The Georgian parliament has approved a new government led by Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili following the surprise exit last week of a prime minister from the same ruling party angry over its handling of accusations targeting an opposition leader.

Gharibashvili and his proposed cabinet were supported by 89 deputies with two opposed in the 150-member parliament, where the main opposition United National Movement (ENM) and smaller parties are boycotting proceedings.

The political scene for the Caucasus nation's 4 million people has been on the brink of crisis since October elections dominated by the Georgian Dream party but that independent monitors say were marred by irregularities.

The long-governing Georgian Dream named the Paris-educated Gharibashvili, a former prime minister who was serving as defense minister, to replace outgoing party colleague Giorgi Gakharia.

Gakharia announced his resignation as prime minister on live television on February 18 following a court ruling that ordered the arrest of Nika Melia, the head of the ENM.

Gakharia had warned that Melia's arrest could further escalate Georgia's ongoing political crisis and that polarization that "is the greatest risk for the future of our country [and] its economic development."

A Tbilisi court granted a prosecution request to place Melia in custody in a case denounced by the opposition as a political witch hunt.

In the West, Georgia has been regarded as a potential role model for its democratic trends in a region where democracy is sometimes an afterthought or worse.

International observers said Georgia's national vote in October was "competitive and, overall, fundamental freedoms were respected" but cited pervasive allegations of pressure on voters.

Critics say Georgian Dream founding billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili has cemented his grip on power over the past seven years of on-again, off-again public leadership of the party.

After Georgian Dream's electoral victory in 2012, Ivanishvili served as prime minister for just over a year before returning to the private sector, though most believe he still wields unrivaled influence over Georgian politics.

A State Department spokesman has said the United States will hold Iran "responsible" for a rocket barrage on February 22 that targeted the U.S. Embassy in the Iraqi capital.

But it said it won't "lash out" in response.

Iraq's army said earlier that there were no casualties when the embassy, within Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, was targeted by the rockets.

It said there was only minor property damage, including a damaged vehicle.

Iraqi security officials said three rockets were fired at the U.S. Embassy. They said one rocket fell within the perimeter of the vast embassy complex and another fell in the nearby residential neighborhood of Harthiya just outside of the Green Zone.

Iraqi officials said the rockets had been launched from the Al-Salam neighborhood to the southwest of the Green Zone.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Baghdad's Green Zone houses foreign embassies as well as the seat of Iraq's government.

The rocket barrage was the third attack to target the U.S. presence in Iraq in a week.

A contractor working for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq was killed and several other civilians were wounded by a rocket attack outside Irbil International Airport in northern Iraq on February 16.

A little-known Shi'ite militant group that calls itself the Guardians of Blood Brigade claimed responsibility for that attack.

On October 20, rockets wounded employees of a U.S. defense company at Balad Air Base in Salahaddin Province about 70 kilometers north of Baghdad.

The U.S. Embassy had been a frequent target of rocket attacks during the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. The pace of attacks slowed during the weeks before President Joe Biden took office. But attacks recently have become more frequent.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters

YEREVAN -- Several thousand people marched in Armenia's capital again on February 22 to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian over his handling of the war over Nagorno-Karabakh with Azerbaijan.

The protesters marched to France Square in central Yerevan and blocked several adjacent streets, temporarily paralyzing traffic in the city center.

The crowd soon dispersed. But opposition politicians say they plan to hold another demonstration on February 23 as part of what they say is a plan for "non-stop" protests and acts of civil disobedience.

A coalition uniting 16 opposition parties has been holding anti-government demonstrations in Yerevan and other parts of the country in a bid to force Pashinian to hand over power to an interim government.

Opposition forces want their joint candidate, Vazgen Manukian, to become transitional prime minister to oversee fresh elections.

Protests broke out in Armenia last November after Pashinian signed a Russian-brokered cease-fire deal that brought an end to 44 days of fierce fighting over Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenian forces had been largely defeated by Azerbaijan's Turkish-backed military in the recent fighting.

Under the terms of the cease-fire, Pashinian ceded control over some territory in Nagorno-Karabakh and all seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan that had been occupied by Armenian forces since the early 1990s.

Pashinian has refused to step down under pressure from the protesters. He has defended the cease-fire deal as a painful but necessary move to prevent Azerbaijan from overrunning the entire Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The opposition protests had stopped in the midst of winter. But demonstrations resumed on February 20 with thousands taking to the streets of Yerevan once again.

With reporting by AFP

Beijing has rejected what it called "slanderous attacks" against China about living conditions for Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities in its western region of Xinjiang.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva that Uyghurs and other minorities living in Xinjiang enjoy freedom of religion and labor rights.

While other countries are considering possible actions over allegations that China is committing "genocide" against Uyghurs, Wang described Beijing's treatment of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang as a "shining example" of China's human rights progress.

Activists and UN rights experts say at least a million Muslims have been detained at camps in the remote region.

Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps. But faced with substantial evidence, it now claims the camps are there to provide vocational training. It also says the camps are needed to fight Islamic extremism.

Earlier on February 22, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab denounced what he described as torture, forced labor, and sterilizations against Uyghurs on an "industrial scale" in Xinjiang.

"The situation in Xinjiang is beyond the pale," Raab said.

Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said: "Our commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also leaves no room for the arbitrary detention of ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs in Xinjiang or China's crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong."

But Wang told the UN Human Rights Council that Beijing was conducting its counterterrorism measures in accordance with the law. He said Xinjiang was now experiencing "social stability and sound development" after four years without any "terrorist case."

He also said that 24,000 mosques are allowed to operate in Xinjiang.

"These basic facts show that there has never been so-called genocide, forced labor, or religious oppression in Xinjiang," Wang said.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration In January endorsed a last-minute determination by the Trump administration that China had committed genocide in Xinjiang. Biden has said the United States must be prepared to impose costs on China.

The office of UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet is in the midst of negotiations of terms for a team of observers to access China.

Wang on February 22 invited UN monitors to scrutinize the situation in Xinjiang. But he did not provide a timetable for his invitation.

"The door to Xinjiang is always open," Wang said. "China also welcomes the High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Xinjiang."

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. development bank has said it remains committed to supporting private investment in the Balkans amid talk that officials have discussed closing its Serbian office.

David Marchick, chief operating officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), told RFE/RL in a statement on February 19 that the bank was dedicated to investing in the region -- including in critical infrastructure and renewable energy -- in light of efforts by China and Russia to gain influence in the region.

“We are eager to build on the DFC’s recently renewed Investment Incentive Agreements with Kosovo and Serbia, which we remain committed to, and continue our enhanced focus that began last year with the establishment of a regional DFC presence based out of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade,” he said in the statement.

Suggestions that the new leadership at the DFC contemplated shutting the Belgrade office as part of a new strategy to focus more resources on lower income nations sparked concern among Balkan advocates in the United States.

Endy Zemenides, the executive director of the Hellenic American Leadership Council, which seeks to promote U.S.-Greek relations, sent a letter to the DFC and the administration of Joe Biden on February 18 to advocate against such a closure, saying it would only serve the interests of Washington's adversaries.

