11/08/2025

MONDAY | AUG 11, 2025

/thesuntelegram FOLLOW / Malaysian Paper

ON TELEGRAM m RAM

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Consensus or no consensus?

Pakistan aircraft shot down: India BENGALURU: India’s air force chief has claimed that five Pakistani fighter jets and another military aircraft were shot down during clashes in May, marking the first such official statement from the country in months regarding its recent military conflict with its neighbour. Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh said on Saturday that most of the aircraft were downed by Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missiles. Speaking at an event in Bengaluru, he cited electronic tracking data as confirmation of the strikes. “We have at least five fighters confirmed killed, and one large aircraft,”he said, adding that the larger plane, potentially a surveillance aircraft, was brought down from a distance of 300km. “This is actually the largest ever recorded surface-to-air kill,” he said. Pakistan’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Singh did not mention the type of fighter jets that were downed, but said that airstrikes also hit an additional surveillance plane and “a few F16” fighters that were parked in hangars. Islamabad, whose air force primarily operates Chinese-made jets and US F-16s, has previously denied that India downed any Pakistani aircraft during the May 7-10 fighting. Pakistan has claimed that it shot down six Indian aircraft during the clashes, including a French-made Rafale fighter. India has acknowledged some losses but denied losing six aircraft. – The Independent Tammy Bruce as the next US deputy representative to the United Nations. Bruce has been the State Department spokesperson since Trump took office in January. Bruce will need to be confirmed by the Senate, controlled by Republicans. Bruce was previously a political contributor and commentator on Fox News for over 20 years. She has also authored books like Fear Itself: Exposing the Left’s Mind-Killing Agenda that criticised liberals and left-leaning viewpoints. In a post after Trump’s announcement, Bruce thanked him and suggested that the role was a “few weeks” away. Neither Trump nor Bruce mentioned an exact timeline. “Now I’m blessed that in the next few weeks my commitment to advancing America First leadership and values continues on the global stage in this new post,” Bruce wrote on X. – Reuters SOUTH KOREA MILITARY SHRINKS BY 20% SEOUL: South Korea’s military shrank by 20% in the past six years to 450,000 troops, largely due to a sharp drop in the population of males of enlistment age for mandatory service in the country with the world’s lowest birthrate, a report said yesterday. The dramatic decline in the pool of available males for military service is also causing a shortfall in the number of officers and could result in operational difficulty if it continues, the Defence Ministry said in the report. The report was made to the ruling Democratic Party member of parliament Choo Mi-ae, whose office released it. South Korea’s military has steadily declined since the early 2000s when it had about 690,000 soldiers. The pace accelerated during the late 2010s and there were about 563,000 active duty soldiers and officers in 2019. North Korea is believed to have an active-duty military of about 1.2 million. – Reuters STATE DEPT OFFICIAL TAPPED FOR UN POST WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was nominating State Department spokesperson

o Wide gaps at plastic pollution treaty talks

BR I E F S

GENEVA: Talks on forging a landmark treaty to combat the scourge of plastic pollution were stumbling on Saturday, with progress slow and countries wildly at odds on how far the proposed agreement should go. The negotiations, which opened on Tuesday, have four working days left to strike a legally binding instrument that would tackle the growing problem choking the environment. In a blunt mid-way assessment, talks chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso warned the 184 countries negotiating at the United Nations that they had to get shifting to get a deal. “Progress made has not been sufficient,” Vayas told delegates. “A real push to achieve our common goal is needed,” the Ecuadoran diplomat said, adding that Thursday was not just a deadline but “a date by which we must deliver”. “Some articles still have unresolved issues and show little progress towards reaching a common understanding,” Vayas said. The key fracture is between countries that want to focus on waste management and others who want a more ambitious treaty that also cuts production and eliminates use of the most toxic chemicals. And with the talks relying on finding consensus, it has become a game of brinkmanship. A diplomatic source told reporters that many informal meetings had been scrambled together for Sunday’s day off to try and break the deadlock. “If nothing changes, we won’t get there,” the source said. Countries have reconvened in Geneva after the failure of the supposedly fifth and final round of negotiations in Busan, South Korea last year. After four days of talks, the draft text has

Petasol, a diesel-equivalent fuel made from plastic waste, drips from a processing machine at a workshop in Pekanbaru, Indonesia. – AFPPIC

to make it a waste management agreement”, and to stifle talks on reducing the amount of plastic in circulation. The UN Environment Programme is hosting the talks and swiftly called a press conference after the stock-take session. UNEP executive director Inger Andersen said a deal was “really within our grasp, even though today it might not look so”. “Despite the fog of negotiations I’m really encouraged,” she told reporters, insisting: “There is a pathway to success.” Vayas said: “We need to accelerate. We need a better rhythm in this and we need to also work in such a way that it will be clear that we will deliver by the end.” Afterwards, Bjorn Beeler, executive director at Ipen, a global network aimed at limiting toxic chemicals, said: “This whole process has not been able to take decisions and is still collecting ideas. We’re sleepwalking towards a cliff and if we don’t wake up, we’re falling off.” – AFP

ballooned from 22 to 35 pages – with the number of brackets in the text going up near five-fold to almost 1,500 as countries insert a blizzard of conflicting wishes and ideas. The talks are mandated to look at the full life cycle of plastic, from production to pollution, but some countries are unhappy with such a wide scope. Kuwait spoke up for the so-called Like Minded Group: a nebulous cluster of mostly oil producing nations which rejects production limits and wants to focus on treating waste. “Let us agree on what we can agree. Consensus must be the basis of all our decisions,” Kuwait said. But given how little is truly agreed on, Uruguay warned that consensus “cannot be used as a justification to not achieve our objectives”. Eirik Lindebjerg, global plastics adviser for the World Wide Fund for Nature, said the Like Minded Group’s proposal was “another attempt

BLOOD BOND ... Indian women tie rakhi , a sacred band, onto the wrist of Border Security Force personnel on the occasion of the Hindu festival of Raksha Bandhan, observed as a symbol of the duty of brothers to protect their sisters, at the India-Pakistan Wagah Border Post about 35km from Amritsar on Friday. – AFPPIC