Visitors enjoying a ride on the last day of Souq Waqif Festival, yesterday.Pic: Baher Amin / The Peninsula

Festival ends

Vettel on top at Bahrainpractice

Credit Suisse executives take

bonus cuts of 40%

BUSINESS | 11 SPORT | 17

Volume 22 | Number 7132 | 2 RiyalsSaturday 15 April 2017 | 18 Rajab 1438 www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

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Sanaullah Ataullah The Peninsula

The Ministry of Trans-p o r t a n d Communications is working on a pilot project to build multi-

storey smart parking lots with online status-checking and res-ervation facilities at crowded places in the country.

These parking lots will be connected through a smart sys-tem enabling motorists to not only check the availability of parking spaces using smart phones or computers but also reserve them online.

“We have a complete plan for vehicles’ parking facilities in Qatar within the plans chalked out by the Ministry under National Strategy for Traffic Safety,” said Rashid Talib Al Nabit, Assistant Under-secretary for Road Transport at The Minister of Transport and Communications in a Qatar TV talk-show.

“We have started work on parking projects from the start of this year. The ambitious project is based on a survey conducted to collect the opin-ions of people to assess where they want parking facilities. And these facilities will be developed as per the size and type of vehicles in the country.”

As a matter of fact, he noted, "we cannot depend on the experiences of other coun-tries in building parking facilities because the culture and needs are different of one country to another".

He said that in a "unique and first-time move", a latest modern technology will be used in these parking facilities ena-bling motorists to get advance information about the availa-bility of parking spaces through smart phones and computers where they intend to visit.

"And they could reserve the vacant parking spaces as well. For example, a motorist wants to visit Souq Waqif or any other place, he would be able to get the information on the availa-bility of parking space there immediately and could also reserve the space as per his choice for a specific date and time."

→ Continued on page 2

PRESIDENT of the Republic of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte arrived in Doha on an official visit to the country.

In reception of the Pres-ident upon arrival to Hamad International Airport were Minister of Energy and Indus-try H E Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada, Ambassador of Qatar to the Philippines Ali bin Ibrahim Al Malki, and Ambassador of Philippines Alan Timbayan.

The Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani will hold talks with the Pres-ident tomorrow morning at the Emiri Diwan on bilateral relations and means of boost-ing them in various fields.

Istanbul

AFP

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday made a final push for votes

in a referendum on expanding his powers, as the authorities said they had foiled a possible jihadist plot against the poll.

Opinion polls — usually treated with caution in Turkey — have predicted a tight out-come tomorrow despite the considerable advantages of the 'Yes' campaign in both airtime and campaign resources.

The referendum will take place under a state of emergency that has been in place since last summer's failed coup, which has seen some 47,000 arrested in the biggest crackdown in Turkey's history.

Analysts regard the referen-dum as a crossroads in the modern history of the country that will affect not just the shape of its political system but also its relations with the West.

"April 16 will be a historic turning point," Erdogan told a rally in Konya, the Anatolian city seen as the heartland of conserv-ative supporters who have benefited from his rule.

The referendum is taking place after a bloody year of ter-ror attacks in Turkey blamed on jihadists and Kurdish militants.

Adding to security concerns, police detained five suspected Islamic State militants in Istan-bul accused of planning a "sensational" attack targeting the weekend referendum.

Authorities on Tuesday detained another 19 suspected IS supporters in the Aegean city of Izmir, accused of planning to

sabotage the vote. In the latest issue of its Al Naba magazine, IS called for attacks on polling sta-tions in Turkey.

If the new system is passed, it will abolish the office of prime minister, enabling the president to centralise all state bureauc-racy under his control and also to appoint cabinet ministers.

Supporters see the new sys-tem as an essential modernisation step for Turkey to streamline government.

Erdogan in an earlier televi-sion interview expressed confidence the new presidential system would be approved, say-ing there were no longer undecided voters. "'Yes' has gone up considerably, while 'No' has gone down," he said.

A poll by the Konda group showed 'Yes' ahead at 51.5 per-cent but the Sonar group has projected a 'No' vote of 51.2 per-cent, and with other polling companies producing different figures the outcome remains uncertain.

'No need for Trump's nod to use massive bomb'WASHINGTON: The US commander in Afghanistan who ordered use of the "mother of all bombs" to attack an Islamic State stronghold didn't need Pres-ident Donald Trump's approval, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

The officials said Gen. John Nicholson has stand-ing authority to use the bomb, which is officially called the Massive Ord-nance Air Burst bomb, or MOAB, the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in combat. The bomb had been in Afghanistan since January.

The officials weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and requested anonymity.

Sidi Mohamed The Peninsula

As many as 3,973,298 transactions were completed through Met-rash2 and Ministry of interior

(MoI) website in the first Quarter of this year. The Ministry of Inter disclosed this on its official Twitter account that the number of transactions on Metrah2 was 3,323,,280 while the number of trans-actions issued through MoI website was 650,018 making a total of 3,973,298 transactions.

It also issued 1,084, 413 transactions of renewal and cancellation of visas, and leave notifications among others through both Metrash2 and (MoI) web-site (e-services). The number of transactions related to traffic services were completed through Metrash2 and (MoI) website (e-services) were 169,264. The total inquires on both services dur-ing the same period was 2,614,961.

Recently the ministry added a new e-service with which people can find out traffic violations by foreign vehi-cles inside Qatar through the Ministry of Interior website. It is part of the ini-tiatives of the Ministry to expand its e-services and save time and efforts of the public.

About 211 electronic services now are available through Metrash2 and the website of the Ministry. The number of subscribers to Metrash2 has reached 328,000 so far.

Metrash 2 is an interactive service oriented Mobile app by MoI and avail-able on App store, play store and Windows store. Metrash 2 services include many services like visa, resi-dence, traffic violations, renewal of driving license, issue or replacement for damaged driving license, travel exit permit, transfer vehicle ownership, community police, CID in addition to different inquiries.

Reserve your parking lot online soon

Four million transactions via Metrash2 and MoI website

Erdogan in last dash for 'Yes' vote

Parking lots will be connected through a smart system enabling motorists to not only check the availability of parking spaces using smart phones or computers but also reserve them online.

Philippine President arrives

P ki l t ill b

A poll by the Konda group showed 'Yes' ahead at 51.5 percent. Erdogan in a TV interview expressed confidence the new presidential system would be approved, saying there were no longer undecided voters.

President of the Republic of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte being received at the Hamad International Airport by Minister of Energy and Industry H E Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada, yesterday.

02 SATURDAY 15 APRIL 2017HOME

On behalf of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani attended the closing ceremony of the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, which was held in Riyadh, in the presence of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia and a number of Their Majesties, Princes and guests.

Sheikh Joaan attends closing ceremony of Camel Festival

The last day of Souq Waqif Festival was filled with fun events and activities for children. The festival saw thousands of visitors flock to Doha’s most visited spot as it coincides with Qatar’s school break. Pics: Baher Amin / The Peninsula

Raynald C RiveraThe Peninsula

The Philippines is look-ing forward to a fruitful three-day state visit of President Rod-rigo Duterte who

arrived in Doha last night in the final leg of his Middle East tour.

In a press conference prior to the arrival of President Duterte yesterday, Philippine Ambassa-dor Alan Timbayan said the Qatari government is ‘enthusi-astic’ about the President’s visit and he was hopeful the Presi-dent’s first official visit to Qatar will yield positive results in var-ious areas of Philippines-Qatar bilateral cooperation.

Highlighting the economic

cooperation between the two countries, Timbayan noted that the Philippines is set to benefit from a bilateral agreement on recipro-cal promotion and protection of

investments if it is signed during the President’s visit.

“We are looking forward to the signing of a bilateral agree-ment on the promotion and protection of investments. If this will be inked during the visit of the President, it is expected to open a lot of invest-ments to the Philippines because Qatar wants to diver-sify its investments and looks towards the Philippines as a good place where to place its investments,” Timbayan said at a press conference at the Phil-ippine Embassy yesterday.

The Doha leg of Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) investment roadshow in Febru-ary have been a success with several pledges from

Qatari businessmen. A number of Memoranda of Understand-ing (MoUs) on investment pledges are expected to be signed during Duterte’s visit.

“When PEZA Director Gen-eral Charito Plaza came here and presented an investment road show, emphasizing the stability and the viability of doing better business in the Philippines as well as the stability of President Rodrigo Duterte’s government, there were some prospective businessmen who manifested their intention to invest in the Philippines, in fact PEZA received several pledges from businessmen to invest,” he said.

He pointed out the possibil-ity of a meeting between Qatar’s labour ministry and Philippine

Secretary of Labour and Employ-ment Silvestre H. Bello III.

“There is a possibility that the Secretary of Labour and Employ-ment of the Philippines Silvestre H. Bello III will meet with the Ministry of Labour. We expect labour issues will be discussed during this meeting,” said Timbayan.

“During my call with the Min-ister for Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs, Dr Issa bin Saad Juffali Al Naimi, he acknowledged the con-tributions of the Filipino workers here in the development of Qatar and I express my gratitude and thanks to the Minister for the con-tinued support and hospitality extended to our workers here who have made Qatar their second

home,” he added.Duterte is expected to meet

around 6,000 Filipinos in Qatar tonight at Lusail Multipurpose Hall, a major highlight of his visit to Qatar where he had a land-slide win during the elections last year.

“In the recent elections con-ducted here in Qatar, around 15,000 of about 44,000 regis-tered voters cast their votes. The President got about 80 percent of the total votes cast, in other words, it was a landslide victory,” said Timbayan.

Whenever he has trips abroad, meetings with overseas Filipinos have become an impor-tant part of itinerary of Duterte, who has made caring for over-seas Filipinos a top priority.

Permanent Mission of Qatar to UN holds briefing on R2PNew York

QNA

The Permanent Mission of the State of Qatar to the United Nations held a

briefing at the United Nations headquarters in New York with Dr Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect on the implementation of the prin-ciple of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) ahead of the upcoming 7th Meeting of the National R2P Focal Points due in Doha on April 24-25 this year.

Qatar's Permanent Repre-sentative to the United Nations, H E Ambassador Alya Ahmed bin Saif Al-Thani, briefed the participants on the upcoming meeting's agenda, which will discuss "Syria and Protection from Mass Crimes".

It will also highlight the

ineffectiveness of the current global order as a result of the failure to resolve the Syrian conflict along with the global network of government focal points on responsibility to pro-tect, she said.

The Ambassador pointed out that one of the main objec-tives of the 7th Meeting was to consider strategic cooperation in the prevention of mass crimes and means of strength-ening preventive mechanisms and better response to regional crises.

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect was established in February 2008 to promote universal accept-ance and effective operational implementation of the norm of the "Responsibility to Protect" populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Duterte visit to boost relations in several fields: EnvoyMoUs to be signed

Philippine Ambassador Alan Timbayan says Qatari government is ‘enthusiastic’ about the President’s visit.

A number of MoUs on investment pledges are expected to be signed during Duterte’s visit.

→ Continued from page 1The parking project is part

of national strategy for traffic safety of which more than 10 plans were shared by the Min-istry. Around three of them have been implemented so far.

The first plan was Qatar Guide for Road Design which was completed in collaboration with other authorities con-cerned like Traffic Department and the Public Works Authority (Ashghal). The second plan was Qatar Guide for Traffic Control

which has also been completed.

The third plan was building separate tracks for bicycles. The plan was completed a long time ago. "Now we are upgrading this plan. Now we have 153 kilometers tracks for bicycles on the roads of the country," he said, adding: "Around 264 kilometers new tracks for bicycles are under con-struction of which 64 kilometres tracks are expected to be com-pleted within coming year."

