Region

ANKARA — Turkey’s government sought parliamentary approval to boost the powers of the secret service on Thursday, a move seen by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s critics as a bid to tighten his grip on the apparatus of state as he wages a bitter power struggle.

Control of the NATO member’s security apparatus goes to the heart of a feud between Erdogan and Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally based in the United States whose network of followers wields influence in the police and judiciary.

Erdogan accuses Gulen’s Hizmet (“Service”) network of orchestrating a plot to unseat him, tapping thousands of phones, including his own, over years and using leaked recordings to unleash corruption allegations against his inner circle in the run-up to a series of elections. Gulen denies involvement.

According to an initial draft, seen by Reuters, proposals before parliament include giving the National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) more scope for eavesdropping and foreign operations, as well as greater immunity from prosecution for top agents.

The MIT is run by Hakan Fidan, one of Erdogan’s closest confidantes, who was himself the subject of an inquiry in February 2012 seen by the prime minister’s circle as a challenge to his authority from a Gulen-influenced judiciary.

Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said the priority was to update existing laws which were decades out of date and to bring Turkey’s spy agency in line with international peers.

“As with Western examples, the aim is to make the legislation more transparent and bestow the agency with a greater range of options,” he told parliament.

“With this draft law, the MIT’s activities regarding foreign security, national defence, the struggle against terrorism, counter-intelligence and cyber crime will be intensified.”

Erdogan’s AK Party has a large majority in parliament.

Erdogan’s response to the corruption inquiry — purging thousands of officers from the police force and reassigning hundreds of prosecutors and judges — has raised concern in Western capitals, including Brussels, which fears the EU candidate nation is moving further away from European norms.

“Events over the past three months have cast doubt on Turkey’s commitment to European values and standards,” EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fuele said, citing tightened control of the judiciary and “massive transfers” of police and prosecutors as part of Erdogan’s purging of the bodies.

Erdogan’s aides says such criticism underestimates the level of threat to national security from what they describe as a “parallel state” seeking to sabotage his government and thwart his ambition to stand in presidential elections in August.

The latest of the leaked recordings, posted on YouTube days ahead of March 30 local polls which were seen as a referendum on Erdogan’s rule, was of a meeting between Fidan, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and the deputy head of the armed forces discussing a possible military operation in Syria.

It was by far the most damaging security leak in the months-old scandal and access to YouTube has been blocked since then. The BTK telecoms regulator said on Thursday it would not end the ban despite court rulings that it should do so.

‘Intelligence state’

Declaring victory after his AK Party dominated the electoral map in the municipal polls despite the corruption scandal, Erdogan said he would “enter the lair” of enemies who accused him of graft and leaked state secrets.

Senior officials have said Turkey will launch a criminal investigation into the alleged “parallel state” backed by Gulen, a crackdown likely to be led by the MIT. Nine police officers were detained in the southern city of Adana on Wednesday in connection with an inquiry into wiretapping, local media said.

“If the [Gulen] movement is very well represented in the police and the judiciary, you have to have someone to go after them, and it seems it will be the MIT, that seems to be the logic behind this,” said Svante Cornell, Turkey expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

The draft bill, which could be amended during debate, seeks to impose strict jail terms for the publication of leaked classified documents and protect the intelligence chief from prosecution by all but the country’s highest court of appeal.

“This law is equipping MIT with authorities it should not have in a state of law. These authorities will turn Turkey into an intelligence state,” said Sezgin Tanrikulu, a deputy from the main opposition CHP party.

“Under this law, it will become impossible to launch inquiries into all illegal activities conducted by MIT in the past and the future,” he told a news conference, citing controversy over the agency’s recent alleged role in blocking an investigation into shipments of supplies to Syria.

Local media said the MIT had intervened to prevent gendarmerie officers from searching trucks in the southern province of Adana in January which prosecutors suspected of carrying weapons to Syrian rebel groups.

