International plastic pollution treaty talks stall over production cap
The United Nations adopted a resolution in 2022 to convene the meetings of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution.
The latest session, involving ministerial-level discussions, opened in Geneva, Switzerland, on August 5, with delegates from about 180 countries and regions. The talks are scheduled to end on Thursday.
The European Union and other stakeholders, such as Pacific island nations, argue that plastic production must be restricted. Oil-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia, oppose such regulations.
The US delegation, taking part in the meetings under the Trump administration for the first time, has also shown reluctance to accept restrictions.
A draft of the treaty released on Saturday reflected a range of views, including the regulation of plastic production.
Tuvalu issued a statement representing a group of Pacific island nations. It said the countries disagree over more than a thousand parts of the draft text.
The meeting chair presented a new draft on Wednesday that failed to include any restrictions on plastic production. The proposal was rejected by several countries that are calling for stricter regulations.
Some observers say it is inevitable that the meeting will have to be extended.
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Japan Today
12 minutes ago
- Japan Today
Putin wins Ukraine concessions in Alaska but did not get all he wanted
By Andrew Osborn In a few short hours in Alaska, Vladimir Putin managed to convince Donald Trump that a Ukraine ceasefire was not the way to go, stave off U.S. sanctions, and spectacularly shatter years of Western attempts to isolate the Russian president. Outside Russia, Putin was widely hailed as the victor of the Alaska summit while at home, Russian state media cast the U.S. president as a prudent statesman, even as critics in the West accused him of being out of his depth. Russian state media made much of the fact that Putin was afforded a military fly-over, that Trump waited for him on the red carpet, and then let the Russian president ride with him in the back of the "Big Beast", the U.S. presidential limousine. "Western media are in a state that could be described as derangement verging on complete insanity," said Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign minister spokeswoman. "For three years, they talked about Russia's isolation, and today they saw the red carpet rolled out to welcome the Russian president to the United States," she said. But Putin's biggest summit wins related to the war in Ukraine, where he appears to have persuaded Trump, at least in part, to embrace Russia's vision of how a deal should be done. Trump had gone into the meeting saying he wanted a quick ceasefire and had threatened Putin and Russia's biggest buyer of its crude oil - China - with sanctions. Afterwards, Trump said he had agreed with Putin that negotiators should go straight to a peace settlement and not via a ceasefire as Ukraine and its European allies had been demanding - previously with U.S. support. "The U.S. president's position has changed after talks with Putin, and now the discussion will focus not on a truce, but on the end of the war. And a new world order. Just as Moscow wanted," Olga Skabeyeva, one of Russian state TV's most prominent talkshow hosts, said on Telegram. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, saying Kyiv's embrace of the West had become a threat to its security, something Ukraine has dismissed as a false pretext for what it calls a colonial-style land grab. The war - the deadliest in Europe for 80 years - has killed or wounded well over a million people from both sides, including thousands of mostly Ukrainian civilians, according to analysts. NO ECONOMIC RESET The fact that the summit even took place was a win for Putin before it even started, given how it brought him in from the diplomatic cold with such pomp. Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court, accused of the war crime of deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Russia denies any wrongdoing, saying it acted to remove unaccompanied children from a conflict zone. Neither Russia nor the United States are members of the court. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's former president and a close Putin ally, said the summit had achieved a major breakthrough when it came to restoring U.S.-Russia relations, which Putin had lamented were at their lowest level since the Cold War. "The mechanism for high-level meetings between Russia and the United States has been restored in its entirety," he said. But Putin did not get everything he wanted and it's unclear how durable his gains will be. For one, Trump did not hand him the economic reset he wanted - something that would boost the Russian president at a time when his economy is showing signs of strain after more than three years of war and increasingly tough Western sanctions. Yuri Ushakov, Putin's foreign policy aide, said before the summit that the talks would touch on trade and economic issues. Putin had brought his finance minister and the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund all the way to Alaska