Yemen Gov’t Spokesperson to Asharq Al-Awsat: The PM, Cabinet Members Were Unharmed in Airport Blast
Arab World
Riyadh - Abdulhadi Habtor
A scene from the Aden International Airport blast (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Yemeni Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik and all ministers of the new Yemeni government were unharmed by the blasts that targeted their arrival at the Aden International Airport on Wednesday, government spokesman Rajeh Badi confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat. “The prime minister and the ministers are fine, and no one was hurt,” Badi asserted, saying they were moved to a secure location. Three blasts caused by mortar shells rocked the airport shortly after a plane carrying the new government landed. Several people were killed and injured. Yemeni sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the shells struck successively before the prime minister and cabinet members went out of the plane. They were immediately evacuated from the scene.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2711996/yemen-gov%E2%80%99t-spokesperson-asharq-al-awsat-pm-cabinet-members-were-unharmed
Iraq Signs $2.625 Bln Faw Port Contract with Daewoo
Business
Asharq Al-Awsat
FILE PHOTO - Construction cranes are seen on a building site. Reuters file photo
Iraq agreed a $2.625 billion deal with South Korea's Daewoo Engineering & Construction on Wednesday to build the first phase at its planned Faw commodities port in the south of the country. Under the contract, signed in Baghdad by representatives of Iraq's transportation ministry and the South Korean company, Daewoo E&C will handle construction work including building five berths to unload ships and a yard for containers. The long-planned and repeatedly delayed Grand Faw port is one of several projects that Iraq hopes will create a shorter transportation corridor between the Middle East and Europe, bypassing the Suez Canal. Daweoo will carry out dredging and drilling works to create an access navigation channel, Farhan al-Fartousi, Iraq's director general at the General Company for Ports, told Reuters on the sidelines of a signing ceremony at the transportation ministry headquarters. The first phase should allow the port to receive three million containers, and all the construction work should be finished in around four years, said Fartousi. For now, to receive commodities ships, Iraq has to rely mainly on the port of Umm Qasr in the south, which sits at the top of the strategic Gulf waterway. The port of Faw will be deeper, allowing it to receive the largest container ships.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2711986/iraq-signs-2625-bln-faw-port-contract-daewoo
Syrian Director Hatem Ali Passes Away at 58 in Cairo
Varieties
Cairo - Entisar Derdr
Late Syrian director and actor Hatem Ali - Asharq Al-Awsat
Syrian director and actor Hatem Ali, considered by many to have been the “godfather of Syrian drama,” passed away of a heart attack in Cairo on Tuesday. He was mourned both by pro-government and opposition figures. Ali, 58, was also known to have been a victim of two forced displacements, once as a refugee fleeing the Golan Heights to Damascus and another time in 2011, when he become a supporter of the protests that had erupted that year. He has won numerous awards throughout his career, and his works were widely received with critical acclaim and commercial success. But out of the tens of works he has been involved in during his career, he is best known for directing renowned historical dramas such as Salah Al-Din Al Ayyubi, The Palestinian Exodus, Omar, and a quartet about the history of Muslim Andalusia. Since his 2011 exile, Ali has worked on many projects in Egypt, the latest of which was another historical drama ''Once Upon A Time'', which is now available on Netflix. He had also been planning on directing another Egyptian work, a movie about Mohmad Ali Pasha, before he passed away. Thousands of fans and tens of those who he had worked with wrote heartfelt messages mourning his death on social media. From his place of exile in Paris, Syrian director Haitham Haqqi, with whom Hatem began his career as an actor, mourned his loss on Facebook writing: “Hatem, you broke my heart, my brother, my son, my friend and my colleague, an actor, director, and writer. What grief surrounds our suffering Syria.” On the other hand, official Syrian regime media outlets merely briefly mention the news. Syrian Jamal Suleiman, who had collaborated with Ali on several occasions, went to the hotel where Ali suddenly passed away to help with the paperwork needed to transfer the body from to a hospital. His family has said that he will be buried in Damascus upon his will.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2711971/syrian-director-hatem-ali-passes-away-58-cairo
Three Blasts Target Aden Airport after New Yemeni Gov’t Lands
Arab World
Riyadh - Abdulhadi Habtor and Asharq Al-Awsat
