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Secretary-General Kofi Annan was questioned yesterday — his third grilling — by the independent commission probing corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program, the United Nations said yesterday. U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard acknowledged the sessions, saying Annan met twice last year with the commission, headed by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker. "[Annan] has met more than once for an extended period of time with Mr. Volcker and his investigators," Eckhard said. There have been no specific allegations of wrongdoing leveled at Annan, but the U.N. leader has been fending off calls for his resignation by Republicans on Capitol Hill...

Top News Story U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs)News Release On the Web: http://www.dod.mil/releases/2005/nr20050117-1987.html Media contact: +1 (703) 697-5131 Public contact:http://www.dod.mil/faq/comment.html or +1 (703) 428-0711   No. 046-05 IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 17, 2005 Statement from Pentagon Spokesman Lawrence DiRita on Latest Seymour Hersh Article             The Iranian regime’s apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides in the New Yorker article titled “The Coming Wars.”              Mr. Hersh’s article is so riddled with errors of fundamental...

Top News Story US Special forces 'on the ground' in IranIan TraynorMonday January 17, 2005The GuardianAmerican special forces have been on the ground inside Iran scouting for US air strike targets for suspected nuclear weapons sites, according to the renowned US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. In an article in the latest edition of the New Yorker, Mr Hersh, who was the first to uncover the US human rights abuses against Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison last year, reports that Pakistan, under a deal with Washington, has been supplying information on Iranian military sites and on its nuclear programme,...

Top Story Jordan King receives photo of al-Zarqawi, Iran military chiefs Sat. 15 Jan 2005 Paris, Jan. 15 – A photo showing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian born mastermind behind the latest spate of bombings in Iraq, standing with senior commanders of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was seen by Jordan's King Abdullah II last month, according to an Algerian journalist. "The Islamic Republic's Foreign Minister did not attend the Amman conference of Iraq's neighbors in response to accusations made by Jordan's King Abdullah II", Atwan Tazakrat on Thursday told US-based Radio Farda. "Fifteen days earlier, Jordanian intelligence...

Top News Story Soros supports mullahs: The left embraces yet another enemy Posted: January 14, 20051:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com On Jan. 13, 2005, the pro-mullah American-Iranian Council joined forces with George Soros's Open Society Institute to host Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, to give a talk titled, "The View from Tehran." Soros did not waste any time after supporting with millions of his own money John Kerry's losing 2004 presidential bid. Even before George Bush could be inaugurated the second time, Soros was rolling out the carpet for the mullah's top man in New York. Soros...

Top News Story Iranian agent arrested for al-Qaida ties Connects Tehran to Osama bin Laden's terror network Posted: January 13, 20051:50 p.m. Eastern By Aaron Klein © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com An Iranian agent was arrested yesterday in Kuwait for ties to recent al-Qaida-related attacks in several Middle Eastern countries, according to a popular Mideast radio network. Sawa Radio, which broadcasts throughout the Middle East, reported the unnamed Iranian agent was apprehended by Kuwaiti security forces after intelligence implicated his involvement in an al-Qaida terror network with prior information on recent attacks in Saudi Arabia. Earlier this week, two Kuwaiti security forces were...

Top News Story Israeli think tank: Only U.S. can neutralize Iran SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COMWednesday, January 12, 2005 TEL AVIV — An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would pose greater risks than benefits, a new report concluded.The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies said an Israeli attack on Iran would fail to either destroy all of its nuclear facilities or halt the program. The report said Teheran could retaliate by launching massive rocket and missile strikes on the Jewish state — from either Iran or Lebanon.In 1981, Israeli F-16 multi-role fighters destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in a single bombing...

Speaking on Monday (10 January) at the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels thinktank, Nicholas Burns outlined NATO's new role in the world as focussing on the Middle East, North Africa and South and East Asia. He also said that the Alliance's main focal points in 2005 will be Afghanistan and Iraq... After severe disagreement between NATO members, the Alliance is now also in Iraq - personnel there will be extended from 60 to 300... he said there are two potential problems to NATO achieving its wider aims: the growing military capabilities gap between the US and its European...

"I believe that Europe needs to identify clear conditions and rules for legal economic migration in order to fight illegal immigration", said Mr Frattini... Some, like Germany, insist on their exclusive right to decide the number of their immigrants... "Immigration in itself is probably not the solution to demographic change", Social affairs Commissioner Vladimir Spidla noted. But, he warned that if the immigration levels remain the same, the EU will face a shortfall of 20 million workers, between 2010 and 2030.

Writing in the German monthly journal, Internationale Politik, Guenter Veheugen said that he could "imagine Israel being widely integrated into the European economic structures" and "being a full participant in the internal market". He also wrote that, in the long-term, he would "not even rule out monetary union" with Israel. This is not the first time Mr Verheugen, who is serving his second term as European Commissioner, has spoken out in favour of stronger relations with Israel... Mr Verheugen has retained a heavyweight post in the current Commission being responsible for co-ordinating the EU's legislation to bring it further towards...

