Region

TEHRAN — Iran has seized on Washington's historic rapprochement with Cuba after five decades of Cold War standoff as proof that big power sanctions do not work.

"The defence by the Cuban government and people of their revolutionary ideals over the past 50 years shows that policies of isolation and sanctions imposed by the major powers against the wishes of independent nations are ineffective," foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Akfham said.

The statement, released late Saturday, was Iran's first official reaction to the rapprochement announced by the two governments on Wednesday.

Washington and Havana said they would launch measures to ease a five-decade US trade embargo as well as a prisoner exchange. First official talks are scheduled for January.

Cuban President Raul Castro on Saturday hailed the thaw with Washington and said he was ready to discuss any topic with the United States.

Iran and the United States severed diplomatic ties after the November 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, along with 50 American hostages, which lasted 444 days.

A year later Washington slapped a trade embargo on Iran and since 2006 the Islamic republic is also facing UN sanctions over its controversial nuclear programme.

Further international sanctions on Iran were announced in 2012, including US and European Union sanctions on oil exports and financial transactions.

Iran denies it is seeking a bomb and says its nuclear programme aims to produce atomic energy to reduce the country's reliance on fossil fuels.

A historic 15-minute telephone call between US President Barack Obama and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani in September 2013 marked the first contact between leaders of the two nations since 1979.

The call was a tentative step towards a thaw between the two countries, who have been engaged in tenuous nuclear talks along with other world powers.

The talks between Iran and the P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany — have been extended until June 30 after the two sides failed to meet a November 24 deadline.

TUNIS — In the corner of his office, Tunisian presidential candidate Beji Caid Essebsi keeps a bust of Habib Bourguiba, who led the country in 1957 after its independence from France. It is a symbol, he says, of the kind of statesman Tunisia now needs.

The 88-year-old was a minister in Bourguiba's government and is now standing for president himself. To win however he must convince voters to look past his more recent job — speaker for the autocratic Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who rigged elections to rule for 24 years until the country threw him out in 2011.

That revolt inspired “Arab Spring” uprisings across the Middle East. Where other nations struggle with post-revolt upheaval, Tunisia’s presidential elections on Sunday highlight its successful shift to democracy and a new constitution.

But the race between Essebsi and incumbent President Moncef Marzouki, the human rights activist named president after the first free election of 2011, is also dominated by questions over the return of those close to Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia.

Some former regime officials have already secured parliamentary positions after Essebsi’s secular party Nidaa Tounes took the most seats in an October general election.

Following that, Essebsi secured 39 percent in the first presidential round in November against 33 per cent for Marzouki.

The presidential candidate, who was once Ben Ali’s parliamentary speaker, distances himself from the corruption and abuses associated with the past regime. Instead he offers his experience as a statesman that he says Tunisia needs after three years of instability.

“Do people really think at my age I will take over everything? I will be the president for all Tunisians,” Essebsi said during a campaign stop earlier this month. “All I want is to return the prestige of the state.”

Compromise

Incorporating Ben Ali officials into politics was part of the political compromise that salvaged Tunisia’s transition and set it apart from other countries, like Libya and Egypt, that still struggle after the Arab Spring to deal with past regime influence.

Ben Ali officials were not hunted down and a law to ban members of his party from politics never made it past initial proposals.

Now Essebsi, who regularly deflects criticism about his age with quips, refers to Bourguiba in his appeal to Tunisians now hoping for more stability.

The first president of Tunisia, Bourguiba ruled for twenty years before being removed by Ben Ali and kept under house arrest until his death. Though he consolidated Tunisia’s one-party system, many Tunisians still see him as the founder of a secular-leaning state with its emphasis on education, women’s rights and economic development.

Marzouki only talks of Essebsi in the context of the Ben Ali era. But he says a win for his opponent would undermine the legacy of the “Jasmine Revolution” and risk consolidating power in the hands of former regime men, known as the “Remnants”.

“Essebsi is not a democrat. He doesn’t know what democracy is,” Marzouki said in a recent speech.

