Iranian Alert -- April 14, 2004 [EST]-- IRAN LIVE THREAD -- "Americans for Regime Change in Iran"

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Iran distances itself from Sadr

By Gareth Smyth in Qom
Published: April 13 2004 20:13 |
Last Updated: April 13 2004 20:13

Iran is dismissing attempts by Washington to link it to Moqtada al-Sadr, the young radical cleric whose militia has battled US forces in neighbouring Iraq.

Iranian leaders, including President Mohammad Khatami and the influential former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, have called for calm in Iraq while blaming US mismanagement for the crisis. On Monday Hamid-Reza Assefi, the foreign ministry spokesman, dismissed a report that Mr Sadr would come to Tehran as a political refugee.

US officials and administration ad visers have long alleged that Iran has secretly funded Mr Sadr's militia. On Monday, General John Abizaid, commander of US Central Command, told a press briefing "there are indications from intelligence folks that there are some Iranian activities going on that are unhelpful". Last week, Donald Rumsfeld, US secretary of defence, accused Iran of "meddling" in Iraq.

Michael Rubin, an adviser to the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, named Ayatollah Kazem al-Hairi, a cleric based in the Iranian holy city of Qom, as one such conduit of funding to Mr Sadr.

In an interview in Qom on Tuesday, Hossein al-Hairi, younger brother of Ayatollah Hairi and a fellow cleric, said that while Mr Sadr was his brother's "religious representative" in Iraq, they had no "political relationship".

"My brother was a friend of Moqtada Sadr's father, Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Sadr [killed by Saddam Hussein in 1999], from the time they were classmates," he said.

Mr Hairi expressed many views at odds with Mr Sadr's. He said Ayatollah Hairi had "no specific opinion" on the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, which Mr Sadr has condemned.

"If an individual can do good, can serve the people [on the council], then he should serve," he said.

Mr Hairi said that violence in Iraq was a response to US actions. "If the US stops, then the Iraqis will be silent. When they kill Iraqi people, we must defend ourselves."

Ayatollah Hairi, 65, was active in Iraqi politics as a leading member of the Da'awa party in the 1970s and, from exile in Iran, in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) until he left party politics around 1986.

A specialist in usul (methodology), he is one of the Shia world's leading jurists.

"Throughout the 1990s, Ayatollah Hairi was busy as a jurist in Iran, and probably, with the fall of Saddam, he suddenly saw this relationship with Moqtada Sadr as a way to win new followers in Iraq," said Hossein Zeinali, a Qom-based researcher. "For Sadr [who is a mid-ranking cleric], it was a way to gain religious legitimacy from the backing of a great ayatollah. So Sadr has gained more from the relationship than Ayatollah Hairi."

Although originally from Iran, the Hairi family has been based in Karbala and Najaf, southern Iraq's two leading shrine cities, for three generations.

On Tuesday Mr Hairi was answering questions about Islamic law.

"Some want to know if Moqtada Sadr is a source of emulation [marja al-taqlid], and we say no, he is not."

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1079420315807&p=1031119383196

Rebel Iraqi cleric ready to negotiate

Reuters - World News
Apr 13, 2004

BAGHDAD - Rebel Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has chosen a go-between to negotiate with the United States and indicated he may disband his militia if told to do so by religious authorities, sources close to a delegation that met him said on Tuesday.

The sources said that Sadr, a young firebrand who U.S. officials have said they are determined to capture or kill, understands the power of the U.S. military and realises he could emerge politically stronger if he strikes a deal now.

Sadr said earlier he was willing to die for his campaign to end the U.S.-led occupation, but also said he was in talks to end the uprising of his Mehdi Army and wanted above all to keep foreign troops out of the holy city Najaf, where he is based.

They said Sadr has chosen a representative from the Shi'ite Dawa Party-Iraq Division to negotiate for him with the United States, whose forces U.S. officials say are massing round Najaf for a possible offensive.

Sadr also told the religious delegation representing Najaf's senior Shi'ite clerics, including the influential Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, that he would disband his militia if the religious authorities told him to, the sources added.

"The delegation answered that as he did not ask the Najaf elders before forming his militia, why is he asking for an edict to disband it now? But the negotiations are ongoing," an aide to leading cleric Mohammad Bahr al-Uloum told Reuters.

"Al-Dawa has weight in Iraq, but the problem is not in choosing an envoy. Sadr has to come up with a comprehensive commitment to solve the problem. He has not done so," the aide said.

DELEGATION IN NAJAF

A delegation including Sistani's son Mohammad Reda and a representative of another senior Najaf cleric, Sayyed Ishaq al-Fayyad, met Sadr in Najaf on Monday.

It did not include Dawa-Iraq Division, a splinter group of the Iraqi Dawa party which was all but wiped out by former President Saddam Hussein and is represented on the Iraqi Governing Council.

The Council and the religious establishment have avoided direct contact with Sadr since he started a revolt against the U.S.-led occupation in central and southern Iraq last week.

The spectre of more civilian casualties and U.S. forces storming Najaf has put pressure on Shi'ite leaders to try to end the crisis.

The mainstream Shi'ite religious establishment considers Sadr a political foe. Senior Shi'ite clerics and politicians, including Iraqi Governing Council members, have been meeting for days to discuss how to avert more bloodshed.

Shi'ite Council members have proposed a deal to end Sadr's revolt under which the United States would agree not to arrest him, and would leave Iraqi authorities to decide his fate.

