Region

CAIRO — Egypt will train Libyan forces to fight terrorism and help secure a shared border, the prime ministers of the two states announced in Cairo on Wednesday, stepping up efforts against Islamist insurgents in both countries.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi has expressed concerns over militants who have capitalised on the chaos in post-Qadhafi Libya to set up operations there and sneak across the border into Egypt.

They have forged ties with Egypt’s Ansar Bayt Al Maqdis, the Sinai-based militant group that has stepped up attacks on soldiers and policemen since Sisi as army chief removed the Muslim Brotherhood from power last year.

Hundreds of security forces have been killed.

“We need to urgently support all the needs of our [Libyan] brothers to coordinate at the highest level in all areas...in the fields of security and we emphasize the exchange of information to combat terrorism...and also emphasize border security and control,” Egyptian Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb told a news conference.

Reuters reported last week that Egypt had offered to train pro-government forces battling rival armed groups in Libya to help address what it says is a threat to its own stability.

The arrangement was publicly announced in Cairo, where Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni expressed alarm over Islamist militants controlling large parts of his country.

“We are facing terrorism... and terrorism must be faced with strength and power and requires building and training cadres capable of confronting these terrorists,” said Thinni.

He is recognised internationally but is currently based in the city of Tobruk in the east — near the Egyptian border — having lost control of the capital to a rival prime minister and parliament.

Both prime ministers stressed that extensive cooperation was needed to stem the tide of Islamist militants in chaotic Libya.

Thinni said his visit was intended to coordinate the beginning of “operational plans” to secure the border through bilateral military cooperation and “boosting the efficiency of army units and training the police”

The lawlessness of eastern Libya has enabled militants to set up makeshift training sites just a few kilometres from Egypt’s border, according to Egyptian security officials.

Some Islamist militants in the Libyan coastal town of Derna have declared allegiance to Al Qaeda breakaway Islamic State (IS) that has seized large swathes of Iraq.

Security officials in Egypt fear that the militants want to topple Sisi and create a caliphate in Egypt, inspired by IS fighters which control large parts of Iraq and Syria.

The porous 1,115-kilometre border between Egypt and Libya makes it easy for militants to move in both directions.

Fifteen members of IS, led by an Egyptian and a Saudi national, travelled to Derna from Syria 15 days ago trying to rally support and establish an IS branch in Libya.

TUNIS — At Tunis airport arrivals terminal last month, hundreds of Tunisians gathered waving flags to greet a special guest — not a sports legend or popstar, but a former minister from ousted President Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali's government. 

Three years after Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution" forced the autocrat out and set the North African country on path to democracy, Ben Ali regime old guard are not only making a comeback but are poised again to win elected posts.

After approving a new constitution this year, in October Tunisia will hold its second parliamentary election since the revolt. In November, it will hold presidential elections that are seen as a test of its newly found democracy.

Prominent among candidates for the legislature and for the presidency are former officials and Cabinet ministers from the Ben Ali regime, who are pitting themselves against the Islamist party that governed after Tunisia's first free election.

After the 2011 revolution, Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, and most of his aides and ministers disappeared, were imprisoned and prevented from participating in the first elections won by the moderate Islamist party Ennahda.

The return of the so-called "Remnants" to the political scene has opened up debate over the legacy of the 2011 revolution that helped inspire the "Arab Spring" uprisings in Libya, Egypt and Syria and eventually led Tunisia to become a model for democratic change.

"All we want is to build Tunisia without exclusion, it must be a new phase in which everyone contributes in building the country," Ben Ali's former transport minister Abderrahim Zouari told Reuters. "I hope to go beyond this debate because Tunisia needs all its men and women."

Zouari, who is running for the presidential elections for the Constitutional Movement party, is just one of several former Ben Ali Cabinet members running in that ballot.

Former regime officials will also be a strong presence in the parliamentary elections and analysts expect them to have ample chance in the elections in regional cities and towns where they still retain their influence.

Tunisia's democratic transition contrasts sharply with Egypt and Libya, which have both struggled with the role of former regime officials versus new political systems since their own 2011 revolutions.

Political compromise between Islamists and secular rivals has more than once pulled Tunisia back from the brink of political crisis, and helped keep it from the type of polarised chaos now engulfing neighbouring Libya.

