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Iran deal tantalizingly close, but US faces new hurdles
Last week’s attack on author Salman Rushdie and the indictment of an Iranian national in a plot to kill former national security adviser John Bolton have given the Biden administration new headaches as it attempts to negotiate a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
A resolution may be tantalizingly close. But as the U.S. and Europe weigh Iran’s latest response to an EU proposal described as the West’s final offer, the administration faces new and potentially insurmountable domestic political hurdles to forging a lasting agreement.
Deal critics in Congress who have long vowed to blow up any pact have ratcheted up their opposition to negotiations with a country whose leadership has refused to rescind the death threats against Rushdie or Bolton. Iran also vows to avenge the Trump administration’s 2020 assassination of a top Iranian general by killing former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iran envoy Brian Hook, both of whom remain under 24/7 taxpayer-paid security protection.
Although such threats are not covered by the deal, which relates solely to Iran’s nuclear program, they underscore deal opponents’ arguments that Iran cannot be trusted with the billions of dollars in sanctions relief it will receive if and when it and the U.S. return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, a signature foreign policy accomplishment of the Obama administration that President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018.
“This is a tougher deal to sell than the 2015 deal in that this time around there are no illusions that it will serve to moderate Iranian behavior or lead to greater U.S.-Iran cooperation,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“The Iranian government stands to get tens of billions in sanctions relief, and the organizing principle of the regime will continue to be opposition to the United States and violence against its critics, both at home and abroad,” he said.
Iran has denied any link with Rushdie’s alleged attacker, an American citizen who was indicted for attempted murder and has pleaded not guilty in the Aug. 12 stabbing at a literary event in Western New York. But Iranian state media have celebrated Iran’s long-standing antipathy toward Rushdie since the 1988 publication of his book “The Satanic Verses,” which some believe is insulting to Islam.
Media linked to Iran’s leadership have lauded the attacker for following through on a 1989 decree, or fatwa, calling for Rushdie to be killed that was signed by Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
And the man who was charged with plotting to murder Bolton is a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Justice Department alleges the IRGC tried to pay $300,000 to people in the United States to avenge the death of Qassam Suleimani, the head of its elite Quds Force who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in 2020.
“I think it’s delusional to believe that a regime that you’re about to enter into a significant arms control agreement with can be depended on to comply with its obligations or is even serious about the negotiation when it’s plotting the assassination of high-level former government officials and current government officials,” Bolton told reporters Wednesday.
“It certainly looks like the attack on Salman Rushdie had a Revolutionary Guard component,” Bolton said. “We’ve got to stop this artificial division when dealing with the government of Iran between its nuclear activities on the one hand and its terrorist activities on the other.”
Read: Iran submits a ‘written response’ in nuclear deal talks
Others agree.
“Granting terrorism sanctions relief amid ongoing terror plots on U.S. soil is somewhere between outrageous and lunacy,” said Rich Goldberg, a former Trump administration national security council staffer and longtime deal critic who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which has also lobbied against a return to the JCPOA.
While acknowledging the seriousness of the plots, administration officials contend that they are unrelated to the nuclear issue and do nothing to change their long-held belief that an Iran with a nuclear weapon would be more dangerous and less constrained than an Iran without one.
“The JCPOA is about the single, central challenge we face with Iran, the core challenge, what would be the most threatening challenge we could possibly face from Iran, and that is a nuclear weapon,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said this week. “There is no doubt that a nuclear-armed Iran would feel an even greater degree of impunity, and would pose an even greater threat, a far greater threat, to countries in the region and potentially well beyond.”
“Every challenge we face with Iran, whether it is its support for proxies, its support for terrorist groups, its ballistic missiles program, its malign cyber activities — every single one of those — would be more difficult to confront were Iran to have a nuclear weapons program,” he said.
That argument, however, will be challenged in Congress by lawmakers who opposed the 2015 deal, saying it gave Iran a path to develop nuclear weapons by time-limiting the most onerous restrictions on its nuclear activities. They say there’s now even more tangible evidence that Iran’s malign behavior make it impossible to deal with.
Two of the most outspoken critics of the deal, Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have weighed in on what the Rushdie attack should mean for the administration.
“The ayatollahs have been trying to murder Salman Rushdie for decades,” Cruz said. “Their incitement and their contacts with this terrorist resulted in an attack. This vicious terrorist attack needs to be completely condemned. The Biden administration must finally cease appeasing the Iranian regime.”
