Region

CAIRO — Egypt's ex-army chief and leading presidential candidate Abdel Fattah Al Sisi said Monday the Muslim Brotherhood movement of deposed leader Mohamed Morsi was "finished" in Egypt and would not return if he was elected.

Following the Sisi-led army ouster of Morsi in July, the Brotherhood has been banned, its leaders arrested and more than 1,400 people, mostly Islamist backers of Morsi, killed in protest clashes.

"I did not finish it, you Egyptians finished it," Sisi said in his first television interview since announcing his candidacy when asked if the Brotherhood was "finished".

Asked if he were saying it would not exist under his presidency, he responded: "Yes."

Sisi's remarks ruled out any chances of reconciliation with the blacklisted Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

The movement, which swept all elections since the 2011 fall of longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak, has already been blacklisted as a "terrorist organisation" by the military-installed authorities.

Sisi, dressed in a suit and appearing composed and often smiling in what was a pre-recorded interview, said Egyptians had rejected the group's ideology and would not allow it to return.

The retired field marshal also said in what was the first part of the interview that if he was elected the army would "not have a role in ruling Egypt", adding that he was not a candidate of the army.

Aside from Morsi, all of Egypt's previous presidents have come from military ranks, including Mubarak who was toppled following a popular 18-day uprising in early 2011.

Sisi's only rival in the upcoming election is leftist leader Hamdeen Sabbahi who has often raised concerns that Egypt was returning to the autocratic era witnessed under Mubarak.

These concerns grew after some leading symbols of the anti-Mubarak revolt were jailed by the interim authorities for organising unlicensed protests.

Last month an Egyptian court even banned the April 6 youth movement which had spearheaded the anti-Mubarak revolt.

Groups such as April 6 have increasingly protested against the interim government, accusing it of restricting freedom while giving police a free hand to crush dissent.

Egypt's interim authorities had justified the ouster of Morsi following mass protests against his divisive one-year rule.

Sisi is riding a wave of popularity after ousting Morsi on July 3 after millions took to the streets demanding the Islamist's resignation.

But the ouster of Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president, and an ensuing police crackdown on his supporters and the Muslim Brotherhood has deeply polarised the country.

Morsi and most of the top leadership of his Muslim Brotherhood have also been put on trial.

When asked, meanwhile, if he had faced any assassination attempts, Sisi without elaborating said: "Two attempts".

RAMALLAH — Palestinian public sector workers received their salaries on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said, in a sign that Israel had backed down from a threat to impose sanctions as peace talks began to collapse last month.

Israel had said on April 10 it would withhold funds after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed a series of international human rights conventions he hoped would allow Palestinians to eventually challenge Israel at the United Nations, which recognised Palestine as a non-member state in 2012.

US-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations ended on April 29 with no breakthrough.

Palestinian officials said the payment reflected Israel’s decision to transfer more than $100 million in customs duties it collects on goods headed to Palestinian-run areas through border crossings it controls.

The money accounts for about two-thirds of the Palestinian budget and is key to keeping its large public sector functioning and maintaining stability in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israel had said it would dock payment of over $100 million it said the Palestinian government owed it in utility bills.

Israeli officials could not be immediately reached for comment during a national holiday.

Speaking last week, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah told reporters Israel would be paying the near usual monthly amount of 450 million shekels ($130.3 million) and only deducting 20 million shekels ($5.8 million) as part of a loan taken out by a previous Palestinian government.

Palestinians say their economy cannot reach its full potential while it remains under partial Israeli control. They seek an independent state in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Israeli, Palestinian and US officials say they hope to revive peace talks given the right conditions.

DUBAI — Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif survived a censure vote in parliament on Tuesday for his refusal to deny the Holocaust, in the latest battle with hardliners trying to undermine President Hassan Rouhani’s overtures to the West.

Zarif, who is Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, caused uproar among hardline conservatives in Iran when he called the Holocaust a “horrifying tragedy” in an interview with a German television station earlier this year.

