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Prayer Time (Tehran)
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Dawn: 5:33
Sunrise: 7:03
Noon: 11:57
Evening: 17:11
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Weather Guide
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MON |
TUE |
Tehran: |
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High: |
0 oC |
-2 oC |
Low: |
-4 oC |
-5 oC |
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Athens |
18 |
18 |
Ankara |
11 |
11 |
Cairo |
22 |
22 |
Copenhagen |
5 |
4 |
Frankfurt |
7 |
6 |
Karachi |
27 |
20 |
Kuwait City |
18 |
17 |
London |
7 |
5 |
Madrid |
17 |
16 |
Moscow |
1 |
-4 |
New Delhi |
23 |
23 |
Paris |
8 |
7 |
Riyadh |
22 |
20 |
Rome |
12 |
11 |
Vienna |
4 |
6 |
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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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Increase
In Petrol Quota
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UN Nuclear Team Arrives
TEHRAN, Dec. 9--A delegation from the UN nuclear watchdog arrived in Tehran on Sunday to tackle a new subject in its ongoing talks over Iran’s nuclear program.
Talks will broach the issue of uranium contamination at a technical university in Tehran, the third subject to be examined in the continuing discussions, IRNA reported.
“An IAEA technical delegation arrived in Tehran on Sunday for talks over the source of contamination in a technical college. The talks with the Iranian side will start on Monday,“ the report said.
Iran has in recent months held several rounds of talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to clarify outstanding questions over its nuclear program.
The two sides have already held discussions about Iran’s past experiments with plutonium and its use of uranium-enriching P1 and P2 centrifuges. The source of contamination represents the latest chapter to be opened.
In August, both sides agreed on a timetable for Iran to give more information over various areas of ambiguity in its nuclear program.
The Vienna-based watchdog said in a report last month that Iran had taken important steps in revealing the extent of its nuclear program, but was refusing UN demands to suspend uranium enrichment.
It said it had sent written questions to Iran on September 15 about the origin of contamination, the nature and names of the equipment involved. The IAEA visit comes a week after a US intelligence report said Iran had no nuclear weapons program, contradicting White House accusations that Tehran pursues an atomic weapons drive.
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Ahmadinejad
To Visit Turkey
Gates Allegations Denied
By Mohammad Reza Asgari
TEHRAN, Dec. 9--Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said a visit to Turkey is on the agenda of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the exact date of the trip has not yet been determined.
Speaking in his weekly press conference, Hosseini said Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki will visit Turkmenistan on Monday.
“Mottaki will also pay a visit to Moscow in the next few days,“ he said.
Hosseini denied recent allegations by Robert Gates, saying such remarks constitute “interference in the domestic affairs of regional states“.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates defended Israel’s nuclear program on Saturday, saying the regime did not seek to destroy its neighbors or support terrorism.
Questioned at the Manama security conference whether he thought Israel’s nuclear program posed a threat to the region, Gates said, “No, I do not.“
“Such remarks have targeted regional solidarity,“ Hosseini said.
Asked about the absence of Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the Manama confab, he said, “Mr. Mottaki had planned to attend the conference but he could not participate in the gathering due to his tight schedule in Tehran.“
The spokesman said Tehran is mulling the date and level of the next round of Iran-US talks on Iraq.
“Iran recently received a proposal from Iraqi officials who said the fourth round of Iran-US talks be held in early January,“ he said.
Referring to the latest round of talks between Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, and his EU counterpart, Javier Solana, the spokesman said Iran adopted “principled (nuclear) policies that were stressed in the Jalili-Solana meeting“.
The two met for five hours in London on
December 1.
Commenting on a statement attributed to Jalili that he was not faithful to Larijani’s commitments, Hosseini said, “On the contrary, it was the other side (Solana) who openly expressed disagreements during the London talks to ideas mentioned in previous sessions.“
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Inventor Wins Top German Award
TEHRAN, Dec. 9--An Iranian inventor of radiation therapy equipment for assisting cancer treatment won the gold medal of the International Nuremburg Inventions Exhibition.
Mojtaba Navabpour, a PhD holder in physics and medical engineering, told reporters that inventors from 34 countries (24 developed and 10 developing countries) showcased their inventions in different scientific fields in the German exhibition held in early November, IRNA reported.
Navabpour’s invention ranked first from among 774 inventions related to medical technology. He had made the equipment in 1999 on a trial basis and an upgraded model with greater efficiency was made after it was tested on cancerous cells.
“Making the equipment is not difficult and its importance lies in its physical mechanism and secondary radiation,“ he said.
