Region

TRIPOLI — Libyans on Monday marked the third anniversary of their revolt which ousted dictator Muammar Qadhafi fearful for the future of a country plagued by lawlessness.

Putting on a brave face, Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, who was briefly abducted last year by militants, said revolution had achieved the goals of “ending tyranny and securing freedom of expression”.

“The February 17 Revolution is a challenge that Libyans must live up to,” he said in a speech to the nation broadcast on television Sunday night, acknowledging the “difficulties” ahead.

Although no official ceremonies were organised for the anniversary, spontaneous celebrations have taken place since Saturday across Libya and were due to culminate in festivities later Monday in the capital Tripoli.

The streets have been decked with Libya’s revolutionary flag, volunteers have cleaned up streets and painted over sidewalks, and multicoloured lights strung across the main roads.

But for many Libyans there is little to celebrate.

“There is noting to be proud about,” one Tripolitanian said on Twitter.

University student Ahmed Fitouri agreed. “Nothing has been accomplished these past three years. We are stuck.”

Three years after the uprising, Libya is still struggling to rebuild an army capable to end waves of unrest blamed largely on well-armed Islamists and ex-rebels.

The government and the interim parliament, the General National Congress, have come under increasing criticism by Libyans who accuse them of corruption and failing to give them a better life.

Common criminals roam the streets, while rival tribes in various parts of the country shoot it out to settle long-standing disputes.

Politicians, security officials, journalists, judges and even the US ambassador have been gunned down in a wave of lawlessness that has grown since Qadhafi was captured and killed in October 2011.

Disgruntled citizens have managed to blockade and shut down Libya’s oil terminals, threatening to bankrupt a government that relies almost exclusively on oil revenues to operate.

Economy taken beating

On the political front, the GNC, the country’s top authority, infuriated Libyans when it decided to extend its mandate by 10 months beyond a February 7 deadline.

But deputies on Sunday said the parliament has reached consensus on holding early elections, apparently yielding to popular pressure and threats that divisions could unleash further unrest.

The economy of oil-rich Libya has also taken a beating due to chronic security problems and industrial actions since the end of Qadhafi’s four-decade autocratic rule.

The oil ministry and the World Bank estimate Libya has lost more than $10 billion in revenues because of the crisis that erupted last July when striking workers and pro-autonomy demonstrators in eastern Libya began blockading the country’s main terminals

Post-war reconstruction has been slow and major infrastructure projects put on the back-burner, while the multinationals have yet to make a return.

The World Bank, in a report issued last month, stressed “the urgent need for economic diversification in order to ensure long-term financial and economic stability”.

“We must set aside out differences on the occasion of this historic event, in memory of the martyrs who fell so that we can enjoy freedom,” said Tripoli University professor Ali Toukabri.

Analyst Soufiene Al Machri blamed the impasse on politicians who are hanging on to power.

DAMASCUS — The evacuation of civilians from Syria’s Homs city has halted, with no new efforts to extend a truce and the governor saying Sunday “armed groups” prevented operations a day earlier.

In a statement, Talal Barazi said “the evacuation of civilians was not carried out yesterday [Saturday] because some of the armed groups prevented the citizens inside from moving to the transit point to leave”.

“The province will continue its efforts with the United Nations to evacuate all those who wish to leave,” he added.

The United Nations and Syria’s Red Crescent began operations to evacuate trapped civilians and deliver aid inside besieged parts of Homs on February 7.

The work was made possible by a deal that included a ceasefire that was extended twice, but expired on Saturday night with no word of attempts to extend it further.

The UN and Red Crescent were able to evacuate some 1,400 of the 3,000 people estimated to be trapped in Homs for more than 18 months by a government siege.

But around 400 men and boys aged 15-55 were detained by authorities for investigation upon leaving.

Barazi said on Saturday that 390 male evacuees had left Homs, with 211 released so far.

On Thursday, the UN said 430 men and boys had been detained with just 181 released.

The fate of the male evacuees has prompted concern at the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose chief warned Saturday that they “must be treated humanely at all times and be allowed to contact their families”.

Peter Maurer also lamented the chaotic evacuation process, which saw aid convoys come under fire and shelling kill more than a dozen people despite the nominal truce.

On Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said several besieged neighbourhoods of Homs came under regime shelling, and government forces battled rebels in the outskirts of the districts.

Regime forces also shelled the Waer neighbourhood, a Homs district under opposition control but not subject to the army siege, where most of the evacuees fled.

