ANALYSIS: By Trita Parsi

The Middle East is once again teetering on the brink as Trump appears poised to reignite war with Iran.

Press reports indicate he will convene military advisers on Tuesday, though my understanding is that both the meeting and the decision are likely to come sooner.

Over the past several hours, Trump has flooded Truth Social with a barrage of incendiary threats. While some of this may be theatrical brinkmanship designed to force Tehran into submission, sources in the Iranian capital tell me they expect the United States to resume hostilities within the next 48 hours.

We should first recognise that restarting the war amounts to an admission that Trump’s previous escalatory gambit– the blockade of the blockade — has failed. That, in turn, was itself an admission that the war had failed. Which was an admission that the threats of war in January had failed.

As I have argued before on my Substack, this relentless search for an escalatory silver bullet capable of bringing Iran to its knees is not unique to Trump; it has become a defining pathology of American Iran policy for decades.

Although negotiators have made meaningful progress on several fronts, talks have thus far failed to produce an agreement, largely because of irreconcilable differences over Tehran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile. And as Washington has come to realise that the blockade is backfiring, a new and dangerous dynamic has emerged: both sides now believe another round of fighting will strengthen their hand in the negotiations that follow.

As I argued in numerous interviews in January, Trump dramatically underestimated Iran’s strength, while hardliners in Tehran believed war would strengthen Iran’s leverage by exposing the illusion of Iranian weakness.

Vindicated assessment
In their view, the outcome of the conflict vindicated that assessment, leaving them increasingly confident — even emboldened — about what a second round of war could yield. I am told the new Supreme Leader belongs to this camp.

Moreover, just as Tehran believes Trump intends to prosecute the next war with far greater ferocity, Iranian planners are preparing a far more expansive and punishing retaliatory campaign, complete with new strategic objectives and targets.

First, Iranian officials increasingly describe the next war as an opportunity to inflict maximum strategic damage on the United Arab Emirates, citing Abu Dhabi’s active role in the previous conflict, its deepening and increasingly overt partnership with Israel, and its role in urging Trump to resume hostilities.

Tehran is likely to target American data centers in the UAE, a move that serves multiple purposes. Iranian officials argue that these American technology firms have already become participants in the conflict through their support for the Pentagon.

At the same time, Tehran sees an opportunity to cripple the UAE’s ambitions to become a global artificial intelligence hub — and, in doing so, potentially undermine Washington’s AI competition with China.

This points to a second defining feature of Iran’s strategy in a future war. Tehran believes Trump and his family hold financial stakes in many of these same technology ventures.

Targeting Trump’s personal business interests is a lever Iran conspicuously avoided pulling during the first conflict but now appears increasingly willing to use.

Logic straightforward
The logic is straightforward: Trump may tolerate damage to American strategic interests, but he is acutely sensitive to threats against his own financial empire. Raise the personal cost to Trump himself, the reasoning goes, and he may prove more willing to adopt a realistic negotiating position.

Third, Tehran is likely to show far less restraint if evidence emerges that other Gulf Cooperation Council states permit the United States or Israel to use their territory or airspace in a renewed conflict. The result would be broader and far more perilous horizontal escalation, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the global economy should critical energy infrastructure come under attack.

Fourth, the Red Sea is now in play. That would dramatically widen the geographic scope of the conflict while placing even greater upward pressure on already volatile oil prices.

Finally, Tehran is increasingly examining the possibility of severing the major submarine fiber-optic cable networks running beneath the Persian Gulf — arteries through which most GCC internet traffic flows, including billions of dollars in financial transactions. Iranian officials increasingly view this as a potential second Strait of Hormuz: a powerful new point of leverage capable of disrupting the global economy at enormous scale.

Renewed war is not inevitable. But when both sides convince themselves that another round of fighting will strengthen their negotiating position, the gravitational pull toward conflict becomes dangerously strong — however irrational the logic may ultimately be.

Trita Parsi is an Iranian-Swedish political analyst and foreign policy scholar specialising in Middle East geopolitics and US-Iran relations. He is the co-founder and executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Why is US President Donald Trump carrying on with his State visit to Beijing this week on May 14? I wouldn’t if I were him.

It also shows that he is surrounded by incompetent officials. Any competent advisor would advise him against undertaking this trip.

He goes as the leader of a “defeated” nation, against a foe on which the United States has imposed the stiffest sanctions for 47 years. He will be viewed by the Chinese as the President that ended the American empire.

He thinks he is going as a conquering hero and can wow the Chinese with his empty boasts that America won a huge victory and destroyed Iran. He will be met by President Xi and the Chinese leadership with polite smiles and smirks of the greatest disrespect.

If he has any EQ, he will know that his treatment in Beijing is going to be brutal. The Chinese may even gift him the symbolic white flag of surrender. You will see that in this summit, the US will be very much the junior partner.

Iran will never give this defeated President the satisfaction of a peace agreement which he so desperately needs, and is begging for, before his trip to Beijing. They will make sure he goes to Beijing as a defeated man.

Iran is not after a peace deal, but the total and comprehensive defeat of America as the global hegemon. Iran will see to it that the US gets out of the Middle East totally so that Israel is isolated and the Greater Israel project totally destroyed.

Security architecture shifting
Even as I write, the security architecture of the Middle East is shifting rapidly. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman are shifting their allegiances increasingly toward Iran, Russia and China.

Fifty-five years of being America’s poodles are coming to an end. These countries have realised that the US is an unreliable partner and cannot guarantee their security.

The stupid countries are the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, which still hitch their wagons to the Americans and Israel. They have dug their own graves.

History has never witnessed another event as dramatic as the Iran war, where a global power has lost power and prestige in such a short period of 4 months.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Without understanding the astonishing network of power exercised by the United Arab Emirates you would have no idea why the UAE was hit particularly hard by Iran in recent weeks.

Nor would you know what fuels chaos from Libya to Sudan to Somalia to Yemen.

If you understand the UAE’s business-geostrategic model and how it mobilises warlords, gold, oil, regional logistics and finance — you get much closer to seeing the pattern in the seeming madness.

Tiny UAE, 1.4 million citizens, wields so much power that Saudi Arabia sees it as a serious threat. In December, Saudi Arabia bombed UAE surrogates in Yemen and told the emirates to exit the country. They didn’t. If the US and Israel hadn’t attacked Iran, more fireworks were in the offing.

