The Conservative candidate defeated by Justin Trudeau Monday warned that although the prime minister managed to secure a second term, he has effectively been placed on notice after losing control of the majority following nail-biting Parliamentary elections in Canada.
Trudeau defeated Andrew Scheer and won a second term as prime minister in Canada's national elections Monday, delivering unexpectedly strong results despite having been weakened by a series of scandals that tarnished his image as a liberal icon.
Scheer said when Trudeau first won in 2015 he looked unstoppable, but he said the times have changed. Trudeau will likely rely on Conservatives to push through legislation.
"Tonight Conservatives have put Justin Trudeau on notice," Scheer said. "And Mr. Trudeau when your government falls, Conservatives will be ready and we will win."
Trudeau reasserted the country's liberal identity in 2015 after almost 10 years of Conservative rule and has been viewed as a beacon of hope for liberals in the Trump era. Scheer declared Tuesday that Conservatives are ready to pounce in the next elections.
Polls showed Scheer had a chance for victory after a combination of scandals and high expectations damaged Trudeau's prospects. Trudeau faced an uphill electoral battle after old photos of him in blackface and brownface surfaced last month, casting doubt on his judgment.
The handsome son of liberal icon and late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau also was hurt by a scandal that erupted earlier this year, when his former attorney general said he pressured her to halt the prosecution of a Quebec company. Trudeau has said he was standing up for jobs, but enough damage was done to give the Conservatives an opening.
"Andrew is what I call a severely normal Canadian," Jason Kenney, Alberta's conservative premier and the godfather of one of Scheer's five kids, told The Associated Press. "His personality is the opposite of Justin's. Andrew is not at home naturally preening for the cameras."
President Trump congratulated Trudeau on his second-term victory early Tuesday on Twitter.
"Congratulations to @JustinTrudeau on a wonderful and hard fought victory. Canada is well served. I look forward to working with you toward the betterment of both of our countries!" Trump tweeted after midnight.
Trudeau was championed for securing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which was perhaps his most noteworthy accomplishment during his first term as prime minister. Canada relies on the U.S. for 75 percent of its exports.
US President Donald Trump says some American troops will stay on in Syria despite his call for them to be pulled out.
He said a small number would protect oil fields while others would stay near Israel and Jordan.
His decision two weeks ago to withdraw US forces from the Syria-Turkey border region drew criticism even from some of his supporters.
Soon after, Turkey began an offensive against former US allies the Kurds.
The US president again defended his decision to withdraw, amid accusations he has betrayed Kurdish-led forces who have been an important partner in the battle against the Islamic State group.
"Why should we put our soldiers in the midst of two large groups, hundreds of thousands potentially of people, that are fighting? I don't think so," he said. "I got elected on bringing our soldiers back home."
But Mr Trump also said the US had been asked by Israel and Jordan to leave a small number of troops in "a totally different section of Syria".
In another part of the country he said US forces were needed to "secure the oil".
There are around 200,000 US troops deployed in conflict areas around the world, despite Mr Trump's promise to bring them home.
US troop numbers in the Gulf have reportedly increased by 14,000 since May, following attacks on Saudi oil tankers blamed on Iran.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that about 3,000 American troops were being sent to "enhance the defence of Saudi Arabia".
Turkey moved against Kurdish-led forces in Syria with the aim of pushing them away from northern Syria and creating a "safe zone" for resettling up to two million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey.
Up to 300,000 people are reported to have fled their homes since the fighting started.
A ceasefire is currently in place to allow for the withdrawal of Kurdish-led forces from the area but is set to run out at 22:00 local time (19:00 GMT) on Tuesday.
Mr Trump has not ruled out the possibility of an extension.
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In a separate development, three current and former defence officials told NBC that the Pentagon had begun drawing up plans for a quick withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan in the event that Mr Trump orders an immediate withdrawal as he did with Syria.
Mr Trump has been heavily criticised over his decision to remove US forces from Syria.
The US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to condemn the move, with both Democrats and Mr Trump's fellow Republicans backing the resolution.
In an opinion piece in the Washington Post, Republican Mitch McConnell said it was a "strategic mistake".
BRUSSELS/DUBLIN/LONDON(Reuters) - In 90 days as British prime minister, Boris Johnson has been humiliated in parliament, drawn mass street protests, tasted heavy defeat in the courts and suffered significant departures from his government, including his own brother.
FILE PHOTO: Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrives for a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in London, Britain October 15, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo
At home, he and his Brexit strategy remain under siege this week as his 11th-hour divorce agreement with the European Union hangs in the balance in a parliament outside his control.
There is one place, however, where he has earned grudging respect over the past few weeks: Brussels. On the other side of the Channel, EU negotiators who once dismissed him as “a clown” now take him seriously and believe he may yet pull it off.
