RAN ANNOUNCES ANTITERRORISM LEGISLATION. Iranian government
spokesman Abdullah Ramezanzadeh announced on 8 September that
legislation on eliminating financing of terrorist groups will be
submitted to the parliament this week, AP reported. He said officials
from the Central Bank of Iran, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance spent a year drafting
the bill, and if the legislature and Guardians Council approve it
Iran will become a member of the 1999 International Convention for
the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (see
http://www.un.org/law/cod/finterr.htm and
http://untreaty.un.org/English/Terrorism/Conv12.pdf). "The bill seeks
to block any financing of groups Iran recognizes as terrorists,"
Ramezanzadeh said. He added that the Al-Qaeda network is on that list
of terrorists but Hamas is not. There is little international
agreement on which groups are terrorist organizations, and
furthermore, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes notes that
"the lack of agreement on a definition of terrorism has been a major
obstacle to meaningful international countermeasures"
(
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/terrorism_definitions.html). BS
HUSSEIN LOYALISTS REPORTEDLY ATTEMPT TO KILL SHI'A CLERIC IN IRAQ.
Unidentified gunmen on 7 September attacked the Al-Najaf home of a senior Shi'a cleric, Grand Ayatollah Bashir al-Najafi, "Iran Daily" reported on 9 September. Two of the ayatollah's aides were wounded,
as was an attacker who was subsequently arrested. Al-Najafi was not
hurt. Sadreddine al-Kubbanji, who heads the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq's office in Al-Najaf, said a man captured
at al-Najafi's home confessed to being a member of deposed President
Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen and to previously killing two U.S. soldiers
in Baghdad's Kazimiyah district, AFP reported on 8 September.
Al-Najafi is one of the Shi'a sources of emulation in Iraq -- the
others are Ayatollahs Ali al-Sistani, Muhammad al-Fayyad, and
Muhammad Said al-Hakim. BS
source: RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 7, No. 171, Part III, 9 September 2003
I anticipate that the interrogation was not done with a cup of coffe.
"The bill seeks to block any financing of groups Iran recognizes as terrorists," Ramezanzadeh said. He added that the Al-Qaeda network is on that list
of terrorists but Hamas is not. There is little international agreement on which groups are terrorist organizations,..."
"Iran recognizes as terrorists," - Kinda leaves a big loophole, doesn't it?
(Hezbollah on the list?)