Region

DAMASCUS — Syria refuses to "bow" to Washington's demands under the latest US sanctions, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said on Tuesday, saying that the sole aim was to undermine support for President Bashar Assad.

"If they [Washington] dreamt that Syria and its people would bow to their conditions, then I would say let them keep dreaming because this will never happen," Muallem told a news conference in Damascus, nearly a week after the Caesar Act came into force.

The sanctions laid down in the law, according to US officials, aim to force Damascus to accept UN Security Council Resolution 2254 of 2015 that calls for a ceasefire, elections and political transition in Syria.

But the real objective is “to influence upcoming presidential elections” in Syria scheduled for next year, Muallem said, and weaken support for Assad ahead of polling.

“President Assad will remain as long as the Syrian people want him to,” the foreign minister stressed.

The Caesar Act, which took effect last Wednesday, punishes under US law any company that works with Assad, casting a cloud over efforts to rebuild Syria.

It seeks to prevent any normalisation with Assad’s regime without accountability for human rights abuses, and also blocks US reconstruction assistance.

The first designations target 39 people or entities, including Assad and his wife Asma — the first time she has been slapped with US sanctions.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the sanctions “the beginning of what will be a sustained campaign of economic and political pressure to deny the Assad regime revenue and support it uses to wage war and commit mass atrocities against the Syrian people”.

Muallem said such comments were part of a “chorus of lies”, arguing that “those seeking the interests of the Syrian people wouldn’t conspire against their livelihoods”.

Syrians should try to use the latest sanctions as an “opportunity to advance the national economy, achieve self-sufficiency, and deepen our cooperation with friends and allies”, he said.

The Syrian govvernment, backed by Russia and Iran, has won back control of most of Syria after a nine-year war that has killed more than 380,000 people and displaced over half of the country’s pre-war population.

Muallem said the latest sanctions would fail to pressure Syria into “abandoning our alliances and our support for the resistance and to embark on the path of normalisation with Israel”.

Syria is in the grips of a severe economic crisis compounded by sanctions.

On the same day that the Caesar Act came into force, Syria’s central bank devalued the pound after the currency had depreciated for weeks on the black market in anticipation of the US measures.

ISTANBUL — Turkey on Tuesday fired back at France, accusing it of "playing a dangerous game in Libya" by supporting military leader Khalifa Haftar against the UN-recognised government in Tripoli.

"France has a major responsibility for Libya being dragged into chaos by supporting illegal structures there for years, and therefore, it is actually France which is playing a dangerous game in Libya," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

In a sign of mounting tensions between two NATO allies, French President Emmanuel Macron accused Ankara on Monday of playing a "dangerous game" in the north African country that can no longer be tolerated.

Turkey supports the Government of National Accord (GNA) in the conflict and its military support has helped Tripoli make gains against rebel strongman Haftar, who is backed Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

France is suspected of supporting Haftar as well, but insists it is neutral in the conflict.

Libya has been mired in violence, with tribal militias, terrorists and merceneries active since the toppling and killing of longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

Haftar, a former Qadhafi-era general who defected decades ago to go to the US, has been battling to take Tripoli since last year.

Tensions have been escalating between Turkey and France since Ankara's unilateral military operation in Syria against the Kurdish militia force. Macron said at the time that NATO was in the throes of a "brain death".

The French leader repeated his controversial comment on Monday, describing Turkey's behaviour as an example that the military alliance had suffered a "brain death".

Ankara said Turkey had a "strong position" in the alliance which maintained its functions even during the COVID-19 pandemic and condemned Macron's controversial comment as a sign of a "distorted approach".

"We are inviting France and the French president to act with the seriousness of a state ... to stop taking steps jeopardising the safety and future of Libya, Syria and the eastern Mediterranean and to use existing channels of dialogue," the ministry said.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia said Tuesday it will dramatically scale back the Hajj pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites next month because of the coronavirus, while Germany announced a new lockdown after an outbreak of infections at a slaughterhouse.

