Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Palestinian officials urged diplomats Tuesday to take action to prevent Israel from carrying out a demolition order against Palestinian homes in the Jerusalem area as a deadline related to it approached.

Diplomats from around 20 mostly European countries toured the area where the demolition orders have been given on the grounds the buildings are in a security zone near Israel's separation barrier cutting off the occupied West Bank.

The buildings, most of which are still under construction, are located south of occupied Jerusalem in the Sur Baher area.

Palestinians accuse Israel of using security as a pretext to force them out of the area as part of long-term efforts to expand settlements and roads linked them.

They also point out that most of the buildings are located in areas meant to be under Palestinian Authority civilian control under the Oslo accords.

"When the house is demolished, we will be in the streets," Ismail Abadiyeh, 42, who lives in one of the buildings under threat with his family, including four children, told the diplomats.

French consul general for occupied Jerusalem, Pierre Cochard, told journalists he did not think the security explanation provided by Israel was sufficient to move ahead with demolitions.

“I think it’s important to underline that we cannot deny their right,” Cochard said, referring to the families living in the homes. “They are here in Palestinian territory.”

Palestinian Governor of Jerusalem Adnan Gheith said “we are looking for serious actions from your governments to stop these continuous crimes.”

An Israeli high court ruling last month dismissed a petition by Palestinian residents requesting the cancellation of a military order prohibiting construction.

On June 18, residents received a 30-day notice from Israeli forces informing them of their intent to demolish the homes.

According to UN humanitarian affairs agency OCHA, the ruling affects 10 buildings already built or under construction, including around 70 apartments.

Some 17 people would be displaced and around 350 others affected, OCHA said.

Residents fear another 100 buildings in the area in a similar situation could be at risk in the near future.

Israel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Israeli forces regularly carry out demolitions of what they consider illegal construction by Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

It is extremely difficult for Palestinians to receive construction permits from Israeli forces in areas under their control, and Palestinians and rights activists say a housing shortage has resulted.

WASHINGTON — Key powers including backers of a rebel leader called Tuesday for a halt to fighting in Libya, warning that bloodshed was aggravating a crisis on multiple fronts.

The United States, France, Britain and Italy joined Egypt and the United Arab Emirates — two supporters, along with Saudi Arabia, of military strongman Khalifa Haftar — in voicing "deep concern" over the violence around the capital Tripoli.

The six powers "call for an immediate de-escalation and halt to the current fighting, and urge the prompt return to the UN-mediated political process," a joint statement said.

They warned that the fighting "has fuelled a growing humanitarian emergency," aggravating a crisis with migrants, and voiced fear that extremists would thrive in the security vacuum.

The countries "call on all parties to the Tripoli conflict to dissociate themselves from all such terrorists and individuals designated by the UN Sanctions Committee, and renew our commitment to see those responsible for further instability held accountable," they said.

Nearly 1,100 people have been killed in Haftar's months-long campaign to wrest control of Tripoli from the UN-recognised Government of National Accord.

While backing the government, Western powers earlier this year sent mixed signals, with US President Donald Trump praising Haftar in a phone call and France and Italy welcoming him on visits.

ANKARA — Turkey will "increase" its activities off Cyprus after the EU approved measures to punish Ankara for drilling operations in the eastern Mediterranean, the Turkish foreign minister said on Tuesday.

EU foreign ministers on Monday agreed measures including cutting 145.8 million euros ($164 million) in pre-accession financial funds to Turkey allocated for 2020.

The move came after Ankara repeatedly ignored warnings by the European Union and the United States to cease its drilling activities off Cyprus.

"If you take these kinds of decisions, we will increase our activities," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said during a televised press conference in the North Macedonian capital of Skopje.

Turkey has already sent three ships to drill for oil and gas off Cyprus, Cavusoglu said, adding: "God willing, we will send a fourth ship soon to the eastern Mediterranean."

Earlier on Tuesday, the foreign ministry said in a statement that the bloc's move would "in no way affect Turkey's determination to continue its hydrocarbon activities".

The ministry accused the EU of being “prejudiced and biased” over the lack of reference to Turkish Cypriots, “who have equal rights” over Cyprus’ natural resources.

Cyprus has been divided between the Republic of Cyprus — an EU member state — and a northern third under Turkish military control since 1974 after Turkey occupied the area in response to a coup sponsored by the Greek military junta.

