Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Kushner's 'deal of the Century' for Israel-Palestine peace process to be unveiled in June

Palestinian officials reject any prospective US-led peace deal under Trump administration

Kushner said the deal will include a "robust business plan" for the Palestinians (Reuters/File)

By MEE and agencies-23 April 2019

The United States will reveal its long-awaited Middle East peace plan after the holy month of Ramadan ends in early June, US President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner said during a media forum on Tuesday.Kushner, speaking at a Time Magazine panel, said the US will be ready to unveil its so-called "deal of the Century" after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forms a coalition government, which is expected to be finalised in the coming weeks.

"Once that's done we'll probably be in the middle of Ramadan, so we'll wait until after Ramadan and then we'll put our plan out," he said.

Yair Netanyahu says Palestine does not exist because there is no 'P' in Arabic

Ramadan will begin in early May and end in early June.

Kushner said the deal will include a "robust business plan" for the Palestinians.

However, he refused to confirm whether the plan would lead to an independent Palestinian state. Washington has long sought a two-state solution to the conflict, but the Trump administration appears to be moving away from urging Israel to stop expanding its settlements in the occupied West Bank - where a Palestinian state would be established.

"Our focus is really on the bottom up, which is how do you make the lives of the Palestinian people better, what can you resolve to allow these areas to become more investable?" Kushner said on Tuesday.

During his election campaign earlier this month, Netanyahu vowed to annex the country's illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, a proposal that would diminish the prospects of Palestinian statehood.

Kushner's announcement comes after Netanyahu said he would be naming an illegal Israeli settlement in the Golan Heights after Trump.

Last week, new Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh rejected news of the plan's proposed arrival, telling the Associated Press that the peace plan will be "born dead."

Netanyahu pledge to annex settlements in West Bank causes uproar

"There are no partners in Palestine for Trump. There are no Arab partners for Trump and there are no European partners for Trump," Shtayyeh said.

Palestinian officials have vowed to reject any US-led negotiations after a string of unprecedented policy moves by Trump in favour of the Netanyahu government, including the White House's decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, declaring the holy city the capital of Israel.

The Trump administration has also slashed hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to Palestinians and suspended support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

Meanwhile, Israel has recently withheld the transfer of tens of millions of dollars in tax revenues to punish the Palestinian government for its "martyrs' fund," a programme that provides stipends to the families of Palestinians imprisoned or killed by Israel.

What to do about Sarah Sanders? White House reporters have a few ideas.

Sarah Sanders talks to reporters outside the White House. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

By Paul Farhi-April 22 at 5:23 PM

Reporters have long approached White House press secretary Sarah Sanders with a trust-but-verify attitude, knowing full well that Sanders is tasked with spinning some of the more unspinnable statements made by her boss, President Trump.

But with the publication of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on Thursday, Sanders’s credibility among the people who cover her has been stretched about as taut as a violin string.

One White House reporter, April Ryan, has openly called for Sanders to be fired. While others don’t go that far, they acknowledge that Sanders’s public statements have damaged her, perhaps permanently, as the president’s spokeswoman. In conversations with reporters, it’s not unusual to hear her compared unfavorably to Ron Ziegler, President Nixon’s press secretary, whose reputation was shredded by the Watergate scandal.

Sanders admitted under oath to Mueller’s investigators that she made false statements to the press after Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey in May 2017. Sanders told Mueller that her comment that “countless” FBI employees had told her they supported the president’s decision was “a slip of the tongue.” She also said a second utterance — in which she said that Trump and “the rest of the FBI” had lost confidence in Comey — was made “in the heat of the moment.” Mueller’s report concluded that her comments were “not founded on anything.”

Given that she made the erroneous statements on two separate occasions, her explanations for them raised the possibility that she not only lied, but lied in explaining why she lied.

“I hope and trust that she understands why this is a big deal and why it matters to us and to her,” said Peter Baker, the veteran New York Times White House reporter, in an interview Monday. “A press secretary’s most important asset is credibility. If you don’t have that, there’s not much point.

But we all make mistakes. The test is what you do about it to make things better.”

Sanders hasn’t offered an apology or a public correction. Instead, she has gone on offense. After repeating the “heat of the moment” excuse during an interview on “Good Morning America,” she fired back, “I’m sorry that I wasn’t a robot like the Democrat Party that went out for 2½ years and repeated time and time again that there was definitely Russian collusion between the president and his campaign.”

Ryan, a CNN political analyst who covers the White House for American Urban Radio Networks, was having none of that on Monday. “She has acknowledged that she lied under oath,” she said. “You can’t trust her. End of story.”

She added, “She’s been caught in lie after lie. It’s beyond spin. She speaks for the president, so it’s life and death. In any other job, if someone acknowledged they lied under oath, they’d be gone. They’d be terminated.”

After Ryan called for Trump to “start lopping the heads off” of discredited officials, including Sanders, Sanders’s father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, called the comment “an incitement to murder” on Twitter. He asked if the White House Correspondents’

Association (WHCA) would revoke Ryan’s press credential, apparently unaware that the WHCA doesn’t issue press credentials. Sanders told “Fox & Friends” that the comment was “a new low for the liberal media.”

