Region

CAIRO — Egypt on Sunday appointed a new ambassador to Israel to fill a post that had been vacant since ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi recalled the previous envoy in 2012.

State news agency MENA said that Hazem Khairat, a former ambassador to Chile, was appointed by President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. It did not say when he will take up his post.

Khairat's appointment was immediately "deeply" welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"We've been informed by the government of Egypt that it is dispatching an ambassador to Israel. This is an important piece of news, we appreciate it," Netanyahu said in Jerusalem.

"It's something that is deeply welcome in Israel, and I think it's very good for cementing the peace that exists between Egypt and Israel," he said at a joint news conference with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Jordan followed suit in 1994.

Ties between the two neighbours soured after Morsi's June 2012 election as president following the ouster of his predecessor Hosni Mubarak in the 2011 uprising.

Morsi recalled Egypt's envoy to Israel in November 2012 to protest against a series of Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip that killed top Hamas fighter Ahmed Jaabari.

He was killed at the start of an eight-day Israeli operation dubbed Pillar of Defence in which 177 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed. The violence stopped after Egypt brokered a truce.

Morsi was ousted by then army chief Sisi in July 2013.

Later that year, the Israeli foreign ministry named Middle East specialist Haim Koren as Israel’s next ambassador to Egypt.

AMMAN — Disruption of fuel supplies due to fighting between rebel groups in northern Syria is threatening the closure of hospitals and paralysing the work of ambulances and rescue services, an international medical charity said on Sunday.

Daesh militants have closed a checkpoint under their control in the countryside north of the city of Aleppo to trucks carrying fuel to areas in northern Syria held by other rebel groups.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said in a statement obtained by Reuters and to be released later that it had received distress calls from health centres in rebel-held areas in Aleppo, Idlib and Hama provinces to say they were running out of fuel needed to run life-saving equipment.

"With so many hospitals now at a risk of closure, the lives of many Syrians are in even greater danger," said Dounia Dekhili, MSF Programme Manager for Syria, where the charity conducts an extensive humanitarian operation.

"Fuel is needed to run water pumps for clean water, to run incubators for newborns and to run ambulances for lifesaving care," she said.

Work by civil defence workers who were helping rescue survivors of air bombardments in rebel-held areas could be halted if the shortages continue, MSF said.

Daesh militants, seeking to choke off fuel supplies heading to its rivals battling for control of the area, had almost completely barred oil truckers from passing through the gateway of Tel Qarah.

The checkpoint, near the Turkish border, separates territory run by Daesh fighters and their rivals, residents and traders in the area said.

Hundreds of private trucks used to pass through the crossing daily, carrying crudely processed oil bought from fields under the control of Daesh in eastern Syria, to sell to the rest of northern rebel-held Syria.

It was the major source of fuel for those areas largely cut off from supplies from President Bashar Assad's government.

Rebels from a coalition of Western backed and Islamist groups fighting to beat off the Daesh offensive said the closure was causing severe hardship to civilians.

The fuel shortages began to bite almost a week ago and have pushed prices of diesel needed to run electricity generators, bakeries and hospitals. A litre of diesel now cost two dollars, up from less than half a dollar, residents said. 

Aden — Rebel shelling of residential areas in Yemen's Aden killed at least three civilians on Sunday, as air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition also hit the southern city, medics and witnesses said.

Rebels fired Katyusha rockets and mortars at residential areas destroying four homes, residents and military sources said. 

Medics at Aden's Al Naqib hospital told AFP that three civilians were killed and four wounded in the shelling.

Coalition air strikes hit rebel positions at entrances to the city as well as at the strategic Al Anad air base in the nearby city of Lahj, military sources said.

Late on Saturday, clashes between rebels and pro-government forces killed 12 fighters from both sides near the base, the sources said.

In the town of Daleh to the north, 15 rebels were killed in an overnight ambush by pro-government fighters, local military sources said, adding that two of the attackers had also died.

AFP could not confirm the tolls from the clashes from independent sources and the rebels rarely acknowledge their losses.

