World

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged on Thursday to cooperate to confront the North Korean nuclear threat while working to narrow persistent differences over cyber security, human rights and maritime conflicts.

Obama, opening a global nuclear security summit near the White House, also joined leaders of Japan and South Korea in calling for further joint steps to deter North Korea. The display of diplomatic unity came as world leaders sought to ramp up pressure on the insular country's government following worrisome nuclear provocations.

"President Xi and I are both committed to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula," Obama said as he and Xi sat down for a meeting on the sidelines of the summit. "We're going to discuss how we can discourage actions like nuclear missile tests that escalate tensions and violate international obligations."

The US has long urged China, the North's traditional ally, to take a more forceful role in pressing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. The Obama administration was encouraged by China's role in passing new stringent UN sanctions punishing the North, and was urging Beijing to implement those sanctions dutifully.

Yet in a nod to deep tensions between the US and China, Obama said he planned to raise thornier issues during their meeting as well — including the disputed South China Sea, where China is asserting territorial claims despite competing claims by its neighbours. Parroting careful diplomatic language long-preferred by Beijing, Obama said the US welcomes China's peaceful rise to prosperity.

"I very much appreciate President Xi's willingness to have conversations on these issues in a constructive way," Obama said.

Xi, addressing reporters through a translator, said the two economic powers would keep deepening ties on trade, law enforcement and climate change. He said the US and China must work together promote peace in light of the rising global terror threat.

"China and the US have a responsibility to work together," Xi said. As for their "disputes and disagreements", the Chinese leader said the two sides could "seek active solutions through dialogue and consultation”.

Long at odds over human rights, the US and China in recent years have sparred regularly over China's move to building artificial islands and military facilities in the disputed South China Sea. Japan and South Korea are similarly alarmed about China's territorial designs on the East China Sea.

Tensions appear set to intensify with an upcoming ruling from an international tribunal that could challenge the legal basis of some of Beijing's sweeping territorial claims. China accuses the US of stoking tensions by sending military ships and planes through the South China Sea on freedom of navigation maneuvers.

Still, it was concerns about North Korea's recent nuclear test and rocket launch drove the agenda on the first day of the two-day summit, Obama's last major chance to focus global attention on disparate nuclear security threats before his presidency ends early next year.

In a rare joint meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Obama said the US was united with its allies because "we recognise that our security is linked". All three leaders urged the world community to stand firmly behind the sanctions.

Park, whose country has been repeatedly threatened by Pyongyang, warned North Korea that the global community "will by no means" condone its provocations. In recent weeks, North Korea has warned it could strike South Korea's presidential palace or even the US mainland, and its propaganda outlet posted a video depicting a nuclear attack on Washington.

"Should it choose to undertake yet another provocation, it is certain to find itself facing even tougher sanctions and isolation," Park said of Pyongyang.

Though leaders spent much of Thursday focused on North Korea, the overriding focus of this year's summit centred on the Daesh terror group and other extremists who security officials warn could someday get their hands on nuclear materials.

As the summit opened, the US said a strengthened nuclear security agreement among nations was finally set to take force following ratification by a critical mass of countries. The stricter rules include new criminal penalties for smuggling nuclear material and expanded requirements for securing materials and nuclear facilities worldwide, and are intended to reduce the likelihood of terrorists getting their hands on ingredients for a bomb.

Obama also planned to meet Thursday with French President Francois Hollande, amid steep concerns about terrorism in Europe following Daesh-linked attacks in Paris and Brussels. The summit continues on Friday with a special session focused on preventing Daesh and other extremists from obtaining nuclear materials and attacking urban areas.

ATHENS — Greek authorities on Thursday began bussing hundreds of migrants and refugees to accommodation in other parts of Greece from a port near Athens, where they have spent weeks sleeping in the open in filthy conditions.

Nearly 6,000 people, most from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have been stuck at the port of Piraeus and tensions have increasingly flared over food and phone chargers. Piraeus is about 12km from central Athens.

The 6,000 people in Piraeus are among at least 51,000 refugees and migrants trapped in Greece after Balkan countries shut their borders last month, preventing them from moving on to wealthier northern Europe where they hope to start a new life.

