I N T E R N AT I O N A LTUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2014

BEIRUT: Extremist Islamic rebelswho overran a village in centralSyria populated by the Alawiteminority have killed at least 40 peo-ple, activists said yesterday. Half ofthe victims in Sunday’s attack werecivilians, including women, whilethe other half were village fightersdefending their homes in Maan inthe province of Hama, said theBritish-based Syrian Observatoryfor Human Rights.

Syrian state media described theattack as a “massacre” perpetratedby terrorists, a term the govern-ment uses to describe rebels fight-ing to topple President BasharAssad. Extremist Sunni Is lamicfighters have come to dominate thearmed uprising against Assad, whois a member of the Alawite sect, anoffshoot of Shiite Islam. The raid on

Maan is likely to bolster efforts bythe government delegation to con-vey their narrative at the Genevapeace talks that the three -yearupris ing to over throw Assad isdominated by Al-Qaeda extremists.The extremists see Alawites asapostates who should be killed.

Meanwhile, Syria’s warring sideslaunched a new round of peacetalks yesterday, as an agreementfrom the first round last month wasbeing implemented with aid con-voys evacuating the besieged cityof Homs. The UN and Arab Leaguemediator, veteran Algerian diplo-mat Lakhdar Brahimi, began the lat-

est session in Geneva by shuttlingbetween the government andopposition teams.

It was not clear when or if thetwo sides would sit down for thesort of mediated face-to-face nego-tiations they held for a week inJanuary. Brahimi hopes to capitalizeon the Homs agreement to findsome way of closing the vast divideseparating representatives fromPresident Bashar Al-Assad’s regimeand the fractured opposition. Therewas little optimism that the tonewould be more constructive thistime. Both sides have shown them-selves to be obstinate and quick toengage in blaming the other side.

This t ime, Brahimi wants tonudge the teams towards discus-sion of the core issues: stoppingfighting and agreeing a transitional

government in Damascus. The ini-tial round late last month was thefirst time the Syrian governmentand opposition sat down face-to-face since the outbreak of theirvicious war nearly three years ago.More than 136,000 people havebeen k il led and mill ions drivenfrom their homes. The governmentside is again headed by SyrianForeign Minister Walid Muallemwhile the opposition negotiatorswere headed by Hadi Al-Bahra.

Syrian state daily Al-Watan saidits sources expected “no progress”,after the first round “failed... due tothe stubbornness of the coalition’s

delegation.” A source in the opposi-tion delegation said it planned tosubmit a report about the Assadregime’s “violence, crimes againsthumanity and state terrorism”. Thereport claims among other thingsthat the regime, especially throughits campaign of “barrel bombs”-can-isters of high explosive dropped byaircraft-has killed more than 1,800people since the beginning of thefirst round of talks in Switzerlandon January 22.

Push to end warThe so-called Geneva II talks-

spurred by the United States, whichbacks the opposition, and Russia, akey ally of Syria-mark the biggestinternational push so far to end thewar. The aim is to build on an inter-national conference held in Genevain 2012 which did not include boththe warring parties but ended upwith world powers calling for politi-cal transition in Syria. That issue ishighly contentious in the Geneva IItalks. While the opposition sees atransit ional governing body asexcluding any role for Assad, theSyrian government insists that thepresident ’s future is not up fornegotiation.

The regime delegation insteadmaintains that the negotiationsmust be about stopping the vio-lence and “terrorism”-its term forthe revolt, which it says has beenfuelled by foreign jihadists and Gulfmoney. The opposition, in turn,wants discussions to addressregime actions such as starving outopposit ion-held areas, rainingexplosives-packed “barrel bombs”from helicopters, and deployingfighters from Hezbollah, theIranian-backed Lebanese Shiitemilitia.

“Fighting terrorism for the Syrianpeople (means fighting) the terror-ism of the regime who resorts towarplanes, rockets and barrelbombs,” National Coalition secre-tary general Badr Jamous said in astatement yesterday. The ceasefirepermitting the Homs operationproved fragile on Saturday, whenthe first aid convoy coming underattack and mortar shells rainingdown on a rebel-held district onSunday, k il l ing five people. RedCrescent teams on Sunday man-aged never theless to evacuatesome 600 people. — Agencies

Rebel attack on Syrian Alawite village kills 40

Syria’s warring parties kick off new round of talks

VIENNA: The UN nuclear watchdogsignaled its determination yesterdayto get to the bottom of suspicionsthat I ran may have worked ondesigning an atomic bomb, a dayafter Tehran agreed to start address-ing the sensitive issue. Chief UNnuclear inspector Tero Varjoranta saidprogress had been good during Feb8-9 talks in Tehran but that muchwork remained in clarifying concernsof possible military links to Iran’snuclear program, in an investigationwhich Western diplomats say Tehranhas stonewalled for years.

“There are still a lot of outstandingissues,” Varjoranta, deputy directorgeneral of the International AtomicEnergy Agency (IAEA), said at Viennaairpor t after returning from theIranian capital. “We will address themall in due course.” Iran denies Westernallegations it seeks the capability tomake nuclear weapons, saying suchclaims are baseless and forged by itsfoes. Years of hostile rhetoric andconfrontation have raised fears of anew war in the Middle East. But adiplomatic push to resolve thedecade -old dispute gained newmomentum after last June’s election

of a relative moderate, HassanRouhani, as Iran’s president on a plat-form to ease its international isola-tion.

Iran and six powers agreed latelast year on an interim deal to curbTehran’s nuclear work in exchange forsome easing of sanctions that havebattered the oil producer’s economyand they will next week start talks ona long-term agreement. The IAEAinvestigation into what it calls thepossible military dimensions (PMD)to Iran’s nuclear activity is separatefrom, but closely linked to, widerdiplomacy between Tehran and theUnited States, France, Germany,Britain, Russia and China.

The IAEA investigation is focusedon the question of whether I ransought atomic bomb technology inthe past and, if it did, to determinewhether such work has sincestopped. Diplomats say the way theIran-IAEA talks progresses will beimportant also for the outcome ofthe big powers’ diplomacy, which theWest hopes will lead to a settlementdenying Iran the capability to make anuclear weapon any time soon.“Continued progress on resolving

PMD issues will go a long way todemonstrate to the internationalcommunity that Iran is not pursuingnuclear weapons and is willing tocome clean about its past activities,”Kelsey Davenpor t of the ArmsControl Association, a US researchand advocacy group, said.

IAEA probe will ‘take time’ The IAEA said on Sunday that Iran

had agreed to take seven new practi-cal measures within three monthsunder a November transparency dealwith the IAEA meant to help allayconcern about the nuclear program.For the first time, one of them specifi-cally dealt with an issue that is partof the UN nuclear agency’s inquiryinto suspected atomic bombresearch by Iran, which has repeated-ly denied any such ambitions.

The IAEA said Iran would provide“information and explanations forthe agency to assess Iran’s statedneed or application for the develop-ment of Exploding Bridge Wire deto-nators”. Although such fast-function-ing detonators have some non-nuclear uses, they can also help setoff an atomic device. — Reuters

UN nuclear agency sees

good progress with Iran

Ntaganda: Congo’s rebel ‘Terminator’THE HAGUE: A Congolese militia leaderwidely known as “the Terminator”ordered troops, including child soldiers,to massacre and rape civilians to spreadterror and grab territory, prosecutors toldthe International Criminal Court yester-day. The allegations against BoscoNtaganda were made at the opening ofhearings seen as a test for the globallegal institution after a string of troubledcases. Ntaganda has yet to enter a plea.“He played a key role in planning assaultsagainst the civilian population in order togain territory,” said Chief ProsecutorFatou Bensouda, setting out her argu-ments to judges who will decide if thereis enough evidence for Ntaganda tostand trial.

Ntaganda was a senior military com-mander who should also be punishedbecause he “failed to prevent or punishcrimes by troops under his effective com-mand or control,” she said. Ntaganda, anethnic Hema, is accused of crimesagainst humanity and war crimes includ-ing murder and rape, all allegedly com-mitted during a 2002-03 conflict in themineral-rich east of the DemocraticRepublic of Congo. The crimes were com-mitted against the Lendu population andother ethnic groups in a bid to drivethem out of the Ituri region over 12months from September 2002, said theprosecutor.

Ntaganda, a tall, slight man with apencil-line moustache, rose briefly at thestart of the hearing, speaking in hisnative Kinyarwanda tongue to confirm

his identity. Ntaganda handed himself into the US embassy in the Rwandan capi-tal Kigali last March after a 15-year careeras a commander in a series of rebellionsin Congo’s Ituri province. Shortly after hisarrival in The Hague, prosecutors askedjudges for more time to rebuild a casewhich had been dormant for five yearswhile Ntaganda was on the run.

The session will be a test of prosecu-tor Bensouda’s promise last year that cas-es will be “trial ready” by the time theycome to court - an implicit response tocriticisms by academics and memberstates of earlier cases which collapsedwhen judges ruled evidence was notstrong enough. The court, 11 years oldthis year, has handed down just one con-

viction - jailing another Congolese war-lord, Thomas Lubanga, for 14 years in2012 for using child soldiers.

“The court is struggling, and the pros-ecutor, with her new strategy, has beentrying to turn something around,” saidBill Schabas, professor of internationallaw at England’s Middlesex University.“The new strategy was a good sign,showing there was a sense of dissatisfac-tion with how things were going,” headded. Judges are due to decide over thenext few weeks whether to suspend theirmost high profile current case - againstKenya’s president on charges of orches-trating violence following 2007 elections- after prosecutors said several witnesseshad withdrawn. —Reuters

An image grab taken from a video uploaded to YouTube shows a group ofnuns from the historic Christian-majority town of Maalula, speaking to thecamera from an undisclosed location. The women are reportedly 12 nunsfrom a Greek Orthodox convent of Mar Takla in Maalula who were taken bygunmen in early December. — AFP

BUJUMBURA: The bodies of the people who perished in flooding and landslides in Bujumbura are laid on theground before being transported to morgues. — AFP

51 die in Burundi

flooding disasterBUJUMBURA: At least 51 people per-ished in flooding and landslides in anight of torrential rain in the Burundicapital that swept away hundreds ofhomes and cut off roads and power,officials said yesterday. Police inBujumbura said the toll was the high-est in living memory from a disastercaused by freak weather, with morethan 100 people also injured. “Therain that fell in torrents overnight onthe capital caused a disaster,” SecurityMinister Gabriel Nizigama toldreporters. “We have already found thebodies of 51 people killed when theirhouses collapsed or were sweptaway.”

Nizigama said burials of the vic-tims would begin on Mondaybecause there was not enough spacefor their bodies in the capital’s mortu-aries. He was speaking at a police sta-tion in the northern part ofBujumbura, the area hardest hit bythe landslides and flooding after therains began lashing the capital lateSunday. An AFP journalist saw 27bodies covered in white sheeting atthe police station. Police said severalhundred homes were destroyed andmore than 100 people injured inBujumbura, which lies on the north-eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika.Houses in the poorer parts of town

are often built from mud bricks,which offer no resistance to torrentsof water and mud.

Nizigama, touring the disasterzone with other ministers, promisedfood aid to those who lost theirhomes and said the governmentwould bear the cost of burying rela-tives and would provide new hous-ing. Torrential rain fell solidly for 10hours overnight, causing power cutsin whole areas of the city. The roadleading out of the capital to neigh-boring Rwanda was blocked becauseof a landslide while a bridge waswashed away on the road to theDemocratic Republic of Congo.—AFP

Bosco Ntaganda