IAEA experts hold talks on nuclear ‘differences’ in Iran

Updated 13 February 2013
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IAEA experts hold talks on nuclear ‘differences’ in Iran

TEHRAN: Experts from the UN atomic watchdog were holding talks in Tehran yesterday aimed at reaching accord on inspections that would allow investigations into a possible military dimension of Iran's nuclear drive.
The discussions are taking place two weeks ahead of a new round of talks between Iran and six world powers in parallel diplomatic efforts, which are due to resume in Kazakhstan on Feb. 26 after an eight-month hiatus.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency and an Iranian nuclear team led by Tehran's IAEA Envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh, began talks in the morning, the ISNA news agency reported.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that in yesterday's negotiations Iran's rights to pursue peaceful nuclear technology had to be protected.
“It is certain that Iran's definite rights should be respected, as well as law, regulations and agreement between Iran and the agency,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting.
The goal of the meeting in Tehran, the third of its kind in the past three months, is to “finalize the structured approach document,” according to Herman Nackaerts, the IAEA's chief inspector who is leading the delegation to Tehran.
The document would “facilitate the resolution of the outstanding issues related to the possible military dimension of Iran's nuclear program,” Nackaerts told journalists at Vienna airport on Tuesday.
But “differences remain... we will work hard to try to resolve these differences,” he said. “We will have good negotiations.”
The Vienna-based agency says “overall, credible” evidence exist that until 2003 and possibly since Iran conducted nuclear weapons research.
Vehemently rejecting the charges, Iran has denied the IAEA broader access to sites, scientists and documents involved in these alleged military activities.
The IAEA is hoping to gain access to Parchin, a military base near Tehran where the agency suspects Iran could have carried out experiments with explosives capable of triggering a nuclear weapon.
But Iran's nuclear chief Fereydoon Abbasi Davani yesterday dented the prospects of such visit, telling reporters: “A visit to Parchin or any other site is not on the agenda,” according to ISNA.
“We will negotiate and hope to reach a rational framework,” he said.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast had suggested Tuesday that inspection of the Parchin site by the IAEA would be possible in the context of a “comprehensive agreement” that recognizes Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy.
Previous demands by the IAEA to visit the base were spurned by Iran, which insists agency inspectors already visited Parchin twice in 2005 and found nothing untoward.
But the agency counters that activity at Parchin spotted by satellite, including moving “considerable” volumes of earth, makes it want to go back.

The United States, Israel and Western powers suspect the Islamic republic is masking the development of a nuclear weapons capability under the guise of a program Iran insists is purely aimed at peaceful purposes.
In November, the US warned that if there was no progress in a deal between Iran and the IAEA, it would push for the UN agency at its next meeting from March 4-8 to take the rare step of referring Tehran to the UN Security Council.
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday called on Iran to end the standoff over its nuclear drive by addressing international concerns.
“The leaders of Iran must recognize that now is the time for a diplomatic solution, because a coalition stands united in demanding that they meet their obligations,” Obama said in his State of the Union address.
The P5+1 group of the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany have urged Tehran to scale back parts of its nuclear work. Those calls have been rejected by Iran because it was not offered sanctions relief in return.
Iran has been slapped with multiple sets of UN Security Council sanctions for its refusal to stop uranium enrichment. The United States and the European Union have also imposed their own additional sanctions.


Egypt denies court ruling threatens historic monastery

Updated 13 sec ago
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Egypt denies court ruling threatens historic monastery

  • A court in Sinai ruled on that the monastery ‘is entitled to use’ the land, which ‘the state owns as public property’
  • Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens called the court ruling ‘scandalous’
CAIRO: Egypt has denied that a controversial court ruling over Sinai’s Saint Catherine monastery threatens the UNESCO world heritage landmark, after Greek and church authorities warned of the sacred site’s status.
A court in Sinai ruled on Wednesday in a land dispute between the monastery and the South Sinai governorate that the monastery “is entitled to use” the land, which “the state owns as public property.”
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s office defended the ruling Thursday, saying it “consolidates” the site’s “unique and sacred religious status,” after the head of the Greek Orthodox church in Greece denounced it.
Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens called the court ruling “scandalous” and an infringement by Egyptian judicial authorities of religious freedoms.
He said the decision means “the oldest Orthodox Christian monument in the world, the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine in Mount Sinai, now enters a period of severe trial — one that evokes much darker times in history.”
El-Sisi’s office in a statement said it “reiterates its full commitment to preserving the unique and sacred religious status of Saint Catherine’s monastery and preventing its violation.”
The monastery was established in the sixth century at the biblical site of the burning bush in the southern mountains of the Sinai peninsula, and is the world’s oldest continually inhabited Christian monastery.
The Saint Catherine area, which includes the eponymous town and a nature reserve, is undergoing mass development under a controversial government megaproject aimed at bringing in mass tourism.
Observers say the project has harmed the reserve’s ecosystem and threatened both the monastery and the local community.
Archbishop Ieronymos warned that the monastery’s property would now be “seized and confiscated,” despite “recent pledges to the contrary by the Egyptian President to the Greek Prime Minister.”
Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis contacted his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty on Thursday, saying “there was no room for deviation from the agreements between the two parties,” the ministry’s spokesperson said.
In a statement to Egypt’s state news agency, the foreign ministry in Cairo later said rumors of confiscation were “unfounded,” and that the ruling “does not infringe at all” on the monastery’s sites or its religious and spiritual significance.
Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said “Greece will express its official position ... when the official and complete content of the court decision is known and evaluated.”
He confirmed both countries’ commitment to “maintaining the Greek Orthodox religious character of the monastery.”

