Egypt to allow Iranians visas on arrival in Sinai as regional tensions ease

Egypt to allow Iranians visas on arrival in Sinai as regional tensions ease
Relations between Egypt and Iran have generally been fraught in recent decades although the two countries have maintained diplomatic contacts. (AFP/File)
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Updated 29 March 2023

Egypt to allow Iranians visas on arrival in Sinai as regional tensions ease

Egypt to allow Iranians visas on arrival in Sinai as regional tensions ease

CAIRO: Egypt will soon allow Iranians traveling with tour groups to obtain visas on arrival in the south of its Sinai peninsula with a view to extending access to other parts of the country, Egyptian Tourism Ministry officials said.

The decision is part of a series of measures announced on Monday aimed at improving access to visas to boost tourism revenues at a time when Egypt has been struggling economically with an acute foreign currency shortage.

It also comes as some Middle Eastern countries including Egypt are taking steps to ease regional tensions. Egypt’s Sunni Muslim Arab ally Saudi Arabia and Shiite Muslim Iran announced this month that they would restore diplomatic relations.

Cairo has mended a rift with Qatar and is re-establishing ties with Turkiye, another country to benefit from new visa rules with Turkish nationals given expanded access to visas on arrival, according to a Egyptian Tourism Ministry statement.

Among the other new visa rules announced were a $700, five-year multiple-entry visa, which Tourism Minister Ahmed Issa said was aimed at investors and property owners who are based outside Egypt.

On visas for Iranians arriving in South Sinai, home to the highly secured resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, Issa said: “We will evaluate the experience of their arrival in South Sinai as a first step, and building on that, we’ll determine if they will be admitted in other places.”

Relations between Egypt and Iran have generally been fraught in recent decades although the two countries have maintained diplomatic contacts.

Tourists from China, which Egypt regards as a market with big potential, and Indians residing in Gulf countries will also be granted visas on arrival.

All new visa rules have been approved in principle and will be put into effect soon, a Tourism Ministry official said.


5 killed in explosion at rocket and explosives factory in Turkiye

Updated 11 sec ago

5 killed in explosion at rocket and explosives factory in Turkiye

5 killed in explosion at rocket and explosives factory in Turkiye
ANKARA, Turkiye: An explosion at a rocket and explosives factory has killed five workers, Turkiye’s defense ministry said.
The explosion occurred early on Saturday in the district of Elmadag, on the outskirts of the capital, Ankara.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately known.

Latest Sudan truce begins amid civilian skepticism

Latest Sudan truce begins amid civilian skepticism
Updated 10 June 2023

Latest Sudan truce begins amid civilian skepticism

Latest Sudan truce begins amid civilian skepticism
  • Civilians trapped in the battlegrounds are desperate for relief from the bloodshed

