Region

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia Tuesday urged “stern” world action against Syria after the regime’s decision to hold presidential elections and its alleged use of toxic gas against civilians.

Saudi Arabia is one of the main backers of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad in a civil war increasingly seen as a proxy battle between it and regional rival Iran.

Syria’s plan to hold elections is “an escalation and undermines Arab and international efforts to peacefully resolve the crisis based on the [outcomes of] the Geneva I conference,” said Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal.

A 2012 peace conference in the Swiss city called for a transitional government ahead of free and fair elections, with no mention of Assad’s role in the transition.

Syrian daily Al Watan reported Tuesday that the date for the presidential elections will be announced next week and is expected to be around June.

The international community has criticised Syria’s plan to go ahead with the vote, which would likely see Assad win another seven-year mandate.

This decision, “as well as dangerous information on the regime’s recent use of toxic gases against civilians in the town of Kafr Zita”, in the central Hama province, represent “clear defiance” of the UN Security Council, Faisal said in Riyadh.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said residents choking from poisoning in the rebel-held town of Kafr Zita were hospitalised after bombing raids on Friday.

Activists in the area accused the regime of using chlorine gas, saying it caused “more than 100 cases of suffocation”.

But state television claimed that Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, a key force in the revolt, had released chlorine in an attack on the town.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict broke out in March 2011, according to the Observatory.

No negotiations 

with Qatar 

Separately, Prince Faisal took a swipe at Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, who charged in March that Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Qatar were supporting militant groups in Iraq and across the Middle East, as well as terrorism worldwide.

Saudi Arabia criticised those accusations as “aggressive and irresponsible,” and Prince Faisal said it would be “more useful” if Maliki would “address Iraqi politicians and his people to resolve his country’s problems instead of throwing them at others.”

Iraq has been hit by a yearlong surge in violence that has reached levels not seen since 2008, driven in part by the conflict in neighbouring Syria.

Relations have always been strained between Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Maliki’s Shiite-led government, backed by Tehran.

Turning to the crisis between his country and Qatar, Prince Faisal insisted there were “no secret negotiations” to defuse tensions.

Last month, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates recalled their ambassadors from Doha after accusing the fellow Gulf Cooperation Council state of interfering in their internal affairs and of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

GCC countries “are free in their policies, provided they do not harm interests of other members” of the regional grouping, said Prince Faisal.

“As long as these countries adhere to this principle, there will be no problems among GCC states.”

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies are hostile to the Brotherhood, fearing its brand of grassroots activism could undermine their authority.

DUBAI — The boss of a telecom company accused Israel of using sanctions to hold the Palestinian economy hostage after Israel stopped his firm from importing equipment to launch services in Gaza.

Wataniya Palestine had imported 40 per cent of the equipment it needed to launch a mobile service — considered a driver of economic growth — before Israel last week tightened restrictions on the Palestinian territories.

“Why is the economy held hostage? Don’t you want to give people hope or is it just a way to polarise society?” Wataniya’s chief executive Fayez Husseini told Reuters in an interview.

“You’re pulling the private sector into the political arena. Let the economy grow, let the people work and then you defuse political tension.”

Israel imposed economic sanctions against the Palestinians on Thursday in retaliation for their leadership signing international conventions.

An unnamed Israeli official told Reuters then that Israel would deduct debt payments from tax transfers the Palestinian Authority routinely receives, and limit the self-rule government’s bank deposits in Israel.

The official made no mention of a trade element to the sanctions, though Husseini said that “when the Palestinians went to the UN agencies all [Wataniya’s] remaining shipments were halted”.

Having waited seven years to begin operations in Gaza the firm, an affiliate of Qatar’s Ooredoo, had obtained Israeli permission for the equipment imports into the enclave in December.

“We have no ability to install or operate a radio network there. It was not optimal, but we accepted what Israel proposed in terms of spectrum and they were supposed to come back four weeks ago with the final go-ahead and we haven’t heard since.”

Loss-making Wataniya received telecommunication licence for the calls- and text-based 2G and Internet-capable 3G services in the Palestinian territories in 2007.

It launched 2G in the West Bank in 2009, having waited two years for frequencies. It is still waiting for further spectrum to provide 3G services in the territory and Israel has halted talks on that as part of the sanctions, said Husseini.

Politics and technology

Israel, which occupied the West Bank in a 1967 war, controls the airwaves of the territory, and Palestinian firms’ lack of 3G is a constraint on its technology sector while Israel’s soars.

“It’s a pure political issue and it will only serve to slow down the economy, said Husseini. “3G is all about data and businesses getting connected.”

The World Bank estimates that a 10 percentage point rise in broadband penetration can increase a country’s economic output by between 0.5 and 1.4 per cent.

