International
Possible lack of final agreement overspeaks Baku summit negotiations
Baku can go down in history as another failed climate summit, adding to the list of COPs that ended in failure; with a bad agreement, as in Copenhagen (2009) or without agreement, as in the summit in The Hague (2000).
This is raised in the conversations that negotiators, observers and journalists have this Saturday in the corridors of COP29, after the 24 hours of extension of a summit that was supposed to end on Friday afternoon and in full “chaos” after dozens of countries left the room where the draft of the potential agreement was being negotiated.
The analysts and observers consulted, as well as the negotiating teams, agree to underline the “especially chaotic” end of this summit, from which a not too encouraging outcome is expected: either a “bad agreement” – that does not meet the needs of the Global South to face the climate challenge – or, directly, without agreement.
Pessimism invaded the spaces of the summit that hosts these days the capital of Azerbaijan, and in which about 200 states have been negotiating for two weeks how to finance climate action, especially in those low-income countries and vulnerable to the impacts of global warming.
Everyone mentions the ghost of the failed summits in The Hague and Copenhagen, cases that they would like to avoid, because they fear that going through another failure like this would further undermine the already weaken confidence in multilateralism.
Some developing countries leave the trading room
In addition, small island states and some Africans left the negotiation room where they met the presidency’s latest proposal for the agreement on climate financing that finalizes COP29, where they said they did not feel heard.
Political representatives of the negotiating group that brings together the least developed countries, as well as that of the small island states claimed to have come to the climate summit in Baku to close “a fair agreement” on climate financing, but they have felt “hurt” by not being consulted.
“There is an agreement to be closed and we are not being consulted. We are here to negotiate, but we are leaving because at the moment we do not feel that we are being heard,” said the head of the negotiating group of the island countries, Cedric Schuste, in statements to the media.
“We do everything we can to build bridges with literally everyone. It is not easy, neither in financing nor in mitigation,” stressed the European Commissioner for Climate Action, Wopke Hoekstra, to emphasize that “it is fair to ask that we be constructive.”
Some Latin American and Caribbean states, which are trying to build bridges between the least developed and rich countries, expressed their refusal to admit that this Baku summit is closed without an agreement.
“We cannot leave Baku or Copenhagen,” said Panama’s special climate envoy, Juan Carlos Monterrey, in reference to the climate summit held in the Danish capital in 2009, a meeting that the international climate community considered a failure, by not reaching any agreement.
“We are already at a point of not only building bridges, but walking on those bridges,” Monterrey said, after detailing that the countries had left the consultation mainly because of their discrepancies regarding the total amount that rich countries suggest mobilizing to pay for the climate transition and adaptation to the inevitable impacts of global warming.
“The great struggle is the figure,” said Monterrey, since developing countries at this point support that the goal is 300 billion dollars per year by 2035, and developing and emerging economies ask for 500 billion dollars annually and by 2030.
Lack of transparency in the process
Panama’s main negotiator, Ana Aguilar, also criticized the lack of transparency in the process, something she blamed on the Azerbaijani presidency of the summit, which according to her has had more meetings with some parties than with others, and has been three days without favoring negotiations more than bilaterally.
“We have a problem,” said Colombian Minister Susana Muhamad, who claimed that there is still a long distance between the amount that rich countries propose to mobilize and that requested by those that developing countries.
The proposal of the presidency of the COP29, as reflected in a negotiating text made public on Friday, was that the awealing countries pay 250 billion dollars a year by 2035 to the states of the Global South, to help them pay for action against climate change, a phenomenon to which they hardly contribute but of which they are the main victims.
Now there is talk of 300 billion dollars, while the largest group of developing countries demands at least 500 billion.
The dispute is especially in the quantum, Muhamad said, but also “in some of the requirements that I think we can achieve through negotiation,” he said.
“The problem is that it has been published very late, it was published yesterday. The deadline is very short, so we have some countries, those that have less financial capacity, that do not feel satisfied,” explained Muhamad, who added that “we need them to be able to move and deliberate.”
