Tag Archives: United Nations

Millions risk starvation in Nigeria, Lake Chad region: United Nations

Children attend a class at a primary school in Muna Garage IDP camp, Maiduguri, Nigeria November 7, 2016. UNICEF/Naftalin/Handout via REUTERS

By Gwladys Fouche

OSLO (Reuters) – More than seven million people risk starvation in Nigeria’s insurgency-hit northeastern region and around Lake Chad, a senior U.N. official said on Wednesday ahead of a new funding appeal.

Famine has been ongoing since last year in parts of Nigeria where the government is fighting a seven-year long Boko Haram insurgency.

An international donor conference in Oslo on Friday will aim to raise a chunk of the $1.5 billion the United Nations says it needs to address deepening food insecurity in the region this year.

“They are living on the edge, barely getting by on one meal a day,” Toby Lanzer, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, told Reuters. “My biggest concern today is starvation.”

Earlier this week the United Nations said 1.4 million children were at risk of “imminent death” in famines in Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.

Lanzer said he was worried the Boko Haram insurgency would deter farmers from planting their crops after missing the last three planting seasons, and that the number of lives at risk could increase. He also expressed concerns the coming rainy season could harm vulnerable people.

“Hungry people without shelter when it rains die,” he said.

Lanzer said the humanitarian response needed to go beyond food aid and include seeds, tools and fishing nets.

Lanzer said he hoped a total $500 million will have been pledged by the end of February, including this week’s funding round.

Lanzer, who has also worked in South Sudan, Darfur and Chechnya, said it was difficult to estimate how many people would die from hunger in the next few months.

“If we were to lose another planting season, I dread to think how severe the crisis could get,” he said.

Some 10.7 million people in northeastern Nigeria and around Lake Chad — roughly two in every three people — need humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations.

Boko Haram militants have killed about 15,000 people and forced more than 2 million from their homes, and still launch deadly attacks despite having been pushed out of the vast swathes of territory they controlled in 2014.

Lanzer cautioned that failure to address the deteriorating situation could encourage more Africans to try and flee to Europe.

(Editing by Richard Lough)

U.S. ambassador at U.N. says Trump supports two-state solution

US Ambassador to United Nations Nikki Haley

By Ned Parker

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Thursday the United States still supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a day after President Donald Trump suggested he is open to new ways to achieve peace.

“First of all, the two-state solution is what we support. Anybody that wants to say the United States does not support the two-state solution – that would be an error,” Haley told reporters at the United Nations.

“We absolutely support the two-state solution but we are thinking out of the box as well: which is what does it take to bring these two sides to the table; what do we need to have them agree on.”

Haley’s comments came after Trump said on Wednesday that he was open to ideas beyond a two-state solution, the longstanding bedrock of Washington and the international community’s policy for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

“I’m looking at two states and one state, and I like the one both parties like,” Trump told a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I can live with either one.”

Trump said that the United States would work toward peace but said he was leaving it up to the parties themselves ultimately to decide on the terms of any agreement. He said such a deal would require compromises from both Israelis and Palestinians.

Trump’s announcement appeared to loosen the main tenet of U.S. Middle Eastern policy dating back three administrations and stunned the international community, which has crafted it diplomacy based on the premise of a Palestinian state co-existing alongside Israel.

Haley also echoed Trump in her remarks Thursday, stressing that a peace deal was not for Washington to impose but could only come from the parties themselves.

“The solution to what will bring peace in the Middle East is going to come from the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority,” Haley said. “The United States is just there to support the process.”

Haley, a Republican who previously served as South Carolina governor, also criticized the United Nations and the Security Council on Thursday for what she called a bias against Israel.

She described the day’s scheduled Security Council meeting on the Middle East as “focused on criticizing Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East.”

Haley said the United States would not support any U.N. resolutions like the one approved by the Security Council in December calling for an end to Israeli settlement building, that passed only after the administration of former President Barack Obama chose not to wield its veto.

