UK Foreign Minister Cameron to Visit Jordan, Egypt This Week 

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron meets with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi (not pictured), in Amman, Jordan December 20, 2023. (Reuters)
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron meets with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi (not pictured), in Amman, Jordan December 20, 2023. (Reuters)
TT

UK Foreign Minister Cameron to Visit Jordan, Egypt This Week 

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron meets with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi (not pictured), in Amman, Jordan December 20, 2023. (Reuters)
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron meets with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi (not pictured), in Amman, Jordan December 20, 2023. (Reuters)

British foreign minister David Cameron will travel to Jordan and Egypt this week to push for a sustainable ceasefire and further humanitarian pauses in Gaza, the foreign office said on Wednesday.

Cameron, on his second visit to the region, will travel with Britain's Minister of State for the Middle East Tariq Ahmad and "progress efforts to secure the release of all hostages, step up aid to Gaza and end Hamas rocket attacks and threats against Israel."

In Jordan, Cameron will meet his counterpart Ayman Safadi and in Egypt, he will travel to Al Arish, near the Egypt-Gaza border, to see the impact of UK aid being sent to Gaza.

On Sunday, Britain, the European Union and more than a dozen partner countries including Australia and Canada, called on Israel to take immediate and concrete steps to tackle settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

Last week, Cameron announced that those responsible for settler violence against Palestinians would be banned from entering Britain, following a similar plan by the EU.



Lebanon's Caretaker Prime Minister Visits Military Positions in the Country's South

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (C) arrives with cabinet ministers for a meeting at Benoit Barakat barracks in Tyre, southern Lebanon, 07 December 2024. (EPA)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (C) arrives with cabinet ministers for a meeting at Benoit Barakat barracks in Tyre, southern Lebanon, 07 December 2024. (EPA)
TT

Lebanon's Caretaker Prime Minister Visits Military Positions in the Country's South

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (C) arrives with cabinet ministers for a meeting at Benoit Barakat barracks in Tyre, southern Lebanon, 07 December 2024. (EPA)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (C) arrives with cabinet ministers for a meeting at Benoit Barakat barracks in Tyre, southern Lebanon, 07 December 2024. (EPA)

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has begun a tour of military positions in the country’s south, almost a month after a ceasefire deal that ended the war between Israel and the Hezbollah group that battered the country.
Najib Mikati on Monday was on his first visit to the southern frontlines, where Lebanese soldiers under the US-brokered deal are expected to gradually deploy, with Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops both expected to withdraw by the end of next month, The Associated Press said.
Mikati’s tour comes after the Lebanese government expressed its frustration over ongoing Israeli strikes and overflights in the country.
“We have many tasks ahead of us, the most important being the enemy's (Israel's) withdrawal from all the lands it encroached on during its recent aggression,” he said after meeting with army chief Joseph Aoun in a Lebanese military barracks in the southeastern town of Marjayoun. “Then the army can carry out its tasks in full.”
The Lebanese military for years has relied on financial aid to stay functional, primarily from the United States and other Western countries. Lebanon’s cash-strapped government is hoping that the war’s end and ceasefire deal will bring about more funding to increase the military’s capacity to deploy in the south, where Hezbollah’s armed units were notably present.
Though they were not active combatants, the Lebanese military said that dozens of its soldiers were killed in Israeli strikes on their premises or patrolling convoys in the south. The Israeli army acknowledged some of these attacks.