World

Israeli politicians battling to unseat veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were racing against the clock Tuesday in talks to build a “change” coalition of bitter ideological rivals.

They have until a minute before midnight (2059 GMT) Wednesday to cobble together an administration that end 12 straight years of rule by the hawkish heavyweight, Israel’s longest-ruling premier.

The high-stakes push is led by former TV presenter Yair Lapid, a secular centrist, who on Sunday won the crucial support of right-wing religious nationalist Naftali Bennett, a tech multi-millionaire.

“The coalition negotiation team sat all night and made progress toward creating a unity government,” a Bennett spokesman said in a statement, adding that further talks were scheduled for the afternoon.

But to reach a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, their unlikely alliance would also have to include other left and right-wing parties — and would probably need the support of Arab-Israeli politicians.

That would result in a government riven by deep ideological differences on flashpoint issues such as Jewish settlements in the Israel-occupied West Bank and the role of religion in politics.

Lapid, leader of the Yesh Atid party, was tasked with forming a government by President Reuven Rivlin after Netanyahu again failed to win a majority following Israel’s fourth inconclusive election in less than two years.

Lapid has reportedly agreed to allow Bennett, who heads the Yamina party, to serve first as a rotating prime minister in a power-sharing agreement, before taking over half way through their term.

– ‘Greater goal’ –

Israel’s latest political turmoil adds to the woes of Netanyahu, who is on trial for criminal charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust while in office — accusations he denies.

It also follows the latest flare-up of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, which ended after 11 days of deadly violence with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on May 21.

Netanyahu, who served an earlier three-year term in the 1990s, had warned on Sunday of “a left-wing government dangerous to the state of Israel”.

The premier, who heads the right-wing Likud party and has developed a reputation as a wily political operator, was scrambling to scupper the new alliance.

Likud’s lawyers tried to hobble the emerging coalition by challenging Bennett’s right to serve first as prime minister, given that it was Lapid who was charged with forming the government.

But the legal adviser to Israel’s president knocked down the challenge.

Opponents of the possible alternative government meanwhile accused Bennett and his right-wing partners of betraying their voters.

Spokesmen for both Lapid and Bennett confirmed to AFP that the two have received additional security protection.

Lapid said Monday that obstacles remained to build the coalition, but added: “That’s our first test — to see if we can find smart compromises in the coming days to achieve the greater goal.”

In order to build the anti-Netanyahu bloc, Lapid must sign individual agreements with seven parties, whose members would then vote in parliament to confirm their coalition.

They include the hawkish New Hope party of Netanyahu’s former ally Gideon Saar and right-wing secular nationalist Avigdor Lieberman’s pro-settlement Yisrael Beitenu party.

The centrist Blue and White party of Defence Minister Benny Gantz, the historically powerful centre-left Labor party and the dovish Meretz party would also join.

– Arab Israeli support? –

If all those parties indeed sign on, the emerging alliance still needs the backing of four more lawmakers.

For that, Lapid is counting on parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, which have not yet announced their intentions.

Mansour Abbas, head of the Islamic conservative Raam party, which has four seats, has generally voiced openness to any arrangement that improves living conditions for Israel’s 20 percent Arab minority of Palestinian descent.

Political analyst Afif Abu Much said Tuesday that Abbas would not pursue ministerial posts, but wanted chairmanship of two parliament committees and budgets for Arab communities.

He also aimed to revoke a law that has hardened penalties for illegal construction, which is seen to impact Arab communities disproportionately.

“They don’t want to be part of the government,” Abu Much told AFP. “What they want is to be the address of the Arab people in Israel.”

Political scientist Jonathan Rynhold warned that it would be unwise at this point to write off Netanyahu, “the best card player by miles”.

If Lapid fails to muster a majority, and lawmakers cannot agree on another candidate for prime minister, Israelis will return, yet again, to the polls.

Abbas told reporters Tuesday that negotiations appeared to be heading “in a good direction”.

But, he said: “until it’s finished, nothing is finished.”

Norbert Hofer, the leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), announced his resignation Tuesday after weeks of infighting and tension with party colleague and former Interior Minister Herbert Kickl.

“My own journey at the helm of the FPOe is ending today,” Hofer said in an FPOe press release but clarified that he will keep his position as one of the deputy presidents of parliament until the next general election, currently scheduled for 2024.

