Month: November 2023

Indonesia Approves 20% Increase in Defense Spending Through 2024

Indonesia’s outgoing president has approved a 20% increase in defense spending through the end of next year, to upgrade the country’s military hardware in response to geopolitical developments, its finance minister said.

In a news conference on Wednesday, Sri Mulyani Indrawati said the approval came in a meeting she attended with President Joko Widodo and Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto.

Prabowo is the leading candidate in the upcoming presidential election in February and is running with Widodo’s son.

The defense budget will be increased from $20.75 billion to $25 billion, Sri Mulyani said.

“The needs were put forward by the defense ministry. They considered them as a necessity given the condition of our military hardware as well as rising threats amid increasing geopolitical and geo-security dynamics,” she said.

Despite the “significant” increase, the defense budget for the three five-year periods from 2020 to 2034 will remain at $55 billion, she said, saying that means it is aligned with her medium- to long-term fiscal plans.

The source of the funds will be foreign loans, she said.

The Southeast Asian country has sought to modernize its aging fleet in recent years, spearheaded by Prabowo.

For the past decade, Indonesia’s defense spending per capita and as a percentage of gross domestic product has been the lowest among six of the region’s emerging-market economies, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) think tank.

Deals Prabowo has signed in recent years included the purchase of 42 Dassault Rafale fighter jets for $8.1 billion, 12 new drones from Turkish Aerospace worth $300 million, and 12 Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets valued at $800 million.

He also signed agreements to buy fighter jets and transport helicopters from U.S. companies Boeing and Lockheed Martin in August 2023.

Indonesia signed a deal to buy a $100 million submarine rescue vessel from Britain in September, after one of the country’s submarines sank in 2021 during a drill.

Indonesia and South Korea have also been locked in a dispute over funding for a joint KFX fighter jet project.

CIA Director in Doha to Talk Israel-Hamas and Hostages 

U.S. President Joe Biden has dispatched one of his most trusted, and potentially influential, officials to the Middle East in the hopes of turning a tenuous truce between Israel and Hamas into something more.

A U.S. official confirmed to VOA that CIA Director William Burns traveled to Qatar Tuesday for the high-level talks, “including discussions on hostages.”

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the sensitive talks. The CIA, which rarely talks about the director’s foreign travel, declined to comment on the trip, first reported by The Washington Post.

Israeli media, as well as other outlets, quoted diplomatic sources as saying that while in Doha Burns met with the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency as well as with Qatari and Egyptian officials.

Top U.S. officials have backed Israel with both words and weapons in the aftermath of the Hamas terror attack on October 7 that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, the majority of whom were civilians.

But the White House has also pushed for the release of all of the approximately 240 people taken hostage by Hamas during the attack, praising the now five-day-old truce that has seen more than 70 of the hostages returned to their families in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

“The objective of the administration at the moment, clearly, is to try to extend the truce or cease fire as long as possible and get as many hostages released as much as possible,” said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA officer who now teaches at Georgetown University.

And Pillar told VOA that Burns, a former diplomat turned spy chief, is well-positioned to help that happen.

“He is a highly accomplished and very much respected, both at home and abroad, diplomat,” Pillar said, further describing Burns as someone who is “perhaps just one step removed from what had been the main line of the Biden administration policy ever since the events of October 7th, which was, and this is the way it was seen by many, to go all in with Israel.”

Burns’ trip to Doha is his second to the Middle East in the past month.

His first trip, in early November, took him to multiple countries for talks with leaders and intelligence counterparts focused on kick-starting hostage negotiations and on preventing the Israel-Hamas conflict from spreading into a regional crisis, a U.S. official told VOA at the time.

But while an effort to extend the truce and free more hostages may dominate this round of talks; some former officials think the CIA director is also looking ahead.

“When we’re talking about the day after, when this all ends, what does [the] Gaza Strip look like?” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA operations officer who worked extensively in the Middle East. “What kind of international force would be present? How do we rebuild, collectively, the international community?”

