Region

TEHRAN — Iran announced Monday a more than tenfold increase in enriched uranium production following a series of steps back from commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by the United States.

The Islamic republic has also developed two new advanced centrifuges, one of which is undergoing testing, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, announced.

Enriched uranium production has reached five kilogrammes per day, Salehi told reporters at the Natanz facility in central Iran in remarks broadcast by state television.

That compares with the level of 450 grammes two months ago.

Tehran decided in May to suspend certain nuclear commitments, a year after US President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal between world powers and Iran and reimposed sanctions on the country.

Tehran has so far hit back with three packages of countermeasures and threatened to go even further if the remaining partners to the deal — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — fail to help it circumvent US sanctions.

After the latest announcement, the European Union warned that its support for the nuclear deal depends on Tehran fulfilling its commitments.

“We have continued to urge Iran to reverse such steps without delay and to refrain from other measures that would undermine the nuclear deal,” said Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini.

Although the EU “remained committed” to the accord, “we have also been consistent in saying that our commitment to the nuclear deal depends on full compliance by Iran”, she told reporters in Brussels.

On July 1, Iran said it had increased its stockpile of enriched uranium to beyond a 300 kilo maximum set by the deal, and a week later, it announced it had exceeded a 3.67 per cent cap on the purity of its uranium stocks.

It fired up advanced centrifuges to boost its enriched uranium stockpiles on September 7.

Salehi said Iranian engineers “have successfully built a prototype of IR-9, which is our newest machine, and also a model of a new machine called IR-s ... all these in two months”.

EU deadline over 

Iran has removed all of its IR-1 centrifuges — the sole deal-approved machines — and is now using advanced models, leading to the sharp increase in enriched uranium production, he added.

“We must thank the enemy for bringing about this opportunity to show the might of the Islamic republic of Iran, especially in the nuclear industry,” Salehi said.

“This is while some say [Iran’s] nuclear industry was destroyed!” he said, laughing.

Iran will take the fourth step of walking back on the nuclear accord on Tuesday, semi-official news agency ISNA reported without specifying details.

The announcement came as Iranians held mass rallies four decades to the day after revolutionary students stormed the US embassy in the capital and took dozens of American diplomats and staff hostage.

It took a full 444 days for the crisis to end with the release of 52 Americans, but the US broke off diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 and ties have been frozen ever since.

Monday also marked the end of the 60-day deadline Iran gave to Europe to either provide it with the economic benefits of the nuclear agreement or see even more commitments abandoned.

The European parties to the Vienna deal have repeatedly called on Iran to stay within the accord’s framework but their efforts to skirt unilateral US sanctions have so far borne no fruit.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called French President Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to set up talks between Iran and the US to break the impasse “naive”.

Macron’s efforts to initiate a phone call between US President Donald Trump and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September ended in failure.

Rouhani stressed he would only hold talks with the US if sanctions were lifted first.

AL FASHIR — Sudan's Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said Monday his government was working towards bringing peace to war-torn Darfur as he met hundreds of victims of the conflict who demanded swift justice.

Hamdok's one-day visit was his first as prime minister to the devastated region, where a conflict that erupted in 2003 has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced.

He met war victims in the town of Al Fashir, the capital of North Darfur state that houses several sprawling camps where tens of thousands of displaced have been living for years.

“We want justice! Send all criminals of Darfur to the ICC [International Criminal Court],” chanted a crowd who met Hamdok as he visited camps in Al Fashir.

Hamdok assured them that Sudan’s new government was working towards peace in Darfur, a vast region the size of Spain.

“I know your demands even before you raised them,” Hamdok, whose government was formed in September, told the crowd.

“We know the massacres that happened in Darfur... We will all work together to achieve your demands and ensure that normal life returns to Darfur,” he said as the crowd chanted: “No justice, no peace in Darfur!”

The Darfur conflict flared when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the then Arab-dominated government of Omar Al Bashir, accusing it of marginalising the region economically and politically.

