Region

CAIRO — Egypt on Saturday announced the arrest of a US-Egyptian citizen accused of having posted on jihadist websites a threat to attack American and other international schools in the region.

At the end of October, US embassies in the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the mission in Egypt, called for vigilance over a threat to American schools there.

Egypt’s interior ministry, in a statement on its official Facebook page, said Alsayyed Abu Saree, 60, was behind the threats and had been arrested, although it did not say when.

The suspect “posted a call through jihadist websites for attacks targeting government and foreign interests... including against foreign teachers at American and international schools in the country”, it said.

Interior ministry spokesman Hani Abdel Latif told AFP the suspect was arrested in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, and that he holds both US and Egyptian citizenship.

He also holds a certificate to teach at American schools around the world and has lived in the United States for 27 years.

In October, the American embassy in Riyadh posted a warning saying that an anonymous jihadist post specifically mentioned schools in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Maadi, an upmarket Cairo suburb.

A similar message issued by the embassy in Cairo said the mission was “working with local schools identified with the United States or that have high concentrations of American teachers or students to review and enhance their security posture”.

It also said “Americans residing in or visiting Egypt should remain vigilant regarding their personal security and alert to local security developments”.

However, the warnings issued at the end of October also stressed that no specific threat had been identified.

MANAMA — Bahrain's foreign minister urged world leaders Sunday to do more to cut off funding for terrorist groups and prevent them from profiting from illegal businesses.

Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa made the comments at the start of a meeting in the Bahraini capita, Manama, aimed at bringing together financial experts to improve the fight against extremist fund-raising.

He urged delegates to set a path to ensure that financial institutions and charities cannot funnel funds to terrorist groups, and "put an end to their ability to smuggle goods and extort funds from commercial enterprises".

The head of the US Treasury Department's effort to undermine the Islamic State's finances, David Cohen, last month estimated the group was earning about $1 million a day from black market oil sales alone. It also generates cash from criminal enterprises such as extortion, bank robbery and kidnapping for ransom. Only a small amount of its funding is believed to come from outside donors.

The one-day gathering follows a meeting in Paris in September in which diplomats from around the world pledged to fight Islamic State militants "by any means necessary”.

It includes representatives from several Arab nations, Western countries including the United States, Britain and France, as well as China and Russia. International bodies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund also participated.

MUSCAT — Iran, the United States and European Union will hold an unscheduled second day of talks on Monday on disagreements blocking resolution of a dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme, a US official and Iranian state media said.

With two weeks to a deadline for a comprehensive accord, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU envoy Catherine Ashton met in Oman's capital Muscat on Sunday to address a decade-long confrontation that has raised the risk of a wider war in the Middle East.

Reiterating Iran's official line, Ali Akbar Velayati, a top aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted by Iranian media as saying the Islamic republic would not abandon its nuclear "rights" but was committed to the negotiations under Khamenei's leadership.

Western countries and close US ally Israel suspect Iran has covertly sought to develop the means to build nuclear weapons.

Iran denies any secret nuclear weapons agenda, saying it wants peaceful nuclear energy only, but has refused to curb enrichment capacity and has been hit by damaging US, EU and UN Security Council sanctions as a result.

The discussions aim to put verifiable limits on Iran's uranium enrichment work — and any other potential path to a nuclear weapon — in return for a gradual lifting of sanctions.

The negotiations at a luxury hotel appeared to be intense. The Iranian, US and European delegations met from 11:30am to 2:30pm local time, broke for lunch and consultations, and then resumed three-way talks just before 6pm (1400 GMT).

Both US and Iranian officials said the discussions would continue on Monday, past the time when some of the participants were due to have left.

"Talks will continue in the morning," a US official said.

"Talks between Kerry, Zarif and Ashton ... will continue on Monday, to narrow the gaps and reach a comprehensive deal by the November 24 deadline," the official IRNA news agency reported.

Omani Foreign Minister Youssef Bin Alawi gave reporters an upbeat assessment of the talks. "By the level of commitment all parties are showing, we feel comfortable," he said. "There is no going back... I feel that all parties are positively willing to reach an agreement."

The thorniest unresolved issues are the size of Iran's enrichment programme, the length of any long-term agreement and the pace at which international sanctions would be phased out, according to Western and Iranian diplomats involved in the negotiations.

