Region

SANAA — Yemen’s political factions extended the president’s term by a year and approved a new federal system at the end of national reconciliation talks on Tuesday, a milestone in the troubled country’s transition to democracy.

Highlighting the security challenges facing Yemen, which borders major oil exporter Saudi Arabia and is home to one of Al Qaeda’s most active branches, unknown assailants shot dead a leader of the Yemeni Shiite Muslim Houthi group while he was driving to attend the final session of the talks.

Yemen has been torn by rising violence and lawlessness as the US-allied country struggles to overcome political turmoil after long-serving president Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down following months of mass protests against his rule in 2011.

The nation’s political factions gave interim president Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi, whose two-year term had originally been due to end with elections in February 2014, an extra year after delays in the transition to democracy.

He will oversee a shift to a federal system intended to accommodate southern separatist demands for more autonomy. Southern separatists have been demanding to revive the state that merged with North Yemen in 1990.

The national reconciliation talks, launched in March 2013 as part of a Gulf-brokered power transfer deal, have been plagued by walk-outs by politicians.

Hadi, who will head a special committee, was also tasked with the drafting of a new constitution within three months.

He was also mandated to reshuffle the Cabinet and restructure the shura council, the consultative upper house of parliament, to give more representation to the south and to Shiite Muslim rebels in the north.

Mindful of the challenges, Hadi told delegates: “I did not take over a nation, I took over a capital where gun shots are continuous day and night, where roadblocks fill the streets. I took over an empty bank that has no wages and a divided security apparatus and army.”

“The national dialogue document [final communiqué] is the beginning of the road to build a new Yemen,” he said at the Movenpick Hotel on a hilltop on the outskirts of Sanaa where the sessions have been taking place.

Yemeni analyst Hatem Bamehrez said Hadi’s task was huge.

“If the dialogue took 10 months to complete, then implementation needs enough time and one year is not enough,” Bamehrez said, adding that shifting the major issues for Hadi to deal with later represented “a big danger” to the process.

Security

Marring Tuesday’s talks, Ahmad Sharafeddin, a Houthi delegate at the reconciliation talks who had served as dean of the law faculty at Sanaa University, was killed when gunmen in a speeding vehicle sprayed his car with bullets in central Sanaa, officials said.

They said he died instantly and the gunmen escaped.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the assassination, but another Houthi leader, Abdulkarim Al Khiwani, accused hardline Sunni Muslim militants of carrying out the attack.

The Houthi group fought radical Sunni Salafis in northern Yemen from October until earlier this month, when a ceasefire was reached to relocate the Salafis to another city some
250km away. But clashes have continued in other parts of northern Yemen with tribesmen allied to the Salafis.

More than 210 people have been killed in the fighting that erupted in late October after the Houthis accused the Salafis of recruiting foreign militants in preparation to attack them.

The Salafis, who follow an austere brand of Sunni Islam, say the foreigners are students of Islamic theology.

Tuesday’s attack was the latest in a string of killings against high-profile Yemenis and foreigners. Last week an Iranian diplomat was killed in Sanaa when he resisted gunmen who were trying to kidnap him.

AMMAN — President Bashar Assad’s government and the Syrian opposition are scheduled to sit at peace talks for the first time on Wednesday in Switzerland after nearly three years of civil war.

Assad has the advantage of iron control over his delegation, which is led by officials with long diplomatic experience. The political opposition in exile is struggling to overcome internal divisions and is weakened by rebel statements rejecting its authority. Below is a description of key players:

Government

Walid Al Mouallem

Assad’s foreign minister and head of the government delegation. As ambassador to Washington in the 1990s, when Syria and Israel embarked on failed peace talks, Mouallem has more than a decade of direct experience in high-stake talks.

The 73-year old career diplomat was appointed foreign minister in 2006 to signal a more flexible foreign policy by Assad. Mouallem can talk tough. He has denied findings of a UN investigation that said he threatened former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al Hariri two weeks before Hariri was assassinated by a massive car bomb in Beirut in 2005.

In public appearances since the revolt against Assad’s rule broke out in March 2011, Mouallem has towed the official line, blaming the demonstrations on a foreign conspiracy and dismissing the possibility of Assad giving up power. Mouallem is from a Sunni Muslim family in Damascus, where an alliance between the city’s wealthy Sunnis and Assad’s Alawite minority, has been a pillar of the four-decade Assad family’s rule.

