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Doha, Feb 19 (IANS) Qatar said Thursday it has recalled its ambassador to Cairo for consultations following an Egyptian official's statement accusing Doha of supporting terrorism. "The state of Qatar recalled its ambassador to Cairo for talks following the statements made by Egypt's envoy at the Arab League," the official Qatar News Agency reported, citing a Qatari foreign ministry source. Earlier, Saad ben Ali Almohanady, a Qatari foreign ministry official in charge of Arab affairs, rejected the Egyptian statement by Tariq Adel, as "mixing terrorism with the murder and burning of civilians in a barbaric manner". The official repeated Doha's...

Copies of a highly critical book land in the private, inaccessible mailboxes of all Members of European Parliament The last time Lithuania’s leader, Dalia Grybauskaite, talked to Vladimir Putin personally was in 2010, when he was still Prime Minister of the Russian government. But Ms Grybauskaite, the president of this small Baltic country of 3 million people, has been talking about him all the time since. And now, she is in trouble. It all started with an interview she gave to the Washington Post (Sept. 24) in which Ms Grybauskaite said that Russia is allowed by “Europe and the world...

In this photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian Presidency, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a news briefing at the Presidency compound in Tehran, Nov. 24, 2013. Iran's leaders have welcomed a landmark nuclear agreement with world powers, calling it a recognition of Iranian nuclear rights and the beginning of an end to international sanctions. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a televised address Sunday that the interim deal reached in Geneva earlier in the day recognizes what Iran says is its "right" to enrich uranium. Iran says its enrichment work is for peaceful...

Two weeks after Israel's alleged bombing raid in Syria, which some foreign reports said targeted North Korean nuclear material, the UN's nuclear watchdog elected Syria as deputy chairman of its General Conference on Monday. The 51st session of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) opened in Vienna on Monday and will run through Friday. The Syrian news agency SANA proudly reported the election on Tuesday, adding that Syria was also successful in including "the Israeli nuclear arsenal as an item on the agenda of the conference." The agenda for the meeting includes the item "Israeli nuclear...

Spinning the UF6 gas until it is up to 5% rich in U-235 produces nuclear fuel. Keep spinning until it is 90% enriched and you have the makings of a bomb. That - combined with the fact that Iran omitted to tell the IAEA about Natanz until its existence was revealed by an opposition group in 2002 - lie at the roots of the global scepticism over Iran's programme. But there is another huge question mark hanging over Isfahan and Natanz: why is the government in such a rush to enrich fuel, when it has no nuclear power plants in...

'THIS IS A WAR': Kidnappings and the perceived hand of Iran demand response, leaders say - Jerusalem -- For Israel, Wednesday's raid was a kidnapping too far. The cross-border raid by Hezbollah gunmen on an Israeli army patrol in northern Israel and the abduction of two soldiers whom the captors declared to be bargaining chips for the release of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners held by Israel prompted a response that threatens the stability of the region. "The notion that this is a limited operation is wrong -- this is a fundamentally new situation," Gen. Gershon Yitzhak, head of the Israeli...

Deflecting increasing criticism for his administration's role in the assassination of former Lebaneese prime minister Rafik Hariri, Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed Saturday that Israel was responsible for the death of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yassir Arafat. "Among the many assassinations that Israel has carried out in a systemic and organized manner, the most dangerous one was the assassination of Arafat," Assad said, addressing a conference of Arab lawyers. Assad, speaking in Damascus, added that "this was done secretly, under the watching eyes of the world. But no country responded - as if nothing had happened at all." The president, facing...

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli did not mince words last week as he lashed out against the Syrian regime. He called Syria under President Bashar Assad a "troublemaker," accused the country of being a "destabilizing element" in the region and described Syrian attempts to close the border with Iraq as a mere "dog-and-pony show" organized by the authorities in Damascus. Ereli's attack on Syria came after a week of harsh rhetoric from Washington aimed at the Syrian president. The first to set the tone was American ambassador in Iraq, Zalmai Khalilzad, who, while speaking to reporters at the State Department,...

<p>An excerpt: "The Jews take pride in something they lie about - the Jews and the Christians. Allah says that the Jews and the Christians say: "We are the sons of Allah and His beloved." and they declare this throughout the world, to modern intellectual streams, to international organizations, and to nations and countries. They say: "Oh people, we, the Jews and Christians, are the sons of Allah and His beloved. Allah made us His sons." They are lying, Allah's wrath upon them."</p>

If anyone's needs reminding about the intent and character of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) towards the United States, one only take a look at this photo, taken at a North Korean pre-school in the capital city of Pyongyang, just yesterday.

