The head of Somalia’s corruption-riddled government said Monday he expects to be re-selected as president of the war-torn Horn of Africa nation when his current mandate expires next month.
“I am a strong candidate and I am very confident that I will win,” President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed told reporters.
Somalia’s Western-funded Transitional Federal Government (TFG) ends its mandate next month after years of infighting and minimal political progress.
Transitional institutions, including the presidency and the parliament, were set up in 2004 but must be replaced by permanent institutions by August 20.
Somali elders are due to designate members of a new parliament which will choose the new president by August 20.
Sharif, who faces competition for the presidency from parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, was linked to alleged graft in a U.N. report leaked earlier this month that called for corrupt leaders to face Security Council sanctions.
Sharif called the allegations “absolutely false” and said that he was unconcerned about the possibility of U.N. sanctions.
“The U.N. will look at this and make their own conclusions, but for me my conscience is clear,” Sharif said.
Billed as the key to lifting anarchic Somalia out of two decades of civil war, the end of the transitional period comes at a time when regional forces have wrested a series of key strongholds from the Islamist Shebab insurgents.
Somalia has been without a stable central government since the ouster of former president Siad Barre in 1991.
The Syrian government is still in full control of its chemical weapons stockpiles, a senior Israeli defense official said on Tuesday.
“The worry, of course, is that the regime will destabilize and the control will also destabilize,” the official, Amos Gilad, told Israel Radio.
But he added: “At the moment, the entire non-conventional weapons system is under the full control of the regime.”
Western countries and Israel have voiced fears that chemical weapons could fall into the hands of militant groups as the authority of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad erodes.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said Israel would consider military action, if needed, to ensure those weapons did not reach Assad’s Hezbollah guerrilla allies in Lebanon. Israel says Hezbollah, a bitter enemy, has some 70,000 rockets in its arsenal.
On Monday, Syria acknowledged for the first time that it has chemical and biological weapons and said it could use them if foreign nations intervened in the 16-month-old uprising against Assad’s rule.
The Syrian opposition would be willing to accept a transition led temporarily by a member of the regime if President Bashar al-Assad steps aside, the Syrian National Council said on Tuesday.
“We would agree that to the departure of Assad and the transfer of his powers to a regime figure, who would lead a transitional period like what happened in Yemen,” SNC spokesman Georges Sabra told AFP.
“We accept this initiative because the priority today is to put an end to the massacres and protect Syrian civilians, not the trial of Assad,” Sabra said.
Asked about which regime figure could lead such a transition, Sabra said “Syria has patriotic figures both in the regime and among officers in the Syrian army who could take such a role,” without giving further details.
Meanwhile, the head of the Arab League has said the Syrian government of President Assad cannot last for long, saying its days were numbered in an interview published in the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat on Tuesday.
Speaking after an Arab League meeting which called on Assad to step down, Secretary General Nabil al-Araby also said the time for talking about political reform was over. “There is now no talk about political reform, but a transfer of power,” he said.
Arab League ministers who convened in Doha on Sunday called on Assad to relinquish power, adding that the Arab League would help to provide a safe exit for him and his family.
Asked how long the Assad administration could survive, Araby told al-Hayat: “I cannot define a period, but the regime cannot continue for a long time.”
As required by the Arab League resolutions adopted on Sunday, Araby said he would soon travel to China and Russia with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, who chairs the Arab League committee on Syria.
China and Russia have used their veto power in the U.N. Security Council three times to block resolutions designed to pressure Assad and halt the conflict in Syria.
“Our message to the Russians will be, with clarity and frankness, that the veto decision they took is viewed as being against Arab interests. We hope for a review of the matter, especially given that they know that the days of the current regime in Syria are numbered,” he said.
Araby also urged the Syrian opposition to unite and form a transitional government.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Intense fighting between the opposition and government forces is raging in a half-dozen areas of the Syrian capital Damascus, the day after a bomb struck at the heart of Syria's senior command, killing at least three of President Bashar al-Assad's top brass.
