LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
February 21/19

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
You Are called to belong to Jesus
Letter to the Romans 01/01-12: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world. For God, whom I serve with my spirit by announcing the gospel of his Son, is my witness that without ceasing I remember you always in my prayers, asking that by God’s will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you. For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on February 20-21/19
Aoun: Not True that Hizbullah's Influence over Lebanon is Increasing
Aoun Refuses Linking Refugees Return to Political Solution in Syria
Geagea Slams 'Big Deception Campaign' on Syrian Refugees
Report: Lebanese Cabinet Holds First Meeting Thursday after Vote of Confidence
Hasbani: Decisions Outside Government Consensus Don’t Represent the State
Bou Saab Meets Hariri, Says Abul Gheit, Pedersen Back His Munich Stance
US Worried About Hezbollah’s Expanding Role in Lebanese Govt
Hariri Shies Away from Calls for Normalizing Ties with Syria
Syria Shows 'Positive Attitude' in Dealing With Lebanon’s Displaced File
Lebanon nominates challenger to Trump’s choice to lead World Bank
Walid Phares Credentials for a UN Job are Rock Solid

Litles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on February 20-21/19
Putin warns new missiles could target ‘decision-making centers’
Rouhani Warns Iran-US Tensions at Maximum
Brother of Iranian President Goes on Trial
Russian FM: US Wants to Create Quasi-State in Syria
Fatah Urges Abbas to Appoint One of Its Members as New Premier
US Says Israel Must Apologize to Poland in Holocaust Row
Saudi Prince Agrees to Step Up Anti-Terror 'Pressure' with India
Israel Strikes Hamas Post over Arson Balloons from Gaza
Egypt Army Says 8 Jihadists Killed in Sinai
Egypt Executes 9 'Brotherhood' Members in Barakat's Murder
Cairo’s Suicide Bomber Was Deported From US, France
Possible Peace Declaration Looms Large over Kim-Trump Summit
Deadly Crackdown Stokes Fear among Protesters in Venezuela
Salame Continues Benghazi Visit, Hopes to End Libya’s Political Deadlock

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on February 20-21/19
Walid Phares Credentials for a UN Job are Rock Solid/John Hajjar/AMCD/February 19, 2019
Possible Peace Declaration Looms Large over Kim-Trump Summit/Agence France Presse/Naharnet/February 20/19
Turkey's 'Food Terrorism': Blaming 'Global Powers' for Country's Ills/Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/February 20/19
Europe: Trying to Legitimize Iran's Regime/Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/February 20/19
As the UK debates what to do with Isis suspects, one country has taken back 1,000 ‘terrorists’/Richard Hall/The Independent/February 20/19
The Only Path to a U.S. Victory in the Middle East Is to Leave Now/Lee Smith/The Tablet/February 20/19
The double standards at the heart of Iran’s Islamist regime/Sir John Jenkins/Arab News/February 20/19

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on February 20-21/19
Aoun: Not True that Hizbullah's Influence over Lebanon is Increasing
Naharnet/February 20/19/President Michel Aoun stressed Wednesday that “it is not true that Hizbullah's influence over Lebanon is increasing.”“This is the U.S. vision and it contradicts with reality, seeing as Hizbullah has maintained the same political presence it had in the previous government, and it is not true that its influence over Lebanon is increasing,” Aoun told a delegation from the Editors Syndicate, when asked about the U.S. concerns over Hizbullah. “What some political circles say sometimes in this regard is mere bickering and even at the security level they say that Hizbullah has influence in the South and the Bekaa but there is no security authority higher than that of the army and security forces, which carried out major security operations recently in the region and consolidated security and stability,” the president added. U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Elizabeth Richard held talks Tuesday with Prime Minister Saad Hariri and relayed to him U.S. concern over Hizbullah's “growing role in the Cabinet.”Hizbullah “continues to make its own national security decisions” and “continues to violate the government’s disassociation policy by participating in armed conflict in at least three other countries,” the ambassador said. Warning that “this state of affairs does not contribute to stability” and is “fundamentally destabilizing,” Richard added that she was very hopeful that Lebanon “will not be derailed from the path of progress now before it.”Hizbullah has named a health minister and two other posts in the new Cabinet. U.S. officials have called on Hariri's government to ensure the group does not receive support from public resources.

Aoun Refuses Linking Refugees Return to Political Solution in Syria
Naharnet/February 20/19/President Michel Aoun on Wednesday stressed that Lebanon refuses to wait for a political solution in Syria before the refugees start returning to their homeland. “Lebanon refuses to wait for a political solution before the refugees return home,” said Aoun, stressing that “Lebanon’s similar experience with the Palestinian refugees is not encouraging” for leniency in that regard. His remarks came in a meeting with a visiting delegation of the Syndicate of Editors. On the government issue, the President said: “There are no differences within the government. The government will be a success.”

Geagea Slams 'Big Deception Campaign' on Syrian Refugees
Naharnet/February 20/19/Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Wednesday blasted State Minister for Refugee Affairs Saleh al-Gharib's visit to Syria as he lashed out at what he called a “big deception campaign.”“The two discouraging signals represented in Minister Saleh al-Gharib's visit to Syria and Minister Elias Bou Saab's stance at the Munich conference can only spark concern over the future of the government's work,” Geagea said in an interview with the Central News Agency. “There is a big deception campaign that is taking place at the expense of the Syrian refugees cause,” the LF leader added, wondering “how the head of a regime that has displaced its people and is pressing on with its punitive and intimidatory policies could secure the refugees' return.”He added: “All signals clearly indicate that the refugees do not want to return due to Assad's presence at the head of the regime, so how can communication with him become a way to return the refugees? Such an approach cannot convince any reasonable person and is a mere attempt at deviating attention and a trick that can no longer deceive the Lebanese.”“It is only a window that they are trying to open to drag Lebanon into normalization with Syria,” Geagea went on to say, lauding Prime Minister Saad Hariri's decision to “label al-Gharib's visit as a personal one.”Turning to Bou Saab's stance, the LF leader described it as “unacceptable.”“What he said does not reflect the stance of the government, which has not convened yet to specify its stance,” Geagea added. “Who has tasked him with announcing Lebanon's stance on the safe zone in Syria?” he wondered.

Report: Lebanese Cabinet Holds First Meeting Thursday after Vote of Confidence
Naharnet/February 20/19/Lebanon’s government is scheduled to hold its first meeting after gaining confidence at the Presidential Palace in Baabda on Thursday to tackle 103 items on its agenda. Ministerial sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper on: “On the agenda is the formation of the Lebanese delegation to the Euro-Mediterranean Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh to be held March 23-24 under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Saad Hariri. And the resignation of Interior Minister Raya al-Hassan from the Presidency of the Public Authority of the Economic Zone in Tripoli; and the issue of deciding the fate of the ministerial committees formed during the mandate of the previous government, which had not completed its work.”Several other issues will be tackled, but the appointment of a Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers is not listed on the agenda, according to the daily.But the sources noted that it “could be done from outside the agenda.”

Hasbani: Decisions Outside Government Consensus Don’t Represent the State
Naharnet/February 20/19/Deputy Prime Minister Ghassan Hasbani on Wednesday stressed that decision-making or remarks outside the government's solidarity “do not represent the State’s” position. "Any decision or speech outside the government’s consensus does not represent the sovereign decisions of the Lebanese state,” said Hasbani in an interview with VDL radio (93.3). “The fear for ministerial solidarity is permanent in light of a national government structure gathering different political parties where each team has its own approach and views,” he added. He stressed that the government's priority was mainly the state budget, which constitutes an input to many files — with electricity being an essential part of it. “Work is underway in all ministries in terms of preparing files to be submitted to the Council of Ministers,” Hasbani added, demanding strict measures against arbitrary state employment which were still happening despite a law banning this option.

Bou Saab Meets Hariri, Says Abul Gheit, Pedersen Back His Munich Stance
Naharnet/February 20/19/Defense Minister Elias Bou Saab announced Wednesday that his stance on Syria at the Munich security conference was backed by Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit and U.N. special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen.
Bou Saab made the announcement after meeting Prime Minister Saad Hariri at the Grand Serail in the presence of ex-minister Ghattas Khoury. “I discussed with PM Hariri the affairs of the Defense Ministry and the Military Council appointments, in addition to the outcome of my visits to Washington and Munich,” the minister said after the talks. Asked about the stances that he voiced during the two visits, Bou Saab said: “All the stances that I voiced were in line with the government's Policy Statement and the Arab League's charter, which was highlighted by the support I received from the Arab League's secretary-general and the U.N. special envoy for Syria, who underscored the same stance during the same session.”“Accordingly, what I said was not a point of contention and talk about opposition from some parties is not accurate, because we have not heard a single official stance but rather media reports quoting sources,” the minister added. “All these stances are aimed at defending Arab land, not interfering in a dispute between one party and another, and a similar incident had happened in Iraq, when Turkey made an incursion into northern Iraq and the Arab League issued a stance in support of Iraq's territorial integrity,” Bou Saab explained. He added: “Accordingly, we are abiding by the Arab League's resolutions and I'm surprised that anyone might be bothered because I'm working under the League's ceiling. I will continue to take stances that defend any Arab land and I ask those annoyed by the fact that I'm defending Arab land: what are your affiliations?”Bou Saab had announced Friday at Munich's conference that “any Turkish presence on Syrian territory without the Syrian state's approval is unwelcome, illegitimate and is considered an occupation.”Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc had on Tuesday called on “some political leaders and forces” to respect the requirements of governmental solidarity, warning that any breach of it would “disrupt the positive atmosphere that prevailed after the formation of the government and the commitments that were mentioned in the Policy Statement and the premier's remarks.”

US Worried About Hezbollah’s Expanding Role in Lebanese Govt
Beirut- Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 20 February, 2019/US Ambassador to Lebanon Elizabeth Richard told Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Tuesday her country was concerned over the growing role of Hezbollah, which is represented in the new cabinet. The armed Shi'ite group, which is backed by Iran and listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, controls three of the 30 ministries in Hariri's new cabinet, the largest number it has ever held. They include the Health Ministry, which has the fourth-largest budget in the state. After meeting with Hariri in Beirut on Tuesday, Richard said: “I was also very frank with the Prime Minister about US concern over the growing role in the cabinet of an organization that continues to maintain a militia that is not under the control of the government, that continues to make its own national security decisions, decisions that endanger the rest of the country and that continues to violate the government's disassociation policy by participating in armed conflict in at least three other countries”. The US Ambassador hoped that Lebanon would not be derailed from the path of progress now before it, and said her country was proud to be the largest provider of development, humanitarian and security assistance to Lebanon. In just this last year alone, the United States provided more than 825 million dollars in US Assistance and that is an increase over the previous year. “We came to review the breadth and depth of the US support available for education and development, for helping Lebanese communities deal with the unprecedented demands placed on them when their Syrian neighbors fled the brutal Assad regime, for building a capable and respected military that protects its citizens under the sovereign control of their elected leaders and for addressing a range of difficult economic issues,” she said. Richard congratulated Hariri on the new government and said she reviewed with him a very broad range of areas in which the United States are already working with Lebanon. “From the time of the first Lebanese who emigrated from Lebanon to the United States in the 1850s, to the establishment by Americans of the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University, to today as we invest over a billion dollars in a new Embassy compound in Awkar, we want to continue our long-standing and comprehensive support for Lebanon,” she stressed.

