World

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Russia faced mounting diplomatic pressure on Tuesday to end its war in Ukraine, as G-20 allies and critics alike rued the painful global impact of nearly nine months of conflict.

A draft communique obtained by AFP showed the world’s 20 leading economies coming together to condemn the war’s effects, but still divided on apportioning blame.

The summit has shown that even Russia’s allies have limited patience with a conflict that has inflated food and energy prices worldwide and raised the spectre of nuclear war.

Risking diplomatic isolation, Russia was forced to agree that the “war in Ukraine” — which Moscow refuses to call a war — has “adversely impacted the global economy”.

It also agreed that “the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons” is “inadmissible”, after months of President Vladimir Putin making such threats.

The embattled Russian leader has skipped the summit, staying at home to reckon with a string of embarrassing battlefield defeats and a grinding campaign that threatens the future of his regime.

Rubbing salt in Russia’s wounds, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky — fresh from a visit to liberated Kherson — delivered an impassioned video appeal to G20 leaders.

Zelensky told leaders from China’s Xi Jinping to America’s Joe Biden that they could “save thousands of lives” by pressing for a Russian withdrawal.

“I am convinced now is the time when the Russian destructive war must and can be stopped,” he said, sporting his now-trademark army-green T-shirt.

Putin’s delegate, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose summit preparation was disrupted by two hospital health checks for an undiagnosed ailment, remained in the room throughout Zelensky’s address, diplomatic sources said.

His most notable diplomatic victory was an acknowledgement in the communique that while “most members” of the G-20 condemned Putin’s invasion, “there were other views and different assessments”.

“All problems are with the Ukrainian side, which is categorically refusing negotiations and putting forward conditions that are obviously unrealistic,” Lavrov told reporters.

Leaders must now sign off on the final text before the summit ends on Wednesday.

‘Immense’ suffering 

The United States and its allies used the summit to broaden the coalition against Russia’s invasion and scotch Moscow’s claims of a war of East versus West.

Many “see Russia’s war in Ukraine as the root source of immense economic and humanitarian suffering in the world”, said a senior US official.

Russia’s G-20 allies China, India and South Africa refrain from publicly criticising Putin’s war, and the draft joint statement is replete with diplomatic fudges and linguistic gymnastics.

But it gives a growing sense of the worldwide impact of the war.

G-20 members Argentina and Turkey are among the nations worst hit by food inflation worldwide, but there was scarcely a country around the table unaffected.

“The war is affecting everyone,” said Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero.

“In the northern hemisphere the merchants of death broker lethal arms sales, but in the southern hemisphere food is costly or scarce — what kills are not bullets or missiles, but poverty and hunger.”

There was also a hint at growing Chinese unease with Russia’s prosecution of the war when presidents Xi and Biden met late Monday.

“It’s clear that the Russians are very isolated,” said one Western official. “I think some countries engaged with Russia but... I did not see any gestures of great solidarity.”

Grain corridor 

A deal expiring on Saturday that allows Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea is a focus of summit conversations, with leaders expected to urge its “full, timely and continued implementation”.

Ukraine is one of the world’s top grain producers, and the Russian invasion blocked 20 million tonnes of grain in its ports before the United Nations and Turkey brokered the deal in July.

The summit build-up focused heavily on Xi, who is making only his second overseas trip since the pandemic began and has stolen the spotlight as leaders line up to speak with him.

Xi and Biden cooled Cold War rhetoric during three hours of talks on Monday, taking some of the heat out of their simmering rivalry.

“The world expects that China and the United States will properly handle the relationship,” Xi told Biden.

Former US diplomat Danny Russel described the meeting as broadly positive.

“We should beware of prematurely declaring the strategic rivalry over. However, we saw a deliberate effort to stabilise a dangerously overheated relationship.”

BRUSSELS — Germany and Spain are planning to train thousands of Ukrainian troops under an EU programme to help bolster Kyiv's fightback against Russia, officials said Tuesday.

