Sistani opposes Iraq-US security deal

Iraq’s most senior cleric voices opposition to a proposed security deal with the US, saying such a deal would threaten Iraq’s sovereignty.

In a meeting with Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq Al-Rubaie on Tuesday, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani expressed his concerns over the security deal by calling it an excuse that will justify the presence of US forces in Iraq.

Ayatollah Sistani had earlier noted that any long-term pact with the US should observe four key terms: safeguarding Iraqis’ interests, national sovereignty, national consensus, and parliament approval.

On Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki suggested a timetable for the departure of US forces from Iraq.

However, Washington played down calls for a firm withdrawal deadline, saying any pullout will be based on the conditions on the ground.

“We’re looking at conditions, not calendars here,” State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said on Tuesday.

Baghdad and Washington are negotiating a treaty that would allow the American troops to stay in Iraq after their mandate under the UN expires in December 2008.

The controversial security deal has faced fierce opposition from Iraqi religious and political figures who believe the deal would turn the country into a US colony.

MMS/PA

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Hersh reveals covert US ops in Iran

The New Yorker magazine says Washington has escalated covert operations against Iran in a bid to destabilize the country’s leadership.

In a report published in the online version of The New Yorker magazine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has revealed that US Congressional leaders quietly agreed late last year to President Bush’s funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against the Islamic Republic.

The article centers on a highly classified Presidential Finding which, by US law, must be made known to Senate leaders, the Democratic and Republican House and to ranking members of the intelligence committees.

“The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” the article cited a person familiar with its contents as saying.

The finding also focused on working with the country’s opposition groups and funneling money.

The article cites current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources as saying that $400 million was approved by congressional leaders for clandestine operations against Iran.

US Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross border operations from southern and southeastern Iraq since last year, the article said.

These have included seizing members of Iran’s Qods force — an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — and taking them to Iraq for interrogation.

The operations also involved the pursuit, capture or killing of ‘high-value targets’ in the so-called war on terrorism, according to the article.

However, the article cited current and former officials as saying that the scale and scope of the covert operations inside Iran, including forces from the Central Intelligence Agency, have now been significantly expanded.

Many of these activities were not specified in the Presidential Finding and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature, the article said.

According to former CIA officer, Robert Baer, the Jundullah terrorist group is among the outfits inside Iran benefiting from US support.

Jundullah, which operates in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province and Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, has carried out a number of attacks against Iranian civilians as well as high-profile government and security officials.

Neither the Democratic leaders in Congress nor the White house and the CIA would comment on the finding, the article said.

MT/MR/GM

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Anticipated Hezbollah,Israel Swap Deal Under Spotlight

Two contradicting views have been floating recently between Lebanon and occupied Palestine over an anticipated exchange deal between Hezbollah and Israel.
 
There are some who believe that a swap deal will take place before the end of this month, while others don’t rule out such deal, but believe that it will not be implemented in the near future.  
 
“The prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah will not take place in the next few days”, the Israeli Defense Ministry official said Wednesday. “In any case, such an exchange will not take place until the cabinet meets to approve the release of Samir Kintar, whose freedom still depends on a 2004 cabinet decision to release him only in exchange for information on missing Israeli navigator Ron Arad”.
 
The schedule for the swap is still unclear, though it may possibly come next week, and no date has been set. It is also not clear whether such a swap would take place at the Naqura border crossing, or whether, as in previous exchanges, it would be carried out in Germany, with two airplanes taking off at the same time, one from Tel Aviv and the other from Beirut, on their way to a German military airport.
 
Israel has stated that it will release four Hezbollah fighters who were taken captive during the July 2006 War, and another eight martyrs’ bodies.
Nevertheless, Israel may release a few dozen Palestinian prisoners at a later date. Ofer Dekel, the prime minister’s representative for negotiations with Hezbollah, returned on Wednesday from a private vacation in Paris, though he also dealt with the exchange talks there. He may also have met with the UN mediator involved in the talks, German Gerhard Konrad.
 
Claims roamed on Wednesday that Israel had already started exhuming the bodies of the Lebanese to be returned as part of the deal. Dekel made it clear to the two families of the captured soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser Dekel, at a meeting in his Tel Aviv office that he had not received any new information. He explained that it is likely that only during the actual swap will they find out whether the two are dead or alive. He informed the families of the possible schedule for the deal.
 
Goldwasser’s father, Shlomo, told Haaretz that a dramatic step over the weekend had been ruled out. The families confirmed reports of the meeting, but refused to reveal details, describing the meeting as a short update.
 
On the other hand, an Israeli security source confirmed few days ago that a “swap deal is expected to take place in the near future, possibly even by late next week”. Lebanese media referred to a number of possible dates for an exchange, with Friday June 20 as the earliest, and Wednesday June 25 being the latest.
 
An Israeli senior political source told Haaretz earlier that Israel is still waiting for a final response from Hezbollah and “nothing is final yet.”
 
