World

WASHINGTON — In a somber and hushed Senate chamber, Democrats began presenting their opening arguments in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on Wednesday, accusing him of using the power of his office to cheat in the upcoming election.

Adam Schiff, the head of the prosecution team from the House of Representatives, took the floor of the Senate after lawmakers were told by the sergeant-at-arms to remain silent during the historic proceedings.

"President Trump solicited foreign interference in our democratic elections, abusing the powers of his office to seek help from abroad to improve his reelection prospects at home," the California lawmaker said.

"And when he was caught, he used the powers of that office to obstruct the investigation into his own misconduct", said Schiff, who headed the probe that led to Trump's December 18 impeachment by the Democratic-controlled House.

Schiff shrugged off Republican arguments that American voters — and not the Senate — should decide in November whether Trump should remain in the White House.

“The president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won,” Schiff said. “The president has shown that he believes he is above the law and scornful of restraint.”

Trump is accused of withholding military aid from Ukraine to pressure his Ukrainian counterpart to announce an investigation into Democrat Joe Biden, his potential presidential opponent.

Schiff appealed to the 100 senators to put aside partisanship in deciding Trump’s fate.

“The Constitution entrusts to you the responsibility of acting as impartial jurors,” he said. “Our duty is to the constitution and the rule of law.”

Republicans, who enjoy a 53 to 47 edge in the Senate, have shown little inclination, however, to break ranks with the president.

A two-thirds majority — or 67 senators — is required to remove a president from office and a series of votes on the ground rules for the trial on Tuesday followed strict party lines.

Republicans shot down a series of bids by Democrats to introduce White House witnesses and documents during nearly 13 hours of acrimonious debate that lasted late into the night.

Trump, who was attending the World Economic Forum in Davos as the historic trial got underway on Tuesday, blasted the proceedings as a “witchhunt” and a “hoax” and said he expected the Republican-led Senate to clear him “fairly quickly”. 

The president defended the Republicans’ rejection of Democratic efforts to force former national security adviser John Bolton and others to testify at his trial saying of Bolton, for example, that it would present a “national security problem”.

“John, he knows some of my thoughts,” Trump said. “He knows what I think about leaders. What happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader and it’s not very positive?”

Schiff and the other House managers have 24 hours over three days to make their case that Trump is guilty of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

White House lawyers will then have 24 hours to present their defence.

On Tuesday, House prosecutors and White House lawyers squared off in fiery exchanges over the rules for just the third impeachment trial in US history, leading Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer to lash out at Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell.

“If there’s one thing we learned here on the Senate floor it’s that Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans don’t want a fair trial that considers all the evidence,” Schumer said.

After both sides present their cases, senators will have an opportunity to ask written questions to be read out aloud by US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, presiding over the trial.

Roberts’ role is mostly ceremonial but he did warn both sides, near the end of a marathon day marked by bitter clashes, to watch their decorum.

“Those addressing the Senate should remember where they are,” Roberts said.

Trump’s lawyers, led by Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow, argued on Tuesday that the House impeachment probe had been unfair to the president.

“They are trying to remove President Trump’s name from the ballot and they can’t prove their case,” Cipollone said.

The next few days are likely to be an endurance test for members of the Senate, some of whom are in their 80s.

Barred from having their phones and computers at their desks, they scribbled on notepads, chatted quietly, fidgeted and stretched on Tuesday.

The four Democratic senators seeking to challenge Trump for the White House have been forced to take time off from campaigning ahead of the first state caucuses to choose their party’s nominee in Iowa on February 3.

“We’re all there to do our duty,” said Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is seeking the nomination along with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Colorado Senator Michael Bennet.

AMMAN — China is implementing regional autonomy in areas densely populated with national minorities, and it is committed to the equality of all nationalities and their common development, according to Beijing’s envoy in Amman. 

Speaking during an event on Wednesday held to “explain the history, development, politics, terrorism and security issues” of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Ambassador of China to Jordan Pan Weifang noted that, as the Chinese New Year is coming up in two days, the embassy “wanted to take this opportunity to clear matters up in regards to China’s interests in Xinjiang”.

This event comes at a time when Beijing faces criticism for its policies in Xinjiang.

