Yellen says US-China ties on ‘surer footing’ after trip

By Viktoria Dendrinou

Dutch PM hands in resignation as govt collapses over migration

By Mike Corder The Associated Press

THE

HAGUE, Netherlands—

Dutch Prime Minister Mark

Rutte visited the king Saturday to hand in the resignation of his four-party coalition, setting the deeply divided Netherlands on track for a general election later this year.

King Willem-Alexander flew back from a family vacation in Greece to meet with Rutte, who drove to the palace in his Saab station wagon for the meeting to explain the political crisis that toppled his administration.

Rutte declined to answer reporters’ questions as he drove away from the meeting that lasted over an hour, saying the talks with the monarch were private.

Yellen’s comments were delivered at a press conference capping a four-day visit to Beijing that she’d described as a mission to revive engagement between the two largest economies. Frictions between Washington and Beijing have tumbled into a titfor-tat trade war that has seen both sides restrict exports critical to advanced technologies.

The US Treasury chief emphasized the benefits of trade with China and said she’d stressed to skeptical officials in Beijing that “diversifying” supply chains in narrow areas wasn’t the same as decoupling. “This is something I am trying to communicate and believe very strongly myself,” she said. “I think that message was received.”

While in China, Yellen held 10 hours of talks that she described as “direct, substantive and productive,” and said had brought US-China ties closer to a “surer footing.” Half of that time was spent with her counterpart vice premier He Lifeng, the first extensive exchange between the two policy chiefs since China’s new economic team was appointed. During a shorter meeting with Premier Li Qiang, she had a broader exchange on the US-China relationship.

Yellen’s task in Beijing was

By Samy Magdy

The Associated Press

CAIRO—An airstrike in a Sudanese city on Saturday killed at least 22 p eople, health authorities said, in one of the deadliest air attacks yet in the three months of f ighting between the country’s rival generals.

The assault took place in the Dar es Salaam neighborhood in Omdurman, the neighboring city of the capital, Khartoum, according to a brief statement by the health ministry. The attack wounded an unspecified number of people, it said.

The ministry posted video footage that showed dead bodies on the ground with sheets c overing them and people trying to pull the dead from the r ubble. Others attempted to help the wounded. People could be heard crying.

The attack was one of the deadliest in the fighting in urban areas of the capital and elsewhere in Sudan. The conflict pits the military against a p owerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces. Last month, an airstrike killed at least 17 people including 5 children in Khartoum.

T he RSF blamed the military for Saturday’s attack and o ther strikes on residential areas in Omdurman, where a tricky one. She sought to air concerns about Chinese economic policies, while calling for greater cooperation and engagement between the two nations, especially on global challenges such as climate change and debt distress in poorer nations.

It was first a major test of a policy she outlined in April that’s geared toward defending and securing US national security without trying to hold China back economically.

During her trip, Yellen raised China’s “non-market” practices and “coercive actions” against American firms, and warned Chinese companies against providing material support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. China expressed its concerns about US sanctions and restrictive measures.

Despite those pressure points, Yellen’s overall message was for both sides to manage their rivalry with a fair set of rules. “President Biden and I do not see the relationship between the US and China through the frame of great power conflict,” she said on Sunday. “We believe the world is big enough for both of our countries to thrive.”

Yellen’s visit was part of a broader push by President Joe Biden’s administration to mend relations with America’s main geopolitical rival, while also sending clear messages about US policy.

During her visit she met with Pan Gongsheng, who is expected to take over as governor of China’s central bank, as well as her former counterpart Liu He—a fluent English-speaking veteran of the international stage who has a rapport with Yellen.

Yellen is the second member of Biden’s cabinet to visit China in three weeks, after Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit in June. Yellen’s efforts to narrow the scope of de-risking and identify “unproblematic” trade opportunities in China contrasted with Blinken’s more combative tone. The top US diplomat said in Beijing that the US would seek to protect “our critical technologies so that they aren’t used against us.”

US Climate Envoy John Kerry is expected to visit later this month for talks on global warming, an area of mutual concern where Beijing and Washington could also find more common ground.

