Region

HOMS — Less than a month after the last rebel fighters retreated from the centre of Homs, the sound of hammering echoes across its narrow, ancient streets as authorities rush to restore major landmarks.

No place is more symbolic of President Bashar Assad’s military ascendancy in Syria’s grinding, three-year conflict and the repair work carries a powerful message ahead of Tuesday’s scripted presidential election, one he is guaranteed to win.

“Together, we rebuild,” says a banner for Assad’s re-election campaign, flanking the entrance to Umm Al Zennar Church in the central district of Bab Dreib. “Together, we want to live,” says another.

Dazed residents returning home questioned how Syria’s patchwork of Sunni Muslims, Alawites and Christians could ever be restored. The fighting has pitted overwhelmingly Sunni rebels, backed by foreign jihadi fighters, against the Alawite president and his Shiite backers in Iran, Lebanon and Iraq.

“We’re fixing everything to make it look like it did before the war. We don’t want any reminders of this terrible time. We want to forget,” said a church usher, greeting the trickle of visitors who had come to check up on their church.

Inside the Syriac Orthodox building, constructed over an underground church which dates back nearly two millennia, damage that was visible only two weeks ago was already fixed.

Asked if he planned to vote, the church usher became nervous. “Yes, of course,” he said, then changed the subject to talk about the history of the church.

At one point, the governor of Homs made an unannounced appearance, inspecting the interior and expressing his approval.

In the neighbouring ancient quarter of Hamidiyeh, dozens of residents tended to their dilapidated homes and shopfronts, despite strong gusts of wind that carried with them the choking dust of crumbled concrete and rubble.

Inside one gutted store, a man stood on a concrete slab that once served as a storage attic. He sifted through rubble, occasionally handing down a charred item to his colleagues bellow.

Down the street, someone beat a sofa with a stick, creating a cloud of thick dust. Around the corner, four men carried a large water tank. Women pushed broken baby strollers stuffed with sofa pillows and kitchenware.

“People come to check up on their belongings, they take whatever is salvageable from their home and, frankly, they often also take from their neighbours’ home. It’s free looting season,” said Samer, who came back two weeks ago to check his home and the three storefronts he owns, all partly destroyed.

He and his wife and three children fled in February 2012, when a stray bullet grazed his young daughter’s arm.

“We left that day and I told my wife to bring only one pair of pyjamas for each child. I told her we’ll be back in a few days. But it’s been more than two years,” he said.

“Look, I still have my house keys, even though I no longer need them,” he said, chuckling as he pointed to his broken down house door. His children’s bunk beds were missing as were some wooden kitchen cabinets. He said they must have been used as fire wood during the winter by the rebels.

Samer was spending the night in his home in Old Homs “to keep watch” while his family remained in Mashtal Hellu, a once popular summer destination about a 30 minutes’ drive away, where many Homs Christians own a second home.

Like others, he said he could not bring his family home yet because there was no water or electricity in Old Homs and schools and other services will take time to reopen.

Nothing left

In Old Homs, outside the ancient quarters, block after block of buildings has been utterly destroyed. Four, five or ten-storey buildings have collapsed, and hardly anything remains salvageable or even recognisable to locals.

“I kept referring to the map in my head, but I couldn’t figure out which building that was,” said Razan, a mother of three who was born and raised in Homs. Her childhood neighbourhood was taken over by rebels and bombarded by Assad’s forces.

“One building, the roof was down and the roof-mounted satellite dish was in front of me at street level. And I thought and thought, then I remembered, there was a seamstress shop at that corner,” she said.

Barely a five-minute drive away, in the government-controlled neighbourhood of Inshaat, where many residents oppose the government and armed government men keep a tight grip on movements, hardly any damage was visible.

On the eve of elections, many people said they planned to vote because of rumours that non-voters will be marked for retribution.

“I don’t know, so I plan to vote,” said Razan, who opposes the government.

Her comment sparked a short debate with relatives who suggested that she could show up for voting and cast a blank ballet in protest, though no one could assure her that the authorities would not trace the empty ballot back to her.

