Ahmadinejad to help open project in Venezuela

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says his Iranian counterpart will visit Caracas before the end of the year to help inaugurate a joint housing project.

"I want him (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) to accompany me to inaugurate some houses," Chavez told Iran's Ambassador to Venezuela, Ahmad Sobhani, in a Sunday TV-radio show.

The houses to be inaugurated are 240 homes built as part of a housing development program between the two countries.

During the Venezuelan president's last visit to Iran, which was in September, the two governments signed over 200 cooperation agreements in various fields such as health, oil, trade, housing, food and finance.

Iranian engineers have already constructed a dairy production plant and a flour factory in Venezuela.

According to comments by the Venezuelan mining minister and Chavez himself, Iranian experts are also helping the Latin American state locate uranium reserves.

The project involves conducting geophysical tests and aerial surveys to find uranium deposits in the mineral-rich states of Bolivar and Tachira.

Chavez: US provoking all-out war in S. America

President Hugo Chavez has threatened an all-out war in South America should the US want to provoke Colombia to launch an armed conflict in the region.

Chavez said Venezuela could end up going to war with Colombia, warning that if a conflict broke out "it could extend throughout the whole continent."

The anti-US leader ordered the military to prepare for a possible war, addressing President Barack Obama to be cautious about any move in the region.

"Don't make a mistake, Mr. Obama, by ordering an attack against Venezuela by way of Colombia," Chavez said during his weekly television and radio program Sunday.

However, the Colombian government dismissed Chavez's threats, saying it would protest to the Organization of American States (OAS) and the UN Security Council.

"Colombia never has, and never will, make an act of war," government spokesman Cesar Mauricio Velasquez said.

A recent military agreement between the US and Colombia that gives American troops greater access to military bases of Colombia has sparked controversy in the region.

In recent weeks, tensions between the two Latin American nations have been worsened by a series of shootings.

Last week, two Venezuelan National Guard troops were killed at a checkpoint near the border in Venezuela's western Tachira state, prompting Caracas to temporarily close some border crossings.

The violence prompted Venezuela to send 15,000 soldiers to the border with Colombia on Thursday to increase security along the border.

Hurricane Ida kills 124 in El Salvador

Hurricane Ida has killed at least 124 people and left 60 others missing across El Salvador, civil defense officials say.

Flooding and landslides claimed the lives of 124 people across the country, officials said.

The army, police and residents have been looking for 60 people missing in Verapaz, a small central city which was partly buried under mud and boulders following torrential rains on Sunday before dawn.

Torrential rains and flooding hit the country due to "low pressure ... and remnants of Ida," Civil Defense Chief Jorge Melendez said.

Melendez added that "there could be more fatalities" in the eastern regions of Verapaz and Tepetitan.

Ida had strengthened packing top wind speeds of 100 miles (160 kilometers) per hour as it moved over Mexico's Caribbean coast according to forecasters at the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center.

Hurricane Ida has now swept past the Yucatan Peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico.

El Salvador has been on a state of alert since Thursday.

Karzai urges West to respect Afghan sovereignty

Mon Nov 9, 2009

President Hamid Karzai has called on his Western allies to respect the Afghanistan's sovereignty amid the country's fight against corruption.

"We like our partners to have a lot of respect for Afghan sovereignty," Karzai said in an interview with the US Public Broadcasting Service airing Monday.

"We must all be very careful while we are partners with one another... our partnership and our advice is a friendly one and with good intentions and not one that can be interpreted any other way," Karzai added.

Western countries have been pressuring the Afghan president to address corruption in his government.

UK Premier Gordon Brown in November warned Karzai that London will not put soldiers "in harm's way for a government that does not stand up against corruption".

The Afghan leader said that he already was addressing corruption, adding Western countries are also partly responsible for the corruption in Afghanistan.

"Where we have found facts on corrupt practices by senior government officials, we have acted, they have gone to prison," he said.

Karzai went on to explain that donor countries share some of the responsibility for rampant corruption because of a poorly structured system to manage projects.

"There is no accountability of their contracts, and there is a serious corruption in the implementation of those projects. And the responsibility for this corruption is (with) the international community," Karzai said.

His remarks were made one day after the Afghan Foreign Ministry accused foreign critics of using corruption allegations to influence the makeup of the new government.

"Such instructions have violated respect for Afghanistan's national sovereignty," the ministry said.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/110800.html.

No deal to protect nuclear arsenal, Pakistan says

Mon Nov 9, 2009

Islamabad has strongly rejected a report that the US has been negotiating a deal with the Pakistani military about the security of the South Asian country's nuclear arsenal.