The Colombian minister said that she will encourage rich countries “to take a step forward” and, she added, “it is very important that they do so so that we can move forward and carry out this negotiation.”
International
Armed clashes in northwestern Pakistan leave at least 35 dead and 50 injured
Armed clashes between Sunni and Shii groups in the Kurram tribal district, in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), in northwestern Pakistan, left at least 35 dead and 50 injured, the police confirmed to EFE on Saturday.
The violence that broke out last night comes two days after an ambush by an unidentified armed group to a passenger convoy in this same district, which killed 42 people, most of them Shiites, when they were traveling on a road escorted by security forces.
“Armed Shiites attacked Sunni houses and shops in the towns of Bagan and Bacha Kot, in which 35 people on both sides died and more than 50 were injured,” Mujahid Ullah, a Kurram police control officer, told EFE.
In the attack, “1,036 houses and 315 stores, mostly Sunnis, have been set on fire since the assault began around 6:00 p.m.” on Friday, he added.
Sectarian violence
Pakistan has a history of sectarian violence, but the latest clashes are claiming the highest number of victims in recent years. The Shiite Muslim minority represents about 15% of Pakistan’s 240 million inhabitants, a Sunni majority.
“In this situation it is difficult for the police to arrest someone involved in the violence,” said today the police officer who estimates that the death toll could increase, since shootings continue in some areas.
Verified images shared on social media show markets, houses and government buildings destroyed by fire.
The attack is apparently a reaction to the one recorded on Thursday to passenger vans that resulted in 42 deaths, including women and children.
The Thall-Sada-Parachinar highway, where Thursday’s ambush took place, has remained closed as authorities struggle to reinforce an unstable peace. Both sides attack each other with heavy and automatic weapons.
“The elderly and government officials have gathered at Kurram’s headquarters, to calm the situation,” Ullah revealed, adding that educational institutions in the district are closed due to growing tension.
No Internet or telephony
Internet and mobile phone services are also suspended throughout the district.
The Kurram district of KP is located on the border with Afghanistan, where a major land dispute that began in 2007 continued for several years and ended in 2011 with the help of a jirga of tribal elders.
According to the KP Department of the Interior, there are land disputes in eight places in the district that date back to the partition of Pakistan and India in 1947. Land disputes often turn into deadly sectarian violence.
International
Cristina Fernández demands the restitution of the pensions that the Milei Government took away from her
Former Argentine president Cristina Fernández (2007-2015) demanded that the National Administration of Social Security (Anses) return the pensions she received for having occupied the Head of State and for being the widow of the former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and that were taken away by decision of the Government of Javier Milei.
Official sources consulted by EFE indicated this Saturday that the administrative claim presented by the former president will be answered “according to the procedural deadlines,” something that will be done by the Legal Affairs area of ANSES, the state agency that administers the pension system in Argentina.
Through a resolution published on November 15 in the Official Gazette, ANSES revoked the lifetime pension benefits that Fernández received for having been head of state and as a widow of another former president, a measure that on the day before had been announced by the Government of Milei itself.
Why did they withdraw Cristina Fernández’s pensions?
The resolution recalls that on November 13, an impeachment court confirmed a sentence for Fernández to six years in prison and perpetual disqualification from holding public office in a trial for irregularities in the concession of road works during his government and that of Kirchner.
ANSES alleged that lifetime pensions for former presidents “become legally incompatible for those who have committed a crime in the exercise of the same public function for which they have acceded to said allocation of privilege and to the detriment of the National State.”
After this measure became effective, Cristina Fernández questioned it on the grounds that pensions for former presidents are not granted for good performance, but for the “merit” of having obtained the election as heads of state by the popular vote.
He also claimed that the alleged “bad performance” of a president can only be judged by the Argentine Parliament through the constitutional process of impeachment during the exercise of the mandate.
