US President Donald Trump said that Russia has lost India as an oil client, while also suggesting that the United States may not immediately impose secondary sanctions on China.In an interview with Fox News aboard Air Force One, Trump remarked, “Well, they lost an oil client so to speak, which is India, which was doing about 40% of the oil. China, as you know, is doing a lot…And if I did what’s called a secondary sanction, or a secondary tariff, it would be very devastating from their standpoint. If I have to do it, I’ll do it. Maybe I won’t have to do it.” Trump’s comments come after he recently threatened to take the total tariffs on India to 50% after imposing an additional 25% tax on imports from New Delhi starting August 27. The White House cited national security and foreign policy concerns, stating that India’s imports of Russian oil pose an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States.
The order covers all Indian goods imported into the US, except items already in transit or meeting specific exemptions.
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India’s response New Delhi has strongly objected to the move. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in its statement said, “The United States has in recent days targeted India’s oil imports from Russia. We have already made clear our position on these issues, including the fact that our imports are based on market factors and done with the overall objective of ensuring the energy security of 1.4 billion people of India.”“It is therefore extremely unfortunate that the US should choose to impose additional tariffs on India for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest. We reiterate that these actions are unfair, unjustified and unreasonable. India will take all actions necessary to protect its national interests,” the MEA added.Secondary sanctions debate While speaking about the potential of broader penalties, Trump hinted that Washington could extend similar measures to China as well. “Could happen. Depends on how we do. Could happen,” he said when asked if tariffs could be raised against Beijing.Earlier, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had warned that if talks between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin did not yield results, secondary sanctions on India could be expanded. In his words, “We put secondary tariffs on the Indians for buying Russian oil. And I could see, if things don’t go well, then sanctions or secondary tariffs could go up.”
Bessent also noted that sanctions could be increased, relaxed, or extended indefinitely depending on future developments.
Trump made the remarks while travelling to Alaska for a summit meeting with Putin. The talks concluded without any agreement on ending the Russia-Ukraine war.
India’s oil imports from Russia India’s crude oil imports from Russia rose to 2 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first half of August, up from 1.6 million bpd in July, reported PTI, citing energy data provider Kpler. The increase lifted Russia’s share to 38% of India’s overall 5.2 million bpd crude imports in the period.
The higher intake came largely at the cost of supplies from Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Imports from Iraq declined to 730,000 bpd in August from 907,000 bpd in July, while Saudi volumes dropped to 526,000 bpd from 700,000 bpd. The US ranked fifth with supplies of 264,000 bpd.
India, the world’s third-largest oil importer, has sharply increased purchases from Russia since the Ukraine war in February 2022. Russian oil, which earlier accounted for less than 0.2 per cent of India’s imports, now makes up 35–40% of crude intake.
While discounts had previously touched as high as USD 40 per barrel, they narrowed to USD 1.5 last month. Discounts this month have improved slightly to over USD 2 per barrel, according to Kpler data.
Donald Trump turned to gaze at Vladimir Putin as the Russian president publicly endorsed his view that, had Trump been president instead of Joe Biden, the war in Ukraine would never have happened.
“Today President Trump was saying that if he was president back then, there would be no war, and I’m quite sure that it would indeed be so,” Putin said. “I can confirm that.”
Vladimir, you complete me, Trump might have replied. To hell with all those Democrats, democrats, wokesters, fake news reporters and factcheckers. Here is a man who speaks my authoritarian alternative facts language.
The damned doubters had been worried about Friday’s big summit at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a cold war-era airbase under a big sky and picturesque mountains on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska.
They feared that it might resemble Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler in Munich 1938, or Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin carving up the world for the great powers at the Yalta Conference in 1945.
It was worse than that.
US president Donald Trump gazes lovingly at Russian president Vladimir Putin in Alaska. ‘Next time in Moscow,’ Putin told Trump in English. Photograph: Gavriil Grigorov/Reuters
Trump, 79, purportedly the most powerful man in the world, literally rolled out the red carpet for a Russian dictator indicted for alleged war crimes over the abduction and transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children. Putin’s troops have also been accused of indiscriminate murder, rape and torture on an appalling scale.
In more than 100 countries, the 72-year-old would have been arrested the moment he set foot on the tarmac. In America, he was treated to a spontaneous burst of applause from the waiting Trump, who gave him a long, lingering handshake and a ride in “the Beast”, the presidential limousine.