He has received several warnings and had previously been called to parliament to account for his perceived soft line on traditional enemies Israel and the United States.

In Tuesday’s hearing, broadcast live on state radio, 75 Islamic hardliners in the 290-member assembly questioned him on a range of issues, including his stance on “illegitimate” Israel and the “lie of the Holocaust”.

In a victory for moderates trying to shed the “anti-Semitic” image cultivated by former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the house voted against censuring Zarif.

The foreign minister turned the questions into an attack on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

To bursts of applause, he said: “Netanyahu shamelessly claims Iran denies the Holocaust, that we are after a nuclear bomb to create another Holocaust. As long as I am foreign minister, I will not allow the Holocaust to be exploited to ruin our national image and dignity.”

Holocaust denial has been a theme of public speeches by leaders in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Ahmadinejad called the mass killing of Jews by the Nazis during World War II “a myth”.

Ahmadinejad’s stance damaged Iran’s global image and helped energise international efforts to curb its nuclear programme, suspected by the West of being aimed at seeking nuclear weapons capability. Tehran says its nuclear activities are for power generation and medical research.

The reformist government of Ahmadinejad’s successor, Rouhani, has tried to reverse the path of antagonism to the West, openly engaging in dialogue with the United States over the nuclear dispute.

Rouhani himself called the Holocaust “reprehensible” in a US television interview last year.

But hardliners, consisting mainly of followers of Ahmadinejad and his spiritual mentor Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, have been fighting hard to block progress in both the nuclear talks and normalising ties with Washington.

On Saturday, opponents of the nuclear talks staged a gathering at the site of the former US embassy in Tehran, overrun by militants and occupied since 1979.

On Sunday, Rouhani told a group of academics, according to the official IRNA news agency: “There are people whose every cell is made of doubt. They panic at every step taken to talk. They want to bare swords to the world all the time.

“We don’t want to fight. We want to talk, reason and communicate. We may fail, we may succeed, but we won’t give up, we will keep going until we find a way.”

BEIRUT — Human Rights Watch (HRW) and a UN refugee agency both expressed concern on Tuesday that Lebanon was blocking Palestinians fleeing war-torn Syria from entering the country.

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said it was “concerned about the increased restrictions on Palestine refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria from entering Lebanon”.

“We are monitoring the situation on the border carefully and have been given assurances by the Lebanese authorities that these restrictions are temporary,” said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness in a statement.

Human Rights Watch accused Beirut of “arbitrarily” denying entry and documented the deportation of around 40 Palestinians accused of having forged documents.

Beirut has not announced a blanket ban on the entry of Palestinians from Syria, but government sources confirm a general policy to keep out Palestinians fleeing the conflict.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one source said the government felt Palestinian refugees registered in Syria should stay there, pointing out Lebanon already has more than one million Syrian refugees, including around 52,000 Palestinians.

But HRW said the Lebanese government was violating international law by sending civilians back to an active war zone.

“Lebanon is turning people back without adequately considering the dangers they face,” the New York-based organisation added.

It said a group of Palestinians seeking to enter Lebanon from a crossing with Syria had been “arbitrarily denied entry” over the weekend.

At the same time, a general security official told AFP that 41 people, many of them Palestinians, were returned to Syria after they were caught trying to fly out from Beirut airport using fake visas.

Once numbering 500,000 in Syria, Palestinians have been targeted by both sides in the war, making them one of the country’s most vulnerable groups, rights groups say.

No more camps 

But Lebanon is also home to around 422,000 Palestinian refugees, whose presence in the country remains a source of tension ever since its own 1975-1990 in which the Palestinians played a prominent role.

Unlike Jordan and Turkey, which also host a large number of Syrian refugees, Lebanon refuses to set up camps for people fleeing Syria’s war.

Some politicians have cited the semi-permanent status of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon dating back to the 1948 creation of Israel as the reason why Lebanon does not want more camps.

The international community has praised the tiny Mediterranean country, which has a population of just four million, for absorbing so many of those fleeing Syria.

