Indonesia warns nuclear weapons put Southeast Asia ‘one miscalculation away from apocalypse’

By Edna Tarigan & Niniek Karmini The Associated Press

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi raised the alarm ahead of a two-day summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations starting Tuesday in Jakarta. The agenda will spotlight Myanmar’s deadly civil strife, continuing tensions in the South China Sea and efforts to fortify regional economies amid the global headwinds set off by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Later in the week, the 10-nation bloc will meet Asian and Western counterparts, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese foreign policy overseer Wang Yi.

The US-China rivalry is not

By Edith M. Lederer

The Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS—Sporadic armed clashes between Yemen’s Houthi rebels and government forces are straining peace efforts, and the rivals are now also battling over revenue from ports, trade, banking and natural resources, the country’s UN envoy said Monday.

Special Representative Hans Grundberg told the UN Security Council that the fight over economic wealth “has become inseparable from the political and military conflict.”

While fighting has decreased markedly in Yemen since a truce in April 2022, he said, “continued sparks of violence alongside public threats to return to large-scale fighting increase fear and tensions.”

Grundberg said Yemenis have enjoyed the longest period of relative calm since the civil war erupted in 2014, but “the situation on the ground remains fragile and challenging.” He pointed to clashes in five frontline areas, including Hodeida where Yemen’s main port is and the oil-rich eastern province of Marib, which Iran-backed Houthi rebels attempted to seize in 2021.

Yemen’s conflict began when the Houthis swept down from their northern stronghold and chased the internationally recognized government from the capital of Sanaa. A Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year on behalf of the government and in time the conflict turned into a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The war has devastated Yemen, already the Arab region’s poorest country, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. More than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, have been killed.

The restoration of Saudi-Iran ties in April has raised hopes of progress in ending the conflict.

Grundberg said that although the truce was not renewed when it expired last October, the lessening of combat has opened the door for serious discussions with the parties on ending the war. He urged both sides to take “bold steps” toward peace.

“This means an end to the conflict that promises accountable national and local governance, economic and environmental justice, and guarantees of equal citizenship for all Yemenis, regardless of gender, faith, background or race,” he said.

On the economic front, Grundberg said, formally on Asean’s agenda but looms large over the meetings of the bloc, an often-unwieldy collective of democracies, autocracies and monarchies, with some members split over allegiances either to Washington or Beijing.

“We cannot be truly safe with nuclear weapons in our region,” Marsudi told fellow Asean ministers. “With nuclear weapons, we are only one miscalculation away from apocalypse and global catastrophe.”

In 1995, Asean members signed a treaty that declared Southeast Asia’s commitment to be a nuclear weapon-free zone, one of five in the world. However, Marsudi lamented that none of the world’s leading nuclear powers have signed on to the pact and called for renewed efforts to convince those states to sign up.

“The threat is imminent, so we can no longer play a waiting game,” she said.

A draft communiqué expected on Wednesday mentions the possibility of a first nuclear weapons state finally signing the treaty but says that there would have to be written assurances that the treaty was being ratified “without reservations.”

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the draft.

The communiqué did not identify the prospective state. However, two Southeast Asian diplomats attending the Jakarta meetings told the AP it was China. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s generals have again been banned from attending the Asean summit for refusing to ease a deadly civil strife sparked by the military’s seizure of power more than two years ago.

Asean has been under international pressure to address the crisis in Myanmar since the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and plunged the country into deadly chaos.

Security forces have killed more than 3,750 civilians, including pro-democracy activists, and nearly 24,000 have been arrested since the military takeover, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a rights group that keeps tallies of arrests and casualties.

Myanmar’s military government has largely ignored a plan by Asean heads of state that includes an immediate end to the violence, prompting the bloc to take an unprecedented step and bar Myanmar’s military leaders from its top-level gatherings, including the foreign ministerial meetings.

The generals responded by accusing the Asean of violating the bloc’s bedrock principles of nonintervention in each other’s domestic affairs.

With the Myanmar crisis dragging on, Asean members appear divided over how to proceed, with Thailand recommending easing punitive actions aimed at isolating Myanmar’s generals and inviting its military-appointed top diplomat and officials back to highprofile meetings.

Since assuming Asean’s rotating chairmanship this year, the value of the Yemeni riyal has dropped more than 25 percent against the US dollar in the past 12 months in the southern port city of Aden, which is now the seat of the internationally recognized government. Conflict-related road closures have more than doubled the cost of transporting goods, he said.

Indonesia has initiated some 110 meetings with groups in Myanmar and provided humanitarian aid to build trust, Marsudi said.

At the summit, Asean foreign ministers are expected to renew a call for self-restraint in “activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability,” according to the draft communiqué, repeating language used in previous statements that does not name China.

Asean members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam have been embroiled in long-simmering territorial conflicts with China and Taiwan for decades. Asean and China have been negotiating a non-aggression pact that aims to prevent an escalation of the disputes, but the talks have faced years of delay.

The disputed waters have emerged as a delicate front in the rivalry between China and the United States. Washington has challenged Beijing’s expansive territorial claims and regularly deploys warships and fighter jets in what it calls freedom of navigation and overflight patrols that have infuriated China.

T he Associated Press writer Jim Gomez in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

Joyce Msuya, the UN Assistant SecretaryGeneral for humanitarian affairs, said 17.3 million of Yemen’s 21.6 million people need aid. She said one of the main reasons for the immense level of humanitarian needs is the deteriorating economy.

“Only by stabilizing the economy can we reduce the staggering number of people in need,” she said. She said that includes “the long overdue resumption of oil exports from government-held areas” and an end to the “obstruction to the transport of commercial goods from government- to Houthi-controlled areas.”

Halfway through the year, Msuya said, the $4.3 billion UN appeal for Yemen is only 29 percent funded and the World Food Program’s operation to help the severely malnourished is reaching just 40 percent of needs. Without more funding by September, she said WFP “may be forced to cut as many as five million people from food assistance.”

UN humanitarian coordinator David Gressly reported a key step in efforts to avoid an environmental disaster in the Red Sea, telling the council that the Houthis provided authorization Monday for the transfer of 1.1 million barrels of crude oil from the Safer, a rusting tanker moored 50 kilometers (31 miles) northeast of the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida.

The Yemeni government bought the tanker in the 1980s to store up to 3 million barrels of oil pumped from the Marib oil fields. Because of the war, the tanker was not maintained since 2015, with seawater seeping into the hull causing damage that increased the risk of sinking and a major oil spill.

Gressly said that since the salvage ship Ndeavor arrived at the Safer site May 30 it has stabilized the tanker so its oil can be transferred. He said the tanker Nautica is preparing to sail from Djibouti and should start taking on oil from the Safer by early next week. The operation will take about two weeks, he said.

“The completion of the ship-to-ship transfer of the oil will be a moment when the whole world can heave a sign of relief,” Gressly said.