“I am here to say the United States will not turn a blind eye to this anymore,” Haley said. “I am here to emphasize that the United States is determined to stand up to the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias.”

French and British diplomats also repeated their longstanding support of the policy, in a show of how Trump’s remarks on Wednesday had caused confusion.

“The UK continues to believe that the best solution for peace in the Middle East is the two-state solution,” said British ambassador to the United Nations, Matthew Rycroft.

On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had warned during a visit to Cairo that was no viable way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict other than the establishment of a Palestinian state co-existing alongside Israel.

(Reporting by Ned Parker; Editing by Dan Grebler and Lisa Shumaker)

U.N. wants to negotiate with U.S., Canada to resettle Rohingya refugees

Rohingya refugee children

By Krishna N. Das

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) – The United Nations’ refugee agency has asked Bangladesh to allow it to negotiate with the United States, Canada and some European countries to resettle around 1,000 Rohingya Muslims living in the South Asian nation, a senior official at the agency said.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya live in Bangladesh after fleeing Buddhist-majority Myanmar since the early 1990s, and their number has been swelled by an estimated 69,000 escaping an army crackdown in northern Rakhine State in recent months.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would push for resettlement of those most in need, despite growing resistance in some developed countries, particularly the United States under President Donald Trump, UNHCR’s Bangladesh representative, Shinji Kubo, told Reuters on Thursday.

“UNHCR will continue to work with the authorities concerned, including in the United States,” Kubo said.

“Regardless of the change in government or government policies, I think UNHCR has a clear responsibility to pursue a protection-oriented resettlement program.”

Kubo said 1,000 Rohingya refugees had been identified as priorities for resettlement on medical grounds or because they have been separated from their family members living abroad.

“Resettlement will always be a challenging thing because only a small number of resettlement opportunities are being allocated by the international community at the moment,” Kubo said in an interview. “But it’s our job to try to consult with respective countries based on the protection and humanitarian needs of these individuals.”

H.T. Imam, a political adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said the resettlement proposal was “unrealistic” due to reluctance in the United States and Europe to take further Muslim refugees.

Reuters reported this month that officials at an Australian immigration center in Papua New Guinea were increasing pressure on asylum seekers to return to their home countries voluntarily, including offering large sums of money, amid fears a deal for the United States to take refugees had fallen through.

Canada, Australia and the United States were the top providers of asylum to Rohingya Muslims who came to Bangladesh from Myanmar before Dhaka stopped the program around 2012. A Bangladesh government official said it was feared the program would encourage more people from Myanmar to use it as a transit country to seek asylum in the West.

Canada has said it would welcome those fleeing persecution, terror and war, after Trump put a four-month hold on allowing refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries into the United States, an order since suspended by a U.S. district judge.

HOPING FOR ACCESS

The UNHCR supports around 34,000 refugees living in two government-registered camps in the Bangladesh coastal district of Cox’s Bazar, but a greater number of Rohingya live in makeshift settlements nearby, unregistered and officially ineligible to receive international aid.

Kubo said he had asked Bangladesh to give the UN access to all the refugees who have recently arrived, adding that UNHCR and other international agencies were also willing to provide aid to poor Bangladeshis living near the refugee settlements to counter local resentment at the influx.

Hasina adviser Imam said providing aid to the new refugees and its citizens was the responsibility of the government.

Myanmar said late on Wednesday that a security operation that began after nine police officers were killed in attacks on border security posts on Oct. 9 had now ended.

A report released by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Feb. 3 gave accounts of mass killings and gang rapes by troops during the operation, which it said probably constituted crimes against humanity.

Two UN sources have separately told Reuters that more than 1,000 Rohingya may have been killed in the crackdown.

Northern Rakhine has been locked down since October, and Myanmar has not said when aid groups or reporters might be allowed in.

