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Iran Women Lawmakers Fight to Save Woman

ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran - Three female Iranian lawmakers stepped up a campaign to save a woman facing imminent execution for killing an intelligence officer she claimed tried to rape her, they told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Afsaneh Nowrouzi was sentenced to death two years ago for the "unjustified murder" of the officer in 1997. The sentence was upheld by Iran's Supreme Court in August following an appeal.

Death sentences are normally carried out days after the verdict is delivered to the prisoner. Nowrouzi was notified last week.

One of the female legislators, Azam Naseripour, said the group petitioned Iran's judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, on Saturday to request a new judicial investigation.

Naseripour told The Associated Press the case should be reopened to "save Nowrouzi from imminent death for legitimate self-defense and protecting her dignity."

Nowrouzi, who is married, has been in a prison in Bandar Abbas, a port city on the Persian Gulf, since killing the officer.

The three petitioning lawmakers, Jamileh Kadivar, Tahereh Ramezanzadeh and Naseripour, said Nowrouzi stabbed the officer to protect her dignity.

Naseripour said the execution would humiliate Iranian women who seek to defend their dignity in this male-dominated society.

"If Nowrouzi is executed, women will be afraid to defend themselves against rape and physical assaults," she said." The execution will have a tremendous negative impact on Iran's women population."

London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International and other groups have condemned the verdict and appealed to Iranian authorities to revoke the sentence. Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the only authority able to grant clemency.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6941783.htm

IAEA deadline nonbinding, says Iranian official

2003-10-06 / Agence France-Presse

Iran intends to answer International Atomic Energy Agency questions over its nuclear program "as quickly as possible," even though it does not consider itself bound by an October 31 deadline to do so, the Islamic republic's representative to the IAEA told AFP yesterday.

"This date of October 31 is not a criteria for us, because we have not accepted this resolution," Ali Akbar Salehi said.

"We have said that we do not consider ourselves to be bound by this resolution, but... we will continue to cooperate with the IAEA and will try to make it so that the answers to outstanding issues will be given as quickly as possible," he added.

In a resolution on September 12, the IAEA's board of governors gave Iran until October 31 to guarantee it was not developing and would not develop atomic weapons.

The resolution, passed after heavy U.S. lobbying, also called on it to sign an additional protocol of the U.N. nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and implement it immediately and unconditionally.

An IAEA team is currently in the Islamic republic for what the agency's chief Mohamed ElBaradei has described as a "decisive" round of inspections and talks aimed at clearing up a number of key questions over Iran's nuclear program.

A failure by Iran to meet the deadline could see Iran being declared in violation of the NPT and the matter being passed to the U.N. Security Council, which could in turn decide to sanction Iran.

But while casting aside the deadline - branded by a string of top officials here as part of a U.S.-Israeli plot to undermine the Islamic regime - Salahi said Iran was determined to continue its cooperation with the IAEA.

http://www.etaiwannews.com/World/2003/10/06/1065405363.htm

Kharazi Condemns Israel Raid on Syria

October 06, 2003
Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting
IRIB News

Tehran -- Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi on Sunday condemned the Zionist regime's air raid on Syria and said that the practice inflames tension and conflict in the region.

He said that the air raid is a gross violation of Syrian territorial integrity and national sovereignty.

"Israeli attack against Syria is an attempt to divert the public opinion from the sufferings of Palestinian people arising from occupation of their country and the subsequent legitimate defense of the Palestinian nation against the occupying force," he s aid.

"By resorting to such aggressions, the Zionist regime posed a threat to the security of the Middle East region," Kharrazi said.

He called on the international community to take explicit stance vis-a-vis the Israeli greed and expansionism and stop continued occupation of the Palestinian territories.

The security of the Middle East and the entire world is being put at risk of the Israeli greed and expansionism, he said.

"The international community's inaction in condemning the Zionist regime's aggression on Syria will embolden the occupying Israel in its aggressive ambitions," Kharrazi said.

http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=189641

Iran: A Nuclear Suicide Bomber?

