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Clooney’s fiancee opts not to join UN Gaza probe team

By - Aug 12,2014 - Last updated at Aug 12,2014

GENEVA — Hollywood star George Clooney’s fiancee Amal Alamuddin has declined her nomination to join a commission probing Israel’s Gaza offensive, the head of the UN Human Rights Council said Tuesday.

In a statement, Baudelaire Ndong Ella said that the Lebanese-born British lawyer had cited “prior professional commitments and regrets that the commission will not benefit from her expertise in the field”.

Ella, who this year holds the rotating presidency of the top United Nations rights forum, had on Monday named Alamuddin to the three-member commission of inquiry.

He said that he had approached a “number of individuals” as potential candidates before making the announcement, and that Alamuddin had several hours later said that she was not in a position to accept the role.

Despite Alamuddin’s decision, the commission of inquiry is now operational, Ella said, adding that he would “decide on the way forward”.

The commission will be led by Canadian international lawyer William Schabas, and also include Doudou Diene of Senegal, who has previously served as the UN’s watchdog on racism and on post-conflict Ivory Coast.

The UN Human Rights Council ordered the Gaza investigation on July 23, in the face of fierce opposition from Israel and the United States.

The decision came during a marathon seven-hour emergency session of the 47-nation council, where Israeli and Palestinians delegates traded accusations over each sides’ alleged war crimes.

The probe team has been tasked with reporting back to the council by March.

Alamuddin’s family, who are from Lebanon’s Druze community, fled to Britain during the country’s 1975-1990 civil war.

The 36-year-old, who is fluent in Arabic, French and English, is reportedly due to wed 53-year-old Clooney in Italy in September.

News that she had stolen the heart of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated bachelors caused a global media frenzy back in April.

Alamuddin is well versed in international conflict probes.

She worked with the international tribunal examining the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, and assisted ex-UN head Kofi Annan in efforts to make peace in Syria.

Among her legal clients have been Ukraine’s former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and controversial Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Putin vows to boost arms sales to Egypt’s Sisi

By - Aug 12,2014 - Last updated at Aug 12,2014

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday promised Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to speed up the delivery of billions of dollars in arms and invited Cairo to forge free trade ties with a Moscow-led customs bloc.

The two strong-willed leaders have developed a warm working relationship since Putin gave his backing to Sisi’s presidential run during the Egyptian’s visit to Moscow in February.

Russian television showed the former field marshal descending the ramp of his plane and immediately being greeted with a display of heavy tanks and armoured vehicles assembled on the apron of the Sochi Airport.

“We are actively developing our military and technological cooperation,” Putin later told Sisi at the Russian president’s Black Sea resort summer residence.

“We signed a corresponding protocol in March. We are delivering weapons to Egypt. We are ready to expand this cooperation.”

Sisi in turn thanked Putin for being the first leader to invite him for a visit outside the Arab world since his swearing-in as head of state.

“All the people of Egypt are closely watching my visit and expecting a high level of cooperation between our states,” Russian state news agencies quoted Sisi as telling Putin.

“I expect us to meet their expectations.”

Russia has jumped at the chance to grab a bigger slice of the Egyptian arms market after the United States suspended some of its weapons deliveries in the wake of Sisi’s crackdown on the former Islamic government last year.

Cairo hosted the Russian defence and foreign ministers in November — the first such visit since the Soviet era — for discussions on an Egyptian arms purchase plan.

Moscow’s Vedemosti business daily reported after those talks that Russia and Egypt were nearing a $3 billion (2.2 billion-euro) advanced missiles and warplanes deal that would be financed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The report said Moscow and Cairo had already either “initialled or signed” contracts for the purchase of Mig-29 fighters and Russian attack helicopters as well as coastal defence systems.

“Egypt is most interested in air defence systems,” said Moscow’s World Arms Trade Analysis Centre chief Igor Korotchenko.

“I think that the signing of actual contracts is just a question of time,” the analyst said in a telephone interview. “A politicAl level agreement has already been reached.”

 

Free trade zone 

 

Putin noted that Egypt could purchase a fifth of Russia’s total wheat exports and was eager to help fill the void left by Moscow’s sanctions on US and European produce and meat.

The Russian leader also invited Cairo to establish a free trade zone between Egypt and a customs union Russia has forged with ex-Soviet Belarus and Kazakhstan.

