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Putin urges dialogue between Lukashenko and opposition

AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called for dialogue between his Belarus ally Alexander Lukashenko and the country’s opposition, exiled since Minsk suppressed mass anti-government protests last year. 

Putin has continued to back Lukashenko, increasingly isolated since crushing unprecedented demonstrations against his rule after he claimed to win an election last summer that the West says was rigged. 

Lukashenko’s regime imprisoned hundreds, forcing most of the opposition — which believes it won the election — to flee.

In an address to Russia’s foreign ministry, Putin said Belarus’s internal situation has “calmed down”. 

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“Nonetheless, there are problems. We are all well aware of this and of course call for a dialogue between the authorities and the opposition,” said the Russian leader, who regularly hosts Lukashenko. 

The Kremlin chief is known for not tolerating street protests and raising suspicions they are instigated by the West, while the Belarusian opposition has been actively courting Western leaders. 

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who the opposition believe was the real winner of last summer’s presidential election and has since fled to neighbouring Lithuania, said she had no contact with Moscow but welcomed the call.  

“Personally, I did not have contact with the Kremlin. But I welcome calls for dialogue,” she told the Belarusian-run news outlet Zerkalo.io. 

She added, however, that he her conditions for talking to the regime remain the release of political prisoners. 

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“No dialogue can start in prison. All political prisoners should be freed and violence stopped. Our conditions are the same,” she said.

There are 873 political prisoners in Belarus, according to rights group Viasna. 

Putin, Lukashenko’s main political and financial backer, has been calling for dialogue between Minsk and Brussels in a migrant crisis on the Polish border. 

The EU accuses Lukashenko of luring thousands of migrants — mostly from the Middle-East — to the Polish border as revenge for Western sanctions on his regime. 

The Kremlin this week welcomed “direct contact” between Minsk and Brussels, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Lukashenko. 

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It was the Belarus strongman’s first phone call with a Western leader since he dispersed the protests. 

Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since 1994. 

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International

China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”

The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.

That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”

“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.

Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”

In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”

This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.

The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.

Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.

For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.

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International

Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants

The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.

According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.

The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”

The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.

The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”

These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.

Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.

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International

Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”

“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.

The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.

“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.

Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.

“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.

The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.

Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.

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