Iran condemns EU for taking group off terror list

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran is condemning a decision by the European Union to remove an Iranian opposition group from its terror list and lift restrictions on its funds. The country says the EU decision encourages terrorism.

Iran's Foreign Ministry says the hands of the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran "are stained with the blood of thousands of Iranian and non-Iranian people." It also says the group has never renounced violence and has resorted to terrorism. The ministry statement was read on state television Monday night.

Monday's decision by the 27 foreign ministers of the EU means that as of Tuesday the assets of the group will be unfrozen. It is the first time an organization has been "de-listed" by the EU.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — The European Union decided Monday to remove an Iranian opposition group from the EU's terror list and lift the restrictions on its funds, a move likely to further damage relations strained over Tehran's nuclear program.

The decision by the 27-nation bloc's foreign ministers means that as of Tuesday, the assets of the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, or PMOI, will be unfrozen. It is the first time an organization has been "de-listed" by the EU.

Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman for the group said $9 million (euro7 million) had been frozen in France alone, with "tens of millions of dollars" worth of assets also locked away in other EU countries.

The group had been blacklisted as a terror organization by the EU since 2002, but waged a long legal battle in the EU's court of justice to reverse that decision. Several EU court decisions went in the group's favor, concluding the EU had failed to properly explain why it froze the assets of the Paris-based group.

The group however, remains on the United States terror list. It was blacklisted by Washington in 1997.

"What we are doing today is abiding by the decision of the court, there is nothing we can do about the decision," said Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief.

Czech European Affairs Minister Alexandr Vondra said that if new evidence comes to light linking the group to terror activities, the EU "could decide to re-include the group" on a list that includes 60 groups and individuals, such as Osama bin Laden, Hamas and al-Qaida.

The People's Mujahedeen, also known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, is the military wing of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which is based in Paris. The council said it is dedicated to a democratic, secular government in Iran.

However, it maintains a camp of disarmed fighters in Iraq, north of Baghdad. Iraqi officials on Saturday called for the group to shut down the camp and move to another country.

Iraq's Shiite-led government has long sought to get rid of the People's Mujahedeen, which fought alongside Saddam Hussein's forces during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. At the same time, many Iraqi Shiites fled to Shiite-dominated Iran and fought against Iraq.

The PMOI was founded in Iran in the 1960s and helped followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrow U.S.-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979.

But the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq fell out with Khomeini, and thousands of its followers were killed, imprisoned or forced into exile. It launched a campaign of assassinations and bombings against Iran's government as a result.

The PMOI has long tried to shed its terrorist tag, despite a series of bloody anti-Western attacks in the 1970s — and nearly 30 years of violent struggle against Iran's Islamic establishment.

The group said however, it has renounced violence in 2001 and hasn't kept any arms since 2003.

Maryam Rajavi, who heads the Paris-based National Council of Resistance, the political wing of the PMOI, said Monday's decision was "a crushing defeat to Europe's policy of appeasement" with Iran.

"The blacklisting of the Iranian Resistance contributed to the prolongation of the rule of religious fascism in Iran," she said in a statement. "The Iranian regime did not refrain from using all political and diplomatic pressures to maintain the PMOI on the list."

Rajavi said her group would now focus its attention on getting the United States to drop the PMOI from its terror list.

Mohammad Safaei, a spokesman at the Iranian Embassy in Brussels, said he could not comment on the decision because it had not yet been officially relayed to Tehran.

The court-mandated move is likely to complicate difficult ties with Tehran just as the EU is trying to negotiate over Iran's nuclear program. The EU and the United States fear Iran is building atomic weapons.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband appealed to Iran to return to talks with European nations and the United States over its nuclear program.

"During 2009 there will and should be significant focus on this issue," Miliband said.

The group had established a camp for about 3,500 members in Iraq, which its forces used to launch cross-border attacks into Iran. After U.S.-led forces overthrew Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, American troops removed the Iranian group's weapons and confined its fighters to the camp.

Details released on Israel, Elbit UAV deal

HAIFA, Israel, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- Elbit Systems (NASDAQ:ESLT) has released final details on a recent contract to supply the Israeli Ministry of Defense with its mini-unmanned aerial vehicle technology.

Israel announced in December it had awarded a contract to Elbit Systems for its Skylark I LE mini-UAVs as part of an initiative to equip Israeli ground battalions with the portable surveillance and reconnaissance technology.

