Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Russian President Vladimir Putin called Thursday for a summit of leaders of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, to "defend peace" in the face of global instability.

His call came as Russia promotes itself as a global powerbroker, playing a decisive role in crises in the Middle East, Libya and Ukraine.

Putin said the leaders of Russia, China, the United States, France and Britain could meet "in any place in the world".

Speaking in Jerusalem at an event marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Putin argued that the countries that created a new global order after World War II should cooperate to solve today's problems.

"The founder countries of the United Nations, the five states that hold special responsibility to save civilisation, can and must be an example," he said at the sombre memorial ceremony.

The meeting would "play a great role in searching for collective answers to modern challenges and threats", Putin said, adding that Russia was "ready for such a serious conversation".

Putin suggested war-torn Libya could be on the agenda, following recent peace talks in Moscow and Berlin.

‘Positive reaction’ 

Putin said Moscow had proposed the summit to “several of our colleagues and as far as I understand, saw a positive reaction”.

Russia has increasingly close ties with China, whose President Xi Jinping last year called Putin his “best friend”, while French President Emmanuel Macron has made a point of cultivating Russia.

While relations between the US and Russia have plunged to post-cold war lows, President Donald Trump has praised Putin. The Russian leader has also criticised moves to impeach his counterpart.

There are varying accounts of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s first official meeting with Putin, on the sidelines of Libya talks in Berlin at the weekend.

Downing Street said Johnson delivered a stern warning that Russia must never repeat its chemical attack on British soil against former double agent Sergei Skripal, but the Kremlin said the talks were constructive, even conciliatory in tone.

‘Frightening consequences’ 

Putin was one of dozens of world leaders in Jerusalem to mark the liberation 75 years ago of the World War II death camp where the Nazis killed more than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews. 

Soviet troops liberated the death camp.

Russia will hold large-scale celebrations in May to mark 75 years since the allied victory in World War II, with numerous world leaders invited.

“Forgetting the past, and disunity in the face of threats, can lead to frightening consequences,” Putin said.

Countries must “do everything to protect and defend peace,” he added.

Putin’s proposal comes despite Russia being expelled from the G8 group of industrialised countries after seizing Crimea from neighbouring Ukraine in 2014. 

Russia is also subject to numerous European and US sanctions because of the conflict in Ukraine.

Moscow denies accusations by Kiev and its Western allies that it provides weapons to separatists fighting in the east.

WASHINGTON — The Daesh group is weakened but a resurgence is possible if the United States leaves Iraq, US Major General Alexus Grynkewich, the number two commander for the international coalition in Iraq and Syria, said on Wednesday.

The group "certainly still remain a threat", he said. "They have the potential to resurge if we take pressure off of them for too long."

The general said he did not see the threat of an immediate IS comeback.

"But the more time we take pressure off of them, the more of that threat will continue to grow," he said.

At a Pentagon press conference, he said the structural weakness of Daesh is shown by their failure to take advantage of demonstrations in Iraq calling for political reforms since October.

More than 460 protesters have been killed, and demonstrators are angry that few Iraqi security personnel have been charged for the violence.

The allies at the heart of the international coalition have over the last few months been evaluating the position of the terrorist movement whose self-declared "caliphate" once spanned parts of Iraq and Syria. It collapsed last March after years of battle with coalition-backed forces.

Daesh went underground and reverted to well-honed guerrilla tactics that continued to do damage.

The coalition wanted to determine whether the group is "executing some sort of strategic patience, waiting for an opportunity that they can exploit, or are they truly on the ropes a bit more and lacking in capability and capacity?" Grynkewich said.

He said the Iraqi protests helped the coalition to refine its assessment "that it's actually ISIS is a little bit more on the lack of capability and capacity side, than strategically patient", using another acronym for the jihadists.

Tensions between Washington and Tehran boiled over onto Iraqi soil this month. The US killed top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad and Tehran retaliated against an Iraqi base hosting American soldiers, some of whom were hurt.

