Region

AMSTERDAM — The head of the global chemical weapons watchdog overseeing the destruction of Syria’s toxic stockpile is considering launching a fact-finding mission on his own initiative to investigate reports of chlorine gas attacks there, sources said.

Syria became a member of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) last year as part of a deal with Russia and the United States to destroy its chemical weapons programme.

OPCW head Ahmet Uzumcu has the authority to launch an investigation into alleged use of chemical weapons in member states, including Syria, without the need to seek a formal request from a member state, sources told Reuters on Thursday.

“The OPCW director general is considering, on his own initiative, sending a fact-finding mission,” one source said.

“A number of questions are still to be answered: Syrian consent, mandate of the mission, participants from other organisations, such as the World Health Organisation,” the source said.

OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan declined to comment.

Several of Washington’s key European allies, including Germany and France, support an investigation into the latest claims of chlorine gas use, the sources said.

“The indications of the use of chlorine on 11-13 April in Hama province are particularly concerning,” a British official said on Thursday.

“We think there needs to be an investigation of recent reports of the use of chemical weapons including chlorine and we are working with others in the international community to establish how that should be done.”

Syria has vowed to hand over or destroy its entire arsenal by the end of this week. It still has roughly 7.5 per cent of the chemicals it declared to the OPCW and has not yet destroyed all of a dozen production and storage facilities.

Cooperation from Syria and other international organisations would need to be arranged to provide security because of the country’s ongoing civil war, which has left 130,000 dead and forced millions more from their homes.

‘What are we 

good for?’

Washington and its Western allies have blamed President Bashar Assad’s forces for using sarin gas in an attack in August that killed hundreds of people in the outskirts of Damascus. Assad has blamed the rebels.

A UN-led inquiry found that chemical weapons were likely used in five attacks in 2013, although it did not apportion blame. The nerve agent sarin was probably used in four of the five attacks, it found.

Chlorine, which was first used as a weapon in World War I, is believed to have been used in attacks in several areas of Syria this month.

All the attacks shared the same characteristics, leading analysts to believe they are part of a coordinated campaign, in which barrels of the toxic chemical have been dropped from helicopters.

Rebels have posted photos and video footage they claim show the latest attacks are also the work of forces under Assad.

“The convention forbids the use of toxic chemicals in warfare,” another source at the OPCW said. “If we close our eyes to any alleged use, we should be asking ourselves: What are we good for?”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius backed calls for an investigation.

“We are gathering precise elements, and if we find them then clearly several steps will have to be taken at the United Nations and the OPCW,” he told reporters.

“The use of such chemicals would be criminal and contrary to all commitments of countries concerned.”

Baseless allegations

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Meqdad said the charges against Syrian government forces were intended “to overshadow the achievements made by Syria” in ending its chemical weapons programme.

As part of the agreement that averted US military strikes last year, Damascus has until June 30 to destroy all chemical weapons, and their production and storage facilities.

Meqdad “refuted as baseless the allegation made by the US, France and Israel on using toxic materials by the Syrian Arab army in any of the Syrian territories”, a statement said.

Syria’s remaining stockpile of declared chemical weapons are in more than a dozen lorry containers, in a location near Damascus that the government has said was unreachable due to fighting.

The OPCW enforces adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which requires members to declare all chemical stocks to the organisation, which won the Nobel Peace prize last year.

On Thursday, the joint UN-OPCW mission to Syria said the total of chemical material removed and destroyed in country had reached 92.5 per cent of the 1,300 metric tonnes Damascus reported.

“I welcome the significant progress of the last three weeks, and I strongly encourage the Syrian authorities to conclude the removal operations as part of their efforts to achieve the 30 June, 2014, deadline,” mission chief Sigrid Kaag said.

Syria has not declared either the sarin, munitions used in last year’s attack, or chlorine, officials said. If it had them, they should be reported to the OPCW.

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Monday that Washington had indications that chlorine was probably used by government forces in Syria and said an investigation was needed.

Even if Syria meets the June 30 deadline and abandons its decades-old chemical weapons programme, the OPCW’s work there will not be finished, one diplomat said.

“If anyone pats themselves on the back and says this is over, they will be fooling themselves.”

TRIPOLI — A rebel group in eastern Libya that controls several oil ports said on Thursday it would not reopen the key Ras Lanuf and Es Sider terminals unless the government implemented its part of a recent deal to end the oil blockade.

