RIYADH, April 18, (Agencies): Gulf Arab states on Sunday called on the international community and UN Security Council to “make flagrant Iranian interference and provocations” in Gulf affairs cease after unrest in Bahrain.
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, after a meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh, called in a statement for “necessary measures” against the Islamic republic to prevent it from sowing regional discord.
The six-nation GCC called on “the international community and the Security Council to take the necessary measures to make flagrant Iranian interference and provocations aimed at sowing discord and destruction” among GCC states.
It said the GCC — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — “categorically rejects all foreign interference in its affairs... and invites the Iranian regime to stop its provocations.”
The statement also slammed “aggression” against Saudi diplomats in Iran.
Earlier on Sunday, Riyadh threatened to recall its diplomats from Tehran unless they were better protected.

“I hope we won’t be obliged to withdraw our diplomatic mission from Tehran if Iran fails to take the necessary measures to protect it,” deputy foreign minister Prince Turki bin Mohammed told reporters.
Iranian students had demonstrated on Monday outside the Saudi embassy to condemn Riyadh’s military intervention in Bahrain and the “murder” of Bahraini citizens, the official IRNA news agency had reported.
Iran’s Fars news agency, which is close to conservatives, had reported that “six to seven petrol bombs were hurled against the embassy” as students chanted slogans against the ruling Sunni dynasties in both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
On Sunday, Prince Turki said: “Shiites in the Gulf are our brothers and have national rights under the umbrella of their loyalty (to their countries) and not to the outside.”
Iran has repeatedly condemned the dispatch of Saudi troops to Bahrain to support the Bahraini forces’ crackdown on demonstrations there by Shiites who form the majority of the population of the country.
Iran is predominantly a Shiite Muslim country.

Unity
Iran’s foreign ministry said on Monday allegations of Iranian interference in the region by its Gulf Arab neighbours were targeting Muslim “unity,” the state television website reported.
“The repetitive and false accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran in the recent Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) statement are rejected and unfounded,” it quoted ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast as saying.
Mehmanparast also said in a statement that the GCC stance was not the collective view of all of six member states, the report said.
“Unfortunately it appears that certain members of this council are taking advantage of its name to implement specific regional objectives and agendas of their own,” he said.
This was “the wish of enemies who for years have sought to (act) against the unity of the Muslim world,” the report quoted Mehmanparast as saying.
His remarks came a day after the GCC called on the UN Security Council to “make flagrant Iranian interference” in Gulf affairs cease after unrest in Bahrain.
But Mehmanparast said the group wanted to “divert public opinion in the international community away from the troublesome and military actions of certain regional countries,” the report said.

Threat
Bahrain’s foreign minister said on Monday Saudi and UAE forces called in to help quell street unrest would leave only when “any external threat” he associated with Iran was seen to be gone.
Pro-democracy demonstrators in Bahrain have denied any link with the Islamic Republic.
Bahrain’s prime minister described the several weeks of anti-government protests by the Sunni Muslim-ruled country’s disaffected Shi’ite majority as a coup attempt and said those who took part would be held to account.
Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa hinted that Gulf troops could be there for some time, saying they would remain until what he described as a threat to Gulf Arab countries from nearby Shi’ite power Iran was over.
“There are no Saudi forces, there are GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) forces and they will leave when they are done with any external threat,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in the United Arab Emirates.

Asked to elaborate, he said: “The external threat is a regional one. The external threat is a complete misunderstanding between the GCC and Iran. This is a threat.”
“I am not pointing fingers here, but what we are seeing from Iran, on Bahrain, on Saudi Arabia, on Kuwait, the occupation of the islands of the Emirates, doesn’t make the situation a positive one. It keeps it a constant threat, and ongoing one.”
The protesters said they had no loyalty to Iran, rejecting accusations by Bahraini officials that they were supported by the Islamic Republic and the Shiite militant movement Hezbollah, which denied training demonstrators.
Iran complained to the United Nations about the deployment of GCC forces in Bahrain and said it could not remain indifferent to the crackdown on protests.
“Bahrain has witnessed a coup attempt,” Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa said in remarks carried by pro-government media on Monday. “No violators would get away with it. All co-conspirators and abettors must be held accountable.”
The unrest has stirred tension in the world’s leading oil-exporting region as Sunni Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and Iran have traded accusations of meddling in Bahrain affairs.

