Region

WASHINGTON — Amid tense ties between Israel and the United States, top US diplomat John Kerry will meet the chief Palestinian negotiator Monday to discuss how to advance the frozen peace process.

Kerry will welcome a Palestinian delegation, lead by Saeb Erakat, to the State Department for discussions on "the way forward" in a Middle East peace deal and the situation in the Gaza Strip, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters Friday.

Kerry would also discuss "lowering tensions in Jerusalem" with the Palestinian team, Psaki said.

Clashes erupted in the West Bank Friday after weekly Muslim prayers while security forces deployed heavily around Jerusalem's flashpoint Al Aqsa Mosque which reopened following the killing of a Palestinian by Israeli forces.

Al Aqsa, in the Old City, and adjacent neighbourhoods have seen months of violence, and the mosque compound has been a rallying point for Palestinian resistance to perceived Jewish attempts to take control of it.

During the unrest Thursday, Israel ordered a rare closure of the mosque compound, sacred to both Muslims and Jews, but the area reopened Friday.

Earlier last week, top US officials were forced onto the defensive after a magazine published scathing anonymous comments from someone in their ranks describing the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a coward.

Kerry denounced the comments as "disgraceful, unacceptable and damaging", saying they did not represent the views of President Barack Obama or his cabinet.

But the report was yet another blow to turbulent US-Israel ties, which have seriously frayed since Kerry's bid to broker a peace treaty collapsed in April.

BENGHAZI, Libya — Pro-government Libyan forces on Saturday recaptured areas of second city Benghazi seized by Islamist militiamen, including army positions, military sources said as medics reported dozens killed in fighting.

A two-week-old government-backed offensive has now killed 254 people, the medical sources said.

At least 36 died on Friday and Saturday, when loyalists of former general Khalifa Haftar and regular army troops attacked Islamist militiamen in east and south Benghazi.

The pro-government forces recaptured military positions that the Islamists, including the radical Ansar Al Sharia group, had seized in July, the military sources said.

A spokesman for Libya's special forces said the unit took back its headquarters on the road to Benghazi Airport, in the city's southeastern Bouatni region.

Armed forces general staff spokesman Colonel Ahmed Al Mesmari said the entire east of Benghazi was now back under the control of government troops, while pro-government forces were making advances in the south of the city.

Witnesses said Haftar loyalists backed by government troops and armed civilians seized several homes owned by Islamists and destroyed some of them.

Airstrikes targeted several neighbourhoods, including the Islamist stronghold of Al Gawarsha in the west, witnesses said.

They said the government troops had been deployed in several parts of the eastern city for the first time since July.

Islamist militias, including Ansar Al Sharia which is blacklisted by Washington as a terrorist group, have held sway in most of Benghazi since July.

BEIRUT — Islamist militants affiliated to Al Qaeda seized the last remaining stronghold of Western-backed rebels in Syria's northwest province of Idlib on Saturday after days of fighting, rebels and a monitoring group said.

Backed by other hardline Islamist groups, Al Nusra Front is waging a major military campaign against the Syria Revolutionary Front led by Jamal Maarouf, a key figure in the armed opposition to President Bashar Assad, after accusing him of being corrupt and working for the West against them.

Al Nusra Front is Al Qaeda's official affiliate in the Syrian civil war and was once one of the strongest insurgent groups fighting to topple Assad. But it has been overshadowed by the Islamic State (IS), which has seized swathes of northern and eastern Syria and is now being targeted by US-led air strikes

In the past few days, Al Nusra Front captured several villages in the Jabal Al Zawiya region of Idlib province and on Saturday it entered the village of Deir Sonbol, the stronghold of the Revolutionary Front, forcing Maarouf to pull out.

"Dozens of his fighters defected and joined Al Nusra, that is why the group won," Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters.

An Al Nusra fighter confirmed the report, saying: "They left him because they knew he was wrong and delusional."

