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TOULON: Tensions over migration flared between EU countries on Saturday after people on board a rescue ship turned back by Italy disembarked in France.
The Ocean Viking, operated by a French NGO, had picked up more than 230 migrants at sea near the Libyan coast before spending weeks seeking a port to accept them.
France allowed the boat to dock at the southern port of Toulon on Friday after Rome denied it access.
The stand-off has inflamed a dispute over the way EU countries handle migration across the Mediterranean.
Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Malta on Saturday slammed the EU’s system for managing migrant flows and called for the EU Commission to intervene.
They hit out at the “disappointing” results of previous EU commitments to a scheme that in its initial year would have seen 10,000 people relocated from the European countries they first reached.
“The mechanism is slow” and the figure of 10,000 relocations, which was not met, “represents only a very small part of the actual figure of irregular arrivals during this year,” they said.
The Greek migration minister and the interior ministers of Cyprus, Italy and Malta made the comments in a joint statement issued in Rome.
These countries have argued for years in favor of a compulsory relocation system.
They said that as states where migrants first enter Europe, they bear “the most difficult burden in the management of migratory flows in the Mediterranean, in full respect of international obligations and EU rules.”
And they pointed the finger at humanitarian NGOs, saying their “private vessels act in total autonomy from the competent state authorities.”
The Ocean Viking vessel , run by SOS Mediterranee, left to undergo maintenance at another port after the migrants disembarked at Toulon, authorities said.
In a few weeks’ time it is set to return to save more migrants in the Mediterranean.
French authorities said the last of the 230 passengers disembarked late Friday. Four others were evacuated by helicopter earlier in the week.
Of the passengers, 189 people — including 23 women and 13 minors — were taken to a holiday camp turned shelter on the Giens Peninsula some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the military port of Toulon.
Among them was an 18-year-old from Pakistan, who clutched a binbag containing his only belongings. Imran — a pseudonym — said he had spent 21 days at sea and felt exhausted.
He wondered how long he would be able to stay in France.
“They haven’t told us anything,” he said.
“As long as we are no longer in Libya or at sea, I am fine with anything. I needed to be on dry land.”
His most pressing concern, he said, was to let his family know he is still alive.
The shelter has been designated a special “international waiting zone” that is not part of French territory and from which the migrants are not allowed to leave until their request for asylum has been processed.
French authorities said all new arrivals had expressed the wish to seek asylum.
They will have to undergo security checks, including from French domestic intelligence, before they can be interviewed by the country’s refugee agency, whose representatives were expected to arrive on Saturday.
Another passenger, the first let off the Ocean Viking on Friday, is being treated in a French hospital for poor health.
A total of 44 unaccompanied minors — mostly “young teenagers” — have been handed over to French social services and are not staying at the Giens shelter, local official Evence Richard said.
Of all the disembarked passengers, 175 are to leave France and head to 11 other countries.
Germany is to receive 80 of the migrants, while Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal and Romania have also agreed to take in a share.
The Ocean Viking initially sought access to Italy’s coast, which is closest to where the migrants were picked up, saying health and sanitary conditions onboard were rapidly worsening.
Italy refused, saying other nations needed to shoulder more of the burden for taking in the thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe from North Africa every year.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration says 1,891 migrants have died or disappeared so far this year while trying to cross the Mediterranean in the hope of a better life in Europe.
DENPASAR, Bali: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year appeared to overshadow all else on the agenda of the leaders’ meeting of the Group of 20 on Tuesday, with the conflict in Europe having fueled geopolitical tensions and a global surge in food and energy prices.
Leaders of G20 member states, invited countries and international organizations have gathered in Bali to discuss the pressing challenges facing the global economy, which is creeping toward a recession.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country and Southeast Asia’s largest economy, is hosting the summit under the theme “Recover together, recover stronger” in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic consequences.
Although the summit’s official focus is on financial stability, health, sustainable energy, and digital transformation, host Indonesia faces another layer of complexity as it tries to bridge rifts within the G20 over the war in Ukraine.
