Region

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.”

CAIRO — An Egyptian appeals court on Monday upheld the jailing of three leading figures of the 2011 pro-democracy uprising, tightening a crackdown on secular activists opposed to the army-backed government.

Critics see their case as an attempt to stifle the kind of political street activism common since the uprising that ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak three years ago as Egypt prepares for presidential election next month.

A court handed down three-year sentences to the three liberal activists, Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma and Mohamed Adel, last December for protesting without permission and assaulting the police.

The verdict was the first under a new law that requires police permission for demonstrations. The case stemmed from protests called in defiance of the law. The European Union and the United States had urged Egypt to reconsider the verdict.

Popular leftist politician and presidential hopeful Hamdeen Sabahi condemned the sentences and urged Interim President Adli Mansour to grant the activists a presidential pardon. The liberal Al Dostour Party made the same request.

The three men appeared in court on Monday inside a metal cage wearing blue prison suits and chanting: “Down, down with army rule, our country will always be free!”

They have one final chance to appeal to a higher court but analysts see little hope of the verdict being overturned.

“I was not expecting this sentence at all. I was certainly expecting it to be overturned. That is very bad news,” said Dostour Party spokesman Khaled Dawoud.

“This will definitely send a very negative signal to all the young people who supported the [2011] January revolution.”

Already pursuing a crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood movement of deposed president Mohamed Morsi, the army-led authorities have arrested a number of secular activists in recent months for breaches of the new protest law.

SIDON, Lebanon — At least eight people were killed in fighting on Monday between Palestinian factions in a refugee camp near Lebanon’s southern city of Sidon, Lebanese and Palestinian medical sources said.

Local sources said the clashes broke out between fighters from the Brigades of Return, a group orginally linked to Palestinian President Mohammad Abbas’ Fateh group, and a rival organisation.

The leader of the Brigades of Return, Ahmed Rasheed, and two of his brothers were killed in the clashes in the Mieh Mieh camp, the sources said.

It was not immediately clear what triggered the fighting, in which at least 10 people were wounded.

Fateh and a range of Islamist factions compete for influence in Mieh Mieh and the nearby Ain Al Hilweh, two of the 12 Palestinian camps in Lebanon that are home to more than 200,000 registered refugees.

Tensions in the camps and in Lebanon as a whole have been exacerbated by the conflict in neighbouring Syria. More than a million Syrian refugees have poured into Lebanon along with many Palestinians, displaced by three years of war.

BEIRUT — Lebanese security officials say clashes in a Palestinian refugee camp near the southern city of Sidon have killed seven people, including the commander of an armed group.

The officials say at least 10 others were wounded in Monday's fighting in Mieh Mieh, which broke out between supporters of a former commander of the mainstream Palestinian group Fatah and members of a rival armed group, Ansarullah.

The officials say heavy machineguns and rocket propelled grenades were used in the fighting. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Fighting between rival groups is common across Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps.

The army blocked all roads leading to the camp later Monday in an effort to contain the fighting.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened the Palestinians with unilateral reprisals on Sunday, as the two sides met for last-ditch talks with a US envoy on salvaging the peace process.

Israel will retaliate if the Palestinians go ahead with applications to adhere to 15 international treaties, the rightwing premier said.

“These will only make a peace agreement more distant,” he said of the applications which the Palestinians submitted last Tuesday.

“Any unilateral moves they take will be answered by unilateral moves at our end,” he told a weekly Cabinet meeting.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators went into talks with US envoy Martin Indyk in the afternoon, a Palestinian source said.

He stressed there would be no change in the Palestinian position if Israel continued to refuse to free Arab prisoners.

The crisis erupted after Israel last week refused to release the fourth and last batch of Palestinian prisoners in line with an agreement struck with the Palestinians and the United States.

In a tit-for-tat move, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed the applications, triggering Israel’s wrath.

Israel says Abbas’ move was a clear breach of the commitments the Palestinians gave when the talks were relaunched last July to pursue no other avenues for recognition of their promised state.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, the driving force behind the talks, warned on Friday that there were “limits” to the time and energy that Washington could devote to the peace process.

But Abbas and Netanyahu have both ignored Kerry’s pleas to step back from the brink, and Israel’s prime minister asked for a range of retaliatory options to be drawn up.

The Israeli parliament is due to meet to discuss the crisis on Monday.

“The Palestinians have much to lose from a unilateral move. They will get a state only through direct negotiations and not through empty declarations or unilateral moves,” Netanyahu said on Sunday.

“We are prepared to continue talks, but not at any price.”

‘Facts on the ground’ 

Israel’s chief negotiator Tzipi Livni suggested that Washington scale down its “intensive” involvement, saying direct talks between Abbas and Netanyahu were needed.

“We need bilateral meetings between us, including between the prime minister and Abu Mazen [Abbas],” she said on television on Saturday.