Putin could be seen cackling on the back seat, looking like the cat who got the cream. As a former KGB man, did he leave behind a bug or two?
Three hours later, the men walked on stage for an anticlimactic 12-minute press conference against a blue backdrop printed with the words “Pursuing peace”. Putin is reportedly 170cm (5.7ft) tall, while Trump is 190cm (6.3ft), yet the Russian seemed be the dominant figure.
Curiously, given that the US was hosting, Putin was allowed to speak first, which gave him the opportunity to frame the narrative. More curiously still, the deferential Trump spoke for less time than his counterpart, though he did slip in a compliment: “I’ve always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin – with Vladimir.”
The low-energy Trump declined to take any questions from reporters – a rare thing indeed for the attention monster and wizard of “the weave” – and shed little light on the prospect of a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Perhaps he wanted to give his old pals at Fox News the exclusive. Having snubbed the world’s media, Trump promptly sat down and spilled the beans – well, a few of them – to host Sean Hannity, a cheerleader who has even spoken at a Trump rally.
Donald Trump is reportedly 20cm taller than the Russian president but Vladimir Putin appeared the more dominant figure. Photograph: Gavriil Grigorov/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL/EPA
The president revealed: “Vladimir Putin said something – one of the most interesting things. He said: ‘Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting … No country has mail-in voting. It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.’
“And he said that to me because we talked about 2020. He said: ‘You won that election by so much and that’s how we got here.’ He said: ‘And if you would have won, we wouldn’t have had a war. You’d have all these millions of people alive now instead of dead. And he said: ‘You lost it because of mail-in voting. It was a rigged election.’”
In other words, the leader of one of the world’s oldest democracies was taking advice from a man who won last year’s Russian election with more than 87% of the vote and changed the constitution so he can stay in power until 2036. In this warped retelling of history, the insurrectionists of January 6 were actually trying to stop a war.
Evidently Putin knows that whispering Trump’s favourite lies into his ear is the way to his heart. It worked. The Russian leader, visiting the United States for the first time in a decade, got his wish of being welcomed back on the world stage and made to look the equal of the US president.
He could also go home reassured that, despite a recent rough patch, and despite Trump’s brief bromance with Elon Musk, he loves you yeah, yeah, yeah.
“Next time in Moscow,” he told Trump in English. “Oh, that’s an interesting one,” the US president responded. “I’ll get a little heat on that one, but I could see it possibly happening.”
Trump’s humiliation was complete. But all was not lost. At least no one was talking about Jeffrey Epstein or the price of vegetables.
United States President Donald Trump failed to secure a Ukraine war ceasefire at a high-stakes summit with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, but insisted on Saturday that he would now target a full peace agreement to end the conflict.
Three hours of talks between the White House and Kremlin leaders at an Alaska air base produced no breakthrough, but Trump and European leaders said they wanted a new summit that includes Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Speaking to top officials in Moscow a day after the talks in Alaska, Putin said he discussed ways of ending the conflict “on a fair basis” during the meeting. He also said the summit with Trump had been “timely” and “very useful”, according to images published by the Kremlin.
Zelensky said he will now go to Washington on Monday, while European leaders said they were ready to intensify sanctions against Russia after Trump briefed them on the summit and they held their own protracted talks. European leaders have also been invited to attend Monday’s meeting.
Trump remained upbeat about meeting Putin in a post on his Truth Social platform. “A great and very successful day in Alaska!” he proclaimed, adding that European leaders backed his plan for a three-way meeting with Putin and Zelensky.
“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a peace agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere ceasefire agreement, which often times do not hold up,” he added, confirming his meeting with Zelensky on Monday.
“If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people’s lives will be saved.”
Meanwhile, The Financial Times, citing four people with direct knowledge of the talks, reported that Putin demanded that Ukraine withdraw from the eastern Donetsk region as a condition for ending the war, but told Trump he could freeze the rest of the frontline if his core demands were met.
In exchange for the Donetsk region, Putin said he would freeze the frontline in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the report added.
After the summit, Trump spoke first with Zelensky, the White House said.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen later joined the call, officials said.
The European leaders, who had been wary of being left out of the Alaska meeting, held their own talks on Saturday and said they supported the proposed three-way summit.
“We are also ready to work with President Trump and President Zelensky towards a trilateral summit with European support,” they said in a joint statement that added that pressure must be maintained on Russia.