State media did not report Sisi’s response to the invitation — if any. But it said he in turn told Putin that Russia was welcome to play a greater role in Egypt’s recently unveiled “new Suez Canal” project.

Closer agricultural and military trade ties between Cairo and Moscow — strategic partners during parts of the Cold War — are unlikely to play well in Washington amid the effective freeze in East-West relations brought on by the Ukraine crisis.

Putin has responded to his diplomatic isolation from the United States and its EU allies by striking a massive gas deal with China and inviting Latin American countries to sell their agricultural goods to Russia on preferential terms.

Power struggle on Baghdad streets as Maliki replaced but refuses to go

By - Aug 12,2014 - Last updated at Aug 12,2014

BAGHDAD — Iraq's president named a new prime minister to end Nouri Al Maliki's eight-year rule on Monday, but the veteran leader refused to go after deploying militias and special forces on the streets, creating a dangerous political showdown in Baghdad.

Washington, which helped install Maliki following its 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, congratulated Haidar Al Abadi, a former Maliki lieutenant who was named by President Fouad Masoum to replace him.

But Maliki's Dawa Party declared his replacement illegal, and Maliki's son-in-law said he would overturn it in court. Washington delivered a stern warning to Maliki not to "stir the waters" by using force to cling to power.

A Shiite Muslim Islamist, Maliki is blamed by his erstwhile allies in Washington and Tehran for driving the alienated Sunni minority into a revolt that threatens to destroy the country. Leaders of Iraq’s Sunni and Kurdish communities have demanded he go, and many fellow Shiites have turned against him.

Maliki himself said nothing about the decision to replace him, standing in grim-faced silence on Monday next to a member of his Dawa Party, who read out a statement on national television declaring Abadi’s nomination illegal.

Abadi “represents only himself”, the Dawa member, Khalaf Abdul-Samad said.

Maliki’s son-in-law Hussein Al Maliki told Reuters his camp would fight the “illegal” decision: “We will not stay silent.”

“The nomination is illegal and a breach of the constitution. We will go to the federal court to object.”

Washington made its support for the new leader clear. The White House said Vice President Joe Biden relayed President Barack Obama’s congratulations to Abadi in a phone call.

“The prime minister-designate expressed his intent to form a broad-based, inclusive government capable of countering the threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” the White House said in a statement, using a previous name for the Sunni militant group that now calls itself the Islamic State.

The new political crisis comes just days after Washington launched its first military action in Iraq since pulling its troops out in 2011. US warplanes have bombed Sunni insurgents from the Islamic State, who have marched through northern and western Iraq since June.

Washington says it is taking limited action to protect a Kurdish autonomous region and prevent what Obama called a potential “genocide” of religious minorities targeted by the militants.

The fighters made new gains against Kurdish forces despite three days of US air strikes, while Baghdad, long braced for the Sunni fighters to attack, was now tensing for possible clashes between Maliki and rivals within the Shiite majority.

President Masoum asked Abadi to form a government that could win the support of all groups in a parliament elected in April. In remarks broadcast on television, Masoum, a Kurd, urged Abadi to “form a broader-based government” over the next month.

Abadi urged national unity against the “barbaric” Islamic State, which has driven tens of thousands from their homes as it swept aside Baghdad’s troops to consolidate a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria.

“We all have to cooperate to stand against this terrorist campaign launched on Iraq and to stop all terrorist groups,” he said in broadcast remarks after meeting Masoum.

As police and elite armed units, many equipped and trained by the United States, locked down the capital’s streets, Secretary of State John Kerry aimed a stark warning at Maliki against fighting to hold on to power.

“There should be no use of force, no introduction of troops or militias in this moment of democracy for Iraq,” Kerry said. “The government formation process is critical in terms of sustaining stability and calm in Iraq and our hope is that Mr. Maliki will not stir those waters.

“There will be little international support of any kind whatsoever for anything that deviates from the legitimate constitution process that is in place and being worked on now.”

 

Power sharing

 

Under Iraq’s post-Saddam governing system, designed to avert conflict by giving all groups a stake, the speaker of parliament is a Sunni and the largely ceremonial president a Kurd. Most authority is wielded by the prime minister, a Shiite.

Maliki’s opponents accuse him of abusing the system by keeping key security posts in his own hands instead of sharing them with other groups, alienating Sunnis in particular by ordering the arrest of their political leaders. Islamic State fighters were able to exploit that resentment to win support from other Sunni armed groups.

