Region

ADDIS ABABA — South Sudan’s government and rebels signed a ceasefire on Thursday to end more than five weeks of fighting that divided Africa’s newest nation and brought it to the brink of civil war.

Fighting between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and those backing the vice president he sacked in July, Riek Machar, erupted in mid-December.

Thousands of people have been killed and more than half a million people have fled their homes, prompting the regional grouping of nations, IGAD, to initiate peace talks.

The pact is expected to be implemented within 24 hours of the signing, mediators said.

But making the ceasefire hold could test Machar, whose forces include loyalists as well as more autonomous groups battling the centrally controlled government forces.

“The crisis that gripped South Sudan is a mere manifestation of the challenges that face the young and fledgling state,” Seyoum Mesfin, IGAD’s chief mediator, told the signing ceremony.

“I believe that the postwar challenges will be greater than the war itself. The process will be ... unpredictable and delicate.”

South Sudan’s defence minister, Kuol Manyang Juuk, told Reuters on January 17 before the deal was reached that Machar did not have enough control to make a ceasefire stick in the oil-producing nation, one of Africa’s poorest.

“To the parties, we say: Enough! The killing must end now. The displaced must be able to return to their homes,” said Alexander Rondos, the European Union’s special representative for the Horn of Africa, at the signing event.

The conflict has turned along ethnic faultlines, pitting Machar’s Nuer against Kiir’s Dinka people. Several other communities have also taken up weapons. Analysts say the ceasefire does not resolve the broader power struggle.

“It is only the first step to allow space and time for a more substantive political dialogue to take place,” said Douglas Johnson, a historian and author.

Rebel prisoners

Both sides had said several times since talks began at the start of January they were close to a deal, but disagreements had pushed back a signing. Meanwhile, fighting raged, with the government retaking major towns from rebel forces.

“This deal does not provide answers to South Sudan’s current problems. We need a comprehensive political deal,” said one rebel official in the Ethiopian capital.

“We are only signing because we, and they, are under pressure.”

Ordinary people in South Sudan’s capital Juba were also sceptical the ceasefire would swiftly end the political rivalry that underpinned the fighting.

“It can solve some of the immediate problems but not all the problems,” said 31-year-old Samuel Kuir Chok. “I’m not optimistic ... because this guy [Machar] wants to be president at all costs.”

The ceasefire was accompanied by an agreement on the “question of detainees”. Rebels had demanded the release of 11 of Machar’s allies, detained by the government and accused of attempting a coup.

Seyoum, the chief mediator, told reporters the deal provided for the 11 to eventually participate in the peace process - but that they must first face due process of law.

Shortly before the signing, rebel spokesman Mabior Garang said freeing the detainees was “not so much of a demand since everyone recognises the need for their release”.

The rebels have also demanded that Uganda, which openly admitted to helping Kiir’s forces in combat, leave South Sudan.

Diplomats at the talks had said the deal would call for an end to “involvement by foreign forces”, but Hussein Mar Nyot, the spokesman for Machar’s delegation, said it called for a ‘withdrawal of allied forces invited by both sides’.”

South Sudan won its independence from Sudan in 2011 after decades of conflict between the northern and southern Sudanese.

DAVOS, Switzerland — Iran is determined to negotiate a comprehensive deal on its nuclear programme with major powers so it can develop its battered economy, President Hassan Rouhani said on Thursday, inviting Western companies to seize opportunities now.

Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, the pragmatic president said Tehran was negotiating with the United States as part of a “constructive engagement” with the world and wanted Washington to back up its words with actions.

However, a day after a chaotic Syria peace conference from which Iran was excluded, he was unbending in his support for Syrian President Bashar Assad. Ending “terrorism” backed by some of Syria’s neighbours was a precondition for any settlement of the country’s civil war, he said.

Elected last year on a promise to improve Tehran’s relations with the outside world, Rouhani took the United Nations by storm in New York in September. His appearance in the Swiss resort launched phase two of a charm offensive aimed at ending sanctions that are crippling Iran’s economy.