No final decisions

The relationship’s next test may come soon. Biden’s team is preparing an executive order curbing US outbound investment in China that could further restrict China’s access to advanced technology.

Yellen said “no final decisions” had been reached on that action but pledged any new restrictions would be “highly targeted” toward a few sectors. “I wanted to allay their fears that we would do something that would have broad-based impacts on the Chinese economy,” she added, referring to her counterparts in Beijing.

Vice premier He warned the US on Saturday that “generalizing national security” was not conducive to economic exchanges, according to a readout published by the official Xinhua News Agency.

Treasury officials said that Yellen’s primary objective in Beijing was to build communication channels with the Chinese government’s new economic team. On Sunday, Yellen said the meetings she’d had in Beijing gave her confidence more talks could be achieved.

“We will have more frequent and regular communication and there will be benefits that come from that,” she said. With assistance from Ana Monteiro and Lucille Liu / Bloomberg

The vexed issue of reining in migration that has troubled countries across Europe for years was the final stumbling block that brought down Rutte’s government Friday night, exposing the deep ideological differences between the four parties that made up the uneasy coalition.

Now it is likely to dominate campaigning for an election that is still months away.

“We are the party that can ensure a majority to significantly restrict the flow of asylum seekers,” said Geert Wilders, leader of the antiimmigration Party for Freedom, who supported Rutte’s first minority coalition 13 years ago, but also ultimately brought it down.

Opposition parties on the left also want to make the election about tackling problems they accuse Rutte of failing to adequately address—from climate change to a chronic housing shortage and the future of the nation’s multibillion-euro agricultural sector.

Socialist Party leader Lilian Marijnissen told Dutch broadcaster NOS the collapse of Rutte’s government was “good news for the Netherlands. I think that everybody felt that this Cabinet was done. They have created more problems than they solved.”

Despite the divisions between the four parties in Rutte’s government, it will remain in power as a caretaker administration until a new coalition is formed, but will not pass major new laws.

“Given the challenges of the times, a war on this continent, nobody profits from a political crisis,” tweeted Sigrid Kaag, leader of the centrist, pro-Europe D66 party.

Rutte, the Netherlands’ longestserving premier and a veteran con - sensus builder, appeared to be the one who was prepared to torpedo his fourth coalition government with tough demands in negotiations over how to reduce the number of migrants seeking asylum in his country. Rutte negotiated for months over a package of measures to reduce the flow of new migrants arriving in the country of nearly 18 million people. Proposals reportedly included creating two classes of asylum—a temporary one for people fleeing conflicts and a permanent one for people trying to escape persecution—and reducing the number of family members who are allowed to join asylum-seekers in the Netherlands. The idea of blocking family members was strongly opposed by minority coalition party ChristenUnie.

“I think unnecessary tension was introduced” to the talks, said Kaag. Pieter Heerma, the leader of the Christian Democrats, a coalition partner, called Rutte’s approach in the talks “almost reckless.” fighting has raged between the warring factions, according to residents. The military has reportedly attempted to cut off a crucial supply line for the paramilitary force there.

The fall of the government comes just months after a new, populist profarmer party, the Farmers Citizens Movement, known by its Dutch acronym BBB, shocked the political establishment by winning provincial elections. The party is already the largest bloc in the Dutch Senate and will be a serious threat to Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy.

The BBB’s leader, Caroline van der Plas, said her party would dust off their campaign posters from the provincial vote and go again.

“The campaign has begun!” Van der Plas said in a tweet that showed her party’s supporters hanging flags and banners from lampposts.

A spokesman for the military was not immediately available for comment Saturday.

Two Omdurman residents said it was difficult to determine which side was responsible for the attack. They said t he military’s aircraft have repeatedly targeted RSF troops in t he area and the paramilitary force has used drones and antiaircraft weapons against the military.

At the time of the attack early Saturday, the military was hitting the RSF, which took people’s houses as shields, and the RSF fired anti-aircraft rounds at the attacking warplanes, said Abdel-Rahman, on e of the residents who asked to use only his first name out of concern for his safety.

