NEW YORK: The United States, Britain and other countries opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad will not support the reconstruction of the country until there is a political transition “away from Assad,” British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Monday.
The “Friends of Syria” group, an alliance of mainly Western and Gulf Arab countries, met in New York on Monday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly at a time when the conflict in Syria, now in its seventh year, appears to be less urgent with attention focused on the North Korean nuclear threat and the fate of the Iran nuclear deal.
“We believe that the only way forward is to get a political process going and to make it clear to the Iranians, Russians and Assad regime that we, the like-minded group, will not support the reconstruction of Syria until there is such a political process and that means, as Resolution 2254 says, to a transition away from Assad,” Johnson said.
He was speaking after a meeting of about 14 countries that back the Syrian opposition including France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States.
The UN Security Council has adopted a Syria transition road map through a Geneva-led process.
Russia joined the war on Assad’s behalf in 2015, turning the momentum in his favor. Assad also enjoys robust support from Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the moderate Syrian opposition is moribund and the United States has largely stepped back from a leading role in Syrian diplomacy.
Earlier this year the Trump administration also halted the CIA’s covert program to equip and train certain rebel groups fighting Assad.
Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, David Satterfield, said all those at the meeting agreed that “there has got to be a political process if there is to be any international participation in the reconstruction of Syria.”
“The regime and the regime supporters cannot declare a victory solely based on a map and colors of positions on the ground,” Satterfield said.
“The reconstruction of Syria depends very much on that credible political process. That political process is focused on Geneva and the role of the United Nations.”
BACK TO GENEVA
The meeting on Monday was in stark contrast to last year’s which took place after a cease-fire deal between the United States and Russia effectively collapsed when an aid convoy was bombed in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
Aleppo is now in the hands of Assad’s forces and Assad himself is in a much stronger position, thanks to Russian and Iranian support.
The last major international attempt to resolve the crisis ended in failure when the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), which included Iran, was cast aside after Syrian government forces retook the rebel stronghold of Aleppo in 2016.
Russia, Turkey and Iran have been negotiating separately for months in Astana to try to reduce the violence on the ground by creating de-escalation zones across the country, although those talks do not cover a long-term political solution
“We discussed here how to bring it back to the UN-led process and Geneva,” Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström told Reuters.
Asked if there was consensus on that, she said “I would say so.”
“It’s good if the Astana process leads to de-escalation and a reduction of the violence but it has to lead into the political process.”
Earlier on Monday, France warned that the status quo in Syria risked leading to the country’s permanent fragmentation and opening the door to new radical Islamist groups.
Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters in New York he would hold a meeting with the four other permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, Russia and the United States — on Thursday to persuade them to create a contact group to give new impetus to end the seven-year conflict.
Le Drian said “realism” dictated that Assad could not stay in power after millions of Syrians had fled the country due to the war, but that it was vital major powers worked together to help revive UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva.
Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said the French contact group proposal was not discussed at the Friends of Syria meeting.
But Riyad Hijab, a prominent Syrian opposition leader, said he told French President Emmanuel Macron that the initiative was important in part because “of American withdrawal and Russia is dominating the entire process. So Mr. Macron’s initiative is the right way to fix this because it’s vital all five (permanent Security Council members) are involved in the process.”
Anti-Assad nations say no to Syria reconstruction until political process on track
Anti-Assad nations say no to Syria reconstruction until political process on track
More than 569 tons of aid delivered across floating pier into Gaza, says US CENTCOM
CAIRO: The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Tuesday more than 569 metric tons of humanitarian assistance has been delivered so far across a temporary floating pier to Gaza, but not all the aid has reached warehouses.
Aid deliveries began arriving at a US-built pier on Friday as Israel comes under growing global pressure to allow more supplies into the besieged coastal enclave.
The UN said that 10 truckloads of food aid — transported from the pier site by UN contractors — were received on Friday at a World Food Programme warehouse in Deir El Balah in Gaza.
But on Saturday, only five truckloads made it to the warehouse after 11 others were cleaned out by Palestinians during the journey through an area that a UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said has been hard to access with humanitarian aid.
The UN did not receive any aid from the pier on Sunday or Monday.
US says Iran sought help over president crash
- “Ultimately, largely for logistical reasons, we were unable to provide that assistance”
WASHINGTON: The United States said Monday that arch-enemy Iran sought assistance over a helicopter crash that killed president Ebrahim Raisi, as Washington meanwhile offered condolences despite saying he had “blood on his hands.”
The State Department said Iran, which has had no diplomatic relations with Washington since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution, reached out afer Raisi’s aging chopper crashed in foggy weather Sunday.
“We were asked by the Iranian government for assistance,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
“We said that we would be willing to assist — something that we would do with respect to any government in this situation,” he said.
“Ultimately, largely for logistical reasons, we were unable to provide that assistance.”
He declined to go into detail or describe how the two countries communicated. But he indicated Iran was seeking help in the immediate aftermath to find the helicopter of Raisi, who died along with his foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and seven others.
The crash came after the United States and Iran reportedly held their latest quiet talks in Oman aimed at increasing stability following open clashes between Iran and Israel.
The State Department in a statement offered “official condolences” over the deaths.
“As Iran selects a new president, we reaffirm our support for the Iranian people and their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms,” it said.
President Joe Biden’s administration described condolences as standard and not showing support for Raisi, who as a judge presided over mass executions of politicial prisoners and under whose presidency authorities have cracked down on mass protests led by women.
“This was a man who had a lot of blood on his hands,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, saying Raisi was responsible for “atrocious” abuses.
Kirby said, however, that “as in any other case, we certainly regret in general the loss of life and offered official condolences as appropriate.”
The United States has often but not always offered condolences in the past to leaders it opposed with such messages sent over Joseph Stalin, Kim Il Sung and Fidel Castro.
But the condolence message, along with similar words from European nations, brought anger to some opponents of the clerical state who saw Raisi’s death as reason to celebrate.
Masih Alinejad, a women’s rights activist who US investigators say was the target of an assassination plot in New York engineered by Tehran, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, “Your condolences only pour salt on the wounds of the oppressed.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin indicated that US forces have not changed their posture after the crash in Iran, where decisions are ultimately made by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“I don’t necessarily see any broader regional security impact,” Austin told reporters.
He preemptively denied any US role and said there was no reason to think it was anything other than an accident.
“The United States had no part to play in that crash. That’s a fact, plain and simple,” Austin said.
“It could be a number of things — mechanical failure, pilot error, you name it,” he said.
Iran’s military ordered an investigation. It has often in the past blamed security incidents on Israel and the United States, which both in recent years have struck Iranian targets.
Former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif blamed the crash on continued US sanctions which have impeded the sale of aviation parts.
Asked about Zarif’s remark, Miller said: “Ultimately, it’s the Iranian government that is responsible for the decision to fly a 45-year-old helicopter in what was described as poor weather conditions, not any other actor.”
Amal Clooney helped ICC weigh Gaza war crimes evidence
- Clooney said she was asked by prosecutor Karim Khan to join an expert panel
WASHINGTON: Amal Clooney helped the International Criminal Court weigh evidence that led to the decision to seek arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas leaders, the human rights lawyer said Monday.
The high-profile British-Lebanese barrister posted a statement on the website of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which she founded with her husband, American actor George Clooney.
Both she and the foundation had previously been criticized on social media for not speaking out over the civilian death toll in Gaza.
Clooney said she was asked by prosecutor Karim Khan to join an expert panel to “evaluate evidence of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and Gaza.”
The statement came the same day Khan said he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as top Hamas leaders.
“Despite our diverse personal backgrounds, our legal findings are unanimous,” Clooney said, adding there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that Hamas’ Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh engaged in “hostage-taking, murder and crimes of sexual violence.”
With Netanyahu and Gallant, meanwhile, there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the two have engaged in “starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and extermination.”
Khan thanked Clooney in his statement announcing the decision to seek the arrest warrants.
Clooney and other members of the panel also wrote an opinion piece in the Financial Times on Monday supporting ICC prosecutions for war crimes in the conflict.
As Hamas, Israel and top ally the United States all denounced the move, the experts wrote that they “unanimously agree that the prosecutor’s work was rigorous, fair and grounded in the law and the facts.”
Clooney, in her statement, said that “my approach is not to provide a running commentary of my work but to let the work speak for itself.”
“I served on this panel because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives,” she added.
“The law that protects civilians in war was developed more than 100 years ago and it applies in every country in the world regardless of the reasons for a conflict.”
Israel says retrieved bodies of hostages were in Gaza tunnels
- Israel has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said Monday that the bodies of four hostages retrieved from Gaza last week were found in tunnels under Jabalia, where troops have been engaged in fierce fighting in recent days.
The army said last week it had recovered the bodies of Ron Benjamin, Yitzhak Gelerenter, Shani Louk, and Amit Buskila, all of whom it said had been killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel.
Their remains were recovered “from underground tunnels in Jabalia in northern Gaza,” the army said late Monday in a statement.
During a military operation, Israeli soldiers searched a suspected building in which a tunnel shaft was located, the army said.
“Soldiers then entered the underground tunnel route in a night operation and inside it conducted combat,” it said.
During the fighting the soldiers “located the bodies of the hostages and rescued them from the tunnels,” the army said.
Gelerenter, Louk, and Buskila were killed and abducted from the Nova music festival, while Benjamin was killed at the Mefalsim intersection from where his body was taken to Gaza, the army said last week.
Thousands of young people had gathered on October 6 and 7 to dance to electronic music at the Nova festival event held near Re’im kibbutz, close to the Gaza border.
Fighters from Hamas crossed over from Gaza and killed more than 360 people at the festival, Israeli officials have said.
The Nova festival victims accounted for nearly a third of the more than 1,170 people killed in the October 7 attack, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Out of the 252 people taken hostage that day, 124 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 37 the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,562 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Since early May the Israeli military has been engaged in renewed street battles in northern and central Gaza.
On Friday, the army told AFP that the fighting in the northern town of Jalalia was “perhaps the fiercest” in over seven months of war.
Fighting in north and central Gaza erupted again when the military began its assault in the far-southern city of Rafah on May 7.
Iran’s Raisi ‘unbefitting of condolences’: son of ousted shah
PARIS: Iran’s former president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash, is not worthy of condolences due to the rights abuses he is accused of overseeing, the son of the late Iranian shah said Monday.
US-based Reza Pahlavi, whose father Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was ousted in the 1979 Islamic revolution and died in exile in 1980, warned the death of Raisi would not affect the policies of the Islamic republic at home or abroad.
“Today, Iranians are not in mourning. Ebrahim Raisi was a brutal mass-murderer unbefitting of condolences,” Pahlavi said in a post on his official Instagram.
“Sympathy with him is an insult to his victims and the Iranian nation whose only regret is that he did not live long enough to see the fall of the Islamic republic and face trial for his crimes,” the former crown prince added.
Rights groups including Amnesty International have long accused Raisi of being a member of a four-man “death committee” involved in approving the executions of thousands of political prisoners, mostly suspected members of the outlawed opposition group People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), in 1988.
As a key figure in the judiciary ever since and then president from 2021, Raisi has also been accused of responsibility over deadly crackdowns on protesters and other violations.
But Pahlavi warned the death of Raisi, as well as that of his foreign minister Hossein-Amir Abdollahian in the same crash, will “not alter the course” of the Islamic republic, where supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has final say.
“This regime will continue its repression at home and aggression abroad,” Pahlavi said.
Pahlavi was a key member of a broad coalition of Iranian exiled opposition groups that joined together in the wake of nationwide protests that erupted in September 2022.
The coalition broke up amid tensions, but he remains an influential figure for some in the diaspora.
Pahlavi’s father the late shah, who was groomed by the West to be a Cold War ally, grew increasingly autocratic during his decades-long rule, using his feared Savak security service to crush political opposition and leading to criticism from Washington of his human rights abuses.
