Tag Archives: Turkey

The United States is focused on “future conduct” of Saudi Arabia and will expect Riyadh to improve its human rights record, a U.S. spokesman said on Monday, after Washington imposed sanctions on some Saudis for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi but fell short of sanctions against Saudi Crown Prince …

Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty is a red line, Saudi columnists said on Sunday, ramping up rhetoric in defense of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after a U.S. intelligence report implicated him in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Prince Mohammed, de facto ruler of the U.S.-allied Gulf powerhouse, has denied any …

President Joe Biden on Saturday said his administration would make an announcement on Saudi Arabia on Monday, following a U.S. intelligence report that found Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had approved the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Biden administration has faced some criticism, notably an editorial in the Washington …

The world reacted to the release on Friday of a U.S. intelligence assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation to capture or kill dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi: OFFICE OF U.S. DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT: “We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved …

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan warned of an attempted military coup against him on Thursday after the army demanded he and his government resign. Pashinyan has faced protests and calls to quit after what critics said was the disastrous handling of a six-week conflict between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces …

Erik Prince, the private security executive and supporter of former U.S. President Donald Trump, “at the very least” helped evade an arms embargo on Libya, according to excerpts from a United Nations report seen by Reuters. Independent U.N. sanctions monitors accused Prince of proposing a private military operation – known …

Libya’s powerful interior minister in the UN-recognized government on Sunday escaped an assassination attempt on a highway near the capital Tripoli, an official from his inner circle told AFP. The convoy of Fathi Bashagha “was fired on from an armored car while he was on the highway. His police escort …

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met incoming Libyan prime minister Abdulhamid Dbeibeh in Cairo on Thursday and offered his country’s support in achieving stability in its troubled neighbour,‮ ‬the presidency said in a statement. Egypt has welcomed the announcement of a new interim government – the latest U.N.-brokered effort to …

John Bolton, former US President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, said on Wednesday that while a return to the Iran nuclear deal appears to be a priority for the Biden administration, he doubts the sincerity of Tehran’s promises not to pursue the development of nuclear weapons. In an interview with …

Egypt is planning to reopen its embassy in Libya’s capital for the first time in six years, according to Egyptian sources and Libyan officials, marking a shift to a more conciliatory approach to western Libya-based factions. The planned reopening, which a visiting Egyptian delegation discussed in Tripoli on Monday and …

A rocket attack on U.S.-led forces in northern Iraq on Monday killed a civilian contractor and injured a U.S. service member, the U.S. coalition in Iraq said, in the deadliest such attack in almost a year. The barrage of rockets hit in and near a military air base occupied by …

Libya’s eastern strongman Khalifa Haftar has offered his backing for a peace process that seeks to end a decade of chaos, after meeting the head of a new transitional presidential council. The military commander met with Mohammed Younes Menfi, a former diplomat who also comes from eastern Libya, and who …

U.S. President Joe Biden plans to speak with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu soon, the White House said on Thursday without providing a date. Biden’s failure to include Netanyahu so far in his calls with foreign leaders has raised eyebrows in Israel and among Middle East experts. Former Presidents Barack Obama …

Turkey will not turn back from its acquisition of Russian S-400 defense systems despite U.S. sanctions, it said on Thursday, but added it would seek to resolve issues with its NATO ally through dialogue. In December, Washington imposed sanctions on Ankara for acquiring the S-400s on grounds they threaten its …

Participants in talks on Libya’s political future were preparing for a ballot on Friday morning to select a new interim government, part of a U.N. process aimed at resolving the country’s decade of chaos with elections in December. Candidates for prime minister and for roles in a new presidency council …

At least five people were killed and scores wounded when a car bomb detonated in the northern Syrian town of Afrin on Saturday, the Turkish defence ministry and local civil defence said. The ministry said in a statement the bomb attack took place in an industrial site at the center …

The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria voiced deep frustration on Friday that the Syrian Constitutional Committee had failed to start drafting a new charter at its latest session after the government delegation rejected proposals. The committee, comprising representatives of Syria’s government, opposition and civil society, has a mandate to …

The U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called for thousands of foreign fighters and mercenaries to immediately leave Libya, with Guterres demanding that they “leave the Libyans alone.” Libya has been divided since 2014 between the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in the capital Tripoli, …

Delegations from Syria’s government, opposition and civil society began a new round of meetings in Geneva on Monday aimed at revising the constitution of the war-torn country. The fifth round of the so-called Constitutional Committee came days after UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen told the UN Security Council …

Geir Pedersen, the UN’s special envoy for Syria, on Friday called for “more serious and cooperative” international diplomacy as part of political efforts to improve the lives of the Syrian people and develop a vision for the future of their country. Speaking ahead of the fifth session of the Small …

Egypt reopened its airspace to Qatari flights on Tuesday and will allow the resumption of air traffic between the two countries as part of a thaw in relations with the Gulf state, officials said. The decision follows moves by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt to end …

Bahrain will open its airspace to Qatar as of Jan. 11, the civil aviation affairs authority said on Sunday, following a U.S.-backed deal by Arab states last week to end a dispute with Doha. The move comes after Riyadh announced a breakthrough at a summit on Tuesday to end the …

