Region

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian Authority will pay partial salaries to most of its employees for a fourth straight month in April after Israel failed to transfer revenue it collects on the Palestinians' behalf, the Palestinian finance ministry said.

Israel started withholding around $130 million a month in tax and customs revenues in December after the Palestinians announced that they were joining the International Criminal Court (ICC), a move finalised on Wednesday.

Under international pressure, Israel agreed last week to resume the transfers, saying it would immediately pay around $400 million — the withheld revenues less what the Palestinians owe for utilities supplied by Israel.

But Palestinian finance minister, Shukri Bshara, said no money had yet been received from Israel and as a result most Palestinian Authority employees will receive 60 percent of their salaries on Thursday, the fourth month of pay cuts.

Angry at the delay, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would seek to take the dispute to arbitration under terms of a 1993 interim peace deal with Israel, and that if that did not resolve it, he would consider appealing to the ICC.

Abbas also rejected the sum Israel was offering, accusing it of having calculated utility costs owed by Palestinians unilaterally.

Despite the shortage of funds, Palestinians earning less than 2,000 shekels a month ($500) will continue to receive their full salary. The Palestinian Authority employs around 150,000 people in Gaza and the West Bank.

"This procedure is because Israel has not yet transferred the Palestinian tax revenues for a fourth consecutive month," Bshara said in a statement on Wednesday.

The International Monetary Fund has warned of dire consequences for the Palestinian economy if the transfers are not rapidly resumed.

Not only does it affect consumption, but it means loans taken out by Palestinian Authority employees and the Palestinian Authority itself are in danger of falling into default.

The Palestinian Monetary Authority, the central bank, warned last week that lending had nearly reached its limit, with the banking system increasingly in danger.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last Friday that the government would release the transfers for humanitarian reasons and because it was in "Israel's interests", he received praise from the United States and the European Union for the decision.

Israeli officials had no immediate response on Wednesday when asked to explain why the money had not been transferred.

According to Bshara, a total of 2.1 billion shekels ($500 million) is now outstanding — four months' worth of withheld revenue less the amounts the Palestinians pay for water, electricity and other services supplied by Israel.

DUBAI — A week into Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen, food imports into the Arab world's poorest country are grinding to a halt as the conflict puts fragile supply chains under growing strain and commercial suppliers stay away.

Saudi Arabia and Arab allies began a bombing campaign last week against Iran-allied Houthi fighters who had taken over much of Yemen and now threaten the southern city of Aden, where President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi had taken refuge.

Several ports are in rebel hands and fighting has made travelling by road perilous.

Yemen imports more than 90 per cent of its food, including the lion's share of its wheat and all its rice, to feed a population of about 25 million.

It has enough basic foodstocks for six months in all provinces and wheat stocks stood at 930,100 tonnes on the day air strikes began, the official Saba news agency said on Monday.

But the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said stocks could start to diminish quickly.

"Although government sources reported sufficient stocks to last the country about six months, the conflict will likely negatively impact distribution, market availability and prices of foodstuffs sooner than earlier expected," the FAO representative in Yemen, Salah El Hajj Hassan, told Reuters on Wednesday

The collapse of central authority and fighting on several fronts including Aden, one of Yemen's main ports, has already disrupted imports as well as the processing and distribution of wheat and other staples, food industry sources said.

"The port is not functioning, it has been a few days now since our imports have stopped and we are not receiving any more wheat," a source at the Yemen Company for Flour Mills and Silos in Aden said.

"Workers can't come to work so they are not operating the mills. The fighting and gunfire has stopped them from showing up and the roads are blocked," he added.

An explosion at a dairy factory at the Houthi-controlled west coast port of Hodaida port on Wednesday morning killed at least 25 people and dealt a blow to food production.

Mohamed Alshamery, manager of the Yemen Company for Sugar Refining in Hodaida, told Reuters his refinery and the port were still operational but fighting was making it difficult to take sugar to market.

Before the conflict, nearly half of Yemenis were “food insecure”, lacking sufficient food for their needs, and one in four was undernourished, the FAO said.

Drawing on foodstocks

An international trade source said it was becoming difficult to deliver shipments of food.

