Manouchehr Mottaki

Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov

ASHKHABAD, Turkmenistan, Dec. 11--Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov said Iran is a good and wise neighbor, and Ashkhabad has special regard for the country.
In a meeting with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki late Monday, the president said Iran always seeks the progress of its neighbors, IRNA reported.
“Turkmenistan has had its most secure borders with Iran and the country has always had a brotherly stance toward its neighbors,“ he said.
Mottaki expressed Iran’s readiness to expand ties, especially in the sectors of trade and economy, adding that there is a great potential for developing bilateral ties.
The two sides discussed cooperation in the fields of oil and gas, transportation, goods transit and development of railroad and joint construction projects.
Speaking in the meeting of the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy in Central Asia on Monday, Mottaki said Tehran welcomes the revision of policy after Iran got a clean health bill from the International Atomic Energy Agency on November 15.
“The report of the US intelligence organizations revealed many realities. The report may be successful in convincing the parties which, intentionally or unintentionally, denied the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear activities to change their wrong policies,“ he said.
Mpttaki said problems such as terrorism, extremism, drugs and organized crimes are threatening the region, which cannot be uprooted without strong regional and even global cooperation.
He noted that the trans-regional powers’ intervention in different regions worldwide and efforts to deprive countries of their legal rights are among factors escalating tension and insecurity.
The minister said preventive diplomacy can solve global problems through the partnership of all members of the international community.
Mottaki arrived in Ashkhabad on Monday to attend the opening ceremony of the UN regional center.

TEHRAN, Dec. 11--All accusations against former nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian should be reviewed by a new inspector, a judiciary spokesman said on Tuesday.
Alireza Jamshidi said Tehran’s Prosecutor General Saeed Mortazavi has asked the judiciary to appoint a new investigator for Mousavian’s case, Mehr News Agency reported.
Mosavian, a former nuclear negotiator, was accused of transferring intelligence concerning Iran’s nuclear activities to foreigners in the British Embassy. The judiciary announced last week that Mousavian has pleaded not guilty.
The judiciary’s move was criticized by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who called for making talks between Mousavian and the British Embassy public.
Tehran’s Prosecutor General Saeed Mortazavi said the case requires a new trial. Jamshidi said this week Mousavian has not been ’acquitted’.
“I said [last week] that the accused is not guilty. I did not use the word ’acquittal’ about Mousavian,“ Jamshidi said.
He added that Mousavian has neither been acquitted nor sentenced.
“[Tehran’s] Prosecutor [Mortazavi] is entitled to call for reviewing the case,“ he said.
Jamshidi noted that Mortazavi has protested at indictments issued for Mousavian and “therefore the case should be handed to a new investigator“.
He said all accusations against Mousavian should be reevaluated.
Asked about the campaign against corruption, Jamshidi said the three branches of power should elaborate on their performance in this regard, stressing that the judiciary is firm about fighting the corrupt.
ISNA quoted Jamshidi as saying that the judiciary is currently holding up to 24 students in jail.
“Between 20 and 24 students are in jail. They have been arrested over recent months, notably for seeking to disturb the public order,“ Jamshidi told reporters.
His comments came two days after hundreds of people demonstrated at Tehran University.
“Five people were arrested during the latest demonstrations. One student and four non-students were arrested and are accused of disturbing the public order,“ he said.
Jamshidi did not specify the date of their arrests.
Last week, the Intelligence Ministry said it had arrested an unspecified number of people using “fake student cards to hold an illegal demonstration“ at Tehran University.