They said Iraq's U.S. governor Paul Bremer had seemed receptive to the proposal.

An Iraqi judge has issued an arrest warrant for Sadr in connection with the murder of another cleric in Najaf last year, but the warrant was not made public until Sadr followers clashed with U.S. forces last week.

Sadr says he was not involved in the murder of the cleric, Sayyed Abdel Majid al-Khoei, the son of a late Grand Ayatollah.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_5713.shtml

Iran Uses Hamas, Hizbulah in Iraq

April 14, 2004
Middle East Newsline
MENL

WASHINGTON -- Iran has been using Hamas and Hizbullah as part of plans to impose Teheran's authority in Iraq. A report by the New York-based Hudson Institute said Iran has been sponsoring and cooperating with a range of Shi'ite insurgency groups in an effort to develop a power base in Iraq.

The Shi'ites have been employed to work against U.S. interests and intimidate independent figures within the majority Shi'ite community in Iraq.

"Following the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the Iranian clerical dictatorship has mounted a covert effort to establish an allied Shi'a Islamist extremist regime in Iraq," the report, by senior fellow Constantine Menges, said. "Iran has been preparing to do this for many years and has recruited political, military, and covert agent assets among the hundreds of thousands of Shi'a Iraqis who fled Iraq and have lived in Iran for years."

The report said Iran has tried to dominate Iraq in several ways. Menges cited Iran's use of Iraqi Shi'ite clerics, the establishment of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the cooperation with Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr and the use of Hizbullah and Hamas for insurgency attacks on Iraq.

http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2004/april/04_14_2.html

Bush eyes intelligence revamp

By James Harding in Washington
Published: April 12 2004 20:08 |
Last Updated: April 13 2004 0:48

The Bush administration is considering a "revamp and reform" of the US intelligence services in the light of the lessons learned from the attacks of September 11 2001.

When asked whether he was satisfied with the performance of the FBI in the months before 9/11, President George W. Bush on Monday said he was "confident that had they found something that was a direct threat to America, they would have brought it to my attention".

But as the 9/11 commission continues to investigate the circumstances of the attack and the administration's flawed efforts to thwart an al-Qaeda attack, Mr Bush said he looked forward to receiving the commission's recommendations.

"Condoleezza Rice [the president's national security adviser] mentioned the other day something very interesting, and that is that now may be a time to revamp and reform our intelligence services," Mr Bush said, "and we look forward to hearing recommendations.

"We're thinking about that ourselves and we look forward to working with the commission."

The FBI and the Department of Justice will be pressed to defend their counter-terrorism work this week, as the focus of the September 11 commission shifts from allegations of inactivity at the White House to suggestions of mismanagement at the law enforcement agencies.

Starting on Tuesday with the testimony of John Ashcroft, attorney-general, and Robert Mueller, FBI director, on Wednesday, the heads of US law enforcement will face questions over communication failures and underfunding of counter-terrorism efforts. In its own defence, the White House has signalled over the last week that responsibility for pursuing the al-Qaeda threat before September 11 2001 lay with the FBI and the Justice Department.

The release at the weekend of the President's Daily Brief (PDB) of August 6 2001 raised questions about the FBI, as the declassified memo noted that the agency was "conducting 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related".

When asked who was to blame for the fact that those investigations did not lead to the interception of the September 11 attacks, Evan Bayh, the Democratic senator from Indiana, said on Monday on CBS TV: "There needs to be some improvement within the FBI. Not all the different field offices are communicating with the central office. The CIA and the FBI weren't sharing information well."

Louis Freeh, former FBI director, who will also testify on Tuesday, on Monday sought to pre-empt criticism of the bureau with a long defence of its September 11 activities in an article in the Wall Street Journal. Mr Freeh said there was not the political nor public will to fight terrorism with sufficient resources before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

"The FBI's pre-9/11 counter-terrorism resources were finite and insufficient," he wrote, citing the fact that when the FBI sought substantial increases in staffing and funding for its counter-terrorism work it got a fraction of what it asked for.

Mr Ashcroft is likely to face a grilling on precisely this budgetary issue.

His office has sought to fend off criticism that he underestimated the terror threat by saying terrorism was high on his agenda, but Mr Ashcroft denied FBI requests for extra funding to combat terrorism, cutting $58m (€48m, £31.6m) out of the bureau's budget to hire additional agents for terrorism investigations.

The September 11 commission will be interviewing FBI directors and past and present attorneys-general.

In addition to Mr Freeh, Janet Reno, Clinton administration attorney-general, is also due to testify on Tuesday. George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, will appear on Wednesday.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/toptease_2.html

"Tehran still needs to reveal the extent of its long-secret program" UN says

AP - World News
Apr 13, 2004

CAIRO -- Iran is showing more cooperative with U.N. nuclear inspectors, but Tehran still needs to reveal the extent of its long-secret program, the chief of the U.N. atomic agency said Tuesday.

"Iran had a hidden program and it was in breach of the international nuclear non-proliferation agreement," the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, told about 500 people, mostly students, during a lecture at Cairo University.

"We are working with Iran now," he said. "But our work is not done yet."

ElBaradei urged Iran to show "more transparency and give more information" about its nuclear program.

ElBaradei's comments came as U.N. nuclear inspectors were in Iran trying to confirm whether Iran has stopped suspicious nuclear activities - including the building of centrifuges for uranium enrichment.

