Syria hits sanctions Yemen deal fails

DAMASCUS, May 19, (Agencies): Syria denounced US sanctions targeting President Bashar al-Assad and
top aides, saying Thursday they were part of long-time efforts by Washington to serve Israeli interests.
The Syrian Revolution 2011, a Facebook group spurring anti-regime protests, called for nationwide demonstrations on Friday for “liberty and national unity.”
France, which has been pushing for a UN resolution condemning repression in Syria, urged the Damascus authorities to send troops deployed in cities and towns back to their barracks, free detainees and launch reforms.
And Al-Jazeera journalist Dorothy Parvaz, jailed in Syria for three days before being sent to Iran, told the Qatari news channel of “savage beatings” of prisoners by Syrian security agents who behaved like “thugs.”
“The US measures are part of a series of sanctions imposed by successive US administrations against the Syrian people as part of a regional scheme, aimed primarily at serving Israel’s interests,” SANA news agency said.
“Any aggression against Syria is akin to US support for Israeli aggressions against Syria and the Arabs,” the state news agency said.
Sanctions “have not and will not” affect decisions taken by the Syrian government or its struggle against US hegemony.
In slapping the sanctions on Wednesday, the United States told Assad to lead a transition toward democracy or step down.
For two months, pro-democracy protests have challenged the regime, which has retaliated with deadly force, sweeping arrests and torture, rights activists say.
The Syrian Revolution for 2011 said Friday’s protests should include Kurdish towns in the north, labelling the day “Friday of Freedom, Azadi,” or liberty in Kurdish.
In Paris, French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said “repression is worsening in Syria, while information about the existence of mass graves and testimony on torture is accumulating.”
“The army must return to the barracks, detainees must be set free, real political dialogue and real reforms meeting the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people must be launched,” he said.
Adding to claims of torture was Al-Jazeera journalist Dorothy Parvaz, who arrived in Qatar on Wednesday from Iran after having been held in a Syrian prison where, she said, she heard the cries of people being tortured.
“I was in a Syrian detention centre for three days, two nights, and what I heard were just savage beatings,” she said Thursday.
“At a certain point you want to cover your ears — it seemed endless, mid-morning to late at night. At random times you would hear beatings and screams and cries.”
More than 850 people are believed to have been killed and another 8,000 arrested since the protests began, according to rights groups and the United Nations. Syria blames “armed gangs” for the bloodshed.
In imposing the sanctions, the US administration stopped short of saying Assad had lost his legitimacy to rule, a formula Washington has applied to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, whose forces are fighting an armed rebellion.
“We are saying that we oppose his behaviour and that he needs to stop his policies of repression and mass arrests and begin a political transition that ensures fair representation and democratic rights for Syrians,” said the executive order issued by President Barack Obama.
“It is up to Assad to lead a political transition or to leave,” it added.
The sanctions allow Washington to freeze any assets owned in the United States by Assad and his top aides and ban any individuals or US companies from dealing with them. But it is unclear what assets would be blocked.
Sanctions were also slapped on Syrian Vice President Faruq al-Shara, Prime Minister Adel Safar, Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shaar, Defence Minister Ali Habib Mahmud, military intelligence chief Abdul Fatah Qudsiya and Mohammed Dib Zaitoun, director of the Political Security Directorate.
Also named were Ali Mamluk, director of Syria’s Intelligence Directorate, and Atif Najib, the ex-head of intelligence in Daraa province, epicentre of protests that has gripped Syria since March 15.
The US Treasury also imposed sanctions on Syria’s Military Intelligence, National Security Bureau and the Air Force Intelligence, as well as on Hafiz Makhluf, a cousin of Assad.
The European Union has slapped sanctions on members of Assad’s inner circle and said it is also contemplating targeting the president, while France is trying to get support for a UN resolution condemning Syria.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon told AFP Wednesday he had been urging Assad to carry out reforms “before it is too late.”
Yemen
Gulf Arab foreign ministers will meet for talks on Yemen soon after a power transition deal for their poorer neighbour fell through for a second time, a Yemeni opposition official said on Thursday.
