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Prayer Time (Tehran)
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Dawn: 5:32
Sunrise: 7:02
Noon: 11:56
Evening: 17:11
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Weather Guide
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SUN |
MON |
Tehran: |
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High: |
8 oC |
1 oC |
Low: |
-3 oC |
-3 oC |
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Athens |
17 |
18 |
Ankara |
8 |
11 |
Cairo |
20 |
21 |
Copenhagen |
6 |
6 |
Frankfurt |
8 |
6 |
Karachi |
25 |
26 |
Kuwait City |
18 |
18 |
London |
9 |
8 |
Madrid |
21 |
17 |
Moscow |
1 |
1 |
New Delhi |
25 |
24 |
Paris |
9 |
7 |
Riyadh |
24 |
22 |
Rome |
10 |
12 |
Vienna |
5 |
4 |
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Identification
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Published by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA)
Address:
Iran Cultural & Press Institute, #212 Khorramshahr Avenue Tehran/Iran
Executive Editor:
Editorial Dept. Tel: 88755761-2
Editorial Dept. Fax: 88761869
Advertising Dept. Tel: 88500616,88500617
Internet Address:
www.iran-daily.com
E-mail Address:
iran-daily@iran-daily.com
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Work for Cultural Development
All State Bodies Should Comply
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Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei addresses members of the Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution during a meeting in Tehran, Dec. 8.
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TEHRAN, Dec. 8--Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said the main ideal of the Iranian nation is to have a vibrant, hopeful, justice-seeking and monotheistic society.
Speaking to members of Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution on Saturday, Ayatollah Khamenei noted that culture is the most important parameter that helps achieve the revolution’s noble objectives, IRNA reported.
Noting that insufficient work has been done on cultural engineering, the leader said this issue should be seriously taken into account.
Referring to the deep impact of culture on social affairs, the leader said public culture not only influences individual and social behaviors, but also affects the government’s decision-making process.
“The council’s activities should promote social justice, proper social and individual conduct and people’s religious faith,“ he said.
He pointed out that prerequisites for achieving an idealistic society are rooted in the general objectives of the Muslim and revolutionary Iranian nation.
“We should try to make the prevailing cultural status compatible with idealistic conditions. Problems can then be overcome through proper planning and cultural engineering,“ he said.
Ayatollah Khamenei noted that the council has a sensitive duty and all state institutions should enforce the council’s approvals.
“As the late Imam Khomeini always underlined, the council’s approvals should be implemented by all state organizations,“ he said.
Ayatollah Khamenei urged the council members to interact with the experts of theological schools and universities.
Prior to the leader’s remarks, head of the Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, presented a report on the council’s performance.
The president noted that the council has managed to promote revolutionary literature and the spirit of national solidarity and bravery.
Ahmadinejad said the body has restructured cultural institutions in line with the national programs.
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Persian Gulf States Against War
Bahrain Welcomes Iranian Initiative
MANAMA, Bahrain, Dec. 8--Persian Gulf countries, cautious about the nuclear standoff between the US and Iran, signaled loudly at a regional security conference on Saturday their opposition to any military option against Tehran.
Washington, wrong-footed by the National Intelligence Estimate in its accusations that Iran wanted nuclear weapons, has emphasized that no options have been ruled out in forcing it to end its nuclear enrichment program.
“We want the military factor (of Iran’s nuclear program) to be eliminated,“ Secretary-General of Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) Abdulrahman Al-Attiyah told AFP on Saturday.
“What we care for in the PGCC is finding solutions that enhance security and stability...and believe in dialogue as a way to solve the crisis,“ between the West and Iran, he said.
Persian Gulf countries do not want to see Iran’s
standoff with the West escalating into a military confrontation.
“We are not for the military confrontation option,“ said Attiyah.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani went further, calling on Washington to engage Tehran in dialogue to reach a solution.
“Direct talks do not mean agreeing (from the start) with the other party,“ he told conference delegates on Saturday, among them US Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Gates reiterated Washington’s view that Iran’s foreign policy was a threat to the United States, the Middle East and all countries within range of missiles which he said Tehran was developing.
Qatar, one of the key US allies in the region, hosts the US army’s Central Command which directed the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
But in a surprising move, it invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend a PGCC annual summit on Monday, making him the first Iranian president to take part in a Persian Gulf leaders summit.
“I don’t think we can try to solve our problems through trying to seal Iran (off from) the region. They are a very important player,“ he said defending Qatar’s decision.
He also reiterated that being “pushed into a military confrontation with Iran“ would not be in the interest of the PGCC countries.
