Region

DUBAI — A Bahraini court on Wednesday acquitted prominent Shiite opposition figure Khalil Marzooq on charges of inciting terrorism in the Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom, a judicial source said.

Marzooq, a former MP for the main Shiite opposition movement Al Wefaq, was arrested on September 17. He has been out on bail since his trial began on October 24 but prohibited from travelling abroad.

Marzooq was in court for the verdict, along with representatives of the opposition as well as delegates from the embassies of Britain, France, Germany and the United States.

The prosecutor had accused Marzooq of using his position at Al Wefaq, which is an authorised political association, to “call for crimes that are considered terror acts under the law”, according to an initial list of charges.

The prosecutor confronted Marzooq with his public speeches in which he allegedly supported the “principles of terror elements... especially the terrorist group named the February 14 Coalition, which he openly supported,” the charge sheet said.

It said that Marzooq had raised the flag of the clandestine group at a public rally after it was handed to him by a masked man.

Marzooq was deputy speaker in the 40-member Parliament of the Sunni-ruled monarchy before 18 MPs from the influential Al Wefaq walked out in February 2011 in protest over violence against demonstrators.

Shiite-led protests erupted on February 14, 2011 in Bahrain, taking their cue from Arab Spring uprisings elsewhere in the region and demanding democratic reforms in the absolute monarchy.

Security forces boosted by Saudi-led troops ended the protests a month later, but smaller protests frequently take place in Shiite villages, triggering clashes with police.

BEIRUT — Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch issued a loyalty pledge on Wednesday to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) at a tinderbox town on the Iraqi border, a monitor said.

The merger is significant as it opens the way for ISIL to take control of both sides of the border at Albu Kamal in Syria and Al Qaim in Iraq, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

ISIL — which aspires to create an Islamic state that straddles Iraq and Syria — has spearheaded a lightning jihadist offensive that has captured swathes of territory north and west of Baghdad this month.

After months of clashes between the two sides, Al Qaeda’s official Syrian arm the Al Nusra Front “pledged loyalty to ISIL” in Albu Kamal, said Observatory Director Rami Abdel Rahman.

“The pledge comes amid advances by ISIL in Deir Ezzor province” in eastern Syria on the Iraqi border, Abdel Rahman told AFP.

An ISIL jihadist confirmed the reports on Twitter, and posted a photograph showing an Egyptian Al Nusra Front commander shaking hands with a ISIL leader of Chechen origin.

Although both ISIL and Al Nusra are rooted in Al Qaeda, the two have been rivals for much of the time that ISIL has been involved in Syria’s civil war since spring last year.

“They are rivals, but both groups are jihadist and extremists. This move will create tension now with other rebel groups, including Islamists, in the area,” said Abdel Rahman.

An opposition activist in Albu Kamal told AFP via the Internet that “there is a lot of tension, and the situation is only going to get worse”.

‘Catastrophe’ 

threatens town 

Using a pseudonym for security reasons, Hadi Salameh also said the merger would “cause a big problem with the local tribes, who will not welcome this change”.

Another activist said the merger comes days after local rebel brigades who had been working with Al Nusra signed a declaration excluding the official Al Qaeda branch from the Islamic court, which acts as the de facto authority in many rebel areas of Syria.

“The loyalty oath [to ISIL] comes after tension between Al Nusra and the local rebels,” said the activist, Abdel Salam Al Hussein.

He also said hundreds of thousands of people, including displaced families from neighbouring Iraq as well as flashpoint areas in Syria, are living in Albu Kamal, and that it would be a “catastrophe” if fighting broke out in the town.

Hussein said: “ISIL fighters are now positioned at the entrance of Albu Kamal, on the Iraqi side.”

Meanwhile, Deir Ezzor province’s rebel spokesman Omar Abu Leyla warned “Albu Kamal is a red line”, and that should ISIL fighters cross over from Iraq, the opposition “Free Syrian Army (FSA) will fight them”.

Rebels fighting ISIL and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad distributed amateur video footage of a rebel parade in Albu Kamal, which Abu Leyla described as a warning to the jihadists positioned just across the border.

Abu Leyla, meanwhile, complained that “the FSA has received no external support at all, even though we are fighting ISIL”.

Also on Wednesday, the Syrian air force carried out air raids targeting ISIL-controlled Raqqa in the north of the country and Muhassen in the east.

The Assad regime has rarely targeted ISIL bastions, except in recent days after the group and other Sunni militants launched an offensive in Iraq, wresting control of Mosul and other pars of Iraq.