Hofer has a mild-mannered public image and was seen as representing a more moderate wing within the anti-migration FPOe, which has been known to use Islamophobic rhetoric and imagery.

Hofer had for months been at loggerheads with Kickl, the party’s longterm ideologue who has been behind some of the FPOe’s most trenchant campaigns.

Hofer has walked with a cane since a 2003 paraglider accident and announced his resignation following three weeks of treatment for his old injuries at a physical rehabilitation centre.

When the tabloid Oesterreich asked Hofer Tuesday if his resignation was also partially in response to differences of opinion with Kickl, he replied: “Yes, of course. I won’t be told every day that I am out of place.” 

The two politicians had differing approaches to the coronavirus pandemic.

Hofer was notable in the FPOe caucus for wearing the FFP2 face mask required in parliament, while Kickl made a point of not doing so and made fiery addresses to anti-lockdown demonstrations.

In 2016 Hofer narrowly failed in his bid to become the first far-right president of an EU member state, losing to Alexander Van der Bellen by some 31,000 votes.

He took over as head of the party in 2019 when Heinz-Christian Strache, then Austria’s Vice Chancellor, was forced to resign after secretly recorded footage in a luxury villa in Ibiza showed him offering a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch state contracts in exchange for campaign help for the FPOe. 

The so-called “Ibiza-gate” scandal brought down the first coalition headed by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, an alliance of his centre-right People’s Party (OeVP) and the FPOe.

“The time after Ibiza wasn’t easy,” Hofer said in his statement, adding that it had been “a difficult job to build the party back up again” after the coalition collapsed.

“In the last few months it has been possible to stabilise the party,” he said, pointing to improved recent performance in the polls where it has scored as high as 20 percent.

The party won just over 16 percent in the last national elections in 2019.

A fire aboard a ship that triggered Sri Lanka’s worst-ever marine ecological disaster was finally extinguished Tuesday after a 13-day international operation, the navy said.

The near two-week inferno prompted a mammoth clean-up operation as huge volumes of microplastic granules from the Singapore-registered ship’s containers inundated 80 kilometres (50 miles) of beach.

The unprecedented pollution forced a fishing ban and saw thousands of troops deployed to scoop tonnes of burnt plastic from beaches.

Experts from Dutch salvage company SMIT boarded the MV X-Press Pearl Tuesday and reported massive flooding of the engine rooms.

Sri Lankan navy divers were also deployed to examine the hull below the waterline to check for any cracks, officials said. 

The fire was first reported on May 20 as the ship was about to enter Colombo port. 

The blaze was initially contained, but strong monsoon winds fanned the fire, forcing the crew to evacuate on May 25.

Navy spokesman Captain Indika de Silva said the stern of the 186-metre (610-feet) long container carrier had gone down by about a metre because of the flooding.

“It is not unusual for the vessel to trim by aft (tilt to the rear) when water sprayed on deck settles in the engine room,” Silva told AFP.

He said the spraying of water was stopped to prevent further flooding, but some areas of the ship were still too hot to carry out a complete examination of the vessel.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered officials to move the vessel from its anchorage near the port and move it to deeper waters in a bid to minimise further coastal damage, his office said.

“Representatives from a number of fields, including shipping and the environment, pointed out that the vessel was at risk of sinking,” the president’s office said.

“Their suggestion, then, was to take the vessel to the deep seas to minimise possible damage to the marine environment.”

Sri Lankan authorities fear an even greater disaster should the 278 tonnes of bunker oil and 50 tonnes of gasoil in the ship’s fuel tanks leak into the Indian Ocean.

– ‘Worst ever’ pollution –

Sri Lanka’s navy was joined by India’s coastguard and tugs brought in by SMIT to battle the flames, which destroyed most of the nearly 1,500 containers onboard.

The three-month-old ship had 25 tonnes of nitric acid and other chemicals as well as 28 containers of plastic raw material onboard, much of which fell into the sea.

Marine Environment Protection Authority chief Dharshani Lahandapura said they were still assessing the ecological damage, but believed it was the “worst ever in my lifetime”.

President Rajapaksa asked Australia on Monday to help with assessing the ecological damage to the island, one of the most bio-diverse countries in South Asia, his office said.

The MEPA chairman Lahandapura said the crew apparently knew of a nitric acid leak on May 11, long before the vessel entered Sri Lankan water en route to Malaysia and Singapore.

