Gulf-Middle East Archive

Four killed in Iraq twin car bombing

Published: October 25, 2009Posted in: Gulf-Middle EastTags:

Baghdad, Oct 25 – At least four people were killed and eight injured in two car bomb explosions which rocked central Baghdad Sunday, an interior ministry source said.

‘Our reports said that at least four people were killed and more than eight injured in two car bomb attacks near Baghdad Provincial Council and Mosul Hotel,’ Xinhua reported quoting the unnamed the source.

At least 12 civilian cars were charred and some were totally destroyed by the powerful blasts, it reported.

Iraqi security forces sealed off the scene and fire engines arrived to put out fires as columns of black smoke rose above the scene, he said.

22 killed in Egypt train collision

Published: October 25, 2009Posted in: Gulf-Middle EastTags:

Cairo, Oct 25 – At least 22 people were killed and 42 injured when two passenger trains collided some 50 km south of the Egyptian capital, police said.

One of the trains involved in the collision Saturday was travelling from Cairo to the oasis of al-Fayum, roughly 80 km southwest of the capital. The second was travelling from Cairo to the southern city of Assiut, Xinhua reported Sunday.

Rescue teams were trying to cut the damaged carriages open to rescue passengers.

The police said no foreigners had been found among the dead and injured so far.

IAEA inspectors in Iran for new nuclear inspection

Published: October 25, 2009Posted in: Gulf-Middle EastTags: ,

Vienna/Tehran, Oct 25 (DPA) A team of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors arrived in Tehran Saturday night to visit a new nuclear site south of the Iranian capital that has created new suspicions about Iran’s nuclear programme.

Flying from Vienna, where the IAEA is seated, the four experts were set to visit the unfinished uranium enrichment site near the village of Fordo for the first time since Iran informed the IAEA about it in late September, years after starting construction.

The inspection is one of the confidence-building steps agreed between Iran’s and the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany in Geneva Oct 1.

The underground Fordo site has been under construction for the past few years and is located 47 km south of the religious city of Qom in a compound protected by the Revolutionary Guards.

Diplomats and experts say there is likely no technical equipment installed yet in the facility that is Iran’s second nuclear enrichment plant besides the one already operating in Natanz.

The three men and one woman on the IAEA team headed by Herman Nackaerts are set to compare technical plans of Fordo with the actual layout of the plant, check for the presence of nuclear material and discuss the site’s role within Iran’s nuclear programme, according to ElBaradei and officials familiar with the IAEA.

But it was less the site itself than the late timing of Iran’s declaration to the IAEA that has Western countries worried.

Tehran argues it has the right to not implement an IAEA rule under which countries have to inform about new nuclear facilities as soon as they decide to build them. Instead, Iran only accepts an older rule that called for only six months advance notice.

But ElBaradei has said the Islamic state is ‘on the wrong side of the law’ with its stance.

The other question that experts and Western countries would like to see answered is why Iran needs a second enrichment plant that is too small to create enough fuel for Iran’s power plant being constructed in Bushehr.

Enrichment technology can be used for making nuclear fuel for power reactors, but also for nuclear weapons. Tehran denies it has any plan to build atomic bombs.

Iran’s IAEA ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh has argued that Fordo was a back-up plant in case the Natanz site was attacked by Israel.

‘Therefore we had to have a contingency plan in order to have a sustained enrichment programme,’ he told the BBC recently.

Israel’s policy is to keep open the option of attacking Iran over its contentious nuclear programme. Israel has launched attacks on Iraq and Syria in the past, in order to destroy nuclear facilities there.

The IAEA inspection that is to last until about next Wednesday comes just a few days before the permanent UN Security Council members Britain, China, France, Russia and the US, plus Germany, are set to meet Iranian representatives for another round of nuclear talks in Geneva in the second half of the coming week.

Although it is unlikely that the IAEA will be able to provide an analysis of its inspection by then, diplomats have told DPA that the outcome of the visit would influence the talks.

At least 15 killed, 24 injured in Egypt train crash

Published: October 25, 2009Posted in: Gulf-Middle EastTags:

Cairo, Oct 25 (DPA) At least 15 people were killed and 24 others injured Saturday when two trains collided in southern Egypt, police told DPA.

Police said rescue workers were still working to pull people from the site of the crash, near al-Ayat, and that the number of those confirmed dead and wounded in the accident was likely to rise.

