Category Archives: European Union

European Union, Japan, NATO, North Korea, United Nations, United States

North Korea taunts the US with new missile launch

NORTH KOREA

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On February 12, North Korea launched a Musudan Intermediate-Range Ballistic missile. The launch contravenes UN Security Council resolutions.

Intro: North Korea is believed to have at least 12 nuclear warheads with explosive power of up to 40 kilotonnes each – over twice that of the Hiroshima bomb. The Musudan ballistic missile can carry at least one of these devices.  

Following the firing of a ballistic missile by North Korea towards Japan on February 12, Donald Trump has given Japan his ‘100 per cent’ backing.

The weapon flew some 300 miles before landing in the Sea of Japan. The timing of the launch coincided with the U.S. President hosting Japanese premier Shinzo Abe at his Florida mansion.

At a hastily arranged press conference Mr Abe said the ballistic test was ‘absolutely intolerable’.

Mr Trump added: ‘I just want everybody to understand that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100 per cent.’

The two leaders said their countries would draw closer together.

The South Korean foreign ministry said in a statement that ‘North Korea’s repeated provocations show the Kim Jong-un regime’s nature of irrationality, maniacally obsessed in its nuclear and missile development’.

Seoul’s military said that it was probably an intermediate range Musudan class missile. The weapons are designed to travel up to 3000 miles – meaning Japan could be reached from North Korea. Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said it was a clear provocation to his country.

NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said the continuing missile tests ‘undermined regional and international security’. He added: ‘North Korea must refrain from further provocations, halt all launches using ballistic missile technology and abandon once and for all its ballistic missile programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, as required by the UN Security Council.’

Mr Abe said: ‘President Trump and I myself completely share the view that we are going to promote further cooperation between the two nations. And also, we are going to further reinforce our alliance.’

North Korea is barred under UN resolutions from any use of ballistic missile technology. But six sets of UN sanctions since Pyongyang’s first nuclear test in 2006 have failed to halt its drive for what it insists are defensive weapons.

It conducted two nuclear tests and numerous missile launches last year in its quest to develop a nuclear weapons system capable of hitting the US mainland. The European Union also joined the criticism of North Korea and said its ‘repeated disregard of its international obligations was provocative and unacceptable’.

The South Korean military said in a statement: ‘Our assessment is that it is part of a show of force and is in response to the new US administration’s hardline position against the North.’

Mr Trump has vowed to get tough with North Korea and has called its leader Kim Jung-un a maniac who butchered his family. At a rally in Iowa last January he said: ‘This guy doesn’t play games. And we can’t play games with him.’

He added: ‘The message we’re sending to the world right now is a message of strength and solidarity; we stand with Japan and we stand with our allies in the region to address the North Korean menace.’

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North Korean Missile ranges.

 

 

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Britain, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

UK Government announces plans for Brexit negotiations

UNITED KINGDOM

David Davis MP, the Brexit Secretary, has set out the UK Government’s negotiating strategy in a Government White Paper.

David Davis MP, the Brexit Secretary, has set out the UK Government’s negotiating strategy in a Government White Paper.

BREXIT SECRETARY David Davis has set out the Government’s negotiating strategy for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in a keenly-awaited white paper.

Launching the 77-page document in a statement to the House of Commons, Mr Davis said the paper confirmed Prime Minister Theresa May’s vision of ‘an independent and truly global United Kingdom’.

Confirming the UK’s strategy would be guided by the 12 principles set out by Mrs May in her Lancaster House speech last month (see article), Mr Davis said the Government was aiming for ‘a new, positive and constructive partnership between Britain and the European Union that works in our mutual interest’.

The white paper, entitled The United Kingdom’s Exit From And New Partnership With The European Union, was published a day after MPs voted overwhelmingly to permit Mrs May to press ahead with starting withdrawal negotiations under Article 50 of the EU treaties.

Mrs May’s foreword to the white paper was made up of extracts from her Lancaster House speech, in which she said that forging a new partnership with Europe and a ‘stronger, fairer, more global’ Britain would be ‘the legacy of our time, the prize towards which we work, the destination at which we arrive once the negotiation is done’.

