Region

CAIRO — Egypt’s army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi said Tuesday he could not ignore demands that he run for president and will take official measures soon, state media reported.

Officials close to Sisi told AFP the recently promoted field marshal would step down as defence minister after a law is passed to regulate the election expected this spring.

Sisi emerged as the most popular political figure in Egypt after he overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July following massive protests against the yearlong rule of Egypt’s first freely elected leader.

Sisi said “he cannot turn his back when the majority wants his nomination in presidential elections”, the official MENA news agency reported.

“The next days will witness official measures,” it quoted him as saying.

Sisi is seen by his supporters as a strong hand who can stabilise Egypt following three years of unrest ignited by the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak. Supporters rallied in the thousands in January calling on Sisi to run, and the military itself has said it would back his decision to enter the election, which he is certain to win.

Interim President Adly Mansour is expected to approve the election law this week or next week by the latest.

Sisi is reviled by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Morsi supporters, who say he masterminded a coup against the country’s first democratically elected and civilian president.

Morsi himself is on trial on various charges after the military detained him on the night of his ouster.

His supporters have repeatedly taken to the streets in protest, often setting off clashes with police and civilian opponents. The violence has claimed at least 1,400 lives since Morsi’s ouster, according to Amnesty International.

Militant groups have, meanwhile, escalated a campaign of bombings and other attacks on security forces, killing scores of policemen and soldiers.

Sisi, if elected, may have to take unpopular measures such as streamlining Egypt’s bloated subsidies for food and fuel.

His supporters believe only Sisi, with his relatively broad support base, could pull off such measures.

WASHINGTON/ RAMALLAH — Israel needs to take tough decisions if peace talks with the Palestinians are to have a future, US President Barack Obama told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.

In a joint address at the White House as a major snowstorm blanketed the city, the two leaders, who have struggled to overcome mutual antipathy, once again found themselves very publicly at odds.

Obama pushed for a decision on the peace process, while Netanyahu insisted Israel had done its part and said Iran is now the most urgent threat.

Israel and the Palestinians have been engaged in seven months of direct peace talks which are due to expire at the end of April.

“The time frame that we have set up for completing these negotiations is coming near and some tough decisions are going to have to be made,” Obama said.

“It’s my belief that ultimately it is still possible to create two states. But it’s difficult and it requires compromise on all sides.”

But the Israeli leader hit back, telling the president that Israel had taken “unprecedented steps” to advance peace over the last 20 years, and that the ball was now firmly in the Palestinians’ court.

“Israel has been doing its part, I regret to say the Palestinians haven’t,” he said, noting that in the past two decades, Israel had both frozen settlement construction, uprooted entire settlements and released hundreds of Palestinian “terrorists”.

Netanyahu quickly moved to declare Iran as the number one priority.

“The greatest challenge, undoubtedly, is to prevent Iran from acquiring the capacity to make nuclear weapons,” he told Obama, leaning forward in his chair and gesticulating to make the point.

Although his tone was courteous, Netanyahu’s remarks, particularly on the peace process, came across as a lecture to Obama on recent Israeli history.

The US leader looked on impassively, nodding almost imperceptibly at several points, resting his clenched jaw on his hand.

While Obama’s remarks were mostly general, listing the topics the two men would discuss, Netanyahu narrowed in on Israeli grievances over Iran’s disputed nuclear programme and the perceived raw deal over the peace process.

In their meeting, which lasted at least two hours, Obama was to push Netanyahu to agree to a framework for future talks put together by US Secretary of State John Kerry to extend the negotiations beyond April.

Unconfirmed reports suggest Washington may demand a partial settlement freeze to try and ensure the Palestinians remain at the negotiating table.

It would be Obama’s most significant entry into peacemaking since 2010 when his first attempt at Middle East mediation collapsed after just three weeks in a bitter dispute over settlements.

The as-yet-unpublished framework, which addresses the most nettlesome issues of the conflict — borders, security and the future status of Jerusalem — was central to Netanyahu’s morning meeting with Kerry, a senior Israeli official said.

Analysts say Netanyahu was leaning towards accepting the framework, but so far the Palestinians have rejected any attempt to extend the deadline, denouncing Kerry’s ideas as biased in Israel’s favour and unworkable.

Ahead of their meeting, Netanyahu vowed he would “insist on Israel’s vital interests” and withstand pressure.