"He left his fighters in the battle and pulled out. Last night, we heard them on the radio shouting 'Abu Khaled [Maarouf] escaped, Abu Khaled escaped'," he added.

Maarouf's group is loosely defined as part of the "Free Syrian Army", a term used to refer to dozens of groups fighting to overthrow Assad. They have little or no central coordination and are often in competition with each other.

Hours after his withdrawal, a defiant Maarouf issued a video statement in which he vowed to continue the fight against Al Nusra and said his group would return to Jabal Al Zawiya.

"For a week now, Nusra Front has put the villages of Jabal Al Zawiya under siege [as if] they were the 'Noseiry' regime," Maarouf said in the video, using a derogatory term for Assad's Alawite sect, which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

"I [want to] clarify why we pulled out of the villages of Jabal Al Zawiya. [It is] so that we preserve civilian blood because this group does not hesitate to kill civilians."

A source in a group affiliated to Maarouf denied that any fighters had defected to Al Nusra Front.

The Syria Revolutionary Front is one of the biggest groups in the Western and Saudi-backed opposition to Assad.

The United States plans to expand military support to moderate opposition anti-Assad groups as part of its strategy to defeat the ultra-hardline IS.

SANAA — Yemen's main political factions, including the Houthi rebels, signed an agreement on Saturday mandating the president and prime minister to form a new government in an effort to defuse political tensions that have crippled the impoverished state.

Yemeni Prime Minister Khaled Bahah will head the selection of the new ministers with consultation from President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, an statement e-mailed from the 13 political parties said.

"We, the political parties, ask President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and Prime Minister Khaled Bahah to form a competent national government... which is committed to the protection of human rights, rule of law and neutrality in the management of affairs of the country," the statement said.

The statement did not mention when the new government would be formed, but a number of party members who were involved in the negotiations that led to Saturday's agreement said it could be in a few days or a week.

UN special envoy Jamal Benomar, who attended the meetings, told Reuters that under the agreement parties that do not have representatives in the president's advisory body will be allowed to nominate candidates for the different ministries.

"Following that the prime minister will choose the more competent candidates for each posting," said Benomar.

Yemen's Shiite Houthi rebels were among the groups who signed the agreement, according to the signatures on the agreement seen by Reuters.

The Houthis gave Hadi an ultimatum on Friday to form a government in 10 days or face "other options".

In recent months, the Houthis have become Yemen's power-brokers and sent their militiamen into the west and centre of the country, far beyond their traditional redoubts. They captured the capital Sanaa on September 21, following weeks of anti-government unrest.

The United States and other Western and Gulf countries are worried that instability in the country of 25 million could strengthen Al Qaeda and have supported a political transition since 2012 led by Hadi.

A southern secessionist movement and Al Qaeda onslaught on security forces had already stretched the resources of the government before the latest crisis, alarming neighbouring Gulf Arab states.

WASHINGTON — Foreign fighters are streaming into Syria at a rate of roughly 1,000 a month, with no let-up in the flow despite international efforts to stem the tide, US officials said Friday.

The surge in foreign militants heading to Syria surpasses anything seen in previous conflicts in the past 10 years, including wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia or elsewhere, said a US intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"It's safe to say this conflict stands out with the highest rate in the last decade," the official told AFP.

US intelligence agencies now believe there are more than 16,000 volunteers from 80 countries that have travelled to Syria to fight with various militant groups, including the Islamic State (IS) jihadists who have seized large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

"All of these numbers are trending upwards," the official said.

There was no sign yet that US-led air strikes against IS in Syria and Iraq or new restrictions aimed at foreign volunteers in several countries had affected the flow, officials said.

Analysts say the numbers may be much higher while US officials acknowledge that tracking the movement of foreign volunteers remains a challenge — and that any figure released is only a rough estimate.

"We have limited insights on this," the official added.

Most of the volunteers have come from the Middle East and North Africa, with the highest number of fighters flowing out of Tunisia, officials said.

