Region

TEHRAN — A failure by Iran and world powers to reach a comprehensive agreement over Tehran's nuclear programme would be dangerous "for the entire world", a senior Iranian negotiator said on Saturday.

Iran and six world powers are seeking a landmark deal by November 24 that would see Iran scale back its nuclear activities in order to ease long-held fears it might develop atomic weapons, in return for a lifting of international sanctions.

"A nuclear deal is in the interest of both parties and the region," Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview with Iranian television the day before talks between Tehran and the so-called P5+1 group of nations resume in Oman ahead of a final deadline this month.

"No one wants to return to the situation there was before the Geneva accord, as that would be a dangerous scenario for the entire world," he said, referring to an interim agreement Iran signed last year that traded curbs on its nuclear programme for limited sanctions relief.

The West wants to close all avenues to Tehran developing an atomic bomb, by cutting back its nuclear enrichment programme, shutting down suspect facilities and imposing tough international inspections.

Iran denies it wants nuclear weapons but insists on having "industriAl level enrichment" for its civilian energy programme. It wants all sanctions lifted and no restrictions on its existing nuclear technology.

US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Sunday and Monday with Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Oman along with EU former head of diplomacy Catherine Ashton in an attempt to bring the two sides closer together.

"Negotiations have almost stopped on one or two issues and we hope that talks in Oman will allow us to make progress" on a final deal, Araghchi said.

He added that "the level, capacity and the size of enrichment and the time needed to be able to have industrial enrichment are subjects of negotiations".

According to a diplomatic source in Tehran, new proposals from the P5+1 group (Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States plus Germany) could allow Iran to "quickly" seal a deal that would see sanctions lifted in exchange for reassurances that Tehran was not seeking a nuclear bomb.

"The Islamic republic would never look to make an atomic weapon," Araghchi said. "But we understand that the other side will need assurances."

SANAA — Al Qaeda said Saturday it had tried to assassinate the US ambassador to Yemen with two bombs that were discovered minutes before they were due to explode.

The explosives were planted Thursday outside the house of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the media arm of Al Qaeda's Yemen branch said in a statement posted on Twitter.

They were intended to be detonated when Ambassador Matthew Tueller left following a roughly hour-long visit to the house in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, it said.

There was no official confirmation of the failed plot.

Yemen is a key US ally in the fight against Al Qaeda, allowing Washington to conduct a longstanding drone war against the group on its territory.

The United States considers Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to be the most dangerous arm of the jihadist organisation.

AQAP was born out of a 2009 merger of its franchises in Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden's native Saudi Arabia and his ancestral homeland in Yemen.

The group has exploited instability in impoverished Yemen since a 2011 uprising overthrew president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

SANAA — Yemen's ruling party, led by former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, and allied Shiite rebels rejected Saturday a newly formed government threatening a UN-brokered deal that established a truce after the rebels overran the capital.

The declaration by Saleh's General People's Congress Party and the rebel group known as Houthis come a day after the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Saleh and two rebel leaders for threatening the peace, security and stability of the country. The council ordered a freeze of all assets and a global travel ban on Saleh, the rebel group's military commander, Abd Al Khaliq Al Houthi, and the Houthi's second-in-command, Abdullah Yahya Al Hakim.

The Houthis said in a statement that the sanctions were an obstacle to the political transition of Yemen. The sanctions were "a flagrant provocation of the feelings of Yemenis and a blatant interference in their internal affairs", the group said.

In the same statement the rebel group dismissed the new government as unrepresentative and called for a new line up.

The Houthi rebels captured Sanaa in September, allegedly with the tacit support of Saleh, and demanded that current President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi appoint a new government, complaining the previous one was too close to their rival conservative Sunni Islamist party.

After weeks of violence and political wrangling, during which a UN-brokered deal was reached, Khaled Bahah was nominated for prime minister and tasked with forming a new government. But a dispute over who would form the Cabinet continued until last Saturday, when all Yemeni parties and political groups agreed on an apolitical technocrat Cabinet. A lineup of 37 members, including Bahah, was announced Friday. Only seven ministers were left over from the previous government.

The new showdown started earlier Saturday and appeared to be in direct response to the UN sanctions passed Friday soon after the new government was announced. Saleh's supporters in the ruling party decided earlier Saturday to sack Hadi from its leadership, replacing him and another senior aide with new members.

