Region

BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces pressed their attack on anti-government fighters holding parts of a city Tuesday as the UN warned of an “exponential rise” in displacement with 22,000 families having fled their homes.

Violence elsewhere killed 10 people, bringing to 700 the number killed in nationwide unrest this month, fuelling fears Iraq is slipping back into the all-out conflict that left tens of thousands dead in 2006 and 2007.

Diplomats have urged Baghdad to foster political reconciliation to undercut support for militants, but with elections looming in April, Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and others have taken a hard line and focused on wide-ranging security operations.

Iraq also announced the execution of 26 men convicted of “terrorism” on Tuesday, the latest in a sharp increase in Baghdad’s use of capital punishment as violence has spiked.

Security personnel, including soldiers, policemen and SWAT forces working with pro-government tribal fighters, continued to assault key neighbourhoods of Ramadi in a bid to wrest back control from gunmen who have held the areas for more than three weeks.

They suffered casualties, however, with a dozen security personnel and tribesmen wounded by snipers during clashes in the central Ramadi neighbourhoods of Malaab and Dhubat, a police major and Dr Mohammed Fanoos from the city’s hospital said.

Fallujah, a former insurgent bastion a short drive from Baghdad, was still in the control of Al Qaeda, however, with residents telling AFP on Monday that the gunmen were tightening their grip at the expense of tribal sheikhs.

Both Ramadi and Fallujah are in Anbar province, a mostly Sunni desert province west of Baghdad along the border with Syria.

The United Nations warned on Tuesday of “an exponential increase in the number of displaced and stranded families”, with more than 22,000 families having registered as internally displaced.

The UN said the actual figure was likely to be higher, as not all those who fled had registered. It said of those who had left, most had found refuge elsewhere in Anbar, but some had gone as far afield as the northern Kurdish region.

Violence in the restive cities of Mosul and Baqouba, both north of Baghdad, meanwhile left six people dead, security and medical officials said, while a car bomb in the capital killed at least four others.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon and other diplomats have called for the Shiite-led authorities to address long-standing grievances in the disaffected Sunni minority, and officials have made some concessions.

But with elections due on April 30, Iraq’s leaders have shown little appetite for compromise, instead trumpeting security operations against militants.

The government on Tuesday also announced the execution of 26 men convicted of “terrorism”, including a Sunni anti-Al Qaeda militia leader whose arrest in 2009 sparked fierce street battles in Baghdad.

The authorities have sharply increased their use of capital punishment as violence has surged in the past year, executing 169 people in 2013, the highest annual figure since the 2003 US-led invasion and the third highest in the world, behind just China and Iran.

Human Rights Watch said in its annual report released on Tuesday that alleged abuses by the Iraqi security forces “compound violence”.

“Iraqis today are caught between state-sponsored violence and terrorist attacks,” said Joe Story, the New York-based group’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The latest violence brought to 700 the number of people killed so far this month, according to an AFP tally.

By comparison, fewer than 250 people died as a result of violence in all of January 2013.

BEIRUT — Ex-premier Saad Hariri has said his bloc is prepared to form a government with Hizbollah to resolve Lebanon’s months-long political deadlock, although they back opposite sides in the Syrian conflict.

The shift by Hariri, who heads a so-called March 14 coalition, comes despite a Beirut car bombing last month that killed a Hariri adviser, Mohammad Chatah, that his bloc blamed on Syrian-backed Shiite movement Hizbollah.

Hariri, in an interview with his Future TV broadcast late on Monday, also stressed that Hizbollah ministers in any future government he heads must not have veto powers.

For nine months, since the resignation of prime minister Najib Mikati, Lebanon has been in political paralysis, with March 14 on one hand and Hizbollah and its allies on the other unable to agree on the formation of a new government.

Chatah’s was the latest in a string of high-profile assassinations in Lebanon of anti-Damascus politicians that began in 2005, with the killing of Saad Hariri’s father, Rafiq Hariri, another former premier.

“We have been targeted with assassinations for nine years, and we have waited and waited. But will we wait for the country to burn down?” Hariri told Future TV.

“I have made this decision [to accept forming a government with Hizbollah] for the sake of Lebanon’s interests, rather than my own,” Hariri added.

