Region

TEHRAN — Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Tehran for talks Tuesday on the Syrian war at a three-way summit overshadowed by fallout from his country's war on Ukraine.

Putin travelled abroad for only the second time since ordering the invasion of Ukraine in order to attend the gathering that also involves Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The summit comes days after US President Joe Biden visited the Middle East for the first time in his presidency, with stops in Iran’s regional foes Israel and Saudi Arabia.

It is the first hosted by Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi since he took office last year and is ostensibly aimed at ending more than 11 years of conflict in Syria.

All three are involved in the conflict, with Iran and Russia supporting Syria’s President Bashar Assad and Turkey backing rebel forces.

Ahead of the trilateral meeting, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met Erdogan, who has repeatedly threatened to launch a new military offensive against Kurdish militants in northern Syria.

Khamenei warned the Turkish leader that such a move would be “detrimental” for the region and called for the issue to be resolved through dialogue between Ankara, Damascus, Moscow and Tehran.

Erdogan, speaking later at a joint news conference with his Iranian counterpart, said Kurdish militias caused “great trouble” for both Iran and Turkey.

“We should fight against these terrorist organisations in solidarity and alliance,” he added.

The presidents also oversaw the signing of a number of agreements in different fields, including in trade and economy.

Ukraine grain 

Erdogan has for months been offering to meet Putin in a bid to help resolve heightened global tensions.

“The timing of this summit is not a coincidence,” Russian analyst Vladimir Sotnikov said.

“Turkey wants to conduct a ‘special operation’ in Syria just as Russia is implementing a ‘special operation’ in Ukraine.”

Turkey has launched waves of attacks on Syria since 2016, targeting Kurdish militias as well as Daesh group extremists and Assad loyalists.

In their talks, Putin and Erdogan would discuss mechanisms to export grain from Ukraine, a Kremlin source said.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has massively hampered shipments from one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat and other grain, sparking fears of global food shortages.

Turkey, a NATO member on speaking terms with both Russia and Ukraine, has spearheaded efforts to resume the grain deliveries.

Ultimately, Erdogan is hoping to get “the green light” from Putin and Raisi for Turkey’s military operation in Syria, said Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned on Monday that Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports threatens supplies to countless thousands vulnerable to starvation.

Borrell dubbed the issue “one of life and death for many human beings”.

‘Iran-phobia’ 

On Sunday, a day after Biden ended his tour of the Middle East, Iran accused the United States of provoking crises in the region.

Biden had vowed the US would not “tolerate efforts by any country to dominate another in the region through military buildups, incursions, and/or threats”, in reference to Iran.

In a speech at a Saudi summit of Gulf Arab states as well as Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, Biden assured those gathered that the US would remain fully engaged in the Middle East.

“We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran,” he said.

Following the meeting, a joint statement committed the leaders to “preserve regional security and stability”.

It also underscored diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, a goal the Islamic republic has always denied seeking.

On Sunday, Iran accused the US of having “once again resorted to the failed policy of Iran-phobia, trying to create tensions and crises in the region”.

The US last week alleged Iran plans to deliver “hundreds of drones” to Russia to aid its war on Ukraine, an accusation the Islamic republic dismissed as “baseless”.

TEHRAN — With the war in Ukraine still raging, Russian President Vladimir Putin travels on Tuesday to Tehran for talks with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts on the Syria conflict.

Russia, Turkey and Iran have in recent years met to discuss Syria as part of the so-called “Astana peace process” to end more than 11 years of conflict in the Arab country.

All three are involved in Syria, with Russia and Iran supporting the Damascus regime against its opponents, and Turkey backing rebels.

Tuesday’s summit comes as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to launch a new offensive in northern Syria against Kurdish militants.

Iran, whose President Ebrahim Raisi is hosting the meeting, has already warned that any Turkish military action in Syria could “destabilise the region”.

The Tehran summit will also enable Erdogan to hold his first meeting with Putin since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

The Turkish president has for months been offering to meet the Russian leader in a bid to help resolve heightened global tensions since the war began.

“The timing of this summit is not a coincidence,” Russian analyst Vladimir Sotnikov told AFP.

“Turkey wants to conduct a ‘special operation’ in Syria just as Russia is implementing a ‘special operation’ in Ukraine,” he said.

Turkey has launched waves of attacks on Syria since 2016, targeting Kurdish militias as well as Daesh and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Green light? 

Erdogan’s planned military offensive targets Kurdish fighters which Ankara regards as “terrorists”.

They include the US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which formed a crucial part of an international coalition against the Daesh group in Syria.

Ankara fears a strong Kurdish presence along its border with Syria will embolden the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which for decades has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Syria’s government has repeatedly condemned Turkish threats to mount a new incursion.

Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe who specialises in Turkish foreign policy, said Ankara wants the blessing of Moscow and Iran before launching its operation.

“It’s particularly important because the two potential target regions are under the control of Russia, and Turkey wants to be able to use the airspace... so as to minimise the risks,” he said.

Iran “also has an indirect presence in the region through Shiite militias that it controls”, said Ulgen.

Ultimately, Erdogan is hoping to get “the green light” from Putin and Raisi, he added.

Russia has already expressed the hope that Turkey would “refrain” from launching an attack on Syria.

Iran, whose foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian visited both Ankara and Damascus in recent weeks, has also urged caution.

‘Destabilising’ 

Late last month, Iran’s top diplomat said in Ankara that “we understand that... maybe a special operation might be needed”.

“Turkey’s security concerns must be tackled fully and permanently.”

Days later, Amir-Abdollahian said in Damascus that Turkish military action in Syria “would be a destabilising element in the region”.

Mazloum Abdi, chief commander of the YPG-linked Syrian Democratic Forces(SDF), has urged Russia and Iran to restrain Turkey.

“We hope [the attacks] will not take place and that the Kurds... will not be forsaken during the talks between the big powers,” he said.

The SDF has warned that an invasion by Ankara would undermine efforts to combat Daesh group jihadists in Syria’s northeast.

Nicholas Heras of the Newlines Institute said Iran and Russia “want to prevent another Turkish military campaign in Syria”.

“Iran is building a presence in and around Aleppo that concerns Turkey, and Russia is for all intents and purposes ceding ground to Iran throughout Syria,” he added.

For Iranian political analyst Ahmad Zeidabadi, “new differences” have emerged between Russia, Iran and Turkey following the Ukraine war.

This and an “uncertain future”, he said, means the three leaders will try to “coordinate” their views on Syria to avoid further tensions.

BETHLEHEM, Palestinian Territories — After hearing Joe Biden identify Jerusalem as Israel's capital and concede a two-state solution seemed "far away", one Palestinian official gave a blunt assessment of the US president's visit to the region.

"It's like the Trump years with a smile," said the official, who requested anonymity.

Biden's predecessor Donald Trump was loathed among Palestinians over his unequivocal pro-Israeli policies.

With Israeli politics gridlocked, few thought that 79-year-old Biden could jumpstart peace talks which have been moribund since 2014.

But there was tempered optimism that Biden's meeting Friday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank town of Bethlehem could deliver modest results.

Palestinians had hoped the US president would finally make good on a promise to re-open a consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem.

The mission was shuttered by Trump in 2019 and its revival is staunchly opposed by Israel, which considers the city its "undivided" capital.

Reopening the mission could serve as a "shot in the arm" for the peace process, said another Palestinian official speaking anonymously.

But the US leader offered no substantive plan to redress Israel's occupation, even side-stepping Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, an issue highlighted by former president Barack Obama's administration, in which Biden served as vice president.

The US delegation, however, did announce plans for 4G Internet access in the West Bank and the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, addressing a longstanding demand by Palestinians which has repeatedly been blocked by Israel.

The president’s visit got off to a bad start for Palestinians, when Biden declared at an Israeli welcome ceremony: “You need not be a Jew to be a Zionist.”

While every US president since Israel’s creation in 1948 has arguably met a technical definition of Zionism by actively supporting Israel’s existence, Biden’s comment last Wednesday was rare, if not unprecedented for a US leader , and Palestinians took note.

“He came to Israel and declared he was a ‘Zionist’, then he came to Palestine and refused to talk about the fundamentals of the conflict,” the first official said.

A protester attending a rally during the president’s visit to Bethlehem hoisted a sign saying: “Biden, Jerusalem is Palestine, no matter your Zionism.”

Palestinians claim the Israeli-occupied eastern part of the city as their capital.

Biden has for decades publicly supported recognising west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and has said he will not reverse Trump’s controversial decision to move the US embassy there back to Tel Aviv.

‘We are so weak’ 

On the peace process, Biden reaffirmed his support for Palestinian statehood while urging perseverance even as conditions appear bleak.

“I know that the goal of the two states seems so far away,” he said in Bethlehem.

“But we never give up on the work of peace,” he added. “There must be a political horizon that the Palestinian people can actually see or at least feel. We cannot allow the hopelessness to steal away the future.”

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh on Sunday said a difficult terrain for peace talks does not excuse American inaction.

“If, as the US president said, the [two-state] solution is currently out of reach, then there must immediately be a [Jewish] settlement freeze, in accordance with international law and resolutions to preserve the right of the Palestinian people to their independent state,” Shtayyeh said.