“Iran’s leaders have been calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie for decades,” said Cotton. “We know they’re trying to assassinate American officials today. Biden needs to immediately end negotiations with this terrorist regime.”
Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, or INARA, the administration must submit any agreement with Iran for congressional review within five days of it being sealed. That begins a 30-day review period during which lawmakers may weigh in and no sanctions relief can be offered.
That timeline means that even if a deal is reached within the next week, the administration will not be able to start moving on sanctions relief until the end of September, just a month from crucial congressional midterm elections. And, it will take additional time for Iran to begin seeing the benefits of such relief because of logistical constraints.
While deal critics in the current Congress are unlikely to be able to kill a deal, if Republicans win back control of Congress in the midterms, they may be able to nullify any sanctions relief.
Read: US-Iran tensions thrust foreign policy into Democrats' race
“Even if Iran accepts President Biden’s full capitulation and agrees to reenter the Iran nuclear deal, Congress will never vote to remove sanctions,” the GOP minority on the House Armed Services Committee said in a tweet on Wednesday. “In fact, Republicans in Congress will work to strengthen sanctions against Iran.”
Market blast in north Syria kills at least 9, wounds dozens
A rocket attack on a crowded market in a town held by Turkey-backed opposition fighters in northern Syria Friday killed at least nine people and wounded dozens, an opposition war monitor and a paramedic group reported.
The attack on the town of al-Bab came days after a Turkish airstrike killed at least 11 Syrian troops and U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, blamed Syrian government forces for the shelling, saying it was in retaliation for the Turkish airstrike.
The Observatory said the attack killed at least 10 and wounded more than 30.
Also read: Lebanon announces plan to repatriate Syrian refugees
The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, had a lower death toll, saying nine people, including children, were killed and 28 were wounded. The paramedic group said its members evacuated some of the wounded and the dead bodies.
Discrepancies in casualty figures immediately after attacks are not uncommon in Syria.
Turkey has launched three major cross-border operations into Syria since 2016 and controls some territories in the north.
Also read: Syrians in desperate need of aid hit hard by Ukraine fallout
Although the fighting has waned over the past few years, shelling and airstrikes are not uncommon in northern Syria that is home to the last major rebel stronghold in the country.
Syria’s conflict that began in March 2011, has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.
President Bashar Assad’s forces have regained control of most parts of Syria over the past few years, with the help of their allies, Russia and Iran.
Doctors stay in Ukraine’s war-hit towns: ‘People need us’
Dr. Ilona Butova almost looks out of place in her neatly pressed lavender scrubs as she walks through a door frame that hangs from a crumbled wall into what used to be an administrative office of her hospital in Zolochiv.
Not one building in the facility in the northeastern Ukrainian town near the Russian border has escaped getting hit by artillery shells.
Since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, space to treat patients at the hospital has shrunk constantly because of damage. Her staff has dwindled to 47 from 120. And the number of people seeking treatment in the small town 18 kilometers (11 miles) from the border is often higher now than before the fighting began.
Read: Bomb threats put tiny Moldova, Ukraine's neighbor, on edge
Ukraine’s health care system struggled for years because of corruption, mismanagement and the COVID-19 pandemic. But the war has only made things worse, with facilities damaged or destroyed, medical staff relocating to safer places and many drugs unavailable or in short supply. Care is being provided in the hardest-hit areas by doctors who have refused to evacuate or have rushed in as volunteers, putting themselves at great risk.
“It’s very hard, but people need us. We have to stay and help,” said Butova, a neurologist who also is the administrator of the hospital in the town near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. She added that she has had to do more with fewer resources.
The World Health Organization declared its highest level of emergency in Ukraine the day after the invasion, coordinating a major relief effort there and in neighboring countries whose medical systems also are under strain.
About 6.4 million people have fled to other European countries, and a slightly higher number are internally displaced, according to U.N. estimates. That presents a major challenge to a health care system built on family doctor referrals and regionally separate administrations.
Across Ukraine, 900 hospitals have been damaged and another 123 have been destroyed, said Health Minister Viktor Liashko, noting: “Those 123 are gone, and we’re having to find new sites to build replacements.”
