Region

WASHINGTON — The US military said Friday the training of moderate Syrian rebels will likely begin within four to six weeks in Turkey after the two NATO allies clinched an agreement last week.

Potential recruits still needed to be vetted for the training sessions, which will take place in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as Turkey, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told a news conference.

About 1,500 Syrian rebels had been identified to take part and of those 100 had been screened and approved, Kirby said.

"I won't put a date certain on when the training will begin, but our assessment is that we could be ready sometime within the next four to six weeks to begin actual training," Kirby said.

There will be roughly 200 to 300 people in each course as part of a plan to train about 5,000 over a year, he said.

About 1,000 US troops will be heading to the region to oversee the training and to provide logistical support, and an advance team of 100 is already on the ground making final preparations, he said.

"Things are moving in the right direction" but there is a "long way to go", Kirby said. "Nobody's underestimating the challenges here."

A spokesman for Turkey's foreign ministry said earlier Friday that the train-and-equip programme for the Syrian opposition fighters would begin on Sunday. But it was unclear if his comments meant the training courses would be launched on March 1 or other preliminary steps.

Following months of negotiations, Ankara and Washington signed an agreement on February 19 to train and arm "moderate" Syrian rebels.

Turkey, an outspoken critic of Syrian President Bashar Assad, hopes rebel factions to be trained will battle the regime in Damascus as well as insurgents from Daesh terror group, who have seized large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, right up to the Turkish border.

But Washington has said the fighters it trains will be focused only on Daesh jihadists initially, with any campaign against the Assad regime to come at some point in the future.

Turkey's hesitation to take decisive action against Daesh militants has led to friction with the United States.

US intelligence chief James Clapper said on Thursday that Turkey did not place a high priority on fighting Daesh jihadists and as a result foreign fighters had been able to travel through the country into Syria.

Ankara argues it has bolstered border security and that Western governments should provide Turkey with more intelligence and a full list of suspects to be monitored.

ISTANBUL — The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on Saturday urged the separatists to take a "historic" decision to lay down arms, a key step in efforts to end Turkey's long-running Kurdish insurgency.

Reading a statement live on television, Sirri Sureyya Onder, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), relayed a message from Abdullah Ocalan calling on the Kurdish rebels to hold a congress on disarmament in the spring.

"We are in the process of ending the 30-year of conflict in the form of a perpetual peace, and our primary goal is to reach a democratic solution," Onder quoted Ocalan as saying in a joint press conference with Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan.

"I'm calling on the PKK to hold an extraordinary congress in the spring months to take the strategic and historic decision on disarmament," Ocalan's message said.

"This is a historic call to replace armed struggle with democratic politics."

Onder, who spoke alongside Akdogan and Interior Minister Efkan Ala following a brief meeting with the two ministers in Istanbul, said the both sides were "closer than ever to peace”.

The press conference was of significance because it was the first time a message by Ocalan was read out in the presence of Turkish government officials.

Akdogan emphasised the importance of a ceasefire and said: "We have reached an important and historical phase in the peace process."

"Silencing arms will contribute to the development of democracy," he said.

The statement came after an HDP delegation met with PKK rebels for talks at their base in the Kandil Mountains in Iraq on February 23 and met Ocalan himself on his prison island of Imrali on the Marmara Sea on Friday.

The statement also listed 10 measures that the government must agree to ensure peace, including drafting a new constitution.

"Today, a critical point has been reached in Turkey's democratisation, the expansion of freedoms and for lasting peace," said HDP chairman, Selahattin Demirtas.

Demirtas said that the congress would be held after a consensus on the measures cited in the statement was reached but did not make clear who would attend the conference nor whether it would bring about an immediate disarmament.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also hailed the statement as the start of a new phase, saying the language of violence would now "cease to exist”.

In 2013, Ocalan called for a "historic" ceasefire, after months of secret negotiations with the Turkish government aimed at ending a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people since 1984.

But peace talks stalled in September 2013, when the insurgents said they were suspending their pullout from Turkish soil after accusing Ankara of failing to deliver on promised reforms.

Government officials have recently stepped up efforts to restart talks with the Kurds and have met with their representatives in the hope of reaching a disarmament deal by the Kurdish new year in March.

The new efforts come against the backdrop of a contentious security bill — currently being debated in parliament — that boosts police powers to crack down on protest.

If passed, the bill, which was introduced after deadly pro-Kurdish protests in October, risks jeopardising the fragile peace process with the PKK, which is listed as a terror organisation by Turkey and its Western allies.