October 06, 2003
FrontPageMagazine.com
Dick Morris

After 60 years of the threat of nuclear war, we have become a bit blasé when other nations such as Israel, India and Pakistan acquire nuclear weapons.

But if Iran gets the bomb, as it appears to be in a headlong rush to do, it will be a very, very different world in which to live. President Bush needs to be far more aggressive in alerting the American people to that danger and in pressuring Russia to cut off its aid to Iranian nuclear reactors.

As shocking as the actions of individual suicide bombers are to Western sensibilities, imagine what could happen if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons. Would the ethos of men and women willing to die to kill Israelis and Westerners transfer to a nation willing to ignore the constraints of deterrence in its desire to wage a global jihad against the “Great Satan?”

Once, the very tactic of suicide bombing by individuals was so incomprehensible to the American way of thinking that our security measures took no account of the possibility that fanatics would willingly lose their lives to pursue their religious agenda.

The recommendations of the Gore Commission on Air Safety in 1997 focused largely on ensuring that all passengers who checked baggage on a flight actually were on board. The idea that one of them might happily enter a plane that he had arranged to destroy and die with the heathens was so far from the ken of the commission that it did not even address the possibility.

If Iran gets the bomb, do we seriously believe that the concept of deterrence will effectively preclude its use? What is to prevent the logic of the homicide/suicide bomber from functioning at the nation-state level? Is it beyond the realm of possibility that the Iranian ayatollahs might, indeed be willing to sacrifice the faithful in Tehran to obliterate the infidels in New York, London, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles?

In the ’60s, much was made of China’s huge population and the willingness of its leaders to accept huge casualties in a nuclear exchange with the United States. But China never had elevated suicide to an art form as the radical Muslim community has done.

Anyone who doubts Iranian efforts to acquire nuclear weapons need only ask one basic question: Why is this nation with among the world’s largest oil reserves seeking to develop nuclear power if not for a bomb? It cannot be a need to replace oil. Iran is drowning in enough oil to last it for decades if not centuries.

Bush seems to have been finessed by worries that he will be accused of crying wolf if he stands up and accurately warns us of the danger we face from an Iranian bomb. But the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will appear to history to have been an odd reason for complaisance in the face of determined Iranian efforts to go nuclear.

North Korea, while also a deadly nuclear threat, is susceptible to pressure from China, its leading source of food and fuel. But Iran is not subject to pressure from anyone. The insanity of the regime and the fanaticism of its religious devotion to countering the infidel make it the very worst country to get the bomb.

But the instability in Iran, the massive student demonstrations, the overt rejection of the theocracy by three quarters of the voters in the last two elections, all show the vulnerability of the Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Khamenei’s regime. Strong American pressure, economic sanctions (enforced on other countries through the D’Amato Amendment of 1996), television broadcasts into Iran and saber rattling by American troops next door in Iraq could work together to solve this problem for the world.

Bush just needs to get it going. His relative silence on the subject and reluctance to elevate it to its proper place in presidential rhetoric is not just bad politics (inexplicably so) but poor policy, as well.

Dick Morris is a former adviser to President Clinton.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10157

Nuclear Weapons in Iran -- a Threat to Take Seriously

October 06, 2003
The Orlando Sentinel
Ilan Berman

Question: Is Iran trying to develop nuclear weapons?

Ilan Berman: Absolutely. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently found traces of highly enriched uranium in the country. This was confirmation of what a lot of people have suspected for a long time -- that the Iranians are trying to develop their own nuclear fuel cycle, so they can create and enrich radioactive materials on their own for a weapons program.

Q: What role has Russia played in supporting Iran's nuclear program?

A: The Iranian nuclear reactor at Bushehr has essentially been a Russian operation since 1998. Last summer, Russia hammered out a 10-year plan to build five additional reactors for Iran. Russia does everything with a wink and a nod -- that its help is only for "commercial" nuclear activity.

Q: Why have the Russians helped the Iranians?