Maliki’s Shiite State of Law bloc emerged as the biggest group in parliament in the April election, but does not have enough seats to rule without support from Sunnis, Kurds and other Shiite blocs, nearly all of which demand he go.

He has nevertheless stayed on in a caretaker capacity while arguing that the constitution requires his bloc to be given the first opportunity to form a government. He has used courts before to keep power: in the previous election in 2010, when State of Law was second, a court let him form a Cabinet.

A US official insisted Washington had not been involved in the selection of Abadi, but said “everybody is pretty relieved that they have chosen somebody and that it was not Maliki”.

Maliki also appears to have alienated his supporters in Iran, the regional Shiite power, which has sent military advisers to help organise the battle against the Islamic State. Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric, Ali Sistani, all but ordered Maliki to leave power on Friday, declaring that politicians who cling to power were making a “grave mistake”.

Obama says a more inclusive government in Baghdad is a pre-condition for more aggressive US military support against the Islamic State. He has rejected calls in some quarters for a return of US ground troops, apart from several hundred military advisers sent in June.

The Islamic State which sees Shiites as heretics who deserve to be killed, has ruthlessly moved through one town after another, using tanks and heavy weapons it seized from soldiers who have fled in their thousands.

On Monday, police said the fighters had seized the town of Jalawla, 115km northeast of Baghdad, after driving out the forces of the autonomous Kurdish regional government.

Washington and its European allies are considering requests for more direct military aid from the Kurds, who have themselves differed with Maliki over the division of oil resources and took advantage of the Islamists’ advance to expand their territory.

On Sunday, a government minister said Islamic State militants had killed hundreds of people from the small, Kurdish-speaking Yazidi religious sect, burying some alive and taking women as slaves. No confirmation was available of the killings.

Thousands of Yazidis have taken refuge in the past week on the arid heights of Mount Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The Islamic State considers the Yazidis, who follow an ancient faith derived from Zoroastrianism, to be “devil worshippers”.

The bloodshed could increase pressure on Western powers to do more to help those who have fled the Islamic State’s offensive. They have already dropped supplies and US aircraft have been bombing the militants since Friday.

All calm in Gaza as truce holds

By - Aug 11,2014 - Last updated at Aug 11,2014

GAZA CITY — A semblance of normal life returned to Gaza on Monday as a 72-hour truce took hold and negotiators sat down in Cairo to seek a permanent end to hostilities.

Quiet returned to the enclave from midnight (2100 GMT on Sunday), the fruit of days of Egyptian-brokered mediation to stem violence which has killed 1,940 Palestinians and 67 on the Israeli side since July 8.

With no reports of violations on either side, shops and businesses started to reopen and people ventured onto the streets of the war-torn coastal enclave which is home to 1.8 million Palestinians.

Outside a UN-run school, a clutch of cars and donkey carts waited to take some refugees back to homes they had fled during the past month.

"We want to go back to see what happened to our house," said Hikmat Atta, 58, who piled his family into a small cart to visit the home they left in the northern town of Beit Lahiya in the first days of the war.

But with the second truce in a week still in its early stages, he was not taking any chances.

“We’re just going back for the day, at night we’ll come back here,” he told AFP.

Palestinian emergency services said that a one-month-old baby girl died on Monday of injuries sustained during the Israeli offensive, raising the overall death toll in Gaza to 1,940.

 

Shuttle diplomacy 

 

In Cairo, Egyptian intelligence mediators threw themselves back into shuttle diplomacy that unravelled after the previous 72-hour truce ended on Friday.

They spent Monday locked in talks with the Palestinian delegation and were to relay their demands to Israeli negotiators, who returned to Cairo three days after abandoning the talks.

Egypt has urged the two sides to use the new lull to reach “a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire”, after efforts to extend a similar truce last week collapsed into a firestorm of violence.

Israel insists that the security of millions of its citizens subject to constant fear from Palestinian rocket attacks be guaranteed.

Hamas, the de facto power in Gaza, has conditioned its acceptance of any permanent agreement on Israel lifting its eight-year blockade on Gaza.

“In the case of Israeli procrastination or continued aggression, Hamas is ready with other Palestinian factions to resist on the ground and politically,” its exiled leader Khaled Mishaal told AFP in Doha.

And an Israeli Cabinet minister warned that without a reasonable outcome to the talks, Israel would have to consider sending ground troops back into Gaza.