In a preface to the document, Mr Davis said that Britain entered the negotiations which the Government intends to trigger by the end of March in ‘a position of strength’.

Stressing that the UK ‘wants the EU to succeed’, he urged the remaining 27 member states and European institutions to be guided in the upcoming negotiations by ‘the principles set out in the EU Treaties concerning a high degree of international co-operation and good neighbourliness’.

Mr Davis said the Government would not publish details of its plans that would undermine Britain’s negotiating position, but promised ‘extensive engagement with Parliament’ and a ‘high degree of public engagement’ as the process went forward.

‘This document sets out our plan for the strong new partnership we want to build with the EU,’ he said.

‘Whatever the outcome of our negotiations, we will seek a more open, outward-looking, confident and fairer UK, which works for all.’

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Britain, Donald Trump, European Union, Society, Terrorism, United States

America’s travel ban

UNITED STATES

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President Donald Trump’s executive order brought a 120-day suspension to America’s refugee program, and an indefinite end to its intake of Syrian refugees.

President Donald Trump has insisted that the U.S. would have been inundated by “bad dudes” if he had given any warning of his clampdown on visitors from terror-hit Muslim countries.

Mr Trump’s administration faces growing protests at home and abroad for closing the country to people from seven largely Muslim countries.

The abruptness of the executive order, which even the US Department of Homeland Security wasn’t warned about, has caused widespread chaos and confusion, with travellers left stranded at airports across the globe.

Mr Trump has, however, defended his decision and the way it was implemented. ‘If the ban were announced with a one-week notice, the “bad” would rush into our country during that week,’ he said on social media site Twitter.

The order, banning refugees from Syria and imposing a 90-day stop on most people from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen from entering the US, has prompted protests across America and provoked strong condemnation from many world leaders.

Even Barack Obama broke with the tradition that former presidents do not criticise their successor to say he ‘fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.’

Mr Obama said he was ‘heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country’, saying it was ‘what we expect to see when American values are at stake’.

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The US President justifies his travel ban and uses social media site Twitter to disseminate his message.

Amid reports that customs and immigration officials struggled to interpret the new rules, Mr Trump instead blamed the chaos at US airports on a Delta Airlines computer outage and the presence of protesters.

He added: ‘Only 109 people out of 325,000 people were detained and instead held for questioning.’

Mr Trump, who has also signed a new executive order to cut back on business red tape, insists that the travel ban and new vetting procedures will be very good for national security. He said: ‘We had to make the move some day, and we decided to make the move.’

Mr Trump was unrepentant as he said there was ‘nothing nice about searching for terrorists before they can enter our country’, telling sceptics to ‘study the world’.

Despite the British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson insisting that British passport holders will escape the ban, the exemption doesn’t appear to have protected all UK citizens.

Lukman Faily, for instance, a former Iraqi ambassador to the US and a British passport holder after spending 20 years in the UK, planned to travel to Washington for a conference on fighting Islamic State.

Trump supporters claim he was badly served by inexperienced advisers who pushed the order through without consulting government departments on how to enforce it.

Blame has chiefly fallen on Stephen Miller, his 31-year-old former speech writer and now Mr Trump’s White House policy adviser.

Mr Miller has argued that the imposition of the ban has been an ‘efficient, orderly, enormously successful challenge’ to a ‘failed orthodoxy’ and was bound to attract protests. He has refused to say whether the US was soon planning to add other countries, such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to the list.

Amid claims his order may breach the US constitution by targeting people on the basis of their religion, Mr Trump has insisted his travel ban is not anti-Muslim.

But German chancellor Angela Merkel said the fight against terrorism ‘does not in any way justify putting groups of certain people under general suspicion’.

And Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit negotiator, accused Mr Trump of working with far-Right groups on the continent to engineer the EU’s disintegration. He identified President Trump as one of three threats to the EU, along with radicalised political Islam and Vladimir Putin.

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