Region

GENEVA — A United Nations body agreed on Thursday to let Iraq postpone its final payment of reparations to Kuwait for the 1990-91 Gulf War, in an effort to help ease Baghdad's cash-strapped budget.

The consensus decision, reached by major powers at the UN Compensation Commission (UNCC), means Iraq will have until January 2016 to begin paying its oil-rich neighbour $4.6 billion for oil fields destroyed during its invasion and seven-month occupation.

Iraq's economy is being battered by low oil prices and war with Islamic State militants who control the north and west, leading the government of Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi to request the delay.

"The Governing Council adopted a decision agreeing to a postponement of Iraq's requirement to deposit 5 per cent of oil proceeds until 1 January, 2016," Leah Kraft, legal officer of the UNCC, told Reuters.

In a statement issued after the closed-door special session, the UNCC said it had taken into account "the extraordinarily difficult security circumstances in Iraq and the unusual budgetary challenges associated with confronting this issue".

Quarterly payments derived from Iraq's oil and natural gas revenues would resume in 2016, it said.

Earlier on Thursday, state news agency KUNA reported that Kuwait said it accepted the Iraqi request related to reparations imposed by the UN Security Council.

"Iraq and Kuwait really negotiated this together at a high level," a Western diplomat told Reuters. "Iraq's finance minister wanted this to happen for the 2015 budget."

"The Kuwaitis have a good relationship with the new Iraqi government and want to see it succeed. They have a strong interest in regional stability," he said.

In 2000, the UNCC awarded $14.7 billion to Kuwait for oil production and sales losses incurred by the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, $4.6 billion of which is Iraq's last debt, the UN statement said.

"Today, the Governing Council welcomed Iraq's ongoing commitment to paying this outstanding claim in full," it said.

More than 700 Kuwaiti oil wells were set on fire by Iraqi troops retreating from the US-led operation Desert Storm to recapture the emirate in January 1991. Some burned for 10 months.

Iraq has already paid nearly $50 billion into the UN fund overseeing compensation for looting and damage inflicted during Saddam Hussein's seven-month occupation of Kuwait.

But with its economy set to shrink for the first time since the 2003 US-led invasion toppled Saddam and ended sanctions, Iraq can ill afford to divert a large chunk of the 2015 budget to make the last payment that had been due next year.

SANAA — Twin car bomb attacks in Yemen's western port city of Hodeida targeting Shiite militiamen left dozens of people dead and wounded on Thursday, a security official said.

"The two explosions were the result of two car bombs and left dozens dead and wounded," the official told AFP, without providing any precise figures.

The first bomb detonated at the Hodeida headquarters of the Shiite militia known as Ansarullah which seized the town at the end of September, said the official.

The other bomb went off close to another position of the Shiite militia west of Hodeida University, not far from the site of the first attack.

Thursday's attacks came two days after 16 schoolgirls were among 26 people killed in a car bomb attack targeting a Shiite militia leader in the central town of Rada.

Yemen has been rocked by worsening instability since the Shiite fighters, who are also known as Houthis, seized control of the capital Sanaa on September 21.

The Houthis have since expanded their presence in central and western Yemen, including Hodeida, but have met fierce resistance from Sunni tribes and Al Qaeda militants.

Thursday's attack came as a new Yemeni government won a confidence vote in parliament a month after its formation.

SANAA — Yemen's parliament on Thursday approved a new government despite months of violence and political wrangling that has shaken the country.

Parliament's approval could ease tensions but it is unlikely to resolve the power struggle between President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and the Shiite Houthi rebels who in September seized control of the capital, Sanaa, and are allied with loyalists of former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Houthis' power grab was met with suicide bombings and deadly attacks, mainly by Sunni rivals from Al Qaeda and allied tribes.

A strong explosion rocked a Houthi-occupied house in the port city of Hodeida on Thursday, killing one and wounding 11, according to a medical official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to media. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack.

Also, the group said it was behind twin suicide bombings that targeted a Houthi leader south of Sanaa on Tuesday — a day that left 26 people dead, including 16 girls whose school bus was hit.
Al Qaeda denied targeting the school bus and accused the Houthis of firing grenades that struck it.

The Houthis had pressed Hadi to form a new government, which would give them more say in political affairs. Believed to be Iran-backed, the Shiite rebels have become key power brokers since they overran Sanaa.

