Region

TRIPOLI — Libya threatened on Saturday to bomb a North Korean-flagged tanker if it tried to ship oil from a rebel-controlled port, in a major escalation of a stand-off over the country’s petroleum wealth.

The rebels, who have seized three major Libyan ports since August to press their demands for more autonomy, warned Tripoli against staging an attack to halt the oil sale after the tanker docked at Es Sider export terminal, one of the country’s biggest.

The oil dispute is just one facet of the deepening turmoil in the North African OPEC member, where the government is struggling to control militias who helped topple Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but kept their weapons and now challenge state authority.

A local television station controlled by protesters showed footage of pro-autonomy rebels holding a lengthy ceremony and slaughtering a camel to celebrate their first oil shipment. In the distance stood a tanker.

Prime Minister Ali Zeidan appeared hours later on television to warn the tanker’s crew. “The tanker will be bombed if it doesn’t follow orders when leaving [the port]. This will be an environmental disaster,” Zeidan said.

“They are now trying to load oil,” he said, denouncing it as a criminal act. Authorities have ordered the arrest of the tanker’s crew.

There was no immediate sign of the country’s armed forces moving towards the port. Analysts say the military, still in training, would struggle to overcome rebels battle-hardened from the eight-month uprising against Gaddafi.

Zeidan acknowledged the army had failed to implement his orders last week to stop the protesters sending reinforcements from their base in Ajdabiyah, west of the regional capital Benghazi, to Es Sider.

“Nothing was done,” Zeidan said, adding that political opponents in parliament were obstructing his government. He said North Korea had asked the ship’s captain to sail away from the port but armed protesters had prevented that.

Abb-Rabbo Albarassi, the eastern autonomy movement’s self-declared prime minister, said Zeidan’s government had failed to meet its demands to share oil wealth, investigate oil corruption and to grant the regional autonomy.

“We tried to reach a deal with the government, but they and parliament ... were too busy with themselves and didn’t even discuss our demands,” he told the televised ceremony.

“If anyone attacks, we will respond to that.”

A successful independent oil shipment would be a blow to the government. Tripoli had said earlier it would destroy tankers trying to buy oil from Ibrahim Jathran, a former anti-Gaddafi rebel who seized the port and two others with thousands of his men in August.

Jathran, who was seen attending the televised ceremony, had commanded a brigade of former rebels paid by the state to protect petroleum facilities. He defected with his troops, however, to take over the ports.

In January, the Libyan navy fired on a Maltese-flagged tanker which it said had tried to load oil from the protesters in Es Sider.

The North Korean-flagged Morning Glory, which was previously flagged in Liberia, had been circling off the Libyan coast for days. It tried to dock at Es Sider on Tuesday, when port workers still loyal to the central government told the crew to turn back.

Storage tanks at Es Sider and other seized ports are full, according to oil sources.

It is extremely unusual for an oil tanker flagged in secretive North Korea to operate in the Mediterranean, shipping sources said.

A spokesman for state-run National Oil Corp said the Morning Glory was owned by a Saudi company. It had changed ownership in the past few weeks and previously been called Gulf Glory, according to a shipping source.

The Saudi embassy in Tripoli said in a statement that the kingdom’s government had nothing to do with the tanker, without saying who owned it.

Protests

Western powers worry Libya will slide into deeper instability or even break apart as the government, paralysed by political battles in parliament, struggles to assert control of a vast country awash with arms and militias.

At a Libya conference this week in Rome, Western countries voiced concern that tensions in Libya could slip out of control in the absence of a functioning political system, and urged the government and rival factions to start talking.

Libya’s government has tried to end a wave of protests at oil ports and fields across the vast desert state that have slashed oil output, the country’s lifeline, to 230,000 barrels per day (bpd), from 1.4 million bpd in July.

Tripoli has held indirect talks with Jathran but his demand for a greater share of oil revenues for the east, like the region had under Gaddafi’s predecessor King Idris, is sensitive for a government that worries this might lead to secession.