Their assistance adds to announcements already given by other EU countries that they will train Ukrainian soldiers on their territories.

The European Union is launching its largest ever military training mission aimed at preparing an initial 15,000 Ukrainian troops for the battlefield.

The main hub for the mission will be in Ukraine's EU neighbour Poland, with a secondary headquarters set up in Germany.

Germany's Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht said at a meeting of EU counterparts in Brussels that Berlin was planning to train 5,000 Ukrainians "in a wide range of skills" by next June.

Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles said her country would train 400 troops every two months, with a total capacity of 2,400 a year.

She said facilities had already been put in place at a training facility in the central city of Toledo to house the troops.

France last month announced that it would train up to 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers.

Britain, Canada and the United States — all fellow NATO countries — have already been training Ukrainian military personnel, in Britain and at a US base in Germany.

EU fund under strain 

The EU training mission is set up for an initial two years and is expected to cost around 60 million Euros annually.

The money comes from the bloc's European Peace Facility, a fund that has been severely strained as it is tapped to cover the cost of weapon deliveries by EU members to Ukraine.

Defence ministers were discussing whether to bolster the fund, as 3.1 billion euros, of its total 5.7 billion-euro budget to 2027, has already been allocated to arming Ukraine.

Brussels says that, along with deliveries by individual member states, the European Union has overall provided military arms and equipment worth eight billion euros to Ukraine.

That’s around 45 per cent of the value of arms deliveries provided by the United States.

Kyiv’s European backers have been buoyed by Ukraine’s recent liberation of the key city of Kherson from Russian forces and have pledged to keep the support flowing.

“It means that the help that Ukraine is getting, weapons but also training, is working in the battlefield,” said Dutch Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren.

“It means the Ukraine has a very good military strategy. So I think it’s extremely important and it means that we have to continue our support to Ukraine,” she said.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, also attending the defence ministers’ meeting, said that the “very sophisticated” nature of modern weapons and tactics required that armies employing them “be completely trained”.

He hailed the Ukrainian army’s advances.

“Russia’s troops are retreating. The war is taking a completely different turn than [Russian President Vladimir] Putin could have imagined when he launched this attack against Ukraine nine months ago,” he said.

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping clashed on Monday over Taiwan but found areas of common ground during the powers' first in-person summit in three years, including a joint warning against Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Xi and Biden both sought to lower the temperature as they met for more than two hours on the resort island of Bali, with the presidents both saying they wanted to prevent high tensions from spilling over into conflict.

In a sign of headway on working together, the White House announced that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit China — the most senior US visitor since 2018.

Biden and Xi, who is on only his second overseas trip since the pandemic, shook hands and smiled before the two countries' flags at a hotel in Bali, where the Group of 20 opens a summit on Tuesday.

Biden, sitting across from Xi at facing tables, said that Beijing and Washington "share responsibility" to show the world that they can "manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming conflict".

Xi, China's most powerful leader in decades who is fresh from securing a norm-breaking third term, told Biden that the world has "come to a crossroads".

"The world expects that China and the United States will properly handle the relationship," Xi told him.

Xi later told him that China and the United States "share more, not less" in common interests, according to a Chinese statement.

'First red line' 

Tensions have risen sharply over Taiwan, with China in August conducting major military exercises after a visit to the self-governing democracy, which it claims, by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Xi told Biden that Taiwan is the "first red line that must not be crossed in China-US relations", according to the Chinese foreign ministry statement.

The White House said that Biden told Xi he opposed any changes on Taiwan, after the US leader repeatedly indicated that Washington was ready to defend the island militarily.

Biden raised US “objections” to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions towards Taiwan, which undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the broader region, and jeopardise global prosperity”, the White House said.

Despite the clash on Taiwan, the White House indicated it had found some common ground with China on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — a high priority for Biden who is hoping to deprive Moscow of its key potential source of international support.

Xi and Biden “reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won and underscored their opposition to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine”, the White House statement said.