“The area is like a hell... fighting around the clock and people are not able to leave,” he said.

The conflict broke out in mid-April, capping months of increasing tensions between the military, chaired by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohammed H amdan Dagalo. The fighting came 18 months after the two generals led a military coup in October 2021 that toppled a Western-backed civilian transitional government.

Health Minister Haitham

Mohammed Ibrahim said in televised comments last month that the clashes have killed over 3,000 people and wounded over 6,000 others. More t han 2.9 million people have fled their homes to safer areas inside Sudan or crossed into neighboring countries, according to UN figures.

It’s a place of great terror,”

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations humanitarian chief, said of Sudan on Friday. He decried “the appalling crimes” taking place across the country and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.

T he conflict has plunged the African country into chaos and turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields.

Members of the paramilitary force have occupied people’s houses and other civilian properties since the onset of the c onflict, according to residents and activists. There were also reports of widespread destruction and looting across Khartoum and Omdurman.

S exual violence, including the rape of women and girls, has been reported in Khartoum and the western Darfur region, which have seen some of the worst fighting in the conflict. Almost all reported cases of sexual attacks were blamed on the RSF, which hasn’t responded to repeated requests for c omment.

On Wednesday, top UN officials including Volker Türk, t he UN high commissioner for human rights, called for a “prompt, thorough, impartial and independent investigation” into the increasing reports of sexual violence against women and girls.

The Sudanese Unit for Combating Violence against Women, a government organization th at tracks sex attacks against women, said it documented 88 cases of rape related to the ongoing conflict, including 42 in Khartoum and 46 in Darfur.

T he unit, however, said the figure likely represented only 2% of the truce number of cases, which means there were a possible 4,400 cases of sexual violence since the fighting began on April 15, according to t he Save the Children charity.

“Sexual violence continues to be used as a tool to terrorize women and children in Sudan,” said Arif Noor, director of Save the Children in Sudan. “Children as young as 12 are being t argeted for their gender, for their ethnicity, for their vulnerability.”

UN refuses to retract its condemnation of Israel over Jenin military operation

By Edith M. Lederer The Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS—Israel’s United Nations ambassador called on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to retract his condemnation of the country for its excessive use o f force in its largest military operation in two decades targeting a refugee camp in the West Bank.

UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said the secretary-general conveyed his views on Thursday “and he stands by those views.”

Guterres, angered by the impact of the Israeli airstrikes and attack on the Jenin refugee camp, said the operation left over 100 civilians injured, uprooted thousands of residents, damaged s chools and hospitals, and disrupted water and electricity networks. He also criticized Israel for preventing the injured from getting medical care and h umanitarian workers from reaching everyone in need.

Israel’s two-day offensive meant to crack down on Palestinian militants destroyed the Jenin camp’s narrow roads and alleyways, forced thousands of people to flee their homes and killed 12 Palestinians. One Israeli soldier also was killed.

“I strongly condemn all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of t error,” Guterres told reporters.

Asked whether this condemnation applied to Israel, he replied: “It applies to all use of excessive force, and obviously in this situation, there was an e xcessive force used by Israeli forces.”

Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the UN chief’s remarks “shameful, far-fetched, and completely detached from reality.” He said the Israeli military action in Jenin “focused solely on combating the murderous Palestinian terror targeting innocent Israeli civilians.”

H aq, the UN spokesperson, said Guterres “clearly condemns all of the violence that has been affecting the civilians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, regardless of who i s the perpetrator.”

The UN Security Council discussed Israel’s military operation in Jenin behind closed doors Friday at the request of the United Arab Emirates and received a briefing from Assistant SecretaryGeneral Khaled Khiari.

Erdan sent a letter to the 15 council members and Guterres before the council meeting saying that over the past y ear, 52 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, and many attacks were carried out f rom Jenin or from the area.

“The international community and the Security Council must unconditionally condemn the latest Palestinian terror attacks and hold Palestinian leadership accountable,” he said. T he Security Council took no action.