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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Historic Islamist leader urges Algeria vote boycott

DOHA (AFP) - The former leader of Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), Abassi Madani, whose party was poised to win parliamentary elections before the army stepped in in 1992, called on Tuesday for a boycott of this year's presidential elections.

Madani, who has lived in Qatar since being freed from a 12-year jail term in 2003 and banned from political activity in his home country, said that the April 9 poll, which is also being boycotted by the two main legal opposition parties, served no useful purpose.

"The elections in Algeria are a way to consecrate a rotten reality," the FIS founder said in a statement.

"Algeria is on a path from bad to worse with no end. There is no way to end this situation but to change the regime as soon as possible.

"Boycotting the elections is the only legitimate way for the people to express their rejection of the deteriorating situation."

Incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was first elected in 1999 and is now 72, on Monday formally presented his candidacy for re-election.

Parliament voted overwhelmingly in November to eliminate a previous two-term limit for president. Algeria's main opposition leaders have said the election is a "done deal" set up in Bouteflika's favor.

Ten other people also submitted their candidacies ahead of a midnight Monday deadline. Algeria's constitutional council is due to announce the official list of candidates within the next 10 days.

Madani, who is now in his 80s and in declining health, was convicted by an Algerian military court of undermining state security. His number two Ali Belhadj was also jailed and their party outlawed, a move that sparked a prolonged insurgency that has killed at least 150,000 people.

Bouteflika has vowed to "press on with a policy of national reconciliation" that he launched in 2000 and which has enabled the release from jail or the surrender of thousands of Islamist fighters who have laid down their weapons.

But militants loyal to the North African arm of Al-Qaeda remain active in the country and on Sunday nine members of a private security firm were killed when militants attacked their base in the mountains east of the capital Algiers.

Iran tests its first nuclear power plant

By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer

BUSHEHR, Iran – Iranian and Russian technicians are conducting a test run of Iran's first nuclear power plant, officials said Wednesday, a major step toward launching full operations at the facility, which has long raised worried the U.S. and its allies.

At the same time, Iran claimed another advance in its controversial nuclear program: The number of centrifuges operating at its uranium enrichment plant has increased to 6,000, the country's nuclear chief said — up from 5,000 in November.

His announcement was the latest defiance of United Nations' demands that Tehran suspend its enrichment program because of fears it could be used to produce material for a warhead. Iran denies it seeks to build a nuclear bomb, saying its program aims only to generate electricity.

The United States has been worried over the nuclear plant at the southern port city of Bushehr because it fears Iran will reprocess the spent reactor fuel into plutonium, a potential material for a nuclear bomb. Russia has helped build the facility and is providing it enriched uranium fuel, and for a time Washington pressured Moscow to stop its assistance.

But U.S. concerns softened after Iran agreed to return spent fuel to Russia so it cannot be turned into plutonium. Washington largely dropped its opposition to the project and argued instead that the Russia fuel deal shows that Iran does not need its own domestic uranium enrichment program.

The Bushehr plant is meant to be the first in a number of reactors for Iran's energy program. But the opening of the 1,000-megawatt light-water reactor has long been delayed by construction and supply glitches.

Iran has said it aims to operate the reactor by the end of the year.

The tests, which began 10 days ago, "could take between four and seven months," the nuclear chief, Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, told reporters at Bushehr. It was not known how long after the tests the reactor could start up.

Scientists at the plant are carrying out a computer run of the equipment to ensure there are no malfunctions in the future when enriched uranium fuel is introduced into the reactor. No electricity is produced during the testing.

In the first stage of the test, technicians for the past 10 days have been loading a "virtual fuel" into the reactor. The virtual fuel consists of lead, which imitates the density of enriched uranium.

Once the fuel is fully loaded, "we will check to see how the reactor will operate," said Russian nuclear agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko, who was inspecting the process.

Bushehr has witnessed "remarkable progress in recent months," Kiriyenko said, adding that the Russian-Iranian team is "approaching the final stage" before the plant becomes operational.

Aghazadeh, who was accompanying Kiriyenko, said the test was going well so far and engineers told him they expected no problems.

