washington — For a possible summit between Pyongyang and Tokyo to be successful, it would have to address the issues of abduction and North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs, said analysts.

Although Pyongyang refuses to engage in talks with Washington and Seoul, it is showing a rare openness to talks with Japan, which has been working closely with South Korea in a tripartite pact with the U.S.

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said Pyongyang is open to improving relations with Tokyo and dangled a prospect for a possible summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. But she said there are caveats.

She continued in a statement released through North Korea’s state-run KCNA on February 15 that Japan would have to put aside the abduction issue that Pyongyang views as “settled” and its nuclear and missile programs that have “nothing to do” with mending ties.

“Declaring the abduction issue resolved is a nonstarter for Japan,” said Nick Szechenyi, a senior fellow and Japan chair and deputy director for Asia at the Center for Security and International Studies (CSIS), on Wednesday.

“There is a solid rationale for Japan-North Korea diplomacy” as “China is missing in action on the North Korea challenge and Kim Jong Un is ignoring South Korea and the United States,” he told VOA via email.

“Japan is the only player with a chance to engage, but Kim would have to address the abduction issue as well as his ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs,” Szechenyi added.

For Tokyo, the abduction issue remains unresolved, and it has long sought to repatriate Japanese abductees it believes to be remaining in North Korea. Japan identified 17 of its citizens abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.

Among them, North Korea sent five people back to Japan after then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, met in Pyongyang in 2002 and announced a joint declaration to normalize relations.

North Korea claims eight of the remaining 12 died and has said that four people listed by Japan were never abducted.

‘Integral part’

Shihoko Goto, Asia program director at the Wilson Center, said, “For Tokyo, the abduction issue must be an integral part of any discussion with Pyongyang.”

She continued via email on Wednesday, “A meeting would also include addressing denuclearization and North Korea’s ambitions.”

Kim Yo Jong did not mention in her statement last week what Pyongyang seeks from Tokyo, other than to highlight the importance of mending their ties.

At a press briefing on February 16, Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan’s chief Cabinet secretary who also serves as the minister in charge of the abduction issue, said Kim Yo Jong’s remarks on the abduction issue as settled was “totally unacceptable,” according to Japanese press reports.

But Hayashi said in a statement he would welcome Kishida’s possible visit to Pyongyang, the report continued.

Kishida underlined the urgency for building top-level consultations with North Korea, with a goal of having a summit with Kim, when he spoke to parliament on January 30.

“The abduction issue is one of the highest-priority issues for my administration” and “nuclear and missile development by North Korea is totally unacceptable,” said Kishida as he stressed “realizing summit-level talks” with Kim.

James Przystup, senior fellow and Japan chair at the Hudson Institute, said, “For Kishida to agree to a summit without demonstrating progress on resolving the abductee issue would be a diplomatic and political disaster for him and Japan,” and “the U.S. will support his efforts.”

A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council told VOA’s Korean Service on February 16 that the U.S. supports Japan’s outreach to North Korea and its trilateral cooperation with Tokyo and Seoul remains “strong.”

Przystup continued via email on Wednesday, “From a U.S., ROK and Japan perspective, denuclearization should be on any summit agenda, but I can’t see North Korea agreeing to take that issue up. Pyongyang has made very clear repeatedly that the nuclear and missile programs will continue.” Republic of Korea (ROK) is the official English name for South Korea.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing on Tuesday that “full denuclearization” is the U.S. policy goal for North Korea.

Szechenyi at CSIS said, “It is hard to imagine Kim Jong Un uttering the term ‘denuclearization’ at this point, but that is still the objective.”

He continued, “At the very least, North Korea would have to consider halting the current cycle of provocations for the dialogue to be meaningful.”

Andrew Yeo, the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies at Brookings Institution, said via email on Wednesday, “At this stage, a Kishida-Kim summit seems unlikely, although Japan may be exploring its options.”

He continued via email on Wednesday, “It’ll be important for the Kishida government to consult with counterparts in Seoul and Washington to ensure that North Korea doesn’t try to divide allies.”

Jiha Ham and Sangjin Cho contributed to this report.
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ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Taliban authorities publicly executed two men Thursday who had been convicted of murder in separate incidents.

The Taliban’s Supreme Court said the executions, by gunshot, were carried out in a football stadium in the southeastern city of Ghazni.

A large number of justice and government officials, as well as residents, witnessed the event, but no one was allowed to bring cellular phones or cameras to the stadium.

The court statement said the two put to death were tried and found guilty of fatally stabbing two people. It added that the judicial order was enforced after the Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, approved it.

The Taliban have executed four people and flogged around 350 others, including women, in front of hundreds of onlookers since reclaiming power in August 2021 and imposing their harsh interpretation of Islamic law. Female victims were mostly accused of crimes such as adultery and running away from homes.

The United Nations has criticized the punishments as violations of human rights, saying they run counter to international law and must stop.

The Taliban have rejected the criticism, saying their criminal justice system and governance at large are based on Islamic rules and guidelines.

Public floggings and executions were routine under the previous Taliban government in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

Afghan authorities have imposed sweeping restrictions on women’s rights to education and public life. They have barred female visitors from parks and gyms and forbidden girls from attending schools beyond the sixth grade.

The Taliban have ignored international outcry and calls for removing curbs on women. The treatment of women has mainly deterred foreign governments from recognizing the Taliban administration in Kabul.

