Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — US efforts to save Middle East peace talks from collapse showed little sign of progress on Monday amid threats from Israel to retaliate for what it saw as unilateral Palestinian moves towards statehood.

The US-brokered negotiations plunged into crisis last week after Israel, demanding a Palestinian commitment to continue talking after the end of the month, failed to carry out a promised release of about two dozen Palestinian prisoners.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responded by signing 15 global treaties, including the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war and occupations, on behalf of the State of Palestine, a defiant move that surprised Washington and angered Israel.

Both sides met on Sunday night “to discuss ways to overcome the crisis in the talks”, a US official told Reuters. Palestinian sources said they would meet again Monday evening.

The wrangling attracted little interest on the streets, where both Israeli and Palestinians have become inured to decades of conflict and deadlock.

With the approach of the Jewish holiday of Passover, Israel’s best-selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, focused its main headline on the plight of the poor — carrying a report on Sunday’s talks at the bottom of page six.

Fewer than 20 Israeli lawmakers showed up for a special debate on the peace process on Monday in the 120-seat Knesset.

“We’re all too busy worrying about how to pay bills. Prices have risen and there are very few jobs,” said Tareq Younes, a Palestinian barber from a village near the West Bank city Ramallah.

‘Retaliatory measures’

The peace talks, which began in July, have stalled over Palestinian opposition to Israel’s demand that it be recognised as a Jewish state, and over settlements built on occupied land Palestinians seek for a country of their own.

An Israeli official described the Sunday meeting as “business-like” without elaborating. A Palestinian official said his side had submitted conditions for extending the talks beyond the original April 29 deadline for a peace deal.

Palestinians have said the signing of the international treaties last week was a natural progression after the UN General Assembly’s de facto recognition of a Palestinian state in 2012.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, promised retaliatory measures — which he did not specify — in response to the signings.

A senior official in Abbas’ Fateh Party said the Palestinians wanted a written commitment from Netanyahu’s government recognising a Palestinian state within all of the territory in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Israel has described those West Bank borders as indefensible and considers East Jerusalem as part of its capital, a claim that is not recognised internationally. Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip, now ruled by Hamas Islamists, in 2005.

In addition, the Fateh official said, Palestinians were demanding a cessation of settlement activity and a prisoner release.

Palestinians fear settlements, viewed as illegal by most countries, will deny them a viable state and have condemned a series of Israeli construction projects announced while talks have been under way.

Stung by his diplomatic setback, just as a complex deal for the negotiations’ extension was emerging, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said the United States was evaluating whether to continue its role in the talks, accusing both sides of taking unhelpful steps.

A monthly peace index, last published in March by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University, found 69 per cent of Israelis “somewhat don’t believe” or “don’t believe at all” that the negotiations will lead to peace.

A poll conducted last month in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Research showed that about three-quarters of those surveyed believed chances for establishing a Palestinian state in the next five years are “slim or non-existent”.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel Radio said on Monday that Israel has evidence backing Syrian opposition accusations that forces loyal to President Bashar Assad had used non-lethal chemical weapons in Damascus last month.

The report quoted an unidentified senior Israeli defence official as saying there were two attacks on March 27, using a “neutralising chemical weapon”, east of Damascus and at another location.

The report was broadcast shortly after Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon met the Israeli media. There was no immediate comment from government officials.

Last Thursday, opposition activists accused Assad’s forces of using poison gas, showing footage of an apparently unconscious man lying on a bed and being treated by medics.

The alleged attack, the activists said, was carried out in Damascus’ Jobar neighbourhood. Reuters could not independently verify the footage or the claims due to security restrictions on reporting in Syria.

One opposition group, the Syrian Revolutionary Coordinators Union, said that all those affected by the gas were “in a good condition”. There has been on-off fighting between rebels and government forces in Jobar this year.

A UN inquiry found in December that sarin gas had likely been used in Jobar in August and in several other locations, including in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Ghouta, where hundreds of people were killed.

