Month: June 2018

The United Nations is asking the international community to help millions of refugees and displaced people in Africa’s Lake Chad Basin. The Boko Haram insurgency is mainly responsible for a crisis that has left huge numbers vulnerable to hunger, malnutrition and violence.

The Lake Chad Basin is into the ninth year of a humanitarian crisis that does not appear to be easing.

The United Nations has appealed for $1.5 billion to provide life-saving aid for some 7.8 million people in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Though half of the year has gone by, only one third of this urgently-needed money has been received.

The region’s four U.N. humanitarian coordinators came to Geneva this week to brief member states about the emergency facing people in the area and to plead for them not to be neglected and forgotten.

Humanitarian coordinator for Niger, Bintou Djibo, described the suffering of civilians who lack protection and run many risks in this insecure, lawless region.

“Millions of innocent women, children and men are at risk of human rights violations including kidnappings, killings, rape and sexual exploitation and abuse,” he said. “Across the region, people continue to be displaced from their homes either due to conflict, food insecurity or the effect of climate change.”

The United Nations reports 2.4 million people remain displaced because of the nine-year-old Boko Haram insurgency. It said five million people are seriously short of food and require assistance.

Djibo said malnutrition is widespread and life-threatening.

“Children are always the most vulnerable in any humanitarian crisis,” he said. “Nearly half a million children under five years are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.Without treatment, they risk death.”

Protection needs are particularly acute within Nigeria, where Boko Haram militants continue to wreak havoc with the population.

The humanitarian coordinator for Nigeria, Edward Kallon, told VOA Boko Haram is still very active, though it has changed its tactics, concentrating on suicide bombings instead of large-scale attacks.

“Boko Haram is still a potent force,” he said. “There is a lot of rhetoric that the war has been won, but the practical experience we have in the field is that it is becoming very much asymmetrical warfare and they are all scattered in small splinter groups, which makes them more potent and very risky for international staff.”

The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Cameroon, Allegra Balocchi, said all countries in the Lake Chad Basin are affected in different degrees by this group.

“All our countries have had several hundreds if not thousands of surrender-ees — Boko Haram coming out and wanting to be given another option.I think the countries have taken advantage of this in different ways,” she said.  “I speak for Cameroon and I think we are a bit late in trying to pull together a demobilization and a stabilization strategy. So, that remains a priority.”

U.N. officials agree Boko Haram will not be defeated militarily. They say the root causes must be tackled, especially the poverty and lack of development in the four countries that have pushed many into joining the militant group.
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French President Emmanuel Macron is seeking to take the lead of the European brigade against U.S. President Donald Trump at the summit of the Group of Seven wealthy countries in Canada.

Macron called a meeting Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Theresa May, new Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte and top EU officials just before the G-7 opening.

He told reporters the United States’ attitude must lead other nations to “reforge the European front.”

European leaders criticize the U.S. decision to impose protectionist tariffs on steel and aluminum and to exit the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement.

Tweeting in English, Macron stressed: “No leader is eternal. We inherit commitments which are beyond us. We take them on. That is the life of nations.”

Macron launched the offensive on Thursday at a joint news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Adopting an unusually sharp tone about one of France’s closest allies, Macron rejected the idea of an American “hegemony”.

“The other countries of the G-6 are a larger market than the American market,” Macron said. “Maybe it doesn’t bother the American president to be isolated, but it doesn’t bother us to be six if need be.”

European Council President Donald Tusk, who will attend the meeting of EU leaders, said in the New York Times this week “Europe must now do everything in its power to protect the trans-Atlantic bond, in spite of today’s mood. But at the same time we must be prepared for scenarios in which we will have to act on our own.”

Macron’s initiative comes six weeks after Macron and Trump exhibited their friendship at a state visit in Washington – with exaggerated handshakes and a pair of kisses.

The two leaders talked on the phone last week after Trump announced U.S. tariffs on European goods. Macron declined to disclose details of the discussion after an unnamed source told CNN television it went badly.

He instead repeated the famous line attributed to 19th-century German statesman Otto von Bismarck about laws and sausages: ” ‘It’s best not to see them being made.’ ”

And he promised a `”frank and direct discussion'” with Trump in Canada.

