Reuters World News - China’s sway in Israel and Ukraine, Taiwan results and Iowa caucus

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

China has called for authoritative peace talks between Israel and Hamas – and Ukraine is also hoping for their involvement to end conflict with Russia. Washington faces its own balancing act with China after Taiwan's elections. Plus, it’s a cold caucus day in Iowa. Listen to our special episode on Davos here. Listen to our special episode on the Iowa caucuses here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Beijing calls for a peace conference on Gaza 100 days into the war. Washington's balancing act with China after Taiwan's elections. It's caucus day in Iowa, but extreme cold threatens turnout. And Zelensky keeps Ukraine on the international radar at Davos. It's Monday, January 15th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal and Wanganui, New Zealand, and I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. A hundred days have passed since the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel,

killing more than 1,200 people and triggering a fierce assault on Gaza by Israeli forces. In that time, almost 24,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza's health ministry. Dan Williams is in Jerusalem. Dan, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is deepening, and international calls for a ceasefire are growing. Are Israelis still fully behind the war? Yes, although there appears to be exhaustion, trauma at the themes, especially when it comes to the fate of 132 hostages remaining in Gaza, many of the public events in Israel,

marking 100 days since the beginning of this war, focused on expressing solidarity with the families, with the friends of those hostages. and there were some who openly called for a rethink of Israeli strategy, perhaps that Israel should enter another humanitarian truce, even some saying that perhaps Israel should call a halt for the war entirely with the argument that there is no way of both pressing the offensive and recovering the hostages alive. China's foreign minister has called for a peace conference on the war. How influential would that call be in Israel? In general, Israel has looked to its main ally the United States to serve as mediator, as broker, as sponsor of peace negotiations. This may be pure coincidence, but at around the same time that China announced this initiative, Hamas issued a rare hostage video. One of the hostages in that video, a young woman called Noah Argomani is seen appealing for her release, for the release of others. Now, Noah Argomani is the daughter of a Chinese woman. Leora, who has become in herself a bit of a cause-celebra in Israel, given the fact that she is dying of brain cancer and has appealed to be reunited with her daughter before she dies.

And the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Parliament last month that he had appealed directly to the Chinese leadership, to Xi Jinping, to intervene on behalf of no Argamani. and it could be that the two are linked, it could be pure coincidence. But there is a very, very personal element here to the China angle in this story. The victory of Lai Ching-Dai in Taiwan's elections is testing China's relationship with the US. Lai, who China considers a dangerous separatist, won Taiwan's presidential election on Saturday, returning the Democratic Progressive Party to an unprecedented third term in power. But China, which views Taiwan as its territory, is warning foreign nations against supporting the new president-elect. The small Pacific Island nation of Nauru said it would sever diplomatic

relations with Taiwan and recognize China, leaving Taiwan with only 12 diplomatic allies. Don Duffy is in Washington, D.C. Well, so far, there's really been two messages coming out from the U.S. So, on one hand, firm support for Taiwan, continues. Just in the last week, U.S. officials were warning China not to interfere with the elections. The U.S. will continue to be Taiwan's main military backer. On the other hand, you had Joe Biden out saying that the U.S. doesn't support Taiwan independence. And that was interesting because that is, for a long time, has been the official policy of the U.S. right, says that on the State Department website. But Biden didn't have to say that. And it's a little bit different from the kinds of things that

he's been saying over the past couple of years. He's several times now said that the U.S. would defend Taiwan if it were attacked by China, which is a big change from policy in the past. So I think what he's trying to do is really reassure China, given how sensitive the independence issue is for them. Iowans head out to caucus in the Republican Party's first presidential nominating contest tonight. Our producer, Christopher Waljasper, is in a very cold, Iowa, where frontrunner Donald Trump held his final rally. Donald Trump spoke in Indianola, Iowa on Sunday. It's just south of Des Moines. There were so many more people at this event than either the DeSantis or Haley rallies that I

attended this week. Trump spoke for nearly two hours. At one point, he recited a poem. A former Missouri representative got up and auctioned off an American flag at one point. It has been unseasonably cold in Iowa. It got down to negative 18 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday. But most Iowans I've spoke to, they've said that the cold isn't stopping them and they still plan to go out and caucus tonight. For more on the Iowa caucuses, you can check out a special weekend episode. We'll put a link to that in the description to today's podcast. Guatemala's new president, Bernardo Ardavoolo, is sworn in shortly after midnight.

His inauguration was delayed for hours after his opponents delayed the transfer of power, prompting chaotic scenes as his supporters threatened to storm Congress. All prison staff held by inmates at prisons in Ecuador have been freed. The hostages have been held for nearly a week in at least seven prisons. Democratic and Republican congressional leaders have unveiled a short-term spending bill to keep federal agencies operating into March. Government agencies that oversee transportation, housing and other services are due to run out of funding by midnight on Friday.

Already, several houses have gone under lava. Iceland's Prime Minister Katrin Jakob's daughter on the volcanic eruption in the country's southwest. Molten lava flows have reached the outskirts of the small fishing town, Grindivik. The town had earlier been evacuated. Crowds cheer as Denmark's new king Frederick weighs from a balcony in Copenhagen after formally taking the throne. His mother, Queen Margreta, stunned the nation when she announced her abdication,

the first Danish monarch to voluntarily relinquish the crown in nearly 900 years. China wrong-footed markets on Monday. Investors were expecting the Chinese central bank to cut interest rates, particularly as data due this week is expected to show just how fragile the economic recovery there is. Instead, the PBOC kept rates unchanged. Asian shares were downbeat with only Japan's Nick Eye booking the mood, hitting a fresh 34-year high. The Martin Luther King holiday in the US is making for thin trading.

Earning season will kick back into gear this week with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley among those reporting. Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky is in Davos this week for the World Economic Forum. Victoria Valdesi is reporting on what he's up to from the Swiss ski resort. Zelensky and his delegation are really here to shore up support, particularly from countries in the global south. We're coming up to the second anniversary of the war. The country's talking about calling out more reserves.

It's waiting for held up financial and military aid packages from the U.S. and from the EU. So he really needs to show his face, have his ministers come along, have key meetings, bilateral meetings, not just with Western allies, but also with countries that have a relationship to Russia and might be able to help Ukraine formulate a peace plan that could really end this war. In particular, are we thinking of the Chinese here? So yesterday there was a press conference with representatives from Ukraine's government and an earlier press conference with the Swiss Federal Counselor for Foreign Affairs. And in both of those press conferences, the topic of bringing the Chinese to the table was sort of at the core of the discussion.

Zelensky has what he calls a peace formula, right? Yes. So Zelensky came up with what's referred to as a 10-point peace plan and the point that was being discussed yesterday at length, which is confirmation of the war's end, including a document signed by the involved parties. And that's, of course, the one where the discussions are going on over what it would take to bring this war to an end. And Russia is not part of those talks? No, Russia is not part of these talks. This was also a topic of conversation at yesterday's conference with Ukraine's representatives. Not one, but several journalists said, isn't it time to find a way to speak directly to Russia?

Ukraine's representatives were very, very firm in saying that we are not yet at that stage. There was a real sense from Ukraine's representatives at this press conference yesterday that this is not a war that began in February 2022. This is a long-standing conflict with Russia that dates back to Crimea in 2014 and they're just not ready to sit down and make concessions at this point. To hear our special episode on Davos, check out the link in the description to today's pod. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.

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