Region

VIENNA — Iran and world powers embark Tuesday on the Herculean task of transforming their interim nuclear deal into a long-term accord satisfying all sides and silencing talk of war for good.

After a decade of failure and rising tensions, US President Barack Obama has put the chances of an agreement at “50-50”, while Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has predicted “difficult” discussions.

Getting a deal could also help bear fruit in other areas, not least in the three-year-old Syrian civil war where Tehran has staunchly backed President Bashar Assad.

The scheduled three-day meeting in Vienna between Iran and the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany — the so-called P5+1 — is the first in what is expected to be a series of tricky encounters in the coming months.

It comes after foreign ministers struck a breakthrough deal in Geneva on November 24 that saw Iran agree to curb — for six months — some of its nuclear activities in exchange for minor relief from painful sanctions.

That agreement, which came into force on January 20, extends the theoretical “breakout time” needed by Iran — which denies seeking the bomb — to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

In return Iran is due to get over the six months some $6-7 billion in sanctions relief, including $4.2 billion in assets frozen in overseas bank accounts. It was also promised no new sanctions.

But Iran’s freeze is only temporary — although it can be extended — and the bulk of sanctions remain, continuing to deprive Iran of billions of dollars in oil revenues every week.

Under the “comprehensive” deal now being sought, which the parties aim to conclude and commence implementing by November, the powers will want Iran to scale back its activities permanently.

These might include closing the Fordo facility, slashing the number of centrifuges enriching uranium, cutting its stockpile of fissile material and altering a new reactor being built at Arak, diplomats say.

This, plus tighter UN inspections, would not remove entirely Iran’s capability to get the bomb but it would make it substantially more difficult — “impossible”, according to Obama.

Hard sell

In exchange, Iran would see all UN Security Council, US and EU sanctions lifted, but it remains to be seen whether it will accept the conditions.

Tehran has laid out a series of “red lines” including refusing to close down any nuclear facilities or to stop medium-level enrichment.

Iranian negotiator Hamid Baeedinejad told IRNA Sunday that Arak, which Western countries fear could provide Iran with weapons-grade plutonium, would be “one of the most important and difficult subjects” in Vienna.

He also said Tehran “will definitely not accept to be deprived from having the right to replace the existing centrifuges with the new and advanced ones”.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate whose election last year has helped thaw relations with the West, retains the backing of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — for now.

“I am not fully sure whether Khamenei himself is fully committed to this process yet,” Siavush Randjbar-Daemi, Iran and Middle East lecturer at Manchester University, told AFP.

Negotiators also have to take into account hardliners in the United States and in Israel, the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, and also Sunni Arab monarchies in the Gulf.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was sharply critical of last November’s accord, and Obama has had to fight hard to prevent Congress passing new sanctions on Iran.

“I think both sides would be willing to make compromises,” Richard Dalton, the former British ambassador to Tehran now at think tank Chatham House, told AFP.

“The trouble is that both sides have hard men outside the negotiating room who have to be satisfied.”

The Mehr news agency said that Zarif would meet on Monday evening with EU foreign policy chief and P5+1 chief negotiator Catherine Ashton for a working dinner.

GAZA CITY — Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement has ruled out the idea of international troops being stationed in a future Palestinian state under a peace deal with Israel.

“From time to time we hear people making offers during the negotiations, primarily about the idea of an international force following the retreat of the [Israeli] occupier,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement published on Saturday.

“We in Hamas, we will not allow the presence of an international force [in a future Palestinian state] which would be just like the Israeli occupation.”

Security arrangements in a future state have become a major bone of contention in ongoing peace talks, with Israel insisting on maintaining a military presence along the Jordan Valley which runs down the eastern flank of the West Bank, bordering Jordan.

The Palestinians have rejected such an idea, although they have said they would accept NATO troops or another international force.

“We demand [US Secretary of State John] Kerry and others revise their positions because we won’t let anyone undermine our rights,” Abu Zuhri said.

“This so-called Kerry plan was put together by the Americans and the Zionist entity to eradicate the Palestinian cause. We will not let such an agreement give away our people’s rights,” he said, calling for “a united front of factions to reject the talks and their outcome”.

DUBAI — The United Arab Emirates have expelled eight Kuwaiti students from two universities for forming a union, collecting donations and holding unauthorised meetings, a higher education official said.

The expulsion is a rare move against students from a fellow Gulf country.

