Region

DUBAI — Bahrain’s opposition has called for protests to mark the third anniversary Friday of an Arab Spring revolt led by the Shiite majority that was brutally crushed by the Saudi-backed Sunni monarchy.

The Gulf state is deeply divided, with persistent protests on the outskirts of the capital Manama that ignite clashes with police, scores of Shiites jailed on “terror” charges, deadlocked reconciliation talks and simmering sectarian distrust.

The main opposition group Al Wefaq is calling for a strike on Thursday and a rally Saturday to commemorate the February 14 uprising, which was inspired by the pro-democracy revolts that swept the Arab world in early 2011.

But even the head of Al Wefaq, cleric Ali Salman, admits there will only be “symbolic activities to protest the deterioration of the situation”.

The clandestine February 14 youth coalition has called on protesters on Friday to try to reach Pearl Square, where demonstrators camped for a month before being violently driven out by security forces in March 2011.

The roundabout and its central monument, which became a symbol of the uprising, were later razed and the site remains heavily restricted.

At least 89 people have been killed since the protests began, according to the International Federation for Human Rights.

Two rounds of national reconciliation talks have so far failed to bring the two sides anywhere near common ground on the future of the tiny but strategic Gulf archipelago.

Crown Prince Salman, who has made several overtures to the opposition, called last month for a third round of national talks.

But many in the opposition believe his efforts have been undercut by more hawkish members of the royal family, including his great uncle Prince Khalifa, who has been prime minister ever since independence from Britain in 1971.

The opposition says the Sunni monarchy, which crushed the uprising with the aid of a Saudi-led Gulf intervention force, has little interest in sharing power, much less in accepting a constitutional monarchy with an elected prime minister that could bring the Shiite majority to power.

“The dialogue has failed because of the lack of a real will by the regime to find a political solution,” the opposition chief told AFP.

“The royal family monopolises all the powers... and refuses to make concessions,” Salman said, accusing the government of trying to “buy time and deceive the international community” during previous talks.

The Wefaq-led opposition responded to the latest call for dialogue with a roadmap reiterating its demands for “a parliament with full legislative powers” and an “elected government” as well as the release of political prisoners.

The government has in turn sought to dilute the opposition’s presence by widening the dialogue to include Sunni associations that support the monarchy.

“There is no place for bilateral talks between the government and the opposition,” Information Minister Samira Rajab said, adding that authorities had requested proposals from all parties and would prepare an “agreed” agenda after studying them.

Battleground in a regional struggle

Bahrain, like Syria, is widely seen as a battleground in the regional standoff between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, with Riyadh fearing both the spread of Arab Spring unrest to the Gulf and the potential emboldening of its own Shiite minority.

Gulf monarchies “will not abandon Bahrain”, says Kuwaiti analyst Ayed Al Mannaa, charging that Iran “dreams of establishing a bridgehead at the doorstep of Saudi Arabia”.

Claire Beaugrand, a political analyst at L’Institut francais du Proche-Orient, said the dialogue’s outcome depends on “the relative strength of internal forces” within the royal family and the level of foreign support enjoyed by the government and the opposition.

While politicians in Manama trade blame for the deadlock, in Shiite villages on the city’s outskirts the struggle has played out in increasingly vicious clashes between protesters and police, with authorities reporting an increase in the use of explosives.

Human Rights Watch accused Bahraini authorities last month of “seriously” undermining prospects for a political solution, citing an increase in “restrictions on the exercise of core human rights like freedom of speech, assembly and association”.

“Official talk of reform is a joke at the time when peaceful critics of the government are labelled terrorists and kept in jail,” said the group’s deputy Middle East director Joe Stork.

TRIPOLI — The brother of a former rebel who has blockaded Libyan oil ports was held in Dubai after Tripoli issued an Interpol notice for his arrest on charges of trying to smuggle oil, Libyan government officials said.

The arrest of the brother of Ibrahim Al Jathran, whose blockade has cost the state billions of dollars, came as the government wages a campaign of attrition to weaken his movement for more autonomy and control of oil wealth in eastern Libya.

Members of the protest movement and Jathran’s relatives confirmed his brother Khalid’s arrest, but rejected the charges, accusing the government in Tripoli of fabricating the investigation to pressure Jathran by acting against his family.