Columns of black smoke rose over Damascus on Thursday as troops shelled Qaboon and Barzeh, while fighting raged in al-Midan and Zahira and loud explosions were heard in Mashrou-Dumar, said the Syrian Local Coordination Committees.
Violence also erupted in Ikhlas neighbourhood near the government headquarters after rebels attacked forces loyal to Assad, who have deployed armoured vehicles, attack helicopters and increased roadblocks across the city.
Rebels fired rocket-propelled grenades at a police station in the Jdeidet Artouz area, killing at least five officers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as the chief UN observer warned that Syria was not "on the track for peace".
Maj Gen Robert Mood, the Norwegian head of nearly 300 observers sent to the country to monitor a cease-fire that never took effect, said the mission was not working.
Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said many people believed the latest developments had led the Syrian conflict to a turning point.
"The Damascus fighting is now in its fifth day, getting close to power base of the Syrian president," our correspondent said. "The prestige of the regime has been shattered. Losing control of Damascus [means] the regime is slowly losing its grip over the country."
Wednesday's attack, the first to target Assad's inner circle since a 16-month uprising erupted, came ahead of a Western showdown on Thursday with Russia and China over a draft UN resolution calling for sanctions.
The explosion was blamed on a bodyguard attending a meeting of security chiefs at their headquarters, prompting the White House to say Assad was "losing control" of Syria.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon and international envoy Kofi Annan called on the Security Council to take strong action, ahead of the vote on the western-backed resolution which Russia and China are expected to veto.
Ban said there was an "extreme urgency" for action to make government and opposition forces halt the violence, which activists say has killed more than 17,000 people since March last year.
The current 90-day UN mission in Syria ends on Friday, and if no resolution is passed by then, it would have to shut down this weekend, diplomats say.
More than 200 people, mostly civilians, were killed on Wednesday, including 38 in Damascus, where rebels are pressing an all-out offensive, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Unprecedented bombing
Wednesday's bombing killed Defence Minister General Daoud Rajha, Assad's brother-in-law Assef Shawkat and General Hassan Turkmani, head of the regime's crisis cell on the uprising, state media said.
Among those wounded were Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar and General Hisham Ikhtiyar, head of National Security.
Conflicting accounts have emerged of who carried out the attack on Wednesday and how it was perpetrated.
Patty Culhane reports on the UN's next steps
Syrian state media did not air any images of the blast, as in previous explosions that hit Damascus in the last two months.
Assad, reported by Reuters to be in the coastal city of Latakia, made no statement on the attack, but within hours named Major General Fahad Jassim Feraj as defence minister, the state news agency SANA reported.
The attack was claimed by the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA), although another group, the Brigade of Islam, also said it was responsible.
The rebels said the attack, part of Operation Damascus Volcano launched on Monday, "is the first in a series ... aimed at bringing down Assad and the pillars and symbols of the regime, whether civilian or military".
State media initially said it was a "suicide bombing" before apparently retracting and calling it a "terrorist attack".
Assad 'losing control'
The blast came a day after the FSA - comprising army defectors and armed civilians - declared its battle to "liberate" Damascus had begun and warned the regime to "expect surprises".
White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said Assad was "losing control," pointing to "increasing" defections and a "strengthened and more united" opposition.
Pentagon chief Leon Panetta said the international community must "bring maximum pressure on Assad to do what's right, to step down and to allow for that peaceful transition".
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the bombing "underlines the urgent need for concerted action by the UN Security Council and the international community to enforce Kofi Annan's peace plan," referring to the UN-Arab League envoy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on Wednesday in a phone call with US President Barack Obama following the attack to work with the US to find a solution to the crisis in Syria, the White House said.
But the Kremlin stressed that "differences" remain ahead of the UN Security Council vote at 10am EDT (1400GMT) in which Russia is expected to veto a Western-drafted resolution calling for sanctions against Assad.