By mid-morning, at least four buses had departed Piraeus for the port town of Kyllini in western Greece, some 280km from Athens, where they will be housed in a former tourist complex. Families gathered at the dock as more buses were expected to be deployed.

Other buses left for the cities of Ioannina and Larissa in northwestern and central Greece.

Ahmad Alakk, 23, an engineering student from Homs in Syria who has been stuck in Piraeus for 10 days, said police appeared only to allow Syrians to board the buses.

"They told us that here [in Piraeus] there are no services, no shower, nothing. [But we are] afraid to move to a place we don't know. We heard it's like a prison there, it's far away from everything," he said.

"But we understand that here it's a port. This place is for tourists, not us," he added.

Many tourists arriving in Athens head for the Greek islands from Piraeus.

‘A decent place’

Under a deal the European Union reached with Turkey last month, migrants who arrive in Greece from Turkey after March 20 are held in camps and are subject to being sent back to Turkey once their asylum claims have been processed.

The people now being moved from Piraeus arrived in Greece before the March 20 cut-off date.

Many migrants have been reluctant to leave Piraeus for fear that they will end up much further from the border between Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in case it reopens.

"I believe the first group to go to Kyllini will relay the message to the rest that it's a decent place, and we won't have a problem moving [more] people there," George Kyritsis, a government spokesman, told Greek TV.

Scuffles have broken out at the port, where people live in tents or on blankets in the open, with poor sanitation and little food.

Windows were smashed and eight people were injured in clashes between groups of Syrians and Afghans on Wednesday night, the government said.

Under the EU's deal with Ankara, for every Syrian sent back to Turkey from Greece, one Syrian will be resettled directly to Europe from Turkey.

The returns are set to begin on April 4 but neither side is fully ready, with officials scrambling to be able to make at least a symbolic start as new arrivals rise with the advent of warmer weather in the Aegean.

The Greek parliament is expected to vote on Friday on a bill to facilitate the implementation of the EU-Turkey deal.

WASHINGTON — The specter of the Daesh terro group obtaining a "dirty bomb" will loom over a top-level nuclear security summit hosted by President Barack Obama in Washington on Thursday and Friday.

Obama welcomes several leaders from countries as diverse as China and Nigeria, as well as representatives from nearly 50 other nations, for the summit aimed at elevating the problem of shaky safeguards from the desks of technocrats to the highest corridors of power.

The meeting comes just days after 32 people were killed and 340 were injured in bombings at Brussels airport and the Belgian capital's metro.

The attacks featured conventional explosives, but two of the suicide bombers — Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui — have been linked to possible efforts by Daesh to secure fissile material.

Late last year, Belgian police investigating the November 13 Paris terror attacks found 10 hours of video surveillance detailing the comings and goings of a senior Belgian nuclear official.

Belgian media have since reported that the brothers were linked to the surveillance.

The incident has only heightened existing concerns about Daesh efforts to get nuclear material.

"Having a portion of the discussion that is focused on counter-ISIL [counter-Daesh] is a decision that was made in January," said Laura Holgate, the National Security Council's senior director for weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and threat reduction. "But it turns out that it is obviously very timely, unfortunately.

"The video footage is of concern," she said, adding, with regard to the Belgian case, that the United States does not "have any information that a broader plot exists”.

But groups like Daesh  have long shown their interest in obtaining nuclear material.

"We've seen over the years that different terrorist organisations have ambitions related to acquiring nuclear materials," said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. 

"We've seen that in their public statements, we've seen that in some cases in their monitoring of nuclear facilities," he added.

"That's why the summit process is so important, because different countries have different levels of security at their facilities or in terms of how they are handling nuclear materials."

Dirty bomb 

Obama personally launched the first head of government-level nuclear security summit in Washington in 2010, after describing nuclear terrorism as the "most immediate and extreme threat to global security".

Subsequent meetings in South Korea and the Netherlands have focused on securing stockpiles, reducing highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium, smuggling detection and cybersecurity.

Few believe Daesh could develop an atomic bomb, but many fear it could acquire uranium or plutonium and construct a "dirty bomb".

