World

KIGALI — Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire said on Saturday she was launching a new political party, hoping it will be allowed to operate in a country where the ruling regime has no real rival. 

Ingabire’s previous party FDU-Inkingi, which she founded while in exile in 2016, was not recognised by the government of long-ruling President Paul Kagame.

She was imprisoned until receiving a presidential pardon last year from Kagame, whom she regularly accuses of suppressing freedom of speech, repressing the opposition and neglecting the country’s poor. 

“I am announcing the launch of a new opposition party,” Ingabire told AFP, saying it would be called Dalfa Umurunzi (Development and Liberty for All).

“This will help me to continue the mission that had been assigned to me by the FDU-Inkingi party,” she added.

“The political space in this country is very limited but we are ready to fulfil all legal requirements for registration and conduct our activities in accordance to the laws of the nation.”

She returned from exile in The Netherlands intending to run for president in 2010 as FDU-Inkingi’s leader.

But she was arrested, charged with terrorism and sentenced to more than a decade in jail during a widely criticised trial. She was unexpectedly granted early release alongside more than 2,000 other prisoners in September last year.

Ingabire, an ethnic Hutu, was accused of “genocide ideology” and “divisiveness” after publicly questioning the government narrative of the 1994 genocide of mostly Tutsi people that killed around 800,000 people.

Numerous FDU-Inkingi members have disappeared or been killed in mysterious circumstances over the last few years. The party accuses the government of brutally cracking down on dissenting voices.

One member was stabbed near the capital Kigali in September, while party spokesman Anselm Mutuyimana was kidnapped in March, his body later found in a forest. 

Although Rwanda is constitutionally a multi-party system there is practically no opposition, with most of the recognised parties supporting the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front.

Kagame, the de facto ruler since his rebel army stopped the genocide in 1994, has been praised for bringing stability and economic growth to his tiny nation but often comes under fire for restricting political freedom.

He commonly wins re-election with more than 90 per cent of the vote.

MOUSOUNI ISLAND, India — Bangladeshi and Indian authorities on Saturday ordered more than 450,000 people to flee coastal villages and islands as Cyclone Bulbul headed for the Bay of Bengal coast.

The eye of the storm, packing winds of up to 120 kilometres per hour, was expected to hit land around the Bangladesh-India frontier late Saturday.

A storm surge up to two metres high was predicted along the coast, Bangladesh’s Meteorological Department said.

Bangladesh troops were sent to villages to help with the evacuation. About 55,000 volunteers were also going door-to-door to warn residents.

Minister for Disaster Management Enamur Rahman told AFP the evacuation of 400,000 people would be completed by Saturday evening.

“We’ve already evacuated some 391,000 people,” he said.

About 1,500 tourists were stranded on the southern island of Saint Martin after boat services were suspended due to bad weather.

Bangladesh’s two biggest ports, Mongla and Chittagong, were closed because of the storm and flights into Chittagong airport have also been halted.

India also ordered an alert on its side of the border and the West Bengal government evacuated nearly 60,000 people in the state, officials said.

On the island of Mousouni, which lies in the path of the storm, scared residents took shelter in schools and government buildings because they had not been able to escape.

All flights at in and out of Kolkata airport were suspended for 12 hours and military planes and ships have been put on standby, Indian authorities said.

Winds of up to 110kph and heavy rainfall from the fringe of Bulbul have already lashed Odisha state, uprooting trees that blocked many roads. 

Bulbul was expected to hit the coast at the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, which straddles Bangladesh and part of eastern India and is home to endangered species including the Bengal tiger.

Bangladesh’s low-lying coast, home to 30 million people, is regularly battered by cyclones that leave a trail of destruction.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in cyclones in recent decades.

While the frequency and intensity have increased, partly due to climate change, the death tolls have come down because of faster evacuations and the building of 4,000 cyclone shelters along the coast.

In November 2007, Cyclone Sidr killed more than 3,000 people. In May this year, Fani became the most powerful storm to hit the country in five years, but the death toll was about 12.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron said he believed NATO was undergoing "brain death", lamenting a lack of coordination between Europe and the United States and unilateral action in Syria by key member Turkey, in an interview published on Thursday.

"What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO," Macron told The Economist magazine.

The president's explosive comments, appearing to question the very future of NATO, threatened to send shock waves through the alliance ahead of a summit in Britain next month.

"You have no coordination whatsoever of strategic decision-making between the United States and its NATO allies. None," said Macron.

"You have an uncoordinated aggressive action by another NATO ally, Turkey, in an area where our interests are at stake," he added, according to an English transcript released by The Economist.