A Syrian government newspaper reiterated frequent regime claims that the United States and Israel are behind the rising violence, and that they are vying to “divide Syria along sectarian and religious lines”.

RAMALLAH — Stuck indefinitely in Israeli jails, Palestinian prisoners see starving themselves — to death if necessary — as their only choice in the face of archaic detention laws.

During the night, dozens of prisoners who had refused food for 62 days ended their hunger strike following a deal with the Israel Prisons Service (IPS).

All were protesting over being held without trial or charge under procedure called administrative detention, which can last for years.

Although there were no immediate details on the deal, the IPS said it would not involve suspending administrative detention, a practice which has driven many to the brink of despair.

Nidal Labboum, one of the first to join the strike when it began on April 24, vividly recounts his ordeal a month after he was hospitalised and then released from Israeli custody.

“I lost around a quarter of my body weight during the strike. My own son didn’t even recognise me when I got out,” he said after 36 days of refusing food which left him exhausted, with viral infections and liver disease.

But 34-year-old Labboum, who spent 16 months locked up without being told why, said the strike was his only weapon against administrative detention.

“When a person is being oppressed, he will do anything. By striking, I just wanted to end my oppression — either by being freed, or to the point where I didn’t want to live anymore,” Labboum told AFP by telephone.

He was never given a reason for his arrest, nor for his eventual release.

‘Secret evidence’ 

“They accused me of belonging to Hamas, but I told them this wasn’t true... they kept me locked up telling me it was a ‘secret’ matter, and brought no charges against me.”

Fellow prisoner Rami Barghouthi refused food for 26 days, and was released late May after four months of detention without trial.

“I had headaches, joint and muscle pain, and I’m still suffering from pain today, in my intestines and in my stomach. I still can’t eat all foods,” Barghouthi said.

“Administrative detention is tyrannical. There are no accusations — anything they claim to have against you is a “secret”.”

“So the strike was the last resort and our only choice — even if it led to death.”

The Palestinian Prisoners Club says around 120 prisoners began the latest strike, and by the time the deal was struck, 75 of them were being treated in hospital due to their rapidly failing health, the IPS said.

Some of the strikers were kept alive with vitamins and sugars, but others took only water for the duration, according to prisoners’ rights group Addameer.

Administrative detention is a procedure that dates back to the British Mandate of Palestine (1920 to 1948), allowing detainees to be held without charge for indefinitely renewable six-month periods.

Rights groups have slammed Israel’s use of the colonial era laws, and the Palestinian leadership has urged international pressure on Israel to “annul” the procedure.

Although the army did not respond to an AFP request for comment, former IPS commissioner Orit Adato said holding prisoners without charge was the only way to protect Israel’s network of Palestinian informants.

“This procedure is used when it’s clear we have someone dangerous on our hands... but a trial would involve revealing our sources, putting them in danger,” she said.

The only right remaining 

Of the 5,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, around 200 are administrative detainees, but that number looks set to double following a vast arrest operation to find those behind the suspected kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers on June 12.

So far, Israel has arrested 371 Palestinians with most expected to be held without charge.

Amal Irhiyeh, mother of the youngest hunger striker, 19-year-old Ahmed Al Rimawi, despaired that the cycle would never end.

“Tomorrow, they’ll round up dozens of young men and go through the same motions, putting them in administrative detention and accusing them of belonging to Hamas,” she said.

Despite the risks, the families fully support their loved ones’ decision.

“At first I didn’t agree with it, but when I saw that this is a case of a person exercising the one right he has, I accepted it,” Irhiyeh said.

In a move aimed at thwarting future hunger strikes, Israel is rushing through a bill allowing the force-feeding of those in critical condition after refusing food, with a parliamentary vote due Monday.

Rights groups are up in arms over the bill, and the families are deeply concerned.

“It just denies them their rights, and denies them their only form of resistance,” said Sima Mutawalli whose fiance was one of those refusing food.

“Even if it saved my fiance’s life, I’d be against it.”

CAIRO — Egypt’s President Abd Al Fattah Al Sisi said Tuesday he will donate half of his personal wealth and half of his salary to help the country’s crippling economy, the improvement of which he said requires sacrifices from all Egyptians.

Sisi also said he asked the government to amend a newly drafted budget — the largest in Egypt’s history at $115 billion — because it had a deficit he said was unacceptable. The draft budget kept Egypt’s budget deficit hovering around 12 per cent.