Inspired by uprisings in the Arab world, protesters have rallied across Yemen for months, resisting fierce attempts by state forces to quash their revolt against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule.
Worried that continued chaos could strengthen al-Qaeda’s local wing, Western and Gulf powers have worked out a transition agreement hoping to end the crisis. But last-minute snags prevented the deal from being signed on Wednesday.
Mohammed Basindwa, an opposition figure tipped as a possible interim prime minister, said foreign ministers from the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council could meet in Riyadh as early as Saturday to discuss Yemen.
“The Cooperation Council informed us of a meeting of Gulf foreign ministers that will be devoted to discussing the special Yemen initiative,” he said. Gulf officials could not immediately confirm the date.
The transition deal would have paved the way for Saleh to resign within a month. It would have also granted him immunity from prosecution and allowed a dignified exit from power in the Arabian Peninsula state.
A government official told Reuters a deal remained possible. “There is still a glimmer of hope,” he said.
The United States and oil giant Saudi Arabia have both been targets of foiled attacks by al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing and are keen to end to the political stalemate.
Washington has stepped up pressure on Saleh to sign and implement the deal which could help end months of protests that have paralysed Yemen’s economy. It said John Brennan, an adviser to President Barack Obama, had called Saleh to discuss this.
“Brennan noted that this transfer of power represents the best path forward for Yemen to become a more secure, unified, and prosperous nation and for the Yemeni people to realise their aspirations for peace and political reform,” the statement said.
Protesters, frustrated that their daily rallies have failed to dislodge Saleh, want the 69-year-old leader out immediately.
They have threatened to step up their campaign by marching on government buildings, a move that brought new bloodshed last week as security forces fired to stop them.
“We are in favour of the president’s departure from power by any route. So long as the agreement encompasses this, we are for it,” said Ali Noman, a street activist in the city of Ibb, south of the capital.
Saleh, who has outlasted previous attempts to challenge his power, indicated in April he would sign the Gulf-brokered deal, but refused to put his name to it in the final hours.
He said at the time he would only sign in his capacity as ruling party leader, not as president.
The opposition, including Islamists and leftists, said the agreement that collapsed on Wednesday contained minor changes to the April deal, on who would sign and in what capacity. Saleh was due to sign as leader of both the country and ruling party.
But the deal broke down over who would sign it from the opposition side. Saleh pushed for its leftist rotating head, Yassin Noman, to be the main opposition signatory. The opposition preferred Basindwa, sources said.
The opposition eventually agreed to have Noman as the first opposition signer while keeping Basindwa on the list of additional signatories. Saleh refused and the deal fell through, sources said.
The ruling party said Saleh was willing to sign but wanted to deal only with “legally recognised parties” represented in parliament, seen as a dig on Basindwa, a political independent.
Libya
Muammar Gaddafi’s forces shelled the main rebel stronghold in a strategic mountain range southwest of the Libyan capital on Thursday, pounding the area with rockets, a resident said.
The Nafusa mountains, which slice across the desert south of Tripoli to the western border with Tunisia, have been a key zone of opposition since the early days of the uprising against Gaddafi’s more than 40-year rule in mid-February. Although Gaddafi’s forces control most of western Libya, rebels have linked up with the mountain area’s minority Berbers to keep his forces out of the highest points, denying them a military advantage.
On Thursday, rebels fought to hold back government troops rocketing their positions to the east and southeast of the city of Zintan, the rebel command center for the mountain range, said resident and activist Hamed Enbayah. The shelling killed at least one rebel fighter and wounded three others, he said.
The Nafusa mountains are the most important rebel-held swath of western Libya after the coastal city of Misrata, which has been under an even more punishing siege. Most of Libya’s rebel forces are concentrated in the east of the country and have been unsuccessful in advancing westward toward the capital even after NATO warplanes began hitting Gaddafi’s forces.
Points along the entire mountain range have been under intensified attack since early this week. Residents of some areas said the fighting had trapped them inside their homes and that they were cut off from food and medical supplies.
The situation in the Nafusa mountains “remains dire, really dire,” said Jalal al-Gallal, a spokesman for the rebel governing council, based in the eastern city of Benghazi.