Syria’s interior ministry denied that identity cards of voters would be marked in any way, saying such rumours were aimed at “influencing the democratic atmosphere of the presidential election”.

“My concern is more with how we can live together again,” said Razan, who is a Sunni Muslim, referring to the sectarian rifts exposed by the conflict.

“We’re afraid of the Alawites, and they are even more afraid of us,” she said, before relaying stories of sectarian harassment, stories that are difficult to verify but have become commonplace today in many parts of Syria.

In Old Homs, Abu Walid, a Christian man in his mid-sixties, sat on a chair in a narrow street and stared at what used to be his stationery store. He was not sure about his future plans, whether he would rebuild or how he might pay for it.

“How will Syria come back?” he said. “In Syria, you have the Christian, the Shiite, the Sunni, the Alawite, and right now none will deal with the other. No one will work together. How will we rebuild?”

MANAMA — Bahrain’s opposition parties will boycott parliamentary elections due to take place this year unless the government guarantees the vote will reflect the will of the people, a statement from the opposition said on Saturday.

Bahrain, a base for the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has been in turmoil since protests led by Shiite Muslims erupted in 2011 after similar uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

Talks between the government and opposition have failed to end the political standoff. Many Shiites complain of political and economic discrimination in the Sunni-ruled Gulf island state, a charge the authorities deny.

“The National Democratic Opposition Parties in Bahrain announced they are to boycott the coming parliamentary elections unless a clear political agreement is reached,” said the statement issued after a meeting at the headquarters of Al Wefaq, the main opposition movement.

“These elections must produce an elected government reflecting the will of the people, an independent judiciary and a security services that reflect Bahrain’s diversity.”

The groups urged the international community to help them pursue a peaceful democratic transition.

“The opposition will work on developing the peaceful popular struggle for democracy,” the statement said.

“We will stick to political activism that is based only on peaceful principles and continue to reject all and any violence.”

Bahrain, which effectively bans protests and gatherings not licensed by the government, has been caught up in a struggle for influence between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

It quelled the 2011 revolt with help from Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-ruled Gulf states, but protests and small-scale clashes persist and bomb attacks have increased since mid-2012.

KHARTOUM — Sudan denied on Sunday a Christian Sudanese woman sentenced to hang for apostasy would be freed soon, saying quotes attributed to a foreign ministry official had been taken out of context.

Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag was sentenced to death on May 15 under the Islamic Sharia law that has been in place since 1983 and outlaws conversions under pain of death.

Abdullah Al Azraq, a foreign ministry under-secretary, told AFP and other media outlets on Saturday that Ishag “will be freed within days in line with legal procedure that will be taken by the judiciary and the ministry of justice.”

But the foreign ministry said the release of the 27-year-old, who gave birth to a baby girl in prison on Tuesday, depended on whether a court accepted an appeal request made by her defence team.

A ministry statement said Azraq actually told media on Saturday “that the defence team of the concerned citizen has appealed the verdict... and if the appeals court rules in her favour, she will be released.”

Azraq said “the government does not interfere in the work of the judiciary because it is an independent body,” the ministry added.

“Some media took what the undersecretary said out of context, changing the meaning of what he said.”

After Azraq’s comment Saturday, Ishag’s husband, Daniel Wani, told AFP he did not believe she would be freed.

“No one has contacted me and I don’t think it will happen. We have submitted an appeal but they have not looked at it yet, so how is it that they will release her?” he said.

Ishag’s lawyer Mohannad Mustapha had expressed doubts she would be released or that charges against her would be dropped.

“The only party who can do that is the appeals court but I am not sure that they have the full case file,” he said on Saturday.

Earlier this week, Mustapha said a hearing that was due to take place on Wednesday was postponed because the file was incomplete.

Ishag was born to a Muslim father but said during her trial she had never been a Muslim herself.

The court gave her three days to “recant” her faith and when she refused, Ishag was handed the death penalty and sentenced to 100 lashes for “adultery”.

