The United States, Britain, France and Germany have called Iran’s recent rocket test “inconsistent” with a U.N. Security Council resolution and asked the U.N. chief to investigate it.

“This launch therefore represents a threatening and provocative step by Iran,” says the letter sent Wednesday to U.N. Secretary-General António Gutteres and the president of the Security Council by the United States on behalf of the four powers.

Last Thursday, Iran announced that it had successfully fired a rocket carrying a satellite into space.  Tehran claimed the “Simorgh” rocket is capable of carrying a 250-kilogram satellite as far as 500 kilometers above Earth, but did not elaborate on the payload of the rocket fired last week.

The launch followed the U.S. move in July to increase economic sanctions placed on Iran for its ballistic missile program.

It is not a violation of the 2015 nuclear deal signed, but is “inconsistent” with language in the U.N. Security Council resolution that endorsed it, “calling on” Iran not to undertake any ballistic missile related activity.

“We call on Iran to immediately cease all activities related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology,” the four powers wrote in their letter.

“In our reading of the JCPOA this is not a violation of the agreement because it concerns other things, which were not directly written into the JCPOA,” Russia’s new U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters, referring to the Iran deal by its acronym.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday the United States is working with the other parties, which include Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany, in order to fully enforce the terms of the Iran deal and challenge whether Iran is “living up to its commitments and the spirit of the agreement.”

During his campaign, President Donald Trump dismissed the 2015 agreement as a terrible deal and threatened to pull out from it.  On Tuesday, Secretary Tillerson left that option open.

“It’s an agreement that should serve Americans.  America’s interests first and foremost, and if it doesn’t serve that interest, then why would we maintain it?” Tillerson told reporters.

Weapons trade

Meanwhile, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley singled Iran out for criticism during a debate Wednesday on the flow of weapons to terrorist groups.

“One country stands out for its deliberate, systematic contributions of weapons, training and funding for terrorist groups,” Haley said.  “One country uses its support for terrorist proxies to conduct its foreign policy and to compensate for its own weakness.  That country is Iran.”

She pointed to Iran’s support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and its interference in Iraq and Syria.

The Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution Wednesday seeking to prevent terrorist groups from acquiring weapons. Haley said technical cooperation and security upgrades would not be enough to diminish the threat from Iran.

“As long as we allow the Iranian regime to violate this council’s prohibitions with impunity, it will be a source of weapons to terrorist groups that will only grow in volume and destructive capability,” Haley warned.
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A Palestinian-Syrian software pioneer has been executed in prison after being arrested five years ago by Syrian authorities in Damascus, his widow and colleagues said Wednesday, in what Amnesty International said was a “grim reminder of Syrian prison horrors.”

Noura Ghazi Safadi wrote on Facebook late Tuesday that she has received confirmation that security services executed Bassel Khartabil in October 2015 after torturing him in prison.

Khartabil, who also went by the name Bassel Safadi, was a champion and leading contributor to Arabic Creative Commons, a framework for coding and legal rights that promotes the open distribution of software and ideas, according to his Lebanese friend Dana Trometer.

He ran a software development workspace in Damascus, which was known to the Syrian authorities. Trometer says his trial was held in secret, and the cause for his arrest was never given.

Khartabil was taken from the street in Damascus in March 2012 amid a wave of military arrests, Creative Commons said in a statement Wednesday confirming news of his execution. He was jailed for several years, during which time he was allowed to infrequently communicate with family members. Then, in October 2015, he was abruptly transferred to an undisclosed location and all communications with the outside world ceased, it said.

Oussama Jarrousse, a Berlin-based colleague of Khartabil, said he was not only a highly skilled software developer but he was also knowledgeable in the policy side of the internet, and was well integrated with the international “Open Internet” community, such as Wikipedia, and had a good reputation among his international peers.

“It takes years of hard work and effort to build such trust and relationships,” he said. 

“We are deeply saddened and outraged at this awful news. Bassel Khartabil will always be remembered as a symbol of courage, who peacefully fought for freedom to the very end,” said Anna Neistat, Amnesty International’s senior director of research.

In a statement, she said “his death is a grim reminder of the horrors that take place in Syrian prisons every day.”

