Lebanon (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Prime Minister Resigns --- What Next?

See also Syria Live Coverage: Fighting in Aleppo and near Damascus
Friday's Israel, Palestine (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Obama Concludes Trip with Netanyahu Meeting

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Najib Mikati1825 GMT: Turkey and Palestine. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced that he may travel to Gaza and the West Bank in April.

The statement follows Friday's reconciliation between Ankara and West Jerusalem, with Israel’s apology for the killing of nine Turkish citizens on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May 2010.

“I may eventually visit Gaza and the West Bank in April. This visit would take place in the context of a general effort to contribute to the resolution process [of the Palestinian issue],” Erdoğan told reporters.

1755 GMT: Bahrain. Security forces have fired tear gas to prevent protesters from reaching the house of Nabeel Rajab, the imprisoned head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

Riot police clashed with hundreds of people marching for Rajab, sentenced to two years in prison on charges of backing “illegal” protests.

Authorities also set up roadblocks to keep cars from reaching the house.

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Israel, Palestine (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Obama Concludes Trip with Netanyahu Meeting

President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the grave of Theodor Herzl at Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem (Photo: Getty)

See also EA Video Analysis: Iraq, 10 Years Later --- 5 Points About the "Intelligence" Factor
Israel Video and Analysis: President Obama's Speech in Jerusalem
Syria Live Coverage: Damascus Suicide Bomb Kills 42, Including Top Cleric
Thursday's Israel, Palestine (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Obama Visits West Bank

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2002 GMT: Lebanon. The statement of Prime Minister Najib Mikati as he resigned, citing divisions on key issues and calling for the formation of a national unity government: "I announce the resignation of the government, hoping that this will open the way for the major political blocs to take responsibility and come together to bring Lebanon out of the unknown."

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Turkey Feature: PKK Leader Ocalan, Moving Towards Peace, Calls on Fighters to Leave Country (Hurriyet)

PM Erdogan & PKK head Ocalan

Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan has called on armed militants to leave Turkish soil in a historic message read out by the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) deputy Pervin Buldan and Sırrı Süreyya Önder in Kurdish and Turkish.

“We are at a point today that guns will be silenced and thoughts will speak. It is time for armed elements to move outside [Turkey’s] borders. This is not an ending but a new beginning,”

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Syria Live Coverage: Turkish Special Forces Enter the Country

1520 GMT: Fighting In Southwest Damascus. Reuters reports that despite rebel gains (described below) some of Assad's forces are well dug in, and have unleashed an intense rocket attack on Khan Alsheh:

An opposition campaigner in the nearby town of Jedeidet said troops stationed in hills overlooking Khan Sheih were attacking the area with multiple rocket launchers to try to dislodge rebels surrounding the barracks.

"I counted up to 20 explosions a minute on Khan Sheih," the activist, who uses the pseudonym of Abdo, told Reuters by phone.

A rebel commander in contact with the fighters said a force of some 1,000 insurgents had moved into Khan Sheih, which is 25 km from the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967.

1508 GMT: Rebels Push Southwest of Damascus. A prominent microblogger finds a video of a recently captured base near the capital, the 1337th Regiment Air Defense Base (map):

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Syria Live Coverage: The Bodies in Aleppo's "River of Martyrs"

2040 GMT: Large Rockets Fired Towards Central Damascus. In the last video we posted a video that shows the remains of a rocket that landed in Ein Tarma, a district in southern Damascus. Eliot Higgins and I have reviewed the image, and we are in agreement that what we are looking at matches the very unique tail end of a Frog-7 rocket. The picture on the left in the debris in Damascus, and the picture on the right is a Frog-7 on a truck launcher:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1064/868869014_d3b90b0505_o.jpg

The Frog-7 has a range of 70 kilometers, and has an average margin of error of 500-700 meters. Ein Tarma is only 1.2 kilometers by 800 meters, and is situated an alarming-close 2.7-3 kilometers from the very center of Damascus:

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Syria Feature: The Surge in Foreign Weapons for the Insurgents (Higgins and Chivers/Schmitt)

Colonel Abdul-Jabber Mohammed Aqidi, a prominent insurgent commander in Aleppo, holds up an anti-tank M79 rocket launcher

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While Persian Gulf Arab nations have been sending military equipment and other assistance to the rebels for more than a year, the difference in the recent shipments has been partly of scale. Officials said multiple planeloads of weapons have left Croatia since December, when many Yugoslav weapons, previously unseen in the Syrian civil war, began to appear in videos posted by rebels on YouTube....

Officials familiar with the transfers said the arms were part of an undeclared surplus in Croatia remaining from the 1990s Balkan wars. One Western official said the shipments included “thousands of rifles and hundreds of machine guns” and an unknown quantity of ammunition.