Nearly three years after the fall of Muammar Qadhafi, the oil port blockade is one of most serious challenges in Libya’s struggle to rein in former rebels who once fought Qadhafi but now refuse to accept the state’s authority.

A former anti-Qadhafi rebel who become a commander of a state force set up to guard oil installations, Jathran and his troops defected in August and seized three oil ports, set up a self-styled government and cut off around 600,000 barrels a day of crude export capacity.

A senior Libyan government source and an official in the prosecutor’s office said Khalid Jathran was arrested in the United Arab Emirates after Libyan authorities filed a “red notice” with Interpol, the international police agency.

“He is wanted for trying to sell Libyan oil illegally. The process of extradition is under way,” the senior government source said, asking not to be identified.

Jathran has threatened to sell Libya’s crude independently, but analysts say few would take the risk of loading oil seen as smuggling by Tripoli.

Siddiq Al Sour, a chief investigator in the state prosecutor’s office, said Khalid Jathran was arrested in the United Arab Emirates when he had tried to renew his passport at the Libyan embassy.

“The information we got from Interpol is that he was arrested and detained,” he said. “A delegation will be sent to the United Arab Emirates within days, and we expect the cooperation from the authorities there.”

He said he was wanted on charges related to the oil protests and attempts to smuggle Libyan crude.

A security source in Dubai said Khaled Saeed Salem Awad, which relatives said was the brother’s full family name, was arrested at the request of Libyan authorities made through Interpol. He was released on bail pending the receipt of the necessary papers from Libya required for him to stand trial.

It was not clear how long any extradition proceedings would take, if they were requested.

The accusations in the Interpol red notice are that he is a member of a criminal gang and that he has committed theft.

But his family dismissed those accusations, saying Khalid is a businessman who had been studying in the United Arab Emirates. Relatives did not immediately respond to a request to speak to his lawyer, but they said he was free.

“He has been arrested for one day, investigated and released, he is not under any house arrest,” Salam Jathran, another of his brothers, told Reuters.

“What damage can he do to public money? He’s not an official to be corrupted. Libyan authorities have made up all of these charges to put pressure on us as he is the only brother located outside Libya.”

Asked to confirm the arrest, Interpol’s press office said in an e-mail that it does not usually comment on specific cases. It referred requests for information to the Libyan authorities.

Interpol red notices are the way the agency informs its 190 member countries that an arrest warrant has been issued by a judicial authority. While Interpol cannot enforce the notice, many countries consider it a valid request for a provisional arrest while they seek extradition.

Months ago the government issued an arrest warrant for Jathran himself, accusing him of damaging the state by shutting down oil exports that account for more than 90 per cent of state revenues. Libya has lost more than $7 billion in revenues since the protest began, according to government figures.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The visiting president of the European Parliament landed in hot water in Israel on Wednesday, drawing a public rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over an address to the Israeli legislature.

Martin Schulz, a German who spoke to the Knesset in his native language, sparked a walk-out by several far-right lawmakers when he cited what he described as unverified data alleging Israel was denying Palestinians a fair share of water in the occupied West Bank.

He said a “Palestinian youth” had asked him why Israelis received four times as much water per capita as Palestinians.

“I haven’t checked the data,” Schulz said in the speech. “I’m asking you if this is correct.”

Legislators from the Jewish Home Party, which advocates annexing parts of the West Bank, stormed out, and one shouted “shame on you” at Schulz.

Netanyahu entered the fray minutes later, in a separate parliamentary debate after Schulz’s speech.

He said that according to Israel’s own statistics and data it received from the Palestinian Authority, the water disparity cited by Schulz was incorrect and significantly smaller, although the Israeli leader did not give any precise numbers.

“Now, the European Parliament President said honestly, ‘I haven’t checked it’ — but that didn’t stop him from repeating [the figures] and making an accusation,” Netanyahu said.

Such behaviour, he said, reflected a general trend to “tarnish Israel” over its policies without checking the facts.

Israel’s B’Tselem group, which monitors human rights in the West Bank, said last month per capita water use in Israel is three and a half times higher than in the West Bank, a ratio close to the one mentioned by Schulz.

A United Nations report released in December 2012 said Israelis living in settlements in the occupied West Bank consumed approximately six times the water used by Palestinians living in the same territory.

Netanyahu also suggested Schulz had a skewed view of events in Iran, whose agreement with world powers to curb some of its nuclear activities in return for an easing of sanctions is seen by the Israeli leader as an attempt to gain time to develop atomic weapons capability.