Iran denies it is working to build nuclear bombs and contends that it is pursuing a peaceful atomic energy program.

Iranian hard-liners close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have accused ElBaradei of being "America's agent" and say by giving in to the IAEA, Iran is bowing to U.S. demands to surrender nuclear technology.

"For a long time Iran did not give accurate information," ElBaradei said. "But since last year it has been cooperating better and we hope that we are on the right track."

On Iraq, ElBaradei reiterated that his agency's inspectors would evenutally return to Iraq as the IAEA still has a "mandate" to work there.

But the atomic energy chief has said that inspectors would only consider returning once the security situation in the war-ravaged country improved.

ElBaradei also praised Libya's recent moves to abandon its nuclear program and open up to inspections.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_5716.shtml

Iran and the Future of Freedom

April 13, 2004
by Dariush Shirazi

We are engaged in a battle not to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction, but rather to ensure the victory of democracy and freedom on a planet that lingers on the verge of instability, tyranny, and the death of virtues for which millions have suffered, died, and struggled for throughout human history. The stakes are high, and to allow continued mistakes will result in an intolerable conclusion that we must prevent now.

Claims we have heard in recent years that insist we are fighting a war to rid the world of WMDs have misled many. It is true that the WMD argument has served as sort of a trigger mechanism in a chain of events that many hope will lead to the establishment of democracy and freedom in the Middle East. However, this trigger, combined with a series of mistakes on the part of the Bush Administration, are leading America further from success and much closer to failure.

In recent months and years, political activists and certain administration officials, senators and congressional figures have urged the US Government to address the real terror masters in Iran, but for a number of reasons, many of which are hidden, this has not happened.

Intelligence sources have been warning us for months of the increased Islamic Republic's presence in Iraq via its' clerical and intelligence proxies. History has continuously warned us that the regime in Iran is the most dangerous and repressive regime in the World, the life of which depends on its modus operandi of international terrorism and the auctioning off of the Iranian people's resources to England, France, Germany, Russia, China and several other nations in exchange for securing the mullahcracy's longevity.

For decades the Iranian people have been fighting the clerical regime in Iran and have been offered little if any support from the outside world. What is really going on?

Arriving at the answers and solutions to the many questions and problems surrounding the current fiasco in the Middle East requires a more comprehensive analysis than a simple discussion of WMDs and their existence, and also requires that every American and citizen of the world take a closer look at what is really unfolding in the Middle East, and the power politics being played.

An important principle outlined in the notorious "Bush Doctrine" is the declaration that the United States supports freedom, democracy and human rights throughout the world. This is undoubtedly one of the most noble and perhaps most important principles of the doctrine because it calls for the United States to use a variety of means not only to protect societies that are already free and democratic, but also to act in response to environments characterized by populations that are not free, where the people are overwhelmingly silenced and repressed by terror-supporting dictatorships.

Those who view these principles as unworkable or even selfish, and declare that "Democracy and freedom will never work in certain countries or societies..." or state that "The United States doesn't have the right to impose democracy on others.." are in fact the selfish irresponsible ones who, by advocating a return to the status quo through inaction, indirectly set into motion a series of events which are more likely to lead to increased repression and slavery of even greater populations throughout our world. Freedom must prevail and its crucifixion must be prevented before our endeavor truly becomes futile.

If one taps the pulse of America today, one is no doubt likely to detect a number of sentiments. There are some Americans who from the beginning were opposed to this endeavor. There are those who wonder why we are still in Iraq, considering the fact that the war's trigger (i.e., WMD, Saddam Hussein) have been defused. The most interesting sentiment is that which is exhibited by countless Americans, many of whom comprise a significant portion of George Bush's base. They are individuals who supported the war not merely for WMD argument, but because they maintain an idealistic vision and hope for the future, a future in which American action ultimately leads to freedom in the Middle East. Freedom in the Middle East would in turn result in a more stable and peaceful world, an increase in global cooperation, and a stronger world economy. Unfortunately the United States is now fighting a war on many fronts within Iraq and has yet to connect all the dots, a crucial link that must be addressed if freedom is to prevail.

There is no question that Islamic fanatics and their ideology of hate and terror must be eliminated, but we cannot succeed merely by assaulting this "fanatical virus" with M-16s and military might, because there will always be a near endless supply of targets. The only way to destroy this virus emanating from hotbeds such as the Mullah's palaces in Iran, mountainous abodes that house fanatics in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and other repositories of hate throughout the world is to counter and destroy the ideology they profess with an ideology that is far superior to theirs. Our only hope is to establish a system built upon an ideology of freedom, democracy and human rights, which will work to seek out and destroy the fanatics and their barbaric ideologies.

Perhaps the accepted view of certain American administration officials was that this superior ideology could quickly take hold in Iraq, but it is clear that in the short to mid-term it cannot. In fact it is futile to rely solely on the effective deployment of this ideological weapon in Iraq, because there are a number of players throughout the World and the region who in the short and in some cases the long-term have nothing to gain by the defeat of Islamic fanaticism and the establishment of democracy in the Middle East.

There are those obvious culprits whose rule will certainly be ended by such regional progress, like Khamenei and his gang of Mullahs in Iran, Bashar Assad in Syria, The House of Saud, and tribal entities in Afghanistan, but then there are also the "others".