Members of the Libyan Dialogue Forum called on the United Nations Security Council to prevent all forms of foreign armed presence and expel mercenaries and foreign bases from Libya. In a statement published by Africa News, 36 out of 74 members called on all Libyan political elites to work together …

A car bomb detonated near a Russian military base in northeastern Syria on Friday in the first such militant attack in the area against the ally of Damascus, a war monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported several wounded in the attack after midnight in the …

The United Arab Emirates has stopped issuing new visas to citizens of 13 mostly Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a document issued by a state-owned business park. A source briefed on the matter told Reuters the visas had temporarily stopped being issued to Afghans, Pakistanis …

Armenia on Sunday was due to begin handing over disputed territory to Azerbaijan as part of a peace accord that ended six weeks of fierce fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Residents of the Kalbajar district in Azerbaijan that was controlled by Armenian separatists for decades began a mass exodus of …

Facebook FB.O on Friday said it has dismantled seven separate networks of fake accounts and pages on its platform that were active in Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Myanmar, Georgia, and Ukraine due to “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”. The social media platform announced it had taken down the new networks as …

Russia is considering an Iranian proposal for ending the conflict in the mountain enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh after three ceasefires failed to halt fighting that is now in its sixth week. Interfax news agency quoted deputy Russian foreign minister Andrei Rudenko as saying Iran’s proposal was made by deputy foreign minister …

Iran’s foreign ministry on Saturday described a U.S.-brokered Sudan-Israel deal to normalise ties as “phoney” and accused Khartoum of paying a ransom in return for Washington removing it from a list of state sponsors of terrorism. The deal agreed on Friday marked the third Arab government after the United Arab …

Netflix Inc is facing a criminal charge in a Texas county for promoting lewd visuals of a child in the French film “Cuties”, according to a statement from Tyler county’s district attorney’s office on Tuesday. The document, filed on Sept. 23, said Netflix promoted material in the film that depicts …

Syrian President Bashar al Assad said the continued presence of Russia’s major naval and air bases in his country help counter the influence of Western powers in the region as the battle to crush insurgents was winding down. In an interview with Russia’s Ministry of Defence TV channel Zvezda on …

An Iranian dissident who fled his country fearing arrest has fallen foul of politics and COVID-19 restrictions in ethnically split Cyprus. Since mid-September, Omid Tootian has been living in a small tent in Cyprus’s buffer zone, a United Nations-controlled slice of territory carved out after a war split Cyprus in …

Syrian opposition sources said Russian jets bombed rebel-held northwestern Syria on Sunday in the most extensive strikes since a Turkish-Russian deal halted major fighting with a ceasefire nearly six months ago. Witnesses said the warplanes struck the western outskirts of Idlib city and that there was heavy artillery shelling in …

The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday asked Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to appoint a special envoy to broker peace in Libya, although Russia and China abstained from voting on the resolution that also extended the U.N. mission in the country. Ghassan Salame, who headed the U.N. political mission and was also …

President Donald Trump will announce a further drawdown of U.S. troops from Iraq on Wednesday, a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday. That announcement will be followed by another one in the coming days on a further reduction in U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the official said. The decision comes …

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued new threats to Greece on Saturday as Turkish forces prepared to conduct military exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean amid tension over oil and gas rights. The temperature has soared in the dispute between the two countries since Turkey deployed a research vessel and an …

The United States has conveyed its concerns to Russia over an incident in Syria in which several U.S. troops were injured when a Russian military vehicle collided with theirs, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said on Friday. “It’s been communicated to them (Russia) very clearly,” O’Brien told a White House …

Russia has stepped up its logistic support for private military contractor Wagner Group in Libya with some 338 military cargo flights from Syria in the nine months to July 31 to aid Wagner fighters backing eastern-based Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar, according to a U.N. report seen by Reuters on Wednesday. …

The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has welcomed a ceasefire announcement in Libya, the UAE news agency WAM reported on Saturday. GCC Secretary General Nayef Falah Mubarak al-Hajraf called on all parties “to adhere to (this) constructive step, to urgently engage in political dialogue, and to work through mediation of …

Lebanese rescue workers dug through rubble looking for survivors of a powerful warehouse explosion that shook the capital Beirut, killing 100 people and injuring nearly 4,000 in a toll that officials expected to rise. Tuesday’s blast at port warehouses storing highly explosive material was the most powerful in years in …

A Russian diplomat said on Monday a group of more than 30 suspected Russian mercenaries detained in Belarus last week were only passing through Minsk and were on their way to an unnamed Latin American state. Belarusian authorities have said they suspect the men entered their country to plot “acts …

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan called this week to discuss peace talks to end clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan that broke out mid-July. Both Russia and Turkey are fighting proxy wars in Syria and Libya, and if the situation in the Caucasus escalates the …

The majority of displaced Syrians want to go home but unless conditions improve, few will risk returning to their war-torn country, a grassroots civil rights organisation says. In a report released on July 21, the Syrian Association for Citizens’ Dignity said the longer Syrians felt unable to return, the more …

France’s foreign ministry on Friday rebuffed U.S. assertions that a European Union naval mission to enforce a U.N. weapons embargo for Libya was biased and not serious, saying Washington should itself be doing more to stop the flow of weapons. David Schenker, assistant secretary for Near East Affairs at the …