Jalili Meets Afghan President

From Page 1
“The Afghan government and the US are going to sign a security agreement and President Karzai is expected to travel to Washington to talk to US officials on this,” Yasin Aleimi, an Afghan political expert told Press TV.
“Given this, the visit of Saeed Jalili is very significant. His visit sends the message that Iran is committed to helping Afghans for the long haul,” he added.
Iran has been playing a helping role in Afghanistan. The Islamic Republic has so far spent over 600 million dollars to build hospitals, schools, bridges, roads and railways in the country.
The Iranian government has at various occasions expressed concerns over the US double standard policies on the so-called war on terror in Afghanistan.
Concerns have now grown amid ongoing talks between Washington and Kabul on an agreement that will allow the US to set up permanent military bases in the war-torn country.

Expansion of Bilateral Ties
Meanwhile, Jalili and Head of Afghan National Security Council Rangin Dadfar Spanta underlined the necessity for the expansion Tehran-Kabul relations.
During the meeting held in Kabul on Saturday evening, the two sides exchanged views on security, economic and border issues, and discussed long-term regional convergence, Fars News Agency reported.
The two sides called for the expansion of economic and cultural ties between their countries and also among the regional states, and directed their deputies to focus on discussions about the future of security and economic relations between Tehran and Kabul.
The Iranian official praised the improvement in Afghan stability, and said, “The stability achieved in Afghanistan is unique in the history of the country and that stability should be strengthened and Iran is ready to provide any kind of cooperation in this regards.”
Sepanta, for his part, underlined the necessity for the implementation of transit and railway projects, and stressed the importance of these projects for peace and stability in the region.

Humanitarian Aid Sent To Myanmar Muslims

Iran has sent a consignment of humanitarian aid to ethnic Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar amid deafening silence of world bodies on atrocities being perpetrated against the community in the East Asian state.
Head of the Rescue and Relief Organization of Iran’s Red Crescent Society (IRCS), Mahmoud Mozaffar, said on Saturday that the 30-ton shipment includes foodstuff, tents, blankets and other basic commodities, Press TV reported
He added that he will fly to Myanmar aboard the cargo plane bound for Naypyidaw to supervise the distribution of humanitarian aid among Rohingya Muslims and study their situation.
Mozaffar said an Iranian team will examine the need for setting up relief camps in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, and sending medical supplies to the Rohingya community.
Some 800,000 Rohingyas are deprived of citizenship rights due to the policy of discrimination that has denied them the right of citizenship and made them vulnerable to acts of violence and persecution, expulsion, and displacement.
The Myanmar government has so far refused to extricate the stateless Rohingyas in the western state of Rakhine from their citizenship limbo, despite international pressure to give them a legal status.
Rohingya Muslims have faced torture, neglect, and repression in Myanmar since it achieved independence in 1948.
Hundreds of Rohingyas are believed to have been killed and thousands displaced in recent attacks by Buddhist extremists.
Buddhist extremists frequently attack Rohingyas and have set fire to their homes in several villages in Rakhine. Myanmar Army forces allegedly provided the extremist Buddhists containers of petrol for torching the houses of Muslim villagers, who are then forced to flee.
Myanmar’s government has been accused of failing to protect the Muslim minority.
Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has also come under fire for her stance on the violence. The Nobel Peace laureate has refused to condemn the Myanmarese military for its persecution of the Rohingyas.
Rohingyas are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origin, who migrated to Myanmar as early as the 8th century.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have issued separate statements, calling on Myanmar to take action to protect the Rohingya Muslim population against extremist Buddhists.

