Month: April 2022

On March 31, both Pakistan and the United States participated in yet another meeting of the so-called Extended Troika for Afghan­istan, which also includes Russia and China.

All four countries sent their special envoys for Afghanistan to the ancient Chinese city of Tunxi which also hosted the foreign ministers of China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan for another meeting.

After the troika meeting, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Wang Wenbin, noted that “China, the US, Russia and Pakistan are all countries with significant influence on the Afghan issue,” a key point that also echoed at a US State Department’s latest news briefing.

“These are countries that have a good degree of leverage with the Taliban, and the ‘Extended Troika’ has, in the past, been a constructive forum, and it is critical that the international community remain united in its approach to Afghanistan,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.

“It is especially critical with countries that have a good deal of leverage with the Taliban. The United States would be included in that, Russia would be included in that, the People’s Republic of China would be included in that, and Pakistan would be included in that.”

The US official said that it was “incumbent on all of these countries to use that leverage to push the Taliban in the right direction.”

Mr Price said that US interests in Afghanistan “are aligned with the members of the troika,” that includes Pakistan, which has the longest border with Afghanistan and policy makers in Washington believe that Islamabad still has enough leverage on the Taliban to influence their policymaking.

Mr Price also explained how the members of this Extended Troika should use their influence, highlighting two key issues that Washington has been pushing for since August last year when the Taliban captured Kabul: “Seeing girls return to secondary schools and encouraging inclusive governance.”

“We want to see to it that those are messages the Taliban received not only from us, not only from our European partners, with whom we’re coordinating closely on Afghan­istan and engagement with the Taliban, but also from a broader collection of countries, and certainly those countries that do have a good deal of leverage,” Mr Price added.

Acknowledging Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan indicates that Washington still wants to engage with Islamabad on issues where Pakistan can be a useful facilitator.

But diplomatic observers in the US capital no longer see a desire in Washington to revive once-close partnership with the South Asian nation.

Pakistan-US relations have been tense since 2011, when Americans found and took out Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad without informing Islamabad. But the discovery of an alleged letter, explicitly expressing US displeasure with the policies of the PTI government has further eroded the US desire to rebuild ties with Pakistan.

Although the alleged letter, which Wash­ing­ton says it never wrote or sent, says that the relationship could be restored if the PTI government is removed, diplomatic observers do not see that happening anytime soon.

The centrist Macron threw his hat into the election ring at the last moment and has been distracted by the war in Ukraine, conducting diplomacy from the Elysee while Le Pen paces the country to discuss basic issues, including purchasing power.

With the first round of elections on April 10 — followed by a run-off on April 24 — polls have shown Le Pen comfortably in second place in the initial stage and narrowing the gap on Macron for round two.

Macron’s rally at the indoor La Defense Arena stadium — a vast venue that usually hosts top-level rugby and rock concerts — represents a pivotal chance for the president to regain momentum.

“Of course Marine Le Pen can win,” Macron’s former prime minister Edouard Philippe warned in an interview with the Le Parisien daily posted online Thursday.

Philippe, who is backing Macron, added that “if she wins, believe me, things will be seriously different for the country… Her programme is dangerous.”

The latest Elabe poll published on Wednesday showed Le Pen winning 47.5 percent of the vote in a second-round run-off against Macron, who was projected to garner 52.5 percent, a smaller margin than in the same poll last week.

Le Pen, who lost to Macron in the 2017 polls run-off, has sought to moderate her image in the last half decade in a process helped by the emergence of Eric Zemmour as a fellow candidate in the far-right.

While Zemmour risks taking votes from Le Pen in the first round, his more radical stances in immigration and Islam have helped her project a more mainstream image.

“We feel it on the ground, there is a great dynamic, a hope that is emerging as the campaign nears it end,” she said on a visit to eastern France.

“What people said was the automatic re-election of Emmanuel Macron turned out to be fake news. It is perfectly possible to defeat Emmanuel Macron and radically change the politics of this country,” she added.

But the first round risks being a disaster for The Republicans — the traditional right-wing party that was the political home of ex-presidents such as Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac.