Weifang noted that China “guarantees the exercise of the autonomy authority” in the autonomous regions. 

“Xinjiang is implementing a policy that respects the freedom of various religious beliefs and guarantees the full freedom of people of all nationalities in accordance with the law, ensuring that religious citizens enjoy the same political, economic, social and cultural rights of non-religious citizens,” the ambassador said. 

He noted that, since the founding of new China seven decades ago, the Chinese central government has invested about 2.35 trillion yuan in Xinjiang to promote social and economic development in the region.

“The Xinjiang region has made a historic leap in economic development, with its economy increasing from 791 million yuan in 1952 to 1.2 trillion yuan in 2018, up 200 times,” the envoy said.

“China has 35,000 mosques in Xinjiang. When adjusted to population per capita, that is more than three times the rate in Western countries,” according to a documentary screened at the event.

The symposium was followed by a photo exhibition showing developments in Xinjiang funded by the Chinese government.

DAVOS, Switzerland — Britain’s Prince Charles on Wednesday told business leaders at the Davos economic forum that wealth was of no use if it doesn’t help tackle climate change, as he met Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg and warned over the perils of global warming and environmental damage.

Charles, the eldest son of the Queen and heir to the throne, met Thunberg in Davos on the same day as President Donald Trump left the Swiss resort expressing regret he had not seen the environmental campaigner.

Charles, a long-time advocate of environmental causes, launched at Davos a new Sustainable Markets Initiative aimed at encouraging the private sector to move towards green ways to promote growth.

“What good is all the extra wealth in the world gained from business as usual if you can do nothing with it, except watch it burn in catastrophic conditions?” asked Charles in a speech to the forum.

“This is why I need your help, your ingenuity and your practical skills to ensure that the private sector leads ourselves out of the approaching catastrophe into which we have engineered ourselves,” he said.

“We simply cannot waste any more time. The only limit is our willingness to act and the time to act is now,” he added.

‘Would have loved to’ 

Charles then held a private meeting with Thunberg, who the previous day told Davos “our house is still burning” and slammed governments for doing “basically nothing” on climate change.

Trump said on Wednesday he would “have loved” to have met Thunberg at Davos but added that she should not focus her anger on the United States.

He claimed that countries other than the United States were the worst polluters and “Greta ought to focus on those places”.

Trump had launched an extraordinary attack on environmental campaigners in a speech to the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday, saying they were “perennial prophets of doom” and the “heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers”.

The president on Wednesday denied he thought that global warming was a hoax, saying: “No not at all — I think aspects of it are.”

Charles, who prides himself on having warned of the perils of climate change before most political leaders, was asked by reporters in the corridors of Davos if he felt in any way targeted by Trump’s “prophets of doom” comments.

“Ha! Good point!” he laughed.

Charles made no reference in his speech to the turbulence in Britain’s Royal Family that has seen an agreement for his younger son Harry to halt royal duties and leave for Canada with his wife Meghan.

But he said he particularly wanted to “extol” the Earthshot Prize announced by his elder son Prince William to encourage the world’s greatest problem-solvers to find answers to the biggest environmental problems.

PARIS — Hardline French unions on Wednesday kept up a series of wildcat strikes aimed at ratcheting up pressure on the government before it presents the final version of a pension reform that has prompted France’s biggest labour protest in decades.

The government will unveil the revised pensions overhaul at a Cabinet meeting Friday before submitting the draft law to parliament for debate set to begin on February 17.

“It’s going to be Friday or never,” Philippe Martinez of the hardline CGT union told BFM television on Friday.

Union leaders launched a crippling train and metro strike against the reforms last month, but those disruptions have largely ended after officials dropped plans — temporarily at least — to extend the age for a full pension to 64 from 62.

But opposition has since shifted to more radical actions such as power cuts and port blockades, as well as mass occupations of the headquarters of the moderate CFDT union by more militant rivals.

Strikers from the CGT’s energy branch have also halted output at France’s biggest hydro-electric plant, at Grand’Maison in the Alps, following a series of cuts that have interrupted power to thousands of homes and businesses.

Prosecutors said two union workers at national grid operator Enedis in the Dordogne region had been detained for questioning over the power outages, which officials say could have put ordinary people’s lives in danger.

