TEHERAN - A young man convicted of child rape has been publicly hanged in Iran’s central clerical capital of Qom, the Jomhouri Eslami newspaper reported Tuesday.

Mohammad Sadeghi, 26, was hanged on Monday, the report said, adding that he was sentenced to eight years in jail for kidnapping as well as receiving the death sentence for rape.

The hanging brings to at least 30 the number of executions in Iran this year. At least 154 people were executed in 2006, according to an AFP tally based on press and witness reports.

Capital offences in the Islamic republic include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, repeated sodomy, adultery or prostitution, treason and espionage.

Source:khaleej times online

The Guardian
Robert Tait in Tehran and Ian Black

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came under fire from domestic critics yesterday for his uncompromising stance on the nuclear issue as the US and Britain launched a new diplomatic effort to agree harsher UN sanctions they hope will force Tehran to halt uranium enrichment.

Mohammad Atrianfar, a respected political commentator, accused the president of using "the language of the bazaar" and said his comments had made it harder for Ali Larijani, the country's top nuclear negotiator, to reach a compromise with European diplomats.

The president made global headlines at the weekend by declaring that his country's quest for nuclear energy was an unstoppable train, adding to the sense of crisis as emergency talks got under way in London yesterday.
Critics from across the Iranian political spectrum took him to task for his "no brakes or reverse gear" remarks, bolstering claims in the west that his hardline position may be starting to backfire.

"This rhetoric is not suitable for a president and has no place in diplomatic circles," said Mr Atrianfar, a confidant of Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential regime insider and rival of Mr Ahmadinejad. "It is the language people in the bazaar and alleyways use to address the simplest issues of life."

Fayaz Zahed, leader of the pro-reform Islamic Iran Solidarity party, criticised the president for seeking to emulate the populist Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, rather than internationally revered leaders such as Nelson Mandela or Vaclav Havel.

"The brake exists to get the train safely to its destination," Mr Zahed wrote in the newspaper Etemad-e Melli. "Perhaps on the journey, we might find the track broken and are obliged to move our passengers by using the reverse gear to get to a safer track. Iran is a nation of earthquakes, flood and national disasters! You are our head. We should be able to trust you."

Even the fundamentalist newspaper Resalat, usually a supporter of Mr Ahmadinejad, was critical. "Neither weakness nor inexperience and unnecessary rhetorical aggression is acceptable in our foreign policy," it said.

In London, the Foreign Office's political director, John Sawers, was talking to colleagues from the US, France, Russia, China - the other four permanent members of the UN security council - and Germany, holder of the EU's rotating presidency. The meeting was described as "a productive first session" by the Foreign Office.

The US and Britain are pushing for tougher financial and trade sanctions on Iran but will have to work hard to overcome objections from Russia and China before they can be codified into a new UN resolution.

The US representative, Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state, has been stressing Washington's commitment to diplomacy to resolve the crisis, in contrast to the continuing refusal of the White House to rule out military action.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, underlined Moscow's unease when he criticised the US for talk of using force.

"Forecasts and suggestions about a strike on Iran have become more frequent and this is worrying," he was quoted as telling President Vladimir Putin.

A UN resolution in December barred the transfer of technology and know-how to Iran's nuclear and missile programme. New measures could include travel bans and asset freezes on individuals and organisations involved in them. Trade sanctions, including a ban on EU export credits, would be harder to agree.

The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said Iran was treading a "dangerous route" but the west still wanted to negotiate. "The steps that we have taken are reversible. There is nothing that we would like better than to be able to reverse them and no longer to have to continue with sanctions," she said in Islamabad.

Iranvajahan.net

TEHRAN - A thief convicted of multiple robberies had four fingers amputated in public in west Iran today, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The 46-year-old, named as F Hosseini, had committed 22 offences, mostly involving opening safes, a judicial official in the western city of Kermanshah said.

Under Iran's Islamic law, repeat offenders face amputation of their fingers for theft, but sentences are seldom carried out, especially in public. In recent years, such sentences have rarely been reported.

The United Nations and rights activists have in the past criticised Iran for such amputations. Iran dismisses the criticism, saying the sentences are part of Islamic sharia law.

Source:nzherald and REUTERS

ANKARA— The president of Iraqi Kurdistan called on Turkey for face-to-face talks to end high-running tensions over Turkish Kurd rebels based in his autonomous region in northern Iraq, in a television interview broadcast here yesterday.

His appeal coincides with remarks by Turkish officials that they are ready to meet Iraqi Kurdish leaders to discuss the problem, contrary to earlier threats by Ankara of a cross-border military operation to crack down on the rebels.

“Dialogue is the best way to resolve problems and misunderstandings,” Massud Barzani told Turkey’s NTV news channel. “We must talk face to face to understand each other’s position. This will be followed by (discussions on) what should be done and necessary actions. “We are extending to Turkey a hand of friendship. We will be pleased if Turkey responds in kind,” he said.

Meanwhile, a Turkish court sentenced the leader and deputy leader of a mainly Kurdish party to 18 months each in prison yesterday for using the Kurdish language in political leaflets and praising a jailed Kurdish rebel chief.

Use of the Kurdish language remains a sensitive issue in Turkey, despite a batch of European Union-backed reforms easing some restrictions on broadcasting and education, and it cannot be used at rallies or for other political purposes.

Source:arab news

By Vincent Boland

FT-The head of Turkey's armed forces used a visit to the US this month to fire a warning shot across the bows of his political masters at home.

Turkey was facing more threats to its national security than at any time in its modern history, General Yashar Buyukanit said, but its "dynamic forces" - its soldiers - would prevent any attempt to "break up the country".

Within days, the government in Ankara dropped a tentative plan to open official lines of communication with the civilian Kurdish leadership in northern Iraq - a controversial initiative but one that many countries are urging.

The government's acquiescence on an important foreign policy issue represents a decisive victory for military over political thinking. It also highlighted the continued influence of the military a decade after the generals ousted an Islamist government without firing a shot - an event that has become known as the "post-modern coup".

Despite legal and constitutional changes in the past four years to reduce their visibility in public life, to give civilian leaders a bigger say in matters of national security and to make the armed forces more accountable to parliament, the Turkish general staff can still influence and change government policy in a way that would be impossible in other European countries.

Cengiz Aktar, a professor at Bahcesehir University, says Gen Buyukanit's Washington speech was meant to send a signal to the end-of-term government and the nation at large that the military retained a pre-eminent role on national issues such as the threat of separatism. "If there was the slightest will on the part of the political leadership of Turkey to talk to the Kurdish leaders in Iraq, that will has now gone," he says.

Turkey has a history of military interference in its political affairs It is one of the legacies that most compromises its attempt to join the European Union.

In addition to the February 1997 coup there have been three coups d'état since 1960, complete with tanks on the streets, mass arrests, new constitutions and generals in uniform assuming top political positions. These interventions were sometimes welcomed by Turks, who regard the military as the country's most trustworthy institution.

Reforms to the status of a status-obsessed military since 2002 were accepted by the general staff because they were necessary to secure the opening of EU entry talks. Now, some observers say, Gen Buyukanit is testing the revised constitutional arrangements to see where the new border between the politicians and the military in Turkey lies.

"It's his attempt to understand the new parameters," says Omer Faruk Genckaya, an associate professor of political science at Bilkent University.

In particular, some observers say, the generals are worried that the constitutional changes have weakened the national security council - which was once dominated by the military and is now run by a civilian - without strengthening the political or civilian alternatives. This, they believe, has occurred at a time when Turkey's neighbourhood - it shares a border with Iraq, Iran, Syria, Georgia and Armenia - is going through profound upheaval.

Omer Taspinar, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says Gen Buyukanit's prominence in recent weeks reflect the weakness of politicians as much as the new-found confidence of the military. "In the political vacuum created by inept politicians, both in power and in opposition, the general staff is once again filling a void and increasingly becoming a barometer of Turkey's stance," he wrote last week.

Gen Buyukanit has clashed with the government before, on issues from internal security to Cyprus. He seems certain to do so again in the run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections this year - as long as he feels the military is a better judge of the public mood than politicians. "Until politicians become more honest about the problems Turkey is facing, the military will always see a role for itself in society," Prof Genckaya says.

Source:kurdish info

By Ali Ezzatyar
KurdishMedia.com

Introduction

Fate has indeed dealt an interesting hand to the Kurds. Upon the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurds, a distinct cultural and linguistic minority, were guaranteed a state of their own per the Treaty of Sevres.[1] In the end, while dozens of independent nation-states were realized among the Arab population alone, the Kurds today remain the largest ethnic group in the world without their own state. Situated within the borders of modern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, “Kurdistan” holds the dubious distinction of being under the jurisdiction of some of the world’s grossest human rights violators.[2] Countless movements for political, economic and social rights, as well as autonomy and independence movements have been waged in the wake of this colonial failure.

Read more

Diabetic Patient Protests Hospital Fee

Kurdish News Human Rights Watch

Bokan- One woodcrafter afflicted with diabetes, Sharoq Khudadadi, protested against the government hospital, which wanted a large fee from him to treat his illness. Mr. Khudadadi cut his legs with a hacksaw in protest. The locals took him to the hospital in Orumia, where he underwent an amputation.

Government Employee Attempts Suicide Over Wages

Bokan- An employee of a curtain factory (government company), Anwar Rashidi, protested to the governor that his pay was inadequate and then proceeded to the employee’s mosque, where he fasted for a time and then attempted suicide. He was brought to the Orumia hospital, where he is still being treated.

Authors Summoned To Court

Tehran- Tonya Kabudvand, a Women’s Rights author, and Kawa Husseinpana, an Economics author, both for Payami Mardom, have been summoned to court for “crimes against God” or disbelief. Their paper was forcibly shut down by the Iranian Islamic Regime. They have been summoned for the third of Ordibahasht (Iranian calendar) in 1386 (next year) to Court Office 1.

One Year Sentence Given to Political Prisoners

Bana- Hemen Kiya, eighteen, was detained one month ago and is still jailed for openly criticizing the Iranian regime. He is now sentenced to one year in prison, after spending two years in prison previously. He was free on bond when he was again detained. Siyawush Khandani has been also sentenced to a year in prison for political activities.

Political Prisoner Sentenced

Bokan- Fatah Husseini, a political activist from Bokan, was detained ten months in Sardasht and imprisoned. He recently received a three year and three month sentence for assisting a political party. He spent the first two months of his detainment in Nagada Jail before being transferred to Bokan.

Cloth Merchants Arrested For Selling Goods Independently of the Islamic Regime

Sardasht- Police in Sardasht have detained eight local cloth merchants for selling without a license close to the Iraqi border. Only six of these eight are known, their names are: Khabat Salahi, Bahaldin Derwishi, Tahir Ahmedi, Ali Barjui, Mohamad Mezamahmoodi, and Kamran Salahi.

Three Year Sentence For Kameyaran Citizen

Kameyaran- Mikail Ghulami has been sentenced by an Islamic court to three years in prison for his political activities. He had already been detained in jail for four months upon receiving the sentence.

Father of Protestor Imprisoned In Lieu of Son

Mahabad- Said Ibrahim Burwundi, father of a political protestor, has been detained by the Iranian Islamic Regime because the regime has been unable to capture his son, Jalal, age twenty-five, who has left the area. Mr. Burwundi was detained by agents of Police Station 13 a few days ago. He is aged and ill, in terrible pain. Jalal Burwundi’s wife and children also fled the city.

Journalists Threatened and Summoned by Itlaad

Sanandaj- Three representatives of a Kurdish Journalist’s Organization, Peyman Yaryan, Leila Madini, Mohamad Ali Tofiqi have been contacted by the Itlaad (Iranian FBI). They have been threatened by phone if they do not meet with the Itlaad’s demands. Each of these three are journalists for newspapers.

Two Sentenced For Free Speech

Mahabad- Maryam Ghazi and Mustafa Ghazi have been summoned to court for speaking out openly against the Iranian Islamic Regime. Maryam Ghazi was sentenced to five years imprisonment while Mustafa Ghazi received a two year sentence.

Educators Experience Mass Layoffs in Kurdistan of Iran

Tehran- More than 1,500 teachers and professors have been laid off by the Iranian regime inside Kurdistan. 334 from Sanandaj, 281 from Meriwan, 230 from Bana, 244 from Saghaz, 116 from Kamyaran, 119 from Diwandarrah, 176 from Karway, and 10 from Bijar on religious grounds. These educators have written an open letter to the Iranian regime declaring that they are educators from Kurdistan that protested the Shah in 1978 and thus assisted the establishment of the Iranian Islamic Regime. They stated that in 1980 the Islamic regime took the freedoms and rights from the people and it was not what had been promised. The educators in Kurdistan request that all international educational organizations and human rights organizations speak up and protest this injustice.

Suicide Attempts in Iran

Tehran- Layla M., a sixteen year old from Alidurrah has hung herself. Farida Z., a thirty-four year old from Saghaz has attempted a self-immolation and is currently hospitalized with burns on seventy-five percent of her body. Both suicide attempts were due to family issues.

Six Political Activists Receive Bonds or Sentencing

Bana- Hossein Dolatti, Ibrahim Shuryani, Rebwar Anwari, Abdulwahid Karimi, Hiwa Dolatti, and Azad Muruti, were detained and imprisoned one month ago for political reasons. Mr. Shuryani and Mr. Hossein Dolatti have both been sentenced to one year in prison, Mr. Anwari and Mr. Karimi have been released on an eighty million temen (Iranian currency) bond. Mr. Muruti and Mr. Hiwa Dolatti have been temporarily released on bond until they are recalled to court.

Man Detainment Without Charges

Sanandaj- Qumars Mohamadi, also known as Qumars Shayani, was detained by agents of the Iranian regime on this past Monday. He was taken from his house to an undisclosed location. No reasons have been given for his detainment.

The Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan – European Office Announces:

Tehran- The European branch of the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan has issued an announcement regarding Mohamad Sadiq Kabudvand, the Head of The Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan, and also two journalists: Ajlal Kuami, and Aso Salah. Their lives have recently been threatened. We ask that the world and the world human rights organizations keep their attention on these three individuals to help guarantee their safety.

Sanandaj Man Disappears

Sanandaj- Ali Surabi received a phoned summons to attend court and is now missing. The speculation is that he has been secretly jailed. His family is anxiously awaiting his return or news regarding his whereabouts.

Detainments in Meriwan

Meriwan- Adnan Hasanpour, a journalist was detained fourteen days ago and it is unknown if he will be released. His family requested information from both the Meriwan and Sanandaj police stations, but received no answers. Hewa Boutimar was detained a month ago, and charges still have not been filed against him. The reasons for the arrest are unknown.

Student Forcibly Relocated As Punishment for Political Activities

Sanandaj- Soran Husseini, a student, has been forcibly relocated another city due to his participation in political protests. Mr. Husseini was the chief editor of Hawre, a weekly magazine. He is relocated for the duration of two semesters.

The Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan Announces

As was previously announced the 28th, 29th, and 30th of January were days of protests against the Iranian Islamic Regime in honor of the National Holiday of Kurdistan. The turnout for the protests was impressive, with many labourers, students, women, political activists and sympathizers attending. Some rumors were spread regarding the protests, that the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan was a religious organization working with the Iranian Regime. We wish to refute these rumors that were spread by ignorance. The Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan is the largest human rights organization run by the Kurdish for the benefit of Kurdistan. This organization wishes to make clear that it is NOT a political organization, and NOT a religious organization, but a human rights organization only. We are not licensed by the Iranian government. We are not dependant on the Iranian Regime, nor are we in want or need of its support, as we are entirely a self-made and self-run organization.

Shirko Jahani Released!

Mahabad- Shirko Jahani, a representative of the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan was released on bond this past Saturday after three months imprisonment.

Fasting Brings Hopeful Results

Bokan- Simko Kaderpour fasted successfully in protest of his sentence for eleven days, after which the court agreed to reopen his case and re-examine the charges. Mr. Kaderpour had been imprisoned for the past three years for participation in Kurdish political activities. The court had previously sentenced him to a total of eleven years before it agreed to reopen the case.

Mahabadi Resident Confined to City

Mahabad- Ibrahim Baizidi was summoned to court by the Itlaad (Iranian FBI) and told he was on city arrest and would not be allowed to step outside of Mahabad. He was imprisoned for political activities before being placed on city arrest.

Death Sentence for Drug Smuggling

Sanandaj- Kaywan Ahmedi, eighteen, and Abdullah Amiri, twenty-four, were detained in Mahabad a year ago. At their last hearing they were sentenced to death for smuggling drugs from Sanandaj to Mahabad. The Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan does not condone the sale or use of illegal substances, but also does not condone executions. We want the Iranian Islamic Regime to cease its executions.

Man Executed Without Charges or Trial

Shukrola Ayuzi, a Kurdish farmer from Sherkesh Village outside of Bijar, was sentenced and executed a few days ago for murder. Mr. Ayuzi was not charged or tried, and was not even informed of the reason for his detainment and sentencing until the moment of sentencing. He immediately protested the sentence and proclaimed his innocence, to no avail. The Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan is sorrowed at this execution and protests the method of sentencing and the lack of charges or trial for Mr. Ayuzi. We want the Iranian Islamic Regime to cease its executions.

Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan

London (KurdishMedia.com) 26 January 2007: The president of Kurdistan, Massuad Barzani, stated that the Kurdistan government would not allow any country to attack the PKK fighters stationed in southern Kurdistan. Barzani’s response came, last Saturday, when was questioned by the journalists in the Kurdish city of Sulemani in a press conference, in which the US ambassador and Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi President, were present.

About 5000 PKK fighters are stationed in Qendil mount in southern Kurdistan. Turkish authorities claim that the PKK are a threat to the Turkish national security.

The Times
Tom Baldwin in Washington and Michael Theodoulou in Nicosia

Diplomats embark on a fresh round of talks today aimed at halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which the country’s president described yesterday as “like a train which has no brake and no reverse gear”. Measures being discussed include imposing travel bans on a dozen named Iranians involved in the nuclear programme and tighter restrictions on the trade of arms and technology, as well as an attempt to block investment and export credits.

But officials meeting in London from the five permanent United Nations Security Council members, Britain, the United States, France, China and Russia — plus Germany, acknowledge that it could take weeks to reach agreement on a new resolution.

A previous resolution in December imposing limited sanctions on Iran took months to work its way through the Security Council because of objections from Russia and China, which have close links with the Islamic Republic.

The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), last week reported that the sanctions appeared to have had little effect on Iran, which insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes. Not only had the country failed to cease uranium enrichment activities, but had expanded them. America believes that the programme is a cover for nuclear weapons. But diplomats at the IAEA have, according to reports yesterday, said that intelligence information provided by the US — purporting to demonstrate the existence of a weapons programme — is unreliable.

President Bush has denied that the presence of two aircraft carriers in the region means that the US is preparing to attack Iran. But rumours abound in Washington that he will not leave office without resolving the issue — by military means if necessary.

An article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine this week claims that a Pentagon panel has been created to plan a bombing attack that could be implemented within 24 hours. It also suggested that covert raids had been made across the Iranian border by American personnel.

Western alarm over Iran’s intentions was exacerbated yesterday by an announcement that it had launched its first rocket into space. Experts say that the same technology can be used to build intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching Britain, which Iranian hardliners demonise as the “little Satan” to distinguish it from its big brother “the Great Satan” of America.

But Iran, which has a tendency to embellish its scientific and military prowess, later back-tracked, saying that what had been launched was a suborbital rocket for scientific research and not a missile capable of reaching space.

President Ahmadinejad defiantly shrugged off the threat of further sanctions, saying that the nuclear programme had no reverse gears.

This brought a swift response from Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, who said: “They don’t need a reverse gear. They need a stop button.”

British officials believe that the pressure on Iran is slowly beginning to work, pointing out that the country’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, is “looking for a way out”. He has already offered to delay installing more cascades of centrifuges needed for industrial-scale production of enriched uranium. “This isn’t enough”, said one diplomat close to the negotiations yesterday, but it is a start.

“We’re getting pinged all over the world by Iranians wanting to talk to us,” said Nicholas Burns, the US Under Secretary of State. The problem is that the Iranians have not yet said the “magic word”, which is to promise suspension of uranium enrichment.

Pariah state

— UN Resolution 1737 (adopted December 2006): All member states compelled to deny Iran the equipment, technology, technical and financial assistance that could aid nuclear programme

— US sanctions against Iran Almost all imports over / banned. Ban on virtually all exports if the final destination is believed to be Iran

Iranvajahan.net

Today's Zaman

PJAK, the Iranian wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), claimed yesterday that it had shot down an Iranian helicopter. Tehran said it was accident due to bad weather conditions.
The Fars news agency reported that a Revolutionary Guards commander was killed in the crash.

The Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan group (PJAK) said the helicopter had been shot down during a security operation launched by the Iranian army in an area close to the Turkish border on Saturday, according to the pro-PKK Fırat news agency.

The group also claimed that it had killed more than 20 Iranian soldiers, including a senior officer in an hours-long battle with the Iranian army. One soldier who survived the helicopter crash was captured by the group, the Fırat news agency also said, quoting a PJAK statement. The chief of the 3rd Corps of the army, Said Qahari, was among those killed, the PJAK statement said. Iranian state media had earlier reported that the elite Revolutionary Guards had on Saturday killed 17 "counter-revolutionary mercenaries" in a remote area close to the Turkish border. The state-run IRNA agency said the clashes took place after Revolutionary Guards ground forces launched an operation to hunt guerrillas in a northwestern area near the Turkish border.

The report said the commander of the ground force carrying out the operation had an "accident due to bad weather" while flying by helicopter with eight others to check on the area, but did not say if there were other casualties. Iran quickly accused the United States and its allies of seeking to provoke tensions along the country's borders.

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An oil law crucial to resolving political divisions in Iraq edged closer to approval after Kurds said some key issues were resolved, officials said on Sunday.

