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Yesterday, Turkey announced new steps in the path of normalization with both Syria and Egypt, confirming its intention to improve relations with these two countries after years of tension and estrangement.

The Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said that a quadripartite meeting would bring him together with his Russian, Iranian and Syrian counterparts, which may be held in Moscow, in early May, pointing out that this meeting will pave the way for the meeting of the leaders of the four countries, within the framework of the path of normalizing relations between Ankara and Damascus. .

“We believe that the four-way meeting of foreign ministers on Syria will take place in early May… the road map was prepared in advance,” Cavusoglu said, in a televised interview on Monday, explaining that this issue was discussed with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who visited Ankara on Thursday and Friday. .

The Turkish minister also said that Ankara “will not achieve any political gains” from the meeting between Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Bashar al-Assad, nor from any meeting at the ministerial level. In an apparent reference to the Syrian side’s belief that Ankara is rushing to hold these meetings before the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled in Turkey, next May 14, to give impetus to President Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party in those elections.

On the line of normalization with Cairo, the Turkish Foreign Minister announced that his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, will visit Ankara this week, pointing to the possibility of announcing during the visit the exchange of appointment of ambassadors between the two countries. He said that his recent visit to Cairo was “very positive, and now is the time to take concrete steps gradually.” Cavusoglu visited Cairo last month after 10 years of severing diplomatic relations.
The four-way meeting for normalization between Damascus and Ankara will be held in Moscow next month

An Iraqi pensioner recounted to Asharq Al-Awsat the course of two meetings he had with President Saddam Hussein, after the fall of Baghdad, whose memory coincides with today. The spokesman, whose name could not be mentioned for security reasons, said that the first meeting was held on the outskirts of Fallujah on April 11, 2003, two days after the fall of Baghdad, while the second meeting was held on July 19, in Baghdad, which was occupied by US forces. . He confirmed that Saddam Hussein was touring Iraqi provinces, supporting “resistance operations against the American occupation.”

On April 6, 2003, at 10:30 pm Baghdad time, a handful of American tanks reached the Republican Palace and the Rashid Hotel in the Iraqi capital. The phone rang of the Director of Intelligence, Lieutenant General Taher Jalil Al-Habush, and Lieutenant General Abd Hammoud, President Saddam Hussein’s secretary, was on the line. Friendliness was absent between the two teams, but Abd Hammoud was the only obligatory passage to receive the orders of the “Mr. President” and to deliver messages to him.

The director of Iraqi intelligence, Lieutenant General Taher Jalil Al-Habush, shows pictures of weapons and bags found in the apartment of the Palestinian leader Abu Nidal, who “committed suicide” in Baghdad August 21, 2002 (Getty Images) and Saddam’s message to Lieutenant-General Taher Al-Habush (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Abed Hammoud delivered a sentence equivalent to a bomb. He told the director of intelligence, “I want you to secure the Baghdad-Saladin road and the Baghdad-Diyala road.” Al-Habush discussed this strange request with the director of his office in the alternative headquarters of the intelligence, and the opinion was agreed, “that Mr. President will leave Baghdad to manage the process of confronting military aggression from outside.”

The retired revealed that Saddam was close to Firdaus Square the moment an American armored vehicle toppled his statue. He added that Saddam led, on the same night, from a nearby secret headquarters, the first operation of the “resistance” against the Americans, which targeted locations of their forces in the vicinity of the Abu Hanifa al-Nu’man mosque in Adhamiya, and he almost personally participated in the attack, but his companions prevented him out of fear for him.

He stated that Saddam left Baghdad the next day for Hit, where he spent a night, after which he moved to Fallujah, where he chaired, in the presence of his son Qusay and security and partisan officials, a meeting during which he called for setting up ambushes for the American forces “so that they know that Iraq is a difficult morsel.” He said that Saddam went the next day to Baghdad, and met in an alternative headquarters in the Dora region, the accountants of the Presidential Court, and obtained from them the sum of one million and 250 thousand dollars, and signed a paper aimed at “perpetuating resistance operations against the American occupation, and I must return them in the shortest possible time.”

The retiree recounted that he was summoned to a meeting held in a secret house in Baghdad after the dawn prayer on July 19, and found himself in front of the Iraqi president. In the meeting, Saddam’s speech showed feelings of disappointment from some inside and outside, and he asked: “Why does the burden of confronting the occupation lie on the shoulders of some provinces, when we participated as a people in the battle of al-Qadisiyah,” referring to the war with Iran. Saddam criticized clerics, references and clan leaders for not participating in resisting the occupation “contrary to promises they made”. He repeated that Iraq is not Saddam Hussein, but rather the king of Iraqis and Arabs, pointing out that the fall of Iraq would mean the extension of Iran’s influence to Morocco.

A wave of frustration prevails in the Sudanese street, after the talks on reforming the security and military sectors between the army and the semi-independent “rapid support” forces stalled, regarding the files of command and control, which raised the level of anxiety about the future of the country.

The signing ceremony of the political agreement was postponed for the second time, indefinitely, after it was scheduled yesterday (Thursday) to coincide with the anniversary of two uprisings, the first overthrew the rule of former President Jaafar al-Nimeiri in 1985, and the second the rule of al-Bashir in 2019.

The state of frustration was not diminished by the Army Commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s renewal of his commitment to the political process and work to end the differences between him and his deputy, the commander of the “quick support” Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo (Hamidti), and the reassurances announced by the political forces participating in the political process. Concern was increased by the manifestations of military mobilization and the deployment of forces, including armored vehicles, in a number of streets in the capital, Khartoum, and the dissemination of information about the recruitment of tens of thousands of soldiers belonging to each of the army on the one hand, and the “rapid support” on the other hand, and the deployment of massive inspection detachments in most major roads.

Al-Burhan pledged to move forward with completing the political process at the required speed, “in a way that closes the doors to all attempts at apostasy.” diligently to complete the discussion on the remaining issues ».
Disagreements between the army and the “rapid support” postpone the signing of the Sudanese political agreement