In-depth coverage of escalating violence across Syria
Russia earlier demanded the arrest and strict punishment of those behind what it called an "act of terror."
"We see the events as another attempt to further destabilise the situation in Syria," the foreign ministry said, calling on both sides to reassess the situation and seek peace.
Jordan's King Abdullah II warned meanwhile that his northern neighbour was on the brink of all-out civil war and that in a worst-case scenario, Syria's chemical weapons could fall into the "unfriendly" hands of al-Qaeda.
He told CNN the attack that killed core members of the Syrian regime was a "tremendous blow" to Assad but not yet the death knell for a regime that remains determined to cling to power.
Syria is not on track for peace and violence is escalating, the chief of the U.N. monitoring group said on Thursday, as clashes rocked Damascus and a day after three top regime officials died in a bombing.
“It pains me to say, but we are not on the track for peace in Syria, and the escalations we have witnessed in Damascus over the past few days is a testimony to that,” Major General Robert Mood, head of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria, said in a statement to reporters.
“I expressed my condemnation of the attack yesterday to the Syria government. I call on the parties to end the bloodshed and violence in all its forms, and recommit to a peaceful solution to this conflict,” he said.
The U.N. truce observer mission’s mandate is due to expire on Friday, Mood said, adding that his own mission as team head “will expire within days.”
Clashes
Meanwhile, clashes erupted on Thursday near Syrian government headquarters in Damascus after rebels attacked forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, who have deployed armored vehicles and increased roadblocks across the city, activists and residents said.
At least one person was reported killed in the fighting in Ikhlas neighborhood near the Council of Ministers, a huge complex, and a Damascus University campus, they said.
Hundreds of families were fleeing the area, located between the districts of Kafar Souseh and Mezze, they said.
“The refugees have nowhere to go. There is fighting across Damascus,” said a housewife watching the fighting from a tower block on Mezze Autostrade near the prime minister’s office.
Fighting has been focused in the southern and north-eastern suburbs of the city, as well as the central areas of Mezze and Kafar Souseh where several security sites are located. Other parts of central Damascus were quiet on Thursday.
Another resident said army snipers were deployed on rooftops in Mezze and Kafar Souseh after rebels attacked armored vehicles stationed near the prime minister's office and a roadblock erected in the last few days behind the Iranian embassy.
“The snipers are shooting at anyone in the streets. Mezze streets are deserted,” he said, speaking by phone.
Fighting was also reported in Midan, a central Sunni Muslim district where rebels have been operating in alleyways and narrow streets that cannot be entered easily by tanks.
Witnesses also said armored vehicles entered the Sinaa neighborhood, which is adjacent to the historic Old City center of the ancient capital.
Egypt’s former vice president Omar Suleiman, long-time spy chief to deposed president Hosni Mubarak, died on Thursday in the United States, the official MENA news agency reported.
“Former vice president General Omar Suleiman died in the early hours of Thursday in a hospital in the United States,” the agency said.
Suleiman, 75, died in the United States where he was undergoing medical tests, Suleiman’s assistant told Reuters on Thursday.
“He was fine. It came suddenly while he was having medical tests in Cleveland,” said the aide, Hussein Kamal, without giving a reason for Suleiman’s death.
The former intelligence chief stepped briefly into the limelight when he was made vice president days before Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising last year.
Suleiman was ousted Mubarak’s most trusted deputy. He dubbed himself as the country’s “black box,” for detailed government secrets he claimed that he knew.
Suleiman, a pillar of the ousted regime, announced in April that he would be running for the president after initially saying he would stay out of the race.
He was barred from pursuing the country’s top job on a technicality, after the country’s election commission said he failed to get endorsements from 15 provinces as per the law.
Born in on July 2, 1935 to a well-off family in the southern town of Qena, Suleiman graduated from Cairo’s military academy in 1955.