The Ministry has come up

with an idea to build sustaina-ble transport system in new roads for the safety of people and properties. Sustainable transport means building mod-ern roads taking into consideration all types of users; motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and people with disabilities because everyone has an equal right to use the roads.

Another feature of the mod-ern roads is their connection with vital points like public transport, seaport and airport.

Focus on sustainable transport systemAl Zayani praises positive role played by Gulf mediaQNA

The Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Dr Abdul

Latif bin Rashid Al Zayani underlined the important and effective role that Gulf press plays in strengthening the joint GCC action and highlighting the achievements of the GCC

in all fields. Al Zayani referred to the

high ranking of the Gulf jour-nalism in the regional and Arab media system, its positive prac-tice regarding strengthening the Gulf identity and developing the Gulf correlation.

Al Zayani expressed his views during his meeting with the Chief of the Gulf Press Union

Khalid Al Malik.During the meeting, they

reviewed the efforts made by the Gulf Press Union to strengthen the cooperation and coordination between Gulf press entities in addition to ways to develop cooperation between the General Secretar-iat of the GCC and the Gulf Press Union.

Souq Waqif Festival concludes

03SATURDAY 15 APRIL 2017 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Supporters of the Hamas movement protesting against the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, in Khan Yunis, yesterday.

Hamas rally

Mosul offensive

Rashidin, Syria

AFP

Hundreds of civilians and fighters who have been under crippling siege for more than two

years left four Syrian towns in fleets of buses yesterday under a delayed evacuation deal.

Men, women and children packed onto buses leaving gov-ernment-controlled Fuaa and Kafraya and rebel-held Madaya and Zabadani, with many expressing despair at not know-ing when they might return.

"When I first went onto the bus, I broke down from sad-ness, I fell on the ground and they had to help me," said Fuaa resident Abu Hussein. "I just couldn't bear it." The deal to evacuate the towns is the latest in a string of such agreements through Syria's six-year civil war.

They have been touted by the government as the best way to end the fighting but rebels say they are forced out by siege and bombardment.

Critics say deals are perma-nently changing the ethnic and religious map, but in an exclu-sive interview with AFP this week President Bashar al-Assad insisted the evacuations were only temporary and people would return once the "terror-ists" had been defeated.

At least 80 buses left Fuaa and Kafraya in Idlib province in the northwest, a correspond-ent in rebel-held territory said.

They arrived at a marshalling point in Rashidin, west of sec-ond city Aleppo, followed by 20 ambulances.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 5,000 peo-ple had left the two towns, including 1,300 pro-govern-ment fighters. The Observatory said 2,200 people from Zabadani and Madaya had left, among them 400 rebels.

Madaya resident Amjad al-Maleh, speaking from a departing bus, said that rebels among the evacuees had been allowed to keep light weapons. "It is a very bad feeling when you see those who besieged you and killed you with hunger and bombardment right in front of you," Maleh said. "Madaya cried today -- the ones who stayed and the ones who left." More than 30,000 people are expected to be evacuated under the deal, which began on Wednesday with an exchange of prisoners.

Juba

AFP

The World Food Pro-g r a m m e ( W F P ) condemned the deaths of

three contract workers in fight-ing that engulfed South Sudan's second-largest city Wau earlier this week.

At least 16 civilians were killed in clashes that started with a rebel ambush of government troops near Wau on Sunday before spreading into the city the following day, according to the UNMISS peacekeeping mission.

The WFP said in a statement that three South Sudanese who had been contracted as porters

were killed while trying to get through the fighting to a ware-house used by the food agency in the town.

Two were hacked to death with machetes and one was shot, the statement said.

"We are outraged and heart-broken by the deaths of our colleagues, who worked every day to help provide life-saving food to millions of their fellow countrymen," WFP country director Joyce Luma said in the statement.

The clash in Wau was the latest spasm of violence to rock South Sudan since a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his former dep-uty Riek Machar led to a civil

war in 2013. In a statement, Human Rights Watch said gov-ernment soldiers carried out "collective punishment" in Wau against people of minority eth-nic groups that are seen to be supporting Machar.

Witnesses, including a local priest, had also told AFP they saw targeted killings by govern-ment troops of civilians suspected of backing the rebels.

"The pattern of abuses by government forces against civil-ians in Wau has become predictable, with soldiers tak-ing revenge against unarmed civilians based on their ethnic-ity," Daniel Bekele, HRW's senior director for Africa advo-cacy said in a statement.

Tehran

AP

IRAN'S President Hassan Rowhani registered yester-day to run in the upcoming presidential elections in May. Rowhani, 68, registered on the fourth day of the allocated period which ends on Satur-day evening. In 2013, he had registered on the first day.

The upcoming vote will be seen, among other things, as a referendum on the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, under which Iran agreed to curb its ura-nium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.

Running on the platform "More freedom and peace," Rowhani vowed to remain loyal to the 2016 land nuclear deal, and urged all Iranians to vote.

"From now on, protect-ing the deal is one of the most important economic and political issues," said Row-hani. He said he would continue his past promise to "salvage the economy" and "engage constructively" with the world. "We do not with-draw," said Rowhani.

Rowhani also mentioned the giant joint gas field, the North Field, Iran will be developing with Qatar.

Earlier on Wednesday former hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his close ally Hamid Baghaei also filed to run for the presidency.

Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line cleric close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khame-nei, has announced plans to run promising to fight pov-erty and corruption.

Dubai

AFP

Reporters Without Borders said Fri-day it was "appalled" at a death sentence handed to a veteran

journalist by a court in Yemen's rebel-held capital.

The court in Sanaa, which is con-trolled by Iran-backed Huthi insurgents, on Thursday found Yahya Al Jubaihi guilty of spying for neighbouring Saudi

Arabia. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it was the first death sentence issued against a journalist in Yemen.

"This Houthi-imposed death sen-tence sets a dangerous precedent for journalists in Yemen," said Alexandra El Khazen, the head of RSF's Middle East desk.

"Issued at the end of an unfair trial, it constitutes a grave violation of inter-national law. We urge Huthi leaders to free this journalist at once," she said.

The Houthis hail from Yemen's Shi-ite-linked Zaidi minority in northern Yemen. Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has been leading a military intervention against the Houthis and their allies in the kingdom's impoverished neighbour.

The Houthis, supported by renegade troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have controlled all gov-ernment institutions in Sana'a since they overran the capital in September 2014.

Rival bodies loyal to internationally recognised president Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi operate out of second city Aden or from exile in Saudi Arabia.

Yemen's press union condemned the sentence as "arbitrary" and accused the rebels of "targeting press freedom".

It said Jubaihi, 61, was seized from his home on September 6.

Press watchdogs and human rights groups have been deeply critical of the rebels' treatment of journalists as the

conflict in the Arabian peninsula coun-try has escalated over the past two years.

Eight reporters were killed in Yemen last year, according to the International Federation of Journalists.

RSF says at least 16 journalists and media workers are currently being held by armed groups in Yemen including the Huthis and Al Qaeda.

Yemen is ranked 170th out of 180 countries in the organisation's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.

Abuja

AP

Nigerians yesterday marked three years since the mass abduction of

nearly 300 schoolgirls by Boko Haram extremists amid anger that government efforts to nego-tiate their freedom appear to have stalled.

Activists were rallying in the capital, Abuja, and commercial hub Lagos to urge President Muhammadu Buhari's govern-ment to do more to free the nearly 200 schoolgirls who remain captive.

Nigeria in October announced the release of 21 of the Chibok schoolgirls after negotiations with the extremist group, and it said another group of 83 girls would be released "very soon."

No one has been freed since then. The government this week said negotiations have "gone quite far" but face challenges. It refused to give details, citing security reasons.

"It is deeply shocking that

three years after this deplora-ble and devastating act of violence, the majority of the girls remain missing," a half-dozen independent experts for the United Nations, who visited Nigeria last year, said in a state-ment this week.

The failure of Nigeria's former government to free the girls sparked a global Bring Back Our Girls movement and was a factor Buhari's 2015 election win over former President Goodluck Jonathan. The schoolgirls from Chibok village are among thou-sands of people abducted by the Nigeria-based Boko Haram as it continues to threaten parts of the northeast and has spread into neighbouring countries.

The Chibok abduction is not even the largest. Nigerian offi-cials refuse to acknowledge the abduction of more than 500 children from the northeastern town of Damasak in November 2014, Human Rights Watch said last month. Buhari late last year announced that Boko Haram had been "crushed," but it con-tinues to carry out deadly

suicide bombings, often strap-ping them to young women. Children have been used to carry out 27 attacks in the first three months of this year, already nearing last year's total of 30, the UN children's agency said this week.

On Wednesday, Nigerian security officials said they had thwarted plans by Islamic State group-linked Boko Haram members to attack the embas-sies of the United States and Britain, along with "other West-ern interests" in the capital. One faction of Boko Haram is allied with the Islamic State group.

Nigeria's military in the past year has rescued thousands of Boko Haram captives while lib-erating towns and villages from the group's control, but many have been detained as possible Boko Haram suspects.

Boko Haram's seven-year Islamic uprising has killed more than 20,000 people and driven 2.6 million from their homes, with millions facing starvation because of the disruption in markets and agriculture.

Nairobi

AFP

GUNMEN have ambushed and killed eight police officers in eastern Tanzania, the presi-dency said, the latest in a string of killings targeting politicians and security officers in the East

African nation."President John Pombe

Magufuli is surprised and very sorry to learn of the news of the death of eight police officers killed last night by armed peo-ple," Tanzania's presidency said in a statement.

The policemen came under

attack in their vehicle in the eastern region of Kibiti as they returned from patrol, and their assailants fled into a nearby for-est, the statement said.

The officers were part of a unit deployed to pacify the region south of Tanzania's larg-est city Dar Es Salaam.

Tanzania gunmen kill 8 policemen

Nigeria marks 3 years since schoolgirls' mass abduction

Rights group slams Yemen journalist's death sentence

Hassan Rowhani registers to run in May elections

3 WFP contract workers killed in South Sudan

Evacuations

continue from

four Syria townsEvacuation

Men, women and children packed onto buses leaving government-controlled Fuaa and Kafraya and rebel-held Madaya and Zabadani, with many expressing despair at not knowing when they might return.

Smoke billowing in west Mosul near the Great Mosque of Al Nuri, where Islamic State (IS) group leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi declared his caliphate back in 2014, during the ongoing offensive by Iraqi forces to retake the city from IS militants.

04 SATURDAY 15 APRIL 2017ASIA

Cooling off

Haj pilgrimage via sea route likely to resumeMumbai

IANS

Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi yesterday said the Centre is "actively consider-

ing" a plan to resume -- after 22 years -- the use of the Arabian Sea route to ferry Haj pilgrims to Saudi Arabia and consulta-tions with the Shipping Ministry are already on.

He said the "revolutionary and pilgrim-friendly decision" of sea travel will cut down travel expenses by nearly half com-pared with air fares. The use of the sea route between Mumbai and Jeddah for Haj was discon-tinued in 1995.

"A high-level committee, formed by the government to frame the Haj Policy 2018 as per the Supreme Court's 2012 order, is exploring the issue for send-ing pilgrims via the sea route to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia," the Min-ister of State for Minority Affairs said at a training programme at the Haj House here.

The committee will soon submit its report to the government.

At present, Haj pilgrims travel by air from 21 points across the country.

The minister said another advantage was that ships now-adays are modern and well equipped to ferry 4,000 to 5,000 persons at one go.

"They can cover the

2,300-odd nautical miles between Mumbai and Jeddah in just two-three days. Earlier, ships used to take 12 to 15 days to cover this distance," he said.

He said the new Haj policy is aimed at making the entire pil-grimage process easier and transparent. Facilities for pil-grims will be the focus of the new policy.