The discovery of huge gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean has fuelled a race to tap the underwater resources, and ignited a dispute between Turkey and Cyprus.

Turkish officials have previously said the areas where the ships are located are either part of Turkey’s continental shelf or part of the territory of the island’s northern third.

Other EU measures taken against Ankara included halting high-level dialogue with Turkey and suspending talks over an aviation agreement.

The bloc’s foreign ministers also told the European Commission to keep working on possible financial sanctions targeting those involved in the drilling operations.

The Turkish ministry said the EU was engaging in “unconstructive behaviour” instead of “encouraging the two sides to come together with regard to the hydrocarbon resources”.

LONDON — Britain will send a third Royal Navy warship to the Gulf, the defence ministry announced Tuesday, while insisting that it did not "reflect an escalation" of tensions with Iran in the region.

Britain has already sent the HMS Duncan, an air defence destroyer, to cover for frigate HMS Montrose while it undergoes maintenance in nearby Bahrain, and will also send frigate HMS Kent "later this year".

Reports said it would head to the Gulf in mid-September.

HMS Montrose last week warned off three Iranian gunboats that UK officials said were trying to "impede" the progress of a British supertanker through the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.

The defence ministry said the HMS Kent would be “taking over” from HMS Duncan, but added that an “occasional overlap of ships when one deployment begins and another ends... is not uncommon”, suggesting that all three could be in the region at some point.

The ministry said the deployments were “long-planned” to ensure “an unbroken presence” in the crucial waterway and “do not reflect an escalation in the UK posture in the region”.

Iranian officials have denied last Wednesday’s incident in the Strait of Hormuz ever happened.

The British government has in any case raised the alert level for ships travelling through Iranian waters to three on a three-point scale, indicating a “critical” threat.

HMS Duncan is an air defence destroyer that carries a set of heavy Harpoon anti-ship missiles and has a company and crew in excess of 280.

Tensions have been escalating in the region for weeks, with US President Donald Trump last month calling off at the last minute an air strike on Iran over its downing of a US spy drone.

The Strait of Hormuz episode occurred a week after UK Royal Marines helped the Gibraltar authorities detain an Iranian tanker that US officials believe was trying to deliver oil to Syria in violation of separate sets of EU and US sanctions.

Iran has bristled at the arrest and issued a series of increasingly ominous warnings to both the United States and Britain about its right to take unspecified actions in reprisal.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt sought to ease tensions on Monday by saying the tanker would be released if Tehran guaranteed it was not heading to Syria.

BEIRUT/QAMISHI, Syria — Months after the territorial defeat of the Daesh group, Syria's Kurds are pushing for an international tribunal to try alleged militants detained in their region.

The Kurds run an autonomous administration in the northeast of Syria, but it is not recognised by Damascus or the international community. 

This brings complications for the legal footing of any justice mechanism on the Kurds' territory, and the international cooperation required to establish one. 

With Western nations largely reluctant to repatriate their nationals or judge them at home, could foreign Daesh suspects be put on trial in northeast Syria?

Why try them in Syria?

After years of fighting Daesh, Syria's Kurds hold around 1,000 foreign men in jail, as well as some 12,000 non-Syrian women and children in overcrowded camps. 

Almost four months after Kurdish-led forces backed by the US-led coalition seized Daesh’s last scrap of land in eastern Syria, few have been repatriated.

The Kurdish authorities say they are seriously exploring how to set up an international tribunal, and invited foreign experts to discuss the idea at a conference it hosted early this month.

“We will work to set up this tribunal here,” the region's top foreign affairs official Abdelkarim Omar told AFP afterwards.

“The topic of discussion now is how we will set up this tribunal and what form it will take,” he said.

Daesh in 2014 declared a “caliphate” in large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, implementing its brutal rule on millions.

The militants stand accused of crimes including mass killings and rape, and a UN probe is investigating alleged war crimes.

Mahmoud Patel, a South African international law expert invited to the July conference, said any court should include input from victims and survivors.

It should be “established in the region where the offences happened so that the people themselves can be part of that process”, he said, preferably in northeast Syria because the Kurds do not have the death penalty.

In Iraq, hundreds of people including foreigners have been condemned to death or life in prison.