“As long as the killing in Ukraine continues, we stand ready to uphold the pressure on Russia. We will continue to strengthen sanctions and wider economic measures to put pressure on Russia’s war economy until there is a just and lasting peace,” they said.
Russia could not have a “veto” on Ukraine joining the European Union or Nato, they added.
In a separate statement, Starmer praised Trump’s efforts as bringing “us closer than ever before to ending Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine”.
But Macron, writing on X, cautioned against what he said was Russia’s “well-documented tendency to not keep its own commitments”. He called for any future peace deal to have “unbreakable” security guarantees.
He also argued for increased pressure on Russia until “a solid and durable peace” had been achieved. The European leader welcomed what they called “security guarantees” made by Trump without giving details.
A diplomatic source told AFP that Trump had offered Ukraine guarantees similar to Nato membership, but without it joining the alliance.
Later today, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told German public broadcaster ZDF said the US is ready to be part of security guarantees for Ukraine.
The war, which has killed tens of thousands and devastated much of Ukraine, went on despite the summit. Ukraine announced that Russia had launched 85 attack drones and a ballistic missile during the night. Russia said it had taken two more villages in Ukraine.
Zelensky said Trump had laid out the “main points” of the summit and that he would go to the White House on Monday “to discuss all of the details regarding ending the killing and the war”.
Trump and Putin emerged from their talks at a Cold War-era air base to offer warm words at a press briefing but took no questions from reporters.
“We’re not there yet, but we’ve made progress. There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said.
He called the meeting “extremely productive” with “many points” agreed, but did not offer specifics.
“There are just a very few that are left; some are not that significant, one is probably the most significant,” Trump said without elaborating.
‘Next time in Moscow’
Putin also spoke in general terms of cooperation at the joint press appearance that lasted just 12 minutes.
“We hope that the understanding we have reached will … pave the way for peace in Ukraine,” Putin said.
As Trump mused about a second meeting, Putin smiled and said in English: “Next time in Moscow”.
The former KGB agent tried to flatter Trump, who has voiced admiration for the Russian leader in the past.
Putin told Trump he agreed with him that the Ukraine war, which Putin ordered, would not have happened if Trump were president instead of Joe Biden.
Trump, for his part, again complained of a “hoax” that Russia intervened to help him in the 2016 election — a finding backed by US intelligence.
Before the summit, Trump had warned of “severe consequences” if Russia did not accept a ceasefire.
But when asked about those consequences during a Fox News interview after the talks, Trump said that “because of what happened today, I think I don’t have to think about that now”.
Putin warns Western allies
Trump, whose tone with Zelensky has changed since he berated the Ukrainian president at the White House in February, told Fox that “Now it’s really up to President Zelensky to get it done.”
Trump could not get the Russian agreement to get Zelensky into Friday’s talks.
But Zelensky, who has rejected suggestions that Ukraine give up territory, said on Saturday that he supported the American efforts.
“It is important that America’s strength has an impact on the development of the situation,” he said.
Putin warned Ukraine and European countries to “not create any obstacles” and not “make attempts to disrupt this emerging progress through provocation or behind-the-scenes intrigues”.
Trump invited Putin just a week ago and ensured there was some carefully choreographed drama for their first in-person meeting since 2019.
The two leaders arrived in their respective presidential jets and descended on the tarmac of an air base, with Trump clapping as Putin appeared.
US military might was on display with a B-2 stealth bomber flying overhead, as a reporter shouted audibly to Putin, “Will you stop killing civilians?”
Putin, undaunted, grinned widely as Trump took the unusual step of escorting him into “The Beast”, the secure US presidential limousine, before a meeting in a room before a screen that said — in English only — “Pursuing Peace”.
Putin smiled and joked with Russian reporters on the visit, a landmark for a leader who is facing an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court related to the Ukraine war, which has killed tens of thousands of people.
US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as they meet to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, at a military base in Alaska. — Reuters
Battlefield gains
Russia, in recent days, has made battlefield gains that could strengthen Putin’s hand in any ceasefire negotiations.
Although Ukraine announced as Putin was flying in that it had retaken several villages, Russia’s army on Saturday claimed the capture of Kolodyazi in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and Vorone in the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region.
Trump had insisted he would be firm with Putin, after coming under heated criticism for appearing cowed during a 2018 summit in Helsinki.
While he was travelling to Alaska, the White House announced that Trump had scrapped a plan to see Putin alone and he instead held the talks alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his roving envoy Steve Witkoff.
