Region

BEIRUT — Syrian government and opposition delegations leave 10 days of peace talks with few results and a follow-up meeting uncertain, but analysts and negotiators say the discussions are an important beginning.

The immediate post-mortem on the talks from Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem was blunt.

“I regret to tell you that we have not reached tangible results during this week,” he said as the talks wrapped up in Geneva on Friday.

Despite persistent pressure from UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, and co-sponsors Russia and the United States, the two delegations failed to agree on a single point.

No ceasefire was signed, talks on a transitional government never began, and a mooted deal to allow aid into the besieged Old City of Homs went nowhere.

Opposition National Coalition chief Ahmad Jarba said the regime had failed to show “serious commitment” during negotiations.

“The talks were obviously not a success,” said Salman Sheikh, director of the Brookings Doha Centre think tank.

“The other disappointing thing was that there was hope that the momentum would come from some sort of a deal on humanitarian access. That hasn’t happened,” he added.

The failure to secure humanitarian access ranks among the larger disappointments of the talks, dashing hopes the government might ease its blockade of besieged rebel-held enclaves as a goodwill gesture.

In the end, the regime offered to allow women and children to leave the Old City of Homs, but aid convoys on standby to enter were left waiting.

Desperately needed food did reach the besieged Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk on Thursday and Friday, but the plight of civilians trapped in the south Damascus camp had not even been on the Geneva agenda.

The talks have also done nothing to slow the pace of killing in Syria, where more than 136,000 people have died since the conflict erupted in March 2011, an NGO said Saturday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nearly 1,900 people were killed between the start of the talks on
January 22 and their penultimate day on Thursday.

‘A modest beginning’ 

A second round of talks is proposed for
February 10, but Mouallem said he could not confirm the regime’s participation without first consulting President Bashar Assad.

Mouallem also said on Saturday the US had asked to “negotiate directly” with his delegation, but that they had “refused to do so before [US] Secretary of State John Kerry apologised for what he said at the conference”.

Kerry said Assad “will not be part” of any transitional government.

The tone in Syria’s state media on Saturday was also far from conciliatory.

“In Geneva, the Syrian delegation spoke as the voice of Syrian rights. They spoke from the heart,” said government daily Al Thawra.

It said the opposition, by contrast, had said “nothing but what was dictated to them on a piece of paper by their master”.

“They were a subservient humiliated slave, and an obedient client,” it charged, alluding to the opposition’s Gulf Arab and Western backers.

But despite the deadlock, Jarba confirmed the opposition would attend the next round of talks, and Brahimi said there had been glimpses of common ground.

“This is a very modest beginning, but it is a beginning on which we can build,” he said on Friday, while admitting disappointment at the failure to achieve humanitarian access.

He was due to hold talks in Munich on Saturday with both Russia, which backs the Assad regime, and the US, which supports the opposition.

Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said the talks were a “first step towards possible success”.

“At least, the two parties recognised the respective other side as someone they have to negotiate with,” he said.

Both sides defied the expectations of many not by only showing up to the talks, but also by not walking out, despite tense moments and mutual recriminations.

“This isn’t much, but more could not have been expected,” Perthes said.

And reports the US Congress has secretly approved resuming weapons deliveries to “moderate” Syrian rebel factions suggest the opposition gained something by attending the talks.

Massoud Akko, a member of the technical team in the opposition delegation, acknowledged little progress had been made, but said the opposition won symbolic victories.

“This is the first time that the Syrian regime has accepted to discuss the future of Syria with Syrians, so I think this is something that we have won,” he told AFP.

RAMADI, Iraq — Security forces and allied tribal fighters mounted major offensives on Saturday against militants in the conflict-hit cities of Ramadi and Fallujah as attacks elsewhere in Iraq killed eight people.

The massive assaults, involving soldiers, police and pro-government armed tribesmen, are part of efforts to wrest back control of areas that have been in the hands of militants, including the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) for weeks, sparking fears the ongoing stand-off could impact elections scheduled for April 30.

They come after Iraq’s deadliest month in nearly six years, with more than 1,000 people killed in January, as it grapples with a surge in bloodshed that has sparked fears of a return to the all-out conflict that left tens of thousands dead in 2006 and 2007.