But, he said, “I will not accept [that Hizbollah hold] the veto-wielding third” of positions in a future Cabinet.

Hariri also stressed he would not allow a future government to provide cover for Hizbollah’s role in the war in neighbouring Syria, and that he would insist Lebanon remain neutral.

“Yes, I am marching with the Syrian revolution... but the difference between me and others is that I am marching politically. I am not sending thousands of soldiers, or bringing back their bodies to Lebanon,” said Hariri.

He was referring to the thousands of fighters which Hizbollah has sent into neighbouring Syria to fight alongside regime troops against the mostly Sunni rebel forces.

Hariri, a Sunni leader, called on his Christian ally Samir Geagea to follow his example and also reconsider his opposition to forming a government with Hizbollah.

“We have explained to everyone why we are taking this step,” said Hariri, who added he hoped Geagea would “rethink this question”.

Hariri, exiled in France since 2011, has said he will return to Lebanon for legislative elections scheduled for November.

Syria dominated Lebanon politically and militarily for 30 years until 2005, when an international outcry over Rafic Hariri’s killing forced Damascus to withdraw its troops.

DAMASCUS — Exhausted by the devastating war that has asphyxiated Syria’s capital, residents of Damascus pray that this week’s Geneva II peace talks will produce a “miracle” that can silence the guns.

Ahead of the talks, the army’s bombardment of rebel-held suburbs of the city, and opposition mortar fire on its centre, have been less frequent.

And in the streets of the Old City and elsewhere, there is a rare semblance of normality.

Citizens go about their daily lives, youngsters take photos in front of the famed UmMayad Mosque, and a vendor peddles souvenir pictures of President Bashar Assad and his ally Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanon’s Hizbollah group.

But weariness shows on people’s faces when they are asked about a solution to the conflict that has ravaged their country for nearly three years, killing more than 130,000 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights NGO.

“Geneva? It would take a divine miracle for it to succeed,” said Akram, who sells beans in the historic neighbourhood of Bab Touma.

“Neither one side nor the other wants to make concessions,” he added, referring to the regime and to the opposition which voted on Saturday to attend the talks.

Assad’s government has said regularly that his departure from office will not be on the table, even though this is the opposition’s main demand.

Akram’s hopes are more simple.

“What we want before anything else is security. If there isn’t a ceasefire, we’ll never get anywhere,” he said as pro-regime militiamen patrolled nearby.

“Let them talk for months, but I want to sleep in peace,” the 35-year-old added, bemoaning the economic ruin the war has brought.

“We used to export wheat and flour. Now we’re importing it from Lebanon and Iran.”

Bab Touma, a majority Christian district, is now home to Syrians of all faiths who have come from across the war-torn country.

“I don’t have much hope,” said Maher, a Sunni Muslim medical engineering student who arrived five months ago from the northern town of Raqa, which is controlled by jihadists.

‘Too much pain’

The talks “will end without results, particularly if the solution is imposed by the West,” he added in particular reference to France and the United States, which back the opposition.

His girlfriend Maha, a timid brunette, is even more pessimistic.

“Syria will never go back to how it was. I don’t think there will be reconciliation because there has been too much pain.”

Omar, a baker in Bab Touma, left the Palestinian Yarmouk camp south of the city about a year ago.

He is delighted to have escaped the camp, which is mostly controlled by the opposition and has been under a regime siege that led to deaths from starvation among remaining residents.

“We are exhausted. We really need a miracle at Geneva II,” said the 31-year-old former accountant, who sports a neatly trimmed beard.

“The two sides have to put aside their egos. If not, peace is impossible,” he added, as he prepared “manoushe” flatbreads.

While many Damascus residents want nothing more than a return to normal life, others trumpet the regime line.

“We hope for victory for us, for our president!” shouted one passer-by in the central Marjeh neighbourhood of the capital, where many displaced families now live in budget hotels.

“Everything will be over when the terrorists leave the country,” said Amjad, another former Yarmuk resident, echoing the regime term for the rebels.

Others questioned the role of the National Coalition, which is based in Turkey and is due to represent the opposition at the peace talks.