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Turkey Analysis: Erdogan's "One Leader, One Nation, One Market" --- Will It Succeed?

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoganIt is a busy and tricky time for the Erdogan Government : relations stuck with the European Union, a possible peace process to solve the Kurdish question, the long-awaited new Constitution, prospects of switching to a Presidential system, and next year's elections.

>The combination requires finely-adjusted diplomatic steps with opposition parties. For instance, the support of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) takes on importance in the Constitution-making process, while the main opposition faction, the Republican People's Party (CHP), has a role in the consensus over counter-terrorism.

So how to hold all this together? Despite some inconsistencies by the Government in its approach, there are three notions that are immutable: "One Leader, One Nation, One Market".

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Iran Live Coverage: Syria --- The Islamic Republic's "35th Province"

Funeral service of Revolutionary Guard commander Hossein Shateri, killed in Syria, on Thursday (Photo: AP)

Iran Feature: The Week in Civil Society --- Honouring Detained Student Activist Tavakoli
Thursday's Iran Live Coverage: Revolutionary Guards Issue A Warning to The Leaders

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2106 GMT: Nuclear Watch. So here, according to Reuters, is the big American gesture towards Iran to advance the talks over Tehran's nuclear programme.....

In exchange for Iranian steps to shut down its Fordow uranium enrichment plant, the US will lift sanctions --- which it imposed only nine days ago.

"Western officials" said the US and its allies will ease measures barring trade in gold and other precious metals with Iran. The restrictions, approved by President Obama in December and taking effect on 6 February, have reportedly cut off Turkey's transfer of gold to pay for Iranian natural gas (see 1716 GMT).

The officials said the offer will be presented to Iran at high-level discussions, the first in eight months, on 26 February Kazakhstan.

They acknowledged that the move is "a relatively modest update" to proposals from last year.

1732 GMT: Nut Watch. First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi said the Government has ordered a six-month ban on pistachio exports to try to control the nut's price, which has doubled in the past month to about 250,000 Iranian Rials per kilogramme ($3.18 per pound).

Pistachios are among Iran's top non-oil exports, bringing in an average of $1.5 billion a year and providing work for hundreds of thousands of people.

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Syria Live Coverage: Car Bomb on Turkey Border; Insurgents Take Major Dam

Islamist-led insurgents attack an Air Force building near the Taqaba Dam

Syria & Iran Follow-Up: The Real Story of "Syria's Iran-Hezbollah 50,000-Man Militia" in 3 Easy Steps
Syria Audio Analysis: Will There Be Negotiations? (No.) --- Scott Lucas with Monocle 24
Syria Video Feature: The Dangers of Reporting for State TV
Egypt (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Protesters Block Key Building for 3rd Day
Monday's Syria Live Coverage: Fighting Escalates Near Damascus

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2124 GMT: Foreign Weapons - Update. Last week we came to a provocative conclusion - there was sufficient evidence that a foreign power was arming the Syrian rebels, and those weapons were being deployed into the fight as part of a new, and far more effective, rebel strategy. We're still finding more evidence that this is true, and that the weapons are spreading, suggesting that a large amount of weapons have been smuggled into the country.

As we've also noted, those weapons were showing up in the hands of Free Syrian Army units, secular units with good reputations, and they had not been seen in the hands of Jihadists.

Until now. This was taken near Hamidiyah Military Base, southwest of Ma'arrat al Nouman (map), where rebels have been gathering to siege the power. The first, and most obvious, feature of the video is the impressive array of weaponry, from tanks to RPGs (including the RPG 29, a powerful anti-tank weapon) to 4x4s with machine guns. One of the shields on the 4x4s is painted in an Arabic prayer common to Jihadi elements. At least some of these soldiers appear to be Mujahadeen, Islamists, Jihadists, likely part of Jabhat al Nusra - not moderates. And among the weaponry, an M60 recoilless rifle is visible, part of the "foreign weapons" arsenal we've been pointing out.

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Egypt (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The 2nd Anniversary of Mubarak's Fall

11 February 2011: The crowd in Cairo's Tahrir Square reacts to news of Hosni Mubarak's resignation

See also Syria Live Coverage: Fighting Escalates Near Damascus
Sunday's Tunisia (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Prime Minister Threatens Resignation if New Cabinet Not Accepted

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2030 GMT: Egypt. Clashes continue at the Presidential Palace --- Sherine Tadros of Al Jazeera English tweets:

Police firing tear gas at protesters #presidentialPalace #Egypt twitter.com/SherineT/statu…

— Sherine Tadros (@SherineT) February 11, 2013

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