"Houthi militias are in control of the major ports including Aden. Traders are unable to open letters of credit with banks. We are starting to see shipments being diverted to other locations," he said.

"What this means is that across Yemen they will need to be drawing their strategic stocks."

Ship tracking data showed only a few ships were located close to Aden, with two bulker vessels most likely to be carrying food supplies anchored off the city's coast for several days.

"The port of Aden is virtually closed but for some oil shipments which berthed at Aden Refinery. Dry cargo shipments are stopped because no stevedores are available because of clashes," shipping and logistics agency GAC said.

A spokesman for the UN agency the World Food Programme said fighting in Aden had disrupted their loading operations. A local partner was still going ahead with distribution of food to refugees in camps in the Aden area.

In Lahj, north of Aden, authorities loyal to Hadi posted a notice ordering shopkeepers to keep prices at their previous levels and not to hoard their stocks.

Residents in the capital Sanaa and other parts of the country said there were widespread fuel shortages that coupled with heavy fighting and air strikes could also hamper efforts to distribute food.

"Petrol stations have started hoarding fuel. There are queues outside petrol stations and the people are anxious about the war carrying on," said Ali Salih, a car owner in the central province of Ibb.

Baghdad — Iraq said security and allied forces backed by US-led coalition aircraft "liberated" the city of Tikrit on Tuesday, its biggest victory yet in the fight against Daesh militants.

The operation to retake the hometown of former president Saddam Hussein began on March 2 and had looked bogged down before Iraqi forces made rapid advances over the past 48 hours.

Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi "announces the liberation of Tikrit and congratulates Iraqi security forces and popular volunteers on the historic milestone," his official Twitter account said.

He was referring to paramilitary groups which played a major role in the fighting to retake Tikrit, a Sunni Arab city which Daesh had controlled since it captured swathes of Iraq in June.

Iraqiya state television showed footage of houses previously used by Daesh in liberated areas but it was not clear whether any pockets of resistance remained.

The provincial government headquarters was retaken on Monday and on Tuesday the Iraqi tricolour replaced the black Daesh flag on the building.

In a statement to AFP just minutes before Abadi’s tweet, his spokesman Rafid Jaboori said: “Iraqi forces reached the centre of Tikrit, raised the Iraqi flag and are now clearing the city.”

Iraqi military officials have been saying since the start of the operation that Daesh fighters had laid thousands of bombs in streets, houses and tunnels to make their last stand.

Political tension 

There is no immediate information on how many fighters were killed, wounded or captured in the fighting.

The government has not provided any casualty figures since the operation started a month ago.

Iraqi army and police forces, as well as volunteers and Iran-backed Shiite militias, completely surrounded Tikrit within two weeks of launching the operation.

There was a lull in fighting when government and allied forces apparently balked at the number of snipers, booby traps, berms and trenches which Daesh was using to defend its city centre redoubt.

Iran was Baghdad’s top foreign partner in the early stages of the operation but Iraqi air force strikes were proving insufficient to break the back of Daesh resistance.

Abadi’s government eventually requested strikes from the US-led coalition which has been assisting Iraqi forces elsewhere in the country since August last year.

US jets began bombing Daesh targets in Tikrit on March 25. France also took part in the campaign.

The move sparked a freeze in the participation of the Popular Mobilisation units, an umbrella organisation for volunteers and militias which accounted for the bulk of the manpower involved in the Tikrit battle.

The Pentagon had expressed unease at the role played by Iran and its proxies in the battle and said it conditioned its intervention on regular forces taking the lead.

Fate of civilians

On Friday, it hailed the withdrawal from the fight of “those Shiite militias who are linked to, infiltrated by, [or] otherwise under the influence of Iran”.

But after giving themselves political cover by declaring that they do not want to work with each other, both sides took part in the Tikrit operation this week.

Tikrit, which once had an estimated population of around 200,000, had been largely emptied of civilians by the time the government operation was launched at the start of March.

The fate of those who were believed to have remained in the city was unclear Tuesday.

Thousands of people displaced last year or more recently from Salaheddin province, of which Tikrit is the capital, have started returning to their homes in outlying liberated areas.

But the level of destruction Tikrit is believed to have suffered and the threat posed by unexploded bombs mean residents of the city itself could take longer to return.