Hariri Shies Away from Calls for Normalizing Ties with Syria
Beirut - Mohamed Choucair/Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 20 February, 2019/The priorities of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in implementing projects that will enable his country get funds pledged at the CEDRE economic conference held in Paris last spring would not be affected by recent visits made by some officials to Damascus, ministerial sources told Asharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday. Hariri has been focusing on enabling Lebanon to benefit from decisions made at the CEDRE conference and therefore he would not heed political attempts to distract him from solving the country’s crises, the sources said. Hariri believes that engaging in pointless arguments, particularly with parties loyal to the “resistance axis,” which constitutes an extension of Iran and the Syrian regime in Lebanon, would distract him from reviving Lebanon’s economy by clinching the benefits of CEDRE. Some observers have wondered why the PM insists on not responding to ministers who believe that the crisis of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon can only be solved through normalization of ties with Damascus and direct dialogue with the regime in the neighboring state. In answering those questions, ministerial sources rejected claims made by some parties that the failure to normalize relations with Syria would shun Lebanese companies from the war-torn country’s reconstruction process.“Even some countries that were enthusiastic to reopen embassies in Damascus, have quickly delayed such moves after realizing that mending ties with the head of the Syrian regime, Bashar Assad, would not push him to break his alliance, even if gradually, with Iran,” the source said.

Syria Shows 'Positive Attitude' in Dealing With Lebanon’s Displaced File
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 20 February, 2019/Following the controversy that surrounded the visit of Minister of the Displaced Saleh Al-Gharib to Damascus - with Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s sources confirming that the latter was not duly informed about it - the minister met on Tuesday with President Michel Aoun and Hariri to update them on the results of his meetings. A statement issued by the Presidential Office said Gharib briefed Aoun on “the results of his visit to Damascus on Monday and the topics he discussed with Syrian officials.”The minister, for his part, said he hoped that the Lebanese would agree on a “national, sensitive and accurate file of this size, as things are no longer tolerable.”“We call again for dissociating the file of the displaced from political disputes because of the economic, financial and security pressures on the nation,” he emphasized. Gharib went on to say that he touched a “very positive [Syrian] attitude” towards the refugees’ file and “the possibility of providing great facilitations” in this regard. Well-informed ministerial sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Syrian side was reportedly showing a desire to cooperate on the file of the displaced, noting that the return mechanism would likely be discussed at a later stage. On reports about Hariri’s discontent with the visit, the sources said: “Gharib is not the first official to go to Syria; other ministers have already taken the same step.” Asked following his meeting with the premier about the controversy surrounding his visit, the minister said: “What is between us and Prime Minister Hariri remains between us and Prime Minister Hariri.”Gharib met in Damascus with Minister of Local Administration and Environment Hussein Makhlouf. The meeting focused on ways to facilitate the safe return of refugees. “The Syrian side was very responsive and welcomed the return of all displaced people,” Gharib said, adding that Lebanon was “ready to work with all concerned parties to secure the return of refugees in a way that will ensure the interests of the Lebanese State.”

Lebanon nominates challenger to Trump’s choice to lead World Bank
MEM//February 20/19/Lebanon has nominated investment banker Ziad Hayek as a candidate for president of the World Bank, mounting the first challenge to US President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the development lender, Hayek said in a Twitter post on Tuesday, Reuters reports. Hayek, who has served as secretary general of Lebanon’s High Council for Privatization since 2006, also posted a nomination letter from Lebanon’s finance ministry. He is challenging Trump’s nomination of David Malpass, US Treasury undersecretary for international affairs. Malpass has met a tepid response from some World Bank board members due to his status as a Trump loyalist who has criticized the bank and multilateral institutions in the past. Hayek’s entry into the race could draw other candidates into a contest expected to be decided before World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in April. The World Bank is accepting nominations through March 14 and will narrow the field to up to three candidates for a board vote. The United States, which controls the most voting power on the World Bank board, has chosen every past leader of the bank, but the tradition has been challenged by emerging markets in recent years. Hayek has previously served as chief executive of Lonbridge Associates in London, and was a board member of BIT Bank in Beirut. He also worked as a senior managing director of Bear Stearns, where Malpass had served as chief economist prior to its 2008 collapse.

Walid Phares Credentials for a UN Job are Rock Solid
د.وليد فارس مؤهل بكفاءات عالية لتولي منصب مندوب أميركا في الأمم المتحدة
by John Hajjar/AMCD/February 19, 2019
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/72321/john-hajjar-walid-phares-credentials-for-a-un-job-are-rock-solid/
As soon as Ambassador Nikki Haley announced her resignation as representative for the United States at the Security Council of the United Nations, speculation spread quickly about who her replacement might be. It quickly circulated that a short list already exists, which included President Donald Trump favorites: His daughter Ivanka, Dina Powell-Habib and later, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert. Many ambassadors and highly qualified personalities are also considered for the job. But even though the choice for Haley’s successor may already have been decided, there is another candidate, who in my view would be an effective and timely choice for American representation at the United Nations.
In a recent press release, the American Mideast Coalition for Democracy (AMCD), a federation of NGOs, announced its endorsement for Professor Walid Phares as potential ambassador for the United States to the United Nations. The AMCD listed a number of other professional and academic achievements of the Beirut-born American scholar who has been serving as National Security and Foreign Policy analyst at Fox News since 2007. Phares’ CV and his activities over the past 28 years reveal the significant and long term work that qualify him, like other possible candidates for the prestigious and tough job of US ambassador at the UN. However, what makes Phares’ profile rise to the top is a combination of professional, political, academic and field experiences, unmatched for the current circumstances. Regardless of the right political balance, the man possesses several high points.
Professor Walid Phares was the first foreign policy advisor, among the five named personally by Presidential candidate Donald Trump in March 2016 at a meeting with The Washington Post’s editorial board. Hours later, the advisor was lambasted for over two months by Trump’s various and sundry opponents in American politics and media as well as by radical forces outside the US, including pro-Iran regime groups and radical Islamist sympathizers. In return, Phares produced some of the highest intensity media and diplomatic work during the campaign. He engaged in a strong informational campaign, reaching out to American, European, Latin American and international press with dozens of interviews, statements and reports highlighting the campaign agenda in foreign policy, which later became the foundation of the Trump administration’s broader policies when he took office in January 2017. Phares also met with many diplomats and foreign dignitaries, at their request, to answer questions about the Trump agenda. Both in the media and with diplomats, he strongly defended the campaign’s announcements and future policy plans. His dedication through the difficult days of the rough campaign, with an experienced intellectual sophistication, was comparable to Ambassador Nikki Haley’s larger task of implementing the administration’s international agenda during her service at the UN. Phares practiced—in more difficult circumstances if in smaller scope—for a whole year the same defense and promotion practiced by Haley for two years.
In his statements and meetings during 2016, Dr. Phares addressed similar issues and crises soon to rise in 2017-2019 while still in their infant stage, including what he called “the east Asian conflict,” encompassing the North Korean crisis, China’s expansion, as well as Japan and South Korea’s worries during the spring and summer of 2016. Phares reassured numerous diplomats and journalists that the United States wasn’t abandoning its allies in the region. (See here, here, here and here.)
Phares also met with many European diplomats and officials visiting Washington, DC (including several members of the European Parliament), and discussed US-European relations in light of Trump’s announced agenda revealed in his foreign policy and convention speeches during 2016, while also providing reassurance of US commitment toward the transatlantic alliance and common security.
Columbian President Uribe discusses Latin American affairs with Dr. Phares
In the same vein, the foreign policy advisor engaged with Latin American foreign ministers, ambassadors and diplomats from—among others—Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico and has given several interviews to Hispanic and Portuguese language press, all of which helped better explain the campaign’s ideas towards this hemisphere. Phares argued that despite all the criticism regarding Trump’s statements regarding refugees and the border with Mexico, both countries were bound to cut a deal to regulate their relationship. He projected changes coming to Venezuela and Brazil as well.
However, the largest policy communication network Phares developed was with Arab, Middle Eastern and African representatives, from areas where criticism of US policy in general, and of the Trump agenda in particular, were the highest. The foreign policy advisor conducted relentless interviews with Arab media, discussed the agenda with dozens of ministers, ambassadors and diplomats and traveled to the region to conduct deeper research about radicalization and indoctrination, including to Egypt and the UAE. As early as 2014, Phares encouraged a new partnership with Egypt, meeting President Sisi, setting up the basic idea for an “Arab Alliance” and was behind the concepts of safe zones in Syria. He also expanded on the notion of a US involvement to protect the minorities in the Middle East, a subject he has defended for decades. As it was said last year, Walid Phares did not land a job in the administration after victory, but his ideas did land in the White House. In addition, Professor Phares launched a coalition of Middle East and liberal Muslims leaders to demonstrate that a Trump administration wouldn’t be “Islamophobic”—as the candidate’s foes accused.
American International Talent
Professor Phares’ views on the UN are more than a quarter of a century old. For decades, he has been calling for fundamental reform of the organization to de-indoctrinate the UN and re-center it as an umbrella for all, particularly the weakest of civil societies. As a presidential and congressional advisor, Walid Phares argued that the UN should not be used by powerful coalitions to suppress the smaller national groups while at the same time slamming the United States ideologically. He supports a Trump inspired approach to the organization. He advocates for a transformation of the institution to what it essentially was supposed to be in 1945—yet adapted to the realities of the 21st century. A strong supporter of human and humanitarian rights, he is a strong opponent of terrorism, extremism and radicalization.
Walid Phares is an American international talent who has the potential to serve this country on the international scene. He has command of the content and the ability to express it masterfully, often in different languages. Professor Phares has already served two presidential candidates, advised dozens of members of Congress and the European Parliament, briefed many government agencies and is well known by the American public from the media. I strongly urge the President to use his skills and capabilities as a US ambassador at the UN or trust him with a senior national security mission. Many Americans share my views.
2012 Republican Presidential Campaign, National Security
Prior to his foreign policy tenure in the Trump campaign, Phares was named four years earlier as a senior national security advisor to the Republican Presidential candidate. He served from 2011 to 2012. He was also a co-chair of the campaign’s Middle East Working group. He was part of a team that worked on regional plans, which included strategies on terrorism, positioning civil societies and development in the region. Professor Phares engaged not only American, but also the international media and European lawmakers in significant ways.
US Government Agencies
Under three administrations, Democrat and Republican, between 1994 and 2017, Professor Phares worked closely with national security agencies on counter terrorism through geopolitical seminars and training. Among his most impactful work internationally was his role as a lead engager with international military delegations from over sixty countries. Over the two decades, Phares was invited by defense and intelligence agencies around the globe to discuss international security and strategy.
From all of his work internationally on behalf of US national interest and security, Professor Phares was involved in two specific UN activities while advising several INGOs. One campaign in 2014-2015, and another earlier in 2003-2005.
Dr. Phares meets with US Special Representative, Elliott Abrams
2014 UN: “The Yazidis and Minorities Genocide”
His most recent push at the UN in New York was on behalf of a coalition of Middle East minorities seeking to petition the Security Council to address the mass ethnic cleansing that took place in June-August 2014 in northern Iraq. Professor Phares led a delegation to meet with almost all permanent members of the UNSC in August 2014 and drafted a document that denoted the actions by ISIS regarding minorities, as “genocide.” Furthermore, Phares identified two more designations to apply in the cases of Iraq and Syria: war crimes and crimes against humanity. Last but not least, the coalition’s advisor recommended the formation of an international tribunal to try the terror group and all involved in the genocide. All permanent missions of the UNSC and the office of the Secretariat General received the Phares drafted coalition memo.
In March of 2015, Phares and the delegation were received as observers to attend the debate at the Security Council session, and a resolution was issued confirming the main talking points advanced in August 2014.
2004 UNSCR 1559: Syria out of Lebanon
Ten years earlier, Professor Walid Phares had led an NGO delegation representing Lebanese Diaspora communities to UN Security Council to request the withdrawal of the Syrian occupation forces from Lebanon. He had designed the draft memo demanding the Syrian pull-out based on international law. The memo was used to trigger the text of UN resolution 1559, calling on Syria to withdraw and on all militias, including Hezbollah, to disarm. The resolution and a mass demonstration in Beirut in March 2005 led to the actual withdrawal in April of that year.
Roots of Phares’ Engagement in International Law
Professor Phares’ history in engaging in and arguing in international law started early on, after he obtained a Masters in International Law from the Jesuit University in Beirut and the Jean Moulin University in Lyons, France. His first book, published in Arabic at age 23, encompassed a “critique of the political coalitions in the UN General Assembly blocking cases for minorities’ liberation.” During the 1980s, he published several pieces on international law and ethnic conflicts. His first briefing to the UN was offered at age 24 in Geneva about human rights and minorities. In the early 1990s, after his immigration to the US, he obtained a Ph.D. in international relations with a focus on strategic studies and ethnic conflict from the University of Miami.
Throughout the 1990s, Phares taught world politics and comparative politics at Florida Atlantic University and published a book and several academic articles. In 1997 he testified for the first time at the US Senate on the status of minorities in the Middle East, and in 1998, he was consulted as an expert by Congress on legislation voted as the “International Religious Freedom Act.” The latter was the core of US policy on religious persecution for over two decades.
Phares the Communicator
Having already published several books and articles before and after his emigration to the US, professor Phares’ communications skills boomed after 9/11, when American and international media sought his expertise on terrorism, radicalism and geopolitics. He was hired by MSNBC between 2003 and 2007 as their resident terrorism analyst before he joined Fox News in 2007 at the request of Rupert Murdoch. Walid Phares remained the national security and foreign policy analyst at Fox News and Fox Business Channel for more than a decade, but he was also sought by international media, including Arabic, French, European, Asian, Latin American and African. From before (and following) the Arab Spring, Professor Phares appeared frequently on Arab TV channels, particularly in Egypt, the Gulf region, Iraq, Lebanon, and North Africa. His views on international law, conflicts and organizations, and US foreign policy have been at the heart of his powerful debates.
Professor Phares possesses a first class strategic mind and the ability to explain and defend American strategic interests forcefully on the one hand, and on the other, to handle delicate diplomatic situations at the highest levels. Both intellectually and temperamentally, he is the perfect fit for UN Ambassador.
Below is the link for the Above document at “AMCD” site
http://www.americanmideast.com/custpage.cfm?frm=217493&sec_id=217493&fbclid=IwAR3ykgpWjnn50dNISMVaFPOCVsYJ598-JYP_4NLPqav_klxRBS3NdkbwPpA