In addition, scores of pharmacies and ambulances have been destroyed or are seriously damaged, and at least 18 civilian medical staff have been killed and 59 others seriously wounded, he said.
“In occupied areas, the referral system has totally broken down,” Liashko told The Associated Press. “People’s health and their lives are in danger.”
Kyiv’s economy was drained by the conflict with Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that began in 2014. When he came to power five years later, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy inherited a health care system that was undermined by reforms launched under his predecessor that had slashed government subsidies and closed many small-town hospitals. During the pandemic, people in those
communities had to seek care in large cities — sometimes waiting as long as eight hours for an ambulance in severe cases of COVID-19.
Read: High-level talks in Ukraine yield little reported progress
As Russia has expanded the territory it controls in eastern and southern Ukraine, the supply of drugs in those areas has dwindled, along with medical staff to administer them. In the southern front-line town of Mykolaiv, “things have been very difficult,” volunteer Andrii Skorokhod said.
“Pharmacies have not been working, and shortages have become increasingly acute: Hospital staff were among those evacuated, including specialists. We just need more staff,” said Skorokhod, who heads a Red Cross initiative to provide residents with free medications.
Volunteers like Skorokhod saved the life of 79-year-old Vanda Banderovska, whose home near Mykolaiv was destroyed by Russian artillery. Her 53-year-old son, Roman, was killed, and she was brought to the hospital badly bruised and barely conscious.
“My son went out to the car to get his mobile phone when the Russians started shelling. He was hit in the head,” she said at a recovery ward, her voice trembling with emotion. “They’ve destroyed everything and I have nothing left.”
Banderovska said she was deeply grateful to the people who saved her life but also overcome by grief and anger.
“The pain I feel is so great. When doctors took me to the hospital I was bruised black and blue but I slowly recovered,” she said.
Finnish PM: No drugs, just lots of dancing at 'wild' party
Finland’s prime minister says she did not take any drugs during a “wild” party in a private home, adding she did nothing wrong when letting her hair down and partying with friends.
A video posted on a social media shows six people dancing and mimicking a song in front of a camera, including Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin. Later in the video, Marin, 36, is on her knees on what seems to be the dance floor with her arms behind her head dancing while mimicking a song.
“I’m disappointed that it has become public. I spent the evening with friends. Partied, pretty wild, yes. Danced and sang,” she was quoted Thursday as saying by Finnish broadcaster YLE.
“I have not used drugs myself, or anything other than alcohol. I’ve danced, sung and partied and done perfectly legal things. I have also not been in a situation where I would know that others are doing it that way,” Marin said, according to the Hufvudstadsbladet newspaper.
It was unclear when the party, which reportedly was attended by Ilmari Nurminen, a member of Eduskunta, or parliament, for Marin's Social Democratic Party, and the Finnish singer Alma, was held.
Read:Turkey again asks Sweden, Finland to extradite suspects
Marin — who in December 2019 became Finland’s youngest prime minister ever — said she spends her free time with friends just like others her age and that she intends to continue being the same person as before.
“I hope that’s accepted. We live in a democracy and in elections everyone can decide these issues,” she said, according to YLE.
Critics have pointed out that Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer (832-mile) land border with Russia, faces high electricity prices, among other issues from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The country recently dropped its long-neutral stance and asked to join NATO.
In July, Marin attended a popular Finnish rock festival. In December she made a public apology after going out clubbing until 4 a.m. without her work phone, hence failing to be informed that she had been in close contact with a COVID-19 positive person. She didn't test positive.
Bomb threats put tiny Moldova, Ukraine's neighbor, on edge
For tiny Moldova, an impoverished, landlocked nation that borders war-torn Ukraine but isn't in the European Union or NATO, it's been another week plagued by bomb threats.
On an overcast day outside the international airport serving Moldova's capital of Chisinau, hundreds of people lined up this week as bomb-sniffing dogs examined the vicinity. That's now a common scene in Europe’s poorest nation as it battles what observers believe are attempts to destabilize the former Soviet republic amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Since the beginning of July, Moldova has received nearly 60 bomb threats — with more than 15 reported so far this week — at locations ranging from the capital’s city hall, to the airport, the supreme court, shopping malls and hospitals.