MP: Tel Aviv Misusing Int’l Law

An Iranian lawmaker said violation of the airspace and territorial waters of the regional countries by the Zionist regime of Israel shows that international laws have turned into a tool in the hands of Tel Aviv rulers.
“Any violation of the skies, territorial waters and lands of an independent country by another is considered a prohibited act by international laws and conventions...,” Hossein Mozaffar said on Saturday.
Referring to the regular violation of the Lebanese airspace by the Israeli aircraft, the lawmaker pointed out that Tel Aviv’s moves are against UN Security Council resolutions, ICANA reported.
“By violating the [United Nations] Security Council Resolution 1701, the Zionist regime [of Israel] crosses into the Lebanese airspace on a daily basis and according to statistics, it has violated this country’s airspace more than 8,000 times since 2006...,” the lawmaker added. Israel violates Lebanon’s airspace on an almost daily basis, claiming the flights serve surveillance purposes.
Lebanon’s government, the Hezbollah resistance movement, and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have repeatedly condemned the over flights, saying they are in clear violation of UN Resolution 1701 and the country’s sovereignty.
UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which brokered a ceasefire in the war of aggression Israel launched against Lebanon in 2006, calls on Israel to respect Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Several Assassination Attempts Against Scientists Foiled

Intelligence and military forces have defused several assassination plots on the lives of the nuclear scientists, a senior nuclear official disclosed on Sunday, adding that Iran has intensified security measures to protect its scientists.
“At present the military and intelligence forces are doing their duty and they have discovered some assassination (plots),” Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Fereidoun Abbasi said in Tehran on Sunday.
He said that assassination threats against the lives of Iran’s nuclear scientists were not limited only to those five scientists who were assassinated between 2010 and 2012, alluding that more scientists have also faced such threats which were foiled by the Iranian security and intelligence forces, Fars News Agency reported.
In the fifth attack of its kind in two years, terrorists killed a 32-year-old Iranian scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, and his driver on January 11, 2012. The blast took place on the second death anniversary of university professor and nuclear scientist, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, who was also assassinated in a terrorist bomb attack in Tehran in January 2010.
The assassination method used in the bombing was similar to the 2010 terrorist bomb attacks against the then university professor, Abbasi himself and his colleague Majid Shahriari. Abbasi survived the attack, but Shariate was killed on the spot.
Another Iranian scientist, Dariush Rezaeinejad, was also assassinated through the same method on 23 July 2011.

Majlis Urges Action Over Blogger Death

The Majlis on Sunday urged “judicial action” against police officers allegedly involved in the death in detention of a blogger last year, adding he may have died of ‘shock’.
“The most likely cause of death could be shock, which, if proved, could have been caused by blows to sensitive parts of the body, or could have been due to excessive psychological pressure,” ISNA reported.
It asked the judiciary to conduct “a special investigation” into the death of Sattar Beheshti, 35, who was found dead in his Tehran prison cell following his arrest for threatening national security on the Internet.
The report’s conclusion echoed findings of a preliminary judiciary inquiry into Beheshti’s fate.
“Due to the necessity of observing human rights... it is essential that the culprits in the case are found and judicial action is taken” against them, the report said. The death also led to the dismissal last month of the head of Tehran’s “cyber police” unit, launched in January 2011 to confront anti-government conduct on the Internet.
Beheshti was found dead in his cell in a Tehran prison on November 3 after being arrested on October 30, according to chief prosecutor Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejeie.
The blogger was reportedly a factory worker and was not an activist. He was held on charges of “actions against national security on social networks”.
Judiciary officials have promised a lawful probe into the case, leading to seven arrests so far.
“The judiciary will investigate the case within the framework of law, and will confront those responsible for the incident,” Mohammad Javad Larijani, head of the judiciary’s High Council of Human Rights, said in remarks reported by media Saturday. The official, however, called the death ‘suspicious’.
On November 11, Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee formed a subcommittee to probe the case.
Mehdi Davatgari, a lawmaker overseeing a parliamentary inquiry into Beheshti’s death, had earlier called for the removal of the cyber police chief. “The Judiciary’s measure for arresting the deceased blogger was legal, but the violation by cyber police in this case is indisputable,” said Davatgari.
“Unfortunately, the officers of the cyber police kept the suspect in custody without court order for a whole night, which was completely against the law,” he was quoted as saying.
Preliminary investigations by the coroner, the prosecutor and the parliamentary committee suggest Beheshti’s death was caused by mistreatment at the hands of the cyber police.
Iran formed the police unit in early 2011 to combat cyber crimes, particularly those committed on social networking sites.