The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in statement on Sunday that the nation's nuclear materials are completely safe and secure.

“Nor will Pakistan, as a sovereign state, ever allow any country to have direct or indirect access to its nuclear and strategic facilities. Any suggestion to this effect is simply preposterous,” the statement read.

A report that appeared in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine said that US officials had negotiated pacts with Pakistan to provide security for its nuclear arsenal amid rising militancy across the country.

The report also suggests that a threat to the security of nuclear facilities might come from a “mutiny” by extremist elements within the powerful military.

A wave of attacks on military targets over the past few weeks has raised concerns over the nuclear arsenal's security.

However, senior civilians and military officials in Islamabad have dismissed the concerns, saying that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are in safe hands.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/110798.html.

50 pct of Iran's telecommunications privatized

An Iranian consortium has signed a deal to buy 50 percent plus one of the shares of Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) for around eight billion dollars.

According to the deputy of Iran's Privatization Company, the related contract was signed Sunday with an Iranian consortium named Etemad Mobin Development that includes three firms.

"The historical deal was signed after an article was added to the $7.8 billion text of the contract according to which the buyer will be committed to the charter of TCI," said Mehdi Oghadaei.

The consortium had already bought the shares, in a controversial transaction, but the official contract had yet to be signed.

Earlier in November, General Inspection Organization of Iran (GIO) cast doubts on the privatization of TCI, saying that some uncertainties exist in the deal.

The GIO had prepared a report on the doubtful points and submitted to related bodies in the Article 44 Parliamentary Committee for further investigation, Mehr News Agency reported earlier.

The important deal, the biggest on the Tehran Stock Exchange so far, attracted lots of attention as TCI has monopoly over Iran's fixed line infrastructure, Iran's largest cellular operator (MCI), and Iran's major Internet service provider and data communication operator (DCI).

Sikh and Muslim women seek freedom to wear head coverings

Nov 08, 2009 (San Jose Mercury News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Their head wear displayed a full palette of colors and patterns, and symbolized different faiths. But the two dozen Sikh and Muslim women who gathered Saturday at a Fremont community center knew their turbans and scarves had a singular effect on many others in a country where their beliefs are in the minority.

They make the women stand out as different, and to some, threatening.

"Around Sept. 11 this year, I had someone call me a terrorist," said Jasdeep Kaur, a middle-school counselor and volunteer with the Sikh Coalition in Fremont that organized Saturday's unusual joint forum with the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Santa Clara to address discrimination that women of both faiths face because of traditional religious head wear like her black dastaar turban. "We are visually standing out compared to everyone else."

Organizers said local Sikhs and Muslims had never held such a multifaith forum to address shared concerns about discrimination and profiling, but decided to do so because it remains a daily concern. While the overt hostility that peaked shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by Islamic terrorists has subsided, more subtle discrimination persists, they said.

"There's a lot of covert discrimination out there," said Harsimran Kaur, a lawyer and director of the Sikh Coalition.

Organizers said they were unaware of specific incidents locally since last week's fatal shootings at Texas' Fort Hood Army base,

allegedly by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a distraught Muslim psychiatrist. But Harsimran Kaur said the possibility of trouble arising from that incident "is a huge concern."

Sikh and Muslim women are expected to cover their heads. In the Sikh faith, which traces its roots to 16th-century India, both men and women cover their hair, which they do not cut. In Islam, which began in seventh-century Arabia, women cover their heads as a sign of modesty.

But in the predominantly Christian U.S., at war in two Muslim countries, the head wear isn't always welcomed. Nura Maznavi, a Muslim lawyer, said she recently handled a case in which a Vietnamese Muslim mother of two in Sacramento was told by her boss at a collection agency that she would have to choose between her traditional hijab covering and her job. Then, during the discrimination case, the collection agency declared bankruptcy.

Though the event was aimed at women who cover their heads in both faiths, a couple of Sikh men attended as well.

Parvin Singh, a San Jose software engineer who wore a blue turban and matching T-shirt that read: "My turban "... a figure of majesty," said he hasn't had much trouble in the Bay Area, but has been hassled at airports in East Asia, where the Sikh faith is uncommon.

"Sometimes," he said, "we get into situations where we just need to speak our rights to them."

Malika Khan of San Jose said she was harassed for wearing the hijab to her job as a clinical lab scientist at O'Connor Hospital in San Jose. But after complaining of discrimination, she won an apology.

"By standing up for your rights," Khan told the gathering, "you do get results."