Region

TRIPOLI — Libya’s parliament asked Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni on Tuesday to form a new government within a week after the Cabinet demanded more powers to tackle the disorder crippling the OPEC country.

The weak central government, which must be reconfirmed by parliament every two weeks, has asked for a longer mandate to deal with Libya’s competing political parties, rival militias, regional demands and rebels disrupting the oil industry.

But General National Congress (GNC) spokesman Omar Hmeidan said the parliament would only decide after formation of a new Cabinet whether the caretaker government could stay on until a general election expected later this year.

In a sign of the confusion surrounding politics in Libya, the state news agency LANA as well as Libyan and Arab television stations had earlier reported that the Cabinet had quit.

“The GNC has appointed Abdullah Al-Thinni as the prime minister under a condition of forming a government within a week,” Hmeidan told Reuters.

Asked about the resignation reports, Cabinet spokesman Ahmed Lamim said: “The government is working normally but there was a letter sent to the General National Congress saying the government needs more authority to work.”

The central government has been unable to control militias that helped oust dictator Muammar Qadhafi in a 2011 uprising but kept their guns and carved out autonomous fiefs. The deepening turmoil has hit the North African state’s lifeblood oil exports.

After sacking Ali Zeidan as prime minister last month over an attempted oil sale by rebels in the volatile east, parliament gave Thinni a mandate that had to be renewed every two weeks.

The latest mandate expired on Monday and Cabinet spokesman Lamim said “a few days of extensions don’t help”.

Lawmaker Najah Salouh Abdulsalam said the GNC had written first to Thinni to say that his Cabinet was just a caretaker government with no right to make any decisions.

Thinni wrote back asking for more powers so his government can run the country, otherwise it would resign, she said.

Adding to the confusion, lawmaker Sharif Al Wafi said Tuesday’s parliamentary decision to ask Thinni to form a new Cabinet was invalid because it had lacked the necessary quorum.

Bowing to public pressure, the GNC has agreed to call new elections later this year but no date has been set. Many Libyans blame factional infighting for Libya’s bumpy transition since the NATO-backed uprising against Gaddafi in 2011.

Parliament is divided among competing factions, Islamists and more moderate forces, with more pressures coming from demands by the different regions in the vast desert country.

Thinni, a former army officer, scored a success earlier this week by working with tribal elders to convince rebels in the volatile east to end a nine-month blockage of oil ports.

The rebels agreed on Sunday to reopen the Zueitina and Hariga Ports immediately and two larger ports within a month pending further talks.

The government has promised to compensate the rebel fighters financially and investigate claims of oil corruption, but managed to ignore their demands for regional autonomy and a share of oil sales, according to the published agreement.

The blockage comes on top of protests at western oil facilities which have crippled output to around 150,000 barrels a day from 1.4 million bpd in July, draining state coffers.

Libya’s oil ministry said force majeure, a term to cover legal contractual obligations, was still imposed on the two ports, an oil ministry official said on Tuesday.

“It has not been lifted. NOC has not instructed the ports to export oil yet,” Ibrahim Al Awami said.

Awami said staff at Arabian Gulf Oil Co, which runs the Hariga terminal, had joined a general strike in the eastern city Benghazi that began on Sunday. It was unclear whether this would affect the port’s ability to resume exports.

Workers at Zueitina were doing maintenance and checking facilities before resuming exports, Awami said.

BAGHDAD — Attacks in Iraq left 15 people dead Tuesday while security forces said they killed 25 militants near Baghdad amid worries insurgents are encroaching on the capital weeks ahead of elections.

The latest violence is part of a protracted surge in nationwide bloodshed that has left more than 2,400 people dead since the start of the year, and sparked fears Iraq is slipping back into the all-out sectarian fighting that plagued it in 2006 and 2007.

The unrest has been driven principally by anger in the Sunni Arab community 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 Tuesday’s bloodiest incident, soldiers killed 25 militants in an ambush southwest of Baghdad, the capital’s security spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said.

Maan said the fighters were part of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and that they were planning to attack an army base that they had attempted to hit last week.

Despite the tactical success, the killings illustrate the growing ambition of ISIL militants seeking to fight their way into Baghdad, with analysts and officials worrying that they are seeking to derail April 30 elections.

Elsewhere in Iraq on Tuesday, attacks north of the capital killed 15 people overall, security and medical officials said, including six members of the same family shot dead inside their home on the outskirts of the restive city of Mosul.

A car bomb set off by a suicide attacker at a checkpoint in the city of Tuz Khurmatu killed four policemen, while attacks were also carried out in Baiji and Tikrit in Salaheddin province.

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 not wanted to be seen as appeasing political rivals.

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.

The United Nations has warned that the election campaign, which got under way a week ago, will be “highly divisive”, underscoring fears that the polls could worsen the long-standing political deadlock, in which Iraq’s fractious unity government has passed little in the way of significant legislation.

“Campaigning will be highly divisive,” UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov told AFP in an interview on April 1.

“Everyone is ratcheting it up to the maximum and you could see this even before officially the campaign started.”

Mladenov added: “I would hope that it would be more about issues and how the country deals with its challenges, but at this point, it’s a lot about personality attacks.”

“The efforts to reach across the sectarian divide are very weak.”

CAIRO — Telephone and Internet networks were briefly shut down to Egypt’s southern province of Aswan for several hours, as authorities moved to try to end a bloody tribal feud that killed 26 people over the past days, security officials and residents said Tuesday.

The officials said the shutdown was part of a plan aimed at preventing contacts while security forces prepare operations to disarm the two feuding sides, an Arab clan and a Nubian family.

Tribal leaders engaged in mediation talks with government officials have complained that contacts with the media and through Internet and mobile phones have fuelled the tension in the past days by spreading news about the carnage, the officials said.