An interim deal with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — known as the P5+1 — came into force this week. This granted Iran a limited easing of the sanctions in return for temporary constraints on its uranium enrichment and nuclear development.

Rouhani stressed his commitment to achieving a final settlement. “Iran has a serious will to come to an agreement with the P5+1,” he told the assembled business and political leaders. “I do not see a serious impediment in the way of this agreement. The Iranian will is strong.”

Asked what might prevent a long-term settlement, he cited the risk of “pressure from other parties” — a veiled reference to Israel, which denounced the interim deal as an “historic mistake” and urged the US Congress to resist it.

Rouhani broke no new diplomatic ground in his speech. In a private session with energy executives, he promised a new, attractive investment model for oil contracts by September as part of a drive to lure back Western business barred by the US-led sanctions, participants said.

Relations with Europe were being normalised now that the interim nuclear accord was being implemented, he said. Rouhani also met European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso on the sidelines of the conference.

“Iran should use this window of opportunity with determination to move to a comprehensive long-term solution on the nuclear issue,” Barroso said in a statement. “This would open up the potential for an improved relationship and broader cooperation.”

At a separate meeting with US, European and Arab businessmen, Rouhani said Iran was seeking investment particularly in car manufacturing, oil and gas, petrochemicals, road and rail infrastructure and mining, a participant said.

He ignored a question from two US businessmen who said they had Israeli passports and asked if they could invest in Iran. The Islamic republic does not recognise Israel.

Most sanctions, including a severe squeeze on Iran’s access to the international financial system, remain in force and the United States has stressed Western companies should not regard Iran as “open for business”.

Rouhani promised to pursue a consistent foreign policy of “prudence and moderation” to revive the economy.

He called for cooperation with all Iran’s neighbours but did not mention Gulf rival Saudi Arabia by name and refused, when pressed twice, to include Israel among states with which Iran sought friendly relations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Davos but not in the hall during the speech, said afterwards that Rouhani’s soft words bore no relation to reality, citing Iran’s military role in Syria and its support for the Palestinian Hamas movement which seeks Israel’s destruction.

“Rouhani continues Iran’s deception show,” Netanyahu said.

“The goal of the Iranian ayatollahs’ regime, that hides behind Rouhani’s smile, is to ease sanctions without giving up their programme to produce nuclear weapons,” he said, urging the international community “not to be duped”.

Rouhani repeated Iran’s standard pledge not to seek nuclear weapons and said Tehran was willing to accept all safeguards and inspections of the UN nuclear agency, provided it was not subjected to “discrimination”. Western countries believe the atomic effort is aimed at developing a military capability.

“We never sought and will never seek nuclear weapons,” the president said. “I declare that a nuclear weapon has no place in our security strategy.”

But in a foretaste of tough negotiations on a long-term agreement, he said: “Iran will not accept any obstacles to its scientific progress.”

Some Western energy chiefs said they were impressed by Rouhani’s commitment to attract foreign investment in the sector, which has seen production cut by a third and exports halved by the sanctions.

“The fact that the president of Iran came to the meeting today... is clearly a sign that Iran wants to open up to international oil companies,” said Paolo Scaroni, chief executive of Italy’s Eni, who was at the meeting.

But he said Eni would stick strictly to the sanctions and return to Iran only when a permanent nuclear deal was concluded and contract terms were changed.

“It was an impressive presentation,” said one of three other oil executives who attended and spoke with Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The United States and other Western powers want Tehran to end high-grade uranium enrichment and shut down a heavy-water reactor capable of producing plutonium nuclear fuel under any permanent settlement. Iran rejects these steps.

With Saudi Prince Turki Al Faisal, a former intelligence chief and ambassador to the United States, sitting in the audience, Rouhani said Iran sought cooperation “with the littoral states of the Persian Gulf”. However, he did not name Saudi Arabia, which has expressed concern about the interim nuclear deal.

In a clear swipe at Riyadh and Qatar, he renewed criticism of countries he did not name which he said were supporting terrorism in Syria, saying this would rebound on them at home.

