(Reuters) – United Arab Emirates authorities have detained Asim Ghafoor, a U.S. citizen and civil rights attorney who previously served as a lawyer for slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi, said U.S.-based rights group DAWN of whose board Ghafoor is a member.

A UAE government official confirmed Ghafoor was arrested while transiting through Dubai International Airport on July 14 on charges related to an in absentia conviction for money laundering pursuant to evidence heard by Emirati courts.

A senior U.S. administration official had told reporters earlier on Saturday that the United States was aware, but could not say whether President Joe Biden would raise the issue in bilateral talks with the UAE president on the sidelines of an Arab summit in Saudi Arabia.

“There’s no indication that it has anything to do with the Khashoggi issue,” the official added.

Saudi journalist Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents in 2018 at the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate in an operation that U.S. intelligence says Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved. The prince denies involvement.

Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) said in a statement on Friday that Ghafoor, a civil rights attorney based in Virginia, was en route to Istanbul to attend a family wedding.

The Emirati official, responding to a Reuters request for comment, said the UAE has granted a request by the U.S. embassy to conduct a consular visit and that since the original trial was held in absentia, Ghafoor is permitted to request a retrial.

“A request has been received and granted, resulting in the case being reopened, and the relevant legal proceedings are underway,” the official said.

DAWN cited U.S. consular officials as saying the lawyer was being held in a detention facility in Abu Dhabi and that Ghafoor stated he had no knowledge of any legal matter against him.

It said the conviction was obtained “without due process” and called for his immediate release.

Rights groups say the UAE has jailed hundreds of activists, academics and lawyers in unfair trails on broad charges.

The UAE has rejected such accusations as baseless and says it is committed to human rights under the country’s charters.

Biden had said he would raise human rights during his trip to the region which concluded on Saturday.

(Reporting by Ghaida Ghantous and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Mark Potter and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

By Layli Foroudi and Sergio Goncalves

PARIS/LISBON -Wildfires raged in southwestern France and Spain on Saturday, forcing thousands of people to be evacuated from their homes as blistering summer temperatures put authorities on alert in parts of Europe.

About 14,000 people had been evacuated from France’s Gironde region by Saturday afternoon as more than 1,200 firefighters battled to bring the flames under control, regional authorities said in a statement.

“We have a fire that will continue to spread as long as it is not stabilised,” Vincent Ferrier, deputy prefect for Langon in Gironde, told a news conference.

Wildfires have torn through France in recent weeks, as well as other European countries including Portugal and Spain, and more than 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of land was on fire in the Gironde region on Saturday, up from 7,300 hectares on Friday.

In the latest weather warning, 38 of France’s 96 departments were listed on “orange” alert, with residents of those areas urged to be vigilant. The heatwave in western France is expected to peak on Monday, with temperatures climbing above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

In neighbouring Spain, firefighters were battling a series of blazes on Saturday after days of unusually high temperatures that reached up to 45.7 C (114 F).

The nearly week-long heatwave has caused 360 heat-related deaths, according to figures from the Carlos III Health Institute.

More than 3,000 people have been evacuated from homes due to a large wildfire near Mijas, a town in the province of Malaga that is popular with northern European tourists, the region’s emergency services said in a tweet early on Saturday.

Many were taken to shelter in a provincial sports centre.

“The police drove up and down the road with their sirens on and everyone was told to leave. Just leave. No instructions where to go,” said British pensioner John Pretty, 83.

“It’s frightening … because you don’t know what’s happening,” said Belgian resident Jean-Marie Vandelanotte, 68.

Elsewhere in Spain, thick black plumes of smoke rose into the air near Casas de Miravete in the Extremadura region as helicopters dumped water on flames that have scorched 3,000 hectares, forced the evacuation of two villages and threatened to reach the Monfrague national park.

Fires were also burning in the central region of Castille and Leon and in Galicia in the north.

There was some respite for firefighters in Portugal, where temperatures dropped across most of the country on Saturday after reaching about 40 C (104 F) in recent days.