Khartoum then applied what rights groups say was a scorched earth policy against ethnic groups suspected of supporting the rebels — raping, killing, looting and burning villages.

About 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced in the conflict, the United Nations says.

‘Return our lands’ 

Bashir, who the army ousted in April after nationwide protests against his rule, is wanted by the Hague-based ICC for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

Bashir has steadfastly denied the ICC charges.

“We want those criminals to be given to the ICC. Without that there won’t be peace in Darfur,” Mohamed Adam, a prominent leader representing the victims of Darfur, told Hamdok.

Adam said the militiamen who in the early years of the conflict rampaged through the region’s villages must now be disarmed.

“We also want our lands to be returned to their rightful owners,” he said.

Several families displaced by the conflict have returned to their original homes in recent years but only to find their lands occupied by Arab pastoralists.

The protest movement that led to the ouster of Bashir said on Sunday it was not against handing over the deposed autocrat to the ICC.

“All the members of the Forces of Freedom and Change agree on that,” Ibrahim Al Sheikh, a leader from the umbrella protest movement, told reporters.

After he was deposed on April 11, ICC prosecutors once again demanded Bashir stand trial for mass killings in Darfur.

The military generals who had initially seized power in the aftermath of Bashir’s fall and arrested him have refused to deliver the ousted president to The Hague.

Sudan’s current transitional authorities would need to ratify the ICC’s Rome Statute to allow for the transfer of Bashir to the court.

Bashir, who is being held in a Khartoum prison, is facing trial on corruption charges.

He ruled Sudan for three decades after seizing power in an Islamist-backed coup in 1989.

BAGHDAD — Protesters in Iraq's capital and the country's south shut down streets and government offices in a new campaign of civil disobedience Sunday, escalating their month-long movement demanding change to the political system.

Demonstrations broke out on October 1 in outrage over rampant corruption and unemployment in Iraq, but were met with a violent crackdown that left dozens dead. 

Since resuming later last month, the protests have swelled again with the support of students and trade unions, who jointly announced a campaign of non-violent resistance on Sunday. 

In Baghdad, university-age demonstrators parked cars along main thoroughfares to block traffic on the first day of the work week in the Muslim-majority country, as police officers looked on.

Other students took part in sit-ins at their schools, and the national teachers union extended a strike they began last week. The engineering, doctors and lawyers syndicates have all backed the protests.

“We decided to cut the roads as a message to the government that we will keep protesting until the corrupt people and thieves are kicked out and the regime falls,” said Tahseen Nasser, a 25-year-old protester in the eastern city of Kut.

“We’re not allowing government workers to reach their offices, just those in humanitarian fields,” such as hospital staff, he said. 

‘Government lies’ 

The government has proposed a string of reforms, including a hiring drive, social welfare plans and early elections once a new voting law is passed.

The pledges have had little effect on those in the streets, who have condemned the political class wholesale. 

“We decided on this campaign of civil disobedience because we have had it up to here with the government’s lies and promises of so-called reform,” said Mohammad Al Assadi, a government employee on strike in the southern city of Nasiriyah.

Demonstrators there organised sit-ins on the four bridges leading out of Nasiriyah, as well as its main streets and squares.

Schools and government offices were closed there and across a half-dozen other cities in the south. 

In Basra, the oil-rich port city, public schools were shut down for the first time since the movement erupted last month.

Protesters also kept up their closure of the highway leading to the Umm Qasr Port, one of the main conduits for food, medicine and other imports into Iraq.

A source at the port told AFP that around a dozen ships, after waiting to unload their cargo, had pulled away to take their goods elsewhere on Saturday. 

The spreading sit-ins indicate a new phase in the protests, already hailed as the largest grassroots movement in Iraq in decades.

Civil society ‘recovers’ 

Under ex-dictator Saddam Hussein, rallies that were not exuberantly supporting him or his Baathist government were banned.

