Tag: InternationalNews

{Warring sides agree to more negotiations as week of unsteady talks, threatened by a crumbling ceasefire, comes to close.}

Geneva, Switzerland – Syria’s warring sides have agreed to future negotiations at the end of a fourth set of talks in Geneva, a mild breakthrough after a week of stalled discussions and a steadily failing ceasefire.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy for Syria, announced on Friday the conclusion of the intra-Syrian talks in the Swiss city having secured a finalised agenda for another round.

He said he would invite the government and opposition negotiators to Geneva for a fifth set of discussions later in March.

“We have a clear agenda in front of us,” de Mistura told reporters. “The train is ready, it is in the station … it is warming up its engine … it just needs an accelerator and the accelerator is in the hands of those in this round.”

De Mistura held back-to-back meetings on Friday, first meeting with two minor opposition groups – the Moscow and Cairo platforms – and later speaking with the Syrian government delegation and the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), the central opposition umbrella group.

“It is now clear to everyone [that] we are here to implement Security Council resolution 2254, and that is beyond dispute,” de Mistura said.

Resolution 2254, adopted by the council in 2015, lays the foundations for a political transition – the opposition’s central goal – based on three subjects, or “baskets”: accountable governance, a new constitution and UN-supervised elections within 18 months.

But before signing on to continue negotiations, government representatives demanded that a fourth subject focused entirely on “anti-terrorism” was added to the agenda.

The opposition has previously been hesitant to add “terrorism” to the agenda over fears that the government would use it to sideline discussions on political transition.

READ MORE: Syria’s Civil War Explained

“The agenda is reflected by the baskets,” said de Mistura. “Four baskets – three plus one.”

The additional subject, said de Mistura, “addresses within the context of the overall transitional political process, issues related to strategies of counterterrorism, security governance and also medium-term confidence building measures”.

The first three subjects were given an implementation target date of six months, while the fourth was linked with separate Russian-led talks in Kazakhstan’s Astana, expected to take place on March 14.

Those talks, backed also by Turkey and Iran, would be in addition to the Geneva process and deal with the “maintenance of the ceasefire, immediate confidence-building measures and operational counterterrorism issues”, de Mistura said.

Future agenda

The government and opposition are now tasked with pursuing a “framework agreement” that outlines a political transition process envisaged within the 2015 UN resolution.

The fourth Geneva talks were part of the latest political initiative to bring an end to a six-year war that has killed nearly 500,000 people, wounded more than a million, and displaced nearly half the population.

The previous round of discussions in Geneva in April was suspended after a previous ceasefire collapsed and heavy fighting resumed.

While the opposition has pointed to signs of progress during this week’s talks, and praised de Mistura for seeming more engaged in political transition than before, violence in Syria threatened to derail the discussions.

Government representatives, meanwhile, accused the opposition of taking the talks “hostage”, alleging that some members of its delegation belonged to “armed terrorist groups”.

{{Ceasefire}}

De Mistura said consolidation and maintenance of the ceasefire were vital to the Geneva process, while talks in Astana would be reinforcing.

“We are very much complementary. If Astana succeeds, it means ceasefire,” he said. “If a ceasefire takes place, we can have productive talks. If we don’t have productive talks, a ceasefire can’t last.”

A successful truce, he said, would also “facilitate” nationwide humanitarian access and a prisoner exchange – another key opposition demand.

The UN envoy said the government delegation had put forward an “interesting suggestion [on] the concrete possibility of exchanges of detainees and abducted people … and the obvious place for doing that is Astana”.

The issue of “detainees, abductees and missing people was raised and would continue to be raised”, he said, referring to a meeting one week ago he had with five Syrian women – mothers, daughters and wives of prisoners, many of whom were former prisoners themselves.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Prisoners, all Jordanians, convicted of ‘terrorism’ offences and rape hanged in Suaga prison, south of the capital.}

Jordan hanged 15 death row prisoners at dawn on Saturday, in a further break with a moratorium on executions it had observed between 2006 and 2014.