In Tunisia's 2011 election, a temporary law prevented all officials of former regime from participating. But now they can participate in elections after the Ennadha agreed with secular opponents to reject the new draft law to ban Ben Ali officials.

That contrasts sharply with Libya, where a similar political isolation law has been the source of armed clashes and court battles between rival factions looking to gain political influence, often at the barrel of the gun.

Rached Ghannouchi, chief of Ennahda defended his party's decision, saying that such a law would have only increased the division of Tunisians in the sensitive time in its transition.

"In the end, the ballot box will have the final word," he said.

Politics of compromise

After coming to power in a coalition government, Ennahda were accused by secular opponents of coddling Islamist hardliners, of economic mismanagement and trying to bring Islam deeper into politics in the Arab world's most secular nation.

The assassination of two opposition leaders last year by Islamist extremist gunmen tipped Tunisia into a political crisis that eventually forced Ennahda to step down and make way for a transitional government that will rule until the elections.

Still, most analysts widely expect Ennahda, one of the country's most organised political movements, and its secular rival Nida Tounes, will turn out the election winners.

But the Ben Ali old guard will also book their place, hoping to promote the skills and technocrat knowledge they say they gained in government as a way to help Tunisia with the sluggish economy and militant threats it now faces.

Like many other former Ben Ali officials and regular Tunisians, those ministers would have been members of the autocrat's now-banned Constitutional Democratic Rally Party.

"People have to compare to what it was before the revolution and what those people are now," Kamel Morjan, a former foreign minister. "It is normal that there will be some candidates from the party composed of millions of Tunisians for years."

Beji Caid Essebsi — the head of Nida Tounes and a former president of Ben Ali's parliament in 1991 — has become a leading presidential candidate after becoming a rallying figure for secular opposition during last year's crisis.

Mondher Znaidi, a former Ben Ali health minister, who was welcomed as a hero at the airport in Tunis last month has also announced also his intention to run in presidential elections.

Ennahda has said the party will not field a presidential candidate, instead focusing on the parliamentary vote which may give them more sway in influencing the selection of the more powerful prime minister's post.

With Tunisia facing a tough combination of Islamist militant violence, a stagnant economy and worries over high costs and unemployment, old regime officials like Znaidi are taking the chance to tout their achievements in economics and security.

But the return of the officials who once worked side by side with Ben Ali is a hard sell for the younger Tunisians who took to the streets to rid their country of what they saw as a generation of politicians led by a corrupt oligarchy.

Even if old regime officials have a right to participate in the election, for some their return is a setback for an uprising that inspired Egyptians, Syrians and Libyans to follow them.

"After that we are seeing, what is next?" asked politician Omar Shabou. "All we need now is for Ben Ali himself to come back and ask for forgiveness."

UNITED NATIONS — The grave humanitarian crisis in Iraq will become "a deadly life-threatening situation" if shelter isn't found for over 160,000 people in Kurdistan before winter weather arrives in about six weeks, a senior UN official warned Tuesday.

Kevin Kennedy, the deputy humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, also told a news conference by video link from the Kurdish capital Erbil that getting aid to some 500,000 people in need of support in Anbar province, where the Islamic State terrorist group continues to capture territory, is very difficult.

Last month, the UN World Food Programme was able to feed 100,000 people in Anbar in a very challenging operation, and "if we're not able to get sufficient assistance there the people will suffer, no question", as temperatures start plummeting, Kennedy said.

Iraq is one of four top-level humanitarian crises the United Nations is trying to tackle, with 1.8 million people fleeing their homes since December and fears of thousands more trying to escape the ongoing conflict. The three other major crises are in Syria, South Sudan and Central African Republic.

Kennedy said nearly $300 million is needed in the very near future for winterised tents, which cost between $6,000 and $8,000 apiece, as well as kerosene for heating and winter clothes and boots for tens of thousands of people who fled the fighting with only the clothes on their backs, many in flip-flops.

While much attention is currently focused on the terrorists' takeover of a large swath of Iraqi territory, Kennedy said, "we believe the humanitarian situation which is the other side of the coin deserves equal consideration."

People who escaped the fighting are "very traumatised" at what they have seen and the people they left behind, "so it's more than a crisis of needs and shelter and food and health... it's a crisis of spirit and a crisis of hope here", Kennedy said.

