Region

DUBAI — A senior member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family said on Wednesday that Gulf states should work on acquiring nuclear know-how to balance any threat from Iran.

Prince Turki Al Faisal, a former intelligence chief, also told a security conference in the Bahraini capital Manama, that the Gulf states should be prepared for any possible outcome from Iran’s nuclear talks with world powers.

“We do not hold any hostility to Iran and do not wish any harm to it or to its people, who are Muslim neighbours,” he said in a speech.

“But preserving our regional security requires that we, as a Gulf grouping, work to create a real balance of forces with it, including in nuclear know-how and to be ready for any possibility in relation to the Iranian nuclear file. Any violation of this balance will allow the Iranian leadership to exploit all holes to do harm to us.”

The United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia have agreed a July 20 deadline with Iran to clinch a long-term deal that would allow a gradual lifting of all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran over its atomic programme.

The Saudi prince said that Gulf Arab states were concerned by Iran’s nuclear ambitions despite the talks and by what he described as its meddling in the internal affairs of its Gulf Arab neighbours.

Gulf Arab countries have long accused Tehran of fueling unrest mainly among Shiite communities in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Yemen. Iran denies these allegations.

“The lack of trust in the Iranian leadership which arises from its double-talk and the duality of its policies prevents us from believing what it says,” he told the Bahrain conference.

“At the time when we hope that the ongoing nuclear talks between [Iran] and world powers reach the desired aim by halting its nuclear ambitions with definite guarantees, we have to be careful until this is a firm reality,” he said.

Prince Turki also said that a rift within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was the biggest threat facing them despite an agreement last week to end a security dispute with Qatar. He expressed concern that regional enemies could exploit the rift to destabilise the Middle East.

“The most dangerous thing that is facing our countries today is this new rift in our relations,” said Prince Turki, brother of the Saudi foreign minister.

In an unprecedented move within the GCC of allied hereditary monarchies, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar on March 5, accusing Doha of failing to abide by an accord not to interfere in each others’ internal affairs.

The three states are angry at Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement whose ideology challenges the principle of conservative dynastic rule dominant in the Gulf.

The GCC foreign ministers agreed at a meeting in Riyadh on April 17 on ways to implement a security agreement they reached last year, but they made no reference to the return of the ambassadors to Doha.

Qatari Foreign Minister, Khaled Al Attiya, speaking during a visit to Kuwait on Wednesday, said the rift with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE has been resolved but it was up to three countries to return their ambassadors to Doha.

“The Riyadh statement of April 17 was a clear statement. The brothers of the Gulf Cooperation Council reached understandings which are not considered to be concessions by anyone,” he told journalists in Kuwait.

RIYADH — King Abdullah was in the Saudi commercial hub of Jeddah on Thursday in a bid to reassure a worried public as the death toll from the MERS virus hit 85.

The Red Sea city has seen a spate of cases among health staff in recent weeks that have sparked fears that the virus has mutated to make it more transmissible from person to person.

The World Health Organisation announced on Wednesday that it had offered to send international experts to Saudi Arabia to investigate “any evolving risk” resulting from the apparent change in transmission pattern.

Public concern has been fuelled by the reported resignation last week of at least four doctors at Jeddah’s King Fahd Hospital after they refused to treat MERS patients for fear of infection with the deadly coronavirus.

In its latest bulletin on Wednesday, the health ministry said that it had recorded a total of 287 cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in the kingdom so far, of whom a full 85 had died.

Despite the figures, the royal family insisted there was no cause for public alarm.

National Guard Minister Prince Mitab said his father King Abdullah was in Jeddah “to reassure the public, and to prove that the exaggerated and false rumours about coronavirus are not true”.

“The MERS situation is reassuring and it has not reached the level of an epidemic,” he told students in Jeddah according to the Saudi Gazette.

But that did not stop the king from dismissing health minister Abdullah Al Rabiah on Monday without an official explanation.

Labour Minister Adel Fakieh, who has taken over as acting health minister, said on Twitter late Tuesday that he had visited the King Fahd Hospital.