Sri Lanka Monday launched a criminal investigation into the fire and the marine pollution.

Police spokesman Ajith Rohana said the captain and chief engineer, both Russian nationals, had been questioned for 14 hours since Monday.

The third officer, an Indian national, was also questioned at length, he said, adding that a court had ordered Tuesday to impound the passports of all three pending investigations.

The ship was heading to Colombo from Gujarat, India when the blaze started, having previously visited Qatar and Dubai where the containers of nitric acid had been loaded.

Sri Lankan authorities suspect a leak of that acid triggered the fire.

A prominent Kremlin critic was facing possible jail time Tuesday after Russian police stopped his foreign-bound plane as it taxied down a runway and yanked him off the flight.

It marked the latest move in what Kremlin opponents have described as a campaign of arrests and intimidation against President Vladimir Putin’s foes ahead of parliamentary elections in September, and came days after Russia’s ally Belarus diverted a plane and arrested a wanted dissident onboard.

Political activist Andrei Pivovarov was pulled off a Warsaw-bound plane in Saint Petersburg late on Monday.

Pivovarov, the former executive director of Open Russia, a recently disbanded pro-democracy group, said on Twitter the plane was taxiing toward take-off when it turned back and police boarded, ordering him off.

Police searched his Saint Petersburg apartment overnight and a criminal probe was launched against the 39-year-old activist for cooperating with an “undesirable organisation,” Pivovarov’s team said on Facebook.

Pivovarov faces up to six years in prison if convicted.

On Tuesday, he was moved to the southern city of Krasnodar where the criminal probe was launched.

The Krasnodar branch of the Investigative Committee, which probes major cases, said in a statement that Pivovarov had in August 2020 published materials in support of an “undesirable organisation.” 

The statement also accused the activist of attempting to flee from investigators on Monday. Pivovarov said he was going on vacation when he was detained.

Open Russia, founded by self-exiled Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, announced last week it was shutting down to shield its members from prosecution.

– ‘Audacious move’ – 

It was designated an “undesirable” organisation in Russia in 2017 in line with a law targeting foreign-funded groups accused of political meddling.

Amnesty International called Pivovarov’s detention an “audacious move”.

“In spite of its recent self-dissolution to prevent the authorities from targeting its members, the witch-hunt against Open Russia continues,” Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty director in Russia, said in a statement.

“Andrei Pivovarov must be immediately released, all charges against him and others prosecuted under the law of ‘undesirable organisations’ must be dropped, and this discriminatory legislation must be revoked.”

Pivovarov’s removal from the plane came after authorities in Belarus on May 23 diverted an EU airliner to Minsk to arrest a dissident on board, provoking an international outcry.

Polish airline LOT, which operated Pivovarov’s flight, said the plane was taxiing when Russian air traffic control ordered the crew to return to the parking position. 

“The pilot had to comply with this order as he was under Russian jurisdiction,” Polish news agency PAP quoted the company as saying.

Poland said it was looking into the issue.

“This is an unusual action because if the Russians wanted to detain this person they could have done so before boarding. The question is why it was done exactly at that moment,” Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk told state broadcaster TVP.

“The standards of the civilised world do not apply there.”

Police also conducted searches Tuesday morning at the country house outside Moscow of former opposition lawmaker Dmitry Gudkov and the homes of his allies, he said.

“I don’t know what the formal reason (for the searches) is. The real one is clear,” he said on messaging app Telegram. 

Dmitry’s father Gennady Gudkov, who is also a former lawmaker and lives outside Russia, said police searched the homes of several other relatives.

“A beautiful morning in Putin’s Russia,” Gennady Gudkov tweeted. 

Putin’s leading domestic opponent, Alexei Navalny, was sentenced in February to two-and-a-half years in a penal colony on old fraud charges that he says are politically motivated, and authorities are gearing up to outlaw his political network.

Former Australian finance minister Mathias Cormann became head of the influential Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Tuesday, kicking off the job with a pledge to keep the global body focused on the fight against climate change.

Cormann, whose nomination in March was celebrated as a diplomatic triumph in Australia, served as finance minister for seven years until late 2020 in right-wing governments.

But his campaign for the position faced fierce resistance from top environmental groups who criticised his record in successive climate-sceptic Australian cabinets, notably under former prime minister Tony Abbott. 

