Iranian Alert -- January 21, 2004 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD --Americans for Regime Change in Iran

The US media almost entirely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, “this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year.” But most American’s are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East.

There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. Starting June 10th of this year, Iranians have begun taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy. Many even want the US to over throw their government.

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.

In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.

This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.

I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.

If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.

If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.

Khatami Rules Out Political Talks with U.S.

January 21, 2004
The Associated Press
Alexander G. Higgins and Nicolas B. Tatro

DAVOS, Switzerland -- Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called for dialogue Wednesday as a solution to global conflicts but said he felt there was no chance for political talks with the United States because of a lack of respect for Tehran's Islamic government.

"Partnership and security will only come about as a result of dialogue," Khatami said in his keynote speech at the World Economic Forum that drew warm applause.

At a news conference later, however, he made clear that in relation to the United States, dialogue should start with cultural exchanges.

"The dialogue that I spoke of is between cultures and civilizations, between scholars and wise men," Khatami said. "If those are realized, then we can have political dialogue as well."

"The prerequisite for any kind of dialogue is the mutual respect between the two partners to the dialogue. Any time we sense that the other side respects us and isn't forcing anything on us, we are prepared to talk. We have not sensed that from the United States."

Asked if he would speak with Vice President Dick Cheney, who arrives later this week at the conference of government and business leaders, Khatami said he was speaking of a process that would begin with an exchange of scholars and improved cultural ties.

Khatami predicted there would free elections in Iran next month and indicated that his reform movement would contest the balloting despite threats to resign over attempts by hard-liners to disqualify his allies.

"With the will of God, we will have a good election," Khatami said.

The Iranian president, dressed in a black robe with black turban, said in a veiled reference to the United States that military power had limitations in bringing security.

"Military might may perhaps bring transient security," he said. "But the gap between this type of security is the difference between a security based on armed peace and peace based on compassion and friendship toward humanity."

Khatami laughed when he was asked if he was "afraid" of a hard-line U.S. policy that President Bush claims forced Libya and Iran to back off attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Asked about reports that North Korea had supplied Iran with nuclear weapons technology, he said, "I categorically deny that there were nuclear shipments from North Korea to Iran."

Khatami told a small group of reporters after his news conference that Iranian officials had not had any contacts with Israeli officials following a recent appeal for dialogue by Israeli President Moshe Katzav.

He said he felt there was "no chance for peace in the Middle East" as long as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his followers were in power.

However, Khatami took a question from an Israeli reporter at the news conference and said that Iran had a "moral issue" with Israel over the occupation of Palestinian land.

He said recognition of Israel would depend on the Palestinian people and "whatever they decide."

Threats to peace and prosperity -- especially in the Middle East -- dominated the discussion as the annual Alpine gathering began.

Before meeting Khatami, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw urged the United Nations to return to Iraq to help resolve a dispute over elections.

He defended the U.S.-led coalition's decision to go to war and lobbied for international support in the postwar rebuilding.

"I am in no doubt that if we had sat on our hands and not acted, the world would be today a much more dangerous place," Straw said.

He said he also would press Khatami on the nuclear issue. An October visit to Tehran by Straw and his French and German counterparts helped broker an agreement on U.N. access to Iran's nuclear sites.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who took the stage shortly after Khatami, backed his sentiment for dialogue.

"When you care and share -- which is partnership -- then it strengthens the security, it strengthens the stability of that community," he said.

Earlier, Straw expressed hope that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is due here Thursday, will support an American and Iraqi request for U.N. experts to assess whether Iraq could hold elections in time for a transitional government to take over July 1.

"If there were to be a re-engagement of the U.N. and early appointment of highly qualified special representative, that could only assist in this process," Straw said.

U.N. foreign staff pulled out of Iraq in October following two bombings at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, and security remains a concern.

A prominent Iraqi religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, has demanded direct elections but U.S. and Iraqi officials want to use caucuses, saying early elections are not feasible.

Protesters who accuse the forum of being elitist and imperialist tried to stop participants from traveling up the Alps to Davos by blocking access to a main highway at Zurich airport for about half an hour, police said. More demonstrations were planned Saturday, when Cheney is to speak.

Police evacuated part of a hotel in Davos early Wednesday after security services sweeping a room where a forum event was to be held found a firework. The session was held after an hour's delay.

http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2004&m=01&d=21&a=12

New twist in German September 11 case
A German court has postponed its verdict in the trial of a Moroccan student suspected of involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to hear a new witness, in a further dramatic twist to the case.

The court in the northern city of Hamburg said on Wednesday it would allow federal prosecutors to present a witness to testify against Abdelghani Mzoudi, who is charged with more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder for the attacks on New York and Washington.

No new date was given for a verdict.

Defence attorney Guel Pinar said that the witness was an unidentified Iranian intelligence agent claiming to have informed US authorities before September 2001 of an impending attack.

