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  • Washington’s disruptive trade wars: Opportunities and challenges

    Washington’s disruptive trade wars: Opportunities and challenges

    By Charles Onunaiju

    Borders that are crisscrossed more frequently by trades in goods and services are less likely to be besieged by soldiers and other armed elements, buttressing the fact that trade dividends are not just development, growth and prosperity but also peace and mutual understanding through the instrumentality of dialogue among civilizations. With the establishment and flourishing of regional free trade areas across the world, it is no doubt that trade makes concrete contributions to the national aggregates of many countries and trade promotions have become an existential part of contemporary diplomacy.

    International trade expos have emerged as central theme in the contemporary international system. With trade as almost the indispensable oxygen that nations breathe, attempts and efforts to disrupt trade will have implications not only on how nations thrive but more importantly, how they survive.

    In Africa, there are broadly share views that trade constitute a formidable path to not only ameliorate poverty but even to banish it with a recognition that trade is central to not only economic recovery but is remarkably consequential to the prospects of prosperity in Africa. It is further broadly recognized that the mono-structural framework of the economies in Africa which are both legacies of colonial domination and consequent skewed trade arrangement with former colonial overlords, is grossly inadequate to generate returns on trade for national aggregates.

    The well-known struggles for economic diversification and added values have been the core themes of Africa’s approach to development and trade policies. The maturity and results of the efforts have greater prospects in the context of sustained international trading system now threatened by the political bombasts of the abuse of tariffs and trade wars.

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    U.S President, Donald Trump claimed that his reasons for instituting disruptive tariffs and escalating trade conflicts is because other countries in the world take advantage of the U.S market without the U.S enjoying reciprocal access to the markets of other countries. Without conceding these reasons are at best dubious, because problems and challenges of market access are sometimes related to the structure and nature of the individual national economies.

    Trade war is not a cure-all for the structural maladies of the advanced capitalist economies, especially the United States but tampering with the pyramid structure of their economies and societies where the working people are the proverbial cannon fodders and expendables, rob them of the critical energizer of their overstretched economies barely subsisting on the tiny thread of their fabulous elite.

    Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont and who vied for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party said “it is not just that one tenth of 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%. They don’t put their wealth underneath their mattresses right. They use that wealth to perpetrate, perpetuate their power. And they do that politically”.

    From the point of structural constraint, the U.S can unshackle herself and become again, world renown and eminent trader.

    Washington right now, does not seek what ails her from within but rather to engage in geo-political manoeuvre with trade disruptions as one of its key strategies. China is the U.S most obvious target in the tariff wars and trade disruptions. China happens to be the world’s foremost trader and investor. As the largest trading partner for more than 100 countries and investing an average of $340 million across the world on daily basis, China is as much an opportunity to the world as the world is an opportunity to China. China has been Africa’s largest trading partner for 14 years in a straight row and also instituted a 100% tariff free entry of goods from the least developed countries including 33 from Africa which has been a boon and veritable gateway to exit poverty for these countries.

    Recognizing that trade and investment would be pivotal to the economic diversification strategies of African countries and central to her sustainability and growth, the third summit of the heads of States and Governments of the Forum on China-Africa Economic Cooperation (FOCAC) at Beijing in 2018 instituted the permanent mechanism of China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo which holds every two years in the China Southern province of Hunan. At the 3rd edition of the Expo held in 2023, a total of 120 deals valued at $10.3 billion were signed, with the Expo providing a platform for Africa’s producers and traders to explore new export markets and for Chinese consumers to find high quality, low-priced products.

    Against the background of vigorous trade exchanges between China and Africa, Washington disruptive trade wars are both opportunities and challenges. Both the Chinese market and investment remain very critical to Africa’s growth prospect and development sustainability. The emerging framework of currency swaps enabling China and African businesses to conduct transactions in their national currencies without the medium of the third currency would bolster exchanges. The African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) offers an integrated market and investment destination, given scope and effect to Africa ambitious plan of Agenda 2063, whose major fulcrum would consist in silencing the gun. Trade would be a major harbinger of Africa’s agenda 2063, and China as Africa’s foremost trading partner will be an important enabler in the continent’s trajectory to peace, stability and prosperity.