A Palestinian source said Livni had already made the suggestion at a meeting two days earlier with her Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erekat, but that no such encounter is on the agenda.

Netanyahu angrily noted that the Palestinian applications to the international institutions were filed before planned talks aimed at extending negotiations beyond their April 29 deadline.

But Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo said Israel was responsible for the crisis and “wants to extend the negotiations forever”.

“Israel always implements unilateral steps,” he told Voice of Palestine radio.

Israel’s hardline Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called for early elections in case the prisoners are released.

“The government has three choices: free the prisoners even if the Palestinians have not kept their promises, form a new governing coalition or organise elections. The last option is preferable,” he said at a conference in New York, quoted on Israel Radio.

Officials from Netanyahu down have been cautious not to specify the exact nature of punitive measures Israel might take against the Palestinians.

But Haaretz newspaper said Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon have asked the military administration in the West Bank to draw up a list of possible punitive measures.

Other reports said Israel could prevent Wataniya Palestine Telecom from laying down cellphone infrastructure in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, and halt Palestinians from building in parts of the West Bank.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, an outspoken hardliner who opposes a Palestinian state, said certain Palestinian leaders should be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.

Shurat Hadin, a non-governmental organisation that backs the families of Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks, said it would petition the ICC.

Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, said Washington should back the Palestinian bid to join international treaties, a step which “could help create a better environment for peace negotiations”.

DAMASCUS — At least 29 rebels died in a blast Sunday in the central Syrian city of Homs as they primed a car bomb for an attack, a monitoring group said.

In the capital, meanwhile, two people were killed when mortar fire struck the Damascus Opera House, state media reported.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said at least 29 people were killed, most or all of them believed to be rebels, in the besieged Old City of Homs when a car bomb exploded.

“The death toll is likely to rise because there are dozens of people missing and body parts in the area of the blast,” the Britain-based group said.

State news agency SANA also reported the blast, saying a car had exploded while being loaded with explosives.

One activist network, the Syrian Revolution General Commission, said the blast was the result of a rocket landing on an ammunition depot in the area. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

The blast took place on the outskirts of the Old City of Homs, which is under rebel control.

Some 1,400 civilians were able to leave the area this year under UN supervision, but an estimated 1,500 people remain until the army siege.

In the capital, SANA said two people were killed in mortar fire by rebel fighters.

“Two people were killed and five wounded by a mortar round that hit the Damascus Opera House” near key government and military buildings on Umayyad Square, it said.

The attack damaged the Opera House, which was inaugurated by President Bashar Assad in 2004.

Mortar fire also wounded 13 people in several neighbourhoods of the capital.

On Saturday, mortar rounds struck near the Russian embassy, said the observatory.

The rebel fire on Damascus comes as government forces step up a campaign to crush insurgents in its eastern suburbs, it said.

On Sunday, the observatory said five civilians, including three children, were killed in regime air strikes on the town of Douma northeast of Damascus.

And additional air raids as well as fierce fighting was reported in Mleiha, southwest of the capital in Damascus province.

In northern Aleppo province, the observatory said two people, including a child, were killed in raids using explosive-packed barrels bombs, an army tactic that has caused dozens of deaths.

BAGHDAD — Gunmen near Iraq’s capital kidnapped and later shot to death six men, the deadliest of a series of attacks Sunday that killed at least 15 people across the country, authorities said.

The gunmen broke into the homes at dawn Sunday in the town of Latifiyah, a mainly Sunni town 30 kilometres south of Baghdad, a police officer said. Authorities later found the bodies, all with gunshot wounds to the head, in remote, rural farmland near the capital, the officer said.

No one immediately claimed the slayings and the motive was unclear. 

The slayings come amid escalating sectarian violence in Iraq, which last year saw its highest death toll since the worst of such killings in 2007, according to the United Nations. 

In November, 18 Sunnis kidnapped by men in Iraqi army uniforms were found dead, just days after police found the corpses of 13 men all killed by close-range gunshots to the head.

Since late December, Iraq’s minority Sunnis has been protesting what they perceive as discrimination and tough anti-terrorism measures against them by the Shiite-led government. 

Now some call for Shiites to create armed “popular committees”, attached in some form to the regular security forces. 

The idea raises the specter of some of Iraq’s darkest years following the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-led regime, paving the way for long-repressed majority Shiites to seize power.

The ongoing violence also comes as the country prepares for its first parliamentary elections since the withdrawal of US troops on April 30

Meanwhile Sunday, a suicide bomber rammed a fuel tanker into a police headquarters in the northern city of Tikrit, killing three police officers and wounding 13, another police officer said. Tikrit is 130 kilometers north of Baghdad.

In Maidan, a town about 20 kilometres  southeast of Baghdad, a bomb in a commercial area killed two civilians and wounded five, police said. Shortly before sunset, a bomb exploded in a commercial street in Baghdad’s northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, killing four people and wounding 11, police said.

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