Election Was Turning Point in Iranian History

Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Saeed Jalili described the mid-June presidential election which was followed by unrests and bitter political differences, as a turning point in the history of the Islamic Republic.
Addressing public and revolutionary prosecutors in Tehran on Wednesday, he referred to large voter turnout in the election and said “Enemies cannot deny the massive turnout and the tight internal political competition leading to the elections. Indeed the election was a turning point in the Islamic Republic’s history and underpinned our political credibility in the world,” IRIB reported.
He noted that “Regrettably some quarters are trying to change this turning point into an opportunity for themselves. This is a major act of injustice towards the Islamic Republic.”
The top nuclear negotiator added “The ideals that were nurtured during the revolution more than 30 years ago have been revived. These include fighting global arrogance that has increased in recent years. This is why the world’s bullying powers lined-up against the ideals and questioned our nuclear achievements so that they could pursue their own agendas.”
On the US-led military invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the failed Israeli military campaigns against Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas, he said “Foreign enemies attacked our friends in the region to bring down the Islamic Republic, but they failed.”
The SNSC chief noted “The recent remarks of hostile powers indicate that they can no longer undermine the Islamic Republic as they have during the past 30 years and admit that Iran is a regional power.”
He described security as a necessary element only attainable through the implementation of justice. “Dispensing justice will lead to the peoples’ satisfaction, clam and confidence towards the governing system. This view is different from the one that seeks to implement security (only) through law-enforcement and the security apparatus.”

Opposition Warned
Speaking at the same conference judiciary chief Sadeq Larijani warned the opposition groups of possible legal action for slander against the state, ILNA reported.
He said sufficient evidence exists to prosecute leading opposition figures for undermining national security.
“We cannot remain impartial towards those who endanger our country’s security. We must take action against such acts,” he said.
Larijani dismissed charges of torture in the prisons as “propaganda against the Islamic state”.
The pro-reform opposition is led by former premier Mir-Hossein Moussavi, former Parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi and former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. The opposition and their supporters say the June election was rigged and have refused to acknowledge the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Tehran accuses the West of instigating and supporting the post-election violence and meddling in Iran’s internal affairs.

Call for Improving Productivity

By Sadeq Dehqan

The Minister of Cooperatives Mohammad Abbasi told an international meeting on improving quality in Tehran on Wednesday that in Iran is low and should improve at a faster peace.
He referred to the ongoing controversy to check and streamline subsidies and said the plan had been prepared by the ninth government (first term of President Mahmoud Ahmdadinejad) in light of the country’s economic weaknesses and to help boost development and growth.
The minister termed management as a “qualitative decision-making process” and noted that “Economic development is not possible without comprehensive measures to improve quality.”
Effective measures have been taken to boost quality management in the cooperatives sector, he said.
During the conference, Fazael Ardeshir Larijani, chairman of the meeting said “Iran has been officially appointed as a quality standardization hub in the Middle East and 10 companies were awarded for their quality goods.”
Gholamreza Kord-Zangeneh, head of Iran’s privatization organization told the conferees that new economic management methods are being introduced across the world. “In the past experts and economists thought increase in a country’s assets would help reduce the gap between rich and poor. But now they say that would be achieved only by increasing productivity amid lack of resources.”
Ineffective use of management, relying on old and obsolete machinery, inefficiency in the use of human resources and managerial errors are among the main reasons why government bodies are weak and ineffective,” Kord-Zangeneh said.
He added that over the past four years 275 government-owned companies worth $63 billion were ceded to Iran’s private sector.
Experts and analysts from 35 countries are attending he meeting.

Sejjil-2 Test Successful

From Page 1
Brown Annoyed
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is attending the climate conference in Copenhagen, reacted to Iran’s missile test, claiming “This is a matter of serious concern to the international community and it does make the case for us moving further on sanctions.”
Brown, who was referring to new western-backed sanctions against Iran to push the country to halt its nuclear program, said he had spoken to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about the missile test. “We will treat this with the seriousness it deserves,” he stated. The German government, meanwhile, said Iran’s missile test was “alarming” and did little to rebuild the trust of the international community.

Bad Signal?
France said the test sends a “very bad signal” to the international community and heightens concerns about the country’s nuclear program. Iran has denied western and Israeli claims that it was working on a secret military nuclear program, saying its atomic activities are peaceful and in line with its rights under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations.

Science Should Serve Humanity

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday enemies are trying hard to curb the progress of the Iranian people but had so far failed.
Addressing the 9th festival honoring prominent researchers, scientists and scholars in Tehran, he said scientific and technological prowess has become a tool in the hands of big powers who tend to dominate other countries with their advancement, IRNA reported.
“Science should be used largely to serve humanity and its overall interests.”
Pointing to the schemes of bullying powers against the free and independent peoples, the president said “Enemies are trying to create obstacles in the path of (Iranian) development…They are making trying to undermine the Islamic Republic in a variety of ways.”
Referring to Western pressures on Tehran to force the country to reverse its nuclear program, Ahmadinejad said “They want to deprive the Iranian nation from their inalienable right to nuclear energy.”
He referred to the allocation of $400 million by the US to pressure the Islamic Republic and said “Even if they (US) mobilize all their allies they won’t dare to even think about military action against Iran.”
Ahmadinejad urged the nation to remain vigilant and steadfast toward enemy conspiracies.
He welcomed the valuable achievements of Iranian scientists in the industrial, medical, aerospace, nanotechnology, biotechnology and nuclear fields and expressed the hope that more successes would be made by intellectuals and scientists in the future.
“A nation which has offered leading scholars and scientists to the world and conquered the peaks of scientific success under tough political and economic conditions must do more in research and science.”
The president said this year his government has allocated more than $3 billion for research. “We are trying to the funding to $9 billion…The $3 billion is also a considerable amount compared to our annual budget.”