The inquiry was only looking at whether chemical weapons were used, not who used them. The Syrian government and the opposition have each accused the other of using chemical weapons, and both have denied it.

The Ghouta attack sparked global outrage and a US threat of military strikes, which was dropped after Assad pledged to destroy his chemical weapons.

But the Syrian government failed to meet a February 5 deadline to move all of its declared chemical substances and precursors, some 1,300 tonnes, out of the country. Israel Radio quoted the defence official as saying the material used on March 27 was not on the list of chemicals due to be removed.

Syria has since agreed to a new timetable to remove the weapons by late April.

Syria’s three-year civil war has killed more than 150,000 people, a third of them civilians, and caused millions to flee.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi security forces said they killed 19 militants while attacks elsewhere in the country left three people dead on Monday, as violence spikes ahead of parliamentary elections.

The April 30 polls, Iraq’s first since 2010, come as the authorities battle the worst sustained period of bloodletting since 2008, when Iraq was just emerging from a brutal Sunni-Shiite sectarian war that left tens of thousands dead.

The unrest, which has already killed more than 2,400 people this year, has been principally driven by anger in the Sunni Arab minority over alleged mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government and security forces, as well as spillover from the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

In clashes south of Baghdad, as well as in and around the conflict-hit cities of Ramadi and Fallujah to the west, Iraqi police and soldiers killed 19 militants, according to interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan.

He did not give details of any casualties suffered by the security forces.

Fallujah and Ramadi lie in the western desert province of Anbar, which shares a long border with Syria.

In January, militants overran all of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi, and while security forces have managed to wrest back control of most of Ramadi since then, a stalemate has persisted in Fallujah.

Elsewhere in the country, security and medical officials said, the authorities found the corpses of two men in different neighbourhoods of Baghdad, their bodies bearing signs of torture, while a policeman was gunned down north of the capital.

Diplomats and analysts have urged the government to reach out to the Sunni community to undermine support for militancy.

But with the parliamentary elections looming, Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and other Shiite leaders have been loath to be seen to compromise.

Near-daily bloodshed is part of a long list of voter concerns that also include lengthy power cuts, poor wastewater treatment, rampant corruption and high unemployment.

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwait’s Islamic affairs minister, accused by a senior US official of promoting jihad in Syria, was reported Monday as saying he will stay on after his resignation was rejected.

Al Qabas daily cited Nayef Al Ajmi as saying he will remain in the post after a request from the “political leadership” following a meeting on Sunday.

The term “political leadership” generally refers to the ruler of the oil-rich Gulf state.

“I will obey the orders of the political leadership and will continue along the same path I have started,” Ajmi, who is also justice minister, said.

Ajmi, who strongly denied the US accusations, said on Friday he had tendered his resignation, citing health problems.

The US Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, David Cohen, charged earlier this year that Ajmi “has a history of promoting jihad in Syria”.

His appointment as minister in January was a “step in the wrong direction”, Cohen said in a lecture in the United States, parts of which were carried by the Kuwait press last month.

Ajmi said on Friday he was resigning because of health problems predating the US accusation.

He said he had been undergoing tests in London when the reports of Cohen’s comments surfaced in the Kuwaiti media, and had cut the tests short to head home.

A statement released after a March 31 Cabinet meeting said ministers had followed Cohen’s comments “with great attention and displeasure”.

Ajmi acknowledged he had taken part in fund-raising campaigns for Syria, but insisted they had been for humanitarian purposes and not for Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front as alleged by Cohen.

RIYADH — Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan will return to the kingdom within days after spending around two months abroad for surgery and retake his position as intelligence chief, including control of the Syrian dossier, said Saudi security officials late Sunday.

The Saudi officials said that during Prince Bandar’s absence, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef was put in charge of the Syrian file and of the intelligence agency.

