The Washington Post - 20.02.2020

thursday, february 20 , 2020. the washington post eZ re A

BY SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN

CAIRO — The United Nations
urged Libya’s warring sides on
Wednesday to return to the nego-
tiating table, hours after the
U.N.-installed government sus-
pended cease-fire talks in the
wake of an attack on Tripoli’s
port, illuminating the festering
obstacles to ending the war.
On Saturday, the forces of east-
ern commander Khalifa Hifter
shelled the port, killing three
people and nearly hitting a ship
carrying liquefied gas that, if
struck, probably would have led
to many more deaths, U.N. offi-
cials said.
Turkish President Recep Ta yy-
ip Erdogan, a key player in fuel-
ing Libya’s conflict, on Wednes-
day applauded the government’s
decision to withdraw from the
talks. Erdogan, who backs the
Tripoli government militarily,
also denounced a new European

Union effort to enforce a U.N.

arms embargo around Libya, ac-

cusing European countries of in-

terfering in the region.

“The E.U. is trying to take

charge of the situation and inter-

fere,” he said in a speech to

lawmakers from his ruling party.

“You have no such authority.”

Erdogan added that the Tr ipoli

government pulling out of talks

was “the right decision.”

The attack came as the United

Nations was holding cease-fire

talks in Geneva and as Richard

Norland, the U.S. ambassador to

Libya, was visiting Hifter in his

eastern stronghold of Benghazi.

It w as the first visit to the city by a

top American envoy since U.S.

Ambassador J. Christopher Ste-

vens and three other Americans

were killed in a 2012 attack

blamed on an Islamist militia.

Late Tuesday, t he Tripoli-based

Government of National Accord

(GNA) said in a statement that it

would not participate in the talks

“until firm responses are taken

against the attacker, and we will

respond firmly to the attack in

appropriate timing.”

“Negotiations don’t mean any-

thing without permanent cease-

fire guarantees returning the dis-

placed people and the security of

the capital and the other cities,”

the statement said.

On Wednesday, the United Na-

tions’ mission to Libya con-

demned Hifter’s self-described

Libyan National Army for bomb-

ing the seaport. It said it calls for

“an end to the escalation and

provocative actions, especially

expansion of the conflict area,

and urges all parties to resort to

dialogue a s the only means to end

the crisis.”

But Prime Minister Fayez Ser-

raj, the head of the GNA, said

Wednesday that any discussions

about resuming peace negotia-

tions had been overtaken by

events on the ground. He noted

that shelling on the capital by

Hifter’s forces had resumed.

“There must be first a strong

signal from all international

players who are trying to talk to

us,” Serraj told reporters in Tripo-

li, at the seaport that was

bombed.

The rising tensions came less

than two days after European

leaders agreed to launch the con-

tinent’s m ost aggressive effort yet

to prevent arms from reaching

Libya’s warring sides in violation

of a U.N. weapons embargo. On

Monday, the European Union

said it would begin a fresh naval

and air mission to patrol the

eastern Mediterranean Sea,

through which much of the arms

have been flowing.

But Tuesday’s attack and the

suspension of talks underscored

the extent to which the warring

sides, especially Hifter, feel em-

boldened by their continued sup-

port from regional and Western

powers with high stakes in Libya.

The Tripoli government is

backed by Turkey and Qatar, as

well as some European nations.

Hifter, who controls much of

Libya’s east and south, is backed

by Egypt, Russia, the United Arab

Emirates and other regional na-

tions. Russia and Turkey have

sent thousands of fighters to Lib-

ya to support their respective

sides in the hopes of gaining

billions of dollars in contracts as

well as deepening their influence

in the Middle East and North

Africa.

The tensions were the latest

indication of the breakdown in

promises made by world leaders

— including those of all the na-

tions fueling Libya’s civil war —

at a summit in Berlin last month.

The leaders agreed to stop the

flow of arms and push toward a

cease-fire, but since then the

fighting has continued on the

ground. Weapons and mercenar-

ies have also continued arriving

in Libya, according to U.N. offi-

cials and analysts.

