Iran Focus

Hundreds of new “judicial police” have begun to roam the streets of Tehran starting from earlier this week, even before Iran’s Majlis (Parliament) approved the dubious judicial-security body that they represent.

The new organ, officially called “Judicial Services Police” (JSP), began monitoring people in the streets of the Iranian capital on Tuesday, arresting those who the judiciary suspected of “illegal activities”.

The JSP was set up by the judiciary in coordination with the State Security Forces (SSF), Iran’s paramilitary police. However, in late 2005 Majlis refused to approve a law granting it authority to carry out its work.

Among senior judicial officials who attended its inauguration at the Imam Khomeini Judicial Centre in the Iranian capital was Tehran’s chief prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi who gained infamy after it was discovered that he may have been personally responsible for the murder of Canadian-Iranian photo-journalist Zahra Kazemi in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison in 2003.

“These people will be based in JSP units in police precincts and are tasked with carrying out the orders issued by judiciary officials”, Mortazavi said.

Other officials at the opening ceremony included the Deputy Judiciary Chief and the Deputy Commander of the SSF.

The JSP is already believed to have some 800 cadre in its command, and security officials claim that the organ will soon widen its sphere of operation to cover the entire nation.

The JSP was originally set up in the early days of the 1979 Islamic Revolution but it was dismantled 10 years later and its forces distributed among the judiciary and the SSF, with officials citing an overlap of its activities and that of Iran’s other security agencies as the reason for its closure.

In recent years, the judiciary under the control of Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi had been pushing hard for it to resurface as a fully-functioning force capable of arresting those on its watch-list and placing them straight into its designated prison cells. It argued that this method would by far lead to the fastest prosecutions and sentences for offenders.

Some analysts say that it is only a matter of time before Shahroudi is replaced as Iran’s Judiciary Chief.

The deployment of the new judicial paramilitary force will likely add to the already repressive atmosphere in the streets of Tehran and may bring about a backlash of social dissent.

Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 31 – Iran’s State Security Forces have dispatched motorbike units in several districts of the Iranian capital in an effort to crack down on social dissent there.

“The police’s priority in carrying out this plan is to deal with public disorder including disturbances on the street and sound pollution”, Colonel Amir-Hossein Kaffash, who heads the SSF in Tehran’s 6th Precinct, recently announced.

The following photos were taken by Iran’s state-run news agencies:

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran vowed defiantly on Thursday not to bow to Western pressure, hours before a U.N. watchdog was expected to report Tehran had failed to meet a deadline to halt work which the West fears could help it build a nuclear bomb.

"They (the West) should know that Iranian nation will not yield to pressure and will not accept any violation of its rights," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech in Iran.

Iran has repeatedly said uranium enrichment, which the United Nations has demanded it stop, is its right and will not be abandoned. Western countries fear Iran's nuclear program is aimed at secretly building nuclear weapons.

"Arrogant powers want to stop our nation's progress ... I am telling them that they are wrong," Ahmadinejad said.

Washington says world powers are poised to begin discussing punitive measures next week against Iran if, as expected, the International Atomic Energy Agency finds Tehran ignored a U.N. Security Council demand to stop enriching uranium by August 31.

As time was running out, Iran vowed never to drop the project and launched one of its key elements, a heavy-water plant. Tehran is also pressing ahead with enriching uranium in small amounts at its pilot centrifuge site, diplomats said.

But Iran's August 22 reply to the powers' offer of incentives not to enrich, saying it could negotiate the scope of its plans, has spurred some U.S. allies in Europe to ask for exploratory talks with Tehran, two Western diplomats said.

"This is to gain more time and postpone the expected sanctions," one said, reflecting underlying European Union preference to find a compromise with Iran rather than isolate one of Europe's biggest oil suppliers.

In a possible nod to EU concerns, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that even if sanctions discussions began, Iran could still opt to halt enrichment work and spur broader negotiations to implement the trade sweeteners package.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana's spokeswoman said he might speak by telephone with Iranian chief negotiator Ali Larijani before the deadline passed, and they could meet afterward, to try to clarify Tehran's response.

The Security Council asked Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the nuclear watchdog IAEA, to spell out on August 31 if Iran had complied with the deadline set in a July 31 resolution.

Washington, Iran's arch-foe, felt the 30-day grace period given to Iran was a fair chance for it to change its mind and if it did not, veto-holding Russia and China could be won over to backing Council sanctions once the deadline expired.

