Argentine lawmakers have proposed legislation to boost oversight of a Chinese space tracking station that has stirred unease among local residents, fueled conspiracy theories and sparked concerns amongst critics about its true intent.

The Chinese-run facility, a space observation station located in Argentina’s remote Patagonia region, has a powerful 16-story antenna that is able to help monitor and coordinate China’s growing space program.

Six lawmakers, including the Senate majority leader, submitted a bill to create a commission that would monitor “the cooperation agreement” between Argentina and the Chinese government relating to the lunar exploration program.

In January, Reuters reported that the remote 200 hectare (494 acres) station operated with little oversight by Argentine authorities. President Mauricio Macri’s former foreign minister, Susana Malcorra, said Argentina had no physical oversight of the station’s operations.

The bill, dated March 25, was referred to on the Senate’s official website, though the full text of the legislation was not publicly available.

Miguel Angel Pichetto, the majority leader, said in a post on his official Twitter account that he had presented the bill to create a commission to control the space tracking station, run by the Chinese military, located in the central province of Neuquen in Patagonia.

He added that the proposed team would include seven members from the Senate and seven from the Chamber of Deputies, the two houses of Argentina’s National Congress.

According to Chinese media, the station’s aim is peaceful space observation and exploration. State news agency Xinhua has said it played a key role in China’s landing of spacecraft on the dark side of the moon in January.

Argentina’s space agency CONAE did not respond to requests for comment. The agency has previously said the agreement between the two countries stated a commitment to “peaceful use” of the project.

An official at the Chinese embassy in Argentina said in an emailed statement that the cooperation between the two countries around the station was “going well”, and that delegations and student groups had made “multiple visits” to the facility.

The official told Reuters that China and Argentina were now building a scientific exhibition hall inside the station, which once completed would “serve as a new platform for the dissemination of aerospace knowledge for the local community”.

Argentina’s Congress debated the space station in 2015, during the presidency of Cristina Fernandez when the deal was approved.

The station, about a 40 minutes’ drive from Las Lajas, became operational in April last year. Thirty Chinese employees work and live on site, which employs no locals, Maria Espinosa, the mayor of the town of 7,000 people, previously told Reuters.
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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is urging the international community to step up its commitment to the organization’s peacekeeping operations, particularly in improving its specialized equipment and troop needs. 

“As conflicts become more complex and high-risk, our operations must keep pace,” Guterres on Friday told more than 100 defense ministers, foreign ministers and diplomats. 

The U.N. chief appealed for critical capabilities, including armored personnel carriers to protect peacekeepers in Mali and medical evacuation helicopters for its mission in the Central African Republic. 

“Elsewhere, we need armed utility helicopters; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance units; quick reaction forces, and air medical evacuation teams,” Guterres said. “I urge you to consider contributing these high-value and critical capabilities, and I assure you that they will be utilized effectively and efficiently, in accordance with our command-and-control policy.”

U.N. troops and police have had to adjust to asymmetrical threats, including from armed groups and terrorists. Last year, 27 peacekeepers were killed in the line of duty. New kinds of technology and equipment are needed to better prepare and protect them from these threats. 

The world body has nearly 100,000 troops and police from 127 countries working in 14 missions in Haiti, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. The peacekeeping department has a budget of nearly $7 billion a year. 

As the U.N. looks to achieve gender parity throughout the organization, the secretary-general noted that it is “unacceptable” that only 4 percent of peacekeepers are women. He said his staff will present a strategy to increase their numbers to the Security Council next month. 

“Beyond better equipment and readiness, we must increase local engagement,” Guterres said. “Women peacekeepers and civilian staff are essential to improve those efforts.”

“If we want to substantially increase the number of women in peacekeeping operations, we need to increase the numbers of women in our respective militaries,” Canada’s Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan pointed out to the assembly. 

Ethiopia’s female defense minister said her country is both the leading troop contributing country with 8,000 troops in U.N. missions, and it has the most women (800) deployed. 

