Middle East diplomacy - Page 18

Convoys of evacuees travelled from a rebel-held area of Aleppo and two Shiite villages besieged by insurgents on Monday, a war monitor and rebels said, as a deal enabling evacuations held after a tense, days-long stand-off and before a UN vote.

France has postponed a proposed Middle East peace conference in Paris to January next year, its ambassador to the United Nations said, acknowledging that the conditions to bring Israelis and Palestinians face-to-face were currently not there.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman says Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a ‘butcher’ who should be thrown out of the country along with his Iranian allies.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a state visit to Kazakhstan on Wednesday asked President Nursultan Nazarbayev for assistance in getting Israel accepted as a rotating member of the 15-member UN Security Council.

The planned evacuation of rebel districts of Aleppo stalled on Wednesday as air strikes and heavy shelling hit the city and Iran was said to have imposed new conditions on the deal.

France will postpone a proposed Middle East peace conference in Paris to January next year, Voice of Palestine radio reported on Wednesday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refusing to participate and U.S. attendance in doubt.

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday it would be “great” if US President-elect Donald Trump made good on his campaign pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Iran signed preliminary agreements with Russia’s Gazprom on Tuesday to develop two major oil fields in the latest of a flurry of deals with foreign firms, local media reported.

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has begun exploring the logistics of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv, and checking into sites for its intended new location, Israeli TV reported on Monday evening, hours after Trump’s campaign manager said the move was “a very big priority” for him.

New York, NY — Speaking here at a press conference outside the United Nations headquarters, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton cautioned the Obama administration against supporting unilateral UN action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his final weeks in office.

Donald Trump’s campaign promise to order the American embassy moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is a “very big priority” for the president-elect, top aide Kellyanne Conway said Monday.

Ending a half-decade-long diplomatic freeze, Turkey’s new ambassador to Israel on Monday hailed a “new beginning” in bilateral ties and called the Jewish state Ankara’s “partner and friend.”

Iran Air said Sunday it had finalised a contract to buy 80 planes from US firm Boeing, the official IRNA news agency reported.

WASHINGTON — A day ahead of a government shutdown deadline, Congress scrambled on Thursday to wrap-up unfinished business, voting decisively to send President Barack Obama a defense policy bill, including more than $600 million for missile defense cooperation with Israel.

A prominent advisor to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cooked up a simmering controversy with the suggestion that foreign chefs on Turkish television shows are undercover spies.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has said that Saudi Arabia and Iran are stoking proxy wars across the Middle East while some politicians in the region are abusing Islam, the Guardian newspaper reported.

The nuclear deal signed last year between world powers and Iran is “vitally important for regional security,” British Prime Minister Theresa May told a summit of Gulf nations on Wednesday, adding that she remained “clear-eyed about the threat that Iran poses.”

The Times of Israel reports: Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman acknowledged that Israel was responsible for recent attacks in Syria, saying on Wednesday that they were meant to prevent “advanced weapons, military equipment and weapons of mass destruction” from reaching Hezbollah.

An Egyptian state advisory body recommended on Monday that a Cairo court uphold a ruling that annulled an agreement giving Saudi Arabia control of two Red Sea islands.

Implementation of the Iran nuclear deal should not be “affected by any changes in the domestic situations” of countries involved, China’s foreign minister warned Monday, responding to US president-elect Donald Trump’s threats to abandon it.

A new poll found that the vast majority of Israelis believe US President-elect Donald Trump will be a “pro-Israel president.”

Speaking to the Saban Forum in Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry demonstrated dangerous ignorance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a biased perception of the core problems impeding peace between the two sides.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday slammed a proposed UN resolution demanding a temporary ceasefire in Aleppo as a “provocative step.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he would discuss with Donald Trump the West’s “bad” nuclear deal with Iran after the U.S. president-elect enters the White House.

Iran’s foreign minister condemned the US Senate’s extension of a piece of anti-Iran legislation, state TV reported Saturday.

A Turkish prosecutor called for charges related to a deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound ship to be dropped following diplomatic reconciliation between Turkey and Israel, state media reported on Friday.

Iran said on Friday that Congress’s decision to renew US sanctions for 10 years was a violation of last year’s nuclear agreement and promised an “appropriate” response.

Israel’s new ambassador to Turkey arrived in the capital Ankara on Thursday, an Israeli embassy official said, to serve as the first official envoy since a six-year spat put diplomatic relations on ice.

Iran’s two top leaders — its president and the country’s supreme leader — both sought Wednesday to calm concerns in Iran over the future of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers in the wake of Donald Trump’s election for US president.

Israel nominated a new ambassador to Turkey Tuesday, its first since the two countries normalised ties after the 2010 crisis triggered by Israel’s deadly storming of a Gaza-bound ship.

The Jerusalem Post reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cautioned his cabinet ministers not to turn to the media with their predictions of what US President-elect Donald Trump’s policy will be toward Israel. “Allow the incoming administration to formulate – together

The biggest challenge facing the Middle East is the “potential domination of the region by an Iran that is both imperial and jihadist,” former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said at a New York City gathering on Thursday.

Before Donald Trump won the presidency, Democratic foreign policy circles hummed with talk that an outgoing President Barack Obama could take a last stab at peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Despite a finding published by the UN’s atomic energy agency this week that Iran has — for the second time — stockpiled more heavy water than permitted under the terms of the nuclear agreement it reached with six world powers last year, the US State Department is declining to acknowledge this as a violation of the deal.

US president-elect Donald Trump pledged Friday to work for a “just, lasting peace” between Israel and the Palestinians, in his first public message on the issue since his upset victory.

President-elect Donald Trump does not condemn Jewish building over the pre-1967 lines, nor does he believe in dictating the terms of any peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinian, a close legal advisor, Jason Greenblatt, told Army Radio on Thursday morning.