AMU Intelligence

Global Security Brief: 8-7-08

A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.
By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror
Hundreds of French troops have been deployed to train and mentor Afghan security forces in a key southern province wracked by the Taliban-led insurgency, NATO said Thursday. Eight Taliban militants were also killed in the south.


The troops travelled in 94 vehicles from Kandahar to Uruzgan province Wednesday in what was one of the largest ground military convoys in southern Afghanistan in years, the military alliance said in a statement. NATO did not provide the exact number of troops deployed, and officials would not specify whether they were being relocated from other areas in Afghanistan or were new to the country. But France has about 1,500 troops in Afghanistan, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged to send 700 more soldiers by the end of the year to help NATO-led forces. (Source: AP)


Roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan have gotten less sophisticated and as a result harder for troops to find or avoid, a military official said Wednesday. And while the number of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, found and troops injured or killed have plummeted in Iraq, they spiked recently in Afghanistan, reflecting the escalating combat there. (Source: AP)


An attack on a Pakistani military checkpost by some 200 pro-Taliban militants triggered intense fighting that killed 25 insurgents and two paramilitary soldiers near the Afghan border, security officials said Thursday. The fighting broke out Wednesday in Loi Sam village in the Bajur tribal region, said two army officers and an area intelligence official. All three spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. The officials said they received reports from local authorities about the casualties. The local intelligence official said the militants used rockets and assault rifles in the attack. (Source: AP)


As Pakistan faces mounting pressure from its neighbors and the United States to clear pro-Taliban elements from its intelligence service, its weak government is struggling to respond in a convincing way. Last week, American officials alleged that members of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had helped plan the bombing of the Indian consulate in Kabul, Afghanistan, last month. The claim echoed those lodged by both affected neighbors, India and Afghanistan. On top of these accusations came reports that a top CIA official had confronted Pakistani leaders with evidence of the ISI’s support for militants that the Pakistani Army has been battling in the country’s restive northwest tribal areas. The timing of the allegations against the ISI is weighing heavily on Pakistan, which has struggled to assuage its neighbors’ and the US’s complaints. While it denies its intelligence agents’ involvement in the July bombing, it has acknowledged that the ISI still includes agents who sympathize with Islamic militants. To defuse escalating diplomatic tensions, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani met last weekend with Afghan and Indian leaders on the sidelines of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit to reiterate Pakistan’s commitment to fighting terror. In talks Saturday with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh, Mr. Gilani promised to investigate the ISI’s alleged role in the Kabul bombing. The next day, in a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, he also agreed to work towards “developing a common strategy” to overcome the challenges terrorism poses to the stability of both of their countries. The reports from the US surfaced just as Gilani was completing his first visit to Washington, where he met with President Bush. The tour was widely criticized for its failure to ease US growing concerns about Pakistan’s role in the war on terror. A column in the Daily Times, a national English-language newspaper, called the trip an “unmitigated disaster.” Even before Gilani’s visit to the US, the Pakistani government appeared to be taking action to rein in the pro-militant influence in its intelligence service. In a surprising move one day before Gilani arrived in the US, it issued a proclamation that sought to bring the ISI and another secret-service agency under the control of a government ministry. (Source: CSM)


Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday decided to visit the Beijing Olympic Games despite media reports that the ruling coalition has agreed on steps to remove him. The leaders of Pakistan’s main ruling parties met for a second day in Islamabad to resolve differences over how to restore dozens of judges fired by Musharraf last year and to consider the unpopular president’s fate. Rifts over those issues have weakened the four-month-old government and hampered its efforts to formulate policies to counter rising Islamic militancy and a slew of economic problems. Before dawn Thursday, a spokesman for former Prime Minister Sharif said the talks were successful and that “the nation will soon hear good news.” (Source: AP)