The MIT has not commented on the reports but government officials have said the trucks were carrying aid.

The agency has played a critical role in peace talks with Kurdish militants, an effort to end an insurgency in Turkey’s southeast which has cost 40,000 lives over three decades and hobbled the development of one of its poorest regions.

“The role it played in running the Kurdish peace process gave Erdogan and the MIT some credibility with Western allies,” said the John Hopkins School’s Cornell. “What you’ve seen is that with Syria policy, MIT has played a very significant role, and a very murky role. In general there has been increasing concern about the role MIT has been playing.”

WASHINGTON — The US House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation on Thursday that seeks to bar Iran’s proposed UN ambassador, Hamid Abutalebi, from entering the United States, three days after its approval by the Senate.

The legislation, which needs President Barack Obama’s signature to become law, would deny admission of anyone as a representative to the United Nations who has engaged in terrorist activity against the United States.

The White House has not said whether Obama will sign the bill. Two US officials told Reuters on Wednesday that a decision by the administration on whether to bar Abutalebi was imminent.

“We’ve made clear and have communicated to the Iranians that the selection they’ve put forward is not viable, and we’re continuing to make that understood,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One.

The US government objects to Abutalebi because of his suspected participation in a Muslim student group that held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days starting in 1979, when the group seized the US embassy in Tehran, the Iranian capital.

Representative Doug Lamborn, the Colorado Republican who sponsored the bill in the House, described Abutalebi as a “terrorist”. The Senate bill was sponsored Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative Republican firebrand and central figure in the US government shutdown battle last year.

Barring a proposed envoy to the United Nations would be a rare and potentially precedent-setting move that could test US influence over the world body.

Iran has rejected US reservations about Abutalebi as unacceptable. The veteran diplomat has played down his personal role in the US embassy’s takeover, saying he was only a translator.

The controversy does not appear — so far at least — to have affected negotiations between major powers and Iran over curbing Iran’s nuclear programme.

GAZA — Kicking up dust on the back roads of northern Gaza within sight of the Israeli fence that seals off the enclave, Olympic athlete Nader Al Masri is still training, despite being barred from competing in his people’s largest sporting event.

Masri, who has participated in 40 international contests including the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, was denied a permit by Israeli authorities to travel to the occupied West Bank for the Palestine Marathon on Friday.

“I’m sad. This is a race for all Palestine and I wanted to participate, but unfortunately the Israeli side coldly rejected me,” said the 34-year-old policeman.

The Palestine Marathon, was inaugurated last year as an expression of statehood and of the right to free movement demanded by Palestinians.

This year it is being run against the backdrop of heightened diplomatic tensions, with Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on the verge of collapse amidst mutual recriminations

In a statement to Reuters, an Israeli government body in charge of permits said: “The marathon is supported by the Palestinian Authority and is tainted by political shades which delegitimise the state of Israel.”

It said Masri’s case did not meet the requirements for travel out of Gaza, without elaborating.

He was also barred from running in last year’s race — which starts in the West Bank town of Bethlehem and loops round a 10km route.

Frontrunner

“I would’ve easily come in first... I know my record and I know the other people’s records,” Masri told Reuters.

As he trained near his hometown of Beit Hanoun, children sprinted to his side and tried to match his stride before falling back. Neighbours cheered “Nader” as he passed.

“People encourage me to continue my sport, telling me the ban isn’t the end and there will be more contests,” he said.

Masri was one of 30 runners from Gaza whose permit requests were rejected by Israel, according to Gisha, an Israeli human rights group which litigated Masri’s case up to the level of Israel’s supreme court.

“The right to freedom of movement which should have been a central consideration was given no weight,” said Gisha spokeswoman Shai Grunberg.

“It would also seem to run counter to public statements made by security officials themselves about Israel’s interest in facilitating normal life for civilians in Gaza,” she added.

Travel permits are not Palestinian athletes’ only concern, Masri said, bemoaning a lack of government funding.