Cormann told reporters at his first news conference in the role that “we need to continue of course to promote global leadership to tackle climate change and achieve global net zero emissions by 2050”.

He singled out the OECD’s International Programme for Action on Climate, a new tool to evaluate members’ efforts to reduce emissions, as a key part of the organisation’s contributions.

Cormann promised that the programme would share its key findings in time for the UN’s COP 26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

“We have got to explore every opportunity to maximise our emission reductions efforts,” he said.

– Global tax –

The 50-year-old conservative took over as secretary general from longstanding chief Angel Gurria, a vocal defender of action to confront the global climate crisis during his 15 years at the helm.

The OECD counts 38 states as members and acts as a sort of global think-tank on economic and policy questions, producing reports and recommendations that are influential in national capitals.

It also serves as a forum to discuss policy and has recently spearheaded talks on a new global plan to tax multinational tech groups that has become a tense issue between European countries and the United States.

“We need a tax deal as soon as possible,” Cormann told Le Figaro newspaper in France last month.

When asked on Tuesday about the chances of a deal by year-end, he acknowledged that “some work still needs to be done” but that “we are in a much better position than we were towards the end of last year”.

Spearheaded by US President Joe Biden, the proposal for a 15-percent minimum tax rate is to be discussed and approved by finance ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy nations at a meeting on London on Friday.

– ‘Fair and equitable’ –

Cormann called on participants in the tax talks to remember that governments needed to raise revenue, and multinationals had to pay their share in a “fair and equitable” way.

The head of the OECD is often invited to major international meetings alongside the heads of other multilateral institutions such as the United Nations or the World Bank.

In March, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called Cormann’s nomination “the most senior appointment of an Australian candidate to an international body for decades”.

He grew up in the small town of Raeren in eastern Belgium and speaks in strong German-accented English, which has seen him likened to “Terminator” star Arnold Schwarzenegger in his adopted homeland.

While campaigning for the OECD position, he emphasised his multilingual background — he speaks four languages — as well as his experience in Asia which was decisive in landing him the job.

“You can count on me to give it my absolute best as we work towards a better future, together,” Cormann said at a handover ceremony at the Paris headquarters of the organisation, according to a statement.

More than two dozen environmental groups said Cormann shouldn’t have been considered for the role, citing former statements on climate change.

They pointed out that he helped campaign against a carbon pricing system designed to curb emissions in Australia’s carbon-intensive economy, and was a senior member of the government that repealed the scheme in 2014.

Greenpeace expressed “deep dismay and anger” at the time of his appointment while the head of E3G campaign group Nick Mabey said it sent a “dangerous signal”.

The leader of Western Sahara’s independence movement, whose presence in Spain has angered Morocco, on Tuesday denied allegations of torture and genocide while being questioned by a Spanish judge.

Brahim Ghali, who heads the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, testified by video conference from a hospital in northern Spain where he is recovering from a severe case of Covid-19.

During the closed-door hearing at the National Court in Madrid, the judge turned down a request from the complainants for Ghali to be taken into custody or turn over his passport, arguing there was no flight risk.

Ghali, who is also the president of the Sahrawi Democratic Arab Republic, a self-declared state since 1976, was only asked to provide an address and a telephone number in Spain where he could be reached.

The Polisario leader is facing two investigations in Spain. 

Ghali was severely ill when he arrived at a hospital in the northern Spanish town of Logrono in mid-April, with his presence in Spain triggering a major diplomatic spat between Rabat and Madrid.

Last month, Spain was caught off guard when as many as 10,000 people surged into its tiny North African enclave of Ceuta as Moroccan border guards looked the other way, in what was widely seen as a punitive political gesture.

The Algeria-backed Polisario Front has long fought for the independence of Western Sahara, a desert region bigger than Britain which was a Spanish colony until 1975. 

Morocco controls 80 percent of the territory, while the rest — an area bordering Mauritania that is almost totally landlocked — is run by the Polisario Front. 

– ‘War criminal’ –

Spanish online newspaper El Confidencial reported that an Algerian government plane had departed on Tuesday morning for Logrono to pick up Ghali but then turned backed.

Asked about the report, Spanish government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero said she had “no knowledge of any flight which was sent back or stopped.”