Such a device would not trigger a nuclear explosion but would scatter radioactive material — with potentially devastating physiological, medical and economic effects.

Nuclear material can be found in small quantities at universities, hospitals and other facilities the world over, often not well secured.

Since the mid-1990s, almost 2,800 incidents of illicit trafficking, "unauthorised possession" or loss of nuclear materials have been recorded in an International Atomic Energy Agency database.

A US government audit late last year found that Obama's goal of improving the physical protection of more than 43 sensitive buildings and making 34 foreign reactors more "proliferation-resistant" had fallen short.

The International Panel on Fissile Materials, an independent group of arms-control experts, estimated that the global stockpile of highly enriched uranium stood at around 1370 tonnes at the end of 2014.

Most was held in Russia.

Lame duck? 

More than 50 heads of state have been invited to attend the summit, but the absence of leaders from Russia, North Korea, Iran and Belarus virtually ensures gaps in the united front.

Rhodes said Russia's decision not to attend at the highest level was a missed opportunity for Moscow, which itself faces significant threats of its own.

Obama leaves office in less than a year, raising questions about whether the initiative will continue without his personal involvement.

"World leaders face a stark choice at the final nuclear security summit later this month: will they commit to continuous improvement, or will nuclear security efforts stall and potentially decline?" said experts at the respected Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

"Their answer will shape the chances that terrorist groups, including the Daesh, could get their hands on the materials they need to build a crude nuclear bomb."

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the administration hopes Obama's successor will take up the mantle.

"I certainly hope that the incoming president would understand that safeguarding loose nuclear materials around the globe is a top national security priority of the United States," he said.

PARIS — President Francois Hollande on Wednesday abandoned plans to strip French nationality from people convicted of terrorism, climbing down from a tough stance he took days after the November attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.

Although a proposal popular with voters, and one that gave the socialist president an opportunity to reach out to the right, the constitutional reform failed to find the necessary support of both houses of parliament.

Hollande also abandoned a proposal to insert into the constitution a set of rules governing a state of emergency, blaming the opposition for torpedoeing his plans, even though some members of his own party had opposed them too.

"Parts of the opposition have been hostile to a revision of the constitution. I deplore this attitude," Hollande said after a weekly Cabinet meeting. "I have decided to end this debate."

The climbdown is likely to further damage Hollande's already low chances of re-election in 2017, said Frederic Dabi at the pollster Ifop.

"It's going to revive the perception of a president who is not determined, who lacks authority, whose hand is shaking," Dabi said.

"It also reinforces the feeling of a term during which reforms have dragged on, got bogged down."

A poll by Ipsos-Sopra Steria for Le Monde newspaper, conducted before Wednesday's announcement but published on the same day, showed Hollande would get 16 per cent of the vote in the first round of elections, down four points from a month ago.

That would put him in third place and out of the contest should he be standing against Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front on 27 per cent, and Nicolas Sarkozy of the mainstream right on 21 per cent.

The passport initiative hit a big snag last week after the opposition-controlled upper house of parliament approved a different version from the one adopted by the Socialist-controlled lower house.

To change the constitution, the proposal needed to be approved by each house in exactly the same terms.

While the government's version was meant to apply to any French person, the senate sought to address the fact that stateless persons cannot be expelled from the country, by restricting the law to those with dual nationality.

Critics say that would have created two categories of French citizens — those that could have their citizenship revoked and those that could not — something that they said could fuel racial tensions.

Putting forward his plan three days after the shootings and bombings of November 13, Hollande won a standing ovation at a rare joint meeting of both houses in the Palace of Versailles.

But after the shock of the attacks began to fade, many on the left of the ruling Socialist Party criticised the measure.

The most spectacular consequence of the rift within the party was the resignation of Hollande's justice minister, Christiane Taubira.

"The president is being dealt a blow by his own political friends," a former prime minister and conservative senator, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said on iTele. "The president's authority over his own troops is being challenged."

ISTANBUL/ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Barack Obama will hold informal talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington this week, the White House said on Tuesday, dismissing suggestions that the lack of a formal meeting represented a snub to Ankara.