Bouthaina Shaaban

An adviser to Assad and a rare non-security figure with direct access to the president. An Alawite who was a translator to the President’s father, Hafez Assad, Shaaban’s career has been shaped by the elder Assad and his historic decision before his death in 2000 to turn down a peace deal with Israel that would have returned most of the Golan Heights to Syria.

Shaaban, who has acted on occasions as a de facto spokesman for Bashar, has a PhD in English literature from Britain. Although she espoused reform early in the revolt, she has appeared more hardline as the anti-Assad camp took up arms. She has denied that children were killed in a nerve gas attack on rebel neighbourhoods of Damascus in August last year.

Faisal Mekdad

Officially deputy foreign minister, Mekdad is one of the most powerful figures in the Cabinet by virtue of his connections with the intelligence apparatus and the ruling Baath Party. A protégé of Farouq Al Shara, Syria’s ceremonial Sunni vice president who has been sidelined since the revolt started, Mekdad is calm and deliberate in projecting support for Assad, while being fiercely critical of the uprising and the subsequent rise of Islamist rebels. He is from the southern province of Deraa, the birthplace of the revolt.

Omran Zoabi

Information minister and a lawyer by training, also from Deraa. Zoabi, an avowed Baathist like Mekdad, has been assuming a more public role on the domestic scene defending Assad’s handling of the revolt and attacking the opposition as stooges of foreign governments.

Bashar Jaafari

Syria’s UN ambassador. Jaafari is close to Assad and his defence of Assad’s handling of the revolt has been key to projecting to an international audience an image of government cohesiveness. Erudite and confident in public, Jaafari worked and studied in France.

Key opposition figures who may attend

Ahmad Al Jarba

President of the Western-backed umbrella opposition group in exile, the National Coalition. Jarba was elected six months ago after a bitter power struggle that saw the ascendancy of an opposition bloc backed by Riyadh but less influenced by Islamists.

Jarba’s leadership was called in question when he slapped a coalition member at a meeting of the coalition two months ago, but he has since defeated a challenge to his leadership by a Qatari-backed wing and established a rapport with Kurdish parties who were brought into the Coalition.

Born in the northeastern Syrian province of Hasaka, which is inhabited by Arabs and Kurds, 44-year-old Jarba belongs to the Shammar, a large Arab tribe that extends into Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He was a political prisoner for two years in the 1990s. He was also arrested during the uprising and fled to Saudi Arabia, a Sunni state that is leading support for the Syrian opposition.

Riad Seif

One of the most prominent figures in the opposition, Seif played a key role in founding the National Coalition. In recent months he has been out of the limelight as he faced health problems.

Seif, a former businessman in his 60s, remains an influential figure in opposition politics behind the scenes with a reservoir of moral authority for his longstanding opposition to Assad. Since Assad took office in 2000, Seif was jailed for two times for a total of eight years.

Michel Kilo

A Christian opposition campaigner who has spearheaded efforts by the mainly Sunni Muslim opposition to appeal to minorities, Kilo is considered the brains behind the ascendancy of Jarba to the coalition. A veteran opposition campaigner and former political prisoner, he has a deep understanding of the Assad family and the intricate working of the security apparatus. A writer versed in several languages, Kilo was jailed for three years before the revolt after writing a column criticising the Alawite domination of the military.

Farouq Tayfour

A Muslim Brotherhood stalwart among the most influential in the group’s collegiate leadership. Born in the city of Hama in 1945, Tayfour fled Syria in the 1980s when a crackdown by Hafez Assad, which especially targeted the Brotherhood, killed many thousands and resulted in the destruction of Tayfour’s home city. A cunning negotiator, Tayfour is known for relishing in political confrontations. His colleagues say before crucial meetings he says: “Now it’s playtime.”

Burhan Ghalioun

Former President of the Syrian National Council, the forerunner of the National Coalition, Ghalioun, a professor of politics living in France, has been advocating democratic reform in his homeland since the 1970s. Criticised for his aloof leadership style when he was Council president, Ghalioun has assumed a low-key but influential role in the coalition as a figure well connected with Gulf and Western governments.

Suhair Al Atassi

One of the few women in the coalition, Atassi is the scion of a political family from the city of Homs with a long history of opposition to Assad family rule. A holder of a French Literature degree from Damascus University, Atassi helped organise a bold demonstrations in central Damascus to demand the release of political prisoners that helped spark the revolt. She was jailed for a month and soon after her release she criticised Assad’s proposed reforms as insufficient, saying he cannot remain “behaving as if he is the master of Syria”.