At the time of the initial award, specific details were not available. Israel-based Elbit Systems has announced new details, including the final order for its Skylark mini-UAVs valued at approximately $40 million.

Additionally, officials say deliveries on the order will take place over several years and be "subject to the Israel Defense Forces' requirements and procurement process," the release said.

Denmark will aid South Africa on wind

PRETORIA, South Africa, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- South Africa and Denmark signed an agreement to work together on wind power.

South African Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica and Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller signed a declaration of intent to get South Africa using wind energy as a renewable energy source in the country.

"Wind is the fastest-growing energy source, with an average annual growth of 29 percent over the last 10 years. The wind industry provides more jobs per capita than conventional power generation," Sonjica said. "Over 70 countries now have wind power, and many developing countries have joined the trend recently."

Sonjica estimates the country's wind power potential to be about 64,000 gigawatt hours, Africa's BuaNews reports.

Moller said Denmark will give South Africa technical expertise.

Thailand asked to join IREA

BANGKOK, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- Thailand's renewable goals earned the country an invitation to join the International Renewable Energy Agency.

Thailand's Energy Minister Wannarat Channukul said the country is committed to supporting renewable energy.

Work is being done on a feasibility study for nuclear power, a 15-year renewable energy development plan, price incentives and a plan to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the Bangkok Post reports.

Because of its exemplary work, Thailand was asked to join IRENA, said Hanns Schumacher, German ambassador to Thailand.

More than 60 countries are working together toward the organization's founding.

"We hope that Thailand will sign the statute. It has been an active member in the preparation of IRENA," said Schumacher.

EU removes PMOI from terrorist list

BRUSSELS, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- European foreign ministers in Brussels Monday agreed on a terrorism list that does not include the People's Mujahedin of Iran based in Iraq's Diyala province.

Milena Vicenova, the Czech envoy to the European Union, said Friday the latest version of the list of terrorist organizations recognized by the European Union was forwarded to ministers without the name of the PMOI. European ministers approved the list Monday.

Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Paris-based political wing of the PMOI, said the decision was a victory for her resistance movement, adding the delisting paved the way for democratic opposition to the clerical regime in Iran.

The Monday decision opens the door for the PMOI to lobby for funds and removes the terrorist label from the 3,500 members of the group living under U.S. military protection at its Iraqi enclave, Camp Ashraf, EUObserver.com reports.

Rajavi said it was now time for the government in Iraq to lift restrictions on Ashraf residents and affirm their status as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The PMOI lobbied the U.S. State Department for delisting in 2008 but was denied in December by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The PMOI and the NCRI were listed as terrorist organizations for violent opposition to the Iranian regime. The PMOI sided with Saddam Hussein during the bloody Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

US envoy predicts 'direct diplomacy' with Iran

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS – President Barack Obama's administration will engage in "direct diplomacy" with Iran, the newly installed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Monday.

Not since before the 1979 Iranian revolution are U.S. officials believed to have conducted wide-ranging direct diplomacy with Iranian officials. But U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice warned that Iran must meet U.N. Security Council demands to suspend uranium enrichment before any talks on its nuclear program.

"The dialogue and diplomacy must go hand in hand with a very firm message from the United States and the international community that Iran needs to meet its obligations as defined by the Security Council. And its continuing refusal to do so will only cause pressure to increase," she told reporters during a brief question-and-answer session.

Her comments, reflecting Obama's signals for improved relations with America's foes after eight years under President George W. Bush, came shortly after meeting with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on her first day in her new job.

Iran still considers the U.S. the "Great Satan," but a day after Obama was sworn in, said it was "ready for new approaches by the United States." Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his country would study the idea of allowing the U.S. to open a diplomatic office in Tehran, the first since 1979.

Rice said the U.S. remains "deeply concerned about the threat that Iran's nuclear program poses to the region, indeed to the United States and the entire international community."

"We look forward to engaging in vigorous diplomacy that includes direct diplomacy with Iran, as well as continued collaboration and partnership" with the other four permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France and Russia — plus Germany, Rice said.

"And we will look at what is necessary and appropriate with respect to maintaining pressure toward that goal of ending Iran's nuclear program," she said.

In recent years, Iranian and American officials have negotiated in the same room on talks about Afghanistan that involved other countries' diplomats. They also talked face to face in Baghdad but the agenda was limited to Iraqi security.

But the differences between Washington and Tehran run deep. They include U.S. suspicions about Iran's nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threats to annihilate Israel, and Tehran's support for Hamas.