Erdogan will be among more than 50 world leaders attending a Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on Thursday and Friday, during which time he is due to have a formal meeting with Vice President Joe Biden.

There had been intense speculation in the Turkish media over whether Obama would meet Erdogan, with some suggesting a failure to do so would mark a deliberate US snub amid differences over Syria and Washington's concerns over the direction of Turkey's domestic policies.

At a news conference in Istanbul before leaving for the United States earlier on Tuesday, Erdogan said a meeting with Obama at the nuclear summit was planned, although he said he did not know how long it would last.

Biden's office later said the vice president would host Erdogan for a meeting on Thursday in Washington.

"I would expect that over the course of the visit, the president will have an opportunity at some point to have at least an informal discussion with President Erdogan," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters traveling with Obama.

Earnest said the lack of a formal meeting should not be interpreted as a snub, noting Biden's planned meeting with Erdogan as well as the large number of foreign leaders due to attend the summit.

"There obviously is a lot of important work to do with our allies in Turkey ... It also includes continuing to intensify our coordination on key aspects of our counter-ISIL [counter-Daesh] strategy, including ramped-up efforts to secure the Turkey-Syria border," he said.

Turkey, a NATO member, is part of the US-led coalition fighting the Daesh terror group in Syria and Iraq.

Though allies, Washington and Ankara are sharply divided over a Kurdish militia in northern Syria. The militia has enjoyed US military support but Turkey, which has a large ethnic Kurdish minority in its conflict-riven southeast region, sees it as a threat to its own national security.

One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged there were strains between the United States and Turkey on a range of issues, but added that Washington regards Ankara's assistance as essential to fighting Daesh.

The United States has also grown increasingly critical of Turkey's record on freedom of expression. Biden said during a visit in January that Turkey was setting a poor example in intimidating media and accusing academics of treason.

Erdogan, meanwhile, said on Tuesday he wanted US authorities to take steps against a network of schools run by a movement affiliated with Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Turkish cleric whom he has accused of running a "parallel" state and of plotting to overthrow him.

Gulen, whose network of followers runs schools worldwide, was once an ally of Erdogan. But the two publicly fell out after police and prosecutors Erdogan saw as sympathetic to Gulen launched a graft investigation that touched on the Turkish leader's inner circle in 2013.

Gulen, who faces terrorism charges in Turkey, denies that his followers sought to topple Erdogan.

Erdogan has said the arrest last week in Florida of a Turkish-Iranian gold trader who was at the centre of that graft investigation is not a concern for Turkey.

"The real money launderers are there [in the United States]. Have the authorities taken any steps towards them?" Erdogan said, in reference to Gulen's network.

BRUSSELS — Bomb-damaged Brussels airport held a drill for a partial restart on Tuesday but warned it could take months to reopen fully, as under-fire Belgian authorities hunted for a suspect still on the run a week after the deadly attacks.

As Brussels struggled to get back on its feet, criticism of Belgium's handling of the case mounted after the sole suspect to be charged over the airport and metro attacks was freed for lack of evidence linking him to the carnage.

Prosecutors had charged the suspect, known as Faycal C., with "terrorist murder" and were investigating whether he was the third airport attacker who fled after his bomb did not detonate.

With his release on Monday, the hunt was back on for the so-called "man in the hat" seen in CCTV footage next to the two Daesh suicide bombers at Zaventem Airport.

The airport, closed since the blasts wrecked the departure hall, was staging a test run Tuesday involving hundreds of volunteer staff to determine if it was ready to resume flights, albeit in a very limited capacity, from Wednesday.

A temporary check-in facility has been set up and passengers will be subject to extra security checks when it does open.

Brussels Airport chief executive Arnaud Feist also warned that even if the airport did reopen Wednesday, it would only be at 20 per cent capacity, handling 800-1,000 passengers an hour. 

For a full return to normal, "we will have to wait for months", Feist told L'Echo daily.

Security around Zaventem was tight for the drill, with soldiers and police stopping and checking all vehicles headed for the airport.

Telephone alibi

A total of 35 people died in the attacks at the airport and Maalbeek Metro Station and 340 were injured, 96 of whom remain in hospital.

