The Covid-19 pandemic will haunt the world until 2024 unless the G7 focuses on increasing vaccine production, in part by facilitating it in Africa, the French foreign minister has said.

Jean-Yves Le Drian added there was a debate to be had about loosening restrictions on pharmaceutical companies’ patents – a measure supported by the Biden administration on Wednesday – but the number one priority was increasing production.

Le Drian was speaking to the Guardian as he attended the meeting of G7 foreign ministers in London, an event he described as marking the comeback of the US and the reignition of multilateralism after years in abeyance because of Donald Trump.

He revealed he had spoken to the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, more times since his appointment in January than he had throughout the three years that Mike Pompeo was in the job.

Le Drian accepted more needed to be done to ensure vaccines were reaching the world’s poorest people, and that – as the club of wealthiest countries – the G7 had a responsibility to do more.

“If we continue at this pace … then there will not be global immunity until 2024,” he said. “Are we going to wait until 2024 keeping on with our masks, our tests, our constraints and our fears? I do not think that is a solution for us or the world.

“There will be no immunity against Covid-19 unless it is global immunity. We can rejoice about the pace of vaccination in each of our countries and it’s all very well that the UK can rejoice about it, but it is only a step to global immunity and the virus will still be there with its variants so long as we do not reach global immunity.”

He admitted the UN’s Covax scheme, in which wealthier countries were funding the production and distribution of vaccines to the world’s poorest, needed more momentum. Covax is a huge initiative to create 2bn doses, including 1.3bn to be used this year

“The G7 leaders need to go further. We also have to speed up distribution. We also have to go further in the framework of the G7 with the Africans to put in place a strategy to put production capacity in Africa,” he said.

“We have to do more to make sure the vaccines reach the right people. It is not just a matter of solidarity. It’s a matter of self-interest and efficiency for ourselves.”

Writing in the Guardian in March, the World Health Organization chief, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he supported a patent waiver that would allow countries to make and sell cheap copies of vaccines that were invented elsewhere. And on Wednesday, Katherine Tai, the trade representative for the Biden administration, declared America’s support for the proposal.

But Le Drian said: “I don’t think the number one question is patents. I think the number one question is production … we can have a debate on patents but what is urgent tomorrow is production.”

At present the Covax scheme was adequately funded but would need financial help soon, he said, comparing the scale of the efforts and funding being put into Covax with what he described as “vaccination propaganda” by other countries.

“A number of countries have been using vaccination as propaganda or an influencing tool. Some countries have been dropping tens of thousands of doses at airports and saying: ‘We are very good’ and then off they go, saying: ‘What a great country we are, acting in solidarity.’”

He also used the interview to send a warning to Iran, saying the talks about the revival of the nuclear deal, restarting in Vienna, were crucial.

“We have got a very tight schedule with the presidential elections looming in June. It is a moment of truth. We need to achieve some progress urgently because due to Iran’s breaches of its own commitments Iran has never been closer to a nuclear weapon.

“The US is very determined to make progress – they sent the necessary gesture and signals to show they were ready to take the necessary decisions to lift sanctions.

“At present Iran has not made the corresponding gestures or signs about all their breaches of the accord since 2019. This is a crucial moment because it is now that the Iranians must make the necessary gestures.”

He insisted there also had to be a mutual understanding that if the US did return to the joint comprehensive plan of action, the process would not end there.

“This is a major issue about non-proliferation and reducing the atmosphere of conflict in the region. We need an agreement to acknowledge that is only a first step. Agreeing on this is not a prerequisite, but it is a necessity for the future that appears essential to us.”

Le Drian separately claimed there was growing unanimity on how to tackle China in the west following Donald Trump’s departure.

He said that during the Trump era China had been allowed to advance its own version of multilateralism, something he described as in reality “a multi-bilateralism” in which China formed different relationships with different countries and used its economic power to to impose its norms and gradually dominate the setting of rules, standards and finances.

Although France was often seen as advocate of a third way between China and the US, he said the EU had over the past years come to see China more as a systemic rival.

Media Agency | Apadana Media

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October 14, 2020

By Issam Abdallah

NAQOURA, Lebanon (Reuters) – Long-time foes Lebanon and Israel launched talks on Wednesday over their disputed sea border (maritime border) in a brief meeting which the lead Lebanese negotiator described as “the first step on a thousand-mile journey.”

The talks were mediated by the United States, which has pushed for years for negotiations to resolve the dispute and brokered deals last month for two Gulf Arab states to establish full ties with Israel, in a major Middle East realignment.

Both Lebanon and Israel had played down expectations for Wednesday’s meeting which was held outdoors under blue canvas covers near the two countries’ land border.