Rice met with Ban in the morning to present her credentials. She said they spent 45 minutes discussing climate change, poverty reduction, U.N. peacekeeping, nonproliferation, Sudan and the Middle East.

She told reporters that "putting the United States at the center of international efforts to support poverty reduction, development, fighting disease and achieving the (U.N.) Millennium Development Goals, which President Obama has said repeatedly, will now be America's goals as well."

Rice said the U.S. will address the Gaza conflict on Tuesday in the Security Council, seeking ways "to support efforts to ensure that that cease-fire is lasting, and in that context for border crossings to open and be available for humanitarian as well as day-to-day economic development imperatives."

Rice, who was a key Africa adviser to the Clinton administration during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, also said the Obama administration remains "very deeply concerned about the ongoing genocide in Darfur."

"The priority at this point has to be effective protection for civilians," she said, adding that she had discussed ways to fully deploy the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur "so that there is the capacity on the ground to begin to effect that civilian protection."

In Washington, Obama's top spokesman said that Rice was merely restating the president's policy on Iran.

Asked about Rice's comments to reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, that what Rice did "was simply to restate the message" that the administration is "going to use all elements of our national power" to address concerns about Iran's nuclear program.

NATO's secretary-general, Japp de Hoop Scheffer, also said Monday that NATO must engage with Iran to secure regional support for the escalating war in neighboring Afghanistan.

The surprise call from the head of the Western alliance comes as the new U.S. administration prepares to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan, where Taliban militants are regrouping and violence is on the rise. They will reinforce the 62,000-strong NATO and U.S. force already operating there.

"We need a discussion that brings in all the relevant players: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, Russia — and yes, Iran. We need a pragmatic approach to solve this very real challenge," de Hoop Scheffer said in a speech to the Security and Defense Agenda, a Brussels-based think tank.

Until now, the United States has sought to isolate the clerical regime in Iran from meddling in Afghanistan, although the Shiite nation has a long history of opposing Taliban rule there. De Hoop Scheffer said what's required is a broader approach that includes all of Afghanistan's neighbors, but he was "not sure at this stage" how to constructively bring Iran into Afghanistan diplomacy.

Troops deployed after Shiite politician killed in Pakistan

by Maaz Khan

QUETTA, Pakistan (AFP) – Paramilitary troops were Monday deployed in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta to quell violent protests against the killing of a Shiite Muslim politician, police said.

Gunmen riding on a motorbike shot dead Ghulam Hassan Yousufi, a prominent Shiite figure, in an attack claimed by a banned Sunni extremist group.

"The Frontier Corps (FC) has been called to assist local police control the law and order situation," senior police official Wazir Khan Nasir told AFP.

He said police were questioning at least 18 people arrested for suspected links to the assassins following the second sectarian attack in Quetta in less than two weeks.

The FC fanned out across the city centre after hundreds of protesters took to the streets and turned violent, setting ablaze vehicles and smashing the windows of a bank in the main boulevard where Yousufi was killed.

"Police launched tear gas shells and baton-charged the protesters in a bid to prevent any untoward incident and disperse them," Nasir said.

At least 12 people were wounded, seven when protesters in the crowd opened fire, Nasir said.

"They are ordinary people injured from firing by the protesters," he said.

Residents said the situation was returning to normal as dusk fell. Shops remained closed, however, and traffic was thin in the city.

Monday's drive-by shooting took place on Jinnah road in Quetta, the capital of gas-rich Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

Yousufi, who led the Hazara Democratic Party, a predominantly Shiite movement, was shot as he got out of his car outside a travel agency and died on the way to hospital.

Hundreds of people blocked Jinnah road and burnt tires to protest against the killing, an AFP photographer said.

The banned Sunni extremist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) claimed responsibility for the killing in a telephone call to the local press club.

"We claim responsibility for this attack," said the caller, who identified himself as Ali Haider, an LJ spokesman.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has been blamed for the killings of hundreds of Shiite Muslims since its emergence in the early 1990s.

Monday's shooting followed a sectarian attack on January 14, when unknown gunmen killed four policemen, three of them Shiites, on the outskirts of the city, sparking street protests.

Aside from the sectarian attacks involving Sunni and Shiite Muslim extremists, the province has been gripped by insurgency for four years.

Hundreds of people have died in insurgent violence in Baluchistan since late 2004, when rebels rose up demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region's natural resources.

The province has also been hit by attacks blamed on Taliban militants.