Many foreign nationals were among the victims, testament to the cosmopolitan nature of a city that is home to both the European Union and NATO.

While Belgian authorities were quick to identify all three bombers, the inquiry has been dogged by accusations that Belgium missed a series of leads in cracking down on a militant network linked to the Brussels attacks as well as the November 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people.

Adding to the recriminations, Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said he regretted the release of the man identified by Belgian media as Faycal Cheffou, who claimed to be a freelance journalist.

Hinting at suspicions that the man was a jihadist recruiter, he told French media: "There is a very thin line between an agitated radical and a radical recruiter, and in this case the judge probably didn't want to cross that line."

The man's lawyer Olivier Martins told RTBF television his client was let go because he had an alibi.

"He gave an alibi based on telephone analysis which showed that he was at home at the time of the attacks," Martins was quoted as saying.

'Enemy in Syria' 

Under pressure at home and abroad for an apparent series of missed chances in keeping tabs on criminals linked to jihadist networks, the Belgian government has admitted mistakes were made.

In the most damning revelation, Turkey accused Belgium of ignoring warnings from Ankara after it deported airport suicide bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui as a "terrorist fighter" last year after arresting him near the Syrian border.

Two Belgian ministers, including Justice Minister Koen Geens, offered to resign last week after the Turkish link emerged.

Underscoring the tense political climate in a notoriously complex and fragmented country, Geens on Tuesday called for unity.

"This is not the time to argue with each other. As far as I know the enemy is in Syria," he told VRT television.

In a bid to uncover the identity of the mystery third airport suspect, police have released video footage of a man in a hat and white jacket pushing a trolley with a large bag through the departure hall, next to suicide bombers Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui. 

Bomb-maker Laachraoui's DNA was found on some of the explosives used in Paris.

Ibrahim El Bakraoui's brother Khalid, who blew himself up on a Brussels metro train shortly after the airport blasts, is meanwhile believed to have rented a property linked to Paris prime suspect Salah Abdeslam.

Raids and arrests in Belgium, France and the Netherlands since the Brussels bombings have exposed a complex web of jihadist cells, underscoring the need for better European coordination in the fight against terrorism.

Dutch prosecutors on Tuesday said a French terror suspect arrested in weekend raids in Rotterdam intends to fight his extradition to France.

The man, identified as Anis B., was detained Sunday suspected of receiving orders from the Daesh terror group to attack targets in France along with Reda Kriket, who was arrested near Paris last week. 

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan has rounded up more than 5,000 militant suspects, then released most of them, in the two days since a suicide bomber killed at least 72 people in a park in Lahore at Easter, a provincial minister said on Tuesday.

Investigators were keeping 216 suspects in custody pending further investigation, said Rana Sanaullah, a state minister for Punjab province from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's ruling party.

Details of the sweeping raids aimed at anyone suspected of violent extremism came as the Taliban faction claiming responsibility for the attack issued a new threat on Tuesday, singling out the media.

Sanaullah said "5,221 people have initially been detained. 5,005 have been released after verifying their identities, and 216 people have been referred for further investigation”.

"If someone is found to be guilty, they will be charged," told journalists in the Punjab province capital of Lahore.

Army spokesman Gen. Asim Bajwa said the military and the paramilitary Rangers were conducting raids across Punjab, Pakistan's richest and most populous province, in rapid response to the Easter bombing.

"Right now in Rawalpindi, Multan and elsewhere, operations are ongoing, intelligence agencies and Rangers and army troops are carrying out operations," he told reporters in Islamabad.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, the Taliban faction that claimed responsibility for the blast aimed at Christians celebrating Easter, warned Pakistani media they could be the next target.

"Everyone will get their turn in this war, especially the slave Pakistani media," Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the group, tweeted. "We are just waiting for the appropriate time."

Even as authorities pursued militants across Punjab, hundreds of ultra-conservative Muslim protesters remained camped out in front of parliament on Tuesday in the capital, Islamabad, days after clashing with police.

Mobile phone networks in the capital were blocked for security purposes for a second day in a row.

The Easter bombing was Pakistan's deadliest attack since a 2014 school massacre claimed by the Taliban killed 134 students.

