Monday, July 9, 2018

60 MONDAY, JULY 9, 2018
world
news
Boris Johnson criticises British PM’s deal with EU
Boris Johnson strongly
criticised Theresa May’s
plan for the UK’s future
relationship with the EU
before agreeing to back it at
Friday’s cabinet meeting, BBC
reports.
The prime minister held the
Brexit meeting at Chequers,
where the cabinet agreed to
support her favoured option.
Johnson used colourful
language as he made the
argument May’s plan would
leave the UK as a “vassal state”.
Labour said May’s customs
plan was a “fudge” and would
soon “unravel”.
At Friday’s summit,
ministers signed up to a plan
to create a free trade area for
industrial and agricultural
goods with the bloc, based on a
“common rule book”.
They also backed what
could amount to a “combined
customs territory”.
Environment Secretary
Michael Gove told the BBC
on Sunday that the deal was a
compromise that would lead to
a “proper Brexit”. But he said
the UK should be prepared to
walk away if the EU was not
willing to negotiate.
At Friday’s get-together,
Johnson told colleagues
the plan could be a “serious
inhibitor to free trade”,
according to BBC political
correspondent Nick Eardley.
The foreign secretary
S’Sudan
reinstates
former VP
South Sudan’s former vice
president Riek Machar will
be reinstated in his position as
part of a peace deal to end a
near five-year-old war that has
devastated Africa’s youngest
nation, the presidency said on
Sunday.
According to a statement,
the agreement was reached
in talks held in Entebbe
in Uganda, mediated by
President Yoweri Miseveni
and attended by South Sudan
President Salva Kiir, Sudan’s
Omar al-Bashir and Machar,
Reuters reports.
“After a 10-hour-long
meeting, the parties agreed
... there will be four vice
presidents and Dr Riek Machar
will be reinstated as first vice
president,” the statement said.
It added that although
the government and the
opposition had agreed to the
proposal, “there will be more
consultation to come up with
the final decision”.
South Sudan has been
gripped by civil war since 2013,
when a political disagreement
between Kiir and Machar
exploded into a military
confrontation.
The war has killed tens of
thousands, uprooted about
a quarter of the country’s
population of 12 million and
slashed oil production, on
which its economy nearly
wholly depends.
The agreement on Machar’s
position is part of new efforts
mediated by regional leaders to
find a peace agreement and end
the war. A similar deal in 2015
failed and conflict resumed.
backed the proposals at
Chequers despite claiming that
defending the plans was like
“polishing a turd”.
An ally of the prime minister
said Johnson’s comments were
made in a humorous style, and
after a dinner Johnson had
then paid a rousing tribute to
the prime minister.
After ministers signed up to
the deal late on Friday night,
May said the time for ministers
to air their concerns in public
was over and collective cabinet
responsibility had been reinstated.
Friends of Johnson say he is
staying in the cabinet to “make
the argument for Brexiteers”.
Gove said the plan
“honoured” the 2016
referendum vote as the
UK would be outside EU
institutions and structures,
The North Korean Foreign
Ministry on Saturday
slammed two days of talks
with visiting Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo as “regrettable”
and accused the United States
of making “gangster-like’’
demands on denuclearization,
USA Today reports.
The statement said the
U.S. betrayed the spirit of
last month’s summit between
President Donald Trump and
North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un by making such
unilateral demands regarding
“CVID,” or the complete,
verifiable and irreversible
denuclearization of North
Korea. The spokesman for
the ministry called the talks
“really disappointing.”
The outcome of the followup
talks in Pyongyang was “very
concerning” because it has led
to a “dangerous phase that
might rattle our willingness
for denuclearization that had
been firm,” according to the
statement.
“We expected that the
U.S. side would come
with productive measures
conducive to building trust
in line with the spirit of the
North-U.S. summit and
(we) considered providing
something that would
correspond to them,” the
spokesman said, according
to the South Korean news
telling the BBC it “achieved all
of the things we campaigned
for”.
Although the UK would
sign up to EU rules on goods,
he said the UK would have the
“sovereign ability” to diverge
where it wanted and that this
autonomy would apply across
a “a swathe of the economy”.
Asked by the BBC’s Andrew
Marr if the proposed deal was
everything he had hoped for,
Mr Gove replied: “No, but I am
a realist” - adding that cabinet
unity was important.
If the EU did not show
flexibility, the UK may have
to “contemplate walking away
without a deal”, he added.
“No-one wants to walk away
now because we are in the
middle of a negotiation,” he said.
“What we need to do is to be able
to walk away in March 2019.”
Tory Brexiteers are uneasy
about many aspects of the plan,
warning the UK will have to
follow EU laws and European
Court of Justice rulings and not
be able to develop an “effective
international trade policy”.
Conservative MP Andrew
Bridgen called the PM’s
pledges a “a pretence and
charade intended to dupe the
electorate”.
Writing in the Mail on
Sunday, Mr Bridgen said the
“time has come for a new
[Conservative] leader” which
he believes should be Brexiteer
Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Former Conservative leader
Iain Duncan Smith told the
Sunday Telegraph if the public
perceive Mrs May’s plan as
“continued membership”
of the customs union and
single market for goods, the
government “will suffer the
consequences at the next
election”.
But Mrs May told the
Sunday Times: “The only
challenge that needs to be
made now is to the European
Union to get serious about this,
to come round the table and
discuss it with us.”