The 301-seat legislature did not release a tally on Thursday's vote, but more than 200 lawmakers at the session voted by a show of hands and overwhelmingly approved the 36-member government, led by Khaled Bahah.

Wrangling over the new government and the Houthis' military expansion around Sanaa and in other strategic provinces have driven Yemen deeper into turmoil.

Saleh and his loyalists, who form the majority in parliament, have called on the government to explicitly denounce UN sanctions against the former president and two top Houthi leaders. Bahah's government has vowed to respect the sanctions.

DOHA — The men grappled with each other to board the quickly filling bus. Others wriggled in through the windows, scaling the outside, using the large wheels as footholds and leaving scuff-marks on the white exterior with their shoes.

These weren't refugees fleeing disaster. They were migrant workers in 2022 World Cup host Qatar, fighting to earn a few dollars. The job: Pretend to be a sports fan.

Qataris boast they're mad for sports. The ruling emir of the oil- and gas-rich Gulf nation is so fond of football he bought Paris Saint-Germain, now France's powerhouse team. Lobbying World Cup organiser FIFA in 2010, his royal mother said: "For us, football is not just a mere game or a sport among many. It is THE sport."

Pitching successfully in November to track and field's governing body to host its world championships in 2019, Qatar bid presenter Aphrodite Moschoudi said: "Qatar has a true passion for sports. Everything in our country revolves around sport."

Or, when passion is lacking, around money.

When the world's second-richest people per capita can't find time or be bothered to fill their sports arenas, migrant workers are paid to take their place.

Thirty Qatar riyals — equivalent to $8 — won't buy a beer in the luxury waterside hotel in Doha, the capital, where Qatari movers-and-shakers unwind. But for this pittance, workers from Africa and Asia sprint under blinding sun in the Doha industrial zone where they're housed and surround a still-moving bus like bees on honey. They sit through volleyball, handball and football, applaud to order, do the wave with no enthusiasm and even dress up in white robes and headscarves as Qataris, to plump up "home" crowds.

The Associated Press squeezed aboard one of three buses that ferried about 150 workers, through dense traffic of luxury cars and past luxury villas they'll never be able to afford, to be fake fans at the Qatar Open of international beach volleyball in November.

The FIVB, volleyball's governing body, trumpeted on its website that the tournament, part of its World Tour, "brought out the crowds". But migrants from Ghana, Kenya, Nepal and elsewhere, who work in Qatar as bus and taxi drivers for the state-owned transport company and for other employers, told the AP they were there for money, not volleyball.

Word of payment filtered around their crowded dormitories. At 2:30 pm, clumps of men on their off-day gathered outside, inhaling dust stirred up by passing forklifts and trucks.

Someone spotted the first bus far down the street that cuts through the bleak-scape of construction and piled dirt. The bus filled instantly. A second and third bus — and more frantic scrambling — followed.

Breathing heavily, men squeezed into seats, three on one side of the aisle, two on the other. There were no safety belts and the ceiling fans didn't turn. One man without a seat squatted on the floor. To shouts of "get down!" he made himself small when a policeman was spotted on the journey.

One by one, from memory, the men reeled off their employee numbers — no names — to a man who methodically shuffled down the aisle, jotting down the details on a crumpled piece of paper. This ensured he'd later know who to pay, workers said.

At Al Gharafa Sports Club, we disembarked and formed a line. An official in Qatari robes counted us in, with taps on the shoulder. French volleyballers Edouard Rowlandson and Youssef Krou were winning their bronze-medal match as we filled seats, making the arena appear almost full.

"Bizarre," Rowlandson said when told of the hired spectators. "But we prefer that to playing in front of nobody."

Ahmed Al Sheebani, executive secretary of the Qatar Volleyball Association, rebuffed the AP's questions, reaching over to switch off this reporter's voice recorder.

Reached later by phone, FIVB media director Richard Baker thanked the AP for making it aware of the fake fans and said the federation will "seek clarification" from Qatari organisers.

"It's news to us," he said.

But not to Qatar's government. A survey of 1,079 Qatar residents published this January by the ministry of development planning and statistics suggested that paid fans may be turning Qataris off sport. The ministry said two-thirds of Qataris surveyed did not attend any football matches during the previous season and two-thirds of respondents cited "the spread of paid fans" as a "significant reason" keeping audiences away.

At the volleyball, some for-hire spectators were offered less than others. Security guards and office boys from Kenya said a promise of 20 riyals ($5.50) each drew 40 people onto their bus. A Nigerian manservant said he, too, was getting just 20.

