Region

CAIRO — The Daesh terror group said on Monday it blew up a gas pipeline in Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula, claiming it was connected to Israel.

Security sources earlier said the pipeline hit was a domestic one that connects to a power station in El Arish, powering homes and factories in central Sinai. No casualties were reported.

Masked gunmen drove a four-wheel drive before detonating explosives in the attack, carried out around 80 kilometres west of the provincial capital El Arish, the sources told AFP.

Some media reports in Egypt and Israel, however, said the section of pipeline hit was part of Israel's Leviathan offshore field that connects the two countries — claims denied to AFP by the Leviathan consortium.

But in a statement posted on its Telegram chat groups, Daesh claimed responsibility for the attack.

It claimed that the section of the pipeline hit was in the Sinai village of Al Teloul and that several explosive devices were used to blow it up, causing "material damage".

Last week the extremist group encouraged its fighters to launch attacks against Israel as part of a “new phase” of its operations.

Israel began pumping natural gas to Egypt for the first time earlier this month under a $15 billion, 15-year landmark deal to liquefy it and re-export it to Europe.

Egypt’s petroleum ministry did not react to a request for comment on Monday after Daesh claimed responsibility.

One of the two offshore fields managed by Israeli and American firms in the deal, Leviathan is estimated to hold 535 billion cubic metres of natural gas, along with 34.1 million barrels of condensate.

Egypt has previously exported gas to Israel but land sections of the export pipeline were targeted multiple times by Sinai militants in 2011 and 2012.

It hopes the recently inked deal will position it to become a regional gas hub.

The country has for years been fighting a hardened insurgency in North Sinai that escalated after the military’s 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi following mass protests.

In February 2018, the army and police launched a nationwide operation against militants focused on North Sinai.

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on Monday rejected US President Donald Trump's peace plan for the Middle East, calling on its 57 member states not to help implement it.

The pan-Islamic body, which represents more than 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, "rejects this US-Israeli plan as it does not meet the minimum aspirations and legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and contradicts the terms of reference of the peace process", it said in a statement.

A meeting of foreign ministers at OIC headquarters in the Saudi city of Jeddah called on "all member states not [to] deal with this plan or cooperate with the US administration efforts to enforce it in any way or form".

Under the US plan unveiled last week, Israel would retain control of the occupied city of Jerusalem as its "undivided capital" and annex settlements on Palestinian lands.

Trump's plan suggests that Israel would retain control of the occupied city of Jerusalem as its "undivided capital" but Palestinians would be allowed to declare a capital adjacent to Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.

The OIC reiterated its support for East Jerusalem as capital of a future Palestinian state, stressing its "Arab and Islamic character".

It said peace would "only be achieved with the end of the Israeli occupation, the full withdrawal from the territory of the State of Palestine in particular the holy city of Al Quds Al Sharif [Jerusalem] and the other Arab territories occupied since [the] June 1967 [Middle East war]".

Iran — a member of the OIC — was not represented in Monday's meeting, with its foreign ministry saying that the delegation was granted visas to arch rival Saudi Arabia "just hours" before the group was to convene.

However, Tehran has already condemned the US plan, saying it amounted to the "treason of the century" and was bound to fail.

The Arab League on Saturday also rejected the controversial plan, saying at a meeting in Cairo that it did not meet the "minimum rights" of the Palestinians.

They insisted on a two-state solution that includes a Palestinian state based on borders before the 1967 war — when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza — and with East Jerusalem as its capital.

'Eliminates
chances of peace'

In his opening remarks on Monday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al Maliki said the plan "cannot be called a peace plan because the Palestinians are not a part of it, and it eliminates all chances of peace".

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates said last week they "appreciated" US efforts to reach a Palestinian-Israeli agreement in what was seen as a balancing act aimed at appeasing their powerful US ally.

"The plan announced [on January 28] offers an important starting point for a return to negotiations within a US-led international framework," said UAE Ambassador to the US Yousef Al Otaiba, who — along with Omani and Bahraini envoys — was at the White House for the announcement.

Saudi Arabia said it "appreciates" Trump's efforts and called for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks, while reiterating its "steadfast" support for the Palestinians.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas announced in Cairo during the Arab League meeting that he will cut all ties with Israel and the US.

"We are informing you that there will be no relations with you [Israel] and the United States, including on security cooperation," he said.

But on Monday he appeared to step back from that statement, implying he had not yet severed ties but still could.

The Trump plan also gives Israel the green light to annex the strategic Jordan Valley — making up 30 per cent of the West Bank — and all Jewish settlements, which number more than 200.

"The plan from the beginning carries with it seeds of its demise," Nevine Mossaad, a political science professor at Cairo University, told AFP.