Senior Gulf Arab businessmen from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain who heard the speech said it was hard to believe Rouhani was genuine about his wish for better relations with Iran’s neighbours. They also said any trade deals would be for cash only until some payments channel could be arranged.

Iran was shut out of Wednesday’s UN-sponsored Syrian peace conference in Montreux, Switzerland, because of its refusal to endorse a framework for a transition from Assad’s rule.

Rouhani later cancelled a planned news conference and left the building without taking any questions in public, except from the World Economic Forum’s founder Klaus Schwab. Organisers cited “technical reasons”, saying they could not provide an adequate room with simultaneous interpretation at short notice.

CAIRO — Egypt said on Wednesday it was “very surprised” by a decision by its longtime US ally to exclude it from a high-profile African summit being convened by President Barack Obama.

Egypt joins international pariahs Sudan and Zimbabwe in the short list of African countries not among the 47 invited to the August get-together.

US officials said that Egypt was ineligible to attend because it is suspended from the African Union following the military’s overthrow of elected president Mohamed Morsi last July.

Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelbati said the US decision was a “mistake” and displayed a “lack of vision”.

“Egypt was very surprised by the US statement about its reasons, especially as the summit is not being held under the auspices of the African Union and is simply a summit between the United States and African countries,” the spokesman said.

Washington stopped short of describing last year’s overthrow of Morsi as a coup, which would have triggered the automatic suspension of all aid.

But it halted a slab of its $1.5 billion a year in mainly military assistance last October in protest at the army’s failure to move more quickly towards a return to elected civilian rule.

Last week, Egypt held a referendum on a new constitution drawn up by the military-installed authorities but US Secretary of State John Kerry responded: “It’s not one vote that determines a democracy.”

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s prime minister called Wednesday for residents of restive Anbar province to “take a stand” against anti-government fighters, as air strikes were said to have killed 50 militants.

Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s call came as government forces pressed an offensive against militants, including those affiliated with Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who overran parts of the provincial capital Ramadi weeks ago.

Diplomats have urged Baghdad to foster political reconciliation to undercut support for the militants, but with elections looming in April, Maliki and others have taken a hard line and focused on wide-ranging security operations.

“I ask the people of the province — the tribes, the notables and all who live there — to be ready to take a stand, to take serious action against those dirty people,” Maliki said in his weekly televised address.

“It is time to finish this subject, and end the presence of gangs in this city, and save the people from their evil,” he said, referring to the Anbar city of Fallujah, which is entirely controlled by insurgents.

Parts of Ramadi and all of Fallujah, both west of Baghdad, have been in the hands of militants for weeks, the first time insurgents have exercised such open control in Iraqi cities since the peak of the violence that followed the 2003 US-led invasion.

Air strikes launched across Anbar killed 50 militants, including foreign fighters of Arab nationality, the defence ministry said Wednesday.

Security forces “received accurate information and carried out painful and effective air strikes against terrorist gatherings in Anbar yesterday, January 21, that killed more than 50 terrorists”, a ministry statement said.

Soldiers, police and SWAT forces have meanwhile joined with tribal allies in an offensive that continued Wednesday against gunmen holding several neighbourhoods of Ramadi, an AFP journalist reported.

The army said in a statement that 13 militants were killed in firefights there.

In Fallujah, meanwhile, shelling in southern and central neighbourhoods left one person dead and 10 wounded on Wednesday, a medic said.

Residents of the city blame the army for the shelling, but defence officials say the military is not responsible.

The government has changed its language in recent days from referring to all anti-government fighters in Anbar as Al Qaeda to instead using terms such as gangs.

And while Fallujah residents and tribal sheikhs have said ISIL has tightened its grip on the city in recent days, several other militant groups and anti-government tribes have also been involved in fighting government forces in both cities in Anbar.

Iraqi security forces have recruited their own tribal allies.

More than 22,000 families displaced

The United Nations warned Tuesday of “an exponential increase in the number of displaced and stranded families”, with more than 22,000 families having registered as internally displaced.

It said the actual figure was likely to be higher, as not all those who fled had registered.

It said most of the displaced had found refuge elsewhere in Anbar, but some had gone as far afield as the northern Kurdish region.