A U.N. expert panel this week called for other countries to officially recognize “gender apartheid” as a crime against humanity, highlighting the oppression of women and girls under regimes like the Taliban in Afghanistan.
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ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN — Kazakhstan has a new government with a big mandate from President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev – to clean up the fallout from years of corruption while delivering a huge boost in the size of the economy over the next five years.

Tokayev accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov and his government on Feb. 5 in what was seen as a bid to consolidate his power two years after deadly unrest rocked the country.

The next day, Tokayev replaced Smailov with his 43-year-old chief of staff, Olzhas Bektenov, who had previously served as the country’s corruption czar.  

Smailov became prime minister in January 2022 after an earlier government was dismissed for increasing fuel prices, a move that sparked protests that turned violent and resulted in at least 238 deaths.

Smailov was considered a compromise figure to ease the transition from a political setup in which long-time ruler Nursultan Nazarbayev still exercised enormous powers through his chairmanship of the Security Council — a body that had the power to overrule presidential decisions — despite having resigned the presidency in 2019.

Tokayev replaced Nazarbayev as chairman of the Security Council days before Smailov’s appointment.

Bektenov is seen as having been picked because of his loyalty to Tokayev, although he has no experience holding executive posts in the government; his anticorruption position was not part of the government.

Moreover, although Tokayev has highlighted Bektenov’s “vast knowledge in the economic sphere and other spheres” and “great organizational skills,” others expressed doubts. 

“He’s loyal to the president and enjoys his trust,” Shalkar Nurseitov, director of the Almaty-based Center for Policy Solutions think tank, told VOA.

With an eye on his own legacy, Tokayev is placing his confidence in Bektenov to deliver an economic revolution that will boost the size of the economy to $450 billion by 2029, when he is due to leave office.

For this to happen, the government calculates that the economy would have to grow, considering exchange rate changes and other factors, by at least 6% annually over the coming years – an ambitious target that the former government was clearly not going to deliver, experts say. The country’s gross domestic product grew by 5.1% last year.

After Smailov’s government resigned, the president leveled a host of criticisms at the former Cabinet, complaining about the low efficiency of the budget, tax policies, and government spending of public funds. He also accused it of focusing too much on immediate problems rather than pursuing long-term strategies.

“The efficiency of the budget and tax policy should be radically improved. … This means the government still faces an objective of efficiently managing budget and making quality forecasts for budget parameters,” Tokayev said. 

“Another systemic problem is the way the budget is spent, because it doesn’t promote economic activity, but money is spent on solving immediate problems, while strategic goals take a back seat,” he said while chairing the new government’s meeting Feb. 7. 

Retreat from tax reform proposal

Bektenov’s government has already retreated from one key proposal of the old Cabinet, to raise Kazakhstan’s value added tax to reduce the budget deficit, estimated at $6.2 billion in 2023. That proposal would have raised the rate from 12% to 16% but without eliminating provisions that allow large companies to claim it back.

Kassymkhan Kapparov, the founder of the Ekonomist.kz economic analysis website, told VOA that the VAT structure benefits mostly large corporations, such as oil giants Chevron and Shell, because as foreign investors or exporters they can claim it back. 

Tokayev criticized the plan to boost the tax because of opposition from business and called for “reforming” it. Bektenov subsequently said the plan would be abandoned, although he did not say what would replace it and he has not said how the government will meet its ambitious growth target. 

“Tokayev’s criticism of VAT sends a message to them [Chevron and other exporters and investors] that this loophole would be closed or their contracts should be renegotiated,” Kapparov said, noting there had been discussions about replacing it with a sales tax.

“Sales tax is more transparent than VAT and it works in the U.S.,” he said.

Bektenov’s performance in his former role as anti-corruption czar, when he was charged with recouping assets illegally appropriated during Nazarbayev’s rule, evidently pleased his boss, who said efforts to claw back illicit assets would continue. As of late last year, the state had recouped some $2.2 billion, including $600 million from abroad, according to government figures.

However, skeptics are not convinced by the Tokayev’s anticorruption drive, which officials tout as part of their efforts to rid Kazakhstan of the legacy of Nazarbayev. The former president fell into disgrace after the violent unrest in 2022, in which some of his associates are believed to have been complicit.

Nurseitov, from the Center for Policy Solutions, pointed to a lack of transparency in the asset return program, with neither the public nor parliament provided with specifics about what the assets are, who appropriated them, and whether those who engaged in wrongdoing faced any repercussions.

 “The main issue is where these assets are being returned to. It looks more like the redistribution of property rather than return of assets to the state coffers because there is no transparency or any information,” he said.

“Tokayev now has to solve all the problems in the system and while attempting to clean all that mess up, placing responsibility on the old regime,” Kapparov said. “Everything that was stolen during Nazarbayev’s rule he would try to bring to light to show that he is different from his predecessor and cares about the state and people.”

With the change of government, Tokayev is trying to emphasize the difference between the old regime and what he bills as his New Kazakhstan.

Part of his strategy is to tackle some of the economic problems that sparked the socioeconomic grievances that brought the public out onto the streets in 2022.

Although he has instituted some political reforms over the last two years, analysts say he is not rooting out the authoritarianism that is Nazarbayev’s main legacy.