He said the three most important humanitarian challenges are access to areas not under government control, finding shelter for all those displaced, and the onset of winter.

There are 860,000 internally displaced people, or IDPs, in Kurdistan and the UN estimates 390,000 need shelter, Kennedy said.

Many are currently in schools, under bridges or out in the open living in very bad conditions, he said.

The UN has completed and is building camps that will accommodate about 224,000 people, but that leaves a gap of about 166,000 people still needing shelter, and that gap has to be closed in the next five to six weeks, Kennedy said.

"Our fear is unless we can provide the shelter and also the items to help people live through the winter, what is currently a very difficult and grave United Nations humanitarian challenge will transform itself into a deadly life-threatening situation for many of the IDPS," he said.

SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Wednesday that he was ordering a crackdown to prevent radical Islamist preachers entering the country, amidst rising tension with the Muslim community following a series of security-related raids.

Abbott, who recently warned that the balance between freedom and security "may have to shift" to protect against radicalised Muslims seeking to carry out attacks, said hate preachers would now be "red-carded" during the visa process.

The tougher new system, which he said would not require new legislation, comes on the heels of a public meeting in Sydney last week by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international group that says its goal is to establish a pan-national Muslim state.

Conservative commentators have seized on the speech to urge greater restrictions on radical preachers.

"What we want to do is to ensure that known preachers of hate do not come to this country to peddle their divisive extremist message," Abbott told reporters in Sydney.

"What I'm doing is declaring that we will henceforth have a new system in place which will ensure that preachers of hate can't come to Australia to peddle their extreme, divisive and alien ideologies."

Australia is on high alert for attacks by radicalised Muslims or by homegrown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East, having raised its threat level to high and undertaken a series of high-profile raids in major cities.

Officials believe up to 160 Australians have been either involved in fighting in the Middle East or actively supporting groups fighting there. At least 20 are believed to have returned to Australia and have been said to pose a security risk.

Prominent Australian Muslims say their community is being unfairly targeted by law enforcement and threatened by right-wing groups, and there are concerns that policies aimed at combating radical Islamists could create a backlash.

The Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamist group, which has a limited following in Australia and does not advocate violence, has not cancelled a public meeting planned for Friday in Sydney, said spokesman Uthman Badar.

'Silencing of dissent'

The group was not surprised by the new policy, he said, but it was perplexed because no foreign speakers were invited to the Friday meeting, which is set to discuss US foreign policy in Syria.

"We have long exposed government attempts to silence dissent against its unjust and brutal foreign policies and here we now see moves to legalise this silencing of dissent," he said in a statement.

"The speakers, who have not even been announced, are all local. There are no 'top draw' or international speakers. Evidently, the prime minister is not interested in facts when seeking to silence political dissent or whip up Islamophobic hysteria."

Australia also confirmed on Wednesday that it had begun flying combat operations in Iraq on Sunday, but that its jets had pulled out of their first potential strike against Islamic State militants over fears of killing civilians.

Vice Admiral David Johnston said the militants were moving into built-up areas, effectively using the civilian population as a shield against the coalition's overwhelming air power.

"Elements of them are moving into built-up areas and that clearly brings a different collateral damage issue with it that we have to manage," he told reporters.

Last week, Abbott said Australian special force troops would be deployed in Iraq to assist in the fight against Islamic State militants, and that its aircraft would also join US-led coalition strikes.

The United States has been bombing Islamic State and other groups in Syria for almost two weeks with the help of Arab allies, and hitting targets in neighbouring Iraq since August.

SANAA — Suspected Al Qaeda militants, including a suicide bomber, killed at least 10 Yemeni police Wednesday in attacks on security forces in the restive country, officials said.

The wave of violence in the central town of Baida targeted a command centre, a police post and an army checkpoint.

Nine police were killed in the suicide car bombing alone, an official at Al Thawra hospital told AFP.

That attack, against the command centre, was thought to have been carried out by a militant identified as Abu Dujana Al Lahji, said a security official in the region.

It came shortly after a meeting of tribal chiefs — some of them with links to Al Qaeda — who decided to "respond to the increased presence of Shiite Huthi rebels in Baida," the official added.

The heads of the Sunni Muslim tribes believe that members of the security services in Baida are sympathetic to the Houthis, who overran the capital Sanaa on September 21 and have since taken control of other parts of Yemen.