With cases topping nine million worldwide, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that the pandemic was accelerating and new economic figures have underscored the scale of the carnage unleashed on global trade and industry.

The virus has also infected another high profile figure, after world number one tennis player Novak Djokovic of Serbia said he had tested positive for COVID-19.

Although a vaccine is still far away, South Africa is rolling out a trial of a drug this week — the first on the continent.

Europe has been steadily easing lockdowns and travel restrictions, but many parts of the world, including Latin America and South Asia, are only beginning to feel the full force of the pandemic, while other regions are being hit with second waves.

Saudi Arabia, which is suffering from the biggest virus outbreak in the energy-rich Gulf, announced it will allow just 1,000 pilgrims living in the kingdom to perform the Hajj — a fraction of the 2.5 million from around the world who attended last year.

“I’ve been preparing for years. But what can I do? This is Allah’s will — it’s destiny,” said Kamariah Yahya, 68, from Indonesia.

Spotlight on abattoirs 

And in Germany, the authorities ordered a new lockdown for an entire district — the first since easing coronavirus restrictions and a major setback to hopes of a swift return to normality.

The new restrictions cover 360,000 people in the district of Guetersloh in Germany’s most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia and follow a coronavirus outbreak in a slaughterhouse that has infected more than 1,500 workers.

Several COVID-19 outbreaks at abattoirs, not just in Germany but also in France, have put a spotlight on the working and housing conditions facing the workers — many of whom come from Romania or Bulgaria.

The disease and the punishing lockdowns introduced to try to curb its spread have caused economic havoc across the globe, and made millions of people jobless.

Outlook ‘highly uncertain’ 

The extent of the damage was highlighted Tuesday with the release of a World Trade Organisation (WTO) forecast that global trade was expected to drop around 18.5 per cent in the second quarter.

Outgoing WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo said the slide would be the steepest on record, but that it could have been much worse.

The WTO nevertheless cautioned that the outlook for the global economy over the next two years remained “highly uncertain”.

Auto sales in Europe this year will also tumble a record 25 per cent because of the pandemic which has left manufacturers facing a “major economic crisis”, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) said.

‘Lack of global solidarity’ 

On Monday, the WHO’s Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual health forum organised in the United Arab Emirates that “the pandemic is still accelerating”.

Tedros said the greatest threat was not the virus itself, which has now killed over 470,000 people, but “the lack of global solidarity and global leadership”.

“We cannot defeat this pandemic with a divided world,” he said. “The politicisation of the pandemic has exacerbated it.”

In the absence of a vaccine, the WHO has called for a rapid increase in production of the steroid dexamethasone, which has been shown to have life-saving potential.

However trials of a vaccine known as ChAdOx1 nCoV19 developed by the Oxford Jenner Institute are due to start in South Africa.

The drug is already being evaluated in Britain, and another pilot scheme is due to take place in Brazil.

In the United States, President Donald Trump said on Monday the country’s toll could surpass 150,000, as eight members of his team that helped organise a controversial weekend rally for him in Oklahoma tested positive.

The United States already has the biggest number of deaths at more than 120,400 fatalities.

In Europe, countries continued to ease restrictions.

Pubs, restaurants, hotels and hairdressers in England will reopen from July 4, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Tuesday.

And in Paris, one of the city’s most visited museums, the Musee D’orsay, opened its doors again while swimming pools and cinemas have also opened up.

But illustrating the persisting risks, Portugal and Australia were among the countries tightening their restrictions.

China, Germany, South Korea and Japan are also battling new outbreaks, with some reintroducing containment measures.

The sports world has been slowly reemerging from the virus darkness, with Premier League matches on again in Britain.

But Djokovic’s announcement that he tested positive has raised questions about the planned return of tennis in August.

He joins a slew of other infected players who recently gathered for an exhibition tournament he organised in the Balkans, in the face of criticism from some other players.

TRIPOLI — Libya's UN-recognised Government of National Accord on Sunday denounced Egypt's warning of military intervention in Libya, labelling it a "declaration of war".