Three Blasts Target Aden Airport after New Yemeni Gov’t Lands
Three blasts caused by mortar shells rocked Yemen’s Aden Airport shortly after a plane carrying the new government landed on Wednesday. The mortar attack killed and wounded several people who were waiting for the new cabinet members to come out of the plane. Local Yemeni sources have reported that the ministers were unharmed. Initial reports also said that gunfire was heard at the time of the blast. Yemen’s new power-sharing government, headed by Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik, arrived in the interim capital, Aden, after having been sworn in by President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in Riyadh on Saturday. The new cabinet will focus on development, salvaging the country’s economy, and uniting ranks to face the nationwide coup staged by Houthi militias. “The government’s return to Aden … is considered a step forward in the course of implementing the Riyadh Agreement under the auspices of Saudi Arabia,” government spokesman Rajeh Badi had earlier told Asharq Al-Awsat. According to Badi, the new ministers have many priorities topped by items Hadi listed during his first meeting with members of the new government. Hadi has highlighted the need to unite military forces to confront the Houthi threat, face economic challenges and improve public services. The leader also stressed on continuing to implement the Riyadh Agreement, especially stipulations on weapons and military operations. “We very much hope for the help from the international community to support Yemen’s government and national economy,” Badi said, noting that Yemen’s deteriorating economy is in dire need of help. He recognized Saudi Arabia as the main supporter of Yemen and voiced hope that the rest of the international community stands by the new government. At a meeting Monday with local officials, the governor said the government's return would offer help to Aden’s provincial leadership in solving a set of problems experienced by the southern governorate. Ahmed Hamid Lamlas also called on Aden's local officials to implement Hadi's instructions and pave way for the government’s return. Yemeni troops have secured the area linking the ministers' residence in al-Maashiq palace in Aden and their workplace in the cabinet secretariat, where the government is expected to hold intensive meetings.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2711951/three-blasts-target-aden-airport-after-new-yemeni-gov%E2%80%99t-lands
A few days ago, in the early hours of Friday, panic spread among the Lebanese again as the sound of rockets launched from the Mediterranean were heard as they flew over Beirut before going north, targeting Missyaf in the Syrian province of Hama. The event is not new. The fear is not new. It is not new for Israeli strikes to hit their targets in Syria either. Nor is it new for Damascus to announce that it had brought them down and cost the enemy dearly. Incidents of this kind have become common. They have been recurring, under different names and slogans, with variance in their details, since the 1960s, and it is the simple "philosophy": Lebanon being used to resist Israel and Israel using Lebanon to retaliate to that resistance. Two things are astonishing about this: The resistance, whether it is the Palestinian one of the sixties, or the Lebanese - Iranian - Syrian resistance that succeeded it, does not aspire to victory or parity, nor does it strive to hinder potential strikes. The resistant knows that this is out of the question because of the Israeli aggressor's evidently supreme military power. The resistant may say otherwise, but saying so does not negate his deep awareness of this fact. He lies, and he knows that he is lying. The second thing is that the resistant does not take the harm his enemy inflicts on him into account nor is there hope on the horizon for any political gains to be made from this battle. While it is understandable that he is not concerned about the harm inflicted on Lebanon, it is difficult to comprehend why the injuries he sustains do not concern him either. The denied fact is simple: Any war or confrontation, launched from Lebanon (or Jordan, Egypt, or Syria ...) stems from an existential weakness of the idea of resistance: Fighting is done from a third country. For fighting from this third country to make gains, fantastical objectives must be met; we all must become a single entity; our different nationalities, religions, confessions, sects, classes, proclivities, and cultures must not separate us and we must agree that we want to fight the enemy and that we are ready to make any sacrifice, the possible and impossible, in this vein. That is, millions of Arabs in the countries surrounding Israel should be transformed into poetic beings. Harsh reality got the best of poetry: Two civil wars erupted in Jordan and Lebanon, and the exorbitant costs of the wars pushed both Egypt and Jordan to leave. As for the