England, several European nations, Russia, and China are deeply worried that the Mullahs will be overthrown by the Iranian people, not only because the Mullahs literally give away and auction off the Iranian people's resources in an effort to secure and sustain their evil regime, but more importantly because of the long-term implications that such a progressive overhaul would have in regards to American power and the advancement of freedom. These forces which are all attempting to halt progress in the region are using Iraq as a battleground, and so we must battle in Iraq while simultaneously looking elsewhere for freedom's breeding ground.

Imagine for a moment that a revolution is sparked in Iran, resulting in minimal bloodshed and the removal of the Mullahs' regime, one which has brought nothing but terror to the proud Iranian people and has left countless victims in their terrorist wake throughout the world. Then imagine the chain reaction which likely follows. Tens of thousands of Iranian political prisoners, most of whom are college-aged Iranians, and countless intellectuals and dissident politicians are released from the clerical regime's prisons and torture chambers. Iranians rush to establish a system that is the complete opposite of that which the mullahs had enforced for over two decades. Liberal clerics return to the mosques and the more hardliner fanatical ones go into hiding, are imprisoned, or are killed by angry Iranians who have suffered greatly at their evil hands. Consequently, the Iranian people reverse two decades of repression and backwardness, and breathe life into a new system built upon the principles of freedom, democracy and human rights.

In the weeks that follow, the forces of freedom in the Middle East gain overwhelming leverage over those fanatical forces which struggle to survive after having received such a powerful blow to their masters, who once ruled in Iran, and the billions of dollars in wealth that was once funneled into terrorism and maintenance of the Islamic Clerical Regime is now invested by the Iranian people and for the people. Populations throughout the region recognize that they too can be free and they need not continue living their lives at the whim of tyrants. Regimes from Syria to Saudi Arabia are pressured to reform or are overthrown by pro-democratic forces. Repressed peoples in the Middle East and throughout the world witness the successful establishment of this far superior ideology based on freedom and respect for the rights of all human beings, and now demand a future much different than that which was prescribed by their dictators in the past.

The future government of a free Iran will be highly critical and wary of alliances and business cooperation with England, much of Europe, Russia and China as a direct result of the ever-increasing Iranian anger and distrust of those nations that have dealt with the Mullahs over the past 20 years. The mullahs' trading partners have focused entirely on exploiting the nation of Iran, instead of recognizing the struggle of the Iranian people, the hell the clerical regime has created, and demanding the regime change it's ways. These trading partners of the Islamic Republic are in major part responsible for the actions of the Mullahs, which include but are not limited to, assassinations throughout the Middle East, Europe and the United States, the murder of more than 100,000 Iranians and the imprisonment of countless others, and presently, the thousands of Islamic regime agents who swarm like bees through the sands of Iraq, ambushing American convoys and instigating actions they hope will give birth to an Islamic Republic proxy in Iraq. So as Americans and citizens of the world we must ask ourselves â€œWho are the real allies of humanity in our endeavor for freedom?â€ The answer is quite sobering, and to some it may even be a bit shocking, but as human beings who exist now, in this moment and no other, we must accept the truth. Our duty cannot and must not be to the self-serving nature of our primitive selves, but rather we must act now, for those who have already passed while enduring in this struggle and for those who are now chained in silent bondage. The question is not whether there were weapons of mass destruction, but rather, the question is, are you with those of us who support freedom for all mankind or are you against us. This is a question that all world leaders must answer, for no government is exempt from answering to truth and to duty.

If the Bush administration continues to treat Iraq as though the dynamics at play within that country occur only in a vacuum rather than actively addressing and treating the external factors involved, this noble endeavor is bound to failure and there will be no second chance. However, if the Bush administration accepts the fact that the current tumultuous state of Iraq is inadequate for deploying the anti-fanatical ideology of freedom and democracy, and immediately looks toward freedom's breeding ground in Iran, and entrusts the Iranian people with its care, we may never have to see the day when we will all lay helpless at the knees of a planet absent of freedom.

As for those nations that remain steadfast trading partners of the regime in Iran, you still have an opportunity to undo much that has been done. By openly working together with the United States in an effort to remove the clerics who rule Iran and subsequently aiding the spread of freedom throughout the Middle East and the world, all nations and people of the world will certainly benefit. The handful of dictators and fanatical-minded tyrants will be the only ones who lose. So not as Americans, but as human beings, we ask that the governments of all countries who currently have relations with the terrorist regime in Iran actively work with the United States to facilitate the transfer of power from the Mullahs in Iran to the Iranian people, or accept the consequence that their government be held accountable and complicit in whatever travesty lay ahead.

In the words of the great 13th century Persian poet, Saadi Shirazi, "Human beings are all members of one body. They are created from the same essence. When one member is in pain, The others cannot rest. If you do not care about the pain of others, You do not deserve to be called a human being."

In the words of the great American, Thomas Jefferson, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Dariush Shirazi is a pseudonym of an Iranian-American university student and Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and can be reached at dariushshirazi@hotmail.com.

http://www.activistchat.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1932

If Iranians truly want freedom, they must join the WOT and the war against Islamofascism. No one will ever trust Muslims again, or go to their defense, if Bush is continually undermined by U.S. Muslims.

