Tag: InternationalNews

{The UN hails significant reduction in violence over the first 24 hours of a new ceasefire brokered by the US and Russia.}

Aid convoys are waiting at the Turkish-Syrian border for the government in Damascus to give authorisation to enter Syria, the United Nations has said, as a fragile ceasefire that came into effect at sundown on Monday appeared to be largely holding across the country.

The UN envoy for Syria on Tuesday applauded the “significant drop in violence”, more than 24 hours after the declaration of a truce deal brokered by US and Russia.

“Today, calm appears to have prevailed across Hama, Latakia, Aleppo city and rural Aleppo and Idlib, with only some allegations of sporadic and geographically isolated incidents,” Staffan de Mistura told a news conference in Geneva.

“Sources on the ground, which do matter, including inside Aleppo city, said the situation has dramatically improved with no air strikes,” he said.

Twenty-four hours after the tentative ceasefire took effect, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that it had received not a single report of combatants or civilians killed by fighting in any areas covered by the truce.

“This is so far the most successful ceasefire to take place in the country,” the Syrian observatory’s Rami Abdulrahman told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

The truce deal does not apply to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the group formerly known as al-Nusra Front that changed its name after cutting ties with al-Qaeda in July.

The truce agreement has been accepted by the Syrian government and, far more reluctantly, by most of the groups that oppose it, with rebel forces saying that the deal was skewed in favour of President Bashar al-Assad.

Russia said Syrian government forces were fully respecting the ceasefire but that rebel fighters had violated it 23 times.

“Syrian government troops have completely stopped firing, with the exception of areas where the Islamic State [ISIL and Jabhat Al-Nusra fighters are active,” senior Russian military officer Viktor Poznikhir said in a televised briefing.

‘Aid trucks waiting’

Speaking to reporters, de Mistura dismissed earlier reports by Turkish state media that aid lorries on Tuesday had entered Syria heading towards rebel-held eastern Aleppo, saying that the UN was still waiting for authorisation from the government in Damascus.

“We are asking them to issue them very quickly so that … we can take advantage of this reduction of violence in order to be able to make sure that, not only eastern Aleppo, western Aleppo but everywhere else, convoys can start moving,” he said.

“We have not yet received those authorisation letters but we are eagerly hoping and expecting the government to issue them very soon.”

READ MORE: ‘No civilian deaths in Syria’ as ceasefire brings calm

De Mistura also said that UN officials were awaiting assurances that the aid convoys would be “unhindered and untouched” after crossing from Turkey into Syria.

“We are waiting for this cessation of hostilities to actually deliver the assurances and the peace before trucks can start moving from Turkey. As I speak, that has not been the case,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, also said in Geneva on Tuesday.

“We need to enter an environment where we are not in mortal danger as humanitarian organisations delivering aid.”

The Syrian government said it would reject any aid deliveries to Aleppo not coordinated through itself and the UN, particularly from Turkey.

The Syrian foreign ministry said: “Commenting on the statement issued by the Turkish regime on its intention to send what it says is humanitarian aid into Aleppo, the Syrian Arab Republic announces its rejection of the entry of any humanitarian aid to Aleppo, particularly from the Turkish regime, without coordination with the Syrian government and the United Nations.”

Turkey said it was already making preparations to deliver humanitarian aid to Aleppo, where some 250,000 people in the rebel-held east are under government siege.

{Analysts say, despite sanctions, increased uranium production means the country can make six nuclear weapons a year.}

North Korea will have enough material for about 20 nuclear bombs by the end of this year with enhanced uranium-enrichment facilities and an existing stockpile of plutonium, according to new assessments by weapons experts.

The revelations came as North Korea accused the United States of pushing the Korean peninsula to “the point of explosion” after it dispatched two huge bombers in a show of force against North Korea.

The American supersonic B-1B Lancers flew over South Korea on Tuesday as the US pledged its “unshakeable commitment” to defend its allies in the region, following North Korea’s fifth and largest-ever nuclear test conducted last week.

The North has evaded a decade of United Nations sanctions to develop its uranium enrichment process, enabling it to run an effectively self-sufficient nuclear programme that is capable of producing six nuclear bombs a year, arms analysts say.

The true nuclear capability of the isolated and secretive state is impossible to verify.

According to South Korea, the North is preparing for another nuclear test – a sign it has no shortage of material to do so.

North Korea has an abundance of uranium reserves and has been working covertly for more than a decade on a project to enrich the material to weapons-grade level, the experts say.

That project, believed to have been expanded significantly, is most probably the source of up to 150kg of highly enriched uranium a year, said Siegfried Hecker, a leading expert on the North’s nuclear programme.

That quantity is enough for roughly six nuclear bombs, Hecker, who toured the North’s main Yongbyon nuclear facility in 2010, wrote in a report on the 38 North website, of Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC, published on Monday.

