Global, regional countries react to China-brokered Saudi-Iran agreement

Global, regional countries react to China-brokered Saudi-Iran agreement
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Updated 11 March 2023
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Global, regional countries react to China-brokered Saudi-Iran agreement

Global, regional countries react to China-brokered Saudi-Iran agreement
  • Kingdom, Iran thanked China for its role in negotiations
  • Saudi and Iranian sides also expressed appreciation to Iraq and Oman for hosting previous talks

RIYADH: The US said it was aware of reports that Iran and Saudi Arabia had resumed diplomatic relations on Friday, but referred further details to the Saudis, a White House National Security Council spokesperson said.

Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations and reopen their embassies within two months following years of tensions between the two countries in a China-brokered deal.

“Generally speaking, we welcome any efforts to help end the war in Yemen and de-escalate tensions in the Middle East region,” John Kirby said. “De-escalation and diplomacy together with deterrence are key pillars of the policy President Biden outlined during his visit to the region last year,” they added.

Kirby added that, while the US welcomed the deal, Washington remained “skeptical” about whether Iran would “meet their obligations.”

The UAE said on Friday it welcomed the agreement, and said it “valued” China's role in the negotiations.

“We believe in the importance of positive communication and dialogue between the countries of the region to consolidate the concept of good neighborliness,” senior government official and advisor to the UAE president Anwar Gargash said.

Qatar’s prime minister and foreign affairs minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani welcomed the announcement during a phone call with Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Qatar News Agency said on Friday.

He also welcomed the reactivation of the security cooperation agreement between the two countries and the general cooperation agreement in the fields of economy, trade, investment, technology, science, culture, sports and youth.

Al-Thani further expressed Qatar's aspiration that this step “contribute to enhancing security and stability in the region, and meet the aspirations of the peoples of the two countries for the benefit of the whole region.”

Iraq and Oman also both welcomed the announcement of the resumption of relations, according to state news agencies in both countries.

Oman “welcomed the trilateral statement on resumption of diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Tehran,” a statement carried by Oman News Agency said, while Iraq welcomed “turning a new page” between Iran and Saudi Arabia, its state news agency said.

“This is a win-win for everyone and will benefit regional and global security,” Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi said. “We hope in the longer term there’s also potential for increasing economic benefits for all,” he added.

The Bahraini, Algerian, Turkish, Lebanese and Sudanese foreign ministries all released statements welcoming the agreement.

Bahrain said it hoped the agreement would constitute a “positive step towards resolving differences and ending all regional conflicts through dialogue and diplomatic means,” a Bahrain News Agency report said.

The Bahrainis also hoped it would “establish international relations on the basis of understanding and respect, good neighborliness and non-interference in the affairs of other countries.”

Kuwait's foreign ministry said the agreement was key to “building trust and developing friendly relations between both countries in a way that serves the interest of the region’s countries and the whole world.”

A Jordanian statement said Amman hoped that the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran would contribute to “preserving the sovereignty of countries and non-interference in their internal affairs.”

On Saturday Syria welcomed the agreement saying it would lead to more stability in the region.

In a statetment Syria’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the agreement, calling it an “important step that will lead to strengthening security and stability in the region.”

It added that the agreement would also lead to cooperation that would “reflect positively on the common interests of the peoples of the two countries in particular and the peoples of the region in general.”

After the Feb. 6 earthquake that hit Turkiye and Syria, killing more than 50,000 people including more than 6,000 in Syria, Saudi Arabia was one of several Arab countries that delivered aid to government-held parts of Syria.

Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu spoke with his counterpart Prince Faisal over the phone to commend the decision, Saudi Press Agency reported.

Pakistani foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said his country welcomed the “accomplishment” and congratulated the leadership of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

“In a world where we're unfortunately no longer used to receiving good news, this was really really fantastic,” he said in New York. 

“Internationally on a global level, regionally, the decision of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran to re-establish diplomatic relations and within two months to open all the embassies, I cannot underestimate the significance of this achievement,” he added.

The Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Jassem Mohamed Albudaiwi said on Friday he and his organization hoped the agreement would “contribute to enhancing security and peace,” while the Arab Parliament also said it hoped it was a “step toward restoring stability to the region.”