The three security officials said the 65-year-old prince was seeking medical attention in the US and resting in Morocco after surgery on his shoulder. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Prince Bandar, who formerly served as Saudi ambassador to the US for 22 years, has had special responsibility for the Levant for years, leading Saudi intelligence and strategic affairs in the region. Some analysts have speculated that Prince Bandar has been the key figure trying to boost Saudi weapons flow to Syrian rebel forces seeking to oust President Bashar Assad’s government.

The officials said that Prince Bandar held a number of official meetings while in Morocco, including with Saudi Deputy Defence Minister Prince Salman Bin Sultan. The deputy defence minister briefed Prince Bandar on his official visits to Washington and Paris last month, they added, also saying that Prince Bandar met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan while in Marrakech.

Some analysts had said Prince Bandar may have been sidelined because the US was unhappy with his handling of Syria’s civil war, mostly his alleged support for radical groups among Syria’s opposition.

However, a top Saudi diplomat previously told the Associated Press that Prince  Bandar could not have taken any decisions without King Abdullah’s approval. He said that the interior minister took over Prince Bandar’s responsibilities in his absence because he too has experience in dealing with counterterrorism and security affairs.

In recent months, Saudi Arabia has issued a royal decree that imposes prison sentences on Saudi nationals who fight in conflicts abroad or those who incite them to fight. The decree was announced just one day after a sweeping anti-terrorism law went into effect in Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom has also declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, along with Al Qaeda’s branches in Yemen and Iraq, the Syrian Al Nusra Front, Saudi Hizbollah and Yemen’s Shiite Houthis.

MOSCOW — President Bashar Assad has forecast that much of the fighting in the Syrian civil war will be over by the end of the year, a former Russian prime minister was quoted on Monday as saying.

“This is what he told me: ‘This year the active phase of military action in Syria will be ended. After that we will have to shift to what we have been doing all the time — fighting terrorists’,” Itar-Tass news agency quoted Sergei Stepashin as saying.

Stepashin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and former head of Russia’s FSB security service, portrayed Assad as secure, in control and in “excellent athletic shape” after a meeting in Damascus last week.

“’Tell Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] that I am not Yanukovich, I’m not going anywhere’,” Stepashin quoted Assad as saying during their meeting, state-run news agency RIA reported.

Yanukovych fled to Russia in February after he was pushed from power by protests that followed his decision to spurn closer ties with the European Union and turn to Moscow. Russian leaders have criticised him for losing control of his country.

Stepashin suggested Assad faced no such threat and was likely to win a presidential election this year.

“There is not a shadow of a doubt that he knows what he’s doing,” RIA quoted Stepashin as saying.

“Assad’s strength now lies in the fact that, unlike Yanukovych, he has practically no internal enemies. He has a consolidated, cleansed team.

“Moreover, his relatives are not bargaining and stealing from the cash register but are fighting,” he said, appearing to draw a contrast with Yanukovych and his family.

‘Fighting spirit’

Stepashin, who served as prime minister in 1999 under president Boris Yeltsin and now heads a charitable organisation called the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, added that “the fighting spirit of the Syrian army is extremely high”.

Russia has been Assad’s most powerful supporter during the three-year-old conflict that activists say has killed more than 150,000 people in Syria, blocking Western and Arab efforts to drive him from power.

Russia and the United States organised peace talks that began in January between Assad’s government and its foes. But no agreement was reached and a resumption appears unlikely soon, in part because of high tension between Russia and the West over Ukraine.

Russian officials say Moscow is not trying to prop up Assad and but that his exit from power cannot be a precondition for a political solution. Their assessments of his future have varied with the fortunes of his military.

Assad has lost control of large swathes of northern and eastern Syria to Islamist rebels and foreign jihadis. But his forces, backed by militant group Hizbollah and other allies, have driven rebels back from around Damascus and secured most of central Syria.

BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar Assad will stand for re-election this year and no longer faces a threat of being overthrown, the head of his Lebanese Shiite ally Hizbollah said in an interview published on Monday.

Hizbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose fighters have been supporting Assad inside Syria, also said that after three years of conflict the danger of the country fragmenting was receding.

Assad has lost control of large swathes of northern and eastern Syria to Syrian Islamist rebels and foreign jihadis. But his forces, backed by Hizbollah, Iraqi Shiite Muslim fighters and Iranian military commanders, have driven rebels back from around Damascus and secured most of central Syria.

“In my estimation, the phase of overthrowing the regime and overthrowing the state is over,” Nasrallah told Al Safir newspaper, adding that he believed Assad would put himself forward for a third presidential term in a vote due by July.

“It’s natural that he nominates himself, and I believe that will happen,” Nasrallah said of the planned vote expected to take place despite ongoing conflict and massive displacement within Syria. Assad’s international foes have said the poll would be a “parody of democracy”.

Rebels “cannot overthrow the regime [but] they can wage a war of attrition,” Nasrallah said. “The real danger was, and still is to a certain extent, the end of Syria, its fragmentation. The danger was real and serious... I think we have passed the danger of fragmentation.”

More than 150,000 people have been killed in Syria’s civil war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group. A third of those were pro-Assad forces, including 364 Hizbollah fighters, it said.

Nasrallah dismissed rebel gains over the last two weeks in the coastal province of Latakia — a stronghold of Assad’s minority Alawite faith where rebels have seized the Kasab border crossing — as little more than a distraction.

“We can’t call what is happening in Latakia and Kasab a big battle ... it’s a limited operation,” he said, adding that talk of a big rebel offensive in the southern province of Deraa on the Jordanian border had also been overstated.

As the military threat against Assad eased, so too would the political pressure “starting with Saudi Arabia and Qatar”, Nasrallah said, pointing to two Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states who have backed the mainly Sunni rebels battling Assad.

“I’m not saying they have changed their positions, but the strength of their stances, the level of their intervention and the hopes that they had, have changed a lot,” he said — in contrast to what he described as the unflinching support Assad enjoyed from his own allies.

Syria war fuels tensions

Shiite Hizbollah’s intervention in Syria, alongside the flow of Sunni fighters and weapons from Lebanon to support the rebels, has fuelled sectarian tensions inside Lebanon.

Radical Sunni groups have claimed responsibility for car bombs which targeted the southern Beirut suburbs where Hizbollah holds sway, and rockets have also struck Shiite and Sunni towns in the Bekaa Valley.

Lebanese Sunni politicians have criticised Hizbollah, which was set up three decades ago to fight Israeli occupation forces in the south of the country, for wading into an Arab conflict.

But Nasrallah denied that his group’s military role in Syria was losing it popularity, saying its campaign against Syrian rebels near the Lebanese border was helping reduce the risk of bombings inside Lebanon.

Even some members of Lebanon’s anti-Hizbollah March 14 coalition tacitly supported the group’s actions, he said.

“There is a strong popular mood which supports Hizbollah’s intervention in Syria. Many Lebanese, even within March 14, deep down they believe and accept that intervention in Syria protects Lebanon from these terrorist groups.”

Nasrallah also said Hizbollah was responsible for a bombing of an Israeli border patrol in March, saying the attack was in response to an Israeli air strike against a Hizbollah target on the Syrian-Lebanese border a month earlier.

“The Shebaa Farms bomb ... was the work of the resistance, the work of Hizbollah,” he said. “The is not the [full] response, but part of the response to the Israeli raid.”

He appeared to be referring to a March 14 incident when Israel’s military said an explosive device was detonated against Israeli soldiers patrolling the border with Lebanon. Israel shot six mortars into southern Lebanon in response, but no one was wounded on either side, security and military sources said.

DAMASCUS — Dutch priest Frans van der Lugt, who gained renown for his insistence on staying in Syria’s besieged city of Homs, was shot dead there on Monday by a masked gunman.