“He’s closer than they have ever been,” an EU diplomat said after a weekend of high drama in the British parliament, where Johnson on Monday was pushing for a vote on his deal after an unexpected delay on Saturday.
“If there is anyone who can do it in the House of Commons, it’s him. If not, we will be back to square one in a few days or weeks,” the diplomat said.
Johnson’s ability to overcome deep European scepticism and salvage the stranded negotiating process was forged during an off-the-record countryside stroll with Ireland’s leader, Leo Varadkar, on Thursday, Oct. 10.
Johnson’s turnaround, insiders on both sides of the talks said, came after the process was on the verge of collapse on Tuesday, Oct. 8.
Just a week earlier, the European side had rejected outright Johnson’s latest proposal to resolve the persistent sticking point of how to deal with the border between Northern Ireland, part of the UK, and Ireland, which remains part of the EU, after Brexit without upsetting a decades-old peace deal.
Johnson’s suggestions were vague and lacked legal foundation, the EU side had said.
The crisis over the so-called Irish backstop, intended to prevent a hard border on the island, seemed insurmountable three weeks before Britain was set to crash out without an agreement.
The low point came during an acrimonious phone call earlier on Oct. 8, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel bluntly told Johnson that the EU would not accept customs checks on the island of Ireland.
Details of the confidential call quickly leaked from a source at 10 Downing Street, upsetting the Germans. Fuming at Merkel’s suggestion, Johnson’s aides unleashed their fury, breaking every diplomatic code in the book and texting reporters: “They aren’t engaging or negotiating seriously.” Another Downing Street source said a deal was “essentially impossible”.
By lunchtime that day, a taunting tweet from European Council President Donald Tusk added a sense of peril: “At stake is the future of Europe and the UK as well as the security and interests of our people. You don’t want a deal, you don’t want an extension, you don’t want to revoke, quo vadis?”
Tusk was telling Johnson he was marching into disaster of a split without an agreement.
At that precise moment Johnson broke from the orthodox Brexit playbook his predecessor Theresa May had stuck to unsuccessfully for more than two years.
That evening, after the Merkel call that one EU diplomatic source called Johnson’s “rendezvous with reality,” he rang Varadkar to set up a meeting.
It “came out of the wreckage of the Merkel call,” one UK source familiar with the conversation said. “We were in the last roll of the dice territory at that stage.”
It turned out to be a political masterstroke from the same man who had been on a path of brinkmanship just days before.
“Johnson left the call feeling the way to a deal was through Varadkar’s heart. But time was running out and he decided clearly to do the impossible – reopen the backstop, get a deal and campaign on a platform of having delivered an orderly Brexit,” said an EU official directly involved in Brexit talks.
They agreed to meet at Thornton Manor, a rustic Elizabethan house near Liverpool in northwest England, where the two strolled side by side down a grassy, tree-lined path among artistically manicured gardens.
“They spent at last half of the three-hour meeting one-on-one,” one Irish source said. “Boris emerged looking for coffee after about 45 minutes and went back in again.”
It was here that Johnson and Varadkar discussed a way to resolve the dreaded Irish backstop, the red line between Britain and the EU that no one had been able to bridge.
“The deal really became possible the minute Johnson dropped the idea of customs checks on the island of Ireland,” another EU diplomat said. “That happened in his meeting with Varadkar in the manor house. It unlocked the whole thing.”
Any doubts on the Irish side about Johnson’s intentions had been virtually erased, with Varadkar coming away saying “that he was certain that the prime minister wanted a deal.”
Johnson used his jovial character to disarm European leaders, who in the end saw past his early diplomatic gaffes and spoke of an affable man of substance. Video footage showed Johnson embracing and laughing with counterparts at the European Council on Thursday, a sharp contrast with May’s awkward and solitary appearance in the chamber just months earlier, when she was also left to eat alone while leaders sat down for an hours-long dinner together.
Once seen as a jester, who put his foot on the table at France’s Elysee Palace ahead of a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and abandoned a press conference with Luxembourg’s leader to avoid heckling protesters - had won credibility.
“It proves you can be both a clown and a statesman at the same time,” another EU diplomat told Reuters.
The man who likened himself to the cartoon character The Incredible Hulk breaking the shackles of EU imprisonment had been underestimated, as Macron put it on Friday at the close of an EU summit in Brussels where the deal was approved by European leaders.
“He may be colorful sometimes but we all are at times,” said Macron. “He’s a character, but he’s a leader with a real strategic vision. Those who didn’t take him seriously were wrong.”
Reporting by Anthony Deutsch, Gabriela Baczynska, John Chalmers and Andreas Rinke in Brussels, Padraic Halpin in Dublin, Elizabeth Piper in London and Michel Rose in Paris; Editing by Bill Rigby
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Monday that the Pentagon was discussing keeping some U.S. troops in parts of northeastern Syria.