The United States and Europe

have mostly looked away a s Libya

was torn apart by civil war fol-

lowing the ouster and death of

Libyan dictator Moammar Gadd-

afi in the 2011 Arab Spring revolu-

tion and NATO intervention. Re-

gional powers filled in the securi-

ty and diplomatic vacuum, back-

ing rivals in a quest for influence,

lucrative oil and gas resources,

and to shape Libya ideologically.

[email protected]

Libya cease-fire talks halt as U.N.-backed government pulls out after attack

mahmud turkia/agence France-presse/getty images

Fayez Serraj, the head of Libya’s Government of National Accord,

visits Tripoli’s port on Wednesday after it was hit by shelling.

Greater international

commitment needed,

prime minister says

BY WILLIAM BOOTH

AND ELLEN NAKASHIMA

LONDON — A lawyer for Julian
Assange said in a British court
Wednesday that former Republi-
can congressman Dana Rohra-
bacher, an ally of President
Trump, made an offer to the
WikiLeaks founder on behalf of
Trump to pardon Assange in ex-
change for saying that Russia had
nothing to do with the 2016 hack
and leak of emails from the Dem-
ocratic National Committee.
Assange is in a British prison
while he awaits a decision on an
extradition request by the United
States. The U.S. government
wants him to stand trial on charg-
es that he violated the Espionage
Act by allegedly helping to obtain
and then disseminating secret
government documents in 2010
and 2011 relating to the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
Assange is fighting the extradi-
tion — arguing that he acted as a
publisher and journalist and that
the United States is pursuing him
for “political offenses.” He faces a
possible 175-year sentence if con-
victed.
In a hearing Wednesday, Ed-
ward Fitzgerald, one of Assange’s
lawyers, told a judge in Westmin-
ster Magistrates’ Court here that
Assange wanted to submit evi-
dence that Trump offered him a
deal in 2017 through Rohrabach-
er.
Fitzgerald made the assertion
in seeking the court’s permission
to admit a statement by Jennifer
Robinson, a lawyer for WikiLeaks
who says she was present when

Rohrabacher made the offer.

Robinson’s statement, read in

part in open court and reported

by the British Press Association,

lays out her version of what was

said by Rohrabacher in the Ecua-

doran Embassy in London on

Aug. 16, 2017. Also present with

Rohrabacher, then a congress-

man from Orange County, Calif.,

was Charles Johnson, a conserva-

tive political activist. Rohrabach-

er was defeated in 2018.

At the time of the meeting,

Assange was not under indict-

ment. The following year, he was

indicted under seal. The indict-

ment was unsealed in April.

District Judge Vanessa Baraits-

er ruled that Robinson’s state-

ment was admissible in court,

thereby possibly dragging Trump

into the proceedings.

Rohrabacher’s meeting with

Assange at the embassy was no

secret.

Following his trip to London,

Rohrabacher told the Orange

Country Register that Assange

“reaffirmed his aggressive denial

that the Russians had anything to

do with the hacking of the DNC

during the election.”

He added: “I think it will have

an earth-shattering political im-

pact.”

In a statement posted to his

website Wednesday, R ohrabacher

said, “A t no time did I talk to

President Trump about Julian As-

sange. Likewise, I was not direct-

ed by Trump or anyone else con-

nected with him to meet with

Julian Assange.”

He s aid he was on his “own fact

finding mission at personal ex-

pense” and that “at no time did I

offer Julian Assange anything

from the President because I had

not spoken with the President

about this issue at all.” But, he

added, he told Assange that if he

gave him evidence about who

provided him the DNC emails, he

would ask Trump to pardon him.

White House press secretary

Stephanie Grisham on Wednes-

day denied the allegation that

Trump was seeking a trade with

Assange. “The president barely

knows Dana Rohrabacher other

than he’s a n ex-congressman,” s he

said in a statement. “He’s never

spoken to him on this subject or

almost any subject. It is a com-

plete fabrication and a total lie.

This is probably another never

ending hoax and total lie from the

DNC.”

