Region

TRIPOLI — The head of Libya's internationally recognised Government of National Accord announced on Sunday a new political initiative and elections in a bid to move the conflict-wracked country beyond eight years of chaos.

"I present today a political initiative for a way out of crisis... [involving] simultaneous presidential and legislative elections before the end of 2019," GNA head Fayez Al Sarraj said in a short speech broadcast by Libya Al Wataniya TV, without specifying a date for polls.

He proposed a forum that would be attended by "influential national forces on the political and social scene, and supporters of a peaceful and democratic solution" to Libya's crisis.

Sarraj's GNA holds Tripoli, but strongman Khalifa Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army holds the east and much of the south of the country. 

The LNA launched an offensive to take the capital in early April, but counter-attacks by forces loyal to the GNA have resulted in a stalemate on the southern outskirts. 

Sarraj said his proposed initiative would take place with support from the UN mission in Libya. 

“Our army and the forces which support it have given a lesson in bravery to [Haftar] and to his militias,” Sarraj said.

“His army has been broken, likewise that of his triumphalist entry to Tripoli that he presented as a two-day walk,” he added. 

The two camps have so far refused to negotiate a ceasefire. 

The GNA is demanding that Haftar’s forces retreat to their previous positions, in the south and east. 

“We are confident that our forces are capable of repulsing the aggressor and of him sending him back to where he came from... victory was our ally, thank God,” Sarraj said.

He alleged that Haftar is seeking to “undermine the democratic process... and to reestablish a totalitarian regime; that of an individual and a single family”.

Haftar meanwhile claims he is fighting “terrorists” and refuses to retreat. 

Fighting since April 4 has killed 653 people, including 41 civilians, while more than 3,500 have been wounded — more than a hundred of them civilians — according to the World Health Organisation. 

The UN says more than 94,000 have been displaced by the fighting.

Libya has been mired in chaos since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

MOGADISHU — A Somali journalists' association on Sunday slammed the actions of police who it said threatened to shoot reporters trying to access the scene of a car bombing near parliament, and warned of a "worsening situation" for the country's press. 

Police at a checkpoint near the site of Saturday's bombing in Mogadishu, which killed eight people and was claimed by the Al Shabaab group, stopped a group of reporters from international news groups, including Al Jazeera's Jama Nur Ahmed. 

"When the journalists tried to explain to the police about their reporting mission, a police officer fired two bullets [in the] air and then pointed his rifle on Jama Nur's head, according to Jama Nur Ahmed and two other colleagues," the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) said in a statement. 

Also in the group were journalists from Reuters, AFP and the Turkey's Anadolu news agency, followed by a second wave of reporters who were similarly denied access. 

"The journalists said the police officers told them they had orders restricting journalist coverage at the scenes of attacks and threatened that any journalist who tries to film will either be shot dead or his/her equipment will be broken resulting [in] the journalists to return back from the scene," said the SJS. 

It charged Somali police treat journalists "as criminals", preventing them from doing their work of reporting on events in the country. 

"This is a symptom of a worsening situation against journalists in Somalia."

It said that on May 14 police confiscated reporters' equipment, detained a cameraman, and beat up two others trying to report on another Mogadishu explosion. 

AFP has documented several incidents in recent months of journalists being intimidated and threatened and their equipment seized while trying to report on Al Shabaab attacks. 

The SJS called on the ministry of information, the commissioner of police and the office of the prime minister to open an investigation, "and take appropriate steps against those responsible". 

"We call the highest offices of the government including that of the office of the prime minister to intervene in order to for the journalists to report freely and accurately without fear," said the statement. 

DUBAI — Saudi Arabia called for swift action to secure Gulf energy supplies, after the United States blamed Iran for attacks on two oil tankers in a vital oil shipping route that have raised fears of broader confrontation in the region.

