By Michael Martina and David Lawder

WASHINGTON -U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Thursday declined to say if Taiwan would be invited to join the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific economic plan, spurring Senate criticism that excluding the island would be a missed opportunity.

Taiwan has voiced its desire to be a “full member” in the forthcoming Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), one part of the administration’s effort to counter what it says is Beijing’s increasing economic and military coercion in the region.

The administration says the still fledgling IPEF aims to be inclusive, but it has not publicly detailed any membership plans. IPEF is intended as a flexible economic framework that would align members on supply chain security, infrastructure, labor standards, clean energy and other issues.

Tai, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, called Taiwan an essential partner, but that no decisions had been made on membership.

“On the point of Taiwan, we are in general in conversations with those who are interested in joining this framework,” Tai said when asked by Senator Bob Menendez if the island would be invited to join the framework.

“Participation in the IPEF is still under consideration, and as far as I’m aware no decisions have been made,” said Tai, the U.S.-born daughter of immigrants from Taiwan.

Menendez responded that the democratically governed island claimed by China was a key strategic and trading partner intertwined with U.S. economic security.

“I get a sense from that answer that we will not include Taiwan within the IPEF, which is missing an opportunity,” he said.

The exchange followed a March 30 letter from 200 members of Congress from both parties, including Republicans Michael McCaul, Liz Cheney, and Elise Stefanik, and Democrats Ted Lieu, Ro Khanna, and Elissa Slotkin, urging Tai and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo to invite Taiwan to join IPEF.

“Taiwan’s inclusion would also send a clear signal that the United States stands with its allies and partners, and will not be bullied by the PRC,” the representatives said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

The letter https://sires.house.gov/sites/sires.house.gov/files/documents/Taiwan%20IPEF%20Final.pdf was posted on the official Congress website of Democratic Congressman Albio Sires, who also signed it.

Some analysts argue Taiwan’s participation in the plan could make countries in the region hesitant to join for fear of angering Beijing, which opposes the idea as a tool for Washington to try to contain China’s rise.

Raimondo told members of the Senate Finance Committee last week that the administration was not contemplating Taiwan’s inclusion at this time, according to two sources with knowledge of the closed-door meeting where she made the remark.

“I think it speaks to a broader issue that our trade agenda is sometimes just out of whack with our foreign policy agenda,” one of the sources said.

The Commerce Department referred a Reuters request for comment to the White House National Security Council, which also said no decisions had been made on membership.

Taiwan’s de-facto embassy in Washington declined to comment on Raimondo’s remark, but a spokesman said: “Regarding IPEF, Taiwan continues to exchange views with the U.S. through existing economic and trade mechanisms and channels.”

Though it doesn’t have formal ties with Washington, Taiwan is one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies and economies, and is a dominant producer of semiconductors crucial to global supply chains.

(Reporting by Michael Martina and David Lawder; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

By Vitalii Hnidyi and Pavel Polityuk

TROSTYANETS/LVIV, Ukraine – President Vladimir Putin threatened on Thursday to halt contracts supplying Europe with a third of its gas unless they are paid in Russian currency, his strongest economic riposte so far to crushing Western sanctions over his invasion of Ukraine.

European governments rejected Putin’s ultimatum for Friday, with the continent’s biggest recipient of Russian gas, Germany, calling it “blackmail”. Moscow did, however, offer a mechanism for buyers to obtain roubles via a Russian bank.

The energy showdown has huge ramifications for Europe as U.S. officials circle the globe to keep pressure on Putin to stop a five-week invasion that has uprooted a quarter of Ukraine’s population.

Europe wants to wean itself off Russian energy but that risks further inflating soaring fuel prices. Russia has a key revenue source at stake even as it reels from sanctions.

Facing stiff resistance from Ukraine’s military, Putin has played one of his biggest cards in the demand on European energy buyers.

“They must open rouble accounts in Russian banks. It is from these accounts that payments will be made for gas delivered starting from tomorrow,” Putin said.

“If such payments are not made (in roubles), we will consider this a default on the part of buyers, with all the ensuing consequences … existing contracts will be stopped.”

‘BATTLES AHEAD’

Putin sent troops on Feb. 24 for what he calls a “special military operation” to demilitarise Ukraine. Western countries say Putin’s real aim was to topple Ukraine’s government.

At talks this week, Moscow said it would reduce offensives near the capital Kyiv and in the north as a goodwill gesture and focus on “liberating” the southeastern Donbas region.

Kyiv and its allies say Russia is instead trying to regroup after taking losses from a Ukrainian counter-offensive that has recaptured suburbs of the capital plus strategic areas in the northeast and southwest.

In a late night address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned of “battles ahead” in Donbas and the besieged southern port city of Mariupol.

“We still need to go down a very difficult path to get everything we want,” Zelenskiy said.

Peace negotiations are set to resume by video conference on Friday. Seeking to bolster its position, Moscow is redeploying forces from Russian-backed breakaway regions in Georgia to Ukraine, Britain’s defence ministry wrote on Twitter.

