Region

VIENNA — The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog said on Monday he would continue to be "firm and fair" with Iran, a day after clinching a deal over access to surveillance equipment at Iran's nuclear facilities.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi was speaking to reporters at the start of a meeting of the agency's board of governors at a delicate moment for international diplomacy on the Iranian nuclear issue.

On Sunday he returned from a visit to Tehran where he hammered out a deal to enable the IAEA to service its surveillance equipment there and to ensure footage recorded on it is preserved.

The footage will be handed over to the IAEA if and when there is an agreement between Iran and world powers on the revival of the 2015 deal, also known as the JCPOA.

Talks to revive the deal are currently stalled, with Iran warning it may be months before they restart.

Little progress has been made on another issue relating to long-standing questions the IAEA has had about the previous presence of nuclear material at undeclared sites in Iran.

The agency has said in numerous reports that Iran’s explanations about the material have not been satisfactory.

Asked whether now was the time to be tougher with Iran on the issue, Grossi replied that “from day one I have had an approach with Iran which is firm and fair”.

He said he hoped a “clear conversation” with the government of new ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi would take place on a return visit to Iran “very soon” and would bring progress.

‘Eyes wide shut’ 

Raisi replaced moderate president Hassan Rouhani, whose landmark achievement was negotiating the JCPOA.

Grossi admitted that Raisi’s government had “firm views on matters related to the nuclear programme” but said that nevertheless “we must engage”.

“These things are not going away. We need to address them together,” he added.

In the run up to this week’s board of governors meeting there had been speculation that Western countries may push for a resolution censuring Iran but a diplomatic source told AFP that the deal struck over the weekend had “in principle removed” that possibility.

Iran’s conservative press meanwhile on Monday celebrated the weekend’s deal.

The Javan daily said it meant “Iran had not revealed its secrets to the agency”, while the Vatan-e-Emrouz newspaper titled its coverage “Eyes wide shut”.

Asked how difficult it would be to reconstruct information once the IAEA gains access to the footage, Grossi admitted that “it’s something that has to a certain extent never been done before but it’s not... beyond the capacity of my technical teams”.

However he confirmed that the agency still has access to footage “as often as required” from sites such as Iran’s enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow.

KHARTOUM — More than two years after Sudan’s power-sharing deal was inked, analysts say the role of civilian leaders is receding while the army remains dominant.

Sudan’s military ousted and detained Omar Al Bashir in April 2019 after months of mass protests against his rule.

The country’s powerful generals and key civil society factions signed a deal four months later for a civilian government and legislature to spearhead the post-Bashir transition.

A “sovereign council” of military and civilian figures would constitute the ruling body.

But the legislative assembly has yet to materialise, and splits have deepened within the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), the main civilian alliance which led the anti-Bashir protests.

Support for Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok’s transitional government of technocrats has waned, in large part due to economic reforms that have taken a heavy toll on many Sudanese households.

And delays in delivering justice to the families of those killed under Bashir, and even during the 2019 protests following his ouster, have left the government open to further criticism.

“Foot-dragging by the military on key aspects of the transition... has stunted progress,” said Jonas Horner of the International Crisis Group.

“Internal divisions and a dearth of capacity have hurt the civilians’ ability to keep the transition ticking over,” he added.

The 2019 accord initially outlined a three-year transition, but that period was reset when Sudan signed a peace deal with an alliance of rebel groups last October.

The military and civilian camps only work “in sync sporadically”, Horner said.

“The military has effectively retained its power.”

Deep military involvement 

Horner said forming the transitional legislative council “would be key to initiating oversight over the military”.

“But both security forces and older political parties, concerned about a dilution of their current powers, have blocked this crucial reform.”

The military has been heavily involved in foreign policy decisions since the power-sharing deal.

Last year, Sudan announced plans to normalise ties with Israel as the US agreed to remove Khartoum from Washington’s state sponsors of terror blacklist.

The Sudanese decision upended policy in place since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, said Omar Al Digeir, a leader in the FFC civilian alliance.

The transitional government signed the accord in January during a visit by Washington’s Treasury chief, and simultaneously obtained US financial aid.

Government officials have said the deal would come into effect only after the approval of the yet-to-be formed legislature.