Turkey's latest military operation against Kurdish forces in northern Syria was staunchly opposed by fellow members like France, but made possible by a withdrawal of US forces ordered by President Donald Trump.

"There has been no NATO planning, nor any coordination," Macron said.

And while NATO works well in communicating between armies and commanding operations, "strategically and politically, we need to recognise that we have a problem", he said.

"We should reassess the reality of what NATO is in light of the commitment of the United States," he warned, adding that "in my opinion, Europe has the capacity to defend itself".

Macron said that while "it's not in our interest" to expel Turkey from NATO — as has been urged by some politicians — members states should "reconsider what NATO is".

'Strategic dialogue with Russia' 

And he emphasised it was crucial to seek a rapprochement with Moscow, which regards NATO and its expansion into ex-Communist bloc states with huge suspicion since the alliance was set up to counter the USSR.

"We need to reopen a strategic dialogue, without being naive and which will take time, with Russia," said Macron, who is seeking to broker an end to the conflict in Ukraine and has courted President Vladimir Putin as a partner.

He said NATO did not reexamine its future in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and "the unarticulated assumption is that the enemy is still Russia".

"So, the question about the present purpose of NATO is a real question that needs to be asked,” especially by the United States where Trump sees the alliance as a "commercial project", he said.

And Macron said he believed that Putin, for all the anti-Western bombast from the Kremlin, would find his strategic options limited, in the long term, to "a partnership project with Europe".

"If we want to build peace in Europe, to rebuild European strategic autonomy, we need to reconsider our position with Russia," said Macron.

He praised the stance on the issue of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — criticised by many in Europe for being authoritarian and close to the Kremlin.

"He's quite close to our views and has a key intellectual and political role" in central Europe, said Macron.

'Edge of a precipice' 

The French president, seen by analysts as Europe's most prominent leader amid Brexit and the looming exit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2021, has sought to stand tall on the foreign policy stage and implement a vision of reforming Europe.

But he said the European Union had been brought "to the edge of a precipice" by a dwindling focus since the mid-1990s on the bloc's political integration.

"Europe has forgotten that it is a community, by increasingly thinking of itself as a market, with expansion as its end purpose," said Macron, who recently blocked expanding the EU to include North Macedonia and Albania.

He also said he wanted European nations to break the "taboo" against using deficits to stimulate growth and investment, and scrap a strict limit on eurozone deficits.

Macron said it was a time of turmoil with Europe losing track of history, a risk of the US and China becoming the sole global powers, and authoritarian regimes emerging in its neighbourhood.

"All this has led to the exceptional fragility of Europe which, if it can't think of itself as a global power, will disappear, because it will take a hard knock," he said.

BUDAPEST — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan heads to Hungary on Thursday for talks with Prime Minister Viktor Orban — a rare EU ally — but is expected to face protests over his deadly military offensive in Syria.

The meeting comes just a week after Orban met Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Thousands of demonstrators are expected to take part in rallies organised by civil society groups in Budapest over Turkey's assault on Kurdish fighters in Syria

Ankara launched the military operation last month to push Syrian Kurdish forces back from its border and create a "safe zone" to take in some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey.

Hungary delayed an EU resolution condemning Turkey's action, with Orban insisting that the offensive was in "Hungary's national interest" because it would help stop refugees coming to the EU.

If Erdogan does not enable refugees to return to Syria, he could "open the gates towards Europe" for millions of migrants, said Orban, an anti-immigration figurehead for nationalists in Europe and beyond.

At a meeting in Kazakhstan last month, Erdogan personally thanked Orban for his "support" for Ankara's Syrian operation

Orban was also one of the few European leaders to attend Erdogan's July 2018 inauguration ceremony for his second term in office, while the Turkish leader visited Hungary in October last year.

"[Orban's] Turkey policy fits in with his strategy towards the east, trying to give political favours for economic ones," Daniel Bartha, director of the think tank Centre for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy, told AFP.

'Berlin-Moscow-Istanbul triangle' 

The Hungarian army plans to buy Turkish armoured vehicles, according to media reports, while a Budapest-based Turkish business magnate is close to both Orban's family and to Erdogan.

Hungary's partly state-owned energy giant MOL also bought last week a stake in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that transports crude oil to the Mediterranean through Turkey.

Orban defends his foreign policy of "eastern opening" as pragmatic cooperation with larger regional powers.

"We live in a Berlin-Moscow-Istanbul triangle," he told a press conference last week in Budapest alongside Putin, also a regular visitor to the EU and NATO member state

Accusing his Western critics of turning a blind eye to their own countries' trade and political engagements with eastern countries, Orban has repeatedly defended Ankara.