Dissolve
Bahrain does not seek to dissolve the main Shiite opposition group Al-Wefaq, and wants it as a “partner for the future.”
Last week, Bahrain’s state news agency said the kingdom had filed suit to disband two Shiite opposition groups, including Al-Wefaq.
But Sheikh Khaled said “we’re not there to dissolve Al-Wefaq (the Islamic National Accord Association). Wefaq committed some violations; there is a court case. But there is no witch hunt.”
“We’re not dissolving Al-Wefaq; we’re not asking for it to be dissolved,” nor “any other (political) society.
“Wefaq will stay. We want to see Wefaq as a partner for the future.”
On Thursday, BNA news agency said the ministry of justice and Islamic affairs had filed a lawsuit to dissolve the Islamic Action Association and Al-Wefaq groups.
It said the decision was “due to the breaches of the kingdom’s laws and constitution committed by both associations and for their activities that have negatively affected the civil peace and national unity.”
Later on Thursday, Justice Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ali al-Khalifa said: “This action deals with the two societies as legal entities. It is not against any individual and does not affect any MP’s right to sit in parliament.”
“Neither would a court decision to uphold the case prevent any members of these societies forming a new society under the proviso that the laws governing political societies are followed,” he said in a government statement.

Investigation
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Monday urged an “independent investigation” into the death in detention of one of the founders of an independent Bahraini newspaper.
RSF “is outraged to learn that Karim Fakhrawi, one of the founders of Bahrain’s only independent newspaper, Al-Wasat, and a member of its board, died in custody on April 12, one week after his arrest”, the media rights watchdog said in a statement.
“We call for an independent investigation into the exact causes of Fakhrawi’s death,” it added. “Those responsible must be arrested and tried.”
Fakhrawi, a 49-year-old businessman and a member of Bahrain’s main Shiite group, the Islamic National Accord Association, was arrested on April 3.
Bahraini authorities have said that Fakhrawi died from kidney failure, but his relatives doubted this, saying he was healthy when arrested.
The United States had voiced concern on April 13 over prison deaths in Bahrain, after Fakhrawi’s death brought to four the number of such deaths since the Sunni-ruled country, backed by forces from Gulf neighbours, crushed Shiite-led street protests in mid-March.
Bahraini authorities said that 24 people were killed in the only Shiite-majority Gulf Arab state.
Although the protest movement on the streets was eradicated, the crackdown on dissent has continued.
Rights group Amnesty International has said more than 400 activists, almost all Shiites, have now been detained, including prominent human rights worker Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and his two sons-in-law arrested on Saturday.

Libya
A ferry rescued almost 1,000 people from Misrata Monday and Britain said it plans to pick up 5,000 more, as efforts grew to head off a chaotic mass escape by sea from the besieged Libyan city.
With snipers, cluster bombs and intense shelling spreading panic in the city of 400,000, UN envoys in Tripoli demanded an end to attacks there by forces loyal to strongman Muammar Gaddafi.
A doctor reported 1,000 people killed in six weeks of fighting in Misrata, as the International Organisation for Migration warned that the vast numbers wanting to flee the city were threatening to overwhelm an international sea rescue operation.
The IOM said nearly 1,000 stranded people had been taken out on Monday but that thousands more were awaiting rescue in increasingly perilous circumstances.
Britain said it will charter ships to rescue 5,000 migrant workers trapped in the port city, about 215 kms (130 miles) east of Tripoli.
A British spokesman at the UN said the plan is being discussed by Britain’s International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell during meetings with top United Nations officials in New York.
“Current planning is to get 5,000 out of Misrata and it is likely to be one ship,” spokesman Daniel Shepherd told AFP.

