International

WASHINGTON: There was ‘surprise and frustration’ in Washington when Kabul fell to the Taliban but gradually, they understood the situation, says Pakistan’s US Amba­ssador Asad Majeed Khan. “Obviously, it came as a surprise for everybody, contrary to the intelligence estimates here and earlier than anybody had expected,” said the outgoing ambassador, explaining why Washington reacted so strongly to the fall. …

KYIV: Ukraine on Wednesday appealed for Western military help, ahead of an emergency Nato summit, and denounced Russian “war crimes” in besieged places including the port of Mariupol where it says mass starvation is possible. Tens of thousands of residents have already fled the southern city, bringing harrowing testimony of a “freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings”, …

WUZHOU: A black box from the crashed China Eastern airliner was recovered on Wednesday as investigators try to determine what made the jet carrying 132 passengers nosedive into a mountainside in southern China. The cause of the disaster has mystified aviation authorities who have scoured rugged terrain for clues, finding no survivors from what is almost certain to be China’s deadliest plane …

ISLAMABAD: The two-day meeting of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s Council of Foreign Ministers ended on Wednesday with affirmation of support for Palestine and Jammu and Kashmir disputes. OIC Secretary General Hissein Brahim Taha, while speaking at a media conference at the end of the 48th meeting of the 57-member body, said: “Palestine remains high on the agenda of OIC and …

India has rejected Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s remarks on occupied Kashmir during the recent Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Islamabad, terming it an “uncalled [for] reference”. According to a report by NDTV, spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Arindam Bagchi, while talking to reporters on Wednesday, called the Kashmir issue an “internal matter”, saying that other countries, including China, had …

India has friendly relations with both the United States and Russia that stand on their own merit, the foreign ministry told parliament on Thursday, in reply to a query whether the Ukraine war had affected ties. Over the past decade, India has grown closer to the United States in the face of a resurgent China across the border, but Russia …

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Kabul on Thursday morning in a trip that was not earlier announced, officials confirmed. Director General of the Afghan state-run Bakhtar News Agency, Abdul Wahid Rayan, confirmed the arrival of the Chinese foreign minister in Afghanistan’s capital. The visit comes a week before Beijing hosts a two-day conference, on March 30-31, …

CAIRO: Egypt hosted the Israeli and UAE leaders for unprecedented three-way talks on Tuesday as the Ukraine war rocks energy and food markets and major powers inch towards a revived Iran nuclear deal. The summit was held in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh between Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the UAE’s de …

WASHINGTON: US Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson defended her record of sentencing in child porn cases and advocacy for terror suspects as she was grilled on Tuesday in her bid to be the first Black woman on the country’s highest judicial bench. The 51-year-old Harvard graduate faces more than 18 hours of questioning in the US Senate on her …

WASHINGTON: Russia would only use nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine conflict if it were facing an “existential threat”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN International on Tuesday. “We have a concept of domestic security, and it’s public. You can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used,” Peskov said. “So if it is an existential …