 
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NATO defense ministers on Thursday unveiled plans for expanded military reinforcements by having the ability to deploy 30 troop battalions, 30 squadrons of aircraft and 30 warships within 30 days to any conflict on the European mainland.

Details of the U.S.-drafted plan remain unclear, though ministers said they aim to have it logistically operational no later than 2020.

The ministers also announced plans to strengthen its new command structure by more than 1,200 personnel spread across a new Atlantic command center based in Norfolk, Virginia, and a mainland Europe conflict logistics headquarters in Ulm, Germany. 

Briefly putting aside what NATO’s chief said were “serious differences” within the 29-member alliance, ministers agreed to a plan to protect the North Atlantic against increased Russian naval strength, move troops more quickly across Europe and have more combat-ready battalions, ships and planes.

Notably absent from Thursday’s ministerial debates: a recent White House decision to target Europe on trade, which may further raise tensions in the trans-Atlantic alliance.

The European Union, along with Canada and Mexico, have expressed irritation over new U.S. tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, which the administration of President Donald Trump has levied on national security grounds.

“There are differences related to issues like trade, the Iran nuclear deal and climate change,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.

“We have disagreements between NATO allies but we stand together in NATO when it comes to the core task of NATO … to protect each other.”

July summit agenda

Another challenge facing the alliance are efforts to expand membership in Eastern Europe, where Russia has long opposed NATO’s presence.

Increasing from 12 to 29 member nations through seven rounds of enlargement since 1949, NATO recently updated its website to include four countries that have declared their intent to join the alliance ahead of the July 11 summit. Those nations include Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, and Macedonia

In a May visit to the White House, Secretary Stoltenberg said expansion will help strengthen the alliance. 

“We live in a more unpredictable world, we need a strong NATO, and we need to invest more in our security,” he said in an interview with VOA.

Former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, said the United States is working to help applicant nations meet the requirements for membership.

“We are there to give them the standards, to help them get there, and that’s what the open door policy is,” she said.

Former NATO deputy secretary general Alexander Vershbow, however, said countering malign Russian influence in the Balkans will remain a vital part of securing membership, citing recent evidence of Russian meddling in Macedonia’s domestic politics.

“Russians are perhaps more persistent and little bit more unscrupulous in their methods, but they have been long trying to discourage Western Balkan countries from joining NATO,” he told VOA. “Macedonia, I think, is the prime target right now, because the possibility of breakthrough between Macedonia and Greece on the name issue opens the way to possible negotiations on membership even this year.”

Greece opposes Macedonia’s name, saying it amounts to a territorial claim on a synonymous northern Greek region. Western involvement in the name dispute could ease Macedonia’s entry into NATO, but only if the country can meet the alliance’s strict requirements.

Matthew Nimetz, UN moderator on the Greek-Macedonian name dispute, told VOA that recent talks on the issue were productive.

“These were very workmanlike talks,” he said of recent meetings in New York. “The issues are well defined. The issues have been narrowed. We still don’t have a final resolution of the issues, but both sides are determined to do enough to try to reach an agreement and are working very hard to do that.”

Another key requirement for membership: a pledge to spend at least 2 percent of a country’s gross domestic product on defense.

Only five member nations — the Greece, Britain, Estonia, Poland, and the United States — currently meet that requirement.

Upon arriving in office, Trump repeatedly criticized NATO member countries for not contributing their fair share to the alliance. In a 2017 speech to NATO members, he failed to reiterate the U.S. commitment to NATO’s Article 5 pledge of mutual defense, rattling NATO allies.

The White House on Wednesday said President Donald Trump will travel to Brussels to attend a NATO summit scheduled for July 11-12, followed by a July 13 visit to Britain.

This story originated in VOA’s Macedonian Service. 
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Russian President Vladimir Putin held his annual televised call-in show with Russians on Thursday in a semi-choreographed event that highlighted the Russian president’s efforts to raise living standards at home while defending Russian interests abroad. 

Amid Putin’s 18-year rule, the so-called “Direct Line” has emerged as a key symbol of Russia’s top-down system of government, in which Putin often sits as the sole arbiter of problems befalling citizens of the world’s largest country.

