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UAE summons Qatar envoy over Al Qaradawi

February 3, 2014

UAE_summons_QatarDubai, Feb 3: The UAE Foreign Ministry on Sunday said it had summoned Fares Al Nuaimi, Qatar’s ambassador to the UAE, to protest its inaction on stopping a cleric from continuing to insult the UAE.

Dr Anwar Mohammad Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, expressed the UAE Government’s “extreme resentment” over Yousuf Al Qaradawi’s statement against the UAE that was aired on Qatari state TV, WAM reported.

“We have held back so that our neighbour can clearly reject such insult, extend sufficient clarifications and guarantee that such provocation and defamation will not recur.

"While the UAE fully respects the freedom of speech, it condemns any talk that incites hatred and violence. Unfortunately, calmness and restraint did not draw the right response from our brothers in Qatar,” Gargash said.

The Egyptian-born Al Qaradawi, speaking live on Qatari state TV from a Doha mosque, criticised the UAE for supporting the current Egyptian government. He claimed that the UAE “has always been opposed to Islamic rule”.

He was talking about the developments in Egypt that followed the ouster of former president Mohammad Mursi last July by a popular uprising.

Al Qaradawi said the new Egyptian administration was “ruling against Allah’s will” and that Mursi must be reinstated to realise a government by Islamic rule.

Gargash condemned the comments and wrote on his official twitter account it was “shameful that we allow Al Qaradawi to continue his insults of the UAE and ties [that bind] the peoples of the Arabian Gulf.”

Gargash said: “We endeavoured to contain the issue out of our interest in relations between the two sisterly countries and to abort discord and sedition instigated by that cleric in his campaign against the UAE. But, we wee forced to take this unprecedented step in our Gulf relationship, given our brothers in Qatar did not reject that their media and religious outlets be used to attack neighbours and sisterly countries.”

Gargash stressed it was unacceptable by all means that dignity of the UAE, its leaders and people as well as its time-honoured values be harmed under any execuses.

Condemning Egypt’s recent blasts, the UAE called for action to counter terror.

Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed, Foreign Minister, expressed the UAE solidarity with the government of Egypt. He also renewed UAE’s stance on standing by Egypt in fighting extremism and terrorism.

Shaikh Abdullah urged the countries that oppose terrorism to stand by the Egyptian government “in the face of this terrorist organisation and what it stands and calls for”.

“The terrorist organisation’s continued acts of terror and killing in Egypt require a swift action by all to eliminate these criminal acts which are carried out under the guise of Islam and which are rejected by Islam and Muslims.”

Qatar’s foreign minister has said that Al Qaradawi do not reflect Qatar’s foreign policy.

In an interview to Qatar Television on Friday evening, Khalid Bin Mohammad Al Atiyyah said: “The foreign policy of Qatar is expressed and conveyed only through the official channels of the state. Qatar’s policy is not expressed or conveyed by the media or platforms here and there. What was said by Shaikh Yousuf Al Qaradawi does not reflect the foreign policy of the state of Qatar. We do have full love and respect for our brothers in the UAE. Relations between Qatar and the UAE are strategic and the security of the UAE is at the same time the security of Qatar.”

His statement came days after the UAE called upon Qatar to stop Al Qaradawi from continuing to insult the UAE.

Dr Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, a leading political analyst, said the UAE’s unprecedented move showed its extreme dissatisfaction with Doha over its failure to rein in Al Qaradawi.

“It seems that Qatar was more interested in Al Qaradawi than its relations with the UAE, which hit back prompted by its self-confidence and pride,” Dr Abdullah said, citing similar firm stands in the case of Canada and Turkey.

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News Network
May 7,2020

Dubai, May 7: As India begins the world’s largest evacuation mission by repatriating its overseas citizens stranded due to COVID-19, as many as 354 of them from the UAE will fly into their home country in the first two flights to Kerala today.

An Air India Express flight, which is scheduled to take off from Abu Dhabi to Kochi at 4.15 pm is the first flight, which will be followed by a Dubai-Kozhikode flight of the same airline at 5.10pm. The Indian missions in the UAE finalised the list of passengers, who were chosen based on the compelling reasons they submitted while registering their names.

Selection criteria

These include pregnant women and their accompanying family members in some instances, people with medical emergencies, workers and housemaids in distress, families with cancelled visas, bereaved family members who couldn’t attend funerals back home, a few students and stranded visitors and tourists including two brothers who got stranded in Dubai International Airport for 50 days, the missions said.

Short-listing the first passengers from among a database of more than 200,000 applicants, who include around 6,500 pregnant women, has been a mammoth task which posed several challenges for the missions, Neeraj Agrawal, Consul Press, Information and Culture at the Indian Consulate in Dubai told Gulf News.

He said the consulate set up an operations room in a tie-up with community volunteers from Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre, Indian Association Ajman, AKCAF Task Force, the BAPS Mandir, Indian People’s Forum, and Tamil Ladies’ Sangam.

 “We are trying to accommodate as many deserving people as possible. We expect the understanding of the people. It has been very difficult to sort out everyone’s urgency.”

“We cannot do a lottery system in this and we had to make sub- categories to ensure there is a mix of people with different types of urgencies.”

“Though we want to give priority to pregnant women, it is practically not possible and not good for the health and safety of the applicants to allot a lot of them on the same flight.”

