Berlin, May 15 (IANS) German Chancellor Friedrich Merz met with United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres here, reaffirming Germany’s steadfast commitment to UN peacekeeping operations.
The meeting followed the UN Peacekeeping Ministerial 2025, hosted by Germany on Tuesday and Wednesday, which brought together representatives from nearly 130 countries, Xinhua news agency reported.At a joint press conference on Wednesday, Merz said Germany will remain one of the most important contributors to the United Nations.Guterres praised Germany as a pillar of multilateralism, a strong supporter of the UN, and an essential partner for peacekeeping, peacebuilding and humanitarian aid.Expressing concern about the impact of US funding cuts on the UN, Guterres said there is a certain degree of uncertainty regarding contributions to the UN, calling on donors to fulfill their obligations.During the UN Peacekeeping Ministerial 2025, Guterres emphasised the urgent need for reforms to peacekeeping operations amid growing fiscal challenges.”It is absolutely essential that all Member States respect their financial obligations, paying their contributions in full and on time,” Guterres said following the event.Guterres underscored the significance of Germany’s leadership: “With almost 200 German peacekeepers now serving in our ranks, I am especially pleased to be here so soon after the new government took office, and I look forward to building on our partnership in the time ahead.”He emphasised the growing risks to peacekeepers, pointing to evolving conflict environments.”Let me be clear that peacekeeping operations today are facing massive challenges… terrorism and transnational crime… and the targeting of peacekeepers through drones, improvised explosive devices, and even social media.”Financial strain is compounding operational risks, he warned.”Unfortunately, peacekeeping operations have been facing serious liquidity problems. It is absolutely essential that all members respect their financial obligations, paying their contributions in full and on time.”German Chancellor Merz reaffirmed his country’s role in global peace and security efforts.”Germany will continue to contribute with military, police and civilian personnel to UN missions. We would also like to assume political responsibility in the United Nations. And that is why we have announced our candidacy for a non-permanent seat on the Security Council for the period 2027 and 2028.”On the war in Ukraine, Merz and Guterres expressed support for a ceasefire.”The Secretary-General and I also discussed the diplomatic efforts under way toward setting up establishing a peace in Ukraine. We both agree that what we need to see now is an unconditional ceasefire,” Merz said.–IANSint/khz

Ankara, May 15 (IANS) Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha in Turkey’s city of Antalya before the upcoming Russia-Ukraine peace talks scheduled in Istanbul.

According to a report by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency, Fidan told Sybiha on Wednesday that Turkey is ready to provide all kinds of support, including holding talks, to help achieve peace.After the meeting, Sybiha wrote on the social media platform X that he and Fidan thoroughly discussed ways to advance a “meaningful peace process”.”I reaffirmed Ukraine’s commitment to peace, our immediate and unconditional readiness for a full and durable ceasefire, as well as our offer of the highest-level direct meeting between Ukraine and Russia,” he wrote.The meeting also covered preparations for a planned visit to Turkey by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Xinhua news agency reported.Last Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed resuming direct negotiations with Ukraine on May 15 in Istanbul. That same day, Ukrainian President Zelensky said he would be prepared to meet with Putin in Istanbul.Earlier on Wednesday, Russian Presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said that the Russian delegation would address political and technical issues at the upcoming talks, and the topics on the agenda will guide the selection of the delegation.Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan spoke on Monday to discuss Kremlin leader Putin’s proposal to hold direct Russian-Ukrainian talks this week in Turkey, Reuters reported, citing the Russian Ministry.”The heads of the two Ministries discussed issues linked with the initiative by Russian Federation President V.V. Putin about beginning direct talks on a Ukrainian settlement on May 15 in Istanbul,” the Ministry said in a statement.A Turkish diplomatic source earlier said the two Ministers had spoken, but gave no further details.Putin issued the proposal at the weekend after European leaders met in Kyiv and urged Russia to agree to a 30-day ceasefire in its war in Ukraine by Monday or face new sanctions.On Monday, US President Donald Trump offered to join the prospective Ukraine-Russia talks in Turkey.–IANSint/khz

Beirut, May 15 (IANS) The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has expressed concern after one of its sites in southeastern Lebanon was struck by Israeli gunshots.