Zelensky was not included and has refused pressure from Trump to surrender territory seized by Russia.
“It is time to end the war, and the necessary steps must be taken by Russia. We are counting on America,” Zelensky said in a social media post.
Plastic polluting a mangrove area lies in Panama Bay, Panama City, Panama December 6, 2024. — Reuters
GENEVA: Delegates discussing the world’s first legally binding treaty to tackle plastic pollution failed to reach consensus, with diplomats voicing disappointment and even rage that the 10-day talks produced no deal.
Participants had been seeking a breakthrough in the deadlocked United Nations’ talks in Geneva, but states pushing for an ambitious treaty said that the latest text released overnight failed to meet their expectations.
The chair of the negotiations, Ecuador’s Luis Vayas Valdivieso adjourned the session with a pledge to resume talks at an undetermined later date, drawing weak applause from exhausted delegates who had worked into the early hours.
French ecology minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told the meeting’s closing session that she was “enraged because despite genuine efforts by many, and real progress in discussions, no tangible results have been obtained”.
In an apparent reference to oil-producing nations, Colombia’s delegate Haendel Rodriguez said a deal had been “blocked by a small number of states who simply did not want an agreement”.
Diplomats and climate advocates had warned earlier this month that efforts by the European Union and small island states to cap virgin plastic production — fuelled by petroleum, coal and gas — faced opposition from petrochemical-producing countries and the US under President Donald Trump.
US delegate John Thompson from the State Department declined to comment as he left the talks.
The path forward for the negotiations is uncertain.
UN officials and some countries, including Britain, said that negotiations should resume but others described a broken process.
“It is very clear that the current process will not work,” South Africa’s delegate said.
More than 1,000 delegates have gathered in Geneva for the sixth round of talks, after a meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) in South Korea late last year ended without a deal.
Negotiations had gone into overtime on Thursday as countries scrambled to bridge deep divisions over the extent of future curbs. Many, including Danish environment minister Magnus Heunicke, who negotiated on behalf of the EU, were disappointed that the final push did not yield any results.
“Of course, we cannot hide that it is tragic and deeply disappointing to see some countries trying to block an agreement,” he told reporters while vowing to keep working on the treaty necessary to tackle “one of the biggest pollution problems we have on earth”.
Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, also pledged to continue work. “We did not get where we want but people want a deal,” she said.
The most divisive issues include capping production, managing plastic products and chemicals of concern, and financing to help developing countries implement the treaty.
Anti-plastics campaigners voiced disappointment at the outcome but welcomed states’ rejection of a weak deal that failed to place limits on plastics production. “No treaty is better than a bad treaty,” said Ana Rocha, Global Plastics Policy Director from environmental group GAIA.
1. The summit produced slim pickings … in other words, no deal
As Donald Trump conceded during his brief press conference with Vladimir Putin, “understanding” and “progress” are oceans apart from an agreement. At the end of a summit more notable for its choreography than its substance – frustrated reporters were not permitted to ask questions – the leaders failed to negotiate even a pause in fighting, let alone a ceasefire.
“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump conceded, while Putin described their talks only as a “reference point” for ending the conflict and, significantly, a potential launchpad for better diplomatic and economic ties between Washington and Moscow.
2. This was a PR victory for a dominant Putin
Putin may have been the guest at a meeting held on US territory, but the Russian leader gained far more cachet than his host. Putin spoke to reporters first – a break with convention that gave him the opportunity to set the tone of a brief and, at times, quixotic press conference in Anchorage.
Clearly mindful of his surroundings, Putin, who had hitched a ride from to the venue in “the beast” – the secure US presidential limousine – reminded the world that the US and Russia were, in fact, geographical neighbours, although he stopped short of mentioning that Alaska had once been a Russian colony.
Trump was effusive in his praise for the Russian leader, repeatedly thanking him for his time and later, in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox, awarding a “10” for the Anchorage summit because “it’s good when two big powers get along”.
As if to underline his dominant role in proceedings, Putin ended the briefing by suggesting that their next meeting be held in Moscow – an invitation that slightly wrongfooted Trump, who had to admit that it would generate “a little heat” at home. But he did not rule it out.
3. Putin is still talking about ‘root causes’ that stand in the way of a breakthrough
That is code for his non-negotiable demand that Russia retain the eastern Ukrainian regions it has captured during the three-and-a-half-year war, as well as other Kremlin “red lines”: no Ukrainian membership of Nato and the European Union, and an end to Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s presidency.