In recent months, a Baghdad court has handed death sentences to 11 Frenchmen transferred from Syria to Iraq in speedy trials denounced by human rights groups.

How would it work?

Omar, the foreign affairs official, said he hoped for an international tribunal to try suspects “according to local laws after developing them to agree with international law”.

The Kurdish region has judges and courts, including one already trying Syrian Daesh suspects, but needs logistical and legal assistance, he said.

A tribunal would have “local judges and foreign judges, as well as international lawyers” to defend the accused, he said.

Nabil Boudi, a French lawyer representing four Frenchmen and several families held in Syria, said the Kurdish authorities seemed determined.

“They're already starting to collect evidence,” he said after attending the conference.

“All the people who were detained... had their own phone” and data can be retrieved from them, said the lawyer, who was however unable to see those he represents.

Boudi called for “a serious investigation by an independent examining magistrate... far less expeditious than in Baghdad”.

But Stephen Rapp, a former US envoy for war crimes issues, said the Kurdish region not being internationally recognised posed a key challenge.

“All of the previous hybrid courts have required the approval of the government of the state where the trials are conducted,” he said, referring to the examples of Sierra Leone and Cambodia.

Instead, the most realistic option to try foreigners would be a Kurdish court with "international assistance conditioned on compliance with international law", he said.

This could include advice from a non-governmental organisation specialised in working with non-state actors.

BRUSSELS — European foreign ministers held crisis talks Monday on saving the beleaguered Iran nuclear deal as Britain warned the "small window" for success was closing and Tehran issued fresh threats of restarting its atomic programme.

Tensions in the Gulf have soared since last year, when the United States pulled out of the 2015 deal and reimposed sanctions on Iran, hammering its economy and prompting Tehran to break limits on uranium enrichment and stockpiling.

The European Union is desperately trying to prevent the deal unravelling completely, seeing it as the best way to stop Tehran acquiring atomic weapons, and the issue was top of the agenda as ministers from the bloc met in Brussels.

But Iran piled fresh pressure on Europe, demanding concrete measures to give it relief from US sanctions and threatening to return its nuclear programme to where it was before the curbs imposed by the 2015 deal.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt — who held phone talks with his US and Iranian counterparts at the weekend — insisted "the deal isn't dead yet".

"Iran is still a good year away from developing a nuclear weapon. We think there is still some closing but small window to keep the deal alive," Hunt told reporters.

Britain, France and Germany — the three European parties to the deal — on Sunday issued a joint statement calling for dialogue to resolve the crisis.

Iran has repeatedly warned it could leave the deal unless the remaining parties bypass US sanctions to deliver the promised economic benefits and on Monday threatened to take its nuclear programme back to its pre-deal status.

“If the Europeans and the Americans don’t want to carry out their duties... we will decrease our commitments and... reverse the conditions to four years ago,” Iranian atomic energy agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said, quoted by IRNA state news agency.

The US has vowed to pursue its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, but Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell — lined up to be the next EU diplomatic chief — warned its strategy is only “strengthening the most radical” elements in the Islamic republic.

Current EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said the steps taken by Iran so far — including enriching uranium above the 3.67 per cent ceiling set by the deal — were reversible.

For now, none of the remaining parties have triggered the formal dispute mechanism, meaning that they did not regard Iran’s breaches up to now as “significant non-compliance” under the terms of the deal, Mogherini said.

Europe hopes to use a special trading mechanism called INSTEX to enable businesses to deal with Iran without using the US dollar or financial system, thereby helping the Iranian economy while avoiding Washington’s sanctions.

But the mechanism is complicated, no transactions have been finalised yet and it can for now only be used for humanitarian goods — food and pharmaceuticals, for example — though Mogherini said the shareholding countries were discussing extending it to Iran’s crucial oil sector.

The sweeping nature of the US measures has scared many major European businesses out of Iran despite Brussels’ insistence that American sanctions do not apply in Europe.

“Iran has taken bad decisions in response to the bad decision of the United States to pull out of the deal and reimpose sanctions, whose extraterritoriality strikes at the economic advantages the country got from the deal,” French Foreign Minister Jacques-Yves Le Drian said as he arrived in Brussels.