Joko Widodo, the Indonesian president, acknowledged the mood during his opening remarks on Tuesday, just before the closed-door discussions began.
“I understand we need huge efforts to be able to sit together in this room,” he said, while calling for collaboration among countries.
He pointed out that the world could not afford to fall into “another Cold War,” adding that nations must work to “end the war.”
He said: “Today, the eyes of the world are on our meeting. Will we score success? Or will we add one more to the list of failures? For us, G20 must succeed and cannot fail.”
Seventeen G20 leaders are attending this week’s summit, including US President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Indonesia invited other nations and international organizations to take part, adding to a long list of world leaders that includes UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, addressed G20 leaders via video link on the summit’s first day, in which he shared his optimism that the conflict’s end could be in sight.
He said: “I am convinced now is the time when the Russian destructive war must and can be stopped.”
Analysts expect the war to feature prominently in the summit’s final communique, despite calls by the Indonesian hosts for dialogue and collaboration to resolve global economic problems such as inflation, and food and energy security.
Gatherings of G20 ministers since Indonesia took over the group’s presidency last December have failed to produce joint declarations. There have been disagreements between Russia and other members on the precise language, including how to describe what is occurring in Ukraine.
Dr. Ahmad Rizky Mardhatillah Umar, an Indonesian international relations researcher at the University of Queensland, in Australia said the expected final declaration on Wednesday was unlikely to fully address the global challenges facing the world today.
He told Arab News: “Given the tensions between the US and China for example in some political matters and then war in Ukraine, it is difficult to see the G20 Summit will deliver an agreeable result that can solve the global challenges facing the world today, because global challenges facing the world today are largely a political problem.
“So, it is a difficult task for Indonesia to deliver a joint communique which is able to solve all the global challenges.”
He noted that the challenges facing the world today were “something that goes beyond Indonesia’s reach.”
Umar added that this was “because the global crisis today requires political solutions, and it is difficult for Indonesia to mediate, for example, between Russia and Ukraine.”
The gathering in Bali follows concerted efforts by Indonesia to broker peace between the warring nations. In late June, Widodo was the first Asian leader to travel to Kyiv and Moscow to meet his Ukrainian and Russian counterparts in an effort to ease the conflict’s impact on the international community.
Bhima Yudhistira, director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, also felt that the global situation was beyond Indonesia’s control.
“The summit has been overshadowed by the Ukraine war, and it’s possible that they won’t reach a final communique, even though the key of the meeting’s success is on this communique,” he told Arab News.
“Indonesia’s position is as a developing country, and the defining players are the ones in conflict and developed countries, so even being able to facilitate the meeting between America’s Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping at the G20 is already an achievement for now,” Yudhistira said.
On Tuesday, Biden and Xi held their first in-person meeting since the US president took office. It came amid strained relations between their two countries that span various issues, ranging from trade to the status of Taiwan.
Yudhistira was nevertheless confident that this year’s G20 Summit would go down in history.
“I think this is a historic G20. It’s historic because of the polarization, because of the crack in multilateralism, but it’s still the one forum that brings together differences, such as between the US and China,” he added.
For others, there was still hope that the summit could bring about stability.
Diana Dewi, chairwoman of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s chapter in Jakarta, told Arab News: “There is hope that this would result in world peace, because with this summit it’s not only about reaching for economic growth, but ever since the beginning, like President Widodo has said, this is an event that is supposed to unite.”
News agencies reported on Tuesday that leaders of the world’s largest economies appeared ready to convey a strong message condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though the draft declaration would still need to be approved by all the group’s members.
Established in 1999 in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, the G20 was originally intended to foster global economic cooperation. But it has since morphed into a forum addressing urgent world problems. This year’s focus was on health infrastructure and food security.
The annual leaders’ summit also serves as an opportunity for informal diplomatic exchanges, as heads of state participate in bilateral talks on the sidelines of the big meeting.
Tuesday witnessed a handful of the bilateral exchanges, including that of Xi and Anthony Albanese, Australia’s new prime minister, which marked the first formal meeting between the leaders of the two countries since 2016.