Under its licence, Wataniya should be the sole 3G provider in the West Bank for four years. But 3G sim cards for Israeli operators are being sold there illegally, Husseini said.

He estimates Wataniya is losing about $100 million of 3G revenue annually to Israeli operators. “There’s a spillage of 3G from the settlements into the West Bank cities,” said Husseini. “It comes at no cost — they don’t pay any taxes, any fees.”

Husseini urged the Palestinian Authority to extend and amend Wataniya 15-year licence to allow for the restrictions it has faced, and said the remaining $214 million it owes on its $354 million licence fee should be waived.

“Our view is that we overpaid and we should not be paying any more,” said Husseini, as the 3G four-year exclusivity clause “constitutes the majority of the licence fee”.

Wataniya generated revenue of $89.2 million in 2013, up from $84.1 million a year earlier. That increase helped it trim its loss last year to $21.3 million from $23.8 million in 2012.

Husseini said a prolonged cost-cutting programme will enable the company to turn profitable even without Gaza or West Bank 3G, “but we will not be like a normal telco, where we should have been a supermarket we will have to operate like a grocery store... We plan to break even by 2016-2017.”

Wataniya sold 15 per cent of its shares in an initial public offering in 2011. It was also due to float a further 15 per cent.

“Given our situation we don’t feel there will be any demand for our shares at this point,” he added. “When things turn around we will go back to the original plan.”

Wataniya’s shares ended Monday at $0.91, up slightly on Wednesday’s all-time low, but 30 per cent below their IPO price.

TEHRAN — Iran on Monday urged United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to intervene directly in a row sparked by America’s refusal to give Tehran’s chosen UN envoy a visa.

The spat over Hamid Aboutalebi has undermined a cautious thaw in relations after decades of enmity following the storming of the US embassy in 1979 and the subsequent hostage crisis.

“We ask Mr Ban Ki-moon to step in and take the necessary action for resolving this issue,” Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi told the official IRNA news agency.

As the host government, the United States is obliged to issue visas to diplomats who serve at the United Nations. Aboutalebi has previously attended sessions at the UN headquarters in New York.

Washington has said it will not issue a visa to Aboutalebi because of his links to the students who seized the US embassy just months after the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Aboutalebi has insisted he was not part of the hostage taking although he has acknowledged that he served a limited role as a translator for the students.

RAMALLAH — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are to meet again Wednesday with US mediator Martin Indyk in a bid to try and save the peace process from crumbling, a Palestinian official said.

Indyk would travel to the region to oversee the meeting, the second three-way talks since last Thursday, said the official who requested anonymity.

There was no immediate confirmation from officials in Israel, which observes the seven-day Jewish holidays of Passover from sunset on Monday.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat met on Sunday his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy Yitzhak Molcho on Sunday.

That meeting was “difficult” and there are still “big gaps” between the sides, the Palestinian official said.

The talks hit an impasse two weeks ago when Israel refused to release as agreed a group of Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinians retaliated by seeking accession to several international treaties.

The peace process suffered a new blow last week after Israel said it would freeze the transfer of duties it collects on behalf of the Palestinians in retaliation for their diplomatic offensive.

The monthly 80 million euros ($111 million) in taxes collected by Israel represents about two-thirds of the Palestinian Authority’s income.

Israel also reportedly plans to suspend its participation with the Palestinians in developing a gas field off the Gaza Strip and to put a cap on Palestinian deposits in its banks.

Direct peace talks were kick-started in July by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who shuttled back and forth to the region to revive a peace process that had been dead for three years.

They have since hit obstacle after obstacle and further deteriorated just weeks ahead of an April 29 deadline.

TRIPOLI — The Libyan trial of more than 30 top figures from Muammar Qadhafi’s deposed regime opened briefly Monday but the court adjourned proceedings as key defendants, including onetime heir apparent Seif Al Islam, were absent.

The adjournment until April 27 came just 40 minutes after the trial started, as rights groups voiced doubts that the defendants, accused of abuses during the 2011 uprising that toppled the regime, would get a fair trial.

It was the second postponement since March 24.

Out of 37 charged only 23 were in the dock, sitting behind bars in blue prison uniforms in the heavily secured courtroom.

Among those present were former intelligence chief Abdullah Al Senussi and Qadhafi’s last premier, Al Baghdadi Al Mahmudi.

Senussi appeared weak and pleaded with the court to treat him like other prisoners.

“I would like this treatment to end so that I can receive visits from my family like the other prisoners,” he told the judge when asked if he had any requests.

The prosecution said Senussi was never denied visiting rights and had been visited by family members.