Security forces and their allies assaulted the militant-held neighbourhoods of Malaab, Dhubat, and Street 60 in Ramadi, killing 35 anti-government fighters and seizing large amounts of weaponry, according to a police officer and tribal militia commander Mohammed Khamis Abu Risha.

The clashes were among the heaviest in several weeks, an AFP journalist in Ramadi said, adding that all mobile phone and Internet connections had been cut.

Abu Risha, the nephew of a powerful tribal sheikh, has backed anti-government protesters and was implicated in the killing of five soldiers near Ramadi last year, but in ISIL he shares a common enemy with the government in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, aerial bombardment and artillery fire on a neighbourhood in northern Fallujah, a rare major operation in the city itself, has killed 15 militants, the defence ministry announced Saturday, without saying when it happened.

The army has largely stayed out of Fallujah, just a short drive from Baghdad, fearing any major incursion could lead to a bloody and protracted conflict with massive civilian casualties and property damage.

American battles in the city, a bastion of militants following the 2003 US-led invasion, were among their bloodiest since the Vietnam war.

But an official in the provincial security command centre told AFP that security forces were preparing a major assault on Fallujah in a bid to retake the city.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not elaborate.

Fallujah is in Anbar province, a mostly Sunni desert region west of Baghdad that shares a border with Syria.

BEIRUT — Syrian government and opposition delegations leave 10 days of peace talks with few results and a follow-up meeting uncertain, but analysts and negotiators say the discussions are an important beginning.

The immediate post-mortem on the talks from Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem was blunt.

“I regret to tell you that we have not reached tangible results during this week,” he said as the talks wrapped up in Geneva on Friday.

Despite persistent pressure from UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, and cosponsors Russia and the United States, the two delegations failed to agree on a single point.

No ceasefire was inked, talks on a transitional government never began, and a mooted deal to allow aid into the besieged Old City of Homs went nowhere.

Opposition National Coalition chief Ahmad Jarba said the regime had failed to show “serious commitment” during the negotiations.

“The talks were obviously not a success,” said Salman Sheikh, director of the Brookings Doha Centre think tank.

“The other disappointing thing was that there was hope that the momentum would come from some sort of a deal on humanitarian access. That hasn’t happened,” he added.

The failure to secure humanitarian access ranks among the larger disappointments of the talks, dashing hopes that the government might ease its blockade of besieged rebel-held enclaves as a show of good will.

In the end, the regime offered to allow women and children to leave the Old City of Homs, but aid convoys on standby to enter were left waiting.

Desperately needed food did get into the besieged Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk on Thursday and Friday, but the plight of civilians trapped in the south Damascus camp had not even been on the agenda of the Geneva discussions.

The talks have also done nothing to slow the pace of killing in Syria, where more than 130,000 people have died since the conflict erupted in March 2011.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nearly 1,900 people were killed between the start of the talks on January 22 and their penultimate day on Thursday. 

‘A modest beginning’

A second round of talks is proposed for Feburary 10, but Mouallem said he could not confirm the regime’s participation without first consulting President Bashar al-Assad.

And the tone in Syria’s state media on Saturday was far from conciliatory.

“In Geneva, the Syrian [government] delegation spoke as the voice of Syrian rights. They spoke from the heart,” said government daily Al Thawra.

It said the opposition, by contrast, had said “nothing but what was dictated to them on a piece of paper by their master”.

“They were a subservient humiliated slave, and an obedient client,” it charged, alluding to the opposition’s Gulf Arab and Western backers.

But despite the deadlock, Jarba confirmed that the opposition would attend the next round of talks, and Brahimi said there had been glimpses of common ground.

“This is a very modest beginning, but it is a beginning on which we can build,” he said on Friday, while admitting disappointment at the failure to achieve humanitarian access.

He was due to hold talks in Munich on Saturday with both Russia, which backs the Assad regime, and the United States, which supports the opposition.

Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said the talks were a “first step towards possible success.”

“At least, the two parties recognised the respective other side as someone they have to negotiate with,” he said.

Both sides defied the expectations of many not by only showing up to the talks, but also by not walking out, despite tense moments and mutual recriminations.