“Again, the president of the European Parliament said that ‘until recently’ — that’s what he said — cries of ‘Death to Israel’ were heard in Tehran,” Netanyahu said.

“’Until recently’ — that means that we don’t hear that now. But we hear the calls of ‘Death to Israel’ every day, or every two days from Iran’s leaders...”

Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear armed power, demands that Tehran dismantle all of its uranium-enriching centrifuges and describes Iran as an existential threat. Iran denies it is seeking atomic weapons.

DAMASCUS — The head of a mission overseeing the dismantling of Syria’s chemical arsenal has urged Damascus to speed up operations, amid Western concerns the regime is deliberately dragging its feet.

Sigrid Kaag, in an interview with AFP late Tuesday, was confident however that a mid-2014 deadline for the regime’s entire arsenal to be destroyed would be met.

Syria, Kaag said, was continuing to display “constructive cooperation” despite missing several deadlines to ship chemical material out of the country.

“Some delays have been encountered, but they have not been insurmountable and we remain confident that the deadline of 30th June 2014 will be met,” she said.

“What’s important... is that there is an acceleration and intensification of efforts as we progress in time towards the deadline,” she said.

“But yes, there is constructive cooperation at the political and at the technical level.”

Under the terms of a UN resolution based on a deal hammered out by the United States and Russia, Syria is to turn over all of its chemical weapons for destruction in-country or abroad.

The entire arsenal is scheduled to be destroyed by June 2014 in a mission overseen by the joint UN-Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons team that Kaag heads.

On Monday, a third shipment of chemical material left Syria to be destroyed overseas.

But Damascus has missed several key deadlines to move material, prompting the Security Council and OPCW Director General Ahmet Uzumcu to urge it to speed up the process.

“A significant effort is needed to ensure the chemicals that still remain in Syria are removed — in accordance with a concrete schedule and without further delay,” Uzumcu warned earlier this week.

US President Barack Obama on Tuesday put the onus on Syria ally Russia to make sure the deadlines are met.

“Syria must meet its commitments and Russia has a responsibility to ensure that Syria complies,” Obama said at a Washington press conference with French President Francois Hollande.

The Syrian government has said it remains committed to the June 30, 2014 deadline, but that security problems related to the ongoing conflict were causing delays.

Kaag acknowledged unforeseen delays, including logistical and security issues.

“It’s a very complex operation,” she said. “It is an unprecendented effort under very challenging conditions. The country is at war.”

She added, however, that the “very precarious” security situation in the country should encourage a speedy process.

“That’s even more reason to make sure that the operation is completed as soon as possible, as one doesn’t know, all things being equal, how conditions may change.”

BEIRUT — Syria’s air force carried out a dozen air strikes against the strategic rebel-held Yabrud area near Damascus for the first time on Wednesday, activists and a monitoring group said.

“There were 13 air strikes against Yabrud and its surroundings today,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, without providing immediate details on casualties.

On the ground, an activist who gave his name as Amer told AFP via the Internet that “the [army’s] campaign to take Yabrud has started. The air strikes are accompanied by an attempted ground offensive”.

Located in the Qalamoun mountains, Yabrud lies near the border with Lebanon and on a strategic road linking Damascus to the war-torn country’s third city Homs, which has suffered some of Syria’s worst violence in the past three years.

While Yabrud is under rebel control, it had been mostly immune to the violence engulfing most other opposition areas. Activists had for many months considered it a haven for nonviolent opposition to Syria’s regime.

But recently, the jihadist Al Nusra Front moved into Yabrud as the loyalist army and its Lebanese Shiite ally Hizbollah stepped up fighting in other areas of the Qalamoun mountains, taking over smaller villages from rebel control.

According to the observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman, troops and Hizbollah have been upping the pressure on Yabrud for several weeks, frequently shelling the town, which is home to a mixed Muslim and Christian population.

On Wednesday, Hizbollah and the paramilitary National Defence Force were backing the army in fighting against Al Nusra Front and local rebels in the Rima area near Yabrud.

Amateur video distributed by activists showed plumes of black smoke rise above Yabrud’s houses and golden hills, as a fighter jet soars through a clear blue sky.

The violence forced families from Yabrud and nearby Flita and Jreijer to flee into Lebanon’s Arsal, just across the border, the UN refugee agency UNHCR’s Dana Sleiman said via Twitter.

