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Gulf Times
Friday, February 26, 2016

REGION/ARAB WORLD
CRACKDOWN

DEFENSIVE MEASURES

REGIONAL TENSIONS

CIVIL STRIFE

NOT FIGHTING

Bahrain jails four men on

terrorism charges

Hamas not seeking war

with Israel: top official

Israels president delays

Aussie trip for Putin talks

UN chief goes to S Sudan

in latest push for peace

French advisers helping

Libyan forces in Benghazi

A Bahraini court has sentenced four people to five

years in prison for plotting to receive explosives
and weapons training to carry out attacks in the
Gulf Arab kingdom, the public prosecutor said in a
statement yesterday. According to the statement
carried by state news agency BNA, several wanted
Bahrainis have fled to Iraq and are attempting to
lure other nationals to militant training camps.
Two of the suspects were convicted of facilitating
the travel plans of the other two for the purpose of
carrying out terrorist crimes inside the kingdom
of Bahrain, BNA said. Bahrain has reported a
growing number of attacks using home-made
explosives in the last two years.

A senior leader of the Islamist group Hamas

said the Palestinian movement is not seeking
a new war with Israel and insisted a network
of tunnels it is digging, some of which have
reached into Israel in the past, was defensive.
Speaking to members of the Foreign Press
Association in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar,
a medical doctor seen as a hardliner, also
suggested the prospects of reconciliation with
Fatah were slim. I think nobody here in the
region is looking for a war, said Zahar. We are
not looking for any confrontation with Israel,
but if they are going to launch an aggression
we have to defend ourselves.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said yesterday

he was delaying a scheduled visit to Australia
next month to instead hold talks in Russia that
are likely to focus on Syria. Due to regional
developments which have occurred in the
Middle East, and the need for a meeting
between the two presidents in Moscow,
President Rivlin has been forced to postpone
his planned visit to Australia, Rivlins office
said. Rivlin was due to visit Australia between
March 13-22. A date for a meeting with Russian
President Vladimir Putin has not yet been
released. A spokesman for Rivlin could not
specify the nature of the meeting with Putin.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived

in Juba yesterday to try and revive a shaky
peace deal that has so far failed to end South
Sudans two-year-old civil war. Ban was
greeted at Jubas airport by Foreign Minister
Barnaba Marial Benjamin before being driven
to see President Salva Kiir whose dispute
with rival Riek Machar triggered civil war in
December 2013. The August deal, signed under
international pressure, leaves Kiir as president
and returns Machar to his old job as deputy, but
in a sign of the levels of mistrust between the
two men Machar remains in exile despite his
reappointment earlier this month.

French military advisers have been helping

co-ordinate Libyan forces fighting Islamic State
insurgents in the eastern city of Benghazi.
The French military group in Benghazi are just
military advisers who provide consultations
to the Libyan National Army, but they are not
fighting with our Libyan forces, special forces
commander Wanis Bukhamada told Reuters.
There was no immediate French comment. Le
Monde reported on Wednesday that French
special forces and intelligence commandos
were engaged in a secret war against Islamic
State in Libya. Frances Defence Ministry
declined comment on the report.

Kuwait celebrates

Egypt jails
3 teens for
contempt
of Islam
AFP
Cairo

n Egyptian court yesterday sentenced three

Coptic Christian teenagers to ve years in jail for
contempt of Islam after they
were seen in a video mocking
Muslim prayers.
A judge in the central Egyptian province of Minya also sent
a fourth defendant, aged 15, to a
juvenile detention centre for an
indenite period.
Defence
lawyer
Maher
Naguib said the four had not
intended to insult Islam in the
video, but merely to mock the
beheadings carried out by militants of the Islamic State group.
The video was lmed on a
mobile phone in January 2015
when the three teenagers who
were sentenced to ve years
were aged between 15 and 17.
Their teacher who is also
seen in the video has already
been sentenced to three years
in jail.
The four teenagers were still
free as of yesterday and Naguib
said he planned to appeal the
judgement.
They have been sentenced
for contempt of Islam and inciting sectarian strife, Naguib
told AFP. The judge didnt
show any mercy. He handed
down the maximum punishment.
In the video, one teenager

can be seen kneeling on the

ground and reciting Muslim
prayers while others stand behind him, laughing.
Later one of them is seen
making a sign with his thumb
to indicate the beheading of the
one who is kneeling.
The Egyptian Commission
for Rights and Freedoms, an
independent rights group, said
ahead of yesterdays judgement
that it watched the video and
found that the four teenagers
were performing scenes imitating slaughter carried out by
terrorist groups.
The Commission said in a
statement that the four were
detained for 45 days and subjected to ill-treatment before being released pending
trial.
The group warned that there
was a return of using contempt of religion as accusations
against writers and religious
minorities.
Another rights group, the
Egyptian Initiative for Personal
Rights, said that between 2011
and 2013, 42 defendants were
tried in similar cases and of
them 27 were convicted.
Egypts constitution outlaws
insults against the three monotheist religions recognised by
the state - Islam, Christianity
and Judaism.
Copts, who comprise up to
10% of Egypts 90mn population, are the Middle Easts largest religious minority.

Kuwaiti paragliders decorated with a Qatari, Kuwaiti and the GCC union flags, fly during celebrations in Kuwait City yesterday marking the Gulf states 55th Independence
Day and the 25th anniversary of the end of the Gulf war.