She said the agent had also told German investigators that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, blamed for the coordinated assault with hijacked planes, had threatened Mzoudi's life because it believed he had cooperated with German authorities when questioned.

The court said that the prosecution had applied on Monday to delay the proceedings for 30 days so it could assess the credibility of the witness.

Although the five-judge panel granted the request for a postponement, it had not yet decided on the length of the interruption.

The judges will now on Thursday hear two police officers and a federal prosecutor who have questioned the new witness.

Mzoudi, 31, has been on trial since August and has denied the charges against him.

The prosecution has demanded 15 years in prison for the defendant, who they say provided logistical help to the so-called Hamburg cell that produced three of the suicide hijackers including alleged ringleader Mohammed Atta.

Mzoudi is accused of helping cover the tracks of the cell's members and is believed to have undergone paramilitary training at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan.

In the case's first surprise development, Mzoudi was released by the court in December pending a verdict when a report by Germany's federal crime office gave fresh evidence from a witness in US custody claiming to exonerate him.

Presiding judge Klaus Ruehle had identified an alleged top Al Qaeda operative, Ramzi Binalshibh, as the likely source of new testimony.

But US authorities have nevertheless repeatedly rebuffed German attempts to have Binalshibh appear before the Hamburg court or allow his full testimony to be examined.

The case has threatened to drive a new wedge between Germany and the United States, whose ties were already strained over Berlin's opposition to the Iraq war and reluctance to play a major role in stabilising the country.

The ruling to free Mzoudi was already sharply criticised by US Attorney-General John Ashcroft who has said he was "disappointed" by the twist in the trial and noted that US authorities handled such cases of national security differently.

Hamburg state justice minister Roger Kusch angrily dismissed Mr Ashcroft's comments last week as "uncalled for and presumptuous" and said the judges did not deserve to be criticized because their ruling was "politically undesirable" and "did not fit somebody's ideas."

-- AFP
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1029436.htm

US Renews Call for Free and Fair Election in Iran

January 21, 2004
AFP
Yahoo News

WASHINGTON -- The United States renewed its call for next month's parliamentary elections in Iran to be free and fair as the political crisis over the vote between religious conservatives and reformists continued.

"We think it's important that Iran's leadership permit free and fair elections through an electoral process that meets international standards and that government needs to be responsive to the needs of the people," State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said.

"This is an evolving situation and there are a lot of developments every day," he told reporters. "We are watching these events carefully."

His comments came in response to questions about reports from Tehran that several ministers and vice presidents in President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites)'s reformist government had tendered their resignations to protest the mass disqualification of candidates from the February 20 polls.

Khatami, speaking in Switzerland, has expressed hope the crisis was moving towards settlement and said he did not plan to resign in the showdown.

Iran was plunged into the crisis earlier this month when the conservative Guardians Council, the body that screens all legislation and candidates, disqualified 3,605 of the 8,157 people seeking to stand for the legislature.

Most were reformists and among those blacklisted were prominent figures in Khatami's reform movement and some 83 incumbent MPs.

After Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni ordered the council, all of whose members he directly or indirectly appoints, to be less stringent in its vetting procedure, it reinstated 300 candidates although none were sitting MPs.

Reformists have protested the partial reinstatements as not enough and submitted their resignations, threatening to quit unless the council backs down on what they see as a bid to purge the regime of moderates.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040121/pl_afp/us_iran_vote_040121213912

DoctorZin Note: I hope the State Department means what it says when it calls for "free and fair" elections. Because even if this "crisis" ends soon with the hardliners backing down, there will not be "free and fair" elections in Iran until they stop their practice of vetting the candidates. Currently, only candidates that clearly support the Islamic Regime can even run for office.

Iranian vice-presidents, cabinet ministers resign

Associated Press
1.21.2004

Tehran — Some Iranian cabinet ministers and vice-presidents have resigned to protest the disqualifications of thousands of prospective election candidates, Vice-President Mohammed Ali Abtahi said Wednesday.

Mr. Abtahi did not say how many officials resigned nor did he identify them.

"A number of cabinet ministers and a number of vice-presidents have resigned. Naturally, they are waiting to see how things go," Mr. Abtahi said after a cabinet meeting at the Presidential Palace.

"The Cabinet ministers are very serious in their resignation."

When asked if he had also resigned, Mr. Abtahi smiled but did not respond.

The crisis was triggered when supervisory bodies affiliated with Iran's Guardian Council, an unelected body controlled by hard-liners, disqualified more than a third of the 8,200 people who applied as candidates in the Feb. 20 elections.

State media controlled by hard-liners say those disqualified failed to meet the legal criteria for candidacy, but reformists maintain the move was intended to skew the elections in favor of conservatives.

The announcement of the resignations came a day after the Guardian Council said it was reinstating 200 candidates and would reconsider the cases of thousands more. That came after fierce opposition from reformists to the ban.

Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, who is attending an international conference in Davos, Switzerland, must approve the resignations for them to take effect.