“Who are our leaders going to talk to?” asked Malek, in the working-class district of Sarouja, near Marjeh.

“The coalition doesn’t represent anything and the [rebels] are completely divided, so why should we negotiate with them?”

Hussam, a drama student having a drink in a pub in the upscale Rawda neighbourhood, will be watching the talks closely.

“If I don’t feel like anything is happening after the conference, I’m going to leave Syria,” he said.

LONDON/ATHENS — Syrian officials could face war crimes charges based on photographs from a defector proving the “industrial scale” torture and killing of 11,000 detainees by the regime, international prosecutors say.

Evidence smuggled out by a former Syrian military police photographer was reminiscent of the conditions in the death camps in Nazi Germany in World War II, the three investigators said.

A report by the prosecutors — commissioned by Qatar, which backs the Syrian rebels — provides “clear evidence” of the starvation, strangulation and beating of detainees in President Bashar Assad’s prisons.

The release of the report, which was first revealed by The Guardian newspaper, CNN and Turkey’s Anatolia news agency, came a day before talks were due to begin in Geneva aimed at negotiating an end to Syria’s bloody civil war.

“There is clear evidence, capable of being believed by a tribunal of fact in a court of law, of systematic torture and killing of detained persons by the agents of the Syrian government,” the report said.

“Such evidence would support findings of crimes against humanity against the current Syrian regime. Such evidence could also support findings of war crimes against the current Syrian regime.”

Syria has previously denied torturing detainees but the government had no immediate reaction to the report.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the report “offers further evidence of the systematic violence and brutality being visited upon the people of Syria by the Assad regime”.

The report was written by Desmond de Silva, former chief prosecutor of the special court for Sierra Leone; Geoffrey Nice, the former lead prosecutor in the trial of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic; and David Crane, who indicted Liberian president Charles Taylor.

It also features testimony from a forensic pathologist, an anthropologist who investigated mass graves in Kosovo and an expert in digital images.

‘Pictures of emaciated bodies’

The defector, identified only as “Caesar” for his own safety, presented forensic experts commissioned by a London legal firm representing Qatar with around 55,000 digital images of 11,000 dead detainees since the start of the uprising in Syria in March 2011. The images were on memory sticks.

He claims the victims all died in captivity before being taken to a military hospital to be photographed.

De Silva said the report was the “smoking gun” showing evidence of “industrial-scale” killing by the Syrian regime.

“The pictures of emaciated bodies are reminiscent of the sort of pictures one saw after the World War II when the Nazi concentration camps were opened,” he told the BBC.

“The pictures show over a period of years the systematic murder of detainees by starvation, by torture, the gouging out of eyes, the hideous beating of people, the mutilation of bodies.”

The report says that all but one of the victims were male. Most appeared to be aged between 20 and 40.

The defector photographed as many as 50 bodies a day, the report said.

He said the purpose of the photos was firstly to be able to issue death certificates — falsely saying that the victims had died in hospital — and secondly to confirm to the regime that executions had been carried out.

The bodies would then be buried in rural areas.

‘He couldn’t take it anymore’

The authors of the report said they found the informant and his evidence to be credible after subjecting them to “rigorous scrutiny” and have made their findings available to the United Nations, governments and human rights groups.

The defector, who said he had never witnessed any executions himself, later escaped from Syria fearing for the safety of his family.

“There came a point a few months ago where he decided that he couldn’t take it anymore, so he decided to defect and he left. He could well have gone to Qatar, yes,” said De Silva.

Sunni-ruled Qatar was quick to back rebels who rose up in 2011 against the rule of Assad, who is backed by Shia powerhouse Iran.

Crane called the evidence “amazing”.

“This is the first provable, direct evidence of what has happened to at least 11,000 human beings who have been tortured and executed and apparently disposed of,” he said.

Syrian delegation to peace talks blocked

A plane carrying the Syrian delegation to crucial peace talks in Switzerland finally took off from Athens after being blocked there for hours Tuesday, according to AFP reporters at the airport.

The plane took off from the Greek capital at 5:05pm (1505 GMT), just over five hours after touching down at the airport.