His death was reported by the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syria’s state news agency SANA, and was confirmed by the Dutch Jesuit Order.

The motive for his murder was unclear, although Syria’s main opposition bloc accused the regime of President Bashar Assad of being behind it.

Van der Lugt, 75, had become a well-known figure in the Old City of Homs, respected by many for his solidarity with residents of the rebel-held area under a government siege for nearly two years.

He refused to leave despite constant shelling and dwindling supplies, insisting Syria was his home and he wanted to be with the country’s citizens in their time of need.

“I can confirm that he’s been killed,” Jan Stuyt, secretary of the Dutch Jesuit Order, told AFP by phone.

“A man came into his house, took him outside and shot him twice in the head. In the street in front of his house,” he said, adding the priest would be buried in Syria “according to his wishes”.

 ‘Guard wounded’ 

The opposition National Council said a “masked gunman” who also wounded Van der Lugt’s guard from the rebel Free Syrian Army when he stormed the priest’s Jesuit monastery and killed him.

Van der Lugt spent nearly five decades in Syria, and told AFP in February that he considered the country to be his home.

“The Syrian people have given me so much, so much kindness, inspiration and everything they have. If the Syrian people are suffering now, I want to share their pain and their difficulties,” he said.

He stayed on even as some 1,400 people were evacuated during a UN-supervised operation that began on February 7 and also saw limited supplies of food brought into the city.

Government forces have besieged Homs’s Old City for nearly two years, creating increasing dire circumstances for those unable to leave.

“The faces of people you see in the street are weak and yellow. Their bodies are weakened and have lost their strength,” Van der Lugt said before the UN operation.

‘What should we do, die of hunger?’

The siege and shelling whittled away the Old City’s population, including a Christian community that shrunk from tens of thousands to just 66, according to the Dutch priest.

Father Frans arrived in Syria in 1966 after spending two years in Lebanon studying Arabic.

He lived in a Jesuit monastery, where he ministered remaining Christians and tried to help poor families — Muslims and Christians alike.

“I don’t see people as Muslims or Christian, I see a human being first and foremost,” he told AFP in February.

‘Man of peace’ 

The Vatican praised Van der Lugt as a “man of peace”, and expressed “great pain” over his death.

“This is the death of a man of peace, who showed great courage in remaining loyal to the Syrian people despite an extremely risky and difficult situation,” spokesman Federico Lombardi said.

“In this moment of great pain, we also express our great pride and gratitude at having had a brother who was so close to the suffering.”

Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Frans Timmermans also mourned the priest on his Facebook page.

“The man that’s brought nothing but good in Homs, who became a Syrian among Syrians and refused to leave his people in the lurch, even when things became life-threatening, has been murdered in a cowardly manner,” he said.

“Father Frans deserves our thanks and our respect. He must be able to count on our contribution to help end this misery.”

The office of Ahmad Jarba, the president of the opposition National Council, condemned the murder “in the strongest terms”.

It said the Assad regime was “ultimately responsible for this crime, as the only beneficiary of Father Frans’ death”.

Assad himself was quoted as saying the “project of political Islam has failed” in Syria, where more than 150,000 people have been killed in a three-year conflict that has come to be dominated by Islamists, ranging from moderates to radicals.

VIENNA — Iran said it hopes enough progress will be made with major powers this week to enable negotiators to start drafting by mid-May a final accord to settle a long-running dispute over its nuclear programme.

The Islamic Republic and six world powers will hold a new round of talks in Vienna on Tuesday and Wednesday intended to reach a comprehensive agreement by July 20 on how to resolve a decade-old standoff that has stirred fears of a Middle East war.

It will be the third meeting of chief negotiators since February. So far, officials say, they have largely focused on what issues should form part of a long-term deal.

“We will finish all discussions and issues this time to pave the ground for starting to draft the final draft in Ordibehesht (an Iranian month that begins in two weeks),” Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said upon arrival in Vienna.

