https://arab.news/546w7
PRETORIA: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that Kyiv would do “everything” its allies wanted but could not recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, considered illegal under Ukraine’s constitution.
“We do everything that our partners have proposed, only what contradicts our legislation and the constitution we cannot do,” Zelensky told reporters during a visit to South Africa in response to a question about Ukraine’s position on ceasefire talks.
SAO PAULO: Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s health condition has worsened following bowel surgery nearly two weeks ago, his doctors said Thursday.
The medical team at the DF Star Hospital in Brasilia, where Bolsonaro continues to recover in intensive care, said the former president “experienced a clinical decline, elevated blood pressure and worsening liver lab test results.” He would undergo additional imaging tests on Thursday, the doctors added.
Bolsonaro underwent a 12-hour surgery on April 13 to remove intestinal adhesions and reconstruct the abdominal wall. It was the sixth procedure related to long-term effects of being stabbed in the abdomen during a campaign rally in September 2018.
Bolsonaro has been in and out of hospitals since the attack and underwent multiple surgeries during his presidency from 2019-2022.
Doctors described the latest surgery as the “most complex” since the stabbing, requiring a “very delicate and prolonged post-surgery.”
There is no expected discharge date from ICU, according to Thursday’s statement. Bolsonaro continues to receive parenteral nutrition and undergo physical therapy and preventive measures for thrombosis.
Since the initial medical report, doctors have advised against visitors for Bolsonaro.
However, the president of his Liberal Party, Valdemar Costa Neto, visited the former president in the ICU on Tuesday. Later that day, Bolsonaro appeared in a live broadcast on the YouTube channel of his eldest son, Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro. And on Monday, the far-right leader gave an interview from his hospital bed to the local television network SBT, saying his trial was not technical but political.
In response, a Supreme Court officer went to Bolsonaro’s hospital room on Wednesday to formally notify him of the start of his trial for an alleged attempt to stage a coup. His legal team has five days, from Wednesday, to present a preliminary defense.
Bolsonaro shared a video of the court officer’s notification, showing him questioning her. He appeared agitated, and someone in the room — apparently a member of his medical team — warned that his blood pressure was rising.
The court officer said in the video that the warrant had been issued on April 11, the same day Bolsonaro was first admitted to the hospital with abdominal pain.
ANTANANRIVO: French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said he opposed stripping former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy of France’s top honor despite the definitive conviction of the right-winger last year on charges of influence-peddling and corruption.
Sarkozy, in an unprecedented punishment for a former head of state, is now wearing an electronic ankle tag after France’s Court of Cassation in December upheld a verdict for him to serve a one-year term outside of prison with the GPS device.
The combative ex-president ruled France from 2007-2012 but failed to win a second mandate in a devastating election defeat to Socialist Francois Hollande and then became embroiled in a string of legal problems.
There had been speculation Sarkozy could lose his Legion of Honour award but Macron, who as head of state is the grand master of the decoration and would have a final say, said he respected Sarkozy and would oppose such a move.
“I think it is very important that former presidents are respected,” he said on the sidelines of a trip to Madagascar, adding he believed “it would not be a good decision” to strip Sarkozy of the award.
“The fact that he was elected president by the sovereign people means he deserves respect. He has my respect. I think he has the respect of the French people,” said Macron.
General Francois Lecointre, France’s former military chief of staff who now serves as the grand chancellor of the Legion of Honour, said last month that such a removal of the award was foreseen under the rules of the order, which was established early in the 19th century by Napoleon Bonaparte.
According to the code of the Legion of Honour, any person definitively sentenced to a prison sentence equal to or greater than one year in prison is “excluded by right” from the order, Lecointre noted.
If Sarkozy is stripped of the award, he would no longer be able to wear it on pain of prosecution.
But while acknowledging that the order has its “rules,” Macron said: “If I have the freedom of maneuver I prefer that a former president retains his place in the order that he belongs to. It’s something to have been president of France.”
Macron himself must step down in 2027 after serving the maximum two terms.
Sarkozy is using his last remaining legal avenue, an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, to defend himself against the conviction.
He is currently on trial in a separate case on charges of accepting illegal campaign financing in an alleged pact with late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
The court is to give a verdict in September with prosecutors asking for a seven-year prison term for Sarkozy, who denies the charges.
Despite his legal problems, Sarkozy remains an influential figure on the right and is known to regularly meet with Macron.
LONDON: Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, made an appearance at Yale University on Wednesday just a day after attending a fundraiser at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Ben-Gvir, who has past convictions for racist incitement and supporting a terrorist group, was previously considered persona non grata by the Joe Biden administration.
At Tuesday’s event in Palm Beach, he addressed a room of Republican figures and business leaders, where he outlined harsh new measures against Palestinian prisoners, according to a report in The Guardian.
“I love the American people very much,” Ben-Gvir told attendees through a translator. “We have a joint war against the jihad.”
While the Israeli minister did not meet Trump, who was not in attendance at the event, he did hold talks with “dozens of senior businessmen from Miami” and Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, according to The Times of Israel.