“We’re now hoping for immediate access to the affected areas in northern Rakhine as soon as possible with our resources, our protection expertise,” Kubo said. “That will also have a positive impact on what is happening in Bangladesh at the moment.”

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das in COX’S BAZAR; Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in DHAKA; Editing by Alex Richardson)

New U.N. team aims to bring Syria war crimes to court

man inspects damaged house after airstrike in Syria

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – A new body is being set up at the United Nations in Geneva to prepare prosecutions of war crimes committed in Syria, U.N. officials and diplomats said on Thursday.

The General Assembly voted to establish the mechanism in December and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is due to name a judge or prosecutor as its head this month.

“We expect to start very, very shortly with just a handful of people,” a U.N. human rights official told Reuters.

The team will “analyze information, organize and prepare files on the worst abuses that amount to international crimes – primarily war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide – and identify those responsible”, she said.

While it would not be able to prosecute itself, the idea is to prepare files for future prosecution that states or the International Criminal Court in The Hague could use.

The focus on prosecutions means evidence collected since 2011 by a U.N. Commission of Inquiry may be sharpened into legal action.

The COI has issued 20 reports accusing the Assad government, rebel forces and Islamic State of mass killings, rapes, disappearances and recruiting child soldiers.

It too lacks a prosecutorial mandate, but has denounced a state policy amounting to “extermination”, and has compiled a confidential list of suspects on all sides, kept in a safe.

Rights watchdog Amnesty International said last week the Syrian government executed up to 13,000 prisoners in mass hangings and carried out systematic torture at a military jail. Syria denied the report, calling “devoid of truth”.

A Swedish court on Thursday sentenced a former Syrian opposition fighter who now lives in Sweden to life in prison for war crimes.

A U.N. report in January put the start-up budget for the new team at $4-6 million. So far $1.8 million has been donated, the U.N. official said. Funding is voluntary, posing a major challenge.

BUILDING CASES

The United Nations aims to recruit 40-60 experts in investigations, prosecutions, the military, and forensics, diplomats said.

“It’s a very important step. It will not only allow court cases but also help us preserve evidence if there are cases in the future,” a senior Western diplomat said.

Legal experts and activists welcomed the initiative.

“The focus is on collecting evidence and building criminal cases before the trail goes cold,” said Andrew Clapham, professor of international law at Geneva’s Graduate Institute.

Jeremie Smith of the Cairo Institute of Human Rights Studies said the United Nations must lay the groundwork for prosecutions ahead of any “exodus” of perpetrators when the war ends.

“This is the only way to make sure criminals don’t get away by fleeing the scene of the crime.”

The new team will seek to establish command responsibility.

“This is mass collection of information on all sides with a view to prosecution in the future by the ICC (International Criminal Court), national courts or in some completely new international tribunal that would be created,” Clapham said.

Many national courts could pursue suspects using its dossiers, he said. States that have joined the ICC could bring cases to the Hague court, without referral by the Security Council.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams)

U.N. warns of catastrophic dam failure in Syria battle

Euphrates River at sunset in Syria

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations is warning of catastrophic flooding in Syria from the Tabqa dam, which is at risk from high water levels, deliberate sabotage by Islamic State (IS) and further damage from air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition.

The earth-filled dam holds back the Euphrates River 40 km (25 miles) upstream of the IS stronghold of Raqqa and has been controlled by IS since 2014.

Water levels on the river have risen by about 10 meters since Jan. 24, due partly to heavy rainfall and snow and partly to IS opening three turbines of the dam, flooding riverside areas downstream, according to a U.N. report seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

“As per local experts, any further rise of the water level would submerge huge swathes of agricultural land along the river and could potentially damage the Tabqa Dam, which would have catastrophic humanitarian implications in all areas downstream,” it said.

The entrance to the dam was already damaged by airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition, it said.