SANAA — Yemen's president named his chief of staff as premier Tuesday, a move rejected by Shiite rebels who overran the capital two weeks ago and whose departure the move was meant to have hastened.

Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi issued a decree naming Ahmed Awad Mubarak after meeting his advisers — including a rebel representative — and they agreed on the nomination, the official Saba news agency reported.

The rebels, known as Houthis from the name of their leading family, stormed into Sanaa in on September 21 and established a strong military presence, mounting patrols and manning checkpoints.

A UN-sponsored ceasefire deal was subsequently signed that also provided for the withdrawal of the rebels from Sanaa, once a neutral prime minister was named, their disarmament and revitalisation of the political transition.

Tuesday's nomination came two weeks later than it should have under the deal, while the insurgents have refused to pull out despite terms that gave them more influence with the Sunni-dominated government.

A senior Yemeni official said of Mubarak that "he seems to enjoy the confidence of President Hadi, and does not appear to have been rejected by the rebel representatives and other political forces".

But shortly afterwards the rebel politburo said "we strongly reject this nomination, which is not in accord with the will of the nation and does not respond to the wishes of the people”.

"This appointment is at the behest of outside forces, a denial of national sovereignty and... the rule of consensus that must direct the process of political transition," a statement added, without elaborating.

Difficult task ahead 

Mubarak, who was presidential emissary to the rebels during talks that led to the truce now has the task, along with Hadi, of trying to restore government authority in negotiating a withdrawal from Sanaa of the rebels who have rejected him.

In addition to bringing normal business activity to a halt, the rebel presence in the city has exasperated residents, who have gone onto the streets twice to demand that the rebels leave Sanaa.

Mubarak would replace Mohamed Basindawa, whose team was accused of corruption by the Shiite rebels and whose departure was one of the rebels' main demands as they advanced on the capital.

When they swept into the city, the insurgents also seized large quantities of weapons from the army.

The rebels are now believed to be trying to expand their influence eastwards to the country's main oilfields and southwest towards the Red Sea.

Mubarak has been Hadi's chief of staff for several months.

He was also secretary general of the national dialogue on a political transition following the 2012 resignation of veteran president Ali Abdullah Saleh after a bloody year-long uprising.

Born in the southern port of Aden, Mubarak was one of the representatives in the dialogue of the Southern Movement, which seeks autonomy or secession for the formerly independent south.

The Houthis, who complain of marginalisation by the authorities in Sanaa, are concentrated in the northern highlands where Shiites are a majority in otherwise Sunni-majority Yemen.

Last month's rapidly moving developments have added to instability in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation since the 2011 uprising forced Saleh from power.

They also threaten an already volatile region, with the Sunni-dominated Gulf Cooperation Council saying on October 1 that it "will not stand idly by in the face of factional foreign intervention", a reference to Iran's alleged backing for the Houthis.

In addition to the Houthis swooping south from their Saada stronghold in the north, the authorities have also had to deal with southern secessionist aspirations and a bloody campaign by the country's Al Qaeda franchise.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is considered by the United States to be the deadliest branch of the extremist network.

AQAP fighters have repeatedly targeted the security forces and have themselves been subject to repeated attack by US drones.

Al Qaeda has also vowed to fight the Huthi rebels in defence of Sunni Muslims.

"Your heads will fly off," it warned the rebels last month, charging that their takeover of Sanaa was the "outcome of a Persian plot in Yemen".

PARIS — France will soon provide weapons and military equipment to the Lebanese army as part of a $3 billion grant from Saudi Arabia to help it fight jihadis encroaching into Lebanon from Syria, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Wednesday.

One of the few institutions not overtaken by the sectarian divisions that plague Lebanon, the army has few resources to deal with the instability on its border and has been seeking to modernise its military hardware.

"All the work is done and the President [Francois Hollande] indicated yesterday to Mr [Saad] Al Hariri that the conditions to fulfil the contract had been met," Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told parliament.

"This is a necessity. The Lebanese army is the last barrier that exists against the security threats this country faces."

Former prime minister Hariri, who has close links to the Saudi royal family, was in Paris on Tuesday to meet Hollande. He said that another Saudi grant of $1 billion for the Lebanese army had also been finalised.

