Tag: cairo
New Arab Coalition Coming Together To Intervene In Libya

New Arab Coalition Coming Together To Intervene In Libya

By Tom Hussain,McClatchy Foreign Staff (TNS)

ISLAMABAD — Three years after the toppling of Moammar Gadhafi, the military chiefs of seven Arab countries are expected to meet in Cairo next week to discuss whether they should intervene in Libya, which is split between two governments, controlled by rival militias, and home now to a blossoming Islamic State affiliate.

Analysts of Middle Eastern affairs said the meeting is likely to increase outside support for Khalifa Hifter, a former Gadhafi general who defected to the United States in the late 1980s and returned to Libya during the 2011 uprising that ended in Gadhafi’s death.

Hifter, who had expected to lead the creation of a new Libyan army after Gadhafi’s fall but was sidelined by the country’s political rivalries, launched an assault last year on what he said were radical Islamist groups that had taken control of much of Libya in the past three years. Libya is now divided between two main factions, one known as Operation Dignity, which is allied with Hifter and based in Tobruk, near the Egyptian border, and another called Libya Dawn, which is based in Tripoli and is backed by several militia factions.

The civil war anarchy has left room for the Islamic State to organize. It now controls Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte. In January, it posted a video of what it said were 21 Egyptian workers being beheaded on a Libyan beach.

Ayham Kamel, director for the Middle East and North Africa for the Eurasia Group, a New York-based political risk advisory firm, said he doubted that the seven countries meeting May 18 in Cairo will agree to send troops to Libya. But increased military support for Hifter’s forces could provide an important edge in what has been the long-running stalemate between the Tobruk government, which the United States and the European Union recognize, and the Tripoli one, which has won a ruling in favor of its legitimacy from the country’s supreme court.

Kamel said supporting Hifter would be the easiest route for the Arab countries, rather than becoming involved in U.N.-sponsored peace talks that have made little progress in months of trying.

Next week’s gathering in Cairo was first reported by the U.S. publication Defense News, which said that participants include seven of the 10 Arab countries that have intervened in Yemen.

But the Libya meeting is a separate initiative pushed by Egypt, which borders Libya on the east. Saudi Arabia is the prime mover behind the Yemen campaign.
The countries sending representatives to Egypt include Jordan and Sudan and four members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. All seven nations are members of the Saudi-led coalition currently opposing Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Notably, the gathering in Egypt excludes another Gulf Cooperation Council member, Qatar, which supports the Libyan Dawn administration in Tripoli.

Theodore Karasik, a Saudi-focused analyst based in the United Arab Emirates, called the Cairo meeting part of a “grand experiment in Arab-led coalitions” that “will illustrate how different theaters of the Middle East and North Africa are viewed in functional strategic and tactical direction.”

He noted that the one item of interest to analysts as the Yemen and Libya situations play out is “who is politically willing or excluded from operations.”

The May 18 meeting would follow up discussions last month by Arab League military chiefs in Cairo, which were attended by the Tobruk government’s armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Abdul Razzaq Nadhuri.

Since then, the UAE has delivered five Russian-built Mi-35 Hind helicopters. Additional Russian anti-tank and armor-piercing weapons and munitions will soon be delivered, Defense News reported.

Parallel to the military initiative, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said last week it would host a forum in late May of Libyan tribal leaders supportive of the Tobruk-based government to “unify the Libyan people” and “to give a necessary boost toward political dialogue.”

(Hussain is a McClatchy special correspondent.) (c)2015 McClatchy Washington Bureau, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

AFP Photo/Abdullah Doma

Power Outage In Egypt Strands Commuters, Disrupts Capital

Power Outage In Egypt Strands Commuters, Disrupts Capital

By Laura King and Amro Hassan, Los Angeles Times

CAIRO — An hours-long power outage in the Egyptian capital and elsewhere in the country on Thursday stranded commuters, disrupted TV broadcasts, and trapped a small but unlucky cohort in elevators as daytime temperatures topped 100 degrees.

Compounding the misery, the outage shut down water supplies in some parts of the country as only water plants with generators continued to operate. Many factories and bakeries also stopped working, leading to long lines of unhappy people waiting for their daily bread subsidy. Cellphone signal boosters were also affected.

Egypt has suffered through a summertime electricity drought that has led to regular rolling blackouts, but Thursday’s outage stood out in terms of both duration and scope. State media did not provide a number of those affected, but said many governates — the administrative equivalent of provinces — were hit along with the capital.