Passing an oil law to help settle potentially explosive disputes among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian communities over the division of oil reserves has been a key demand of the United States in providing further military support to the government.

Officials are in last ditch talks to finalize a draft law that sets rules for sharing the wealth from the world's third largest oil reserves.

Agreement was nearly reached last month but leaders in the largely autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq demurred, saying they still had concerns about relations between regions and Baghdad.

A top aide to Kurdish regional president Masoud Barzani said on Sunday letters had been exchanged between the two sides in recent weeks and solutions found to some problems.

"Some of the issues in debate between the Kurdish regional government and the federal government in Baghdad were solved recently," Fauad Hussain, head of the presidency board in Kurdistan, told Reuters on Sunday.

"The Kurdish regional government approved the submission of the oil draft law to parliament..." Hussain said.

But he added: "The whole issue is still under discussions and it's only a draft law."

STILL UNDER DISCUSSION

"The Kurds agreed on the key points which clarify the annexes of the oil law and the issue of the way that regions can manage oil resources all over the country, including the Kurdish region," he said.

Barzani met Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is also a Kurd, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad on Saturday.

"We agreed on the draft of the law but still there are some articles under debate with the central government," Barzani said at a joint news conference with Talabani.

Talabani said the key issue discussed at their meeting was the oil law and they had come "close to final approval."

U.S. embassy spokesman John Roberts welcomed the comments by the two Kurdish leaders as indicating "good progress."

"This is an encouraging development," he said. "It represents a move forward in terms of the negotiation process and we welcome any movement toward agreement."

A government source with close knowledge of the oil law debate, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said no final agreement was reached on the draft when the cabinet last met on February 22.

"Discussions in the cabinet on the oil draft haven't reached a compromise and the key conflicting issue of the regions having authority to approve deals with foreign companies is still in debate," the source said.

The source said the cabinet would meet on Wednesday for further discussions on the law. Once it is approved by the cabinet, the law will go to parliament.

The Iraqi oil ministry had no comment on whether the Kurds had approved the draft oil law.

The Kurdish government has had reservations on the wording regarding the powers of a federal council, to be established under the law, which will set the oil policy and lay down ground rules for contracts signed with foreign firms.

Officials from Kurdistan, where relative security has encouraged more development than elsewhere in Iraq, have said they want assurances the federal council will not invalidate their existing contracts, including with Norway's DNO.

(Additional reporting by Shamal Aqrawi and Sherko Raouf)

BAGHDAD (AFP) -Iraq's President Jalal Talabani is suffering from extreme exhaustion and dehydration but is in high spirits and his life is not in danger, his office said Monday.

Talabani, Iraq's 74-year-old Kurdish leader, was flown from his home town in northern Iraq to the Jordanian capital Amman on Sunday after falling ill, and underwent tests at the King Hussein Medical Centre.

"The first results showed that his condition is stable and there's no reason to worry," said a statement from his office in Baghdad. "The president's vital organs are all in good condition."

"The tests showed that his excellency was suffering from extreme exhaustion that caused him to lose a lot of fluid: fatigue and dehydration," it said.

"His excellency will undergo more medical tests to know for sure the details of his health, but his companions said President Talabani is in high spirits and fully aware and interacting normally with others."

Earlier, an official in Talabani's party had suggested that the president was suffering from liver problems, but there was no reference to this in the statement.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday Iran had "no reverse gear" on its way to mastering the technology to make nuclear fuel, voicing fresh defiance before major powers meet to discuss the dispute. An Iranian deputy foreign minister echoed the tough talk, saying the Islamic Republic, which is accused by the West of trying to build nuclear weapons, was ready for any possible scenario "even for war". The United States insists it wants a diplomatic solution to the row but has not ruled out military action if that fails. Vice President Dick Cheney said on Saturday Washington and its allies must curb Iran's atomic ambitions. "Iran has obtained the technology to produce nuclear fuel and Iran's move is like a train ... which has no brake and no reverse gear," Ahmadinejad was quoted by Iran's student news agency ISNA as saying. Officials from the Security Council plus Germany are due to meet in London in the coming days to examine the chances of drafting a resolution that could impose more restrictions on Tehran. U.N. sanctions were slapped on Iran in December. "We have prepared ourselves for any situation, even for war," Manouchehr Mohammadi, one of the deputies to the foreign minister, was quoted by ISNA as saying at a conference in the central city of Isfahan. "If they issue a second resolution, Iran will not respond and will continue its nuclear activities," he said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responded to Iran's declaration that it had no "reverse gear" on its nuclear program by saying on Sunday that what Iran needed to do was halt weapons-related activities. Rice said if Tehran did so, the United States was prepared to discussed trade and political issues, and she would be willing to meet her Iranian counterpart. "They don't need a reverse gear. They need a stop button," Rice said on "Fox News Sunday." Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that Iran had obtained the technology to produce nuclear fuel and its program was now like a train "which has no brake and no reverse gear." The United States accuses Iran of wanting to develop nuclear weapons, but Iran says it is only seeking nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Last week, Iran ignored a U.S. deadline to halt uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to make fuel for power plants or nuclear warheads. Rice said if Iran were to stop its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities, "we can sit down and talk about whatever is on Iran's mind." "I am prepared to meet my counterpart or the Iranian representative at any time, if Iran will suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities. That should be a clear signal," she said.

By Assad Waissi
KurdishMedia.com

The Turkish government and politicians are playing political games to score some political points, which could gain them more popularity and support among their nationalist people. What they are hoping and trying to achieve through their “sick” behavioural threat is to isolate the Kurds in Northern Iraq and other part of Kurdistan economically, socially, and culturally. Like always, Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq have played the same political manners, which they are playing today, in most cases through cooperation and agreement among themselves to destroy Kurds by isolating them economically, socially and culturally.

These countries have done all that was necessary in the past and today to contain the Kurds and keep control over those parts of Kurdistan that were granted to them and to assimilate and exterminate the Kurds. Yet they continue to fail, despite their collaboration and oppression against Kurds. It is because Kurdish national consciousness has strengthened from year to year, and we are stronger today than fifty or a hundred years ago.

The recent example is, “Hilmi Aydogdu, head of the Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, charged by the Turkish authority on Friday, February 23, 2007 with inciting “hatred” for suggesting any military intervention by Turkey in Kurdish autonomous region of Northern Iraq would be viewed as an attack on all Kurds.” (Zaman). Aydogdu’s comments were not hatred; it was a huge encouragement and strength for the Kurdish unity and nationhood.

The Turkish politicians are not concerned about what Mr. Gul calls (the rising tensions between Kurds, Arabs and Turkish-speaking Turkmen in Kurdistan city of Kirkuk in Northern Iraq. This is a political game that Turkish politicians are playing and it is aimed to jeopardize peace and harmony has been established through out the Southern Kurdistan. Mr. Gul further stated that “the partition of Iraq will spark a civil war which will force neighbouring countries to intervene whether they like it or not.” (Kurdish News). Well Mr. Gul, Iraq is in a state of civil war now if your ignorant government, politicians and neighbours like it or not.

Why are you and your neighbouring countries so quiet about the mass killing of civilians between the Iraqi Shiite and Sunni Arab everyday? If you and your neighbours are so concerned about the future of Iraq, stop intervening in the Iraqi internal affairs and stop terrorists entering Iraq from your country and other neighbours.

In other word, the Turkish politicians and government are hopelessly concerned about the unity of Kurds and the growing power of Kurds in Southern Kurdistan. Like Mr. Gul stated, “we are concerned about the (growing unity and power of Kurds in Iraq and establishment of a Kurdish state in the North of Iraq, the reason is clear, we are against the partition of Iraq because this will trigger endless wars in the region.” (Kurdish News). Well too bad whether you like it or not it is going to gradually happen. Kurds can no longer be isolated nor be dictated by you and your totalitarian government.

Mr. Gul also stated, that “Establishing an independent Kurdish state in Northern Iraq is a mere imagination and distant from reality specially that the Kurdish leaders realize how impossible is that,” in an interview with (Turkish Channel Seven). Mr. Gul Establishing an independent Kurdish state is not a mere imagination nor is it a distant from reality. It is a true and possible reality that had created fear in your heart, and it is the reason why you and your sick government are so hopeless about it. It is because your government have failed for over a century to assimilate and exterminate the Kurds, and yet continues to fail. You need to know the Kurdish questions are no longer about rights, freedom, equality, and problem of a minority, in other word it is the question of a divided country and a nation. We Kurds will do what is right and what ever it takes to achieve an independent Kurdistan with our rights and freedom.

I would like to ask my fellow Kurds of north, south, west, east Kurdistan and other part of the world to unite and support Mr. Aydogdu who is now in Turkish prison for emphasizing his solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Southern Kurdistan, please. Our movements through peaceful demonstration will strength our solidarity and nationhood. Let’s not sit silent and complain and blame others. Today is the most important time to prove our unity and nationhood and condemn those who violate our rights and freedom.

Assad Waissi, a regular KurdishMedia.com contributor, is an Eastern Kurd who lived most of his life in Iraq and now is living in Canada. Waissi is currently study studying Political Science and Human Justice at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A minibus packed with explosives blew up on a street running in front of the Iranian embassy in Baghdad amid rising tensions over Tehran's relations with its war-torn neighbour.

It was not clear whether the blast was intended as a signal to the Iranians -- the street is also much used by official Iraqi convoys -- but it erupted only 50 yards (metres) away from the compound and killed two passers-by.

The blast ripped through the street at 8:45 am (0545 GMT) during the busiest period of the morning rush hour, when nearby roads were packed with motorists and pedestrians heading for work, many in nearby Iraqi ministries.

"The police told us that it was a Kia minibus, and that two people were killed. It was close to the embassy, but we weren't the target," Iranian diplomat Khalil Saadati told AFP.

An Iraqi defence ministry official confirmed that two civilians had died in the blast and said eight more had been wounded.

The blast ripped the bus apart entirely, leaving only the battered engine block amid scorch marks and a spray of deadly shrapnel. US Blackhawk choppers clattered overhead as a cloud of dust drifted over the embassy.

Car bombs explode in Baghdad every day, as insurgent groups target the US-backed government and rival Sunni and Shiite factions fight a bloody sectarian turf war for control of the capital.

Death squad murders have dropped off significantly this month since the launch of a city wide security crackdown by up to 90,000 US and Iraqi police and troops.

But bomb attacks have continued and fighting has intensified in the outskirts of the capital.

In the "Sunni triangle" west of Baghdad, a suicide bomber late on Saturday detonated fuel tanker outside a Sunni mosque in the town of Habbaniyah, where tribal chiefs have vowed to fight Al-Qaeda. At least 40 people were killed.

Overnight, US artillery responded to insurgent mortar fire in the southern suburb of Boaitha, rocking Baghdad with a series of massive blasts.

Also on Saturday, a suicide bomber had attacked the home of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a party founded by exiles in Tehran and retains close ties to Iran.

Washington accuses Iran of smuggling sophisticated weapons to Iraqi Shiite parties -- in December US forces arrested an alleged Iranian special forces officer in Hakim's compound -- and of funding sectarian militias.

On Friday, US forces arrested Hakim's son Ammar al-Hakim as he returned across the border from Iran. He was released the same day, but his detention nevertheless triggered massive protests in Shiite cities.

Earlier this month, Iran's role in Iraq came under the spotlight once more, when US commanders and senior Iraqi officials claimed that radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had decamped across the border.

Sadr's supporters deny this, but he has not been seen publicly for many weeks, amid persistent reports that senior cadres in his feared Mahdi Army militia have gone to ground to avoid the new US-Iraqi security plan.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's goverment is walking a delicate tightrope in its relations with Iran and the United States.

Many of the Shiite parties in Maliki's ruling coalition maintain links with Tehran, and both Maliki and President Jalal Talabani have visited Iran with an eye to seeking their neighbour's cooperation in ending the Iraqi crisis.

But, at the same time, Sunni parties in the government fiercely oppose "Persian" influence in Iraqi affairs and accuse Iranian agents of sponsoring militias engaged in the country's bitter sectarian conflict.

The White House and US commanders also accuse Iran of fomenting trouble, in particular by smuggling deadly armour-piercing roadside bombs called "explosively formed penetrators" to Iraqi Shiite groups.

When an EFP explodes it emits a white-hot slug of molten copper that can cut through the armoured skins of US military vehicles and it has been blamed for the deaths of at least 170 US service personnel since May 2004.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has launched a missile capable of reaching space, Iran's state television Web site reported on Sunday, quoting an Iranian aerospace official.

"Iran has successfully launched its first space missile made by Iranian scientists," the head of Iran's aerospace research centre, Mohsen Bahrami, was quoted as saying.

On Saturday, Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said Iran was planning to build a satellite and launcher.

Iranian advances in building missiles capable of reaching space are watched closely by the West because the same technology could be used to build intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Iran launched its first satellite, Sina-1, into orbit from a Russian rocket in 2005 and has said it planned to modify its Shahab-3 missile, which Iran says has a range of about 2,000 km (1,250 miles), to launch satellites.

Bahrami said the missile was built by his centre in cooperation of the Defence and Science Ministries. He gave no further details.

Despite announcing what would be a major advance in Iran's missile technology, the news was mentioned only once by the main state TV news channel and was not carried by other Iranian official media.

The U.N. Security Council has slapped sanctions on Iran that bar the transfer of technology and know-how to Iran's nuclear and missile programmes, a move that was pushed for by the West because of fears that Iran is seeking to build atomic bombs.

Tehran says its nuclear programme is purely civilian and aims to generate electricity.

The defence minister was quoted by a newspaper as saying: "Building a satellite and satellite launcher, as well as (previously) launching the first Iranian satellite called Sina with Russian cooperation, and becoming a member of the space club, are part of the Defence Ministry's plans."

The daily Etemad-e Melli said the minister made the comments on Saturday.

By Aram Azez
KurdishMedia.com

Since the division of their homeland between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria in 1923, there is no doubt the vast majority of Kurds in the these countries have been subject to discrimination and mistreatment, including illegal arrests, imprisonment, torture, kidnappings, and even assassinations and massacres by these oppressive regimes. Each of those countries’ justification for their brutality against Kurds is that Kurds demand their rights on their own land, Kurdistan. Unfortunately, Kurds are not only mistreated while they are within the boundaries of those countries colonizing Kurdistan. Even Kurds who have managed to escape the brutality of those non-democratic nations and have resettled in other countries, in recent years are facing similar mistreatment worldwide.

To summarize the Kurdish people’s situation in the case of those living in countries colonizing Kurdistan, the conflicting views can be stated as follows: Kurds almost unanimously, regardless of which part of Kurdistan they inhabit, support the struggle for an independent, greater Kurdistan. They also respect the Peshmerga--the Kurdish men and women who have sacrificed their lives as resistance fighters to make such a Kurdish state possible--as patriotic revolutionaries and national heroes. On the contrary, the countries dominating Kurdistan consider the Kurdish freedom fighters as “terrorists” and view whoever supports them as traitors and given the same low status as those who fight for the Kurdish identity. These views have been held by governments for decades in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. In the late 1990s, when a German woman who had joined the Kurdish freedom fighters was captured by Turkish forces and taken to a Turkish court, the judge asked her where she was captured. “In Kurdistan”, she answered. When the judge supposedly responded, “There is no country called Kurdistan,” the German woman replied, “That’s why we fight.”

As for the Diaspora Kurds who have managed to escape from those brutal countries’ mistreatment and the denial of their Kurdish national identity (and/or who have come into conflict with Islamic extremists for being secular), hundreds of thousands have found third countries to live in. Many of these Kurds have become citizens of those countries and consider them as their second home--but still face difficult circumstances. Perhaps the main reason for this is that most ‘westerners’ are unable to differentiate Kurds from Arabs—and Arabs they view as prime suspects for fundamentalist Islamic activities and threats worldwide. Although the majority of Kurds are Muslims, in their countries of origin they are treated as Kurds rather than as fellow Muslims, and in some cases they are not considered as Muslims at all. The defunct Iraqi regime’s military campaign against the Kurdish people in 1988, code-named the ‘Anfal’ (‘spoils of war’, according to the Quran), massacred 182,000 innocent civilians, and illustrates this point. For their part, Kurds also respect and identify more with their Kurdish nationality than with their religious faith. Unfortunately, however, due to their skin color and/or where they were born, in many western countries Kurds may be treated as “terrorist” suspects.

When Kurds in the Diaspora face mistreatment or discrimination, they feel that they have been victimized twice. For decades they have been victims of terrorist states that conquered Kurdistan, leading them to be dispersed around the world. State terrorism has taken place including attacks by the Turkish military secret service against Kurdish civilians, extralegal executions, the growing numbers of torture cases in police detention in Turkey, Iran, and Syria, and kidnappings and assassinations of influential Kurdish politicians in Kurdistan and Europe. Unfortunately, most of the time Kurds pay the price for what some extremist Islamic Arabs, Turks, Iranians, and other anti-western organizations stand for. Considering themselves non-Arabs and non-fundamentalist Muslims, but rather as being pro-democracy and pro-western, Diaspora Kurds are nonetheless being treated as suspects while traveling abroad, and even while living in their adopted countries, which they consider their second home.

As a result of the September 11 attacks, the various UK incidents, as well as the arrest of 17 Islamic suspects in Toronto last summer, Diaspora Kurds accept the security measures required by the countries they live in or travel to. Yet these security measures should not be taken against them merely due to their physical appearance or where they were born. Western officials, especially the police, must understand that Kurds have been victims of terrorism for decades and that is the prime reason for their lives spent in exile in other countries. Non-Kurds should also accept Kurds’ sensitivity regarding affirming their Kurdish identity and the word “Kurdistan.” Whenever I have been asked where I was from, or if I happened to return from a homeland trip, my answers would have always been “Kurdistan.” Unfortunately, however, most of the time, even in Canada, I get an insulting reply: “Kurdistan is not an official country; tell us Turkey, Iran, Syria or Iraq.” To support my argument, I respond, “Palestine is also a non-official country but no one would dare tell an Arab that he or she is from Israel!”

Even as a proud Canadian citizen and traveling with a Canadian passport, I have personally endured many times incidents of mistreatment and discrimination in different countries--including Canada--perhaps due to the way I look, or my birthplace, Iraq, which I have never considered as my own country. Although discrimination is against the law and is not a major problem in Canada, on my recent return from my first ever driving to the US, I was asked by a Canadian Customs officer, “Where were you born?” Although I was holding a Canadian citizenship card as the other Canadians did at the border, I was asked further questions and dealt with almost as a suspect! On every single trip returning to Canada from abroad--as is the story with so many Kurds--at the airports I’ve gone through “multi inspection” security measures and being almost investigated as a suspect by the Canada Customs officers.

Diaspora Kurds feel that they have been twice victims of terrorism; first at the hands of the state terrorist countries who have conquered Kurdistan, and second by paying the ongoing price of being (wrongly) suspected of identifying with what extremist Arab, Turkish, and Islamic groups stand for. The Kurdish people do, however, continue to stand for our struggle for an independent Kurdistan. The first ever democratic election in Iraq (which occurred in 2005), is an example of this. There was a non-official referendum as an alternative option for Kurds who were born within Iraqi boundaries and who were eligible to vote both inside and outside of the country, while electing Iraq’s parliament members. In the referendum they had the chance to vote on whether Kurdistan should remain within Iraq or become independent. The result was that 98.8% of the voters chose an independent Kurdistan. This became a wake-up call for those who would say that Kurds prefer to stay within the borders of Iraq, and it demonstrated to the world the reality of Kurds’ true aspirations. As a former US Ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, wrote recently, “You can call this place Kurdistan, as its citizens do, or northern Iraq, as the Turks do. But either way, the overwhelming majorities (98 percent in a 2005 referendum) of its 4 million people do not want to remain part of Iraq.”

February 24, 2007 -- An Iranian military helicopter has crashed near the border with Turkey and Iraq, killing at least one Revolutionary Guards commander.

Eight other people were on board the helicopter when it crashed in the province of West Azerbaijan. Their fates are not immediately clear.

An Iranian Kurdish rebel group, Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), says it shot down the aircraft with a shoulder-held missile, killing eight soldiers and capturing one.

Iran's official IRNA news agency says Revolutionary Guards killed 17 rebels in the province before the crash.

In recent weeks there have been reports of fighting in West Azerbaijan between Iranian forces and the PJAK, an Iranian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Possibility Of Military Action

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said today that the United States is not in a position to take military action against Iran.

Earlier today, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said Washington would not rule out military action against Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Iran this week ignored a UN deadline to halt sensitive nuclear activities. Tehran denies it is seeking nuclear weapons. Mottaki urged Washington and its allies to negotiate with Tehran.

(Reuters, AFP, AP,rferl)
Photo:Firat news agency

By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS -Iran accused the United States, Britain and Israel of making "baseless allegations" about its nuclear ambitions, insisting that it has always considered weapons of mass destruction to be "inhumane, immoral and illegal."

Iran's deputy U.N. ambassador Mehdi Danesh Yazdi told the U.N. Security Council Friday that his country has an "inalienable right" to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and would not "give in to the pressures emanating from groundless and unsubstantiated allegations and ulterior political motives."

Iran was a last-minute addition to the list of countries speaking at a daylong council meeting on implementation of a 2004 resolution requiring all U.N. member states to pass laws to keep nuclear, chemical and biological weapons out of the hands of terrorists and black marketeers.

The meeting took place a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran had ignored a council ultimatum to freeze uranium enrichment — a possible pathway to nuclear arms — and had instead expanded its program.

Iran's president and a former president accused the West on Friday of "bullying" Tehran through ultimatums and threats of new sanctions.

Divisions had emerged within the Iranian leadership over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's handling of the nuclear standoff following the council's adoption of limited economic sanctions against Iran in December.

