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10 AMERICAS OMANDAILYOBSERVER SATURDAY l JANUARY 28 l 2017 US-MEXICO TENSIONS RISE as Trump aide floats border tax idea Aerial picture taken with a drone of the urban fencing on the border between the US and Mexico at Playas de Tijuana, northwestern Mexico. — AFP Enough talk; time to deliver: Trump tells Republican lawmakers President Donald Trump poses in his office aboard Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland after he returned from Philadelphia on Thursday. — AFP PHILADELPHIA: President Donald Trump pushed Republican lawmakers on Thursday for swift action on a sweeping agenda including his planned US-Mexico border wall, tax cuts and repealing Obamacare, despite tensions over timetables and priorities. Congressional Republicans were in Philadelphia for a three-day retreat to hammer out a legislative agenda, with the party in control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives for the first time in a decade. “This Congress is going to be the busiest Congress we’ve had in decades, maybe ever,” Trump said in a speech to the lawmakers at a Philadelphia hotel. “Enough ‘all talk, no action.’ We have to deliver,” Trump added. But Trump did not hold an expected question-and-answer session with the lawmakers, and his speech veered into side issues such as predicting crowd size for an antiabortion march in Washington, alleging American voting irregularities and touting winning Pennsylvania in the November 8 election. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who initially hesitated in endorsing Trump last year and has criticised him on some issues, said congressional Republicans were in sync with the president, who was sworn in less than a week ago having never previously held public office. “We are on the same page with the White House,” Ryan said during a news conference with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump pressed the lawmakers to act on lowering taxes on “all American businesses” and the middle class and to repeal former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Congressional Republicans were in Philadelphia for a three-day retreat to hammer out a legislative agenda, with the party in control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives for the first time in a decade Act. Republicans have yet to agree on a replacement for the law known as Obamacare. Republican US Representative Greg Walden said he would propose a bill next week to ensure people with existing medical conditions could still get coverage if Obamacare is repealed. That requirement is one of the most popular parts of the law. “Insurance companies will not be able to deny health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions,” Walden said in a telephone interview. For weeks, Republicans talked about formulating an agenda for the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency. In recent days, the talk has turned into a 200-day agenda for passing major legislation before the lawmakers’ August recess. “It’s going to take more than simply 100 days,” Ryan said. He said he hoped to finish health and tax legislation in 2017, but did not guarantee it. McConnell said lawmakers would take up legislation to provide $12 billion to $15 billion to pay for Trump’s planned wall along the US- Mexico border. — Reuters WASHINGTON: US-Mexican relations have rocked as Donald Trump’s administration suggested taxing imports from the southern neighbour to fund a border wall and Mexico’s president scrapped a meeting with the US leader. On Friday, Trump kept up his criticism of Mexico, saying it “has taken advantage of the US for long enough,” as a crisis over border security and trade deepened. “Massive trade deficits & little help on the very weak border must change NOW!” Trump wrote on Twitter. On Thursday, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto scrapped a planned trip to Washington to meet Trump, who has repeatedly demanded that Mexico pay for a wall on the US border to halt illegal immigration. The White House also suggested on Thursday that the United States could impose a 20 per cent tax on goods from Mexico to pay for the wall, sending the peso tumbling. Speaking about the scrapped summit, senior Trump aide Kellyanne Conway on Friday told Fox News that “the relationship was not imploded. This one meeting has been cancelled and that was a mutual cancellation.” In a separate interview on CBS News, she said the tax was one funding possibility and waved off the chance of Mexican retaliation that could cost American jobs, telling CBS News: “They can do what they want.” “Mexico should pay for that wall because they get an awful lot from this country,” Conway told CBS. The White House has said its tax proposal is in the early stages. A plan being weighed by House Republicans would exempt export revenues from taxation but impose a 20 per cent tax on imported goods. The idea, known as a border adjustment tax, would be a significant change from current US policy. Retailers and other businesses that sell imported goods are not keen on the idea, and some lawmakers have expressed concern about its impact on US consumers. “The costs for everything from groceries, to cars, to office supplies would go up by 20 (per cent), making it harder for middle class families to pay for things they need every day,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. Trump had been scheduled to receive Pena Nieto at the White House on Tuesday, for their first meeting since the inauguration. Instead, the Republican president is managing a foreign policy spat with a normally friendly nation and key trade partner during his first week in office. The escalating war of words over who would pay for the proposed border wall — a central pledge made by Trump during his successful presidential campaign — hit the breaking point on Thursday. “If Mexico is unwilling to pay for Demonstrators protest against President Donald Trump’s plan to build a border wall along the United States and Mexico border, on Thursday in Chicago, Illinois. — AFP the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting,” Trump said on Twitter in the morning. Pena Nieto, who had good relations with former US president Barack Obama, didn’t take long to rise to the challenge. “We informed the White House this morning that I will not attend the working meeting scheduled for next Tuesday” with Trump in Washington, the Mexican leader responded on Twitter. “Mexico reiterates its willingness to work with the United States to reach agreements in both nations’ interests.” Hours later, Trump told Republican lawmakers at a retreat in Philadelphia that the cancellation was by mutual Trump kept up his criticism of Mexico on Friday saying it “has taken advantage of the US for long enough” agreement. “Unless Mexico is going to treat the United States fairly, with respect, such a meeting would be fruitless, and I want to go a different route. I have no choice,” he said. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the “lines of communications” would remain open and Washington hoped to “schedule something in the future.” But in a move that is sure to increase tensions, Spicer later said that Trump could fund the wall’s construction by slapping a 20 per cent tax on goods from Mexico. “By doing that, we can do $10 billion a year and easily pay for the wall just through that mechanism alone,” he said. Spicer did not say whether the tax would violate the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump’s administration wants to renegotiate with Canada and Mexico. Trump signed an order on Wednesday for work to begin on building a wall along the 3,200-kilometre border. But the US leader has struggled to articulate how the wall will be paid for, though he has suggested recently that the United States would fund it first and Mexico would reimburse the cost later. During the campaign, Trump threatened to tap into remittances that Mexican migrants send home, which last year amounted to $25 billion. Trump has also ordered officials to scour US government departments and agencies in search of “direct and indirect” aid or assistance to the Mexican government and report back within 30 days. Republican leaders announced on Thursday they would try to carve out $12-15 billion worth of US taxpayers’ money for the project. — AFP/Reuters
EUROPE 11 SATURDAY l JANUARY 28 l 2017 OMANDAILYOBSERVER MARKET ATTACK VICTIMS REMEMBERED German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande visit the site where on December 19, 2016 a truck ploughed through a crowd at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square in Berlin on Friday. — Reuters Oppn faces rebellion over call to back Brexit trigger LONDON: Britain’s opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn faced a party rebellion on Friday over his support for triggering Brexit, after two lawmakers resigned from his policy team and others publicly promised to defy him on the issue. Corbyn has ordered his lawmakers to support legislation published on Thursday which will allow Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May to begin the legal process of leaving the European Union. That decision has strained Corbyn’s authority over a party whose membership is deeply divided between its traditional working class voters, who strongly supported Brexit in England’s struggling post-industrial regions, and pro-EU voters in more prosperous urban constituencies. “I believe that leaving is a terrible mistake and I cannot reconcile my overwhelming view that to endorse the step that will make exit inevitable, is wrong,” wrote Jo Stevens, Labour’s spokeswoman for Wales, in a resignation letter to Corbyn. Stevens, whose constituency is in the Welsh capital of Cardiff which voted in favour of staying within the EU, said that she felt May was leading Corbyn has ordered his lawmakers to support legislation published on Thursday which will allow Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May to begin the legal process of leaving the European Union Britain towards a “brutal exit”. The resignation signalled an embarrassing internal rebellion for Corbyn that will come to a head when lawmakers vote for the first time on the legislation next Wednesday. But is highly unlikely to result in a defeat for May, who retains a parliamentary majority and is expected to pass the new law and then formally trigger Brexit by the end of March. Corbyn has acknowledged the “pressures and issues” facing Labour lawmakers and said he will seek greater parliamentary oversight of the terms of Britain’s exit, but on Thursday told his party to support the government bill. “I say to everyone unite around the important issues of jobs, economy, security, rights, justice, and we will frame that relationship with Europe in the future — outside the EU but in concert with friends,” he told Sky News. Stevens was the second lawmaker to resign from Corbyn’s shadow ministerial team after Tulip Siddiq, who represents an inner-London borough, quit on Thursday saying she could not betray the wishes of her constituents. Other lawmakers said publicly they would vote against the Brexit legislation. Corbyn, who voted against Britain’s membership of the EU’s predecessor in 1975, was subject to a failed leadership challenge last year after the EU referendum, when lawmakers said he did not campaign hard enough to keep Britain in the bloc. He comfortably defeated the challenge in a vote of the party’s grassroots members, where support for his leftist agenda is much higher than among his elected lawmakers. — Reuters Dutch justice minister quits over scandal THE HAGUE: Dutch Justice Minister Ard van der Steur (pictured) resigned on Thursday as an old scandal over 2.1 million euros paid by prosecutors to a drug baron returned to haunt Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s ruling party. “I’m handing in my resignation to His Majesty the King (Willem- Alexander). Thank you,” an emotional Van der Steur said after a six-hour grilling by opposition parties. Van der Steur is the fourth highprofile parliamentarian from the Liberal VVD party to resign since March 2015, in a move that could damage the premier’s bid for reelection in general elections now less than seven weeks away. The controversy involves a deal by former VVD deputy justice minister Fred Teeven 17 years ago with a notorious trafficker called Cees H. The criminal was paid back millions of guilders (euros) — previously