To some extent, Sanders’s credibility is a moot point among reporters, given her increasing isolation from and limited contacts with the press.

Under Sander’s tenure, formal press briefings have all but disappeared, relieving Sanders of what was, at least in previous administrations, the press secretary’s primary daily responsibility. As of Tuesday, the Trump White House will set a record for the longest stretch without a briefing, 43 days. This breaks the previous record set in March (42 days), which broke the record set in January (41 days). Since the beginning of the year, Sanders has had just two briefings, fielding press questions for a mere 30 minutes or so in total.

Sanders sometimes holds Q&As with reporters on the White House driveway outside the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. But these are both informal and irregular. She has also become well known among reporters for not responding to emails or calls to her office seeking comment.

Sanders did not reply to a request for comment for this story.

One reporter points out that Sanders can be helpful in the limited times she does engage, but not in a way that the public — or the president — sees. Sanders still has access to the president and can be a useful source on background or off the record, said the reporter. “She won’t deny things that she knows to be true,” said the reporter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because her employer hadn’t approved her speaking for publication.

“As far as I’m concerned, the Mueller report hasn’t changed anything,” said Olivia Nuzzi, who covers the White House for New York magazine. “Sanders never should have been relied on, and she should not be relied on now.”

Hilmy Ahamed, Muslim Council of Sri Lanka: ‘As a community we fear a backlash’

Krishnan Guru-Murthy-23 Apr 2019Presenter

Hilmy Ahamed , Vice President of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, discusses the terror attacks.

Sri Lanka’s Perfect Storm of Failure

There were many chances to stop the Easter Sunday attacks. The government missed them all.

A child looks at a grave after a funeral for victims of the Easter Sunday attacks in Katuwapity village on April 23, 2019 in Negambo, Sri Lanka. ATUL LOKE/GETTY IMAGES

BY LYDIA KHALIL

| APRIL 23, 2019, 4:11 PM
The horrific terrorist bombings in Sri Lanka on April 21 killed more than 300 people and injured 500 more. Sri Lankan officials have identified a little-known local group, National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ), as behind the coordinated Easter Sunday attacks, while the Islamic State has just claimed responsibility.

There are questions surrounding exactly who sponsored this attack, but the real question is whether it could have been stopped. Although more evidence will emerge over time, the information trickling out paints a damning picture. The attacks were preventable, but compound failures let them happen. Sri Lankan authorities failed to anticipate the threat from Islamist groups with potential international networks, ignored warning signs, and failed to share information among themselves.

The bombings represent an intelligence failure of massive proportion. But a failure this big is not just confined to Sri Lanka. Jihadi terrorism is a global threat. When the networks are international, attacks in one country demand concerted action to prevent such mistakes from happening again.

At least two weeks ago, intelligence officials from India and the United States warned Sri Lankan officials about a potential plot against churches and tourist sites in the country. A week later, the Sri Lankan Defense Ministry advised the inspector general of police of the potential plot—complete with a list of names and addresses of potential suspects, several of whom turned out to be the real attackers. Nothing was done.

Another detailed memo released by the deputy inspector general of police to several government directors, including the heads of the Ministerial Security Division, Judicial Security Division, and Diplomatic Security Division, also laid out the threat and a list of suspects.

Sri Lankan officials had also received previous warnings about NTJ from the Sri Lankan Muslim community. The vice president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka claimed that he warned military intelligence officials about the group as far back as three years ago.

Why did no one act on these advance warnings? Probably because the Sri Lankan government remains bitterly divided, with the president and prime minister at war with each other.
Sri Lanka is still feeling the reverberations of the constitutional crisis last year, where the president (and defense minister), Maithripala Sirisena, attempted to remove Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe from office and replace him with the authoritarian former leader Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Although this political coup failed, the division between president and prime minister continues, and control of the security services has been a key potential battleground. In an environment where information has become a political tool, and where Sirisena has taken the defense and police ministries under his own control and excluded the prime minister from the national security council, it’s hardly surprising that lower-level officials were reluctant to take action unilaterally.

Nevertheless, the various national security officials who were aware of the threat should have acted. And at least two other ministers—Telecommunications Minister Harin Fernando and Minister for National Integration Mano Ganesan—also said they had advanced warning. In a divided government, everything becomes somebody else’s problem.
Despite advance warning of a potential terrorist attack against churches and tourist destinations, there was no increased security presence or additional protocols followed to protect sites at risk during the public holiday nor was access limited to these sites. No warning was given to either churches or the public at large.

That’s a strange failure given the country’s history. Sri Lanka has long experience with terrorism, albeit of the sectarian variety during the brutal civil war, where the Tamil Tigers perfected the use of the suicide vest. Yet it had not previously been a target of jihadi violence, although there has been tensions between Buddhists and Muslims, as in when Buddhist mobs attacked Muslims last March.
Sri Lankan officials may have been caught in that perpetual problem of fighting the last war.

As Sameer Patil, the director of Gateway House’s Centre for International Security, said in an interview with Bloomberg: “The Sri Lankan security agencies still go on their long experience with the bloody insurgency. … Their mindset is still attuned to any future terrorist attack coming from Tamil Tiger extremists.”

