Region

RIYADH –– Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain said on Wednesday they were withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar because Doha had not implemented an agreement among Gulf Arab countries not to interfere in each others' internal affairs.

The move, conveyed in a joint statement by the three countries, is unprecedented in the three-decade history of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a pro-Western alliance of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Oman.

Qatar has been a maverick in the conservative region Of hereditary monarchies, backing Islamist groups in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East that are viewed with suspicion or outright hostility by some fellow GCC members.

The statement said GCC members had signed an agreement on Nov. 23 not to back "anyone threatening the security and stability of the GCC whether as groups or individuals - via direct security work or through political influence, and not to support hostile media".

GCC foreign ministers had met in Riyadh on Tuesday to try to persuade Qatar to implement the agreement, it said.

"But unfortunately, these efforts did not result in Qatar's agreement to abide by these measures, which prompted the three countries to start what they saw as necessary, to protect their security and stability, by withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar starting from today, March 5 2013," the statement said.

ALGIERS — Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika made a rare appearance Monday to drop off papers for his reelection, as concerns grow over the ailing 77-year-old’s bid for a fourth term.

Bouteflika, who helped end Algeria’s devastating 1990s civil war but whose recent rule has been dogged by corruption scandals, told Algerian television he had registered as a candidate for reelection.

They were his first public remarks since he suffered serious health problems in April 2013, and came as two candidates for the presidency withdrew from the race, saying the vote had been fixed.

Bouteflika was hospitalised in Paris for three months last year after suffering a mini stroke. He has chaired just two Cabinet meetings since returning home in July and has not spoken in public since 2012.

“I came to officially submit my application in accordance with article 74 of the constitution and the electoral law,” said Bouteflika.

Article 74 effectively removed limits on the number of terms in office the head of state could serve, allowing Bouteflika to stand for win a third mandate in 2009.

In the television footage broadcast on Monday, Bouteflika appeared sitting in an armchair facing the head of the constitutional council, Mourad Medelci.

His voice was barely audible as he made his statement, and quickly cut to the president adding his signature to the declaration of his candidacy in the April 17 election.

His reelection bid has sparked protests in several towns, with police forcefully dispersing a demonstration in Algiers on Saturday, and has even launched the “Barakat” movement, whose sole aim is to oppose his candidacy.

And key figures from Algeria’s political classes, the military and civil society groups have added their voices to a growing chorus of dissent over a new mandate for the veteran head of state, who has been in power since 1999.

‘Piracy with legal backing’ 

On Monday, former prime minister Ahmed Benbitour withdrew his candidacy, saying the vote would be “piracy with legal backing”.

And former general Mohand Tahar Yala also said he had pulled out because the polls had been “rigged” to secure Bouteflika’s fourth mandate.

Another retired general, Hocine Benhadid, recently told Arabic daily Al Watan that another term for Bouteflika seemed “impossible” to him, saying he could “neither talk nor stand up”.

Rights activist Ali Yahia Abdenour even called on the president to submit a certificate to the constitutional council proving “his physical state allows him to fulfil his role”, French-language newspaper Liberte said.

Before he handed over his candidacy papers on Monday, it had been unclear whether Bouteflika would appear in person ahead of the midnight Tuesday deadline, as is customary.

Former prime minister Ali Benflis, who is seen as Bouteflika’s main rival in the vote, is set to submit his dossier on Tuesday morning.

Although Bouteflika has not delivered a speech in public since May 2012, he has received several foreign dignitaries, and he chaired two Cabinet meetings in September last year.

His prolonged silence, even during the announcement of his candidacy, which he made on February 22 through Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal, has worried even those close to the president.

Another ex-premier, Mourad Hamrouche, called for a “peaceful” change of the regime, which he said was no longer capable of running the country, and saying the army should play a role in the change in government.

Election campaign ‘surprises’ 

Louisa Hanoune, secretary general of the Workers Party, who is also running, criticised Sellal for announcing the president’s candidacy.

She called the move “abnormal” on Sunday, adding “Sellal did not have the right to do that” and pointing out Sellal was also president of the commission for preparing the elections.

Said Sadi, former head of the secular opposition Rally for Culture and Democracy Party, has also spoken out against Bouteflika.

As prominent figures have voiced their worries about Bouteflika’s candidacy increasingly vocally, those close to him have been bullish about his run.