Tikrit holds both strategic and symbolic importance.

It was the hometown of executed leader Saddam Hussein, remnants of whose Baath Party collaborated with Daesh last summer.

Iraqi forces had since June tried and failed several times to retake the city, seen as a key stepping stone to recapturing Mosul, the jihadists’ largest hub in Iraq.

BEIRUT — Daesh terror group Tuesday executed at least 37 civilians, including two children, in a raid on a regime-held village in Hama province of central Syria, a monitor said.

Daesh "executed at least 37 people, including women and children, by burning, beheading, and firing on them" in the village of Mabujeh, said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syrian state television reported that 44 people were killed and 21 injured in the raid.

Mabujeh, east of the provincial capital Hama, has a population of Sunni Muslims as well as Alawites and Ismailis, minority sects that are offshoots of Shiite Islam.

Daesh has regularly targeted minority sects in Syria, especially Shiite Muslims it accuses of apostasy, as well as Sunnis who it alleges have violated its interpretation of Islam.

Mabujeh lies near a vital road that serves as the regime's only link between the central province of Homs and the northern province of Aleppo.

Daesh militants have repeatedly tried to sever the route.

In late March, the extremist group killed 83 regime soldiers in the region in a bid to gain control over the road.

In northwest Syria, the observatory said Tuesday, at least 32 people were killed in government air strikes on the city of Idlib in the past 48 hours.

Regime forces lost control of the city Saturday to a coalition of Islamist forces led by Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front.

In Geneva, the UN's human rights office said it was worried about the situation in the city.

"We are deeply concerned by the human rights situation in Idlib" after the rebel takeover, spokeswoman Cecile Pouilly said at a briefing.

Pouilly said the UN was concerned about reports of an attack on a hospital run by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in the city.

Syria's Red Crescent published photos of destruction at its Idlib hospital on Facebook, but did not give details on how it had been damaged.

Pouilly also voiced UN concerns over the fate of Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite-majority villages near Idlib city.

One of the leaders of the Islamist coalition that captured Idlib warned Sunday that the two villages would be targeted if the regime bombed Idlib.

Syria's conflict began with peaceful demonstrations in 2011 but has since spiralled into a bloody civil war that has left more than 215,000 people dead.

ADEN — Saudi troops clashed with Yemeni Houthi fighters on Tuesday in the heaviest exchange of cross-border fire since the start of a Saudi-led air offensive last week, while Yemen's foreign minister called for a rapid Arab intervention on the ground.

Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition of Arab states in a six-day-old air campaign against the Shiite Houthis, who emerged as the most powerful force in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country when they seized Yemen's capital last year.

The Saudis say their aim is to restore President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi who left the country last week. The Houthis are allied with Saudi Arabia's regional foe Iran, and backed by army units loyal to long-term ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was toppled three years ago after "Arab Spring" demonstrations.

The conflict has brought civil war to a country already on the verge of chaos and forced Washington to evacuate its personnel from one of the main battlefields in the secret US drone war against Al Qaeda.

Residents and tribal sources in north Yemen reported artillery and rocket exchanges along several stretches of the Saudi border. Explosions and heavy gunfire were heard and Saudi helicopters flew overhead, they said.

In the southern port of Aden, Houthi fighters and allied army units pressed an offensive against forces loyal to Hadi, trying to capture the last remaining major stronghold of the absent president’s forces.

At least 36 people were killed when Houthi forces shelled Hadi loyalists in Aden. Jets from the Saudi-led coalition bombed Houthi positions near the airport.

Hadi’s rump government, now based in Saudi Arabia, is calling for Riyadh to escalate the air war into an invasion.

Asked by an interviewer on pan-Arab television channel Al Arabiya Hadath whether he sought an Arab ground intervention, Yemeni foreign minister Riyadh Yasseen responded: “Yes, we are asking for that, and as soon as possible, in order to save our infrastructure and save Yemenis under siege in many cities.”

Saudi authorities say they have gathered troops along the border in preparation for any possible ground offensive, but have given no timetable to send them in. Pakistan has also said it is sending troops to support Saudi Arabia.

In the southern city of Dhalea, residents reported heavy fighting, with southern secessionist fighters trading artillery fire with Houthis backed up by army units loyal to Saleh.