Given the growing intercommunal violence—and the known Islamic State presence in neighboring Maldives, Bangladesh, and India—the Sri Lanka Easter bombings also present a failure of anticipation.

However, Sri Lankan security officials were aware of a cache of explosives and a training ground earlier in the year. According to open-source reporting, they seized 100 kilograms of explosives from a remote farm compound in Wanathawilluwa, nearly 100 miles away from the capital, which was also believed to be a training camp for jihadis planning to blow up Buddhist monuments. Even though Sri Lankan security officials conducted some surveillance and seized the explosives, there appears to have been no follow-up investigation into the broader activities or the links to wider networks of those arrested.

NTJ has not claimed responsibility for this attack. But even given its probable involvement, there is little to indicate that NTJ had the capability to carry out such sophisticated coordinated attacks. It’s wise to remain circumspect regarding the Islamic State’s claim to these attacks absent additional evidence, but it would be highly unlikely that there was no direction or coordination from more experienced jihadis with global reach.

Coordinated attacks of this level of sophistication require funding and logistics networks. These networks, if properly identified and monitored beforehand, could have offered a trove of valuable intelligence that could thwart such attacks.

Missing these signs was another failure on the part of the authorities. Sri Lankan authorities should not have been caught unaware by international jihadi violence, especially in the aftermath of the defeat in conventional warfare of the Islamic State, which has dispersed experienced fighters—and funding—elsewhere. Officials should have been monitoring international connections long before these attacks and heeding warnings from international partners such as India and the United States.

At least 36, possibly up to 100, individuals from Sri Lanka are known to have spent time in the Islamic State’s caliphate. Terrorism analysts, intelligence professional, and policymakers around the world have warned that Islamic State foreign fighters would present a threat to their home countries and neighboring countries on their return and that there is a pressing need to understand the networks that these individuals have formed, the routes out of Syria and Iraq, and their intentions once they have left the battlefield.

The cohort of foreign fighters emerging out of Syria is the most operationally experienced, lethally skilled, and highly networked group of jihadis to date—and their ties to Sri Lanka had already been demonstrated. Mohammad Muhsin Nilam, also known as Abu Shurayh, was a Sri Lankan Islamic State adherent who was killed in an airstrike on Raqqa in 2015. Nilam was believed to have close contacts with the NTJ network. Sri Lankan intelligence and security should have been following that network closely.

It is not yet known if Nilam, his network, or anyone else connected to the Islamic State was involved in these attacks. Sri Lankan authorities know who these individuals are, what part of the country they are from, and who their families are. But they should have been actively monitoring these individuals or identified their current whereabouts.

The fallout from this intelligence failure will be severe. The constitutional crisis and political competition that helped contribute to this disaster will likely get worse as the country searches for who is to blame. As Sri Lanka grapples with its own dysfunction, investigators from around the world are flocking to the country to help piece together who was behind this attack.

There was a lack of appreciation that Sri Lanka could be a target of international jihadi attack. And as with other major attacks, coordination among security services was seriously lacking. Sri Lanka failed spectacularly on this front, but it also failed to warn the public, who could have aided investigations or thwarted attempted attacks.

But fundamentally, the Easter bombings laid bare the dangers of Sri Lanka’s lingering political crisis and unresolved sectarian tensions. The country’s complacency in the face of such dire warnings demonstrates that political leaders were lulled into believing that Sri Lanka’s terrorism problem was over after it had defeated the Tamil Tigers — and failed to see the dangers round the corner.

Lydia Khalil is a former intelligence advisor to the Boston Police Department and counterterrorism analyst to the New York Police Department. She is currently a research fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia.

Sri Lanka attacks: Authorities admit massive security failure

Paraic O'Brien-22 Apr 2019Correspondent

We report from St Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo – where scores of worshippers had gathered for Easter Sunday mass when a suicide bomber detonated his device.

Tonight, amid heartbreaking stories of those lost, Sri Lanka is again under curfew. Sweeping military powers have been given to soldiers to arrest and detain suspects, while social media has been shut down. Government ministers have said the bombers were Sri Lankan – from a local Islamist group – but must have had international support.

They also reveal that security services were warned two and a half weeks ago that an attack was being planned.

Tonight, this massive security failure has devastated families from all over the world.

Philippines earthquake: Eight deaths reported

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

A powerful earthquake has struck the main Philippines island of Luzon, killing at least 11 people.

The magnitude 6.1 tremor hit at 17:11 local time (09:11 GMT) on Monday, the Philippines Institute of Volcanology and Seismology reports.

An airport was seriously damaged and at least two buildings were destroyed.

Authorities fear dozens of people remain trapped underneath a collapsed building in the province of Pampanga, north-west of the capital Manila.

The province is believed to be the worst-hit area. Its governor, Lilia Pineda, told Reuters news agency that 20 people had been injured there.

"They can be heard crying in pain," she said of those trapped under the rubble. "It won't be easy to rescue them."