The pro-Erdogan ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is seeking support from Turkey's estimated 15 million Kurds in parliamentary elections in June in order change the constitution and imbue Erdogan's office with more executive powers.

PARIS — Sudan's President Omar Bashir said he will stand aside in 2020 if he is elected for one more term in April election, in an interview published by France's Le Monde newspaper on Thursday.

The announcement by the 71-year old, who is wanted on charges of genocide and war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), will refocus attention on his extended rule after 25 years in power.

Bashir had previously signalled he would step down this year, but his National Congress Party chose him as its candidate in October, all but assuring his success against a fractured and weakened opposition.

"According to the interim constitution adopted in 2005... the head of state can serve two terms," he told the French daily. "So for me, it will be the last mandate and, if elected, I will leave power in 2020."

Opposition figures have said the continued rule of Bashir — facing an ICC arrest warrant that has prevented him travelling to many countries — has exacerbated Sudan's isolation from global financial and political institutions.

But he has remained defiant in the face of domestic and international opponents, kept a strong power base in the army and remained popular among many parts of the population.

On Thursday, he kicked off his re-election campaign by dismissing opposition calls for him to step down.

"I will not leave until the people tell me to leave by not voting for me in the election," he said in a speech in
Aljazeera state.

Bashir, who came to power in a bloodless coup in 1989, told Le Monde he had made numerous gestures to the opposition and that a process of reconciliation launched a year ago was about to conclude.

"Since April 1, 2013, there are no political prisoners in Sudan," he said. Many opposition groups boycotted the dialogue sessions.

Bashir said Western powers had labelled him a dictator because they were disturbed by his stance against interventions in Muslim countries.

"I'm used to it. I'm considered a dictator, a war criminal and genocidal, but how many dictators allow 120 political parties to exist?"

The Hague-based court has indicted Bashir on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide during his suppression of the Darfur revolt.

But the court's prosecutor in December shelved further investigations into crimes committed during the conflict, citing a lack in efforts to getting Bashir to appear. Khartoum dismisses the ICC charges and refuses to deal with the court.

CAIRO — One person was killed Thursday in a bombing outside a pizzeria in the Egyptian capital as other blasts hit a police station and offices of cell phone companies, a health official said.

The bomb tore off the legs of the victim who was pronounced dead in hospital, health ministry spokesman Hossam Abdel Ghaffar told AFP. Two other people were wounded.

The restaurant was next to a branch of the Britain-based cell phone provider Vodafone.

Two other bombs targeted its offices in another neighbourhood and a third bomb went off outside a branch of United Arab Emirates-owned Etisalat, damaging the store fronts but causing no casualties, interior ministry spokesman Hany Abdel Latif told AFP.

The offices were closed at the time of the explosions.

Hours later, an explosion outside a police station in the north of the capital wounded a police conscript and three passersby, police officials said.

It was not immediately clear why the cell phone companies were targeted, but Abdel Latif said authorities had been on the alert for attacks in the run-up to parliamentary elections next month.

Militants have set off dozens of bombs in the capital since the army overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 and cracked down on his supporters, killing hundreds of protesters in street clashes.

Most of the bombs have been rudimentary and caused no casualties.

But several have killed policemen, including two senior officers killed while attempting to defuse bombs planted outside the presidential palace in June last year.

Those bombs, and several others that killed policemen in Cairo, were claimed by the Ajnad Misr militant group.

In the Sinai Peninsula where they are based, militants who have pledged allegiance to Daesh terror group have killed scores of soldiers and policemen since Morsi's overthrow.

Daesh affiliate in Sinai set up branches in the Nile Delta, targeting police headquarters in Cairo and other cities before police killed and arrested most of their operatives last year.

Jihadists, who have focused their attacks on security forces, were also believed to be planning attacks on the embassies of countries that have backed the former army chief and now President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, officials have said.

Sisi was elected to office in May 2014 pledging to eradicate the militants, but has had limited success, especially in the Sinai where they are waging an insurgency.

ADEN — Yemen's President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi met Thursday with the UN envoy in Aden, as the southern city increasingly became the country's de facto political and diplomatic capital instead of militia-held Sanaa.

Saudi Arabia also announced its envoy was resuming his duties in Aden, after several Arab and Western nations closed their embassies in Sanaa this month over security fears.

