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Prayer Time (Tehran)
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Dawn: 4:18
Sunrise: 5:57
Noon: 13:01
Evening: 20:25
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Weather Guide
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SAT |
SUN |
Tehran: |
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High: |
24oC |
27oC |
Low: |
17oC |
16oC |
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Athens |
21 |
21 |
Ankara |
25 |
25 |
Paris |
20 |
20 |
New Delhi |
42 |
42 |
Rome |
23 |
23 |
Riyadh |
34 |
34 |
Frankfurt |
24 |
24 |
Cairo |
31 |
31 |
Kuwait City |
40 |
40 |
Karachi |
35 |
35 |
Copenhagen |
16 |
16 |
London |
16 |
16 |
Moscow |
23 |
23 |
Madrid |
27 |
27 |
Vienna |
22 |
22 |
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Identification
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Published by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA)
Address:
Iran Cultural & Press Institute, #212 Khorramshahr Avenue Tehran/Iran
Managing Director: Mohammad T. Roghaniha
Executive Editor: Amin Sabooni
Editorial Dept. Tel: 8755761-2
Editorial Dept. Fax: 8761869
Advertising Dept. Tel: 8753119, 8757702, 8733764
Internet Address:
www.iran-daily.com
E-mail Address:
iran-daily@iran-daily.com
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Muslims Condemn US Abuse of Qur’an
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Iranians shout slogans during a demonstration against the desecration of the holy Qur'an in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, following the Friday prayers at Tehran University, May 20. (ISNA Photo)
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NASSIRIYAH, Iraq,
May 20--Several thousand Muslims in different Middle Eastern countries protested on Friday over the alleged abuse of the Qur’an at the US detention facility of Guantanamo Bay.
In Iran, the faithful followed a call by the authorities for a protest against the desecration after Friday prayers, official media said.
Worshippers in many Iranian cities, including Tehran, Qom, Sari, Abadan, Arak and Sanandaj, rallied to condemn the administration of US President George W. Bush for their anti-Islamic policy.
At the end of Friday prayers in Tehran, thousands shouted “Death to America“ and “Death to Israel“.
Violence marred a demonstration in the southern Iraqi Shiite town of Nassiriyah, where four radical Shiites and four police and soldiers were wounded by gunshots, medical sources said, AFP reported.
The protest had been organized by Shiites loyal to the fiery cleric Moqtada Sadr, who earlier in the week had called on Iraqis to soil US and Israeli flags outside mosques by the feet of the faithful.
In the occupied Palestinian territories, more than 2,000 demonstrators held aloft a giant mock-up of the Qur’an and Hamas flags as they marched through the West Bank city of Nablus in a protest organized by the radical Islamist group.
Local Hamas leader Maher Al-Kharraz called on the United States to “apologize and punish those who desecrated the Qur’an“.
On Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said that on multiple occasions between early 2002 and mid-2003 detainees at Guantanamo Bay reported how the Qur’an was being disrespected.
Riots have broken out across the Muslim world following a report in Newsweek magazine that US investigators had found that interrogators at the prison threw a Qur’an in a toilet to rattle Muslim inmates.
The magazine this week retracted the story after its source developed doubts, and the Pentagon has said its own investigation has found no evidence to support the allegation that Qur’ans were defiled at the offshore US prison.
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European Incentives Can Break Impasse
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Hossein Mousavian
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WASHINGTON, May 20--Iran is seeking significant incentives from Europe, like a deal for 10 nuclear reactors, to break the weeks-long stalemate in negotiations over its nuclear program, but it will never be persuaded to abandon its plans to enrich fuel, a top Iranian negotiator told The New York Times.
Hossein Mousavian, in an interview published Thursday, said Iran was prepared to prolong its six-month suspension of all aspects of the fuel cycles a while longer, AFP reported. “We would be prepared to continue suspension of enrichment for two to three more months, or some months, to test whether there would be any outcome of negotiations,“ he said, referring to Iran’s negotiations with Britain, France and Germany set to resume Tuesday in Brussels.
However, the member of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council stressed that no incentives would persuade Iran to abandon its plans to enrich fuel, which the United States fears would lead to the development of a nuclear bomb.
He said Iran was � percent flexible, open, ready to negotiate, to compromise on any mechanism, but not cessation“.