"This is not the time to create confusion with regards to the U.S.'s commitment to the [Balkan] region. Russia and China will be the only beneficiaries of a reduced DFC presence," he said, according to a copy of his letter.

"We are eager to hear the DFC's new leadership make a public commitment to continued support of the Aegean and Western Balkans, including a pledge to maintain its Belgrade office," Zemenides' letter said.

'Tension' Within The Bank

Marchick, who worked on reconstruction in the Balkans following the Bosnian wars of the 1990s, said DFC officials in Washington will continue to work with embassy staff and others to identify investment opportunities in the region.

Former DFC officials have told RFE/RL on condition of anonymity that there has been tension within the development bank between those who want to focus investment on lower income nations, such as those in Southeast Asia and Africa, and those who believe it should also invest in projects in middle- and higher-income nations that promote U.S. foreign policy goals.

Trump in 2018 authorized the creation of the DFC based on the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and other U.S. agencies with a view to better compete with China for influence in developing nations.

China has been spending tens of billions of dollars on infrastructure and energy projects in emerging nations, including the Balkans, through its Belt and Road Initiative as it seeks to expand its geopolitical influence and challenge U.S. global dominance.

Trump expanded the bank’s firepower and financial instruments compared with the OPIC, authorizing it to provide up to $60 billion in loans, loan guarantees, equity, and insurance to U.S. companies willing to do business in nations with a higher risk profile.

A 2019 bill gave the DFC permission to invest in strategically important energy-related projects in higher income nations like Greece, which is considered a gateway to the strategically important Western Balkans.

The United States is also seeking to reduce the Balkans' energy dependence on Russia.

Trump agreed in September to open a DFC office in Belgrade as part of a larger deal brokered by his administration to normalize economic relations between Serbia and Kosovo.

The Trump administration believed that boosting economic ties between Kosovo and Serbia could help resolve their decades-old conflict. The Belgrade office's mandate, however, went beyond the two countries to include the entire Balkan region.

Growing Russian, Chinese Influence

Some analysts viewed the Washington-brokered agreement as a preelection maneuver by Trump. The talk about closing the office comes weeks after Biden took office and ousted the Trump appointee running the DFC.

The office is the DFC’s first in Europe and is designed to counter growing Russian and Chinese influence in Balkans by helping bring American investment to the region.

Marko Cadez, the president of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce and head of the Western Balkans 6 Chamber Investment Forum, which brings together all six chambers of commerce in the region, called the DFC Belgrade office a "sign of America’s long-term commitment" to the region.

"It tells the countries of the region that the United States is invested, quite literally, in their success," Cadez said in a statement to RFE/RL.

Greek Development and Investment Minister Adonis Georgiadis said on February 17 that the DFC has already played a "key role" in helping to attract the interest of American companies to the nation's strategic infrastructure.

Greece is privatizing many state assets, including its ports and shipyards, which have become a geopolitical playground as Chinese, Russian, and U.S. investors jockey for ownership.

Greece is also expanding its energy infrastructure to become a transit hub for the Balkans.

U.S. investment in the Balkan region has been sorely lacking, say politicians like former Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.

She recently called on the U.S. to step up its presence.

"I must say that I've been disappointed by the sort of disinterest that I've seen in the past years" from the United States, Grabar-Kitarovic told Stanford University's Hoover Institution on February 17.

"If you want to really prevent others from political interference in a certain area then you have to be involved yourself," she said.

She also criticized the United States and Europe for dragging their feet on integrating the Balkans into the EU and NATO, saying the slow action in doing so has enabled Russia and China to expand their influence in the region.

Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Bureau has arrested the former deputy chairman of a Ukrainian bank at the heart of an FBI criminal investigation as he attempted to fly abroad in the latest sign Kyiv is taking steps to tackle corruption and lawlessness.

Volodymyr Yatsenko was detained at Boryspil Airport in Kyiv on February 22 after investigators forced the pilot of the private jet he was traveling on to land, the bureau announced in a tweet.

Yatsenko, who was on his way to Vienna after reportedly being tipped off about his arrest, was charged with the embezzlement of funds at PrivatBank, once the nation’s largest lender.

More arrests of management could follow, the Kyiv Post reported.

The FBI is investigating the two owners of PrivatBank -- Ihor Kolomoyskiy and Hennadiy Boholyubov -- in connection with accusations that more than $5 billion was stolen from the lender through fraudulent loans and that the money was then laundered.

In a move that made international headlines, Ukraine was forced to nationalize PrivatBank in 2016 and pump more than $5 billion into the lender in order to stave off its bankruptcy.

The United States accuses Kolomoyskiy and Boholyuobov of using some of the laundered proceeds to buy assets in the United States ranging from metals companies to commercial properties with the help of two American associates based in Miami.

The Justice Department last year filed three civil forfeiture lawsuits in a Florida court against a U.S. real estate holding controlled by the two tycoons and run by the associates.

However, a judge agreed last week with a Justice Department request to temporarily suspend the civil forfeiture proceedings amid concerns it could harm the criminal investigation against the Ukrainian businessmen and their two American partners.

“Allowing [the tycoons] to conduct discovery would expose the identities of witnesses who have provided and will provide information and testimony in both the civil forfeiture actions and the criminal investigation,” the Justice Department said in its February 19 filing.

“If that occurs, the confidential informants may cease providing information, and, to the extent they are not reachable through process in the United States, they may make themselves unavailable for future testimony. Potential sources of information who have not yet been interviewed by the government would likely be deterred from coming forward.”

The tycoons deny the accusations and neither Ukraine nor the United States has filed criminal charges against them.

Kolomoyskiy is one of the most influential tycoons in Ukraine and the U.S. government’s investigation into his activities is being closely followed.

The billionaire owns key media, energy, and metals assets and is believed to have outsized influence over the administration of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Kolomoyskiy’s TV stations backed Zelenskiy’s successful presidential bid.

The United States, one of Ukraine’s biggest backers financially and militarily, has repeatedly expressed concern about oligarchic influence over the nation’s government and economy.

Washington has also complained about the lack of investigations into corrupt tycoons and officials and has tied some aid to improvements in judicial reform.

The arrest of Yatsenko, who was flying on a private plane owned by Kolomoyskiy, is the latest in a series of moves by Kyiv to tackle cases that resonate with the United States.

Zelenskiy last week approved sanctions on Viktor Medvedchuk, a tycoon and lawmaker with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Medvedchuk was sanctioned by the United States in 2014 for undermining democracy in Ukraine.

On February 2, Zelenskiy sanctioned three television stations believed to be owned by Medvedchuk. In late January he announced an investigation into Ukrainian individuals accused of interfering in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.

The moves come after President Joe Biden was inaugurated on January 20. Biden knows Ukraine well, having served as the point man to Kyiv while serving as vice president from 2009 to 2017.

Political analysts say Zelenskiy is seeking to win over the Biden administration after a difficult relationship with the Trump administration caused by the 2019 impeachment investigation.

NUR-SULTAN -- Dozens of Kazakh women have gathered in the headquarters of the ruling Nur-Otan party demanding increased social allowances three days after another family lost several children in a fire as their parents were out of the apartment.

On February 22, the women demanded government housing for families with multiple children, a fourfold increase of social allowances for children, and a halt in the persecution of women who have picketed and rallied for the cause.