RUSSIA, CHINA STILL OPPOSE SANCTIONS

But Moscow and Beijing, keen to protect heavy energy contracts with Tehran and seeing no imminent threat from its nuclear program, urged a return to diplomacy after Iran's careful response to the incentives package.

Even Washington's staunchest ally Britain has played down U.S. predictions of a swift resort to sanctions in September.

Although Iran must obey the legally-binding Council resolution, "we don't close the door to further talks" after the deadline, a British Foreign Office spokesman said on Wednesday.

Joe Cirincione, global security analyst at the Center for American Progress, said the powers needed to proceed cautiously since no hard proof of atom bombmaking has been found by IAEA investigators in Iran, although many questions persist.

"Most of the evidence points to a program to slowly develop the capability for producing nuclear weapons some time in the future should Iran decide to do so," Cirincione said.

Iran says it is pursuing a peaceful program permitted by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to generate energy and has denounced pressure for an unconditional suspension as illegal.

"Enrichment is clearly the prize of negotiations and Iran clearly does not want to give it up before talks happen," said Trita Parsi, a U.S.-based Iranian author and specialist.

But concerns about Iran's intentions have been fanned by its record of hiding sensitive nuclear work from the IAEA for 18 years, failure to cooperate fully with agency probes and calls for Israel's destruction, Western officials say.

Probe targets since 2003 include plutonium experiments, alleged administrative links between processing of uranium ore, explosives tests and a missile warhead design, and black-market acquisitions of parts for centrifuge enrichment machines.

ElBaradei's report may state that Iran has stonewalled the myriad inquiries to a standstill, one senior diplomat said.

Iran is withholding answers to IAEA questions as bargaining chips for crunch talks with the big powers, diplomats say.

Analysts believe Iran remains 3-10 years away from producing highly-enriched uranium needed for a bomb, assuming it wants to.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday Iran would not yield to Western pressure over its rights, on the day of a U.N. deadline to halt its atomic work.

"They (the West) should know that Iranian nation will not yield to pressure and will not accept any violation of its rights," Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech.

Iran has repeatedly said uranium enrichment, which the United Nations has demanded it stop, is its right and will not be abandoned.

The U.N. Security Council had set an August 31 deadline, demanding Tehran halt uranium enrichment or face possible sanctions.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, will report to the Council on Thursday to certify whether Iran has suspended "all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development."

The world's fourth largest oil exporter insists it wants nuclear technology only to cope with booming electricity demands, but Western nations say the program is a smokescreen for producing atomic weapons.

By Ibon Villelabeitia

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Fed up with car bombs and death threats, Lazem Hamid, an Iraqi doctor from one of Baghdad's most violent neighbourhoods, decided one day to pack his bags and take his family north to Kurdistan.

"I had to leave it all and come here. There was no chance for us in Baghdad. The day we left, our neighbours came out to congratulate us. Life is good here. I have made Kurdish friends," said the 50-year-old microbiology specialist.

Thousands of Arabs like Hamid have arrived among the ethnic Kurds of the soaring northern mountains, fleeing the violence gripping much of Iraq since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in February pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

The trend is a stunning reversal for Iraq's Kurdistan, home mainly to non-Arab Kurds. During the 1980s, tens of thousands of Kurds were killed in the region during Saddam Hussein's military campaign, which emptied entire villages.

In June, Hamid set up a private clinic in Sulaimaniya, in partnership with a cardiologist and an orthopaedics specialist -- both of whom are also from Baghdad, 330 km (205 miles) to the south.

It is not only doctors and academics who have fled north, leaving once-prestigious hospitals and universities in Baghdad without qualified specialists and scholars.

Arab labourers from the Shi'ite south and the Sunni heartland have also sought refuge from the violence. Now, hundreds sleep on cardboard boxes in Sulaimaniya's public parks, scratching out a living in the booming construction sector or working as porters for Kurdish merchants.

There are no official figures for the number of Arabs who have resettled in Kurdistan, but anecdotal evidence suggests it has become a magnet for those who can't afford to go abroad.

PEACE IN THE PARK

Iraq's Kurdistan has been semi-autonomous since a failed uprising against Saddam in 1991 that led the United States and Britain to establish a no-fly zone across the region.

The 2003 fall of Saddam, who is on trial for genocide for the seven-month campaign against the Kurds in 1988, deepened the region's autonomy and its relative calm set it apart even more.

Many of the Arab labourers -- Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims alike -- come from regions where their communities are at each other's throats. More than 3,000 people were killed in sectarian bloodshed in July alone.