While no one has yet been charged for the bomb threats, most of which have arrived via email and all of which have turned out to be false, officials say they have traced computer addresses to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
“It is part of the disinformation war against Moldova, which is ongoing,” said Valeriu Pasa, an analyst at the Chisinau think tank Watchdog.md. “It could be part of the Russian effort to destabilize Moldova, as they use many different methods to do so.”
Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Moldova, which has a population of 2.6 million people, has faced a multitude of crises. It has received more Ukrainian refugees per capita than any other country; tensions have soared in the country's Russia-backed breakaway region; it is dealing with an acute energy crisis; and like much of Europe it is battling skyrocketing inflation.
The frequent bomb threats are only adding pressure to the country's already overstretched authorities.
“It blocks a lot of the resources — police, investigators, technical services — it’s a type of bullying I would say, or harassment, of Moldovan state systems and public services,” Pasa said.
Maxim Motinga, a prosecutor from Moldova’s Office for Combating Organized Crime, told The Associated Press that since the bomb threats started “practically every day we open criminal cases.”
Read:High-level talks in Ukraine yield little reported progress
“At the moment, all criminal investigations are ongoing,” he said, adding that requests have been made for official assistance from Russia and Ukraine if “certain tracks leading to the respective countries were established.”
“I hope we get some answers from those countries,” he said.
For Veaceslav Belbas, a 43-year-old Moldovan businessman returning from Turkey to Chisinau on Monday, a bomb threat left him frightened as his plane circled the capital’s airport for 30 minutes. After that, the plane did a U-turn and went back to Turkey.
“We prayed a lot and finally landed,” he said. “For me, it was such a big shock that I told my wife that this is my last flight.”
Tensions in Moldova soared in April after a series of actual explosions occurred in the Russia-backed breakaway region of Transnistria, where Russia bases about 1,500 troops in a so-called frozen conflict zone. It raised fears that non-NATO, militarily neutral Moldova could get dragged into Russia’s war orbit. At least one Russian official has spoken openly of snatching enough land in southern Ukraine to link up Russian-controlled areas from the mainland to Transnistria.
Observers pointed out that the blasts came as Moldova — which has historically close ties with Moscow — showed a growing Western orientation and after it had applied to join the EU, which it did shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. It was granted EU candidate status in late June, shortly before the bomb threats started.
Since Moldova gained independence in 1991, it has been plagued by organized crime and official corruption. After an election in 2019, a local oligarch attempted to seize power, which triggered mass protests before he fled the country. In 2014, several politicians and oligarchs had alleged ties to a scam in which $1 billion vanished from local banks. No one has yet been convicted in that case.
Galina Gheorghes was returning to England from Moldova last month after attending a family get-together when a bomb threat canceled her flight. She says she is angry that no one has yet been caught.
“It is very bad what’s happening … unfortunately, the ordinary people suffer,” the 35-year-old Gheorghes said.
Amid a seemingly endless pattern of disruptive and costly threats, Moldova’s Internal Ministry said it wants to toughen punishments for anyone convicted of false bomb alerts by ramping up fines and handing out lengthier prison sentences.
Chisinau Airport has been hit by dozens of bomb threats since July and has bolstered security in response. Radu Zanoaga, head of border police at the airport, says a specialist unit has been established to save security officials the trouble of traveling in from the city center each time a bomb threat is made.
“At the moment, we are dealing with the situation in cooperation with other (state) bodies and institutions that operate within the airport,” he said. “There have been bomb alerts before — but not as many and not as frequent as now.”
China's response to Pelosi visit a sign of future intentions
China's response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan was anything but subtle — dispatching warships and military aircraft to all sides of the self-governing island democracy, and firing ballistic missiles into the waters nearby.
The dust has still not settled, with Taiwan this week conducting drills of its own and Beijing announcing it has more maneuvers planned, but experts say a lot can already be gleaned from what China has done, and has not done, so far. China will also be drawing lessons on its own military capabilities from the exercises, which more closely resembled what an actual strike on the island claimed by Beijing as its own territory would look like, and from the American and Taiwanese response.
During the nearly weeklong maneuvers that followed Pelosi's early August visit, China sailed ships and flew aircraft regularly across the median line in the Taiwan Strait, claiming the de facto boundary did not exist, fired missiles over Taiwan itself, and challenged established norms by firing missiles into Japan's exclusive economic zone.
