New York’s incoming leftist mayor Zohran Mamdani will meet with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday, after an exchange of barbs that has seized national attention.Mamdani, a 34-year-old political insurgent who came from nowhere to win leadership of America’s biggest city, said Thursday he was “ready for whatever happens.”Sparks could fly when the self-declared Democratic Socialist comes face-to-face with the 79-year-old Republican. Trump brands Mamdani a “communist” and has suggested the Ugandan-born New Yorker should be deported.”It speaks volumes that (Friday) we have a communist coming to the White House,” Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.Both men are from the Queens area of New York City and both have a talent for political messaging, but with vastly different styles.Trump has threatened to make life difficult for the young political upstart.The Republican, whose presidency revolves around harsh anti-immigrant policies, has derided Mamdani’s South Asian name.More seriously for New York, Trump is threatening cuts to the city’s federal funding alongside national guard deployments like those to other Democratic cities once Mamdani, set to be the first Muslim mayor, takes office.- One million-plus votes -Mamdani was elected after a campaign focused on the often crippling expenses facing New Yorkers and promising innovative  — if untested — measures like rent freezes, free buses and experimental city-run grocery stores.Virtually unknown at the start of the campaign, he became the first mayoral candidate to surpass the one-million-vote mark in New York since 1969.But he has also been careful to placate centrists.He named incumbent police commissioner Jessica Tisch — seen as a safe pair of hands and reportedly popular with rank-and-file officers — as his pick to run the police department. He also named veteran bureaucrat Dean Fuleihan, 74, as his first deputy mayor.While campaigning, the leftist leader positioned himself as part of the anti-Trump resistance. Since then, Mamdani has struck a more conciliatory tone, stressing his desire to work with Trump on the cost of living.”It’s more critical than ever, given the national crisis of affordability, one that New Yorkers know very well…and the specific challenge many cities are facing in balancing public safety and steps taken by this administration,” Mamdani said in front of City Hall on Thursday.While noting that he and Trump had “many disagreements,” Mamdani said that he would “pursue all avenues and meetings that can make our city affordable.”He added that it was customary for a newly elected New York mayor to meet the US president.”Look for the outcome of that meeting to be something to the effect of, ‘I think I can work with (him) — but we will see how it goes and I’m hopeful — we both want the city to succeed’,” said Syracuse University politics professor Grant Reeher. – ‘Turn the volume up’ -Oval Office meetings with Trump can be perilous affairs, with the president using the impressive setting to ambush both US and foreign visitors, notably including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.Columbia University political analyst Lincoln Mitchell warned that Mamdani could walk into a Zelensky-like situation, where Trump watched his vice president, JD Vance, censure the wartime Ukrainian leader in front of the world’s media.”It certainly could — you could see Vance just picking at him,” he told AFP.During his acceptance speech on winning the mayor’s chair, Mamdani looked down the camera and said: “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you — turn the volume up!”The White House confirmed that Trump had been watching.

In Washington’s embassy district, years’ worth of wildly overgrown vegetation outside an empty building was finally pruned away in September as the flag of Syria was raised.The symbolic reopening of the compound after 11 years of closure serves as a reminder that a number of buildings in the area of Washington called Kalorama are in a state of sad abandon, thanks to the violent jolts of world diplomacy.Since the embassy of Afghanistan closed a few months after the Taliban returned to power in 2021, its mailbox outside has been filled with yellowing newspapers.And not far away, weeds grow in the parking lot of a mansion that used to house the Russian trade delegation in Washington. The State Department ordered it closed in reprisal for Russia’s alleged attempt to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election.The Syrian Embassy was shut down by the US government in 2014 after three years of civil war. Now, in principle at least, it can reopen.The Trump administration announced this on November 10 after a White House visit by Syria’s new president Ahmed al-Sharaa, the formerly blacklisted jihadist who led the ouster of Assad in late 2024.- Angry neighbors -But the building is in such bad shape it could take years to get it up and running again, former Syrian diplomat Bassam Barabandi told AFP.Barabandi left his post in 2013 after it emerged that he had secretly made passports for people opposed to the Assad regime.He recalled that even back then, before he left, areas of the building had been partially condemned.”So, just imagine,” he said, of its state now.Down the street, the overgrown hedges outside the abandoned ambassador’s residence were sometimes trimmed by gardeners employed by wealthy neighbors irked by the unsightliness.A utility company notice of gas being cut off still hangs from the front door knob.A few buildings away, near a mansion owned by Barack and Michelle Obama, the embassy of Afghanistan stands.”So one day it was there. The next day it just was, it was gone,” said US postal worker Trina Thompson, who has done rounds in the neighborhood for 25 years.That was in March 2022 and then-deputy ambassador Abdul Hadi Nejrabi watched it all. It was he who handed the keys to the embassy back to the US government.Kabul had fallen to the Taliban seven months earlier and Hadi Nejrabi and his diplomatic colleagues represented a government that no longer existed.Soon their bank accounts were frozen and they were no longer paid.The embassy was still offering consular services to Afghan citizens but “we reached a point the State Department officially asked us to close the embassy and just hand over the keys,” Hadi Nejrabi told AFP.A team from the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions went to the embassy to oversee the closure.”We checked every room, and then we just came out and we locked the door and I just gave the key,” the former diplomat said.It is this State Department section which is responsible for the upkeep of other countries’ embassies.Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, states are supposed to respect and protect other countries’ embassies in cases where diplomatic relations are severed.- ‘Border on theft’ -The State Department lists 29 such buildings which it is supposed to be looking after: three associated with Afghanistan, six with Venezuela, and 11 with Iran — these three countries have no relations with the United States now. But the list also features three buildings for China and six Russian ones.The buildings now off limits to the Russians include consulates in San Francisco and Seattle and a massive compound in Maryland.They were closed in a spat of tit for tat reprisals after the 2016 election won by Donald Trump.The Russian Embassy told AFP these closures are illegal under the Vienna Convention and “border on theft.””While property rights of the Russian Federation for these six objects are recognized and have not been challenged by the US side, continuously denying access for Russian diplomats even to inspect the grounds and buildings is preposterous, cementing the bilateral relations’ ‘toxic legacy’ of previous years.”Elsewhere in Kalorama the embassy of Iran has stood empty since 1980, after the Islamic revolution that ousted the US-backed shah.The squat, blue-domed building used to host fancy receptions for the Washington diplomatic crowd. But unlike the Syrian embassy, it looks far from reopening as US-Iran tensions remain fierce.