On February 19, five children were killed when a fire broke out in a five-story residential building in the town of Zhanatas. The father was at work at the time of the blaze while the mother had left the house to buy food at a shop.

"What happened in Zhambyl is another tragedy. Some officials we heard criticizing the poor children's parents for what happened. It's wrong. Children are dying in fires and other incidents across the country. And that is not the parents' fault. They simply are surviving and very often must leave their children alone in homes. If the government increased financial allowances to support children, things like that would not have happened," one of the protesting women Zhumaghyz Kokeshova said.

In February 2019, another fire in a small house near Nur-Sultan killed five children from the same family when both parents were at work on night shifts.

That deadly fire also sparked waves of protests across the Central Asian nation, with people demanding increased social support and financial allowances for families with several children and low incomes.

The women on February 22 demanded lawmakers representing Nur-Otan in parliament to meet with them, chanting "Lawmakers! Come Out!"

They also sought the immediate release of Feruza Sapar, who they say was detained over the weekend after police stopped some of the women when they tried to reach Zhanatas to meet the family after its tragedy.

When party officials invited them to a congress hall in the building but warned that journalists would be barred, the women refused and continued their protest in the main hall of the headquarters.

Daulet Karibek, the deputy chairman of Nur-Otan's branch in Nur-Sultan, advised the women to go to another building in the city where, according to him, the party could handle their complaints in written form.

The women rejected the suggestion, saying that they had written "tons of complaints already, but there have been no results."

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau have appealed to U.S. President Joe Biden to prevent the completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which they called a "dangerous, divisive project."

The pipeline would affect Ukraine by depriving it of transit fees from existing pipelines that transverse its territory.

The U.S. Congress last year passed the Protecting Europe's Energy Security Clarification Act (PEESCA) to widen the list of sanctionable services against the project to include providing insurance, reinsurance, pipeline testing, inspection, and certification services. PEESCA became law on January 1.

SEE ALSO:

Nord Stream 2: Is Russia's 'Bad Deal For Europe' Also A Done Deal?

"Poland and Ukraine have long warned against the dangers associated with the construction of Nord Stream 2. Our calls for vigilance and boldness were heard in the U.S. Congress, which pressed on with measures designed to stop this dangerous, divisive project," Kuleba and Rau said in a joint article published in Politico on February 22.

"We call on U.S. President Joe Biden to use all means at his disposal to prevent the project from completion," the two ministers said.

Some 150 kilometers of pipe under Danish and German waters in the Baltic Sea must be laid to complete the pipeline, controlled by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. It is expected to carry 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Russia to Germany.

"On this issue, the U.S. continues to be critically important. It needs to dismiss claims that Nord Stream 2 has become 'too big to fail' and that it simply needs to be finished," they wrote in the article.

"If the project is successful, Russia could try to convince the Ukrainian public that the West doesn’t care about its own principles, and ultimately, about the security and prosperity of Ukraine."

Nord Stream 2 is "not about the energy security of Germany, our close ally and partner," Kuleba and Rau said.

"We respect Germany's right to express their point of view. But we also strongly believe that these kinds of projects cannot be viewed narrowly through the lens of bilateral relations, but should instead be approached from a broader perspective of Europe's interests and security as a whole," they said.

The Biden administration on February 19 imposed additional sanctions on a Russian vessel and the ship’s owner for their work on the pipeline.

However, the move was immediately criticized as inadequate by Republican lawmakers, who denounced the administration for failing to impose sanctions on additional targets and demanded the administration explain what it is doing to oppose the completion of the pipeline.

The two foreign ministers warned that "a lot remains at stake" in the project.

"Autocratic rulers in the Kremlin and elsewhere can and should be held accountable. The West, led by the United States, cannot afford to cower in the face of blackmail that runs counter to everything that we stand for," they concluded.

HOMEL, Belarus -- A court in the southeastern Belarusian city of Homel has sentenced a 16-year-old youngster with a medical condition to five years in prison for participating in protests demanding the resignation of the authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

Judge Dzmitry Deboy of the Chyhunachny district court on February 22 sentenced Mikita Zalatarou, along with two other defendants -- 25-year-old Dzmitry Karneyeu and 28-year-old Leanid Kavalyou -- after finding them guilty of taking part in "mass civil disobedience."

Karneyeu and Kavalyou were sentenced to eight years and six years, respectively.

After the judge pronounced the sentences, Zalatarou, who has epilepsy, began throwing himself against the bars in the courtroom cage he and the other defendants were placed in, shouting "Let me out of here!"

His father said earlier that police had severely beaten his son right after his arrest in August 2020, and again while in pretrial detention.

Crisis In Belarus

Read our coverage as Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka continues his brutal crackdown on NGOs, activists, and independent media following the August 2020 presidential election.

During the trial, the teenager also said that he had been beaten while in custody and deprived of the pills he needed to use on a daily basis to treat his medical condition.

"A prison guard told me when I asked for my medicine that 'you are political and therefore you will turn away,'" the boy said at the trial.

The three were arrested in the wake of nationwide protests that started after Lukashenka, who has run the country since 1994, was declared the victor of an August 9 presidential election.

The country's political opposition and many people in the country have said the poll was rigged.

Security officials have cracked down hard on the demonstrators, arresting thousands, including dozens of journalists who covered the rallies, and pushing most of the top opposition figures out of the country.

Several protesters have been killed in the violence, some were handed prison terms, and some rights organizations say there is credible evidence of torture being used by security officials against some of those detained.

Lukashenka has denied any wrongdoing with regard to the election and refuses to negotiate with the opposition on stepping down and holding a new vote.

The European Union, United States, Canada, and other countries have refused to recognize Lukashenka, 66, as the legitimate leader of Belarus and have slapped him and senior Belarusian officials with sanctions in response to the “falsification” of the vote and postelection crackdown.

Iranian state television has confirmed that the country has ended its implementation of the Additional Protocol, which allows for so-called snap inspections of nuclear-related sites, signaling the further disintegration of atomic safeguards in place since a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The move on February 22 came after Tehran floated the possibility of dramatically escalating uranium enrichment as Washington and its Western partners scrambled to salvage the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) that the previous U.S. administration abandoned in 2018.

Word of the imminent breakout from the Additional Protocol followed defiant statements by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that included a vow to "not back down on the nuclear issue."

Khamenei also suggested that Tehran could boost uranium enrichment as high as 60 percent -- below the 90-percent level for a bomb.

But it is well above the 20-percent enrichment announced by Tehran last month and many multiples above the 3.67-percent limit agreed as part of the JCPOA.

A U.S. State Department spokesman was later quoted as saying that 60-percent enrichment sounded "like a threat" but that Washington would not respond to hypotheticals and posturing.

Earlier, White House press secretary Jenn Psaki said that the United States' European allies were still awaiting a response from Iran on an offer to host an informal meeting of current members of the JCPOA.

Newly inaugurated U.S. President Joe Biden's administration vowed on February 22 that it will return to "strict compliance" with the JCPOA if Tehran does the same.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva in a pre-recorded speech that Washington hopes to extend and bolster the nuclear deal that has come under intense pressure lately.