And there may also be some discussion among the United States, Israel, Egypt and others about what comes next for Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group.

“Hamas has gained incredible legitimacy amongst the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank for being able to recover, in their view, Palestinian prisoners,” Polymeropoulos told VOA. “They are actually being treated now almost as a state actor. And I think that’s something that is concerning, not only for Israel, but the United States.”

British PM Accuses Greek Leader of ‘Grandstanding’ Over Parthenon Marbles 

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has accused his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis of public “grandstanding” over the ownership of Parthenon sculptures. 

The two leaders have been at odds with one another after Sunak canceled a scheduled meeting between the two just hours before it was set to take place. 

In a weekly question period with the house of commons, Sunak told parliament that Mitsotakis had broken a promise that he would not publicly bring up the sculptures.

“Specific assurances on that topic were made to this country and then were broken,” Sunak said. “When people make commitments, they should keep them.” 

Greek officials denied that any such promise had been made.

In an interview with British television on Sunday, Mitsotakis called for the return of the sculptures so they could be displayed beside the rest of the sculptures still in Athens. He also said that removing them was like cutting the “Mona Lisa” in half.

Athens has long urged the British Museum to return 2,500-year-old sculptures, known in Britain as the Elgin Marbles. The Marbles were taken from the Parthenon temple by British diplomat Lord Elgin in 1806, when Greece was under Ottoman Turkish rule.

Greek officials have said Mitsotakis only promoted a longstanding position, and he called Sunak’s cancelation of the meeting disrespectful.

Mitsotakis said the cancelation was “an unfortunate event,” but he added that “the move will not hurt relations between Greece and Britain in the longer term.”

The Greek leader also went on to say the cancelation of the meeting had a positive side to it and that his calls for reunification of the sculptures have gained more attention.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

Ukraine Using Soviet-Era Missiles in Strikes on Russia

Russian missiles pounded Ukraine’s Donetsk region overnight, as concerns grew about more intense attacks from Russia as weather conditions improve.

Ten people were wounded in the missile attacks, including four children. Five other people were trapped in rubble, Ukrainian interior minister Ihor Klymenko said Thursday.

In Pokrovsk, Klymenko said a 6-month-old baby was wounded alongside boys aged 13 and 16.

“One of the shells exploded in the yard of a house where a family with two children lived. As a result of the shelling, the roof and walls of the house were destroyed, and the family was buried under the rubble,” he added.

An apartment block, nine private houses, a police station, cars and garages were also damaged.

The Donetsk industrial region, which Russia claims to have annexed last year, has seen some of the fiercest fighting in the two-year conflict.

Russia’s defense ministry said Wednesday its forces had taken control the village of Khromove, which Russia calls Artyomovskoe.

Wednesday, a day after addressing the intense fighting in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had met with military commanders and government officials in the southern part of the country after a recent storm.

He said he instructed government officials “to increase the number of repair crews and equipment to promptly restore electricity supply to people. If necessary, the State Emergency Service personnel and power engineers from other regions that have not experienced such problems with the weather will be brought in.”

Repairs are being made to Odesa’s boiler facility, which was damaged by severe weather.

Weather conditions are improving in the country this week, which is allowing Russia to ramp up its assaults, according to Ukrainian army spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun.

“The enemy has doubled its artillery fire and airstrikes. It has also intensified ground infantry attacks, and is using armored vehicles,” he said.

Oleksandr Tarnavsky, a Ukrainian commander, said Russia had “significantly increased” its activity around Avdiivka.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.   

COP28 Has Big Agenda but Won’t Have Biden, Xi

When world leaders gather in Dubai beginning Thursday for COP28, this year’s U.N. climate summit, the heads of the world’s two largest economies will be notably absent.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping have no plans to attend the two-week event, which is aimed at marshaling governments around the world behind the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Both countries will send high-level representatives. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, the Biden administration’s special envoy for climate change, will attend. China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, is also expected.

