Region

UNITED NATIONS — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has selected a new ambassador to represent Tehran at the United Nations, Hamid Abutalebi, a veteran diplomat who has held key European postings in the past, Iranian sources said.

Abutalebi, who has served as Iran’s ambassador to Italy, Belgium and Australia, was chosen to replace Iran’s outgoing ambassador, Mohammad Khazaee, sources said. Khazaee’s departure was previously announced.

A spokesman for Iran’s UN mission declined to comment.

Abutalebi began working for the Islamic republic’s foreign ministry in the early 1980s, not long after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

One Western diplomat at the United Nations said on condition of anonymity that Abutalebi was connected to circles close to Rouhani and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, both considered to be pragmatists who have good relations with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Abutalebi was a diplomat under former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardline conservative who angered the United States and Europe with his anti-Western and anti-Israeli rhetoric. But Abutalebi is not considered to be close to Ahmadinejad, the Western diplomat said.

He added that Abutalebi is not known to have played a role in the secret nuclear discussions between Washington and Tehran that led to an interim deal last November between Iran and the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. Under that deal Iran agreed to halt some sensitive nuclear activities in exchange for limited sanctions relief.

Tehran denies allegations from Western countries and their allies that it is covertly developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy programme.

If granted a visa by the United States to work in New York as Iran’s UN envoy, Abutalebi will replace Khazaee.

A US State Department spokeswoman did not have an immediate response when queried on Saturday about Abutalebi as head of Iran’s UN mission.

Khazaee was viewed by Western UN delegations as relatively moderate, Western diplomats said.

Iranian sources, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said Abutalebi was selected months ago to replace Khazaee, an economist who took up the post in 2007. Abutalebi is hoping to arrive as early as next month, the sources said.

Iranian diplomats, like the envoys of North Korea and Syria, are confined to a radius of 45 kilometres from Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan.

DUBAI — Unknown assailants in a speedboat shot at a merchant vessel as it sailed through the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman on Sunday, the NATO Shipping Centre (NSC) said.

The unidentified merchant ship reported being shot at twice from close range from a speedboat carrying six people armed with machineguns, on Sunday morning. It repelled the attack with hoses and the vessel and crew are safe, NSC said.

Although suspected Somali pirates commonly attack merchant shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Somali Basin, attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz — a vital oil and gas shipping route — are rare.

The attack happened on the Gulf of Oman side of the Strait of Hormuz, about 90 minutes after a different merchant ship was approached by two speedboats with crews wearing military clothing, NATO said.

“Two green coloured skiffs with three-four persons on board in military clothing and armed with gun machines got to 150 metres of a merchant vessel,” the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s merchant shipping alert service said in a statement.

“After a while the skiffs turned away to Iranian coast.”

No shots were fired by the crews wearing military uniforms. That incident happened about 30 nautical miles to the west of the shooting by a different speedboat.

A spokesman for the NSC said the two incidents were being investigated. He said the nationalities of the non-merchant crews had not yet been determined and that it was early to say whether the two incidents were related.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s army vowed to battle “terrorism” hours after a suicide bomber killed three soldiers at a checkpoint in the east near the border with war-torn Syria.

“The army knows that it is now more than ever targeted by terrorists who want to prevent the establishment of the authority of the state and its attempts to eliminate discord,” the military said in a statement issued late on Saturday.

It came as a new security plan came into effect on Sunday aimed at quelling spillover violence from the conflict in Syria.

Under the new plan, the army will deploy more heavily in flashpoint areas of Arsal in the east and Lebanon in the north.

The military will also conduct raids aimed at arresting suspects, and in restive Tripoli the army will disarm fighters.

Lebanon’s north and east have seen clashes and attacks between those who support the rebellion against Syria’s President Bashar Assad and those who back Damascus.

The army command “will continue to fight and pursue terrorists, and is determined to implement the security plan... whatever the sacrifices”, the statement said.

But in a fresh incident on Sunday, the army defused a bomb that was set to explode at a military post in Tripoli, a security source said.

“The explosive device was timed to explode at 5:00pm (1400 GMT),” the source told AFP.

The narrowly averted attack comes a day after three soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at an army checkpoint at Aqabet Al Jurd in the Arsal region.