According to analyst Magdi Al Gizouli of the Rift Valley Institute think tank, “the reorientation of Sudan’s foreign policy since Bashir was outlined by the military”.

It also “translated into closer ties with the US”.

The military has also been key to agreeing to peace deals with rebel groups.

A senior member of the ruling council, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemeti — commander of a feared paramilitary force — signed last October’s peace deal with a key rebel alliance on behalf of Khartoum.

Talks this year with a holdout rebel group also involved senior military figures.

Military expert Amin Ismail said civilian participation in peace talks with the rebels was “limited”.

“They left the issue completely to the military.”

‘Highly sensitive’ 

The military also dominates lucrative companies specialising in everything from agriculture to infrastructure projects.

Hamdok said last year that 80 per cent of the country’s public resources were “outside the finance ministry’s control”, without specifying the proportion controlled by the army.

A military source who requested anonymity told AFP that the involvement of civilians in any military affairs remains a “highly sensitive” issue.

“Recent civilian calls for security sector reforms may accordingly continue to face resistance,” the source added.

Civilian leaders and former rebel factions have been pushing for reforms that include integrating paramilitaries and armed groups into the armed forces.

According to Digeir from the FFC civilian alliance, the 2019 power-sharing accord failed to specify who would be overseeing the security reforms.

“Instead, it was left to be shared between both sides,” he said.

Horner said the transitional deal demands that civilians “ultimately exercise oversight of the military”.

“But there has been no sign of military will to step away from their dominant role in the country,” he added.

BENGHAZI, Libya — A photographer arrested in eastern Libya in 2018 and jailed by a military tribunal has been released under an amnesty ordered by forces loyal to strongman Khalifa Haftar, official sources said on Sunday.

“Ismail Abuzreiba Al Zway, sentenced to 15 years in prison, was released after benefiting from a special amnesty from the general command of the armed forces” under Haftar’s control, a source in the military prosecutor’s office in the city of Benghazi said.

Zway was released late Saturday, the source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Hanan Salah, a researcher on Libya for Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a tweet wrote that his release was “overdue” and came “after 3yrs of arbitrary detention”.

Zway was arrested in Ajdabiya in December 2018, a town in the east under Haftar’s control.

A military tribunal in Benghazi gave him a 15-year sentence in May 2020 “for communicating with a television channel that supports terrorism”, a reference to the privately run station Al Nabaa, according to HRW’s report for 2020.

“A #Benghazi military court in May 2020 had sentenced Zway in a secret trial to 15 yrs in prison on trumped up ‘terrorism’ charges,” Salah tweeted.

Zway’s conviction sparked “dismay” from the United Nations support mission in the North African country.

“The detention and trial appear to violate Libya’s laws as well as its international obligations on the right to a fair trial” and freedom of expression, UNSMIL said in a tweet in August last year.

Libya is trying to extricate itself from a decade of turmoil following the 2011 toppling of dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

In March, an interim government was sworn in to lead Libya towards December 24 parliamentary and presidential polls under a UN-brokered peace process.

Libya ranks 165 out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index.

BENGHAZI, Libya — A photographer arrested in eastern Libya in 2018 and jailed by a military tribunal has been released under an amnesty ordered by forces loyal to strongman Khalifa Haftar, official sources said Sunday.

"Ismail Abuzreiba Al Zway, sentenced to 15 years in prison, was released after benefitting from a special amnesty from the general command of the armed forces" under Haftar's control, a source in the military prosecutor's office in the city of Benghazi said.

Zway was released late Saturday, the source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Hanan Salah, a researcher on Libya for Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a tweet wrote that his release was "overdue" and came "after 3yrs of arbitrary detention".

Zway was arrested in Ajdabiya in December 2018, a town in the east under Haftar's control.

A military tribunal in Benghazi gave him a 15-year sentence in May 2020 "for communicating with a television channel that supports terrorism", a reference to the privately run station Al Nabaa, according to HRW's report for 2020.

"A #Benghazi military court in May 2020 had sentenced Zway in a secret trial to 15 yrs in prison on trumped up 'terrorism' charges," Salah tweeted.

Zway's conviction sparked "dismay" from the United Nations support mission in the North African country.

DARAA, Syria — An uneasy calm held sway in a southern Syrian city Sunday after the army entered a former rebel holdout under a surrender deal, AFP journalists on a government-organised tour said.