with a view to discussing potential deals on the Arctic, energy, space and the technology sector. In the end, though, they didn't get a look in. Trump told reporters on Air force One before the summit started there would be no business done until the war in Ukraine was settled. It's also unclear how long the sanctions reprieve that Putin won will last. Trump said it would probably be two or three weeks before he would need to return to the question of thinking about imposing secondary sanctions on China, to hurt financing for Moscow's war machine. Nor did Trump - judging by information that has so far been made public - do what some Ukrainian and European politicians had feared the most and sell Kyiv out by doing a deal over the head of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy. Trump made clear that it was up to Zelenskyy as to whether he would agree - or not - with ideas of land swaps and other elements for a peace settlement that the U.S. president had discussed with Putin in Alaska. Although as Trump's bruising Oval Office encounter with Zelenskyy showed earlier this year, if Trump thinks the Ukrainian leader is not engaging constructively, he can quickly turn on him. Indeed, Trump was quick to start piling pressure on Zelenskyy, who is expected in Washington on Monday, saying after the summit that Ukraine had to deal because, "Russia is a very big power, and they're not". "The main point is that both sides have directly placed responsibility on Kyiv and Europe for achieving future results in the negotiations," said Medvedev, who added that the summit showed it was possible to negotiate and fight at the same time. DONBAS DEMAND While deliberations continue, Russian forces are slowly but steadily advancing on the battlefield and threatening a series of Ukrainian towns and cities whose fall could speed up Moscow's quest to take complete control of the eastern region of Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claims as its own. Donetsk, some 25% of which remains beyond Russia's control, and the Luhansk region together make up the industrial Donbas region, which Putin has made clear he wants in its entirety. Putin told Trump he'd be ready to freeze the front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, two of the other regions he claims, if Kyiv agreed to withdraw from both Donetsk and Luhansk, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. Zelenskiy rejected the demand, the source said. According to the New York Times, Trump told European leaders that Ukrainian recognition of Donbas as Russian would help get a deal done. And the U.S. is ready to be part of security guarantees for Ukraine, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said. Some Kremlin critics said it would be a mistake to credit Putin with too much success at this stage. "Russia has re-established its status and got dialogue with the U.S.," said Michel Duclos, a French diplomat who formerly served in Moscow and who is an analyst at the Institut Montaigne think-tank. "But when you have a war on your hands and your economy is collapsing, these are limited gains." Russian officials deny the economy, which has been put on a war footing and has proved more resilient than the West forecast despite heavy sanctions, is collapsing. But they have acknowledged signs of overheating and have said the economy could enter recession next year unless policies are adjusted. "For Putin, economic problems are secondary to his goals, but he understands our vulnerability and the costs involved," said one source familiar with Kremlin thinking. "Both sides will have to make concessions. The question is to what extent. The alternative, if we want to defeat them militarily, is to mobilize resources more deeply and use them more skillfully, but we are not going down that road for various reasons," the person said. "It will be Trump's job to pressure Ukraine to recognize the agreements." © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Japan Today
12 minutes ago
- Japan Today
European leaders to join Ukraine's Zelenskyy for meeting with Trump
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, right, and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy participate in a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on Sunday. By SAMYA KULLAB and JOHN LEICESTER European and NATO leaders announced Sunday they will join President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington for talks with President Donald Trump on ending Russia's war in Ukraine, with the possibility of U.S. security guarantees now on the negotiating table. European leaders, including heavyweights France, Britain and Germany, are rallying around the Ukrainian leader after his exclusion from Trump's summit on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their pledge to be at Zelenskyy's side at the White House on Monday is an apparent effort to ensure the meeting goes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated Zelenskyy in a heated Oval Office encounter. 'The Europeans are very afraid of the Oval Office scene being repeated and so they want to support Mr Zelenskyy to the hilt,' said retired French Gen. Dominique Trinquand, a former head of France's military mission at the United Nations. 