“However, while it may be the highest number from a single country, it is still barely representative of the possibilities,” said Aisha Mohammed Mussa.

U.N. peacekeeping has also struggled with allegations against some of its blue helmets — as the peacekeepers are known — of raping or sexually exploiting the civilians they are sent to protect. After a “zero tolerance” campaign started under the previous secretary-general, the numbers of such cases are starting to come down. A report earlier this month said the number of cases in peacekeeping and political missions dropped to 54 in 2018 from 62 in 2017 and 104 in 2016. 

Ministers also made new pledges of troops, equipment or other capacities at Friday’s meeting. 

Nepal’s defense minister said his country is ready to double its peacekeeping presence to 10,000 blue helmets if the U.N. requests the additional personnel.  Brazilian Defense Minister Fernando Azevedo e Silva said his government would deploy a jungle-experts warfare team to the U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mongolia’s minister said his country was adding a rapid deployment battalion to its existing peacekeeping contribution. 

The United States, which is the top funder of U.N. peacekeeping, providing a quarter of its annual budget, said it is focused on the development of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, which are critical to improving the effectiveness of U.N. peacekeeping operations.
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The crisis at the U.S. southern border deepens as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen turns to Congress for help while President Donald Trump threatens again to shut it down.

In a letter to Congress Thursday, Nielsen asked for faster deportation of unaccompanied migrant children from Central America, as well as the ability to detain families while they await their day in court. Noting that Congress has tasked DHS with taking “operational control of the border,” Nielsen wrote that “we are increasingly unable to uphold that responsibility given the emergency situation.”

In her letter Nielsen said that this month, DHS is on track to apprehend nearly 100,000 migrants. 

“We face a cascading crisis at our southern border,” Nielsen said in a statement. “The system is in free fall.  DHS is doing everything possible to respond to a growing humanitarian catastrophe while also securing our borders, but we have reached peak capacity and are now forced to pull from other missions to respond to the emergency.”

“The system was not built for this. Our laws are just not built for this,” a senior DHS official said of the current arrival numbers at the border, during a call with reporters Friday afternoon.

DHS has repeatedly attributed logistical challenges at the southern border to a shift in demographics — with an increasing number of families arriving, compared with single men in earlier waves. By law, families can be detained for only a limited time. Nielsen is asking Congress to extend that. 

She is also asking that children from Central America be treated the same way as Mexican children, who may be returned to their home country if they “have no legal right to stay.”

In the meantime, DHS is planning to pull hundreds of customs agents from ports of entry to aid in detainee processing, the agency announced Thursday. It has also asked for employees from across the department to volunteer for temporary placement to work at the border.

Friday, for the second day in a row, Trump called in a tweet for shutting down the border if Mexico does not immediately stop all illegal immigration to the U.S.

Later in the day, Trump reiterated his tweets during remarks in Florida. “So Mexico’s tough, they can stop them, but they chose not to, and if they don’t stop them, we’re closing the border. And we’ll keep it closed for a long time. I’m not playing games.”

Asked whether the agency intended — as Trump threatened — to close ports of entry, the DHS official demurred, saying “it’s short at the moment of a full closure of any port.”

The official added that the reassignment of customs officers to detention work at the border could reduce the flow of vehicles and pedestrians through ports, however, and cause delays. 

“What the president is making clear,” the official said, is that if the agency has to close ports of entry, “we will do that,” making the issue a possibility, rather than a fully made decision.
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Hundreds of demonstrators returned to the streets of Haiti’s capital Friday to protest corruption and to ask for President Jovenel Moise’s resignation.  Protesters set fires in the street and wrapped themselves in red, white and blue flags as they marched uptown at midday.

A group of opposition parties had called for nationwide protests to show their dissatisfaction with the government and the failure to prosecute those implicated in the mismanagement of PetroCaribe oil profits.

