Region

UNITED NATIONS — Beefing up international monitoring of Iran's nuclear work could become the biggest stumbling block to a final accord between Tehran and major powers, despite a preliminary deal reached last week.

As part of that deal, Iran and the powers agreed that United Nations inspectors would have "enhanced" access to remaining nuclear activity in Iran, where they already monitor key sites.

But details on exactly what kind of access the inspectors will have were left for the final stage of talks, posing a major challenge for negotiators on a complex and logistically challenging issue that is highly delicate for Iran's leaders.

Securing proper inspections is crucial for the United States and other Western powers to ensure a final deal, due by June 30, is effective and to persuade a sceptical US Congress and Israel to accept the agreement. Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful, but it has never welcomed intrusive inspections and has in the past kept some nuclear sites secret.

Sharply differing interpretations have emerged on what was covered by last week's framework agreement — a sign of what diplomats and nuclear experts say will be tough talks ahead.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say for Iran on the deal, on Thursday ruled out any "extraordinary supervision measures" over nuclear activities and said military sites could not be inspected.

That appeared to contradict a US "fact sheet" issued after last week's marathon talks in Switzerland which said the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would have "regular access to all Iran's nuclear activities" and to the supply chain that supports it, as well as a joint Iranian-European Union statement that said the IAEA would have expanded access in Iran.

Aside from the question of Iranian consent, the logistical requirements for increased monitoring of Iranian sites would be daunting. It would involve more cameras, on-site inspections, satellite surveillance and other methods and might require the IAEA to assign more people and resources to its Iran team.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said it was crucial to come up with a mechanism for “anytime, anywhere” inspections that go beyond the IAEA’s own special arrangements for short-notice inspections, known as the Additional Protocol.

The Additional Protocol was created in the 1990s, after the discovery of Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons programme and revelations that North Korea and Romania had separated plutonium, as a means of smoking out covert arms-related activities.

“It’s extremely difficult for Iran,” said Albright, himself a former UN weapons inspector. “They don’t want it. They want to keep smuggling [nuclear-related dual-use items]. They’re buying a lot of things, and they’re not going to want to stop.”

‘Big fights’ ahead

Last week’s framework accord between Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China cleared the way for talks on a final settlement by a June 30 deadline. The aim is to block an Iranian path to a nuclear bomb in return for lifting sanctions on Tehran.

The framework would require Iran to mothball most of its installed enrichment centrifuges and curtail uranium enrichment and other sensitive work for at least a decade. The plan calls for IAEA-monitored storage by Iran of thousands of centrifuges and other infrastructure.

Among the splits that have already emerged in the Iranian and Western interpretations of the deal are timing of sanctions relief and the removal of UN sanctions, as well as monitoring.

“I believe monitoring and inspections may prove to be the most difficult nut to crack and I wouldn’t be surprised if Iran and the P5+1 [six powers] have some big fights about it,” a senior diplomatic source told Reuters condition of anonymity.

The interim deal makes clear that broader inspections will be mandatory for Iran. The joint EU-Iranian statement said that the IAEA “will have enhanced access through agreed procedures, including to clarify past and present issues”.

Iran signed the Additional Protocol in 2003, a year after the existence of its Natanz enrichment site and Arak heavy-water production facility was revealed. Tehran began voluntarily implementing the protocol but never ratified it. It eventually stopped implementing it.

US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that Iran had agreed that it would resume implementation of the Additional Protocol and would submit it for ratification.

But Olli Heinonen, the IAEA’s former chief nuclear inspector who is now at Harvard University, said Additional Protocol inspections would likely not be enough for proper monitoring.

The Additional Protocol has limitations, experts say, such as not covering research by Iran that the IAEA is investigating and which Western countries believe was linked to weaponisation.

Heinonen said there would have to be a new comprehensive Iranian declaration about its nuclear programme that also includes information about Iranian cooperation with foreign states.

“You need some provision about nuclear cooperation with other countries given the stories about cooperation with North Korea,” Heinonen said.

Jacqueline Shire, a non-proliferation expert and former member of the UN Security Council’s Panel of Experts on Iran, said resolving questions about the so-called “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s past nuclear activities was crucial but extremely difficult.

