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Trump willing to talk to Iran, but action on nuclear program must come first: Brian Hook

Brian Hook, the US Special Representative for Iran, looks on during a press conference in Kuwait City on June 23, 2019 during a tour of the Middle East region. (AFP)
Updated 24 June 2019
Reuters
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Trump willing to talk to Iran, but action on nuclear program must come first: Brian Hook

  • Hook told reporters that Iran could “come to the table or watch its economy crumble”
Updated 24 June 2019
Reuters

LONDON: US President Donald Trump is ready to talk to Iran about a deal that would lift American sanctions but Tehran would need to curtain its nuclear and missile program, as well as its support for proxies, US Special Representative on Iran Brian Hook said on Monday.
Hook told reporters that Iran could “come to the table or watch its economy crumble,” but declined to give more details about fresh US sanctions expected later on Monday.
Hook was speaking to media by telephone from Oman, where he is touring Gulf countries — including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait — before heading to Paris for talks with his E3 counterparts.

Hook told reporters that the US was looking to agree a treaty that would be ratified by the US Congress, saying the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and world powers was flawed because it had no legal basis.

"This is a president who is very willing to sit down with the regime," Hook said, speaking by telephone from Oman, where he is touring Gulf countries before heading to Paris to explain U.S. policy to European powers. "I think the question people should be asking is ... why Iran continues to reject diplomacy."

The US withdrew last year from the 2015 accord under which Iran accepted curbs to its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of sanctions.

Last week the two countries came the closest in years to direct military confrontation after Iran shot down a US drone. Trump called off a retaliatory air strike minutes before impact.

Hook, who accused Tehran of "violent responses to diplomatic pressure," said Iran could come to the negotiating table or watch its economy "continue to crumble."

"They are in a recession now, it is going to get significantly worse," he said ahead of an expected announcement later on Monday on further US sanctions.

He said there was no diplomatic contact, or back channel, between Washington and Tehran at present. Hook said elements of a deal with Tehran would need to involve an end to the arrest of dual nationals in Iran and an end to support for what he said were Iranian proxies in the Middle East who committed clandestine attacks on Iran's behalf.

Topics: US Iran Iran tensions Brian Hook

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Libya’s security authorities free more than 200 migrants from ‘secret prison’, two security sources say

Updated 58 min 33 sec ago
Reuters
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Libya’s security authorities free more than 200 migrants from ‘secret prison’, two security sources say

  • Security authorities had found an underground prison, nearly three meters deep, which the sources said was run by a Libyan human trafficker
Updated 58 min 33 sec ago
Reuters

BENGHAZI: Libya’s security authorities have freed more than 200 migrants from what they described as a secret prison in the town of Kufra in the southeast of the country after they ​were held captive in inhuman conditions, two security sources from the city told Reuters on Sunday.
The security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the security authorities had found an underground prison, nearly three meters deep, which the sources said was run by a Libyan human trafficker.
One of the sources said this person had not yet been detained.
“Some of the freed migrants were ‌held captive up ‌to two years in the underground cells,” ‌this ⁠source ​said.
The ‌other source said what the operation had found was “one of the most serious crimes against humanity that has been uncovered in the region.”
“The operation resulted in a raid on a secret prison within the city, where several inhumane underground detention cells were uncovered,” one of the sources added.
The freed migrants are from sub-Saharan Africa, mainly from Somalia ⁠and Eritrea, including women and children, the sources said. Kufra lies in eastern Libya, ‌about 1,700 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the capital ‍Tripoli.
Libya has become a transit ‍route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via dangerous ‍routes across the desert and over the Mediterranean since the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
The oil-based Libyan economy is also a draw for impoverished migrants seeking work, but security throughout the ​sprawling country is poor, leaving migrants vulnerable to abuses.
At least 21 bodies of migrants were found in a ⁠mass grave in eastern Libya last week, with up to 10 survivors in the group bearing signs of having been tortured before they were freed from captivity, two security sources told Reuters.
Libya’s attorney general said in a statement on Friday the authorities in the east of the country had referred a defendant to the court for trial in connection with the mass grave on charges of “committing serious violations against migrants.”
In February last year, 39 bodies of migrants were recovered from about 55 mass graves in Kufra. The town houses ‌tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees who fled the conflict that erupted in Sudan in 2023.

Topics: Libya

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