AFP Asia Business

US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off from striking Iran as he voiced optimism about nuclear talks his administration is holding with Tehran.Iran said that it may consider allowing Americans to inspect its facilities as part of the United Nations nuclear watchdog if a deal is reached.Trump, asked if he had told Netanyahu in a call next week not to take any action that could disrupt the diplomacy, said: “Well, I’d like to be honest, yes I did.”Pressed on what he told the Israeli premier, Trump replied: “I just said I don’t think it’s appropriate, we’re having very good discussions with them.”He added: “I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a solution. “I think they want to make a deal, and if we can make a deal, save a lot of lives.” Tehran and Washington have in recent weeks held five rounds of talks focused on the issue — their highest-level contact since Trump in 2018 withdrew from a previous deal negotiated by former president Barack Obama.Trump on a visit to Qatar earlier in May voiced optimism at reaching a new agreement with Iran that avoids military conflict.Israel sees cleric-ruled Iran, which supports Hamas militants in Gaza, as its top enemy. Israel has repeatedly threatened strikes on its nuclear facilities, after pummelling Iranian air defenses in rare direct combat.- ‘Reconsider accepting Americans’ -Iran denies Western charges that it is seeking a nuclear weapon, insisting its program is solely for peaceful, civilian purposes.Trump, withdrawing from the Obama-era deal in 2018, imposed sweeping sanctions that include pressuring all countries not to buy Iranian oil.”Countries that were hostile to us and behaved unprincipledly over the years — we have always tried not to accept inspectors from those countries,” Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami told reporters, referring to staff from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).Tehran “will reconsider accepting American inspectors through the agency” if “an agreement is reached, and Iran’s demands are taken into account,” he said.President Masoud Pezeshkian, currently on an official visit to Oman, thanked the Gulf state for its mediation efforts between the longtime adversaries, which have had no formal diplomatic ties since 1979.Iranian Foreign Minister and top negotiator Abbas Araghchi, who is accompanying Pezeshkian in Oman, said that “the date for the new round of negotiations will probably be clarified within the next few days.”While welcoming the negotiations, Iranian officials have repeatedly declared uranium enrichment “non-negotiable.” Trump administration officials have publicly insisted that Iran not be allowed to enrich any uranium — even at low levels for civilian purposes, as allowed under Obama’s 2015 deal.”The continuation of enrichment in Iran is an inseparable part of the country’s nuclear industry and a fundamental principle for the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told reporters.”Any proposal or initiative that contradicts this principle or undermines this right is unacceptable.”Iran currently enriches uranium up to 60 percent — the highest level of any non-nuclear weapons state. That rate is still below the 90 percent threshold required for a nuclear weapon, but far above the 3.67 percent limit set under the 2015 deal.

Ministers of the OPEC+ oil alliance, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, discussed production on Wednesday as another hike looms despite falling prices.The 22-nation group began a series of cuts in 2022 to prop up crude prices, but Saudi Arabia, Russia and six other members surprised markets recently by sharply raising output for May and June.The move has put pressure on prices, which have also fallen as investors worry that US President Donald Trump’s tariff onslaught will cause an economic slump and weigh on demand.Analysts say the hikes have likely been aimed at punishing OPEC members that have failed to meet their quotas, but it also follows pressure from Trump to lower prices.OPEC+ ministers in their online meeting Wednesday reaffirmed the alliance’s collective policy, according to a joint statement.But a decision to accelerate output hikes in July is expected to be made by its leading members — known as the “V8” or “voluntary eight” — at a meeting on Saturday.Such a decision, however, is not expected to have a major effect on oil prices, which have hovered around a relatively low $60-$65 per barrel.”This potential hike seems largely priced in already (by the markets),” said Ole Hvalbye, commodities analyst at SEB research group.”We expect market reactions to remain relatively muted,” Hvalbye said.At a meeting in December, OPEC+ decided to wait until late 2026 to reverse collective cuts of some two million barrels per day (bpd), as well as additional cuts by some member countries of 1.65 million bpd.But the V8 separately decided to reopen the valves this year, reducing further cuts they made and raising output from April by 137,000 bpd and at an accelerated pace by 411,000 bpd in May and June.”There are rumours that the group will move ahead with another triple hike (another 411,000 barrels) in July” at its meeting on Saturday, said analysts at Norwegian financial services group DNB.Analysts see several possible motivations for the production hikes.The move is seen as Saudi Arabia and others penalising members for not keeping to their quotas under the cuts first agreed in 2022.Kazakhstan, which is seen as one of the main laggards, “continues to produce roughly 350,000 barrels above its quota,” said Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, an analyst at Global Risk Management.Analysts also note that the production increases came after Trump called on OPEC to slash prices — meaning to increase output — in order to contain US inflation.A third reason could be an attempt by Saudi Arabia to drive prices down to add pressure on the US shale business and increase its market share.The next OPEC+ ministerial meeting is set for 30 November 2025.