“The tens of thousands of people currently locked away inside Syrian government detention facilities face torture, ill-treatment and extrajudicial executions. These cruel acts undoubtedly amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity,” she said. 

The London-based watchdog said in a report earlier this year that Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as “the slaughterhouse.”

The February report covered the period from 2011 to 2015, when Amnesty said 20 to 50 people were hanged each week at Saydnaya Prison in killings authorized by senior Syrian officials, including deputies of President Bashar al-Assad, and carried out by military police.

The Syrian government rejected the Amnesty report and denied its findings.
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The crisis in Yemen that has left millions on the brink of famine is “a man-made disaster” driven not only by decades of poverty and lack of investment but also by economic strangulation being used as a tactic of war, the U.N. development chief in the country said Tuesday.

Auke Lootsma said “there is no end in sight” to Yemen’s civil war. He said about 70 percent of the country’s 27 million people need humanitarian aid, 60 percent don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and nearly 7 million “are close to slipping into a state of famine.”

In addition, he said, the U.N. has recorded almost 400,000 cases of cholera and nearly 1,900 related deaths in the past four months — and in the last two weeks there has been a meningitis outbreak.

Lootsma told U.N. reporters by videoconference from Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, that nearly 2 million children are considered “acutely malnourished,” which makes them susceptible to cholera — and cholera creates more malnutrition.

“We expect this cholera outbreak to continue to wreak havoc despite the best efforts of the U.N. agencies” and humanitarian agencies working on the ground, said Lootsma, who is the U.N. Development Program’s country director in Yemen.

Yemen, which is on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, has been engulfed in civil war since September 2014, when Houthi Shiite rebels swept into Sana’a and overthrew President Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi’s internationally recognized government.

Campaign against Houthis

In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition, backed by the United States, began a campaign against Houthi forces allied with ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh in support of Hadi’s government. Since then, the Iranian-backed Houthis have been dislodged from most of the south, but remain in control of Sana’a and much of the north.

Lootsma said 90 percent of Yemen’s food is imported, “so imports are crucial.” At the moment, he said, getting food into the country is difficult because there are few commercial importers, they face financing challenges, airports are closed to commercial flights and there are difficulties at ports.

“Foreign exchange reserves are depleted and the country is facing a liquidity crisis as well as a hard currency shortage,” he added.

But Lootsma said the food crisis is mainly driven by the impact of increased food prices, and especially the reduction in purchasing power of Yemenis, many of whom were living in poverty before the conflict began.

“So although food may be available in the market, it is financially out of reach for many of the poor families,” Lootsma said.

Yemen is like “a bus racing towards the end of a cliff,” he said. “Instead of hitting the brakes and turning around, the one that controls the bus keeps going and pushes the accelerator, all but certain to crash.”

But, he added, “I think we can still stop this bus and turn it around before it goes over the cliff, but time is really running out.”

Lootsma said the most important task to be accomplished is stopping the war.

He said there is also a shortage of funds to help Yemenis. The U.N. humanitarian appeal for $2.1 billion is only 45 percent funded, and he urged donors who made pledges in April to send in the money.
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The head of Libya’s committee tasked with writing the constitution called upon the eastern parliament Tuesday to hold a national referendum on a final draft, setting in motion a long-awaited step that it’s hoped will end the current political stalemate and terminate power struggles among the country’s rival parties.

More than three years overdue, the draft still leaves many of Libya’s key questions unanswered. Experts warn that its lack of clarity will pave the way for another phase of instability, which has plagued the country since the 2011 uprising that ousted longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.

The call by Nouh Abdel-Sayyed to “take all necessary measures to enable the Libyan people to practice their constitutional right” came after days of confusion over whether his committee is following proper legal procedures.

On Saturday, disgruntled protesters stormed the committee’s session in the eastern town of Bayda, calling for a redo of their vote, which was in favor of putting the final draft up for a nationwide referendum. Opponents included secessionists who wanted greater say over the redistribution of resources in the oil-rich country and those in favor of the country’s 1951 constitution, which would mean a return to the monarchy.

The 60-member committee was elected in a direct vote in 2014; it was scheduled to deliver a draft in 120 days. However, unrelenting conflicts forced delays.