"Today was one of the most important days for the Iranian nation," Aghazadeh said. "We are approaching full exploitation of this plant."

In Israel, which has been one of the most vocal nations accusing Iran of seeking a bomb, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the tests at Bushehr "should be understood as very bad news for the whole of the international community."

"The real issue here is the general Iranian program designed to obtain nuclear weapons, the Bushehr reactor is just one component of that program," he said. He called for "immediate and very determined steps in order to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power."

While Bushehr has been a concern, the main focus of international efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear program has been on getting it to suspend uranium enrichment. That is because the same process that enriches uranium to low levels for reactor fuel can also enrich it to higher levels to produce the material for a warhead.

In the enrichment process, uranium gas is pumped through a series of centrifuges and spun at supersonic speeds to remove impurities.

Aghazadeh announced that 6,000 centrifuges were now "operating" at Iran's enrichment facility in the town of Natanz. He said Iran hopes to install over 50,000 centrifuges there over the next five years.

"We are doing what we need to do in Natanz on the basis of a specific time schedule," he told a press conference.

Iran says it intends to use the enriched uranium fuel in its first domestically made nuclear power plant, in the town of Darkhovin, which it wants to start operating in 2016. Aghazadeh said any delay in enrichment will mean a delay in opening Darkhovin.

Iran has rejected proposals it import all its reactor fuel from abroad, saying that would leave it vulnerable to cutoffs of the material.

It was not clear if Aghazadeh meant all 6,000 centrifuges were actually enriching uranium. In a report last week, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran had about 4,000 centrifuges enriching and 1,600 more "under vacuum," which means they are operating but not yet being fed uranium gas to spin.

An IAEA official said the Iranian numbers appeared to roughly tally with the agency's count, including machines under vacuum. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in exchange for commenting on a statement from an IAEA member nation. The official refused to comment on the Bushehr testing.

The Bushehr reactor was meant to start up in 2008. The project dates backs to 1974, when Iran's U.S.-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi signed an agreement to build the reactor with the German company Siemens. The company withdrew from the project after the 1979 Islamic revolution toppled the shah.

In 1992, Iran signed an agreement with Russia to complete the project and work began on it in 1995.

Russia says there is no evidence that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and has joined China in weakening Western-backed sanctions in the U.N. Security Council, arguing that punishing Tehran too harshly for its nuclear activities would be counterproductive.

The U.N. Security Council has passed three sets of sanctions against Iran over uranium enrichment and is considering further measures.

Troops to leave Iraq in 18 months, officials say

By ANNE GEARAN and PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is expected to order all U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq by August of next year, administration officials said, closing the door on a war that has led to the deaths of at least 4,250 members of the U.S. military.

The pullout recommended by Obama's security advisers would free up troops and resources for the war in Afghanistan, where Obama has said the threat to national security is acute. The Iraq withdrawal would be completed 18 months from now.

"We are now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war," Obama said in his address to Congress on Tuesday.

An announcement could come as early as this week, a senior White House official said Tuesday, adding that Obama has not yet approved the final details. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because an announcement was not yet planned, said Obama could discuss Iraq during a trip to North Carolina on Friday.

Obama built enormous grass-roots support for his White House bid by promising a quick end to the unpopular Iraq war. His 16-month withdrawal plan, based on removing roughly one brigade a month, had been predicated on commanders determining that it would not endanger U.S. troops left behind or Iraq's fragile security.

Officials said that upon entering the White House, Obama requested a range of options from his top military advisers, asking for plans ranging between 16 to 23 months.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had recently forwarded three withdrawal alternatives for Obama's consideration — 16, 19 and 23 months, the longest an alternative preferred by Iraqi officials and some of Obama's Iraq-based generals. The 19-month plan, which was selected, was pegged to his January inauguration.

Other senior military officials were more sanguine about a quicker pullout. Marine Maj. Gen. John Kelly, who just left his job overseeing U.S. operations in Anbar Province, said Tuesday that violence there has dropped to an almost "meaningless" level over the past year. Kelly told reporters Tuesday most U.S. forces in Anbar could have pulled out months ago.