A group of 12 Syrian and Lebanese Orthodox nuns taken by gunmen in early December from the historic town of Maalula were believed to have been taken to Yabrud.

Elsewhere, the death toll from air raids on Aleppo’s rebel-held Sakhur neighbourhood on Tuesday rose to 27, including nine children, said the observatory.

The air force’s use of explosive-packed barrel bombs has been widely denounced by rights groups as “indiscriminate”.

In Daraa in the south, air strikes against Tafas village killed nine people, including six children, said the Britain-based observatory.

More than 136,000 people have been killed in Syria’s nearly three-year war, and millions more forced to flee their homes.

BAGHDAD — Militants in pick-up trucks ambushed Iraqi army outposts protecting a major oil export pipeline in the north of the country overnight, killing at least 16 soldiers by shooting them and slitting their throats, security and medical sources said.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but Sunni Islamist and other insurgents have been regaining momentum in a campaign to destabilise Iraq’s Shiite-led government.

The attack took place near the Ain Al Jahash area, 30km south of the city of Mosul in Nineveh province, through which a long section of pipeline stretches from Iraq’s Kirkuk oilfield to neighbouring Turkey.

“Dozens of gunmen in pick-up trucks launched orchestrated attacks against army commando soldiers protecting an oil pipeline,” said a security source, adding that an army humvee vehicle had gone missing during the attack. “The soldiers were taken by surprise and this is why we have such a high death toll.”

The OPEC member’s ambitious plans to ramp up its oil output have been held back by poor maintenance, technical problems and now deteriorating security.

More than 1,000 people were killed in attacks across the country in January alone, building on a trend of intensifying violence that made last year the bloodiest since 2008, when sectarian warfare began to abate from its height.

“We have received 16 bodies of soldiers bearing bullets-wounds and with slit throats,” said a doctor in Mosul hospital on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to media.

‘Insulting caricature’

In a separate incident, an Iraqi daily newspaper stopped publishing after two bombs were planted in the entrance to its headquarters in Baghdad on Monday and after threats from an Iranian-backed Shiite militia.

Editors and reporters at Assabah AlJadeed said they had received death threats from the influential Asaib Al Haq militia in response to what it had described as an “insulting caricature” of Shiite Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Some Iraqi Shiite groups that follow Khamenei, including Asaib Al Haq, are fighting in Syria, often alongside President Bashar Assad’s troops and against mainly Sunni rebels.

Dozens of angry protesters carrying photographs of Asaib Al Haq leader Qais Al Khazali gathered in Baghdad’s Firdos Square on Monday demanding the paper be shut down and whoever insulted revered Shiite figures, punished.

Firdos Square was the site of the famous statue of former dictator Saddam Hussein that was torn down after the US-led invasion of 2003, setting in motion the ascendancy of Iraq’s Shiite majority.

GENEVA — Even as he fights to hold on to power, Syrian President Bashar Assad has agreed to destroy a significant part of his arsenal and to join negotiations whose stated aim is to remove him from his post.

Those seemingly contradictory moves may point to a shrewd strategy: Negotiate, play for time and hold the West at bay while his troops wear down an increasingly divided and dysfunctional rebel force on the battlefield no matter the cost.

So far the strategy has been working.

Since peace talks began in Switzerland on January 24, Assad’s forces have stepped up the pace of aerial bombardment against opposition-held areas and increased attacks in the north and around Damascus. Opposition groups say nearly 1,900 people were killed during the first week of talks last month — including more than 800 in the northern city of Aleppo alone by dozens of crude helicopter-dropped “barrel bombs”. Some 220 others died in fighting between Islamic extremists and other rebels.

In addition, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has documented 2,454 deaths so far in February, making it likely to be one of the deadliest months so far in the Syrian civil war.

“You want to negotiate from a strong position. You want to show exactly how immune you are internationally. And I think nothing says that more than conducting attacks during peace talks. It creates an impression of non-vulnerability,” said Firas Abi Ali, an analyst with the think tank IHS Jane’s.

For Assad, protracted, UN-brokered peace talks are a chance to engage with the international community — much of which shunned him soon after the uprising began in March 2011. Peace negotiations sponsored by the US and Russia offer Assad a means to claim relevance — just as the deal last year to destroy his chemical weapons to avoid US military strikes helped bolster his standing.