Washington also wants intensive verification and monitoring measures to ensure Iran is living up to its end of the bargain.

As Kerry arrived in Oman, a senior US official said the three-way talks would be "an important meeting", with the focus on making progress in order to meet the deadline.

US officials say major gaps still remain in negotiating positions. Kerry said last week that the United States and its partners were not contemplating an extension of the November 24 deadline, although he held out the possibility that negotiations could go beyond that date if major issues were resolved and there were only technical details to wrap up.

Solution possible

Speaking to Iranian state television on his arrival in the Omani capital Muscat on Saturday night, Zarif reiterated that sanctions imposed on Iran had brought "no result" for the West.

"If the West is interested in reaching such a solution, there is possibility to find a solution and to reach an understanding before November 24," he said.

Quoted by Iranian student news agency ISNA in Tehran, Velayati said Iran "will not abandon our rights" over nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Arak as well over the size of its centrifuge programme that enriches uranium for nuclear fuel.

Centrifuges are machines that spin at supersonic speed to increase the ratio of the fissile isotope in uranium. Low-enriched uranium is used to fuel nuclear power plants, Iran's stated goal, but can also provide material for bombs if refined much further, which the West fears may be Iran's latent aim.

"We are committed to the talks and our negotiators are acting based on a framework... outlined by the leader," he was quoted as saying, reinforcing the widely accepted notion that Khamenei has the last word on important matters of state.

A senior Iranian official close to the talks told Reuters the Oman talks would examine "the gaps that are still huge, Iran's enrichment capacity and time frame of lifting sanctions."

WASHINGTON — The United States is considering imposing sanctions on Libya's combative factions to prevent a proxy conflict fuelled by regional powers from erupting into full-blown civil war and to force militant leaders to negotiate, US officials said.

Three years after Muammar Qadhafi's downfall, outside intervention has exacerbated the fighting, with Qatar and, to some degree, Turkey supporting Islamist-linked forces and Egypt and the United Arab Emirates backing more secular rivals.

US sanctions would be separate from potential United Nations sanctions that aim to pressure Libyan factions and militias to take part in UN-backed political negotiations to be led by UN envoy Bernardino Leon.

The possibility of using UN sanctions to help bring about political talks has been aired publicly. The consideration of separate US sanctions has not been previously disclosed.

US officials declined to say whom they might target with sanctions or why they felt it necessary to look at US penalties separate from the United Nations. Nor would they detail what sanctions they would propose.

If applied, the United Nations sanctions would target individuals or groups involved in the fighting, rather than their foreign backers, and would freeze their assets as well as impose travel bans.

Libya is in chaos with two rival governments and parliaments struggling for power and control of its oil wealth.

The western part of the country is controlled by militants with Islamist links who call themselves Operation Dawn and who seized the capital, Tripoli, in August. This group has reinstated the previous parliament and established its own government.

The government that internationally recognised is in charge of a rump state in the east, whose parliament operates out of a hotel in Tobruk. In a ruling likely to deepen divisions, the Supreme Court on Thursday declared this parliament unconstitutional.

In the latest sign of upheaval, a Libyan rebel group that previously seized oil ports to press its demand for regional autonomy said on Friday it would declare independence in the east if the world recognised the rival parliament in Tripoli.

Separately, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, Spain and the United States issued a statement urging all sides to end “military operations and to refrain from taking any steps which increase the polarisation and divisions in the country.”

Why US action?

While US officials would not discuss the reasoning for unilateral sanctions, there are at least two possibilities.

First, if the United Nations moves slowly or not at all, US penalties could be imposed whenever Washington wished.

Second, US sanctions could be especially worrisome to Khalifa Haftar, a former Libyan army general who fled to the United States after breaking ranks with Qadhafi and returned to launch a campaign against the Islamists in Benghazi.

Western officials say the involvement of outside powers such as Egypt and the UAE is exacerbating the conflict and that the two countries are arming and funding the more secular forces.

Haftar, according to Western officials, has become the major proxy in Libya for Egypt, whose military-dominated government regards extremists on its border with Libya as a primary national security challenge.

The UAE sees Egypt’s leadership as a firewall against militants and has given Cairo financial and military support, US and allied officials say.

