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TUNIS — Tunisia's new President Kais Saied vowed Wednesday to defend women's rights, reunite the country and restore trust in its leaders as the political outsider outlined his agenda following a surprise election victory.

Saied, a conservative academic with no previous political experience who won the overwhelming support of younger voters in an October 13 runoff, was sworn in before members of the constituent assembly and other top state bodies.

He thanked all Tunisians for delivering "this historic moment", after handily winning over his controversial opponent, businessman Nabil Karoui, in an election that reshaped the country's post-revolution political landscape.

Tunisians, he said, "needed a new relationship based on trust with their politicians and those in power".

After sweeping 72.71 per cent of the vote in this month's runoff, Saied has won a clear mandate to fight corruption and promote social justice, even though his role focuses on security and diplomacy.

The poll followed the death in July of Beji Caid Essebsi, Tunisia's first president freely elected by universal suffrage.

'Reuniting' all Tunisians 

A constitutional law professor whose rigid and austere demeanour earned him the nickname "Robocop", Saied vowed as president to "reunite" all Tunisians.

Despite having spearheaded the Arab Spring revolt that ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011 and gaining unprecedented freedoms along the way, Tunisians have been bitterly divided between old political classes and Islamist forces.

Saied said his countrymen were "free in their beliefs and choices" but stressed the state must be immune from "political calculations".

"The people [Tunisians] have waited for so long...wanting to move from despair to hope", he added.

Honing his main talking points that distinguished him in the electoral race, Saied promised to uphold the rule of law.

He also reassured the chamber that “women’s rights would not be diminished”, which received a rousing round of applause from a packed parliament.

He went on to stress that he would “strengthen the rights of the Tunisian woman, especially her socio-economic rights”.

Saeid has previously rejected a bid to overhaul Tunisia’s inheritance law — which remains based on Islamic law, meaning that women inherit half of their male siblings’ part.

‘Will of the people’ 

An international novice with no real foreign policy experience, he emphasised Tunisia’s respect for “various international agreements but also to revise them according to the interest and will of the people”.

The professor who up until his swearing-in Wednesday lived in a middle-class Tunis neighbourhood will now be moving to the presidential palace in Carthage.

Tunis, which currently chairs the Arab League, could renew diplomatic ties with Syria, severed since 2012, and play a role in the return of the war-torn country to the bloc.

He has made strong statements against Israel, considering any ties with the Jewish state to be “high treason” — an Arab nationalist position that earned him praise among supporters.

While the security situation has significantly improved since a series of high-profile attacks on tourists in 2015, Tunisia has maintained a state of emergency for four years, with assaults against security forces persisting.

On June 27, a suicide attack killed two people in the heart of the capital Tunis, reviving the spectre of violence.

During the campaign debate, Saied said a key to fighting terrorism was education, arguing that improving primary education would “immunise” youth against extremism.

Another significant task he will face is reforming the police force, which was a cog in the dictatorship toppled by the Arab Spring revolt of 2011 and which continues to be accused of human rights abuses.

QAMISHLI, Syria — Russian forces in Syria headed for the border with Turkey Wednesday to ensure Kurdish fighters pull back after a deal between Moscow and Ankara wrested control of the Kurds' entire heartland.

Kurdish forces, who previously controlled nearly a third of Syria, have lost almost everything after Turkey secured the right to remain fully deployed in an area that was the main target of a two-week-old offensive.

The agreement Tuesday in Sochi also requires Kurdish fighters to pull back to a line 30 kilometres from the border along its entire length, forcing them to relinquish control of some of their main towns.

US President Donald Trump called the agreement a "big success".

The deal — hailed as "historic" by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — quashes the Kurdish minority's dreams of a semi-autonomous region and makes way for the absorption of their forces into the Syrian Army.

Erdogan vowed that Turkey would take "the necessary steps" if promises to push Kurdish fighters away from the border were not kept.

On Wednesday, the defence ministry in Moscow said a convoy of Russian military police had crossed the Euphrates River and "advanced towards the Syrian-Turkish border".

Russian military police and Syrian border guards are to "facilitate the removal" of Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters and their weapons from within 30 kilometres of the Turkish-Syrian border, as per the Sochi deal.

This withdrawal must be finalised within 150 hours.

'Kill, displace 

and occupy' 

Russian and Turkish patrols will then start in two zones stretching 10 kilometres to the east and west of Turkey's safe zone, which is about 120 kilometres long and 32 kilometres deep.

This will allow Turkey to patrol with Russia in areas inside Syria that were not part of its offensive.

An AFP correspondant near the border town of Kobane saw several military vehicles bearing the Russian flag entering the area on Wednesday.

News agency RIA Novosti quoted the Russian defence ministry as saying military police had met with officials there and were due to start patrolling.

In the Kurdish-controlled city of Qamishli — excluded from the Sochi agreement — hundreds demonstrated against the deal on Wednesday, saying it amounted to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

“This deal serves the interests of foreign powers and not the interests of the people,” said Talaat Youndes, an official with the Kurdish administration.