“As you see, we train in the streets and most of the time in areas adjacent to the border,” said Masri.

“Sometimes shots are fired as I run — not at me — but once a shell exploded 500 metres away,” he said.

Not far from where Masri trained, gunfire echoed and Palestinian medical officials later said two people collecting gravel from near the fence with Israel were wounded when soldiers opened fire to disperse them from the area.

The Islamist group Hamas runs Gaza after seizing control in 2007, ousting forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas one year after Hamas won parliamentary elections.

The takeover prompted an Israeli-led embargo on the Islamist faction which does not recognise Israel’s right to exist.

ON BOARD THE CAPE RAY, Spain — Experts on board a cargo ship transformed into a multimillion-dollar chemical weapons destroyer said on Thursday they were ready to start working on Syria’s stock of toxic arms in the middle of the Mediterranean as early as May.

Now they just have to hope the weather holds and Damascus delivers on time.

Former container vessel Cape Ray, docked in southern Spain, has been fitted out with at least $10 million of gear to let it take on about 560 metric tonnes of Syria’s most dangerous chemical agents and sail them out to sea, said officials.

The Damascus government, fighting rebels for three years, agreed to hand over its stockpile, which include precursors for deadly nerve agents sulphur, mustard and sarin gas, under an international deal backed by Washington and Moscow,

On the Cape Ray, the specialised crew will transform much of it into a much less poisonous soup of chemicals, ready for disposal back on land.

The process, say officials on the hulking grey five-storey vessel, is fairly simple. The main agent to neutralise the agents is hot water.

But things could get trickier if the seas turn rough.

“Everything depends on the roll of the ship and they have tested that,” said Michael Luhan, spokesman for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) which is running the disposal operation with the United Nations.

“They had some trial runs with the Cape Ray before it set sail and they are confident they should be able to keep operations going in relatively calm seas,” he added.

If they are calm, the Cape Ray — with a 10-country security escort — will head to somewhere in international waters and take about 60 days of round-the-clock processing to neutralise the chemical agents, said Rear Admiral Bob Burke, director of US naval operations in Europe and Africa.

If seas are rough, the process could stretch out to 90 days, though the weather at that time of year is usually fine, he added.

Whatever happens, there would be no risk to the blue waters of the Mediterranean, both officials insisted. “The ship will store every drop of effluent from the destruction process. Not a drop will go into the sea,” said Luhan.

Just add hot water

Another source of uncertainty is whether the Syrian government will deliver the deadly agents on time.

Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed to hand over his chemical weapons after Washington threatened missile strikes in reaction to a sarin gas attack that killed hundreds of people in the outskirts of Damascus in August.

Syria now has until June 30 to eliminate its chemical weapons programme and has already handed over roughly half its stockpile, which has been loaded onto Norwegian and Danish ships in the Syrian port of Latakia, OPCW officials said on Thursday.

Almost all of the rest of the agents have been packed up and are now located at a few sites near the Syrian city of Homs, the OPCW added.

But Assad’s government has missed several deadlines.

“The Syrians control the timeline. They’ve committed to deliver the materials no later than the 27th of April. If they meet that commitment we would be starting the process within days,” Burke told journalists touring the vessel at the US-funded Rota naval base.

Assad has cited unrest around Latakia as the most recent reason for delays in delivering the chemicals still in Syria.

Once they get to Latakia, the blister agent mustard and sarin precursor chemicals, considered top priority chemicals for destruction, will be put on board Danish ship Ark Futura for transport from Syria to Italian Port Gioia Tauro, said officials.

From there they will be transferred to the Cape Ray in a ship-to-ship operation.

The Cape Ray, used by the US government for special missions, dates back to the 1970s. But it has been filled with the latest air pressurising systems and filters, safety equipment, an emergency helicopter pad and two treatment units, housed in tent-like structures.

Experts on the ship will use the hydrolysis process — where hot water is added to the agents to cause a reaction that turns them into low-toxicity effluent.

