position:acting prime minister

Those closest to #Nagorno-Karabakh conflict ‘most supportive of peace’

Those who have experienced the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict first-hand and are most affected by the hostilities are more supportive of peaceful reconciliation, a report from UK-based peacebuilding group International Alert suggests.

‘Envisioning Peace’ is the first large-scale study of attitudes towards the conflict since renewed hostilities during the April 2016 Four-Day War.

The study examined ‘grassroot’ views on Nagorno-Karabakh by those living there and among communities in Azerbaijan and Armenia. Respondents included internally displaced persons (IDPs) and those living near the frontline.

The study suggested that those most affected by the armed confrontations — living in border communities or near the ceasefire line, and those who had personally faced consequences of the war — were more supportive of peaceful reconciliation with the ‘other’ side.

‘These individuals understand the importance of resolving this conflict and can take practical steps to promote peacebuilding initiatives’, said Carey Cavanaugh, the Chairman of the Board of International Alert, who is a former co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group.

The OSCE Minsk Group, led by Russia, France, and the United States, has been mediating the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh since 1992.

‘The further people live from the frontline, the more strongly they speak about patriotism’, the report said.
Powerlessness to resolve conflict

The report noted the effects of long-lasting hostilities on the communities they had to adapt to, making the conflict a constant part of their lives. ‘I haven’t even thought about what my life would be like without the conflict’, one interviewee says in the study.

This sort of coping and a ‘learned helplessness’ — less faith in having a control over one’s surroundings, life, and future — among respondents could have a negative influence on peacebuilding initiatives aimed at conflict transformation, the report suggests.

Respondents in all three societies expressed a sense of powerlessness in resolving the conflict. This, the study suggests, together with a low trust in external peacebuilding actors like the Minsk Group, the US, and Russia, pose additional challenges to policymakers and peace negotiators.

Protracted conflict, according to the study, was being accompanied by enemy image propaganda, especially by the Azerbaijani state and media.

The study reflected contrasting attitudes of Azerbaijanis and Armenians on transforming the years-old ‘no peace no war’ stalemate. According to the report, respondents in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia identified the status quo with ‘stability’, while for Azerbaijanis, it evoked the concept of ‘justice’, which they associate with the ‘return of territories’.

International Alert called for more support for initiatives that would help all three societies to overcome a trend of devaluing human life, and to explore more about the lives of individuals in the border areas.

The peacebuilding group also underlined the continued exclusion of refugees in all three societies from the conflict discourse.

‘It is important to put the focus back on the individual who has shouldered the heavy burden of war, their feelings, thoughts, fears and hopes. Personal history must be clearly seen and valued. Only then will it become possible to appreciate a person’s worth and activity’, the report reads.

The group suggests ‘open media projects’ as one of the tools to highlight personal stories.

[Read on OC Media: ‘I would never return home again’ — the Azerbaijani IDPs as old as the conflict]

The group advocated for raising awareness of members of the communities about the personal cost of conflict both in humanitarian and economic terms.

‘If people realise that every individual and every family is paying for the conflict and not for peace, this could help to alter the dynamics of the conflict’, the report reads.

The group recommends highlighting how conflict reinforces social justice grievances, a problem seen as important among respondents from all communities.
‘Status quo no longer in Armenia’s favour’

On Monday, outgoing US Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills identified the unresolved conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh and resulting economic blockade from Azerbaijan and Turkey as contributing to corruption in Armenia.

‘The status quo is no longer in Armenia’s favour […] Corruption didn’t grow because there are evil people here. The ground was pretty fertile for it because you have closed borders and a very small economy, so it’s very easy to control markets’, Mills said in an interview with EVN Report.

In the same interview, Mills said he had been ‘struck’ by a lack of discussion in Armenia on what could be ‘acceptable solutions and compromise’ for Armenians, and said that settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict would require Armenia to ‘return some occupied territories’ to Azerbaijan.

[Read on OC Media: ‘Enhanced security’: Armenian settlers in Nagorno-Karabakh]

On Wednesday, acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan shortly commented the statement, saying that Armenia’s position was known to the public and ‘has not changed’.

Russia, another Minsk Group co-chairing country, recently angered Azerbaijani authorities when on 7 October, Svetlana Zhurova, deputy chair of the Russian Duma’s International Affairs Committee, visited Nagorno-Karabakh without their prior permission.

Her trip was part of the ‘Women for Peace’ initiative under Pashinyan’s wife, Anna Hakobyan.