The President's Resolve

New York Post

April 14, 2004 -- President Bush spoke to the nation last night, and to the world, at a critical juncture in the War on Terror - and he said what had to be said.
"This has been a tough week," Bush said. The Coalition's foes "want to run us out of Iraq and destroy the democratic hopes of the Iraqi people."

But he made it clear that America has no intention of going wobbly.

Quite the opposite.

"We will not permit the spread of chaos and violence. I have directed our military commanders to make every preparation to use decisive force if necessary to maintain order and to protect our troops."

That was an important message to send to Americans, to their allies - and, most of all, to the terrorists and thugs in Iraq who hope that casualties and kidnappings will prompt the Coalition to turn tail and flee.

Not happening, Bush said.

This time, America will not go weak.

Indeed, this president clearly understands the importance of resolve.

"Over the last several decades, we've seen that any concession or retreat on our part will only embolden this enemy and invite more bloodshed," Bush said. "And the enemy has seen, over the last 31 months, that we will no longer live in denial or seek to appease them.

"For the first time, the civilized world has provided a concerted response to the ideology of terror - a series of powerful, effective blows."

Here, here.

As the president made clear - and as the world has known for a year now - the stakes in Iraq are enormous.

"The consequences of failure in Iraq would be unthinkable," he said. "Every enemy of America in the world would celebrate, proclaiming our weakness and decadence, and using that victory to recruit a new generation of killers."

Bush's tough talk - and the action it's backed up with - will do much to convince the enemy of the futility of their attacks. That may prompt some to give up.

The enemies of freedom have surely taken heart from the language of some folks right here in America - folks who are intent on attacking the president and his efforts in Iraq.

Last night, for instance, reporters questioning Bush couldn't have been more hostile.

Why won't Bush admit failure? Why did he get it so wrong in Iraq? Wasn't he responsible for 9/11? Isn't Iraq another Vietnam?

They should be ashamed.

Bush's answer was 100 percent correct, by the way, about the comparison to Vietnam, which comes courtesy of Sen. Ted Kennedy, on behalf of the John Kerry-for-President campaign.

"The analogy is false," he said. And it "sends the wrong message to our troops and . . . to the enemy."

No matter.

Nothing will shake this president.

Not the terrorists.

Nor his reckless critics at home.

And hallelujah for that.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/18731.htm

"Last night, for instance, reporters questioning Bush couldn't have been more hostile."
"They should be ashamed."

Hallelujah for the NY Post!

Iran Says Arch-Foe U.S. Seeks Tehran's Help in Iraq

Wed Apr 14, 2004
Reuters, USA

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said Wednesday that the United States has sought its help in tackling increasingly bitter violence in Iraq.
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said the calls from Iran's arch foe had come through the Swiss Embassy, which has covered U.S. interests in Tehran since Washington broke ties shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"Naturally, there are demands by Americans through the Swiss Embassy that we help to resolve the crisis in Iraq. And we are acting," he said.

Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr began fighting U.S.-led occupying forces in south and central Iraq this month after U.S. forces closed the cleric's newspaper, said he was wanted for murder and detained his top aide.

The U.S. military has branded Sadr an outlaw and pledged to kill or capture the cleric, who has taken refuge near Najaf's Imam Ali shrine, sacred to the world's Shi'ite Muslims.

Hundreds of Iraqis and scores of foreign troops have died in the recent clashes in Iraq, including dozens of Americans, making April the deadliest month for the U.S. military since Saddam was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion force a year ago.

Shi'ite Iran's most senior leaders have been keen to distance themselves from the uprising of Sadr supporters.

Kharrazi stressed Iran was not meddling in the internal affairs of its neighbor as some in Washington have suggested.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last say on all state matters, held Washington responsible for the recent turmoil in Iraq.

"It is evident the occupiers' (U.S.-led forces) crimes ... have triggered Iraqi people's reaction," Khamenei said in a speech, broadcast live on state radio.

Khamenei also accused Washington of trying to impose a flawed vision of democracy in Iraq that was doomed.

"America's measures in Iraq are destined to fail and Americans have to leave Iraq shamefully sooner or later," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4823829&section=news

Iran Must Open Up

April 14, 2004
Khaleej Times
Editorial

With the arrival of a team of United Nations inspectors in Iran on Monday, Teheran gets yet another opportunity to get out of the nuclear tangle it has landed itself in. The team of five inspectors is in Iran to examine whether Teheran is serious in fulfilling its pledge to suspend its controversial nuclear programme.

The United States has been accusing Iran of having a covert nuclear weapons programme. In fact, President Bush's key address following the 9/11 strikes named Iran as the third member of the so-called `axis of evil,' the other two being North Korea and Saddam's Iraq, of course. Teheran, however, has always insisted that its atomic ambitious are confined to more mundane purpose of generating electricity.

Earlier this month, Iran had volunteered to stop making centrifuges when Mohamed El Baradei of International Atomic Energy Agency had paid a visit to the country. But the IAEA has been more concerned about Iran's omissions of key atomic technology from an October statement that included undeclared research on advanced "P2" centrifuges that can make weapons grade uranium. Yesterday Iranian officials claimed that they have already stopped making and assembling atomic parts. If true, it is a welcome move. However, Iran needs to do more to convince the world that it is serious in addressing international concerns on nuclear proliferation.