The talks, the first to be held over the disputed sea boundary(maritime border), broke up after barely an hour and both sides agreed to meet again in two weeks.

The United States and United Nations, which hosted the meeting, described it as productive, while Israel’s Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said the Israeli delegation would push ahead with the talks “to give the process a chance”.

Agreement to hold the talks was announced weeks after the United States stepped up pressure on allies of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah, imposing sanctions on a senior politician from its main Shi’ite ally, the Amal party.

Hezbollah, which fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006, says the talks are not a sign of peace-making with its long-time enemy.

(Graphic: Overlapping claims in disputed east Med exploration area Overlapping claims in disputed east Med exploration area, https://graphics.reuters.com/LEBANON-ISRAEL/TALKS/ygdvznygmvw/LEBANON-ISRAEL.jpg)

“Our meeting today will launch the train of technical, indirect negotiations, and represents the first step on a thousand-mile journey for demarcating the southern borders,” the Lebanese army quoted delegation head Brigadier General Bassam Yassin as saying.

“We look forward…to achieving this file within a reasonable time frame.”

GAS-RICH WATERS?

Disagreement over the sea border had discouraged oil and gas exploration near the disputed line.

Israel already pumps gas from huge offshore fields but Lebanon, which has yet to find commercial gas reserves in its own waters, is desperate for cash from foreign donors as it faces the worst economic crisis since its 1975-1990 civil war.

The financial meltdown has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and by an explosion that wrecked a swathe of Beirut in August, killing nearly 200 people.

Wednesday’s meeting was hosted by the United Nations, which has monitored the land boundary since Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000 at the end of a 22-year occupation.

Lebanese sources originally said the next talks will be held on Oct 28, but a statement from President Michel Aoun’s office said they would take place two days earlier on Oct. 26.

Hours before the meeting, Hezbollah and Amal called for changes to the Lebanese negotiating team to ensure it included only military officials. The Lebanese presidency has said the talks would be purely technical.

The talks come after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain agreed to establish full relations with Israel, under U.S.-brokered deals which realign some of Washington’s closest Middle East allies against Iran.

(Reporting by Dominic Evans, Ellen Francis and Issam Abdallah in Lebanon and Ari Rabinovitchin Jerusalem; Editing by Samia Nakhoul, William Maclean)

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October 14, 2020

By Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) – British spies are trying to defend COVID-19 vaccine work against hostile powers that seek to either steal or sabotage research data in the race for the global prize of a jab that could provide immunity, the head of MI5 said on Wednesday.

Oxford University’s vaccine candidate, which has been licensed to AstraZeneca, is in late stage trials, while a vaccine candidate being developed by Imperial College London is in early stage clinical trials.

“Clearly, the global prize of having a first usable vaccine against this deadly virus is a large one, so we would expect that a range of other parties around the globe would be quite interested in that research,” Security Service (MI5) Director General Ken McCallum told reporters.

McCallum, in his first major remarks since being named as the new boss of MI5 in March when the United Kingdom was under national lockdown, said there were a range of threats against the vaccine development work.

“I guess there are two bits we are on the lookout for: attempts either to steal unique intellectual property that’s been generated in that research, or potentially to fiddle with the data,” he said.

“And then the second risk we’ve got to be alive to is the possibility that the research is still high integrity and sound, but that somebody tries to sow doubt about its integrity.”

Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said in July that hackers backed by the Russian state were trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research from academic and pharmaceutical institutions around the world.

More than 150 potential vaccines are being developed and tested globally to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, with 42 in human trials, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

A CAULDRON OF THREATS

McCallum, a career spy who studied mathematics in Glasgow before spending more than two decades in MI5, said the United Kingdom was facing a cauldron of threats ranging from growing far-right terrorism to Chinese economic espionage.

“The right-wing terrorist threat is not on the same scale as the Islamist extremist threat – but it is rising,” he said.

Of 27 late-stage plots disrupted in Britain, eight were hatched by right-wing extremists, he said, adding that MI5 was also grappling with increasingly severe state-sponsored espionage.

“The varying threats from Russian, Chinese, Iranian and other actors are growing in severity and complexity.”

China has sought to hack commercially sensitive data and intellectual property as well as to interfere in politics, he said. Britain had disrupted Chinese espionage plot aimed against the European Union. He gave no further details.

McCallum defended MI5 over its role investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum, saying little of any great significance was found.

He did, though, give a rare insight into what it is to be a spy chief: “Terrorist attacks are always, without exception, sickening. Whenever my phone rings late in the evening, my stomach lurches in case it is one of those awful moments.”

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Kate Holton/Mark Heinrich) Apadana Media

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