Bahrain welcomed an Iranian proposal to step up cooperation with Arab countries of the Persian Gulf and stressed Tehran’s right to develop a peaceful nuclear program.
“We see the presentation of these proposals as a positive development to enhance peace in the region and to ensure stability and security,“ Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa told participants at a regional security conference, AFP reported.
He was referring to proposals made on Monday by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attending a summit of Arab leaders of the Persian Gulf.
Ahmadinejad offered a regional security pact and a 12-point cooperation plan, including on free trade and joint investments in oil and gas during the PGCC summit.
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Protest Lodged Over US Espionage
TEHRAN, Dec. 8--Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the recent US National Intelligence Estimate report has revealed only 70 percent of realities concerning Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities and the rest remains undisclosed.
Mottaki told a meeting on the nuclear issue on Saturday that Tehran has lodged a formal protest over the use of espionage by the US to produce the intelligence report on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, IRNA reported.
The minister noted that the protest was lodged with the Swiss Embassy in Tehran--which looks after US interests in the absence of an American mission--over the NIE report released on Monday.
“The day the report came out, the Foreign Ministry sent a protest note to the Swiss Embassy and demanded an explanation over the espionage,“ he said.
“Some believe we have become happy or look at the issue optimistically, but the fact is that our righteousness has become more and more clear. Today, they have confessed that there has been no diversion in Iran’s nuclear activities.“
Mottaki pointed out that the NIE report was ready in early 2007, but political strife between the supporters and opponents of war delayed its publication.
He said the report was placed at the disposal of US President George W. Bush several months ago, though he claims to have been informed only recently.
Referring to the past US claims that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, he said, “That’s a big lie raised in line with their political goals. We had said in the past that Iran will prove the falsehood of such claims.“
Mottaki said Iran insists on its legitimate nuclear rights and is not pursuing adventure, adding that Iran has a transparent, rational stance vis-ˆ-vis its nuclear program.
Pointing to his informal meetings with ambassadors of European countries in Tehran over the past two days, he said, “I told them that Iran has abided by its commitments since past 200 years, while European governments have repeatedly violated their obligations.“
Mottaki noted that the Europeans’ package of incentives cannot resolve the differences.
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Democrats Demand
Probe Into CIA Tapes
WASHINGTON,
Dec. 8--Top Democratic lawmakers demanded that the US Justice Department investigate whether the CIA broke the law when it destroyed videotapes showing interrogations of terror suspects.
Senator Richard Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking him to determine if CIA officials illegally withheld information about the tapes’ existence, Alalam.ir reported.
“What is at stake here goes to the heart of the rule of law and justice in America,“ Durbin said on the Senate floor.
“If our government can destroy evidence, can misrepresent to our courts whether that evidence ever existed, if it can attempt to cover up wrongdoing, that...goes way beyond the standards of justice and the values of America,“ he said.
Human rights groups also urged a prompt investigation and said the CIA move amounted to destroying evidence of likely torture and abuse.
London-based Amnesty International said in a statement the destruction of the interrogation tapes represented “obstruction of justice and concealment of evidence“.
The American Civil Liberties Union charged the move was “part of an extensive, long-term pattern of misusing executive authority to insulate individuals from criminal prosecution for torture and abuse“.
CIA Chief Michael Hayden acknowledged on Thursday that the agency destroyed in 2005 videotapes of interrogations, which had been conducted three years earlier, to protect the identities of CIA agents.
Senator Carl Levin, an influential Democrat on military affairs, dismissed the CIA’s explanation.
“It’s a pathetic excuse,“ Levin told reporters. “You would have to burn every document in the CIA that has the identity of an agent on it, under that theory.“
“Of course, you’re going to protect the identity of agents,“ he said. “But you can’t destroy documents which are relevant to an investigation in order to protect the identity of agents, or else every document relevant to any investigation would have to be destroyed.“
Noting that he was not aware of the contents of the tapes, Durbin said, “It was clearly something very troubling, or they wouldn’t have been destroyed.“
Senator Ted Kennedy expressed fury at the revelation and accused the US administration of trying to cover up the abuse of detainees.
“Those tapes were not shown to Congress. They were not shown to any court. They were not shown to the bipartisan 9-11 Commission. Instead, they were destroyed,“ Kennedy said.
Senator Richard Durbin demanded that the US Justice Department investigate whether the CIA broke the law when it destroyed the tapes.
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Afghanistan Unable to Confront Rights Violators
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 8--President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday addressing human rights abuses in Afghanistan’s violent past would take years with his government still too weak to take on those behind the continuing atrocities.
