Chavez ready
to shelter duplicate Iranian nuclear facilities in
Venezuela
DEBKAfile Exclusive
06 Sept. Sunday, Sept. 6, Hugo
Chavez joined Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a visit to the mausoleum
of Emam Reza at Meshhad, revered by Shiites as the Seventh Imam. DEBKAfile's
Iranian sources disclose that this gave them a chance to discuss a major project
to replicate Iran's key nuclear installations in Venezuela and set up a nuclear
program on the Iranian and North Korean models.
The French news agency AFP,
reporting from Tehran Sunday disclosed Chavez's suggestion to Iran to establish
in his country a "nuclear village" to produce nuclear energy for peaceful
purposes. But according to DEBKAfile's Iranian sources, the discussion between
the two presidents Saturday was much broader in scope and extended to "removing"
or "copying" elements of the Iranian nuclear industry to Venezuela both to keep
them safe from attack and to guarantee their uninterrupted operation in the
event of a US or Israel strike against Iran.
Sep 24,
2009 04:30 AM
UNITED NATIONS–Moammar Gadhafi waited 40 years for his turn at the United
Nations microphone. He was not about to let the moment pass quickly.
In a rambling, largely improvised 95-minute address to the UN General
Assembly, the controversial Libyan leader let it fly in all directions,
beginning with an attack on the UN itself, which he called a "terrorist"
organization on par with Al Qaeda due to a format that favours the will of the
mighty over the weak.
Gadhafi's attack on the veto power wielded by the UN Security Council's five
permanent members was the first salvo in a marathon rant that wore out two UN
translators. Among the more striking claims, many of which prompted peals of
laughter from the press corps:
The Libyan leader called for new investigations of all conflicts and
political assassinations since World War II, including the killing of John F.
Kennedy, which he said might have been the work of Israelis.
Gadhafi praised Barack Obama as a "son of Africa," expressed hope the U.S.
president would become leader for life, but worried that the post-Obama America
will revert to its former place on the world stage.
Positioning himself as a champion of post-colonial indemnification, Gadhafi
called for $7.7 trillion in restitution for Africa. Until the debt is paid,
Gadhafi called for immigration without limits to allow Africans to migrate to
Europe to share in the wealth that was stolen from them.
In a rambling aside about the jet lag many world leaders suffer in the
journey to New York, Gadhafi called for the UN headquarters to be relocated to
the "middle" or "Eastern hemisphere." Gadhafi said America would welcome the
move.
Addressing the dangers of swine flu, Gadhafi suggested the ailment was
deliberately released by profit-seeking pharmaceutical firms. He said "fish flu"
may be next.
Gadhafi attacked the NATO-led effort in Afghanistan as folly, saying he was
doing Western allies a favour by speaking so frankly. "If I really want to
deceive my friends in America and Britain I would encourage them to send more
troops to this bloodbath." Instead, Gadhafi suggested Afghanistan be abandoned
to battle internally for its future, even if all-out civil war resulted. He
compared the Taliban to the Vatican, describing both as "religious states" and
observing that Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was neither Taliban nor
Afghan.
Calling for a probe into the hanging of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein,
Gadhafi wondered if his masked hangmen were the then-leaders of the U.S. and
U.K.
Gadhafi's surreal speech – his first to the UN, 40 years after seizing power
in oil-rich Libya – followed Obama's address in which the U.S. president called
for a new era of international engagement and an end to the grandstanding that
so often infuses UN discourse.
The Libyan leader appeared to lose his place in his speech notes several
times, and instead used the UN charter as a prop during his 30-minute attack on
the organization. At one point, he began to tear apart the document but then set
it down.
During his speech, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown referenced Gadhafi's
behaviour, saying: "I stand here to defend the UN charter, not to tear it
up."
Brown had no small role to play in the back story of Gadhafi's controversial
visit, with many observers accusing the British government of meddling for
economic advantage in the case that saw a convicted Lockerbie bomber released to
Libyan custody last month.
The saga sparked outrage in the United States and led to an awkward
diplomatic shuffle as U.S. diplomats scrambled for a discreet location for
Gadhafi to pitch his Bedouin tent. New York media outlets reported the tent
found a home on a property owned by celebrity investor Donald Trump. But Trump's
organization denied any direct dealings with the Libyan leader.
US threats rule out peace in Korea: North's envoy
Pyongyang
recently said it had reached the final stages of enriching uranium and was also
building more plutonium-based atomic
weapons.
by Staff
Writers
London (AFP) Sept 28, 2009
There can never be peace and security on the Korean peninsula
while the United States "continues to threaten us with nuclear weapons",
Pyongyang's ambassador to London said Monday.
North Korea was committed to denuclearising the peninsula but the secretive
state would pursue its nuclear programme while Washington's "hostility" remains,
Ja Song-Nam said in a rare public speech.
He said the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) had pulled out of
the six-party talks on its nuclear activities because they were being treated
unfairly, given they were surrounded by nuclear-armed states and countries under
a nuclear umbrella.
"To eliminate the nuclear threat from the Korean peninsula and denuclearise
the peninsula is the consistent policy of the DPRK," Ja, speaking through a
translator, told the Royal United Services Institute security think-tank in
London.
"With the continuation of the status quo, I doubt there can ever be genuine
peace and security.
"We have rejected the six-party talks because the six-party talks are not
based on impartiality and equality.
"If our national sovereignty is respected and if there is no nuclear threat
against our country, then the nuclear weapons from the DPRK will go."
Detailing the chronology of the atomic stand-off between Pyongyang and
Washington, he said: "The nuclear issue arose because the US threatened us with
nuclear weapons, because the US pursued an anti-DPRK hostile policy."
Pyongyang recently said it had reached the final stages of enriching uranium
and was also building more plutonium-based atomic weapons.
North Korea quit six-nation disarmament talks in April and staged its second
nuclear test the following month. The forum hosted by China also includes Japan,
Russia, South Korea and the United States.
Ja said it was hypocritical to say North Korea possessing atomic weapons was
a threat to international peace while Washington "threatening the DPRK with
nuclear weapons" was not.
"The United States has disregarded all proposals and efforts made by the
government of the DPRK," he said.
"The United States continues to threaten us with nuclear weapons and put our
country on the list of nuclear pre-emptive strikes.
"We realised that the main aim of the US from the six-party talks is... to
dispossess us from the nuclear deterrent we have had."
Iran test-fires missiles that can hit Israel
DEBKAfile Exclusive
06 Sept. Sunday, Sept. 6, Hugo
Chavez joined Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a visit to the mausoleum
of Emam Reza at Meshhad, revered by Shiites as the Seventh Imam. DEBKAfile's
Iranian sources disclose that this gave them a chance to discuss a major project
to replicate Iran's key nuclear installations in Venezuela and set up a nuclear
program on the Iranian and North Korean models.The French news agency AFP, reporting from Tehran Sunday disclosed Chavez's suggestion to Iran to establish in his country a "nuclear village" to produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. But according to DEBKAfile's Iranian sources, the discussion between the two presidents Saturday was much broader in scope and extended to "removing" or "copying" elements of the Iranian nuclear industry to Venezuela both to keep them safe from attack and to guarantee their uninterrupted operation in the event of a US or Israel strike against Iran.
UNITED NATIONS–Moammar Gadhafi waited 40 years for his turn at the United Nations microphone. He was not about to let the moment pass quickly.
In a rambling, largely improvised 95-minute address to the UN General Assembly, the controversial Libyan leader let it fly in all directions, beginning with an attack on the UN itself, which he called a "terrorist" organization on par with Al Qaeda due to a format that favours the will of the mighty over the weak.
Gadhafi's attack on the veto power wielded by the UN Security Council's five permanent members was the first salvo in a marathon rant that wore out two UN translators. Among the more striking claims, many of which prompted peals of laughter from the press corps:
The Libyan leader called for new investigations of all conflicts and political assassinations since World War II, including the killing of John F. Kennedy, which he said might have been the work of Israelis.
Gadhafi praised Barack Obama as a "son of Africa," expressed hope the U.S. president would become leader for life, but worried that the post-Obama America will revert to its former place on the world stage.
Positioning himself as a champion of post-colonial indemnification, Gadhafi called for $7.7 trillion in restitution for Africa. Until the debt is paid, Gadhafi called for immigration without limits to allow Africans to migrate to Europe to share in the wealth that was stolen from them.
In a rambling aside about the jet lag many world leaders suffer in the journey to New York, Gadhafi called for the UN headquarters to be relocated to the "middle" or "Eastern hemisphere." Gadhafi said America would welcome the move.
Addressing the dangers of swine flu, Gadhafi suggested the ailment was deliberately released by profit-seeking pharmaceutical firms. He said "fish flu" may be next.
Gadhafi attacked the NATO-led effort in Afghanistan as folly, saying he was doing Western allies a favour by speaking so frankly. "If I really want to deceive my friends in America and Britain I would encourage them to send more troops to this bloodbath." Instead, Gadhafi suggested Afghanistan be abandoned to battle internally for its future, even if all-out civil war resulted. He compared the Taliban to the Vatican, describing both as "religious states" and observing that Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was neither Taliban nor Afghan.
Calling for a probe into the hanging of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Gadhafi wondered if his masked hangmen were the then-leaders of the U.S. and U.K.
Gadhafi's surreal speech – his first to the UN, 40 years after seizing power in oil-rich Libya – followed Obama's address in which the U.S. president called for a new era of international engagement and an end to the grandstanding that so often infuses UN discourse.
The Libyan leader appeared to lose his place in his speech notes several times, and instead used the UN charter as a prop during his 30-minute attack on the organization. At one point, he began to tear apart the document but then set it down.
During his speech, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown referenced Gadhafi's behaviour, saying: "I stand here to defend the UN charter, not to tear it up."
Brown had no small role to play in the back story of Gadhafi's controversial visit, with many observers accusing the British government of meddling for economic advantage in the case that saw a convicted Lockerbie bomber released to Libyan custody last month.
The saga sparked outrage in the United States and led to an awkward diplomatic shuffle as U.S. diplomats scrambled for a discreet location for Gadhafi to pitch his Bedouin tent. New York media outlets reported the tent found a home on a property owned by celebrity investor Donald Trump. But Trump's organization denied any direct dealings with the Libyan leader.
Pyongyang recently said it had reached the final stages of enriching uranium and was also building more plutonium-based atomic weapons. |
London (AFP) Sept 28, 2009
There can never be peace and security on the Korean peninsula while the United States "continues to threaten us with nuclear weapons", Pyongyang's ambassador to London said Monday.
North Korea was committed to denuclearising the peninsula but the secretive state would pursue its nuclear programme while Washington's "hostility" remains, Ja Song-Nam said in a rare public speech.
He said the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) had pulled out of the six-party talks on its nuclear activities because they were being treated unfairly, given they were surrounded by nuclear-armed states and countries under a nuclear umbrella.
"To eliminate the nuclear threat from the Korean peninsula and denuclearise the peninsula is the consistent policy of the DPRK," Ja, speaking through a translator, told the Royal United Services Institute security think-tank in London.
"With the continuation of the status quo, I doubt there can ever be genuine peace and security.
"We have rejected the six-party talks because the six-party talks are not based on impartiality and equality.
"If our national sovereignty is respected and if there is no nuclear threat against our country, then the nuclear weapons from the DPRK will go."
Detailing the chronology of the atomic stand-off between Pyongyang and Washington, he said: "The nuclear issue arose because the US threatened us with nuclear weapons, because the US pursued an anti-DPRK hostile policy."
Pyongyang recently said it had reached the final stages of enriching uranium and was also building more plutonium-based atomic weapons.
North Korea quit six-nation disarmament talks in April and staged its second nuclear test the following month. The forum hosted by China also includes Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
Ja said it was hypocritical to say North Korea possessing atomic weapons was a threat to international peace while Washington "threatening the DPRK with nuclear weapons" was not.
"The United States has disregarded all proposals and efforts made by the government of the DPRK," he said.
"The United States continues to threaten us with nuclear weapons and put our country on the list of nuclear pre-emptive strikes.
"We realised that the main aim of the US from the six-party talks is... to dispossess us from the nuclear deterrent we have had."
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Iran reportedly test-fired medium-range missiles that could strike Israel, parts of Europe and American bases in the Persian Gulf region.
"Iranian missiles are able to target any place that threatens Iran," said Abdullah Araqi, a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards official, according to Iran's semi-official news agency Fars.
The Monday tests of the Shahab-3 and Sejil-2 missiles, in addition to short-range missile tests on Sunday, came just days before a Thursday meeting between Iran and the P5+1 powers -- the United States, Great Britian, France, Russia, China and Germany -- to discuss Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, and just days after the United States, France and Britain publicly revealed the existence of a secret nuclear processing plan under contruction in the Iranian city of Qom.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the missile tests were not connected to either event but had been planned long in advance, according to The New York Times.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that the Obama administration is targeting for sanctions the insurance and reinsurance companies that underwrite the shipments of goods Iranian companies make throughout the world. The administration also is looking at targeting companies that evade trading restrictions by shipping through third parties in other countries.
 disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only |
Rio De Janeiro (UPI) Sep 28, 2009
Brazilian Vice President Jose Alencar says he favors Brazil developing nuclear weapons as a deterrent against any foreign aggressor's attempt to capture its offshore oil fields -- but also to win international respectability.
"Nuclear weapons as an instrument of deterrence are of great importance for a country that has 15,000 kilometers (9,000 miles) of border," Alencar told Brazilian news media.
Alencar's aides confirmed his comments, but officials later tried to distance the government from the statement, saying they were his personal opinion.
Nuclear weapons would also act as a deterrent to ensure security of Brazil's newly discovered vast offshore oil deposits and give the country greater respectability on the international stage, Alencar said.
He cited the example of Pakistan, which he termed a poor nation with "a seat in various international entities, precisely for having an atomic bomb."
Brazil's nuclear profile has come into the news lately after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched a military regeneration program, signed agreements for weapons purchases in Europe and announced plans for building a nuclear-powered submarine in preparation for extensive patrolling of Brazil's offshore oil wealth.
Brazil's nuclear intentions gained further attention as Lula played host to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the U.N. General Assembly in New York last week and invited the Iranian leader to visit Brazil in November. Lula is scheduled to go to Iran in May next year.
Brazil began its nuclear science activities in the 1930s and mounted an active nuclear weapons research program that lasted through two decades of successive military dictatorships from the mid-160s to mid-1980s.
The program was abandoned after restoration of democracy in the late 1980s, but much of Brazil's technical expertise and infrastructure remained intact throughout.
Lula announced this year that Brazil planned to build a nuclear-powered submarine through a promised transfer of technology from France. It was the first indication that the nuclear program was back on the country's priority list.
Although Alencar cited security concerns over the developing offshore oilfields, analysts said the nuclear program also was favored for its potential to give Brazil a pre-eminent role on the South American continent. Lula and his aides have referred to Brazil as a regional power and campaigned for a Security Council seat for the country.
However, Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said in August that Brazil has no interest in developing nuclear weapons. Brazil is a signatory to the 1988 Tlatelolco Treaty that bars Latin American and Caribbean countries from developing nuclear weapons programs.
Analysts said Alencar's comments did not necessarily indicate a policy shift but could offer clues to various ideas at work within the Lula administration.
WASHINGTON–When U.S. President Barack Obama stood last week with the leaders of Britain and France to denounce Iran's construction of a secret nuclear plant, the Western powers all appeared to be on the same page.
Behind their show of unity, however, is a continuing debate among U.S., European and Israeli spies about a separate component of Iran's nuclear program: its efforts to design a nuclear warhead.