The budget had large sums dedicated to state subsidies on food and energy, as well as spending on pensions and social spending. Sisi said he asked his government to amend it, but didn’t specify what will be changed.

He said tough measures will have to be taken to address the deficit and other economic challenges. Tourism revenues, a main foreign cash earner, have fallen drastically because of Egypt’s political unrest.

“I found the deficit increasing, bringing our debts up to ($282 billion) only because this is the budget that won’t stir public opinion,” he said. “I couldn’t approve it. ... How long can we continue to avoid confronting our challenges and problems?”

Sisi said Gulf aid to Egypt in the past months, estimated around $20 billion, won’t last.

“I am telling you, there must be real sacrifices from every Egyptian,” he said.

To set an example, Sisi said he will donate half of his personal wealth and half of his salary to the country. The monthly salary for the president is set at $6,000.

“This is too much for me. I am telling you I will do two things. I will only take half of this salary,” he said. “There is something else I can do. I will give up half of what I own, included what I inherited from my father, for the sake of the country.”

He appealed to wealthy Egyptians to do same, saying a bank account he would oversee would go to help Egypt’s myriads of problems.

The size of Sisi’s personal wealth was subject to speculation around the time of his nomination for elections when he was required to divulge it to the election commission confidentially.

A local newspaper published a report estimating his wealth at $4.2 million, including inheritance from his father. But the paper later retracted amid reports of criticism from the military for publishing it. Sisi’s family is one of the best known makers of orientAl type furniture in Cairo’s old district.

Sisi also said he will not accept or be able to meet demands from different sectors for wage increases and better working conditions.

Protests by workers and government officials were a main feature during the last three years in Egypt, as they joined in with the spirit of revolt against government policies and corrupt practices.

CAIRO — Egypt’s president said Tuesday the authorities will not interfere in the judiciary, as protests were staged worldwide in solidarity with Al Jazeera journalists, including an Australian, whose jailing has sparked outrage.

The United States is leading calls for President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to pardon the journalists convicted of aiding the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood movement and “spreading false news”.

A Cairo court sentenced award-winning Australian journalist Peter Greste and Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fadel Fahmy to seven years in jail on Monday, while producer Baher Mohamed was handed 10 years.

Eleven of 20 defendants who stood trial were given 10-year sentences in absentia, including one Dutch journalist and two British journalists. Those sentenced can appeal.

Since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, the Egyptian authorities have been incensed by Al Jazeera’s coverage of their deadly crackdown on his supporters.

They consider the pan-Arab satellite network as the voice of Qatar and accuse Doha of backing Morsi’s Brotherhood, while the emirate openly denounces the repression of the Islamist supporters.

Sisi, the ex-army chief who led Morsi’s ouster before being elected president in May, said the authorities “will not interfere in judicial matters”.

“We have to respect judiciary rulings, and not comment them even if others don’t understand them,” he said in a televised speech.

Sisi’s comments came a day after the White House urged the Egyptian authorities to pardon the journalists.

But a presidency official told AFP Sisi cannot legally do so until a final court ruling after any appeals.

‘Journalism not a crime’ 

Monday’s ruling sparked an international outcry, with US Secretary of State John Kerry denouncing “a chilling and draconian sentence”.

Greste’s shattered parents vowed to keep fighting for press freedom as Australia joined the call for Sisi to issue a pardon.

“This is a very dark time not only for our family, but for journalism generally,” his father Juris said in Brisbane. “The campaign for media freedom and free speech must never end. Journalism is not a crime.”

Al Jazeera, whose journalists had been working in Cairo without official accreditation, condemned the verdict as “unjust”.

Journalists around the world demonstrated Tuesday in solidarity with those jailed, including staff at the London headquarters of the BBC, Greste’s former employer and reporters at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong.

“The verdict is unjust, the case is unfounded,” BBC news director James Harding told the gathering, before a one-minute silent protest was observed exactly 24 hours after the sentencing.

Scores of journalists posted pictures of themselves on Twitter with their mouths covered in duct-tape, posting under the protest hashtag #FreeAJStaff.

France on Tuesday joined Britain and the Netherlands in summoning the Egyptian ambassadors.

But reactions were limited to verbal objections, as the West cannot afford to harm ties with Egypt, the first Arab country to have signed a peace treaty with Israel and a strategic US ally in the Middle East.

A day before the ruling, US officials announced that $572 million (420 million euros) in aid, frozen since October, had been released to Egypt.