Security forces have used such communications shutdowns repeatedly in the Sinai Peninsula during their offensive against Islamic militants there.

The state news agency MENA quoted communications company officials as saying a technical failure caused the cut, without elaborating. It said there was a blanket communications cut in Aswan for hours, disrupting banks, government offices, and offices issuing plane and train tickets.

The fighting in Aswan province, about 880 kilometres, from the capital, erupted Friday. It reportedly began after a fight last week between school students drew in adults, sparking the clashes that turned deadly Friday. Police said the fight was over the harassment of a girl. Witnesses said offensive graffiti on the school walls taunting the Nubian family and the Arab clan with racial slurs fuelled the violence.

The state news agency MENA said the toll from three days of fighting rose to 26 when one person died from extensive burns suffered earlier.

One of the officials said the fighting, which began Friday, had become a “national security issue”. The previous evening, the interim president met with the National Security Council, a body of top security officials, to come up with a plan to confront the violence.

One of the officials said severing communications aimed to give cover for troops during searches for weapons and suspects. The shutdown lasted about three hours, during which attempts to reach Aswan residents by phone were unsuccessful. By the afternoon, communications at least partially returned. But it was not clear what operations had been carried out.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to speak to reporters.

An Associated Press photographer in Aswan said officers said an operation was underway but didn’t elaborate. A joint police and military force was seen searching at least one home in the neighbourhood where most of the killing took place, but it was not clear if they were looking for suspects or weapons.

The communication cut down also came soon after the country’s chief prosecutor visited the area from Cairo. Prosecutor Hisham Barakat toured the area were the fighting took place, where several homes were torched, and where most of the 26, mostly from the Arab clan, were killed.

Security officials say members of the impoverished Arab clan are involved in arms and drugs smuggling. The fight took on a political overtone when the Arab clan accused the ethnic Nubians of supporting the military, while the Nubians say the Arabs back ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and are protected by officials loyal to longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Local leaders say police were mostly absent from the streets, causing the violence to spread. The governor appealed for the military to deploy troops there.

VIENNA — The United States said on Tuesday Iran has the ability to produce fissile material for a nuclear bomb in two months, if it so decided, as Tehran and six world powers swung into a new round of talks in Vienna on resolving their atomic dispute.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s comments in Washington highlighted Western concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions and the wide divisions between the two sides that could still foil a deal. Iran says its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.

The overarching goal of the powers — Britain, France, China, Russia, Germany and the United States — in the talks is to persuade Iran to scale back its programme to the point that it would take it much longer, perhaps as much as a year, to produce fuel for a bomb if it chose to do so.

“I think it’s public knowledge today that we’re operating with a time period for a so-called ‘break-out’ of about two months. That’s been in the public domain,” Kerry testified at a Senate hearing.

Iran’s “break-out” time is defined as how long it would take it to produce fissile material for one nuclear weapon, if it decided to build such weapons of mass destruction.

To lengthen this potential timeline, the powers want Iran to cut back the number of centrifuges it operates refine uranium and the overall amount of enriched uranium it produces, as well as to limit its research into new technologies and submit to invasive inspections by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.

The Islamic Republic says its nuclear fuel-making activity is only for peaceful purposes such as electricity generation, and it wants the West to lift crippling economic sanctions as part of any final accord with the powers.

The February 8-9 round is the third meeting between the powers and Iran since February, and part of a series which they hope will culminate in a broad settlement of the decade-old nuclear dispute that threatens to sink the Middle East into a new war.

The meetings so far have been used by the sides largely as an opportunity to spell out their positions on issues such as the scope of Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts, its contested nuclear facilities, rather than to narrow their differences.

“We are involved in very detailed and substantial negotiations and we are trying as hard as we can to drive the process forward,” the spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who coordinates the discussions on behalf of the powers, told reporters.

Getting into the details

Both sides say they want to start drafting a comprehensive agreement in May, some two months before a July 20 deadline for finalising the accord.

“What matters most to us is that there is a good agreement. Clearly we want to make progress as fast as possible but the most important thing is the quality of the agreement,” Ashton’s spokesman, Michael Mann, said.

“It has to be a good agreement that everyone is happy with. So we will work as hard was we can to achieve that.”

Iranian and US negotiators are wary that any deal will face criticism from conservative hardliners at home wedded to confrontation since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The six nations have agreed internally to have a draft text of an accord by the end of May or early June, one diplomat from the powers said. But he added: “We’re still in an exploratory phase... In the end, things will happen in July.”

Tuesday’s opening session was chaired by Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, but their deputies later took over.

The diplomat said issues to be discussed included how UN nuclear inspectors would verify whether Iran was meeting its end of any deal, suspected past atomic bomb research by Tehran and how to deal with UN Security Council resolutions on Iran adopted since 2006.

A senior Iranian negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, said major issues discussed in previous meetings — Iran’s level of uranium enrichment and a heavy-water nuclear reactor project at Arak — would also be covered.

Refined uranium can be used to fuel nuclear power plants, Iran’s stated purpose, but can also provide material for a bomb, which the West suspects may be Tehran’s ultimate aim. The Arak reactor, once operational, can yield plutonium — another weapons-usable fissile material — but Iran says it only intends to use it for medical and agricultural research ends.

The goal 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 that have hobbled the OPEC country’s economy.

In November, the two sides agreed an interim accord curbing some Iranian enrichment activities in exchange for some easing of sanctions. This six-month deal, which took effect on January 20, was designed to buy time for talks on a final accord.

The talks can be extended by another half-year if both sides agree to do so and negotiate the content of an extension deal.

Israel has threatened to attack its long-time foe Iran if diplomatic efforts fail. Iran says it is Israel’s assumed atomic arsenal that threatens peace and stability in the Middle East.

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.