The reinforcements indicated Russia had sustained unexpected losses, it said.

ENERGY CRISIS?

With the war exacerbating global fuel prices, President Joe Biden launched the largest release ever from the U.S. oil reserve and challenged oil giants to drill more.

“This is a moment of consequence and peril for the world,” Biden said as he announced a release of 180 million barrels starting in May. But that amount fails to cover a U.S. loss of Russian oil, which Biden banned this month.

Western governments say Putin’s demand for rouble payments would be a breach of contracts in euros or dollars.

An order signed by Putin allows customers to send foreign currency to a designated account at Russia’s Gazprombank, which would then return roubles for the gas buyer to make payment.

“Russia would have to physically halt gas flows to EU 27 (European Union member states) to force the issue, marking a major escalation not even performed at the height of the Cold War. It would mark another major financial blow to Russia’s coffers,” said analysts at Fitch Solutions.

U.S. and European officials say Putin has been misled by generals about his military’s dire performance.

The U.S. ambassador in Moscow, John Sullivan, told Reuters that the United States and Russia were “in the Mariana Trench as far as diplomatic relations go,” referring to the deepest place on Earth.

In a show of support for Ukraine’s government, EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola said late on Thursday that she was on her way to Kyiv.

‘THE CHILDREN ARE SHAKING’

The war has been particularly fierce in Mariupol, a gateway to the Black Sea which links a strategic corridor between Donbas and the Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula.

The mayor’s office estimates 5,000 people have died.

Tens of thousands have been trapped for weeks with scant food, water and other supplies in the city that was once home to 400,000 people but has been pulverised by bombardment.

In a Russian-held part of Mariupol, people climbed out of cellars to appear, ghostlike, among the ruins. One man named Pavel placed a bowl and spoon as a tribute on a makeshift grave in a patch of grass, marked with a plain wooden cross.

“Our friend. March 16. Driving in a car. A bullet hit him in the throat. He was dead in five minutes,” he said.

Elsewhere, there was evidence of Ukraine’s successful counter-attack in Trostyanets, an eastern town. Burned-out Russian tanks and abandoned ammunition littered muddy roads.

“We spent 30 days in the basement with small children. The children are shaking, even still,” said a woman named Larisa.

Ukraine’s state nuclear company said all Russian forces that occupied the Chernobyl nuclear station had left the defunct plant, possibly concerned over radiation.

Britain and the United States imposed sanctions on Russian media outlets and the country’s technology sector. Canada said Russia cannot be a constructive partner in the G20, a group composed of most of the world’s largest economies.

“The bottom line is: It can’t be business as usual to have Vladimir Putin just sitting around the table pretending that everything’s okay,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Peter Graff, Andrew Cawthorne and Rami Ayyub; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel, Alexandra Hudson and Daniel Wallis)

By Andrea Shalal and David Lawder

WASHINGTON -Senior U.S. officials fanned out this week to press world leaders to keep piling pressure on Moscow or join the campaign of sanctions and other measures, as the war in Ukraine enters its fifth week and the initial economic shock to Russia seems to be ebbing.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo met with senior officials in London, Brussels and Paris, and will finish the week in Berlin; the deputy national security adviser for international economics, Daleep Singh, pressed Indian officials in New Delhi, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the Ukraine war with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan in Morocco.

The effort comes as the initial impact of unexpectedly tough sanctions on Russian banks, oligarchs and companies begins to wear off somewhat, and the United States considers its next economic steps to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Within days of cutting off key Russian banks from the international SWIFT financial transactions network and immobilizing the bulk of the Russian central bank’s $630 billion foreign exchange war chest, the rouble lost half its value, prompting U.S. officials to declare that Moscow was battling a financial crisis.

But a month later, the rouble has largely recovered to its level just before the invasion, propped up partly by Russian capital controls, government orders for export firms to sell foreign currency and companies gathering funds to make quarter-end tax payments. Shares on Russia’s stock market are trading again, although they have dropped in value.

Russian bank VTB, a principal sanctions target, remains open for business in Europe, where it has gathered billions of euros in deposits, mainly from German savers. Other Russian banks are considering China’s UnionPay credit card system after Visa and Mastercard suspended Russian operations.

And the sanctions thus far have left Russia’s biggest economic lifeline untouched – energy sales to Europe, which could be up to 500 million euros ($555 million) a day at current prices. Russia is demanding payments in roubles for gas starting on Friday, which could boost the currency further.

The Biden administration is making sure European allies are firmly aligned on punishing Putin, while working to sway leaders who have sat on the sidelines as the war stretches on, officials say.

“We’ve got to continue to raise pressure on Russia and increase our support for Ukraine,” one senior U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “This is a challenge that is facing the free world and all democratic nations. And we need to be prepared for it to last a long time.”