Seddik Al Sour, the representative of the prosecution, admitted however that some of the defendants were given “special treatment” due to what he described as the “gravity of the charges against them”.

All the defendants are charged with murder, kidnapping, complicity in incitement to rape, plunder, sabotage, embezzlement of public funds and acts harmful to national unity.

Mahmudi asked the court to be allowed to see his lawyers in jail, and said that some members of his defence team had not been allowed to attend the trial. At least two lawyers represented him on Monday.

During the brief 40-minute hearing, some lawyers complained that they have had no access to the charge sheets against their clients.

The prosecution dismissed their claims, saying the documents could be consulted any time at the prosecutor’s office but that defence lawyers were barred from making copies of them.

Monday’s postponement was due to a number of defendants, notably Seif, being absent, and is meant to give lawyers time to prepare their cases.

It will also allow for preparations to be made to set up video links with Seif and other prisoners who are detained outside Tripoli and whose transfer could pose a security risk.

Grossly unfair’ to defendants 

Seif has been held in the western town of Zintan since he was arrested by rebels in November 2011. The central authorities in Tripoli have tried without success to negotiate his transfer to the capital.

The other defendants are held in the eastern city of Misrata.

Seif and Senussi are wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the uprising.

In May, the ICC rejected Tripoli’s request to try Seif in Libya because of doubts over a fair trial. Tripoli has appealed the decision.

But the ICC last October gave Tripoli the go-ahead to try Senussi inside the country.

Saadi Qadhafi, another of the slain dictator’s sons, was extradited from Niger in March, and is also due to go on trial. However, he has not yet been formally charged.

Human Rights Watch has called on authorities to grant the defendants full access to a lawyer, adequate time to prepare their defence and the ability to challenge evidence presented against them.

But Richard Dicker, HRW’s international justice director, said in a statement Monday that “this case has been riddled with procedural flaws right from the beginning, which have made it grossly unfair to the defendants”.

“Putting Qadhafi-era officials on trial without fair-trial guarantees shouldn’t leave anyone satisfied that justice is being done,” he added.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli forces arrested five Jews suspected of trying to sacrifice a goat at Jerusalem’s highly sensitive Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem Monday as the Jewish Passover holiday begins, a spokesperson said.

The five “extreme rightwing Jews” were dragging the goat towards the flashpoint compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, when they were stopped and taken into custody, security spokesperson Luba Samri said in a statement.

The incident took place as the seven-day holiday, in which traditionally a lamb or a kid is sacrificed, was to begin at sunset.

The compound, in the walled Old City, houses the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosques, and is the third holiest shrine in Islam.

It is also venerated by Jews as the site where King Herod’s temple stood before it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, and is where the priests of antiquity would have ritually reenacted the first slaughter.

Clashes frequently break out there between Palestinians and Israeli security forces.

Muslims are intensely sensitive to any perceived threat to the status of the compound and many believe Jews are determined to build a new temple on the wide esplanade.

Jews are not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount.

Jewish fringe groups have vowed to build a third Temple, but Israeli political and religious authorities have repeatedly dismissed the idea.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli was killed and two others wounded in a shooting near the southern West Bank city of Hebron on Monday, the army said.

“Fire was opened at Israeli civilian vehicles on route 35, near Hebron, and we’re conducting widespread searches for the perpetrators... an Israeli civilian was killed in the attack,” an army spokeswoman told AFP.

A separate army statement added that two other Israelis were also wounded.

Israeli military radio said the victim was a man, and his wife and one of their children were those injured.

It was unclear if they were Israeli settlers residing in the occupied West Bank.

The flashpoint city of Hebron, home to nearly 200,000 Palestinians, also comprises some 80 settler housing units in the centre of town housing about 700 Jews who live under Israeli army protection.

The incident took place as the seven-day Jewish Passover holiday began.

In September, an Israeli soldier was shot dead by a suspected Palestinian gunman in the centre of Hebron during the weeklong Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel is holding secret talks with some Arab states that do not recognise it, looking to establish diplomatic ties based on a common fear of Iran, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Monday.

Amongst the countries he was in contact with were Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Lieberman told newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth — the first such disclosure by a senior Israeli official.

The two nations swiftly denied the existence of any talks with Israel.

Both these states, along with most other Arab nations, have traditionally been highly hostile towards Israel, which has only signed peace deals with two neighbours — Egypt and Jordan.

However, anti-Israeli sentiment was being superseded by a growing concern over Iran’s nuclear programme, Tehran’s regional allies, and the menace of Islamist militancy, Lieberman said.

“For the first time there is an understanding there that the real threat is not Israel, the Jews or Zionism. It is Iran, global jihad, [Lebanese Shiite guerrilla group] Hizbollah and Al Qaeda,” the foreign minister said.