Arsal, near the border with Syria, is a Sunni town where residents support the rebels fighting Assad’s forces. The town also hosts tens of thousands of Syrian refugees.

Saturday’s attack was claimed on Twitter by a shadowy group calling itself Liwa Ahrar Al Sunna — Arabic for the Brigades of the free Sunni Muslims — which also vowed more attacks.

“The next few days will see several jihadist and blessed attacks like this one. This is only the beginning,” the group said, adding that the army would be among its targets.

It said Saturday’s attack was to avenge the death of Sami Al Atrash, wanted in connection with car bombings targeting Lebanon’s Shiite group Hizbollah which has been fighting alongside Assad’s forces.

Atrash was killed on Thursday in a shootout with the army in Arsal.

Hizbollah’s participation in the Syria conflict has raised sectarian tensions in Lebanon.

Hizbollah bastions inside Lebanon have been the target of several bloody attacks since last summer, claimed by extremist Sunnis who say the attacks are a response to the group’s involvement in Syria.

Extremist groups accuse the army of discriminating against Sunnis who back the Syria uprising and of turning a blind eye to Hizbollah sending fighters across the border.

MADRID — Two Spanish journalists taken hostage in Syria by an Al Qaeda-linked group returned to Madrid in a military plane Sunday after six months in captivity.

El Mundo correspondent Javier Espinosa, 49, and freelance photographer Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, 42, were “freed and handed over to the Turkish military”, the Spanish newspaper had said on its website earlier in the day.

Espinosa called El Mundo’s offices on Saturday evening and said they were in good health, it added.

“Pure happiness,” wrote Espinosa’s girlfriend, the journalist Monica Garcia Prieto, on Twitter early Sunday, without giving further details.

“Their relatives are feeling excitement and joy because this puts an end to a nightmare that has lasted six months,” a spokesman for their families, Gervasio Sanchez, told AFP.

The pair arrived at Torrejon de Ardoz airbase near Madrid in the afternoon where they were welcomed by overjoyed friends and family.

They were to speak about their six-month ordeal at a press conference at El Mundo offices later Sunday.

Espinosa, 49, and Vilanova, 42, were seized on September 16 as they tried to cross the Syrian border to Turkey, the latest of scores of journalists captured while covering Syria’s civil war.

There was no immediate word on whether any demands were made by their kidnappers or any ransom paid.

El Mundo identified the captors as members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a jihadist faction in Syria with roots in Al Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate.

The group has fought against the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria but has also been battling other rebel groups.

The newspaper had kept the kidnapping quiet until December while it contacted the captors via intermediaries. It said at that time that the kidnappers had made no demands.

“It has been a hard few months. We knew the wait would be long but you never get used to it,” said the director of El Mundo’s international pages, Ana Alonso Montes, on Sunday.

“You never know when the moment of liberation will come, although we never doubted it would,” she told national radio.

Reporting Syrian bloodshed 

Award-winning reporter Espinosa has been a Middle East correspondent for El Mundo since 2002 and is based in Beirut.

Like Vilanova, he has covered some of the most dangerous points in the Syrian conflict, including the siege of Homs in February 2012.

On February 22 he escaped that bloodbath in which human rights groups said 700 people were killed and thousands injured, and made it back to Lebanon a week later.

Among those killed in Homs were two other Western journalists: US reporter Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik.

Espinosa wrote of his escape from the city, under fire among a crowd of wounded refugees, in a compelling reportage published in March 2013.

“We believe the Syrian people need our work, and that we must live up to our responsibility,” said Prieto, who is also a prize-winning journalist, in December.

An online forum that frequently features statements from jihadists had also called on the militants to free the two.

The Honein jihadist forum said the two journalists were a “good hand for advocating our issues in Iraq and Syria, and carrying the silenced truth”.

Garcia Vilanova has contributed to Agence France-Presse and other world media such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Media rights group Reporters Without Borders ranks Syria as the most dangerous country in the world for journalists.

A third Spanish journalist seized separately in Syria in September, Marc Marginedas, a correspondent for the Catalan daily El Periodico, was freed early this month.

French, US and Syrian journalists are among the others still missing in Syria.

BAALBEK, Lebanon — A suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle at an army checkpoint in eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria on Saturday, killing at least two soldiers, a security official said.