In a message to Keir Starmer and other regional leaders who made a public show of support for Zelenskyy on the eve of the summit, Putin warned “European capitals” against “creating obstacles” to peace in Ukraine. “I have said more than once that for Russia, the events in Ukraine are associated with fundamental threats to our national security,” he said.
4. Trump appears to have more in common with Putin than with Zelenskyy
The summit was notable for the absence of the man who leads the country whose fate now lies in the hands of Trump and an alleged war criminal. The contrast between the public ambushing of Zelenskyy by Trump and JD Vance in the Oval Office in February and the personal connection – some might even call it warmth – on show in Anchorage was hard to ignore.
Kyiv could perhaps take solace in the fact that Trump did not appear to have accepted all of Putin’s demands, but the summit did little to reassure Ukraine that it can, in Zelenskyy’s words, continue to “count on America”.
As he ended his comments to the media, Trump, almost as an afterthought, said he would call the Ukrainian leader “very soon”, along with Nato leaders.
5. Trump couldn’t resist revisiting domestic political grievances
Trump is not a man to let go of the long list of resentments he harbours towards his political opponents at home; not surprisingly, he used a summit called in an attempt end the bloodiest war in Europe for eight decades as a platform to revisit some of those grievances.
Perhaps encouraged by Putin – who revealed he had told Trump he agreed with the US president’s contention that the Ukraine war would not have started had he, and not Joe Biden, been in the White House when Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022 – Trump repeatedly referenced “hoax” claims, backed by US intelligence, that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.
In his interview with Hannity, he also claimed that Putin had told him that the 2020 US presidential election “was rigged” through the widespread use of postal voting.
6. The fighting in Ukraine will continue
The Ukraine war raged on even as Trump and Putin sat in a room in front of a screen proclaiming that they were “Pursuing Peace”. As preparations were made for their first face-to-face meeting since 2019, there were no signs that Russian forces were preparing for a possible ceasefire, with reports that small sabotage groups had pierced Ukrainian defences in the eastern Donbas.
Zelenskyy also warned that Russia was planning new offensives on three parts of the frontline. On the day of the summit Ukrainian military intelligence claimed that Russia was preparing to conduct tests of a new nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered cruise missile that, if successful, would be used to bolster its negotiating position with the US and European countries.
As the two leaders met, most eastern Ukrainian regions were under air raid alerts, while the governors of Russia’s Rostov and Bryansk regions reported that some of their territories were under attack from Ukrainian drones.
The continued fighting was proof that Putin had never been interested in negotiating a ceasefire, the Ukrainian opposition lawmaker Oleksiy Honcharenko said on Telegram: “It seems Putin has bought himself more time. No ceasefire or de-escalation has been agreed upon.”
The presidents of the United States and Russia wrapped up critical talks in Alaska without reaching a deal on ending the war in Ukraine.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were on the ground in Anchorage, Alaska, for only about six hours, but the historic yet inconclusive summit still produced some memorable moments.
Both leaders spoke at a news conference, but neither mentioned a ceasefire – something many hoped Mr Trump could persuade Mr Putin to accept during the discussions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who didn’t participate in the talks in Alaska, had said that Ukraine was “counting on America”.
Image: The two leaders meeting each other. Pic: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Image: Pic: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Image: Mr Trump arriving on Air Force One. Pic: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/PA
Image: Mr Putin steps off the Ilyushin Il-96. Pic: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Image: A red carpet was laid out for the Russian leader. Pic: Julia Demaree Nikhinson
Image: Pic: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Image: Not far from the military base, several hundred people joined a pro-Ukraine rally. Pic: Nathaniel Wilder/Reuters
Image: They unfurled this huge flag. AP Photo/Jae C Hong
Image: The two leaders held a joint news conference after their discussion. Pic: Reuters
Image: Pic: Sergei Bobylev/ Sputnik/ Kremlin pool via AP
Image: Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and US secretary of state Marco Rubio. Pic: AP
Image: Pic: Reuters
Image: Pic: Jae C Hong/PA
Image: Pic: Kevin Lamarque/Reutrs
Image: Pic: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Image: Pic: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Image: President Trump waves goodbye as he boards Air Force One after the meeting. Pic: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/PA
ACTIVISTS protest during the final day of negotiations on a global treaty on plastic pollution, at the United Nations offices in Geneva.—AFP
KARACHI: The 10-day negotiations towards a legally binding agreement to tackle global plastic pollution fell apart on Friday, a couple of days after the first draft of the treaty was rejected by 80 countries.