Some Iranians believe Ahmadinejad has been too antagonistic toward the U.S. and its allies. Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in recent weeks has emerged as a high-level advocate of a more conciliatory stance toward the West in the nuclear dispute.

But Rafsanjani told worshippers gathered for Friday prayers in Tehran, the Iranian capital, that Western countries would fail to achieve anything by pressuring Iran over its nuclear activities.

And, in northern Iran, Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands: "The Iranian nation has resisted all bullies and corrupt powers and it will fully defend all its rights," according to state television.

The U.N. nuclear agency's report set the stage for difficult negotiations on new U.N. sanctions, with the United States, Britain and France again likely to seek tougher measures than Russia and China will accept. Senior diplomats from the five permanent Security Council nations and Germany will meet on Monday in London to start work on a new resolution to try to pressure Iran to suspend enrichment.

U.S. deputy ambassador Jackie Sanders told Friday's open meeting that, "unfortunately, Iran has yet to ... make the strategic decision to cooperate with the international community and end its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability," she said.

Britain's U.N. ambassador mentioned "our continuing concern at developments in Iran and the failure of the government of Iran to meet the obligations" to halt enrichment. And Israel's deputy U.N. ambassador said the Iranian supply of weapons to Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon violated the 2004 resolution.

The three countries were the only ones among 36 speakers in the debate to mention Iran.

Danesh Yazdi, speaking last, said it was regrettable that "an ill-intended and extensive campaign with political motivation has been at work attempting to distort and fabricate the facts and realities about Iran's peaceful nuclear program, as we have witnessed in today's meeting through the baseless allegations made against my country by the representatives of the United States, United Kingdom and Israeli regime."

The Iranian envoy said it was unreasonable for countries that have nuclear weapons to "threaten others with their massive arsenals and aggressive policies, while crying wolf about others' peaceful nuclear program."

_____

Associated Press Writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

The Washington Post
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security

Earlier this week, the BBC carried a report that said it had learned "U.S. contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure."

The BBC also said "diplomatic sources" told the news agency that "senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran." An attack would be triggered either by confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon; or if a "high-casualty" attack on U.S. forces in Iraq was traced back to Tehran.

The BBC report has predictably ignited an Internet firestorm, certainly understandable given the supposedly impeccable news source, the Bush campaign ever since the State of the Union speech to focus on Iran and Tehran's continued intransigence in the face of international pressure.

I understand the impulse of many who feel the special burden to "stop" an Iran war given American overextension in Iraq and sense of having been burned by the Bush administration's earlier declarations that it had "no plans" to attack Baghdad. Raising the specter of Iraq and invoking Cambodia in 1970, The Nation magazine best sums up this view in a lead editorial this week when it says that "The media must be challenged to do their job - as should Congress - by citizens who have decided that they won't be fooled again."

And there is no question that the Bush administration is engaged in a desperate campaign to blame Iran for the making of its own ills in the region. There is also no question that the Bush administration has designated Iran as the number one enemy state in the region for the future.

But is it "planning" for war? That is, has it mobilized the military and the national security bureaucracies to focus on the country, does it have established war objectives, or has it prepared sufficient forces, or actually written a specific offensive war plan and done the detail work necessary to bring all of the pieces together for a real war to be implemented? The answer is unequivocally no. The United States has more than one contingency plan for potential conflict with Iran.

First, there is a generic major combat operations war plan (CONPLAN 1025?) that posits a full-scale air, naval and ground confrontation in response to Iranian aggression. Contained within this plan are various "excursions" and "response options" that posit limited wars, say for instance, if Iran closed the Straits of Hormuz or invaded Iraq. This is the "standard" war plan that has gone through many different iterations and has existed for many years. To actually turn the standard plan into a war requires enormous effort, and could only be accomplished once the Commander-in-Chief directed the Joint Chiefs to "plan" for a specific mission, say "regime change," and gave some sense of a timeline and the risks it was willing to accept.

My reporting convinces me that we are no where close to this point: The Bush administration is completely overwhelmed by Iraq, one of the reasons ironically that it flails about blaming Iran for this and that: it just can not accept the possibility of the failure of its own strategy and policy and needs to find a scapegoat or a subject changer.

Beyond the generic major Iran war plan - a plan that equally exists for North Korea and for a Chinese attack on Taiwan -- there are various contingencies directly associated with the Iraq war plan and U.S. presence in Iraq. For instance, to mount limited cross border attacks to eliminate terrorist "support infrastructure," that is, Iranian capabilities and infrastructure that are supporting the development and shipment of IEDs and other ordnance being used in Iraq.

This is what the President made reference to in his State of the Union. It is behind the strange intelligence briefings given earlier this month in Iraq producing "evidence" that Iran was providing weapons to Iraqi militias. I understand that the administration at high levels have directed the military and intelligence communities to better "map" these support infrastructures and much of the "targeting" effort shifted last year from weapons of mass destruction infrastructure to "terrorist support" infrastructure.

The second major war plan that exists for Iran has to do with its pursuit of WMD. This is the stuff of the Bush administration's national policy of preemption announced in September 2002. That policy announced that the United States would not allow any nations to acquire nuclear weapons, and it was the intellectual basis for the Iraq war. In the case of Iraq, since the war objective war regime change, the standard war plan was implemented (OPLAN 1033V).

In the case of Iran, a more limited war plan could be put into effect. It is called CONPLAN 8022 - "global strike" - and exists to specifically counter foreign development of WMD or the imminent use of WMD (including ballistic missiles) against the United States and its allies. The U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) which is in charge of CONPLAN 8022 brags that it has put all of the pieces in play to implement a presidential directive within minutes to undertake a limited attack. I have written extensively about the global strike plan,

the problem of reading too much into this can-do military preparation, the irony of inaction on North Korea, and the danger of signaling the wrong thing to Iran.

So there are three basic tracks for war planning: the big war plan that seeks regime change and entails ground attacks; the small scale attack directly related to Iran's support for terrorism or some other discreet scenario (Straits of Hormuz); and the WMD plan.

Given that I have been the first to write about the Iraq war plan in 2002, about CONPLAN 1025, about development of global strike, and the designs of the Iran war plan, my experience in writing about this war planning is that it is exceedingly difficult to report on this subject, and very few actually know anything.

In other words, anyone can write an article generically describing air, sea, and land attacks based upon U.S. practices in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Very, very few of these articles are actually based upon any knowledge or access to actual war plans and scenarios. Terms like CONPLAN 8022 and TIRANT can be thrown around to make it sound official. This is what the BBC has pulled this week: there is nothing new here, according to my sources. Though as I say, there is a lot here; it is just that I think we should be clear about what is being "planned" and what is inevitable.

Of course all of what I write here could be null and void if Iran did something to "trigger" a conflict. In other words, there could be a war that is not exactly the preemptive Bush administration war the vigilant are worried about. Despite my admonition that there is no offensive preemptive general war plan in play right now, such a war could happen today or tomorrow, say if Iran shot ballistic missiles at U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf.

As I've written before, a series of crises and misunderstandings could lead us to this very point, particularly if Iran misreads American intent and preparations. I have argued in these pages that that is why it is essential that we not overstate what the United States is really up to and that the Bush administration recognizes that its "planning" might be misinterpreted by Iran and lead to the very thing it supposedly is hoping to prevent.

Those who are stuck on the war scare equally should recognize their own role here. Sorry, the protests against a certain Iran war also contributes to the deafening drum beat for certain war. This is a very tricky situation that requires the Congress to demand to know publicly and precisely where the Bush administration really is on this question. Specifically, Congress should force the administration to articulate, given war in Iraq and non-war in North Korea, just what its preemption policy is with regard to Iran.

original article

Human Rights Watch
Human Rights News

New York -- The Iranian government should immediately release Somaye Bayanat, wife of the well-known political prisoner Ahmad Batebi, and investigate the manner in which she was snatched from the streets, Human Rights Watch said today.

On February 21, two men, thought to be security and intelligence agents, snatched Bayanat from the streets in the northern city of Gorgan, where she works as a dentist. Somaye Bayanat’s brother, Miad Bayanat, provided Human Rights Watch with details of how his sister was detained. Bayanat was meeting a friend at 8 p.m., and as she approached her friend’s car, a light-colored Peugeot pulled out in front of her. Two men exited the car, showed Bayanat a piece of paper, forced her into the vehicle, and drove off.

“The authorities seem to have arrested Somaye Bayanat by snatching her in a kind of kidnapping,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division. “The Iranian government should release Bayanat and investigate this outrageous arrest.”

According to Miad Bayanat, in the immediate aftermath of her apparent abduction, Bayanat’s family searched for her at police stations and security force offices, but no one had any information on her whereabouts or would confirm if she had been arrested. Confirmation that Bayanat was in the hands of the security forces came only on February 22, when the family received a phone call at 4 p.m. from her cell phone. A man identified himself as calling from the Gorgan’s Women’s Prison, then handed the phone to Bayanat.

Bayanat’s family had heard from her twice after her arrest but before they learned of her whereabouts. First, several hours after her detention, she called a cousin and told him that she would be sending her house keys to him by taxi so that he could take care of her pet.

The family also repeatedly tried to call her cell phone between 8 p.m. and 1:30 a.m., when she finally answered her phone. On this occasion, in an extremely brief phone conversation, Bayanat told them that she was on a work-related trip to the city of Mashad. According to the family, Bayanat had not told them in advance about any such trip, and when they pressed her on the issue, she replied that she could not speak anymore but that she was not arrested.

Finally, on February 22, the family received the phone call apparently made on Bayanat’s cell phone from Gorgan’s Women’s Prison. Bayanat told her family that she had been arrested in connection with a group of medical doctors with whom the authorities are alleging she works, and that she had been charged with several criminal offences, including forging medical documents and performing illegal abortions. She claimed that she would be released within five to seven days.

Miad Bayanat told Human Rights Watch that his family is not aware of any such group of doctors and does not believe any of these allegations, as Bayanat is a dentist.

Bayanat’s arrest comes at a time when her husband, political prisoner Ahmad Batebi, has been suffering severe health problems resulting from the physical and mental pressures of detention, including severe beatings and torture. Security forces arrested Batebi in 1999 for participating in student protests, and the Judiciary subsequently sentenced him to 10 years’ imprisonment. On February 18, the authorities transferred Batebi from Tehran’s Evin prison to Tajrish Shohada Hospital. According to news reports, Batebi’s physician, Hesam Firoozi, announced that Batebi’s condition is dire and that he requires treatment outside of prison. On February 20, the Judiciary’s spokesman, Alireza Jamshidi, told reporters that Batebi’s health is fine. Batebi was returned to Evin and is currently held in section 350 of the prison. He has told his family that he is on a hunger strike to protest his wife’s abduction.

“The Iranian government should release Somaye Bayanat, drop the dubious charges against her, and give proper medical care to her husband Ahmad Batebi,” said Whitson.

Background

Ahmad Batebi first came to international attention when his photo was published on the cover of The Economist magazine in 1999. In the now-famous photo, Batebi is standing in a crowd of student protestors and holding up the bloodied shirt of a fellow student who had been beaten by plainclothes militia during the protests.

Authorities arrested Batebi in connection with his participation in these protests and he was initially handed a death sentence on charges related to endangering national security. The sentence was later commuted, first to 15, then to 10 years’ imprisonment.

While interrogating Batebi, security forces severely beat and tortured him. He described these early experiences in a detailed letter dated March 23, 2000, which he smuggled out of Evin prison. As a result of this torture and poor detention conditions, Batebi’s hearing and eyesight were diminished, and he lost several teeth.

Since being incarcerated, prison authorities have allowed Batebi to leave the prison on furlough several times, usually to seek medical treatment. During one such furlough in November of 2003, authorities detained Batebi following his meeting with Ambeyi Ligabo, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, who was visiting Iran on a fact-finding mission.

After another furlough in the spring of 2005, Batebi did not report back to prison, although authorities were aware of his whereabouts. In July of 2006, Batebi was re-arrested and has been serving his sentence in Evin prison.

Batebi’s physical and mental health have continued to deteriorate in prison, resulting in his recent hospitalization on February 18 at Tajrish Shohada Hospital. He has since been returned to Evin prison. His physician Hesam Firoozi has confirmed his family and friends’ claims that Batebi requires immediate health care in appropriate health care facilities.

February 23, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Bahruz Galali, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's (PUK) representative to Ankara, said Iraqi Kurdish leaders are optimistic about the possibility of improving relations with the Turkish government. He also commented on Kirkuk, saying a referendum on the status of Kirkuk would likely be held on schedule, and calling those who say there is ethnic tension in the city 'propagandists.' Galali spoke to told RFE/RL Iraq Analyst Kathleen Ridolfo.

RFE/RL: Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has made overtures toward strengthening relations between the Turkish government and Iraq in recent days. What has been the reaction of the Kurdistan Region Government (KRG)?

Bahruz Galali: I think the relationship between [Kurds] and Turkey will be better in the future. We are working on it, and I think it is in the interests of both [parties] to have a good relationship with each other.

RFE/RL: The United States has appointed a special representative to mediate issues of importance to Turkey and Iraq, specifically dealing with the Turkish-Kurdish opposition group PKK. Has this helped to facilitate better relations between Turkey and Iraq?

Galali: Now the United States and Iraq -- it is in the interests of all to have good relations between the KRG and Turkey and also between Iraq and Turkey. We are thinking now about this, and I hope that developments will be better than before. We think that both [parties] need to have a good relationship with each other. Today there will be an important meeting [of the National Security Council or MGK] in Ankara, and I think maybe [the situation] will become more clear.

RFE/RL: Turkish Chief of Staff General Yasar Buyukanit took a strong position against Iraqi Kurdish leaders last week in Washington, accusing Kurdish leaders [Iraqi President Jalal] Talabani and [KRG President Mas'ud] Barzani of supporting the PKK and saying he objected to holding meetings with Iraqi Kurdish officials. He also criticized the Iraqis for what he called lax border security. Is this an area where perhaps the KRG can help smooth relations with Turkey?

Galali: Now we have too many problems in Baghdad, and in Iraq and [we are dealing with] too many terrorist groups in Baghdad, in Kirkuk, in all the regions. Our government now in Baghdad is working very hard to bring security to Iraq. For us as Kurds also, as Iraqis, we are part of Iraq as a federal, regional, government.... We are trying to have security in all of Iraq for our people.

RFE/RL: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week asked [KGR Vice President Adil Abd al-Mahdi] for a delay in the referendum on Kirkuk, which is slated for December.

Galali: The Iraqi people decided through Article 140 [of the Iraqi Constitution] on Kirkuk. All Iraqis -- Arabs, Kurds, and Turkomans. I think we will hold the referendum [on schedule], and we are not thinking about postponing it.

RFE/RL: So you believe that Turkomans and Arabs living in Kirkuk would be open to holding the referendum in December?

Galali: I think [yes] because the majority of Turkomans need this. [Deposed Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein also displaced Turkomans from Kirkuk [as he did with Kurds], and the Turkomans need to be returned to their homes in Kirkuk. We have a constitution, and the constitution says we have a plan, an agenda [regarding Kirkuk]. This is not something on the side of Kurds alone. The Arabs, the Turkomans, the Kurds, the Assyrians, Christians -- everyone supported this [through the constitution].

RFE/RL: Do you think there will be a resolution to the dispute in Kirkuk? Can Kirkuk become peaceful?

Galali: This is propaganda -- those who are saying there will be a war between the ethnic groups in Kirkuk. We don't think that because we have a good relationship with the Turkomans. We have a good relationship with the Arabs, the original Arabs who are living in Kirkuk. The people who are living in Kirkuk are relevant for each other. And we think we can [implement] Article 140 with our brothers -- Turkomans, Arabs, and other communities -- in Kirkuk.

RFE/RL: What is the status of the commission set up to compensate Arabs [moved to Kirkuk under Hussein's Arabization program] who return to their original towns?

Galali: The committee has decided to compensate the Arabs who return to their homes, and [Arabs] are ready now to go back.

ANKARA, Turkey -(AP) A politician was charged Friday with inciting hatred and threatening public safety after suggesting that fellow Kurds would rise against the state and fight if Turkey ever attacked their Kurdish brethren in neighboring Iraq.

Police detained Hilmi Aydogdu, leader of the Democratic Society Party's branch in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, as he left a conference and questioned him over the remarks, said Nazmi Gur, a party spokesman.

Prosecutors later formally arrested Aydogdu and charged him with threatening public safety by inciting racial enmity and hatred. The charge carries a maximum three-year prison sentence.

In remarks published in several newspapers, Aydogdu had warned Turkey against taking any action in the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Turkey, which has been trying to quell a domestic Kurdish insurgency for more than two decades, fears that Iraqi Kurdish groups could seize control of the northern city and incorporate it into their self-ruled region.

Some in Turkey have suggested that Ankara could take military action to prevent that from happening.

"The two sides in this war would be Turkey and the Kurds in Iraq. There are some 20 million Kurds in Turkey, and the 20 million Kurds would regard such a war as an attack against them," newspapers quoted Aydogdu as saying.

"Any attack on Kirkuk would be considered an attack on Diyarbakir," the politician was also quoted as saying.

Turkish leaders are concerned that Iraq's Kurds want Kirkuk's oil revenues to fund a bid for independence that could encourage separatist Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey who have been fighting for autonomy since 1984. The conflict has claimed the lives of 37,000 people.

Turkey has not ruled out military incursions into Iraq to hunt separatist Kurds, despite warnings from the U.S., which fears that such moves could lead to tensions with the Iraqi Kurdish groups allied with Washington.

Turkish authorities frequently accuse the Democratic Society Party of having links to an outlawed Kurdish guerrilla group, the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which the U.S. and European Union consider a terrorist group.

Party members frequently are detained and branch offices raided.

ANKARA, Turkey: (AP)-Police detained a Kurdish politician on Friday for suggesting Turkey's Kurds would rise up against the state and fight if Turkey ever attacked their Kurdish brethren's across the border in Iraq, his party said.

Police detained Hilmi Aydogdu, the leader of the Democratic Society Party's branch in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, as he left a conference and were questioning him over his remarks, said Nazmi Gur, a party spokesman.

The prosecutor's office in Diyarbakir confirmed that Aydogdu was detained but gave no other details. No immediate charges were brought.

In remarks published in several newspapers, Aydogdu warned Turkey against taking any action in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

Turkey, which has been trying to quell a Kurdish insurgency for more than two decades, fears that Iraqi Kurdish groups could seize control of the city and incorporate it into their self-ruled region. Some in Turkey have suggested that Ankara could take military action to prevent that from happening.

"The two sides in this war would be Turkey and the Kurds in Iraq. There are some 20 million Kurds in Turkey and the 20 million Kurds would regard such a war as an attack against them," newspapers quoted Aydogdu as saying.

Turkey is concerned that Iraq's Kurds want Kirkuk's oil revenues to fund a bid for independence that could encourage separatist Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey, who have been fighting for autonomy since 1984. The conflict has claimed the lives of 37,000 people.

Turkey has not ruled out military incursions into Iraq to hunt separatist Kurds, despite warnings from Washington, which fears that such a move could lead to tensions with the Iraqi Kurdish groups who have been important allies of the U.S.

Turkish authorities frequently accuse the Democratic Society Party of having links to the outlawed autonomy-seeking Kurdish guerrilla group, the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. Party members are frequently detained and branch offices are raided.

Source:International Herald Tribune

kurdishinfo.com

TNA-A pro-Kurdish political party official yesterday said that advantages won by Kurds in northern Iraq should be protected, adding that any counter move to weaken the Kurdish movement there would be much the same as "cutting the veins of Kurds in Turkey."

"We consider an attack on Kirkuk as the same as one on Diyarbakir," said Democratic Society Party (DTP) Diyarbakir branch head Ibrahim Aydogdu, a staunch Kurdish nationalist, whose remarks appeared on the Pukmedia, website of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), directly clashing with those of Turkey.

"We see interference in the course of events in Kirkuk as totally irrational and the imaginings of a mind refusing to understand the historical facts," he added, referring to the approaching referendum for the future status of the oil-rich city.

Turkey has many times urged the regional Kurdish administration to stop Kurdish migration to the city, accusing them of trying to change the demographic composition of the city in order to take advantage in the referendum.

"The referendum will be a major turning point for the Kurds. It will open a new era with the decline of the Arabization policy of Saddam Hussein in the region and with bringing a real democratic regime in which the Kurds will take their equal place," Aydogdu said, describing Kirkuk as a strategically important center to give strength to the Kurds, allowing them to protect their advantages.

He also said that seeing a Kurdish leader as the prime minister of the country is very pleasing, adding that Jalal Talabani's being the president will give rise to the establishment of the Kurdish identity and nationalism as well as bringing a more democratic system to the region with Kurds recognized as an equal people in the Middle East.

He also said that Talabani and Iraqi Kurdistan Democrat Party (KDP) leader Massoud Barzani will be invited to the Nevruz celebrations in the city calling their participation a gesture to honor them.

By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS -Iran is "thumbing its nose" at the international community by expanding its uranium program, a top U.S. official said, setting the stage for difficult negotiations on new U.N. sanctions, with the U.S. likely to push for tougher measures.

In the wake of the U.N. nuclear agency's confirmation that Iran expanded its uranium enrichment program, senior diplomats from the five permanent Security Council nations and Germany will meet on Monday in London to start work on a new resolution to try to pressure Iran to suspend that program, which can lead to the production of nuclear weapons.

Among the permanent council members, Britain and France are likely to join the U.S. in a call for harsher sanctions than Russia and China will accept.

Some diplomats said the new measure may invoke travel bans, expand the list of technology and materials countries are banned from making available to Iran and create stiffer economic sanctions, among other options.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who announced the London meeting in Washington, said Thursday that Iran was "effectively thumbing its nose at the international community" and a new resolution was needed to "see Iran repudiated again."