“Iran will have to engage with the IAEA on this in a way it has not, up to this point, been willing to,” she said.

Heinonen, Albright and Shire said that failure to address the possible military dimensions could undermine confidence in any monitoring and inspection regime.

“If you leave PMD unresolved, then there could be many unknowns,” Heinonen said.

DAMASCUS — Syrian rebels shelled a government-held neighbourhood in the northern city of Aleppo early Saturday, killing at least nine people and wounding dozens, Syrian state television and an activist group reported.

Hours after the shelling, helicopter gunships struck a market in Aleppo's rebel-held neighbourhood of Maadi in apparent retaliation, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the opposition-run Aleppo Media Centre.

The observatory said the air strike killed eight people and wounded dozens, some seriously. The Aleppo Media Centre reported casualties but did not provide a precise toll.

The violence came as the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees planned to undertake an "urgent mission" to Damascus later Saturday amid concerns over the situation in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, most of which has been captured by the Daesh group.

State TV said the shelling on the predominantly Christian and Armenian neighbourhood of Suleimaniyeh in Aleppo early Saturday killed nine people, wounded another 50 and damaged several buildings.

The observatory, which has a network of activists around the country, said the shelling killed 10 people and wounded “tens”.

Syrian rebels have shelled residential areas in government-held parts of the contested city in the past, killing hundreds of people. Government warplanes have dropped explosives-filled barrels on rebel-held neighbourhoods in Aleppo and other cities, killing thousands.

State TV said the rebels shelled the neighbourhood with a so-called Hell Cannon, a crude, locally made weapon that fires gas cylinders filled with explosives. The projectiles cause widespread damage and cannot be precisely targeted. State TV showed a building with its top three stories collapsed.

Aleppo, Syria's largest city and its former commercial hub, became a key front in the civil war after rebels launched an offensive there in July 2012.

Pierre Krahenbuhl, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, was meanwhile set to meet with Syrian and UN officials in Damascus about the humanitarian situation in Yarmouk camp, agency spokesman Chris Gunness said.

Gunness said in a statement that there are deepening concerns over the safety of some 18,000 Palestinian and Syrian civilians, including 3,500 children, who remain in the camp.

Gunness later wrote on his Twitter account that UNRWA treated 31 Yarmouk evacuees, including two pregnant women who fled to the nearby neighbourhood of Tadamon. He added that the youngest displaced person from the camp is six weeks old.

Daesh fighters overran much of Yarmouk last week, establishing a foothold in the Syrian capital for the first time. The incursion is the latest trial for Yarmouk’s residents, who have already suffered through a devastating two-year government siege, starvation and disease.

Residents say there is barely enough food and water, and hospitals have long run out of drugs and supplies.

The Syrian government has said it will launch a military operation in Yarmouk to evict militants, which could cause even more devastation.

CAIRO — A Cairo court confirmed death sentences for Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie and 11 other defendants on Saturday, and a US-Egyptian citizen was jailed for life over Islamist protest violence.

Judge Mohamed Nagy Shehata also sentenced to death two Islamists who have fled the country, and he handed life terms to 23 detained defendants.

The defendants were accused of plotting unrest from their headquarters in a sprawling Cairo protest camp in the months after the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

Among those sentenced to life in prison was Mohamed Soltan, a US-Egyptian citizen who is on hunger strike.

His father Salah Soltan was among the 11 detainees sentenced to death.

Soltan’s family called for Mohamed’s immediate release in a statement after the verdict, charging that there was no evidence against him.

The US embassy, in a statement, said it was “gravely concerned” about Mohamed Soltan and would “continue to monitor his case closely and to provide him with all possible support”.

The rulings can be appealed before the court of cassation, which has overturned dozens of other death sentences, including against Badie.

So far Egypt has executed one Islamist sentenced to death after Morsi’s overthrow, following his conviction of involvement in the murder of a youth during violent protests in July 2013.

Shehata, who has sentenced dozens of Islamists to death in other cases, read out a Koranic verse that stipulates amputation and crucifixion for outlaws, before rendering his verdict on Saturday.