    Strengthening cooperation with a view to build strategic resilience into its trajectories would guarantee long term prospects with minimal or even marginal effects of the trade disruptions.

    Despite that trade wars are unwinnable and need not to be fought, the current Washington leadership would be hard to be persuaded. But as history has often does, it comes with the harsh reminder of having to be ignored. It did not take too long for the boisterous bubble of the “end of the history”, proclaimed in the 1990s with the collapse of the former Soviet Union to burst revealing that history was only at the cusp of a fresh starting point.

    Translating the obsessive geo-political fantasy of America’s exceptionalism and hegemony into disruptive trade wars would backfire, heightening the tensions of the America’s fault line of race and street violence. Globalization powered by trade with communication technologies ever shrinking the space and helping the trends of inclusion are irreversible tide in the human prospects.

    Inward and toxic nationalisms are at best ephemeral and transient. Trade may sometimes be unfair but the compelling dividends of trade means that such situations are better addressed with more trade and not less. While the mechanism of the World Trade Organization is evidently weak, however, its pioneering efforts through the Uruguay and Doha rounds remain the critical infrastructures for building consensus on basic rules.

    Quite a number of regional free trade areas exist to address lacunas in trade and therefore, the international system is not short of rules to engage in issues of trade disputes.

    The United States have ample leeway to redress her trade concerns and grudges, without launching disruptive trade wars. As with the U.S’ initial refusal under President Trump to engage in a broad international cooperation to contain the outbreak of the corona virus in 2020, it paid a disproportionate high price with more COVID deaths than any other country in the world. Now not only turning its back on global trade but even disrupting it, the current U.S administration would never have to entertain any illusions that there would be consequences.

    •Onunaiju is director, Centre for China Studies, Abuja.

  • From Washington with tears

    From Washington with tears

    In the last-but-one week of October, I was one of the people that made Washington DC, the capital of the United States, had more than the usual demand for its metro services, taxis, hailing rides and car rental services. We were from the different segments of the world: First, Second and the Third.

    The massive campus of the World Bank and IMF in the heart of the District of Columbia hosted us to all manners of meetings, where all manners of issues were discussed and all manners of conclusions reached.

    Aside journalists like me, whose role was to let in the world on the annual meetings, the men and women in suits at the meetings included finance ministers and secretaries, Central Bank governors, scholars, and civil society experts.

    Incidentally, this year marks the 80th anniversary of the Bretton Woods System. Its Institutions have evolved over the decades, but it is a different ball game determining whether or not they are evolving fast enough to meet the rapidly changing and increasingly volatile global environment.

    These winter meetings came at a time the world’s central banks have raised interest rates to their highest levels in years to tame rapid inflation, a development that has helped bring down global inflation rates. Sadly, the developing world hasn’t benefitted from shrinking inflation rates. In this beggarly part of the world, rates are still high and interest rates remain high, and higher interest rates translate to lesser affordability. Amid this, borrowing for countries is a necessity. And we are seeing an escalation in global debt crisis, which the Bretton Woods Institutions are downplaying as “short-term liquidity challenges”.

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    These “short-term liquidity challenges” has seen countries in the Global South defaulting on obligations. At the meetings, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) such as the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD), the Latin American Network for Economic and Social Justice (LATINDADD), the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), and the Development Finance International(DFI), painted a grim picture of the situation. They highlighted how countries in the Global South are being forced to default on human rights obligations, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and climate commitments due to unsustainable debt payments.

    Domestic and external debt servicing, they said, is consuming 42 percent of spending across all countries, and 55 percent in Africa. This is 2.7 times the expenditure on education, 4.2 times on health, and 11 times on social protection.

    According to them, recent debt relief agreements remain inadequate, with six nations that have undergone restructuring still set to spend over 20 percent of their government revenue on external debt servicing.