Added to an estimated 32-54kg plutonium stockpile, the North will have sufficient fissile material for about 20 bombs by the end of 2016, Hecker said.

Assessments of the North’s plutonium stockpile are generally consistent and believed to be accurate because experts and governments can estimate plutonium production levels from telltale signs of reactor operation in satellite imagery.

{{Nuclear wild card}}

Hecker, a former director of the US Los Alamos National Laboratory, where nuclear weapons have been designed, has called North Korea’s uranium-enrichment programme “their new nuclear wild card”.

Jeffrey Lewis, of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said North Korea had an unconstrained source of fissile material, both plutonium from the Yongbyon reactor and highly enriched uranium from at least one and probably two sites.

“The primary constraint on its programme is gone,” Lewis said.

Weapons-grade plutonium has to be extracted from spent fuel taken out of reactors and then reprocessed, and therefore would be limited in quantity.

A uranium-enrichment programme greatly boosts production of material for weapons.

Despite sanctions, by now North Korea is probably largely self-sufficient in operating its nuclear programme, although it may still struggle to produce some material and items, Lewis said.

“While we saw this work in Iran, over time countries can adjust to sanctions,” he said.

{The US will reportedly provide Israel’s military with $38bn in a 10-year deal that also involves concessions by Israel.}

The United States has agreed to a record multibillion-dollar deal to provide Israel with military assistance over a decade – the largest such agreement ever with any country.

Following 10 months of frequently tense negotiations, the State Department said on Tuesday the two allies had reached a deal with a signing ceremony planned for Wednesday in Washington DC.

Israel has long been a major recipient of US aid, mostly in the form of military assistance, against a backdrop of an ebbing and flowing conflict with the Palestinians and Israel’s neighbours.

The US and Israel have not disclosed the exact sum, but officials familiar with the deal told news agencies it totalled $3.8bn a year – up from the $3.1bn the US gave Israel annually under the previous 10-year deal that ends in 2018.

The agreement was described as the “single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in US history”, but it also reportedly involves major concessions by the Israeli government, which will no longer be able to seek additional annual funds from the US Congress over and above the new package.

Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington DC, said the annual $3.8bn figure did not mark a big change “compared with what Israel was getting in 2015 or 2016”.

“It sounds like a bit of a difference, but then if you look at the money that the US Congress routinely gives Israel on top of that $3.1bn, it’s really not that much more,” Culhane said.

“In 2015, the US Congress gave Israel $620m for missile defence, so basically Israel is going to get the same amount as it’s been getting.”

The reported figure also is significantly lower compared with the $4.5bn – $5bn sums that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was seeking when entering the negotiations 10 months ago, according to Culhane.

Israel’s government had no immediate comment on the deal.

Under the agreement, Israel’s ability to spend part of the funds on Israeli military products will be gradually phased out, eventually requiring all of the funds to be spent on American military industries, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Israel’s preference for spending some of the US funds internally had been a major sticking point in the deal.

The new US-Israel agreement also includes, for the first time, funding for missile defence programmes. Under the previous arrangement, Congress approved funds for missile defence separately and on an annual basis.

The deal comes despite mounting frustration within US President Barack Obama’s administration at Israel’s policy of building settler homes on occupied Palestinian territory.

Washington has warned that Netanyahu’s policies are putting at risk hopes of an eventual peace deal.

{Ankara formally demands US authorities to arrest the religious leader for “ordering and commanding” July’s failed coup.}

Turkey has asked Washington to arrest a US-based religious leader and businessman for allegedly masterminding a failed attempt to overthrow the government, according to state media.

The Turkish justice ministry formally demanded that US authorities arrest Fethullah Gulen on charges of “ordering and commanding the attempted coup”, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other top Turkish officials have repeatedly appealed to the US government to extradite Gulen, sending them documents which allegedly show evidence of his involvement in the failed coup attempt on July 15.

Gulen has denied any involvement in the coup bid.

A delegation of US officials visited Ankara late last month to hold talks over Turkey’s request for Gulen’s extradition.

The development marked the first concrete and public sign of progress in Turkey’s efforts to get him returned to the country.

Early last month, an Istanbul court issued a formal arrest warrant for Gulen.

When US Vice President Joe Biden visited Ankara several weeks later, he said he understood the “intense feeling” in Turkey over Gulen.

The US has “no interest whatsoever in protecting anyone who has done harm to an ally. None,” he said.

“But we need to meet the legal standard requirement under our law,” he added.

{{‘Parallel state’}}

Turkey says that supporters of Gulen within the army carried out the failed coup attempt, claiming that they had been running “a parallel state” within the civilian and military bureaucracy that followed the US-based cleric’s orders. Gulen denies the claims.

The US has previously asked the Turkish government for evidence of Gulen’s involvement, saying that the extradition process must be allowed to take its course.

