Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday called upon the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and China to "step in" and "mediate" between Russia and Ukraine to stop the ongoing war.

"We are all worried about what's going on there. May I suggest that during their discussions, the foreign ministers, we should think about how we can mediate? How we can bring about a cease-fire, and put an end to the conflict," Khan said, while addressing the 48th session of the OIC Foreign Ministers' Conference in the capital Islamabad.

"I'm going to meet His Excellency Wang Yi (Chinese Foreign Minister) after this (summit) and I want to discuss how they (OIC) along with China can all step in and try to stop this (war)," Khan went on to say.

"This conflict which is going to have -- if it keeps going the way it is -- it will have great consequences for the rest of the world ... We already suffering. Oil prices have gone up. Gas prices have shot up, wheat prices have gone up because of this war," he further said, warning that if the war continues "this is only going to get worse."

"So, therefore ... all the countries which are non-partisan ... we are in a special position to be able to influence this conflict," he added.

Islamophobia

Voicing concern over the growing phenomenon of Islamophobia and attacks on Muslims, the premier lamented that the Muslim world has failed to counter this "wrong narrative."

"Where did this Islamophobia grow and was allowed to keep growing after 9/11? What happened after 9/11? Unfortunately, this narrative of Islamic terrorism, Islamic radicalization, radicalism. This narrative went on unchecked," he said.

"I'm sorry to say that we the Muslim countries did not do anything to check this wrong narrative. How can any religion have anything to do with terrorism? How was Islam equated to terrorism?" he said.

"Unfortunately, what should have been done -- and (it) wasn't (done) -- was (that) the heads of Muslim countries should have taken a stand on this. But instead, a lot of heads of state kept saying things like 'well, we are moderate'," he went on to say.

"And guess who suffered? Muslims living in Western countries. They kept suffering because any incident would happen. Any terrorist incident by a Muslim immediately meant that every Muslim became branded," he said.

Palestine and Kashmir

Khan contended that the Muslim world has failed the people of Palestine and Kashmir.

"We are not talking about conquering some country, we (are) simply talking about the human rights of Palestinians and Kashmiris," he said.

"I'm sad to say that we have been able to make no impact at all. They don't take us seriously. We are a divided house. And those powers know it we are 1.5 billion people. And yet a voice to stop this blatant injustice is insignificant," he said.

Condemning arch-rival India for scrapping the decades-long semi-autonomous status of the Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019, Khan said: "The international community promised them the right to decide their own destiny through a plebiscite. That right was never given to them. In fact, this special status of Kashmir was taken away illegally by India on Aug. 5, 2019."

"It's a war crime, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention to change the demography of unoccupied land. India is changing the demography of Kashmir by making the Muslims from a majority to a minority by bringing in settlers from outside," he said.

Without altering their respective foreign policies, he suggested, the OIC member states should have a common stand on core issues confronting the Muslim world.

"I am not talking about altering or foreign policies all of us (countries) have a different foreign policy. But on core issues, unless we have a united front, we will let these abuses happen.

"Like in Palestine, I mean it's daylight robbery going on in Palestine."

Afghanistan

Khan urged the OIC and the international community to jointly work to "stabilize" Afghanistan.

"No nation has suffered as the people of Afghanistan have by 40 years of conflict," he said, calling for the withdrawal of sanctions on the Taliban government.

This, he opined, is the only way to stop "international terrorism" from Afghan soil./aa

Environmental developments worldwide in February 2022

A number of reports on climate change and its growing impact were released in February along with encouraging initiatives and pledges for environmental protection.

A list of environmental developments, reports and events compiled by Anadolu Agency is as follows:

Feb. 1:

- Water level at Zambia's Victoria Falls significantly increases thanks to the prevailing good rainfall in the southern African nation.

- Bangladesh suspends two chief officers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Safari Park in Gazipur city over the deaths of 11 zebras.

- Tons of extra medical waste from the COVID-19 pandemic response put global health waste management systems under tremendous pressure, threatening human and environmental health, says the World Health Organization.

Feb. 2:

- The UN’s specialized agency for information and communication technologies launches a new community platform driven by artificial intelligence that aims to step up global collaboration on the use of AI to advance sustainable development.