In a statement sent to Xinhua news agency on Wednesday, the UNIFIL expressed concern over the recent hostile actions taken by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) against its personnel and assets near the Blue Line, including an incident on Tuesday in which Israeli fire hit the vicinity of a UNIFIL position south of Kfarchouba village.”In the incident, which occurred at around 7:20 p.m. local time yesterday, peacekeepers observed two shots fired from south of the Blue Line, one of which struck a UNIFIL base,” said the statement.”This marks the first time a UNIFIL position has been directly hit since a ceasefire agreement came into effect on November 27, 2024,” it added.UNIFIL has also reported observing at least four additional incidents involving the IDF firing near its positions along the Blue Line in recent days, Xinhua news agency reported.UNIFIL was established in 1978 following the first Israeli invasion of Lebanon to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and to assist the Lebanese government in reestablishing authority over the area.In a latest round of cross-border hostilities, Lebanon has witnessed fierce clashes between Hezbollah and Israel since October 2023 following the conflict in Gaza.A truce, mediated by the US and France, has largely held since late November last year, though sporadic flare-ups have continued.In violation of the truce, the Israeli military continues to hold several strategically important positions in southern Lebanon and launch occasional strikes, claiming they were targeting “Hezbollah threats”.Amid the challenges, the Lebanese Army, as per the truce deal, is advancing its deployment in the south and along the border to assume security responsibilities and prevent the presence of militants and weapons.On Wednesday, the Lebanese Defence Ministry, the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, and the UN Development Programme in Lebanon signed a tripartite memorandum of understanding to rally and coordinate international support for the Lebanese Army, which is expected to reinforce the ongoing partnership between the Lebanese Army and the UN.–IANSint/khz

United Nations, May 15 (IANS) More torrential rains have hit Somalia, this time in Banadir, northeast of the capital Mogadishu, killing nine people and triggering deadly flooding 24,000 people being affected, UN humanitarians said.
“Key infrastructure was destroyed, and shelters in displacement sites were swept away,” said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Wednesday.”The federal government is leading the response, and the UN and its partners are supporting and delivering food, shelter items, hygiene kits and cash.”OCHA said the Banadir rain started on Friday, adding to the heavy seasonal downpours that began in mid-April, causing flash flooding that has claimed 17 lives and affected more than 84,000 people across Somalia, Xinhua news agency reported.Despite heavy rains in most areas of the country, dry and hot conditions persist in parts of northern regions.The office said the flooding came when severe funding cuts forced humanitarian partners in Somalia to scale back or even close critical programs.The $1.4-billion Somalia Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan is 11 per cent funded, with only $158 million received to date.OCHA said Somalia’s humanitarian crisis is among the world’s most complex, driven by cycles of internal conflict and climate shocks that drive displacement and undermine development efforts.The cumulative effect of both violence and climate shocks continues to drive displacement and destroy livelihoods, leaving millions of people in urgent need of assistance.The humanitarians said these shocks’ increased frequency and severity have left large population segments in prolonged states of risk and vulnerability.Light to heavy Gu (April to June) seasonal rains have triggered localised flooding in several parts of the country since mid-April.The UN agency said the Somali government has formed a committee that includes federal ministers and regional officials to respond to the flooding crisis.Somalia, a country where nearly two-thirds of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihoods, has experienced extreme climate shocks in the past, including prolonged dry seasons causing drought and heavy rains leading to flooding, media reported.Many communities, initially displaced by drought or conflict, have been displaced a second or third time by floods or renewed violence.–IANSint/khz

Berlin, May 15 (IANS) Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pledged to make national security…

New York, May 15 (IANS) A federal judge in the US has ordered the release of an Indian academic held by the immigration authorities and threatened with deportation.