“The position in Misrata, which has sharply deteriorated in the last few days, means that there are 5,000 poor migrant workers caught out on the quayside with munitions exploding some 300 yards (metres) from where they are,” Mitchell told the BBC.
He said the IOM would organise the operation and take the workers to Egypt.
“Many of them are Egyptians, there’s some Bangladeshis as well, and we’re going to move all of them out as soon as we can by sea.”
In Geneva, the IOM said a chartered ferry had evacuated 971 stranded people on Monday, mostly Ghanaians, and was headed for Benghazi, where those deemed physically able would later be taken to the Egyptian border for repatriation.

The arrival of the Greek vessel on Sunday saw hundreds of panicked refugees blocking a key road to the harbour and demanding to be allowed aboard, witnesses said.
Jeremy Haslam, IOM chief in Libya, said the situation was eventually calmed by the rebels manning checkpoints at the port and some of the Libyans being allowed on the ferry.
But he said he was worried the movement could be just the tip of the iceberg of an attempted mass escape by sea by many of Misrata’s 400,000 residents.
“Everybody in Misrata is on the frontline,” said Hussein al-Fortia, a former headmaster who became one of the leading figures of the revolution that started in the city mid-February.
Many of his former high school students are now learning the lessons of war, he said, joining the rebels in fighting back Gaddafi’s forces pressing on the city from three directions.
Fortia, whose father and a brother died in prison in the early 1990s after being arrested by the regime, said opposition to Gaddafi had long been building.

Now, in Misrata, there were “maybe 3,000, maybe 5,000 fighters — no-one knows”, holding off against the better-armed Libyan military.
They have suffered some losses, such as the death of a rebel commander late Sunday as he tried to take a school being used by Gaddafi will fall.
“We are sure he will go or die. But we hope (it will happen) today, not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” he said.
In the centre of the city, the main Tripoli Street once lined with shops and upmarket apartments in now a jagged scene of carbonised vehicles — tanks among them — and remains of walls and buildings.
Rebels there, aged from their teens into their 40s, fire off defiant volleys from automatic rifles, anti-aircraft guns and mortars at pro-regime fighters located up and down the street.
One 30-year-old fighter, Alaadin Kheshem, explained that they were surrounding a group of abandoned pro-regime snipers who were reduced to descending from their nests in buildings to loot shops at night to eat.

The administrator of the main hospital in Misrata, Doctor Khaled Abu Falgha, said in all, 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the fighting that broke out in Misrata nearly six weeks ago, while another 3,000 people have been wounded.
“Eighty percent of the deaths are civilians,” he said.
Human Rights Watch quoted doctors as saying more than 267 bodies had been taken to morgues as of April 15, the majority of them civilians, but that the actual toll was higher because some dead had not been taken in.
Gaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, denied civilians were being targeted.
“We didn’t commit any crime against our people,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post published Sunday.
“I am not going to accept it, that the Libyan army killed civilians. This didn’t happen. It will never happen.”

NATO is currently enforcing a United Nations-mandated no-fly zone designed to protect civilians, and Western allies have called for the end of Gaddafi’s four-decade rule.
Speaking in Budapest, UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for an immediate ceasefire and a political solution to the conflict, saying the United Nations would open a humanitarian mission in Tripoli.
“We have three objectives: first, an immediate, effective ceasefire; second, to extend our humanitarian assistance to the needy; third, we have to continue to have a political dialogue and a political resolution to the issue,” Ban said.
And in Tripoli, UN special envoy to Libya, Abdul Ilah al-Khatib, and chief humanitarian coordinator Valerie Amos, called for an end to attacks on Misrata, in a meeting Sunday with Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmud and Foreign Minister Abdelati Laabidi.
Meanwhile, renewed fighting was reported in Nalut, near the border with Tunisia, and in the strategic rebel-held eastern crossroads town of Ajdabiya.