But Obama also made clear he meant business in a sharply worded interview published Sunday in which he warned that “continued aggressive settlement construction” would expose Israel to further international isolation.

“We have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we’ve seen in a very long time,” he added in remarks which were borne out by figures published Monday which showed construction starts in West Bank settlements were up 123.7 per cent in 2013.

Settlement construction

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will not extend peace talks with Israel beyond April without further prisoner releases and a halt to settlement construction, Israeli and Palestinian sources said Tuesday.

“We cannot continue negotiations with ongoing settlement construction,” Mohammad Al Madani, a member of the Fateh central committee, quoted the Palestinian president as saying during a meeting with a left-wing Israeli politician.

Abbas met Zehava Galon, head of the Meretz Party, in his Ramallah headquarters on Monday.

A statement from Galon’s office said that in addition to a settlement freeze, Abbas would also demand a release of “further prisoners beyond the next tranche, including women, youths and administrative detainees”.

Israel committed in July to releasing 104 Palestinian prisoners in four tranches. It has so far released 78 of those in three batches.

Abbas also told Galon that “if the American framework agreement will not sufficiently address the fundamental principles of the core issues, we won’t enable extending the negotiations,” according to the statement.

Core issues in the talks include borders, security, Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

The Abbas-Galon meeting took place just before Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.

Unconfirmed reports suggest Washington may demand a partial settlement freeze to try and ensure the Palestinians remain at the negotiating table.

But such demands have not been put to the Israeli side yet, according to Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz.

“I think these things are not even on the agenda,” he told public radio, in response to a question about Palestinian demands to freeze settlement construction and release further prisoners.

Pro-settlement Housing Minister Uri Ariel, of the far-right Jewish Home party, said he was not “concerned” by the idea of a settlement freeze, pointing out that “the prime minister has announced there wouldn’t be one”.

SAHEL, Syria — Syrian government troops are tightening their grip on the last rebel stronghold near the border with Lebanon a day after taking control of a key village in the area, a field commander told reporters on Tuesday.

Forces loyal to President Bashar Assad have seized a string of towns and villages in the rugged Qalamoun region along the Lebanese border since launching an offensive there in November. Backed by gunmen from the Lebanese Hizbollah group, the army seized the village of Sahel this week and is closing in on Yabroud, the largest town in the mountainous region still in rebel hands.

The government operation aims to sever the rebel supply routes from nearby Lebanon and shore up its hold on the main north-south highway that runs through the area.

During a government-led tour of the village of Sahel, a Syrian commander told reporters that troops ousted opposition fighters from the village Monday, bringing down the rebels’ “first defence line” of Yabroud. The officer did not provide his name, in line with military regulations.

Hizbollah guerrillas have played a significant role in the government push. The Lebanese Shiite militant is eager to clear the border area of the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim rebels trying to topple Assad’s government. Hizbollah claims that several cars used in recent bombings targeting predominantly Shiite neighbourhoods of south Beirut have been rigged in Yabroud.

Al Qaeda-linked groups have claimed responsibility for several of the attacks in Lebanon, saying they were retaliation for Hizbollah’s military support for Assad.

Opposition groups said fighting was raging Tuesday on the edge of Yabroud, with government helicopters dropping barrel bombs on the town’s outskirts. The makeshift bombs, which the government has used to devastating effect in other parts of Syria, are packed with explosives and fuel and are intended to cause massive damage to urban areas.

Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group, said rebels fighting in Yabroud belong predominantly to hardline Islamic groups, including Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and the breakaway group of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Syria’s state news agency reported heavy fighting around Yabrud on Tuesday. It said the army destroyed a car fitted with a machinegun, and killed fighters from the Nusra Front and other rebel groups.

The Syrian field commander said the army is determined to clear the area by launching a final assault from Sahel. He said “moral was high among the troops as they fulfil their mission” to capture Yabroud.

Sahel was deserted on Tuesday as the government troops escorted reporters along. There was damage on several houses and a mosque, apparently from fighting, and telephone and electricity cables were torn from poles and strewn on sidewalks.

At least one body could be seen on the ground.

“It was a real battle and we didn’t give the gunmen any chance to negotiate,” the commander said. He did not say if the army or the rebels sustained any casualties, but said the troops detained more than 30 opposition fighters after capturing the village.

Many of those captured were Syrians, the commander said, although there were also foreign fighters who had travelled to Syria from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Lebanon to battle Assad’s troops.