Furious at the US hit, Iraq's parliament voted January 5 to oust all foreign troops, including about 5,200 American soldiers deployed alongside local forces.

Coalition troops have ostensibly reduced their operations in Iraq since then, even if cooperation with the Iraqi army continues discreetly, according to several US military sources.

US President Donald Trump and his Iraqi counterpart Barham Saleh agreed Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland on the need for a continued US military role in the country, the White House said.

"That's really kind of a government-to-government discussion on when we get back to full restoration of that partnership. They certainly have an interest in it, as do we," Grynkewich said.

BASRA, Iraq — An anti-government activist was killed in Iraq's south by unidentified gunmen, amid a resurgence of rallies and road closures by protesters pressing authorities to implement long-awaited reforms.

The youth-dominated movement is desperately trying to maintain momentum in the face of spiralling US-Iran tensions and a rival anti-American rally planned for Friday.

But as they escalate their demonstrations, they have also faced a new wave of violence. 

Late Tuesday night, a female activist was killed by unidentified assailants as she was returning home from protests in the oil-rich port city of Basra. 

“Civil society activist Janat Madhi, 49, was shot on Tuesday night around 11:00pm [2000 GMT] by armed men in an SUV,” a police source said, adding that five people including at least one other activist were wounded.

A source at the city’s forensics lab confirmed to AFP that Madhi suffered gunshot wounds.

Activists have for months complained of an intensifying campaign of kidnappings and killings that they say is meant to scare them into halting protests.

They are also worried about tensions with a competing rally this Friday organised by populist cleric Moqtada Sadr that will call for the 5,200 US troops deployed in Iraq to leave.

To simultaneously head off that protest and ramp up pressure on authorities, demonstrators this week launched sit-ins in new areas and shut roads with burning tyres.

‘Wreaked havoc on Iraq’ 

Their main demands include early elections under a new voting law, an independent premier and accountability for corruption and killings of protesters.

More than 460 protesters have been killed since the rallies first erupted in October, fuelled by anger over graft and a lack of jobs that ballooned into demands for systemic reform.

On Monday, three protesters were killed in clashes with security forces in Baghdad and another demonstrator died on Tuesday after a tear gas canister punctured his skull.

Rights groups accuse security forces of improperly using military-grade gas canisters — up to 10 times heavier than those designed for use against civilians — by firing them directly at crowds rather than into the air.

Demonstrators are outraged that only a handful of security force personnel have been charged with excessive violence and no perpetrators of hit-and-run attacks have been pursued, whereas protesters have been swiftly arrested for shutting down streets.

Blocking roads has been a key tactic this week, with protesters cutting streets and national highways around the capital on Wednesday.

Under a winter drizzle, they erected metal barricades to block the Mohammad Al Qasim thoroughfare which cuts through eastern Baghdad.

Protesters wore plastic ponchos to protect against the rain, balaclavas so they could not be identified by security forces and brightly coloured party hats to lighten the mood. 

Roads were cut and government offices closed across the Shiite-majority south too, including the holy city of Najaf and the cities of Al Hillah and Diwaniyah.

In the protest flashpoint of Nasiriyah, burning tyres and a sit-in blocked highways leading into the city for the third straight day.

“We’ll keep shutting roads and getting protesters into the street to keep these important demonstrations going,” said Aqil Al Zamili, a 50-year-old activist there.

The key demand, Zamili said, was “the end of this ruling class — which in our view has wreaked havoc on Iraq by formalising sectarian power-sharing”.

Oil production hit 

The road closures have left hundreds of tankers carrying oil products north towards central Baghdad stranded outside the capital. 

They also forced a shutdown at the main oil field northwest of Nasiriyah, the capital of Dhi Qar province, a source at the state-owned provincial oil company told AFP.

“Production... was halted for the third consecutive day because transport routes leading to the field are cut,” the Dhi Qar Oil Company source said. 