“I think we are in for a risky period of testing boundaries and finding out who can achieve escalatory dominance across the diplomatic, military and economic domains,” said David Chen, an analyst with CENTRA Technology, a U.S.-based consulting firm.
Pelosi was the highest-level member of the U.S. government to visit Taiwan in 25 years, and her visit came at a particularly sensitive time, as Chinese President Xi Jinping prepares to seek a third five-year term as leader of the ruling Communist Party later this year.
Under Xi, China has been increasingly forceful in declaring that Taiwan must be brought under its control — by force if necessary — and U.S. military officials have said that Beijing may seek a military solution within the next few years.
Tensions were already high, with China conducting regular military flights near Taiwan and the U.S. routinely sailing warships through the Taiwan Strait to emphasize they are international waters.
China accuses the U.S. of encouraging the island’s independence through the sale of weapons and engagement between U.S. politicians and the island’s government.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying called Pelosi’s visit a “serious provocation” and accused Washington of breaking the status quo and “interfering in China’s internal affairs.”
“China is not the old China of 120 years ago, and we are not Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan — we will not allow any foreign force to bully, suppress or enslave us,” she told reporters in Beijing. “Whoever wants to do so will be on a collision course with the Great Wall of steel forged by the 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
The U.S. continues to insist it has not deviated from its “one-China” policy, recognizing the government in Beijing while allowing for informal relations and defense ties with Taipei.
China held off on its maneuvers until Pelosi had left Taiwan, and turned back its forces before they approached Taiwan's coast or territorial airspace, which showed a “modicum of restraint,” Chen said. But, he noted, another congressional visit following Pelosi's triggered the announcement of more exercises.
“We are likely entering a period of regular military demonstrations in and around China’s maritime domain," he said.
“The Chinese Communist Party is also quite capable in creating cross-domain responses, as has been seen in the cyber realm. Beyond that, we could see escalatory moves in space, in the South China Sea, Africa, the Indian Ocean, or the South Pacific.”
Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said the scale and coordination of the exercises suggested China was looking past Taiwan toward establishing dominance in the western Pacific. That would include controlling the East and South China Seas via the Taiwan Strait, and having the capability to impose a blockade to prevent the U.S. and its allies from coming to the aid of Taiwan in the event of an attack.
Short of an armed conflict, a blockade of the Taiwan Strait — a significant thoroughfare for global trade — could have major implications for international supply chains at a time when the world is already facing disruptions.
In particular, Taiwan is a crucial provider of computer chips for the global economy.
Though ostensibly a reaction to Pelosi's visit, it is clear China's exercises had been long planned, said Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow in the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund think tank.
“I do think they were looking for an opportunity to escalate,” she said. “This is not something you prep after the announcement (of the visit) and then pull off that quickly and that easily.”
Read:China sets sanctions on Taiwan figures to punish US, island
The U.S. held back throughout the maneuvers, keeping an aircraft carrier group and two amphibious assault ships at sail in the region, but not close to the island. Taiwan avoided any active countermeasures.
Kurt Campbell, the Biden administration's coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs, said this week that the U.S. was taking a “calm and resolute” long-view approach that would include continued transits of the Taiwan Strait, supporting Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, and otherwise deepening ties with the island.
To that end, the U.S. announced Thursday that it was opening talks with Taiwan on a wide-ranging trade agreement.
Campbell said Washington sees China’s actions as “part of an intensified pressure campaign against Taiwan, which has not ended.”
“We expect it to continue to unfold in the coming weeks and months,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Defense has acknowledged China’s increasingly capable military, saying it has become a true rival and has already surpassed the American military in some areas, including shipbuilding, and now has the world’s largest navy.
The reserved American response to the recent exercises seemed calculated to avoid any accidental confrontation that could have escalated the situation, but could also feed China’s confidence, Ohlberg said.
“The base of China’s thinking is that the U.S. is in decline and that China is on the rise, and I guess the response would have been seen in Beijing as confirming that thinking,” she said.
The U.S. and China came perhaps the closest to blows in 1996, when China, irked by what it saw as increasing American support for Taiwan, fired missiles into the waters some 30 kilometers (20 miles) from Taiwan’s coast ahead of Taiwan’s first popular presidential election.
The U.S. responded with its own show of force, sending two aircraft carrier groups to the region. At the time, China had no aircraft carriers and little means to threaten the American ships, and it backed down.