Numerous workers said they regularly make up numbers at sports events. Qatar league football games pay 20 or 25 riyals, they said. A Kenyan said he made 50 riyals at handball.

An added bonus: The volleyball arena had free Wi-Fi, allowing workers to get news and e-mails from home. They pulled out smartphones, ignoring a crowd organiser waving a plastic hand who urged them to clap to Daft Punk's "Get Lucky”.

Thirty riyals buys food for three days when you're eating just once a day to save money for families back home, workers said. And watching sports, some said, is less tedious than whiling away off-duty hours in Doha's back-of-beyond industrial zone.

"Shaking my body all over ... being in the crowd and shouting and dancing" was great fun for Adu, a trainee bus driver from Ghana who gave just his first name.

"Being there and getting paid is a plus for me."

Afterward, the transport company workers waited nearly three hours in the dark, on barren land near the arena, for return buses. Contacted separately later by phone, three of them confirmed they got 30 riyals each in cash, either on the bus back or in their dormitories.

On an hourly basis, that came out at just over $1 per hour.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Most Israelis would like to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replaced after March elections but, paradoxically, he is seen as most suitable for the job, an opinion poll said Thursday.

Israelis go to the polls on March 17, just over two years after Netanyahu's right-leaning coalition took office and following a spat in which the premier fired two ministers.

The survey conducted by the Dialog Institute and published by Haaretz Newspaper, showed that 53 per cent of those polled do not want Netanyahu to win a third consecutive term in office, for four in total.

Nevertheless, 34 per cent agreed that the incumbent and head of the right-wing Likud Party is the most credible candidate and the most capable to be prime minister.

Coming a distant second, at 17 per cent, was Labour Party head Isaac Herzog.

The survey also said Likud could end up neck and neck with an alliance of Labour and the centrist party HaTnuah of former justice minister Tzipi Livni, one of the two Cabinet members sacked by Netanyahu.

In that case each would secure 21 seats in the 120-strong Knesset, parliament, said Dialog, which had given Likud 24 seats in a survey published three weeks ago.

A poll published by Maariv newspaper last week said the Labour-HaTnuah alliance could gain 23 seats against 21 for Likud.

A total of 505 people were polled by Dialog in the latest survey which has a margin error of 4.2 percentage points.

UNITED NATIONS — The UN Security Council on Wednesday renewed for 12 months its authorisation for humanitarian access without Syrian government consent into rebel-held areas of Syria at four border crossings from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan.

The unanimously adopted resolution authorises aid deliveries across Al Yarubiyah on the Iraq border, Al Ramtha from Jordan and Bab Al Salam and Bab Al Hawa from Turkey. The Turkish posts cross into territory held by Islamic State, an Al Qaeda offshoot that has seized large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

The United Nations says some 12.2 million Syrians now need humanitarian aid, an increase of 2.9 million people in just 10 months. Nearly half of the Syrian population is displaced with more than 7.6 million internally displaced and over 3 million refugees in neighbouring states.

The resolution calls for continuing a monitoring mechanism for loading aid convoys in neighbouring countries, which confirms for Syria that aid consignments are in fact humanitarian relief.

It says the council is "gravely concerned" with the ineffective implementation of previous resolutions demanding increased aid access to Syrian civilians trapped in hard-to-reach areas, and at the barrel bombs, air strikes, torture and abuse of children in Syria's civil war, now in its fourth year.

"The council's strong demands have gone unheard," UN humanitarian aid chief Valerie Amos told the council earlier this week.

“The parties to the conflict continue to ignore the most basic principles of humanity,” she said. “In many parts of Syria the level of violence has worsened, with civilians continuing to pay heavily with loss of life, serious injuries, psychological trauma, ongoing and recurring displacement.”

The resolution adopted on Wednesday also had the council condemning impediments to the delivery of humanitarian aid across borders and front lines.

It added that UN humanitarian aid agencies and their partners should “scale up humanitarian deliveries into hard-to-reach and besieged areas, including by using, as effectively as possible, [the authorised] border crossings.”

The resolution has the 15-nation council “expressing its grave concern” that parts of Syria have been taken over by Islamic State and Al Nusra Front militants.

The council also voiced support for UN mediator for Syria Staffan de Mistura’s “action plan” to implement local ceasefires in some regions of Syria, with the country’s second city Aleppo as a possible starting point.