The source said the field produces up to 100,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Oil-rich Iraq is OPEC’s second-biggest crude producer, logging around 3.4 million bpd of exports.

But public services are failing, unemployment is high and one in five people live in poverty, according to the World Bank.

The current government, in power since late 2018, had pledged to address those issues but it barely served a year before the sweeping protests prompted its head, Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, to step down.

He submitted his resignation letter to parliament in December but has continued to run the government in a caretaker role.

Political factions have failed to agree a successor and protesters have demanded a new premier untainted by prior involvement in the country’s politics.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — When French President Emmanuel Macron visited Jerusalem's Old City on Wednesday, he also trod in the footsteps of one of his predecessors, Jacques Chirac, by engaging in a heated argument with Israeli forces.

The altercation broke out when Israeli forces pushed past the French detail and were first to enter the Church of Saint Anne, which is French state property.

“Everybody knows the rules. I don’t like what you did in front of me,” an animated Macron loudly told the Israeli personnel, speaking in English, in the crush to enter the building, which remains French territory under international treaties. 

“Go out — outside please!” he added in a raised voice in scenes captured in video footage that quickly spread on social media.

Macron will on Thursday attend a ceremony to commemorate the liberation of Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz death camp in what was then occupied Poland.

Wednesday’s tense scenes recalled a 1996 Jerusalem visit by late former president Chirac during which he also lost his cool with Israeli security agents who were pressing him to move on.

Chirac heatedly told them their actions were a “provocation” and angrily asked: “What do you want? Me to go back to my plane and go back to France, is that what you want?”

Tripoli — Rocket fire targeted the Libyan capital's sole functioning airport on Wednesday, dealing another setback to peace efforts a day before regional foreign ministers meet in Algeria to discuss the crisis.

Tripoli's Mitiga airport was forced to suspend all flights for several hours after it was targeted by six Grad rockets, just nine days after it reopened following a truce. 

The airport has been hit multiple times since the start of an offensive by forces led by eastern commander Khalifa Haftar to seize the capital from the Government of National Accord (GNA).

World powers have stepped up efforts in recent weeks to find a political solution to the grinding conflict, with neighbouring Algeria to become the latest country to host a meeting on Thursday to discuss ways forward.

The Algerian foreign ministry said chief diplomats from Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Niger and Mali would meet in Algiers to advance "a political settlement to the crisis through an inclusive dialogue between all parties". 

Algeria, which has stayed neutral in the Libyan conflict, shares a border of almost 1,000 kilometres with its neighbour, rocked by violence since the 2011 toppling of dictator Muammar Qadhafi by NATO-backed insurgents.

The meeting comes after a summit last Sunday in Berlin, which saw world leaders commit to ending all foreign meddling in Libya and to upholding a weapons embargo as part of a broader plan to end the conflict.

The two sides also agreed to form a military commission charged with finding ways to reach a long-term truce.

It should include five members each from the United Nations-recognised government in Tripoli and from Haftar’s forces, which back a rival administration in Benghazi.

On Tuesday, the UN Security Council urged the parties to reach a ceasefire deal paving the way for a political process aimed at ending the conflict in the North African country. 

‘New violation’ 

Despite repeated appeals from the UN’s envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, Tripoli’s GNA-held airport has been the target of several air raids and rocket strikes since Haftar’s forces launched their offensive.

Located east of the capital, Mitiga is a former military airbase used by civilian traffic since Tripoli international airport was heavily damaged in fighting in 2014.

GNA forces spokesman Mohammed Gnunu branded the strikes as a “flagrant threat” to the safety of air traffic and a “new violation” of the most recent ceasefire.

Haftar’s forces, which accuse the GNA of using Mitiga for military purposes, say they target “Turkish drones” being launched from the airport to attack their troops in southern Tripoli.

The GNA has denied those accusations.