He promised “transparency, and to promptly provide the media and society with the information needed”.

WHO offers expertise 

The World Health Organisation said on Wednesday that the recent cluster of cases among health workers was a cause of concern as the virus had clearly been contracted from a human patient and not directly from an animal host.

“WHO is unaware at this point in time of the specific types of exposure in the health care facilities that have resulted in transmission of these infections, but this remains a concern,” the UN agency said.

“Therefore, WHO has offered its assistance to mobilise international expertise to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates to investigate the current outbreaks in order to determine the transmission chain of this recent cluster, and whether there is any evolving risk that may be associated with the current transmissibility pattern of the virus.”

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 it may have been passed from the animals to humans and now evolved.

Since the emergence of MERS in April 2012, a total of 253 laboratory-confirmed cases of human infections with MERS have been reported to the WHO worldwide. Of those 93 have died.

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

SANAA — Yemen’s president on Wednesday said that the death toll of this week’s military campaign against Al Qaeda has reached over 60 suspected militants, including several of the group’s leaders.

Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s remarks aired on state TV came as a high ranking security official said authorities are examining DNA samples of the dead to determine their identities.

Earlier, a government official told The Associated Press that the results of the DNA test were forthcoming, declining to give names of the leaders targeted. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the press.

On Sunday and Monday, the military, reportedly backed by US drone strikes, hit a major Al Qaeda base in the remote southern mountains, killing 55 militants. The bombed sites included a training ground, a storehouse for weapons and food as well as vehicles. The base is in a remote mountain valley called Wadi Al Khayala in the rugged Mahfad region at the border between Abyan province, and the neighbouring provinces of Shabwa and Al Bayda.

Hadi was quoted by state TV as saying: “The heroic operations by the armed forces and special security forces against terrorists’ groupings... have achieved strong victory against these remnants.” He did not give names of the leaders killed. He urged security forces to chase terrorism to achieve stability.

The assault appeared to be a significant escalation in the US and Yemeni campaign against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror group’s powerful branch in the southern Arabian nation. The United States has been hitting Al Qaeda positions in the country heavily with drone strikes the past two years, trying to cripple the group after it was driven out of several southern cities it took over in 2011.

But the group has proven highly resilient, spreading around the country and working from mountain areas. In a show of boldness, a video recently posted on Islamic militant websites showed the group’s leader Nasser Al Wahishi meeting openly with dozens of militants in Abyan.

DUBAI — Authorities in Sunni-ruled Bahrain on Wednesday expelled the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, in the latest manifestation of tension with the kingdom’s Shiite majority.

Sheikh Hussein Al Najati was among 31 Bahrainis who had their citizenship revoked in November 2012 over accusations that they had undermined state security, more than a year after authorities crushed a Shiite uprising in March 2011.

Najati “practised unclear activities, without coordinating with authorities which discovered afterwards that he was Sistani’s representative”, the interior ministry said.

“Working as an official representative of any party necessitates a letter of accreditation that specifies responsibilities and planned activities,” it said.

Najati worked on “collecting funds and distributing them” in the name of the Iraq-based Sistani, one of the top Shiite spiritual guides, the ministry added.

Najati was born in 1960 to Iranian parents in Bahrain, it said.

He arrived on Wednesday in Lebanon, according to Bahrain’s Shiite Al Wefaq opposition association.

Sistani, who is based in the Iraqi city of Najaf, in 2011 condemned Bahrain’s crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired protests which demanded democratic reforms in the Gulf kingdom.

Bahrain remains deeply divided three years after the February 2011 uprising, with persistent protests sparking clashes with police, scores of Shiites jailed on “terror” charges and reconciliation talks deadlocked.

DOHA — The family of an Al Jazeera reporter detained in Egypt since August and on hunger strike since January 21 said on Wednesday his health is deteriorating, and called for his release.

Abdullah Elshamy, a journalist for the pan-Arab satellite news network, was arrested on August 14 when police dispersed supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi at the massive Rabaa Al Adawiya protest camp in Cairo, killing hundreds in clashes.