Under Sudan’s interpretation of Sharia, a Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim man, and any such relationship is regarded as adulterous.

Her case sparked international condemnation, with British Prime Minister David Cameron denouncing the “barbaric” sentence.

Wani, a US citizen, visited Ishag and the baby on Thursday after being denied access earlier in the week and said that both were in good health.

GAZA CITY — Israel has denied three future Palestinian ministers from the Gaza Strip entry to the West Bank ahead of the unveiling of a new unity government, a senior source said Sunday.

The news emerged as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel had informed him it would cut all ties with his incoming interim government, which is to be sworn in at his West Bank headquarters on Monday.

And he also warned in remarks late on Saturday that the Palestinians would respond to every punitive step taken by Israel in respect to the new government.

The three ministers elect had applied to cross from Gaza to the West Bank on Thursday, but their application was immediately rejected, a senior Palestinian official responsible for coordinating exits and entries told AFP.

“We sent the application in on Thursday and explained that these officials are to be sworn in as ministers in Ramallah, but Israel immediately rejected the application,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.

COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry unit responsible for Palestinian civilian coordination, refused to comment on the matter, as did the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Earlier, public radio said COGAT head Major General Yoav Mordechai had vetoed the request, without saying why.

On April 23, rival Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip announced a surprise unity deal, pledging to work together to set up an interim government of political independents.

But Israel immediately called a halt to crisis-hit peace talks, vowing it would never talk to any government backed by Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel.

And with the promised government to be sworn in at a ceremony on Monday, Israel appeared to be making good on its threat.

Speaking late on Saturday, Abbas said Israel was looking to punish the Palestinians for overcoming their years-long internal political differences.

“Israel wants to punish us for agreeing with Hamas on this government,” he said, explaining that Israeli officials had informed him that the Netanyahu administration would “boycott the government the moment it is announced”.

But the Palestinians would have an answer for every Israeli move, he warned.

“Each Israeli step will have a proper Palestinian response,” he warned, without elaborating.

“We will take everything step-by-step, we will not be the ones to react first.”

He appeared to be alluding to Palestinian intentions to seek further recognition for their promised state in the international diplomatic arena.

Such moves were put on hold for nearly all of the nine-month US-led peace talks, which collapsed in late April, but resumed after Israel blocked the promised release of two-dozen veteran Palestinian prisoners.

The new government, which will pave the way for long-overdue legislative and presidential elections, will be chaired by Rami Hamdallah, who is currently serving as prime minister in the Fateh-dominated West Bank administration.

DAMASCUS — Syria entered its final day of campaigning on Sunday for the June 3 presidential election expected to return Bashar Assad to power, a vote the opposition brands a “parody of democracy”.

With swathes of the country out of government control, voting will only take place in regime-held territory, far from where Assad’s forces are battling the rebels who seek to topple him.

The fragmented opposition, and their Western and Arab allies, are set to watch powerlessly as the ballot returns Assad to power for a third, seven-year term at a time when the army is making advances on the battlefield.

Assad’s opponents have dubbed the vote a “parody of democracy” and the “blood election”, as the toll from the civil war has reached 162,000, according to a monitoring group.

The rebels have urged Syrians to boycott the vote in which Assad’s sole competitors, MP Maher Al Hajjar, and businessman Hassan Al Nouri — are little known and seen as token rivals.

On Sunday the ruling Baath Party, which has dominated Syria for more than half a century, called for people to reelect Assad.

The president was chosen by referendum in 2000 following the death of his father and predecessor, Hafez Assad, who had ruled over Syria for nearly 30 years.

By choosing Assad, Syrians would be voting “not only for a president of the republic but for a leader... who faces the war... for the iconic leader Bashar Assad who has stayed at the side of his people in all corners of the homeland,” the ruling party said in a statement.

In an apparent bid to shore up the support of Sunni Muslims for Assad, state television gave a live broadcast of a meeting of Sunni clerics who also urged voters to cast their ballots for Assad.