The new iteration, which was to be shared on Thursday, was adjourned in 43 seconds. It took another 16 hours for the plenary to be reconvened.
Talks chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso said the session had merely been adjourned rather than ended.
He told AFP that countries and the secretariat “will be working to try to find a date and also a place” for resuming the talks.
However, the process was a shambles, with many delegates being excluded from the final plenary.
Talks break down after most countries reject initial draft; Musadik Malik says text offers no clarity on financing or access to tech
“We remained outside the convention centre well after past midnight on Thursday, expecting the final plenary to take place, only to be told it would reconvene the following morning, without any indication of time.
Then suddenly, they rushed it through at 6am on Friday“ Climate Change Minister Dr Musadik Malik told Dawn from Geneva.
He called the uncertainty deliberate; “it was designed so no one had time to read the revised text, reflect on it and analyse it properly.”
As negotiators took the floor, the room echoed with familiar rhetoric and recycled talking points.
Despite expressions of disappointment over unmet ambitions and underwhelming outcomes, there was broad consensus on one thing: plastic pollution remains a grave and escalating threat to both people and the planet.
The High Ambition Coalition, which includes the European Union, Britain and Canada, and many African and Latin American countries, wanted to see language on reducing plastic production and the phasing out of toxic chemicals used in plastics.
The cluster of mostly oil-producing states calling themselves the Like-Minded Group — including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Russia, Iran, and Malaysia — want a much narrower remit.
Hopeful
Still, many remained hopeful. Vietnam was heard saying: “It’s (the treaty) within our grasp”, while Sri Lanka found the new text “an improvement” from the one shared a day earlier.
Madagascar said countries needed to act “boldly and with strong political will” as did Tunisia calling for a more “courageous decision” from the countries.
But there were some who were brave enough to openly reject the second iteration too.
“We’ve been ignored in the treaty,” said the delegate from Paraguay, speaking on behalf of the land-locked developing countries (LLDCs).
She asserted that measuring them with the same yardstick as the plastic polluters was a “tremendous injustice” as they polluted the oceans the least, and announced her bloc was “rejecting” the second iteration of the treaty.
Pakistan criticised the process, finding it lacking transparency.
“There was a general sense among developing nations, including us, that they were sidelined. There was no clarity on financing nor on whether polluters would grant us access to technology. To me, even the language implied ‘you’re on your own’,” Dr Malik said of the earlier version that was shared by the organisers on Wednesday and quickly taken back.
“We were willing to meet them halfway, even take a few steps back to find common ground,” he said.
Break Free From Plastic, a global coalition of over 13,000 groups and individuals, said the talks had been “captured by the petrochemical industry.”
Despite the concerns raised by various developing nations, calling for stricter controls on plastic waste, progress remained elusive.
Subsequently, Friday’s meeting also ended without a clear agreement on the path forward.
For Dharmesh Shah — consulting senior campaigner on the Plastics Treaty at the Centre for International Environmental Law — it felt like “Busan all over again” having witnessed all the five previous rounds of negotiations.
“Better to continue talking than to go home with a bad agreement in hand,” he told Dawn over the phone from Geneva.
DEIR AL-BALAH: After waking early to stand in line for an hour under the August heat, Rana Odeh returns to her tent with her jug of murky water. She wipes the sweat from her brow and strategizes how much to portion out to her two small children. From its color alone, she knows full well it’s likely contaminated.
Thirst supersedes the fear of illness.
She fills small bottles for her son and daughter and pours a sip into a teacup for herself. What’s left she adds to a jerrycan for later.
“We are forced to give it to our children because we have no alternative,” Odeh, who was driven from her home in Khan Younis, said of the water. “It causes diseases for us and our children.”
Such scenes have become the grim routine in Muwasi, a sprawling displacement camp in central Gaza where hundreds of thousands endure scorching summer heat.
Sweat-soaked and dust-covered, parents and children chase down water trucks that come every two or three days, filling bottles, canisters and buckets and then hauling them home, sometimes on donkey-drawn carts.
Each drop is rationed for drinking, cooking, cleaning, or washing.
Some reuse what they can and save a couple of cloudy inches in their jerrycans for whatever tomorrow brings — or does not.
When water fails to arrive, Odeh said, she and her son fill bottles from the sea.