"After all this Palestinian, Arab and Islamic rejection, be assured of its death."

BAGHDAD — Whether in protests, elections, secret negotiations or government formations, one man always seems to have the last word in Iraq’s tumultuous political scene: Sharp-tongued cleric Moqtada Sadr.

The onetime militiaman has earned himself a cult-like following in Iraq which he can mobilise with a single tweet to crown — or bring down — a government.

He appeared to do just that this week, endorsing ex-minister Mohammad Allawi to become Iraq’s new premier after four months of anti-government protests had brought political life to a standstill.

Sadr had backed the rallies early on, even though they called for the downfall of a Cabinet and PM he had sponsored, and for early elections that may cost him seats in parliament, where he controls the largest bloc.

Mind-boggling politicking is par for the course when it comes to Sadr, said Renad Mansour of the London-based Chatham House think tank.

“He’s a guy who has multiple sides: an anthropologist who goes with the street, making him inconsistent over the years,” said Mansour.

Sadr, 46, was born in the southern Iraqi town of Kufa to a family with deep political roots.

His father, Mohammad Sadeq Sadr, who was assassinated in 1999, was one of Iraq’s most respected Shiite clerics and a fierce opponent of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Moqtada Sadr is also related to Mohammad Baqer Sadr, the prominent thinker who was executed by Saddam in 1980.

This legacy fuelled the younger Sadr’s fire, and he saw his opportunity in Saddam’s 2003 ouster by a US-led invasion — which he also opposed with his Mahdi Army.

Sadr virtually disappeared in 2006, spending the next few years studying to become a cleric in Iran’s Qom before returning to Iraq’s holy city of Najaf in 2011.

Ruling reformist 

As he returned to public life, Sadr began railing against corruption and its main symbol in Iraq: Baghdad’s once-exclusive “Green Zone” which hosts government offices and embassies.

In 2016, he held weekly Friday protests against graft in a country considered the 12th most corrupt in the world, according to watchdog group Transparency International.

Sadr regularly dispatched his critiques to his more than 900,000 followers on Twitter.

But after years as a self-styled opposition, his Saeroon bloc won the largest share of parliament’s 329 seats in the 2018 elections.

To form a majority, he allied with the next-biggest bloc, Fatah, the political arm of the Hashed Al Shaabi military network and his longtime rivals.

“Sadr presents himself as an anti-establishment champion of reform and a populist voice of the millions who have been let down by the system,” said Fanar Haddad, an expert at Singapore University’s Middle East Institute.

“But the fact remains that the Sadrists have been an integral part of the political classes and have had no shortage of ministerial posts and high ranking public office,” he added.

That contradiction has been strained in recent months as Sadr issued a dizzying series of tweets backing, then abandoning, then reendorsing anti-government rallies rocking Iraq since October.

He also organised his own anti-US rally that saw tens of thousands flood the streets of Baghdad to demand foreign forces leave Iraqi territory.

“Sadr is torn between two competing trends — one to try to unify the political leadership, and two, to try to bring protesters closer to it,” Mansour added.

He has tried to walk the tightrope between them: Asking his supporters to remain in protest camps but condemning student sit-ins and road closures — the two main tactics used by other demonstrators.

‘Winding trajectory’ 

But Sadr’s instructions have all been issued on Twitter as he is thought to still be in the Iranian holy city of Qom.

He has complex ties with Iran, a country to which his family was long opposed but where he is now completing his religious studies.

Sadr shocked many when he travelled to Tehran in September, meeting both supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed months later in a US drone strike on Baghdad.

It was another indication of Sadr’s “winding trajectory”, said Karim Bitar, an international relations analyst at the Paris-based Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.

“A nationalist anti-American troublemaker during the Iraq war, who we then find allied to Saudi Arabia, before he makes another radical turn again to get closer to the Iranians,” Bitar said.

Now, Sadr once again finds himself the main sponsor of Iraq’s new prime minister but has insisted that he remains a rebel at heart.

At the bottom of a recent tweet urging a return to normal life, swiftly shared and reposted by thousands of his die-hard followers, Sadr signed off: “Patron of the revolution”.

KHARTOUM — Sudan said on Sunday the US had invited the head of its ruling body to Washington for an official visit, the first such move in more than three decades.

The ruling civilian-led sovereign council said its chief General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan received the invitation in a telephone call from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier on Sunday.

"General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan said he would make the visit soon," the council said in a statement, without further details.

Relations between the northeast African country and the US soured in the 1990s after now-toppled leader Omar Al Bashir seized power in an Islamist-baked coup in 1989 after ousting an elected government.

In 1993, the US blacklisted Sudan as state sponsor of terrorism as Bashir's regime hosted Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, who resided in the country between 1992-1996.