"Turkey's stability is the guarantee of our security," he said during last year's visit by Erdogan, referring to the role of Turkish authorities in controlling migration into Europe.

The Hungarian government appears to perceive Turkey as an emerging, key geopolitical player, not only in Syria but also in south-eastern Europe and the broader Middle East," said Daniel Hegedus, an analyst with the German Marshall Fund of the United States. 

"It seems ready to accept significant conflicts within the EU to please Ankara, and acts according to the interests of Turkey and Russia rather than the Western alliances Budapest belongs to," Hegedus told AFP.

PARIS — Top European medical bodies demanded on Thursday that Chinese traditional medicines be subject to the same regulatory oversight as conventional Western methods, despite recent World Health Organisation (WHO) recognition of their use.

“Just because the World Health Organisation includes a chapter on Traditional Chinese Medicine in its new International Classification of Diseases, it is not automatically safe to use without robust evidence,” Professor Dan Marhala, President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said in a statement issued by top European medical and scientific bodies.

The European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EA SAC) and the Federation of European Academies of Medicine (FEAM) said European lawmakers must protect the health of European citizens. 

Accordingly, the existing European regulatory framework should be revised to make sure Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is held to the same standards of proof and evidence as conventional medicine.

“There have been examples where some Traditional Chinese Medicine has undergone thorough pre-clinical investigation and proven in rigorous clinical trials to contribute significant health benefit — artemisinin therapy for malaria, for example,” Marhala said.

“There may be more leads to diagnosis and therapeutic benefit yet to be discovered but this can in no way mean that other claims can be accepted uncritically.”

It was not necessarily the Who’s intention to promote the use of TCM, but its stamp of approval could lead supporters to promote wider application, the statement cautioned.

As a result, patients could be confused over which diagnosis was appropriate and which therapy was effective.

More serious still, said former European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) president Jos van der Meer, is that some TCMs “can have serious side effects and interactions with other treatments”.

“Moreover, patients may be at risk that severe diseases are treated ineffectively and conventional medical procedures delayed,” he added.

The WHO included TCMs in an official classification of diseases coming into effect in January 2022.

In 2015, China’s Tu Youyou won the Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering artemisinin, giving a huge boost to the credibility of TCM which many in the west deride as lacking scientific foundation and verging on quackery.

In China, traditional medicine has a long, distinguished history and its practitioners are treated with great respect.

EASAC comprises the national science academies of EU Member states, plus Norway and Switzerland.

FEAM groups medical academies which provide advice to the European authorities.

MOSCOW — The head of Russia’s security service on Thursday said the terror group Daesh is setting up a base in Afghanistan to target ex-Soviet countries using militants from Central Asia.

There are increasing activities of Daesh branches in Afghanistan, the chief of Russia’s Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov told a regional security forum in Tashkent, quoted by TASS state news agency.

“Their goal is to increase a base to expand into the CIS [ex-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States] territory.” 

He said Daesh was uniting branches in Afghanistan and working in tandem with a group called Jamaat Ansarullah and the East Turkestan... movement.

The expansion into the ex-Soviet countries “will be done by militants who are citizens of central Asian republics with experience of warfare as members of terrorist groups,” Bortnikov said.

The comments come on the heels of an attack on Wednesday on a border post in Tajikistan which officials blamed on members of Daesh who crossed over from Afghanistan. 

Tajikistan authorities said 15 attackers were killed and four detained, while a soldier and a policeman were also killed.

Tajikistan and other ex-Soviet countries of central Asia have been major sources of recruits for radical groups in Syria and Iraq, with some travelling there from Russia where many work as labour migrants.

Daesh propaganda outlets have referred to territories in Central Asia as “wilayas”, or provinces, which are part of Daesh “caliphate”.

The group’s militants have also claimed several attacks in Tajikistan, including a hit-and-run that killed four Western tourists on a cycling trip last summer.

UNITED NATIONS, United States — The UN General Assembly condemned the nearly 60-year-old US embargo on Cuba on Thursday for the 28th year in a row, calling for an end to it by a vote of 187 to three.

First imposed on October 19, 1960 in response to Havana’s nationalisation of US-owned oil refineries, and extended in 1962, the embargo is an enduring legacy of the Cold War hostilities between the two countries.

It was denounced as “anachronistic” and “inhumane” during two days of debate by the General Assembly.

In 2016, the US abstained for the first time in the annual UN vote amid a historic US rapprochement with Cuba under former president Barack Obama.