Syria Moving Toward Stability

Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir Abdollahian said the situation on the ground in Syria has been progressing from critical to stable.
Following his meeting with Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Miqdad in the Iranian capital on Saturday, Amir Abdollahian said the current situation in Syria was gaining more stability, with the Syrian army combating terrorists on one hand and the continuation of political negotiations between the government and different Syrian groups on the other, IRNA reported.
Miqdad arrived in Tehran to hold talks with Iranian officials regarding the recent developments in Syria.
Syria has been the scene of turmoil for nearly two years. Many people, including large numbers of security forces, have been killed.
The Syrian government says the chaos in the country is being orchestrated from outside. There are reports that a very large number of the armed militants are foreign nationals.
Amir Abdollahian also said that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is “paying special attention to sending humanitarian aid to the conflict areas”.
The Iranian official said different political approaches for resolving the crisis in Syria, including efforts made by the UN-Arab League Special Representative for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi and Iran’s six-point peace plan, were also discussed during the meeting with the visiting Syrian official.
On December 16, Iran unveiled the details of a six-point plan to resolve the crisis in Syria. The proposal calls for an immediate end to all violent and armed acts.
The plan also urges the dispatch of humanitarian aid to Syrians following the end of all conflicts, the lifting of all economic sanctions imposed against the country, and the facilitation of the return of displaced Syrians to their homes.
It also calls on the Syrian government and the representatives of all Syrian groups regardless of their political and social tendencies to hold talks in order to form a national reconciliation committee.

Iran Strike Not in Cards for Israel

The US has reached the conclusion that a possible attack on Iran will yield no results and the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv lacks the ability to launch a “go-it-alone” attack against Tehran, a Lebanese diplomat said.
Former Lebanese envoy to Washington, Abdallah Bouhabib, told IRNA on Sunday that Israeli pretexts have so far failed to convince American officials and the White House is not really concerned about an Iranian nuclear weapon as it knows none are being produced in the country.
He stressed that Iran has no A-bombs and does not seek to acquire them.
Bouhabib said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who tried to use this pretext to start a war, now knows he cannot make such a decision alone.
The Lebanese diplomat also said that Israel needs the green light from the US for a military attack against Iran, pointing out that even if it is given the go-ahead, Arab countries are against allowing their airspace to be used by fighter jets to attack the Islamic Republic.
Israel has threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities based on the unfounded allegation that the Iranian nuclear energy program has been diverted towards military purposes.
Iran rejects the allegations against its nuclear energy program, arguing that as a committed signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
Israel, on the other hand, has refused to join the NPT or allow inspections of its Dimona nuclear plant.

UN Hails Iran’s Anti-Narcotics Efforts

From Page 1
Ever since, the three countries have been exchanging information and intelligence, and have carried out several joint operations against drug trafficking networks operating in the region, which have resulted in the seizure of almost six metric tons of illicit drugs and the arrest of many drug traffickers.
The Triangular Initiative has been praised by the international community as a promising example of regional counter-narcotics enforcement cooperation. Member states of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs have on several occasions recognized its importance as a regional solution to curb the scourge of drug trafficking.
Most of the opium from Afghanistan is shipped through Iran and Pakistan, and the three countries have for the past five years been involved in the UN-sponsored initiative to set up joint planning cells in each country to coordinate their efforts.
They have pledged to bolster joint operations targeting smugglers and the networks they use to get the drug to the international marketplace.
Since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has spent billions of dollars in the unending fight against drug rings in the region.

Obstructing Medical Imports

Member of Majlis Health Commission Seyyed Alireza Marandi lambasted the West for banning medical and pharmaceutical exports to Iran through blocking the country’s financial transactions with foreign states.