After rising through the ranks of the military, he served as Egypt’s intelligence chief for nearly two decades. For most of that time he played a behind-the-scenes role as the top official in charge of some of the most important issues facing the Egyptian state.
He served as a negotiating partner for the United States, Israel and the Palestinians, orchestrating a series of short-lived truces.
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are attempting to convince both China and Russia to change their stance on Syria.
Ki-moon is expected to press China’s leaders Wednesday to back tougher action to stop violence in Syria before a Security Council showdown over a resolution threatening sanctions.
Ban will meet Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing before the vote on the Western resolution that links the renewal of a U.N. mission in Syria with a threat to impose sanctions if the regime does not pull back heavy weapons.
But it will be a difficult task for the U.N. secretary general to persuade Beijing, which has repeatedly warned against outside intervention in Syria, to back the action being pushed for by Western powers.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin was due Wednesday to meet Erdogan to discuss differences on Syria as U.N. Security Council prepared to vote on the conflict.
Russia and Turkey are still at odds over the ongoing violence between the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the armed opposition, which has claimed 17,000 lives since last spring, according to opposition monitors.
While Moscow has refused to support a tough resolution against Assad, Turkey has become one of its former ally’s harshest critics and Erdogan is expected to attempt to convince Putin to harden the Russian stance.
China and Russia
China, one of five veto-wielding members of the Security Council, has twice joined with President Bashar al-Assad’s main ally Russia in blocking resolutions at the council.
Ban has already urged China to use its influence to back a peace plan by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who is calling on the Security Council to order “consequences” for any failure to carry out his six-point plan.
Assad has agreed to the plan, which includes the withdrawal of heavy weapons, but failed to carry it out.
As Ban headed for China, Beijing’s determination to stick to its guns was underlined when a top, state-run newspaper again warned against international intervention.
“The life of Syria’s current political leadership can only be determined by the Syrian people. This is an internal matter and the international community should respect that,” the People’s Daily said in an editorial.
Russia has branded as “blackmail” the bid to link renewal of the U.N. mission to the threat of sanctions, and had said it would block the new resolution, instead proposing its own draft.
But Moscow struck a more conciliatory tone on Tuesday after Annan met Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin vowed to do everything to support Annan’s plan for ending the violence, while Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he could “see no reason why we cannot also agree at the U.N. Security Council. We are ready for this.”
The current 90-day U.N. mission in Syria ends on Friday and if no resolution is passed by then, it would have to shut down this weekend, according to diplomats.
Following talks with Hu, Ban will also meet Vice President Xi Jinping -- set to become China’s president next year -- as well as top foreign policy advisor Dai Bingguo and Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, diplomats said.
Ban, who is officially in Beijing for a China-Africa summit, has said that international inaction on Syria would be giving “a license for further massacres.”
In Syria on Tuesday, troops blasted Damascus neighborhoods with helicopter gunships and tank fire, witnesses said, after rebels announced an escalation of their battle for control of the capital.
Fighting between Assad’s forces and rebels of the Free Syrian Army has raged in Damascus since Sunday, with some activists saying it marked a “turning point” in the 16-month revolt against the regime.
Syrian opposition warns
Syrians will seek new ways to confront Assad’s regime if the U.N. Security Council fails to threaten sanctions, the main Syrian opposition group said ahead of a vote showdown Wednesday between the major powers.
Representatives of the Syrian National Council (SNC) met ambassadors from the 15-nation Security Council, including Russian envoy Vitaly Churkin, in a bid to persuade them to back sanctions.
The group warned that it will seek alternative ways to defend civilians if the U.N. Security Council does not threaten sanctions over the 16-month-old conflict in which activists say more than 17,000 people have died.
Basma Kodmani, the SNC’s head of foreign affairs, said the western resolution was “a very last chance for breathing life” into the peace plan of U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.
“Should the current attempts fail, the Syrian National Council will explore other alternatives with international and regional friends in order to provide humanitarian protection to the Syrian people,” Kodmani told a press conference.