The Iranian foreign ministry warned in a statement that its compliance with the deal was “rooted in the principle of reciprocity” and demanded Europe come up with “practical, effective and responsible decisions”.

EU ministers insisted Iran must return to respecting its obligations under the deal in full, rejecting a suggestion by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani that both sides could reduce their commitments.

“This is a very, very serious situation. We must make it clear once again, in clear language, that there is only a chance if Iran commits itself unreservedly to what is contained in the treaty,” Germany’s Junior Foreign Minister Michael Roth told reporters.

But the Iranian foreign ministry statement branded the European expectations “unrealistic”, demanding a quid pro quo for undoing its recent breaches of the deal — including exceeding a 300-kilo limit on enriched uranium stockpiles.

The joint commission overseeing the accord, made up of representatives from the countries still in the deal — the Europeans plus China, Russia and Iran — will meet “very soon” to discuss Tehran’s breaches, Hunt said.

CAIRO — Egypt's parliament on Monday approved amendments to a controversial law that rights groups say imposes strict curbs on nongovernmental organisations.

The changes come after President Abdel Fattah El Sisi announced last November that the law needed to be more balanced.

"The house of representatives finally approved a number of important draft laws... including the bill regulating civil society's work," parliament said on its website.

Under the amendments, foreign organisations are prohibited from using their headquarters for "unauthorised activities", according to a version of the amended law in local media.

They are also barred from transferring or receiving funds from persons or entities, other than pre-determined sources, without official approval. 

The amendments eliminate jail terms but lay down fines of up to 1 million Egyptian pounds (more than $55,000), according to local media. 

Last week, 10 Egyptian rights groups including the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies rejected the amendments as still too restrictive.

"The majority of changes in the draft NGO law are deceptive and superficial," they said in a statement urging the international community to intervene.

Lawmaker Mohamed Abu Hamed, however, defended the amended version.

"The law... satisfies all the previous concerns raised by local and foreign civil society groups," the deputy told AFP.

He said local NGOs could receive foreign funding provided the authorities had been notified and the organisation did not violate any laws.

More than two-thirds of the 596-seat parliament approved the bill, with only six MPs rejecting it, local media said.

"The draft will be sent to the presidency for ratification," Abu Hamed said.

Foreign funding has been a contentious political issue since the 2011 revolution that toppled long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Last December, a court acquitted 43 NGO staff including Americans and Europeans accused of receiving illicit foreign funds to stir up unrest during the uprising.

Sisi has faced international condemnation for a crackdown on civil society groups since he took power in 2014, a year after the military toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Rights groups have regularly accused his government of human rights violations and repression of dissidents.

WASHINGTON — Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was heading on Monday to the United Nations after the United States issued him a visa but restricted his movements amid soaring tensions between the countries.

Weeks after the United States threatened sanctions against Zarif, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Washington agreed to let him enter but forbade him from moving beyond just six blocks of Iran's UN mission in Midtown Manhattan.

"US diplomats don't roam around Tehran, so we don't see any reason for Iranian diplomats to roam freely around New York City, either," Pompeo told The Washington Post.

"Foreign Minister Zarif, he uses the freedoms of the United States to come here and spread malign propaganda," he said.

The United States, as the host nation of the United Nations, has an agreement to issue visas promptly to foreign diplomats on UN business and only rarely declines.

Zarif is scheduled to speak on Wednesday at the UN Economic and Social Council, which is holding a high-level meeting on sustainable development.

A US-educated academic who speaks fluent English sprinkled with self-effacing humor, Zarif regularly uses his visits to the United Nations to take Iran's message to US media and think tanks.

His visit is the latest sign that President Donald Trump's administration appears to be retreating from its vow to slap sanctions on Zarif as part of its "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on June 24 that sanctions would come later that week.

Critics questioned the legal rationale for targeting Zarif and noted that sanctions would all but end the possibility of dialogue — which Trump has said is his goal.

Zarif said in an interview with The New York Times he would not be affected by sanctions as he owns no assets outside of Iran.

Trump last year left a denuclearisation accord negotiated by Zarif with six nations including the United States under former president Barack Obama and instead slapped sanctions, vowing to curb Iran's regional role.

Zarif's restrictions are unusually harsh. The United States generally bars diplomats of hostile nations from traveling outside a 40 kilometre radius of New York's Columbus Circle.