Israel aid blockage making Gaza ‘hungriest region on earth’, UN office says

Updated 7 sec ago
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Israel aid blockage making Gaza ‘hungriest region on earth’, UN office says

BERLIN: Israel is blocking all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, with almost no ready-to-eat food entering what its spokesperson described as “the hungriest place on earth.”
Spokesperson Jens Laerke said only 600 of 900 aid trucks had been authorized to get to Israel’s border with Gaza, and from there a mixture of bureaucratic and security obstacles made it all but impossible to safely carry aid into the region.
“What we have been able to bring in is flour,” he told a regular news conference on Friday. “That’s not ready to eat, right? It needs to be cooked... 100 percent of the population of Gaza is at risk of famine.”
Tommaso della Longa, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, added that half of its medical facilities in the region were out of action for lack of fuel or medical equipment. (Reporting by Thomas Escritt, editing by Rachel More)


Hamas receives Israeli response to US Gaza proposal and is reviewing it

Updated 11 min 17 sec ago
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Hamas receives Israeli response to US Gaza proposal and is reviewing it

  • Hamas: Israeli response fails to meet any of the Palestinian “just and legitimate demands”

DUBAI: Hamas has received Israel’s response to a US proposal for a Gaza ceasefire deal and is thoroughly reviewing it, even though the response fails to meet any of the Palestinian “just and legitimate demands,” group’s official Basem Naim said on Friday.


Daesh claims first attack on Syrian government forces since Assad’s fall

Updated 34 min 30 sec ago
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Daesh claims first attack on Syrian government forces since Assad’s fall

  • Daesh, which once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, is opposed to the new authority in Damascus led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa
  • Daesh was defeated in Syria in March 2019 when SDF fighters captured the last sliver of land that the extremists controlled

BEIRUT: The Daesh group has claimed responsibility for two attacks in southern Syria, including one on government forces that an opposition war monitor described as the first on the Syrian army to be adopted by the extremists since the fall of Bashar Assad.

In two separate statements issued late Thursday, Daesh said that in the first attack, a bomb was detonated targeting a “vehicle of the apostate regime,” leaving seven soldiers dead or wounded. It said the attack occurred “last Thursday,” or May 22, in the Al-Safa area in the desert of the southern province of Sweida.

Daesh said that the second attack occurred this week in a nearby area during which a bomb targeted members of the US-backed Free Syrian Army, claiming that it killed one fighter and wounded three.

There was no comment from the government on the claim of the attack and a spokesperson for the Free Syrian Army didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the attack on government forces killed one civilian and wounded three soldiers, describing it as the first such attack to be claimed by Daesh against Syrian forces since the fall of the 54-year Assad family’s rule in December.

Daesh, which once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, is opposed to the new authority in Damascus led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who was once the head of Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria and fought battles against Daesh.

Over the past several months, Daesh has claimed responsibility for attacks against the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast.

Daesh was defeated in Syria in March 2019 when SDF fighters captured the last sliver of land that the extremists controlled. Since then, its sleeper cells have carried out deadly attacks, mainly in eastern and northeast Syria.

In January, state media reported that intelligence officials in Syria’s post-Assad government thwarted a plan by Daesh to set off a bomb at a Shiite Muslim shrine south of Damascus.

Al-Sharaa met with US President Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia earlier this month during which the American leader said that Washington would work on lifting crippling economic sanctions imposed on Damascus since the days of Assad.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement after the meeting that Trump urged Al-Sharaa to diplomatically recognize Israel, “tell all foreign terrorists to leave Syria” and help the US stop any resurgence of the Daesh group.


Israel far-right minister says ‘time to go in with full force’ in Gaza

Updated 30 May 2025
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Israel far-right minister says ‘time to go in with full force’ in Gaza

  • Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Friday it was time to use “full force” in Gaza, after Hamas said a new US-backed truce proposal failed to meet its demands

JERUSALEM: Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Friday it was time to use “full force” in Gaza, after Hamas said a new US-backed truce proposal failed to meet its demands.
“Mr Prime Minister, after Hamas rejected the deal proposal again — there are no more excuses,” Ben Gvir said on his Telegram channel. “The confusion, the shuffling and the weakness must end. We have already missed too many opportunities. It is time to go in with full force, without blinking, to destroy, and kill Hamas to the last one.”