Special forces
The influential chairman of the French parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Monday called on France to send special forces troops to Libya to guide in air strikes.
Axel Poniatowski, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s majority party, warned NATO’s campaign against Gaddafi’s Libyan regime could become bogged down unless the allies put boots on the ground.
“The exclusive use of air power, as imposed on us by UN Security Council resolition 1973, has proved its limitations in the face of targets that are mobile and hard to track,” he said, in a statement.
Poniatowksi said that from the air, NATO pilots found it hard to see the difference between pro-Gaddafi forces and the rebels that have risen up against him, who use the same weapons and pick-up trucks.
“Without information from the ground, coalition planes are flying blind and increasing the risk of friendly fire incidents,” he said. NATO warplanes have accidentally bombed rebel convoys on at least two occasions.
France and its allies have been bombing Libyan forces for the past month under the authority of a United Nations resolution that explicitly forbids them from sending a “force of occupation” on Libyan soil.
But Pontiakowksi argued that special forces troops could be sent with a limited mission to guide in allied air strikes and designate ground targets without breaking the “spirit” of the resolution.

Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is involved in the uprising in Libya, a government spokesman said Sunday, hinting at a role of a “very well known leader” of the organisation in the conflict.
“The involvement of al-Qaeda in the conflict in Libya is proven every day,” said Musa Ibrahim during a news conference. “We believe it’s very dangerous if these people establish themselves in this country, have control of its future, its immense wealth a footstep from Europe.”
Ibrahim said his government had information that “the famous Abdelhakim Al-Hasadi, the very famous al-Qaeda leader, who has a jihadist history and fought in many countries including Iraq and Afghanistan”, had left the eastern city of Benghazi for besieged Misrata.
Hasadi, who he said was “very well-known to intelligence services around the world”, was travelling in an old Egyptian ship, the Al-Shahid Abdelwahab, accompanied by 25 “highly trained fighters”.
“They repaired the ship and they filled it with weapons and advanced communication gadgets,” he added.

“And unfortunately the (Western) coalition knows about this, as they are observing our waters, and unfortunately they are prepared to allow known Qaeda members to pass from Benghazi to Misrata,” said Ibrahim.
Another Islamist, Ismail Sallabi, a member of the Fighting Islamic Group in Libya (GICL) and al-Qaeda, was training 200 “fundamentalists” in the “April 7” military camp in Benghazi with the support of about 20 experts sent from Qatar, said Ibrahim.
Abdelmonem Al-Madhuni, who he said had been an al-Qaeda member since the 1980s, was recently killed as he fought alongside rebels near the Brega oil terminal west of Benghazi.
Madhuni, who is known under various aliases, was wanted by Interpol and the United States, he said.
A spokesman for Libyan rebels fighting Gaddafi’s regime last month played down allegations by a top NATO commander that there may be al-Qaeda fighters in their ranks.

Syria
Fresh protests shook Syria on Monday as thousands took to the streets a day after 11 people were killed by security forces amid a growing clamour for further democratic reforms, activists said.
Protests gripped the central city of Homs, the protest hub of Daraa in the south as well Jisr al-Shoughour near the northwestern city of Idleb despite pledges by the president to lift a draconian emergency law.
Activists have said Bashar al-Assad’s vow on Saturday to lift within a week nearly five decades of emergency law is insufficient, with protesters also demanding the release of political prisoners and the end of the ruling Baath party’s grip over the state and society.

Tens of thousands of mourners marched in Homs on Monday a day after security forces fired live rounds to disperse demonstrators in the Bab Sba’a neighbourhood, killing at least seven people, activists said.
Tensions in the region have been exacerbated with the death Sunday in the nearby town of Talbisseh of at least four people, killed when security forces opened fired on a funeral procession. More than 50 people were also wounded.
A sea of mourners swamped Homs carrying shoulder high above the crowds the seven coffins, some open, others covered with Syrian flags, witnesses said.
Many of them clapping their hands, mourners called for “the fall of the regime” and “freedom” as they paid tribute to the “martyrs,” activists said.
And a sit-in in the city centre of Homs swelled to more than 10,000 after the funerals with people flowing into the rally from across the city, witnesses said.
Anger has whipped through Homs since the announcement on Saturday that a Muslim cleric arrested a week earlier had died in custody.

“The security services handed back the body of Sheikh Faraj Abu Mussa a week after he was arrested in perfectly good health as he was leaving the mosque,” an activist said.
The official news agency SANA blamed an “armed criminal group” for the violence in Talbisseh where it said a policeman was killed and 11 others wounded by gunfire. Five soldiers were also hurt.
“The criminals opened fire from buildings close to an army post near the bridge where the army had been sent to apprehend these gangs,” SANA said, adding that three gunmen were also killed.
There were also protests in Daraa, where some 500 angry demonstrators, including 150 lawyers, called for the fall of the regime, a rights activist at the scene said.
The protesters in Daraa, the beacon of demonstrations for greater freedoms launched in Syria in mid-March, also demanded the release of political prisoners and an end to Baath Party hegemony, said the source.
In Jisr al-Shoughour, 1,500 people protested Monday after the funeral of a demonstrator killed in the northern coastal town of Banias.
They blocked the road to Aleppo and demanded news be provided of everyone who has gone missing, an activist told AFP.

Meanwhile Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said Syria will go ahead with reforms as promised, but warned against “sabotage” committed by protesters, SANA reported.
“The reforms will continue and peaceful protests are authorised, but the recourse to violence and sabotage is unacceptable,” Muallem said at a meeting Monday with a group of ambassadors.
Earlier the ruling party’s Al-Baath newspaper said reforms announced by Assad “have become an urgent necessity in the light of the painful events which are happening across Syria.”
Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said cancelling “military courts” and revoking a law granting security agents immunity were also necessary.
Prominent Syrian human rights lawyer Haytham Maleh told AFP scrapping the emergency law “is a step, but it is not enough. It must be accompanied by reform of the judicial system, which is corrupted.”
At least 200 people have been killed by security forces or plain-clothes police since the start of the protest movement, according to Amnesty International.
Meanwhile the Washington Post said the US government has been secretly financing Syrian opposition groups, including a satellite TV channel beaming anti-regime programming into the country, citing cables by WikiLeaks.

Support
Hezbollah on Monday expressed its firm support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, as Assad faces unprecedented protests demanding the end of nearly 50 years of emergency rule.
“Today, we stand yet again by our sister Syria ... and by Syria’s leaders who have refused to give into pressure or ... to conspire against the resistance,” said Hezbollah MP Nawwaf Moussawi, in reference to the Shiite militant group.
“We are certain Syria will overcome this passing phase,” he added.
“There is no stability in Lebanon without stability in Syria, no security in Lebanon without security in Syria.”

Moussawi’s spoke at a press conference entitled “In solidarity with Syria against the American-Zionist-Western plot to undermine its national, pan-Arab and resistance role,” attended by pro-Syrian Lebanese politicians of all faiths.
Along with Iran, Syria is a major backer of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and has faced accusations by Washington of smuggling arms to the group.
On Friday, Syrian Ambassador Ali Abdel Karim Ali warned that “any harm done to Syria will also harm Lebanon with the same magnitude or even more” — a statement that provoked the ire of the pro-Western camp in Lebanon rival to Hezbollah.
Acting prime minister Saad Hariri’s US- and Saudi-backed camp denounced Ali’s statement as a “veiled threat.”
Damascus has accused Lebanese parties including MP Jamal Jarrah, of Hariri’s Sunni Future Movement, of funding and arming mainly Sunni protesters in cities across Syria.
Jarrah has denied the allegations.

Yemen
Yemen’s opposition remained adamant on Monday that veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh step down immediately, after a fruitless meeting with Gulf mediators and late-night demonstrations in Sanaa turned violent and spread to other cities.
Hundreds of thousands of men and women protested in the capital late Sunday against Saleh’s call for an end to mixed-gender demonstrations against the regime, and called for his ouster.
Security forces attacked them with firearms and tear-gas grenades. Thirty people were wounded by live rounds and 1,000 suffered from tear-gas inhalation, an AFP video reporter quoted a medical source at a Sanaa hospital as saying.
Security forces also used water cannon to disperse demonstrators as police cars carried away many wounded protesters, witnesses told AFP.

Early on Monday, residents took to the streets in the Red Sea city of Al-Hudaydah to protest against the use of force against Sanaa demonstrators. Medical sources said 45 people were wounded, 12 of them by bullets, when security forces intervened.
Similar demonstrations to show solidarity with the Sanaa protests were also held late Sunday in Taez and Dhamar, south of the capital, and the main southern city of Aden.
After a meeting in Riyadh on Sunday with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states ministers, leading Common Forum opposition activist Mohammed al-Sabri told AFP on Monday: “The opposition has succeeded in conveying its point of view to Gulf Arab monarchies” on the need for Saleh to step down.
Gulf Arab states “must understand that every day Saleh’s regime remains in power will be on the account of their stability”, added Sabri.
Speaking late Sunday after the talks, Sultan al-Atwani of the Unionist Nasserist Party said: “We demand the abdication” of Saleh.

“We favour the Gulf initiative ... but we reject the paragraph in the final communique of the April 10 GCC foreign ministers’ meeting proposing a transfer of presidential powers; we demand the abdication” of the president, he said.
On April 10, the GCC — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — appealed to Saleh to “announce the transfer of his powers to the vice-president” Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi.
It also called for the formation in Yemen of “a government of national unity led by the opposition” that would be responsible for “establishing a constitution and organising elections”.
Over the past week, US and European diplomats have been working to bring the opposition and Saleh’s camp together, a Western diplomat told AFP.
“The Common Forum has obtained American and European assurances on the success of the GCC initiative, especially for a rapid departure of President Saleh”, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But Sabri said that the parliamentary opposition does not represent the demonstrators, apparently fearful of the reaction of protesters on the streets who have suffered more than 125 deaths in clashes with Saleh’s security forces.
A statement issued after the Riyadh meeting said the GCC would hold discussions with the government in Sanaa, but did not specify a date.
Speaking in Bahrain, where he is attending a conference on piracy, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kurbi said Sunday’s meeting “marked the beginning of a process and not its end. This process will eventually lead to a transition of power”.
Last week, Saleh’s office said in response to the GCC mediation bid that the president has “no reservation about transferring power peacefully and smoothly within the framework of the constitution”.
Saleh has so far insisted on overseeing any transition, fearful of being dumped out of office and faced with prosecution like his ally, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who resigned on Feb 11 following mass demonstrations.

Defected
Meanwhile, several top figures who defected from the embattled Yemeni president’s camp set up their own opposition party Monday in another blow to the long-time ruler who has clung to power despite near-daily protests demanding his ouster and defections by key allies.
In the capital Sanaa, several top figures and lawmakers — many of them defectors from Saleh’s ruling Congress Party — set up their own bloc, entitled “Justice and Construction Bloc” and issued a statement insisting that Saleh relinquish power.
US-educated Mohammed Abulahoum, who is also a leader of the powerful Bakeel tribe, the second-largest tribe in Yemen, was among the founding members. Khaled al-Wazeer, who was transport minister before he defected, was also among the party’s founders.
Several women were among them too, including Huda al-Ban, who resigned last month as human rights minister. The group said it would strive to “establish a civil society based on democracy, peaceful transfer of power and respect of others.”

Egypt
Egypt’s financial oversight body says the former president of Egypt and his family have amassed wealth beyond their means in the form of properties and bank accounts.
The state news agency said Monday the agency found that the 82-year old former president and his two sons and wife own several properties around Egypt, including luxury apartments, and palaces, as well as empty land plots and valuable farm land.
The report said the family also has numerous bank accounts in foreign and local currencies. The elder son, Alaa, is apparently the richest, followed by Gamal, who was groomed by his father to be president.
Mubarak, the father, has the least wealth, according to the office.
Mubarak’s sons are in detention pending investigation, while the elder Mubarak has been hospitalized.