Washington further stepped up its measures against Sudan by imposing tough trade sanctions on the country in 1997.

It lifted those restrictions in October 2017, but has kept Sudan in its state sponsor of terrorism list along with North Korea, Iran and Syria.

However, talks to remove Sudan from the blacklist have gained momentum since Bashir’s ouster last April. Several delegations of US officials and members of Congress have visited Sudan to analyse the situation.

Bashir was removed by the army in a palace coup on the back of a nationwide protest movement against his iron-fisted regime.

Since August, Sudan has been ruled by the civilian-majority sovereign council headed by Burhan, which is tasked with overseeing the country’s transition to civilian rule, as demanded by protesters.

BAGHDAD — Furious anti-government youth dug in their heels in Iraq's capital and south on Sunday, rejecting the previous evening's nomination of Mohammad Allawi as premier after months of demonstrations and political paralysis.

Allawi was named prime minister-designate after a hard-won consensus among Iraq's rival parties, who had struggled to agree on a candidate since outgoing premier Adel Abdel Mahdi resigned under growing street pressure two months ago.

Mass rallies have rocked Baghdad and the mainly-Shiite south since October, with protesters demanding snap elections and an independent prime minister as well as accountability for corruption and recent bloodshed.

Young demonstrators have expressed contempt for the ruling elite and on Sunday, they slammed Allawi — a former lawmaker and minister — as part and parcel of the system they want to overhaul.

"We are here to reject the new prime minister because he has a well-known history within the political class," said 22-year-old university student Tiba protesting in Baghdad.

Hundreds of students flooded the streets around the capital's main protest camp of Tahrir Square, carrying pictures of Allawi with an "X" over his face.

They blared upbeat  Arabic music through speakers, trying to drown out the somber Islamic hymns played by demonstrators loyal to populist cleric Moqtada Sadr.

Sadr backed the protests in October but has split with the main movement over Allawi, whose designation he welcomed as a “good step”.

After his endorsement, Sadr’s supporters — identifiable by their blue caps — rushed into the multistorey building known as the Turkish restaurant.

The structure had become a symbol of the uprising, featuring portraits of young men shot dead in the rallies and huge banners listing reforms protesters wanted to see.

By Sunday, those banners were gone and Sadr posted new tweets condemning student sit-ins and road closures — the two main tactics used by anti-government demonstrators.

“The revolution must go back to being restrained and peaceful,” Sadr wrote on Twitter.

Despite his appeal, angry protesters in the holy city of Najaf blocked roads with burning tyres and held up a sign that read, “Mohammad Allawi is rejected, by order of the people!”

In Diwaniyah, further south, protesters marched into government buildings to demand they close for the day while students began sit-ins at schools and universities.

“Naming Mohammad Allawi is a mockery,” one demonstrator there told AFP.

“It represents a total disregard for those killed in the protests and for the demands of the Iraqi people who have been demonstrating for four months to reject parties affiliated with Iran,” the demonstrator said.

In addition to their calls for better services and an end to government graft, demonstrators have accused Iraq’s ruling elite of being beholden to powerful neighbour Iran.

Tehran has seen its influence grow in Iraq since the US-led invasion that toppled ex-dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Allawi, 65, launched his political career in the aftermath of the invasion, first as a parliamentarian and then twice as communications minister under former premier Nuri Al Maliki.

But he resigned both times, accusing Maliki of turning a blind eye to graft in a country considered among the top 20 most corrupt in the world by Transparency International.

His appointment came after days of crisis talks prompted by President Barham Saleh, who said he would select his own candidate if Iraq’s parliamentary blocs did not nominate someone by Saturday.

The negotiations were very secretive and it remains unclear what finally unlocked a deal, but on Saturday evening Allawi announced his own nomination in a video posted to Twitter.

There was no official statement from Saleh, but Abdel Mahdi congratulated his successor and the pair pledged to meet soon to ensure a smooth transition.

In his first public remarks, Allawi vowed to form a representative government, hold early parliamentary elections and ensure justice for protest-related violence.

More than 480 people have died and nearly 30,000 have been wounded since the rallies began on October 1, but few have been held accountable for the bloodshed.

Allawi has one month to form a government, but ensuring an independent line-up may prove a challenge, said Sajad Jiyad of the Iraq-based think tank the Bayan Centre.

“If we’ve learned anything from the previous PM, it’s that this is the most difficult part: Pushing back against the political blocs’ demands,” Jiyad told AFP.

In Iraq, Cabinets are typically formed after complex horsetrading whereby parties demand lucrative and influential ministerial posts based on their share of parliament.

If Allawi fails to resist ministerial candidates proposed by parties, “it will back up what protesters are saying” about his allegiance to the factions, Jiyad added.