And while HRW criticised Lebanon for returning Palestinian refugees to Syria, the group urged foreign governments to better assist Beirut in hosting refugees.

“The Lebanese government is bearing an incomparable burden with the Syrian refugees crossing its borders, but blocking Palestinians from Syria is mishandling the situation,” HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director Joe Stork said.

“Concerned governments should generously assist neighbouring countries, including Lebanon, so that they can meet the needs of refugees and asylum seekers from Syria,” Stork added.

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels from the southern province of Daraa have kidnapped a presidential hopeful whose bid was turned down by the constitutional court, according to an online video distributed Tuesday.

The video shows three armed, bearded rebels wearing fatigues in a room with Mohammad Kanaan, a military officer who had registered to run in June 3 elections that are widely expected to return President Bashar Assad to power.

In a video filmed by the rebel brigade and distributed online by opposition media activists, he is shown wearing a suit, seated on an armchair.

“The Tabarak Al Rahman Brigade has arrested one of the presidential candidates,” said an unnamed rebel seated next to Kanaan.

Prompted to speak, Kanaan says he is a colonel in the army’s First Division tank battalion, and that he was stopped by a rebel Free Syrian Army patrol while travelling from Damascus to Daraa.

Asked why he registered for an election that the opposition has mocked as a “farce”, Kanaan, who appeared tense and was flanked by gunmen, said the regime coerced him into running.

Tens of thousands of people have gone missing over the course of Syria’s conflict, with kidnapping and detention used by all sides in the war.

Motivations for abductions include extortion and hostage exchange, eradicating criticism, and eliminating political rivals.

BEIRUT — Fighting between rival jihadist groups in eastern Syria killed 74 people on Monday, despite a call from Al Qaeda’s chief for a ceasefire, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The clashes between Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have prompted 60,000 people to flee towns in the oil-rich Deir Ezzor province.

The observatory said 69 fighters on both sides had been killed in the clashes on Monday, along with five civilians.

Al Nusra seized the village of Al Sabha, in the west of Deir Ezzor, which borders Iraq, with 11 of its fighters and 23 ISIL members killed there.

In other villages in the province, 35 Al Nusra and allied militants died in fighting Monday.

The deaths bring to more than 150 the toll since the latest confrontation between the groups erupted last week in Deir Ezzor.

It comes after Islamist and moderate rebels launched an offensive against ISIL earlier this year. They were later joined by Al Nusra.

While Al Nusra has been accepted as an ally by many rebels, ISIL has been criticised for its attacks on civilians and rival opposition groups.

The fighting with ISIL has killed around 4,000 people, according to the Britain-based observatory.

The two jihadist groups have continued to clash despite a call from Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri for an end to the hostilities.

In an audio recording released Friday, Zawahiri urged Al Nusra to stop fighting ISIL and focus on battling the Syrian regime.

He also repeated a call for ISIL to restrict its activities to Iraq, a plea that the group has rejected on several occasions.

In a response to Zawahiri’s call, Al Nusra said it would stop fighting ISIL if the group ended its attacks.

“We will follow the orders of... Ayman Al Zawahiri... to stop any attack from our side against ISIL, while continuing to respond whenever they attack Muslims and all that is sacred to them,” Al Nusra said in a statement.

“As soon as ISIL announces the end of its attacks on Muslims, we will spontaneously stop firing,” said the jihadist group, adding it had only fought ISIL in areas “where it was on the attack”.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia has detained 62 suspected Al Qaeda militants with links to radicals in Syria and Yemen who were plotting attacks on government and foreign targets in the kingdom, its interior ministry said on Tuesday.

The world’s No. 1 oil exporter is increasingly concerned that Syria’s civil war is radicalising more of its own citizens and has announced tough new measures to counter militancy.

The 62 represent the largest group of people said by authorities to have been detained on suspicion of Islamist militancy for at least two years in the conservative Islamic kingdom, which has imprisoned thousands over the past decade in its battle against Al Qaeda.