China, despite rhetorical support for Russia, has not supplied weapons for the war in Ukraine, with Moscow obliged to rely on Iran and North Korea, according to US officials.

Biden also nudged China to rein in ally North Korea after a record-breaking spate of missile tests has raised fears that Pyongyang will soon carry out its seventh nuclear test.

Biden told Xi that “all members of the international community have an interest in encouraging the DPRK to act responsibly”, the White House said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name.

Xi’s last in-person meeting with a US president was in 2019 with Donald Trump, who along with Biden identified China as a top international concern and the only potential challenger to US primacy on the world stage.

Although the meeting was the first time Xi and Biden have met as presidents, the pair have an unusually long history together.

By Biden’s estimation, he spent 67 hours as vice president in person with Xi including on a 2011 trip to China aimed at better understanding China’s then-leader-in-waiting, and a 2017 meeting in the final days of Barack Obama’s administration.

On Tuesday, Xi will hold the first formal sitdown with an Australian leader since 2017, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced, following a concerted pressure campaign by Beijing against the close US ally.

Absent Putin 

Though he is engaging Xi, Biden has refused since the invasion of Ukraine to deal directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is conspicuously absent from the Bali summit.

The Kremlin cited scheduling issues and has instead sent longtime foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who arrived Sunday evening and underwent two health checks at a Bali hospital, according to an Indonesian health ministry official.

Lavrov, 72, denied reports that he was receiving treatment at a Bali hospital, telling Tass news agency that he was in his hotel preparing for the summit.

Lavrov’s presence has thrown into question a customary G-20 group photo and joint statement, with Russia sure to reject any explicit calls to end its invasion of Ukraine.

DENPASAR, Indonesia — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived Monday on the Indonesian island of Bali for the G-20 leaders' summit, the first since Russia invaded Ukraine.

He would condemn Russia's "barbarism" in Ukraine at the talks, urge a deal with Moscow allowing safe passage of grain shipments from its neighbour to be extended and call for "a G-20-wide commitment never to weaponise food production and distribution", Downing Street said in a statement.

"The prime minister will use the G-20 as an opportunity to call out [President Vladimir] Putin's barbarism and force Russia to confront the global suffering caused by this senseless campaign of violence," it said.

The new British leader will hold a series of bilateral meetings with allies including US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Australia's Anthony Albanese.

Britain's first-ever premier of Indian descent will also meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In an opinion piece for Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper published Sunday evening, Sunak slammed Putin for not attending the summit and said Britain would "not let our economic future be held hostage by the actions of a rogue state".

"Leaders take responsibility. They show up. Yet, at the G-20 summit, in Indonesia this week, one seat will remain vacant. The man who is responsible for so much bloodshed in Ukraine and economic strife around the world will not be there to face his peers," he wrote.

"He won't even attempt to explain his actions. Instead, he will stay at home and the rest of us will get on with the task at hand."

Sunak is due to return to Britain early on Thursday and head straight into his finance minister's presentation of an emergency budget statement.

The statement is expected to include painful tax hikes and spending cuts, after Sunak's short-lived predecessor Liz Truss panicked markets with a spree of unfunded tax cuts.

ROME — Italian anti-mafia journalist Roberto Saviano stands trial next week on defamation charges brought by Giorgia Meloni, now Italy's prime minister, for a 2020 outburst criticising her stance on migrants.

Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy was at the time a small opposition party, but took office last month after a sweeping election victory driven in part by its promise to stop the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean.

Saviano, who is best known for his international mafia bestseller "Gomorrah", faces up to three years in prison if convicted in the trial, which opens on Tuesday.

The 43-year-old told AFP it was an "unequal confrontation, decidedly grotesque", while press freedom groups warned it sent a "chilling message" to journalists.

Watchdogs say such trials are symbolic of a culture in Italy in which public figures — often politicians — intimidate reporters with repeated lawsuits, threatening the erosion of a free and independent press.

