South Asia
Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar travelled to Abu Dhabi on Thursday to meet with his Emirati counterpart Sheikh Abdulla bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The pair were joined by Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Trade Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra, and other senior officials from both sides. They welcomed the implementation of the two countries' Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement in May and said it could increase bilateral trade to $100 billion over the next five years. They also spoke about climate action, food security, and healthcare and education cooperation. [Indian Ministry of External Affairs]
Sri Lanka and the International Monetary Fund have reached a staff-level agreement on a 48-month Extended Fund Facility with $2.9 billion in special drawing rights. The programme is conditional on increasing income and corporate taxes, energy pricing reforms, giving the central bank more autonomy, and restoring a ‘market-determined’ interest rate. [Newswire.lk]
Central Asia and the Caucasus
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi in Rome on Thursday, wherein the pair discussed the recent energy deal between Azerbaijan and the European Union. [Trend]
Kazakhstan has removed restrictions on the export of wheat and flour, in a decision that comes as a huge relief to Tajikistan, which imports roughly 98% of its wheat and flour, or one million tonnes per year, from Kazakhstan. Nur Sultan imposed restrictions on grain and flour exports on April 15 by setting a quota of one million tonnes for wheat and 300,000 tonnes for flour. [Asia Plus]
East and Southeast Asia
A French Senate delegation is set to visit Taiwan on September 7, Taiwan’s envoy to France, Wu Chih-chung announced on Thursday. Wu said that such parliament visits to the island “show that the world is concerned about the stability of the Taiwan Strait,” and added that support from democracies is “very important for the morale of Taiwan to resist the pressure from China, as well as the stability of the region, and for the interest of the world.” [Taiwan News]
South Korean national security adviser Kim Sung-han said on Thursday that “If North Korea conducts its seventh nuclear test, the response will be clearly different from the past.” While speaking to reporters in Hawaii after the trilateral consultation with counterparts from Japan and the United States, Kim added that the three countries had agreed that their response to the test would not be “complacent.” [Channel News Asia]
Europe
French President Emmanuel Macron responded to British Foreign Secretary and prime ministerial candidate Liz Truss saying the "jury's out" on whether Macron is a "friend or foe" to the United Kingdom, Macron said, "It’s never good to lose your bearings in life.” He affirmed, “For sure I say the British people—the nation that is the United Kingdom—is a friend, a strong and allied nation, whatever its leaders,” adding, “If we are not able to tell between France and the U.K. whether we are enemies or friends—the terms are not neutral—we are heading towards serious problems.” [Politico]
While speaking with the students and lecturers of the MGIMO University in Moscow on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned Moldova that any threat to the safety of Russian peacekeepers in the breakaway Transnistria region “will be considered in line with the international law as an attack on Russia, just like it was in South Ossetia, when [then-President of Georgia Mikhail] Saakashvili attacked our peacekeepers.” He also said that Russian forces are guarding the largest arms depot in Europe near Kolbasna. [TASS]
In a meeting with Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeppe Kofod in Kyiv on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked him for providing the Ukrainian forces with military uniforms, winter clothing, and also for housing Ukrainian refugees in Denmark. Kofod underlined Copenhagen’s support for Kyiv “for as long as necessary.” [President of Ukraine]
Latin America and the Caribbean
On Thursday, Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner survived an attempted assassination after a Brazilian man shot at her while she was addressing supporters outside her home. President Alberto Fernández expressed concern over escalating violence and hate speech in Argentina, describing the attack as the “most serious incident” since the nation won democracy in 1983. The police have detained the suspect and the government has announced Friday as a national holiday to express solidarity with Kirchner. [BBC]
Brazil’s Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Thursday convicted President Jair Bolsonaro for his alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that his refusal to implement prevention, isolation, and vaccination strategies constituted a “crime against humanity” that caused 34,429,853 infections and 683,365 COVID-19-related deaths. Justice Eugenio Zaffaroni from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned Bolsonaro’s “intentionality” behind the deaths, accusing him of planning a genocide through the “drop by drop” massacres against the native peoples, and urged the Hague-based International Criminal Court to probe this “malice.” [TeleSUR]
Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
Clashes between rival Shi’ite militant groups in the southern Iraqi city of Basra killed four people on Thursday as the fallout from populist Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s resignation from politics continues. The constant state of unrest has meant that Iraq is now undergoing its longest period without a government since the 2003 invasion by the United States. [Reuters]
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held their first-ever conversation on Thursday. Zelensky called on Lapid to join the international sanctions regime against Russia and provide “practical assistance.” Though Lapid has refrained from providing advanced defence systems and offensive weapons, he has authorised financial support for civil aid organisations and protective gear. [The Times of Israel]
North America
In a meeting with his Danish counterpart Morten Bødskov at the Pentagon on Thursday, United States (US) Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin talked about the “strength of [the two countries’] long-standing bilateral defence relationship and ongoing efforts to support Ukrainian sovereignty,” including ongoing efforts by the US and European allies to provide Kyiv with the “capabilities it needs to defend itself.” He also thanked Bødskov for organising the Copenhagen Conference for Northern European Defence Allies of Ukraine to complement the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. [US Department of Defense]
Following the release of the United Nations report on the human rights situation in Xinjiang, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly expressed on Thursday “grave concern at the mounting evidence pointing to systemic, state-led human rights violations by Chinese authorities,” including the mass arbitrary detention of over 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities on the basis of their religion and ethnicity, widespread mass surveillance, political re-education, sexual and gender-based violence, forced labour, torture and forced sterilisation. She vowed to work with allies “to ensure the Chinese government is held to account for its actions.” [Global Affairs Canada]
Oceania
On a visit to East Timor on Thursday, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong warned the country to be wary of falling into China’s debt trap. “We know that economic resilience can be effected, can be constrained by unsustainable debt burdens or lenders who have different objectives,” Wong told the media in Dili. “We, Australia, we seek to help make your country stronger,” she stated. [The Manila Times]
Australian Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil announced during the government’s Jobs and Skills Summit on Friday that the country is raising the cap on permanent migration. The measure will allow around 35,000 more workers to enter the country this financial yea, to help to ease the country’s labour shortage problem. “Australia’s migration system is not serving our needs. And I think we should change it. Because the coming 30 years will look very different for Australia than the last 30 did,” she said. “And that shift [is] moving away from a system which is almost entirely focused on how we keep people out, to one that recognises that we are in a global war for talent,” the minister added. [The Australian]
Sub-Saharan Africa
On Thursday, the White House announced that President Joe Biden will meet his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa on September 16 to identify means to “work together to address regional and global challenges,” including African nations’ stance on the Russia-Ukraine war. The meeting will follow last month’s visit by United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Africa tour, during which he unveiled the United States’ new strategy on sub-Saharan Africa. [Associated Press]
Data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on Thursday revealed that over 98 million children between the age of six and 18 remain out of school in sub-Saharan African countries, making it the “only region where this number is increasing, out-of-school rates are falling more slowly than the rate at which the school-age population is growing.” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay expressed concern over the worrying trend, saying it risks derailing the global goal of quality education for all by 2030. [Vanguard News]