UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations chief said Thursday that he would have liked more results from his meetings with the rival leaders of divided Cyprus, while the Turkish Cypriot leader said he was “very, very upset” that there was no agreement on opening four new border crossings.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the meetings “constructive” and pointed to progress on four of the six initiatives that the leaders agreed to in March. He cautioned, however, that “there’s a long road ahead.”

The Mediterranean island was divided in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup by Athens junta-backed supporters of uniting the island with Greece. Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence, and it maintains more than 35,000 troops in the island’s northern third.

Negotiations between the rivals have been stalled since 2017. When asked whether he would start a new round, Guterres responded that there is more to be done before any negotiations. The current talks are “complex,” he said, stressing the very different views of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots on a solution.

“I think we are building, step by step, confidence and creating the conditions to do concrete things to the benefit of the Cypriot people,” the secretary-general said.

The agreed-upon, U.N.-endorsed framework for a peace deal has been a reunified Cyprus as a federation composed of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot zones.

Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar has been demanding a two-state deal ever since his 2020 election. He faces reelection in October and says he’s running on the same two-state platform with Ankara’s full backing.

Tatar told reporters after the meeting that “unless our sovereign equality and equal international status is reaffirmed, we will not resume formal negotiations for the resolution of the Cyprus problem.”

Greek Cypriots reject any agreement that would formalize partition, fearing Turkey would seek to control the entire island in light of its demand to maintain a permanent troop presence and military intervention rights in Cyprus. Turkey also insists the minority Turkish Cypriots should have veto rights over all federal government decisions.

Greek Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides did not speak to reporters after the meeting, which included the foreign ministers of guarantor countries Turkey and Greece and a United Kingdom deputy minister.

Despite differences on the future of Cyprus, the rivals have made some progress on trust-building measures.

Guterres told reporters that four initiatives had been achieved: creating a technical committee on youth; initiatives on the environment and climate change, including the impact on mining areas; the restoration of cemeteries; and an agreement on demining, where technical details still need to be finalized.

He said discussions will continue on opening four new crossings between the Greek and Turkish sides of the island and on solar energy in the buffer zone between them, which is patrolled by a U.N. peacekeeping force.

Tatar accused Christodoulides of preventing the announcement of the four border crossings on Thursday by insisting that one of them go through the buffer zone, which he called unacceptable to Turkish Cypriots.

He also sharply criticized Greek Cypriots for pursuing legal action over the sale of properties in the Turkish Cypriot north, saying the moves “are certainly damaging to the relations of the two peoples and are aimed at damaging our economy and our tourism.”

Property rights are a deeply contentious issue in Cyprus. A recent boom in construction of luxury villas and apartments in the north has prompted Cypriot legal authorities to take a more assertive stance toward realtors and developers to discourage what they say is the large-scale “illegal usurpation” of Greek Cypriot land.

Guterres said the meeting also produced an understanding on a consultative body for civil society engagement, exchange of cultural artifacts, an initiative on air quality monitoring and addressing microplastic pollution.

The secretary-general said Tatar and Christodoulides agreed to meet with him in late September during the annual gathering of world leaders at the General Assembly and to hold another informal meeting later in the year.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian forces largely withdrew from the southern province of Sweida on Thursday following days of clashes with militias linked to the Druze minority.

While the truce between Druze armed groups and government forces appeared to be largely holding, state media reported that Druze militants had launched revenge attacks on communities of Sunni Bedouins, leading to a wave of displacement.

Bedouin clans had fought alongside government forces against the Druze groups.

Druze leaders and Syrian government officials reached a ceasefire deal mediated by the United States, Turkey and Arab countries.

Under the ceasefire agreement reached Wednesday, Druze factions and clerics have been appointed to maintain internal security in Sweida, Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa said in an address broadcast early Thursday.

The fighting had threatened to unravel Syria’s postwar political transition and brought further military intervention by neighboring Israel, which on Wednesday struck the Syrian Defense Ministry headquarters, in central Damascus. Israel said it was acting to protect the Druze religious minority.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Thursday to keep southern Syria demilitarized and to protect the Druze community, which has a sizeable population in Israel.

“This will also be the continuation of our policy,” said Netanyahu, who said the ceasefire was reached because of Israel’s intense strikes on government forces during the clashes. “We will not allow military forces to descend south of Damascus, we will not allow the Druze to be harmed in Jebel Druze.”