In a sign of further delays to restart vital oil exports from the volatile east, rebels said the Tripoli government had failed to fulfil its part of the accord reached this month.

Diplomats expect both sides to implement the deal eventually as the country badly needs the oil revenue but tactical manoeuvres and mutual mistrust are likely to cause delays.

The row is part of chaos in the North African country where the government cannot control militias who helped oust Muammar Qadhafi in 2011 but have held on to their weapons to make political and financial demands by seizing oilfields or government ministries.

“The government hasn’t fulfilled a single item of the agreement to reopen the ports,” rebel spokesman Ali Al Hasi told Reuters.

Tripoli has not paid state salaries to the rebels — who are former oil guards — as agreed under the deal reached earlier this month to reopen four oil ports, he said.

The agreement also called for a commission to investigate corruption.

So far only the 110,000 barrels per day (bpd) Hariga port in Tobruk has resumed work, while the Zueitina port is facing technical issues after the long blockage.

Both ports had meant to reopen immediately after the signing of the deal almost three weeks ago with the larger terminals Ras Lanuf and Es Sider restarting after more talks.

There was no immediate comment from the government but Cabinet spokesman Ahmed Lamin said earlier the Ras Lanuf and Es Sider ports would be handed over within a month — a claim dismissed by the rebel spokesman unless the government fulfilled its part of the deal.

Lamin said Zueitina port cannot resume exports until outstanding technical issues are fixed.

Sources close to the talks say part of the problem is that some rebels at Zueitina terminal had demanded to be put on the government payroll, a strategy used before in post-Qadhafi Libya to put pressure on a weak central government.

Protests at oilfields and pipelines have also crippled oil production in the west of the OPEC producer, reducing output to around 220,000 bpd from 1.4 million bpd in summer.

ADEN — Al Qaeda militants have seized hospitals in southern Yemen to treat wounded comrades following blistering air strikes that killed scores of gunmen in two days, medics said Thursday.

An intensive aerial campaign by US drones and Yemeni jet fighters on Al Qaeda bases in the rugged mountains of nearby Abyan province killed some 70 militants over the weekend.

On Sunday, militants stormed the hospital of Azzan, in Shabwa province, as well as two smaller medical centres in nearby districts, the sources said.

They counted experienced doctors among their number, who tended the wounded.

“They forced us out of the centres along with other members of staff and brought in their wounded,” a doctor at a medical centre in the town of Al Saeed told AFP.

After the raids, militants arrived with casualties in pick-up trucks, accompanied by “several doctors, including Arabs and foreigners”, he said.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) remains active in southern and eastern Yemen, despite successive military operations against it.

AQAP has been linked to a number of failed terror plots against the United States, and its leader Nasser Al Wuhayshi has appeared in a rare video in which he vowed to attack Western “crusaders... everywhere in the world”.

DUBAI — A senior member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family said on Wednesday that Gulf states should work on acquiring nuclear know-how to balance any threat from Iran.

Prince Turki Al Faisal, a former intelligence chief, also told a security conference in the Bahraini capital Manama, that the Gulf states should be prepared for any possible outcome from Iran’s nuclear talks with world powers.

“We do not hold any hostility to Iran and do not wish any harm to it or to its people, who are Muslim neighbours,” he said in a speech.

“But preserving our regional security requires that we, as a Gulf grouping, work to create a real balance of forces with it, including in nuclear know-how and to be ready for any possibility in relation to the Iranian nuclear file. Any violation of this balance will allow the Iranian leadership to exploit all holes to do harm to us.”

The United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia have agreed a July 20 deadline with Iran to clinch a long-term deal that would allow a gradual lifting of all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran over its atomic programme.

The Saudi prince said that Gulf Arab states were concerned by Iran’s nuclear ambitions despite the talks and by what he described as its meddling in the internal affairs of its Gulf Arab neighbours.

Gulf Arab countries have long accused Tehran of fueling unrest mainly among Shiite communities in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Yemen. Iran denies these allegations.

“The lack of trust in the Iranian leadership which arises from its double-talk and the duality of its policies prevents us from believing what it says,” he told the Bahrain conference.

“At the time when we hope that the ongoing nuclear talks between [Iran] and world powers reach the desired aim by halting its nuclear ambitions with definite guarantees, we have to be careful until this is a firm reality,” he said.

Prince Turki also said that a rift within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was the biggest threat facing them despite an agreement last week to end a security dispute with Qatar. He expressed concern that regional enemies could exploit the rift to destabilise the Middle East.

