Military Action Should Be Excluded as Response to N. Korea – Russian Envoy to UN
Sputnik – 05.07.2017
Military action should not be an option considered in possible responses to North Korea’s recent launch of an ICBM and its continued work on a nuclear program, Russia’s Deputy Envoy to the United Nations Vladimir Safronkov said during a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday.
“The possibility of taking military measures to resolve the problems of the Korean peninsula should be excluded,” Safronkov stated.
He also said any attempt to economically strangle North Korea in response to its missile test would be unacceptable.
“Attempts to economically strangle North Korea are equally unacceptable, as millions of people are in humanitarian need,” Safronkov said, after warning the Security Council countries against pursuing any military option.
Instead, the situation around the recent missile launch by North Korea requires close examination, he argued.
“The situation requires a thorough investigation and clarification,” Safronkov said.
He acknowledged that Pyongyang’s most recent missile launch is unacceptable and violated the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.
“We find this action from the DPRK to be inadmissible and to be running counter to relevant Security Council resolutions,” Safronkov said. “Russia and China have urged the DPRK to firmly comply with the provisions of set resolutions. We share the concern regarding the evolving situation in the Korean peninsula and escalation of military and political tensions on the peninsula.”
Haneyya delivers first speech as Hamas’s leader
Palestine Information Center – July 5, 2017
GAZA – The newly-elected head of Hamas’s political bureau, Ismail Haneyya, delivered on Wednesday his first speech since taking office in which he addressed all Palestinian issues.
Held in Gaza city, the speech was attended by a large number of officials from different Palestinian factions as well as other political, media and religious figures.
Haneyya stressed that the escalation waged against the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails must stop, describing the administrative detention policy targeting both Palestinian citizens and MPs in the occupied West Bank as “terrorism”.
He expressed his pride of the Palestinian resistance, especially the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas Movement, and denounced labeling it as a form of terrorism, explaining that the real terrorism is embodied in the Israeli occupation.
Haneyya pointed to a US-Israeli project that is aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause, stressing that the Palestinian people will never accept any settlements that contradict their rights of return and establishing a Palestinian state.
As for Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque, Hamas’s leader asserted that the attempts exerted by the Israeli occupation to obliterate the Islamic identity of al-Aqsa Mosque through the repeated settlers’ incursions and the temporal and spatial division of the mosque will fail.
Haneyya praised in his speech the steadfastness of the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, “the center of conflict”, as he put it, and those in the 1948 occupied territories who are constantly subjected to Israeli terrorism and racial discrimination.
On the issue of the Palestinian refugees in the diaspora, he underlined that the right of return is sacred and inalienable, appealing to the Arab countries hosting Palestinian refugees to provide them decent living conditions.
Speaking about the situation in Gaza, he strongly condemned the latest decisions imposed by the Palestinian Authority on the Gaza Strip which led to furthering the suffering of the Gazan citizens living under an 11-year blockade.
Haneyya pointed out that efforts are ongoing with the Egyptian authorities to reach solutions for Gaza’s crises, appreciating at the same time the role Qatar has played in the past years in supporting Gaza by all means.
He proposed a political initiative that stipulates the formulation of a unified political program and the formation of a national unity government that assumes its obligations toward the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The initiative also includes preparing for free and fair legislative and presidential elections with the participation of all parties, ending security coordination between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and removing all obstacles to achieving the initiative, the foremost of which is reversing all punitive measures taken against Gaza.
Haneyya stated that Hamas seeks to maintain good relations with all Arab countries without interfering in their internal conflicts.
At the international level, Hamas’s leader asked the international community not to believe the “black propaganda” waged by Israel against his movement, emphasizing that Hamas is a national liberation movement and a genuine part of the Palestinian people.
‘US should end Korean War, sign a peace treaty with North Korea’
RT | July 5, 2017
The most sensible path, at this point, is for the US to end the Korean War, sign a peace treaty with North Korea, and withdraw its troops from the Korean peninsula, Hyun Lee, a member of the National Campaign to End the Korean War, told RT.
