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China again blocks bid at UN to list JeM chief Masood Azhar as global terrorist

Agencies
March 14, 2019

United Nations, Mar 14: The statement also noted that Azhar is a former leader of the terrorist group Harakat al-Mujahadin and he had given a call to volunteers to join the fight in Afghanistan against Western forces

China for the fourth time blocked a bid in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to designate chief of Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar as a “global terrorist” by putting a technical hold on the proposal on Wednesday, a move India termed as disappointing.

The proposal to designate Azhar under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council was moved by France, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) on February 27, days after a suicide bomber of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama, leading to a flare-up in tensions between India and Pakistan.

The Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee members had 10 working days to raise any objections to the proposal. The no-objection period deadline was scheduled to end at 3 PM local time (New York) Wednesday, (12:30 AM IST Thursday).

Just before the deadline, China put a “technical hold” on the proposal, a diplomat at the UN said.

The diplomat said China asked for “more time to examine” the proposal.

The technical hold is valid for up to six months and it can be again extended by up to three months.

Reacting to the development, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi expressed disappointment.

“We are disappointed. We will continue to pursue all available avenues to ensure that terrorists involved in attacks on Indian citizens are brought to justice,” the MEA said.

“We are grateful to all countries who supported the bid to designate Azhar as global terrorist,” it said.

The proposal was the fourth such bid at the UN in the last 10 years to list Azhar as a global terrorist.

The Committee makes its decisions by consensus of its members.

All eyes were on China, which has in the past blocked India’s bids to get Azhar listed as a UN-designated global terrorist thrice.

According to the listing rules of the Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee, if no objection is received by the end of the no-objection period, the decision will be deemed adopted.

As it has done in the past, Beijing put a technical hold on the proposal just as the deadline was about to end.

An inkling of China’s stand on the issue came during Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu Kang’s press conferences on Monday and Wednesday in Beijing when he was asked about the proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by the UNSC.

“The UN Security Council and its subsidiary bodies are run on strict rules. We already stressed China’s position on the listing of terrorist organisations and individuals in the UN Security Council 1267 Committee on many occasions,” Lu said on Monday. “China will continue to adopt responsible attitude and participate in the deliberations in the UNSC 1267 Committee,” Lu said on Wednesday.

On the issue of listing Azhar, he said, “I want to say that China always adopts a responsible attitude, engage in consultations with various parties and properly deal with this issue.” “The discussions, I want to say must follow the rules and procedures of the relevant bodies and only the solution that is acceptable to all sides is conducive for resolving the issue,” he said, indicating that Beijing may again block the move to list Azhar as a global terrorist.

According to sources, the statement of the case of the latest proposal by France mentioned that JeM had taken responsibility for the Pulwama suicide attack on February 14 in which 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel were killed.The statement also noted that Azhar is a former leader of the terrorist group Harakat al-Mujahadin and he had given a call to volunteers to join the fight in Afghanistan against Western forces.

In 2009, India moved a proposal by itself to designate Azhar. In 2016 again India moved the proposal with the P3 - the US, the UK and France in the UN’s 1267 Sanctions Committee to ban Azhar, also the mastermind of the attack on the air base in Pathankot in January, 2016.

In 2017, the P3 nations moved a similar proposal again. However, on all occasions China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, blocked India’s proposal from being adopted by the Sanctions Committee. An assets freeze under the Sanctions Committee requires that all states freeze without delay the funds and other financial assets or economic resources of designated individuals and entities.

The travel ban entails preventing the entry into or transit by all states through their territories by designated individuals. Under the arms embargo, all states are required to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale and transfer from their territories or by their nationals outside their territories to the designated individuals and entities.

Hectic diplomatic and political parleys had preceded the closely-watched March 13 deadline as New Delhi reached out to the UNSC member countries.

In the wake of the Pulwama terror attack, India launched a major diplomatic offensive against Pakistan, holding briefing for envoys of 25 countries, including those from the five permanent UNSC members -- the US, China, Russia, the UK and France -- to highlight Islamabad’s role in using terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

Modi’s foreign policy a series of ‘diplomatic disasters, says Congress

The Congress attacked the Modi administration and slammed China for blocking the move.

Congress’ chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said it was a sad day in the global fight against terrorism.

The Congress has been attacking the BJP over Masood Azhar’s release in exchange for passengers of a hijacked Indian plane. Congress chief Rahul Gandhi has asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to tell the nation that it was a BJP-led government which released Azhar from an Indian jail in 1999.

Azhar and two other terrorists, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, were released from an Indian prison in 1999 by the then BJP-led government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in exchange for the passengers held hostage on board flight IC-814 hijacked to Kandahar in Afghanistan.

“After 56 inch’s ‘hugplomacy’ and the game of sitting on a swing also, the China-Pakistan duo is showing red eyes to India,” Surjewala added in a tweet in Hindi.

