Daily Archives: September 15, 2022

Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif met with Kyrgyzstan President Sadyr Zhaparov on the sidelines of SCO Council of Heads of State meeting in Samarkand, on Thursday and exchanged views on growing bilateral relations.

The Kyrgyz President expressed sympathies and condolences over the loss of precious lives and damage to property in the massive floods in Pakistan caused by climate change.

The Prime Minister thanked President Zhaparov for the expression of solidarity and shared details of the devastation resulting from the unprecedented floods. He also stressed the importance of urgent global action to address the threat of climate change and the need for support to countries like Pakistan that had virtually no contribution to carbon emissions.

The two leaders underscored the need for closer cooperation in trade, investments, energy and people-to-people contacts. The leaders accorded particular focus to further strengthening of high-level exchanges, inter-parliamentary relations, and defence and security ties.

The leaders agreed to convene the next meeting of the Joint Ministerial Commission at the earliest. They also reiterated their resolve for timely completion of the “CASA-1000” power transmission project.

The Prime Minister reaffirmed Pakistan’s readiness to facilitate Kyrgyz Republic’s access to the sea through Gwadar and Karachi ports. He also welcomed resumption of chartered flights between the two countries.

The Prime Minister thanked for hosting more than 11,000 Pakistani students in medical universities of the Kyrgyz Republic and hoped that the Kyrgyz government will continue to facilitate them and ensure their safety and security during the period of their educational stay in the country.

The two sides agreed to maintain regular high-level contacts.

The Prime Minister extended an invitation to President Zhaparov to visit Pakistan at an early date.

Source: Radio Pakistan

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he understands that China has “questions and concerns” about Moscow’s military action in Ukraine, as he held talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Uzbekistan.

China has publicly adopted a neutral stance on Russia’s seven-month invasion, even as Xi has said that one of Beijing’s core foreign policy principles is that countries should respect one another’s borders.

In televised remarks at the start of their talks in Samarkand, Putin told Xi, “We highly value the balanced position of our Chinese friends regarding the Ukrainian crisis. We understand your questions and concerns on this matter, and during today’s meeting, we will of course clarify all of these in detail.”

Putin’s remarks came as Ukraine in recent days has swiftly recaptured vast swaths of territory in the northeast region that Russia had claimed in the earliest weeks of the war, which Moscow continues to call a “special military operation.”

Putin assailed what he characterized as the American-dominated “unipolar” world that he sees Russia and China jointly aligned against.

“We jointly stand for the formation of a just, democratic and multipolar world order based on international law and the central role of the U.N., and not on some rules that someone has come up with and is trying to impose on others, without even explaining what it’s about,” Putin said.

“In general, I must say that the attempts to create a unipolar world have recently acquired an absolutely ugly shape and are absolutely unacceptable for the vast majority of states on the planet,” he continued.

Beijing did not release any immediate comment on the talks, but a transcript of the opening remarks released by the Kremlin quoted Xi as saying, “We are ready, together with our Russian colleagues, to set an example of a responsible world power and play a leading role in bringing such a rapidly changing world onto a trajectory of sustainable and positive development.”

The transcript did not include any comments by Xi about Ukraine or U.S.-dominated NATO, the West’s key military alliance that has sent billions of dollars in armaments to Ukraine to help fend off the Russian invasion.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told VOA on Thursday, “We made clear months ago now of information that was available to us suggesting that the Russian Federation was seeking assistance, military assistance from the PRC [People’s Republic of China] for its war against Ukraine.

“We made very clear to the PRC, both in public but also at the highest levels, the highest levels, that we will be watching very closely in any PRC effort to provide military assistance to Russia, or to help Russia on a systematic basis, circumvent the sanctions that had been put in place would incur significant costs,” Price said, “and we have not seen any change on the part of the PRC.”

Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a global issues think tank in Washington, told VOA’s Mandarin service, “China is not committed to support the Russian war in Ukraine. That will not change. But the China-Russia relations are so much broader than just the war in Ukraine, and China will advance those.”