Jathran has teamed up with another set of protesters blocking oil exports at the 110,000-bpd Hariga Port in Tobruk, also located in the east.

Libya’s defence minister held talks this week with protesters blocking the 340,000-bpd El Sharara Oilfield in the south but there is no word on whether it will reopen soon.

The protesters, from a tribal minority, want national identity cards and a local council, demands the minister has promised to study.

GAZA CITY — A member of a Gaza armed group was killed Saturday and six more wounded in an explosion as they were learning to make bombs, the group said.

“The explosion occurred during a training session in bomb making,” said a statement from the Izzeddine Al Qassem Brigades, the military wing of the Islamist Hamas movement that controls Gaza.

The blast took place at a house in the southern town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border.

Earlier, witnesses had said that most of the injured, including two seriously hurt, were “activists”.

TEHRAN — EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who coordinates nuclear talks between Iran and world powers, arrived in Tehran on Saturday, media reported.

Her visit comes amid a recent thaw in Iran’s strained relations with the West following last year’s election of moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and over its controversial nuclear programme.

Rouhani vowed to “constructively engage” with the West, and a historic interim nuclear deal struck in November came into force in January.

The interim deal requires that the Islamic republic curb its nuclear activities for six months in exchange for some sanctions relief.

Negotiators are aiming to reach a comprehensive agreement by July 20, when the interim accord is due to expire.

“Ashton and her political and economic delegation arrived in Tehran and were officially welcomed by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi,” official IRNA news agency said.

Araqchi is Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator in the talks with world powers.

Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takhte Ravanchi said that bilateral ties between Iran and European Union as well as nuclear issue were on Ashton’s agenda.

“Ms. Ashton travels to Iran as the EU foreign policy chief, and discussing bilateral ties between Iran and European Union is on her agenda... naturally the nuclear issue will be raised too,” he said.

Ashton’s visit is the first to Iran by an EU policy chief since 2008.

She is scheduled to meet Rouhani, Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday.

Sources close to her delegation said that later Saturday she was also due to meet representatives of civil society, mainly women.

The issue of human rights would also be on the agenda, even if it could upset some hardliners, the source added.

An eight-member European Parliament delegation visited Iran in December and met rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and filmmaker Jafar Panahi triggering criticism by conservative politicians.

Ashton’s trip — which follows official visits by top diplomats from Italy, Sweden, Belgium and Spain — will also take her to Isfahan on Monday, Iranian media reports said.

The European Union is a key player in the nuclear negotiations with Iran, and Ashton is credited as playing a pivotal role.

Talks aimed at reaching a comprehensive and permanent deal are to begin in New York next month.

The United States, other Western powers and Israel have long suspected Iran of using its civil nuclear energy programme as a cover for developing atomic weapons, a charge denied by Tehran.

In return for eased sanctions, Iran undertook to limit enrichment of uranium to 5 per cent purity, halting enrichment to the higher levels that had prompted Western concern on whether its intentions were entirely peaceful.

It also undertook to neutralise existing stockpiles of higher-enriched uranium and to suspend work on a heavy water reactor it had been building.

BAGHDAD — Attacks across Iraq killed 13 people on Saturday, including a parliamentary candidate and four children, officers and medical sources said, as the country suffers its worst violence in years.

In Sharqat, north of Baghdad, gunmen shot dead Mohammed Hussein Hamid, who was standing in parliamentary elections scheduled for next month on Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Al Mutlak’s list.

Hamid was the second parliamentary candidate to be killed this year, after gunmen murdered Hamza Al Shammari last month.

Election candidates have been targeted in the past, with nearly 20 killed ahead of April 2013 provincial council elections.

In Samarra, also north of Baghdad, a shooting at a checkpoint killed two secondary school students and a policeman, while a roadside bomb blast in a village south of Sharqat killed two children.