The attack, which included 29 children among the 72 dead, showed the militants can still cause carnage despite military raids on their northwestern strongholds.

Lahore is the capital of Punjab, Pakistan's richest and most populous province, and Sharif's political heartland.

"Let Nawaz Sharif know that this war has now come to the threshold of his home," tweeted Ehsan. "The winners of this war will, God willing, be the righteous mujahideen."

Sanaullah said at least 160 raids have been carried out since Sunday night by a mixture of police, counter-terrorism and intelligence agents and confirmed that army, and paramilitary forces would be used in future operations.

"This operation will include all law enforcement agencies," Sanaullah said.

Military campaign

Military and government officials on Monday said that the army was preparing to launch a new paramilitary counterterrorism crackdown in Punjab, as it did more than two years ago in the violent southern megacity of Karachi.

By allowing this, the civilian government once again ceded special powers to the military to fight militants.

Punjab provincial leaders, particularly among Prime Minister Sharif's party, have long resisted suggestions of bringing in the paramilitary Rangers to fight extremism in reported centres of radicalism including Multan in southern Punjab.

In Karachi, the Rangers' crackdown has cut back the rate of militant and criminal violence sharply, but also drawn accusations of human rights abuses and the targeting of opposition politicians.

A possible renewal of their mandate by the Sindh provincial government is the subject of heated debate there.

Army spokesman Gen. Bajwa said the government had agreed to send whatever forces are most appropriate to capture extremists.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, which has declared loyalty to the Daesh terror group, has carried out five major attacks in Pakistan since December.

In recent years, Pakistan has cracked down on movements that target its own citizens and institutions, including the Pakistani Taliban who are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

The army and former governments have been accused of fostering hard-line religious movements to boost their own support and to use militant groups to help pursue objectives in Afghanistan and against Pakistan's old rival India.

However, moves by the government to crack down on extremism have prompted a backlash.

The recent outpouring of anger over the execution in late February of ex-bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri, who assassinated the Punjab governor he guarded because the politician campaigned against Pakistan's harsh blasphemy laws, highlights the tension.

The demonstrators, incensed by the hanging of a man they consider a hero for defending Islam, now demand the immediate execution of hundreds of people in jail on blasphemy charges.

WASHINGTON — A police officer may have been injured by shrapnel on Monday in the US Capitol Visitors Centre when a man fired a gun, media reports and congressional sources said.

There was confusion in early accounts about what occurred but police said a suspect was taken into custody with wounds after shots were fired.

MSNBC-TV reported that an officer who fired at an armed suspect may have been injured by a shrapnel. Police said the suspect was taken to hospital. The officer did not identify or describe the suspect and he added that there were no additional suspects.

A US government official told Reuters that initial reports were that a suspect walked into the Visitors Centre, pointed a gun at one of the police officers on duty and a shootout erupted.

The official said no evidence had materialised of a connection to terrorism.

Separately, CNN reported that a person tried to gain entry into the White House but was caught.

Congress is in recess, with few lawmakers in Washington but the shooting happened just a few hours after a drill for an active shooter took place at the Capitol, creating further confusion.

The secret service temporarily cleared tourists from an area surrounding the White House after the incident, but activities quickly went back to normal. Capitol Hill was placed in lockdown immediately after the shooting but was later lifted.

Cathryn Leff, a licensed therapist, tweeted that she was at the visitor’s centre when she heard gunshots while going through a security check point.

“That moment when it goes down. Everyone is screaming & running and you can’t see where the #ShotsFired are from,” tweeted Leff(@Cathrynlefflmft).

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed down on Monday from his attempts to appoint a former settler leader as ambassador to Brazil, which has since August refused to accept the nomination. 

Netanyahu "decided to appoint Dani Dayan as consul general in New York. He will replace foreign ministry career official Ido Aharoni, who is completing his term," the prime minister's office said in a statement.

The move puts an end to a nearly eight-month stand-off that soured relations with Brasilia.

Brazil did not accept the nomination of the former head of the main West Bank settlements organisation who opposes a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu had refused to reconsider the nomination, insisting that Dayan was the appropriate appointee and the only one Israel would be offering Brazil.