House Democratic leaders say no immediate plans to open impeachment proceedings against Trump

U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), Irish Education Minister Joe McHugh, U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) cross the Irish border from Northern Ireland into the Republic of Ireland at Bridgened in County Donegal on Thursday. (Niall Carson/AP)

By Rachael Bade ,Karoun DemirjianandJacqueline Alemany-April 22 at 8:11 PM

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told lawmakers Monday that there are no plans to immediately open impeachment proceedings against President Trump, rejecting calls from several Democrats to initiate steps to try to oust the president.

In a rare Monday night conference call, the California Democrat stressed that the near-term strategy in the wake of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report is to focus on investigating the president and seeing where the inquiries lead. Members of Pelosi’s leadership team reaffirmed her cautious approach, according to four officials on the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

“We have to save our democracy. This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans. It’s about saving our democracy,” Pelosi said.

But Pelosi’s message did not go over well with several Democrats, who argued that Congress has a duty to hold Trump to account with impeachment despite the political blowback Pelosi has long feared.

Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, argued that as someone with more than 25 years of experience in law enforcement, she thought the House had enough evidence to proceed.

“While I understand we need to see the full report and all supporting documents, I believe we have enough evidence now,” Demings said.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said the party has a duty to openly discuss the downside of not impeaching Trump for his actions and the precedent it could set for the future.

Mueller, in the 448-page redacted report released last week, identified 10 instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump but he did not find that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.

The report has divided Democrats, with several clamoring for impeachment, notably White House candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), while others argue such a step is futile with the GOP controlling the Senate. Several Democrats maintain that impeachment would embolden Trump and his Republican backers ahead of the 2020 election.

Despite leadership’s effort to tamp down impeachment talk, they did not rule it out completely. In fact, after some of her members spoke up, Pelosi clarified that “if it is what we need to do to honor our responsibility to the Constitution — if that’s the place the facts take us, that’s the place we have to go.”

“I wish you would just read my letter because it, I think succinctly, presents some of the reasons, I think — whether it’s articles of impeachment or investigations, it’s the same obtaining of facts,” she said to her members. “We don’t have to go to articles of impeachment to obtain the facts, the presentation of facts.”

The nearly 90-minute call with lawmakers scattered around the country during the congressional recess came just hours after Pelosi appeared to tap the brakes on impeachment discussions. She argued in a letter to her colleagues that while Democrats would hold Trump accountable for his actions in the Mueller report, “it is . . . important to know that the facts regarding holding the president accountable can be gained outside of impeachment hearings.”

“Whether currently indictable or not, it is clear that the president has, at a minimum, engaged in highly unethical and unscrupulous behavior which does not bring honor to the office he holds,” Pelosi wrote.

[After Mueller report, Democrats divided over end game — investigate Trump or impeach]

She added: “As we proceed to uncover the truth and present additional needed reforms to protect our democracy, we must show the American people we are proceeding free from passion or prejudice, strictly on the presentation of fact.”

The speaker’s caution comes despite an impeachment push by some 2020 presidential hopefuls and even some of her Democratic chairmen, who suggested on the Sunday talk shows that it might be an option.

But as they briefed lawmakers on the call Monday night, those same chairmen appeared to push that notion to the side for now, suggesting Democratic leaders — who spoke privately before the call — have decided it is not the time to start such proceeding.

Even House Financial Services Chairman Maxine Waters, who last week warned that “Congress’s failure to impeach is complacency in the face of the erosion of our democracy and constitutional norms,” did not push the matter. Instead, the California Democrat, a vocal Trump critic who is probing the president’s business practices before he won the 2016 election, made a point on the call of clarifying that she is not pressuring lawmakers to join her effort.

Waters instead spoke of her latest effort to subpoena a bank that lent money to Trump despite his bankruptcies. Just minutes before the call, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) subpoenaed former White House counsel Donald McGahn, who was a central witness in Mueller’s probe into possible obstruction of justice by Trump.

Nadler also spoke on the call about his own next steps in investigating Trump.

According to an official on the call, leadership tried to emphasize that impeachment is not a political decision and that they would let the chairmen do what they need to keep investigating Trump.

But Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.) challenged that assertion, telling leadership not to “shy away from the notion that impeachment isn’t political.”

“It is political,” he retorted.

But leadership had allies. Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the leader of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, said he was committed to ensuring Trump doesn’t get reelected but also wondered if the party would guarantee the Republican’s second term with an impeachment push.

Himes asked for impeachment data from leaders so Democrats knew where the country was on the issue. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) agreed.

According to a recent survey, roughly 6 in 10 Democrats said Congress should begin impeachment hearings in a Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted after Attorney General William P. Barr’s initial letter to Congress about the investigation’s findings but before the release of the final report. But the same survey found the public overall leaned against impeaching Trump, with 41 percent saying Congress should begin hearings and 54 percent saying lawmakers should not.

At one point on the call, a lawmaker brought up a question about whether House Democrats could censure the president. Nadler explained how it has no legal effect but would just be a simple expression of disapproval.

Nadler said it was an option, though did not endorse it explicitly.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), one of the most liberal members in leadership, said no option, including impeachment, should be taken off the table. She asked leadership to give lawmakers messaging about how House Democrats can both push for economic issues they ran on while also holding up the rule of law by checking Trump.

Despite Democratic leadership’s move to down play the prospects of impeachment at this time, they did not rule it out completely. Officials following the House probes closely say that’s intentional.