Troubled economy takes centrestage in Iran elections

AFP
Tehran

he state of Irans postsanctions economy is

dominating voter concerns ahead of todays elections
but no matter who wins major
obstacles are lying in wait.
After more than a decade of
seeing their prospects battered
by sanctions, Iranians are anxious to feel the results of the nuclear deal with world powers that
took effect earlier this year.
President Hassan Rouhani who became the key architect of
the nuclear agreement after taking
office in 2013 - has vowed the next
12 months will be a year of economic prosperity for the nation.
He is encouraging foreign
money to ow in, saying investments will boost jobs for a population with a 10% unemployment rate, but a much higher
25% of joblessness among youth.

Rouhanis moderate and reformist allies are hoping that

message will chime with voters
as they cast ballots in todays
vote for seats in the 290-seat
parliament and 88-member Assembly of Experts, a powerful
committee of clerics.
But conservatives seeking to
retain their dominance of the legislature are blaming the government for failing to tackle the Islamic republics economic woes.
They are insisting a resistance economy - focused on domestic investment and production - is the key to revival.
For Iranians like 50-year-old
taxi driver Abdollah, the debate
is far from academic.
When the economy is
stopped, nobody has any money
and morale suffers, said Abdollah, a father-of-two who earns
1.2mn rials ($35) a day.
A sixth of his salary pays for
fuel and servicing his car, the rest
goes to paying the familys bills.

When I leave home in the

morning I have nothing, Abdollah said.
He is hardly alone in worrying. In a public opinion survey
for news website Tabnak ahead
of the vote, 64% of Iranians said
the economy was their main
concern.
Only 17% said politics was
most important, and social
problems were the top concern
for just 11.5%.
But fundamental challenges
- from falling oil prices and persistent ination to ageing infrastructure and high public debt
- will complicate any efforts to
revive Irans economy.
The plunge in global oil prices
by nearly 70% since mid-2014
had hit Iran, which has the
worlds fourth-largest proven
reserves, harder than most.
Production plummeted under sanctions and while Iran increased exports to 1.5mn barrels
per day after the nuclear deal, the

Egyptians poke fun

at Sisi TV speech
Reuters
Cairo

resident Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who once enjoyed

widespread popular support, yesterday came under
withering criticism from Egyptians on social media
after delivering a long televised speech on Wednesday.
During his address on his vision for the future, Sisi
seemed unsure of himself, at times delivering a barrage of
random sentences.
One Egyptian historian, Khaled Fahmy, compared Sisi to the
late, eccentric Libyan leader Muammar Gadda when he delivered a speech threatening to hunt down opponents in every
corner of Libya as rebels challenged his rule. Sisis speech is
a historic speech in all ways, he wrote on his Facebook page,
suggesting the Egyptian president is on the defensive.
Sisi toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim
Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests against his rule.
Security forces then shot dead hundreds of Mursi supporters and imprisoned thousands of others in a erce crackdown, before being elected president.
Sisi often spoke in an aggressive tone in the speech,
wagging his nger while providing few details on how he
planned to improve life for Egyptians.
Dont listen to anyone except me, said Sisi. I am
speaking in all seriousness. I dont lie or go around in circles and I dont have any interest except my country.
Sisi asked Egyptians to donate a pound every morning
towards tackling Egypts debt problem, and then said he
would sell himself if he could to ease the burden. I swear to
God Almighty, if I could be sold I would sell myself, he said.
Shortly after the speech, Ahmed Ghanem, an Egyptian
living in the US, took the leader at his words and listed
Sisi on online auction site eBay. For sale: Field Marshal,
Philosopher with a military background in good shape,
said the advertisement. Within hours the bids reached
$100,000, before it was taken down.
Several Egyptians interviewed by Reuters said they could
not care less about the speech. Since he took power he has
been talking and nothing has changed, said shop owner
Mohamed Nabil, 32. People are about to explode again
and he (Sisi) feels that his throne is shaky.

level is still barely half of what it

was before a US and European
embargo was imposed in 2012.
Irans economy minister Ali
Tayebnia has said the countrys
debt - made worse because of
lower oil sales income and subsidies that Rouhani wants to eliminate - is a key burden.
Rouhani has sought to reduce
the countrys reliance on crude,
raising taxes to boost state revenues and seeking economic reforms including privatisation of
state rms.
Analysts say Iran needs major
international investment - Rouhani has said up to $50bn annually - to fund new technology
and update key infrastructure
including in its energy sector,
factories and transport network.
Conservatives are instead focusing on the untapped capacity
of Irans domestic economy, saying the countys highly educated
citizens could prove the motor of
growth.

Rouhani inherited many of

the economic problems from his
predecessor, the hardline conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
who despite record high oil prices
plunged the economy into the red.
Ination was more than 40%
when Rouhani was elected in
June 2013 and with prices skyrocketing the rial currency had
already lost two thirds of its value against the dollar.
In Rouhanis rst full year in
office he returned annual growth
of three%. He has also reduced
ination to 13%.
But his efforts appear to be
stagnating and analysts say Rouhanis growth target or ve% will
be difficult to achieve.
Economic growth has been
negative or around zero during
the rst six months of the current year, Moussa Ganinejad, a
top economist, wrote in nancial
daily Donyaye Eqtesad last week,
referring to the Persian year that
began in March 2015.