The Israelis, who have delivered veiled threats of a military strike, say they believe Iran has restarted these efforts, the final step in building a nuclear weapon. The Germans say they believe the work was never halted. The French have strongly suggested that independent international inspectors have more information than they have made public.
Meanwhile, U.S. spy agencies have stood firm in their conclusion that while Iran may want a bomb, the country halted work on weapons design in 2003.
The debate, in essence, is a mirror image of the intelligence dispute on the eve of the Iraq war. This time, U.S. spy agencies are delivering more cautious assessments about Iran's clandestine programs than Western European counterparts.
The differing views colour how each country perceives the imminence of the Iranian threat and how to deal with it in the coming months, including the UN's nuclear negotiations in Geneva Thursday – the first direct talks between the U.S. and Iran in more than 30 years.
In the case of the facility outside the holy city of Qom, designed for uranium enrichment, some experts speculate it is part of something larger. But a senior U.S. official with access to intelligence about it said he believed the secret facility was itself "the big one," but cautioned, "it's a big country."
This distinction has huge political consequences. If Obama can convince Israel that the exposure of the Qom facility has dealt a significant setback to the Iranian effort, he may buy some time from Israel.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were speaking about classified intelligence assessments.
Uranium enrichment – the process of turning raw uranium into reactor or bomb fuel – is only one part of building a nuclear weapon, though it is the most difficult step. The two remaining steps are designing and building a warhead, and building a reliable delivery system, like a ballistic missile.
U.S. officials said that Iran halted warhead design in 2003, a conclusion they reached after penetrating Iran's computer networks and gaining access to internal government communications.
Israeli intelligence officials say they believe Iran restarted weapons design work in 2005 on the direct orders of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.
German intelligence officials say weapons work never stopped.
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, former head of intelligence at the Department of Energy and a nuclear expert who worked for the CIA, said that the differences of opinion might boil down to "interpreting the same data in different ways," he said in an interview.
KARACHI, PAKISTAN–Ten months after the devastating attacks in Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants, the group behind the assault remains largely intact and determined to strike India again, according to current and former members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, and a range of intelligence officials.
Despite pledges from Pakistan to dismantle militant groups operating on its soil, and the arrest of a handful of operatives, Lashkar has persisted, even flourished, since 10 recruits killed 163 people in a rampage through India's financial capital last November.
Indian and Pakistani dossiers on the Mumbai investigations offer a picture of the operations of a Lashkar network that spans Pakistan. It included four houses and two training camps in this sprawling southern port city that were used to prepare the attacks.
Among the organizers, the Pakistani document says, was Hammad Amin Sadiq, a homeopathic pharmacist, who arranged bank accounts and secured supplies. He and six others go on trial Saturday in Pakistan, though Indian authorities say the prosecution stops well short of top Lashkar leaders.
Lashkar's broader network can be mobilized quickly for spectacular attacks with relatively few resources, according to a dozen current and former Lashkar militants and intelligence officials from the U.S., Europe, India and Pakistan.
In interviews with The New York Times, they presented a troubling portrait of Lashkar's capabilities, its popularity in Pakistan and the support it has received from former officials of Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment.
Pakistan's chief spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), helped create Lashkar two decades ago to challenge Indian control in Kashmir, the disputed territory that lies at the heart of the conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
Pakistani officials say that after 9/11 they broke their contacts with the group. No credible evidence has emerged of Pakistani government involvement in the Mumbai attacks, but a senior U.S. intelligence official said the ISI was believed to maintain ties with Lashkar.
One highly placed Lashkar militant said that the Mumbai attackers were part of groups trained by former Pakistani military and intelligence officials at Lashkar camps. "Some people of the ISI knew about the plan and closed their eyes," said one senior Lashkar operative in Karachi, who said he had met some of the gunmen.
Venezuela fetes Gadhafi
CARACAS (JTA) -- Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi was welcomed warmly in Venezuela days after slamming Israel in a speech.
Gadhafi was feted in the South American country this week days after slamming Israel at the United Nations General Assembly in a rant that included linking the Jewish state to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Gadhafi traveled to the Venezuelan island of Margarita Sept. 27 to attend the Second Summit of the South featuring 61 heads of state from Africa and South America.
“All of the people of Margarita are filled with jubilation by your presence and offers you this tribute as a show of our love and great affection for the great Libyan nation, the Arab people, the people of Africa and the great Libyan revolution,” said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as he draped a sash of the Venezuelan colors around Gadhafi’s neck.
The Libyan leader responded by promising to further bilateral ties between the two oil-producing nations and calling for reforms of the U.N. General Assembly to end its “hegemony” over “the people.”
“For [Chavez], the most important thing is the time that [Gadhafi has] achieved in power,” said Paulina Gamus, the only Jew to have served as a deputy in Venezuela’s National Assembly.
Earlier this year, Chavez won a referendum abolishing term limits for elected officials, paving the way for him to stand for election indefinitely.
The Venezuelan leader, an outspoken critic of Israel, has sought increasingly to form alliances with nations that are both anti-America and anti-Israel, such as Iran and Libya, much to the consternation of the local Jewish population.
“To support someone that denies the Holocaust, this is hate,” said Camila Roffe de Levy, 51, a Caracas biologist, referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom Chavez has called a brother. “All the time he is creating hate.”
 Goldstone defends report on Israel, Hamas Washington (UPI) Oct 1 - Richard Goldstone Thursday defended his highly controversial report on Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza that accused both sides of war crimes, saying the criticisms, which mainly come from Israelis, ignore the fundamental purpose of the investigation. "Our mandate was (to investigate) human rights violations," not determining whether Israel was justified in its attack on Gaza, Goldstone, a former justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, said Thursday in comments at the National Press Club in Washington. The 575-page Goldstone Commission report, commissioned by the United Nations and released Sept. 15, accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. The Israeli government, which had refused to cooperate with Goldstone's team of investigators, and Israeli supporters were indignant with the report's findings, saying they ignored Israel's right to self-defense and were not evenhanded. "The Goldstone Commission is part of a long series of biased, one-sided actions taken by the United Nations Human Rights Council," said The American Israel Public Affairs Committee in a public statement. Goldstone said such broad criticisms are impossible to deal with because no details are given. He also said he was disappointed in Israel's decision not cooperate with his commission. "I started with the belief that Israel would cooperate," said Goldstone. "We couldn't go to West Bank at all and had to go to Gaza through Egypt." Israel wouldn't allow investigators into Israel, either. The White House called the report "unfair to Israel" because it didn't focus enough on the actions of Hamas. However, the administration has said it will not prevent the report recommendations from reaching the International Criminal Court. Israel began its military operation in Gaza on Dec. 27, 2008, claiming self-defense against Hamas rocket attacks. Though the report condemned the rocket attacks by Hamas, it accused Israel of using excessive and unnecessary force against civilians and civilian structures such as a flour factory, a legislative building and a sanitation plant. "There's no explanation as to how that relates to self-defense," Goldstone said. Groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have defended the U.N. report, urging the United States to endorse it. "Dismissal of all or parts of the Goldstone report would contradict President Barack Obama's stated commitment to human rights in the Middle East," Human Rights Watch said in a statement. Goldstone emphasized the importance of fact-finding reports like his in achieving lasting peace. "Without some sort of truth telling, there cannot be any sort of peace," he said. |
Ramallah, West Bank (UPI) Oct 1, 2009
The return of former security chief Mohammed Dahlan from exile to the inner circle of Palestinian political power could signal a new dynamic in the long-moribund peace process.
It could also trigger a new spasm of fighting between the mainstream Fatah movement and Hamas, which now rules Gaza.
In August the charismatic Dahlan, 47, who has worked closely with the Israelis and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was elected to Fatah's 18-member Central Committee, the movement's executive body, at landmark legislative elections.
The gathering in the West Bank town of Bethlehem elected a new breed of Palestinian leaders to start taking over the reins from the long-entrenched corruption-tainted Arafat generation that has led the Palestinians since the 1960s.
The dapper Dahlan fell from grace in 2007, when Hamas' fighters drove him and his armed followers out of the Gaza Strip.
Dahlan, then head of the Palestinian Authority's Preventive Security Service in Gaza, was widely held responsible for igniting that bloody coup because of his long feud with the fundamentalists.
But now the longtime favorite of U.S. administrations and Israel's security service is back in the top tier of Palestinian politics. He is seen by many as a possible contender to take over as Fatah leader when the current PA president, 74-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, steps down.
Dahlan was one of the leaders of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in 1987-93. He was arrested by the Israelis and deported to Jordan. He made his way to Tunis, where the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership was then based.
Yasser Arafat took him under his wing, and he returned with the PLO leader when he and his cronies returned to the Palestinian territories in 1994 following the Oslo Accords.
Arafat rewarded him by putting him in charge of the PSS in Gaza, one of the Palestinians' main security forces, and the Fatah apparatus there, making him one of the most powerful figures in the Palestinian Authority.
But Dahlan became disenchanted with Arafat's political chicanery and became one of the most vocal critics of the Arafat generation. He demanded political change and reform.
Even then, in the mid-1990s, supported by the Americans, Dahlan, the tough-guy Gaza strongman and grassroots leader, was seen as a possible successor to Arafat, who died in 2004.
The Israelis considered him a pragmatist with whom they could do business and expected him to deliver a complete halt to attacks on Israel. In 2004 the Israelis even wanted him to lead a coup against Arafat.
Dahlan also had the support of the intelligence services of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The CIA, with whom he liaised on security issues, favored him and was reported to have encouraged him to crush Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Dahlan resigned as Arafat's security adviser in 2004. It was a largely powerless position, but it allowed Arafat to keep a close eye on a man he increasingly viewed as a challenger.
At that time, Dahlan went all out to lead the frustrated "Young Guard," push Arafat from power and establish a democratic Palestinian state that Israel could live with.
He was highly popular with ordinary Palestinians, weary of the corruption and nepotism that infected the Palestinian Authority, and of the ceaseless bloodshed with Israel and between rival Palestinian factions.
Arafat had no interest in serious reforms, as demanded by Dahlan and his associates, for fear they would end his long domination of Palestinian politics and finances.
Dahlan has a penchant for stylish business suits and was frequently seen dining with Israeli generals and political leaders in the top restaurants of Tel Aviv.
But he also has a ruthless streak, as evidenced by his brutal crackdown on Hamas in the 1990s and the systematic assassination of his rivals in his drive for power.
Dahlan's enemies say he is too close to Israel and the United States to be trusted. And Dahlan has made wide use of his connections to amass considerable wealth and, until Hamas looted it after the 2007 coup, the biggest mansion in the Gaza Strip.
But he still retains wide grassroots support among Palestinians, and now that he's back in play, in part at least because of the support of Fatah's demoralized rank and file, there are expectations of action and change.
Dahlan has made clear he wants to oust Hamas, his old nemesis, as rulers of his native Gaza. Asked about using force to secure his revenge and reunite the Palestinians, he replies enigmatically, "It's too soon to be thinking about that."
 Graphic courtesy AFP. |
Ottawa (AFP) Oct 1, 2009
Iran is attempting to acquire clandestine shipments via Canada for its nuclear program, a senior customs official said Thursday.
Canadian customs officers have seized everything from centrifuge parts to programmable logic controllers being shipped to Iran through third countries, George Webb, head of the Canada Border Services Agency's Counter Proliferation Section, told the National Post.
The increasing number of cases involves entrepreneurs and state-sponsored cells, Webb told the daily, in comments that were confirmed to AFP by a spokeswoman for CBSA.
Microchips identified as possible "navigational chips" from the United States, Denmark and Japan were marked as headed for the United Arab Emirates, but officials suspect the end destination was Iran, said the Canadian daily.
"With all of the UN sanctions, of course, now no one declares that the goods are going to Iran. They actually declare UAE, Dubai," Webb said.
The most recent seizure occurred just last week.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon told reporters he was "very pleased" authorities were acting to stem the flow of illicit nuclear materials to Iran.
He also said he welcomed Iran's agreement Thursday with international powers to allow UN access to a new nuclear plant, but said Canada "remains suspicious" of Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
In April, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police charged a Toronto man with attempting to export pressure transducers, which can be used in nuclear power plants but are also required to produce nuclear weapons, to Iran.
Mahmoud Yadegari is to be tried in January for attempting to ship the items to Iran via Dubai.
In another case, high pressure pipes from Texas were originally suspected of containing Mexican drugs, but turned out to be for nuclear use in Iran.
However, "arrests are rare because the procurement cells are difficult to identify," the newspaper said.
Webb also said authorities had recently discovered a new port in the Gulf named Ras al-Khaimah being used to transship goods to Iran.
The port is nominally in the UAE, but is controlled by Iran and is situated just across the Gulf from Bandar Abbas, an Iranian city with a naval base and an airport capable of landing large transport planes, he said.
Report: Iran can build a nuclear bomb
JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Iran has enough data build a nuclear bomb, according to a
confidential United Nations report.
The New York Times reported Sunday that the International Atomic Energy
Agency's confidential analysis found that Iran has acquired “sufficient
information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb.
The report, titled "Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program,"
emphasized that its conclusions were "tentative and subject to further
confirmation of the evidence, which it says came from intelligence agencies and
its own investigations." The report was produced in consultation with a range of
nuclear weapons experts inside and outside the agency, according to the
newspaper.
Still, the report's conclusions "go well beyond the public positions taken by
several governments, including the United States," the Times reported.
Last week, during meetings with Western negotiators, Iran agreed "in
principle" to ship out most of its enriched uranium for reprocessing in Russia
and France. The meeting came just days after Iran admitted to operating a second
secret uranium enrichment plant in the holy city of Qom.
IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei said Sunday in Tehran that his U.S. nuclear
watchdog organization will inspect the Qom site on Oct. 25.
Iran says U.S. involved in nuclear scientist
disappearance
TEHRAN, IRAN – Iran's foreign minister said Wednesday that the United States
may have had a role in the disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist in
Saudi Arabia earlier this year, state TV reported.
Scientist Shahram Amiri vanished during a pilgrimage to the Saudi kingdom in
late May, Iranian authorities have said. Relatives quoted in Iranian media have
said Amiri researches medical uses of nuclear technology at a Tehran
university.
His disappearance came months before the revelation of a second uranium
enrichment facility that Iran has been building near the city of Qom, raising
speculation that Amiri may have given the West information on it or other parts
of the nuclear program. Relatives said Amiri was not involved in the broader
nuclear program beyond his research.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Wednesday that "we have evidence of
a U.S. role in disappearance of the Iranian national ... in Saudi Arabia. ...
There is evidence to suggest the United States was involved," according to Press
TV, the state-run English-language channel.
Iran has asked Saudi Arabia for information on Amiri's whereabouts but has
received no reply, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi said earlier this
week. "Amiri's fate is Saudi Arabia's responsibility," he said.
The Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, which is owned by Saudi businessmen,
reported last week that Mottaki made a formal complaint to U.N. chief Ban
Ki-moon about the disappearances of Amiri and three other Iranians in recent
years, some of whom it feared may have provided nuclear information to the West.
Qashqavi this week denied the complaint made any mention of the nuclear
issue.
Last month, Iran revealed that it was building the new enrichment facility
outside Qom, bringing U.S. and European accusations that it had been hiding the
project. Tehran denied it sought to deceive the U.N. nuclear watchdog, saying it
revealed the site earlier than required under its deals with the
agency.
Poll: Strong majority back military action in Iran
Report: Iran can build a nuclear bomb
JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Iran has enough data build a nuclear bomb, according to a
confidential United Nations report.