He said, however, that it was too soon to say what provisions the resolution might contain.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he had "no substantive comment" on the International Atomic Energy Agency's report Thursday which concluded that "Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities" as the Security Council demanded in a resolution adopted on Dec. 23. But he reiterated Moscow's desire for a diplomatic negotiated solution.

"We should not lose sight of the goal — and the goal is not to have a resolution or to impose sanctions," Churkin said. "The goal is to accomplish a political outcome."

The IAEA began probing Iran's nuclear activities more than four years ago, after revelations of nearly 20 years of secret work that included plans to enrich uranium. Since then, it has made several worrying finds, including Iranian experiments with plutonium, unexplained traces of enriched uranium, and a document showing how to mold uranium into the shape of nuclear warheads.

Last June, the six nations offered Tehran a package of economic incentives and political rewards if it agreed to consider a long-term moratorium on enrichment and committed itself to a freeze before negotiations on its nuclear program. Tehran refused to comply with an Aug. 31 deadline to suspend enrichment, insisting its program is aimed solely at producing nuclear energy.

The Security Council responded by unanimously adopting a resolution on Dec. 23 after two months of tough negotiations imposing sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend enrichment. It ordered all countries to stop supplying Iran with materials and technology that could contribute to its nuclear and missile programs and to freeze assets of 10 key Iranian companies and 12 individuals related to those programs.

The council warned it would adopt further nonmilitary sanctions if Iran refused to comply and that is what members will now be considering.

During negotiations on the December sanctions resolution, the U.S. administration pushed for tougher penalties but Russia and China, which both have strong commercial ties to Tehran, and Qatar, across the Persian Gulf from Iran, balked.

To get their votes, the resolution dropped a ban on international travel by Iranian officials involved in nuclear and missile development and specified exactly which items and technologies were banned.

Several council diplomats have stressed the importance of maintaining council unity on a new resolution — even if means sacrificing tougher sanctions.

Stressing the importance of unity, U.S. deputy ambassador Jackie Sanders said Thursday "we do need to ratchet up the pressure and Iran needs to see an international community that stays coordinated and showing common purpose to have them stop what they're doing in developing nuclear weapons."

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy echoed the importance, saying, "unity and firmness are ... the only effective instruments we have to get Iran to turn toward the international community, and away from isolation."

"We support a second resolution, to be passed unanimously by the Security Council, to continue sanctions," he said.

Two diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations haven't even started, spoke of an "incremental" strengthening of sanctions in a new resolution to ensure that unity is preserved.

Diplomats said Thursday that new measures under consideration include a mandatory travel ban against individuals on the U.N. list, new individuals and companies subject to sanctions, additional prohibited items, economic measures such as a ban on export guarantees to Iran, and an expansion of the nuclear embargo to an arms embargo.

The permanent council members believe the initial sanctions have had some positive effects. Iran now says it wants negotiations, though it still refuses to suspend enrichment.

Whether new sanctions can bring Tehran to comply with the council's demands remains to be seen.

"It's Iran's refusal to talk which right now has gotten Iran in a lot of hot water," said Burns, the U.S. State Department official. "Iran is increasingly isolated, and we hope Iran is going to choose negotiations."

Spiegel Online
smd/ap/reuters

With the United Nations deadline running out for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, Tehran is showing no signs of compromise on the issue. Instead, Iran is offering talks, a guarantee not to develop nuclear weapons -- and a warning against any military attack.

As the United Nations deadline for suspending uranium enrichment runs out, Iran is showing defiance rather than compliance. On Tuesday Ali Larijani, Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator, vowed that Iran would continue to go ahead with its nuclear program but offered a guarantee that it would not develop nuclear weapons. Such a guarantee is unlikely to impress the UN. Tehran had been given a 60 day period of grace by the UN Security Council to halt enrichment. The period ran out on Wednesday.

Ali Larijani met with the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei for two hours on Tuesday in Vienna. But the two men didn't come any closer to resolving the nuclear dispute. Iran has insisted it is not prepared to halt its enrichment as a precondition for talks with the West. Nevertheless, the Iranians are trying to present themselves as flexible. Larijani said "We have no objections to settling these concerns at the negotiating table." Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was in Turkey, echoed this, saying Iran was looking to resolve the dispute through negotiations. "The way to solve problems through diplomacy is dialogue."

The West, though, has made Iran's halting of uranium enrichment a precondition to negotiations. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday seemed willling to accept that condition -- on the condition that the West likewise cease enrichment activities prior to negotiations. The offer was quickly dismissed by the White House.

Back in December the Security Council passed a resolution banning transfers of technology and expertise to Tehran's nuclear program. And it gave Iran 60 days to halt enrichment or face harsher sanctions -- a deadline that has just expired. ElBaradei will deliver his report Wednesday or Thursday. The Security Council is expected to then wait until after the IAEA's board of governors meet from March 5-9 before making the next move.

The West is concerned that Iran real intention is to develop nuclear weapons rather than a civilan energy program. But Tehran denies this: "We are a country with no intentions to develop nuclear weapons," Larijani said after the meeting with ElBaradei. "We want to work within the framework of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)."

ElBaradai has called on both sides to take a "timeout" to enable talks -- with Iran suspending enrichment and the UN lifting the sanctions. In an interview with the Financial Times newspaper published on Monday, ElBaradei said that while the Iranians could be only six months away from being able enrich uranium on an industrial scale, "there's a big difference between acquiring the knowledge for enrichment and developing a bomb." He added that any use of military force against Iran "would be catastrophic" and "counterproductive."

Washington has insisted that it is not planning a military strike but is merely increasing diplomatic pressure on Tehran. However, with the US moving against Iranians in Iraq, accusing them of helping insurgents, and ramping up its military presence in the region, there are growing concerns that a US-Iran conflict could be looming.

Yet the Iranians remain defiant in the face of the military build up. "Iran's nuclear dossier cannot be resolved through force and pressure," Larijani said on Tuesday. And he warned the US that it would pay dearly if it attacked Iran. "If they are inclined to engage in a boxing match, they will have problems of their own. But if they are willing to sit down at a chess match, both sides could come to a negotiated result."

The Guardian
Julian Borger in Vienna

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by American spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, according to diplomatic sources in Vienna.

The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.

That report, delivered to the security council by the IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, sets the stage for a fierce international debate on the imposition of stricter sanctions on Iran, and raises the possibility that the US might resort to military action against Iranian nuclear sites.

At the heart of the debate are accusations, spearheaded by the US, that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons. However, most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.

"Most of it has turned out to be incorrect," said a diplomat at the IAEA with detailed knowledge of the agency's investigations. "They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities."

"Now [the inspectors] don't go in blindly. Only if it passes a credibility test."

One particularly contentious issue concerned records of plans to build a nuclear warhead, which the CIA said it found on a stolen laptop computer supplied by an informant inside Iran. In July 2005, US intelligence officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran.

Tehran rejected the material as forgeries and there are still reservations about its authenticity in the IAEA, according to officials with knowledge of the internal debate inside the agency.

"First of all, if you have a clandestine programme, you don't put it on laptops which can walk away," one official said. "The data is all in English which may be reasonable for some of the technical matters, but at some point you'd have thought there would be at least some notes in Farsi. So there is some doubt over the provenance of the computer."

IAEA officials do not comment on intelligence passed to the watchdog agency by foreign governments, saying all such assistance is confidential.

A western counter-proliferation official accepted that intelligence on Iran had sometimes been patchy but argued that the essential point was Iran's failure to live up to its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty.

"I take on board on what they're saying, but the bottom line is that for nearly 20 years [the Iranians] were violating safeguards agreements," the official said. "There is a confidence deficit here about the regime's true intentions."

That deficit will be deepened by yesterday's IAEA report. It concluded bluntly: "Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities", in defiance of a December UN ultimatum to stop. The report noted that Iran had continued with the operation of a pilot enrichment plant.

Furthermore, the report said that Iran had informed the agency of its plan to install 18 arrays, or cascades, of 164 centrifuges in an underground plant by May - a total of nearly 3,000. At the moment, Iran's centrifuges are being used to make low-enriched uranium, but if they were switched to making highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium, they could produce enough for a bomb in less than a year.

Dr ElBaradei's report said that Iran had so far not agreed to the IAEA installing remote monitoring devices in the enrichment plant to keep constant tabs on what the Iranians were doing with them.

Furthermore, the IAEA still has a string of questions about the Iranian programme that remain unanswered. Until they are, the agency will not give Iran a clear bill of health.

One of the "outstanding issues" listed in yesterday's report involves a 15-page document that appears to have been handed to IAEA inspectors by mistake in October 2005. That document roughly describes how to make hemispheres of enriched uranium, for which the only known use is in nuclear warheads. Iran has yet to present a satisfactory explanation of how and why it has the document.

Last night Iran, which says its nuclear fuel programme is designed only to produce electricity, remained defiant. "Regarding the suspension mentioned in the report, because such a demand has no legal basis and is against international treaties, naturally, it could not be accepted by Iran," Muhammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, told Reuters in Tehran. Mr Saeedi said the report showed that returning to talks was the best way to resolve the dispute.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he was "deeply concerned". "I urge again that the Iranian government should fully comply with the demands as soon as possible and engage in negotiations with the international community so that we can resolve this issue peacefully."

PAVEH, Western Iran - Learning English was a hard struggle for Hassan Arinadi. The thickly bearded son of a respected dervish [1] grew up in an isolated Sunni-dominated Kurdish village that is also a mystical center for Iran's remote and volatile Kordestan province. Long days and nights of study paid off, and now Arinadi is the local English teacher, imparting long strings of grammatically sound if old-fashioned English sentences to his Kurdish pupils.

When a rare foreign visitor passes through his village, Arinadi is the first port of call. Squatting in the kitchen of the village khaneqah (Sufi meeting house), he prepares an endless stream of small glasses of tea for the 100 dervishes who come every Friday for the weekly ceremony. But since being harassed by Iranian intelligence a few years ago, he can speak far less than he might have liked to.

Arinadi remains vague on the details of his brush with Iran's feared VAVAK (Vezarat-e Etelaat va Amniat-e Keshvar) intelligence apparatus. All he will say is that it followed his hosting of a group of European tourists at the Sufi retreat of which his family are caretakers. Contacts between foreign tourists straying beyond Iran's urban tourist triangle - Tehran, Esfahan and Shiraz - and Iran's often-pressured ethnic minorities are frowned on.

While visually stunning - it ought to be on the tourist trail - the village's position next to civil-war-torn Iraq and restive Sunni Muslim Kurdish inhabitants dictates its isolation. The prevailing government philosophy ever since a Kurdish rebellion soon after the 1979 Iranian revolution was violently suppressed is out of sight, out of mind. During Ashura, Shi'ite Islam's most important festival and the commemoration of the slaying of the Prophet's grandson Hossein by his political opponents, there were none of the black shrouds of mourning, self-flagellating crowds that filled most of Iran's other cities.

It is a time when the struggle by Iraq's already autonomous Kurds for their own state is providing inspiration to Kurds in neighboring countries. In the region, a simmering Sunni-Shi'ite enmity has spilled over into a covert war. So it is unsurprising that Iranian Kordestan's Sunni Kurds inhabit one of the least developed areas of the country and are politically unrepresented in Tehran.

"If there was a Shi'ite shrine here, the government would have built a huge mosque on its site and asphalted all roads leading to it," said Abu Bakr, the driver of an antique Nissan flatbed truck as he negotiated the snowed-in mountain paths connecting far-flung mountain villages.

In Paveh, the biggest city in the area, the state makes its presence felt through the armed guards standing sentry at the fortress-like police station built atop a hill close to the center of town. Most public signs are in Persian and Shi'ite imagery and names are given to schools and hospitals with predominantly Sunni pupils and patients. Many of the Revolutionary Guards entrusted to control the frontier from the rampant smuggling in goods that cuts across Iran and Iraq come from Iran's dominant Persian ethnic majority.

"Guerrillas from the Komala or Democrats [banned anti-Islamic Republic Kurdish secessionist groups] would throw stones at our sentries at night to bait them out in order to shoot at them," said a Kurdish soldier who served in Paveh in the early 1990s ferrying water to the border outposts. He was dismissed from duty after his superiors discovered that he had been selling water to locals whose villages had yet to have piping installed.

Many of the politically active Kurds are forced to lie low or flee across the border to Iraq. There, they can pick up military training and political indoctrination at a camp run by Pejak - the Party of Free Life in Kurdistan - on the inaccessible Mount Qandil. Pejak subscribes to the teachings of now-imprisoned Abdullah Ocalan, the former leader of Turkey's banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Pejak's cadres are mostly educated male and female activists, and it emerged as a force in northern Iraq as a result of the collapse of the Iraqi state. Ever since then, reports have emerged linking US and Israeli covert operations with these anti-Tehran groups.

"If reports are true that we have third-party agents and even a few Special Forces teams of our own inside Iran, why isn't Tehran screaming bloody murder about that?" asked Ray Close, a former US Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Saudi Arabia. "Perhaps in the past this was because they were embarrassed to admit that they had not caught any of our agents. But now that we have done so in Iraq, wouldn't you expect that the Iranians are probably launching a major campaign to grab some American and display him on TV as an infiltrator? Stay tuned."

Last May, a top Kurdish guerrilla threatened to launch hit-and-run attacks on Iran after Iranian artillery shelling of Mount Qandil.

"We have the right to launch attacks against Iranian forces," said Cemil "Cuma" Bayik, the de facto leader of the PKK, a quasi-socialist rebel movement entrenched in a decades-long guerrilla war for independence in the majority-Kurdish southeast of Turkey. In 2005, Pejak killed at least 120 Iranian soldiers in Iran, according to the Jamestown Foundation. In 2006, the guerrilla attacks continued undiminished. Also active is the left-wing Komala (Revolutionary Toilers of Iran) group that was founded in 1969 and was affiliated with the also-banned Communist Party of Iran. Last year, a senior Komala representative, Abdullah Muhtadi, traveled to Washington for a conference of Iranian minority groups amid speculation that the US administration was exploring a way of working with the group against Tehran.

On January 16, a commentary by Aref Mohammadzadeh in the conservative daily Jomhuri-ye Eslami accused Washington of "devising a strategy against the Islamic Republic similar to the one which had led to the collapse of the Soviet Union" and which aims at "fomenting and strengthening separatist movements and tribalist groups".

"One of the duties of these [recruited] individuals is to make connections inside Iran in order to recruit other people, and also to be in contact with Western authorities, organizations and institutions and present false and fabricated reports on the situation of ethnic groups in Iran," the commentary said.

Triumphant Iranian soldiers encountered last summer on the outskirts of Marivan in the Kurdish heartland claimed to have been involved in a skirmish the previous night in which "we killed the Khomeini of the Kurds", a comparative reference to the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But very little news filters out from Kordestan, and the Ministry of Islamic Guidance in Tehran throws bureaucratic obstacles in the path of foreign journalists seeking to visit the province.

With the region kept underdeveloped, smuggling provides a lucrative source of income. The Kurds' unmatched knowledge of the bandit-infested mountain passes connecting Iran with Iraq allows them to feed their neighbor's thirst for gasoline while bringing in Western electrical goods, weapons and alcohol.

If the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are smuggling weapons into Iraq, it is more likely to be happening through the southern border crossing areas of Mehran and Basra, which connect large Revolutionary Guard infrastructure projects with majority-Shi'ite, pro-Tehran southern Iraq. Any arms smuggling happening through the Kurdish areas is more likely to be Kurdish-orchestrated and private, rather than government-led.

"The fact that serial numbers were found [on weapons in Iraq] and that they could be traced to Iran production factories is not completely out of the question," said Paul Sullivan, a professor of economics at National Defense University in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC. "However, this does not necessarily prove Iranian culpability. These could have rather easily been sold on black markets, smuggled etc."

The Iranian government tries to stop the fuel-smuggling by posting armed guards at gasoline stations, noting license plates (a pointless action as the system is not computerized) and rationing fuel to 30 liters (half the full-tank capacity of a Nissan flatbed truck, the smugglers' favorite mode of transport) per day

"You have to get used to sleeping in the snow at night when bringing in a shipment," said Umar, a driver who uses his truck to bring goods into Iraq. "We know where the checkpoints are and carry the goods by hand across mountain paths before depositing them again on the other side of the checkpoint and bringing the empty truck to carry them the rest of the way."

Soldiers are also co-opted, and many look forward to a stint turning a blind eye at mountain checkpoints or gasoline pumps in Kordestan as a lucrative form of income.

"However pure a guard or a fuel attendant is, they become corrupted within a day when they are given the opportunity to make in one month enough money to be able to marry when their duty finishes," said one Kurdish official who requested anonymity.

Many of the most successful Kurdish smugglers are collaborators with the government in Tehran. The state allows them to conduct their own activities unmolested in return for their loyalty. One Kurdish family in the inaccessible village of Oraman has grown wealthy from smuggling but lost one of its sons, who was in the Revolutionary Guard when he was killed in a guerrilla attack.

Note 1. The word "dervish", especially in European languages, refers to members of Sufi Muslim ascetic religious fraternities, known for their extreme poverty and austerity, similar to mendicant friars. - Wikipedia

By Ibrahim Salehrad
KurdishMedia.com

In a democratic society, leadership positions bestowed upon individuals by the people are privileges, not rights. In other words, no one can claim the right to be a leader. Some of Kurdish party leaders, contrary to this principle, apparently feel they have the right to lead just because they were in leadership positions fifteen, twenty or thirty years ago.

This view was reinforced for me when I recently heard at some of Kurdish party leaders, who are actors in the ranks of Kurdish national movement, insist on this right. They openly do not want to relinquish or share power with others. Some of them feel that they have been fighting for at least a couple of decades instead of pursuing their education or other business interests as most of us have been doing.

Such an attitude is not helpful and has not the interest of our people at heart. The notion that those who have continued the struggle against regime are entitled to lead our people but others are considered newcomers, is not fruitful at all, to say at least.

Similarly, there may be those who were not part of the opposition, joining it but recently; nevertheless feel they are the ones who should lead our national movement.
They may think that they are entitled to leadership positions, or they may think they have more support at home and outside of Iranian Kurdistan, and that they do not have to coordinate their fight with rest of the opposition. Such an attitude again, will lead us nowhere.

Kurdish political leaders in general do not exhibit the humility and the wisdom that required for the cultivation of a democratic culture, which would be the most important legacy, they could leave for posterity. What would have happened had George Washington refused to step down after eight years as the first president of the young United Stated of America in the 18th century? He was very popular and indeed had the chance even to become the new monarch. But he refused the temptation. What would have been the lesson if Nelson Mandela had not stepped down after four years as president of the post-Apartheid South Africa? These two iconic figures taught their respective countries and the world at large that humility is important; that sowing democratic culture is bigger than their person or their egos, which apparently they did not possess much of.

Therefore, let alone those I mentioned above who must be at their sixties or more should move aside and allow the younger generation take over. Unfortunately, we see very similar problems within the leadership of the opposition that we have been witnessing in the ranks of the Kurdish National Movement for years. Think about it! Aren’t we telling the Iranian Government to have some humility instead of telling us they alone know what is best for our beloved country? Aren’t we asking the Iranian authorities to share power, instead of clinging to it by all means necessary? Aren’t we fighting them to let us, let the Kurdish people, have a say in their own affairs? Why then do the opposition leaders think they have they have the right to lead forever? Is it because they feel that they have unfinished business?

In order to establish a strong opposition that can win the struggle for freedom and democracy in Iranian Kurdistan an Iran as a whole, it must allow the participation and input of all opposition parties, organisations, civil society groups, individuals who may not be aligned with any organisation and most importantly women and youth.

The leaders of the opposition organizations should understand that any national gathering, front, congress or conference that does not include all the above and more, will be condemned to fall from the start. Because the leadership, policy, or an agreement that comes out of an exclusive gathering, cannot represent the interests of the people. For, it should be understood that no one individual, organisation, or group has the monopoly for patriotism, the knowledge and experience required and most of all, the right to lead.

Until such time, until we realize this and come together, we will not succeed. Forming parties and organisations, whether political or civil, is not enough. Unless you translate big thoughts into concrete step for action, they are pointless.

It should be clear to any one by now that we have not established a strong and wide opposition because some of our leaders who think they are indispensable. In order to be part of the solution, and not part of the problem, these leaders must understand and respect and accept that they are not indispensable; and, must learn to humble and pave the way for the people to choose their own leadership. By so doing, they will have strengthened, not weakened, the struggle for freedom, for human rights, for democracy and civil society in Iranian Kurdistan, and their place in our people’s history would be secured.

Ibrahim Salehrad is a Kurdish advocate lives in Oslo.

Eid-Ali Karimi, the workers representative from Ghazvin said: “On Tuesday, February 6th, 350 workers from the Pousheeneh-Baaft factory spent the night in front of the presidential offices.”

In an interview with the regime-run news agency, ILNA, Karimi said: “The workers of Pousheeneh-Baaft have come back, from Ghazvin to Tehran to protest in front of the presidential office because the president promised to resolve our problems and help us resume work. So far this has not come to fruition; therefore we have decided to resume our protests in front of various governmental organizations and buildings.”

He emphasized that these workers had faced hardship and were in limbo for an entire year and did not have the means to endure any more mismanagement and corruption under privatization. He added: “Before all this, when the president visited Ghazvin province and investigated the problems promises were made to resolve the situation so that the ownership of the company could be returned from the private sector to the state retirement fund. These workers will remain in Tehran until there is a resolution to the problems and the factory resumes work.”

Source:iranpressnews

The Italian center left newspaper La Republica in a report from Tehran wrote that the oppressed and exhausted people of Iran express their hatred for the Mullahs on the streets of Iran by openly castigating and verbally abusing them as they blame the Mullahs for the general chaos in Iran.