The party is split between supporters of Hadi and those backing Saleh, who was forced to step down in 2012 following protests against him. Saleh remains a major power broker however. In the US-backed, Gulf-brokered deal in which Saleh agreed to step down in favour of Hadi, he was granted immunity from prosecution. Hadi was a senior aide of Saleh but has since assuming office accused his predecessor of undermining him.

In a televised speech to the party, which he still heads, Saleh blamed Hadi for allegedly lobbying for the sanctions against him since he stepped down. He denied any wrongdoing, vowing to drop the immunity he was granted if authorities had enough evidence to prosecute him.

Saleh then criticised the newly formed government, saying it was "unrepresentative". The ruling party then announced it was pulling its members from the new Cabinet, which include at least three ministers.

"We will not take part in a government weaker than its predecessor," Saleh said.

CAIRO — A bomb on a train in Egypt killed four people including two policemen, officials said Thursday, while blasts in the Cairo metro and near a presidential palace wounded several others.

The makeshift bomb exploded in a carriage late on Wednesday as policemen inspected it after the train stopped at a station in the province of Menufiya north of the capital.

The train was not heading for Cairo.

The two policemen were killed on the spot while two passengers later succumbed to their wounds, a medical official said in an updated toll.

A bomb later went off in a Cairo metro station, wounding three people.

Another small blast in the capital struck outside Al Qubba Palace, which is rarely used by President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, lightly wounding a female passerby.

Dozen of policemen and soldiers have been killed in militant attacks since then-army chief Sisi overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year and launched a bloody crackdown on his supporters.

Most of the deadliest attacks have taken place in the Sinai peninsula, where militants killed at least 30 soldiers in one attack last month.

The militants have also expanded their reach into the capital and the Nile Delta, targeting police stations and checkpoints.

A bomb outside Cairo University on October 22 wounded nine people, including a police general.

Ajnad Misr, a militant group that has killed several policemen in Cairo bombings, claimed that attack, saying in a statement it was in response to repression of student protesters.

The group also claimed responsibility for bombing a checkpoint outside the foreign ministry in September that killed two policeman.

It says the attacks are revenge for the deaths of hundreds of pro-Morsi protesters in clashes with police after his overthrow in July 2013.

At least 15,000 Islamists have been arrested on suspicion of protesting or participating in violence since Morsi's overthrow.

The authorities have blamed Morsi's now blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood for the violence, although the group insists it is committed to peaceful protests.

Sisi has vowed to eradicate the Islamist movement, which continues to hold small protests.

The deadliest bombings have been carried out by Sinai-based militant group Ansar Beit Al Maqdis.

It is believed to be responsible for last month's attack on an army checkpoint that killed at least 30 soldiers, the deadliest in years.

Sisi declared a state of emergency in parts of northern Sinai after that attack, and the military has begun demolishing homes along the Sinai border with Gaza to create a buffer zone.

TRIPOLI — Libya's supreme court on Thursday declared the internationally recognised parliament as unconstitutional, in a ruling likely to fuel further chaos in the north African oil producing nation.

The decision came a day after gunmen stormed Libya's biggest oilfield, shutting down production at the facility in the country's remote south in a new blow to the already beleaguered energy sector.

Libya is in chaos as two rival governments and parliaments are struggling for control of the country's vast energy reserves three years after the overthrow of Muammar Qadhafi. Dozens of armed groups have also joined the fray.

Western powers and Libya's neighbours fear the OPEC member nation is heading for a full-blown civil war, with former rebels who helped oust Qadhafi now using their guns to carve out their own fiefdom.

Libya is split into a western part controlled by fighters calling themselves Operation Dawn, who seized the capital in August, leaving the internationally recognised parliament and government in charge of a rump state in the east.

In a televised ruling likely to deepen these divisions and hamper United Nations mediation efforts, the Supreme Court invalidated the election of the House of Representatives, which has fled to the eastern city of Tobruk. The court said a committee that prepared the election law had violated the country's provisional constitution.

The June election produced an assembly with a strong showing of liberals and federalists, annoying Islamists with links to Operation Dawn, which seized Tripoli two months later.

The Supreme Court is based in Tripoli, where Dawn has reinstated the previous parliament, the General National Congress (GNC), where Islamists had been stronger.

The fighters, who come mainly from the western city of Misrata, have taken control of state bodies, calling into question the court's ability to rule independently.

A GNC official predictably welcomed the decision, while hundreds of people in Tripoli were seen celebrating. A spokesman for the House of Representatives in Tobruk declined to comment while lawmakers debated how to respond.

