World leaders send congratulations as Donald Trump claims victory

World leaders send congratulations as Donald Trump claims victory
Senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, called on Trump to avoid the perceived policy missteps of President Joe Biden. (FILE/AFP)
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Updated 06 November 2024
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World leaders send congratulations as Donald Trump claims victory

World leaders send congratulations as Donald Trump claims victory
  • Saudi Arabia’s king and crown prince send cables of congratulations
  • Hamas urges Trump to end war on Gaza, while Iran downplays poll outcome

DUBAI: World leaders have started offering their congratulations to Donald Trump following his victory in the US presidential election on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman sent a cable of congratulations to Trump following his win. He wished Trump success in his endeavors, and the American people further progress and prosperity.

The Kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also sent a cable of congratulations to Donald Trump, expressing his best wishes and a successful tenure.  

Meanwhile, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates, emphasized the strength and significance of the UAE’s relationship with the United States.  

“The UAE and the US are united by an enduring partnership based on shared ambitions for progress,” Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan said, expressing optimism about the continued collaboration.  

“We look forward to continuing to work with our partners in the US toward a future of opportunity, prosperity, and stability for all,” he added. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed Trump’s return, describing it as “history’s greatest comeback.”  

Netanyahu emphasized that Trump’s leadership represented “a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.”  

The Israeli leader expressed hope that the renewed partnership would strengthen strategic ties and deepen cooperation on key issues.

Highlighting the historic bond between the two nations, Netanyahu was optimistic about what he described as a promising chapter for US-Israel relations.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy congratulated Trump on his “impressive” victory.

“I appreciate President Trump’s commitment to the ‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs. This is exactly the principle that can practically bring just peace in Ukraine closer,” Zelenskiy wrote on X.

NATO chief Mark Rutte wrote on X: “I just congratulated Donald Trump on his election as President of the United States. His leadership will again be key to keeping our Alliance strong. I look forward to working with him again to advance peace through strength through NATO.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was looking forward to working with Trump.

“Heartiest congratulations my friend @realDonaldTrump on your historic election victory,” Modi wrote on X. “As you build on the successes of your previous term, I look forward to renewing our collaboration.”

Iran’s government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said the livelihood of her nation’s citizens would not be impacted by the US election, according to semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Iran’s currency fell Wednesday to an all-time low following the news that Trump was on the verge of clinching the US presidency again, trading at 703,000 rials to the dollar.

In 2015, at the time of Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, it was at 32,000 to a dollar.

Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking years of tensions between the countries that persist today.

Referring to it as an “historic election victory,” Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he looked forward to working with Trump.

“From growth and security to innovation and tech, I know the UK-US special relationship will continue to prosper on both sides of the Atlantic for years to come.”

France’s President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X: “Congratulations, President Donald Trump.”  

Macron’s message was accompanied by calls from within his administration for Europe to focus on self-reliance in the wake of Trump’s return.

French government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon underscored the need for European independence in key areas.

“We must not ask ourselves what the United States will do, but what Europe is capable of doing,” Bregeon said during an interview with RTL, emphasizing the importance of defense, industrial recovery, and decarbonization efforts.

“We must take charge of our own destiny,” Bregeon added, reflecting a growing sentiment for strategic autonomy in Europe.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala wrote on X: “Our shared goal is to ensure that the relations between our countries remain at the highest level, despite changes in administration, and that we continue to develop them for the benefit of our citizens.” 

Italy’s right wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said a Trump victory would strengthen ties between the two countries.

In a post on X, Meloni offered her “most sincere congratulations” to Trump, and said Italy and the US had an “unshakeable alliance.”

“It is a strategic bond, which I am certain we will now strengthen even further,” she said.

Senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, called on Trump to avoid the perceived policy missteps of President Joe Biden.

“We urge Trump to learn from Biden’s mistakes,” the official emphasized, referencing dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Abu Zuhri described the Democratic Party’s likely loss as “the natural price” for its leadership’s “criminal stance” toward Gaza.