Some 35 of the detainees had previously been held by the Saudi authorities on security charges before being released, Major General Mansour Turki, the interior ministry’s security spokesman, told a televised news conference.

“They swore allegiance to their warlord and started in constructing components of the organisation, means of support and planning for terrorist operations targeting government installations and foreign interests and the assassination of security personalities,” he said.

He said the group had links to the Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is both a powerful force among rebels in Syria’s civil war and an anti-government combatant across the border in turbulent Iraq.

International rights groups have said some of the thousands of people detained and jailed by Saudi Arabia on security grounds over the past decade were peaceful dissidents, something the authorities deny.

The groups have also voiced concern at a new “anti-terrorism” law that gives the authorities wide scope to detain and jail people as militants for criticising the ruling family.

Turki said monitoring of social media played an important role in uncovering the group of 62, and had shown how Al Qaeda members in Yemen and Syria were communicating with each other in coordination with members of the group inside Saudi Arabia.

The authorities found a laboratory to make explosives and seized funds worth nearly one million Saudi riyals ($266,000) intended for the cell, Turki said. State television showed dozens of seized mobile phones, laptops and tablet computers.

He said the cell comprised 59 Saudis, a Pakistani, a Yemeni and a Palestinian, and that one detainee was the group’s leader.

Turki added that the authorities were still seeking another 44 people suspected of having links to the group.

While Saudi Arabia is a leading supporter of the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar Assad, it also fears the conflict could reinvigorate a threat from militants within its own borders.

The interior ministry has said that anger at the Syrian conflict has spurred a surge in online militancy, and that it fears Saudis who travel to Syria to fight with the rebels might join Al Qaeda and return to the kingdom to carry out attacks.

An Al Qaeda insurgency inside Saudi Arabia from 2003-06 was mainly led by veterans of civil wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and after it was crushed its survivors fled to neighbouring Yemen where they founded a new branch of the movement.

Al Qaeda has thrived in south Yemen since then, exploiting weak government and widespread poverty, but a Yemeni government offensive ousted militants from their main regional stronghold on Tuesday, the defence ministry said.

In February, King Abdullah issued a decree that any Saudi who travelled abroad to fight faced three-20 years in prison and that any who supported a militant group would be jailed for five-30 years. ISIL was named as a banned terrorist group.

Separately, a group calling itself the Al Zaraqwiyya Battalion” after the late Iraqi Al Qaeda leader announced on Twitter it had been set up in Saudi Arabia to target Shiite Muslims, SITE monitoring reported on Tuesday.

The group said “legitimate targets” included Shiite gatherings, their homes and cars, and individuals who defend them. Shiism is seen as heretical by Al Qaeda. Most Saudi Shiites live in the country’s Eastern Province.

BEIRUT — Fierce fighting in Syria’s contested northern province of Aleppo killed at least 21 rebels on Monday as rockets slammed into a government-held district in the provincial capital, killing nine people.

The clashes, which erupted after midnight Sunday and continued through the day Monday, also left at least 30 soldiers dead or wounded, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Syrian government does not publicise its casualties in the war.

President Bashar Assad’s forces, backed by Lebanese Hizbollah fighters and pro-government militias, have been trying to wrest as much territory as possible from the opposition in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria ahead of the June 3 presidential elections.

The fighting in the province, pitting troops loyal to Assad against several rebel groups, including Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, was concentrated around two rebel-held villages in the province, said the Observatory, which has documented the 3-year-old conflict based on reports from a network of activists on the ground.

In the city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest and its former commercial hub, government forces have been relentlessly shelling opposition districts with aircraft and artillery in recent months.

On Monday, government aircraft bombed three rebel-held districts in the city, including Masaken Hanano, where at least two people died, the Observatory said. The activist group also reported heavy fighting in Mleiha east of Damascus and air strikes on the capital’s district of Jobar on the edge of the city.

Aleppo has been divided between government- and opposition-held areas since rebels launched an offensive there in mid-2012, capturing whole neighbourhoods and large sections of territory outside the city and along the border with Turkey.