A: After the Soviet Union collapsed, a wave of radical, violent nationalism with a religious tinge swept Russia's southern rim. The Russians knew the Iranians have a well-deserved reputation as a state sponsor of terrorism. So the Russians created this Faustian bargain to give the Iranians arms and missile know-how in return for Iran staying out of the Caucusus.

Q: How imminent a threat is Iran's nuclear program?

A: Conservative estimates place Iran acquiring a nuclear capability by the end of the decade. More realistic estimates put the window at anywhere from 18 months to three years. An Iranian nuclear capability, per se, is not the problem. If the regime changes and they're pro-American, it doesn't matter. But with the Iranian regime that we have now, a nuclear capability is certainly a problem.

Q: Who controls Iran?

A: The source of power is twofold. The public face of Iran is the president and the regular standing armed forces. The private face is an Islamic council and Islamic clergy that have their own separate structure of power. They're the ones who really call the shots. They have their own armed forces, the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guard. It's the point of contact with terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Very tellingly, Iran's most advanced intermediate ballistic missile is controlled not by their standing armed forces, but by the Republican Guard. So there's a potential for groups like Hezbollah to be fueled with very sophisticated weaponry. I would think this would be keeping people up nights in Washington.

Q: How realistic a possibility is an internal regime change in Iran?

A: This only works if the will of the people is stronger than the will of this increasingly disenfranchised ruling clergy, who control the weapons and the guns and the missiles. I don't think we're there yet.

There's a very narrow window of opportunity for internal regime change before Iran goes nuclear. Then, the chances for a peaceful domestic transition of power towards a more liberal, pluralistic, non-religious-based form of government decline dramatically, because the ruling regime gains all sorts of credibility internationally. They're a nuclear power, and they have stood down the United States.

Q: How would you like to see the threat from Iran addressed?

A: It would be really nice if the international community joined ranks on this issue. It's one thing for the United States to say our companies can't trade with Iran. That's a significant blow to the Iranian economy. But it's a substantially larger blow when everybody decides not to trade with Iran.

For that, you have to talk to the Russians. The Russian consensus that cooperating with Iran is a good idea is beginning to crumble domestically. A respected think tank in Russia recently estimated that by 2006, the Iranians could field an extended-range nuclear missile that would put 20 million people in southern Russia and Ukraine and Kazahkstan at risk.

Q: How can Russia be persuaded to drop its support?

A: My word to the Russians is that caution is in order. You've invested so much into this relationship with Iran, assuming it's going to be an asset. But politics change and countries change and strategic interests change. And all of a sudden Iran becomes a liability.

I think we're going to see a measure of our success in at least slowing down Iran's march toward nuclear capability in how much we can convince the Russians that Iran is actually a liability -- that the more you impede their progress, rather than facilitate it, the better. That's a start.

Ilan Berman is vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edpqa06100603oct06,0,4670266.story?coll=orl-opinion-headlines

Iran to Give IAEA Details of Imported Nuke Parts

October 06, 2003
Reuters
Paul Hughes

TEHRAN -- Iran said on Monday it would give the U.N. nuclear watchdog a list of components imported for enriching uranium, which Washington says is the heart of a secret atomic weapons program.

But Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ali Akbar Salehi said Tehran, which has been given until October 31 to dispel doubts about its atomic aims, could not say exactly where the parts came from.

"These are items which were not bought officially, they were bought through intermediaries and it is not possible to trace intermediaries," Salehi told Reuters by telephone.

"We will give them (the IAEA) a list of the items and we will show them where they were stored because they were stored in a number of places," he added.

An IAEA team arrived in Tehran late last week to conduct talks and inspections aimed at verifying Iran's position that its sophisticated nuclear program is solely geared to producing electricity and not bombs.

Should outstanding doubts remain at the time of the next IAEA Governors Board meeting in November, Iran's case may be sent to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

Salehi's comments were the first details to emerge of concrete steps Iran is taking to meet the IAEA's demands for full transparency about its nuclear program since the IAEA team arrived.