Limited authority

Yet should Essebsi win, victory would be tempered by the political and economic challenges facing Tunisia: A low-intensity Islamist militant insurgency and a need for tough austerity measures to ease the budget deficit.

His party’s slim margin in Congress also means it will be forced to compromise when lawmakers choose a prime minister and form a new government. It is unclear whether Nidaa Tounes would be able to work with the leftist Popular Front or the Islamists Ennahda in a national coalition — both strong movements.

Ennahda remains a powerful political voice with 69 seats versus Nidaa Tounes’ 85 seats in the 217-member legislature.

“As a result, the next government will be largely ineffective and unable to implement any major economic reform,” said Eurasia Group analyst Riccardo Fabiani, referring to the challenges of forming a coalition government.

Many participants in the 2011 uprising say they too will be warily watching the return of old regime.

This week marked the fourth anniversary of the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, the street vendor who set himself alight in protest and triggered the uprising against the abuses and poor living conditions many suffered under Ben Ali.

“We paid a high price for the revolution and now just four years later the old regime is back with a new look and democratic talk,” said Ali Makki, whose brother was shot dead in protests.

“We’ll keep fighting for freedoms we won.”

LONDON — The Islamic State (IS) extremist group has executed 100 of its own foreign fighters who tried to flee their headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Financial Times (FT) newspaper said Saturday.

An activist opposed to both IS and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is well-known to the British business broadsheet, said he had "verified 100 executions" of foreign IS fighters trying to leave the jihadist group's de facto capital.

IS fighters in Raqqa said the group has created a military police to clamp down on foreign fighters who do not report for duty. Dozens of homes have been raided and many jihadists have been arrested, the FT reported.

Some jihadists have become disillusioned with the realities of fighting in Syria, reports have said.

According to the British press in October, five Britons, three French, two Germans and two Belgians wanted to return home after complaining that they ended up fighting against other rebel groups rather than Assad's regime. They were being held prisoners by IS.

In total, between 30 and 50 Britons want to return but fear they face jail, according to researchers at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London, which had been contacted by one of the jihadists speaking on their behalf.

Since a US-led coalition began a campaign of air strikes against IS in August, the extremist group has lost ground to local forces and seen the number of its fighters killed rise significantly.

Meanwhile Thursday, the Pentagon said several IS leaders had been killed in US air strikes.

In 40 days across October and November, some 2,000 air raids killed more than 500 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

GAZA CITY — Israeli aircraft hit Gaza for the first time since an August truce ended 50 days of war after a rocket hit Israel, witnesses and the army said early Saturday.

A spokesman for Gaza's health ministry said there were no casualties in the air strike, which came just hours after the rocket hit an open field in southern Israel on Friday without causing casualties or damage.

It was only the third instance of rocket fire from Gaza since the August 26 truce between Israel and the territory's Islamist de facto rulers Hamas.

The Israeli army said the air strike had "targeted a Hamas terror infrastructure site".

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said the "Hamas terrorist organisation is responsible and accountable" for the rocket fire, which he said the army viewed "with severity".

Hamas did not claim responsibility for the rocket launch but Israel holds the Islamist movement responsible for any rocket fire from Gaza regardless of who carries it out.

The summer war between Israel and Hamas killed 2,140 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 73 people on the Israeli side, most of them soldiers.

AMMAN  — Syrian businessmen and trade officials say they are worried the economic lifeline provided by Iran is under strain from plunging oil prices, despite public messages of support from Syria's strongest regional ally.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has relied on oil-producing Iran to help him fight insurgents in a nearly four-year-old civil war and also prop up a currency under pressure.

"If it had not been for Iranian support we could not have survived the crisis," a senior Syrian trade official said from Damascus, requesting anonymity.

"It was Iranian support that has been the most important. In return, we are promising them more and more, and opening more and more doors for them to invest in Syria."

Oil production in Syria, which is under US and European sanctions, has dropped sharply since the start of the conflict and as insurgents have taken over energy installations.

In July last year, Iran granted Syria a $3.6 billion credit facility to buy oil products, according to officials and bankers at the time. Another $1 billion went for non-oil products.