"Working with allies and partners, we will also seek to lengthen and strengthen the JCPOA and address other areas of concern, including Iran's destabilizing regional behavior and ballistic-missile development and proliferation."

At the same conference, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas called on Iran to fully comply with the pact and said compliance was in Tehran's interest.

"It is in Iran's best interest to change course now, before the agreement is damaged beyond repair," Maas said.

Maas said that Germany expected "full compliance, full transparency and full cooperation" from Iran with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose chief Rafael Grossi reached a temporary agreement in Iran on February 21 on site inspections that he called a "significant achievement."

That deal effectively bought time with inspections continuing as all sides try to salvage the agreement, which was pushed to the brink of collapse when U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew nearly three years ago and reimposed tough sanctions.

The United States and other governments have accused Iran of secretly trying to build a nuclear weapons capability, a charge that Tehran has consistently rejected despite years of what the IAEA said was obfuscation and deception.

Khamenei, who has the final say on political and religious affairs in Iran, said on February 22 that "we will act to the point that is needed and the country requires" and that "we could bring enrichment to 60 percent" for a number of purposes.

"The Islamic Republic will not back down on the nuclear issue and will strongly continue down the path of what the country requires for today and tomorrow," the AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

A day earlier Press TV quoted Khamenei as saying that Iran will never move toward the development of nuclear weapons.

The so-called Additional Protocol allows IAEA inspectors to visit undeclared sites in Iran at short notice.

Tehran is demanding that Washington remove punishing sanctions Trump reimposed in 2018, while Washington has called on Iran to first return to all of its nuclear commitments.

"Iran must comply with its safeguards agreements with the IAEA and its international obligations," Blinken said on February 22.

"The United States remains committed to ensuring that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon," the top U.S. diplomat said. "Diplomacy is the best path to achieve that goal."

Meanwhile the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, General Kenneth McKenzie, was quoted as warning Tehran against any provocation.

"I would think this would be a good time for everybody to behave soberly and cautiously, and see what happens," McKenzie said during a visit to Oman, according to AFP. "I do believe we will be prepared for any eventuality, however."

In the standoff, Iran's conservative-dominated parliament has demanded that the country limit some inspections by the IAEA from February 23.

Grossi hammered out a temporary technical deal with Tehran during his visit, whereby Iran will continue to allow access to UN inspectors to its nuclear sites -- but will for three months bar inspections of other, non-nuclear sites.

Grossi said afterwards that the "temporary solution" enables the IAEA to retain "a necessary degree of monitoring and verification work."

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said on February 22 that the talks had "resulted in a very significant diplomatic achievement and a very significant technical achievement."

Khatibzadeh stressed that the outcome was "within the framework of parliament's binding law."

Under the agreement reached over the weekend with the IAEA, Iran will temporarily suspend so-called "voluntary transparency measures" -- notably inspections of non-nuclear sites, including military sites suspected of nuclear-related activity.

Tehran will for "three months record and keep the information of some activities and monitoring equipment" at such sites, Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said.

This means that cameras will keep running at those sites, "but no footage will be given to the IAEA," Khatibzadeh said.

The footage will be deleted after three months if the U.S. sanctions are not lifted, Iran's atomic body has said.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and dpa

The candidate of Bosnian Serb parties says he has won a repeat of local elections in the town of Srebrenica despite a boycott of the vote by Bosnian Muslims.

Mladen Grujicic declared victory in his mayoral reelection bid in the eastern town that was the scene of the Bosnian war's worst atrocity when 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Serb forces in July 1995.

Elections in Srebrenica and Doboj, in the north of the country, were repeated after numerous irregularities had been reported in the November 2020 local elections, dominated by Bosnian Serbs.

Grujicic told RFE/RL that "even if there had been no boycott by Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) parties," the difference in the number of votes in his favor "would have been large" and he would have won reelection anyway.

Grujicic won the previous election in 2016, becoming the first Bosnian Serb to become mayor of Srebrenica since 1999.

In Doboj, where Bosnian Serbs make up about 70 percent of the population, incumbent Boris Jerinic of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) also declared a "convincing" victory.

The SNSD said Jerinic won almost 70 percent of the vote.

In a news conference at midnight, Bosnia's Central Election Commission confirmed Grujicic and Jerinic's victories.

The turnout was almost 43 percent in Srebrenica and more than 55 percent in Doboj, the election commission announced.

The results of the February 21 repeat elections were almost certain to be challenged and exacerbate already high political tensions in the area.

Bosnian Muslims vowed to boycott the rerun in Srebrenica because, they said, officials haven't done enough to rectify the problems that marred first elections in November 2020 such as multiple voting and the discovery of caches of pre-marked ballots before voting began.

Moreover, the Bosniak parties complained, officials weren't including mail-in voters in the new elections.

Bosnia comprises two entities, the Muslim and Croat federation and the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska.

Srebrenica is regarded by some as a potential flashpoint for ethnic tensions because of the massacre, the worst mass killing in post-World War II Europe.

The massacre was labeled as genocide by international courts, but Serbian and Bosnian Serb officials refuse to accept that wording.

The episode came at the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian War pitting the Serbs against Bosniaks and Croats that claimed some 100,000 lives.

The country continues to struggle domestically and internationally under an ethnically based deal -- known as the Dayton Agreement -- that ended fighting among the sides.

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- About a dozen people, mainly women, have picketed the Chinese Consulate in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, to continue to push their demands for the release of relatives held in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang.

The demonstrators on February 22 held pictures of their relatives detained in China and large posters with slogans urging the Chinese government to "end genocide" and release all "innocent people from reeducation camps" in Xinjiang.

"I came here to demand the immediate release of my younger brother, Qalypbek Babam.... He was arrested after he publicly performed a verse called Kazakhs' Sorrow in 2019 and has been held incommunicado ever since. Authorities in Xinjiang have not given any information about the charges against my brother, while his trial has yet to be held. I am deeply concerned for his life," one of the protesters, Kumisqan Babam, told RFE/RL.

Another protester, Gulnur Qosdauletqyzy, told RFE/RL that she and some other protesters have been picketing the consulate almost daily for more than two weeks, but no Chinese Consulate officials have come out of the building to meet with them.

Over the weekend, one of the protesters, Baibolat Kunbolatuly, was released from a detention center in Almaty after he served a 10-day prison term he received for "violating the law on mass gatherings" after picketing the consulate earlier.

In recent years, many similar protests have taken place in Kazakhstan, with demonstrators demanding Kazakh authorities officially intervene in the situation faced by ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang.

The U.S. State Department has said as many as 2 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and members of Xinjiang's other indigenous, mostly Muslim, ethnic groups have been taken to detention centers.

China denies that the facilities are internment camps.

People who have fled the province say that thousands of ethnic Kazakhs, Uyghurs, and other Muslims in Xinjiang are undergoing "political indoctrination" at a network of facilities known officially as reeducation camps.

Kazakhs are the second-largest Turkic-speaking indigenous community in Xinjiang after Uyghurs. The region is also home to ethnic Kyrgyz, Tajiks, and Hui, also known as Dungans. Han, China's largest ethnicity, is the second-largest community in Xinjiang.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka spent six hours together at Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi on February 22 for talks on their stalled integration efforts.