At a previous session, he had sought the opinion of the country’s mufti, the Islamic legal authority, on the death sentences.

The mufti has an advisory role under Egyptian law.

Known as the “Rabaa Operations Room” case, the prosecution accused the defendants of organising months of unrest and protests against the ouster of Morsi, a senior Brotherhood figure himself now on trial.

Rabaa protest camp

The Rabaa Al Adawiya protest camp in Cairo was dispersed by police on August 14, 2013 in a 12-hour operation that left hundreds of protesters and about 10 policemen dead.

Mohamed Soltan was shot in the arm during the dispersal, and he was arrested days later as police hunted down Islamist activists who had fled the protest camp.

Police moved in to disperse the camp after weeks of failed European and US-brokered negotiations with the Brotherhood, who publicly insisted on Morsi’s return.

The Islamist was the country’s first freely elected president and he ruled only for a year before the army toppled him, spurred by massive protests demanding his resignation.

President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, the former army chief who toppled Morsi and then won an election, has pledged to eradicate the Brotherhood.

The government has blacklisted the movement as a terrorist organisation amid a spike in militant attacks that have killed dozens of policemen and soldiers.

The deadliest attacks have been claimed by jihadists in the Sinai Peninsula and in Cairo, and the Brotherhood insists it is committed to non-violence.

But decapitated and driven underground, the Islamist movement is believed to have radicalised with members adopting militant tactics against policemen.

ADEN/SANAA — Local militiamen in the Yemeni city of Aden said they captured two Iranian military officers advising Houthi rebels during fighting on Friday evening, Reuters reported.

Tehran has denied providing military support for Houthi fighters, whose advances have drawn air strikes by a regional coalition led by Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Republic's main rival for influence in the Gulf.

If confirmed, the presence of two Iranian officers, who the local militiamen said were from an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, would further worsen relations between Tehran and Riyadh who are vying for dominance in the region.

Three sources in the southern port city's anti-Houthi militias said the Iranians, identified as a colonel and a captain, were seized in two separate districts that have been rocked by heavy gunbattles.

"The initial investigation revealed that they are from the Quds Force and are working as advisors to the Houthi militia," one of the sources told Reuters.

"They have been put in a safe place and we will turn them over to [the Saudi-led coalition] Operation Storm of Resolve to deal with them."

Saudi-led air strikes, entering their third week, hit Houthi and military targets throughout the country on Saturday, pounding government buildings and a presidential palace used by the group’s leaders in the Red Sea port city of Hodaida.

Ground combat between armed factions battered southern Yemen, killing around 20 Houthi fighters and two rival militiamen, residents and militia fighters said.

Bolstered by the air raids, local armed groups have been resisting the southward advance of the northern-based Shiite Muslim Houthis.

Residents said southern fighters ambushed a convoy of Houthis and allied forces loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh in a tribal area about 100 km north of the militia’s base in Aden, killing 15 of the northerners.

Inside the port city, Houthi forces and local militiamen battled with rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns. Five Houthis and two local fighters died, residents said.

Locals said Houthi forces were shelling civilian areas and trying to push into the Tawahi district, one of the only areas where they have no presence and home to a presidential palace and the city’s military port.

While the Houthis deny getting help from Shiite Iran and say their armed campaign is designed to stamp out corruption and Sunni Al Qaeda militants, Saudi Arabia and its allies describe them as an Iranian-backed threat to regional security.

The United Nations says the conflict, in which the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa in northern Yemen in September, has killed 600 people, wounded 2,200 and displaced 100,000 others.

Fresh aid reaches Yemen 

Meanwhile, the Red Cross on Saturday delivered a second planeload of aid to war-battered Yemen in as many days, as the Saudi-led coalition stepped up air raids on allies of Iran-backed rebels.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said its aircraft landed in Sanaa with medical equipment after weeks of intense fighting across the country.

“The new cargo is 35.6 tonnes, of which 32 tonnes is medical aid and the rest water purifying equipment, electric power generators and tents,” ICRC spokeswoman Marie Claire Feghali said.