Ten were convicted of “terror” offences, including attacks on tourists, a writer, and security forces. Five others were convicted of crimes including rape, Mahmud al-Momani, Jordanian information minister told the official Petra news agency.

The group of 10 were part of the so-called “Irbid terror cell”, which was responsible for several attacks.

In 2005, King Abdullah II said Jordan aimed to become the first Middle Eastern country to stop carrying out executions, in line with most European countries.

Courts continued to hand down death sentences, but they were not carried out.

But public opinion blamed a rise in crime on the policy and in December 2014 Jordan hanged 11 men convicted of murder, drawing criticism from human rights groups.

Opinion hardened after the murder by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group of captured Jordanian pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh whose plane had crashed in a rebel-held region of Syria in December 2014.

Grisly footage posted in February the following year of him being burned alive in a cage outraged the public.

Jordan swiftly hanged two people convicted of “terrorism” offences, including Sajida al-Rishawi.

She had taken part in a 2005 suicide attack on luxury hotels in Amman organised by ISIL’s forebear, al-Qaeda in Iraq, but her explosives failed to detonate.

Jordan is part of a US-led military coalition that has been carrying out air raids against ISIL in Iraq and Syria.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Players complain of unpaid wages for four months as opening games postponed despite government payout.}

Footballers in Argentina pushed ahead with a strike over unpaid wages, forcing the year’s first league games to be suspended despite a $22m government payout, officials said.

Friday evening’s fixtures, Rosario Central versus Godoy Cruz and San Lorenzo against Belgrano were suspended, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) said.

The Argentina Footballers’ Union (FAA) had warned earlier that the government payout had not resolved the dispute.

“Tomorrow [Friday], there will be no football. I maintain that the situation today is worse than yesterday,” said FAA spokesman Sergio Marchi.

The union says some players have not been paid for four months because the state had failed to redistribute broadcasting revenues to their clubs.

The AFA has been without a permanent president since the death of Julio Grondona in July 2014.

Al Jazeera’s Daniel Schweimler, reporting from Buenos Aires, said FIFA, football’s world governing body, has threatened to suspend Argentina from international competition unless the AFA adopts its criteria for choosing a new boss.

{{Payout not enough}}

On Thursday, the government approved the payment of 350 million pesos ($22m) to the AFA, which the association will pass on to clubs.

But the FAA said that was less than half the debt owed to the clubs. It said the $22m was not expected to be paid until Tuesday.

Last week the AFA ended a contract that gave the state broadcasting rights to top matches.

The association, which is scheduled to elect a new president next month, is threatening to deduct points.

The chaotic situation has prompted several top clubs to say they might field non-professional players to get around the strike.

The strike has also hit the football fans hard.

“Those who run football and our politicians should realise that football is the national sport in Argentina,” Ariel, a football fan, told Al Jazeera.

“Football should be available to everyone. We’ve all got the right to football.”

Source:Al Jazeera

{Joint operation involving Russian air power and Shia militia forces ISIL to retreat again from historic city.}

The Syrian army said it has recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra from ISIL for the second time in a year with help from allied forces and Russian warplanes.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group seized Palmyra in a surprise advance in December after having been driven out eight months before.

“With backing from the Syrian and Russian air forces, units of our armed forces recaptured the city of Palmyra, in cooperation with the allies,” the military said in a statement.

The army and Iranian-backed militia advanced inside Palmyra on Thursday as ISIL withdrew completely, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said.

ISIL retreated to areas in the east, the Syrian Observatory reported. Government forces took control of swathes of Palmyra and conducted combing operations to clear land mines, it said.

During ISIL’s first occupation, which ended in March last year, the armed group destroyed some of Palmyra’s priceless archaeological heritage. It is believed to have razed other parts of the historical ruins after regaining control in December.