“We don’t see the main fight against the most important legacy – authoritarianism. On the contrary, the current authorities aim to benefit from this system,” Nurseitov said, “Only the frontman and his entourage have changed.”
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New Delhi — Indian farmers paused their protest march for two days after clashes with police left one protester dead, the protest leaders said Wednesday.

Indian police used tear gas and water cannons earlier Wednesday to disperse thousands of protesting farmers as they attempted to resume a march to the capital, New Delhi, after negotiations with the government failed to resolve a deadlock over their demands for guaranteed crop prices.  

A young farmer, Subhkaran Singh, 21, died of what appeared to be a bullet wound to his head. He arrived at a local hospital with two other protesters, who also appeared to have bullet wounds. They are in stable condition.

Farmers’ leader Sarwan Singh Pandher told reporters one person had been killed and others injured, but Haryana state police denied anyone died. 

It is the second time the police used tear gas to thwart attempts by farmers to reach Delhi since they launched their protest on Feb. 13.  

Farmers mounted on tractors came equipped with masks and gloves to protect themselves from the tear gas at Shambhu, about 200 kilometers from Delhi, where thousands have gathered. 

Some had also brought bulldozers and excavators to dismantle barricades erected along highways, but hundreds of security personnel lined both sides of the highway and prevented them from moving ahead. Using loudspeakers, farm leaders urged them to fight for their rights.

Local media showed police using water cannons at farmers at another protest site.

Highways leading to Delhi have been heavily barricaded with concrete blocks, barbed wire and iron spikes to prevent the farmers from laying siege to key roads on the capital’s outskirts as they did during a yearlong mass protest in 2021.

The farmers’ leaders have urged the government to let them enter the capital.

“We will remain peaceful, but we should be allowed to remove these barriers and march towards Delhi,” Pandher told reporters.

Farmers launched their protest last week, accusing the government of failing to meet some promises it made when they called off the protest two years ago.

Four rounds of talks in recent days have failed to break an impasse over their key demand for legislation that would guarantee prices for all crops. The farmers say that would buffer them from market fluctuations and help improve their incomes. 

Currently, the government announces subsidized prices for about two dozen agricultural products each year and buys some crops, such as rice and wheat, at guaranteed prices — a system that began in the 1960s to encourage farmers to sow food grains at a time when India faced severe shortages. 

At the last round of talks, which broke down on Monday, the government had offered to extend price guarantees to some more crops such as pulses, maize and cotton, but that failed to satisfy the farmers.

The government is urging the farmers to continue negotiations.

“After the fourth round, the government is ready to discuss all the issues,” Agriculture Minister Arjun Munda posted on X. “I again invite the farmer leaders for discussion. It is important for us to maintain peace.”

Farmers in India complain of stagnant or dwindling incomes, saying that crop prices have failed to keep pace with rising costs of inputs such as fertilizers and seeds. More than two-thirds of the country is dependent on farm incomes.

The protest is being held months before India holds national elections in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is widely seen as winning a third term in office.

Political analysts said the government is using heavy security to prevent the farmers from reaching the capital because images of tens of thousands of farmers sitting around the capital were “bad optics.”

“If farmers reach the capital, they would get much more media attention just as they did during the last protest in 2021,” political analyst Rasheed Kidwai explained. “Anything happening around Delhi becomes magnified. That is why the government wants to control the protest away from the city.” 
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new york — A leader of a Japan-based crime syndicate conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar in the belief that Iran would use it to make nuclear weapons, U.S. prosecutors alleged Wednesday. 

Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, and his confederates showed samples of nuclear materials that had been transported from Myanmar to Thailand to an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker who had access to an Iranian general, according to federal officials. The nuclear material was seized, and samples were later found to contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium. 

“As alleged, the defendants in this case trafficked in drugs, weapons and nuclear material — going so far as to offer uranium and weapons-grade plutonium fully expecting that Iran would use it for nuclear weapons,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a statement. “This is an extraordinary example of the depravity of drug traffickers who operate with total disregard for human life.” 

The nuclear material came from an unidentified leader of an “ethic insurgent group” in Myanmar who had been mining uranium in the country, according to prosecutors. Ebisawa had proposed that the leader sell uranium through him in order to fund a weapons purchase from the general, court documents allege. 

According to prosecutors, the insurgent leader provided samples, which a U.S. federal lab found contained uranium, thorium and plutonium, and that “the isotope composition of the plutonium” was weapons-grade, meaning enough of it would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon. 

Ebisawa, who prosecutors allege is a leader of a Japan-based international crime syndicate, was among four people who were arrested in April 2022 in Manhattan during a DEA sting operation. He has been jailed awaiting trial and is among two defendants named in a superseding indictment. Ebisawa is charged with the international trafficking of nuclear materials, conspiracy to commit that crime, and several other counts. 

An email seeking comment was sent to Ebisawa’s attorney, Evan Loren Lipton. 

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Ebisawa trafficked the material from Myanmar to other countries. 

“He allegedly did so while believing that the material was going to be used in the development of a nuclear weapons program, and the weapons-grade plutonium he trafficked, if produced in sufficient quantities, could have been used for that purpose,” Williams said in the news release. “Even as he allegedly attempted to sell nuclear materials, Ebisawa also negotiated for the purchase of deadly weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.” 

The defendants are scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in federal court in Manhattan.
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taipei, taiwan — U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher, who chairs the House of Representatives select committee on China, arrived in Taiwan on Thursday with a delegation of other lawmakers and will meet senior Taiwanese leaders. 