The Red Cross and the UN also sent planes to Sanaa on Friday, each carrying 16 tonnes of medicine and equipment, the first aid supplies to reach the capital since the air campaign began late last month.

Russian news website Vesti.ru reported that two Russian aircraft were unable to land in Sanaa on Saturday to evacuate hundreds of civilians after being denied coalition permission to enter Yemeni airspace.

BEIRUT — Pro-government forces repelled an attack on a key Syrian military airport by Daesh group affiliated militants, losing 20 fighters but killing almost as many jihadists, a monitor said Saturday.

"Militants who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group attacked the outskirts of the Khalkhalah Military Airport in Sweida province on Friday," said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Forces loyal to President Bashar Assad maintained control over the airport and its surrounding areas despite losing 20 fighters. At least 15 Daesh jihadists were killed.

Syria's official news agency SANA said the army had "blocked attempts from Daesh terrorists to infiltrate" areas near the airport.

Khalkhalah lies along a major highway between Damascus and the regime-held city of Sweida, a stronghold of the Druze minority that has largely avoided the bloodshed of Syria's war.

The attack on Khalkhalah was the first by Daesh, but the airport has been previously targeted by rebels and Syria's Al Qaeda affiliate.

In March, Syrian rebels and Islamist fighters seized the town of Bosra Al Sham, which is south of Sweida but located along the same highway as Khalkhalah Airport.

Also on Friday, Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate withdrew from a key area along Syria's border with Jordan, the Observatory said.

Rebels and the Al Nusra Front took control of the Nasib crossing in the southern province of Daraa from regime forces last month.

Nasib had been under attack by moderate rebel forces, but fell shortly after Al Nusra joined the ongoing offensive.

The jihadists and other rebels held the checkpoint, the duty-free zone between the two crossings, and the customs area.

Al Nusra withdrew from the checkpoint last week and left the other areas Friday.

"The other fighters asked them to leave Nasib because they weren't in the fight to begin with," Abdel Rahman said.

Daesh militants were also fought back in the northeast province of Hasakeh, where Kurdish militia took on the extremist group in bloody clashes Friday night.

The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) "retook at least four checkpoints and a number of neighbourhoods" around the town of Tal Tamr, Abdel Rahman told AFP.

He said the Kurds had launched a "counter-offensive" against a Daesh assault on the town that began in February, adding that in the past 24 hours, seven YPG fighters and 24 Daesh militants were killed.

Though small, Tal Tamr has strategic value because it lies on a road that runs east across the Iraqi border to Daesh's bastion in Mosul, as well as north to the Turkish border.

Daesh has seized over a dozen villages around Tal Tamr, said Abdel Rahman, adding that the group was attacking the town to make up for losses in other parts of Hasakeh.

The US-led coalition fighting Daesh in Syria and Iraq also conducted air strikes on Daesh positions around Tal Tamr on Friday, he added.

In the northern city of Aleppo, at least five people were killed and dozens wounded in rocket attacks Saturday on the Christian neighbourhood of Suleimaniyah.

"The death toll will likely rise as there are a number of people in critical condition," Abdel Rahman said.

State television reported the attack but said "terrorist shelling" had killed eight people.

Government forces regularly pound rebel-held areas from the air, and opposition fighters fire rockets and mortar rounds into regime-controlled neighbourhoods.

More than 215,000 people have been killed in Syria's four-year war.

RAMALLAH — The Palestinian leadership has rejected the idea of joining the conflict in Syria's Yarmouk camp, apparently ruling out involvement in a joint military operation to expel Daesh terror group.

The position was made clear in a statement released late Thursday by the Palestine Liberation Organisation from its headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

It came just hours after Ahmed Majdalani, a senior PLO official who is currently in Damascus for talks, said 14 Palestinian factions backed the idea of a joint military operation with the Syrian army to expel the Daesh militants from the camp where more than 15,000 people, mostly Palestinian refugees, are trapped.

But the PLO said its traditional position of non-involvement had not changed.

"We refused to drag our people and their camps into the hellish conflict which is happening in Syria and we categorically refuse to become one of the parties involved in the armed conflict that is taking place in Yarmouk," it said.