“We have had big fires and we don’t want them to be reactivated again … We will keep extreme vigilance this weekend,” Emergency and Civil Protection Authority Commander Andre Fernandes told reporters.

A total of 39,550 hectares (98,000 acres) was ravaged by wildfires from the start of the year until mid-June, more than triple the area razed by fires in the same period last year, data from the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests showed.

An area equivalent to almost two-thirds of that has burned during fires in the last week.

Portugal’s Health Ministry said 238 people had died as a result of the heatwave between July 7 and 13, most of them elderly people with underlying conditions.

MOROCCO BLAZES

Across the Mediterranean from Europe, blazes in Morocco ripped through more than 2,000 hectares of forest in the northern areas of Larache, Ouazzane, Taza and Tetouane, killing at least one person, local authorities said.

More than 1,000 households were evacuated from their villages and water-carrying planes helped extinguish most of the fires by Friday night, though firefighters were still struggling to douse three hot spots near Larache.

In Britain, the national weather forecaster has issued its first red “extreme heat” warning for parts of England on Monday and Tuesday.

With possibly record-breaking temperatures expected, the government’s emergency response committee was due to meet later on Saturday.

The highest recorded temperature in Britain was 38.7 C (101.7 F), recorded in Cambridge on July 25, 2019.

(Reporting by Layli Faroudi in Paris, Sergio Gonclaves in Lisbon, Mariano Valladolid and Jon Nazca in Malaga, Ahmed Eljechtimi in Rabat, and Jessica Jones and Michael Holden in LondonWriting by Helen PopperEditing by Frances Kerry and Christina Fincher)

By Tom Balmforth and Max Hunder

KYIV -Russia said on Saturday its forces would step up military operations in Ukraine in “all operational areas” as Moscow’s rockets and missiles pounded cities in strikes that Kyiv says have killed dozens in recent days.

Rockets hit the northeastern town of Chuhuiv in Kharkiv region overnight, killing three people including a 70-year-old woman and wounding three others, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said.

“Three people lost their lives, why? What for? Because Putin went mad?” said Raisa Shapoval, 83, a distraught resident sitting in the ruins of her home.

To the south, more than 50 Russian Grad rockets pounded the city of Nikopol, on the Dnipro River, killing two people who were found in the rubble, the region’s governor Valentyn Reznichenko said.

Ukraine says at least 40 people have been killed in such attacks on urban areas in the last three days. Russia says it has been hitting military targets.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered military units to intensify their operations to prevent Ukrainian strikes on eastern Ukraine and other areas held by Russia, where he said Kyiv could hit civilian infrastructure or residents.

“Clearly, preparations are now under way for the next stage of the offensive,” said Vadym Skibitskyi, a spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence, adding that there was Russian shelling along the entire front line and active use of attack helicopters.

Shoigu, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was shown in military fatigues at a command post on the defence ministry’s Zvezda TV channel being briefed on the war and awarding “Golden Star” medals for heroism to two generals.

His remarks appeared to be a direct response to what Kyiv says is a string of successful strikes carried out on 30 Russian logistics and ammunitions hubs using several multiple launch rocket systems recently supplied by the West.

Ukraine’s defence ministry spokesperson said on Friday that the strikes were causing havoc with Russian supply lines and had significantly reduced Russia’s offensive capability.

On Saturday, the Ukrainian military said Russia appeared to be regrouping units for an offensive towards Sloviansk, a symbolically important city held by Ukraine in the Donetsk region.

WAR OF ATTRITION

While the focus of the war has moved to Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Russian forces have been striking cities elsewhere in the country with missiles and rockets in what has become an increasingly attritional conflict.

Moscow, which launched what it called its “special military operation” against Ukraine on Feb. 24, says it uses high-precision weapons to degrade Ukraine’s military infrastructure and protect its own security. It has repeatedly denied targeting civilians.

Kyiv and the West say the conflict is an unprovoked attempt to reconquer a country that broke free of Moscow’s rule with the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In one recent attack that stoked outrage from Ukraine and its Western allies, Kalibr cruise missiles hit an office building in Vinnytsia, a city of 370,000 people about 200 km (125 miles) southwest of Kyiv, on Thursday.