La Republica wrote that the hatred of the ruling mullahs is to the extent that a young novitiate from a seminary in Ghom said that when he steps out into the streets alone and especially when he goes to big cities like Tehran he goes in plain clothes and not in his religious garment.

Source:iranpressnews

BAGHDAD, Iraq - AP - High-tech roadside bombs that have proved particularly deadly to American soldiers are manufactured in Iran and delivered to Iraq on orders from the "highest levels" of the Iranian government, a senior intelligence officer said Sunday.

The officer, briefing reporters on condition he not be further identified, said that between June 2004 and last week, more than 170 Americans had been killed by the bombs, which the military calls "explosively formed projectiles."

Those weapons are capable of destroying an Abrams tank.

The officer said American intelligence analysts believe the EFPs are manufactured in Iran and smuggled into Iraq on orders from the top of the Iranian government. He did not elaborate.

U.S. officials have alleged for years that weapons were entering the country from Iran but had stopped short of alleging involvement by top Iranian leaders.

The U.S. officer said Iran was working through surrogates — mainly "rogue elements" of the Shiite Mahdi Army — to smuggle the EFPs into Iraq. He said most of the components are entering Iraq near Amarah, the Iranian border city of Meran, and the Basra area of southern Iraq.

The U.S. officer said American authorities had briefed Iraq's Shiite-led government on Iran's involvement and Iraqi officials had asked the Iranians to stop. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, has said he told both the U.S. and Iran that he does not want his country turned into a proxy battlefield.

Al-Maliki, who has been reluctant to crack down on the Mahdi Army, largely because he does not want to lose the support of its leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, said Iraqi security forces would deploy in force this week as part of a U.S.-backed security sweep aimed at stopping the violence in Baghdad.

"The new security plan will not start from a specific area, but it will start from all areas and at the same time and those who will take part in it are from all formations of the army and police," he said earlier in the day. The Iraqi leader has faced criticism that delays in starting the operation have allowed attacks that have killed hundreds over the past few weeks.

In Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, a suicide truck bomber slammed into a crowd of police lining up for duty Sunday near Tikrit, collapsing the station and killing at least 30 people and wounding 50, police said.

Minutes later, a roadside bomb struck a car on a highway on Tikrit's western outskirts, killing two civilians and wounding two others, police said.

Residents who rushed to the scene of the first bombing tried to help with rescue efforts before civil defense squads arrived with shovels to remove the debris and pull out the dead and those injured. U.S. and Iraqi forces later surrounded the area.

Bashir Masour, a 46-year-old laborer, said the explosion blew out the windows of his house, about 500 yards away.

"I ran to help and I saw destruction everywhere, along with charred bodies and body parts. Blood was spilled across a big area," he said. "I carried six people who I thought were still alive but then realized they had died after being torn apart by shrapnel."

Adwar, about 12 miles southeast of Tikrit, is where former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was captured on Dec. 13, 2003.

Insurgents frequently target Iraqi security forces, accusing them of collaborating with the U.S.

A U.S. soldier also was killed Saturday after coming under small-arms fire northeast of Baghdad, the military said, raising the number of American troops who have died this month to 37.

U.S. and Iraqi troops found 14 weapons caches and detained 140 suspects in a week, focusing on mainly Shiite eastern Baghdad in the initial phase of the security sweep, said U.S. Brig. Gen. John Campbell (news, bio, voting record), the deputy commander of American forces in Baghdad.

"With the cache finds this week, the detentions we've made and creating a larger presence on Baghdad streets with the establishment of another combat outpost, we are making headway with the Baghdad security plan," Campbell said. "This is only the beginning."

The chief military spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, said Wednesday that the much-anticipated Baghdad security operation was under way. His remarks came about a month after President Bush announced he was dispatching 21,500 more troops to curb sectarian bloodletting. The latest plan is the third effort to secure the capital since al-Maliki took office on May 20.

As the Baghdad operation begins, U.S. officials have been stepping up allegations that Iran is assisting Shiite militias that pose a major threat in the capital and surrounding areas.

Last week, U.S. officials said they were investigating allegations that the Shiite lawmaker Jamal Jaafar Mohammed, a member of the bloc that brought al-Maliki to power, was a main conduit for Iranian weapons. Mohammed has believed to have fled to Iran.

The allegations against Iran were made briefing which had been set for last week. But U.S. defense officials said it was postponed so that the Pentagon could review the information.

That appeared aimed at avoiding the embarrassment suffered when evidence of Iraqi unconventional weapons presented by Secretary Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003 proved to be wrong.

During the briefing, the officer said that one of six Iranians detained in January in a raid on an office in the northern city of Irbil was the operational commander of the Quds Brigade, a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that trains and equips Shiite militants abroad.

He was identified as Mohsin Chizari, who was apprehended after slipping back into Iraq after a 10-month absence, the officer said.

The Iranians were caught trying to flush documents down the toilet, he said. Bags of their hair were found during the raid, indicating they had tried to change their appearance, he added.

He said the dates of manufacture on weapons found so far indicate they were made after fall of Saddam Hussein — mostly in 2006. He said the "machining" on the components was traceable to Iran but did not elaborate.

In a separate briefing Maj. Gen. Jim Simmons, deputy commander of Multinational Corps-Iraq, told reporters there was no indication Iranian weapons were behind the latest spate of helicopter crashes.

KURDISHINFO-Kurdish demonstrators hold flags with portraits of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan in Strasbourg. 40,000 demonstrators protested in support of Ocalan, who was kidnaped February 15, 1999 from Kenya by CIA,Mossad and Mit cooperate .

KON-KURD (The Association of Kurdish Organisation in Europe)
The System of Imrali: Execution in Instalments

"The death penalty in Turkey has been officially abolished. Nevertheless, the Turkish government remains committed to its policy to kill Abdullah Ocalan in instalments. Ocalan has been imprisoned facing inhuman conditions of solitary confinement on the prison island of Imrali for eight years now. This is a form of systematic execution in instalments."

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani has left Tehran to attend a conference in Munich where he plans to meet European officials, state television reported on Saturday.

U.N. officials have said they hoped the planned meeting would allow some breathing space in the standoff between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear program.

"Larijani ... has left to take part in the Munich conference," said the television. It did not say when he would arrive in the German city.

Organizers of the Munich Security Conference, bringing together some of the world's top politicians, said on Friday Larijani had canceled his visit due to illness but later reported he would attend. The conference began on Friday.

The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran over its failure to prove to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), that experimental efforts to enrich uranium are geared solely to generating electricity as it maintains. The West suspects Iran wants to produce atom bombs.

Iran has said it would make an announcement of "significant" nuclear progress on Sunday when it crowns 10 days of celebrations marking the anniversary of its 1979 Islamic revolution.

DIPLOMACY

Washington is building up forces in the Gulf but says it is committed to diplomacy and has no intention of invading Iran.

Keeping up a war of words on Friday, UnderSecretary of State Nicholas Burns told reporters in Buenos Aires Iran was "digging a hole deeper and deeper for itself".

He said an offer to Iran to negotiate was still on the table if Tehran suspended enrichment, but added: "Iran seems to be determined to further its isolation internationally."

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said the talks with Larijani had been arranged with an eye to a February 21 U.N. Security Council deadline for Iran to stop enriching uranium for nuclear fuel or risk broader financial sanctions.

According to a report obtained by Reuters on Friday, the IAEA has cut back almost half its technical aid projects in Iran to uphold the U.N. sanctions.

The aid reduction, based on a review by IAEA experts, will go for final approval to a March meeting of the IAEA's board of governors, where Western and developing states are split over how hard to crack down on Iran.

"This is a substantial cut in the technical aid program," said a senior U.N. official, who declined to be named. "It is a message of inducement to Iran to reconsider its course."

The existing U.N. resolution bans transfers of sensitive nuclear materials and know-how to Iran as well as IAEA aid, traditionally given to bolster peaceful uses of nuclear energy, if it has any possible use in producing atomic fuel.

Iran Focus Tehran, Iran, Feb. 09 – Iran’s intelligence czar announced that the Islamic Republic had identified 100 U.S. and Israeli “spies” within the country’s borders, the government-owned news agency Fars reported on Thursday. Radical Shiite cleric Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ezhei, who head’s the dreaded Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), said that the foreign agents were CIA and Mossad operatives. They intended to obtain intelligence on Iran’s military and political apparatus, the report said. Mohseni-Ezhei said that the foreign intelligence services were also recruiting Iranians and training them abroad.

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will seek to show a nation united behind its nuclear program on Sunday but pressure from the West and voices counselling caution at home have dampened prospects for a grand announcement about atomic progress.

Iran marks the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's promise to celebrate the "establishing of Iran's nuclear program" had prompted talk of a major announcement.

Some analysts expected Tehran to announce it had begun installing 3,000 centrifuges, which can make fuel for power stations or material for nuclear warheads, in defiance of Western demands to halt a program it fears is a front for bomb-making.

But one senior official said Tehran had no intention of announcing such a provocative step because it could block a political solution and hasten more penalties in the nuclear standoff with the West.

Ahmadinejad, who is not the most powerful figure in Iran despite his headline-grabbing speeches against the West and Israel, has faced mounting public criticism in Iran since December when a U.N. sanctions resolution was passed and when his supporters were trounced in local council polls.

Critics say his rhetoric has helped push Iran toward international isolation, although the final say in policy lies with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not the president.

"To avoid upping the stakes in the nuclear standoff with the West, there will only be a nationwide rally on Sunday," the senior government official told Reuters

Chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani also suggested in comments in a newspaper that the focus on Sunday would be to "show that the Iranian nation is supporting the nuclear issue".

Larijani said he would hold talks with "Western parties" at a conference in Germany starting Friday, the first such meetings since sanctions were imposed. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who led failed efforts to coax Iran to an atomic deal last year, said he was open to a meeting.

Analysts say Tehran's new caution partly shows the growing influence of more moderate or pragmatic voices among the ruling elite since December. But they say Iran remains determined to master atomic technology even if tactics to achieve this change.

Among the pragmatists is Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a cleric beaten in the 2005 presidential race but whose political fortunes have revived as Ahmadinejad's have dipped. He talks of Iran's atomic rights but warns against "inciting the enemies".

Tehran says it only wants to make fuel for nuclear power plants.

FEARING AN ESCALATION

Iran runs two cascades of 164 centrifuges that have enriched tiny quantities of uranium. But diplomats in Vienna, home of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), say Iran has recently set up two more cascades, the first stage of plans to build thousands and start "industrial-scale" enrichment.

For failing to halt that work, the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran and gave it until February 21 to suspend enrichment or face further measures.

Some expect Iran to declare it has expanded atomic work before any compromise.

"They will make a celebration and then, from a position of strength, they can go for a deal," said political analyst Nasser Hadian-Jazy, who said he expected Iran would announce some nuclear advance, such as the installation of new centrifuges.

The U.N. sanctions barred the transfer of sensitive material and know-how to Iran's nuclear program. But economists see a wider impact with already meager investment flows drying up because foreign and Iranian businesses fear an escalation.

Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, is enjoying windfall oil revenues but priming the economy with petrodollars is fuelling inflation and not creating jobs, economists add.

"I am not sure whether Iranians are ready to tolerate further economic isolation," said economist Saeed leylaz.

The United States has increased the pressure with sanctions on two Iranian state banks and by ordering a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf, sparking talk of a pre-emptive U.S. strike.

Washington insists it wants a political solution but U.S. officials have not ruled out force. Khamenei said on Thursday Tehran would target U.S. interests around the world if attacked.

Bianet-Journalist Sinan Kara had been taken under custody and sent to prison, while visiting Batman, for a pending sentence. He'll stay 146 days in prison, told Becerikli of IHD. Sinan Kara had faced numerous trials for his articles in his now-closed newspaper .

Journalist Sinan Kara has been taken under custody and sent to Batman prison concerning a standing conviction.

He was arrested as he was visiting the southeastern city of Batman for preparations of an upcoming book on the region.

Kara would serve his 146-day imprisonment sentence pending from a case that was put forward while he was the owner of the now-closed Datça Haber local newspaper, Human Rights Association (ÝHD) Batman branch chair Saadet Becerikli told bianet.

He had founded another newspaper, Ege'nin Sesi, as Kara faced numerous trials for trivial violations of procedures or such during his time with Datça Haber.

Lastly, he was convicted of affronting Datça province governor Savaþ Tuncer in the book that he wrote during a previous imprisonment.

By LAUREN FRAYER
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. airstrike hit a Kurdish position in northern Iraq, killing at least eight Kurdish troops and wounding six, Iraqi officials said Friday. The U.S. military said it was looking into the report.

The strike hit just before midnight Thursday in Mosul, according to officials with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party headed by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a staunch supporter of U.S. efforts in Iraq.

Sheik Kabir Goran, deputy in charge of the party's branch in Mosul, said U.S. warplanes hit a guard post that was protecting the PUK branch in eastern Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. He said eight Kurdish guards were killed and six were wounded in the strike.

Goran identified those killed as peshmerga, members of the Kurdish militia that fought Saddam Hussein's regime for decades. Many peshmerga fighters have been incorporated into the Iraqi military since the U.S.-led invasion.

Maj. Gen. Wathiq Mohammed Abdul-Qadir, the commander of the provincial police, confirmed the airstrike and gave the same casualty toll.

Goran said U.S. forces went to the post after the airstrike and provided care to the wounded before returning them to the PUK branch. He said the Americans promised to return later Friday to explain what happened.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said the reports were being investigated.

Prominent Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman, who is not a PUK member but has strong ties to the community, expressed anger over the attack.

"This is not a good sign for the new security plan that they (U.S. forces) have started by attacking the people who support them," he told The Associated Press.

A separate U.S. airstrike killed eight suspected terrorists and destroyed a building south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Friday.

The attack occurred Thursday night in Arab Jabour, a mostly Sunni Muslim suburb south of Baghdad.

American troops came under "heavy enemy fire during a raid targeting al-Qaida in Iraq terrorists and foreign fighter facilitators," the U.S. military said in a statement.

Coalition aircraft swooped in, dropping precision bombs on a building where eight suspects had barricaded themselves, the statement said.

All eight were killed. No U.S. forces or Iraqi civilians were injured in the attack, the military said.

An Iraqi army officer, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media, confirmed the raid and number of people killed. He added that Iraqi soldiers did not take part in the clashes.

Elsewhere, gunmen dressed in Iraqi army uniforms swept into a village south of Baghdad, kidnapping 13 civilians and killing at least 11 of them, police said.

The attack occurred around 5 a.m. local time in Imam village, a predominantly Shiite town about 50 miles south of the Iraqi capital.

About two hours after the abduction, police found eleven bodies with gunshot wounds to the head and chest, and they were believed to be those who had been kidnapped, police and the Iraqi army said.

An Iraqi army spokesman acknowledged that the gunmen wore Iraqi army uniforms and drove military vehicles, but said they were not government soldiers.

"We did not have any duties in that area, and those vehicles do not belong to us," said 1st Lt. Murad al-Maamouri. "They are terrorists of course."

Al-Maamouri said Iraqi soldiers were patrolling the area on foot, searching for the other two captives.

The U.S. military said Friday that three U.S. soldiers were killed in fighting in Iraq's western Anbar province.

The soldiers, who were assigned to Multi-National Force — West, died Thursday from wounds sustained while conducting combat operations in the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

Their names were withheld pending notification of relatives.

The deaths raised to at least 3,117 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

BAGHDAD, Feb 9 (Reuters) - A U.S. air strike in northern Iraq killed eight Kurdish Peshmerga militiamen and wounded six others, Kurdish officials said on Friday.

They said the air strike occurred around midnight on Thursday when a U.S. helicopter attacked a Kurdish Peshmerga watchtower on a hill east of the city of Mosul. The U.S. military said it was checking the reports.

Demonstrations in Manchester and Leicester against the policy of forced return of Kurdish asylum seekers to Kurdistan.

Saturday 10 February 2007

Dallas Court, Manchester at 12midday

Clock Tower, Leicester city centre at 2pm

For further information phone: Dashty Jamal 07856 032 991, Sarah Parker 020 8809 0633, Aram Hama Saed 07729 182 083, Burhan Fatah 07929 010 257, Saman Sardam 0779 950 714. Or email Sarah Parker: sarahp107@hotmail.com or tod.jamal@ntlworld.com.
Events listing is provided for information only. Inclusion in this listing should not be taken to imply that the Institute of Race Relations supports an event or is involved in organising it.

Human Rights Watch
HRW

New York -- The Iranian government should immediately lift foreign travel bans used to prevent human rights activists and journalists from attending international forums, Human Rights Watch said today.

In recent months, Iranian security forces have repeatedly confiscated passports of activists as they prepared to leave for international conferences. In some cases, the authorities detained and interrogated activists upon their return to Iran.

“The Iranian government is effectively putting the country’s civil society leaders under national house arrest,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “After silencing activists inside Iran, the government is preventing them from expressing their views outside the country as well.”

On February 4, representatives of the Information Ministry prevented two prominent activists, Hashim Aghajari and Abdullah Momeni, from departing on a plane to attend an international conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on political reform in Iran. Aghajari is a history professor at Tehran’s Tarbiat Modares University, and Momeni is a spokesman for an organization of former student activists.

Both Aghajari and Momeni had their passports processed and stamped with an exit permit in Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport. While they waited to board the plane, however, plainclothes officials confiscated their passports and notified them that the Passport Services division of the Presidential Executive Office, under the order of the Revolutionary Court, has imposed a travel ban on them.

In another recent incident, authorities detained Mansoureh Shojai, Sadigheh Tal’at Taghinia and Farnaz Seifi, who are women’s rights activists and journalists, as they were preparing to board a plane to attend a journalism workshop in India on January 27. The security forces subsequently searched the women’s homes, confiscating their personal belongings, including cell phones, computers, books, and notes, and transferred them to section 209 of Tehran’s Evin prison, which is run by Iran’s security services.

Shirin Ebadi, the women’s lawyer and the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, told Human Rights Watch that there was no prior arrest warrant against the women. On January 28, after interrogating the three women, the authorities charged them with “acting against national security” and released them on bail. The authorities also confiscated the passport of another women’s rights activist, Sussan Tahmasebi, upon her return from a trip abroad in November.

On January 13, security forces at the airport prevented Taghi Rahmani, a writer and civil society activist, from traveling by plane to Denmark, where the PEN Association of Denmark had invited him to deliver a series of lectures.

“All of my official papers were processed in the airport, and the passport authorities stamped my passport with an exit stamp,” Rahmani told Human Rights Watch. “As I was waiting to board the airplane, however, a group of plainclothes security agents approached me and told me that I was banned from leaving the country.”

“They confiscated my passport and told me to follow up with the Passport Services division of the Presidential Executive Office,” Rahmani added. “After I went there, they notified me that the Revolutionary Court’s Deputy for Security, supervised by Tehran’s prosecutor general, Saeed Mortazavi, had issued the order to ban me from travel. I have not been able to recover my passport so far.”

On November 26, the security forces in Tehran detained Ali Farahbakhsh, a journalist and economist, one week after he had returned from a conference for journalists held in India. Before detaining him, the security services took him in for interrogation each day and pressured him to make confessions that he had endangered national security. After he refused, the authorities detained him. His family told Human Rights Watch that he is being held in section 209 of Evin prison. He was held in solitary confinement for 44 days.

Over the past year, the government has barred several other prominent human rights defenders and writers, including Issa Saharkhiz, Emad Baghi, Fatimeh Govarai and Ahmad Ghabel, from traveling outside Iran.

The government’s travel bans are contrary to Iranian law as well as the country’s obligations under international law.

Iranian law only permits foreign travel bans upon court order for persons formally accused of criminal offenses. On February 4, an official with the Tehran Judiciary, Saberi Zafarghandi, told reporters that “accused persons” can be banned from traveling abroad under article 133 of the Procedures for Criminal Courts. Article 133 provides that, “taking into account the weight of the evidence underlying the charges brought against the accused, a court can ... issue an order to ban the accused of traveling abroad.”

However, none of the activists and journalists subject to the travel bans had been charged with a criminal offense, and therefore none of them can be considered as an “accused person” under article 133. In addition, none of those subject to these travel bans had received any notice from any court of a travel ban against them, as is required by article 133.

International law ensures that all Iranians have a right to leave and return to Iran. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Iran has ratified, in article 12 establishes that “everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own” and that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.”

Restrictions on this right are only permissible when they are prescribed by law, are “necessary to protect national security, public order, public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others,” and are consistent with other fundamental rights – elements which the government has not established. However, none of the Iranians barred from travel had been charged with any offenses, such as threatening national security, when they attempted to travel abroad.

“The Iranian government violated the fundamental right of these men and women to leave and return their country,” said Whitson. “And they did so without regard to Iranian law.”

Human Rights Watch called on the Iranian government to end its persecution of civil society activists by banning them from foreign travel.

original article

Washington Post

Remark Adds to Debate on Whether U.S. Missed Chance to Improve Ties With Tehran

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 8, 2007; A18

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was pressed yesterday on whether the Bush administration missed an opportunity to improve relations with Iran in 2003, when Tehran issued a proposal calling for a broad dialogue with the United States, on matters including cooperation on nuclear safeguards, action against terrorists and possible recognition of Israel.

Although former administration officials have said the proposal was discussed and ultimately rejected by top U.S. officials, Rice, who was then national security adviser, said she never saw it.

"I have read about this so-called proposal from Iran," Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday, referring to reports in The Washington Post and other publications last year. "We had people who said, 'The Iranians want to talk to you,' lots of people who said, 'The Iranians want to talk to you.' But I think I would have noticed if the Iranians had said, 'We're ready to recognize Israel.' . . . I just don't remember ever seeing any such thing."

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) cited a former Rice staff member, Flynt Leverett, who has publicly discussed seeing the proposal when he worked at the White House.

"Why should we accept the administration's analysis today that it is correct to yet again not engage with Iran when administration officials at the time now have concluded -- at least this one and one or two others -- that the administration was wrong?" Wexler asked Rice at the hearing.