Among the main issues addressed at the conference will be the structure of a “loss and damage” fund meant to compensate low-income countries that are suffering disproportionately from climate change despite having contributed little to its causes.

Another important topic of discussion will be the adoption of an agreement to phase out the use of fossil fuels, the single largest contributor to carbon emissions.

The fossil fuel discussion may be complicated by the fact that the host country, the United Arab Emirates, is one of the world’s largest producers of oil and gas.

UAE oil deals

In a development that may further snarl the talks in Dubai, the news organization Centre for Climate Reporting, in conjunction with the British Broadcasting Corp., on Monday revealed leaked documents suggesting that the COP28 organizing authority in the UAE has scheduled talks about oil and gas development projects during the conference.

The decision to allow the UAE to host the conference was already controversial, especially after Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, group CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., was named president of COP28.

The reports published Monday contained internal talking points apparently prepared for Al-Jaber ahead of meetings with representatives from various countries, including China, Colombia and Egypt. They appear to declare the UAE’s willingness to develop new fossil fuel projects.

According to the BBC, conference organizers did not deny the accusation and refused to comment further than saying that ”private meetings are private.”

Activists optimistic

While some activists remain troubled by the decision to allow the UAE to host the event, others say the revelations about the oil and gas development talks could actually boost the chances of fossil fuel phase-out language being adopted.

“We’re all very clear on where the battle lines are drawn, and with this new article that came out, we’re clear on what’s really going on behind the scenes, which we all suspected but no one would say outright,” Cherelle Blazer, director of international climate and policy at the Sierra Club, told VOA. “Given all of those factors, if there’s more clarity going into this than usual, I’m going to say there’s a good chance.”

Blazer also said she was not concerned about the absence of Biden and Xi.

“The Senate delegation is going to be there. The full U.S. negotiating team will be there. Kerry will be there. So, everyone that needs to be in place for something actionable to happen will be there,” she said.

Global Stocktake

This year’s conference will mark the completion of the most recent Global Stocktake, a two-year process that is conducted every five years to assess progress toward emissions reductions and other goals related to the effort to halt global warming.

While the final results of the process are yet to be announced, an interim report released earlier this year found that progress on various climate initiatives has been “significant yet inadequate” over recent years.

The meeting takes place at a time when the manufacture and installation of green energy development sources is on the rise globally, with costs falling rapidly for many key elements, including the photovoltaic panels used to capture solar energy.

However, experts told VOA that while some regions, like Europe, have greatly accelerated their transition to green energy in recent years, progress has been slower elsewhere. To some degree, that difference was expected, because the emission-reductions goals set following the Paris Agreement were “nationally determined” — meaning that individual countries set their own goals.

Trade complications

Michael Mehling, deputy director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told VOA that the interactions between countries further along in the transition to green energy and those in the early stages of the process are getting increasingly complicated, particularly around trade.

Mehling said the attitude of some countries that have accelerated their energy transition is, “Well, if we cannot force, say, Turkey, or we cannot force China to decarbonize through the UNFCCC-Paris Agreement, because it’s nationally driven, we can at least make sure that anything we import from them will have to live up to the same high standards.”

He said some countries find having manufacturing emissions reduction standards imposed on them by restrictive trade requirements understandably frustrating.

“Some of these countries say, ‘Well, wait. We thought we understood the Paris Agreement to say that we can decide how fast we decarbonize our manufacturing. It’s not for you to force that on us,’” he said.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that many of the countries that have been decarbonizing at a slower pace are in the Global South and contributed very little to the crisis of global warming but feel they are now being asked to forgo economic development opportunities with little compensation from wealthy countries like the U.S. and China that contributed most to climate change.

Blinken Reassures NATO Allies US Still Committed to Ukraine

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads back to Israel on Thursday, where he says he will work to help prolong a cease-fire so more hostages can be released and more humanitarian aid can be delivered to Gaza. At the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Blinken tried to reassure allies of continued U.S. support for Ukraine as Kyiv prepares for another winter of fighting. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.