Region

SYDNEY — Australia’s foreign minister will meet ambassadors angered by the country’s decision to stop referring to East Jerusalem as “occupied”, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Sunday as he stressed there was “no change in policy”.

Australia has been warned of possible Arab trade sanctions after last week’s move, which Attorney General George Brandis said was made because the term “occupied” carried pejorative implications and was neither appropriate or useful.

But the decision has sparked fury in the Arab world, and on Thursday 18 diplomats from countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia protested to Australia’s department of foreign affairs in Canberra.

Israel seized East Jerusalem during the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

Abbott, speaking in Houston as part of an official trip to the United States, said Australia was “very happy to clarify the position and on trade”.

“My understanding is that there is going to be a meeting between some of the ambassadors and Foreign Minister [Julie] Bishop in a couple of days’ time,” the prime minister said.

“We are very happy to clarify the position and on trade. People trade with us because we are a good trading partner... Nothing that has happened in the last couple of days could detract from that.”

The head of the Palestinian delegation to Canberra warned Friday that Australia could face trade sanctions by Arab nations over the new stance.

Australia’s export trade with the Middle East accounts for billions of dollars annually, particularly in wheat and meat, with Qatar and Jordan major markets for live sheep.

Abbott said there was “absolutely no change” to Australia’s policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the shift on East Jerusalem was “simply a terminological clarification”.

“We strongly support a two-state solution,” he said. “We are giving, I think, Aus$56 million [$53 million] in aid this year to Palestine. No change in policy.”

Israel has hailed the Australian move as “refreshing”.

The Palestinians claim Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state.

The international community views Israeli construction on land seized in 1967, including East Jerusalem, as illegal and a major obstacle to a peace agreement.

Bishop on Sunday blamed the opposition Labour Party for the uproar, telling Ten News it was a “complete and utter overreaction”.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday accused the Islamist Hamas movement of kidnapping three teenagers as a massive West Bank manhunt for the missing youths entered its third day.

As troops wrapped up the biggest arrest operation in years, detaining 80 Palestinians overnight — many of them Hamas members — Netanyahu pointed the finger of blame directly at the Islamist movement.

“Those who carried out the kidnapping of our youngsters are Hamas people — the same Hamas with whom Abu Mazen has forged a unity government, which has very serious implications,” he said at the weekly Cabinet meeting, referring to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The youths, one of whom also holds a US passport, are students at Jewish seminaries in the occupied West Bank, and are believed to have been snatched Thursday night from an area between Bethlehem and Hebron while hitchhiking.

They have been identified as Gilad Shaer, 16, from Talmon settlement near Ramallah, Naftali Frenkel, 16, from Nof Ayalon, and Eyal Ifrach, 19, from Elad, both in central Israel.

US Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the kidnapping, saying “many indications point to Hamas’ involvement” and noting that the Islamist militant movement “has used kidnapping in the past”.

Israeli media reported that police had received an emergency call late Thursday, apparently from one of the three who said “we’ve been kidnapped”, but failed to act since it was not clear and was suspected to be a prank.

Their disappearance came 10 days after the establishment of a new Palestinian government of technocrats pieced together by Abbas’ Fateh movement and Hamas following a unity agreement between rival leaders in the West Bank and Gaza.

The reconciliation with Hamas, which is committed to Israel’s destruction, enraged Israel, with Netanyahu placing responsibility for the settlers’ safe return on the shoulders of Abbas and his Palestinian Authority.

The executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, however, denied Netanyahu’s “false accusations”, warning of “clear Israeli intentions to broaden settlement activity”, using the kidnapping as “a pretext”.

Hamas dismisses ‘stupid’ accusations 

Netanyahu’s accusation was also derided by Hamas.

“Netanyahu’s statements accusing Hamas of kidnapping the [teenagers] are stupid,” spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.

“These arrests are aimed at breaking the movement and it won’t succeed.”

He said the wave of arrests overnight, which included Hamas MPs and former ministers, showed Israel was “flailing around in the dark”.

But Netanyahu insisted that “Hamas terrorists carried out Thursday’s kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers”.

“Hamas denials do not change this fact,” he said in a statement to the foreign media.

The Israeli premier said that since the Palestinian unity agreement there had been “an increase in terror activity emanating from the West Bank”.

The arrests came after Netanyahu ordered the security forces to “use all tools at their disposal” to find the three, with the army saying “approximately 80 Palestinian suspects” had been detained.

With the search in its third day, the defence ministry imposed a complete lockdown on Hebron and the surrounding area, and also limited access to and from Gaza to humanitarian cases only, while only fuel was allowed in through the southern goods crossing.