The Saudi crown prince also held a number of meetings on the summit’s sidelines, including with the UAE president, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Though most international headlines have focused on US and Chinese participation in the summit due to their global economic standing, Saudi Arabia’s role “is very significant,” senior Indonesian journalist Andreas Ismar told Arab News.
“Saudi Arabia needs to diversify its economy to be less oil-reliant and they have plenty of chances of doing that in this forum,” Ismar said, alluding to the Vision 2030 reform plan aimed at diversifying the Kingdom’s economy away from hydrocarbons.
Saudi Aramco and Indonesia’s state-owned Pertamina recently agreed to work together on the possibility of developing a clean ammonia and hydrogen value chain, as both Riyadh and Jakarta prioritize efforts on transitioning toward renewable energy sources.
“I’m guessing there will be plenty more to come between Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Cooperation between the two countries was previously more on political and culture, but it is now rapidly shifting into economics,” Ismar added.
LAGOS: The world’s population is projected to hit an estimated 8 billion people on Tuesday, according to a United Nations projection, with much of the growth coming from developing nations in Africa.
Among them is Nigeria, where resources are already stretched to the limit. More than 15 million people in Lagos compete for everything from electricity to light their homes to spots on crowded buses, often for two-hour commutes each way in this sprawling megacity. Some Nigerian children set off for school as early as 5 a.m.
And over the next three decades, the West African nation’s population is expected to soar even more: From 216 million this year to 375 million, the UN says. That will make Nigeria the fourth-most populous country in the world after India, China and the United States.
“We are already overstretching what we have — the housing, roads, the hospitals, schools. Everything is overstretched,” said Gyang Dalyop, an urban planning and development consultant in Nigeria.
The UN’s Day of 8 Billion milestone on Tuesday is more symbolic than precise, officials are careful to note in a wide-ranging report released over the summer that makes some staggering projections.
The upward trend threatens to leave even more people in developing countries further behind, as governments struggle to provide enough classrooms and jobs for a rapidly growing number of youth, and food insecurity becomes an even more urgent problem.
Nigeria is among eight countries the UN says will account for more than half the world’s population growth between now and 2050 — along with fellow African nations Congo, Ethiopia and Tanzania.
“The population in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double between 2022 and 2050, putting additional pressure on already strained resources and challenging policies aimed to reduce poverty and inequalities,” the UN report said.
It projected the world’s population will reach around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100.
Other countries rounding out the list with the fastest growing populations are Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines and India, which is set to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation next year.
In Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, where more than 12 million people live, many families struggle to find affordable housing and pay school fees. While elementary pupils attend for free, older children’s chances depend on their parents’ incomes.
“My children took turns” going to school, said Luc Kyungu, a Kinshasa truck driver who has six children. “Two studied while others waited because of money. If I didn’t have so many children, they would have finished their studies on time.”
Rapid population growth also means more people vying for scarce water resources and leaves more families facing hunger as climate change increasingly impacts crop production in many parts of the world.
“There is also a greater pressure on the environment, increasing the challenges to food security that is also compounded by climate change,” said Dr. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. “Reducing inequality while focusing on adapting and mitigating climate change should be where our policymakers’ focus should be.”
Still, experts say the bigger threat to the environment is consumption, which is highest in developed countries not undergoing big population increases.
“Global evidence shows that a small portion of the world’s people use most of the Earth’s resources and produce most of its greenhouse gas emissions,” said Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the Population Foundation of India. “Over the past 25 years, the richest 10 percent of the global population has been responsible for more than half of all carbon emissions.”
According to the UN, the population in sub-Saharan Africa is growing at 2.5 percent per year — more than three times the global average. Some of that can be attributed to people living longer, but family size remains the driving factor. Women in sub-Saharan Africa on average have 4.6 births, twice the current global average of 2.3.
KYIV: Poland said early Wednesday that a Russian-made missile fell in the eastern part of the country, killing two people in a blast that marked the first time in the war with Ukraine that Russian weapons came down on a NATO country.
Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy decried the strike as “a very significant escalation” of the war.
The Polish government said in a statement that Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau summoned the Russian ambassador and “demanded immediate detailed explanations.”
Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller said some military units were put on alert while officials sought details.
Polish media reported that the strike took place in an area where grain was drying in Przewodów, a village near the border with Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry denied being behind “any strikes on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border” and said in a statement that photos of purported damage “have nothing to do” with Russian weapons.
On Tuesday, Russia pounded Ukraine’s energy facilities with its biggest barrage of missiles yet, striking targets across the country and causing widespread blackouts.
The barrage also affected neighboring Moldova. It reported massive power outages after the strikes knocked out a key power line that supplies the small nation, an official said.
The missile strikes plunged much of Ukraine into darkness and drew defiance from Zelenskyy, who shook his fist and declared: “We will survive everything.”
In his nightly address, the Ukrainian leader said the reported strikes in Poland offered proof that “terror is not limited by our state borders.”
“We need to put the terrorist in its place. The longer Russia feels impunity, the more threats there will be for everyone within the reach of Russian missiles,” Zelenskyy said.
Russia fired at least 85 missiles, most of them aimed at the country’s power facilities, and blacked out many cities, he said.
The Ukrainian energy minister said the attack was “the most massive” bombardment of power facilities in the nearly 9-month-old Russian invasion, striking both power generation and transmission systems.
The minister, Herman Haluschenko, described the missile strikes as “another attempt at terrorist revenge” after military and diplomatic setbacks for the Kremlin. He accused Russia of “trying to cause maximum damage to our energy system on the eve of winter.”
The aerial assault, which resulted in at least one death in a residential building in the capital, Kyiv, followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes — the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.
The power grid was already battered by previous attacks that destroyed an estimated 40% of the country’s energy infrastructure. Zelenskyy said the number of Ukrainians without power had fallen from 10 million to 2 million by Tuesday evening.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the retreat from Kherson since his troops pulled out in the face of a Ukrainian offensive. But the stunning scale of Tuesday’s strikes spoke volumes and hinted at anger in the Kremlin.
By striking targets in the late afternoon, not long before dusk began to fall, the Russian military forced rescue workers to labor in the dark and gave repair crews scant time to assess the damage by daylight.
More than a dozen regions — among them Lviv in the west, Kharkiv in the northeast and others in between — reported strikes or efforts by their air defenses to shoot missiles down. At least a dozen regions reported power outages, affecting cities that together have millions of people. Almost half of the Kyiv region lost power, authorities said.
Zelenskyy warned that more strikes were possible and urged people to stay safe and seek shelter.
“Most of the hits were recorded in the center and in the north of the country. In the capital, the situation is very difficult,” said a senior official, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
He said a total of 15 energy targets were damaged and claimed that 70 missiles were shot down. A Ukrainian Air Force spokesman said Russia used X-101 and X-555 cruise missiles.
As city after city reported attacks, Tymoshenko urged Ukrainians to “hang in there.”
With its battlefield losses mounting, Russia has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine’s power grid, seemingly hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark.
In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said authorities found a body in one of three residential buildings that were struck in the capital, where emergency blackouts were also announced by power provider DTEK.
Video published by a presidential aide showed a five-story, apparently residential building in Kyiv on fire, with flames licking through apartments. Klitschko said air defense units also shot down some missiles.
Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra took to a bomb shelter in Kyiv after meeting his Ukrainian counterpart and, from his place of safety, described the bombardment as “an enormous motivation to keep standing shoulder-to-shoulder” with Ukraine.
“There can be only one answer, and that is: Keep going. Keep supporting Ukraine, keep delivering weapons, keep working on accountability, keep working on humanitarian aid,” he said.
The strikes came as authorities were already working furiously to get Kherson back on its feet and beginning to investigate alleged Russian abuses there and in the surrounding area.
The southern city is without power and water, and the head of the U.N. human rights office’s monitoring mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, on Tuesday decried a “dire humanitarian situation” there.