More than 2,000 hail from European nations and more than 100 from the United States, with a small number — about a dozen — linked to IS, according US estimates.

Returning radicalised 

The numbers on foreign fighters were first reported by NBC News and The Washington Post.

James Clapper, director of national intelligence, warned this week the foreign fighters may return to their countries ready to orchestrate violence.

"First and foremost, the more than 16,000 foreign fighters who gravitated to Syria are now returning to their countries of origin, including in the West," Clapper said at an event Monday.

"They've picked up dangerous skills and radicalisation, both at the same time," Clapper said.

The chaos in Syria — where a civil war has raged for three years between the regime of President Bashar Assad and opposition forces — porous borders and the sophisticated use of social media by hardline militants to recruit volunteers have all paved the way for the influx of foreign fighters, according to US officials and experts.

The IS jihadists in particular have exploited social media as a powerful propaganda tool, unlike Al Qaeda, according to Michael Leiter, former head of the National Counterterrorism Centre.

IS "is in social media, and it is going after 'Jihadi Cool’”, Leiter told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

"What we have to do now is counter that message using social media just as effectively. And that's not something the US government over the past 10 years has been particularly good at," he said.

TUNIS — Campaigning began Saturday for a presidential election in Tunisia, birthplace of the Arab Spring, with secularist Beji Caid Essebsi seen as the frontrunner after his party won milestone parliamentary polls.

Despite his age — Essebsi turns 88 six days after the November 23 vote — he is confident he will win after his Nidaa Tounes Party came on top in last Sunday's legislative election, beating the Islamist Ennahda movement.

In an interview with AFP Essebsi, a pillar of the old guard, said he will fight to gain an absolute majority in the vote.

Essebsi leads a field of 27, including incumbent Moncef Marzouki, woman magistrate Kalthoum Kannou and former ministers of ousted dictator Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali.

Tunisians hope both elections will provide much-sought stability nearly four years after the revolution that drove Ben Ali from power.

The presidential vote will be the first time Tunisians freely elect their head of state.

Between independence from France in 1956 and the revolution, Tunisia had just two presidents — the "father of independence" Habib Bourguiba and Ben Ali who overthrew him in 1987.

Ben Ali was himself forced out, this time by people power, fleeing to Saudi Arabia on January 14, 2011.

In an effort to prevent a new dictatorship, the new president's powers will be restricted under a constitution adopted in January, with most executive power resting with the premier from the parliamentary majority.

Positive state of mind 

Essebsi denies that his age is a hurdle.

"I have the age that I have... Youth is... a state of mind," he told AFP.

"I hope to have enough wisdom and vision for the future, in order to set aside negative things and look at positive things."

After independence, he became an adviser to Bourguiba and also held the ministerial portfolios of defence, interior and foreign affairs. He was parliament chief under Ben Ali.

Essebsi has vowed to restore the prestige of the state, a pledge that will be popular with many voters in a country destabilised by political, economic and security crises since the revolution.

He will officially launch his campaign on Sunday at Bourguiba's mausoleum in Monastir.

"I submitted my candidature because I believe it is useful... because my goal is to make Tunisia a 21st century country," he told AFP.

"We would like Tunisia to be governed in such a way that all factions, political and social, are involved. Of course it will be difficult, but we will work towards that."

He admitted that his long-time rival Ennahda appears to have accepted democracy, but insists that time will tell if the moderate Islamist party has really changed.

Ennahda, which has opposed the very principle of holding a presidential election, has not put forward its own candidate.

If Essebsi supporters see him as the only way to block the Islamist rise, his opponents accuse him of being a product of the old regime who seeks to restore it.

But Essebsi told AFP that stalwarts of the Ben Ali regime he plans to include in his team "have the right to take part in politics" like any other citizen.

"I am against settling old scores. I think we have to be more forward-thinking, because over the next two years Tunisia needs all her children."

Rise of jihadists 

Despite post-revolution instability, Tunisia is seen as the last hope of establishing a democratic regime in an Arab Spring state, the others having descended into chaos or repression.

