June 6, 2026
World
World
WASHINGTON, June 6 — US President Donald Trump said Friday he wants his incoming acting spy chief to begin cutting staff, further fuelling controversy over the appointment of a man with no prior intelligence experience.
UNITED NATIONS, June 5 — The Palestinian ambassador to the UN, joined by counterparts from Arab and Muslim countries, called on the United States yesterday to halt Israel’s annexation of Palestinian territories.
“I know that President (Donald) Trump is capable, and he has the tools to stop Netanyahu in his tracks, in order not to keep the whole region in turmoil...and to move in the direction of peace and justice, that is why the majority of us are working with them,” Riyad Mansour told reporters.
“We know that he told (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, including recently, stop the nonsense in Lebanon, stop the craziness. You know you are not allowed to annex the land.”
The UN’s Arab Group expressed “deep alarm” and regional solidarity over what it described as rapidly escalating Israeli settler aggression and military violence against Palestinians.
“Israel continues to implement policies that amount to accelerated annexation and a systematic dismantling of Palestinian rights,” Saudi ambassador Abdulaziz Alwasil said on behalf of the bloc.
“The Group stresses that Israel’s recent measures are not isolated incidents but part of a coordinated strategy to entrench permanent control over Palestinian land, alter the demographic and geographic reality on the ground, and eliminate the possibility of an independent Palestinian state, in line with relevant UN resolutions.”
Representatives from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) also reiterated calls to end Israel’s annexation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank, where settlement expansion continues, and in Gaza, where the Israeli military controls at least half the territory.
Speaking for the OIC, Turkish deputy ambassador Fikriye Asli Guven urged the Security Council to take urgent and effective action to stop annexation activities, settlement expansion, forced displacement, and other unlawful practices in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, and to ensure accountability under international law. — AFP