    The CSOs argued that the solution is clear: cancel sufficient debt to allow countries return to a sustainable development path and reform the global debt architecture.

    These complaints show that the Bretton Woods Institutions need to do more. The G-24, to which Nigeria belongs, identified four key reforms that would enhance the system’s effectiveness and empower the IMF and the World Bank to better serve their members. This group wants a new mechanism to support countries with sound fundamentals during liquidity crisis, more ambitious goals for concessional and non‑concessional windows, reformation of the sovereign debt resolution framework to deliver comprehensive, predictable, swift, and impactful debt relief, and the acceleration of governance and institutional reforms of the Bretton Woods Institutions to increase the voice and representation of developing nations.

    In 1944, IMF and the World Bank were created for reconstruction and stability after World War II. The Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 agreed on their formation on the premise that global economic security could only be achieved through cooperation and coordination, not isolationism. The World Bank started as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), to facilitate the rebuilding of war-ravaged nations and later evolved into promoting development in poorer regions of the world. The IMF was tasked with ensuring the stability of the international monetary system because currencies were devalued and gold reserves depleted after the war, and countries faced mounting pressures on their balance of payments.

    From then till now, the United States and Europe have retained humongous influence over decision-making, a situation China, India, and Brazil are seriously fighting.

    Their 80th anniversary has raised the question of their relevance in this age and time. It’s a moment for deep introspection and it’s high time they rose to the challenges of an era where climate change, digital disruption, inequality, and shifting geopolitical realities demand innovative solutions and a balanced-cum-responsible international cooperation.

    My final take: As I returned to Houston after one week of meetings and briefings at the IMF/ World Bank Campus, the inequalities in the world and how tokenism will never address it bothered me. The developing countries require sums that can make real difference. What they currently get only help with their immediate payment needs and not to grow their economies. They need to get the resources to develop and grow.

    Unfortunately, the rich nations are like rich men who hardly want the poor to level up with them. All they offer the poor is enough to be alive to continue to provide cheap services to them. The poor nations, I believe, will never get enough liquidity from the rich to make headway. They have to find local solutions to make money and join the rich list. Ask Singapore and others who have found their way out of the Third World. They did it without any reasonable outside support. So, looking up to the Bretton Woods Institutions is waiting in vain. Absolute waste of time. 

  • A Diplomatic Scuffle in Washington

    THE brief diplomatic scuffle between London and Washington ended with the self-dismissal of the British Ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, on Wednesday. It was the best and wisest course of action to take, the ambassador’s position having been rendered untenable and unsustainable by Donald Trump’s tweet that he was no longer welcome in the White House. In political circuits, this was the equivalent of a diplomatic red card.

    Despite the strong backing of his home government, the ambassador’s position was rendered all the more precarious by Boris Johnson, British Prime minister presumptive, who rumbled ominously that he could not rule out firing Darroch on coming to power. In the event, Darroch did not wait to be dismissed. He jumped, and a distinguished ambassadorial career has ended up in ruins.

    The mercurial Boris Johnson has now moderated his position, claiming regrets over the departure of an exceptional envoy who has served his country with distinction in a career spanning forty two years. Diplomatic insiders claim that the embattled envoy had to fall on his sword when he discovered that he may not enjoy the confidence and support of the incoming Prime minister.

    It is a typically British political execution exemplifying the saying that from time to time, Britain often relishes the public defenestration of its finest public servants in order to encourage the others. The Brexit rumpus and current political uncertainties in the western hemisphere have claimed another major scalp.

    The diplomatic dogfight began quietly enough on Sunday with the leakage of Darroch’s cable by The Mail On Sunday of London by an insider who is a rabid partisan of Brexit. In language shorn of diplomatic niceties, Trump was dismissed as wacky and incompetent while running a dysfunctional administration that is both clumsy and inept.

    Anybody imagining that the vain and narcissistic Donald Trump would take this lying low is living in a fool’s paradise. Hamurabi does not have a monopoly on the franchise of swift and instant revenge. A master of the rapid response school not known for turning the other ear, the pugnacious and rambunctious American president quickly returned fire, dismissing the British envoy as a very stupid person.