RAMALLAH — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday he was not looking “to flood Israel” with returning Palestinian refugees, at a rare meeting with 250 Israeli students at his West Bank headquarters.

He also said there was no need to “re-divide” Jerusalem in order to have a Palestinian capital in the Arab eastern sector, a central demand of the Palestinians in US-brokered peace talks relaunched last year that have shown little sign of progress.

“Propaganda says Abu Mazen wants to flood Israel with five million refugees to destroy the state of Israel,” he told the group at his Muqataa presidential compound in Ramallah, referring to himself by his nickname.

“All we said is that we should put the refugee file on the table because it is an issue we must solve to end the conflict,” he told them, adding that any solution must be “just and agreed upon”.

“But we will not seek to flood Israel with millions of refugees to change its social character. This is a lie,” said Abbas, who is himself a refugee.

Resolving the question of the right of return for Palestinian families who fled or were forced out of their homes during the war which accompanied Israel’s creation in 1948 is one of the most bitterly-disputed issues in the conflict.

The Palestinians have always demanded that Israel recognise their right of return to homes in modern-day Israel in keeping with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.

But Israel rejects the idea, saying it would erode the country’s Jewish majority. It is, however, prepared for the refugees to live in a future Palestinian state.

There are approximately five million registered Palestinian refugees, mostly descendants of the original 760,000 people who fled or were forced out in 1948. Most refugees now live in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

‘Leave Jerusalem open’

Abbas also stressed he did not want to “re-divide” Jerusalem, saying both peoples could live under their own authorities, which would be overseen by coordinating body.

“We do not want to re-divide Jerusalem, [we want to] leave Jerusalem open,” he said.

Israel captured East Jerusalem during the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community, but the Palestinians want the eastern sector as capital of their promised state.

“We will build a municipality in addition to the Israeli municipality and we have a superior body to coordinate between them. What’s wrong with this?” Abbas said, winning a round of applause.

“This is the beginning of coexistence, the beginning of real coexistence.”

But he warned that Israel’s ongoing settlement building would complicate peace efforts.

“How do you want me to make peace with you when you’re building here in Beit El [settlement] and saying ‘This is my land’? Where do you want us to build our Palestinian state?” he asked.

“There is no other solution in this region but peace,” Abbas said, prompting another round of applause.

“This solution will bring recognition for Israel from all Arab and Islamic countries.”

The Israelis, most of them masters students in their 20s, were brought to Ramallah by an international grassroots movement called OneVoice that facilitates dialogue between the two sides in a bid to coax the political echelon towards a two-state solution.

Laura Talinovsky, executive director of OneVoice Israel, said they had invited participants through Facebook, asking them to explain why they wanted to come.

“We had over 1,000 people who wanted to come but we only had places for 250 students,” she said, describing the visit as “very fruitful and successful”.

“I came to hear what president Abu Mazen has to say, and to show him and the Palestinians that there are young Israelis that believe in peace and want peace,” said 32-year-old Mizrahi, a student at Haifa University.

“It was a big opportunity to be here and to see the president himself speaking,” said Hadar, a 21-year-old from Sderot near the Gaza border, who said it was her first time in Ramallah.

“It was very exciting”.

CAIRO — A bomb tore through a bus carrying South Korean sightseers near an Egyptian border crossing with Israel on Sunday, killing three tourists and their Egyptian driver, a senior official said.

It was the first attack on tourists since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July sparked unrest and a spate of attacks across the country.

The bomb exploded in the front part of the bus at Taba border crossing with Israel in south Sinai, the interior ministry said.

South Sinai governor Khaled Fouda told AFP three of the dead were South Koreans, along with the Egyptian driver, and 13 were wounded in the attack.

In Seoul, the South Korean foreign ministry confirmed the death of two of its nationals, saying they were members of a Christian church on tour.

A doctor who had been waiting for a bus nearby witnessed the blast.

“There were body parts and corpses. I saw the corpse of a man who appeared to be Korean, with a leg missing,” said Ahmed Ali, who runs a clinic in a neighbouring resort.

The explosion blew off the front of the yellow bus and tore out parts of the roof.

The interior ministry said in a statement that the tourists had set off from Cairo and were waiting at the crossing to enter Israel when the explosion happened.

The attack is likely to further damage Egypt’s foundering tourism industry.

“Terrorism has no religion. The police and the army are working to eliminate it,” Fouda said.