Trump has long bristled at the

U.S. intelligence community’s

“high confidence” c onclusion, re-

vealed publicly in January 2017,

that Moscow was behind the

hacking and releasing of Demo-

cratic emails in the 2016 presi-

dential contest, and that it was

part of an effort ordered by Rus-

sian President Vladimir Putin to

undermine Hillary Clinton’s c am-

paign and aid Trump’s. The presi-

dent has suggested that the hack-

er could have been “some guy in

his home in New Jersey” or the

work of the Chinese.

The first hearing on Assange’s

extradition to the United States is

scheduled to begin at Woolwich

Crown Court outside London on

Monday, with one week of legal

argument. The case will be ad-

journed and will continue with

three weeks of evidence on

May 18.

It is not clear when Assange’s

defense team will present to the

court their evidence that Rohra-

bacher sought to make a deal with

Assange for Trump.

Assange has been incarcerated

in Belmarsh Prison after he was

found guilty of breaching his bail

conditions when he fled to the

Ecuadoran Embassy in London.

In 2012, Assange took refuge at

the embassy to avoid extradition

to Sweden, where he was wanted

for questioning over sexual as-

sault allegations. Assange has al-

ways denied the allegations. Swe-

den has since ended its investiga-

tion.

Assange was holed up in the

embassy for nearly seven years

before his arrest in April.

Chelsea Manning, the former

Army private who was convicted

on charges she provided the Iraq

and Afghanistan documents to

WikiLeaks, is petitioning for re-

lease from jail. Manning, whose

prison sentence was commuted

in January 2017 by President Ba-

rack Obama, said she will never

comply with a subpoena to testify

in front of a grand jury about her

interactions with Assange.

[email protected]

[email protected]

nakashima reported from

Washington. karla adam in london

contributed to this report.

Congressman o≠ered Assange pardon on behalf of Trump in ’17, lawyer says

leon neal/agence France-presse/getty images

Demonstrators rally in support of Julian Assange this month at a London prison, where he’s being held

while the United States seeks his extradition on charges related to leaks of government war documents.

alex Wong/getty images

Former congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) met with

Assange in 2017 but said Wednesday that he did not speak with

President Trump about a pardon offer for the WikiLeaks founder.

Proposal was for help

absolving Russia in DNC

hack, attorney tells court

BY ANNA FIFIELD

BEIJING — China ordered the ex-
pulsion of three Wall Street Jour-
nal correspondents Wednesday in
retaliation for a column headline
that Beijing deemed racist, a dra-
matic escalation in the Commu-
nist Party’s efforts to silence criti-
cism abroad a s well as a t home.
While the Foreign Ministry
linked the expulsions to a Feb. 3
opinion piece by Walter Russell
Mead t hat referred t o China as the
“sick man of Asia,” t he move fol-
lowed a decision by the United
States a day earlier to designate
five major Chinese media outlets
as government entities.
American officials had warned
correspondents in China working
for U.S. media outlets that they
could be affected by the designa-
tion.
China’s Foreign Ministry “re-
serves the right” to take further
actions both against the Wall
Street Journal and in response to
the United States’ designation,
spokesman Geng Shuang told re-
porters in announcing the expul-
sions.
The announcement represent-
ed a clear signal from China,
whose government has tightened
censorship and repression in re-
cent years. In previous cases in
which Beijing has evicted foreign
journalists, it has usually allowed
their existing press credentials to
expire a nd then declined t o renew

them, a practice tantamount to

expulsion but without the provo-

cation.

The authorities also appeared

to be a ttempting to stoke national-

ist outrage in China at a time of

extreme duress for the ruling

Communist Party. The party has

faced widespread criticism over

its r esponse to the novel c oronavi-

rus outbreak, which began in the

city o f Wuhan in December but did

not e licit formal acknowledgment

or emergency-response measures

from the ruling party until the

third week o f January.

The Journal s aid the t hree c orre-

spondents a ffected b y Wednesday’s

action were deputy bureau chief

Josh C hin and reporter C hao Deng,

both U.S. citizens, and reporter

Philip Wen, an Australian national.