The country can learn a lesson or two from what happened in neighbouring Iraq in the run up to the US invasion. It should open its nuclear sites to regular international inspections if it has nothing to hide. It is no time to play games with the sensitivities of the international community being what they are in the post 9/11 world.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/Displayarticle.asp?xfile=data/editorial/2004/April/editorial_April40.xml&section=editorial&subsection=editorial

Why We Will Never Abandon Iraq

April 14, 2004
The Observer
Tony Blair

We are locked in a historic struggle in Iraq. On its outcome hangs more than the fate of the Iraqi people. Were we to fail, which we will not, it is more than "the power of America" that would be defeated. The hope of freedom and religious tolerance in Iraq would be snuffed out. Dictators would rejoice; fanatics and terrorists would be triumphant. Every nascent strand of moderate Arab opinion, knowing full well that the future should not belong to fundamentalist religion, would be set back in bitter disappointment.

If we succeed -- if Iraq becomes a sovereign state, governed democratically by the Iraqi people; the wealth of that potentially rich country, their wealth; the oil, their oil; the police state replaced by the rule of law and respect for human rights -- imagine the blow dealt to the poisonous propaganda of the extremists. Imagine the propulsion toward change it would inaugurate all over the Middle East.

In every country, including our own, the fanatics are preaching their gospel of hate, basing their doctrine on a wilful perversion of the true religion of Islam. At their fringe are groups of young men prepared to conduct terrorist attacks however and whenever they can. Thousands of victims the world over have now died, but the impact is worse than the death of innocent people.

The terrorists prey on ethnic or religious discord. From Kashmir to Chechnya, to Palestine and Israel, they foment hatred, they deter reconciliation. In Europe, they conducted the massacre in Madrid. They threaten France. They forced the cancellation of the President of Germany's visit to Djibouti. They have been foiled in Britain, but only for now.

Of course they use Iraq. It is vital to them. As each attack brings about American attempts to restore order, so they then characterise it as American brutality. As each piece of chaos menaces the very path toward peace and democracy along which most Iraqis want to travel, they use it to try to make the coalition lose heart, and bring about the retreat that is the fanatics' victory.

They know it is a historic struggle. They know their victory would do far more than defeat America or Britain. It would defeat civilisation and democracy everywhere. They know it, but do we? The truth is, faced with this struggle, on which our own fate hangs, a significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with schadenfreude at the difficulty we find.

So what exactly is the nature of the battle inside Iraq itself? This is not a "civil war," though the purpose of the terrorism is undoubtedly to try to provoke one. The current upsurge in violence has not spread throughout Iraq. Much of Iraq is unaffected and most Iraqis reject it. The insurgents are former Saddam sympathisers, angry that their status as "boss" has been removed, terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda and, most recently, followers of the Shia cleric, Muqtada-al-Sadr.

The latter is not in any shape or form representative of majority Shia opinion. He is a fundamentalist, an extremist, an advocate of violence. He is wanted in connection with the murder of the moderate and much more senior cleric, Ayatollah al Khoei last year. The prosecutor, an Iraqi judge, who issued a warrant for his arrest, is the personification of how appallingly one-sided some of the Western reporting has become. Dismissed as an American stooge, he has braved assassination attempts and extraordinary intimidation in order to follow proper judicial process and has insisted on issuing the warrant despite direct threats to his life in doing so.

There you have it. On the one side, outside terrorists, an extremist who has created his own militia, and remnants of a brutal dictatorship which murdered hundreds of thousands of its own people and enslaved the rest. On the other side, people of immense courage and humanity who dare to believe that basic human rights and liberty are not alien to Arab and Middle Eastern culture, but are their salvation.

Over the past few weeks, I have met several people from the Iraqi government, the first genuine cross-community government Iraq had seen. People like Mrs Barwari, the Minister of Public Works, who has just survived a second assassination attempt that killed her bodyguard; people like Mr Zebari, the Foreign Minister. They are intelligent, forward-looking, tolerant, dedicated to their country. They know that 'the occupation' can be used to stir up anti-coalition feeling; they, too, want their country governed by its people and no one else. But they also know that if we cut and run, their country would be at the mercy of warring groups which are united only in their distaste for democracy.

The tragedy is that outside of the violence which dominated the coverage of Iraq, there are incredible possibilities of progress. There is a huge amount of reconstruction going on; the legacy of decades of neglect is slowly being repaired.

By 1 June, electricity will be 6,000 MW, 50 percent more than prewar, but short of the 7,500 MW they now need because of the massive opening up of the economy, set to grow by 60 percent this year and 25 per cent the next.

The first private banks are being opened. A new currency is in circulation. Those in work have seen their salaries trebled or quadrupled and unemployment is falling. One million cars have been imported. Thirty per cent now have satellite TV, once banned, where they can watch al-Jazeera, the radical Arab TV station, telling them how awful the Americans are.

The internet is no longer forbidden. Shrines are no longer shut. Groups of women and lawyers meet to discuss how they can make sure the new constitution genuinely promotes equality. The universities eagerly visit Western counterparts to see how a modern, higher-education system, free to study as it pleases, would help the new Iraq.

People in the West ask: why don't they speak up, these standard-bearers of the new Iraq? Why don't the Shia clerics denounce al-Sadr more strongly? I understand why the question is asked. But the answer is simple: they are worried. They remember 1991, when the West left them to their fate. They know their own street, unused to democratic debate, rife with every rumour, and know its volatility. They read the Western papers and hear its media. And they ask, as the terrorists do: have we the stomach to see it through?