Anas Al Abdeh

A geologist by training, Abdeh represents a younger generation of pragmatic Islamists with exposure to the West. Abdeh, who lives in Britain, is the external representative of the Damascus Declaration, a movement for political reform.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel moved ahead Tuesday with plans for another 381 units for West Bank settlers, prompting Palestinian charges it was more interested in building settlements than building peace.

It was the third such announcement in just over two weeks, and raised to 2,530 the number of new settler units announced since the start of the year.

The new construction will take place in Givat Zeev, a settlement which lies immediately south of the West Bank city of Ramallah, Peace Now spokesman Lior Amihai told AFP.

“The Israeli Civil Administration, which falls under the defence ministry, has published plans for the construction of 381 extra units in Givat Zeev,” he said.

The move comes just three weeks after Israel’s release on December 31 of 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners, in accordance with commitments under US-led peace talks.

“This is the third time since the last phase of Palestinian prisoner releases that the government has approved plans for new houses,” Amihai told AFP.

The announcement showed that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “not serious about the two-state solution and that its actions are contradictory with the negotiations”.

On January 6, Israel approved plans for 272 new units in various West Bank settlements, and four days later it unveiled plans for more than 1,877 new units, some in annexed Arab East Jerusalem.

Settlements vs. peace

Last July, Israel and the Palestinians embarked on nine months of direct negotiations at the urging of US Secretary of State John Kerry.

But over the past six months, Israel has not slowed its construction on land the Palestinians want for a future state, raising questions over its commitment to the talks.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said the message was clear.

“Netanyahu’s government does not want peace,” he told AFP.

“This decision confirms that Netanyahu’s government only wants to continue settlement building, which will destroy any possible peace.”

With very little progress visible and the April deadline for a framework agreement looming, Erakat said there was no chance the Palestinians would contemplate any extension of the talks.

“We’ve not been presented with a [plan for] extending negotiations, but we will not extend them for even an additional day after the nine month period we agreed on,” he said.

“There are still three months left which Israel can use to move with us towards a peace agreement, but its actions confirm that it’s not interested in this. It’s destroying everything that might help a comprehensive peace agreement.”

Last week, four key European states summoned Israeli ambassadors over the January 10 settlement announcement, drawing the ire of Netanyahu, who denounced the move as lacking “balance and fairness”.

Netanyahu has also denied that Israel is breaching any prior commitment to the peace talks in its persistent settlement expansion.

“We are keeping in line exactly with the understandings we undertook at the beginning of the talks,” he said in an address to the foreign press on January 16.

“Israel undertook no restraints on construction.”

Israeli construction on land the Palestinians want for a future state is one of the thorniest issues of the peace process, and brought down the last attempt at direct talks in 2010.

The international community considers all Jewish settlements built on land Israel seized in the war of 1967 to be illegal.

BEIRUT — A suicide car bomb killed four people in south Beirut Tuesday, in the latest in a string of attacks targeting strongholds of Lebanon’s powerful Shiite movement and Syria ally Hizbollah.

The blast was quickly claimed by Al Nusra Front in Lebanon, a group believed to be linked to Al Qaeda’s Syrian arm.

“Four people are dead, and there are 35 injured,” Red Cross spokesman Ayad Al Monzer told AFP.

The army said it had discovered the remains of explosive devices, along with body parts apparently from the suicide bomber and an explosive belt that did not detonate.

Al Nusra Front in Lebanon, in a statement on Twitter, said it was behind the attack.

“With the help of God almighty we have responded to the massacres carried out by the party of Iran [Hizbollah]... with a martyrdom operation in their backyard in the southern [Beirut] suburbs,” it said.

The blast took place on busy Al Arid Street in the Haret Hreik neighbourhood, targeted by a suicide car bombing earlier this month.

An AFP photographer saw troops and Hizbollah security men deployed, as firemen worked to put out the flames and rescue workers took the wounded to hospitals.

The blast is the sixth to target areas considered Hizbollah strongholds since the group announced on April 30 that it was sending fighters to support President Bashar Assad in neighbouring Syria.

And it was the third in a month.

Less than a week ago, a car bomb exploded in Hermel in the eastern Bekaa Valley, killing three people. That attack was also claimed by Al Nusra Front in Lebanon.

And on January 2, a suicide car bombing claimed by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) killed five people on the same street targeted Tuesday.

While the attacks appear to be targeting the Hizbollah, the victims have all been civilians.

Lebanon violence spiralling

Tuesday’s killing sparked swift condemnation at home and abroad.

President Michel Sleiman urged “national unity,” which he said would “reduce the chances of terrorism, a phenomenon that must be fought hard and relentlessly.