The president is from the minority Alawite community while most of the rebels fighting to topple him come from Syria’s majority Sunni Muslim community.

On Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant killed a 102-year-old man and four other members of his Alawite community in Hama province.

“Some members of the family were burned alive, others killed in their sleep,” said the Britain-based monitoring group.

It also reported that regime aircraft pressed an offensive on the northern city of Aleppo, dropping barrel bombs on rebel areas that left many people wounded and set ablaze a house.

Early show of force 

With campaigning drawing to a close, the streets of Damascus were plastered with posters glorifying Assad.

He was seen in casual wear, fatigues or dress uniform with a chest covered in medal ribbons, in pictures that dwarfed those of his rivals.

The poll is aimed at bolstering Assad’s position as he seeks to win at all costs the war he is fighting against the exiled opposition and fragmented rebels weakened by infighting between rival jihadists.

Peaceful protests calling for political change that started in March 2011 have been transformed into a full-blown civil war across the country after a brutal regime crackdown on demonstrators.

Damascus never recognised the protest movement, referring to protesters as “armed terrorists” working to serve a “foreign plot”.

Al Baath newspaper, mouthpiece of the ruling party, insisted on Sunday that Syrians will vote “to show that the will of the people is stronger than all the dreams and desires of the plotters”.

The regime pulled off an early show of force on Wednesday when thousands of expatriates and refugees living abroad turned out for an early vote in 43 embassies in their host countries.

More than 95 per cent of those registered to vote cast their ballots, Syrian state news agency SANA said.

However, Syrians who entered countries illegally were not allowed to take part and only 200,000 of some three million refugees were on electoral lists abroad.

Refugees in Turkey and Lebanon protested against the election and claimed the regime bussed voters from Damascus to cast their ballots in neighbouring countries, and put pressure on others to vote.

France, Germany and Belgium forbade the election from taking place on their territory, as did the United Arab Emirates, according to Damascus.

CAIRO — A gang of arms traffickers killed six Egyptian border guards on Sunday after they crossed into the country from Libya, the military said.

“The army deplores the killing of an officer and five soldiers from the army’s border protection corps attacked by arms traffickers while patrolling a mountainous area,” it said in a statement.

The attack, in Egypt’s northwest, happened shortly after midnight, with the assailants believed to be Egyptians, a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“This attack comes after border guards successfully arrested 68 traffickers and seized a large quantity of weapons,” the army statement said, without elaborating or giving a date for the operation.

Libya has been awash with weapons and gripped by unrest since the NATO-backed uprising that toppled dictator Muammar Qadhafi in 2011, with the rival militias who ousted him vying for control.

A wave of insecurity in Egypt boosted the popularity of former army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who scored a crushing presidential election victory last week.

AKKAR, Lebanon — Hundreds of Syrian refugees held a protest march Sunday in the Akkar district of northern Lebanon to condemn Syria’s June 3 election poised to keep President Bashar Assad in power.

“Vote for the man who killed 200,000 Syrians!” read one poster held by a protester in Kusha village, as demonstrators marched waving flags of the Syrian opposition.

Men, women and children living in tents in unofficial refugee camps in and near Kusha took part in the protest march held under the banner of a “blood election”, two days ahead of the presidential poll in Syria.

“Our revolution came to topple the sectarian, aggressive regime. How can we be expected to vote it back in?” read a poster.

Last Wednesday, tens of thousands of Syrians living in Lebanon flocked to their embassy in Beirut to cast their vote in an election branded by the Syrian opposition and its backers as a “farce”.

Two little-known candidates are facing Assad in the vote, which will only be held in regime-held territory and exclude refugees who fled Syria through unofficial crossings.

Saad Dandashi, a 55-year-old from Homs in central Syria, took part in the protest along with his three children.

“We can’t possibly vote for the person who killed our children and our women, and who destroyed our houses,” Dandashi said.

The protesters charged they had received threats to try to coerce them into voting last Wednesday.

“I received a message saying that if I don’t vote, my house [in Homs city’s battered Juret Al Shiyah district] will be confiscated,” said Ghoneim.

