RIYADH: The Arab Coalition supporting Yemen’s internationally recognized government condemned the Houthi militia on Monday for violating international law.

The Houthis continue to plant improvised explosive devices in schools, including Al-Sharaf School in Hodeidah, said coalition spokesman Col. Turki Al-Maliki.

The coalition is continuing its efforts to rescue and rehabilitate children recruited as fighters by the Houthis, in cooperation with Yemen’s legitimate government, the Red Cross, the Red Crescent and human rights groups, he added.

The coalition has so far rescued and rehabilitated 102 such children, he said, adding that the rehabilitation period takes at least three months.

Rehabilitation includes disarming the children, providing them with medical and psychological treatment, and returning  them to their families under the government’s supervision. 

Meanwhile, the Houthis have been denying ships access to Hodeidah port for the past three days, said Al-Maliki. 

The coalition supports efforts by UN special envoy Martin Griffiths to reach a political solution to the Yemen crisis, the spokesman added.

The coalition agreed to the evacuation of wounded Houthi fighters to Oman for medical treatment out of “humanitarian considerations and as part of confidence-building measures” ahead of UN-sponsored peace talks in Sweden, Al-Maliki said.

Griffiths arrived in Sanaa on Monday to escort the Houthi delegation to the talks, which might start on Wednesday, said two sources familiar with the matter.

A UN-chartered flight took off at 6 p.m. carrying the wounded Houthis, their escorts and a team of doctors to Oman, a security source at Sanaa International Airport told AFP. The Houthis had asked to travel on a plane not inspected by the Arab Coalition.

The Houthis launched 208 ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia between March 26, 2015, and Dec. 3, 2018, Al-Maliki said. 

The Yemeni National Army has made great progress against the Houthis in various parts of the country, he added. Between Nov. 26 and Dec. 3, 648 Houthi terrorists were killed, he said.

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to hold talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Brussels on Monday, a day after police recommended the premier’s indictment in a third graft case.
Netanyahu’s office said the meeting had been set last week, but provided few other details.
US President Donald Trump’s top diplomat was to be in Brussels for a NATO meeting of foreign ministers on Tuesday.
“I will discuss with Mike Pompeo a series of regional developments as well as the steps we are taking together to block the aggression of Iran and its proxies in the north,” Netanyahu said before departing, referring to Syria and Lebanon.
“Of course we will also discuss other issues.”
They were to meet on Monday evening, with Netanyahu accompanied by the head of Israeli spy agency Mossad, the head of his national security council and his military secretary.
Trump has pledged unwavering support for Israel and has pushed ahead with controversial policies such as moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
Israel and the US have also worked closely on a range of issues, particularly related to Iran.
Both have warned of Iran’s presence in Syria, which neighbors Israel.
Netanyahu has pledged to stop arch-foe Iran from entrenching itself militarily in Syria and to keep it from transferring advanced weapons to its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.
There has been increased attention in Israel in recent days over Israeli officials’ concerns regarding Iranian activity in Lebanon.
The Israeli premier has also pursued ties with Arab Gulf nations that have no official diplomatic relations with his country and the US has backed him in those efforts.
Netanyahu’s trip comes a day after police recommended indicting him and his wife Sara for bribery and other offenses, the third such move against him in recent months.
The attorney general must now decide whether to indict Netanyahu, who rejects the accusations against him in all three cases.

