NAM Summit Will Discuss Comprehensive Syria Peace Plan

By Farzaneh Shokri

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Iran will present a comprehensive peace plan for Syria at the upcoming NAM Summit in Tehran.
Speaking in a press conference on Saturday he added that consultations will be held with countries which are in consensus with Iran on the issue.
He further said the participants at the 16th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran will visit Iran’s nuclear sites on the sidelines of the meeting, noting that the Natanz nuclear facility will be one of the sites scheduled for the visits.
Mehmanparast said 120 NAM member states will attend the Tehran Summit at various levels. “50 countries will participate in the highest level including 27 presidents, 2 kings, 7 prime ministers, 9 vice presidents, 2 parliament speakers and 5 presidential special envoys.”
He noted that the summit will kick off in Tehran on Sunday, August 26 and will run until August 31.
The spokesman stated that Syria will be represented at the meeting by the foreign minister and another official of higher ranks. “A representative from Russia’s foreign ministry will also take part in the summit.”

New Long-Range System for Air Defense Soon

Defense Ministry is due to equip the country’s Armed Forces with a new long-range air-defense system by the next Iranian year (starting on March 21, 2013),
a senior Iranian military official said on Saturday.
Speaking to Fars News Agency, Deputy Defense Minister for Industrial and Research Mohammad Eslami said the new long-range air-defense system can cover a major part of the S-300 mission.
Eslami said the new long-range air-defense system will provide a full air-defense cover for Iran by the time the Iranian version of S-300 becomes operational.
He stated that development of the Iranian version of the sophisticated S-300 air defense missile system is underway in Iran and has undergone ‘remarkable progress’, adding that the system is expected to be complete soon.
In November 2011, Commander of Khatam ul-Anbia Air Defense Base Brigadier General Farzad Esmaeili told reporters that the designing phase of the Iranian version of S-300 system has ended and the system will soon be delivered to the country’s integrated air defense network.
He further stated that the missile system, dubbed as Bavar (Belief) 373, is even more powerful and more advanced than the Russian S-300.
“With this powerful system in our hand, we would not think of S-300 anymore,” Esmaeili stated.
“Bavar 373 system is an important and completely indigenous achievement that can be a powerful rival for S-300,” the commander reiterated.
Under a contract signed in 2007, Russia is required to provide Iran with at least five S-300 air defense systems.

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Immigrants In Athens Against Racist Attacks

Thousands of immigrants marched in Athens on Friday to protest police sweeps and a rash of racist attacks in Greece as the country struggles to pull itself out of a huge debt crisis.
Greece is a major gateway for mostly Asian and African migrants trying to enter the European Union. They face increased hostility as the country struggles through its deepest post- World War Two recession and record unemployment, propelling the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party to parliament for the first time since the fall of a military junta in 1974, Reuters reported.
About 5,000 protesters marched to parliament holding banners reading “No Islamophobia” and “Neo Nazis out!” in one of the biggest anti-racism marches in Athens in recent years.
Tensions between immigrants and Greeks have risen sharply in recent months and the demonstration was held a day after police detained hundreds of undocumented immigrants in the western city of Corinth as part of a nationwide sweep and held them in a former army camp.
The move enraged local authorities and residents who rallied outside the army camp to protest against its conversion into an immigrant detention center.
“We will do everything possible to prevent such a disaster,” Corinth’s mayor Alexandros Pnevmatikos told Skai TV.
“We don’t want the camp, which is in the center of the city, close to densely populated neighborhoods, to become a holding center”.
Far-right protesters and supporters of Golden Dawn clashed with police at the entrance of the camp on Thursday and hundreds of protesters, including small groups of ultra-nationalists, returned to protest on Friday.
Some hurled bottles of water at a conservative deputy visiting the camp.
Police this month launched a sweep operation called “Xenios Zeus” after the ancient Greek god of guests and travelers.
They have so far arrested hundreds of illegal immigrants.
Racist attacks against immigrants have increased in Greece since the economic crisis flared in 2009, according to pro-immigrant groups which accuse the police of turning a blind eye.
Human Rights Watch said in a report last month that it had interviewed 59 people who suffered or escaped a racist incident between August 2009 and May this year.
But the advocacy group added that the true extent of xenophobic violence in Greece was not clear given many victims do not report the crimes.