The result will be thousands of tonnes of liquid toxic waste that the Cape Ray will store, and then deliver to Germany and Finland for commercial destruction, most likely incineration, Burke said.

Luhan said the destruction mission was unprecedented in terms of funds, the large number of countries involved in security, equipment and technology, and the attempt to destroy the entire chemical weapons arsenal of a government involved in a civil conflict.

The rest of Syria’s chemical weapons — 800 metric tonnes that are not processed on the Cape Ray — do not need to be neutralised with this process and will go straight from the Latakia port to commercial destruction facilities in various countries.

BEIRUT — Fierce infighting between rival Islamic rebel groups in eastern Syria left some 24 fighters dead on Thursday, while government shelling killed at least four teenagers in a town in the country’s west, activists said.

The four were killed in the rebel-held town of Rastan, just north of the city of Homs, a day after two car bombs exploded in a government controlled district there, killing 25 and wounding over 100.

It was the latest episode in a relentless cycle of blood and violence that has gripped the country since March 2011, when the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s rule began.

Opposition groups including the Local Coordination Committees and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the teenagers were killed in a barrage of artillery shells that struck a residential district.

“Bashar Assad and his gangs killed the children. They are slaughtering us, old and young and children,” said one man, standing beside the bodies shrouded in white sheets, in a video posted online.

Other footage showed heavy smoke rising behind buildings as the shells hit. The videos were consistent with The Associated Press’ reporting on the incident.

The rebel infighting took place around the town of Bukamal in the oil-rich Deir Al Zour province near the Iraqi border between rebels from Al Qaeda breakaway group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and fighters of Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. The two have fought each other for months over territory they previously captured together from Assad’s forces.

The observatory said 24 died in the rebel-on-rebel fighting Thursday.

In Damascus, state-run news agency SANA said two civilians were killed and seven others wounded in mortar shelling by rebels on the city’s outskirts.

Syria’s conflict began three years ago with largely peaceful protests calling for reform, and later for Assad’s ouster. It has evolved into a civil war and Islamic extremists, including foreign fighters and Syrian rebels who have taken up hard-line Al Qaeda-style ideologies have played an increasingly prominent role among fighters, dampening support from the West.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in the past three years, opposition activists say.

BAGHDAD — Across parts of Iraq, medical teams in white coats and gloves again roam the streets giving children polio vaccines and marking the walls of their homes, fighting a resurgent virus once more taking advantage of the country’s turmoil.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Iraq polio free in 1990, just before Saddam Hussein launched his invasion of Kuwait. The virus returned and health officials’ efforts saw the last case reported in 2000 — until a six-month-old boy contracted it in March in a north Baghdad neighbourhood.

With the disease back in neighbouring Syria, engulfed in a civil war, Iraq’s outbreak is a worrying reminder of the close links between the violence-plagued neighbours and the challenges facing Iraq’s weakened public health sector 11 years after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.

“As if we are living our life with no problems to have now this polio issue,” said a fuming Mustafa Salim, a police officer and father of two recently vaccinated children in Baghdad’s eastern neighbourhood of Sadr City. “Now, I have another thing to be obsessed with in addition to my safety and my kid’s future in this country.

“With the continuing fighting in Syria and political wrangling and deteriorated security situation inside Iraq, I’m afraid more diseases will attack us along with the daily bombings.”

Polio remains endemic in three countries around the world — Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan — but it spreads in unsanitary conditions often exacerbated by warfare. It is highly infectious and usually strikes children under 5. The disease attacks the central nervous system, and can cause paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and, in some cases, death.

In Iraq, international agencies helped the country administer vaccines purchased under the United Nations’ oil-for-food programme in the 1990s, fighting back a new outbreak of the disease then. After the 2003 invasion, health officials again began vaccinations, but often found themselves blocked from entering neighbourhoods over raging sectarian fighting.

