Croatia populist president re-elected in landslide

LONDON: The UK prime minister is moving forward with a Middle East peace plan based on his work in the Northern Ireland peace process, The Independent reported on Saturday.

Keir Starmer pledged in December that the UK would lead efforts to bring long-term peace to the region.

This week, following the establishment of a ceasefire in Gaza, the British government and Foreign Office held meetings with figures from the Alliance for Middle East Peace, a network of more than 160 organizations engaged in civil society peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians.

Starmer’s plan will see Foreign Secretary David Lammy host a conference later this year to raise funds for the project.

John Lyndon, ALLMEP’s executive director, told The Independent: “It’s encouraging to see the government begin to think through how the prime minister’s endorsement of an international fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace — and the pledge that the foreign secretary would hold an inaugural meeting in London — can relate to the rapidly changing environment.

“With a fragile ceasefire and hostage deal in place, we need to see initiatives like this predicated on conflict resolution, nonviolence and diplomacy gather momentum.”

Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, served as adviser on human rights to the Northern Ireland Policing Board from 2003 to 2007.

The board supervises the Police Service of Northern Ireland, with Starmer having worked to ensure the service was compliant with the 1998 Human Rights Act.

The International Fund for Ireland, which was launched in the late 1980s and serves as a model for Starmer’s Middle East peace project, was described as the “great unsung hero of the Good Friday Agreement” by Jonathan Powell, the government’s former chief negotiator.

The fund slowly pooled resources and brought figures from both sides of the conflict together, culminating in the 1999 Good Friday Agreement.

KABUL: Afghanistan’s only luxury hotel, Serena Hotel in Kabul, closed down operations on Saturday as its management was taken over by a corporation run by the Taliban.

Set in landscaped gardens, overlooking the city’s Zarnegar Park in the Afghan capital’s downtown, it opened in 1945 as the Kabul Hotel.

Heavily damaged during decades of war, the five-star property was rebuilt by the Aga Khan Development Network in 2005, according to a design by Canadian architect Ramesh Khosla, who adhered to the classical Islamic architectural style.

Renamed Serena Kabul Hotel, it was inaugurated by former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, during whose term it endured two major attacks by the Taliban in 2008 and 2014.

The last attack took place under the rule of former president Ashraf Ghani in 2021, the year when Afghanistan’s Western-backed administration collapsed, US-led foreign troops withdrew after 20 years of war and occupation, and the Taliban took over the country.

“After nearly two decades of dedicated services to Afghanistan and its citizens ... Kabul Serena Hotel shall be closing its operations effective Feb. 1, 2025,” the hotel said in a notification on Friday.

“The operations of the hotel will, as from now on, be taken over by Hotel State Owned Corporation.”

The Taliban government-run corporation confirmed the takeover to Arab News, saying that the Serena Hotels group’s contract was terminated five years before it was due.

An official at the HSOC said it was fit to operate the hotel as it was “running several other hotels across the country.”

It was not clear whether the corporation would be able to uphold the five-star level of service as the hotel was the only luxury property in the country — an exclusive venue with expensive restaurants hosting mostly foreigners.

“Most Afghans couldn’t afford to spend the night or have a meal there, so they didn’t really have any attachment to it … there’s really only a select group of highly privileged people who have these fond memories of hours spent at the Serena. The average Afghan simply has no experience of it,” Ali Latifi, an Afghan American journalist based in Kabul, told Arab News.

It was also the subject of a famous blunder by an Indian news anchor, who in 2021 claimed that Pakistan’s intelligence agency had an office on the hotel’s fourth floor, despite the fact that the Serena Kabul has only two floors.

While the hotel was both famous and infamous, it had never been a symbol of Kabul and its society, Latifi said.

“It took a real level of privilege to even walk through the door there ... it was an elite place for privileged people.”

Mirwais Agha, a taxi driver who remembers construction works when the hotel was being rebuilt, had no idea how the property looked inside.

“I only saw the cement walls and big cars getting in through the doors every time I passed by the place,” he said.

“It was not for common people like us. It was for foreigners and some rich people. You had to pay dollars to get a meal in the hotel. It doesn’t really mean anything for us if it’s closing or its management is being charged. It never belonged to us.”