Gallagher, who is being accompanied by four other lawmakers on a trip ending Saturday, has been a strong friend of Chinese-claimed Taiwan and a fierce critic of China.  

“The delegation will meet with senior Taiwan leaders and members of civil society to discuss U.S.-Taiwan relations, regional security, trade and investment, and other significant issues of mutual interest,” the de facto U.S. embassy in Taiwan said in a statement. 

In December, his committee issued an extensive list of bipartisan recommendations to reset U.S. economic ties with China, setting out legislative goals for 2024 that it said would prevent the U.S. from becoming the “economic vassal” of its chief geopolitical rival. 

Gallagher, who said this month he will not run for reelection, is likely to meet both President Tsai Ing-wen and Vice President Lai Ching-te, who won election as Taiwan’s next president at elections last month and will take office on May 20. 

Gallagher, a member of both the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, has spent much of his time this year chairing the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, a bipartisan panel charged with investigating U.S. relations with China and developing strategies to improve the country’s ability to compete with China. 

China views democratically governed Taiwan as its territory. The government in Taipei rejects that position, saying only the island’s people can decide their future. 

Beijing routinely denounces visits by foreign lawmakers to Taiwan, believing it seeks to stoke tensions and interferes in China’s affairs.  

Taiwan says it can invite whomever it wants, and that China has no right to speak for Taiwan’s people. 
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hong kong — Albanian Canadian scholar Olsi Jazexhi seemed to be the perfect foreign writer for the Chinese government to invite to Xinjiang, its westernmost province and home to the ethnic Uyghur Muslim minority so mistreated by Beijing that its critics have called it cultural genocide.

“My initial intention was to visit Xinjiang myself to investigate and to prove the West wrong,” Jazexhi tells VOA.

During an interview for a journalist visa at the Chinese Embassy in Tirana, Albania, in 2019, he says he told the consular official, “I want to produce a story where I can show the world that all this talk about the Uyghur is in a way orchestrated, and by people in the West. And there is nothing true about it.”

Since 2018, Beijing has been inviting diplomats, journalists, and writers like Jazexhi on controlled tours of western Xinjiang province as part of its efforts to tell the world that all is well, despite what the U.N. says are China’s possible crimes against humanity committed against the Uyghurs.

Chinese state media says that more than 1,200 people from 100 countries and regions, including officials from international organizations, diplomats, journalists and religious leaders, have visited Xinjiang from the end of 2018 to February 2021.

State media often quote those who go on the tours as they extol what is presented to them as the region’s economic development and religious freedom, while attacking Western media and governments for “peddling disinformation” and publishing “fake news” about re-education camps where Uyghurs are tortured and forced to abandon their religious and cultural practices.

Jazexhi should have been one of them.

The Chinese government took him and 19 other writers, mainly from Muslim countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE, on an all-expenses paid, 10-day trip in Xinjiang to visit factories and farms and show China’s efforts in Xinjiang’s economic development.

Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, director of China affairs at the rights group World Uyghur Congress, told VOA that Chinese authorities invite foreign media to visit Xinjiang and ensure “they will only see the singing and dancing performances of Uyghurs on the stage, but not the blood and tears of Uyghurs struggling in concentration camps and prisons.”

But in Beijing’s effort to dismiss the allegations of abuse, they also took Jazexhi’s group to what they called a “vocational training center” where ethnic Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks were not allowed to leave and told him they were taken there for practicing Islam.

“So what the Chinese government was doing, it was jailing these people. And in this, the vocational centers there were forcing them to renounce Islam,” Jazexhi said.

Jazexhi said the group also saw posters of Chinese President Xi Jinping in mosques in Aksu and Kashgar, which violate Islamic precepts against images of idolatry. While in Urumqi they saw a mosque converted into a shopping mall.

Jazexhi said he was not the only Muslim in his group, which included Turkish and Arab reporters, who were shocked. But he was the only one who condemned the detention conditions while others told the outside world there were no rights violations in Xinjiang.

Jazexhi said several Arabs in his group told him they wouldn’t publish stories about what they saw because it could create a diplomatic crisis between their countries and China.

He said that after he complained about the treatment to Chinese authorities, they called him a “fake journalist” and interrogated him as a suspected intelligence agent before he was released and left China.

VOA was not able to independently confirm Jazexhi’s account of the trip, which he told to media and published on his YouTube channel.

Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, denied that any so-called “re-education camps” exist in Xinjiang. In an email response to VOA, Liu called the vocational education and training centers in Xinjiang schools that are “no different from the Desistance and Disengagement Program of the U.K., or the de-radicalization centers in France.”

Liu said in 2019 “all trainees at the vocational education and training centers have completed their training, secured stable employment in the society and are living a normal life.”

He then denounced “anti-China forces in the West, including the United States,” for “fabricating and spreading a large amount of groundless disinformation about Xinjiang by distorting facts to smear China’s image” and welcomed “interested foreign friends to visit Xinjiang to see with their own eyes all the changes and development that are truly happening there.”

Jazexhi teaches history and civilization courses at the International Islamic University of Malaysia.

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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New Delhi — Indian police fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse thousands of protesting farmers as they attempted to resume a march to the capital, New Delhi, on Wednesday after negotiations with the government failed to resolve a deadlock over their demands for guaranteed crop prices.

