Washington, July 29 (IANS) The top diplomats of the United States, Japan, India and Australia condemned North Korea’s rocket launches and its pursuit of nuclear arms, and renewed their commitment to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” during their talks in Tokyo on Monday.

They issued a joint statement following a foreign ministerial meeting of the Quad forum, where they discussed a wide range of regional and global issues, including maritime security, emerging technologies and cybersecurity.

“We condemn North Korea’s destabilizing launches using ballistic missile technology and its continued pursuit of nuclear weapons in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs),” they said in the statement.

“We express our grave concern over North Korea’s use of proliferation linkages, malicious cyber activity and workers abroad to fund its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes,” they added.

They called for the North’s return to dialogue as concerns persisted that Pyongyang has been doubling down on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in the absence of any meaningful diplomacy to at least limit its weapons programmes, reported Yonhap news agency.

“We reaffirm our commitment to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula consistent with relevant UNSCRs, and we urge North Korea to abide by all its obligations under the UNSCRs and engage in substantive dialogue,” they said.

In an apparent allusion to growing military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow, the ministers touched on proliferation issues concerning the North.

“We stress the need to prevent any proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies related to North Korea in the region and beyond. In that context, we urge all UN Member States to abide by the related UNSCRs, including the prohibition on the transfer to North Korea or procurement from North Korea of all arms and related materiel,” they said.

They also stressed their commitment to continued implementation of anti-North Korea sanctions as they noted that the mandate of a sanctions-monitoring U.N. expert panel has expired due to Russia’s veto of a resolution on its renewal earlier this year.

–IANS

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Tehran, July 29 (IANS) French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday called up his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian and expressed his and other EU countries’ hope to enhance relations with Tehran.

In the hour-long telephone conversation, Macron welcomed Pezeshkian’s approach of focusing on engagement and balance in foreign policy, and discussed various issues and topics, including negotiations to lift anti-Iran sanctions, the war in Ukraine, and the latest situation and developments in Gaza and Lebanon, Mehr News Agency reported.

At the start of the phone conversation, Pezeshkian warned that the Israeli regime’s attack on Lebanon could have severe consequences for them.

Citing the long-standing political relations and cultural relations between Iran and France, he said that that could lay the ground for the development of their diplomatic interactions and announced his country’s readiness to improve relations with France based on honesty and mutual trust.

Declaring Iran’s readiness to continue JCPOA-related negotiations on the lifting of sanctions within the agreed framework, Pezeshkian stressed that Tehran expects other parties live up to all their commitments and to cease pressure and oppressive sanctions.

The conversation between the French and Iranian Presidents came a day after Supreme Leader Seyyed Ali Khamenei, in the ceremony to endorse Pezeshkian as President, said that Iran’s priority is to maintain relations with its neighbours and the countries that “help expand Iran’s diplomacy”, such as African and Asian nations.

European countries however are not on Iran’s priority list, not because of hostility towards them, but because these countries have not behaved toward Iran in a good manner in the past years, Ayatollah Khamenei held.

Pezeshkian had himself, in an article titled “My message to the new world” soon after his victory in the run-off elections, noted that relations with Europe have “known its ups and downs”.

“After the United States’ withdrawal from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) in May 2018, European countries made eleven commitments to Iran to try to salvage the agreement and mitigate the impact of the United States’ unlawful and unilateral sanctions on our economy. These commitments involved ensuring effective banking transactions, effective protection of companies from U.S. sanctions, and the promotion of investments in Iran. European countries have reneged on all these commitments, yet unreasonably expect Iran to unilaterally fulfill all its obligations under the JCPOA,” he said.

He noted that despite “these missteps, I look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue with European countries to set our relations on the right path, based on principles of mutual respect and equal footing”, stressing that the European countries “should realise that Iranians are a proud people whose rights and dignity can no longer be overlooked”.

–IANS

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Washington, July 29 (IANS) In their first week of head-to-head match, Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee for US President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tried to define the race and each other in their own terms.

Harris framed it as a fight between a “prosecutor and a convicted felon”, referring to her previous career as a prosecutor in California and Trump’s conviction for falsifying business records.