“This isn’t much, but more could not have been expected,” Perthes said.

And reports that the US Congress has secretly approved resuming weapons deliveries to “moderate” Syrian rebel factions suggest the opposition gained something by attending the talks.

Massoud Akko, a member of the technical team in the opposition delegation, acknowledged that little progress had been made, but said the opposition won symbolic victories.

“We pushed the regime to discuss, to negotiate with the Syrian people,” he told AFP.

“This is the first time that the Syrian regime has accepted to discuss the future of Syria with Syrians, so I think this is something that we have won.”

President Barack Obama plans to travel to Saudi Arabia in March on a mission to smooth tensions with Washington’s main Arab ally over US policy on Iran’s nuclear programme and the civil war in Syria, a newspaper reported.

Obama is preparing to meet with King Abdullah for a summit, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing unnamed Arab officials briefed on the meetings.

“This is about a deteriorating relationship” and declining trust, said a senior Arab official in discussing the need for the summit, which was pulled together in recent days, the newspaper reported.

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment.

The United States and Saudi Arabia have been allies since the kingdom was formed in 1932, giving Riyadh a powerful military protector and Washington secure oil supplies.

Washington’s relationship with the Saudis was crucial as the region faced changes and challenges from the transition in Egypt to civil war in Syria.

But relations have been tested on a number of fronts.

Members of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family threatened a rift with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria’s civil war, which has killed more than 100,000 people, as well as the recent US outreach with Iran.

The Sunni Muslim kingdom’s regional rivalry with Shiite Iran, an ally of Syria, has amplified sectarian tensions across the Middle East.

King Abdullah is also to use the meeting to question Obama on why he decided against air strikes in Syria, which Saudi and other Arab officials believe strengthened Assad, the newspaper reported.

“The meeting in many ways will get back to basics,” said a Saudi official briefed on the meetings, according the Wall Street Journal. “Why did Obama do it the way he did it?”

US and other security officials said earlier last week that “moderate” Syrian rebel factions were receiving light arms supplied by the United States. 

The Arab Spring as well as a November agreement between Iran and other world powers that curbs parts of Tehran’s nuclear programme, has angered Saudi Arabia, along with other Arab states and Israel.

The relationship was also badly shaken by the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, since most of the hijackers were Saudi nationals, and by the subsequent American invasion of Iraq.

Obama’s visit comes after a mission to Riyadh by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

BEIRUT — A suicide car bomber killed three people at a petrol station in a stronghold of the Shiite Hizbollah movement on Lebanon’s northern border on Saturday, the latest sign that Syria’s civil war is spilling over into its small neighbour.

The blast occurred in the town of Hermel at the northern end of the Bekaa Valley, an area populated mainly by Shiite Muslims among whom Hizbollah draws its support.

Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) cited witnesses who said the perpetrator entered the gas station and asked to buy fuel before detonating the bomb, leaving a metre-deep hole in the ground and setting the station and nearby cars on fire.

Images broadcast on Hizbollah’s Al Manar television showed fire raging beside a severely damaged petrol station as well as emergency vehicles and security forces at the scene.

A security source told Reuters that, besides the three dead bystanders and the dead bomber, 28 other people had been wounded in the blast.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Saturday’s blast fitted a pattern of attacks by rival sectarian groups on each other’s strongholds that has been amplified by Syria’s civil war. Another suicide car bomb killed three people in Hermel last month.

Lebanon’s caretaker interior minister, Marwan Charbel, told Reuters by phone that the situation in Lebanon was “unstable and getting worse every day”.

“This matter is very, very dangerous,” he said. “It is bigger than the security apparatus.”

Suicide bombers often use stolen vehicles, and Charbel said up to 400 cars had been stolen in Lebanon in the last six months.

“This is a strange path for Lebanese, because most of the explosions we see are carried out by Lebanese,” he said.

Saturday’s blast happened near a building that houses a charity connected to the late Shiite Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. Fadlallah, who died in 2010, was not a member of Hizbollah.

Shortly after the explosion in Hermel, a bomb went off near an Al Manar office in the Beirut neighbourhood of Ouzai, a security source said. It was not clear whether the Hizbollah-run television station had been targeted or whether anyone was hurt.