Saudi Arabia, a supporter of Egypt’s leader, General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, is sympathetic to the Egyptian and Emirati involvement in Libya but is not believed to have played any direct role, diplomats said.

Supporting Libya’s Islamists, including some elements that the United States views as dangerous extremists, are Qatar and Turkey. Qatar, officials said, has given arms and money to Islamist militias while Turkey has offered moral support.

While acknowledging regional fears Libya may become a magnet for militants, a US official said Washington believed outside interference may create “the very kind of conflict... that will invite negative elements into Libya rather than keep them out”.

GAZA CITY — The top EU diplomat appealed Saturday for the establishment of a Palestinian state as the killing of a young Arab Israeli by Israeli forces fanned tensions following violent clashes in Jerusalem.

Federica Mogherini, the European Union's new foreign affairs chief, said the world "cannot afford" another war in the Gaza Strip.

"We need a Palestinian state — that is the ultimate goal and this is the position of all the European Union," Mogherini said during a trip to Gaza, devastated by its third conflict in six years.

Hamas and Israel fought a 50-day war in July and August which resulted in the deaths of 2,140 Palestinians and more than 70 Israelis, majority of them soldiers.

Palestinians are seeking to achieve statehood in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank with East Jerusalem as the capital.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday that a draft resolution was on course to be submitted to the UN Security Council this month calling for an end date for Israeli occupation.

The text is expected to be vetoed by permanent member the United States.

Mogherini's visit comes against a backdrop of surging Israeli-Palestinian tensions in annexed East Jerusalem where there have been near-daily clashes in flashpoint neighbourhoods.

In the village of Kfar Kana in northern Israel, meanwhile, a 22-year-old was shot dead by security forces after intervening in the dawn arrest of one of his relatives, brandishing a knife, according to Israeli forces.

Dozens of angry youths later erected barricades and set fire to tyres on the outskirts of the village as Israeli forces deployed reinforcements.

Arab Israelis, who account for about 20 per cent of Israel’s population, are the descendents of Palestinian Arabs who remained on their land when Israel was created in 1948.

The shooting followed another night of clashes in East Jerusalem pitting youths throwing stones and firecrackers against Israeli forces who used rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas.

The violence was particularly intense at the Shuafat refugee camp, a maze of alleys crammed with Palestinian homes along the separation barrier cutting off East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank.

The spike in violence came after one of the camp’s residents ploughed a car into pedestrians in Jerusalem on Wednesday, killing a security officer and injuring nine other people before he was shot dead.

On Friday, a young Israeli also died of injuries sustained in the attack — the second of its kind in a fortnight.

Israel rejects 

‘fictitious claim’ 

The anger has been fuelled by Israel’s settlement activities as well as efforts by far-right Jewish fringe groups to secure prayer rights at the Al Aqsa compound which is holy to Jews as well as Muslims.

Speaking on Friday during her first official visit to Jerusalem, Mogherini said there was a real “urgency” to pick up and advance the moribund peace process.

She also flagged up Israel’s settlement building on lands the Palestinians want for a future state as an “obstacle” to a negotiated peace.

Shortly afterwards, Mogherini met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who gave a terse statement dismissing all criticism of his settlement policy.

“I reject the fictitious claim that the root of the continuous conflict is this or that settlement,” he said.

“Jerusalem is our capital and as such is not a settlement.”

Netanyahu ordered the security forces to either seal or demolish the homes of any Palestinian involved in anti-Israeli attacks, an official said Friday.

Mogherini had been scheduled to meet Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Gaza but he cancelled his trip after a series of bombs there Friday hit the homes and cars of Fateh officials.

Fateh, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, laid the blame on the Islamist movement Hamas, the de facto rulers in Gaza, as a new row broke out between the rival Palestinian factions.

Hamas announced Friday it was forming a thousands-strong “popular army” in the devastated Gaza Strip in response to what it called “serious Israeli violations” at Al Aqsa.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon — Friends and former colleagues of a US aid worker whom the Islamic State (IS) group has threatened to execute appealed Saturday for his release.

Twenty-six-year-old Peter Kassig, who converted to Islam and took the Muslim name Abdel Rahman, has been an IS captive since 2013.