Sunday’s protest followed several others held in areas of Lebanon home to a large number of refugees, such as the northern port city of Tripoli and Arsal near the Syrian border.

Lebanon is home to a total of more than one million refugees from Syria’s brutal three-year-old civil war.

BEIRUT — It was not so long ago that Bashar Assad’s enemies thought he was finished.

In the summer of 2012, the rebels were not just at the gates of Damascus, but inside the capital, preying on Assad’s harried forces.

His government had lost big chunks of Syria’s territory and a string of strategic towns, and a small number of loyal and tested army units were rotating around the country in an exhausting attempt to hold back rebel advances on many fronts.

Not any longer.

Now, even as the United States seeks to increase aid and training to moderate rebels to fight Assad’s forces, US officials privately concede Assad isn’t going anywhere soon.

Buoyed by a sequence of victories over the past year, won in large part through Iran and Hizbollah, its Lebanese paramilitary proxy, Assad will be elected president this week for a third seven-year term, symbolically contested by selected opponents playing walk-on roles to pad out the main drama.

The old Syria — at its core a security state run by the Assad clan, their Alawite allies and selected partners from other minorities and the Sunni majority — is reasserting itself.

Assad himself, who had almost dropped out of sight and, on the rare occasions he did appear in public, looked troubled and strained, has re-emerged looking relaxed, confident and smart as he gets out and about, campaigning with his wife, Asma.

Triumphalism

There is a note of triumphalism when he speaks, a sense that the tide of the crisis, that began as a popular revolt against his rule, has turned in his favour.

Despite the loss of 160,000 lives and the displacement of 10 million Syrians, the shattering of cities like Homs and Aleppo and wholesale destruction of infrastructure and the economy, Assad proclaims Syria will become again what it once was.

During a visit to the ancient Christian town of Maaloula on Easter Sunday, after it had been recaptured from rebels, he told soldiers: “We will remain steadfast and bring security back to Syria and defeat terrorism. We will hit them with an iron fist and Syria will return to how it was.”

“The battle may be long but we’re not afraid; Syria has been like that all its life,” he said on another stop at nearby Ain Al Tina. “As long as we’re together... we’ll rebuild it. However much they destroy we will rebuild and make it even better.”

Such is his confidence that he is contemplating retaking the whole country after the presidential election, according to a Lebanese political ally who sees him regularly.

Having regained control of a chain of cities up the northsouth backbone of the country, secured his grip on the northwest coast and Alawite heartland, and cleared rebels away from Lebanon’s border, he is mulling a new offensive against Aleppo, before pushing right up to the northern frontier with Turkey.

According to the Lebanese ally he would leave parts of eastern Syria that are connected to the insurgency in western Iraq under the control of Al Qaeda-linked jihadis — fitting Assad’s contention he is fighting foreign-inspired terrorists.

This would also send a warning to Western and Arab supporters of the mainstream rebels that getting rid of him opens the gate to Sunni extremists.

Reasserting control

Diplomats close to Assad acknowledge that part of his strategy has been to overlook the presence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an Al Qaeda division led by foreign jihadists, who have been fighting the moderate rebels — the first to rise up against the Syrian leader’s rule.

“It’s a logical strategy. Why attack ISIL if ISIL is attacking your enemy?,” one Arab diplomat said.

But Assad will eventually retake even the east, the Lebanese ally confidently predicts, citing the Algerian state’s long and bloody campaign to eradicate Islamist insurgents in the 1990s.

“It will take time but Algeria lasted seven to eight years until the government purged the country and regained control,” he said.

Yet, seductive though this scenario may be to the loyalist camp, Assad has returned from the brink only because powerful foreign allies — Iran, Hizbollah, and Iranian-trained Iraqi militias on the ground and Russia in the UN Security Council — have intervened decisively as the US, Europeans and Arabs have mirrored the indecision and muddle of Syria’s rebel opposition.

“Assad has not won, Assad has survived,” says Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics. “There is a big difference between weathering the violent storm and basically defeating the opposition.”