After he was toppled by the US-led invasion of 2003, political parties tussling for influence were the only actors able to draw large numbers out into the streets.

“Iraq’s civil society which was undermined by decades of Baathi authoritarianism and sectarianism is recovering,” wrote Harith Hasan, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Centre. 

But the movement has also been bloodied by the deaths of more than 250 people, a vast majority of them protesters.

On Saturday, medical sources told AFP at least one person was killed and dozens wounded in clashes with security forces near the capital’s Tahrir Square, a focal point for demonstrators. 

Young protesters have spilled over from Tahrir onto two main bridges leading to the western bank of the Tigris.

Riot police deployed along the bridges have fired tear gas to keep back protesters, who have dug in to their positions behind their own barricades.

Amnesty International slammed Iraqi forces this week for using two types of military-grade tear gas canisters that have pierced protesters’ skulls and lungs.

Rights groups have also expressed worry over the detention of protesters, journalists and medics. 

On Sunday, the Iraqi Human Rights Commission said Saba Mahdawi, a doctor and activist, had been abducted the previous evening after providing medical aid to protesters.

The Commission did not say who may have seized Mahdawi but urged security forces to investigate the matter and other “organised kidnapping operations” in recent weeks.

BAABDA, Lebanon — Lebanon's president Sunday called on citizens to unite behind reforms, after more than two weeks of nationwide anti-graft protests that brought down the government.

President Michel Aoun addressed thousands of his supporters thronging the road outside the presidential palace, ahead of more mass anti-government protests planned in Beirut in the afternoon.

Unprecedented cross-sectarian demonstrations have gripped Lebanon since October 17, demanding a complete overhaul of a political system deemed inefficient and corrupt.

The Cabinet stepped down on Tuesday, but protesters have said this was not enough and pledged to meet for another demonstration Sunday afternoon in Beirut.

In a live televised address beamed to his fans and around the nation, Aoun called on supporters and protesters alike to rally behind a plan for reforms.

"I call on you all to unite," the state leader said, warning against having "one protest against another". 

The 84-year-old president said a roadmap had been drawn up to tackle corruption, redress the economy, and put together a civil government.

"It won't be easy, and we want your efforts," he said, leaning on a pulpit inside the palace in the town of Baabda outside Beirut.

'We will not abandon you'

Protesters have called for an end to Aoun's tenure, as well as drastic change to a political system dominated by the same figures and families since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

"All of them means all of them," has become a popular chant calling for all political leaders to step down.

Outside the palace, an AFP correspondent saw Aoun's supporters chanting, some brandishing the orange-coloured banners of his political party, the Free Patriotic Movement.

"We are here, General. We won't abandon you as long as we live," one poster read, referring to the army's youngest-ever commander in chief during the civil conflict.

Aoun’s supporters said they backed the overall demands of protesters nationwide, but insisted the president was the only man able to bring about reforms.

“General Aoun is a reformist and sincere man — not corrupt nor a thief,” said one supporter who gave her name as Diana.

“There has been corruption in the state for 30 years,” she said.

“The president isn’t responsible. He’s trying to fight against graft.”

Along with its allies including powerful Shiite movement Hizbollah, Aoun’s political party holds the majority in parliament.

The FPM is now headed by his son-in-law Gibran Bassil, who has emerged as one of the most reviled figures in the protests.

Before the Cabinet resigned on Tuesday, Bassil was foreign minister.

A proposed tax on calls via free phone applications such as Whatsapp triggered protests last month.

But they soon morphed into a huge nationwide movement to denounce a raft of woes including a lack of basic services, a failing economy, and rampant sectarianism.

On Tuesday, prime minister Saad Hariri announced his government would be stepping down.

But it is still unclear what a new Cabinet will look like, and if it will include independent technocrats as demanded by demonstrators.

After around two weeks of closure, banks and some schools re-opened this week.