France and the United States also condemned the violence and offering condolences to the victims.

Lebanon has suffered a spike in violence since the war in Syria broke out, with the frequency of attacks rising in recent weeks.

The conflict between Alawite Syrian President Bashar Assad and a Sunni-led uprising has stoked long-standing tensions between Alawite and Sunni residents in the northern city of Tripoli.

On Tuesday, one person died of wounds suffered in the latest clashes there, and four soldiers were wounded, a security source said.

That brought to seven the death toll in three days of clashes between the Sunni Bab Al Tebbaneh and Alawite Jabal Mohsen districts.

Targeted attacks have also struck opponents of Hizbollah and Damascus.

On Friday, a day after the Hermel car bombing, eight people were killed in cross-border shelling of the Sunni frontier town of Arsal.

And on December 27, moderate Sunni politician Mohammed Chatah, known for his opposition to Syria’s regime, was assassinated in a massive car bombing in central Beirut that also killed seven others.

Salman Sheikh, director of the Brookings Doha Centre think tank, said the security situation in Lebanon was trending badly.

“What should worry people is this frequency, the short time period between each bombing,” he told AFP.

Lebanon was dominated by Syria for nearly 30 years until its troops withdrew under pressure in 2005, and it continues to be deeply affected by events in its larger neighbour.

The conflict has contributed to a nine-month political impasse over forming a government, with the anti-Damascus March 14 movement and Hizbollah unable to reach a deal.

However, key March 14 figure and leader of the Future bloc Saad Hariri said Tuesday he was rescinding a previous refusal to join a government with Hizbollah.

“I have made this decision for the sake of Lebanon’s interests, rather than my own,” the former premier said.

The overture has raised hopes a new government could be in the works, which Sheikh said “may provide some antidote” to the violence.

“It would, I hope, illustrate that the main parties are not interested in this kind of thing... and that the finger points more to the Syrian side, whether it’s the Syrian regime or Sunni extremists fighting against it,” he said.

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s Shiite-led government said Tuesday it had decided in principle to create three new provinces from contested parts of the country in an apparent attempt to address Sunni grievances and counter the expansion of the Kurdish self-rule region.

One of those provinces would be centred on Fallujah, a city overrun earlier this month by Al Qaeda and allied insurgents after more than a year of protests there and in other Sunni cities against what they consider treatment as second-class citizens. Separate province status was not a major Sunni demand, but it could allow the area to receive increased federal funding.

The other two areas — Tuz Khormato and the Ninevah Plain — border Iraq’s northern Kurdish self-rule region. The former is a mixed city containing Arabs, Kurds, and ethnic Turkomen, while the latter has a large Christian population.

A statement said the Cabinet had “agreed in principle to turn the areas of Tuz, Fallujah and the Ninevah Plain into provinces and the Cabinet will decide after the fulfilment of the necessary requirements.” It did not give a reason for the decision.

Turkomen and Christians, many of whom fear absorption into the Kurdistan regional government, have been demanding separate province status for Tuz Khormato and Ninevah Plain for years. The Fallujah announcement, however, was unexpected.

AMMAN — The Geneva II Conference, which opens on Wednesday, “must deliver real change in the lives of ordinary Syrians”, said aid agency Oxfam in a statement issued on Tuesday.

“Millions of lives are riding on this event, which offers the best chance of ending the violence and alleviating the suffering of the millions of Syrians caught up in the conflict,” the organisation said.

More than 2.3 million refugees have fled their homes to neighbouring countries, and an estimated 9.3 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria.

“Geneva II offers a real opportunity for a major breakthrough for all those who are suffering the effects of this devastating crisis. This chance must not be squandered,” the statement quoted Oxfam’s adviser on humanitarian and security issues, Shaheen Chughtai, as saying.

“While negotiations will not resolve the crisis overnight, they should instead deliver a clear timeline and process for doing so. Time will fly this week — and every second in Montreux counts,” he said.

“Whatever comes out of the talks, strides must be made to alleviate the humanitarian suffering of ordinary Syrians – this cannot be used as a political bargaining chip,” Chughtai stressed.

Oxfam “wants to see the full and active participation of women and civil society organisations in the political process moving forward”, the statement said.

Oxfam called for Syrian civil society groups to be involved in the implementation of negotiated agreements, including monitoring ceasefires and human rights violations.

“The peace talks should involve all governments and institutions involved in the conflict and those intending to play a part in Syria’s reconstruction,” the agency added.

Oxfam called on the international community not to undermine the talks.

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.