Gunmen attacked a checkpoint in Sharqat, killing a police major and a policeman, while a roadside bomb in Khales killed army Lieutenant Colonel Abbas Al Rubaie and another soldier.

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near a market in the Qahira area, killing at least two people and wounding four.

And a shooting killed one person in the northern city of Mosul, one of the most dangerous parts of the country.

Violence has killed at least 110 people so far this month, and more than 1,800 since the beginning of the year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia on Friday listed the Muslim Brotherhood and two Syrian jihadist groups as terrorist organisations, and ordered citizens fighting abroad to return within 15 days or face imprisonment.

The move represents a major escalation against the Muslim Brotherhood of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi and indicates rising concern in Riyadh over the possible return of battle-hardened Saudi extremists from Syria.

In addition to the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi listed Al Nusra Front, which is Al Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a rogue group fighting in both Syria and Iraq, as terrorist organisations.

The interior ministry decree, which was released by state media, also listed as terrorist groups the Shiite Huthi rebels fighting in northern Yemen and “Hizbollah inside the kingdom”, apparently referring to a little-known Saudi Shiite group.

The order penalises involvement in any of the groups’ activities at home or abroad — including demonstrations — and outlaws the use of “slogans of these organisations”, including in social media.

It also forbids “participation in, calling for, or incitement to fighting in conflict zones in other countries”.

Riyadh is a staunch supporter of the Sunni-led rebels battling to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad but has long feared blowback from radical jihadist groups, particularly after a spate of attacks by a local Al Qaeda franchise from 2003 to 2006.

King Abdullah last month decreed jail terms of up to 20 years for belonging to “terrorist groups” and fighting abroad.

Similar sentences will be passed on those belonging to “extremist religious and ideological groups, or those classified as terrorist organisations, domestically, regionally and internationally”, state news agency SPA said at the time.

Supporting such groups, adopting their ideology or promoting them “through speech or writing” would also incur prison terms, the decree added.

Rights group Amnesty International sharply criticised last month’s decree, saying it could be used to suppress peaceful political dissent because the law used an “overly vague definition of terrorism”.

Saudi Arabia set up specialised terrorism courts in 2011 to try dozens of nationals and foreigners accused of belonging to Al Qaeda or being involved in a wave of bloody attacks that swept the country from 2003.

Rivalry with Qatar 

Saudi Arabia and other conservative Gulf monarchies have long been hostile towards the Muslim Brotherhood, fearing that its brand of grass-roots activism and political Islam could undermine their authority.

The decision to brand the Brotherhood a terrorist group came a day after Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates recalled their ambassadors from Qatar, which had been a staunch supporter of Morsi and backs Brotherhood-linked groups across the region.

It was an unprecedented escalation of tensions within the Gulf Cooperation Council — which also includes Kuwait and Oman — and was widely seen as signalling Gulf fury at Qatari support for Islamist groups following the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.

It was also seen as a revival of the on-again, off-again rivalry between Riyadh and Doha, oil- and gas-rich monarchies that have long vied for regional influence.

Saudi Arabia hailed the overthrow of Morsi and pledged billions of dollars to Egypt’s military-installed government following his July 2013 ouster, and in recent months has eclipsed Qatar as the main backer of Syria’s rebels.

Egypt, which has launched a sweeping crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and detained reporters from Qatar’s Al Jazeera news network, on Thursday welcomed the Gulf countries’ decision to recall their envoys from Doha.

It said its own envoy, who has been in Cairo since early February, “will not return to Qatar at the present time, and his remaining [in Egypt] is a sovereign political decision”.

“It is for Qatar to clearly determine its position, whether it will stand on the side of Arab solidarity, unified ranks and protection of national security... or on the other side, and bear the consequences and responsibility for that,” a government statement said.

JUBA — Five soldiers died when heavy fighting broke out in the main military barracks in war-torn South Sudan’s capital Juba on Wednesday, underscoring serious tensions within the national army as it battles a rebel uprising.