Prosecutors also said on Wednesday that Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and Budget Minister Gerard Darmanin have received death threats over the pension reform.

A letter to one of them contained two bullets, with the message: “You must convince... Macron that’s enough, to drop his reform, otherwise it’s a massacre.”

Roadblocks 

Striking workers also blocked access to the industrial port at Ambes near Bordeaux, and set up roadblocks on a main highway leading to Rouen.

In the central city of Tours, police evacuated a university site occupied by protesters for the past 10 days.

In Paris, teachers, street sweepers, government workers and other civil servants threw down uniforms, copies of France’s labour code and other items in front of the finance ministry.

Several hundred employees in the retailing and services sectors also marched toward the Opera Garnier in the French capital, fearing they would suffer in particular because pensions will now be based on lifetime earnings, instead of the 25 best years of salary.

“Women make up 80 per cent of retailing employees, and many work only part-time,” said CGT representative Amar Lagha.

“Calculating retirement on the basis of an entire career is going to penalise them,” she said.

Unions have vowed a new day of mass walkouts on Friday, when the government unveils the draft bills it hopes will be approved by parliament before the summer.

The overhaul does away with France’s 42 separate pension schemes in favour of a single system, with every worker earning points based on their earnings.

The move has infuriated public-sector employees as well as lawyers, physiotherapists and even Paris Opera workers who currently benefit from special regimes that offer early retirement and other benefits.

Macron says the new system will be more transparent and fairer, in particular to women and low-income workers, and has promised the reform will include a minimum pension payout of 1,000 euros ($1,100) a month.

But unions argue the changes would force everyone to work longer or face curtailed pension payouts.

BEIJING — A new virus that has killed nine people, infected hundreds and reached the United States could mutate and spread, China warned on Wednesday, as authorities urged people to steer clear of the city at the heart of the outbreak.

The coronavirus has caused alarm because of its similarity to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.

With hundreds of millions of people travelling across China this week for the Lunar New Year holiday, the National Health Commission announced measures to contain the disease — including sterilisation and ventilation at airports and bus stations, as well as inside planes and trains.

In Wuhan, the epicentre of the epidemic, large public events were cancelled and international football matches were moved to a new location. Visitors were urged to stay away, while residents were advised to not to leave the central city, which is home to 11 million people.

The illness is mainly transmitted via the respiratory tract and there “is the possibility of viral mutation and further spread of the disease”, health commission Vice Minister Li Bin told a news conference in Beijing.

The virus has now infected at least 440 people across the country, with most cases in Wuhan. Li added that 1,394 people are still under medical observation.

The World Health Organisation started an emergency meeting on Wednesday to decide whether or not to declare a rare global public health emergency over the disease, which has now been detected in the United States, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and Macau.

The Chinese government has classified the outbreak in the same category as the SARS epidemic, meaning compulsory isolation for those diagnosed with the illness and the potential to implement quarantine measures.

But they still have not been able to confirm the exact source of the virus.

“We will step up research efforts to identify the source and transmission of the disease,” Li said, adding that “the cases are mostly linked to Wuhan”.

Countries have intensified efforts to stop the spread of the pathogen — known by its technical name 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) — as the number of cases has risen.

Passengers are facing screening measures at five US airports and a host of transport hubs across Asia. Britain and Italy on Wednesday also announced enhanced monitoring of passengers from Wuhan.

Virus source 

A prominent expert from China’s National Health Commission confirmed this week that the virus can be passed between people.

However, animals are suspected to be the primary source of the outbreak.

A Wuhan market is believed to be the epicentre of the outbreak.

A price list circulating online in China for a business there lists a menagerie of animals or animal-based products including live foxes, crocodiles, wolf puppies and rats. It also offered civets, the animal linked to SARS.

“We already know that the disease originated from a market which conducted illegal transaction of wild animals,” said Gao Fu, director of the Chinese centre for disease control and prevention.

He said it was clear “this virus is adapting and mutating”.

Hong Kong and British scientists have estimated that between 1,300 and 1,700 people in Wuhan may have been infected. 