Latest LCCC English Miscellaneous Reports & News published on February 20-21/19
Putin warns new missiles could target ‘decision-making centers’
Reuters, Moscow/Wednesday, 20 February 2019/Russia will respond to any US deployment of short or intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe by targeting not only the countries where they are stationed, but the United States itself, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday. In his toughest remarks yet on a potential new arms race, Putin said Russia was not seeking confrontation and would not take the first step to deploy missiles in response to Washington’s decision this month to quit a landmark Cold War-era arms control treaty. But he said that Russia’s reaction to any deployment would be resolute and that US policy-makers, some of whom he said were obsessed with US exceptionalism, should calculate the risks before taking any steps. “It’s their right to think how they want. But can they count? I’m sure they can. Let them count the speed and the range of the weapons systems we are developing,” Putin told Russia’s political elite to strong applause. “Russia will be forced to create and deploy types of weapons which can be used not only in respect of those territories from which the direct threat to us originates, but also in respect of those territories where the centers of decision-making are located,” he said.
Missiles in Europe
Alleging Russian violations, Washington said this month it was suspending its obligations under the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and starting the process of quitting it, untying its hands to develop new missiles. The pact banned either side from stationing short and intermediate-range, land-based missiles in Europe and its demise raises the prospect of a new arms race between Washington and Moscow, which denies flouting the treaty. Russia denies violating the treaty. Putin responded to the US move by saying Russia would mirror the US moves by suspending its own obligations and quitting the pact. But Putin, who has sometimes used bellicose rhetoric to talk up Russia’s standoff with the West and to rally Russians round the flag, did not up the ante. He did not announce new missile deployments, said money for new systems must come from existing budget funds and declared that Moscow would not deploy new land-based missiles in Europe or elsewhere unless Washington did so first. On Wednesday, he made clear however that he was ready, reluctantly, to escalate if the United States escalated and that Russia was continuing to actively develop weapons and missile systems to ensure it was well prepared for such an eventuality. He said any US move to place new missiles in Europe would leave Moscow with no choice but to respond because it would drastically cut the time it took US missiles to reach Russia, something that would pose a direct threat. He said Russia wanted good ties with the United States, but was ready with its defensive response if necessary. “We know how to do this and we will implement these plans immediately, as soon as the corresponding threats to us become a reality.”

Rouhani Warns Iran-US Tensions at Maximum
London- Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 20 February, 2019/Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday relations with the United States had rarely been so bad and that sanctions imposed by the Trump administration targeting Tehran’s oil and banking sectors amounted to “a terrorist act”. Animosity between Washington and Tehran - bitter foes since Iran’s 1979 revolution - has intensified since US President Donald Trump withdrew from an international nuclear deal with Tehran last May and reimposed sanctions lifted under the accord. “The struggle between Iran and America is currently at a maximum. America has employed all its power against us,” Rouhani was quoted as saying in a cabinet meeting by the state broadcaster IRIB. “The US pressures on firms and banks to halt business with Iran is one hundred percent a terrorist act,” he said. Trump has reimposed the sanctions with the aim of slashing Iranian oil sales and choking its economy in order to curb its ballistic missile program and its activities in the Middle East, especially in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen. Unlike the United States, European powers are working to preserve the 2015 international nuclear deal with Iran. But France has said it is ready to reimpose sanctions on Iran if no progress is made in talks over its ballistic missile program. In a clear reaction to French pressure, Rouhani said: “We want a constructive interaction with the world, but the countries that work with us should not have excessive demands. Iran is firm in its stance and will act based on its national interests.” Iran has said its missile program is purely defensive.

Brother of Iranian President Goes on Trial
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 19 February, 2019/The brother of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani went on trial in Tehran on Tuesday on charges of financial violations, the judiciary's news website Mizan Online reported. Hossein Fereydoun, a key adviser to Rouhani, was arrested in July 2017 following long-running corruption allegations, with the judiciary saying at the time that he was the subject of "multiple investigations". At the first hearing on Tuesday Fereydoun and four associates were present in court with their lawyers for a session that lasted more than two hours, Mizan Online said.
During the hearing a representative of the state prosecutor read out the indictment, it said, without giving further details. A new hearing will be held next week, Mizan Online said without giving an exact date. Fereydoun and his brother do not share the same name because Rouhani changed his when he was younger. A day after his arrest in 2017, Fereydoun was released on bail, reported by local media to be millions of dollars. The head of the General Inspection Organization, Naser Seraj, had accused Fereydoun of financial violations. Seraj alleged Fereydoun had influenced the appointment of two bank directors, one of whom was accused by the Revolutionary Guards of involvement in a "large corruption scandal". Conservatives had demanded that Fereydoun be put on trial, accusing him of receiving zero-interest loans among other violations. Iran has jailed allies of former presidents for similar charges.

Russian FM: US Wants to Create Quasi-State in Syria
Moscow - Raed Jaber/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 19 February, 2019/Washington is attempting to split Syria and create a quasi-state on the Euphrates River's east bank as US opposes the return of Syria's northeast to the regime, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday. Recent escalation in Russian statements against the US coincided with Moscow's growing skepticism about Washington's intention to withdraw from Syria, but Russian officials still expressed readiness to discuss “eliminating the remaining terrorist strongholds” in the country. Over the past few weeks, Moscow said it is monitoring the mechanisms for implementing the withdrawal resolution. But Lavrov returned to directly accusing Washington of wanting to divide Syria, hinting that Moscow believes the withdrawal decision was no more than a maneuver. “It is becoming increasingly clear that the US goal is to split Syria and create a quasi-state on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River,” he said at a joint press conference with his Slovak counterpart. He went on to say that the task of restoring Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, approved by the entire UN community including the US, was just a “diversion tactic for Washington.”“It is already investing in this state, in part, by compelling its allies to pay for the infrastructure development of this part of Syria. Indicatively, the US is prohibiting its allies from investing to restore the infrastructure in the rest of Syria that is under the control of the legitimate government.”Meanwhile, Russian Presidential Envoy for the Middle East and Africa and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov expressed Moscow's readiness to “cooperate with all parties, including Washington” to eradicate terrorist remnants in Syria. Bogdanov was speaking at the opening session of the Valdai International Discussion Club on Middle East, titled “Middle East: New Stage, Old Problems?” This year’s conference aimed at exploring Russia’s policy in the East. Bogdanov warned that ISIS is increasing its recruiting and propaganda activity in the areas to which its elements return. ISIS militants are strengthening their positions in Libya, where they are also improving their relations with al-Qaeda. He noted that the expansion of ISIS influence in Afghanistan is a direct threat to the members of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), including Russia.
Moreover, he referred to what he called “geopolitical engineering” methods to impose upon the Middle East and North Africa nations, development models and values that are alien to them, have led to the weakening or collapse of national governments in various countries. It also led “to an unprecedented surge in international terrorism, a large-scale migration crisis, and the violation of a centuries-old patchwork of ethnic and religious harmony.”Lavrov also indicated that the situation is further being complicated by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Separately, senior adviser to Syrian President, Bouthaina Shaaban, called on the Arab countries to "return to Syria."She deemed the suspension of Damascus's membership in the Arab League “an unfair decision and dependent on external agendas.”"Syria is the basis of the League, a very important Arab country,” adding that Arab countries must stand together and support each other.
Earlier, Bogdanov pointed out that return of Syria to the Arab League is being considered, adding that some countries have taken concrete steps, namely the reopening of embassies and increasing consular, political and diplomatic representation in Arab capitals and Damascus.