Feb. 3:

- The Amazon rainforest saw its worst level of deforestation in January, with around 360 square kilometers (139 square miles) of forest lost, according to data released by Brazil's national space research institute.

Feb. 4:

- Extreme weather events across Europe cause the deaths of up to 145,000 people in the last four decades, according to a report by the EU’s environment agency.

Feb. 7:

- Drought in Somalia escalates, and the country is "staring at a potential catastrophe," says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Feb. 8:

- A severe drought that hit the Horn of Africa region kills thousands of livestock and left millions of people facing extreme famine, according to a World Food Program report.

- The United Nations Children’s Fund projects that up to 20 million people in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia will need water and food assistance in the next six months as the driest conditions in four decades afflict the region.

Feb. 10:

- Germany appoints Jennifer Morgan as Greenpeace International's executive director, making her the country's first special climate envoy.

Feb. 18:

- The number of people displaced by the current drought in Somalia doubled in January from 245,000 to 554,500, according to the UN.

Feb. 21:

- Turkiye's first climate council kicked off with the aim to form a roadmap in line with the Paris Agreement to reach the 2053 net-zero emissions target.

Feb. 22:

- The Climate Law, for which preparations are underway, will be framework legislation that will shape Turkiye's environment for the next 100 years, says the urbanization and climate change minister.

Feb. 25:

- A model green village in Tanzania's smoke-belching city of Dar es Salaam unveils its sustainability plans, outlining aggressive actions it will take to address urgent environmental challenges in order to create a better future.

Feb. 28:

- Climate adaptation investments need to speed up to restore degraded ecosystems effectively and equitably, given that climate change affects the lives of billions of people worldwide, says the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change./aa

Authorities in northern Iraq's Nineveh province said Monday they had discovered the remains of 143 unidentified people killed between 2014-2017 when the Daesh/ISIS terrorist group was in control of the region.

The Civil Defense Directorate in the province said a mass grave was found in the Er-Rifaai area of the city of Mosul and the bodies were later referred to a forensic institute.

It is estimated that there are corpses of 6,000 to 12,000 people in mass graves in Iraq.

In June 2014, the terrorist group had full control of provinces including Mosul, Saladin and Anbar while also holding some parts of Diyala and Kirkuk./aa

The European Union's (EU) natural gas, oil and coal imports from Russia since the beginning of the war in Ukraine have hit approximately €17 billion ($18.7 billion), according to data collated by Anadolu Agency on Monday from live tracker published by Europe Beyond Coal with Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) analysis.

The cost of natural gas imports via Ukraine, along with liquefied natural gas (LNG), has reached €10.6 billion since the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Data from Russian gas company Gazprom shows that gas flows to the EU via Ukraine stood at 62 million cubic meters on Feb. 23, reached 110 million cubic meters on Feb. 25, and 109 million cubic meters on Feb. 26.

The data reveals that the level of gas flow transmission has been in the range of 100-110 million cubic meters since the beginning of the war.

Sergey Kupriyanov, the spokesman of Gazprom, confirmed last week that gas flow of around 105 million cubic meters to the EU via Ukraine is progressing at "routine levels".

Despite harsh economic sanctions against Russia by the US, UK and the EU, the EU has so far excluded the energy sector from sanctions due to its significant dependence on Russian imports. Nonetheless, the US banned the import of Russian oil, LNG and coal, while the UK agreed to phase out oil imports from Russia by the end of the year.

The EU’s new energy strategy, REPowerEU, aims to reduce the EU's gas imports from Russia by nearly two-thirds by the end of 2022 and to make Europe independent from all Russian fossil fuels well before 2030.

According to the International Energy Agency, the EU imported an average of over 380 million cubic meters per day of gas by pipeline from Russia in 2021, equivalent to around 140 billion cubic meters annually, along with around 15 billion cubic meters of LNG.

The 155 billion cubic meters of gas imported from Russia accounted for around 45% of the EU's imports in 2021 and almost 40% of its total gas consumption.

EU largest buyer of Russian oil

The EU's oil imports neared €5.8 billion while coal amounted to €436 million since the war started, the live tracker showed.