Should Pelosi declare “no impeachment” flat out, she probably would undercut her chairmen’s bid to sue the Trump administration for the full Mueller report, including grand jury information. To get those documents, impeachment probably would have to be on the table, lawyers say, justifying the House move to get such information.

Pelosi would also risk the ire of the far left, which has typically viewed her as an ally of their cause.

Before the Mueller report, Pelosi had argued that impeachment was too divisive, politically costly and that Trump was “not worth it.” Pelosi also set a high threshold for taking up impeachment, arguing it would have to be bipartisan.

But after the Mueller report’s release, Republicans have largely gone silent, even as Mueller detailed the Trump campaign welcoming Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and Trump’s effort to thwart the investigation.

Mueller, however, did not establish conspiracy and did not answer the question of whether Trump obstructed justice, appearing to kick the issue to Congress. Barr said the president did not obstruct justice.

Republicans control the Senate, and even if the Democratic-led House voted to impeach Trump, it would take a two-thirds vote of the Senate to convict the president and remove him from office. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday dismissed the notion of impeachment.

“Well, look, I think it’s time to move on. This investigation was about collusion, there’s no collusion, no charges brought against the president on anything else, and I think the American people have had quite enough of it,” McConnell said when questioned during a stop in Owensboro, Ky.

[Democrats will meet in the next few weeks to discuss impeachment, Schiff says]

Pelosi in her Monday letter took a shot at the GOP for its muted reaction to the Mueller report.

“It is also clear that the congressional Republicans have an unlimited appetite for such low standards,” she wrote. “The GOP should be ashamed of what the Mueller report has revealed, instead of giving the president their blessings.”

Pelosi also called on the GOP-controlled Senate to take up campaign finance legislation that passed the House earlier this year, which included sweeping ethics changes. On Sunday, the president’s legal team argued that it was acceptable for the Trump campaign to seek to benefit from Russia’s hacking of the Clinton campaign.

“[I]n light of the President’s defenders arguing in defense of receiving and weaponizing stolen emails, we continue to press our Republican House counterparts to take up our pledge to refuse to use stolen, hacked, or falsified information in campaigns because the American people deserve honest debate,” Pelosi wrote.

Meanwhile, White House officials taunted House Democrats as they considered their next steps.

“If they have to get a conference call together to figure out where they’re going from here, they shouldn’t be in office in the first place,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on “Fox and Friends.” “I think it’s quite sad that they’ve got to have a conference call with all of their members to figure out what they’re going to do with themselves now that the Mueller report is out and proven that there was no collusion and no obstruction.”

John Wagner and Scott Clement contributed to this report.

US Voices On Terrorist Attack In Sri Lanka

by Michael R. Pompeo-23 Apr 2019

Before I make my announcement regarding our pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran, I want to address yesterday’s terrorist attack in Sri Lanka.

What was supposed to be a joyful Easter Sunday was marred by a horrific wave of Islamic radical terror bloodshed.

It’s heartbreaking that a country which has strived so hard for peace in recent years has been targeted by these terrorists. We mourn the loved ones of the victims, some of whom, we can confirm, were indeed U.S. citizens. This is America’s fight too. I spoke with the prime minister of Sri Lanka this morning. And our embassy and other parts of the U.S. Government are offering all possible assistance to Americans and the Sri Lankan Government alike. We urge that any evildoers be brought to justice expeditiously, and America is prepared to support that.

We also stand with the millions of Sri Lankans who support the freedom of their fellow citizens to worship as they please. We take confidence in knowing that not even atrocities like this one will deter them from respecting religious freedom. Today our nation grieves with the people of Sri Lanka, and we stand committed, resolved to confront terrorism together.

Now, turning to Iran:

Almost one year ago, after withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, President Trump implemented the strongest pressure campaign in history against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The goal remains simple: to deprive the outlaw regime of the funds it has used to destabilize the Middle East for four decades, and incentivize Iran to behave like a normal country.

Up to 40 percent of the regime’s revenue comes from oil sales. It’s the regime’s number one source of cash. Before our sanctions went into effect, Iran would generate as much as $50 billion annually in oil revenue. Overall, to date, we estimate that our sanctions have denied the regime well north of $10 billion. The regime would have used that money to support terror groups like Hamas and Hizballah and continue its missile development in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, and it would have perpetuated the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

Our goal has been to get countries to cease importing Iranian oil entirely. Last November, we granted exemptions from our sanctions to seven countries and to Taiwan. We did this to give our allies and partners to wean themselves off of Iranian oil, and to assure a well-supplied oil market.

Today I am announcing that we will no longer grant any exemptions. We’re going to zero – going to zero across the board. We will continue to enforce sanctions and monitor compliance. Any nation or entity interacting with Iran should do its diligence and err on the side of caution. The risks are simply not going to be worth the benefits.

I want to emphasize that we have used the highest possible care in our decision to ensure market stability.

The United States has been in constant discussion with allies and partners to help them transition away from Iranian crude to other alternatives. And we have been working with major oil-producing countries to ensure the market has sufficient volume to minimize the impact on pricing. Both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have assured us they will ensure an appropriate supply for the markets. And of course, the United States is now a significant producer as well.

