Region

CAIRO — Egypt’s outgoing interim president enacted a law on Saturday making it illegal to desecrate the national flag or refuse to stand for the national anthem, his office said.

Those who break the new law will face up to one year in jail.

Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, the former army chief who ousted  Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, won an overwhelming victory in last week’s presidential election and is to take office next month.

The law, one of the last that will be enacted by outgoing interim president Adly Mansour, also stipulates a fine of up to 30,000 Egyptian pounds (about $4,300, 3,200 euros) for desecrating the flag or disrespecting the anthem, his office said in a statement.

Several Islamist members of Egypt’s parliament, which was dissolved in 2012, had sparked outrage when they refused to stand for the national anthem. Some hardline Islamists reject displays of nationalism, which they view as a Western innovation.

ABU DHABI — The United Arab Emirates foresees greater stability in Egypt after former army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi won a presidential election last week and will continue to back it financially, the UAE foreign minister said on Saturday.

Since the army ousted Egypt’s first freely elected president, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi amid mass protests against his rule last July, the UAE has become a major donor for Egypt, taking a hands-on approach in its support for Cairo.

The Gulf Arab countries were opposed to Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, which they regard as a security threat. In total Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE have pledged over $12 billion in loans and donations since July.

Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed also told reporters the UAE wanted international partner to join in their efforts to repair Egypt’s shattered economy.

“We want to have partners from around the world involved, whether it be partners like Germany... or institutions like the World Bank and the IMF,” Sheikh Abdullah said at a news conference in Abu Dhabi on the occasion of a visit by his German counterpart.

The minister said the UAE had a plan to revive Egypt’s economy and put it back on track.

“The next period will be different. The previous one was a transitional period and now there will be more stability,” he said.

The International Monetary Fund and Egypt have discussed a possible loan worth up to $4.8 billion to help the economy, embattled since a 2011 uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak and drove away tourists and foreign investors, two main sources of foreign currency.

These talks took a backseat when financial aid began flowing from Gulf Arab states following Morsi’s ouster last year.

BEIRUT — Syrian refugees in Lebanon will lose their status as such if they return home for a visit, the interior ministry said Saturday.

At the same time, there are calls for deporting those who voted in an election in which Syrian President Bashar Assad is certain to win.

More than a million Syrians have fled their war-torn country for Lebanon in the past three years, according to the United Nations.

“Syrian displaced people who are registered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees are requested to refrain from entering into Syria starting June 1, 2014, or be penalised by losing their status as refugees in Lebanon,” said the ministry.

The statement, published by the National News Agency, said the measure is grounded “in a concern for security in Lebanon and the relationship between Syrian displaced and Lebanese nationals... and in a bid to prevent any friction between them”.

The decision, which takes effect Sunday, comes two days after tens of thousands of Syrians flocked to their Beirut embassy to vote in the election.

Lebanon’s March 14 coalition, which opposes Assad and its Lebanese allies, said those who voted “should be deported immediately... because their security in Syria is not under threat”.

The refugee influx into Lebanon has burdened the tiny Mediterranean country’s weak economy, with politicians on all sides calling for measures to limit the flow.

Lebanon has not signed the Convention on Refugees, and refers to Syrians forced out of their country by war as “displaced”.

Most Syrian refugees in Lebanon live in informal camps dotted around the country, mainly in border areas in the north and east.

The authorities say the actual number of Syrians in Lebanon is far higher than the nearly 1.1 million accounted for by UNHCR.

Lebanon has frequently complained it lacks the necessary resources to cope with them, and that the labour market is struggling to accommodate them.

Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil warned Thursday that the country would “collapse” if the influx continues to soar.

He also said Beirut was taking measured aimed at “putting an end to the Syrian migration wave to Lebanon”.

Lebanon, dominated by Damascus for nearly 30 years until 2005, is still sharply divided into pro- and anti-Assad camps.

It has also seen a spillover of Syria’s violence, killing scores in the past three years, mainly in battles and explosions.

On Saturday, the Lebanese army said an explosive device planted inside a vehicle detonated during the night in the border town of Arsal, wounding two people.

A local official in Arsal told AFP the vehicle had a Syrian registration plate, and that “a personal dispute” had been behind the attack.

Arsal is home to more than 100,000 Syrian refugees.

DAMASCUS — Nearly 2,000 civilians, including 567 children, have been killed in a massive air offensive this year by Syrian regime forces on the northern province of Aleppo, a monitor said Friday.

The staggering death toll from barrel bombings and other air raids on rebel-held areas comes just four days before the June 3 presidential election that is expected to return Bashar Assad to power.