That agreement, brokered by Moscow, called for destruction of Syria’s chemical arsenal by mid-2014 and took armed US intervention off the table. Assad signed on, but has already missed several deadlines with no consequences.

“The Syrian regime which pretends it is coming to Geneva kicking and screaming in fact loves nothing more than a process because it can claim that it’s the only side with which the world can negotiate,” said Rime Allaf, a political commentator who specialises in Middle East affairs.

The talks’ objective is finding a political solution to a three-year-old conflict that has killed more than 130,000 people and displaced millions from their homes. The Syrian war has fanned regional sectarian hatreds, attracted thousands of jihadi foreign fighters and extremists and destabilised neighbouring countries like Lebanon and Iraq.

But the two sides have been unable to agree even on an agenda. The opposition — backed by the US — wants the talks to focus on establishing a transitional governing body that excludes Assad. That’s a non-starter for the government which has not budged from its demand that halting “terrorism” must be the priority.

For negotiations to have any hope of success, analysts believe they must reflect the reality on the ground. Assad has little incentive to give major concessions when his forces still hold 13 of 14 provincial cities and continue to make slow but steady headway against arms-strapped rebels in Homs, Aleppo and around his seat of power Damascus. The rebels are more fractured than ever, bogged down in infighting against an Al Qaeda splinter group.

More importantly, Assad can still count on the unwavering support of strong allies Russia and Iran.

“Assad still thinks he can regain control of Syria even after all these events,” Allaf said.

This line of thinking is perhaps justified in light of the international community’s unwillingness to get involved. Military action against Assad appeared all but certain last year following a chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds. The weapons deal removed that option, leaving the US and its allies with no alternative but a political process which Assad has no interest in wrapping up quickly.

Many Syrians have little faith in the seemingly toothless process, which is already drawing comparisons to the so-called Oslo talks on interim peace deals between Israelis and Palestinians which have dragged on intermittently since the early 1990s.

Opposition spokesman Louay Safi rejected such parallels Tuesday, saying the talks will not go on indefinitely. “There will come a time when it will be clear that the regime does not want a solution and we will ask the international community to act,” he said.

Western diplomats have sought to play down such doubts. “This is not a time-wasting exercise,” said one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the record. Others have expressed quiet concern that the government will continue to block negotiations, forcing the opposition to withdraw at some point with no Plan B in the wings.

Mohammad Ballout, an analyst with the Lebanese daily As-Safir newspaper covering the talks in Geneva, said the world has no choice but to engage with Assad because it fears the collapse of the Syrian state.

“The alternative to Bashar Assad is not a democratic one, with all due respect to the opposition,” he said. “The alternative to Bashar Assad is chaos at best and Islamic fiefdoms with no central government at worst.”

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama weighed into two international struggles Tuesday, vowing to come down like “a tonne of bricks” on firms that violate sanctions against Iran and acknowledging that Syrian peace talks are far from reaching their goal.

“There’s enormous frustration here,” Obama said of the Syrian peace talks.

Obama made the remarks at a joint news conference with French President Francois Hollande, a key partner in both the Syrian and Iranian efforts.

The United States and France are among the countries that signed an interim nuclear agreement with Tehran. The agreement halts progress on the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme in exchange for easing international sanctions. Talks on a final deal begin next week in Vienna, Austria.

Speaking on companies doing business with Iran in violation of sanctions still in place, Obama said: “We will come down on them like a tonne of bricks” if they don’t hold up their end.

The Obama administration has objected to the interest French businesses have shown in Iran since the sanctions were eased. More than 100 French executives visited Tehran last week, a trip Secretary of State John Kerry told his counterparts in Paris was “not helpful”.

Hollande said he told the French businessmen that sanctions remain in effect and no commercial agreements can be signed without a long-term, comprehensive nuclear deal. But he said he’s not president of the French employer’s union and companies make their own travel decisions.

The United States and France have been working to end the violent civil war in Syria, a former French colony. But peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition forces have gained no traction.

An agreement to strip Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles is being carried out. But there are concerns on both sides of the Atlantic that Syria is stalling on its obligations.

When Obama threatened a military strike against Syria following a chemical weapons attack there last year, France was the only European ally ready to join that effort.

The United State and France have rebuilt a relationship that “would have been unimaginable even a decade ago”, after President George W. Bush launched an unpopular war against Iraq.