The latest violence came after the UN special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, announced on Friday that talks in Geneva between the warring sides ended without agreement.

The rebels — including Shiite Houthi militiamen and troops loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh — have seized control of large parts of Yemen after taking the capital Sanaa last September.

The coalition launched the air strikes in March in support of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled a rebel advance on Aden to Saudi Arabia.

Loyalist troops have been joined by some Sunni tribes and southern separatists in battling the rebels.

More than 2,600 people have been killed in Yemen since March, according to UN figures, and almost 80 per cent of the population — 20 million people — are in need of urgent humanitarian aid.

The situation is particularly serious in Aden, where residents have complained of food and water shortages and health officials are warning of the spread of disease.

DAMASCUS —Daesh militants have mined the spectacular ancient ruins in Syria's Palmyra, an antiquities official and monitor said Sunday, prompting fears for the UNESCO World Heritage site.

The reports came one month after the extremist group overran the central Syrian city.

Syria's antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said that the group had laid mines and explosives in Palmyra's Greco-Roman ruins.

The observatory, which relies on a network of sources on the ground, said the explosives were laid on Saturday.

"But it is not known if the purpose is to blow up the ruins or to prevent regime forces from advancing into the town," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

He said regime forces had launched heavy air strikes against the residential part of Palmyra in the past three days, killing at least 11 people.

"The regime forces are to the west outside the city, and in recent days they have brought in reinforcements suggesting they may be planning an operation to retake Palmyra," he added.

A political source told AFP that a leading commander had been dispatched to the region to organise an offensive to recapture and secure Palmyra and several key gas fields nearby.

Abdulkarim also said Sunday he had received reports from Palmyra residents that the ruins had been mined.

"We have preliminary information from residents saying that this is correct, they have laid mines at the temple site," he told AFP.

"I hope that these reports are not correct, but we are worried."

He urged "Palmyra's residents, tribal chiefs and religious and cultural figures to intervene to prevent this... and prevent what happened in northern Iraq", referring to Daesh's destruction of heritage sites there.

"I am very pessimistic and feel sadness," he added.

'Irreplaceable treasure' 

Daesh captured Palmyra, which is famed for its extensive and well-preserved ruins, on May 21.

The group has regularly heavily mined its territory to make it more difficult to recapture.

The city’s fall prompted international concern about the fate of the heritage site described by UNESCO as of “outstanding universal value”.

Before it was overrun, the head of the UN cultural body urged that the ruins be spared, saying they were “an irreplaceable treasure for the Syrian people, and the world”.

Daesh has released several videos documenting its destruction of heritage sites in Iraq and Syria.

In its extreme interpretation of Islam, statues, idols and shrines amount to recognising objects of worship other than God and must be destroyed.

There have been no reports of damage to sites in Palmyra since Daesh seized it, though the group’s fighters reportedly entered the city’s museum, which had largely been emptied of its collection before the militants arrived.

The group executed more than 200 people in and around Palmyra in the days after capturing the city, including 20 who were shot dead in the ancient ruins, according to the observatory.

Before Syria’s war began, more than 150,000 tourists visited Palmyra each year, admiring its beautiful statues, more than 1,000 columns and formidable necropolis of over 500 tombs.

It had already suffered before Daesh’s arrival, with clashes between rebels and government forces in 2013 leaving collapsed columns and statues in their wake.

The site is also believed to have been looted during the chaos of the war that began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.

In December, the UN said nearly 300 cultural heritage sites in Syria, including Palmyra, had been destroyed, damaged and looted.

More than 230,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict started.

ESKI MOSUL, Iraq — When Daesh burst into the Iraqi village of Eski Mosul, Sheikh Abdullah Ibrahim knew his wife was in trouble.

Buthaina Ibrahim was an outspoken human rights advocate who had once run for the provincial council in Mosul. The Daesh militants demanded she apply for a "repentance card." Under the rule of the extremist group, all former police officers, soldiers and people whose activities are deemed "heretical" must sign the card and carry it with them at all times.