I can confirm that each of those suppliers are working directly with Iran’s former customers to make the transition away from Iranian crude less disruptive.

And as I said, we’re doing our part here in the United States too. In 2018, crude production increased by 1.6 million barrels per day over the 2017 levels. And the U.S. Energy Information Agency projects an increase of an additional 1.5 million barrels per day in calendar year 2019.

Look, with the announcement today, we have made clear our seriousness of purpose. We are going to zero. We – how long we remain there at zero depends solely on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s senior leaders.

We have made our demands very clear to the ayatollah and his cronies. End your pursuit of nuclear weapons. Stop testing and proliferating ballistic missiles. Stop sponsoring and committing terrorism. Halt the arbitrary detention of U.S. citizens.

Our pressure is aimed at fulfilling these demands and others, and it will continue to accelerate until Iran is willing to address them at the negotiating table.

Finally, as I have said before, these demands are not just coming from the United States Government and many of our allies and partners. They are similar to what we hear from the Iranian people themselves. I want the Iranian people to know that we are listening to them and standing with them.

We will not appease their oppressors, as the last administration did. Our hopes are for a better life for them, and all people afflicted by the regime’s violence and destruction.

I will now take a few questions.

MS ORTAGUS: Matt.

QUESTION: Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Secretary.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Good morning, sir.

QUESTION: Thank you. I just – broadly on Iran, aside from this, your goal – you just said bring them back to the negotiating table. But are you really interested in renegotiating the JCPOA or negotiating something like that, or are you just looking for – are all these steps that you’re taking aimed at just getting them to change their behavior without getting anything in return?

And then secondly, if you could just address a report about comments you allegedly made to Iranian diaspora leaders last week in Texas.

SECRETARY POMPEO: What comments? What in particular?

QUESTION: That the – you’re not interested in any kind of military intervention, that it’s basically economic, diplomatic pressure, and that – and some – I don’t know, some kind of comment about the MEK, and you’re not --

SECRETARY POMPEO: Let me – Matt, thank you. Let me try and take those; I’ll take them in reverse sequence. We’ve not supported any outside group. We’re supporting the Iranian people. And so I get questions all the time about outside Iranian groups, including the MEK, and I – every time I engage with anyone – and this was a meeting with folks who have family, often had family inside of Iran – wanted to make clear to them we’re supporting the Iranian people, not any particular group. That’s the U.S. administration’s policy.

Second, with respect to our objectives, we’re happy to receive the – we’re happy to get the outcome however we can achieve it. The President’s always made very clear, we’ve made clear to Iran’s leaders, that if Americans are attacked, we will respond in a serious way. And so I don’t think there should be any doubt about the fact that if it is required for us to take an action in response to something that Qasem Soleimani does or the Iranian leadership, or a Shia militia somewhere in the world, that we will respond to that in a way that is appropriate to protect American interests wherever we find them.

With respect to our goal, we laid them out. We laid them out. There are 12 things we’re looking for. When we get to those things, we are happy to re-engage with Iran as a normal nation. If they’re prepared to come to the table and negotiate those things to get to that outcome, fantastic. If not, the campaign with which we’ve been engaged since, frankly, the administration took office, but more clearly since the President’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA, the campaign will continue. And we built that enormous coalition to work on this, right. Gulf state partners, Israel, lots of countries that are working alongside us to achieve these objectives.

You see the Europeans with increasing risk from the assassination campaign that’s taking place inside of their country. We watch as Iran continues to try and have a role in protecting Maduro in Venezuela. This is causing countries in South America to understand that the expeditionary nature of the Islamic Republic is something that threatens citizens all across the world. And so this is not the United States alone; it’s a true coalition working to achieve the ends which we have laid out.

QUESTION: Thank you.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you, Matt.

MS ORTAGUS: (Off-mike.)

QUESTION: Good morning, Mr. Secretary.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yes, ma’am. Good morning.

QUESTION: With the maximum pressure campaign, have you detected any change in the Iranian behavior, with the few exception that you mention I think before, which is short of cash of the Hizballah and maybe to not giving all to the Syrian regime? And also talking about senior leadership, do you have any comment about the appointment of the new leader of the IRGC – I think his name is Mr. Hossein Salami.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah, yes.

QUESTION: Because he’s been praised as a hardliner, anti-U.S.

SECRETARY POMPEO: So we have watched Iran have diminished power as a result of our campaign. Their capacity to wreak harm around the world is absolutely clearly diminished. I talked about it with respect to Hizballah not being able to make payroll in a timely fashion. I’ve talked about it in other places as well. What we’re announcing this morning, the designation of the IRGC a couple of weeks back, actions that we’ll take in a handful of weeks – each of these things will continue to support the Iranian people so that they can get what they ultimately are so desperately seeking.

I don’t have any comment on the new appointment of the IRGC other than – IRGC leader other than this: You described him as a hardliner.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY POMPEO: It is the case that every Iranian leader – that includes President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif – has accepted the notion, has accepted this fundamental notion of the nature of the regime itself, right. So they accept that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the appropriate method for which Iran to engage – when – once they’ve conceded that, in our view, these distinctions are often – are often insignificant. That is, if you are pushing and you are supporting Qasem Soleimani’s efforts in Iraq, if you’re supporting the efforts of the IRGC’s Qods Force and Hizballah, and you’re supporting the underwriting of Hamas, by definition that is working against what America has laid out as our objective.