The IAEA has said getting to the bottom of Iran's uranium enrichment program -- which Tehran now acknowledges dates back to 1985 and not 1997 as it had originally told the agency -- is its top priority.

Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear energy reactors, or as bomb material if highly enriched.

SUSPICIOUS TRACES FOUND

IAEA inspectors have found traces of arms-grade enriched uranium at two sites in Iran this year. Tehran says the findings were caused by contamination from imported parts and not a sign that it is secretly producing fissile material.

A Vienna-based diplomat said it was theoretically conceivable that the intermediaries who sold Iran the components on the black market in the 1980s (during the Iran-Iraq war) were no longer contactable, as they probably did not run standard above-board businesses.

At the same time, the diplomat said it would be crucial for Iran to hand over a complete import list and all original documents pertaining to the imports. Anything less would not be considered complete.

Iran refuses to accept as binding the IAEA's September resolution which set the October 31 deadline and called on Iran to halt enrichment activities.

But Salehi said Iranian officials had agreed on an action plan with visiting IAEA officials to answer their outstanding concerns.

"So far things have been going very well. We hope it will continue as it has been. We have an initial understanding of what to do and I hope it speeds up," he said.

However, diplomats remain skeptical that Iran will do enough to satisfy the IAEA.

"We need a report from (IAEA chief Mohamed) ElBaradei," a Western diplomat told Reuters in Vienna. "But I think it's likely that the board will find Iran in non-compliance in a number of areas in November."

http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2003&m=10&d=06&a=7

Dissident Iranian Journalist Released on Bail

October 06, 2003
Reuters
MSNBC News

TEHRAN -- A dissident Iranian journalist known for his outspoken criticism of the Islamic Republic's clerical leaders was released on bail on Monday after four months in jail, his brother said.

Mohsen Sazgara, a one-time press aide to the leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was freed after his family paid the equivalent of $750,000 bail.

Sazgara, who has been editor of several liberal newspapers and news Web sites closed down by the hardline judiciary in the past four years, was arrested in June.

He was charged with provoking student protests that shook Tehran and several other Iranian cities in June and July, his lawyer told the official IRNA news agency.

Rumours had been flying in recent days about Sazgara's deteriorating health, prompting the judiciary to take the unusual step of denying that he had died while in custody.

''He has lost around 20 kg (44 pounds) and we will take him to hospital for a general check-up tonight or tomorrow morning,'' his brother Mehdi Sazgara told Reuters.

''He was imprisoned for almost 113 days but he spent 79 days in solitary confinement,'' he added.

Paris-based media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Friday called on Iranian authorities to give immediate news and guarantees about the health of Sazgara who has heart problems.

According to RSF Iran is the biggest jail for journalists in the Middle East with 17 journalists in prison.

http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters10-06-072937.asp?reg=MIDEAST

Aghajari Deserves Nobel Peace Prize

October 06, 2003
Iran va Jahan
Shaheen Fatemi

Last month some 450 Iranian intellectuals and dissidents sent a petition to the Nobel Committee in support of Hashem Aghajari, a jailed dissident Iranian intellectual as a nominee for the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.

We support this nomination and urge the Committee to seriously consider the implications of such an award as a token of support for the heroic struggle of the Iranian students and intellectual against the oppressive regime of the Mullahs in Iran.

As an intellectual and a university professor, Aghajari was sentenced to death in November 2002 for blasphemy. His statements and utterances in regard to varying interpretations of religious theories and practices have been fully within the realm and practice of "Academic Freedom and Tenure Statement" recognized by the academic community world-wide.

Although his jail term has since been reduced to three years, he is still waiting for a review of his death penalty. He sparked the anger of Iran's religious establishment in a speech on June 19, 2002, when he questioned clerics' right to rule in Iran by calling for an "Islamic Reformation" and saying Muslims "should not blindly ... follow their religious leaders".