An official Syrian source said Greek authorities had been refusing to refuel the plane, while a Greek civil aviation spokesman said it was being inspected and that a flight plan had not been submitted.

Syrian state television said the delay could lead to the cancellation of meetings, including one between Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The Syrian source said the plane had been blocked “because the Greek authorities refuse to provide it with fuel”.

It was not immediately clear why the plane — a mid-sized Tupolev, according to AFP reporters — would have needed to stop in Athens for refuelling.

In Athens, a civil aviation spokesman confirmed to AFP that the plane, which airport authorities described as “a Syrian Air charter”, had been blocked.

Foreign ministry spokesman Konstantinos Koutras said it was a “procedural” matter.

“The problem stemmed from the refusal of two private companies to refuel the plane owing to the embargo” against the Syrian regime, another foreign ministry source said.

“Following steps taken by the foreign ministry, the problem was solved,” he added.

The so-called Geneva II conference begins on Wednesday in the Swiss lakeside city of Montreux, where representatives from nearly 40 regional and world powers will be seeking a way out of the nearly three-year Syria crisis.

Those meetings will be followed on Friday by direct talks in Geneva between representatives of the opposition and of Assad’s regime, which, according to a Russian official, could last seven to 10 days.

ALGIERS — Weeks of heightened tensions between rival communities in the flashpoint oasis town of Ghardaia in southern Algeria have erupted into violence, leaving one person dead and others hurt, officials said Monday.

Schools and shops were shut after a group of youths went on the rampage on Sunday, attacking five different neighbourhoods, and after a 39-year-old man was stabbed in the chest at his home.

Another 10 people were wounded in the desert town 600 kilometres south of Algiers, among them three policemen, Interior Minister Tayeb Belaiz said, cited by Algerian media.

“The clashes continued until 7:00 am (0600 GMT) this morning. The police managed to restore calm,” Ahmed Baba Aissa, spokesman for the Ghardaia coordination committee, told AFP.

His association was created a month ago to try to defuse ongoing tensions between the Chaamba community of Arab origin and the Mozabites, a Berber minority group which adheres to the Ibadi faith, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

“Until Sunday, a group of youths was spreading fear by attacking different neighbourhoods, one after the other. Then yesterday [Sunday], five neighbourhoods were attacked simultaneously,” Baba Aissa said.

One Mozabite, Belhadj Kebaili, 29, was stabbed to death in his home and numerous others were wounded, he added.

Hamou Mesbah, a senior member of the opposition Socialist Forces Front (FFS) in Ghardaia, insisted the Chaambas and Mozabites had co-existed peacefully for centuries and accused “a gang of criminals” of being behind the latest violence, with the complicity of some police.

“Some want to create trouble in Ghardaia ahead of April’s presidential elections,” he said.

“The problem is that Ghardaia is fertile ground for stirring unrest. It’s a transit town for drug trafficking.”

Interior Minister Belaiz, meanwhile, ruled out the possibility of foreign involvement in the unrest, saying there was “no tangible proof that could confirm such a theory” in comments carried by national news agency APS.

But the FFS parliamentary group tabled a petition to demand an investigation into the tensions in Ghardaia.

In recent years, there have been numerous outbreaks of sectarian violence in the town that lies deep in the Sahara Desert.

Resentment runs high in the region over the lack of opportunity despite its vast energy riches, with stability further undermined by illegal drug trafficking and the threat from Islamist militants.

JUBA — South Sudan’s president said his soldiers had seized the regional capital Malakal back from rebels on Monday, a report dismissed by insurgents battling in the world’s newest country.

If confirmed, it would be the second major centre retaken in the past three days by government forces, who have been backed by troops from neighbouring Uganda.

The United Nations says thousands of people have been killed in a month of clashes pitting troops loyal to President Salva Kiir against rebels supporting Riek Machar, who was sacked as vice president in July.

Initially triggered by a political row, battle lines have increasingly followed ethnic lines with Kiir’s Dinka battling Machar’s Nuer.

“They took Malakal and other areas around in the Upper Nile region,” Kiir told a news conference, referring to his forces.

He did not say if the soldiers who retook Malakal, capital of oil-producing Upper Nile region, had received any help from Ugandan troops.