Fighting originally erupted in the Ramadi area on December 30, when security forces cleared a year-old Sunni Arab protest camp.

The violence then spread to Fallujah, as militants moved in and seized the city and parts of Ramadi after security forces withdrew.

Violence elsewhere in the country on Wednesday killed eight people, security and medical officials said.

The deadliest incident occurred in Baghdad’s western outskirts, where three mortar rounds slammed into a residential neighbourhood, killing at least three people.

Attacks in and around the restive northern cities of Mosul, Tikrit and Kirkuk killed five others.

The latest violence brought to more than 700 the number of people killed so far this month, according to an AFP tally.

By comparison, fewer than 250 people died as a result of violence in all of January 2013.

JUBA — The South Sudanese government has accused rebel troops of committing atrocities against civilians by killing 127 hospital patients in the town of Bor last month.

The United Nations says thousands of people have been killed in more than a month of clashes pitting troops loyal to President Salva Kiir against rebels supporting Riek Machar, who was sacked as vice president in July.

Officials said the killings occurred on December 19 when Peter Gadet, the army commander in Bor, pledged loyalty to Machar. Bor, which has seen some of the worst fighting since the rebellion started, was only retaken by the government last Saturday.

“They went into the hospital and slaughtered all 127 patients,” Ateny Wek Ateny, the president’s spokesman, told a news conference.

The rebels rejected the accusation and instead accused the government of massacring civilians in the capital, Juba, and of flattening the oil-producing Unity state’s capital of Bentiu when they seized it back from the rebels earlier this month.

“That is a complete lie... We don’t target civilians and on the contrary it is the government that targets its own civilians starting with the massacre in Juba,” Lul Ruai Koang, a rebel military spokesman, told Reuters by phone from the Kenyan capital.

Officials of the United Nations humanitarian mission to the country were not immediately available to comment.

The army regained Bor with the backing of Ugandan troops deployed there.

Initially sparked off by a political row, battle lines have increasingly followed ethnic lines with Kiir’s Dinka battling Machar’s Nuer.

Kiir and Machar declined to sign a ceasefire agreement in Ethiopia due to disagreements over the fate of 11 detainees held by authorities in Juba and the involvement of the foreign troops.

Rebels insist the detainees be freed before a deal can be signed while the government maintains that they will only be released when the due process of law has been followed.

A summit of the heads of state of the regional grouping of Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which initiated the Addis Ababa talks, was postponed from Thursday.

A statement from the South Sudanese president’s office said the IGAD meeting that was scheduled for Juba would now be held alongside the African Union summit in Addis Ababa starting January 28.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel said on Wednesday it had arrested two Palestinians from East Jerusalem who were planning to carry out attacks for Al Qaeda with the help of foreign suicide bombers posing as Russian tourists.

The men were recruited by another Al Qaeda agent in the Gaza Strip, said Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency — the second Israeli report in as many months suggesting the militant network was taking root among Palestinians.

Hamas Islamists governing Gaza rejected the spy agency’s account as “silly fabrications”, saying it was an attempt to justify Israeli military strikes in the territory.

Security experts say Al Qaeda and its global agenda have for a long time had only a fringe appeal among Palestinians as they pursue a more nationalist conflict with Israel.

The two Palestinians, who could travel freely in Israel because of their Jerusalem residency, were recruited over Facebook and Skype, Shin Bet said in a statement, which appeared to be based on confessions by the detainees.

It did not say if they had lawyers or how they might plead in open court. Civil rights groups have often accused the Shin Bet of duress against terrorism suspects.

According to the agency, the Palestinians planned to provide bomb vests to foreign militants posing as Russian tourists for attacks on an Israeli convention centre in Jerusalem and the US embassy in Tel Aviv.

The detainees were further accused of planning to kidnap a soldier and shoot up an Israeli bus in the occupied West Bank. One of the men was arrested as he prepared to travel to Syria, via Turkey, to undergo weapons training, the Shin Bet said.