The prize is set to be announced in Oslo on October 10. The five members of the Nobel Committee have shown extraordinary courage in the past by choosing such controversial candidates as the Soviet era dissident Andrei Sakharov (1975), the Polish labor-union leader Lech Walesa (1983), Dalai Lama (1989), the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi (1991), the Guatemalan human rights crusader Rigoberta Menchu Tum (1992), and South Korean peace activist Kim Dae Jung (2000).

Among all the candidates being talked about this year, Aghajari is the only one in jail with a pending death sentence hanging over his head.

According to today’s Sunday Times, "Iranian dissident Hachem Aghajari, currently imprisoned in his own country, is one possible laureate, Toennesson said.

"This would send a message of democracy to Iran to encourage it on its road of reform, as well as a message of peace to the United States to convince them that a change in Iran will not come by way of war," he said.

http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2003&m=10&d=06&a=2

Conversation With Khomeini

October 06, 2003
Slate
Christopher Hitchens

I have no respect for the hereditary principle and neither does Shiite Islam, which considers earthly kingship to be profane. But no one can be completely uninterested in heredity per se, and my first thought, on meeting Hossein Khomeini, was that he has his grandfather's eyebrows. Still, our conversation quickly banished the notion that this 45-year-old cleric is the least bit interested in running for his grandpa's job.

He is a relatively junior cleric — a sayeed — but he wears the turban and robe with some aplomb and was until recently a resident of Qum, the holy city of the Iranian Shiites and once the Vatican, so to speak, of the Khomeini theocracy. As soon as it became feasible, however, he moved to Baghdad (where he would have been executed on sight until a few months ago) and is now hoping to establish himself in Karbala, one of the two holy Shiite cities in southern Iraq. He refers as a matter of course to the work of the coalition forces in Iraq as a "liberation." He would prefer, he says, to live in Tehran, but he cannot consider doing so until there has been "liberation" in Iran also.

He speaks perfect Arabic, acquired during the years when the ayatollah and his family were exiled by the shah to live in Karbala, and he knows Iraq reasonably well already. He is of course a figure of fascination to the Iraqi Shiite population, but he doesn't seek any explicit role in their affairs. Nonetheless, his view of developments among them is worth hearing. "Talk of an Islamic state in Iraq is not very serious or very deeply rooted among the people. It is necessary for religion and politics to be separated." When I asked him about Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite anti-American extremist in Iraq who is the son of the late Ayatollah Sadr, murdered by Saddam Hussein, he was dismissive. "He is not considered an interpreter of our religion but only an imitator known only because of his father." Again, there is implicit disapproval of those who trade on the family name.

Even so, I could not resist asking his opinion of the famous fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I cannot say that I understood all of his reply, which was very long and detailed and contained some Quranic references and citations that were (to me at any rate) rather abstruse. But the meaning was very plain. A sentence of death for apostasy cannot really be pronounced, or acted upon, unless there is "an infallible imam," and there is no such thing. The Shiite faithful believe in a "hidden imam" who may one day be restored to them, but they have learned to be wary of impostors or false prophets. In any event, added Khomeini, there was an important distinction between what the Quran said and what an ayatollah as head of state might say. "We cannot nowadays have executions in this form." Indeed, he added, it was the policy of executions that had turned the Islamic revolution in Iran sour in the first place. "Now we have had 25 years of a failed Islamic revolution in Iran, and the people do not want an Islamic regime anymore."

It's not strictly necessary to speak to Hossein Khomeini to appreciate the latter point: Every visitor to Iran confirms it, and a large majority of the Iranians themselves have voted for anti-theocratic candidates. The entrenched and reactionary regime can negate these results up to a certain point; the only question is how long can they do so? Young Khomeini is convinced that the coming upheaval will depend principally on those who once supported his grandfather and have now become disillusioned. I asked him what he would like to see happen, and his reply this time was very terse and did not require any Quranic scriptural authority or explication. The best outcome, he thought, would be a very swift and immediate American invasion of Iran.