“For example, on 16 January 2017, airstrikes on the western countryside of Ar-Raqqa impacted the entrance of the Euphrates Dam, which, if further damaged, could lead to massive scale flooding across Ar-Raqqa and as far away as Deir-ez-Zor.”

The town of Deir-ez-Zor, or Deir al-Zor, is a further 140 km downstream from Raqqa, and is besieged by IS. The U.N. estimates that 93,500 civilians are trapped in the town, and it has been airdropping food to them for a year.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are undertaking a multiphased operation to encircle Raqqa, and have advanced to within a few kilometers of the dam. The SDF has previously said air strikes are not being used against IS near the dam to avoid damaging it.

As IS, also known as ISIL, retreats, its fighters have deliberately destroyed vital infrastructure, including three water stations and five water towers in the first three weeks of January, the U.N. report said.

“ISIL has reportedly mined water pumping stations on the Euphrates River which hinders the pumping of water and residents are resorting to untreated water from the Euphrates River.”

The U.N. has also warned of the danger of a collapse of the Mosul dam on the Tigris River in Iraq, which could affect 20 million people. The dam was briefly captured by IS in 2014, but remains at risk, with constant repairs needed to avoid disaster.

Last month Lise Grande, the top U.N. humanitarian official in Iraq and a trained hydrologist who is an expert on the Mosul dam, said a catastrophic burst could have “Biblical” consequences. The U.N. is preparing an international response in case the Mosul dam collapses.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Toby Chopra)

North Korea says missile launch ‘self-defense’, U.S. demands action

A test-fire of strategic submarine-launched ballistic missile is seen in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – North Korea said on Tuesday its missile launches were “self-defense measures”, rejecting U.N. Security Council criticism of its weekend test, but the United States demanded international action against Pyongyang’s weapons programs.

North Korea’s ballistic missile firing on Sunday was its first direct challenge to the international community since U.S. President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20.

The missile had a range of more than 2,000 kms (1,240 miles), according to South Korea’s intelligence agency. It reached an altitude of about 550 km and flew about 500 km towards Japan before splashing into the sea east of the Korean peninsula.

The U.N. Security Council on Monday denounced the launch, urging members to “redouble efforts” to enforce sanctions against the reclusive state, but gave no indications of any action it might take.

Han Tae Song, the new Ambassador of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the United Nations in Geneva, addressed the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament a day after taking up his post.

“The various test fires conducted by DPRK for building up self-defense capabilities are, with no exception, self-defense measures to protect national sovereignty and the safety of the people against direct threats by hostile forces,” Han told the 61-member-state forum.

“My delegation strongly rejects the latest statement of the U.N. Security Council and all U.N. resolutions against my country.”

U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood said: “All efforts to advance North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities must cease,” adding: “If ever there were a situation that called for international collective action to ensure our mutual security, it is this.”

RESTRAINT

China, North Korea’s main ally, said the missile launch violated Security Council resolutions but called on all parties to “exercise restraint”. The way to defuse the situation was through dialogue, China said, calling for a return to talks.

U.S., Japanese and South Korean military officials held a teleconference on Monday in which they condemned the launch as “a clear violation” of multiple Security Council resolutions. The United States “reaffirmed its iron-clad security commitments” to South Korea and Japan, the Pentagon said.

Han said the divided Korean peninsula “remains the world’s biggest hotspot with a constant danger of war”. He condemned joint military exercises carried out annually by South Korea and the United States, as well as what he called “nuclear threats” and blackmail towards his country.

“It is the legitimate self-defense right of the sovereign state to possess strong deterrence to cope with such threat by hostile forces aimed at overthrowing the state and the socialist system,” he said.

South Korea’s Ambassador Choi Kyong-lim said the test showed “the unreasonable nature of the DPRK and their fanatical obsession with the pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles”. Japan’s disarmament Ambassador Nobushige Takamizawa urged Pyongyang not to take further “provocative actions” that undermine peace and security in the region.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Netanyahu opposes Palestinian state, Israeli minister says ahead of U.S. visit

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) stands next to Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump during their meeting in New York, U.S.