State media claimed that Russians submitted over 2.5 million questions to the Russian leader on topics ranging from health care to gas prices, pension payments, mortgage rates and much, much more. 

Despite a grueling live answering session before cameras, the limits of that format were also on display: Putin fielded under a hundred questions in just under 4.5 hours. 

Good (economics) vibrations

As anticipated, domestic issues dominated the session. 

Indeed, Putiin claimed improving Russians’ lives was his priority after a landslide re-election last March that was marred by accusations of vote tampering but secured Putin’s rule through 2024. 

Addressing the economy early on, Putin argued that Russia’s finances were “on the right path” and re-emphasized campaign calls that — despite western sanctions — Russia was poised for “breakthroughs” in its development. 

“Overall, we are heading in the right direction,” said Putin. “We have started on the trajectory toward robust economic growth in Russia. Yes, this growth is modest, small, but it is also not falling backward.”

The Russian leader again touched on a campaign pledge to halve Russia’s poverty rate in his next, and — in theory — final six-year term. 

Asked by the event’s moderator whether the current government — whose leadership has gone largely unchanged from his previous term  — was capable of reaching that goal, Putin assured the “government team was optimal.” 

Foreign policy classics 

The event also contained Putin’s well-worn barbs against the West — with the United States, in particular, a long favorite target.  

Putin said that U.S. allies in Europe — currently engaged in a tariff showdown with the Trump administration — were slowly warming to the message he’d been delivering for years: U.S. foreign and economic policy was aimed at extending American power at the expense of the rest of the world. 

“It appears our partners thought that this would never affect them, this counterproductive politics of restrictions and sanctions,” said Putin. “But now we are seeing that this is happening.”

Putin also accused the U.S. of fueling a Cold War-style arms race by abandoning key nuclear arms treaties, while expressing hope that the threat of mutual annihilation would continue to play a deterrent role. 

“The understanding that a third world war could be the end of civilization should restrain us,” said the Russian leader.

In a related exchange, Putin assured that a new generation of Russian super weapons — unveiled by Putin in a high-profile speech before Russia’s Federal Council last March — were largely now operational and ready to defend Russia, despite doubts from outside experts.

 Hot wars

Russia’s very real conflicts also figured prominently.  

In Ukraine, where Russia has been engaged in a simmering proxy war since 2014, Putin suggested the government in Kyiv would pay a heavy price if rumors of a planned summer offensive against Russian-backed rebels in the country’s east proved true.  

“If this happens, I think it would have very serious consequences for the Ukrainian government in general,” said Putin. 

When asked about Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Syria, Putin argued Russia’s military had gained valuable experience from participating in the Syrian conflict but seemed to walk back earlier repeated calls for a large-scale withdrawal of Russian forces. 

“Our soldiers are there in order to secure Russia’s interests in this critically important part of the world, which is so near to us. And they will stay there, for as long as it is in Russia’s interest for them to do so.”

Same old same old

Given this was the 16th Direct Line over the course of Putin’s rule, the event had an air of predictability that even the Russian president seemed to acknowledge. On several occasions, Putin noted several topics had been raised in past call-in programs.  

When asked whether he had chosen a possible successor, the Russian leader again demurred, noting it was a “traditional question.”

Yet the event was not without at least some surprises. For the first time, a live studio audience was jettisoned in favor of video and phone appeals fielded by young pro-Kremlin “volunteers.” 

Key governors and ministers were also a new part of the show, remaining on a direct video feed to address problems in real time — and occasionally faced admonishment from the president — when policies clashed with realities on the ground.

Informed theater

Debate has long simmered over just how choreographed the Direct Line truly is.  Obvious propaganda-style cutaways to highlight the government’s achievements mix with genuine complaints to create an atmosphere of what some called “informed theater.” 

Adding to that blur were screens in the background that posed apparently unfiltered — and occasionally uncomfortable — questions to the Russian leader.

“Why is there money for tanks, bombs, planes and machine guns, but no money for the people?” went one text message that appeared briefly on screen.

If Putin saw the prompt, it went unacknowledged.  