It is the second time that the police used tear gas to thwart attempts by farmers to reach Delhi since they launched their protest last Tuesday (February 13).

Farmers, mounted on tractors, came equipped with masks and gloves to protect themselves from the tear gas at Shambhu, about 200 kilometers from Delhi, where thousands have gathered. Some had also brought bulldozers and excavators to dismantle barricades erected along highways but hundreds of security personnel lined on both sides of the highway prevented them from moving ahead. Using loudspeakers, farm leaders urged them to fight for their rights.

Local media showed police using water cannons at farmers at another protest site.

Highways leading to Delhi have been heavily barricaded with concrete blocks, barbed wire and iron spikes to prevent the farmers from laying siege to key roads on the capital’s outskirts as they did during a year-long mass protest in 2021.

The farmers’ leaders have urged the government to let them enter the capital.

“We will remain peaceful but we should be allowed to remove these barriers and march towards Delhi,” farm leader Sarwan Singh Pandher told reporters.

Farmers launched their protest action last week accusing the government of failing to meet some promises it made when they called off the protest two years ago.

Four rounds of talks in recent days have failed to break an impasse over their key demand for legislation that would guarantee prices for all crops.  The farmers say that would buffet them from market fluctuations and help improve their incomes.

Currently, the government announces subsidized prices for about two dozen agricultural products each year and buys some crops, such as rice and wheat, at guaranteed prices – a system that began in the 1960s to encourage farmers to sow food grains at a time when India faced severe shortages.

At the last round of talks, which broke down on Monday, the government had offered to extend price guarantees to some more crops such as pulses, maize and cotton, but that failed to satisfy the farmers.

The government is urging the farmers to continue negotiations. “After the fourth round, the government is ready to discuss all the issues,” Agriculture Minister Arjun Munda posted on social media network X. “I again invite the farmer leaders for discussion. It is important for us to maintain peace.”

Farmers in India complain of stagnant or dwindling incomes, saying that crop prices have failed to keep pace with rising costs of inputs such as fertilizers and seeds. More than two-thirds of the country is dependent on farm incomes.

The protest is being held months before India holds national elections in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is widely seen as winning a third term in office.

Political analysts said the government is using heavy security to prevent the farmers from reaching the capital because images of tens of thousands of farmers sitting around the capital were “bad optics.”

“If farmers reach the capital, they would get much more media attention just as they did during the last protest in 2021,” pointed out political analyst Rasheed Kidwai. “Anything happening around Delhi becomes magnified. That is why the government wants to control the protest away from the city.”
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GENEVA — The United Nations on Tuesday urged Papua New Guinea to take immediate steps to address the root causes of tribal violence and work towards reconciliation following deadly clashes.

Dozens of bloodied bodies were discovered in the PNG Highlands following a clash early Sunday between rival tribal fighters.

“We urge the government of Papua New Guinea to effectively address escalating tribal violence and to engage with provincial and local leaders in a dialogue to achieve durable peace and respect for human rights in the Highlands region,” U.N. human rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence said.

Conflicts among 17 tribal groups had progressively escalated since elections in 2022 over issues including land disputes and clan rivalries, he said.

The clashes have increasingly turned deadly due to a proliferation of firearms and ammunition in the region, the spokesman added.

“We call on the government to ensure the surrender of all arms, particularly mass-produced firearms,” said Laurence.

“The government must take immediate measures to address the root causes of the violence, and work toward tribal reconciliation.

“The Highland communities, particularly women and girls, must be protected, and further harm to them prevented.”

The rugged and lawless area has been the scene of tit-for-tat mass killings between rival Sikin, Ambulin, Kaekin and other tribesmen for years — with each retaliatory attack fueling a fresh round of atrocities.

Clans have fought each other in the Highlands for centuries, but an influx of mercenaries and automatic weapons has made clashes more deadly and escalated the cycle of violence.
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washington — Seoul’s newly forged diplomatic ties with Havana are a diplomatic setback for North Korea, which views Cuba as a brother country, according to analysts.

North Korea has had diplomatic relations with Cuba since 1960, and Cuba maintains an embassy in Pyongyang.

South Korea did not have diplomatic ties with Cuba for 65 years, but the South Korean Foreign Ministry announced it agreed with Cuba to set up ambassador-level diplomatic relations between the two when their respective representatives to the United Nations met in New York on Feb. 14.

North Korea has not made a public statement about South Korea’s diplomatic ties with Cuba.

“The establishment of full diplomatic relations between the ROK and Cuba is somewhat of a psychological and symbolic setback for the DPRK,” said Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea.

South Korea’s official name is the Republic of Korea (ROK). North Korea is officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

“Seoul’s motivation was to regularize ties with a North Korean ally and achieve a diplomatic and political success in its ongoing competition with the DPRK,” Revere said via email on Saturday.

“Cuba’s motivation was to try to improve its stagnant economy and improve the lives of its people,” added Revere, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for East Asia Policy Studies.

Terence Roehrig, professor of national security affairs and a Korea expert at the U.S. Naval War College, said via email on Monday that establishing ties with Cuba is “a political win for Seoul in its competition with the North.”

He said that the two countries’ economic relations will give Seoul expanded access to Cuba’s mineral resources while Havana will obtain increased trade and investment from South Korea.

Robert Rapson, who served as charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, said via email on Friday the Seoul-Havana ties probably do not cause Pyongyang “so much pain” diplomatically because it has strengthened ties with Russia and looks ahead to a possible meeting with Japan.

