Italy’s state-owned TG1 published a report with three documents showing that Qatar bribed former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani with $110 million to avoid resisting the Taliban’s return to power after the US withdrawal in 2021. Ghani and two other senior members of the now-ousted government received the bribes after signing the documents on 7 July 2021.
Turkey’s foreign minister summoned envoys of nine countries – the US, Sweden, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK – on Thursday. Ankara rejected the countries’ decisions to temporarily close down their diplomatic missions and issue security alerts to their citizens in Turkey. Over the past week, several Western countries alerted their citizens about a rising threat of attacks on diplomatic missions and minority religious places. The warnings came amid rising tensions with Turkey following several far-right-led protests in Europe, where demonstrators burned and defaced the Quran.
Indonesia will take up its chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) today. Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said that the country’s goal was to implement the Five-Point Consensus. “This will be the main platform from ASEAN to contribute to help Myanmar exit from the political crisis,” he stated.
In a meeting on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi discussed disputed islands in the East China Sea. Hayashi expressed “serious concerns” regarding China’s “increasingly active military activities near Japan.” Meanwhile, Qin requested Hayashi to stop “right-wing forces” from provoking disputes in the region.
On Thursday, the EU announced $546 million in additional military assistance for Ukraine, and another $49 million to train the Ukrainian forces, ahead of the EU-Ukraine summit to be held on Friday in Kyiv. Further, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell stated that the bloc aims to double the number of Ukrainian troops to be trained to 30,000 this year.
US Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns on Thursday remarked that no one should “underestimate” Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “ambitions with regard to Taiwan,” further claiming that Xi was supposedly “surprised and unsettled” while trying to learn from the Russian forces’ “very poor performance” in Ukraine. Burns further called China the US’ “biggest geopolitical challenge” right now.
In a letter written to US President Joe Biden on Thursday, a bipartisan group of senators urged Biden against approving the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey unless the latter approves Sweden and Finland’s bids to join NATO. Turkey has vowed not to support Sweden and Finland’s applications unless they crack down on Kurdish militants.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday condemned Iran’s “headlong rush” to accelerate its nuclear programme and its refusal to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). During a meeting with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Macron also expressed “strong concern” over Iran’s “destabilising activities,” particularly its supply of drones and missiles to Russia.
UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Alice Nderitu on Thursday condemned the 24 January airstrike in Nigeria, which killed at least 40 Fulani herders and injured several civilians, and decried the security situation in the West African country. Nderitu asserted that the “politicisation of transhumance” and “increasing divisions among communities” are the main factors driving the worsening security situation, which must be addressed immediately.