Fierce gunfire lasting two hours was heard coming from the main barracks near Juba University, home to the presidential guards and other elite troops, from 9:30am (0630 GMT).

The government played down the violence as resulting from a “misunderstanding” over pay. Army spokesman Malak Ayuen told AFP five soldiers had been killed and that those found responsible would face a court martial.

“It’s unfortunate that this morning fighting ensued among the commandos themselves over salary,” he said.

“What happened was a misunderstanding among the commandos and it ended in their unit.”

However, the UN mission in South Sudan voiced concern in a statement at “a number of shooting incidents which occurred in the capital, Juba”.

The fighting at the barracks was not far from UN offices.

The UN mission spoke of other reports of shootings in Juba, including around the university and the World Food Programme warehouse.

According to independent Tamazuj radio, the fighting at the barracks started after soldiers argued with a military pay committee. Other local media carried unconfirmed reports that the fighting broke out between guards loyal to President Salva Kiir and a commando unit under top general Gatwech Gai.

The US embassy in Juba issued a statement advising people to stay indoors as hundreds of terrified residents flooded the main church in Juba, fearing a major outbreak of violence.

“When the fighting started we immediately ran to the church for protection,” said Annet Sitima, a local woman.

The conflict in South Sudan started in the capital Juba under similar circumstances nearly three months ago amid tensions within the ruling party between President Kiir and former vice president Riek Machar.

The December 15 clashes, which spilt the army along ethnic lines, quickly spread across the country.

MUNSTER, Germany — Behind barbed wire fences at a top-security site in a German forest, workers in hazard suits will soon destroy remnants of Syrian chemical weapons of a type first tested here during World War I.

Far from the battlefields of the three-year-old Syrian war, this remote high-tech facility, which usually destroys munitions from two world wars, will help eliminate mustard gas stocks from the arsenal of President Bashar Assad.

The facility known as GEKA, Germany’s state-owned company for disposing of chemical warfare agents, boasts incinerators and a blast-proof explosives furnace that can safely detonate munitions with the destructive power of two tonnes of TNT.

“It’s not an adventure playground,” a GEKA spokesman quipped Wednesday to journalists visiting the site, where the faint smell of mustard gas-contaminated soil in bags wafts through storage halls. “You wouldn’t hold a children’s birthday party here.”

About 140 staff work on the site adjacent to a military training ground, from where rifle shots echo through the cedar woods.

It was at this site in Munster, some 70 kilometres south of Hamburg, that Germany developed chemical weapons during World War I and first test-fired mustard gas, a devastating warfare agent.

“It attacks the skin and causes blisters and wounds, and it is strongly carcinogenic,” said GEKA chief Andreas Krueger. “If you breathe in a lot, it attacks the lungs and mucous membranes including the eyes.”

As GEKA helps eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons, he said, “you do think about how, after 100 years since the start of World War I, they are still a problem”.

“But you also remember that the OPCW [Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] and thus this entire effort won the Nobel Peace Prize last autumn. That’s a certain incentive and also a source of pride if you’re involved, even in a small way.”

Mustard gas

A century has passed since lethal poison clouds first maimed and killed soldiers in the trenches of Europe, but the horror of the indiscriminate killer has not been consigned to history.

Last year, on
August 21, rockets loaded with the nerve agent sarin ploughed into battlefield suburbs of Damascus, killing hundreds of people.

The world was shocked by YouTube footage, purportedly taken after the attack, that showed men and children in spasms and pain, eyes flickering and foaming at the mouth.

The Syrian opposition, along with the US, EU and Arab League, blamed the attack on Assad forces, a claim denied by the regime and its ally Russia.

Under threat of US military strikes, the Assad regime agreed to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and hand over its 1,300-tonne stockpile for destruction by mid-2014.

The lethal material is to be destroyed under the supervision of the UN and OPCW, but several interim deadlines have since slipped and frustrated Western powers accuse the regime of stalling.

The weapons handed over by Syria will be neutralized aboard the US warship MV Cape Ray in the Mediterranean Sea.

