Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai reported on Tuesday that the Fatah al-Islam militant group is trying to infiltrate several Palestinian refugee camps, especially the Beddawi camp in North Lebanon and the al-Bourj al-Shamali camp in South Lebanon, in an attempt to form small cells capable of launching terrorist attacks against Palestinian and Lebanese officials as well as UNIFIL. A man identified as Fadi Ibrahim has recently been discovered in the Ain al-Hilweh camp to be working with both Jund al-Sham and Fatah al-Islam to form terrorist cells, a source said.
The daily added that the Fatah Movement led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is coordinating with the Lebanese Armed Forces to gather information on Fatah al-Islam members and launch an awareness campaign inside the camps, so that residents will report any suspicious individuals.
Continued on Page 47
The United States believes Iran's Revolutionary Guards are providing training and weapons to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan to help them fight Western forces, U.S. counterterrorism officials said on Monday.
The alleged role played by the Revolutionary Guard's shadowy, elite Qods force in helping the Taliban, and the extent to which the Iranian leadership may be involved, has been hotly debated within the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community.
In a confidential assessment of the war, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Army General Stanley McChrystal, said Iranian military assistance was not an immediate threat to Western forces but could become one in the future.
A counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the degree of Qods assistance -- supplying arms and providing training to Taliban elements -- had reached "very troubling" proportions, underscoring heightened concerns within the intelligence community. ...
[Iran Press TV Latest] After the Russian leader talked of an assurance given by Israeli President Shimon Peres about the lack of a plan for a military strike against Iran, a senior Israeli official moves to dismiss the remark, saying there exists no such guarantee.
"Liar, liar, pants on fire!" Or the diplomatic version, which goes, "I believe the gentleman is mistaken about his facts."
In an interview with the US news channel CNN on Sunday, Dmitry Medvedev said that Peres made an important assurance during a visit to Russia in August. "When Israeli President Peres was visiting me in Sochi recently, he said something very important for all of us. 'Israel does not plan any strikes on Iran, we are a peaceful country and we will not do this'," Medvedev said, according to a transcript posted on the Kremlin's website.
It's true. He did say that. President Medvedev, I mean.
While the Israeli president's office declined to comment on the remarks on Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said the comments were "certainly not a guarantee" that there would be no military action.
"I don't think that, with all due respect, the Russian president is authorized to speak for Israel and certainly we have not taken any option off the table," Ayalon said.
Israel -- the alleged sole possessor of a nuclear warhead in the Middle East -- accuses Iran of conducting efforts to develop a nuclear bomb, maintaining that a "nuclear Iran" is the prime existential threat to its security.
Tehran, however, denies seeking nuclear weapons and has called for the removal of all weapons of mass destruction from across the globe.
In separate remarks, Israeli Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi reacted to the development, saying that a nuclear Iran would be a threat to the Middle East and "the entire free world" as well as Israel.
"We all understand that the best way of coping is through international sanctions," he told army radio. "I hope that Iran will understand this."
"I think that if not, Israel has the right to defend itself, and all options are open. The IDF's (Israel Defense Forces) working premise is that we have to be prepared for that possibility, and that is exactly what we are doing."
The reactions by the Israeli officials come as former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said earlier that President Barack Obama should warn Israel that in case of an attempt to attack Iran, the US Air Force will go all out to stop any such move.
Explaining that Israeli warplanes would "have to fly over our [US] airspace in Iraq," Brzezinski said, "We have to be serious about denying them [Israelis] that right. That means a denial where you aren't just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them."
[Iran Press TV Latest] Syria charges Israel with dumping nuclear waste near the Syrian border, in territories occupied by the regime during the 1967 Middle East war.
In a report titled The suffering of Syrian citizens in the Golan and submitted to the United Nations, Syrian officials have stated that the Israeli regime uses tunnels in the Golan Heights to bury nuclear waste, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram reported.
The report also charges that Israel has dug a tunnel in Mount Hermon to hide its nuclear warheads. According to Syrian officials, Israel has booby-trapped the nearby region and planted tactical nuclear mines in the area.
Syria had reported earlier in 2003 that Israel was digging tunnels in Mount Hermon to bury waste from its Dimona nuclear plant.
Tel Aviv has acknowledged that it was digging tunnels in the region but claimed that they were anti-tank ditches.
The United Nations, however, under dominating influence by the US, has yet to investigate or even consider looking into such reports. The US has always used its veto power in the UN unreservedly to provide total immunity for Israeli atrocities and war crimes against any binding actions or even criticism by the world body.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11130 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
Meanwhile, back in Portland, Maine
Don, now chain-smoking 40 packs of cigarettes a day, sits at a local bar and has a few beers with the regulars. Bored, everyone's attention turns to the television set that just hangs from the wall. ("Welcome to Bowling for Dollars"). Suddenly, a news broadcaster bursts onto the screen:
Unknown gunmen have assassinated 30 Mahdi Army commanders in the Syrian capital Damascus. The killings, made in the past few weeks, were all made "quietly, inside the victims apartments", said an unnamed source in the Sadr movement. The source added that among those assassinated was Laith al-Ka'bi, who commanded the Mahdi Army in the Palestine Street neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. The report adds that large numbers of Mahdi Army operatives left to Iran out of fear the assassinations wave could expand to target them.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that he was proud of the anger he had caused by calling the Holocaust a "myth," just days before he is due to address the United Nations General Assembly.
"The anger of the world's professional killers is a source of pride for us," the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying, in an apparent reference to arch-foe Israel and the United States.
Western governments expressed outrage at the Iranian president's remarks, made during a keynote speech on Friday to an annual mass rally in support of the Palestinians.
"The pretext for establishing the Zionist regime is a lie... a lie which relies on an unreliable claim, a mythical claim, and the occupation of Palestine has nothing to do with the Holocaust," Ahmadinejad had said.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11131 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Syria charges Israel with dumping nuclear waste near the Syrian border, in territories occupied by the regime during the 1967 Middle East war. 
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that he was proud of the anger he had caused by calling the Holocaust a "myth," just days before he is due to address the United Nations General Assembly.