Ben-Gvir later posted on X that he “had the honor and privilege” of meeting senior Republican officials at Mar-a-Lago, though he did not name them, and in the post he further claimed they endorsed his call to bomb Gaza’s food and aid depots to ramp up pressure for the release of Israeli hostages.
The minister has repeatedly sparked controversy both within Israel and abroad. Since entering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government in 2022, he has threatened to quit if the Gaza war ends and has advocated for the mass deportation of Arab citizens.
His US visit has prompted condemnation from Jewish organizations and human rights groups alike.
At Yale, protests were held ahead of his scheduled appearance at a meeting hosted by Shabtai, a Jewish society at the university. Demonstrators from Yale’s Students for Justice in Palestine led campus opposition.
Yale did not respond to a request for comment.
Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, said Ben-Gvir’s warm reception in the US was “deeply disturbing.”
He added: “That the GOP is aligned with the most fanatical elements in Israeli politics, while perhaps not surprising, is extremely alarming and does not bode well for the stability of the region.”
Ben-Gvir’s history has long drawn scrutiny.
In 2007, he was convicted of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization. He once displayed in his home a photo of Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslim worshipers in the 1994 Hebron massacre. In 2022, the US State Department condemned his visit to the memorial of extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, whose violent ideology Ben-Gvir has expressed admiration for in the past.
“Celebrating the legacy of a terrorist organization is abhorrent. There is no other word for it,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said at the time.
“We urge all parties to maintain calm, exercise restraint and to refrain from actions that only serve to exacerbate tensions, and that includes in Jerusalem,” he added.
Despite international rebukes, Ben-Gvir has continued to court controversy. His provocative visits to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, most recently earlier this month, have drawn fierce criticism across the region, including a rare public reprimand from Netanyahu last year.
The White House did not comment on Ben-Gvir’s US visit.
Following his Yale appearance, the minister was scheduled to speak at another event in New York City, billed as a discussion on “securing Israel post-Oct. 7.”
ANTANANRIVO: France’s President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin needed to “stop lying” over wanting peace in Ukraine while continuing to strike the country.
“The only thing to do is for President Putin to finally stop lying,” Macron said during a visit to Madagascar.
He accused the Russian leader of telling US negotiators “he wants peace” but then continuing “to bombard Ukraine.”
A Russian missile attack on Kyiv earlier Thursday killed at least nine people, one of the deadliest strikes on the Ukrainian capital since Moscow launched its invasion more than three years ago.
The attacks throw yet more doubt on already fraught US efforts to push Russia and Ukraine to agree to a halt in fighting.
“In Ukraine, they only want a single answer: Does President Putin agree to an unconditional ceasefire?” Macron said.
Macron said Putin was the only person holding up the US-proposed and European-backed proposal.
“If President Putin says yes, the weapons will fall silent tomorrow, lives will be saved.”
“US anger should be directed at only one person, President Putin,” he added.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has been floating the idea of recognizing Russian control of Crimea as part of a peace settlement.
Trump on Wednesday said Crimea — a lush Black Sea peninsula with longtime Soviet and Russian naval facilities — was “not even a point of discussion” and was “lost years ago,” a position welcomed by the Kremlin.
Macron however said he thought the priority should be first agreeing to a ceasefire, and that the status of Crimea was not something to be discussed “for now.”
OSWIECIM, Poland: Israel’s president said in Poland on Thursday the return of hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza was a “universal moral imperative” and called on the international community to help end “this horrific humanitarian crime.”
Isaac Herzog spoke from the southern city of Oswiecim, the site of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, on the occasion of the annual March of the Living to commemorate its victims.
Auschwitz was the largest of the extermination camps built by Nazi Germany and has become a symbol of the Holocaust of six million European Jews. One million Jews and more than 100,000 non-Jews died at the site between 1940 and 1945.
“With a broken heart, I remind us all that even though after the Holocaust we swore ‘never again’, today — here and now — the souls of dozens of Jews are once again yearning within a cage, longing for water and freedom,” Herzog said at a ceremony.
Nearly 60 “of our brothers and sisters remain held by terrorist murderers in Gaza, in a horrific crime against humanity,” he added.
“The return of the hostages is a universal moral imperative, and I call from here — from this sacred place — for the entire international community to mobilize and end this horrific humanitarian crime.”
Some 251 people, including women and children, were seized during Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which left 1,218 Israelis dead according to an AFP tally based on official data, and sparked a deadly war in Gaza.
Fifty-eight hostages are still being held there, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s military response in Gaza has unleashed a humanitarian crisis and killed at least 51,355 people, mainly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Herzog did not mention Israel’s military operations in Gaza at the ceremony in Auschwitz.
Qatar, with the United States and Egypt, brokered a truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas which began on January 19 and enabled a surge in aid, alongside the exchange of hostages and prisoners.
Israel resumed its intense air strikes and ground offensive across Gaza on March 18 amid disagreement over the next phase in the ceasefire that for two months had largely halted the fighting.
Last month, Herzog said he was shocked that the hostage issue was no longer a top priority in the country and criticized the war policy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Thousands of Israelis have been holding daily protests in Jerusalem, angry over the government’s policies including a return to war, which many see as forsaking the hostages still being held in Gaza.
