the security of all, that this would never happen again.”

Tillerson’s trip to Poland is aimed at strengthening Washington’s “strategic partnership” with Warsaw in meetings with Polish leaders, with security ties and energy cooperation high on the agenda.

Tillerson also met Saturday with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Law and Justice Party Leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, before wrapping up his European trip and returning to Washington.

 
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A defiant Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Friday that he’s prepared to risk confrontation with the United States over Turkey’s military incursion into northern Syria, vowing to next target a Kurdish-held town where U.S. Special Forces are stationed.

Speaking to members of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara, a belligerent Erdogan shrugged off U.S. calls for Turkey to limit the incursion launched a week ago, saying the next town to be targeted after the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, where Turkish tanks have been grinding through winter mud, will be Manbij, raising the possibility of American troops being drawn inadvertently into the bruising fight between Turks and Syrian Kurds.

The Reuters news agency reports that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Saturday the United States needs to withdraw from northern Syria’s Manbij region immediately, suggesting that an attack might be imminent.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed concerns in a phone call with Erdogan about the Turkish offensive aimed at ousting Kurdish militiamen the U.S. sees as allies in the battle against the Islamic State terror group. Trump urged him to limit the incursion and to avoid civilian casualties. The U.S. president, though, acknowledged Turkey’s legitimate security concerns, according to Turkish officials, who say that Trump asked Erdogan “not to criticize the U.S.”

Dramatic escalation

But speaking to AKP members, Erdogan outlined a far more expansive operation than he’s committed to before, indicating his readiness to order Turkish forces, along with thousands of allied Syrian rebels, remnants of the Free Syrian Army that led the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to drive right across northern Syria all the way to Iraq.

That would mean attacking east of the Euphrates River the Kurdish stronghold of Rojava, which Syrian Kurds hope one day will become their own independent state. It would mark a dramatic escalation of Turkey’s offensive – as well as adding a massive complication in the already complex Syrian conflict.  

“We will rid Manbij of terrorists, as was promised before. Our battles will continue until no terrorist is left right up to our border with Iraq,” Erdogan said.

Turkish officials refer to Kurdish militiamen with the People’s Protection Units (YPG) as a terrorists. They say the YPG is an affiliate of the Turkey’s own outlawed Kurdish separatist group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade-long insurgency against Ankara.

The Turkish offensive, oddly named Operation Olive Branch, “will continue until it reaches its goals,” Erdogan pledged. He made no reference to the fact that as many as 2,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Manbij or nearby. We will “walk on our road until the end,” Erdogan added.

Turkey shares a 911-kilometer-long border with Syria, around two-thirds of which is under YPG control. Manbij is some 100 km east of the mountainous pocket of Afrin, which has been the focus of the Turkish offensive so far. U.S. troops have been located in Manbij since 2016, when Islamic State militants were driven from the city by the YPG with American assistance.

Kurdish officials say they are ready to deploy militiamen from Rojava to reinforce about 10,000 YPG fighters in the crowded city of Afrin, which would mean weapons, including anti-tank missiles, supplied by Washington for use against jihadist militants being turned instead on the Turks and their Syrian rebel allies.

‘Confusion and conflict’

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Washington would continue to pursue talks with Turkey and hoped to find a way to create a “security zone” that would meet Turkey’s “legitimate” security interests.” Senior Pentagon officials visited Ankara this week and sought to try establish a clear line between Afrin and other Kurdish-held territory and between different YPG units. Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that “the armed Kurdish groups in Afrin” are not part of the U.S.-backed coalition against Islamic State.

But some analysts say that distinction is false, and former U.S. envoy to Turkey James Jeffrey says there is “confusion and conflict” in Washington about what steps to take.

Gonul Tol, an analyst with the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based policy research organization, says that persuading Erdogan not to move on Manbij will likely prove extremely difficult. He argues one of the driving factors behind the offensive is Erdogan’s goal of “galvanizing [Turkish] nationalists ahead of critical 2019 elections.”

Syrian Kurds have accused both the U.S. and Russia of stepping aside when it comes to Afrin, which has an estimated population of more than 300,000 after having been swelled by refuges from other parts of war-torn Syria. Russian advisers were based in Afrin but were withdrawn by Moscow just days before Operation Olive Branch was launched. Erdogan claimed last week that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin have an agreement over the Turkish incursion.

A Kurdish official told al-Sharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab newspaper, that the Kremlin brokered a meeting between the YPG and the Syrian government 48 hours before the Turkish offensive. He said the Kurds were told to hand over Afrin to President Assad as a way to avoid a Turkish attack and it was when they refused that the Russian military advisers were removed from Afrin.

Russia has been wooing the Kurds but appears now to have chosen the Turks in the conflict with the Kurds. Russian analysts say Turkey is more important in Moscow’s plans for ending the Syria conflict in a way that benefits its ally Assad.

