VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

French President Emmanuel Macron said in comments published on Sunday that Europe had no interest in an acceleration of the crisis over Taiwan and should pursue a strategy independent of both Washington and Beijing.

Macron has just returned from a three-day state visit to China, where he received a warm welcome from President Xi Jinping. China began drills around Taiwan on Saturday in anger at President Tsai Ing-wen's meeting with the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday.

China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan's government strongly objects to China's claims.

Macron said Europe should not accelerate the conflict but take the time to build its position as a third pole between China and the United States in comments to French newspaper Les Echos and Politico made during his visit to China.

"The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and adapt to the American rhythm or a Chinese overreaction," Politico quoted him as saying.

Europe must better fund its defence industry, develop nuclear and renewable energy and reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar to limit its reliance on the United States, both media outlets quoted him as saying.

The joint interview was given on a flight on Friday between Beijing and the city of Guangzhou.

On Friday, an adviser to Macron told reporters in Guangzhou that Xi and Macron had a "dense and frank" discussion on the issue of Taiwan during their meetings.

"The president's feeling is that we should be careful there's no accident or an escalation of tensions (that could lead) to the Chinese going on the offensive," the Elysée adviser said. 

Macron travelled to China with a 50-strong business delegation including Airbus and nuclear energy producer EDF, which signed deals during the visit. (Reuters)

China firmly opposes a visit by India's home minister to Arunachal Pradesh and views his activities in the area as violating Beijing's territorial sovereignty, a foreign ministry spokesperson told a news briefing on Monday.

China has renamed some places in what India regards as its eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as part of its territory.

"Zangnan is China's territory," spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in response to a question on the visit by Indian Home Minister Amit Shah. 

"The Indian official's visit to Zangnan violates China's territorial sovereignty, and is not conducive to the peace and tranquility of the border situation."

China and India have had several skirmishes over the disputed border and clashes in mountainous regions in recent years have seriously strained ties. (Reuters)

The U.S. national security community is grappling with fallout from the release of dozens of secret documents, including the impact on sensitive information-sharing within the government and ties with other countries, two U.S. officials said.

Reuters has reviewed more than 50 of these documents, labeled "Secret" and "Top Secret", that first appeared on social media websites in early March and purportedly reveal details of Ukrainian military vulnerabilities and information about allies including Israel, South Korea and Turkey. The material did not draw much notice until a New York Times article on Friday.

Reuters has not independently verified the documents' authenticity. U.S. officials have said some giving battlefield casualty estimates from Ukraine appeared to have been altered to understate Russian losses.

The leak was sufficiently alarming within the Pentagon that it referred the matter to the Department of Justice, which has opened a criminal investigation into the disclosure of the documents.

Two U.S. defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the Pentagon was examining procedures governing how widely some of the most sensitive U.S. secrets are shared.

Some of the documents, one of the officials said, would most likely have been available to thousands of people with U.S. and allied government security clearances despite being highly sensitive, as the information directly affected those countries.

The Pentagon on Sunday said in a statement that an interagency effort was assessing the impact the photographed documents could have on U.S. national security as well as that of close American allies, a standard procedure known as "damage assessment" for leaks of classified information.

The first official said the number of people who had access to the documents underscores that sensitive information was perhaps being shared too widely with personnel who might not require the level of detail some of the documents contained.

"The Pentagon has needed to curtail the unbridled access to some of the most sensitive intel when they've (got) no justifiable reason to have it," the first official said.

The two officials said further that although the leaks were highly concerning, many of them provided only snapshots of time in February and March - when they were dated - but did not appear to disclose anything about future operations.

Although the release of documents appears to be the most serious public leak of classified information in years, officials say it so far does not reach the scale and scope of the 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables that appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2013.

SEARCHING FOR A MOTIVE

The first defense official said Pentagon investigators were trying to determine who would have an incentive to leak this kind of information.

Since the leak first came to light in March, the investigators have been pursuing theories ranging from someone simply sharing the documents to show off the work they were doing to a mole inside the U.S. intelligence community or military, the first official added.

Daniel Hoffman, a former senior CIA undercover officer, said that given past activities of Moscow's intelligence agencies, it was "highly likely" that Russian operatives posted documents related to Ukraine as part of a Russian disinformation operation.