The alleged misuse of $3.8 billion has sparked protests for months. The money, due to Haiti under the PetroCaribe oil alliances signed between Venezuela and Caribbean nations starting in June 2005, had been earmarked for infrastructure and social and economic projects.

“We’re asking the people to demand the president resign, replace the parliament with new lawmakers and create a new system (of government), a new model for Haiti where everyone’s rights are respected,” former opposition Senator Moise Jean-Charles of the Pitit Dessalines party (Dessalines’ Children) told VOA Creole.

WATCH: Video from Port-au-Prince

March 29 also coincides with the anniversary of Haiti’s Constitution.

“The country needs a new constitution. The 1805 Constitution more accurately reflects everything the protesters are asking for,” he said. “The 1987 Constitution – with or without the current amendments – does not reflect our reality today.”

Protester Josue Blanchard, a sculptor who was marching with a group of protesters in the Delmas neighborhood of the capital said people want a better life.

“There are things we consider as imperatives – it’s clear that there’s a huge social and economic disparity where people can’t even afford health care. Many are not working. So I think the anniversary of the constitution is a significant date for the young people and for citizens in general because we don’t feel we are living the way we should be living,” Blanchard told VOA Creole.

VOA Creole’s reporter in the southwestern town of Les Cayes said the protester turnout was much lower than organizers had hoped for.

Earlier in the week, lawmakers from the president’s Pati Ayisyen Tet Kale (PHTK) sought to discourage protesters from taking to the streets, and law enforcement officials warned that anyone caught committing crimes would be brought to justice.

Hernst Eliscar contributed to this report from Les Cayes
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President Donald Trump says he will close the nation’s southern border, or large sections of it, next week if Mexico does not immediately stop illegal immigration.

In a tweet Friday, Trump ramped up his repeated threat to close the border by saying he will do it next week unless Mexico takes action.

The president called on Congress to immediately change what he said were “weak” U.S. immigration laws, which he blamed on Democrats.

He says it “would be so easy” for Mexico to stop illegal immigration, which would also strike a blow to drug-trafficking.

 
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The White House is again warning nations, including Russia, to not send military resources to Venezuela, while condemning disputed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s “continued use of foreign military personnel in his attempt to remain in power.”

National Security Adviser John Bolton made the statement Friday, two days after U.S. President Donald Trump said Russia “has to get out” of Venezuela, and following the recent arrival of Russian military personnel in Venezuela, where Maduro is locked in a power struggle with opposition leader and self-declared interim president Juan Guaido. 

“Maduro will only use this military support to further repress the people of Venezuela; perpetuate the economic crisis that has destroyed Venezuela’s economy; and endanger regional stability,” Bolton said. “We call on the Venezuelan military to uphold its constitutional duty to protect the citizens of Venezuela.”

The White House national security adviser also said the United States “strongly” cautions actors external to the Western Hemisphere against deploying military assets to Venezuela or elsewhere in the hemisphere, with the intent of establishing military operations. The statement says any such actions would be viewed as a “direct threat” to regional security.

Guaido: Medical support coming

Meanwhile, Guaido announced Friday that “important medical support” would be arriving in the resources-starved country “in the coming hours.” He did not provide details.

Guaido in February tried to deliver aid to Venezuelans, staging the deliveries in Colombia and Brazil. But Maduro called the efforts an attempted invasion by the United States. Security forces refused the supplies and clashed with protesters at the borders.

The Maduro government says it has stripped Guaido of the right to hold public office for 15 years, but Guaido has said his movement will “continue in the streets.”

On Wednesday, Trump told a reporter several times, “All options are open,” in response to a question about whether the United States is willing to put “boots on the ground” to remove the Russians. Trump added that Moscow is well aware of the U.S. stance.

Russian planes

Two Russian air force planes landed outside Caracas last Saturday and were believed to be carrying Russian military personnel and equipment.

Russia says it has sent specialists to Venezuela through a military cooperation agreement but that they are no threat to regional security. China, too, is allied with the Maduro government.