"She said she'd never stoop so low," her husband said.

Buthaina Ibrahim was an outlier in her defiance of Daesh. It would cost her dearly.

The "caliphate", declared a year ago, demands obedience. Untold numbers have been killed because they were deemed dangerous to the Daesh, or insufficiently pious; 5-8 million endure a regime that has swiftly turned their world upside down, extending its control into every corner of life to enforce its own radical interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.

Daesh is a place where men douse themselves with cologne to hide the odor of forbidden cigarettes; where taxi drivers or motorists usually play the Daesh radio station, since music can get a driver 10 lashes; where women must be entirely covered, in black, and in flat-soled shoes; where shops must close during prayers, and everyone found outdoors must attend.

There is no safe way out. People vanish — their disappearance sometimes explained by an uninformative death certificate, or worse, a video of their beheading.

"People hate them, but they've despaired, and they don't see anyone supporting them if they rise up," said a 28-year-old Syrian who asked to be identified only by the nickname he uses in political activism, Adnan, in order to protect his family, which still lives under IS rule. "People feel that nobody is with them."

The Associated Press interviewed more than 20 Iraqis and Syrians describing life under the group's rule. One AP team travelled to Eski Mosul, a village on a bend in the Tigris River north of Mosul where residents emerged from nearly seven months under Daesh rule after Kurdish fighters drove the extremists out in January. Daesh forces remain dug in only a few miles away, so close that smoke is visible from fighting on the front lines.

Another AP team travelled to the Turkish border cities of Gaziantep and Sanliurfa, refuges for Syrians who have fled Daesh territory.

The picture they paint suggests Daesh’s "caliphate" has evolved into an entrenched pseudo-state, based on a bureaucracy of terror. Interviewees provided AP with some documents produced by the Daesh ruling machine — repentance cards, lists inventorying weapons held by local fighters, leaflets detailing rules of women's dress, detailed forms for applying for permission to travel outside Daesh territory. All emblazoned with the Daesh black banner and logo "Caliphate in the path of the prophet".

Adnan described the transformation that the Syrian city of Raqqa underwent after Daesh took it over in January 2014. At the time, he fled, but after a few months of missing his family, the 28-year-old returned to see if he could endure life under the extremists. He lasted for almost a year in the city, now the Daesh de facto capital. He spoke to AP in the Turkish border town of Gaziantep.

The once colourful, cosmopolitan Syrian provincial capital has been transformed, he said. Now, women covered head to toe in black scurried quickly to markets before rushing home. Families often didn’t leave home to avoid any contact with the “Hisba” committees, the dreaded enforcers of the innumerable Daesh regulations.

Daesh militants turned a football stadium into a prison and interrogation centre, known as “Point 11”. The city’s central square was referred to by residents as “Jaheem” Square — Hell Square, an execution site where Adnan said he saw the corpses of three men left dangling for days as a warning.

Armed members of the Hisba patrolled the streets, cruising in SUVs and wearing Afghan-style baggy pants and long shirts. They sniffed people for the odor of cigarettes, and chastised women they considered improperly covered or men who wore Western clothes or hair styles. Adnan said he once was dealt 10 lashes for playing music in his car.

In this world, the outspoken Buthaina Ibrahim was clearly in danger. The sheikh tried to save his wife, sending her away to safety, but she soon returned, missing their three daughters and two sons, he said. In early October, the militants surrounded the house and dragged her away.

Not long after, Ibrahim received the death certificate. A simple sheet of paper from an “Islamic court” with a judge’s signature, it said only that Buthaina’s death was verified, nothing more. He has no idea where her body is.

Delivery from Daesh came to Eski Mosul at the hands of Kurdish fighters. Amid the joy over liberation, many residents discarded documents from Daesh.

But Ibrahim is keeping the death certificate as a connection to his wife, “because it has her name on it”.

A former soldier in the village, Salim Ahmed, said he is keeping his repentance card. Daesh might be gone, but the fear it instilled in him is not.

“We live very close to their front line,” he said. “One day, they might come back and ask me for my repentance card again.”

