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China's Jiang to talk terror and politics on three continents
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Reuters
BEIJING -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin sets off on Monday on a delicate five-nation mission that includes Libya and Iran, both labelled by Washington as state sponsors of terrorism and buyers of Chinese arms technology.
Jiang's April 8 to 21 expedition is likely to be one of his last overseas before his expected retirement as
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Tabriz Friday prayer leader says Palestinian intifadah will destroy Israel
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BBC Monitoring Service
Text of report by Iranian newspaper Kayhan web site on 6 April
Tabriz: The [Palestinian] intifadah will ultimately destroy Israel. The representative of the vali-ye faqih [supreme jurisconsult, Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i] and Tabriz Friday prayer leader [Hojjat ol-Eslam val-Moslemin Mojtahed-Shabestari], mentioned the above in the city's Friday prayers sermons yesterday, and added: The oppressed people of Palestine, with their struggles, are shaking the pillars of Israel.
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Moderate Earthquake Jolts Iran, no casualties
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Reuters
TEHRAN, Iran -- A moderate earthquake shook Iran causing damage to residential houses but there were no immediate reports of casualties, the official IRNA news agency said on Saturday.
The quake, measuring 5.5 on the open-ended Richter scale, was felt late on Friday night in Yazd and Kerman provinces, in central and south-east Iran, in particular in the city of Behabad.
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Bush and Blair say Saddam must be removed
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Financial Times
Tony Blair joined George W. Bush on Saturday to insist that Saddam Hussein must be removed from power in Iraq and his efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction halted.
At a summit overshadowed by the Middle East conflict, the UK prime minister and US president said Palestinian leaders must order an immediate clampdown on terrorist networks and Israel must withdraw "without delay" from the cities it has occupied.
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The Limits of American Influence
Neutrality Act
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The New Republic
What the Middle East really needs, according to a chorus of opinionmakers, is for the United States to intensify its efforts to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Former Clinton national security adviser Samuel Berger insists, "We have to get engaged in this, not in simply admonishments and condemnations, but by putting some real effort here." Senator Joseph Biden demands that the president "step up his involvement," while The Washington Post's Jackson Diehl characterizes the bloodletting as "a dangerous situation that, through timidity and willful inaction, the United States allowed to become a catastrophe."
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Five offenders flogged in Esfahan; gang leader sentenced to death
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BBC Monitoring Service
Text of report in English by Iranian news agency IRNA
Esfahan -- Five armed bandits received each 74 lashes of the whip in one of the major squares of this central Iranian ancient city for a variety of crimes including rape, armed robbery, hooliganism and disrupting public security on various occasions, Saturday evening [5 April].
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Iran continues to train Hizbullah
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ME Newslines
WASHINGTON -- Iran has dismissed appeals by the Bush administration to end training of the Lebanese-based Hizbullah movement, one of 33 groups on the State Department list of terrorist organizations.
U.S. officials said Iran continues to finance and train Hizbullah insurgents in sabotage as well as operating anti-aircraft and other missiles. They said Iran provides as much $100 million a year to Hizbullah.
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Dirt Domes: Breakthrough in Emergency Housing?
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National Geographic Today
In regions of the world devastated by floods, earthquakes, fire, hurricanes, and war, where money and natural resources are lacking, one thing always remains—dirt. That is the material of choice for architect Nader Khalili, who uses dirt to build dome-shaped emergency housing.
Khalili believes his dirt domes, which are cheap, eco-friendly, and quick to construct, could provide housing for the more than a billion people worldwide who lack adequate shelter.
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Defiant Hamas leaders vow to continue terror against Israel
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Independent
The Gaza Strip has not faced the military onslaught that Israel is conducting on the West Bank, but leaders of the radical group Hamas are concerned that they will be targeted next as militants are tracked down.
The main members of Hamas in Gaza – Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the group's spiritual leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, known for his fiery speeches, and Mahmoud Zahar, a leading spokesman – still appear at rallies and other public events, but have altered their routines.
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Troops Vulnerable To Missile Attack
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Insight Magazine
It has been more than 10 years since Operation Desert Storm, when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles against targets in Israel and Saudi Arabia, yet the number of deployable U.S. systems to counter even a modest barrage of modernized theater ballistic missiles will be far from adequate for some time.
Today's forecast is that Iraq, Iran and North Korea — President George W. Bush's so-called "Axis of Evil" —
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Hezb eslami, not Hekmatyar, behind anti-Karzai coup plot?
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Iran Press service
KABUL -- Afghan Foreign Minister Abdollah Abdollah denied Saturday earlier information that the former Afghan prime minister Golboddin Hekmatyar has been behind a coup attempt aimed at killing the interim Prime Minister Hamed Karzai and toppling his United Nations installed government.
Talking to reporters in a press conference, Dr. Abdollah however confirmed that at least 160 people had been
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US and UK call for Iraq 'change'
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BBC
US President George W Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair have expressed their support for a change of regime in Iraq.
Speaking after a summit in Texas, Mr Blair said all options were open if Iraq continued to defy the United Nations by blocking weapons inspections.
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French Judge Stand's as Secret Ally
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Insight Magazine
A raid conducted at the end of March by U.S. and Pakistani law-enforcement officials in the city of Faisalabad, Pakistan, netted a top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden named Abu Zubaydah. He is believed to know virtually every secret worth knowing about the organizational structure of the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
According to a Pakistani official who announced the successful raid, Abu Zubaydah was wounded in the groin
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$100,000 bounty on Westerners
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The Observer
Islamist guerrillas hope to stir a new jihad in Afghanistan by offering huge rewards for the kidnapping and assassination of Westerners.
Pamphlets known as night letters have appeared in eastern border regions promising bounties of up to $100,000 for the capture or killing of foreign soldiers, aid workers or journalists.
British and US military officials are taking the threat seriously as night letters galvanised support for the Mujahideen campaign against Russia in the Eighties.
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Looking to Washington
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The Jerusalem Reporter
FOR ENTERTAINMENT ON THESE warm evenings in Gaza, many Palestinians gather outside the homes of Hamas and Fatah suicide gunmen and bombers to watch the "farewell clips" the killers record before they set off to murder Israelis. The father of the bomber often takes a seat among the rows of viewers, and tells hovering camera crews he hopes all his children will follow in the new martyr’s footsteps. In yet another chilling precedent, one recent bomber’s mother appeared in the video with her son, spurring him on.
It’s no surprise, in such a climate, that 46 percent of Israeli Jews surveyed last month by Tel Aviv
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