But protesters have vowed to press ahead with their demands and — after numbers dwindled amid rain in recent days — were set to make a broad stand on Sunday afternoon in Beirut’s main square.

On Saturday night, thousands of anti-government protesters had flocked together in the impoverished northern city of Tripoli to keep the popular movement alive.

Several said they had travelled to the Sunni-majority city from other parts of the country, inspired by the after-dark street parties that earned it the title “bride of the revolution”.

More than 25 per cent of Lebanese citizens live in poverty, the World Bank says.

TALL ABYAD, Syria — A car bomb killed at least 13 people in a Turkish-held border town in northeast Syria Saturday, as thousands of Kurds in the wider region protested against "Turkish occupation".

The bombing ripped through Tall Abyad, one of several once Kurdish-controlled towns seized by Turkey last month in a deadly cross-border offensive.

The blast came despite a truce last week to halt the Turkish assault that began on October 9 and sparked the latest humanitarian disaster of Syria's eight-year war.

On Saturday, an AFP correspondent in Tall Abyad saw the remains of two motorbikes ablaze in the middle of a rubble-strewn street.

A group of men carried the severely burnt body of a victim onto the back of a pickup truck, as a veiled young woman stood aghast by the side of the street.

Turkey’s defence ministry said 13 civilians were killed in the attack, which it blamed on Kurdish fighters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported 14 people — pro-Ankara fighters and civilians — had been killed in the explosion.

“To displace true owners of the land and to settle Syrian refugees in Turkey to their homes in NE Syria, Turkish army and its proxies are now creating chaos in Tall Abyad by explosions targeting civilians,” Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Forces (SDF) Tweeted.

“Turkey is responsible for civilian casualties in the region it controls,” he said.

Meanwhile, in the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli, thousands of Syrian Kurds marched in the streets to protest what they view as a Turkish invasion.

“No to Turkish occupation,” they cried, brandishing flags of their once semi-autonomous region and its fighters.

In the German capital Berlin, the police said around 1,000 people protested to “stop the war” against the Kurds, while hundreds in Paris called for sanctions against Turkey.

US troops return? 

The truce deal signed last week between Ankara and Moscow demands Kurdish fighters withdraw from the border.

It hands a 120-kilometre-long stretch of border land including Tall Abyad over to Turkey, and provides for joint Russian-Turkish patrols along other parts of the frontier — the first of which started on Friday.

Ankara views Syrian Kurdish fighters as “terrorists”, and wants to expel them from areas along its southern border.

But Turkey also hopes to resettle there some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees it hosts on its own soil.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Friday told Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the United Nations would study Ankara’s plans for repatriation.

The Turkish attack last month came after US President Donald Trump said he had ordered US troops to leave northern Syria.

But on Saturday, US troops visited Kurdish forces in Qamishli in the second such spotting of American forces in north-eastern Syria since that announcement.

Tan armoured vehicles flying the American flag pulled up at the headquarters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the de-facto army of Syria’s Kurds.

The SDF have been a key US partner in fighting the Daesh terror group, backed by air strikes by a US-led coalition.

A source who attended a meeting with the Americans on Saturday said they wanted to return to set up a military post in Qamishli.

‘No confidence’ 

The US withdrawal was largely seen as a betrayal of its Kurdish partners, who were forced to seek help from the Russia-backed Damascus regime to contain the Turkish attack.

In an interview published Saturday, SDF commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi said he distrusted both the Syrian government and Russia, but had no other choice but to work with them.

“We have no confidence, but it’s not possible to solve Syria’s problems without using the political path. We must negotiate,” he told Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper.

The SDF expelled Daesh extremists from their last patch of territory in Syria in March.

But the extremists continue to claim deadly attacks in SDF-held areas, and this week they announced they had a new leader after their former chief Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi was killed in a US raid.

After years of war against Daesh, the SDF guard around 12,000 suspected extremists fighters in overcrowded jails.