The Muslim World League issued a statement voicing its welcoming of the agreement late on Friday.

Hussain Ibrahim Taha, Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation said the agreement would contribute to “strengthening the pillars of peace, security and stability in the region” and would “give a new impetus to cooperation” among the member states of the OIC, SPA said.

Taha praised Iraq, Oman, and the leadership and government of China for hosting and sponsoring the talks.

Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN Secretary General, welcomed the agreement on behalf of Antonio Guterres.

“The Secretary General expressed his appreciation to the People's Republic of China for hosting these recent talks and for promoting dialogue between the two countries,” he said.

“The Secretary General also commends efforts by other countries such as the Sultanate of Oman and the Republic of Iraq in this regard, good neighborly relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia are essential for the stability of the Gulf region. 

“The Secretary General reiterates his readiness to use his good officers to further advance regional dialogue and to ensure durable peace and security in the Gulf region,” he added.

The Saudi and Iranian sides also expressed their appreciation and gratitude to Iraq and Oman for hosting rounds of dialogue that took place between both sides during the years 2021-2022, Friday's statement said.

The two sides expressed their appreciation and gratitude to the leadership and government of the People’s Republic of China for hosting and sponsoring the talks, and the efforts it placed towards its success, it added.


The Gaza Strip: Tiny, cramped and as densely populated as London

People enjoy the day on the beach in the Mediterranean Sea during a heat wave in Gaza City, Friday, June 2, 2023. (AP)
People enjoy the day on the beach in the Mediterranean Sea during a heat wave in Gaza City, Friday, June 2, 2023. (AP)
Updated 20 sec ago
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The Gaza Strip: Tiny, cramped and as densely populated as London

People enjoy the day on the beach in the Mediterranean Sea during a heat wave in Gaza City, Friday, June 2, 2023. (AP)
  • Gaza has a population density of about 14,000 people per square mile (5,500 per square kilometer)

GAZA: The war between Israel and Hamas has seen fierce Israeli bombardment that has flattened broad swaths of the Gaza Strip. Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
And all that is happening in a tiny, densely populated coastal enclave.
Gaza is tucked among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. The strip is 25 miles (40 kilometers) long by some 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide. It has 2.3 million people living in an area of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), according to the CIA Factbook.
That’s about the same land size as Detroit, a city that has a population of 620,000, according to the US Census Bureau. It’s about twice the size of Washington and 3½ times the size of Paris.
Gaza has a population density of about 14,000 people per square mile (5,500 per square kilometer). That’s about the same as London, a city brimming with high-rise buildings, but also many parks. Gaza has few open spaces, especially in its cities, due to lack of planning and urban sprawl.
Gaza’s density is even tighter in its urban cores like Gaza City or Khan Younis, where tens of thousands are packed into cramped neighborhoods and where density rates become more comparable to certain cities in highly populated Asia.
An Israeli-Egyptian blockade, imposed after the Hamas militant group seized power in 2007, has greatly restricted movement in and out of Gaza, adding to the sense of overcrowding.
 

 


Detained Iran protesters raped, sexually assaulted: Amnesty

Detained Iran protesters raped, sexually assaulted: Amnesty
Updated 41 min 24 sec ago
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Detained Iran protesters raped, sexually assaulted: Amnesty

