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BEIJING: President Xi Jinping will attend the G20 summit in Indonesia from November 14 to 17, China’s foreign ministry confirmed on Friday.
He will then travel to Thailand from November 17 to 19 to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular press briefing Xi will meet US President Joe Biden and French counterpart Emmanuel Macron next week in Bali, as well as Senegal’s Macky Sall and Argentina’s Alberto Fernandez.
The White House has already confirmed Biden and Xi will meet on November 14 on the sidelines of the G20 summit, in their first in-person talks since the US leader became president.
The two met prior to Biden taking office and have spoken by phone a number of times over the past 22 months, but the COVID-19 pandemic and Xi’s aversion to foreign travel has prevented them from meeting in person.
Their meeting during the G20 comes after Xi last month was awarded a landmark third term as leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
The US and China have a massive investment and trade relationship but are also challenging each other’s military and diplomatic influence, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.
TEHRAN: Iran has indicted 11 people over the murder of a Basij paramilitary force member during a ceremony last week in honour of a slain protester, a judiciary official said Saturday.
The incident happened on November 3 in Karaj, capital of Alborz province, when mourners were paying tribute to Hadis Najafi at the cemetery to mark 40 days after she was killed in the city.
Her death on September 21 came five days into nationwide protests that erupted after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, following her arrest for an alleged breach of Iran’s hijab dress rules for women.
Eleven people, including a woman, had been summoned and charged over the killing of Basij member Ruhollah Ajamian, said Alborz province’s judiciary chief Hossein Fazeli Harikandi.
The indictments followed an investigation launched after images posted on social media networks showed “a group of rioters assaulting and killing” Ajamian, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website quoted him as saying.
“Rioters attacked this security officer, who was unarmed, stripped him naked, stabbed him with knives, beat him with brass knuckles, stones, and kicks, and then dragged his naked and half-dead body on the asphalt street and between cars in a horrific manner,” Harikandi added.
Some face charges of “corruption on earth”, one of the most serious offenses under Iranian law which is punishable by death.
They are also accused of serious disturbance of public order leading to murder, gathering with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s security, and propaganda against the state.
Amini, 22, died on September 16 in the custody of the morality police three days after falling into a coma, sparking street violence across the Islamic republic.
Dozens of people, mainly demonstrators but also security personnel, have been killed during the demonstrations, which the authorities have dubbed “riots”, and hundreds more have been arrested.
The Basij is a state-sanctioned volunteer force that is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
PHNOM PENH: Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba pressed Southeast Asian countries for political and material support in his county’s fight against Russia, while accusing Moscow on Saturday of playing “hunger games” with the world by holding up shipments of Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products.
Kuleba told reporters on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit that with a deal allowing Ukraine to export grain and fertilizer due to expire Nov. 19, the world needed to pressure Russia not to object to its extension, saying Ukrainian products were critical in Africa and Asia.
More than just continuing the deal, however, Kuleba accused Russian inspectors of “quiet sabotage,” saying they were intentionally dragging their feet in allowing shipments through.
Not only does Russia have “to remain part of the initiative, it also has to instruct its inspectors to act in good faith and to avoid any measures, any steps, that create obstacles and hinder the export of Ukrainian agricultural goods to the global market,” he said.
“Russia should — must — stop playing hunger games with the world.”
Kuleba’s country was invited to the ASEAN summit for the first time this year and signed a peace accord with the group of nations with a combined population of nearly 700 million people.
Many of the member nations have thus far been reserved in their stance toward the invasion, condemning the war but generally trying to avoid assigning blame. Eight of 10 ASEAN countries did vote in favor of the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russian aggression, with Vietnam and Laos abstaining.
Kuleba said signing the accord with ASEAN was a strong message of support from the group, though added that “the litmus test is the … voting in the UN General Assembly for resolutions related to Ukraine.”
ASEAN is made up of Cambodia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Brunei and Myanmar, though Myanmar’s leaders are not being allowed to participate in the current meetings due to ongoing violence in the country and its lack of effort in implementing the group’s peace plan following the 2021 military takeover.
Kuleba said he is using the opportunity of the Phnom Penh summit as “an Asian tour,” meeting with ASEAN members and non-members like Australia to plead for more political support, material aid — like transformers and generators to repair those destroyed in the fighting — and improvements of food security and trade.
