THE ‘project of political Islam has failed,’ Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad said on Monday, calling for the separation of religion from politics, state television said.
Assad’s regime has been battling an uprising that has come to be dominated by Islamists, ranging from moderates to radicals, who want to see Syria run as an Islamic state.
‘The project of political Islam has failed, and there should be no mixing between political and religious work,’ he said in comments on the 67th anniversary of the founding of his Baath party.
Assad refers to all those fighting against him as ‘terrorists’ and has said that he is battling extremists with retrograde ideas. The president has repeatedly stressed the need for all parts of Syrian society to challenge ‘extremism’.
Assad said his government was also ‘continuing with the process of reconciliation, because what concerns us is ending the bloodshed and the destruction of infrastructure’. In recent months, Assad’s government has negotiated limited ceasefires with rebels who agree to raise the government’s flag in their neighbourhoods, and in many cases turn over their weapons.
The deals usually follow months-long sieges by the army, which have contributed to humanitarian crises in parts of the country. Syria’s conflict, which began in March 2011, has left more than 150,000 people dead.
• The US Senate has passed legislation to bar Iran’s newly selected delegate to the United Nations from entering the United States because he belonged to the group that took over the American embassy in 1979.
The Senate passed the measure, sponsored by Texas Republican Ted Cruz, by voice vote late on Monday after it earlier won the backing in private talks of Charles Schumer of New York. Cruz said in a speech on Monday on the Senate floor that his proposal would send a message to Iran ‘that the United States Senate is not just going to ignore this latest insult’.
The Senate vote is symbolic because the executive branch issues visas to the US. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham told reporters in Tehran that her government was waiting for an official US decision on Hamid Aboutalebi’s visa application. Our envoy is qualified for that position,’ Afkham said. ‘We have chosen our ambassador’.
Schumer, speaking on the Senate floor, said it was ‘totally inappropriate’ that Iran chose Hamid Aboutalebi as its UN envoy and that it would rightly inflame the outrage of the former hostages and their families if he had been allowed to enter the US.
‘We ought to close the door on him, and others like him, before he even comes to the United States, and that’s exactly what this bill will do,’ Schumer said.
The Senate measure would amend the Foreign Relations Authorization Act by adding UN representatives who have participated in terrorist acts to the list of those to whom the president may deny visas. The list already includes those who’ve spied on the US or could threaten national security.
Cruz maintains that Aboutalebi should be barred because he was a member of the student group involved in the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran that resulted in 52 Americans being held hostage for 444 days. The UN headquarters is in New York. In a Senate speech last week, Cruz called Aboutalebi ‘an acknowledged terrorist’.
Aboutalebi was a member of the student group that led the 1979 seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran. He has acknowledged that he worked with the organisation that took over the embassy, but has played down his role in the crisis.
Aboutalebi’s appointment by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been criticised by the Obama administration, which called the nomination ‘extremely troubling’. In recent months, Aboutalebi’s visa application to enter the United States as a diplomat has been stalled.
As host nation of the United Nations’ headquarters, the United States generally admits the chosen representatives of UN members, with limited exceptions.
‘We’re taking a close look at the case now, and we’ve raised our serious concerns about this possible nomination with the government of Iran. I’m not going to get into specifically how we’ve done that, but we have done that,’ State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said at a news briefing last week.
The Cruz bill passed unanimously on Monday evening and will require House approval and President Obama’s signature to take effect.
• Iran and world powers kicked off a new round of nuclear talks on Tuesday hoping to make enough progress to move up a gear and start drafting a historic final deal next month.
Threatening to drive a wedge between the powers, however, is the crisis surrounding Ukraine, which has led to the biggest standoff between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. Iran and the five UN Security Council permanent members plus Germany want to transform a deal struck in November into a permanent agreement by the time this temporary accord lapses on July 20.
Doing so is a tall order, however, requiring both sides to tackle thorny issues that will severely test their willingness and ability to give ground to the limit. So far the mood music has been good, with the powers’ chief negotiator, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, hailing the last monthly round in mid-March as ‘substantive and useful’.
Likewise Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Iranian media afterwards that ‘there are signs that an understanding is possible that respects the rights of the Iranian nation’.
A senior US official involved in the talks said on Friday she was ‘absolutely convinced’ a deal could be reached and that both sides were ‘looking toward beginning drafting (a deal) in May’. But ‘the real issue is not about whether you can write the words on paper, to do the drafting. It’s about the choices that Iran has to make, and some of them are very difficult’.
Under the November deal, which took effect on January 20, Iran froze certain nuclear activities for six months in exchange for minor relief from sanctions hurting its economy. As part of the deal, Iran was given greater access to civilian aircraft parts and on Monday Washington said that Boeing had been issued with a temporary licence to do business with the Islamic republic.
Now the UN powers want Iran to reduce permanently, or at least long-term, the scope of its programme in order to make any dash to make the bomb extremely difficult and easily detectable.
Iran in return wants all sanctions lifted.
The deal may involve Iran slashing the number of centrifuges – machines ‘enriching’ nuclear material – changing the design of a new reactor at Arak and giving UN inspectors more oversight. One issue is proving to be particular tricky – that of Iran’s desire to research and develop newer and faster centrifuges, something which November’s deal allowed them to continue, one diplomat said.
Any deal that gives too much away risks losing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani – who since taking office last year has sought to improve ties with the West – or the supreme leader. But leaving too much – or indeed any – of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure intact would also be a hard sell to sceptical US lawmakers and to Israel, the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power.