Repeated air strikes hit Houthi and allied positions, including an ammunition store at a military base causing huge explosions. An eyewitness said nine southern fighters were killed, along with around 30 Houthi is and allied fighters.

In the central town of Yarim, an air strike hit a fuel tanker, killing at least 10 people, residents said.

Iran proposal

The Houthi fighters are drawn from a Zaidi Shiite minority that ruled a thousand-year kingdom in Yemen until 1962. They are backed by military units still loyal to Saleh, himself a member of the Zaidi sect who fought to crush the Houthis while in power but has now allied with them.

The civil war comes after years of unrest and disintegrating central authority in a country also dealing with a southern secessionist movement, tribal discontent and Al Qaeda’s most potent regional branch.

Saleh’s decision to ally with the Houthis tips the regional balance of power away from Saudi Arabia and towards Iran, a feud also being played out on battlefields in Syria and Iraq. The crisis is the first big foreign policy test for Saudi Arabia’s new king, Salman, and kin he has elevated to top posts.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian called the Saudi strikes a “strategic mistake”. He said Tehran had a proposal to end the conflict and was trying to reach out to Riyadh. He gave no details.

“Iran and Saudi Arabia can cooperate to solve the Yemeni crisis,” he said in Kuwait. “We recommend all parties in Yemen return to calm and dialogue.”

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud Al Faisal, said the operation would continue until it achieves its aims of restoring security and unity to Yemen.

“We are not the ones calling for war. But if you bang the drums of war, we are ready for it,” he told the kingdom’s shura council advisory body.

While the strikes have not halted Houthi gains, the Saudi-led coalition says it has succeeded in closing off Yemeni airspace to Houthi supporters and imposing a naval blockade.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said one of its planes was prevented from delivering medical supplies in Sanaa, and called for “the urgent removal of obstacles to the delivery to Yemen of vital medical supplies needed to treat casualties”.

It also called on all combatants to allow humanitarian workers to operate safely. A Yemeni Red Crescent volunteer was shot dead on Monday in Dhalea while evacuating wounded people.

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations has relocated its peace envoy for Yemen to Jordan and pulled its last 13 foreign employees from the conflict-torn country, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Envoy Jamal Benomar left Yemen at the weekend along with some 200 UN staff as a Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes to block an advance against Shiite rebels known as the Houthis.

UN spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters that Benomar is working on reviving peace talks despite the air campaign and downplayed reports that the envoy had lost support from Gulf governments.

"It's difficult in a time of war to get negotiations going, but it's precisely crucial to do so at that very time," Haq said.

"We need to get the fighting stopped and we need to get everything back on track."

Benomar, the Moroccan diplomat appointed as the envoy for Yemen in 2012, continues to have the "full support" of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, said Haq.

The spokesman added that with the departure of the last remaining 13 employees, the United Nations would rely on "several hundred" local staff to maintain a presence in Yemen.

The international staff will go back to Yemen “as soon as circumstances permit”, he said.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights HH Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein warned earlier that Yemen “seems to be on the verge of total collapse” as the Saudi-led campaign escalated.

The United Nations is backing embattled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi as Yemen’s legitimate leader in the face of the Houthi uprising that threatens to plunge the poor Arab state deeper into chaos.

Hadi has fled to Saudi Arabia which has accused Iran of backing the Houthis in their power grab in a bid to gain influence in the region.

SAN FRANCISCO — A security company has discovered a computer spying campaign that it said "likely" originated with a government agency or political group in Lebanon, underscoring how far the capability for sophisticated computer espionage is spreading beyond the world's top powers.

Israeli-based computer security firm Check Point Software Technologies said its researchers ruled out any financial motive for the effort that targeted telecommunications and networking companies, military contractors, media organisations and other institutions in Lebanon, Israel, Turkey and seven other countries. Researchers also found computers infected with spyware in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.

The campaign, which Check Point dubbed Volatile Cedar, dates back at least three years and deploys hand-crafted software with some of the hallmarks of state-sponsored computer espionage. Twice, after software elements were detected as malicious by anti-virus programmes, the campaign paused and then began distributing newer versions that escaped scrutiny, said Check Point researcher Shahar Tal.

