Britain criticised as obscene the presence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at this week’s global food summit in Rome, saying he had inflicted shortages on millions of his own people by his ”profound misrule”. Mugabe flew into Rome late on Sunday, making his first official trip abroad since elections condemned by Western leaders as fraudulent.
Iran’s president said on Monday Israel would soon disappear off the map and that the ”satanic power” of the United States faced destruction, in his latest verbal attack on the Islamic Republic’s arch-foes. Opposition to Israel is a fundamental principle in Shi’ite Muslim Iran, which backs Palestinian militants opposed to peace.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe flew into Rome for a global food summit on Sunday, his first official trip abroad since elections condemned by Western and opposition leaders as fraudulent. A British Foreign Office spokesperson said: ”It is a matter of concern to us and we would prefer that he did not attend.”
It has been described as a global crisis pushing 100-million people into hunger, threatening to stoke social and political turmoil and set the fight against world poverty back by seven years. Now, the food price crisis will be tackled by world leaders, who meet in Rome next week to seek ways of reducing the suffering for the world’s poorest people.
The Iranian government has proposed the creation of an international consortium to enrich uranium on its own soil as a way of defusing the tense stand-off over its nuclear programme. The proposal is part of a ”new and comprehensive initiative” put forward by Iran ahead of a planned visit to Tehran by Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief.
United States President George Bush used a visit to Israel on Thursday to denounce Democratic party offers to negotiate with America’s enemies in the Middle East as comparable to appeasement of Hitler. Although Bush did not name any Democratic politician, the party’s presidential contender Barack Obama has offered to open negotiations with the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim leader Saad al-Hariri pledged on Tuesday there would be no political surrender to what he called a bid by Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian backers to impose their will on the nation by force. The Shi’ite Hezbollah group and its opposition allies have routed supporters of the Sunni-led government in Beirut.
A top cleric on Friday vowed that Iran would deal a knock-out blow to what he called maniacs in the United States and Israel if they ever attacked the Islamic republic. ”If maniacs in Washington or Tel Aviv seek to take action, the Iranian nation will slap them so hard they will not get off the floor,” hard-line cleric Ahmad Khatami said.
Iranian conservatives were on Saturday heading for a crushing victory in parliamentary elections over reformists who were sidelined by mass pre-vote disqualifications, partial results showed. Eighty-two seats in the 290 seat Parliament were at stake in the run-off voting on Saturday after the first round on March 14 left conservatives assured of taking a majority in the next Parliament.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could ”totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel. Clinton said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in hopes that this warning would deter any Iranian attack.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday proclaimed Iran was the ”most powerful nation” in the world as the country’s air force boasted of its prowess at a time of mounting tension with the West. ”Iran is the most powerful and independent nation in the world,” Ahmadinejad told a military parade outside Tehran.
Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday reaffirmed his doubts about the accepted version of the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States, describing the strikes as a ”suspect event”. ”Four or five years ago a suspect event took place in New York,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech to a public rally in the holy city of Qom.
Iran would "eliminate Israel from the global arena" if it was attacked by the Jewish state, the deputy commander of the army warned on Tuesday, amid an intensifying war of words. "We are not worried by Israeli manoeuvres, but if Israel takes such action against the Islamic Republic of Iran, we will eliminate it from the global arena," Mohammad Reza Ashtiani said.
Iran said a film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Qur’an of inciting violence was ”heinous” and called on European governments to block any further showing, Iran’s official news agency reported on Friday. The film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders was posted on Thursday on his Freedom Party’ website, which crashed soon afterwards.
Conservatives won a majority in Iran’s parliamentary vote, state television said on Sunday, but the new assembly may still give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a tougher time ahead of next year’s presidential election. Western powers embroiled in a deepening stand-off with Tehran over its disputed nuclear plans condemned Friday’s election as unfair.
Iran began counting votes on Saturday that are likely to keep conservatives in control of Parliament after many opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were blocked from standing in the election. The United States, at loggerheads with Iran over its nuclear programme, said any result was ”cooked”.
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/ 18 February 2008
When Ali started blogging that he was Sudanese and gay, he did not realise he was joining a band of African and Middle Eastern gays and lesbians who, in the face of hostility and repression, have come out online. But within days the messages started coming in to Blackgayarab.