Syria’s war has spiralled into a complex conflict involving word powers since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

ALGIERS — Five candidates, including two former prime ministers, will run to replace ousted Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the country's election authority said on Saturday, amid widespread protests against the vote.

A total of 23 candidates had submitted their papers to run and five were approved, head of the election authority Mohamed Charfi told reporters in Algiers.

The list will be passed to the constitutional council for final validation.

Former premiers Ali Benflis and Abdelmadjid Tebboune are considered front-runners in an election opposed by the mass protest movement that alongside the army forced Bouteflika to resign in April after 20 years in power.

The other candidates are Azzedine Mihoubi, leader of the Democratic National Rally Party that was part of Bouteflika's ruling coalition, former tourism minister Abdelkader Bengrina and Abdelaziz Belaid, head of the Front El Moustakbel Party.

Activists are demanding sweeping reforms in the oil-rich country before any vote takes place, and say Bouteflika-era figures still in power must not use the presidential poll to appoint his successor.

Instead of waning when the ageing president stepped down, the protest movement turned its focus on the whole regime, amping up calls for an overhaul of the political system in place since 1962.

Polls planned for July 4 were postponed due to a lack of viable candidates, plunging the country into a constitutional crisis, as interim president Abdelkader Bensalah's mandate expired that month.

Despite fierce opposition from the streets, authorities have been pushing forward with presidential elections set for December 12. Observers are predicting a weak turnout.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi security forces clashed with anti-government protesters near the capital's Tahrir Square on Saturday as anti-government rallies which have rocked Baghdad for a month cost more lives.

The violence in Baghdad has been centred on two bridges linking Tahrir to the Green Zone on the west bank of the Tigris River where most government buildings and foreign embassies are located.

Riot police deployed along the bridges on Saturday fired tear gas to keep back protesters, who have dug in to their positions behind their own barricade.

One demonstrator was killed there overnight, and another died during the day on Saturday, medical sources confirmed to AFP.

Dozens more were wounded in the clashes.

The protests have evolved since October 1 from rage over corruption and unemployment into a wholesale condemnation of Iraq's political and religious class.

The movement has swelled as students, trade unions and NGOs joined in.

On Saturday, nearly 200 Iraqis with special needs organised their own small march in Baghdad to show support.

“Our rights have been overlooked for years because of corruption,” said Muadh Al Kaabi, 30, a blind teacher who works in a special needs school.

“There are four million people with special needs across Iraq — and the numbers are only growing because of the wars we have been through,” he told AFP.

Iraq has suffered decades of back-to-back conflicts, including war with Iran, the US-led invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein and years of sectarian infighting.

Since then, its political system has been gripped by clientelism, corruption and sectarianism, prompting protesters to call for the total “downfall of the regime”.

They have so far been unimpressed by the government’s proposed reforms, including early elections.

“We’ve been having elections for 16 years, and we’ve gotten nothing,” said Haydar, 30, a protester in Tahrir.

Another activist, Mohammad, 22, said the demonstrators should not accept such “fake reforms”.

“People are very aware of what’s happening: we’ve gotten to an important phase and can’t lose it all now,” he added.

Protesters have occupied Tahrir Square for more than a week, repeatedly defying an army order to clear the streets between midnight and 6:00 am.

The military on Saturday shortened that curfew to 2:00 am — 6:00 am, but many demonstrators planned to stay in the square overnight.

Buildings around the square are blanketed with the banners of young Iraqis who have died in the skirmishes with the riot police.

Over the past month, more than 250 people have been killed and thousands more wounded in the rallies.

The latest official toll was provided on Wednesday, but medical sources said at least nine demonstrators have been killed since.

Eight of them died around Tahrir, where clashes between riot police and security forces have escalated.

The ninth victim was killed by the security guards of a local politician in the southern city of Nasiriyah.

Rights group Amnesty International slammed Iraqi forces this week for using two types of military-grade tear gas canisters that have pierced protesters’ skulls and lungs.