“The most dangerous thing that is facing our countries today is this new rift in our relations,” said Prince Turki, brother of the Saudi foreign minister.

In an unprecedented move within the GCC of allied hereditary monarchies, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar on March 5, accusing Doha of failing to abide by an accord not to interfere in each others’ internal affairs.

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

The GCC foreign ministers agreed at a meeting in Riyadh on April 17 on ways to implement a security agreement they reached last year, but they made no reference to the return of the ambassadors to Doha.

Qatari Foreign Minister, Khaled Al Attiya, speaking during a visit to Kuwait on Wednesday, said the rift with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE has been resolved but it was up to three countries to return their ambassadors to Doha.

“The Riyadh statement of April 17 was a clear statement. The brothers of the Gulf Cooperation Council reached understandings which are not considered to be concessions by anyone,” he told journalists in Kuwait.

RIYADH — King Abdullah was in the Saudi commercial hub of Jeddah on Thursday in a bid to reassure a worried public as the death toll from the MERS virus hit 85.

The Red Sea city has seen a spate of cases among health staff in recent weeks that have sparked fears that the virus has mutated to make it more transmissible from person to person.

The World Health Organisation announced on Wednesday that it had offered to send international experts to Saudi Arabia to investigate “any evolving risk” resulting from the apparent change in transmission pattern.

Public concern has been fuelled by the reported resignation last week of at least four doctors at Jeddah’s King Fahd Hospital after they refused to treat MERS patients for fear of infection with the deadly coronavirus.

In its latest bulletin on Wednesday, the health ministry said that it had recorded a total of 287 cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in the kingdom so far, of whom a full 85 had died.

Despite the figures, the royal family insisted there was no cause for public alarm.

National Guard Minister Prince Mitab said his father King Abdullah was in Jeddah “to reassure the public, and to prove that the exaggerated and false rumours about coronavirus are not true”.

“The MERS situation is reassuring and it has not reached the level of an epidemic,” he told students in Jeddah according to the Saudi Gazette.

But that did not stop the king from dismissing health minister Abdullah Al Rabiah on Monday without an official explanation.

Labour Minister Adel Fakieh, who has taken over as acting health minister, said on Twitter late Tuesday that he had visited the King Fahd Hospital.

He promised “transparency, and to promptly provide the media and society with the information needed”.

WHO offers expertise 

The World Health Organisation said on Wednesday that the recent cluster of cases among health workers was a cause of concern as the virus had clearly been contracted from a human patient and not directly from an animal host.

“WHO is unaware at this point in time of the specific types of exposure in the health care facilities that have resulted in transmission of these infections, but this remains a concern,” the UN agency said.

“Therefore, WHO has offered its assistance to mobilise international expertise to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates to investigate the current outbreaks in order to determine the transmission chain of this recent cluster, and whether there is any evolving risk that may be associated with the current transmissibility pattern of the virus.”

Experts are still struggling to understand MERS, for which there is no known vaccine.

A recent study said the virus has been “extraordinarily common” in camels for at least 20 years, and it may have been passed from the animals to humans and now evolved.

Since the emergence of MERS in April 2012, a total of 253 laboratory-confirmed cases of human infections with MERS have been reported to the WHO worldwide. Of those 93 have died.

The virus is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus which erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, 9 per cent of whom died.

SANAA — Yemen’s president on Wednesday said that the death toll of this week’s military campaign against Al Qaeda has reached over 60 suspected militants, including several of the group’s leaders.

Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s remarks aired on state TV came as a high ranking security official said authorities are examining DNA samples of the dead to determine their identities.

Earlier, a government official told The Associated Press that the results of the DNA test were forthcoming, declining to give names of the leaders targeted. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the press.

On Sunday and Monday, the military, reportedly backed by US drone strikes, hit a major Al Qaeda base in the remote southern mountains, killing 55 militants. The bombed sites included a training ground, a storehouse for weapons and food as well as vehicles. The base is in a remote mountain valley called Wadi Al Khayala in the rugged Mahfad region at the border between Abyan province, and the neighbouring provinces of Shabwa and Al Bayda.

Hadi was quoted by state TV as saying: “The heroic operations by the armed forces and special security forces against terrorists’ groupings... have achieved strong victory against these remnants.” He did not give names of the leaders killed. He urged security forces to chase terrorism to achieve stability.

The assault appeared to be a significant escalation in the US and Yemeni campaign against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror group’s powerful branch in the southern Arabian nation. The United States has been hitting Al Qaeda positions in the country heavily with drone strikes the past two years, trying to cripple the group after it was driven out of several southern cities it took over in 2011.