Obama says the transformation stands as a testament to how Washington and Paris have worked to transform their alliance, as the two leaders worked to project a renewed relationship between their countries after hitting a low point more than a decade ago over France’s staunch opposition to the American-led war in Iraq.

There has been some tension between the US and its allies in Europe and elsewhere following revelations that their leaders had been subject to spying from the National Security Agency.

Obama said there is no country with which the United States has “a no-spy agreement”. But he says the United States endeavours to protect privacy rights as it collects foreign intelligence.

Obama also announced that he’s accepted Hollande’s invitation to travel to France for the June 6 ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

CAIRO — Suspected militants blew up a gas pipeline in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Tuesday and gunmen shot dead a policeman in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, security officials said.

Attacks in the Sinai and violence targeting soldiers and policemen across Egypt have surged since the military’s overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July.

In Ismailia, two unknown gunmen riding a motorcycle shot dead the policeman while he was standing at a traffic light, officials said.

Since January 23, 18 policemen have been killed in militant attacks, according to an AFP tally based on reports by security officials.

In the Sinai, which borders Israel and the Gaza Strip, militants Tuesday planted a bomb under a pipeline that transports gas to an industrial area south of Al Arish city, security officials said.

No one was injured in the attack, the fourth this year in the restive peninsula.

The army has poured troops into the mountainous and underdeveloped Sinai Peninsula

to combat the growing militancy.

Militants had previously forced a halt to gas supplies to Israel and Jordan by repeatedly targeting the pipeline following the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

An attack on January 27 was claimed by an Al Qaeda inspired group, Ansar Beit Al Maqdis or Partisans of Jerusalem.

The group has claimed most of the deadliest attacks in Egypt since the army ousted Morsi, saying that they were in revenge for a deadly crackdown by the security forces on his supporters.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in the crackdown, according to Amnesty International, and thousands jailed.

RAMALLAH — A top Palestinian official said on Tuesday a framework agreement being crafted by US Secretary of State John Kerry to buttress troubled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks may be doomed to fail.

Nabil Abu Rudeinah, spokesman to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the deal due to be submitted to the two sides in the coming weeks would be “useless” if it allowed them to nominally accept its principles but to express reservations.

“Use of the word ‘reservations’ bogs down the peace process and the use of this concept in the past has got the process stuck,” Abu Rudeinah told Reuters.

In an interview with The Washington Post last week, Kerry said that enabling Israeli and Palestinian leaders to “have some objection” to drafted parametres “is the only way for them to politically be able to keep the negotiations moving”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads a governing coalition that includes a far-right party which could bolt over land-for-peace terms of any statehood deal with Palestinians.

Abbas also faces political pressure not to bend on issues at the core of the decades-old conflict, such as the fate of Palestinian refugees and future of Jerusalem.

Veterans of Abbas’ own Fateh Party have been sceptical of his decision to restart talks with Israel, which resumed in July after a three-year break. Top officials have mooted a return to protests and even armed violence should they fail.

The US-backed negotiations are scheduled to expire at the end of April. Washington has said the framework agreement would be a basis to prolong the talks, but Palestinian officials have yet to accept any extension.

Palestinians want a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel captured those areas in the 1967 war, and in 2005 pulled its troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip — land now hedged in by an Israeli blockade and run by Hamas Islamists opposed to Abbas’s peace efforts.

Red lines

Abu Rudeinah cautioned against the Kerry document traversing any Palestinian “red lines”.

He said the framework agreement must clearly recognise the 1967 lines as the outline demarcating the two states, designate East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and call Israel’s settlements on occupied land “illegal”, hardening Washington’s current description of them as “illegitimate”.

Over half a million Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Most countries consider the settlements illegal, a term disputed by Israel.

Failure to salvage the talks, which have yet to show signs of progress, may lead to a showdown between Israel and the Palestinians in international bodies. Israeli officials say boycotts and political isolation of their state may soon follow.

Setting conditions for a final peace deal, Netanyahu has ruled out a return to what he has termed “indefensible” pre-1967 war lines. He has also demanded a long-term Israeli security presence on the future eastern border of a Palestinian state and has called on Abbas to recognise Israel as a Jewish state.

The Israeli leader is due to meet US President Barack Obama next month in Washington, where they will discuss the negotiations along with US efforts to ease tensions with Iran over its nuclear programme.