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected “international dictates” as France’s top diplomat visited, with Paris advocating a UN resolution laying out parameters for peace talks.

With negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians stalled for more than a year, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu on Sunday.

The separate meetings in Ramallah and occupied Jerusalem were part of a regional tour by Fabius aimed at reviving peace talks.

France has argued in favour of a UN resolution that would guide negotiations leading to an independent Palestinian state and which could include a timeframe for talks.

Ahead of Fabius’s arrival in Jerusalem, Netanyahu hit out at international diplomatic efforts to impose proposals which he said neglected to address vital Israeli security concerns, saying his government would reject “international dictates”.

In a joint news conference with Fabius after their meeting, Netanyahu said “peace will only come from direct negotiations between the parties without preconditions”.

“It will not come from UN resolutions that are sought to be imposed from the outside,” he said.

Netanyahu said a Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state as well as “iron-clad security arrangements on the ground in which Israel can defend itself” were requirements for peace.

Fabius sought to respond to such concerns, saying negotiations would ultimately be left to the Israelis and Palestinians, but that it did not prevent international support in the process. 

“We must both guarantee Israel’s security and at the same time give Palestinians the right to have a state,” Fabius told journalists earlier at a joint news conference with Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al Malki in Ramallah.

Malki welcomed France’s efforts, but said he doubted a deal was possible with the current rightwing Israeli government, which he labelled “extremist”.

In Cairo on Saturday, Fabius warned that continued Israeli settlement building on land the Palestinians want for a future state would damage chances of a final deal.

Lone-wolf attacks

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been comatose since a major US push for a final deal ended in failure in April 2014.

Israel says the process failed because the Palestinians refused to accept a US framework document outlining the way forward.

But the Palestinians blame the collapse on Israel’s settlement building and the government’s refusal to release veteran prisoners.

The relationship between the two sides remains severely strained, prompting the Palestinians to boost efforts on the international stage to seek their promised state.

Such efforts have included a push to open criminal proceedings against Israel before the International Criminal Court.

Tensions have been high, and on Sunday a Palestinian stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli security officer outside Jerusalem’s Old City, with the officer managing to shoot his attacker, leaving him in critical condition.

It was the latest in a string of so-called lone-wolf attacks by Palestinians.

After Iran talks? 

The United States has consistently defended Israel before the UN Security Council, and any French resolution must be accepted by Washington to avoid a veto. 

President Barack Obama’s administration, however, has signalled that it could be swayed given Netanyahu’s recent comments regarding a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu sparked international concern when he ruled out the establishment of a Palestinian state while campaigning for the March 17 general election, though he later backtracked.

France could unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state should the peace process remain moribund, a possibility that could pile further pressure on Israel.

France’s diplomatic efforts come against the backdrop of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme, with Israel firmly opposing the deal currently on the table.

Iran and the P5+1 powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — agreed in April on the main outlines of what would be a historic agreement scaling down Tehran’s nuclear programme.

The world powers and Iran set themselves a deadline of June 30 to finalise what would be a highly complex accord.

Some have argued that a window of opportunity may arise after the conclusion of the Iran talks for France to submit a resolution at the United Nations.

They say that Washington would be unlikely to support moves beforehand that could impact negatively on the nuclear negotiations.

ESKI MOSUL, Iraq  — It was a heart-racing moment. The cigarette smuggler was stuck in line at a checkpoint as, up ahead, Daesh militants were searching cars. He was running a big risk: The militants have banned smoking and lighting up is punishable with a fine or broken finger. Selling cigarettes can be a death sentence.

Falah Abdullah Jamil, 30, relied on his quick wits and silver tongue.

When the fighters came to his vehicle at the checkpoint leading to his home village of Eski Mosul in northern Iraq, they asked what he had in his trunk.

"Nothing," he lied.

They popped open the trunk and found the 125 cartons of cigarettes he'd brought from Rabia, a town near the border with Syria.