Sources in the Prime Minister’s Bureau said that the reports published by the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, suggesting a prisoner exchange deal is expected as early as next week, were “inaccurate,” adding it is unlikely the deal will be finalized in such a short time.
 
As for Ron Arad, the missing Israeli air force navigator: Eliad Shraga, head of the Born Free organization, told Israeli daily Ynet that “every possible mistake has been made. Hezbollah has beaten Israel big-time. They’ve been able to get every last one of our bargaining chips, kidnap more soldiers and now we have nothing left. Promises must be kept. We had to give (Mustafa) Dirani and (Abdel Karim) Obeid in the last prisoner swap – they were the best bargaining chips we had on Ron’s case. To make this wrong a little more right, they told us the deal would have a second stage – information about Ron in exchange for Kintar. It’s been four year. Kintar is going home and we still have no new information about Ron.”
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Ahmadinejad to OPEC: Dump weak dollar

Iran urges the OPEC member states again to convert their cash reserves into a basket of currencies rather than the tumbling US dollar.

Speaking at a ceremony to open the 29th ministerial meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his proposal made about six months ago in a rare summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’s heads of states.

“The fall in the value of US dollar is one of the pressing problems of the world today,” warned the Iranian president at the conference in Isfahan on Tuesday.

He further expressed concern over the adverse effect of the dollar depreciation on the international community, especially energy exporting countries through increasing the price of commodities like wheat, rice and oilseeds.

Ahmadinejad said he warned six months ago in the summit conference in Riyadh that there were many indications pointing to continued fall in the value of the greenback.

“And we see that this continues to happen and the resources and wealth of OPEC member countries have been hugely damaged.

“I again repeat my previous proposal; we should have a basket of different international hard currencies as the basis or the member countries should come up and produce a new hard currency for petroleum contracts,” he stressed.

“They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper,” Ahmadinejad said earlier after the close of the summit in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

The comments by the Iranian president gained backing from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as he said at the same event, “The empire of the dollar has to end.”

On the soaring oil prices, the Iranian president said, “At a time when the growth of consumption is lower than the growth of production and the market is full of oil, prices are rising and this trend is completely fake and imposed.”

“As you know the decrease in the dollar’s value and the increase in energy prices are two sides of the same coin which are being introduced as factors behind the recent instability,” Ahmadinejad added.

MK/GM

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‘US, Israel two sides of same coin’

Lebanon’s top cleric Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah draws a parallel between the US and Israel in the savage killing of innocent people.

“The US and its protégé, Israel, are two sides of the same coin in their brutal killing of innocent people,” said the prominent Lebanese cleric in his weekly Friday prayer sermon delivered from the Imamayn Hassanayn Mosque in Haret Hreik.

“When US military aircraft bomb innocent Afghan families and kill Pakistani soldiers to warn them nobody better dare stick their necks out against White House policy on its so-called war on terror, it looks very much like its Israeli ally which launches air strikes against residential units in the Gaza Strip,” said the senior cleric.

“Washington sees the world as an area under its dominance and feels no shame in the kidnapping and torture of those opposing its policies in its military bases stationed across the globe,” Fadlallah added.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who voices concern over the ‘captivity’ of Israeli soldiers, expresses no sympathy over the appalling condition of 11,000 Palestinians subject to psychological and physical torture in Israeli prisons, the cleric argued.

Fadlallah sees no difference between Israeli or American prison guards, as the US soldiers have tortured many prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Abu Ghraib, and prisons in Afghanistan.

MK/JG/GM

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‘Ayatollah will not allow US-Iraq deal’

Iraq’s most revered Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has strongly objected to a ’security accord’ between the US and Iraq.

The Grand Ayatollah has reiterated that he would not allow Iraq to sign such a deal with “the US occupiers” as long as he was alive, a source close to Ayatollah Sistani said.

The source added the Grand Ayatollah had voiced his strong objection to the deal during a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday.

The remarks were made amid reports that the Iraqi government might sign a long-term framework agreement with the United States, under which Washington would be allowed to set up permanent military bases in the country and US citizens would be granted immunity from legal prosecution in the country.

While the mainstream media keep mum about the accord, critics say the agreement would virtually put Iraq under the US tutelage and violate the country’s sovereignty.

The source added Ayatollah Sistani, however, backed PM al-Maliki’s government and its efforts and that of the nation to establish security in the country.

The mandate of US troops in Iraq will expire in December 2008 and al-Maliki’s government is under US pressure to sign ‘a mutual security agreement’ which would allow the long-term presence of US troops in Iraq.

Washington’s plan has so far faced fierce protests by religious figures including Ayatollah Seyyed Kazem Haeri, another senior Shia cleric, and it is expected that other religious figures join the efforts to prevent the deal.

The US has signed similar agreements with countries like Japan and South Korea and thousands of US troops are now stationed in the countries.

SB/RE

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