“Both in his discourse and his image he projects much more confidence, he is much more at ease, he projects a narrative of victory,” Gerges says. “The truth is that Al Qaeda has damaged the opposition and has strengthened Assad’s hand.”

“But the fact is the opposition is divided but not defeated yet. You have between 70,000 and 100,000 fighters and we have to wait and see how the opposition, and how the United States, Western powers and regional allies play their cards.”

Pyrrhic victory?

Lebanese columnist Sarkis Naoum, a Syria expert who from the start predicted a long conflict, says Assad has won “the first half” of the conflict. “It is a pyrrhic victory. The scale is on Bashar and Iran’s side now but for sure Bashar won’t be able to win the overall war.”

While there are indications that the US and its allies are beginning to worry more about an Al Qaeda revival in Syria than about removing Assad, Western diplomats say, there is also evidence Washington is encouraging Saudi Arabia to provide selected rebel units with more sophisticated anti-tank weapons and Qatar to upgrade their skills with military training.

US President Barack Obama, facing criticism that he has been passive and indecisive on Syria, said last week that he would work with Congress to “ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition who offer the best alternative to terrorists and brutal dictators” but he offered no specifics.

While Obama and Congress deliberate, the dominant fear remains the absence of a credible alternative to take over power from Assad, whose family has ruled Syria ruthlessly for over 40 years. Instead, they see a scenario under which the country of 23 million people may go the way of Iraq or Libya.

At home, Assad is fond of telling foreign journalists that he and his wife continue to move around Damascus freely and without personal security. But locals say that has not happened since the uprising erupted in March 2011.

Security surrounding Assad’s movements is so tight that even at official ceremonies, it is not clear if the footage shot is of the same day or a previous day, they say.

One close observer noted that Assad doesn’t tell his guards in advance about his movements. “He suddenly emerges and they run after him to follow movement orders on the spot,” he said.

Close to home

Mortars continuously hit close to Assad’s private residence in Damascus, residents who live in the area say.

During a recent mortar barrage that came unusually close to his residence, neighbours say they saw several cars with darkened windows leave from a basement.

“It was so fast, almost instantaneous. We heard the mortar blast, which we felt in our home. It shook our windows. And by the time I walked up to the window to see what was happening, I saw maybe 10 cars leave from his residence, one after the other, all of them in a big hurry,” one resident said.

Locals along the Syrian coast say Assad and his family have not been to their summer residence for at least two years.

Western diplomats say that about a year into the uprising, “Assad must have gotten advice from his friends not to leave Damascus as it is the ultimate prize for the rebels”.

Under all scenarios, experts say a military solution to oust Assad is out of the question and, barring an assassination, a nuclear deal between Iran and major powers could in the long-term be the only way forward to usher a post-Assad order.

“He’s staying until someone puts a bullet in his head or until the regional equation changes and this won’t happen until a nuclear deal is reached,” said the Arab diplomat.

Another diplomat with close links to Assad admitted that the president, 48, is the man of the moment but not the future.

“He’s not perfect, and he could be more flexible on humanitarian issues. Besides, he won’t be around forever, and Syria will eventually move forward. But for now, he’s the better of the two choices,” the diplomat said.

But diehard loyalists close to Iran strongly believe Tehran will stand by its friend, whose alliance is a vital land bridge giving the non-Arab Persian state access to Hizbollah, its proxy militia fighting Israel from Lebanon.

“God forbid when his situation was worse than this, the Iranians did not give him up, they won’t now.”

TEHRAN — Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah on Sunday started a landmark visit to Tehran focused on mending fences between Shiite Iran and the Sunni-ruled monarchies in the Gulf.

The two-day visit comes amid a thaw in ties between Tehran and six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) since the election of Iran’s moderate President Hassan Rouhani in June 2013.

In greeting the emir, Rouhani, quoted on the presidency website, said the trip would mark “a decisive turning point” and that the two states had “close views on political, regional and international issues”.