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) said on Monday it had nominated current premier Nechirvan Barzani to succeed his uncle Masoud Barzani as president of Iraqi Kurdistan, and Masoud Barzani’s son Masrour as premier of the regional government.
With 45 of 111 seats, the KDP is the biggest party in the Kurdish assembly after September’s regional election but 11 shy of an outright majority, and will have to govern in coalition.
Masrour Barzani is currently Iraqi Kurdistan’s security chief. Both Masrour and Nechirvan have occupied senior roles within the KRG throughout the last decade.
Veteran Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, still the head of the KDP, stepped down after 12 years as regional president in November 2017, less than a month after helming a referendum on Kurdish independence that backfired
and triggered a crisis for Iraq’s Kurds.
The post has remained vacant ever since. The president’s powers were divided between the prime minister, Parliament and the judiciary in a makeshift arrangement, leaving the future of the presidency uncertain.
The semi-autonomous region does not have a formal constitution, having failed to ratify it in Parliament since it was drafted in 2009.
Any future power-sharing arrangement would require a rethinking of presidential powers, which would need to be ratified by Parliament.
“We still don’t know what the presidency will look like. Will it become a ceremonial post filled by Parliament?” said Kamal Chomani, a Kurdish political analyst and nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
“In any case, Nechirvan will be weaker than Masrour but will stay powerful enough to control the foreign relations of the KRI. It all depends on how the presidential law will be amended,” he said.
Relations with the previous Iraqi administration of Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi were strained by the referendum.
But with a new Iraqi government in place, led by Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Irbil and Baghdad have in recent weeks signalled a willingness to work together.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika named Ahmed Ouyahia, head of the Rassemblement National Democratique (RND), the second-largest party of Algeria and an ally of the National Liberation Front (FLN), as prime minister on Aug. 17, 2017.

The appointment of Ouyahia, who met Mohammed bin Salman on Monday during the Saudi crown prince’s two-day visit to Algeria, followed the departure of Ouyahia’s predecessor, Abdelmadjid Tebboune.

Tebboune was sacked after barely three months in office. Although the rumor mill was busy speculating about the reasons behind the sudden change, for Ouyahia the priority was clear — putting the Algerian economy back on track and continuing the reforms to diversify the economy away from its dependence on hydrocarbon, which still accounts for more than 60 percent of government revenues and half of GDP.

A close ally of Bouteflika, Ouyahia had been the head of his office since May 2014 before being asked to take charge as prime minister for his fourth term in the position that he first occupied more than two decades ago. Though considered to be a man of the establishment, Ouyahia is also known for his radical positions and his ability to stand his ground in the management of sensitive and priority issues, with a hands-on approach towards hard work.

Ouyahia is an old hand at managing economic crises. He was named head of the Liamine Zeroual government in 1995, when the country was faced with one of the harshest economic crises in its history. Ouyahia not only pulled Algeria back from the brink of bankruptcy, but also implemented a strict structural reform plan imposed by the International Monetary Fund as a condition of rescheduling the large external debt of Algeria.

In the three years that he stayed on as prime minister, Ouyahia initiated several other austerity measures, including a cut in subsidies on basic commodities, which were not popular but necessary for preventing an economic meltdown. The measures did go a long way to boost Algeria’s fragile treasury. He went on to serve as the prime minister until 1998.

Almost five years later, in 2003, he was back as PM and again faced tough economic decisions. In 2006, he cracked down on striking teachers and refused to discuss any salary increase, boosting his image as the man to go to for handling tough situations.

So when his predecessor, Tebboune, was sacked, the Algerian president turned again to his ally to restore the national economy and bring a sense of order to the country. ‘‘He’s the right man to handle the situation the country is going through right now. Algeria does not need a complacent head of government, but rather a man who tries to save Algeria vis a vis its economic and security situation. The danger facing the country, in connection with the new world order that is emerging, requires a leader of his stature and who can execute the program that is needed for restoring calm in the economy and the society,’’ said Salima Benhouhou, a housewife and a mother, soon after Ouyahia’s appointment as prime minister.

When he took charge, Ouyahia acknowledged the challenges following a sharp decline in the country’s revenues and foreign exchange reserves, which had slumped from nearly $200 billion. The regional security situation, with the civil war in neighboring Libya and civic unrest in Tunisia, also weighed heavily on Algeria. ‘‘I hope to live up to this mission and the confidence that the president of the republic has given me to serve the Algerian people,’’ Ouyahia declared soon after his swearing-in ceremony.