Troops focus on Hebron 

Inside Hebron, Israeli paratroopers fanned out, sealing off all entrances to the city, while to the east, troops with police dogs raided Taffuh village, forcing some people from their homes, an AFP correspondent said.

Across the West Bank, scores of Jewish settlements on Sunday refused entry to Palestinian labourers, in line with a directive from the Yesha Settlers’ Council.

The aim was to “put pressure” on the Palestinian public not to cover up for the kidnappers, a council statement said.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the kidnapping, expressing “solidarity” with the families of the three and calling for their “immediate release”, his spokesman said.

Thousands of Jews gathered at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City to pray for the safe return of the youths, an AFP correspondent said.

BEIRUT — Government forces flushed opposition fighters from their last redoubts in northwestern Syria near the Turkish frontier on Sunday, capturing two villages and restoring government control over the border crossing, activists and state media said.

The military’s advances fully reversed the gains rebels had made during their three-month campaign in Latakia province, the rugged coastal region that is the ancestral heartland of President Bashar Assad. The counter-offensive’s success is the latest blow to the rebels, who have suffered a string of bitter recent setbacks in Syria’s more than three-year-old civil war.

Islamic rebel factions launched their surprise assault in Latakia in March, pushing south from the Turkish border to seize a string of villages in the lush, mountainous terrain. The military, nervous about an incursion in a bastion of government support, dispatched reinforcements to blunt the rebel advance and eventually turn the tide.

On Sunday, after months of bloody clashes, army troops backed by fighters from the Lebanese Shiite military group Hizbollah seized the seaside hamlet of Samra before also taking the village of Kassab and its adjacent border crossing, said Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

He said there were minor clashes still taking place west of Kassab, a predominantly Armenian Christian village whose residents fled after the rebels seized control.

The Syrian army command issued a statement saying that it “restored security and stability to Kassab”. It also said the operation “smashes the illusions” of the rebels securing a sea port in Samra or a buffer zone along the border to use as “a base for launching terrorist acts against the Syrian people”.

The government refers to those trying to topple Assad as “terrorists”.

Lebanon-based Al Mayadeen TV, which has a reporter embedded with Syrian troops, broadcast live footage from Kassab that showed a blown-out stone building with a smoldering wooden staircase. Soldiers in camouflage uniforms milled in the streets, and the rocky hills typical of the area could be seen in the background.

Engineering units were clearing mines and dismantling booby traps in Kassab, Syria’s pro-government Al Ikhbariya TV said.

The government made dislodging rebels from Latakia a priority for strategic as well as symbolic areas. The coastal province is a stronghold of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and losing control of even a portion of it was an embarrassment to the government.

Now in its fourth year, Syria’s conflict has spilled far beyond the country’s borders to shake the foundations of the Middle East.

Last week, an Al Qaeda breakaway group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which holds much of northern and eastern Syria, overran huge swaths of neighbouring Iraq and captured the country’s second-largest city.

In the wake of its onslaught, the jihadi group has pillaged Iraqi military bases, carting off Humvees, ammunition and other weapons. The militants have transferred some of that materiel to Syria to bolster their forces there.

The Syrian air force has not targeted Islamic State territory with the same ferocity as it has other rebel factions. But on Saturday and Sunday, government aircraft bombed facilities belonging to the extremist group in Hassakeh province bordering Iraq and in the groups’ stronghold of Raqqa province, the observatory said.

Abdurrahman said the Syrian military appeared to be wary of the Islamic State possessing high-grade military equipment. Among the places targeted by the air strikes was Shaddadi, a town just across the Syrian border from Iraq that activists say is a hub for the movement of men and equipment across the frontier.

Also Sunday, the state news agency said that some 230 prisoners were freed under a general amnesty declared by Assad following his re-election in Syria’s June 3 vote. SANA said the prisoners were released from lockups in the central cities of Homs and Hama, as well as the northeastern province of Hassakeh.

The observatory confirmed that detainees were released Sunday, although it could not provide exact numbers. The group said that more than 1,500 people — a mix of anti-government activists and common criminals — have been freed under the presidential amnesty since it was announced on June 9.

International rights groups say there are tens of thousands of anti-government activists, protesters, opposition supporters imprisoned in the country. It is not clear how many of them will be covered by the pardon.

BAGHDAD — Iraq said Sunday it had “regained the initiative” against militants who seized vast swathes of territory, as former UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi blamed the crisis on global neglect of Syria’s civil war.

Washington responded to the sweeping unrest by deploying an aircraft carrier group to the Gulf, but Iran has warned against foreign military intervention in its Shiite neighbour, voicing confidence that Baghdad can repel the onslaught.

