MILAN: A European organization that operates migrant rescue ships denounced what it characterized as a chaotic maritime rescue system in the central Mediterranean Sea as one of its vessels disembarked hundreds of rescued passengers at an Italian port Wednesday.
The Ocean Viking, which is jointly operated by SOS Mediteranee and the medical nonprofit Doctors Without Borders, arrived in the southern port of Taranto with 403 of 407 migrants rescued off Libya during five operations within a 72-hour period. A woman who suffered serious burns and her three children were previously evacuated from the ship to island nation of Malta.
SOS Mediteranee operations director Federic Penard said it took the ship 10 hours to reach the location of the last two rescues and that Maltese armed forces handled a third.
He said current coordination and rescue operations on the dangerous central Mediterranean route are chaotic and there are not enough rescue ships on the lookout for people in trouble.
‘’The main issue is how to rescue these people,” Penard said.
The Twitter account for Alarm Phone, an emergency hotline for people crossing the Mediterranean, had a post saying it was alerted in the past five days of nine boats in distress carrying about 650 people in total.
‘’All of them escaped war-torn #Libya and reached #Europe!” the tweet said.
Penard called for renewing dedicated government-led rescue operations, like Italy’s former Mare Nostrum patrols or the European Union’s Operation Sofia. The latter stopped operating ships last March and is limited to aerial surveillance.
‘’There is complete chaos in terms of coordination between the maritime authorities in Europe and the maritime authorities in Libya,” Penard said. ‘’Each rescue, we feel, is a bit of a miracle that we find the boats.”
The migrants who landed in Italy included 12 pregnant women and 132 unaccompanied minors as young as 12-years-old and 20 families, according to government officials.
Malta opened a port Wednesday to the Alan Kurdi, a rescue ship run by a German humanitarian group that was carrying 77 rescued migrants. The Maltese government said it would accept 50 of the passengers for processing of asylum claims and the others would be transferred to other European countries.
Aid ship with 403 migrants rescued off Libya docks in Italy
https://arab.news/6b4at
Aid ship with 403 migrants rescued off Libya docks in Italy
- The Ocean Viking arrived in the southern port of Taranto with 403 of 407 migrants rescued off Libya during five operations within a 72-hour period
US presses missile issue as new Iran talks to open in Geneva
- New round of negotiations in Geneva comes after the US carried out a massive military build-up in the region
- Iran’s president reiterates Tehran is not seeking nuclear weapons in line with policy
GENEVA: The United States and Iran are set to hold indirect talks in Switzerland on Thursday aiming to strike a deal to avert fresh conflict and bring an end to weeks of threats.
The new round of negotiations in Geneva comes after the US carried out a massive military build-up in the region and President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to strike Iran if a deal is not reached.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump accused Iran of “pursuing sinister nuclear ambitions.”
He also claimed Tehran had “already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”
The Iranian foreign ministry called these claims “big lies.”
Iran president says ahead of US talks not seeking nuclear weapon ‘at all’
TEHRAN: Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated on Thursday that Tehran was not seeking nuclear weapons in line with the policy set by the country’s supreme leader.
“Our Supreme Leader has already stated that we will not have nuclear weapons at all,” Pezeshkian said in a speech.
“Even if I wanted to move in that direction, I could not — from a doctrinal standpoint, I would not be permitted.” — AFP
The maximum range of Iran’s missiles is 2,000 kilometers according to what Tehran has publicly disclosed. However the US Congressional Research Service estimates they top out at about 3,000 kilometers — less than a third of the distance to the continental United States.
The dispute between the countries mostly revolves around Iran’s nuclear program, which the West believes is aimed at building an atomic bomb but Tehran insists is peaceful.
However the US has also been pushing to discuss Iran’s ballistic missile program, as well as Tehran’s support for armed groups hostile toward Israel.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that Iran must also negotiate on its missile program, calling Tehran’s refusal to discuss ballistic weapons “a big, big problem” on the eve of the talks.
He followed up by saying “the president wants diplomatic solutions.”
Iran has taken anything beyond the nuclear issue off the negotiating table and has demanded that the US sanctions crippling its economy be part of any agreement.
‘Neither war nor peace’
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Wednesday he had a “favorable outlook for the negotiations” that could finally “move beyond this ‘neither war nor peace’ situation.”
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is leading the Iranian delegation at the talks, has called them “a historic opportunity,” adding that a deal was “within reach.”
In a foreign ministry statement that followed a meeting with his Oman counterpart, Araghchi said the success of the US negotiations depend “on the seriousness of the other side and its avoidance of contradictory behavior and positions.”
The US will be represented by envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
The two countries held talks earlier this month in Oman, which is mediating the negotiations, then gathered for a second round in Geneva last week.
A previous attempt at negotiations collapsed when Israel launched surprise strikes on Iran last June, beginning a 12-day war that Washington briefly joined to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.
In January, fresh tensions between the US and Iran emerged after Tehran engaged in a bloody crackdown on widespread protests that have posed one of the greatest challenges to the Islamic republic since its inception.
Trump has threatened several times to intervene to “help” the Iranian people.
Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that “the region seems to expect a war at this point.”
In January, there was “a big push by a number of Middle Eastern states to convince the US not to” strike Iran.
“But there’s a lot of apprehension at this point, because the expectation is that this time” a war would be “bigger” than the one in June.
Tehran residents who spoke to AFP were divided as to whether there would be renewed conflict.
Homemaker Tayebeh noted that Trump had “said that war would be very bad for Iran.”
“There would be famine and people would suffer a lot. People are suffering now, but at least with war, our fate might be clear,” the 60-year-old said.