In 2016, as many as 99,903 pilgrims went to Jeddah for Haj through the Haj Committee of India, besides nearly 36,000 persons who went through pri-vate tour operators.

In 2017, a total of 1,70,025 persons will go for Haj from India, including 1,25,025 through the Haj Committee and 45,000 others through private

operators. This year, he said, 129,196

applications were received online.

"The Ministry of Minority Affairs along with other agen-cies has started preparations for the biggest annual pilgrimage very early in coordination with various agencies, " he added. The aim is to provide world class facilities to Haj pilgrims.

With an increase of 34,005 in India's annual Haj quota by host country Saudi Arabia, announced last year, all Indian states will benefit for this year's pilgrimage, Naqvi said.

"The decision was taken dur-ing the signing of a bilateral annual Haj agreement between the two countries at Jeddah on

January 11. It is the biggest increase in the Haj quota for India after many years," the Min-ister said.

More than 500 trainers from different states are participating in the three-day training pro-gramme that deals with various dos and don'ts to be adhered to during the pilgrimage. They are enlightened about transport, accommodation and laws in Saudi Arabia, among other things.

Officials from the Haj Com-mittee of India, Saudi Arabia Consulate, BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation, Saudi Airlines, Air India, customs and immigration departments and doctors are involved in the endeavour.

Kerala man among 36 dead in US attack Kasaragode

IANS

AN Islamic State (IS) activist from Kerala is believed to have been killed along with 36 IS mil-itants when the US unleashed a massive GBU-43 bomb, also known as the "mother of all bombs", on the terror group's position in a cave network in eastern Afghanistan.

According to Indian intel-ligence officials, Murshid Mohammed, in his 20s, who hailed from Kasaragode in Kerala, was among the IS mil-itants killed after the US military struck the IS' posi-tion in Nangarhar province, on Thursday with a massive 10-tonne missile-powered bomb.

A top intelligence officer in Kasargode said that around Thursday midnight they got information of Mohammed being killed in the US military assault.

"The information of the death came to a relative of Mohammed. Unlike similar news received in February about the death of another youth from here, this time there are no pictures (to establish the death)".

A relative of Mohammed received only a message that he was killed, according to the Kerala Police intelligence wing.

The bomb used in the strike is claimed to be the big-gest-ever non-nuclear bomb.

Kejriwal hopeful of winning civic electionsNew Delhi

IANS

A day after the AAP suffered a drubbing in the Rajouri Garden assembly seat

bypoll in Delhi, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal yesterday said the defeat will not impact his party's prospects in the April 23 civic elections.

Kejriwal said the Aam Aadmi Party lost the bypoll because the people in the constituency were

angry after party MLA Jarnail Singh resigned in the middle of his term to contest the February 4 Punjab assembly elections.

"I was getting a feedback that the constituency's people were angry that Jarnail Singh left to contest Punjab assembly elec-tions. People of Rajouri Garden did not like that Jarnail Singh left them midway. We failed to con-vince the voters," Kejriwal said.

Kejriwal said he is hopeful of winning the elections to the

272 wards of the three munici-pal corporations in Delhi and "it will be wrong to see this (bypoll result) as a trailer for municipal elections".

"The Delhi loss was just an anger against one candidate, nothing more".

The Bharatiya Janata Party's candidate won the seat in the bypoll, the Congress came sec-ond, while the AAP candidate came a distant third.

Kejriwal also questioned the

work done by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the three munic-ipal areas in the last 10 year.

"I ask people -- (tell) one good thing the BJP has done in the municipal bodies in the last 10 years."

"For 10 years, the BJP has been in charge of the MCDs; you can see how much filth there is on the streets of Delhi. All the dengue, malaria... and this is despite all the money they have. They are so short of cash that

they can't pay their employees. The MCDs under BJP rule did nothing. There is huge corrup-tion in the MCDs," Kejriwal said.

The Chief Minister pointed to the work done by the AAP government in Delhi and said that the April 23 civic polls will be a referendum on their "good work" in the national capital.

"There is a lot of positivity in Delhi about the work we have done, especially in education, health and water availability".

Pakistan files seven charges against JadhavIslamabad

IANS

Alleged Indian spy Kulb-hushan Jadhav has been slapped with seven

charges, including sponsoring IED attacks on important instal-lations and attacks on Shias in Pakistan -- according to the list read out by the country's top foreign policy chief Sartaj Aziz yesterday.

Aziz said Jhadav, who has been sentenced to death, was "directly involved" in the fol-lowing list of subversive acts.

* He sponsored and directed IEDs and grenade attacks in Gawadar and Turbat in Balochistan.

* Directed attacks on the radar station and civilian boats in the sea, opposite Jiwani Port in Gwadar district.

* Funded subversive seces-sionist and terrorist elements through Hawala/Hundi for sub-verting the Pakistani youth against the country, especially in Balochistan.

* Sponsored explosions of gas pipelines and electric pylons in Sibi and Sui areas in Balochistan.

* Sponsored IED explosions in Quetta in 2015, causing mas-sive damage to life and property.

* Sponsored attack on Hazaras in Quetta and Shia Zaireen enroute to and from Iran.

* Abetted attacks through anti-state elements against forces in areas of Turbat, Pun-jgur, Gawadar, Pasni and Jiwani during 2014-15, killing and injuring many civilians and soldiers.

Alliance Air to increase Delhi-Dharamshala flight frequencyNew Delhi

IANS

NATIONAL passenger car-rier Air India yesterday said that its subsidiary Alliance Air will increase the frequency of its Delhi-Dharamshala flight from April 15.

"On the occasion of Himachal Pradesh day on 15th April, Alliance Air the subsidiary of Air India will increase the frequency of Delhi-Dharamshala flight".

The airline said that it will continue to deploy ATR 72 aircraft on the same route to operate the new flight.

Currently, there is only one flight being operated between Delhi and Dharamshala. Air India's subsidiary operates flights to 34 destinations with a fleet of eight ATR 72-600 (70 seater) and two ATR 42-320 (48 seater) aircraft.

New policy

The 'revolutionary and pilgrim-friendly decision' of sea travel will cut down travel expenses by nearly half compared with air fares, says Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.

The new Haj policy is aimed at making the entire pilgrimage process easier and transparent. Facilities for pilgrims will be the focus of the new policy.

Army probes video of alleged human shieldSrinagar

AFP

The Indian army is inves-tigating allegations a man was tied to a jeep

and used as a human shield by soldiers in Kashmir after video of the apparent inci-dent generated outrage.

The 11-second clip, which went viral on social media yesterday, showed an uni-dentified man bound to the front of an army jeep as it led a convoy through Budgam district in Kashmir.

A voice speaking Hindi in the background can be heard saying "stone throwers will meet a similar fate" as villag-ers watch.

Army spokesman Colo-nel Rajesh Kalia said the video was being examined.

"The contents of the video are being verified and investigated.

Budgam district was the scene of violence this week as police and paramilitary officers opened fire on thou-sands of protesters shouting slogans against Indian rule during a local poll.

Eight civilians were killed and dozens wounded in the election violence, including troops who were pelted with stones.

The footage of the man bound to the jeep caused out-cry and demands for an immediate inquiry.

Rights activists say Indian forces in Kashmir have been using human shields since the late 1980s, when an armed insurgency against Indian rule erupted across territory.

"These kinds of crimes have gone unnoticed here for decades. Now, because of an explosion in social media, it's finally coming out," Kashmiri activist Khurram Parvez said.

Iraqi baby with 8 limbs treated in IndiaNoida

IANS

A team of doctors here has successfully operated upon a seven-month-old

baby from Iraq who was suffer-ing from polymelia -- a birth defect involving limbs -- to give him a new lease of life.

Polymelia is a birth defect in

which the affected individual has more than the usual number of limbs and, in this case, the boy, named Karam who was brought to hospital in a very critical con-dition, had eight limbs.

"Both the legs of the baby which were protruding out of the stomach were connected through his sternum and there was no abdominal wall defect.

His blood veins were also adjoined to his liver veins," Ash-ish Rai, Senior Consultant, Plastic and Reconstructive Sur-gery, Jaypee Hospital, said.

With the help of complex microscopic technique, these veins were separated and then his legs protruding out of his stomach were removed from his body.

Gufran Ali (third left) and Sarwed Ahmed Nadar (third right) with their eight month old son Karam and physicians during a press conference at a hospital in Noida, yesterday.

A boy splashes in the water of a decorative shallow pool adorning the gardens surrounding the India Gate monument on a hot day in New Delhi, yesterday.

05SATURDAY 15 APRIL 2017 ASIA

Huge bomb deployment for tactical reasons: USAchin

Reuters

The top US military c o m m a n d e r i n Afghanistan said yes-terday that the decision to deploy one

of the largest conventional bombs ever used in combat was purely tactical, and made as part of the campaign against Islamic State-linked fighters.

As many as 36 suspected Islamic State militants were killed in the strike on Thursday evening in the eastern province of Nangarhar, Afghan defence officials said, adding there were no civilian casualties.

Amaq, the news agency affil-iated with IS in the Middle East, carried a statement denying that the group had suffered casual-ties in the attack, citing an unidentified source who had been in contact.

The statements could not be independently verified, and yes-terday Afghan and foreign troops in the vicinity were not allowing reporters or locals to approach the scene of the blast.

The strike came as US Pres-ident Donald Trump prepares to dispatch his first high-level del-egation to Kabul, amid uncertainty about his plans for the nearly 9,000 American t r o o p s s t a t i o n e d i n Afghanistan.

Nicknamed "the mother of all bombs," the weapon was dropped from an MC-130 aircraft in the Achin district of Nan-garhar, bordering Pakistan.

Nicholson said he was in constant communication with officials in Washington, but the decision to use the 9,797kg GBU-43 bomb was based on his assessment of military needs and not broader pol i t ical considerations.

"This was the first time that we encountered an extensive obstacle to our progress," he said of a joint Afghan-US operation that has been targeting IS since March.

"It was the right time to use it tactically against the right tar-get on the battlefield."

Afghan and US forces were at the scene of the strike and reported that the "weapon achieved its intended purpose,", Nicholson said.

Afghan Defence Ministry

spokesman Dawlat Waziri said recently that no civilians were harmed in the massive blast that targeted a network of caves and tunnels that had been heavily mined.

"No civilian has been hurt and only the base, which Daesh used to launch attacks in other

parts of the province, was destroyed," Waziri said in a statement.

He was using an Arabic term that refers to IS, which has estab-lished a small stronghold in eastern Afghanistan and launched deadly attacks on the capital, Kabul.

Manila deports alleged Kuwaiti IS memberManila

AFP

A Kuwaiti man suspected to be a member of the IS group was deported yesterday by the Philippines to face charges at home, a justice department official said.

"Hussein Al-Dhafiri, one of the two suspected IS mem-bers arrested in the Philippines last month, was flown out of the country to Kuwait," undersecretary Erickson Balmes said.

A statement from the Kuwaiti embassy said Dhafiri was due to be tried in his home country.

"Evidence obtained by Kuwait's state security agen-cies also showed that he is planning to carry out terror-istic attacks in the State of Kuwait," the statement said.

Dhafiri was arrested along with a Syrian woman Rahaf Zina, also named as a member of the jihadist group.

"Zina and Dhafiri married after her high-ranking IS commander husband was killed in Syria," said Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre recently.

He earlier said the pair had entered the country as part of plans for "a bombing operation" in the Philippines or Kuwait.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has warned that IS members might make their way into the country by infiltrating its communities, concentrated in the south of the largely Catholic country.

The Philippines has been battling with extremist groups for years in the remote south-ern region, some of whom have since pledged allegiance to IS.