In Turkey, a former rebel military leader was seriously injured in a car crash while travelling to the Syrian border, the opposition Syrian National Coalition said in a statement. His son was killed.

Col. Riad Al Asaad, a former Syrian air force officer who defected and became one of the first leaders of the rebel Free Syrian Army, was in intensive care, the coalition said.

Asaad was among the first to call openly for armed insurrection against Assad, although he was later sidelined in the rebellion. He was wounded in the foot a year ago by a bomb planted in his car.

SAMARRA, Iraq — Militants seized the city council headquarters in the Iraqi city of Samarra and took employees hostage on Tuesday, officials said, the second such attack in recent months.

The attack illustrates the impunity with which militants in Iraq can strike even targets that should be highly secure, as the country suffers its worst violence in years.

Two militants, possibly wearing explosives-rigged vests or belts, seized the Samarra city council building on Tuesday morning with an unknown number of employees inside, security officials said.

Clashes broke out between the militants and security forces, and a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle near police and Sahwa anti-Al Qaeda militia forces when they arrived at the scene.

The blast wounded 24 people, most of them police, a doctor and an officer said.

The doctor also said that the deputy head of the city council was wounded in the bombing.

The attack in Samarra follows a similar incident in Tikrit, another city in the mostly Sunni Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad, in which militants detonated a car bomb and seized the city council headquarters on December 16.

Security forces ultimately freed the Tikrit hostages, but a city council member and two policemen were killed.

The following week, on December 23, suicide bombers attacked the headquarters of a local television station in Tikrit, killing five journalists.

Salaheddin province is also home to the Sulaiman Bek area, where militants repeatedly battled security forces for control earlier this month.

Attacks in other areas of Iraq killed two security forces members on Tuesday — a Sahwa militiaman in Kirkuk province and a policeman in Mosul.

Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a brutal period of sectarian violence in which tens of thousands died.

The year-long surge in violence in Iraq has been driven by widespread discontent among the minority Sunni Arab community, and by the bloody civil war in neighbouring Syria.

The Iraqi government also faces a two-month crisis in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, where it has lost all of the city of Fallujah as well as shifting parts of provincial capital Ramadi to anti-government fighters.

It is the first time anti-government forces have exercised such open control in major cities since the peak of the deadly violence that followed the US-led invasion of 2003.

GAZA CITY — An Israeli air strike on the northern Gaza Strip killed two Palestinians and wounded two others on Monday, the emergency services in the Hamas-run enclave said.

Emergency services chief Ashraf Al Qudra told AFP that Mousab Al Zaanin, a man in his early 20s, was killed in the raid on farmland near the town of Beit Hanoun.

He later added that Sharif Nasser, 31, had died of injuries sustained in the attack.

The Israeli military spokesman’s office said the target was a Palestinian “rocket-launching squad”.

“Israel air force aircraft targeted terrorists preparing to launch rockets in the northern Gaza Strip,” it said in a statement.

“The mission was carried out in order to eliminate an imminent attack targeting civilian communities of southern Israel.”

Israeli media had earlier reported a failed rocket attack, with the projectile apparently falling short and landing within the Gaza Strip.

On Friday, an Israeli air strike destroyed a rocket launch site in Gaza which also represented “an imminent threat”, the army said at the time.

No casualties were reported in the attack.

Tensions have risen in and around Gaza after a year of relative calm.

An increase in Israeli raids and Palestinian rocket attacks as well as border incidents in the past few weeks have raised the possibility of a major new confrontation between Israel and Hamas.

Monday’s strike occurred as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met US President Barack Obama to discuss the future of the peace process with the Palestinians.

Hamas, the Islamist movement that ousted the Western-backed Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007, opposes a peace deal.

MANAMA — Bahrain blacklisted three anti-government groups as terrorist organisations on Tuesday, a day after a bomb killed two local policemen and an officer from the United Arab Emirates, state news agency BNA said.

The attack has raised fears of more violence in the Sunni Muslim-ruled kingdom, where opposition groups led by majority Shiites have staged protests for the past three years demanding political reform and an end to perceived discrimination.

The Cabinet, meeting in emergency session in Manama, put the “so-called February 14 movement, Saraya Al Ashtar [Ashtar Brigade] and Saraya Al Muqawama [Resistance Brigade] and any group associated or allied to them on lists of terrorist groups”, BNA said.

The decision effectively outlaws these groups and makes their members subject to imprisonment. Bahrain listed Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbollah as a terrorist organisation last year.