Italy ranked 58th in the 2022 world press freedom index published by Reporters Without Borders, the lowest level in western Europe.

The case dates back to December 2020 when Saviano was asked on political TV chat show "Piazzapulita" for a comment on the death of a six-month-old baby from Guinea in a shipwreck.

He pointed a finger at Meloni and Matteo Salvini, the leader of the anti-immigrant League Party, which is now part of her coalition government.

Meloni said in 2019 that charity vessels which rescue migrants "should be sunk", while Salvini, as interior minister that same year, blocked the vessels from docking.

"I just want to say to Meloni, and Salvini, you bastards! How could you?" Saviano said on the show.

Meloni sued, as did Salvini, whose separate case is expected to go to trial in February.

PEN International, an organisation that defends free speech, sent an open letter to Meloni this week urging her to drop the case.

"Pursuing your case against him would send a chilling message to all journalists and writers in the country, who may no longer dare to speak out for fear of reprisals," it said.

Meloni will be represented by lawyer Andrea Delmastro, who she recently nominated deputy justice minister.

Saviano said he has been sued for defamation "dozens of times", but only Meloni and Salvini's suits have gone to trial.

The author, who has been under police protection since publishing "Gomorrah" due to threats from the mafia, said the tactic was to "intimidate one in order to intimidate 100".

Within weeks of taking office, Meloni's government showed it would be tough on migrants by blocking rescue vessels from its ports last weekend, in the process sparking a row with France, which took in one of the ships.

"This extreme right-wing government needs enemies who meet two criteria: Not having a voice [like the migrants] or being very well known so that the punishment can appear exemplary," he told AFP.

"It will be even more difficult [for journalists] to report on what is happening and express an opinion if the prospect is having to defend one's freedom of expression in court and seeing your words put on trial when they criticise power and its inhuman policies," Saviano said.

In 2017, the latest available data from the National Statistics Institute (ISTAT) showed nearly 9,500 defamation proceedings were initiated against journalists in Italy.

Sixty per cent were dismissed, while 6.6 per cent went to trial.

Defamation through the media can be punished in Italy with prison sentences from six months to three years.

But Italy's constitutional court urged lawmakers in 2020 and 2021 to rewrite the law, saying jail time for such cases was unconstitutional and should only be resorted to in cases of "exceptional severity".

Ricardo Gutierrez, head of the European Federation of Journalists, told AFP the "passivity and inaction of the government and parliament" could only be interpreted "as complicity with the enemies of press freedom".

LÜTZERATH, Germany — After the last farmer packed up and left in October, climate activists are the only people left in the village of Luetzerath, Germany, which sits above a rich vein of coal.

In huts perched six metres above ground in the trees, the young campaigners say they can hold out against the authorities if they try to clear them out.

They are there in an effort to stop the village being bulldozed to allow the extension of a neighbouring open-air coal mine.

They do not know when the police might come to force them out, but with Germany in need of more coal, most think it will be soon.

Europe's largest economy has restarted part of its mothballed inventory of coal power plants to relieve the pressure on gas-powered facilities, following a cut to supplies from Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.

More than a thousand protesters descended Saturday on Luetzerath, now a symbol of the resistance to fossil fuels, to urge more action from participants at the COP27 conference in Egypt.

Many had painted their faces with the words "Stop coal".

Activists unfurled a huge yellow cross — a symbol against coal mine expansion — in a field.

Alma, a French activist who uses a pseudonym, earlier said she did not know when the evacuation was planned.

"It's a question of responsibility, one that is difficult to take for the authorities because it's a huge operation, for which thousands of police officers need to be mobilised over several weeks," she said.

Mining deal 

After studying, Alma decided to go full time as an activist and was one of the first to set up the activist camp in Luetzerath two years ago.

One by one, the residents of Luetzerath have left as their homes were expropriated and they were compensated and rehoused.