Judge Patricia Giles ruled on Wednesday that the US government had not given proof that Badar Khan Suri was a danger to society and that that he had the right to freedom of expression, which applied to non-citizens also.”The First Amendment extends to non-citizens and doesn’t distinguish between citizens and non-citizens,” she said, noting that the government likely wanted to deport him because of his views and his marriage to a Palestinian-American woman.US Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin accused Suri of “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media”.Suri, who has a PhD from Jamia Milia University in New Delhi, was a was a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University in Washington, where he was teaching a course on “Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia” while researching peacebuilding in conflict zones.He is married to a US citizen, Maphaze Ahmad Yousef, the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, who was described in a Hindustan Times article quoted by Politico as “a senior political advisor to the Hamas leadership”.Suri was seized by masked immigration officers outside his home in a Washington suburb in Virginia State in March and told that his student visa had been revoked, according to his lawyer.After his arrest, he was moved to a detention centre in Louisiana and then to another in Texas pending his deportation.Suri’s lawyers had filed a habeas corpus petition seeking his release and opposing his detention in Texas.Government lawyers wanted the case moved to Texas, where judges are more conservative.Suri is still facing a deportation case in a Texas court.Judge Giles’ ruling in Suri’s case in a court in Alexandria was the third high-profile setback for President Donald Trump’s administration’s efforts to deport students accused of supporting Hamas, the terrorist organisation that controls Gaza and had launched an attack on Israel.Another judge on Friday ordered the release of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University.She was arrested in a similar manner to Suri’s on the grounds that her visa had been revoked because of her alleged support for Hamas in an article in a student newspaper.Mohsen Mahdawi, who led anti-Israel protests at Columbia University and was detained pending his deportation, was ordered released by a judge on April 30.–IANSal/khz

United Nations, May 15 (IANS) United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has commended India and Pakistan for taking steps to reduce tension when he took a phone call from Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, according to a UN spokesperson.

During the conversation, Guterres welcomed the “ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan and commended both sides for taking steps to reduce tensions,” his Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said on Wednesday.He added that they “exchanged views on possible next steps” and Guterres “reiterated the availability of his good offices”.When they spoke, Guterres was in Berlin for the Ministerial Meeting on Peacekeeping.This was Sharif’s third phone conversation with Guterres in two weeks.With the ceasefire between India and Pakistan holding, “we’re in a better place,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday.”We hope the ceasefire will continue to hold, and we hope that the parties will use this to deal with a lot of the outstanding issues between them,” he said at his briefing.”The ceasefire is holding,” Dujarric said while responding to a Palestinian journalist’s statement critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserting that his speech on Monday indicated the ceasefire is “very fragile”.To back his assertion, the journalist also quoted what he said was a Pakistani statement “to check this kind of tone by Indian Prime Minister”.Dujarric added, “We’re in a better place than we were before.”The understanding to end four days of conflict was reached on Saturday following a call from Pakistan’s Directorate General of Military Operations (DGMO) to the counterpart in India.India launched targeted strikes on terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and the Kashmir territory it occupies last Wednesday in retaliation for last month’s massacre of 26 people in Pahalgam by The Resistance Front, an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Toiba.Islamabad launched attacks on India, leading to an escalation of the situation.Soon after the understanding was announced, Guterres welcomed it “as a positive step toward ending current hostilities and easing tensions”.Earlier on Tuesday, while the confrontation was building up, the United Nations Chief called for restraint saying, “The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan.”–IANSal/khz

United Nations, May 15 (IANS) A team from India is at the UN headquarters to make New Delhi’s case for declaring The Resistance Front (TRF) an international terrorist organisation and put sanctions on it, according to sources here.
The sources said that the team is meeting on Wednesday with the monitoring team of the Security Council panel known as the 1267 Committee that sanctions terrorist groups and those associated with them.The team, the sources said, is presenting the committee with evidence of TRF carrying out last month’s massacre of tourists in Pahalgam and other activities.The group, an affiliate of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), owned responsibility for the 26 killings.The committee is named after Security Council Resolution 1267 that calls for action against the Islamic State or Da’esh, and Al-Qaida, and groups and people associated with them.The Indian team is also scheduled to meet with the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, and Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, the sources said.The sources added that team members will also be meeting with delegations of member countries to press India’s case against the terrorist organisation.The 1267 Committee’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team makes recommendations to the panel, and it also consults “in confidence, with Member States’ intelligence and security services” about terrorist organisations and threats, according to its mandate.LeT was listed as an international terrorist organisation in 2005 and sanctioned.The sanctions list includes 27 names under which LeT operates, including Pasba-e-Kashmir, and variations of Jamaat-ud-Dawa.About a dozen individuals associated with it, including its leader Hafeez Mohammed Saeed, have also been sanctioned along with three organisations linked to it, including Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.The sanctions include freezing of their assets and travel ban.–IANSal/khz

