French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has urged China to be more active diplomatically to resolve the ongoing crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Le Drian said on Friday that he and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had held a telephone conversation to review the Korean Peninsula situation a day earlier.

During their talk, Le Drian and Wang agreed that another round of United Nations sanctions needed to be implemented. Le Drian said he called on Wang to advise Beijing, which is Pyongyang’s main trade partner, to do its utmost to enforce the sanctions.

The French foreign minister said, “We must anticipate, there is a United Nations resolution that France voted for, to put in place sanctions on North Korea.” He warned that North Korea would, in a few months, have the capability to send long-range ballistic missiles anywhere across the globe. “In a few months that will be a reality,” he warned.

Le Drian said France supported intensifying efforts by the international community to push forward the denuclearization process on the Korean Peninsula. He said Pyongyang needed to resolve its issues through negotiations. “North Korea must find the path to negotiations.”

Wang, for his part, said his country “always strictly carries out related United Nations Security Council resolutions.” Beijing is “playing a positive role in seeking a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula,” he said. Wang added that other parties involved needed to jointly work to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea has repeatedly asked the United States and South Korea to stop military drills in the region. Pyongyang sees the annual drills as a prelude for future invasion. North Korea says it needs its missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the US and its regional allies’ hostility, aggression and expansionist policy in the region.

Culled from Presstv

A new poll shows that a majority of American voters disapprove of US President Donald Trump’s performance and believe he is “tearing the country apart.” The survey, released on Wednesday by Fox News, found that 55 percent of registered voters said they disapprove of Trump’s time in office and 56 percent said they feel he is “tearing the country apart.”

Just 33 percent of voters said Trump is “drawing the country together,” and 41 percent approved of his performance.
According to the survey, Trump has lost the most support from Republican men and whites without a college degree (a nine-point decline for each) and conservatives (a seven-point loss). All three groups are significant demographics in his voter base.

For most of the issues asked in the survey— including immigration, taxes, health care, Russia, North Korea and the environment — the majority of voters expressed disapproval of Trump. His worst ratings came in his handling with race relations. Only 33 percent approved of his performance there; 61 percent did not.

Fox News is reportedly Trump’s favorite news network and the only major news station he has publicly praised. Trump has described “Fox & Friends,” a morning show on Fox News, as the most “fair” news program.
Trump has scored all-time low approval ratings in most mainstream surveys, but in the past few months, even polls skewed in his favor have been reporting poor scores.

Trump’s approval this month hit an all-time low in a survey by Rasmussen Reports, a right-wing polling company that Trump dubiously called “one of the most accurate” in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has already spent more time under 40 percent than any other first-year president, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

Low approval ratings impede a president’s ability to push an agenda through Congress and make it more likely the president’s party will lose seats in Congress in the midterm elections.

US President Donald Trump has called on Saudi King Salman and “all the parties in the Qatar dispute” to find a diplomatic solution to the regional standoff, according to the White House.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates cut their diplomatic ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing Doha of sponsoring terrorism and destabilizing the region.

The Saudi-led bloc has also imposed sanctions against the tiny Persian Gulf country, including restrictions on Qatari aircraft using their airspace. Qatar’s only land border with Saudi Arabia has only been blocked as a result.

In a phone conversation on Wednesday, Trump told the Saudi monarch that a diplomatic resolution was necessary in order to fulfill a commitment Washington and its regional allies had made to stay united while fighting terror, the White House said in statement.

Meanwhile, experts have touted the Qatar crisis as the fallout of Trump’s visit to Riyadh in early June. Even Trump himself pointed this out in a tweet during the conflict’s early days.

“During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology,” Trump wrote on June 6. “Leaders pointed to Qatar — look!”

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said before the visit that it was aimed at getting Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations in the region to stand in “unity” with Israel and confront Iran.

This might explain the sudden push to isolate Doha, under the pretext that it has close ties with Iran as well as the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.

Trump’s siding with Saudis became more apparent on June 8, when the White House said he had talked to Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, asking him to help “prevent the financing of terrorist organizations and stop the promotion of extremist ideology.”

Now, however, it seems that the White House is running out of patience with Saudi Arabia over its refusal to resolve the crisis.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said Wednesday that Riyadh and its regional allies had ignored “on at least 12 different occasions” calls by Qatar for talks on resolving the impasse.

The immense pressure seems to have failed to bring Qatar to its knees, as the country has strengthened ties with Iran and other regional players like Turkey.

Culled from Presstv

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for an end to the decade-long Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, describing the situation in the coastal Palestinian enclave as one of the most “dramatic humanitarian crises.”

Guterres made the remarks during a visit on Wednesday to a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, also known as UNRWA, in northern Gaza.

The besieged Palestinian territory is undergoing an electricity and water crisis. “I am deeply moved to be in Gaza today, unfortunately to witness one of the most dramatic humanitarian crises that I’ve seen in many years working as a humanitarian in the United Nations,” Guterres stated.

He added that it was “important to open the closures,” in a reference to the Israeli siege of Gaza and Egypt’s closure of Rafah border crossing, the only passageway to the outside world for the impoverished coastal Palestinian sliver.

The UN secretary general wrapped up his three-day visit to the Palestinian territories on Wednesday. The trip was the first of its kind since Guterres took office. During the trip, Guterres met Israeli and Palestinian officials in Jerusalem al-Quds and Ramallah. The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas welcomed Guterres’ visit, urging him to work for the lifting of the Israeli blockade.

The European Union (EU) has once again thrown its weight firmly behind a multilateral nuclear deal with Iran, as the United States tries its hand at undermining the agreement.

Addressing the opening session of the 2017 EU Ambassadors Conference in Brussels on Monday, Federica Mogherini said the deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), represents “the European way to foreign policy.”

“This was not an agreement between two countries, I have repeated it time and again and I have the impression that we will need to repeat it time and again in the months to come,” she added, apparently referring to the stepped-up American rhetoric and action against the deal.

US President Donald Trump has called the JCPOA — which was negotiated under his predecessor, Barack Obama — “the worst deal ever” and repeatedly threatened to tear it up.

The deal was reached between Iran and the P5+1 countries — namely the US, Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany — in July 2015 and took effect in January 2016.

Recent reports indicate that the Trump administration is actively seeking a pretext to potentially withdraw from the JCPOA. Among other things, the White House has reportedly been pressuring US intelligence officials to produce intelligence that could be used to declare Iran in violation of the nuclear agreement.

This is while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is tasked with monitoring Iranian compliance with the deal, has consistently verified the Islamic Republic’s adherence to its obligations.

Last week, the Trump administration sent US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley to Vienna to lobby with the IAEA to request access to Iranian military sites as part of the deal, a move generally considered an attempt at undermining the JCPOA.

Mogherini said in her Monday’s comments that the JCPOA was “a commitment undertaken by the entire international community on one side and Iran on the other, supported by a resolution of the UN Security Council, and certified regularly by the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

She said “compliance with the deal is certified by the IAEA and by the Joint Commission I chair…, not by one single individual country,” in a thinly-veiled rejection of US attempts to claim an Iranian breach.

The EU’s top diplomat further hailed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s “personal commitment to continue to implement their part of the deal. This is what is counting the most for us in this moment.” Iran has denounced Washington’s attempts to undermine the JCPOA.

Culled from Presstv