Sellal himself has said the president “is very well” on several occasions, as have other ministers close to Bouteflika.

On Monday, Sellal said the reelection campaign “will begin within the limits set by the law” on March 23, with “surprises”, APS news agency reported.

Amara Benyounes, head of the Algerian Popular Movement, and minister for investment and the promotion of industry, was confident Bouteflika was fit for a fourth term.

“He will manage the country with his head, not his feet,” Benyounes said.

THE HAGUE — Syria has surrendered or destroyed nearly a third of its chemical arsenal but remains behind on its international obligations, the head of the disarmament mission told the world’s chemical watchdog Tuesday.

Syria has already missed several target dates to hand over or destroy its arsenal before a June 30 deadline and the United Nations-Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mission called on Damascus to move faster.

“Nearly one-third of Syria’s chemical weapons material has now been removed or destroyed,” UN-OPCW coordinator Sigrid Kaag told a meeting of the watchdog at its Hague headquarters.

“This is good progress and I expect further acceleration and intensification of effort.”

OPCW head Ahmet Uzumcu told the executive council meeting that Syria had submitted a revised proposal to complete the removal of all chemicals from Syria before the end of April, after previously saying it could only complete the job by June.

An OPCW meeting two weeks ago heard that just 11 per cent of Syria’s dangerous chemicals had left the country.

But with two shipments last week and one more expected this week, the country will have handed over more than 35 per cent of its arsenal, Uzumcu said.

“Given delays since the lapse of the two target dates for removal, it will be important to maintain this newly created momentum,” Uzumcu said.

Missed deadlines

Syria was to have shipped out most dangerous Category 1 chemicals by December 31 and Category 2 chemicals by February 5.

“For its part, the Syrian Government has reaffirmed its commitment to implement the removal operations in a timely manner,” Uzumcu.

Syria has also destroyed 93 per cent of its stocks of isopropanol, used to make sarin nerve gas, a task that was supposed to have been completed by March 1.

The remainder is currently inaccessible for security reasons in the war-ravaged country, diplomats said.

Syria has claimed two “attempted attacks” on convoys taking chemicals to Latakia port on their way out of the country, but Western diplomats dismissed the unverifiable claim.

Once Syria has delivered its chemicals to main port Latakia, they are to be taken by Western warships to a US vessel, the MV Cape Ray, aboard which they will be broken down at sea using hydrolysis, a process expected to take 90 days.

That means the entire disarmament and destruction process may well overrun the June 30 dealine, agreed by Russia and the US last year as part of a plan to avert US-backed military strikes in the wake of deadly chemical attacks outside Damascus blamed by the West on President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Most countries at the OPCW’s executive council are frustrated with the delays, although Russia, China and Iran are reluctant to put more pressure on Damascus.

So-called Priority 1 chemicals were supposed to be destroyed by March 31, but they will not even be delivered to Latakia by that date.

Syria is also supposed to have destroyed its 12 chemical weapon production facilities by March 15, and the OPCW Executive Council remains divided on how to pressure Syria to meet that date.

UN Security Council resolution 2118 was passed after a massive chemical weapon attack that killed hundreds in several opposition areas around Damascus in August.

Rebels and the regime exchanged blame for that attack.

CAIRO — A Cairo court banned Tuesday the Palestinian Hamas movement from operating in Egypt, tightening the noose around the militant rulers of the blockaded Gaza Strip amid a crackdown on Islamists.

The emergency court’s decision to also seize Hamas’ assets, ahead of a final ruling, was in response to a private citizen’s petition to designate it as a terrorist group.

Egypt has accused Hamas of colluding in attacks on its territory in the past few years, and aiding the Muslim Brotherhood movement of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Egypt had never recognised Hamas’ rule in Gaza after it forcibly ousted the more moderate Fateh Party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from Gaza in 2007.

But it hosted Hamas’ deputy leader Musa Abu Marzouk following Mubarak’s overthrow in February 2011, and eased passage through its Rafah border crossing with Gaza.

Morsi, elected in June 2012, was seen as further bolstering the militant group’s power in Gaza by mediating a 2012 truce ending week-long fighting with Israel and that lifted some of the blockade restrictions on Gaza.