“From the beginning of January to May 29, 1,963 civilians were killed by barrel bombs and other air raids. Among them were 567 children and 283 women,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Control of Aleppo city, Syria’s former commercial hub, has been divided since a rebel offensive in July 2012, and government aircraft have also targeted nearby towns and villages held by the opposition.

The air offensive began in mid-December, and intensified in January, with regime helicopters raining barrels bombs on rebel areas, causing many thousands of people to flee their homes.

The munitions are cylindrical metal containers packed with explosives and scrap metal, which are unguided and cannot be directed at military targets.

Their use has been condemned by the international community.

The United Nations saying they have a “devastating effect”, the United States has denounced them as “barbaric” and rights group have said their use could amount to a war crime.

Activists have criticised the international community for failing to stop the “massacres” in Aleppo.

‘Criminal regime’

In April, Human Rights Watch said: “President Assad is talking about elections, but for Aleppo’s residents, the only campaign they are witnessing is a military one of barrel bombs and indiscriminate shelling.”

The election will be held only in government-controlled areas inside Syria and in Syrian embassies, where voting began on Thursday.

The regime has barred the exiled opposition from standing in the race.

Assad, whose family has ruled Syria with an iron fist for four decades, is expected to win a third, seven-year term in Tuesday’s election, in which he faces two little-known challengers.

The opposition has dismissed the vote as a “farce” and the United States calls it a “parody of democracy”.

Rebel Free Syrian Army chief General Abdel Ilah Al Bashir on Thursday urged Syrians boycott a vote run by a “criminal” regime.

“O Syrians, historical duty, true patriotism and fears over the dangers threatening Syria and Syrians dictate that we must foil this farce by boycotting it completely,” said Bashir.

The election is seen as a tactic by Damascus to strengthen Assad’s position.

Even though the opposition has seized significant swathes of territory, especially in the north and northwest, the Iran and-Russia-backed regime still massively outguns the rebels with its regular army, air force, growing paramilitary force and elite fighters from Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbollah.

The vote also comes as the rebels have been weakened by infighting among rival jihadist groups.

On Friday, senior Iranian foreign policy adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, said he expected the election to be “carried out without a hitch” and “to strengthen the legitimacy of the Bashar government”.

The Syrian conflict began as an Arab Spring-inspired, peaceful movement demanding political change but it descended into civil war after Assad unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent.

At least 162,000 people have died as a direct result of the fighting and bombings, according to the observatory which relies on a network of activists and medics on the ground for its reports.

According to the European Commission, an additional “200,000 Syrians have died from chronic illnesses due to lack of access to treatment and medicines”.

It also said that nearly half the country’s population of 22.4 million has fled the country or has been displaced inside Syria while 3.5 million are in areas impossible which cannot be accessed by aid workers.

“Denying such access is a crime,” said this week European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, Kristalina Georgieva.

LONDON — The Foreign Office said Saturday it was following up the case of a British woman reportedly sentenced to 20 years in jail in Iran for posting anti-regime propaganda on Facebook.

Iranian opposition website Kaleme said Roya Saberinejad Nobakht, an Iranian-born British woman, was among eight people jailed for posts on the social networking site.

The 47-year-old, from Stockport outside Manchester in northwest England, was detained whilst visiting friends in the city of Shiraz in October, reports said.

Nobakht has dual British and Iranian nationality and has lived in England with her British husband, Daryoush Taghipoor, 47, for more than six years, according to The Times newspaper.

He travelled to Iran to find her, was allowed to visit her for 10 minutes and has not seen her since, the daily said.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We are aware that a British national has received a custodial sentence in Iran. We are seeking to establish the full facts and are following up the case with the Iranian authorities.”

There is an ongoing clash in Iran between moderates, backed by President Hassan Rouhani, and hardliners, over Internet freedom.

GENEVA — An international team of scientists say they have identified a compound that can fight coronaviruses, responsible for the SARS and MERS outbreaks, which currently have no cure.

Coronaviruses affect the upper and lower respiratory tracts in humans. They are the reason for up to a third of common colds.

A more severe strain of the virus, thought to have come from bats, triggered the global SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic in 2002, which killed nearly 800 people.

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a new strain discovered in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and thought to have originated in camels. More deadly but less contagious, it has so far killed 193 people out of 636 confirmed cases.

Now, a team of scientists led by Edward Trybala from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Volker Thiel from the University of Bern, have discovered a compound called K22, which appears to block the ability of the virus to spread in humans.

“This finding is important in light of the fact that some emerging coronaviruses, such as SARS and MERS... are potential pandemic-causing pathogens,” Trybala said in an e-mail to AFP.

In “our work we found a novel strategy to combat these viruses,” he added.

The team screened 16,671 different compounds before realising that K22 could combat a weak form of coronavirus that causes mild cold-like symptoms.