Rice's comments add a new level of complexity to an issue that has generated debate among foreign policy experts: Did the Bush administration forgo a chance to pursue a dialogue with Iran shortly after the fall of Baghdad, when U.S. power seemed at its height?

The Iranian document, conveyed to Washington via the Swiss Embassy, listed a series of Iranian aims for potential talks, such as ending sanctions, full access to peaceful nuclear technology and a recognition of its "legitimate security interests," according to a copy that has circulated in Washington and was verified by Iranian and U.S. officials.

In the document, Iran offered to put a series of U.S. aims on the agenda, including full cooperation on nuclear safeguards, "decisive action" against terrorists, coordination in Iraq, ending "material support" for Palestinian militias and accepting a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The document also laid out an agenda for negotiations, including possible steps to be achieved at a first meeting and the development of road maps on disarmament, countering terrorism and economic cooperation.

Rice dismissed yesterday the earlier comments of Leverett.

"First of all, I don't know what Flynt Leverett's talking about, quite frankly," she said. "Maybe I should ask him when he came to me and said, 'We have a proposal from Iran and we really ought to take it.' "

Leverett said yesterday that he became aware of the two-page offer, which came over a fax machine at the State Department, in his waning days in the U.S. government as a senior director at the National Security Council, but that it was not his responsibility to put it on Rice's desk because Rice had placed Elliott Abrams in charge of Middle East policy. "If he did not put it on her desk, that says volumes about how she handled the issue," he said yesterday.

Abrams is currently the deputy national security adviser in charge of the Middle East and democracy promotion. An NSC spokeswoman, speaking on behalf of Abrams, said yesterday that Abrams "has no memory of any such fax and never saw or heard of any such thing."

Former State Department officials have said that they saw the Iranian offer and used it as a key element in a 2003 memo to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell proposing that the United States pursue a "grand bargain" with Iran. The Iranian offer was attached to the memo, but Powell did not forward the memo to the White House, officials said.

Last June, Rice appeared to confirm, in an interview with National Public Radio, that the White House had received the memo. "What the Iranians wanted earlier was to be one-on-one with the United States so that this could be about the United States and Iran," Rice said. State Department officials at that time did not dissuade reporters from interpreting her comments as referring to the 2003 fax.

Leverett said the Iranian offer is "embarrassing and politically difficult" for the administration now that it has rejected calls for a dialogue from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, has confronted Iranian agents in Iraq and has expanded military assets in the Persian Gulf.

Leverett charged in December that the White House orchestrated an effort by the CIA to demand significant deletions in an opinion article he had written on Iran policy on the grounds that the material was classified. "The single biggest recision" concerned his description of the Iran's 2003 offer, he said yesterday.

original article

Iran Focus

London, Feb. 08 – Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad will travel to Tehran next week to hold talks with senior Iranian officials, the Kuwaiti news agency quoted the daily al-Watan as saying on Thursday.

During his trip, al-Assad will discuss Tehran-Damascus bilateral relations and issues relating to Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mu'allem will accompany al-Assad, the report said.

Regional allies Iran and Syria are both accused by the United States of being state sponsors of terrorism.

Associated Press
By NASSER KARIMI

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - If the United States were to attack Iran, the country would respond by striking U.S. interests all over the world, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Thursday.

Speaking to a gathering of Iranian air force commanders, Khamenei said: "The enemy knows well that any invasion would be followed by a comprehensive reaction to the invaders and their interests all over the world."

Iranian leaders often speak of a crushing response to any attack. While the remarks are seen as an attempt to drum up national support, Iran's position on Iraq and its nuclear program have provoked more than usual international pressure in recent months.

President Bush has ordered American troops to act against Iranians suspected of being involved in the Iraqi insurgency and has deployed a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf area as a warning to Iran. The U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions because of Iran's refusal to cease uranium enrichment.

"Some people say that the U.S. president is not prone to calculating the consequences of his actions," Khamenei said in remarks broadcast on state television, "but it is possible to bring this kind of person to wisdom.

"U.S. policymakers and analysts know that the Iranian nation would not let an invasion go without a response," Khamenei added.

He also addressed rumors about his health - a subject that is rarely discussed openly in Iran. Last month, there was speculation his health had deteriorated seriously.

"Enemies of the Islamic system fabricated various rumors about death and health to demoralize the Iranian nation, but they did not know that they are not dealing with only one person in Iran. They are facing a nation," Khamenei said.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Public Statement

AI Index: EUR 44/003/2007 (Public)
News Service No: 026
8 February 2007

Amnesty International is deeply concerned that after an unfair trial, in which the primary evidence was based on statements allegedly extracted under torture, eight individuals face imprisonment solely for their non-violent political beliefs and completely unproven connection with a political party which has not used or advocated violence. The organization will consider Mehmet Desde, Mehmet Bakır, Hüseyin Habip Taşkın, Maksut Karadağ, Şerafettin Parmak, Metin Özgünay, Ömer Güner and Ergün Yıldırım as prisoners of conscience if they are imprisoned and will campaign for their immediate and unconditional release. The eight are currently at liberty and face arrest and imprisonment in the coming days.

On 25 December 2006, in spite of the Chief Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation recommending the quashing of the verdicts, the Court upheld the March 2006 convictions of Mehmet Desde, Mehmet Bakır, Hüseyin Habip Taşkın, Maksut Karadağ and Şerafettin Parmak for “membership of an illegal organization”, and Metin Özgünay, Ömer Güner and Ergün Yıldırım for “supporting an illegal organization”. The former five men now face 30-month prison sentences (of which they will serve around 17 months, having already served six months) and the latter three men 10-month sentences (of which they will serve seven and a half months) for their alleged connection with the Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan/Turkey), a charge which they denied during their trial. Evidence used to convict the eight has consisted mainly of statements allegedly extracted under torture, the discovery of legal journals, leaflets and stickers in the name of the Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan/Turkey) urging public support for 1 May demonstrations and not advocating violence, and the fact of some of the defendants having met in the Aegean town of Kuşadası on 8 July 2002. They were detained on 9-10 July 2002.

The decision by the 9^th Chamber of the Court of Cassation to uphold the convictions comes after a prolonged judicial process which has seen two retrials and two previous decisions by the Court of Cassation to quash verdicts of the lower court. The course of the trial demonstrates clear uncertainty by the courts in how to deal with the case and earlier judgments contradict later ones. The implication of the Court of Cassation’s first decision to quash the verdict of the Izmir State Security Court in April 2004 had been to question whether the Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan/Turkey) could be legally counted as a terrorist organization in the absence of evidence of acts of violence or intimidation, threats, or advocacy of terrorism. Upon retrial the lower court sought to sidestep the lack of evidence pointing to terrorist activities and justify the decision to categorize the political party as a terrorist organization by describing its ideology as based on “moral force” (as opposed to actual physical force). The Izmir public prosecutor in both retrials had recommended the acquittal of the defendants.

The latest and final decision by the Court of Cassation after two retrials to uphold the convictions is all the more disturbing in view of the fact that a separate case against four police officers accused of torturing Mehmet Desde is continuing and awaits a decision of the 8^th Chamber of the Court of Cassation. The appeal in this case has been pending since December 2004. Amnesty International notes there are instances of the Court of Cassation quashing the verdicts of lower courts on the grounds that the lower court should have waited for the outcome of trials of alleged torturers.

Amnesty International regards the final verdict against the eight as evidence of a continuing pattern of unfair trial proceedings which blights Turkey’s criminal justice system. The background to the unfair trial of Mehmet Desde and others is documented at length, alongside other cases, in a report focusing on trials for those charged under anti-terrorism legislation published by Amnesty International in September 2006 (Turkey: Justice Delayed and Denied: The persistence of protracted and unfair trials for those charged under anti-terrorism legislation, AI Index: EUR 44/013/2006). The right to a fair trial is enshrined in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. As a State Party to both these conventions, Turkey has a legal obligation to uphold the right to a fair trial for all those under Turkish jurisdiction.

UNPO

The Hague, 07 February 2007 – In continued pursuit of its objective to give a voice to all nations and peoples working without adequate representation at international institutions and organisations, the newly elected Presidency of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) has admitted six new UNPO Members. The UNPO Presidency met from 01 to 03 February 2007 at the European Parliament in Brussels, where it considered several of the countless applications received over the past period and welcomed the following nations and peoples into the organisation:

Hmong ChaoFa – Representing the 300,000 Hmong presently residing in Laos, the ChaoFa Federated State works to promote a greater degree of self-determination for all Hmong communities, as well as an end to the continued violation of their social, political, and human rights.

Inner Mongolia – Following the loss of its independence in 1947, when control of Inner Mongolia was transferred by the USSR to China following the successful expulsion of invading Japanese forces, the Inner Mongolia Peoples Party works to preserve the cultural identity of its people, aspiring to an end of Communist Rule and a confederated union with China.

Iranian Kurdistan – Since Iranian authorities annexed the Republic of Mahabad (Kurdistan) in 1946, the aspirations for autonomy and self-rule amongst Iran’s Kurdish population has been systematically repressed. The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan works to promote their national rights, and aspires to a Federal and Democratic Iran with equal respect for all Iran’s minority communities.

Rehoboth Basters – Numbering approximately 35,000, the Rehoboth Basters presently reside in central Namibia. Despite colonial treaties affording their Captains Council a degree of self-determination within their ancestral lands, the Rehoboth Basters have lost control of much of this territory, and are presently campaigning for its rightful return.

Southern Azerbaijan – Working towards improving the conditions of all minorities living within Iran, the Southern Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement (SANAM) represents its Azeri population, the largest minority community living within Iran, and advocates a peaceful transition towards democracy in Iran.

Tsimshian – The Tsimshian are a Native American and First Nation people, living “inside the Skeena River”, spanning southern Alaska and northern British Columbia. Their Hereditary Chiefs negotiate with Canadian authorities in an effort to secure formal recognition of the rights of First Nations across Canada.

ww.unpo.org/article.php?id=6263

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Revolutionary Guards launched two days of war games on Wednesday in the Gulf and Sea of Oman, state media reported. State television said the exercises by the air and naval units of the Guards were "to raise ... combat preparedness". The United States and Iran are at loggerheads over Tehran's nuclear program, which Washington says is aimed at building atomic bombs, and over Iraq, where U.S. officials say Iran is backing militants. Tehran denies both charges. Washington has ordered a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf, a move regarded as a warning to Iran. "Missile interception and test firing will be included in the war games," state television said, showing footage of divers jumping out helicopters and a warship at sea. When asked by a state radio reporter about what hardware had been tried out, the Guards' air force commander Hossein Salami suggested tests included equipment related to the Russian-made TOR-M1 anti-aircraft missile system. It did not appear to involve firing those missiles. Last month, Russia said it had completed delivery of the TOR-M1 system to Iran. Washington said the sale undermined regional security. Moscow says the missiles are only short-range and purely defensive. Military experts say Iranian forces are no technological match for the U.S. military but could still cause havoc in the Gulf and the narrow Strait of Hormuz, a choke point through which two fifths of the world's traded oil passes. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that Washington was not planning for war with Iran. The Revolutionary Guards is an ideological wing of the Islamic Republic's armed forces and has a separate command structure to the regular military. Source:iranfocus

By VOA News

Iraq's foreign minister says four Iraqi military officers have been detained in the kidnapping this week of an Iranian diplomat.

Foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters in Baghdad Wednesday that the four men, although military officers, were apparently not linked to the government. He did not elaborate.

He said the men are being questioned about who ordered the kidnapping.

Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms kidnapped the Iranian diplomat on Sunday.

Iran has said it holds the United States responsible for the safety of the diplomat. An Iranian spokesman said the kidnappers are linked to Iraq's defense ministry, which, he said, "works under the supervision of American forces."

The U.S. has denied involvement in the incident.

U.S. forces in Iraq arrested a number of Iranians recently.

Washington has accused Tehran of aiding Shi'ite militants involved in sectarian attacks.

By OMAR SINAN
Associated Press Writer

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - Some 2 million Iraqis have fled to neighboring countries in the past three years and up to 3,000 more go abroad every day, according to the U.N. refugee agency. But Umm Ali and her husband, Hussein Jawad, are among nearly 85,000 Iraqi Arabs who have sought refuge in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

Here, they find themselves in what feels like a foreign country: Kurdistan has been autonomous since 1991, and Kurds run their own affairs. While Arabic is an official language, it is all but eclipsed by Kurdish.

As snow fell outside, the smell of frying eggplant and onions burned Umm Ali's eyes as she cooked in her kitchen — which doubles as the family bathroom. There's not much else: one other room for her, her husband and four children. Still, she says, it's better here than at the family's home in Baghdad, 180 miles south, at the center of Iraq's bloodshed.

"Even if we were living in a tent, without a real roof over our heads in this snowy weather, we'd still be happy to be away from that intimidation," said the 41-year-old Shiite.

Iraq's Kurdistan also has largely been spared the relentless car bombings, suicide attacks and Shiite-Sunni slayings that have killed thousands in Baghdad, central Iraq and the south. People here also are mostly free of the daily crime, kidnappings, death threats and fear present in Baghdad.

The result has been an economic boom in the three provinces that make up Kurdistan, with many construction jobs for Iraqis from the south.

"Our joy comes in feeling secure," said Jawad, who took his wife and children from Baghdad's Dora district after a note was left at their house calling the family "Shiite infidels" and warning the children would be "slain like sheep" if the family didn't leave.

"I didn't care about my house," he said. "I just felt my children and I needed to live our lives." He now works as an electrician at a new three-star hotel here.

The influx has strained social services in the north, however, and fueled rising housing prices. It also comes at a time when Kurdish-Arab tensions are increasing in the city of Kirkuk, just outside the Kurdish zone, over Kurdish attempts to include it in Kurdistan. Similar Kurdish-Arab tensions have arisen in the northern city of Mosul.

That makes the peaceful migration of Iraqi Arabs to Kurdish cities like Sulaimaniyah somewhat unusual in the country's history. Under Saddam Hussein, Kurds were terrorized and repressed; Saddam tried to send Arabs north in some cases to displace Kurds in key cities.

So far, the flight of Iraqi Arabs to the three Kurdish provinces has not sparked significant ethnic tensions. In fact, the governor of Sulaimaniyah, Dana Ahmad Majeed, has invited more Iraqis to come north rather than leave Iraq altogether.

Majeed said the federal government needs to give Kurdistan more medical supplies, fuel and electricity to handle the flood of refugees.

"The support these displaced people are getting is so slim compared to the skyrocketing numbers of these emigrants (to Kurdistan) every day," he told The Associated Press.

Of the nearly 85,000 displaced Iraqis who now live in the three Kurdish provinces, about 30,000 live in Sulaimaniyah province, said Anita Raman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR has been providing emergency help for the most vulnerable, including kerosene, lanterns, blankets and food, she said.

At the "border" between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq, Kurdish fighters at checkpoints stop and search the cars of entering Arabs. Families are allowed in without permits, but single men must have a Kurdish sponsor and a work permit — a security measure to keep out militants, Kurdish authorities say.

Those who come have to make adjustments — to the high rents, scarce housing, cold winter weather and the Kurdish language. Kurdish uses the Arabic alphabet, but is an Indo-European language unrelated to Semitic Arabic.

"We couldn't even read the signs in the streets," said Jawdat al-Obaidi, a Sunni Arab from the town of Youssifiyah, just south of Baghdad. "I am trying to learn the language so I can find a decent job and settle here."

The 46-year-old engineer fled Youssifiyah two months ago after Shiite militiamen scrawled "death to terrorists" on his house.

Now he's thrilled to have found the Jawahiri Elementary School — Sulaimaniyah's only Arabic language school, where he has enrolled his three sons.

Near the school one recent day, a Kurdish street vendor selling cookies and chocolates stood surrounded by a dozen Arab children. Hussein Mazin, a 12-year-old Shiite, struggled to find a way to ask the vendor whether he sold a particular kind of potato chip.

"I speak some Kurdish," Mazin said, smiling. "But obviously not very well."

Mazin's family fled the southern city of Basra after his brother was abducted. The kidnappers returned him after the family paid a ransom, but they also threatened to seize his younger sister, too.

"We are not afraid of the kidnappers anymore," Mazin said.

The New York Times

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: February 6, 2007

BAGHDAD, Tuesday, Feb. 6 — An Iranian diplomat was abducted Sunday evening when his convoy was stopped by men with official Defense Ministry identification in the Karrada neighborhood here, senior Iraqi and American officials said Monday.

Iraqi security forces captured several suspects after pursuing their vehicles through the streets of Baghdad, two of the Iraqi officials said.

The vehicle with the diplomat was not caught, though.

Bombings killed at least 29 people and wounded 90 more in Baghdad as preparations for the latest attempt to secure the city were under way. Those preparations are part of the American-led troop buildup that some American and Iraqi officials view as a last-ditch effort to keep violence in the capital from degenerating into an all-out sectarian war between Shiite and Sunni Arabs.

The abduction of the Iranian took place in a largely Shiite section of the city not far from where a truck bomb killed at least 135 people on Saturday and where residents have complained that the slow pace of the increase in American troops has left them open to attacks.

The men captured in the chase by Iraqi forces on Sunday were Iraqis with Defense Ministry identification, Iraqi and American officials said, raising serious questions about whether government forces themselves were involved in the abduction.

A senior Iraqi official said that the credentials initially appeared to be genuine but that investigators later received conflicting information about whether the men had been dismissed from the ministry but somehow kept their identification.

When asked about indications that an Iranian diplomat had been abducted in Baghdad, Mohammad alHosseini, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran, said: “We need to investigate, because we have been receiving a lot of news like that these days. I cannot confirm it yet.”

If the kidnappers’ credentials turn out to be genuine, there will be enormous pressure on the Iraqi government to recover the diplomat and capture all of those involved. The Iraqi government has been critical of recent raids by American forces in which Iranians working with diplomatic offices in Iraq have been detained.

The Americans have accused some of those Iranians of supporting illicit armed groups in Iraq, but the raids have been embarrassing to the Iraqi government, which has been encouraging foreign diplomatic missions — in particular Iran’s — to increase their presence here. Iraqi officials have distanced themselves from the American raids, while Iran has simply termed those operations kidnappings.

In fact, the American position on those raids was weakened after American forces in Baghdad first announced that they would formally present evidence on illicit Iranian activity in Iraq, then pulled back amid indications that officials in Washington were not persuaded that the case was strong enough.

Tensions between the United States and Iran have recently soared over the issues of Iran’s nuclear program and statements by its ambassador to Iraq that his country planned to increase its economic and military ties with Iraq substantially.

The Iranian Embassy has not publicly acknowledged the kidnapping. But in an indication of how high tensions between Iran and the United States have risen over the American raids, the embassy privately voiced suspicions that the kidnapping of its diplomat might have been done at the behest of American forces in Baghdad, an Iraqi official said.

American Embassy and military spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment that were made after midnight on Monday in Baghdad.

Beyond the unsubstantiated suspicions about the involvement of the United States in the kidnapping, there were no clear indications of whether the Iranian diplomat might have been taken by insurgents seeking to cast doubt on the stability of Iraq’s government, or simply for ransom.

But in videos, Sunni insurgents claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on Arab embassies in Baghdad in 2005, when the top diplomats from Egypt and Algeria were kidnapped and killed.

Also on Monday, the United States military reported that two American soldiers had been killed the day before.

One soldier from Task Force Lightning was shot by insurgents during combat in Diyala Province. Another soldier, assigned to the 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), was killed by a roadside bomb during a patrol north of Baghdad.

A British soldier was killed Monday by a roadside bomb in Basra, the 100th British military combat death in Iraq, according to British news reports.

Another 31 members of the British military have died in Iraq from accidents or other causes.

Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Nazila Fathi from Tehran.

Source:iranfocus

According to German radio, the Islamic Republic is one of the few governments which still executes children and teenagers under the legal age.

At present at least 23 boys and girls under the age of 18 are in the dungeons of the Islamic regime, waiting to be executed.

Though in many countries around the world the death penalty has been abolished, in Iran, under the oppression of the clerical regime, the number of those executed each year escalates.

The Islamic Republic regularly executes women, children and even the elderly.
After China, Tehran’s regime is the second highest ranking in the number of executions in the world.