Containment 

Health authorities are urging people to wash their hands regularly, avoid crowded places, get plenty of fresh air and wear a mask if they have a cough.

Anyone with a cough or fever was urged to go to hospital.

In Wuhan, city authorities made it mandatory to wear a mask in public places on Wednesday, according to state-run People’s Daily.

In response to skyrocketing demand for masks — which were starting to sell out at pharmacies and on some popular websites — China’s industry and information technology ministry said it would “spare no effort in increasing supply”, official news agency Xinhua reported.

“These days, I wear masks even in places that are not too crowded, although I wouldn’t have done so in the past,” said Wang Suping, 50, who works at a Beijing arts school.

At the capital’s main international airport, the majority of people were wearing masks.

Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific said it had agreed to allow staff to wear surgical masks on mainland China flights, and that passengers from Wuhan would be offered masks and antiseptic wipes.

In Wuhan, police were conducting vehicle spot checks for live poultry or wild animals leaving and entering the city, state media said. Officials also screened people on roads, the airport and the train station for fever.

The local government has cancelled major public activities and banned tour groups from heading out of the city.

Women’s Olympics football qualifiers scheduled for February 3-9 in Wuhan have been moved to the eastern city of Nanjing.

Mayor Zhou Xianwang told state broadcaster CCTV: “If it’s not necessary we suggest that people don’t come to Wuhan.”

DAVOS — President Donald Trump tore into environmental "prophets of doom" at the Davos forum Tuesday, rejecting fiery warnings from teenage campaigner Greta Thunberg, and lauding the "unprecedented" US economy just hours ahead of his impeachment trial back home.

Thunberg was in the audience in the Swiss Alps to hear the typically bullish speech by Trump, delivered shortly before the US Senate was to open the crucial next stage in his trial for abuse of power and obstruction.

The 50th meeting of the World Economic Forum aimed for a strong focus on climate change but Trump made clear he had no time for Thunberg’s warning that “our house is still on fire”.

“We must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse,” said Trump, complaining that “they want to see us do badly”.

He claimed that “alarmists” had been wrong over the decades when predicting population crisis, mass starvation or the end of oil.

Trump branded those warning of out-of-control global warming and other environmental disasters “the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers”.

The scathing assessment came just afer Switzerland’s president, Simonetta Sommaruga, made an emotional appeal for saving the health of an ailing planet on the same stage.

By contrast, Trump did not even mention global warming, a phenomenon that nearly all climate scientists say is dangerously accelerating, with possibly devastating results for humanity.

Trump was just as unapologetic over his impeachment, which is now kicking into high gear.

He said in Davos he was working for American investment, meeting with “the most important people in the world and we’re bringing back tremendous business”.

“The other’s just a hoax,” he said of the “disgraceful” impeachment trial.

The White House spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, said Trump “will be briefed by staff periodically” on the drama unfolding in Washington.

Trump campaigns 

Large parts of Trump’s address sounded like a campaign speech aimed at a domestic audience as much as the Davos gathering of global political and business elites.

“Two years ago I told you we had launched the great American comeback,” Trump said, referring to his last appearance at the yearly Davos bash. “Today I’m glad to declare the United States is in the midst of a great economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen before.”

Over and over, Trump brought up statistics he claimed proved his “unprecedented” success, based on slashing environmental protections and renegotiating trade relationships with China and the United States’ two huge neighbours Canada and Mexico.

“The American dream is back, bigger better, stronger than ever before,” he said.

Robin Niblett, director of the Chatham House think tank, called Trump’s performance “an almost plain vanilla presidential campaign speech, laying out an unassailable set of statistics that tell the Democrats ‘good luck taking me on on this, because you won’t stand a chance.’”

‘Just the very beginning’ 

Earlier, Thunberg underlined the message that has inspired millions around the world, saying “basically nothing has been done” to fight climate change.

“It will require much more than this. This is just the very beginning,” the 17-year-old said.

Speaking calmly and with a wry smile, Thunberg acknowledged that her campaign, which began with school strikes, had attracted huge attention without yet achieving concrete change.

“There is a difference between being heard to actually leading to something,” she said.

And despite the focus given by the Davos forum, Greenpeace said in a new report that some of the world’s biggest banks, insurers and pension funds have collectively invested $1.4 trillion in fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal in 2016.

