Draft UN resolution sparks spat

NATO could potentially face a lawsuit suing it for the damage to human health and well-being caused by the use of depleted uranium munitions during the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia.

The Serbian lawyer heading the team alleges that Nato forces used 10 to 15 tons of depleted uranium, which led to a “major environmental disaster” that damaged the health of tens of thousands of people. The lawsuit will ask the 19 countries who were members of Nato at the time of the bombing to pay compensation for the “financial and non-financial damages”, and also provide funds for cancer treatment. teleSUR IRBIL: Dozens of Islamic State militants wearing suicide vests penetrated Iraqi police lines in Mosul yesterday, retaking ground in a large-scale counterattack and sending residents fleeing.

Starting at about 3am, the militants launched seven car bombs at the front lines south of the Old City, their last remaining foothold, said Lieutenant-Colonel Hussein al-Lami, a federal police commander. Simultaneously 25 fighters wearing suicide vests attacked them from behind their lines. The militants had sneaked down the Tigris River and attacked with the assistance of “sleeper cells”. Washington Post LONDON: Fire engulfed a 24-storey housing block in the capital in the early hours yesterday, killing at least 12 people and injuring 78 others in an inferno that trapped residents as they slept.

Flames raced through the highrise Grenfell Tower block of flats in the Kensington area after taking hold about 1am. Witnesses reported some residents screaming for help from windows of upper floors and others trying to throw children to safety.

More than 200 firefighters, backed up by 40 fire engines, fought for hours to try to bring the blaze, one of the biggest seen in central London in memory, under control.

By mid-day, London police said six people had been killed. They cautioned the death toll was likely to rise and that there could be people in the building who are unaccounted for. Fire-fighting crews still had to reach the top four floors of the building where several hundred people live in 130 flats.

The cause of the fire, which left the tower block a charred, smoking shell, was not immediately known.

The block had recently undergone millions in refurbishment of the exterior. Residents rushed to escape through smoke-filled corridors after being woken up by the smell of burning.

The fire engulfed all floors from the second to the top of the 24-storey block. Reports said some residents leapt out of windows to escape the flames. One woman lost two of her six children as she tried to escape from the block. Reuters

THE US and France are hurtling towards a potential dust-up, as the Trump Administration weighs vetoing a French Security Council resolution empowering an African counter-terrorism force, according to US officials and UN-based diplomats.

The dispute hinges on the question of who will help fund the force of 5 000 African soldiers and police in the Sahel, a semi-arid plain that stretches from Senegal to Sudan, and whether French military planners have devised a workable strategy.

France spearheaded the effort to assemble a five-nation African anti-terror force – the G5 – but the countries taking part are looking to the US, its allies and the UN to share the burden of funding and supporting the cross-border operations.

The negotiations have emerged as a test of will between France’s newly elected president Emmanuel Macron, who travelled to Mali days after being sworn in to underscore France’s commitment to battling Islamic terrorists, and US President Donald Trump, who is looking to scale back US funding for multilateral operations.

A breach over the Sahel force could place new strains on US relations with France and other governments just weeks after Trump announced plans to withdraw from the Paris climate pact.

The US, backed by Britain, supports in principle the French and African commitment to take the fight to terrorists. But they have objected to giving the operation a UN seal of approval, saying the troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, already have legal authority to conduct missions.

“It is not legally necessary for the council to authorise this force,” according to a US official, who said the administration’s concerns went beyond the financial costs.

“The recent history of using Security Council resolutions to apply the UN imprimatur to hastily crafted mandates without proper on-theground oversight and accountability is not glowing.”

A second US official said American diplomats in New York were still trying to persuade the French to back down, but Paris appeared intent on “ramming it through and ignoring all of our objections”.

The official noted that the US was weighing whether to use its veto power if the French did not amend their initiative to address those concerns.

But France is betting that the US will blink if it faces a counter-terrorism resolution with broad Security Council support.

For the past four years, France has led international counter-terrorism efforts in the Sahel, seeking to fill a security vacuum in the region that followed the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s government in Libya in 2011.

The US has generally supported that effort, providing financial, political and intelligence support to the French counter-terrorism effort in the region. But Washington has long had reservations about the capacity of the region’s African armies to prosecute an effective war on terror.

In 2012, France proposed assembling an army of 15 African countries to confront Mali’s terrorists, an idea that Susan Rice, then the US ambassador to the UN, dismissed as “crap”.

For France, the initiative offers a model for helping local forces take on terrorists, particularly at a time when the US and the UN are looking to African states to resolve their own security problems.

It is only logical, French diplomats have argued, that the UN Security Council, which has approved hundreds of millions of dollars in support for a US African anti-terror force in Somalia, should also support this African-backed mission in Mali.

French officials maintain that their plan, which has been endorsed by the AU and UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, enjoys widespread backing in the 15-nation council, from African states to China.