They then went on to show that it can fight more serious strains, including SARS and MERS.

In an article for specialist journal “PLOS Pathogens”, the scientists explained that the virus reproduces in the cells that line the human respiratory system.

The virus takes over the membranes that separate different parts of human cells, reshaping them into a sort of protective armour in order to start its production cycle, and so creating “viral factories”, Trybala told AFP.

K22 acts at an early stage in this process, preventing the virus from taking control of the cell membranes and so opening up “new treatment possibilities”, he said.

“The results confirm that the use of the membrane of the host cell is a crucial step in the life-cycle of the virus,” the researchers wrote. Their work shows that “the process is highly sensitive and can be influenced by anti-viral medications”.

They said the recent SARS epidemic and MERS outbreak mean there should be urgent investment in testing K22 outside the laboratory and developing medicines.

While K22 still has a way to go before it can be tested on humans, Trybala still believes “that identification of this new strategy of combating coronaviruses will aid to develop an effective and safe antiviral drug”.

Earlier this month, experts gathered in Geneva by the World Health Organisation confirmed that MERS was spreading but had yet to reach the level of global emergency.

Most of the MERS cases and deaths so far have been in Saudi Arabia, but the virus has been imported to more than a dozen other countries. All of those cases have involved people who became ill while in the Middle East.

Iran registered its first death from MERS on Thursday, and has registered six cases of the infection.

TRIPOLI — Rival interim governments are disputing power in Tripoli less than four weeks before a general election, claiming control of Libya’s huge currency reserves from oil and gas.

The power struggle is creating a quandary for foreign diplomats as the competing claimants trumpet their meetings as a vindication of their legitimacy.

Prime minister Abdullah Al Thani had announced his intention to step down earlier this year after an armed attack on his family but he is insisting that his successor should be chosen by a new parliament rather than its contested predecessor.

Prime Minister Ahmed Miitig insists his election by the outgoing Islamist-led parliament, largely boycotted by liberals for months, was valid and he has formed a rival administration which met Thursday in a Tripoli luxury hotel.

“We have got ourselves in a real bind,” said analyst Salem Al Zarrouk.

“Which of the two governments is the central bank going to deal with, who is going to hold the chequebook and who is going to sign the deals with foreign and domestic firms?” he asked.

Libya’s foreign currency reserves built up from past oil and gas earnings still stand at more than $100 billion, but they have been depleting fast from $132 billion last July.

A still unresolved rebellion for autonomy in eastern Libya has cut oil exports from 1.5 million barrels per day to just 240,000 bpd.

That has reduced earnings from $4.6 billion a month to just $1 billion, far short of the $3.5 billion the central bank says Libya needs each month just to cover imports.

“To vote in a government to run the country for less than a month and to put in its hands billions of dollars is virtual madness and looks like a deliberate ploy to complicate the situation,” said fellow analyst Moataz Al Majbari.

“Ahmed Miitig must withdraw from politics immediately. His insistence on his claim to the premiership will only deepen the crisis,” he said.

Miitig has repeatedly refused to give way, insisting he is determined to “serve my country even for a few minutes”.

Zarrouk accused the Muslim Brotherhood and its more radical Islamist allies of seeking to install the nominally independent Miitig as part of “a last-ditch bid to hang on to power”.

Analyst Mohamed Al Jebal said the 42-year-old businessman from Libya’s third city Misrata should stand down to save his fledgling political career.

“What he’s doing now is political suicide,” Jebal said.

But Miitig’s supporters in the outgoing interim parliament have been defiant.

Speaker Nuri Abu Sahmein has warned Thani that he could face criminal prosecution for his refusal to hand over the premiership in accordance with the vote in the General National Congress.

Tripoli power struggle 

The GNC’s legitimacy was thrown into question when it unilaterally prolonged its mandate, due to expire this February, until December, only agreeing to a June 25 election for a successor body in the face of mass protests on the streets.

But it still insists that its election in Libya’s first-ever free polls in July 2012 gives it executive as well as legislative authority until then.

The power struggle in Tripoli has brought to a halt negotiations on reopening two key oil terminals which remain under blockade by rebels demanding autonomy for the east.

They want a return to the federal constitution which Libya had for the first 12 years after independence in 1951 with key spending powers in the hands of three regions.

And as the rival prime ministers square off in Tripoli, waiting in the wings outside Benghazi is a former general and longtime US exile whose forces have launched two armed assaults, backed by air power, on jihadists in the main eastern city.

Khalifa Haftar claims his forces represent the legitimate national army, and although he has repeatedly denied any political ambitions, his Islamist opponents accuse him of plotting a coup in Tripoli with the backing of liberals and their militia allies.