Intelligence Bodies Active

A senior military official said Iran is abreast of almost all the intelligence information it needs about its enemies.
“Commanders of our armed forces have political insight into the key local issues and full understanding of the enemy from the intelligence perspective,” Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, senior military advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said Tuesday.
He noted that internal issues should not prevent the armed forces from closely monitoring enemies like the Zionists (Israel) and the United States, Fars News Agency reported.
“The commanders of the Islamic Revolution’s Guards Corps (IRGC) and the military have devised plans to deal with all the eventualities,” the former IRGC chief stated.
Iran, which has been surrounded by the US military forces around its borders, has made known that it is regularly monitoring the moves and schemes of the staunchly pr-Israeli western powers that make little secret of their enmity toward the Islamic Republic. Tehran has warned that any aggression against its interests will invite a rapid and merciless retaliation.
Israel has repeatedly threatened Iran with military action to reverse its nuclear program.

New Setbacks...

From Page 1
China said the process chosen by the Danish hosts “lacked transparency”. Others complained that rewritten texts were being pushed through without proper consultation.

Danes Accused
The summit has been plagued by claims from poorer countries that the Danes have tailored the shape of negotiations to suit the EU’s desired outcomes.
Delegates still have a huge number of fundamental issues to address before the summit ends at the end of the week.
These include the size of emissions cuts by developed nations, how finance should be raised and disbursed, and most fundamentally, whether a deal here should aim to keep the global temperature rise to 2C or 1.5C.
Draft text released to delegates and obtained by the BBC makes clear that the most important parts of any eventual deal have still to be decided.
Temperature targets are still in the text as alternatives. Proposed figures for emission cuts by developed nations - apart from the US - range from 15 percent by the period 2013-2017 to 49 percent by 2013-2020.
The section on finance consists entirely of paragraphs in square brackets, meaning that none of it has been agreed.

Financial Issues
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has suggested that poor countries may have to give up their hope of getting immediate long-term financial commitments from richer countries.
The amount of aid rich nations will pay poorer ones to combat global warming has been one of the main stumbling blocks at the summit.
In an interview with the UK’s Financial Times, Ban said he did not think the exact amount was vital to the current deal.
“If they are not able to agree this time at Copenhagen, then there needs to be some initial arrangement. This is a time when common sense, compromise and partnership should prevail,” he said.

Obama and AfPak

From Page 1
In official statements Berlin and Paris said at least for now they are unable and unwilling to send more soldiers to Afghanistan. Although, the two governments have not rejected Obama’s controversial troop surge, they have shied away from providing a proper and direct response to his appeal two weeks to “come together to end this war successfully”.
Calling for much-needed help from the tried and skeptical allies, Obama recalled that “Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside in Afghanistan”.
In getting the tough message across to the Europeans that more of their sons, fathers, spouses and dear ones will die in the senseless Afghan conflict, Obama said “what is at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility -- what is at stake is the security of our allies and the common security of the world”.
After months of pushing and pulling US defense chief Robert Gates was able to convince the NATO allies to provide only 7,000 extra troops. The serious concern and possibly fear in Brussels is understandable.
The number of NATO casualties has been rising steadily over the past few months and the bankruptcy of the war is obviously not lost on the power brokers and deal makers in Europe.
Apparently there is deep pessimism about the possibility of victory in the US-led war among the Europeans as is also the case with US public opinion tired and tormented by the bloody fighting in that faraway lands in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Washington is visibly disturbed about the rebuff from France and Germany whose governments usually say one thing in public and something very different in private about the ‘cost and benefit’ of the Afghan crises.
This, among other things, is clearly an indication that the mood for continuing the war is wholly discouraging as there are increasing calls in and outside Europe to “get the boys back” from a country where the former Red Army started and lost a full-fledged war.
With hopelessness the only game in town, the Democrats in Washington have to deal also with another player which has a much more determining role than NATO in the war. After eight years of bloody fighting in impoverished Afghanistan, Pakistan has emerged as the main battleground in America’s ostensible war against terror.
Almost a year after taking office, Obama and his crew have been trying hard to win the much-needed support of Pakistani generals and put an end to their ‘second thoughts’ about continuing the dangerous war.
Although Islamabad has given a positive response to the Pentagon’s call to support the surge strategy, public opinion and influential political parties are openly critical of their government’s controversial decision.
A day after Obama announced the surge the vibrant Pakistani media hit back with a thud and warned the Zardari administration of serious consequences it might face by playing to the dangerous tunes coming out of an equally dangerous US AfPak policy that for all practical purposes has made Pakistan one of the most unsafe countries in the world.
Their argument is simple and understandable. The surge by US Marines and NATO will open the floodgates to more Taliban fighter into nuclear-powered Pakistan, sparking a much bigger crisis than the one already visiting the government and powerful generals in Islamabad.

Nuclear Statement

The second Arabs-Turkey cooperation gathering in Damascus in a
statement underlined necessity of reaching a diplomatic solution to
Iran-West dispute on Tehran’s nuclear program.