I believe we do. And the rest of the world must hope that we do. None of this is to say we do not have to learn and listen. There is an agenda that could unite the majority of the world. It would be about pursuing terrorism and rogue states on the one hand and actively remedying the causes around which they flourish on the other: the Palestinian issue; poverty and development; democracy in the Middle East; dialogue between main religions.

I have come firmly to believe the only ultimate security lies in our values. The more people are free, the more tolerant they are of others; the more prosperous, the less inclined they are to squander that prosperity on pointless feuding and war.

But our greatest threat, apart from the immediate one of terrorism, is our complacency. When some ascribe, as they do, the upsurge in Islamic extremism to Iraq, do they really forget who killed whom on September 11, 2001? When they call on us to bring the troops home, do they seriously think that this would slake the thirst of these extremists, to say nothing of what it would do to the Iraqis?

Or if we scorned our American allies and told them to go and fight on their own, that somehow we would be spared? If we withdraw from Iraq, they will tell us to withdraw from Afghanistan and, after that, to withdraw from the Middle East completely and, after that, who knows? But one thing is for sure: they have faith in our weakness just as they have faith in their own religious fanaticism. And the weaker we are, the more they will come after us.

It is not easy to persuade people of all this; to say that terrorism and unstable states with WMD are just two sides of the same coin; to tell people what they don't want to hear; that, in a world in which we in the West enjoy all the pleasures, profound and trivial, of modern existence, we are in grave danger.

There is a battle we have to fight, a struggle we have to win and it is happening now in Iraq.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12981

Why We Will Never Abandon Iraq

April 14, 2004
The Observer
Tony Blair

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1117197/posts?page=14#14

Iran Tells U.S. it Can't Solve Iraq Crisis Without Neighbors

April 14, 2004
The Associated Press
Ali Akbar Dareini

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran said Wednesday that its attempt to work with the United States on Iraq had foundered, but that Washington can't resolve the upsurge in violence without consultations with Iraq's neighbors.

``Previously, we had dialogue'' about Iraq, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters. ``Currently it has stopped because we felt we were going nowhere. The Americans give promises but don't keep their promises. Currently, they (Americans) are taking a wrong path.''

Kharrazi did not say when the Iran-U.S. talks took place or when they stopped. He said Iran was willing to help improve the security situation in Iraq, but gave no indication it was trying to resume talks.

Iran ``is making its utmost efforts to help resolve the situation in Iraq as soon as possible so that the power is given back to the Iraqi people,'' he said. ``The solution is for occupiers to leave Iraq.''

The official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Wednesday that a top Iranian Foreign Ministry official, Hossein Sadeghi, was being dispatched to Iraq for consultations with members of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council and with Iraqi clerics.

Kharrazi advised the United States to consult with Iraqi clerics and Iraq's neighbors. Relying on force, he said, ``is a big mistake with severe consequences. They have to employ wisdom .... They (Americans) don't know the psychology of the Iraqi people. They should avoid making more mistakes.''

The U.S. military has been fighting on several fronts across Iraq this month against followers of an anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, in the south; against Sunni Muslim insurgents in the central city of Fallujah; as well as in Baghdad and elsewhere.

In his remarks Wednesday, Iran's foreign minister rejected U.S. accusations of Shiite Iran's involvement in the upsurge in violence in Iraq, where the Shiite majority has shown increasing impatience with the U.S. occupation.

Kharrazi made no comment on the tense situation in southern Iraq, where al-Sadr was holed up in his office in the holy city of Najaf.

http://cbsnewyork.com/international/Iran-US-Iraq-ai/resources_news_html

Crime Pays, Terrorists Find

April 14, 2004
The Wall Street Journal
Glenn R. Simpson, David Crawford and Keith Johnson

Terrorists in Europe, their financial pipelines from the Middle East under intense scrutiny by government authorities, have been operating an immigrant-smuggling and passport-forging network to raise money.

European police agencies believe the group Ansar al-Islam, which Spanish police suspect is linked to last month's bombings in Madrid, has been operating a lucrative underground railroad for immigrants across North Africa, Europe and the Middle East, supplying them with fraudulent documents.

The sideline business has served a dual purpose, helping the group to raise funds by selling phony documents to economic migrants and enabling it to infiltrate its own recruits into target countries such as Spain and Iraq.

Italian police probing Ansar cells have concluded there is "wide evidence that these structures have been used to recruit volunteers for military camps in Iraq," as well as to "help illegal immigration towards Italy via Greece and Turkey [and] to provide financial and material means for terrorist activities," according to an Italian police report.

The involvement of terrorists in document fraud isn't new, but the emergence of sophisticated, self-sustaining forgery units that operate like businesses indicates a significant financial reorganization, possibly in response to law-enforcement pressure on the Middle Eastern donors that have long supported such groups.

"Terrorists seem to have found replacements for their traditional systems of funding such as Islamic charities," said Washington-based terrorism analyst Rita Katz, director of a nonprofit think tank called the SITE Institute.

Ansar al-Islam was founded in December 2001, after the U.S. ousted the al Qaeda-backed Taliban regime in Afghanistan. It was originally believed to be a small and relatively harmless offshoot of the al Qaeda terrorism organization, confined to a lawless corner of northern Iraq. But recent German, Spanish and Italian investigations show that Ansar has cells all over Europe and operatives as far away as Singapore and Malaysia.