“Now we have two governments and pretty much two parliaments and two armies,” said Suleiman Dogha, a former political leader in the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

“I fear that we will end up with two or three states.”

AMMAN — At least 40 Syrian soldiers were killed on Saturday when rebels detonated explosives packed beneath an army base in Aleppo, activists and rebels said.

The Islamic Front, an umbrella rebel organisation, claimed responsibility for the bombing, though the claim could not be immediately verified.

A video posted on the Internet showed a massive blast sending clouds of dust and debris into the air as gunshots rang out in the old Zahrawi area of Aleppo.

The front said 40 government soldiers were killed. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 20 died in the blast and added that fierce clashes had erupted along the divided city’s frontlines, where fighting between rebels and troops has escalated in recent days.

Rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad regularly carry out guerrilla attacks but have only recently begun using large tunnel bombs on military targets. Last week, they claimed responsibility for blowing up a hillside army base and a hotel used by soldiers in Aleppo.

The government has vastly superior firepower and has intensified air strikes using crude barrel bombs on residential areas in rebel-held Aleppo, killing at least 132 civilians in the last three days, a local medical group said.

Gunbattles, air strikes, car bombs, shelling and executions regularly kill more than 200 people a day in Syria, where a conflict that started as a peaceful protest movement has killed over 150,000 people and forced millions from their homes.

Despite the carnage and loss of swathes of territory in the north and east to insurgents, Syria plans to hold a presidential election next Tuesday that is all but certain to give Assad a third term. Opponents have dismissed the vote as a farce.

DUBAI — Sudan turned down an Iranian offer to set up air defences on its Red Sea coast after a 2012 air strike Khartoum blamed on Israel, fearing they would upset Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia, Sudan’s foreign minister was quoted as saying on Thursday.

In an interview with the Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper that seemed aimed at improving frosty ties with Riyadh, Ali Karti played down Khartoum’s links to Iran and to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is outlawed in Saudi Arabia.

“Iran, in truth, offered to set up air defence platforms on the Western coast of the Red Sea after the latest Israel raid, but Sudan rejected that because this would require Iranian arms experts [on the ground],” Karti said during a recent visit to Saudi Arabia, Al Hayat reported.

“We rejected that because it is an Iranian presence against Saudi Arabia, something which we do not accept,” he added.

The 2012 air strike killed four people and partially destroyed an arms factory in Khartoum. Sudan blamed Israel, which did not comment at the time on the accusations.

Israeli officials have in turn accused Sudan of funnelling weapons from Iran to the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iranian officials were not immediately available for a comment on Karti’s comments.

Sunni-powerhouse Saudi Arabia, a key regional ally of the United States, has been locked in a contest with non-Arab Shiite power Iran for influence in the Middle East.

The rivalry has effectively divided the region into two camps, with countries either allied to Saudi Arabia or to Iran.

Qatar factor

Sudan has been entangled in a complex web that put it at odds with Saudi Arabia when the world’s top oil exporter tried to shore-up Egypt’s military-backed government in its struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood after the army ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi from power last year.

Sudanese media have said Karti travelled to Saudi Arabia two weeks ago for talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal to improve “lukewarm” ties between the two countries.

Karti denied that Khartoum supported the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been outlawed by Egypt as well as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Brotherhood’s embrace of the ballot box challenges the principle of dynastic rule in the Gulf.

“There is a belief in the Gulf states that we have feelings towards the Muslim Brotherhood in any country in the Gulf or even in Egypt. But Sudan has refused to join the Muslim Brotherhood group,” Karti said, according to Al Hayat.

Sudan said last month after a visit by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani that Doha would deposit $1 billion at Sudan’s central bank as part of an aid package to Khartoum — a move likely to be seen in the region as evidence of Sudan’s ties to Qatar, an ally of the Brotherhood.

In his interview with Al Hayat, Karti also played down Sudan’s relationship with Tehran. “Our ties with Iran are quite ordinary,” Karti said.

SEOUL — Lebanon’s ambassador to South Korea died in a car accident Thursday in Seoul, police said.

Jad Saeed Al Hassan was driving his car by himself when it hit another vehicle inside a tunnel, police officers said on condition of anonymity, citing department rules.

He was taken to a hospital, where doctors said the diplomat had died before his arrival, according to officials at the Inje University Seoul Paik Hospital.

Two South Koreans in the second car were slightly injured and taken to another hospital, the officers said. Seoul National University Hospital refused to comment on the status of their injuries.

Other details about the accident were not immediately known, including what caused the ambassador’s car to hit the other vehicle.

A person at the Lebanese embassy in Seoul confirmed that Hassan, who was born in 1954, had died, but refused to provide further details.