She said her plan was a
“serious, workable proposal”
and when people voted to
leave the EU, “they wanted to
take control of our money, our
laws and our borders and that’s
exactly what we will do”.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir
Keir Starmer said proposals
to avoid customs checks by
differentiating between UK
and EU-bound goods, in
terms of what tariffs should
be paid, were “a bureaucratic
nightmare”.
•US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (left), and Vietnam’s Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong,
at the party’s head office in Hanoi ...on Sunday. Photo: AFP
N’Korea slams talks with Secretary of State, Pompeo
agency, Yonhap.
“However, the attitude
and stance the United States
showed in the first highlevel
meeting (between the
countries) was no doubt
regrettable,” the spokesman
said, according the The
Associated Press.
The statement, issued by
an unnamed foreign ministry
spokesman and carried by the
official Korean Central News
Agency, came hours after a
second day of talks between
Pompeo and senior North
Korean officials. Both sides
said they needed clarity on the
parameters of an agreement
to denuclearize the Korean
Peninsula.
The spokesman reiterated
Pyongyang’s call for a
“phased” and “synchronous”
approach, saying that it
would be the fastest way to
denuclearize.
“It would be the shortest
path toward realization of the
denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula to ... boldly break
away from the failure-ridden
methods of the past, push for
whole new approaches and
seek to resolve problems one
by one based on trust and in
a phased and synchronous
principle,” he said.
It was Pompeo’s third trip
to Pyongyang since April and
his first since last month’s
historic summit between
Trump and North Korean
leader Kim Jong Un. Pompeo
was meeting Kim Yong Chol, a
senior ruling party official.
Both men said they needed
to “clarify” certain elements of
their previous discussions, but
provided no details. Pompeo
left Pyongyang for Japan early
Saturday afternoon but it
wasn’t immediately clear if he
met with Kim Jong Un, as had
been expected.
Before leaving Pyongyang,
Pompeo told reporters that
his talks with Kim Yong Chol
had been “productive,” was
carried out “in good faith”
and had made “a great deal
of progress” in some areas.
He stressed, however, that
“there’s still more work to be
done” in other areas, much
of which would be done by
working groups that the two
sides have set up to deal with
specific issues.
Unlike his previous visits,
which have been one-day
affairs, Pompeo spent the night
at a government guest house in
Pyongyang after a three-hour
dinner with Kim Yong Chol,
something the North Korean
official alluded to in comments
as they began their talks.
“We did have very serious
discussion on very important
matters yesterday,” Kim Yong
Chol said. “So, thinking about
those discussions you might
have not slept well last night.”
Pompeo, who spoke with
Trump, national security
adviser John Bolton and
White House chief of staff
John Kelly by secure phone
before starting Saturday’s
session, replied that he “slept
just fine.” He added that the
Trump administration was
committed to reaching a deal
under which North Korea
would denuclearize and realize
economic benefits in return.
Kim Yong Chol’s reference,
inadvertent or not, recalled
Trump’s tweet after his
meeting with Kim Jong Un
in Singapore that the two
leaders had “largely solved”
the nuclear issue: “President
Obama said that North
Korea was our biggest and
most dangerous problem. No
longer - sleep well tonight!”
Kim Yong Chol later said
that “there are things that
I have to clarify” to which
Pompeo responded that
“there are things that I have to
clarify as well.”
There was no immediate
explanation of what needed
to be clarified but the two
sides have been struggling
to specify what exactly
“denuclearization” would
entail and how it could be
verified to the satisfaction of
the United States.
“This has got fudge written
all over it,” he told Andrew
Marr. “She (Theresa May) has
not met our demands. It is
going to unravel and she will
have to think again.”
He urged Mrs May to put
her customs proposals to a vote
in Parliament in a week’s time,
suggesting Labour’s alternative
plan for a comprehensive
customs union had the backing
of the majority of MPs.
The prime minister
gathered her 26 cabinet
ministers together at her
country residence to resolve
differences over the shape of
the UK’s relations with the EU
and break the current deadlock
with the EU.
The Observer reported that
more than 100 entrepreneurs
and business leaders
regard Mrs May’s plan as
“unworkable” and “costly and
bureaucratic”.
Turkey purges
more workers
Turkey has sacked
another 18,000 state
workers, in the latest purge
triggered by a failed coup two
years ago, BBC reports.
Those dismissed
include soldiers, police and
academics. A TV channel and
three newspapers have also
been closed.
Since the coup attempt
the government has fired
more than 125,000 people,
introduced emergency rule
and clamped down on the
media and the opposition.
The move comes as
President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan is preparing to be
sworn in with sweeping new
powers on Monday.
He has promised to lift
the state of emergency.
Correspondents say the purge
announced on Sunday could
be the last before he does so.
Last month President
Erdogan was re-elected
with 53% of the vote. He
has presided over a strong
economy and built up a solid
support base.
But he has also polarised
opinion, cracking down on
opponents and putting some
160,000 people in jail.
Under controversial
constitutional changes
approved by a referendum
last year, parliament has been
weakened and the post of
prime minister abolished.
The president will be able
to appoint to ministers and
vice-presidents and intervene
in the legal system.
Erdogan says his increased
authority will empower him
to address Turkey’s economic
woes and defeat Kurdish rebels
in the country’s south-east.
His Islamist-rooted
AKP party also controls
parliament.
The defeated opposition
candidate in the presidential
election, Muharrem Ince, said
Turkey was now entering a
dangerous period of “oneman
rule”.
Turkey’s Western allies
have accused the president of
using the July 2016 coup as
an excuse to crack down on
dissent.