The Syrian army is also fighting ISIL east of Aleppo city, where it is pushing to reach the Euphrates River, and in the city of Deir al-Zor, where it controls an enclave besieged by fighters.

ISIL is on the back foot in Syria after losing territory in the north to an alliance of US-backed Kurdish-led militias, and to Turkey-backed Syrian rebel groups.

Government and opposition delegations are attending UN-sponsored peace talks in Geneva, where the government’s chief negotiator hailed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for keeping his promise to retake Palmyra.

The Syrian opposition, however, declined to congratulate Assad on capturing Palmyra and suggested the city changing hands again was possible.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Concerns rise over government plans to build a 10,000-hectare port and industrial zone on traditional Mah Meri land.}

Carey Island, Malaysia – In a wooden hut, elevated above the swampy ground, a shaman from Malaysia’s indigenous Mah Meri people sits cross legged in front of an altar laden with offerings of food and drink, and decorated with palm fronds folded and twisted into birds and flowers.

As each visitor climbs the steps into the chamber and falls to their knees, the shaman dabs first their forehead and then their hands with white chalk. It is a blessing; a cleansing for the year ahead.

Every Ancestors Day, or Hari Moyang, the Mah Meri who have lived on Carey Island on Malaysia’s west coast for generations honour the spirits of their ancestors and the island they call home in a series of ceremonies that last for a month.

But this year’s celebration took place amid rising concern about government plans to build a 10,000-hectare port and industrial zone on the island to expand Port Klang, which lies just north of Carey Island and is the world’s 12th busiest cargo hub.

If the plans proceed, the indigenous people will be squeezed into an ever smaller area of the low-lying island, which is just an hour’s drive from Kuala Lumpur.

“This is the land of the Mah Meri,” says Kemi bin Khamis, 42, who carves the spirit statues from local hardwood. “This is our island. I don’t want to to move.”

The Mah Meri are one of 18 ethnic groups who make up the Orang Asli; descendants of the original inhabitants of the Malay peninsular who are now thought to number about 179,000.

{{‘Cultural survival’}}

Ancestral land is crucial to the Orang Asli’s way of life and the landscape central to their largely animist beliefs, but as Malaysia’s economy has expanded, and demand for land has grown, the indigenous people have lost vast swaths of their territory to plantations, logging and industrial projects.

“The centrality of indigenous peoples’ customary lands is vital for their development and cultural survival,” Malaysia’s human rights commission, known as Suhakam, wrote in its recommendations to the government following a national enquiry into indigenous peoples’ land rights in 2013, urging official recognition of Orang Asli customary lands.

The government has yet to implement Suhakam’s recommendations, but the pressure on Orang Asli continues to grow. According to Minority Rights Group International, less than one-fifth of the indigenous tribes’ native land has been set aside as Orang Asli areas or reserves. On Carey Island, only two of the five villages have been recognised, and they are now thought to be the ones most at risk from the port development.

“It’s not that fair,” Kemi says softly of the official approach to Orang Asli land. “If they want to take, they will take. There’s no land title or grant.”

The federal government agency overseeing Orang Asli affairs told Al Jazeera on Friday it was unaware of any plans to move the Mah Meri community. It added because land issues fall under state government jurisdiction, authorities there would have to pay compensation and provide a suitable area for relocation.

The Mah Meri aren’t the only Orang Asli struggling to hold onto what is theirs. In the northeastern state of Kelantan, the forest-dwelling Temiar are fighting loggers backed by the state government in a reserve that is part of their ancestral land, setting up blockades and risking arrest to defend their territory.

“The view is why should we give the land to the Orang Asli when it’s valuable land,” says Colin Nicholas, coordinator of the Center for Orang Asli Concerns, an NGO that works on behalf of the indigenous people. “If you have the chance, why not grab it?”

The Orang Asli have responded with legal action, increasingly determined to assert their rights and defend their way of life. This week, a group of 188 indigenous people in Malaysia’s south won a five-year court battle over customary land taken for the Iskandar development, a project three times the size of Singapore.