Legal expert Sami al-Atrash said articles of the constitution look innocent enough on the surface, but “it’s not a homogenous document and this is not an honest attempt to produce an inclusive constitution.”

A look at the draft shows efforts to keep most of the articles as vague as possible to avoid conflicts among the country’s rival parties. The draft made no mention of the national anthem or the flag, to avoid friction between those who backed the 2011 uprising against Gadhafi and those who continue to support him.

‘Legislative trap’

“It was done in a way to just escape from the current situation and crisis,” said al-Atrash, who warned this would, “postpone, rather than face, harsh realities.”

He added that leaving the articles open to interpretation “could lead to a legislative trap.”

The draft failed to live up to the aspirations of many easterners, who long complained of discrimination under Gadhafi. Eastern secessionists call for the return of autonomy to Cyrenaica, saying their lands are the major source of oil. However, for decades, Libya’s centralized system has driven oil gains to the capital.

In Article 143, the draft states decentralization is the basis of governance. However, Article 148 defers the issues of local municipalities and their budgeting to future legislation. The draft also removed an earlier mention of the eastern city of Benghazi as the economic capital and seat of the central bank.

As for presidential elections, the draft places several restrictions on candidates; candidates with dual citizenship must revoke their non-Libyan nationality a year before registration for elections begins, and if married it must be to a Libyan national. The article risks isolating some of the most powerful Libyan politicians who under Gadhafi lived in exile and were granted non-Libyan nationalities or married non-Libyans.

The draft also deprived non-Arab minorities — like the Amazigh who make up between 5 and 10 percent of Libya’s population — of having their language recognized alongside Arabic as a state language.

The push for the vote came less than a week after Libya’s top rivals — the internationally recognized, designated prime minister, Fayez Serraj, and army chief Marshal Khalifa Hifter — met in Paris, where they shook hands on a cease-fire and agreed to work toward parliamentary and presidential elections as soon as possible.
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The war in Syria destroyed more than its cities. It destroyed its soul, says American drummer and photographer Jason Hamacher, who has recorded a large collection of Syrian religious music in an effort to preserve it. Arman Tarjimanyan reports.
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China’s U.N. ambassador urged the international community on Monday to support President Xi Jinping’s new four-point proposal to end the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict and establish an independent Palestinian state.

Liu Jieyi said at a news conference that China’s future diplomatic efforts will focus on trying to move toward a negotiated solution based on the four proposals.

Xi signaled China’s stepped-up engagement in the Middle East when he met about two weeks ago in Beijing with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and outlined the plan.

The four points are:

— Advancing the two-state solution based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of a new Palestinian state.

— Upholding “the concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security,” immediately ending Israeli settlement building, taking immediate measures to prevent violence against civilians, and calling for an early resumption of peace talks.

— Coordinating international efforts to put forward “peace-promoting measures that entail joint participation at an early date.”

— Promoting peace through development and cooperation between the Palestinians and Israel.

China views both Israel and the Palestinians as “important partners” in its “One Belt, One Road” initiative, a mammoth Chinese-funded push to develop transport routes including ports, railways and roads to expand trade in a vast arc of countries across Asia, Africa and Europe, the ambassador said. China has also proposed launching a “China-Palestine-Israel tripartite dialogue mechanism in order to coordinate the implementation of major assistance programs in Palestine,” he said.

But the gaps between Israeli and Palestinian leaders remain wide, preventing any meaningful talks since 2009.

China to host seminar

Tensions escalated recently after Arab gunmen killed two Israeli police officers at the major holy site in Jerusalem on July 14, prompting Israel to install security devices that sparked Arab outrage and clashes. Under intense pressure, Israel removed the metal detectors last week and prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque ended peacefully on Friday.

Liu said China plans to hold a seminar for Israeli and Palestinian “peace activists” this year, seeking “to contribute wisdom for the settlement of the Palestinian question.”

He urged the international community to “respond positively to the proposals made by China because we believe these four proposals once fully implemented will really go a long way towards helping the issue to be solved through negotiations, and also contribute to stability of the relations between the two sides.”

 
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