Now fighting has begun again in Iraq, which last year saw its highest death toll since the worst of such killings in 2007, according to the UN That’s coupled with an influx of Syrians fleeing the civil war. Laboratory testing showed that the virus detected in Iraq’s new polio case closely resembles the virus found in Syria, according to the WHO.

UNICEF, the UN’s children agency, says that polio has paralysed at least 18 children in Syria’s Deir Al Zour province, located along the border with Iraq.

Iraq’s health ministry, backed by UNICEF and the WHO, launched a new round of polio immunisations this week, trying to reach all 5.6 million children five years old and younger across the country. Authorities also have sponsored a radio and television ad campaign, as well as sent text messages warning about the danger of the disease.

“Up to now, our reports indicate that there is a good turnout,” health ministry spokesman Ziad Tariq said. “We are not expecting to cover all the children, but at least 80 per cent, which is good.”

Teams also are working to reach children in Anbar province, where militants from Al Qaeda breakaway group called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other Sunni groups hold parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi, and nearly all of the nearby city of Fallujah. Tariq declined to elaborate.

Gopinath Durairajan, an official with UNICEF’s polio team in Iraq, said most of the children in Anbar province could not be vaccinated due to the unrest.

“Anbar is going to be an issue for us,” Durairajan said, adding that more vaccination rounds may be organised with the health ministry.

Despite the crisis in peace talks, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met for a third time this week on Thursday. Israeli and Arab media reports said they discussed proposals to break through the logjam and extend negotiations though early 2015, Reuters news agency reported.

An Israeli source speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed a proposal for Israel to freeze some settlement construction and free more than 400 Palestinian prisoners, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would freeze or rescind his signing of 15 world documents that angered Israel this month.

“It’s on the agenda but nothing has yet been agreed upon,” the source said, suggesting some work was still required before any deal could be finalised. Officials on both sides seemed confident the impasse in the talks could be broken.

“I would bet on the possibility of them reaching a deal to continue negotiations between now and the end of the month. The differences are not so substantial,” said Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian government minister and now academic at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

Settlements have been a constant source of aggravation between Israelis and Palestinians, with construction of new Jewish housing units in the West Bank rising 123 per cent year-on-year in 2013, a surge that coincided with the resumption of talks.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said this week that the announcement last week of tenders for 700 new housing units in East Jerusalem was the immediate cause of the negotiations crisis.

An official in Netanyahu’s office said Israel was “deeply disappointed” by Kerry’s remarks, signalling clear tensions in relations between the two allies.

Arab League 

The head of the Arab League said Thursday he is confident that Israel and the Palestinians will soon resolve a crisis over the release of long-held Palestinian prisoners and extend their US-brokered peace talks beyond an April deadline.

Nabil El Araby told The Associated Press that the April 29 deadline would be extended “for months” and rejected the idea that the talks have failed to make progress.

“I believe that negotiations are going to be resumed for several months and we hope that this will be the end of it,” he said at the Nile-side Cairo headquarters of the Arab League.

Araby did not elaborate, but he did say that he “had contact” with Kerry, who is leading the talks.

Abbas also is in Egypt, where he met with Egyptian leaders and held talks with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. Araby also met with Ashton, according to AP.

‘Annex settlements’

Meanwhile, a senior Israeli minister has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex a swathe of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying peace talks with the Palestinians were dead, according to Reuters.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who is head of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home Party, wrote to the prime minister late on Wednesday saying Israel should extend its sovereign territory to a number of major settlement blocs.

Mega settlements, such as Ma’ale Adumin, are built on land seized in the 1967 war — territory the Palestinians want for their future state. Successive governments have said the blocs, deemed illegal under international law, should remain part of Israel in any negotiated deal with the Palestinians.

“It is clear that the current process has exhausted itself and that we are entering a new era,” said Bennett, urging Netanyahu to annex a number of large settlements.

“These are areas which enjoy a wide national consensus, have security implications and have historical significance for the state of Israel.”