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Benjamin Netanyahu opposes a Palestinian state, a senior Israeli cabinet member said on Monday, but left it unclear whether the prime minister would say that publicly in talks with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington this week.

Netanyahu has never explicitly abandoned his conditional support for a future Palestine, and his spokesman did not respond immediately to a request to comment on Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan’s remarks.

Erdan belongs to Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, whose leading members have often espoused a harder line than the prime minister himself.

“I think all members of the security cabinet, and foremost the prime minister, oppose a Palestinian state,” Erdan told Army Radio after the forum met on Sunday on the eve of Netanyahu’s departure for Washington for talks with Trump on Wednesday.

“No one thinks in the next few years that a Palestinian state is something that, God forbid, might or should happen,” he said in the interview.

But asked if Netanyahu would voice opposition to statehood on camera when he meets Trump, Erdan said: “The prime minister has to weigh things according to what he feels in the meeting and the positions he encounters there. No one knows what the positions of the president and his staff are.”

Palestinians seek to establish a state in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel captured those areas in a 1967 war and pulled its troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005.

NUANCED

Citing Israeli settlement activity, Palestinian leaders and the former U.S. administration of Barack Obama have questioned Netanyahu’s commitment, which he first made in a 2009 policy speech, to the so-called two-state solution to decades of conflict.

“It is not only their statements – what the government of the extreme right in Israel does on the ground prevents any chance of the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Wasel Abu Youssef, an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said of Erdan’s comments.

Since Trump took office last month, Netanyahu has approved construction of 6,000 settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, drawing international condemnation which the White House did not join.

In recent days, however, the Trump administration has taken a more nuanced position, saying building new settlements or expanding existing ones may not be helpful in achieving peace.

Netanyahu has spelled out terms for a future Palestine: its demilitarization, the stationing of Israeli troops in its territory and Palestinian recognition of Israel as the “nation-state” of the Jewish people.

Last month, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said Netanyahu, in a closed-door meeting with Likud ministers, coined a new term “Palestinian state-minus” to describe his vision of limited Palestinian sovereignty.

Under interim peace deals, Palestinians, who number about 2.5 million in the West Bank, currently exercise limited self-rule in the territory, where some 350,000 Israeli settlers live.

Some members of Netanyahu’s government have called for the annexation of parts of the West Bank, a demand he has resisted.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Maayan Lubell and Janet Lawrence)

United Nations, EU condemn Israel legalizing settlements on Palestinian land

European Union foreign policy chief condenming israel

BRUSSELS/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The European Union’s foreign policy chief and the United Nations secretary-general on Tuesday criticized an Israeli move to legalize thousands of settler homes on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.

The EU’s Federica Mogherini said that the law, if it was implemented, crossed a new and dangerous threshold.

“Such settlements constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten the viability of a two-state solution,” she said.

“(It) would further entrench a one-state reality of unequal rights, perpetual occupation and conflict,” she said, highlighting that the EU sees Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories as illegal.

The Israeli parliament passed the legislation two weeks after the inauguration of President Donald Trump as the new U.S. president. Trump has signaled a softer approach to the settlement issue than that of the previous U.S. administration.

It retroactively legalizes about 4,000 settler homes built on privately owned Palestinian land.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the action went against international law and would have legal consequences for Israel.

“The Secretary-General insists on the need to avoid any actions that would derail the two-state solution,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement, referring to longstanding international efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

French President Francois Hollande also added his voice to the condemnation, saying it paved the way for the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories.

“I think that Israel and its government could revise this text,” Hollande said at news conference after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas called the law an aggression against the Palestinian people. Other Palestinian leaders described it as a blow to their hopes of statehood.

Most countries consider the settlements, built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War, illegal and an obstacle to peace as they reduce and fragment the territory Palestinians seek for a viable state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Israel disputes this and cites biblical, historical and political connections to the land, as well as security needs.