Convoys of government forces started withdrawing overnight as Syrian state media said the withdrawal was in line with the ceasefire agreement and the military operation against the Druze factions had ended.

It remained unclear if the ceasefire would hold after the agreement was announced by Syria’s Interior Ministry and in a video message by a Druze religious leader. A previous agreement Tuesday quickly broke down after being dismissed by prominent Druze cleric Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri.

Looting homes and killing civilians

A Turkish official said Thursday that Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and intelligence chief İbrahim Kalin held a series of diplomatic and security contacts to de-escalate the clashes. They worked with the U.S. special envoy for Syria, Israel, and regional officials and leaders, including Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, said the official who requested anonymity to discuss the issue.

The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province of Sweida. Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze militias, but also in some cases attacked civilians.

Video circulated on social media showed government forces and allies humiliating Druze clerics and residents, looting homes and killing civilians hiding inside their houses. Syrian Druze from Sweida told The Associated Press that several family members who were unarmed had been attacked or killed.

“We are committed to holding accountable those who wronged our Druze brethren,” Al-Sharaa said, describing the Druze as an ”integral part of this nation’s fabric” who are under the protection of state law and justice.

‘Militant sectarianism’

The Druze community had been divided over how to approach al-Sharaa’s de facto Islamist rule over Syria after largely celebrating the downfall of Bashar Assad and his family’s decades-long dictatorial rule. They feared persecution after several attacks from the Islamic State militant group and al-Qaeda-affiliates the Nusra Front during Syria’s 14-year civil war.

Issam al-Reis, a senior military adviser with Etana, a Syrian research group, said the lack of “effective state-led negotiations” could sow further divisions between the Druze community with the Sunni Beduins who largely were able to coexist.

“This is leading to militant sectarianism which is dangerous,” he said, adding it’s a sign that the government needs to speed up its integration of other sects into the Syrian army, that could make it a more unifying force and could help resolve sectarian tensions.

“There have been agreements and talks about this with different communities, but until now none of this has been implemented,” he said.

The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.

—

Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser from Ankara, Turkey contributed to this report.

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday hailed start of a disarmament process by militant Kurdish separatists as the end of a “painful chapter” in Turkey’s troubled history.

Erdogan told a meeting of his ruling AKP party in Ankara that the more than 40-year-old “scourge of terrorism” for which the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – or PKK – was responsible is on its way to ending.

Erdogan’s remarks came a day after male and female members of the PKK in northern Iraq cast rifles and machine guns into a large cauldron where they were set on fire. The symbolic move was seen as the first step toward a promised disarmament as part of a peace process aimed at ending four decades of hostilities.

The move came after PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been imprisoned on an island near Istanbul since 1999, urged his group in February to convene a congress and formally disband and disarm. In May the PKK announced that it would do so.

The PKK had waged an armed insurgency against Turkey since 1984, initially with the aim of establishing a Kurdish state in the southeast of the country. Over time, the objective evolved into a campaign for autonomy and rights for Kurds within Turkey.

The conflict, which spread beyond Turkey’s borders into Iraq and Syria, killed tens of thousands of people. The PKK is considered to be a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Previous peace efforts between Turkey and the PKK have ended in failure — most recently in 2015.

“Today the doors of a great Turkey, a strong Turkey, a Turkish century have been opened wide,” Erdogan said.

In a statement issued on Friday, the PKK said the fighters who were laying down their weapons, saying that they had disarmed “as a gesture of goodwill and a commitment to the practical success” of the peace process.

“We will henceforth continue our struggle for freedom, democracy, and socialism through democratic politics and legal means,” the statement said.

But Erdogan insisted that there had been no bargaining with the PKK. “The terror-free Turkey project is not the result of negotiations, bargaining or transactions.” Turkish officials have not disclosed if any concessions have been given to the PKK in exchange for laying down their arms.

The Turkish president also said that a parliamentary commission would be established to oversee the peace process.

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq (AP) — Fighters with a Kurdish separatist militant group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey began laying down their weapons in a symbolic ceremony on Friday in northern Iraq, the first concrete step toward a promised disarmament as part of a peace process.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, announced in May that it would disband and renounce armed conflict, ending four decades of hostilities. The move came after PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned on an island near Istanbul since 1999, urged his group in February to convene a congress and formally disband and disarm.