At the International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday, Iran seems to have dodged a bullet. Hassan Rowhani, a top Iranian official, certainly thinks so, calling the IAEA decision a "great victory" that proved that Iran is capable of "isolating the US." Yet some proliferation experts, such as the Clinton State Department's point man Robert Einhorn, think the European-IAEA deal is just fine: "This is really a win-win situation for the administration." Which is it? According to Einhorn, the deal is a win for the US because "Iran's nuclear progress is impeded as long as it keeps up the suspension [of...

"There are three species of creatures who when they seem coming are going, when they seem going they come: diplomats, women, and crabs," said John Hay, secretary of state during Teddy Roosevelt's presidency. Women have been freed of this dated, chauvinistic stigma, and crabs never protested anyway. But as far as diplomats are concerned, it appears that Hay was frequently right. For example, there is now an ongoing process to find a solution to the problem of Iran - the hottest problem on President Bush's desk. It appears that attempts are being made to extinguish the flames by means of...

Russia and Iran have almost completed a protocol on returning spent nuclear fuel to Russia and the two countries should sign it soon, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. The United States and Israel fear that the US$800 million Bushehr deal could help Tehran build nuclear weapons. Moscow says that having Iran ship spent nuclear fuel back to Russia will make any such project impossible. The spent fuel return agreement has been delayed repeatedly, however, by what both countries say are mainly financial details. Iran says it doesn't have facilities to store the spent fuel. Russia wants to be paid...

A senior Iranian official has admitted that Tehran supplied Hezbollah with the drone that spent several minutes in Israeli skies in the north of the country on Sunday, an Arab-language newspaper reported Wednesday. Haaretz reported Tuesday that Iranian drone experts from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards took part in the launch from Lebanon of a Hezbollah drone that spent several minutes over northern Israel this week. On Wednesday, the Arab-language Al-Shark Al-Awsat newspaper, which is published in London, quoted a senior official in the Revolutionary Guards as saying that the drone was one of eight Iran-produced unmanned airborne vehicles that the...

TEHRAN - Iran threatened on Monday to strike back at Israel or any other country that attacked its nuclear facilities. U.S. and Israeli officials accuse Iran of seeking to develop atomic bombs under cover of a civilian nuclear program. Iran denies the charges saying it only intends to produce electricity from nuclear power plants. "If Israel or any other country attacks any site in Iran, we know no limits to threaten their interests," Deputy Revolutionary Guards Commander Mohammad-Baqer Zolqadr said. "That means anywhere in the world, within their borders or outside it," he told reporters on Monday on the sidelines...

(IsraelNN.com) Diplomatic officials are indicating the situation should be rectified shortly. At present, the IDF’s search and rescue team is not being permitted to operate at the scene of the Hilton Hotel bomb attack. Egyptian officials on the scene are preventing the Homefront Command’s experts from beginning to search the ruble for bodies and possibly survivors.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has rejected a resolution from the U.N. nuclear watchdog that it should freeze uranium enrichment, its chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani says. "Iran will not accept any obligation regarding the suspension of uranium enrichment," he told a news conference on Sunday. "No international body can force Iran to do so." Iran also warned it would stop allowing the U.N. snap checks of nuclear sites if the atomic issue was sent to the Security Council. "If they want to send Iran to the Security Council, it is not wise, and we will stop implementing the Additional Protocol,"...

PARIS, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Iran is using numerous front companies to buy materials for its secret nuclear weapons programme, a group of Iranian exiles that has reported accurately about Tehran's atomic programme said on Friday. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an exiled opposition group that Washington listed as a terrorist organisation last year, said Tehran uses front firms to "portray its nuclear activities as benign work by the private sector". The United States, like the NCRI, accuses Iran of developing atomic weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy programme. Oil-rich Iran denies the charge and...

Current international efforts to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons are not enough, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a Jerusalem Post interview Tuesday. "Actions are being taken, but I don' t think the pressure is enough," Sharon said. Sharon said there needs to be increased supervision of Iran, and that the issue should be brought to the United Nations Security Council. Israel, Sharon said, is not leading the campaign against Iran, but "is taking its own measures to defend itself..." He did not elaborate. Sharon said that if the international community wants to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,...

Iran is ready to repeat a test of a new version of its Shahab-3 ballistic missile, a weapon Iran maintains it produced in response to Israeli efforts to improve its own missile power and test-fired successfully last month. Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said his employees were ready to test the missile "in the presence of observers," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. He did not elaborate. In August, the Defense Ministry announced the new version of the Shahab-3 _ which already was capable of reaching Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East _ had been successfully test-fired. Israeli...