TODAY'S COLUMNIST
By Tulin Daloglu
The Washington times

At their meeting today in Washington, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul will give Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a clearer picture of a country in total disarray, confusion and uncertain of its next steps. This is a decisive year for Turkey, one in which its citizens will determine whether it will remain aligned with the West or take another path.
Mr. Gul represents a country in a very difficult position. Although the recently publicized National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) predicts a possible Turkish military incursion into Iraq, Turkey is trying desperately not to be pulled into the war. While it maneuvers around the thorny issues, Turkey is trying to achieve good standing with as many countries as possible, even as Turks perceive that the Western bloc is pushing them away.
Under his "new way forward," President Bush has given the Iraqi government responsibility for dealing with attacks in Turkey by the separatist Kurdish terrorists, or PKK. The NIE makes it clear that the Iraqi security forces are not capable of providing security. It also says that in the event of an American withdrawal, the "[I]raqi Security Force would be unlikely to survive as a non-sectarian national institution." Therefore, transferring security responsibility to the Iraqis means more terrorist attacks for Turkey.
For over a decade now, U.S. policy on Kurds largely excludes their nationality as Iraqis or Turks and emphasizes only their ethnicity. Kurds seek a homeland, but one made up of land carved from Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. Although "the solution is not only military," says Matt Bryza, assistant secretary of state, no one could argue that U.S. policy is a solution to this historical dilemma.
John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said recently that "there may well come a day when Iraq divides along sectarian lines and that may not necessarily be a disastrous outcome." When I mentioned that possibility to Imad Moustapha, Syria's ambassador to the United States, he said, "God forbid. As far as we are concerned, that will be catastrophic. It is [in] our national interest to preserve the territorial integrity of Iraq and not to allow any group in Iraq to dominate it or defeat it, because the defeated group will not give up. It might be defeated in the battle, but it goes to other ways of fighting back. And this is a vicious cycle of vengeance and violence in Iraq that will never end." Asked whether he agrees with the Turkish assessment that a Kirkuk referendum would increase the sectarian and ethnic violence and make it more difficult to protect Iraq's territorial integrity, he said, "While we don't approach the issue of Kirkuk the same way as Turks do, the results are almost the same... Wherever we look at Iraq, we are afraid that policies of dividing Iraq into autonomous regions and federal regions might end up leading to the disintegration of Iraq."
Meanwhile, David Satterfield, the State Department's senior coordinator on Iraq, told at a panel Friday at Woodrow Wilson Center, "We believe the issues as sensitive as Kirkuk must come in a way that contributes to national reconciliation and unity and in terms not be divisive." This is a marked change from two weeks ago, when Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, warned neighboring countries that they should stay out of the Kirkuk referendum. Mr. Satterfield, however, said, "On the procedures to be followed, Iraqi sovereign national procedures are to be followed. This does not mean that friends of Iraq, including Turkey and the U.S., cannot express views. They can and we do."
The complexity of taking responsibility in Iraq and the way it is being used in politics -- for the approaching 2008 presidential election -- will likely cause more bad decisions. Although it could be disturbing to admit, the fact is that the Iraqi government did not invite U.S. troops, nor the U.N., nor the Arab League, nor the regional countries like Turkey, into their country's business. Yet they must bear the responsibility of cleaning up the battlefield. While finger-pointing is all too easy, the United States should accept full responsibility of the preventative war in Iraq.
Turkey, the only NATO ally that borders Iraq, Iran and Syria, is facing a historical challenge. "We understand... how the Kurds are feeling emboldened by the autonomous Kurdistan of Iraq and we see how Turkey is not very comfortable -- although it is not opposing the emergence of an almost independent Kurdistan of Iraq," Mr. Moustapha said. Asked if Turkey should cross the border, he said, "This is a bilateral issue between Iraq and Turkey."
Such a perspective puts Turkey in an even more difficult position. Syria is enormously influential in Iraq; 17 out of 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council used to live in Syria, and Iraqi delegations are almost a daily phenomenon in Damascus. Syria clearly has much more power on Iraq than Turkey, simply because they have more intimate access to the people in charge.
Turkey has no alternative but to work on its relationship with Damascus. The United States, in the meantime, has to decide how it wants to solve the Kurdish issue with Turkey.

Tulin Daloglu is a free-lance writer.

Reporters Without Borders

Three online journalists and women’s rights activists, Tala’t Taghinia, Mansoureh Shojaie and Farnaz Seify, were arrested at Tehran airport on 27 January as they were about to board a plane for India to undergo journalism training.

They were released the following afternoon after being interrogated at Evin Prison, in the north of the city.

Reporters Without Borders is also concerned about the disappearance of journalist Adnan Hassanpour, who was arrested by the authorities in Sanadaj in Iranian Kurdistan on 25 January and whose family has had no news of him since.

“The arrest of these online journalists demonstrates President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s security and ideological paranoia which prompts him to ban all contact between journalists and foreign organisations and media,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said.

“This incident is also revealing of the fear that the women’s rights movement produces within the regime”, it added.

Tala’t Taghinia, Mansoureh Shojaie and Farnaz Seify were all due to undertake journalism training in India, funded by a foreign organisation, along with 12 other people. Most of them are members of the women’s cultural centre, an organisation which has launched a petition calling for reform of laws that discriminate against women.

The homes of the three journalists were also searched and their computers seized. Although they were released on 28 January the security forces told them that they would be questioned again in the coming weeks. Their computers were not returned to them when they left the prison.

Tala’t Taghinia and Mansoureh Shojaie contribute to several Iranian online publications including Zanestan (city of women - http://herlandmag.net) and Tagir Bary Barbary (Change to equality - http://we-change.org/), which campaign for women’s rights. Farnaz Seify is a journalist on the daily Sarmayeh and runs a very popular blog in Iran, farnaaz.com, but which has been inaccessible since her arrest.

Journalist Adnan Hassanpour, who was arrested in front of his home on 25 January, works for the weekly Asou. Publication has been suspended since 2005 on the orders of the Culture and Islamic Orientation Ministry, because it carried articles about the very tense situation in Iranian Kurdistan.

By Devrim Kilic

kurdmedia

The famous Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi who has been chosen as one of the top living 100 filmmakers in the world last year will no longer be able to shoot a film in Iran according to the decision of Cinema Office of Iranian Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry. Ghobadi’s wrote an open letter at his production company, Mij Film’s official web site and stated that the banning is a nonsense decision. Ghobadi said in his statement that he is banned of shooting films just because of his Kurdish origin. Interestingly Ghobadi’s last film ‘Nive Heyve’, Kurdish for ‘Half Moon’, that won the best film award at the 54th San Sebastian International Film Festival in 2006, was banned in Iran on the basis that it was a separatist film. It is expected that the banning of Ghobadi will attract international reaction from all over the world, especially from the artistic community.

Read more

French police have arrested 13 people believed to be members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on suspicion of money laundering and ‘financing PKK’, police said in morning.

"The arrests were made early today on the northern outskirts of Paris. The arrested Kurds appear to be linked to the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party" the official said. The arrests were part of an investigation that began last July when two Turks were arrested after trying to change 200,000 euros into dollars in a Paris bureau de change, police said.

source:kurdishinfo

Massoud Barzani, head of the autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq, said the Kurdish-controlled north would retaliate should neighboring Turkey or Iran launch attacks, reported Pukmedia, the official Web site of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). “We would like to be friends with the two countries, but if they attack us we will respond,” he said.

KTV . Replying to a reporter from the VOA (Voice of America), President Barzani stated that he regarded an increase in the size of the US military presence as a positive step. Joint operations with Iraqi Forces could improve the security situation.

President Barzani maintained that it is up to the Iraqi forces to prove they can cooperate with the US army in providing security in Iraq. If they are unable to combine their forces, this could turn out be a disaster for the country.

The President argued that it is Al-Qaeda, former Baathists, uncontrolled Shia and Sunni militia groups coupled with interference from neighboring countries which are the root cause of the violence in Iraq.

Referring to the dispute between the US and Iran over the Iran’s nuclear issue, President Barzani stated that the Kurds would not back either country. Questioned about Iran’s meddling in Iraqi internal affairs, President Barzani replied that all the countries in the region are involved in interfering with the situation in Iraq. He added that Iraq has become a battlefield for neighboring countries who want to take advantage of the unstable situation in the country.

President Barzani claimed that some countries are interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs because they fear that if democracy succeeds in Iraq, this will upset the status quo in their own countries. What they want to see is a deterioration in the US situation in Iraq.

The President observed that Turkey and Iran, who both have large Kurdish minorities inside their own borders, are very sensitive to any changes to the situation in the Kurdistan Region. He hoped that neither would become a threat to the Kurds as the Kurdistan Region has always enjoyed good relations with both countries. Nevertheless, Kurdistan would respond if it felt threatened by Turkey or Iran.

Commenting on the Kirkuk issue, President Barzani stated that Kirkuk is a Kurdish city and that the aim should be to implement Article 140 of Iraq’s permanent constitution. He added that the Kurdistan Region wants to transform Kirkuk into an example of a society in which different factions and ethnic groups are able to coexist.

When asked about Kurdistan’s dream of independence, President Barzani stated that the Kurds do not regard an Independent Kurdistan as a dream. They see it as their legal right.

LONDON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Military action against Iran would have disastrous consequences, according to a report released on Monday by a coalition of British-based think-tanks, faith groups and others who urged a new diplomatic push to avert conflict.

The United States and Israel have stepped up their rhetoric against Tehran in recent weeks, prompting speculation they could be preparing for military attacks on the Islamic state.

Washington has sent a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf, a move seen as a warning to Iran, which the United States accuses of seeking atomic arms and fuelling instability in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Iran denies the charges.

The joint report by 15 organisations, including the Foreign Policy Centre, Oxfam and the Muslim Council of Britain, said an attack on Iran would, among other things, strengthen Iran's atomic ambitions, severely undermine hopes for stability in Iraq and damage global economic growth through higher oil prices.

"The consequences of military action against Iran are not only unpalatable, they are unthinkable," said Stephen Twigg, director of the Foreign Policy Centre.

"Even according to the worst estimates, Iran is still years away from having a nuclear weapon. There is still time to talk," he said.

Sir Richard Dalton, Britain's ambassador to Tehran from 2002 to 2006, said it was "vital that the U.S. becomes fully involved in creative diplomacy".

"Recourse to military action -- other than in legitimate self defence -- is not only unlikely to work but would be a disaster for Iran, the region and quite possibly the world," Dalton said.

Among the unintended consequences of an attack on Iran, the report said, would be to bolster the position of hardliners within Iran's political system and set back the chances of reform. It could also inspire terrorist attacks in Western countries.

"I think our decision makers have yet to appreciate the full consequences of a military attack against Iran," said Ali Ansari, director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at St Andrews University.

"The view held by some in Washington that all diplomatic and political options have been exhausted is palpable nonsense that needs to be challenged," he said.

The report's recommendations include removing or finding a compromise on preconditions to talks, such as the insistence Iran suspend uranium enrichment; seeking direct talks between Iran and the United States; and developing a "grand bargain" package of incentives made by major world powers to Iran last June in return for its suspension of sensitive nuclear work.

"Only through direct U.S.-Iranian engagement can an agreement be found and the potentially devastating consequences of military action be avoided," it concluded.

By Paul de Bendern

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, facing pressure on security issues ahead of elections, will send his foreign minister to Washington next week to lobby for a crackdown on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

Ankara has repeatedly threatened to send troops into northern Iraq to crush Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels if U.S. and Iraqi government forces fail to take action, though most analysts dismiss the threats as rhetoric to impress voters.

There are presidential and parliamentary polls in 2007.

Against a backdrop of rising nationalism in Turkey, partly due to disillusionment with the European Union accession process, the ruling centre-right AK Party says it cannot stand idly by if PKK attacks resume as expected in the spring.

Ankara says some 4,000 PKK rebels are based in northern Iraq from where they stage attacks into Turkish territory.

Since the PKK launched its armed campaign for a Kurdish homeland in 1984 more than 30,000 people have been killed, mostly in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul will hold talks with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

"Gul will seek U.S. support in cracking down on PKK terrorists. It's a major security concern for us," said a Turkish diplomat.

"We can't just sit on the sidelines when our boys are being killed. We have been promised action but seen few results."

IMPORTANT ALLY

Relations between NATO member Turkey and the U.S. have improved after a low in 2003 when Ankara denied U.S. forces permission to use its territory for the Iraqi invasion, but Gul will still face a tough time.

While the Americans value Turkey as an ally -- the country's neighbors include Iraq,Iran and Syria -- and consider the PKK a terrorist organization, Washington may be wary of a crackdown in northern Iraq because the area is a rare haven of relative calm in a country ablaze.

Turkish media have said the government may propose a compromise deal where Turkish, U.S. and Iraqi forces jointly carry out attacks against PKK targets.

Armed forces chief General Yasar Buyukanit will follow in Gul's footsteps a week later for talks with Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Hadley -- also focused on Iraq.

"This will be a more important meeting as the U.S. military has no love lost for Turkey," said CNN Turk diplomatic editor Semih Idiz.

"The Turkish military is concerned that the Americans are in cahoots with the (Iraqi) Kurds and in contact with the PKK."

Talks will also probably touch on Kirkuk, an ethnically-mixed northern Iraqi city which has vast oil reserves.

Kurds want to annex the city for their capital and Iraq's new constitution mandates a local referendum on the issue later this year.

Turkey is worried that greater autonomy for the Kurdish-controlled area will threaten Turkey's own security and has said it wants the referendum postponed.

LONDON (Reuters) - Three former senior U.S. military officials warn that any military action against Iran would have "disastrous consequences" and urged Washington to hold immediate and unconditional talks with Tehran.

The Bush administration has increased the regularity and vehemence of its accusations against Iran, prompting speculation it could be laying the ground for military attack against the Islamic state.

Washington has also sent a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf, a move seen as a warning to Iran which the United States accuses of seeking atomic arms and fuelling instability in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Iran denies the charges.

In a letter to London's Sunday Times newspaper, the three former U.S. military leaders said attacking Iran "would have disastrous consequences for security in the region, coalition forces in Iraq and would further exacerbate regional and global tensions," they wrote.

"The current crisis must be resolved through diplomacy," they said.

The letter was signed by retired army Lieutenant General Robert Gard, a former military assistant to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, retired U.S. Marine Corps General Joseph Hoar, a former commander in chief of U.S. Central Command; and retired Navy Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, a former director of the Center for Defense Information.

They urged the U.S. government to "engage immediately in direct talks with the government of Iran without preconditions.

"There is time available to talk, we must ensure that we use it," they said.

The three men have joined previous petitions calling on the Bush administration to change course in its policy on Iran.

Washington broke ties with Iran in 1980. It has offered to hold direct talks with Iran but only once Tehran halts its drive to produce nuclear fuel through uranium enrichment.

Iran, which says it wants to enrich uranium to make nuclear reactor fuel, not bombs, has refused.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday said Washington was not planning for war with Iran, but again accused Tehran of supplying bombs for deadly attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq.

NCRI - The mullahs’ regime is imposing restrictions on the deprived workers. This week, the state-run news agency ILNA reported a few of such restrictions.

According to the agency on January 27, Director of Labor House in Abadan, Aqa-Yare Hosseini said, “Nearly 2,000 workers in Bus Company, City Planning, Municipal Offices and other municipal related services have not been paid in two months.”

The workers of Tehran’s Derakhshan Textile Factory “have not been paid their last year’s wages and other benefits. In past ten months, the regime has not paid the textile workers their salaries,” ILNA reported on January 30.

Yesterday, 150 workers at the largest Iranian ship factory (Iran-Sadra) went on strike over the shipyard’s huge investments in Venezuela, according to ILNA.

On Thursday, Workers at Alborz Factory demonstrated in the northwestern city of Qazvin over the unpaid wages in past six months, the state-run news agency ILNA reported.

Yesterday, More than 1,500 workers of two sister companies Zegorat and Pour-led went on strike over their past four months unpaid salaries in the western city of Elam, according to ILNA.

NCRI -A day before Yesterday, Chief of the regime’s Appeals’ Courts in Tehran Province, Mohammad Ali Khani admitted to handing down stoning sentences, the state-run daily Etemaad reported.

He said, “If the law proves that the crime has been committed then judges would hand down stoning sentences. The law makers will not allow a substitute sentence for the crime. Stoning to death is a form of punishment which is different from [mere] execution.”

On June 27, 2006, the regime has sentenced a woman, Ashraf Kalhori, to death by stoning. The regime often announces such cruel punishments as hangings to cover the stoning sentences in Iran.

Iran clearly seeks to lure Turkey away from its traditional moorings to the West, and the Kurds may be just the wedge it needs.

By Omer Taspinar
Newsweek International

If you were a mullah in Tehran facing a new western "coalition of the willing," there's one country you would try to get on your side: next-door NATO neighbor, Turkey. And lately, the Iranians have been doing this quite well. The reason: Ankara and Tehran increasingly share a cause that unites them: Kurdish guerrillas operating in northern Iraq, and America's failure to do anything about them.

It would be premature to speak of any entente. Yet Iran clearly seeks to lure Turkey away from its traditional moorings to the West, and the Kurds may be just the wedge they need. During visits to Ankara in recent months, Iranian officials and other state representatives—including Ali Larijani, head of the supreme National Security Council—have gone out of their way to stress the troubles created for both nations by the PKK terrorist movement. Despite myriad promises, U.S. troops in the region do nothing to prevent cross-border raids. Suggesting that Turkey should join with Iran and Syria to establish a tripartite platform of security cooperation against the Kurdish separatists, Larijani and others impressed upon their counterparts the advantages of a large-scale Turkish military incursion to clean out the guerillas—possibly in coordination with Iranian forces, according to Turkish and Iranian news reports.

Nothing so dramatic appears to be imminent. Yet clearly, the prospects of a Turkish intervention are growing. It is certain to be an issue when Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and military Chief of Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit visit Washington over the next week. And, just as clearly, Tehran has every incentive to stir up trouble. An intervention in northern Iraq would all but end Turkey's already troubled European journey and spark a monumental crisis with the United States. Estranged from Brussels and Washington, Turkey would see less benefit in toeing the Western line against Iran. To be sure, a Sunni Turkey would have some problems with its historic Shia rival's acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet that still-hypothetical threat is considered modest next to the reality of Kurdish separatism. On this score, at least, Turks do not see America as being on their side. Iran, however, is.

Ten days ago, the Turkish Parliament met in a closed session under the strictest rules of secrecy. The agenda: northern Iraq and Turkish options. The country's military spent most of the last 20 years fighting a bloody war against the PKK, causing 40,000 deaths and costing close to $150 billion. The guerillas have since regrouped in northern Iraq and, between 2004 and the summer of 2006, launched a new terrorist campaign against Turkey. Most Turks believe that the current ceasefire is merely tactical and will last only until spring.

As Ankara sees it, the PKK is only part of a bigger problem. Turkey's longstanding fear that independence-minded Kurdish nationalists in Iraq would set a dangerous precedent for Kurds in Turkey is now being borne out. Emboldened by their partnership with Washington, Iraqi Kurds have embarked on an ambitious nationalist journey with a clear destination: an independent state with the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as its capital. This Kurdish dream is a Turkish nightmare.

The fact that the closed session of the Turkish Parliament focused on Kirkuk, where many ethnic Turkmens live, is not a good sign. With a local referendum on the city's status scheduled for late 2007 and a critical census coming in April, events could quickly turn volatile. Iranian forces, grouped along the Kurdistan border, have shelled a PKK offshoot in Iraq's Kandil Mountains, and turned terrorists caught there over to Ankara. According to various reports, the Iranians have proposed a coordinated military campaign—an escalation of hugely unpredictable consequence.

It is no coincidence that Gul and Buyukanit are going to Washington. The meetings should put an end to the Bush administration's happy talk about the stability of Iraqi Kurdistan. Unless U.S. forces act decisively against the PKK, the Turks will warn, Ankara will take matters into its own hands. This is an election year in Turkey, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has every incentive to demonstrate his nationalist credentials against political rivals, many favoring military intervention. All this will inevitably push Turkey toward Iran—and may even end up creating an unprecedented Sunni-Shia axis of frustration against America.

Taspinar is a fellow at the Brookings Institutionin Washington.

Reuters
By Parisa Hafezi

ISFAHAN, Iran -- Six envoys representing the Non-Aligned Movement of developing nations visited a nuclear facility in Iran on Saturday as part of Tehran's attempt to be open about its disputed atomic program.

The NAM diplomats, accredited to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived for a tour of the site near the central Iranian city of Isfahan that converts uranium ore into feedstock uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas.

About 90 Iranian and foreign journalists were also taken to the facility in a barren area in the shadow of a mountain southeast of Isfahan. Anti-aircraft guns surrounded the site.

The United States accuses Iran of secretly working to make atomic bombs under cover of a civilian nuclear program to generate electricity. It has said putting Iran's nuclear activities on display would not build confidence abroad.

"The aim of ... this visit is to underline again the transparency of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities," Hossein Simorgh, spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told reporters at the site.

The envoys, who stay in Iran until Monday, are not due to visit the Natanz uranium enrichment site where UF6 gas is fed into centrifuges to make power plant fuel or, if greatly enriched, material for warheads.

The group comprises ambassadors from Egypt, Malaysia, Cuba, Algeria and Sudan, and a Syrian representing the Arab League.

"They are not technical people and will not be able to pass judgment on what is going on (technically). This is a publicity exercise, that's the main point," a NAM ambassador in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, said of the visit.

'GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS'

Iran has said it will soon start work to expand enrichment capacity at Natanz, prompting speculation Tehran could announce the beginning of this work during celebrations to mark the 1979 Islamic revolution that run to February 11.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by Fars News Agency as saying February 11 would be a day to "prove the Iranian nation's obvious right" to nuclear technology. He also said Iran would announce "great achievements" in days but did not give details.

The U.N. Security Council slapped sanctions on Iran on December 23, banning the transfer of sensitive materials and know-how for Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The resolution gave Iran 60 days to suspend uranium enrichment work.

In response to the resolution, Iran has barred entry to 38 out of 200 IAEA inspectors whose role is to check Iranian sites to verify material is not used to make bombs.

The United States has also increased pressure by imposing sanctions on two big Iranian banks and sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf.

Washington has said it wants diplomacy to end the standoff but has not ruled out military action if that fails. U.S. officials dismiss speculation that it is planning a conflict.

Iran has said it plans to press ahead with installing 3,000 more centrifuges at Natanz, adding to about 350 experimental machines it now runs. With 3,000 machines, it could make material for at least one warhead in a year, experts say.

The six envoys are due to hold talks with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, before they leave on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Mark Heinrich in Vienna)

The Associated Press
iranvajahan.net

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Saturday that U.S. officials assured him in meetings in Washington this week that the United States does not have plans to launch military action against Iran, Russian news agencies reported.

Lavrov, who returned to Moscow on Saturday from meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others, said he discussed the United States' plans to send additional forces to Iraq and neighboring areas.

"The American side assured us that they have no plans for war against Iran and that the additional presence of forces and equipment in the Persian Gulf region is aimed at stabilizing the situation," the ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies quoted him as saying.

In addition to the deployment of 21,500 more American soldiers to Iraq, the U.S. Navy is building up forces in the Middle East, prompting concern in Iran, which is already locked in a standoff with the U.S. and Europe over its nuclear program.