But it still faces significant challenges, including a growing jihadist movement blamed for the deaths of dozens of police and soldiers and the killing of two anti-Islamist politicians.

Stability is also threatened by a weak economy and rampant unemployment, particularly among young graduates.

Poverty was the spark behind the revolution.

Ennahda, which dominated the political scene after the 2011 uprising, won only 69 of parliament's 217 seats on October 26.

Nidaa Tounes — formed just two years ago and comprising a coalition of leftist and secular groups including old guard figures — won 85.

TUNIS — Tunisia's secular Nidaa Tounes won landmark parliamentary elections, results showed Thursday, beating Islamist rivals in a vote that raised hopes of a peaceful transition in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

Sunday's election has been hailed as a victory for democracy in the North African nation, which touched off the so-called Arab Spring when protests drove longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power in 2011.

Tunisians hope the election, and a presidential vote on November 23, will provide much-coveted stability, nearly four years after the revolution.

Nidaa Tounes — an eclectic coalition of left and centre-right politicians, opposition figures and senior people from the ousted Ben Ali regime — won 85 of 217 seats, the ISIE election body told a press conference.

The Islamist Ennahda Party, which had run Tunisia in coalition with other parties for much of the time since Ben Ali's downfall, took 69 seats.

With an outright majority of 109 seats virtually out of the question once final results are issued, political horse-trading has already begun on forming a coalition.

Under Tunisia's electoral system, a party that gains the largest number of votes but falls short of a majority is given a mandate to form a coalition government.

But there is no natural alliance among the various parties, and press reports have suggested a grand coalition between the two top vote-getters may be possible.

Nidaa Tounes is headed by Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old veteran of Tunisian politics, who vowed to form a coalition with other parties to take the country forward.

Essebsi himself is a candidate for the presidency, and considered a front-runner.

"We took the decision in advance that Nidaa Tounes would not govern alone, even if we won an absolute majority," he told Al Hiwar Al Tounsi television.

"We will govern with those closest to us, with the democratic family, so to speak," he said.

‘No blank cheque '

Mohsen Marzouk, a Nidaa Tounes official, said "the question of [forming a] government will be sorted out after the presidential election," meaning the end of December if a run-off is required.

Newspaper La Presse said the outcome of Sunday’s election has not provided a “blank cheque” to anyone.

“Tunisians voted for solutions to be found to their problems, without wasting time and without getting bogged down.”

And 31 per cent of registered voters failed to turn out, according to preliminary figures, due to widespread disaffection and lack of confidence in the political system.

Ennahda, which won Tunisia’s first free elections three years ago after Ben Ali’s departure, had been accused of working to steer Tunisian society away from its traditional secularism and the country is troubled by a low-level jihadist insurgency.

At the same time, the economy has been in the doldrums during Ennahda’s tenure, with unemployment among the young, themselves widely disaffected, a major concern.

But the Tunisian central bank expressed confidence Thursday that the results of the election would contribute to putting the economy back on track.

The success of this “important stage in the transitional process should... send reassuring messages to economic players, both local and foreign investors, and contribute to the success of the decisive phase of the transition on the economic front”, a statement said.

The UPL (Free Patriotic Union), led by entrepreneur Slim Riahi, came third in Sunday’s vote, winning 16 seats. That was just one more than the number secured by leftist coalition Popular Front.

Another 15 parties will divide up the remaining 32 seats.

GENEVA — A UN human rights watchdog on Thursday urged Israel to respect the rights of Palestinians, and demanded the country probe violations committed during repeated assaults on Gaza.

With tensions soaring in East Jerusalem, and months of almost daily clashes, the UN Human Rights Committee published conclusions Thursday from its review earlier this month of Israel's human rights record.

The committee lamented continued punitive demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, excessive force by the Israel military and decried reports of the use of torture and ill treatment of Palestinians, including children, in Israeli detention facilities.