Their meeting came as each faces mass protests at home and mounting pressure from the West over police crackdowns against opposition leaders and peaceful protesters.

The talks started at 3 p.m. local time. The two then went skiing together before continuing the talks during a formal working dinner.

The Kremlin press service said their agenda focused on the development of Russian-Belarusian relations in terms of a "strategic partnership and alliance," economic ties, energy, and integration within the framework of a union state.

During a part of the meeting that was open to the press, the two also discussed the delivery of supplies of a Russian coronavirus vaccine to Belarus.

At the start of the meeting, Putin said he was "delighted to reaffirm the level of our interaction, strategic partnership, and allied relations."

Russian media quoted Lukashenka as saying during the meeting that there were "maybe six, seven [integration] road maps left out of 33" that still needed to be hammered out within their broader "plan of action" on joint cooperation. "All the others are ready to be signed," he said.

Lukashenka has long sought to portray himself as a brake on Moscow's pressure to merge Belarus with Russia.

But seven months of unprecedented street protests since a disputed presidential election has put the Belarusian leader on the defensive and seemingly more reliant on Putin's support.

Their summit was held as the European Union is poised to adopt fresh sanctions against Russia and possibly Belarus, ramping up pressure over a host of issues that have drawn the two neighbors closer in recent months.

The EU has progressively imposed sanctions on Belarus in response to the violent repression of peaceful protesters, the opposition, and media since an August 2020 election the bloc considers fraudulent that extended Lukashenka's 26-year authoritarian rule.

Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya claims to have won the vote. She is calling for the EU to take a tougher stance against Lukashenka’s regime.

The last time Putin and Lukashenka met face to face was in mid-September 2020 in Sochi, when Belarus secured a $1.5 billion loan for its battered economy.

In recent years, Russia has pressured Belarus to take steps toward integration in order to cement a 20-year-old agreement to form a union state, only to be rebuffed by Lukashenka's defense of the nation's sovereignty.

However, the situation began to change after Russia helped prop up Lukashenka in the wake of the August presidential election, bringing the two sides closer over common threat perceptions.

“Minsk understands perfectly how important it is now to be on the right side of the Kremlin,” political analyst Artyom Shraibman wrote in an analysis for the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Lukashenka has tried many times to show that he and Putin are in the same boat against the collective West, and that the recent protests in Russia are a continuation of those in Belarus."

Putin arrived in Sochi with the threat of new Russia sanctions looming from the EU and Washington over the detention of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny and evidence that the anti-corruption campaigner was poisoned with a Novichok-like nerve agent. Navalny blames his poisoning on Putin and FSB security agents.

Navalny’s detention in January upon his return from life-saving treatment in Germany and subsequent crackdown on some of Russia's largest anti-government protests in a decade have prompted international outrage.

With reporting by dpa and TASS

EU foreign ministers on February 22 agreed to fresh sanctions against "specific persons" over Russia's jailing of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny and a crackdown on his allies, according to German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.

The Russian Foreign Ministry responded by saying it was "disappointed" at the bloc's move and accusing the EU Foreign Affairs Council of invoking a "far-fetched pretext" to prepare "new unlawful restrictions on Russian citizens."

Moscow also rejected as "categorically unacceptable" outside demands for the release of a Russian national convicted by a Russian court, as Navalny has been in processes that he and Western governments have said are politically motivated.

Top diplomats from the EU’s 27 members gathered in Brussels were weighing targeted measures against Russian individuals and institutions, such as asset freezes and visa bans, under the bloc's newly created sanctions instrument to punish human rights violators.

"The relations are certainly at a low, there is no other word for it," Maas said in Berlin after returning from the meeting with his counterparts in Brussels. "Therefore, we decided today to impose further sanctions and list specific persons."

Anonymous diplomatic sources were quoted by multiple agencies as saying ministers had agreed behind closed doors to punish four senior, unnamed Russian officials tied to the Navalny case and clampdown.

One diplomat told Reuters that Aleksandr Bastrykin, head of the federal Investigative Committee, which conducts criminal probes and reports directly to President Vladimir Putin, would be on the list.

But those reports were not confirmed.

Maas said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, whose disastrous trip to Moscow nearly two weeks ago highlighted Russian tensions with the bloc, will propose specific individuals to be targeted by the new sanctions.

The German foreign minister predicted the sanctions list would be agreed within days.

EU leaders have sought to balance calls for the West to send a meaningful international signal to Moscow with appeals for caution to preserve increasingly frayed ties with Russia.

The step follows weeks of internal EU debate since Navalny was detained last month upon his returned from Germany where he had been recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he and supporters say was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In October 2020, the EU placed six Russian officials on a blacklist over the poisoning of Navalny with the nerve agent Novichok.

In a recorded speech to a UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on February 22, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned what he said was Russia's use of "chemical weapons" against Navalny and urged compliance with the UN ban on such toxins.

Maas had urged his EU counterparts to give the green light for the preparation of additional sanctions on Russia.

"I am in favor of ordering the preparation of additional sanctions, of listings of specific persons," Maas said at his arrival for the talks in Brussels, adding, "at the same time we need to talk about how to keep up a constructive dialogue with Russia, even as relations certainly have reached a low."

"Another opportunity has been missed for the European Union to rethink the course of artificial linkages, sanctions, and pressure in relations with Russia that has been shown to be a complete failure in recent years," the Russian Foreign Ministry statement said after the EU foreign ministers' meeting.

It said Brussels was "instinctively pushing again on the inoperative sanctions 'button.'"

Over the weekend, a Moscow court upheld a 2 1/2 year prison sentence imposed on Navalny earlier in February for a parole violation related to a previous embezzlement conviction. In another case, the Kremlin critic was fined for allegedly insulting a World War II veteran. Both trials were decried as politically motivated.

"We consider it categorically unacceptable the constantly expressed unlawful and absurd demands for the 'release' of a citizen of the Russian Federation who was convicted of economic crimes by a Russian court on the territory of our country in accordance with Russian law," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The move to further sanction Russia comes nearly two weeks after the controversial visit by Borrell that coincided with the expulsion of three EU diplomats from Russia.

Borrell noted on February 21 that Russia continues to ignore a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) demanding Navalny be set free.

EU member states, led by Poland and the Baltic countries, are calling for a hard line against Russia, including additional economic sanctions.

On the eve of the meeting in Brussels, two of Navalny's closest allies met in the Belgian capital with eight EU foreign ministers and several EU ambassadors.

One of the allies, Leonid Volkov, told AFP they "talked about targeted personal sanctions against Putin's closest allies and people who are guilty of major human rights violations.”

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis organized the meeting.

A group of EU members, including influential France and Germany, were calling for a more targeted approach and ruling out economic sanctions.

Unanimity among all the bloc's members is normally required to impose sanctions.

The United States, EU, Britain, and Canada have already hit Russia with a number of sanctions over the 2014 annexation of Crimea and Moscow's support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, dpa, and Die Welt

Authorities in Iran say an imprisoned activist from the Sufi Gonabadi dervish religious minority died days after being hospitalized for what they say was poisoning caused by the consumption of medication.

Behnam Mahjubi, 33, had been jailed after taking part in a demonstration along with other members of the Gonabadi order in 2018 and started serving a two-year prison sentence in June.

