BRUSSELS: Iran has agreed to resume talks next month with world powers over its nuclear deal, the country’s deputy foreign minister said Wednesday, after talks with EU mediators in Brussels.
The other participants in the talks — which included indirect negotiations between the United States and Iran — still need to confirm the return to the table.
“We agree to start negotiations before the end of November. Exact date would be announced in the course of the next week,” Ali Bagheri, who also serves as Tehran’s chief negotiator, wrote on Twitter.
The EU and world powers have been scrambling to try to get negotiations in Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 accord back on track after the election of a hard-liner in Tehran.
The agreement between Iran and world powers to find a long-term solution to the crisis over its controversial nuclear program has been moribund since former US president Donald Trump walked out of the deal in May 2018 and imposed sweeping sanctions.
His successor Joe Biden has said he is ready to re-enter the agreement, so long as Iran meets key preconditions including full compliance with the deal whose terms it has repeatedly violated by ramping up nuclear activities since the US left the pact.
But the Vienna-based talks through intermediaries made little headway, before being interrupted by the election of Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s president and suspended for the last four months.
The US point man on Iran, Rob Malley, on Monday renewed a warning that the United States had “other options” if Iran’s nuclear work advances although he said the Biden administration preferred diplomacy.
The EU acts as coordinator for the deal that also involves Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia.
Iran says agrees to restart nuclear deal talks in Nov
https://arab.news/wemuj
Iran says agrees to restart nuclear deal talks in Nov
- The other participants in the talks still need to confirm the return to the table
- "We agree to start negotiations before the end of November. Exact date would be announced in the course of the next week," Tehran's chief negotiator wrote on Twitter
Rescue teams empty 1,500 tons of oil from Russian tanker
Two Russian ships, the Volgoneft-239 and the Volgoneft-212, were badly damaged in stormy weather in December
MOSCOW: Rescue workers have successfully removed almost 1,500 tons of oil left onboard a tanker that ran aground last year in southern Russia, officials said Saturday.
The mishap resulted in a devastating oil spill that damaged miles (kilometers) of coastline along the Black Sea.
Two Russian ships, the Volgoneft-239 and the Volgoneft-212, were badly damaged in stormy weather in December resulting in thousands of tons of low-grade fuel oil called mazut spilling into the Kerch Strait.
A crew from Russia’s Marine Rescue Service siphoned away the remaining 1,488 tons of oil left in the grounded Volgoneft-239 in a six-day operation, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Savelyev said Saturday in a post on the Russian government’s official Telegram channel.
Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov announced that the damaged tanker would be drained earlier this month but workers found it was continuing to leak oil into the water.
The Volgoneft-239 will now be cleaned and prepared for being dismantled, Savelyev said. The fate of the second tanker, the Volgoneft-212, remains undecided after the boat sank beneath the waves.
So far, oil from the spill has washed up along beaches in Russia’s Krasnodar region, as well as in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions of Crimea and the Berdyansk Spit, some 145 kilometers (90 miles) north of the Kerch Strait. President Vladimir Putin earlier in January called the spill “one of the most serious environmental challenges we have faced in recent years.”
Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said Saturday that more than 173,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil have so far been collected by the weekslong cleanup effort, with thousands of volunteers joining the operation.
Rescue workers have successfully removed almost 1,500 tons of oil left onboard a tanker that ran aground last year in southern Russia, officials said Saturday. (AP/File)
Zelensky expresses hopes US, Europe will be involved in Ukraine peace talks
- Zelensky said Ukraine also needed to be involved in any talks about ending the war
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hopes Europe and the United States will be involved in any talks about ending his country’s war with Russia, he told reporters on Saturday.
At a joint news conference with Moldovan President Maia Sandu, Zelensky said Ukraine also needed to be involved in any talks about ending the war for such negotiations to have any meaningful impact.
Ukrainian hit on occupied southern village kills 3: Moscow-installed official
- “Ukrainian terrorists shelled Oleshky with cluster munitions and remote mine-clearing systems,” Saldo said
- “At the moment, we know about three killed civilians”
MOSCOW: Russian occupational authorities in southern Ukraine said Saturday that a Ukrainian strike on a Moscow-held village in the Kherson region killed three people.
Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-installed leader of the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Kherson region, accused Kyiv of using cluster munitions in a strike on the village of Oleshky.
Oleshky lies close to the city of Kherson and near the Dnipro river, which forms the frontline in southern Ukraine.
“Ukrainian terrorists shelled Oleshky with cluster munitions and remote mine-clearing systems,” Saldo said in a post on Telegram.
“At the moment, we know about three killed civilians,” he added, saying the victims are being identified.
He called on villagers to stay in their homes or in shelters.
Both sides in the almost three-year war have accused each other of using cluster munitions.
The US has supplied cluster munitions — which rights groups say are particularly deadly and have long-term effects — drawing criticism even from its allies.
Kyiv, meanwhile, said that four people were wounded by Russian attacks in the Kherson region on Saturday.
Seoul court rejects second request to extend Yoon detention
- Yoon Suk Yeol was arrested last week on insurrection charges
- Becomes first sitting South Korean head of state to be detained in a criminal probe
SEOUL: A Seoul court rejected a second request Saturday to extend the detention of impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol over his failed attempt to declare martial law, putting pressure on prosecutors to quickly indict him.
Yoon was arrested last week on insurrection charges, becoming the first sitting South Korean head of state to be detained in a criminal probe.
His December 3 martial law decree only lasted about six hours before it was voted down by lawmakers, but it still managed to plunge South Korea into its worst political crisis in decades.
The Seoul Central District Court on Saturday turned down a request for a detention extension, prosecutors said in a brief statement.
This follows a ruling by the same court a day earlier when a judge stated it was “difficult to find sufficient grounds” to grant an extension.
Prosecutors had planned to keep the disgraced leader in custody until February 6 for questioning before formally indicting him, but that plan will now need to be adjusted.
“With the court’s rejection of the extension, prosecutors must now work quickly to formally indict Yoon to keep him behind bars,” Yoo Jung-hoon, an attorney and political commentator, said.
Yoon has refused to cooperate with the criminal probe, with his legal defense team arguing investigators lack legal authority.
The suspended president is also facing a separate hearing in the Constitutional Court which, if it upholds his impeachment, would officially remove him from office.
An election would then have to be held within 60 days.
Kabul residents name their newest mosque after Gaza
- Gaza Mosque is located in Qua-ye-Markaz, near Kabul’s famous carpet market
- Opened this month, the two-story mosque was funded from public donations
KABUL: In an act of solidarity and to honor the victims of Israel’s war on Gaza, residents of the Afghan capital have named their newest mosque after the Palestinian enclave.
Opened on Jan. 11, the Gaza Mosque is located in the Qua-ye-Markaz area of Kabul, close to business plazas and the city’s famous carpet market.
A two-story building, which can accommodate some 500 worshippers, it was funded from public donations on land provided by the Kabul municipality.
“The mosque was named Gaza Mosque to acknowledge the struggle and sacrifices of the men, women, children, youth and elders in Gaza in defending their land,” Hajji Habibudin Rezayi, a businessman who led the fundraising, told Arab News.
“There were a few name suggestions before the completion of the mosque’s construction, including Palestine, Aqsa and Gaza. Most of the campaign participants voted for Gaza as a symbol of solidarity.”
There is widespread support for Palestine among Afghans — many of whom know what it means to live under foreign occupation as they endured it during the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan War and the 20 years of war following the US invasion in 2001.
Afghanistan was the first non-Arab country to recognize the Palestinian National Council’s declaration of independence in 1948. Every successive Afghan government has stood by Palestine in the wake of Israel’s wars against it and the occupation of Palestinian land.
Since the beginning of Israel’s latest deadly assault on Gaza in October 2023, which has destroyed most of the enclave’s civilian infrastructure and killed tens of thousands of civilians, imams at Afghan mosques have regularly held special prayers for Palestinian freedom.
When a ceasefire was announced last week, celebrations were organized both in Afghan households and in public spaces.
“Afghans have been trying to help as much as they can to send support to Palestinians in terms of donations, prayers and other acts of solidarity,” said Abduraqib Hakimi, the imam of the Gaza Mosque.
“Every Muslim and human must have some solidarity with the people of Palestine and Gaza for what they have gone through during the past year and a half.”
Worshipers at the mosque told Arab News that they hoped that their country could do more.
“Israel’s actions in Palestine are nothing but genocide,” one of them, Asadullah Dayi, said.
“Innocent women and children were killed, and houses were destroyed. There has never been so much oppression in the history of Islam like the Zionist oppression of the Palestinians.”