Although Seoul and Havana have engaged in cultural exchanges, the newly established ties will aid economic cooperation that will support South Korean companies’ entry into the Cuban market, said the South Korean Foreign Ministry in a Feb. 14 statement.

South Korea imported more than $7 million worth of goods from Cuba while exporting $14 million in 2022, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Among items that South Korea imported in 2022, copper accounted for $3.28 million, chemical products $2.13 million, and tobacco products $1.03 million, according to UN COMTRADE database, cited by Trading Economics, which compiles economic databases, indicators and indexes for 196 countries.

The South Korean presidential office said Cuba could emerge as a new market if the bilateral economic ties develop and if the U.S. relaxes the trade embargo imposed on Cuba in 1962.

The U.S. severed its diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961 after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. Washington officially restored diplomatic ties with Havana in 2015, but some U.S. policies were reversed in 2017.

Revere said Washington has reacted in a “very low-key manner” because of the sensitivity of Cuba as a domestic political issue in the United States.

However, he continued, the U.S. is probably “quite pleased with ROK-Cuba normalization, especially since Washington has also been trying to improve ties with the island. Going forward, the U.S. and the ROK will need to ensure that they coordinate their respective approaches on Cuba.”

South Korea has been working over the years to improve ties with the socialist country whose government bears more resemblance to North Korea’s than its own. Havana’s political power is wholly vested in its Cuban Communist Party, much like Pyongyang’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.

Seoul’s “bold and smart decision” in establishing ties with Havana could expose the Cuban government and people to South Korea’s liberal democracy, said Joseph DeTrani, the special envoy for Six Party denuclearization talks with North Korea during the George W. Bush administration.

“North Korea may feel threatened diplomatically by this move,” DeTrani said via email on Friday.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said several cultural exchanges and people-to-people contacts between the two countries have played a role in the normalization of the diplomatic relations.

Among them are a Cuban film festival held in Seoul in 2022 and South Korean movies featured at an international film festival in Havana in December.

The Foreign Ministry also said ArtCor, a fan club of approximately 10,000 members in Cuba devoted to Korean popular culture, contributed to the opening of the diplomatic ties.

Approximately 14,000 South Koreans visited Cuba prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and about 1,100 ethnic South Koreans live in Cuba, according to the South Korean Foreign Ministry.
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washington — A high-level meeting between the top U.S. homeland security official and his Chinese counterpart is giving Washington reason to hope that current talks may eventually help stem the flow of drugs such as fentanyl into the United States.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met with Chinese Public Security Minister Wang Xiaohong in Vienna on Sunday for talks focused on stopping the spread of fentanyl and the chemicals used to make the powerful synthetic opioid.

A U.S. readout of the meeting with the People’s Republic of China official described the talks as “candid and constructive,” and senior officials told reporters Tuesday that there were signs progress is being made.

“This was a really productive set of meetings,” a senior U.S. official told reporters, agreeing to brief them on the meeting under the condition of anonymity.

The official said the initial meeting between Mayorkas and Wang lasted about four hours, with discussions continuing over dinner.

The officials also said the two sides left Vienna with a commitment for scientists from the two countries to have further talks later this month to review “emerging trends” when it comes to the development and trade of the chemicals needed to manufacture fentanyl and other drugs.

Sunday’s meeting in Vienna follows a virtual meeting last month between Mayorkas and Wang as well as a January 30 meeting of the U.S.-PRC Counternarcotics Working Group.

“There have been concrete specific actions,” the senior U.S. official said Tuesday, explaining the guarded optimism.

“We saw the PRC take action with respect to particular companies. We know that they also shared information with the International Narcotics Board, which helps other countries also track actors and chemicals of concern,” the official said.

“Ultimately, obviously, our goal is to stop the flow of precursor chemicals from the PRC to Mexico and then finished products up from Mexico to our country,” the official said. “We are focused on the kind of the concrete work of the working group on specific steps that we can take that will help us advance those goals.”

According to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, Chinese officials also described the meeting in Vienna as constructive but said Chinese officials were focused on U.S. visa restrictions for Chinese students.

The PRC’s Wang told Mayorkas that the U.S should “stop harassing and interrogating Chinese students for no reason and ensure that Chinese citizens enjoy fair entry treatment and full dignity.”

A second senior U.S. official who briefed reporters Monday acknowledged the Chinese officials raised concerns about current U.S. visa restrictions but declined to elaborate, saying the focus of the meeting was counternarcotics.

Sunday’s meeting between Mayorkas and Wang in Vienna came two days after talks in Munich between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on a variety of issues — including Beijing’s counternarcotic efforts and U.S. searches of Chinese nationals.
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ISLAMABAD — The Taliban have reportedly allowed female high school graduates in Afghanistan to enroll in state-run medical institutes for the new academic year that begins in March.

The enrollment process has begun in more than a dozen Afghan provinces, following a directive from the Ministry of Public Health in Kabul, the Taliban-run official Bakhtar news agency said Tuesday. It provided no further information.

There was no immediate comment from de facto Afghan authorities on the ministry’s reported directive.

The Taliban have banned girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and barred women from working in public and private sectors since reclaiming power in Afghanistan in August 2021.

The reported health ministry directive could be a sign of relief for girls who graduated before the Taliban takeover to resume their education and pursue employment in the health sector, one of the few areas where women are still permitted to work.