    Even by the standards of diplomatic disputes and demarche, this was very strong language indeed. After the limping and exhausted Teresa May administration weighed in on the side of its ambassador defending the universal rights of envoys to send back to their home governments clear and candid evaluation of their hosts, Trump went into overdrive gear with his famous tweet calling the ambassador a pompous fool. Not done, the American president promptly supplied the coup de grace with a cruel personal taunt of Teresa May’s Brexit bungle.

    This is diplomatic fencing at its most vicious and blood-curling, particularly between two countries that rhapsodise their special relationship. It will be recalled that last month on a state visit to Great Britain, Donald Trump, in a clear breach of diplomatic protocols and international norms, openly canvassed for Boris Johnson even as he was embroiled in a nasty spat with the Mayor of London. It was an unwarranted intervention in the personal affairs of a sisterly country.

    Throughout her ordeal in the hands of Trump, Teresa May, the outgoing British Prime-minister, kept a typically British stiff upper lip and remained gracefully demure even as Donald Trump went on a rampage. There are die-hard conspiracy theorists of the cloak and dagger school of diplomacy who believe that the ambassador’s stinging rebuke was a retaliatory rally against Trump’s political and diplomatic hooliganism.

    It is a new low in the special relationship between Britain and her former colony. There has been the occasional dust up such as when General Haig, the former American Secretary of State, was said to have famously dismissed Lord Peter Carington, the British Foreign Secretary, as a duplicitous bastard. The British aristocrat was known to have responded that this was the problem with leaving diplomacy in the hands of Boys’ scouts.

    But despite the occasional stress and strain, the special relationship has kept up over the centuries. Diplomatic historians are already dredging up comparisons with 1856 when the 14th American President Franklin Pierce openly accused Britain of recruiting Americans to fight on its side during the Crimean War. It doesn’t get more sour and sullied.

    In the rarified world political intelligence, diplomatic cables are often written at the summit of the language. In the hands of masters of the genre, they are a wonderful delight to read and a source of rapturous felicity: witty, concise, bristling with lapidary precision and soaring with epigrammatic brilliance.  In many quarters, they are regarded as works of art in their own right, to be relished and treasured by its aficionados.

    But that now seems to belong to another world with the crisis of globalization and the attendant rise of right wing populism and xenophobic governments in the western world and the subsequent mutual self-loathing and hateful recriminations.

    With such desperation and fear of tomorrow, the west has become a bear at bay thrashing about and lashing out at everything. With those they consider as immigrant barbarians arriving at the banquet, there can be no room left for cultured language and cultivated speech even at the apex of governance.

    In many respects, Donald Trump is an archetype of this millennial meltdown, this brave new world in all its unworthy and graceless perorations. The feisty and fiery American president is the master of a new type of politics of impolitics; a connoisseur of verbal violence and crude lack of empathy. In a matter of weeks, he will inherit a devoted sidekick in a Boris Johnson who is only marginally less aggressive and divisive as he is contemptuous of consensus.

    For these new hard men and hitmen of the right, consensus is an overpriced canard of the cringing and the craven. As far as they are concerned, the world has never been driven by consensus but by coercion and crass compulsion. They may be right, but if this is a peep into the emerging world order, humanity had better forget about civilization as we know it.

    The nasty diplomatic slugfest between the American president and the outgoing British ambassador offers a grim reminder of the terrible fate that awaits an exhausted and isolated Great Britain once it has exited the European Union. With nowhere else to turn having abjured its European neighbours, Britain will find itself prostrate in desperate and impecunious importuning even as a merciless Uncle Sam tightens the screw.

    The normal diplomatic protocol is for a country to a have a free hand in naming ambassadors of its choice to another country to represent its interests. But with a Britain powerless and paralyzed by Brexit, America has now unilaterally reversed that global order by insisting that only British envoys who conform to and comply with the bizarre taste of the sitting American president will be welcomed in Washington.