The three European Union country members called a crisis meeting with Iran after Tehran announced late last month it would resume uranium conversion work, a move that would violate the November accord on freezing nuclear fuel work and opening long-term talks.
Iran has agreed to hold off from resuming uranium conversion--a precursor to the ultra-sensitive enrichment process--pending the emergency talks.
Musavian accused the Europeans of stalling and called the US offer to provide Iran with spare parts for used airplanes as an incentive “just a joke“.
He said Iran has proposed reaching a complete uranium enrichment cycle in four phases over two years to allow the West to monitor the process and grow confident Iran was not trying to build a nuclear weapon.
“In terms of the different phases and the time of each phase, we have not closed the door for the Europeans,“ Mousavian told The New York Times.
Asked by the daily of a specific example of the kind of incentives his government sought, Mousavian said: “Europe can agree in principle to a contract for 10 nuclear power plants for Iran.“
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Iraq Agrees To Add Saddam Charges
War Reparations Still on Agenda
BAGHDAD, Iraq,
May 20--Iraq has acceded to Iranian calls for additional war crimes charges against Saddam Hussein and his top aides in connection with the 1980-88 war between the two countries, the foreign ministry said Friday.
The announcement followed a visit to Baghdad earlier this week by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, AFP reported.
“Both parties agreed on the need to try former Iraqi regime leaders for war crimes, crimes against humanity and military aggression against the people of Iran, Iraq and Kuwait,“ said a joint statement released on the ministry’s website.
Saddam and 11 senior aides in custody with him had previously only faced charges in connection with the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and operations inside Iraq against Kurdish and Shiite rebels.
It was the first time Iraq had accepted responsibility for the Iran-Iraq war, in which at least a million people are believed to have died.
The statement stressed the need for the two neighbors to put relations on a new footing and establish a joint high committee chaired by Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and Iranian Vice President Mohammed Reza Aref to oversee the development of ties.
Kharrazi was the most senior Iranian official to visit since the ouster of Saddam Hussein two years ago.
His visit followed the swearing-in earlier this month of a new government led by Shiites who share Iran’s official religion.
In Tehran, meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry spokesman emphasized that despite the warming of relations, the question of reparations demanded by Iran over the war between the two countries is still a live issue.
“Important matters unresolved since the war, in particular those of war reparations, are still on the agenda of the Islamic Republic’s government,“ said Hamid Reza Asefi, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.
Iran has officially put the figure it claims from Iraq at around $100 billion. Other Iranian sources have put the destruction as high as $1 trillion.
Baghdad and Tehran reestablished diplomatic ties last September, although many issues are still unresolved from the war.
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Koulaei:
Imam Khomeini’s Outlook Democratic
ABYEK, Qazvin,
May 20--A leading political activist said on Friday the late founder of the Islamic Revolution offered a democratic outlook on state affairs and the same is reflected in the country’s constitution.
Elaheh Koulaei, a former MP who also teaches at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, said Imam Khomeini established the idea that the people must determine their country’s destiny.
She noted that the Iranian nation is struggling for religious democracy since past 100 years, stressing that “outsiders should not be allowed to harm our national dignity“.
Koulaei also said the reform camp could exhibit its achievements in the June 17 presidential election.
“Reforms have always carried a positive connotation in Iran’s political literature,“ she said, adding that reforms are the manifestation of efforts to meet public demands.
She pointed out that Iran is not poor in terms of resources, but faces strong challenges as far as distribution of resources is concerned.
Koulaei said the main reason why Iran has remained a developing country for years now is that it has failed to utilize its resources in an efficient manner.
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Pakistan Keen
Faces Energy Shortage By 2010
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, May 20--Islamabad regards a $4 billion gas pipeline stretching from Iran through Pakistan to India as the easiest of several options to pipe gas to the subcontinent, Pakistan’s foreign minister said on Thursday.
“At the moment it seems as if the Iranian (plan) is the easiest to implement,“ Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri told reporters on a visit to Malaysia when asked about progress on separate proposals for gas pipelines from Turkmenistan, Iran and Qatar, Reuters reported.
Pakistan and its giant neighbor and rival, India, are hungry for energy as their economies grow at more than 6 percent a year.
Pakistan says it faces a major shortage of oil and gas by 2010. India, which imports 70 percent of its crude oil, is hunting stakes in foreign oil projects and importing liquefied natural gas.
