The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Venezuela says U.S. bans Maduro from flying over Puerto Rico
- Analysis - Obama may extend his hand to Iran's Rouhani at U.N.
- Heavy rain lashes northwest Mexico as storm misery spreads
| Venezuela says U.S. bans Maduro from flying over Puerto Rico Posted: CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela said on Thursday the United States banned President Nicolas Maduro's jet from flying through U.S. airspace over Puerto Rico en route to a state visit to China in what Caracas called an act of aggression. There was no immediate comment from the United States, and it was unclear why Maduro's flight would be rejected. He is due in Beijing this weekend for talks. China is a major lender to his government, and Chinese firms are heavily involved in the OPEC nation's oil industry. Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said a flight plan filed by Venezuela that would have routed the president's plane over Puerto Rico had been rejected by U.S. authorities. "We denounce it as yet more U.S. aggression," Jaua said. "We reserve the right to take whatever measures we have to if the U.S. government and its aviation authorities don't rectify this new assault on Venezuela's sovereignty." Jaua told reporters that Washington had no right to deny airspace to any presidential plane. He said the government was studying other routes and the move would not stop Maduro from visiting China. The U.S. Embassy in Caracas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Maduro has often clashed with Washington since winning an election in April that was triggered by the death from cancer of his mentor, the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez. "What's going on in the United States? Why are they so nervous? Why so much despair?" he asked on state TV during a meeting with his party's candidates for local elections. "Denying a head of state permission to fly through airspace that they colonized, like in Puerto Rico, is a grave mistake." His trip to China would go ahead regardless, Maduro said, to applause from the crowd. "They can't stop us!" U.N. VISA DISPUTE Venezuela's president later accused the United States of not wanting to issue a visa for General Wilmer Barrientos, his minister in the office of the presidency, to attend meetings of the U.N. General Assembly next week in New York. "They want to put conditions, if we decide to go to New York ... They don't want to give a visa to my minister," he said. "Do we want to go as tourists? We're going to the United Nations. You're obligated to give visas to all the delegation." In July, Venezuela said it was ending efforts to improve ties with Washington after the Obama administration's nominee for envoy to the United Nations vowed to oppose what she called a crackdown on civil society in the "repressive" country. The latest diplomatic spat is reminiscent of this year's incident when Bolivia said France, Spain, Italy and Portugal denied their airspace to President Evo Morales' jet, apparently on suspicion the aircraft might have been carrying fugitive U.S. intelligence agency contractor Edward Snowden out of Russia. Days after that, Venezuela's Maduro became the world's first leader to offer asylum to Snowden, who is wanted by Washington for disclosing details of secret surveillance programs. At a news conference in Bolivia late on Thursday, Morales expressed solidarity with his Venezuelan counterpart. He also suggested that the 33 members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC, consider kicking out their U.S. ambassadors in response to the action against Maduro. "As a CELAC member we ask for a summit to address seriously the arrogance of the United States. At this meeting the Bolivian government will suggest the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. ambassadors," Morales told reporters in Santa Cruz. Bolivia's president also suggested the leaders of the leftist Latin American and Caribbean ALBA bloc - once led by Chavez - should not attend the U.N. General Assembly meetings. |
| Analysis - Obama may extend his hand to Iran's Rouhani at U.N. Posted: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Next week's U.N. General Assembly meetings will offer U.S. President Barack Obama a chance to extend a hand, both literally and figuratively, to new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The White House said on Thursday a meeting was possible, the first between U.S. and Iranian presidents since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. "It's possible, but it has always been possible," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. "The extended hand has been there from the moment the president was sworn in. It looks more likely to be a handshake and brief exchange of pleasantries - probably in the U.N. building - rather than a formal meeting where the leaders could talk at greater length With conciliatory overtures and gestures emanating from Iran's ruling echelon at a surprising pace in recent days, the White House is looking for the right balance in forming a response. Obama eventually wants to encourage Iran to make concessions in talks over its nuclear program. But if he embraces Tehran too warmly before it takes concrete actions, he would risk criticism that he is fumbling another foreign policy issue after struggling to handle crises over Syria and Egypt. SIGNS OF WARMING Iran's rhetoric has softened markedly since Rouhani took office in August. Recent gestures