Posted on 11/09/2004 9:15:27 PM PST by DoctorZIn
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
[Excerpt]
November 9, 2004
Press Briefing by Scott McClellan
Q Can you clarify the status of negotiations with Iran to curtail their nuclear energy program?
MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, there's -- as far as I know at this point, I'm not aware of any formal agreement that has been reached. We will see what happens. Those discussions I think are ongoing between our European friends and Iran. What we have made clear is that Iran needs to fully comply with its international commitments. They made commitments and they need to fully comply. If they do not comply, we think that is a matter that needs to be taken up at the next meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency later this month and referred to the Security Council.
TEHRAN - "Russia plays an important role in Iran's foreign policy, and Tehran has always sought strategic and all-round ties with the Russian Federation," Iranian Vice President Reza Aref said at a meeting with St Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, reports the president's administration.
"By removing certain obstacles and defining their private sectors' realistic potentials the two countries will intensify bilateral cooperation," said Mr Aref.
The Iranian government's special headquarters that handle Russian-Iranian trade and economic relations demonstrates Tehran's interest in promoting bilateral ties, according to Mr Aref.
Mr Aref expressed hope that trade turnover between Russia and Iran would exceed $5 billion in the future through employing their potentials and exchanging expertise.
Mr Aref said Petersburg was a major cultural and economic centre in Russia and urged more intensive contacts between Russian and Iranian regions, above all, in the trade, scientific and cultural spheres.
On Wednesday, Ms Matviyenko is expected to hold meetings with the authorities of Isfaghan, Petersburg's twin town.
Washington, D.C. -- Throughout history, troops like those brave Americans currently liberating Fallujah have demanded the identity of people approaching their lines with the challenge "Who goes there: Friend or foe?" In the case of Tony Blair, the British prime minister whose esteemed stature in the Bush White House has been recognized by an invitation to be the first foreign leader to congratulate the President on his reelection in person, the answer might be "Both."
To be sure, Mr. Blair has amply demonstrated his friendship with America and its leader by his stalwart performance to date on Iraq. In the face of withering criticism at home, most especially within his own Labor Party, the PM has proven a worthy successor to Margaret Thatcher, the famed Iron Lady of 10 Downing Street.
Three of Mr. Blair's Wrongheaded Ideas
It would be a mistake, however, to permit our gratitude for such solidarity and our admiration for Mr. Blair's pluck to obscure the necessary clear-eyed assessment of certain of his other policy proclivities that are, if not actually hostile, then at least contrary to U.S. interests and ill-advised. Three items on (or behind) Mr. Blair's agenda during this week's state visit illustrate his other aspect, a side of the man of which Mr. Bush should be wary:
"Solving" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: For some time, Mr. Blair has insisted that, as he put it last week, this issue is "the single most pressing political challenge in our world today." He has for months tried to parlay his high standing with George W. Bush into something the President understands quite well: political capital. The idea has been to expend it in such a way as to make U.S. policy track with that of the other notoriously anti-Israel members of the so-called "Quartet" - the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.
While Mr. Blair bided his time during the U.S. election crunch, he comes to Washington intent on cashing in. He will try to euchre Mr. Bush into agreeing to compel Israel to make sweeping territorial and other concessions to the Palestinians, without regard for the real and abiding danger posed to democracy's only real and reliable outpost in the Middle East. Such concessions have been met in the past with greater violence, born of the inevitable conclusion that the more terrorism is waged against Israel, the more Israel will be forced to accept the terrorists' demands. The fact that this strategy has not worked in the past and is wholly incompatible with the Bush-Blair policy approach in Iraq seems not to trouble the Prime Minister. It cannot be ignored by the President.
"Containing" Iran: The Prime Minister will also be seeking Mr. Bush's support for the latest in a series of unsavory diplomatic efforts undertaken by Britain, France and Germany and aimed at preventing Islamist Iran from realizing its ill-concealed nuclear weapons ambitions. The Associated Press reported on Monday that "a major breakthrough" was achieved in negotiations last weekend resulting in "a preliminary agreement at the expert level."
Unfortunately, it is absolutely predictable that this "breakthrough" - which Iran's chief negotiator said would, if approved by his government and its European interlocutors, result in "an important change in Iran's relations with Europe and much of the international community in the not-too-distant future" - will go the way of previous efforts to appease Tehran: In due course, it will be supplanted by fresh evidence that Iran continues to acquire nuclear weapons-related technology and capabilities. The United States has no interest in endorsing what amounts to political cover and protection for the further covert pursuit of such activities. Mr. Blair must be firmly if cordially told "Thanks, but no thanks."
"United States of Europe": One item that Mr. Blair may just as soon have go unremarked, but that should be taken up by Mr. Bush nonetheless is the damage the Prime Minister is doing to the Anglo-American "special relationship" by signing onto a European Constitution largely dictated by the French and Germans. Although John Kerry and his ilk would have us believe the recent Franco-German animus over Iraq was a product of President Bush's diplomatic shortcomings in the run-up to the war, actually something far bigger was at work - bigger even than the bribes Saddam paid his French and German friends through the Oil-for-Food scam.
France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder make no secret of their determination to build a united Europe that will be at least diplomatically and economically a rival to American power and an insurmountable obstacle to its exercise. This goal animates the policies Paris and Berlin are applying in every arena and the French and Germans seek through an appalling new constitution to create institutions, bureaucracies and assorted policy mechanisms to assure conformity on the part of Britain and the heretofore pro-American "New Europeans" recently added to the EU.
The Bottom Line
The European Constitution is neither in America's interest nor that of a sovereign and independent Great Britain - the nation that has for so long proven to be an important and valued friend to this country. The fact that Tony Blair has been obliged to submit the document to a referendum offers hope that his people will repudiate it and, in so doing, improve the chances that this relationship will remain special, indeed - and an especially necessary bulwark against the sorts of evils that will arise were we foolishly to sacrifice Israel to, among others, a nuclear-armed Iran.
TEHRAN - Iran has blocked four local photographers from exhibiting some of their work in Paris after certain pictures were deemed to be "against Islamic values and mocking the image of Iranian women."
Sources close to the dispute said Tehran's state-run Museum of Contemporary Art had been due to support the photographers by paying for the packing and shipping of their work so it can appear at the Paris Photo exhibition at the Carrousel du Louvre from November 11-14.
"When the museum sponsors the works it has certain authorities," a spokesman for the museum, Farhad Badpa, told AFP.
"The works that were against Islamic values or mocked the image of Iranian women were omitted. Other works by these artists that did not insult Islamic values were sent to the exhibition."
The four photographers are Shadi Ghadirian, Ramin Haerizadeh, Yalda Amiri and Arash Hanai.
"The museum has offered me no explanation," complained Ghadirian, whose photos feature women clad head to toe in the traditional chador with housekeeping objects - such as pots, kettles and irons - for a face.
"These pictures are reflecting me as an Iranian woman," she asserted. "How can I insult and ridicule my own sex? I do not show anything that crosses the red lines like faces or flesh in my work."
This year the Paris Photo exhibition features 105 galleries from 16 countries.
TEHRAN As a result of a blast in a military plant in Isfahan, central Iran, a worker was killed, Baztab website reported.
The blast in the ammunition manufacturing plant in Lanjan, an industrial area belonging to Irans Ministry of Defense on Tuesday evening led to the severe injury of a worker who succumbed to his wounds on the way to hospital.
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