Israel is the UAE’s close ally. They collaborate not just on the War on Iran but in many of these various “civil wars” that are both money-making ventures and a series of heartless state-destruction campaigns that give them greater geopolitical weight in the region.

Israel is UAE’s close ally.            Image: Google Earth map

We first need to understand what UAE (United Arab Emirates) really is. Comprising seven emirates — Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al-Quwain, Ras Al-Khaimah, and Fujairah — it is now the hub of an empire that both Iran and Saudi Arabia would like to knee-cap.

The powerhouse is actually Abu Dhabi, the oil giant which is the effective boss of the rest, including Dubai.

Family business with six sons
Abu Dhabi is a family business, run by The Bani Fatima, the sons of Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi who is the most influential of the wives of the late Sheikh. Today, ultimate power resides with MBZ (Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan) the eldest of her six sons.

MBZ was a long-time buddy of MBS (Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman) but those days are well behind us. In the words of a senior Saudi figure, Ahmed Altuwaijri, Abu Dhabi is Israel’s Trojan horse in the region.

Along with Bahrain, UAE is a signatory to the Abraham Accords which is a US vehicle to bring Israel in from the cold. The other Gulf States oppose this “Israel First” policy and are clear that a resolution of the rights of the Palestinians must come first, although they do little about it.

The Bani Fatimid system works like this: identify a country that is experiencing instability, pick a side (preferably anti-political Islam) and offer not only to finance that militia or warlord of choice but provide the immense logistical support the UAE has, including air freighting weapons, supplies and soldiers, and the complex systems needed to convert, for example, stolen gold into arms or other assets.

Time and again this has resulted in the creation of shadow economies that end up controlling significant resources (gold, oil, agriculture, ports) and creating parallel states. Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen have all been played in this way. It is textbook divide and rule: weakening a state from within to then exert ongoing influence and resource extraction.

Dr Andreas Krieg of the School of Security Studies at King’s College London told The Thinking Muslim channel recently that UAE is far more advanced than Saudi Arabia in establishing powerful, agile networks across a wide zone of influence.

“It’s not about size. Size doesn’t matter in the networked global order that we’re operating in today. It’s about connectivity and who you can mobilise on your behalf — whether it’s in the information environment or armed non-state actors, such as the STC (in Yemen).

“But it’s also the commodity traders, the financiers, the banks, the insurance companies, the other trading corporations, that you can mobilise to generate what strategy is all about: influence and power,” Krieg says.

Libya’s terrible 15-year civil war has been immensely worsened by outside states, including UAE which turned general Khalifa Belqasim Haftar from a YouTube revolutionary into the head of the massively resourced LNA militia that now controls about a third of the country.

With UAE commanding the centre of a hub-and-spoke system, it can move fighters around the region at will, for example from Libya to Yemen where it sent thousands of LNA fighters to support local client militias. By backing the Southern Transition Council (STC) in Yemen, UAE got control over the vital Port of Aden. Similarly, by partnering with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan, tons of stolen gold flows into Dubai. You get the picture.

Gold is the prime currency of the Bani Fatima empire (MBZ and his brothers). Dubai is known in the region as The City of Gold, the place where the bulk of Africa’s yellow metal, much of it smuggled, finds its way.

Imagine this: at the very time tens of millions of Sudanese are suffering famine or near-famine conditions, the UAE is facilitating the export to Dubai of tons of gold to fuel the war. This represents billions of dollars that should be held for the benefit of the people but instead is being used for empire building.

In Somalia the UAE has switched sides when economic or strategic advantage could be made. Along with Israel, UAE is backing militias who have declared a break-away state “Somaliland” that borders the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The UAE has military bases in “Somaliland” and has poured millions of dollars into the port of Berbera. With hundreds of kilometres of coastline adjacent to vital Red Sea shipping lanes, UAE and Israel will be important players in a contest with Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other powers.

In December last year Israel became the first to recognise Somaliland as a state. UAE is understood to be working on the Trump administration to do the same – further trashing the idea of territorial integrity for the sake of advantage. As an aside: Israel hopes to ethnically cleanse Palestinians to Somaliland one day.

All this dovetails with Israel’s strategy of smashing states to control them. For them, an alternative to regime change in Iran is Balkanisation to create several weak statelets thereby enhancing Israeli security and influence.

For those reasons and more, I hope the sovereign state of Iran survives the onslaught. I hope UAE and Israel’s genuinely evil business of fragmenting state after state is defeated. I hope the Western countries look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves: what kind of moral monsters would be allies of Israel and the UAE?

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and contributes to Asia Pacific Report. He hosts solidarity.co.nz

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

On Tuesday, I wrote UAE, Israel, And The Hexagon Alliance which illuminated Israel’s duplicity in relation to Hamas, and the understated but very strong alliance between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel. And Israel’s agenda to divide and rule the ‘Middle East’ by creating its own encircling alliance; and setting up two rival Muslim axes (a Shia axis, and a Sunni axis) which Israel would like to see weaken and damage each other.

Here I begin with other candid comments, by recent Israeli leaders, from the Australian 2024 documentary The Forever War. Themes include a mix of empathy and contempt for the indigenous Palestinian population, Benjamin Netanyahu’s trustworthiness, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich as “messianic” “terrorists”, Israel’s hold over the United States, and Israel’s self-inflicted diminishing security.

Excerpts from the Australian ABC documentary

TZIPI LIVNI, FMR FOREIGN & JUSTICE MINISTER: They hate us. We saw the results. The idea of eradicating Hamas completely from Gaza is a just cause.

YEHUDA SHAUL, FMR ISRAELI ARMY COMMANDER: That the IDF is doing everything to avoid civilian casualties is a blunt lie. Straight lie.

YEHUDA SHAUL, FMR ISRAELI ARMY COMMANDER: Y’know, [in the] the beginning I was also full of rage. I also had the feeling that these are animals, we need to go there and bomb the hell out of them. But then you stop for a second and you think, you say to yourself, what did we think is going to happen after 16 years of siege.

AMIRA HASS, OCCUPIED TERRITORIES CORRESPONDENT, HAARETZ: I was surprised and not surprised because I kept warning that people cannot stand the accumulated cruelty accumulated over so many decades. And somehow there will be an explosion. Somehow there will be an outburst. I couldn’t imagine what it would be, but there it came.

