Region

BEIRUT — Syria’s army pressed a counter-offensive against rebels in the south of the country Saturday, firing a surface-to-surface missile and carrying out numerous air strikes in the area, a monitoring group said.

The violence comes a day after the army launched a massive bid to reclaim strategic positions in the west of Daraa province seized by rebels in recent weeks, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

State media has also reported the launching of an offensive against rebels in Daraa.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the area is important because it is located near the border with Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and also because Daraa is near Damascus.

“The army wants to take back hills seized by rebels in recent weeks, that link together Daraa and Quneitra provinces,” said Abdel Rahman.

“The army’s counter-offensive, against rebels and the [jihadist] Al Nusra Front, has been extremely fierce. On Friday, the army fired 100 rockets and carried out 15 air strikes. On Saturday, the air raids and shelling have been continuous, and the army also fired a surface-to-surface missile against Sahem” village, he told AFP.

The Britain-based observatory said the air raids had caused an unknown number of casualties, while fighting between troops and rebels killed six Al Nusra jihadists.

Elsewhere in Syria, the air force carried out 12 air strikes against Mleiha east of Damascus, as it pushed a monthlong bid to take back the besieged, rebel-held enclave, said the observatory.

The army also cut off the only checkpoint leading out of Moadamiyet Al Sham, a formerly besieged rebel town that made a truce late last year with the regime, said the observatory and activists on the ground.

Abu Malek, a medical volunteer in Moadamiyet Al Sham, said the army was demanding that “all civilians from Daraya leave Moadamiyet Al Sham”.

Abdel Rahman confirmed the report.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in Syria’s war, and nearly half the population forced to flee their homes.

KHARTOUM — Sudan's state security arrested on Saturday opposition leader and ex-premier Sadiq Al Mahdi, his secretary said, after he reportedly accused a counter-insurgency unit of rape and other abuses of civilians in Darfur.

"At 8:45pm (1745 GMT) a number of state security officers came to the home of imam Sadiq Al Mahdi with a warrant, and they arrested him," his secretary, Mohammed Zaki, told AFP.

Zaki had no further details about the arrest, which makes Mahdi one of the highest-profile figures to be detained in Sudan in recent years.

The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) has the right to detain people for more than four months without judicial review.

On Thursday Mahdi, who heads the major opposition Umma party, appeared before prosecutors for questioning over the allegations he made at a press conference about the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

NISS, which has authority over the RSF, filed a criminal complaint accusing Mahdi of distorting the image of the forces, threatening public peace, undermining the prestige of the state and inciting the international community against Sudan, newspapers reported.

At a news conference in Khartoum on Wednesday, commanders of the RSF denied their force had looted, raped or committed arson.

"All the allegations against us are lies," an angry Mohammed Hamdan Dalgo, the unit's field commander, shouted.

Mahdi's detention comes as Umma and others opposition parties engage in a "national dialogue" with President Omar Bashir.

A senior opposition politician has told AFP that Umma is a main focus of the dialogue process that might lead to a new, coalition government.

The politician said Bashir is pushing for "a real change" because he realises the country is "collapsing".

The security service is resisting the dialogue process, the politician said.

A political scientist, El Shafie Mohammed El Makki, has said that even if Bashir himself is serious about reform, "not all the people in his party are for what is going on. You have to understand this".

The Bashir regime, which took power 25 years ago in an Islamist-backed coup, has faced mounting challenges since the separation of South Sudan three years ago

Inflation has soared and the Sudanese currency sank. Wars and unrest spread to about half of the country's 18 states, and internal divisions surfaced in Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP).

Repression peaked in September when thousands called for the regime's downfall after fuel price increases. Security forces are believed to have killed more than 200 protesters, many with gunshots to the head and chest, Amnesty International said.

Those demonstrations made clear the urgent need for reform, which Bashir addressed in January when he appealed for a broad national political dialogue and "renaissance" focused on peace.

Since then, in a tenuous political opening, some opposition political rallies have drawn thousands of people without interference by the security forces.

But youth activists have continued to be arrested.

Sixteen opposition parties have refused to join Bashir's dialogue unless certain conditions are met — including the abolition of laws restricting freedom.