But in the crowded parks of Sulaimaniya they seem to live in harmony. They pray together in the old mosque, share meals and sleep on the withered grass, head to toe, their few possessions -- usually spare sandals and an extra shirt -- lying nearby.

"I left my home because I was scared of getting killed. I feel safe here and have a job," said Hassan Ali Mohammed, a Sunni who arrived in June from Baquba, a city north of Baghdad, which has seen some of the worst violence in the country.

Mohammed, who makes $10 (5.3 pounds) a day working as a mason, said Kurds were kind and local police didn't bother them as long as they stayed away from the city's main park, which is across the street from a hotel frequented by foreigners.

"We are all poor in this park, Shi'ites and Sunnis. We get along. We all want to work," said Mohammed Hassad, a Shi'ite from Hilla, south of Baghdad, who arrived in August.

While violence has left much of Iraq's economy in tatters, cities in Kurdistan are prosperous with building cranes popping up and foreign firms looking for bases. Rents have soared, the region offers tax breaks to firms, profits can be transferred out of Kurdistan and foreign companies can own land.

Kurds seem generally happy that their economy is expanding enough to absorb the labour of their Arab neighbours, although many Kurds are also unemployed, especially in the countryside.

But some Arabs complain of feeling unwelcome in the far north and Arab-Kurd struggles for control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk remain a potential flashpoint for conflict.

"THE DOCTOR IS NOT HERE"

According to Iraq's Ministry of Displacement and Migration, about 200,000 people have fled their homes due to sectarian violence since the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February.

But the number of refugees is likely to be far higher because ministry figures do not include those who flee abroad or resettle in other parts of Iraq.

The population shift is consolidating a de facto partition along ethnic and sectarian lines. In religiously mixed Baghdad, officials and residents talk gloomily of the emergence of a Shi'ite-Sunni "Green Line", with the Tigris River as a border.

The drift north is also creating a brain drain.

Iraqis living in Baghdad and in other cities find it increasingly difficult to track down a surgeon or dentist. Many are turned away at emergency rooms with the words: "The doctor is not here. Go to Jordan or Kurdistan to get treated."

In the 1980s, Iraq boasted some of the best doctors in the Arab world and many travelled to Baghdad to be treated.

Hamid, the microbiologist, said he has no plans to return to Baghdad any time soon and that he has even learnt some Kurdish. He said the doctor who replaced him at his Baghdad hospital was kidnapped for a $40,000 ransom.

"I still have a house in Baghdad," he said. "One day I will return. But only when there is security."

(Editing by Clar Ni Chonghaile)

The independent
By Elizabeth Davies

A Kurdish rebel group that claimed responsibility for a string of attacks on Turkish holiday resorts in which three people died and 10 Britons were injured, vowed yesterday to turn Turkey "into hell" as part of their separatist campaign.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) said on its website that it had carried out the attack on the seaside town of Antalya on Monday, the deadliest of a series of blasts that rocked the country over the weekend. Three people were killed and dozens injured when a bomb ripped through a crowded shopping centre in the centre of the resort, tearing façades off buildings in one of Turkey's most popular holiday destinations.

Threatening to damage the country's burgeoning tourist industry, TAK, which has already claimed responsibility for the weekend's other attacks, warned yesterday that "the fear of death will reign everywhere in Turkey" in the aftermath of the co-ordinated blasts.

On Sunday, in Istanbul six were hurt by an explosion in the suburb of Bagcilar. Eight of the Britons injured at Antalya remained in hospital last night, two others having already been flown home.

"We have promised to turn... monstrous Turkey into hell with our warriors who have pledged revenge," the group, believed to be an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said. "Our motto is: 'more actions, bigger blows'."

TAK has claimed to be behind several attacks on so-called "soft" targets in the past year, hitting the tourist industry which has boosted Turkey's economy and solidified its image as a country friendly to the West. Security analysts say the group is made up of dissatisfied former members of the PKK, the banned guerilla group that waged a bloody armed struggle for a Kurdish homeland during the 1980s and 1990s.

As security was stepped up at all major tourist destinations on the coast yesterday, Turkish police said they had launched a hunt for two people suspected of planting the bomb in Antalya. Milliyet newspaper reported that sketches of two men seen fleeing the scene had been circulated, while one suspected PKK member remained in custody after explosives were found in his possession during a raid on Monday.

The man, who was allegedly plotting a fourth major attack on the Aegean port of Izmir, is believed to have entered Turkey from northern Iraq.