But with the global oil price down 50 per cent since June, Syria — where rebels have seized up to a third of the country — has sought reassurances Tehran will maintain the status quo.

The public message has been an overwhelming "yes".

Syrian Prime Minister Wael Al Halqi visited Tehran this week to boost Iranian support for Syria, in particular ensuring Iranian petroleum products reach the Syrian market, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

"Iran's economic support for Syria will continue incessantly," Iranian Vice President Eshagh Jahangiri said on Tuesday after meeting Halqi, according to Iran's state news agency IRNA.

But there were no detailed announcements of joint ventures or oil deals as followed previous such visits in the past.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters that support for Assad would never flag despite the fall in oil prices. "We are going through a very difficult phase and the drop in oil prices is a plot by our enemies. They want to bring us to our knees to abandon our pillars and to break our resistance," he said.

"But I can assure you that Iran's support to Syria will continue. Iran has been through worse situations and has never changed its foreign policy."

Currency falls

The Syrian pound, which has fallen around 70 per cent since the civil war began in 2011, lost another 10 per cent over the past two weeks alone.

Dealers said the slide was driven by several factors, including a realisation that US strikes on Islamic State insurgents were not helping Assad as much as had been expected. But a major one was that a falling oil price had made them fear Iran would be less able to help shore up its ally's economy.

Shiite Iran has deep ties with Syria. Assad is an Alawite, an offshoot of Shiism, and Tehran sees him as a bulwark against Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia's influence in the region.

In the past, Assad streamed Iranian support to Shiite Hizbollah in neighbouring Lebanon, while now, the militia gets funds directly from Iran to fight Assad's enemies at the front.

Damascus-based businessmen and bankers say the Syrian Central Bank is worried about the drop in oil prices affecting Iranian support for Syria.

Iran deposited $500-$750 million in Syria's Central Bank more than a year ago that has been used by the authorities to help stabilise the pound, according to two senior bankers with close ties with central bank officials.

In recent weeks, the bank sold dollars to shore up the pound in some of the largest market interventions since the start of the crisis, the two bankers said.

Syrian officials could not be reached for comment on Thursday or Friday.

There is a general consensus among traders, bankers and businessmen that the drop in Iranian oil earnings will have untold consequences on the level of economic support in the long term despite little discernible impact on business ties so far.

"The 50 per cent steep fall in oil prices will break Iran's back, not just the level of support for Assad," a prominent member of the Damascus Chamber of Industry said, also requesting anonymity.

Oil disruptions

Iranians have delivered turbines for power plants and have been promised contracts to rebuild housing, roads and other infrastructure destroyed by the war on the understanding that Tehran would finance them in return for equity shares.

All this could be jeopardised. Much, however, will depend on how long oil prices will continue to stay depressed, they say.

Two Syrian businessman who sell products including olive oil and garments to Iranian private traders are worried they may defer payments.

A member of the Syrian Chambers of Industry from the city of Aleppo said he understood the main item on Prime Minister Halqi's shopping list in Tehran was bigger quantities of petroleum product imports.

Growing power cuts have hit government-controlled areas as more gas fields go out of action, forcing Damascus to rely even more on imports of fuel for its power plants.

Islamic State militant control of some of the border crossings with Iraq has disrupted the flow of tens of thousands of barrels of crude from Iraq that were delivered overland by oil tankers, an oil trader based in the region said.

Four Iranian tankers have discharged cargoes of gasoline products in the last two months in Syria's ports, traders said. But this did not end shortages accentuated by higher demand in the winter season, prompting small protests in Alawite villages near the port of Latakia, the heartland of Assad support.

UNITED NATIONS — Israel was asked by the UN General Assembly on Friday to compensate Lebanon for $856.4 million in oil spill damages it caused during its 2006 war with Hizbollah.

The non-binding vote, which passed 170-6, asks Israel to offer "prompt and adequate compensation" to Lebanon and other countries affected by the oil spill's pollution.

In a statement, Israel condemned the resolution as biased against the nation, Israeli media reported.