Kasuri said Pakistan was depleting its energy reserves so rapidly that it might consider more than one pipeline.
“Previously we thought that we wouldn’t require gas for the next 20-30 years, because of our own reserves, but now it’s being depleted so fast that we need gas anyway. So I think there could be more than one at the same time.“
On a recent trip to Asia, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told India the United States had concerns over the Iranian pipeline deal. The concerns are reported to stem from US opposition to Iran’s nuclear program.
“Pakistan and India, which are looking to resolve some of their differences and improve relations, may jointly lobby Washington to ease its concerns over the project,“ Kasuri said.
Last month, Afghanistan said it would guarantee the security of the pipeline, allaying concerns that had held up the project.
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Human Rights Watch:
MKO Tortures Dissidents
NEW YORK, May 20--Human Rights Watch on Wednesday accused an exiled Iranian opposition group of torturing dissident members who criticized or sought to leave the organization.
In a 28-page report, the New York-based rights watchdog said the armed Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO) regularly subjected members to beatings, torture and prolonged solitary confinement at military camps in Iraq, AFP reported.
The report was based on direct testimony from a dozen former MKO members, including five who were turned over to Iraqi security forces and held in Abu Ghraib prison under Saddam Hussein’s government.
“Members who try to leave the MKO pay a very heavy price,“ said Joe Stork, Washington director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division.
“These testimonies paint a grim picture of what happened to members who criticized the group’s leaders.“
One former high-ranking MKO member, Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, recounted how he was held in solitary confinement for more than eight years until he was turned over to the Iraqi authorities in January 2001.
The United States classified the MKO as a “foreign terrorist organization“ in 1997, and the European Union followed suit in 2002.
Founded in 1965 as an urban guerrilla group to challenge the regime of the then Shah of Iran, the MKO went underground in 1981 after trying to incite an armed uprising against the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
After exile in France, the group’s leaders relocated to Iraq in 1986 and MKO forces regularly attacked Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq war.
The fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003 put an end to Iraqi financial and logistical support and the US military disarmed MKO forces operating in the country.
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Victory for Kuwaiti Women
By M. P. Zamani
Kuwaiti women must be wallowing in sweet victory, after years of campaigning for political rights.
They have every reason to celebrate since suffragettes in the oil-rich sheikhdom were championing their cause since the seventies--a decade after the state was born.
Political enlightenment finally dawned on the 50-member Kuwaiti assembly, seen as being staunchly conservative, when it took a decision Monday to grant women suffrage, marking an important advancement in the issue of Arab women’s rights in the Middle East.
The position of women in Kuwait was unusual because they were educated, modern, could hold high posts in the government, including serving as diplomats, CEOs, be employed in various sectors of the economy, and even drive cars.
Yet education and wealth did not bring them political gains and they were denied the right to vote or contest in the elections unlike their counterparts in other regional countries-- the exception, of course, being Saudi Arabia, where women are still denied some of their basic rights.
For decades Kuwaiti women were seeking a change to the 1962 election law that deprived them of enfranchisement. Even though the Kuwaiti Constitution grants equal rights to both men and women, conservatives in parliament twice defeated the move to grant them political rights in recent years. In 1999, the emir, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah issued a decree granting full rights to women but the legislature quashed it.
The question of women’s political rights gained momentum especially in the 1990s after Saddam Hussein’s forces were driven out of the tiny Persian Gulf state.
Kuwaiti women are known to have fought in the war alongside men to drive out the invading Baathist soldiers. They also participated in the rebuilding of the country, so the delay in granting them full political rights had no justification.
Parliament’s approval of the bill introduced by the government has opened a new chapter in Kuwaiti society. With political equality, the future should see Kuwaiti women having a greater say in the political process, particularly where gender issues are concerned.
But political equality should not remain only on paper and Kuwaiti women cannot afford to rest on their newly-achieved laurels since a lot more remains to be done to organize themselves for the challenging tasks that are ahead, particularly the parliamentary poll in 2007. How they fare in those polls will reflect the genuine desire of the Kuwaiti society to make women politically inclusive.
The US administration has welcomed Kuwait’s decision to give full political rights to Kuwaiti women. Some might see the political developments in Kuwait as part of the moves by Washington to “democratize“ and reform the Middle East. However, credit should be given to women’s groups in Kuwait and it was their patient struggle through rallies and peaceful protests that ultimately brought them political victory.
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