“Afrin’s defenders have a poor hand to play,” according to Aron Lund, an analyst at the Century Foundation, a New York-based think tank. He says that while the Turks risk getting bogged down during the offensive and the YPG could drag out an insurgency, the Syrian Kurds face a powerful foe in Turkey “whose goal is not to win concessions but to destroy it.” Kurdish leaders may have no option but “to negotiate with Moscow and Damascus, self-interested actors whose assistance will come at a steep price, if at all,” he says.

Operation Olive Branch is enjoying widespread public support in Turkey. Three of the country’s four main parties support the incursion amid a media frenzy backing the offensive. Ankara has moved against critics, and dozens who oppose the offensive, including at least five journalists, have been detained. Erdogan has pledged to “crush anyone who opposes our nationalist struggle.”

 
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The United States needs to withdraw from northern Syria’s Manbij region immediately, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Saturday.

President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday said Turkish forces would sweep Kurdish fighters from the Syrian border and could push all the way east to the frontier with Iraq, including Manbij – a move which risks a possible confrontation with U.S. forces allied to the Kurds.

Speaking to reporters, Cavusoglu also said Turkey wanted to see concrete steps by the United States to end its support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.

Ankara said earlier it had been told by U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster that Washington would not provide the YPG with weapons anymore.
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President Donald Trump has warned that the United States will no longer tolerate unfair trade practices and will always put America first in future trade deals. Giving the closing speech at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos on Friday, Trump lauded the performance of the U.S. economy under his leadership. The speech, however, was overshadowed by further controversy over alleged links between the president’s campaign team and Russia. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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The U.S. Treasury has announced new sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian citizens involved in the Russian annexation of Crimea, barring them from doing business with Americans and freezing any assets they hold under U.S. jurisdiction.

“The U.S. government is committed to maintaining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and to targeting those who attempt to undermine the Minsk agreement,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday, referring to the agreement under which Russia and Ukraine are obligated to support a cease-fire, withdraw heavy weapons, and support electoral reform.

The new sanctions target several Russian officials, including deputy energy ministers Andrei Cherezov, who is already under European Union sanctions for his role in transferring energy turbines to Crimea, and Evgenia Grabchak. Also listed is Sergei Topor-Gilk, director general of Technopromexport, a Moscow-based engineering firm that builds hydropower, geo-thermal and diesel power plants, power lines and electricity substations in Russia and abroad.

Eleven of the other people targeted are Ukrainian separatists holding government titles in the separatist areas that have proclaimed themselves Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic.

In addition to the individuals, the new sanctions target nine Russian companies involved with building infrastructure in the separatist-controlled areas of Crimea. The list also includes the foreign trade association Technopromexport, Power Machines, 12 subsidiaries of Surgutneftegaz, and Doncoaltrade, which is registered in Poland.

The United States and European Union say the separatists in Crimea are directly backed by Russian forces. They accuse Russia of sending personnel and weapons, funding, and supplies to Crimean separatists.

Russia announced in 2014 that it was annexing Crimea and denied accusations that it was arming and supporting separatist fighters there.

The U.S. Commerce Department announced Thursday that Russian company Abtronix had also been included on a separate sanctions lists. U.S. property and assets of Abtronix’s general director, Timofey Telegin, will be seized, and Telegin with be banned from entering the United States.

Treasury is expected to submit the list to Congress by January 29.

This story includes reporting from VOA’s Russian Service.
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The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee said Friday it will investigate sexual abuse in organized sports after the sentencing of a USA Gymnastics team doctor for sexually abusing female athletes.

The committee sent letters to USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Olympic Committee, Michigan State University, USA Swimming, and USA Taekwondo asking questions about sexual abuse within organized sports. Some asked when entities became aware of abuse allegations related to Dr. Larry Nassar and want answers by Feb.

9.

Nassar was sentenced in Michigan this week to up to 175 years in prison for sexually assaulting young female gymnasts.

 
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U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley took aim at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Thursday, saying he lacks the courage to seek peace with Israel. Her comments come after President Donald Trump threatened to cut aid to the Palestinians if they do not pursue peace with Israel.

Ambassador Haley’s remarks, at a regular Security Council meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian situation, focused on the Palestinian leader.

“Real peace requires leaders who are willing to step forward, acknowledge hard truths, and make compromises,” Haley said. “It requires leaders who look to the future, rather than dwell on past resentments. Above all, such leaders require courage.”

Haley praised slain Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and the late King Hussein of Jordan as two such courageous leaders.

Both men signed peace deals with Israel. In Sadat’s case, the 1979 peace agreement became a contributing factor in his assassination two years later.