The Al Jazeera ruling is the latest issue in Egypt to concern rights groups since a 2011 uprising toppled long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

And since Morsi’s ouster, political unrest has reached unprecedented levels in Egypt, with more than 1,400 people killed and at least 15,000 jailed in a government crackdown.

‘McCarthyist climate’

Hundreds have also been sentenced to death in speedy mass trials and dozens of youth activists who spearheaded the 2011 uprising have been handed jail terms, with the authorities being accused of using the judiciary as a blunt tool of repression.

“Many judges believe the state was threatened” during Morsi’s single year of rule, said Hassan Nafaa, a political professor at Cairo University. “They are taking their revenge today with harsh and unjustified verdicts.”

Middle East expert Karim Bittar told AFP the “rulings confirm that Egypt is living in a purely McCarthyist climate”.

In the latest case of mass trials, state media said 494 alleged Morsi supporters would go on trial on July 16 over clashes that killed 44 people in August 2013.

The Al Jazeera ruling drew limited criticism in Cairo, with newspapers speaking of verdicts against “terrorists” accused of “tarnishing Egypt’s image abroad”.

The few voices denouncing the court’s decision were to be found on social media networks.

“Seven-10 years in jail for journalists. Mubarak got 3 years for 30 years of corruption,” a prominent blogger known as The Big Pharaoh tweeted.

TEHRAN — Iranian lawmakers approved a bill Tuesday criminalising birth control surgeries amid a drop in the country’s population, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.

The agency said 106 lawmakers out of 207 voted for the bill, which would imprison those convicted of performing vasectomies and tubal ligations for two to five years. Opponent of the bill warn that it could lead to Iranians seeking underground medical care that could be dangerous.

The bill requires more debate on its details and ratification by a constitutional watchdog before becoming law.

Last year, some 100,000 people underwent birth-control surgery in Iran.

Having successfully curbed birthrates for two decades, Iran now is promoting a baby boom to help make up for its graying population. Last year, parliament approved a bill that allows the government to increase maternity leaves.

Iran’s birthrate reached a peak of 3.6 children per couple after its 1979 Islamic revolution, among the world’s highest at the time. By 1990, experts estimated Iran could be home to 140 million people if the rate was left unchecked. To combat the rise, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsed birth control, while then-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani made controlling the birthrate a part of his development plans.

Mass-produced condoms reached Iranians, as a month’s supply of birth control cost the equivalent of 10 cents in 1992. The birthrate dropped precipitously, now reportedly standing at 1.8 children per couple with a population of some 77 million people. Experts now say that drive might have been too successful, estimating that Iran’s population growth could reach zero in the next 20 years if the trend is not reversed.

Officials now say Iran should have a population of 150 million people or more. However, experts say it is difficult to encourage Iranians to have more children in its mismanaged economy, staggered by Western sanctions, 36 per cent inflation and high unemployment.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — A massive Israeli search and arrest operation in the occupied West Bank launched after the suspected abduction of three settler teenagers is sapping support for the Palestinian leadership, analysts say.

Israel blames Islamist movement Hamas for the kidnappings and has detained most of its West Bank leaders in its crackdown but a mounting backlash in Palestinian public opinion is undermining the authority of President Mahmoud Abbas.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Abbas has his base, scores of protesters took to the streets on Monday to demand an end to his leadership’s cooperation with the massive Israeli military operation which has claimed four Palestinian lives since June 12.

On Sunday night, angry youths torched a police station in the city, displaying growing anger at the search operation for the missing teenagers which has seen the army round up nearly 270 members of Hamas and lock down major city Hebron and other towns.

It has been Israel’s largest operation in the West Bank since the end of the second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, in 2005.

Caricatures of Abbas have multiplied on social media forums, with many showing him in Israeli army uniform with captions deriding him as a “collaborator” and a “traitor”.

Some have even come from media linked to the president’s own Fateh Party.

“It’s highly likely the Palestinian population’s reaction will be directed at the Palestinian Authority and its institutions, because it now looks incapable of protecting its own people,” said Samir Awad, a politics professor at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

Awad said Israel might even be deliberately moving to “exploit the situation to delegitimise the Palestinian Authority”.

Israel’s ‘strong message’ 

Naji Sharab, a political analyst at Gaza’s Al Azhar University, said stoking public resentment was Israel’s way of sending a “strong message” to the Palestinian leadership, after its April deal with Hamas under which a merged administration for the West Bank and Gaza was formed earlier this month for the first time in seven years.

“This is an operation with two goals,” he said.

“It aims to completely dismantle the infrastructure of Hamas, and also to send a strong message to the Palestinian Authority — that its role is purely one of security, not one of sovereignty.”

