India, UAE sign pact on trans-continental trade corridor

WARSAW: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Friday said his government would draw up plans to deport migrants who break the law of the EU country as Poland nears a key presidential election in May.
Tusk also reiterated criticism of the EU migrant relocation scheme during a press conference in the port city of Gdansk alongside European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.
“Anyone who is hosted in Poland, takes advantage of our hospitality and violently violates the law will be deported from Poland,” Tusk said.
He added that the government was working on a “plan for an immediate response to organized crime and violent crime carried out by foreigners.”
He said an outline of the plan, drawn up by the justice and interior ministries, would be presented in the coming days.
Tusk, whose centrist camp faces an electoral threat from the nationalists in the May presidential vote, has in past months vowed to suspend asylum rights partially and backed curbing benefits for Ukrainian refugees.
On Friday, he also said Poland would not accept any “burdens” related to the EU migrant relocation scheme.
Last year, the EU significantly overhauled asylum rules, requiring member states to remove thousands of asylum-seekers from “frontline” states such as Italy and Greece.
Alternatively, they could provide money or other resources to under-pressure nations.
“If anyone in Europe were to say that Poland should take on even more burdens, then no matter who it is, I will tell them that Poland will not fulfill that. The end,” Tusk said.
He said Poland had already “opened its borders and hearts to two million refugees from Ukraine” following the Russian invasion and was facing illegal migration across its border with Belarus.
States in eastern Europe have accused Russia and its ally Belarus of pushing thousands of migrants over their borders in recent years as part of a campaign to destabilize Europe.

LONDON: British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Friday warned that US President Donald Trump’s moves to freeze foreign aid and dismantle the USAID agency could see “China and others step into that gap.”
The UK’s top diplomat pointed to reforms by Britain’s previous Conservative government to its foreign aid program as “a big strategic mistake” which the new Trump administration should “look closely at.”
In 2020 the UK government closed down the Department for International Development (DfID) and subsumed it into the Foreign Office, before slashing the aid budget the following year.
The moves earned widespread criticism at the time from aid groups and others in the sector, as well as the countries’ opposition parties.
“What I can say to American friends is it’s widely accepted that the decision by the UK with very little preparation to close down DfID, to suspend funding in the short term or give many global partners little heads up, was a big strategic mistake,” Lammy told the Guardian.
“We have spent years unraveling that strategic mistake. Development remains a very important soft power tool. And in the absence of development... I would be very worried that China and others step into that gap,” he added.
“So I would caution US friends to look closely at what went wrong in the United Kingdom as they navigate this decision.”
Trump on Friday called for the United States Agency for International Development to be shut down, in an escalation of his unprecedented campaign to dismantle the massive government aid agency that has prompted confusion and chaos among its global network.
His administration has already frozen foreign aid and ordered thousands of foreign-based staff to return to the United States, with reported impacts on the ground steadily growing.