In statements to radio La Red, Facundo Fernández Pastor, the former president’s lawyer, pointed out that if the administrative claim before the ANSES does not succeed, Fernández will go to court.
International
The former Chancellor of Peru asks the US and Europe to freeze assets of “corrupt jers of Venezuela”
The former foreign minister of Peru Javier González-Olaechea assured that “the United States is the country that has the most instruments to surround the summit” of the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and even revealed that he had delivered to the North American country “a list of 57 corrupt bosses” with the aim of freezing their assets abroad.
“I say it for the first time: I have provided you with the list of the 57 main corrupt leaders of Venezuela,” González-Olaechea said in an interview with EFE in Quito, after being decorated on Tuesday by the Government of Ecuador for strengthening relations between the two countries.
“They have current accounts abroad, some in the United States, others in some European countries. They should intervene. They should dry them up,” said González-Olaechea, in whose period as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru he advocated within the Organization of American States (OAS) for the recognition of anti-Chavista candidate Edmundo González Urrutia as elected president of Venezuela.
González-Olaechea’s statements
The former Peruvian foreign minister made these statements minutes before the United States Government recognized González Urrutia as president-elect, after elections in July where most of the international community does not recognize the official results of the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela that gave Maduro the triumph and asks for the dissemination of the electoral minutes, in which the opposition claims to have won easily.
He insisted that the banks that keep those funds “should not endorse or use those ill-held money, rather exploit them.”
González-Olaechea, who left the Government of President Dina Boluarte in September, also recalled that “there are multiple calls to the members of the Armed Forces themselves to put themselves on the right side of history,” because the military take an oath in defense of the Constitution and “the Venezuelan order has been absolutely upset, falsified and instrumentalized.”
“The first call is to the Armed Forces themselves, not to participate in the corrupt party. That they think of their children and their families, because when they have to continue repressing and end up being slaughtered a daughter, a son or a nephew (of a member) of the Bolivarian Forces, they will face divine justice and their own family,” he said.
Presidential project
Recently, González-Olaechea announced his intention to be elected as a presidential candidate of the Popular Christian Party (PPC) for the next elections in Peru.
“I am an aspirant who wants a radical cycle change to bury everything that hurts us and all the institutions that, in quotes, say they are defenders of human rights and that do nothing but profit from them,” said the former foreign chaill.
“I will do everything possible to lead that proposal for a change of cycle that, basically, is a new current also beyond America. In many countries there are clear signs of boredom of the total state of impunity, of attacking the rights of families and of practically burying religious beliefs and moral values,” he added.
For González-Olaechea, “lies and political persecution against those of us who love and defend freedom above any other consideration have been instrumentalized.”
Defense of freedom is not enough
The Peruvian politician said that “it’s not just about defending freedom, because “that freedom has to be translated into a responsible, honest and transparent exercise of power to serve the large majorities in solving the problems that afflict them such as insecurity, lack of food, lack of opportunities and queues in hospitals.”
Regarding the fact that almost all the heads of state that Peru has had in the last 40 years have ended up investigated or imprisoned, González-Olaechea replied that he faces his political project “with an incorruptible will.”
“I can guarantee in the honor of my family that no one can impute an act of corruption to me,” González-Olaechea said.
Nor does he fear the fact that he can be linked to the Boluarte Government, whose popularity according to various surveys does not exceed 5%, since he argued that he sought as foreign minister “not to be a notary of reality, but an agent of change” and a “worthy representative of Peru abroad.”
When asked if as president he would take the step of leaving the San José Pact as he had suggested as chancellor, González-Olaechea replied that he would decide when the time comes. “Sometimes I think it’s better to fight from the inside, knowing the monster a little, and sometimes I think it’s better to fight from the outside,” he said.
Armed clashes in northwestern Pakistan leave at least 35 dead and 50 injured
Cristina Fernández demands the restitution of the pensions that the Milei Government took away from her
Possible lack of final agreement overspeaks Baku summit negotiations
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