Aid groups say the restrictions on women’s education and work have hurt an already fragile Afghan health sector as the country has not produced a single doctor for over a year.

The United Nations has repeatedly warned that Afghanistan faces a shortage of qualified health workers in general and women in particular.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated Tuesday that the Taliban must reverse “the outrageous ban on girls’ access to education and the ban on women’s employment.

“Women & girls must be able to fully & meaningfully participate in all aspects of Afghan life – from seats in classrooms to the tables where decisions are made,” Guterres wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

He made the statement a day after hosting an international conference in Qatar, where envoys from 25 countries, as well as the European Union, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, discussed engagement with Afghanistan’s de facto Taliban authorities.

Guterres stressed the need for girls’ education while briefing reporters on the conference’s outcomes in Doha, the capital of the Gulf state. He said it would be “inconceivable” for him if his three granddaughters could not attend secondary school and could not go on to university.

“I would like all the granddaughters and daughters in Afghanistan to enjoy exactly the same rights that my granddaughters will hopefully enjoy in my country,” said the secretary general.

In a report this month, Human Rights Watch warned that a sharp reduction in foreign financial and technical development has severely harmed the Afghan healthcare system.

The U.S.-based watchdog said the Taliban’s sweeping restrictions on women’s employment have fueled the crisis.

“Women have been banned from most civil service jobs, from employment with nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations except for specific positions in health care and education, and from some private sector jobs,” the report said.

It noted that the curbs on women and girls have “gravely impeded” their access to health services and have blocked almost all training of future female healthcare workers in Afghanistan.
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SYDNEY — Australia Tuesday announced a multibillion overhaul of its navy, which senior officials say is in response to “increasing geostrategic uncertainty.”

Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told reporters Tuesday that the overhaul would give the navy the largest surface fleet since World War II.  

The total cost of the plan over the next 10 years is estimated at $35.25 billion.

The revamp of Australia’s naval fleet intends to more than double the number of warships. Analysts say the reforms will help prepare the military for possible armed conflict in the Indo-Pacific region and a growing unease in Canberra about China’s military and territorial ambitions.

Under the Australian plan, there will be up to 11 new general-purpose frigates and a fleet of drone-like boats that can be operated remotely without sailors on board.

A review last year found Australia’s defense force was no longer “fit for purpose” and that the navy needed a more strategic combination of smaller and larger warships.

Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, the chief of the Australian navy, told reporters in Sydney that the new plan would create, in time, the “most lethal…surface combatant force” the country had seen in generations.

“Against the backdrop of increasing geostrategic uncertainty this is a consequential investment in national security,” he said.

The Canberra government aims to grow Australia’s fleet of warships from 11 to 26 vessels by the late 2040s.

Marcus Hellyer, head of research at Strategic Analysis Australia, a defense and security consultancy, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the new plan should reverse years of neglect in the navy.

“It is really important because – I do not want to get too melodramatic – but we are at risk of not having a navy. The chickens have come home to roost from over a decade of terribly bad decision making between the previous government and the senior leadership of defense. So, between the two of them they have got us into a terrible position.”

Australia is also pushing ahead with plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS accord with the United States and Britain.

Analysts say that China’s increasing assertiveness is a key motivation behind the trilateral AUKUS agreement, but China has accused the three countries of a “Cold War mentality,” saying the alliance was embarking on a “path of error and danger.”   
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SEOUL, South Korea — Russian President Vladimir Putin has gifted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a Russian-made car for his personal use in a demonstration of their special relationship, North Korea’s state media reported Tuesday.

The report didn’t say what kind of vehicle it was or how it was shipped. But observers said it could violate a U.N. resolution that bans supplying luxury items to North Korea in an attempt to pressure the country to abandon its nuclear weapons.

Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, and another North Korean official accepted the gift Sunday and she conveyed her brother’s thanks to Putin, the Korean Central News Agency said. Kim Yo Jong said the gift showed the special personal relationship between the leaders, the report said.

North Korea and Russia have boosted their cooperation significantly since Kim traveled to Russia last September for a summit with Putin. During Kim’s visit to Russia’s main spaceport, Putin showed the North Korean leader his personal Anrus Senat limousine and Kim sat in its backseat.

According to Russia’s state-run Tass news agency, Aurus was the first Russian luxury car brand and it’s been used in the motorcades of top officials including Putin since he first used an Anrus limousine during his inauguration ceremony in 2018.

Kim, 40, is known to possess many foreign-made luxury cars believed to have been smuggled into his country in breach of the U.N. resolution.

During his Russia visit, he traveled between meeting sites in a Maybach limousine that was brought with him on one of his special train carriages.

During an earlier Russia trip in 2019, Kim had two limos waiting for him at Vladivostok station – a Mercedes Maybach S600 Pullman Guard and a Mercedes Maybach S62. He also reportedly used the S600 Pullman Guard for his two summits with then-President Donald Trump in Singapore in 2018 and Vietnam in 2019.

In 2018, Kim used a black Mercedes limousine to return home after a meeting with South Korea’s then-President Moon Jae-in at a shared Korean border village.

Kim’s possession of such expensive foreign limousines shows the porousness of international sanctions on the North. Russia voted for the ban on supplying luxury good to North Korea, even though as a permanent Security Council member, it could have vetoed the resolution.