“I call upon the public prosecutor, who is a father, to answer the plea of a mother by releasing Abdullah today,” Thuraya Elshamy said at a news conference organised by Al Jazeera in Doha.

“My son is a journalist — journalism is not a crime,” she said.

Elshamy’s father urged action to save the life of his son, stressing that “his health has deteriorated due to the hunger strike”.

In a separate case, three other journalists for Al Jazeera English — Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Australian Peter Greste, and producer Baher Mohamed — face charges of spreading news that falsely sought to portray Egypt in a state of “civil war” and colluding with Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

An Egyptian court on Tuesday heard new prosecution evidence, including audiotapes, against some of the journalists before setting the next hearing for May 3.

CAIRO — Prosecution witnesses in the jailbreak trial of Egypt’s ousted president Mohamed Morsi on Wednesday accused members of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Lebanon’s Hizbollah of attacking Egyptian prisons during the 2011 uprising.

The trial, one of three against Morsi, is part of a government crackdown that has targeted him and his Muslim Brotherhood movement since his ousting by the army in July.

In the jailbreak case, Morsi and 130 other defendants including Palestinian and Lebanese militants are charged with organising attempts to spring prisoners from jails, and attacking police stations during the uprising that ousted longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak.

The prosecution presented three witnesses in Wednesday’s hearing, two of whom described how jails were attacked during the uprising, before the trial was postponed until April 30.

Morsi, dressed in white prison uniform, appeared in a caged dock as his co-defendants sat with their backs to the judges in a separate enclosure, an AFP journalist said.

Former interior minister Mahmoud Wagdi told the court members of “Hamas, [Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine] Al Qassam Brigades, [Palestinian Islamists] the Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah... entered Egypt through the border with the Gaza Strip helped by Bedouins from Sinai” on January 28, 2011.

Wagdi was named interior minister three days after the militants are alleged to have entered Egypt.

He said that after crossing the border, they “destroyed” several police installations in the Sinai, before attacking “the prisons of Abu Zaabal, Al Marg and Wadi Natrun that had political elements from Hamas and Hizbollah”, Wagdi said.

Prosecutors charge the attacks on police stations and the jailbreaks, in which Morsi and other political prisoners escaped, were a Muslim Brotherhood-led conspiracy aimed at sowing chaos during the 2011 revolt.

Nearly 850 people died during the 18-day uprising that toppled Mubarak, most of them on January 28, 2011, when protesters battled police.

At Wednesday’s hearing, prosecution’s other witness Atef Sherif Abdel Salam, who was prison chief at the time, said the prisons were attacked by “elements from Sinai Bedouins”.

“The prisons where the jailbreak succeeded were prisons that had political elements in them,” he said.

“The first prison to be attacked was the Abu Zaabal prison at 10 in the morning on January 29... it had elements from Al Qaeda and Sinai Bedouins.”

He said the authorities later found “spent ammunition... that was not used by Egyptian police or military” at Abu Zabaal prison.

Abdel Salam also said Wadi Natrum jail had around 30 leaders from the Muslim Brotherhood when it came under attack.

Morsi is also on trial over the killing of protesters during his presidency and in an espionage trial where he is accused of conspiring with foreign powers, Hamas and Shiite Iran to destabilise Egypt.

A government crackdown targeting Morsi and his supporters has killed more than 1,400 people and jailed thousands.

JUBA — The White House has expressed horror at what it called the “abomination” of spiralling violence in South Sudan’s civil war, where rebels have been accused of massacring hundreds of civilians.

The rebels seized the oil hub of Bentiu last week, unleashing two days of ethnic slaughter as they hunted down civilians sheltering in mosques, churches and a hospital, butchering dozens on the roadside, according to the United Nations.

“We are horrified by reports out of South Sudan that fighters aligned with rebel leader Riek Machar massacred hundreds of innocent civilians last week in Bentiu,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

“These acts of violence are an abomination. They are a betrayal of the trust the South Sudanese people have put in their leaders,” he said.