In a statement to Al Jazeera in late August, Yasin Aktay, the deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party, said that Washington’s reluctance to return Gulen to Turkey, or arrest him, was unacceptable.

“It is bizarre for us that they [the US] have not been convinced, considering the scope of evidence we presented to them,” Aktay said.

“The testimony of the suspects who were arrested red-handed and documents we gave them are clear. If you add the statements of Gulen regarding the goal of his organisational movement, we believe there is nothing to question. Strong American intelligence should be well aware of who he really is.”

Gulen has had court cases pending against him for several years and Turkey has been demanding his extradition well before the failed coup attempt.

Following the July 15 events, more court cases have been opened against him.

{Up to 20 youths viciously attack Polish man in Leeds, in what police say was a racially motivated assault.}

Poland’s embassy in London has decried a racially motivated attack by up to 20 teenagers that left a Polish man hospitalised in the northern city of Leeds, the latest in a series of hate crimes against Poles in the UK.

Calling Friday’s attack “a disgusting act”, the police and crime commissioner of the West Yorkshire region, which includes Leeds, issued a statement on Tuesday to reassure the area’s Polish and Eastern European communities that “hate crimes” would not be tolerated.

“There is no place in West Yorkshire for those who foster any kind of hatred and intolerance,” commissioner Mark Burns-Williamson said, adding that extra police patrols have been ordered in the area.

“[Police] are committed to working together with eastern European communities and others to tackle hate crime head on.”

Following the attack, the Polish embassy said it was “saddened by another assault” on one of its citizens in the UK, where there have been around 30 “xenophobic incidents” in recent months.

“The assault in Leeds has been the most serious of over 10 xenophobic incidents experienced by Poles in the north of England that the Consulate General in Manchester dealt with in the recent months,” the embassy said in a statement on Monday.

“The Consular Section of the Polish Embassy in London offered assistance in [a] further 17 cases in the South and the Midlands.”

The latest attack occurred at 9:35pm local time on Friday night in Leeds when a group of up to 20 teenagers confronted a 28-year-old Polish man and his friend. The Pole attempted to escape but was chased down and punched and kicked by the group, who racially abused their victim during the attack, police said.

Hospitalised with a cut to his head that required stitches, the man had injuries that were not considered life-threatening, police said.

Police also appealed for witnesses to the attack to come forward.

In the aftermath of the June 23 referendum vote to leave the EU, known as Brexit, xenophobic and racist hate crimes surged by 58 percent, according to the UK’s National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), with Eastern European migrants, particularly the Polish community, being targets of attack.

While the huge surge had abated in recent weeks, hate crimes were still 14 percent higher in August that in the same period in 2015, according to the NPCC.

Polish embassy officials said they will meet members of the Polish community in Leeds later this week.

{Tentative truce brokered by the US and Russia begins across Syria, but there are concerns about whether it will hold.}

A nationwide ceasefire in Syria brokered by the United States and Russia began at sundown on Monday, coinciding with the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, but there are concerns about whether it will hold.

Several hours into the ceasefire, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said major conflict zones across the country were quiet.

“Calm is prevailing,” said SOHR director Rami Abdulrahman, adding, however, that there had been light shelling by both rebel groups and government forces in the country’s southwest.

The deal, agreed to on Friday by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, aims at putting an end to fighting and moving towards a political transition after more than five years of war between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and rebel groups fighting to depose him.

The truce does not apply to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the group formerly known as al-Nusra Front that changed its name after cutting ties with al-Qaeda in July.

The Syrian government, as well as Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah armed group, two of its strongest allies, have all agreed to the deal, but rebel groups expressed serious concerns.

Hours after the nationwide truce went into effect, more than a dozen rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA) alliance, Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, put out a statement that harshly criticised the agreement, calling it “unjust”, but stopped short of fully rejecting it.

The statement came a day after Ahrar al-Sham had denounced the deal in a video address.

At a State Department press conference two hours after the ceasefire came into effect, Kerry said there had been reports of violations “here and there”, but urged all parties to adhere to the truce deal, saying it may be the last “opportunity” to obtain peace in a united Syria.

{{‘No guarantees’}}

Hours before Monday’s truce was set to begin, Syria’s main opposition group and several rebel factions called for “guarantees” on the implementation of the ceasefire before fully endorsing it.

“We want to know what the guarantees are,” said Salem al-Muslet, spokesman for the High Negotiations Committee, Syria’s main opposition bloc.

“What is the definition that has been chosen for ‘terrorism’, and what will the response be in case of violations?” Muslet told AFP.

The FSA had said over the weekend that it would observe the truce, but had major reservations.

The alliance wrote to Washington on Sunday, saying that while it would “cooperate positively”, it was also concerned that the deal would benefit the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

{{Opposition concerns }}

Just hours before the truce began, Assad said his government would take back all the land held by “terrorists” and rebuild the country.