Citing diplomatic sources, Spain’s El Pais newspaper said Ghali was “critically ill” when he arrived on a medicalised Algerian government plane on April 18, bearing a diplomatic passport.  

It said he was admitted to the hospital under a false name for “security reasons”.

Rabat, which considers Ghali to be a “war criminal”, has demanded a “transparent investigation” into Ghali’s arrival in Spain with what it said was a forged passport. 

In response, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Monday it was “unacceptable” for Morocco to “attack Spain’s borders” by letting migrants into Ceuta due to “differences in foreign policy”.

Ghali’s lawyer, Manuel Olle, said his client “did not come in secret, he entered with his passport, close to death.”

The accusations against Ghali “are totally false” and are “politically motivated to target the credibility of the Sahrawi people,” he told journalists.

Olle also suggested that Rabat was behind the lawsuits against Ghali in Spain.

– ‘These tortures are confirmed’ –

One of the lawsuits relates to allegations of torture at Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, a town in western Algeria.

The accusations were made in 2020 by Sahrawi activist Fadel Breika, who also holds Spanish nationality. 

While a Spanish court initially rejected the complaint, it agreed to reopen the case earlier this year.

“The tortures are confirmed by thousands of witnesses,” said Breika’s lawyer, Maria Jose Malagon Ruiz del Valle.

The second investigation relates to allegations of genocide, murder, terrorism, torture and disappearances made in 2007 by the Sahrawi Association for the Defence of Human Rights (ASADEDH), which is based in Spain.

The UN refers to Western Sahara as a “non-self-governing territory”.

After 16 years of war, Rabat and the Polisario signed a ceasefire in 1991, but a UN-backed referendum on self-determination has been repeatedly postponed.

Morocco is willing to offer it within Morocco but not independence.

Three Myanmar journalists who illegally crossed into Thailand to flee a military crackdown have been fined and could face deportation, a member of their legal team said Tuesday, warning the trio’s lives will be in danger if they are sent home.

The journalists, who worked for the Democratic Voice of Burma news website, were arrested along with two Myanmar activists in the northern city of Chiang Mai in May and charged with illegal entry.

A court on Friday sentenced them to a one-year probation period and fined them 4,000 baht ($128) each, said Nadthasiri Bergman, a lawyer with the Human Rights Development Foundation. 

The court also said they will face seven months in prison if they were to commit the same offense again.

“By law, they can be deported within 72 hours” after sentencing, Bergman told AFP, although she added they had submitted an appeal letter on Friday which stops immigration authorities from deporting them immediately. 

“We are waiting for the process of seeking asylum in the third country.”

Thailand has said it was seeking a “humanitarian” solution to avoid deporting the trio back to coup-stricken Myanmar, where their employer has warned their lives would be “in serious danger”.

The country has been in turmoil since the military ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, triggering a mass uprising as large swathes of the population take to the streets.

The junta has responded with force — shooting protesters, arresting suspected dissidents in night raids, and targeting journalists and news outlets by shutting them down.

A well-known news organisation within Myanmar, DVB started as an exile media outlet during the previous junta, broadcasting uncensored reports on TV and radio.

It moved into the country in 2012, a year after the military dictatorship loosened its grip, but had its broadcast licence revoked in March, sending its journalists into hiding.

Despite this setback, it has continued to report, posting regular Facebook updates — as well as broadcasting on satellite TV — about the daily protests and crackdowns.

Israeli politicians battling to unseat veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were racing against the clock Tuesday in talks to build a “change” coalition spanning the political spectrum.

They have until a minute before midnight (2059 GMT) Wednesday to cobble together an alternative governing alliance that would bring down the right-wing leader known as Bibi, who has ruled Israel for the past 12 years.

The high-stakes push is led by former TV presenter Yair Lapid, a secular centrist, who on Sunday won the crucial support of right-wing religious nationalist Naftali Bennett, a tech millionaire.

“The coalition negotiation team sat all night and made progress toward creating a unity government,” a Bennett spokesman said in a statement, adding that further talks were scheduled for the afternoon.

In order to gain a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, their unlikely alliance would also have to include other left and right-wing parties and likely require the support of Arab-Israeli politicians.

In order to bring down the 71-year-old Netanyahu the fragile grouping would have to unite, despite their deep ideological differences on flashpoint issues such as Jewish settlements in the Israel-occupied West Bank.