Hizbollah-run areas are frequently hit by bomb and rocket attacks claimed by Sunni militants. Four car bombs have exploded in Hizbollah’s stronghold of south Beirut since July. A pair of suicide bombings at the Iranian embassy in November killed at least 25 people including an Iranian diplomat.

Hizbollah has sent fighters and advisers to aid President Bashar Assad, a member of Syria’s Alawite minority, which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Both Hizbollah and Assad are supported by Shiite-ruled Iran.

Hizbollah’s intervention in Syria and the steady flow of Lebanese Sunnis joining the anti-Assad rebels have both fuelled sectarian strife in Lebanon, which has taken in more than 900,000 refugees from the Syrian civil war.

TEHRAN — Iran has received the first instalment of $4.2 billion in frozen assets as part of a nuclear deal with world powers, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told ISNA news agency Saturday.

Unblocking the funds under the landmark deal in which Iran agreed to roll back parts of its nuclear programme and halt further advances is expected to breathe new life into its crippled economy.

“The first tranche of $500 million was deposited in a Swiss bank account, and everything was done in accordance with the agreement,” Araqchi said.

Iran clinched the interim deal in November with the P5+1 group — Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany — and began implementing the agreement on January 20.

Under the agreement, which is to last six months, Iran committed to limit its uranium enrichment to 5 per cent, halting production of 20 per cent-enriched uranium.

In return, the European Union and the United States have eased crippling economic sanctions on Iran.

A senior US administration official told AFP last month that the first $550-million (400-million-euro) instalment of $4.2 billion in frozen assets would be released from February.

“The instalment schedule starts on February 1 and the payments are evenly distributed” across 180 days, the US official said.

Iran and the P5+1 will also hold a new round of talks in Vienna on February 18 in a bid to discuss a comprehensive solution to Tehran’s contested nuclear programme.

Major world powers and Israel fear that Iran is trying to develop an atomic bomb, but Tehran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful.

Also on Saturday, the official IRNA news agency quoted the head of the civil aviation authority, Alireza Jahanguirian, as saying that Iran will soon receive spare parts for its ailing civilian fleet.

Jahanguirian said the parts would arrive within two weeks as part of the sanctions relief agreed in Geneva in November.

But the November deal foresees an easing on sanctions imposed on several sectors, including Iran’s car industry and petrochemical exports, as well as allowing civil aviation access to long-denied spares.

SANAA — Fierce clashes between Huthi Shiite rebels and gunmen from the powerful Hashid tribe killed at least 60 people on Friday in northern Yemen, tribal sources told AFP.

The clashes in Omran province killed 40 Huthi rebels and their allies and left 20 dead in the ranks of the Hashid tribe, the sources said.

The violence in Omran dates back to January 5 when Huthis tried to seize Hashid strongholds.

“The fighting, the heaviest since the clashes broke out in Omran, erupted at dawn on Friday in Wadi Khiwan and Wadi Danan and in other areas of the Huth and Isha districts,” a tribal elder said.

Gunmen on both sides fired machine-guns and mortar rounds, he added.

Another source close to the powerful Al Ahmar tribal grouping to which the Hashid belong said the tribes had “mobilised thousands of gunmen over the past few days” to confront the Huthis.

The source blamed the Huthis for launching an offensive on Tuesday, pounding the region with rockets and mortar rounds “in a bid to advance on the Huth district and Al Khomri”, Al Ahmar bastions.

“Tribesmen launched a counteroffensive and were able to push back the Huthis and today’s fighting was the fiercest,” the source said.

Hashid tribesmen recaptured ground lost to the Huthis earlier in the week, he said, adding, however, that the fighting was still under way late Friday.

The rebels have been pushing out from their stronghold in the mountains of the far north to other areas nearer the capital to lay a stake to their own autonomous unit in a promised federal Yemen, political sources say.

But their fighters, know as Huthis from the name of the rebels’ leading family, have faced stiff resistance from pro-government Zaidi tribes, as well as from Sunni hardliners who have established religious schools in parts of the north.

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has pledged that Yemen will adopt a federal constitution to tackle the grievances of its disparate regions.