After performing prayers for the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, once the heart of the uprising against the government and only recently surrendered by rebels, Assad vowed to “retake every inch of Syria from the terrorists”.

In the lead-up to the sundown deadline, government air strikes hit rebel-held areas of Aleppo and Idlib on Monday, while Ahrar al-Sham pushed forward in a heavy offensive against pro-government forces in Quneitra in the country’s southwest.

“On the ground, what you see is more violence, more fighting and more air strikes,” Al Jazeera’s Hasham Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border, said.

Senior members said that they were “sidelined” by the deal and had “no guarantees about what will happen in the future, and that there is no indication about Assad stepping aside in the future,” our correspondent reported.

Rebel commanders were also very concerned about the “targetting of the Nusra Front, which is a crucial component for the opposition in northern Syria,” said Ahelbarra.

Alongside Ahrar al-Sham and other local factions, the group formerly known as Nusra forms the core of the Army of Conquest, which is credited for capturing the province of Idlib and breaking the siege on Aleppo.

In a letter sent to Syrian rebels ahead of the ceasefire, US State Department envoy Michael Ratney urged armed opposition groups to distance themselves from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, or there would be “severe consequences”.

According to the deal, aid access to the country’s many besieged and “hard-to-reach” areas is set to begin immediately, with government and rebel forces ensuring unimpeded humanitarian access, in particular to Aleppo city.

Questions remain, however, about how the ceasefire will apply in several parts of the country where Jabhat Fateh al-Sham is present.

If the ceasefire holds, the deal says that Washington and Moscow will begin joint targeting against hardline groups, including Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, in a week.

But the former al-Qaeda ally is a powerful partner for many opposition factions on the ground, and a rebel letter to the US over the weekend warned of repercussions if the group was targeted.

Striking Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the rebels said, “will spark anger that will be directed towards us and be another factor in the failure of the ceasefire”.

The letter, sent by FSA-related groups to the US on Sunday, outlined “concerns” over the deal.

In the text seen by AFP, rebels wrote they would “deal positively with the idea of the ceasefire,” but did not explicitly back it.

“The clauses of the agreement that have been shared with us do not include any clear guarantees or monitoring mechanisms … or repercussions if there are truce violations,” they said.

Ahmad al-Saoud, who heads the US-backed Division 13 rebel group, a signatory of the letter, said they had received no response to their concerns.

{Announcement comes nearly three months after Cameron quit as PM in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the EU.}

Former British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his resignation from his seat in parliament “with immediate effect”.

The news on Monday came nearly three months after he stepped down from his job as the country’s leader in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

Cameron, who first came to power in 2010, said he had told his successor, Prime Minister Theresa May, of his decision to stop representing his constituency in Oxfordshire to make way for someone who could concentrate on the area in central England.

“In my view with modern politics, with the circumstances of my resignation, it isn’t really possible to be a proper backbench MP as a former prime minister. I think everything you do will become a big distraction and a big diversion from what the government needs to do for our country,” he told Britain’s BBC.

The ruling Conservative Party elected May to lead the country after Cameron resigned following his failed campaign to persuade voters to remain in the European Union in a June 23 referendum.

He had campaigned in favour of remaining in the EU bloc.

At the time, Cameron had said he would complete his term in office until the next election due in 2020, although he would no longer have a leadership role in the Conservative Party.

Cameron had won re-election in 2015, but his position became untenable after losing the EU vote on June 23.

May is overseeing the process of Brexit, or Britain’s exit from the bloc.

Cameron’s unexpected announcement will trigger a by-election for his seat in Oxfordshire.

{Heavy downpours cause severe flooding in North Korea, leaving 133 dead and hundreds more missing.}

Torrential rain has caused severe flooding in the northeast of North Korea. According to the UN, 133 people have died and another 395 are currently missing.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) quoted Pyongyang government figures, saying that around 107,000 residents had been forced from their homes in the area along the Tumen River.

OCHA added that more than 35,500 homes had been destroyed along with 8,700 public buildings.

The past few weeks have seen bands of heavy rain sweeping across North Korea. The heaviest downpours fell over the eastern side of the country.

July to September represents the country’s wettest time of the year. Changjon had 70mm of rain during the past five days. Meanwhile, Sinpo recorded 80mm of rain over the same period.

The heaviest downpours have taken place in Wonsan. Almost a month’s worth of rain has fallen here, with 165mm in four days. This compares to the September average of 178mm.

The North Korean meteorological department said that the flooding was “the most devastating natural disaster since the liberation of Korea in 1945.

State media went on to say that the people in the northeastern region near the border with China and Russia were suffering “great hardship”.

Drier weather has now set in over the peninsula, and soldiers have been called in to help civilians with the clear-up operation.