The rebels have been striking back, firing mortars and makeshift rockets into cities and towns under control of Assad’s forces. They have also detonated several car bombs in major cities, including in the capital, Damascus.

The state-run SANA news agency said rockets struck in Aleppo’s residential neighbourhood of Ashrafiyeh overnight, killing nine people and wounding several, mostly women and children.

Syria’s conflict, which began with largely peaceful protests in March 2011, has evolved into a civil war with sectarian overtones, pitting predominantly Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad’s government that is dominated by Alawites, a sect in Shiite Islam. More than 150,000 people have been killed and millions have been displaced by the war.

Islamic extremists, including foreign fighters and Syrian rebels who have taken up hardline Al Qaeda-style ideologies, have an increasingly prominent role in the war, dampening the West’s support for the rebellion to overthrow Assad. Many Syrians, particularly religious minorities, have also come to doubt the opposition, fearing that Islamic radicals would take over if Assad is ousted.

Assad took power after the death of his father, Hafez, in 2000. He has maintained throughout the conflict that his government is not facing an uprising, insisting that his army is fighting terrorists that are part of the Western- and Gulf Arab-sponsored plot to destroy Syria.

Over the past year, Assad’s forces have been taking back rebel-held areas throughout Syria with a mix of crippling blockades, deals with rebels and relentless pounding of opposition-held areas. Presenting himself as a defender of united and religiously mixed Syria, Assad has pushed for the June 3 vote to seek a third seven-year term amid fierce fighting.

Despite two other candidates on the ballot, Assad is widely expected to win the vote, which opposition activists and Western countries have condemned as a sham. The vote is expected to be held only in government-controlled territory.

Syrian officials have said they will not accept international monitors to oversee the vote, but on Monday, Parliament Speaker Jihad Laham invited pro-government countries to send representatives.

Addressing a parliament session, Laham called on the BRICS group — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — and other “friendly” states to send experts “to oversee this free and democratic experienc”.

International efforts to halt Syria’s bloodshed have failed and millions of Syrians are in dire need of humanitarian aid. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said last week that almost 3.5 million civilians in Syria have virtually no humanitarian aid access, calling on both sides in the conflict to stop blocking aid.

In Greece, the head of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby, sharply criticised the UN, saying the international community has “utterly failed to stop the fighting” in Syria, and calling on the Security Council to “impose a ceasefire” in Syria.

“Enough grief, enough destruction and enough suffering,” Elaraby said in Athens, where he was attending a conference on Arab-European Union ties. “The Security Council has to assume its charter responsibilities and impose an immediate ceasefire.”

DOHA — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held “positive” talks with Hamas chief Khaled Mishaal in Doha Monday in the first meeting since their rival movements signed a surprise unity deal last month.

The meeting began at 0900 GMT shortly after Abbas held talks with Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, a senior Palestinian official told AFP in Ramallah.

“Abbas and Mishaal held a long meeting this afternoon in Doha to discuss the latest Palestinian developments, including the reconciliation agreement and creating a positive atmosphere in which to achieve it,” a Hamas statement said.

“The meeting was positive, with both leaders expressing a serious willingness to turn over a new leaf, based on national partnership,” it added.

The exiled Hamas chief has been based in Doha for more than two years after leaving his previous base in Damascus because of the Syrian civil war.

The last time the two leaders met face-to-face was in Cairo in January 2013.

Abbas’ Fateh movement, which dominates the Palestine Liberation Organisation, has been locked in years of bitter rivalry with Mishaal’s Hamas since the Islamist movement forcibly took over the Gaza Strip in 2007, confining Abbas’ forces to the West Bank.

Earlier reconciliation efforts have failed, but on April 23, the PLO and Hamas announced a deal under which they would work together to form a new government of political independents.

Hamas said it might incorporate some 3,000 members of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces to help police Gaza on a temporary basis.

