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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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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Israel deports freed Hezbollah spy to Lebanon

NAQURA, Lebanon (AFP) – Israel freed and then deported to Lebanon on Sunday a convicted Hezbollah spy while the Shiite militant group handed over the remains of Israeli soldiers, sparking talk of a wider exchange.

Lebanese-born Nessim Nisr was released after more than six years in prison on charges of collaborating with Hezbollah. He was handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross at Rosh Hanikra crossing point on Israel’s border with Lebanon.

Simultaneously Hezbollah handed over to the ICRC on the Lebanese side what it said were the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in the summer 2006 war.

A senior Israeli official confirmed that the army had received a coffin but said tests had to be carried out on the contents to confirm whether the remains were those of Israeli soldiers.

“A coffin apparently containing body parts of soldiers killed during the Second Lebanon War has been transferred by Hezbollah to the IDF (Israeli army) as a gesture for the ongoing negotiations on a prisoner exchange,” the official said.

“The coffin will be examined and the body parts will be examined to determine whether they indeed belong to Israeli soldiers.”

Israel and Hezbollah  have been involved in indirect negotiations aimed at securing the release of two Israeli soldiers captured in July 2006 in a deadly cross-border raid that sparked the 34-day war that summer.

Germany is acting as mediator in negotiations between Hezbollah and Israel on a prisoner exchange.

“I hope this is a step in the direction of a prisoner exchange,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said during a visit to Beirut on Sunday.

“I am happy that preliminary steps were taken in that direction and hope that this creates a positive dynamic, building mutual trust. Quick progress will be in the interest of the victims and concerned parties,” he added.

Israeli army radio reported last week that Israel was prepared to release five Lebanese prisoners and return the bodies of 10 Hezbollah fighters in exchange for the two missing servicemen.

In a speech on January 19, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said his group had the “heads” and “body parts” of soldiers that he said the Israeli army had abandoned on the battlefield.

“We have the heads, the hands, the feet and even a nearly intact cadaver from the head down to the pelvis,” Nasrallah said.

“The Israeli army left behind the remains of the bodies of a large number of soldiers,” he added.

As Nisr arrived back in his native land, he said he hoped soon to see the release of all Lebanese prisoners from Israeli jails.

“Hopefully we will soon see the return of all Lebanese detainees to Lebanese soil,” he said.

Lebanese troops had fanned out across the border town of Naqura, setting up a checkpoint near the main square and inspecting the identity cards of the hundreds of people who had gathered there.

Hezbollah fighters were also out in force across the town, wearing black clothes and yellow hats bearing the words “A victory from God” and blocking the main route into the town.

Nisr arrived at the border in a white, unmarked jeep and was escorted by Israeli police to the crossing point before being driven into the no man’s land between the two countries.

Born in 1968 to a Lebanese Muslim father and an Israeli Jewish mother who converted to Islam, Nisr left Lebanon during the Israeli invasion of 1982 and joined his mother’s family in Israel, where he settled near Tel Aviv.

He held Israeli citizenship at the time of his arrest in 2002.

Nisr’s brother Mohammed said Nessim had told him in a phone call a month ago that “his jailers had placed him in solitary confinement in a bid to persuade him to abandon his plans to return to Lebanon with his two daughters, who are Israeli citizens.”

Israel and Hezbollah have carried out a series of exchanges of prisoners and remains over the years.

In the largest, Israel released 400 Palestinians and 31 other people, including 23 Lebanese, in exchange for an Israeli reservist and the remains of three other Israeli soldiers in January 2004.

Last October Israel handed over a Hezbollah prisoner and the remains of two militants in return for the body of an Israeli and information on the fate of a missing airman.