"We refuse to be drawn into military actions, whatever or wherever they are, and we call for other means to ensure the safety of lives in Yarmouk and to prevent more destruction and forced displacement."

Majdalani had said the Palestinian forces would work in an "integrated" fashion "with the Syrian state to clear the camp of terrorists".

Daesh jihadists entered the Yarmouk camp in southern Damascus last week, quickly capturing large swathes of the district, sparking international concern for the residents inside.

Once home to some 160,000 Syrian and Palestinian residents, Yarmouk has been devastated by violence since late 2012, with about 18,000 people left in the camp.

Since the Daesh attack on April 1, around 2,500 people have managed to escape, some giving a grisly account of the atrocities perpetrated inside the camp by the jihadist forces.

The Palestinian leadership has frequently said it "would not get involved in [internal] Syrian affairs".

WASHINGTON — The United States is expanding its intelligence-sharing with Saudi Arabia to provide more information about potential targets in the kingdom's air campaign against Houthi militias in Yemen, US officials told Reuters.

The stepped-up assistance comes as two weeks of relentless air strikes by the Saudis and other Gulf Arab allies have largely failed to halt advances by the Iran-linked Houthi forces.

The US officials said the expanded assistance includes sensitive intelligence data that will allow the Saudis to better review the kingdom's targets in fighting that has killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands since March.

"We have opened up the aperture a bit wider with what we are sharing with our Saudi partners," said one US official.

"We are helping them get a better sense of the battlefield and the state of play with the Houthi forces. We are also helping identify 'no strike' areas they should avoid" to minimise any civilian casualties, the official said.

US ally Saudi Arabia is concerned that the violence could spill over the border it shares with Yemen, and is also worried about the influence of Shiite Iran, which has denied Saudi allegations it has provided direct military support to the Houthis.

The United States, whose fight against Al Qaeda militants in Yemen has been dealt a heavy setback by the Houthi takeover of the capital Sanaa and ousting of the previous government, has avoided a direct role in the worsening conflict. It will still stop short of picking targets for the Saudis, said the four US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But Washington has come under pressure to do more to assist the alliance led by Saudi Arabia, which fears the Houthi advance is expanding the influence of arch foe Iran to its border.

Saudi concerns of growing Iranian influence have also been heightened by nuclear talks between Tehran and world powers that could result in a deal by June 30 removing punishing sanctions on the country.

A senior US diplomat said earlier this week that Washington was speeding up arms supplies and bolstering intelligence sharing with the Saudi-led alliance. The Pentagon has said it is beginning aerial refueling of Arab coalition jets — although outside Yemeni airspace.

Until recent days, US intelligence support was limited to examining Saudi targeting information to try to affirm its accuracy, US and Saudi officials said.

The US role has now expanded in size and scope, involving more detailed "vetting" of targeting information prepared by the Saudis, with a particular interest in helping the Saudis to avoid civilian casualties, according to the US officials.

The White House and Pentagon would not comment specifically when asked about expanded intelligence-sharing.

"The United States is providing our partners with necessary and timely intelligence to defend Saudi Arabia and respond to other efforts to support the legitimate government of Yemen," said Alistair Baskey, a White House spokesman.

Legal barriers

Aid groups have said the Saudi strikes, which began March 25, have caused many civilian deaths, including a March 30 attack on a Houthi-controlled refugee camp in northern Yemen that the International Organisation for Migration said killed 40 people. Senior Saudi officials have blamed such incidents on the Houthis themselves.

The Saudi-led air campaign is aimed at rolling back territorial gains by the Houthis and reinstalling Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who has fled the country.

While the White House announced US intelligence support soon after the operation began, American officials said that data sharing had been extremely minimal in the campaign's early days. That is partly due to legal barriers, the officials said.

While the United States has used lethal force against an Al Qaeda offshoot in Yemen, it does not consider itself at war with the Houthis. Some officials said the US administration's analysis is that it lacks the ability under international and US law to collaborate with the Saudis in an offensive against the Houthis.

Baskey said that US actions were "fully consistent with applicable domestic and international legal requirements”.

Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke in general terms about the expanded cooperation during a Monday visit to Riyadh, without disclosing specifics.