“There is a clause addressing the security situation, including... administrative arrangements for 3,000 members of Ramallah’s security apparatus to work as part of Gaza security,” Hamas government secretary, Abdel Salam Siyyam, said in a statement on Sunday.

He said the move would be for an “interim period”, without saying how long it would be.

News of the April deal provoked an angry response from Israel, which said it would not negotiate with any Palestinian government backed by Hamas, putting the final nail in the coffin of the latest round of US-brokered peace talks.

TRIPOLI — Libya on Monday confirmed the appointment of a new premier after a chaotic vote highlighting tensions between Islamists and liberals in a country sapped by violence nearly three years after the overthrow of Muammar Qadhafi.

The General National Congress (GNC), the interim parliament, ratified Ahmed Miitig, an Islamist-backed businessman, as prime minister in a decision signed by its speaker.

However, it is still unclear if the decision by Nuri Abu Sahmein — whose own position is disputed — will end a legal and political row over Miitig’s election, which has been rejected by several lawmakers and Abu Sahmein’s own deputy.

The GNC said it had ratified the 42-year-old’s appointment in a move that would make him Libya’s youngest and fifth premier since long-time autocrat Qadhafi was toppled and killed in a 2011 uprising.

“Ahmed Omar Miitig was appointed head of the transitional government, and asked to form his Cabinet and present it to the GNC for a confidence vote within 15 days,” said the text of a decision signed by Abu Sahmein.

However, the appointment has been rejected by several MPs and the deputy speaker, Ezzedine Al Awami.

One lawmaker, Tahar Al Mokni, indicated there were still doubts about the appointment.

Mokni said the speaker had indeed signed the decision, but that he had not attended Sunday night’s GNC session when the vote was held.

Abu Sahmein has not been seen in public for weeks, with some MPs demanding his resignation over suspected involvement in a “moral” scandal.

The GNC indicated that Abu Sahmein was abroad for unspecified treatment.

Contacted by AFP on Monday, the spokesman for the outgoing government, Ahmed Lamine, was unable to comment on Miitig’s appointment.

Since the uprising, successive governments in the oil-rich country have struggled to impose order as heavily armed former rebel brigades have carved out their own fiefdoms and refused to join the security forces.

The post of prime minister has proved both challenging and dangerous.

Ali Zeidan, voted out by parliament for failing to prevent a rebel oil shipment in March, was kidnapped by gunmen last year and held for several hours.

Gunmen interrupt vote 

Last month, Zeidan’s Defence Minister Abdullah Al Thani was appointed to replace him. But then he quit after just five days, saying that he and his family had come under attack.

State television broadcast footage from Sunday’s chaotic GNC session, the second in a week to decide between two candidates.

After an initial meeting on April 27, parliament had gathered again on Tuesday, when Miitig won 67 votes in a first round and Benghazi university professor Omar Al Hassi came second with 34.

Tuesday’s second round of voting was interrupted by gunmen who stormed into parliament for reasons that remain unclear, shooting and forcing deputies to evacuate the premises.

On Sunday, Awami said Miitig defeated Hassi by 73 votes to 43 but secured only 113 of the 120 required for a vote of confidence.

However Awami’s deputy, Salah Al Makhzum, later announced the relatively unknown businessman had clinched 121 votes in the 185-seat assembly, apparently after a recount.

In a statement posted later on the government’s website, Awami declared the vote of confidence “void and illegal.”

Some deputies denounced the recount, saying it took place after the session had officially closed.

The GNC was elected in July 2012 for an 18-month term, but in February extended its own mandate to December, sparking widespread protests.

Parliament’s Islamist supporters backed the extension but the liberal National Forces Alliance denounced it as undemocratic.

Under pressure from the street, the GNC agreed to give way to the formation of a new parliament, although an election date has yet to be set.

Militants have launched near-daily attacks on security forces, particularly in the restive eastern city of Benghazi, cradle of the uprising that ended Qadhafi’s four-decade rule.

Miitig has vowed to rebuild state institutions, especially the army and police.