He spoke on the day US President Joe Biden arrived at the talks, and was scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines.
He said he had hoped to meet with China’s foreign minister but was told he would not be present. Kuleba added that Ukraine was maintaining a dialogue with China to push Beijing to “use its leverage on Russia to make them stop the war. ”
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was also on hand at the ASEAN meetings, and Kuleba said if Lavrov asked to meet him, he would be willing to consider the request but accused Russia thus far of using talks as a “smokescreen for its continued aggression on the ground.”
“Ukraine will prevail, it’s only a matter of time and the price,” he said. “And yes, some gains are being achieved militarily, but some gains of Ukraine will be achieved diplomatically.”
But, he said, in any talks the “territorial integrity of Ukraine is not something that can be discussed.”
PHNOM PENH: US President Joe Biden landed in Asia on Saturday vowing to urge Chinese leader Xi Jinping to rein in North Korea when they hold their first face-to-face meeting at next week’s G20 summit.
Biden touched down in Phnom Penh for meetings with Southeast Asian leaders ahead of his encounter with his Chinese counterpart on Monday in Bali.
The meeting between the two superpowers comes after a record-breaking spate of missile tests by North Korea sent fears soaring that the reclusive state would soon conduct its seventh nuclear test.
In Monday’s meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Biden will tell Xi that China — Pyongyang’s biggest ally — has “an interest in playing a constructive role in restraining North Korea’s worst tendencies,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
Biden will also tell Xi that if North Korea’s missile and nuclear build-up “keeps going down this road, it will simply mean further enhanced American military and security presence in the region.”
Sullivan said Biden would not make demands on China but rather give Xi “his perspective.”
This is that “North Korea represents a threat not just to the United States, not just to (South Korea) and Japan but to peace and stability across the entire region.”
Whether China wants to increase pressure on North Korea is “of course up to them,” Sullivan said.
However, with North Korea rapidly ramping up its missile capacities, “the operational situation is more acute in the current moment,” Sullivan said.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida added his voice to calls for concerted international action to halt Pyongyang’s missile program during talks with ASEAN, China and South Korea.
Tokyo and Seoul have been increasingly alarmed by the North Korean testing blitz, which included an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Biden and Xi, the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies, have spoken by phone multiple times since Biden became president in January 2021.
But the COVID-19 pandemic and Xi’s subsequent aversion to foreign travel have prevented them from meeting in person.
The pair are not short of topics to discuss, with Washington and Beijing at loggerheads over issues ranging from trade to human rights in China’s Xinjiang region and the status of the self-ruled island of Taiwan.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has urged the two sides to work together, warning Friday of “a growing risk that the global economy will be divided into two parts, led by the two biggest economies — the United States and China.”
Before the G20, Biden will push the US’s commitment to Southeast Asia in meetings with leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), seeking to counter Beijing’s influence in the region.
China has been flexing its muscles — through trade, diplomacy and military clout — in recent years in a region it sees as its strategic backyard.
Biden flew into Phnom Penh with an agenda emphasising his administration’s policy of “elevating” the US presence in the region as a guarantor of stability, Sullivan said.
Biden will argue for “the need for freedom of navigation for lawful, unimpeded commerce, and for ensuring that the United States is playing a constructive role in maintaining peace and stability in the region.”
Biden and Xi both go into the G20 buoyed by recent domestic political success: Biden’s party having earned surprisingly strong midterm results and Xi having secured a landmark third term as China’s leader.
At last month’s Communist Party Congress, where he was anointed as chief again, Xi warned of a challenging geopolitical climate without mentioning the United States by name, as he wove a narrative of China’s “inevitable” triumph over adversity.
The G20 summit will be the latest step in a diplomatic re-emergence for Xi after the pandemic — it comes less than a fortnight after he hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Beijing.
As well as Biden, Xi will also meet French President Emmanuel Macron before heading to Bangkok later in the week for the APEC summit.
Notably absent from the summit will be Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been shunned by the West over his invasion of Ukraine, and who is instead sending Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Lavrov will press Moscow’s view that the United States is “destabilizing” the Asia-Pacific region with a confrontational approach, the Russian TASS news agency reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to attend the G20 virtually, after his request to address the ASEAN gathering was turned down.