Speaking with reporters during a trip to Afghanistan, Esper said that while the withdrawal from northeastern Syria was underway, some troops were still present to ensure oil fields do not fall into the hands of the Islamic State group or other militants.
Esper said he had not presented that option yet to President Donald Trump but that the Pentagon’s job was to look at different options.
Asked whether there was a plan or discussions of keeping a residual force in any part of eastern Syria, Esper responded that it had been discussed.
"There has been a discussion about possibly doing it, there's been no decision with regards to numbers or anything like that," he said.
"My job, the military’s job is to prepare options and then present them to the president and let him decide."
But he added that he had not yet presented the option to the president.
The New York Times reported Sundaythat Trump was in favor of leaving about 200 personnel in the northeast to combat ISIS. The newspaper quoted a senior administration official as saying the Special Forces troops would continue to fight ISIS and would counter Syrian and Russian efforts to take control of the region's oil fields.
Trump has been harshly criticized by Republicans and Democrats alike for his decision this month to remove about 1,000 troops from Syria, representing most of the U.S. military presence in the country. A garrison of about 300 personnel at the U.S. base at Al Tanf in the south wouldn't be affected by the order, administration officials said at the time.
The withdrawal from the Syria-Turkey border allowed Turkey to invade and attack Kurdish forces in Syria. Both Turkey and the Kurdish forces are U.S. allies, but Turkey considers the Kurds an enemy, trapping the United States between the two.
On Saturday, Esper said that all of the nearly 1,000 U.S. troops being removed from northern Syria would head to western Iraq to continue the campaign against ISIS militants.
U.S. soldiers gather during a patrol rehearsal in Manbij, Syria on Nov. 7.Spc. Zoe Garbarino / AP file
Gen. Mazloum Kobani, commander of the Kurdish militia, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, told NBC News he feared that the Turkish campaign in Syria would lead to "ethnic cleansing."
"We trusted them for five years and the continuing war against ISIS, but now [there is] ethnic cleansing against the Kurdish people under their eyes," Kobani said. "If they wanted, they would have interfered to stop it."
The Syrian Democratic Forces have been among the United States' most loyal partners in its campaign against ISIS.
Should Trump decide to keep some forces within Syria, it would be the second time he has reversed course on pulling all U.S. troops out of the region in less than a year.
In the summer of 2004, U.S. soldier Greg Walker drove to a checkpoint just outside of Baghdad's Green Zone with his Kurdish bodyguard, Azaz. When he stepped out of his SUV, three Iraqi guards turned him around at gunpoint.
As he walked back to the vehicle, he heard an AK-47 being racked and a hail of cursing in Arabic and Kurdish. He turned to see Azaz facing off with the Iraqis.
"Let us through or I'll kill you all," Walker recalled his Kurdish bodyguard telling the Iraqi soldiers, who he described as "terrified."
He thought to himself: "This is the kind of ally and friend I want."
Now retired and living in Portland, Oregon, the 66-year-old former Army Special Forces soldier is among legions of U.S. servicemembers with a deep gratitude and respect for Kurdish fighters they served alongside through the Iraq war and, more recently, conflicts with the Islamic State. So he was "furious" when President Donald Trump this month abruptly decided to pull 1,000 U.S. troops from northeast Syria, clearing the way for Turkey to move in on Kurdish-controlled territory.
Walker's rage was echoed in Reuters interviews with a half dozen other current and former U.S. soldiers who have served with Kurdish forces. Mark Giaconia, a 46-year-old former U.S. Army special forces soldier, recalled similar camaraderie with the Kurds he fought with in Iraq more than a decade ago.
"I trusted them with my life," said Giaconia, who now lives in Herndon, Virginia, after retiring from the Army with 20 years of service. "I fought with these guys and watched them die for us."
The Trump administration's decision to "leave them hanging" stirred deep emotions, Giaconia said.
"It's like a violation of trust," he said.
The White House declined to comment.
BIPARTISAN CRITICISM
Trump's abrupt decision to pull back U.S. troops from along the Syria-Turkey border allowed Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to launch an offensive into the region aimed at creating a 20 mile (32 km) "safe zone" clear of the Kurdish YPG militia. The Kurdish fighters had been Washington's main ally in the region but the Turkish government regards them as a terrorist group.
In the face of criticism from both Democrats and his own Republicans, Trump defended the move, saying that it fulfilled a campaign promise to reduce foreign troop presence and asserting that the Kurds were "not angels."
The Kurds pivoted quickly, allying themselves with Syria to try to hold off the Turkish onslaught.
Trump then sent Vice President Michael Pence to Ankara to negotiate a pause in the fighting that the United States said would allow the Kurds to pull back from the area Turkey aimed to take, and which Turkey said achieved the main goal of the assault it launched Oct. 9.