Though the legislation was backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, it has raised tensions in the government. Israel’s attorney-general has said the law is unconstitutional and that he will not defend it at the Supreme Court.

A White House official said on Monday that, given the new law is expected to face challenges in Israeli courts, the United States would withhold comment for now.

The Trump administration has signaled a far softer approach to the settlement issue than that of the Obama administration, which routinely denounced settlement announcements.

(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Netanyahu, Trump align on Iran ahead of Israeli leader’s visit

Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump

By Jeffrey Heller and Matt Spetalnick

JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Seizing on an Iranian missile test, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and new U.S. President Donald Trump are nearing common ground on a tougher U.S. policy towards Tehran ahead of their first face-to-face talks at the White House.

But people familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking say that its evolving strategy is likely to be aimed not at “dismantling” Iran’s July 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers – as presidential candidate Trump sometimes advocated – but tightening its enforcement and pressuring the Islamic Republic into renegotiating key provisions.

Options, they say, would include wider scrutiny of Iran’s compliance by the U.N. nuclear watchdog (IAEA), including access to Iranian military sites, and removing “sunset” terms that allow some curbs on Iranian nuclear activity to start expiring in 10 years and lift other limits after 15 years.

In a shift of position for Netanyahu, all signs in Israel point to him being on board with the emerging U.S. plan. Two years ago, he infuriated the Obama White House by addressing the U.S. Congress to rally hawkish opposition to a budding Iran pact he condemned as a “historic mistake” that should be torn up.

As Trump and Netanyahu prepare for their Feb. 15 meeting, focus has shifted to Iran’s ballistic missile test last week.

The White House said the missile launch was not a direct breach of the nuclear deal but “violates the spirit of that”. Trump responded by slapping fresh sanctions on individuals and entities, some of them linked to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).

A U.N. Security Council resolution underpinning the nuclear pact urges Iran to refrain from testing missiles designed to be able to carry nuclear warheads, but imposes no obligation.

However, Trump tweeted, “Iran is playing with fire” and “they don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!” Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said Washington was putting Tehran on notice over its “destabilising activity”. Netanyahu “appreciated” the comments.

Tehran bristled, warning that “roaring missiles” would fall on its enemies if its security is threatened. It also said its military would never initiate a war.

MEETING OF MINDS OVER MISSILE TEST

Beyond the rhetoric, the missile test gave the new Republican president and the conservative Israeli leader – who had an often acrimonious relationship with Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama – an early chance to show they are on the same page in seeking to restrain Iranian military ambitions.

Netanyahu wrote on Facebook last week: “At my upcoming meeting with President Trump in Washington, I intend to raise the renewal of sanctions against Iran in this context and in other contexts. Iranian aggression must not go unanswered.”

In London for talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday, Netanyahu said “responsible” nations should follow Trump’s imposition of new sanctions as Iran remained a deadly menace to Israel and “threatens the world”.

Netanyahu also said Washington should lead the way, with Israel and Britain, in “setting clear boundaries” for Tehran.

But he stopped short of any call to cancel the nuclear accord. Israeli officials privately acknowledged that he would not advocate ripping up a deal that has been emphatically reaffirmed by the other big power signatories – Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China – since Trump’s election victory.

Russia said on Monday it disagreed with Trump’s assessment of Iran as “the number one terrorist state” and a Russian diplomat said any move to rework the nuclear pact would inflame Middle East tensions. “Don’t try to fix what is not broken,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

Iran has ruled out reworking the deal, and Trump’s stance could weaken the hand of pragmatists in Tehran who have been willing to negotiate a detente with the West after decades of volatile confrontation, a former senior Iranian official said.

Under the accord, Tehran received relief from global economic sanctions and in return committed to capping its uranium enrichment well below the level needed for bomb-grade material, cutting the number of its centrifuge enrichment machines by two-thirds, reducing its enriched uranium stockpile and submitting to a more intrusive IAEA inspections regime.