Mr. Khatami, a leading reformer, has warned that he also might resign if the disqualifications are not reversed.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040121.wiran0121/BNStory/International/

Surprise Iranian Witness Delays Verdict in Sept. 11 Trial in Germany

January 21, 2004
Chicago Tribune
John Crewdson and Cam Simpson

WASHINGTON -- On what had been the eve of his widely expected acquittal, the trial of the second person charged by German authorities as an accomplice of the Sept. 11 hijackers was thrown into turmoil Wednesday after prosecutors disclosed the existence of a surprise witness purporting to link Iran to the hijackings.

The mysterious witness, who goes by the name Hamid Reza Zakeri and claims to have been a longtime member of the Iranian intelligence service, is said to have told German investigators that the Sept. 11 plot represented what one termed a "joint venture" between the terrorist group al-Qaida and the Iranian government.

Sources familiar with the witness' story, greeted with pronounced skepticism by some German intelligence officials, say he also implicates the defendant, a 31-year-old former Moroccan student named Abdelghani Mzoudi, as a knowledgeable participant in the hijacking plot.

"If the story was true, the consequences would be remarkable," said one senior intelligence official, who observed that the wittiness' account comes nearly 2 1/2 years after Sept. 11, 2001, and "looks a little bit constructed."

Zakeri is not expected to appear in the high-security Hamburg courtroom Thursday, where officials of the German federal police, the BKA, have been summoned to explain why they believe Zakeri's testimony is credible.

Sabine Westphalen, a spokeswoman for the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg, said the five-judge panel that will decide Mzoudi's fate had received a 30-page transcript of the BKA's interview with Zakeri conducted within the past few days.

Westphalen said the federal prosecutor had asked "to interrupt the hearing of evidence for 30 days in order to be able to examine the data of the witness and its reliability." No verdict is now expected before Jan. 29.

The appeal to the court to consider Zakeri's story amounts to a last-minute move by the chief German prosecutor, Kay Nehm, to preserve the fast-fading possibility of a conviction in what is likely to be the last trial in Germany of an alleged accomplice of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

In the first such trial, which concluded last year, another Moroccan student, Mounir al-Motassadeq, was sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in prison for aiding the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Motassadeq admitted knowing some of the hijackers but denied any foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 plot, in which four airplane hijackings resulted in more than 3,000 deaths. Mzoudi has taken essentially the same stance.

According to the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Zakeri reportedly said Mzoudi acted as the hijackers' liaison with their al-Qaida support network.

Until now, the case against Mzoudi has been entirely circumstantial, resting on evidence showing that he performed a number of logistical and "housekeeping" services for the principal hijackers, both before and after they left Hamburg to begin flying lessons in the U.S.

The prosecution's theory, not supported by any direct evidence or testimony, is that Mzoudi must have known why Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, believed to have piloted the two hijacked jets that struck the World Trade Center, had quietly departed northern Germany for Florida.

In December, however, the Hamburg court ordered Mzoudi's release from prison after being informed by the BKA that a confessed Sept. 11 co-conspirator, Ramzi Binalshibh, had told U.S. intelligence agents that those who did know of the hijacking plot had "never talked to others about the true operations or the establishment of a terrorist cell" in Hamburg.

Any credible evidence linking Iran to Sept. 11 would have immediate and profound repercussions for U.S. relations with Iran and the Muslim world. Bush administration officials have included Iran with North Korea and the former Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein in what they term the "axis of evil."

The Tribune reported last year that Shadi Abadallah, a 26-year-old Jordanian who said he served as one of Osama bin Laden's bodyguards in Afghanistan, previously told the BKA that one of the world's most-wanted terrorists, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, described by Secretary of State Colin Powell as an "al-Qaida associate," was closely allied with the Iranian government.

Zarqawi, a one-legged Jordanian national who heads the al-Tawhid terrorist network, which some U.S. officials say is linked to al-Qaida, has been accused by the Bush administration of helping al-Qaida develop plans to attack the West with radioactive and other weapons of mass destruction.

American officials, who say Zarqawi is responsible for the assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan, have placed a $5 million reward on his head.

Kenneth R. Timmerman, a senior writer for Washington-based Insight magazine, said he interviewed Hamid Zakeri during several telephone conversations last summer and that the man "told a very credible story."

Timmerman said he had been able to corroborate a number of the physical details provided by Zakeri concerning such things as the physical layout of the Tehran headquarters of the Iranian Ministry of Information and Security, or MOIS.

According to an article Timmerman published in July, Zakeri said that he worked for the Iranians' "supreme leader," Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and that he was present at two meetings between senior Iranian and al-Qaida officials in the months before Sept. 11.

Timmerman said Zakeri had provided him a document purportedly signed by the Iranian intelligence chief, Hojjatoleslam Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, in May of 2001, ordering a strike at this country's "economic structure, their [sic] reputation and their internal peace and security."

Because the Mzoudi case is still before the German court, the CIA declined to comment.

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/7765063.htm

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