    Pre-Brexit it was canvassed by right-wing populists and xenophobic politicians that Britain was in danger of becoming a mere vassal state of the EU. The great irony is that post-Brexit, Britain is now likely to become a craven vassal state of a bullying America. The order of precedence between a vassal state and a slave state should be very clear.

    We are certainly not far from the New World Order according to Donald Trump. Henceforth, only countries with the economic buoyancy and ideological cujones will be able to look Washington in the face and tell it to go to hell with its envoys. In a revealing diplomatic howler which shows a child-like infatuation with raw power, the American president had even let it be known that Nigel Farage, the far-right hustler, will not be a bad British envoy to America. The poor fellow had reportedly snapped that he is not a diplomat.

    If gold can rust, what will iron do? One must shudder at the fate of Third World nations, particularly African countries that seem to have nowhere else to turn. Having mismanaged their God-given resources thus reducing their countries to a beggarly status in the process, they will find in Donald Trump an implacable taskmaster.

    It may well be that we all need this right-wing chastisement to bring us back to our senses. For now, Britain appears to have shot itself in the leg with the Brexit imbroglio and must be prepared for the consequences. Once again, welcome to the world according to the Don.

  • Former U.S. President Bush’s body leaves for Washington

    Family and former staff of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush will hold a brief ceremony on Monday morning at a Texas Air National Guard base outside Houston, putting his casket onto Air Force One for a final trip to Washington.

    Two of his sons, former President George W. Bush and Neil Bush, will accompany the body of the 41st president on the presidential jet, called “Special Air Mission 41,” for the flight to Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington.

    Bush will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda from Monday through Wednesday, when a state funeral is scheduled at the National Cathedral.

    A contingent of former Bush staff members now living in Texas will join the mourners leaving Houston on Monday morning, former Ambassador Chase Untermeyer told Houston Public Media.

    The 41st president of the United States died at his Houston home on Friday night, seven months after his wife Barbara died.

    After services in Washington, there will be another funeral in Houston on Thursday followed by burial at the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas.

    Bush served two terms as vice president under fellow Republican President Ronald Reagan before his own stint in the Oval Office from 1989 to 1993.

    Read Also: Former U.S President George H.W. Bush dies at 94

    That was a time that saw the end of the Cold War as well as the United States’ routing of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s army in the 1991 Gulf War.

    He failed to win a second term after breaking a no-new-taxes pledge.

    Trump has ordered the federal government to close on Wednesday and both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq will be closed on Wednesday in observance.

    Remembrances to George and Barbara Bush sprang up in the neighborhood where he made his home, at a memorial to President Bush at a city park and at the airport named in his honor.

    Christy Smith paused over the weekend to pay her respects to President Bush at a bronze statue of him at a Houston park.

    “He set a good example for all of us,” said Smith, 39. “He always was caring and treated people equally.”

  • Israel has not cut ties with Paraguay– FM

    Israel said on Thursday the decision to close its Embassy in Paraguay does not mean it has broken off all ties to the South American Nation.

    The action amounts to a diplomatic downgrade and another Israeli embassy on the continent will take over the duties of the embassy in Asuncion, a source in Jerusalem said.

    Israel announced on Wednesday that it was shuttering its embassy after Paraguay reversed its nearly four-month old decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

    The Foreign Ministry in Asuncion said the change of plan was due to concerns that the relocation to Jerusalem would have a negative impact on peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

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    Luis Castiglioni, who became Paraguay’s foreign minister after President Mario Abdo Benitez was sworn into power in August.

    He said that the embassy’s decision had been taken unilaterally and without proper consultation.

    Paraguay announced in May it was following the United States and Guatemala in moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

    The move by Washington was denounced by much of the world as prejudicing possible peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, who claimed the eastern half of Jerusalem for their future capital.

  • Trump agrees to meet North Korea’s Kim

    Trump agrees to meet North Korea’s Kim

    President Donald Trump of the United States of America (USA) is set to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a man he once dismissed as “Little Rocket Man”.