Some 200,000 people have died in the conflict, according to UN estimates.

BRUSSELS — The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas should be removed from the European Union's terrorist list, an EU court ruled on Wednesday, saying the decision to include it was based on media reports not considered analysis.

However, in its ruling, the bloc's second highest tribunal said member states could maintain their freeze on Hamas' assets for three months to give time for further review or for an appeal to be launched.

The EU's foreign policy arm said the bloc continued to view Hamas as a terrorist group. "This was a legal ruling of the court based on procedural grounds. We will look into this and decide on appropriate remedial action," spokeswoman Maja Kocijanic said.

Israel, which has clashed repeatedly with Europe in recent years over Palestinian statehood ambitions, demanded Hamas remain blacklisted and said the ruling showed "staggering hypocrisy" towards a Jewish state founded after the Holocaust.

"It seems that too many in Europe, on whose soil six million Jews were slaughtered, have learned nothing. But we in Israel, we've learned," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. He branded Hamas "a murderous terrorist organisation".

Hamas holds sway in the Gaza Strip and its founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel. It has regularly battled Israel, most recently in a 50-day war this summer.

Most Western countries, including the United States, say it is a terror organisation, pointing to years of indiscriminate rocket strikes out of Gaza and waves of suicide attacks, primarily between 1993 and 2005.

Hamas says it is a legitimate resistance movement and contested the European Union's decision in 2001 to include it on the terrorist list. It welcomed Wednesday's verdict.

"The decision is a correction of a historical mistake the European Union had made," Deputy Hamas chief Moussa Abu Marzouk said. "Hamas is a resistance movement and it has a natural right according to all international laws and standards to resist the occupation."

The EU court did not ponder the merits of whether Hamas should be classified as a terror group, but reviewed the original decision making process. This, it said, did not include the considered opinion of competent authorities, but rather relied on media and Internet reports.

It said if an appeal was brought before the EU's top court, the European Court of Justice, the freeze of Hamas funds should continue until the legal process was complete.

In a similar ruling, an EU court said in October the 2006 decision to place Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers on the EU list was procedurally flawed. As with Hamas, it also said the group's assets should remain frozen pending further legal action and the European Union subsequently filed an appeal.

BRUSSELS — The European Union scrambled to set the record straight on Hamas Wednesday after an EU court ordered the removal of the Palestinian Islamist group from its terror blacklist, infuriating Israel.

The ruling threatened recent Brussels attempts to play a bigger role in reviving the moribund Middle East peace process, with Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu saying it showed Europeans had learned nothing from the Holocaust.

A vote by the European Parliament backing the recognition in principle of a Palestinian state just hours after the Hamas decision, following a series of such votes in European nations, added fuel to the fire.

The EU insisted that it still viewed Hamas as a terrorist group, saying that the ruling by the General Court of the European Union was based on a technicality and that it might appeal the decision.

"This is a legal ruling, not a political decision," European Commission spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said.

She said the EU would "take appropriate remedial action" and pointed out that under the ruling the designation of Hamas as a terror group and the freeze of its funds remains in place for three months or pending the outcome of an appeal.

She added: "The EU continues to consider Hamas a terrorist organisation."

Britain also said it wanted to maintain the terror listing.

Its embassy to the EU said the judgement "does not change UK or EU's position on Hamas, a terrorist group."

Hamas's military wing was added to the European Union's first-ever terrorism blacklist drawn up in December 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States. The EU blacklisted the political wing of Hamas in 2003.

Europe 'learned nothing' from Holocaust 

However the General Court of the European Union, its second highest court, ruled Wednesday that the listing was based on "factual imputations derived from the press and the Internet", instead of sound legal judgements.

It stressed that the decision was procedural, and did "not imply any substantive assessment of the question of the classification of Hamas as a terrorist group”.

But Israel was in no mood for legal niceties.

"It seems that too many in Europe, on whose soil six million Jews were slaughtered, have learned nothing," Netanyahu said, demanding that the EU reinstate Hamas on the list.

"But we in Israel, we've learned. We'll continue to defend our people and our state against the forces of terror and tyranny and hypocrisy."

Hamas, meanwhile, hailed the decision as a "victory".

"This is a victory for the Palestinian question and for the rights of our people," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told AFP.

"We thank the European court for this positive decision which must be followed by international steps to lift the oppression of the Palestinian people."

