CAIRO: The Arab League has said a ministerial delegation will head to Moscow on Monday to discuss “ways to reach a solution” to the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

The Russian Embassy in Cairo said the foreign ministers of Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Sudan — members of the Arab Contact Group on Ukraine — are expected to participate in the talks in Moscow alongside Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

LONDON: The half-brother of Jordan’s King Abdullah II relinquished his princely title on Sunday.

In a letter posted on his Twitter account, Prince Hamzah said he gave up his title because his “personal convictions and the values” instilled in him by his father “are not in line with the approaches, trends and modern methods of our institutions.”

He said that he was honored to have served his country and people by holding the title previously and would continue to be loyal to Jordan and serve the “country, people, and the message of (our) fathers and forefathers” in his private life as much as he could.

BEIRUT: Parties standing in the May 15 parliamentary elections in Lebanon are hurrying to draw up their candidate lists ahead of the Monday deadline for registration.

Campaigning for the elections is gathering pace as candidates visit their constituents across the country and their rhetoric becomes increasingly inflammatory.

Most of the parties in power have announced their lists and alliances, but the opposition and independent forces are still forming lists and alliances.

A voter in the Baalbek-Hermel constituency told Arab News that “Hezbollah mobilized all its electoral machinery and began touring the voters, wooing them in Beirut and its southern suburbs, in the Bekaa and the south.”

The voter added that party delegates “enquire about the number of voters in each house and whether they need transportation to reach the polling booth, and ask them to fill out a specific form to communicate with them.”

The voter, who declined to be named, also indicated that Hezbollah’s delegates were being challenged during campaigns. They said people were raising queries about how the party had benefited them during the last period of being in power, and that their situation had become worse.

“The same applies to other parties whose electoral machines face losing the voter enthusiasm.”

The elections may lead to a change in the balance of power in the new parliament, which will elect the new president to succeed Michel Aoun, whose term ends in October.

Hezbollah had tried to raise the bar of its electoral battle to a higher level to obtain a parliamentary majority.

On Saturday, during a tour of southern villages, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, MP Mohammed Raad, accused “the accomplices who are working to sow discord and stir divisions in the ranks of our resistance environment.”

MP Wael Abu Faour, of the Democratic Gathering bloc, said that “there is an excessive targeting of the Progressive Socialist Party, and the war against it is almost global.”

Addressing his voters in the southern Bekaa region, Abu Faour said: “There is a clear project to create a parliamentary bloc in parliament that supports the forces of the ‘March 8 alliance’ (Hezbollah and its allies) among (PSP leader) Walid Jumblatt’s supporters, and this attempt will fail.”

A delegation from the EU made up of technical experts and election observers has been looking at preparations for the elections, as agreed with the Lebanese Election Supervision Commission.

Headed by Deputy Chief Observer Jaroslaw Domansky, the delegation held talks with the commission, led by Judge Nadim Abdel-Malik to discuss how they would carry out their work supervising the elections.

WASHINGTON : An Algerian man imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention center for nearly 20 years has been released and sent back to his homeland.
The Department of Defense announced Saturday that Sufiyan Barhoumi was repatriated with assurances from the Algerian government that he would be treated humanely there and that security measures would be imposed to reduce the risk that he could pose a threat in the future.
The Pentagon did not provide details about those security measures, which could include restrictions on travel.
Barhoumi was captured in Pakistan and taken to the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002. The United States eventually determined he was involved with various extremist groups but was not a member of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, according to a report by a review board at the prison that approved him for release in 2016.
US authorities attempted to prosecute Barhoumi but the effort fizzled amid legal challenges to the initial version of the military commission system set up under President George W. Bush.
In the final days of Barack Obama’s presidency in January 2017, a federal judge in Washington declined to intervene in the Pentagon’s decision not to repatriate Barhoumi, whose lawyer said he had expected his client to be released and that the prisoner’s family had begun making preparations for his return, including by buying him a car and a small restaurant for him to run.
The Justice Department said then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter rejected the release of Barhoumi on Jan. 12, 2017, “based on a variety of substantive concerns, shared by multiple agencies,” without going into detail.
The effort to resettle prisoners languished under President Donald Trump. The Biden administration is attempting again to reduce the number of men held at Guantanamo as part of a broader effort to close the facility.
Barhoumi’s release brings the total held at the US base in Cuba to 37 men, including 18 who have been deemed eligible for repatriation or resettlement in a third country.

RIYADH: Fighting has largely stopped in Yemen’s key battlefields as rival factions stick to the UN-brokered humanitarian truce, local military officials told Arab News on Saturday.

The UN’s Yemen envoy Hans Grundberg on Friday announced that the Iran-backed Houthis and the internationally recognized government agreed to a two-month truce coming into effect on Saturday, the first day of Ramadan.

The parties agreed to halt ground, air and cross-border strikes, allow oil tankers to enter Hodeidah seaport, permit flights to depart and land at Sanaa airport, and lift the siege of Taiz.

Local officials said that fighting and shelling between government troops and the Houthis have largely subsided in the central province of Marib and outside the city of Taiz, amid reports that the Houthis are still amassing forces in Marib.

“Fighting has stopped in Marib. There is a limited exchange of mortar and heavy gun fire and the enemy is deploying forces,” a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity told Arab News, adding that army troops and allied tribesmen were bracing for Houthi violations of the truce.

Thousands of combatants and civilians have been killed since early last year in the province of Marib when the Houthis resumed a major offensive to seize control of the energy-rich city of Marib, the Yemeni government’s last bastion in the northern part of the country.

Despite aggressive missile, drone and ground attacks on the city, the Houthis failed to take control of the city and suffered thousands of casualties.

Yemeni experts believe that the Houthis, who have long rejected many similar calls for a truce, were forced into accepting the latest UN-brokered ceasefire after failing to invade Marib.

In the city of Taiz, key battlefields were quiet on Saturday as the Houthis and army troops halted hostilities for the first time in years, but residents called on the Iran-backed militia to immediately lift its stranglehold on the city.

Col. Abdul Basit Al-Baher, a military officer, told Arab News by telephone that government forces stuck to the truce as the Houthis also halted shelling and attacks on the densely populated city. “There is relative calm on all fronts here in Taiz,” Al-Baher said.

The Houthis have laid siege to Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, for more than seven years, after failing to take control of the city’s downtown.

They positioned forces on the outskirts of the city, barring people from leaving or crossing into the city, and gunning down those who moved close to their positions.

Al-Baher said the siege should be lifted, in concert with the truce, because it has stifled the city and pushed thousands of people to the brink of famine. “The truce (is) meaningless if the siege of Taiz is not lifted. Siege is a form of warfare,” he said.

“The Houthis blocked Taiz’s roads with large rocks and sandbags and planted a huge number of landmines.” They were targeting all living things, including cats and dogs, he said.