Hospitals are overwhelmed with casualties and running out of supplies. Many of the wounded from one village, Kiklah, were being smuggled out on donkeys because government forces were blocking evacuations, the rebel council said.
It has appealed for help in establishing a safe corridor to deliver humanitarian aid and allow the wounded to be evacuated.
“It is abundantly clear that Gaddafi forces continue to target innocent civilians,” said the council’s vice chairman, Abdel-Hafiz Ghoga. “The blocking of food, water and medical supplies is unacceptable.”
BelJassem, a fighter from a Berber village near the mountain town of Yafrin, said on Wednesday that Gaddafi forces had shelled that area repeatedly. “We dig trenches and hide in there at night,” said BelJassem, who gave only his first name for fear of reprisals.
Omar Hussein, a spokesman for the Nafusa mountain rebels, claimed that a government soldier killed in fighting near the town of Nalut, closer to the border with Tunisia, was found chained to his destroyed vehicle, apparently to prevent him from fleeing.
Elsewhere in the west, along the Mediterranean coast, a resident of the city of Ajaylat reached by telephone from Benghazi said Gaddafi forces stormed in Wednesday and kidnapped hundreds of people, most of them young men and boys.
She said they moved house to house and appeared to be trying to take one male from each home. By evening, they retreated from the town, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Ajaylat is known as a smuggling haven for people who take Libya’s cheap fuel across the border to Tunisia, about 80 kilometers away, and smuggle back other goods.
The kidnapping claim could not be independently confirmed, but Amnesty International has made similar allegations of abductions in Misrata, saying scores of young men were “subjected to enforced disappearance.”
In Libya’s capital, meanwhile, hundreds of Gaddafi’s loyalists staged an overnight show of support, proclaiming that the rebel insurgency was nearing an end.
In the main square in Tripoli, crowds of teenagers, young men and security officers turned out for the government-sponsored rally, spraying gunfire into the air, setting off fireworks and waving green Libyan flags.
Some of them said they were celebrating because they heard on state TV that Gaddafi loyalists were holding similar rallies in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi, though there was no evidence of such a demonstration there.
Benghazi has been firmly under rebel control since the start of the uprising.
“We are celebrating our unity of citizens in east and west,” said Raid Mansour, 35, carrying his young daughter on his shoulders. “Now we all think the same: We want freedom and for Muammar Gaddafi to be victorious,” Mansour said.
The gathering appeared to have been organized in an attempt to reassure Libyans that the regime was standing strong three months into an uprising that has left most of the east in rebel hands, halted the country’s oil exports and drawn in the punishing NATO air campaign. Gaddafi’s regime has also been hit by a wave of defections.
Late on Wednesday, Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, denied rumors that Gaddafi’s wife and daughter had fled to neighboring Tunisia. “They are in Tripoli; they are safe,” he said. He also denied that Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem defected, saying he was in Vienna on business.
Ghanem, who was also head of Libya’s National Oil Co, crossed into neighboring Tunisia by road on Monday and defected, according to a Tunisian security official and Abdel Moneim al-Houni, a former Libyan Arab League representative who was among the first wave of Libyan diplomats to defect.
A person who answered a cell phone listed for Ghanem in Austria and identified herself as his daughter said the family had had no contact with him since Friday and did not know his whereabouts. The woman’s identity could not be verified.
Prominent members of Gaddafi’s government who have abandoned the regime include the foreign minister, justice minister, a former UN General Assembly president and a number of other diplomats.
Journalists
The Libyan government has released four foreign journalists and a fifth reached freedom in Qatar after disappearing while on assignment in Syria, the latest reporters to be freed after being swept up while covering unrest in the Middle East.
Americans Clare Morgana Gillis and James Foley, along with British freelance reporter Nigel Chandler and Spanish photographer Manuel Varela, appeared at a Tripoli hotel after being released on Wednesday from six weeks detention in Libya.
“I’ve spoken to our son,” Diane Foley of Rochester, N.H., told The Associated Press. “He’s in good health, he’s feeling very, very relieved. He’s feeling very hopeful.”