The New York Times reported Sunday that the International Atomic Energy
Agency's confidential analysis found that Iran has acquired “sufficient
information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb.
The report, titled "Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program,"
emphasized that its conclusions were "tentative and subject to further
confirmation of the evidence, which it says came from intelligence agencies and
its own investigations." The report was produced in consultation with a range of
nuclear weapons experts inside and outside the agency, according to the
newspaper.
Still, the report's conclusions "go well beyond the public positions taken by
several governments, including the United States," the Times reported.
Last week, during meetings with Western negotiators, Iran agreed "in
principle" to ship out most of its enriched uranium for reprocessing in Russia
and France. The meeting came just days after Iran admitted to operating a second
secret uranium enrichment plant in the holy city of Qom.
IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei said Sunday in Tehran that his U.S. nuclear
watchdog organization will inspect the Qom site on Oct. 25.
Iran says U.S. involved in nuclear scientist
disappearance
Report: Iran can build a nuclear bomb
JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Iran has enough data build a nuclear bomb, according to a confidential United Nations report.
The New York Times reported Sunday that the International Atomic Energy Agency's confidential analysis found that Iran has acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb.
The report, titled "Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program," emphasized that its conclusions were "tentative and subject to further confirmation of the evidence, which it says came from intelligence agencies and its own investigations." The report was produced in consultation with a range of nuclear weapons experts inside and outside the agency, according to the newspaper.
Still, the report's conclusions "go well beyond the public positions taken by several governments, including the United States," the Times reported.
Last week, during meetings with Western negotiators, Iran agreed "in principle" to ship out most of its enriched uranium for reprocessing in Russia and France. The meeting came just days after Iran admitted to operating a second secret uranium enrichment plant in the holy city of Qom.
IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei said Sunday in Tehran that his U.S. nuclear watchdog organization will inspect the Qom site on Oct. 25.
TEHRAN, IRAN – Iran's foreign minister said Wednesday that the United States may have had a role in the disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Saudi Arabia earlier this year, state TV reported.
Scientist Shahram Amiri vanished during a pilgrimage to the Saudi kingdom in late May, Iranian authorities have said. Relatives quoted in Iranian media have said Amiri researches medical uses of nuclear technology at a Tehran university.
His disappearance came months before the revelation of a second uranium enrichment facility that Iran has been building near the city of Qom, raising speculation that Amiri may have given the West information on it or other parts of the nuclear program. Relatives said Amiri was not involved in the broader nuclear program beyond his research.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Wednesday that "we have evidence of a U.S. role in disappearance of the Iranian national ... in Saudi Arabia. ... There is evidence to suggest the United States was involved," according to Press TV, the state-run English-language channel.
Iran has asked Saudi Arabia for information on Amiri's whereabouts but has received no reply, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi said earlier this week. "Amiri's fate is Saudi Arabia's responsibility," he said.
The Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, which is owned by Saudi businessmen, reported last week that Mottaki made a formal complaint to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon about the disappearances of Amiri and three other Iranians in recent years, some of whom it feared may have provided nuclear information to the West. Qashqavi this week denied the complaint made any mention of the nuclear issue.
Last month, Iran revealed that it was building the new enrichment facility outside Qom, bringing U.S. and European accusations that it had been hiding the project. Tehran denied it sought to deceive the U.N. nuclear watchdog, saying it revealed the site earlier than required under its deals with the agency.
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A strong majority of Americans would support military action to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, according to a new poll.
Asked whether it was "more important" to "prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action" or to "avoid military conflict, even if Iran may develop nuclear weapons," 61 percent chose the first option, according to a poll released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
The result included majorities of both political parties -- 71 percent of Republicans and 51 percent of Democrats -- as well as 66 percent of independents. Twenty-four percent said it was more important to "avoid military conflict."
The nationwide survey of 1,500 adults on both landline telephones and cell phones, taken from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
Majorities also were in favor of direct negotiations with Iran and tougher sanctions, although they were not optimistic that either would work. Sixty-three percent said they would support direct negotiations, but only 22 percent thought they would be effective, while 78 percent favored sanctions with 32 percent thinking they would be successful. Partisan differences on those questions were minimal.
Qaeda urges Uighurs to launch jihad against China: SITE
by Staff
Writers
Dubai (AFP) Oct 8, 2009
Al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahia al-Libi has called on Uighurs to launch a
jihad against the Chinese authorities and has urged Muslims worldwide to support
their co-religionists, a US monitoring group reported.
"It is the duty of Muslims today to stand by the side of their wounded and
wronged brothers in East Turkestan," Libi said in a video recording posted on an
Islamist website, according to SITE Intelligence group.
East Turkestan is the name used by Al-Qaeda for China's Muslim-majority
region of Xinjiang.
"Let our Muslim brothers in Turkestan know that there is no way for salvation
and that there is no way to lift oppression and injustice but with truthful
return to their faith and attachment to it as much as possible; to seriously
prepare for jihad (holy war)," Libi said.
Wearing a white-and-red checkered turban and a vest, Libi also called on
Muslims to launch a media campaign to raise awareness of what is happening in
China and about the "atheist
Chinese colonisation."
Libi said that the Turkic Muslim
community
is suffering from discrimination
and pledged that the communist Chinese regime would face the same destiny as the
former Soviet Union, which Islamist fighters had ferociously battled in
Afghanistan.
"As for the state of atheism and stubbornness, it is [doomed] to extinction,"
he said. "They will experience that which the Russian
bear experienced in terms of disintegration and division."
The Uighurs of Xinjiang province complain of cultural and religious
discrimination practised against them by the Chinese state in the name of the
fight against separatism.
Chinese authorities have said that riots in the Xinjiang city of Urumqi by
Muslim Uighurs on July 5 killed 184 people -- most of whom were Han, China's
dominant ethnic group -- and injured more than 1,600.
Uighur leaders accuse Chinese forces of opening fire on peaceful protests and
say that Uighurs have been killed in subsequent mob attacks.
In July, Al-Qaeda threatened for the first time to attack Chinese interests
overseas in retaliation for the deaths of Muslims in Xinjiang, risk analysis
consultancy Stirling Assynt reported at the time.
The call, which came from the jihadist netork's North African arm, Al-Qaeda
in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), was swiftly rejected by exiled Uighur
leaders.
Rebiya Kadeer, the Washington-based head of the World Uighur Congress, said
she opposed the use of violence in her campaign to bring greater rights for the
ethnic group in Xinjiang.
Uighurs generally practise a moderate brand of Islam influenced by Sufi mysticism
and earlier shamanistic traditions.
Top Iranian official: Iran will ‘blow up’ Israel
|
Dubai (AFP) Oct 8, 2009
Al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahia al-Libi has called on Uighurs to launch a jihad against the Chinese authorities and has urged Muslims worldwide to support their co-religionists, a US monitoring group reported.
"It is the duty of Muslims today to stand by the side of their wounded and wronged brothers in East Turkestan," Libi said in a video recording posted on an Islamist website, according to SITE Intelligence group.
East Turkestan is the name used by Al-Qaeda for China's Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang.
"Let our Muslim brothers in Turkestan know that there is no way for salvation and that there is no way to lift oppression and injustice but with truthful return to their faith and attachment to it as much as possible; to seriously prepare for jihad (holy war)," Libi said.
Wearing a white-and-red checkered turban and a vest, Libi also called on Muslims to launch a media campaign to raise awareness of what is happening in China and about the "atheist Chinese colonisation."
Libi said that the Turkic Muslim community is suffering from discrimination and pledged that the communist Chinese regime would face the same destiny as the former Soviet Union, which Islamist fighters had ferociously battled in Afghanistan.
"As for the state of atheism and stubbornness, it is [doomed] to extinction," he said. "They will experience that which the Russian bear experienced in terms of disintegration and division."
The Uighurs of Xinjiang province complain of cultural and religious discrimination practised against them by the Chinese state in the name of the fight against separatism.
Chinese authorities have said that riots in the Xinjiang city of Urumqi by Muslim Uighurs on July 5 killed 184 people -- most of whom were Han, China's dominant ethnic group -- and injured more than 1,600.
Uighur leaders accuse Chinese forces of opening fire on peaceful protests and say that Uighurs have been killed in subsequent mob attacks.
In July, Al-Qaeda threatened for the first time to attack Chinese interests overseas in retaliation for the deaths of Muslims in Xinjiang, risk analysis consultancy Stirling Assynt reported at the time.
The call, which came from the jihadist netork's North African arm, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), was swiftly rejected by exiled Uighur leaders.
Rebiya Kadeer, the Washington-based head of the World Uighur Congress, said she opposed the use of violence in her campaign to bring greater rights for the ethnic group in Xinjiang.
Uighurs generally practise a moderate brand of Islam influenced by Sufi mysticism and earlier shamanistic traditions.
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Iran will "blow up the heart of Israel" if attacked by Israel or the United States, a top Iranian Revolutionary Guard official said.
"Even if one American or Zionist missile hits our country, before the dust settles Iranian missiles will blow up the heart of Israel," said Mojtaba Zolnour, the respresentative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameni on the elite military force, according to the Iranian state-controlled IRNA news agency.
The remarks by Zolnour echo comments earlier this year by Iran's deputy army chief that Iran would "eliminate" Israel if Israel attacked Iran.
Israel may attack
15 Oct. According to an unconfirmed report in the
French Le Canard Enchaine, Wednesday, Oct. 14,
Another sign of the growing military
tensions surrounding the Iranian nuclear program was a phone conversation late
Wednesday night between President Barack Obama and French President Nicola
Sarkozy. The two discussed
Taliban launches fresh attacks in
15 Oct. Taliban gunmen attacked three law enforcement
facilities in
DEBKAfile's military sources report: Five days ago,
Taliban gunmen and bombers hit
Thursday, Taliban pushed
further northeast toward the Kamra nuclear center, aiming to cut it off from
Taliban has
stepped up the tempo of its large-scale assaults in an effort to throw central
government and the military command off-balance as they prepare a major
offensive against terrorist bastions in South Waziristan
.
Canada's military peers into future, and it's scary
In the worst-case scenarios, oil prices quadruple, drones patrol the skies, global wars spill into cities
Residents walk past the aftermath of a suicide bomb explosion in Kohat, located in Pakistan's northwest Frontier Province. (Oct. 15, 2009)
REUTERS PHOTOOTTAWA–The war between India and Pakistan spills over into Toronto's immigrant suburbs. A terrorist sleeper cell poisons Montreal's water system. Mandatory military service is enacted for young and new Canadians.
While the country's politicians debate what Canada's engagement in Afghanistan will look like after the current mission ends in 2011, the military has already peered far past that date to determine its training and equipment needs and the worst-case scenarios it must prepare to face.
While the Armed Forces constantly project scenarios for which to train, these hypothetical situations are rarely publicized. Although they appear far-fetched, the military is obliged to prepare for the worst, or risk being unready in the event of a catastrophe.
A 10-year forecast completed for the air force lays out likely trends in areas such as oil prices and aviation technologies, but also a series of "strategic shocks" – unpredictable events that could throw the best-laid plans off course.
The report predicts that oil prices will have doubled, tripled or quadrupled by 2019, unmanned attack aircraft will police the skies, and the Arctic will have become the zone of interest for the world's great powers.
A lethal, all-commando Canadian army may not stay in Kandahar, but it will be fighting terrorists in a geographic rainbow known as the "arc of instability" – a region stretching from western Africa, through the Middle East and into Southeast Asia.
"These areas have also traditionally served as potential safe havens for terrorists in developing, organizing and preparing for asymmetric attacks against the developed world," says the report, produced earlier this year by the Canadian Forces Aerospace Warfare Centre.
No more country-to-country wars for Canada. Instead, soldiers will face shadowy enemies in weak or failed states with little regard for civilian safety.
"It is projected that irregular challenges, asymmetrical warfare, low-intensity conflicts and insurgencies will be the most prevalent form of conflict until 2019."
The report also explicitly probes Canada's domestic fault lines – features like our shared border and trade ties with the United States or our large immigrant populations – and puts them up against some of the world's most volatile disputes to offer scenarios showing how a largely peaceful society could be torn apart.
They include:
The introduction of national military service for new Canadians in 2016 to tackle large immigration flows and a depleted military.
War between India and Pakistan that sparks clashes in B.C.'s Lower Mainland and Ontario suburbs where refugee and immigrant populations from the two countries have settled.
A Taliban sleeper cell poisons the Montreal water system, killing and sickening thousands. Hospitals are swamped, the U.S. border closes and tourism plummets.
A large-scale Canadian military deployment to Afghanistan in 2016 to ensure Canadian business has free access to protectionist U.S. markets.
The scenarios may seem improbable, but they all have some basis in reality: Canada's dependence on the U.S.; international terrorist ambitions; simmering conflict in South Asia; and a stagnant military.
A study by the University of Ottawa earlier this year looked at security threats to Canada in 2020 and came up with similar outcomes to those of the military.
In one, the Pakistani state collapses in 2016 and India moves in, appointing friendly politicians and establishing its own laws. Protests eventually give way to riots in "Little Toronto," where Indians and Pakistanis live side-by-side.
"Fundamentalist feelings have flared up, opening the door to terrorist organizations and the recruitment of new members," says the April study.
The military's scenarios may be conceivable, but there's no evidence they are likely to occur, said Paul Robinson, a University of Ottawa professor and former military intelligence officer who helped design the dystopian outcomes for the University of Ottawa study.
"Scenario building is never desperately scientific in the sense that you are engaging in fantasy, but you can engage in fantasy in a more solidly grounded basis," he said.
In his opinion, the air force's strategic shocks are less grounded in scientific method than in the politics of a military bureaucracy competing for money.
"I suspect it's in an air force report because it makes you scared, and if it makes you scared you'll spend more on defence," he said. "That's just my cynical view."
The air force report cites various Canadian and British military studies to come up with its forecasts, as well as an official Air Force Strategy paper and the "vision of the Chief of the Air Staff."
As for the flying wing of the Canadian Forces, the future lies in the North and high in the skies.
With climate change, melting Arctic ice and the possibility of up to 80 per cent of the global transportation market moving through Canadian waterways, the air force plans to better protect Canadian territory, deter unfriendly visitors and rescue those in trouble in the unforgiving territory.