“Either there will be a reasonable resolution of the situation in Gaza, or, if the fire resumes, we will have to consider a broadening of the operation, including an expansion on the ground, overthrowing the Hamas authorities and the demilitarisation of Gaza by ourselves,” Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz told army radio.

“No-one is very excited by this and there is a price for it. But I think that within a couple of days, it will be decided one way or another.”

 

Gaza reconstruction 

 

James Rawley, the top UN humanitarian official for the Palestinian territories, said Israel’s security concerns must be addressed but warned that without ending the blockade another conflict was likely.

“Not only will we see very little in the way of reconstruction, but I am afraid that the conditions are in place for us to have another round of violence,” he told AFP.

Palestinian delegates in Cairo said they would be happy for President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority to take over the reconstruction of Gaza and execute any agreement reached in Cairo.

Tel Aviv has no direct dealings with Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel.

Hamas had refused to extend the last 72-hour lull when it expired on Friday, and Israel accused the Islamist group of breaching the agreement in its final hours with rocket attacks.

In the gap between ceasefires, warplanes hit more than 170 targets, killing at least 19 people, while the Palestinians fired at least 136 rockets at Israel, of which 93 hit and 13 were shot down, with the rest falling short inside Gaza, the army said.

The UN says just under three quarters of those killed in Gaza were civilians. Around a third of the civilian victims were children.

Turkish aid group, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, said it would send a new flotilla of ships in a bid to break Israel’s eight-year blockade on Gaza.

Four years ago, the group sent a six-ship flotilla to Gaza which was stormed by Israeli commandos, leaving 10 Turkish nationals dead and triggering a major diplomatic crisis with Ankara.

Turkey has also promised to treat 200 wounded Palestinians from Gaza — the first four of whom arrived in Ankara on Monday.

In the West Bank, a Palestinian fighter was shot dead early Monday in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops near Nablus, witnesses and a Palestinian security source said.

The Israeli army, confirming the incident, said he was wanted in connection with a shooting incident against soldiers two weeks ago.

Gaza teen’s war tweets make her a social media sensation

By - Aug 11,2014 - Last updated at Aug 11,2014

GAZA — As bombs explode in Gaza, Palestinian teenager Farah Baker grabs her smartphone or laptop before ducking for cover to tap out tweets that capture the drama of the tumult and fear around her.

The 16-year-old’s prolific posts on Twitter have made her a social media sensation through the month-old conflict. Once a little known high school athlete, Baker’s following on the website has jumped from a mere 800 to a whopping 166,000.

Living near Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, where her father is a surgeon, provides Baker with a live feed of blaring ambulance sirens in addition to blasts from Israeli air strikes and shelling attacks.

Baker often records these and posts video clips to provide followers with a quick personal glimpse of the war.

A tweet from August 1 included a link to a video of a darkened street punctuated by the sounds of repeated explosions. In another tweet Baker tells of hiding from the shelling in one of the rooms of her home.

“I am trying to tell the world about what I feel and what is happening where I live,” Baker told Reuters at her Gaza home, adding that she has been “trying to make other people feel as if they are experiencing it, too”.

Baker, whose Twitter profile photo shows a blue-eyed frightened looking young woman calling herself “Guess what”, or @Farah_Gazan, said she’s surprised at the popularity she has garnered.

“I did not expect it. I was writing for a small circle of people, and the number has become too many,” she said.

Baker dreams of becoming a lawyer, hoping to use that profession as a means to advocate for crowded and impoverished Gaza, a coastal territory wedged between Israel and Egypt.

It isn’t always easy to overcome her fears to tweet, but she feels compelled to go on.

“I see this is the only way I can help Gaza, showing what is happening here. Sometimes I tweet while am crying or too scared but I tell myself, I should not stop,” Baker said.

Fateh fighter killed in West Bank shoot-out — witnesses

By - Aug 11,2014 - Last updated at Aug 11,2014

NABLUS, Palestinian Territories — A Palestinian fighters was shot dead early Monday in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops in the northern West Bank, witnesses and a Palestinian security source said.

Zacharia Akra, a 24-year-old fighter allied to the Fateh movement of President Mahmoud Abbas, was killed in a shoot out in Qabalan village some 10 kilometres south of Nablus, they said.

In the early hours of Monday morning, soldiers had surrounded the house where Akra was staying with this brother, provoking an exchange of fire in which he was killed, they said.

The Israeli army confirmed the incident saying troops had gone to apprehend a man wanted for questioning in connection with a shooting incident against Israel troops two weeks ago.