Their candidate Valerie Pecresse is projected by most polls to be vying with Zemmour for fourth place after failing to find momentum in the campaign.

Her big chance to ignite her bid will be at a rally in southern Paris. But the Le Parisien daily reported that Sarkozy — whose support is still coveted by the right despite criminal convictions — would be staying away in a major snub to her campaign.

The Socialist candidate, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, is struggling to reach beyond low single figures while the Greens hopeful Yannick Jadot has failed to put the environment at the centre stage of the campaign.

The left’s main hope is the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon who most polls project coming in third place but believes he has a chance of making a run-off.

Melenchon, one of the most explosive orators in French politics, will address an open air meeting in

Place de Capitole in centre of the southern French city of Toulouse on Sunday.

Nepal has traditionally done a balancing act between New Delhi and Beijing, but analysts believe Indian influence over Kathmandu has been dwindling as China pours heavy investment into the landlocked Himalayan country.

But Nepalese prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba made India his first foreign destination since he returned to power last year.

As part of a three-day visit, he met his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Saturday and they virtually flagged off a passenger train connecting the eastern Indian state of Bihar with Nepal.

It is the first such rail link between the neighbours since services were halted for upgrades in 2014.

Both leaders agreed to prioritise trade and cross-border connectivity initiatives, Modi said.

“Such schemes will make a wonderful contribution for smooth, hassle-free exchange of people between the two countries,” he said.

The two countries also finalised agreements on the supply of petroleum products and released a joint vision statement on power sector cooperation.

Deuba’s journey south comes just days after Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi visited Nepal and India.

The China Eastern jetliner was flying between the cities of Kunming and Guangzhou on March 21 when it nosedived into a mountainside, disintegrating on impact and killing all 132 people on board.

The cause of the disaster, China’s deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years, is not yet known.

“NTSB investigators are assisting the Civil Aviation Administration of China with the download of the cockpit voice recorder from China Eastern Flight 5735 in our lab in Washington,” spokesman Peter Knudson said in an email. He declined to give any details of this work.

The other black box from the plane, the flight data recorder, has also been found, and it too could help solve the mystery of what went wrong. This recorder contains crucial information such as the speed of the aircraft, its altitude and heading. It was found March 23 and sent to Beijing for analysis.

While parts of this recorder were seriously damaged, the data storage unit appears relatively intact, Zhu Tao, director of safety at the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), told reporters last weekend.

The aircraft went down near Wuzhou in southern China after losing contact with air traffic control.

Tracking website FlightRadar24 showed the jet sharply dropped from an altitude of 29,100 to 7,850 feet (about 8,900 to 2,400 metres) in just over a minute. After a brief upswing, it dropped again to 3,225 feet, the tracker said. There is no data for the flight after 2:22pm.

The cockpit voice recorder will likely provide investigators with details of communications between the flight’s three pilots, which is one more than is normally required on board the Boeing plane.

Earlier on Friday, the NTSB said a team of three investigators had left for China to assist in the crash probe. The NTSB said “investigators will limit interactions with those outside of investigation similar to safety protocols at Beijing Olympics, which will allow them to begin work immediately without a quarantine.”

The team includes the US accredited representative Sathya Silva, who is an NTSB senior aviation accident investigator. An NTSB spokesman said the US team was traveling on a commercial flight. It was not clear if the team will travel to the crash site in China and for how the long team will be in China but it could be several weeks.

The NTSB also said a small team from Boeing is also traveling China to assist in the investigation.

CAAC News, a publication under the Chinese aviation regulator, said on Saturday that the NTSB group of seven investigators and technical advisers had arrived in China. Under an international agreement, the NTSB has the right to participate since the plane was designed and built in the United States.

On Thursday, Chinese state media said the cause of the crash must be determined as soon as possible, following a meeting of China’s highest decision-making body helmed by President Xi Jinping.

Information about the crash must be released in an open, timely and transparent manner, state media said in a report on the meeting of the seven-person Standing Committee of the Communist Party’s politburo, China’s top leadership.