"Saudi Arabia is sending a strong message to the Houthis and their allies that they cannot overrun Yemen by force," Blinken said.

"As part of that effort, we have expedited weapons deliveries, we have increased our intelligence sharing, and we have established a joint coordination planning cell in the Saudi operation center," he added.

The United States has sent a 20-member military coordination team to interact with the Gulf allies, led by Marine Major General Carl Mundy. Assigning a two-star general will facilitate interactions with other high-ranking officials from other nations, US officials said.

The United States this week started daily air-to-air refueling flights of fighter jets from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

But even with its refueling flights, the United States is exhibiting caution — carrying out the flights outside Yemeni airspace and requesting financial reimbursement from allies.

It is still unclear how the United States plans to accelerate the delivery of bombs and guidance kits to its allies.

One person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States might accelerate shipments to the United Arab Emirates, which could then also help resupply Saudi Arabia.

LONDON — The Baghdad bureau chief for Reuters has left Iraq after he was threatened on Facebook and denounced by a Shiite paramilitary group's satellite news channel in reaction to a Reuters report last week that detailed lynching and looting in the city of Tikrit.

The threats against journalist Ned Parker began on an Iraqi Facebook page run by a group that calls itself "the Hammer" and is believed by an Iraqi security source to be linked to armed Shiite groups. The April 5 post and subsequent comments demanded he be expelled from Iraq. One commenter said that killing Parker was "the best way to silence him, not kick him out”.

Three days later, a news show on Al Ahd, a television station owned by Iranian-backed armed group Asaib Ahl Al Haq, broadcast a segment on Parker that included a photo of him. The segment accused the reporter and Reuters of denigrating Iraq and its government-backed forces, and called on viewers to demand Parker be expelled.

The pressure followed an April 3 report by Parker and two colleagues detailing human rights abuses in Tikrit after government forces and Iranian-backed militias liberated the city from Daesh terror group. Two Reuters journalists in the city witnessed the lynching of a Daesh fighter by Iraqi federal police. The report also described widespread incidents of looting and arson in the city, which local politicians blamed on Iranian-backed militias.

A Reuters spokeswoman said the agency stood by the accuracy and fairness of its report. Facebook, acting on a request from Reuters, removed a series of threatening posts this week.

The threats appear to be part of a broader power struggle in Iraq. The country is divided between its Shiite Muslim majority, which now dominates the government, and its Sunni Muslim minority, which held sway under the late dictator Saddam Hussein. Prime Minister Haidar Al Abadi, a moderate Shiite, is attempting to defeat Daesh — a radical Sunni offshoot of Al Qaeda that has seized huge portions of Iraqi territory — while at the same time trying to mend fences with the broader Sunni community.

The Iraqi military is rebuilding following its collapse last June. That has forced Abadi's government to rely on a constellation of Shiite paramilitary forces backed by Iran. The paramilitary forces, which include Asaib Ahl Al Haq, routinely denounce Western media coverage of Iraq's internal conflict.

Abadi is scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington on April 14 to discuss the campaign against Daesh.

Rafid Jaboori, a spokesman for Abadi, said the government was "definitely against any message that encourages hatred or intimidation, whether it comes from a local or international network”. At the same time, the Al Ahd segment "was primarily a criticism of the government, something that we have to live with" he said.

BEIRUT — Forty years after Lebanon's civil war began, the families of thousands of people who disappeared are still haunted by the conflict and fighting to learn of their loved ones' fate.

"We just want to know what happened to them... we want a grave where we can leave flowers," Wadad Halawani, president of the Committee of the Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared, told AFP.

The civil war lasted 15 bloody years from 1975 to 1990, killing more than 150,000 people and leaving some 17,000 missing, according to official figures.

The conflict primarily pitted Christian groups against Palestinian factions backed by leftist and Muslim parties, with significant regional and international intervention.

"Those who buried their children were able to weep for them, but we have not been able to mourn," said Mariam Saidi, whose 15-year-old son Maher disappeared in 1982 while fighting near Beirut.

"It's a cause that must not die," she insisted in her apartment on the old line that separated largely Christian east Beirut from the mostly Muslim west of the city.