Highlighting expectations for Trump, he said the former president’s return puts him “to the test” to act on his promises.


Germany’s Scholz urges Putin in phone call to open talks with Ukraine

Germany’s Scholz urges Putin in phone call to open talks with Ukraine
Updated 14 sec ago
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Germany’s Scholz urges Putin in phone call to open talks with Ukraine

Germany’s Scholz urges Putin in phone call to open talks with Ukraine
Scholz also demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and reaffirmed Germany’s continued support for Ukraine
“The Chancellor urged Russia to show willingness to enter talks with Ukraine with the aim of achieving a just and lasting peace,” the spokesperson said

BERLIN: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Russian President Vladimir Putin in a rare phone call on Friday to begin talks with Ukraine that would open the way for a “just and lasting peace.”
In a one-hour phone conversation, their first in almost two years, Scholz also demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and reaffirmed Germany’s continued support for Ukraine, a German government spokesman said.
The call comes as Ukraine faces increasingly difficult conditions on the battlefield amid shortages of arms and personnel while Russian forces make steady advances.
“The Chancellor urged Russia to show willingness to enter talks with Ukraine with the aim of achieving a just and lasting peace,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“He stressed Germany’s unbroken determination to back Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression for as long as necessary,” the spokesperson added.
Scholz spoke with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of his call with Putin and would brief the Ukrainian leader on the outcome afterwards, the spokesperson said.
Germany is Ukraine’s largest financial backer and its largest provider of weapons after the United States, whose future support for Kyiv appears uncertain following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the scale of Western financial and military aid to Ukraine and has suggested he can put a swift end to the war, without explaining how.
Scholz and Putin last spoke in December 2022, 10 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, plunging relations with the West into their deepest freeze since the Cold War.
Scholz, the most unpopular German chancellor on record, is preparing for a national election on Feb. 23 in which his Social Democrats face stiff competition from left-wing and far-right parties that are critical of Germany’s backing for Ukraine.

Croatian health minister arrested and sacked over alleged graft

Croatian health minister arrested and sacked over alleged graft
Updated 50 min 26 sec ago
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Croatian health minister arrested and sacked over alleged graft

Croatian health minister arrested and sacked over alleged graft
  • Beros’ lawyer Laura Valkovic told local media that he denied any criminal responsibility
  • The prime minister’s comments came after Croatia’s Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK) said it was conducting several arrests

SARAJEVO: Croatian Health Minister Vili Beros was sacked on Friday after being arrested on suspicion of corruption, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said.
Beros’ lawyer Laura Valkovic told local media that he denied any criminal responsibility. The health ministry declined to comment.
The prime minister’s comments came after Croatia’s Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK) said it was conducting several arrests.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office also said it had initiated an investigation against eight people, including Beros and the directors of two hospitals in Zagreb, over alleged bribery, abuse of authority and money laundering.
Croatia’s State Attorney Ivan Turudic, whose office works closely with USKOK, said there were two parallel investigations into the alleged crimes and that EPPO has not informed his office nor USKOK about its investigation.
Turudic said Beros was accused of trade of influence. He said two other individuals had been arrested and one legal entity would be investigated on suspicion of the criminal act of receiving a bribe.
The people detained will be brought before an investigative judge who will decide on any pre-trial detention, Turudic told a news conference.
The EPPO said that a criminal group seeking to secure financing for the sale of medical robotic devices in several hospitals was suspected of giving bribes to officials to try to win contracts for projects, including EU funded ones.
“What is obvious is that this is about criminal acts of corruption,” Plenkovic said. “On behalf of the government, I want to say that agencies authorized for criminal persecution should investigate everything.”