Trump touted the United States as the “number one producer of oil and natural gas” and said he would not let “radical socialists” attack the lucrative industry.

‘Governments
continue to fail’ 

Sustainability is the buzzword at the Davos forum, which began in 1971, with heel crampons handed out to participants to encourage them to walk on the icy streets rather than use cars, and the signage paint made out of seaweed.

“People are paying a lot more attention” to climate, Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer told AFP at Davos, adding there was “genuine action by some big players”, after investment titan BlackRock said it was partially divesting out of coal.

“But let’s be clear — a big part of this is because we failed for a very long time and governments continue to fail,” he added.

Business leaders are likely also to be concerned by the state of the global economy whose prospects, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have improved but remain brittle.

The IMF cut its global growth estimate for 2020 to 3.3 per cent, saying that a recent truce in the trade war between China and the US had brought some stability but that risks remained.

Activists meanwhile will be pressing for much more concrete action to fight inequality, after Oxfam issued a report outlining how the number of billionaires has doubled in the past decade and the world’s 22 richest men now have more wealth than all the women in Africa.

FRANKFURT AM MAIN — The discovery of an unexploded World War II bomb in Cologne prompted authorities on Tuesday to close a key bridge near the main train station, leading to severe rail disruptions and halting ship traffic.

Construction workers stumbled upon the 500-kilogramme bomb on the right bank of the Rhine River on Monday evening, city officials said.

It was dropped by American air forces during the war when the western German city was heavily bombed.

Experts will start the defusing operation at midday (11:00 GMT), following the evacuation of nearby offices, including those of broadcaster RTL, and the Cologne opera.

Just 15 residents live in the exclusion zone, the city said in a statement.

The bomb was found close to the Hohenzollern rail and pedestrian bridge that leads to Cologne’s famous Dom cathedral and central train station on the opposite bank.

German rail operator Deutsche Bahn announced that because of the exclusion zone no trains would be stopping at Cologne’s smaller Messe/Deutz station from 08:00 GMT, though the central station remained open.

The closure of the crucial Hohenzollern Bridge for the duration of the bomb disposal efforts would lead to train delays and cancellations throughout the day, it warned, affecting mainly long-distance journeys.

The city of Cologne said the airspace above the danger zone would also be closed from midday, while local river traffic would be halted in one of the world’s busiest waterways.

The discovery of World War II bombs is not uncommon in Germany.

Earlier this month, some 14,000 people had to leave their homes in Dortmund after two unexploded bombs were found in the city centre.

In 2017, the discovery of a 1.4 tonne bomb in Frankfurt prompted the evacuation of 65,000 people — the largest such operation since the end of the war in Europe in 1945.

THE HAGUE — A Dutchman isolated six of his children in a remote farmhouse from birth and beat them to drive out "bad spirits", prosecutors told a court on Tuesday.

Gerrit Jan van D., 67, subjected the youngsters who were found on the farm in the village of Ruinerwold in October to "very serious physical punishment" when he thought they had been made "unclean".

One child was tied up by his hands and feet as punishment, while another child was forced to spend an entire summer in a doghouse at the farm in northern Drenthe province, prosecutors said.

Van D. is also accused of sexually abusing two older children.

"The children all speak of very serious physical punishment if their father thought there was a 'bad spirit' in them. That happened from a very young age, four or five years," prosecutors said during a procedural hearing in the case.

Prosecutors said the youngest six of the man's nine children "lived in seclusion from birth, were kept indoors and had to be quiet so that no one would notice that they existed".

They were not registered with Dutch authorities and had never been to school, they said.

'Punching and kicking' 

The family was first discovered in October when the oldest son still living on the farm walked into a local bar in a confused state and raised concern about the welfare of his other siblings.

Police raided the farm and arrested Van D. and an Austrian man identified as Joseph B., 58.

Van D. was absent for medical reasons from Tuesday's hearing in the town of Assen after suffering a brain haemorrhage.

He is charged with depriving the children of their liberty from 2007 to 2019 and "punching, kicking and denying food and drink" to the six children. He is also charged with sexually abusing two of the older three children.

