Romanian diplomat Cornel Feruta will head the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) until member states agree on who will permanently succeed deceased Director General Yukiya Amano.

The IAEA announced on Monday that chief Yukiya Amano had died, leaving the agency with a leadership vacuum at a time of tensions between Iran and the West following Washington’s decision last year to quit a 2015 international deal that curbed Tehran’s nuclear program in return for an easing of economic sanctions.

“The Board of Governors has decided to designate Mr. Cornel Feruta as acting Director General, until a Director General assumes office,” the United Nations nuclear agency said on Thursday.

Last week, the agency said that Amano’s health problems had forced him to plan an early end to his term, which was originally set to expire in December 2021.

The Japanese diplomat held the position of IAEA director general since 2009 when he took over from Mohamed ElBaradei and began steering the international body through a period of intense diplomacy over Iran’s nuclear program.

Amano, on several occasions, reaffirmed Iran’s compliance with its nuclear-related commitments under the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). US President Donald Trump, however, pulled his country out of the JCPOA in May 2018 and re-imposed harsh sanctions against the Islamic Republic in defiance of global criticisms.

Sources: (news agencies)

Tunisia’s 92-year-old president, Beji Caid Essebsi, who helped guide the North African country’s transition to democracy after a 2011 revolution, has died.

A leading figure in the country’s fortunes since 2011, Essebsi was hospitalized late last month and spent a week in hospital after suffering what authorities described as a severe health crisis.

“On Thursday morning, the President of the Republic died at the military hospital in Tunis … The burial ceremony will be announced later,” the presidency said in a statement.

According to the constitution, the speaker of parliament will temporarily serve as president.

Essebsi has been a prominent politician in Tunisia since the overthrow of former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, which was followed by uprisings against Arab monarchies across the Middle East, including in nearby Libya and Egypt.

Drafted in as prime minister in 2011 after Ben Ali was toppled, Essebsi was elected president three years later, becoming the country’s first directly elected head of state after its uprising.

Parliamentary elections are expected to be held on October 6 with a presidential vote following on November 17. They will be the third set of polls in which Tunisians have been able to vote freely following the 2011 revolution.

The presidency further called on Tunisians to unite and safeguard their country’s present and future.

“After the revolution, the president led the people to avoid confrontation and led the democratic transition and was keen to build and complete the constitutional institutions,” said the presidency.

The North African country has been hailed for its relatively smooth democratic transition with a new constitution, free elections and a coalition government, but it is still experiencing economic and political turbulence.

Source: (Reuters)

Former U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller testifies to Congress Wednesday at a pair of televised hearings that carry high stakes for President Donald Trump and Democrats who are split between impeaching him or concentrating on the 2020 election.

Mueller, whose inquiry detailed extensive contacts between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia at a time when Moscow was interfering in the 2016 election with hacking and propaganda, is set to appear beginning at 8:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) in separate hearings before the House of Representatives Judiciary and Intelligence committees.

Democrats, who control the House, hope his testimony will rally public support behind their own ongoing investigations of the Republican president and his administration, even as they struggle with whether to launch the impeachment process set out in the U.S. Constitution for removing a president from office for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Mueller is not expected to deliver any new bombshells, according to Democratic aides, but rather stick to the contents of his 448-page investigation report about the 22-month-long probe of Russian election meddling. Mueller plans to deliver an opening statement before taking questions.

Democrats hope the 74-year-old former FBI director will give the American public a compelling account of Russia’s sweeping interference, the Trump campaign’s readiness to accept help from Moscow and Trump’s efforts to impede the Russia probe that Mueller investigated as potential obstruction of justice.

Trump, running for re-election in 2020, is hoping to move past the entire Russia issue.

“Seeing is believing in America. That report was voluminous. But most Americans didn’t read it. So they’ll see Mueller lay out the case,” said Representative Eric Swalwell, who sits on both the Judiciary and Intelligence panels.

Mueller’s appearance could also be a turning point for Democrats on the question of impeachment.

Many liberal Democrats are pushing for an impeachment inquiry against Trump, whose recent incendiary rhetoric about four congresswomen from racial minorities also has ignited a political firestorm. Eighty-nine House Democrats, about 38 percent of them, now want an impeachment inquiry against Trump, according to a Reuters survey.

That is well short of the 218 votes needed to adopt articles of impeachment in the House, which would trigger a trial in the Senate on whether to remove Trump. But the number backing impeachment could swell if Mueller’s testimony proves to be compelling.

“We hope Mueller’s testimony will be a watershed,” said Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Judiciary panel member.

The impeachment question has divided Democrats, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposing such a move as politically risky for moderate Democrats on whose future the House Democratic majority depends. Some Democrats prefer to remove Trump from office the ordinary way: defeating him in next year’s election.

Mueller, who had expressed reluctance to testify, agreed only after being subpoenaed. Mueller, a former federal prosecutor and U.S. Marine Corps officer, is also known for favoring one-word answers at hearings and could prove too taciturn to satisfy Democrats’ hopes of a forceful narrative.

“Let us listen, let us see where the facts will take us,” Pelosi said of the hearings. “We’ll see what happens after that.”

‘Going to be disappointed’

Republicans in Congress are predicting chagrin for the Democrats.

“I think they’re going to be disappointed, just as they were when the Mueller report came out,” said Republican Representative Tom Cole.

Mueller’s report said the investigation found insufficient evidence to prove that Trump and his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia. The report also did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump committed the crime of obstruction of justice but pointedly did not exonerate him. Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, subsequently cleared the president of obstruction of justice.

“It is so important for him to say that the investigation did not exonerate the president,” said Representative Val Demings, another Democrat who sits on both panels.

Republicans are expected to raise questions with Mueller about the integrity of the origins of the Russia probe in the FBI during Democrat Barack Obama’s administration and the political leanings of the special counsel’s staff members. Trump has sought to portray the probe as an attempted coup.

The Justice Department on Monday sent a letter telling Mueller to limit his testimony to merely discussing the public report, a directive that the Judiciary Committee chairman rejected as out of line.

But even if Mueller’s testimony proves disappointing enough to deflate impeachment chances, Democrats expect their continuing investigations to produce revelations that could damage Trump’s re-election prospects.

The heart of the Democratic strategy is to focus Mueller’s testimony on several examples of potential obstruction by Trump, including his repeated efforts to get former White House Counsel Don McGahn to remove Mueller and then deny that he had been directed to do so.

Lawmakers will also emphasize attempts by Trump to his fired former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to redirect the Russia probe away from his 2016 campaign, and possible witness tampering in public statements seen to discourage his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen from cooperating with federal investigations.

Democrats have said the report includes shocking evidence of misconduct that would result in criminal charges against any other American. The Justice Department has a longstanding policy against bringing criminal charges against a sitting president.

(REUTERS)