A spokesman for the Israel Airports Authority, which is responsible for border security, told AFP that the Taba crossing had been closed in the wake of the blast.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Tourism hit hard

Scores of Egyptian policemen and soldiers have been killed in bombings in Sinai and the Nile Delta, but Sunday’s attack was the first to target tourists since Morsi’s overthrow.

The unrest since last summer has severely hit tourism, a vital earner in Egypt which has been targeted sporadically by militants over the past two decades.

The government’s census agency said the number of tourists was down in December 2013 by almost 31 per cent compared with the same month in 2012.

Sunday’s bombing came as a court in Cairo began trying Morsi and 35 co-defendants on charges of espionage and collusion with militants to launch attacks in Egypt.

The military-installed government has accused Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood of masterminding the attacks that have also targeted police headquarters in Cairo.

The Brotherhood, now designated as a terrorist group, denies involvement in the bombings.

The deadliest attacks have been claimed by the Sinai-based Ansar Beit Al Maqdis group, whose leadership is drawn from militant bedouin who want an Islamist state in the peninsula.

That group also took responsibility for downing a military helicopter in Sinai on
January 25 using a heat-seeking shoulder-fired missile.

The attack prompted concerns that militants could use such weapons to target commercial flights to resorts in south Sinai.

Between 2004 and 2006, scores of Egyptians and foreign tourists were killed in a spate of bombings in resorts in south Sinai.

In 1997, militants massacred dozens of tourists in a pharaonic temple in the southern city of Luxor.

In Cairo in 2009, a French tourist was killed in a bombing at the historic Khan Al Khalil bazaar, which police at the time blamed on fighters from the neighbouring Palestinian Gaza Strip.

NAJAF, Iraq — Powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, leader of a major political movement and a key figure in post-Saddam Iraq, has announced his exit from politics two months before elections.

The decision, if confirmed as permanent, brings to a close a political career that began with his fierce opposition to the US military presence in Iraq, and has spanned more than a decade.

“I announce my non-intervention in all political affairs and that there is no bloc that represents us from now on, nor any position inside or outside the government nor parliament,” Sadr said in a written statement received by AFP on Sunday.

Ahead of legislative elections in April, Sadr’s movement currently holds six Cabinet posts as well as 40 seats in the 325-member parliament.

He also said his movement’s political offices will be closed, but that others related to social welfare, media and education will remain open.

It was not immediately clear if the move was temporary or permanent, with Sadrist officials saying they had been taken by surprise and could not clarify.

One official from Sadr’s office told AFP that no one wanted to discuss the issue “because it was a surprise decision”.

“I do not think it will be reversed... because it is a very strong decision,” the official added.

Sadr said the decision to leave politics was taken from the standpoint of Islamic law and of “preserving the honourable reputation of Sadr, especially of the two Sadr martyrs”, referring to his father and another relative who were killed during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

The move also aims to “end all the corruptions that occurred or which are likely to occur” that would harm the Sadr reputation, he said.

“He could be trying to distance himself from an unpopular electoral process where everyone is able to vote but discontent with the candidates is high,” said John Drake, a Britain-based analyst for risk consultancy AKE Group.

“He could also be seeking to adopt a figurehead role, with influence rather than electoral endorsement,” Drake said.

Sadr’s political career began with his fierce opposition to the presence of foreign troops in Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion of the country that toppled Saddam.

His rise was aided by the famed reputation of his father Mohammed Mohammed Sadiq, who was killed along with two of Moqtada’s brothers in 1999 by gunmen allegedly sent by Saddam, and another relative, Mohammed Baqir, who was executed in 1980.

Moqtada’s movement subsequently gained both seats in parliament and Cabinet posts, and played the role of political kingmaker.

Feared Mehdi Army

Sadr’s widely feared Mahdi Army militia also repeatedly battled American forces, and played a major role in the brutal sectarian conflict between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites in which tens of thousands of people died.

Sadr suspended the militia’s activities in 2008 following fierce battles with Iraqi and US security forces.

US military commanders said Sadr’s action had been instrumental in helping bring about a significant decrease in Iraq violence.

Both before and after the US military withdrawal in late 2011, Sadr was a sharp critic of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, despite ultimately backing his selection as premier in both 2006 and 2010.

In 2012, Sadr was among Iraqi politicians who called for Maliki to resign, referred to the premier as a “dictator” hungry for acclaim, and accused him of wanting to postpone or cancel elections.

But Maliki ultimately weathered the crisis, and Sadr’s focus has increasingly shifted to religious studies in both Iran and Iraq that have taken him out of the country for extended periods of time.

