Day: September 3, 2022

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U.S. Should Take “Important” Role In Stopping Unilateral Israeli Measures: Palestinian Official

RAMALLAH, A senior Palestinian official said yesterday that, the United States should take its “important” role in stopping the unilateral Israeli measures in the Palestinian territories, mainly in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, made the remarks, during his meeting with Barbara A. Leaf, the visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

“Stopping the Israeli measures represented in (building) settlements, incursions and daily killings, and preserving the historical status in Jerusalem, would establish a political horizon, leading to an end to the Israeli occupation,” al-Sheikh told Leaf.

After a three-day trip to Tunisia that ended on Aug 31, Leaf is currently visiting Israel and the West Bank, to discuss U.S. cooperation with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, during her three-day trip in the region that ends today, according to a U.S. government statement.

On Thursday, Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyad al-Maliki said in a press statement that, Palestine’s accession to the United Nations as a full-fledged state would be high on the agenda during the visit of Leaf.

The United States refuses to allow Palestine to become a full member state in the United Nations, al-Maliki noted in the statement.

In 2012, the UN General Assembly granted Palestine a non-member observer state, allowing the Palestinian Authority to participate in some voting processes in the General Assembly and join some UN agencies.

Full UN membership would give the Palestinians an official international recognition of an independent state they seek to establish, along the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital

Source: Nam News Network

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Blinken Denounces New 3-Year Prison Term for Myanmar’s Suu Kyi

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday denounced a new three-year sentence imposed on Myanmar’s ousted elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and urged further pressure on the country’s junta.

“We strongly condemn the Burma military regime’s unjust sentencing of Aung San Suu Kyi to three more years of prison, including hard labor,” Blinken said, using Myanmar’s former name.

“We must work together to hold the regime accountable for its escalating violence and repression of democratically elected leaders in Burma.”

The latest sentence, handed down behind closed doors, takes the total jail time the Nobel laureate and democracy figurehead is facing to two decades.

The new sentence was over purported electoral fraud in 2020 polls that her party won by a landslide.

The military deposed and detained her the following February and has piled on a series of charges including corruption that her supporters say are trumped up.

The United States and other Western nations have imposed a series of sanctions on Myanmar’s junta since the coup — but to little avail.

The United States pledged further action after the junta executed four democracy activists in July but has held back from the key step of sanctions on its oil and gas industry amid opposition from Thailand, which imports energy from its neighbor.

In a speech broadcast last month, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing did not mention a date for fresh polls but said they could only be held when the country was “peaceful and stable.”

More than 2,200 people have been killed and over 15,000 arrested in the military’s crackdown on dissent since it seized power, according to a local monitoring group.

Source: Voice of America