China subsequently embarked on a massive modernization of its military and the recent exercises demonstrate a “quantum leap” of improvement from 1996, showing a joint command and control coordination not seen before, Chen said.
Before being confident enough to launch an actual invasion of Taiwan, however, the Chinese military still needs to do more to assure the country’s political leadership it would be successful, he said.
“These latest exercises are probably part of proving that capability, but more needs to be hammered out before they could be confident in conducting a full-scale Taiwan amphibious invasion,” he said. “They’ve only demonstrated the maritime blockade and air control parts of that campaign, without opposition.”
Following the visit, China released an updated “white paper” on Taiwan outlining how it envisioned an eventual annexation of the island would look.
It said it would follow the “one country, two systems” format applied in Hong Kong, which critics say has been undermined by a sweeping national security law that asserts Beijing’s control over speech and political participation. The concept has been thoroughly rejected in Taiwanese public opinion polls in which respondents have overwhelmingly favored their current de facto independence.
Tellingly, the new white paper discarded a pledge in its previous iteration not to send troops or government officials to an annexed Taiwan.
China has refused all contact with Taiwan’s government since shortly after the 2016 election of President Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party. Tsai was overwhelmingly reelected in 2020.
China's bellicose response to Pelosi's visit may have the unintended effect of strengthening the DPP in midterm elections later this year, said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the College of International Affairs at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University.
Ideally, it would be in Taiwan's best interest if both sides backed off and found “reasoned ways” to settle differences, he said.
“There’s an old saying that when two big elephants fight, the ant and the grass suffer,” he said.
Sri Lanka hopes to reach initial agreement with IMF for help
Sri Lanka's central bank chief said Thursday he hopes the government can reach a preliminary agreement that could lead to a bailout package with the International Monetary Fund when its officials visit the crisis-hit island nation later this month.
The Indian Ocean country is effectively bankrupt and its economic crisis set off massive public protests that led to the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa last month. The government has said the crisis has made the negotiations with the IMF difficult.
Nandalal Weerasinghe, the governor of Sri Lanka's central bank, said he hoped IMF officials and Sri Lanka's government could “finalize and reach a staff-level agreement" on the policy package during their meetings.
Sri Lanka announced in April that it is suspending repayment of foreign loans. Its total foreign debt is $51 billion, of which it must pay $28 billion by 2027. The country has said it needs to restructure all of its debt.
Weerasinghe told reporters Thursday that the agreement being sought with the IMF would give them “a clear picture on debt sustainability and debt targets for us to achieve in the next 10 years.”
Once an agreement is reached, Weerasinghe said, Sri Lanka would approach sovereign bond holders and other external creditors.
"We hope all our creditors will support Sri Lanka once they see the strong macro program endorsed by the IMF," he said.
Sri Lanka’s new President Ranil Wickremesinghe said two weeks ago that his government had initiated negotiations with the IMF on a four-year rescue plan and had commenced the finalization of a debt restructuring plan.
However, Wickremesinghe also said negotiations with the IMF have been difficult because of Sri Lanka’s bankruptcy and that an expected early August target for an agreement with the agency was not possible. It is now expected in September.
Read: Sri Lanka leader proposes 25-year plan for crisis-hit nation
Wickremesinghe was elected last month to complete the rest of Rajapaksa’s five-year term, which ends in 2024. Rajapaksa resigned in exile and is now in Thailand.
The protesters blamed Rajapakasa and his powerful family for years of mismanagement and corruption that have bankrupted the nation and led to unprecedented shortages of essential imports like fuel, medicine and cooking gas.
Wickremesinghe’s government is preparing a national policy roadmap for the next 25 years that aims to cut public debt and turn the country into a competitive export economy.
Wickremesinghe has stressed that Sri Lanka needs long-term solutions and a strong foundation to stop a recurrence of economic crises.
Two weeks ago, he said the hardships had eased somewhat with reduced power cuts, fertilizers being brought in for cultivation and cooking gas distribution improving.
But many people complain that price hikes of most essential items are unbearable.
Prices of most essentials have tripled in recent months and most people are struggling to pay for basic needs. About 70% of Sri Lankan households surveyed by UNICEF in May reported cutting back on food consumption. Many families rely on government rice handouts and charitable donations.