Protesters storm parliament in breakaway Georgian region Abkhazia over deal with Russia

Protesters storm parliament in breakaway Georgian region Abkhazia over deal with Russia
Updated 15 November 2024
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Protesters storm parliament in breakaway Georgian region Abkhazia over deal with Russia

Protesters storm parliament in breakaway Georgian region Abkhazia over deal with Russia
  • Eshsou Kakalia, an opposition leader and former deputy prosecutor general, said the parliament building was under the control of the protesters
  • “We will now seek the resignation of the current president of Abkhazia,” he was quoted by Russia’s Interfax news agency as saying

TBILISI: Protesters stormed the parliament of the Russian-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia on Friday and opposition politicians demanded the resignation of the self-styled president over an unpopular investment agreement with Moscow.
Protesters used a truck to smash through the metal gates surrounding the parliament in the capital Sukhumi. Video from the scene then showed people climbing through windows after prying off metal bars and chanting in the corridors.
Eshsou Kakalia, an opposition leader and former deputy prosecutor general, said the parliament building was under the control of the protesters.
“We will now seek the resignation of the current president of Abkhazia,” he was quoted by Russia’s Interfax news agency as saying. Protesters also broke into the presidential administration offices located in the same building as the parliament.
Emergency services said at least eight people were taken to hospital.
The presidential administration said in a statement that authorities were preparing to withdraw the investment agreement with Russia that some Abkhaz fear will price them out of the property market.
Russia recognized Abkhazia and another breakaway region, South Ossetia, as independent states in 2008 after Russian troops repelled a Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia in a five-day war.
Most of the world recognizes Abkhazia as part of Georgia, from which it broke away during wars in the early 1990s, but Russian money has poured into the lush sub-tropical territory where Soviet-era spa resorts cling to the Black Sea coast.

RUSSIAN MONEY
Abkhazian lawmakers had been set to vote on Friday on the ratification of an investment agreement signed in October in Moscow by Russian Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov and his Abkhazian counterpart, Kristina Ozgan.
Abkhazian opposition leaders say the agreement with Moscow, which would allow for investment projects by Russian legal entities, would price locals out of the property market by allowing far more Russian money to flow in.
The opposition said in a statement that the protesters’ actions were not against Russian-Abkhazian relations.
“Abkhazian society had only one demand: to protect the interests of our citizens and our business, but neither the president nor the parliament have heard the voice of the people until today,” Interfax cited the statement as saying.
Earlier this week Abkhazia’s self-styled president, Aslan Bzhania, held an emergency security council meeting after protesters blocked a key highway and rallied in central Sukhumi to demand the release of four activists.
The activists, who were subsequently freed, had been detained for opposing the passage of a law regulating the construction industry which references the Russian-Abkhazian agreement.
In 2014, demonstrators stormed the presidential headquarters, forcing then-leader Alexander Ankvab to flee. He later resigned over accusations of corruption and misrule.
Opposition leader Raul Khadzhimba, elected following the unrest in 2014, was himself forced to step down in 2020 after street protests over disputed election results.


Pakistani province declares health emergency due to smog and locks down two cities

Pakistani province declares health emergency due to smog and locks down two cities
Updated 15 November 2024
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Pakistani province declares health emergency due to smog and locks down two cities

Pakistani province declares health emergency due to smog and locks down two cities
  • Smog has choked Punjab for weeks, sickening nearly 2 million people and shrouding vast swathes of the province in a toxic haze
  • Average air quality index readings in parts of Lahore exceeded 600 on Friday

LAHORE, Pakistan: A Pakistani province declared a health emergency Friday due to smog and imposed a shutdown in two major cities.
Smog has choked Punjab for weeks, sickening nearly 2 million people and shrouding vast swathes of the province in a toxic haze.
A senior provincial minister, Marriyum Aurangzeb, declared the health emergency at a press conference and announced measures to combat the growing crisis.
Time off for medical staff is canceled, all education institutions are shut until further notice, restaurants are closing at 4 p.m. while takeaway is available up until 8 p.m. Authorities are imposing a lockdown in the cities of Multan and Lahore and halting construction work in those two places.
“Smog is currently a national disaster,” Aurangzeb said. “It will not all be over in a month or a year. We will evaluate the situation after three days and then announce a further strategy.”
Average air quality index readings in parts of Lahore, a city of 11 million, exceeded 600 on Friday. Anything over 300 is considered hazardous to health.
The dangerous smog is a byproduct of large numbers of vehicles, construction and industrial work as well as burning crops at the start of the winter wheat-planting season, experts say.
Pakistan’s national weather center said rain and wind were forecast for the coming days, helping smoggy conditions to subside and air quality to improve in parts of Punjab.
Dr. Muhammad Ashraf, a professor at Jinnah Hospital Lahore and Allama Iqbal Medical College, said the government must take preventative measures well before smog becomes prevalent.
“It is more of an emergency than COVID-19 because every patient is suffering from respiratory tract infections and disease is prevailing at a mass level,” he said earlier this week.