Dwindling global fuel stocks, and unstable oil prices, also make it more likely that the pilots of the future will have two feet on the ground, controlling surveillance and attack drones by remote control. It's unlikely the air force will ever purchase another fighter jet to replace its CF-18s, the report says. "In the future, smaller, cheaper and expendable unmanned combat aerial vehicles ... will have unsurpassable advantages over manned platforms in both performance and costs."
|
|
| Iran threatens
U.S. and Britain after Guard bombing Mon Oct 19 22:38:26 UTC 2009 |
|
|
By Hashem Kalantari and Hossein Jaseb TEHRAN (Reuters) - The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards vowed on Monday to "retaliate" against the United States and Britain after accusing them and neighboring Pakistan of backing militants who blew up six Guards commanders. Iranian media say the Sunni Muslim insurgent group Jundollah (God's soldiers) has claimed responsibility for Sunday's bombing in Sistan-Baluchestan province, which killed 42 people in all. The incident threatened to overshadow talks between Iran and global powers in Vienna on Monday intended to tackle a standoff about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Guards commander-in-chief Mohammad Ali Jafari said Iranian security officials had presented documents indicating "direct ties" from Jundollah to U.S., British and, "unfortunately," Pakistani intelligence organizations, the ISNA news agency said. "Behind this scene are the American and British intelligence apparatus, and there will have to be retaliatory measures to punish them," Jafari was quoted as saying. Jundollah, which has been blamed for many attacks since 2005 in the desert province bordering Pakistan, says it is fighting to end discrimination against Sunni Muslims by Iran's dominant Shi'ites. Its leader is Abdolmalek Rigi. Jafari said Rigi and his plans were "undoubtedly under the umbrella and the protection" of U.S., British and Pakistani organizations, though he limited the threat of retaliation to the United States and Britain. "TRAINED BY U.S. AND BRITAIN" Iranian television quoted General Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the Guards' ground forces, whose deputy was killed in the bombing, as saying: "The base of the terrorists and rebels has not been in Iran. They are trained by America and Britain in some of the neighboring countries." The United States, Pakistan and Britain all condemned the bombing, the bloodiest attack in Iran since the 1980-88 war with Iraq, and denied involvement. "We reject in the strongest terms any assertion that this attack has anything to do with Britain," said a spokeswoman at Britain's Foreign Office. "Terrorism is abhorrent wherever it occurs." The bombing of a mosque in Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchestan, reportedly also claimed by Jundollah, killed 25 people in May. The poor and remote province, mostly populated by Sunni Muslims, borders both Pakistan and Afghanistan and has frequently been the scene of clashes between security forces, ethnic Baluch Sunni insurgents and heavily-armed drug smugglers. The victims of the bombing in the city of Sarbaz included a number of tribal chiefs who were due to hold a meeting with the Guards to promote Shi'ite-Sunni unity. The incident raised tension between Iran and major powers before talks at the International Atomic Energy Agency. On the agenda in Vienna was a proposal that Iran send low enriched uranium abroad to be enriched further and then returned to be used in a reactor where Iran produces medical isotopes. The meeting of Iranian, Russian, French and U.S. officials started shortly after state-run Iranian television said Iran would not deal directly with France since it had failed to deliver "nuclear materials" in the past. It was not immediately clear what effect this would have on the talks. NEW CLAMPDOWN? Analysts say Iran's governing hardliners may use the bomb attack as an excuse to further clamp down on moderate opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose disputed re-election in June sparked huge opposition protests. A study by the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment published on Monday said Jundollah's existence showed that Iran's control over Sistan-Baluchestan was precarious, adding: "It also shows the limits to Islamic unity within the Islamic Republic itself. This deals a blow to the credentials of the revolution and the international revolutionary aspects of (the late Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini's doctrine," it said. "The great paradox is that Iran, which has been active in support of different Islamist movements outside her own territory after the revolution, is now faced with serious armed opposition within her own borders." The Guards force, whose influence has increased since Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, played a key role in suppressing the street protests after the election. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev offered cooperation in fighting terrorism and extremism in a letter to Ahmadinejad. "We are ready to cooperate with Iran in countering these threats," he wrote, according to press service. Ahmadinejad urged Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in a telephone call to help find the perpetrators of the attack, Iran's IRNA news agency reported. Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told the Daily Times newspaper: "Pakistan is not involved in terrorist activities ... we are striving to eradicate this menace." Pakistan has backed armed Sunni Muslim groups in the past, particularly in Afghanistan. Relations between Iran and Pakistan have been generally good in recent years and the neighbours are cooperating on plans to build a natural gas pipeline. But Iran has in the past said Jundollah members have been operating out of Pakistan. Some analysts believe Jundollah has evolved through shifting alliances with parties including the Taliban and Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, who saw it as a tool to use against Iran. (Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Tehran and Augustine Anthony in Islamabad; Editing by Kevin Liffey) |
New Iranian missiles
head for Gaza,
20 Oct. Iran is making a huge effort to smuggle
to the Palestinian Hamas Fajr-5 ground-to-ground rockets that would bring Tel
Aviv within range of the Gaza Strip, and Syria, Iran's second ally with an
Israeli border, has decided to transfer one-third of its missile stockpile to
the Hizballah in Lebanon, topping up its arsenal with medium-range rockets that
can cover central as well as northern Israel.
1. Are
the 250 Syrian surface missiles destine for Hizballah Scuds B, C and D whose
ranges exceed 800 kilometers, or Iranian-Syrian made projectiles whose range is
shorter?
2. Do the transfers
mean
3. Will Syria
4. Will
some batteries be installed atop the mountain ranges running down central
 Ben Ali wins landslide in Tunisian election: partial results Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali got 90 percent of the vote in Sunday's elections to head for a fifth term in office after two decades in power, according to partial results released early Monday by the interior ministry. The results covered 10 of the north African country's 26 constituencies, with his score ranging from 87.95 percent of the vote in Medenine to 93.27 percent in Tataouine, two cities in the far south. Ben Ali's little known rivals trailed far behind, with Mohamed Bouchiha on five percent, Ahmed Inoubli with four percent and Ahmed Brahim coming in last. In the parliamentary election, Ben Ali's Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party was largely ahead of the eight opposition parties, according to the partial results. Ben Ali ousted Tunisia's first elected president since independence from France, Habib Bourguiba, for senility in 1987. At every vote since then, his opponents have cried fraud over the staggering scale of Ben Ali's win. In the last elections in 2004, Ben Ali was returned to office with 94.4 percent of the vote, while his RCD won an overwhelming majority in parliament. |
London (AFP) Oct 26, 2009
Arab nations and "even the Palestinians" should be allowed nuclear weapons as long as Israel's nuclear ambitions are tolerated, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi said in an interview out Monday.
Israel is widely considered to be the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear state, and Kadhafi told Britain's Sky News television that the international community should also allow its Arab neighbours to develop nuclear weapons.
"If the Israelis have the nuclear weapons and the nuclear capabilities, then it is the right of the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Saudis to have the same -- even the Palestinians should have the same because their counterparts, or their opponents, have nuclear capabilities," Kadhafi said.
He added: "And, if we don't want this situation, so we'll have to disarm the Israelis from their nuclear weapons and capabilities."
The Libyan leader said he would oppose Iran acquiring nuclear weapons if it acknowledges such a goal, but noted Tehran's insistence that its nuclear programme is peaceful -- something that Western powers dispute.
"Iran, up to now, hasn't said it is manufacturing a nuclear weapon: Iran says it is enriching uranium," Kadhafi said.
"If Iran were to manufacture nuclear weapons, nuclear arms, then all of us, including us, will be against them. But Iran has not said so."
He added: "Our position is clear and it should be clear and evident... that we are against anyone who manufactures, possesses a nuclear weapon, whether it is Iran, America, Libya, or the Israelis."
Meanwhile he said US President Barack Obama merited winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but had been given it too soon.
"I do believe he deserves it, but to be given right now I think it is some sort of hypocrisy, sycophancy, and I think it is premature. It is not due yet," he said.
Iran warns it may produce S-300 system
disclaimer: image is
for illustration purposes only
by Staff Writers
Tehran (UPI) Nov 16, 2009
Increasingly irate over a delayed arms deal, Iran has
threatened to manufacture an advanced missile system itself if Russia
does not deliver it to Tehran
soon.
The warning, sounded by Alaeddin Bouroujerdi, a senior Iranian lawmaker, was
the latest in a series of threats by Iranian officials angered at Russia for
delaying delivery a much-vaunted missile sales agreement.
"Iran is not a country to come to a halt in the face of non-cooperation of
other countries," Bouroujerdi was quoted as saying in a local newspaper.
"Naturally, and in light of Iran's capabilities, it will be able to produce
missile defense systems in the near future," the Aftab Yazd daily added.
The controversy centers on a deal in which Russia would supply its high-grade
S-300 air defense missiles to Iran.
Moscow, however, has come under strong pressure from the West to refrain from
advancing arms deals with the Islamic Republic, which is at odds with Washington
over its nuclear and missile program.
Last week senior Iranian lawmakers accused the United
States
of trying to scupper the deal for fear that Iran may reverse-engineer the S-300
system.
"The United States and certain Western countries are afraid that the
contracts between Iran and Russia in the economic, political and military sphere
will increase Iran's political and military might," Hassan Sobhaninia, an
Iranian member of Parliament, said.
"They are making efforts to impede the implementation of these contracts," he
told the Mehr News Agency.
The S-300 system, which can shoot down cruise missiles, track targets and
fire at aircraft up to 90 miles away, features high jamming immunity. It is able
to simultaneously track up to 100 targets.
Mounted on a truck, the S-300MPUM1 can fire missiles traveling at more than 2
kilometers per second, experts say.
Iranian officials have not indicated what type of land-to-air-missile defense
system they can manufacturer in replacement of the Russian order.
Still, Bouroujerdi said he had recently met with Russia's top envoy to
Tehran, who "agreed that both sides should fulfill their commitments" regarding
the missile defense deal.
Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi has also called on Russia not to capitulate to
"Zionist pressure" and to carry through on the deal.
Washington has been trying to extract specific pledges from Moscow for
tougher sanctions against Iran over its controversial nuclear program. The West
has long argued that the program is a cover for Iran's designs to build its
nuclear arsenal -- an accusation the Islamic Republic has repeatedly
rebuffed.
Israel
also fears that these defenses could interfere with a possible strike on its
nuclear facilities.
N.Korea unlikely to give up nuclear weapons: US expert
by Staff
Writers
Seoul (AFP) Nov 16, 2009
North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons in the
foreseeable future despite the upcoming talks with Washington,
a former senior US diplomat who recently visited Pyongyang said Monday.
David Straub, once head of the State Department's Korea desk, gave his views
as Washington prepares to send an envoy to the North for discussions on reviving
the stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.
"I see no indication that North Korea, in the foreseeable future, is prepared
to give up its nuclear weapons programmes on terms that the US will find
politically acceptable," Straub told a Seoul
seminar, according to Yonhap news agency.
Straub accompanied former president Bill Clinton on a trip in August to
negotiate the release of two US journalists.
He said he expected no breakthrough from the upcoming visit by Stephen
Bosworth, the US representative for North Korea.
The United
States
hopes to bring the North back to the disarmament talks, which also group China,
Japan, Russia
and South Korea. Pyongyang quit the forum in April and staged a second nuclear
test the following month.
Straub said he expected Bosworth to convey a "short and simple message" that
Washington was ready to strike a deal in which North Korea would drop its
nuclear programmes to get political and economic incentives.
He, however, predicted that it would not accept the offer. But the Obama
administration would also not consider a military option to end the North's
nuclear ambitions.
"What does this mean? It probably means a long stalemate," Straub said.
North Korea has said it is ready to return to the six-nation talks but only
if there is progress in bilateral discussions with the United
States.
Israel PM warns about nuclear Iran on navy
tour
disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only |
Tehran (UPI) Nov 16, 2009
Increasingly irate over a delayed arms deal, Iran has threatened to manufacture an advanced missile system itself if Russia does not deliver it to Tehran soon.
The warning, sounded by Alaeddin Bouroujerdi, a senior Iranian lawmaker, was the latest in a series of threats by Iranian officials angered at Russia for delaying delivery a much-vaunted missile sales agreement.
"Iran is not a country to come to a halt in the face of non-cooperation of other countries," Bouroujerdi was quoted as saying in a local newspaper.
"Naturally, and in light of Iran's capabilities, it will be able to produce missile defense systems in the near future," the Aftab Yazd daily added.
The controversy centers on a deal in which Russia would supply its high-grade S-300 air defense missiles to Iran.
Moscow, however, has come under strong pressure from the West to refrain from advancing arms deals with the Islamic Republic, which is at odds with Washington over its nuclear and missile program.
Last week senior Iranian lawmakers accused the United States of trying to scupper the deal for fear that Iran may reverse-engineer the S-300 system.
"The United States and certain Western countries are afraid that the contracts between Iran and Russia in the economic, political and military sphere will increase Iran's political and military might," Hassan Sobhaninia, an Iranian member of Parliament, said.
"They are making efforts to impede the implementation of these contracts," he told the Mehr News Agency.
The S-300 system, which can shoot down cruise missiles, track targets and fire at aircraft up to 90 miles away, features high jamming immunity. It is able to simultaneously track up to 100 targets.
Mounted on a truck, the S-300MPUM1 can fire missiles traveling at more than 2 kilometers per second, experts say.
Iranian officials have not indicated what type of land-to-air-missile defense system they can manufacturer in replacement of the Russian order.
Still, Bouroujerdi said he had recently met with Russia's top envoy to Tehran, who "agreed that both sides should fulfill their commitments" regarding the missile defense deal.
Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi has also called on Russia not to capitulate to "Zionist pressure" and to carry through on the deal.
Washington has been trying to extract specific pledges from Moscow for tougher sanctions against Iran over its controversial nuclear program. The West has long argued that the program is a cover for Iran's designs to build its nuclear arsenal -- an accusation the Islamic Republic has repeatedly rebuffed.
Israel also fears that these defenses could interfere with a possible strike on its nuclear facilities.
|
Seoul (AFP) Nov 16, 2009
North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future despite the upcoming talks with Washington, a former senior US diplomat who recently visited Pyongyang said Monday.
David Straub, once head of the State Department's Korea desk, gave his views as Washington prepares to send an envoy to the North for discussions on reviving the stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.
"I see no indication that North Korea, in the foreseeable future, is prepared to give up its nuclear weapons programmes on terms that the US will find politically acceptable," Straub told a Seoul seminar, according to Yonhap news agency.
Straub accompanied former president Bill Clinton on a trip in August to negotiate the release of two US journalists.
He said he expected no breakthrough from the upcoming visit by Stephen Bosworth, the US representative for North Korea.
The United States hopes to bring the North back to the disarmament talks, which also group China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. Pyongyang quit the forum in April and staged a second nuclear test the following month.
Straub said he expected Bosworth to convey a "short and simple message" that Washington was ready to strike a deal in which North Korea would drop its nuclear programmes to get political and economic incentives.
He, however, predicted that it would not accept the offer. But the Obama administration would also not consider a military option to end the North's nuclear ambitions.
"What does this mean? It probably means a long stalemate," Straub said.
North Korea has said it is ready to return to the six-nation talks but only if there is progress in bilateral discussions with the United States.
ABOARD THE INS EILAT–Underscoring Israel's military might in the face of a perceived Iranian threat, Israel's prime minister warned on Tuesday about the dangers of a nuclear Iran after visiting a submarine believed capable of firing nuclear-tipped missiles.
Benjamin Netanyahu also took a ride on an Israeli missile ship that led a raid earlier this month on a vessel loaded with arms that Israel says were bound for Iranian-backed foes in Lebanon. Israel says the arms came from Iran, a charge Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas have denied.
"The threat that Iran poses is very grave for the state of Israel, for peace in the Middle East and the whole world," he said aboard the missile ship INS Eilat.
"Without any doubt, we are the first target, but not the last.''
Iran denies its nuclear program is designed to build bombs, but Israel and the West do not believe that.
There has been much speculation that Israel might carry out a military strike against the Iranian nuclear program because it fears the Jewish state would be a target. Israeli leaders say they prefer to resolve the standoff with Iran through diplomacy, but have not ruled out a military strike.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeatedly has made references to Israel's destruction.
The submarine that Netanyahu visited was one of three Dolphin-class vessels built in Germany that foreign press reports have said are carrying nuclear warheads. Two more are on order.
Israel has never confirmed the submarines have nuclear capabilities, as it never has confirmed media reports that it possesses a stockpile of nuclear bombs.
After complimenting the sailors, Netanyahu got off the INS Eilat and stepped onto a dinghy to visit the elite navy base whose commandos captured the Francop arms vessel off the Cyprus coast last month.