“I ask here today, where is the Palestinian King Hussein? Where is the Palestinian Anwar Sadat? If President Abbas demonstrates he can be that type of leader, we would welcome it. His recent actions demonstrate the total opposite,” she said.

President Abbas has rejected the Trump administration’s December 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U.S. embassy there. He cancelled a meeting this month with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence who was in the region and has said the U.S. can no longer be an acceptable mediator in the peace process.

Haley said the United States would not “chase after” a Palestinian leadership lacking what is necessary to achieve peace. She added that the United States remains “fully prepared and eager” to pursue a peace deal.

 
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Two revered former U.S. secretaries of state on Thursday warned lawmakers of a marked rise in nuclear dangers stemming from North Korea’s race to develop atomic weapons and the means to deliver them.

Henry Kissinger, who served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, highlighted “a systemic failure of the world order” in dealing with nuclear proliferation. George Shultz , who served in the Reagan administration, called the spread of nuclear weapons “a major problem that can blow up the world.”

“The most immediate challenge to international security is posed by the evolution of the North Korean nuclear program,” Kissinger said at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said Pyongyang’s determined defiance of the international community could have a ripple effect elsewhere.

“If North Korea could maintain its capability in the face of opposition by China and the United States and the disapproval of the rest of the world, other countries are bound to feel that this is the way for achieving international prominence and the upper hand in international disputes,” Kissinger said. “The denuclearization of North Korea must be a fundamental objective. And if it is not reached, we have to prepare ourselves for the proliferation of weapons to other countries.”

Shultz expressed alarm about what he sees as changing attitudes regarding the use of atomic weapons.

“President Reagan thought nuclear weapons were immoral, and we [the Reagan administration] worked hard to get them reduced,” Schultz said. “I fear people have lost that sense of dread [about nuclear weapons], and now we see everything going in the other direction. The more countries have nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that one is going to go off somewhere, and the more fissile material is lying around, anybody who gets fissile material can make a weapon fairly easily.”

Shultz noted that the rapid spread of advanced technology presents security challenges, with countries able to use inexpensive drones to deliver conventional bombs and other weapons rather than military aircraft. Kissinger concurred.

“Compounding this [current threats] is the pace of technological development whose extraordinary progress threatens to outstrip our strategic and moral imagination and makes the strategic equation tenuous unless major efforts are made to sustain it,” Kissinger said.

Lawmakers who normally opine at length at committee hearings mostly held back in order to give more time for the testimony of two of America’s best-known statesmen, both of whom are in their 90s and spoke with halting, frail voices.

The committee’s top Democrat, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, agreed with the witnesses’ testimony, though he expressed hope that China and Russia will cooperate more to limit the spread of nuclear weapons.

“My sense is [that] they, too, fear a proliferation problem,” Reed said.

Absent from the hearing was the committee’s chairman, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has been undergoing cancer treatment.
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The United States has denied Pakistan’s claim that an American drone strike targeted an Afghan refugee camp in the country, in a war of words between the uneasy allies.

The denial Thursday came a day after missiles fired from an unmanned aircraft struck a militant hideout located between Pakistan’s semiautonomous Kurram region and the Hango district, both in the country’s northwest. The pre-dawn Wednesday attack killed a commander of the Haqqani militant network and his two aides.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry denounced the “unilateral action,” saying a compound being used by Afghan refugees was hit.

“The claim in [a Pakistani Foreign Ministry] statement yesterday that U.S. forces struck an Afghan refugee camp in Kurram Agency yesterday is false,” a U.S. embassy spokesman said, making no further comments. It is extremely rare for American officials to publicly discuss drone operations in Pakistan and their outcome.

“Had they [U.S.] shared intelligence, [with Pakistan], we would have targeted them,” Army spokesman Major-General Asif Ghafoor told VOA, saying there are no “organized” militant sanctuaries in the country.

In maintaining that the drone hit one of two refugee camps in the area, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Faisal called for the early repatriation of the refugees.

“Pakistan has also been stressing the need of early repatriation of Afghan refugees, as their presence in Pakistan helps Afghan terrorists to melt and morph among them,” Faisal said at his weekly news conference.

A spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency told VOA there are no refugee camps in the area where the drone strike occurred. He did not, however, rule out the presence of undocumented Afghans there.

Pakistani officials say that of the estimated 3 million Afghan refugees living in the country, nearly half are undocumented.

Islamabad has set a January 31 deadline for all refugees to return to Afghanistan, although U.N. officials anticipate an extension, saying it is impossible to repatriate such a massive population.

The deadline was announced earlier this month after U.S. President Donald Trump suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Pakistan to force it to prevent militants from staging cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.

Islamabad has denied the charges, alleging Washington is scapegoating the country for U.S. military failures in Afghanistan. The allegations and counter allegations underscore a deterioration in relations between the U.S. and Pakistan.
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