Category: 2. World

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan and China are working on a proposal to establish a new regional organisation that could potentially replace the now-defunct South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

Discussions between Islamabad and Beijing are now at an advanced stage as both sides are convinced that a new organisation is need of the hour for regional integration and connectivity, according to diplomatic sources familiar with the development.

The recent trilateral meeting of Pakistan, China and Bangladesh held in Kunming, China, was part of those diplomatic maneuvers.

The meeting attended by senior diplomats from three countries was first of its kind that raised eyebrows in India.

The ultimate goal of the meeting in Kunming on June 19 was to invite other South Asian countries, which were part of SAARC, to join the new grouping.

India, according to sources, would be invited to the new proposed forum but given its divergent interests, it is unlikely to respond positively.

Nevertheless, other countries including Sri Lanka, Maldives, Afghanistan to name a few are expected to be part of the grouping.

The main purpose of the new organisation is to seek greater regional engagement through enhanced trade and connectivity.

If the proposal is materialised, SAARC, which was once dubbed European Union (EU) of South Asia, would be dead as ever.

SAARC could not achieve its stated objectives as it remained hostage to adversarial ties between Pakistan and India.

The regional grouping last held its summit a decade ago. Pakistan was to host the summit in 2016 but India boycotted the meeting in Islamabad. Bangladesh, which was at the time ruled by pro-India Sheikh Hasina Wajid, also joined New Delhi in staying away from the summit.

Since then no serious efforts were made to revive the organisation, though Pakistan was keen to host the summit.

Recently, SAARC was dealt with another fatal blow when India withdrew from offering special visas under the organization to Pakistani businessmen following the Pahalgam attack.

Pakistan and China were discussing the proposal of new organization for months and came to the conclusion that like-minded countries should join hands for better future.

India, observers believe, because of its divergent interests finds itself misfit in other regional groupings such as Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipped the last two SCO summits. The 10-member security alliance comprises China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and some central Asian States.

The presence of China and Russia often refers the SCO as regional bloc to challenge West. However, India in recent years seems to be at odds with the SCO agenda.

Seven workers were injured in the collapse, which occurred in an area controlled by the Sudanese Armed Forces.

The partial collapse of a traditional gold mine in Sudan’s northeast has killed 11 miners and wounded seven others, according to the state mining company, as a brutal civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is in its third year.

Since the war erupted in April 2023, both sides’ war chests have been largely funded by Sudan’s gold industry.

In a statement released on Sunday, the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company (SMRC) said that the collapse occurred in an “artisanal shaft in the Kirsh al-Fil mine” over the weekend in the remote desert area of Howeid, located between the SAF-controlled cities of Atbara and Haiya in Sudan’s northeastern Red Sea state.

Another seven workers were injured and transferred to a hospital, the SMRC said.

The company added that it had previously suspended work in the mine and “warned against its continuing activity due to its posing great risk to life”.

According to official and NGO sources, nearly all of the gold trade is funnelled through the United Arab Emirates, which has been accused of arming the RSF. The UAE denies it does so.

The war has shattered Sudan’s already fragile economy. The army-backed government, nevertheless, announced record gold production of 64 tonnes in 2024.

Africa’s third-largest country is one of the continent’s top gold producers, but artisanal and small-scale gold mining accounts for the majority of gold extracted.

In contrast to larger industrial facilities, these mines lack safety measures and use hazardous chemicals that often cause widespread diseases in nearby areas.

Mining collapses are also common. Similar incidents in recent years include a 2023 collapse that killed 14 miners and another in 2021 that claimed 38 lives.

Before the war, which has pushed 25 million people into dire food insecurity, artisanal mining employed more than two million people, according to mining industry sources and experts.

Today, according to those sources, much of the gold produced by both sides is smuggled to Chad, South Sudan and Egypt, before reaching the UAE, the world’s second-largest gold exporter.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Sudan, where more than 13 million people are currently displaced in the world’s largest displacement crisis.

More than four million have fled across borders.

Currently, the SAF dominates the north and east of the country – including the smallest state by area, but most populous, Khartoum – along with some central areas. The RSF, meanwhile, holds most of western Sudan, including most of Darfur.

Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, said on Sunday that the Islamic republic’s nuclear enrichment “will never stop” because it is permitted for “peaceful energy” purposes under the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

“The enrichment is our right, an inalienable right, and we want to implement this right,” Iravani told CBS News, adding that Iran was ready for negotiations but “unconditional surrender is not negotiation. It is dictating the policy toward us.”

But Iravani said Tehran was “ready for the negotiation, but after this aggression, it is not proper condition for a new round of the negotiation, and there is no request for negotiation and meeting with the president”.

The Iranian UN envoy also denied that there were any threats from his government to the safety of Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or against the agency’s inspectors, who are accused by some Iranian officials of helping Israel justify its attacks. IAEA inspectors are currently in Iran but do not have access to Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Pressed by the CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan on whether he would condemn calls for the arrest and execution of the IAEA head, which Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state said a newspaper close to Iran’s leader had made, Iravani said that he would.

“There is not any threat,” Irvani said, but acknowledged that Iran’s parliament had suspended cooperation with IAEA. The inspectors, he said, “are in Iran, they are in safe conditions, but the activity has been suspended. They cannot have access to our site … our assessment is that they have not done their jobs.”

Iravani also responded to questions on why Tehran has not accepted proposals for a diplomatic solution. Referring to Trump’s “unconditional surrender” demand, Iravani said that the US “is dictating the policy towards us. If they are ready for negotiation, they will find us ready for that. But if they want to dictate us, it is impossible for any negotiation with them.”

Iravani said on Saturday that Iran could transfer its stocks of enriched uranium to another country in the event of an agreement with the United States on Tehran’s nuclear program, according to the news site Al-Monitor.

The transfer of 20% and 60% enriched uranium would not be a red line for Tehran, Iravani said, adding that the material could alternatively remain in Iran under IAEA supervision.

But as he said again on Sunday, Iravani stressed that Iran would not renounce its right to domestic uranium production, a condition the US rejects.

Iravani’s comments comes as western nations, including the US, are pushing for Iran to resume negotiations over its nuclear program a week after the US launched strikes on three facilities, setting off days of heated dispute over whether the facilities has been “totally obliterated”, as Donald Trump initially claimed, or if they had delayed but not destroyed the program.

Grossi told CBS that there was “agreement in describing this as a very serious level of damage” but went on to say that Iran will probably will be able to begin to produce enriched uranium within months.

“The capacities they have are there,” he said. “They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that. But as I said, frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.”

On Sunday, Trump again dismissed reports that Iran had moved 400kg (880lb) on 60% enriched uranium ahead of the strikes on Fordow, regarded as the center of Iran’s enrichment program.

“It’s very hard to do, dangerous to do, it’s very heavy, plus we didn’t give them much notice because they didn’t know they we were coming,” Trump told the Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.

Trump speculated that vehicles seen near the entrances to Fordow before the strikes were probably masons brought in to seal up the facility. “There are thousands of tons of rock in that room right now,” Trump said. “The whole place was just destroyed.”

However, the Washington Post reported on Sunday that the US obtained intercepted Iranian communications in which senior Iran officials remarked that damage from the attack was not as destructive and extensive as they anticipated.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, scoffed at the Iranian claims in a comment to the Post in which she did not dispute that such communications had been intercepted.

“The notion that unnamed Iranian officials know what happened under hundreds of feet of rubble is nonsense,” Leavitt said.

Separately on Sunday, Abdolrahim Mousavi, Iran’s armed forces chief of staff, reportedly told the Saudi defense minister during a call that Tehran is not convinced Israel will honour the ceasefire that ended their 12-day war announced by Trump.

“Since we are completely doubtful about the enemy honoring its commitments, including the ceasefire, we are prepared to give it a tough response in case of recurrence of an act of aggression”, Mousavi said, according to Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu.

Israel and the US, “have shown that they do not adhere to any international rules and norms” the Iranian general added. “We did not initiate war, but we responded with all our power to the aggressor.”

President Donald Trump has said he has a buyer for TikTok, the video-sharing app that was banned in the US amid claims it posed a national security risk.