It hurt me somewhat to have to tell him that there was scant chance of deliverance coming by this means. He took the news pretty stoically (and I hardly think I was telling him anything he did not know). But I was thinking, wow, this is what happens if you live long enough. You'll hear the ayatollah's grandson saying, not even "Send in the Marines" but "Bring in the 82nd Airborne." I think it was the matter-of-factness of the reply that impressed me the most: He spoke as if talking of the obvious and the uncontroversial.

That reminded me to ask him what he thought of the mullahs' nuclear program. He calmly said that there was no physical force that was stronger than his faith, and thus there was no need for any country to arm itself in this way. No serious or principled Shiite had any fear of his belief being destroyed by any kind of violence. It was not a matter for the state, and the state and religion (he reiterated) ought to be separated—for both their sakes.

Hossein Khomeini operates within an entirely Quranic frame of reference, but what he has to say is obviously of great interest to those who take the secular "regime change" position. The arguments about genocide, terrorism, and WMD—in all of which I believe the Bush administration had (and has) considerable right on its side—are all essentially secondary to the overarching question: Does there exist in the Middle East a real constituency for pluralism and against theocracy and dictatorship. And can the exercise of outside force hope to release and encourage these elements? This is a historic question in the strict sense, because we will not know the true answer for some considerable time. But that does not deprive us of some responsibility to make judgments in the meanwhile, and we have good reason to know that the region can't be left to fester as it is. On my own recent visit to Baghdad, Karbala, and Najaf, as well as to Basra and then Kurdistan, I would say that I saw persuasive evidence of the unleashing of real politics in Iraq and of the highly positive effect of same. Conversation with Khomeini suggests to me that in at least one other highly important neighboring country, the United States has also managed to get on the right side of history, as we used to say.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2089329/

Iran Eyes Azadegan Decision by Summer 2004

October 06, 2003
Reuters
Parinoosh Arami

QESHM ISLAND -- Iran hopes to announce the result of talks with foreign companies bidding to develop the giant untapped Azadegan oilfield by summer 2004, Deputy Oil Minister Mehdi Mirmoezi told reporters on Monday.

"We hope to announce the outcome for the field within the first half of the next Iranian year, beginning in March 2004 - I mean in spring or summer," he told reporters who had travelled down to the Gulf for the inauguration of a new phase of oil projects.

He added broad international competition had entered the race for the massive Azadegan oilfield in western Iran after a Japanese consortium lost exclusive rights.

"French, Dutch, Norwegian, Chinese and Indian companies have been invited for the development of the Azadegan oilfield," he said.

The government-backed Japanese consortium missed a June deadline to seal the $2 billion deal, following pressure from the United States to back away.

Mirmoezi gave his appraisal of other so-called "buy-back" deals with foreign companies seeking to develop Iran's virgin oilfields.

On the development of the Bangestan field, he said two companies, which he declined to name, had reached the final stretch of the race and he hoped to announce a winner by March 2004.

Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh has already said the shortlisted companies are Britain's BP and France's Total.

Spokespeople from Royal Dutch/Shell said on Monday the Anglo-Dutch oil giant was aiming to meet a target of 190,000 barrels per day (bpd) from Iran's offshore Gulf fields by March.

A spokesman for Shell said output from the Nowruz oilfield, which has not yet started production, would hit 90,000 bpd by the beginning of the Iranian year on March 20 while the Soroush field should be pumping 100,000 bpd by then.

Mirmoezi said the final stages of negotiations for the oil layer of the South Pars field were throwing up thorny problems that meant the state National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) could take the project on themselves.

"Particular difficulties have stretched out negotiations. We need to resolve some ambiguities," Mirmoezi told reporters.

"We are doing our best to conclude negotiations but NIOC may undertake the development of the oil layer of South Pars if they do not have the desired result," he added.

http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2003/10/06/rtr1100519.html

More teachers arrested in Iranian cities

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Oct 6, 2003

More teachers have been arrested following their strikes and protest gatherings of yesterday. Several of the arrests have occured yesterday evening and in the early hours of today, following the protest gatherings in front of the offices of the Ministry of Education.

