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.

19/12/2005

DUBAI (Reuters) – An Iraqi militant group posted on the Internet on Monday a video it said showed the killing of a U.S. security consultant it had abducted earlier this month.

The Islamic Army in Iraq said on December 8 it had killed the man, identified as Ronald Schulz, because the U.S. government had not fulfilled its demands, which included freeing all Iraqi prisoners and compensation for Iraqi families.

Agence France Presse, ANKARA – A Turkish court has said that neighboring Iran trained Turkish Islamist radicals and supported “terrorist” activities aimed at undermining Turkey’s strictly secular order, media reports said Sunday.

The accusations came in the reasoning that an Ankara court wrote over the convictions in July of nine Islamist militants in a long-running case over the murders of four prominent pro-secular intellectuals in the 1990s.

London, Dec. 17 – The United Nations General Assembly adopted on Friday a resolution censuring widespread human rights violations in Iran.

The Assembly expressed its serious concern over the continuing harassment, intimidation and persecution of human rights defenders, non-governmental organisations, political opponents, religious dissenters, journalists, and students through undue restrictions on freedoms of assembly, press and expression, arbitrary arrests, as well as the disqualification of large numbers of prospective candidates during the June 2005 presidential elections.

Stopfundamentalism.com

Supporters of Friends OF Humanity joint a rally in Gothenburg, Sweden to condemn Ahmadinejad’s recent terrorizing comments and clerical regime’s meddling in Iraq.

Demonstrators were particularly concerned over the threats posed by the Iranian regime’s against Iraqi stability and. They also called on the Swedish government to take a firm stance against the Iranian regime’s violation of Human Rights, rights of women and to stop the state sponsored terrorism.

The demonstrators also call for referral of the clerical regime’s nuclear file to the UN Security Council.