Germany, along with Britain, has offered help with disposing of the secondary waste, so-called hydrolysates, which are similar to industrial waste.

Some 370 tonnes of the waste will be shipped in coming months in about a dozen containers to the German plant, where it will be pumped into a 1,000oC incinerator.

The area near GEKA has been heavily contaminated since 1919, when an explosion obliterated everything in a three-kilometre radius.

In World War II the area was again used for chemical weapons research and production, only to be later destroyed by British occupation forces after 1945.

The German army took over in the 1950s and has since been dealing with the legacy of two world wars, which have left the soils contaminated and littered with unexploded ordnance.

Munitions are still found here, screened with mobile X-ray units and taken away in round blast-proof metal containers on wheels.

Warfare agents are then separated from explosives and detonators, a process handled with remote-controlled saws and drills under jets of water, and then burnt for eight to 12 hours.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in January announced that Germany would lend its expertise to help in the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, saying that “the international community has an obligation to ensure they are destroyed”.

DOHA — Qatar will not bow to demands from three Gulf states to alter its foreign policy, sources close to its government said, suggesting Doha is unlikely to abandon support for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Syrian Islamists.

In an unprecedented move, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar on Wednesday, saying Doha had failed to abide by an accord not to interfere in each others’ internal affairs.

Hours later Qatar’s Cabinet voiced “regret and surprise” at the decision by the fellow-members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), but said Doha would not pull out its own envoys and that it remained committed to GCC security.

On Thursday, a source close to the Qatari government suggested Qatar would not comply.

“Qatar will not let go of its foreign policy, no matter what the pressures are. This is a matter of principles which we will stick to, no matter the price,” the source said.

The source also suggested Qatar would not stop its practice of playing host to members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including Youssef Al Qaradawi, an influential Sunni cleric and a vocal critic of authorities in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

“Since the day Qatar was founded we decided to take this approach of always welcoming anyone who seeks refuge in our country, and no amount of pressure will make us kick these people out,” said the source close to the government.

A source at the foreign ministry said: “It’s the right of every sovereign state to have its own foreign policy.”

The source also suggested that Qatar had no differences with fellow Gulf Arab states on Gulf matters.

Airtime for preacher

The dispute “is more about differences in foreign policy approaches”, the source added, referring to issues in the Middle East such as the crises in Egypt and Syria.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE clearly do see Qatar as at odds with them on Gulf issues. They are fuming especially over Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, an Islamist movement whose political ideology challenges the principle of dynastic rule.

They also resent the way Doha has sheltered Qaradawi and given him regular airtime on its pan-Arab satellite television channel Al Jazeera, and on Qatari state television.

The GCC, which normally keeps its disputes under wraps, is a pro-Western alliance of monarchies set up in the 1980s to counter Iranian influence in the Gulf, and includes several of the world’s biggest producers and exporters of oil and gas.

Qatar’s new emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, who took over from his father in June last year, said Qatar would not “take direction” in foreign affairs, suggesting he would continue his father’s habit of pursuing policies at odds with those of most other GCC states.

He has yet to comment publicly on the latest ruckus.

Since the start of the Arab Spring, the tiny Gulf state has used its wealth to back Islamists throughout the Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria.

With ambitions to mediate in conflicts in the region, Qatar has been a welcoming host to members of the Brotherhood, other Islamist groups and the Afghan Taliban.

Al Jazeera says it is an independent news service giving a voice to everyone in the region.

BAGHDAD — A series of bombings Thursday struck commercial areas in central Iraq, killing at least 37 civilians, authorities said.

Most of the blasts came from explosives-rigged parked cars and one by a bomb that ripped through an outdoor market, police said.

In Baghdad, a car bomb targeting shoppers in the southwestern Amil neighbourhood killed seven people and wounded 17, police said. A bomb at a cafe in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighbourhood killed four people and wounded 15, authorities said. Another bomb in a commercial street in central Baghdad killed three people and wounded 13, police said, while an explosion near the Green Zone killed three people and wounded eight.