Twitter users vented their outrage — often signing on from cafes in parts of Cairo that still had power — and angry television commentators called for firing the minister of electricity.

For many Egyptians, the prolonged outage was particularly galling, coinciding with a blast of late-summer heat and coming on the heels of official reassurances that the electricity problems were being alleviated.

Authorities blamed a technical failure at a Cairo relay station, and said institutions such as hospitals would be given priority as electricity was restored. Egypt’s stock exchange, powered by generators, was unaffected, state media reported.

Egypt’s chronic energy problems have been worsening for years, due to a combination of poorly maintained infrastructure, weakening oil and natural gas output and failure to pay foreign companies that partner with the state in energy production.

However, this summer’s power woes do not appear to have triggered widespread antigovernment sentiment, as last year’s did, when President Mohammed Morsi was in office. Morsi was toppled by a popularly supported military coup led by then-Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who is now president, and Morsi’s movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been decimated by arrests and fatal clashes with security forces.

Still, the big blackout led to grumbling in shisha cafes and in living rooms and on social media.

“Sissi is the bad omen,” one Facebook user said in a status update, referring sarcastically to the former general’s much-publicized account of a omen in a dream that told him he would one day lead Egypt.

A Twitter user chimed in: “Wonder how long it will take the government to blame the mass power cuts on the Muslim Brotherhood?”

Hassan is a Los Angeles Times special correspondent.

AFP Photo

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Israel Hits Gaza, Quits Cairo Talks After Rocket Fire

Israel Hits Gaza, Quits Cairo Talks After Rocket Fire

By Mai Yaghi

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) — Israel hauled its negotiators back from talks in Cairo and warplanes hit Gaza Tuesday after Palestinian rockets smashed into the south as the two sides were observing a 24-hour truce.

Nine days of relative quiet in the skies over Gaza came to an abrupt halt on Tuesday afternoon when three rockets struck southern Israel just hours before the truce was to expire at midnight local time.

Israel immediately ordered a military response, with warplanes striking targets across the battered Gaza Strip, although there were no immediate reports of casualties, Palestinian security sources and witnesses told AFP.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rockets fired at Beersheva, which is home to around 200,000 Israelis.

An Israeli official confirmed the negotiating team had been ordered back from Cairo where Egypt has been pushing for a decisive end to the Gaza bloodshed, which has killed more than 2,000 Palestinians and 67 on the Israeli side.

“The Cairo process was based on the premise of a total ceasefire,” he told AFP.

“If Hamas fires rockets the Cairo process has no basis.”

Israel has repeatedly said it would not negotiate under fire and on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned there would be “a very strong response” should there be any resumption of fire.

Hamas dismissed his remarks as having “no weight.”

“Yet again, terrorists breach the ceasefire and renew fire at Israeli civilians from Hamas ruled Gaza Strip,” said army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, confirming attacks on targets across the coastal enclave.

“We cease, they fire.”

– ‘Sabotaging the talks’ –

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri denied the Islamist movement had fired rockets over the border, accusing Israel of trying to sabotage the truce talks.

“We don’t have any information about firing rockets from Gaza. The Israeli raids are intended to sabotage the negotiations in Cairo,” he told AFP.

The talks in Cairo center on an Egyptian proposal that meets some of the Palestinian demands, such as easing Israel’s eight-year blockade on Gaza, but defer debate on other thorny issues until later.

The aim is to broker a long-term arrangement to halt more than a month of bloody fighting, although both sides have largely silenced their guns since August 11 thanks to a series of temporary truces.

Talks at the headquarters of Egyptian intelligence resumed around 0800 GMT, a Palestinian official told AFP.

Although the back-to-back truce agreements have brought relief to millions on both sides of the border, the drawn-out waiting and the fear of a resumption of fighting was beginning to test people’s patience.

“No one here has any hope,” said Riyad Abul Sultan, a father of 10 with thick curly hair, smoking as he sat on a flimsy mattress at a UN school in Gaza.

“Maybe they’ll finish the war for two hours, maybe Israel will start bombing again.”

– Deadlock over ports –

The Palestinians say agreement over a long-term arrangement in Gaza has been delayed by Israeli foot-dragging over key issues such as a port and an airport.

“The negotiations failed on Monday evening because the Israelis refused to include a port or an airport in the agreement,” a Palestinian source close to the talks told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The Egyptians then added a clause allowing for the postponement of talks on this issue in order to avoid Israel raising the issue of (disarming Gaza from) rockets and missiles,” he said.