But at a ceremony last Saturday to mark the conclusion of a troubled 10-month national dialogue, he put off any decision on the thorny issue of how many component units it will have, promising that a special commission will decide.

The prospects of a federal Yemen, originally mooted as a solution to the grievances of the formerly independent south where secessionist violence has been on the rise, has spawned demands for autonomy from other discontented regions, including the rebel-held far north.

CAIRO — Prime Minister Hazem Al Beblawi has said a Cabinet reshuffle will include the defence ministry, an Egyptian newspaper said on Saturday, in the clearest sign yet that Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al Sisi plans to stand for president.

Army chief Sisi, now defence minister in Egypt’s interim government, deposed Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July after mass protests against his rule and is widely expected to announce his candidacy within days and win an election easily.

Before he can run for president he must step down from his government post.

The reshuffle will not be announced before a visit by Beblawi to Saudi Arabia, a major financial supporter of Egypt’s interim government, on Tuesday and Wednesday, the privately-owned Al Masry Al Youm newspaper quoted him as saying.

The reshuffle is to include the defence ministry and the ministry for international cooperation, whose head, Ziad Bahaa Al Din, tendered his resignation last Monday, according to the report.

Cabinet officials were not immediately available for comment.

RAMALLAH — Israeli soldiers shot and wounded 10 Palestinians near the West Bank town of Ramallah during a protest Friday over the killing of a teenager, Palestinian medics and security sources said.

In Gaza, meanwhile, medics said five more Palestinians were wounded by Israeli army gunfire near the border fence with Israel.

The sources said the Palestinians in the West Bank were hit by live rounds on the outskirts of Jalazun refugee camp and hospitalised in Ramallah, including one with serious injuries.

Hundreds of Palestinians took part in the protest, many of them hurling rocks at the soldiers.

The demonstration was called to protest at the Israeli army’s killing on Wednesday of Mohammed Mubarak, a 19-year-old from Jalazun working on a project funded by USAID and son of the camp’s locally elected leader.

The army said he was shot dead near a Jewish settlement outside Ramallah after opening fire on them, but witnesses insisted he was unarmed.

Palestinian Housing and Public Works Minister Maher Ghneim has condemned what he branded the “cold-blooded killing” of a labourer working on a project run by the ministry in coordination with USAID.

Ghneim said the youth had been “carrying a sign to direct the traffic” when he was shot.

A total of 27 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army in the West Bank in 2013, three times more than the previous year, figures from Israeli rights watchdog B’Tselem showed.

In central Gaza, five Palestinians were shot and wounded Friday as they threw rocks at soldiers on the other side of the border fence, medics said.

An army spokeswoman, contacted by AFP, said dozens of demonstrators hurled rocks and had approached the fence inside a military exclusion zone.

The soldiers first fired warning shots before targeting the protesters, she said, adding that at least one Palestinian was hit.

CAIRO — The Egyptian army said it killed seven militants in an air strike in the Sinai Peninsula less than a week after jihadists downed a military helicopter in the restive region.

The army said the Thursday night air raid hit militants linked to the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted president Mohamed Morsi, which the military-installed authorities have designated a terrorist organisation despite its repeated condemnation of jihadist attacks against the security forces.

The air strike targeted four houses of “dangerous extremists linked to the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group” south of the North Sinai town of Sheikh Zwayed, the army said, adding that seven militants were killed and five wounded.

On January 25, militants shot down a military helicopter in the Sinai, killing five soldiers as Egyptians marked the third anniversary of the Arab Spring uprising that toppled veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak.

Al Qaeda inspired group Ansar Bait Al Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem) claimed responsibility for the downing, which was only belatedly acknowledged by the military after several days of insisting that it had been an accident.

The Sinai-based group has claimed a spate of attacks against the security forces in recent months, not only in the desert peninsula but also in the heart of the capital.

The day before the helicopter downing, it claimed four bomb attacks against police targets in Cairo which killed six people, including a car bombing just outside the perimeter fence of police headquarters.

The army has poured troops into the Sinai in a bid to crush the militants but despite the loss of scores of police and troops since its July overthrow of Morsi, there has been no let-up in attacks.