A device exploded Thursday on a beach in a Russian resort that will host the 2014 Winter Olympics, killing two people and wounding three. The blast occurred in the southern city of Sochi when visitors touched the device on the Black Sea resort beach.
It said a man and a woman died on the spot and three other visitors, including an 8-year-old child, were wounded on the beach, which is 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) north of central Sochi. Local authorities said they quickly evacuated visitors from all Sochi beaches and checked them for more explosives. None were found. The explosion immediately drew the concern of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev who ordered his envoy in the region to oversee the investigation. The local governor rushed to the site. An Interior Ministry official said the explosion could be part of turf battle for control over the area between local criminal groups. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. (Source: AP)


A series of explosions at a municipal government building in Istanbul slightly injured three people Thursday. Three blasts occurred near a municipal building in the Uskudar district, a municipal official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists. It was not immediately clear what caused the blasts and officials said police were investigating. The building houses the district’s Parks Department. Earlier reports said hand grenades were tossed into the building, but that could not be immediately confirmed. The three injured were taken to a nearby hospital, private NTV television reported, citing Istanbul police chief Celalettin Cerrah. Hospital officials could not immediately be reached for comment. On July 25, two bombings killed 17 people and injured more than 150 others at a packed Istanbul square. Turkey’s government has blamed the attack on a Kurdish rebel organization, which denied responsibility. (Source: AP)


Iraq
Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will call on his fighters to maintain a cease-fire against American troops but may lift the order if a planned Iraq-U.S. security agreement lacks a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces, a spokesman said Thursday. The statement by Sheik Salah al-Obeidi comes as al-Sadr plans to reveal details of a formula to reorganize his Mahdi Army militia by separating it into an unarmed cultural organization and elite fighting cells. The announcement is expected during weekly Islamic prayer services on Friday. Several cease-fires by al-Sadr have been key to a sharp decline in violence over the past year, but American officials still consider his militiamen a threat and have backed the Iraqi military in operations to try to oust them from their power bases in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. Al-Sadr’s move appears to be an extension of plans he announced in June aimed at asserting more control over the militia by dividing it into a group of experienced members who would be exclusively authorized to fight and others who would focus on social, religious and community work.But the cleric also apparently has decided to link the reorganization to ongoing U.S.-Iraqi negotiations over a long-term agreement that would extend the American presence in Iraq after a U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year. The White House’s original goal was to have it completed by the end of July. Two U.S. soldiers were killed Monday by an armor-piercing roadside bomb known as an explosively formed penetrator, which the military believes is supplied by Iran to Shiite militia fighters. Iran denies it is supporting violence in Iraq. On Thursday, a roadside bomb killed eight Bedouins, including three women and two children, on a remote desert highway west of Nasiriyah frequently used by U.S. and Iraqi troops, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information. Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, is in a Shiite area that has been the site of fierce infighting between rival Shiite factions but has been relatively peaceful since a cease-fire declaration by al-Sadr. Gunmen also killed a senior member of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, Mahmoud Younis Fathi, and a colleague as they were driving to work in the northern city of Mosul, according to the group. Elsewhere in Mosul, three Iraqi policemen were killed when a booby-trapped wooden cart exploded after they arrived to collect a body that had been left on the street beside it. (Source: AP)


United States
Government officials asserted yesterday that a troubled bioweapons scientist acted alone to perpetrate a terrorism scheme that killed five people, a case that centered on a near-perfect match of anthrax spores in his custody and a record of his late-night laboratory work just before the toxic letters were mailed. Federal investigators uncovered e-mail messages written by bacteriologist Bruce E. Ivins describing an al-Qaeda threat that echoed language in the handwritten letters mailed to Senate offices and media organizations in September and October 2001. Ivins, who worked in high-security labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had a motive because of his work validating a controversial anthrax vaccine that had been suspended from production. Even as Justice Department officials declared the worst act of bioterrorism in U.S. history all but solved, scientists and legal experts noted that the evidence is far from foolproof. Investigators were unable to place Ivins in Princeton, N.J., on the days when the letters were dropped into a Nassau Street mailbox. They did not try to match his crabbed handwriting with the distinctive block print on the 2001 letters. And they did not silence congressional critics who wondered yesterday whether one man could have carried out the elaborate attacks. (Source: Washington Post)


