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South Africa rejects US accusations of arms shipment to Russia

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(Last Updated On: May 13, 2023)

South African officials on Friday hit back at US accusations that a Russian ship had collected weapons from a naval base near Cape Town late last year, a move investors fear could lead Washington to impose sanctions.

The US ambassador to South Africa Reuben Brigety said on Thursday he was confident that a Russian ship under US sanctions took aboard weapons from the Simon’s Town base in December, suggesting the transfer was not in line with Pretoria’s stance of neutrality in Russia’s war against Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Western diplomats were alarmed at South Africa carrying out naval exercises with Russia and China this year, and at the timing of a visit by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

South Africa is one of Russia’s most important allies on a continent divided over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but says it is impartial and has abstained from voting on UN resolutions on the war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday had discussed the conflict in Ukraine in a phone call with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the Kremlin said.

Ramaphosa’s office said on Thursday that an inquiry led by a retired judge would look into the US allegation. On Friday, a minister responsible for arms control and a foreign ministry spokesman said South Africa had not approved any arms shipment to Russia in December.

“We didn’t approve any arms to Russia … it wasn’t sanctioned or approved by us,” Communications Minister Mondli Gungubele, who chaired the National Conventional Arms Control Committee when the purported shipment took place, told 702 radio.

He did not say whether or not an unapproved shipment had left South Africa.

South Africa’s defense department said on Friday it would give its side of the story to the government’s inquiry.

Brigety was summoned on Friday to meet South African foreign minister Naledi Pandor. The ministry “expressed the government’s utter displeasure with his conduct and statements made yesterday,” a statement said.

It said Brigety “admitted that he crossed the line and apologized unreservedly to the government and the people of South Africa.”

Brigety said on Twitter: “I was grateful for the opportunity to speak with Foreign Minister Pandor this evening and correct any misimpressions left by my public remarks.”

The US State Department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken had a phone call with Pandor “and reiterated cooperation on shared priorities, including health, trade, and energy.”

After leaving Simon’s Town, Refinitiv shipping data showed the vessel, the “Lady R”, sailed north to Mozambique, spending Jan. 7 to 11 in the port of Beira before continuing to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

It arrived in the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea on Feb. 16, the data showed.

The United States placed the Lady R and Transmorflot LLC, the shipping company it is linked to, under sanctions in May 2022 on the grounds the company “transports weapons for the (government of Russia)”.

Washington has warned that countries providing material support to Russia may be denied access to US markets, Reuters reported.

“This is not just a verbal warning, this is something that the Biden administration has shown through its actions that it is willing to do, including by sanctioning companies in places like China and Turkey,” said Edward Fishman, a foreign policy expert who worked on Russia sanctions during President Barack Obama’s administration.

Cameron Hudson, a former CIA analyst and now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he thought it was unlikely that Washington would impose sanctions or suspend South Africa from AGOA, a major US trade preference programme for Sub-Saharan Africa, although he said there were grounds to.

Authorities in South Africa’s opposition-run Western Cape province said they feared losing a market for exports such as oranges, macadamia nuts and wine.

The US allegation over the weapons has heaped pressure on the rand currency, already weighed down by concerns over a power crisis. It struck an all-time low early on Friday before regaining some ground, but remained at its weakest in three years.

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Spain air drops 26 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

Spanish military planes air dropped 26 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Madrid called on Israel to open land border crossings to prevent a famine, the Foreign Ministry said.

The operation, carried out in coordination with Jordan and co-financed by the European Union, dropped more than 11,000 food rations to alleviate the “catastrophic levels of food insecurity” faced by up to 1.1 million people in Gaza, the ministry said in a statement.

“Spain insists on the opening of the land crossings as an indispensable measure to avoid a famine situation,” it added.

Other Western countries, including the United States, France and Germany, have also resorted to air drops to deliver aid to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza after nearly six months of war between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, Reuters reported.

Aid agencies say deliveries into Gaza, much of which has been laid to waste by Israeli bombardments, have been held up by bureaucratic obstacles and insecurity since the start of the war on Oct. 7, 2023.

Last week, a U.N.-backed report said a famine was imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave by July.