It also slammed the “continuing confiscation and expropriation of Palestinian land and restrictions on access of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”.

The body, which oversees global rules on civil and political rights, and submits governments to regular reviews, also voiced concern over alleged human rights abuses during three Israeli military operations in Gaza since late 2008, including the nearly two-month war this summer that killed nearly 2,200 mainly civilian Palestinians and 73 people in Israel, mostly soldiers.

Israel “should ensure that all human rights violations committed during its military operations in the Gaza Strip in 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 are thoroughly, effectively, independently and impartially investigated”, the Geneva-based committee said in its conclusions.

It demanded that perpetrators, especially those in positions of command, be “prosecuted and sanctioned” and that the victims and their families be provided “effective remedies”.

And it criticised Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza, lamenting that the blockade continues to “negatively impact Palestinians’ access to all basic and life-saving services such as food, health, electricity, water and sanitation”.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli forces on Thursday shot dead a 32-year-old Palestinian man suspected of having tried hours earlier to kill a far-right Jewish man, leading to fierce clashes in East Jerusalem.

Al Aqsa compound, known to Muslims as Al Haram Al Sharif, a holy site at the heart of the latest violence, was shut down for almost an entire day to all visitors "as a security precaution". 

It was the first full closure of the site, venerated by both Jews and Muslims, in 14 years. Late on Thursday Israeli forces reopened the complex.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced Israel's actions as "tantamount to a declaration of war" and his Fateh Party called for a "day of rage" on Friday. It was not clear if Al Aqsa would be opened to Muslims on their holy day.

Moataz Hejazi's body lay in blood among satellite dishes and a solar panel on the rooftop of a three-storey house in Abu Tor, a district of Arab East Jerusalem, as Israeli forces sealed off the area and repelled Palestinian protesters.

Hejazi was suspected of shooting and wounding Yehuda Glick, a far-right religious leader who has led a campaign for Jews to be allowed to pray at Al Aqsa compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Glick, a US-born settler, was shot as he left a conference at the Menachem Begin Heritage Centre in Jerusalem late on Wednesday. His assailant escaped on the back of a motorcycle.

A spokesperson for the centre said Hejazi had worked at a restaurant there. Glick, 48, remains in serious but stable condition with four gunshot wounds, doctors said.

Residents said hundreds of Israeli security personnel were involved in the predawn search for Hejazi. He was tracked down to his family home in the hilly backstreets of Abu Tor and eventually cornered on the terrace of an adjacent building.

“Anti-terrorist police units surrounded a house in the Abu Tor neighbourhood to arrest a suspect in the attempted assassination of Yehuda Glick,” Israeli spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said. “Immediately upon arrival they were shot at. They returned fire and shot and killed the suspect.”

Local residents identified the man as Hejazi, who was released from an Israeli prison in 2012 after serving 11 years. Israeli personnel fired stun grenades to keep back groups of angry residents as they watched from surrounding balconies.

Abu Tor residents said Hejazi was a good son from a respectable family.

“They are good people, he does nothing wrong,” said Niveen, a young woman who declined to give her family name.

East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, has been a source of intense friction in recent months, especially around Silwan, which sits in the shadow of the Old City and Al Aqsa.

Jewish settler organisations have acquired more than two dozen buildings in Silwan over the years, including nine in the past three months, and moved settler families into them, an effort to make the district more Jewish. Around 500 settlers now live among approximately 40,000 Palestinians residents.

The influx of settlers combined with tension over the site, Islam’s third-holiest shrine and the holiest place in Judaism, have contributed to the most fractious atmosphere in East Jerusalem since the second Intifada or uprising began in 2000.

The United States condemned the shooting of Glick but urged all sides to exercise restraint and maintain the “historic status quo” at the Jerusalem holy site.

On Thursday, crowds of young Palestinian men and boys blocked off streets near where Hejazi was killed with rubbish skips and lit fires. They smashed tiles and bricks and used the pieces to throw at Israeli forces.