Mahjubi’s mother, Batool Hosseini, said in a video message posted online by activists that she will not allow her son to be buried until the cause of his death is determined by a full autopsy.

His death, announced late on February 21, comes amid accusations of neglect by Iranian authorities.

Mahjubi was reportedly taken from the notorious Evin Prison and admitted to a local hospital on February 16.

The Gonabadi order strongly opposes the use of drugs.

Mahjubi's wife, Saleh Hosseini, told RFE/RL's Radio Farda last week after being allowed to see her husband in the intensive care unit of Loghman hospital in Tehran that he had been denied timely medical care and that contributed to his falling into a coma.

Mahjubi's mother said last week that her son was breathing with the aid of a ventilator while handcuffed to a hospital bed in the hospital's intensive care unit.

Amnesty International said last year that Mahjubi’s psychiatrist, as well as doctors from the Legal Medical Organization, had made the assessment that he was not fit for imprisonment. The rights group said that Mahjubi suffered from a “serious panic disorder.”

The Gonabadi dervishes have spent years clashing intermittently with Iranian authorities, with critics saying Iran's leadership regards them as a threat to its monopoly on religion.

Denial Of Proper Medical Care

Some conservative clerics have called the Sufis a danger to Islam.

"Special medical care was administered after he was hospitalized, but despite the medical team's efforts, the prisoner unfortunately passed away," Iran's judiciary said on an official website on February 21.

Iran’s prisons' organization said that Mahjubi's cellmates claimed he had "willingly, and with no medical consultation, consumed several of his own and other prisoners' drugs.”

Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-Based Center for Human Rights In Iran, accused Iranian authorities of having denied Mahjubi proper medical care.

“The reported death of Behnam Mahjoubi is a tragedy that occurred following denial of proper medical care -- an inhuman state policy that is used to further intimidate and punish prisoners in #Iran,” Ghaemi said on Twitter.

"There are serious allegations of authorities neglecting Mahjubi's medical condition for a long time," Tara Sepehri Far, Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, said.

"Those allegations should be investigated, including for any criminal liability," she added.

Security troops have destroyed Gonabadi houses of worship and detained members en masse on a number of occasions.

Amnesty International says the persecution of dervishes in Iran increased after an October 2010 speech by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who denounced "newly created circles of false mysticism."

With reporting by AFP

Reports from eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina suggest that many Bosniaks boycotted a rerun election in the city of Srebrenica on February 21 after local authorities claimed fraud in November voting.

The results were almost certain to be challenged and exacerbate already high political tensions in the area.

Ethnic Serbs dominated the balloting in November. But Bosnia's Central Election Commission concluded that irregularities like multiple voting and caches of pre-marked ballots before voting began had compromised its legitimacy.

Bosnian Muslims had vowed to boycott the rerun in Srebrenica because, they said, officials hadn't done enough to rectify the problems.

Moreover, the Bosniak parties complained, officials weren't including mail-in ballots in the new election. Many diaspora Bosnians were unable to vote in November after mail-in ballots were distributed late.

They vowed to appeal to Bosnia's Constitutional Court to contest the new voting.

"We expect the BiH Constitutional Court to uphold our appeal, which would allow all Bosniaks from Srebrenica to vote, wherever they may be," Sadik Ahmetovic, president of an initiative uniting Bosniak parties called Moja Adresa (My Address), told RFE/RL's Balkan Service. "In this respect, we expect new elections to be called in which every citizen of Srebrenica would have the right to choose their [preferred] candidates. That's the only way the elections in Srebrenica will be legitimate and democratic."

Bosnia comprises two entities: the Muslim and Croat federation and the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska.

Srebrenica is regarded as a potential flashpoint for ethnic tensions because it was the scene of the murder of around 8,000 Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces late in the Bosnian War. The massacre was the most notorious act of genocide in post-World War II Europe.

The country continues to struggle domestically and internationally under an ethnically based deal that ended fighting among the sides in 1995.

A rerun of the November voting was also being held in the northern city of Doboj in February 21.

President Joe Biden's national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on February 21 that the new administration has "begun to communicate with the Iranians" on the issue of detained Americans.

Speaking on a weekend current-affairs program, Sullivan said Washington's "strong message to the Iranians will be that...we will not accept a long-term proposition where they continue to hold Americans in an unjust and unlawful manner."

The United States has repeatedly called on Iran to help locate former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared when he traveled to the Iranian resort of Kish Island in 2007 and is presumed dead.

At least four other American-Iranians are thought to still be in Iranian custody, including businessmen Emad Sharghi and Siamak Namazi.

"It will be a significant priority of this administration to get those Americans safely back home," Sullivan said.

The United States and other Western governments have long accused Tehran of detaining dual nationals who visit Iran and other foreign nationals -- frequently on dubious espionage charges -- in order to use them as bargaining chips for prisoner swaps.

"We intend to very directly communicate with the Iranians about the complete and utter outrage, the humanitarian catastrophe that is the unjust, unlawful detention of American citizens in Iran," Sullivan said on CBS's Face The Nation program. "We have begun to communicate with the Iranians on this issue, yes. And we will continue to do so as we go forward."

U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan has warned that the United States will respond within "weeks, not months" to a suspected Russian cyberattack, discovered in December, that targeted branches of the U.S. government and other key institutions.

Sullivan was talking about the breach -- which began with malicious code slipped into updates of the SolarWinds software used by the government and thousands of businesses -- on CBS's Face The Nation program on February 21.

He said the response was likely to include "a mix of tools seen and unseen" and "it will not simply be sanctions."

"We're in the process of working through that, and we will ensure that Russia understands where the United States draws the line on this kind of activity," Sullivan said.

SEE ALSO:

Microsoft President Says Cyberattack Blamed On Russian Hackers Was 'Most Sophisticated' Ever

Experts have called the so-called SolarWinds breach one of the biggest and most sophisticated cyberattacks in history and suggested it could only have been pulled off by a state actor.

It targeted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for border security and protecting the country from online attacks, as well as the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, in addition to thousands of other entities.

It was traced back to infiltrated network management software dating back to at least June.

Intelligence and industry sources have blamed it on Russian hackers.

Moscow has denied any involvement, saying in a statement on December 14 that Russia “does not conduct offensive operations in the cyberdomain.”

"First of all, we have asked the intelligence community to do further work to sharpen the attribution that the last administration made about precisely how this hack occurred, what the extent of the damage is, what the scope and scale of the intrusion is, and we are in the process of working through that now," Sullivan told CBS. "And then what I have said is that it will be weeks, not months, before we have a response prepared."

Suspected Russian government hackers behind the massive intrusion of government and private company networks discovered in December were able to gain access into Microsoft’s source code, a key building block for software or operating systems, the tech giant said on December 31.

Microsoft President Brad Smith in mid-February said the attack was "probably the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen."

A rise in U.S.-Russian tensions greeted the new U.S. presidency of Joe Biden but did not prevent his administration and Moscow from successfully negotiating a five-year extension of the New START arms-control treaty, their last remaining arms-control pact.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this month that he had warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a phone call that the new U.S. administration will respond "firmly in defense of U.S. interests in response to actions by Russia that harm us or our allies."

Blinken cited Russia's ongoing detention of two former U.S. Marines, Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, but the so-called SolarWinds cyberattack has also cast a long shadow over U.S.-Russian relations amid signals that a state actor like Russia was behind it.

But a State Department statement said Blinken also raised “Russian interference” in last year’s presidential election that brought Biden to the White House, Moscow’s “military aggression” in Ukraine and Georgia, the poisoning of jailed Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, and the SolarWinds hack of U.S. government systems.

SEE ALSO:

U.S. Warns Of Russian Hacking Group's Attempts To Gain 'Dream Access' To Computer Systems

FireEye, a prominent cybersecurity company that was breached in connection with the SolarWinds incident, said targets included government, technology, and telecommunications companies in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

France's cybersecurity watchdog said this month that it had discovered a hack of French organizations that bore similarities to other attacks by a group linked to Russian intelligence.

In a report released on February 15, the French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (ANSSI) said the hackers had taken advantage of a vulnerability in monitoring software sold by the Paris-based company Centreon.

The ANSSI said it discovered intrusions dating back to late 2017 and stretching into 2020.

It stopped short of identifying the hackers but said they had a similar modus operandi as the Russian cyberespionage group often nicknamed Sandworm and thought to have links with Russian military intelligence.

Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg expects the European Union to adopt new sanctions against Russia over the case of opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

A step likely could be taken when European foreign ministers meet on February 22, he said in an interview with Germany's Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

"We will discuss at the Foreign Affairs Council appropriate reactions to the case of Navalny," Schallenberg said.

This would likely include targeted measures against individuals and organizations under the bloc's newly created sanctions instrument to punish human rights violators.

Schallenberg said he expects "a broad majority of support" for sanctions among the EU's 27 members, but added the sanctions "have to be politically smart and legally watertight."

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Twitter on February 21 that “EU actions” will be discussed at the Foreign Affairs Council meeting on February 22.

Borrell said the courts in Russia continue to ignore a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) asking the Russian government to free him.

A Moscow court on February 20 upheld Navalny’s prison sentence relating to his embezzlement conviction, but reduced the sentence by about 50 days considering time served. Later in the day, Navalny was fined a large sum on charges of insulting a World War II veteran.

Both trials were decried as politically motivated.

Navalny was arrested last month on his return from Germany where he was recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he and supporters say was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Based on reporting by dpa and Reuters

The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog agency said after talks in Iran on February 21 over Tehran's threat to curb international inspections that the two sides reached an agreement but that Iran will suspend a key document on cooperation and offer "less access" to inspectors.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi was speaking after meetings with senior Iranian officials to seek a compromise two days before Iran's deadline for the reductions if U.S. sanctions are not lifted.

In an assessment that will surely be challenged by Iran hawks in the West, Grossi said he got "a good, reasonable result" from his talks.

Grossi said Tehran will apply a law passed two months ago by the hard-line parliament suspending the so-called Additional Protocol of nuclear safeguards that allows IAEA inspectors to visit undeclared sites in Iran at short notice.

But he added that he had agreed with Iranian officials that the IAEA would continue necessary verification and monitoring activities for up to three months.

"What we agreed is something that is viable, [is] useful to bridge this gap that we are having, [that] salvages the situation now," Grossi said after his return from Iran.

"There is less access, let's face it. But still we were able to retain the necessary degree of monitoring and verification work," he said, calling it "a temporary technical understanding."

As Grossi was on his mission to Tehran, senior Iranian and U.S. officials each left open the possibility of fresh negotiations over a return by both sides to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal that traded sanctions relief for nuclear curbs.

But they also heaped pressure on the other to move first in the ongoing diplomatic standoff over Iran's ongoing pursuit of nuclear technology.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted by Iranian Press TV as saying on February 21 that Tehran was open to such talks once all signatories were fulfilling all their obligations.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden's national-security adviser told a weekend news program on February 21 that "Iran has not yet responded" to the new U.S. administration's call for a return to the negotiating table.

Jake Sullivan reiterated that Biden is "prepared to go to the table to talk to the Iranians about how we get strict constraints back on their nuclear program."

"That offer still stands because we believe diplomacy is the best way to do it," Sullivan added.

Iran this month threatened to stop implementing "voluntary transparency measures" under the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) with major powers, including the Additional Protocol, by February 23. Tehran has said that the steps are reversible.

That prompted the visit by Grossi for talks with officials including Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's civilian Atomic Energy Organization.

The IAEA said last week that Grossi’s visit to Tehran was aimed at finding “a mutually agreeable solution for the IAEA to continue essential verification activities in the country.”

Zarif has said the IAEA's cameras will be shut off despite Grossi's visit in line with legislation passed by the hard-line parliament.

“This is not a deadline for the world. This is not an ultimatum,” Zarif told the state-run, English-language broadcaster Press TV in an interview aired during Grossi's visit. “This is an internal domestic issue between the parliament and the government.

"We are supposed to implement the laws of the country. And the parliament adopted legislation -- whether we like it or not.”

Iran's parliament in December approved a bill that would suspend part of UN inspections of its nuclear facilities if the country does not receive sanctions relief.

Iran has stressed it will not cease working with the IAEA or expel its inspectors.

Iran and six major powers struck the JCPOA over the objections of conservatives in both countries to trade curbs on Iran’s uranium-enrichment program in return for the lifting of international sanctions.

But then-President Donald Trump in May 2018 pulled the United States out of the accord and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran, saying the terms were not strict enough.

In response, Tehran has gradually breached the deal by building up its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, refining uranium to a higher level of purity, and using advanced centrifuges for enrichment.

Biden's administration is exploring ways to return to the deal.

The White House said on February 19 that the European Union has floated the idea of a conversation among Iran and the six major powers that signed the deal.

On the same day, Biden said that Washington is prepared to reengage with the international partners that signed the deal on Iran's nuclear program.

The U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal two years ago has led to tensions among Western partners over the best way to ensure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon.

On CBS television, Sullivan said on February 21 that Washington's call for "hard-headed, clear-eyed diplomacy" has had the result "that the script has been flipped" on Iran.

"It is Iran that is isolated now diplomatically, not the United States," he said. "And the ball is in their court."

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on February 20 that his country is considering the European Union’s offer to host a meeting between Iran and the other parties to the 2015 nuclear deal.

“Now we are considering [the offer] and are engaged in consultations with our other friends and partners like China and Russia,” Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

"However, we believe a U.S return to the nuclear accord does not require a meeting and the only way for it is to lift the sanctions," Araqchi said.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, AP, Press TV and IRNA

Russia has reported the first case of a bird-flu strain, H5N8, being passed from birds to humans.

Officials said seven workers at a poultry farm in southern Russia had been infected following an outbreak in December.

They are believed to have caught the virus from poultry on the farm.

Anna Popova, the head of Russia's health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, said on February 20 that authorities had alerted the World Health Organization (WHO).

Popova said all seven people infected by H5N8 were “now feeling better.”

She added that there was no sign of transmission between humans.

The WHO confirmed that it had been notified by Russia about the infections.

"We are in discussion with national authorities to gather more information and assess the public health impact of this event," a spokesperson said. "If confirmed, this would be the first time H5N8 infects people."