Diplomats close to the IAEA consider the deal a success so far, voicing little concern with overall Iranian compliance – despite Netanyahu’s insistence that it will only pave the Islamic Republic’s path towards nuclear weapons once major restrictions expire 15 years after its signing.

PRESSURE POINTS OTHER THAN SCRAPPING DEAL

With German, French and British firms busy cultivating new business with Iran, Washington’s peers in the six-power group almost surely would rebuff any U.S. thrust to reopen the deal.

Daniel Shapiro, who recently ended his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Israel under Obama, told Reuters he would be surprised if Trump and Netanyahu “determined so early in the time working together that they would rather scrap that agreement than try to enforce it in a tough manner and put other pressures unrelated to that deal on the Iranians”.

Some foreign policy experts say U.S. efforts to tighten the screws on Iran could seek to goad it into ditching the nuclear accord in hopes that Tehran – and not Washington – would then have to shoulder international blame for its collapse.

According to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, an Israeli intelligence assessment recently presented to Netanyahu said revoking the pact would be an error, causing a chasm between Washington and other signatories like Russia and China.

Amos Yadlin, former head of Israeli military intelligence, said there were many areas outside the deal where pressure could be applied on Iran to change what he called its negative behavior of “subversiveness, supporting terrorism”.

But beyond new sanctions and sharpened rhetoric, analysts say, it is unclear how far Trump could go. Arguments for restraint would include the risk of military escalation in the Gulf, out of which 40 percent of the world’s seaborne crude oil is shipped, and strong European support for the nuclear deal.

Though the new U.S. strategy is in the early stages of development, the Trump administration, the sources say, is considering a range of measures, including seeking “zero tolerance” for any Iranian violations.

Trump’s aides accused the Obama administration of turning a blind eye to some alleged Iranian infractions to avoid anything that would undermine confidence in the integrity of the deal. Obama administration officials denied being “soft” on Iran.

Other U.S. strategy options, the sources say, include sanctioning Iranian industries that aid missile development and designating as a terrorist group the Revolutionary Guards, accused by U.S. officials of fuelling Middle East proxy wars. That designation could also dissuade foreign investment in Iran because the Guards oversee a sprawling business empire there.

The administration, one source said, is counting on the Europeans to eventually get on board since their companies might think twice about closing major deals in Iran for fear new “secondary” U.S. sanctions would penalize them too.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell and Luke Baker in Jerusalem, Jonathan Landay in Washington, Francois Murphy and Shadia Nasralla in Vienna, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, Andrew Osborn and Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Russia, Turkey, Iran discuss Syria ceasefire implementation in Astana

Russian soldiers patrol a street in Aleppo Syria

ASTANA (Reuters) – Experts from Russia, Turkey, Iran and the United Nations held a technical meeting in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, to discuss in detail the implementation of the Syrian ceasefire agreement, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

“Representatives of Jordan are expected to take part for the first time,” a ministry spokesman said of the talks.

He said the agenda included reviewing the implementation of the cessation of hostilities, discussing a proposal from the Syrian armed opposition about the ceasefire, and determining options about how to implement it.

Fighting and air strikes have plagued the ceasefire agreement between the government and rebel groups since it took effect in late December, with the combatants accusing each other of violations.

“This is about creating a mechanism to control the implementation of the ceasefire,” the ministry spokesman said.

The ministry gave no information about the line-up of the delegations, who were meeting behind closed doors.

After the talks, Russian negotiator, chief command official Stanislav Gadzhimagomedov, said the sides had also discussed preventing provocations and securing humanitarian access.

“The delegations have confirmed their readiness to continue interaction in order to achieve the full implementation of the cessation of hostilities in Syria,” he said.

(Reporting by Raushan Nurshayeva; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Dominic Evans)