Tag Archives : Iran

QUETTA: Targeted killings happen so often in Pakistan”s city of Quetta, they have become almost routine. Assassins drive up, fire a hail of bullets and melt into shadows as their victims bleed to death. Heading to and from work, or nipping to the shops, fear grips professional men and women in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, where a sharp increase in assassinations is being blamed on separatist rebels. An upsurge in killings threatens to ignite the southwestern tinder box, with possible consequences for neighbouring Iran and Afghanistan, and heavyweight allies China and [...]

KARACHI: Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has urged the need to regroup the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) by learning a lesson from the past mistakes. “Dr. Aafia Siddiqi’s return is a question of nation’s honor,” he told newsmen after meeting Dr. Ismat Siddiqi, the mother of detained neuroscientist, at her residence in Karachi. The government, he said, has not yet taken a bold stop for the release of Dr. Siddiqi from the US detention. Rehman told that a meeting of the MMA was being called on May 6 for evaluating past mistakes. To a question, the JUI-F chief questioned [...]

TEHRAN: Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Wednesday that Iran was still hopeful that a UN-drafted deal to supply nuclear fuel to a Tehran reactor could be finalised. “The fuel exchange proposal is still on the table and we can carry it out,” Mottaki told reporters. “We have had direct and indirect talks with all the sides of the Vienna group and discussed different aspects of a logical framework for an exchange (of fuel).” Mottaki said the deal can still be done “in a little while if they show some political will.” The International [...]

TEHRAN: A top cleric with Iran”s elite Revolutionary Guard has reiterated warnings that Tehran would strike archenemy Israel if the Jewish state and its Western allies attacked Iran. A report by the semiofficial news agency on Tuesday quoted cleric Mojtaba Zolnour as saying the “enemies know if they fire a missile toward Iran, the dust from explosions by Iranian missiles will rise in Tel Aviv”” even as “their missile is still in the air.””

SYDNEY: Australia has blocked a shipment of scientific equipment to Pakistan over fears it could be used to help build weapons of mass destruction, a spokesman for Defence Minister John Faulkner said Tuesday. The government used the 1995 Weapons of Mass Destruction (Prevention of Proliferation) Act to stop an Australian company exporting instruments and accessories to a Pakistani firm, he said. “The minister forms the view, based on advice from the Department of Defence supported by other agencies, that there are unacceptable risks associated with the provision of these goods,” the [...]

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama plans to place new restrictions on the use of atomic weapons as part of a major US nuclear policy overhaul, a senior administration official said on Monday. In an interview with US newspaper, Obama said he would make exceptions for “outliers like Iran and North Korea,” but stress non-nuclear deterrence and eliminate Cold War ambiguities about when such weapons could be used. Obama unveils his strategy on Tuesday, two days before signing a treaty with Russia to slash stockpiles of long-range nuclear warheads by a third, and less than a week before [...]

PARIS: The crisis over Iran”s nuclear programme should be settled through diplomacy, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview published Tuesday by the French newspaper. “We consider that this affair must be resolved by the diplomatic path,” Erdogan, who starts an official two-day visit to France Tuesday, told the newspaper. Although several countries had been speaking in terms of sanctions, he said he did not think this was the way to get results. Sanctions had already been voted through twice before, but those who had decided to apply had also been the [...]

ZURICH: Iran”s girls” soccer team was thrown out of the Youth Olympics because FIFA rules prevent players from wearing an Islamic headscarf. Thailand replaces Iran in the August tournament, the governing body of Asian soccer said on its Web site Monday. The hijab scarf — worn by girls and women to observe Islamic dress code — was not allowed under FIFA rules relating to on-field equipment, the Asian Football Confederation said. Iran”s national Olympic committee had urged soccer”s international ruling body and the International Olympic Committee to review the ban. FIFA [...]

BAGHDAD: Three suicide car bombs targeting three embassies for the first time in Iraq’s capital Baghdad and the number of casualties has reached 30 while 168 people were wounded. The bomb blasts rocked Baghdad Sunday as three bombs exploded before the embassies of Iran, Egypt and Germany. As per Iraqi interior ministry, all three explosions were suicide attacks and two of them hit the upscale west Baghdad neighbourhood of Mansur, which is home to several foreign embassies, and a third massive explosion struck the Iranian embassy in the centre of the city shortly afterwards. The explosions occurred [...]

TEHRAN: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that world pressure on Iran, including talks of imposing new sanctions, makes the Islamic republic more determined than ever to pursue its nuclear programme. Ahmadinejad also reiterated his view that his US counterpart, Barack Obama, has been ineffective in ushering “real” change despite his promises. “You (world powers) can cut your own throat, jump up or down, issue statements and declarations and pass resolutions… but don”t think you can stop the progress and building of the Iranian nation,” Ahmadinejad [...]