BEIJING: Everyone in a district of 1.8 million people in China’s southern metropolis of Guangzhou was ordered to stay home Saturday to undergo virus testing and a major city in the southwest closed schools as another rise in infections was reported.
Nationwide, a total of 11,773 infections were found over the past 24 hours, including 10,351 in people with no symptoms, the National Health Commission announced. China’s numbers are low, but the increase over the past week is a challenge to a “zero-COVID” strategy that aims to isolate every infected person.
The quarantine for travelers arriving in China was shortened to five days from seven as part of changes in anti-virus controls announced Friday to reduce their cost and disruption. But the ruling Communist Party said it would stick to “zero COVID” even as other countries ease travel and other restrictions and try to shift to a long-term strategy of living with the virus.
A total of 3,775 infections were found in Guangzhou, a city of 13 million, including 2,996 in people who showed no symptoms, according to the NHC. That was an increase from Friday’s total of 3,030, including 2,461 people without symptoms.
People in the Guangzhou’s Haizhu district were ordered to stay home Saturday while testing was carried out, the district government announced on its social media account. One member of each household was allowed out to buy food.
Guangzhou has shut down schools and bus and subway service across much of the city as case numbers rise.
Flights from Guangzhou to the Chinese capital, Beijing, and other major cities have been canceled.
Nationwide, people who want to enter supermarkets, office buildings and other public buildings are required to show negative results of a virus test taken as often as once a day. That allows authorities to spot infections in people with no symptoms.
In the southwest, the industrial city of Chongqing closed schools in its Beibei district, which has 840,000 people. Residents were barred from leaving a series of apartment compounds in its Yubei district but the city gave no indication how many were affected.
The ruling party earlier this year shifted to isolating buildings or neighborhoods where infections are found instead of its previous approach of suspending access to cities following complaints that was too costly. But in outbreaks, such restrictions still can extend to areas with millions of inhabitants.
Public frustration and complaints that residents sometimes are left without access to food or medicine have boiled over into protests and clashes with local officials in some areas.
Elsewhere, mass testing also was being carried out Saturday in eight districts with a total of 6.6 million people in the central city of Zhengzhou.
Access to an industrial zone of Zhengzhou that is home to the world’s biggest iPhone factory was suspended last week following outbreaks. Apple Inc. warned deliveries of its new iPhone 14 model would be delayed.
Despite efforts to ease damage to the world’s second-largest economy, forecasters say business and consumer activity is weakening after growth rebounded to 3.9 percent over a year earlier in the three months ending in September from the first half’s 2.2 percent.
Economists have cut their forecast of China’s annual economic growth to as low as 3 percent, which would be among the lowest in decades.
President Xi Jinping’s government has refused to import foreign vaccines and defied requests to release more information about the source of the virus, which was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.
Economists and public health experts say “zero COVID” might stay in place for as much as another year. They say millions of elderly people have to be vaccinated before the ruling party can consider lifting controls that keep most foreign visitors out of China.
PHNOM PENH: UN chief Antonio Guterres on Saturday urged the Myanmar junta to “immediately” restart democracy, saying it was the only way to stop the “unending nightmare” engulfing the country.
Myanmar has spiraled into bloody conflict since the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government in February last year, with thousands killed.
The escalating crisis dominated a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional bloc, which has led so far fruitless diplomatic efforts to end the bloodshed.
“The situation in Myanmar is an unending nightmare for the people and a threat to peace and security across the region,” Guterres told reporters.
“I urge the authorities of Myanmar to listen to their people, release political prisoners and get the democratic transition back on track immediately. That is the only way to stability and peace.”
After meeting ASEAN leaders, Guterres said it was vital that a peace plan agreed with the junta — but so far not enforced — came into effect.
“Indiscriminate attacks on civilians are horrendous and heartbreaking,” he said.
A “five-point consensus” aimed at ending the chaos in Myanmar, agreed with the junta in April last year, has so far been ignored by the generals.
Increasingly frustrated ASEAN leaders on Friday tasked their foreign ministers with coming up with a concrete plan to implement the consensus.
They also gave their blessing to an ASEAN special envoy meeting opposition groups in Myanmar — a move that drew a furious response from the junta, which regards the dissident outfits as “terrorists.”