Palestinians living in Gaza “deserve more than survival,” the United Nations envoy for the Middle East told the Security Council on Wednesday, as Israel’s war there enters its 600th day.  Israel stepped up its military offensive in Gaza, ignited by an attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023, earlier this month, while mediators push for a ceasefire that remains elusive.The issue of aid has come sharply into focus amid a hunger crisis after Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza for over two months, before allowing supplies in at a trickle last week.”Since the resumption of hostilities in Gaza, the already horrific existence of civilians has only sunk further into the abyss. This is manmade,” Sigrid Kaag, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told the Council.”Death is their companion,” she continued. “It’s not life, it’s not hope. The people of Gaza deserve more than survival. They deserve a future.”The aid that is now coming in “is comparable to a lifeboat after the ship has sunk,” she said.Kaag warned that there could be no “sustainable peace” in the Middle East without a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adding that the West Bank also is on a “dangerous trajectory.”And she called for collective action to revive a two-state solution, saying that a high-level international conference in June presents a “critical opportunity.””It must launch a concrete path towards ending the occupation and realizing the two-state solution,” she said. When speaking of people in Gaza, “the words empathy, solidarity and support have lost their meaning,” Kaag said.”We should not become accustomed to the number of people killed or injured. These are daughters, mothers, and young children whose lives have been shattered. All have a name, all had a future, all had dreams and aspirations.”- ‘Why didn’t I die?’ -The UN Security Council also heard the harrowing testimony of an American surgeon on Wednesday, a few weeks after his return from Gaza. “I am here because I have witnessed what is happening in Gaza with my own eyes, especially to children, and I cannot pretend not to have seen it. You too, cannot claim ignorance,” said Dr Feroze Sidhwa. The medical system in Gaza has not failed, he said. “It has been systematically dismantled through a sustained military campaign that has willfully violated international humanitarian law.”Children are “supposed to be protected,” he said, but “in Gaza, those protections are simply gone.””Most of my patients were pre-teen children, their bodies shattered by explosions and torn by flying metal. Many died. Those who lived often awoke to find their entire families gone,” he said.”According to the War Child Alliance, nearly half of Gaza’s children are suicidal,” he said.”They ask, why didn’t I die with my sister, my mother, my father? Not out of extremism, but out of unbearable grief. I wonder if any member of this Council has ever met a five-year-old child who no longer wants to live.”The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, blamed Hamas for the situation in Gaza. “There is suffering in Gaza, but the blame is on the shoulders of Hamas … so they will continue to be suffering until Hamas will understand that they will not stay in Gaza,” he told reporters.

Israeli air strikes blew up the last remaining plane at rebel-held Yemen’s international airport, Israel and a Yemeni official said on Wednesday, weeks after an earlier attack inflicted major damage.An air raid involving multiple strikes hit the Yemenia Airways plane and the runway at Sanaa airport, the Huthi rebels’ Al-Masirah TV channel posted on X, decrying “Israeli aggression”.Thick black smoke was seen billowing from a stricken plane on the tarmac, in a video posted on X by Sanaa airport director Khaled al-Shaief who said it was Yemenia’s last operational aircraft.The airport had only resumed limited commercial services on May 17, according to Huthi authorities, after it was closed by a heavy Israeli attack that destroyed six planes 11 days earlier.The Huthis, claiming solidarity with the Palestinians, have been firing on Israel and Red Sea shipping throughout the Gaza war, prompting reprisal strikes from Israel as well as the United States and Britain.Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said fighter jets targeted Huthi “terror targets” at the airport, a day after the group fired two projectiles at Israel.”Air Force jets have just struck terror targets of the Huthi terrorist organisation at the airport in Sanaa and destroyed the last aircraft remaining,” he said in a statement.An Israeli military statement said aircraft there “were used by the Huthi terrorist organisation for the transfer of terrorists who advanced terrorist attacks against the state of Israel”.According to a statement from Yemenia, the plane was about to be boarded by Muslim pilgrims bound for the annual hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.- ‘Fragile situation’ -The Huthis began their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November 2023, weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, prompting British and US military strikes beginning in January 2024.Earlier this month, the United States agreed a ceasefire with the Huthis, ending weeks of intense American strikes on rebel-held areas.However, the Huthis have continued to fire frequent projectiles at Israel, including strikes targeting Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. Earlier this month, Israel threatened to target the Huthi leadership.United Nations special envoy Hans Grundberg warned in a statement that clashes between the Huthis and Israel are “exacerbating an already very fragile situation for Yemen and the region”.The Huthis had earlier paused their attacks during a two-month ceasefire in Gaza that collapsed in March.The rebels have been at war with a Saudi-led coalition since 2015 in a conflict that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and triggered a major humanitarian crisis in Yemen, although fighting has decreased significantly since a UN-negotiated six-month truce in 2022.That year the airport, closed for six years during the war, reopened to commercial flights and has offered services to and from Amman in Jordan.

