Diplomacy

The European Union has thanked Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for their role during the recent evacuation of Kabul following its fall into the hands of the Taliban. The president of the European Council spoke on the phone to the presidents of the two countries in the last days.

With the Iranian nuclear file expected to regain momentum after the summer break, Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is keen on making a case against reaching an agreement as he visits the United States. Bennett meets US president Joe Biden today in Washington. 

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths warned on Monday (23 August) at a Security Council session that 5 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine. The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, called the Houthis to accept a ceasefire without pre-conditions. 

The Committee on Party Affairs of the Libyan Ministry of Justice announced that it adopted and approved eight parties for political work while rejecting five others for not reaching all conditions, according to Mohamed Bettamer who is a member of the committee and head of the civil affairs department. 

"Moldovan President Maia Sandu has kept her word - after forming a government she began talks about meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. To enable this, Deputy Chief of the Russian Presidential Staff Dmitry Kozak was invited to Chisinau on Wednesday. Former Moldavian Ambassador to Russia Anatol Taranu told the newspaper that an agenda for a meeting of the two presidents was discussed at Sandu’s initiative and, according to him, the meeting will happen and will focus on the issues of Transnistria and the presence of Russian troops on its territory, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported on Thursday (12 August).

“The Council of Ministers has decided to hand over the wanted people to the ICC,” the Sudanese foreign minister, Mariam Al-Mahdi, said on Wednesday (11 August), according to the official SUNA news agency. This was announced during her meeting with the new chief prosecutor of the Court in The Hague, Karim Khan, who is visiting Sudan's capital, Khartoum, this week.

The presence in Tehran of the Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, for the inauguration of incoming-president Ebrahim Raisi underscored the significance of relations with Iran for Armenia in the post-2020 Karabakh war context, writes Benyamin Poghosyan in this op-ed where he also discusses Iran's deep interest in the South Caucasus region.

In July, Lithuania declared a state of emergency due to the sudden increased influx of migrants from Belarus. According to Lithuanian politicians, the number of flights between Belarus and Afghanistan has increased as part of a strategy to push more migrants towards Lithuania.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres named Swedish diplomat Hans Grundberg as his new Yemen envoy on Friday (6 August).  Grundberg is the fourth UN envoy since the beginning of the civil war in Yemen