    The high level talks are  scheduled for  May as part of the effort  to  free the  Korean peninsula of nuclear arms, a South Korean official said outside the White House on Thursday.

    It would be the first face-to-face meeting in history between a U.S. president and a North Korean leader.

    The opening came through shuttle diplomacy by a South Korean delegation that arrived in Washington on Thursday. Trump heralded the development as a “major announcement” after speaking with the South Korean president.

    Read Also: Trump and North Korea leader to hold ‘milestone’ meeting

    “I told President Trump that in our meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he’s committed to denuclearization. He pledged that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests,” South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong told reporters after meeting with Trump at the White House.

    Chung met with Kim earlier this week, and came to Washington on Thursday to relay the message from the North Korean leader.

    “I explained to President Trump that his leadership, and his maximum pressure policy, along with international solidarity, brought us to this juncture,” he said.

    The Trump administration has rallied the United Nations to impose ever-tightening sanctions against North Korea following a battery of missile tests.

     

  • China criticises U.S. over Taiwan travel bill

    China criticises U.S. over Taiwan travel bill

    China on Thursday expressed its disapproval with the United States over a bill passed by the U.S. Senate seeking closer ties with Taiwan.

    “Although the bill is not legally binding, China strongly and resolutely opposes it and has lodged formal protests with Washington,’’ Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson, Hua Chunying, said.

    The bill, passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, allows U.S. officials at all levels to travel to Taiwan for meetings.

    It also permits high-level Taiwanese officials to enter the U.S. “under respectful conditions’’ to meet with their U.S. counterparts.

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    Report says the legislation now only needs U.S. President Donald Trump’s signature.

    Beijing, through its “One China’’ policy, prevents other nations from having formal ties with self-governing Taiwan, which it regards as a breakaway province.

    The spat came amid rising trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

    Top Chinese economic advisor Liu He is currently in Washington, reportedly to avert a trade war between the two countries.

    NAN

  • ​Undocumented victims of human trafficking allowed to stay in the U.S

    ​Undocumented victims of human trafficking allowed to stay in the U.S

    Undocumented immigrants who are victims of human trafficking can  stay legally in the United States, an official of the U.S department of states, Steve Wagner, has said.

    Wagner who is the acting Secretary, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S Department of Health and Human Services, spoke with reporters at the Foreign Press Centre in Washington.

    Providing an overview of the role of the of the U.S department of Health and Human Services in combating both sex and labour trafficking, Wagner stated that there is a category of visa known as ‘T’–visa, which allows for continued presence of trafficking victims brought into the U.S illegally.

    “Our job is to help restore them by getting them back to the place where they can function as healthy adults and children.  Rather than being deported, victims should have the opportunity, ideally to rebuild their lives and access the care they need,” he said.

    He added that the U.S government has granted 13, 856 T- visas out of 18, 917 applications.  Wagner explained that trafficking has nothing to do with movement of people but with exploitation and coercion as it relates to commercial sex and labour exploitation.

     Read Also: Obasanjo: Edo needs FG, Int’l agencies’ support in fight against human trafficking

    Citing the Federal law in the United States which defines anyone under 18 who engages in commercial sex as a victim, the diplomat revealed that the vast majority of people trafficked in the U.S are kids who are U.S citizens. He added that labour trafficking on the other hand has involved foreign victims who work mostly in the hospitality industry such as hotels, massage parlous, farms and nurseries.

    He said: “The major challenge with foreign victims is that they get hidden in ethnic communities and get trapped in debt bondage while working to make more money in order to pay their smugglers”.  trying to pay their smugglers.”

    Speaking on how the U.S combats human trafficking, he disclosed that the ACF leads works with local coalitions pushing community reforms and also giving grants to non-governmental organizations working with victims of human trafficking.

    “We believe victims of human trafficking are being encountered routinely by doctors and nurses in emergency rooms and if we train our medical personnel to identify victims, then we can find hopefully many more victims,” he said.