"We call on IS... to free Abdel Rahman," Firas Agha, a Syrian refugee living in Tripoli who shared a flat with Kassig when he lived and worked in the northern Lebanese coastal city, told a news conference.

"Islam does not allow Muslim to kill Muslim, especially if the Muslim in question has done good work," he said.

In an October 3 video showing British aid worker Alan Henning's beheading, the threat was made that Kassig would be next.

The group says its brutal executions are in retaliation for US-led air strikes targeting jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

Before travelling to rebel-held areas in Syria, Kassig worked in hospitals and clinics treating Syrians forced to flee their war-torn country to neighbouring Lebanon and Turkey.

He made two separate trips into rebel-held areas of Syria before travelling to the eastern province of Deir Ezzor in autumn 2013, when he was taken hostage.

Kassig "was a very enthusiastic young man, so much that he would help refugees out of his own pocket", said Agha.

The former US soldier left the army after fighting in Iraq.

"He told us many times about his dismay over what he saw, both in terms of the killing and destruction," said Agha.

Another Syrian, Dr Ahmad Obeid, told reporters Kassig "cared a lot about giving humanitarian and medical aid to Syrian refugees".

A third refugee, who identified himself only as Mohammed and who now lives in Switzerland, made an emotional appeal.

With the green, black, red and white flag Syrians opposed to President Bashar Assad's regime have adopted behind him, Mohammed said he warned Kassig about returning to Syria because he sensed his life would be in danger.

"But Abdel Rahman was convinced of the need to help the Syrians inside Syria, because they need that," he said.

Hostages threatened at the end of four previous IS videos have all subsequently been murdered.

Activists say the jihadists are holding hundreds of hostages, mostly Syrians.

BEIRUT — The former head of Syria's main political opposition said he had visited Russia with other opposition figures and had discussed ways to end the conflict with Damascus's ally Moscow, but had insisted that President Bashar Assad must go.

Moaz Alkhatib, the former head of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, said on Twitter on Saturday that they had met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other Russian officials.

"At the invitation of Russia, Syrian opposition figures and I visited and talked about a political solution and its mechanisms," he wrote in a tweet.

"We mentioned to the Russians that our country cannot heal while the head of the regime, who is the No.1 responsible for bloodshed and devastation, remains. We cannot accept his role in the future of Syria," he wrote in a second tweet.

Although he no longer leads the main opposition in exile, Alkhatib is a respected figure seen by diplomats as someone who could play a part in a future political solution for Syria, where the conflict is in its fourth year.

Attempts to reach Alkhatib were unsuccessful and the Russian Foreign Ministry was not immediately available for comment.

Lebanese media reported on Saturday that Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's minority Druze community and head of the Progressive Socialist Party, was also at the meeting, which took place late last week. Jumblatt wrote on Twitter that he was in Moscow and posted photos of his trip.

Jumblatt has also called for Assad to step down in order for Syria to reach a solution to the civil war, which has occasionally spilled over into its smaller neighbour Lebanon and stirred communal and political tensions.

Details on the Moscow meeting come at the same time as the start of a visit by the United Nations Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura to Damascus on Saturday.

Syrian media have said he will meet government officials to discuss ideas on implementing local ceasefire agreements. De Mistura visited Moscow last month.

Russia and Iran are Assad's most powerful international allies. In August, Lavrov urged Western and Arab governments to overcome their distaste for the Syrian president and to engage with him to fight Islamic State insurgents.

Alkhatib, a former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, stepped down in March 2013 after only four months at the head of the coalition, which is backed by Western and Gulf states.

His resignation came after the coalition berated him for offering Assad a negotiated exit and after the group went ahead with steps to form a provisional government that would have further diminished his authority.

GAZA CITY — Hamas announced the creation of a "popular army" in the Gaza Strip on Friday, saying it was ready for any future conflict with Israel, particularly over the flashpoint Al Aqsa Mosque compound.

At a ceremony at the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the devastated Palestinian territory, a spokesman for the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades — the military arm of the Islamist Hamas movement — said 2,500 recruits would form "the first section of the popular army for the liberation of Al Aqsa and of Palestine".

Mohammed Abu Askar, a Hamas official, said those older than 20 could sign up "to be prepared for any confrontation" with Israel.