Third arrest

Israel captured East Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and Gaza, in the 1967 war. It annexed East Jerusalem as its capital — a move not recognised abroad — and says it may cede West Bank territory to the US-backed Palestinian Authority (PA). It quit Gaza in 2005, leading to Hamas’ rise there.

The Shin Bet said that a third Palestinian, from the West Bank city of Jenin, was in custody on suspicion of planning to set up an Al Qaeda cell in his area. Two of the detainees were arrested last month and the third this month, it said.

In November, Israeli troops said they had killed three Palestinian fighters linked to Al Qaeda in a West Bank clash. The Al Qaeda-inspired Majles Shura Al Mujahideen (“Holy Warriors’ Assembly”) claimed the slain men as its own. The PA sought to play down the link.

The Shin Bet said Al Qaeda’s spread in the West Bank was “still at its inception, and possible to stop”.

Citing the alleged recruitment work by Al Qaeda in Gaza, the Shin Bet accused Hamas authorities of “allowing Salafis to carry out terrorism as long as it is not against them”.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri fired back by accusing Israel of seeking a “pretext” for its attacks in Gaza. Earlier on Wednesday, an Israeli air strike killed a militant from the Palestinian faction Islamic Jihad blamed for a cross-border rocket salvo last week.

Though the Gaza authorities lack the advanced technologies that would be required to monitor Internet communication, Abu Zuhri scorned the Shin Bet statement as “silly fabrications”, adding: “Facebook is not a Hamas network.”

Hamas, while hostile to Israel, has often observed Egyptian-mediated truces with it and curbed more radical Salafi Muslims aligned with Al Qaeda.

ALGIERS, Algeria — Algeria has sent thousands of police officers to calm weeks of ethnic clashes in a southern desert city, and seven people have been arrested.

Ghardaia, a picturesque city perched on the edge of the Sahara desert 600 kilometres south of Algiers, was reported calm Wednesday following a weekend of rioting that left one person dead, 10 wounded and dozens of shops and homes burned. The arrests came late Tuesday.

The city is divided between Algeria’s Mozabites, members of North Africa’s original Berber inhabitants and followers of the rare Ibadi sect of Islam on one hand, and Sunni Muslim Arab migrants.

For the past month, there have been intermittent clashes between young men from the two groups and over the weekend, a Mozabite man was stabbed to death. At least 30 shops were also set on fire, the state news agency said.

Around 3,000 policemen were sent Monday to stabilise the situation and the next day, the state news agency announced seven men had been arrested and were being investigated with another 16 in custody.

Hammou Mosbah, a Mozabite member of the opposition Front for Socialist Forces Party, said the attacks were by criminal gangs allowed to exist by the local police forces.

“We have no problems with the Arabs, with whom we have coexisted for centuries,” he Told the Associated Press. “We have always called for the gendarmes (national police) to be deployed, and now with them calm has returned.”

Bouamer Bouhafs, an Arab elder in Ghardaia, told the online Tout Sur Algerie news site the clashes were the fault of Mozabite gangs attacking Arab neighborhoods.

Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal visited Ghardaia on January 14 and met with community representatives in an effort to calm tension, but fighting resumed soon after he left.

Violence between the two communities has erupted in the past. A US State Department cable on the 2009 clashes that left two dead and 100 others injured ascribed the violence to competition between the Arabs and Mozabites over land and resources as the populations swell.

“The slow police response and inability to contain sectarian violence in this recent incident is indicative of the difficulty that state institutions and officials face when trying to work in Ibadi communities,” the cable stated.

Algeria’s Berber, or Amazigh, community, which has its own language and makes up an estimated 30 per cent of the population, is often at odds with the Arab majority, especially in the mountainous Kabylie region near the capital.

The ethnic tensions in Ghardaia, however, are somewhat unique in the country as it is one of the few areas where traditional Arab and Berber communities live side by side.

The country’s impoverished south has, however, been a constant scene of demonstrations calling for more jobs and investment from Algeria’s hydrocarbon wealth, which is largely located there.

MANAMA — Bahrain’s crown prince has pulled reconciliation talks back from the brink by organising a meeting with the Shiite opposition, and the appointment of a royal delegate, and agreed topics for new talks, have raised some hope of progress.

