Around 270,000 Syrians have right to bring families to Germany - report
Apr 5, 2017- Around 270,000 Syrians in Germany have the right to bring in their family members, a newspaper said on Wednesday - a statistic that could fuel the debate about migration less than six months before a national election.
Mass-selling tabloid Bild cited a government paper as showing a total of 431,376 Syrians applied for asylum in Germany in 2015 and 2016 and said that of those 267,500 would be entitled to family reunifications in Germany.
Neither the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) nor the Interior Ministry immediately responded to requests for comment on the report.
In 2016, the government decided to suspend family reunifications for two years for migrants who get "subsidiary protection" - granted to people who are not considered as being persecuted individually but in whose home county there is or war, torture or other inhumane treatment.
Syrians are the biggest group of asylum applicants in Germany. They are increasingly being granted subsidiary protection rather than refugee status and that means they are only granted the right of residence for a year, although this can be extended.
But Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), their Bavarian sister party - the Christian Social Union (CSU) - and the Social Democrats (SPD), their junior coalition partner, decided last week to make exceptions for people with subsidiary protection status in hardship cases.
More than a million migrants flocked to Germany in 2015 and 2016 but arrivals have dropped significantly.
The impact of immigration has been of one of Alternative for Germany's (AfD) key rallying points but its support has suffered as the issue has slipped out of the headlines ahead of the Sept. 24 vote.
The AfD is currently on between 7 and 11 percent in opinion polls, above the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament.
CSU leader Horst Seehofer told German magazine Stern tackling the AfD was a main aim.
"If we govern the country sensibly and don't attack each other personally in the election campaign, we can push the AfD under 5 percent," Seehofer said.
However, while his party is behind Merkel in the election campaign he said it was sticking to its demand for a cap on the number of migrants coming here - a proposal which the chancellor has rejected.
In 2016, some 280,000 migrants arrived in Germany, a sharp drop compared with 890,000 the previous year. Bild said while there were no numbers for 2017 yet, the federal police had already caught more than 20,000 illegal migrants on the borders in the first three months of this year.
Separately, the German cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft law that would prevent child marriages conducted abroad from being recognised in Germany. It says marriages should automatically be void if at least one of the partners was younger than 16 at the time they wed.
Apr 5, 2017- Russia suggested on Wednesday it would publicly stand by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad despite outrage over a chemical weapons attack, setting Donald Trump's new U.S. administration on course for a head-on diplomatic collision with Moscow.
Western countries including the United States blamed Assad's armed forces for the chemical attack, which choked scores of people to death in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in a rebel-held area of northern Syria hit by government air strikes.
Washington said it believed the deaths were caused by sarin nerve gas dropped by Syrian aircraft. But Moscow offered an alternative explanation that could shield Assad: it said it believed poison gas had leaked from a rebel chemical weapons depot struck by Syrian bombs.
Hasan Haj Ali, commander of the Free Idlib Army rebel group, called the Russian statement a "lie".
"Everyone saw the plane while it was bombing with gas," he told Reuters from northwestern Syria.
"Likewise, all the civilians in the area know that there are no military positions there, or places for the manufacture (of weapons). The various factions of the opposition are not capable of producing these substances."
The incident is the first time Washington has accused Assad of using sarin since 2013, when hundreds of people died in an attack on a Damascus suburb. At that time, Washington said Assad had crossed a "red line" set by then-President Barack Obama.
Obama threatened an air campaign to topple Assad but called it off at the last minute after the Syrian leader agreed to give up his chemical arsenal under a deal brokered by Moscow, a decision which Trump has long said proved Obama's weakness.
The new incident means Trump is faced with same dilemma that faced his predecessor: whether to openly challenge Moscow and risk deep involvement in a Middle East war by seeking to punish Assad for using banned weapons, or compromise and accept the Syrian leader remaining in power at the risk of looking weak.
Trump described Tuesday's incident as "heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime", but also faulted Obama for having failed to enforce the red line four years ago. Obama's spokesman declined to comment.
Washington, Paris and London have drawn up a draft U.N. Security Council statement condemning the attack and demanding an investigation. Russia has the power to veto it, as it has done to block all previous resolutions that would harm Assad.
"BARBARIC REGIME"
Trump's response to a diplomatic confrontation with Moscow will be closely watched at home because of accusations by his political opponents that he is too supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He has previously said the United States and Russia should work more closely in Syria to fight against Islamic State.
U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia intervened in the U.S. presidential election last year through computer hacking to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. The FBI and two congressional committees are investigating whether figures from the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow, which the White House denies.
The chemical attack in Idlib province, one of the last major strongholds of rebels that have fought since 2011 to topple Assad, will complicate diplomatic efforts to end a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven half of Syrians from their homes.