Since ousting him, the military has destroyed hundreds of smuggling tunnels under its border with the coastal enclave, alleging they are used to smuggle weapons and militants who have taken part in attacks on Egyptian security forces.

Egypt is believed to have also cut off most of its contacts with Hamas, although Abu Marzouk remains in Cairo.

An aide to Abu Marzouk said Hamas had no properties that could be seized in Egypt and Abu Marzouk privately rents his villa in a Cairo suburb.

Move ‘serves Israeli occupation’ 

Hamas denounced the move, which it said “serves the [Israeli] occupation”.

Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim told AFP the court’s decision was “an attempt to besiege the resistance, and serves the Israeli occupation”.

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Egyptian government designated as a terrorist group in December.

The military-installed government accuses the movement of plotting a spate of militant attacks that have killed scores of soldiers and policemen, charges the Brotherhood denies.

Amnesty International says more than 1,400 people have been killed in street clashes, mostly Islamist supporters of Morsi, since his overthrow.

Dozens of alleged Hamas militants have been named among scores of defendants on trial with Morsi for organising jailbreaks and attacking police stations during the 2011 revolt that toppled Mubarak.

In a separate espionage trial, Morsi and 35 other defendants are accused of conspiring with foreign powers, including Sunni Hamas and Shiite Iran, to destabilise Egypt.

Hamas has denied accusations it is involved in fighting in the Sinai Peninsula, where militant attacks on security forces have surged since July.

CAIRO — Egypt’s army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi said Tuesday he could not ignore demands that he run for president and will take official measures soon, state media reported.

Officials close to Sisi told AFP the recently promoted field marshal would step down as defence minister after a law is passed to regulate the election expected this spring.

Sisi emerged as the most popular political figure in Egypt after he overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July following massive protests against the yearlong rule of Egypt’s first freely elected leader.

Sisi said “he cannot turn his back when the majority wants his nomination in presidential elections”, the official MENA news agency reported.

“The next days will witness official measures,” it quoted him as saying.

Sisi is seen by his supporters as a strong hand who can stabilise Egypt following three years of unrest ignited by the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak. Supporters rallied in the thousands in January calling on Sisi to run, and the military itself has said it would back his decision to enter the election, which he is certain to win.

Interim President Adly Mansour is expected to approve the election law this week or next week by the latest.

Sisi is reviled by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Morsi supporters, who say he masterminded a coup against the country’s first democratically elected and civilian president.

Morsi himself is on trial on various charges after the military detained him on the night of his ouster.

His supporters have repeatedly taken to the streets in protest, often setting off clashes with police and civilian opponents. The violence has claimed at least 1,400 lives since Morsi’s ouster, according to Amnesty International.

Militant groups have, meanwhile, escalated a campaign of bombings and other attacks on security forces, killing scores of policemen and soldiers.

Sisi, if elected, may have to take unpopular measures such as streamlining Egypt’s bloated subsidies for food and fuel.

His supporters believe only Sisi, with his relatively broad support base, could pull off such measures.

WASHINGTON/ RAMALLAH — Israel needs to take tough decisions if peace talks with the Palestinians are to have a future, US President Barack Obama told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.

In a joint address at the White House as a major snowstorm blanketed the city, the two leaders, who have struggled to overcome mutual antipathy, once again found themselves very publicly at odds.

Obama pushed for a decision on the peace process, while Netanyahu insisted Israel had done its part and said Iran is now the most urgent threat.

Israel and the Palestinians have been engaged in seven months of direct peace talks which are due to expire at the end of April.

“The time frame that we have set up for completing these negotiations is coming near and some tough decisions are going to have to be made,” Obama said.

“It’s my belief that ultimately it is still possible to create two states. But it’s difficult and it requires compromise on all sides.”

But the Israeli leader hit back, telling the president that Israel had taken “unprecedented steps” to advance peace over the last 20 years, and that the ball was now firmly in the Palestinians’ court.

“Israel has been doing its part, I regret to say the Palestinians haven’t,” he said, noting that in the past two decades, Israel had both frozen settlement construction, uprooted entire settlements and released hundreds of Palestinian “terrorists”.

Netanyahu quickly moved to declare Iran as the number one priority.

“The greatest challenge, undoubtedly, is to prevent Iran from acquiring the capacity to make nuclear weapons,” he told Obama, leaning forward in his chair and gesticulating to make the point.