But the group has proven highly resilient, spreading around the country and working from mountain areas. In a show of boldness, a video recently posted on Islamic militant websites showed the group’s leader Nasser Al Wahishi meeting openly with dozens of militants in Abyan.

DUBAI — Authorities in Sunni-ruled Bahrain on Wednesday expelled the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, in the latest manifestation of tension with the kingdom’s Shiite majority.

Sheikh Hussein Al Najati was among 31 Bahrainis who had their citizenship revoked in November 2012 over accusations that they had undermined state security, more than a year after authorities crushed a Shiite uprising in March 2011.

Najati “practised unclear activities, without coordinating with authorities which discovered afterwards that he was Sistani’s representative”, the interior ministry said.

“Working as an official representative of any party necessitates a letter of accreditation that specifies responsibilities and planned activities,” it said.

Najati worked on “collecting funds and distributing them” in the name of the Iraq-based Sistani, one of the top Shiite spiritual guides, the ministry added.

Najati was born in 1960 to Iranian parents in Bahrain, it said.

He arrived on Wednesday in Lebanon, according to Bahrain’s Shiite Al Wefaq opposition association.

Sistani, who is based in the Iraqi city of Najaf, in 2011 condemned Bahrain’s crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired protests which demanded democratic reforms in the Gulf kingdom.

Bahrain remains deeply divided three years after the February 2011 uprising, with persistent protests sparking clashes with police, scores of Shiites jailed on “terror” charges and reconciliation talks deadlocked.

DOHA — The family of an Al Jazeera reporter detained in Egypt since August and on hunger strike since January 21 said on Wednesday his health is deteriorating, and called for his release.

Abdullah Elshamy, a journalist for the pan-Arab satellite news network, was arrested on August 14 when police dispersed supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi at the massive Rabaa Al Adawiya protest camp in Cairo, killing hundreds in clashes.

“I call upon the public prosecutor, who is a father, to answer the plea of a mother by releasing Abdullah today,” Thuraya Elshamy said at a news conference organised by Al Jazeera in Doha.

“My son is a journalist — journalism is not a crime,” she said.

Elshamy’s father urged action to save the life of his son, stressing that “his health has deteriorated due to the hunger strike”.

In a separate case, three other journalists for Al Jazeera English — Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Australian Peter Greste, and producer Baher Mohamed — face charges of spreading news that falsely sought to portray Egypt in a state of “civil war” and colluding with Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

An Egyptian court on Tuesday heard new prosecution evidence, including audiotapes, against some of the journalists before setting the next hearing for May 3.

CAIRO — Prosecution witnesses in the jailbreak trial of Egypt’s ousted president Mohamed Morsi on Wednesday accused members of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Lebanon’s Hizbollah of attacking Egyptian prisons during the 2011 uprising.

The trial, one of three against Morsi, is part of a government crackdown that has targeted him and his Muslim Brotherhood movement since his ousting by the army in July.

In the jailbreak case, Morsi and 130 other defendants including Palestinian and Lebanese militants are charged with organising attempts to spring prisoners from jails, and attacking police stations during the uprising that ousted longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak.

The prosecution presented three witnesses in Wednesday’s hearing, two of whom described how jails were attacked during the uprising, before the trial was postponed until April 30.

Morsi, dressed in white prison uniform, appeared in a caged dock as his co-defendants sat with their backs to the judges in a separate enclosure, an AFP journalist said.

Former interior minister Mahmoud Wagdi told the court members of “Hamas, [Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine] Al Qassam Brigades, [Palestinian Islamists] the Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah... entered Egypt through the border with the Gaza Strip helped by Bedouins from Sinai” on January 28, 2011.

Wagdi was named interior minister three days after the militants are alleged to have entered Egypt.

He said that after crossing the border, they “destroyed” several police installations in the Sinai, before attacking “the prisons of Abu Zaabal, Al Marg and Wadi Natrun that had political elements from Hamas and Hizbollah”, Wagdi said.

Prosecutors charge the attacks on police stations and the jailbreaks, in which Morsi and other political prisoners escaped, were a Muslim Brotherhood-led conspiracy aimed at sowing chaos during the 2011 revolt.

Nearly 850 people died during the 18-day uprising that toppled Mubarak, most of them on January 28, 2011, when protesters battled police.