David Sacks, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA that Putin’s acknowledgement that China had “questions and concerns” about its invasion of Ukraine “is somewhat surprising because it shows that there could be a little bit of daylight between Russia and China, and it reveals that potentially China has aired some concerns privately about Russia’s conduct in Ukraine.”

Price said it’s “not surprising that these two countries are coming together. We’ve said that President Putin is very clear in looking for every conceivable lifeline he can find.”

“He’s turning to countries like the DPRK [North Korea], he is turning to countries like Iran in the process. And when it comes to Russia and the PRC, it’s true that they share a vision for the world,” he added.

Putin and Xi held talks on the sidelines of a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security alliance that includes China, Russia, India, Pakistan and four Central Asian nations.

Putin also met Thursday with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, whose country is planning to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Raisi said Moscow and Tehran are completing a major treaty that would bring their relations to a “strategic level.”

Source: Voice of America

Pakistani engineers and soldiers cleared a key highway Thursday to enable aid workers to speed supplies to survivors of devastating floods that have left hundreds of thousands homeless and killed 1,508 people, the majority of them women and children.

Traffic between the flood-hit city of Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, and the southern Sindh province had been suspended for weeks after floods damaged the key highway. The blockage had forced the military to deliver aid to victims by helicopters and boats.

As they reopened the route, engineers in Baluchistan also restored the power supply for millions, according to a government statement. And the disaster’s deadly toll became clearer, with the United Nations’ children agency saying Thursday that 528 children were among those killed in the floods.

The National Flood Response and Coordination Centre said this summer’s monsoons and the flooding — the worst-ever deluge in living memory — destroyed 390 bridges and washed away more than 12,000 kilometers of roads across the country. The inundation of roads affected the government’s response to the floods, and people complained they were still waiting, weeks later, for the government’s help.

The crisis has affected more than 33 million people, damaged 1.8 million houses and displaced at least half a million people who are still living in tents and makeshift homes, according to the National Disaster Management Agency. The water has destroyed 70% of wheat, cotton and other crops in Pakistan. At one point, a third of the country’s territory was submerged under flood water.

But the government in a statement Thursday insisted there was no shortage of food in Pakistan and that plans are being drawn up for imports of certain food items.

Initially, Pakistan estimated that the floods caused $10 billion in damages, but now several economists say the cost of the damages is more like $30 billion. That’s five times more than what Pakistan’s government will get under the 2019 bailout signed with the International Monetary Fund.

So far, 100 flights from different countries and international aid agencies have delivered the much-needed supplies, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday. The U.N. weeks ago urged the international community to generously help in relief, rescue and rehabilitation work.

On Wednesday, the U.N. resident coordinator in Pakistan, Julien Harneis, told reporters that the member states had so far committed $150 million in response to an emergency appeal for $160 million. So far, he said, $38 million pledges from the world community had been converted into assistance for Pakistan.

On Thursday, Palitha Gunarathna Mahipala, the representative of the World Health Organization in Pakistan, handed over medical equipment and medicines for flood victims to the provincial Health Minister Azra Fazal Pechuho in Karachi, the capital of Sindh, the country’s province worst hit by the floods.

Mahipala said at a news conference that he had visited flood-affected areas where the WHO’s staff was on the ground, providing medical camps and mobile medical clinics. He said WHO will soon provide more aid, vehicles and boats to the Sindh government so that officials could use them to reach flood victims in remote areas.

Also, WHO has for the past several weeks been helping Pakistan in tackling the outbreak of waterborne and other diseases among flood victims in Sindh and elsewhere in the country.

The impoverished nation is diverting funds allocated for development projects to help flood victims. Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif this week promised the country’s homeless people that the government will ensure they are paid to rebuild and return to their lives. With winter just weeks away, displaced people living in tents are worried about their future.

Source: Voice of America