The visit would “benefit both countries”, the emir was quoted as saying.

Sheikh Sabah, on his first visit to Tehran as head of state, flew in at the head of a high-level delegation including the foreign, oil, finance, commerce and industry ministers.

“Our ties with Kuwait are very important to us and we hope this trip would be a new chapter to boost cooperation,” said Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, quoted by state news agency IRNA.

The visit will also focus on controversial regional issues, including Iran’s military involvement in Syria, the situation in Iraq and Egypt, and the Middle East peace process, Kuwaiti officials said.

Relations between Iran and the Gulf, namely signs of rapprochement between regional power brokers Saudi Arabia and Iran, will also be discussed during the visit, Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Khaled Al Jarallah told Al Hayat newspaper.

He said Kuwait, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the GCC — which also includes Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — has balanced links with Tehran and is willing to mediate between Riyadh and Tehran.

Saudi Arabia and its GCC partners are deeply suspicious of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and wary of the talks under way between Tehran and Western powers aimed at striking a long-term compromise.

Riyadh is also at odds with Iran over the Syria war, in which Tehran backs the government and Saudi Arabia the rebels, as well as its involvement in Iraq, Bahrain and other countries in the region.

Last month, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal invited his Iranian counterpart Zarif to visit Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has also invited Iran to attend a two-day meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation that opens on June 18 in Jeddah, with Tehran welcoming the invite as a “friendly” gesture.

But Zarif told IRNA on Sunday that he will not be able to attend because the timing coincides with the next round of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers, scheduled for June 16-20 in Vienna.

In December, Zarif toured Kuwait, the UAE, Oman and Qatar, but skipped Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Kuwait’s ambassador to Tehran, Majdi Al Dhafiri, told Kuwait’s official news agency KUNA that Sheikh Sabah and Rouhani will discuss a number of “strategic projects” useful for the whole region. He did not elaborate.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Palestinian and Israeli rights groups on Sunday wrote to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton demanding her “urgent intervention” on behalf of 125 prisoners on long-term hunger strike.

The letter was sent as the overall number of Palestinian prisoners refusing food climbed to 290, including 70 being treated in hospital, an Israel Prisons Service spokeswoman told AFP.

Of that number, 125 have been on hunger strike for more than five weeks, beginning their mass protest on or shortly after April 24, Palestinian rights groups say.

Most of the prisoners are administrative detainees who are refusing to eat in protest over their being held without trial in a procedure which can be extended indefinitely.

“We... wish to bring to your attention the ongoing mass hunger strike involving approximately 125 Palestinian detainees and prisoners, and request your urgent intervention on their behalf,” said the letter, signed by 17 rights groups and the Palestinian prisoners affairs ministry.

“As of June 1, the majority of the hunger strikers have gone without food for 38 days.

“We have reached a critical stage and unless there is immediate intervention there will be dire consequences for the health of all those on strike,” it said.

Among those refusing food are six parliamentarians from the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), all of whom are administrative detainees, the letter said. Palestinian officials said they had only recently joined the strike.

Many had stopped taking vitamins and were only drinking water, it said, accusing Israel of withholding salt from them for the first fortnight of their strike.

The IPS denied the allegation, with spokeswoman Sivan Weizman telling AFP the detainees had been given “everything as required by law”.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior figure with the Palestine Liberation Organisation accused Israel of “systematically” using administrative detention as a tool for the collective punishment of Palestinians.

“We call on all states... to pressure Israel to drop its cruel and illegal use of the colonial practise of administrative detention and other administrative punitive measures,” she said in a statement.

Two years ago, more than 1,500 prisoners staged a four-week hunger strike which ended with a deal in which Israel agreed not to extend the prison terms of those in administrative detention unless fresh evidence against them emerged.

Israel also agreed to return those in solitary detention back to the general prison population as well as allowing a resumption of family visits for detainees who come from Gaza.

About 5,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons, nearly 200 of them under administrative detention orders, which allow suspects to be jailed without trial for up to six months.

Such orders can be renewed indefinitely by a military court.