Jihadis attacked and briefly seized the Lebanese border town of Arsal in August and since then the army has stepped up its efforts to prevent fighters, most notably from al Qaeda's Syrian wing Nusra Front, from crossing into Lebanon.

Beirut has officially tried to distance itself from Syria's conflict, but the country's powerful Shiite movement Hizbollah has sent fighters to aid President Bashar Assad, an Alawite. Assad, like Hizbollah, is backed by Shiite power Iran.

Lebanon, which is still rebuilding after its own 15-year civil war, has also seen clashes between gunmen loyal to opposing sides of the Syrian conflict, as well as militant strikes on the army and crossborder attacks by Syrian rebels.

The Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has taken part in air strikes in neighbouring Syria, may be seeking to bolster the army as a counterbalance to Hizbollah.

Le Drian said France would provide land, air and naval equipment.

"This project will be concluded and we have already started by renovating the Lebanese army's helicopter fleet," he said.

The contract, which was initially agreed in December, has been under intense scrutiny for several months as negotiations between Paris and Riyadh over the deal have proved more complicated than first imagined.

MURSITPINAR, Turkey/ANKARA — At least 19 people were reported killed in riots across Turkey, the deadliest street unrest in years, after the Kurdish minority rose up in fury at the government's refusal to protect a besieged Syrian town from Islamic State.

Street battles raged between Kurdish protesters and police across Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, as the fallout from war in Syria and Iraq threatened to unravel the NATO member's own delicate peace process. There were also clashes in the commercial hub Istanbul and capital Ankara.

Across the frontier, US-led air strikes appeared to have pushed Islamic State fighters back to the edges of the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani, which the militants have been poised to capture this week after a three-week siege.

Washington said its warplanes, along with those of coalition ally the United Arab Emirates, had struck nine targets in Syria, including six near Kobani that hit Islamic State artillery and armoured vehicles. It also struck Iraq five times.

Nevertheless, Kobani remained under intense bombardment from Islamic State positions within sight of Turkish tanks that have so far done nothing to help.

US officials were quoted expressing impatience with the Turks for refusing to join the military coalition against Islamic State fighters who have seized much of Syria and Iraq. Turkey says it could join, but only if Washington agrees to use force against Syrian President Bashar Assad as well as against the Sunni jihadists fighting against him.

Turkey's own Kurds say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is stalling while their brethren are killed in Kobani.

Police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse demonstrators who burnt cars and tyres. Authorities imposed curfews in at least five provinces, the first time such measures have been used widely since the early 1990s, local media said.

Ten people died in clashes in Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish city in Turkey's southeast, according to Agriculture Minister Mehdi Eker. In live televised comments, he said an all-day curfew imposed in the city from Tuesday night would be reviewed on Wednesday.

Pockets of protesters defying the curfew clashed with security forces there later on Wednesday, local media reported.

Others died in clashes between protesters and police in the eastern provinces of Mus, Siirt and Batman. DHA news agency reported a death toll of 19 from two days of clashes.

The Istanbul governor's office reported 30 people wounded, including eight police officers, and 98 people detained in "illegal protests" in Turkey's biggest city.

Unrest spread to other countries with Kurdish and Turkish populations. Police in Germany said 14 people were hurt in clashes there between Kurds and Islamists.

The unrest in Turkey, which has NATO's second largest army, exposes the difficulty Washington has faced in creating a coalition of countries to intervene against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, two countries with complex, multi-sided civil wars in which every country in the region has a stake.

The advance by the jihadists of Islamic State in northern Syria drove 180,000 of the area's mostly Kurdish inhabitants to flee into adjoining Turkey.

Black flag

Islamic State fighters hoisted their black flag on the eastern edge of the town on Monday. Since then, US-led air strikes have been redoubled, and the town's defenders say fighters have been pushed back.

Intense gunfire and loud explosions could be heard on Wednesday morning from across the Turkish border, and huge plumes of grey smoke and dust rose above the town, where the United Nations says only a few hundred inhabitants remain.

"They are now outside the entrances of the city of Kobani. The shelling and bombardment was very effective and as a result of it, IS have been pushed from many positions," Idris Nassan, deputy foreign minister of the Kurdish-run Kobani district administration, told Reuters by phone.

"This is their biggest retreat since their entry into the city and we can consider this as the beginning of the countdown of their retreat from the area."