KHARTOUM: A 24-hour cease-fire took effect Saturday between Sudan’s warring generals but, with fears running high it will collapse like its predecessors, US and Saudi mediators warn they may break off mediation efforts.
With the fighting now about to enter a third month, civilians trapped in the battlegrounds in greater Khartoum and the flashpoint western region of Darfur are desperate for relief from the bloodshed but deeply skeptical about the sincerity of the generals.
Multiple truces have been agreed and broken since fighting erupted on April 15, and Washington had slapped sanctions on both rival generals after the last attempt collapsed at the end of May.
The nationwide truce announced by US and Saudi mediators on Friday took effect at 6:00 a.m.
“Should the parties fail to observe the 24-hour cease-fire, facilitators will be compelled to consider adjourning” talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah which have been suspended since late last month, the mediators said.
Civilians voiced disappointment that the promised cease-fire was so limited in scope.
“A one-day truce is much less than we aspire for,” said Khartoum North resident Mahmud Bashir. “We look forward to an end to this damned war.”
Issam Mohamed Omar said he wanted an agreement that required fighters of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) who had occupied his home in Khartoum to leave so that he can return there from his temporary lodgings across the Nile in Omdurman.
“For me, a truce that doesn’t kick the RSF out of the home they kicked (me) out of three weeks ago, doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said.
Sudan specialist Aly Verjee said he saw little reason why this truce should be honored any more than its predecessors.
“Unfortunately, the incentives have not changed for either party, so it’s hard to see that a truce with the same underlying assumptions, especially one of such short duration, will see a substantially different result, said Verjee, a researcher at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.
Upwards of 1,800 people have been killed in the fighting, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
Nearly two million people have been displaced, including 476,000 who have sought refuge in neighboring countries, the United Nations says.
The Saudi and US mediators said they “share the frustration of the Sudanese people about the uneven implementation of previous cease-fires.”
The army, led by Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, said it has “agreed to the proposal,” adding in a statement it “declares its commitment to the cease-fire.”
The paramilitary RSF, commanded by Burhan’s former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, said: “We affirm our full commitment to the cease-fire.”
Both statements said the truce could support humanitarian efforts, while cautioning against violations by their opponents.
“If observed, the 24-hour cease-fire will provide an important opportunity... for the parties to undertake confidence-building measures which could permit resumption of the Jeddah talks,” the US-Saudi statement said.
Friday’s announcement came a day after Sudanese authorities loyal to Burhan declared UN envoy Volker Perthes “persona non grata,” accusing him of taking sides.
UN chief Antonio Guterres later expressed support for Perthes, who is currently in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for a series of talks.
Speaking through his spokesman, Guterres said “the doctrine of persona non grata is not applicable to or in respect of United Nations personnel” and is contrary to Khartoum’s obligations under the UN charter.
The fighting has sidelined Perthes’s efforts to revive Sudan’s transition to civilian rule, which was derailed by a 2021 coup by the two generals before they fell out.
It has also complicated the coordination of international efforts to deliver emergency relief to the 25 million civilians that the United Nations estimates are in need.
Alfonso Verdu Perez, outgoing head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Sudan, warned on Friday that “health care may collapse at any moment.”
“The needs are immense and much more remains to be done” in both Khartoum and Darfur, he told reporters in Geneva.


Five dead, dozens missing after 3 shipwrecks off Tunisian coast

Migrants near their overturned boat during a rescue operation. (AP/File)
Migrants near their overturned boat during a rescue operation. (AP/File)
Updated 10 June 2023

Five dead, dozens missing after 3 shipwrecks off Tunisian coast

Migrants near their overturned boat during a rescue operation. (AP/File)
  • Iron boats took on water as soon as they reached the open sea

JERUSALEM: At least five Africans are dead and dozens believed missing after three boats attempting to carry migrants across the Mediterranean Sea sank in recent days off the coast of the Tunisian city of Sfax, the Tunisian coast guard said on Thursday.
Bodies of five people, including one child, were recovered in the area in recent days, Sfax Prosecutor Faouzi Masmoudi said.
Masmoudi said that navy units had rescued 73 migrants after the three shipwrecks, but survivors’ accounted indicated as many as 47 others were missing.
Six of the missing were reported to be children.
Masmoudi said the boats were made of iron and took on water as soon as they reached the open sea.

FASTFACT

The number of victims buried in Sfax’s cemeteries since January has reached almost 500, a significant increase from the previous two years.

Most of the growing number of attempts to migrate to Italy by boat from Tunisia leave from the area around Sfax, a port on Tunisia’s central coast.
Masmoudi said the number of victims buried in Sfax’s cemeteries since January has reached almost 500, a significant increase from the previous two years. In 2022, 355 burials were recorded and 226 in 2021, he said.
Migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, are undertaking the perilous journey from Tunisia in unprecedented numbers.
Tunisian authorities say they stopped 13,000 migrants from making the crossing from Sfax in the first three months of this year alone. Tunisia has seen growing numbers of migrants arriving via neighboring Libya and is facing a financial and political crisis of its own that is driving growing numbers of young Tunisians to seek a better life in Europe.
The leaders of Italy and the Netherlands along with the EU Commission president are traveling to Tunisia on Sunday with a packet of security initiatives to ease the way for a possible international bailout, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said on Thursday.

 


Palestinian couple brace for East Jerusalem eviction

Palestinian couple brace for East Jerusalem eviction
Updated 10 June 2023

Palestinian couple brace for East Jerusalem eviction

Palestinian couple brace for East Jerusalem eviction
  • Israeli forces kill Palestinian in occupied West Bank

JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH: In the walled Old City of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, Nora and Mustafa Sub Laban are counting down the last days before a court decision that has hovered over them since 1978 is carried out.
After decades of legal wrangling, they are set to be evicted from their home in the Muslim Quarter to make way for Jewish settlers.
“These days, I’m like a prisoner waiting to be put to death. I don’t sleep like other people,” Nora Sub Laban said.
The East Jerusalem residents have been embroiled in a 45-year legal battle with authorities and Israeli settlers.
The settlers are part of an organization called Atara Leyoshna and are represented by Eli Attal, according to both the Sub Laban family and Ir Amim, an anti-settlement watchdog. Attal refused to comment about the case.
The Israeli plaintiffs claim that Jews lived in the building before the division of the holy city into Israeli and Jordanian sectors following the proclamation of the Jewish state in 1948.
They invoke an Israeli law from the 1970s that allows Jews to reclaim property owned by Jews before 1948, even if they are not related.
The Sub Labans say they were designated “protected tenants” by Jordan in the 1950s, before Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967 and proceeded to annex it in a move regarded as illegal by the UN.
The family showed a Jordanian rental contract dating back to 1953, as well as Israeli court rulings recognizing their status as “protected tenants.”
Yet the courts said that the couple do not currently live permanently in the building, so their “protected tenants” status no longer applies and the eviction can go ahead.
Nora said the judgment refers to a period when she was not living in the apartment daily because of a hospitalization. “Legally speaking, within the Israeli system, nothing more can be done,” said Rafat Sub Laban, the couple’s son and an employee of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
  Meanwhile, Israeli forces on Friday killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry and the army said, with the latter adding that a soldier was lightly wounded.
Mehdi Bayadsa, 29, was killed by “bullets from the occupation (Israel) near the Rantis military checkpoint, west of Ramallah,” the ministry said in a statement.
The military in a statement said it had “neutralized” a Palestinian who had arrived near the crossing point between the West Bank and Israel in a stolen vehicle.
“While IDF (Israeli army) soldiers inspected his vehicle, the suspect attacked an IDF soldier and attempted to steal his weapon,” the army said, adding a “lightly injured” soldier was taken to hospital.
“Following the confrontation, another soldier in the area shot live fire toward the suspect and neutralized him,” the army said, adding that it was “investigating the incident.”
Nearly 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the Six-Day War of 1967.

 


Erdogan appoints Hafize Gaye Erkan as governor of Turkiye’s central bank

Erdogan appoints Hafize Gaye Erkan as governor of Turkiye’s central bank
Updated 09 June 2023

Erdogan appoints Hafize Gaye Erkan as governor of Turkiye’s central bank

Erdogan appoints Hafize Gaye Erkan as governor of Turkiye’s central bank
  • Experts skeptical about whether appointment signals change of economic policy

ANKARA: As part of recently re-elected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempts to overhaul his economic team, the country’s central bank will be governed by a female executive for the first time.

US-based Hafize Gaye Erkan, 41, is Turkiye’s fifth central bank chief in four years, replacing Sahap Kavcioglu, who followed a policy of slashing interest rates despite rising inflation of around 40 percent. Kavcioglu has now been appointed head of the Banking Regulatory and Supervision Agency (BDDK).

Erdogan has always been opposed to interest rate hikes and has focused on economic growth, investment and exports.

Erkan was the first woman under the age of 40 to hold the title of president or CEO at one of America’s 100 largest banks. She has a doctorate in financial engineering from Princeton, and previously worked as First Republic’s co-chief executive officer. She abruptly resigned from that position in December 2021 before the bank was sold. She also worked at Goldman Sachs for almost a decade as a managing director, and was a director at Marsh McLennan. Last year, she was appointed CEO of the real estate finance and investment firm Greystone, a post she resigned in December.

Following her new appointment, there are now 23 female central bank governors around the world.

On Monday, Erkan reportedly met Turkiye’s newly appointed Treasury and Finance Minister, Mehmet Simsek, a former Merrill Lynch economist, in Ankara to discuss her new role.

Simsek told media on Wednesday that Turkiye would now return to economic “rationality” with a “credible program” to address the cost-of-living crisis. However, he also warned there would be “no shortcuts or quick fixes” and asked the public to be patient.

Brad W. Setser, senior fellow at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations, recently calculated that, apart from Turkey’s swap and deposit deals with foreign countries including Saudi Arabia, the central bank has only $30 billion in actual foreign reserves.

Economists believe that Erkan’s appointment may indicate that Turkiye will now follow orthodox economic policies, including interest rate hikes.

The new governor’s policy preferences are unclear, however, as she has previously worked only in the private sector. It also remains to be seen how much independence she will be granted, especially with local elections approaching. In March 2021, former central bank governor Naci Agbal was fired after just five months in the job after he decided to raise interest rates.

Erik Meyersson, chief emerging markets strategist at the European financial services group SEB, said the appointment of Erkan “provides valuable synergies” to Simsek’s attempts to shift policy.

“But, at the same time, the experience of Agbal — and the manner in which his efforts to push policy in a similar direction ended prematurely — does hang like a shadow over the current initiative,” he told Arab News. “The continued presence of Kavcioglu — a figurehead of the devastating policy mistakes of recent years — as head of the BDDK does not provide similar synergies and instead could be a sign of a limited commitment on behalf of Erdogan to the new policy direction.”

The retention of Kavcioglu, he added, “risks becoming an unwanted deadweight to what could otherwise have signaled fresh and significant policy momentum.”
According to Meyersson, one interpretation is that the old economic model that caused so much damage is “more dormant than dead” and is a reminder that “arbitrary rule implies arbitrary and often sudden changes.”

Meyersson believes that markets will likely look to test the extent of the new mandate from the presidential palace, and said that front-loaded rate hikes would be a good start.

“The gap between the policy rate and current inflation is minus 30 percent, and given the low credibility ascribed to the central bank, the real policy rate should increase toward positive territory soon. But that amount of policy tightening is unlikely to have been approved by President Erdogan, setting up Turkish financial markets for further volatility during the year,” he said.

The central bank’s monetary policy committee will have its first meeting under the new governor on June 22, and an increase in interest rates is expected.

Ehsan Khoman, head of emerging markets, ESG and commodities research at MUFG Bank in Dubai, said Erkan’s appointment, coupled with Simsek’s pledges to restore credibility, was a clear signal of a return toward rules-based monetary policymaking to re-anchor inflation expectations.

“Our base case is for a supersized rates hike from 8.5 percent to 20 percent on 22 June — with a likely pre-meeting statement to prepare markets for the start of the hiking cycle — to reach levels that imply positive real rates by year-end,” he told Arab News.

Critically, given Turkey’s past experience with relatively short-lived U-turns in policy regarding interest rates, Khoman said that (gaining) credibility will require patience, though these latest market-friendly appointments should rule out risks related to reliance on less-orthodox measures, including stricter regulations on foreign exchange transactions, to sustain acutely negative real rates.

Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of London-based Teneo Intelligence, thinks that “an outright and fast pivot toward a conventional policy set, especially in terms of monetary policy, remains unlikely.”

He told Arab News: “Erkan’s appointment seems designed to regain credibility in the eyes of foreign investors. But how she will adapt to Ankara’s working culture, where obedience matters, remains to be seen. Also, Erkan has no formal monetary policy experience.

“The appointments are important, but the next crucial step should be the decisions,” he continued.

He also noted that a shift towards orthodox economic policy requires the support of the banking regulator, which is now headed by a loyalist, suggesting a likely return to previous economic policies.

“Turkey’s domestic banks — private and state-owned — are under close political scrutiny and command,” he said.