"I swear, it's out of hunger," he said he pleaded with the men. The father of six told them he was the only breadwinner for his extended family and was helping his neighbours as well.

The fighters took him to the checkpoint commander, who warned Jamil he'd go to prison and his car would be confiscated. Jamil promised never to do it again. "Just let me go this time for the sake of my children," he said. "If I don't have money, what can I do? Should I steal? If I steal, you'll cut off my hand."

In an interview with The Associated Press in May, Jamil sat in his modest living room, describing how he survived nearly seven months of Daesh rule before the extremist group was run from town by Kurdish fighters.

The checkpoint commander ordered his subordinates out of the room, Jamil recalled. Once they were alone, he made his offer: "I will let you go if you give me cigarettes." Jamil asked him what brand. "Anything, just give me two cartons," the commander replied.

The commander "said he hadn't had a smoke for three days so when he saw the cigarettes, he was very happy," Jamil said with a laugh.

Iraqi civilians living under Daesh rule in Mosul, the group's biggest stronghold, told the AP that the militants actually control the cigarette black market, banning smoking in public while privately controlling the sale of cigarettes at an inflated price. They spoke anonymously for fear of retribution.

Saad Eidou, 25, a displaced Iraqi from the town of Sinjar near the Syrian border, said that like everyone else, militants smoke in private. The cigarettes come in through Syria, where movement in and out of Turkey and non-Daesh areas is easier.

"They brought in cigarettes from Syria, where you probably won't pay more than 250 dinars ($0.20) for a pack, but they were selling it here for 1,000 dinars ($0.80)," said Bilal Abdullah, another resident of Eski Mosul. With Daesh gone, he took deep draws from a cigarette in public as he spoke.

In another incident, Jamil said, he was accused of selling cigarettes by a member of the Hisba, the vice patrol that ruthlessly enforces the group's regulations. Jamil denied it profusely: "I told him, yes, I used to, but I stopped selling. I told him no one sells anymore since you have forbidden it."

The Hisba official asked if any cigarettes were in Jamil's house. Jamil said no.

"He said, 'I will go and inspect your house, and if I find one pack of cigarettes I will execute you.'"

Jamil's bluff had just gotten more dangerous. He had 1,600 cartons of cigarettes hidden at home, he said with a wicked smile.

But he stuck by his story. "I told him, 'Go ahead, I haven't got anything."

Apparently convinced, the Hisba official had him sign a document vowing to never sell cigarettes or risk execution.

"I signed it — but I sold again. I didn't stop," Jamil said. "We had no flour, no rice, no food. I have children, and it was winter and was cold and there was no oil, no gas. ... We were living a hellish tragedy."

BRADFORD, England — Zahoor Ahmed shakes his head in disbelief as he surveys the back of a terraced house belonging to the family of the three Dawood sisters, believed to have travelled to Syria to join Daesh militants and brought their nine children with them.

"Why would you go to Syria? I don't understand it," said Ahmed, 52, wearing traditional Muslim attire as he surveyed the unremarkable street in the northern English city of Bradford, where he said he had never encountered extremism.

He is far from the only person in Bradford bewildered by the apparent decision of Sugra, Zohra and Khadija Dawood to journey to Syria with their children, the youngest aged just three, and leave their husbands behind.

The case came to light just two days after reports that Talha Asmal, a 17-year-old from Dewsbury just a few kilometres from Bradford, had carried out a Daesh attack in Iraq, becoming what is believed to be Britain's youngest suicide bomber.

Both incidents have provoked soul searching among British Muslims at a time when the government is proposing new laws to give the authorities greater powers to fight radicalisation and potentially shut down mosques linked to extremists.

The authorities say more than 700 Britons — men and women, some teenagers, some well-educated — have been lured to fight in Syria and Iraq, most to join the group Daesh.

Those who make the journey are putting not only their lives at risk but contributing to "one of the biggest threats our world has faced", Prime Minister David Cameron said in a speech on Friday to a security conference in Slovakia.