“There have been some very strong judgements saying Orang Asli do have native rights to the land, even if you’ve gazetted it as a forest reserve, a Malay reserve or even given it away to someone else,” Nicholas explained. “But it’s not being recognised by those who make the decisions.”

{{Rapid development}}

It was in the early 20th century, when Malaysia was ruled by the British, that rubber was first planted on Carey Island, but the country’s rapid post-independence development has greatly increased the pressure on the Mah Meri.

Kemi, who has five children, remembers the time when the sea and the rivers were clearer, the fish easier to catch and the crab plentiful, but agriculture and industrialisation have brought pollution, and rubbish dots the island’s beaches. Communities have to travel ever further for a decent catch, he says.

The plantations are now owned by Sime Darby, one of the world’s largest producers of palm oil (the Mah Meri grow some oil palm plants to supplement their income), and a golf resort opened a few years ago close to Kampung Sungai Bumbun. The 810-hectare site, part of which was once indigenous community land, is now being developed into a housing estate for stressed-out city dwellers.

The affected families agreed to just 2,000 ringgit ($450) each in compensation. The developer, meanwhile, is looking forward to a “higher than typical” profit margin for the luxury villas it aims to build.

Plans for the port remain sketchy and the indigenous villages may yet be able to work with the state government. The port itself is a project of the federal government led by a rival political coalition, and elections are due by the middle of next year. The project’s proponents will also need to convince Sime Darby to give up its plantations.

{{‘Not from our time’}}

In front of the shaman’s hut, the dances are coming to an end. The men and women stand patiently in their costumes – made from the bark of native trees – as the scores of foreign tourists who’ve come to watch the celebrations take photos.

“Their environment, their surroundings, this is their life,” says Rashid Esa, who manages the Mah Meri Cultural Village on the island, which is supported by the Tourism Ministry.

“[Mah Meri] are a unique people. They are not from our time, really.”

Next to a bamboo table laden with chocolate drinks, fruit juices, and food for the spirits, 15-year-old Sazrin anak Gali removes his mask, which has been smudged white by the shaman, and runs his hand through his hair.

The schoolboy comes from a family steeped in Mah Meri culture and has been learning traditional dance since he was seven. Sazrin has no doubts about what will happen if the port project goes ahead.

“I will resist,” he says, cradling the mask, with its riot of woven hair in the crook of his arm. “This is the land where I was born. Everyone will protest.”

Source:Al Jazeera

{Democrats call for Jeff Sessions to resign; President Donald Trump calls controversy ‘a total witch hunt’.}

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has agreed to recuse himself from an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.

His comments came a day after the Washington Post reported that Sessions, a former senator who advised Donald Trump’s campaign on foreign policy and other issues, met the Russian ambassador in July and September, just as accusations of Russian interference in the election were building.

At a news conference on Thursday, Sessions drew a distinction between his conversations with Sergey Kislyak in his role as a senator and his role in the Trump campaign.

He said the decision to recuse himself from a federal investigation came at the urging of senior career officials in the justice department.

“I feel I should not be involved in investigating a campaign I had a role in,” Sessions said.

His critics say his two conversations with Kislyak contradict Sessions’ statements during his confirmation hearing when he told Congress he had not had communications with Russians during the campaign.

Calling for Sessions to resign, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused him of “lying under oath”.

The White House stood behind Sessions, with Trump saying he had “total” confidence in his attorney general.

He said Sessions could have been more accurate in what he said about his contacts with Russian officials but blamed Democrats for blowing up the controversy for political reasons.

“Jeff Sessions is an honest man. He did not say anything wrong. He could have stated his response more accurately, but it was clearly not intentional,” Trump said in a statement.

“The Democrats are overplaying their hand,” Trump continued. “It is a total witch hunt!”

Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Virginia where the president visited a Navy aircraft carrier and addressed shipbuilders on Thursday, said that while Democrat politicians will not be satisfied with Sessions’ recusal, Trump supporters will have a different reaction.

“We often talk about Washington being something of a bubble. Once you go outside, it is a very different political reality,” our correspondent said.

“Many Trump supporters know they have an imperfect president, they know there may be problems with his cabinet, but they don’t care. What they care about is what the president came to talk about today, and that is job creation. For them, what matters is putting food on the table, having a regular paycheck, and anything beyond that is simply background noise.”

The justice department has maintained there was nothing improper about Sessions’ contacts or his answers to Congress.

Trump has been trailed for months by questions about potential ties to Russia. He has vigorously denied being aware of any contacts his associates had with Russia during the campaign and has also insisted he has no financial ties to Russia.

His national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned last month following reports he misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with Russia.

Source:Al Jazeera

{US carries out first major operation in Yemen since a botched raid left civilians and a Navy SEAL dead.}

The United States said it carried out more than 20 strikes in Yemen targeting al-Qaeda on Thursday, in the first major operations against the group since a botched US commando raid against the group left multiple civilians and a Navy SEAL dead.

The Pentagon said the strikes targeted al-Qaeda fighters, heavy weapons systems, equipment, infrastructure and the group’s fighting positions.

The raids, including drones and manned aircraft, were carried out in the Yemeni governorates of Abyan, al-Bayda and Shabwah.

The US military did not estimate the number of casualties in the strikes, but residents and local officials told news agencies that at least nine suspected al-Qaeda fighters were killed.

“The strikes will degrade the AQAP’s ability to coordinate external terror attacks and limit their ability to use territory seized from the legitimate government of Yemen as a safe space for terror plotting,” Navy Captain Jeff Davis said, using an acronym for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The raids were conducted “in partnership” with the Yemeni government, and coordinated with President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Davis said.

The operations come a month after the January 29 raid in al-Bayda that residents said killed 16 civilians as well as al-Qaeda fighters.

The operation, the first of its kind authorised by President Donald Trump, was hailed as a success by the White House and other US officials.

But critics questioned the value and effectiveness of the mission since it killed women and children as well as Navy SEAL Ryan Owens.

Owens’s father has described the mission as “stupid,” and declined to meet with Trump.

Trump, the military’s commander-in-chief, has sought to pass blame for the death to “the generals” and stressed the raid yielded large amounts of vital intelligence.

The United States periodically sends small teams of commandos into Yemen, primarily to gather intel, and in recent months has been increasing activity against AQAP.

AQAP has been a persistent concern to the US government ever since a 2009 attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.

The group has taken advantage of a civil war pitting Houthi rebels against the Saudi-backed government to try to widen its control and influence in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country, one of the poorest in the Middle East.

The conflict, which UN officials say has killed more than 10,000 people, has also forced the United States to scale back its presence in Yemen, degrading US intelligence about the group, officials say.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Condemnation comes after diplomat says improbable that VX nerve agent killed North Korean leader’s half-brother.}

Malaysia has condemned the use of toxic nerve agent VX that killed the estranged half-brother of North Korea’s leader at an airport packed with travellers, as authorities moved to deport a North Korean suspect.

Kim Jong-nam was murdered on February 13 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where he was assaulted by two women who allegedly smeared his face with VX, a chemical classified by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction.

Malaysia’s foreign ministry “strongly condemns the use of such a chemical weapon by anyone, anywhere and under any circumstances. Its use at a public place could have endangered the general public”, it said in a statement on Friday.

North Korea has denied accusations it was involved in the killing. It described as “absurdity” the belief that VX was used and suggested the victim died from heart failure.

Malaysia’s foreign ministry said it was in close contact with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an inter-governmental organisation based in the Netherlands, regarding the incident.

“Malaysia does not produce, stockpile, import, export or use any Schedule 1 toxic chemicals, including VX, and has made annual declarations to that effect to the OPCW,” the statement said.