“A suicide bomber detonated his car in front of a Lebanese army checkpoint at Aqabet Al Jurd in the Arsal area,” the official told AFP.

He said at least two soldiers were killed, raising an earlier toll of one dead, and that others were wounded.

“There were at least seven soldiers at the checkpoint,” the official added.

The attack was claimed on Twitter by a shadowy group calling itself Liwa Ahrar Al Sunna in Baalbek — Arabic for the Brigades of the free Sunni Muslims.

It said the attack was to avenge the death of Sami Al Atrash, a suspect wanted in connection with car bombings targeting Lebanon’s Shiite group Hizbollah.

Atrash was killed on Thursday in a shoot-out with the army.

The army had described Atrash as a “dangerous terrorist” who was tracked down to a hideout in Arsal, where he was killed.

The Arsal region has seen a spillover of the conflict across the border as Syrian regime forces backed by fighters from Hizbollah press their campaign against rebels.

Most Sunni Muslims in Lebanon back the rebels fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

Sunni groups have targeted Hizbollah interests in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon with car bombings in the past months.

Hizbollah claims that the car bombs were prepared in the Qalamun region just across the border and the scene of fierce fighting, before being driven via Arsal to their eventual targets.

DAMASCUS — Syrian troops backed by Hizbollah  fighters made fresh gains in the strategic Qalamun region near the border with Lebanon Saturday, seizing two villages from rebels, a military source told AFP.

Controlling Qalamun is crucial for President Bashar Assad’s forces as this would stop the flow of weapons and fighters entering Syria from Lebanon.

The Lebanese Shiite group Hizbollah  says deadly car bombs targeting the movement in Lebanon were rigged with explosives in the Qalamun area.

“The army took control this morning of the villages of Ras Al Maarra and Flita, after bombing the last groups of armed terrorists there,” the source said.

Assad’s troops backed by Hizbollah  have been assaulting rebel positions in Qalamun, north of Damascus, since November.

In mid-March they seized the rebels’ last major stronghold in the region, the town of Yabrud, and have since moved on rebel-held villages closer to the border.

The military source called the latest advance “a new step towards closing off the border with Lebanon”.

Though capturing Flita and Ras Al Maarra has not completely sealed the border, “any success... helps seal the border more tightly, at least at the main crossing points that [the rebels use] to transport vehicles”, he added.

The fall of the two villages forced around 700 Syrians to flee across the border to the town of Arsal, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported.

RAMALLAH — A senior Palestinian official said a release by Israel of Arab prisoners would not go ahead on Saturday as envisaged but he hoped there would only be short delay.

“Today the prisoners will not be released... maybe in the coming days,” Issa Qaraqae, the minister of prisoner affairs, told AFP.

“There are efforts to solve the crisis and I believe that in 24 hours everything will be clearer.”

Under the deal that relaunched peace talks last July, Israel agreed to release 104 Arabs held since before the 1993 Oslo peace accords in exchange for the Palestinians not pressing their statehood claims at the United Nations.

So far, Israel has freed 78 prisoners in three batches but ministers had warned they would block the final release, which had been anticipated for Saturday, if the Palestinians refused to extend the talks beyond their April 29 deadline.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has not spelled out his terms for prolonging talks, saying only that he is not even prepared to discuss the issue until the prisoners are freed.

There has been no official Israeli update on the last batch of prisoners. The Palestinians want it to include Arab citizens, a demand hotly opposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners and by hardliners within his own Likud Party.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that Israel was willing to free the prisoners but the Palestinians were placing obstacles in the way.

“Israel is interested in continuing the peace talks with the Palestinians and is prepared to carry out the fourth stage of the release of convicted terrorists,” he said.

“But the Palestinians are creating difficulties with this when they say that the moment after the release of the prisoners they will stop the talks.”

He did not elaborate.

Palestinian official Jibril Rajub told AFP Friday that Israel informed the Palestinians that the last batch of prisoners would not be released on Saturday.

Rajub said this would be a “slap in the face of the US administration and its efforts”, adding the Palestinians would resume their international diplomatic offensive against Israel as a consequence.

“Not releasing the prisoners will mark the beginning of the efforts in the international community to challenge the legality of the occupation,” he said.