Netanyahu made no comment on Bennett’s request, but is likely to face strident calls from within his own rightist Likud Party to annex the blocs, home to an estimated 350,000 Israelis, if the latest peace talks implode.

Such a move would almost certainly set off a storm of international condemnation, and Israel’s chief negotiator, Tzipi Livni, said Bennett was acting like a “provocative child” who needed parental restraint.

“If you want to go totally crazy, keep it up until we can no longer make a deal and lose everything we hold dear,” Livni, who serves as justice minister, wrote on her Facebook page.

MOSCOW/BRUSSELS — Russia told the West on Wednesday that four-way talks between representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the United States and European Union must focus on fostering dialogue among Ukrainians and not on bilateral relations among the participants.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivered the message in a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State John Kerry, the foreign ministry said. It said Lavrov and Kerry urged all sides to refrain from violence in eastern and southern Ukraine.

The European Union said on Tuesday that top diplomats from the EU, Russia, Ukraine and the United States would meet next week to discuss the crisis, but Russia says it wants to know more about the agenda for such a meeting.

“Lavrov noted that this format could be useful if it is aimed not at discussing various aspects of one bilateral relationship or another, but on helping to arrange a broad and equal internal Ukrainian dialogue with the aim of agreeing mutually acceptable constitutional reform,” the ministry said.

Russia, which incited the fury of Ukraine and the West by annexing the Crimea region from its neighbour last month, does not want to be forced into talks with the interim government in power in Kiev after its role in ousting Moscow-allied president Viktor Yanukovich in what Moscow called an armed, Western-encouraged coup d’etat.

Russia accuses the government of ignoring the rights and interests of Russian speakers in the east and south Ukraine and is calling for a new constitution that would grant the regions strong powers and keep Ukraine out of NATO.

Lavrov told Kerry “the authorities in Kiev must finally respond to the legitimate demands of eastern and southern regions of the country,” the ministry said.

Kerry on Tuesday accused Russian agents and special forces of stirring up separatist unrest in eastern Ukraine.

The crisis in Ukraine erupted after Yanukovich cancelled plans to sign trade and political pacts with the EU in November and instead sought closer ties with Russia, triggering protests that turned bloody and drove him from power.

Moscow annexed Crimea in March following a referendum staged after Russian forces established control over the Black Sea peninsula in the biggest East-West crisis since the Cold War.

On Wednesday, the EU created a dedicated support group to advise Ukraine on political and economic reforms and coordinate with other donors and international lenders.

The Brussels-based group is intended to channel EU help and advice for Ukraine through a single coordinating body, and underlines EU support for the new government, which is trying to stabilise the economy while tensions with Moscow remain high.

NATO says Russia has massed tens of thousands of troops close to their Ukraine border.

“It is important to have this support for the... political and economic reforms Ukraine needs to become a sustainable, independent, modern country,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a statement.

Last month, the EU said it was willing to provide $15 billion in loans and grants to Ukraine over the next several years. The International Monetary Fund announced a $14-$18 billion loan for Kiev in return for tough economic reforms.

The European Union and Ukraine signed a landmark political cooperation accord last month, committing to the same deal that Yanukovich rejected in November.

Although the free trade parts of the agreement will only be signed after Ukraine’s May 25 presidential election, the European Commission has already agreed to extend trade benefits worth nearly 500 million euros ($689 million), removing duties on a range of farm goods, textiles and other imports.

The support group’s work could be extended to Georgia and Moldova, which are also seeking closer ties with the EU.

BEIRUT — Bashar Al Assad’s Lebanese ally Hizbollah said his Western foes must now accept he will go on ruling Syria after fighting rebels to a standstill — a “reality” to which his foreign enemies seem increasingly resigned.

Echoing recent bullish talk coming out of Damascus, Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy leader of the Iranian-backed Shiite militia which is supporting Assad in combat, told Reuters that the president retained popular support among many of Syria’s diverse religious communities and would shortly be re-elected.