Russia is the world's largest oil exporter supplying approximately 8% of global demand. The EU is the world's second-largest importer and the largest buyer of Russian oil, according to Bruegel, a Brussels-based think-tank.

In a recent analysis, Bruegel conveyed that Russia's oil infrastructure was built to serve eastern European markets, namely via the Druzhba oil pipeline that directly feeds six refineries in the EU.

Russia has a 70% share in the EU's imports of thermal coal, while Germany and Poland are particularly reliant on thermal coal from Russia.

"While stopping Russian gas imports would be difficult and costly, but feasible, it will likely be less painful for the EU to manage a complete interruption of Russian oil and coal imports. Oil and coal are more global and liquid markets than gas, and rely less on rigid infrastructure like Europe's gas import pipelines," Bruegel said in the analysis.

The think-tank warned that although a European halt to Russian oil and coal supplies would have substantial global second-round effects in higher prices, nonetheless, it said Europe would be able to attract more crude oil, oil products, and coal being a wealthy continent compared to emerging and developing economies, which would find it increasingly difficult./aa

The US said Monday it has "clear evidence" that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine as its military aggression against the East European nation nears one month.

At a press conference, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said there is an investigative process and the US will contribute to it to document the war crimes by helping gather evidence of them.

"We certainly see clear evidence that Russian forces are committing more crimes, and we are helping with the collecting of evidence of that," he told a press briefing. "As for what would come out of that, that's not a decision that the Pentagon leadership would make."

Earlier, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said it is Russia who is carrying out an "unprovoked and unjustified" war on Ukraine.

"We're seeing clear evidence that they're intentionally targeting civilians and committing indiscriminate attacks. The president’s comments speak to the horror, of the brutality that Russia and President (Vladimir) Putin are inflicting," she added.

Last week, Biden called Putin a "war criminal.”

Russia's war against Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24, has been roundly denounced by the international community and has been met with biting Western and allied sanctions and export controls. The economic fallout has been exacerbated by an exodus of global firms from Russia.

At least 925 civilians have been killed during the war and 1,496 have been injured, according to the UN's tally.

The international body warns, however, that the true toll is "considerably higher."/aa

The US has determined that the Myanmar military's violence against the country's Rohingya minority constitutes "genocide" and crimes against humanity, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Monday.

The announcement comes roughly five years after the military, which is formally known as the Tatmadaw, dramatically escalated its clampdown on the Muslim minority group. Over 1.2 million Rohingya have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar since, and tens of thousands were killed.

Speaking at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Blinken announced just the eighth genocide determination in US history, saying the Tatmadaw carried out "widespread and systematic" attacks against the Rohingya, including the razing of villages, mass killings and rape, torture "and other horrific abuses."

Based on internal findings within the State Department and outside documentation from rights groups, Blinken said the evidence he reviewed "points to a clear intent behind these mass atrocities, the intent to destroy Rohingya, in a whole or in part."

That intent is corroborated not just by the accounts of former soldiers who defected, but also the military's very efforts to prevent Rohingya from escaping the systemic violence, Blinken said.

"This demonstrates the military’s intent went beyond ethnic cleansing to the actual destruction of Rohingya," the top diplomat said.

"Percentages, numbers, patterns, intent. These are critically important to reach the determination of genocide. But at the same time, we must remember that behind each of these numbers are countless individual acts of cruelty and inhumanity," he added.

Additional sanctions are expected to be applied under the US determination on the already heavily-blacklisted Myanmar junta.

The US determination comes as the UN's top court resumed in February its proceedings to determine if Myanmar is responsible for genocide.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has been hearing the case, which was brought by Gambia, and accuses Myanmar of violating the Genocide Convention in its brutal crackdown on the Rohingya community, for over two years.

Blinken said the US has provided Gambia with information to bolster its case, which he said is an effort to "lay the foundation for future accountability."

In January 2020, the ICJ imposed “provisional measures,” ordering the end to genocidal practices against the Rohingya.

Myanmar was being represented in the case by former State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi, who was overthrown in the Tatmadaw's February 2021 coup, and has been jailed by the junta on various charges.

The military takeover has triggered mass protests in Myanmar in which junta forces have killed more than 1,500 people in a crackdown on dissent, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a local monitoring group./aa