Diplomats Make Progress on Prisoner Release, Peace Talks in Yemen

U.S. and U.N. diplomats working with the government of Oman have secured the release of two individuals being held by the Houthis and say they are close to reaching an agreement for new peace talks. American freelance journalist Casey Coombs was flown to Oman, then on to the United States yesterday, and a Singaporean citizen was also released. Three other U.S. citizens are still being held by the Houthis for unknown reasons, and yesterday a video was released of a French woman being held by another group in Yemen, possibly with ties to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the U.N. envoy for Yemen, said that talks with the Houthis about planning negotiations to resolve the civil war are making progress and that formal invitations to the parties could be sent out within hours. According to Reuters, he said that “the date, agenda and framework for the Geneva talks and the parties that attend the meeting” have been already been settled. A previous effort to hold negotiations was announced on May 20 but was quickly postponed due to disagreements about preconditions.

Egyptian Court Postpones Ruling on Morsi Death Sentence

An Egyptian court has postponed the final ruling on the sentencing of Muslim Brotherhood officials in two cases until June 16 while it reviews opinions submitted by the Grand Mufti. Former President Mohamed Morsi was sentenced to death for his role in breaking out of prison in 2011, and Brotherhood leader Khairat el-Shater faces the death penalty for allegedly working with Hamas and Hezbollah against Egypt.

Headlines

• France and Germany called on the European Union to revise plans for a new quota system to disperse the burden of migrants fleeing to Europe via Libya, saying the current proposal lacks “balance.”

• An Islamic State supporter was killed by Hamas forces trying to arrest him in Gaza.

• A new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency found that Iran has increased its stockpile of nuclear fuel, though the reasons why are unclear.

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened an opposition newspaper after it published images purporting to show Turkish intelligence smuggling weapons into Syria; “The person who made the story will pay a heavy price. I will not let him get away with it,” Erdogan said.

• An outbreak of MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) has spread to 25 people in South Korea and killed two, making it the largest outbreak outside the Middle East; the disease spread to South Korea after it was contracted by a man on a trip to three Gulf countries in May.

Arguments and Analysis

“Egypt sentenced me to death. The U.S. is ‘concerned,’ but that’s not enough” (Emad Shahin, Washington Post)

“The U.S. and the E.U. need to consider a new approach to this born-again authoritarianism in Egypt. It is not too late to call the coup a coup, boldly treat it as such, and make the coup leaders pay a price for subverting democracy and violating human rights. This, and not appeasement, will provide an incentive to Egypt’s military establishment to reform itself and take a step back from direct control.”

“Small Arms Survey 2015: Trade Update – After the ‘Arab Spring’” (Small Arms Survey)

“While the issue [of arming non-state actors with small arms] divided some governments, the emergence of IS tipped the balance in favour of such transfers in the eyes of many important exporters. As described in the chapter, however, arms shipments such as the ones delivered to the Kurdish peshmerga also present heightened risks of diversion and potential misuse. It will be interesting to see whether countries that have exported small arms to non-state armed groups, including the peshmerga, will include this information in their Arms Trade Treaty reports, which do not restrict the information states parties are to provide to transfers between states. In any case, neither the prospect of the adoption and entry into force of the Arms Trade Treaty, nor pre-existing control instruments, nor national legislation or policy appear to have led small arms exporters to exercise much restraint vis-à-vis the turbulence of the Middle East and North Africa.”

-J. Dana Stuster

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