Top News Story EU Lessens Nuclear Issue in Iranian Trade Talks [Excerpt] January 12, 2005 Marc Champion and Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck Trade talks between the European Union and Iran to be reopened today won't be linked directly to progress on controlling Iran's nuclear ambitions, EU officials said. The talks, aimed at securing a Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and Iran , were frozen in 2003. They now are being reopened as a result of Iran's Nov. 15 agreement with Britain, France and Germany to suspend its uranium-enrichment program temporarily. Even if nuclear watchdogs were to catch Iran...

Top News Story Iran may resume uranium enrichment in March 10 Jan 2005 13:32:47 GMT Source: Reuters By Parisa Hafezi TEHRAN, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Iran may resume uranium enrichment -- which can be used to make atomic bombs -- in March if talks with the European Union fail to yield satisfactory progress, a senior Iranian security official said on Monday.Even if the talks go well, Hossein Mousavian told Reuters Tehran was only prepared to extend until June the enrichment freeze it began in late November in an effort to disprove U.S. accusations it is seeking nuclear weapons. "The...

Top News Story Iran Won't Allow Military Gear Inspection Monday January 10, 2005 5:16 AMAP Photo NY114 By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran will allow U.N. nuclear experts to take environmental samples at a military site the United States links to an alleged nuclear weapons program but won't allow them to inspect military equipment, the foreign ministry spokesman said Sunday. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said last week that Iran had agreed to grant access to the site at Parchin, just southeast of Tehran, and that his inspectors...

Top Story Saturday January 8, 2005 The Guardian Twenty-five years after the revolution, Kevin Rushby meets a new generation eager to shake off the fundamentalist legacy The world was gone mad. The coach was a Volvo and on the door it said Millwall Football Club. The sound system was playing Elvis as we boarded,"... we can't go on together with suspicious minds..." and the video was Indecent Exposure with Clooney and Zeta-Jones. Outside the door, men were finishing their Winston cigarettes. A girl wore Levi jeans and touched the sticking plaster on her surgically improved nose. A mad world...

Top News Story Group discloses secret nuke effort By Jennifer Joan Lee THE WASHINGTON TIMES PARIS — The Iranian opposition group that exposed the nation's covert nuclear weapons program two years ago said yesterday that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered the effort to continue in secret.    The opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), also disclosed the existence of what it said is a new uranium enrichment facility in central Iran that is nearing completion.     Speaking to reporters in Paris yesterday, Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the NCRI's Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Iranian regime is...

Top News Story Rice Is Said to Pick Trade Negotiator as DeputyBy STEVEN R. WEISMAN Published: January 7, 2005 ASHINGTON, Jan. 6 - Moving to assemble a pragmatic team as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice has selected Robert B. Zoellick, the administration's top trade negotiator, as her deputy and is considering two veteran diplomats with reputations as moderates for the No. 3 job, administration officials said on Thursday.The officials said that the under secretary of state for political affairs, the third-ranking post at the department that is reserved for a member of the foreign service bureaucracy, would probably be...

Top News Story Intel Drone Crashes in Iran?DEBKAfile Exclusive: Unidentified drone crashes at Arak nuclear site in central Iran, according to sources close to Iranian Revolutionary Guards ex-commander Rezai. Evidence in wreckage of intelligence-gathering at presumed uranium enrichment site. Last week, Iranian air force commander said mystery aircraft reported by witnesses over sensitive sites would be shot down.

Top News Story Risks of appeasing Iran's mullahs[Excerpt]By Struan Stevenson Iran's increasing meddling in Iraq and its defiance in its nuclear weapons program pose the greatest challenge to peace and security in Iraq and the whole Middle East, as we enter 2005. ...     Its proxies in that country, including the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), have put forward a united slate, hoping to gain a majority in the newly elected parliament, whose primary task is to draft Iraq's future constitution. The Iranian clerics have never been so close to realizing their decades-old dream of erecting a...

Top News Story Number 936 December 30, 2004 Influencing Iran's Nuclear Activities through Major Power Cooperation Patrick Clawson This is the second part of a two-part series on diplomacy surrounding the Iranian nuclear program and discusses the role of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, with particular focus on Russia and China. The first part appeared as PolicyWatch 928 on December 16. The Iran nuclear issue will be on the international agenda in the coming months. The often-postponed visit to Tehran by the head of Russia's Atomic Energy Agency (Minatom) Alexander Rumyantsev to sign an agreement...

Top News Story Iraq's Shiites rule out Iran model Monday, January 3, 2005 Political coalition says it won't create an Islamic theocracyBAGHDAD In a surprise press conference Sunday, leaders of the Shiite-dominated coalition that is expected to prevail in national elections sought to dispel fears that they are under the secret sway of Iran, or have any desire to create an Islamic theocracy. Speaking in offices that were damaged by a car bomb just six days before, leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance urged disaffected Sunnis to join in the elections for a National Assembly, scheduled for Jan. 30....