Jihadist groups have a strong presence in Idlib alongside other rebel groups, some of which have received backing from powers including Turkey and the United States.
Over the past several months Western countries, including the United States, had been quietly dropping their demands that Assad leave power in any deal to end the war, accepting that the rebels no longer had the capability to topple him by force.
The use of banned chemical weapons would make it harder for the international community to sign off on any peace deal that does not remove him.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who two months ago shifted his country's policy by saying Assad should be allowed to run for re-election, said on Wednesday that he must go.
"This is a barbaric regime that has made it impossible for us to imagine them continuing to be an authority over the people of Syria after this conflict is over."
Russia says proposed U.N. Syria chemical attack resolution "unacceptable" - Ifax
Apr 5, 2017- A proposed United Nations resolution on a chemical weapons attack in Syria is "unacceptable" for Moscow, Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying on Wednesday.
"We do not believe it is expedient to pass a resolution on the chemical weapons attack in its present form," she added.
Washington, Paris and London have drawn up a draft U.N. Security Council statement condemning the attack and demanding an investigation. Russia has the power to veto it, as it has done to block all previous resolutions that would harm Assad.
Russia has already suggested it would publicly stand by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and says the chemical incident which killed scores of people was likely caused by a leak from a depot controlled by Syrian rebels,
Nine military officers sacked over Kabul hospital attack
Apr 5, 2017- Nine military officers have been sacked over last month's attack by militants on the military hospital in Kabul, the Afghan defence ministry says.
Those dismissed include a general and a colonel. All face prosecution for negligence, the ministry said.
The attack was one of the worst in the conflict-hit nation in recent months.
About 50 people are said to have died as militants armed with guns, grenades and knives targeted patients and staff at the hospital.
The brutal assault caused shock and anger among the public. Many people are still demanding to know why a building that was meant to be secure was so vulnerable to attack.
The hospital is heavily guarded and the government says the attackers got inside after exploding a car bomb at the gate.
But other reports suggest some attackers were already inside the hospital when the violence began, meaning militants had infiltrated the high-security site.
There is also a lack of clarity over how many people died. Some hospital workers quoted in local media said the toll was much higher than the figure of about 50 reported by the government.
The so-called Islamic State group said it carried out the attack, but some eyewitnesses later told media the assailants shouted slogans in support of the Taliban.
The deputy interior minister was sacked in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
UN calls talks over Syria 'gas attack'
Apr 5, 2017- The UN Security Council is to hold emergency talks after a suspected chemical attack in Syria left dozens of civilians dead and wounded.
The attack on a rebel-held town brought furious international reaction, with the US and other powers blaming the Syrian government for the deaths.
Officials in Damascus deny using any such weapons.
The attack will overshadow a conference in Brussels at which 70 donor nations will discuss aid efforts in Syria.
Delegates want to step up humanitarian access for thousands of civilians trapped by fighting.
Syria's civil war has raged for more than six years with still no political solution in sight.
Nearly five million Syrians have fled the country and more than six million are internally displaced, the UN says. More than 250,000 people have been killed.
Wednesday's emergency meeting of the UN Security Council was called by France and the UK as international outrage mounted over the suspected gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province on Tuesday.
The Russian defence ministry gave its version of events on Wednesday, saying a Syrian air strike had hit a rebel ammunition store that included "a workshop for the production of land mines filled with poisonous substances".
It seemed to support accounts by Syrian military sources a day earlier who reported an explosion at what they called a rebel chemical weapons factory in Khan Sheikhoun.
Earlier, Britain's ambassador to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, said the incident was "very bad news for peace in Syria".
"This is clearly a war crime and I call on the Security Council members who have previously used their vetoes to defend the indefensible to change their course," he told reporters in New York.
Footage from the scene showed civilians, many of them children, choking and foaming at the mouth.
Witnesses said clinics treating the injured were then targeted by air strikes.
UK-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 58, including 11 children.
It was unable to say what chemical was involved but pro-opposition groups said it was believed to be the nerve agent Sarin.
In a statement, US President Donald Trump condemned what he called "these heinous actions" by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused the Syrian government of "brutal, unabashed barbarism".
UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said it was a "horrific" attack and that there should be a "clear identification of responsibilities and accountability" for it.
Syria has denied its forces caused the deaths and Russia, which is supporting the government, said it had not carried out any air strikes in the vicinity.
The BBC's Lyse Doucet in Brussels says the attack could prove a stumbling block at Wednesday's international conference.
The EU hopes to use the prospect of funds for reconstruction as a bargaining chip in the faltering peace talks, our correspondent says, but the latest developments will deepen the opposition of those who say now is not the time to discuss financial support for areas controlled by the Syrian government.
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