'It's a power struggle and a position of strength that might work with Trump,' he said. Special U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said Sunday that Putin agreed at the meeting in Alaska with Trump to allow the U.S. and European allies to offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO's collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the 3 1/2-year war. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking at a news conference in Brussels with Zelenskyy, said 'we welcome President Trump's willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine. And the 'Coalition of the willing' -- including the European Union -- is ready to do its share.' Von der Leyen was joined Sunday by French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Finnish President Alexander Stubb in saying they will take part in Monday's talks at the White House, as will secretary-general of the NATO military alliance, Mark Rutte. The European leaders' demonstration of support could help ease concerns in Kyiv and in other European capitals that Ukraine risks being railroaded into a peace deal that Trump says he wants to broker with Russia. Neil Melvin, director of international security at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said European leaders are trying to 'shape this fast-evolving agenda.' After the Alaska summit, the idea of a ceasefire appears all-but-abandoned, with the narrative shifting toward Putin's agenda of ensuring Ukraine does not join NATO or even the EU. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' on Sunday that a possible ceasefire is 'not off the table' but that the best way to end the war would be through a 'full peace deal.' Putin has implied that he sees Europe as a hindrance to negotiations. He has also resisted meeting Zelenskyy in person, saying that such a meeting can only take place once the groundwork for a peace deal has been laid. Speaking to the press after his meeting with Trump, the Russian leader raised the idea that Kyiv and other European capitals could 'create obstacles' to derail potential progress with 'behind-the-scenes intrigue.' For now, Zelenskyy offers the Europeans the 'only way' to get into the discussions about the future of Ukraine and European security, says RUSI's Melvin. However, the sheer number of European leaders potentially in attendance means the group will have to be 'mindful' not to give 'contradictory' messages, Melvin said. 'The risk is they look heavy-handed and are ganging up on Trump,' he added. 'Trump won't want to be put in a corner.' Although details remain hazy on what Article 5-like security guarantees from the U.S. and Europe would entail for Ukraine, it could mirror NATO membership terms, in which an attack on one member of the alliance is seen as an attack on all. In remarks made on CNN's 'State of the Union,' Witkoff said Friday's meeting with Trump was the first time Putin has been had heard to agree to such an arrangement. Zelenskyy continues to stress the importance of both U.S. and European involvement in any negotiations. 'A security guarantee is a strong army. Only Ukraine can provide that. Only Europe can finance this army, and weapons for this army can be provided by our domestic production and European production. But there are certain things that are in short supply and are only available in the United States,' he said at the press conference Sunday alongside Von der Leyen. Zelenskyy also pushed back against Trump's assertion — which aligned with Putin's preference — that the two sides should negotiate a complete end to the war, rather than first securing a ceasefire. Zelenskyy said a ceasefire would provide breathing room to review Putin's demands. 'It's impossible to do this under the pressure of weapons,' he said. 'Putin does not want to stop the killing, but he must do it.' Associated Press writers Pan Pylas in London, and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
NHK
42 minutes ago
- NHK
US special envoy says Russia agrees to NATO-like security guarantees for Ukraine
US special envoy Steve Witkoff says Russia has agreed to NATO-like security guarantees for Ukraine. Witkoff, who attended the US-Russia summit on Friday, appeared on CNN TV on Sunday. He revealed that the issue of security guarantees for Ukraine was discussed at the summit. Ukraine has been seeking such guarantees. Witkoff referred to NATO's Article 5, which handles the right of collective defense. The article states that an armed attack against one of the members shall be considered an attack against them all and NATO will respond to it. Witkoff said, "We got an agreement that the United States and other European nations could effectively offer Article 5-like language to cover a security guarantee." His comment indicates that Ukraine could obtain such a guarantee without joining NATO. The special envoy said Russia agreed to that, but did not refer to details about what form of guarantees would be provided. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday that the EU welcomes US President Donald Trump's willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine. She also said the coalition of the willing, including the EU, is ready to do its share.