The Congress has slammed Modi for being allegedly soft on China by holding a summit meeting with President Xi Jinping in Wuhan “without an agenda” and hosting him in India earlier.

“Responsible UNSC members may be forced to pursue other actions”

UNSC members warned they “may be forced to pursue other actions” at the Security Council if Beijing continued with this policy.

A diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity to give a sense of the feeling of other members of the Security Council after China blocked the move to designate Azhar a global terrorist. Beijing previously put a technical hold on similar proposals at the UNSC thrice.

“This is the fourth time that China has placed a hold on this listing. China should not prevent the Committee from doing the job the Security Council has entrusted it to do,” another security council diplomat said.

“China’s move to hold the listing is inconsistent with its own stated goals of combatting terrorism and furthering regional stability in South Asia,” said the diplomat.

The diplomat also slammed Pakistan for depending on China to protect terrorist groups and leaders that operate from its soil.

“Pakistan has quite often depended on China to protect it from the listing of Pakistan-based terrorist groups and individuals in the UN 1267 sanctions committee,” the diplomat said.

“The case for designating Masood Azhar — the leader of a group the UN already calls an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organization — is undeniable,” the diplomat said.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration had said that Azhar meets the criteria for designation by the United Nations.

“Our views on JeM and its founder are well known. JeM is a UN-designated terrorist group,” State Department deputy spokesperson Robert Palladino told reporters.

“Azhar is the founder and the leader of JEM, and he meets the criteria for designation by the United Nations. JEM has been responsible for numerous terrorist attacks and is a threat to regional stability and peace,” Palladino said.

The State Department referred to this statement on Wednesday when asked about the latest developments in New York.

“I would say that the US and China share a mutual interest in achieving regional stability and peace, and that a failure to designate Azhar would run counter to this goal,” Palladino said.

Congressman Brad Sherman described the Chinese move as unacceptable.

“Once again, China has blocked the UN from imposing sanctions on Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed, which carried out the Pulwama attack in India in February. This is unacceptable. I urge Beijing to allow the UN to place sanctions on Azhar, the leader of a UN-recognized terrorist organization,” Sherman said.

Several American think-tank members slammed China for its decision delaying the Azhar listing.

“Today, China doubled down on a very bad bet. It blocked yet another round of UN sanctions on Pakistan-based JeM chief Masood Azhar weeks after the group claimed credit for the deadliest terror attack in Kashmir. This one won’t be undone by another romantic stroll through Wuhan, he said, indicating that such a move by Beijing would only escalate the tension between India and China,” Jeff Smith from the Heritage Foundation said.

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News Network
February 2,2020

Feb 2: The Philippines on Sunday reported the first death from a new virus outside of China, where authorities delayed the opening of schools in the worst-hit province and tightened quarantine measures in a city that allow only one family member to venture out to buy supplies.

The Philippine Department of Health said a 44-year-old Chinese man from Wuhan was admitted on Jan. 25 after experiencing a fever, cough, and sore throat. He developed severe pneumonia, and in his last few days, “the patient was stable and showed signs of improvement, however, the condition of the patient deteriorated within his last 24 hours resulting in his demise.”

The man’s 38-year-old female companion, also from Wuhan, also tested positive for the virus and remains in hospital isolation in Manila.

President Rodrigo Duterte approved a temporary ban on all travelers, except Filipinos, from China and its autonomous regions. The U.S., Japan, Singapore and Australia have imposed similar restrictions despite criticism from China and an assessment from the World Health Organization that they were unnecessarily hurting trade and travel.

The death toll in China climbed by 45 to 304 and the number of cases by 2,590 to 14,380, according to the National Health Commission, well above the number of those infected in in the 2002-03 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, which broke out in southern China and spread worldwide.

Meanwhile, six officials in the city of Huanggang, neighboring the epicenter of Wuhan in Hubei province, have been fired over “poor performance” in handling the outbreak, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

It cited the mayor as saying the city’s “capabilities to treat the patients remained inadequate and there is a severe shortage in medical supplies such as protective suits and medical masks.”

After Huanggang, the trading center of Wenzhou in coastal Zhejiang province also confined people to homes, allowing only one family member to venture out every other day to buy necessary supplies.

With the outbreak showing little sign of abating, authorities in Hubei and elsewhere have extended the Lunar New Year holiday, due to end this week, well into February. The annual travel crunch of millions of people returning from their hometowns to the cities is thought to pose a major threat of secondary infection at a time when authorities are encouraging people to avoid public gatherings.

All Hubei schools will postpone the opening of the new semester until further notice and students from elsewhere who visited over the holiday will also be excused from classes.

Far away on China’s southeast coast, the manufacturing hub of Wenzhou put off the opening of government offices until Feb. 9, private businesses until Feb. 17 and schools until March 1.