Trump and Vice President Mike Pence spoke to reporters Wednesday at the White House, alongside Fabiana Rosales, the wife of Venezuelan opposition leader and self-declared interim President Juan Guaido.

“The United States views Russia’s arrival of military planes this weekend as an unwelcome provocation,” Pence said alongside Rosales in the Roosevelt Room. “We call on Russia today to cease all support of the Maduro regime and stand with Juan Guaido, stand with nations across this hemisphere and across the world until freedom is restored.”

Russia rejected the U.S. declaration, saying its actions in Venezuela were lawful and agreed with the South American nation’s legitimate government, the RIA news agency reported. The Kremlin declined to comment on reports it has deployed Russian servicemen to Venezuela.

The United States, along with dozens of other countries, have recognized Guaido as the country’s interim president, while Russia has backed Maduro. Guaido, in Venezuela on Wednesday, called on supporters to protest Saturday against nationwide power outages.

Maduro’s cabinet ministers have accused the United States of sabotaging the electrical power grid, including a cyberattack on Venezuela’s main hydroelectric dam.
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Mexico is bracing for the possible arrival of the “mother of all caravans,” even as doubts arise over whether the group of Central American migrants will be all that big.

Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero has said a caravan of migrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala could be forming.

“We have information that a new caravan is forming in Honduras, that they’re calling ‘the mother of all caravans,’ and they are thinking it could have more than 20,000 people,” Sanchez Cordero said Wednesday.

But a WhatsApp group calling for people to gather Saturday in El Salvador to set off for Guatemala only has about 206 members.

​Activists: False reports used to create fear

Activist Irineo Mujica, who has accompanied several caravans in Mexico, said reports about “the mother of all caravans” were false, claiming “this is information that (U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen) Nielsen is using to create fear.”

His group, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, said in a statement there was no evidence the new caravan would be that large, noting “there has never been a caravan of the size that Sanchez Cordero mentioned.” Indeed, past caravans hit very serious logistical hurdles at 7,000-strong.

She and others suspect the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump may be trying to fan fears of a big caravan to turn the U.S. national agenda back to the immigration issue.

Honduran activist Bartolo Fuentes, who accompanied a large caravan last year, dismissed the new reports as “part of the U.S. government’s plans, something made up to justify their actions.”

A caravan of about 2,500 Central Americans and Cubans is currently making its way through Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas. The largest of last year’s caravans in Mexico contained about 7,000 people at its peak, though some estimates ran as high as 10,000 at some points.

​Mexico eager not to anger US

Mexico appears to be both tiring of the caravans and eager not to anger the United States. It has stopped granting migrants humanitarian visas at the border, and towns along the well-traveled route to Mexico City sometimes no longer allow caravans to spend the night.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday that Mexico is doing its part to fight immigrant smuggling.

“We are going to do everything we can to help. We don’t in any way want a confrontation with the U.S. government,” he said. “It is legitimate that they are displeased and they voice these concerns.”

Sanchez Cordero has pledged to form a police line of “containment” around Mexico’s narrow Tehuantepec Isthmus to stop migrants from continuing north to the U.S. border.

The containment belt would consist of federal police and immigration agents, but such highway blockades and checkpoints have not stopped large and determined groups of migrants in the past.
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The Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro said Thursday that it had stripped opposition leader Juan Guaido of the right to hold public office for 15 years, a sharp escalation of the political unrest in the South American country. 

But soon after the announcement on state television, Guaido said, “We’re going to continue in the streets” to protest Maduro’s hold on power. 

Guaido, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly, is recognized by the U.S. and 50 other countries as the nation’s interim president, but Maduro has clung to power amid power blackouts, street demonstrations led by Guaido, widespread poverty and frequent condemnation of his rule from world leaders. 