Bangladesh waved off its first consignment of mangoes to China on Wednesday, a largely symbolic export as Beijing sweetens ties after relations soured between Dhaka and former ally and neighbour India.Bangladesh, still reeling from the political fallout of a 2024 uprising that ended the autocratic rule of Sheikh Hasina — who fled by helicopter to …

Mango deal sweetens ties between Bangladesh and China Read More »

The UN on Wednesday condemned a US-backed aid system in Gaza after 47 people were injured during a chaotic food distribution, where the Israeli military said it did not open fire at crowds.The issue of aid has come sharply into focus amid a hunger crisis coupled with intense criticism of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a shadowy group that has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in the territory.According to the UN, 47 people were injured in the mayhem that erupted on Tuesday when thousands of Palestinians desperate for food rushed into a GHF aid distribution site, while a Palestinian medical source said at least one had died.Ajith Sunghay, the head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories, said most of the wounded had been hurt by gunfire.Based on the information he had, “it was shooting from the IDF” — the Israeli military.The Israeli military rejected the accusation, with spokesman Colonel Olivier Rafowicz telling AFP that Israeli soldiers “fired warning shots into the air, in the area outside” the centre managed by the GHF, and “in no case towards the people.”With the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel entering its 600th day on Wednesday, Palestinians in Gaza felt there was no reason to hope for a better future.”Six hundred days have passed and nothing has changed. Death continues, and Israeli bombing does not stop,” said Bassam Daloul, 40, adding that “even hoping for a ceasefire feels like a dream and a nightmare”.In Israel, the relatives of people held hostage in Gaza since the October 7 attack longed for the return of their loved ones, with hundreds gathering in their name in Tel Aviv.”I want you to know that when Israel blows up deals, it does so on the heads of the hostages,” Arbel Yehud, who was freed from Gaza captivity in January, told a press conference in Tel Aviv.”Their conditions immediately worsen, food diminishes, pressure increases, and bombings and military actions do not save them, they endanger their lives.”- ‘Waste of resources’ -The UN has repeatedly hit out against the GHF, which faces accusations of failing to fulfil the principles of humanitarian work.Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, on Wednesday reiterated the criticism.”I believe it is a waste of resources and a distraction from atrocities. We already have an aid distribution system that is fit for purpose,” he said during a visit in Japan.In Gaza, the civil defence agency said Israeli air strikes killed 16 people since dawn Wednesday.Heba Jabr, 29, who sleeps in a tent in southern Gaza with her husband and their two children, was struggling to find food.”Dying by bombing is much better than dying from the humiliation of hunger and being unable to provide bread and water for your children,” she told AFP.Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza for over two months, before allowing supplies in at a trickle last week.A medical source in southern Gaza told AFP that after Tuesday’s stampede at the GHF site, “more than 40 injured people arrived at Nasser Hospital, the majority of them wounded by Israeli gunfire”, adding that at least one had died since.The source added that “a number of other civilians also arrived at the hospital with various bruises”.- Hostage families’ anguish -On Tuesday, the GHF said around “8,000 food boxes have been distributed so far… totalling 462,000 meals”. UN agencies and aid groups have argued that the GHF’s designation of so-called secure distribution sites contravenes the principle of humanity because it would force already displaced people to move again in order to stay alive.Israel stepped up its military offensive in Gaza earlier this month, while mediators push for a ceasefire that remains elusive.In Israel, hundreds of people gathered to call for a ceasefire that would allow for the release of hostages held by militants in Gaza since their 2023 attack. Protesters gathered along the country’s roads and on the main highway running through the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv at 6:29 am, the exact time the unprecedented October 7 attack began.Most Israeli media headlines read “600 days”, and focused on the hostage families’ struggle to get their loved ones home.Other events were planned across Israel to mark the 600th day of captivity for the 57 remaining hostages still in Gaza.Some 1,218 people were killed in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Wednesday that at least 3,924 people had been killed in the territory since Israel ended a ceasefire on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 54,084, mostly civilians.bur-az-lba-acc/jsa