VIENNA — Iran and world powers embark Tuesday on the Herculean task of transforming their interim nuclear deal into a long-term accord satisfying all sides and silencing talk of war for good.

After a decade of failure and rising tensions, US President Barack Obama has put the chances of an agreement at “50-50”, while Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has predicted “difficult” discussions.

Getting a deal could also help bear fruit in other areas, not least in the three-year-old Syrian civil war where Tehran has staunchly backed President Bashar Assad.

The scheduled three-day meeting in Vienna between Iran and the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany — the so-called P5+1 — is the first in what is expected to be a series of tricky encounters in the coming months.

It comes after foreign ministers struck a breakthrough deal in Geneva on November 24 that saw Iran agree to curb — for six months — some of its nuclear activities in exchange for minor relief from painful sanctions.

That agreement, which came into force on January 20, extends the theoretical “breakout time” needed by Iran — which denies seeking the bomb — to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

In return Iran is due to get over the six months some $6-7 billion in sanctions relief, including $4.2 billion in assets frozen in overseas bank accounts. It was also promised no new sanctions.

But Iran’s freeze is only temporary — although it can be extended — and the bulk of sanctions remain, continuing to deprive Iran of billions of dollars in oil revenues every week.

Under the “comprehensive” deal now being sought, which the parties aim to conclude and commence implementing by November, the powers will want Iran to scale back its activities permanently.

These might include closing the Fordo facility, slashing the number of centrifuges enriching uranium, cutting its stockpile of fissile material and altering a new reactor being built at Arak, diplomats say.

This, plus tighter UN inspections, would not remove entirely Iran’s capability to get the bomb but it would make it substantially more difficult — “impossible”, according to Obama.

Hard sell

In exchange, Iran would see all UN Security Council, US and EU sanctions lifted, but it remains to be seen whether it will accept the conditions.

Tehran has laid out a series of “red lines” including refusing to close down any nuclear facilities or to stop medium-level enrichment.

Iranian negotiator Hamid Baeedinejad told IRNA Sunday that Arak, which Western countries fear could provide Iran with weapons-grade plutonium, would be “one of the most important and difficult subjects” in Vienna.

He also said Tehran “will definitely not accept to be deprived from having the right to replace the existing centrifuges with the new and advanced ones”.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate whose election last year has helped thaw relations with the West, retains the backing of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — for now.

“I am not fully sure whether Khamenei himself is fully committed to this process yet,” Siavush Randjbar-Daemi, Iran and Middle East lecturer at Manchester University, told AFP.

Negotiators also have to take into account hardliners in the United States and in Israel, the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, and also Sunni Arab monarchies in the Gulf.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was sharply critical of last November’s accord, and Obama has had to fight hard to prevent Congress passing new sanctions on Iran.

“I think both sides would be willing to make compromises,” Richard Dalton, the former British ambassador to Tehran now at think tank Chatham House, told AFP.

“The trouble is that both sides have hard men outside the negotiating room who have to be satisfied.”

The Mehr news agency said that Zarif would meet on Monday evening with EU foreign policy chief and P5+1 chief negotiator Catherine Ashton for a working dinner.

GAZA CITY — Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement has ruled out the idea of international troops being stationed in a future Palestinian state under a peace deal with Israel.

“From time to time we hear people making offers during the negotiations, primarily about the idea of an international force following the retreat of the [Israeli] occupier,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement published on Saturday.

“We in Hamas, we will not allow the presence of an international force [in a future Palestinian state] which would be just like the Israeli occupation.”

Security arrangements in a future state have become a major bone of contention in ongoing peace talks, with Israel insisting on maintaining a military presence along the Jordan Valley which runs down the eastern flank of the West Bank, bordering Jordan.

The Palestinians have rejected such an idea, although they have said they would accept NATO troops or another international force.

“We demand [US Secretary of State John] Kerry and others revise their positions because we won’t let anyone undermine our rights,” Abu Zuhri said.

“This so-called Kerry plan was put together by the Americans and the Zionist entity to eradicate the Palestinian cause. We will not let such an agreement give away our people’s rights,” he said, calling for “a united front of factions to reject the talks and their outcome”.

DUBAI — The United Arab Emirates have expelled eight Kuwaiti students from two universities for forming a union, collecting donations and holding unauthorised meetings, a higher education official said.

The expulsion is a rare move against students from a fellow Gulf country.

