ANKARA, 30 December 2020, (TON): Turkey and the United States have started talks to form a joint working group to discuss sanctions that Washington imposed on its NATO ally over its purchase of an advanced Russian air defence system, according to Turkey’s foreign minister.

Cavusoglu said Turkey had itself proposed a joint working group on the sanctions.

“Now the proposal came from the US. As we naturally always favour dialogue, we said yes, and negotiations began at the level of experts,” Cavusoglu said during the meeting.

He also said imposing sanctions is a misstep both politically and legally. “It is an attack on our sovereign rights,” he stressed.

“In 2020, our ties with the United States were overshadowed by existing problems,” Cavusoglu said. “In 2021, we are prepared to lead our relations with the new administration in a healthier manner and we are prepared to take steps to overcome existing problems.”

Earlier this month, Cavusoglu had said Turkey was considering possible steps to reciprocate

against the sanctions.

The US slapped sanctions on NATO ally Turkey following its acquisition of the Russian missile shield in 2017, claiming it would be incompatible with NATO systems and would expose F-35 jets to possible Russian subterfuge. Washington had earlier dismissed Turkey of F-35 jet programme on the condition that the Russian defence system would jeopardise the safety of F-35.

However, Turkey, stressed that the S-400 would not be integrated into NATO systems, and poses no threat to the alliance or its armaments. Turkey has said that the acquisition of Russian defence system is aimed at self-defence from the threats that it faces in the region.

BRUSSELS, 30 December 2020, (TON):  The European Union’s top officials on Wednesday formally signed post-Brexit trade deal with the United Kingdom.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel signed the documents in a brief signature ceremony in Brussels. The documents will now be forwarded to British Prime minister Boris Johnson to sign them.

“The agreement that we signed today is the result of months of intense negotiations in which the European Union has displayed an unprecedented level of unity,” Michel said. “It is a fair and balanced agreement that fully protects the fundamental interests of the European Union and creates stability and predictability for citizens and companies”.

“On major issues, the European Union stands ready to work shoulder to shoulder with the United Kingdom,” Michel said. “This will be the case on climate change, ahead of the COP 26 in Glasgow, and on the global response to pandemics, in particular with a possible treaty on pandemics. On foreign affairs, we will seek cooperation on specific issues based on shared values and interests.”

The UK Parliament will later start debating the agreement setting up new trade rules between the 27-nation bloc and former member Britain. It is set to provisionally enter into force on 1 January The agreement eventually needs approval from Britain’s Parliament, and from the EU’s legislature.

RIYADH, 30 December 2020, (TON): Saudi Arabia’s cabinet has approved a digital economy policy, state news agency SPA reported.

The digitalization of the economy will encourage investments, increase local technical leadership and attract international partnerships, Saudi official news agency SPA said.

The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Al-Swaha said the policy will be a road map for the Kingdom’s directions for government authorities, the private sector and the international community in fields related to digital economy.

The launch of Saudi Arabia's digital economy policy helps to adopt the Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies in the industrial and mining sectors and raises their competitive edge, said the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources in a statement.

The Kingdom aims to be among the top 15 economies in the world, by creating an attractive investment environment and diversifying its economy, to raise the percentage of non-oil exports from 16% to 50% of non-oil GDP and raising the private sector contribution from 40% to 65% of GDP, the report further said.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia occupies a prominent economic position, as it is the largest economy in the Middle East and one of the twenty largest economies in the world.

WASHINGTON, 30 December 2020, (TON): The US State Department has approved the potential sale of 3,000 precision guided munitions to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in a deal valued at up to $290 billion, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

The package would include 3,000 GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb I (SDB I) munitions, containers, support equipment, spares and technical support, the Pentagon said.

“The proposed sale will improve Saudi Arabia’s capability to meet current and future threats by increasing its stocks of long-range, precision air-to-ground munitions,” the Pentagon said in a statement. It added that “the size and accuracy of the SDB I allows for an effective munition with less collateral damage.”

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of the deal on Tuesday.

Despite approval by the State Department, the notification does not indicate that a contract has been signed or that negotiations have concluded. The Pentagon said Boeing Co was the prime contractor for the weapons.

Lawmakers worry that the weapons would be used in attacks in Yemen that would harm civilians who are already in the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.