Cameron's emphasis is on persuading Britain's 2.8 million Muslims to do more to fight radicalism within their own community. Too many people are expressing the same "evil" ideology as Daesh, even if they do not advocate violence, he said.

"This paves the way for young people to turn simmering prejudice into murderous intent; to go from listening to firebrand preachers online to boarding a plane to Istanbul and travelling onward to join the jihadis."

He plans new laws to ramp up powers to ban "extremist" groups, close mosques where radicals thrive and censor media to restrict broadcasts that encourage extremism.

But some British Muslims say such measures are counter-productive, increasing the feeling of isolation that fuels radicalism. The state needs to work with Muslims, not demonise them, said Bana Gora, founding member of Bradford's Muslim Women's Council.

"This onslaught of counterterrorism legislation that's coming through is not going to help matters," she said.

If the government takes on "powers to shut down mosques at their pleasure, how is that going to help build relationships between the Muslim community and the state?" she said.

‘Ice cream lady in a burqa’

Stories of recruits travelling to Iraq and Syria open politically sensitive questions about whether Britain is doing enough to integrate minorities, especially in poor northern cities with a history of racial strife.

Nearly a quarter of Bradford's estimated 526,400 population are Muslim and the area has England's largest proportion of people of Pakistani heritage. Like many northern towns and cities it has struggled economically in recent years with the unemployment rate above the regional and national average.

Parts of Bradford were torched in race riots between whites and people of Asian descent in 2001, although today most people who live there say it is a friendly city and communities get along well.

The Dawoods' neighbourhood is typical: working class and ethnically-mixed, where women in veils are as common as white men in England football shirts, and churches and mosques operate cheek by jowl.

Unlike officially secular France, Britain has no policies against religious dress in public places. The government pays for pupils to study full-time at Muslim faith-run schools, just as Catholic and Protestant schools receive state funding.

Secularist critics say such "multi-cultural" policies can encourage segregation, isolating minorities while provoking resentment and political backlash among some whites.

After Asmal's reported suicide attack, the stridently right-wing Daily Mail tabloid labelled his hometown Dewsbury "The breeding ground for jihadists where even the ice cream lady wears a burqa". It printed a photo of a woman hidden behind a black full-face veil, selling ice cream from the window of a van with a picture of Mickey Mouse.

Isolated

The three sisters, aged between 30 and 34 had been with their children on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia but failed to return home eight days ago.

British authorities believe they have joined one of their brothers fighting alongside Daesh militants who control parts of Syria and Iraq. Britain is participating in a US-led air campaign targeting the group.

"We do not support the actions of the sisters leaving their husbands and families in the UK and of taking their children into a war zone where life is not safe to join any group," their family said in a statement on Thursday.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a UK-based think tank that promotes an anti-extremism message, said women were being drawn to the conflict zone not because they wanted to become "Jihadi brides" of fighters on the front lines, but because they felt culturally and socially isolated, believed Muslims were being persecuted, and were attracted by Islamic ideals.

Bradford café owner Aziz Ahmed, 56, said British Muslims recognised the problem of radicalisation and were working hard to confront it.

"We have been talking in the mosques: Who are these people that actually brainwash these people? And it certainly isn't the mosques," Bradford café owner Aziz Ahmed, 56, told Reuters.

"It's disturbing, because we've got young family of our own. We have to keep an eye on them, who they are associating with. At one time we were worried about lads on the street corner selling drugs. Now this is a bigger shock. Where does it end?"

BEIRUT — Lebanon said on Sunday it has arrested two policemen after videos showing officers beating Islamist militants held in prison caused outrage in the country.

At least two short videos went viral on social media overnight. One shows a number of inmates crouching on the floor in Lebanon's largest prison, their hands tied behind their backs and facing a wall.

They were stripped shirtless. One of the policemen appears to be beating them with a rod. The backs of several inmates turned dark red.

Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk said the incidents occurred two months ago when police raided Roumieh prison, in east Beirut, to end a riot that broke out at a building where militants are held.

He told a news conference called to address the videos that six policemen, from more than 500 who raided the prison, were involved. Two officers have already been referred to a military court while the others have yet to be identified, he said.