Prisoner release ‘crucial’ issue 

A poll published Saturday by the Palestinian Centre for Public Opinion said 87 per cent of those surveyed believed the Palestinian leadership should renew its UN efforts if the prisoners are not freed.

The prisoner release “is a prerequisite for any future progress of the negotiations”, the centre said, as the overwhelming majority of Palestinians consider it to be “the most crucial issue that must be treated in order to continue with the peace process”.

The talks have been teetering on the brink of collapse, with Washington fighting an uphill battle to get the two sides to agree to a framework for continued negotiations until the end of the year.

US Secretary of State John Kerry met Abbas in Amman on Wednesday in a bid to salvage the talks, with US special envoy Martin Indyk meeting the Palestinian leader in Ramallah a day later.

On Friday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki denied reports that negotiations had already collapsed.

“Any reports that suggest the talks are off are inaccurate,” she said.

“Ambassador Indyk and the negotiating team remain closely engaged with both parties on the ground and will continue to work over the coming days to help them bridge the gaps and determine the path forward.”

Israeli media say Netanyahu could give a green light to the prisoner release if the US frees Jonathan Pollard, who was arrested in Washington in 1985 and condemned to life imprisonment for spying on the United States for Israel.

Israel is not commenting on such reports, with Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev saying only that in general the spy’s fate is “often raised at high-level meetings between Israelis and Americans”.

On Wednesday, Psaki said “there are currently no plans to release Jonathan Pollard”.

CAIRO — A court in Egypt on Saturday sentenced to death two supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi convicted of throwing youths off an apartment block roof, judicial sources said.

One of the young men thrown from the building in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria was killed.

The court submitted its verdict to the mufti, the government’s official interpreter of Islamic law, for approval or rejection, the sources said.

The latest death sentences come despite international outcry at Egypt handing down the death penalty to 529 Islamists on Monday.

That verdict can be appealed, and the mufti has upheld death sentences in the past.

The men sentenced to death on Saturday were among 63 people on trial over deadly violence in Alexandria’s Sidi Gaber neighbourhood on July 5 last year, two days after the amy overthrew Morsi.

Their trial was adjourned until May 19 when the verdicts for the other defendants are expected to be announced.

The violence in Alexandria broke out as supporters and opponents of Morsi took to the streets of Egypt’s second city, with one group demanding his reinstatement and the other celebrating the end of his sole year in power.

Amateur video posted on social networks at the time showed men throwing two youths from the building.

It showed four young men cowering on the rooftop who are followed by several older men, one of them bearded and holding a jihadist flag.

The men are seen throwing stones at the youths and later one is thrown from the roof.

The video goes on to show club-wielding men beating the youth’s body.

Another man is later thrown from the roof and survives but is injured.

Egyptian authorities later said only one youth was killed in the attack and that one man had been arrested in connection with his death.

The latest verdict follows Monday’s mass death sentences for more 529 pro-Morsi defendants, a ruling that triggered an international outcry.

Washington urged Egypt not to go ahead with the executions, with deputy US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf calling the sentencing “shocking”.

The verdict also drew fire from rights groups, the United Nations and the European Union, which questioned the fairness of proceedings against so many defendants lasting just two days.

Legal experts said the unprecedented sentences are likely to be overturned on appeal.

The military-installed regime has opened mass trials against more than 2,000 alleged Islamists since the army overthrew Morsi.

Two new mass trials of Islamists are being held in Minya province south of Cairo, where Monday’s mass death sentences were pronounced.

The detained head of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, is a defendant in both.

In the first, he stands accused with 714 others of murdering six people and the attempted murder of 51 others in the provincial town of Samalot, the official MENA news agency reported.

In the second trial, Badie is accused along with 203 others of assaulting policemen, disturbing public order, and damaging public and private property in another town in Minya province.

Only 160 of defendants in the first new trial are in custody, and in the second, just two of Badie’s co-defendants are in detention.

In all, some 15,000 suspects have been detained since the security forces dispersed two Cairo protest camps set up by Morsi supporters last August 14, killing hundreds of people.

BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar Assad is quietly preparing the ground to hold elections by early this summer to win another seven-year term, even as the Syrian conflict rampages into its fourth year with large parts of the country either in ruins or under opposition control and nearly a third of the population scattered by civil war.