Turkey has backed the GNA, deploying troops to Libya since early January under a controversional November deal with the Tripoli-based administration. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected in the Algerian capital on Sunday at the start of a two-day visit also tied to the Libyan conflict.

Germany’s top diplomat Heiko Maas is also expected in Algiers Thursday, the Algerian foreign ministry said.

Algiers has hosted a string of foreign leaders and envoys for talks on the crisis, including Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and the top diplomats of Egypt, Italy, Turkey and former colonial power France.

BEIRUT — Lebanon's new prime minister claims to lead a government of technocrats, but critics argue the line-up is window dressing for a set of ministers who are neither experts nor independent.

Hassan Diab insisted the list of 20 ministers unveiled on Tuesday night represented the demands of protesters who first took to the streets three months ago to demand change.

But protesters reacted angrily to the line-up, arguing it fell short of a clean break from the sectarian-driven way of apportioning government jobs that has characterised Lebanese politics for decades.

A self-proclaimed technocrat, the 61-year-old Diab is a university professor but also a former education minister who owes his political appointments to the Shiite group Hizbollah.

Before his Cabinet was even formed, many protesters rejected him as a pawn of the parties they want removed from the political landscape.

The Cabinet brought many new faces but the month-long political bargaining that led to Tuesday's announcement fuelled deep-rooted suspicion that behind every technocrat is a party clinging to its share of influence and patronage.

A closer look at the line-up confirmed that, with some exceptions, the government is nothing but another product of Lebanon's age-old political pie-slicing game.

'Cooking' 

"Despite the presence of a few genuinely independent and reformist figures, the cooks who whipped up this government are the usual suspects," said Karim Bitar, a professor of international relations in Paris and Beirut.

Gebran Bassil, President Michel Aoun's son-in-law and arguably the politician most reviled by the protest camp, hands over the foreign ministry to Nassif Hitti, a respected career diplomat.

Justice Minister Marie-Claude Najm and Finance Minister Ghazni Wazni are also both considered to have strong credentials.

But many of the new ministers are close to the stalwarts of Lebanon's hereditary ruling elite and will have little room for manoeuvre.

"It feels as if the Lebanese political class wanted to show something more palatable to the public and international community," Bitar said.

"But there has been no in-depth change, just a bit of window dressing," he said.

The newly appointed minister of public works, Michel Najjar, made no secret of his political debt.

His first words were to thank not the prime minister but his sponsor Sleiman Frangieh, who heads a pro-Syrian Christian Party, for nominating him during government formation talks.

The Lebanese press published articles giving a breakdown of each new minister's friendships and allegiances, painting a picture of a government team that will have its hands tied at a time when drastic economic measures are needed.

MP Paula Yacoubian made it clear she felt "Diab did not keep his promise to form a government of independent" experts.

The independence of the new government was always in doubt in a country where the ruling elite is desperate to cling to its privileges, but some of the new ministers' expertise was also coming under scrutiny on Wednesday.

Pipe dream 

When asked about the appointment of Zeina Akar — a social scientist who runs a consultancy firm — as defence minister, Diab fumbled his answer and questioned the need to have specialists for the job.

Last-minute horsetrading between Lebanon's factions combined with a drive to downsize the Cabinet also led to unlikely ministerial mergers.

Social media was awash with wry comments and jokes on the appointment of Abbas Mortada, who has worked in hotel management and real estate, as the minister in charge of both culture and agriculture.

His name was put forward by the Shiite party Amal.

After a three-month vacuum, a new government was eagerly awaited, at home and by Lebanon's donors, but fears are already high that it will not be in a position to deliver radical reforms needed to save the near-bankrupt
country.

Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre, said a fully independent government of the country's brightest minds was the protest movement's pipe dream.

"Ideally what you would have needed at this point in time, is a consensus by all political parties to allow an independent government to do its work and stabilise the country, prioritising the economy over the politics," she said.

"That didn't happen," she said.

By Tony Gamal Gabriel