Ukraine would give up a swathe of eastern territory to Russia and slash the size of its army under a sweeping 28-point peace plan backed by US President Donald Trump, according to a draft obtained by AFP.Kyiv would also pledge never to join NATO, and would not get the Western peacekeepers they have called for, although European warplanes would be stationed in Poland to protect Ukraine.A US official told AFP the draft plan includes a powerful security guarantee for Kyiv, modeled on NATO rules, which would commit the US and European allies to respond to any attack on Ukraine.Russia would meanwhile be readmitted to the G8 group of nations and be rewarded with sanctions relief under the plan, which US officials said was still a “working document.”The proposal involves major concessions by Kyiv, which has previously refused to cede any land, while appearing to meet many of Moscow’s maximalist demands following its 2022 invasion.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he expected to discuss the plan with Trump “in coming days.” He said any deal must bring a “dignified peace” that respected Kyiv’s sovereignty.The White House denied reports it had cooked up the proposal with Moscow, saying envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been “quietly” working with both sides for the past month.”The president supports this plan. It’s a good plan for both Russia and Ukraine,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.Trump himself would preside over a “peace council” to oversee the ceasefire, similar to the one proposed for the Gaza truce between Israel and Hamas, according to the plan.- Territory – Key parts of the proposal correspond to Moscow’s previous demands and cross Ukraine’s red lines.These include that Ukraine would withdraw from the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, the frontline industrial belt known collectively as the Donbas that Ukraine still partly holds.The two regions and Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, “will be recognized as de facto Russian, including by the United States,” while a demilitarized zone would be created in the Donbas.The war-torn southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — which Russia falsely claims to have annexed — will be “frozen along the line of contact,” it said.Russia’s army occupies around a fifth of Ukraine — much of it ravaged by years of fighting.- Ukraine security – Ukraine had been hoping for European-led peacekeepers but Russia’s refusal to accept any such force also wins out in the plan.NATO would agree not to station troops in Ukraine, while the country would be barred from joining NATO by both its own constitution and the alliance’s statutes.Kyiv meanwhile would reduce its army by a little less than half, to 600,000 personnel.In return, Ukraine would receive “reliable security guarantees,” the plan says without specifying, but “European fighter jets” would be stationed in neighboring Poland.Ukraine would also have to hold elections in 100 days — a further Russian demand and one echoed by Trump, who called Zelensky a “dictator without elections” earlier this year.Amid a spiralling corruption scandal in Ukraine that has claimed the jobs of two ministers, Kyiv had meanwhile removed language about an audit of foreign aid and replaced it with a call for a “full amnesty,” a senior US official told AFP.- G8 return for Russia? – Under the proposal, Russia would be “reintegrated into the global economy” and be allowed back into the G8, from which it was expelled in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea.Sanctions would snap back if it invades Ukraine again.Yet Russia meanwhile faces few military restrictions under the plan, which says only that “it is expected that Russia will not invade neighboring countries.”The contents of the proposal plan have fuelled suggestions that Moscow was involved in drafting it. “It seems that the Russians proposed this to the Americans, they accepted it,” a senior Ukrainian source told AFP.But US officials insisted all sides were involved. Zelensky also met a Pentagon delegation headed by US Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll in Kyiv on Thursday.The timing has also raised questions, coming as the corruption row rattles Zelensky and Russia pushes forward with its grinding offensive.On the ground, Russia claimed Thursday to have recaptured the key city of Kupiansk in eastern Ukraine — which Kyiv denied — as Putin visited an army command post to speak with officers.A Russian strike on the city of Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine on Thursday killed five people and wounded three others, emergency services said.Since returning to the White House, Trump’s position on the Ukraine war has shifted dramatically back and forth.He rowed with Zelensky in the Oval Office in February but has also shown increasing frustration with Putin after a summit in Alaska produced no results.burs-dk/sla/jgc