Regardless, the Russian leader looked far more comfortable than he was during a recent interview with Austria’s national ORF channel in which Putin repeatedly grew testy over the journalist’s line of inquiry and repeated follow-up questions. 

Direct Line offered none of that, and Putin seemed to enjoy the comfortable questions from Russian state media hosts.   

“Vladimir Putin, you received a record level of support during the last elections. Do you feel lonely at the top of political Olympus? Lonely without any competitors or competition?”  

“No, I’m not lonely,” he replied, adding, “I have my team.”  

With that, the Russian leader stared at the screen. 
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A 500-year-old copy of a letter in which Christopher Columbus describes his voyage to the Americas has been returned to Spain after U.S. authorities tracked down the document, which had been stolen and replaced with a forgery years ago.

The letter, copied centuries ago from the one Columbus wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain after his first Atlantic crossing, was given to Spain’s Ambassador Pedro Morenes in Washington, law enforcement authorities said on Thursday.

The repatriation of the letter follows seven years of sleuthing by U.S. law enforcement agencies after the discovery that it had been replaced by a forgery at the National Library of Catalonia in Barcelona.

“We are truly honored to return this historically important document back to Spain — its rightful owner,” U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss said in a statement.

Columbus, born in Genoa in modern-day Italy, had written the letter in Spanish after his return to Europe in 1493. Ferdinand and Isabella, who sponsored his voyage, sent the document to Rome to be translated into Latin and manually copied, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie McCall said.

“A number of these copies were made and then delivered to various kings and queens in Europe to spread the news of Columbus’s discoveries,” McCall said by telephone.

A Latin copy of the letter, in which Columbus describes the mountains, fertile fields, gold and indigenous people he encountered in the Caribbean, is the one that was illegally swapped for a forgery at the Barcelona library, McCall said.

Authorities said they discovered the theft after a tip in 2011 to an assistant U.S. attorney in Delaware who had become experienced in the subject.

Because the library had digitized its collection before the theft, U.S. investigators said they and Spanish authorities were able to determine in 2012 that the letter it had was a forgery.

The real letter, they said, had been sold in November 2005 by two Italian book dealers for 600,000 euros.

After learning in March 2013 that it had been sold again in 2011 for 900,000 euros, authorities said they made contact with the person who had the letter. They said that person was unaware that it had been stolen.

They said they later concluded “beyond all doubt” that it was the letter taken from the Barcelona library and got it back.

The case is still under investigation, McCall said.
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Leaders of the world’s top industrialized democracies will meet in Quebec, Canada, this weekend at a time of growing tensions over trade and other issues While the G-7 Summit is likely to be overshadowed by another historic meeting next week in Singapore, analysts say the G-7 summit is likely to be no less consequential to the future of the global economy or the continued international leadership of the United States. Mil Arcega has more.
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Vladimir Putin, on a living standards drive at the start of a new presidential term, is expected to try to fix Russians’ everyday problems on live TV later Thursday, handing out real-time orders to regional governors and government ministers.

Putin, who won a landslide re-election victory in March, has taken part in the annual phone-in since 2001, using it to cast himself as a decisive troubleshooter on the home front and as a staunch defender of Russia’s interests on the world stage.

Political theater

Critics say the event, which is being held days before Russia hosts the soccer World Cup, is a stage-managed piece of theater designed to let Russians let off steam and fleetingly feel like they can influence a bureaucratic top-down system.

Putin and his aides say it is an indispensable tool to gauge public sentiment and learn what people’s real problems are.

The 65-year-old politician used the event last year to pledge to eradicate spiraling poverty, fielding almost 70 questions in just less than four hours in an event that Kremlin watchers often liken to a tsar listening to his petitioners.

This year, the Interfax news agency reported Putin would forgo his usual studio audience, field text and video questions on a series of TV monitors, and hand out real time orders to regional governors and government ministers who have been told to be at their desks when the event starts at 0900 GMT.

1.4 million questions

Members of the public have submitted more than 1.4 million questions, Russian news agencies reported, many of them visible on a special website set up for the event.