Öcalan renewed his call in a video message broadcast Wednesday, saying, “I believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons.”

In Turkey, Devlet Bahceli, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist ally who initiated the peace process, welcomed the development.

“Starting today, members of the separatist terrorist organization have begun surrendering their weapons in groups, marking historic developments that signal the end of a dark era,” Bahceli said in a written statement. “These are exceptionally important days for both Turkey and our region.”

Bahceli, who has traditionally maintained a hard-line stance against the PKK, had surprised everyone in October, when he suggested in parliament that Öcalan could be granted parole, if he renounced violence and disbanded the PKK.

The PKK issued a statement from the fighters laying down their weapons, who called themselves the “Peace and Democratic Society Group,” saying that they had disarmed “as a gesture of goodwill and a commitment to the practical success” of the peace process.

“We will henceforth continue our struggle for freedom, democracy, and socialism through democratic politics and legal means,” the statement said.

The ceremony took place in the mountains outside the city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region. The state-run Iraqi News Agency reported that “the process will take place in stages, with a group of party members initially laying down their weapons symbolically.” The disarmament process is expected to be completed by September, the agency reported.

The PKK has long maintained bases in the mountains of northern Iraq. Turkish forces have launched offensives and airstrikes against the PKK in Iraq and have set up bases in the area. Scores of villages have emptied as a result.

Last year, Iraq’s government announced an official ban on the separatist group, which has long been prohibited in Turkey.

Journalists weren’t allowed at the site of Friday’s ceremony.

An Iraqi Kurdish political official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly, said that about 30 fighters took part in the ceremony, which took place in the presence of a representative of the Turkish intelligence service and representatives of the Kurdish regional government, Iraq’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party and the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, a pro-Kurdish party in Turkey.

PKK officials previously said that in order to continue the disarmament process, they want to see Turkey take steps to end “the regime of isolation” imposed on Öcalan in prison and to allow integration of former militants into the political system.

___

Qassim Abdul-Zahra reported from Baghdad. Abby Sewell in Beirut, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — A U.S. envoy said on Wednesday that Syria’s central government and the Kurds remain at odds over plans on merging their forces after the latest round of talks, a persistent obstacle as the new authorities in Damascus struggle to consolidate control after the country’s yearslong civil war.

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who is also a special envoy to Syria, told The Associated Press after meetings in Damascus, the Syrian capital, that there are still significant differences between the two sides. Barrack held talks with Mazloum Abdi, head of the Kurdish-led and U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces, and Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa.

The development comes after a move by the Trump administration took effect this week, revoking a terrorism designation of the former insurgent group led by al-Sharaa, which was behind a lightning offensive last December that ousted Syria’s longtime autocrat Bashar Assad.

Revoking the designation was part of a broader U.S. engagement with al-Sharaa’s new, transitional government.

A deal vague in details

In early March, the former insurgents — now the new authorities in Damascus — signed a landmark deal with the SDF, a Kurdish-led force that had fought alongside U.S. troops against the militant Islamic State group and which controls much of northeastern Syria.

Under that deal, the SDF forces would merge with the new Syrian national army. The agreement, which is supposed be implemented by the end of the year, would also bring all border crossings with Iraq and Turkey, airports and oil fields in the northeast under the central government’s control. They are now controlled by the SDF.

Detention centers housing thousands of Islamic State militants, now guarded by the SDF, would also come under government control.

However, the agreement left the details vague, and progress on implementation has been slow. A major sticking point has been whether the SDF would remain as a cohesive unit in the new army — which the Syrian Kurds are pushing for — or whether the force would be dissolved and its members individually absorbed into the new military.

Barrack said that is still “a big issue” between the two sides.

‘Baby steps’

“I don’t think there’s a breakthrough,” Barrack said after Wednesday’s meetings. “I think these things happen in baby steps, because it’s built on trust, commitment and understanding.”

He added that “for two parties that have been apart for a while and maybe an adversarial relationship for a while, they have to build that trust step by step.”

Also, Turkish-backed factions affiliated with the new Syrian government have over the years clashed with the SDF, which Turkey considers a terrorist group because of its association with the Kurdish separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which had waged a decades-long insurgency within Turkey before recently announcing it would lay down its weapons.

The United States also considers the PKK a terrorist group but is allied with the SDF.