Although his tone was courteous, Netanyahu’s remarks, particularly on the peace process, came across as a lecture to Obama on recent Israeli history.

The US leader looked on impassively, nodding almost imperceptibly at several points, resting his clenched jaw on his hand.

While Obama’s remarks were mostly general, listing the topics the two men would discuss, Netanyahu narrowed in on Israeli grievances over Iran’s disputed nuclear programme and the perceived raw deal over the peace process.

In their meeting, which lasted at least two hours, Obama was to push Netanyahu to agree to a framework for future talks put together by US Secretary of State John Kerry to extend the negotiations beyond April.

Unconfirmed reports suggest Washington may demand a partial settlement freeze to try and ensure the Palestinians remain at the negotiating table.

It would be Obama’s most significant entry into peacemaking since 2010 when his first attempt at Middle East mediation collapsed after just three weeks in a bitter dispute over settlements.

The as-yet-unpublished framework, which addresses the most nettlesome issues of the conflict — borders, security and the future status of Jerusalem — was central to Netanyahu’s morning meeting with Kerry, a senior Israeli official said.

Analysts say Netanyahu was leaning towards accepting the framework, but so far the Palestinians have rejected any attempt to extend the deadline, denouncing Kerry’s ideas as biased in Israel’s favour and unworkable.

Ahead of their meeting, Netanyahu vowed he would “insist on Israel’s vital interests” and withstand pressure.

But Obama also made clear he meant business in a sharply worded interview published Sunday in which he warned that “continued aggressive settlement construction” would expose Israel to further international isolation.

“We have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we’ve seen in a very long time,” he added in remarks which were borne out by figures published Monday which showed construction starts in West Bank settlements were up 123.7 per cent in 2013.

Settlement construction

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will not extend peace talks with Israel beyond April without further prisoner releases and a halt to settlement construction, Israeli and Palestinian sources said Tuesday.

“We cannot continue negotiations with ongoing settlement construction,” Mohammad Al Madani, a member of the Fateh central committee, quoted the Palestinian president as saying during a meeting with a left-wing Israeli politician.

Abbas met Zehava Galon, head of the Meretz Party, in his Ramallah headquarters on Monday.

A statement from Galon’s office said that in addition to a settlement freeze, Abbas would also demand a release of “further prisoners beyond the next tranche, including women, youths and administrative detainees”.

Israel committed in July to releasing 104 Palestinian prisoners in four tranches. It has so far released 78 of those in three batches.

Abbas also told Galon that “if the American framework agreement will not sufficiently address the fundamental principles of the core issues, we won’t enable extending the negotiations,” according to the statement.

Core issues in the talks include borders, security, Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

The Abbas-Galon meeting took place just before Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.

Unconfirmed reports suggest Washington may demand a partial settlement freeze to try and ensure the Palestinians remain at the negotiating table.

But such demands have not been put to the Israeli side yet, according to Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz.

“I think these things are not even on the agenda,” he told public radio, in response to a question about Palestinian demands to freeze settlement construction and release further prisoners.

Pro-settlement Housing Minister Uri Ariel, of the far-right Jewish Home party, said he was not “concerned” by the idea of a settlement freeze, pointing out that “the prime minister has announced there wouldn’t be one”.

SAHEL, Syria — Syrian government troops are tightening their grip on the last rebel stronghold near the border with Lebanon a day after taking control of a key village in the area, a field commander told reporters on Tuesday.

Forces loyal to President Bashar Assad have seized a string of towns and villages in the rugged Qalamoun region along the Lebanese border since launching an offensive there in November. Backed by gunmen from the Lebanese Hizbollah group, the army seized the village of Sahel this week and is closing in on Yabroud, the largest town in the mountainous region still in rebel hands.

The government operation aims to sever the rebel supply routes from nearby Lebanon and shore up its hold on the main north-south highway that runs through the area.

During a government-led tour of the village of Sahel, a Syrian commander told reporters that troops ousted opposition fighters from the village Monday, bringing down the rebels’ “first defence line” of Yabroud. The officer did not provide his name, in line with military regulations.

Hizbollah guerrillas have played a significant role in the government push. The Lebanese Shiite militant is eager to clear the border area of the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim rebels trying to topple Assad’s government. Hizbollah claims that several cars used in recent bombings targeting predominantly Shiite neighbourhoods of south Beirut have been rigged in Yabroud.