On March 17, the foreign ministry published a tender for the position, signalling it was dropping Dayan's nomination, only to swiftly retract it as an "unfortunate bureaucratic mistake". 

Diplomatic sources said on Monday that the tender would most likely now be reissued.

Dayan himself said his appointment to New York was a victory over Israeli advocates of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, that targets Israel over its occupation of the West Bank.

Dayan said the activism of Israeli BDS advocates against him had legitimised Brazil's refusal to accept his nomination.

Dayan's new appointment was welcomed by Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely as "an important statement to the world" that Israel stood behind a settler "as a faithful and worthy representative of the state".

Dayan was born in Argentina and moved to Israel in 1971, aged 15.

He headed the Yesha Council of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank between 2007 and 2013.

Brazil recognised the Palestinian state in 2010. Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are considered illegal under international law.

BRUSSELS — Belgian prosecutors on Monday released a man they had charged in connection with last week's deadly Brussels bombings, saying they did not have enough information to justify holding him.

The man, named only as Faycal C., had been accused of taking part in the activities of a terrorist group and actual attempted terrorist murder after being detained on Thursday. His home had been searched but no weapons or explosives had been found.

"The evidence which led to the arrest of the man named as Faycal C has not been backed up by the ongoing investigation. As a result, the person has been freed by the investigating magistrate," the prosecutor's office said.

The announcement was a major blow to an investigation that had netted half a dozen people charged with lesser offences in Belgium and others in the Netherlands, Italy and France, where officials said the same network had planned another attack.

Belgian media had identified the man as Faycal Cheffou and a source close to the investigation had said officials believed he was the man caught in security camera footage at Brussels airport moments before two bombs exploded last Tuesday.

Earlier on Monday, police had issued a new appeal for witnesses, saying they were seeking to identify the man seen in the video wearing a light jacket, with a hat pulled down over his face and glasses. The suspected suicide bombers walking alongside him were dressed in black with their heads uncovered.

Police say one man left a suitcase containing a bomb at the terminal and fled while two others detonated their bombs.

The death toll from the attack on the airport, and a subsequent bombing of a rush-hour metro train, rose to 35 on Monday, excluding the three men who blew themselves up.

Around 340 people were wounded and 96 were still being treated in hospital, of whom 55 were in intensive care, a health ministry statement said.

A Europe-wide hunt for suspects has revealed links with the network that killed 130 people in Paris last November, as well as foiling a new potential attack on France last week, officials said. But several suspects are reported to be still at large.

Others at large

Daesh has claimed responsibility for both the Paris and Brussels attacks. These have exposed weaknesses within intelligence services in Belgium, where some of the Paris attackers lived, as well as insufficient cooperation between security services across Europe.

Dutch anti-terrorism police arrested a 32-year-old suspect on Sunday in Rotterdam on France's request, and Italy arrested an Algerian on Saturday suspected of having forged documents for militants linked to the Brussels and Paris attacks.

Germany has also conducted raids but its Federal Criminal Police Office was among European security agencies still hunting for at least eight mostly French or Belgian suspects on the run in Syria or Europe, Die Welt am Sonntag newspaper said.

The US State Department confirmed four US citizens were among victims of nine different nationalities, including Belgian.

Belgian Health Minister Maggie De Block said more of those wounded in the attacks had since died. "Four patients died in hospital. Medical teams did everything possible. Total victims: 35," she said in a tweet.

Other foreigners killed were British, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Swedish.

The airport in Brussels remained closed on Monday and the metro was running a reduced service in the capital, which was largely shuttered for the Easter holiday.

There was no sign of the nationalist protesters who clashed with police on Sunday at the Brussels bourse, where mourners have gathered and placed candles, wreaths and messages for victims.

The State Department has declined to name any of the four US citizens killed, citing respect for their families.

Two of them were identified by relatives as Justin and Stephanie Shults, residents of Belgium originally from Tennessee and Kentucky who were last seen dropping off her mother at the Brussels airport before the explosion in the check-in area.

"The world lost two amazing people," Justin Shults' brother, Levi Sutton, said in a post on Twitter.

"It's not fair."