Barrack said that though “we’re not there” yet, Damascus had “done a great job” in presenting options for the SDF to consider.

“I hope they will and I hope they’ll do it quickly,” he said.

From skepticism to trust

A key turning point for Syria came when U.S. President Donald Trump met with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in May and announced that Washington would lift decades of sanctions, imposed over Assad’s government.

Trump took steps to do so after their meeting and subsequently, the U.S. moved to remove the terrorist designation from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, al-Sharaa’s force that spearheaded the offensive against Assad.

The U.S. played a key role in brokering the deal announced in March between al-Sharaa’s government and the SDF and has urged the Syrian Kurdish authorities to integrate with Damascus.

Barrack said Washington has “complete confidence in the Syrian government and the new Syrian government’s military,” while the SDF has been a “valuable partner” in the fight against IS and that the U.S. “wants to make sure that they have an opportunity … to integrate into the new government in a respectful way.”

The U.S. has begun scaling down the number of troops it has stationed in Syria — there are about 1,300 U.S. forces now — but Barrack said Washington is in “no hurry” to pull out completely.

Prospects of Syria-Israel ties

In the interview with the AP, Barrack also downplayed reports of possible breakthroughs in talks on normalizing ties between Syria and Israel.

“My feeling of what’s happening in the neighborhood is that it should happen, and it’ll happen like unwrapping an onion, slowly … as the region builds trust with each other,” he said without elaborating.

Since Assad’s fall, Israel has seized a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in Syria bordering the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and has launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites in Syria. Israeli soldiers have also raided Syrian towns outside of the border zone and detained people who they said were militants, sometimes clashing with locals.

Israeli officials have said they are taking the measures to guard their border against another cross-border attack like the one launched by the Palestinian militant Hamas group on Oct. 7, 2023 in southern Israel that triggered the latest war in the Gaza Strip.

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company said Wednesday that it’s taking down “inappropriate posts” made by its Grok chatbot, which appeared to include antisemitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler.

Grok was developed by Musk’s xAI and pitched as alternative to “woke AI” interactions from rival chatbots like Google’s Gemini, or OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Musk said Friday that Grok has been improved significantly, and users “should notice a difference.”

Since then, Grok has shared several antisemitic posts, including the trope that Jews run Hollywood, and denied that such a stance could be described as Nazism.

“Labeling truths as hate speech stifles discussion,” Grok said.

It also appeared to praise Hitler, according to screenshots of posts that have now apparently been deleted.

After making one of the posts, Grok walked back the comments, saying it was “an unacceptable error from an earlier model iteration, swiftly deleted” and that it condemned “Nazism and Hitler unequivocally — his actions were genocidal horrors.”

“We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts,” the Grok account posted early Wednesday, without being more specific.

“Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved.

The Anti-Defamation League, which works to combat antisemitism, called out Grok’s behavior.

“What we are seeing from Grok LLM right now is irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic, plain and simple,” the group said in a post on X. “This supercharging of extremist rhetoric will only amplify and encourage the antisemitism that is already surging on X and many other platforms.”

Also Wednesday, a court in Turkey ordered a ban on Grok and Poland’s digital minister said he would report the chatbot to the European Commission after it made vulgar comments about politicians and public figures in both countries.

Krzysztof Gawkowski, who’s also Poland’s deputy prime minister, told private broadcaster RMF FM that his ministry would report Grok “for investigation and, if necessary, imposing a fine on X.” Under an EU digital law, social media platforms are required to protect users or face hefty fines.

“I have the impression that we’re entering a higher level of hate speech, which is controlled by algorithms, and that turning a blind eye … is a mistake that could cost people in the future,” Gawkowski told the station.

Turkey’s pro-government A Haber news channel reported that Grok posted vulgarities about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his late mother and well-known personalities. Offensive responses were also directed toward modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, other media outlets said.

That prompted the Ankara public prosecutor to file for the imposition of restrictions under Turkey’s internet law, citing a threat to public order. A criminal court approved the request early on Wednesday, ordering the country’s telecommunications authority to enforce the ban.

It’s not the first time Grok’s behavior has raised questions.

Earlier this year the chatbot kept talking about South African racial politics and the subject of “white genocide” despite being asked a variety of questions, most of which had nothing to do with the country. An “unauthorized modification” was behind the problem, xAI said.