“Turkey’s objective is to kill, displace and occupy the Kurds,” he said, as protesters waved flags and chanted slogans against Ankara’s invading force.

Turkey’s October 9 assault was made possible by a pullback of US troops deployed along the border as a buffer force between their NATO ally Turkey and the Kurdish fighters of the SDF.

The withdrawal by their erstwhile ally left the Kurds completely in the lurch, forcing them to turn to the Syrian government for protection from an expanded Turkish offensive.

‘Separatist designs’ 

The Syrian army rushed north within days, ostensibly to pin back Turkish-backed insurgents, but also to reclaim control of swathes of territory.

The Kremlin on Wednesday accused Washington of betraying the Kurds by withdrawing its forces and leaving allies alone in the face of a Turkish offensive.

“The US were the closest allies for the Kurds for several years. In the end the US abandoned the Kurds, effectively betraying them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.

Meanwhile, Pentagon chief Mark Esper arrived in Baghdad for talks with his Iraqi counterpart Najah al-Shammari as Washington pulled out its remaining troops from northern Syria through Iraq.

Despite being on the opposite sides of the Syria conflict, Turkey and Russia have been working together to find a solution to the war.

Tuesday’s agreement said the two countries were determined “to combat terrorism in all forms... and to disrupt separatist agendas in Syrian territory”.

The deal said efforts would also be launched for the return of refugees to Syria “in a safe and voluntary manner”.

Ankara has said some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey can be re-housed inside the safe zone.

ALGIERS — The head of an Algerian political party that was part of the ruling coalition under former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Wednesday became the first candidate to register for presidential polls.

Azzedine Mihoubi, leader of the Democratic National Rally Party (RND), submitted his candidacy for the December 12 vote to the National Independent Elections Authority, recently formed to oversee the vote.

A minister of culture in three governments under Bouteflika from 2015 to 2019, Mihoubi assumed leadership of the RND in July after its former head was arrested in a corruption probe.

The mass protest movement that forced Bouteflika's resignation in April has rejected moves, backed by the army, to hold the poll in December.

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

Observers are predicting a weak turnout.

Mihoubi acknowledged the challenge in a statement as he submitted his candidacy along with the required 50,000 signatures endorsing him.

"The most important thing for us is not to convince people to give their signature but to participate in this vote, which remains the only solution to this crisis," he said.

The Hirak protest movement was formed in February to demand that Bouteflika resign instead of running for a fifth term. It has demanded transitional institutions to replace Algeria's entire system of government, in place since independence from France in 1962.

Authorities have rejected these demands, but protests continue.

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.

Bensalah, also an RND member, was speaker of the Upper House for 17 years under Bouteflika.

The RND was founded in 1997 and for 20 years was the main ally of Bouteflika's National Liberation Front.

The RND supported Bouteflika's candidacy for a fifth term, despite him suffering a debilitating stroke in 2013, but his candidacy prompted massive protests that led to his departure.

Until recently, the RND was led by Ahmed Ouyahia, an unpopular three time former prime minister under Bouteflika who was arrested in June in a graft investigation.

Mihoubi's nomination prompted a flood of negative comments online.

Five other candidates have made appointments to submit their candidacy to the elections authority, spokesman Ali Draa told AFP.

Local media reports indicate that they include two former Bouteflika era prime ministers, Ali Benflis and Abdelmadjid Tebboune.

The deadline for submitting applications is Saturday at midnight (23:00 GMT).

BEIRUT — Tens of thousands of Lebanese protesters kept the country on lockdown on Tuesday, rallying for a sixth consecutive day to demand new leaders despite the government's adoption of an emergency economic rescue plan.

Demonstrations initially sparked by a proposed tax on WhatsApp and other messaging apps quickly grew into an unprecedented cross-sectarian street mobilisation against the political class.

The movement has spread to all major cities and into Lebanon's vast diaspora.

The Cabinet was spurred into passing wide-ranging economic reforms on Monday, but the move failed to win over protesters, who now seem bent on removing the entire political elite, which they see as corrupt.

Tuesday's protests initially seemed smaller than on previous days, but they swelled in the afternoon, with thousands gathering in central Beirut.

Protester Abdel Amir Ramadan, a 73-year-old from Beirut's southern suburbs, lamented the state of the country.

"Lebanon used to be the Paris of the Middle East. Now it's the dumping ground of the Middle East," he said.

He was unconvinced by the government's rescue plan, announced on Monday by Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

"They have been in power for years, why did they just wake up to these reforms now?" Ramadan asked.

"Today, the decisions are not in their hands. They are in the hands of the people."

Among the measures were a 2020 budget meant to bring the deficit down to 0.63 per cent of GDP, without new taxes, along with a privatisation programme and projects to support the underprivileged.

The agreed reforms will also halve the salaries of current and former lawmakers and ministers.