The guilty verdict delivered against former Osama bin Laden driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan on Wednesday establishes a legal precedent that will make it easier for prosecutors to convict other suspected war criminals in military commission trials at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Mr. Hamdan, a Yemeni national, was convicted of providing material support to a terror group. But the six-member war crimes tribunal also found Hamdan not guilty of charges that he was a willing participant with Al Qaeda in a terror conspiracy. The split verdict comes in the first war crimes tribunal conducted by the US military since World War II. The military commission, made up of six officers hand-picked by the Pentagon, reached its verdict after eight hours of deliberations over three days. The conviction marks an important victory for the Bush administration. (Source: CSM)


The Pentagon on Wednesday reopened the bidding process for the controversial Air Force tanker contract in an effort to address issues raised by congressional auditors that had forced the Pentagon to reverse itself in awarding the $35 billion contract. Defense officials stressed that the new bidding process will be as transparent as possible as they released a draft “request for proposal” to the two companies wanting to build the next generation aerial refuellers, Boeing and a partnership of Northrop Grumman and EADS, a French concern that owns Airbus. (Source: CSM)


The U.S. Air Force has been breaking in its new fleet of F-22s, the world’s most advanced fighter jet, this summer by sending five of the planes from cool and dry Alaska to hot and humid Guam for the first time. The F-22 Raptors, which have unrivaled ability to fly at supersonic speeds for long periods and travel undetected by radar, have been operational for less than three years.

Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska has been home to two F-22 squadrons since last year. It’s only the second base to house the stealth fighters, after Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. The July 18-August 2 deployment of five Raptors from the Elmendorf’s 90th Fighter Squadron to the U.S. territory marked just the second time the F-22 has ventured outside the 50 states. Its first such trip was early last year, when Pacific Air Forces sent 12 Langley-based F-22s to Okinawa in southern Japan for three months. (Source: AP)


At least a half-dozen rogue states and well-funded terrorist groups around the world could launch short-range Scud ballistic missiles with nuclear or biological warheads from large container cargo ships from outside U.S. territorial waters, leading experts in ballistic-missile defense warn. The entire populations of the U.S. Eastern seaboard and the West Coast, some 70 percent of Americans totaling more than 210 million people, are at risk. In addition, analyst Otto Kreisher noted there were already 75,000 anti-ship cruise missiles in circulation around the world in at least 70 countries, and many of them could easily be programmed to attack land targets instead. (Source: UPI/Washington Times)


Africa
Army commanders ousted Mauritania’s first freely elected president in two decades Wednesday after a bitter political fight over his overtures to Islamist radicals and ties to allies of a reviled former dictator. In a bloodless coup, troops detained President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, seized control of state radio and television and announced the formation of a new “state council” led by the commander of the presidential guard, Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. The junta issued no further statements at the time, but early Thursday morning the coup leaders said that they plan to hold free and open elections; they did not set a date. In a statement read on national television, the junta said the west African nation would be governed during the interim by the council, describing it as an 11-member group of military commanders. The coup, which drew widespread international condemnation, reflected the internal struggle over how to manage this desperately poor desert nation that straddles the Arab and African worlds and is Africa’s newest, if small-scale, oil producer. Troubles began early Wednesday, when Abdallahi fired Aziz and three other generals, reportedly for supporting lawmakers who had accused him of corruption and disagreed with his outreach to Islamist radicals. (Source: AP)


Senior Zimbabwean security officials, seen as key to any resolution of Zimbabwe’s political crisis, have been meeting South African mediators, South Africa’s Star Newspaper reported on Thursday. Citing unnamed sources, The Star said Zimbabwe’s security chiefs, seen as wielding wide power, “wanted to ensure that their interests are catered for in any agreement reached” in power-sharing talks which began two-and-a-half weeks ago. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai were due to meet in Harare on Thursday after signs that progress had been made in the power-sharing talks.

Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC on Wednesday called on their supporters to end political violence in the country, the most tangible sign of forward movement in the talks since they began two weeks ago. Members of South African President Thabo Mbeki’s mediation team met Zimbabwean security officials this week in Pretoria, The Star said. Mbeki, who has been leading regional mediation efforts, was expected in Harare on Thursday. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) began power-sharing talks last month, following the veteran leader’s re-election in a widely condemned June poll boycotted by the opposition. (Source: Reuters)


Americas
Defence Minister Peter MacKay confirmed Wednesday that Canada is sending a Halifax-based frigate to waters off the horn of Africa to stop pirates from attacking food shipments bound for Somalia. The navy has diverted HMCS Ville de Quebec, which left Halifax last month for a 5½-month NATO mission to the Mediterranean and Black seas. “This will be a crucial mission,” Mr. MacKay said during a hastily called news conference at the Stadacona wardroom in Halifax. “The population of Somalia is facing serious food shortages. The (UN) World Food Programme has indicated that all current food stocks in Somalia will be depleted by mid-August.” Ville de Quebec is already on its way to the region and is expected to arrive in Somali waters within a week.

Mr. MacKay said the warship’s presence will ensure food shipments make it past the pirates who have been haunting Somali waters. (Source: Chronicle Herald-CAN)


There will be no flag-waving or patriotic chest-thumping, but Canadian scientists are quietly set to make one of this country’s most important assertions of Arctic sovereignty in decades tomorrow at a geology conference in Norway. A year after Russian scientists planted their nation’s flag on the North Pole seabed, a controversial demonstration of their country’s interest in securing control over a vast undersea mountain chain stretching across the Arctic Ocean from Siberia to Ellesmere Island and Greenland — the Canadian researchers have teamed with Danish scientists to offer proof that the Lomonosov Ridge is, in fact, a natural extension of the North American continent. Their landmark findings, the initial result of years of sea floor mapping and millions of dollars in research investments by the Canadian and Danish governments, are to be presented at the 2008 International Geological Congress in Oslo under the innocuous title “Crustal Structure from the Lincoln Sea to the Lomonosov Ridge, Arctic Ocean.” But the completion of the study represents a key step in Canada’s effort to eventually win rights over thousands of square kilometres of the polar seabed, a potential treasure trove of oil and gas being made more and more accessible as melting ice unlocks our High Arctic frontier. The stakes are so high that the Canadian and Danish governments set aside their differences over the ownership of Hans Island. Along with Russia, both Canada and Denmark are preparing submissions under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to secure jurisdiction over large swaths of the Arctic Ocean sea floor adjacent to their coastlines. To secure those rights, each country has to submit scientific evidence proving the claimed undersea territories are linked geologically to its mainland or its Arctic islands. (Source: Canada.com)


The Islamic centre offering Abdullah Khadr a job, and helping post bail for the eldest son in the infamous Khadr family, was frequented by individuals with ties to terrorism and extremist activities, according to Crown arguments at a bail review hearing yesterday. Khadr, 27, facing extradition to the U.S, has been in custody at the Toronto West Detention Centre since 2005. The judge at the time denied him bail and said there was a strong case for extraditing him. The U.S is seeking to try him on charges of buying weapons for Al Qaeda. Under the conditions proposed by the defence yesterday, Khadr would be released on $300,000 bail, would live with his grandparents in Scarborough, wear an electronic monitoring device, and work at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre. The centre has raised $50,000 for his bail through community donations, and has offered Khadr an office job. The board of the centre has also agreed to pay for the electronic monitoring device for two years, said Abdul Ibrahim, the manager of the centre. Ibrahim rejected the Crown’s attempt to show the centre is an inappropriate workplace for Khadr. The Crown claimed it’s a venue often frequented by individuals with links to terrorism. Lead prosecutor Howard Piafsky told the court that the Khadr patriarch Ahmed Said Khadr, who was believed to have close ties to Osama bin Laden and many of those charged in the so-called Toronto 18 terrorist plot, often visited the centre and used its facilities. (Source: The Star-CAN)


Asia
Just hours before flying to Beijing for the Olympics on Thursday, U.S. President George W. Bush used some of his bluntest language yet in publicly pressing China to improve its human rights record. In a speech in Bangkok on the eve of the Games’ opening ceremony, when the eyes of the world will be on Beijing, Bush voiced “firm opposition” to China’s detention of dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists. (Source: Reuters)