An upsurge in attacks in the overwhelmingly Kurdish south-east of Turkey has sparked fears of a return to the violence that gripped the country after the formation of the PKK in 1978, in which more than 300,000 people died. The PKK has come under pressure recently from Ankara, Washington and Brussels to end operations in northern Iraq. But the Kurds demand immunity for their fighters, a condition which Prime Minister Erdogan's government refuses to meet. The flow of PKK guerrillas over the Iraqi border has strained Turkey's relations with the US and Iraq, both of whom it accuses of not doing enough to crack down on the threat. Turkey has warned it has the right under international law to conduct incursions into Iraq if the attacks continue. The US, with more than 130,000 troops mired in conflict in Iraq, fears that such a move would complicate the volatile situation.

Ha'aretz
Yossi Melman

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is urging the United States government to disconnect an Iranian news site from American Internet servers, charging that the site has ties to terrorist organizations. The allegation is based on a report published by Haaretz last month.

According to the Haaretz report, the site, Baztab, published details about a month ago of what it termed "an interrogation" of the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah on July 12. Baztab's report claimed that the soldiers had admitted that Israel planned a military attack on Hezbollah in September or October, and the kidnapping had foiled this plan.

Based on this report and other information published on the site, AIPAC concluded that Baztab, which is supported by an American server, has ties with a terrorist organization. It therefore asked the U.S. Treasury Department to order the site shut down.

iranpressnews

The regime-run web site AFTAB reported that Mohammad Khatami has expressed concerns over the fingerprinting process during in his visit to the United States of America. The report wrote: "This trip to the U.S. may have problematic consequences such as fingerprinting, for him and his delegation. "

Mullah Khatami commented: "Among the 40-50 invitations that I have received, several are in the East, others in the West; in a few cases the invitations in the west were extended by Iranians as well as westerners such as Mr. Kofi Annan. This invitation that was slated for the month of September, was forwarded to the high-ranking officials of the Coalition for the Dialogue Among Civilizations. Based on this I preferred to travel to America earlier, but due to the lack of time, I decided to suffice my trip to the east coast of the US. I have been asked to deliver a speech for members of CAIR, at Harvard University, the greater assembly of churches in Washington D.C. and probably at the University of Virginia and New York University as well."

Mullah Khatami continued: "It should be natural that when going to the United stated that I should be allowed to come and go freely and comfortably. If Americans want to make their usual illusory and deceptive American excuses, I will have to inform our friends in the U.S. that my trip will therefore be cancelled; Myself and those who are with me are heads and shoulders above giving into these types of trepedations. However we will wait; we are not in any hurry to actually go through with this at this juncture.”

The Times

Foreign Editor's Briefing by Bronwen Maddox
August 30, 2006

THE latest terrorist blasts in Turkey are more serious than many in the past because the stakes are now higher.
The Kurdish Freedom Falcons, the offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which claimed responsibility, says that it wants to destroy Turkish tourism. But it might trigger an even more destructive change, driving a wedge between Turkey and its allies in the US, Israel, Nato and Europe.

If you fly north from Baghdad to Turkey, the miles of brown scrubby land end suddenly in the 10,000-foot wall of the Kandil mountains. This is where the territory of Iraqi Kurds meets that of Turkish Kurds. To many there, this should be Kurdistan: a single, undivided country of its own.

For Turkey, the problem is hardly new. Its Kurds, in the southeast, have long felt allegiance to this notional “Kurdistan” rather than to Turkey. The PKK, in spasms of activity, has expressed this violently.

But the latest blasts come at a difficult time in Turkish relations with the rest of the world. Turkey, for so long valued by the West as a secular, Muslim ally, as a member of Nato, as a pioneering Muslim ally of Israel — generally, as a bridge between Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia — is finding the ambivalence a strain. The European Union, which has long assumed that Turks craved membership, has only slowly become alert to the danger that, at some price, they would not — as polls now show.

One test will come later this week, when parliament will vote on the controversial decision by the Prime Minister. Recep Tayyip Erdogan. to deploy peacekeeping troops in Lebanon.

Its passage is all but certain, as the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) dominates parliament. But the prospect has split opinion.

The Justice Minister, Cemil Cicek, has said that “Turkey cannot remain just a spectator, like a country which is distant from events . . . in the Middle East”. Those who want Turkey to the EU also see the deployment as essential.

But others (calling the move “neo-Ottomanist”) find it offensive. Turkey’s President, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, said last week that he did not believe the conditions warranted it.

Sezer’s role is largely ceremonia but he is a leading secular figure and has clashed with the Islamist-leaning Erdogan over several proposed laws. His opposition could still be costly to the Prime Minister.