Kuwait’s Alrai newspaper speculated that the students were expelled due to suspected links to the Muslim Brotherhood which is banned in the UAE.

The University of Sharjah and the University of Ajman have expelled the students for “violating the internal regulations of the universities”, the official from the ministry of higher education said late Saturday.

The students were involved in “forming a student union with a permit from the administration at both universities, in addition to collecting donations and holding illegal gatherings in dormitories”, the state news agency WAM quoted the official as saying.

“This represents a violation of UAE laws,” the unnamed official added, without disclosing the identities or the affiliations of the students.

Kuwait’s Alrai reported on Saturday that the students were told they were “no longer welcome” in the UAE “on the assumption that they belong to the Muslim Brotherhood or similar organisations”.

The expulsion comes amid a UAE crackdown on Islamists over the past two years.

Last month a court jailed 30 Emiratis and Egyptians up to five years for forming a Muslim Brotherhood cell.

It is not clear if the students will have to leave the UAE which, along with Kuwait, is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council which grants GCC citizens unlimited residency in one another’s country.

The other members of the GCC are Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwaiti MPs are unlikely to vote on ratifying a Gulf security pact during the current legislative term, the parliament speaker said Sunday, amid concerns it would undermine constitutional freedoms.

Marzouk Al Ghanem told a press conference that a majority of MPs supporting and opposing the pact have called for delaying its ratification and that “no decision will be taken on it in the current parliamentary term” which closes at the end of June.

The next term normally opens in late October.

The pact calls for the extradition of anyone accused of carrying out political or security activities against a member state and allows members to seek military and security assistance from other GCC states to counter unrest.

Opponents say the pact would undermine freedom of expression, and several political groups have started holding public rallies warning it will turn Kuwait into a police state.

Unlike most of its neighbours, Kuwait has an elected parliament and relatively few restrictions on the press and public expression.

The speaker called on the government not to press for immediate ratification and to respond positively with the majority of the legislature.

Ghanem said he has asked parliament’s constitutional experts to prepare a comprehensive legal study on the security pact and distribute it to all the 50 MPs who have requested expert opinions before debating the agreement.

Kuwait is the only member of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) not to ratify the security pact, which was approved at a summit in Bahrain in December 2012 and signed by GCC interior ministers, including Kuwait’s, a month earlier.

Besides Kuwait, the GCC groups energy-rich Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

The security agreement was specially modified to enable Kuwait to join after it refused to take part in an earlier pact introduced in 1994, saying it violated the constitution.

TIKRIT, Iraq — At least 17 people were killed in attacks across Iraq on Sunday as troops fought to evict Islamist militants from the northern town of Sulaiman Pek, security sources and medics said.

Armoured vehicles and special police forces with heavy machineguns arrived in Sulaiman Pek to reinforce troops battling there for several days backed by helicopters gunships.

“Clashes are continuing today in the town centre,” the town’s mayor, Talib Mohammed, told Reuters. “The situation is still unclear. We can’t even look out of the window, as bullets and blasts are not stopping.”

Militants raised the black flag of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — a hardline Sunni group also fighting in neighbouring Syria — over parts of Sulaiman Pek, 160 km north of Baghdad, on Thursday.

Sunni militancy has been on the rise over the past year, especially in the western province of Anbar, where the army is besieging the city of Fallujah, overrun by insurgents on January 1.

A suicide car bomber blew himself up near a police checkpoint on Sunday, killing one person in the Al Warrar area west of Anbar’s provincial capital Ramadi. Police said they had thwarted another attack east of Ramadi, shooting dead a suicide bomber driving a police vehicle previously seized by militants.

No group claimed responsibility for any of the latest attacks, but Sunni insurgents trying to undermine the Shiite-led government often attack police and military targets.

Gunmen killed five people at a police checkpoint in Taza, a town 210km north of Baghdad, a local police source said.

In the town of Shirqat, 300km north of the capital, at least two policemen were killed when gunmen fired on their patrol, police sources said.

A car bomb killed four people in the mainly Shiite Chkouk district in northern Baghdad, police and medical sources said.

In other attacks, police said two mortar rounds hit a house, killing a civilian, in Jurf Al Sakhar, 60km south of Baghdad, where the army is also fighting militants.

Gunmen using silenced weapons shot a man and his son dead near their home in central Hilla, south of Baghdad. In the town of Muqdadiya, 80km northeast of Baghdad, gunmen killed two government-backed Sunni militiamen in drive-by shooting.