The growth is based in part on a merger between Ansar, founded by ethnic Kurds including a longtime associate of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden named Mullah Krekar, and a group called al Tawhid, which is controlled by a Jordanian named Abu Musab Zarqawi.

In the pan-European investigation into the March 11 bombings in Madrid by a terrorist cell consisting largely of Moroccans, new links are emerging between the Spanish cell and the Ansar-Tawhid transport network. Spanish police believe the cell behind the Madrid bombings is connected with Ansar through a Moroccan with an arrest record for passport forgery named Amer el Azizi, who they believe met with another Madrid cell leader in Turkey.

Ansar's network works both ways, bringing in migrants and potential terrorists to Europe, and sending people via Europe and Syria to Iraq.

For instance, five Moroccans who traveled through Italy with help from Ansar apparently died last year in Iraq in suicide attacks against U.S. forces, according to a 150-page Italian police report dated Nov. 25, 2003. One of the dead was on an international al Qaeda sanctions list, while another allegedly took part in the attack last October on the al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad during a visit by U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

When Italian police raided the home of a suspected terrorist operative in Padua last October, they uncovered a thriving business dealing in forged travel and residency documents, and €200,000 ($241,000) in cash. German investigators have found evidence that Ansar's European network trades in false documents for its own fighters and anyone else willing to pay the price -- about $700 per passport for economic migrants and $350 for fighters, according to court records.

At first, the Ansar network linked new fighters with shoddily prepared passports to get them to the war in Bosnia. On at least one occasion in late 1995, one of the commanders of the mujahedeen training camp in Zenica, Bosnia, called a cell leader in Madrid to complain about the low quality of the recruits as well as the fake passports they were using.

When mujahedeen arrived at the training camp in Bosnia, their documents were kept safe; passports of those killed in action were recycled for future mujahedeen, according to Spanish police reports, with only the photos being changed. By the beginning of 1996, after the end of war in Bosnia brought mujahedeen back to Spain and looking for a new place to train, Spanish operatives began systematically preparing stolen passports with Pakistani entry visas, the better to get people into Afghanistan across the border.

By the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S., passport operations had become highly developed. But the operations were run as franchises of al Qaeda rather than subsidiaries. Each cell was a profit center that charged for services, and this was a no-credit business, according to German court records.

One Ansar operative told German police he refused in the months after Sept. 11 to provide a false passport for a top plotter of the Sept. 11 attacks, Ramzi Binalshibh, because Mr. Binalshibh didn't have the cash, according to a copy of the interrogation transcript.

Mr. Binalshibh and the operative were friends from their days in Afghanistan, when they both worked directly with Osama bin Laden, according to the court records. But at the time, money was tight, and Mr. Binalshibh was unable to contact friends in Europe who might front the needed cash. Mr. Zarqawi had money and contacts, but he desperately needed falsified documents to move more than 100 fighters from Afghanistan and Iran to Western Europe and North Africa, according to the interrogation transcript.

In a phone conversation monitored by police on Jan. 23, 2002, two Ansar operatives discussed using profits from commercial false ID operations to fund Mr. Binalshibh's passport. Mr. Zarqawi, however, already had allocated all the available profits to pay for passports for his own fighters. Mr. Binalshibh "isn't part of the al Tawhid structure, and has no position in the hierarchy," according to the operative's statement.

Mr. Binalshibh was turned away, and later was captured by U.S. forces in Pakistan.

Write to Glenn R. Simpson at glenn.simpson@wsj.com, David Crawford at david.crawford@wsj.com and Keith Johnson at keith.johnson@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/public/us

Iran Sends Official To Mediate In Iraq's Najaf - BBC

April 14, 2004
Dow Jones Newswires
Dow Jones

LONDON --- Iran Wednesday said it had sent a top Foreign Ministry official to Iraq to help mediate in the standoff between U.S. forces and militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the holy city of Najaf, the BBC reports on its Web site.

Around 2,500 U.S. soldiers outside the city are preparing for action against the al-Mahdi Army.

Al-Sadr has barricaded himself near a shrine in Najaf, and vowed to continue the "popular revolution" against occupying troops.

"I fear only God," he told a Lebanese TV station Tuesday. "I am ready to sacrifice my blood for this country."

U.S. officials have vowed to kill or capture him.

"The target is not Najaf. The target is Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia," said Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy head of U.S. military operations.

Iraqi politicians and clerics have been engaged in a mediation attempt to avert a U.S. assault on Najaf.

An envoy appointed by al-Sadr said the cleric had asked him to convey peace proposals to the coalition - but he gave no details.

Colonel Robert Strzelecki - a Polish officer who is spokesman for the multinational force responsible for Najaf - told the BBC that Iraqi security forces were controlling the city and coalition troops were helping patrol its streets.

He said the troops under his command would not take part in any offensive operations.

http://news.nasdaq.com/news/newsStory.aspx?&cpath=20040414ACQDJON200404140846DOWJONESDJONLINE000386.htm

TO THE ARAB WORMS, THOSE WHO KILLED THE ITALIAN HOSTAGE:

WE'LL NOT SURRENDER..NEVER

BASTARD WORMS,ASSASSINS!!

My condolences to you and your country over the death of your hostage.
We need to stand up to the terrorists and hold firm against their tactics.
Our countries can never give in.