There was also no immediate response from Western and Arab powers which have recognised only the Tobruk-based assembly and publicly boycotted the rival Prime Minister Omar Al Hassi, set up by the Tripoli rulers.

Gunmen storm oil field

The decision came after gunmen stormed Libya's El Sharara oilfield on Tuesday and Wednesday, shutting down the country's biggest production facility in a blow to government efforts to keep the oil industry isolated from the spreading chaos.

It was not clear what happened exactly but rival tribes have fought over the area near the field twice in the past 12 months to press authorities to meet their financial and political demands.

Officials said on Thursday the gunmen had left the field. Oil company vehicles riddled with bullet holes could be seen on social media. A Libyan official said authorities hoped to restart production very soon but they needed to resolve local conflicts first.

The closure will lower the OPEC member's oil production, last reported at around 800,000bpd, by at least 200,000bpd, worsening a budget crisis as oil revenues have been well below target due to repeated strikes across the country.

Some Libyan websites said the gunmen were linked to the Misrata-led alliance, but that could not be confirmed. Both sides — the Tripoli rulers and the government in the east — have an interest in keeping the oil flowing as their supporters are on the state payroll.

Authorities had managed to boost output in the past three months after it had slumped to 100,000bpd due to protests.

Conditions in the poverty stricken south have worsened since the seizure of Tripoli, which has hampered the work of government ministries and deprived the south of food, consumer goods and money from the central bank.

The fluid situation in the capital and the south has been exacerbated by a separate conflict in the main eastern city Benghazi between pro-government forces and Islamists. More than 230 people have been killed since the army started an offensive three weeks ago.

BEIRUT — At least 12 civilians, including women and children, were killed on Thursday when Syrian regime helicopters dropped explosive-packed barrel bombs on a district in Aleppo city, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack hit the Muwasalat district of Shaar neighbourhood in the rebel-held east of the city.

The group said the toll was expected to rise, and that the second barrel bomb had been dropped at the scene shortly after the first one hit.

A video of the aftermath of the strikes, posted by the observatory online, showed ambulances arriving and emergency workers carrying stretchers rushing into a street shrouded in thick white smoke.

Women could be heard screaming hysterically at the scene of the attack.

Aleppo has been divided between rebel control in the east and regime control in the west since shortly after fighting began there in mid-2012.

Syria's military has increasingly resorted to using so-called barrel bombs, which rights groups have condemned as a particularly indiscriminate weapon that often kills civilians.

Barrel bombs are typically constructed from large oil drums, gas cylinders or water tanks filled with high explosives and scrap metal.

According to the Observatory and Syrian activists, the regime has stepped up its use of the crude weapons in recent weeks, as international attention focuses on the fight against the Islamic State jihadist group.

BAGHDAD — A series of attacks, mainly against Iraqi troops, killed 13 people in Baghdad and in the country's west on Thursday as the government pressed ahead with a draft law meant to establish a community-based national guard force in efforts to mobilise Iraq's Sunni minority in the battle against the Islamic State (IS) group.

In one of Thursday's attacks, a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car into an army checkpoint near the town of Al Baghdadi, about 180 kilometres northwest of Baghdad, killing five soldiers and wounding 12, police officials said.

In Baghdad, a bomb blast in a commercial street in the western district of Ghazaliyah killed four people and wounded eight, while a bomb near a line of shops killed two people in the city's northwest, the officials said.

Earlier, gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on an army checkpoint in Baghdad's western suburb of Abu Ghraib, killing two soldiers.

Hospital officials confirmed the causalities. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.

Meanwhile, Iraq's parliament speaker, Salim Al Jubouri said that the draft law to establish a community-driven national guard in each province would be finished and submitted to the parliament within the next two weeks

The move is mainly designed to appease and mobilise Sunni tribes against the extremists IS who made big advances in the Sunni western province of Anbar in recent months. Members of the Sunni minority have been complaining of second-class treatment by the Shiite-led government and abuse by Shiite militias.

Once the law is approved, it could still take months to assemble and equip such a force.

"Obviously the events of Anbar... led to a popular mobilisation of the people to confront the IS group," Jubouri told The Associated Press from Erbil in northern Iraq.

Iraq is facing its worst crisis since the 2011 withdrawal of US troops, with IS in control of large swathes of land in the country's north and west.

SANAA — Former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh's party on Thursday called for protests against UN sanctions expected to target the ousted strongman and Houthi rebel leaders for obstructing peace.