Waters were choppy, and he briefly lost his balance, a pained look crossing his face.
Aides helped to steady him, and a bodyguard placed his arms around the Israeli leader to keep him on balance.
Ahmandinejad: Israel can’t stop Iranian nukes
JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel cannot do a "damn thing" to stop his country's nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad made the statement Wednesday in a televised speech, Reuters reported.
He called the International Atomic Energy Agency's resolution approved last week censuring the country's nuclear activity "illegal" and said it came "under pressure of a few superficially powerful countries."
The IAEA resolution called on Iran to halt construction of a recently disclosed underground nuclear enrichment facility. In response, Iran's parliament on Sunday approved the construction of 10 new uranium enrichment sites.
Islamic Movement gathers steam in Israel
-
1 out of 1
- The principal of a private high school for the sciences in the Israeli Arab town of Umm Al-Fahm built by the Islamic Movement helps shepherd students to class. (Dina Kraft)
UMM AL-FAHM, Israel (JTA) -- It's time for noon prayers in this Israeli Arab city, and a jumble of sneakers piles up outside the doors of a mosque on the top floor of a private high school for the sciences.
Inside, the boys, led in prayer by a math teacher, stand in two rows on a soft green-and-beige carpet and then kneel in unison. The $5.8 million tab to construct the high school, considered one of the top Arab schools in Israel with its state-of-the art physics and chemistry labs, was picked up by the Islamic Movement.
Such support -- helping fund community needs not being met by the Israeli government -- is one way the movement is gaining power and influence among Israel's 1.2 million Arabs.
"This vacuum has opened the door for the Islamic Movement to get in and provide alternative services," said Yousef Jabareen, a resident of Umm al-Fahm and director of Dirasat, a nonprofit that advocates for socioeconomic and political equality for Israel's Arab citizens.
The influence of the movement -- particularly its northern branch, which preaches adherence to a devout form of Islam and a code of social isolation from Israel at large -- can be seen in the shift toward increased religious observance among some of Israel's Arab citizens, the majority of whom are Muslim.
Critics say the movement's more extreme elements preach a form of nationalism that is actively anti-Israeli and is radicalizing Israel's Arab citizens. Its social service tactics have been compared to the work of Hamas, which similarly built a base of support among ordinary Palestinians by providing social services not offered by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority.
With its power base in Umm al-Fahm, one of Israel's largest Arab towns, the Islamic Movement in Israel is drawing support with the message that pride in Islamic roots can overcome the feelings of second-class citizenship to which Arab citizens often feel relegated in the Jewish state.
The movement is divided into two branches: the more radical northern branch, which eschews the Israeli political process and calls on followers to abstain from voting in national Israeli elections, and the more moderate southern branch, which is represented in Israel's Knesset.
Sheik Ibrahim Sansur, a Knesset member who leads the movement's southern branch, told JTA that the Islamic Movement is united by the goal "to crystallize the religious and national identity of the Arab minority inside Israel."
Representatives of the northern branch refused JTA's requests for interviews. But Sheik Ra'ad Salah, a key leader of the branch and the former mayor of Umm al-Fahm, made headlines during the Jewish High Holidays six weeks ago when he called on supporters to "liberate" the Al-Aksa mosque in Jerusalem "with blood and fire," touching off days of clashes between police and Arab rioters.
Umm al-Fahm is a visible example of the movement's success. Its hilly landscape is dotted with the rounded domes of mosques built by the movement, as well as dozens of other movement-funded projects, including women's education centers, a college for the study of Islamic law and Arabic language, and even a hospital under construction. A growing number -- perhaps a majority -- of women and girls wear headscarves, and men sport thick beards.
The Islamic Movement started to take off here following the 1967 Six-Day War. It was then that Israel's Arab citizens could re-establish ties with their Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that had been cut off since the 1948 war of Israeli independence. Many Arab Israelis attended Islamic colleges in the West Bank and Gaza, sparking a return to devout observance for some inside Israel. The movement was strengthened by the example of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979.
Salah has become the face of the movement's more controversial side. A product of the post-1967 Islamic awakening in Israel, Salah returned from his religious studies in Hebron and Nablus as a leader of the movement. He has been accused of raising millions of dollars for Hamas -- a charge he denies.
Yitzhak Reiter, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University and Ashkelon Academic College, says Salah's broader goal is to connect Israel's Muslims to the larger Islamic world and make Jerusalem the future seat of an Islamic caliphate.
Salah preaches that Israel's archeological activities near the Temple Mount are part of a secret Jewish plan to destabilize the Al-Aksa Mosque, provoke its collapse and pave the way for the construction of the Jewish Holy Temple. Such charges are dismissed as fantasy and incitement by Israeli authorities.
Nohad Ali, a sociologist at Haifa University and an expert on the Islamic Movement, says Salah and his followers nevertheless believe such conspiracies to be true. The fears have been heightened by the agitation of some Israelis to visit the Temple Mount and messianic talk by a few radicals of rebuilding the Holy Temple, Ali said.
Though it's not in the interests of the movement to rush headlong into confrontation with Israel, Ali said, the movement continues to keep the issue a central one in the community, organizing buses daily to the Temple Mount compound from Arab towns and villages throughout the country.
In Umm al-Fahm, the recent tensions in Jerusalem feel remote, but social problems are felt acutely. The city has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.
Ahmad Kabaha, the math teacher who leads students in prayer, says he admires the movement for its grass-roots work.
"People tend to think about them in a political way," Kabaha said, "but I see their importance in how it helps with problems within our society, in doing good deeds, in helping the poor."
N.Korea still wants recognition as nuclear state
by Staff
Writers
Seoul (AFP) Dec 14, 2009
North Korea is still seeking recognition as a nuclear power despite
trying to normalise relations with the United States, South Korea's top military
officer said Monday.
"It is our assessment that North Korea has not altered its strategic goal of
simultaneously securing the status of a nuclear state and the stability of its
regime through the normalisation of North-US relations," General Lee Sang-Eui,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a forum.
US President Barack
Obama's
envoy Stephen Bosworth flew to Pyongyang last week to try to persuade the
communist state to return to stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks.
Under a 2005 six-party joint statement, the North agreed to scrap all its
nuclear programmes and weaponry in return for aid, non-aggression guarantees,
diplomatic benefits and talks on a treaty formally ending the 1950-53 war.
The war ended only in an armistice.
Bosworth said Friday that the United States and North Korea have a "common
understanding" on the need to implement the 2005 statement and resume the
six-nation talks.
But he said it was unclear when the North would return to the forum which it
quit in April, a month before staging its second nuclear test.
Bosworth said the other five negotiating partners -- the United States,
China, South Korea, Russia and Japan -- would hold further talks on a possible
return date.
The United States refuses to recognise the North as a nuclear power and says
a peace treaty can be discussed in the context of the six-party talks.
"Through the reinforcement of its nuclear capabilities, North Korea is
strengthening its bargaining power against the US and pursuing direct talks,"
Lee said.
The North is also seeking to improve its relations with South Korea, he said,
after more than a year of bitter hostility.
"It is our projection that Kim (North
Korean
leader Kim Jong-Il) will continue to tighten his control (over the country), and
pursue improved ties with the US as well as a softening of sanctions for
economic gains," Lee said.
South Korea's chief nuclear envoy Wi Sung-Lac will visit Moscow from
Wednesday to Saturday to discuss next steps, the foreign ministry said. He will
meet his counterpart Alexei Borodavkin on Thursday.
earlier related report
Arms seizure shows
pressure on N.Korea: S.Korea analysts
Seoul (AFP) Dec 14, 2009 -
Thailand's seizure of a North Korean arms shipment after an apparent US tip-off
will embarrass Pyongyang but won't derail its newly restarted dialogue with
Washington, analysts said Monday.
Four Kazakhs and a Belarussian detained after flying into Bangkok on a cargo
plane carrying 30 tonnes of sanctions-busting weapons appeared in court Monday
and were detained for 12 days.
The cache, including missiles and rocket-propelled grenades, was found after
the plane landed for refuelling on Friday. Thai media said authorities moved
after receiving intelligence from the United States.
The plane began its journey in Pyongyang and Thai Prime Minister Abhisit
Vejjajiva said the weapons came from a North Korean company. Its destination was
unclear.
Thai officials said they were enforcing United
Nations
Resolution 1874 passed in June following North Korean missile and nuclear tests.
It was the first known airborne arms cargo from Pyongyang to have been seized
since the resolution banned all its weapons exports.
The seizure came one day after US envoy Stephen Bosworth returned from talks
in Pyongyang aimed at restarting stalled six-party nuclear disarmament
talks.
"Arms Deals Highlight N.Korea's Duplicity," the conservative Chosun Ilbo
newspaper headlined its editorial. The North refuses to recognise the UN
resolution.
Seoul analysts said the North is unlikely to overreact at a time when it
seeks direct talks with the United States. Bosworth's trip was its first
official contact with the Obama administration.
"The seizure of North Korean weapons in Thailand will not seriously hurt the
mood for dialogue," Dongguk University professor Koh Yu-Hwan told AFP.
"Of course it reflects the US government's determination to dismantle North
Korea's nuclear programme. The US will continue its policy of using pressure and
dialogue.
"North Korea will be under further pressure to make a quick decision and
resume six-party talks," Koh said.
"For North Korea, this is embarrassing. But it is not expected to abandon
bilateral talks with the US."
Cheon Seong-Whun of the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification,
also said the seizure may help prompt the North back to the six-way talks,
according to Yonhap news agency.
A Seoul government official told Dong-A Ilbo newspaper that Pyongyang spends
most of its earnings from arms exports on developing weapons of mass destruction
-- one reason why conventional weapons were included in the latest sanctions
resolution.
The US State Department says the North is thought to earn hundreds of
millions of dollars from the sale of missiles and other illicit activities.
"Having difficulty earning foreign currency due to continued international
sanctions, North Korea seems to be diversifying its means of transporting
weaponry," the unidentified official quoted by Dong-A Ilbo said in relation to
the aircraft.
In the summer the US navy shadowed a North Korean freighter suspected of
carrying banned cargo and believed bound for Myanmar. The ship turned back in
July.
In August weapons including rocket-propelled grenades were found on a ship
seized by the United Arab Emirates while travelling from North Korea to
Iran.
"This case sends a clear message to North Korea that the international
community,
including the other five nations in the six-party talks, is adopting a two-track
approach -- dialogue for dialogue and pressure for pressure," the official
added.
The talks group the two Koreas, Japan, China, the United States and Russia.
The North quit them in April and staged its second nuclear weapons test in
May.
The Korea Herald also noted the weapons seizure came on the heels of
Bosworth's talks. "The incident... exposed North Korea's duplicity," its
editorial said.
"Perhaps the seizure of the arms cargo will drive home the message to the
leadership in Pyongyang that it really does not have much choice but to return
to the aid-for-denuclearisation talks."
Al-Qaida warns 'traitors'
Yemeni
soldiers shoots dead seven compatriots: report
Sanaa (AFP) Dec 14, 2009 -
A Yemeni soldier with a history of mental illness opened fire on a group of
people killing six comrades and a civilian, the state-run SABA news agency
reported Monday. The shooting, in which six other people were wounded, took
place late Sunday near the national museum in the southern town of Taiz, the
agency said quoting Taiz security chief Lieutenant Colonel Yahya Haisami.
According to Haisami the soldier suffers from mental disorders and had been
released from jail in July after serving time for a hand grenade attack against
a group of civilians last year in which 14 people were wounded. The soldier was
arrested and handed over to the military police, who will conduct an
investigation, Haisami said, according to
SABA.
by Staff
Writers
Sanaa, Yemen (UPI) Dec 14, 2009
Al-Qaida is currently circulating a gruesome
videotape showing the interrogation and execution of a senior Yemeni
intelligence officer, Col. Suleiman Tarbush, kidnapped in June, as a warning to
Muslims who collaborate with the United States and Israel.
In Iraq, an al-Qaida suicide bomber last week assassinated Lt. Col. Ahmed
Subhi al-Fahal, one of the country's top counter-terrorism chiefs, in Tikrit,
Saddam Hussein's hometown north of Baghdad. Al-Fahal claimed he had personally
killed 250 jihadists.
On Sunday, another Iraqi security chief, police Col. Saad al-Shimari,
narrowly escaped death in a car bomb ambush in Fallujah, once an insurgent
stronghold west of Baghdad, that killed two of his bodyguards.
Al-Qaida operatives from Algeria to Pakistan are targeting the officers who
lead the counter-terrorism campaigns that hunt them down.
On Aug. 27 a Yemeni member of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula came within
an ace of assassinating the Saudi prince who was responsible for crushing the
movement's 2003-07 campaign in the kingdom.
Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the deputy interior minister for security affairs,
escaped with only minor wounds when explosives hidden inside the body of his
would-be assassin, Abdullah Hassan Tali Assiri, exploded prematurely in the
prince's palace in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.
Assiri was killed instantly. He was No. 40 on a list of 85 terrorists the
Saudi government deemed most dangerous. He was allowed to get so close to the
prince because he had pretended to be surrendering himself.
That attack sent shockwaves through the intelligence organizations of Saudi
Arabia and other pro-Western Arab states that are grappling with jihadist
forces.
It was the first serious assassination attempt in decades against a member of
the Saudi royal family, whose overthrow is one of the jihadists' main
objectives, and underlined the extremists' determination to take out those who
head the war against them.
In November, the religious leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula,
Ibrahim al-Rubaish, called for an assassination campaign, starting with the
Saudi leadership, "to instill terror and dread in the ranks of the enemy."
This deadly new twist in the jihadists' global war suggests that the
counter-terrorism campaign is hurting them.
The growing number of jihadist plots that are being thwarted indicates that
intelligence and security services, particularly in the Muslim world, are now
able to penetrate terrorist cells to an unprecedented degree.
To be sure, there have been other attacks on the Saudi intelligence
apparatus, such as the April 21, 2004, attack on security headquarters in
Riyadh, the Saudi capital, in which 10 people were killed.
The attack was generally seen as a response to the effectiveness of Prince
Mohammed's crackdown.
In neighboring Jordan, which has been battling jihadists since the mid-1990s,
security authorities claimed on April 6, 2004, that they had thwarted plans for
a massive attack on the headquarters of the General Intelligence Department in
Amman.
The GID had earlier rolled up several al-Qaida cells that had planned attacks
against U.S., Israeli and Jordanian targets. Security officials aid six trucks
packed with 20 tons of chemical-laced explosives were to have been used in the
attack on GID's hilltop headquarters.
The jihadists are also striking back in Pakistan, the new storm center of the
war against terrorism. Facilities run by the Inter-Services Intelligence
directorate, Pakistan's principal intelligence service, have been attacked
several times.
In the worst attack on Nov. 12, a suicide bomber almost destroyed the ISI's
provincial headquarters in the North-West Frontier province and killed senior
officers.
Those attacks were intended to demonstrate the vulnerability of the country's
most powerful security agency, which is supposed to be the first line of defense
against terrorism.
Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Directorate, headed by Prince Moqrin bin
Abdul Aziz, has long had close links with its Pakistani equivalent.
King Abdallah is reported to be personally involved behind the scenes in
trying to persuade the Taliban leaders to break with al-Qaida and bring about a
possible peace deal with Islamabad. To do that, the Saudis need to help Pakistan
combat its Taliban problem.
Many of the 85 jihadists most wanted by Riyadh are believed to be in Pakistan
now, and the Saudis are working with Pakistan's counter-terrorism chief, Rehman
Malik, to round them up and send them back to Saudi Arabia.