Kyiv said the strike killed at least 23 people and wounded dozens. Among the dead was a 4-year-old girl with Down’s Syndrome named Liza, found in the debris next to a pram. Images of her playing shortly before the attack quickly went viral.

Russia’s defence ministry has said the strike on Vinnytsia was directed at a building where top officials from Ukraine’s armed forces were meeting foreign arms suppliers.

Late on Friday, Russian missiles hit the city of Dnipro, about 120 km (75 miles) north of Nikopol, killing three people and wounding 15, Reznychenko, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region that includes both cities, said on Telegram, adding that an industrial plant and a busy street next to it were hit.

“When the blast wave hit, there were few shards because all my windows were taped up,” a local woman who gave her name as Klavdia told Reuters.

“The people whose windows were not protected like this, there was a lot of blood, their injuries were horrible. I saw a small child all covered in blood. It was awful,” she said.

Russia said it had destroyed a factory in Dnipro making missile parts.

CONFLICT DIVIDES G20

The war dominated a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Indonesia. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said differences over the conflict had prevented the finance chiefs and central bankers from issuing a formal communique but that they agreed on a need to address a worsening food security crisis.

“This is a challenging time because Russia is part of the G20 and doesn’t agree with the rest of us on how to characterize the war,” Yellen said.

Western countries have imposed tough sanctions on Russia and have accused it of war crimes in Ukraine, which Moscow denies. Other G20 nations, including China, India and South Africa, have been more muted in their response.

In one spillover from the conflict, a blockade restricting exports of Ukrainian grain has prompted warnings it could put millions in poorer countries at risk of starvation.

Despite the bloodshed, both Russia and Ukraine described progress towards an agreement to lift a blockade in recent talks. Turkey, which is mediating, has said a deal could be signed next week.

(Reporting by Reuters bureauxWriting by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Alex Richardson, Matt Spetalnick; Editing by William Mallard, Nick Macfie, Frances Kerry and Paul Simao)

SKOPJE – Lawmakers in North Macedonia on Saturday passed a French-brokered deal aimed at settling a dispute with Bulgaria and clearing the way to long-due European Union membership talks.

With 68 votes, the 120-seat parliament voted in favour of the agreement. Opposition lawmakers did not participate in the vote and left the room.

“Today we are opening a new perspective for our country…from today we are moving with accelerated steps to join the EU family,” Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski said in a press conference after his cabinet approved parliament’s conclusions.Kovacevski said the first meeting between his government and the EU would be held on Tuesday.

The deal proposes that North Macedonia’s constitution be amended to recognise a Bulgarian minority. The proposal does not require Bulgaria to recognise the Macedonian language.

In exchange, Bulgaria will allow its West Balkan neighbour to start membership talks with the EU. After the agreement was adopted, governing party deputies rolled out EU and North Macedonian flags.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who travelled to Skopje and urged lawmakers on Thursday to vote the deal, said the vote “paves the way for opening the accession negotiations rapidly.”

Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama, whose country has been held back because the EU has linked its progress to that of North Macedonia, said an Albanian delegation would travel to Brussels on Monday to start membership talks.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the vote, saying Washington recognised “the difficult tradeoffs considered in this compromise, which acknowledges and respects North Macedonia’s cultural identity and the Macedonian language.”

The leader of the biggest opposition party VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski, whose party protested against the deal since the beginning of July, said “nothing was over”. He added his party would not back constitutional changes which require two-thirds of the vote.Bulgaria’s parliament lifted its veto on Macedonian-EU talks last month. This also triggered protests in Bulgaria and contributed to a no-confidence vote that toppled the government.

North Macedonia, a former Yugoslav republic, has been a candidate for EU membership for 17 years but approval for talks was first blocked by Greece and then by Bulgaria.

(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci and Ognen Teofilovski; Editing by Christina Fincher)

By Jarrett Renshaw

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia – President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took a step to mending their troubled relationship with a fist bump, but the U.S. leader left the kingdom on Saturday with few big successes and doubts as to whether the visit was worth it.