Joseph B. is also charged with depriving the children of their liberty and was in court.

"I feel like this is a witch hunt," Joseph B. told the court. "I have a clear conscience... I have not robbed anyone of his freedom."

The court ordered the two men to be detained for another three months while further tests were carried out on Van D. Defence lawyers will also question the children behind closed doors.

Prosecutors said the three oldest children were not allowed to talk about the existence of their brothers and sisters.

'Unclean' 

Citing diaries kept by the children, prosecutors said they had all spoken of their "conviction that contact with the outside world makes you 'unclean' and about 'bad spirits' that come into bodies. The father determined when a child had a ‘bad spirit’”.

"This child was isolated, had to pray and the other family members were not allowed to have contact with this child, sometimes not even for months."

One of the children was separated from the rest of the family at the age of 12 and made to stay in a caravan on another part of the farm, prosecutors said, adding that "after that he spent a whole summer in a doghouse in a shed".

The three oldest of the nine children were allowed to go to school and the "exterior doors were not locked all those years", prosecutors said.

But they said that there was still "unlawful deprivation of liberty for all these years — classically locked up at times, but in a less classic way at other times".

Prosecutors said the abuse was a "figurative lock on the door", adding that "no physical lock is required on the door as evidence of unlawful deprivation of liberty or hostage-taking".

NEW YORK — Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has launched a scathing attack on presidential hopeful and 2016 Democratic rival Bernie Sanders, telling a documentary that "nobody likes him".

Clinton also refused to say whether she would endorse and campaign for Sanders if he becomes the Democrats' choice to take on President Donald Trump in November's election.

"He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him," Clinton, 72, says in a four-part series due to air on streaming site Hulu in March.

"Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician.”

"It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it," he adds.

Sanders, a leftist senator from Vermont, is among the leaders in the race for the 2020 Democratic nomination.

He sits second in national polls behind centrist Joe Biden and ahead of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, two weeks before the first nomination vote in Iowa.

Sanders, 78, pushed Clinton to the wire four years ago in an acrimonious, months-long battle for the party's nomination. Clinton won that race but lost to Trump in November.

Asked whether she would back Sanders if he won the nomination this time around, Clinton said: "I'm not going to go there yet. We're still in a very vigorous primary season."

Warren has accused Sanders of telling her privately in December 2018, as they contemplated White House runs, that he did not believe a woman could win a presidential election.

Sanders denies the claim but Clinton said the comment was "part of a pattern".

"If it were a one-off, you might say, 'OK, fine'. But he said I was unqualified," she recalled.

"It's the culture around him. It's his leadership team. It's his prominent supporters. It's his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women," she added.

Sanders was forced to apologise to Biden on Monday after one of his supporters, Zephyr Teachout, wrote an opinion article in The Guardian accusing the former vice president of having "a big corruption problem".

SEOUL — South Korea will send a naval destroyer and 300 troops to the Strait of Hormuz, its defence ministry said on Tuesday, after pressure from its ally the US in the face of tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Iran has been blamed for a series of attacks on shipping vessels in the strait, a strategic choke point for the world’s oil trade where the US has deployed a naval mission.

But the request put Seoul in a dilemma: It has had diplomatic relations with Tehran since the early 1960s and until last year Iran was one of the resource-poor South’s key oil suppliers.

The defence ministry said in a statement that Seoul had decided to “temporarily expand” the deployment area of its anti-piracy military unit operating off the coast of Somalia to include the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, which are linked by the Strait of Hormuz.

It would not be part of the US naval mission, it insisted — although two liaison officers would be sent to the US headquarters for “information sharing”.

Seoul and Washington are in a security alliance but their relations have been strained by the Trump administration’s demands the South pay billions of dollars more towards the costs of 28,500 US troops stationed in the country to protect it from the nuclear-armed North.

US Ambassador Harry Harris last week urged Seoul to join in the naval mission, saying “very few countries have a greater need” to take part as the South “gets 70 per cent of its oil supplies from the Middle East”.

Trump abandoned the landmark 2015 deal curtailing Tehran’s nuclear programme and imposed economic sanctions against Iran, prompting South Korean exports to the country to fall nearly 90 per cent last year.