With nearly 10 million people, Wenzhou has reported 241 confirmed cases of the virus, one of the highest levels outside Hubei. Similar measures have been announced in the provinces and cities of Heilongjiang, Shandong, Guizhou, Hebei and Hunan, while the major cities of Shanghai and Beijing were on indefinite leave pending developments.

Despite imposing drastic travel restrictions at home, China has chafed at those imposed by foreign governments, criticizing Washington’s order barring entry to most non-citizens who visited China in the past two weeks. Apart from dinging China’s international reputation, such steps could worsen a domestic economy already growing at its lowest rate in decades.

The crisis is the latest to confront Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has been beset by months of anti-government protests in the semi-autonomous Chinese city of Hong Kong, the reelection of Taiwan’s pro-independence president and criticism over human rights violations in the traditionally Muslim northwestern territory of Xinjiang. Economically, Xi faces lagging demand and dramatically slower growth at home while the tariff war with the U.S. remains largely unresolved.

Among a growing number of airlines suspending flights to mainland China was Qatar Airways. The Doha-based carrier said on its website that its flights would stop Monday. It blamed “significant operational challenges caused by entry restrictions imposed by a number of countries” for the suspension of flights.

Oman also halted flights to China, as did Saudi Arabia’s flagship national carrier, Saudia.

Saudi Arabia’s state-run TV reported that 10 Saudi students were evacuated from Wuhan on a special flight. It said the students would be screened upon arrival, but did not say whether they would be quarantined for 14 days.

This weekend, South Korea and India flew hundreds of their citizens out of Wuhan. They went into a two-week quarantine.

On Sunday, South Korea reported three more cases for a total of 15. They include an evacuee, a Chinese relative of a man who tested positive and a man who returned from Wuhan. India reported a second case, also in southern Kerala state.

South Korea also barred foreigners who have stayed or traveled to Hubei province within the last 14 days from entering the country.

Indonesia flew back 241 nationals from Wuhan on Sunday and quarantined them on the remote Natuna Islands for two weeks. Several hundred residents protested the move, with one saying, “This is not because we do not have a sense of solidarity with fellow nationals. But because we fear they could infect us with the deadly virus from China.”

A Turkish military transport plane carrying 42 people arrived in Ankara from Wutan Saturday night. The 32 Turkish, six Azerbaijani, three Georgian nationals and an Albanian will remain under observation for 14 days, together with 20 personnel who participated in the evacuation, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.

Vietnam counted its seventh case, a Vietnamese-American man who had a two-hour layover in Wuhan on his way from the U.S. to Ho Chi Minh City.

The virus’ rapid spread in two months prompted the WHO on Thursday to declare it a global emergency.

That declaration “flipped the switch” from a cautious attitude to recommending governments prepare for the possibility the virus might spread, said the WHO representative in Beijing, Gauden Galea. Most cases reported so far have been people who visited China or their family members.

WHO said it was especially concerned that some cases abroad involved human-to-human transmission.

“Countries need to get ready for possible importation in order to identify cases as early as possible and in order to be ready for a domestic outbreak control, if that happens,” Galea told The Associated Press.

Both the new virus and SARS are from the coronavirus family, which also includes those that cause the common cold.

The death rate in China is falling, but the number of confirmed cases will keep growing because thousands of specimens from suspected cases have yet to be tested, Galea said.

“The case fatality ratio is settling out at a much lower level than we were reporting three, now four, weeks ago,” he said.

Although scientists expect to see limited transmission of the virus between people with family or other close contact, they are concerned about cases of infection spreading to people who might have less exposure.

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News Network
January 10,2020

Dubai, Jan 10: Iran denied on Thursday that a Ukrainian airliner that crashed near Tehran had been hit by a missile, Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei said in a statement, according to state TV.

"All these reports are a psychological warfare against Iran. All those countries whose citizens were aboard the plane can send representatives and we urge Boeing to send its representative to join the process of investigating the black box".

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News Network
February 6,2020

Beijing, Feb 6: The number of confirmed fatalities from China's coronavirus outbreak rose to at least 560, after authorities in hardest-hit Hubei province reported 70 new deaths on February 6.

In its daily update, the health commission in Hubei also confirmed the number of confirmed infections in the outbreak has reached 28,018 nationwide with 3,694 new cases reported.

The epidemic, which has spiralled into a global health emergency, is believed to have emerged in December from a market that sold wild game in Hubei's capital Wuhan.

Hu Lishan, an official in Wuhan, warned Wednesday that despite building a hospital from scratch and converting public buildings to accommodate thousands of extra patients, there was still a "severe" lack of beds in the region.

There was also a shortage of "equipment and materials," he told reporters, adding that officials were looking to convert other hotels and schools in the city into treatment centres.

Authorities in several other cities in China have placed restrictions on the number of people allowed to leave their homes.

Global concerns have also risen about the virus, with cases confirmed in more than 20 countries.

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