Sri Lankan president’s leftist coalition secures landslide election win

Sri Lankan president’s leftist coalition secures landslide election win
Updated 15 November 2024
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Sri Lankan president’s leftist coalition secures landslide election win

Sri Lankan president’s leftist coalition secures landslide election win
  • National People’s Power alliance wins 159 seats in the 225-member parliament
  • First time in history, election is won by representatives of Sri Lanka’s poor

COLOMBO: The coalition of Sri Lanka’s new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake won a landslide victory in a snap parliamentary vote, results from the election body showed on Friday, giving the left-leaning leader a mandate to fight poverty and corruption in the crisis-hit island nation.

Dissanayake’s alliance, the National People’s Power, secured 159 seats in the 225-member assembly, according to the results released by the Election Commission.

The United People’s Power of Sajith Premadasa retained its role from the previous parliament as the largest opposition party, winning 40 seats.

When Dissanayake won the presidential vote in September, he had only three members of his party in parliament, which limited his ability to realize his campaign promises.

To boost the NPP’s representation — as government ministers can be appointed only from among lawmakers — he dissolved the parliament and cleared the way for the polls that took place on Thursday, a year ahead of schedule.

While ahead of the poll, the president expressed optimism that the 42 percent of the vote he received in the presidential election showed the NPP was “a winning party,” the landslide win came with a surprise.

“It’s a historic election,” Lakshman Gunasekara, a political analyst in Colombo, told Arab News. “The result has gone far beyond the expectations of analysts ... I did not expect them to win a total majority, but they have done so.”

Dissanayake and his coalition took over control of Sri Lanka as the nation continued to reel from the 2022 economic crisis — its worst since independence in 1948. The austerity measures imposed by his predecessor, Ranil Wickremesinghe — part of a bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund — led to price hikes in food and fuel and caused hardship to millions of Sri Lankans.

Dissanayake said during his campaign that he planned to renegotiate the targets set in the IMF deal, as it placed too much burden on the ordinary people.

More than half of former lawmakers chose not to run for re-election. No contenders were seen from the powerful Rajapaksa family, including former president Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, also former president, Gotabaya — who was ousted in 2022 and largely blamed for the crisis.

Sri Lanka People’s Front, the party loyal to the Rajapaksa family, secured only three seats in the new parliament.

Sri Lankans decided to choose the NPP, a movement that until now would never win more than 4 percent, as there was a general “anti-incumbency kind of mood, but also tiredness among the voters of the same old parties alternating and doing political mismanagement, whipping up ethnic chauvinism, encouraging attacks on minorities to cover up for their own corruption,” Gunasekara said.

He explained that even more voted for the NPP than for Dissanayake in the presidential vote, as during slightly over one month of his and his three-member cabinet’s rule, they “realized that this new leadership is very fresh in their style of governance, very collective ... not personality-oriented, and also did not resort to violence or bullying or thuggery.”

Both Dissanayake and most of his party members come from the poorest segments of Sri Lankan society.

“He’s a son of a farmer, benefited from free education ... He’s an educated person, but coming from the lowest classes, not from the urban elite, not the urban middle class, the Westernized people, fashionable people, not at all,” Gunasekara said.

“It will be a new entrant into the South Asian political arena ... For the first time, we have subalterns who have arrived in power. And they have arrived with a huge majority.”