Hadi held his first face-to-face talks with UN envoy Jamal Benomar in Aden after fleeing on Saturday to the city in Yemen's formerly independent south, an AFP correspondent said.

Hadi has called for the government to rally in Aden, after he escaped house arrest under a Shiite militia, known as Houthis, who have seized control of Sanaa.

Benomar told reporters after the talks that he hoped Hadi's "resumption of duties would help to pull Yemen out of its crisis".

He said the two had discussed the "abnormal situation in Yemen and peaceful ways to end it" and that he was looking into options for a "safe place" to resume political talks.

The envoy landed a day after a high-profile delegation visited Aden to reiterate support from Arab Gulf monarchies to Hadi.

Benomar has been shuttling between Yemeni parties to secure an end to the country's political deadlock.

The UN diplomat also held talks Thursday with representatives of political factions from the Southern Movement, which is calling for the secession of the regions of the formerly independent south.

Hadi has been seeking to restore his authority from Aden and earlier this week received representatives of Yemen's main seven political parties.

'Centre of gravity' shifting 

Also backed by the United Nations and Western allies as Yemen's legitimate ruler, Hadi has retracted a resignation he offered last month and resumed his duties.

He has said he hopes to make Aden secure for the return of foreign diplomatic missions, after many countries including the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates shuttered their embassies.

In a first step, the Saudi embassy to Yemen said in a statement Thursday that its ambassador, Mohammed Saeed al-Jaber, had resumed his duties from the kingdom's consulate in Aden.

"The centre of political and diplomatic gravity has shifted to Aden after Hadi went there and following the popular support he received in southern and central provinces," Yemeni political analyst Thabit Hussein said.

"Aden now has a special importance due to the political and security situation in Sanaa."

Powerful tribes in the oil-rich province of Marib, east of Sanaa, have urged Hadi to declare Aden, which was the capital of South Yemen, the "temporary capital of Yemen until Sanaa is liberated”.

The Houthis, who have long clashed with central authorities, descended from their power base in northern Yemen to seize Sanaa in September.

After their attempts to expand into southern and central Yemen were checked by fierce resistance from Al Qaeda and from Sunni tribesmen, the militia moved to take power this month in what Yemen's Gulf neighbours branded a coup.

The country's continued insecurity was highlighted this week when a French woman — 30-year-old Isabelle Prime — and her Yemeni interpreter were kidnapped on the streets of Sanaa by unidentified gunmen.

Prime's father Jean-Noel on Thursday urged her kidnappers "to show their humanity" and set her free.

ROME — NATO's chief said Thursday the alliance was ready to advise Libya's government on defence and security issues, saying the deteriorating situation in the country is posing new security threats for Europe that require a more robust defence.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also told a news conference in Rome that the alliance plans to bolster its surveillance of the region by using drones based at the naval air station in Sigonella, Sicily, starting next year.

NATO helped enforce an arms embargo and a no-fly zone over Libya during the 2011 ouster of Muammar Qadhafi's regime. The mission ended in October 2011 and the security situation has since spiraled out of control with two separate governments and multiple armed groups, including some affiliated with the Daesh.

Stoltenberg has said there should have been more international presence in Libya after the military operation ended, and pledged Thursday that NATO was available to help.

"NATO stands ready to support Libya with advice on defence and security institution building, as requested by the Libyan government," he said, repeating a pledge by NATO members at a September summit in Wales.

He cited the deteriorating situation in Libya, the Mideast and the conflict in Ukraine as evidence that NATO requires more robust defence spending than in the years after the end of the Cold War, when defence budgets were slashed.

"The world has changed. We have seen new threats and new challenges," he said.

On Ukraine, he called for all sides to respect the ceasefire and in particular for Russia to withdraw its heavy weaponry.

"Russia has transferred in recent months over one thousand pieces of equipment, tanks, artillery and air defence systems. They have to withdraw this equipment and stop supporting the separatists," he said. "Any attempts to expand further the territory held by separatists would be a clear violation of the ceasefire. And it would be unacceptable to the international community."

RAMALLAH — Israel allowed two Gaza-based Palestinian ministers to travel to the West Bank for a cabinet meeting Thursday for the first time since the unity government took office in June, officials said.

Housing Minister Mufid Hasayneh and Justice Minister Salim Al Saqa passed through the Israeli-controlled Erez border crossing and arrived in Ramallah, government spokesman Ihab Bseiso told AFP.

"It is the first time they have done so since the government was formed," he said.