Kurdish media reported that YPG fighters had thwarted an attempted Islamic State car bombing on positions in Kobani, saying the vehicle had detonated before it reached its target.

An Islamic State source on Twitter claimed the attack had destroyed a police station where Kurdish forces were based. The attack could not be independently verified, but a huge explosion could be seen from across the Turkish border, sending a mushroom cloud high into the sky above the town.

Islamic State has been advancing on the strategically important town from three sides and pounding it with artillery despite dogged resistance from heavily outgunned Kurdish forces.

The Turkish parliament voted last week to authorise cross-border intervention, but Erdogan and his government have so far held back, saying they will join military action only as part of an alliance that also confronts Assad.

Erdogan wants the alliance to enforce a "no fly zone" to prevent Assad's air force flying over Syrian territory near the Turkish border and create a safe area for an estimated 1.2 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to return. Otherwise, he says, Turkish military action would only make the situation worse.

Washington, which has so far managed to bomb Islamic State positions in Syria without Assad raising objections, has not agreed to expand the mission to confront the Syrian leader.

US impatience

The conflict has already opened up a fissure in relations between the United States and Turkey, its most powerful ally in the area. US Vice President Joe Biden was forced to apologise last week after Erdogan took umbrage at comments Biden made at Harvard University, in which he blamed Turkey's open borders for allowing Islamic State to bring in recruits.

An unnamed senior US official told The New York Times on Tuesday that there was "growing angst about Turkey dragging its feet to act to prevent a massacre less than a kilometre from its border".

"This isn't how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a stone's throw from their border," the official said.

At the same time, official diplomacy intensified. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said US Secretary of State John Kerry had spoken with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Monday night and Tuesday morning, and said Turkey was "determining what larger role they will play".

Retired US General John Allen, charged with building a coalition against Islamic State after it seized about a third of neighbouring Iraq, was due in Turkey this week.

Ankara said on Tuesday it had urged Washington to step up air strikes against Islamic State to halt its advance on Kobani.

But, while taking in Kobani's refugees and treating its wounded, Turkey has deep reservations about deploying its own army in Syria. Beyond becoming a target for Islamic State, which is active along much of Syria's 900km border with Turkey, it fears being sucked into Syria's three-year-old civil war and perhaps even having to confront Syria's formidable army.

It also distrusts Syria's Kurds, whom it sees as allies of its own Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which waged a decades-long insurgency for Kurdish autonomy in which around 40,000 people were killed.

The PKK's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan has said any massacre of Kurds in Kobani would doom a fragile peace process with the Turkish authorities, one of the most important initiatives of Erdogan's decade in power.

The street protests across Turkey were already making the prospect of reconciliation with nationalists seem more remote, as protesters set fire to Turkish flags and attacked statues of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Selahattin Demirtas, co-chair of the HDP, Turkey's leading Kurdish party, condemned such acts as "provocations carried out to prevent help coming to the east [Kobani] from the west".

WASHINGTON — The fight against the Islamic State (IS) group will be difficult and could last decades due to decisions made by US President Barack Obama, former Pentagon chief Leon Panetta has said.

"I think we're looking at kind of a 30-year war" that could extend to threats in Libya, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, Panetta told USA Today in a story published Monday.

Panetta, a respected policy maker who served under Obama, blamed the challenges on decisions the president made over the past three years.

Among those decisions, he cited Obama's failure to push the Iraqi government hard enough to allow a residual US force to stay in the country after troops withdrew in 2011, saying that created a security "vacuum".

The former defence secretary also pointed to Obama's rejection of advice in 2012 from Panetta and then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton to begin arming Syrian rebels fighting against President Bashar Assad.

"I do think we would be in a better position to kind of know whether or not there is some moderate element in the rebel forces that are confronting Assad," Panetta said.

And Panetta said Obama lost credibility when he warned Assad not to use chemical weapons against his own people and then failed to act when the Syrian leader crossed that "red line" last year.

Panetta says Obama now has an opportunity to "repair the damage" by showing leadership after having "lost his way" in the fight against the radical group that has seized chunks of territory in Iraq and Syria.

The former Pentagon chief was speaking ahead of the release of his new book, "Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace", set for Tuesday by Penguin Press.

USA Today said that Panetta is explicitly critical of Obama in his book, writing that his "most conspicuous weakness" was "a frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause."

