Region

BAGHDAD — The largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament, led by powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, announced on Saturday a boycott of a session called next week to elect the country’s president.

The 73-member bloc’s parliamentary chief, Hassan Al Izari, told a news conference they will not attend Monday’s session in the 329-seat house, making a vote unlikely although technically a quorum could be reached.

The vote for president, a largely ceremonial role traditionally reserved for Iraq’s Kurds in post-Saddam Iraq, primarily pits the incumbent Barham Saleh against his top challenger, former minister Hoshyar Zebari, candidate of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

The latter’s candidacy has stirred controversy due to years-old corruption accusations against him in court that led to his 2016 dismissal from the post of finance minister.

“Our withdrawal is a message to the Kurds, in particular to the KDP, for them to agree on a single candidate,” a Sadrist MP told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

The MP, whose bloc’s triumph in general elections last year has left Sadr in the driving seat in complex negotiations to select a new prime minister, said Zebari was “not a consensus [candidate]”.

After having served for a decade as foreign minister followed by two years as finance minister, parliament fired Zebari in September 2016, notably over charges that $1.8 million of public funds were diverted to pay for airline tickets for his personal security detail.

Zebari has always denied any corruption accusations.

“I have not been convicted in any court,” he said in a television interview on Friday night as the charges resurfaced alongside forecasts he would unseat Saleh, candidate of KDP’s rival in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

LONDON — The family of a British man held since 2017 and allegedly tortured in Yemen on Friday accused the UK government of apathy about his fate.

Luke Symons, 29, was detained by Houthi rebels in southwest Yemen along with his Yemeni wife on suspicion of espionage, which his family strongly denies.

They say his arm was broken during one interrogation in a bid to force a confession, and that his physical and mental health has degenerated during solitary confinement in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

His wife was released and has been able to visit him periodically in the prison, and is alarmed at his condition, according to Symons’ grandfather Robert Cummings.

“Luke’s going through hell. He’s getting no medical attention, and we’ve been going backwards, not forward, with this [UK] government,” Cummings told AFP by phone from the family’s home in Cardiff.

“The government should ask the question, ‘what do the Houthis want to get Luke released?,’” he said, accusing the rebels of holding his grandson as a “bargaining chip” for unspecified aims.

“But they just won’t ask the question,” Cummings said, alleging inaction both by the Foreign Office in London and by Saudi-based British diplomats responsible for Yemen.

Amnesty International, which this week launched a fresh appeal for UK intervention, demanded that Foreign Secretary Liz Truss meet the family.

“It’s long overdue that the government properly engaged with his family and exerted sustained pressure on the Houthis to get him out of jail and back home to Cardiff,” Amnesty’s UK chief Sacha Deshmukh said.

Symons was arrested in April 2017, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson was foreign secretary, and has never been charged.

The detainee’s MP in the Welsh capital, Kevin Brennan of the opposition Labour Party, pressed his case to Johnson in parliament a month ago.

The prime minister replied that the case was “a very sad one”.

“I know that our staff in the [Foreign Office] work very, very hard to try to release people from the positions they find themselves in,” Johnson said.

“Luke Symons is no exception to that,” he said, promising Brennan a meeting with a foreign office minister.

But there has still been no meeting, according to the family and Amnesty.

Britain says it has been regularly raising Symons’ plight with the Houthi leadership, and insists it has kept his family informed.

“We know this is a difficult time for Luke Symons and his family. Our staff have been working intensively to secure Luke’s release,” a Foreign Office spokesperson said after the latest appeals.

PARIS — Iran has created a new naval militia made up of mercenaries from around the region to attack enemies in its neighbourhood and particularly off Yemen, the exiled opposition alleged on Wednesday.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said the unit had been created as part of the Quds Force, the arm of the Revolutionary Guard responsible for extra-territorial operations.

“The Quds Force has been recruiting mercenaries for newly created, armed and trained terrorist units to attack ships and maritime targets in the region,” it said in a report based on information received from Iran.

The NCRI, which is outlawed in Iran and is the political wing of the People’s Mujahedin, said the mercenaries were being hired from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Africa.

The fighters are brought to Iran for training and then sent back to their home countries to conduct the operations, it said.

“The strategy affords the politically weakened and vulnerable Iranian regime a veneer of plausible deniability for its proxy war in the region, as it seeks to augment the export of terrorism on which it depends,” the group added.

It said the primary location for naval commando training is at a naval academy in Ziba Kenar on the Caspian Sea in Gilan Province.

The militia troops are then organised in naval commando battalions, which are deployed in the Arabian Sea, the Bab Al Mandeb Strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea.

The aim is to “disrupt maritime navigation of commercial ships, to attack ports, conduct ship hijackings and plant mines”.

It detailed examples where such operations had already been carried out including suicide and bomb attacks using small boats off Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeida.

It was not immediately possible to verify the claims, which come at a time when Iran and world powers are negotiating to revive the 2015 deal on its nuclear programme.

Iran is deeply implicated in Yemen’s seven-year war, where it backs Houthi rebels in their fight against the government — supported by Tehran’s regional foe Saudi Arabia.

Tensions have soared in recent days after the rebels launched missile attacks on targets in Riyadh’s ally the United Arab Emirates, prompting the United States to step up its military presence.