South Korean and US forces fired missiles into the Sea of Japan in a display of resolve toward North Korea as a part of a joint ballistic missile exercise between Washington and Seoul.
According to officials, the exercise used missiles that can be “easily deployed”.
It all came in response to North Korea’s latest missile test on Tuesday, which the Pentagon said was an intercontinental ballistic missile.
RT: North Korea is clearly aware the US and South Korea possess a wide range of missiles. Was this show of force really necessary?
Hyun Lee: North Korea has been saying from the beginning of this year, from the beginning of the Trump administration, that it will test launch an intercontinental ballistic missile and it has always said it is a form of deterrence against US threats against North Korea. The US and South Korea conduct annual military exercises, including the collapse of the North Korean regime and the simulation of the decapitation of the North Korean leadership. North Korea has always said these are threats to its sovereignty and that is why it is developing an ICBM as a form of deterrence.
RT: China and Russia have been calling on the international community to try and talk to North Korea to avoid provocation. Why did the US and South Korea decide to stage these exercises anyway?
HL: I think what the US and South Korea are doing is basically flexing their muscles to show ‘We are not afraid of North Korea. We also have big bad weapons.’ But what they are doing is answering fire with fire in a region that is a powder keg. We know that the world’s greatest military powers face off in this region: that is the US, China, Japan, South Korea. Former US army generals have warned that even the slightest miscalculation on the Korean peninsula can trigger a conflict that basically mires the entire region in a protracted war that could have catastrophic consequences not only for the region but also for the global economy. And that is not in anyone’s interest.
RT: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said North Korea launching an intercontinental ballistic missile is a new escalation of the threat against the US. Is Pyongyang’s new launch a game changer?
HL: Yes, but not because it will attack the US; Washington doesn’t truly believe that. But more because this changes the US strategic calculus in the region. North Korea now has the capacity to target the heart of the US Pacific Command, which is located in Hawaii, as well as the West Coast of the US continent. This means US policy of basically intimidating countries through military might and collapsing uncooperative regimes as it has done in the Middle East for decades: this is not going to work vis-à-vis North Korea.
And if this encourages other countries around the world to follow the example of North Korea, it threatens the nuclear non-proliferation regime, which is essentially intended to ensure that only the prominent five countries of the UN Security Council, and its allies, like Israel, can have nuclear weapons and no one else. North Korea is obviously not a party to the NPT; it is not a US ally but now appears to have the capability to threaten a nuclear attack on the US. This is why this missile test is a big deal and it makes Washington very nervous. If the US wants North Korea to stop, then the path is very clear – it has to stop its provocations and its military exercises and then resolve the conflict fundamentally by signing a peace treaty to end the ongoing state of war between the US and North Korea.
RT: Is there an end to this vicious circle where opposite sides just fire missiles trying to up the ante on each other?
HL: I think there is a clear path: North Korea, we should note, has repeatedly offered to freeze its own nuclear and missile program in exchange for a freeze of US provocation, including the very provocative military exercises. I think the most sensible path at this point is for the US to end the Korean War, sign a peace treaty with North Korea, finally withdraw its troops from the Korean peninsula. That is the only way to put the nuclear crisis to rest. Washington knows that this is the answer. The only thing that is standing in the way is, not surprisingly, the interest of the military-industrial complex, which feeds off of perpetual war.