QUESTION: Thank you, sir.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Take one more, Morgan? Yeah.

MS ORTAGUS: Lesley.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Good morning, Lesley. Hi.

QUESTION: Hello. How are you, Mr. Secretary?

SECRETARY POMPEO: I’m very good, thank you.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, I want to ask you about the timing of your announcement. Oil supplies are pretty tight given that a lot of oil’s come off Venezuela as well. What are your discussions – China said today that the U.S. had reached beyond its jurisdiction. What have your – what assurances do you have from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, to supply the market in a timely fashion?

And second, do you believe that, I think it’s the five largest importers of Iranian oil, will abide by what you are asking of them?

SECRETARY POMPEO: With respect to your second question, we’ve made clear: If you don’t abide by this, there’ll be sanctions. Right? This is what we’re laying out this morning. We have a requirement and – to conduct these transactions, one almost always needs to participate in the financial markets, and we intend to enforce the sanctions. We don’t lay out sanctions that we don’t have any intention of encouraging countries to cooperate with.

With respect to – I’ll leave others to talk about the details of what the Saudis and the Emiratis have agreed to, but I’ve had conversations, the President has had conversations with these countries, and they have committed to making sure that there is sufficient supply in the markets. And I’m confident that we’ll achieve that. I’m confident that they’ll support this policy that is consistent with their objectives as well.

One more? Take one more. Yes. Go ahead, sir.

QUESTION: Thank you, sir.

QUESTION: You could stay all day.

QUESTION: Very quickly --

SECRETARY POMPEO: What’s that?

QUESTION: You could stay all day.

SECRETARY POMPEO: (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Very quickly, sir.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Got to get to the Easter egg roll. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Sir, you said that you are at zero level today. Is that effective today, or do they --

SECRETARY POMPEO: It’s May 2nd.

QUESTION: May 2nd.

SECRETARY POMPEO: The current waivers expire on May – midnight May 1st, I think it is.

QUESTION: So they’re not getting, like, any grace period beyond May 2nd? That’s it? It all must stop?

SECRETARY POMPEO: There are – there are no – there are no SRE waivers that extend beyond that period, full stop.

QUESTION: And so in the interim, they need to look at other sources like --

SECRETARY POMPEO: That’s right.

QUESTION: To make up the (inaudible).

SECRETARY POMPEO: Look, we’ve always tried – and I think we’ve always been very fair about this – if there is a particular transaction that is incidental – all right, so I don’t want to foreclose the possibility, but there will be no waivers that extend beyond the 1st of May.

Great, thank you all.

QUESTION: Can I ask about Sri Lanka?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you all very much.

QUESTION: Can I ask about Sri Lanka, sir?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah, sure.

QUESTION: Do you think the incident there says anything about the dangers ISIS continues to pose now that the – they’ve been defeated on the battleground?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yes. Radical Islamist terror remains a threat. The President’s been very clear about that; I think I’ve been very clear about that. We are continuing to do real work against these evil human beings that went into places of worship on Easter Sunday. Yeah, the – we’ve taken that threat down substantially. The destruction of the caliphate was important, and it mattered, and the takedown of these threats from other geographies as well. But sadly, this evil exists in the world, and the United States and all of its partners that are cooperating in the D-ISIS campaign – some 80 countries, and other nations too that are assisting us in defeating this terrorism around the world – we have to remain active and vigilant and it’s going to require attention. There’s no doubt about that.

So thank you all very much.

QUESTION: May I ask about North Korea?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you. Have a great day.

QUESTION: Thank you.

QUESTION: Thank you, sir.

The Assange Matter

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

“I know nothing about Wikileaks.” -Donald J. Trump [April 11, 2019]

Ralph E. Stone, Salem-News.com-Apr-23-2019

(SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.) - At this point, I am not sympathetic about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's arrest in London after being evicted from the Ecuadoran Embassy after six years in exile. Assange allegedly collaborated with Russians to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report is clear that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and sought to help Donald Trump win the White House.

His schemes are not journalism; he is not a journalist. No journalist worthy of the name would partner with an authoritarian regime to disrupt a democracy or pour classified material into the public domain without trying to verify its accuracy or seek comment from the subjects of the disclosures or conspire to break into a computer system (the subject of the U.S. indictment against him).

The indictment as it now stands is fairly narrow: accusing him of helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to try to crack a classified Defense Department password, which would be out of bounds in legitimate news gathering.

If tried in the U.S., the case significantly reduces concerns about press freedoms because it is outside traditional investigative journalism to help sources try to break passcodes so they can illegally hack into government computers.

In October 2016, Trump said, “I love Wikileaks.” However, on April 11, 2019, Trump said, “I know nothing about Wikileaks.”

Will the British extradite Assange? If so, to where: Sweden or the U.S.? Sweden's prosecuting authority is considering whether to reopen an investigation into an allegation of rape against Assange that was closed in 2017.