The Israelis responded with tear gas, scattering the crowd. Clashes continued for hours after Hejazi was killed.

“It is not a good situation, it is the worst, everyone is angry,” said Galib Abu Nejmeh, 65, who wandered down the rock-strewn street.

“It is becoming like another Intifada,” he said, comparing it to the scenes in East Jerusalem in the late 1980s, when Palestinians first rose up against Israeli occupation.

After Glick was shot, far-right Jewish groups urged supporters to march on Al Aqsa on Thursday morning. That prompted Israeli forces to shut access to the site to everyone — Muslims, Jews and all tourists.

Glick and his backers, including Moshe Feiglin, a far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, are determined to change the status quo that has governed Al Aqsa since Israel seized the walled Old City in 1967.

Those rules state that Jordan’s religious authorities are responsible for administering Al Aqsa complex and that while Jews may visit the marble-and-stone esplanade, which includes the 7th-century golden Dome of the Rock, they cannot pray there.

Glick and his supporters argue that Jews should have the right to pray at their holiest site, where two ancient Jewish temples once stood, even though the Israeli rabbinate says the Torah forbids it and many Jews consider it unacceptable.

WASHINGTON — Less than a month before a deadline to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, US Catholic bishops are urging negotiators not to underestimate the power of fatwas by Islamic leaders banning atomic weapons.

In a ground-breaking visit, a six-strong delegation from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) travelled in April to the holy city of Qom to meet with top Shiite leaders in a bid to bridge gaps between Iran and the West.

"Iranians feel profoundly misunderstood by America and the West," said Bishop Richard Pates, the chairman of the USCCB's committee on international justice and peace, speaking publicly about the trip on Wednesday.

As the West seeks to negotiate a deal by November 24 to rein in Iran's suspect nuclear programme, the USCCB delegation argued Washington, in particular, should pay more heed to Iranian assertions that stockpiling and using nuclear weapons would be against the fundamental principles of Shiite Islam.

Iranian leaders say Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons in 2003 and has reiterated it several times since.

No text of the fatwa appears to have been written down, but the Iranian religious leaders told the bishops' delegation that it was "a matter of public record and was highly respected among Shia scholars and Iranians generally", Pates said.

In their talks, the Irani leaders assured the delegation that nuclear weapons "are immoral because of their indiscriminate nature and their powerful force of destroying all types of innocent communities", Pates told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Tehran has repeatedly denied that it is seeking to develop the atomic bomb, saying its nuclear programme is for civilian energy purposes only.

But the West, and the grouping known as the P5+1, remain deeply skeptical, arguing that the Islamic republic must take "verifiable actions" to show the world that its programme is for peaceful purposes only.

Modern culture 

"I would argue that we ignore the influence of religion as a motivator and validator at our own peril," said Stephen Colecchi, a leading USCCB official.

He said he believed the US State Department was not seriously factoring in Iranian religious objections to weapons of mass destruction as part of the negotiations.

"Iran is a very, very religious culture. It is also a very modern culture. And it is not all like the caricature of the fanatic religion that we see depicted too often... and the fatwa needs to be looked at in that light."

In the ongoing nuclear negotiations, the fatwa "does not have every relevance, but it does have some relevance", Colecchi argued, saying it was "pervasively taught and defended in Iran".

"And the possibility of changing the fatwa overnight is non-existent. This is what should be taken into account by diplomats... it would undermine the whole teaching authority of their system."

"It's inconceivable to a Catholic that the Pope would do it like that, and it's inconceivable to them that an ayatollah or a supreme leader would do that," Colecchi added.

University of Maryland academic and expert Ebrahim Mohseni said a recent study found that some 65 per cent of Iranians believed producing nuclear weapons was against Islam.

Technical experts from the P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States plus Germany — plus Iran were continuing to meet Wednesday to hammer out a deal, with the November 24 deadline looming.

So far no date has been set for the next round of high-level talks.