The militants, spearheaded by the powerful Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist group, have overrun all of one province and chunks of three more since launching their offensive late Monday.

Security forces have generally performed poorly, with some abandoning vehicles and positions and discarding their uniforms, though they seem to be recovering from the initial onslaught and have started to regain ground.

Iraqi officers have said their forces were now starting to repel the militants, and that soldiers had recaptured two towns north of Baghdad.

Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s security spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassem Atta, said during a televised news conference on Sunday that Baghdad’s forces have “regained the initiative” and killed 279 “terrorists” in the past 24 hours.

Iraqi officials often announce large militant tolls, with no way of independent verification, and downplay their own casualties.

Officials added that security forces and tribal fighters repelled a militant assault in the strategic town of Tal Afar near the Syrian border. It provides a critical corridor for militants to access conflict-hit Syria.

Ten people were killed in militant shelling of the town, and 18 anti-government fighters also died in ensuing clashes.

Volunteer forces 

Baghdad’s embattled forces will be joined by a flood of volunteers after a call to arms from top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, but a recruitment centre for volunteers came under attack on Sunday, killing six people.

US President Barack Obama said he was “looking at all the options” to halt the offensive that has brought militants within 80 kilometres of Baghdad’s city limits, but ruled out any return of American troops to combat in Iraq.

Washington has, however, ordered an aircraft carrier group into the Gulf in response.

Obama has been under mounting fire from his Republican opponents over the swift collapse of Iraq’s security forces, which Washington spent billions of dollars training and equipping before withdrawing its own troops in late 2011.

Iran warned Sunday that “any foreign military intervention in Iraq” would only complicate the crisis, voicing confidence that Baghdad “has the capacity and necessary preparations for the fight against terrorism”.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday Iraq had not asked for its help.

But in surprise comments he added that Iran may “think about” cooperating with its archfoe the United States to fight the militants in Iraq, despite the lack of diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington for more than three decades.

Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican critic of the American president, also called for direct engagement with Tehran, warning that the unrest in Iraq would give extremists a staging area for “the next 9/11”.

‘Syria conflict to blame’ 

Brahimi, the former UN and Arab League envoy to Syria, told AFP the international community’s neglect of the conflict in Syria had precipitated the Iraq crisis.

“It is a well-known rule: A conflict of this kind [in Syria] cannot stay confined within the borders of one country,” said Brahimi, who resigned as UN-Arab League representative to Syria in May.

As Iraqi troops began to drive back the militants, they found grisly scenes, amid reports of summary executions of Iraqi security forces members the militants captured.

Troops found the burned bodies of 12 policemen as they recaptured the town of Ishaqi in Salaheddin province, a police colonel and a doctor said.

Photos posted online were also said to show militants summarily executing dozens of captured members of the security forces in the province.

The situation on the ground has been further complicated as forces from the autonomous Kurdish region have made territorial advances.

A senior official said Sunday that Kurdish peshmerga forces had taken control of one of two official border crossings with Syria earlier in the week.

Kurdish forces have also seized the disputed ethnically mixed northern city of Kirkuk and surrounding areas, as well as other territory.

Amid the confusion, Iraq launched an air strike on a convoy of Kurdish forces Saturday night near Khanaqin, one area of eastern Iraq where Kurds have moved in, killing six people.

It was not immediately clear if the Kurdish troops were targeted specifically, or it was mistaken identity.

Although violence has eased in Baghdad, apparently as militants concentrate their efforts elsewhere, the capital has not been spared, with a Sunday afternoon bombing killing nine people.

CAIRO — Egyptian authorities seized Sunday two retail outlets owned by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has faced a relentless crackdown since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year.

The businesses targeted were the Seoudi supermarket chain and Zad department store, respectively owned by Abdel Rahman Seoudi and Khairat Al Shater — both leaders of the blacklisted Brotherhood.

“Security forces are implementing the law,” Cairo’s police chief, Brigadier General Ali Al Demerdash, said in relation to the moves.

“A committee formed in accordance with a court ruling decided to seize Zad, which is owned by Khairat Al Shater, and Seoudi, which is owned by Abdel Rahman Seoudi, because the two leaders are financing the Muslim Brotherhood,” he told reporters.

A court in September banned the Muslim Brotherhood from operating and ordered its assets seized. It also prohibited any institution branching out from or belonging to the Islamist movement.

Shater, the Brotherhood’s number two who headed its financial affairs, is behind bars and on trial for a range of charges, some of them punishable by death.

He was arrested along with Brotherhood chief Mohamed Badie following the ouster of Morsi in July 2013.

Seoudi is a wealthy businessman but little is known about his role in the Muslim Brotherhood.

The movement, which swept all elections since the fall of strongman Hosni Mubarak up to the election of Morsi in June 2012, was blacklisted in December as a “terrorist group” by the military-installed authorities.

RIYADH — Newspapers in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia on Sunday blamed Shiite Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki for unrest sweeping his country, saying his “sectarian” polices are taking Iraq to a “devastating civil war”.

Militants spearheaded by powerful jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and joined by supporters of executed dictator Saddam Hussein, have since Monday overrun a large chunk of northern and north-central Iraq.

“Policies of sectarianism and monopolisation of power that have been followed by Maliki... have led Iraq to the brink of a devastating civil war,” Alriyadh newspaper wrote.

Relations between Riyadh and Iran-backed Maliki have been strained. In March, Maliki accused the kingdom and neighbouring Qatar of supporting terrorism, a charge that drew harsh criticism from Riyadh.

“It is inevitable that a new political leadership enjoying a broad national consensus should be sought if [Iraq] wants to avoid sliding into a war similar to the one raging in neighbouring Syria,” Alriyadh said.

Iraqis should be wary of “the fire of sectarianism that would burn everyone”, the daily said.

Saudi columnist Abderrahman Al Rashed also lashed out at Maliki, accusing him of doing anything to stay in power.

“Nouri Al Maliki is worse, and more dangerous, than ISIL and Qaeda. He is a bad person that is ready to commit massacres in order to stay in power,” he wrote in Asharq Al Awsat.

He argued that ISIL is only part of the uprising that includes a “majority” of Sunni Arab tribes and former military personnel disbanded after the US-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam.

“The presence of ISIL could not hide the main factors in Iraq’s conflict: a third of the population are punished by the regime for sectarian” reasons, he wrote, referring to the Sunni Arab minority, mostly disgruntled since the regime changed.

Al Jazirah daily also accused Maliki’s of sectarianism.

“Maliki says he failed because of a conspiracy... This is a bad excuse, because this person is sectarian up to his neck,” it wrote.

BENGHAZI/TRIPOLI, Libya — A renegade Libyan general launched a fresh offensive on Sunday against Islamist militants in the eastern city of Benghazi, sparking some of the worst fighting in weeks in which at least four people were killed and power supplies disrupted.

Libyan authorities are struggling to restore order across the vast desert nation ahead of June 25 parliamentary election. The situation remains especially chaotic in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city and cradle of the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Qadhafi three years ago.

Retired general Khalifa Haftar has declared war against militants in Benghazi and several army units have joined him. The Tripoli government says he has no authority to act but its orders are routinely ignored in much of the country, especially the east, as rival militias and tribal groups vye for control.

Haftar’s troops, backed by tanks and rocket launchers, attacked several suspected camps of Islamists in western areas of Benghazi on Sunday, forcing dozens of families to flee. War planes could also be heard circling above the city.

Benghazi and much of eastern Libya suffered power outages after rockets hit a power station near the city’s airport, the state electricity firm said.

There has been speculation among analysts that Haftar has the support of neighbouring Egypt and of Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates, which like the West is worried about Islamist militants exploiting the chaos in Libya.

Haftar told Saudi-owned Arabiya television that his forces were being supported by Libya’s neighbours to help secure the country’s borders, according to the channel’s website. He did not elaborate and he later issued a denial of any such support.

At a news conference held outside Benghazi, Haftar praised Egypt’s new president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, as the right man for the job. Egypt has cracked down hard on the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, which Haftar on Sunday branded as an “international spy network”.

Haftar also accused Qatar of fuelling Libya’s chaos. “There is no doubt Qatar supports the militias in Libya,” he said.

Separately, he told Arabiya television Qatar was hampering the formation of a national army and police force in Libya.

Qatar has come under pressure from Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain over its backing for the Muslim Brotherhood. All three withdrew their ambassadors to Doha in March, causing an unprecedented public rift in the Gulf.

The latest fighting in Libya comes less than two weeks before a parliamentary election that ordinary citizens hope will bring an end to the chronic political infighting that has paralysed decision making since the last vote in summer 2012.

Western powers and Gulf countries fear that Islamists will turn Libya into a battlefield or transit point for fighters heading for conflict zones such as Egypt’s Sinai, Syria or sub-Saharan countries like Mali.

The security fears are particularly acute for Benghazi, home to several oil firms and the focus of Haftar’s campaign.

Haftar’s spokesman Mohamed El Hejazi said Haftar had warned the Islamists against shipping in arms via the commercial port of Derna, east of Benghazi. Derna is a focal point for Ansar Al Sharia, a militant group designated as terrorist by the United States, and other insurgents.