TRIPOLI — Libya’s parliament has reached consensus on holding early elections, yielding to popular pressure after it had extended its mandate that ended on February 7, deputies said Sunday.

The agreement comes as the North African country on Monday prepares to mark three years since the start of the revolution that overthrew long-time dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

“The political blocs are unanimous on the holding of early elections” for new transitional authorities, MP Abdullah Al Gmati told AFP.

He belongs to a 15-strong bloc of independent lawmakers in the General National Congress (GNC), Libya’s highest political authority.

Discussions are still under way on institutions that might replace the GNC: A new congress, or a parliament and a president.

The second strongest bloc in the GNC, the Party of Justice and Construction (PJC) which is the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, had on Thursday called for early elections.

The GNC’s 200 members were elected in July 2012 for a term of 18 months and tasked with leading the country’s transition after the 2011 uprising.

But earlier this month, it decided to extend its mandate until December despite opposition from Libyans critical of its inability to halt the country’s slide into chaos.

Thousands of Libyans took to the streets for the second consecutive week on Friday to protest against the decision.

The demonstration came ahead of Monday’s third anniversary of the start of the February 17 Revolution, when angry residents of the eastern city of Benghazi took to the streets to protest against Qadhafi’s four-decade rule.

The GNC last week adopted a new roadmap that would see a general election held by the end of the year if a constitutional body due to be chosen on February 20 adopts a new charter within four months of its election.

The commission would decide on key issues in a new constitution, including the system of government, the status of minorities and the role of Islamic Sharia law.

But if, within 60 days, it decides it cannot complete the job, it would call for immediate presidential and legislative polls for a fresh period of 18 months.

After first accepting this roadmap, the PJC has now called for going “straight to elections”.

Their rivals, the liberal Alliance of National Forces (NFA), opposed extending the GNC mandate from the outset.

MP Suad Soltan of the NFA said on Sunday her bloc has been demanding the assembly’s dissolution for months.

Confirming that agreement in principle had been reached on holding early elections, Soltan said a vote on the move could be held later on Sunday.

GAZA CITY — As hoards of excited fans scramble to reach Arab Idol winner Mohammed Assaf, they are pushed back by a group of tough-looking men in shades — the face of Gaza’s first private security firm.

Guarding the young singer on a rare trip back to his hometown is the very first assignment for “Secure Land”, a newly formed team of bodyguards whose mandate covers everything from minding VIPs, securing hotels and businesses to ensuring the safe delivery of cash in transit.

“This is our first day on the job and we are securing Arab Idol star Mohammed Assaf,” Secure Land’s executive director Bilal Al Arabid told AFP.

“We have a team of 18 people protecting him, not including the drivers. This is our first mission protecting such a personality.”

As Assaf drove up to Palestine University in a UN car, his Secure Land minders followed in their own vehicle, a white-and-red company logo plastered to the door: “Secure Land. We make it happen,” it reads, all in English.

It’s a family business and Arabid’s father, Abdel Kader, serves as its chief executive.

“We thought seriously about this service after we talked to institutions, companies and people, and found they accepted the idea because this sort of service is just not available in Gaza,” the father said.

But getting a permit to operate such a business from the Hamas-run government was not easy — largely because none of the employees belong to any of Gaza’s many armed factions.

“The permits for the business were late coming because of the ‘sensitivity’ of the issue,” he said, explaining it was the first time that Hamas had allowed such a company to operate.

In Gaza, Hamas does not allow private individuals except in special rare cases to carry arms — unless they are a card-carrying member of one of the factions.

By taking over the protection of many civilian institutions, Secure Land can even help to “ease the burden” on the Hamas police and security forces, because such operations “demand a lot of manpower”, Arabid said.

Martial arts

Inside one of Gaza City’s handful of sports centres, dozens of sweaty men — young and not so young — are put through their paces in various martial arts and other exercises to stay in shape for the job.

“I used to serve in the Qatari army and I do Taekwondo so this job is good for me,” said 40-year-old Hassan Al Shourbaji from the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, who serves as a group leader.

“We have received high-quality training and we are experienced in martial arts, and I also have my personal experience with weapons due to my military training,” he told AFP.

“This is the first company in the Gaza Strip that is not affected by security complications. It’s a private company and has no affiliation to any Palestinian faction,” he said.

