International
The US warns that it cannot support the Rafah invasion without seeing Israel’s plan to protect civilians
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said on Monday from Riyadh that so far he has not seen any plan by Israel to guarantee the “effective” protection of civilians in the face of an invasion against the Palestinian town of Rafah, bordering Egypt.
“In the absence of a plan that guarantees that civilians will not suffer harm, we cannot support a large-scale military operation in Rafah and we have not yet seen a plan that gives us confidence that civilians can be effectively protected,” he said at the special session of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is held in Riyadh.
Israel’s potential offensive to Rafah, where about 1.4 million people displaced by the war live overcrowded, has become a red line for a large part of the international community, although this operation could be delayed in the event of a ceasefire.
The head of US diplomacy has traveled to Riyadh to coordinate with his colleagues from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), made up of six Arab countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, the positions regarding the efforts to reach a pause in Gaza, and participate in the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in the Saudi capital.
Before his speech at the Forum, Blinken addressed in a bilateral meeting with his Saudi counterpart, Faisal bin Farhan, efforts to reach a truce in Gaza and increase aid to civilians in the Palestinian enclave, Saudi sources reported.
At the meeting, Blinken and Bin Farhan “dealt with the situation in Gaza and other issues of common interest,” reported the official Saudi television channel Al Ejbaria, which disseminated images of the event.
Saudi television also broadcast images of the arrival of the heads of Foreign Affairs of the GCC at the meeting with Blinken, who landed on Monday in Riyadh on his seventh visit to the Middle East since the beginning of the war in Gaza, last October.
Along with the situation in Gaza, the US Secretary of State dealt with the heads of the diplomacies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman, the “threat from Iran” and the Shiite Houthi rebels of Yemen.
After his visit to Riyadh, he will move to Israel and Jordan and meet with humanitarian organizations.
International
Geert Wilders reaches a provisional agreement to form a government in the Netherlands
The leader of the Dutch extreme right, Geert Wilders, reached a “provisional” agreement on Wednesday to form a government with three other center-right parties, which he will now send to the Dutch Parliament for debate, although they have not yet agreed on behalf of the candidate for prime minister.
As announced by Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party (PVV), there is already a “provisional” agreement with the other three center-right parties: the liberal VVD, the Christian Democrat NSC and the BBB farmers’ party, although there are still disagreements about pensions and “the discussion about who will lead that government will be resumed at a later date” because they have not yet decided on this point.
Wilders won the general elections on November 22, but had to resign his aspiration to the position of prime minister to unblock the dialogue with the other parties.
International
Diana Boluarte goes to a new interrogation of the Attorney General for the ‘Rolex case’
The president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, arrived this Wednesday unexpectedly at the headquarters of the Public Ministry to be interrogated by the interim Attorney General, Juan Carlos Villena, as part of the preliminary investigation opened for the crimes of corruption and bribery by the so-called ‘Rolex case’.
Boluarte arrived at the tax headquarters, in the historic center of Lima, at 9:20 a.m. (14.20 GMT) sheltered by a large police security display and entered aboard an official van with dark moons.
As has happened on previous occasions, the ruler is not expected to offer subsequent statements about this interrogation.
International
The filmmaker Rasoulof will go to the Cannes Film Festival after fleeing Iran, according to his lawyer
Iranian filmmaker Mohamad Rasoulof, who fled his country after being sentenced to eight years in prison, will go to the Cannes Film Festival to present his film ‘The seed of the sacred fig’, his lawyer Babak Paknia told EFE.
“He (Rasoulof) will participate in Cannes,” Paknia said on Wednesday.
Rasoulof will present his film ‘The seed of the sacred fig’ at the French festival, which is about a judge who deals with the protests unleashed by the death of the young Iranian Mahsa Amini in 2022 after being arrested for not wearing the Islamic veil well.
Some actors of the film, however, will not be able to attend since the Iranian authorities do not allow them to leave the country, according to Paknia, who also stated that they have opened a new judicial case against the director for the film.
“They have opened a new case for this new film,” said Paknia, who did not explain the charges.
Rasoulof announced two days ago that he had fled his country to Europe after being sentenced to eight years in prison, lashes and the confiscation of property for the crime of “collusion with the intention of committing crimes against the security of the country.”
The filmmaker, winner of the Golden Bear of the Berlinale with ‘The Life of Others’ in 2020, a film that deals with the death penalty in the country, has had numerous problems with the country’s authorities and has been sentenced to prison on three occasions.
He was last arrested in July 2022 for criticizing the repression of protests unleashed by the collapse of a building that caused dozens of deaths two years ago and eight months later he was released.
In recent weeks, Iranian courts have multiplied convictions against artists and academics who are critical of the Islamic Republic.
In one of the most noted cases, a revolutionary court sentenced rapper Tomaj Salehi to death for sedition, propaganda against the system and incitement to riots for supporting the protests unleashed by Amini’s death.
In those protests, young Iranians and women called for the end of the Islamic Republic and only disappeared after a repression that caused 500 deaths and the arrest of at least 22,000 people and in which eight demonstrators were executed, one of them in public.
Geert Wilders reaches a provisional agreement to form a government in the Netherlands
Diana Boluarte goes to a new interrogation of the Attorney General for the ‘Rolex case’
The filmmaker Rasoulof will go to the Cannes Film Festival after fleeing Iran, according to his lawyer
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