A US official gave a similar timetable last week, voicing hope that the drafting of an agreement could begin in May.

Iran says its enrichment programme is a peaceful bid to generate electricity and has ruled out shutting any of its nuclear facilities.

But the United States and some other Western countries have accused it of working on developing a nuclear bomb capability. Israel has threatened to attack its long-time foe Iran if diplomatic efforts fail.

The relatively upbeat comment by Zarif appeared designed to underline Tehran’s commitment to reach a comprehensive deal by the July deadline, though Western officials say wide differences remain between the two sides.

A spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who coordinates contacts with Iran on behalf of the powers, said the discussions would be “detailed and substantial” but gave no details.

“The next round of talks will be an important continuation to explore respective positions on each topic,” the spokesman, Michael Mann, said.

The six powers — United States, France, Russia, China, Britain and Germany — want Iran to scale back its nuclear programme so it cannot quickly make a nuclear bomb, if it decided to pursue such arms. Iran wants the six powers to lift sanctions that are severely hurting its oil-dependent economy.

Talks still in early 

stages — Russia

Iran says the powers must respect what it calls its right to a peaceful nuclear programme, including the enrichment of uranium. Such activity can have both civilian and military uses.

“We believe that our partners should make important decisions which includes respecting the existing realities and respecting Iran’s rights,” Zarif said.

“We are ready to cooperate to remove any ambiguity about the peaceful nature of our nuclear programme.”

A senior US administration official, speaking on Friday, said both sides intended to spend March and April going over “every single issue that we believed had to be addressed in a comprehensive agreement” before work started on drafting in May.

“We are on pace with that work plan, looking toward beginning drafting in May,” the official said.

Russia’s chief negotiator said Moscow had no special expectations for this week’s meeting. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said talks on a number of issues were still in early stages and the meeting should produce a basis for further discussions, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

The aim of the negotiations begun almost two months ago is to hammer out a long-term deal to define the permissible scope of Iran’s nuclear programme in return for an end to sanctions.

In November, Iran and the six nations agreed an interim accord to curb Tehran’s atomic activities in exchange for some easing of sanctions. The six-month deal, which took effect on January 20, was designed to buy time for talks on a final accord.

Iran has said it had useful expert-level nuclear talks with world powers in Vienna last week, addressing all major technical issues in the way of a final settlement.

LONDON — Three women from the United Arab Emirates were in hospital on Monday after being savagely attacked in their luxury London hotel room by a man wielding a hammer, police said.

The tourists, all in their 30s, sustained serious injuries to their heads and faces during the “unusually violent attack” at the four-star Cumberland Hotel early on Sunday morning.

Three children aged between seven and 12 were asleep in an adjoining room at the time but they were unharmed.

One of the victims is in a critical but stable condition at a central London hospital, while the injuries suffered by the other two women are not life-threatening, police said.

Detectives are treating the attack as attempted murder and suggested theft might have been the main motive.

They are looking for a lone white man who entered the women’s seventh-floor room, which was left unlocked because other family members were staying in other parts of the hotel.

When one of the women woke up, he attacked her with a hammer before turning on the other two victims and then fleeing the building in bloodstained clothes.

The wealthy family had come to London to do some shopping and sightseeing, and the victims had visited some of the larger stores in the West End during the day on Saturday.

“Early indications are that theft appears to be the motive,” said Detective Superintendent Carl Mehta of the Metropolitan Police.

“We are yet to establish precisely what happened, but we are in close liaison with the family to establish what is missing from the room.”

The 1,000-room hotel is located near Hyde Park and the Oxford Street shopping artery, and is owned by the Guoman group.

A group spokesman told AFP: “Our thoughts are with the guests that have been affected by this, both immediately and our other guests, and we are cooperating with the police to make sure they have everything they need.”

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Chalmers added: “This was an unusually violent attack on three women and I am very keen to speak with anyone who was in or around the hotel between 1:00am and 2:00am on Sunday morning.”