Carpet Sets Guinness Record

Guinness World Records recognized an Iranian carpet as the largest hand-woven carpet in the world, announced Managing Director of Iran Carpet Company Mohammad Reza Abed.
The carpet, which is 133 meters long and almost 48 meters wide, is laid in Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the UAE, Abed noted.
Designed by Iranian artist Ali Khaliqi, the hand-woven carpet was woven by 1,200 Iranian artists in the city of Neyshaboor in the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi, Press TV reported on Saturday.
The giant carpet, which has been decorated with traditional Persian designs and natural colors with more than 2.1 billion knots, receives about 1,500 to 2,000 visitors every day.
Produced by Iran Carpet Company (ICC), the carpet has a unique design, featuring five big medallions depicting various traditional flower motifs.
The hand-made masterpiece is also made of 72 percent of wool and the rest of cotton, Abed explained.
Weaving of the 5,634-square meter carpet with 48 tons weight took 18 months of working two shifts a day.
Carpet-weaving is one of the most distinguished manifestations of Persian culture and arts, and dates back to ancient Persia.
Iran is the world’s largest producer and exporter of handmade carpets, producing three quarters of the world’s total output.

Emerging Markets Go for Gold

Int’l Economy Desk

Gold will extend a bull run as emerging-market central banks and investors accumulate the metal to protect against weakening currencies, according to Coutts & Co., the private-banking division of Royal Bank of Scotland Plc.
“The reason we’re positive on gold is that major currencies around the world lack credibility,” Gary Dugan, chief investment officer for Asia and the Middle East, said in an interview in Singapore, without giving a price forecast, Albawaba.com wrote.
Investment holdings expanded to an all-time high this week amid concern that fresh stimulus from central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, will weaken currencies and may reignite inflation.
Billionaire investors George Soros and John Paulson increased their stakes in the SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest gold-backed exchange-traded product, in the second quarter.
“The natural buyers of today are emerging-market central banks, and over and above that, it’s going to be further investment demand,” said Dugan. “People continue to naturally gravitate to gold.”
Gold for immediate delivery, which traded at $1,644.65 an ounce at 4:48 p.m. in Singapore, has rallied for 11 years and reached a record $1,921.15 on September 6.

Enemies Fail to Dissuade Leaders From Tehran Meeting

Extensive participation of world leaders in the upcoming Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran is seen as yet another failure for Iran’s enemies who had made futile attempts to dissuade heads of states from attending the summit, Police Chief Esmaeil Ahmadi Moqaddam said.
Ahmadi Moqaddam made the remarks at the start of police security drills in Tehran on Saturday.
The police chief said enemies of Iran have used threat and intimidation to discourage the heads of the participating states from coming to Iran, Fars News Agency reported.
“Fortunately, preliminary steps of the summit have displayed that enemies have experienced another heavy defeat,” he stated.
“The arrogant powers are trying to portray Iran as a sanction-stricken country experiencing emergency conditions, but we have had the highest level of security during the first five months of the current (Iranian) year (March 20-August 21, 2012) compared with the last 34 years (after the Islamic Revolution),” the police chief said. The 16th summit of the NAM member states will be held in Tehran on August 26-31.
Some 51 countries have so far announced their participation in Tehran summit meeting at the highest level and the number is growing, Vice President Ali Saeedlou said earlier this week.

Economic Role on NAM Agenda

Secretary general of the upcoming Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran said the bloc is set to transcend its traditional political role by putting a comprehensive economic deed on its agenda.
In a Friday television interview in the capital Tehran, Mohammad-Mehdi Akhondzadeh alluded to NAM’s mere political role in the past and pointed out, “The economic deed of the 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran has been drawn up in more than 300 pages.”
He made reference to Iran’s remarkable achievements in the face of the West’s embargoes and noted, “Because of the outstanding position of the Islamic Republic of Iran in different spheres, key players in global economy including, China and Russia, will participate in the NAM meeting in Tehran.”
The 16th summit of the NAM member states will be held on August 26-31.
The summit, during which the Islamic Republic will assume the rotating presidency of the movement for three years, will be also attended by representatives of almost 120 countries, with 50 states taking part at a high level.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei will address the Tehran NAM summit, which will be also attended by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The document of the 16th NAM summit will also incorporate Iran’s proposals to counter the unilateral embargoes and illegal measures by certain countries and Tehran’s insistence on the need for endorsing a convention on nuclear disarmament, Akhondzadeh pointed out.
The secretary general of the conference further stated that the NAM document also condemns the US unilateral measures in Syria and any foreign interference in the other countries’ internal affairs.

Expert Missions in Tehran
Delegations of senior experts from the member states of the NAM) arrived in Tehran, on Saturday to attend the 16th summit of the bloc, the spokesman for the event’s organizing committee said.
In a Saturday interview, Mohammad Reza Forqani also pointed to the coordinated efforts among the Iranian executive bodies to hold the conference in the most favorable manner.
The NAM foreign ministers will arrive in Tehran on Monday and as of Wednesday the Movement’s heads of state will travel to the Iranian capital, he added.
Forqani noted that the presidents of Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Ghana as well as the Indian prime minister and the head of state of North Korea (who presides over the North Korean parliament) are among the top-ranking officials to attend the conference.
NAM, an international organization with 120 member states and 21 observer countries, is considered as not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. It is the largest grouping of countries outside of the United Nations.

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