BNA said 25 suspects in Monday’s bombing in the village of Daih, west of the capital Manama, had been rounded up. It did not says if they were members of any of the blacklisted groups.

Speaking on Bahraini state television, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashed Bin Abdullah Al Khalifa condemned the attack and blamed Iran for instability in the island kingdom.

“As we have said before, what happens inside our country has foreign links. We have announced publicly that foreign training sessions were organised and hosted at Iranian Revolutionary Guard camps that operated with official backing,” he said.

Iran denies links to Bahrain’s opposition. It does, however, champion their cause.

The three policemen were killed by a remotely detonated bomb during a protest as hundreds of mourners marched in a procession for a 23-year-old Shiite who died in custody last week.

The shadowy Saraya Al Ashtar organisation has claimed responsibility for the attack in a message on social media that could not immediately be authenticated.

Saraya Al Muqawama is also little-known, but the February 14 movement has been organising anti-government protests since the security forces crushed the mass demonstrations of February-March 2011 with help from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

A Bahraini policeman was killed last month during protests to mark the third anniversary of the uprising.

“It’s clear that the government has not succeeded in the last three years in ending the sort of violent activities that at least one part of the opposition continues to engage in, and not for lack of trying,” said Justin Gengler, a Bahrain expert at Qatar University.

Fate of talks

The policemen’s deaths further clouded attempts to revive reconciliation talks between the government and the opposition.

Mainstream opposition groups, including the main Shiite Al Wefaq movement, condemned the bombing and called on their followers to ensure that protest activities were peaceful.

But Citizens for Bahrain, widely regarded as a pro-government group, said the condemnation was not enough.

“It is good that the Bahraini opposition has come out and condemned the killing of three policemen. However, it should recognise that the terrorists who perpetrated these acts are the seeds of its own creation,” it said in an e-mail on Tuesday.

The UAE police officer, who had worked alongside Bahrain’s security forces, was buried in the UAE on Tuesday.

Bahrain and the UAE are members of the Western-aligned Gulf Cooperation Council, a political and military alliance that also includes Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar.

Bahrain’s Shiites have long complained of discrimination against their majority community in areas such as jobs and public services, charges that the Sunni-led government denies.

The Gulf island is a US ally which hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. The Sunni Al Khalifa family, which has ruled for two centuries, has resisted Shiite-led demands for an elected government, not one chosen by the king.

Bahrain’s human rights record is often criticised at home and abroad. The government says it has taken steps to address abuses by security forces by dismissing those responsible and introducing monitoring cameras at police stations.

VIENNA — Iran is reducing its most proliferation-prone nuclear stockpile as required by its landmark deal with world powers but much work remains to be done to resolve all concerns about Tehran’s activities, the UN atomic watchdog chief said on Monday.

Among measures Iran is taking since the interim agreement took effect on January 20 is the dilution of its stock of higher-enriched uranium to a fissile concentration less suitable for any attempt to fuel an atomic bomb.

Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), indicated that Iran had made sufficient progress in this regard to receive a scheduled March 1 instalment of $450 million out of a total of $4.2 billion in previously blocked overseas funds.

The IAEA has a pivotal role in checking that Iran is living up to its part of the six-month accord in curbing its disputed nuclear programme in exchange for some easing of sanctions that have impaired its oil-dependent economy.

“As of today, measures agreed under the Joint Plan of Action are being implemented as planned,” Amano said, referring to the November 24 agreement struck in Geneva between Iran and the United States, Germany, France, Russia, China and Britain.

These included “the dilution of a proportion of Iran’s inventory” of 20 per cent uranium gas to a lower enrichment level, which “has reached the halfway mark”, he told the IAEA’s 35-nation board, according to a copy of his speech.

Under the accord, Iran suspended enrichment of uranium to 20 per cent fissile concentration — a relatively short technical step away from the level required for nuclear bombs — and is taking action to neutralise its holding of the material.

In return, Iran is gradually winning access to $4.2 billion of its oil revenues frozen abroad and some other sanctions relief. The funds will be paid out in eight transfers on a schedule that started with a $550 million payment by Japan on February 1.

Last month, banking sources said South Korea was set to make two payments in March totalling $1 billion.

The March 1 instalment depended on Iran following a schedule for diluting part of its stockpile, which Amano’s comment suggested it now had. But it was not immediately clear if the funds had already been transferred to Iran.