Biden’s four-day trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, his first to the Middle East as president, aimed to reset ties with the Gulf Arab oil giant, demonstrate U.S. commitment to the region and counter the rising influence of Iran, Russia and China.

But thorny optics overshadowed the Saudi leg as Biden avoided appearing to embrace a crown prince implicated by U.S. intelligence in the brutal 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a charge Saudi authorities deny.

Biden said he confronted Prince Mohammed, known as MbS, over the killing. MbS remained unbowed, telling Biden the United States had also made mistakes.

Though Biden left the Middle East without securing an immediate pledge by Saudi Arabia to boost oil output or public support for U.S. efforts for a regional security axis that would include Israel, the trip was not a wash.

Biden’s fist bump with Prince Mohammed in front of the royal palace in Jeddah will serve as the defining image of the trip, but it was months in the making. White House officials were divided over rewarding MbS with a visit and agonized over how it would look.

In the end, they decided that keeping strategic ties with Saudi Arabia that have weathered 80 years was important for U.S. interests and would help the two sides turn the page.

Riyadh took several important steps to pave a path for the visit, including backing a U.N.-brokered truce in the Yemen conflict, a big victory for Biden, who pulled U.S support for Saudi-led offensive operations. It also helped accelerate already approved boosts in oil production through OPEC+.

“The summit of the nine Arab leaders is a clear accomplishment as is the backing for the truce in Yemen. But these accomplishments have come at the cost of the fist bump,” said Bruce Riedel, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Biden came to Saudi Arabia hoping to convince the OPEC heavyweight to boost oil production, but the kingdom held firm on its strategy that it must operate within the framework of the OPEC+ alliance, which includes Russia, and not act unilaterally.

High gasoline prices have fueled a surge in inflation in the United States and globally, dragging down Biden’s poll numbers as he heads into critical congressional elections in November.

However, White House officials are confident their diplomatic efforts will help shape the conversation when OPEC+ members hold their next meeting.

“All eyes are on the August 3 OPEC+ meeting. If the Saudis and the UAE want to raise output, they will do it via OPEC+. But we have to keep in mind the demand picture is softening. I’m not sure these countries are convinced the market needs more crude supply,” said Ben Cahill, an energy analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

ISRAELI-SAUDI RELATIONS

The trip saw a small warming of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel after Riyadh said it would open its airspace to all air carriers, paving the way for more overflights to and from Israel.

There was also a U.S.-brokered deal between Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia under which a small U.S.-led international peacekeeping contingent would quit the strategic island of Tiran, control of which was ceded to Riyadh by Cairo in 2017.

The United States and Israel hope those moves and the summit could help build momentum toward Israel’s further integration into the region, including with Saudi Arabia.

But the Saudi foreign minister poured cold water over any imminent normalization with Israel, saying this was not a precursor to further steps. He said Riyadh was not part of any discussions on a Gulf-Israeli defense alliance to counter Iran.

On Thursday, the U.S. and Israel signed a joint pledge on Thursday to deny nuclear arms to Iran, a show of unity by allies long divided over diplomacy with Tehran. The declaration was part of Biden’s efforts to rally regional allies around U.S. efforts to revive a 2015 nuclear pact with Iran.

Saudi Arabia and Israel were not happy with the original nuclear deal brokered by former President Barack Obama’s administration and celebrated when Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, quit the pact.

Now, Biden is asking for patience, assuring them that the United States is willing to use force as a last resort if talks fail and Iran continues what the West believes is a program to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denies it is seeking a nuclear weapon.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE want regional concerns over Iran’s missile program and regional proxies to be addressed.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Paul Simao)

By Steve Holland, Aziz El Yaakoubi, Jarrett Renshaw and Maha El Dahan

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia -President Joe Biden told Arab leaders on Saturday that the United States would remain an active partner in the Middle East, but he failed to secure commitments to a regional security axis that would include Israel or an immediate oil output rise.