In Hillah, located about 95 kilometres south of Baghdad, two car bombs killed nine civilians and wounded 28, police said.

A police officer said an explosion killed four people and wounded 10 in the nearby town of Iskandariyah, about 50 kilometres south of the capital.

In Mishada, about 30 kilometres north of Baghdad, a car bomb killed five civilians and wounded 14, another police officer said. A bomb in Baghdad’s southeastern suburb of Jisr Diyala killed two civilians and wounded seven, police said.

Three medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to release the information.

The attacks came a day after a series of explosions killed at least 24 people in different parts of Iraq. Such bombings have increased since last year, along with Sunni anger over perceived mistreatment and random arrests of Sunnis by the authorities.

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

UNITED NATIONS/ WASHINGTON — March will be a “critical” month for Syria if it is to maintain its timetable for dismantling its chemical weapons arsenal, the UN official tasked with overseeing the mission said on Wednesday.

“The month of March, as I informed the Security Council, is the critical month to look at continued progress towards the overall deadline,” said Sigrid Kaag, special coordinator for a joint mission by the UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to disassemble the weapons.

She made her remarks after briefing members of the Security Council early Wednesday by Damascus towards the goal of destroying or handing over its arsenal of banned weapons before a June 30 deadline.

After Damascus missed several key dates, the UN Security Council last week demanded that it move faster.

Prior to a shipment Monday, the United States estimated that Damascus had shipped out just 5 per cent of its stockpile.

The Syrian government blamed the delays on insecurity in the country, where it is locked in a brutal war with rebels seeking the overthrow of President Bashar Assad.

Kaag said, however, that there has been “an acceleration and an intensification” of effort by Damascus, and that about 35 per cent of weapons material now has been shipped.

“A number of shipments have taken place and will continue to take place,” she said.

“About one-third of Syrian chemical weapons materials has been removed or destroyed, Kaag said.

Over the next few days, she added, “we expect to reach already 40 or 41 per cent, and we look forward to see continued progress.”

Kaag also praised the “unity of purpose and voice of the Security Council” after briefing its members.

Syria agreed to hand over its chemical weapons for destruction after Washington threatened military action in response to a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus in August 2013.

The United States and the Syrian opposition blamed the attack, which reportedly killed hundreds of people, on the Syrian regime.

It denied involvement, but under pressure agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons programme.

Restricting movement

The United States is restricting the movement of Syria’s UN ambassador, limiting him to a 40-kilometre radius around New York City, the State Department said Wednesday.

Officials gave no explanation for the move against Bashar Jaafari but US relations have deteriorated sharply with Damascus since Assad led a crackdown against a pro-democracy uprising in 2011.

“We have delivered a diplomatic note to the permanent representative of the Syrian mission to the United Nations in New York informing him that he is restricted to a 40-kilometre travel radius,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

The note was delivered at the end of February, she told reporters.

Some other countries’ UN envoys face similar restrictions, she said. Envoys from Iran and North Korea are among them.

“So this is not something that is out of the realm of what we’ve done before,” Psaki said.

The Coalition for a Democratic Syria, an association of Syrian-American groups, welcomed the announcement, accusing the diplomat of trying to fuel sectarian divisions among Syrians in his public appearances in the United States.

“This development has been a long-standing objective that the Syrian-American community has been trying to achieve for the past five months,” said Chad Brand, a spokesman for the coalition.

For the past six months, Jaafari “has been conducting a series of propaganda tours across the United States to mislead Americans and sow sectarian discord among Syrian-Americans,” he said.

The United States has closed its embassy in Damascus but has not cut off diplomatic ties with Syria, despite repeated condemnation of the Assad regime.

The US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, who had cultivated contacts with Syria’s opposition, stepped down last week. Ford left the Syrian capital in 2011, when the popular uprising against Assad turned into a bloody civil war.