However, mistrust between the Shiite Muslim majority and the ruling Sunni Al Khalifa family is still high three years after the government crushed pro-democracy protests and many Bahraini Shiites regard these reconciliatory gestures with scepticism.

Since 2011 the tiny Gulf Arab monarchy, where the US Fifth Fleet is based and which is caught in the middle of a regional tussle for influence between Shiite Iran and Sunni Muslim powerhouse Saudi Arabia, has seen continuous unrest that political efforts have failed to quell.

Earlier this month, the government said it was suspending talks with opposition groups, who have boycotted the process since September after the arrest of a senior member.

But last week, in a surprise move, Crown Prince Salman Bin Hamad Al Khalifa, seen as a moderate member of the royal family, met with, amongst others, Sheikh Ali Salman, the leader of the main Shiite opposition Al Wefaq group.

Just a few weeks ago, Sheikh Ali was charged with insulting the interior ministry and “spreading lies”, part of what the opposition has described as a harsh crackdown on its members.

Khalil Marzouq, a senior member of Wefaq, whose arrest in September prompted the opposition to boycott the talks and who is out on bail, said the meeting had made him “cautiously optimistic”.

“We are not overwhelmed with the shift but we are open for a solution and ready for a partnership,” Marzouq told Reuters in Bahrain after an anti-government protest on Friday.

Both the government and the opposition blame each other for the political deadlock.

The opposition accused the ruling family of manipulating sectarian divisions to avoid democracy, while the government charged Wefaq of working for Iran.

Five points

At the new rounds of talks, both sides have agreed on five main issues as the basis for discussions, opposition officials and pro-government sources said.

These include parliament approval of governments appointed by the king, examining the powers and composition of the upper house of parliament, electoral districts, enhancing the independence of the judiciary and police and security issues.

All five points address major grievances of Bahrain’s Shiite population against the Al Khalifah family and the government.

Marzouq said the talks would be bilateral and that senior royal family member, Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Khaled Bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, was likely to be the government’s representative in future talks.

Information Affairs Minister Samira Rajab, the government’s spokeswoman, confirmed the appointment, saying there was “consensus” over the choice of Sheikh Khaled.

The first bilateral talks between the opposition and the Royal Court Minister took place on Tuesday, Wefaq said.

Marzouq said the overall structure of the talks, with the crown prince overseeing and the presence of Sheikh Khaled, was “accepted by the opposition as a representation of the king”.

Last year’s round table included government officials, members of the opposition and other pro-government parties but no representative of the king, who has the last say in politics. The talks were criticised by the opposition as nothing but a waste of time.

“Unfortunately, last year there were parties who did not want to listen and discuss the real issues. It was all ‘he said, she said’. They could not even agree on an agenda,” said a Bahraini official, who asked not to be named.

The official said the royal court would hold bilateral meetings with the opposition and other representatives to agree on a set agenda.

The royal court is headed by Sheikh Khaled Bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, who is seen by the opposition as a main force in the hardliner wing in Al Khalifa ruling family.

“Having the royal court involved meaning that you are talking to the king directly,” the official added.

“I think this new way of talks is positive.”

‘What dialogue?’

Last Wednesday’s meeting was only a first step in efforts to address a long list of grievances among Shiite Muslims highly sceptical of the government’s sincerity in wanting to end the crisis.

Bahrain’s Shiites have long complained of political and economic marginalisation, an accusation the government denies.

On Friday, hundreds of men and women holding Bahrain’s flags and photos of protesters killed in the security crackdown took to the streets in the Shi’ite village of Diraz. Some shouted “Down with Hamad”, referring to the king.

“We heard about these talks in the past and we have seen nothing out of them,” said Sayed, a protester in his 20s.

“Yesterday, there were arrests in my village. A helicopter was flying over our heads and security forces breaking the doors of nearby houses. What dialogue?”

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel on Wednesday moved forward with plans for 261 new housing units in two settlements located deep in the occupied West Bank, a watchdog said, drawing strong European condemnation.