Navabpour noted that the main problem with cancer treatment is that cancerous cells may reappear again after a phase of treatment.
“In all chemotherapy, surgery and radiation therapy, the same problem exists because treatment is not final,“ he said.
Navabpour pointed out that sufficient radiation usually does not reach the diseased cells but if excessive radiation is emitted, the healthy cells will also be destroyed.
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Sharif Opts for Poll
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 9--Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif now wants his party to take part in a January general election after failing to clinch a boycott pact with his rival Benazir Bhutto, party aides said on Sunday.
Sharif had hoped that fellow opposition leader Bhutto would join an alliance of parties seeking to isolate President Pervez Musharraf in protest at his declaration of emergency rule, but now feels he has no choice but to participate, Reuters reported.
“After failing to get (Bhutto’s) Pakistan People’s Party on board, he does not want the field to remain open for all Musharraf’s loyalists and he wants to turn the election into a referendum,“ said Ahsan Iqbal, spokesman for Sharif’s faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N).
“His recommendation is that after failing to have People’s Party on board, he is in favor of taking part,“ he added, before a meeting of a cluster of parties with whom Sharif had sought to build a boycott consensus.
He said Sharif wanted the vote to be a referendum on reinstating judges Musharraf deposed on November3 to fend off challenges to his reelection while still army chief.
“We should ask people to vote for us if they want restoration of the judiciary, so that we can block their attempt to legitimize the November 3 action through parliament,“ Iqbal said.
Sharif and Bhutto failed to agree on whether to insist that the judges Musharraf sacked be restored to their positions before the election, and on whether to issue a deadline for other demands they did agree on.
Sharif, who is calling for the judges--including several deposed Supreme Court judges still under house arrest--to be reinstated prior to the election, has been barred from running because of past criminal convictions he says were politically motivated.
Bhutto has filed her nomination papers for the election, arguing a boycott would leave the field open for a walkover by Musharraf’s allies and says she reserves the right to protest after the vote if she deems it was rigged.
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Iraqi Police Chief Killed
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 9--A roadside bomb struck a convoy carrying the police chief of a predominantly Shiite province south of Baghdad on Sunday, killing him and two of his bodyguards, authorities said.
The explosion in Babil province’s capital of Hillah, about 60 miles from Baghdad, was the latest in a series of assassinations against provincial leaders in the mainly Shiite region south of the capital as militias and other factions battle for control of the area with an eye toward the eventual withdrawal of US-led forces, AP reported.
Local authorities acknowledged militia fighters could be behind the attack that killed Brig. Gen. Qais Al-Maamouri and two guards, but said the primary suspect was Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which maintains a strong presence in the northern half of the province that includes towns in the so-called “triangle of death“ south of the capital.
Maamouri was politically independent and had a reputation for leading crackdowns against militia fighters. He is thought to have resisted pressure from religious and political groups to release favored members from detention.
The head of the provincial council’s security committee, Hassan Watwet, said an investigation into Sunday’s assassination was underway.
“The primary suspect is Al-Qaeda, but we do not rule out the second suspect, the militias,“ Watwet said. “This criminal act reflects the deep bitterness inside the terrorist groups who failed to destabilize the security of Babil province due to the great work of the late police chief.“
Police slapped an indefinite curfew on Hillah, where streets quickly emptied of residents amid fears of arrests and clashes in the wake of the killings.
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Turkish Law to Encourage PKK Defections
ISTANBUL, Turkey, Dec. 9--Turkey’s government is considering a new law to encourage members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to leave the separatist guerrilla group, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying on Sunday.
Ankara blames the PKK for almost 40,000 deaths since the start of its campaign in 1984 and in recent months has massed tens of thousands of troops in the southeast for possible cross-border strikes against rebels based in northern Iraq, Reuters reported.
Turkish law already allows members of the PKK who have not been involved in attacks to avoid punishment, but only if they hand themselves in and inform on the group.
“Now we can develop it further. Before we passed a law but the number of people who benefited from it was not to the degree that we wanted,“ Erdogan was quoted as saying by top-selling daily Hurriyet. Other newspapers also carried the report.
“With a new initiative we can minimize the number of people going up into the mountains (joining the PKK), we can eradicate that. Then we can encourage people to come down from the mountains,“ he said.
Erdogan pointed out that the government was working on the plan with the powerful armed forces and said it would not negotiate with the PKK. He did not give details.
“We’re not negotiating with anyone. We will say ’this is the law, come hand yourself in’,“ he said.