seized in an investigation — through bank accounts in Luxembourg without tax authorities being informed in 2001. The authorities unable to prove the money seized was linked to drug trafficking and so most of it was returned to Cees H. In March 2015, both Teeven, then deputy justice minister and his boss, Ivo Opstelten resigned after they were called out by parliament for not releasing the amount involved in the deal: 4.7 million guilders (2.1 million euros). In December, Lower House Speaker Anouchka van Miltenburg also resigned after opposition parties accused her too of withholding information. On Thursday evening, Van der Steur was next to face the wrath of opposition MPs, who sniffed an opportunity to take a stab at Rutte’s party before some 12.6 million voters flock to the polls on March 15. — AFP Poland marks 72nd anniversary of Auschwitz liberation WARSAW: Some 60 Holocaust survivors returned to Auschwitz, the former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, on Friday to attend a ceremony marking the 72nd anniversary of its liberation. On this day in 1945, Red Army soldiers from the Soviet Union opened the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp where some 7,000 mainly Jewish prisoners were trapped, already abandoned by the Nazi soldiers who were retreating to Germany, Efe news reported. Friday’s ceremony was presided over by Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and attended by several international delegations, among them from Russia and Israel. The motto of this year’s commemoration at the Auschwitz museum-memorial was “Time”, symbolised by a watch found during the 1967 excavations of the site that had been stored away along with 16,000 other artefacts. These artefacts were to be displayed at the “Archaeology” exhibition at the camp’s museum. “Time inevitably brings us further away from the history of Auschwitz and memory acts as our fight against the passage of time,” said the director of the Auschwitz museum Piotr Cywinski. To this end, Cywinski said it was important that future generations be aware of the dangers of populism, xenophobia, anti-semitism and radical nationalism. Presenting a blue and white wreath, matching the colours of the prisoner’s uniforms in the camps, a group of survivors stood and paid homage at the Death Wall — a stone-clad courtyard backdrop against which prisoners would be shot by the Nazi guards. Some of the men commemorating the 72nd anniversary of their liberation wore the blue and white hats they were given during their time in the camp. Former prisoners were also shown around the newlyopened exhibition, where glass cabinets displayed everyday objects such as spoons, cooking utensils and bottles excavated on the site. Above the entrance to the camp, the wrought iron lettering of “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work sets you free) offers museum visitors a reminder of the site’s original purpose. Upon discovering the camp, the Red Army soldiers found piles of human corpses, hair and belongings. — IANS QUEEN VISITS ART & LIFE EXHIBITION Fillon sore over wife ‘fake job’ claims Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II arrives for a visit to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, east England, on Friday. The Queen visited the ‘Fiji: Art & Life in the Pacific’ exhibition. — AFP PARIS: French presidential hopeful Francois Fillon was counting the cost on Friday of claims his wife had a fake job in a scandal overshadowing this week’s vote to pick a leftwing candidate. Fillon said in a TV interview on Thursday that he was “disgusted” at allegations that Welsh-born Penelope Fillon did nothing to earn half a million euros ($534,000) paid from public funds over more than a decade. He said his wife had “always worked for me” during his four-decade political career and listed tasks she had carried out, including “editing my speeches” and representing him at events. France’s national financial prosecutor has opened a preliminary inquiry into the claims. A new opinion poll on Friday showed that the popularity of Fillon, a former prime minister who is widely seen as the frontrunner in the presidential contest, had taken a hit over the allegations. Thirty-eight per cent of voters across the political spectrum have a “good opinion” of him in the wake of the claims about his wife’s jobs, a drop of four points from a poll on January Francois Fillon (L) arrives to attend the opening ceremony of the archives of late French political figure Philippe Seguin on Thursday at the Archives Nationales in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine. — AFP 8, and 16 points less than in early November, the Odoxa poll of 1,012 people showed. Le Canard Enchaine, the newspaper that made the claims, also alleged that in 2012 and 2013, Penelope Fillon had a job at a literary periodical, La Revue des Deux Mondes, for which she was also paid from the allowance that her husband receives as a member of parliament. The former publisher of La Revue des Deux Mondes was questioned on Friday by investigators probing the claims. Michel Crepu said this week that while Fillon’s wife had contributed comments to several articles, “I do not have the slightest indication of what could be described as a job as a literary consultant.” If Fillon does drop out of the race, the man he beat to the rightwing nomination last year, veteran centrist Alain Juppe, on Friday “clearly and definitively” ruled out any suggestions he could step in. In a race being watched closely after Britain’s vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s victory in the United States, Fillon is currently forecast to reach the presidential runoff in May, with far-right candidate Marine Le Pen his most likely opponent. But centrist Emmanuel Macron is increasingly in contention, having attracted packed crowds to campaign events. On Sunday, former premier Manuel Valls and leftwing radical Benoit Hamon will fight it out for the nomination of the governing Socialist party. The leftwing primary has become a battle of two factions within the Socialist party, with Valls’s reformist agenda clashing with Hamon’s attempts to claw back the party’s “true” ideals. — AFP
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