The Spanish foreign ministry also reaffirmed its commitment to supporting UNRWA, the United Nations humanitarian agency for Palestinians, and to its continued existence.

In January, major donors to UNRWA, including the U.S. and Germany, suspended funding following allegations that around 12 of its tens of thousands of Palestinian employees were suspected of involvement in the attacks on Israel by Hamas which triggered the war.

Israel says it puts no limit on the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza and blames problems in it reaching civilians there on U.N. agencies, which it says are inefficient, read the report.

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UN expert says Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, calls for arms embargo

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(Last Updated On: March 27, 2024)

A United Nations expert told the global body’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday that she believed that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since Oct. 7 amounted to genocide and called on countries to immediately impose sanctions and an arms embargo, Reuters reported.

Israel, which did not attend the session, rejected her findings.

“It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my findings,” Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, told the U.N. rights body in Geneva, presenting a report called “The Anatomy of a Genocide”.

“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met,” she said, citing more than 30,000 Palestinians killed among other acts.

“I implore member states to abide by their obligations, which start with imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel and so ensure that the future does not continue to repeat itself,” she said, prompting a burst of applause.

The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said the use of the word genocide was “outrageous” and said the war was against Islamist group Hamas and not Palestinian civilians. It was triggered when Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 and taking 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies, read the report.

“Instead of seeking the truth, this Special Rapporteur tries to fit weak arguments to her distorted and obscene inversion of reality,” it said.

Gulf nations such as Qatar, as well as African countries including Algeria and Mauritania, voiced support for Albanese’s findings and alarm at the humanitarian situation, Reuters reported.

The seats for Israel’s ally the United States were left empty. Washington has previously accused the council of a chronic anti-Israel bias.

Albanese, an Italian lawyer, is one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations to report and advise on specific themes and crises. Her views do not reflect those of the global body as a whole.

In the past, her comments on the Israel-Hamas conflict have drawn scrutiny, including from a U.S. ambassador in Geneva who said she has a history of using “antisemitic tropes”.

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Qatar welcomes UNSC resolution calling for Ramadan ceasefire in Gaza

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(Last Updated On: March 26, 2024)

Qatar’s foreign ministry has welcomed the UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during the holy month of Ramadan.

According to a statement issued by the ministry, Qatar hopes this will be a step towards a permanent cessation of hostilities in Gaza, “especially in light of the catastrophic humanitarian conditions which civilians, including children and women are suffering from.”

The ministry stressed the need to comply with the implementation of the resolution, especially stopping the hostilities, facilitating the urgent and unhindered entry of humanitarian aid to all areas of Gaza, and positively engaging in the ongoing negotiations.

“In this context, the ministry reaffirms the continuation of mediation by the State of Qatar in cooperation with its partners to stop the war on Gaza and address its humanitarian repercussions,” the statement read.

“The ministry expresses the State of Qatar’s hope that the vote of 14 countries in favor of the resolution will constitute a fundamental shift in the international community’s awareness of the seriousness of the tragic situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Gaza Strip in particular, thereby enhancing international efforts to apply the two-state solution and resume the peace process on the basis of international resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative,” the statement read.

The ministry also reiterated Qatar’s firm position in support of legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to establish their independent state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Qatar has played a key role in facilitating and mediating talks between Hamas and Israel over the past few months in the hope of reaching an agreement on a Gaza truce and hostage-prisoner swap.

On Sunday, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman held talks in Doha with UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths to discuss ways to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip.

On Monday, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the release of all hostages after the United States abstained from the vote.

The remaining 14 council members voted for the resolution, which was proposed by the 10 elected members of the body. There was a round of applause in the council chamber after the vote.

“The Palestinian people has suffered greatly. This bloodbath has continued for far too long. It is our obligation to put an end to this bloodbath before it is too late,” Algeria’s U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama told the council after the vote.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the failure of the U.S. to veto the resolution was a “clear retreat” from its previous position and would hurt Israel’s war efforts and bid to release more than 130 hostages still held by Hamas.

“Our vote does not, and I repeat that does not represent a shift in our policy,” White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters. “Nothing has changed about our policy. Nothing.”

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack led by Hamas in which some 1,200 people were killed.

More than 32,200 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and over 74,500 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

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