Washington’s Devastating Next-stage of the War in Syria
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 05.07.2017
All the US has to offer to the people of Syria is not hope but destruction, not peace but war, a war that is no longer—and never was—just about Syria. With the passage of time, the actual nature of the war imposed on Syria has become self-evident. Therefore, what we are hearing from Washington these days is no longer sole emphasis on defeating terror outfits such as ISIS; it is rather an emphasis on extending the war beyond Syria to accomplish at least a regime change in Iran, the kind of which the US and its Arab and European allies have been seeking in Syria. ISIS has already attacked Iran once and there is no guarantee that such attacks wouldn’t take place in future in Iran or elsewhere beyond the Middle East. While the West is projecting ISIS’ extended reach to other regions as an outcome of the organization’s exit from Syria and Iraq, the chaos this extended reach would cause will then serve as an invitation, as it did in the case of both Iraq and Syria, to the US to extend its own military presence in the region. Already we have seen fresh deployment in Afghanistan and resumption of drone strikes in Pakistan, indicating the US’ intention of not leaving the region in the near or even distant future.
In this context, plans for an extended military stay in “Syraq” (Syria and Iraq) and even of extending the scope of the war are already being considered in the official US policy making circles. The Foreign Policy magazine reported in mind June that some policy makers in the White House were pushing for extending the Syrian front as a means to use the scenario to militarily confront Iran and finally settle score with the “nexus of evil.” According to the report,
“Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council, and Derek Harvey, the NSC’s top Middle East advisor, want the United States to start going on the offensive in southern Syria, where, in recent weeks, the U.S. military has taken a handful of defensive actions against Iranian-backed forces fighting in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”
While the report mentions that the idea hasn’t yet found much support in the Pentagon, there is no gainsaying that within the Pentagon’s Syria strategy, there is enough scope for extending the war to the extent of militarily confronting pro-Assad forces, especially Iran. Its recent glimpse came when the US forces shot down an Iranian drone in Syria few days ago. And as Washington Post recently revealed, the US was already making unprecedented strikes against Assad regime and Iranian-backed militia forces and sending warnings to them that “they will not be allowed to confront or impede the Americans and their local proxy forces.”
On the other hand, the fact that the US is willing to go to any extent to protect the anti-Assad forces fighting under its nose is also evident from the way the US is still opposed to seeing Assad in power as Syria’s legitimate ruler. Two thing clearly point to this fact.
First, Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, told House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 28 hearing that the US should decide on its role in Syria for the time when ISIS is driven out, “because a healthy Syria is not with Assad.” Ambassador Haley’s latest remarks at the hearing, titled “Advancing US Interests at the United Nations,” could indicate a possible change in America’s future objectives on Syria. She had previously said that Washington’s priorities in Syria had changed with the new administration, and the US would no longer focus on the removal of Assad.
Second thing that adds to this seeming policy shift is the way the White House is involved in propagating about yet another possible chemical attack in Syria by Assad. On June 26, the White House official stated that Syria was planning another chemical weapons attack and “would pay a heavy price” if it came to pass. Ambassador Nikki Haley quickly chimed in on Twitter saying that any further attack would “be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia and Iran who support him killing his own people.”
The above mentioned change in policy and the preparations being made for extending the war to Iran has also found some support within the Republican ranks. It was only few days ago when a Republican senator Tom Cotton was reported to have said that “the policy of the United States should be regime change in Iran.” The CIA has already expanded its Iranian covert operations (read: in the name of ISIS). The US secretary of state Rex Tillerson, in little noticed comments to the US Congress few days ago also called for “peaceful regime change” in Syria. It is, however, not sure what Tillerson meant by “peaceful”, for the history of US regime change interventions is filled with direct military interventions or covert operations.
Is then Iran the next overt target of the US and its allies? The answer to this intriguing development-in-the-making has to be in the affirmative. It is going to be the culmination of Trump’s policy of ‘isolation of Iran’ that he laid down during his recent visit to Saudi Arabia. There is no gainsaying that this extension of the Syrian war would find ready-made support among many Arab-Gulf states, who would see in this policy a ready-made opportunity to cordon off their only chief rival in the entire region. Not only would they jump on the American bandwagon but also willingly funnel billions of dollars, contributing to transforming the whole region into one living-hell, a hell that wouldn’t take much time to knock on their own doors.