The row comes as a blow to the EU's new diplomatic chief, former Italian foreign minister Federica Mogherini, who has focused on the Middle East peace process since taking office on November 1.

One of her first visits was a trip to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank during which she called for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Meanwhile, frustration has been growing in European capitals, with growing pressure on Israel to halt new settlements and get the peace process back on track.

In Spain, France, Britain, Ireland, Portugal and Luxembourg, national parliaments have backed motions calling on their governments to recognise Palestinian statehood, while Sweden's government has actually done so.

DUBAI — A Saudi cleric has sparked uproar by appearing on television along with his wife — whose face was uncovered in an open challenge to strict tradition in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

Sheikh Ahmed Al Ghamedi, who has said covering the face is not a must for women under Islam, sat alongside his wife Jawaher bint Ali as she spoke to Dubai-based Saudi MBC television, in a programme broadcast at the weekend.

Saudi women rarely show their faces in public.

Sporting trendy sunglasses, light make-up and varnished nails, but also wearing the traditional black abaya cloak, Ghamedi's spouse spoke of the problems their children have at school because of their father's controversial fatwas or edicts.

"Our children complain that some teachers tell them: Why does your father say this and that?" she said of fatwas that have enraged zealots in the desert kingdom.

Ghamedi, who once headed the notorious religious police in the western city of Mecca, home to Islam's holiest shrine, has openly challenged the tradition that imposes niqab or face veil on women.

He has also said that wearing make-up is permissible.

"The prophet did not order women to cover their faces. Wearing make-up is allowed," he told Badria Al Bishr, female host of the television programme.

"Happy now? Every mobile phone now has a picture of your wife, you cuckold," said one outraged post on Twitter.

Like other posts, it used a picture of the couple — but with the wife's face blurred.

Saudi Arabia's mufti or religious leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh criticised Ghamedi on Saudi news website Sabq, urging him to repent and praying that "Allah will guide Ghamedi to the right path".

But Ghamedi supporters also took to social media.

"They insult him for showing his wife's face... but they shut up when it's Alwaleed [Bin Talal]," tweeted Ahmed Rasan, posting a picture of the Saudi billionaire prince next to his fashionably dressed wife.

Saudi women are required to cover themselves from head to toe when outside the home, and still need permission from a male guardian to work and marry.

Saudi Arabia is also the world's only country which does not allow women to drive, and those who challenge the ban risk arrest.

On December 9, rights group Amnesty International said authorities have extended the detention of two women's rights activists, one of whom tried to drive into the kingdom.

The interior ministry has still not commented on the case of Loujain Hathloul and Maysaa Alamoudi.

Border officers stopped Hathloul when she tried to drive from neighbouring United Arab Emirates into Saudi Arabia on November 30.

Alamoudi, a UAE-based Saudi journalist, later arrived to support her.

Both were arrested and are being held in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province.

DUBAI — Britain wants to make sure its citizens are more nice than naughty while soaking up the Persian Gulf sun this holiday season.

A social media campaign by British embassy staff in the United Arab Emirates running this week is a play on the classic poem "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", and includes travel advice aimed at keeping unwitting Britons out of trouble.

The rhyme is meant for visitors to the Emirates, an oil-rich seven-state federation of former British protectorates on the Arabian Peninsula. It highlights potential cultural pitfalls through the eyes of a fictional traveller, Stu Nicholas.

"No holding of hands or Christmas kisses; under the mistletoe, despite amorous wishes," goes a festive nugget.

Another says: "So time to go home after several spirits neat; but it's a crime for Stu to be drunk on the street."

The Emirates' biggest and most cosmopolitan city, Dubai, has the most relaxed social codes in the conservative Gulf region, but foreigners occasionally run afoul of strict decency laws and prohibitions on public intoxication.

British citizens have received jail sentences here after being found guilty of kissing in public and having drunken sex on the beach. Other foreigners have been prosecuted for exchanging steamy text messages or showing a middle finger to a fellow driver.

The poem is being meted out little by little on Facebook and Twitter accounts operated by Britain's diplomatic missions to the country.

It follows a similar awareness campaign last year centred on the "12 Days of Christmas" that included the tweet: "On the 5th day of #Christmas my friend said to me; If I have overdone it, please send me home."

Millions of foreign tourists each year are drawn to the Emirates by beaches blessed with nearly year-round sunshine and eye-popping attractions such as the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building.

More than 100,000 British citizens live in the Emirates, and about a million visit the country each year, according to the embassies in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.