While the chief aims of the software were to steal data and spread, the programmes could also delete files and take other actions at the direction of control computers elsewhere.

The distributors relied on an unusual method for installation, Tal said. Instead of e-mailing tainted links or infected attachments, the people behind Volatile Cedar broke down the front door, hacking into public-facing websites and then moving from those host computers to others in the organisation that contained more valuable information.

"They are not `script kiddies’,” as low-skill hackers are called, Tal said. "But we have to say in terms of technical advancement, this is not NSA-grade. They are not replacing hard-drive firmware," as did a nearly undetectable strain of spy software found recently by Kaspersky Lab.

Tal declined to say what sort of data had been stolen but said he found the successful infiltration of a defense contractor to be “alarming”.

He said Check Point had notified authorities in all 10 countries where the hundreds of infections had been detected. The company also passed along technical information to other security companies so that their anti-virus programmes would find more instances.

Tal said he was not aware of any other major spying campaign attributed to the Lebanese government or major factions. Researchers consider the United States, China and Russia to be the most advanced and prolific electronic spies, while other major cyber-espionage efforts have been traced to Israel, the United Kingdom, France and Spain.

CAIRO — Qatar returned its ambassador to Cairo on Tuesday, almost a month after recalling him in response to an Egyptian official accusing the tiny Gulf nation of supporting terrorism.

The ambassador was summoned home for consultation after Egypt carried out air strikes in Libya in February in response to the beheading of 21 captive Egyptian Christians by Daesh terror group.

Qatar protested Egypt's "unilateral" air strikes, while Egypt's delegate to the Arab League accused Doha of supporting terrorism.

Now, Egypt and Qatar both back the Saudi-led air strikes against Shiite rebels in Yemen, which began last week.

The ambassador resumed his work Tuesday, after returning to Egypt with the emir of Qatar to attend an Arab League summit last weekend that endorsed the Saudi-led strikes.

Cairo and Doha have been at odds since the Egyptian military overthrew Islamist President Mohamed Morsi following mass protests against him. Qatar was a strong backer of Morsi and protested his ouster.

The military-backed government that succeeded Morsi withdrew Egypt's envoy from Doha in January 2014, accusing Qatar of meddling, and of using the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite TV network to stir chaos. Al Jazeera has denied the allegations.

On Tuesday, the Egyptian foreign ministry said any decision to return its ambassador to Qatar will be made "according to national interest consideration”, referring to earlier comments made by the minister.

Saudi Arabia has been attempting to reconcile Egypt and Qatar.

Tripoli — The leader of the disputed government in Tripoli, Omar Al Hassi, was sacked Tuesday by the parliament in the Libyan capital, which is under the control of an Islamist-backed militia, a lawmaker said.

"The head of the government was dismissed by the parliament in a vote on Tuesday that was backed by the rest of the ministers," Mahmoud Abdel Aziz told AFP.

Libya has had two governments and parliaments since Tripoli was seized in August by the Fajr Libya militia coalition and the internationally recognised government fled to the country's far east.

The militia appointed Hassi in August, but lawmakers in the General National Congress (GNC), the alternative parliament, challenged his leadership and demanded his departure.

Hassi faced criticism for failing to fire ministers accused of corruption.

One of his aides, Mohammed Khalifa Al Guwail, has now been tasked with handling the everyday business of the government, according to another parliamentary source.

Libya has been wracked by political turmoil and violence since the 2011 uprising backed by NATO air strikes that ousted and killed dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

The rival parliaments have been holding UN-sponsored talks in Morocco aimed at ending the bloodshed and establishing a provisional government.

Abdel Aziz said the GNC had given the two sides a month in which to reach an agreement.

"If a national unity government is formed within a month, we will support it," he said. "Failing that, we will name a new head of government."

Last week, the United Nations unveiled proposals that called for a unity government headed by a president and a presidential council of independent figures, along with a parliament and a high state council.

The proposals, also called for creation of a national security council and a municipalities council, while an existing constitutional drafting committee would be part of a mutually agreed transitional period.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — The United States said it was prepared to work past a midnight deadline into Wednesday if progress was being made towards clinching a preliminary nuclear deal between Iran and global powers.

