MIDDLE EAST ONLINE

Khalilzad urges Iraqi leaders to form broad-based cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian government.

BAGHDAD – The US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, on Tuesday issued a stark warning to Iraq’s interior minister over the importance of impartiality, his second such rebuke within a week.

“For a police force to be credible it has to have the confidence of all the communities,” he said. “You can’t have someone regarded as sectarian as a minister of the interior,” he said in his year end address.

THE INDEPENDENT, ONLINE EDITION, By Patrick Cockburn

21 December 2005

Iraq is disintegrating. The first results from the parliamentary election last week show the country is dividing between Shia, Sunni and Kurdish regions.

Religious fundamentalists now have the upper hand. The secular and nationalist candidate backed by the US and Britain was humiliatingly defeated.

Ruling slate leads in early returns; Sunni predicts `disaster’

Chicago Tribune, December 20, 2005

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s ruling Shiite religious bloc has taken an overwhelming lead in last week’s election and appears destined to retain a strong grip on the government, according to early vote results released Monday by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq.

Sunni leaders expressed deep disappointment in the partial results from 11 of the 18 provinces and charged that there had been voter intimidation by the United Iraqi Alliance, the leading Shiite religious bloc that has ties with Iran.

December,21

VIENNA (Reuters) – Iran reaffirmed its determination to pursue a fully-fledged nuclear programme on Wednesday as the top three European powers reopened dialogue with Tehran over concerns that it is secretly trying to make atomic bombs.

Confrontation rather than compromise has been brewing after declarations from Iran that the Holocaust is a myth and Israel should be wiped out, and a European Union accusation on Tuesday that Tehran has systematically violated human rights at home.

Middle East Times, December 20, 2005

TEHRAN — Iran has spelled out clearly that it will not back away from its bid to conduct sensitive nuclear fuel work, limiting the chance for a compromise at a key meeting on Wednesday with Britain, France and Germany.

For Iran, conducting fuel cycle work and enriching uranium to make reactor fuel is a “right” afforded to all signatories of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“Be certain that we will not back away one iota from our legitimate nuclear rights,” Iran’s hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said last week.

But the so-called EU-3, backed by the United States, argues that the Islamic republic cannot be trusted to carry out enrichment – a process that can be extended to make the explosive core of a nuclear bomb.

Los Angeles Times

TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has barred all Western music from state radio and TV stations, partially reviving a ban imposed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when popular music was outlawed as un-Islamic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In recent years it had become common to hear hip- hop blaring from car radios in Tehran’s streets, and songs by Western pop stars such as Eric Clapton and the Eagles often accompanied Iranian broadcasts.

Tehran, 20 Dec. (AKI) – The Swedish parliament has announced that it will be cutting all ties with the Iranian parliament, which is known as the Majlis. The speaker of the Swedish parliament, Bjorn von Sydow, announced that although he is restricted by constitutional limitations to only act in matters of foreign policy,”it is not reasonable to continue to have relations and contact with the parliament of a country that asks for the cancellation of another country.”

Sweden’s decision to cut all ties with Iran at parliamentary level follows a letter, sent by Rueven Reilin, president of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in November, asking the parliaments of 80 countries to condemn the statements made by the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”.

Stofundamentalsm.com, Tuesday, 20 December 2005

December 18, 2005 – A seminar on issues of fundamentalism was held in Toronto, Canada calling for an end to mullah’s meddling in Iraq and it’s efforts to export fundamentalism.

The event was sponsored by Friends of Humanity, Committee in Defense of Human Rights in Iran, the International Coalition of Women against Fundamentalism in Canada and other Human Rights organizations as well.