Machnouk said he would take all measures necessarily against those who committed the abuse, as well as their superiors.

"I think it is a big issue and should not be ignored," he said. "I will continue this until the end, I will not accept any assault on any prisoner."

"These are prisoners, some have committed terrorist crimes... but they do have rights guaranteed by law," he said.

Riots have broken out several times at the prison, mainly in buildings holding Islamist militants, including some with connections to Syria's Al Qaeda branch, Al Nusra Front.

Roumieh was built to hold 1,500 inmates but is now crammed with about 3,700. It holds many high profile convicts and government officials have previously warned that it is a hotbed for militancy.

TEHRAN — Iran's parliament curtailed its own power to block a nuclear deal with world powers Sunday, effectively removing a longstanding threat that a final accord could be torn up by lawmakers.

A draft bill presented on Wednesday, which laid down strict criteria for Iran to accept any agreement, had threatened to complicate talks on a final accord, which are due to be finalised by June 30.

However, in a boost to President Hassan Rouhani's government, key amendments to the proposed legislation will now move the formal supervision of a deal out of the hands of lawmakers.

The original text had set criteria that parliament would have to say had been met for an agreement to be binding.

But the amended bill instead gives the right of supervision to the country's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC).

The council comprises ministers, military commanders and handpicked appointees of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Chaired by Rouhani, who is pushing hard for a nuclear deal, it is ultimately controlled by Khamenei, who will have the final word on any nuclear accord.

"Whatever decision the leader takes in this regard, we should obey in parliament," speaker Ali Larijani said after 199 MPs voted for the amendments in the 290-member chamber.

"We should not tie the hands of the leader," he added.

Only three lawmakers opposed the changes and five abstained, with six not voting and dozens more absent.

Although the sponsor of the original bill, Alaedin Boroujerdi, the chairman of parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said it was designed to insulate Iran's negotiators from the West's "excessive demands", Larijani suggested otherwise.

"We want to help the country and not create new problems," he said, referring to the need to coordinate with the SNSC.

According to the official IRNA news agency Larijani earlier told Ahmad Tavakoli, a conservative MP critical of the bill being delayed: "We are not discussing the sale of potatoes, but an important issue for the country."

IRNA cited Rouhani as saying that "in the current situation, in order to advance the country and resolve its problems, we need to help each other more".

Roadblocks remain

Iran and the P5+1 powers (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany) agreed the outlines of the nuclear deal on April 2 after intensive talks went past a March 31 deadline.

Major roadblocks that remain include the West's ability to enforce tighter inspections of Iran's nuclear sites and other facilities.

Iranian officials insist there can be no inspections of military sites and the legislation published on Sunday forbids access beyond "conventional supervision" of nuclear sites.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, on a visit Sunday to the Palestinian territories and Israel, said any nuclear deal with Iran must be verifiable.

"We think that we must be extremely firm and that, if an agreement is to be reached, that agreement must be robust," he told journalists.

"That means that it must be able to be verified."

Any deal will still have to be ratified by Tehran's parliament but it would be highly unlikely by that stage that lawmakers would oppose a text approved by the SNSC.

The bill stipulates the need to lift all sanctions imposed on Iran as punishment for its nuclear programme, under which leading states have suspected the Islamic republic of developing a bomb.

However, the altered draft law is now more specific and says sanctions must be lifted "on the day Iran starts implementing its obligations", as opposed to "on the day of an agreement".

World powers insist that Iran's compliance must be verified if sanctions are to be removed, despite earlier insistence by Tehran that the measures, mostly economic, cease immediately.

In a sign of greater flexibility, Rouhani said on June 13 that "weeks or even months will pass" between signing and implementing the deal, which involves UN, EU and US sanctions being removed.

In a measure that mirrors that taken in Tehran, President Barack Obama has given US lawmakers 30 days to review a nuclear deal. Iran denies its nuclear programme has military objectives, insisting it is for purely peaceful energy development purposes capable of reducing its reliance on fossil fuels.