VIENNA — Iran and world powers warned Friday they are a long way from reaching a comprehensive and potentially historic nuclear deal by a July 20 deadline following tough talks in Vienna.

Such an accord would see Iran roll back its nuclear programme in order to render it virtually impossible for Tehran to make an atomic bomb, in exchange for a lifting of all sanctions.

Failure could have calamitous consequences, sparking possible conflict — neither Israel nor Washington rules out military action — and creating a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

In this fourth round of talks, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany aimed to start drafting a deal before a November interim accord expires on July 20.

But it was clear after three days of intense negotiations in a Vienna hotel that nothing had been put to paper yet.

“The gaps were too large to begin drafting the text of an accord,” Iran’s chief negotiator Abbas Araqchi told state television.

In this round “we made no tangible progress”, he said, adding that the differences were “too huge”.

A source close to the Iranian delegation was quoted by the IRNA news agency as saying that “the West has to abandon its excessive demands”.

Western diplomats were similarly downbeat, saying that Iran needed to be more prepared to budge on its positions.

“Huge gaps remain, there is really more realism needed on the other side,” one Western diplomat said. “We had expected a little more flexibility.”

“Iran still has to make some hard choices. We are concerned that progress is not being made, and that time is short,” a senior US official said. “We believe there needs to be some additional realism at this point.”

The official added, however, that both sides had been well aware that this would not be an easy process, and that they remained committed to getting an agreement.

Unusually, no date was announced for the next round, although officials said it would be some time in June.

There was also no closing press statement by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Michael Mann, a spokesman for Ashton, explained that the parties “don’t want to break things down and give a snapshot of where we are after every session”.

“We have had three days of hard work. As we have said, the negotiations are complex and detailed,” he said.

Tricky issues 

Neither side gave any indication of which particular issues were proving difficult.

Comments previously indicated that there had been some narrowing of positions on the Arak reactor, but both sides insist that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

The biggest issue — and main problem area — is the enrichment of uranium, which makes it suitable for power generation but also, when highly enriched, for a bomb.

Multiple UN Security Council resolutions have called on Iran to suspend this process.

The world powers want to extend the time Iran would need to enrich its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade by slashing the number of centrifuges from the current 20,000.

The Islamic republic denies wanting nuclear weapons and says that it needs to enrich for a fleet of nuclear power plants, which however it has yet to build.

Ballistic missiles 

Another issue is Iran’s development of ballistic missiles, a point that Tehran has said should not be part of the nuclear talks. Washington disagrees.

Also to be resolved is the IAEA’s long-stalled probe into alleged past “military dimensions” to its programme before 2003 and possibly since.

A Thursday deadline for Iran to clear up one small part of this — its stated need for certain detonators — passed without comment from either Iran or the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“The gaps between the parties are large, but not insurmountable. Negotiators on both sides expected obstacles, but if they are willing to be flexible and creative, a deal can be reached,” Kelsey Davenport from the Arms Control Association told AFP.

“Both sides know that diplomacy remains the only viable option for reaching a win-win agreement that meets the needs of all the parties involved.”

TRIPOLI — Libya’s interim authorities on Saturday denounced an offensive launched by a rogue general in the restive eastern city of Benghazi against Islamists as a “coup” bid, a statement said.

The offensive by Khalifa Haftar against those he describes as “terrorists” is considered “an action outside state legitimacy and a coup d’etat”, the army, government and parliament said in a joint statement.

“All those who took part in this coup bid will be prosecuted,” said Nuri Abu Sahmein, the head of the General National Congress, interim parliament, reading from the joint statement on state television.

Interim Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thani, who has branded Haftar’s forces as “outlaws”, and Armed Forces Chief-of-Staff Abdessalam Jadallah Al Salihin, who has denied any army involvement in the Benghazi clashes, were shown on television standing next to Sahmein.

Khalifa, a retired general, used air power to pound Islamist positions in Benghazi on Friday, in a campaign to purge Libya’s second city of “terrorists” that led to clashes in which 37 people were killed.

Haftar, who defected from the army of Muammar Qadhafi in the late 1980s, led ground forces in the NATO-backed 2011 uprising that toppled and killed the veteran dictator.

He now heads a group calling itself the “National Army”, which launched Friday’s operation to flush “terrorists” out of Benghazi, according to his spokesman Mohammed Al Hijazi.

The army says that he is being supported by tribes, officers who defected from the army as well ex-rebels who are opposed to the central government.

Earlier this year Haftar announced, in a video posted on the Internet, an “initiative” under which the interim government and parliament would be suspended.

That video sparked rumours on social media that a coup might be in the offing.

But the government, which has come in for criticism for failing to defeat lawlessness in Libya, was quick to quash the rumours and insist it was in control.

Libya has been rocked by lawlessness since the 2011 uprising, and authorities have struggled to assert their control over the vast, mostly desert country, which is awash with heavy weapons and effectively ruled by a patchwork of former rebel militias.

CARACAS — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro pledged Friday to send oil and diesel to the Palestinian Authority, as part of agreements signed with its leader Mahmoud Abbas during his visit to Caracas.

Venezuela, which sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves, said it would provide an initial shipment of 240,000 barrels of oil, but gave no details as to how it would send them.

“Thanks to Venezuela for supporting Palestine... to break Israel’s monopoly on our economy, for your response to our needs, for your willingness to support the Palestinian people in their long struggle,” Abbas said, according to an official translation.

During the meeting, Maduro also agreed to support the Palestinian Authority’s quest to be granted observer status in three Latin American regional organisations: The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

“The Palestinian people have the right to maintain commercial relations with the world as well,” Maduro said.

During his third visit to Venezuela in five years, Abbas visited the grave of Maduro’s predecessor, longtime leader Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer last year.

Abbas arrived in Caracas on Thursday after meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in London the day before, a first since the peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis collapsed.

Abbas’ visit comes amid months of at times bloody protests that have rocked Venezuela since February.

Maduro has called the unrest, which has claimed at least 42 lives, a coup attempt backed by the United States, raising tensions with Washington, which has repeatedly denied the claim.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s powerful Hizbollah movement said Friday it had warned the Maronite patriarch of the “negative repercussions” of his plan to accompany Pope Francis to Jerusalem this month.

“We presented our perspective and point of view and laid out what we see as the negative repercussions of this visit,” Ibrahim Amin Al Sayed, head of the group’s political council, said after meeting Patriarch Beshara Rai.

Sayed said the group hoped “that this perspective is taken into account”.

Rai is set to become the first Maronite patriarch to visit Jerusalem since it came under full Israeli control after the 1967 war.

The decision to join Pope Francis on his May 24-26 trip has caused some controversy in Lebanon, which is technically at war with Israel and bans its citizens from visiting Israel.

Rai has defended the visit as a purely religious matter, and said he has a duty to welcome the Pope in Jerusalem.

“The Pope is going to the Holy Land and Jerusalem. He is going to the diocese of the patriarch, so it’s normal that the patriarch should welcome him,” Rai told AFP this month.

Hizbollah, which fought a devastating war with Israel in 2006, had previously declined to comment on the trip, although a leading newspaper close to the movement called it a “historic sin”.

Sayed said the group understood Rai’s intentions, “but we talked about the risks and drawbacks of the trip in terms of repercussions at the level of Lebanon and of the Israeli entity”, he said.

Despite the Israel travel ban, Lebanon’s Maronite clergy are allowed to travel to the Holy Land to minister to around 10,000 faithful there.

Rai’s deputy Boulos Sayyah, who will accompany him, has said the patriarch would not participate in any political meetings in Israel but will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Maronite church has its roots in the early 5th century and is named after a hermit, St Maron.

It has its own distinct theology, spirituality, liturgy and code of canon law but is in full communion with Rome.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s President Michel Sleiman on Saturday urged Hizbollah to withdraw its forces from Syria to avoid future repercussions on the tiny Arab state that suffered through 15 years of its own civil war.

Sleiman made his comments in the mountain village of Brih during a ceremony on reconciliation between the Druse and Christian community in the area that witnessed deadly sectarian violence during Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.

“I appeal for the return to Lebanon and to withdraw from neighbouring arenas to avoid future repercussions on Lebanon,” said Sleiman, a critic of Hizbollah backing Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

Hizbollah, which openly joined the battles in Syria last year, is not likely to abide by Sleiman’s call. Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to keep his fighters in Syria as long as needed to shore up Assad’s struggle against Syria’s rebels.