For Tahani Mustafa, West Bank analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, Biden’s visit left “no indication that the situation of the Palestinian people has any place in his administration’s agenda”.

According to sources close to the Palestinian leadership, initial plans to issue a joint Biden-Abbas statement on Friday were scrapped because the sides could not agree on wording.

For Palestinians seeking US leadership capable of forcing Israeli concessions, seeing Biden’s delegation jet off from Tel Aviv to Saudi Arabia on Friday after a short, unremarkable meeting with Abbas brought familiar feelings of disappointment.

“As usual, we are left with the crumbs,” Issa Abu Ayash told AFP, as he watched television in a Bethlehem cafe broadcasting images of Biden’s motorcade heading to Israel’s airport.

“We are so weak here,” he said.

KHARTOUM — Thousands of Sudan's Hawsa people set up barricades and attacked government buildings in several cities on Monday, witnesses said, after a week of deadly tribal clashes in the country's south.

Violence in Blue Nile state, bordering Ethiopia, has killed 60 people and wounded 163 others, including 13 in serious condition, according to health officials.

The clashes first erupted a week ago on Monday between the Berti and Hawsa tribes, after the Bertis rejected a Hawsa request to create a "civil authority to supervise access to land", a prominent Hawsa member told AFP on condition of anonymity.

But a senior member of the Bertis had said the tribe was responding to a "violation" of its lands by the Hawsa.

Troops were deployed in Blue Nile on Saturday, and since then an uneasy calm has prevailed there although tensions have escalated elsewhere.

In the eastern city of Kassala, the government banned public gatherings after several thousand Hawsa people "set government buildings and shops on fire", according to eyewitness Hussein Saleh.

“It’s panic in the city centre,” Kassala resident Idriss Hussein told AFP by telephone. He said protesters were “blocking roads and waving sticks”.

In the city of Wad Madani, some 200 kilometres south of Khartoum, “hundreds of Hawsa people put up stone barricades and burned tires on the main bridge to block traffic”, resident Adel Ahmed told AFP.

Experts say a military coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan in October 2021, has created a security vacuum that has fostered a resurgence in tribal violence, in a country where deadly clashes regularly erupt over land, livestock, access to water and grazing.

Pro-democracy activists have accused Sudan’s military and ex-rebel leaders who signed a 2020 peace deal of exacerbating ethnic tensions in Blue Nile for personal gain.

The Hawsas, also known as Hausa, are one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, with tens of millions of members living in several countries.

There are three million Hawsas in Sudan, where they largely follow the majority religion of Islam, but speak their own native language rather than Arabic.

They mostly live off agriculture in Darfur, Al Jazira state and in the eastern states of Kassala, Gedaref, Sennar and Blue Nile.

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — US President Joe Biden sought to use his first Middle East tour in office to reassert Washington's influence but emerged without a single diplomatic breakthrough, an outcome analysts said was no surprise.

On issues ranging from energy prices to human rights and Israel's role in the region, Biden could point only to small — if any — gains after four whirlwind days of meetings and speeches.

Driving the point home, as Air Force One flew back to Washington Saturday evening, Biden's Saudi hosts downplayed one of the trip's few concrete announcements: their lifting of airspace restrictions on flights to and from Israel, which Biden himself had earlier hailed as "a big deal".

There's little question the moves announced during Biden's trip were "modest", as Brian Katulis of the Middle East Institute in Washington put it, though he added that some represent "positive signs of perhaps something bigger to come".

"They won't remake the region overnight, and there is so much more work ahead by actors in the region to achieve the full potential of these first steps," Katulis said.

No oil boost 

Saudi Arabia was always going to be the most fraught piece of the itinerary, but Biden came under intense pressure to court Riyadh after Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent energy costs soaring.

Washington has been eager for the kingdom, the world's biggest crude exporter, to help bring down rising petrol prices that threaten Democratic chances in November US mid-term elections.

After his bilateral meetings with Saudi leaders on Friday, Biden said he was “doing all I can” to increase the oil supply but added that concrete results would not be seen “for another couple weeks” — and it was unclear what those might be.

His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, also tamped down expectations, telling reporters that any action “will be done in the context of OPEC+”, the exporting bloc.

The following day, at a summit of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council plus Egypt, Iraq and Jordan, oil “wasn’t really a subject”, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan told a press conference.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s pledge to boost production capacity to 13 million barrels per day was actually first announced in May, and is not meant to become reality until 2027.

Israel walk-back 

On the issue of boosting ties between Israel and Arab countries, Riyadh appeared to hand Biden a victory — at least at first.