'Let the banks pay' 

A couple of dozen demonstrators shouted slogans in front of the central bank on Tuesday, despite the premier's announcement.

"Down with the rule of the central bank. We won't pay the taxes. Let the banks pay them," they chanted.

Heiko Wimmen, analyst with the International Crisis Group, said it appeared Monday’s measures were not enough.

“These mostly technical solutions may put the country on a sounder fiscal footing, but they appear inadequate to the challenge of the protests, which now demand broader, systemic change,” he said.

The country’s main parties, including those of President Michel Aoun and the Shiite movement Hizbollah, have warned of a political vacuum and supported the reform package.

Hariri met top ambassadors in Beirut Tuesday, hoping to restore confidence that Lebanon can handle its ballooning debt and unlock a huge aid package approved in Paris last year.

“We believe, after the announcement of the decisions of the Cabinet yesterday, that we’re going to get very positive reactions” from the international community, senior government adviser Nadim Munla told reporters.

Lebanon’s economy has been sliding closer to the abyss in recent months, with public debt soaring past 150 per cent of GDP and ratings agencies grading Lebanese sovereign bonds as “junk”.

Fears of a default have compounded the worries of Lebanese citizens exasperated by the poor quality of public services.

Residents suffer daily electricity shortages and unclean water.

‘Only chance’ 

On Tuesday morning, the Lebanese army was trying to reopen a number of major roads that have been blocked by demonstrators for days, the state-run National News Agency reported.

In Beirut, volunteers cleaned up streets after euphoric crowds partied deep into the night on Monday, dancing to impromptu concerts and DJ sets.

It is unclear how long protests will last, but banks said they would remain closed on Wednesday, having shuttered last week as the demonstrations gained momentum.

Given the size of the gatherings, the six-day-old mobilisation has been remarkably incident-free, with armies of volunteers providing water to protesters and organising first aid tents.

Hariri seemed aware that the measures he announced would not quench the people’s thirst for change, telling protestors on Monday the plan was not simply a “trade-off” to get people off the streets.

Lebanon fought a devastating 15-year civil war that ended in 1990 and many of the country’s politicians today were formerly warlords fighting along sectarian lines in the conflict.

Outside of Lebanon, expats in Europe, the United States and Africa staged sit-ins and demonstrations in solidarity.

In Beirut, Mounir Malaaeb, an elderly man from the southern city of Tyre who came to the capital to join the rallies, said the protest movement was “the only chance the people have”.

“If we give the government another chance, we would be crazy,” he said. “We have been giving them chances since the 1990s.”

QAMISHLI, Syria — Syria's Kurds have withdrawn all their forces from a strip of land bordering Turkey in compliance with a US-brokered truce deal to stem a Turkish assault, a top Kurdish official said Tuesday.

"We have fully complied with the conditions of the ceasefire agreement," Redur Khalil told AFP just hours before a deadline.

"We have withdrawn all our military and security forces from the area of military operations from Ras Al Ain in the east to Tall Abyad in the west," he said.

Turkey and its Syrian proxies on October 9 launched a cross-border attack against Kurdish fighters in northeastern Syria after an announced US military pullout.

Turkey wants to set up a buffer zone on Syrian soil along the length of its southern frontier, to keep Kurdish forces it views as "terrorists" at bay.

A US-brokered truce agreement announced on Thursday requires Kurdish forces to withdraw from the area by late Tuesday.

"We have renewed the separation lines between us and the Turks east of Ras Al Ain on one side and west of Tall Abyad on the other," Khalil said.

A US official said earlier that the head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces had also told Washington his forces had fully withdrawn.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed “a historic agreement” with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin after hours of talks between the two leaders over the conflict in Syria.

“According to this agreement, Turkey and Russia will not allow any separatist agenda on Syrian territory,” Erdogan said, addressing reporters alongside Putin after the talks in the Russian city of Sochi.

Erdogan also announced a 150-hour deadline beginning on Wednesday for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters and their weapons to be moved back 30 kilometres from the Turkish border.

“Within 150 hours starting at 1200 noon on October 23, YPG terrorists and their weapons will be removed to the depth of 30 kilometres and their ... positions will be destroyed,” Erdogan said.

He added that after the deadline, Turkish and Russian joint patrols would start in two zones stretching 10 km to the east and west of the area of Turkey’s current Operation Peace Spring.

“All YPG terrorists in Tal Firat and Manbij will be removed outside this region, together with their weaponry,” he said.

Erdogan also said both countries would take necessary measures against “terrorist infiltrations” and create a “joint mechanism” to coordinate the agreement.President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday said the Syrian army would support Kurdish fighters in the northeast of the war-torn country against Turkish soldiers and their proxies.

“We are prepared to support any group carrying out popular resistance against the Turkish aggression,” he said in a video shared by the presidency.

“This is not a political decision... We are not taking any political decisions now,” he told Syrian troops on the frontline in the province of Idlib.

“It is a constitutional duty and a national duty,” he said.