Detained Iran protesters raped, sexually assaulted: Amnesty

PARIS: Members of the Iranian security forces raped and used other forms of sexual violence against women and men detained in the crackdown on nationwide protests that erupted from September 2022, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
Amnesty said in a report it had documented 45 such cases of rape, gang rape or sexual violence against protesters. With cases in more than half of Iran’s provinces, it expressed fear these documented violations appeared part of a “wider pattern.”
“Our research exposes how intelligence and security agents in Iran used rape and other sexual violence to torture, punish and inflict lasting physical and psychological damage on protesters, including children as young as 12,” Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard said.
The London-based organization said it had shared its findings with the Iranian authorities on November 24 “but has thus far received no response.”
The protests began in Iran in September 2022 after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22. Her family says she was killed by a blow to the head but this has always been disputed by the Iranian authorities.
After rattling Iran’s clerical leadership, the movement lost momentum by the end of that year in the face of a fierce crackdown that left hundreds dead, according to rights activists, and thousands arrested, according to the United Nations.
Amnesty said 16 of the 45 cases documented in the report were of rape, including six women, seven men, a 14-year-old girl, and two boys aged 16 and 17.
Six of them — four women and two men — were gang raped by up to 10 male agents, it said.
It said the sexual assaults were carried out by members of the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basij force, agents of the intelligence ministry, as well as police officers.
The rapes on women and men were carried out with “wooden and metal batons, glass bottles, hosepipes, and/or agents’ sexual organs and fingers,” it said.
As well as the 16 rape victims, Amnesty said it documented the cases of 29 victims of other forms of sexual violence such as the beating of breasts and genitals, enforced nudity, and inserting needles or applying ice to men’s testicles.
It said it collected the testimony through interviews with the victims and other witnesses, conducted remotely via secure communications platforms.
“The harrowing testimonies we collected point to a wider pattern in the use of sexual violence as a key weapon in the Iranian authorities’ armory of repression of the protests and suppression of dissent to cling to power at all costs,” said Callamard.
One woman, named only as Maryam, who was arrested and held for two months after removing her headscarf in a protest, told Amnesty she was raped by two agents during an interrogation.
“He (the interrogator) called two others to come in and told them ‘It’s time’. They started ripping my clothes. I was screaming and begging them to stop.
“They violently raped me in my vagina with their sexual organs and raped me anally with a drink bottle. Even animals don’t do these things,” she was quoted by the group as saying.
A man named as Farzad told Amnesty that plain clothes agents gang raped him and another male protester, Shahed, while they were inside a vehicle.
“They pulled down my trousers and raped me. I couldn’t scream out. I was really being ripped apart... I was throwing up a lot, and was bleeding from my rectum when I went to the toilet,” said Farzad who was released without charge a few days later.
Amnesty said most victims did not file complaints against the assault for fear of further consequences, and those who did tell prosecutors were ignored.
“With no prospects for justice domestically, the international community has a duty to stand with the survivors and pursue justice,” said Callamard.


Israel not doing enough to allow fuel, aid into Gaza -US

An ambulance is stopped by Israeli army forces during a raid in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 5, 2023.
An ambulance is stopped by Israeli army forces during a raid in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 5, 2023.
Updated 06 December 2023
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Israel not doing enough to allow fuel, aid into Gaza -US

An ambulance is stopped by Israeli army forces during a raid in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 5, 2023.
  • Israeli forces stormed southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis on Tuesday, and hospitals struggled to cope with scores of Palestinian dead and wounded

WASHINGTON: Israel needs to do more to allow fuel and other aid into Gaza, the United States said on Tuesday as Israel’s offensive against Hamas in southern areas of the Palestinian enclave intensified.
“The level of assistance that’s getting in is not sufficient,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing. “It needs to go up, and we’ve made that clear to the government of Israel.”
On Monday, 100 humanitarian aid trucks and about 69,000 liters of fuel were delivered to Gaza from Egypt, the United Nations said, about the same as Sunday.
“This is well below the daily average of 170 trucks and 110,000 liters of fuel that had entered during the humanitarian pause that took place between 24 and 30 November,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Tuesday.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on his third trip to the Middle East since the Hamas attack on Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, last week pressed the Israeli government to increase the flow of aid and to minimize civilian harm in its offensive against Hamas.
Israeli forces stormed southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis on Tuesday, and hospitals struggled to cope with scores of Palestinian dead and wounded.
In what appeared to be the biggest ground assault in Gaza since a truce with Hamas unraveled last week, Israel said its troops — who were backed by warplanes — had reached the heart of Khan Younis and were surrounding the city
A World Health Organization official in Gaza said on Tuesday the situation was deteriorating by the hour.

 

 


UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels

UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels
Updated 06 December 2023
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UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels

UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels

UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations food agency said Tuesday it is stopping food distribution in areas of war-torn Yemen controlled by the Houthi rebels, a move that will impact millions of people.
The World Food Program said the “pause” was driven by limited funding and the lack of agreement with the rebel authorities on downscaling the program to match the agency’s resources.
“This difficult decision, made in consultation with donors, comes after nearly a year of negotiations, during which no agreement was reached to reduce the number of people served from 9.5 million to 6.5 million,” WFP said in a statement.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said WFP has tried unsuccessfully “to establish a system that is safe and accountable for the aid going through” to the rebel-held areas.
The war in Yemen has raged for eight years between the Iran-backed Houthis and pro-government forces, backed by a coalition of Gulf Arab states. The Houthis swept down from the mountains in 2014, seized much of northern Yemen and the country’s capital, Sanaa, and forced the internationally recognized government to flee into exile to Saudi Arabia. Since then, more than 150,000 people have been killed by the violence and 3 million have been displaced.
The WFP announcement came as the Houthis have unleashed attacks on ships in the Red Sea, imperiling traffic along one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes, critical to global trade. The Houthis support the Palestinian militant Hamas group and the attacks are linked to the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war.
WFP said food stocks in Houthi-controlled areas “are now almost completely depleted and resuming food assistance, even with an immediate agreement, could take up to as long as four months due to the disruption of the supply chain.”
The Rome-based UN agency said it will continue its other programs, such as nutrition and school feeding projects, to limit the impact of the pause in food distributions. In government-controlled areas of Yemen, WFP said general food distribution will continue “with a heightened focus on the most vulnerable families.”
“Similar prioritization is taking place in nearly half of WFP’s operations around the world as the agency navigates the challenging financial landscape that the entire humanitarian sector is facing,” the agency said.
At the end of October, WFP and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization warned that acute food insecurity is likely to deteriorate further in Yemen through April 2024. It called for urgent and scaled-up assistance to Yemen and 17 other “hunger hotspots” to protect livelihoods and increase access to food.


Israeli hostage families angry after meeting with Netanyahu

Israeli hostage families angry after meeting with Netanyahu
Updated 06 December 2023
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Israeli hostage families angry after meeting with Netanyahu

Israeli hostage families angry after meeting with Netanyahu
  • “They say ‘we’ve done this, we’ve done that.’ (Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya) Sinwar is the one who returned our people, not them
  • Several of the relatives who attended the meeting left bitterly critical of the government

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met families of returned hostages on Tuesday in an encounter that some of those present described as loud and angry.
The meeting came as fighting has resumed in the Gaza Strip following a seven-day pause that saw the return of more than 100 hostages from the enclave. The fate of 138 captives who remained behind is still open.
“I heard stories that broke my heart, I heard about the thirst and hunger, about physical and mental abuse,” Netanyahu said at a news conference. “I heard and you also heard, about sexual assault and cases of brutal rape unlike anything.”
Several of the relatives who attended the meeting left bitterly critical of the government.
Dani Miran, whose son Omri was taken hostage on Oct. 7 by Hamas gunmen along with around 240 other Israelis and foreigners, said he felt his intelligence had been insulted by the meeting and had walked out in the middle of it.
“I won’t go into the details of what was discussed at the meeting but this entire performance was ugly, insulting, messy,” he told Israel’s Channel 13, saying the government had made a “farce” out of the issue.
“They say ‘we’ve done this, we’ve done that.’ (Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya) Sinwar is the one who returned our people, not them. It angers me that they say that they dictated things. They hadn’t dictated a single move.”
The meeting had been intended as a forum for released hostages to tell ministers of their experience in captivity. A group representing hostage families issued a series of unnamed quotes it said were taken from remarks made by some of the former hostages at the meeting.
The quotes told of mistreatment meted out to the captives by Hamas but the encounter was overshadowed by the emotions of families worried by the fate of relatives still being held.
“It was a very turbulent meeting, many people yelling,” said Jennifer Master, whose partner Andrey is a hostage.
Israel says a number of women and children remain in Hamas hands, while families with adult male relatives in captivity have been calling for them not to be forgotten.
“We are all trying to make sure our loved ones get home. There are those who want the women who are left or the children who are left, and those who say we want the men,” Master told Israel’s Channel 12.