But diplomatic relations between the two countries have turned cold since Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez charged there has been “an escalation in aggression against Cuba” under Trump, whose government, he said, “does not hide its intention to economically asphyxiate Cuba and increase the damage, shortages and suffering of its people”.

Havana claims the embargo has caused $138 billion in damage to the island’s economy, in today’s dollars.

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, blamed the Cuban regime, accusing it of abuses against its own people, and of sowing regional instability.

WORKINGTON, United Kingdom — Hot on the heels of Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman comes Workington Man — the swing voter who British Prime Minister Boris Johnson needs to convince to win next month's election.

At least that's the theory of one think tank, which has developed the latest in a tradition of alliteratively titled stereotypes considered crucial to winning a parliamentary majority.

Workington, a rural constituency on England's most northwesterly coast, has been Labour for 100 years, with only a three-year blip in the 1970s when it went Conservative.

But it voted Leave in the 2016 EU referendum, and the current Labour MP voted Remain — a discrepancy that some believe could give Johnson a chance in the December 12 polls.

Repairing his lobster pot in a fishing hut near the harbour, Alan Ferris admitted he fits the description of "Workington Man" set out by the Tory-leaning Onward think tank — an older, white, northern English non-graduate who voted for Brexit.

But the 67-year-old, who has held many jobs from coal mining to construction, told AFP: "If I vote Conservative, it'll be by mistake and I'd chop my fingers off so I won't do it again."

Hostility to the Tories is strong in this rundown former industrial town, which after the closure of its coal and steel works, is dependent for many jobs on the nearby Sellafield nuclear plant.

But many here also have doubts about Labour's leftist leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has promised sweeping nationalisations and higher taxes on the wealthy.

He has vowed to renegotiate Britain's exit terms with the EU and hold a second referendum, but has yet to say how he would campaign.

Despite backing Labour his whole life, Ferris says he will not be voting next month.

"I can't vote for Jeremy Corbyn. He's an absolute clown. And on Brexit, he's totally neutral," he said.

"This constituency voted Leave — why aren't they doing it? Our votes don't count."

'Get us out' 

Johnson was forced to delay Brexit for three months from October 31 after failing to get his exit terms through parliament, but is now campaigning on a promise to "Get Brexit Done".

For some Leavers in Workington, it resonates.

"The Conservatives, they're the only ones that's promising to get us out," said Bron Stringer, 43, who runs a market stall.

She is normally a Labour voter, but condemned Corbyn as a "communist".

A poll by Survation for the Daily Mail last weekend suggested the Conservatives are on course to win in Workington, with 45 per cent support, compared to 34 per cent for Labour.

Labour's Sue Hayman, a member of Corbyn's top team, won the seat for a second time in 2017 with 51 per cent of the vote, an increased majority of 4,000.

Her supporters insist she can keep the seat.

"I'm not Workington Woman!" said Market Trader Charlotte Byers, 50.

"It's not all about Brexit, it's also about the National Health Service," she said, pointing to Labour's record of funding public services.

Ann Douglas, 70, a retired secretary, added: "We lost our steelworks, we lost our ports. The Conservatives have done this area no favours."

Enter Farage 

Workington lies between the Lake District national park and the Irish Sea, and it feels like a long way from Westminster.

"We're out here on a limb, nobody gives a stuff about us," said Stringer.

The 2016 Brexit campaign tapped into a similar sense of disillusionment in communities across Britain — and populist eurosceptic leader Nigel Farage is hoping he can do it again.

Farage made Workington one of the first campaign stops for his new Brexit Party.

His former party, UKIP, won 20 per cent of the vote here in the 2015 election, only to slump to less than 4 per cent two years later.

The UKIP candidate from 2015, Mark Jenkinson, is now the Conservative candidate and has made delivering Brexit his main pitch.

Addressing a meeting at a local hotel, Farage argued that Johnson's withdrawal deal with the EU would deliver "Brexit in name only".

He dismissed as "patronising cobblers" the idea of Workington Man, the successor to Mondeo Man, the stereotypical Ford owner targeted by former Labour leader Tony Blair.

And he made clear where his target was.

"If you're a Leave voter you cannot vote Labour in this election, because it's clear they will betray your vote," he said.

By Alice Ritchie

BEIJING — Chinese leader Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron declared on Wednesday that the Paris climate pact was "irreversible", showing a united front after Washington formally withdrew from the accord this week.

The joint declaration came at the end of Macron's second visit to China, which started on Monday in Shanghai and included talks on trade and the Iranian nuclear issue.

The French leader also said he told Xi there was a need for dialogue to resolve months of unrest in Hong Kong — ignoring Beijing's prior warning that such sensitive topics should not be on the agenda.

But Xi and Macron found common ground on climate change.