Hamas and Israel fought a 50-day war earlier this year which resulted in the deaths of 2,140 Palestinians and more than 70 Israelis, majority of them soldiers, and destroyed swathes of the Gaza strip.

Frequent clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers occur around the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied east Jerusalem.

Recent confrontations have been largely triggered by Palestinian fears that Israel was poised to change the status quo and allow Jewish prayer at the site, which is holy to both Muslims and Jews.

Abu Askar said the new force had been established "at a moment when the Al Aqsa Mosque is subject to serious Israeli violations".

Another Al Qassam spokesman said "the people, arms and the tunnels are going well", in reference to Hamas's network of underground passages, hundreds of which have been destroyed by Israel and Egypt to prevent arms smuggling.

RAMALLAH — For decades, Yasser Arafat was the incarnation of the Palestinian fight for independence. Ten years after his death, he remains a national hero for a still stateless people.

When he died on November 11, 2004, he was the president of a moribund Palestinian Authority, an interim body set up in 1994 which was to have handed power to a permanent government by 1999.

His successor Mahmoud Abbas has managed to obtain the UN rank of observer state, but on the ground the Palestinians still await their own state some 66 years after Israel was established.

"It was Arafat who was the first to take the painful decision to recognise the 1967 lines and abandon 78 per cent of historic Palestine and open the way to coexistence," said Xavier Abu Eid, spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) which signed the 1993 Oslo peace accords with Israel.

But when the interim period ended without a permanent agreement in 1999 and the US-led Camp David peace talks collapsed a year later, things went from bad to worse with the outbreak of the second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising (2000-2005).

As the situation deteriorated, Israel depicted Arafat himself as the main obstacle to peace, suggesting a new era was at hand when he died.

"In 2004, Israel said the main obstacle to peace was gone, and said it would work with the new elected president," Abu Eid said.

"But a few months later, they withdrew from Gaza, a unilateral decision taken without any coordination with Mahmud Abbas," he said of Israel's withdrawal of all troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in August 2005.

Largely ignored by Israel, Abbas has struggled to assert his authority among Palestinians, he said.

Personal charisma 

Although Abbas took over as head of both the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, and leader of the Fateh movement — such organisations are "much less imposing" than they used to be under Arafat, said Nathan Brown, non-resident senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Popularly known as Abu Ammar, Arafat "exercised a personal charisma but he didn't know how to delegate, to build institutions or plan for the future", said Karim Bitar of the Paris-based Institute for International and Strategic Relations.

"He was a revolutionary but not a statesman, he was born for action and communication, not for strategic thinking," he told AFP.

"Palestine is [today] a prisoner of agreements which were very badly negotiated by Arafat.

"Exiled to Tunis, he wanted to come back to Palestine so he made huge concessions without getting any guarantees over a halt to settlement [building] or an end of the occupation," Bitar said.

"He only got promises which were never fulfilled."

Deadlines laid out in the Oslo Accords passing without progress dented Arafat's popularity, said Brown.

"His final decade saw him lose much of his attraction in terms of his failure to deliver a Palestinian state, tolerance of corruption, and so on," he said.

Palestinians are still condemning Israeli settlement building and trying to secure a timetable for the creation of a state within the 1967 lines.

This month, the Palestinian leadership is to submit a draft resolution to the UN Security Council calling for an end to the Israeli occupation within two years, in a project likely to be vetoed by Washington.

Internal squabbling 

As leader of Fateh which Arafat founded in the late 1950s, Abbas also faces internal battles.

"Arafat embodied a secular nationalism that has lost a lot of ground as a result of the Islamisation of the Palestinian question," Bitar said.

From the occupied West Bank to Gaza, the same refrain can be heard: "There would never have been any Palestinian division under Arafat."

Palestinians are unanimous in their belief he would not have allowed the quasi civil war between Fateh and Hamas in 2007 which saw the Islamist movement ousting their rivals from Gaza and the establishment of two separate administrations.

In fact, said Brown: "Even Hamas is respectful of his memory."

The Islamist movement also recognises him as some kind of father figure, although not to the extent that it has permitted an annual public memorial to be held in Gaza.

This year, however, following an April reconciliation agreement between the PLO and Hamas, a remembrance ceremony will be held on November 11.