…

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: You’ve spent a lot of time studying this obviously as head of Shin Bet. Could you describe what is the reality for Palestinians here?

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: It was a life of people who dream about freedom, and don’t see it. Whether we liked it or not, we control the life of millions.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: If you were a Palestinian living in the West Bank or Gaza, what would your view be of Israel?

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: I would fight against Israel in order to achieve my liberty.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: How would you fight? How dirty?

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: I would do everything in order to achieve my liberty. And that’s it.

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: Look, I once was asked some 30 years ago what I have been doing if I were a Palestinian and 30 years ago. I was new enough in politics to tell the truth that if I were born Palestinian probably would’ve joined one of the terror organisations.

…

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Israel’s famous for its targeted assassinations. I mean you yourself dressed as a woman famously and went into Beirut and met up with Mossad and went and killed a Palestinian leader. Israel’s done that over the years. Why couldn’t they have tried to strategically target Hamas leaders rather than kill those thousands of children?

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: I never deluded myself to believe that by killing any individual you solve the problem, you give them a blow and they will recover in a way it just delayed the real decision. Real decisions at the end are not about how to kill mosquitoes more effectively. It’s about how to drain the swamp [my emphasis].

…

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Do you trust Benjamin Netanyahu?

TZIPI LIVNI, FMR FOREIGN & JUSTICE MINISTER: Never.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Can there be peace while Benjamin Netanyahu’s the leader here?

TZIPI LIVNI, FMR FOREIGN & JUSTICE MINISTER: No. No.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Can the world trust Benjamin Netanyahu?

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: I don’t think that anyone can trust him. So basically, he lies to everyone and no one trust him.

…

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: BenGvir and Smotrich, the two racist messianic guys that seems to be to very strong leverage on Bibi. They want to turn it into a major religious war between Israel and the Islam.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Are they dangerous?

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: Sure, they’re dangerous.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: How powerful are BenGvir and Smotrich and what do you think of them?

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: I see them as terrorists and as Jewish messianics, they represent only a small minority within the Israel society, but they get their power because of our coalition system.*

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: But can I just check something? Are you calling the Minister for National Security and the Minister for Finance in Israel? Are you calling them terrorists?

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: Of course. They are.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Is the brutal reality that Benjamin Netanyahu wants to continue this war for his own political survival?

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: Look, I cannot penetrate his soul and tell you for sure, but it’s clear that he acts as if the main objective of this whole event is his survival. He understands that if fighting will have a pause for six weeks or two times six weeks, the Israeli republic will demand accountability in spite of the fact that there is no word in Hebrew for accountability. It was not needed in our culture, but the public will demand it and he might lose his role, the prime minister.

…

excerpt from U.S. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The state of Israel was born to be a safe place for the Jewish people.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: President Biden is a lifelong supporter of Israel.

excerpt from U.S. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: If Israel didn’t exist we’d have to invent it.

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: Israel cannot fight this regional war without having close relationship with the Americans. We need their support, not just in munitions that we do not produce in a high enough space to supply the needs of such a regional war, but we need them also to protect us in the UN Security Council. We needed them at the beginning of the crisis to deter Iran from getting involved or from activating the Hezbollah against us. And we will need them even in the Hague, to block the prospect that… Israeli commanders or even politically, they might find themselves as a criminal in the Hague or demanded to be broke. Only America can help us to avoid all this.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Pro-Israeli lobby groups in the US wield immense power.

NATHAN THRALL, FMR DIRECTOR INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP: Every politician in the United States knows that they can pay a major price with their jobs for not toeing the line. And the level of devastation that we are seeing now has so horrified the world and has so horrified the American public that now we have half of the people who voted for Biden saying that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza.

…

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Do you now fear for the future?

TZIPI LIVNI, FMR FOREIGN & JUSTICE MINISTER: I am worried. I am worried about the future of Israel. Yes, more than ever.

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: You cannot deter a person or a group of people if they believe that they have nothing to lose. We Israelis, we shall have security only when they will have hope.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: What’s the future for Palestinians

AVI DICHTER, CURRENT ISRAELI CABINET MINISTER: Supporting death will not bring you anything. If you don’t believe that the Jewish presence here between the Mediterranean and Jordan Valley is forever, you are going to lose more than you’ve lost till now.

*Coalition System

All electoral democracies – ie with parliamentary or congressional elections – face the problem of a very close electoral result in a partisan House. And, as Keir Starmer is finding out, political parties in traditional duopoly systems (generally ‘First Past the Post’) are themselves coalitions. In 1984, under FPP, New Zealand went to the polls early, because a minority faction of two within the governing National caucus – Marilyn Waring and Mike Minogue – had (or seemed, to Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, to have had) gained the effective balance of power. In Israel today, it is BenGivr and Smotrich who have that balance of power within the parliament, the Knesset.) In the US Senate under Joe Biden’s presidency, it was Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

In the Israel case, Netanyahu is the bigger problem. The BenGivr and Smotrich tails are not wagging the Netanyahu dog.

Ehud Barak and Jeffrey Epstein

Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post episode The anatomy of the Epstein network (9 Feb 2026) noted this 15 Jan 2026 article – “Praise Allah, There Are Still People Like You”: Jeffrey Epstein Nurtured Israel-Emirates Ties Before Abraham Accords – from Drop Site News, and then interviewed one of its authors, Murtaza Hussain. As well as emphasising Israel’s links with UAE, it also outlines Jeffrey Epstein’s longstanding links to both UAE (especially Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, former head of DP World) and to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Yes, the very Ehud Barak who intimated that Gaza and the West Bank (and presumably much of Lebanon to the south and west of Beirut) were swamps in need of draining.

Barak, Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001, was the most recent Labor Party leader of Israel. Labor-constituent parties led Israel from 1948 to 1977, and also for some years in the 1990s. Yitzhak Rabin, a Labor Prime Minister, was assassinated by a Zionist terrorist on 4 November 1995.

From Wikipedia: “According to Barak, they first met in 2003, and no evidence of an earlier meeting has been published to date. Barak stayed at Epstein’s apartments in New York several times over the years. … A large portion of the funds invested by Barak was supplied by Jeffrey Epstein. … In 2023, it was revealed that Barak had visited Epstein around 30 times from 2013 to 2017. … Barak said [in 2015 that] he currently earns more than $1 million a year.”