  • Hillary Clinton says U.S. threats of war with North Korea ‘dangerous, short-sighted

    Hillary Clinton says U.S. threats of war with North Korea ‘dangerous, short-sighted

    Former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Wednesday said “cavalier” threats to start war on the Korean peninsula were “dangerous and short-sighted”.

    Clinton, however, urged the U.S. to get all parties to the negotiation table.

    Clinton also called on China to take a “more out-front role” in enforcing sanctions against North Korea aimed at curbing its missile and nuclear development.

    “There is no need for us to be bellicose and aggressive over North Korea,” Clinton told the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, stressing the need for more pressure on North Korea and diplomacy to bring Pyongyang to talks.

    Tension between Pyongyang and Washington has soared following series of weapons tests by North Korea and a string of increasingly bellicose exchanges between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

    “Picking fights with Kim Jong Un puts a smile on his face,” Clinton said, without mentioning Trump by name.

    Clinton also indirectly referred to Trump’s social media comments on North Korea, saying, “the insults on Twitter have benefited North Korea, I don’t think they’ve benefited the United States”.

    The war of words has seen Trump call the North Korean leader “little rocket man” on a suicide mission, and vow to destroy the country if it threatens the U.S. or its allies.

    In turn, the North called Trump “mentally deranged” and a “mad dog”.

    Talks between the adversaries have long been urged by China in particular, but Washington and its ally, Japan have been reluctant while Pyongyang continues to pursue a goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile to hit the U.S.

    On Tuesday, Deputy Secretary of State, John J. Sullivan, said the U.S. did not rule out the eventual possibility of direct talks with North Korea.

    The situation on the Korean peninsula was now touch-and-go point and a nuclear war may break out any moment”, North Korea’s Deputy UN Amb. Kim In Ryong had told a UN General Assembly committee on Monday.

    In Seoul, the vice foreign minister said South Korea was considering levying its own sanctions on the North, although no decision had yet been made.

    NAN

  • Tinubu lauds choice of Agege Stadium for AITEO Cup Final

    Tinubu lauds choice of Agege Stadium for AITEO Cup Final

    The choice of Agege Township Stadium located in a close-packed area of the Lagos metropolis for the 2017 maiden AITEO Cup Final by the organisers is logical and administrative, says Deji Tinubu, the Chairman, State Sports Commission.

    “The choice of Agege stadium as venue for the cup is logical and administrative.

    “The use of the stadium means so much to us as it had played host to the CAF President, Ahmad Ahmad and other CAF executives. So, it is a right step.

    “The facilities at the stadium are of high standard that can host any final because we harp on quality infrastructure in Lagos State,” he disclosed in an interview on Monday.

    The stadium had played host to the maiden AITEO Cup final displacing the former host, Teslim Balogun Stadium in Surulere with thousands of spectators and football supporters on hand to watch the oldest cup match in the country.

    Akwa United football club defeated the Niger Tornadoes 3-2 on penalty shootout after a goalless full time to emerge winner for the second time in a space of two years, having won it in 2015 under the name, Federation Cup.

    Tinubu said:“This stadium will also play host to the continental championships which we are looking forward to, they must have used the opportunity to access the facilities at the stadium.

    “The organisers asked us for venues and they made their choice which is logical and administrative. They have their criteria, ours is to get the venue ready.”

    On the bid by the Lagos State Government to take over the National Stadium adjacent to the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Tinubu said the plan to acquire it was still on, adding the proposal has yet to be approved by the Federal Government.

    “We have submitted the bid and we are awaiting response from the federal government for approval, if we are awarded the bid, it is okay and if not, we will move on.

    “We have our plans for sports infrastructure in the state and we will not continue to sit down and watch such an iconic facility rot away under our nose.

    “Sports remains one of the the sectors we want to use to drive the economy of the state as identified by Gov. Akinwunmi Ambode.

    “The administration has identified critical sectors such as sports, tourism, and entertainment to drive the economy, hence , sports infrastructure development is critical,’ ‘he said.