"Despite all his failings and poor decisions, his message was heard from refugee camps in Lebanon to Palestinians living in Chile, via Gaza and the West Bank," said Abu Eid.

Always dressed in his trademark fatigues and traditional keffiyeh headscarf, Arafat "was certainly leader of Fateh but he was also a national symbol", said Brown.

"And he is viewed now as a martyr for the cause."

Arafat's death still remains a mystery with some research indicating he may have been poisoned by polonium, a theory which is accepted by much of the Palestinian street.

"Nobody has yet come up with a dispassionate critique of the Arafat era as he was so closely identified with the Palestinian cause that this would be potentially explosive," Bitar concluded.

ANKARA — Western and Arab powers that have deployed air strikes to prevent the Syrian town of Kobani falling to Islamic State (IS) must be ready to help another Kurdish enclave that is also surrounded by Islamist fighters, the local leader said on Friday.

Kobani has been besieged by IS for more than a month, and only air strikes by a US-led coalition and the deployment of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters have kept the hardline Sunni group at bay.

Two-hundred kilometres to the west lies Afrin, which, like Kobani, is one of three Kurdish regions that declared itself autonomous from the Syrian government earlier this year.

It could face a fate similar to Kobani’s at the hands of the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, according to the woman who runs Afrin’s local government as its prime minister.

“Afrin is surrounded by Nusra, we’re ready to defend ourselves,” Hevi Mustefa said during a visit to the Turkish capital Ankara to raise awareness of Afrin’s plight.

“We’re grateful for the international community’s efforts at Kobani, but it was late. We want support from them so that the situation in Kobani doesn’t repeat itself,” she told Reuters in an interview, wearing a tailored leather jacket and a pendant in the Kurdish colours of yellow, green and red.

Nusra Front is Al Qaeda’s Syrian wing and one of the more powerful groups fighting in Syria’s splintered and increasingly sectarian civil war against President Bashar Assad.

It is similar in ideology to IS, a group that broke away from Al Qaeda and now is its rival for territory in Syria and for global recognition as the leading brand of militant jihadism.

Nusra Front struck a blow against the West’s strategy of aiding moderate Syrian rebels a week ago when its fighters over-ran Western-backed forces in Idlib province, to the west of Afrin.

Readying for attack

The collapse of state authority in much of Syria provided the long-oppressed Kurds with an opportunity to set up local governments in three areas. Their decision not to directly confront Syrian government forces had, until recently, allowed them to remain islands of relative calm.

IS’ offensive against Kobani changed all that, however, and Afrin, home to more than 1 million people, including 200,000 refugees, may be next, said Mustefa.

IS attacked Afrin last year but was repulsed. The Nusra Front has held positions close by for many months without launching a major offensive.

Nusra recently struck a deal with other armed groups in the area and advanced to within 25km of Afrin town. The Kurdish administration believes they are gathering forces to attack.

Mustefa wants coalition forces to co-ordinate with Kurdish troops and to quickly launch a bombing campaign if that attack happens. She is also calling on neighbouring Turkey to open a border crossing to allow aid and trade to flow to the region.

Although her delegation has had some contact with Western diplomats, calls to meet Turkish officials have so far gone unanswered.

Ankara is strongly opposed to the autonomy of Syria’s Kurds, fearing it could stir up separatist feelings within Turkey’s own 15 million-strong Kurdish population and saying it threatens the unity of Syria.

Turkey also accuses the autonomous regions of colluding with Assad, a one-time Ankara ally, turned implacable foe.

Mustefa acknowledges they have avoided direct confrontation with Damascus, but denies having relations with Assad, calling the allegation a smear to discredit the Kurds.

“We’re fighting against the [government] in another way, with our system, which could be an alternative model for the whole of Syria,” she said.

“Syria’s like a mosaic. That’s why every part could have a local government that meets their needs, but they could link with a central government... We’re struggling for the unity of Syria.”

Kurdish fighters from Afrin are members of the outgunned YPG and YPJ militias that have doggedly defended Kobani against IS. Those remaining in Afrin are now gearing up for what they fear may be a similarly tough fight, particularly if Western powers do not intervene.

“We don’t want war,” Mustefa said.

“Yes, we’re afraid, but we trust in our security forces and our population to defend themselves.”