So far, the firm has 40 employees who have trained for two months to prepare for the job.

As well as physical training they have also been instructed in the use of light weapons by a specialised trainer at a local shooting range.

Arabid said most of the men are fairly fit from doing sport, but they also receive more fitness and security training from the company.

“We focus on individual capacity and give our utmost attention to fitness, and things like the ability to run, to jump, to evacuate VIPs and secure them,” explained trainer Ahmed Yusef, saying they also instruct the men in decision making.

For some international groups, the appeal of a private firm is that it allows them to side-step the politically tricky need to interact directly with the Hamas administration, which has been boycotted by most Western governments since it forcibly took over the Gaza Strip in summer 2007.

“Some international organisations and private companies in Gaza which have international ties are sensitive and do not like dealing with the Hamas police because of the international boycott,” Yusef explained.

“And some independent international figures prefer bodyguards from a private firm to avoid [political] embarrassment.”

But their role doesn’t clash with that of the Hamas forces, it’s more of a complementary arrangement, he said.

“It’s internationally recognised that governments have to protect public institutions, while private institutions — like banks and tourist facilities and hotels — get private companies.

“We will work together with the government.”

BAALBEK — The Lebanese army intercepted a car packed with explosives near the border with Syria on Sunday, four days after two car bombs were defused elsewhere in the country.

State news agency NNA said the car had entered Lebanon from the embattled Qalamun region across the border and was stopped at an army checkpoint when soldiers became suspicious.

A security source told AFP soldiers opened fire towards the vehicle, prompting the passengers to flee.

The car was rigged with 200 kilogrammes of explosives which were to be triggered by mobile phones, the source said.

“The car came from the Qalamun region and was heading towards Beirut,” the NNA reported.

It identified the vehicle as a four-wheel drive and said it was seized along the Shoaybe-Ham highway in eastern Lebanon.

The army confirmed the reports in a brief statement, and said soldiers had opened fire towards the vehicle. It gave no further details.

On Wednesday, the army said it defused two car bombs, one in Beirut and a second in eastern Lebanon which it said had come from Yabrud, a bastion of Syrian rebels in the Qalamun mountains.

Lebanon has seen a string of deadly attacks, including car bombs, linked to Syria’s war, claimed by Al Qaeda-linked groups.

Although officially neutral in Syria’s conflict, Lebanon is deeply divided over the Sunni-led rebellion against President Bashar Assad, whose troops are backed by fighters from the Shiite movement Hizbollah.

CAIRO — Egypt’s deposed president Mohamed Morsi charged he was being muzzled in a soundproof dock at the start of his trial on espionage charges Sunday, as his defence lawyers staged a protest walkout.

The court adjourned the trial, the third for the Islamist since his July 3 ouster, to February 23 to allow the lawyers’ syndicate to appoint new lawyers.

Morsi, who has shouted that he was Egypt’s legitimate and elected president in hearings of other trials against him, said the court was trying to silence him.

“We are in a farce, all this because you are afraid of me. You are afraid that the president speaks,” Morsi cried out.

“If this farce continues, don’t come to the court,” Morsi told his defence.

Mohamed Selim Al Awa, a member of the defence team, told AFP: “We have withdrawn until the court removes the glass cage, we will not get in the room today.”

The soundproof dock is designed to stop Morsi and the other defendants from interrupting the proceedings with outbursts. On Sunday, 20 defendants were brought to court, including Morsi, who was placed in a separate dock with a former aide, and the Brotherhood’s supreme guide Mohamed Badie and his deputy Khairat Al Shater.

The accused include former presidential aides and renowned political scientist Emad Shahin, who is being tried in absentia.

The latest court case is part of a relentless government crackdown targeting Morsi and his Islamist supporters since he was ousted by the military after a single year in power.

Morsi and 35 others, including leaders of his Muslim Brotherhood, are accused of espionage “for the international organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood, its military wing and [Palestinian] Hamas movement”.

If found guilty, the defendants could face the death penalty.

Morsi, who was Egypt’s first democratically elected and civilian president, is already on trial for alleged involvement in the killing of opposition protesters in December 2012.

Along with 130 others, including dozens of members of Hamas and Lebanon’s Shiite group Hizbollah, he is separately being tried on charges linked to a jailbreak during the 2011 uprising that toppled strongman Hosni Mubarak.