KABUL, 30 December 2020, (TON): The Afghan parliament on Wednesday rejected the next fiscal year's budget submitted by the government estimated a total of 452 billion Afs ($5.8 billion), citing "serious problems."

The exclusion of 1,131 provincial projects, the allocation of Afs13 billion ($166 million) for the emergency code (an emergency budgetary unit) and the allocation of Afs2 billion ($25.5 million) to the government's Code 91 and 92--also emergency funds--were reasons for concern raised by lawmakers.

About a month ago, the budget plan was also rejected because of its late submission to the Afghan parliament, and for financial violations.  

Meanwhile, other lawmakers alleged that a number of necessary amendments to the budget plan suggested by MPs to the government were not taken seriously by the finance ministry.   

ISLAMABAD, 30 December, (TON): Foreign Office Spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chauhdri on Tuesday rejected the reported allegations of forced conversions in the country as “fictitious, politically motivated or based on mala fide intent of our detractors to malign Pakistan in the international community.”

“As per principles of Quran and Sunnah, there is no forced conversion in Islam,” the Foreign Office Spokesperson stated in response to queries from some media colleagues.

Rejecting any institutionalized or consistent pattern of forced conversions he said, “Most of the reported allegations, when investigated revealed that they were either fictitious, politically motivated or based on mala fide intent of our detractors to malign Pakistan in the international community,” he added.

Reminding to the world, said that a case in hand were the disclosures of EU DisinfoLab regarding the disinformation spreading network being operated by the Indian intelligence agencies.

“There have been few incidents of forced conversions by individuals and non-state actors, but there is no evidence of complicity of any state institution. Whenever such case has been reported, all state institutions have taken swift action against the perpetrators,” he added.

In some instances, the Spokesperson said that the state became party to the case against the perpetrators in the court, in order to ensure speedy and effective justice.

He said, “Foundations of our State are firmly laid on the principles laid down by our Founding Father Quaid-e-Azam and appropriately reflected in our Constitution.”

“The Constitutional provisions are supplemented further by the legal and administrative framework to protect our minorities from any forced conversion,” he added.

The FO statement comes a day after The Associated Press published a story stating that nearly 1,000 girls from religious minorities are forced to convert to Islam in Pakistan each year.

SRINAGAR, 30 December, 2020, (TON): In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Indian troops in their fresh act of state terrorism martyred three Kashmiri youth in Srinagar city, today.

During a cordon and search operation, launched by the Indian troops last evening, martyred youth in Lawaypora area of Srinagar.  

The troops also destroyed and damaged several residential houses with explosive material in the area. The operation continued till last reports came in.

On the other hand, Indian troops fired several gun shots in Lawdara Papchan area of Bandipora district, KMS reported.

Meanwhile, the troops arrested a youth in Baramulla town.

India’s gross human rights violations in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir present a unique example of state terrorism. India violated each standard of international human rights law. India made repressive laws empowering its security forces in IIOJK to use of force to martyr innocent Kashmiris, arrest, and detention without any charge and right to a fair trial.

BRUSSELS, 30 December, 2020, (TON): European Union and Chinese leaders are poised to announce a hard-fought agreement to expand opportunities in China for foreign investors.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, who chairs the bloc’s summits, plan to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a video conference on Wednesday to signal the successful completion of negotiations begun in 2013 on an EU-China investment pact, according to officials in Brussels.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which currently holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, will also join the discussion, two of the officials said. The video conference is due to start at 1 p.m. Central European Time, Michel said in a Twitter post on Tuesday.

The deal aims primarily to expand access to the Chinese market for foreign investors in industries ranging from cars to telecommunications. The accord also tackles underlying Chinese policies deemed by Europe and the U.S. to be market-distorting: industrial subsidies, state control of enterprises and forced technology transfers.

“We need to rebalance the economic and investment relationship with China,” Valdis Dombrovskis, executive vice-president in charge of economic matters at the commission, the EU’s executive arm, told Bloomberg Television on December 18. “Currently Europe is substantially more open to Chinese investments than China is to the EU’s investments.”

Chinese concessions to European investors in the agreement include Chinese market opening, Chinese state-owned enterprises, subsidies, forced technology transfers. While the accord largely commits the EU to maintain its relative openness to Chinese investors.

The deal could be a setback for the incoming Biden administration, which is expected to continue President Trump’s tough stance on China and wanted to work with the EU on coordinating policy toward Beijing.