“The terrorist barricaded himself in his location despite repeated calls for him to turn himself in. Following gunfire from the suspect, the troops responded with lethal force,” a military spokeswoman said.

During subsequent searches, troops uncovered several “improvised anti-tank missile launchers”, she said.

A 17-year-old Palestinian boy died later Monday in an accidental explosion of a mine left by Israeli troops near Nablus, a Palestinian security official said.

Mohammad Basharat was killed by the leftover mine near Tamun.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said all military training zones were prohibited to members of the public and that she was not aware of the incident.

US sending arms to Kurds in Iraq

By - Aug 11,2014 - Last updated at Aug 11,2014

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has begun directly providing weapons to Kurdish forces who have started to make gains against Islamic militants in northern Iraq, senior US officials said Monday, but the aid has so far been limited to automatic rifles and ammunition.

Previously, the US sold arms in Iraq only to the government in Baghdad, some of which would be transferred to the Kurdish forces in the north. The Kurdish peshmerga fighters had been losing ground to Islamic State militants in recent weeks, however.

The weapons appeared to be coming through intelligence agencies covertly and not through regular defence department channels.

The officials wouldn’t say which US agency is providing the arms, but one official said it isn’t the Pentagon. A Kurdish official said the weapons were coming from “US intelligence agencies”, and a senior Pentagon official said the defence department may yet get involved. The CIA has historically done similar quiet arming operations.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the operation publicly.

The move to directly aid the Kurds underscores the level of US concern about the Islamic State militants’ gains in the north, and reflects the persistent administration view that the Iraqis must take the necessary steps to solve their own security problems.

To bolster that effort, the administration is also very close to approving plans for the Pentagon to arm the Kurds, a senior official said. In recent days, the US military has been helping facilitate weapons deliveries from the Iraqis to the Kurds, providing logistical assistance and transportation to the north.

But the Kurdish government official said Monday the US weapons being directly sent to Erbil — a northern Iraqi city where US personnel are based and where Islamic State militants are advancing on Kurdish forces — are very limited in scope and number, and mostly consist of light arms like AK-47s and ammunition.

He said the American lethal aid is still not enough to battle the militants, even though peshmerga and other Kurdish forces were supplemented with similar munitions from Baghdad over the weekend

The State Department sought to downplay the significance of the apparent shift in US policy.

The militants have “obtained some heavy weaponry, and the Kurds need additional arms and we’re providing those — there’s nothing new here,” said department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

She said the US was working with Baghdad to speed up deliveries of “badly needed arms” to Kurdish forces in the north. The Iraqi government, she said, “has made deliveries from its own stocks and we are working to do the same”.

The additional assistance comes as Kurdish forces on Sunday took back two towns from the Islamic insurgents, aided in part by US air strikes in the region. President Barack Obama authorised the air strikes to protect US interests and personnel in the region, including at facilities in Erbil, as well as Yazidi refugees fleeing militants.

US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, speaking to reporters in Sydney, where he is attending an Asian defence ministers meeting, said the airstrikes “have been very effective from all the reports that we’ve received on the ground”. He declined to detail how or when the US might expand its assistance to Iraq, or if military assessment teams currently in Baghdad would be moving to a more active role advising the Iraqi forces.

Iranian parliament bans vasectomies in bid to boost birthrate

By - Aug 11,2014 - Last updated at Aug 11,2014

DUBAI — Iran’s parliament has voted to ban permanent forms of contraception, the state news agency IRNA reported, endorsing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s call for measures to increase the population.

The bill, banning vasectomies and similar procedures in women, is parliament’s response to a decree Khamenei issued in May calling for more babies to “strengthen national identity” and counter “undesirable aspects of Western lifestyles”.

Doctors who violate the ban will be punishable by law, the ISNA news agency reported.

The bill, approved by 143 out of 231 members present in parliament, according to IRNA, also bans the advertising of birth control in a country where condoms had been widely available and family planning considered entirely normal.

The law now goes to the Guardian Council — a panel of theologians and jurists appointed by the supreme leader who examine whether legislation complies with Islam.

It aims to reverse Iran’s declining population, but reformists see the law as part of a drive by conservatives keep Iran’s highly educated female population in traditional roles as wives and mothers.

It also worries health advocates who fear an increase in illegal abortions. State media reported that the number of illegal terminations between March 2012 and March 2013 was 12,000, more than half of the total number of abortions that year.