The Israeli authorities confirmed the ministers had been allowed to travel to the West Bank but gave no indication why the restrictions were eased.

The international community has urged Israel to lift its blockade of the territory, which includes travel and goods restrictions, warning of a worsening security situation and eventual explosion of violence if it remains in place.

Of the 17-member Palestinian Cabinet, four are based in Gaza and the rest in the West Bank, where President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority (PA) has its headquarters.

The government was formed on the back of a unity deal between the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which dominates the PA, and Hamas, which controls Gaza.

The Cabinet of independents, agreed on by both sides, has until now had to meet without its Gaza ministers, due to Israeli travel restrictions.

Israel blocked Gaza ministers' travel after the government was sworn in, slamming the PA for signing an agreement with Israel's sworn enemy Hamas.

NEW YORK — Two men arrested on charges of plotting to help the Daesh terror group were vocal both online and in personal conversations about their commitment and desire to join the extremists, with one of them threatening to shoot President Barack Obama to "strike fear in the hearts of infidels”, federal authorities said.

The men were among three charged Wednesday with attempt and conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organisation.

Akhror Saidakhmetov, 19, was arrested at Kennedy Airport, where he was attempting to board a flight to Istanbul, with plans to head to Syria, authorities said. Another man, 24-year-old Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, had a ticket to travel to Istanbul next month and was arrested in Brooklyn, federal prosecutors said. The two were held without bail after a brief court appearance.

A third defendant, Abror Habibov, 30, is accused of helping fund Saidakhmetov's efforts. He was ordered held without bail in Florida.

If convicted, each faces a maximum of 15 years in prison.

New York Police Department Commissioner William Bratton said this was the first public case in New York involving possible fighters going to Daesh, but he hinted at ongoing investigations.

"This is real," Bratton said. "This is the concern about the lone wolf, inspired to act without ever going to the Mideast."

Authorities said Juraboev first came to the attention of law enforcement in August, when he posted on an Uzbek-language website that propagates the Daesh ideology.

"Greetings! We too want to pledge our allegiance and commit ourselves while not present there," he wrote, according to federal authorities. "Is it possible to commit ourselves as dedicated martyrs anyway while here?"

"What I'm saying is, to shoot Obama and then get shot ourselves, will it do? That will strike fear in the hearts of infidels."

Saidakhmetov's mother took away his passport to try to prevent him from travelling, according to the federal complaint. When he called his mother and asked for it back, she ended up hanging up on him. She had asked him where he wanted to go and he said that a person who had the chance to join Daesh and didn't would face divine judgement.

Habibov had recently been a Brooklyn resident before moving a few years ago and falling out of contact with the borough's Uzbek community, said Farhod Sulton, president of the Brooklyn-based Vatandosh Uzbek-American Federation.

At some point, he stopped coming to Uzbek gatherings, Sulton said, and he was reading extremist literature. "We had a tense conversation about the ultra-orthodox understanding of Islam. I think he got into the wrong hands in terms of learning Islam."

Loretta Lynch, who is Obama's choice to be US attorney general, said: "The flow of foreign fighters to Syria represents an evolving threat to our country and to our allies."

Saidakhmetov's attorney, Adam Perlmutter, said his client was a "young, innocent kid" who would plead not guilty.

"This is the type of case that highlights everything that is wrong with how the Justice Department approaches these cases," Perlmutter said. Juraboev's attorney had no immediate comment.

Saidakhmetov is a Brooklyn resident and citizen of Kazakhstan. Juraboev is a Brooklyn resident from Uzbekistan. Habibov had been in the US legally, but his visa had expired. He was appointed a public defender on Wednesday.

ERBIL/BAGHDAD — Daesh members in northern Iraq have destroyed a collection of priceless statues and sculptures dating to the ancient Assyrian era, according to a video published online.

A Daesh video showed men attacking the artefacts, some of them identified as antiquities from the 7th century BC, with sledgehammers or drills, saying they were symbols of idolatry.

"The Prophet ordered us to get rid of statues and relics, and his companions did the same when they conquered countries after him," an unidentified man said in the video.

The articles destroyed appeared to come from an antiquities museum in the northern city of Mosul, which was overrun by Daesh last June, a former employee at the museum told Reuters.

The militants shoved statues off their plinths, shattering them on the floor, and one man applied an electric drill to a large winged bull.

The video showed a large room strewn with dismembered statues, and Islamic songs played in the background.