“There is a practical Syrian reality that the West should deal with — not with its wishes and dreams, which proved to be false,” Qassem said during a meeting with Reuters journalists at a Hizbollah  office in the group’s southern Beirut stronghold.

He said the United States and its Western allies were in disarray and lacked a coherent policy on Syria — reflecting the quandary that Western officials acknowledge they face since the pro-democracy protests they supported in 2011 became a war that has drawn Al Qaeda and other militants to the rebel cause.

Syria’s fractious opposition — made up of guerrillas inside the country and a largely impotent political coalition in exile — had, he said, proved incapable of providing an alternative to four decades of rule by Assad and his late father before him.

“This is why the option is clear. Either to have an understanding with Assad, to reach a result, or to keep the crisis open with President Assad having the upper hand in running the country,” said the bearded and turbaned cleric.

Qassem’s comments follow an account from another Assad ally, Russian former prime minister Sergei Stepashin, who said after meeting him last week that the Syrian leader felt secure and expected heavy fighting to end this year.

Officials said this week that preparations would begin this month for the presidential election — a move that seems to reflect a degree of optimism in the capital and which may well end with Assad claiming a popular mandate that he would use to resist UN-backed efforts to negotiate a transition of power.

Hizbollah  chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah also said this week that Assad is no longer at risk and that military gains mean the danger of Syria fragmenting was also receding.

Western resignation

It is a view of Assad that — quietly — seems to be gaining ground in Western capitals. Calling it bad news for Syrians, the French foreign ministry said this week: “Maybe he will be the sole survivor of this policy of mass crimes”.

France, which last year was preparing to join US military action that was eventually aborted, now rules out force and called the stalled talks on “transition” the “only plan” — a view US officials say is shared in Washington, notably among military chiefs who see Assad as preferable to sectarian chaos.

While rebels do not admit defeat, leaders like Badr Jamous of the Syrian National Coalition accept that without foreign intervention “this stalemate will go on”. A US official, asked about a deadlock that would leave Assad in control of much of Syria, conceded: “This has become a drawn-out conflict.”

Assad, 48, has weathered an armed insurgency which started with protests in 2011 and descended into a civil war that has sucked in regional powers, including Shiite Iran and Hizbollah  who back the Alawite president and Sunni states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar behind the rebels.

With Russia blocking a UN mandate, and voters showing no appetite for war after losses in Afghanistan and Iraq, Western governments have held back from the kind of military engagement that could have toppled the well-armed Syrian leader.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in three years, as Assad has lost the oil-producing and agricultural east and much of the north, including parts of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.

But he did not suffer the fate of other autocrats in the Arab Spring, whether the presidents of Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen or Muammar Qadhafi, the Libyan leader toppled and killed by rebels who rode into Tripoli under cover of Western air power.

Instead, he has clawed back control near Damascus, where a year ago rebels hoped for a decisive assault, and the centre of the country which links the capital to the coastal stronghold of Assad’s Alawite minority. His troops, backed by Hizbollah  fighters, took another key town on Wednesday.

Though as much as half the country is being fought over, Assad could hope to hold at least a roughly southwestern half, including most of the built-up heartlands near the coast, and more than half of the pre-war population of 23 million.

This leaves Western powers reflecting on a perceived loss of influence in the Middle East. Many now see a new strategy of “containing” Assad — and the fallout from a bitter war that has created millions of refugees and legions of hardened guerrillas.

“The US has a stated policy of regime change, but it has never devoted the resources to effect that change,” said Andrew Exum, a former US official who worked on Middle East issues at the Pentagon. “The de facto US strategy of containment is very well suited for what is likely to be a very long war.”

‘Stalemate will continue’ 

Qassem said the United States, which backed away from military action in September after blaming Assad for gassing civilians, was hamstrung by fears over the dominance in rebel ranks of Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, and another group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

“America is in a state of confusion. On the one hand it does not want the regime to stay and on the other it cannot control the opposition which is represented by ISIL and Nusra,” he said.

