Middle East & North Africa

13 Mar 2021; MEMO: According to Sudanese officials, Saudi Arabia has committed to pay $1.5 billion to Sudan as part of the economic aid package it approved for the country in 2019.

On Thursday, the Sudanese News Agency (SUNA) quoted officials stating: "An amount of $750 million had been deposited in the Sudanese government account," explainingthat: "$500 million of the amount will be allocated to help solve the crisis of wheat, medicine, oil and some other commodities.

13 Mar 2021; MEMO: Rohingya refugees who have been residing in Saudi Arabia for decades will not be sent back to Bangladesh, a top Bangladeshi diplomat said on Wednesday following a recent visit to the kingdom.

"Saudi Arabia didn't say they would send Rohingya back to Bangladesh. And, there was no such issue between the two countries," said Bangladeshi State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam, referring to his recent meeting with his Saudi counterpart Adel Al-Jubeir.

13 Mar 2021; MEMO: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced yesterday that it was setting up a $10 billion investment fund aimed at strategic sectors in Israel. The two countries normalised relations last year in what was seen as a major triumph of the former US President Donald Trump.

TRIPOLI, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Mohammad Menfi, the newly-appointed president of Libya's Presidential Council, said on Friday that he would do his utmost to help achieve national reconciliation in his country.

"The greatest efforts will be dedicated to laying the foundations of the national reconciliation process, by building its structures, providing moral and material requirements for national reconciliation, and establishing values of forgiveness and tolerance," Menfi said in a televised speech.

ANKARA, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Turkey and Egypt have launched diplomatic-level contacts years after former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was toppled in 2013, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Friday.

"We have contacts both at the level of intelligence and foreign ministries with Egypt. Diplomatic-level contacts have started," Cavusoglu told Anadolu Agency on his flight from Qatar to Turkey.

SANAA, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Yemen's Houthis spokesman said Friday night that the Houthi rebel group rejected the ceasefire plan proposed by the United States special envoy for Yemen, calling it an empty one that represented the Saudi vision.

"If the U.S. was serious to stop the war and siege in Yemen, it would have declared an end to the war and siege, then we would welcome this step," Mohammed Abdulsalam told the group's al-Masirah television.

ANKARA, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Turkey reported on Friday 14,941 new COVID-19 cases, including 834 symptomatic patients, as the total number of positive cases in the country reached 2,850,930, according to its health ministry.

The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 66 to 29,356, while the total recoveries climbed to 2,670,273 after 11,180 more cases recovered in the last 24 hours.

The rate of pneumonia in COVID-19 patients stands at 3.8 percent and the number of seriously ill patients is 1,349 in the country, said the ministry.

CAIRO, Mar 12 (NNN-MENA) – Egyptian President, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, and his counterpart of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Felix Tshisekedi, yesterday discussed over the phone, the disputed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

During the conversation, Sisi reiterated Egypt’s position, that calls for reaching a legally binding agreement on the rules of filling and operating the GERD, before the next rainy season, in order to preserve the water rights of the downstream countries, Egyptian presidential spokesman, Bassam Rady, said, in a statement.

RAMALLAH, Mar 12 (NNN-WAFA) – Palestine’s Fatah movement, yesterday dismissed a senior member from the ruling party and its central committee, over his violation of internal rules.

The dismissal came, days after Nasser al-Qudwa announced his intention to form an independent electoral list, under the name of the National Democratic Forum, in the legislative elections, scheduled on May 22.

DAMASCUS, Mar 12 (NNN-SANA) – Syrian and Russian Coordination committees, on the Return of Syrian Refugees, affirmed yesterday that the US continues to strangle the Syrian people, economically, by using various methods of economic and political pressure on international bodies and organisations, to turn a blind eye to the dangerous repercussions of the sanctions imposed on Syria.