29/09/2025

MONDAY | SEPT 29, 2025

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Iran denounces return of UN sanctions

No talk of republic, says Australia PM SYDNEY: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said yesterday he did not raise the issue of Australia severing ties with Britain to become a republic in a meeting with King Charles in Scotland. Charles is head of state in Australia, New Zealand and 12 other Commonwealth realms outside the United Kingdom, although the role is largely ceremonial. Australia has long debated the need to keep a distant monarch. A 1999 referendum in Australia on becoming a republic lost with 55% of voters opposed. Albanese, a lifelong republican who nonetheless has pledged his allegiance to the monarch, said in televised remarks yesterday that he met one-on-one with Charles at Balmoral Castle, his home in the Scottish Highlands. Asked if he raised any plans to hold a referendum on Australia becoming a republic, Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp: “No. And I think I’ve made it clear that I wanted to hold one referendum while I was prime minister, and we did that.” Australia in October 2023 decisively rejected a referendum proposal, advanced by Albanese’s ruling centre-left Labor party, to recognise indigenous people in the constitution. “We’re concentrating on cost of living and on making a real practical difference to people’s lives,” Albanese said. Charles, the only British monarch who has spent time living in Australia, visited the country in October last year, the first visit by a reigning British monarch in 13 years. Albanese’s meeting with Charles came a day after the Australian leader expressed confidence that the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal with the US and Britain would move forward, after a meeting in London with his British counterpart, Keir Starmer. – Reuters Stop navel gazing, UK Labour party told LIVERPOOL: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called on his party yesterday to stop “navel gazing” and unite to defeat Reform UK, accusing the populist party of planning to launch a “racist policy” of mass deportations if it wins power. Starmer, whose governing Labour is well behind Reform in the polls, kicked off his party’s annual conference by issuing a rallying cry to party members to direct their anger towards Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s Reform, rather than his leadership. “I’m saying we have got the fight of our lives ahead of us, because we’ve got to take on Reform. We’ve got to beat them and so now is not the time for introspection or navel gazing. We need to be in that fight united,” he told BBC. With Starmer’s Labour badly behind in the polls before a national election due in 2029, the British prime minister wants to reset the narrative about his leadership after weeks of difficulties when he was forced to reshuffle his government. He sees his party’s conference in the northern English city of Liverpool as a chance to rally Labour and challenge those critics who want him to be replaced, including the mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, by focusing their anger on Farage. Starmer defended his government’s efforts to tackle illegal immigration, which is one of the main concerns of British voters, describing Farage’s plan to deport refugees who had settled in Britain as “racist”. “It is one thing to say we’re going to remove illegal migrants, people who have no right to be here. I’m up for that,” he said. “It is a completely different thing to say we are going to reach in to people who are lawfully here and start removing them ... I do think that it’s a racist policy, I do think it is immoral, and it needs to be called out for what it is.” – Reuters

o Channels for dialogue remain open

sanctions alongside Britain and France, had “no choice” as Iran was not complying with its obligations, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said. “For us, it is imperative: Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon,” he told the UN General Assembly. “But let me emphasise: we remain open to negotiations on a new agreement. Diplomacy can and should continue.” Russia made clear it would not enforce the sanctions, considering them invalid. The sanctions “finally exposed the West’s policy of sabotaging the pursuit of constructive solutions in the UN Security Council, as well as its desire to extract unilateral concessions from Tehran through blackmail and pressure,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. Iran has long contended that it is not seeking nuclear weapons. The sanctions are a “snapback” of measures frozen in 2015 when Iran agreed to major restrictions on its nuclear programme under a deal negotiated by former president Barack Obama. Iran recalled its envoys from Britain, France and Germany for consultations on Saturday, state television reported. – AFP

forces bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. Despite the reimposition, Western leaders stressed channels for dialogue remained open. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Iran to “accept direct talks, held in good faith”. He also called on UN member states to “immediately” implement sanctions to “pressure Iran’s leaders to do what is right for their nation, and best for the safety of the world”. The British, French and German foreign ministers said in a joint statement they would continue to seek “a new diplomatic solution to ensure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon”. They also called on Tehran “to refrain from any escalatory action”. Iran had allowed UN inspectors to return to its nuclear sites, but President Masoud Pezeshkian said the United States had offered only a short reprieve in return for handing over its whole stockpile of enriched uranium, a proposal he described as unacceptable. An 11th-hour effort by Iran allies Russia and China to postpone the sanctions until April failed to win enough votes in the Security Council on Friday, leading to the measures taking effect in Tehran yesterday. Germany, which triggered the return of

TEHRAN: Iran yesterday condemned as “unjustifiable” the reinstatement of UN sanctions over its nuclear programme, after the collapse of talks with Western powers and Israeli and US strikes on its nuclear sites. The measures, which bar dealings linked to the republic’s nuclear and ballistic missile activities, took effect overnight after Western powers triggered the so-called “snapback” mechanism under the 2015 nuclear accord. “The reactivation of annulled resolutions is legally baseless and unjustifiable ... all countries must refrain from recognising this illegal situation,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will firmly defend its national rights and interests, and any action aimed at undermining the rights and interests of its people will face a firm and appropriate response,” it said. The return of the sanctions ends months of tense diplomacy aimed at reviving nuclear talks derailed since June, when Israeli and US

World’s highest bridge opens to traffic BEIJING: The world’s highest bridge opened to traffic in China yesterday, state media said, capping an engineering feat three years in the making and snatching the record from another bridge in the same province. bridge for a ceremony to mark the occasion, several expressing their pride and excitement in live interviews to state media. The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge towers 625m above a river in Guizhou province in China. – AFPPIC

The hilly province of Guizhou in particular is crisscrossed by thousands of bridges, which now include the world’s two highest. Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday that nearly half of the world’s 100 highest bridges are in the province. The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge took more than three years to complete, Xinhua reported. Its 1,420m main span makes it the “world’s largest-span bridge built in a mountainous area”, it said. Apart from the world’s highest bridge, the tallest – measured in terms of the height of its own structure, rather than the distance to the ground – remains France’s Millau viaduct at 343m. – AFP

“The opening of the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge reduces travel time between the two sides from two hours to two minutes,” said Zhang Yin, head of the provincial transport department. Its opening makes “enormous improvements to regional transport conditions and (injects) new impetus into regional economic and social development.” China has invested heavily in major infrastructure projects in recent decades, a period of rapid economic growth and urbanisation in the country.

The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge towers 625m above a river and vast gorge in the country’s rugged southern province of Guizhou, also home to the 565m Beipanjiang Bridge that is now the world’s second highest. Live drone footage broadcast by state media yesterday showed vehicles traversing the immense structure, its blue support towers partially engulfed in clouds. Crowds of onlookers including project engineers and local officials gathered on the