Fatah Urges Abbas to Appoint One of Its Members as New Premier
Ramallah - Kifah Ziboun/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 19 February, 2019/Fatah Central Committee has urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to name the prime minister “as soon as possible”, in order to announce the Cabinet formation before the end of February. Well-informed sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the committee specifically requested that one of its members be named the new premier, leaving the choice to the president, however, noting that Mohammad Shtayyeh's name was the most talked-about in political deliberations. Shtayyeh is a Central Committee member, a former minister, negotiator and head of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction (PECDAR). The committee’s recommendation came at a meeting on Monday. Fatah’s keenness on the formation of a new government that would meet its specifications is seen as an attempt to regain its role in the government’s leadership, after being deprived of it since 2007; in light of foreign and internal complexities facing the Palestinian issue. Members of the committee discussed during the meeting external challenges, mainly the confrontation with Israel and the United States, and the stumbling internal reconciliation. Underlining commitment to Palestinian national principles, including the issue of Jerusalem, the committee rejected all “suspicious plans, including the so-called US deal of the century,” which it said were aimed at “ending our national cause by separating the West Bank from the Gaza Strip and abolishing our people’s legitimate rights to freedom and independence and the establishment of our independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders.”The committee also called on the international community to intervene to stop Israeli intransigence and its refusal to abide by bilateral agreements signed under international auspices. As for the file of national reconciliation, the central committee accused Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements of obstructing the opportunity to reach understandings in the Moscow talks.

US Says Israel Must Apologize to Poland in Holocaust Row
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 20 February, 2019/The United States stepped in on Wednesday to address the row between Poland and Israel over the Holocaust, calling on Tel Aviv to apologize after its acting foreign minister said "many Poles" had collaborated with the Nazis. US ambassador Georgette Mosbacher, asked if Israel Katz should apologize, said the comment "warrants an apology". Mosbacher said she felt two strong allies like Israel and Poland "shouldn't be using that kind of rhetoric. We are too important to each other not to work these things out." The row, initially sparked by media reports suggesting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Poles of complicity in the Holocaust, deepened on Monday after the comment by Katz, who also labeled Poles anti-Semites. Katz's words led Poland to pull out of a planned summit of central European states in Israel. On Tuesday, Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek said the "shameful, scandalous and slanderous" comments require an "unequivocal and definite" reaction. Katz is a member of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party which presently leads the polls ahead of national elections scheduled for April. Netanyahu, whose office said his initial comments had been misinterpreted, has faced criticism in Israel over what some see as a bid to win allies in central Europe at the expense of revising Holocaust history and whitewashing anti-Semitism. He had also hoped the Visegrad summit that was boycotted by Poland would burnish his diplomatic credentials as the election campaign picks up. Netanyahu's office said in a statement that the prime minister, who was in Warsaw for a US-sponsored Middle East conference, had been misquoted by The Jerusalem Post, which issued a corrected story. He clarified that he "spoke of Poles and not the Polish people or the country of Poland," but the comments infuriated his Polish hosts, who reject the suggestions. Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, also a member of Netanyahu's Likud, said on Wednesday there were Poles who cooperated with the Nazis and Poles who saved Jews. "The entire Polish nation cannot be blamed for the Holocaust," he said in an interview with Reshet Beit Radio. "Poland is one of the friendliest countries to Israel... The understandings between us and Poland still stand."
Poland was the first country occupied by Adolf Hitler's regime and never had a collaborationist government.

Saudi Prince Agrees to Step Up Anti-Terror 'Pressure' with India
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/February 20/19/Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Indian leader Narendra Modi vowed Wednesday to increase pressure on countries that fuel terrorism. Neither mentioned a target, but their accord came as Modi has stepped up warnings to Pakistan following a suicide attack in Kashmir that left at least 40 paramilitaries dead. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, constantly accuses Iran of involvement in militant strikes. Modi again slammed the "barbaric attack" last week as he said: "To tackle this menace effectively, we agreed that there is a need to increase all possible pressure on countries supporting terrorism in any way. "It is extremely important to eliminate the terror infrastructure and stop support to terrorists and their supporters."Prince Mohammed, who arrived in Delhi from a two-day visit to Pakistan as the cross-frontier tensions heightened, had offered to help the neighbours end the showdown over the bombing. "Terrorism and extremism is a common concern for India and Saudi Arabia," the crown prince said after talks with Modi. "I want to state that we are ready to cooperate with India, including through intelligence sharing," he added. The crown prince, on his first major tour since the storm over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October, signed joint accords with Modi on industry and culture, but announced no major deals. In Pakistan, the Saudi prince announced $20 billion of investment for the Muslim country. Prince Mohammed was expected to go on to China later Wednesday.

Israel Strikes Hamas Post over Arson Balloons from Gaza
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/February 20/19/Israel's army said it carried out air strikes Wednesday against a Hamas post in the Gaza Strip after balloons carried an incendiary device over the border into Israeli territory. "During the day, arson balloons were identified as having been launched from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory," the army said in a statement. "In response, an IDF (Israeli army) aircraft targeted a Hamas military post in the southern Gaza Strip," it added. A Palestinian security source in the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave said an Israeli aircraft fired three projectiles at an observation post and farmland east of the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, causing damage but no casualties. The Israeli strike is the first on Gaza since January. Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas have fought three devastating wars since 2008.
Tensions have risen again since March as Palestinians have gathered along the border with Israel for often violent protests, calling for an end to the blockade. At least 250 Palestinians have since been killed by Israeli fire, the majority shot during clashes, though others have been hit by tank fire or air strikes. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed over the same period.

Egypt Army Says 8 Jihadists Killed in Sinai
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/February 20/19/Egypt's military said Wednesday that eight suspected jihadists who had taken part in a deadly attack on an army checkpoint last week were killed in the restive North Sinai."Eight extremely dangerous terrorists have been eliminated," army spokesman Tamer el-Refai said in a statement, adding that security forces had also destroyed their hideouts and seized ammunition. An attack Saturday on a checkpoint near the town of El-Arish, claimed by the Islamic State group, left 15 soldiers dead or wounded, according to the army. The interior ministry said Tuesday that 16 suspected jihadists had also been killed.Since the army's overthrow of elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, hundreds of soldiers and police have died in attacks by extremist groups. Civilians have also been targeted in jihadist attacks, particularly members of Egypt's minority Coptic Christian community. Egypt's army launched a major operation against the jihadists in early 2018, originally scheduled to run three months, after an attack in North Sinai killed more than 300 people at a mosque. The army says more than 550 suspected jihadists have been killed in its "Sinai 2018" offensive -- which has also targeted militants elsewhere in Egypt -- costing the lives of more than 30 soldiers. No independent figures are available and North Sinai is largely cut off to media and foreigners.

Egypt Executes 9 'Brotherhood' Members in Barakat's Murder
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 20 February, 2019/Nine Muslim Brotherhood members have been executed after being convicted of involvement in the 2015 assassination of the country's top prosecutor, Egyptian security officials said Wednesday. The nine were found guilty of taking part in the murder of Hisham Barakat in a car bomb attack on his convoy in the capital, Cairo. They were among a group of 28 who were sentenced to death in the case in 2017. Egypt's highest appeals court upheld the death sentences against the nine suspects in November. It commuted six other death sentences to life in prison.

Cairo’s Suicide Bomber Was Deported From US, France
Cairo - Mohammed Abdo Hassanein/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 19 February, 2019/Egyptians held on Tuesday the funeral of three policemen who died in the suicide attack near Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo on Monday. The suicide bomber, Al-Hassan Abdullah, 37, is reportedly the son of a pediatrician who had emigrated to the United States 25 years ago and is known to be a "religious extremist." Sources said he moved to live with his father before being deported to France and then to Egypt, almost three years ago. Eyewitnesses said Abdullah used to sell gas cylinders and ride a bicycle, sometimes he used to wear medical face masks. In a house nearby in Darb al-Ahmar district in Cairo, police found a bomb and bomb-making material, which prompted the evacuation of the entire building, according to security officials. Abdullah blew himself up after police officers approached to arrest him. He was wanted in a bombing last Friday near Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo's district of Giza, and the police had been monitoring his movements. Egypt’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that security forces were pursuing the man in search for the perpetrator of last week’s attempted attack against a police patrol. “After catching the suspect in Cairo's ancient Islamic district close to the Al Azhar mosque, one of the explosive devices in his possession exploded, causing the death of the terrorist and the martyrdom of a police officer from national security and an officer from Cairo investigations (department),” the statement said. At least three civilians were also wounded, including a Thai student who suffered light injuries, security sources said.