The Ministry of Health had dispatched 80 ambulances to transport the injured to nearby hospitals, Egyptian cabinet spokesman Magdy Radi told DPA.

The trains were both travelling south, police said. One was travelling from Giza, just across the Nile from Cairo, to the oasis of al-Fayum, roughly 80 km southwest of the capital. The second was travelling from Cairo to the southern city of Assiut.

More than 350 people were killed in Feb 2002 when a train caught fire near al-Ayat, not far from the site of Saturday’s accident. Investigators at the time said that fire had been caused by a man using a propane cooking stove on the train.

Iranian parliament against uranium exchange deal

Published: October 24, 2009Posted in: Gulf-Middle EastTags:

Tehran, Oct 24 (DPA) The Iranian parliament has voiced opposition to a proposed uranium exchange deal with Russia, the US and France, state media reported Saturday.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said that Iran should not be limited in the deal to just exchanging its own uranium with higher enriched uranium, but should also be allowed to purchase it separately.

‘The stance by the sides involved in the deal indicates imposition and cheating,’ said Larijani, a former chief nuclear negotiator.

The proposal, which originated in Iran, called to increase 3.5-percent-enriched uranium from its Natanz plant in central Iran to an enrichment level of 20 percent at facilities in Russia, with cooperation from the US and France.

The 20-percent-enriched uranium is supposed to be used for the Tehran reactor, a basic research reactor producing medical isotopes.

Despite three days of talks in Vienna earlier this week and Tehran’s approval for implementing the deal directly with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Russia – and indirectly with the US and France – Iran did not give the go-ahead by Friday’s deadline.

Instead, Iran’s IAEA envoy, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said that the country was still carefully evaluating the different dimensions of the deal. Thus, he said he would give the reply to IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei by next week, when he was again in Vienna.

Larijani’s deputy, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, meanwhile said that Iran should not exchange its own uranium, but rather urge the IAEA to realise its international duty and provide the fuel for the Tehran reactor through third countries.

Additionally, the head of the parliamentary foreign policy commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, told the ISNA news agency that it would be better to purchase the 20 percent enriched uranium and keep the 3.5 percent enriched uranium from the Natanz plant for the country’s local nuclear plants.

Afghan Taliban call for poll runoff boycott

Published: October 24, 2009Posted in: Gulf-Middle EastTags:

Kabul, Oct 24 (DPA) Taliban militants threatened Saturday to disrupt the Nov 7 presidential runoff after attacks during the first round of balloting in August kept many voters away from polling stations.

‘The Islamic Emirate hereby informs all countrymen not to take part in this US-led election process,’ a statement posted on the Taliban website said.

‘If anyone gets harmed by our mujahedin by participating in this unfortunate process, they will themselves be responsible for that because the mujahedin have repeatedly informed all Afghans of our decision,’ it said.

The statement claimed that by convening the election, the Western countries whose militaries are deployed in Afghanistan were trying to conceal their invasion and their defeat on the military front.

During the election’s first round, insurgents carried out more than 130 attacks, including firing dozens of rockets and unleashing numerous suicide bombers on polling sites to disrupt the vote.

Those attacks did not stop the elections but contributed to the low turnout of 38 percent of eligible voters.

‘Besides implementing old tactics, this time, they (Taliban fighters) would use more new tactics to stop this process of the enemies of Islam and our country,’ it said.

The statement also called on Taliban insurgents to attack Afghan and Western military bases before the election and to block all highways one day before the polling day.

The threats were one of the numerous obstacles that could undermine the runoff. Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission must dispatch polling kits to the country’s 380 districts, access to some of which could be blocked by the onset of winter snows at the beginning of November.

Because of the remoteness of many areas and time constraints, the commission is having to rely more on airplanes to deliver the kits, replacing trucks and around 3,000 donkeys used in the first round to transport election materials.

President Hamid Karzai, who had claimed an outright victory in the first round, bowed to intense pressure from the US and other Western supporters of his government to allow the two-man runoff after a UN-led fraud investigation team found about one million ballots cast for him were fabricated.

The runner-up in the first round, Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai’s former foreign minister, previously accused both the incumbent and the commission of engineering the fraud and has voiced concerns about a repeat of rigging in the runoff.

Abdullah’s spokesman has threatened that his candidate might pull out of the elections if top commission members were not replaced. The six-member commission was appointed by Karzai and is widely accused of being biased in favour of the president.

The US government and other Western allies that have troops in Afghanistan hope that the fresh vote would restore the credibility of the elections and produce a legitimate government in Afghanistan that could partner with them in the fight against a resurgent Taliban.