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters

Russia has approved its third domestically produced coronavirus vaccine, although large-scale clinical trials have yet to be completed.

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on February 20 that registration of the CoviVac vaccine makes Russia “the only country today that already has three vaccines."

The first 120,000 doses of the vaccine, produced by the state-run Chumakov Center, are expected to reach Russians by March. By the end of the year, Russia aims to have some 20 million doses of CoviVac produced.

Scientists at the Chumakov Center claim their vaccine is more than 90 percent effective against COVID-19, although Phase 3 clinical trials aren't expected to start until April.

In August, Russia approved the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, prompting scientists around the world to question its safety and efficacy because it was registered before the results of Phase 3 studies were made available.

But in early February, peer-reviewed, late-stage trial results published in The Lancet medical journal showed the two-dose regimen of Sputnik V was 91.6 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19, about the same level as the leading Western-developed vaccines.

The vaccine has now been approved for use in some 30 countries.

A second vaccine developed in Russia, called EpiVacCorona, was registered in October and is expected to go into arms in March.

Even though Russia was early to register domestically produced vaccines, so far only about 2.2 million people in the country have received at least one of two necessary injections, or about 1.5 per cent of the population.

Unlike the Sputnik V vaccine and Western shots, the new CoviVac vaccine was developed using a whole inactive virus. A similar vaccine has been developed by China.

With reporting by AFP, dpa, Interfax, and Reuters

BISHKEK -- A court in Bishkek has ruled to place Raimbek Matraimov, the controversial former deputy chief of the Customs Service who was rearrested on corruption charges this week, in pretrial detention.

The Birinchi Mai district court on February 20 said Matraimov will remain in pretrial detention for at least two months.

Matraimov's lawyer, Madina Niyazova, said she would appeal the ruling.

Kyrgyzstan's State Committee for National Security (UKMK) said Matraimov was rearrested on February 18 due to an ongoing probe launched into money laundering.

SPECIAL REPORT: Plunder And Patronage In The Heart Of Central Asia

The move came days after hundreds rallied in the Kyrgyz capital, protesting a Bishkek court ruling last week that ordered a mitigated sentence and no jail time for Matraimov.

Matraimov, who was placed on the U.S. Magnitsky sanctions list for his involvement in the illegal funneling of hundreds of millions of dollars abroad, was fined just over $3,000 after pleading guilty to corruption charges.

The court said on February 11 that Matraimov had paid back around $24 million that disappeared through corruption schemes that he oversaw.

In June 2019, an investigation by RFE/RL, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and Kloop implicated Matraimov in a corruption scheme involving the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars out of Kyrgyzstan by Chinese-born Uyghur businessman Aierken Saimaiti, who was subsequently assassinated in Istanbul in November 2019.

On February 15, a day after the protests, the UKMK said the criminal case against Matraimov would resume if allegations are confirmed that he has numerous properties in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, and Russia.

The estimated $700 million scheme involved a company controlled by Matraimov bribing officials to skirt customs fees and regulations, as well as engaging in money laundering, “allowing for maximum profits,” the U.S. Treasury Department said.

Recent reports said that the 49-year-old Matraimov had changed his last name to Ismailov, and that his wife, Uulkan Turgunova, had changed her family name to Sulaimanova in a move seen as an attempt to evade the U.S.- imposed sanctions.

Last month, Damira Azimbaeva, a spokesperson for Kyrgyzstan's state registration service, confirmed to RFE/RL that both Matraimov and his wife had changed their surnames.

There have been no official statements from lawyers for Matraimov's family to explain the name change.

KYIV -- Ukrainians have marked the seventh anniversary of the shooting deaths of dozens of participants in the Euromaidan anti-government protests that toppled the country's Russia-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014.

The commemorations honored those who were killed in the capital, Kyiv, during clashes with Yanukovych's security forces on February 18-20, 2014.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his wife, Olena, laid flowers at the so-called Monument of the Heavenly Hundred in Kyiv's Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) on February 20.

"Eternal memory to all those who died for the future of Ukraine," Zelenskiy said at the ceremony.

Gatherings were held across Ukraine on February 20 to commemorate those killed during the Euromaidan protests.

• RFE/RL

Ukraine is marking the seventh anniversary of the bloody end of the mass street protests that ousted Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych and in which some 100 people were killed, most of them between February 18-20, 2014.

Some parts of Ukraine began honoring the slain demonstrators two days earlier, on the day when the shootings started.

The Euromaidan movement began in November 2013 when protesters gathered on the central square in Kyiv to protest Yanukovych's decision not to sign a crucial trade accord with the European Union. Instead, he sought closer economic ties with Russia.

Ukrainian prosecutors say 104 people were killed and 2,500 injured as a result of violent crackdowns by authorities against protesters.

Shunning a deal backed by the West and Russia to end the standoff, Yanukovych abandoned power and fled Kyiv on February 21, 2014.

SEE ALSO:

Justice Or Commemoration? As Maidan Massacre Anniversary Approaches, Both Appear Elusive

The former president, who was secretly flown to Russia and remains there, denies that he ordered police to fire on protesters, saying that the violence was the result of a “planned operation” to overthrow his government.

In March 2014, shortly after Yanukovych's downfall, Russian military forces seized control of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula -- a precursor to the Kremlin's illegal annexation of the territory through a hastily organized and widely discredited referendum.

Russia also has supported pro-Russia separatists who are fighting Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine.

More than 13,200 people have been killed in that conflict since April 2014.

YEREVAN -- Thousands of protesters have rallied in the Armenian capital to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian over his handling of a six-week war with Azerbaijan last year.

Demonstrators gathered on February 20 in Freedom Square in central Yerevan under a heavy police presence shouting, "Armenia without Nikol!" and "Nikol traitor!"

Pashinian has refused calls to step down but raised the possibility of holding early parliamentary elections.

Pashinian, who swept to power amid nationwide protests in 2018, has come under fire since agreeing to a Moscow-brokered deal with Azerbaijan that took effect on November 10. The deal ended six weeks of fierce fighting in and around the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh that saw ethnic Armenian forces suffer battlefield defeat.

A coalition uniting 16 opposition parties has been holding anti-government demonstrations in Yerevan and other parts of the country in a bid to force Pashinian to hand over power to an interim government.

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Tea, Cake, And Death Threats: Coexistence On The New Azerbaijan-Armenia Border

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Opposition forces want their joint candidate, Vazgen Manukian, to become transitional prime minister to oversee fresh elections.

"It doesn't matter how many people gather on the square, Nikol Pashinian will not resign voluntarily," Manukian told a crowd of protesters waving Armenian flags in Freedom Square.

Despite facing a united opposition front, Pashinian’s My Step bloc maintains an overwhelming majority in parliament.

Under the Moscow-brokered cease-fire, a chunk of Nagorno-Karabakh and all seven districts around it were placed under Azerbaijani administration after almost 30 years of control by Armenians.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but the ethnic Armenians who make up most of the region's population reject Azerbaijani rule.

They had been governing their own affairs, with support from Armenia, since Azerbaijan's troops and Azeri civilians were pushed out of the region and seven adjacent districts in a war that ended in a cease-fire in 1994.

With reporting by AFP