The oil spill was caused by Israel's air force when it bombed oil tanks near a coastal Lebanese power plant during the fierce month-long war with Hizbollah fighters.

The attack flooded the Mediterranean coastline with 15,000 tons of oil, according to the United Nations.

The adopted resolution cited $856.4 million (700 million euros) in damages caused by the oil spill, accounting for inflation of a October 2007 estimate by the United Nations secretary general that reported the spill caused $729 million in damage.

Lebanon bore the brunt of the spill, but the Syrian coast and other Mediterranean countries have suffered as well, the UN said.

The oil slick made by the spill "has had serious implications for livelihoods and the economy of Lebanon”, the resolution said.

The UN asked Lebanon to continue clean-up efforts and the international community to increase funding for its environmental restoration.

The US, Australia, Canada and Israel were among the six states that voted against the UN text.

DOHA — Saudi security forces killed four militants in a clash in Awamiya region on Saturday, the interior ministry said.

The troops raided a militant hideout in Awamiya town and killed the four in an exchange of fire.

The dead were behind the killing of a member of the security forces and wounding of another last Sunday, a ministry spokesman said, quoted by the Saudi state news agency SPA. They included the leader of that attack, it said.

Awamiya has been the focal point of unrest among Saudi Shiites since protests in early 2011 calling for an end to discrimination against the minority sect and for democratic reforms in the Sunni monarchy.

More than 20 people have been killed in the unrest since then, most of them local people shot in incidents that police have described as exchanges of fire. Shiite rights activists say some of those killed were shot dead while peacefully protesting, which the government denies.

Saudi Shiites complain it is harder for them to get government jobs than Sunnis, or to build places of worship, and the kingdom's state-employed clergy use abusive language to describe their sect in sermons and religious text books.

The government denies discrimination and has accused Shiite activists involved in attacks on security officers or protests as working on behalf of a foreign power, widely understood to mean Iran. The activists and Tehran deny that.

UNITED NATIONS — Negotiations on a draft UN resolution that sets terms for a final Israeli-Palestinian peace deal will take time, Jordan said Thursday, indicating that a Security Council vote was not imminent.

Jordan presented the measure on Wednesday to the UN Security Council on behalf of the Palestinians, who said they were open to negotiations on the text.

"It will take time," Jordan's UN Ambassador Dina Kawar told reporters.

Jordan along with Britain and France were hoping to achieve a draft resolution that could be adopted by consensus at the Security Council and will not be vetoed by the United States.

But the United States said Thursday it did not support the current resolution.

"It is not something that we would support," State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters.

Washington has repeatedly vetoed Security Council resolutions seen as undermining its close ally Israel.

The Palestinian draft resolution sets a 12-month deadline for wrapping up negotiations on a final settlement and the end of 2017 as the time frame for completing an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories.

A final peace deal would pave the way to the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as a shared capital, according to the text.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel would never accept "unilateral diktats" while his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman dismissed the draft as a "Palestinian gimmick”.

The US administration opposes moves to bind negotiators' hands through a UN resolution — particularly any attempt to set a deadline for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank.

Looking for consensus

"There is not the basis for consensus on the text as drafted and that is why we need to do some work," said a Security Council diplomat.

"The issue now is how do we get something that really does command consensus. The objective that we have is to achieve consensus, which means we want to have a text that everybody can agree," said the diplomat, who asked not to be named.

France, working with Britain and Germany, was pressing on with a separate text on reviving the peace process, but it was unclear when that effort would yield results.

"We are continuing our work on a consensus text. We are working on the European text and we will see if we can make progress," said a European diplomat.

Adoption of a Security Council resolution on reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace talks would mark a key step after the United States failed in a high-profile bid to restart the process in April.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that without a return to peace, violence will continue on the ground and war could be reignited following the 50 days of bloodshed in Gaza this summer.

With Israel deep in an election campaign for March polls, there is concern that the resolution could play into the hands of hardliners and that delaying UN action would be wise.

"Palestinians are now feeling they want to rush ahead, the rest of us quite frankly are not sure that is a good idea…" said a Western diplomat.