Lapid, leader of the Yesh Atid party, was tasked with forming a government by President Reuven Rivlin after Netanyahu again failed to win a majority following Israel’s fourth inconclusive election in less than two years.

He has reportedly agreed to allow Bennett, who heads the Yamina party, to serve first as prime minister of a “national unity government” in a power-sharing agreement before taking over half way through their term.

– ‘Greater goal’ –

Israel’s latest political turmoil comes as Netanyahu, the country’s longest serving premier, is on trial for criminal charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust while in office, accusations he denies.

It also follows the latest flare-up of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, which ended after 11 days of deadly violence with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on May 21.

Netanyahu, in power for 12 straight years after an earlier three-year term, had warned on Sunday of “a left-wing government dangerous to the state of Israel”.

The premier, who heads the right-wing Likud party and has developed a reputation as a wily political operator, was scrambling to scupper the new alliance against him.

Likud’s lawyers tried to hobble the emerging coalition by challenging Bennett’s right to serve first as prime minister, given that it was Lapid who was charged with forming the government.

But the legal adviser to Israel’s president knocked down the challenge.

Opponents of the possible alternative government meanwhile accused Bennett and his right-wing partners of betraying their voters.

Spokesmen for both Lapid and Bennett confirmed to AFP that the two have received additional security protection.

Lapid said Monday that obstacles remained to build the coalition, but added: “That’s our first test — to see if we can find smart compromises in the coming days to achieve the greater goal.”

In order to build the anti-Netanyahu bloc, Lapid must sign individual agreements with seven parties, whose members would then vote in parliament to confirm their coalition.

They include the hawkish New Hope party of Netanyahu’s former ally Gideon Saar, and right-wing secular nationalist Avigdor Lieberman’s pro-settlement Yisrael Beitenu party.

The centrist Blue and White party of Defence Minister Benny Gantz, the historically powerful centre-left Labor party, and the dovish Meretz party would also join.

– Arab Israeli support? –

If all those parties indeed sign on, the emerging alliance still needs the backing of four more lawmakers.

For that, Lapid is counting on parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, which have not yet announced their intentions.

Mansour Abbas, head of the Islamic conservative Raam party, which has four seats, has generally voiced openness to any arrangement that improves living conditions for Israel’s 20 percent Arab minority of Palestinian descent.

Political analyst Afif Abu Much said Tuesday that Abbas appeared close to signing an agreement to support the new coalition.

He said Abbas would not pursue ministerial posts, but wanted chairmanship of two parliament committees and budgets for Arab communities.

He also aimed to revoke a law that has hardened penalties for illegal construction, which is seen to impact Arab communities disproportionately.

“They don’t want to be part of the government,” Abu Much told AFP. “What they want is to be the address of the Arab people in Israel.”

Despite the alliance building to unseat Netanyahu, it would be unwise to count him out just yet, warned political scientist Jonathan Rynhold, who labelled the premier “the best card player by miles”.

If Lapid fails to muster a majority, and lawmakers cannot agree on another candidate for prime minister, Israelis will return, yet again, to the polls.

In Tulsa, the city that still bears the scars of a 1921 racial massacre, African American residents are eagerly awaiting the arrival of President Joe Biden on Tuesday, hoping he will hear their call for financial reparations.

“I just want him to feel our pain,” said local activist Kristi Williams.

The Democratic leader will attend Tuesday’s commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, meeting with survivors of one of the worst episodes of racial violence in US history.

Ahead of his arrival, the White House announced a raft of new national initiatives including billions in federal grants to address racial disparities in wealth, home ownership and small business ownership.

Williams, who is descended from some of the massacre victims, wants Biden to “do us right.”

“It’s been 100 years, and we have been impacted negatively, from housing, economic development, our land has been taken,” she told AFP.

“This country, right now has an opportunity to right this wrong.”

On May 31, 1921, a group of Black men had gone to the Tulsa courthouse to defend a young African American man accused of assaulting a white woman. They found themselves facing a mob of hundreds of furious white people.

Tensions spiked and shots were fired, and the African Americans retreated to their neighborhood, Greenwood.

The next day, at dawn, white men looted and burned the neighborhood, at the time so prosperous it was called Black Wall Street.

In 2001, a commission created to study the tragedy concluded that Tulsa authorities themselves had armed some of the white rioters.