“There are contacts, there are talks, but we are very close to the stage in which within a year or 18 months it will no longer be secret, it will be conducted openly,” added Lieberman, who is a far rightist in the coalition government.

Lieberman said he was in touch with “moderate” Arabs - a term Israelis often use for Sunni states in the Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East that align with US interests. He also said he would have no problem visiting Saudi Arabia or Kuwait.

“I have spent more than a few years of meetings and talks with them. As far as they are concerned, there is only one red rag and that is Iran,” he said.

A spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said: “There are no ties or talks with Israel at any level.” In Kuwait, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Khaled Al Jarallah said: “It is not true, we don’t have these kind of talks.”

Full relations

Yedioth paraphrased Lieberman as saying some new Israeli-Arab peace accords would be signed in 2019.

“I’m certain that by then we will have a situation in which we have full diplomatic relations with most of the moderate Arab states. And you can count on my word,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long hinted that Israel and the Gulf states share a similar goal in halting Iran’s nuclear programme, saying they all saw a mortal threat in its ambitious atomic drive.

Iran denies that it is planning to build nuclear weapons.

Senior Israeli officials have also said that like themselves, moderate Sunni states are worried that Washington was not taking a tough enough line with Tehran.

However, analysts have scoffed at the idea that ties between Israel and much of the Arab world could be normalised while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remained unresolved.

US-brokered peace talks between the two are floundering, with no indication that a resolution is anywhere in sight.

“To Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, the cost of open relations with Israel at this time may be higher than the benefit, given the position of the Arab street,” Israeli think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies, said in a report in December.

Lieberman, who has worked hard in recent months to soften his hardline international image, suggested Arab nations were as eager as Israel to be open about their shared interests.

“I think that they too are stewing in their own juice and reaching an awareness that there will be no choice but to move from the secret stage of the dialogue between us to the open stage of the talks,” he said.

RIYADH — A Saudi Arabian court on Sunday jailed 13 men to sentences ranging from one to 10 years for aiding and financing militants fighting abroad, conspiring inside Saudi Arabia and harbouring wanted suspects, state news agency SPA reported on Monday.

Other charges for which the 13 were convicted included money laundering, bribery and possession of illegal weapons. They were all given travel bans to come into force after their sentences finish. Another seven men were acquitted, SPA reported.

Saudi courts have sentenced hundreds of convicted militants to prison terms in recent months as they work to overcome a long backlog of cases related to a militant campaign last decade that killed hundreds.

The security forces detained thousands of people after the bombings and shootings started in 2003 who were accused of security offences, including joining militant groups, and fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Saudi and international human rights groups have also accused the government of using its crackdown on militants to detain peaceful dissidents in the conservative Islamic kingdom, something the authorities deny.

In February King Abdullah issued a royal decree imposing prison terms of three to 20 years on any Saudi who travels overseas to fight and of five to 30 years on any who gives moral or material support to groups the government considers extremist.

The move reflected the government’s fears that the civil war in Syria, where many rebels fighting against the government are militants, coupled with Egypt’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, will inspire radicalism inside the kingdom.

The world’s top oil exporter is a leading supporter of both the Syrian rebellion against President Bashar Al Assad and of Egypt’s military rulers.

JEDDAH — A foreigner has died from MERS in the western Saudi city of Jeddah, where authorities have sought to calm fears over the spreading respiratory illness, the health ministry said Monday.

The death of the 70-year-old man brought the toll of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)  in the most-affected country to 69 fatalities. Four new cases of infection were registered, bringing the kingdom’s total to 194, the ministry said.

It did not disclose the man’s nationality.

Last week panic over the spread of MERS among medical staff in Jeddah had caused a temporary closure of an emergency room at a main hospital, prompting a visit by Health Minister Abdullah Al Rabiah aimed at reassuring an anxious public.

Rabiah briefed the Cabinet on Monday following his visit to hospitals in Jeddah over the weekend.

“The situation concerning the coronavirus is reassuring,” a government statement said following the meeting.

The virus was initially concentrated in the eastern region but has now spread across other areas.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said Friday that it had been told of 212 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS infection worldwide, of which 88 have proved fatal.

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

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 may have been passed directly from the animals to humans.

But the Saudi health minister warned against assuming that camels were behind the virus, insisting in remarks published by Makkah daily on Monday that “one should not jump to conclusions”.

“Saudi hospitals did not deal with a single case of infection that involved contact with the animal,” he said.

His statement appeared in contrast with an announcement by his ministry on November 11, which said that a camel became the first animal to test positive in “preliminary laboratory checks”.

The ministry said at the time that the camel was owned by a person diagnosed with the disease.