Author: Steven Sahiounie

Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Fayssal Mikdad, continued his meetings with a number of his counterparts participating in the meeting of the Arab League Council at the ministerial level in Cairo. Minister Mikdad discussed with Sameh Shukri, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt, Abdullah Bou Habib, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates in Lebanon, and Khalifa Shaheen Al Marar, Minister of State in the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs,Nabil Ammar, Tunisia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Migration and Tunisians Abroad, bilateral relations and ways to enhance them, and developments in the situation on the regional and international arenas. The discussions took place…

Russia continues to proactively cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and remains among global leaders in the nuclear energy area, President Vladimir Putin said at the meeting with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi. “We continue very active cooperation with IAEA; Russia continues cooperating in plenty of areas. We remain among indisputable leaders in this sphere globally,” the head of state said. “We do not merely operate but also actively develop the nuclear energy sector and consider it to be the environmentally pure kind of energy. We are doing everything to increase security at nuclear power facilities,” the President…

Ukraine is willing to accept trade restrictions with the EU to end its disputes with Poland but is urging the bloc to ban Russian food imports, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

US State Department spokesperson states that the US has made it absolutely clear that it does not want to see any civilians dead. US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller stated today that the United States condemns the Israeli argument that the murder of more than 30,000 Palestinians, including women and children, is a “fair price” in the occupation’s alleged attempts to “eliminate Hamas.” When asked if it is a “fair price” during a press briefing, he answered “No, and we do not want to see any civilians killed. We made that absolutely clear.” ….But Biden says In an interview for The New Yorker published…

Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and therefore does not recognize any decisions handed down by the Hague-based ICC, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, commenting on arrest warrants issued by the ICC against Sergey Kobylash, commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces’ Long-Range Aviation, and Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander Viktor Sokolov. The Kremlin official noted: “We do not participate in the Statute, we do not recognize it. So we treat such decisions accordingly.” “This is not the first decision [by the ICC against Russia],” Peskov reiterated. Earlier, the court, unrecognized by…

Indirect talks to end hostilities along the Lebanese-Israeli border will begin during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan which starts next week, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati said on Tuesday.Powerful Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging fire for nearly five months in parallel with the Gaza war, prompting diplomatic efforts aimed at staving off an escalation.In an interview on Tuesday night with local Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed, Mikati said long-term stability on the southern border required Israel to stop violating Lebanon’s territorial integrity and to return territories it occupies all along the border.He said Lebanon’s parliament…

Leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Australia (ASEAN-Australian) were reported to be struggling to find common ground on the war in Gaza, with nations split on the wording of a joint declaration. The AFP reports that a draft joint ASEAN-Australian statement showed there was broad agreement behind a call for “an immediate and durable humanitarian ceasefire”. “We condemn attacks against all civilians and civilian infrastructure, leading to a further deterioration of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza including restricted access to food, water, and other basic needs,” the latest draft, accessed by AFP, read. But a working…

A piece published on The Atlantic magazine’s news website suggested that Yemeni Ansar Allah leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi “may now be the most popular public figure in the Middle East.” The piece pointed out that since the Yemeni Armed Forces began their operations in the Red Sea in November in support of the Palestinian people, Sayyed al-Houthi “has been treated like a latter-day Che Guevara, his portrait and speeches shared on social media across five continents.” It emphasized that although it remains challenging to assess the consequences of the attacks, the Yemeni operations created a gap in the global economy. The operations, according to…

Despite restrictions on travel, Benny Gantz somehow met with US officials in Washington pushing the Israeli PM’s office into disarray. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is conducting a comprehensive investigation into how war cabinet member Benny Gantz obtained a travel ticket to the United States, despite Netanyahu’s orders against it, according to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation. Netanyahu tried to cancel Benny Gantz’s trip to the United States, prompting the Prime Minister’s office to open a wide-ranging investigation into how he obtained a travel ticket, according to the Israeli broadcaster. On the other hand, Gantz’s aides explained that…

During a joint press conference with President Mahmoud Abbas in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said it has become all the more obvious with the recent incidents that peace cannot prevail in the Middle East without a fair solution to the Israel-Palestine issue. Yet, he added, the only path to lasting peace is the establishment of an independent, sovereign and geographically-integrated Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. “We have been exerting extraordinary efforts in this regard since October 7. Israel’s attacks on the occupied Palestinian territories have topped our…