Kazem Darabi

TEHRAN, Dec. 11--A parliamentarian lauded the Iranian government’s efforts to seek the release of Iranian citizen, Kazem Darabi, from a German prison after 15 years.
Darabi, imprisoned in Germany for his alleged involvement in the Mykonos affair, was released on Monday and arrived in Tehran early Tuesday.
“During a visit to Germany, as a representative of the Iranian people, I discussed the release of this Iranian citizen with Germany’s interior minister,“ Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, told IRNA on Tuesday.
Darabi was arrested for being present at the Mykonos Restaurant in Berlin where three leaders of Iran’s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) were shot dead by gunmen in 1992.
Iran denied responsibility for the killings.
“The court verdict indicates that I am not guilty,“ Darabi told reporters upon his arrival.
He reiterated his innocence and said he would write a book to tell his side of the story.
Darabi arrived in Tehran after German officials said he and his Lebanese accomplice, Abbas Rhayel, were granted early release from their life prison sentences.
“In this book, all the things, all the reasons for my arrest and release...will be published,“ Darabi told reporters at Tehran’s airport, where he was welcomed by his family and a senior Foreign Ministry official.
Darabi, who said the decision to free him showed his innocence, noted that some unnamed German writers had agreed to help with the book, which he said would take about a year to finish. He said it would be published first in German and then in Persian.
He said 15 years of his and his family’s lives had been wasted and that he had “decided to write the entire story...from the beginning to the end“.
The office of Germany’s chief prosecutor decided in October there was no legal reason to delay the release and officials in Berlin said on Monday both were being flown out of the country.

TEHRAN, Dec. 11--Parliamentarians on Tuesday voted against a double urgency bill for allocating funds for importing essential goods by the government.
Majlis rejected the supplementary budget bill for the fiscal year 2007-8 demanding $1.2 billion for importing basic commodities.
Parliamentarians further voted 95-69 against the single urgency of the bill with 18 abstentions, ISNA reported.
The government requested the Majlis to allow further withdrawal from the Oil Stabilization Fund (OSF) to plug its budget deficit.
Mohammad Hassan Hosseini, deputy head of the Presidential Office for strategic planning and supervision of parliamentary affairs, explained that record oil prices as well as appreciation of euros have increased the prices of imported goods.
“This has created problems for the government in supplying essential commodities to the public,“ he said.
Mohammad Hossein Farhangi, a deputy from Tabriz, East Azarbaijan, spoke against the bill, saying that the bill will put extra inflationary pressure on the low-income strata.
Prominent lawmaker, Mohammad Khoshchehreh, earlier criticized parliamentarians for authorizing withdrawals from Oil Stabilization Fund.
Khoshchehreh, a Majlis Economy Commission member, blamed excessive injection of money into the economy, pressure resulting from rising costs and psychological factors for the runaway inflation in the country.
“This is the failure of the Majlis, which readily agrees to every request for taking money out of the OSF and injecting it into the market,“ he said.

TEHRAN, Dec. 11--Talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency entered the second day on Tuesday.
The IAEA team headed by Director for Safeguards Operations Herman Nackartes arrived in Tehran on Sunday, IRNA reported.
The talks began on Monday within the framework of an agreement signed by officials from Iran and the IAEA on August 21. They are focused on the source of contamination at Tehran’s Technical University, the third issue to be examined in the continuing discussions.
Iran’s representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh, told IRNA that talks will continue till Wednesday.
Deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization for international affairs, Mohammad Saeedi, and Soltaniyeh are members of Iranian delegation to the talks.
Iran has in recent months had several rounds of talks with the IAEA officials focusing on outstanding questions over its nuclear program.
The two sides have already held discussions about Iran’s past experiments with plutonium and its use of P1 and P2 centrifuges.
The agency sent written questions to Iran on September 15 about the origin of contamination in the university as well as the nature and names of equipment involved.

TEHRAN, Dec. 11--Smart cards will be issued for drug addicts by 2009.
Brigadier General Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam, commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Police (IRIP), made the remark in a meeting with medical students at the Drug Control Headquarters on Monday, ISNA reported.
“Addicts try to conceal their identity, therefore smart cards, which contain the addicts’ fingerprints, will help police to identify them,“ he said.
Ahmadi-Moqaddam, who also heads the Drug Control Headquarters, stated that the use of traditional drugs has reduced and addicts are turning toward synthetic drugs such as crack, crystal and ecstasy pills.
“The new drugs are more dangerous than the traditional ones,“ he said.
The police chief noted that the number of drug addicts treated by methadone in Iran has increased by 30 percent during the first nine months of the Iranian year (started March 21).
“Iran will rank first in world in terms of methadone therapy for drug addicts by the end of the current Iranian year,“ he said.
Referring to the role of school education in preventing students from using drugs, he said, “Unfortunately, Iranian students are not informed about this issue.“