In a Fox News interview, Trump said he had a group of “very wealthy people” willing to acquire the platform. “I’ll tell you in about two weeks,” he teased.

A sale would need approval from the Chinese government, but Trump told Fox he thought President Xi Jinping “will probably do it”.

This month Trump delayed for a third time the enforcement of a law mandating TikTok’s sale.

The latest extension requires parent company ByteDance to reach a deal to sell the platform by 17 September.

The BBC has contacted TikTok for comment.

A previous deal to sell TikTok to an American buyer fell apart in April, when the White House clashed with China over Trump’s tariffs.

It is not clear if the current buyer Trump says he has has lined up is the same as the one who was waiting in the wings three months ago.

The US Congress passed a law forcing TikTok’s sale in April last year, with lawmakers citing fears that the app or its parent company could hand over US user data to the Chinese government, which TikTok denied.

Trump had criticised the app during his first term, but came to see it as a factor in his 2024 election win and now supports its continued use in the US.

The law was supposed to take effect on 19 January, but Trump has repeatedly delayed its enforcement through executive actions, moves that have drawn criticism for overruling congressional lawmakers.

TikTok challenged the constitutionality of the law, but lost its appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to cut New York City off from federal funds if favored mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, “doesn’t behave himself” should he be elected.

Mamdani, meanwhile, denied that he was – as the president said – a communist. But he reaffirmed his commitment to raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers while saying: “I don’t think that we should have billionaires.”

In an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Trump argued that a Mamdani victory was “inconceivable” because he perceived the candidate to be “a pure communist”.

He added: “Let’s say this – if he does get in, I’m going to be president, and he’s going to have to do the right thing, or they’re not getting any money. He’s got to do the right thing or they’re not getting any money.”

More than $100bn flows to the city from the federal government through different entities and programs, according to the city’s comptroller last year.

Speaking Sunday with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Mamdani said, “no, I am not” a communist.

He also said that he had “already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, who I am – ultimately because he wants to distract from what I’m fighting for”.

Mamdani said he was inspired by the US civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr, who once remarked: “Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism. There has to be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country.”

He then reiterated his intent to raise taxes on New York’s wealthiest as part of a campaign pledge “to shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods”.

“I don’t think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality – and ultimately what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country,” Mamdani said. “And I look forward to work with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fairer for all of them.”

Mamdani said the proposal reflected “a description of what we see right now”.

“It’s not driven by race,” he said. “It’s more of an assessment of what neighborhoods are being undertaxed versus overtaxed.

“It is not to work backwards from a racial assessment of neighborhoods or our city. Rather, it’s to ensure that we actually have an equal playing field.”

Many New Yorkers and moderate Democratic politicians have expressed concern over Mamdani’s win over former governor Andrew Cuomo in the 24 June primary for the Democratic nomination.

Among those to endorse him was progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But he has not been endorsed by many other prominent Democratic party figures, including the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, who said coolly after his win: “Obviously, there’s areas of difference in our positions, but I also think we need to have those conversations.”

Mamdani said on Sunday that he was looking forward to discussions with Hochul, saying: “Ultimately, my policies, my vision, it’s driven by an assessment of what’s actually happening.”

Asked if he thought moderate Democrats were afraid of him, Mamdani said: “I think that people are catching up to this election.

“Ultimately what we’re showing is that by putting working people first, by returning to the roots of the Democratic party, we actually have a path out of this moment where we’re facing authoritarianism in Washington DC” under the Trump administration.

In his comments on Mamdani’s having secured the Democrats’ nomination in the heavily Democratic city, Trump said: “It’s shocking.”

“I used to say we will never have a socialist in this country,” the president said, in part.

Asked about Mamdani’s proposals to oppose his administration’s immigration crackdown and to arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he sets foot in New York, Trump said the mayoral candidate would “be very unsuccessful” on both counts.

“He’s a radical left lunatic,” Trump said.

Mamdani, for his part, said Democrats “need to be a party that’s not just against Donald Trump – but also for something”.

“And our campaign was for working people, bringing dignity back into those lives,” Mamdani said.