Zhurova ended up being blacklisted by the Azerbaijani government for ‘illegally’ entering Nagorno-Karabakh.
Renewal of talks

The OSCE Minsk Group, created in 1992, remains the only format for peace negotiations. It has yielded no major breakthroughs in recent years.

Azerbaijan’s leadership continues to insist on respecting the country’s territorial integrity and on Armenia withdrawing their armed forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.

Since a change of power in Armenia in May, new Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has insisted on including the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities in the negotiation process as a party directly involved in the conflict.

Azerbaijan has rejected the proposal.

Nevertheless, at a Minsk Group–mediated meeting on 27 September on the margins of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly, top Armenian and Azerbaijani diplomats agreed to continue negotiations.

Talks between the two are expected to resume during the co-chairs’ ‘upcoming’ visit to the region.

Hopes for progress were reignited after informal talks between Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Dushanbe on 28 September. The meeting was the first public interaction between the two countries’ leaders following the change in power in Armenia.

After the meeting, both leaders confirmed that they had agreed to open a direct line of communication between each other through their defence ministries, in order to prevent incidents along the Nagorno-Karabakh line of contact.

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Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington | Why the Trump Administration Should Reconsider Oman

▻http://www.agsiw.org/why-the-trump-administration-should-reconsider-oman

by Sigurd Neubauer and Yoel Guzansky
Following his historic address to the U.S.-Arab-Islamic Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, U.S. President Donald J. Trump held bilateral talks with every Gulf Cooperation Council leader except for Oman’s deputy prime minister, Sayyid Fahd al-Said, who had his meeting cancelled at the last minute with no public explanation. Oman’s unique foreign policy record – which ranges from facilitating the early U.S.-Iranian contact that eventually led to the nuclear agreement, to its active contribution to the Middle East peace process, to more recently supporting the United Nations-sponsored Yemen peace negotiations – was also ignored altogether during the president’s speech, even though he thanked each of the other GCC countries for their respective commitments to fighting extremism and regional terrorist groups.

In fact, it may be that the very nature of Oman’s engagement in efforts to defuse regional conflicts has prompted the Trump administration to view it warily, given Washington’s efforts to restore close relations with Saudi Arabia. In this context, Oman’s established links to both Tehran and the political leadership of Yemen’s Houthi insurgents – clearly valued by the administration of former President Barack Obama – may be seen now as reasons to keep Oman at arm’s length. Further evidence that the U.S.-Omani relationship may be heading toward uncertainty came as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cancelled his meeting in Riyadh with his Omani counterpart, Yusuf bin Alawi. This, coupled with the Trump administration’s Budget Blueprint for fiscal year 2018 – which suggests a 35 percent cut in annual military/security assistance to Oman, down from $5.4 million to $3.5 million – further suggests that Washington is revising its approach toward Muscat.

The Sultanate of Oman has been a U.S. strategic ally for nearly two centuries, and was the second Arab country, after Morocco, to establish diplomatic relations with Washington, in 1841. Moreover, Oman is only one of two GCC countries to enjoy a free trade agreement with the United States.

Building on these historic ties, Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, the Arab world’s longest-serving monarch, has skillfully managed throughout his 44-year tenure to serve as a regional intermediary to help defuse tensions between Washington and Tehran, and has at the same time actively contributed to Israeli-Arab dialogue by hosting the Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC), a Muscat-based organization dedicated to sharing Israeli expertise on desalination technologies and clean fresh water supply.

Given that Trump has pledged to reset U.S.-GCC relations and accelerate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as part of an apparent strategic effort to counter Tehran’s “malign” regional influence, it is also surprising that Qaboos is the only GCC leader that Trump has yet to call, especially considering Oman is the only GCC country to enjoy pragmatic relationships with Iran and Israel.

In recent years, Oman used its channels to Tehran – and to the Houthis in Yemen – to gain the release of a half dozen U.S. citizens who had been detained, efforts that earned Oman public expressions of thanks from Obama.

In addition, “Oman recognizes that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an irritant between the U.S. and the Arab world, but – consistent with Qaboos’ philosophy of peaceful coexistence and conflict resolution – he wanted to play a constructive role,” said Richard Schmierer, former U.S. ambassador to Oman, adding that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not a top issue on the U.S.-Omani bilateral agenda during his tenure in Muscat.

Nonetheless, in 2010 U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton hailed MEDRC as “a model for Middle East peace making.” A year later, it was revealed that Obama personally called Qaboos to ask him to lead Arab goodwill gestures toward Israel in exchange for a settlement freeze moratorium.