Israel has repeatedly demanded that Gaza be demilitarized although the subject is not overly mentioned in the Egyptian proposal as seen by AFP.

Islamic Jihad on Tuesday accused Israel of “intransigence” while Hamas’s Abu Zuhri said the Jewish state was “playing for time” at the talks.

Hamas had repeatedly warned it would not extend the temporary ceasefire again, pressing for immediate gains that would allow it to claim concessions from Israel after the devastating four-week war, which began on July 8.

– Hamas shift –

But a senior official within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) said the Islamist movement appeared to have changed its position following a meeting at the weekend between exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and senior Palestinian official Saeb Erakat.

“It looks like Hamas and Islamic Jihad will agree to the Egyptian paper,” he told AFP.

The Egyptian proposal calls for both sides to immediately cease fire, and includes provisions relating to opening the borders to allow for free movement of people, goods, and construction materials, as well as a clause on regulating the financial crisis within the enclave.

But crucially, it postpones discussions on the thorniest issues, such as a port and airport in Gaza, for another month “after calm and stability returns,” along with talks over exchanging the remains of two Israeli soldiers for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

AFP Photo/Said Khatib

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Gaza Truce Deadline Looms; Israel, Hamas Stick To Demands

Gaza Truce Deadline Looms; Israel, Hamas Stick To Demands

By Laura King, Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times

The latest Gaza truce is the longest so far, lasting five days, but an agreement over demands remains elusive.

Hamas appears at odds not only with Israel but other Palestinian factions in the delegation to the Cairo talks.

As the clock ticked down on yet another Gaza cease-fire, Egyptian mediators on Monday prodded Israel and the Palestinians to take steps to avert another outbreak of hostilities, but neither side showed public signs of softening its demands.

The latest truce — the longest so far, lasting five days — was due to expire at midnight local time. Israel warned the militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, against any resumption of rocket fire, saying such a move would draw a forceful response.

Israel has expressed willingness to extend the cease-fire and continue indirect talks if the calm held. Israel’s intelligence minister, Yuval Steinitz, told Israel radio on Monday that prospects for an accord were “not spectacular, to say the least.” But he added that “one must wait … sometimes there are surprises.”

Hamas, for its part, appeared to find itself at odds not only with Israel but with other Palestinian factions in the delegation to the Cairo talks, taking a harder line than the government of President Mahmoud Abbas on several points, including how and when an Egyptian and Israeli blockade of the coastal territory will be eased.

A monthlong war between the two sides, which tapered off with a series of cease-fires and the withdrawal of Israeli ground forces earlier this month, killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, most of them believed to be civilians, and 67 on the Israeli side, all but three of them soldiers.

When the last truce expired late Wednesday, there was argument almost up to the moment of the deadline. And even as the extension was announced, there was a brief flare-up of fighting — rockets fired from Gaza and retaliatory airstrikes by Israel. Hamas, which has allied fighters it says it does not directly control, denied its forces had fired the rockets.

Hamas came under pressure over the weekend to moderate its position in talks between Saeb Erekat, representing Abbas, and Khaled Meshaal, who lives in exile in Qatar and heads Hamas’ political bureau. Israel’s Haaretz daily newspaper said Abbas’ government is trying to get Hamas to accept an Egyptian-authored formula for an accord even if it falls short of Hamas’ demands.

But after the extreme scope of death and devastation in Gaza, Hamas wants to produce landmark results, such as a commitment for the reopening Gaza’s seaport and airport. Israel insists that stringent security provisions would have to be in place to prevent Hamas from exploiting an easing of the blockade in order to rearm.

Delays in reaching an accord have been holding up the start of full-scale efforts to start reconstruction of Gaza, where the infrastructure has been battered and thousands of homes and businesses destroyed. Norway announced that its government and Egypt would cohost a donor conference to kick off what is likely to be a massive and lengthy rebuilding effort.

As the deadline neared, Monday brought a reminder of the events that helped touch off the Gaza conflict. The Israeli military said Monday that troops had demolished the West Bank homes of two suspects in the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teens, and blocked off a third. After the teens’ bodies were found, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Hamas and authorized a wave of arrests of Hamas suspects in the West Bank.

Special correspondent Sobelman reported from Jerusalem.

AFP Photo/Thomas Coex

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