United Arab Emirates

Dubai World and its largest creditors have agreed in principle to a deal to restructure the Emirati company's $23.5 billion in debt.

The deal would reduce Dubai World's debts to $14.4 billion, divided into two tranches. The first, worth $4.4 billion, would be repaid over five years with 1 percent interest; the second would have an eight-year maturity.

Lenders would receive a mix of both tranches, and they'll be allowed to choose from several interest rate options for the second tranche, which offer varying degrees of protection against a complete Dubai World bankruptcy (in exchange for a lower payout).

Details of the agreement are posted on Dubai World's web site. It's similar to the general terms announced in March.

The deal is between Dubai World and the "coordinating committee" of its creditors; firms on the committee hold about 60 percent of the company's debts.

The international community continues to be very good at promising money to Yemen, and not very good at actually delivering those funds.

Yemen's deputy minister for planning, Hisham Sharaf Abdullah, represented the country this week (عربي) at the inaugural Friends of Yemen conference in Abu Dhabi. Abdullah told reporters that his government needs $44 billion for development work over the next five years.

When Dubai World, the huge emirate-owned investment company, announced a plan to restructure some $26 billion in debt on Wednesday, markets welcomed the news.

Now, less than a week later, disagreements between Dubai World and some of its 97 creditor banks are becoming public. A handful of banks on the committee that's coordinating Dubai World's debt restructuring are angry that other creditors look set to receive preferential repayment.

Representatives from nearly 100 banks met with executives from Dubai World to discuss a restructuring plan for the troubled company's $26 billion in debt -- but the five-hour meeting ended without any public announcements.

The talks were led by bankers from Dubai World's senior creditors, which include HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, and other international firms. Media reports say the banks will asked to accept either slow repayment terms or substantial losses -- perhaps up to 40 percent of their debts. In exchange, the Dubai government would guarantee Dubai World's debt.

The emirate already announced this week that it will use a financial support fund to help Dubai World pay off short-term loans.

Dubai World's 97 creditors need to reach an agreement in the next few weeks. In November, the company asked its creditors for a six-month delay on payments; that term will expire this spring.

In other bad news for the firm, DP World -- a major operator of international ports -- said its year-over-year profits fell by 46 percent, largely due to slow international shipping. Dubai World owns a majority stake in DP World.

Forget all the doom and gloom, the United Arab Emirates are going up, up, up! At least, that's what Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media baron and owner of News Corporation believes.

From the National>:

Fox International Channels, a subsidiary of News Corp, is making Abu Dhabi its regional hub for online advertising sales, documentary production and satellite television broadcast.

Murdoch and Fox are betting that the booming wealth of the Gulf states, combined with the enormous Middle Eastern youth population that consume media products produced in the Gulf, will spell big profits for online advertising in the region.

There are still many unanswered questions about the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh assassination, but one thing is clear: Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, the Dubai police chief, really enjoys the media spotlight.

Tamim, who's had more airtime than Larry King over the last few weeks, called another press conference today to urge Mossad chief Meir Dagan to "be a man" and admit his organization killed Mabhouh. Tamim also admitted today that it will be "very difficult" to catch the killers without help from Western countries (عربي).

Forensic tests on the body of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, the assassinated founder of the Qassam Brigades and a former high-ranking Hamas official, revealed traces of the drug succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant, that had apparently been injected into Mabhouh's thigh, according to Dubai authorities.

The new information on Mabhouh's killing was released today in a statement by deputy Dubai police chief Maj. Gen. Khamis Mattar al-Mazeina, who also said that Mabhouh had been suffocated by a pillow "so that it would seem that his death was natural."

Dubai police now say 26 people, not the original 11, were involved in assassinating Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

The updated list includes six new British passport holders, and three people each with Irish, French and Australian passports. Two of the names are women; the original list of 11 included just one woman, Gail Folliard.

Police also released two somewhat complicated graphics showing the movements of the alleged hit squad. We've posted them both after the jump. The first one shows nine members of the team traveling to Dubai in November 2009 -- reportedly to plot the assassination; the second shows their movements in the days before and after Mabhouh's murder. The group traveled through more than a half-dozen countries en route to Dubai.

Dubai police chief Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim says he has proof -- credit card receipts and phone records -- that Mossad was involved in killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

"Among the new evidence available to Dubai police which incriminates the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, and confirms its involvement in the murder ... are telephone communications between the culprits who have been detected," Tamim said in the newspaper Al-Bayan.

"Dubai police also have reliable information that some perpetrators bought their tickets in other countries using credit cards bearing the same identity revealed" previously by the emirate, he added.

Tamim doesn't really elaborate, though, on how either of these link Mossad to the assassination. A credit card receipt by itself is not incriminating -- unless the billing address on the card is "Mossad HQ, Jerusalem, Israel."

(Updated below) I rag on Robert Fisk sometimes, but the man is doing some good reporting on the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh assassination. His latest piece looks at some of the inconsistencies in the British government's story -- remember, the UK says it doesn't know how the killers got British passports.

It was a source - impeccable, I know him, he spoke with the authority I know he has in Abu Dhabi - to say that "the British passports are real. They are hologram pictures with the biometric stamp. They are not forged or fake. The names were really there. If you can fake a hologram or biometric stamp, what does this mean?"