She has lately used an adjective for Trump that has gone viral with the Democrats — ‘weird’. Her campaign has also underscored Trump’s age — 78, 19 years older than Harris.

Trump has not settled on any specific line of attack, phrase, or name yet, and has been testing an entire range of them at his rallies.

He has called Harris “Low IQ”, “A bum”, a “Failed Vice-President”, and “Crazy liberal”.

The former President has also mispronounced her name, which has been seen as an attempt to emphasise her foreign origins — mother from India, father from Jamaica — and mocked her laughter.

Trump likes to brand his rivals with derogatory names. He has continued to call President Joe Biden “Crooked Joe” and “Sleepy Joe” and former rival for President Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary”.

He called Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, 2016 rivals for the Republican nomination, “Low-energy Jeb” and “Little Marco”; and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas”, to mock her claims to American-Indian ancestry.

Last week was the first for the two campaigns to confront each other head-to-head.

Trump’s campaign had been focused on President Biden until July 21, but Biden’s exit from the race took away a whole chunk of the Trump campaign’s playbook — framing the President as too old and with serious questions about his mental acuity.

Harris’ elevation to the Democratic ticket had caught the Trump campaign by surprise, although it has claimed it was prepared.

It is racing against time to frame a line of attack that will strike a chord with not only the Republican base, but also independent voters in swing states which will ultimately determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential elections as they did in every election cycle in the past.

“This November, the American people are going to reject Kamala Harris’ crazy liberal extremism in a massive landslide,” Trump said at a rally in Minnesota on Saturday.

Just hours before, he told a Bitcoin conference in Tennessee, “The people in this room are high IQ individuals. I’m running against a low IQ individual.”

At a rally in Florida last Friday, the former President said, “She was a bum three weeks ago. She was a bum. A failed Vice President in a failed administration.”

Trump will settle on a line of attack that works for him, but until then, he will try new lines and names.

The Harris campaign, on the other hand, found and broadcast its main line of attack from the word go.

“I took on predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheats who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said in her first election speech the day after Biden quit the race and endorsed her to replace him on the ticket.

“So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Her campaign calls Trump a “78-year-old convicted felon” in press statements.

Increasingly now, Harris and her campaign are using the adjective “weird” for Trump as a person and his actions, and for his running mate J.D. Vance.

“Trump is old and quite weird,” the campaign said in a statement last week headlined ‘Statement on a 78-Year-Old Criminal’s Fox News Appearance’.

At a fundraiser in Massachusetts, she described comments made about her by Trump and Vance as “just plain weird”.

The Harris campaign also slammed Vance’s remarks to a TV channel as a “weird night” in a statement on Sunday.

–IANS

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Berlin, July 29 (IANS) An explosion followed by a fire erupted at BASF’s plant in Ludwigshafen on Monday afternoon, causing minor injuries to 14 workers, the company reported.

The explosion occurred around noon in the southern section of the BASF SE site, with a smoke cloud clearly visible outside the plant premises, said the company on social media platform Facebook.

BASF announced that the fire had been extinguished, and the cause of the explosion is under investigation, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Ludwigshafen Fire Department issued instructions to the public, advising residents to keep windows and doors closed and to turn off air conditioning due to the heavy smoke. A hazard information hotline was also activated.

In 2016, an explosion and subsequent fires at the North Harbor of BASF’s Ludwigshafen site resulted in the deaths of two BASF fire department employees and an employee of a tanker anchored in the harbour.

–IANS

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Moscow, July 29 (IANS) Russia is committed to comprehensively developing its relations with Venezuela, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.

“We are developing our relations with Venezuela in all areas, including sensitive ones,” Peskov noted, adding that cooperation between the two countries is in the interests of the peoples of both countries.

“Therefore, we will comprehensively develop our relations with Venezuela,” Peskov said when asked about the potential of Russia and Venezuela expanding cooperation in the defence sector, Xinhua news agency reported.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced at Monday midnight that President Nicolas Maduro has won the presidential election. Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Maduro on his re-election on Monday, adding that Moscow is fully committed to “continuing constructive cooperation on important bilateral and international matters.”

–IANS

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