Pakistan orders strict visa issuance policyIslamabad

Internews

The interior ministry of Pakistan has directed the authorities concerned to

ensure strict implementation of rules and regulations regarding issuance of visas to foreigners as well as their arrival and stay in the country.

A meeting chaired by

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan yesterday decided that a ban would be imposed on issuance of visas to the foreigners submitting incomplete documents and that such people would never be allowed to enter the country.

The meeting instructed the foreign affairs ministry, the country’s missions abroad, the Civil Aviation Authority and the

immigration department to ensure that arrangements for transportation of staff of for-eign delegates and guests coming to Pakistan for hunting purposes were made only through international airports and no one was allowed to enter the country without going through the immigration process.

The meeting was attended,

among others, by interior sec-retary, advocate general and chairman of National Database and Registration Authority.

The meeting decided that in future the missions abroad and personnel deputed for issu-ance of visas would be responsible for assisting the visa applicants and maintain-ing record and sharing the details with interior ministry.

Death penalty upheld for 'black widow'

China urges US & N Korea to stop provoking each otherBeijing

AP

There can be no winners in a war between the US and North Korea over

Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and missile programmes, Chi-nese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said yesterday, while pledging support for dialogue between the sides.

"Once a war really happens, the result will be nothing but multiple loss. No one can become a winner," Wang told reporters at a news conference with French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

"Therefore, we call upon all the parties, no matter verbally

or in action, to stop provoking and threatening each other and not to allow the situation to become irretrievable and out of control".

He urged all sides to take a flexible approach to resuming dialogue. "As long as dialogue takes place, it can be official or unofficial, through one chan-nel or dual channels, bilateral or multilateral. China is willing to give support to all of them".

Wang last month urged North Korea to suspend its nuclear weapon and missile tests in exchange for South Korea and the US putting their war games on hold, reviving a proposal first raised by Pyongyang.

Tokyo

AFP

A Japanese "black widow" convicted of murdering three boyfriends she had

met online and dated for their money faces execution after Japan's Supreme Court yester-day dismissed her final appeal.

Kanae Kijima, 42, who has married twice since she was detained in 2009, killed three men in the space of eight months through carbon mon-oxide poisoning, by burning charcoal briquettes after giving them sleeping tablets.

A spokesman for Japan's top court confirmed it had ruled against an appeal lodged by Kijima.

Her legal team has claimed her innocence, saying the three men were likely to have

committed suicide, according to public broadcaster NHK yesterday.

The case has been closely followed in Japan and major media flashed news of the top court decision across television screens.

Kijima writes a blog from the detention centre where she has been held, detailing her life inside, the food and talking about men she likes.

In the latest post on Thurs-day, she wrote to her readers: "I hope to see you again some-where someday."

Kijima's first victim, 53-year-old Takao Terada was found dead in Tokyo in January 2009.

Kenzo Ando, 80, died in his home in Chiba prefecture in May 2009, and three months later 41-year-old Yoshiyuki Oide was found poisoned in a rented car, also from briquette fumes.

Kijima was convicted with-out the witness testimony or confession often relied upon in Japanese prosecutions.

Instead prosecutors rested their case on layers of circum-stantial evidence, such as Kijima's purchases of sleeping pills and coal briquettes, in addi-tion to the fact that she had met with each man shortly before he died.

She was also found guilty of seven other lesser crimes, including fraud and theft.

Bali jails NZ woman over drug case Abu Sayyaf leader offers to surrenderDenpasar

AFP

A New Zealand woman was jailed for two and a half years on the Indonesian

resort island of Bail after being caught with a tiny amount of crystal methamphetamine.

Bali airport authorities became suspicious of Myra Wil-liams as she was acting strangely when she arrived on the island in August, shouting and refus-ing to queue up to have her travel documents checked.

When immigration officials took the 28-year-old for ques-tioning, 0.43 grammes of crystal meth wrapped in plastic slipped out of her pocket.

The anti-drug agency said that she had admitted taking crystal meth, ecstasy and mar-ijuana at a party in the Australian city of Melbourne before flying to Bali.

A court in the Balinese cap-ital Denpasar on Thursday convicted her of using drugs and sentenced her to two and half years in jail. Chief judge Ni Made Purnami said she had "been proven legally and convincingly guilty of abusing drugs".

The sentence was less than the three years recommended by prosecutors at a previous hearing.

Indonesia has some of the toughest anti-drugs laws in the world, including capital punish-ment for traffickers.

Zamboanga City

Anatolia

Radulan Sahiron, the most senior Abu Sayyaf leader in the southern Philippines

province, wishes to surrender, a security official said.

Lt Gen Carlito Galvez Jr, commander of Western Mind-anao Command said Sahiron wants to turn himself to author-ities because "he is already old."

Sahiron, a one-armed ban-dit, is known as the most senior Abu Sayyaf leader based in Sulu province and wanted by the US Department of Justice for a bounty of $1m.

Galvez said the surrender plan of Sahiron was passed on by elderly leaders from Sulu following relentless military offensives.

The militant leader, how-ever, has reportedly set conditions for his surrender, which includes remaining under Philippine authorities' custody.

"Sahiron wants to surren-der provided he will not be turned over to the US or other countries," Galvez said.

US interest on Sahiron is believed to have stemmed from his participation in the kidnap-ping of American national Jeffry Schilling during the late 1990s in Sulu.

Reports of Sahiron's plan came a few days after 11 Abu Sayyaf members from Basilan and Tawi-Tawi surrendered.

The number of militants from the group who surren-dered to lawmen already reached 50 since last year.

Afghan commandos prepare to launch mortar shells on an IS militant stronghold in Achin district of Nangarhar, yesterday.

Mother of all bombs

It was the right time to use it tactically against the right target on the battlefield. Afghan and US forces reported that the weapon achieved its intended purpose: Official

As many as 36 suspected IS militants were killed in the strike on Thursday evening.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi (right) and French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault at a joint news conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, yesterday.

Myra Williams (front right) of New Zealand attends her trial at a court in Denpasar on Bali island.

Kanae Kijima wrote to her readers: "I hope to see you again somewhere someday."

06 SATURDAY 15 APRIL 2017EUROPE

Migrants carry belongings as they walk to board buses in Grande-Synthe to head to reception and orientation centres in northern France, yesterday. They leave a makeshift camp where around 300 migrants had found shelter after the destruction by a fire of their nearby camp.

Plight of migrants

Moscow

Reuters

Russia’s state broadcaster has said it will boycott this year’s Eurovision song contest after the host country, Ukraine,

said it would bar entry to the Rus-sian contestant and Moscow rejected two possible compromises suggested by the organisers.

Ukraine said Russian singer Yulia Samoylova could not travel to Kiev for the competition next month because she had performed in Crimea after the region was

annexed by Russia. Moscow accused Ukraine of discriminating against Samoylova and of breach-ing the contest’s rules. The contest organisers also condemned the Ukrainian decision but said the event will go ahead.

Russia’s Channel One, the state broadcaster that transmits the con-test to large Russian audiences, said organisers had offered the option of sending a different con-testant or of having Samoylova perform via video link from Mos-cow. “In our view this represents discrimination against the Russian entry, and of course our team will not under any circumstances agree to such terms,” said Yuri Aksyuta, the station’s chief producer for musical and entertainment programmes.

“Naturally, we are not taking part in the Eurovision 2017 com-petition under the terms that are being offered to us, and we will not broadcast it either,” he said.

“The absence of a Russian par-ticipant, in my view, is a very serious blow to the reputation of the contest itself, and for Russian viewers it is also another reason not to pay attention to the contest.” The annual singing contest attracts millions of television viewers across Europe. For many countries, especially former Communist states in Europe, performing well

in the event is seen as a matter of national pride.

Kiev said that Samoylova has violated Ukraine’s borders by entering Crimea without seeking permission from the Ukrainian authorities. Moscow annexed Cri-mea in 2014, but all but a handful of countries consider it part of Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed “regret that the Eurovision organisers have turned out to be unable to fulfil the terms of their own rules,” and compel Ukraine to allow Samoylova to travel to Kiev.

The organisers of the contest, the European Broadcast Union (EBU), said in a statement they had done everything in their power so that all eligible countries could take part. “We strongly condemn the Ukrainian authorities’ decision to impose a travel ban on Julia Samoylova as we believe it thor-oughly undermines the integrity and non-political nature of the Eurovision Song Contest,” Frank Dieter Freiling, chairman of the event’s steering committee, said in statement released by the EBU.

“However, preparations con-tinue apace for the Eurovision Song Contest in the host city Kyiv. Our top priority remains to produce a spectacular Eurovision Song Contest.”

Russia to snub 'Eurovision' contest over Ukraine row

Growing conflict

Ukraine said Russian singer Yulia Samoylova could not travel to Kiev for the competition next month because she had performed in Crimea after the region was annexed by Russia.

Moscow accused Ukraine of discriminating against Samoylova and of breaching the contest’s rules.

London

Reuters

Ukraine could miss out on energy sector funding from China worth up to

$3.65bn because squabbles between ministries and the state-run energy firm Naftogaz have held up project proposals, according to interviews with officials.

Ukraine signed the loan agreement with the China Devel-opment Bank (CDB) in 2012 and it must submit proposals for projects by June to receive funding.

But with the deadline loom-ing, Naftogaz and the relevant government departments have yet to sign off on any of the coal or gas projects that were due to

be funded by the loan.The government says the

proposal for at least one of the projects will be ready by the deadline. It is not clear whether CDB will allow Ukraine to access part of the funding if proposals for the full amount are not ready.

Failure to secure all of it would deprive Ukraine of much-needed funds to upgrade energy infrastructure. It would also send a poor signal about efficiency and transparency to foreign investors whose cash is vital for economic recovery after conflict over Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

The head of Naftogaz coal and gas subsidiary, Uglesintez-gaz, does not expect all the proposals to be ready in time.

“The sum is huge and the

loan is under (Ukrainian) state guarantee. A project of this size is political, due to this the issue needs a joint position of the economy, energy and finance ministries,” Uglesintezgaz chief Andriy Suprun told Reuters.

“There is a certain lack of convergence in the positions of us (Uglesintezgaz) and the energy ministry,” he said, without elab-orating on their differences.

Spokespeople for the econ-omy, energy and finance ministries did not respond to requests for comment about the status of the loan or reason for the delays. A spokeswoman for Naftogaz referred queries on the loan to Suprun. CBD did not respond to requests for a comment.

Ukraine’s Deputy Finance

Minister Yuriy Butsa also said the proposals would not all be ready by the deadline but he was con-fident that Ukraine would secure some of the funding.

“We have every intention to use those funds. I know there is some serious work going on at Naftogaz, so I believe in the near-est time we will see some progress,” he told Reuters.

“The loan was signed under different conditions, in different times, for different purposes. Our intention is to use the opportu-nity to finance the projects which are needed at this point of time and the needs have changed much.” Asked whether at least one project would be submitted before the June deadline, he said: “I believe it will happen.”

The loan agreement was first

mapped out in 2012 under ousted president Viktor Yanukovich. Many of the projects he had ear-marked for the money were in the east of Ukraine, his heartland and a coal-mining area.

But with the east unstable and Ukraine run by President Petro Poroshenko the plans under consideration have changed.

Suprun said they include building two new coal-fired power stations in Kiev and the western city of Lviv and an upgrade in drilling capacity at a Naftogaz subsidiary. They would replace Soviet-era power pro-duction facilities, which run on mainly expensively imported gas, with units that run on coal.

In March, the General

Prosecutor’s office asked the government to explain the rea-sons for the delays, accusing officials at Naftogaz and Ugles-intezgaz of “official negligence”, according to a document seen by Reuters. Suprun said his office and home had been searched by the prosecutor’s investigators. He denied any wrongdoing.