“Images and accounts of the attacks shock the conscience: stacks of bodies found dead inside a mosque, patients murdered at a hospital and dozens more shot, and killed in the streets and at a church — apparently due to their ethnicity and nationality — while hate speech was broadcast on local radio,” Carney added.

Images released by the United Nations show piles of bloated, decomposing bodies strewn in several areas — a repeat of mass killings seen in other areas of the country over the past four months.

The UN said the killings continued for almost two days after the rebels issued a statement boasting of victory in Bentiu, and that the rebels had used hate radio broadcasts to whip up violent ethnic sentiment.

South Sudan’s army has been fighting rebels loyal to sacked vice president Riek Machar since the unrest broke out on December 15.

The conflict has taken on an ethnic dimension, pitting President Salva Kiir’s Dinka tribe against militia forces from Machar’s Nuer people.

The White House called on both men to “make clear that attacks on civilians are unacceptable, perpetrators of violence on both sides must be brought to justice and the cycle of violence that has plagued South Sudan for too long must come to an end”.

 Piles of bodies 

The rebels, however, have blamed retreating government troops for the atrocities.

“The government forces and their allies committed these heinous crimes while retreating,” rebel spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said, adding that the rebel offensive targeting oil fields and the town of Bor, situated north of the capital Juba, was continuing.

The scale of killings in Bentiu is one of the worst atrocities in the four-month conflict, during which both sides have been implicated in massacres, rape and the recruitment of child soldiers.

Last week gunmen in the government-held town of Bor also attacked a UN base sheltering civilians, killing at least 58 people.

Toby Lanzer, the top UN aid official in the country, told AFP after visiting Bentiu — capital of oil-producing Unity State — that he had witnessed the “most terrible sight”.

“There are piles of bodies lining the streets where they had been executed, in the market, outside and inside places of worship... the majority wearing civilian clothes,” Lanzer said Monday.

The United States, which was instrumental in helping South Sudan win independence from Khartoum in 2011, has threatened sanctions against those responsible for continuing the war.

Heavy fighting was also reported on Tuesday in the eastern state of Jonglei, and in Upper Nile in the northeast, with South Sudan army spokesman Philip Aguer boasting the army had repulsed the attacks and killed scores of rebels.

In Bentiu, some 23,000 terrified civilians have crowded into the cramped UN peacekeeping base for protection, where under both fierce heat and heavy rains — and little if any shelter — they are surviving on just a litre (quart) of water a day each.

Jonathan Veitch, the UN children’s agency chief in the country, warned of fatal water-borne diseases, saying that “children have endured unspeakable violence”.

The UN has said more than one million people are at risk of famine.

On Tuesday, 22 international aid agencies, including Oxfam, Care and the International Rescue Committee, issued a joint warning they were already witnessing “alarming rates of malnutrition”.

The conflict in South Sudan has left thousands of people dead and forced around a million to flee their homes. Peace talks are due to restart in neighbouring Ethiopia later this month.

DUBAI — Several armed men targeted a family from the United Arab Emirates by forcing their way into their London apartment, weeks after a similar attack in the British capital, state media in the Gulf nation and police said Wednesday.

The attacks have been front-page news in the Emirates, where violent crime is rare. The country has longstanding ties to the United Kingdom, and London is a popular destination for Emirati tourists and other wealthy Arabs from the Gulf.

The Emirates’ ambassador to Britain, Abdulrahman Ghanem Al Mutaiwee, was quoted by the country’s official WAM news agency as saying that seven people were involved in the attack, some of them wielding hammers, knives and guns.

They stole money, jewellery and credit cards from the Emirati man and his wife, he said.

British police confirmed details of the robbery, saying it happened in the Paddington area of central London early Tuesday. They said the victims were an Emirati couple and an Emirati acquaintance in their 40s and 50s.

No arrests have been made.

On April 6, a man entered an upscale London hotel room and battered three sisters from the Emirates. Police said theft was the apparent motive.