Lavrov said Moscow and Washington agree on the need for united action to ensure Iran does not develop nuclear weapons.

"On Iran, we have absolute agreement on the final goal — not to permit violations of the nonproliferation regime," he said, according to RIA-Novosti. "At the same time, it is necessary to have agreement on the tactical approach for moving toward this goal."

Russia and the United States have often been at odds over how to put pressure on Iran not to develop nuclear weapons. In December, Russia supported a U.N. Security Council resolution imposing limited sanctions against Iran after it ignored calls to halt uranium enrichment. But that support came only after an initial proposal was dropped that would have imposed curbs on Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, which Russia is helping build.

Lavrov on Saturday also expressed skepticism at a U.S. proposal to place elements of a missile defense system in former Soviet satellite countries. The United States says such a system would be aimed at intercepting possible missile attacks by Iran.

"What we heard (in Washington) does not convince us that this is an appropriate answer to those threats," he was quoted as saying by RIA-Novosti. President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that deployment of such sites could threaten Russia and he said Russia would take unspecified countermeasures.

Lavrov also said sharp differences remain between Moscow and Washington over the final status of the Serbian province of Kosovo, which has been a U.N. protectorate since 1999, when NATO airstrikes stopped Serbia's crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanian rebels.

Russia insists that Kosovo must remain a part of Serbia, whereas its majority ethnic Albanians seek independence. A plan unveiled by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari on Friday spelled out conditions for internationally supervised self-rule for Kosovo — complete with the trappings of nationhood such as a flag, anthem, army and constitution and the right to apply for membership in international organizations.

"Kosovo is a topic on which, in contrast to Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, the divergence in our positions has a character of principle," Lavrov said.

By Dr Kamal Mirawdeli
KurdishMedia.com

Racism is a disease and it is a deadly one. It is a malady that internally destroys the bearer before it affects its victims. Racism is also a black spectacle. It prevents the wearer from seeing white and colour. It blurs and blackens, confuses threats and opportunities, misleads on strengths and weaknesses.

Turkey is suffering from this disease now which is so dangerous that it is possible that it will turn it again into the anachronistic sick man of the Middle East. There is nothing that stands between Turkey and a bright future based on mutual recognition and co-operation with the Kurdish nation but its self-annihilating racism towards the Kurds.

Turkey aspires to be a modern twenty-first century nation, a strong prosperous European democracy. That is what we the Kurds want and pray for too. No Kurd, no Kurdish political party and organization is against the Turkey becoming a leading prosperous democratic state in the Middle East supported by both the European Union and the United States, and acting as a bridge of peace and civilized dialogue between Islam and the West. This is the role that Turkey is fit for, ready for and able to achieve. But with one blow of inherent racism, the Turkish state and its anachronistic racist culture continue to destroy this opportunity and endanger this prospect.

The opportunity, the way to utilize it, the road map to achieve its aspiration, all lie in Turkish recognition of Kurds as an independent fraternal nation with more history of friendship and mutual support with them than the unfortunate episodes of racist and chauvinistic oppression.

The Kurds are the third largest nation of the Middle East. As a stateless nation, they are still a young resilient aspiring power. No politics of peace and war, progress and integration, can happen in the Middle East without the active, positive or negative, participation of the Kurds. It is time that Turkey realized this. On the other hand, the Kurds still do not have real friends. The Baker-Hamilton report contains dangerous signs of a new American betrayal. So the Kurdish quest for real reliable strategic long-term friends continue. Iran has supported present Kurdish leaderships for a long time. But it always dealt with them as objects of its intelligence interest. There has never been a formal political recognition of the Kurdish nation in Iraq, Iran or anywhere by the Iranian Persian state. The recent American arrest of the so-called Iranian consulate members in Arbil, demonstrated that the Iranians are still approaching PUK and KDP leaderships as intelligence interests. From this point of view the American action was very necessary and welcome. Iran has used its flexible approach to Barzani and Talabani after 1992 in order to silence its Kurdish opponents from East Kurdistan. More than 300 Kurdish political activists from East Kurdistan were assassinated between 1991 and 1998 by the Iranian agents in the areas controlled mainly by PUK forces.

Needless to say the Iranian regime continues to colonise East Kurdistan and oppress its people. Therefore Iran needs radical positive reformist changes in its approach to Kurdish people before the Kurds can have any trust in any sort of positive relationships with Iran.

Syria is totally out of the equation. The Syrian system is no more than a Bathist replica of Saddam’s regime in its racist, Arabist oppressive approach to Kurdish people in West Kurdistan.

Despite its extremist chauvinist political regime as far as Kurdish nation is concerned, Turkey remains the best bet for the Kurds. Turkey has rid itself to a large extent from despotic religious tradition of Islam, has genuine democratic experience, which unfortunately has excluded Kurds, of peaceful changeover of power, has to a large extent modernized its society despite the futile attempts of religious elements to reverse the wheels of history. And Turkey is in Europe, a member of NATO and a historical ally of the US. The Turks should have now played the proactive role of mediators between Kurds and the West to ensure that a democratic secular Kurdistan state, which is not just a friend but a natural ally and asset to Turkey, is established in South Kurdistan. This will not endanger Turkey but allows it to avail itself of the support, friendship of the Kurds and natural, cultural, human and economic resources of Kurdistan enabling Turkey to play a leading glorious role in the Middle East, Europe and the world.

Will Turkish politicians, intellectuals and people wake up to this opportunity before it is gone for ever? Will Turkey choose to step into the future of success, or to stagnate in the quagmire of its racist culture and futile nostalgia for its grand Ottoman past?

By KATHY GANNON
Associated Press Writer

QANDIL MOUNTAIN RANGE, Iraq - Deep in the mountains of eastern Iraq, a cluster of mud huts and the chatter of machine gun fire reveal another piece of the jigsaw puzzle called Kurdistan.

Here, recruits are training to fight Iran, one of the four countries that rule the fractured Kurdish people. And although they belong to an organization officially outlawed as terrorist by Washington, they appear to be operating unhindered from Iraqi territory controlled by U.S. forces.

A boulder-studded road spirals up through sun-soaked mountains to a pale yellow building that flies the flag of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), condemned as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and its NATO ally, Turkey.

A giant face of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK founder who is serving a life sentence in Turkey, is painted on the mountainside. Ten miles farther on lies the Qandil range, which runs like a snow-dusted spine along Iraq's northern border with both Turkey and Iran.

In the camp, lugging heavy machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles, are men and women of the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PEJAK, an offshoot set up by the PKK in 2004 to fight for Kurdish autonomy in Iran.

The PKK and its affiliates are spread through a region of some 35 million Kurds that straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. PEJAK, the newest group, claims to number thousands of recruits, and targets only Iran — a mission which has made PEJAK the subject of intense speculation that it is being used to undermine the radical Islamic regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In the Nov. 27 issue of The New Yorker, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote that PEJAK was receiving support from the U.S. as well as from Israel, which fears Iran's nuclear ambitions and Ahmadinejad's call to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

PEJAK says it regularly launches raids into Iran, and Iran has fired back with artillery. In October the English-language Iran Daily, published by Iran's official news agency, said Iran accused PEJAK of killing dozens of its armed forces in insurgent attacks.

Rep.Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), a presidential candidate who claims the White House is overplaying the Iranian threat, last year wrote to President Bush expressing concern that the U.S. was using PEJAK to weaken Ahmadinejad.

James Brandon, an analyst for the U.S.-based Jamestown Foundation, told The Associated Press that PEJAK has refused to discuss its funding sources. But he said its greatest threat to Iran is not military. It has veins running deep into the Iranian Kurdish population and is offering to join forces with other restless minorities in Iran, he said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said "Israel is not involved in any way in what's going on there."

Meir Javedanfar, an Israel-based Iran expert, noted however that Israel has a long-standing relationship with Iraqi Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani and "It would not surprise me to discover that Israel is using the Kurdish areas of Iraq to undermine Iran's influence in Iraq and monitor what's going on along the Iranian border, as well as to undermine the Iranian government itself."

The AP recently spent two winter days at a PEJAK training camp tucked in the shadow of the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, listening to its followers describe their goals and operations in Iran.

According to a camp commander, Hussein Afsheen, "PKK gives ideological and logistical support" while funding comes from Iranian Kurds. He said he didn't know of U.S. funding, but would gladly accept it.

The camp is designed to toughen up the new recruits, who numbered 38 during the AP's visit. Beds are single wool blankets spread over a rough concrete floor, or over a narrow steel bench that hugs an icy mud wall. The only heat comes from a wood-fired potbelly stove.

It's still pitch dark and freezing at 5 a.m., when the fighters line up and pledge allegiance to the Kurdish cause.

Soztar Afreen, a 22-year-old Syrian with a quick smile, says she joined five years ago and the first months were tough.

"I had trouble keeping up. You have to toughen yourself. The physical work is difficult but once you get used to it life here gets easier," she said.

She recalled that her parents, PKK sympathizers, sent her off with this plea: "Don't let down the struggle; make us proud."

Gunfire and explosions echo off mountainsides as recruits learn to fire artillery and rocket launchers and automatic rifles. They are taught to lay ambushes and to endure long hours isolated and in hiding.

Food is spartan — potatoes, tomato broth, onions and a lot of bread baked flat in a deep stone oven.

Much time is spent in ideological training and studying Ocalan's vision of a united Kurdistan, which the guerrillas say has gradually shifted from demanding full-blown independence to settling for autonomy as a distinct culture within the various countries where they live.

PEJAK ideology is rigorously leftist and includes equality of the sexes — unusual in this region. The camp has two leaders, a man and a woman.

The male one, Afsheen, is a Turkish Kurd who joined the PKK in 1990, at age 19. He said he enlisted after Turkish soldiers herded him, his family and his neighbors into the town square and burned down their homes.

Four shepherds were coming home and "The soldiers just opened fire on them. I had inside of me a lot of anger. I promised I would get my revenge," said Afsheen.

In training, "Recruits were put in a cave and left there for a month, allowed out only for half an hour each day. We walked for hours in frigid water," he said.

Afsheen said he has made several forays into Iran, including one monthlong trek to the Iranian town of Shahha three months ago, not to attack Iranians but to organize Kurds. "We were discovered. There was a firefight and it went on until dark. We were pinned down, trapped," he said.

"At nightfall we found an opening and we tried to slip out but we were discovered. The firing went on again and they called in their helicopters. One of our friends was wounded and three Iranian security men were killed."

Afsheen's co-leader is Beridon Dersim, who grew up in Austria and found her identity with the PKK.

"What I wanted I couldn't find from Turkey. I couldn't find from Europe. The PKK offered me answers about myself, about my ethnicity."

Dersim, 32, said she wanted to pick up a gun the day she joined the PKK at 17 but it was just before her 20th birthday that she was allowed into the guerrilla ranks.

Unlike Afreen of Syria, she did not have her family's blessing, she says, and her father, a Turkish civil servant, was tortured and left in a wheelchair. She said she has since fought in gunbattles.

The guerrillas vow not to marry or visit their families lest they put them in danger or be distracted from their struggle. Afsheen said he hasn't seen his parents since their village was destroyed 16 years ago. "I was the youngest of nine children, but maybe there are more now. I don't know."

Dersim says her presence encourages Kurdish women but also frightens the men.

"We go to a village and when we speak they are surprised and they ask us: 'Where do you get such power to do this? How can you speak like this and in front of men?'"

By LOLITA BALDOR
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The extra troops that Iraq promised to send into Baghdad in a new U.S.-Iraqi military buildup are arriving on schedule but in inadequate numbers, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday.

Gates was asked at a news conference about Senate testimony on Thursday by the outgoing U.S. commander in Baghdad, Gen. George Casey, who said the arriving Iraqi units have only 55 to 65 percent of their intended troops.

"Fifty-five percent probably isn't good enough," Gates said, but he left open the possibility that by the time the Baghdad crackdown begins in earnest the Iraqi combat units will be at full strength.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who sat beside Gates in fielding questions at the Pentagon, estimated that the arriving Iraqi units are at about 60 percent of their assigned strength.

"It needs to be stronger than that," Pace said.

Administration officials have said they expect Iraq to meet the pledges it made, as the troop buildup proceeds, but they have not said explicitly what would happen if the Iraqis fall substantially short on troop contributions.

"Partly it will depend on how quickly they get back up to strength," Gates said.

The defense secretary has publicly held out the possibility of slowing or stopping the flow of additional U.S. troops if the Iraqis fall short, as they have in the past; the Pentagon has announced plans to send five additional Army brigades, totaling 17,500 troops, to Baghdad by May. In addition, about 4,000 Marines are to be sent to western Anbar province.

At his news conference, Gates also said that the decision announced in January to send a second U.S. aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf region does not mean the United States is planning for a war with Iran. He said the purpose was to underscore to U.S. allies as well as potential adversaries that the Gulf is a vital interest to the United States.

"Nobody is planning, we are not planning for a war with Iran," Gates said.

Gates said the United States' main aim with regard to Iranian influence inside Iraq is to counter what he called networks providing explosives used to make roadside bombs that are powerful enough to destroy a U.S. tank.

"Because we are acting against the Iranians' activities in Iraq, it has given rise to some of these talks" of U.S. intentions to attack Iran, he said, adding that there is no such plan.

Pace said that over the past month or so, raids against those bomb-supplying networks had netted two Iranians.

Gates said it was too soon to say with confidence whether Iranians were involved in the ambush last week in Karbala, in southern Iraq, that left five American soldiers dead. U.S. officials have said in recent days that they are investigating possible Iranian links.

"The information that I've seen is ambiguous," he said.

Gates also said that U.S. military officers in Baghdad were planning to brief reporters on what is known about Iranian involvement in Iraq but that he and other senior administration officials had intervened to delay the briefing in order to assure that the information to be provided is accurate.

Gates opened his news conference by announcing that he has recommended to President Bush that he nominate Navy Adm. Timothy Keating, currently the commander of U.S. Northern Command, to be the next commander of U.S. Pacific Command, replacing Adm. William Fallon, who has been selected as the next commander of U.S. Central Command.

Gates said he also recommended that his senior military aide, Lt. Gen. Victor "Gene" Renuart, be nominated to replace Keating at Northern Command.

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ: RISING TENSIONS IN THE NORTH

As a vote looms on the future of oil-rich Kirkuk, rising violence prompts fear that a third conflict will be ignited in Iraq.

By Louise Roug, Times Staff Writer
los angeles times (latimes.com)

KIRKUK, IRAQ — American officials, regional leaders and residents are increasingly worried that this northern oil-rich city could develop into a third front in the country's civil war just as additional U.S. troops arrive in Baghdad and Al Anbar province as reinforcements for battles there.

Al Qaeda-linked fighters recently have surfaced here, launching a wave of lethal attacks, U.S. and Iraqi officials say. The attacks come amid a rise in communal tensions in the months before a referendum on the status of the city and the surrounding province.

Elsewhere in Iraq, Shiite and Sunni Arab Muslims are locked in a bitter civil war. Here, the two groups have a common cause against the Kurds, a non-Arab minority that dominates Iraq's far-northern provinces.

The Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens, another minority group, each want control of this city and the region. At stake are land, water and some of Iraq's richest oil reserves.

None of the groups want war, they say. Yet everyone here appears to be preparing for it.

"They are right when they call it a time bomb," said Sheik Abdul Rahman Obeidi, a prominent Sunni Arab leader in Kirkuk. "We will not leave, and we will not let anyone take Kirkuk. We are ready to fight. We hope we won't have to, but we're ready."

Kurdish leaders, in turn, warn that they will take the city by law or by force.

"People don't have any more patience," said Kurdish Councilman Rebwar Faiq Talabani, sitting in Kirkuk's heavily fortified provincial council building. "They are telling the government, 'If you can't get our rights back, we'll do it by ourselves.' "

Neighboring countries, especially Turkey and Iran, fear that if the Kurds do gain control of Kirkuk, Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region would have the confidence and economic power to move toward independence. That could embolden Kurdish militants in the surrounding countries and further destabilize the region. Turkish officials recently have threatened to intervene if the Kurds take over Kirkuk and have warned against efforts to change the city's population balance.

"Turkey cannot stand idly by, watching the efforts to change the demographic structure of Kirkuk," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last month, according to the Cihan News Agency.

Turkish officials recently hosted a conference in Ankara, the Turkish capital, on the future of Kirkuk. Participants included Sunni Arab and Turkmen parties as well as the political party affiliated with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, all of whom oppose Kirkuk's inclusion in Kurdistan. None of the main Kurdish parties were invited, and Kurdish lawmakers responded angrily, denouncing what they described as Turkish interference.

Against this backdrop of ethnic, political and regional tensions, Iraq's new constitution mandates that a referendum on control of Kirkuk be held by the end of this year. If the vote goes ahead as scheduled, most analysts expect the Kurds to win.

Kurdish bureaucrats are pushing through little-noticed administrative decisions that will take away the voting rights of tens of thousands of Arabs.

Last year, at least 325 people were killed and 1,390 wounded in this city of about 1 million. During the first three weeks of this year, bombings and assassinations left 23 dead and 102 injured, police say. And on Sunday, police say, two car bombs killed 11 people and wounded 34.

"We expect increased violence when we get closer to" the referendum, said Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin, the top Iraqi commander in Kirkuk.

The emergence of fighters from two radical Islamic groups with ties to Al Qaeda after years of lying low is especially troublesome, officials say. The groups, known as Ansar al Sunna and the Islamic Army in Iraq, have launched a bombing campaign targeting politicians and civilians. Their aim is to foment violence between ethnic and sectarian groups much as they have done in Baghdad and elsewhere, officials say.

Painting Iraq's Sunni Arab guerrillas as Al Qaeda associates serves Kurds in their goal of taking control of Kirkuk and its environs by making the aims of their rivals seem less legitimate.

Assassinations, bombings and attacks on Kurdish parties' headquarters by Shiite militias and Sunni groups linked to Al Qaeda "are now all part of Kirkuk's violent landscape," said a report last month from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Turkmen and Arab politicians also have been targeted in apparent retaliation by Kurds.

"Kirkuk is as likely as Baghdad to produce a calamity that can fracture Iraq," the report's authors wrote, recommending a delay of the referendum. The International Crisis Group, a nonprofit think tank based in Belgium, and the U.S. government's bipartisan Iraq Study Group also have recommended postponement.

But for Kurds, this year presents a historic opportunity they won't part with willingly.

If Kirkuk were annexed to their region, Kurds would no longer be economically beholden to the rest of Iraq. Without Kirkuk, however, Kurdistan is not an economically viable state.

Once a distant dream carried in the heart of Kurdish peshmerga fighters as they battled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's army in the mountains, full independence is now tantalizingly within reach.

If the timetable leading to the referendum is not followed, Kirkuk will be thrust into chaos, said Talabani, the provincial councilman. "It will be a civil war," he said. "Worse than Baghdad, because it will be a battle of ethnicities."

For nationalist Arabs and minority Turkmens, meanwhile, Kurdish appropriation of Kirkuk would signify the first step toward Iraq's disintegration. Turkmens do not want to become part of an independent Kurdistan, but they don't want to be controlled by Baghdad either. Most Arabs want to remain part of a unified Iraq.

As the various constituencies maneuver before the referendum, the issue of just who has the right to vote is emerging as a major point of contention.

In 1957, the year of Kirkuk's last reliable census, Turkmens made up 40% of the population, whereas Kurds composed 35%, Arabs 24% and Christians 1%. In the surrounding province, Kurds were a majority, constituting 55% of the inhabitants.

During the 1970s, however, Hussein forcibly removed 250,000 Kurds from Kirkuk, giving their property to Arabs in an effort to "Arabize" the city and its oil. Many of the new residents were Shiites moved here from villages in the south.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the demographics have shifted again. Thousands of Arabs and Turkmens have left because of political pressure and violence. And as many as 350,000 Kurds have come to Kirkuk, Iraqi and American officials say. In dilapidated camps throughout the city, thousands of Kurds now wait for property claims to be resolved; Kurdish officials complain that the government in Baghdad is slowing the process.

The Kurds want Arabs who moved here under Hussein to return to the south, and the recent administrative moves are aimed at removing them as potential voters in the referendum.

Kurdish officials have recently proposed a cash incentive for Arabs, compensation of about $19,000 for each family willing to give up property and voting rights in the city. The tens of thousands of Arabs affected would be allowed to stay — though required to live in other accommodations — but would not be able to vote on Kirkuk's future, the officials say.

"I don't believe they have the right to vote in the referendum," said Adnan Mufti, the powerful speaker of Kurdistan's regional parliament. Even Arabs born in Kirkuk to parents who came from the south will be ineligible, he said. "It's the mistake of their fathers."

Arabs and Turkmens accuse Kurdish politicians of gerrymandering and administrative jujitsu. "Many of the Kurds who returned to Kirkuk are not the original residents of the city," said Abass Ahmed, a 60-year-old Turkmen. "They are actually Kurds from other Kurdish regions."

Because of the demographic shifts and the Sunni Arab boycott of the 2005 election, Arabs already have little representation in the city. Kurds control 26 of the 41 provincial council seats as well as the army, police and intelligence services in the city.

Iraqi security forces here mostly strike against Arab neighborhoods, said Amin, the Iraqi commander. But this is because Ansar al Sunna and the Islamic Army in Iraq are primarily Arab groups, he added.

But residents and international observers accuse the Kurds of abusing Arabs and Turkmens and holding them in secret and largely unsupervised prison facilities.

"We are being insulted especially in the Arab villages and the Arab neighborhoods," said Obeidi, the Sunni Arab sheik. "I think, for the Kurdish forces, it's like revenge."

These alleged human rights violations inflame the situation, analysts warn and local politicians confirm.

"We are all arming ourselves," a politician from Kirkuk recently told the International Crisis Group. "We are afraid. There is talk of civil war. Anything could start it."