Palestine Liberation Organization, it has also decided, at least since the early 1990s, that politics may have been more useful for attaining rights than war… There are two relative exceptions to this general illustration of the obstacles facing the resistance: The era of Hafez al-Assad: He was indeed fighting an impossible war without being directly involved, and he was being dealt blows and insults. However, with his Arab and international relations and his army’s presence in Lebanon, and by exploiting Egypt’s absence (because of Camp David) and that of Iraq (because of the war with Iran), he was able to barter, sell and buy, and he was making fleeting gains here and there from time to time. Meanwhile, in Iran, it is true that the policies it has pursued, including an impossible war it is waging through others, have come back to drain, impoverish and insult the country, most recently through the assassination of its top military leader and scientist. But it is also true that it imposed itself as a regional player with ambitions and influence in at least four Arab countries. It is pursuing the unlikely prospect of Biden compensating it for the gains Donald Trump snatched away. The pure catastrophe is the Syrian regime during Bashar's era, where resistance's fruitlessness is at its zenith. Merely staying alive is the only demand. Resistance and resilience bring about conflicts that are no longer limited to Lebanon and the Palestinians, especially since his forces were taken out of Lebanon. He has become the party directly concerned because his territory is being struck. Thus, he is now being insulted directly as well. On the other hand, he is no longer able to invest, benefit or depend on anything in any way. His protection is guaranteed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah; as for Israel, a declaration that southern Syria is its sphere of influence is not far-fetched. In other words, we are looking at a regime without capabilities, and consequently without goals. To maintain its survival, it remains ready to sacrifice everything, from Syria's territory to its dignity and its people. Everything for nothing. In this state, Syria does not resemble Iran, but it also doesn't resemble itself under Hafez el Assad. The closest parallel is the Gaza Strip under Hamas: Lure Israeli aggression, and the rest is up to God. Only a regime that is colonizing its land and displacing its people would sacrifice them to survive in this way. There have always been Lebanese who demand that Lebanon be spared this resistance out of concern for their country. Concern for Syria has become a new reason to make this demand today.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2711921/hazem-saghieh/syrian-regime-and-its-resistance-philosophy
Iran Says Allocates $150,000 for Families of Each Victim of Ukraine Plane Crash
Iran
Asharq Al-Awsat
FILE PHOTO: General view of the debris of the Ukraine International Airlines, flight PS752, Boeing 737-800 plane that crashed after take-off from the outskirts of Tehran, Iran January 8, 2020 is seen in this screen grab obtained from a social media video via REUTERS
Iran's cabinet on Wednesday allocated $150,000 for the families of each of the 176 victims of a Ukrainian plane downed in Iranian airspace in January, the official IRNA news agency reported. "The cabinet approved the provision of $150,000 or the equivalent in euros as soon as possible to the families and survivors of each of the victims of the Ukrainian plan crash," IRNA quoted a government statement. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they accidentally shot down the Ukraine International Airlines plane shortly after takeoff, mistaking it for a missile when tensions with the United States were high. Last month, Ukraine accused Iran of dragging its feet on investigating the downing of the airliner. Iran's Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami told state television on Wednesday that the final report on the crash had been sent to the countries participating in the investigation. Many of the 176 people killed in the crash were Canadian citizens or permanent residents.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2711906/iran-says-allocates-150000-families-each-victim-ukraine-plane-crash
Asharq Al-Awsat
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz
Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani received a "formal invitation" from Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz to the January 5 meeting of the six-nation GCC in Saudi Arabia's northwest Al-Ula province. On Wednesday, the Saudi cabinet said that it "wished for a successful summit to enhance joint action and enhanced cooperation between the country members," according to a statement on the official Saudi Press Agency. As well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the GCC includes Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2711876/king-salman-invites-qatar-emir-gulf-summit