Questions posted ahead of the event included asking Putin whether he planned to meet U.S. President Donald Trump this year, whether relations with the West would improve anytime soon, how he planned to reduce poverty, and why petrol prices were rising so fast.

Putin, who is at the start of a new six-year term in office, always fields a smattering of foreign policy questions, which he typically uses to lash out at the West with whom Moscow’s relations are at a post Cold War low.

This year, he is expected to focus more heavily on domestic issues because he has said the main priority of his fourth term is raising living standards by sharply increasing social and infrastructure spending.
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Ukrainian journalists have been left puzzled and feeling uneasy since the Ukrainian security service (SBU) staged the assassination of Russian reporter Arkady Babchenko, a U.S. media watchdog says.

Ukrainian authorities have said the elaborate operation was designed to foil a Russian plot to assassinate Babchenko and other members of the Ukrainian media. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday that Ukrainian media staffers were upset by SBU’s revelation that it had discovered a “hit list” of 47 journalists, bloggers and activists who may allegedly be targeted by assassins. But veteran journalists told CPJ that while they were perturbed by the news of the list, they were used to being under threat.

Many questioned why the SBU would go through all the trouble to protect Babchenko when it has yet to solve the daylight car bombing that killed Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet in 2016.

“I feel the same as I felt before the Babchenko case,” TV reporter Nastya Stanko told CPJ. “I didn’t feel safe then, and I don’t feel safe now.”

Stanko said the Babchenko case had, in fact, made things worse for journalists.

“When some journalists spoke their mind and said journalists shouldn’t work with security services, Babchenko himself said that he wished for these ‘betrayers’ to have a killer knocking on their door,” she said. “I think we are now at a greater risk of that than before.”
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A year ago in Sicily at the G-7 summit of leading industrial nations, U.S. President Donald Trump was at loggerheads with his fellow summiteers primarily over climate change. At this year’s annual meeting starting in Canada Friday, the dispute will be over tariffs.

European and Canadian participants remain fuming over Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on their steel and aluminum imports — an issue which will dominate a summit planners were already struggling to agree on an agenda for ahead of the U.S. president’s decision to include close allies in the new metals tariff regime.

The U.S. President will find himself without an ally when it comes to tariffs, say European and Canadian diplomats.

“There will be disagreements on important issues and tariffs will certainly be one of them,” a Canadian official told reporters midweek.

Even Britain’s Theresa May, who has declined to keep in step with her fellow Europeans and threaten retaliation, fearing apparently to do so could sink Britain’s chance of a post-Brexit deal with the U.S., has made her disapproval clear. She told Trump in a 30-minute phone call that the tariffs on EU metals are “unjustified and deeply disappointing” and urged him to exempt the Europeans.

But behind the united front of disapproval there are deep disagreements among U.S. allies — especially among the Europeans — about how to respond and whether to take retaliatory action. And if so, what counter-measures to introduce. The disagreements partly stem from different interpretations about what’s driving the U.S. President.

Is Trump being opportunistic and mercurial and playing to a domestic American audience seeking to secure short-gains or is there are an overall longer-term strategy, one at odds with the global free-trade system Washington largely shaped and has backed since the end of World War II?

Is he wanting to change or ‘re-balance’ the terms of global free-trade by using U.S. leverage to reshape rules or is he out to wreck a rules-based system entirely, thereby creating a free-for-all which allows the largest, most powerful countries to exploit their power to the full, secure better deals and lift trade barriers impeding them?

Despite Trump’s rapport with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, Paris has been among the hardest pushing for retaliation, along with top EU officials, viewing the U.S. President’s decision to cite national security as the grounds for the tariffs on steel and aluminum as a direct challenge to the rules-based global trade system overseen by the World Trade Organization.

CNN reported last week that Macron and Trump clashed during a phone call in a conversation described as “terrible” by an unidentified White House source. In a statement issued by the Elysée Palace before the call, Macron said the U.S. tariff imposition was “a mistake on many points. It is a mistake because it responds to a worldwide unbalance that exists in the worst ways through fragmentations and economic nationalism.”