“The United States is invested in building a positive future of the region, in partnership with all of you—and the United States is not going anywhere,” he said, according to a transcript of his speech.

Biden, who began his first trip to the Middle East as president with a visit to Israel, presented his vision and strategy for America’s engagement in the Middle East at an Arab summit in Jeddah.

The summit communique was vague, however, and Saudi Arabia, Washington’s most important Arab ally, poured cold water on U.S. hopes the summit could help lay the groundwork for a regional security alliance – including Israel – to combat Iranian threats.

During a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Biden raised the highly sensitive issue of human rights, drawing countercriticism from the crown prince, also known as MbS.

“We believe there’s great value in including as many of the capabilities in this region as possible and certainly Israel has significant air and missile defence capabilities, as they need to. But we’re having these discussions bilaterally with these nations,” a senior administration official told reporters.

A plan to connect air defence systems could be a hard sell for Arab states that have no ties with Israel and balk at being part of an alliance seen as against Iran, which has a strong regional network of proxies including Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, said he was not aware of any discussions on a Gulf-Israeli defence alliance and that the kingdom was not involved in such talks.

He told reporters after the U.S.-Arab summit that Riyadh’s decision to open its airspace to all air carriers had nothing to do with establishing diplomatic ties with Israel and was not a precursor to further steps.

Biden has focused on the summit with six Gulf states and Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, while downplaying the meeting with MbS which drew criticism in the United States over human rights concerns.

Biden had said he would make regional power Saudi Arabia a “pariah” on the global stage over the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents, but ultimately decided U.S. interests dictated a recalibration, not a rupture, in relations with the world’s top oil exporter.

The crown prince told Biden that Saudi Arabia had acted to prevent a repeat of mistakes like the killing of Khashoggi and that the United States had also made mistakes, including in Iraq, a Saudi minister said.

FIST BUMP

Biden exchanged a fist bump with MbS on Friday but said he told him he held him responsible for Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

“The President raised the issue … And the crown prince responded that this was a painful episode for Saudi Arabia and that it was a terrible mistake,” said Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir.

The accused were brought to trial were and being punished with prison terms, he said.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s killing, which he denies.

Jubeir, talking to Reuters about Friday’s conversation, said MbS had made the case that trying to impose values on other countries by force could backfire.

“It has not worked when the U.S. tried to impose values on Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, it backfired,” Jubeir quoted the crown prince as telling Biden. “Countries have different values and those values should be respected!”

The exchange highlighted tensions that have weighed on relations between Washington and Riyadh, its closest Arab ally, over issues including Khashoggi, oil prices and the Yemen war.

Biden needs the help of OPEC giant Saudi Arabia at a time of high crude prices and other problems related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Washington also wants to curb Iran’s sway in the region and China’s global influence.

Biden came to Saudi Arabia hoping to reach a deal on oil production to help drive down gasoline prices that are driving inflation above 40-year highs and threatening his approval ratings.

He leaves the region empty-handed but hoping the OPEC+ group, comprising Saudi Arabia, Russia and other producers, will boost production at a meeting on Aug. 3.

“I look forward to seeing what’s coming in the coming months,” Biden said.

FOOD SECURITY

A second senior administration official said Biden would announce that Washington has committed $1 billion in new near- and long-term food security assistance for the Middle East and North Africa, and that Gulf states would commit $3 billion over the next two years in projects that align with U.S. partnerships in global infrastructure and investment.

Gulf states, which have refused to side with the West against Russia over Ukraine, are seeking a concrete commitment from the United States to strategic ties that have been strained over perceived U.S. disengagement from the region.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have been frustrated by U.S. conditions on arms sales and at their exclusion from indirect U.S.-Iran talks on reviving a 2015 nuclear pact they see as flawed for not tackling concerns about Iran’s missile programme and behaviour.

Israel had encouraged Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia, hoping it would lead to warmer ties between it and Riyadh as part of a wider Arab rapprochement.

(Additional reporting by Maha El Dahan in Jeddah and John Irish in Paris Writing by Ghaida Ghantous and Michael GeorgyEditing by Timothy Heritage and Helen Popper)