The new arrests have occured in the cities of Abadan, Shiraz, Mashad, Ardabil and Oroomiah (former Rezai-e) as they were shouting slogans against the regime and its leaders. Many others were arrested, yesterday, in the cities of Tehran, Esfahan, Hamadan and Kermanshah during the attacks of the plainclothes men.

Slogans, such as, " Akbar Pinochet, Iran Chili Nemishe" (Akbar - Rafsanjani- the Pinochet, Iran won't become Chili) , "Mardom e ba gheyrat, Hemayat, Hemayat" , (Vaillant people, support, support), "Hokoomat e Adl e Ali, in Hame Bi-Edalati" (The Ali's rule and so much injustice) were shouted by the protesters while getting beaten and arrested by the regime's militiamen.

The situation in the schools have been very tense today and many students and teachers were keeping silence in sign of protest. Many other didn't attend courses.

The Ministry's Intelligence members have been deployed in the schools and are identifying the teachers and sudents who are defying the regime.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_2742.shtml

Iran Gives Inspectors Details on Nuclear Equipment

VOA News
06 Oct 2003, 11:43 UTC

Iran says it is giving international inspectors lists of equipment it bought outside the country for its uranium enrichment program.
A top official in Tehran said the government agreed to turn over the lists as part of an effort to comply with international demands for more information on the Iranian nuclear program.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency discovered traces of highly enriched uranium earlier this year at two locations in Iran. The highly enriched material can be used for nuclear weapons.

Iran said the material must have been on equipment when it was brought into the country for a nuclear program that the Tehran government insists is only designed to produce electricity.

Iran has never officially said where it bought the equipment for centrifuges to enrich uranium, but it has been reported that the gear originated in Pakistan and was sold on the black market.

A delegation from the IAEA traveled to Iran last week to seek more information about the nuclear program. Last month, the IAEA board gave Iran until the end of October to show that it is not developing nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian power program.

http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=3F642949-B0C2-4F66-AD703C54AE8E44F6

MOHSEN SAZEGARA RELEASED

TEHRAN 7 Oct. (IPS)

Mr. Mohsen Sazegara, a prominent dissident politician and journalist known for his outspoken criticism of the Islamic Republic's clerical leaders was released on bail on Monday after four months in jail, the British news agency Reuters quoted his brother as having announced.

A co-founder of a new political party with Mr. Qasem Sho´leh Sa´di and some other “new reformers” who call for radical change in Iranian Constitution, Mr. Sazgara, a one-time press aide to the leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was freed after his family paid the equivalent of $750,000 bail.

Sazgara, who has been editor of several liberal newspapers and news Web sites closed down by the hardline judiciary in the past four years, was arrested in June, charged with provoking student protests that shook Tehran and several other Iranian cities in June and July, his lawyer told the official IRNA news agency.

Rumours had been flying in recent days about Sazgara's deteriorating health, prompting the judiciary to take the unusual step of denying that he had died while in custody and assuring that he was “well, both physically and mentally, detained with other (political) prisoners”.

''He has lost around 20 kg (44 pounds) and we will take him to hospital for a general check-up tonight or tomorrow morning,'' his brother Mehdi Sazgara told Reuters.

''He was imprisoned for almost 113 days but he spent 79 days in solitary confinement'', he added, as other informed Iranian opposition sources outside Iran speculated that the regime had itself exagerated the news about its row with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency to better crackdown influential political dissidents.

“While the whole world seems to be preoccupied with Iran´s nuclear programs, it pays little attention to the worsening human rights situation in Iran and particularly that of political prisoners”, Mr.Javad Sho´leh Sa´di, the youngest son of the lawyer and university rofessor who told Iran Press Service.

Dr. Sho´leh Sa´di was detained last August and suffered torture while in prison, charged with having questionned openly the leader´s religious credentials and his domestic and foreign policies, mostly his defiant opposition to dialogue with the United States.