Over the 22 months since Israel launched its offensive, Gaza’s water access has been progressively strained. Limits on fuel imports and electricity have hindered the operation of desalination plants, while infrastructure bottlenecks and pipeline damage have restricted delivery to a trickle. Gaza’s aquifers became polluted by sewage and the wreckage of bombed buildings. Wells are mostly inaccessible or destroyed, aid groups and the local utility say.
Meanwhile, the water crisis has helped fuel the rampant spread of disease, on top of Gaza’s rising starvation.
UNRWA — the UN agency for Palestinian refugees — said that its health centers now see an average of 10,300 patients a week with infectious diseases, mostly diarrhea from contaminated water.
Efforts to ease the water shortage are underway, but for many, the prospect remains overshadowed by the risk of what may unfold before a new supply arrives.
And the thirst is only growing as a heat wave bears down, with humidity and temperatures in Gaza soaring on Friday to 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit).
Mahmoud Al-Dibs, a father displaced from Gaza City to Muwasi, dumped water over his head from a flimsy plastic bag — one of the vessels used to carry water in the camps.
“Outside the tents, it is hot, and inside the tents, it is hot, so we are forced to drink this water wherever we go,” he said.
Al-Dibs was among many who said they knowingly drink non-potable water.
The few people still possessing rooftop tanks cannot muster enough water to clean them, so what flows from their taps is yellow and unsafe, said Bushra Khalidi, an official with Oxfam, an aid group working in Gaza.
Before the war, the coastal enclave’s more than 2 million residents got their water from a patchwork of sources. Some was piped in by Mekorot, Israel’s national water utility.
Some came from desalination plants. Some was pulled from high-saline wells, and some was imported in bottles.
Palestinians are relying more heavily on groundwater, which now accounts for more than half of Gaza’s water supply.
The well water has historically been brackish, but still serviceable for cleaning, bathing, or farming, according to Palestinian water officials and aid groups.
The effects of drinking unclean water don’t always appear right away, said Mark Zeitoun, director general of the Geneva Water Hub, a policy institute.
“Untreated sewage mixes with drinking water, and you drink that or wash your food with it, then you’re drinking microbes and can get dysentery,” Zeitoun said. “If you’re forced to drink salty, brackish water, it just does your kidneys in, and then you’re on dialysis for decades.”
Deliveries average less than three liters per person per day — a fraction of the 15 liters that humanitarian groups say is needed for drinking, cooking, and basic hygiene.
In February, acute watery diarrhea accounted for less than 20 percent of reported illnesses in Gaza. By July, it had surged to 44 percent, raising the risk of severe dehydration, according to UNICEF, the UN children’s agency.
Early in the war, residents said deliveries from Israel’s water company Mekorot were curtailed — a claim that Israel has denied.
Airstrikes destroyed some of the transmission pipelines as well as one of Gaza’s three desalination plants.
Bombardment and advancing troops damaged or cut off wells to the point that today only 137 of Gaza’s 392 wells are accessible, according to UNICEF.
Water quality from some wells has deteriorated, fouled by sewage, the rubble of shattered buildings and the residue of spent munitions.
Fuel shortages have strained the system, slowing pumps at wells and the trucks that carry water.
The remaining two desalination plants have operated far below capacity or ground to a halt at times, aid groups and officials say.
In recent weeks, Israel has taken some steps to reverse the damage. It delivers water via two of Mekorot’s three pipelines into Gaza and reconnected one of the desalination plants to Israel’s electricity grid, Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel told The Associated Press.
Still, the plants put out far less than before the war, said Monther Shoblaq, head of Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility. That has forced him to make impossible choices.
The utility prioritizes delivering water to hospitals and to the public. However, that means sometimes withholding water needed for sewage treatment, which can lead to neighborhood backups and increase health risks.
Water hasn’t sparked the same global outrage as limits on food entering Gaza. But Shoblaq warned of a direct line between the crisis and potential loss of life.
“It’s obvious that you can survive for some days without food, but not without water,” he said.
Water access is steadying after Israel’s steps. Aid workers have grown hopeful that the situation will not worsen and could improve.
Southern Gaza could get more relief from a desalination plant just across the border in Egypt.
The plant wouldn’t depend on Israel for power, but since Israel holds the crossings, it will control the entry of water into Gaza for the foreseeable future.
But aid groups warn that access to water and other aid could be disrupted again by Israel’s plans to launch a new offensive on some of the last areas outside its military control. Those areas include Gaza City and Muwasi, where a significant portion of Gaza’s population is now concentrated.