Abortion is legal in Iran if the mother is in danger or if the foetus is diagnosed with certain defects.

During the war with Iraq in the 1980s, Iran offered incentives to encourage families to have more children, but that was reversed in the late 1980s, amid concerns that the rapid population growth could hobble the economy and drain resources.

Khamenei’s edict has once again reversed the policy, effectively doing away with the “Fewer Kids, Better Life” motto adopted when contraception was made widely available and subsidised by the state.

Iran’s birthrate stands at 1.6 children per woman, lawmaker Ali Motahari said, according to IRNA. At that rate, the population of more than 75 million would fall to 31 million by 2094, and 47 per cent of Iranians would be above the age of 60, said Mohamad Saleh Jokar, another lawmaker.

UN data suggests Iran’s median age will increase from 28 in 2013 to 40 by 2030.

The ministry of health announced in June it would help couples pay for infertility treatment, which can cost between $3,000 to $16,000 in Iran.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia seek united front against militants

By - Aug 11,2014 - Last updated at Aug 11,2014

RIYADH — The leaders of the Arab world’s most populous state and its richest state met on Sunday to talk over joint efforts to counter Islamist militancy across the Middle East, including the turmoil now shaking Iraq.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi’s spokesperson, Ehab Badawi, said Sisi and Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz agreed to work together promote the “true and moderate values of Islam that reject extremism and terrorism”.

“President Sisi and King Abdullah also reviewed the development of the situation in Iraq in light of the expanding of the circle of terrorism in the region,” Badawi said, according to Egypt’s Middle East news agency.

“There is no doubt that the meeting between the leadership of the two countries is important in light of the current circumstance of the Arab and Muslim nation,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal said, according to state news agency SPA.

“[There are] external wars, intervention from foreign powers, internal sedition and disputes within the Arab nation at a time when it is in utmost need for solidarity and to stand together as one man to repel enemies,” he said.

The visit is Sisi’s first since his election as president this year. The pair met on King Abdullah’s plane in Cairo in June, and Riyadh regards the former Egyptian army leader as one of its closest regional allies.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have provided some $20 billion in aid after Sisi ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year following mass protests against his one year in office.

King Abdullah has also called for a donor conference for Egypt expected to take place either this year or early next year to provide further support to the most populous country in the Arab world.

Egypt has suffered a string of attacks by Islamist militants.

US-allied Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, is also worried by the advance of the Islamic State, previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, militant group in Iraq, while at the same time it is unhappy with the policies of the Shiite-led government of Nouri Al Maliki, seeing it as being too close to regional rival Iran.

Few details emerged from the late-night meeting at King Abdullah’s palace in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah. State media from both countries said the talks included Egyptian efforts to broker a ceasefire in a monthlong fighting between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Clooney’s fiancee named to UN Gaza inquiry team

By - Aug 11,2014 - Last updated at Aug 11,2014

GENEVA — Hollywood star George Clooney’s fiancee Amal Alamuddin is to join fellow human rights experts probing Israel’s Gaza offensive, the United Nations said Monday.

The Lebanese-born British lawyer was one of three top experts appointed to a commission of inquiry by the UN Human Rights Council, which ordered the investigation last month.

Alamuddin’s family, who are from Lebanon’s Druze community, fled to Britain during the country’s 1975-1990 civil war.

The 36-year-old, who is fluent in Arabic, French and English, studied at a French school in London and holds degrees from Oxford and New York University.

She is reportedly due to wed 53-year-old Clooney — who is known both for his acting and his peace campaigning — in Italy in September.

News that she had stolen the heart of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated bachelors caused an international media frenzy back in April.

Alamuddin is no stranger to international investigations and conflicts.

She worked with the international tribunal examining the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri and assisted ex-UN head Kofi Annan in efforts to make peace in Syria.

Among her legal clients have been Ukraine’s former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the controversial founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange.

The other members of the inquiry team are Doudou Diene of Senegal, who has previously served as the UN’s watchdog on racism and on post-conflict Ivory Coast, and Canadian international lawyer William Schabas.

In the face of fierce opposition from Israel and the United States, the 47-member UN Human Rights Council voted on July 23 to create the commission of inquiry.

The decision came after a marathon seven-hour emergency session of the top UN human rights body, where the Israelis and the Palestinians traded accusations over war crimes.

The probe team has been tasked with reporting back to the council by March.

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