BAE’S Barrow arms factory is to share in a new multi-million pound export order for M777 army field guns. An M777 field gun Workers at Barrow, where the world-beating 155m calibre, lightweight gun was conceived and designed, build vital parts.
The revolutionary gun uses titanium for many of its parts instead of steel, making it almost half the weight of rivals and therefore more manoeuvrable. The Barrow plant, in shipyard buildings off Michaelson Road, is working through a massive order for nearly 700 of the guns from the US Marine Corps and US Army, as well as around 38 guns for Canada. Now the Australian government is poised to order 57 of the guns, which can be lifted by helicopters to be in and out of battle situations. Denmark and a number of other countries are also interested in the M777, which has been used in action in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And the US with its massive defence forces could place an order for more guns in October. Around 70 per cent of each M777, including the barrel, is made in the US by sub-contractors, and each weapon is assembled at a BAE factory in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
(Source: North West Evening Mail-UK)


Europe
Official French reaction to the Rwandan accusation that French leaders, diplomats, and soldiers were complicit in the epic 1994 genocide in Rwanda was muted and curt. “Unacceptable,” said both former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, and a diplomatic spokesman here during a sleepy week when most of Paris has decamped for vacation. Yet some French nongovernmental organizations, media, and intellectuals treated accusations that France aided and abetted Hutu government forces in the 100-day killing spree, which left more than 800,000 dead, as at least a subject for further inquiry. (Source: CSM)


Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic demanded on Wednesday that former U.S. peace mediator Richard Holbrooke and ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appear at the U.N. war crimes tribunal to back his claims of an immunity offer from the United States. Karadzic, who was transferred to The Hague’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia last week to face war crimes and genocide charges after 11 years on the run, challenged the legality of the case against him, a filing released by the tribunal showed. In the document, Karadzic repeated his claims that in 1996 Holbrooke had offered him immunity from the tribunal if he disappeared from public life. Karadzic argued that when Holbrooke realized he could not persuade the court’s chief prosecutor to drop the indictment he decided to “liquidate” him instead. (Source: Reuters)


Serbia has stepped up its pursuit of fugitive Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic whose arrest is crucial to the country’s European Union bid, a senior Serbian official said on Wednesday. The arrest of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic two weeks ago left just two fugitives from the 1990s Balkan wars, Mladic and Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic, on the run. Their arrest is critical for Serbia’s progress towards European Union membership, which the current government has set as a main goal. (Source: Reuters)


Russia and the United States called on Wednesday for a halt to violence in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia where separatists made disputed claims of military success against Tbilisi’s forces. But while Moscow’s Foreign Ministry urged calm over the deepening conflict, the Russian military accused Georgian military jets of overflying South Ossetia, a charge Tbilisi swiftly denied. Georgia’s key Western ally Washington called for talks.
(Source: Reuters)


Heavy shelling overnight in the Georgian breakaway province of South Ossetia wounded at least 21 people, officials said Thursday. Tensions in the region have soared, stoking fears of full-scale war. Georgian and South Ossetian officials were scheduled to meet Thursday to try to find a resolution, but separatist officials said the meeting was off because of the Georgian shelling. The provincial capital, Tskhinvali, and nearby areas came under heavy artillery and mortar shelling from Georgian-controlled territory, injuring 18 people. (Source: AP)


Middle East
Following the death of Yasser Arafat there was a struggle for leadership between Ahmed Hilles, leader of the Hilles clan in Gaza, and Mohamed Dahlan. When Hamas mounted a massive operation to control Gaza and expel Fatah last June, the Hilles clan stood by without firing a single round, as Hamas claimed that the operation targeted Dahlan and his group. Despite this, the Sheja’eya neighborhood, the fiefdom of the powerful Gazan family, was not spared by Hamas. Hamas was not able to find a framework of understanding with a well-known clan, refusing to coexist with another power in Gaza where society still recognizes the weight of family aggregations. Hamas forced citizens of its own, fleeing its liquidation attempts, to seek refuge with the enemy.
The Hilles men are not only known for their hatred for Israel, but also for their actual involvement in confronting the Israelis.
(Source: Dar Al-Hayat-Lebanon)


Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged Wednesday to free more than 150 Palestinian prisoners by the end of August as a goodwill gesture to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert spokesman Mark Regev announced the pledge after a meeting between the two leaders. Saeb Erekat, who took part in the meeting at Olmert’s official residence, said Abbas specifically requested the release of Marwan Barghouti, jailed for life by Israel for involvement in deadly attacks on Israelis. Abbas also asked for the release of Ahmed Saadat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose group assassinated Israeli Cabinet minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001. Israel freed 429 Palestinian prisoners in December as a gesture to Abbas. (Source: Ha’aretz)


Israel freed two senior Hamas officials detained after Hamas abducted an Israeli soldier two years ago. Abli Yaish, the Hamas mayor of Nablus, and Issa al-Ja’abari, a Hamas representative in Hebron, returned home, their families said on Wednesday. Israel freed former Hamas finance minister Omar Abdel Razek on Sunday. (Source: Reuters)


Lieutenant General Henry Obering III, head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, will recommend helping Israel finance the development of an updated version of the Arrow-3 anti-ballistic missile system, following talks in Israel. The new system, in its initial development stages, should be able to intercept missiles at heights of more than 100 km., reducing the danger of having the warhead land in Israel after interception. (Source: Ynet News)


In the latest violation of the Gaza truce, a Kassam rocket fired by Palestinians in Gaza landed near a greenhouse on an Israeli kibbutz on Wednesday. (Source: Jerusalem Post)


Israel is building up its strike capabilities amid growing anxiety over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and appears confident that a military attack would cripple Tehran’s atomic program, even if it can’t destroy it. Such talk could be more threat than reality. However, Iran’s refusal to accept Western conditions is worrying Israel as is the perception that Washington now prefers diplomacy over confrontation with Tehran. The Jewish state has purchased 90 F-16I fighter planes that can carry enough fuel to reach Iran, and will receive 11 more by the end of next year. It has bought two new Dolphin submarines from Germany reportedly capable of firing nuclear-armed warheads, in addition to the three it already has. This summer Israel carried out air maneuvers in the Mediterranean that touched off an international debate over whether they were a “dress rehearsal” for an imminent attack, a stern warning to Iran or a just a way to get allies to step up the pressure on Tehran to stop building nukes. According to foreign media reports, Israeli intelligence is active inside Iranian territory. Israel’s military censor, who can impose a range of legal sanctions against journalists operating in the country, does not permit publication of details of such information in news reports written from Israel. (Source: AP)


A top U.N. nuclear watchdog official arrived in Iran on Thursday for talks on cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported. Diplomats in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, said the visit was a fresh effort to get Iranian clarification about intelligence reports suggesting it is illicitly trying to design atomic bombs. Iran insists its nuclear work is peaceful. “The two parties will assess the trend of cooperation between Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization and the IAEA,” IRNA said in a report that said Olli Heinonen, the IAEA’s deputy director, would hold talks in Tehran on Thursday and Friday. Western capitals have said Iran now faces a new round of U.N. sanctions after it failed to respond positively to an offer made by six world powers aimed at ending the dispute. (Source: Reuters)


Russia said Wednesday that Iran should be granted more time to respond to a package of incentives that the United States and five other powerful nations have offered Tehran to freeze its uranium enrichment efforts, a stance that may slow U.S. and European efforts to impose U.N. sanctions on Tehran. Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, said the six nations should continue negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. He dismissed assertions by the United States, Britain and France that Tehran had missed a deadline this week to respond to the offer, which would make a push for U.N. sanctions inevitable. (Source: Washington Post)


France joined the U.S. on Wednesday in rejecting Iran’s response to an incentives package aimed at defusing a dispute over its nuclear program as insufficient. France regrets that Iran “has again chosen not to provide a clear response,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said in Paris. (Source: AP/Washington Post)


Six world powers agreed Wednesday to consider new sanctions on Iran after Tehran gave an ambiguous answer to their latest demand to freeze key nuclear work, the U.S. and Britain said. (Source: AFP)


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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University,

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