It was the fifth such move in just over two weeks and raised to 2,791 the number of new settler housing units announced since the start of the year, threatening to derail faltering US-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians.

Israel’s rapid settlement expansion has angered Palestinian negotiators and drawn condemnation from the international community, threatening peace talks that US Secretary of State John Kerry kick-started in July.

EU envoy to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen said continued settlement building would isolate Israel, which he warned would be held accountable for a failure of peace talks.

“If Israel were to go down the road of continued settlement expansion and were there not to be any result from the current talks, I’m afraid that what will transpire is a situation in which Israel will find itself increasingly isolated,” Faaborg-Andersen told journalists in Jerusalem.

“If the talks are wrecked as a result of Israeli settlement announcements, then the blame will be put squarely on Israel’s doorstep,” he said.

“You are eating away at the cake that you are discussing how to slice up.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week accused the EU of a “hypocritical” attitude toward the Middle East peace process, saying it should be more concerned by Palestinian militancy than Israeli housing construction.

The new plans include 256 housing units in the Nofei Prat settlement, between Jerusalem and Jericho, and another five in the sprawling Ariel settlement in the north, the group said.

“The addition of 256 housing units to the small, isolated settlement of Nofei Prat dramatically changes the settlement, expanding its size and population significantly. In fact, these planned units will nearly triple the size of Nofei Prat,” Peace Now said in a statement.

Construction would be allowed to start “without further political approval or public awareness,” it added.

“Every day that Kerry isn’t in the region, the government announces construction of new settlements,” Peace Now spokesman Lior Amihai told AFP.

Kerry has visited the region 10 times since March to coax the two sides towards a final peace agreement, but the talks continue to falter ahead of an agreed April deadline.

Israel moved ahead on Tuesday with plans for 381 homes for West Bank settlers, prompting Palestinian charges it was more interested in building settlements than reaching a peace agreement.

It also pushed ahead with plans for a second visitors’ centre at an archaeological site in Silwan, a densely populated Arab neighbourhood of annexed East Jerusalem, Peace Now said.

And on January 6, Israel approved plans for 272 new housing uits in various West Bank settlements. Four days later, it unveiled plans for more than 1,877 new units, some in East Jerusalem.

Israel and the Palestinians embarked on nine months of direct negotiations in late July at the urging of Kerry.

But over the past six months, Israel has not slowed its construction on land the Palestinians want for a future state.

BEIRUT — Syria’s conflict was sparked by an act of brutality — the detention and torture of schoolchildren who spray-painted anti-government graffiti in a southern city. In the three years since, the civil war has evolved into one of the most savage conflicts in decades.

The atrocities have been relentless. Protesters gunned down in the streets. An opposition singer whose vocal cords were carved out. Beheadings and mass sectarian killings. Barrels full of explosives dropped from warplanes onto bakeries and homes.

It will be hard enough to find a political solution to Syria’s crisis at an international peace conference convening in Switzerland on Wednesday, given the vast differences between the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad and the opposition. But in a nation drowning in blood, reconciliation and justice over the atrocities seem even more distant.

“The ethical and moral fabric of this society has been stretched to beyond breaking point,” said Amr Al Azm, a US-based Syrian opposition figure and professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio. “For a country to recover from such a traumatic rupture of the very glue that holds it together is not easy.”

In the latest sign of the brutality, three prominent international war-crimes experts said they had received a huge cache of photographs documenting the killing of some 11,000 detainees by Syrian authorities.

David Crane, one of the three experts, told The Associated Press that the cache provides strong evidence for charging Assad and others for crimes against humanity — “but what happens next will be a political and diplomatic decision”.

In the 55,000 digital images, smuggled out by an alleged defector from Syria’s military police, the victims’ bodies showed signs of torture, including ligature marks around the neck and marks of beatings, while others show extreme emaciation suggestive of starvation. The report — which was commissioned by the Qatar government, one of the country’s most deeply involved in the Syrian conflict and a major backer of the opposition — could not be independently confirmed.