There has been heated deliberations in Washington on sending additional US troops to Afghanistan as demanded by NATO’s top commander in the country, but President Barack Obama has said no extra soldiers would be deployed until the new government in Kabul is formed.

Nearly 200,000 Afghan security personnel and more than 100,000 NATO-led international troops are to provide security for the November polling.

Draft Iran deal has Israel worried

Published: October 23, 2009Posted in: Gulf-Middle EastTags:

Tel Aviv, Oct 23 (DPA) As the world awaited Iran’s formal reply Friday to a proposal under which it would send most of its low-enriched uranium abroad for processing, voices in Israel against the compromise were growing.

The latest was Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who warned the enrichment agreement ‘will blow up in our face and in the face of the international community’.

‘Iran should know that all options are on the table,’ Israel Army Radio quoted her as telling a farmers’ union symposium near Tel Aviv.

‘The world understands that it cannot afford a nuclear Iran, but to my regret there is a gap between this understanding and actions on the ground,’ said the former foreign minister of the centrist Kadima party Friday.

Israel’s Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom was expected to convey concern about the proposal to Ban Ki-moon in a scheduled meeting in New York.

Thus far, officially Israel largely remained mum on the talks in Vienna and Geneva.

The only reaction from an Israeli government official so far came from Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who late Thursday criticised the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proposal as insufficient.

‘The agreement, if it is signed, will postpone uranium enrichment in Iran by about one year. But if the enrichment is not halted, then the only end result is that Iran will have received legitimacy to enrich uranium on its soil,’ Barak told a conference in Jerusalem.

‘Therefore, a halt of enrichment in Iran … coupled with immediate harsh sanctions free of any illusions and with eyes wide open’ was needed, and without ‘all parties taking any option off the table under any conditions’, said the Israeli defence minister.

Several Israeli lawmakers outside the government and former officials spoke out against the draft deal even more forcefully. They charged Iran would benefit most, buying precious time and removing the immediate threat of harsh sanctions, while within a year it would be able to refill the stock that it was giving up.

Former Israeli army chief of staff and defence minister Shaul Mofaz, of Kadima, was quoted by the Makor Rishon – Hatzofe newspaper as dismissing the draft proposal as ‘a worthless piece of paper’.

Mofaz called IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei ‘a serial cover-upper, an ostrich with its head in the sand’, who wanted to show the world he had solved the Iranian problem before the end of his term.

The entire process, he blasted, was meant to show that Iran had ‘accepted an international ultimatum’. He argued any agreement should include ‘an absolute halt to uranium enrichment on Iranian soil, and full and comprehensive supervision of all its nuclear facilities’.

UAE issues pre-marriage health check guidelines

Published: October 23, 2009Posted in: Gulf-Middle EastTags:

Dubai, Oct 23 – The health ministry of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has published a booklet on medical check-ups to be undertaken by couples before marriage, WAM news agency reported Friday.

The booklet was launched in accordance with the personal status law issued by the UAE government in 2005. The law makes medical check-ups mandatory before marriage ‘to build healthy community’.

Article 27 of the personal status law stipulates that a certified medical report must be obtained by both partners, showing they do not have any diseases, before a marriage certificate is issued.

The booklet is aimed at educating people about genetic diseases and the importance of pre-marriage health check-ups.

Seven Asian countries discuss water cooperation in UAE

Published: October 23, 2009Posted in: Gulf-Middle EastTags:

Abu Dhabi, Oct 23 – Officals of seven South Asian countries met here Oct 22-23 to promote water cooperation on the rivers of greater Himalayan region, WAM news agency reported.

Government officials, politicians and water experts from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan participated in the conference.

The theme of the meeting was ‘First International Conference on Southern Asia Water Cooperation’.

‘Around 40 percent of the world’s population and 50 percent of the farm land depend on more than 245 rivers (in the region). Despite this fact, there are no international agreements that govern the use of these resources,’ Mohammed Al Bowardi, managing director of Abu Dhabi environment agency (EAD) said at the conference Thursday.

‘This drives us to be even more careful with he management and distribution of these important resources to avoid conflict among countries with shared borders,’ he said.

‘I would like to take this opportunity to invite all participants in this dialogue to develop the necessary frameworks to contribute to global efforts to protect our natural resources and to mitigate the effects of climate change, because of their significant environmental, economic and political impact,’ he added.

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