Thursday’s tanker attacks in the Gulf of Oman exacerbated the antagonistic fallout from similar blasts in May that crippled four vessels. Washington, already embroiled in a standoff with Iran over its nuclear programme, has blamed Tehran.

Iran has denied any role in the strikes on the tankers south of the Strait of Hormuz, a major transit route for oil from Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, and other Gulf producers.

Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al Falih said “there must be a rapid and decisive response to the threat” to energy supplies, market stability and consumer confidence after the attacks in the Gulf area, the Saudi energy ministry reported on Twitter.

The US military released a video on Thursday, saying it showed Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were behind the explosions that damaged the Norwegian-owned Front Altair and the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous.

“Iran did do it and you know they did it because you saw the boat,” US President Donald Trump told Fox News on Friday.

The United States has tightened sanctions on Iran since Washington withdrew from a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and global powers last year. Washington’s stated aim is to drive Iranian oil exports, the mainstay of its economy, to zero.

Tehran has said that if its oil exports were halted, it could block the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow channel of water separating Iran and Oman through which a fifth of the oil consumed globally passes.

Energy security

Oil prices have climbed 3.4 per cent since Thursday’s attacks. Ship insurers said insurance costs for ships sailing through the Middle East have jumped by at least 10%.

“The kingdom is committed to ensuring stability of global oil markets,” the Saudi energy minister said in Japan at a meeting of energy ministers from the G-20 group of nations.

Japanese Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko said ministers agreed on the need to “work together to deal with the recent incidents from (an) energy security point of view”.

Trump, who pulled the United States out of the nuclear deal under which world powers agreed to ease international sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on Tehran’s nuclear work, said any move to close the Strait of Hormuz would not last long.

He also said he was open to holding talks with Iran, although Tehran said it had no plans to negotiate with the United States unless it reversed a decision on the nuclear deal.

Tehran and Washington have both said they have no interest in a war. But this has done little to assuage concerns that the archfoes could stumble into conflict.

A US official told Reuters a surface-to-air missile was fired from Iranian territory on Thursday morning at a US drone that was near Front Altair following the attack on the tanker. The missile did not hit the drone, the official said.

US Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan said the United States was “planning various contingencies” when asked if more military forces would be sent to the area, but added that the focus was on building an international consensus.

“We also need to broaden our support for this international situation,” he told reporters.

Restraint

As well as blaming Iran for the tanker attacks, Washington has also said Tehran was behind May 14 drone strikes on two Saudi oil-pumping stations. Tehran has denied all those charges.

Britain has backed the United States in blaming Iran for the tanker attacks, saying no other state or non-state actor could have been responsible.

But others have urged caution. Germany said the video was not enough to prove Iran’s role, while UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for an independent investigation to determine responsibility.

China and the European Union called for restraint.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani renewed Iran’s threat to continue scaling back compliance with the nuclear deal unless other signatories to the pact show “positive signals”.

He did not specify what Iran wanted in his comments to a meeting of Asian leaders in Tajikistan.

France and other European signatories to the nuclear deal, have said they wanted to save the accord, but many of their companies have canceled deals with Tehran, under pressure from the United States.

KHARTOUM — Ousted Sudanese leader Omar Al Bashir is to appear in court next week to face charges of corruption and illegal possession of foreign currency, the acting prosecutor general announced on Saturday.

The announcement came more than two months after the military overthrew Bashir following mass nationwide protests against his 30-year iron-fisted rule.

Bashir "will appear in court next week following charges of corruption and possessing foreign currency", Al Waleed Sayyed Ahmed told reporters, without specifying the day.

On Thursday, an unnamed official quoted by the official SUNA news agency said Bashir was facing charges including "possessing foreign funds, acquiring suspected and illegal wealth, and ordering the [state of] emergency".

In April, Sudan's army ruler General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan said more than $113 million worth of cash in three currencies had been seized from Bashir's residence.

He said a team of police, army and security agents found seven million euros ($7.8 million), $350,000 and five billion Sudanese pounds ($105 million). 