Speaking from Kyiv, Bogner said her teams are looking to travel to Kherson to try to verify allegations of nearly 80 cases of forced disappearances and arbitrary detention.
The head of the National Police of Ukraine, Igor Klymenko, said authorities are to start investigating reports from Kherson residents that Russian forces set up at least three alleged torture sites in now-liberated parts of the wider Kherson region.
The retaking of Kherson dealt another stinging blow to the Kremlin. Zelenskyy likened the recapture to the Allied landings in France on D-Day in World War II, saying both were watershed events on the road to eventual victory.
But large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine remain under Russian control, and fighting continues.
In other developments, leaders of most of the world’s economic powers were drawing closer to approval of a declaration strongly denouncing Russia’s invasion.
On Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden and Zelenskyy pressed fellow G20 leaders at the summit in Indonesia for a robust condemnation of Russia’s nuclear threats and food embargoes. More discussion and a possible vote come Wednesday.
DENPASAR, Bali: The Group of 20 Summit opened on Tuesday with calls to end the war in Ukraine, as world leaders gather for discussions on mending the struggling global economy after the coronavirus pandemic and the fallout of the conflict in Europe.
The G20, comprising 19 states and the EU, accounts for over 80 percent of the world’s GDP, 75 percent of international trade, and 60 percent of its population. The group includes countries ranging from Brazil to Saudi Arabia.
Indonesia, which this year holds the rotating G20 presidency, is hosting the leader’s summit in Bali on Nov. 15-16, with 17 leaders of the G20 and the heads of other invited countries and international organizations in attendance.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who has called for dialogue since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in late February, opened the talks with a plea to end the war in Europe.
“We have no other option. Paradigm of collaboration is badly needed to save the world. We all have responsibility, not only for our people, but also for the people of the world,” Widodo said during his opening remarks.
“Being responsible here also means that we must end the war. If the war does not end, it will be difficult for the world to move forward. If the war does not end, it will be difficult for us to take responsibility for the future of current generation and future generations.
“We should not divide the world into parts. We must not allow the world to fall into another cold war,” he added before world leaders began closed-door discussions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who appeared in a video speech on the first day of the summit, told the roomful of officials that Russia’s war must end now.
“I am convinced now is the time when the Russian destructive war must and can be stopped,” Zelensky said, addressing the audience in Ukrainian.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was not in the room, as he had canceled his participation and was represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The invasion of Ukraine is “strongly condemned” by “most” members of the G20, according to a draft of a declaration, as reported by Reuters news agency.
The possibility of a final communique from the summit has been in question, as the war is likely to affect the document that has to be adopted by all G20 members. A meeting of ministers representing them failed to produce a consensus in July, as officials did not agree on the reasons for the current crisis.
ROME: A Naples drug trafficker on Europol’s most wanted list and on the run since 2003 was extradited from Syria and arrested in Rome on Tuesday.
Bruno Carbone, 45, a major drug supplier to Naples’ Camorra mafia who fled an Italian court’s sentence of 20 years in prison for international drug trafficking was detained at Rome’s Ciampino airport on Tuesday morning, Naples police said.
An official in a northwestern Syrian area held by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) militants group said Carbone was arrested “while passing through the ‘liberated’ areas in March with the aim of reaching the regions under the control of the regime” of President Bashar Assad.
He was “handed over to his country according to the rules in force,” the official, Mohammad Sankari, said on the Telegram channel, without adding details.
According to the Italian media, Carbone spent a large part of his time while absconding in the UAE.
He later moved to Europe and then to Turkiye before relocating to regime-held areas in Syria “which he considered the best haven from the law,” HTS security service spokesman Dhia’ Al-Umar said, according to the SITE intelligence group which monitors jihadist websites.
He passed himself off as a Mexican who fled his country for selling fake Rolex watches, SITE said.
The UAE announced Carbone’s arrest in 2021, only to discover that the arrested man “was a stand-in presented by Bruno as bait so that he could escape again,” Dhia’ Al-Umar said.