Despite growing behind-the-scenes business and security contacts, the kingdom has never recognised Israel and refused to join the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020 that allowed Israel to normalise relations with neighbouring Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

But early Friday, the Saudi aviation authority announced it was lifting overflight restrictions on “all carriers”, paving the way for Israeli planes to use Saudi airspace.

Yair Lapid, Israel’s prime minister, claimed it was “the first official step in normalisation with Saudi Arabia”.

Prince Faisal, however, dismissed that idea out of hand Saturday, saying the move had “nothing to do” with Israel and was “not in any way a precursor to any further steps”.

During Biden’s earlier stop in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, there was no progress at all when it came to long-moribund peace negotiations, leaving Biden to focus instead on economic measures including 4G Internet for Palestinians.

Biden and Lapid signed a new security pact which commits the US to never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.

But the pact did not mask differences in approach between the two. Lapid explicitly said the use of force needed to be an option as diplomacy and talk are inadequate, whereas Biden had reaffirmed he still wanted to give diplomacy a chance, calling force a “last resort”.

For Biden, he added, the visit aimed to repair personal and political ties between his administration and the Saudis.

“That appears to have been accomplished,” Ibish said.

KHARTOUM — Police fired tear gas in Sudan's capital Khartoum on Sunday against hundreds of anti-coup protesters who also called attention to increasingly deadly tribal clashes in the country's south.

The capital has been the scene of near-weekly protests since army chief General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan launched a power grab in October last year that derailed a transition to civilian rule.

The coup saw key donors pull the plug on funding, exacerbating a long-running economic crisis and feeding into inter-communal unrest in remote parts of the country.

Blue Nile state, bordering Ethiopia, is the latest crucible of tribal clashes — and on Sunday, authorities there raised the death toll to 60, from 33 the previous day, in fighting that began nearly a week ago.

"Al Damazin is bleeding," read a sign held up by a Khartoum protester, referring to the provincial capital of Blue Nile.

Other demonstrators in the capital chanted: "Sudan is one nation" and "No to racism, no to tribalism”.

In the city of Wad Madani, some 200 kilometres  south of Khartoum, protesters diverted their demonstration to the local hospital to "donate blood to our brothers wounded in tribal clashes in Blue Nile", protest organiser Ammar Mohammed told AFP.

'Violence not a solution' 

The clashes in Blue Nile state, between the Berti and Hawsa tribes, first erupted last Monday.

The violence came after the Berti tribe rejected a Hawsa request to create a "civil authority to supervise access to land", a prominent Hawsa member had told AFP on condition of anonymity.

But a senior member of the Bertis had said the tribe was responding to a "violation" of its lands by the Hawsas.

Dozens of Hawsas blocked the western entrance to the western city of Kassala with burning tyres and stones "in solidarity with our people in the [Blue] Nile, to stop their murder and displacement", said protester Mohammed Abkar.

The revised death toll of 60 was provided by Blue Nile health minister Jamal Nasser, who also told AFP that 163 people have been wounded.

"Violence is never a solution," UNICEF tweeted Sunday, in a country where the UN estimates half the population will be pushed into extreme hunger by September.

Post-coup 

security vacuum 

The Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, the main armed faction in Blue Nile, denied on Sunday any involvement in the clashes.

Pro-democracy demonstrators accuse Sudan's military leadership and ex-rebel leaders who signed a 2020 peace deal of exacerbating ethnic tensions in Blue Nile for personal gain.

Security forces had erected road blocks on bridges crossing the Nile linking Khartoum to its suburbs, AFP reporters said, to deter protesters who vowed to take to the streets in large numbers to protest against Burhan.

Sudan's latest coup sparked regular protests and an ongoing crackdown by security forces that has killed at least 114, according to pro-democracy medics.

Nine were killed on June 30, the medics said, when tens of thousands gathered against the military.

Early this month, Burhan vowed in a surprise move to make way for a civilian government.

But the country's main civilian umbrella group rejected his move as a "ruse" and protesters have continued to press the army chief to resign.

The rallies on Sunday follow a period of relative calm in Khartoum in recent days.

Experts say last year's coup created a security vacuum that has fostered a resurgence in tribal violence, in a country where deadly clashes regularly erupt over land, livestock, access to water and grazing.

Guerrillas in Blue Nile battled former strongman president Omar Al Bashir during Sudan's 1983-2005 civil war, picking up weapons again in 2011.

Prompted by enormous protests against his rule, the army ousted Bashir in 2019.

The following year, a civilian-military power-sharing government reached a peace deal with key rebel groups, including from Blue Nile as well as the war-ravaged western Darfur region.

Both areas remain underdeveloped and awash with weapons and there has also been an increase in violence in Darfur in recent months.