From the Drop Site News article:

“In the last two decades of his life, American financier Jeffrey Epstein acted as an informal diplomatic bridge between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.”

“Epstein’s … claim of having an intimate friendship with Sulayem is now corroborated by a flood of his emails from the House Oversight Committee, a U.S. federal court case, and the hacked inbox of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.”

It appears that much of Epstein’s correspondence with Sulayem was cc.ed to Ehud Barak; keeping Israel – if not Netanyahu – fully in the loop of UAE’s deepening links with Epstein, a man sufficiently notorious as a child sex offender to bring down the likes of the former prince, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. (The Epstein Affair has close parallels with the 1963 Profumo Affair, which brought down the British government and also came close to entangling the Royal Family; as viewers of The Crown will appreciate. I’m surprised that the Andrew-obsessed British media seems to downplay this parallel.)

The article adds:

‘In a November 2022 interview about the Abraham Accords, Epstein’s close friend Ehud Barak told journalist Afshin Rattansi, “I’m glad that the Emirates and Bahrain went ‘out of the closet’ and are ready to formalize relationships with us [Israel], and I hope that others will follow. It’s a positive development; of course, it’s not a real peace, it’s not a major breakthrough. We know these people for 25 years, and we have a very intensive relationship with them in many arenas”.

‘The relationship between Israel and the UAE has only deepened in the years since, even as the Israeli genocide in Gaza has provoked global outrage. In December 2025, the UAE signed a $2.3 billion defense deal with Elbit Systems, one of the largest arms sales in Israeli history.’ [What are the odds that the RSF in Sudan are now using some of those weapons?]

‘Although Epstein did not live to see these agreements come to fruition, the private channels he helped cultivate between Emirati and Israeli elites helped make them possible.’

Epstein’s Ponzi Scheme

How did Epstein make his massive fortune and become so influential and entitled? The whole story is of course murky, especially in the years of the 1990s and 2000s. Most of the information we have today relates to the post-2008 period, after Epstein’s conviction for ‘procuring for prostitution’.

I discovered a very interesting story relating to an earlier part of Epstein’s life, when he was working closely with Steven Hoffenberg. From Epstein’s Wikipedia page: “In 1993, [Hoffenberg’s] Towers Financial Corporation imploded when it was exposed as one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in American history, losing over US$450 million of its investors’ money (equivalent to $1 billion in 2025). In court documents, Hoffenberg claimed that Epstein was intimately involved in the scheme.” Epstein worked with Towers Financial Corporation, which perpetrated that Ponzi scheme in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

From CBS (Jeffrey Epstein worked at financial firm that engaged in massive Ponzi scheme in 1980s and 1990s, by Brian Pascus and Mola Lenghi, 13 Aug 2019): ‘Hoffenberg’s financial crimes in the 1990s drew major public attention, as the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme was the largest financial fraud in American history prior to Bernie Madoff’s crimes a decade later, according to The New York Times. … “Jeffrey was my partner in what we did raising the billion dollars. He worked with me every day, seven days a week and he was in the mix with everything that I did,” Hoffenberg told CBS News. “I was the CEO of Towers Financial Corporation, a public company, and Jeffrey was my main assistant, associate, or partner. And the company did do a billion dollars in raising money. And it was criminal”.’

And note How Epstein got so rich, by Timothy Rooks for Deutsche Welle, 16 Feb 2026.

Conclusion

By focussing on Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, we may be letting him and his contacts off lightly.

Epstein was a money man; a miner of money, paying minors while playing majors. An Israel man. A scholar, majoring in influence, with particularly strong links to politicians and businessmen on the right of the political left; people like Peter Mandelson and Ehud Barak. A Hexagon Alliance man, who died ignominiously before his work came to its present fruition. A man trading in big guns and little women. A man serving what has become the world’s most lucrative and secretive industry; the high-tech high-chat world of asymmetric warfare, geopolitics, and draining swamps. Many of Epstein’s many contacts, now distancing themselves from him, will have imbibed the same Kool-Aid.

Epstein was a man who did much towards creating the new circum-Arabia circular economy, whereby Israel facilitates the UAE to supply military tech to the RSF to extract gold and materials from Sudan so that Israel (and its proxies, big and small) can devise, manufacture, and test more military tech to sell to the UAE to supply RSF terrorists …

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

The 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) of members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is being held in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Adam Wolfenden, who is there on behalf of Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG), says the concerns of small Pacific nations centre on the subsidy provided by larger nations to fishing companies.

He said Fiji, in particular, was seeking a strong outcome on fisheries subsidies’ negotiations.

Wolfenden said the reason they were so concerned around fisheries subsidies was because of “the revenue and the importance of fisheries to the Pacific both at a governmental level, but also for the livelihoods of Pacific Islanders is enormous”.

He said this then raised concerns about how countries deal with overfishing and overcapacity, but did not prevent the small island nations from “developing their own domestic fleets to fish their resources and create a development pathway built on fisheries”.

Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister and Trade Minister, Manoa Kamikamica, who is at the meeting, said: “Fiji will ask from its partners for stronger disciplines on subsidies contributing to overfishing and overcapacity in the negotiations that has caused the global depletion of fish stocks.”

“For us, this is more than a matter of national interest — it is a matter of national survival,” he said.

“Additionally, Fiji will highlight the importance of special and differential treatment for developing and least developed countries, including small island states, to ensure that trade policies take into account the specific challenges and vulnerabilities faced by these nations.”

Solomon Islands Foreign and Trade Minister, Jeremiah Manele, said the deliberations continued to undermine the responsible growth in his country’s fisheries sector “and further, the preservation of our fishing arrangements and differential licensing arrangements”.

“The current text maintains the status quo, leaning favourably towards the major subsidisers, with a mere focus on notifications and sustainability.”

MC13 is also focusing on reform of the WTO and Samoa’s Trade Negotiations Minister, Leota Laki Lamositele, said last year that “we reaffirmed that special and differential treatment for developing and Least Developed Country Members is an integral part of the WTO and its agreements”.

“As such, Samoa concurs with others in supporting the work of the WTO and that MC13 should ensure inclusive, transparent, and rules-based outcomes, to accommodate the diversity of WTO Membership in implementing current.”