Al Qaeda-linked groups have claimed responsibility for several of the attacks in Lebanon, saying they were retaliation for Hizbollah’s military support for Assad.

Opposition groups said fighting was raging Tuesday on the edge of Yabroud, with government helicopters dropping barrel bombs on the town’s outskirts. The makeshift bombs, which the government has used to devastating effect in other parts of Syria, are packed with explosives and fuel and are intended to cause massive damage to urban areas.

Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group, said rebels fighting in Yabroud belong predominantly to hardline Islamic groups, including Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and the breakaway group of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Syria’s state news agency reported heavy fighting around Yabrud on Tuesday. It said the army destroyed a car fitted with a machinegun, and killed fighters from the Nusra Front and other rebel groups.

The Syrian field commander said the army is determined to clear the area by launching a final assault from Sahel. He said “moral was high among the troops as they fulfil their mission” to capture Yabroud.

Sahel was deserted on Tuesday as the government troops escorted reporters along. There was damage on several houses and a mosque, apparently from fighting, and telephone and electricity cables were torn from poles and strewn on sidewalks.

At least one body could be seen on the ground.

“It was a real battle and we didn’t give the gunmen any chance to negotiate,” the commander said. He did not say if the army or the rebels sustained any casualties, but said the troops detained more than 30 opposition fighters after capturing the village.

Many of those captured were Syrians, the commander said, although there were also foreign fighters who had travelled to Syria from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Lebanon to battle Assad’s troops.

In Turkey, a former rebel military leader was seriously injured in a car crash while travelling to the Syrian border, the opposition Syrian National Coalition said in a statement. His son was killed.

Col. Riad Al Asaad, a former Syrian air force officer who defected and became one of the first leaders of the rebel Free Syrian Army, was in intensive care, the coalition said.

Asaad was among the first to call openly for armed insurrection against Assad, although he was later sidelined in the rebellion. He was wounded in the foot a year ago by a bomb planted in his car.

SAMARRA, Iraq — Militants seized the city council headquarters in the Iraqi city of Samarra and took employees hostage on Tuesday, officials said, the second such attack in recent months.

The attack illustrates the impunity with which militants in Iraq can strike even targets that should be highly secure, as the country suffers its worst violence in years.

Two militants, possibly wearing explosives-rigged vests or belts, seized the Samarra city council building on Tuesday morning with an unknown number of employees inside, security officials said.

Clashes broke out between the militants and security forces, and a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle near police and Sahwa anti-Al Qaeda militia forces when they arrived at the scene.

The blast wounded 24 people, most of them police, a doctor and an officer said.

The doctor also said that the deputy head of the city council was wounded in the bombing.

The attack in Samarra follows a similar incident in Tikrit, another city in the mostly Sunni Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad, in which militants detonated a car bomb and seized the city council headquarters on December 16.

Security forces ultimately freed the Tikrit hostages, but a city council member and two policemen were killed.

The following week, on December 23, suicide bombers attacked the headquarters of a local television station in Tikrit, killing five journalists.

Salaheddin province is also home to the Sulaiman Bek area, where militants repeatedly battled security forces for control earlier this month.

Attacks in other areas of Iraq killed two security forces members on Tuesday — a Sahwa militiaman in Kirkuk province and a policeman in Mosul.

Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a brutal period of sectarian violence in which tens of thousands died.

The year-long surge in violence in Iraq has been driven by widespread discontent among the minority Sunni Arab community, and by the bloody civil war in neighbouring Syria.

The Iraqi government also faces a two-month crisis in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, where it has lost all of the city of Fallujah as well as shifting parts of provincial capital Ramadi to anti-government fighters.

It is the first time anti-government forces have exercised such open control in major cities since the peak of the deadly violence that followed the US-led invasion of 2003.

GAZA CITY — An Israeli air strike on the northern Gaza Strip killed two Palestinians and wounded two others on Monday, the emergency services in the Hamas-run enclave said.

Emergency services chief Ashraf Al Qudra told AFP that Mousab Al Zaanin, a man in his early 20s, was killed in the raid on farmland near the town of Beit Hanoun.

He later added that Sharif Nasser, 31, had died of injuries sustained in the attack.