Haftar was once close to Qadhafi but fell out with him and then played a role in the 2011 uprising. In February, he stirred rumours of a coup by appearing in army uniform to call for a presidential committee to be formed to govern till an election.

BEIRUT — Syria has freed after 21 years in jail an ex-horse rider known to have been an equestrian rival of one of President Bashar Assad’s late brothers, reports said Sunday.

The release of Adnan Qassar is part of a wide-reaching amnesty that Assad decreed last week, and has seen some 1,500 people freed from the war-ravaged country’s prisons, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“In 1993, Adnan Qassar was one of the top horse riders in Syria and the Arab world. He won a horse race against Bassel Al Assad,” who at the time was being groomed for the presidency, said Observatory Director Rami Abdel Rahman.

“Qassar was thrown in Saydnaya jail [near Damascus] for his ‘crime’,” said Abdel Rahman.

Aks Alser, a Syrian opposition activist website, also reported Qassar’s release, and said he had been accused of “possessing explosives, and of trying to assassinate Bassel Al Assad.”

Qassar was jailed “without trial,” it added.

A year later when Bassel Al Assad died in a traffic accident, “Qassar was dragged out of his cell to a public square, beaten and then thrown back in jail. It took them 21 years to release him”, said Abdel Rahman.

The Assad clan has ruled Syria with an iron fist for more than 40 years.

“Qassar was not a political activist. But in Syria, no one is allowed to be better at anything than the Assads,” Abdel Rahman said.

Qassar was set free as part of a wide-reaching general amnesty that President Assad decreed last week.

So far, some 1,500 people have been set free from jails across the country, most of them from Damascus, according to the observatory.

The amnesty is unprecedented because it pledges pardon and reduce sentences for people jailed under Syria’s controversial 2012 anti-terror law, which has seen tens of thousands of people jailed over political charges.

The regime has systematically branded armed and unarmed dissidents, including journalists, of being “foreign-backed terrorists”.

“Some of those released so far are prisoners of conscience, others were in jail over criminal charges,” Abdel Rahman said.

The number of those released so far pales in comparison to the estimated total of 100,000 people imprisoned, including some 50,000 held in security buildings dotted across the country.

Rights groups say torture and ill-treatment are systematic in Syria’s jails.

CAIRO — Egyptian police arrested Saturday a fugitive Sunni scholar who had been sentenced to death in absentia in a trial involving the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, state media reported.

Abdallah Hassan Barakat, a former senior academic at the prestigious Al Azhar University, was arrested at a checkpoint in Cairo, the official MENA news agency reported.

He was travelling in a car with his son and two of his brothers.

Barakat was among 10 fugitives sentenced to death earlier this month in a case in which Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohamed Badie and 37 others, all in custody, are awaiting a verdict on July 5.

They are accused of inciting violence in which two people were killed in the Nile Delta city of Qaliub, only days after the military ousted president Mohamed Morsi last July.

Under Egyptian law, Barakat is now entitled to a retrial.

After the army ousted Morsi, Badie and thousands of the deposed president’s supporters were arrested in a police crackdown that also left more than 1,400 dead.

Hundreds have already been sentenced to death in often speedy trials.

DAMASCUS — A bomb attack targeting a weapons bazaar in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border killed 30 “terrorists” on Saturday, state television reported.

“A big explosion hits a terrorist arms market in Mayadeen, killing 30 terrorists and wounding dozens of others,” the channel reported.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a different account, alleging a “bomb planted in the car of an arms dealer” caused a series of blasts, as nearby munitions exploded.

“At least eight civilians were killed and 21 others were wounded,” said the Britain-based group, which distributed amateur video showing burnt corpses.

Just 80 kilometres from the Iraqi border, the town is under the control of rebel groups, including Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate Al Nusra Front, that have been fighting the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

ISIL is the same cross-border group which has spearheaded a lightning offensive in neighbouring Iraq this week that has seen militants sweep down from second city Mosul towards Baghdad.

A rebel spokesman from Syria’s Deir Ezzor province contested the state television version, and told AFP the blast was a car bomb planted by ISIL that killed at least 15 civilians in a street market.

ISIL’s fighters in Syria have been under attack by rival rebels since the start of the year.

They have been driven out of much of the northwest, but retain control of the city of Raqa up the Euphrates Valley from Deir Ezzor.

They have tried repeatedly to extend their area of control to the Iraqi border to unite their forces in the two countries.

In Deir Ezzor province, one of the main groups fighting ISIL has been Al Nusra Front, which late Friday reportedly brought five Hummers and three other vehicles captured from the Iraqi army into Syria.