Major powers expressed regret and concern after President Donald Trump went ahead with the pullout from the Paris accord despite mounting evidence of the reality and impact of climate change.

Washington presented its withdrawal letter to the United Nations on Monday, the first possible date under the accord negotiated by Trump's predecessor Barack Obama, making the world's largest economy the sole major outlier from the agreement.

In a joint written statement, Xi and Macron reaffirmed "their firm support for the Paris accord which they consider as an irreversible process and a compass for strong action on climate".

Without directly naming the US, Macron said he "deplores the choices made by others" as he sat next to Xi following the talks at the imposing Great Hall of the People in the Chinese capital.

"But I want to look at them as marginal choices," Macron said.

With the European Union, China and Russia backing the pact, he added, "the isolated choice of one or another is not enough to change the course of the world. It only leads to marginalisation."

'Law of the jungle' 

In his remarks, Xi took a veiled swipe at the United States, which launched a trade war with China last year and has angered Beijing on various diplomatic issues.

"We advocate for mutual respect and equal treatment, and are opposed to the law of the jungle and acts of intimidation," Xi said.

"We advocate for openness, inclusion and for mutually beneficial cooperation, and are opposed to protectionism and a zero-sum game."

China's efforts against climate change are key as it is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Xi also called on the international community to "jointly protect our homeland planet Earth", saying "we are against the attempt to place national interests above the common interests of humanity".

In a document titled the "Beijing Call for Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Change", the two leaders voiced their determination to improve international cooperation to "ensure a complete and efficient implementation of the Paris accord".

The document includes a commitment to restoring almost a third of degraded land as well as eliminating fossil fuel subsidies in the medium term.

Unrest in Hong Kong 

After the meeting, Macron said at a news conference at the French embassy that he had raised the unrest in Hong Kong during his talks with Xi.

"I obviously conveyed our concerns, which are shared by Europe," Macron said, adding that he told Xi that there was a need for "de-escalation through dialogue".

The international finance hub has been convulsed by five months of huge and increasingly violent protests calling for greater democratic freedoms.

A Chinese foreign ministry official had warned prior to Macron's visit that Hong Kong was a matter of China's internal affairs and should not be on the diplomatic agenda.

But it did not stop the two sides from striking deals, including an agreement to protect 200 European and Chinese agricultural products — whose names are tied to their regions — against counterfeiting, from Champagne to Feta cheese and Panjin rice.

The two sides also committed to signing by January 31 a contract for the construction of a nuclear fuel recycling plant in China, which would involve French energy giant Orano.

On Iran, Macron said the two countries agreed to deepen joint efforts to convince Tehran to "fully respect its obligations" under the 2015 nuclear deal with major powers.

Washington's abandonment of the agreement in May last year followed by its reimposition of crippling sanctions prompted Tehran to begin a phased suspension of its own commitments.

President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday that Iran would resume uranium enrichment at an underground plant south of Tehran — a move Macron decried as "grave".

WASHINGTON — The first open hearings in the impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump are set for next week, the congressman overseeing the process said on Wednesday, as the investigation heads into a much-anticipated public phase.

Two US officials including William Taylor, the top US diplomat to Ukraine who has bolstered the accusation that Trump pressured Kiev to launch investigations that could help the president politically, will testify next Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said.

People will be able to see “the degree to which the president enlisted whole departments of government in the illicit aim of trying to get Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political opponent”, Schiff said.

Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, who heads the European and Eurasian bureau at the State Department, also testifies on November 13.

The former US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who told investigators she was ousted from her post over “false claims” spread by Trump allies, is scheduled to testify on November 15.

The Capitol Hill hearings will be broadcast live as Democratic and Republican lawmakers question witnesses, many of whom the White House has sought to discredit.

Republican lawmakers have spent weeks accusing Democrats of holding “sham” secret hearings in the US Capitol basement and demanding a more open process.

Schiff said that such a phase has now arrived, and that Americans will be able to hear the accounts of potential abuse of power directly from witnesses who were caught up in the scandal.

The hearings “will be an opportunity for the American people to evaluate the witnesses for themselves, to make their own determinations about the credibility of the witnesses, but also learn first-hand about the facts of the president’s misconduct”, Schiff added.

An anonymous whistleblower filed a complaint in September highlighting potential abuse of power by the president when he telephoned Ukraine’s leader and asked him to investigate Trump’s potential 2020 election rival Joe Biden.

The complaint led Democrats to formally launch their impeachment inquiry, which has led to an avalanche of testimony from several witnesses, including current and former diplomats or administration officials who have largely corroborated the whistleblower’s account.