‘A lot of uncertainty’
Civil society organisations have found themselves being shut out at this WTO meeting.

Wolfenden said there was a lot of concern about how non-government organisations were being treated in Abu Dhabi.

He said a lot of the activities that the groups would normally have been able to do — even just providing leaflets to journalists or directly engaging in advocacy — was being restricted.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty and a lack of clarity around what the security situation is with, you know, colleagues being detained for sending information to journalists for taking photos.

“We have sent a letter to the WTO director-general, I know this has been raised by a number of governments, including New Zealand, and the concerns around the way civil society is being treated.

“Yet there’s still no clarity and if anything, it feels like the way that we have been dealt with by local security is escalating.”

He added there was a lot of concern for participants and their safety within the conference venue.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Macron said tensions in the Indo-Pacific zone were a matter for concern because France was an integral part of the Indo-Pacific — both in the Indian and the Pacific oceans.

He recalled the French version of the Indo-Pacific had been masterminded in 2018 and had since been developed in partnership with such key allies as India, Australia, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.

“But we have also consolidated it and, may I say entrenched it, in our own (overseas) territories,” he said, citing New Caledonia as an example of French army presence to defend France’s sovereignty and “the capacity for our air force to deploy (from mainland France) to Oceania within 48 hours”.

He also praised the recent South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting held in Nouméa last month when “France was the inviting power”.

He said Paris was able to strike “strategic partnerships” with neighbouring armed forces.

“The year 2024 will see us maintain without fail the protection of our overseas territories,” he told the troops.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Joe Biden’s controversial fist-bump with Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi crown prince, may help New Zealand to forge its own new direction in the Middle East.

The US president’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia showed that despite real concerns over human rights, the Middle East’s strategic importance in the current global geopolitical jigsaw puzzle cannot be ignored.

Biden’s meeting with MBS in the Saudi port city of Jeddah – four years after the horrific killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi – was a triumph of realism over idealism.

In essence, Biden’s trip was all about convincing Saudi Arabia to increase oil production to try to bring down the global fuel prices that have risen sharply since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Biden might have called Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’ for the Khashoggi killing during the 2020 presidential election campaign – but Vladimir Putin is now Washington’s main adversary.

And in the Middle East itself, the threat of Iran – which the US claims is about to supply military drones to Russia for use against Ukraine – is also a higher priority for Biden.

New Zealand policymakers will be watching Biden’s moves in the Middle East.

After all, New Zealand has also been trying to rekindle its own relationship with the Gulf. Foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta visited New Zealand’s lavish, $NZ60m pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on her inaugural overseas trip in November last year – and she also managed to fit in a side-trip to influential Qatar while she was in the region.

Mahuta pointedly avoided a trip to Riyadh, but Biden’s meeting with MBS will be a signal to New Zealand and other Western countries that the time is right to bring Saudi Arabia in from the cold.

The wealthy Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – a six-country grouping made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – is already New Zealand’s eighth-biggest trading partner.

It holds the potential to become an even more significant market for New Zealand exports, especially in the key areas of meat and dairy.

Indeed, the very modest gains achieved by New Zealand for meat and dairy in its recent free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union mean that improving trade with other key markets – such as the Middle East – is more important than ever.

As Western attitudes towards China have soured, New Zealand ministers have been keen to make trade diversification a major priority.

To that end, trade minister Damien O’Connor embarked on a major mission to the Gulf in March to try and restart New Zealand’s troubled free trade negotiations with the GCC.

A deal with the bloc was signed in 2009 but remains unratified from the Gulf side.

The last big push to try and get the deal over the line was in 2015, under the previous National-led government, when Prime Minister John Key toured Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Around the same time, the ill-fated ‘Saudi sheep deal’ was devised by Key’s foreign minister, Murray McCully, in an unsuccessful bid to appease a prominent Saudi investor who was upset by New Zealand’s ban on exporting live sheep by sea. The deal involved New Zealand sending significant amounts of cash and air-freighted sheep, but it largely ended in embarrassment – and did not deliver the FTA that New Zealand sought.

An acrimonious intra-Gulf split in the years that followed – which saw Qatar isolated by several GCC members – subsequently ruled out any further progress on the deal from the Gulf side. But those divisions were largely resolved last year.

Fast forward to New Zealand’s Labour government in 2022, and O’Connor’s trip was surprisingly successful. It resulted in FTA negotiations between New Zealand and the GCC being restarted.

But despite this success, New Zealand made surprisingly little fanfare of O’Connor’s successful foray into the Gulf. While the trip was announced as part of wider international travel plans, no press release on the outcome was issued after the minister’s trip. O’Connor’s report to Cabinet on the travel is also yet to be publicly released.

To be fair, O’Connor did tweet about his visit to Riyadh – calling it ‘productive’ – and he also announced the ‘reengagement with the Gulf Cooperation Council on an FTA’ in another tweet in April.

The minister also touched on the talks with the GCC in a speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (NZIIA) in May. In that address, O’Connor said New Zealand would focus on ‘goods market access’ in the negotiations, but would also be seeking ‘to update and modernise the agreement’ in other areas such as labour and environmental standards.

Arab media provide some further detail about O’Connor’s movements on his March trip.

A report by the Bahrain News Agency from March 8 said a meeting between O’Connor and GCC Secretary General Dr. Nayef Falah Al Hajraf ‘discussed the means to enhance economic and investment relations between the GCC countries and New Zealand’. A few days later, the same outlet reported that New Zealand had signed a ‘strategic food security partnership’ with the UAE.

The Arabic-language Al-Ain news website even produced an elaborate infographic about the food security deal and O’Connor’s visit.

Of course, the Government may have decided that a low-key approach to the talks with the GCC best serves New Zealand’s interests, especially given the difficulties faced in the past.

But another reason for keeping a low profile domestically almost certainly relates to the sensitivities over the involvement of Saudi Arabia, the most populous country in the GCC by far and its driving force.

In addition to New Zealand’s own concerns over the Khashoggi killing in 2018, a political firestorm erupted in early 2021 when it was revealed that Air New Zealand – of which the NZ Government owns 51 per cent – had been repairing engines for the Saudi military, despite Riyadh playing a leading role in the war in Yemen.

At the time, Jacinda Ardern called the arrangement ‘completely wrong’ and said it did not ‘pass New Zealand’s sniff test’. Air New Zealand summarily terminated the arrangement and returned the remaining parts with the repairs incomplete.