Kampala’s involvement has angered the rebels and raised the spectre of the conflict in one of the Africa’s poorest states overflowing its borders.

BP says South Sudan holds the third-largest oil reserves in sub-Saharan Africa after Angola and Nigeria.

Malakal ‘nearly destroyed’

A rebel spokesman in Addis Ababa, where talks aimed at securing a ceasefire have been grinding on, dismissed Kiir’s statement.

“It is true that they made an attempt to capture the town around 1:00pm this afternoon, but they were defeated. Malakal is still in our hands,” Lul Ruai Koang told Reuters.

Witnesses say Malakal, a major transit hub on the White Nile, has been nearly destroyed by weeks of heavy shelling between both sides.

Control of the town has changed hands at least three times since the fighting started in mid-December and there have been conflicting statements about who controls it in the past.

Kampala had said its soldiers were instrumental in the recapture of Bor, administrative centre of neighbouring Jonglei state, over the weekend.

Both Kiir and rebels have declined to sign a ceasefire agreement in Ethiopia due to disagreements over the fate of 11 detainees held by authorities in Juba and the involvement of foreign troops.

Rebels insist the detainees be freed before a deal can be signed while the government maintains that they will only be released when the due process of law has been followed.

South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011 under a peace agreement to end decades of war with the Khartoum government. That conflict also saw fighting between southern factions, including one splinter group led by Machar.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — At least one rocket struck the outskirts of Israel’s southern Red Sea resort of Eilat on Monday, a security source told AFP.

“At least one rocket was fired at Eilat and they found the remains on the outskirts of the city,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding the searches were continuing.

Neither the police nor the army could confirm rocket fire on the city, although residents had reported hearing several explosions earlier in the evening, a police statement said.

The last time the resort city came under attack was in August 2013 when the Israeli army said its Iron Dome anti-missile system had intercepted and destroyed a rocket but did not say where it came from.

That attack was claimed by a Gaza-based Salafist group called the Mujahedeen Shura Council, which has previously said its fighters in Sinai had staged several rocket attacks on Eilat.

Since the ouster of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, Israel’s border with Sinai has seen multiple security incidents, with militants using the lawless peninsula to stage attacks on Israel.

The most serious incident was in August 2011, when gunmen infiltrated southern Israel and staged a series of ambushes that killed eight Israelis.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel’s restrictions on Palestinian movement between Gaza and the West Bank is separating relatives and making family life impossible for tens of thousands of people, an Israeli human rights report said Monday.

Jointly published by rights watchdogs B’Tselem and HaMoked, the 42-page report documents the impact of Israel’s policy of tightly restricting Palestinian movement into and out of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

“Israel’s declared policy of isolating the Gaza Strip severely violates the right to family life of tens of thousands of Palestinians living in split families, divided between Gaza and Israel, or between Gaza and the West Bank,” it said.

Current Israeli policy bars Gazans from travelling to the West Bank except in extremely rare circumstances. And although West Bank residents are permitted to go to Gaza, they have to commit to stay there, the report said.

“Israel prohibits all passage between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, except in very few exceptional humanitarian cases of first-degree relatives involving serious illness, death or a wedding,” it said.

Even then, not all requests are accepted, or are granted too late.

After the 1967 war when Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank, it allowed Palestinians relative freedom of movement between the two territories, but during the first uprising (1987-1993), restrictions were stepped up, ostensibly for security reasons.

The policy changed in 2006 when Israel first imposed a blockade on Gaza after fighters there seized an Israeli soldier, and was tightened again a year later after Hamas forcibly took control.

Women were particularly affected, the report said, noting that marriage meant a woman was expected to leave her family and move into her husband’s home.

“Israel’s policy... is especially detrimental to women... as the restrictions on their freedom of movement effectively sever them from their families of origin,” the organisations said.

The report urged the Israeli government to “respect the rights of all Palestinian residents to family life and freedom of movement.”

In response, Israel’s justice ministry acknowledged the “hardship” the policy was causing, but said it was necessary for security reasons.

The Gaza Strip is “a hostile territory controlled by a murderous terrorist organisation [Hamas] that routinely operates against a civilian population and whose self-declared goal is the annihilation of the State of Israel”, it said.