Possible Peace Declaration Looms Large over Kim-Trump Summit
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/February 20/19
With their second summit fast approaching, speculation is growing that President Donald Trump may try to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to commit to denuclearization by giving him something he wants more than almost anything else: an announcement of peace and an end to the Korean War. Such an announcement could make history. It would be right in line with Trump's opposition to "forever wars." And, coming more than six decades after the fighting essentially ended, it just seems like common sense. But, if not done carefully, it could open up a whole new set of problems for Washington. Here's why switching the focus of the ongoing talks between Pyongyang and Washington from denuclearization to peace would be a risky move — and why it might be exactly what Kim wants when the two leaders meet in Hanoi on Feb. 27-28.
THE STANDOFF
The Korean Peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel after World War II, with the U.S. claiming a zone of influence in the south and the Soviet Union in the north. Within five years, the two Koreas were at war. Though the shooting stopped in 1953, the conflict ended with an armistice, essentially a ceasefire signed by North Korea, China and the 17-nation, U.S.-led United Nations Command that was supposed to be replaced by a formal peace treaty. But both sides instead settled ever deeper into Cold War hostilities marked by occasional outbreaks of violence. The conflict in Korea is technically America's longest war. North Korea, which saw all of its major cities and most of its infrastructure destroyed by U.S. bombers during the war, blames what it sees as Washington's unrelenting hostility over the past 70 years as ample justification for its nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. It claims they are purely for self-defense.
The U.S., on the other hand, maintains a heavy military presence in South Korea to counter what it claims is the North's intention to invade and assimilate the South. It has also implemented a long-standing policy of ostracizing the North and backing economic sanctions. Trump escalated the effort to squeeze the North with a "maximum pressure" strategy that remains in force. A combination of that strategy and the North's repeated tests of missiles believed capable of delivering its nuclear weapons to the U.S. mainland are what brought the two countries to the negotiating table.
WHY KIM WANTS A TREATY
Getting a formal peace treaty has been high on the wish list of every North Korean leader, starting with Kim Jong Un's grandfather, Kim Il Sung. A peace treaty would bring international recognition, probably at least some easing of trade sanctions, and a likely reduction in the number of U.S. troops south of the Demilitarized Zone.If done right, it would be a huge boost to Kim's reputation at home and abroad. And, of course, to the cause of peace on the Korean Peninsula at a time when Pyongyang says it is trying to shift scarce resources away from defense so that it can boost its standard of living and modernize its economy with a greater emphasis on science and technology. Washington has a lot to gain, too. Trump has said he would welcome a North Korea that is more focused on trade and economic growth. Stability on the peninsula is good for South Korea's economy and probably to Japan's as well. Though Trump hasn't stressed human rights, eased tensions could create the space needed for the North to loosen its controls over political and individual freedoms. But it's naive to expect North Korea to suddenly change its ways. According to a recent estimate, it has over the past year continued to expand its nuclear stockpile. And even as it has stepped up its diplomatic overtures to the outside world, Pyongyang has doubled down internally on demanding loyalty to its totalitarian system.
PEACE OR APPEASEMENT?
After his first summit with Kim, in Singapore last June, Trump declared the nuclear threat was over. He isn't saying that anymore. Trump made no mention of the word "denuclearization" during his State of the Union address. Instead, he called his effort a "historic push for peace on the Korean Peninsula" and stressed that Kim hasn't conducted any nuclear or missile tests, released Americans who had been jailed in the North and returned the remains of dozens of Americans killed in the war. Kim, meanwhile, has good reason to want to turn his summits with Trump into "peace talks."The biggest win for the North would be to get a peace declaration while quietly abandoning denuclearization altogether, or by agreeing to production caps or other measures that would limit, but not eliminate, its nuclear arsenal. Simply having a summit without a clear commitment to denuclearization goes a long way toward establishing him as the leader of a de facto nuclear state. Unless Washington is willing to accept him as such, that will only make future talks all the more difficult. The U.S. has, however, continued to take a hard line in lower-level negotiations leading up to the summit. Stephen Biegun, Trump's new point man on North Korea, stressed in a recent speech that as a prerequisite for peace, Washington wants a "complete understanding of the full extent of the North Korean weapons of mass destruction missile programs," expert access and monitoring of key sites and, ultimately, "the removal and destruction of stockpiles of fissile material, weapons, missiles, launchers, and other weapons of mass destruction."The question is whether Trump will similarly challenge Kim or choose an easier and splashier — but less substantive — declaration of peace.
TALK VS TREATY
If he chose to do so, Trump could unilaterally announce the end of the Korean War.
It would be great TV. But it wouldn't necessarily mean all that much. Trump can't by himself conclude an actual peace treaty. China, and possibly a representative of the U.N. Command, would have to be involved. South Korea would naturally want to be at the table. The U.S. Senate would have to ratify whatever they came up with.Back in 1993, the administration of President Bill Clinton reached a familiar-sounding agreement with Pyongyang "to achieve peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula." The next year the two sides vowed to reduce barriers to trade and investment, open a liaison office in the other's capital and make progress toward upgrading bilateral relations to the ambassadorial level. In 2000, Clinton and Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, added a promise "of respect for each other's sovereignty and non-interference in each other's internal affairs."But by 2002, George W. Bush was back to calling the North part of an "axis of evil." In 2006, North Korea tested its first nuclear device. The lesson? Whatever grand proclamations are made, establishing real peace will go well beyond just another Trump and Kim summit. But it could be a start.

Deadly Crackdown Stokes Fear among Protesters in Venezuela
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/February 20/19/Jhonny Godoy had taken to Twitter to proclaim his opposition to President Nicolas Maduro, posting a video that showed him running through the streets waving the national flag as protests erupted across Venezuela's capital. Two days later, his family said, rifle-wielding special police agents wearing black masks stormed into their home in the Caracas slum of La Vega, pulled him outside and shot him to death. The slaying of the 29-year-old was part of a crackdown that has spread fear among young protesters in poor neighborhoods of Venezuela, where a history of steadfast loyalty to Maduro has begun to crack amid hyperinflation and shortages of food and medicine. At least 43 people have been killed in the round of protests that began last month, when Juan Guaido, the head of the opposition-controlled congress, declared himself interim president of the crisis-wracked country.Human rights groups say some of those deaths appear to be targeted slayings by the National Police Action Force, or FAES, an elite commando unit created in 2017 for anti-gang operations. Rights groups say it is now acting against disaffected youths living in the slums. "Maduro seeks to sow fear," said Rafael Uzcategui, coordinator of the respected rights group Venezuelan Education-Action Program on Human Rights, known as PROVEA. More than 700 opponents of Maduro have been arrested during the latest push by Venezuela's opposition to oust the socialist leader, according to PROVEA and a crime monitoring group, Observatory of Social Conflict. Maduro is facing more pressure than ever to cede power in the oil-rich nation. The Trump administration recently sanctioned Venezuela's state-owned oil company, squeezing the country's damaged economy even harder, and Guaido has been recognized as the country's rightful leader by the U.S. and dozens of other nations that argue Maduro's re-election to a second six-year term last year was fraudulent. A new round of sanctions Friday targeted four high-ranking intelligence officials, including the heads of the FAES commando unit and the feared SEBIN intelligence police.The country has seen the largest protests since 2017, when 120 people died in clashes with national guardsmen and pro-government civilians who fired on the masked demonstrators in middle-class neighborhoods. Now, critics say, Maduro is hitting back by sending security forces into the slums to try to suppress dissent.
PROVEA and Observatory say they recorded 35 deaths during a single week in January — most at night in poor neighborhoods — in addition to eight cases of apparent targeted killings by members of the elite commando unit. Godoy's cousin, Marvelis Sinai, said that when agents burst into the family's home on Jan. 25, Godoy's mother Ana Buitrago saw her son beaten and dragged out as she begged for his life. Minutes later, she heard two gunshots. Godoy was shot in the abdomen and foot, and a disposable diaper was shoved in his mouth, apparently to suffocate him, Sinai said. She said the family believes his killing was linked to the video he posted on Twitter two days earlier. "I'm going to continue demonstrating because I learned it from my cousin," said Sinai, who works for an opposition politician who hands out free food in the slums. "He died so we can have a free Venezuela." The case gained special prominence when a tearful Guaido met with Godoy's mother at her home and assured her that her son's death wouldn't be in vain. Later, during a news conference, Guaido blamed the elite police commando unit for the killing.
Authorities have not commented on the case. But it's not the first time the special agents have been linked to deadly operations. PROVEA released a report last month accusing the unit of involvement in more than 200 killings in 2018.
Human Rights Watch also detailed widespread abuses by members of Venezuela's security forces in reports published in 2014 and 2017. It quoted Foro Penal, a Venezuelan group that provides legal aid to detainees, as saying that more than 13,000 people have been arrested since 2014 in connection with anti-government protests.
The Prague-based CASLA Institute, headed by Venezuelan lawyer Tamara Suju, recently gave the U.N. International Criminal Court reports of 536 victims of torture in Venezuela since 2014, including 106 since the beginning of last year. Six nations also made the unprecedented move of asking the court to investigate Venezuela for possible crimes against humanity. Socialist party chief Diosdado Cabello and Venezuela's defense minister, Gen. Vladimir Padrino Lopez, have denied the accusations of targeted killings. They insist the military follows the constitution and respects human rights.
The attorney general's office has not given a figure for those killed in the recent protests, though Attorney General Tarek William Saab told a local TV channel that eight members of the national guard and the army had been detained for the killings of four people in the rural states of Bolivar and Yaracuy. Among those who died when the latest protests broke out Jan. 23 was 19-year-old Nick Samuel Oropeza. His family says he was last seen alive fleeing alongside other protesters through the dusty streets of the capital's Las Adjuntas slum as national guardsmen opened fire on people who had blocked streets with mounds of trash. Minutes later, he was found on the ground, his shirt drenched in blood.A bullet destroyed his kidney and punctured a lung, said his mother, Ingrid Borjas, a 38-year-old lawyer. "This needs to be investigated," Borjas said, her voice breaking with emotion. "Justice needs to be served for my son and for others."

Salame Continues Benghazi Visit, Hopes to End Libya’s Political Deadlock
Cairo – Jamal Jawhar and Khaled Mahmoud/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 19 February, 2019/United Nations envoy to Libya Ghassan Salame underlined on Tuesday the importance of ending the political impasse in the country. During a meeting with parliament Speaker Aguila Saleh, he stressed the importance of ending the political deadlock, reiterating the UN’s commitment “to work with all Libyans on unifying institutions and propelling political dialogue and legislative functions.”The envoy had landed in the eastern city of Benghazi earlier this week. He received on Tuesday a group of writers and artists and listened to their views on the cultural situation in the city the East. Salame emphasized the important role played by intellectuals and writers and the UN support to cultural events in Libya. The envoy had held talks in Benghazi on Monday with commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA) Khalifa Haftar on the latest developments in the country. Haftar, meanwhile, held talks on Tuesday with Italian Ambassador to Libya Giuseppe Buccino Grimaldi on cooperation between their countries. In Tripoli, head of the Government of National Accord (GNA) Fayez al-Sarraj met with High Council of State chief Khaled al-Mishri, who had returned to Libya from a trip to the United States. The officials discussed the security arrangements in the capital and the developments in the South. In the South, an LNA commander, Al-Mabrouk al-Ghazwi, said that the military will not quit its operations against terrorism in Libya, vowing that Tripoli will be liberated “soon.”Separately, LNA spokesman Ahmed al-Mismari launched a scathing attack against Sarraj, saying he was in a “real crisis” in wake of the recent complaint he had submitted to the United Nations Security Council. He attributed the move to Sarraj’s sensing that the battles “have inched closer to Tripoli.”“We do not care for his comments and decisions because we know who stands behind him and writes his statements,” he noted, in reference to the complaint’s rhetoric that is reminiscent of the Muslim Brotherhood’s style. “We say to Sarraj: ‘Do what you like. You have the money and Libyan Central Bank.’ The Libyan people have had their say and embraced the LNA. We will meet their aspirations and eliminate crime,” vowed Mismari.

Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on February 20-21/19
Turkey's 'Food Terrorism': Blaming 'Global Powers' for Country's Ills
Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/February 20/19
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13758/turkey-west-blame
"Until today, [neither global powers nor their local Turkish collaborator subcontractors] have... been able to make Turkey bend down the way they want it to on any issue. Seeing that they could not [achieve their goals] by means of foreign exchange rates, interest rates, diplomacy or perception politics, they are now trying to do it through onions, potatoes, eggplants, cucumbers and peppers." — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Ankara's anti-Western statements and politics not only make Turkey an unstable and unreliable NATO ally, but also blind many Turks to the realities of the world, thwart their intellectual growth and render them unable to grasp what is really happening to them in their own country.
At a rally on February 13, ahead of Turkey's municipal elections -- slated for March 31 -- President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blamed "global powers" (meaning the West) for the country's serious economic problems and massive rise in the price of produce. Pictured: Erdogan addresses the Turkish parliament on October 23, 2018 in Ankara.
At a rally on February 13, ahead of Turkey's municipal elections -- slated for March 31 -- President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blamed "global powers" (meaning the West) for the country's serious economic problems and massive rise in the price of produce.
Alluding to "food terrorism," Erdoğan said:
"Until today, [neither global powers nor their local Turkish collaborator subcontractors] have... been able to make Turkey bend down the way they want it to on any issue. Seeing that they could not [achieve their goals] by means of foreign exchange rates, interest rates, diplomacy or perception politics, they are now trying to do it through onions, potatoes, eggplants, cucumbers and peppers."
Erdoğan's tirade was part of a propaganda tactic to keep the public from attributing its domestic plight, and the country's problems in the international arena, to poor government policies. Judging by surveys conducted during the past few years, which reveal that xenophobia in general and anti-Americanism in particular are widespread in Turkey, that tactic seems to be working wonders.
According to a 2018 poll, conducted by Istanbul's Kadir Has University, 60% of Turks consider the United States to be their number-one threat.
According to a 2017 survey by the pro-Erdoğan newspaper, Yeni Şafak, 96% of Turkish citizens think of America as an enemy; 94% see NATO as a threat; and 95.4% said that the Incirlik airbase should be closed to the American military.
According to a 2014 Pew survey, 73% of the Turkish populace has an unfavorable view of the United States, and 70% hold a negative view of NATO.
According to a 2007 Pew survey, "Of the 10 Muslim publics surveyed in the 2006 Pew Global Attitudes poll, the Turkish public showed... a higher level of negativity [towards Westerners] than is found in the other four Muslim-majority countries surveyed (Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan and Jordan) as well as among the Muslim populations in Nigeria, Britain, Germany, France and Spain. Large and increasing majorities of Turks also hold unfavorable views of Christians and Jews."
"Turkish public opinion as a whole is perhaps the most xenophobic on earth," wrote University of Indianapolis Professor Douglas Woodwell in 2012. "Whatever the future, at least Americans can rest assured; while Turks may have a lower opinion of the US than any other country, they are equal opportunity haters."
Such xenophobia, however, long predates Erdoğan's rule. According to St. Lawrence University sociology professor Yeşim Bayar's 2014 book, Formation of the Turkish Nation-State, 1920–1938:
"In the aftermath of the World War I the Allied Powers' main goal in assuring the protection of minorities was to create liberal political cultures in Eastern and Central Europe's new states, in which nation-building majorities would be tolerant and non-coercive, and the newly minoritized would be politically local and anti-secessionist.... Yet, the liberal ideals of the Allies would directly clash with the proposals of the Turkish delegation.
"During this period the nationalist elite very often and zealously articulated anti-Western and anti-Christian sentiments. The Allied Powers' continuing territorial and economic control was viewed as an imperialist attack on the country; even labeled by some as a Crusade. Consequently, as Mustafa Lütfi Bey asserted, the goal of the TBMM [Grand National Assembly of Turkey] was first and foremost to save the abode of caliphate, save Istanbul from the hands of enemies. The Western world represented a body which was working toward the annihilation of Islam. Europe's direct attack is against Islam ... Relatedly, all internal tensions were attributed to external sources (i.e. Western powers.)"
This sentiment is reflected in the lyrics of Turkey's national anthem, officially adopted in 1921, which refer to the West as "that battered, single-fanged monster you call civilization."
Even after Turkey joined the Council of Europe in 1949 and NATO in 1952, anti-Western and anti-American attitudes remained popular among Turkish elites. Because such attitudes already prevailed in Turkey -- which has never been held accountable for them -- it is easy for the Erdoğan government to manipulate the public into believing that all their problems are the fault of the West and Christianity.
This view is possibly why Erdoğan, during an election rally on February 16, falsely claimed, "Our mosques are getting bombed and burnt down in the West -- in Germany and Western Thrace [Greece]."
Ankara's anti-Western statements and politics not only make Turkey an unstable and unreliable NATO ally, but also blind many Turks to the realities of the world, thwart their intellectual growth and render them unable to grasp what is really happening to them in their own country.
*Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute. She is currently based in Washington D.C.
© 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Europe: Trying to Legitimize Iran's Regime
جوليو ميوتي/معهد كايستون: تحاول أوروبا إضفاء الشرعية على النظام الإيراني
Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/February 20/19
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"The E.U. only seems to care about the nuclear agreement and trade ties. It pretends that the regime is legitimate and that Iranians have no alternatives to living under tyranny". — Alireza Nader of New Iran, reported by Benjamin Weinthal, Fox News.
"The fact that the Ayatollah had executed thousands of people, including many writers and poets since his seizure of power in Tehran had provoked only mild rebuke from Western governments and public opinion... With the fatwa against Rushdie, we thought the whole world would mobilise against the ayatollah, turning his regime into an international pariah. Nothing of the kind happened". — Amir Taheri, former executive editor-in-chief of Iran's leading newspaper, Kayhan.
Worst of all, now Europe's highest court has effectively adopted Khomeini's idea of blasphemy. The European Court of Human Rights recently decided that an Austrian woman's conviction for calling the Prophet of Islam "a pedophile" did not breach her freedom of speech. The sharia style of "blasphemy" has now become a potent weapon to stifle and suppress free speech.
"In looking to the future, Ayatollah Khomeini has spoken of his hopes to show the world what a genuine Islamic government can do on behalf of its people", wrote Princeton University professor Richard Falk at the dawn of the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979. He was one of the many Western intellectuals who, in a mix of misconception and naiveté, supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's regime. These deaf Western secularists succumbed to the charm of the Iranian clerics who have just celebrated the 40th anniversary of their regime. It is useful to remind the public that Khomeini orchestrated his Islamic revolution from Neauphle-le-Château, a village 20 miles outside Paris.
"It is perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems", the French philosopher Michel Foucault remarked at the time about the Iranian revolutionaries who brought down Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Many American officials and academics also fell into this Iranian Revolution trap. Andrew Young, the US ambassador to the United Nations under the Carter Administration, said that Khomeini was a "saint" and compared his revolution in the name of Islam to the US civil rights movement. The American ambassador to Tehran, William Sullivan, compared the new Iranian ruler to Gandhi, while President Carter's advisor, James Bill, wrote admirably that Khomeini was a man of "impeccable integrity and honesty". The result, as US President Donald Trump tweeted recently, has been "40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure".
We are now witnessing, again, "The West's betrayal of Iranian dissidents". Iran last year arrested more than 7,000 people in a crackdown on dissidents, protesters, students, journalists, lawyers, women's rights activists and unionists, according to Amnesty International. The human rights group called the crackdown "a shameless campaign of repression". According to new documents leaked to the media monitoring group Reporters Without Borders, the Iranian regime imprisoned or executed at least 860 journalists in the three decades between the Islamic revolution in 1979 and 2009.
"The file is a register of all the arrests, imprisonments and executions carried out by the Iranian authorities in the Tehran area over three decades", Reporters Without Borders wrote. The documents added to record of the 61,900 political prisoners who had been held since the 1980s, as well as evidence of a massacre in 1988 in which 4,000 political prisoners were executed on the orders of Khomeini. According to human rights campaigner Geoffrey Robertson:
"Revolutionary guards descended on the prisons and a 'death committee' (an Islamic judge, a revolutionary prosecutor and an intelligence ministry official) took a minute or so to identify each prisoner, declare them mohareb [enemy of God] and direct them to the gallows erected in the prison auditorium, where they were hanged six at a time".
Why has Europe never tried to hold Iran accountable for these mass murders, which are believed to have been ordered by Khomeini on a death list denounced by Reporters Without Borders?
The Iranian regime, which holds the world record of per capita executions, persecuted not only journalists. A Wikileaks dispatch revealed that the Islamic Republic of Iran has executed between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians since the 1979 revolution. Amnesty International estimates that 5,000 gays and lesbians have been executed there since 1979. The most recent Iranian gay man was hanged a few weeks ago. Alireza Nader of "New Iran," based in Washington, D.C., told Fox News, "The E.U. only seems to care about the nuclear agreement and trade ties. It pretends that the regime is legitimate and that Iranians have no alternatives to living under tyranny".
Last December, in another violent crackdown, Iran arrested more than 100 Christians. Many of the detainees were Muslims who converted to Christianity, and were accused of "proselytising". Iran is also number 9 on the Open Doors' world blacklist of countries persecuting Christians. Why has Europe, which so often claims to cherish religious freedom, never protested against Iran's persecution of its Christian minority?
In 2018 alone in Iran, at least 112 female human rights defenders were arrested or held in detention. One woman, who was arrested after waving her hijab to protest Iran's repressive clothing laws, said she did it for her 8-year-old daughter. "I was telling myself: 'Viana should not grow up in the same conditions in this country that you grew up in,'" Azam Jangravi recounted in an interview with Reuters. Bret Stephens wrote in The New York Times.
"Liberals and progressives should not find it difficult to join conservatives in championing the rights of women in Iran, particularly women removing their headscarves in public and courageously facing the consequences... Nor should it be difficult for liberals and conservatives alike to call attention to the plight of Iran's political prisoners, much as both sides were once moved to action by the plight of political prisoners in the Soviet Union or China or South Africa".
Unfortunately, the opposite seems to be taking place. According to Mariam Memarsadeghi: "Iranians who yearn for democracy and an open, prosperous society at peace with the world are met with overwhelming indifference from the West's media and political leaders, not to mention its universities, unions, civic groups, churches, and celebrities—the very people and institutions that historically have lent their empathy, solidarity, and concrete assistance to the cause of freedom across the world."
Forty years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa demanding the head of Salman Rushdie, the British-Indian novelist who authored "The Satanic Verses". Iranian leaders recently repeated their support for that unprecedented deadly ruling. "Imam Khomeini's verdict regarding Salman Rushdie is based on divine verses and just like divine verses, it is solid and irrevocable", the official account of Iran's supreme leader Khamenei recently tweeted. Iranian journalist Amir Taheri wrote about the fatwa in 1990:
"The fact that the Ayatollah had executed thousands of people, including many writers and poets since his seizure of power in Tehran had provoked only mild rebuke from Western governments and public opinion... With the fatwa against Rushdie, we thought the whole world would mobilise against the ayatollah, turning his regime into an international pariah. Nothing of the kind happened".
Since then, freedom of expression has been under attack everywhere, not just in the Islamic world but also Europe. Iranian poets are executed by the regime for "waging war on God". Forty years after the fatwa, "No young artist of Rushdie's range and gifts would dare write a modern version of The Satanic Verses today, and if he or she did, no editor would dare publish it", the British journalist Nick Cohen wrote. Worst of all, now Europe's highest court has effectively adopted Khomeini's idea of blasphemy. The European Court of Human Rights recently decided that an Austrian woman's conviction for calling the Prophet of Islam "a pedophile" did not breach her freedom of speech. The sharia style of "blasphemy" has now become a potent weapon to stifle and suppress free speech.
In 1979, Western leaders met in Guadalupe for a summit. French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, US President Jimmy Carter, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of Germany and Prime Minister James Callahan of Great Britain decided to support Khomeini instead of the Shah of Iran. In 2019, Western leaders met for another summit on Iran. A few days ago, foreign ministers from 60 nations gathered in Warsaw, but this time the United States tried to assemble a coalition to pressure Iran. The most visible scene at the summit was the absence of foreign ministers of the three major European powers, Germany, UK and France, the same countries that in 1979 abandoned their allies in Iran in favor of Khomeini. Europe's spineless leaders choose again appeasement and indulgence in their relations with Iran.
"The time has come for our European partners to stop undermining U.S. Sanctions", U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said at the annual Munich Security Conference. He received absolutely no reaction. When Pence told the audience he was bringing greetings from President Trump, not a single person clapped. Europe has clearly chosen appeasement, rather than confrontation, with Iran.
On January 31, the foreign ministries of France, Germany and the United Kingdom shamefully announced a deal to help European companies that wish to continue trading with Iran to avoid US sanctions. It is the "Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges", or Instex. The EU's high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, said that "the instrument launched today will provide economic operators with the necessary framework to pursue legitimate trade with Iran".
European officials, however, are not only working on trade. While Iranian death squads are targeting dissidents on Europe's soil, they are openly legitimizing Iran's regime. Last summer, an Iranian attempt to bomb an opposition group near Paris was foiled, and last October, Denmark recalled its ambassador to Tehran after another Iranian assassination attempt was prevented. As reported by the German newspaper Bild, the German Foreign Ministry recently sent officials to Iran's Embassy in Berlin to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Republic. In addition, Germany's former Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, traveled with a German economic delegation to Tehran to boost the trade between the two countries. Again according to Bild, Gabriel met parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani (who has called the existence of the Holocaust an "open question") and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the official in charge of Iran's support for Middle East terror groups.
"The Iranian regime openly advocates another Holocaust and it seeks the means to achieve it", US President Mike Pence said at the Munich Security Conference last week. A few days earlier, a senior Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander, Yadollah Javani, threatened to "raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground". Last November, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani called Israel a "cancerous tumor". With its silence, the West is trying its best to downplay these deadly threats.
After the Iranian regime executed one of its citizens for homosexuality this month, US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, wrote on his Twitter feed, "Many of our European allies have embassies in Tehran. This barbaric act must not go unanswered. Speak up". Sadly, Europe has chosen not speak up. As Bloomberg's Eli Lake has written, Iran does not need our appeasement; it needs "a new revolution".
*Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
© 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13762/europe-iran-legitimacy

As the UK debates what to do with Isis suspects, one country has taken back 1,000 ‘terrorists’
ريتشارد هول/الإنديبندت/فيما الجدل قائم في بريطانيا حول كيفية التعاطي مواطنيها مع الداعشيين تونس قبلت بعودة ألف منهم
Richard Hall/The Independent/February 20/19
Tunisia has taken back more than 1,000 terror suspects since 2011
More than 1,000 “terrorists” have returned from conflict zones to Tunisia, according to one of the country’s top security officials.
Mokhtar Ben Nasr, head the national counterterrorism commission, said the figure accounts for the number of jihadi suspects who have come back since 2011, according to Mosaique FM radio.
The news comes as the UK and other European countries debate how to deal with its citizens who were captured abroad on suspicion of being members of Isis.
Thousands of men and women left Europe to join the Isis caliphate when it was declared in 2014. At that time, it stretched across two countries over thousands of miles, but over the last few months its territory has been reduced to a tiny pocket in eastern Syria. All but a few hundred of its former members have been killed or ended up in the custody of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
More than 800 Europeans are currently being detained in northern Syria, but so far their respective governments are refusing to repatriate them over fears they would present a security risk.
The fate of British Isis suspects held in Syria has been thrown into the spotlight in recent days following the discovery of Shamima Begum, a 19-year-old British woman who left the UK to join Isis four years ago, in a refugee camp.
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has previously said that he would move to block any British citizen suspected of joining Isis from returning.
Mr Javid said of her case: “My message is clear: if you have supported terrorist organisations abroad I will not hesitate to prevent your return.”
But Kurdish forces, along with Donald Trump, have called on European governments to repatriate its suspects and have them prosecuted on their respected home soil.
“The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 Isis fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial. The Caliphate is ready to fall. The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them,” he wrote on Twitter.
Tunisia has also struggled to find a solution to the issue. The country’s already overcrowded prisons are filling up with convicted terrorists. The president, Beji Caid Essebsi, has in the past floated the idea of a pardon for returning jihadists, but the idea was met with fierce opposition and protests.
Following the return earlier this month of four ”extremely dangerous terrorists” – in the words of a court spokesperson – security officials have been forced to defend the policy of bringing them home.
Judge Naila El Faqih, the deputy head of the national counterterrorism commission, told parliament on Monday that bringing terror suspects home was “an international obligation, in addition to the fact that the Tunisian constitution provides for the right of all Tunisians to live in their own country”.
‘I have no other home’: Irish citizen suspected of Isis links Alexandr Bekmirzaev on his desire to return to Dublin
The North African country represents something of a paradox. In 2011, a successful revolution saw the overthrow of long-term dictator president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and a transition to democracy. It has often been referred to as the Arab Spring’s only success story.
But it has also earned the dubious title of being the biggest exporter of jihadists per capita in the world. The UN estimates that some 5,500 Tunisians left the country to join Isis and al-Qaeda in Syria, Iraq and Libya. The revolution did not bring economic change, and so jihadist recruiters found fertile ground in a young and impoverished population.
By comparison, UK intelligence services estimate that around 900 Britons left for Syria, with around 40 per cent returning. Most have been placed on government rehabilitation schemes, while only a handful have faced prosecution.

The Only Path to a U.S. Victory in the Middle East Is to Leave Now
لي سميث من موقع التبليت: السبيل الوحيد لإنتصار الولايات المتحدة في الشرق الأوسط هو الإنسحاب منه الآن
Lee Smith/The Tablet/February 20/19
American foreign policy is unmoored from American realityالسياسة الخارجية الأميركية غير مرتبطة بالواقع الأميركي
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/72335/lee-smith-the-tabletthe-only-path-to-a-u-s-victory-in-the-middle-east-is-to-leave-now-%d9%84%d9%8a-%d8%b3%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%ab-%d9%85%d9%86-%d9%85%d9%88%d9%82%d8%b9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%aa%d8%a8%d9%84%d9%8a/
It is still possible to achieve bipartisan consensus in Congress. Just vote to oppose Trump and prolong lost wars.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell showed how it’s done late last month with an amendment rebuking the president’s plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Syria passed by a wide 70-26 majority. Even that endorsement of the status quo was only a symbolic measure since a second-order amendment stipulated that McConnell’s could not be interpreted as legally authorizing military force in those conflicts.
But symbolizing what? An appetite for never-ending war? That there is no cost to opposing Trump even when a vast majority of the American public, Democratic and Republican, want out of the Middle East? The answer is a little bit of both—which is to say, it symbolizes the fact that U.S. foreign policy has become unmoored from American reality.
All the Senate Democrats who have declared their candidacy for president voted no, as did four Republicans, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and John Kennedy.
A day after the vote, Cruz delivered a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, where he outlined his rationale for supporting Trump’s withdrawal. He described a strategy somewhere between interventionism and isolationism, based on the idea that America should “be extremely reluctant to intervene militarily and risk the lives of our sons and daughters.”
Cruz traces his strategy back to the founders and takes as its motto “Don’t Tread on Me”—leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone. There are signs as well of more contemporary influences, like the “Tea Party Foreign Policy” articulated in 2015 by conservative intellectual Angelo Codevilla, which bears notable similarities to Cruz’s proposals.
Cruz’s opponents represent a clear majority in the Senate and broader national security establishment. They say that if we don’t stick it out, our enemies will say we cut and run. Further, a U.S. withdrawal from the region will be seen as an abdication of global leadership. American Exceptionalism, the notion that we have a special mission in the world, will run aground. What is remarkable about this position is how reality-resistant it is. If we worry that leaving will embolden our enemies, perhaps it’s worth asking what effect staying has had when after nearly two decades of war the Taliban still controls or contests more than half of Afghanistan.
“Great nations do not fight endless wars,” Trump said in his State of the Union address. On those terms, how does a nearly 18-year-long war in Afghanistan represent leadership?
The fact that the United States continues to rotate combat forces into Afghanistan is unprecedented in American history—but not unheard of outside our borders. Israel also occupied a country for 18 years, Lebanon, an engagement typically regarded as a stain on the country’s moral as well as its military record.
It’s common to meet veterans of Israel’s first Lebanon war who believe that they backed the wrong actors—had they only sided with the Shiite community then Hezbollah never would’ve found a foothold in Lebanon. There may be some psychological salve in believing that Lebanon’s political fate was within Israel’s grasp before slipping away but such delusions come at a cost.
As fellow Tablet contributor Tony Badran, senior fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has explained, the fact that prominent Israelis like former Prime Minister Ehud Barak believe the occupation gave rise to Hezbollah does not make it true. Iranian activists loyal to Ruhollah Khomeini seeded the Party of God in the mid-’70s. There was nothing that Israel could have done to prevent that, because there is nothing that Israel can do to prevent Lebanon from being Lebanon.
The same is true for Afghanistan and every Middle Eastern country where the United States has troops. The issue is not that America can’t fix Afghanistan, but that most of our leaders do not understand that Afghanistan can only ever be Afghanistan.
The foreign policy establishment has replaced strategy with symbolism. The problem is that symbols represent differently in different cultures. To Picasso, for instance, a primitive mask was a kind of artwork, but to the culture that designed it, the mask was a different kind of totem.
The danger is in confusing contexts. This has been a central issue in the United States’ engagement in the Middle East.
You can bet that policymakers and Pentagon officials defend the continued U.S. deployments citing Osama bin Laden’s conviction that the United States’ 1983 withdrawal from Lebanon signaled America is a paper tiger.
So what would convince a bin Laden that the U.S. is not feeble? A longer U.S. deployment, a permanent one? America killing thousands of Arabs, millions? Eradicating a town, a clan, an entire nation? Those aren’t American answers because it’s not an American question. It was bin Laden’s question freighted with the meaning of his symbols.
The proper American question is, what constitutes an American victory, in the eyes of Americans?
America’s first urge after the 9/11 attacks was to take revenge for our American dead and root out the terrorists responsible. It was soon replaced by what appeared to be a more temperate instinct, a more nuanced and far-reaching response: To prevent further attacks on America, the Arab world would have to change. We had to “drain the swamps” of Arab state tyranny, or so went the symbolism of that phrase the first time an American president used it in the 21st century.
After all, the real problem wasn’t the attacks carried out by a handful of jihadi terrorists but how ordinary Arabs celebrated them. Arab political culture had to be remade to give individual Arabs the space to express their political lives freely. The end result of that flowering of freedom would be liberal democracies, sure to be different than our own in their local variations, but still places where individual rights and democratic norms were the prize.
Policymakers, regional experts, and journalists, myself included, saw free elections as evidence that this hope was being realized. Instead, it marked an epic bout of American narcissism.
Rather than giving more luster to the ethos of “Americanness,” the narcissism actually cheapened the object of its esteem. What is American exceptionalism if its apostles believe that any society, no matter its culture and history, can easily adopt the principles and disciplines of American public life and politics?
Voters brought Hamas to power in Gaza, elected a Muslim Brotherhood president in Egypt, legitimized Hezbollah’s hold over Lebanon, and gave Iran leverage over the Iraqi government. Rather than recognize that U.S.-style and U.S.-backed elections tended to reward anti-American forces in the region, Washington doubled down.
Consider Iraq. Demographics showed that elections would bring to power the Shiite majority. History suggested that this community would seek revenge on the Sunnis who, under Saddam Hussein, had persecuted it. Further, culture, history, and geography provided evidence that Iraq’s Shiites would find partners in the Shiite power on their border, Iran.
Instead of acknowledging failure, or declaring victory, and getting U.S. troops from out of the middle of a sectarian war, America stayed the course to disastrous effect for both Americans and foreigners. In what is euphemistically known as the anti-ISIS campaign, American military backing and critical air support allowed Iranian backed Shiite militias to extend their control over the country’s security and political institutions. Effectively, the U.S. has helped Iranian proxy forces prosecute a campaign of revenge against the country’s Sunnis.
The Pentagon reasons that in the event of a U.S. withdrawal, ISIS is likely to regroup. Perhaps that is true, but there is little that the United States can do—except for help recruit members.
Just as the Shiites did not want to be hunted by the Sunnis, the Sunnis do not now want to live under an Iranian-soled Shiite boot. Anyone who would take up arms to fight the Iranian order is going to join forces with those already fighting—ISIS, or similar Sunni vehicles for contesting Iranian hegemony. And they will in turn be targeted by Iranian-backed forces, in partnership with the United States.
There is nothing the United States can do to change the sectarian dynamic of the region. To stay in Iraq enlists the United States in an endless war against the Sunni population. And unless the U.S. wants to switch sides and turn its weapons on Iran and its allies, there is nothing American forces can do to change that reality, except leave.
Our almost two-decade long stay in the Middle East and Central Asia has shown that the U.S. has no power to shape the region’s essential political and cultural dynamics. Perhaps the greatest impact has been on our own political elite who have become fluent in using symbols that are not ours to project and answer questions that belong to others.
The U.S. public has already answered what constitutes an American victory—get out, now.

The double standards at the heart of Iran’s Islamist regime
Sir John Jenkins/Arab News/February 20/19
The Warsaw conference on Iran has been and gone. It was heralded loudly — if not always convincingly — by the US. The White House let it be known that it might be an opportunity for the formal construction of a powerful coalition to contain and even push Iran back in the Middle East. There were suggestions that we would see another step along the path to the normalization of Israel as a regional state actor and get more clarity on the outlines of the Middle East peace plan that Jared Kushner is supposed to be masterminding.
As it happens, there was a certain amount of spectacle. Sixty countries sent representatives. The attendance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alongside some senior representatives of Arab states caused temporary excitement, especially when the Israelis tried quietly to release and then had to remove unauthorized footage of some of the closed discussions. And it is true that there seems to have been general consensus on the challenge that Iran represents. But, in the end, the parallel meeting in Sochi of Iran, Russia and Turkey, the absence from Warsaw of senior representation from some of the key European states — not, I hasten to add, the UK — and of the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, and some confusion about what exactly was discussed and concluded seems to have taken much of the shine off the event.
So in the end I paid rather more attention to two recent interviews with senior Iranians. One, in The Times of London, was with Masoumeh Ebtekar, who from 1979 to 1981 was the notorious spokeswoman for the students who took American diplomats hostage and is now vice president for women’s affairs. The other — in Der Spiegel — was with Mohammed Javad Zarif, Iran’s Foreign Minister. Both, in their different ways, offered evasion rather than clarity in response to simple questions. This is, of course, a characteristic from time to time of politicians everywhere. In Iran, it looks like a way of life — not so much “taqiyya” as “tawriya.” But you can still learn a lot, if you pay enough attention.
Both Ebtekar and Zarif simply avoid the most difficult questions by accusing their opponents, the West and particularly the US, of “double standards.” Ebtekar does it directly, saying that is the reason Iran opposes the US: Nothing personal, simply business. Zarif does it in a more roundabout way. With a straight face, he says that US criticism of Iran is “laughable,” immediately after he has also said that Iran “has always supported Jews: We’re just anti-Zionist,” which will have the whole of Tel Aviv, large parts of New York and North London, and the few Jews actually left in Iran holding their sides. He then says that Iran’s missiles are purely defensive; the US and others are the ones behind disorder in the region because they support other states; the US is in no position to criticize Iran over Syria because it supports Israel; and in any case the Iranian intervention in Syria is all part of being a good neighbor. And so on.
This is pure “whataboutism.” And it brings us to the heart of a problem we all have with Iran (as with any state or organization founded upon the principles of political Islamism): Its claim to be the only disinterested, authentic and truly moral actor in the region. That really is laughable. But it also springs from the contradictions at the heart of the Islamic Republic. As Tony Blair recently asked, is it a state with an ideology or an ideology with a state? Are its actions divinely sanctioned (as the doctrine of Wilayat Al-Faqih, with its insistence on the infallibility of the immanent Imam, suggests) or is it just another bunch of human beings trying to do the best with the world as it is and making the same compromises as the rest of us — not between the good and the bad, but between the quite good, the probably bad and the possibly not-so-bad? The answer may be that it 014promises as the rest of us –is trying to be both.
Ebtekar, whom The Times claims is “a moderate” now, expresses no regrets about her part in the grotesque mistreatment of the US diplomats. She won’t hear a word said against Ruhollah Khomeini; the revolution, she claims, was “idealistic,” it just took a wrong turn somewhere. Yet she has apparently sent her children to be educated in the US, as indeed she was. And she has vocally opposed the coercion of women by the moral zealots of the regime.
Zarif takes much the same line in a different context. Iran is always the victim: From the war with Iraq (which ended, let us remember, over 30 years ago, before most Iranians were born. I don’t remember my father or uncles — who all fought — ever going on about the Second World War, which ended 10 years before I was born) to US sanctions, to the way it is constantly misunderstood in the West, to Israel’s “unjustified” attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah targets inside Syria, which he describes as “assaults on international law” (I can’t help it, I’m laughing again).
Queen Victoria said of her famously self-righteous Prime Minister, William Gladstone, that she didn’t mind him having the ace of spades up his sleeve during every argument with her, but she did mind him pretending God had put it there. And that is the problem with every religious regime in history: They think being religious justifies anything. Yet Iran’s behavior in Syria has had nothing religious about it at all — any more than in Yemen, Iraq or Lebanon, let alone the acts of terror it has commissioned over the years in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Beirut, Bangkok, Basra, Buenos Aires, Bulgaria and so on.
When pressed on the recent discoveries by national security authorities of new plots for attacks in Europe, Zarif initially suggests that this is a conspiracy. But he then interestingly adds a remark about the activities of intelligence agencies and says that there are and have been no plans for an attack in Europe “which would have been ordered by the Iranian government.” This subjunctive added further nuance to a form of words that could suggest the planning was actually done somewhere outside the purview of the government, something we all suspect happened during the campaign to assassinate dissidents abroad overseen by elements within the intelligence structures of the Islamic Republic in the 1990s.
Now, any attempted triage between “moderate” and “extremist,” “reformist” and “Principlist” inside Iran is probably misconceived. The situation is more complex than that. But it is also true that there are competing groups within the country who differ principally on the pragmatics of statecraft. Is it better to seek a form of ideological purity that gives its proponents the moral high ground in any dispute but risks falling victim to the intransigence that saw the war with Iraq last six years longer than necessary; or openly to recognize that Iran operates in the murky world where the best is always the enemy of the good, the adequate will do to be going on with and politics is the art of the possible?
The French philosopher Michel Foucault was sent to Iran in 1978 by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera to cover the revolution. Enchanted by the apparent prospect of resistance not just to power but to what he saw as the entire oppressive epistemological apparatus of the West, he believed the revolution represented a rejection of historically grounded politics in favor of the reinvention of the resistant individual and a perpetual spiritual revolution.
Like many leftist ideologues, Foucault — who never saw an anti-Western heterodoxy he didn’t like — was seduced by absolutism. But, if religion is to live in the real world, it has to become political. Politics means sustained attention to the worldly needs of ordinary people in this, not the next world, and an ability to compromise in order to achieve anything. That in the end compromises religion, as Saint Augustine knew and many former Iranian revolutionaries have subsequently found out for themselves.
As Tony Blair recently asked, is Iran a state with an ideology or an ideology with a state?
And that is the real dilemma of the Islamic Republic. If it’s Islamic in the Iranian sense, then it inhabits a realm of absolutes in which the word of the Imam is final. If it’s a republic, then it is subject to the same laws of history as any other republic and needs to deal with what the great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, called the “crooked timber of humanity.” And that’s not a matter of double standards: It’s an eminently practical question of choice.
People always allege double standards when they don’t want to choose, or be seen to have chosen. Both Zarif and Ebtekar, in their different interviews, showed how hard it is to make that choice or admit that they need to do so. They want it both ways — to sanctify Khomeini or the supreme leader as the infallible guide to salvation (and to righteous behavior while we’re waiting) and to try to resolve the contradictions of the real world, in which you can’t have everything you want all the time and other people’s views matter. To choose the former is to choose absolutism and continued confrontation, which is precisely what causes most of the region and the international community to view Iran with suspicion. The latter is to choose messy normality. Normality doesn’t necessarily mean friendship, but it does mean recognition that other people matter. That there are such things as national interests. That history is a better guide to the future than revelation. That, while neither man nor woman can live by bread alone, bread matters enormously. And that to get along with your neighbor, you really need to stop throwing stones over the fence.
And that, it seems to me, not conferences in Warsaw or anywhere else, will make the real difference. Iran can certainly be contained and deterred rather better than we do at the moment — and we need to keep the US engaged in order to achieve this — but, for Iran to become a good neighbor, a more normal state and a more open and successful economy, delivering for all its people and not simply the well-connected, it has to decide it wants to do so. As it has always been, it’s up to Tehran. After all, there’s probably a limit to how long ordinary Iranians will wait.
*Sir John Jenkins is an Associate at Policy Exchange. Until December 2017, he was Corresponding Director (Middle East) at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), based in Manama, Bahrain, and was a Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. He was the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia until January 2015.