African Union expresses ‘deep concern’ over crisis in Tigray

WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that South Africa’s ambassador to the United States “is no longer welcome” in the country.
Rubio, in a post on X, accused Ebrahim Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” who hates President Donald Trump and declared him “persona non grata.” He didn’t give further reasoning.
The State Department did not have additional details, and it was unclear whether the ambassador was even in the US at the time the decision was made. Rubio posted as he was flying back to Washington from a Group of 7 foreign ministers in Quebec.
It is highly unusual for the US to expel a foreign ambassador, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.
At the height of US-Russia diplomatic expulsions during the Cold War and then again over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, allegations of interference in the 2016 election and the Skripal poisoning case in Britain, neither Washington nor Moscow saw fit to expel the respective ambassadors.
It comes after Trump signed an executive order that cut aid and assistance to the Black-led South African government. In the order, Trump said South Africa’s Afrikaners, who are descendants of mainly Dutch colonial settlers, were being targeted by a new law that allows the government to expropriate private land.
The South African government has denied its new law is tied to race and says Trump’s claims over the country and the law have been full of misinformation and distortions.
Phone calls to the South African Embassy seeking comment, made at the end of the work day, were not answered.
Rasool previously served as his country’s ambassador to the US from 2010 to 2015 before returning this year.
As a child, he and his family were evicted from a Cape Town neighborhood designated for whites. Rasool became an active anti-apartheid campaigner, serving time in prison and proudly identifying as a comrade of the country’s first post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela. He later became a politician in Mandela’s African National Congress political party.
Trump said land was being expropriated from Afrikaners — which the order referred to as “racially disfavored landowners” — when no land has been taken under the law.
Trump also announced a plan to offer Afrikaners refugee status in the US They are only one part of South Africa’s white minority.
The Expropriation Act was signed into law by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this year and allows the government to take land in specific instances where it is not being used, or where it would be in the public interest if it is redistributed.
It aims to address some of the wrongs of South Africa’s racist apartheid era, when Black people had land taken away from them and were forced to live in areas designated for non-whites.
Elon Musk, a close Trump ally and head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, has highlighted that law in social media posts and cast it as a threat to South Africa’s white minority. Musk grew up in South Africa.

KYIV: President Vladimir Putin on Friday called on beleaguered Ukrainian troops in the Russian region of Kursk to “surrender” as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russian leader of seeking to sabotage a ceasefire initiative.
US President Donald Trump urged Putin to spare the lives of the Ukrainian troops as he said his envoy had held “productive” talks with Russia’s leader on a proposed 30-day ceasefire.
Russia has mounted a rapid counteroffensive in the western border region of Kursk over the past week, recapturing much of the territory Ukraine seized in a shock incursion last August.
Defeat in Kursk would be a major blow to Ukraine’s plans to use its hold on the region as a bargaining chip in peace talks for the three-year-old war.
“We are sympathetic to President Trump’s call,” Putin said in remarks broadcast on Russian television.
“If they lay down their arms and surrender, they will be guaranteed life and dignified treatment,” Putin said.
Trump said “thousands” of Ukrainian troops were “completely surrounded by the Russian military, and in a very bad and vulnerable position.”
“I have strongly requested to President Putin that their lives be spared. This would be a horrible massacre, one not seen since World War II,” Trump said.
Ukraine’s military leadership denied the claims. “There is no threat of our units being encircled,” Ukraine’s General Staff posted on social media.
Zelensky gave a more sober assessment in comments to reporters in Kyiv. “The situation in the Kursk region is obviously very difficult,” he said, while insisting the campaign still had value.
Russia, he said, had been forced to pull troops from other areas on the front line, easing pressure on Ukrainian troops fighting to keep control of the eastern logistics hub of Pokrovsk.
Trump’s latest comments came as he gave an update on a meeting Thursday between his envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin on a US-Ukrainian proposal for a 30-day pause in hostilities.
“We had very good and productive discussions with President Vladimir Putin of Russia yesterday, and there is a very good chance that this horrible, bloody war can finally come to an end,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
Putin said Thursday that he had “serious questions” about the proposal and that events in Kursk would influence the next moves toward a ceasefire.
Zelensky accused the Russian leader of seeking to undermine the ceasefire initiative.
“He is now doing everything he can to sabotage diplomacy by setting extremely difficult and unacceptable conditions right from the start even before a ceasefire,” Zelensky posted on X.
The Kremlin said Friday that it was “cautiously optimistic” a deal could be reached, but that Trump and Putin had to speak directly before talks could progress.
US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said in a Fox News interview that the United States had “some cautious optimism” after Witkoff’s visit.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a meeting of the Group of Seven western powers in Canada that both sides would have to make “concessions.”
G7 foreign ministers warned Russia of new sanctions unless it accepted a ceasefire “on equal terms,” saying sanctions could include “caps on oil prices, as well as additional support for Ukraine, and other means.”
France and Germany accused Russia of seeking to block a ceasefire, and support for Ukraine was to be discussed again in a video conference of some European leaders with Zelensky on Saturday.
Diplomatic sources said EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas would propose that the 27-country bloc supply up to 40 billion euros ($43.5 billion) in new military aid to Ukraine.
Ukraine hoped its hold on Kursk would be a bargaining chips in talks with Russia and way eyeing a potential land swap with Moscow, which has occupied around a fifth of Ukraine since it took Crimea in 2014 and launched its military offensive in February 2022.