Kuwait’s Alrai newspaper speculated that the students were expelled due to suspected links to the Muslim Brotherhood which is banned in the UAE.

The University of Sharjah and the University of Ajman have expelled the students for “violating the internal regulations of the universities”, the official from the ministry of higher education said late Saturday.

The students were involved in “forming a student union with a permit from the administration at both universities, in addition to collecting donations and holding illegal gatherings in dormitories”, the state news agency WAM quoted the official as saying.

“This represents a violation of UAE laws,” the unnamed official added, without disclosing the identities or the affiliations of the students.

Kuwait’s Alrai reported on Saturday that the students were told they were “no longer welcome” in the UAE “on the assumption that they belong to the Muslim Brotherhood or similar organisations”.

The expulsion comes amid a UAE crackdown on Islamists over the past two years.

Last month a court jailed 30 Emiratis and Egyptians up to five years for forming a Muslim Brotherhood cell.

It is not clear if the students will have to leave the UAE which, along with Kuwait, is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council which grants GCC citizens unlimited residency in one another’s country.

The other members of the GCC are Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwaiti MPs are unlikely to vote on ratifying a Gulf security pact during the current legislative term, the parliament speaker said Sunday, amid concerns it would undermine constitutional freedoms.

Marzouk Al Ghanem told a press conference that a majority of MPs supporting and opposing the pact have called for delaying its ratification and that “no decision will be taken on it in the current parliamentary term” which closes at the end of June.

The next term normally opens in late October.

The pact calls for the extradition of anyone accused of carrying out political or security activities against a member state and allows members to seek military and security assistance from other GCC states to counter unrest.

Opponents say the pact would undermine freedom of expression, and several political groups have started holding public rallies warning it will turn Kuwait into a police state.

Unlike most of its neighbours, Kuwait has an elected parliament and relatively few restrictions on the press and public expression.

The speaker called on the government not to press for immediate ratification and to respond positively with the majority of the legislature.

Ghanem said he has asked parliament’s constitutional experts to prepare a comprehensive legal study on the security pact and distribute it to all the 50 MPs who have requested expert opinions before debating the agreement.

Kuwait is the only member of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) not to ratify the security pact, which was approved at a summit in Bahrain in December 2012 and signed by GCC interior ministers, including Kuwait’s, a month earlier.

Besides Kuwait, the GCC groups energy-rich Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

The security agreement was specially modified to enable Kuwait to join after it refused to take part in an earlier pact introduced in 1994, saying it violated the constitution.

TIKRIT, Iraq — At least 17 people were killed in attacks across Iraq on Sunday as troops fought to evict Islamist militants from the northern town of Sulaiman Pek, security sources and medics said.

Armoured vehicles and special police forces with heavy machineguns arrived in Sulaiman Pek to reinforce troops battling there for several days backed by helicopters gunships.

“Clashes are continuing today in the town centre,” the town’s mayor, Talib Mohammed, told Reuters. “The situation is still unclear. We can’t even look out of the window, as bullets and blasts are not stopping.”

Militants raised the black flag of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — a hardline Sunni group also fighting in neighbouring Syria — over parts of Sulaiman Pek, 160 km north of Baghdad, on Thursday.

Sunni militancy has been on the rise over the past year, especially in the western province of Anbar, where the army is besieging the city of Fallujah, overrun by insurgents on January 1.

A suicide car bomber blew himself up near a police checkpoint on Sunday, killing one person in the Al Warrar area west of Anbar’s provincial capital Ramadi. Police said they had thwarted another attack east of Ramadi, shooting dead a suicide bomber driving a police vehicle previously seized by militants.

No group claimed responsibility for any of the latest attacks, but Sunni insurgents trying to undermine the Shiite-led government often attack police and military targets.

Gunmen killed five people at a police checkpoint in Taza, a town 210km north of Baghdad, a local police source said.

In the town of Shirqat, 300km north of the capital, at least two policemen were killed when gunmen fired on their patrol, police sources said.

A car bomb killed four people in the mainly Shiite Chkouk district in northern Baghdad, police and medical sources said.

In other attacks, police said two mortar rounds hit a house, killing a civilian, in Jurf Al Sakhar, 60km south of Baghdad, where the army is also fighting militants.

Gunmen using silenced weapons shot a man and his son dead near their home in central Hilla, south of Baghdad. In the town of Muqdadiya, 80km northeast of Baghdad, gunmen killed two government-backed Sunni militiamen in drive-by shooting.