The Geneva deal was designed to buy time for negotiations on a final settlement of the decade-old standoff over nuclear activity that Iran says is peaceful but the West fears may be latently aimed at developing a nuclear bomb capability.

IAEA short of cash
for Iran work

Those talks began in Vienna last month and are due to resume on March 17, also in the Austrian capital. The goal is to hammer out a long-term agreement by late July, though the deadline can be extended by six months if both sides agree.

Expert-level talks between the sides are to be held in Vienna on March 5-7, Iran’s official IRNA news agency said.

Separately, the IAEA is investigating suspicions — largely believed to be based on intelligence provided by Western states and Israel — that Iran has researched how to construct an atomic bomb, a charge Tehran denies. Iran says it is Israel’s assumed nuclear arsenal that threatens Middle East peace.

Amano made clear his determination that those allegations — alleged experimentation and tests to develop the expertise needed to turn fissile material into a functioning atomic bomb — must be cleared up.

“The measures implemented by Iran, and the further commitments it has undertaken, represent a positive step forward, but much remains to be done to resolve all outstanding issues,” the veteran Japanese diplomat said.

He said clarification of all issues related to the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme is “essential”.

Amano said 17 IAEA member states had so far expressed interest in contributing extra-budgetary funds to help finance the IAEA’s extra workload in monitoring the implementation of the Geneva agreement in Iran, but that more was needed. “We are still short of some 1.6 million [$2.21 million],” Amano said.

The UN agency said in January it needed about 5.5 million euros from member states to pay for its increased activities in Iran. This would cover more inspectors sent to Iran and the purchase of specialised surveillance-related equipment.

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — Two Egyptian policemen were sentenced to 10 years in jail Monday for the killing of a blogger whose death rallied protesters in the 2011 revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

The two were sentenced following a retrial for the manslaughter and torture of Khaled Said in June 2010, when they had unlawfully arrested him at an Internet cafe in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.

The two policemen, Mahmoud Salah Mahmoud and Awad Ismail Suleiman, had initially been sentenced to seven years in October 2011 for excessive brutality.

Said’s death galvanised protests against then-president Mubarak, after pictures emerged online of the 28-year-old’s mangled face.

The government further enraged Mubarak’s opponents when it tried to cover up the killing by alleging he choked on a bag of drugs.

A Facebook group titled “We are all Khaled Said” helped organise the 18-day protests that drove Mubarak’s hated police force from the streets and forced him to resign in February 2011.

The sentencing comes amid renewed popularity for the police, who supported the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July, and a pattern of acquittals for policemen tried for killing protesters during the anti-Mubarak revolt.

Both defendants were in a caged dock when Judge Ismail Attiya delivered the verdict. They showed little emotion on hearing the sentence.

Their lawyer said he would appeal the verdict, and relatives yelled at police outside the court room: “You sold out your men!”

Mahmoud Abdel Rahman, a lawyer for Said’s family, told AFP “justice has been delivered for all” and that the verdict sent a message of “deterrence to a powerful institution”.

Police and the forensic authority had initially said that Said choked to death after swallowing a packet of drugs.

Another forensic report later said he died of asphyxiation after being beaten, and that the packet of drugs was thrust in his mouth when he was unconscious.

Pictures of Said’s badly bruised face after his death spread on the Internet, and his case became synonymous with police brutality under Mubarak.

Said’s supporters and opposition activists have often clashed with security forces, in particular during the trial hearings.

In January, seven activists were sentenced to two years in prison for a violent and unlicenced protest outside the court hearing the Said case.

Since Morsi’s ouster, the military-installed government has pressed an extensive crackdown on protests, mainly those of his Islamist supporters, frequently setting off violent street clashes.

At least 1,400 people have been killed in clashes since Morsi’s overthrow, most of them Islamists.

Three years after the overthrow of Mubarak, Egypt’s police again faces accusations of brutality and ill treatment in detention centres, which the interior ministry has denied.

The police and army have meanwhile come under frequent attack by jihadist militants, mainly in the restive Sinai Peninsula, with dozens killed since Morsi’s ouster. On Monday, a policeman was shot dead in the town of Beni Suef, south of Cairo.

TRIPOLI — Libyan authorities vowed Monday to pursue a democratic transition in the face of mounting lawlessness after two MPs were shot when protesters stormed the country’s transitional parliament.

On Sunday, two members of the General National Congress (GNC) were shot and wounded as armed protesters stormed their building in Tripoli. In a separate incident, a French engineer was killed in the restive eastern city of Benghazi.