The president said he had held back on implementing a three-year peace, reconciliation and justice plan that he signed in 2005 “on purpose“ to prevent any violent backlash from those behind human rights violations in the past, AFP reported.
“There are tyrants in our land,“ Karzai said at a meeting of around 200 rights activists and victims of alleged war crimes in this country’s three decades of conflict.
“They exist in our political circles, but we must move with lots of caution so as not to cause lots of noises and more human rights violations,“ he said at the event to mark the 60th anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Former warlords and other people alleged to be linked to murders, rapes, torture and other atrocities in Afghanistan’s bloody past hold seats in the administration and democratically elected parliament.
Several people at the meeting, including some claiming to be victims of abuse, demanded Karzai explain why these alleged abusers had not been dealt with and the reconciliation plan acted on.
“Because the power to implement it does not exist in the government,“ Karzai responded.
“It will take time. We are better than five, six years ago but to bring an ideal justice would maybe take several years, nine, 10 years,“ said Karzai, who took power six years ago after a US-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime.
The president said rights violations and atrocities were continuing today, with his government unable to confront the culprits.
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Gates Bait
By Armin Hedayati
Iran’s successful diplomacy in the Persian Gulf has once again compelled Bush’s America to use obsolete tactics in trying to assert its unwanted presence in the strategic waterway.
This time it was George Bush’s defense chief who set out to tell the Muslim region tired of US comedies and its dangerous support for Israel’s half-century-old criminality against Arabs that Iran is a “threat to US interests and the Middle East.“
It appears that the tried and tested imperial policy of divide and rule is being revived by the US-led western powers in some ill-planned attempt to get something from nothing.
Speaking at a security conference in Bahrain on Saturday, US defense secretary, Robert Gates charged that even without nuclear weapons Iran is a grave threat to regional security. He begged the Arab regimes to buy new and sophisticated air and missile defense systems from Uncle Sam to counter Iran and its growing political and ideological clout in the Muslim-Arab world.
Gates’ comical stance came a few days after a report by 16 US spy agencies confirmed that the Islamic Republic does not have a nuclear weapons program. The intelligence assessment, arguably one of the most controversial in the history of the “unintelligent“ spy industry, said in simple terms that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
For understandable reasons, Gates and his peers in the embattled Bush regime have decided to up the ante in their rabid hostility against the people of Iran and by extension provoke more tension and instability in the oil-rich region.
Small wonder that Gates had no time to wisely and impartially respond to queries on US double standards on nuclear arms in the volatile region. He also dismissed questioners who insisted to know why Washington does not accept that nuclear-armed Israel that has been killing Arab women and children for half a century, is the real danger.
Gates obviously could not muster enough courage to explain why his country has allowed Israel to spread death and destruction in Arab lands with American weapons.
It seems that only the US and European necons are oblivious to the fact that the usurper state in Tel Aviv is the most dangerous regime in this part of the world akin to its anti-Arab bankroller in the White House.
Gates and the likes can get this pretty unambiguous message if they only gathered the courage to walk the streets of Manama or any other Arab street.
The civilian nature of Iran’s nuclear program has been verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the openly pro-Israel American intelligence agencies.
The latest development has indeed put the Bush company in a new and more embarrassing situation.
In its faulty exercise of damage control, the White House is desperate and wants to blunt public resentment at home by floating the idea that Iran is capable of restarting its alleged nuclear weapons activities at any time.
US attempts to demonize Iran and portray it as a danger is more pronounced, especially among Persian Gulf sheikhdoms after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad participated in the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Qatar last week.
Bush’s anti-Iran rhetoric got new currency after it was known that the littoral Arab states had expressed interest in broadening political and economic ties with Iran as a brotherly Muslim nation keen on building ties to its neighbors in the interest of all the peoples of the region. Tehran has never made a secret of its desire to work with the Arab neighbors and prudently address common interests and interests.
This is while some parties came to underestimate the national will of the Iranian nation and government to boost regional cooperation. They sought to overshadow Ahmadinejad’s security cooperation proposals to the PGCC by raising baseless issues like the UAE’s claims to the three Iranian islands Abu Musa, and the Lesser and Greater Tunbs.
Contemporary wisdom has it that unvarnished understanding among neighbors is always more effective and essential than alien deployment of missile defense shields.
As has been proved time and again for more than three decades, huge Western arms deals or American weapons cannot ensure stability and security in the region.
Governments and statesmen in the region also need to realize that the European model of US missile defense shields is all but dead due to Russia’s strong and probably irreversible opposition. Replacing that part of the globe with the oil-rich Persian Gulf would be another recipe for disaster.
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