The move will also show whether the army is wholeheartedly behind the action; plenty of rumblings suggest it is not.

Monday’s blast in Antalya coincided with the swearing-in of the new chief of the armed forces, General Yasar Buyukanit. He has a reputation as a hardline secularist and has said cracking down on the PKK will be a priority.

The US’s appointment of General Joseph Ralston, former Nato supreme commander, as a special envoy on Kurdish terrorism should also help to warm up relations.

The frostiness in US-Turkish relations stems from 2003, when the Turkish parliament refused to allow the US to use Turkey as a base for a northern invasion of Iraq. US commanders have often argued since that much of the insurgency might have been avoided if they had fought their way to Baghdad from the north, through the “Sunni triangle”.

The past three years have not done a lot to repair relations, other than making this single decision seem less crucial, because of the proliferation of troubles in Iraq. Turkey, which feels taken for granted, says the US has paid too little attention to its fears of Kurdish separatism in giving its blessing to Iraqi Kurds’ efforts to run their own territory. Turkey also accuses the PKK of using northern Iraq to mount attacks in the Turkish south east.

The PKK assault this week was carried out in the name of a territorial cause, not a religious one. But even so, they strain Turkey’s already fraught relations with the West.

AP, Tehran, Aug 29 - Iran's hard-line president on Tuesday challenged the authority of the U.N. Security Council as Iran faces a deadline to halt its uranium enrichment or face economic and political sanctions.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said no one can prevent his country from having a peaceful nuclear program and proposed having a televised debate with U.S. President George W. Bush on world issues. «The U.S. and Britain are the source of many tensions.

At the Security Council, where they have to protect security, they enjoy the veto right,» Ahmadinejad said during a press conference. «This (veto right) is the source of problems of the world. ... It is an insult to the dignity, independence, freedom and sovereignty of nations,» he said.

The U.N. Security Council has given Iran until Thursday to suspend a key part of its nuclear program -- the enrichment of uranium, a process that can produce either fuel for a reactor or material for weapons.

But Iran has refused any immediate suspension, calling the deadline illegal. «The use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is the right of the Iranian nation. The Iranian nation has chosen this path. ... No one can prevent it,» Ahmadinejad said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan doesn't have a «special right or advantage,» and Iran won't suspend enrichment even if Annan asks for it during a visit to the Islamic country on Saturday, he said. Iran last week responded to a Western incentives package aimed at getting Tehran to roll back its nuclear program. Iranian officials said the Islamic country did not agree to halt enrichment -- the key demand -- before engaging in further talks.

Ahmadinejad on Tuesday called the response an opportunity for the two sides to resolve the issue. «The opportunity the Iranian nation has given to other countries today is a very exceptional opportunity for a fair resolution of the issue,» Ahmadinejad said.

The U.S. government on Monday reaffirmed its intent to pursue sanctions, but Russia, whose support is the U.N. Security Council is essential, publicly counseled patience with Iran.

Along with purposing a debate with Bush, Ahmadinejad also didn't rule out the possibility of direct talks with the United States.

«When we want to talk with a friendly country, we speak under clear circumstances. And talks with those who every day show an angry face to our nation requires other conditions. If conditions are met, yes,» he said. He did not specify what conditions would be needed to hold talks.

Iran says its nuclear program is intended solely to generate electricity, while the United States and Europe contend it secretly aims to develop weapons.

The Iranian president also said the creation of Israel is a «tale» and called the Jewish state a threat to peace and stability in the Middle East. «The Zionist regime has deprived the Palestinian nation and other nations of the region of a single day of peace. In the past 60 years, it has imposed tens of wars on the Palestinian nation and others,» he said.

On Saturday, Ahmadinejad said Iran was not a threat to any nation, even Israel. But he previously has called for Israel to be «wiped off the map.

By Thomas Grove

ANTALYA, Turkey (Reuters) - A shadowy Kurdish rebel group threatened on Tuesday to turn Turkey "into hell" after a two-day bombing spree which killed three people and wounded dozens of others at popular tourist resorts.

The Kurdish Liberation Hawks (TAK) said it bombed a busy shopping area in the coastal resort Antalya on Monday, killing three people and wounding dozens, including European and Middle Eastern tourists.

The blast followed four bombs on the Mediterranean resort of Marmaris and in Istanbul that wounded 27 people.

"We vow to turn the monstrous TC (Turkish Republic) into hell ... with our warriors who have pledged revenge," TAK said in a statement on its Web site. It was not immediately possible to verify its authenticity.