The rape allegations were made separately by two women in Sweden after a visit by Assange there in August 2010. The case was set aside because there was no practical way it could be continued while Assange remained in the Ecuadorian embassy.

UN waters down rape resolution to appease US's hardline abortion stance

Measure on sexual violence in conflict passes after Trump administration threatened to veto document over references to reproductive health

Nadia Murad listens as Amal Clooney, left, speaks at the UN security council during a meeting about sexual violence in conflict in New York on 23 April 2019. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Liz Ford @lizfordguardian-Tue 23 Apr 2019

The UN has backed a resolution on combatting rape in conflict but excluded references in the text to sexual and reproductive health, after vehement opposition from the US.

The resolution passed by the security council on Tuesday after a three-hour debate and a weekend of fierce negotiations on the language among member states that threatened to derail the process.
The vote was carried 13 votes in favour. China and Russia abstained. On Monday, the US had threatened to veto the resolution but it is understood that last minute concessions on Tuesday morning got the US on side.

Other omissions included calls for a working group to review progress on ending sexual violence.
The UK backed the resolution, but expressed regret about the omission on reproductive healthcare. Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, the UK prime minister’s special representative on preventing sexual violence in conflict, said: “We emphasise the need for a survivor-centred approach. Survivor services should cater to all survivors – with no exception.”

But he added: “We deeply regret the language on services for survivors of sexual violence, recognising the acute need for those services to include comprehensive reproductive and separate sexual healthcare.”

The UK, he said, would continue to “support access to sexual and reproductive healthcare for survivors of sexual violence around the world. This is a priority. If we are to have a survivor-centred approach, we cannot ignore this important priority.”

France and Belgium also expressed disappointment at the watered down text. French permanent representative to the UN Francois Delattre said: “We are dismayed by the fact that one state has demanded the removal of the reference to sexual and reproductive health … going against 25 years of gains for women’s rights in situations of armed conflict.”

In recent months, the Trump administration has taken a hard line, refusing to agree to any UN documents that refer to sexual or reproductive health, on grounds that such language implies support for abortions. It has also opposed the use of the word “gender”, seeing it as a cover for liberal promotion of transgender rights.

Jessica Neuwirth, the director of The Sisterhood Is Global Institute thinktank and former UN special advisor on sexual violence, said: “It’s shocking that the United States turned its back on these girls and jeopardised this urgently needed security council resolution.”

During the debate, the secretary-general Antonia Guterres called on the council to “work together to reconcile differences” before the vote was cast.

Following the vote, Russia’s UN envoy, Vasily Nebenzia, said the resolution overstepped the remit of UN bodies and required excessive reports to be delivered. He added: “Don’t try to paint us as opponents of ending sexual violence in conflict. It is a scourge and has to be eliminated.”

Nadia Murad, the Yazidi Nobel peace prize laureate who spoke at the debate, said: “I think this resolution is a step in the right direction. But adopting this resolution must be followed by practical steps to achieve reality.”

The UN mission in South Sudan takes part in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign in November 2018. Photograph: Nektarios Markogiannis/UN Photo

The human rights lawyer Amal Clooney had called on members of the UN security council to stand on the right side of history in supporting the Yazidi survivors of sexual violence. “This is your Nuremberg moment,” she said during the debate.

The agreed-upon resolution was a sliver of what the Germans had put forward earlier this month. The zero draft included progressive text on strengthening laws to protect and support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who could be targeted during conflict.

It also made specific mention of the need for women to have access to safe terminations.

But the resolution – number 2467 – did for the first time make specific calls for greater support for children born as a result of rape in conflict, as well as their mothers, who can face a lifetime of stigma. It also gave prominence to the experiences of men and boys.

The resolution is the ninth introduced by the security council that has sought to address women’s specific experiences of conflict, and advocate for their involvement in peace negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction. The first – resolution 1325 – was passed in 2000 after years of lobbying by women’s rights campaigners.

Germany has made women, peace and security a priority of its presidency.

However, before the government introduced the resolution, there were concerns that it risked weakening the women, peace and security agenda.

In a statement published last month, 10 organisations, including the Gunder Werner Institut, UN Women and the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy and the NGO Care, said: “Given the further hardening of antidemocratic and decidedly misogynistic stances in the UN security council, we believe there is a danger of a weak resolution text ultimately being negotiated and adopted.

“Some powerful members of the security council, such as Russia, China and the USA, are undermining women’s rights and once again questioning, for example, women’s and girls’ right to self-determination. Through such actions, the achievements that have already been made could be shattered and the ‘women, peace and security’ agenda overall decisively weakened.”

In November, ministers, government officials and civil society groups will attend a second global conference on ending sexual violence in conflict in London. The three-day event is part of the UK government’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI). The first conference was held in June 2014.

The UK is expected to launch the “Murad Code” on sexual violence, named after the Yazidi Nobel peace prize laureate. The code will set out standards of behaviour and care when gathering evidence of sexual violence.

Leaders will also be lobbied to support calls by the actor Angelina Jolie and the former foreign secretary William Hague for the UN to established a permanent, independent body that will gather and assess evidence in cases of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Julian Borger contributed to this report