She and the dozens of others who have joined her in the occupied village felt betrayed earlier this year when the government, led by Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, announced a compromise with the energy giant RWE to allow the extension of the nearby mine.

Under the agreement, five nearby villages will be spared, but Luetzerath is set to disappear.

Even though RWE, long one of Europe's biggest emitters, said it would stop producing electricity with carbon in 2030, the activists are not persuaded.

"If RWE extracts all the coal under Luetzerath, Germany will certainly violate the Paris [climate] accord because of the emissions from the mine. The village is therefore not just a symbol, it's a critical point in the fight against climate change," said Alma.

'In danger' 

On the other side of the road, sits the coal pit, where excavators move across golden-black dunes of sand.

The lignite still in the ground here will be needed "from 2024" to supply power plants as other mines close, RWE says.

According to a 2021 report by the DIW economic think-tank, the energy company could extract a further 100 million tonnes of coal without having to demolish Luetzerath and the other five villages.

Despite resorting to more coal power in the current energy crisis, Germany says it is not wavering from its aim of exiting coal power in 2030.

The climate activists want action accelerated to bring down emissions.

In recent months, some activists have turned to more extreme means to get their voices heard — including by glueing themselves to main roads and halting traffic.

Recently, some activists also flung mashed potatoes at a Monet painting in a Potsdam museum.

In Luezerath, climate activists have set up an intricate camp in the trees to avoid being quickly evicted by the police.

Using a network of cables, they have connected their encampment. The militants think they can hold out for several weeks, 6 metres above the ground.

On the ground in the middle of the camp, around twenty militants try to raise a pole made of a giant tree trunk with a system of pulleys.

"The poles are tied to the trees in a way that ought to make it impossible to cut the ropes without putting someone's life in danger," Alma says.

Underlining their commitment, an anonymous activist said facing death is the activists' "entire strategy".

VELLORE, India — The last co-conspirators jailed for the 1991 assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi walked out of prison on Saturday, a day after the country's supreme court ordered their release.

Gandhi, 46, was killed by a woman suicide bomber at an election rally in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in a plot by the the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lankan armed separatist group.

India's apex court allowed the release of the six convicts, citing their "satisfactory conduct" in prison and the fact that they had already served over three decades behind bars.

Three of the six — Nalini Sriharan, her husband Murugan and Santhan — walked out of two prisons in Vellore, about 140 kilometres from the regional capital Chennai, according to an AFP journalist at the scene.

Santhan and Murugan were driven away to a camp for Sri Lankan refugees soon after their release.

Local media said the others — Robert Pais, Jaikumar and Ravichandran — walked out of prisons in Chennai and the city of Madurai in the same state.

Three of the six convicts released on Saturday had initially been condemned to death before their sentences were commuted.

Gandhi became India's youngest prime minister after his mother and predecessor Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984.

The family's Congress Party dominated Indian politics for decades, and Rajiv's widow Sonia remains the organisation's most powerful figure, while their son Rahul, 52, is seen as the main challenger to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Rajiv's killing was seen as a response to his move to send Indian forces to Sri Lanka in 1987 to disarm the Tamil rebels. New Delhi lost more than 1,000 men against the well entrenched rebels before it withdrew its troops.

The Congress Party has condemned the court's decision as "totally unacceptable" and "completely erroneous".

"It is most unfortunate that the supreme court has not acted in consonance with the spirit of India on this issue," the party said, tweeting a statement by senior member Jairam Ramesh.

India has a significant Tamil population of its own, and state governments in Tamil Nadu have repeatedly called for the convicts to be freed.

Earlier this year, the court freed AG Perarivalan — another convict involved in the assassination who had previously faced execution — with the state's current chief minister MK Stalin, a key Congress ally, hugging him after his release.

Gandhi's son has over the years spoken about how he and his sister Priyanka had forgiven their father's killers.

"We were very upset and hurt and for many years we were quite angry," the Indian Express newspaper quoted Rahul as saying in 2018. But they had since forgiven them, he said, "in fact, completely".