Separately Thursday, police fired tear gas and used water canons to disperse university students who were walking in a protest march in the capital Colombo, demanding that Wickremesinghe resign. Local television channels showed police arresting some of the protesters.
Protestors accused Wickremesinghe of being a surrogate of Rajapaksa and trying to suppress the rights of the people to protest.
They paraded along the main roads in the Colombo, shouting slogans and displaying banners that read “Go Ranil Go, get lost with ALL Rajapaksas,” “Stop Suppression and “Release all the arrested protestors.”
Since his election, Wickremesinghe has authorized the military and police to violently dismantle protest camps in Colombo and arrest those they identified to have trespassed in the president’s official residence and other state buildings.
Rights groups have accused Sri Lanka’s government of using emergency laws to harass and arbitrarily detain protesters who are seeking political reform and accountability.
However, Wickremesinghe has said that although the protests started peacefully, groups with political interests took over later and became violent, citing the burning of dozens of ruling party politicians’ homes in May.
Officials: At least 2 die after planes collide in California
Two small planes collided in Northern California while trying to land at a local airport Thursday and at least two of the three occupants were killed, officials said.
The planes crashed at Watsonville Municipal Airport shortly before 3 p.m., according to a tweet from the city of Watsonville. The city-owned airport does not have a control tower to direct aircraft landing and taking off.
There were two people aboard a twin-engine Cessna 340 and only the pilot aboard a single-engine Cessna 152 during the crash, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Officials say multiple fatalities were reported but it was not immediately clear whether anyone survived.
The pilots were on their final approaches to the airport before the collision, the FAA said in a statement. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board, which did not immediately have additional details, are investigating the crash.
No one on the ground was injured. The airport has four runways and is home to more than 300 aircraft, according to its website. It handles more than 55,000 operations a year and is used often for recreational planes and agriculture businesses.
Watsonville, near the Monterey Bay, is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of San Francisco.
Read: Ukrainian cargo plane crashes in Greece
Photos and videos posted on social media showed the wreckage of one small plane in a grassy field by the airport. One picture showed a plume of smoke visible from a street near the airport.
A photo from the city of Watsonville showed damage to a small building at the airport, with firefighters on the scene.
The planes were about 200 feet (61 meters) in the air when they crashed, a witness told the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
Franky Herrera was driving past the airport when he saw the twin-engine plane bank hard to the right and hit the wing of the smaller aircraft, which “just spiraled down and crashed” near the edge of the airfield and not far from homes, he told the newspaper.
The twin-engine aircraft kept flying but “it was struggling,” Herrera said, and then he saw flames at the other side of the airport.
The manager of the Watsonville Municipal Airport was unavailable for a phone interview in the hours after the crash. The airport accounts for about 40% of all general aviation activities in the Monterey Bay area, according to the City of Watsonville’s website.
The Watsonville Police Department referred calls to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, where a dispatcher had no information.
Two other pilots also were hurt in aircraft crashes elsewhere in California on Thursday.
A 65-year-old San Diego man received injuries that were major but not life-threatening when his single-engine plane crashed on a street near a busy freeway overpass in El Cajon, authorities said.
The plane reportedly struck an SUV but nobody on the ground was hurt in the city nearly 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of downtown San Diego.
Later, the pilot of an ultralight aircraft was critically injured when it crashed upside down on a building at the Camarillo Airport in Ventura County, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) from downtown Los Angeles.
High-level talks in Ukraine yield little reported progress
Turkey's leader and the U.N. chief met in Ukraine with President Volodymr Zelenskyy on Thursday in a high-powered bid to ratchet down a war raging for nearly six months. But little immediate progress was reported.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would follow up with Russian President Vladimir Putin, given that most of the matters discussed would require the Kremlin's agreement.
With the meetings held at such a high level — it was the first visit to Ukraine by Erdogan since the war began, and the second by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres — some had hoped for breakthroughs, if not toward an overall peace, then at least on specific issues. But none was apparent.
Meeting in the western city of Lviv, far from the front lines, the leaders discussed expanding exchanges of prisoners of war and arranging for U.N. atomic energy experts to visit and help secure Europe's biggest nuclear power plant, which is in the middle of fierce fighting that has raised fears of catastrophe.
Erdogan has positioned himself as a go-between in efforts to stop the fighting. While Turkey is a member of NATO, its wobbly economy is reliant on Russia for trade, and it has tried to steer a middle course between the two combatants.
