Kim Jong-un had a rendezvous with Chinese President Xi Jinping past Tuesday. It was the North Korean leader’s third visit to China, in which Kim was expected to discuss his recent summit with US President Donald J. Trump over nuclear arms. A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said the purpose of the meeting was to ‘facilitate regional peace and stability’.
‘Beijing was happy with the results [of the Trump-Kim summit] because essentially the two sides agreed to what they have been promoting all along, which is this idea of a dual suspension where North Korea suspends its nuclear and missile tests in exchange for the United States suspending its military exercises,’ states Patricia Kim of the Council on Foreign Relations.
‘[Trump’s] decision advances China’s goal of weakening US alliances with South Korea and Japan, which are key to Washington’s ability to project power and influence in the region. Beijing now has more fodder to push back against US operations in the South China Sea and East China Sea as well,’ Bonnie S. Glaser and Oriana Skylar Mastro opine in their piece for Foreign Affairs.
‘Under the banner of “Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula”, North Korea has exercised a grand strategy to fundamentally change the security structure in the region. The purpose is to realize its long-term goal of unifying Korea under North Korea’s terms, as well as the immediate objective of maintaining the Kim family regime,’ says Cheon Seong Whun in the Asian Institute for Policy Studies.
Saudi Arabia is pushing Iran to raise output restrictions at a meeting of OPEC in Vienna. The association of major oil-producing countries is discussing adding up to one million barrels per day to the market to lower crude prices, which have reached a level not seen since 2014. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said that ‘we are cooking something’, but he added that OPEC members do not intend to ‘receive instruction from President Trump’, who has urged for lower prices.
‘Even if the Vienna group takes production increase decisions this week that staves off any economically crippling oil price shock that could have sent oil demand into a tailspin, caution signs are already emerging that oil prices even at $70 a barrel are creating some economic headwinds,’ writes Amy Myers Jaffe of the Council on Foreign Relations.
‘US president Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and re-impose sanctions on the country’s energy exports was the final bump to take oil above $80 a barrel,’ David Sheppard and Anjil Raval state in an article for the Financial Times.
‘Saudi Arabia has the support of the majority of the group, plus the backing of Russia, so it’s unlikely that it feels it needs to cave in to Iran’s pressure,’ Javier Blas writes in his article for Bloomberg.
Rebel leader Riek Machar arrived in Ethiopia to discuss ending South Sudan’s five-year civil war with President Salva Kiir, the first such meeting since a peace deal broke down in 2016. Machar has since fled to South Africa, where he was under house arrest.
Twin attacks carried out by suspected Boko Haram militants in northeastern Borno State left 31 people killed and an additional 48 people injured, according to reports. The victims had been celebrating Eid al-Fitr. According to the UN, 1.7 million people have been forced from their homes due to the Boko Haram conflict, which is now in its ninth year.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s popularity has hit a new low, according to a poll held on Sunday. This has come following recent controversies over spending at his residences and cutting remarks he made on welfare benefits. The poll showed the decline in popularity was particularly acute among France’s over-65s — the age group where Macron found the strongest support in the presidential election last year. In that category alone, Macron suffered an eight point fall in one month to 38 per cent, highlighting pensioners’ frustration over the higher tax bills they have been paying since the start of the year.
Emmanuel Macron has hit back at Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini for branding him ‘arrogant’ as he insisted ‘France has no lessons to learn from anyone’ over migration. The French president was keen to have his say as tensions reached boiling point in Brussels where 16 EU leaders met on Sunday to discuss how to tackle migrant flows across the continent, which threatens to engulf the nation.
Mr. Macron was the target of Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio’s rage as he said France risks becoming his nation’s ‘Number one enemy‘ on migration issues after the French President said immigration flows towards Europe had fallen in comparison to a few years ago
The Trump administration withdrew the United States on Tuesday from the UN Human Rights Council, a body that US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley labelled as a cesspool of political bias that inexplicably takes aim at Israel and protects many rights abusers. According to Haley, the council has failed to address recent abuses in Venezuela and Iran and allowed the Democratic Republic of Congo to become a member.
‘[It’s] the latest example of the Trump administration’s quitting multilateral institutions and agreements, coming on the heels of its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal,’ states Nahal Toosi in an analysis for Politico.
In a joint letter written by 12 human rights organizations, it was stated that: ‘Without strategic US engagement at the Council as a member, the US loses a platform to influence the course of human rights globally for the better and the victims of human rights abuse globally will fall prey to the machinations of governments that will take advantage of this strategic vacuum.’
‘Actions taken by the UNHRC, the only global intergovernmental human rights body, carry special weight. Whereas countries can deflect criticism of their human rights record by another government as being politicized, it is harder to dismiss the voting outcomes of a globally representative rights body,’ Mark P. Lagon and Ryan Kaminski write in a detailed paper for the Council on Foreign Relations.