That alone makes the Saudi monarchy and its intelligence services a prime
target for al-Qaida. And with al-Qaida resurgent in the kingdom's
trouble-plagued neighbor, Yemen, Riyadh can expect more such
attacks.
Iran nearing atomic bomb capability, Israel
says
JERUSALEM–Iran is close to a "technological breakthrough" that would enable
it to build nuclear weapons, Israel's military intelligence chief said in a rare
public assessment Tuesday.
Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin said Iran has enriched enough uranium this year at its
facility in Natanz to build a bomb and is on the brink of a "technological
breakthrough" that would enable it to build atomic weapons.
He noted, however, that the uranium must be further enriched if Iran wants to
build a weapon. He did not say when Iran might reach full weapons capability and
did not elaborate on what technology Iran is allegedly nearing.
The countdown on Iran's nuclear technology clock "has almost finished
ticking," he said, speaking to a security conference at Tel Aviv University. UN
monitors have confirmed that Iran has generated enough low-enriched uranium to
build a bomb – if it were enriched up to a military grade of more than 90 per
cent.
Yadlin rarely speaks in public, and the comments reflected Israel's concern
about Iran. Israel views Iran as its most dangerous enemy due to its nuclear
program and its missiles that can hit Israel. Iran insists that its nuclear
program is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. and its allies accuse it of
secretly seeking to build weapons.
Israel is widely believed to have an arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons
but has avoided confirming or denying their existence.
Israel has called for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue,
while hinting it could use force if Iran is not prevented from building a
weapon.
Speaking in Austria on Monday, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, called
for tougher new sanctions on Iran.
Barak suggested that military strikes should remain an option, saying Israel
does not "remove any options off the table." But he insisted, "We still believe
that it's time for diplomacy, tough diplomacy.
"There is a need for tough sanctions ... something that is well and
coherently coordinated to include the Americans, the EU, the Chinese, the
Russians, the Indians, Barak told reporters in
Vienna.
Report: Iran tests new long-range missile
N.Korea still wants recognition as nuclear state
by Staff
Writers
Seoul (AFP) Dec 14, 2009
North Korea is still seeking recognition as a nuclear power despite
trying to normalise relations with the United States, South Korea's top military
officer said Monday.
"It is our assessment that North Korea has not altered its strategic goal of
simultaneously securing the status of a nuclear state and the stability of its
regime through the normalisation of North-US relations," General Lee Sang-Eui,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a forum.
US President Barack
Obama's
envoy Stephen Bosworth flew to Pyongyang last week to try to persuade the
communist state to return to stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks.
Under a 2005 six-party joint statement, the North agreed to scrap all its
nuclear programmes and weaponry in return for aid, non-aggression guarantees,
diplomatic benefits and talks on a treaty formally ending the 1950-53 war.
The war ended only in an armistice.
Bosworth said Friday that the United States and North Korea have a "common
understanding" on the need to implement the 2005 statement and resume the
six-nation talks.
But he said it was unclear when the North would return to the forum which it
quit in April, a month before staging its second nuclear test.
Bosworth said the other five negotiating partners -- the United States,
China, South Korea, Russia and Japan -- would hold further talks on a possible
return date.
The United States refuses to recognise the North as a nuclear power and says
a peace treaty can be discussed in the context of the six-party talks.
"Through the reinforcement of its nuclear capabilities, North Korea is
strengthening its bargaining power against the US and pursuing direct talks,"
Lee said.
The North is also seeking to improve its relations with South Korea, he said,
after more than a year of bitter hostility.
"It is our projection that Kim (North
Korean
leader Kim Jong-Il) will continue to tighten his control (over the country), and
pursue improved ties with the US as well as a softening of sanctions for
economic gains," Lee said.
South Korea's chief nuclear envoy Wi Sung-Lac will visit Moscow from
Wednesday to Saturday to discuss next steps, the foreign ministry said. He will
meet his counterpart Alexei Borodavkin on Thursday.
earlier related report
Arms seizure shows
pressure on N.Korea: S.Korea analysts
Seoul (AFP) Dec 14, 2009 -
Thailand's seizure of a North Korean arms shipment after an apparent US tip-off
will embarrass Pyongyang but won't derail its newly restarted dialogue with
Washington, analysts said Monday.
Four Kazakhs and a Belarussian detained after flying into Bangkok on a cargo
plane carrying 30 tonnes of sanctions-busting weapons appeared in court Monday
and were detained for 12 days.
The cache, including missiles and rocket-propelled grenades, was found after
the plane landed for refuelling on Friday. Thai media said authorities moved
after receiving intelligence from the United States.
The plane began its journey in Pyongyang and Thai Prime Minister Abhisit
Vejjajiva said the weapons came from a North Korean company. Its destination was
unclear.
Thai officials said they were enforcing United
Nations
Resolution 1874 passed in June following North Korean missile and nuclear tests.
It was the first known airborne arms cargo from Pyongyang to have been seized
since the resolution banned all its weapons exports.
The seizure came one day after US envoy Stephen Bosworth returned from talks
in Pyongyang aimed at restarting stalled six-party nuclear disarmament
talks.
"Arms Deals Highlight N.Korea's Duplicity," the conservative Chosun Ilbo
newspaper headlined its editorial. The North refuses to recognise the UN
resolution.
Seoul analysts said the North is unlikely to overreact at a time when it
seeks direct talks with the United States. Bosworth's trip was its first
official contact with the Obama administration.
"The seizure of North Korean weapons in Thailand will not seriously hurt the
mood for dialogue," Dongguk University professor Koh Yu-Hwan told AFP.
"Of course it reflects the US government's determination to dismantle North
Korea's nuclear programme. The US will continue its policy of using pressure and
dialogue.
"North Korea will be under further pressure to make a quick decision and
resume six-party talks," Koh said.
"For North Korea, this is embarrassing. But it is not expected to abandon
bilateral talks with the US."
Cheon Seong-Whun of the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification,
also said the seizure may help prompt the North back to the six-way talks,
according to Yonhap news agency.
A Seoul government official told Dong-A Ilbo newspaper that Pyongyang spends
most of its earnings from arms exports on developing weapons of mass destruction
-- one reason why conventional weapons were included in the latest sanctions
resolution.
The US State Department says the North is thought to earn hundreds of
millions of dollars from the sale of missiles and other illicit activities.
"Having difficulty earning foreign currency due to continued international
sanctions, North Korea seems to be diversifying its means of transporting
weaponry," the unidentified official quoted by Dong-A Ilbo said in relation to
the aircraft.
In the summer the US navy shadowed a North Korean freighter suspected of
carrying banned cargo and believed bound for Myanmar. The ship turned back in
July.
In August weapons including rocket-propelled grenades were found on a ship
seized by the United Arab Emirates while travelling from North Korea to
Iran.
"This case sends a clear message to North Korea that the international
community,
including the other five nations in the six-party talks, is adopting a two-track
approach -- dialogue for dialogue and pressure for pressure," the official
added.
The talks group the two Koreas, Japan, China, the United States and Russia.
The North quit them in April and staged its second nuclear weapons test in
May.
The Korea Herald also noted the weapons seizure came on the heels of
Bosworth's talks. "The incident... exposed North Korea's duplicity," its
editorial said.
"Perhaps the seizure of the arms cargo will drive home the message to the
leadership in Pyongyang that it really does not have much choice but to return
to the aid-for-denuclearisation talks."
Al-Qaida warns 'traitors'
Yemeni
soldiers shoots dead seven compatriots: report
Sanaa (AFP) Dec 14, 2009 -
A Yemeni soldier with a history of mental illness opened fire on a group of
people killing six comrades and a civilian, the state-run SABA news agency
reported Monday. The shooting, in which six other people were wounded, took
place late Sunday near the national museum in the southern town of Taiz, the
agency said quoting Taiz security chief Lieutenant Colonel Yahya Haisami.
According to Haisami the soldier suffers from mental disorders and had been
released from jail in July after serving time for a hand grenade attack against
a group of civilians last year in which 14 people were wounded. The soldier was
arrested and handed over to the military police, who will conduct an
investigation, Haisami said, according to
SABA.
by Staff
Writers
Sanaa, Yemen (UPI) Dec 14, 2009
Al-Qaida is currently circulating a gruesome
videotape showing the interrogation and execution of a senior Yemeni
intelligence officer, Col. Suleiman Tarbush, kidnapped in June, as a warning to
Muslims who collaborate with the United States and Israel.
In Iraq, an al-Qaida suicide bomber last week assassinated Lt. Col. Ahmed
Subhi al-Fahal, one of the country's top counter-terrorism chiefs, in Tikrit,
Saddam Hussein's hometown north of Baghdad. Al-Fahal claimed he had personally
killed 250 jihadists.
On Sunday, another Iraqi security chief, police Col. Saad al-Shimari,
narrowly escaped death in a car bomb ambush in Fallujah, once an insurgent
stronghold west of Baghdad, that killed two of his bodyguards.
Al-Qaida operatives from Algeria to Pakistan are targeting the officers who
lead the counter-terrorism campaigns that hunt them down.
On Aug. 27 a Yemeni member of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula came within
an ace of assassinating the Saudi prince who was responsible for crushing the
movement's 2003-07 campaign in the kingdom.
Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the deputy interior minister for security affairs,
escaped with only minor wounds when explosives hidden inside the body of his
would-be assassin, Abdullah Hassan Tali Assiri, exploded prematurely in the
prince's palace in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.
Assiri was killed instantly. He was No. 40 on a list of 85 terrorists the
Saudi government deemed most dangerous. He was allowed to get so close to the
prince because he had pretended to be surrendering himself.
That attack sent shockwaves through the intelligence organizations of Saudi
Arabia and other pro-Western Arab states that are grappling with jihadist
forces.
It was the first serious assassination attempt in decades against a member of
the Saudi royal family, whose overthrow is one of the jihadists' main
objectives, and underlined the extremists' determination to take out those who
head the war against them.
In November, the religious leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula,
Ibrahim al-Rubaish, called for an assassination campaign, starting with the
Saudi leadership, "to instill terror and dread in the ranks of the enemy."
This deadly new twist in the jihadists' global war suggests that the
counter-terrorism campaign is hurting them.
The growing number of jihadist plots that are being thwarted indicates that
intelligence and security services, particularly in the Muslim world, are now
able to penetrate terrorist cells to an unprecedented degree.
To be sure, there have been other attacks on the Saudi intelligence
apparatus, such as the April 21, 2004, attack on security headquarters in
Riyadh, the Saudi capital, in which 10 people were killed.
The attack was generally seen as a response to the effectiveness of Prince
Mohammed's crackdown.
In neighboring Jordan, which has been battling jihadists since the mid-1990s,
security authorities claimed on April 6, 2004, that they had thwarted plans for
a massive attack on the headquarters of the General Intelligence Department in
Amman.
The GID had earlier rolled up several al-Qaida cells that had planned attacks
against U.S., Israeli and Jordanian targets. Security officials aid six trucks
packed with 20 tons of chemical-laced explosives were to have been used in the
attack on GID's hilltop headquarters.
The jihadists are also striking back in Pakistan, the new storm center of the
war against terrorism. Facilities run by the Inter-Services Intelligence
directorate, Pakistan's principal intelligence service, have been attacked
several times.
In the worst attack on Nov. 12, a suicide bomber almost destroyed the ISI's
provincial headquarters in the North-West Frontier province and killed senior
officers.
Those attacks were intended to demonstrate the vulnerability of the country's
most powerful security agency, which is supposed to be the first line of defense
against terrorism.
Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Directorate, headed by Prince Moqrin bin
Abdul Aziz, has long had close links with its Pakistani equivalent.
King Abdallah is reported to be personally involved behind the scenes in
trying to persuade the Taliban leaders to break with al-Qaida and bring about a
possible peace deal with Islamabad. To do that, the Saudis need to help Pakistan
combat its Taliban problem.
Many of the 85 jihadists most wanted by Riyadh are believed to be in Pakistan
now, and the Saudis are working with Pakistan's counter-terrorism chief, Rehman
Malik, to round them up and send them back to Saudi Arabia.
That alone makes the Saudi monarchy and its intelligence services a prime
target for al-Qaida. And with al-Qaida resurgent in the kingdom's
trouble-plagued neighbor, Yemen, Riyadh can expect more such
attacks.
Iran nearing atomic bomb capability, Israel
says
|
Seoul (AFP) Dec 14, 2009
North Korea is still seeking recognition as a nuclear power despite trying to normalise relations with the United States, South Korea's top military officer said Monday.
"It is our assessment that North Korea has not altered its strategic goal of simultaneously securing the status of a nuclear state and the stability of its regime through the normalisation of North-US relations," General Lee Sang-Eui, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a forum.
US President Barack Obama's envoy Stephen Bosworth flew to Pyongyang last week to try to persuade the communist state to return to stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks.
Under a 2005 six-party joint statement, the North agreed to scrap all its nuclear programmes and weaponry in return for aid, non-aggression guarantees, diplomatic benefits and talks on a treaty formally ending the 1950-53 war.
The war ended only in an armistice.
Bosworth said Friday that the United States and North Korea have a "common understanding" on the need to implement the 2005 statement and resume the six-nation talks.
But he said it was unclear when the North would return to the forum which it quit in April, a month before staging its second nuclear test.
Bosworth said the other five negotiating partners -- the United States, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan -- would hold further talks on a possible return date.
The United States refuses to recognise the North as a nuclear power and says a peace treaty can be discussed in the context of the six-party talks.
"Through the reinforcement of its nuclear capabilities, North Korea is strengthening its bargaining power against the US and pursuing direct talks," Lee said.
The North is also seeking to improve its relations with South Korea, he said, after more than a year of bitter hostility.
"It is our projection that Kim (North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il) will continue to tighten his control (over the country), and pursue improved ties with the US as well as a softening of sanctions for economic gains," Lee said.
South Korea's chief nuclear envoy Wi Sung-Lac will visit Moscow from Wednesday to Saturday to discuss next steps, the foreign ministry said. He will meet his counterpart Alexei Borodavkin on Thursday.
earlier related report
Arms seizure shows
pressure on N.Korea: S.Korea analysts
Seoul (AFP) Dec 14, 2009 -
Thailand's seizure of a North Korean arms shipment after an apparent US tip-off
will embarrass Pyongyang but won't derail its newly restarted dialogue with
Washington, analysts said Monday.
Four Kazakhs and a Belarussian detained after flying into Bangkok on a cargo plane carrying 30 tonnes of sanctions-busting weapons appeared in court Monday and were detained for 12 days.
The cache, including missiles and rocket-propelled grenades, was found after the plane landed for refuelling on Friday. Thai media said authorities moved after receiving intelligence from the United States.
The plane began its journey in Pyongyang and Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said the weapons came from a North Korean company. Its destination was unclear.
Thai officials said they were enforcing United Nations Resolution 1874 passed in June following North Korean missile and nuclear tests. It was the first known airborne arms cargo from Pyongyang to have been seized since the resolution banned all its weapons exports.
The seizure came one day after US envoy Stephen Bosworth returned from talks in Pyongyang aimed at restarting stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks.
"Arms Deals Highlight N.Korea's Duplicity," the conservative Chosun Ilbo newspaper headlined its editorial. The North refuses to recognise the UN resolution.
Seoul analysts said the North is unlikely to overreact at a time when it seeks direct talks with the United States. Bosworth's trip was its first official contact with the Obama administration.