The emerging plan now leaves Obama two months off his campaign pledge, and with between 30,000 and 50,000 troops still in Iraq to advise and train Iraqi security forces and to protect U.S. interests.

The residual force would include intelligence and surveillance specialists and their equipment, including unmanned aircraft, according to two administration officials and a Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been made public.

The complete withdrawal of American forces will take place by December 2011, the period by which the U.S. agreed with Iraq to remove all troops.

About 142,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq, roughly 14 brigades, about 11,000 more than the total in Iraq when President George W. Bush announced in January 2007 that he would "surge" the force to put down the insurgency. He sent an additional 21,000 combat troops to Baghdad and Anbar province.

Although the number of combat brigades has dropped from 20 to 14, the U.S. has increased the number of logistical and other support troops. A brigade is usually about 3,000 to 5,000 troops.

Congress has approved more than $657 billion so far for the Iraq war, according to a report last year from the Congressional Research Service.

As the Obama White House prepared to address the Iraq pullout, the man Obama defeated for the White House challenged suggestions by administration officials that the United States should lower its expectations in Afghanistan.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., insisted in remarks prepared for a speech Wednesday that Afghanistan could be turned around with sufficient resources.

In a speech planned at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, McCain said the United States should brace itself for violence in Afghanistan that worsens before it gets better.

McCain said that while "some suggest it is time to scale back our ambitions in Afghanistan," the U.S. should start spending more on development to keep Afghans from being seduced by the Taliban.

But McCain also echoed recent cautions from Obama, Gates and Mullen that the Afghan conflict would be hard going in the coming months.

"The scale of resources required to prevail will be enormous, and the timetable will be measured in years, not months," said McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

A recent classified Pentagon report urged Obama to shift the military strategy in Afghanistan to de-emphasize democracy-building and concentrate more on targeting Taliban and al-Qaida sanctuaries inside Pakistan with the aid of Pakistani military forces.

Bus crash kills 39 in Indian Kashmir

JAMMU, India (Reuters) - A bus carrying dozens of passengers in Indian Kashmir skidded off a road and plunged into a river Wednesday, killing at least 39 people, police said.

Another 14 people were seriously injured when the overcrowded bus en route to Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, plunged 250 metres (800 feet) into a river near a remote village, police said.

"The bus driver was negotiating a sharp bend when he lost control and it rolled down into the Chenab river," A.R. Baig, a police spokesman said.

Rescuers, mostly villagers, helped pull bodies from the river and took survivors to a hospital.

Gathafi blames Israel for Darfur unrest

Libyan leader charges key Darfur rebel leaders have opened offices in Tel Aviv, meet frequently with Israeli army.

TRIPOLI - Libyan leader Moamer Gathafi demanded Tuesday that any international legal proceedings against Omar al-Beshir be halted immediately, charging that it was Israel and not the Sudanese president who was to blame for the Darfur conflict.

"It'll be no surprise to anyone when we say that we have found inequivocable proof that the Darfur problem was fomented by foreign forces," Gathafi said in a speech carried by the independent Al-Libya television channel.

"Key rebel leaders have opened offices in Tel Aviv and meet frequently with the (Israeli) army," he charged.

"If Tel Aviv among others is behind the events in Darfur, why then call Beshir or the Sudanese government to account," said Gathafi, who was speaking at an African conference organized by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The International Criminal Court said on Monday that it will rule next week on whether to issue a warrant for the arrest of Beshir on charges of war crimes, including genocide, in Darfur.

The court's chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requested the warrant last July.

"The ICC, the United Nations and the international community must turn their attentions towards the guilty party in this dramatic conflict... the party which turned this banal dispute between tribes over camels into an international crisis," Gathafi said.

Some 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million fled their homes since ethnic minority rebels in Darfur rose up against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government in February 2003. Sudan puts the death toll at 10,000.

In the past, Libya has played a major role in efforts to broker a peace deal between the Khartoum government and the rebels. It hosted the last major UN-mediated peace talks in summer 2007.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=30622.