Negotiations appeared to be bogged down on an outline agreement aimed at curbing sensitive Iranian nuclear activities, while officials cautioned that any agreement would likely be fragile and incomplete.

"Our team is evaluating where we are throughout the day and making decisions about the best path forward," a senior State Department official said, speaking hours before the self-imposed March 31 deadline was due to expire.

"We will of course keep working if we are continuing to make progress, including into tomorrow if it's useful to do so."

A Western diplomat indicated that the talks were still focused on crucial sticking points.

For nearly a week, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China have been trying to break an impasse in the talks, which are aimed at stopping Iran from gaining the capacity to develop a nuclear bomb in exchange for easing international sanctions that are crippling its economy.

But disagreements on enrichment research and the pace of lifting sanctions threatened to scupper a deal that could end a 12-year standoff between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear ambitions and reduce the risk of another Middle East war. Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful.

"The two sticking points are the duration and the lifting of sanctions," an Iranian official said. "The two sides are arguing about the content of the text. Generally progress has been made."

Officials played down expectations for the talks in the Swiss city of Lausanne.

For days they have been trying to agree on a brief document of several pages outlining headline numbers to form the basis of a future agreement. Officials said they hoped to be able to announce something, though one Western diplomat said it would be "incomplete and kick some issues down the road".

Officials said they were hoping to agree on some kind of declaration, while any actual preliminary understanding that is agreed might remain confidential.

It was also possible they would not agree on anything.

"We are preparing for both scenarios," another Western diplomat said.

Officials, who were shuffling from plenaries to bilateral meetings as the midnight deadline approached, said talks on a framework accord, intended as a prelude to a comprehensive agreement by the end of June, could yet fall apart.

Speaking in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande said it would be better to have no deal than a bad deal.

A deal on Iran's nuclear programme would almost certainly lift sanctions only in stages, deferring even a partial return of Iranian crude exports until at least 2016. Sanctions have halved Iran's oil exports to just over 1 million barrels per day since 2012 when oil and financial sanctions hit Iran.

Brent crude oil dropped towards $55 a barrel on Tuesday as talks entered the final day of a deal that could see the energy-rich country increase oil exports to world markets.

Sticking points

The real deadline in the talks, Western and Iranian officials said, was not Tuesday but June 30.

They said the main sticking points were the removal of UN sanctions and Iranian demands for the right to unfettered research and development into advanced nuclear centrifuges after the first 10 years of the agreement expires.

Iran said the key issue was lifting sanctions quickly.

"There will be no agreement if the sanctions issue cannot be resolved," Majid Takhteravanchi, an Iranian negotiator, told Iran's Fars news agency. "This issue is very important for us."

The six powers want more than a 10-year suspension of Iran's most sensitive nuclear work. Tehran denies it is trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that he believed there was a good chance of success.

"The odds are quite 'doable' if none of the parties raise the stakes at the last minute, he told reporters in Moscow before returning to Lausanne.

Both Iran and the six have floated compromise proposals, but Western officials said Tehran has recently backed away from proposals it previously indicated it could accept, such as on shipping enriched uranium stocks to Russia.

Officials said dilution of the stockpiled uranium was an option, saying that the stockpiles issue was not a dealbreaker.

The goal of the negotiations is to find a way to ensure that for at least the next 10 years Iran is at least one year away from being able to produce enough fissile material for an atomic weapon. In exchange for temporary limits on its most sensitive atomic activities, Tehran wants an end to sanctions.

Iran and the six powers have twice extended their deadline for a long-term agreement, after reaching an interim accord in Geneva in November 2013.

The US Congress has warned it will consider imposing new US sanctions on Iran if there is no agreement this week, giving a sense of urgency to the talks.

"With Congress, the Iranian hawks and a Middle East situation where nobody's exactly getting on, I'm not convinced we'll get a second chance if this fails," a senior Western diplomat said.

US President Barack Obama has threatened to veto any sanctions moves by the Republican-dominated Congress.

In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Israel's concern that an agreement would fall short of guaranteeing its safety.

The framework agreement would leave Iran with the capability to develop a nuclear weapon in under a year, said Netanyahu, whose country is believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal.