DAMASCUS: Syria on Thursday dismissed the global chemical weapons watchdog’s statement, which said that investigators had found “reasonable grounds to believe” the Syrian air force dropped two cylinders of chlorine gas in 2018 on then-rebel-held town of Douma.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons produced a detailed report following a fact-finding mission that investigated the April 7, 2018 attack. Medical workers and activists said at the time more than 40 people were killed in the attack. OPCW inspectors headed to the site of the attack days later.
The United States, Britain and France blamed Syrian government forces and launched airstrikes. Syria and key ally Russia deny any chemical attack.
Douma was the final target of the Syrian government’s sweeping campaign to reclaim control of the eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital, Damascus, from the rebels, who gave up the town days after the alleged chemical attack.
Syria’s permanent representative to OPCW, Ambassador Milad Atieh, told reporters that the OPCW has been biased toward “Western positions.”
“The OPCW’s report relied mostly on information obtained from countries hostile to Syria and some other media and social networking sites run by terrorist organizations,” he said. “The report contained false accusations aimed at increasing pressure and escalating Western positions hostile to Syria.”
Atieh claimed the report’s methodology had “serious irregularities and defects” and false accusations that impacted its credibility, though he did not give any examples or offer evidence to support his statement.
In an attempt to ensure accountability for crimes in Syria, the United Nations has established a commission entitled “International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism.” It is mandated to preserve and analyze evidence of crimes and prepare files for trials in “national, regional or international courts or tribunals that have or may in the future have jurisdiction over these crimes, in accordance with international law.”
Atieh however accused the United States and Western countries of political interference with the UN commission.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in a joint statement with his British, French, and German counterparts last week commended the OPCW report and called on key Syrian ally Russia to “stop shielding Syria from accountability for its use of chemical weapons.”
“Syria must fully declare and destroy its chemical weapons program and allow the deployment of OPCW staff to its country to verify it has done so,” the statement read.
The ongoing conflict that started in Syria more than a decade ago has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s prewar population of 23 million.
Syria joined the OPCW in 2013 under severe international pressure after a deadly chemical attack on a Damascus suburb.
Syria slams chemical watchdog report on 2018 attack
https://arab.news/yu6sm
Syria slams chemical watchdog report on 2018 attack
- Syria and key ally Russia deny any chemical attack
- Syria's permanent representative to OPCW, Ambassador Milad Atieh, told reporters that the OPCW has been biased towards “Western positions"
Israeli president urges halt to judicial overhaul after protests
- Warning from the head of state underlines alarm over divisive proposal
- Isaac Herzog’s plea follows a night of protests in cities across Israel
JERUSALEM: Israeli President Isaac Herzog urged the government on Monday to halt its bitterly contested judicial overhaul, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked his defense minister for opposing the move, sparking mass street protests.
“For the sake of the unity of the people of Israel, for the sake of responsibility, I call on you to stop the legislative process immediately,” Herzog said on Twitter.
The warning from the head of state who is supposed to stand above politics and whose function is largely ceremonial, underlined the alarm the divisions opened up by the proposals has caused. It followed a dramatic night of protests in cities across Israel, with tens of thousands pouring out on the streets following Netanyahu’s announcement that he had dismissed Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
A day earlier, Gallant had made a televised appeal for the government to halt its flagship overhaul of the judicial system, warning that the deep split it had opened up in Israeli society was affecting the military and threatening national security.
Three months after it took power as one of the most right-wing governments in the country’s history, Gallant’s removal has plunged Netanyahu’s national-religious coalition into crisis, during a deepening security emergency in the occupied West Bank.
The judicial overhaul, which would give the executive control over appointing judges to the Supreme Court and allow the government to over-ride court rulings on the basis of a simple parliamentary majority has drawn mass protests for weeks.
While the government says the overhaul is needed to rein in activist judges and set a proper balance between the elected government and the judiciary, opponents see it as an undermining of legal checks and balances and a threat to Israel’s democracy.
Netanyahu, on trial on corruption charges that he denies, has so far vowed to continue with the project and a central part of the overhaul package, a bill that would tighten political control over judicial appointments, is due to be ratified in parliament this week.
He is expected to make a statement later on Monday.
As well as drawing opposition from the business establishment, the project has caused alarm among Israel’s allies. The United States said it was deeply concerned by Sunday’s events and saw an urgent need for compromise, while repeating calls to safeguard democratic values.
Rushed daylight-saving decision puts Lebanon in two time zones
- Government issued last-minute decision to delay the start of daylight saving time by a month
- Some institutions implemented the change while others refused, causing confusion
BEIRUT: The Lebanese government’s last-minute decision to delay the start of daylight saving time by a month until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan resulted in mass confusion Sunday.
With some institutions implementing the change while others refused, many Lebanese have found themselves in the position of juggling work and school schedules in different time zones — in a country that is just 88 kilometers (55 miles) at its widest point.
In some cases, the debate took on a sectarian nature, with many Christian politicians and institutions, including the small nation’s largest church, the Maronite Church, rejecting the move.
The small Mediterranean country normally sets its clocks forward an hour on the last Sunday in March, which aligns with most European countries.
However, on Thursday, the government announced a decision by caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati to push the start of daylight saving to April 21.
No reason was given for the decision, but a video of a meeting between Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri leaked to local media showed Berri asking Mikati to postpone the implementation of daylight saving time to allow Muslims to break their Ramadan fast an hour earlier.
Mikati responds that he had made a similar proposal but goes on to say that implementing the change would be difficult as it would cause problems in airline flight schedules, to which Berri interjects, “What flights?”
After the postponement of daylight saving was announced, Lebanon’s state airline, Middle East Airlines, said the departure times of all flights scheduled to leave from the Beirut airport between Sunday and April 21 would be advanced by an hour.
The country’s two cellular telephone networks messaged people asking them to change the settings of their clocks to manual instead of automatic so the time would not change at midnight, although in many cases the time advanced anyway.
While public institutions, in theory, are bound by the government’s decision, many private institutions, including TV stations, schools and businesses, announced that they would ignore the decision and move to daylight saving on Sunday as previously scheduled.
Even some public agencies refused to comply. Education Minister Abbas Halabi said in a statement Sunday evening that the decision was not legally valid because it had not been taken in a meeting of the Cabinet. If the government meets and approves the decision, he wrote, “we will be the first to implement it” but until then, “daylight saving time remains approved and applied in the educational sector.”
Soha Yazbek, a professor at the American University of Beirut, is among many parents who have found themselves and their children now bound to different schedules.
“So now I drop my kids to school at 8 am but arrive to my work 42 km away at 7:30 am and then I leave work at 5 p.m. but I arrive home an hour later at 7 pm!!” Yazbek wrote on Twitter, adding for the benefit of her non-Lebanese friends, “I have not gone mad, I just live in Wonderland.”
Haruka Naito, a Japanese non-governmental organization worker living in Beirut, discovered she has to be in two places at the same time on Monday morning.
“I had an 8 a.m. appointment and a 9 a.m. class, which will now happen at the same time,” she said. The 8 a.m. appointment for her residency paperwork is with a government agency following the official time, while her 9 a.m. Arabic class is with an institute that is expected to make the switch to daylight saving.
The schism has led to jokes about “Muslim time” and “Christian time,” while different Internet search engines came up with different results early Sunday morning when queried about the current time in Lebanon.
While in many cases, the schism broke down along sectarian lines, some Muslims also objected to the change and pointed out that fasting is supposed to begin at dawn and end at sunset regardless of time zone.
Many saw the issue as a distraction from the country’s larger economic and political problems.
Lebanon is in the midst of the worst financial crisis in its modern history. Three quarters of the population lives in poverty and IMF officials recently warned the country could be headed for hyperinflation if no action is taken. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of President Michel Aoun ended in late October as the parliament has failed to elect a replacement since.
Iraq’s Kurdistan region to hold elections on Nov. 18 — spokesman
- The vote should elect both a parliament and a president for Kurdish regions
SULAIMANIYA: Elections will be held in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq on Nov. 18, the regional government spokesman said on Sunday.
Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani issued a decree on Sunday and approved the date, KRG spokesman Dilshad Shahab told a news conference.
The vote should elect both a parliament and a president for Kurdish regions which have gained self-rule in 1991.
Tunisia recovers 29 bodies after migrant vessels capsize
- Rome has pressured Tunisian authorities to rein in the flow of people
TUNIS: Tunisia’s coast guard said Sunday the bodies of 29 migrants from sub-Saharan African countries had been recovered after three vessels capsized, the latest in a string of such tragedies.
A series of shipwrecks has left dozens of migrants dead and others missing in the country that serves as a key conduit for migrants seeking to reach nearby European shores.
It comes after President Kais Saied made an incendiary speech last month, accusing sub-Saharan Africans of representing a demographic threat and causing a crime wave in Tunisia.
The coast guard said in a statement Sunday that it had “rescued 11 illegal migrants of various African nationalities after their boats sank” off the central eastern coast, citing three separate sinkings.
In one, a Tunisian fishing trawler recovered 19 bodies 58 kilometers (36 miles) off the coast after their boat capsized.
A coast guard patrol off the coastal city of Mahdiya also recovered eight bodies and “rescued” 11 other migrants after their boat sank as it headed toward Italy.
Fishing trawlers in Sfax meanwhile recovered two other bodies.
Black migrants in the country have faced a spike in violence since Saied’s speech and hundreds have been living in the streets for weeks in increasingly desperate conditions.
People fleeing poverty and violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, West Africa and other parts of the continent have for years used Tunisia as a springboard for often perilous attempts to reach safety and better lives in Europe.
The Italian island of Lampedusa is just 150 kilometers (90 miles) off the Tunisian coast, part of the Central Mediterranean route described by the United Nations as the most deadly in the world.
Rome has pressured Tunisian authorities to rein in the flow of people, and has helped beef up the coast guard, which rights groups accuse of violence.
Italy’s hard-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni warned Friday that Tunisia’s “serious financial problems” risked sparking a “migratory wave” toward Europe.
She also confirmed plans for a mission to the North African country involving the Italian and French foreign ministers.
Meloni echoed comments earlier in the week by Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, who warned Tunisia risks economic collapse that could trigger a new flow of migrants to Europe — fears Tunis has since dismissed.
Since Saied’s speech, hundreds of migrants have been repatriated in flights organized by their embassies, but many say they fear going home and have called on the UN to organize evacuation flights to safe third countries.
Tunisia is in the throes of a long-running socio-economic crisis, with spiralling inflation and persistently high joblessness, and Tunisians themselves make up a large proportion of the migrants traveling to Italian shores.
The heavily indebted North African country is in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a $2-billion bailout package, but the talks have been stalled for months and there is no sign a deal is any closer.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Wednesday that unless they reach an agreement, “the economy risks falling off the deep end.”
Israeli group asks court to punish Netanyahu over legal plan
TEL AVIV: An Israeli good governance group on Sunday asked the country’s Supreme Court to punish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allegedly violating a conflict of interest agreement meant to prevent him from dealing with the country’s judiciary while he is on trial for corruption.
The request by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel intensifies a brewing showdown between Netanyahu’s government and the judiciary, which it is trying to overhaul in a contentious plan that has sparked widespread opposition.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, a fierce opponent of the overhaul, asked the court to force Netanyahu to obey the law and sanction him either with a fine or prison time for not doing so, saying he was not above the law.
“A prime minister who doesn’t obey the court and the provisions of the law is privileged and an anarchist,” said Eliad Shraga, the head of the group, echoing language used by Netanyahu and his allies against protesting opponents of the overhaul. “The prime minister will be forced to bow his head before the law and comply with the provisions of the law.”
Netanyahu is barred by the country’s attorney general from dealing with his government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary, based on a conflict of interest agreement he is bound to, and which the Supreme Court acknowledged in a ruling over Netanyahu’s fitness to serve while on trial for corruption.
But on Thursday, after parliament passed a law making it harder to remove a sitting prime minister, Netanyahu said he was unshackled by the attorney general’s decision and vowed to wade into the crisis and “mend the rift” in the nation. That declaration prompted the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, to warn that Netanyahu was breaking his conflict of interest agreement by entering the fray.
The fast-paced legal and political developments have catapulted Israel into uncharted territory and to a burgeoning constitutional crisis, said Guy Lurie, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.
“We are at the start of a constitutional crisis in the sense that there is a disagreement over the source of authority and legitimacy of different governing bodies,” he said.
If Netanyahu continues to intervene in the overhaul as he promised, Baharav-Miara could launch an investigation into whether he violated the conflict of interest agreement, which could lead to additional charges against him, Lurie said. He added that the uncertainty of the events made him unsure of how they were likely to unfold.
It is also unclear how the court, which is at the center of the divide surrounding the overhaul, will treat the request to sanction Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate affairs involving wealthy associates and powerful media moguls. He denies wrongdoing and dismisses critics who say he will try to seek an escape route from the charges through the legal overhaul.
The overhaul will give the government control over who becomes a judge and limit judicial review over government decisions and legislation. Netanyahu and his allies say the plan will restore a balance between the judicial and executive branches and rein in what they see as an interventionist court with liberal sympathies.
Critics say the plan upends Israel’s fragile system of checks and balances and pushes Israel down a path toward autocracy.
The government has pledged to pass a key part of the overhaul this week before parliament takes a month recess, but pressure has been building on Netanyahu to suspend the plan.