"The seizure of North Korean weapons in Thailand will not seriously hurt the mood for dialogue," Dongguk University professor Koh Yu-Hwan told AFP.
"Of course it reflects the US government's determination to dismantle North Korea's nuclear programme. The US will continue its policy of using pressure and dialogue.
"North Korea will be under further pressure to make a quick decision and resume six-party talks," Koh said.
"For North Korea, this is embarrassing. But it is not expected to abandon bilateral talks with the US."
Cheon Seong-Whun of the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification, also said the seizure may help prompt the North back to the six-way talks, according to Yonhap news agency.
A Seoul government official told Dong-A Ilbo newspaper that Pyongyang spends most of its earnings from arms exports on developing weapons of mass destruction -- one reason why conventional weapons were included in the latest sanctions resolution.
The US State Department says the North is thought to earn hundreds of millions of dollars from the sale of missiles and other illicit activities.
"Having difficulty earning foreign currency due to continued international sanctions, North Korea seems to be diversifying its means of transporting weaponry," the unidentified official quoted by Dong-A Ilbo said in relation to the aircraft.
In the summer the US navy shadowed a North Korean freighter suspected of carrying banned cargo and believed bound for Myanmar. The ship turned back in July.
In August weapons including rocket-propelled grenades were found on a ship seized by the United Arab Emirates while travelling from North Korea to Iran.
"This case sends a clear message to North Korea that the international community, including the other five nations in the six-party talks, is adopting a two-track approach -- dialogue for dialogue and pressure for pressure," the official added.
The talks group the two Koreas, Japan, China, the United States and Russia. The North quit them in April and staged its second nuclear weapons test in May.
The Korea Herald also noted the weapons seizure came on the heels of Bosworth's talks. "The incident... exposed North Korea's duplicity," its editorial said.
"Perhaps the seizure of the arms cargo will drive home the message to the leadership in Pyongyang that it really does not have much choice but to return to the aid-for-denuclearisation talks."
Yemeni soldiers shoots dead seven compatriots: report Sanaa (AFP) Dec 14, 2009 - A Yemeni soldier with a history of mental illness opened fire on a group of people killing six comrades and a civilian, the state-run SABA news agency reported Monday. The shooting, in which six other people were wounded, took place late Sunday near the national museum in the southern town of Taiz, the agency said quoting Taiz security chief Lieutenant Colonel Yahya Haisami. According to Haisami the soldier suffers from mental disorders and had been released from jail in July after serving time for a hand grenade attack against a group of civilians last year in which 14 people were wounded. The soldier was arrested and handed over to the military police, who will conduct an investigation, Haisami said, according to SABA. |
Sanaa, Yemen (UPI) Dec 14, 2009
Al-Qaida is currently circulating a gruesome videotape showing the interrogation and execution of a senior Yemeni intelligence officer, Col. Suleiman Tarbush, kidnapped in June, as a warning to Muslims who collaborate with the United States and Israel.
In Iraq, an al-Qaida suicide bomber last week assassinated Lt. Col. Ahmed Subhi al-Fahal, one of the country's top counter-terrorism chiefs, in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown north of Baghdad. Al-Fahal claimed he had personally killed 250 jihadists.
On Sunday, another Iraqi security chief, police Col. Saad al-Shimari, narrowly escaped death in a car bomb ambush in Fallujah, once an insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, that killed two of his bodyguards.
Al-Qaida operatives from Algeria to Pakistan are targeting the officers who lead the counter-terrorism campaigns that hunt them down.
On Aug. 27 a Yemeni member of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula came within an ace of assassinating the Saudi prince who was responsible for crushing the movement's 2003-07 campaign in the kingdom.
Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the deputy interior minister for security affairs, escaped with only minor wounds when explosives hidden inside the body of his would-be assassin, Abdullah Hassan Tali Assiri, exploded prematurely in the prince's palace in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.
Assiri was killed instantly. He was No. 40 on a list of 85 terrorists the Saudi government deemed most dangerous. He was allowed to get so close to the prince because he had pretended to be surrendering himself.
That attack sent shockwaves through the intelligence organizations of Saudi Arabia and other pro-Western Arab states that are grappling with jihadist forces.
It was the first serious assassination attempt in decades against a member of the Saudi royal family, whose overthrow is one of the jihadists' main objectives, and underlined the extremists' determination to take out those who head the war against them.
In November, the religious leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, Ibrahim al-Rubaish, called for an assassination campaign, starting with the Saudi leadership, "to instill terror and dread in the ranks of the enemy."
This deadly new twist in the jihadists' global war suggests that the counter-terrorism campaign is hurting them.
The growing number of jihadist plots that are being thwarted indicates that intelligence and security services, particularly in the Muslim world, are now able to penetrate terrorist cells to an unprecedented degree.
To be sure, there have been other attacks on the Saudi intelligence apparatus, such as the April 21, 2004, attack on security headquarters in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, in which 10 people were killed.
The attack was generally seen as a response to the effectiveness of Prince Mohammed's crackdown.
In neighboring Jordan, which has been battling jihadists since the mid-1990s, security authorities claimed on April 6, 2004, that they had thwarted plans for a massive attack on the headquarters of the General Intelligence Department in Amman.
The GID had earlier rolled up several al-Qaida cells that had planned attacks against U.S., Israeli and Jordanian targets. Security officials aid six trucks packed with 20 tons of chemical-laced explosives were to have been used in the attack on GID's hilltop headquarters.
The jihadists are also striking back in Pakistan, the new storm center of the war against terrorism. Facilities run by the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, Pakistan's principal intelligence service, have been attacked several times.
In the worst attack on Nov. 12, a suicide bomber almost destroyed the ISI's provincial headquarters in the North-West Frontier province and killed senior officers.
Those attacks were intended to demonstrate the vulnerability of the country's most powerful security agency, which is supposed to be the first line of defense against terrorism.
Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Directorate, headed by Prince Moqrin bin Abdul Aziz, has long had close links with its Pakistani equivalent.
King Abdallah is reported to be personally involved behind the scenes in trying to persuade the Taliban leaders to break with al-Qaida and bring about a possible peace deal with Islamabad. To do that, the Saudis need to help Pakistan combat its Taliban problem.
Many of the 85 jihadists most wanted by Riyadh are believed to be in Pakistan now, and the Saudis are working with Pakistan's counter-terrorism chief, Rehman Malik, to round them up and send them back to Saudi Arabia.
That alone makes the Saudi monarchy and its intelligence services a prime target for al-Qaida. And with al-Qaida resurgent in the kingdom's trouble-plagued neighbor, Yemen, Riyadh can expect more such attacks.
JERUSALEM–Iran is close to a "technological breakthrough" that would enable it to build nuclear weapons, Israel's military intelligence chief said in a rare public assessment Tuesday.
Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin said Iran has enriched enough uranium this year at its facility in Natanz to build a bomb and is on the brink of a "technological breakthrough" that would enable it to build atomic weapons.
He noted, however, that the uranium must be further enriched if Iran wants to build a weapon. He did not say when Iran might reach full weapons capability and did not elaborate on what technology Iran is allegedly nearing.
The countdown on Iran's nuclear technology clock "has almost finished ticking," he said, speaking to a security conference at Tel Aviv University. UN monitors have confirmed that Iran has generated enough low-enriched uranium to build a bomb – if it were enriched up to a military grade of more than 90 per cent.
Yadlin rarely speaks in public, and the comments reflected Israel's concern about Iran. Israel views Iran as its most dangerous enemy due to its nuclear program and its missiles that can hit Israel. Iran insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. and its allies accuse it of secretly seeking to build weapons.
Israel is widely believed to have an arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons but has avoided confirming or denying their existence.
Israel has called for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue, while hinting it could use force if Iran is not prevented from building a weapon.
Speaking in Austria on Monday, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, called for tougher new sanctions on Iran.
Barak suggested that military strikes should remain an option, saying Israel does not "remove any options off the table." But he insisted, "We still believe that it's time for diplomacy, tough diplomacy.
"There is a need for tough sanctions ... something that is well and coherently coordinated to include the Americans, the EU, the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, Barak told reporters in Vienna.
JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Iran said it has successfully test-fired a new missile capable of reaching Israel and U.S. military bases.
The Sejil-2 missile is a two-stage surface-to-surface missile, and has a longer range than the older Shahab-3 missile, Iran state television reported Wednesday during its announcement of the successful test.
The missile reportedly hit its target. State television showed what was reported to be the missile launch.
 Iran denies working on nuclear bomb component Tehran (AFP) Dec 15, 2009 - Iran on Tuesday dismissed as a "scenario" hatched by Western powers a report alleging that it is working on a key component of a nuclear bomb. "Some countries are angry that our people defend their nuclear rights," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters. When Western powers "want to pressure us they craft such scenarios which is unacceptable," he said. "This claim has political aims and it is psychological warfare which has no basis at the International Atomic Energy Agency," he added. He was reacting to a report in the British newspaper The Times which said on Monday it had obtained notes describing a four-year plan by Iran to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb which triggers an explosion. The Times reported that foreign intelligence agencies dated the documents to early 2007 -- four years after US agencies had previously assessed Iran had suspended efforts to produce a weapons. It said the documents detailed a plan to test whether the device works -- without leaving traces of uranium that the outside world could detect. Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for civilian purposes and rejects Western suspicions that it is covertly trying to develop a bomb. Iran is under three sets of UN sanctions for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment and risks a further round after rejecting a UN-brokered deal to send its low enriched uranium abroad to be further refined into fuel for a research reactor. Its enrichment work lies at the centre of Western concerns about its intentions as the process can produce fuel for nuclear reactors but in highly extended form can also be used to make the fissile core of an atomic bomb. |
Washington (AFP) Dec 15, 2009
The United States said Tuesday it will investigate a British newspaper report that Iran is working on a trigger for a nuclear bomb, adding the "revelation" fueled concerns about Iranian intentions.
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley's remarks appear to give credence to a report in The Times on Monday saying it had obtained notes describing a four-year plan by Iran to test a neutron initiator, or bomb trigger.
"There's been a public report about an issue related to... Iran's nuclear program. It's safe to say the United States government will be investigating those reports," Crowley told reporters.
The Times reported that foreign intelligence agencies dated the documents to early 2007 -- four years after US agencies had assessed Iran had suspended efforts to produce nuclear weapons.
It said the documents detailed a plan to test whether the device works -- without leaving traces of uranium that the outside world could detect.
Iran insists its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes and rejects Western suspicions that it is covertly trying to develop a bomb.
In Tehran, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast dismissed the Times claim as a "scenario" hatched by Western powers.
Crowley was initially reluctant to comment on the news report, but later raised it in the context of growing concerns about Iran's failure to respond to international inquiries about its suspect nuclear program.
He said the discovery of a new uranium enrichment site near Qom, Iran's plans for other facilities and the "revelation this week about nuclear triggers... all adds up to the fact that Iran has yet to really come to... the international community and address our concerns in a meaningful way."
When asked to elaborate on the revelation of a nuclear trigger, Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs, said: "I will not discuss intelligence matters."
But when pressed further, he said the US government will investigate the report.
And when asked to give his opinion of the news report, Crowley first replied "no" before adding "it was a fine piece of journalism. Enough said."
A senior State State Department official told reporters he is "sure somebody in the government is looking into the issue," but he did not know whether the documents in the Times report had been authenticated.
The US-based Institute for International Science and Security (ISIS) said the documents, which it said The Times showed its experts before publishing the report, could be a "smoking gun" showing proof of what the Iranians are up to.
"But ISIS urges caution and further assessment of this document, in particular to confirm the document's date and with how the document fits with other information regarding Iran's nuclear weaponization activities both prior to 2003 and any work afterwards," it said on its website.
With a year-end deadline, President Barack Obama's administration has signaled in the last few days that time is running out for Iran to seize its offer of diplomatic engagement for resolving nuclear and other issues.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials have renewed talk of imposing a fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions on Iran.
earlier related report
US pushes for 'additional
pressure' on Iran
Washington (AFP) Dec 14, 2009 - The administration of
President Barack Obama pushed Monday for tougher sanctions on Iran to curb its
nuclear ambitions after driving home the point that its near year-long
diplomatic engagement with Tehran had yielded little.
However, it was not clear if the administration can yet rally the support it needs for a fourth round of UN sanctions when it said China is unable to join the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany in Brussels on Friday.
Both Russia and China, which a US official said had a scheduling problem barring it from attending the six-power meeting, have been more reluctant than the other four powers about tightening sanctions.
The group is known as the P5-plus-1, or the permanent five veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany.
With a year-end deadline, the administration signaled Friday that time is running out for Iran to seize its offer of diplomatic engagement for resolving nuclear and other issues.
Following up on pessimistic comments she made last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Obama's engagement policy had yielded few, if any results.
"We have reached out. We have offered the opportunity to engage in meaningful, serious discussions with our Iranian counterparts. We have joined fully in the P5-plus-1 one process. We've been at the table," Clinton said.
"But I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of positive response from the Iranians," the chief US diplomat said.
If engagement fails under what is called a dual-track strategy, the United States will try to rally the international community to press Iran into changing course on its nuclear program, she recalled.
"And certainly additional pressure is going to be called for in order to do that," she said Monday during a press briefing with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos.
In an interview Friday with Al-Jazeera English channel, Clinton said the world community will now turn toward using "more pressure, like sanctions" against Iran to halt its nuclear program.
Clinton said Iran has taken actions that show little sign it will respond to Obama's efforts to engage them as it has failed to build confidence in recent months, including since an October 1 meeting with the P5-plus-1 in Geneva.
For example, she said Iran has balked at a US-backed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proposal to ship abroad low-grade nuclear fuel so it can be further enriched and returned to refuel a Tehran medical research reactor.
Also undermining international confidence, she said, is Iran's continued crackdown on peaceful opposition to Iran's disputed election in June that gave incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another term in office.
She said Iran also fanned fears about its intentions when it failed to come clean on a secret uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom, and noted that Iran has subsequently announced plans for 10 to 20 new nuclear plants.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters that a P5-plus-1 meeting "won't be possible this year" because of a scheduling difficulty, raising questions about how soon the six could agree on concerted action.
A State Department official later confirmed it was China that "couldn't come on December 18" for a political directors meeting in Brussels.
But the official also said plans were afoot for a P5-plus-1 teleconference call on Iran, probably by next week.
The US Congress sent Obama on Sunday a giant spending bill that also requires periodic reports on the status of diplomatic efforts to freeze Iran's nuclear program as well as on US and global sanctions on the Islamic republic.
 File image courtesy AFP. |
Tehran (UPI) Dec 16, 2009
Iran claimed to have successfully tested an advanced variant of its Sajjil-2 ballistic missile Wednesday, thumbing its nose at possible air and missile strikes by the United States and Israel to cripple its nuclear ambitions.
But, as tensions in the Gulf swell once more, the Americans say they will conduct a test of their own in January -- countering a simulated Iranian missile attack.
That will be carried out by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency in the Pacific, where most of the agency's facilities are located.
The Sajjil test, if independently confirmed, would underline an accelerated missile development program by Tehran that has been given some urgency by recent political developments, most notably the apparent breakdown in U.S. efforts to negotiate a deal with Iran on its controversial nuclear program.
The two-stage Sajjil-2 is powered by solid fuel, which gives it greater range and accuracy than the liquid-fueled Shehab-3 weapons that currently constitute Iran's strategic missile force.
The Sajjil-1 was first test-fired on Nov. 12, 2008, and bore a striking resemblance to another missile, the Ashura, flight-tested a year earlier.