With reports of acute suffering in Gaza flooding the airwaves, EU leaders have toughened their tone on Israel — but the bloc will need to bridge deep divisions to move from rhetoric to a real-world impact on the conflict.The shift has been most noticeable from key power Germany, one of Israel’s staunchest allies in the world, its loyalty rooted in the trauma of the Holocaust.After an Israeli strike killed dozens, including many children, in a Gaza school-turned-shelter Monday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared he “no longer understands” Israel’s objectives in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave.”The way in which the civilian population has been affected… can no longer be justified by a fight against Hamas terrorism,” he said.Berlin’s stern new tone found an echo Tuesday in Brussels, where the German head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, denounced as “abhorrent” and “disproportionate” the past days’ attacks on civilian infrastructure in Gaza.An EU diplomat called such language both “strong and unheard of” coming from the commission chief, among the first to rally to Israel’s side in the wake of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks that triggered the Gaza war.The explanation? “Merz has moved the dial” in Brussels, said one EU official.”There’s been a very notable shift over recent weeks,” agreed Julien Barnes-Dacey, head of the Middle East programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), in a podcast by the think-tank — arguing it reflects a “sea change of European public opinion”.Translating talk into action is another matter, however.- Longstanding divisions -Germany, the main supplier of weapons to Israel after the United States, this week rebuffed calls to cut off arms sales to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.On Tuesday however, in a barely veiled threat, its foreign minister warned Israel against crossing a line.”We defend the rule of law everywhere and also international humanitarian law,” said Johann Wadephul. “Where we see that it is being violated, we will of course intervene and certainly not supply weapons that would enable further violations.”The European Union has long struggled to have an impact on the Mideast conflict due to long-standing divisions between countries that back Israel and those seen as more pro-Palestinian.Last week, in a milestone of sorts, the bloc launched a review to determine whether Israel is complying with human-rights principles laid out in its association agreement with the EU — a move backed by 17 of 27 member states.EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas said Wednesday she hopes to present options on the next steps to foreign ministers at a June 23 meeting in Brussels.Suspending the EU-Israel accord outright would require unanimity among member states — seen by diplomats as virtually unthinkable.Berlin was among the EU capitals that opposed even reviewing the deal, as did fellow economic heavyweight Italy.But Barnes-Dacey sees “the possibility of a qualified majority of states imposing some restrictions” under the trade component of the agreement.The EU is Israel’s biggest commercial partner, with 42.6 billion euros ($48.2 billion) traded in goods in 2024. Trade in services reached 25.6 billion euros in 2023.An EU diplomat says it is not yet clear whether there is sufficient support for the move, which needs backing from 15 member states, representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population.For Kristina Kausch, a Middle East expert at the German Marshall Fund think tank, it is too soon to speak of a European policy shift.”Even the review of the association agreement is only a review,” she said. “What counts is the action.”Momentum to ramp up pressure is growing by the day, however, spearheaded by the most vocal critics of Israel’s assault such as Spain, Belgium and Ireland.”My personal view is that it very much looks like genocide,” said Belgium’s foreign minister, Maxime Prevot. “I don’t know what further horrors need to take place before we dare use the word.”Accusations that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza have been levelled by rights groups, UN officials and a growing number of countries.Israel rejects the charge, and in Europe even the governments most sympathetic to the Palestinians are treading carefully.One tangible next step could be the broader recognition of Palestinian statehood — with France seeking to move forward on the matter ahead of a UN conference in June.”Will that have an immediate impact? Probably not,” said Barnes-Dacey.”But I do think it will have an impact if Israel knows that it no longer has the free path that it’s had for so long.”

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi backed week-long nationwide strikes by truckers Wednesday as a “loud call” to the authorities, after arriving home from his triumph at the Cannes film festival.Truck drivers across Iran were striking for a seventh day on Wednesday in a stoppage rare in its length and magnitude, seeking better conditions in a sector crucial for the economy in the Islamic republic.After starting last week in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, the strike action has spread across the country, according to reports by monitoring groups on social media and Persian-language media based outside Iran.The truck drivers are protesting a rise in insurance premiums, poor road security, high fuel prices and low freight rates, according to union statements cited by these media.”They are fed up. They have no choice but to go strike,” Panahi wrote on Instagram, having returned to Iran on Monday after winning the Palme d’or for his latest film “It Was Just an Accident”.”When thieves and illiterate people are put in charge, the result is this terrible situation: corruption and mismanagement in everything, from the economy and culture to the environment and politics,” added Panahi.The acclaimed director was long banned from filmmaking and unable to leave Iran, having also spent time in prison due to his political stances.”This strike is a loud call to the government saying: ‘Enough! Stop all this oppression and plunder’,” he said.Persian-language television channels based outside Iran, including Iran International and Manoto, which are critical of the government, said the strike was continuing Wednesday, broadcasting images of deserted roads sent from inside Iran as well as trucks parked up in cities including the central city of Isfahan. It was not immediately possible to independently verify the images.Tankers carrying fuel from the major refinery in Abadan in western Iran have now joined the strike, Manoto said.Iran International also said some participants had been arrested in the western city of Kermanshah, following arrests earlier this week in the southern city of Shiraz.The same outlets also indicated that there have been strikes in other sectors in Iran, notably by bakers who are angered by early morning power cuts when they are baking bread.