Police have declined to comment on the group.

TAK, a separatist group linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), has warned tourists to stay out of European Union-aspirant Turkey.

Security has been stepped up at key tourist destinations, and although no major cancellations to Turkey have been reported some tourists and those in the sector were concerned.

Police have launched a hunt for two people suspected of planting the bomb in Antalya, Milliyet newspaper said on Tuesday, although police did not confirm the report.

The government has remained silent and Turkish media have largely ignored the attacks.

Turkish financial markets were unfazed by the attacks.

Eleven people were still being treated in hospital for their injuries, said police spokesman Akif Aktug. None of them were in a critical condition.

Police detained a PKK suspect in the port city of Izmir on Monday and TV footage showed him being led away by police and plastic explosives found in his possession. He was believed to have been planning an attack.

TARGETS TOURISTS

TAK has claimed a series of attacks over the last year in tourist resorts and cities across the country. PKK guerrillas carry out attacks mainly against soldiers in the mountains of southeast Turkey from their bases in northern Iraq.

Tourism is worth an annual $18 billion (9.5 billion pounds) to Turkey and has already been hit in 2006 by other bombings and a bird flu outbreak.

"It's hard to judge whether we will stay. We'll have to see how it turns out. Terror in the world is growing and you feel so small, but there's nothing you can do," said Helen Schneider from Germany holidaying with her family.

The Monday afternoon blast outside a building in the touristic heart of Antalya shattered windows, sent shrapnel flying into people and sparked a fire at a shopping area.

It came less than 24 hours after three bombs in Marmaris wounded 21 people, including 10 Britons, and a device in Istanbul wounded six passers-by.

Security analysts say TAK was set up by former PKK guerrillas dissatisfied with the group's tactics. The Firat News Agency said on Tuesday that the PKK condemned the bombings.

More than 30,000 people have been killed in the separatist conflict since the PKK took up arms in 1984 with the aim of creating a homeland in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.

PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured and convicted for his role in the conflict in 1999 and is currently imprisoned alone on an island south of Istanbul. TAK statements describe Ocalan as their leader.

The United States, the EU and Turkey consider the PKK a terrorist organisation.

"The U.S. Embassy condemns the recent terrorist bombings ... We once again call on the PKK to unconditionally cease its terrorist actions," the embassy said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Emma Ross-Thomas and Daren Butler in Istanbul)

Eight British holidaymakers are today still being treated in hospital after being caught up in a bloody weekend of bombings at Turkish holiday resorts that left three people dead.

A militant Kurdish group claimed responsibility for Sunday night's blast - which injured ten Britons, four seriously - in the popular seaside town of Marmaris, and warned that Turkey was not safe for tourists.

By David Blair
telegraph.co.uk

Police in Iran's capital, Teheran, have stopped almost 64,000 women and warned them against breaching strict Muslim dress codes in the last month alone.

The authorities have chosen the height of summer for a new crackdown to ensure that women cover their heads with veils and their bodies with long, heavy overcoats whenever they can be seen in public.

For years, Iran's police turned a blind eye when young women pushed the boundaries of the rules by wearing the flimsiest of veils, or displaying painted toenails in open sandals. But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's deeply conservative regime is steadily reversing this trend.

Police in Teheran have been given orders to caution any woman they deem to be "badly veiled". Thousands are being stopped every day.

Mohammad Reza Alipour, from the capital's police force, said that 63,963 women had been given a warning in the last month, with some making a "written pledge to dress properly".

Observers say that Mr Ahmadinejad has ordered the new, hardline approach.

"We are certainly seeing a return to behaviour we haven't seen for 10 years," said Hadi Ghaemi, the Iran researcher for Human Rights Watch.

"Generally, the imposition of strict Islamic codes has been increasing under Ahmadinejad." The fate of women who police decide are "badly veiled" depends on the whims of the officers concerned. They may be released with a caution, or taken to a police station and bailed. Those with political connections are usually treated leniently. Others may be detained. "The person could end up in jail depending on their relationship with the authorities," said Mr Ghaemi.

The authorities have also begun confiscating satellite dishes from private apartment blocks, enforcing a ban which was largely ignored for years.

By JEANNINE AVERSA

WASHINGTON -Iran, a primary source of funding for militant group Hezbollah, is a "central banker of terror," a top Treasury Department official said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.

"Iran is like the elephant in the room if you will ... they are the central banker of terror. It is a country that has terrorism as a line-item in its budget," said Stuart Levey, the department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

Levey's comments came as Iran faces a Thursday deadline imposed by the U.N Security Council to suspend a key part of its nuclear program or face political and economic sanctions.