She said the first thing he said to her on the phone was “‘Hey, ma, it’s me. It’s Jim. I’m fine, we’re at a hotel.’” She said he told her the four were to be taken early Thursday to the border with Tunisia, where they would cross out of Libya.
Three of the journalists — Gillis, who freelances for The Atlantic and USA Today; Foley who writes for the Boston-based news agency GlobalPost and Varela, who works under the name Manu Brabo — were detained on April 5 near the Libyan town of Brega. Chandler was detained separately.
They were freed a day after the Libyan government said it had given them a one-year suspended sentence on charges of illegally entering the country.
Jane Gillis of New Haven, Conn, expressed relief at the news. “We’re ecstatic and we are looking forward to seeing her,” she said in a Web posting by The Atlantic.
Editor James Bennet said the magazine had been in close touch with the US government, media colleagues and intermediaries on the ground in Libya. “We’re hugely grateful today to diplomats, Americans and others, who have played a role” in securing the release, he said.
Sanctions
The European Union is considering tightening sanctions on the government of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi by blacklisting ports to prevent exports of oil and imports of fuel, a Western diplomatic source told Reuters.
The source said European Union experts have reached an agreement over putting the Libyan ports of Tripoli, Zuara, Zawiyah, Al-Khoms, Ras Lanuf and Brega on the sanctions list and proposals could be submitted to the EU sanctions committee next week.
Gaddafi’s government is seeking to raise fuel imports by using a loophole in international sanctions after two months of western air strikes against Libya..
Civil war has crippled the refining industry and Gaddafi urgently needs fuel imports for his military and to keep civilian vehicles running in the areas he controls.
“West Libya’s supply of refined products is still sufficient. Western powers want a lot more control over supplies to Libya,” the source said.
“The concern is that a stalemate will ensue in the war.”
The discussions will likely take place at the level of the EU sanctions committee next week and could become law by early June if it is successful, he said.
The discussions may also involve the Libyan state-owned shipping company General National Maritime Transport Company (GNMTC) which is not on the sanctions list and has managed to bring at least one fuel cargo into west Libya.
EU, UN and US sanctions against Libya are implemented through a list of companies that are excluded from business, but exports to western Libya or dealings with firms missing from the list are not forbidden.
Egypt
An Egyptian military prosecutor questioned on Thursday the editor and two reporters of a daily which reported the government was mulling an amnesty for ousted leader Hosni Mubarak, sources said.
The journalists at Al-Shorouk newspaper were accused of spreading false news and inflaming public opinion, a military source said. The military has ruled the country since Mubarak was forced out in February.
Gamal Fahmy, a member of the journalists’ union who attended the session, said a military judge questioned the journalists and then released them after they pledged to consult the military on related stories before the newspaper publishes them.
The report had angered opposition groups that helped overthrow Mubarak and prompted youth activists to threaten protests if the reported deal, in which he would be pardoned in return for an apology, went through.
Mubarak, 83, is under arrest in a hospital, where he received treatment for a reported heart attack during an interrogation.
He is accused of corruption and involvement in the deaths of anti-regime protesters. His wife Suzanne is out on bail and his two sons are detained in a Cairo prison.
The military denied it was mulling an amnesty for Mubarak, a former air force chief, or for his family.
On Thursday, the newspaper said it never intended to spark controversy and it would refrain from publishing further details on the topic until the “mood allows for a frank discussion on it.”
Meanwhile, Egypt’s military rulers have suspended the prison sentences of 120 people who participated in protests following the revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has also denied using gunfire to break up sit-ins that have continued following Mubarak’s Feb 11 ouster.
The comments, made in a statement late Wednesday, come amid mounting criticism of the military council, which has taken over power. The caretaker rulers have promised democratic elections and other reforms but human rights activists say they continue some of the abuses of Mubarak’s regime.
The statement said sentences of up to seven years for the 120 protesters will be reduced to one-year suspended sentences. It is not clear what the protesters were convicted of.
Egypt’s anti-graft agency opened a new corruption investigation into ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s former chief of staff on Wednesday, a day after a court ordered his release on bail, state media reported.
Assem el-Gohari, the head of the Illicit Gains Authority, ordered that Zakaria Azmi return to detention after questioning him for about four hours late on Wednesday, the state news agency MENA said.
Investigators were questioning Azmi following reports by watchdog groups about additional and previously undisclosed wealth believed to have been accumulated unlawfully.
Azmi, one of Mubarak’s closest aides, was ordered released on bail of 200,000 pounds ($33,640) on Tuesday after nearly six weeks in detention.
The decision came after Azmi’s lawyer filed an appeal for his client’s release. Under Egyptian law, suspects can be held for up to 45 days and then must be freed or brought to trial.
The anti-graft agency said it had informed the prosecutor it would appeal the ruling at the criminal court.
Bahrain
Bahrain’s foreign minister floated the idea of expanding military bases within a bloc of Sunni-led Gulf Arab allies that helped Manama quash mostly Shiite protests it blamed rival Shiite power Iran for stoking.
Sheikh Khalid al-Khalifa said in an interview with PBS Newshour on Wednesday evening that concerns over Iranian interference may push the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to reshape its Gulf military presence.
The opposition had hoped that the GCC would pull out of Bahrain when emergency law, imposed in March, ends on June 1.
“Any threat that any country would face would definitely, no doubt, affect its neighbours. Saudi Arabia is only 28 kms (17 miles) away from here. We are looking at the GCC force to be expanded, to have multi-bases everywhere in the GCC,” he told the US television programme.
“So whether they leave or stay or be restructured, that’s what is to be discussed in the future,” he said.
Bahrain’s Sunni rulers imposed emergency law and called in troops from neighbouring Gulf countries in March to quash protests led mostly by its Shiite majority demanding democratic reforms. Some hardliners had called for a republic.
Non-Arab Shiite Iran, just across Gulf waters, has issued several statements condemning the GCC troops’ presence in the country. Bahraini Shiites insist they have no ties to Iran.
Sheikh Khalid told Newshour that Bahrain was getting a “daily barrage” of statements from Iran that worried the tiny Gulf island country.
“I can tell you that they have people sympathising with them here,” he said, adding that not all Shiites were siding with Iran. “There’s definitely an Iranian interest group in Bahrain.”
A military court on Thursday sentenced nine people to 20 years in prison after they were convicted of kidnapping a policeman. One of the men sentenced was a prominent religious cleric and political activist.
International and local rights groups have criticised the government for the severity of its security sweep, in which masked troops manned checkpoints throughout the city and hundreds of people, mostly Shiite activists or politicians, were arrested. At least four detainees have died in custody.
Dozens of people have also disappeared, and hundreds of mostly Shiite workers have been fired from their jobs.
Government supporters have held two protests in the past week demanding security assurances after a man at a small protest at a check point on Tuesday drove his car into a group of policemen, wounding nine of them.
A special security court in Bahrain has sentenced nine people to 20 years in prison each after it convicted them of abducting a policeman, state news agency BNA reported Thursday.
“The Lower National Safety Court sentenced nine defendants accused of kidnapping one policeman to 20 years in prison,” according to an English-language statement on BNA that did not give further details.
Among those sentenced was Sheikh Mohammed Habib al-Safaf, a Shiite cleric who had previously been arrested along with 22 other activists and charged with terrorism.
The group was freed under a royal pardon in February after the outbreak of protests calling for democratic reforms in Bahrain.
The court was set up under the state of national safety, a lower level of emergency law declared by King Hamad in mid-March, a day before an all-out crackdown on a month-long, Shiite-dominated protest movement demanding political reforms.
Defendants have the right to appeal the court’s rulings within 15 days.
Last month, authorities said that 405 detainees have been referred to national safety courts, of whom 312 had been released.
The National Safety Appeals Court last month sentenced four Shiites to death and three others to jail for life for killing two policemen by running them over with cars during the protests.
Their case has drawn condemnation from Amnesty International, which urged Bahrain to halt the executions.
In a statement released on Thursday, Amnesty also condemned the conviction of a number of other activists it said were sentenced to between one and four years in jail earlier this week.
“These trials and convictions represent yet further evidence of the extent to which the rights to freedom of speech and assembly are now being denied in Bahrain,” Malcolm Smart, Amnesty’s Middle East and north Africa director, said in the statement.