When he imposed the state of emergency, Bashir issued a decree making it illegal to possess more than $5,000 in foreign currency.

Bashir, who was toppled on April 11 following months of protests and is currently being held in the capital's Kober prison, swept to power in an Islamist-backed coup in 1989. 

Sudan suffered high rates of corruption during his rule, ranking 172 out of 180 countries in Transparency International's 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index.

Last month, Ahmed ordered Bashir questioned over money-laundering and "financing terrorism".

In an effort to quell protests that erupted against his rule in December, Bashir imposed a nationwide state of emergency on February 22.

In May, the prosecutor general said Bashir had been charged over the killings of protesters during the anti-regime demonstrations, which eventually led to his ouster.

Ahmed also said on Saturday that 41 other charges against “symbols of the ousted regime” were under investigation. 

He did not name the others accused but said most of the charges were over the “possession of land”.

Protests against Bashir’s rule initially erupted on December 19 after his then government tripled the price of bread.

He was ousted by the army after thousands of demonstrators launched a sit-in outside the military headquarters in central Khartoum from April 6.

But army generals have resisted protesters’ demands to hand power to a civilian administration.

The protesters kept up their sit-in even as protest leaders held several rounds of talks with the generals on installing civilian rule.

But talks broke down in May over who would lead a new overall governing body — a civilian or soldier.

And on June 3, armed men in military fatigues launched a crackdown on demonstrators camped outside the army complex that left dozens of people dead and hundreds wounded.

Protesters and witnesses accuse a feared paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, of carrying out the assault on demonstrators.

General Shamseddine Kabbashi, spokesman of the ruling military council, has said the findings of a probe into the deaths would be released on Saturday.

RSF commander General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo defended his force at a rally Saturday in a village on the outskirts of Khartoum.

“Our image as Rapid Support Forces has been distorted,” said Dagalo, who is also the deputy chief of the ruling military council.

“But we will not talk about it [the June 3 crackdown] until the findings of the report come out,” he said as a crowd of supporters cheered.

On Thursday, the ruling military council acknowledged the dispersal of the sit-in.

Kabbashi has said the initial plan was to clear an area called Colombia near the sit-in but then “we regret what happened”.

Doctors linked to the protest movement say about 120 people have been killed in Khartoum since the crackdown, while the health ministry says 61 people died nationwide on June 3.

TRIPOLI — France’s Total and other foreign firms have started to renew their business licences with Libya’s internationally recognised government to keep operating in the country, the Tripoli-based economy minister told Reuters.

The comments by Ali Abdulaziz Issawi could appease Western concerns the Tripoli government will try to suspend oil and other firms as it fights for survival against an offensive by the eastern military forces of Khalifa Haftar.

In May, the economy ministry suspended Total and 39 other foreign firms, saying their licences had expired, before granting a grace period of three months to seek new ones.

Some diplomats and analysts saw the move as political pressure aimed at shoring up support abroad against an assault by Haftar’s Libya National Army (LNA), which has been trying for more than two months to take the capital Tripoli.

Issawi denied a political motive, saying some firms had operated without a licence for a long time.

“There are companies working now on renewing their licences in Libya,” he said, adding Total was among them.

He added that if a licence did not get renewed, “there are several oil companies to take [over] the oilfields in 24 hours. There is a lot of competition.”

Other firms required to renew their licences include French aerospace firm Thales, German engineering firm Siemens, telecoms equipment firm Alcatel-Lucent, now owned by Finland’s Nokia, and Microsoft. Total is most exposed, with oil operations on the ground.

Issawi also said Libya’s oil production was around 1.25 million barrels a day, in line with previously reported levels.

Libya has been riven by conflict since the fall of Muammar Qadhafi in 2011, with the country now broadly split between eastern-based forces under Haftar and the UN-backed government in Tripoli, in the west, under Prime Minister Fayez Al Sarraj.