A Long History of Support for Mideast Peace

Following the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Oman was the only GCC member to consistently engage with Israel through a number of informal diplomatic initiatives. Oman was also one of only three Arab League members not to boycott Egypt after its peace treaty with Israel while actively supporting Jordanian-Israeli peace talks in the ensuing years.

Qaboos demonstrated his commitment to reaching a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace treaty by inviting Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to visit him in Muscat in 1994. Rabin’s visit came only months after Israel and Jordan signed a comprehensive peace treaty. Although Rabin’s landmark visit was initially conducted in secrecy, it was announced publicly upon his return to Israel.

Though falling short of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic Knesset address in 1977 and the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty of 1994, Qaboos granted Rabin and the Israeli leadership what it had strived for since the inception of the Jewish state in 1948: recognition and legitimacy. Moreover, Qaboos’ invitation arguably signaled publicly to Rabin, the Israeli public, and the Arab world at large a willingness to distance Oman from the Saudi position by granting Israel de facto recognition.

Following the assassination of Rabin, Qaboos once again displayed his commitment to the peace process by dispatching Oman’s foreign minister to attend Rabin’s funeral. In a subsequent interview with Israeli media, Alawi said, while being hosted by acting Prime Minister Shimon Peres, “Oman will soon have diplomatic relations with Israel, Oman was never in a state of war with Israel so there is no need for a peace agreement.”

The brief relationship between Qaboos, Rabin, and Peres has had concrete and positive outcomes: Oman has maintained a diplomatic channel with Israel since 1996 by hosting MEDRC. MEDRC is the only surviving organization of five regional initiatives included in the Oslo Accords as part of an effort to accelerate the peace process. Through it, participants from Gaza, Jordan, and the West Bank have attended, with Israeli counterparts, a number of courses on desalination and wastewater management in Tel Aviv.

On the surface, Oman’s quiet diplomatic style of doing business appears to be by design: By maintaining a policy of neutrality and noninterference, Oman seeks to preserve its independence and stability by closely aligning with Britain and the United States while balancing relations with its powerful neighbors, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Israeli-Palestinian angle, however, does not fit into Oman’s immediate strategic concerns; unlike Iran, with whom it shares the Strait of Hormuz, Israel is a distant power.

Given Trump’s quest to forge a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement, Oman could potentially again play a pivotal role through its MEDRC networks. A White House invitation to Oman’s newly-appointed deputy prime minister for international cooperation, Sayyid Assad bin Tariq al-Said, might provide an opportunity to explore this potential with the man who appears to be in line to become Qaboos’ eventual successor. And, unlikely as it would seem at the moment given Trump’s strident anti-Iran rhetoric, Oman could also reprise its role as a conduit for quiet messaging between Tehran and Washington on regional security issues as part of an effort to mitigate the risk of conflict.

While the last U.S. president to visit Oman was Bill Clinton in 2000, the administration of George W. Bush dispatched vice president Dick Cheney to Muscat in 2002, 2005, and 2006 to discuss Iran and other regional issues. More recently, the Obama administration and its secretary of state, John Kerry, in particular, came to rely on Muscat on a host of regional initiatives ranging from Iran, Syria, and Yemen. In fact, Kerry grew so appreciative of Oman’s effective diplomacy that he attended Oman’s national day celebration in 2016, a most unusual public gesture for a secretary of state. Whether Oman regains this coveted position in the eyes of the current administration remains to be seen, although its unique contributions in support of efforts to resolve some of the Middle East’s most intractable problems would at the very least argue for open channels of communication.

Sigurd Neubauer is a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. Yoel Guzansky is a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, a National Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a 2016–17 Israel Institute postdoctoral fellow.

Libyan parliament sacks prime minister over failure to control #oil_ports
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/libyan-parliament-sacks-zeidan-appoints-defense-minister-acting-p

The Libyan parliament voted Tuesday to oust Prime Minister Ali Zeidan amid anger at his government’s failure to stop eastern rebels from independently exporting oil. Libyan state television said Defense Minister Abdullah al-Thani will become acting prime minister. “The Congress voted to withdraw its confidence in the prime minister by 124 votes,” MP Suleiman al-Zubi told AFP. Defense Minister Abdullah al-Thani was named interim premier for the two weeks that General National Congress now has to agree on a permanent replacement, he added. read more

#Libya #Top_News