"This is a hostile act, direct interference and amounts to a declaration of war," the GNA said in a statement.

The war of words came on the eve of a virtual meeting of Arab League foreign ministers on Libya, in which the GNA declined to participate. That meeting, which had originally been scheduled for Monday, has been pushed back to Tuesday.

On Saturday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi warned that if pro-GNA forces advanced on the strategic city of Sirte — some 450 kilometres east of Tripoli — it could provoke a "direct" intervention by Cairo.

For the Libyan state, "interference in its internal affairs, attacks on its sovereignty, whether by declarations... like those of the Egyptian president or by support for putschists, militias and mercenaries, is unacceptable," the GNA said.

The GNA called on the international community to "assume its responsibilities with regard to this escalation".

It said it was open to "all impartial mediation... under the aegis of the UN" but rejected "unilateral or extrajudicial initiatives".

Oil-rich Libya has been torn by violence, drawing in tribal militias, extremists and mercenaries since the 2011 toppling and killing of longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi in a Western-backed uprising.

Since 2015, a power struggle has pitted the Tripoli-based GNA against strongman Khalifa Haftar, who claims legitimacy from an eastern-based elected parliament.

Haftar has been trying unsuccessfully to seize the capital since April 2019, with support from neighbouring Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

Since the start of June, increased Turkish support has enabled pro-GNA forces to take control of northwest Libya, ending Haftar's assault on Tripoli.

The GNA advance is now halted outside the coastal city of Sirte, a strategic access point to Libya’s key oil fields which remains under Haftar’s control.

Sirte and Al Jufra to the south represents a “red line”, Sisi said in a television broadcast on Saturday, citing the need to protect Egypt’s porous border.

If this line is crossed, Egyptian forces will directly intervene in Libya, Sisi said.

“All of Libya is a red line,” the GNA responded. “Whatever the dispute between Libyans, we will not allow our people to be insulted or threatened.”

But the speaker of Libya’s eastern-based parliament Aguila Saleh defended Sisi’s declaration, saying in a Sunday statement that the Egyptian president was “responding to our appeal to the Egyptian parliament” last January in which Saleh called for Egyptian intervention in Libya.

KUT AL BADAA, Iraq — The broad leaves and delicate purple flowers floating on the Euphrates look breathtaking — but they are suffocating the waterways of Iraq, celebrated as the "land of the two rivers".

The water hyacinth, nicknamed the "Nile flower" in Iraq, is an invasive plant native to South America's Amazon basin that has ravaged ecosystems across the world, from Sri Lanka to Nigeria.

The fast-spreading pest poses a special risk in Iraq, one of the world's hottest countries that is already suffering from regular droughts and shrinking water resources due to overuse, pollution and upstream river dams.

The exotic flower was introduced to Iraq just two decades ago as a decorative plant, but now the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers are being choked by its rapid spread.

Its glossy leaves form a thick cover, absorbing up to five litres of water per plant a day and blocking sunlight and oxygen vital to the aquatic life below.

That has made the hyacinth a formidable floral foe for Iraq's fishermen, who sell hauls of river carp in local markets to those cooking "masgouf", a national delicacy.

Because of the infestation, carp are dying and fishing nets get caught in the tangle of flat leaves, roots and flowers that also hampers boat travel.

"Our livelihoods are gone, all because of this Nile flower," said Jallab Al Sharifi, a fisherman in the southern province of Dhi Qar who makes his living on the Euphrates.

Another fisherman east of Baghdad who works the Tigris said his haul had dropped by as much as half.

Harvests at risk 

The hyacinths have also impacted Iraqi farmers who already struggle with low water levels due to a series of dams built further upstream in Turkey and Iran.

The thick floating vegetation draws down water levels and clogs irrigation channels leading to agricultural fields.

"During this harvest, our vegetable sales in the local market were down by a third," said Ahmed Yasser, a farmer in a village near Kut, east of Baghdad.