Russia has fired more than 500 aerial weapons at Ukraine overnight, in a barrage that Kyiv described as the biggest air attack so far of the three-year war.

Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday that Russia had fired 477 drones and decoys as well as 60 missiles overnight. While 475 of these were shot down or lost, the onslaught marked the “most massive airstrike” on the country since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Yuriy Ihnat, head of communications for Ukraine’s air force, told the Associated Press.

The bombing appeared to target several regions far from the frontline, he said, including in western Ukraine. The Russian army said on Sunday its overnight attack hit Ukrainian military-industrial complex sites and oil refineries, and that it had intercepted three Ukrainian drones overnight.

The scale of the attacks called into question comments made on Friday by Vladimir Putin, in which the Russian president said that Moscow was ready for a fresh round of direct peace talks in Istanbul.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Sunday that the barrage of bombs in fact showed that Putin had decided to pursue war. “Moscow will not stop as long as it has the capability to launch massive strikes,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media.

In the past week alone, Russia had attacked Ukraine with more than 114 missiles, more than 1,270 drones and nearly 1,100 glide bombs, he said.

“This war must be brought to an end – pressure on the aggressor is needed, and so is protection,” he added. “Ukraine needs to strengthen its air defence – the thing that best protects lives.”

He reiterated Ukraine’s willingness to buy US air defence systems, adding that his country counted on the “leadership, political will, and support of the United States, Europe and all our partners”.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air force said an F-16 warplane supplied by its western partners had crashed after sustaining damage while shooting down air targets, killing the pilot. “The pilot used all of his onboard weapons and shot down seven air targets. While shooting down the last one, his aircraft was damaged and began to lose altitude,” the air force said on Telegram.

The pilot did not have time to eject, it added.

Local officials in Ukraine said the strikes had killed two people and injured at least 12, including two children. As air raid sirens rang out across the country, residents in Kyiv took refuge in bomb shelters and metro stations, while in the city of Drohobych, in the western Lviv region, a large fire broke out at an industrial facility after a drone attack that cut electricity to parts of the city.

Explosions were heard in Kyiv, Lviv, Poltava, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy and the Ivano-Frankivsk regions, witnesses and regional governors told Reuters.

Russia’s escalating campaign comes as talks on ending the fighting remain largely at an impasse. Two recent rounds between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul yielded no progress.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s presidential website said the country had begun the process of withdrawing from the international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines.

A senior Ukrainian lawmaker, Roman Kostenko, said on social media that parliamentary approval was still needed. “This is a step that the reality of war has long demanded,” he said.

“Russia is not a party to this convention and is massively using mines against our military and civilians. We cannot remain tied down in an environment where the enemy has no restrictions.”

In recent months, and to an outcry from anti-mine campaigners, five European countries have announced similar plans to withdraw from the 1997 landmark mine ban treaty, citing concerns about the growing threat of Russia.

Iran could be producing enriched uranium in a few months, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog Rafael Grossi was quoted as saying on Sunday, raising doubts about how effective US strikes to destroy Tehran’s nuclear programme have been.

US officials have stated that their strikes obliterated key nuclear sites in Iran, although US President Donald Trump said on Friday he would consider bombing Iran again if Tehran is enriching uranium to worrisome levels.

“The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” Grossi told CBS News in an interview.

“Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there,” he added, according to the transcript of an interview on “Face the Nation” with Margaret Brennan due to air on Sunday.

Saying it wanted to remove any chance of Tehran developing nuclear weapons, Israel launched attacks on Iran earlier this month, igniting a 12-day air war that the US eventually joined.

Iran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

Grossi, who heads the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said the strikes on sites in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan had significantly set back Iran’s ability to convert and enrich uranium.

However, Western powers stress that Iran’s nuclear advances provide it with an irreversible knowledge gain, suggesting that while losing experts or facilities may slow progress, the advances are permanent.

“Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology,” Grossi said. “So you cannot disinvent this. You cannot undo the knowledge that you have or the capacities that you have.”

Grossi was also asked about reports of Iran moving its stock of highly enriched uranium in the run-up to the US strikes and said it was not clear where that material was.