In Muwasi’s tent camps, people line up for the sporadic arrivals of water trucks.
Hosni Shaheen, whose family was also displaced from Khan Younis, already sees the water he drinks as a last resort.
“It causes stomach cramps for adults and children, without exception,” he said.
“You don’t feel safe when your children drink it.”
ANCHORAGE: US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met face-to-face in Alaska on Friday in a high-stakes meeting that could determine whether a ceasefire can be reached in the deadliest war in Europe since World War Two.
Ahead of the summit, Trump greeted the Russian leader on a red carpet on the tarmac at Elmendorf Air Base, the largest US military installation in Alaska that once played a key role in monitoring the Soviet Union.
Trump waited in Air Force One until Putin landed and then waited again for him on the tarmac, clapping as he saw the Russian leader for the first time since 2019. The two shook hands warmly and touched each other on the arm before riding in US presidential limousine to the summit site nearby.
The two leaders sat silently, with their respective delegations seated to the side, in what was previously planned a one-on-one meeting. They were seated in front of a blue backdrop that had the words, “Pursuing Peace” printed on it.
Rubio, Witkoff join what was planned to be a ‘one-on-one meeting’
Just an hour before the Alaska summit began, the White House said Trump no longer plans to meet alone Putin and instead will be joined by top aides throughout.
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump goes to shake hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as they meet to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, at a military base in Alaska.—Reuters
“Trump, instead of a previously planned one-on-one meeting, will be joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff before a larger meeting over lunch that will include other officials,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Air Force One.
Before his arrival in Alaska for the high-stakes summit, Trump said he wants to see a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine “today”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was not invited to the talks, and his European allies fear Trump might sell out Ukraine by essentially freezing the conflict with Russia and recognising, if only informally, Russian control over one-fifth of Ukraine.
But Trump sought to assuage such concerns, saying he would let Ukraine decide on any possible territorial swaps. “I’m not here to negotiate for Ukraine, I’m here to get them at a table,” he said.
Asked what would make the meeting a success, he told reporters: “I want to see a ceasefire rapidly … I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today … I want the killing to stop.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday’s talks could last six to seven hours and that aides would take part in what had been expected to be one-to-one meetings. He added that a three-way summit would be possible only if the Alaska talks bore fruit, Interfax news agency reported.
The Kremlin said Putin would be met at his plane in Alaska by Trump. “He is a smart guy, been doing it for a long time, but so have I … We get along, there’s a good respect level on both sides,” Trump said of Putin. He also welcomed Putin’s decision to bring businesspeople to Alaska.
Hezbollah raised the spectre of civil war with a warning on Friday there would be “no life” in Lebanon if the government sought to confront or eliminate the Iran-backed group.
The government wants to control arms in line with a US-backed plan following Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah, which was founded four decades ago with the backing of Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards.
But the group is resisting pressure to disarm, saying that cannot happen until Israel ends its strikes and occupation of a southern strip of Lebanon that had been a Hezbollah stronghold.
“This is our nation together. We live in dignity together, and we build its sovereignty together — or Lebanon will have no life if you stand on the other side and try to confront us and eliminate us,” its leader Naim Qassem said in a televised speech.
Israel has dealt Hezbollah heavy blows in the last two years, killing many of its top brass, including former leader Hassan Nasrallah, and 5,000 of its fighters and destroying much of its arsenal.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said that Qassem’s statements carried an implicit threat of civil war, calling them “unacceptable”. “No party in Lebanon is authorised to bear arms outside the framework of the Lebanese state,” Salam said in a post on X carrying his statements from an interview with the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
The Lebanese cabinet last week tasked the army with confining weapons only to state security forces, a move that has outraged Hezbollah.
Qassem accused the government of implementing an “American-Israeli order to eliminate the resistance, even if that leads to civil war and internal strife”. However, he said Hezbollah and the Amal movement had decided to delay any street protests while there was still scope for talks.
“There is still room for discussion, for adjustments, and for a political resolution before the situation escalates to a confrontation no one wants,” Qassem said. “But if it is imposed on us, we are ready, and we have no other choice … At that point, there will be a protest in the street, all across Lebanon, that will reach the American embassy.”
The conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, which left parts of Lebanon in ruins, erupted in October 2023 when the group opened fire at Israeli positions along the southern border in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas at the start of the Gaza war.