The expanding ties between North Korea and Russia come as they are locked in separate confrontations with the United States and its allies – North Korea for its advancing nuclear program and Russia for its protracted war with Ukraine.

The U.S., South Korea and their partners accuse North Korea of sending conventional arms to Russia for its war in Ukraine, in return for high-tech Russian weapons technologies and other support.

After its foreign minister returned home following a Russian visit in January, the North’s state media reported Putin expressed his willingness to visit the North at an early date.
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WASHINGTON — Myanmar’s military junta is going forward with a mandatory draft set to begin in mid-April, but critics say doing so has the potential to negatively impact the economy and the military itself.

The ruling junta, which seized power in a coup three years ago this month, says the objective is to call up about 60,000 young men and women annually for mandatory service.

The military has said the conscription order, known as the People’s Military Service Law, is essential given the conflict with rebel groups in the country. Analysts say the junta has struggled to sign up new recruits and is facing its biggest challenges on the battlefield.

The measure dates to 2010 but had not been activated until last week.

According to the 2019 census, at least 13 million men and women are eligible for military service, said Major General Zaw Min Tun, spokesperson for the Myanmar junta, in an audio clip released on Wednesday. He said that while the government wants to recruit 60,000 people annually, “We cannot call up more than 50,000 per year,” because of budget constraints.

Yet, a written statement released by the junta details a monthly quota of 5,000 conscripted for training this year, with women joining the military starting in September.

The statement also emphasizes that engaging with alternative armed groups to evade the military service law is considered a violation, “subjecting individuals to prosecution under existing legal frameworks.”

According to Zaw Min Tun, the initiation of the conscription measure is intended for young people to “understand the responsibility of national defense.”

“On February 14th, organizations at the regional level were established to commence the recruitment process,” the general said. He said the first group of recruits would be called up in mid-April following the traditional Thingyan New Year celebration.

A desperate measure?

“The Myanmar military currently has fewer than 100,000 troops,” Khun Bedu, the chairman of the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force, or KNDF, said by phone on Friday. “Morale in the military is extremely low, and many soldiers don’t want to serve any longer. That is why the junta needs to force young people to join.”

The KNDF is one of the most powerful ethnic armed resistance forces in Myanmar. It is fighting the junta in coordination with the National Unity Government, or NUG, a grouping of politicians and regional leaders who were ousted in the 2021 coup. The NUG views itself as a shadow government.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military coup.

“It’s a desperate measure, and they’re resorting to this because they lack soldiers.” Miemie Winn Byrd, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and Myanmar-U.S. military relations expert, told VOA via Zoom last week.

“They simply don’t have enough,” she said. “This has been an ongoing issue, but it escalated since 2021 with the beginning of armed resistance against the military. There has been an unprecedented surge of defections recently, and the numbers of killed-in-action and casualties have been much higher on the military side than the resistance side.

“Additionally,” Byrd said, “There have been mass unit-level surrenders; and they have missed their recruitment target every year since 2021, because they are highly unpopular. Our data say that over 90% of the Burmese people reject the military.”

The lack of transparency by Myanmar’s junta makes it difficult to know the true size of junta forces. It has been estimated by the Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace that, accounting for casualties, desertions and defections since the military takeover, the effective size of the Myanmar military stands at around 150,000, with less than half being front-line troops.

Escaping conscription

Meanwhile, VOA Burmese reported Monday that two women were killed in a stampede outside a passport office in Mandalay, the second-largest city. The incident unfolded as thousands rushed to leave the country, seeking to evade enforcement of the junta’s military service law.

A rescue worker on the scene tells VOA the incident occurred around 2:30 a.m. as people queued to apply for passports.

“There was a hole nearby, and people fell into it, causing their deaths due to a lack of air,” he said. “Some people also got injured and were sent to a hospital.” He spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for his safety.

According to a French news agency report on Friday, more than 1,000 people lined up outside the Thai embassy in Yangon, highlighting a surge in individuals seeking to leave Myanmar following the junta’s announcement of mandatory military service.

“This law is impossible to accept,” a 27-year-old man living in Yangon, speaking anonymously for his protection, said by phone. “There are proper procedures for military conscription,” he continued, “But in this case, we can just be arrested on the street and forced to join.”

When asked about his plans if unable to comply with military conscription, he said, “We have no choice but to leave; it’s extremely frustrating.” He said some people will go to liberated areas to avoid conscription, while others are planning to go abroad to work and send money to those who joined the resistance.

Consequences of conscription

“You’re going to see a mass exodus of young people, especially those who can afford to leave,” Byrd said. “So, then you have a brain drain. A lot of the businesses and other groups are not going to have enough workers or qualified workers,” she added.

Byrd also noted that the military likely will use some of the recruits for demining and mine detection purposes, which she said will make the military more unpopular.

The National Unity Government said on Tuesday that the recently activated military service law is illegal and therefore citizens are not obligated to adhere to this law.

“Because the junta seized control through illegal and forceful means, any rules they establish are also illegitimate. So, there’s no need to follow their directive,” the NUG’s presidential office spokesperson, Kyaw Zaw, said last week. “Therefore, the public can resist in different ways. In the past we have used methods of resistance like silent strikes. The NUG and allied revolutionary organizations are prepared to support, protect, and meet the needs of the youth in their resistance against the junta’s actions.”

Tommy Walker contributed to this report.
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