COUNTERING CHINA, WARNING INDIA

The visits follow closely on the heels of Biden’s visit to Europe last week and come as Russia and China – the world’s second largest economy – draw ever closer together. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday, reaffirming Beijing’s plans to continue bilateral ties and boost cooperation.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Adeyemo’s discussions with his European counterparts centered on sanctions, the impact of India and China on Russia’s potential sanctions evasion efforts, and how to help countries like Germany cover their energy needs in the event of a Russian embargo, said one European official.

In Brussels, officials discussed steps to “align sanctions implementation and enforcement, expand joint cooperation on sanctions, and further deepen the transatlantic sanctions alliance,” Treasury said.

One key issue was Russia’s demand that foreign buyers pay for their Russian gas imports in roubles starting Friday or face supply cutoffs, the European official said. European capitals have rejected the demand, and the German government said it amounted to “blackmail.”

It is imperative the United States keep tending its relationships with allies, said Catherine Novelli, a former senior U.S. trade official and diplomat, underscoring the difficulty to maintaining the momentum of sanctions and other punitive measures after the initial outrage wanes.

In India, White House economic adviser Singh, who led efforts to coordinate the Western response to the war, told officials Washington would not set any red lines about purchasing oil, but warned against rapid acceleration of purchases.

India has a military dependence on Russian technology and hardware and has tried to balance its long-standing ties with Russia and the West. Unlike other members of the Quad group of countries – the United States, Japan, Australia – it has not imposed sanctions on Russia.

Singh spoke ahead of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s arrival in the Indian capital for a two-day trip.

($1 = 0.9034 euro)

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, David Lawder in Washington, Mark John in London and John O’Donnell in Frankfurt; Editing by Heather Timmons, Jonathan Oatis and Lincoln Feast.)

By Laura Gottesdiener and Lizbeth Diaz

REYNOSA, Mexico -News the United States is poised to end a pandemic-related border expulsion policy is buoying hopes of thousands of migrants who have waited months in Mexico for a chance to seek asylum in the United States.

U.S. health officials are set to announce plans this week to terminate the order, known as Title 42, in May, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

More than a million migrants have been expelled under the order since it was put in place in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the policy, U.S. border agents rapidly send people back to Mexico or other countries, often within hours after being apprehended, without giving them a chance to ask for refuge, a process rights groups say unlawfully denies them access to asylum.

In a public plaza in Reynosa, Mexico, nearly 2,000 migrants are camping in tents or under tarps right across the U.S. border from McAllen, Texas. Most are from South and Central America and the Caribbean, and have fled violence or persecution in their home countries.

On Thursday morning, under a beating sun, about a dozen migrants lined up to see volunteer health workers in the camp. A group of women fried fish over an open flame and children ran around, playing with marbles, racing scooters and sweeping up trash.

Aile Rodriguez, 32, has family in McAllen but has been waiting since last August at the camp with her three children, aged 8, 13, and 15. She said they fled Honduras because of gang threats to their family and hope to seek asylum in the United States. “I want to enter legally,” she said. “That’s why we’ve suffered here for seven months.”

U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has kept Title 42 in place since taking office in January 2021, even as he pledged to reverse the hardline immigration policies of his Republican predecessor, President Donald Trump.

Immigration advocates, health experts and fellow Democrats have decried the order saying it violates migrants’ rights while exposing them to danger in Mexico.

Glendy Juana de Leon, 30, from Guatemala said she was denied a chance to ask for asylum when she crossed the border in July. She has spent the nine months since her expulsion in the Reynosa camp with her eight-year-old son. She said she left home after death threats from her husband, who is in jail for domestic violence but is slated to be released soon.

“I have all my documents, from the hospital, from the police in Guatemala, but they didn’t look at any of them,” she said. “God willing they’ll change,” she said, “and ask us why we fled.”

THOUSANDS WAITING

On the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana, Mexico across from San Diego, California, Enrique Lucero, the municipal director of migrant services said he estimates there are thousands of migrants waiting to make their case for asylum.

“This gives them hope,” said Jose Maria Garcia, the director of Tijuana’s Movimiento Juventud 2000 shelter, referring to the plans to lift Title 42.

Garcia and other immigrant advocates have long criticized the policy and are cheering its end. But Garcia acknowledged the decision could strain the border’s already crowded shelters if more migrants head north.

“Most of the shelters are already at capacity,” he said.

Republicans have criticized Biden’s immigration policies as the number of migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border broke records last year and is set to rise further this year.

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on Thursday said ending Title 42 would “effectively throw our borders wide open,” and “spark a humanitarian and security crisis like we’ve never seen.” The move could become a major attack point as his party seeks to win a majority in the November congressional elections.

Democrats have argued that the United States must welcome, not block, asylum seekers. U.S. Representative Judy Chu from California said the order’s use has been “a shameful time in our country’s history.”

But U.S. and Mexican officials say not all migrants have valid asylum claims, which is narrowly defined in U.S. law.

Esteban Moctezuma, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, said at an event in Washington that if Title 42 is lifted, migrants who aren’t seeking refuge should be sent home to prevent a “revolving door” at the border.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City and Laura Gottesdiener in Reynosa; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Aurora Ellis)