That attack drew the attention of the top leadership in the Emirates, a seven-state federation that includes Dubai and the oil-rich capital of Abu Dhabi. The Emirati government dispatched a high-level government delegation and police officers to meet with the sisters’ family.

All three women in the hotel hammer incident are still in the hospital. One of the victims lost her left eye and has brain injuries, and is described as in “critical but stable condition”, according to police.

A London man has been charged with attempted murder and aggravated burglary in the hotel attack, and three other people are charged with handling stolen goods.

British police noted the “tragic coincidence” of the two attacks, but say there is no evidence linking them or any indication the latest victims targeted because of their nationality.

Britain recently introduced an electronic visa waiver system for citizens of the UAE, Qatar and Oman, making it easier for those countries’ citizens to travel to the UK.

UNITED NATIONS — Iran brought its simmering row with the United States over its proposed UN ambassador to United Nations headquarters on Tuesday but failed to make any headway.

US President Barack Obama signed into law Friday a bill designed to bar Iran’s pick for UN ambassador from US soil over his links to the 1979 American embassy hostage siege.

The spat over Hamid Aboutalebi’s nomination has blown up amid a cautious thaw in relations between the US and Iran as Tehran’s new leadership seeks to negotiate a nuclear treaty with global powers.

The United States, which hosts the UN, has said it would not issue a visa to Aboutalebi because he was involved in the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran.

Iran, which does not want to select another candidate, asked the United Nations, in New York, to weigh in.

A committee on relations with the host country failed to reach a conclusion.

“Iran and the US presented their views on the well-known incident concerning the denial of a visa to the new permanent representative of Iran,” said Nicholas Emiliou, the Cypriot ambassador, who led the committee.

He added that “we will continue to be in touch with the relevant delegations”, but did not give a date on any potential further meeting and will monitor the diplomatic impasse.

According to diplomats, Belarus, Cuba and North Korea were in favour of Iran during the session that lasted barely an hour.

The committee can make recommendations to the UN General Assembly or seek legal advice, but did not, said a diplomat, adding: “Iran has not been successful.”

In 1979, dozens of American diplomats and staff were held for 444 days by radical Iranian students at the embassy in Tehran.

The protracted standoff profoundly shocked the United States and led to the severing of all diplomatic ties between the US and Iran for the past three decades.

As the host government, the United States is generally obliged to issue visas to diplomats who serve at the United Nations.

Aboutalebi, a veteran diplomat who currently heads Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s political affairs bureau, has insisted he was not part of the hostage-taking in November 1979, when a Muslim student group seized the US embassy after the overthrow of the pro-Western shah.

He has acknowledged he served a limited role as a translator for the students who took the Americans hostage.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia on Wednesday announced 11 new cases of MERS, including a 13-year-old child, as its acting health minister vowed to keep the public better informed on the coronavirus.

The new cases bring to 272 the total number of MERS infections, including 81 deaths, registered across the kingdom — worst hit by the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome which was first detected in eastern Saudi Arabia in September 2012.

Most of the latest cases are in Riyadh and the commercial hub Jeddah, with one case in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, visited each year by millions of pilgrims from around the world.

Three of the new infections were of health workers, while a 13-year-old Saudi girl is among cases recorded in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

A spike in MERS cases and public fears prompted the Gulf state to dismiss its health minister, Abdullah Al Rabiah, on Monday without an official explanation.

Rabiah last week visited hospitals in Jeddah to calm a public hit by panic over the spread of the virus among medical staff that triggered the temporary closure of the city’s King Fahd Hospital emergency room.

Labour Minister Adel Fakieh, who has taken over as acting health minister, said on Twitter late Tuesday that he had visited the Jeddah hospital.

Fakieh promised “transparency and to promptly provide the media and society with the information needed” on the virus.

At least four doctors at King Fahd Hospital reportedly resigned last week after refusing to treat MERS patients.

The virus is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus which 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 it may have been passed directly from the animals to humans.

The World Health Organisation said on April 20 that it had been informed of 250 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS infection worldwide, of which 93 had been fatal.