“No rockets are fired, no attacks on ships take place, and no suicide speed boats target the shores, unless the order has come from Tehran,” said Soona Samsami, the NCRI’s representative in the US.

Pierre Razoux, academic director of France’s Mediterranean Foundation of Strategic Studies think tank, said the Quds Force had always had the mission of training proxies to carry out asymmetric warfare.

“What is without doubt somewhat new is that now it’s done through naval actions. But they will not go far with 200 Yemeni mercenaries,” he told AFP.

HARANBUSH, Syria — Two Syrian infant girls have died from harsh winter weather in northwest Syria where snow and rain have destroyed the tents of hundreds of displaced families, the United Nations said Tuesday.

"A seven-day-old girl and a two-month-old girl have died from the cold in Idlib province," the UN's humanitarian agency OCHA told AFP.

According to an AFP correspondent in northern Idlib, both children were announced dead on Tuesday.

They were taken to the Al Rahman specialist hospital in the Idlib village of Haranbush which has received an influx of children in recent days amid sub-zero temperatures, the correspondent said.

Deaths due to the cold are an annual occurence in Syria's last major rebel enclave, which the UN says is home to 2.8 million displaced people.

Dwindling donor funds have already caused dire shortages of medicine and equipment in hospitals and clinics in the region, many of which are now at risk of closing down.

“Children are at risk of the cold. They live in worn-out tents and there is a lack of winter clothes and fuel,” said OCHA spokesman Patrick Nicholson.

“The problem is getting worse due to the economic crisis, lack of resources to provide winter aid and increased needs.”

According to OCHA, harsh weather in January has destroyed at least 935 tents and damaged more than 9,000 others in several displacement sites in Syria’s north.

Unsafe heating methods, including exposed rudimentary heaters, have often triggered deadly fires.

Since the start of the year, 68 fires were reported, which resulted in two deaths and 24 injuries in northern Syria alone, according to OCHA.

The Save the Children charity condemned the latest deaths in a statement.

“It is incomprehensible that any child should face the winter scared for their life,” it said.

“These avoidable and tragic deaths are a dreadful example of how children urgently need more humanitarian support.”

DOHA — Qatar's energy minister told the European Union on Tuesday that his country could not rescue Europe alone if Russia turned off gas supplies amid spiking tensions over Ukraine.

But the minister, Saad Al Kaabi, told EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson that Qatar was ready to help Europe "in times of need".

The United States has raised the possibility of Qatar, one of the world's leading gas producers, supplying Western European nations in talks, officials said.

The Ukraine crisis was a key topic in a meeting on Monday between US President Joe Biden and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

In a video conference, Kaabi told the EU official that Qatar hoped the tensions in Europe could be resolved through diplomacy.

"Qatar stands ready to support our partners around the world in times of need," he said.

But "the volume of gas needed by the EU cannot be replaced by anyone unilaterally, without disturbing supplies to other regions around the world. Europe's energy security requires a collective effort from many parties," he added.

Qatar has said it is already working at full production and experts have said Europe could only get emergency supplies if key customers in East Asia, including Japan and South Korea, agreed to divert some of their consignments.

The United States has also spoken with Australia about providing gas and could provide its own natural gas. 

Without mentioning any special deliveries, Kaabi said Qatar was proud “to have never missed a single cargo delivery for the last 25 years to all our partners around the world”.

“Keeping our contractual word is sacrosanct in Qatar, and therefore we have the full trust of our global commercial partners and buyers.” 

Industry experts have warned that European consumers, already reeling from high prices for natural gas, would have to pay even more for the special deliveries.

UNITED NATIONS, United States — The UN Security Council on Monday adopted a British-drafted resolution extending its political mission in Libya for just three months, after several days of a standoff between the United States and Russia.

The extremely short text, which was adopted unanimously, provides for a continuation of the mission until April 30. An earlier version had taken the mission until September 15.

The text contains no mention of the Council’s hopes that presidential and legislative elections will be held soon in Libya. Initially scheduled for December 24, the presidential election was supposed to have put an end to more than 10 years of chaos and conflict, but it has been postponed indefinitely.

Moscow, which favored a short renewal of the UNSMIL mission, threatened to use its veto and even went as far as proposing a counter-draft to the British text last week in order to stress the need for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to appoint “without further delay” a new envoy for Libya.

Since the abrupt resignation in November of Jan Kubis of Slovakia, the post of UN envoy has been de facto occupied by the American Stephanie Williams, an Arabic-speaking diplomat with the title of “special adviser”.

That allowed the UN head to skirt around the need for a Security Council agreement on the choice of appointee, which has for years been a contentious issue.

According to diplomats, Russia is seeking to get rid of Williams as quickly as possible while the United States wants her to stay in her post.

That opposition, which effectively weakens Williams’ position vis-a-vis the Libyans, was the main sticking point during the Security Council negotiations to renew the mandate of UN mission.

Speaking after the vote, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Anna Evstignyeva, said she hoped the appointment of a new emissary to head the UN Libya mission “will make it possible to fully relaunch” the project.

By contrast, her US counterpart Jeffrey DeLaurentis said the United States called on all Council members and the Libyans themselves to engage “constructively” with Williams and to support her efforts.

France’s deputy ambassador, Nathalie Broadhurst, regretted the lack of unity in the Council but said it “should encourage the Libyans to resolve their differences in order to allow the organisation of presidential and parliamentary elections as soon as possible”.