At Wednesday’s hearing, prosecution’s other witness Atef Sherif Abdel Salam, who was prison chief at the time, said the prisons were attacked by “elements from Sinai Bedouins”.

“The prisons where the jailbreak succeeded were prisons that had political elements in them,” he said.

“The first prison to be attacked was the Abu Zaabal prison at 10 in the morning on January 29... it had elements from Al Qaeda and Sinai Bedouins.”

He said the authorities later found “spent ammunition... that was not used by Egyptian police or military” at Abu Zabaal prison.

Abdel Salam also said Wadi Natrum jail had around 30 leaders from the Muslim Brotherhood when it came under attack.

Morsi is also on trial over the killing of protesters during his presidency and in an espionage trial where he is accused of conspiring with foreign powers, Hamas and Shiite Iran to destabilise Egypt.

A government crackdown targeting Morsi and his supporters has killed more than 1,400 people and jailed thousands.

JUBA — The White House has expressed horror at what it called the “abomination” of spiralling violence in South Sudan’s civil war, where rebels have been accused of massacring hundreds of civilians.

The rebels seized the oil hub of Bentiu last week, unleashing two days of ethnic slaughter as they hunted down civilians sheltering in mosques, churches and a hospital, butchering dozens on the roadside, according to the United Nations.

“We are horrified by reports out of South Sudan that fighters aligned with rebel leader Riek Machar massacred hundreds of innocent civilians last week in Bentiu,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

“These acts of violence are an abomination. They are a betrayal of the trust the South Sudanese people have put in their leaders,” he said.

“Images and accounts of the attacks shock the conscience: stacks of bodies found dead inside a mosque, patients murdered at a hospital and dozens more shot, and killed in the streets and at a church — apparently due to their ethnicity and nationality — while hate speech was broadcast on local radio,” Carney added.

Images released by the United Nations show piles of bloated, decomposing bodies strewn in several areas — a repeat of mass killings seen in other areas of the country over the past four months.

The UN said the killings continued for almost two days after the rebels issued a statement boasting of victory in Bentiu, and that the rebels had used hate radio broadcasts to whip up violent ethnic sentiment.

South Sudan’s army has been fighting rebels loyal to sacked vice president Riek Machar since the unrest broke out on December 15.

The conflict has taken on an ethnic dimension, pitting President Salva Kiir’s Dinka tribe against militia forces from Machar’s Nuer people.

The White House called on both men to “make clear that attacks on civilians are unacceptable, perpetrators of violence on both sides must be brought to justice and the cycle of violence that has plagued South Sudan for too long must come to an end”.

 Piles of bodies 

The rebels, however, have blamed retreating government troops for the atrocities.

“The government forces and their allies committed these heinous crimes while retreating,” rebel spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said, adding that the rebel offensive targeting oil fields and the town of Bor, situated north of the capital Juba, was continuing.

The scale of killings in Bentiu is one of the worst atrocities in the four-month conflict, during which both sides have been implicated in massacres, rape and the recruitment of child soldiers.

Last week gunmen in the government-held town of Bor also attacked a UN base sheltering civilians, killing at least 58 people.

Toby Lanzer, the top UN aid official in the country, told AFP after visiting Bentiu — capital of oil-producing Unity State — that he had witnessed the “most terrible sight”.

“There are piles of bodies lining the streets where they had been executed, in the market, outside and inside places of worship... the majority wearing civilian clothes,” Lanzer said Monday.

The United States, which was instrumental in helping South Sudan win independence from Khartoum in 2011, has threatened sanctions against those responsible for continuing the war.

Heavy fighting was also reported on Tuesday in the eastern state of Jonglei, and in Upper Nile in the northeast, with South Sudan army spokesman Philip Aguer boasting the army had repulsed the attacks and killed scores of rebels.

In Bentiu, some 23,000 terrified civilians have crowded into the cramped UN peacekeeping base for protection, where under both fierce heat and heavy rains — and little if any shelter — they are surviving on just a litre (quart) of water a day each.

Jonathan Veitch, the UN children’s agency chief in the country, warned of fatal water-borne diseases, saying that “children have endured unspeakable violence”.

The UN has said more than one million people are at risk of famine.

On Tuesday, 22 international aid agencies, including Oxfam, Care and the International Rescue Committee, issued a joint warning they were already witnessing “alarming rates of malnutrition”.

The conflict in South Sudan has left thousands of people dead and forced around a million to flee their homes. Peace talks are due to restart in neighbouring Ethiopia later this month.