They have been ordered to leave

China within five days, it said.

A statement from William L ew-

is, the chief executive of Dow

Jones and publisher of the Jour-

nal, said t hat “we are deeply disap-

pointed” by China’s decision, and

he urged the Foreign Ministry to

reinstate the visas for the three

journalists.

“This opinion piece was pub-

lished independently from the

WSJ newsroom and none of the

journalists being expelled had a ny

involvement with it,” the state-

ment said. “In line with best prac-

tice, w e enforce a complete separa-

tion between our News and Opin-

ion d epartments.”

A similar policy of separate

news and opinion departments is

enshrined at most U.S. newspa-

pers, including The Washington

Post.

Lewis’s statement added: “Our

opinion pages regularly publish

articles with opinions that people

disagree — or agree with — and it

was not our intention to cause

offense with the headline on the

piece. However, this has clearly

caused upset and concern

amongst the Chinese people,

which w e regret.”

Among the reporters ordered to

leave, Deng at the time of the

announcement w as in Wuhan, the

locked-down city in Hubei prov-

ince at t he e picenter of t he c orona-

virus epidemic. She has been filing

reports on how ordinary people

are coping and how Communist

Party officials a re t rying to contain

the v irus.

Wen was o ne of t wo a uthors o f a

report published last year that de-

tailed allegations that a cousin of

Chinese leader Xi Jinping was in-

volved in high-stakes gambling

and potential money laundering

in Australia. The other reporter on

that story, Chun Han Wong, a Sin-

gaporean national who had cov-

ered Chinese politics out of the

paper’s Beijing bureau since 2014,

was effectively expelled when his

press credentials expired and

were not renewed in A ugust.

The title of the column at issue

is a reference to a period around

the middle of the 19th century

until the early 20th century when

a weak China, crippled by infight-

ing, was carved up by colonial

powers including Japan, Germa-

ny, France and Britain. China calls

this period t he “century o f humili-

ation” a nd vowed during the t rade

war with the United States that it

will not b e humiliated a gain.

The phrase echoed the moniker

given at the time to the Ottoman

Empire, which w as called “ the s ick

man of E urope.” More recently, t he

label has been applied to Britain,

first during the economic malaise

of the 1970s and more recently as

the c ountry was w rangling with its

exit from the European Union.

But i n Beijing, t he Foreign Min-

istry latched onto the Journal’s

headline with unbridled fury, re-

peatedly accusing the paper of us-

ing racially discriminatory lan-

guage and offending the Chinese

people. The Journal website is

blocked by China’s G reat Firewall,

meaning that readers within the

country cannot access its website

without software to make it ap-

pear that t hey are outside China.

“China demands the WSJ rec-

ognize the severity of its mistake,

make an official apology and hold

the persons involved account-

able,” Geng told reporters

Wednesday in a briefing conduct-

ed over the WeChat messaging

app because public gatherings are

banned during the coronavirus

outbreak.

The Foreign Correspondents’

Club of China condemned the deci-

sion, describing it in a statement as

“an extreme and obvious attempt

by the Chinese authorities to intim-

idate foreign news organizations.”

The club, whose members in-

clude two Post correspondents,

called the simultaneous expul-

sions “an unprecedented form of

retaliation against foreign jour-

nalists in C hina.”

This was the first outright ex-

pulsion of a foreign correspon-

dent since 1998, according to the

FCCC’s tally. Since 2013, the year

after Xi became China’s leader, at

least nine journalists have been

effectively expelled by not having

their press credentials renewed,

meaning they had to leave the

country.

Some analysts speculated that

the d ecision w as retaliation f or the

State Department’s d ecision Tues-

day to designate five of China’s

foremost media outlets as official

government entities under the

Foreign Missions Act, meaning

they will be t reated as though t hey

are d iplomatic o utposts of t he Chi-

nese government and subject to

the s ame c onstraints.

[email protected]

China expels Wall Street Journal reporters over column

ng han guan/associated press

China’s Foreign Ministry, pictured here, linked the expulsions of

the three correspondents to an opinion piece by an academic.