Ouyahia lost no time in beginning to clean up the economy. He brought in presidential aides to occupy key ministries such as industry, trade and housing, with the objective of rapid implementation of his economic program. Within a week of taking charge, he held several meetings with directors of public institutions to ensure that the entire government machinery moved in the same direction together.

Ouyahia’s priorities include diversification of the national economy, facilitating the administrative processes to make doing business in Algeria easier as well as reforms in the education, higher education and health-care sectors. His roadmap also included mobilization of unconventional domestic financing and concrete actions by the government to promote growth in sectors such as agriculture, industry and tourism.

But the government was also reassuring Algerians that its moves were aimed at rationalizing public policy on social justice and national unity. ‘‘The government and its social and economic partners must set an example for our people through solidarity, mobilization and unification of ranks so that our country can invest constructively in the different capacities and potentialities of its children,’’ Bouteflika said recently.

For preparing the new monetary policy and the means for financing of the national economy, the prime minister called a meeting of the heads of public banks. In keeping with the wishes of the president and in view of the dramatic experience that Algeria had with out-of-control external debt in 1980s, Ouyahia also turned his back on using international debt markets to raise finances to help tide over budget and current account deficits. 

Within days of taking over, Ouyahia presented a detailed plan for a recalibration of the Algerian economy by tackling declining forex reserves, rising unemployment and private-sector bankruptcies. It included prioritizing domestic production over imports, special incentives for investors and widespread development of economic zones with tax breaks for companies situated there.

Ouyahia’s plan included direct borrowing from the Algerian Central Bank to plug the bulging budgetary deficit, even as the country’s oil revenues have collapsed by nearly 40 percent since the highs of 2016. His five-year plan aims to balance the budget by 2022 and reverse a deficit that ballooned with the fall in global crude oil prices that also led to the country’s forex reserves slumping from about $178 billion to about $100 billion.

With domestic debt currently about 20 percent of gross domestic product, Algeria has room to take on additional borrowing, the IMF has said. The government also brought in a regime of strict import controls, thus managing to cut the current account deficit, a key factor in controlling inflation, stabilizing the currency and improving the economic stability of the country.

And Ouyahia continues his efforts to diversify the Algerian economy. Earlier this week, he announced the launch of the biggest industrial project in the country for more than a decade with the development of the phosphate complex in the eastern region of Algeria. The project is the outcome of a tripartite agreement between the state-owned Sonatrach, Algerian business group Asmidal-Manal and the Chinese investment firm Citic. 

With an investment of more than $6 billion, besides fertilizers and other derivates of phosphate, the complex will produce natural gas and is expected to generate non-hydrocarbon revenues of more than $2 billion a year by that period. It will also create 3,000 direct and more than 14,000 indirect jobs, an important factor in a country with a large youth population.

With roughly 30 percent of the Algerian population aged between 15 and 29, this group also represents 72 percent of the unemployed, making Ouyahia’s plans look all the more vital for Algeria’s future.

CAIRO: An Egyptian criminal court has ordered the conditional release of prominent blogger and journalist Wael Abbas, a judicial source said on Monday, rejecting an appeal by state security prosecutors to keep him in detention.
Abbas, an award-winning journalist and rights activist, was arrested in March on charges including involvement with an illegal organization and publishing false news.
The source said the precise conditions of his release were not yet known but could include him not being allowed to leave home without police permission, subjecting himself to police supervision and presenting himself every 45 days in court.
“The question is why was he arrested in the first place? He is a prisoner because of his opinions and he has lost seven months of his life,” his lawyer Gamal Eid said.
Eid said his client denied the charges presented by state security prosecutors.
Abbas first became known in activist circles after posting videos showing police brutality. One such video, published in 2006, caused such uproar that it prompted an investigation resulting in a rare conviction of two policemen.