The EU deal may open up European markets even more to Chinese enterprises, though many believe that China sees the deal as more of a political victory than an economic one because it drives a wedge between the U.S. and EU.

JAMMU AND KASHMIR, 30 December 2020, (TON): For young Kashmiri journalist, the fear of getting arrested or summoned by police always lurks around as Journalists have been attacked and press freedom curtailed since India stripped Kashmir of its special status last year.

A young Kashmiri journalist, Masrat Zahra, was charged under anti-terror law, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), in April this year for allegedly posting “anti-national” content on social media. Zahra was among several Kashmiri journalists who were summoned by police early this year.

More complaints of “harassment” and “intimidation” by journalists followed during the course of the year as reporting from the region has been increasingly becoming difficult since India’s Hindu nationalist government introduced the Revised Media Policy following scrapping of the Article 370 of India’s constitution that granted the disputed region a measure of autonomy. The new media policy authorises government officers to decide on what is “fake news” and “anti-nationalism” – a step that media personnel say could be misused by authorities in the disputed region, where anti-India sentiments run high.

Since late last year, several local journalists have been summoned by police or investigating agencies for doing their professional duty. India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) raided the office of Greater Kashmir newspaper and the residence of AFP news agency’s journalist, Parvaiz Bukhari on October 28. This followed a week after office of the oldest English Daily of the region, Kashmir Times, was sealed.

“This was simply done to punish us for speaking the truth,” said Anuradha Bhasin, the Executive Editor, who had approached the Supreme Court against the communication blockade imposed last August.

In September, journalist Auqib Javeed said that he was slapped at the police station in Srinagar after summoned for doing a story on intimidation of Twitter users by the cyber cell of the police.

A few weeks later, three Kashmiri journalists – Fayaz Ahmad, Mudasir Qadri and Junaid Rafiq – were beaten up and their phones and cameras were taken away by police while they were doing their professional duty in southern Kashmir.

Senior journalists say the local administration, which takes orders directly from New Delhi, has launched a “a lethal assault” on journalism in Kashmir since downgrading the status of the region. New Delhi has since passed laws that will allow outsiders to settle in Kashmir, causing fears of demographic shift.

“We have witnessed our colleagues getting killed with bullets when the armed conflict was at its peak [during 1990s and early 2000s]. But, now the journalism itself is being killed with selective usage of laws and other methods,” says veteran journalist, Altaf Hussain, who has had a long stint with BBC news.

Meanwhile, Michael Kugelman, the Asia Program Deputy Director and Senior Associate for South Asia at the Washington based Woodrow Wilson Center said, “Before the Article 370 move, there would be periodic coverage of the dispute, with much of the focus on human rights abuses in Kashmir…But the spike in coverage after the Article 370 repeal far exceeded anything that had come for many years prior,”

“This was a clear indication that for the international press, the Article 370 move was about much more than what New Delhi shrugged it off as a routine internal and administrative change. In this sense, New Delhi’s decision to repeal Article 370 did more to internationalise the Kashmir dispute than anything Pakistan had done in previous years,” he further noted.

ZAGREB, 30 December, 2020, (TON): A strong earthquake in central Croatia has killed at least seven people, injured more than 20 and caused a significant destruction in Petrinja, a town southeast of the capital Zagreb.

The 6.4-magnitude quake was felt as far afield as Vienna but the heavy damage was concentrated in and around Petrinja, a town of around 20,000 some 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Croatia's capital Zagreb.

Tuesday’s earthquake was felt throughout the country, neighbouring Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and as far away as the Austrian capital, Vienna. It was the second quake in the area in as many days.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said late Tuesday that seven victims had been found so far and that there would "probably be more".

The European Union's crisis management chief, Janez Lenarcic, said the bloc was preparing aid and that he would visit Petrinja on Wednesday.

The earthquake, which hit around 1130 GMT according to the US Geological Survey, rattled Petrinja and the surrounding area just a day after a smaller earthquake struck in the same vicinity, causing some damage to buildings.

The tremors reverberated across neighbouring countries, including Serbia and Slovenia, which as a precaution shut down the Krsko nuclear power plant it co-owns with Croatia.

Zagreb is still rebuilding from a 5.3-magnitude quake that struck in March, the most powerful to hit the capital in decades. The Balkan region lies on major fault lines and sees regular earthquakes.