Besides Mr. Sazegara, several other prominent Iranian journalists, namely Mr. Abbas Abdi, Akbar Ganji, Hoda Saber, Reza Alijani and Taqi Rahmani, to name some, are in jail, with their families and lawyers unable to reach them.

In a recent letter to the authorities, families of the jailed intellectuals have warned that if they continue not releasing any sound information about the status of their relatives, they would have no other choice but to get help from the international community.

Paris-based media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Friday called on Iranian authorities to give immediate news and guarantees about the health of Sazgara who has heart problems, and other jailed dissidents.

According to RSF Iran is the biggest jail for journalists in the Middle East with 17 journalists in prison and its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenehí, one of the world´s “predators” of journalists asnd press freedom. ENDS SAZEGARA RELEASED 71003

http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2003/Oct-2003/sazegara_released_71003.htm

Breaking the Stalemate in Iran

By ROSE GOTTEMOELLER
Published: October 7, 2003
NYTimes

WASHINGTON

"We never asked Russia to not build the plant at Bushehr," Secretary of State Colin Powell said last month. That's strange. When I was in the Clinton administration, we told the Russians, and more than once, not to build that nuclear power plant in Iran. When they persisted, we pushed them to narrow the scope of their cooperation. In this we succeeded.

At the United States' urging, the Russians insisted that the Iranians purchase the nuclear fuel from Russian companies and return the spent fuel to Russia for disposal. Now Russia has almost finished building a reactor at Bushehr, but because of the spent-fuel arrangement the Iranians will not be able to get material for nuclear weapons from it.

That means the Bushehr reactor is not a proliferation problem on par with the plant at Natanz, which Iran built secretly. This plant, not Bushehr, is the main problem for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Still, Bushehr continues to be at the core of American differences with Russia over Iran. The Russians insist that they should be able to build even more reactors at Bushehr; so long as they provide fuel and carry away the spent fuel, the Russians say, there will be no danger of it being used for weapons. The Americans counter that building more reactors in Iran creates a greater potential for a weapons program.

The result is an impasse. The United States insists that Russia cease construction at Bushehr and will not move forward on other issues until Russia agrees. Impossible, say the Russians, citing the loss of a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

This stalemate has prevented Moscow and Washington from working together on projects that could curtail proliferation. An example of how beneficial Russian-American cooperation could be is the Russian proposal to build an international spent-fuel storage site in the city of Krasnoyarsk in western Siberia. Utilities from around the world could send their spent nuclear fuel to Krasnoyarsk. The utilities would pay a fee for the storage; part of that money could be used to help pay for the protection of Russian nuclear facilities against theft and accident.

The project would also be a valuable tool in helping to solve crises in places other than Iran. If the Krasnoyarsk site were available, for example, Russia would be able to take the 8,000 fuel rods that the North Koreans have been using to extract plutonium for nuclear weapons and store them in a safe place.

The United States, however, is refusing to talk to Russia about any site for spent fuel, in Krasnoyarsk or elsewhere, until American concerns about the Bushehr reactor are resolved. This is counterproductive. The contours of a deal are not difficult to imagine:

Russia might agree, for the time being, to limit the project at Bushehr to a single reactor, and link continuing cooperation to Iran's willingness to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency. In particular, Iran needs to clear up questions about its nuclear program by the agency's Oct. 31 deadline. The agency's demand for additional safeguards is another necessary step, but the United States and Russia could cooperate in other areas, like monitoring the fuel services deal.

The United States, for its part, would agree that Russia has taken sufficient action to resolve concerns over the Bushehr reactor, and would move quickly to resume cooperation with Russia on nuclear issues. An international spent-fuel storage facility, like the one proposed for Krasnoyarsk, should be the first item on that agenda.

If the United States and Russia begin to work together, we could see some progress on proliferation. With nuclear crises on two continents, the United States needs every tool it can get, and it needs the cooperation of Moscow.

Rose Gottemoeller, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was responsible for nonproliferation policy at the Department of Energy from 1997 to 2000.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/07/opinion/07GOTT.html?ex=1066104000&en=d7e62c086cde19a7&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE