Region

TRIPOLI  — Libya’s new Prime Minister Ahmed Maiteeq won a vote of confidence from parliament on Sunday in defiance of a renegade former army general who has challenged the assembly’s legitimacy.

Maiteeq, backed by the Muslim Brotherhood which is fiercely opposed by anti-Islamist forces in Libya, was initially elected two weeks ago after a chaotic parliamentary session that some lawmakers had rejected as illegal.

Lawmakers met again on Sunday under heavy security to vote to approve Maiteeq’s government a week after militia forces loyal to former army general Khalifa Haftar attacked the congress to demand lawmakers hand over power.

“The congress has granted Prime Minister Ahmed Maiteeq its confidence. Out of 95 members, 83 voted in favour of his government,” Abdulhamid Ismail Yarbu, an independent lawmaker told Reuters.

Another lawmaker confirmed the votes for Maiteeq, a businessman who will be Libya’s third premier since March after months of unrest in the OPEC oil producer.

Libya’s legislature is at the centre of a growing standoff between anti-Islamist forces claiming loyalty to Haftar, and the pro-Islamist parties and militias he has promised to purge from the North African country.

The Europe Union’s special envoy on Sunday called the crisis Libya’s worst since the 2011 war ousted Muammar Qadhafi with the fragile government struggling to control brigades of former rebels and militias who are the country’s main powerbrokers.

Three years after a NATO-backed revolt toppled Qadhafi, Libya still has no national army, no new constitution and its parliament is caught up in infighting.

Powerful rival brigades of former rebel fighters often make demands on the weak state, with each loosely allied with competing Islamist and anti-Islamist political forces squaring off for control.

BEIRUT — Syria’s Al Qaeda branch staged four suicide bomb attacks on army positions Sunday, leaving dozens of casualties, in a bid to cut off Idlib province from the coast, a monitoring group said.

The attacks came a day after the Al Nusra Front announced the creation of an arms factory.

“Four Al Nusra Front fighters carried out suicide attacks this morning, driving vehicles packed with explosives into four regime forces’ checkpoints in the Jabal Al Arbaeen area near Ariha city,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based group said that dozens of troops were killed or wounded, without giving specific figures.

Fierce fighting broke out in the area, pitting army troops backed by pro-regime militia against rebels and jihadists, said the observatory.

The air force also struck the area, killing two rebels and wounding another 15, it added.

The army controls the cities of Idlib and Ariha in Idlib province of northwest Syria, but much of the countryside is under rebel control.

Ariha lies on the road from Idlib to Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, the heartland of President Bashar Assad’s regime and his Alawite offshoot of Shia Islam.

Like the majority of Syria’s population, most of the rebels are Sunni Muslims.

The rebels are “determined to cut off the road before the presidential vote” on June 3 that is to be contested only in regime-controlled areas, according to the observatory.

The opposition and its Western backers have condemned as a “farce” the election in which Assad is expected to stroll to victory.

The attacks came a day after the jihadists announced via Twitter that they had launched a project to manufacture weapons, and called on “all Muslims” to support it.

“In a bid to create a full-scale military industry... Al Nusra Front has established the Bas [courage] institution for military production and development, the first fully jihadist project of development and fabrication of effective weaponry.”

Al Nusra Front said it was “an opportunity to serve jihad and jihadists”.

Syria’s war broke out in March 2011 as Arab Spring-inspired demands for political change morphed into an insurgency after Assad’s regime unleashed a brutal crackdown on dissent.

Al Nusra Front surfaced in the conflict in 2012.

The war has killed more than 160,000 people, the observatory estimates, and forced nearly half the population of Syria to flee their homes.

CAIRO — Along a busy Cairo roundabout, a poster portrays presidential front-runner Abdel Fattah Al Sisi as a teacher, engineer, doctor and judge, reassuring supporters who see him as Egypt’s saviour.

But in other neighbourhoods, opponents splash red paint on the image of the face of the man who toppled Egypt’s first freely elected president, and who they say has blood on his hands for ordering a violent crackdown.

The former army chief is expected to easily win a May 26-27 presidential election, taking over a polarised country with immense challenges: from an energy crisis to an Islamist militant insurgency that has sharply worsened since he overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi last year.

Sisi has gained cult-like adulation among backers since removing Morsi. Many Egyptians vocally supported the military-backed government’s decision to order an assault on camps of Morsi supporters last year in which hundreds of people were gunned down on the Cairo streets.

They still back a crackdown that saw thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members rounded up and hundreds sentenced to death. 

But some cracks have appeared in the field marshal’s support base since the suppression of Islamists has expanded to include secular activists.

Many Egyptians seem willing to overlook allegations of abuse because they see him as a leader who can bring calm after three years of political upheaval.

“Sisi has power to achieve stability,” said accountant Islam Ra’fat, 25.

With Egypt beset by seemingly intractable problems, the square-jawed 59-year-old in aviator sunglasses benefits from an image as a man of action. In television interviews, Sisi tells Egyptians the answer to their future is simple: hard work. He faces no serious opposition in the vote.

But to a quiet minority of Egyptians, his rise represents an unsettling reversal of the 2011 uprising that dislodged former air force general Hosni Mubarak after six decades of unbroken rule by military men.

“We will soon see that all this talk is lies,” said a 22-year-old man at a coffeeshop near the poster which portrays Sisi as the man who will save Egypt, which was paid for by a former member of Mubarak’s ruling party.

“One of the main reasons we staged the revolution [in 2011] was to get rid of a military man,” said the man, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.

Discipline and temper

Sisi’s aides describe him as a man of few words, who carefully listens to others. It is a description familiar to neighbours who knew him as an aloof youngster in Al Gamaliya, the poor Cairo district with dirt lanes where he grew up.

They say he kept to himself and worked hard to achieve success, an image in line with his public persona. Some have spoken of how he used to work out lifting homemade bar bells.

But his self-composure also hid a fierce temper, said Ali Hosan, an Al Gamaliya resident.

“When he lost his temper he really lost it,” he said. “I remember two guys provoked him once and he beat them both up.”

The discipline, and the temper, may both be evident in his handling of security in office: he has vowed that he will eradicate Morsi’s 85-year-old Brotherhood once and for all. Critics say the ferocity of the crackdown so far has driven more Islamists from the mainstream Brotherhood, which publicly disavows violence, into the arms of more radical groups.

Hundreds of police and soldiers have been killed by insurgents mainly based in the Sinai peninsula since last year.

Outside of Sisi’s area of expertise in security, his policies are less well-known, but his behaviour and public remarks suggest he may be cautious rather than an action hero.

In interviews he has said Egypt must be careful over the removal of costly state subsidies on fuel and food, which the International Monetary Fund and others say are urgently needed to restore the country’s finances.

Born on November 19, 1954, Sisi rose to the position of head of military intelligence under Mubarak, and was the youngest member of the military council that ruled for 18 turbulent months after Mubarak resigned on February 11, 2011.

Morsi shunted aside an older generation of generals to appoint Sisi army chief and defence minister in August 2012, in a mistaken calculation that the military would let the Brotherhood pursue its Islamist agenda. Sisi’s reputation as a pious Muslim may have led Morsi to expect him to be less hostile than other brass to the Islamist cause.

Now, some Egyptians voice fear that Sisi will become yet another authoritarian leader who will crush the hopes of democracy, reform and social justice aroused by the protests that swept away Mubarak. Even in Al Gamaliya, where he enjoys hero status, some question his intentions.

Standing near a coffeeshop with old black and white photos of Arab autocrats including Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi hanging alongside posters of Sisi, Yasser Al Sayed pulled up his trouser leg.

He exposed a scar from a bullet wound on his calf, recalling how he was shot by police two years ago in protests against the military council that ruled Egypt after Mubarak’s fall.

“Sisi is Mubarak. He is just another military man. Sisi fooled Egyptians. He is backed by Mubarak’s people,” said Sayed. “The military should stay in their barracks and build airplanes not rule the country again.”

TEHRAN, Iran — A billionaire businessman at the heart of a $2.6 billion state bank scam in Iran, the largest fraud case since the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution, was executed Saturday, state television reported.

Authorities put Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, also known as Amir Mansour Aria, to death at Evin prison, just north of the capital, Tehran, the TV reported. The report said the execution came after Iran’s supreme court upheld his death sentence.

Khosravi’s lawyer, Gholam Ali Riahi, was quoted by news website khabaronline.ir as saying that the death sentence was carried out without him being given any notice. Death sentences in Iran are usually carried out by hanging.

“I had not been informed about the execution of my client,” Riahi said. “All the assets of my client are at the disposal of the prosecutor’s office.”

State officials did not immediately comment on Riahi’s claim.

The fraud involved using forged documents to get credit at one of Iran’s top financial institutions, Bank Saderat, to purchase assets including state-owned companies like major steel producer Khuzestan Steel Co.

Khosravi’s business empire included more than 35 companies from mineral water production to a football club and meat imports from Brazil. According to Iranian media reports, the bank fraud began in 2007.

A total of 39 defendants were convicted in the case. Four received death sentences, two got life sentences and the rest received sentences of up to 25 years in prison.

The trials raised questions about corruption at senior levels in Iran’s tightly controlled economy during the administration of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

TEHRAN — Iranian actress Leila Hatami Friday apologised for kissing the Cannes film festival’s president on the cheek, an act which angered authorities in the Islamic republic, state news agency IRNA reported.

“I am so sorry for hurting the feelings of some people,” she wrote in a letter to Iran’s cinema organisation, cited by IRNA.

She underlined her respect for Islamic rules of behaviour in public, but festival president Gilles Jacob, 83, “had forgotten the aforementioned rules, which comes with old age.

“My preemptive action of hand shaking was fruitless,” Hatami wrote, explaining the kiss.

“Although I am embarrassed to give these explanations, I had no choice but to go into details for those who could not understand the inevitable situation that I was stuck in,” she said.

“In my eyes, he is certainly like an old grandfather who was also my host.”

A photograph carried by Iranian media showed Hatami kissing Jacob at the opening of the festival earlier this month, prompting a reprimand.

“Those who attend intentional events should take heed of the credibility and chastity of Iranians, so that a bad image of Iranian women will not be demonstrated to the world,” Deputy Culture Minister Hossein Noushabadi said on Sunday.

“Iranian woman is the symbol of chastity and innocence,” he said. Hatami’s “inappropriate presence” at the festival was “not in line with our religious beliefs”.

A group of female Islamist students are seeking legal action against Hatami, calling for her to be sentenced to a jail term and lashed, according to the Iranian website Tasnim News.

Born into a family with a background in cinema, Hatami gained worldwide fame for her role in Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation”, which won the 2012 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

She was on the jury this year at the annual Cannes festival in southern France but lives in Iran.

According to Iran’s interpretation of Islamic [Sharia] law, in place since the 1979 revolution, a woman is not allowed to have physical contact with a man outside her family.

MANAMA — Bahrain on Sunday ruled out returning its ambassador to Qatar soon, signalling that efforts to resolve the unprecedented rift within the US-allied Gulf Cooperation Council have yet to bear fruit.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) recalled their ambassadors from Doha in March, accusing Doha of failing to abide by an accord not to interfere in each others’ internal affairs.

The three GCC states are angry at Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement whose ideology challenges the principle of conservative dynastic rule long dominant in the Gulf.

The Gulf Arab states in April agreed on steps to try to heal the rift.

But Bahrain state news agency BNA said on Sunday the foreign minister, Sheikh Khalid Bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, speaking about a GCC meeting in Saudi Arabia on Saturday to assess progress in efforts to end the dispute, had said: “Bahrain’s ambassador to Qatar will not return to resume his duties in Doha at the present time”.

“The GCC committees are still working on overcoming differences,” the agency quoted the minister as saying.

There were few details after the GCC meeting in April on what would make Qatar drop its support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Gulf officials had said that Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain wanted Qatar to end any financial or political support for the Brotherhood.

The movement has been declared a terrorist organisation by Saudi Arabia, in a move precipitated by the Egyptian army’s overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi last year.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE resent Doha’s sheltering of prominent Brotherhood preacher Youssef Al Qaradawi, a critic of the two states’ rulers, and his regular air time on Qatar’s pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera and on Qatari state television.

Qatar has said that its foreign policy is “nonnegotiable”.

ERBIL, Iraq — Iraq’s bid to thwart exports of oil from Kurdistan via Turkey by filing for international arbitration is a “hollow threat” that will fail, the autonomous region said on Sunday.

The Iraqi oil ministry said on Friday it was taking legal action against Ankara and state-owned pipeline operator BOTAS for facilitating the first sale of crude to be piped from Kurdistan without Baghdad’s consent.

The move raised the stakes again in a long-running game of political brinkmanship with ramifications for Iraq’s territorial integrity, as Kurdistan seeks greater self-sufficiency.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said it was undeterred by Baghdad’s “self-defeating” request for arbitration at the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce and accused the Iraqi oil ministry of flouting the country’s constitution.

“The KRG assures its contractors and international partners, including transporters and traders, that it will not allow hollow threats from the Iraqi oil ministry to interfere with the KRG’s oil export regime,” it said in a statement.

“Its threats will fail.”

The Kurds say they are entitled to develop and market the resources in their region, and late last year finished building a pipeline to Turkey that circumvents federal export infrastructure.

Oil has been flowing through the new pipeline into storage tanks at the Turkish port of Ceyhan since the start of the year, and the first shipment of more than one million barrels left shore last week.

Baghdad claims exclusive rights to manage all the oil in Iraq, and has already cut the Kurds’ share of state revenue as punishment for their move to export unilaterally, plunging the region into economic crisis.

“These efforts are misguided and can only harm the federal government,” read the statement, noting that previous attempts to blacklist companies operating in the Kurdish region had proved unsuccessful.

The KRG also blamed the Iraqi oil ministry for misleading the federal government and parliament about the nature and extent of Kurdish exports, and reasserted its right to receive revenue from crude sales directly.

Last week, the KRG said oil revenue from the sale would be deposited in an account in Turkey’s Halkbank.

“The KRG warns against any internationalising of this Iraqi domestic constitutional issue by attempting arbitration processes obstructing the KRG’s constitutional right to sell its oil to the international market,” its statement said.

CAIRO — Egypt’s likely next president, retired military chief Abdel-Fattah Al Sisi, says ties with the United States and the West will improve after elections this week. 

He is confident that a strong show of public support will prove that Egyptians wanted the ouster of the country’s Islamist president, which threw relations between Egypt and the US into their worst strains ever.

But it will likely be a troubled road towards warming the chill between Cairo and Washington. Egypt’s security forces have waged a fierce crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist backers of ousted president Mohamed Morsi, as well as against secular-minded youth activists.

Asked in a recent TV interview whether the Brotherhood will no longer exist under presidency, Sisi replied in the affirmative: “Yes. Just like that.”

Sisi, considered certain to win presidential elections taking place Monday and Tuesday, has made clear he wants better ties — but on his terms. 

The retired field marshal has also raised worries in Egypt and the United States over potential restrictions on freedoms and civil rights, with his tough line against dissent as he pushes for stability he says is needed to repair the economy.

Tamara Cofman Wittes, the director of the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy, described the Egyptian-US relations as in a moment of reflection because direction is not clear.

Both sides “know their relations are important. They value the cooperation... but publicly they are reluctant to engage”, Wittes said.

Sisi removed Morsi on July 3 after protests by millions demanding that the Islamist leader go — and since then, supporters of the move have furiously rejected the idea that it was a military coup, saying the ouster was the people’s will.

After much deliberation, Washington decided not to declare it a coup, a step that would have required a cut-off in aid. Still, after hundreds of Morsi’s protesting supporters were killed in an escalating crackdown in August, the United States withheld millions of the more than $1.5 billion in aid a year that it provides Egypt — mostly to the military.

Also, Washington left the post of its ambassador in Cairo vacant after the departure of Anne Patterson — now an assistant secretary of state — who was fiercely criticised by many Egyptians who accused her of supporting the Brotherhood.

Since Morsi’s ouster, Egyptian media have been enflamed with anger at the United States, accusing it of backing the Brotherhood, raising conspiracy theories about the United States working with the Islamists to divide Egypt.

Sisi has avoided that sort of rhetoric. 

In interviews with Egyptian media in the past weeks, he has said he understands the US has laws that require it to take the steps. He has also insisted Washington must understand why he and the military acted, both in Morsi’s ouster and the ensuing crackdown, in which hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested.

“We are giving them the chance to see,” he said of the Americans in one TV interview. “We always tell them... ‘See us with Egyptian eyes. Live our reality’.”

He added that the election will show the US and the Europeans that the Egyptian people are behind him. “The relations will only return to warmth when the people go in millions to vote.”

Sisi has also put forward a common cause for better relations, warning of a rise of militancy in Egypt, Syria and Libya. 

“The international community must cooperate to deal with terrorism, and we are with them,” he said. Otherwise, “they will have problems”, he added, pointing to European citizens fighting in Al Qaeda-inspired groups in Syria’s civil war or in Libya.

Security cooperation is one area where the alliance has continued. Egypt has been working closely with the US and with Israel in its offensive against Islamist militants in the Sinai Peninsula, who have stepped up a campaign of bombings and other attacks since Morsi’s ouster. 

In April, Egyptian intelligence chief Mohammad Farid Tohamy visited Washington for talks with Secretary of State John Kerry.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy also met with Kerry in Washington, a trip seen as a sign of easing tensions. 

“It’s like a marriage. It’s not a fling; it’s not a one-night affair,” Fahmy said of relations with the US. “it’s going to take time... Any marriage has its hiccups.”

During the visit, Kerry certified to Congress that Egypt is upholding its peace treaty with Israel and strategic commitments to the US, freeing up $680 million in assistance. The Pentagon also released a hold on the delivery of 10 Apache helicopters to Egypt to help its military combat extremists.

But the $650 million are in jeopardy after Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, raised objections on the Senate floor. Kerry has not yet certified that Egypt is meeting the democratic standards required for the remainder of the $1.5 billion in US assistance to be sent.

Kerry said Washington has made progress in its democratic transition but that it needs to address “disturbing” problems. 

“We really are looking for certain things to happen that will give people the sense of confidence about this road ahead,” he said. “It’s actions, not words that will make the difference.”

Washington-based Middle East Institute scholar Mohamed Elmenshawy said that “Washington is leaving the door half open”.

“They are watching for free elections, they are watching for signs of reconciliation knowing that keeping pressure on political Islam won’t work on the long run,” he said.

Wrangling over the US ambassador has also been a sore point. Patterson departed soon after Morsi’s overthrow, and the Obama administration initially suggested Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, to fill the Cairo post. 

But it didn’t nominate him after objections from Egyptian officials. Egyptian media had been depicting Ford as having a pro-Islamist agenda.

It was months until the administration finally put forward a nominee, earlier in May — Stephen Beecroft, the current ambassador in Iraq.

“Finding an alternative was not high” on the administration’s agenda, said Jon Alterman, a prominent Egypt expert who directs the Middle East programme at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies. 

“The US won’t be begging Egyptian government to have an ambassador. If you don’t want Ford, we will wait.”

“There is a growing sense that Egypt is not embracing liberal democratic principles... that government efforts to crack down will actually lead to violence, polarisation and increase the problem of extremism rather than end it,” said Alterman.

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels and government forces have agreed to a truce in an opposition-held area near the central city of Homs, activists said Saturday.

The ceasefire, which started on Friday, comes as troops loyal to President Bashar Assad are trying to seize as many rebel-held parts of major urban centres as possible ahead of the June 3 presidential election.

Assad is widely expected to win a third, seven-year mandate, but opposition activists have criticised the vote as being illegitimate because it is taking place amid a raging civil war. 

Syria’s conflict, which began as an uprising against Assad’s rule, is now in its fourth year and has killed about 160,000 people, activists say.

The truce in Waer came as Assad thanked Russia, one of his top backers, for its support on the international scene at a time when “the West is trying to subdue countries that don’t accept its hegemony”.

The state-run SANA news agency said Assad spoke during a meeting Saturday with Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin in Damascus.

Russia and China on Thursday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution referring the Syrian crisis to the International Criminal Court for investigation of possible war crimes.

It was the fourth time the two used their veto power as permanent Council members to deflect action against Assad’s government.

SANA quoted Razogin as saying that the West’s policy towards Syria and the upcoming June presidential election is “immoral and does not take into consideration the interests of the Syrian people”.

The truce in Waer, which lies across the Orontes River from Homs, is meant to give the warring sites a chance to negotiate an agreement that will allow the rebels to leave the area without being attacked, or later arrested.

A Syrian activist who uses the name Thaer Khalidiya said the truce went into effect on Friday and was to last for three days, until Sunday night.

Rami Abdel Rahman, of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and the Hizbollah channel Al Manar, which supports Assad, also reported the ceasefire.

It is similar to a ceasefire agreed on in early May that ultimately allowed for the evacuation of hundreds of rebels from opposition-held parts of old Homs.

Assad’s forces have been combining bombings of besieged, opposition-held areas with negotiated ceasefires and evacuation deals to reclaim rebel-held territory.

Waer has been under a government blockade for about six months that has prevented food and fuel from entering the area, where tens of thousands of civilians live.

Khalidiya, the activist, said that although rebels were quite strong in Waer, they were under pressure from the residents to leave the area.

He said many of the local residents feared they would suffer deprivation and hunger, akin to what civilians in rebel-held parts of Homs experienced, if the siege in Waer continued for much longer.

Pro-government forces control the Syrian capital, Damascus, and recently assumed control of all of Homs. They have also stepped up their assault in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, to take back rebel-held areas.

But government-held areas are not entirely secure. A car bomb killed two people in an upscale part of Damascus on Saturday.

On Thursday night, a mortar attack on Assad’s supporters gathered at an election campaign tent in the southern city of Daraa killed 39 people and wounded 205 others, Syrian state TV said Friday.

DUBAI — Iran on Saturday said the latest UN report on its nuclear activities, which calculated it had slashed its nuclear stockpile by around 80 per cent, proved its atomic programme was peaceful.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in its quarterly report on Friday that Iran had reduced its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium gas under an interim pact with world powers.

It also said it had started to engage with a long-stalled IAEA investigation into suspected weapons research.

A steep cut in uranium gas — a relatively short technical step away from weapons-grade material — is among concessions demanded by the United States and its Western countries in return for limited easing of economic sanctions against Tehran.

“The report is an affirmation of Iran’s claim to peaceful activities,” nuclear spokesperson Behruz Kamalvandi told the official news agency IRNA.

“No deviations have been seen in these activities.”

Western countries have long suspected the Islamic republic of seeking nuclear weapons capability and Tehran’s cooperation with the IAEA is a test of any progress in the current talks with the six world power known as P5+1.

The latest round of negotiations failed to make much headway last week, raising doubts over the prospects for a breakthrough by the late July deadline.