The political ban against Guaido was announced by Auditor General Elvis Amoroso. He said Guaido, who invoked the country’s constitution in January to assume the interim presidency, had inconsistencies in his personal financial disclosures and was spending more than his income would seem to allow. 

Guaido has said he expects continued efforts by Maduro to try to block him from assuming outright control of the government. 

The United Nations has estimated that about a quarter of Venezuelans need humanitarian assistance, including food and basic services. 

Maduro, who is backed by Russia, has said no crisis exists and blames U.S. sanctions for the country’s moribund economy.  

Russia sent about 100 military personnel to Venezuela last weekend and 35 tons of cargo in support of Maduro. Moscow has ignored U.S. demands that it send the servicemen back home. 
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The Kremlin on Thursday rejected U.S. calls for Moscow to withdraw its military specialists from Venezuela, saying they are there to honor obligations under previous arms contracts.

Asked to comment on Washington’s demand for Moscow to pull out its personnel and halt other assistance to embattled President Nicolas Maduro, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov snapped that “our bilateral relations isn’t something that should concern third countries.”

“The United States is present in many parts of the world and no one is telling it where it should or shouldn’t be,” he told reporters. “We anticipate respect for our right to develop relations with any country that are in our mutual interests.”

The U.S. and several dozen other nations have recognized Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president, while Russia and China have staunchly backed Maduro.

“Russia has developed traditional and mutually-beneficial cooperation with Venezuela, including arms contracts,” Peskov said. “Our specialists who have arrived in Venezuela in recent days are there as part of Russia’s obligations to fulfill those contracts.”

Earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia had sent military help to Venezuela under a bilateral agreement — but neither Zakharova nor Peskov provided any numbers or details on their mission.

Zahkarova questioned the grounds for U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s demands Wednesday for their withdrawal. 

Zakharova said Pence’s call was a “completely arrogant attempt to dictate to a sovereign state.”

 
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As the top homeland security official in the U.S. prepared to announce the signing of a multinational security agreement with several Latin American countries on Thursday, capping a years-long diplomatic process, U.S. President Donald Trump accused those same countries of “doing nothing.”  

Trump tweeted just before 6:30 a.m.:

For the last several days, however, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has been holding high-level meetings with Mexican, Honduran, Guatemalan and Salvadoran officials, finalizing what DHS calls a regional compact to “stem the flood of irregular migration and develop a regional approach to addressing the ongoing humanitarian and security emergency at our Southern Border.”

A request for comment made to DHS about the president’s contradictory tweet and any repercussions on the regional compact was not immediately answered Thursday.

Hours after Trump’s tweet, Nielsen, who had traveled to Miami and Honduras for negotiations, announced that the Central American countries had signed the memorandum of cooperation with the U.S.

The agreement signed in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, covers four broad areas: human trafficking and smuggling; transnational criminal organizations and gangs; information and intelligence sharing; and border security. 

Nielsen’s statements around the signing have focused largely on the agreement’s potential impact on migration, as the U.S. has seen a recent spike in family arrivals at the border. 

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, however, framed the anticipated outcomes in terms of protecting migrants and combating organized crime.

“The migrant is the victim of criminal structures and should not be criminalized, rather the relevant authorities of the affected countries must work together to investigate and hold accountable the criminal groups that are causing so much suffering and grief,” he tweeted in Spanish on Wednesday.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday acknowledged that migrants were increasingly coming north, “because there are no options, no alternatives in Central America.”

Lopez Obrador said Mexico is doing its part to fight immigrant smuggling. “We are going to do everything we can to help. We don’t in any way want a confrontation with the U.S. government.”

He said Mexico was going to maintain a “very respectful relationship” with the U.S. government and Trump, adding that the U.S. concerns were legitimate.

While overall arrests at the border are still well below highs of the early 2000s, U.S. officials this week released data showing March has been another month of increased arrivals at the southern U.S. border, especially by families with young children, largely from the Northern Triangle countries (Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador).

Some information in this report is from the Associated Press. 
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