The Sajjil-2, reportedly equipped with a more advanced guidance system, underwent its first flight test in May. Another test was conducted in September.
Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi, who Argentina has accused of masterminding the July 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people, announced that the test was designed to bolster Iran's deterrent capabilities.
He gave no details, such as its range, but said it is faster and more accurate than the Shehab and has "radar-evading capability."
Al Alam, Iran's Arabic-language satellite television, said the Sajjil-2 has a longer range than the Shehab-3. The Iranians say that has a range of up to 1,250 miles, sufficient to reach Israel.
Iranian TV showed a missile launched in desert terrain, probably the firing range in the Great Salt Desert south of Tehran. But there was no immediate independent verification that there had actually been a test launch or that it involved a new version of the Sajjil-2.
Most Western missile experts say Iran has accelerated its ballistic missile program over the last couple of years as relations with the United States and Israel became more fraught.
The Iranians boast that their missile forces can now target Israel's nuclear facilities, its strategic bases and main cities, and would be unleashed if the Islamic Republic came under attack.
One of the consequences of the Iranians' shift to solid fuel from the more cumbersome liquid fuel is that ballistic missiles can be maintained at instant readiness fully fueled.
Those using liquid propellant have to be fueled before they can be launched, a delicate process that can take hours. That makes it easier for spy satellites to detect them and for pre-emptive strikes to be launched to knock them out.
The Iranians' use of a two-stage booster rocket, known as the Safir-2, a variant of the Shehab-3, to launch their first satellite into Earth orbit in February marked a major technological breakthrough in Tehran's drive to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
It was clear that the Iranians had overcome the complex problem of separating the second stage carrying the satellite in flight from the rocket booster. That's a key element in producing an ICBM.
According to one U.S. analyst at the time the missile "carrying the satellite can be used to carry nuclear warheads to Israel -- and to Europe."
"The world has not found a way to stop or slow down Iran's nuclear weapons program. This means an Israeli attack on Iran is becoming more likely. The countdown toward an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program has begun."
That may be overstating the case, but the rapid acceleration of Iran's missile development has caused unease in Israel, which views the nuclear program as an existential threat.
Initially at least, many in the West were dismissive of the February satellite launch.
But Uzi Rubin, former director of Israel's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, cautioned: "As with the 1957 launch of the Russian Sputnik, the world should not be alarmed by the satellite but by the missile carrying it.
"The Iranians, long students of North Korean missile technology, have now surpassed their tutors: the Safir-2 is the basis for a future Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile."
 According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute of Sweden, which monitors global arms sales, the Ilyushin seized in Thailand is registered in Georgia to a company called Air West Limited. Photo courtesy AFP. |
Bangkok (UPI) Dec 21, 2009
A planeload of North Korean arms seized in Bangkok was reportedly bound for Iran, which has been buying up large amounts of weaponry in recent months as it braces for a possible onslaught by Israel, and possibly the United States.
Mystery has shrouded the destination of the Georgian-registered Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane that was found be to carrying 35 tons of arms, including surface-to-air missiles and rocket launchers, in 12 crates when it was detained during a refueling stop on Dec. 11 following a tip-off from U.S. intelligence.
The five-man crew, all former Soviet air force members from Belarus and Kazakhstan, are in police custody and claim they thought they were hauling oil-field equipment.
According to two organizations that monitor international arms transfers -- TransArms in Chicago and the International Peace Information Service in Antwerp, Belgium -- the Ilyushin's flight plan now in the hands of Thai authorities indicates that Iran was the final destination of the deadly cargo, worth an estimated $18 million.
Tehran has been buying unusually large amounts of weapons and military equipment in recent months because of fears the Islamic Republic will be attacked by Israel to knock out its nuclear facilities, and possibly by the United States as well.
North Korea has been identified as a key source of those arms purchases. But in recent months U.S. authorities have also broken up several clandestine Iranian efforts to buy F-4 fighters, helicopters, aircraft components and other military materiel worth $2.5 billion.
The Ilyushin cargo was the first airborne arms shipment from Pyongyang to be seized since U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 banning arms exports by Pyongyang was passed in June after North Korea conducted missile and nuclear tests.
It authorizes any country to inspect and seize North Korean weapons shipments that pass through its territory, regardless of the cargo's destination.
Cash-starved North Korea is estimated to earn $1 billion a year from arms sales, usually to rogue regimes or insurgent groups, to fund its nuclear program. Its biggest sales are ballistic missiles to Iran and other Middle Eastern states.
The Bangkok seizure was the second shipment of North Korean arms bound for Iran that has been intercepted in recent weeks.
In August authorities in the United Arab Emirates seized a Bahamian-flagged freighter, the ANL Australia, which was found to be carrying military equipment from North Korea to Iran.
Like the Bangkok shipment, that cargo, which included a large quantity of solid-fuel propellant for missiles, was also listed as drilling equipment.
During the summer the U.S. Navy shadowed a North Korean ship suspected of carrying arms to Myanmar. It was refused entry by several ports and eventually turned back.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute of Sweden, which monitors global arms sales, the Ilyushin seized in Thailand is registered in Georgia to a company called Air West Limited.
It had bought the aircraft from Beibars, a Kazakh company linked to notorious Serbian arms dealer Tomislav Dmanjanovic.
The aircraft had previously been registered with three companies identified by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control as controlled by Viktor Bout, arguably the world's most infamous arms trafficker.
Although the former Soviet air force officer is not believed to have been involved in the arms shipment seized at Bangkok's Don Muang International Airport, there are some curious links to his gunrunning network and the fleet of aircraft he owns.
Bout was arrested in Bangkok in March 2008 in a sting operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on charges of plotting to sell anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons to Colombian rebels listed as terrorists by U.S. authorities.
He was indicted in New York on four charges of terrorism. Last August a Thai court rejected a U.S. extradition request, but Washington is appealing that ruling.
Bout remains behind bars in Bangkok's Klong Prem Central Prison, which is, as fate would have it, where the Ilyushin's crewmen are being held.
 Mainly Christian Ethiopia, which sent its army into Somalia in December 2006 to prop up the TFG, does not want to see an Islamist regime installed in its northern Muslim neighbor. Photo courtesy AFP. Blast kills two at suspected Qaeda camp in south Yemen Al-Maajala (AFP) Dec 21, 2009 - Two people were killed and nine wounded on Monday in two explosions at the site of a suspected Al-Qaeda training camp in southern Yemen which was hit by an air strike last week that also killed 49 civilians. The two explosions went off after a protest by thousands of southern tribesmen demanding an investigation into the attack in the village of al-Maajala, in Abyan province, a local authority official said. Dozens of protesters had visited the site to inspect the aftermath of the raids, when the two explosions took place, the official told AFP requesting anonymity. The source of the explosion was not immediately clear, but the provincial governor was quick to blame the militants. "The Al-Qaeda terrorists mined the ground targeted in Thursday's raid... in the expectation that the security forces would inspect the site as part of their investigation," Ahmed al-Muyasari told the official Saba news agency. He said two of the nine people wounded in the blasts were in a serious condition. Thursday's air raid killed 23 children and 17 women, a local official and tribal sources said. The government said it targeted a suspected Al-Qaeda training camp killing around 30 militants, some of them foreigners. The interior and defence ministers as well as the vice premier for security affairs had been due to appear before parliament on Monday to take questions about the raid but they failed to turn up. |
Mogadishu, Somalia (UPI) Dec 21, 2009
A recent surge of suicide bombings in Somalia underlines the growing influence of al-Qaida in the Horn of Africa as the war-ravaged country's Islamist forces keep up pressure on the U.S.-backed transitional federal government holed up in the capital Mogadishu.
In the worst suicide attack, three government ministers were killed along with 16 other people at a graduation ceremony for medical students at Benadir University held in a Mogadishu hotel on Dec. 3. Two other ministers were wounded.
The attack was a punishing blow to the beleaguered transitional government, whose writ barely covers a few blocks of the city and its airport.
Several weeks earlier two suicide cars bombers attacked the main military base of the African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu, killing 17 soldiers, including their deputy commander.
The bombings underlined the government's weakness and the ease with which the jihadists are able to strike more or less at will. They are spearheaded by the Harakat al-Shebaab al-Mujahedin, universally known as al-Shebaab, or Youth, that is linked to al-Qaida.
The only real obstacle to al-Shebaab overwhelming the TFG is divisions that plague the Islamists.
Al-Shebaab has been locked in a power struggle with its main rival, Hizbul Islam, in the south since May.
Al-Shebaab has been making some gains there against the alliance of clan-based militias. But until it can secure unfettered domination it appears that the TFG, propped up by U.S. arms and money, will be able to hold on even though it has no popular mandate.
"It is likely that President Sharif Ahmed and the TFG are actively supporting the clan-based organizations that make up the various parts of Hizbul Islam in the south," according to Texas-based security consultancy Stratfor.
The TFG, aided by Ethiopia, has another ally in the Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca, a Somali militia backed by Addis Ababa.
Mainly Christian Ethiopia, which sent its army into Somalia in December 2006 to prop up the TFG, does not want to see an Islamist regime installed in its northern Muslim neighbor.
An AU peacekeeping force that deployed when the Ethiopian troops withdrew in 2008 is supposed to bolster the TFG. But the 5,250-strong force is woefully inadequate, poorly trained and under-armed.
It is also widely despised by the inhabitants of Mogadishu, whom its troops regularly slaughter indiscriminately when their bases come under fire from the jihadists.
Many of al-Shebaab's leaders are Somali veterans of the wars in Afghanistan. Their current commander, Ahmed Abdi Godane, aka Abu Zubehr, is believed to have fought the Soviets in the 1980s alongside Osama bin Laden and his Arab jihadists.
He took over the leadership in the fall of 2008 after his predecessor, Aden Hashi Ayro, was killed in a U.S. airstrike on May 1 with another important leader, Sheik Muhyadin Omar.
Ayro, aka Eyrow, is believed to have trained in Afghanistan with al-Qaida and returned to Somalia in 2003.
Another senior commander is Ibrahim Hajji Jaama, known as "al Afghani" because he spent years fighting in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
There are reported to be scores of "foreign fighters" in the ranks of al-Shebaab who have carried with them a radical ideology of global jihad as espoused by Osama bin Laden.
Their influence is spreading among the Islamist forces, changing their outlook from a localized insurgency to a wider battle against the West. The foreign element in the leadership is exercising increasing control over the organization.
"There's a serious struggle within al-Shebaab between nationalists and the foreign jihadis who want to take the fight to another level," says Abdi Rashid, a Somali analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
The Americans are increasingly concerned that the jihadists are extending their influence across the Horn of Africa, infiltrating East Africa and the Red Sea.
The jihadists recently threatened to attack African states that have contributed troops to the peacekeeping force in Somalia.
Al-Qaida's resurgence in Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia, is also causing concern, although the Yemeni government unleashed airstrikes against the jihadists on Dec. 17.
There have been reports that al-Qaida is sending veteran fighters to Yemen and Somalia.
 Iran troops still on Iraqi soil: Iraqi politician Amara, Iraq (AFP) Dec 21, 2009 - Iranian troops remained inside Iraq territory on Monday despite pulling back from an oil well along the two countries' disputed frontier, a local politician told AFP. Oil ministry spokesman Assem Jihad, meanwhile, said the oil well had not yet been developed and that no Iraqis had worked to extract crude from it before Iran took it over last week. "The Iranians withdrew from the well and took down the Iranian flag," Mayssam Lafta, the Maysan provincial council member charged with security and defence, told AFP. "But they are still on Iraqi soil." The well, known as Oil Well 4, is situated in Maysan. According to Lafta, the Iranians are positioned 50 metres (yards) east of the well, while Iraqi forces are "surrounding the well." The oil ministry spokesman said the well had "not been developed" and added that no workers would be going to it because it was not in use. Iraqi officials say the well lies 100 metres (yards) inside Iraqi territory. Iran insists it lies on its side of the border. On Friday, an official of Iraq's state-owned South Oil Company in the Maysan provincial capital Amara said that a dozen Iranian troops and technicians had arrived at the field, taken control of Well 4 and raised the Iranian flag. One SOC employee spoke of how he and his colleagues had faced harassment and intimidation from Iranian forces for several years on visits to the well. "Usually when we have gone there, we have gone as a group, with engineers and technicians," said Hassan Abu Qassim, a 40-year-old SOC technician. "Iranian forces would shout in our direction when we go there, to make us afraid, and warn us not to approach. The last time we went was in the summer, and the Iranians shouted at us and did not want us to go nearby." It was the first serious incident between the two neighbours since the US-led invasion of 2003 toppled now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, which fought a devastating 1980-1988 war against Iran. Many leaders of Shiite parties who were exiled in Iran during the Saddam era are now in power in Baghdad. Well 4 is in the Fauqa Field, part of a cluster of oilfields which Iraq unsuccessfully put up for auction to oil majors in June. The field has estimated reserves of 1.55 million barrels. The tensions between the two oil producing countries come as OPEC readies for a meeting in Angola on Tuesday. |
Washington (AFP) Dec 21, 2009
Diplomacy offers the best way to resolve tensions over Iran's nuclear program but the Pentagon must be ready with military options if needed, the top US military chief said on Monday.
"No resolution is yet in sight, but I fully support the effort to focus on diplomatic solutions to existing tensions" with Iran, Admiral Mike Mullen wrote in a memorandum setting out strategic priorities for the US armed forces in 2010.
"My belief remains that political means are the best tools to attain regional security and that military force will have limited results," said Mullen, chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff.
"However, should the president call for military options, we must have them ready."
The United States and its allies suspect Iran is developing technology to enrich uranium to highly refined levels that would allow it to build a nuclear bomb, a charge Tehran vehemently denies, saying its nuclear program serves peaceful purposes.
With a year-end deadline, President Barack Obama's administration has signaled that time is running out for Iran to seize its offer of diplomatic engagement for resolving nuclear and other issues.
Washington has raised the threat of a fourth round of UN sanctions, but will need to persuade Russia and China to drop their traditional reluctance to consider tougher measures.
earlier related report
Japan voices 'strong
concerns' to Iran's nuclear envoy
Tokyo (AFP) Dec 21, 2009 - Japan's
foreign minister voiced "strong concerns" Monday about Iran's nuclear programme
in talks with Tehran's top nuclear negotiator, warning that it was preventing
broader cooperation.
"There are many fields in which we can cooperate, but the situation surrounding Iran won't easily allow us to go ahead with the cooperation," Katsuya Okada told visiting envoy Saeed Jalili, according to his ministry.
"I have strong concerns over the situation surrounding Iran's nuclear issue," Okada added.
He also urged Iran to accept an offer of dialogue with the United States, the official said.
"You should not miss this chance. If you miss this chance, the American door may be shut, which will make the situation worse," he was quoted as saying.
Japan is one of few major developed nations maintaining warm relations with Iran, in a rare break with the United States, its main ally.
Iran insists that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes and rejects Western suspicions that it is covertly trying to develop a bomb.
At a later press conference, Jalili defended Iran's position and said Iran wanted to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to eradicate nuclear weapons.
When asked about a report that a planeload of weapons from North Korea seized in Bangkok this month was bound for Iran, he said only that Tehran was different from Pyongyang because it allows inspections by UN nuclear experts.
"Our approach toward this issue is completely different from that of North Korea. We seriously oppose massively destructive nuclear weapons," he said.
The Wall Street Journal, quoting a flight plan obtained by researchers, said the plane was due to make refuelling stops in Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates and Ukraine before unloading in Tehran.
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