Diplomatic sources suggested the Palestinians may be willing to hold off on a Security Council vote if they get assurances that Israel will freeze settlement construction until a way forward can be decided.

ZUMAR, Iraq — Kurdish peshmerga fighters have secured a route to Iraq's Sinjar mountain, where hundreds of people had been trapped by the Islamic State (IS) fighters, Masrour Barzani, head of the Iraqi Kurdish region's national security council said on Thursday.

"The peshmerga have managed to reach the mountain. A vast area has been liberated," Barzani said, adding that 100 IS fighters had been killed. "Now a corridor is open and hopefully the rest of the [Sinjar] region will be freed from the Islamic State."

The assault ended the months-long ordeal of hundreds of Iraq's Yazidi religious minority, who had been trapped on the mountain since IS stormed Sinjar and other Kurdish-controlled parts of northern Iraq in August.

"All those Yazidis that were trapped on the mountain are now free," Barzani said.

The peshmerga had not yet begun to evacuate them, he added.

The road through Sinjar is an important supply route for IS militants between Mosul and neighbouring Syria.

Kurdish peshmerga soldiers began their offensive on Wednesday to break the jihadists' siege of the mountain and the town of Sinjar.

The peshmerga fighters charged from Zumar, east of Sinjar, capturing back 700 square kilometres over two days.

The Kurds have yet to take back the actual town of Sinjar, but the freeing of the Yazidis from the mountain is a symbolic victory for the Kurds after IS victories over the Kurds' peshmerga fighters this summer.

The August spectacle of IS fighters racing towards Arbil and the pleas of Yazidis trapped on Sinjar mountain, with hundreds of others captured or killed, galvanised US President Barack Obama to military action.

Since then, Kurdish peshmerga forces have regained most of the ground they lost to IS in northern Iraq, but Sinjar's awkward geography, out on a limb to the west, has made it difficult to penetrate.

GAZA CITY — Thousands of supporters of exiled Palestinian strongman Mohammed Dahlan protested Thursday in Gaza against the reported sacking of dozens of members of the security forces who back him.

The demonstration came as a trial opened in the West Bank against Dahlan on charges of corruption, seven months after a Palestinian court sentenced him to two years in jail for defamation.

Dahlan once held the internal security portfolio and headed the powerful security forces in the Gaza Strip, acting as pointman for the Fatah Party of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas — his sworn rival.

But he fell from grace in June 2007 when Hamas drove Fateh from Gaza after days of fierce street battles.

In June 2011 he was expelled from Fateh's ruling body and also lost his parliamentary immunity following allegations of financial corruption and murder.

In May, a West Bank court sentenced Dahlan, who lives in the United Arab Emirates, to two years in jail — effectively barring him from ever running in general or presidential elections.

One of his lawyers, Sevag Torossian, described the trial, which has been adjourned to December 28, a "demolition machine" operated by Abbas against Dahlan.

The trial is a "farce" and a "parody" of justice, said the Paris-based Torossian, who charged that the defence team learned about the case via media reports and have not seen the charge sheet.

In Gaza thousands of protesters rallied outside the Palestinian parliament, carrying portraits of Abbas covered with slogans accusing him of "treason”, "corruption" and "tyranny".

"The time has come to put an end to the injustice facing the Gaza Strip and our brothers whose salaries have been cut," Palestinian lawmaker and Dahlan supporter Majd Abu Shamaleh told the crowd.

A spokesman for Abbas's Palestinian Authority security services, Adnan Damiri said the personnel were sacked for violating regulations, not because they are Dahlan partisans.

"We sacked those who violated the rules of military discipline," he said.

The Gaza demonstration came after sources close to Dahlan said the PA had sacked 100 of his supporters among the security forces.

It also reflects lingering tensions between Abbas and Hamas, the de facto rulers of Gaza, despite an agreement between the two to set up a national unity government.

Last month Abbas accused the Islamist movement Hamas of trying "to destroy" efforts to broker national unity after bomb blasts cancelled a memorial for veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Gaza.