North Korea diplomat Ri Tong-il – who is leading a delegation to the country – said on Thursday that Malaysia should provide samples of the VX that police say they found on the body to the OPCW.

“If it is true that it was used,” he told reporters, “then the samples should be sent to the office”.

Ri, a former North Korean deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said it made no sense to say the two women used such a deadly toxin without also killing or sickening themselves – and people around them.

He added that Kim had a history of heart problems and had been hospitalised in the past. He said he understood that Malaysian officials found medication for diabetes, heart problems, and high blood pressure in Kim’s belongings and concluded he wasn’t fit to travel.

“This is a strong indication that the cause of death is a heart attack,” Ri said.

Relations between Malaysia and North Korea, who have maintained friendly ties for decades, have soured since the killing of Kim Jong-nam, the estranged brother leader Kim Jong-un who had lived for years in exile in Macau.

South Korean intelligence and US officials say the murder was an assassination organised by North Korean agents, though the only suspects charged in the case so far are an Indonesian woman and a Vietnamese woman.

They face the death penalty if convicted. They have told diplomats from their home countries they thought they were participating in a prank for reality television.

Al Jazeera’s Florence Looi, reporting from Kuala Lumpur, said questions remain about who else may have been involved with the women.

“There are doubts they could have acted on their own because how would have they been able to obtain the highly toxic substance that was found on Kim Jong-nam’s body and apparently killed him,” said Looi.

Another North Korean suspect, who was arrested on February 18 over the killing, was released from a detention centre on Friday and driven away in a police convoy.

Ri Jong-chol was taken to the immigration office wearing body armour to prepare his deportation to North Korea.

Malaysia’s attorney-general said on Thursday that he would be released because of insufficient evidence.

Police have identified seven other North Koreans wanted in connection with the killing, including a senior embassy official in Kuala Lumpur. Four have left the country and are believed to be in Pyongyang.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke twice with Russian ambassador before taking office, The Washington Post reports.}

Jeff Sessions, while still a US senator, spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador, encounters he did not disclose when asked during his confirmation hearing to become attorney general about possible contacts between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian officials, The Washington Post reported, citing Justice Department officials.

One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what US intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the US presidential race, the Post reported.

Sessions in a statement denied ever meeting “with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign”.

“I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false,” the statement read.

The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election, the Post said.

Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was fired last month after he discussed US sanctions on Russia with Kislyak before Trump took office and misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates.

When Sessions spoke with Kislyak in July and September, he was a senior member of the influential Senate Armed Services Committee as well as one of Trump’s top foreign policy advisers, according to the Post.

Sessions played a prominent role supporting Trump after formally joining the campaign in February 2016.

At his January 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Democratic Senator Al Franken what he would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign, the Post reported.

“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” Sessions responded, according to the Post. He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

Officials said Sessions did not consider the conversations relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in detail what he discussed with Kislyak, according to the Post.

“There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer,” Sarah Isgur Flores, Sessions’ spokeswoman, told the Post.

“Last year, the Senator had over 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, including the British, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Indian, Chinese, Canadian, Australian, German and Russian ambassadors.”

Justice officials said Sessions met with Kislyak on September 8 in his capacity as a member of the armed services panel rather than in his role as a Trump campaign surrogate, the Post reported.

“He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign – not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee,” Flores told the Post.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Washington, former associate US attorney general Bruce Fein told Al Jazeera: “Everyone knows Jeff Sessions was up to his ears in the Trump campaign, that’s why he’s attorney-general now.”

But he noted Trump has made powerful enemies early on in his presidency.

“Mr Trump has so alienated the press that they’re out to get him. And there are many people in the intelligence community that are probably out to get Mr Trump too because he’s derided them, [accused] them of doing things equivalent to the Nazis. So he’s going to have an intelligence community that’s looking for things,” Fein added.