Like the Argentine Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo movement, Saidi has since 2005 participated in a permanent protest camp outside the UN headquarters in central Beirut.

But despite the long-running protest and various campaigns, the parties to the civil war have refused to share information about the missing.

"They refuse to reopen the files, saying it will threaten civil peace. As if the country was at peace!" Halawani said.

Lebanon has experienced many spasms of violence since the war, and has been criticised by international NGOs for its "collective amnesia" about the conflict.

'We want the truth' 

"To learn the lessons of the war, the past must be confronted," said Carmen Hassoun Abu Jaoude, director of the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) in Beirut.

"It's a wound that was closed up while it was still infected," she added, noting that investigations into the fate of the disappeared in other countries had not rekindled conflict.

In 1991, Lebanon issued a broad amnesty that benefited the country's warlords, allowing many of them to become political leaders.

"Abroad, people are astonished when I tell them we don't want justice or the cancellation of the amnesty law," said Halawani, whose husband was kidnapped in front of her in 1982.

"We cannot put all the political leaders in jail. We just want to know the truth and reconcile with the past."

Under pressure from relatives, Lebanon's government in 2000 acknowledged the existence of mass graves in the capital, without beginning any identification efforts.

And last year, the country's highest judicial body ruled that the families had the right to know the fate of their loved ones.

However, little progress has been made.

Since 2012, the International Committee of the Red Cross has been compiling a database of information about each disappeared person.

Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC Lebanon president, said efforts were under way to get approval from the authorities to collect saliva samples from still living parents of the disappeared for future DNA analysis.

A bill drafted by the families of the disappeared, with the help of the ICTJ, would create a commission of inquiry led by the police and aided by specialised archaeologists and anthropologists. It has yet to be approved by parliament.

Unending pain 

As they fight for information, many relatives of the disappeared struggle to live normally, feeling that time just stopped when their loved ones went missing.

"There's Um Issam, who hasn't left her house for several years, convinced that her son will knock on the door any minute," Halawani said.

Other mothers sit by the window, hoping to see a returning child; or they have left their children's rooms untouched since their disappearance.

Many, like Saidi, have experienced dashed hopes and false promises of a reunion.

"When they would tell me Maher was free, I would start dancing," she said.

"The next day there would be no news, and I would cry and scream his name all night."

Despite her pain, she harbours no desire for vengeance.

"I support the cause of all the mothers of the disappeared, even those whose sons were Lebanese Forces" and fought against Maher.

Among the disappeared are dozens of people who were taken to Syria during the war and in the early 1990s.

Damascus has always denied holding political prisoners, despite the presence of Lebanese detainees in several releases between 1976 and 2000.

Marie Mansourati, 83, is sure that her son Dani is still alive, more than two decades after being taken to Damascus in 1992.

Her hands trembling, she smokes cigarette after cigarette in her Beirut apartment.

"I don't meet people any more — I have worn black all these years."

"I just want him to come back and call me 'Mum'."

WASHINGTON — Daesh terror group brought Iraqi leaders together in a common fight since the militant group declared a "caliphate" in northern Iraq last summer, US Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday.

Biden gave an upbeat assessment of Iraq's progress against the Sunni group in an address to the National Defence University before a White House meeting next week between US President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al Abadi.

"ISIL's [Daesh’s] momentum in Iraq has halted and in many places flat out reversed," Biden said, using an acronym for the group.

"There's still a long fight ahead," Biden said, but the group's "aura of invincibility" has been pierced.

Biden praised Iraqi leaders from Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish groups for pulling together to form an inclusive government, agree to a oil revenue sharing plan and mobilise thousands of Sunni fighters to go to battle against Daesh.

He said Iraqi government forces have made significant gains on the battlefield, with help from the US-led coalition air strikes.

Iraqi security forces launched a new offensive against Daesh insurgents in the Sunni Muslim heartland of Anbar on Wednesday, seeking to build on a victory over the jihadist group last week in the city of Tikrit.

Biden urged Iraqi leaders to continue to compromise in the face of a complicated sectarian divisions and bitter fighting. "It is hard. It is hard. But they're doing it," he said.