David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, said again today that his office didn't know about the British passports until February 15, shortly before Dubai police released the information publicly. But if Fisk's reporting is accurate -- if these passports have accurate biometric information on them, which is hard to fake -- well, that's an interesting wrinkle.

Interpol posted wanted notices this morning for the alleged Mahmoud al-Mabhouh killers. Here's the notice for Gail Folliard, for example, the lone woman in the group of 11; here's Melvyn Adam Mildiner, the Israeli/British dual citizen who appeared on Channel 10 news last night and said he hasn't left Israel in two years.

All 11 are wanted for "crimes against life and health" in Dubai, but the notices don't provide much more detail.

I'm not even really sure where to begin writing about the latest on the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh assassination. The story really jumped into the spotlight today, largely because of the revelation that more than half of the 11 people wanted for Mabhouh's murder used real identities -- but fake passports.

Dubai police identified six of Mabhouh's killers as British passport holders Michael Lawrence Barney, James Leonard Clarke, Jonathan Louis Graham, Paul John Keeley, Stephen Daniel Hodes, and Melvyn Adam Mildiner.

And it turns out that all six are real people -- British citizens living in Israel. The killers used their identities on forged passports; the names, birthdays and other biographical information were accurate, but the signatures and photographs were not, according to British authorities. Mildiner actually appeared on Israel's Channel 10 news today, and said he hasn't left the country in two years.

The Dubai police department today released photos of the 11 people allegedly responsible for assassinating Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last month -- and the chief of police says he's close to issuing arrest warrants for the group.

Everyone in the group held European passports, according to police: six British, three Irish, one French and one German. The lone woman in the group had an Irish passport. The Ma'an News Agency (عربي) and Al-Jazeera (عربي) both report that the group included two Palestinians; one of them reportedly met with the group's leader, a Frenchman named Peter.

Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai's police chief, says both Palestinians were arrested in the UAE as they were leaving for trips to China and the Sudan. Tamim said one of them acted as a "spotter" for the assassination.

The Mahmoud al-Mabhouh case has dropped out of the headlines for a few days, but it popped up this morning in The National, which interviewed Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, the chief of the Dubai police department. Tamim still won't name the suspects -- but says he will issue an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli Mossad is implicated.

The Golden Arches are a little less golden, at least in the United Arab Emirates: McDonalds sales grew by just 4 percent in the UAE last year, compared to 14 percent in 2008. Growth is expected to pick up a bit in 2010.

The McArabia is better than anything you'll find in a stateside McDonalds, by the way.

Ha'aretz says a preliminary inquiry -- conducted by Hamas -- concluded that Arab governments, and not the Mossad, are behind the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month.

... details of a Hamas inquiry passed to Haaretz reveal that Arab states, not Israel, now top the suspect list. Both Hamas and Dubai police say that Mabhouh had enemies across the Middle East, any of whom may have had a motive for his murder.

Obligatory caveat: The paper doesn't say how it obtained the inquiry report. But I've heard several variations of this theory in the last few days -- either that Mabhouh, a weapons smuggler, was killed in an arms deal gone bad; or that one of his many enemies knocked him off.

No arrests yet, nor claims of responsibility, in the assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh -- but officals in Dubai say they've got a lead.

Police said yesterday that the killers hold European passports. And today they told Ha'aretz the killers "left behind evidence" that could lead to their arrest; officials in Dubai have reportedly contacted Interpol for help with the investigation.

(Updated below) Hamas officials claim Israeli agents assassinated a member of their group, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who had recently arrived in Dubai.

Mabhouh was found dead on Jan. 20 in his hotel room in Dubai. Izzat al-Rishq, a Damascus-based spokesman for the group, said he couldn't reveal the circumstances of the killing. Yedioth Ahronoth interviewed Mabhouh's brother, Faiq al-Mabhouh, who claimed Mahmoud was killed by "an electrical appliance that was held to his head." Other reports suggest he was electrocuted and strangled (عربي).

World leaders and clean energy enthusiasts are in Abu Dhabi for the World Future Energy Summit -- but oil ministers from the Gulf say they don't want to move into the future too quickly.

Abdullah al-Attiyah, Qatar's minister of energy, criticized the world for "scapegoating" fossil fuel producers.

"Why did Copenhagen fail? It's because when you go there you feel that someone is trying to create a scapegoat," he said, referring to last month's climate talks in the Danish capital. "You try to blame oil and gas producers."

The UAE's energy minister, Mohammed al-Hamli, made similar comments, telling the audience fossil fuels would "complement" renewable energy.

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nayhan, the brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates, was acquitted yesterday of torture charges by an Emirati court -- despite a videotape that shows him assaulting an Afghan man.

The brutal assault was filmed in 2004, and originally broadcast last year on the American television network ABC. The tape shows Sheikh Issa assaulting the man with whips and wooden planks, shocking him with cattle prods, and driving over his foot with an SUV. Sheikh Issa was assisted by several men, at least one of them wearing a UAE police uniform.

The victim, Mohammed Shah Poor, allegedly shortchanged Nayhan on a grain delivery to his ranch.