“Permitting passage between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would entail a substantial security risk,” the ministry said, insisting the policy was “a regretful side effect” of the “strategy of terrorism and violence” pursued by Palestinian fighters.

TEHRAN — Iran on Monday halted production of 20 per cent enriched uranium, marking the entry into force of an interim deal with world powers on its disputed nuclear programme.

Western powers kept to their part of the deal reached in November, with the European Union and the United States announcing they were easing crippling sanctions slapped on Iran.

The move came as the United Nations invited Iran to attend an international peace conference on ending the war in Tehran’s ally Syria, despite strong objections from Arab and Western nations.

Implementation of the landmark nuclear deal also started the clock on negotiating a trickier long-term accord to end the nuclear standoff with and avert a possible war with Iran.

Under the deal Western powers will loosen the sanctions in a package worth $6-$7 billion, including $4.2 billion in frozen overseas foreign exchange assets in eight instalments starting February 1.

The Atomic Energy Organisation’s Mohammad Amiri told IRNA news agency Iran had kept to its part of the deal reached with the P5+1 powers — the US, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany.

“In line with the implementation of the Geneva joint plan of action, Iran suspended the production of 20 per cent enriched uranium in the presence of UN nuclear watchdog inspectors at Natanz and Fordo sites,” said Amiri.

The International Atomic Energy Agency concurred.

Iran “has ceased enriching uranium above five per cent” fissile purities at the Natanz and Fordo enrichment facilities, the IAEA said in a report passed to member states and seen by AFP.

It said Iran was also converting its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, a particular concern to the international community since it could easily be purified to weapons-grade.

The IAEA said Iran “is not conducting any further advances to its activities” at Natanz, Fordo or the heavy-water reactor under construction at Arak, which could provide Iran with weapons-grade plutonium.

“It’s all fine, all their requirements have been fulfilled,” a diplomat told AFP.

EU, US announce sanctions relief

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who represents the P5+1, said she would meet representatives of the major powers Tuesday to push for further negotiations with Iran on a comprehensive solution.

“We should build on the momentum that we’ve got and start moving towards significant dialogue and negotiation in the next weeks... I would like to move swiftly,” she said.

Ashton’s comments came after the EU and the US announced steps to ease the sanctions.

“As part of the implementation of the Joint Plan of Action agreed by Iran and the (P5+1), which enters into force today, the council today suspended certain EU restrictive measures against Iran for a period of six months,” the EU said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry also approved a waiver to ease the sanctions, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, as the White House hailed Iran’s actions as “an important step forward”.

Under the deal, Iran will not install or switch on new nuclear machines and will grant the IAEA daily visits to the Fordo and Natanz enrichment facilities.

But the core sanctions will still bite. Over the next half-year alone, Iran will miss out on $30 billion in oil revenues, the White House says.

Most of Tehran’s $100 billion in foreign exchange holdings remains off-limits.

Comprehensive accord

Mark Fitzpatrick, a former US State Department official now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said world powers will want Iran to slash the number of centrifuges to 3,000-4,000 from the current 19,000.

Iran must also mothball Fordo, change the Arak reactor so it cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium, and cut the stockpile of low-enriched uranium to less than a bomb’s worth, he told AFP.

Coupled with tighter inspections, this would not remove entirely Iran’s capability to make nuclear weapons — it denies having this aim — but it would make it considerably more difficult.

Agreeing the interim deal was hard enough, and neither side is under any illusions about the difficulty of securing a long-term agreement.

Even if a deal is reached, its terms may be too tough for hardliners in Iran and too lax for their US counterparts and Iran’s arch-enemy Israel, the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power.

Iran’s conservative newspapers slammed the deal.

Under the headline “Nuclear holocaust”, Vatan-e Emrooz said Monday the Geneva accord would see most of Iran’s nuclear activities come to a halt.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Geneva deal “does not prevent Iran from realising its intention to develop nuclear weapons”.

Experts also warned against a push by US lawmakers to impose new sanctions, saying it could undermine further negotiations.

It would “send the message to Tehran that the United States is unable to hold up its end of the bargain,” said Kelsey Davenport from the Arms Control Association.