Germany, which runs a large trade surplus with the U.S. and has more to lose than most European nations from a full-blown transatlantic trade, has been more reticent with German businesses — especially in its auto sector — urging Berlin to proceed cautiously. German car-makers’ biggest fear is that EU retaliation — Brussels has already published a list of U.S. products that could be targeted — will result in the U.S. imposing tariffs on German cars.

Trump has lambasted in the past the 10 percent EU tariff on car imports. On May 23 the Trump administration announced an investigation into whether car imports are a threat to U.S. national security, too. A German magazine reported last week that Trump told Macron in April he wanted German carmakers out of the United States altogether. The report was based on unnamed sources and hasn’t been confirmed by either the White House or Elysée Palace.

German car-makers are banking on President Trump’s not raising U.S. duties to 25 percent on all imports of automobiles and auto parts, arguing that to do so will hurt American workers as much as German ones.

An analysis by the Peterson Institute, a Washington think tank, has suggested the fallout for the U.S. auto industry from such tariffs would be harsh as well with a possible 195,000 American workers losing their jobs over a three-year period. But projected chain-supply job consequences in the U.S. from the metals tariffs imposed on June 1 did not deter the Trump administration and EU retaliation could well prompt, German officials fear, Washington to respond with tariffs on auto imports.

According to some analysts and European officials, it doesn’t really matter whether Trump has a longer term-strategy to end rules-based trading or is determined to tug the global system in a direction that favors the U.S. more, making the rules anyway less predictable. Up to a point, the consequences are the same, they say.

“In a world where there are no internationally predictable rules, most countries faced with protectionist actions, crudely, have two options – retaliate or concede. If they choose to retaliate, the optimal strategy is to cause enough pain to the political leadership of the protectionist country that they will back down,” argued Matthew Oxenford, an analyst at Britain’s Chatham House.

He added: “However, this can only be effective for large economies that the U.S. exports to significantly. For smaller countries without significant leverage, the alternative is to concede and try to negotiate a favorable settlement, which will still be asymmetrical.”

That is the policy South Korea has followed, agreeing to quotas on their steel exports to the U.S. in exchange for a permanent exemption.

For all of the rage and fury in Europe about the metal tariffs, amid disunity about how to respond, that may well end up as the result with the EU, too, but probably not in Canada this week. U.S. officials say they expect a long rocky road ahead and they doubt there will even be an agreed joint statement at the end of the summit, emphasizing how the G-7 is becoming increasingly, in the eyes of observers, a G-6 plus 1.
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Britain, France and Germany have joined forces to urge the United States to exempt European companies from any sanctions the U.S. will slap on Iran after pulling out of an international nuclear agreement.

In a letter dated Monday to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ministers from the three European countries said they “strongly regret” President Donald Trump’s decision last month to withdraw from the Iran deal. Trump has said sanctions will be imposed on any company doing business with Tehran.

The three European countries were also signatories of the 2015 deal, which was meant to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

In their letter, made public on Wednesday, the ministers said that “as close allies we expect that the extraterritorial effects of U.S. secondary sanctions will not be enforced on EU entities and individuals, and the United States will thus respect our political decision and the good faith of economic operators within EU legal territory.”

The ministers, which included British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz, said they want the U.S. to “grant exemptions” for EU companies that have been doing business with Iran since the deal came into force in 2016. They also said Iran should not be cut out of the SWIFT system for international money transfers.

Many companies from Europe and the U.S. have been steadily building up their investments in Iran in the past few years in the wake of the nuclear deal, particularly in the fields of pharmaceuticals, banking and oil.

France’s Le Maire tweeted Wednesday that EU “businesses must be able to pursue their activities.”

 
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Tunisia’s interior minister has fired 10 security officials amid an investigation into the sinking of a boat carrying migrants trying to reach Europe that left an estimated 112 dead or missing.

It was the deadliest shipwreck this year on the dangerous route from North Africa across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Braham announced late Tuesday the dismissal of 10 people including local police and security chiefs in the coastal city of Sfax and the Krekennah island, based on preliminary investigations into Sunday’s sinking.

The Tunisian government has been widely criticized for not grasping the extent of the tragedy. The prime minister visited the island Tuesday to oversee the search operations.

The International Organization for Migration has counted 60 confirmed deaths, 52 people still missing and 68 survivors.
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