He said 11 pregnant women have been issued tickets on the Dubai-Kozhikode flight.

“That is the threshold we can allow on a flight.”

Volunteer support

The consul appreciated the support of the volunteers in finalising the flight manifest.

“But our response ratio was very less. Many people whose names came up on top of the list were not willing to go on the first flights.”

Due to various constraints like this and sometimes the details of accompanying persons not readily being available, he said the mission was not able to quickly reach out to who might be really in need.

“However, we have given due consideration to people who got in touch with us with their emergency needs. At the time of issuing tickets, we had about 20 such cases.”

He said the Consul General of India in Dubai Vipul led the entire operation and Pankaj Bodkhe, consul, education, was in charge of the Dubai flight.

A big challenge

“It has been a big challenge. Our only concern is that despite our best efforts, sometimes people with more compelling reasons might have got left out on the first flights because of the volume of people who have reached out to us.”

Since there is a chance that some passengers with tickets might not be allowed to fly if they fail the medical screening including blood tests to check antibodies for COVID-19, he said some applicants in the waiting list have been asked to be on standby at the airport.

People with emergencies wishing to fly to other destinations also could not be included, he pointed out.

“We had to ask them to wait. We are unable to send them to other destinations. We can see their desperation. We feel sorry and desperate.”

He said the government is trying to add more flights to un-chartered destinations and a new flight from Dubai to Kannur has been added on May 12.

Passengers of today’s flights have been urged to reach the airport four to five hours prior to departure to facilitate the medical screening.

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Agencies
August 2,2020

Dubai, Aug 2: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced on Saturday that it has started operations in the first of four reactors at the Barakah nuclear power station - the first nuclear power plant in the Arab world.

Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC), which is building and operating the plant with Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) said in a press release that its subsidiary Nawah Energy Company "has successfully started up Unit 1 of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant, located in the Al Dhafrah Region of Abu Dhabi".

That signals that Unit 1, which had fuel rods loaded in March, has achieved "criticality" - a sustained fission chain reaction.

"The start-up of Unit 1 marks the first time that the reactor safely produces heat, which is used to create steam, turning a turbine to generate electricity," said ENEC.

Barakah, which was originally scheduled to open in 2017, has been dogged by delays and is billions of dollars over budget. It has also raised myriad concerns among nuclear energy veterans who are concerned about the potential risks Barakah could visit upon the Arabian Peninsula, from an environmental catastrophe to a nuclear arms race.

Paul Dorfman, an honorary senior research fellow at the Energy Institute, University College London and founder and chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group, has criticised the Barakah reactors' "cheap and cheerful" design that he says cuts corners on safety.

Dorfman authored a report (PDF) last year detailing key safety features Barakah's reactors lack, such as a "core catcher" to literally stop the core of a reactor from breaching the containment building in the event of a meltdown. The reactors are also missing so-called Generation III Defence-In-Depth reinforcements to the containment building to shield against a radiological release resulting from a missile or fighter jet attack.

Both of these engineering features are standard on new reactors built in Europe, says Dorfman.

There have been at least 13 aerial attacks on nuclear facilities in the Middle East - more than any other region on earth.

The vulnerability of critical infrastructure in the Arabian Peninsula was further laid bare last year after Saudi Arabia's oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais were attacked by 18 drones and seven cruise missiles - an assault that temporarily knocked out more than half of the kingdom's oil production.

On Saturday, Dorfman reiterated his concern that there is no regional protocol in place to determine liability should an accident or incident at Barakah result in radioactive contamination spreading from the UAE to its neighbours. 

"Given Barakah has started up, because of all the well-rehearsed nuclear safety and security problems, it may be critically important that the Gulf states collectively evolve a Nuclear Accident Liability Convention, so that if anything does go wrong, victim states may have some sort of redress," Dorfman told Al Jazeera. 

The UAE has substantial oil and gas reserves, but it has made huge investments in developing alternative energy sources, including nuclear and solar.

Experts though have questioned why the UAE - which is bathed in sunlight and wind - has pushed ahead with nuclear energy - a far more expensive and riskier option than renewable energy sources.

When the UAE first announced Barakah in 2009, nuclear power was cheaper than solar and wind. But by 2012 - when the Emirates started breaking ground to build the reactors - solar and wind costs had plummeted dramatically.

Between 2009 and 2019, utility-scale average solar photovoltaic costs fell 89 percent and wind fell 43 percent, while nuclear jumped 26 percent, according to an analysis by the financial advisory and asset manager Lazard.

There are also concerns about the potential for Barakah to foment nuclear proliferation in the Middle East - a region rife with geopolitical fault lines and well-documented history of nuclear secrecy.

The UAE has sought to distance itself from the region's bad behaviour by agreeing not to enrich its own uranium or reprocess spent fuel. It has also signed up to the United Nation's nuclear watchdog's Additional Protocol, significantly enhancing inspection capabilities, and secured a 123 Agreement with the United States that allows bilateral civilian nuclear cooperation.

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News Network
April 29,2020

Dubai, Apr 29: Saudi Arabia reported 1,325 new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 21,402, the Ministry of Health announced on Wednesday (April 28).

Meanwhile, the ministry reported 169 recoveries today, with total recoveries in the kingdom at 2,953. There are 125 cases in intensive care.

The ministry also confirmed 5 deaths, bringing the total number of deaths in the kingdom to 157.

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