The Turkish president urged the international community after the talks not to abandon diplomatic efforts to end the war that has killed tens of thousands and forced more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes.
He repeated that Turkey is willing to act as “mediator and facilitator” and added, “I remain convinced that the war will end at the negotiating table.”
In March, Turkey hosted talks in Istanbul between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators that failed to end the hostilities.
On the battlefield, meanwhile, at least 17 people were killed overnight in heavy Russian missile strikes on Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Ukrainian authorities said Thursday.
Russia's military claimed that it struck a base for foreign mercenaries in Kharkiv, killing 90. There was no immediate comment from the Ukrainian side.
Read:Ukraine’s Zelenskyy hosts talks with UN chief, Turkey leader
In the latest incident on Russian soil near the border with Ukraine, an ammunition dump caught fire in a village in the Belgorod region, the regional governor said. No casualties were reported. Video posted online, whose authenticity couldn’t be verified, showed orange flames and black smoke, with the sound of multiple explosions.
Elsewhere, Russian officials reported that anti-aircraft defenses shot down drones in the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula at Kerch and near the Belbek airfield in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol. Explosions in recent weeks on the peninsula have destroyed warplanes and caused other damage at military airfields.
Heightening international tensions, Russia deployed warplanes carrying state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles to its Kaliningrad region, an enclave surrounded by NATO members Lithuania and Poland.
One major topic at the talks in Lviv was the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine. Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of shelling the complex.
Condemning the Kremlin for what he called "nuclear blackmail,” Zelenskyy demanded that Russian troops leave the plant and that a team from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency be allowed in.
“The area needs to be demilitarized, and we must tell it as it is: Any potential damage in Zaporizhzhia is suicide,” Guterres said at a news conference.
Erdogan likewise expressed concern over the fighting around the plant, saying, “We don’t want to experience another Chernobyl" — a reference to the world’s worst nuclear accident, in Ukraine in 1986.
Zelenskyy and the U.N. chief agreed Thursday on arrangements for an IAEA mission to the plant, according to the president's website. But it was not immediately clear whether the Kremlin would consent to the terms. As for a pullout of troops, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said earlier that that would leave the plant “vulnerable."
Fears mounted Thursday when Russian and Ukrainian authorities accused each other of plotting to attack the site and then blame the other side. Late Thursday, multiple rounds of Ukrainian shelling struck the city in which the power plant is located, a Russian official reported.
Guterres used the talks in Lviv to name Gen. Carlos dos Santos Cruz of Brazil to lead a previously announced U.N. fact-finding mission to the Olenivka prison where 53 Ukrainian POWs were killed in an explosion in July. Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for the blast.
Also on the agenda Thursday: an increase in grain exports. Earlier this summer, the U.N. and Turkey brokered an agreement clearing the way for Ukraine to export 22 million tons of corn and other grain stuck in its Black Sea ports since the Russian invasion.
The blockage has worsened world food shortages, driven up prices and heightened fears of famine, especially in Africa. Yet even with the deal, only a trickle of Ukrainian grain has made it out — some 600,000 tons by Turkey's estimate.
Zelenskyy said Thursday that he proposed expanding the shipments. Guterres, for his part, touted the operation's success but added, “There is a long way to go before this will be translated into the daily life of people at their local bakery and in their markets.”
Monkeypox cases cross 35,000: WHO
Monkeypox infections continue to rise globally, with more than 35,000 cases across 92 countries and territories, and 12 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Almost 7,500 cases were reported last week, a 20 percent increase over the previous week, which was also 20 percent more than the week before, UN health agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday in Geneva.
The majority of cases are being reported from Europe and the Americas, and mostly among men who have sex with men.
The primary focus for all countries must be to ensure they are ready for monkeypox and to stop transmission using effective public health tools, including enhanced disease surveillance, careful contact tracing, tailored risk communication and community engagement, and risk reduction measures, Tedros said.
Currently, global supplies of monkeypox vaccines are limited, as is data about their effectiveness.
The WHO is in contact with manufacturers, and with countries and organizations willing to share vaccine doses, Tedros said.
"We remain concerned that the inequitable access to vaccines we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic will be repeated, and that the poorest will continue to be left behind," he added.