Abbas is not unaware of the damage being done to his poll ratings.

“What Israel is doing with its arrests and searches will take away the PA’s authority,” he told reporters on Saturday.

Senior Hamas politician Moussa Abu Marzouq said Israel’s aim in locking down swathes of the West Bank under Abbas’ administration was to “drain confidence in it in order to humiliate it”.

It was a deliberate attempt to “put an end to the national consensus government and Palestinian reconciliation”, Abu Marzouq wrote on his Facebook page.

Both the European Union and the United States expressed readiness to work with the new Palestinian government but Israel announced a boycott and has seized on the abduction of the three teenagers as an opportunity to drive a wedge between Abbas and its Islamist foe Hamas.

Abbas aides have acknowledged the damage done to Palestinian reconciliation efforts by the kidnappings.

“If it transpires that Hamas is indeed responsible for the abduction, this could deliver the coup de grace for reconciliation,” said former culture minister Ibrahim Abrash.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that “many indications point to Hamas’ involvement” but there has been no formal claim of responsibility and Hamas has described Israeli finger-pointing as “stupid”.

Walid Mudallal of Gaza’s Islamic University said that were Hamas to turn out to be responsible, it would make things “very difficult for Abbas”.

“He would have to announce a rejection of Palestinian reconciliation, because he would be under enormous Israeli and American pressure,” Mudallal said.

BEIRUT — An overnight suicide blast in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Hizbollah’s main bastion, killed a security officer who had tried to stop the bomber, a Lebanese security source told AFP on Tuesday.

The explosion happened at around midnight local time (2100 GMT Monday) near an army checkpoint and a cafe where football fans were watching a World Cup match.

An army statement earlier said a suicide attacker driving a white Mercedes “blew himself up at an army checkpoint at the Tayuneh roundabout [in southern Beirut], wounding several civilians”.

The official National News Agency reported 12 people wounded in the blast.

On Tuesday, a security source told AFP that a high-ranking General Security Agency officer whom the army had reported missing had “been martyred”.

Remains were undergoing DNA testing to confirm that they were indeed those of Abdel Karim Hodroj, the source added.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the security source said Hodroj and his colleague Ali Jaber, who was wounded, “were passing through the area... They felt a vehicle that was going against the traffic flow was suspicious.

“Then vehicle stopped in the middle of the road, and a man got out. [Hodroj and his colleague] stopped him and questioned him. The man said his car key was broken, and he couldn’t drive any more,” the source said.

The driver’s suspicious behaviour led Jaber to go to the nearby army checkpoint to report him.

“Hodroj remained with the suicide attacker to ensure he wouldn’t get away,” the security source said.

Jaber was 30 metres away when “the explosion happened”.

The bombing came three days after a suicide attack in east Lebanon killed one person and wounded 30.

Southern Beirut, a stronghold of Lebanon’s Shiite movement Hizbollah, has been targeted by attacks for months.

Most incidents were claimed by Sunni extremists because Hizbollah sent thousands of fighters into neighbouring Syria to support President Bashar Assad’s forces battling rebels.

BAGHDAD — Pro-government forces held off attacks on a key Iraqi town and oil refinery as John Kerry pushed Tuesday for unity against a militant onslaught the UN says left over 1,000 dead.

But security forces successes, also including retaking a border crossing with Syria, were marred by air strikes that killed civilians as they seek to push back insurgents led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who have seized swathes of five provinces north and west of Baghdad.

The US secretary of state’s unannounced trip to Erbil in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region came a day after he pledged “intense” American support to Iraq to repel the insurgent advance.

The militant onslaught has displaced hundreds of thousands, alarmed world leaders, and put Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki under pressure at home and abroad.

After wilting in the face of the initial militant attack two weeks ago, Iraqi forces appear to be performing better, holding off major assaults at the Baiji oil refinery and the western town of Haditha.

The overnight attack on the refinery — the scene of heavy fighting in recent days — was repulsed by security forces, officials said.

Assaults on the complex, which once filled some 50 per cent of Iraq’s demand for refined petroleum products, have caused jitters on world markets.

And concerns about the latest violence in Iraq saw Brent crude for August delivery add two cents to $114.14 a barrel in London on Tuesday.

Elsewhere, security forces and allied tribal fighters saw off a militant attack on Haditha in Anbar province, after Iraqi forces recaptured a border crossing with Syria on Monday.

Air strikes

They also carried out air strikes on Baiji town and the western border area of Husseibah.