“It’s chilling; it’s direct evidence to show systematic killing of civilians,” said Crane, former chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that the United States has focused too strongly on bringing the warring parties into peace talks at the expense of putting “real pressure” on the Assad government to end atrocities and hold to account those responsible. The group also accused Russia and China of shielding their ally Syria from concrete action at the United Nations.

“The mass atrocities being committed in Syria should be a parallel focus of the peace process,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told reporters in Berlin Tuesday.

For Syria watchers, the descent into the abyss was not inevitable, but the result of conscious decisions by a multitude of players.

“From day one, there was a level of violence used initially by the government in its suppression that was unprecedented,” said Nadim Houry, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division. “Since the Balkan wars and Rwanda in the 1990s, we have rarely seen a conflict with that many people killed in such a short amount of time.”

More than 130,000 people have died in Syria’s conflict, and more than a quarter of the population of 23 million now live as refugees, either within Syria or in neighboring countries. Fighters who took up weapons against Assad have turned their guns on each other, trapping ordinary Syrians in the violence of two parallel wars.

Protests started in the southern city of Daraa in March 2011 in response to the arrest and torture of high school students who scrawled anti-government graffiti on the school wall. Security forces responded with brute force, beating and opening fire on largely peaceful protesters, who initially demanded reforms and later moved to seeking Assad’s ouster.

Chilling brutality against opposition figures came quickly in the very first months of the conflict. Hamza al-Khatib, a chubby-faced teenager, was arrested at an anti-government demonstration in April 2011 and not seen again until his mutilated body was delivered to his family weeks later.

Popular cartoonist Ali Farzat was severely beaten up and both his hands broken before being dumped on the side of the road after he compared Assad to Libya’s dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

The body of Ibrahim Qashoush was thrown in the Orontes river with his throat carved out for writing poetry and anti-Assad songs that rallied thousands of protesters.

As opponents increasingly took up arms, the government escalated its repression. Warplanes indiscriminately hit rebel-held residential areas with incendiary bombs and crude explosive-filled barrels, often hitting bread lines at bakeries, schools and makeshift hospitals. Government forces have been blamed for an August chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds.

Sectarianism fueled the viciousness. Syria is a patchwork of religious groups, with Sunnis making up the majority and forming the backbone of the rebellion. Assad is a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

A May 2012 assault on Houla — a cluster of Sunni villages surrounded by Alawite towns in central Syria — killed about 100 people, including many children under the age of 10. Gruesome video showed rows of dead children with gaping head wounds in a mosque, and the UN called it a massacre by pro-Assad gunmen. In a massacre blamed on rebels, nearly 200 civilians were killed in pro-regime villages in Latakia province.

Islamic militants and foreign Al Qaida-linked fighters joined the war against Assad — and reports of human rights abuses by the opposition soared, including mass killings of prisoners, beheadings and floggings. In Aleppo last year, Al Qaida-linked militants shot to death a 15-year-old coffee vendor in front of his parents, accusing him of being an “infidel” for allegedly mentioning Islam’s Prophet Muhammad in vain.

“I never imagined that this could happen to my country,” said Ibrahim, a 41-year-old former teacher whose brother died in an air raid on the northern town of Al Bab last year. He said his brother — two years his elder — had gone over to a friend’s house to play backgammon when the bomb struck without warning, killing 12 people.

“He has two children and his wife doesn’t speak from the shock,” Ibrahim said in a Skype interview, declining to give his full name for fear reprisals.

Ibrahim fled Al Bab after militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant took it over, terrorising civilians. He is now staying with relatives in Syria until he can leave the country. “There’s no future here anymore,” he said.

Experts say justice and accountability are crucial if the hatred is not to be transmitted to future generations.

In neighboring Lebanon, for example, wounds have still not healed from the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990 with more than 150,000 killed.

The Taif agreement which ended the Lebanese war — brokered partly by Lakhdar Brahimi, the same diplomat who will sit down with the Syrian warring sides in Switzerland — did not mention justice.

“There was a blanket amnesty, which meant that all the warlords and war criminals became respectable ministers, and they just split the pie of the state,” Houry said. “We are still paying the price more than 20 years later.”