The Israeli military spokesman’s office said the target was a Palestinian “rocket-launching squad”.

“Israel air force aircraft targeted terrorists preparing to launch rockets in the northern Gaza Strip,” it said in a statement.

“The mission was carried out in order to eliminate an imminent attack targeting civilian communities of southern Israel.”

Israeli media had earlier reported a failed rocket attack, with the projectile apparently falling short and landing within the Gaza Strip.

On Friday, an Israeli air strike destroyed a rocket launch site in Gaza which also represented “an imminent threat”, the army said at the time.

No casualties were reported in the attack.

Tensions have risen in and around Gaza after a year of relative calm.

An increase in Israeli raids and Palestinian rocket attacks as well as border incidents in the past few weeks have raised the possibility of a major new confrontation between Israel and Hamas.

Monday’s strike occurred as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met US President Barack Obama to discuss the future of the peace process with the Palestinians.

Hamas, the Islamist movement that ousted the Western-backed Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007, opposes a peace deal.

MANAMA — Bahrain blacklisted three anti-government groups as terrorist organisations on Tuesday, a day after a bomb killed two local policemen and an officer from the United Arab Emirates, state news agency BNA said.

The attack has raised fears of more violence in the Sunni Muslim-ruled kingdom, where opposition groups led by majority Shiites have staged protests for the past three years demanding political reform and an end to perceived discrimination.

The Cabinet, meeting in emergency session in Manama, put the “so-called February 14 movement, Saraya Al Ashtar [Ashtar Brigade] and Saraya Al Muqawama [Resistance Brigade] and any group associated or allied to them on lists of terrorist groups”, BNA said.

The decision effectively outlaws these groups and makes their members subject to imprisonment. Bahrain listed Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbollah as a terrorist organisation last year.

BNA said 25 suspects in Monday’s bombing in the village of Daih, west of the capital Manama, had been rounded up. It did not says if they were members of any of the blacklisted groups.

Speaking on Bahraini state television, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashed Bin Abdullah Al Khalifa condemned the attack and blamed Iran for instability in the island kingdom.

“As we have said before, what happens inside our country has foreign links. We have announced publicly that foreign training sessions were organised and hosted at Iranian Revolutionary Guard camps that operated with official backing,” he said.

Iran denies links to Bahrain’s opposition. It does, however, champion their cause.

The three policemen were killed by a remotely detonated bomb during a protest as hundreds of mourners marched in a procession for a 23-year-old Shiite who died in custody last week.

The shadowy Saraya Al Ashtar organisation has claimed responsibility for the attack in a message on social media that could not immediately be authenticated.

Saraya Al Muqawama is also little-known, but the February 14 movement has been organising anti-government protests since the security forces crushed the mass demonstrations of February-March 2011 with help from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

A Bahraini policeman was killed last month during protests to mark the third anniversary of the uprising.

“It’s clear that the government has not succeeded in the last three years in ending the sort of violent activities that at least one part of the opposition continues to engage in, and not for lack of trying,” said Justin Gengler, a Bahrain expert at Qatar University.

Fate of talks

The policemen’s deaths further clouded attempts to revive reconciliation talks between the government and the opposition.

Mainstream opposition groups, including the main Shiite Al Wefaq movement, condemned the bombing and called on their followers to ensure that protest activities were peaceful.

But Citizens for Bahrain, widely regarded as a pro-government group, said the condemnation was not enough.

“It is good that the Bahraini opposition has come out and condemned the killing of three policemen. However, it should recognise that the terrorists who perpetrated these acts are the seeds of its own creation,” it said in an e-mail on Tuesday.

The UAE police officer, who had worked alongside Bahrain’s security forces, was buried in the UAE on Tuesday.

Bahrain and the UAE are members of the Western-aligned Gulf Cooperation Council, a political and military alliance that also includes Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar.

Bahrain’s Shiites have long complained of discrimination against their majority community in areas such as jobs and public services, charges that the Sunni-led government denies.

The Gulf island is a US ally which hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. The Sunni Al Khalifa family, which has ruled for two centuries, has resisted Shiite-led demands for an elected government, not one chosen by the king.

Bahrain’s human rights record is often criticised at home and abroad. The government says it has taken steps to address abuses by security forces by dismissing those responsible and introducing monitoring cameras at police stations.