“This is why the latest American position was to leave the situation in Syria in a state of attrition.”

President Barack Obama said last month that the United States had reached “limits” after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and questioned whether years of military engagement in Syria would produce a better outcome there.

Qassem said: “I expect that the stalemate will continue in the Syrian crisis because of the lack of an international and regional decision to facilitate a political solution.”

UN-mediated talks at Geneva failed in February to bridge a gulf between Assad’s government and opponents who insist that Assad must make way for a government of national unity.

Western and regional powers who support the Syrian opposition say it would be a “parody of democracy” to hold an election in the midst of a conflict which has displaced more than 9 million people and divided the country across frontlines.

Syria’s electoral law effectively rules out participation by opponents who have fled the country in fear of Assad’s police — candidates must have lived in Syria continuously for 10 years.

“My conviction is that Assad will run and will win because he has popular support in Syria from all the sects — Sunnis and secularists,” Qassem said. “I believe the election will take place on its due date and Assad will run and win decisively.”

Fear of hardline Islamists has undermined support for some rebels even among the 75 per cent Sunni majority, and bolstered support for Assad among his fellow Alawites, and Christians.

Qassem said it was too soon to speak of Hizbollah  pulling out of Syria, despite an increase in Sunni-Shiite tensions within Lebanon caused by the intervention across the border of a movement that is Lebanon’s most accomplished military force and also holds Cabinet seats in the government in Beirut.

“Until now we consider our presence in Syria necessary and fundamental,” Qassem said.

“But when circumstances change, this will be a military and political matter that requires a new assessment.”

“But if the situation stays as is and the circumstances are similar, we will remain where we should be.”

BAGHDAD — Car bombs hit several mostly Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad and a town south of the Iraqi capital on Wednesday, killing at least 24 people and wounding dozens, officials said, the latest bout of violence ahead of the country’s first parliament elections since the 2011 US troop withdrawal.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks but the bombings bore the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda-inspired group and other Sunni insurgents, who frequently use suicide and car bombs to target public areas and government buildings in their bid to undermine confidence in the Shiite-led government.

The explosions also coincided with the anniversary of the 2003 fall of Baghdad in the hands of US troops.

The deadliest of the day’s attacks took place in the town of Numaniyah, about 80 kilometres south of Baghdad, where a bomb first went off in a busy commercial area, followed by a car bomb that exploded as people gathered to help the victims from the first blast. In all, five people were killed and 17 were wounded, police said.

Earlier in the day, a car bomb in Baghdad’s central Nidhal Street killed four people and wounded 11, while three people died and nine were wounded in a car bombing in the northern Kazimiyah district.

Car bombs also exploded in the areas of Shaab, Shammaiya, Karrada and Maamil, killing a total of seven people and wounding 30, police officials added.

Later Wednesday, three more civilians died and eight were wounded when another car bomb struck Baghdad’s central upscale commercial area of Jadiriyah.

Medical officials confirmed the causality figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.

Violence has surged in Iraq since last year, with the country weathering its deadliest bout of violence since it pulled back from the brink of civil war in 2008. UN figures showed that last year, Iraq saw the highest death toll in attacks, with 8,868 people killed.

Wednesday’s attacks came as Iraq is heading towards a crucial election on April 30, its first vote since the 2011 US troop pullout.

More than 9,000 candidates will vie for 328 seats in parliament but there will be no balloting in parts of the western, Sunni-dominated Anbar province engulfed in clashes between security forces and  Al Qaeda-inspired militants.

On Tuesday, the country’s Independent High Electoral Commission said those areas were too dangerous for the vote to take place.

Since late December, the western Anbar province has seen fierce fighting between government troops and allied tribal militias on one side, and militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an Al Qaeda spin-off group, on the other.

The militants have seized and are continuing to hold parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi, and nearly all of the nearby city of Fallujah.