Democratic Representative Adam Schiff said t he US House of Representatives intelligence committee will investigate allegations of collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.

“We have reached a written agreement, the minority and the majority in the House intelligence committee, that we will investigate allegations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign,” Schiff, the top Democrat on the panel, said on MSNBC.

The committee said in a statement that its Republican chairman, Devin Nunes, and Schiff had agreed that their investigation will seek answers to questions including: “Did the Russian active measures include links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns or any other US Persons?”

Source:Al Jazeera

{UN probe finds Syrian air force deliberately attacked aid convoy, while rebels used human shields in eastern Aleppo.}

Both sides in last year’s battle for Syria’s Aleppo city committed war crimes, including a “deliberate” bombing of a humanitarian convoy by the Syrian government, according to a new United Nations investigation.

The UN Commission of Inquiry’s report released on Wednesday said Syrian government and allied Russian forces “pervasively used” unguided munitions to bomb densely populated areas in rebel-held eastern Aleppo between July and its fall on December 22, amounting to the war crime of indiscriminate attacks.

“Throughout the period under review, the skies over Aleppo city and its environs were jointly controlled by Syrian and Russian air forces … (They) use predominantly the same aircraft and weapons, thus rendering attribution impossible in many cases,” the report said.

Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city and former commercial hub, had been divided into rebel and government parts since 2012.

The recapture of its eastern sector in late December by government forces was the biggest blow to Syria’s rebel movement since fighting started in 2011.

Syrian helicopters unleashed toxic chlorine bombs “throughout 2016” on Aleppo, a banned weapon that caused hundreds of civilian casualties there, the report said.

At least 5,000 pro-government forces also encircled eastern Aleppo in a “surrender or starve” tactic, it said.

In a major new finding, the investigators also accused the Syrian government of a “meticulously planned and ruthlessly carried out” air strike on a UN and Syrian Red Crescent convoy at Orum al-Kubra, in rural western Aleppo on September 19 which killed 14 aid workers.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government has fiercely denied responsibility for the convoy’s bombardment and a separate UN probe in December said it was impossible to establish blame.

But after analysing satellite images, forensic evidence and other material, the inquiry determined that “Syrian air forces targeted (the) humanitarian aid convoy”.

“By using air-delivered munitions with the knowledge that humanitarian workers were operating in the location, Syrian forces committed the war crimes of deliberately attacking humanitarian relief personnel, denial of humanitarian aid, and attacking civilians,” the report said.

During the recapture of eastern Aleppo, pro-government forces arrested doctors and aid workers and committed reprisal executions, the report said.

{{Crimes on rebel side}}

According to the report, opposition groups shelled government-controlled western Aleppo, indiscriminately firing with no clear military target.

As the opposition resistance was crumbling and civilians tried to escape, some rebel armed groups prevented civilians from fleeing eastern Aleppo, using them as “human shields”, and attacked the residential Kurdish district of Sheikh Maqsoud – both war crimes.

The US-led coalition did not conduct any offensive air missions over Aleppo in the second half of the year, the UN investigators said.

The findings – released as Syrian peace talks continue in the Swiss city of Geneva – was based on 291 interviews with victims and witnesses, as well as analysis of forensic evidence and satellite imagery.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Geneva, said the authors of the report stated that there was “just no accountability”.

“Even though this is being documented, even though the world knows this is going on … UN investigators said the fact of the matter is no side in this conflict feels that they are accountable when it comes to committing these atrocities,” he said.

“The bigger question now is, if this is documented, what is going to happen?” he said.

“What the press was told was that the UN is preparing a dossier so if there is a tribunal that eventually happens, the evidence is ready to try to prosecute those who are accused of doing war crimes.”

Russia and China blocked in 2014 a request for the International Criminal Court to open up investigations of war crimes committed during the war in Syria.

The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons in the war that has killed nearly 400,000 people and displaced almost half the country’s population since 2011.

Source:Al Jazeera