Eighteen months later, the GCC seems willing to turn the page and reconsider a trade deal with New Zealand.

But just as MBS expected Joe Biden to meet him in exchange for Saudi Arabia pumping more oil, he will probably expect Jacinda Ardern to personally visit the Middle East to seal any free trade deal with the GCC.

Of course, New Zealand has considerable experience in balancing human rights and trade issues from its careful handling of the China relationship.

And while Joe Biden has received heavy criticism for his trip, the visit also gave the US president an opportunity to raise the killing of Jamal Khashoggi directly with MBS – and to call the murder ‘outrageous’ while Biden was on Saudi soil.

Will Jacinda Ardern now follow Joe Biden’s lead – and give MBS a fist-bump of her own?

Other items of interest and importance today

NEW BOOK ON THE NATIONAL PARTY
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Blue Blood: how the National Party went to war with itself
Andrea Vance (Stuff): The final hours of the last National Government – and the coronation of Jacinda Ardern as NZ’s youngest PM
Steve Braunias (Newsroom): National’s autopsy report
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): ‘We didn’t know how nasty it got’: Andrea Vance on National’s long nightmare
Kelly Dennett (Stuff): Blue Blood author Andrea Vance on getting the inside story of National’s war with itself

COST OF LIVING AND INFLATION
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Grant Robertson extends fuel tax cut to January, with fuel relief now costing $1b
Rachel Sadler and Leighton Heikell (Newshub): Cost of living: Government placing ‘bandaid upon bandaid’ rather than having plan to address inflation – National’s Nicola Willis
Rosie Gordon (RNZ): Fuel tax cut: Road relief measures ‘not targeted to help those who need it most’
Carmen Hall (Stuff): Struggling families will bear brunt if stagflation hits

HEALTH
Claire Trevett (Herald): Health crisis or not? Andrew Little has the worst job in politics now (paywalled)
Lana Hart (Stuff): Arguing about whether it’s a ‘crisis’ isn’t helping the health situation
Rob Campbell (Newsroom): Band-aids for health staffing crisis are only a short-term patch, says new health boss
Brendon McMahon (Local Democracy reporting): Health minister’s leadership ‘sadly lacking’ – former Coast DHB deputy
RNZ: ‘We see the data, we see the challenges’ – Little defends health system
Jem Traylen (BusinessDesk): It’s time govt got out of the corner on migrant nurses (paywalled)
Hannah Martin (Stuff): Just two weeks’ supply of ‘important’ anti-anxiety medication left in NZ

COVID
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Covid-19 is surging big time but the Government is right to not panic
Tony Blakely and Michael Baker (The Conversation): How are Australia and NZ managing the rising Covid winter wave – and is either getting it right?
Jaime Lyth (Herald): Kelvin Davis and top judges cop flak from health expert after going maskless at indoor event (paywalled)
Tess McClure (Guardian): New Zealand seeks to repeat world-beating Covid response in face of surging cases
Tamara Poi-Ngawhika (Herald): Retail expert says mask use has ‘dropped off a cliff’
Herald: Editorial: Eyes wide shut and bare-faced exposure to Omicron (paywalled)
Herald: Editorial: The persistent presence of Covid-19 (paywalled)
Jamie Morton (Herald): NZ’s Covid future: Michael Baker answers our five biggest questions

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Jayden Holmes (Today FM): Prime Minister could travel to Saudi Arabia if trade deal is revisited
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Jacinda Ardern finally gets lucky break on overseas trips (paywalled)
Christine Rovoi (Stuff): Māori vulnerable to US-China fallout in the Pacific, warns Shane Jones
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): NZ cannot afford to be comfortable in the Pacific
Christine Rovoi (Stuff): Leaders push for unity in the midst of a Pacific rift
1News: Nanaia Mahuta sounds alarm on Pacific debt
Mike Smith (The Standard): Militarising the Pacific

ECONOMY, EMPLOYMENT AND MIGRATION
Damien Grant (Stuff): We’re following in Sri Lanka’s footsteps
Brooke van Velden (Herald): We need to stop the Kiwi brain drain
Mike Munro (Herald): The workers are heading our way (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT AND ELECTIONS
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Could we take the politics out of politics, and hand it back to the people?
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): 2023 Election: Who will NZ fear most? A National/ACT Government or a Labour/Green/Māori Party Government?
Phil Smith (RNZ): Parliament’s cooperative team captains
Steve Braunias (Herald): The secret diary of David Seymour (paywalled)

NATIONAL PARTY
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Christopher Luxon’s support fell amid US abortion debate, poll suggests
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): Christopher Luxon’s wrong call – putting NZ business down (paywalled)
Richard Harman: Willis begins to redefine National (paywalled)
Andrew Gunn (Stuff): Explaining is losing with Christopher Luxon
Hayden Munro (Herald): Christopher Luxon’s foot in mouth business faux pas (paywalled)

GOVERNMENT
Rachel Smalley (Today FM): Now is the time for true leadership Prime Minister
Max Rashbrooke (Stuff): Here’s how Labour could outflank Luxon on tax
Steve Braunias (Herald): The rise of anti-Jacinda Ardern ferals, fake news and its advocates (paywalled)
1News: Mahuta hits back at ‘toxic trolling’ after nepotism accusations

LEO MOLLOY CAMPAIGN FOR AUCKLAND MAYORALTY
Jack Tame (Herald): Leo Molloy v Guy Williams backlash – TV interview was comedy but showed Auckland mayoral candidate as he is
Neil Reid (Herald): Rival Wayne Brown calls on Leo Molloy to stand aside from Auckland mayoral race over TV appearance
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Jack Tame vs Leo Molloy vs Guy Williams vs Woke Twitter
Madeleine Chapman (Spinoff): What was Guy Williams trying to do?

LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND ELECTIONS
Simon Wilson (Herald): Auckland mayoralty: Is it the Efeso Collins and Leo Molloy show – or still too early to say (paywalled)
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Latest Auckland mayoralty poll: Winners, losers & predictions
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk): Councils are notoriously stupid and unaccountable
Brent Edwards (NBR): Bigger not necessarily better for local government (paywalled)
Tamati Tiananga (Māori TV): Mahuta says vote to change entrenched racism
Anthony Doesburg (Newsroom): Sage advice for Dunedin’s Green mayor
Erin Gourley (Stuff): Council candidates warned Wellington may need to sell commercial assets
Stephen Ward (Stuff): How to get the ‘local voice’? Community committee trial recommended for Hamilton
Bill Hickman (Stuff): Wellington mayor Andy Foster shares hope for ‘transformation’ of the capital
Stephen Ward (Stuff): Hamilton faces ‘staggering’ array of issues in an ‘extraordinary’ time, CEO warns
Mike Mather (Stuff): Signs of a testy campaign? Hamilton City Council candidates ‘jumping the gun’ on election hoardings
Megan Woods (Herald): Christchurch is already a super city – does it need to become a ‘Super-City’? (paywalled)

CHRISTCHURCH STADIUM
RNZ: Questions raised on who will fund new Te Kaha stadium in Christchurch
Anna Leask (Herald): Christchurch stadium decision – council votes 13-3 in favour of new arena
Steven Walton and Amber Allott (Stuff): ‘Absolutely stoked’: Christchurch to spend $683 million on stadium, following 13-3 vote
Hamish Clark (Herald): Party time in Christchurch – Thank goodness the Stadium will be built (paywalled)
David Williams (Newsroom): Is the new stadium Christchurch’s monorail?
David Williams (Newsroom): In defence of Christchurch’s dissenting three
John Minto (Daily Blog): “Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor”

EDUCATION
Janet Wilson (Stuff): Polytech merger’s ills a harbinger for Government’s other reforms
David Farrar: The mega polytech mega meltdown
Dubby Henry (Herald): Poverty, family background don’t explain Māori suspension, expulsion rates – study (paywalled)

SUPERMARKET REGULATION
Sarah Robson (RNZ): Shopping for change: Busting the supermarket duopoly
Gerhard Uys (Stuff): Supermarket code ‘will not be a silver bullet for vegetable growers’
Martyn Bradbury (Waatea News): Supermarket Duopoly whitewash a missed opportunity for Co-governance
John Anthony (Stuff): Supermarket price promotions a direct response to falling public trust, experts say

MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION
Nicky Hager (Newsroom): Investigative journalism in times of trouble
Duncan Greive (Spinoff): How social media abandoned news – and newsletters became existentially important to The Spinoff
Tim Murphy (Newsroom): Today FM hopes for audiences tomorrow
Herald: Newstalk ZB claims top radio ratings spot for 14th year running
Chris Schulz (Spinoff): Too many jobs, not enough reporters: ‘It is a very good time to be a journalist’
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): The future for Morning Report, without Susie Ferguson
David Skipwith (Stuff): Susie Ferguson will leave Morning Report for new role as senior RNZ presenter and journalist
Colin Peacock (RNZ): The worst of times?
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): NZ on Air just gave Spinoff $160 000 to cover the local elections

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT
Hamish Cardwell (RNZ): Climate change poll: Tolerance dropping for those who build in harm’s way
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): Sticks, not carrots, to cut farm emissions – Climate Commission
Alex Zhou (Stuff): Why housing is the elephant-sized hole in our climate plan
Katarina Williams (Stuff): Public overwhelmingly expects more extreme flooding events, more often, poll shows

TRANSPORT
Justin Wong (Stuff): Porirua, Kāpiti Coast councils support making public transport free
Bernard Orsman (Herald): Auditor-General says it will cost $5.5 billion to enable Auckland’s City Rail Link to open (paywalled)
Andrew Barnes (Herald): A message to Auckland Transport: On your bike — or bus or feet (paywalled)

JUSTICE, LAW AND ORDER
Sophie Cornish (Stuff): Police to spend $2 million over two years to investigate bias and racism
Deena Coster (Stuff): Police, iwi Māori justice initiative fueled by a drive to ‘decriminalise’
Deena Coster (Stuff): Let’s tip the justice scales in favour of people

THREE WATERS
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Three waters IT system project could top $500m, warns National
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Labour asks supporters to back Three Waters in Parliament
Sheryl Mai (Herald): Decision does not compromise our stand on Three Waters reform
Dave Armstrong (Stuff): Fluoride foul-up makes 3 Waters more attractive
Toni McDonald (ODT): Council clear Three Waters process flawed
Georgina Campbell (Herald): Regulator didn’t raise concerns over Wellington fluoride failure

ABORTION
Graham Adams (The Platform): The great abortion beat-up
Caroline Williams (Stuff): Hundreds rally for abortion rights in Auckland after Roe v Wade overturned
Arena Williams; Stuart Smith (Stuff): How easily could the right for an abortion be removed in New Zealand?
Deborah Coddington (Stuff): Abortion is not compulsory, opponents turn a blind eye to facts
Karl du Fresne: Abortion in New Zealand: the statistics

RODEOS
Lynn Charlton (Spinoff): What’s wrong with rodeos?
Virginia Fallon (Stuff): Rodeo is blatant animal abuse and New Zealand must ban it
Newstalk: To rodeo or not to rodeo: Are the rodeo animals safe?
Kate Nicol-Williams (1News): Rodeo legal challenge heard in High Court
Hazel Osborne (Herald): Legality of rodeo challenged in the High Court at Wellington

By Johnny Blades of RNZ Pacific

Political fallout from a controversial loan taken on by Papua New Guinea’s government five years ago could hinder rather than help attempts to remove Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.

O’Neill and other leading officials have been referred by the Ombudsman Commission to a Leadership Tribunal over a US$1.2 billion loan his government took on from Swiss-based investment bank UBS in 2014.

The ombudman’s report, which was completed last December but only handed to the Parliament Speaker, Job Pomat, late last month, is yet to be tabled in the house.

READ MORE: UBS loan to PNG may have breached 15 laws

LISTEN: The controversial loan saga on RNZ Dateline Pacific

However, the report has been published at a time when the parliamentary opposition, bolstered by recent defections from the government, is planning for a vote of no confidence against the prime minister later this month.

The UBS loan was nominally taken for the state to buy a 10 percent stake in oil and gas producer Oil Search, a major player in PNG’s burgeoning petroleum sector.

In last week’s heated Parliament debate the prime minister said it was imperative for the state to regain Oil Search shares.

These were earlier lost after being mortgaged by PNG’s Sir Michael Somare government in 2009 as it sought finance from the United Arab Emirates-based International Petroleum Investment Company to gain equity in the country’s first LNG gas project.