The General People's Congress warned in a statement that any sanctions would only exacerbate the crisis in Yemen, where Saleh is seen as the prime backer of Shiite rebels who have overrun the capital and other areas since September.

The UN Security Council was poised to endorse a US-drafted proposal to slap a visa ban and assets freeze on Saleh and two of his allies, Shiite Houthi rebel commanders Abd Al Khaliq Al Houthi and Abdullah Yahya Al Hakim, diplomats in New York said on Tuesday.

"Any sanction would have dangerous consequences that would threaten not only the security of Yemen, but also that of its neighbours," the GPC warned.

The party said its supporters and allies would "confront any sanctions with all peaceful means". It called for protests across the country on Friday to reject "all of forms of intervention".

Saleh was Yemen's first president after unification in 1990 before being forced to step down in February 2012 under a regional peace plan.

But he is seen as the prime backer of the rebel Houthi movement that seized the capital in September and has since spread its control into central and west Yemen, in defiance of a UN peace plan.

Abd Al Khaliq Al Houthi is the younger brother of chief rebel leader Abdulmalik Al Houthi and was among commanders who oversaw the storming of Sanaa.

Hakim is Abdulmalik Al Houthi's military second-in-command.

A Security Council committee met on Tuesday to discuss the proposed sanctions and the talks were "constructive", a diplomat said.

The 15 members of the council now have until Friday evening to raise objections before the proposal returns to the sanctions committee for action.

The top UN body in August called on the Houthi rebels to end their armed uprising against President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi and warned of sanctions against those who threaten the stability of Yemen.

WASHINGTON — The US policy toward Iran has not changed, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in response to a report that US President Barack Obama had written a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei about the campaign against Islamic State (IS) insurgents.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Obama sent a letter to the Iranian leader last month describing their shared interested
regarding IS.

Earnest said he could not comment on private correspondence between Obama and a world leader.

"I'm not in a position to discuss private correspondence between the president and any world leader," he said at a White House briefing. "I can tell you that the policy that the president and his administration have articulated about Iran remains unchanged."

Earnest said the United States had discussed the campaign against IS with Tehran on the sidelines of negotiations concerning Iran's nuclear programme but gave no details.

"The United States will not cooperate militarily with Iran in that effort," he said of the fight against IS. "We won't share intelligence with them. But their interests in the outcome is something that's been widely commented on — commented upon and something that on a couple of occasions has been discussed on the sidelines of other conversations."

US House Speaker John Boehner, asked in a separate briefing about the reported letter, said he did not trust Iran's leaders and did not think they should be brought into the fight against IS.

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — Dozens of Palestinian doctors and patients held a sit-in at the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza Thursday, demanding Egypt reopen the frontier to allow people out for medical treatment.

The crossing, Gaza's only gateway to the world which is not controlled by Israel, has been closed since October 25 following a deadly suicide bombing in northern Sinai which killed 30 Egyptian soldiers.

"Open the terminal" read one of the signs held up by the demonstrators, some of whom were lying on orange stretchers.

"The closure threatens cancer patients," read another.

"The crossing must be opened to allow in medication and medical delegations, and to allow Gaza patients to cross for treatment in specialist hospitals in Egypt and in the Arab world," said Ashraf Al Qudra, spokesman for Gaza's health ministry.

Last week, Egypt began demolishing houses along its border with Gaza to set up a buffer zone to prevent militant infiltration and arms smuggling, following a wave of deadly attacks targeting its troops in Sinai.

Cairo suspects Palestinian fighters of aiding jihadist attacks that have increased since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, a close ally of the Palestinian Hamas movement, in July 2013.

The restrictions imposed by Cairo on travel through Rafah since the ousting of Morsi have led to a sharp decline in the number of individuals exiting via Egypt, figures published by the Israeli rights group Gisha show.

From an average of more than 20,000 exits a month during the first half of 2013, the figure dropped to just 4,350 exits in June 2014.

The number rose again during Israel's massive 50-day war against Hamas fighters in July and August as Cairo opened the border to allow the wounded to cross, but dropped again in October.

In the weeks leading up to the closure on October 25, a total of 6,079 people exited via the Rafah crossing, the figures show. Of that number, 2,266 pilgrims left for Mecca, accounting for more than a third of those permitted to cross.

The number of Palestinians leaving Gaza via Israel's Erez crossing meanwhile reached 8,666 during October, according to Gisha, of them 2,004 medical patients and their companions.