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/ 6 February 2008
Funny, isn’t it, how we have come this far in the United States election campaign, reaching the milestone of results from 24 states in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and still a mystery remains. What, exactly, do these warring candidates stand for?
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/ 4 February 2008
Iran on Monday fired a rocket into space to mark the opening of its first space centre, triggering swift condemnation from the United States amid continued tensions over the Iranian nuclear drive. The space centre, located in the remote desert of western Iran, will be used to launch Iran’s first home-produced satellite in May or June this year, officials said.
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/ 14 January 2008
United States President George Bush heads to Saudi Arabia on Monday to encourage support for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking by the Arab powerbroker and seek help maintaining American pressure on Iran. Bush will spend two nights in the Islamic kingdom, having already visited Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
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/ 21 December 2007
The annual hajj in Saudi Arabia entered its final day on Friday as the last of almost 2,5-million Muslim pilgrims took part in the ritual ”stoning of Satan”. Eager pilgrims from across the world thronged around the Jamarat Bridge at Mina, east of Mecca, from the early hours to throw pebbles at the three massive pillars representing the devil.
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/ 17 December 2007
His middle-of-the-road rock and schmaltzy balladry may have opened him up to much mockery over the years. But not in Tehran. Chris de Burgh is to capitalise on his inoffensive image and not inconsiderable following in the Islamic republic by becoming the first major Western artist to perform live since the 1979 revolution.
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/ 8 December 2007
There are few obvious parallels between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the religiously devout Iranian President, and Jim Morrison, the famously hedonistic lead singer of The Doors. But now the fact that the pair are to share a cinematic bond in the form of biopics directed by Oliver Stone is generating stern disapproval in Tehran.
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/ 5 December 2007
Jubilant Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Wednesday said the United States report confirming his country had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme was a ”declaration of victory”. ”This was a final shot to those who, in the past several years, spread a sense of threat and concern in the world through lies of nuclear weapons.” Ahmadinejad said.
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/ 5 December 2007
A jubilant Iranian leadership called on Tuesday for plans for new United Nations sanctions against the country to be dropped in the face of the United States report confirming it had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme. The report has forced America’s European allies to re-evaluate policy towards Iran on Tuesday.
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/ 4 December 2007
United States intelligence agencies undercut the White House on Monday by disclosing for the first time that Iran has not been pursuing a nuclear weapons development programme for the past four years. The secret report, which was declassified on Monday and published, marked a significant shift from previous estimates.
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/ 3 December 2007
Leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, wary of the repercussions of Iran’s nuclear programme, opened a two-day summit on Monday at which they were joined by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was the first Iranian president to attend the gathering of the neighbouring bloc of wealthy Gulf Arab oil producers.
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/ 1 December 2007
Iran was not to blame for the disappointment expressed by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana after key talks in London on the nuclear crisis failed, chief negotiator Saeed Jalili said on Saturday. Solana said on Friday he was ”disappointed” after the last-ditch talks in London failed to produce a breakthrough.
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/ 27 November 2007
He denounces it as the ”Great Satan”, but the overtures of the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to the United States seem to grow ever more extravagant. Having failed to win a response with a letter to President George Bush, Ahmadinejad has offered himself as an observer in next year’s presidential election.
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/ 26 November 2007
When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, wanted to create a forum to trumpet his populist political message without the interference of media and opposition catcalls he launched his own blog. But he may have failed to reckon with the merciless mud-slinging and sarcasm that characterises communication in much of cyberspace.
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/ 24 November 2007
The laborious work starts well before dawn. Frigid temperatures greet pickers like Ebrahim Baratnejad as they head for the fields to set about the crocuses that yield up one of the most precious ingredients of the Eastern kitchen. But despite the fiddly work extracting saffron stigmas from the flowers, he is a picture of contentment.
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/ 15 November 2007
Israel is quietly preparing for the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran despite public pledges to deny its arch-foe the means to pose an ”existential threat”, Israeli political and defence sources said on Thursday. Israel predicts that Iran’s nuclear programme could produce warheads by 2009.