The hyacinth causes another type of pressure — a 100 square metre patch can weigh up to five tonnes, putting major strain on dilapidated riverside infrastructure, Iraqi officials warn.

In the village of Al Badaa, the thick columns of a brick bridge that once spanned a wide stretch of the Euphrates are now covered by hyacinths.

A dam further upstream encloses a swamp-like patch of land also covered by the plant.

If the flowers are not removed, "the bridge and dam of Al Badaa will collapse", said Jalil Al Abboudi, the village sheikh.

"And if they collapse, the whole water supply system will collapse."

That would deprive vast regions — all the way to Iraq's southernmost province of Basra — of the fragile water resources their ecosystems and economies rely on.

Iraq's oil-dependent economy is already projected to shrink by nearly 10 per cent this year, according to the World Bank.

And a health crisis sparked by a shortage of safe drinking water in the south hospitalised some 100,000 people in 2018.

'Spreads like wildfire' 

Locals blame authorities for what they say have been years of neglect and insufficient maintenance.

"The lack of action by the ministry of water resources, and the fact that there have been no renovations of infrastructure, caused an invasion that reached potable water reserves," said Abboudi.

But Saleh Hadi, head of research at Dhi Qar's agriculture directorate, insisted the ministry was well aware of the dangers and working hard to mitigate them.

"The ministry of water resources is working to combat this plant mechanically by uprooting it from irrigation channels," he told AFP.

The perennial predicament has been made even worse this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Under normal conditions, Iraqi villagers along the banks of the Euphrates pluck out the plants by hand instead of using a chemical agent that would destroy the delicate ecosystem.

But this year, a countrywide lockdown imposed to stem COVID-19 infections has allowed the hyacinth to spread mostly unhampered.

Some vigilantes, however, are defying the curfew to fight the parasitic flower which they see as a bigger threat to their livelihoods than the pandemic.

While villagers are sneaking out to uproot the plants by hand, Mohammed Kuwaysh, an environmental activist and member of a farming cooperative, is thinking even bigger.

His collective raised about $800 from local farmers to equip small speedboats to clear waterways by cutting hyacinths en masse.

"The government isn't listening, which allowed this flower to spread like wildfire," Kuwaysh said.

TATAOUINE, Tunisia — Protesters demanding jobs and the release of an activist in Tunisia's marginalised south clashed on Monday with security forces for a second straight day.

Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters in the centre of Tataouine city, an AFP correspondent said.

Defence Ministry spokesman Mohamed Zekr said the army was deployed outside state establishments.

Demonstrators at a protest camp in the region have been demanding authorities make good on a 2017 promise to provide jobs in the gas and oil sector to thousands of unemployed.

For weeks they have blocked roads around the remote El Kamour pumping station to prevent tanker trucks from entering the facility, but the protest had been largely peaceful.

On Sunday, protesters in Tataouine city burned tyres and pelted security forces with stones to demand jobs and the release of activist Tarek Haddad, who was arrested the previous day, as security forces responded with tear gas.

Haddad is a key figure in the protest movement.

The governor of Tataouine, Adel Werghi, said Haddad was "wanted" by the authorities, without providing further details.

The interior ministry said 10 people were arrested Sunday after a group of protesters tried to attack police stations with Molotov cocktails.

Denouncing an "excessive and unjustified" use of force against protesters, the powerful Tunisian trade union confederation UGTT had called for a general strike in Tataouine.

Shops were open on Monday but public services and state institutions remained closed in adherence to the strike, AFP correspondents said.

In 2017, protesters blockaded Tataouine's El Kamour pumping station for three months demanding jobs.

The sit-in ended after the employment minister signed a deal with representatives of the protesters, brokered by the UGTT, pledging to invest 80 million Tunisian dinars a year (almost $28 million) in Tataouine.

The UGTT branch in Tataouine said the promise was never kept.

The protests come as Tunisia, until now largely spared the worst of the novel coronavirus, faces tensions within its coalition government and the impact of restrictions imposed to combat the spread of the pandemic that have deepened inequalities.