The president too often "relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader", the former defence chief added, saying that approach means Obama "avoids the battle, complains and misses opportunities".

At times, Obama "gets so discouraged by the process" that he sometimes stops fighting, Panetta told USA Today.

Even before its publication, the book has already drawn the ire of the White House and State Department.

"I'm finding that former administration officials, as soon as they leave write books, which I think is inappropriate," Vice President Joe Biden told students at Harvard University on Friday. "At least give the guy a chance to get out of office."

But Panetta also expressed hope Obama would change course during his last two years in office and recover from his mistakes.

"My hope is that the president, recognising that we are at a kind of critical point in his administration, will take the bit in his teeth and will say, 'We have got to solve these problems’," Panetta said.

DUBAI — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has lowered its economic growth forecasts for most Arab countries over unrest in the region but said growth would remain generally strong in the oil-rich Gulf states.

In its semi-annual World Economic Outlook released Tuesday, the IMF said the Middle East and North African (MENA) region would grow by 2.6 per cent this year, compared with 3.2 per cent forecast in April.

And even though the figure for next year is seen as higher, it was cut from 4.5 per cent to 3.8 per cent. 

"With increased strife in some countries in the region, the projected pickup in growth in 2014... is now projected to be weaker relative" to the April forecast, the IMF said.

"Growth is expected to increase in 2015, assuming that security improves, allowing for a recovery in oil production, particularly in Libya," it said. 

The most spectacular drop is expected in Iraq, whose economy is being hit hard by the conflict between a US-led coalition and the Islamic State group.

The IMF now expects growth to contract by 2.7 per cent this year after it was forecast to grow by a whopping 5.9 per cent.

And oil-dependent Iraq is seen growing only 1.5 per cent next year, compared with 6.7 per cent projected in the April report.

For oil exporters as a whole — the Gulf states, as well as Algeria, Iraq, non-Arab Iran, Libya and Yemen — the IMF lowered 2014 growth forecast to 2.5 per cent from 3.4 per cent. 

And the outlook for 2015 was cut to 3.9 per cent from 4.6 per cent.

The IMF said growth in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states is projected to remain strong at an average 4.5 per cent in 2014 and 2015.

The IMF increased its economic growth projections for Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but lowered those for Kuwait, whose economy contracted by 0.4 per cent last year. 

But it warned of oil price fluctuations due to weaker demand and increased non-OPEC production, particularly from the United States.

Weak growth
outside Gulf

Among the non-GCC oil exporters, and excluding Iran, growth is forecast to average only 0.25 per cent in 2014 given recent political shocks and deteriorating security. It is projected to recover to 3 per cent in 2015, assuming a rebound in oil production in Iraq, Libya and Yemen.

"These assumptions are, however, subject to significant uncertainty," the IMF said.

A key priority for most of the oil exporters is to shore up weakening fiscal balances, the IMF said. The overall fiscal balance is projected to decline from 2 per cent of the gross domestic product in 2014 to 1 per cent in 2015. 

Fiscal surpluses are too low in most GCC countries to enable them to save an equitable share of oil wealth for future generations and are expected to vanish by 2017. 

Meanwhile, all non-GCC oil exporters are running fiscal deficits.

Iranian, whose economy shrank 1.9 per cent last year, is showing signs of recovery. It is expected to grow 1.5 per cent in 2014, unchanged from April's projections, and by 2.2 per cent next year, slightly off from the 2.3 per cent April forecast.

 Oil importers stutter 

The growth outlook for oil-importers has also been lowered slightly from April.

“Economic activity in the oil importers is projected to improve only gradually as they continue to deal with difficult sociopolitical transitions, subdued confidence and setbacks from regional conflicts,” IMF said.

Economies of the so-called Arab Spring countries, mainly Egypt and Tunisia, will continue to be negatively affected by instability, the IMF said.

After growing 2.1 per cent in 2013, Egypt’s economy is expected to expand by 2.2 per cent in 2014, slightly lower from 2.3 per cent expected in April. The forecast for next year has been lowered from 4.1 per cent to 3.5 per cent.

The economy of Tunisia, cradle of the wave of Arab uprisings, is expected to grow 2.8 per cent in 2014, only slightly off the 3 per cent April forecast. 

In 2015, it is expected to see 3.7 per cent growth, compared with 4.5 per cent.