Amid the destruction, which has left more than 140,000 dead, presidential elections may seem impossible. But Syrian officials insist they will be held on time.

The election is central to the Syrian government’s depiction of the conflict on the international stage. At failed peace negotiations earlier this year in Geneva, Syrian officials categorically ruled out that Assad would step down in the face of the rebel uprising aimed at ousting him. Instead, they present the elections due at the end of Assad’s term as the solution to the crisis: If the people choose Assad in the election, the fight should end; if Assad loses, then he will leave.

Observers say it would be preposterous to think a vote could reflect a real choice, and that Assad is certain to win. It would be impossible to hold polls in areas controlled by rebels. In areas under government control, many would not dare vote for anyone but Assad for fear of secret police who have kept a close eye on past elections.

“There is a gap between what goes on the mind of the Syrian president and reality. He has a fixation on the presidency and he doesn’t see beyond it,” said Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut.

“He can hold elections, and if the international community were to take these elections seriously then there is something really wrong in the international community,” he said.

In government held areas, pro-Assad demonstrators have recently begun holding rallies in support of the armed forces, carrying Assad posters, Syrian flags and banners lauding “victories against terrorists”, the term that the government uses to refer to rebels.

Assad and his British-born wife, Asma, have emerged from months of seclusion, visiting with school students, mothers and displaced people students in a campaign aimed at infusing confidence and optimism into the war-wrecked nation.

As the fighting on the ground shifts, there is no telling how the battlefield will look by the summer. But for now, Assad has overall good reason to feel self-assured.

Backed by Shiite fighters from the Lebanese group Hizbollah and Iraqi militias, Syrian troops have seized areas around Damascus and the central province of Homs that links the capital with Assad’s stronghold on the Mediterranean coast. Earlier this month, government forces recaptured two key rebel-held towns near the border with Lebanon. Troops also regained areas outside the city of Aleppo and secured its international airport, where flights resumed after a 15-month halt.

Underscoring the see-sawing conflict, rebels last week launched a major offensive in Assad’s ancestral homeland in the coastal province of Latakia, capturing the last border crossing point with Turkey that was still under government control and several towns. A second cousin of Assad, Hilal Assad, was killed in the fighting. But it is still unclear how much it represents a shift.

“This has been a great year for Assad,” said Fawaz A. Gerges, director of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics.

“His army has become an effective killing machine that has made major tactical gains all over Syria, controlling Syria’s cities and border area with Lebanon that is essential to his survival,” Gerges said.

No date has been set yet for the vote, which must be held between 60 and 90 days before Assad’s 7-year term ends on July 17. This month, the Syrian parliament approved an electoral law opening the door — at least in theory — to potential contenders besides Assad.

It states that any candidate must have lived in Syria for the past 10 years and cannot have any other citizenship, apparently to prevent opposition figures in exile from running.

So far, no one has come forward to run against Assad.

Syria’s Ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja’afari said in mid-March that a presidential election will be held in May or June, and called it “an internal affair”. Presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban said presidential elections would be held on time according to the constitution. She said Syria would not accept international monitors for the vote.

Preparations are under way. Authorities in government held areas have started issuing election cards and taking applications from people who lost or don’t have identity cards.

Assad’s wife, Asma, has reappeared in several carefully scripted public appearances recently.

In January, state TV and Syria’s official SANA news agency splashed images of the first lady’s visit to a Damascus school, where she greeted children who had lost their fathers fighting on the government side. Dressed in a gray jacket, her hair casually pulled up, she looked at children’s drawings surrounded by smiling students in blue school uniforms.

More recently, Asma and her husband sat with a group of a dozen teachers in Damascus. On March 21 — Mothers’ Day in the Arab world — state TV showed Asma meeting mothers of missing soldiers.

“Your sons are our sons,” she told them softly. “They are the sons of Syria. Syria will not rest until all of its children are found.”

The new constitution approved in a referendum in February 2012 allows for a multiparty system in Syria, which has been ruled by Assad’s Baath Party since a 1963 coup. Hafez Assad took power in another coup in 1970. His son Bashar succeeded Hafez after his death in 2000.

The constitution sets a limit of two 7-year terms for the president — starting the count from the passage of the constitution, meaning Assad could run again in 2021 and remain legally in power through 2028.