“I assure you we are committed to the path of the February 17 revolution and to pursue the democratic process,” GNC President Nuri Abu Sahmein said in a televised address, referring to the uprising that ended Muammar Qadhafi’s four-decade rule.

Abu Sahmein said the MPs’ wounds were not life-threatening but condemned what he termed a “flagrant aggression on the seat of legitimate sovereignty”.

He urged former rebel fighters who ousted Qadhafi to protect the capital and state institutions.

On Monday, ex-rebels equipped with pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns were posted around the GNC building, where at least five burnt-out cars testified to the previous day’s violence.

Abu Sahmein said the GNC was examining a roadmap for the handover of power “as quickly as possible” to an elected body.

The GNC, elected after the 2011 uprising, has stirred popular anger by extending its mandate from early February until the end of December.

Under pressure from demonstrators, the GNC, Libya’s highest political authority, has announced early elections will be held but has not yet set a date.

The head of an elected panel tasked with preparing elections, Nuri Al Abbar, submitted his resignation to the GNC on Sunday, saying Libya had to “end political tensions and restore order” before holding polls.

He added that it would take another four or five months of preparations before elections could go ahead.

Libya’s political class is deeply divided, and GNC members are still demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, although they have failed to oust him in a vote of confidence.

Dozens of armed demonstrators on Sunday demanded the GNC be dissolved and railed against the “kidnapping” the previous night of participants in a sit-in protest outside the parliament building.

They later attacked and “abused” deputies, GNC spokesman Omar Hmidan said, adding that their cars had been destroyed.

One GNC member told AFP that the protesters, mostly young people armed with knives and sticks, entered the premises chanting “Resign, resign”.

Two members were “hit by bullets when they tried to leave the venue in their cars,” according to Abu Sahmein.

Ministers to Benghazi 

In Benghazi, meanwhile, gunmen on Sunday shot dead a French engineer who worked for a company doing extensive work at a medical centre in the eastern city, which was the cradle of the 2011 revolt.

The government announced a six-member ministerial team was sent to Benghazi to examine ways to restore order in the city, the scene of almost daily attacks on security forces.

An assault on the US mission in Benghazi in 2012 killed the ambassador and three other Americans.

Three years after the uprising, the government and GNC have come under increasing criticism from Libyans who accuse them of corruption and failing to provide security.

Criminals roam the streets, and rival tribes shoot it out to settle long-standing disputes, while many ex-rebels have formed powerful militias rather than integrate into the regular armed forces and police.

A host of different factions and ex-rebel groups make up a dangerous cocktail which could send Libya sliding into civil war.

However, the proliferation of arms and militias left behind from the uprising have so far served as a balancing factor, deterring a power grab by any single group.

Adding economic misery to Libya’s woes, protesters have blockaded and shut down oil terminals, threatening to bankrupt a government that relies almost exclusively on petroleum revenues to operate.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel began building twice as many settler housing units in the occupied West Bank last year as in 2012, official data showed on Monday, just hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to meet US President Barack Obama.

Obama has been sharply critical of Jewish construction on land Palestinians want for a future state. Such settlement is deemed illegal in international law.

A spokesman for Netanyahu, who arrived in Washington on Sunday at the start of a five-day visit to the United States, had no immediate comment on the figures, which were released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.

It said the number of new construction projects in the settlements jumped to 2,534 in 2013 from 1,133 the year before, but did not say where specifically the houses were being built.

Citing security concerns and historic and biblical links to the territory, Israel says it intends to keep large settlement blocs in any future peace deal. Palestinians say relentless settlement expansion makes a mockery of their aspirations to an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Obama issued a veiled warning to Netanyahu on Sunday, saying it would be harder for Washington to defend Israel against efforts to isolate it internationally if US-led peace talks fail.

“What I do believe is that if you see no peace deal and continued aggressive settlement construction and... if Palestinians come to believe that the possibility of a contiguous sovereign Palestinian state is no longer within reach, then our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited,” Obama told Bloomberg View.

He urged Netanyahu to “seize the moment” to help achieve a framework agreement that Secretary of State John Kerry has been trying to forge as the basis for a peace settlement.

Israel’s anti-settlement group Peace Now said the increase in settlement building starts showed the Israeli government’s “lack of commitment to negotiations”.

More than 500,000 Jewish settlers live on land seized by Israel in the 1967 war.