He said such operations - meant to sow confusion, if not discord, among Russia's adversaries - were a "classic" practice of Russian spy services to leak authentic documents in which they have inserted false information.

The aim, he said, appeared to be to drive a wedge between Ukraine and the United States, Kyiv's largest provider of military support.

Some national security experts and U.S. officials say they currently suspect that the leaker could be American, given the breadth of topics covered by the documents, but they do not rule out pro-Russian actors. More theories could develop as the investigation progresses, they said.

The Kremlin and the Russian embassy did not respond to a request for comment about whether it was involved in the leak.

Ukraine said its president and top security officials met on Friday to discuss ways to prevent leaks.

The White House has declined to discuss publicly who might be responsible for the breach, and has referred all questions about the leak to the Pentagon. The Pentagon said that over the weekend, U.S. officials spoke with allies and had notified the relevant congressional committee about the leak.

"I'm deeply troubled by the possible extent and nature of the information exposed and expect to be fully briefed in the days to come," said Representative Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who sits on the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence and foreign relations committees.

IMPACT ON ALLIES

The leaks have already drawn responses from some foreign governments.

In a statement on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office labeled as "mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever" a document asserting that the Mossad, one of the country's intelligence agencies, encouraged recent protests against Netanyahu's plan to tighten controls on the judiciary.

A South Korean presidential official said on Sunday the country was aware of reports about the leaked documents and planned to discuss "issues raised" with Washington.

One of the documents gave details of internal discussions among senior South Korean officials about U.S. pressure on Seoul to supply weapons to Ukraine, and its policy of not doing so.

One of the documents marked "Top Secret" purportedly detailed how Russian private military contractors met with Turkish "contacts" to buy weapons from Ankara.

The Turkish embassy in Washington declined to comment.

Some of the most sensitive information is purportedly related to Ukraine's military capabilities and shortcomings.

It is not uncommon for the United States and other countries to spy on their allies. But public disclosures of such spying are uncomfortable for those allies, who need to explain to their populations how they will respond.

"It is going to take some time to rebuild trust with our allies," the second U.S. defense official interviewed by Reuters said.

Michael Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, played down the lasting impact of the leak.

"It is of course embarrassing when these activities become publicly disclosed," Mulroy said. "It may cause short-term problems for the relationships but I believe long-term the shared interests between the countries will still be strong." (Reuters)

Jakarta (voinews) Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan intends to partner with an expert team from Shenzhen, China, to partake in development of Indonesia's  new capital city (IKN) Nusantara in East Kalimantan.

"Indonesia expects support from China, especially an expert team from Shenzhen, to design and manage the construction of supporting cluster in IKN," Pandjaitan stated at a press conference regarding updates on Indonesia-China cooperation in Jakarta on Monday.

Pandjaitan revealed that his side had also met with the special envoy of the President of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ), who would later join the Shenzen team and the IKN team.

"The special envoy of President MBZ showed enthusiasm in the collaboration with an expert team from Shenzhen. We will develop the nine clusters in IKN Nusantara," he remarked.

Pandjaitan stated that the IKN team had also garnered a high level of interest from Chinese companies. He urged the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) to recommend which companies will be able to contribute to IKN's development.

“The IKN team has received a lot of interest from Chinese companies. We hope that the NDRC can recommend qualified companies to work at IKN," he stated.

Earlier, at a meeting with chairman of NDRC, Zheng Shanjie, in Beijing, China, last week, Pandjaitan echoed President Joko Widodo's message to invite China to invest in IKN Nusantara.

"It is an honor for me to have a meeting with Chairman Shanjie because it is the first time he has met with representatives of Asian countries after he was sworn in," Pandjaitan explained.

During the meeting, they discussed several cooperation projects between Indonesia and China, including the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed train, the Global Maritime Fulcrum-Belt Road Initiative (GMF-BRI), and IKN projects.

The minister also invited him to directly check the cooperation projects between the two countries.

"We discussed several things, starting from the progress (in the construction) of the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Train, the North Kalimantan Green Industrial Area, the GMF-BRI Project, the Herbal Center, South-South Cooperation, Vocational Training, and especially IKN Nusantara whose progress (in development) is on track and expects support from the Chinese government," he noted.  (antaranews)