Until now, Bashar Assad has been elected by referendums in which he was the only candidate and voters cast yes-or-no ballots. Each time, he won with more than 90 per cent of the vote.

“We are seeing preparations for the elections but for us the results are known,” said a prominent Syrian opposition activist in the central city of Homs, Mohammed Saleh. “Of course, there will be other candidates for decoration only.”

The thought of elections in the current situation has enraged the opposition.

“It is impossible.... In order to hold elections there should be free parties, elections campaigns, stability, peace and when people can go vote without pressure,” said opposition figure Kamal Labwani, who spent long years in jail in Syria before he left the country.

Ahamad Al Masalmeh, an opposition activist in the southern city of Daraa where the uprising began in March 2011, said even areas under government control are too dangerous to hold a vote.

“This is an illegitimate regime that should not hold elections,” he said. “Assad for me is history and he has no place in the new Syria.”

RIYADH — US President Barack Obama sought Friday to allay Riyadh’s criticism of his policies on Syria and Iran, telling the Saudi king their two countries remain in lockstep on their strategic interests.

He also assured King Abdullah that the US “won’t accept a bad deal” with Iran, as global powers negotiate a treaty reining in Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.

“The president underscored how much he values this strategic relationship,” a senior US administration official said, after Obama met for some two hours with the king on a royal estate outside Riyadh.

“There’s sometimes a perception out there of differences between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and the two leaders spoke frankly about a number of issues,” the official added, asking not to be named.

But Obama “made very clear that he believes that our strategic interests remain very much aligned”.

Earlier, White House officials said part of the discussions would focus on ways to “empower” Syria’s moderate opposition.

Saudi Arabia was dismayed by Obama’s 11th hour decision last year not to go ahead with military strikes against the Syrian regime over chemical weapons attacks.

But officials shot down as untrue reports that the US administration was planning to give Riyadh a green light to ship heavy weapons, known as MANPADs, to the beleaguered moderate Syrian opposition.

“We have not changed our position on providing MANPADS to the opposition,” a second senior administration official said, acknowledging “this is a proliferation risk”.

“This was not a trip or a meeting designed to coordinate detailed questions or types of assistance to Syrians,” the first official added.

Riyadh also has strong reservations about revived efforts by Washington and other major world powers to negotiate with Iran.

Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, long wary of Shiite Iran’s regional ambitions, views a November deal between world powers and Iran on Tehran’s nuclear programme as a risky venture that could embolden Tehran.

The interim agreement curbs Iran’s controversial nuclear activities in exchange for limited sanctions relief, and is aimed at buying time to negotiate a comprehensive accord.

Obama made clear to the king the US was “determined to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, that we’ve gone into the talks eyes wide open, but that we believe this is a common interest in stopping proliferation to Iran,” the first US official told reporters.

He also stressed that Washington remained “very much focused on Iran’s other destabilising activities in the region”.

Iranian-Saudi rivalry crystallised with the Syrian conflict: Tehran backs Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, while several GCC states support the opposition rebels.

‘Reassurance visit’ 

Obama’s stand on events reshaping the region “have strained relations, but without causing a complete break”, said Anwar Eshki, head of the Jeddah-based Middle East Centre for Strategic and Legal Studies.

US security and energy specialist professor Paul Sullivan said Obama meeting King Abdullah could “help clear the air on some misunderstandings”.

“However, I would be quite surprised if there were any major policy changes during this visit. This is also partly a reassurance visit,” he added.

The two leaders were also expected to discuss Egypt, another bone of contention since the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak, who was a staunch US and Saudi ally.

The kingdom was angered by the partial freezing of US aid to Egypt after the army toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last July — a move hailed by Riyadh.

Meanwhile, US officials said Obama did not raise the issue of human rights with the king despite appeals from US lawmakers and rights groups.

Dozens of US lawmakers had urged Obama to publicly address Saudi Arabia’s “systematic human rights violations” and efforts by women activists to challenge its ban on female drivers.

“We do have a lot of significant concerns about the human rights situation” in Saudi Arabia, the second administration official said, mentioning in particular “women’s freedoms”.

Saudi activists have urged women to defy the driving ban and get behind the wheel on Saturday, the second day of Obama’s visit.