The key part of Iran's nuclear program deals with the enrichment of uranium, a process that can produce either fuel for a reactor or materials for weapons of mass destruction.

Iran last week responded to a package of Western incentives aimed at getting it to roll back its nuclear program. Iranian officials said the Islamic country did not agree to halt enrichment — the key demand — before engaging in further talks. Other details have not been released.

Iran says its nuclear program is intended solely to generate electricity, while the United States and Europe contend it secretly aims to develop nuclear weapons.

Levey said the United States was working not only to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions but to financially clamp down its funding of Hezbollah and its role in the recent bloodshed in Lebanon.

He estimated that Iran was providing Hezbollah with more than $100 million per year in financial support, in addition to the military equipment.

NCRI - The state-run news agency ISNA reported that on Sunday the commander of State Security Forces’ Internal Security Division in Greater Tehran Brig. Gen. Mohammad Alipour announced that in the past month, 64,000 “mal-veiled” women were reprimanded.

Alipour said, “In one month, 63,963 mal-veiled women were either warned or reprimanded, and 1,149 vehicles whose occupants were either mal-veiled or creating noise pollution were confiscated.”

The NCRI’s Women’s Committee Chair Ms. Sarvnaz Chitsaz described these vulgar remarks and the aggression by the regime’s suppressive forces against the country’s women under the pretext of mal-veiling as yet another form of suppression by the regime and an excuse to create fear in society and take control in order to prevent an increase in social protests in which women play a very active role.”

NCRI - The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran reported more than 340 protests, strike, and clashes with suppressive forces took place by people in Iran’s towns and cities during the past month.

These protests which took place in Tehran as well as other cities including Tabriz, Mashhad, Isfahan, Kerman, Bukan, Baneh, Qom, Karaj, Rasht, Shahre-Kord, Qaem-Shahr, Hamedan, Qazvin, Sari and Khoui in many instances led to clashes between people and the suppressive forces.

Workers took part in 165 such protests and students and academics took part in 110 others.

By Hossein Jasseb

TEHRAN (Reuters) -Iran said on Monday a U.S. threat to form an independent coalition to impose sanctions if the U.N. Security Council failed to act over Tehran's nuclear program was an insult to the council's work.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday that the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, had indicated Washington was prepared to act independently with allies to freeze Iranian assets and restrict trade if the council did not.

"These remarks (by Bolton) are an obvious insult to the Security Council," Iranian government Gholamhossein Elham told a weekly news conference.

"These remarks are just bullying and baseless remarks and show that they (the U.S.) are not competent to be a member of the Security Council," he added.

The United States has called for a swift response if Iran does not heed the Security Council's Thursday deadline to halt uranium enrichment.

The LA Times said Washington planned to introduce a resolution imposing penalties soon after the August 31 deadline if Iran's position did not change.

But analysts say divisions, particularly opposition from veto-wielding powers Russia and China, could delay any move.

Iran has so far shown no sign it will halt enrichment, a process which can make fuel for nuclear power plants or material for nuclear bombs. The West accuses Iran of seeking atomic weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

"The Islamic Republic has repeatedly announced that using nuclear weapons is not in our defense policies," Elham said.

SHRUGGING OFF THREATS

Bolton said Washington was working on a parallel diplomatic track outside the United Nations if Russia and China did not accept the resolution, the LA Times reported.

"You don't need Security Council authority to impose sanctions, just as we have," Bolton was quoted as saying.

The United States has had broad restrictions on almost all trade with Iran since 1987.

In response to an offer of incentives made by the United States, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany, diplomats said Iran had hinted it might consider halting enrichment after talks start but not as a precondition, as the offer proposed.

Iran has shrugged off the threat of sanctions, saying such a move would push already high oil prices higher still, hurting economies in industrialized countries more than Iran.

Iran says it will press ahead with its atomic plans which it says are to produce electricity. It inaugurated a heavy-water production unit southwest of the capital on Sunday, which Western diplomats said was not a proliferation threat itself but was part of project that could eventually have military uses.

International crude prices remain in sight of record highs partly because of market fears that supply from Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, could be disrupted if the nuclear dispute escalates.

Iran said it fired a missile on Sunday from a submarine in the Gulf as part of wargames which analysts view as a signal that Iran could disrupt oil shipping in the area if pushed by an escalation in the nuclear standoff.