Congressional Republicans - including Senator Lindsey Graham, normally a staunch Trump ally - fretted that the move would risk allowing the Islamic State militant group to resurge.
"Congress is going to speak with a very firm, singular voice," Graham said at a Thursday news conference to unveil legislation to impose new sanctions on the Turkish government. He said the "Turkish outrage" would lead to the re-emergence of Islamic State, the destruction of an ally - the Kurds - and eventually benefit Iran at the expense of Israel.
The House of Representatives voted 354 to 60 last week to condemn Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from northeastern Syria - a rare case of Republicans voting en masse against Trump. A Senate vote on the resolution was blocked, however, by Republican Senator Rand Paul.
Paul, a senator from Kentucky, has voiced his support Trump's withdrawal of troops, saying during a Senate hearing on Thursday that "the Constitution is quite clear, no authorization has ever been given for the use of forces in Syria."
HISTORY OF 'BETRAYAL'
Some of the U.S. soldiers interviewed by Reuters pointed out that the United States has history of forging alliances with Kurdish forces only to later abandon them. In the 1970s, the administration of President Richard Nixon secretly agreed to funnel money to Iraqi Kurds fighting for autonomy from Iraq, only to drop that aid after Iraq and Iran reached a peace treaty to end border disputes in 1975.
Likewise after the 1991 Gulf War, a Kurdish uprising against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein eventually led to a brutal crackdown after U.S. forces left the region.
Those incidents came up often among Kurds who fought alongside a U.S. Army soldier who did several tours in the Middle East.
"Even then, they were bringing up the 1991 betrayal of the Kurds. This idea of betraying the Kurds was something that was very, very front of mind," said the soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity since he is still in the military. "There was definitely some skepticism of our support of them long term."
Kurds have come to know betrayal, said Kardos Dargala, a 38-year-old Iraqi Kurd whose relationship with the U.S. military dates back to 2004 and the second U.S. invasion of Iraq.
"Feeling betrayed, throughout history it is a very familiar pattern," said Dargala, who worked as a security contractor for the U.S. military until 2008 - when he immigrated to the United States, joined the U.S. Army, and was deployed to Afghanistan.
Dargala, a U.S. citizen, was injured multiple times in combat. He returned to Iraq earlier this year to spend time with family members who are unable to travel to the United States.
The president's withdrawal of troops from Syria left him in disbelief. Dargala said Trump's decision ran counter to U.S. values and interests and sent the wrong message to its allies.
"The path the president is on," he said, "is a very destructive path."
(Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Brian Thevenot)
LONDON – Prime Minister Boris Johnson is hoping British lawmakers on Monday will vote on and pass a Brexit withdrawal agreement he negotiated with the European Union after a weekend vote was sabotaged by opposition and rebel parliamentarians.
In an unexpected twist to Brexit's months-long stalemate, parliamentarians Saturday forced Johnson to ask the EU for an extension to his Oct. 31 Brexit deadline.
They want more time to scrutinize the legislation and to make sure there is sufficient time to implement it so a so-called no-deal Brexit can be completely ruled out.
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Johnson was forced by law to send a letter to the EU requesting an extension, which the EU has not yet granted, but he did not sign it and he made it clear that he was against any form of postponement to leaving the 28-nation bloc by Halloween.
Now Johnson wants Parliament to hold the vote on Monday. However, that is up to Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow, who has not yet approved it.
Johnson's government could also try to push ahead with implementing legislation for the deal he agreed with the EU before Parliament has indicated whether it will approve it, although for Brexit to happen lawmakers will need to first pass judgment on the deal, according to Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London.
A vote in Parliament on Johnson's deal is theoretically the last major obstacle to winning approval for Britain's exit from the EU three years after a national referendum that has divided Britain. Theresa May stepped down as prime minister after repeatedly failing to get lawmakers to approve her divorce deal. And her predecessor, David Cameron, resigned after failing to predict the political chaos that Brexit would leash.
Johnson's deal resembles May's, although he has replaced the "backstop" – measures to prevent a post-Brexit return to a "hard" border between EU member Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom – with "alternative arrangements" that allow some customs checks to take place on the UK mainland.
Frictionless trade between Ireland and Northern Ireland is one of the things that underpins the Good Friday Agreement, a peace deal between the British and Irish governments, and most of the political parties in Northern Ireland.
Under a so-called no-deal Brexit, many of the laws and regulations that have governed Britain's four-decade relationship with the EU, from trade to security, would effectively evaporate overnight. Economists believe that it would significantly harm Britain's economy and threaten chaos on its borders. The British government claims that it has made adequate emergency preparations to cover just-in-time supply chains on which Britain relies for access to some fresh foods and essential medicines.