The ousted leader also faces trial for “insulting the judiciary”. A date for that has yet to be set.

In the espionage trial, the prosecution aims to implicate Morsi in a vast conspiracy involving foreign powers, militant groups and Iran to destabilise Egypt.

The defendants are accused of “espionage for foreign organisations abroad to commit terrorist attacks in the country”, a prosecution statement said.

Some defendants, including Essam Haddad, Morsi’s second in command when president, also stand accused of betraying state secrets to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

During Morsi’s short-lived presidency, ties flourished between Cairo and Hamas, a Palestinian affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood which rules neighbouring Gaza.

But since July, Egypt’s military-installed government has accused Hamas of backing Morsi and his Brotherhood and carrying out terrorist attacks inside Egypt.

BEIRUT — Lebanon on Saturday announced the formation of a compromise government after a 10-month political vacuum during which the war in neighbouring Syria exacerbated longstanding divisions.

The 24-member government brings together the powerful Shiite movement Hizbollah and its allies with the Sunni-led bloc of former prime minister Saad Hariri for the first time in three years.

“After 10 months of efforts, of patience, a government protecting the national interest is born,” said Tammam Salam, Lebanon’s new prime minister.

“It is a unifying government and the best formula to allow Lebanon to confront challenges,” said Salam, who was tasked with forming the government back in April 2013, after the resignation of his predecessor Najib Miqati.

The announcement ends a political stalemate that left Lebanon without a government even as the conflict next door spilled over, with car and suicide bomb attacks striking Beirut and elsewhere.

Multiple attempts to resolve the government crisis stumbled over disagreements between the Hizbollah and Hariri blocs, which back opposing sides in the Syrian conflict.

Hizbollah is allied with Syria’s President Bashar Assad and has dispatched fighters to bolster his regime in its fight against an uprising.

Hariri is a fierce opponent of the government in Damascus and backs the Sunni-led uprising against Assad.

Compromise agreement

Saturday’s compromise, which has been months in the making, is intended to ensure neither the Hizbollah nor the Hariri bloc has veto power over the other.

It divides the 24 portfolios into three groups, with Hizbollah and Hariri’s blocs each taking eight ministries, and the final eight going to candidates considered to be neutral.

To preserve the delicate balance between the country’s 18 sects, the government is also equally divided between Christian and Muslim representatives.

Hizbollah’s political wing will have two ministries — industry and minister of state for parliamentary affairs — with its allies taking portfolios including the foreign ministry and energy ministry.

A single portfolio was awarded to a woman, with neutral figure Alice Shabtini taking the displaced persons ministry that handles the cases of people displaced during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

Hariri paved the way for the breakthrough when he announced in a U-turn last month that he was willing to allow his so-called March 14 bloc to join a government with Hizbollah.

The decision was a bitter pill for the former prime minister, who is fiercely opposed to Hizbollah.

Five Hizbollah members are currently on trial in absentia at a special court in the Hague for their alleged involvement in the 2005 assassination of Hariri’s father and ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.

Hariri’s decision has not been welcomed by all those in his bloc, with the Christian Party Lebanese Forces refusing to join any government that includes Hizbollah.

‘Concessions’

Sources within March 14 said Hariri had made a number of “concessions” to Hizbollah, which won several key portfolios for its Christian ally Michel Aoun.

His son-in-law Gebran Bassil becomes foreign minister, and fellow bloc member Arthur Nazarian will be charged with the powerful energy ministry.

Hariri also reportedly compromised on two initial candidates for interior minister, both of which were rejected by Hizbollah’s bloc, party sources said.

Hariri has said his decision was justified by the country’s desperate need for leadership as it struggles with the spillover from the war in Syria.

Hariri, who is based in Paris, offered Salam his congratulations after the government was announced.

He said he hoped the government would be “able to deal with the constitutional and national challenges, with the responsibility required at this crucial period of the country’s history”.

The new government will have no shortage of challenges ahead of it, first among them likely to be the security situation.

In recent months, a string of bomb attacks have rocked the capital Beirut and other parts of the country, largely targeting Hizbollah strongholds but killing civilians.

Jihadist groups, some linked to those fighting in Syria, have claimed responsibility and said the attacks are a response to Hizbollah’s role in the Syrian conflict.

Lebanon is also struggling under the weight of nearly one million Syrian refugees, who are testing the country’s already-limited resources.