Daraa province and its capital of the same name, the cradle of Syria's unrest, returned to government control in 2018 under a previous ceasefire backed by government ally Russia.

But insurgents stayed on in a southern part of the city called Daraa Al Balad, and over the summer they clashed with the army on its outskirts seeking to retake the area.

A new Moscow-brokered truce has seen dozens of opposition fighters bused out of the city over the past few weeks and government forces return to the area since Wednesday.

Inside Daraa Al Balad on Sunday, AFP correspondents saw bulldozers clearing away rubble between battle-scarred buildings.

Syrian and Russian flags flew in several places.

The guns had fallen silent but the areas visited were largely devoid of civilians, and several onlookers on motorbikes refused to speak to the media.

"Nine checkpoints have been set up on the edges of and inside Daraa Al Balad," a military source told AFP.

Under the deal, fighters who agree to the truce have been invited to give up their guns and sign up to stay in the city under a so-called reconciliation process.

“The process is ongoing to settle the status of those fighters who wish to do so after handing over their weapon,” the source said.

“There is cautious calm and we are waiting for the reconciliation steps to be completed,” the source added, expressing the hope that everyone would accept the deal.

“The state would prefer not to have to resort to a military solution.”

The United Nations and rights group Amnesty International have warned of dwindling supplies inside Daraa Al Balad in recent weeks, after government forces tightened the noose around the area.

But a source with the provincial authorities said: “Two bakeries have started working again in the past few hours and work is underway to set up several medical treatment posts.”

The fighting since July caused more than 38,000 people to flee the southern half of the city, the UN has said.

TEHRAN — Iran and the UN atomic agency on Sunday announced the IAEA will keep up surveillance of Tehran's nuclear activities, soothing a sore point in talks to resuscitate a 2015 deal to curb its programme.

With negotiations in Vienna between Iran and world powers deadlocked, the steps hashed out with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA )chief Rafael Grossi on a visit to Tehran leave a chink of hope for US President Joe Biden's ambition to restore the agreement, known as the JCPOA.

Since Donald Trump's administration walked away in 2018, Iran has since also retreated from many of its commitments.

In a joint statement Sunday, Grossi and Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation (AEOI) chief Mohammad Eslami, also one of the country's vice presidents, hailed a "spirit of cooperation and mutual trust", while noting that surveillance was an issue to be treated "exclusively in a technical manner".

Eslami welcomed "good and constructive negotiations with Mr Grossi," while again insisting on the "technical" nature of the bargain, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported.

Their deal relates to limits Iran has imposed on the IAEA’s ability to monitor various of its nuclear facilities.

Iran has refused to provide real-time footage from cameras and other surveillance tools that the UN agency has installed in these locations.

Under a compromise deal, the monitoring equipment remains in the agency’s custody but the data is in Iran’s possession, and must not be erased as long as the arrangement remains in force.

Initially agreed for three months, the compromise was extended by another month and then expired on June 24.

With no word on next steps, the IAEA said in a statement last Tuesday that its “verification and monitoring activities have been seriously undermined” by Tehran’s actions.

But under Sunday’s agreement, “IAEA’s inspectors are permitted to service the identified equipment and replace their storage media which will be kept under the joint IAEA and [Iran’s] AEOI seals in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the joint statement said.

“The way and the timing are agreed by the two sides.”

The surveillance issue had heightened tensions at the time the new government of Iran’s ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi was taking charge in Tehran.

Iran has also boosted its stocks of uranium enriched above the levels allowed in the 2015 deal, the IAEA has said.

A meeting of the UN agency’s board of governors is scheduled for Monday.

“We have decided to be present at the next meeting and to continue our talks on the sidelines,” Iran’s Eslami told IRNA.

Raisi argued in a statement on Wednesday that his country was “transparent” about its nuclear activities, which Iran has always insisted are peaceful.

“Naturally, in the event of a non-constructive approach by the IAEA, it is unreasonable to expect Iran to respond constructively,” he said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cautioned last Wednesday that, faced with the impasse, the United States was “close” to abandoning its diplomatic efforts.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Friday charged that the IAEA report “proves that Iran is continuing to lie to the world and advance a programme to develop nuclear weapons, while denying its international commitments”.