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EU top diplomat, Italian FM in Libya to push for peace talks

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High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell meets head of Libya’s Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) Fayez Al-Sarraj in Tripoli, Libya September 1, 2020. (GNA/Facebook)
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High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell meets head of Libya’s Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) Fayez Al-Sarraj in Tripoli, Libya September 1, 2020. (GNA/Facebook)
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High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell meets head of Libya’s Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) Fayez Al-Sarraj in Tripoli, Libya September 1, 2020. (GNA/Facebook)
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High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell meets head of Libya’s Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) Fayez Al-Sarraj in Tripoli, Libya September 1, 2020. (GNA/Facebook)
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Libya’s head of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, Fayez Al-Sarraj, meets with Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio in Tripoli, Libya Sept. 1, 2020. (The Media Office of the Prime Minister/Reuters)
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Libya’s head of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, Fayez Al-Sarraj, meets with Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio in Tripoli, Libya Sept. 1, 2020. (GNA/Facebook)
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Libya’s head of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, Fayez Al-Sarraj, meets with Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio in Tripoli, Libya Sept. 1, 2020. (GNA/Facebook)
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Updated 02 September 2020
Arab News
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EU top diplomat, Italian FM in Libya to push for peace talks

  • Borrell said Libya remains top priority for EU
  • Al-Sarraj and Di Maio agree on ceasefire, disarmament in Sirte and Jufra
Updated 02 September 2020
Arab News

TRIPOLI: The EU’s foreign policy chief held talks with Libya’s UN recognized government on Tuesday to push for renewed efforts to resolve the country’s long-running conflict.
Josep Borrell met the head of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, Fayez Al-Sarraj, whose administration recently announced a truce after months of hostilities with troops loyal to eastern strongman Khalifa Haftar.
“#Libya remains top priority for EU. We welcome recent cease-fire understanding, and continue to support dialogue and Libyan-led political resolution to conflict,” Borrell tweeted after the meeting.
Haftar launched an offensive to seize Tripoli in April 2019, but was beaten back by pro-GNA forces. Fighting has stalled around the central Mediterranean port of Sirte, the gateway to Libya’s eastern oil fields and export terminals.
The GNA and Aguila Saleh, speaker of the eastern-based parliament that partly backs Haftar, in late August made separate announcements that they would cease all hostilities and hold nationwide elections, drawing praise from world powers.

“EU strongly supports Berlin process, mediation efforts and deescalation measures, including arms embargo — key elements to bring Libyan conflict to an end,” Borrell tweeted.
He was referring to a January summit in the German capital where the main countries involved in the Libyan conflict agreed to respect an arms embargo and to stop interfering in Libya’s domestic affairs.
Borrell said he had also discussed ways “to advance (the) political process,” revive joint military talks between the two sides and to lift an oil blockade imposed since January by pro-Haftar groups demanding a fair share of hydrocarbon revenues.
The EU diplomat later on Tuesday met the head of the National Oil Corporation Mustafa Sanalla, and tweeted that they had discussed the “need to ensure that oil production can resume, for the benefit of all Libyans and for the unity and prosperity of #Libya.”

Haftar last month authorized a partial lifting of the months-long blockade of oil terminals to help ease power cuts in the east, according to a military official loyal to him.
The north African country, which sits on the continent’s biggest crude reserves, has been mired in a complex web of conflicts since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled and later killed longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
Also on Tuesday, Al-Sarraj met Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio to discuss ways to implement the points of agreement announced in Saleh’s statement, to achieve a permanent cease-fire and disarmament in Sirte and Al-Jufra and to lift the closure on oil regions.
The two sides agreed that the political process should get underway.

They also called for oil sites to be reopened, "as the delay causes more suffering for all Libyans, and more losses, which have so far amounted to about $10 billion,” the GNA said in a statement on Facebook.
The talks also included economic cooperation and enabling Italian companies to resume work on stalled projects ​​and implement new projects to boost the Libyan economy, open job opportunities and revitalize the various sectors.

The Italian minister then headed to eastern Libya to meet with Saleh, speaker of the rival Tobruk-based House of Representatives, Libyan officials said.

Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) Chairman Mustafa Sanalla also met Di Maio in Tripoli on Tuesday as they discussed the blockade of oil facilities in Libya, NOC said on its Facebook page.
NOC said Di Maio “affirmed his full support for the initiative proposed by the corporation to resume production and export of oil, and freeze its revenues in the corporation’s account in the Libyan Foreign Bank, in parallel with the launch of an economic path that ensures the achievement of financial transparency.”
Haftar is supported by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates as well as Russia, while the GNA is backed by Turkey and Qatar.