‘Strategic investment’
“The Treasury officials said the Oil Search investment is a strategic investment to government,” O’Neill explained in Parliament last week.

“So the company decided to offer the government of Papua New Guinea at a special issue so we can secure the 10 percent. Why? Because Oil Search, even today, is the biggest company in PNG, is the biggest taxpayer in PNG.

However, the report reveals that the Ombudsman found the prime minister failed to present the government’s proposal on the borrowing of a loan, from UBS’ Australia branch, in Parliament for debate and approval as required by the constitution.

O’Neill was found to have misled the cabinet into approving the loan, among other irregularities. But he was not alone.

The commission’s findings also implicate the former Finance Minister, James Marape, who was found to have signed off the loan’s approval as minister despite knowledge of irregularities and “that his actions were improper”.

According to the opposition’s justice spokesman, Kerenga Kua, the deal and O’Neill’s lead role in pushing it through were very suspicious. He said the greatest transgression in the deal was its commercial injustice.

“In the end we only held that share for about twelve months before it was foreclosed by UBS and sold. So you see we don’t have those shares in our hands any more, because the state fell into default on that loan arrangement.”

Stock price fell
PNG was forced to sell its Oil Search shares when the stock price fell sharply, incurring a big loss. On the other hand, UBS profited around US$83 million in fees, interest and trading revenue from the deal.

Kua said the financial professionals involved in arranging the huge loan must have known the transaction was bound to fail for PNG.

“They would have seen this as a scam, a real professional scam. Because everybody knew of the state’s financial vulnerability, and its lack of cash flow to pay for that loan,” Kua said.

“Yet they created a monster, so that within a matter of months it would fall into default, and then you foreclose on the asset, cover yourself. But what are the people of PNG left with? Nothing, except a debt of 3 billion kina [NZ$1.4 billion].”

But an issue over which the opposition has been attacking O’Neill for years is now proving problematic for the MP seeking to replace the prime minister.

Marape, who resigned last month as minister and left the ruling party, has emerged as the opposition’s choice for alternative prime minister in a motion of confidence against O’Neill which it lodged last week.

But along with other officials, including Government Chief Secretary Isaac Lupari, Treasury Secretary Dairi Vele, and the Central Bank Governor Loi Bakani, Marape has also been referred by the Ombudsman Commission for investigation under the leadership code over the UBS loan. This undermines his own recent attacks on the prime minister.

Questions unsuccessful
Standing on opposite sides of the Parliament chamber for the first time last week, Marape questioned the prime minister about the loan process. The questions were unsuccessful because the prime minister was able to remind Marape that he was also involved in those decisions himself.

While it remains to be seen whether O’Neill, Marape and others will face the Leadership Tribunal, the opposition continues to portray the prime minister as the lead transgressor in the UBS saga and other controversies.

The former Health Minister, Sir Puka Temu, who also left the government last month, has portrayed the prime minister as exerting too much control on state departments, overriding the authority of ministers.

“I resigned because I saw things were not working well. There were a lot of corrupt practices and there were governance processes from agencies and bodies of the state that the leaders did not support,” Sir Puka said.

O’Neill has denied any wrongdoing, characterising the investigation as politically motivated, and part of a “dirty game” by the opposition as it tries to lure support to change the government.

He has indicated that the issue would be the subject of a judicial review.

Although he was a member of the last Somare government in its later stages, O’Neill has placed blame with that regime for placing PNG in a weak position when it sought finance in Abu Dhabi for the LNG Project.

Country ‘mortgaged’
“When they borrowed that money, when the mortgaged not only Oil Search, but they borrowed every state-owned entity of this country,” O’Neill explained.

“So if we wanted to sell one of the planes in Air Niugini, we had to ask the permission of the Arabs. If we wanted to sell one of the buildings in any of the SOEs, we had to ask the Arabs. So literally, we were mortgaged to the Arabs.”

But Kua said the O’Neill government’s purchase of Oil Search shares under the controversial UBS loan was a far more shoddy deal than the IPIC transaction.

“The IPIC transaction led to PNG owning 19.26 percent in the PNG LNG Project. That equity is still there and annually we are receiving over a billion kina in revenue from that project,” he explained.

The UBS loan was opposed from an early stage by the then Treasurer Don Polye, who ultimately refused to sign off on the deal before resigning in protest.

Polye insisted that the loan required parliamentary approval, warning that taking the loan on would break the country’s official debt ceiling.

The former Kandep MP was also not involved in the negotiations with Oil Search on the purchase of the shares.

‘Cup of coffee’
According to the Ombudsman report, the agreement to buy the shares was reached “over a cup of coffee” in a swanky Port Moresby hotel when O’Neill and Vele met with Oil Search’s managing director Peter Botten and its board chair, Gerea Aopi.

The government’s purchase of the Oil Search shares allowed the company to buy a stake in the Elk Antelope gas field in PNG’s Gulf province. This resource is being developed by French company Total SA to be the second major LNG project in PNG.

The Papua LNG Project agreement was signed by Total and the government last month.

However, the agreement immediately preceded the exodus from O’Neill’s ruling party, and was cited as a causal factor in the move by several of the MPs who resigned, including  Marape.

Warning that interests of provinces and landowners were not being protected, the MPs lamented that promised equity and royalty benefits from PNG’s first big LNG gas project, based in Marape’s province, had still not transpired, 10 years after that project agreement.

Meanwhile, the Chief Ombudsman, Richard Pagen, says the commission submitted its final UBS report to the Parliament Speaker, Job Pomat, on April 30.

Asserting that the commission has jurisdiction over the prime minister’s office, Pagen said the Speaker must table the report within 8 sitting days of receiving it.

Public interest
However, he added that the commission decided to publish the report as it considered it a matter of public interest

Only one day of Parliament sitting has lapsed since the handover of the report. That was last Tuesday, May 7, the same day the opposition lodged its motion of no confidence, when Pomat adjourned parliament until May 28.

PNG’s Attorney-General has filed a Supreme Court application to which could yet delay the confidence vote against the prime minister proceeding.

Opposition MPs say they’re confident that the vote will go ahead. The group is not likely to change Marape’s nomination as alternative prime minister, but his involvement in the UBS loan may yet count against him.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz