ANKARA: Russia may pull out of a wartime deal that allows the export of Ukrainian grain to global markets if the West fails to remove obstacles to Russian agricultural exports, Moscow’s top diplomat suggested Friday.
The deal, which was brokered by the United Nations and Turkiye in July, unblocked shipments that were stuck in Ukraine’s blockaded and mined ports, alleviating rising food prices and threat of hunger in some countries.
A separate agreement aimed to facilitate the export of Russian fertilizers and grain. Moscow has repeatedly complained that the deal failed to work for Russian agricultural exports, which have had trouble reaching world markets due to Western sanctions.
Speaking at a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters that Russia agreed last month to extend the deal for 60 days — instead of the 120 days set under a previous extension — to send a warning signal to the West.
“After we extended the deal for 120 days, we saw no indication that those issues could be solved and grew tired of appealing to the conscience of those who determine it,” Lavrov said of Moscow’s dissatisfaction.”
We made a small escalatory move and offered to extend the deal only for 60 days on the assumption that if there is no change in removing the obstacles to the exports of Russian fertilizers and grain, we would think whether the deal is needed.”
Lavrov shrugged off the West’s argument that Russian food and fertilizers are not subject to sanctions. He noted that “obstacles related to financing, logistics, transportation and insurance of Russian exports have remained and even have grown tougher.”
Experts say private shipping and insurance companies remain cautious about handling Russian commodities amid the war in Ukraine, although Russian wheat shipments were at or near record highs in November, December and January, according to financial data provider Refinitiv.
Lavrov said the West has effectively blocked the UN-Turkiye agreement on Russian agricultural exports and “that’s why we’ve asked for letters of comfort from certain governments.”
Instead of agreeing to another extension later this year, Russia may decide to cooperate directly with Turkiye and Qatar to ensure grain gets to the countries that need it.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, whose country joined the UN and Ukraine in pressing for a 120-day extension before the deal on Ukrainian exports expired last month, said he and Lavrov “agreed that the obstacles to the export of Russian grain and fertilizer should be removed immediately.”
“We value the continuation of the deal,” Cavusoglu said. “This is not only important for Ukraine’s and Russia’s grain and fertilizer exports. It is also important in terms of reducing the world food crisis and especially the problem experienced by every household in the world.”
Lavrov’s warning echoed one from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said last month that Moscow could end its participation in the initiative if its conditions were not met. Putin said Russia expected the facilitation of exports of its own agricultural products as part of a package agreement.
Lavrov and Cavusoglu also discussed Russian efforts to forge a reconciliation between Turkiye and Syria. Earlier this week, Moscow hosted the deputy foreign ministers of Turkiye, Syria and Iran to facilitate the rapprochement.
Turkiye has backed armed opposition groups that have sought to overthrow President Bashar Assad’s government during the Syrian civil war. Turkiye has control over large swaths of territory in northwestern Syria, and Damascus is pressing for the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syria as a prerequisite for a normalization of ties.
Turkiye, for its part, is looking for security guarantees, including regarding Kurdish militants in Syria that Ankara considers to be terrorists.
“We know that not all issues can be settled in one or two meetings,” Cavusoglu said. “But the dialogue needs to continue and it would be beneficial if the consultations continue in the same way.”
Russia: West must remove obstacles to its grain exports
https://arab.news/9hp3d
Russia: West must remove obstacles to its grain exports
- Moscow has repeatedly complained that the deal failed to work for Russian agricultural exports
- “After we extended the deal for 120 days, we saw no indication that those issues could be solved and grew tired of appealing to the conscience of those who determine it,” Lavrov said
Netanyahu says Israel will continue to act against the Houthis
“Just as we acted forcefully against the terrorist arms of Iran’s axis of evil, so we will act against the Houthis,” he said in a video statement a day after a missile fired from Yemen fell in the Tel Aviv area, causing a number of mild injuries.
On Thursday, Israeli jets launched a series of strikes against energy and port infrastructure in Yemen in a move officials said was a response to hundreds of missile and drone attacks launched by the Houthis since the start of the Gaza war 14 months ago.
On Saturday, the US military said it conducted precision airstrikes against a missile storage facility and a command-and-control facility operated by Houthis in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.
Netanyahu, strengthened at home by the Israeli military’s campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon and by its destruction of most of the Syrian army’s strategic weapons, said Israel would act with the United States.
“Therefore, we will act with strength, determination and sophistication. I tell you that even if it takes time, the result will be the same,” he said.
The Houthis have launched repeated attacks on international shipping in waters near Yemen since November 2023, in support of the Palestinians over Israel’s war with Hamas.
Iraq PM says Mosul airport to open in June, 11 years after Daesh capture
- On June 10, 2014, the Daesh group seized Mosul
BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani on Sunday ordered for the inauguration of the airport in second city Mosul to be held in June, marking 11 years since Islamists took over the city.
On June 10, 2014, the Daesh group seized Mosul, declaring its “caliphate” from there 19 days later after capturing large swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria.
After years of fierce battles, Iraqi forces backed by a US-led international coalition dislodged the group from Mosul in July 2017, before declaring its defeat across the country at the end of that year.
In a Sunday statement, Sudani’s office said the premier directed during a visit there “for the airport’s opening to be on June 10, coinciding with the anniversary of Mosul’s occupation, as a message of defiance in the face of terrorism.”
Over 80 percent of the airport’s runway and terminals have been completed, according to the statement.
Mosul’s airport had been completely destroyed in the fighting.
In August 2022, then-prime minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi laid the foundation stone for the airport’s reconstruction.
Sudani’s office also announced on Sunday the launch of a project to rehabilitate the western bank of the Tigris in Mosul, affirming that “Iraq is secure and stable and on the right path.”
Turkiye’s top diplomat meets Syria’s new leader in Damascus
- Hakan Fidan had announced on Friday that he planned to travel to Damascus to meet Syria’s new leaders
- Turkiye’s spy chief Ibrahim Kalin had earlier visited the city on December 12, just a few days after Bashar Assad’s fall
ANKARA: Turkiye’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan met with Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, Ankara’s foreign ministry said.
A video released by the Anadolu state news agency showed the two men greeting each other.
No details of where the meeting took place in the Syrian capital were released by the ministry.
Fidan had announced on Friday that he planned to travel to Damascus to meet Syria’s new leaders, who ousted Syria’s strongman Bashar Assad after a lightning offensive.
Turkiye’s spy chief Ibrahim Kalin had earlier visited the city on December 12, just a few days after Assad’s fall.
Kalin was filmed leaving the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, surrounded by bodyguards, as broadcast by the private Turkish channel NTV.
Turkiye has been a key backer of the opposition to Assad since the uprising against his rule began in 2011.
Besides supporting various militant groups, it has welcomed Syrian dissenters and millions of refugees.
However, Fidan has rejected claims by US president-elect Donald Trump that the militants’ victory in Syria constituted an “unfriendly takeover” of the country by Turkiye.
Syria’s de facto ruler reassures minorities, meets Lebanese Druze leader
- Ahmed Al-Sharaa said no sects would be excluded in Syria in what he described as ‘a new era far removed from sectarianism’
- Walid Jumblatt said at the meeting that Assad’s ouster should usher in new constructive relations between Lebanon and Syria
DAMASCUS: Syria’s de facto ruler Ahmed Al-Sharaa hosted Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt on Sunday in another effort to reassure minorities they will be protected after Islamist militants led the ouster of Bashar Assad two weeks ago.
Sharaa said no sects would be excluded in Syria in what he described as “a new era far removed from sectarianism.”
Sharaa heads the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), the main group that forced Assad out on Dec. 8. Some Syrians and foreign powers have worried he may impose strict Islamic governance on a country with numerous minority groups such as Druze, Kurds, Christians and Alawites.
“We take pride in our culture, our religion and our Islam. Being part of the Islamic environment does not mean the exclusion of other sects. On the contrary, it is our duty to protect them,” he said during the meeting with Jumblatt, in comments broadcast by Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed.
Jumblatt, a veteran politician and prominent Druze leader, said at the meeting that Assad’s ouster should usher in new constructive relations between Lebanon and Syria. Druze are an Arab minority who practice an offshoot of Islam.
Sharaa, dressed in a suit and tie rather than the military fatigues he favored in his militant days, also said he would send a government delegation to the southwestern Druze city of Sweida, pledging to provide services to its community and highlighting Syria’s “rich diversity of sects.”
Seeking to allay worries about the future of Syria, Sharaa has hosted numerous foreign visitors in recent days, and has vowed to prioritize rebuilding Syria, devastated by 13 years of civil war.
Al-Sharaa vowed not to “negatively” interfere in neighboring Lebanon.
During his meeting with the visiting Lebanese Druze chiefs, Al-Sharaa said Syria will no longer exert “negative interference in Lebanon at all.”
He added that Damascus “respects Lebanon’s sovereignty, the unity of its territories, the independence of its decisions and its security stability.”
Syria “will stay at equal distance from all” in Lebanon, Al-Sharaa added, acknowledging that Syria has been a “source of fear and anxiety” for the country.
The Syrian army entered Lebanon in 1976, only leaving in 2005 after enormous pressure following the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, a killing attributed to Damascus and its ally, Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
* With Reuters and AFP
Pope Francis again condemns ‘cruelty’ of Israeli strikes on Gaza
- Comes a day after the pontiff lamented an Israeli airstrike that killed seven children from one family on Friday
- ‘And with pain I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty’
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis doubled down Sunday on his condemnation of Israel’s strikes on the Gaza Strip, denouncing their “cruelty” for the second time in as many days despite Israel accusing him of “double standards.”
“And with pain I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty,” the pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer.
It comes a day after the 88-year-old Argentine lamented an Israeli airstrike that killed seven children from one family on Friday, according to Gaza’s rescue agency.
“Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” the pope told members of the government of the Holy See.
His remarks on Saturday prompted a sharp response from Israel.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman described Francis’s intervention as “particularly disappointing as they are disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism — a multi-front war that was forced upon it starting on October 7.”
“Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people,” he added.
“Cruelty is terrorists hiding behind children while trying to murder Israeli children; cruelty is holding 100 hostages for 442 days, including a baby and children, by terrorists and abusing them,” the Israeli statement said.
This was a reference to the Hamas Palestinian militants who attacked Israel, killed many civilians and took hostages on October 7, 2023, triggering the Gaza war.
The unprecedented attack resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
That toll includes hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
At least 45,259 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in the Palestinian territory, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Those figures are taken as reliable by the United Nations.