(With AFP and Reuters)

Topics: Libya European Union (EU) Khalifa Haftar Josep Borrell Fayez Al-Sarraj Luigi Di Maio Italy Disarmament Cease-fire

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Helicopter carrying Iran’s president suffers a ‘hard landing,’ state TV says without further details

Updated 30 min 2 sec ago
AP
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Helicopter carrying Iran’s president suffers a ‘hard landing,’ state TV says without further details

  • Iran flies a variety of helicopters in the country, but international sanctions make it difficult to obtain parts for them
Updated 30 min 2 sec ago
AP

DUBAI: A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi suffered a “hard landing” on Sunday, Iranian state television reported, without immediately elaborating.
Raisi was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. State TV described the area of the incident happening as being near Jolfa, a city on the border with with the nation of Azerbaijan, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Raisi had been in Azerbaijan early Sunday to inaugurate a dam with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. The dam is the third one that the two nations built on the Aras River.
Iran flies a variety of helicopters in the country, but international sanctions make it difficult to obtain parts for them. Its military air fleet also largely dates back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Raisi, 63, is a hard-liner who formerly led the country’s judiciary. He is viewed as a protégé of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some analysts have suggested he could replace the 85-year-old leader after his death or resignation from the role.

Topics: Iran President Ebrahim Raisi

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Israel war cabinet minister says to quit unless Gaza plan approved

Updated 19 May 2024
AFP
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Israel war cabinet minister says to quit unless Gaza plan approved

  • Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu dismisses comments as "washed-up words"
  • Broad splits emerge in Israeli war cabinet as Hamas regroups in northern Gaza
Updated 19 May 2024
AFP

JERUSALEM: Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz said Saturday he would resign from the body unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved a post-war plan for the Gaza Strip.

“The war cabinet must formulate and approve by June 8 an action plan that will lead to the realization of six strategic goals of national importance.. (or) we will be forced to resign from the government,” Gantz said, referring to his party, in a televised address directed at Netanyahu.

Gantz said the six goals included toppling Hamas, ensuring Israeli security control over the Palestinian territory and returning Israeli hostages.

“Along with maintaining Israeli security control, establish an American, European, Arab and Palestinian administration that will manage civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip and lay the foundation for a future alternative that is not Hamas or (Mahmud) Abbas,” he said, referring to the president of the Palestinian Authority.

He also urged the normalization of ties with Saudi Arabia “as part of an overall move that will create an alliance with the free world and the Arab world against Iran and its affiliates.”

Netanyahu responded to Gantz’s threat on Saturday by slamming the minister’s demands as “washed-up words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandoning of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

The Israeli army has been battling Hamas militants across the Gaza Strip for more than seven months.

But broad splits have emerged in the Israeli war cabinet in recent days after Hamas fighters regrouped in northern Gaza, an area where Israel previously said the group had been neutralized.

Netanyahu came under personal attack from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday for failing to rule out an Israeli government in Gaza after the war.

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s attack on October 7 on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 124 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 37 the military says are dead.

Israel’s military retaliation against Hamas has killed at least 35,386 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry, and an Israeli siege has brought dire food shortages and the threat of famine.

US, Iranian officials met in Oman after Israel escalation

Updated 19 May 2024
Arab News
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US, Iranian officials met in Oman after Israel escalation

  • Washington called on Tehran to rein in proxy forces
  • Officials sat in separate rooms with Omani intermediaries passing messages
Updated 19 May 2024
Arab News

LONDON: US and Iranian officials held talks in Oman last week aimed at reducing regional tensions, the New York Times reported.

Through intermediaries from Oman, Washington’s top Middle East official Brett McGurk and the deputy special envoy for Iran, Abram Paley, spoke with Iranian counterparts.

It was the first contact between the two countries in the wake of Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone attack on Israel in April.

The US officials, who communicated with their Iranian counterparts in a separate room — with Omani officials passing on messages — requested that Tehran rein in its proxy forces across the region.

The US has had no diplomatic contact with Iran since 1979, and communicates with the country using intermediaries and back channels.

Since the outbreak of the Gaza war last October, Iran-backed militias — including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and armed groups in Syria and Iraq — have ramped up attacks on Israeli and American targets.

But US officials have determined that neither Hezbollah nor Iran want an escalation and wider war.

After Israel struck Iran’s consulate in Damascus at the beginning of April, Tehran retaliated with hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones.

The attack — which was intercepted by air defense systems from Israel, the US and the UK, among others — was the first ever direct Iranian strike on Israel, which has for years targeted Iranian assets in Syria, whose government is a close ally of Tehran.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a news conference this week that the “Iranian threat” to Israel and US interests “is clear.”

He added: “We are working with Israel and other partners to protect against these threats and to prevent escalation into an all-out regional war through a calibrated combination of diplomacy, deterrence, force posture adjustments and use of force when necessary to protect our people and to defend our interests and our allies.”

Topics: US Iran Oman

Death toll from Israeli strike on Nuseirat rises to 31: Gaza officials

Updated 19 May 2024
AFP
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Death toll from Israeli strike on Nuseirat rises to 31: Gaza officials

  • Rescue workers continuing to search for missing people under the rubble
  • Heavy Israeli bombardments have been reported in the central Nuseirat camp
Updated 19 May 2024
AFP

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Sunday that an Israeli air strike targeting a house at a refugee camp in the center of the Palestinian territory killed at least 31 people, updating an earlier toll.

“The civil defense crew were able to recover 31 martyrs and 20 wounded from a house belonging to the Hassan family, which was targeted by the Israeli occupation forces in the Nuseirat camp,” Gaza civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told journalists.

He said rescue workers were continuing to search for missing people under the rubble.

Earlier on Sunday the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital had said it had received the bodies of 20 people killed in the strike which witnesses said occurred around 3:00 am local time.

The Israeli army when contacted by AFP asked for specific coordinates of the strike.

Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that the wounded included several children.

Fierce battles and heavy Israeli bombardments have been reported in the central Nuseirat camp since the military launched a ground operation on the southern city of Rafah in early May.

Palestinian militants and Israeli troops have also clashed in north Gaza’s Jabalia camp for days now.

Witnesses said several other houses were targeted in air strikes during the night across Gaza, and that strikes and artillery shelling also hit parts of Rafah during the night.

The Israeli military said two more soldiers were killed in Gaza the previous day.

The military said 282 soldiers have been killed so far in the Gaza military campaign since the start of the ground offensive on October 27.

Topics: War on Gaza Israel Gaza

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Houthi missile strikes China-bound oil tanker in Red Sea

Updated 19 May 2024
Saeed Al-Batati
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Houthi missile strikes China-bound oil tanker in Red Sea

  • The vessel and crew are safe and continuing to its next port of call: UKMTO
  • The incident occurred 76 nautical miles (140 kilometers) off Yemen’s Hodeidah
Updated 19 May 2024
Saeed Al-Batati

AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s Houthi militia launched an anti-ship ballistic missile into the Red Sea on Saturday morning, striking an oil tanker traveling from Russia to China, according to US Central Command, the latest in a series of Houthi maritime strikes. 

CENTCOM said that at 1 a.m. on Saturday, a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile struck a Panamanian-flagged, Greek-owned and operated oil tanker named M/T Wind, which had just visited Russia and was on its way to China, causing “flooding which resulted in the loss of propulsion and steering.”

Slamming the Houthis for attacking ships, the US military said: “The crew of M/T Wind was able to restore propulsion and steering, and no casualties were reported. M/T Wind resumed its course under its power. This continued malign and reckless behavior by the Iranian-backed Houthis threatens regional stability and endangers the lives of mariners across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.”

Earlier on Saturday, two UK naval agencies said that a ship sailing in the Red Sea suffered minor damage after being hit by an item thought to be a missile launched by Yemen’s Houthi militia from an area under their control.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations, which monitors ship attacks, said on Saturday morning that it received an alarm from a ship master about an “unknown object” striking the ship’s port quarter, 98 miles south of Hodeidah, inflicting minor damage.

“The vessel and crew are safe and continuing to its next port of call,” UKMTO said in its notice about the incident, encouraging ships in the Red Sea to exercise caution and report any incidents.

Hours earlier, the same UK maritime agency stated that the assault happened 76 nautical miles northwest of Hodeidah.

Ambrey, a UK security firm, also reported receiving information regarding a missile strike on a crude oil tanker traveling under the Panama flag, around 10 nautical miles southwest of Yemen’s government-controlled town of Mokha on the Red Sea, which resulted in a fire on the ship.

The Houthis did not claim responsibility for fresh ship strikes on Saturday, although they generally do so days after the attack.

Since November, the Houthis have seized a commercial ship, sunk another, and claimed to have fired hundreds of ballistic missiles at international commercial and naval ships in the Gulf of Aden, Bab Al-Mandab Strait, and Red Sea in what the Yemeni militia claims is support for the Palestinian people.

The Houthis claim that they solely strike Israel-linked ships and those traveling or transporting products to Israel in order to pressure the latter to cease its war in Gaza.

The US responded to the Houthi attacks by branding them as terrorists, forming a coalition of marine task forces to safeguard ships, and unleashing hundreds of strikes on Houthi sites in Yemen.

Local and international environmentalists have long warned that Houthi attacks on ships carrying fuel or other chemicals might lead to an environmental calamity near Yemen’s coast.

The early warning came in February when the Houthis launched a missile that seriously damaged the MV Rubymar, a Belize-flagged and Lebanese-operated ship carrying 22,000 tonnes of ammonium phosphate-sulfate NPS fertilizer and more than 200 tonnes of fuel while cruising in the Red Sea. 

The Houthis have defied demands for de-escalation in the Red Sea and continue to organize massive rallies in regions under their control to express support for their campaign. On Friday, thousands of Houthi sympathizers took to the streets of Sanaa, Saada, and other cities under their control to show their support for the war on ships.

The Houthis shouted in unison, “We have no red line, and what’s coming is far worse,” as they raised the Palestinian and militia flags in Al-Sabeen Square on Friday, repeating their leader’s promise to intensify assaults on ships.

Meanwhile, a Yemeni government soldier was killed and another was injured on Saturday while fending off a Houthi attack on their position near the border between the provinces of Taiz and Lahj.

According to local media, the Houthis attacked the government’s Nation’s Shield Forces in the contested Hayfan district of Taiz province, attempting to capture control of additional territory.

The Houthis were forced to stop their attack after encountering tough resistance from government troops.

The attack occurred a day after the Nation’s Shield Forces sent dozens of armed vehicles and personnel to the same locations to boost their forces and repel Houthi attacks. 

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