Lamia Al Gailani, an Iraqi archaeologist and associate fellow at London-based Institute of Archaeology, said the militants had wreaked incalculable damage.

"It's not only Iraq's heritage: it's the whole world's. It's human heritage," she told Reuters.

"They are priceless, unique. It's unbelievable. I don't want to be Iraqi anymore," she said, comparing the damage to the dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Afghan Taliban in 2001.

As well as Assyrian statues of winged bulls from Nineveh and Nimrud, Gailani said Daesh hardliners appeared to destroy statues from Hatra, a Hellenistic-Parthian city in northern Iraq dating back around 2,000 years.

"Muslims, these relics you see behind me are idols that were worshiped other than God in the past centuries," the unidentified man in Daesh video said.

"What is known as Assyrians, Akkadians and others used to worship gods of rain, farming and war other than God and pay all sorts of tributes to them."

LONDON — "Jihadi John", the masked Daesh militant apparently responsible for beheading Western hostages, was named on Thursday as Kuwaiti-born London computer programmer Mohammed Emwazi.

A Washington Post report citing friends, a leading think tank researching foreign jihadists and a British security official quoted by the New York Times identified Emwazi as being the executioner.

The Guardian and the BBC in Britain also named him without citing sources.

But London's Metropolitan Police dismissed the reports as "speculation" and said it was "not going to confirm his identity".

The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College in London said it believed the identity "to be accurate and correct".

Cage, a civil rights group that was in contact with Emwazi for two years over his alleged harassment by British security services, said the man bore "striking similarities" to the hooded militant.

But Cage's research director Asim Qureshi told a Washington Post reporter that due to the hood "there was no way he could be 100 per cent certain", the campaign group said in a statement.

Cage also published correspondence with Emwazi in which he alleged that a British secret service agent named "Nick" tried to recruit him while interrogating him at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport in 2009.

Emwazi said he was returning with two friends after they were expelled from Tanzania, accused of trying to join Islamist militants in Somalia but on a trip that he said was a holiday after finishing university.

“Why don’t you work for us?” Emwazi quoted “Nick” as telling him. After refusing, he said the officer told him: “You’re going to have a lot of trouble, you’re going to be known, you’re going to be followed”.

After being refused entry to his native Kuwait three times, Cage said Emwazi left his London home in 2013 and it cited police as telling him family “that they had information that he had entered into Syria”.

Stylish and polite 

Emwazi, said by Cage to be 26, was identified to the Post by friends and others familiar with the case, with one acquaintance telling the paper: “I have no doubt that Mohammed is Jihadi John”.

He is from a middle class family and earned a degree in computer programming before travelling to Syria around 2012, according to the report.

Dozens of reporters could be seen outside a house believed to belong to his family in the London neighbourhood of Queen’s Park.

The University of Westminster said in a statement it had a record of Mohammed Emwazi leaving college six years ago and was setting up a pastoral team to provide advice and support to students.

“If these allegations are true, we are shocked and sickened by the news. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families,” it said.

Emwazi is described as being quiet and polite with a stylish dress sense. In one e-mail to Cage he complained about police going through his designer clothes.

Cage said he was subjected to “harassment” by British authorities after his aborted trip to Tanzania and subsequent attempts to reach Kuwait to get married.

“I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started,” he wrote in a 2010 e-mail released by Cage.

But now “I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London,” he added.

“He desperately wanted to use the system to change his situation but the system ultimately rejected him,” Qureshi said in the Cage statement.

“What risk assessments, if any, have been made about British counter-terrorism policy and the key part it plays in radicalising individuals?” he said.

Ideology, not poverty 

“Jihadi John”, named after Beatle John Lennon due to his British accent, is believed to be responsible for the murders of US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, British aid workers David Haines and Allan Henning and American aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig.

He also appeared in a video with the Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto, shortly before they were killed.

In the videos posted online, he appears dressed all in black with only his eyes exposed, and wields a knife while launching tirades against the West.

Referring to his middle-class upbringing, the King’s College research centre said it showed that radicalisation “is not something driven by poverty or social deprivation”.

“Ideology clearly plays a big role in motivating some men to participate,” it said.

British intelligence officers estimate that there are around 700 homegrown militants fighting for Daesh in Syria and Iraq.

“British fighters have clearly demonstrated that they are not in this conflict to take a back seat. They are full participants in this war, operating as suicide bombers, hostage takers, and executioners.”