Revolutionary Guards commander-in-chief Yahya Rahim Safavi also told state TV late on Sunday an un-manned Iranian plane photographed a U.S. aircraft carrier operating in the Gulf earlier this year.

The U.S. Navy denied any such incident. "We have the ability to know. This incident did not take place," a spokesman for the Bahrain-based U.S. Fifth Fleet told Reuters on Monday.

Iran Focus

Twenty four Iranian students were killed on Saturday as their bus overturned on the road from Tehran to the north-eastern city of Mashad, state-run press reported on Sunday.

The head of Iran’s traffic police Brigadier General Mohammad Rouyanian announced in June that the expected death toll from accidents on Iran’s highways for the current year stood at 31,000.

Iran's highways are considered to be among the most dangerous in the world, with some 100,000 road-accident deaths occurring in the last five years, the equivalent of three deaths an hour.

AP

TEHRAN, Iran -Iran on Sunday test-fired a sub-to-surface missile in the Persian Gulf during large-scale military exercises, state-run television reported.

"The army successfully test-fired a top speed long-range sub-to-surface missile off the Persian Gulf," the Army's Navy commander, Gen. Sajjad Kouchaki, said on state television.

A brief video clip showed the missile, fired from a submarine, hitting a target on the surface of the water within less than a mile.

The test came as part of large-scale military exercises under way throughout the country. Iran has routinely held war games over the past two decades to improve its combat readiness and to test equipment including missiles, tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 27 – A man was hanged in public on Saturday in the south-eastern province of Sistan-va-Baluchestan, the official news agency IRNA reported.

The man, identified as Ali-Jan Moradi, was hanged in public in the town of Iran-Shahr.

He was accused of drug smuggling.

Iranian authorities routinely execute dissidents on the bogus charge of drug smuggling.

Sistan-va-Baluchistan Province is home to Baluchis, a predominantly Sunni Muslim ethnic minority.

Iran has witnessed escalating unrest since 2006 in areas populated by Baluchis, who complain of discriminatory and repressive policies by the theocratic regime.

In recent months, Iranian authorities have stepped up executions in the restive province in what many Baluchis believe is a response to a spate of attacks by dissidents on government and security officials.

Telegraph
Harry de Quetteville in Jerusalem

Israel has appointed a top general to oversee a war against Iran, prompting speculation that it is preparing for possible military action against Teheran's nuclear programme.

Maj Gen Elyezer Shkedy, Israel's air force chief, will be overall commander for the "Iran front", according to military sources spoken to by The Sunday Telegraph.

News of the appointment comes just days before a United Nations deadline expires for Iran to give up its nuclear programme, which Western governments fear will be used to produce atomic weapons. Despite Iran's offer last week to engage in "serious talks" on the matter, Israel fears even more than other Western nations that the offer is simply to buy time for Teheran to secure all the technology it needs to build the bomb.

"Israel is becoming extremely concerned now with what they see as Iran's delaying tactics," said the Israeli Iran expert Meir Javedanfar. "They [the planners] think negotiations are going nowhere and Iran is becoming a major danger for Israel.

"Now they are getting ready for living with a nuclear Iran or letting the military take care of it."

The prospect of Israel "living with" a nuclear Iran appears remote. Last week Giora Eiland, Israel's former national security adviser, told reporters that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, would "sacrifice half of Iran for the sake of eliminating Israel".

President Ahmadinejad "has a religious conviction that Israel's demise is essential to the restoration of Muslim glory, that the Zionist thorn in the heart of the Islamic nations must be removed," Mr Eiland said. Gen Shkedy, who was appointed to the role two months ago, will co-ordinate intelligence gathered by Israel's foreign spy agency Mossad and military sources, in order to draw up battle plans. Then, during any war with Iran, he will command the campaign from a "hotseat" in the Israel army's headquarters in Tel Aviv.

"It's natural that Shkedy is nominated to this role, because the air force is Israel's only force that can reach and sustain a military operation against Iran," said Uri Dromi, a former air force colonel and military analyst.

"Everyone is playing with dates and timeframes, but the list of options is becoming shorter," he added. "I think we have one year open [to launch military action]. Israel will have to decide."

Officially, Israel stresses that it does not want to take the lead in tackling Iran, and that a massive campaign of air strikes would be best led by America, which has forces in Iraq that are much closer to Iranian targets.

Gen Shkedy's appointment to the Iran command role was made by Israel's chief of staff Dan Halutz in the run-up to this summer's Lebanon war, but emerged only last week.

Gen Shkedy, 49, is the son of Holocaust survivors and has a picture in his office of an Israeli F15 flying over Aus