State television said 19 “terrorists” were killed in Baiji, but officials and witnesses said the casualties were civilians, and of 13 people killed in Husseibah, six were civilians.

Iraqi forces have struggled against the insurgent advance, with Maliki’s security spokesman saying “hundreds” of soldiers have been killed since the offensive began late on June 9 — the most specific official information so far on government losses.

The UN said Tuesday that at least 1,075 people were killed and 658 wounded in Iraq between June 5 and 22.

Militants were able to overrun the strategic Shiite-majority northern town of Tal Afar and its airport after days of heavy fighting, and at the weekend, insurgents swept into Rawa and Ana towns in Anbar province west of Baghdad after taking the Al Qaim border crossing with Syria.

Kerry was in the Kurdish regional capital to urge President Massoud Barzani to work to uphold Iraqi cohesion, telling him “this is a very critical time for Iraq and the government formation challenge is the central challenge that we face”.

Kurdish forces were “really critical in helping to draw a line with respect to ISIL”, he added.

Barzani told Kerry, who has since departed, that Kurds seek “a solution for the crisis that we have witnessed”, but warned that it had created a “new reality and a new Iraq”.

The militant offensive has cleared the way for Iraqi Kurds to take control of disputed territory they want to incorporate into their autonomous region over Baghdad’s strong objections.

‘The time is here’ 

Speaking to CNN before Tuesday’s talks, Barzani called for Maliki, whom he blamed “for what has happened” in Iraq, to step down.

Pressed on whether Iraqi Kurds would seek independence, Barzani said: “The time is here for the Kurdistan people to determine their future and the decision of the people is what we are going to uphold.”

In Baghdad on Monday, Kerry met Maliki and other leaders to urge the speedy formation of a government following April elections in order to face down the insurgents.

Washington’s “support will be intense, sustained, and if Iraq’s leaders take the necessary steps to bring the country together, it will be effective,” Kerry said.

“This is a critical moment for Iraq’s future.”

US leaders have stopped short of calling for Maliki to go, but there is little doubt they feel he has squandered the opportunity to rebuild Iraq since American troops withdrew in 2011.

President Barack Obama has offered to send up to 300 military advisers to Iraq, but has so far not backed air strikes as requested by Baghdad.

ISIL aims to create an Islamic state incorporating both Iraq and Syria, where it has become a major force in the rebellion against President Bashar Assad.

It has commandeered an enormous quantity of cash and resources because of the advance, bolstering coffers already the envy of militant groups worldwide.

In Brussels, a two-day meeting of foreign ministers from NATO countries begins Tuesday to discuss the situation in Iraq, as well as Ukraine.

TEHRAN — Iran is moving to finalise plans with Russia to build at least two more nuclear power plants on the Islamic republic’s southern Gulf shores, media reports said on Monday.

The announcement came as Russia’s Rosatom deputy chief Nikolai Spassky arrived in Tehran for a two-day visit during which he will meet senior nuclear officials.

Spassky will also meet Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, a senior negotiator in talks with world powers on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said that after months of negotiations, the deal with Moscow would be signed this week, the ISNA news agency reported.

Under a provisional agreement, Russia will build two more 1,000-megawatt plants next to Iran’s sole existing plant in the southern Gulf port city of Bushehr.

No further details have been reported.

In Moscow, Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko confirmed the talks were “in the final stages”, but added that the deal could be signed by the end of the year, rather than this week.

“Talks are ongoing and they are in the final stages. We are expecting to sign before the end of this year, both the supplement to the intergovernmental agreement and the relevant contracts,” he told Russian agencies.

Oil-rich Iran says it wants to operate at least 20 nuclear power plants capable of producing 20,000 megawatts of electricity, as a way of decreasing dependency on its vast oil and gas resources.

“It is possible that in addition to the two nuclear power plants, we will also discuss further power plants,” Kamalvandi said.

The Bushehr power plant that came online in 2011 uses Russian-provided nuclear fuel, and is not of international concern.

However, Western powers in ongoing talks with Iran are seeking to ensure that its other controversial nuclear activities — including enrichment of uranium — are of a purely civilian nature, and that Tehran will never be able to acquire an atomic bomb.

A new round of talks is scheduled for July 2 in Vienna, as Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany work to transform an interim deal into a lasting accord by a self-imposed July 20 deadline.

Under such an agreement, Iran’s nuclear work will be curbed and subject to increased monitoring in exchange for the lifting of painful sanctions choking its oil-reliant economy.