Ankara, like the United States and European Union, considers the PKK a terrorist organization.
Erdogan’s AK Party, which has invested heavily in development in the impoverished, mainly Kurdish southeast, made sweeping gains in the region in July’s parliamentary election, taking support away from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party.
But elsewhere in Turkey, an escalation of guerrilla violence in recent months has stirred nationalist sentiment and Erdogan could face fierce opposition to any initiative perceived as an amnesty.
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Bosnian Serbs Vote
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dec. 9--Voters in the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska went to the polls on Sunday to choose a new president, as the country takes initial steps towards European integration.
Ten candidates are vying to succeed Milan Jelic, the late leader of Republika Srpska, which along with the Muslim-Croat Federation has made up Bosnia-Herzegovina since the end of the 1992-95 war, AFP reported.
The election comes five days after the Balkan country took its first step towards eventually joining the European Union by initialing a Stabilization and Association Agreement with Brussels.
Rajko Kuzmanovic of the ruling Union of Independent Social-Democrats (SNSD) is seen as the most likely candidate to replace Jelic, who died of a heart attack on September 30, less than a year after being elected.
Although no opinion polls were published ahead of the vote, Kuzmanovic has a big advantage over other candidates as his party enjoys by far the strongest support.
A recent survey by the United Nations Development Programme showed the SNSD was backed by 45.9 percent of Bosnian Serb voters, way ahead of the nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS) with 10.4 percent.
Despite Republika Srpska’s willingness to join the EU, preserving the Bosnian Serb entity’s institutions dominated the electoral campaign.
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Destroying Evidence
By Amir Ali Abolfath
Scandals, corruption, lies, fraud, deceptionsÉhave indeed become near permanent fixtures of the rapidly sinking Bush administration that is doing terrible harm to the once mighty superpower and its already dented image in the global court of world pubic opinion.
After a long chain of scandals, namely Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Blackwater, phone tapping, ghost flights, secret prisons, renditions, successive departure of top Bush aides disgraced in office or unwilling to serve the neocon war president, blowing the cover of a CIA agent to avenge her husband’s opposition to the Iraq warÉnow is the turn of the of the intentional destruction of CIA videotapes showing torture of prisoners in US prisons.
After recent Congressional and other protests over the undoing of torture videotapes took on larger proportions, the US Department of Justice and the CIA called for fresh investigations into the scandal.
What led the top spy agency’s top cadres to take the seemingly unprecedented action to destroy key evidence of wrongdoing will be looked into by the joint investigation.
For now the reports have it that the CIA has destroyed at least two important tapes. CIA boss Michael Hayden has claimed that getting rid of the torture tapes was necessary to protect the safety of the torturers!
But Congressmen believe the main motive was to deceive the lawmakers and finish off anything that could bring the spies to task and expose the already humiliated spy apparatus of the United States under George Bush.
After September 11, 2001, the issue of interrogating terror suspects and torturing prisoners to break their resistance or extract (under duress) confessions has become a major controversy with equally disturbing legal and judicial consequences in that country.
Bush and his minions shockingly argue that torture can, is and should be permitted to avoid the horrors similar to 9/11. It is for this reason that Washington has issued “instructions“ on how to make the detainees talk, many of whom are in the CIA dungeons for more than six years without even knowing their crime or why they are under such degrading conditions.
What transpired in Abu Ghraib prison and the US-run Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is an open secret. Many US watchers believe the destruction of torture documents showing grave and rampant human rights violations in the US military prisons was designed to help avoid new political scandals and legal problems for the embattled regime.
It is worthy of mention that destruction of important government records or incriminating material is not limited to the latest torture tapes, nor will this be the last time such irresponsible action of US ruling elites is being exposed. At least in one known instance in the not too distant past, five million emails of the White House were destroyed by design and direction of higher ups.
The torture tape scandal and insistence of relevant executive officials in backing the illegal actions has infuriated Congressional leaders some of whom want to get to the bottom of the issue.
It needs recalling that almost 35 years ago a similar incident, destroying audiotapes related to illegal phone tapping of the US Democratic Party in Watergate Hotel resulted in resignation of former US President Richard Nixon--reportedly one of the most popular and powerful leaders in American history.
No doubt times and ethics have changed and the prevailing political climate in America is poles apart from the time of the Watergate Scandal. But the opposition Democrats will certainly try to draw political capital from the videotape scandal in the upcoming presidential elections.
How the upcoming investigations into the new scandal proceed will add fuel to the hot political rivalry in Washington and the rush to rule in the White House after Bush’s long-awaited departure.
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