Quetta, May 14 (IANS) The Baloch Women Forum (BWF) on Wednesday strongly condemned a rocket attack on the residence of a civilian, Jangiyan Baloch, in the Balicha area of Tump Tehsil in Balochistan. The forum alleged that locally active armed groups, termed as “death squads”, allegedly operating under the payroll of law enforcement agencies of Pakistan, carried out the attack a few days ago, injuring three members of Jangiyan Baloch’s family — his son Nawaz Jangiyan, daughter-in-law Ayesha Mulla Raza, and wife Modho Naik Bakht.The forum stated that the death squad members are given free rein to distort the societal stability of the Baloch and are involved in every sort of evil, including targetted killings, attacks, and enforced disappearances of civilians in the province of Balochistan.”We, the BWF, denounce the ugly attack of rocket launchers on the home of a civilian, Jangiyan Baloch, in district Kech’s Balicha in the strongest possible terms and deem it an attack on the societal order and organisation of the Baloch,” said the statement.”The attackers are commonly and openly functioning under the payroll of the law enforcement agencies who are given a free hand to distort the societal stability of the Baloch. We want to clarify it that Tump region has been one of the most affected areas where the death squad members are given a free hand to involve themselves in every sort of evil, including targetted killings, attacks and enforced disappearances of the civilians,” the statement added.Highlighting the atrocities, the forum stated that this group also terms themselves the “laws and the violators” openly and are held accountable for nothing because they have the backing of law enforcement agencies. “It has given birth to the state of lawlessness in the region, infringing the fundamental rights of the citizens,” read a statement issued by the forum.Condemning the act, BWF demanded an end to such illegal privileges of the local militias or the “death squads”, permanent culmination of human rights violations in Tump in particular, Balochistan in general, an impartial inquiry on the case of attack on Jangiyan’s home and accountability for the culprits as per law, and medical and financial assistance to the grieving family.–IANSint/scor/as

Beirut, May 14 (IANS) An Israeli drone strike killed a Hezbollah member in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, targetting a vehicle near Qaaqaait al-Jisr in the Wadi al-Hujayr area, Lebanese security and official sources said.Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that “an enemy drone targeted a car at the entrance of Wadi al-Hujayr near Qaaqaait al-Jisr in the Nabatieh district this morning.”The Lebanese Ministry of Health’s Public Health Emergency Operations Center confirmed one fatality in the strike. Civil Defence officials said the vehicle caught fire, and the body was transported to a hospital in Nabatieh.A Lebanese security source told Xinhua that the deceased was identified as Hussein Nehmeh Milhem Shomran, a Hezbollah member from Qaaqaait al-Jisr.Also on Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had carried out the strike, describing the target as a senior Hezbollah figure.”Israeli Defense Forces aircraft carried out an attack in the area of Qaaqaait al-Jisr in southern Lebanon, eliminating a member of the Hezbollah terrorist organization who held the position of commander of the Qabrikha compound,” Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on social media platform X.In a separate incident, the NNA reported that an Israeli drone crashed due to a technical malfunction and exploded inside a home in the town of Shebaa, in the Hasbaya district. No casualties were reported, though material damage was sustained.The cross-border strikes come despite a ceasefire agreement reached on November 27, 2024, intended to halt more than a year of hostilities tied to the war in Gaza. The truce, mediated by the US and France, had largely held, though sporadic flare-ups have continued.Israel has said its strikes are intended to neutralize Hezbollah threats. However, the Lebanese government and several Arab states have accused Israel of repeatedly violating the ceasefire agreement. Despite the truce’s provision requiring a full Israeli withdrawal, Israeli forces continue to hold several strategically important positions in southern Lebanon.–IANSint/as