include a promise never to develop nuclear weapons, tweeted greetings on the Jewish New Year and the release of prominent political prisoner and rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. On Thursday, Rouhani published an opinion piece in the Washington Post urging other leaders "to respond genuinely to my government's efforts to engage in constructive dialogue." For its part, the White House said this week Obama had written Rouhani to convey the message "that the U.S. is ready to resolve the nuclear issue in a way that allows Iran to demonstrate that its nuclear program is for exclusively peaceful purposes." A U.S. official said the White House hoped to engineer a handshake in the U.N. building between the two leaders, but by no means a full meeting, and a second official also bet on a handshake, while saying there were currently no such plans. Regardless of whether Obama and Rouhani shake hands, the more serious issue is whether both countries are ready to get into a direct bilateral discussion. The United States suspects Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop atomic weapons, something it sees as a threat to Israel and to oil-producing U.S. allies in the Gulf. Iran denies that, saying its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes. A decade of negotiations between Iran and the West has yet to resolve the dispute and the United States has said it would not take any option off the table - code for a possible military strike - in dealing with Iran's nuclear program. Speeches by Obama and Rouhani, who address the United Nations next Tuesday, will attract scrutiny for signs of a thaw. Another closely watched address will be that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who views a potential Iranian bomb as an existential threat to Israel and is wary of Iran's new tone. Rouhani may extend what many analysts regard as a charm offensive by distancing himself from remarks by his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was widely vilified in the West for doubting the Holocaust and questioning Israel's right to exist. Obama's speech must strike a balance, analysts said, between showing a readiness to engage Iran - a message he conveyed in his first week as president in 2009 by saying he would extend a hand if they would "unclench their fist" - and stressing that talks could not be endless and Iran must curb to its nuclear program. In so doing, Obama needs to keep the door open to talks while protecting himself from attacks from conservatives who may regard his willingness to talk as weakness, particularly after his recent decision not to bomb Syria. Elliott Abrams, who served under former Republican President George W. Bush and is now at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said Obama was right to test whether Iran was willing to negotiate but should avoid an encounter with Rouhani himself. Saying the two are not equals because Rouhani serves under Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Abrams said: "Such a meeting is likely to be read in Tehran as showing how anxious Obama is for a deal. It ought to be avoided." Abrams also said Obama had undercut his leverage with Iran by striking a diplomatic deal with Russia to try to eliminate Syrian nuclear weapons rather than launching a military strike that he appeared poised to order in late August. "What happened with regards to Syria (suggests) that the Americans don't want any kind of military engagement, so all options are not on the table with regards to Iran," he said, saying that might make Israel more likely to strike Iran if the Jewish state thinks Washington is not engaged. LOWER-LEVEL CONTACTS? While there has been speculation of talks between the two presidents or between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif during the U.N. meetings, current and former U.S. officials said lower-level contact might make more sense. "That's often the way they start because you're not really sure what you're dealing with," said a third U.S. official. "You can survive a lower-level meeting that doesn't work, but you can't survive a higher-level that doesn't work." The United States has several potential candidates to lead the talks, including Wendy Sherman, undersecretary of state for political affairs, who currently leads U.S. nuclear negotiations with Iran, and Bill Burns, deputy secretary of state, who is a past negotiator with Iran and a Middle East expert. "The level and the negotiator will not be difficult to arrange ... the formal trappings, they'll figure out," said Dennis Ross, a former senior White House official under Obama now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank. "If the decision has been made to do it, you cut through that. If they are still fencing around trying to determine how to do it, then that is an indication that there isn't quite the readiness there otherwise would appear to negotiate," he added. Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said a genuine rapprochement between Iran and the United States was unlikely but that an Obama-Rouhani handshake "could open a path toward detente." "As long as Ayatollah Khamenei remains supreme leader of Iran, this is the best group of interlocutors that the U.S. will ever have to work with in Tehran, particularly Foreign Minister Zarif," Sadjadpour said. He argued that Rouhani and his foreign minister might succeed in impressing other Western nations with their more conciliatory tone and that could, over time, make it harder for the United States to sustain economic sanctions on Iran. "I think the double-edged sword Rouhani and Zarif present to the United States and Israel is that Iran is now easier to engage, but more difficult to isolate," he added. (Additional reporting by Marcus George and Yeganeh Torbati in Dubai; Editing by Alistair Bell, Frank McGurty and Peter Cooney) |