The Hizbollah fighters have been instrumental to Assad’s success on the battlefield, and support from the Iranian-backed group appears to have tipped the balance into the government’s favour — especially in areas on the border with Lebanon and near the Syrian capital of Damascus.

Sleiman’s comments came a week before his six-year term ends.

Meanwhile in Syria, members of Al Qaeda breakaway group called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant beheaded a local rebel commander of a rival group, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the Ahrar Al Sham commander known as Abu Al Miqdam went missing four days ago. It said the man was found beheaded Friday in the central province of Hama.

Many rebels referred to Abu Al Miqdam as the “tank sniper” for his role in firing rockets at Syrian army tanks, according to opposition websites.

The Islamic State and rival Islamic groups including Ahrar Al Sham have been fighting each other in northern and eastern Syria since January. Activists say the internal fighting killed more than 6,000 people.

Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned a cut in water supplies in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo that he said has deprived at least 2.5 million people of access to potable water.

In a statement released by his office late Friday, Ban noted that denying civilians essential supplies is a breach of international and humanitarian law.

Rebels from the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front shut down the main water pumping station in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, nearly two weeks ago to punish civilians living on the government-controlled side of the divided metropolis, the observatory’s Rami Abdurrahman said.

Abdurrahman, whose group collects information from activists inside Syria, said that the Nusra Front has tried to restart the water station, but that supplies are erratic and remain largely cut.

“They don’t have specialists to deal with the pumps, and they’ve damaged the station,” Abdurrahman said. “They’ve tried to resume pumping. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The water comes and goes, but until now it’s not flowing as usual.”

Some residents have resorted to drinking polluted well water distributed in buckets and plastic jerry cans.

LONDON — Western and Arab nations vowed Thursday to step up assistance for Syria's moderate opposition, while the US said "raw data" suggested chlorine had been used as a chemical weapon in the conflict.

The Friends of Syria group meeting in London poured scorn on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime's plan to hold presidential elections in June, saying it was an "insult" while the civil war was still raging.

As they met, a car bomb killed at least 29 people on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey, a monitoring group said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said the regime's plan to hold a presidential election on June 3 was "an insult" to the Syrian people and would be a "fraud".

A joint statement from the 11 countries at the London talks described the election as "illegitimate".

The Friends of Syria group — Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States — was meeting for the first time since January.

Kerry said after the talks that “raw data” suggested chlorine had been used in Syria, supporting accusations made by France.

“I’ve seen the raw data that suggests that there may have been, as France has suggested, a number of instances in which chlorine has been used in the conduct of war,” Kerry said.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius suggested this week that the regime of President Bashar Assad had used chemical weapons 14 times since October, including chlorine.

US frustration with aid blockade 

Kerry also voiced US frustration over blockages of aid to the Syrian population and said it was open to new ways of delivering essential supplies.

“We are open to the idea of providing aid through any means to get to the people who need it,” Kerry said.

Under a UN-brokered agreement the Syrian regime is currently responsible for organising the distribution of aid through NGOs.

“We are very frustrated with the current process. It is not getting to the people, it is going through one gateway,” Kerry said.

The UN’s director of aid operations in Syria, John Ging, last week accused the government of blockading medical supplies bound for opposition areas, calling it an “abomination”.

In a diplomatic boost to the Syrian opposition, Britain announced it had upgraded the status of their London office to a mission.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the move was being made “in recognition of the strength of our partnership” with the National Coalition headed by Ahmad Jarba.

Britain will also provide an extra £30 million ($50 million, 37 million euros) in “practical support” for the opposition, Hague said.

Jarba took part in the London talks after attending a week of high-level meetings in Washington in a bid to strengthen US support for the rebels.

In Washington, Jarba pleaded for anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down regime aircraft which are dropping deadly barrel bombs on Syrian civilians.

More blood was shed in Syria on Thursday, when a car bomb tore through a crowd at the Bab Al Salama border crossing with Turkey, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

At least 29 civilians were killed, including five women and three children.

Gruesome photographs posted online by activists showed distraught men standing over charred bodies.

A video of the scene on YouTube showed smoke rising from the twisted remains of a blown-up car.

RAMALLAH — Israeli occupation forces shot dead two Palestinians on Thursday during a demonstration in the West Bank marking the 66th anniversary of the Nakbeh, or "catastrophe" of Israel's creation.

Security and medical sources told AFP that Musaab Nuwarah, 20, and Mohammed Udeh, 17, died in a Ramallah hospital after being shot in the chest during a protest near Ofer jail to demand the release of thousands of Palestinians held by Israel.

The latest fatalities brought the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year to 11.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment.

At Qalandiya checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah, protesters set fire to tyres and hurled stones at Israeli forces who responded with "riot dispersal means", an army spokesman told AFP, referring to the use of rubber bullets and tear gas.

Other Palestinian rallies for Nakbeh Day were held in the northern city of Nablus, and in Hebron in the south of the West Bank.

Hundreds of people, some carrying Palestinian flags or banners calling for refugees to be allowed to return to their former homes, marched in the Gaza Strip near the Erez Crossing with Israel.

In Ramallah, where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has his headquarters, people stood in silence on the streets for 66 seconds while sirens wailed.

"On this 66th anniversary of the Nakbeh, we hope this year will be the one in which our long suffering ends," Abbas said in a speech broadcast on Palestinian TV and radio late Wednesday.

"It is time to put an end to the longest occupation in modern history and time for Israel's leaders to understand that there is no other homeland for the Palestinians but Palestine," he said.

After nearly nine months of fruitless US-sponsored peace talks, Israel suspended its participation in negotiations last month when Abbas's Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) announced a unity deal with the Islamist movement Hamas which who runs Gaza.

Nation law 

On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Palestinians of teaching their children that Israel "should be made to disappear".

The Israeli answer was to “continue building our country and our unified capital, Jerusalem”, said the rightwing premier.

“Another answer to the Nakbeh is our passing the Nation Law, clarifying to the world that Israel is the State of the Jewish people,” he said in remarks relayed by his office.

Netanyahu has pledged to enshrine Israel’s status as the national homeland of the Jewish people in law.

He has repeatedly demanded Palestinian recognition of Israel’s status, but Abbas has flatly refused.

In 1948, more than 760,000 Palestinians — now estimated to number more than 5 million with their descendants — fled or were driven out of their homes.

Around 160,000 stayed behind and became Israeli citizens.

They and their descendants currently number about 1.4 million people, or some 20 per cent of Israel’s population.

Palestinian chief peace negotiator Saeb Erekat, in a commentary published in Israel’s left-leaning daily Haaretz, said the PLO has officially recognised Israel’s right to exist since 1988.

“We are not asking for Hebrew not to be an official language or Jewish holidays not to be official holidays. The character of Israel is not for us to define,” he wrote.

But “the concept of an exclusively Jewish state necessarily implies the negation of the Nakbeh.”

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwait’s parliament on Thursday accepted the resignations of five MPs who quit because the pro-government chamber refused to question the prime minister about allegations of corruption and mismanagement.

Speaker Marzouk Al Ghanem declared the five seats vacant after separate votes on each of the MPs following a lengthy debate. An overwhelming majority of MPs and Cabinet ministers approved the resignations.

The five, who include the only woman in the 50-seat parliament, were not present. Elections for their replacements must now be held within 60 days.

Opposition MPs Riyadh Al Adasani, Abdulkarim Al Kundari and Hussein Al Mutairi quit two weeks ago after parliament rejected their demand to question Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al Sabah, a senior member of the ruling family, over allegations he gave cash handouts to lawmakers.

Four days later, Ali Al Rashed, a former parliament speaker, and Safa Al Hashem resigned, saying the situation in the Gulf state had reached a “deadlock”.

During Thursday’s debate, several MPs strongly objected to the parliament’s unprecedented action of rejecting a grilling for the premier.

“What happened was a breach of the constitution and an attempt to silence MPs,” Islamist member Hamdan Al Azemi told the house.

This is the first mass resignation by Kuwaiti MPs since 1967 when several quit in protest at allegations of election rigging. Kuwait is the first country in the Gulf Arab region to have a constitution and elected parliament.