A spokesman for the prose-cutor’s office declined to comment on questions from Reuters about the case. A spokes-woman for Naftogaz declined immediate comment on the investigation.

Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman at a meeting on March 17 had also demanded project plans be finalised as soon as pos-sible so he could present them to the Chinese side, Suprun said.

Ukraine could miss out on up to $3.65bn of China energy loans

Berlin

Reuters

German police have arrested three people on suspicion of sup-

porting a suspected Islamist militant and helping to pre-pare a serious act of violent subversion against the state,

magazine Focus said on its website.

It cited the chief public prosecutor in the northern town of Celle as saying yes-terday that there had been an arrest warrant for the two men and one woman. The prosecutor’s office was not immediately available to

comment when contacted. Focus said the suspects - a 27-year-old Afghan, a 27-year-old Turk and a 25-year-old German - were arrested on Thursday evening. It added that the Salafist they are suspected of supporting had been arrested on Febru-ary 21 and is in custody.

Germany arrests three for backing violence

Madrid

AFP

An outbreak of panic sparked by troublemak-ers caused mayhem in

Seville's nightime Good Friday processions, famed for their reli-gious floats, hooded penitents and hordes of spectators, seri-ously injuring one person, Spanish authorities said yesterday.

Emergency services said eight people were detained in connection with the incidents that took place from 4am local time (0200GMT), sending peo-ple running in panic and leaving children in tears in different parts of the processions.

In a statement, the Cecop centre that oversees security during the processions in the southern Spanish city said those detained had variously "shouted", used metallic objects to make loud noise or made "wild gesticulations" to create panic in the thousands-strong crowds.

An AFP photographer present said she heard what sounded like a stampede of gal-loping animals, and then a mass of people pushed towards her.

Standing on the Isabel II bridge that goes over Seville's Guadalquivir River, she climbed

onto a lamppost. "There were children, women with prams," she said, adding some people rushed down steps towards the river, falling over themselves in panic. "The first thing people think is that there is a terrorist attack."

An initial probe showed that there were three initial move-ments of panic, which sparked a "domino effect" in other parts of the city, Cecop said. It added that the different incidents did not appear to be coordinated. " T h e s e a r e

isolated cases without any apparent connection that are similar to cases of vandalism and hooliganism," it said.

Cecop said three of those arrested were "common delin-quents". Some 17 people were taken to hospital for injuries and panic attacks, it said.

One of them was in inten-sive care in a serious condition, suffering from brain trauma. A video posted on Spanish news site El Confidencial showed what looked like a post-panic scene, with people hanging onto bars

on windows and the famed pen-itents, some of them with their hoods off, waiting anxiously as an onlooker on a balcony urged everyone to calm down.

The situation was later brought back under control and the processions continued. Organised by religious brother-hoods and featuring huge floats of wooden sculptures of religious scenes accompanied by hooded penitents, the processions known as "La Madruga" are the high point of Easter Week fes-tivities in Seville.

Outbreak of panic mars processions in Spain

Moscow

Reuters

Russia’s most famous cam-paigning newspaper said yesterday it had appealed

to the Kremlin to protect its staff after Chechen clerics said the paper faced “retribution” for alleging that a section of men in Chechnya were being tortured and killed.

Novaya Gazeta published an article this month which said authorities in the majority Mus-lim southern Russian republic had rounded up over 100 men and tortured them. It said at least three of them had been killed.

Kremlin critics saw the report as further evidence that Moscow allows authorities in Chechnya to run the region - which has been consumed by two wars since the Soviet col-lapse - as a feudal fiefdom in exchange for separatist and radical Islamist sentiment being brutally suppressed.

Chechnya’s Moscow-backed president Ramzan Kadyrov denies allegations human rights are routinely flouted. His spokesman Alvi Karimov called Novaya’s report

“an absolute lie." “Nobody can detain or harass anyone who is simply not present in the repub-lic,” Karimov told the Interfax news agency. Novaya’s report also caused outrage among Chechnya’s Muslim clerics, who adopted a resolution saying it had insulted the dignity and Islamic faith of Chechen men and society.

“We promise that retribu-tion will catch up with the hate-mongers wherever and whoever they are and with no statute of limitations,” the res-olution read.

Dmitry Muratov, Novaya’s editor, said yesterday that the resolution was an incitement to violence and that he was worried about his staff’s safety.

“This resolution is encour-aging religious fanatics to retaliate against our journal-ists,” he said in a statement, calling on the authorities to protect journalists and stop anyone whipping up hatred against them. Two of Novaya’s reporters specialising in Chech-nya - Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estermirova - have been murdered in the last dec-ade. Neither case has been fully solved.

People leave an area following a stampede in Sevilla, yesterday.

Russian daily appeals Kremlin to protect staff

07SATURDAY 15 APRIL 2017 EUROPE

Trucks queue on a motorway in the direction of Italy near a tunnel, as people leave for holidays, yesterday, in Chamonix, southeastern France.

Leaving for holidays

Paris

AFP

French prosecutors have asked the European parliament to lift the immunity of far-right presidential candidate

Marine Le Pen over an expenses scandal, deepening her legal woes on the eve of the election, legal sources said yesterday.

The move comes just nine days before France heads to the polls for a highly unpredictable

vote with Le Pen, who heads the anti-EU, anti-immigration National Front (FN), one of the frontrunners in the April 23 first round. The request was made at the end of last month after Le Pen, who is a member of the European Parliament (MEP), invoked her parliamentary immunity in refusing to attend questioning by investigating magistrates.

The prosecutors also made a similar request regarding another MEP from Le Pen's party, Marie-Christine Boutonnet, who also avoided questioning.

Le Pen, who has presented the investigation as a plot to derail her presidential bid, shrugged off the move, saying it was "normal"."It's totally normal procedure, I'm not surprised," she told France Info radio.

Her lawyer Rodolphe Bosse-lut expressed astonishment, however, saying his client had expressed willingness to answer questions after the upcoming general elections in June, "depending on results of the presidential vote".

If elected president — a sce-nario analysts deem unlikely but not impossible — Le Pen would have immunity from prosecution.

The investigation appears to have had little impact on her campaign, being dwarfed by the bigger scandal engulfing her

conservative rival Francois Fil-lon. Former prime minister Fillon was revealed in January to have given his wife a suspected fake job as a parliamentary assistant for which she was paid a total ¤680,000 from the public purse.

The affair, which culminated with the former "Mister Clean" of the right being formally charged last month, has thrown his campaign into turmoil but in the past few weeks he has climbed back into the race.

While polls still show Le Pen and centrist independent Emmanuel Macron leading the field on around 22-24 percent each, Fillon and radical Commu-nist-backed candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon are closing in on them, on around 18-20 percent each. A veteran leftist and euro-sceptic famous for his mass rallies and fiery speeches, Melen-chon has surged from behind on a platform of massive spending increases and a threat to pull out of key EU treaties.

The two leaders of the first round will go through to a deci-sive run-off on May 7.

Surveys show Le Pen would be beaten by any of the other three main contenders at the final hurdle but analysts have warned of a possible upset, after Britain's shock vote to quit the EU and Donald Trump's election in the US, both of which pollsters failed to predict.

The case against Le Pen was triggered by a complaint from the European Parliament, which accuses the FN of defrauding it to the tune of some ¤340,000.

The parliament believes the party used funds allotted for par-liamentary assistants to pay FN staff for party work in France. In February, the assembly began withholding part of her pay to recover the money.

Le Pen, who has pledged to put France's EU membership to a referendum if elected, has

vehemently denied any wrong-doing. In a TV debate last week, Ford worker Philippe Poutou, candidate of the New Anticapi-talist Party tore into her.

"For someone who is anti-European, she doesn't mind having her fingers in Europe's till," he said. Investigators prob-ing the allegations against the FN raided the party's headquarters outside Paris last month.

Le Pen's chief of staff Cath-erine Griset and Charles Hourcade, previously a graphic

designer at FN headquarters, were charged with concealment. The two are among those sus-pected of being paid with parliamentary funds for work in France.

Le Pen has already had her parliamentary immunity lifted over a separate affair dating to 2015 when she shared graphic pictures of Islamic State atroci-ties on Twitter.

The pictures triggered an investigation for "dissemination of violent images".

Prosecutors seek to lift Le Pen's immunity

Campaign posters for the French presidential candidates on billboards, in front of the Mont-Blanc massif, near Houches, southeastern France, yesterday.

Pre-poll tactics

The move comes just nine days before France heads to the polls for a highly unpredictable vote with Le Pen, who heads the anti-EU, anti-immigration National Front, one of the frontrunners in the April 23 first round.

While polls still show Le Pen and centrist independent Emmanuel Macron leading the field on around 22-24 percent each.

Kiev

AFP

One of Ukraine's richest men vowed yesterday to defend his ownership of

a major telecoms company after its shares were impounded by a court following a probe into graft under the deposed Rus-sian-backed regime.

Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko announced Thursday that a Kiev court had "frozen" the shares of tycoon Rinat Akhmetov in the Ukrtelecom company and its subsidiary TriMob.

The decision was issued after a nearly two-year investi-gation into Ukrtelecom's

privatisation under ousted pres-ident Viktor Yanukovych in March 2011. Ukrainian media quoted Lutsenko as saying that Yanukovych's government gave Ukrtelecom for a nominal sum to a shell company based in Cyprus that was purchased by Akhmetov in October 2013.

Akhmetov's main holding company said in a statement to Interfax-Ukraine that it would defend its interests in Ukrtele-com and demand an "objective and independent investigation" of the case.

The billionaire has played a dominant role in Ukrainian pol-itics for more than a decade and twice served in parliament as a member of Yanukovych's now-

disbanded Party of Regions.Ukrtelecom held an effec-

tive monopoly over telephone land lines and was an early pio-neer in cell phone services prior to its privatisation.

Ukraine's February 2014 pro-EU revolution left Akhme-tov and other oligarchs who critics say grew fabulously wealthy thanks to close govern-ment connections on the back foot. Akhmetov soon turned into an early target of an anti-graft campaign launched by post-revolt President Petro Poroshenko. He defended his interests furiously and the ini-tial vigour of Ukraine's drive to clean up business and politics slowed down.

Rome

Reuters

A Rome court yesterday suspended a lower court ruling that had

blocked the use of smart phone apps for Uber cars in Italy.

The court accepted an appeal by Uber against the first ruling, made a week ago, which said Uber could not use its Black, Lux, Suv, X, XL, Select and Van phone appli-cations nor could it promote or advertise its services in Italy.

The first court had ruled in favour of a suit filed by Ita-ly’s major traditional taxi associations, taking the view that the apps constituted unfair competition.

Italy’s two main con-sumer groups, Codacons and UNC, welcomed the latest rul-ing, saying it gave people more choice.

Paris

AFP

An asteroid as big as the Rock of Gibraltar will streak past Earth on April

19 at a safe but uncomfortably close distance, according to astronomers.

"Although there is no pos-sibility for the asteroid to collide with our planet, this will be a very close approach for an asteroid this size," Nasa said in a statement.

Dubbed 2014-JO25 and roughly 650 metres (2,000 feet) across, the asteroid will come within 1.8m km of Earth, less than five times the distance to the Moon.

It will pass closest to our planet after having looped around the Sun. 2014-J25's will then continue on past Jupiter before heading back toward the centre of our Solar System.

Smaller asteroids whizz by Earth several times a week. But the last time one at least this size came as close was in 2004, when Toutatis -- five kilome-tres (3.1 miles) across -- passed within four lunar distances.

The next close encounter with a big rock will not happen before 2027, when the 800 metre wide asteroid 199-AN10 will fly by at just one lunar dis-tance, about 380,000km (236,000 miles).

The last time 2014-JO25

was in our immediate neigh-bourhood was 400 years ago, and it's next brush with Earth won't happen until sometime after 2600.

The April 19 flyby is an "out-standing opportunity" for astronomers and amateur star-gazers, Nasa said. "Astronomers plan to observe it with tele-scopes around the world to learn as much about it as pos-sible," the US space agency said.

Besides its size and trajec-tory, scientists also know that its surface is twice as reflective as that of the Moon. It should be visible with a small optical telescope for one or two nights before moving out of range.

2014-J25 was discovered in May 2014 by astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey near Tuc-son, Arizona.

Also on April 19, a comet known as PanSTARRS will make its closest approach to Earth at a "very safe" distance of 175million km (109 million miles), according to Nasa. The comet has brightened recently and should be visible in the dawn sky with binoculars or a small telescope.

Asteroids are composed of rocky and metallic material, whereas comets -- generally smaller -- are more typically made of ice, dust and rocky stuff. Both were formed early in the history of the Solar Sys-tem some 4.5 billion years ago.

Big asteroid to run past Earth on Wednesday

Ukraine's anti-graft fight targets telecoms

Rome

AP

Premier Paolo Gentiloni urged Alitalia workers yes-terday to approve a

compromise deal to relaunch Italy's struggling flagship airline that was reached in last-ditch, government-mediated negotia-tions between unions and Alitalia management.

The deal reached early yes-terday reduces proposed job and salary cuts and calls for greater investment in the long-range

routes that analysts say are crit-ical for Alitalia's survival. It is to be put to a referendum of Alita-lia workers next week.

At a news conference yester-day, Gentiloni said the negotiations were difficult but that it was in the government's interest to push through a deal.

"I hope it's confirmed by the workers," he said. "Alitalia is a private company but the govern-ment hasn't spared any effort to find an agreed-upon turnaround plan." Alitalia was taken over nearly three years ago by Etihad

Airlines, which infused cash and a new business plan into an air-line that was losing a reported 2 million euros a day. Alitalia had been run by an all-Italian con-sortium led by banks Unicredit and Intesa Sanpaolo, which still retains a 51 percent stake though Etihad runs the airline.

In March, Alitalia's board had approved an initial business plan that foresaw layoffs of more than 2,000 ground personnel and sal-ary cuts of flight personnel by 25 to 35 percent. The ¤1bn (1.07bn) in cost-cutting measures over

three years had been aimed at helping the airline better com-pete with low-cost carriers that have captured nearly half of the Italian market.

The agreement reached early yesterday trims the number of ground crew to be cut to 980 and caps the salary cut at 8 percent, the ANSA news agency reported. Alitalia employs 12,500 people worldwide. The agreement also calls for new long-range flights to boost revenue, as per the information available.

" A f t e r m o n t h s o f

negotiations, we were able to reach a verbal agreement over-night that reduces the work and economic sacrifices, even though the overall burden will be signif-icant," said Carmello Barbagallo of the UIL union.

Alitalia's Luigi Gubitosi said great progress had been made. After the deal was presented to Alitalia's board yesterday, he said: "We didn't get everything we wanted, but from our point of view we did everything pos-sible and above all we respected the deadline," ANSA reported.

Bucharest

AFP

A fugitive Romanian media mogul and ex-MP, who is wanted

over alleged corruption, fraud and tax evasion, has been arrested in Serbia, Romanian authorities said yesterday.

Sebastian Ghita was detained overnight in the Ser-bian capital Belgrade, Romanian police said in a statement. The 38-year-old had false Slovenian papers and was with his brother when he was caught, the Romanian interior ministry said. Ghita, the head of a pri-vate TV station and a former Social Democrat lawmaker, is embroiled in several crim-inal cases for alleged money-laundering and brib-ery in Romania, one of the European Union's poorest and most corrupt countries.

PM urges Alitalia workers to approve compromise deal

Fugitive Romanian media boss caught in Serbia

Rome court lifts block of Uber services in Italy

08 SATURDAY 15 APRIL 2017VIEWS

E S T A B L I S H E D I N 1 9 9 6

QUOTE OF THE DAY

We call on all parties to refrain from provoking and threatening each other, whether in words or actions, and not let the situation(North Korea tension) get to an irreversible and unmanageable stage.

Wang Yi Chinese Foreign Minister

Listening to his campaign rhetoric, the last thing you would expect Donald Trump to do as president would be to escalate a ground war in the Middle East. He won the Republican nomina-

tion last year by campaigning against both George W Bush’s war in Iraq and Barack Obama’s war in Libya.

But as Trump’s young presidency has shown, many of the candidate’s foreign policy positions are not as firmly held as his support-ers had hoped. It’s not just that Trump struck the Syrian regime after last week’s chemical weapons attack on rebels outside of Damas-cus. It’s not just his recent reversals on Chinese currency manipulation and the Nato alliance. The president’s biggest foreign policy surprise may be yet to come.

Senior White House and administration officials tell me Trump’s National Security Adviser, Gen H R McMaster, has been quietly pressing his colleagues to question the under-lying assumptions of a draft war plan against the Islamic State (IS) that would maintain only a light US ground troop presence in Syria. McMaster’s critics inside the administration say he wants to send tens of thousands of ground troops to the Euphrates River Valley. His supporters insist he is only trying to facili-tate a better interagency process to develop Trump’s new strategy to defeat the self-described caliphate that controls territory in Iraq and Syria.

US special operations forces and some conventional forces have been in Iraq and Syria since 2014, when Obama reversed course and ordered a new air campaign against the Islamic State. But so far, the US presence on the ground has been much smaller and quieter than more traditional military campaigns, par-ticularly for Syria. It’s the difference between boots on the ground and slippers on the ground.

Trump himself has been on different sides of this issue. He promised during his campaign that he would develop a plan to destroy the Islamic State. At times during the campaign he said he favoured sending ground troops to Syria to accomplish this task. More recently, Trump told Fox Business this week that that would not be his approach to fighting the Syr-ian regime: “We’re not going into Syria,” he said.

McMaster himself has found resistance to a more robust ground troop presence in Syria. In two meetings since the end of February of Trump’s national security cabinet, known as the principals’ committee, Trump’s top advis-ers have failed to reach consensus on the Islamic State strategy. The White House and administration officials say Secretary of Defence James Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford and General Joseph Votel, who is in charge of US Central Command, oppose sending more conventional forces into Syria. Meanwhile, White House senior strategist Stephen Bannon has derided McMaster to his colleagues as trying to start a new Iraq War, according to these sources.

Trump said no troops in Syria; aides aren’t sureEli Lake Bloomberg

Because Trump’s national security cabi-net has not reached consensus, the Islamic State war plan is now being debated at the policy coordinating com-mittee, the interagency group hosted at the State Department of subject matter experts that prepares issues for the prin-cipals’ committee and deputies’ committee, after which a question reaches the president’s desk for a decision.

The genesis of this debate starts with one of Trump’s first actions as president, when he told the Pentagon to develop a strategy to defeat the Islamic State. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, opposed sending conven-tional forces into a complicated war zone, where they would be targets of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, Iran and Russia. In Flynn’s brief tenure, he supported a deal with Russia to work together against the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, similar to a bargain Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry’s tried and failed to seal with Moscow.

Inside the Pentagon, military leaders favour a more robust version of Obama’s strategy against the Islamic State. This has been a combination of airstrikes and special operations forces that train and support local forces. Military leaders favour lifting restrictive rules of engage-ment for US special operations forces and using more close air support, like attack helicopters, in future operations against the Islamic State capital in Raqqa.

McMaster, however, is sceptical of this approach. To start, it relies primarily on Syrian Kurdish militias to conquer and hold Arab-majority territory. Jack Keane, a retired four-star Army general who is close to McMaster, acknowledged to me this week that the Kurdish forces have been willing to fight the Islamic

State, whereas Arab militias have primarily fought against the Assad regime.

There are other rea-sons that relying too much on the Kurds in

Syria presents problems. The US Air Force relies on Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base to launch bombing raids over Islamic State positions in Syria. The Turks con-sider the Syrian Kurdish forces to be allies of Kurdish separatists within Tur-key and have complained that Obama was effectively arming militias with weapons that would be turned on their own government.

Keane, who said he was not speaking for McMaster, told me he favoured a plan to begin a military operation along the Euphrates River Valley. “A better option is to start the operation in the southeast along the Euphrates River Valley, estab-lish a US base of operations, work with our Sunni Arab coalition partners, who have made repeated offers to help us against the regime and also ISIS. We have turned those down during the Obama administration.” Keane added that US conventional forces would be the anchor of that initial push, which he said would most likely require around 10,000 US conventional forces, with an expecta-tion that Arab allies in the region would provide more troops to the US-led effort.

“The president wants to defeat ISIS, he wants to win, what he needs is a US-led conventional coalition ground force that can take Raqqa and clean out the Euphrates River Valley of ISIS all the way to the Iraq border,” Keane said. “Hand-wringing about US ground troops in Syria was a fetish of the Obama administra-tion. Time to look honestly at a winning military strategy.”

White House and administration offi-cials familiar with the current debate tell me there is no consensus on how many troops to send to Syria and Iraq. Two sources told me one plan would envision sending up to 50,000 troops. Blogger and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich wrote on April 9 that McMaster wanted 150,000 ground troops for Syria, but US officials I spoke with said that number was wildly inflated and no such plan has been under consideration.

In public, the tightlipped McMaster has not revealed support for conven-tional ground forces in Syria. But on Sunday in an interview with Fox News, McMaster gave some insights into his thinking on the broader strategy against the Islamic State. “We are conducting very effective operations alongside our partners in Syria and in Iraq to defeat ISIS, to destroy ISIS and reestablish con-trol of that territory, control of those populations, protect those populations, allow refugees to come back, begin reconstruction,” he said.

That’s significant. Obama never said the goal of the US intervention in Iraq and Syria was to defeat the Islamic State, let alone to protect the population from the group and begin reconstruction. Those aims are much closer to the goals of George W. Bush’s surge strategy for Iraq at the end of his second term, under which US conventional forces embedded with the Iraqi army would “clear, hold and build” areas that once belonged to al Qaeda’s franchise.

US special operations forces and some conventional forces have been in Iraq and Syria since 2014, when Obama reversed course and ordered a new air campaign against the Islamic State. But so far, the US presence on the ground has been much smaller and quieter than more traditional military campaigns, particularly for Syria. It’s the difference between boots on the ground and slippers on the ground.

E S T A B L I S H E D I N 1 9 9 6

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFI

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

msalim@pen.com.qa

French presidential election race is getting tighter with just eight days to go for voting. It has been a roller-coaster ride for the leading candidates with the latest opinion poll

showing the four leading candidates just three percentage points apart. The campaigns of candidates have all the virulence it requires for an election at this crucial junction when Europe is going through a period of upheaval which has spilled in ample measure into France too. Migration, the future of European Union, economy and Islamophobia continue to be the dominant issues with candidates, ranging from far-right Marine Le Pen to the far-left’s Jean-Luc Melenchon, taking diametrically opposite views.

There are several candidates in the fray, but the world has its eyes focused on Le Pen. This is because of the poisonous agenda she and her National Front have been pushing for years. Her victory, if it hap-pens, will be a blow for France and the image it projects to the outside world. Instead of taking France to progress, or at least sticking to the values the country has been known for, Le Pen would take her country down a dark alley, a country where xen-ophobia, Islamophobia and hatred of minorities will be normal. Le Pen stands for subverting the current system. She is also anti-European Union and anti-globalisation, and her recent statement that France was not responsible for rounding up Jews during

World War II to be sent to German concentra-tion camps triggered a controversy. Like Don-ald Trump’s America First policy, Le Pen wants to make the French “to be proud to be French again” though that pride is going to be built by trampling on the rights of others.

According to a poll by Ipsos-SopraSteria, centrist Emmanuel

Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen were tied on 22 percent each, with the far-left’s Jean-Luc Melenchon and conservative Francois Fillon on 20 and 19 percent respectively.

The two top scorers in the first round on April 23 will go through to contest a run-off on May 7. And according to the opinion poll, Macron is likely to win that face-off

with 63 percent of votes.The world will expect the French to reject Le Pen

in the same way as the Dutch rejected the far-right leader Geert Wilders recently. Even if she doesn’t get elected, she and her party have spewed enough venom into French politics and they have been dom-inating the political discourse for a long time now. But it is heartening that her popularity has been dwindling in the past few weeks due to a number of factors, including a lackluster performance in televi-sion debates.

Shun populism

The French must reject Le Pen in the same way as the Dutch rejected Geert Wilders recently.

ED ITOR IAL

09SATURDAY 15 APRIL 2017 OPINION

countries have contacts of one form or another with this organisation,” the Russian leader told Mir televi-sion, according the Kremlin.

He said Russia wanted to develop relations with “all” forces in Afghanistan based on three principles: the recognition of Afghanistan’s constitution, disar-mament, and reaching full national accord.

“Our view is that by assisting Afghanistan’s legit-imate government, together with other participants in the settlement process, we will eventually achieve reconciliation there,” he said.

According to Indian experts, the Moscow confer-ence was very important for India, which shares a close relationship with Afghanistan.

Defence analyst Krishna Jha said India supports “every effort to stabilise situation in Afghanistan and fight against terrorism.

“The Indian government has invested heavily in Afghanistan, so they are hoping that the situation improves and all stakeholders come to the table for peace talks.”

India often accuses Pakistan of supporting the Afghan Taliban for its own interests, while Pakistan accuses India of using proxies in Afghanistan to desta-bilse Islamabad.

Tahir Khan, an Islamabad-based expert, said the Moscow-led peace initiative was unlikely to yield

Russia and Nato: Drama redux

Call it Cold War 2.0 or any other name, it is beyond doubt that Russia and the West are at a lowest point in their relationship since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The reset of ties that President Donald Trump promised to usher in is over before it even started, cut short by the scandal over Russian inter-ference in the US elections and the US strikes against Bashar Al Assad’s regime in Syria. After insisting that US support for Nato is conditional on allies paying in their fair share, Trump is now reassuring everyone that the commitment is “ironclad”.

Michael Flynn is long gone and Russia sceptics such as Defence Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H R McMaster set the tune. But can this low point in relations actually lead to a direct conflict between Russia and Nato?

The war in Eastern Ukraine goes on under reported and Vladimir Putin ratchets up his rhetoric. In a statement on 12 April, he pledged to fight back “colour revolutions” in any of the post-Soviet coun-tries within the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyr-gyzstan, and Tajikistan. As ever, Russia is ready to cut deals with the West outside its “near abroad” but insists that the latter should stay off limits. The vex-ing issue is where the line is drawn separating the Russian from the Western spheres of influence. The three Baltic states fear that they, too, could fall prey to Russian aggression. The traumatic memories of their annexation in 1940 by the Soviets have left a deep imprint. Justifiably or not, the presence of Rus-sian-speaking communities makes the Crimean precedent painfully relevant to Estonia and Latvia.

It is hardly surprising that those nations have cheered NATO’s decision to upgrade its role, switch-ing from “reassurance” to “enhanced forward presence”, to use the alliance’s lingo. Not only has Nato developed contingency plans on how to coun-teract a putative Russian invasion but also resolved to send in battalion-size battle groups in each of the three Baltic countries, as well as Poland.

The deployment of the 4,000-strong contingent with contributions from 16 member states should be done by next month, with Germany in charge of the force in Lithuania, Canada in Latvia, the United King-dom in Estonia and the United States in Poland.

In parallel, Nato’s Warsaw Summit (July 2016) gave a green light to a “multinational framework

brigade” in Romania, which is essentially a platform for reinforced cooperation with Poland, Bulgaria, Turkey, Canada, US, the Netherlands and Germany.

What Nato is after is not necessarily matching Russia’s military capabilities along a vast territorial stretch from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In the north, the Atlantic Alliance will need a three-times greater force to repeal a direct attack. Russia has further-more turned Crimea into a fortress, to use Putin’s own words. The build-up of naval forces and coastal defences along with the deployment of strategic bombers and advanced anti-aircraft missiles consol-idated Russian supremacy in the Black Sea.

However, Nato is setting tripwires and signalling to Putin that it will stand its ground and escalate in the event that Russia crosses the line.

Rightly, many security experts are troubled that the standoff can get out of hand. Russia has responded to Western build-up by incursions in Nato airspace, harassing US and allied ships and aircraft in both the Baltic and the Black Sea, kidnapping an Estonian border guard, launching snap exercises rehearsing invasion or even a nuclear strike in the Baltic, and deploying nuclear-capable Iskander mis-siles in the Kaliningrad enclave tucked between Lithuania and Poland. Russia has issued blunt threats against Finland and Sweden in case they abandon neutrality in favour of joining Nato. It is pressuring Belarus to establish an airbase on its soil. Under a nightmare scenario, a minor incident - such as civil unrest by Russians in an Estonian border

town - might escalate into an Eastern Ukraine-like insurgency and, heaven forbid, pit Nato against Mos-cow into a direct military clash.

Not to be easily dismissed, these fears are in all likelihood overblown. As Mark Galeotti of the Insti-tute of International Relations Prague noted, “Putin’s calculation appears to be that the scarier he seems, the more political traction he has”.

The confrontation with Nato wins points inside Rus-sia where a majority sees the alliance as a threat. But Putin is not in a position to bully Nato in Eastern Europe or indeed haggle with the West using the standoff as a bargaining chip. The attention of the US and other major players in Nato is focused on Russia’s moves in Syria. In their assessment, they have done enough to reassure the Eastern Europeans through enhanced forward presence as well as the enlargement to Montenegro.

Russia is talking again to the Atlantic Alliance, after ties were frozen in March 2014. Last month, the Rus-sian chief of staff General Valery Gerasimov was on the phone with General Petr Pavel who heads Nato’s Mili-tary Committee. There is a mechanism in place to avoid unwanted crises spiralling out of control. Russia will continue probing Nato to expose the weak spots and the cracks in its defences. But one should not forget that it faces its own constraints. The economic crisis beset-ting Russia has already resulted in cuts of its defence spending. The ambitious modernisation programme of its arms forces is bound to slow down. Moscow is already overstretched in Eastern Ukraine and Syria.

Last but not least, 2018 will be an election year for

Kabul appears to have softened its stance on Russia’s alleged support for the Taliban as Mos-cow successfully held an international conference on

Afghanistan yesterday.The Russian Foreign Ministry said the

meeting involved senior diplomats from Afghanistan, China India, Iran, Pakistan and ex-Soviet Central Asian nations.

Afghanistan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil said the government was con-vinced that the 16-year conflict cannot be resolved militarily.

The Foreign Ministry added that Afghan-istan and Russia had developed amicable relations and effective cooperation on com-bating terrorism and drug smuggling.

“Relations will not get affected by the propaganda launched by some individuals through the free press and media because the diplomatic organ is the main and prin-cipal entity of the Afghan government,” the ministry said in a statement released Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would help Afghanistan get on track towards peacefully resolving its internal problems and development.

However, he described the terror threat emanating from Afghanistan as “very serious”.

“As far as the Taliban is concerned, many

Afghanistan draws closer to Russia

Soldiers attend welcoming ceremony for US-led Nato troops at polygon in Poland, yesterday.

immediate fruit due to the absence of the US, which holds the key to the Afghan situation.

However, he said, the Russian summit, supported by most concerned parties, including Kabul, was a way toward a regional solution to the post-9/11 war.

“America has refused to attend the conference because it appears to be confused over Russia’s initiative,” Khan said. “If Washington attended the conference that would mean it rec-ognised Moscow’s diplomatic supremacy.”

He added that Washington cannot afford to stay away from the process for long as its strategy to date has failed to bring peace to Afghanistan.

“Sooner or later, it will have to join the process,” Khan said. US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Thurs-

day that Washington would not be represented at the conference because “it was unclear to us what the purpose was.”

“It seemed to be a unilateral Russian attempt to assert influ-ence in the region that we felt wasn’t constructive at this time,” Toner said.

The spokesman added that the Taliban has “no viable alter-native but to enter into direct talks” to achieve its goals.

“Going forward we do plan to work with Russia and other key regional stakeholders to enhance dialogue on Afghanistan,” Toner said.

US non-participation is not necessarily a bad omen for Wash-ington-Moscow ties in the Middle East or US engagement in Afghanistan specifically, according to Richard Weitz, director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the DC-based Hudson Institute.

“So far, the Trump administration has supported the Astana talks on Syria and seems open to Russian peace efforts as long as there is no Russian military support for the Taliban,” Weitz said.

As for the Russian initiative’s chance of success with the US absent from the table, Weitz said: “It is very hard whether or not the US is involved in the peace process, given the differ-ences between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

“China, Iran, Pakistan, and India will also press to have their interests respected,” he added.

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Putin who will certainly win but will struggle hard to demonstrate that popular enthusiasm for his leadership has not waned. Russia comes into the spotlight when it throws its weight around in international politics but, in truth, the important story is what goes on domestically in Russian society.

Shadi KhanAnatolia

Dimitar Bechev Al Jazeera

Nato is setting tripwires and signalling to Putin that it will stand its ground and escalate in the event that Russia crosses the line.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would help Afghanistan get on track towards peacefully resolving its internal problems and development.

10 SATURDAY 15 APRIL 2017AMERICAS

Washington

AFP

Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo branded WikiLeaks a "hostile intelligence service,"

saying it threatens democratic nations and joins hands with dictators.

In his first public remarks since becoming chief of the US spy agency in February, Pom-peo focused on the anti-secrecy group and other leakers of clas-sified information like Edward Snowden as one of the key threats facing the United States.

"WikiLeaks walks like a hos-tile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence serv-ice. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence... And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking sup-port from anti-democratic countries and organizations," said Pompeo.

"It is time to call out WikiLe-aks for what it really is -- a

non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia." Pompeo compared WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange to leak-ers of the pre-internet days like former CIA official Philip Agee.

Agee's exposing the identi-ties of undercover CIA agents was blamed for the assassina-tion of the agency's Athens station chief in 1974.

On Wednesday, Assange published an opinion piece in the Washington Post in which he said his group's mission was the same as America's most respected newspapers: "to pub-lish newsworthy content."

"WikiLeaks's sole interest is expressing constitutionally pro-tected truths," he said, professing "overwhelming admiration for both America and the idea of America."

While it has released secret materials from around the world, WikiLeaks's notoriety comes from its US-related scoops. In 2010 it published 251,000 classified cables from US embassies around the world.

Last year it published files and communications from the Democratic Party, damaging presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign. US intelli-gence says that release was part of a Russian plot to aid eventual election victor Donald Trump.

The FBI and other US agen-cies are in fact investigating

alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The Guardian newspaper in Britain reported Thursday that British intelligence played a crit-ical role in alerting the US government to contacts between members of Trump's campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives.

WikiLeaks is hostile intelligence service: CIA

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Mike Pompeo speaks at The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, yesterday.

BRASILIA: Brazilian President Michel Temer has agreed to make further changes to a landmark pension reform amid fears that a corruption investigation into dozens of politicians could paralyze Congress, a senior lawmaker said.

The draft proposal will likely reduce the number of years of work required to retire with full benefits to 40 from the original amendment of 49 years, said congressman Carlos Marun, who leads the pension reform commission in the lower house.

Another major alteration sets a minimum retirement age of 50 for women and 55 for men, which would gradually increase to reach 65. The change means a softer transition for Brazilians who are closer to retirement age.

The changes could reduce the savings the government expected with the reform to cut some of the world’s most generous pen-sion benefits.

CHICAGO: The man dragged off a United Airlines flight, sparking an international uproar, suffered a broken nose and concussion, his lawyer said, adding that he is planning to sue.

David Dao was released from the hospital overnight and was at a "secure location," attorney Thomas Demetrio said at a news conference during which a member of Dao's family spoke out for the first time. United remained under a spotlight Thursday as rep-resentatives of the carrier faced tough questioning at a city council hearing in Chicago, where the airline is headquartered and where the incident occurred.

Mexico City Reuters

Mexico’s government said it plans to extra-dite the man accused

of pulling the trigger in the 2010 killing of a US Border Patrol agent in a case tied to the US government’s ill-fated “Fast and Furious” gun-run-ning sting.

Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes was arrested on Wednesday on the border of the northern Mexican states of Sinaloa and Chihuahua for the shooting of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, according to the US Marshal for Arizona.

Identifying the suspect only as Heraclio “N”, the Mex-ican attorney general’s office said in a statement that fol-lowing his capture by Mexican marines, steps were underway to initiate the proc-ess of his extradition to the United States.

The suspect is due to be tried in the US District Court for the District of Arizona for crimes including homicide, conspiracy and drug traffick-ing, the office added.

Osorio-Arellanes is the fifth drug cartel figure sought by US authorities for the kill-ing to be apprehended.

Terry’s cousin Robert Heyer said the slain agent’s family was “very grateful” to law enforcement authorities on both sides of the border for the detention. “With the arrest of Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes only one other suspect remains at large. ,” he said.

ATLANTA: Four people were shot at an Atlanta rail station and a suspect was in custody, the city’s transit authority said. The shoot-ing took place at the West Lake Station at about 4:30pm EDT, and emergency responders are at the scene, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) said in a statement. The con-dition of the victims was unknown, it said. “A suspect has been detained and the investigation is ongoing,” the statement said, adding that the West Lake Station, on Atlanta’s west side, has been temporarily closed.

Washington

AFP

US President Donald Trump (pictured) vowed that the "problem" of North Korea "will be taken care of," as speculation mounted that

Pyongyang might be preparing another nuclear or missile test.

"North Korea is a problem, the prob-lem will be taken care of," Trump told reporters.

Separately on Twitter he expressed confidence China, Pyongyang's sole ally, would "properly deal with North Korea."

But, "if they are unable to do so, the US, with its allies, will! USA." The omi-nous comments came the same day Trump ordered the dropping of

the biggest non-nuclear bomb the US military possesses on Afghanistan, tar-geting a complex used by the Islamic State group. A US aircraft carrier and its naval strike group has been diverted to

the Korean peninsula. Trump also flexed his military muscle last week by order-ing cruise missile strikes on a Syrian airbase the US believed was the origin of an alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians in a northern Syria town.

There are reports of activity at a nuclear test site in North Korea ahead of Saturday's 105th anniversary of the birth of the country's founder Kim Il-Sung.

A US monitoring group, 38North, has described the Punggye-ri test site as "primed and ready." The Voice of Amer-ica, quoting US government and other sources, said North Korea "has appar-ently placed a nuclear device in a tunnel and it could be detonated Saturday AM Korea time."

Trump has repeatedly said he will

prevent Pyongyang from developing a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.

He has asked his advisers to give him all options for dealing with the nuclear-armed North. The US president has also said he would not signal his punches before embarking on any military action abroad. Asked on Thursday whether the bomb dropped in Afghanistan -- a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb better known by its nickname, the "Mother Of All Bombs" -- was a warn-ing to Pyongyang, Trump demurred.

"I don't know if this sends a message to North Korea," he said. "It doesn't make any difference if it does or not." The North is under multiple sets of United Nations sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

North Korea will be taken care of: Trump

Man dragged off flight plans to sue

Caracas

AFP

Venezuelan authorities said yesterday they arrested two opposition youth

leaders, the latest move in a crackdown on anti-government protests that have left five dead.

Jose Sanchez and Alejandro Sanchez were arrested "for organizing terrorist acts and assaults against the peace of the country," Interior Minister Nes-tor Reverol wrote on Twitter.

The two are youth leaders of the Justice First party, one of the main groups in the center-right opposition coalition pushing for President Nicolas Maduro to be removed from office.

Venezuelan authorities drew international criticism last week for banning the party's most prominent figure, Henrique Capriles, from public office for

15 years. Reverol said the two detainees "confessed taking part in this week's violence."

Five people, including a 13-year-old boy have been killed since April 6 in clashes with riot police during a wave of protests against Maduro. Jus-tice First rejected Reverol's allegations. It wrote on its Twit-ter account that the two youth leaders were "abducted" by mil-itary intelligence forces.

"Nestor Reverol, the real ter-rorism is the one you are leading by repressing the people," it wrote. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse pro-testers in Caracas in the latest eruption of unrest on Thursday, AFP reporters saw. Maduro is fighting off efforts to oust him as Venezuela, once a booming oil-exporting nation, struggles with shortages of food and medicine.

The next major organized

rallies called by opposition lead-ers are set for Wednesday next week. That is expected to be the next big showdown in an increasingly fraught crisis that has raised international con-cerns for Venezuela's stability.

The opposition is demand-ing the authorities set a date for postponed regional elections.

It is also furious over moves to limit the powers of the legis-lature and ban Capriles from politics. Those moves have raised international condemna-tion including from the United States and the European Union.

Maduro has resisted oppo-sition efforts to hold a vote on removing him, vowing to con-tinue the "socialist revolution" launched by his late predeces-sor Hugo Chavez.

Maduro says the economic crisis is the result of what he calls a US-backed capitalist conspiracy.

Venezuela arrests two oppn leadersVenezuelan National Guard personnel and opposition activists clash in Caracas, yesterday.

Temer agrees to pension bill changes

Four shot at Atlanta rail station

GUATEMALA CITY: Guatemala authorities grappled with new violence in one of its juvenile detention centres on Thursday, a month after a blaze in a children's shelter killed 41 girls and shook the government. Gang members held in a facility on the capital's southern outskirts rebelled, wounding guards in a protest over the lack of conjugal visits and stoves, police and the social wel-fare in charge said. After negotiations, one guard taken hostage was released and taken to hospital with serious knife wounds to his torso, head and hand. While the Las Gaviotas detention center was designed to hold 500 juveniles, most of the 42 gang members involved were aged over 18 -- typical in such facilities in Guate-mala as young detainees reach adulthood behind bars.

Mexico govt to extradite accused gunman to US

Guatemala rocked by new riot

WASHINGTON: The US Air Force will this weekend deploy a small number of F-35A fighter jets to Europe for several weeks of train-ing with other US and NATO military aircraft, the Pentagon said yesterday.

The deployment would allow the US Air Force to “further dem-onstrate the operational capabilities” of the stealthy fighter jet. It did not name the countries where the aircraft would be deployed to.

The F-35, which is the Pentagon’s costliest arms program, has been dogged by problems.

US will send F-35 fighters to Europe

QUITO: Ecuador’s electoral council late Thursday night approved a partial recount of votes in the recent disputed presidential elec-tion, in a bid to highlight what it says was a fair process after the losing conservative candidate said there was fraud.

The April 2 election was won by the government’s socialist candidate Lenin Moreno in a close contest, rebutting a tide of mar-ket-friendly governments that have recently come to power in South America.

The recount of the equivalent of 1.2 million votes, which would account for 12 percent of the total votes cast, will take place on Tuesday in public in the capital Quito. The council has not dis-closed what sort of ballots would be recounted.

Ecuador to partially recount votes

Nuclear threat

Separately on Twitter Trump expressed confidence China, Pyongyang's sole ally, would "properly deal with North Korea."

A US aircraft carrier and its naval strike group has been diverted to the Korean peninsula.

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CROSSWORD

CONCEPTIS SUDOKU

Yesterday's answer

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The Great Father (Malayalam) 1:00, 4:00, 4:30, 7:00 & 10:00pmTake Off (Malayalam) 1:30, 4:30, 6:30pmKadamban (Tamil) 1:30 & 7:30pm Shivalinga 12:30, 3:00 & 9:30pm

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20 SATURDAY 15 APRIL 2017MORNING BREAK

Los Angeles

AFP

Disney premiered the highly-anticipated first trailer for "Star Wars:

The Last Jedi" at a fan event in Florida on Friday, sending the internet into a frenzy of excitement.

The footage was shown at the "Star Wars Celebration" gathering in Orlando, Florida, during a panel on the eighth installment in the blockbuster space opera, due for release on December 15.

The 132-second clip teases Luke Skywalker's first meet-ing with Rey, as he teaches her the ways of the Force, open-ing with the young apprentice played by Daisy Ridley on the island where fans saw her encounter Luke at the end of "The Force Awakens."

"Breathe, just breathe.

Now, reach out. What do you see?" says a mysterious male voice.

"Light. Darkness. And bal-ance," Rey replies.

"It's so much bigger," the voice says.

"I only know one truth. It's time for the Jedi -- to end," says the voice, which seems likely to be Luke.

Although Disney has been teasing snippets of footage, it is the first fully-formed trailer for "The Last Jedi" and it had more than 400,000 views within half an hour of being posted online, with #The-LastJedi quickly becoming the top trending hashtag world-wide on Twitter.

Directed by Rian Johnson ("Looper," "Brick"), "The Last Jedi" sees the return of the new characters introduced in 2015's seventh installment including Rey, Poe Dameron

(Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega) and a few members of the original crew, including Luke (Mark Hamill).

The Florida panel unveiled

a new star, Kelly Marie Tran, who plays Rose, a mainte-nance worker who is part of the resistance. "I can't wait for you to meet her," Tran said.

The film also stars Carrie Fisher as Leia. Fisher died in December but had wrapped shooting "The Last Jedi" before her death.

Indio

AFP

When Koen Van Der Wardt was 14, his parents moved with him from their native Neth-

erlands to rural Norway, longing for nature. His musical awakening was an unintended consequence.

As the frontman and principal songwriter of the band Klangstof, Van Der Wardt conjures up the

dark atmospherics of rural Norway in guitar rock that breaks free from tra-ditional song structure. He was kicking off Coachella on Friday, becoming the first Dutch act to play the leading music festival that takes place in the desert of southern California. Now 24, Van Der Wardt recalls growing up in The Netherlands listening to electronic dance music like other Dutch preteens.

In Norway, he said, he spent his first

year engrossed in only one album -- Radiohead's "OK Computer," the English rockers' seminal 1997 transformation into digital experimentation.

He first picked up a guitar in Nor-way simply out of boredom. But he gradually came to appreciate his par-ents' decision to move. "It was very inspirational to have no pressure from the outside world that you usually have when you live in a city or live in a country with a lot of people," Van Der

Wardt told AFP before a pre-Coachella rehearsal at a Los Angeles studio. "Nor-way just makes you feel that you don't have to care about anything around you," he said, "because there isn't much around other than beautiful nature."

Although the music bears the clear influence of Radiohead, Van Der Wardt's high-pitched, melody-resistant vocals and Klangstof's Nordic sensibility also bring to mind the Icelandic post-rock-ers Sigur Ros.

Disney drops first trailer for 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'

Star Wars products are lined up at the annual Star Wars Celebration where Walt Disney Co licensees are selling a new Luke Skywalker action figure, limited-edition Stormtrooper helmets and other coveted merchandise, in Orlando, Florida, US, yesterday.

From Netherlands to Norway, Klangstof on dark rock journey

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