| Heavy rain lashes northwest Mexico as storm misery spreads Posted: MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - More rain lashed Mexico's northwest coast on Thursday, prompting evacuations and adding to flash floods that have created chaos across the country and killed at least 97 people. Storms have inundated vast areas of Mexico since the weekend, wrecking roads, destroying bridges and triggering landslides that buried homes and their occupants. In the Pacific resort of Acapulco, roads became raging torrents, stranding some 40,000 tourists. Dozens of people from a nearby village are missing after a deadly mudslide. Emergency services said heavy rains were battering the northwestern state of Sinaloa and hundreds of people had been evacuated from coastal communities. President Enrique Pena Nieto announced he was cancelling a trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week to focus on leading the relief efforts in Mexico. "The rainfall in the last few days has been the most intense registered in history over an extended area in Mexico," Pena Nieto told reporters in Guerrero, Acapulco's home state. The rain has eased in some areas, but more may be coming. The U.S. National Hurricane Centre said an area of low pressure over the oil-producing southern Gulf of Mexico had a 50 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone over the next 48 hours and could dump heavy rains on already flooded areas. The risk of more downpours comes after tropical storms Ingrid and Manuel converged on Mexico from the Gulf and the Pacific over the weekend, triggering the flash floods. Ingrid dissipated, but Manuel eventually became a hurricane before being downgraded again to a tropical storm, then a depression. Manuel is expected to dissipate in the mountains of western Mexico later on Thursday, the NHC said. More than 1 million people have been affected across the country, and 50,000 have been evacuated from their homes. "It's raining really heavily. I saw lots of fallen trees on my way to work," said Cristian Nunez, 26, a hotel receptionist in Culiacan, capital of Sinaloa, which Manuel hit on Thursday. "Many employees didn't make it in ... we're basically alone." Winds blew off the roofs of houses and 11 rivers in the mountainous state broke their banks. Residents waded through muddy, chest-high waters in some areas. Further south in flooded Acapulco, which has been hit by looting, the beach resort was still reeling. Thousands of people remained trapped in the city, awaiting evacuation as airlines and the armed forces worked to get them home. MUD BURIES HOUSES National emergency services reported that 97 deaths had been confirmed across Mexico. Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong later said he did not want to give a fresh update on the tally while rescue efforts continued. Osorio Chong said 68 people were still missing after a mudslide in a remote village in Atoyac de Alvarez, a municipality northwest of Acapulco. The government says 288 people have been rescued from the site, and about 20 bodies have been found there so far. Hotels in the northern Pacific state of Baja California Sur, home to the beach resorts of Los Cabos, which are popular with U.S. tourists, reported rain and wind on Wednesday, but nothing like the conditions seen in Acapulco. The storm damage follows a sharp slowdown in the Mexican economy last month, which prompted the government to cut its growth forecast for this year to 1.8 percent. The Finance Ministry said it has some 12 billion pesos ($945 million) in emergency relief funds, but footing the bill is an unwelcome burden on public finances at a time when Mexico had already proposed running a budget deficit to boost the economy. Gabriel Casillas, head of economic analysis at Banorte, said the storms could shave between 0.1 and 0.3 percentage points off gross domestic product in the third quarter if economic activity is interrupted for 10 days in 16 badly affected states. "We haven't seen two such aggressive weather phenomena hitting at the same time in recent years," he said. "We just don't yet know how long economic activity will be knocked out." He said he expected the additional impact to an already weak economy, coming on top of concerns about the health of the U.S. economy voiced by the Federal Reserve this week, would push the central bank to cut its benchmark rate again in October. By Thursday evening, all Mexico's main oil export hubs along the Gulf were open, and only one port was closed to large ships. State oil monopoly Pemex said it was sending 126,000 barrels of fuel by sea to help bring relief to Guerrero. Earlier, Pemex said it had dispatched technicians to fix a ruptured 12-inch (30 cm) oil pipeline from the Gulf port of Madero inland to Cadereyta, which connects two refineries. The pipeline was damaged when the Pablillo River burst its banks due to heavy rains. ($1 = 12.7035 Mexican pesos) (With reporting by Miguel Gutierrez, Gabriel Stargardter and David Alire Garcia; Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by Kieran Murray, Jim Loney and Stacey Joyce) |
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