The mayor of Tulsa formally apologized Monday for “the city government’s failure to protect our community in 1921.”

“The victims — men, women, young children — deserved better from their city, and I am so sorry they didn’t receive it,” G.T. Bynum said in a statement.

As with the economic losses, the human toll is difficult to estimate, but historians say that as many as 300 African American residents lost their lives, and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless.

The destruction “was followed by laws and policies that made recovery nearly impossible,” the White House statement said Tuesday.

– ‘It hasn’t changed’ –

It cited redlining, which locked Black people out of home ownership; federal highways which were built and cut the community off, and chronic disinvestment in Black businesses — moves which have “echoes in countless Black communities across the country.” 

“Because disparities in wealth compound like an interest rate, the disinvestment in Black families in Tulsa and across the country throughout our history is still felt sharply today,” the statement continued.

In this city in Oklahoma, part of the previously slave-owning US south and a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan, those disparities are clear.

There are marked inequalities between the northern part of Tulsa, which is predominantly Black, and the south, which is mostly white.

“When tourists visit Tulsa, one of the things that they say is that they can’t believe how segregated it still is,” said Michelle Brown, who runs educational programs at a cultural center.

Billie Parker, a 50-year-old African American woman, said Tulsa is the same as when she was growing up there. “It hasn’t changed. We’re still separated.”

She said Black residents are still disadvantaged compared to the city’s white residents. Reparations could, she believes, help Greenwood improve its schools.

Many in Greenwood say it’s time for the state to help the neighborhood regain its prosperity.

“There’s nothing here but grass, but there was investment, there was wealth, there was life,” said Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat and chief sponsor of a bill on federal slavery reparation payments to African Americans.

In mid-April, a US congressional committee voted to advance the bill to the House of Representatives.

On April 19, some of the last survivors of the massacre testified before Congress and asked that the country recognize their suffering.

The 2001 commission had recommended that Greenwood residents receive compensation. But so far, reparations have not been paid.

The White House statement Tuesday does not mention reparations, but says the new grants and investment aim “to help narrow the racial wealth gap and reinvest in communities that have been left behind by failed policies.”

Beyond financial compensation, city residents are counting on Biden’s visit to bring more attention to a tragedy that long remained taboo.

Tulsa has also begun to excavate mass graves, where many Black victims of the massacre are buried, in an effort to shed more light on the city’s dark past.

For LaShaundra Haughton, 51, the great-granddaughter of some of the survivors, “it is time to heal, it is time to tell the truth, it is time to bring everything to light.”

The US military will hand over its main Bagram Air Base to Afghan forces in about 20 days, an official said Tuesday, as Washington presses on with withdrawing the last of its troops from the country.

The vast base, built by the Soviets in the 1980s, is the biggest military facility used by US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, with tens of thousands of troops stationed there during the peak of America’s military involvement in the violence-wracked country.

“I can confirm we will hand over Bagram Air Base,” a US defence official told AFP without specifying when the transfer would take place.

An Afghan security official said the handover was expected in about 20 days and the defence ministry had set up special committees to manage it.

The base, the centre for nationwide command and air operations for the past two decades, also houses a prison that held thousands of Taliban and jihadist inmates over the years.

Washington has already handed over several military bases to Afghan forces before May 1, when it began accelerating the final withdrawal of troops.

Last month it completed the withdrawal from Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan, once the second-largest foreign military base in the country.

The US withdrawal comes despite bloody clashes across the country between the Taliban and Afghan forces.

Peace talks were launched in September in Qatar, but so far have failed to strike any deal to end a war that has killed tens of thousands of people over nearly two decades.

On Tuesday, a group of Afghan government negotiators was headed to Doha in the hope of resuming stalled talks.

“Our team is ready for serious negotiations. There is no military solution to this conflict,” Najia Anwari, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Peace, told AFP, adding that no date had been fixed for resuming the talks.

Fawzia Koofi, one of four women negotiators from the government team, said on Twitter that she hoped for a “meaningful and result based negotiation this time to end the bloodshed and suffering of my people”.

“We need to see more willingness and sincerity in the talks as the few months ahead of us are crucial for Afghanistan and the region.”

Last month the two sides had agreed to speed up the talks, with the Taliban saying the dialogue would begin after the festival of Eid al-Fitr that ended on May 16.