Libya Protest Turns Deadly as Militias Open Fire
CAIRO — Dozens of people were killed in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, on Friday after militiamen opened fire on unarmed protesters, setting off some of the worst violence in the Continue Reading
Obama Calls for Patience in Iran Talks
WASHINGTON — President Obama made a vigorous appeal to Congress on Thursday to give breathing space to his efforts to forge a nuclear deal with Iran, and the prospects for an interim agreement may have improved with the release of a report by international inspectors who said that for the first time in years, they saw evidence that the Iranians have put the brakes on their nuclear expansion. The inspectors, from the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that very few new advanced centrifuges had been installed since President Hassan Rouhani of Iran took office in June, promising a new start with the West, and that little significant progress has been made on the construction of a new nuclear reactor, which became a point of contention in negotiations in Geneva last week. The slowdown, according to diplomats familiar with the Iranian work, was clearly political, not driven by technical problems. […]
Iran FM hopeful on next round of nuclear talks
AP Photo TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s foreign minister says he is hopeful ahead of next week’s negotiations with world powers and reiterated Tehran’s demand for recognition of what it calls its “nuclear rights.” Talks between world powers and Iran are set to resume on Wednesday in Geneva after failing to strike an accord last weekend. Both Iran and the United States have blamed each other for the failure to reach agreement to limit Tehran’s uranium enrichment in exchange for an easing of Western sanctions. Mohammad Javad Zarif says in comments carried by the semi-official Fars news agency on Friday that there is no chance for the upcoming round of talks to succeed if the West ignores Iran’s demand for formal recognition of its right to enrich uranium. Iran denies it’s pursuing a nuclear weapon. © 2013 The Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be […]
New Chinese Panel Said to Oversee Domestic Security and Foreign Policy
BEIJING — China’s new national security committee is mainly based on the Washington model. It will put at the disposal of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, a highly empowered group of security experts who can work the levers of the country’s vast security apparatus — and presumably respond more nimbly than the country’s multilayered party, police and military bureaucracies have been known to do. But the Chinese body, which was announced at the conclusion of a party meeting this week, will apparently differ from the American National Security Council in one crucial aspect: The Chinese version will have dual duties with responsibility over domestic security as well as foreign policy, Chinese experts say. That means the new body will deal with cybersecurity as well as the unrest in China’s Tibet and Xinjiang regions, where resistance against the Han majority population is continuing, according to Shi Yinhong, a professor of […]
Insight: Russia fears return of fighters waging jihad in Syria
NOVOSASITLI, Russia (Reuters) – A scrawny 15-year-old this summer became the first from his deeply religious Muslim village in Russia’s southern Dagestan province to die fighting alongside rebels in Syria. Some regard him as a martyr for joining the rebels in the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who is supported by Russia. Moscow now fears that hundreds of Russian-born militants it says are fighting in Syria will return experienced in warfare to join an insurgency in Dagestan and its other North Caucasus provinces by militants fighting for an Islamic state. Violence in the region claims lives almost daily. Fifteen men from Novosasitli alone have died in shootouts with Russian forces in the last four years, locals say. Analysts say fighters could also try to strike during the 2014 Winter Olympics in February in nearby Sochi. President Vladimir Putin, who has staked his reputation on the Games, has said […]
Iran foreign minister blames West for nuclear talks breakdown
DUBAI (Reuters) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif hit back at U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry late on Tuesday and blamed divisions between Western powers for the failure of talks over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program in Geneva last week. Responding to remarks by Kerry in Abu Dhabi on Monday, Zarif said that blaming Iran only served to undermine confidence in the negotiations which are set for another round on November 20. The United States, the European Union and Iran worked intensively together for months on a proposal to help end the 10-year stand-off over Iran’s nuclear program, diplomats said, but talks in Geneva between Tehran and six world powers to agree the deal ended on Saturday without agreement. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Paris could not accept a "fool’s game" – in other words, a weak deal with Iran. Diplomats from other Western nations at first […]
Iran’s Full Return to Oil Market Remains Perilous, Barclays Says
The breakdown of negotiations between the U.S. and world powers highlights how difficult it will be for Iran to make a full return as an oil exporter in the near future, according to Barclays Plc. The six-nation negotiating group in Geneva didn’t agree during Nov. 9 talks with Iran on alterations to its nuclear program that would allow financial sanctions to be eased. Even had the talks been more successful, the U.S. Congress has little appetite to lift measures banning imports of Iranian crude and is considered proposals to tighten sanctions further, Miswin Mahesh, a London-based commodities analyst at Barclays, said today in an e-mailed report. “Given the constellation of forces that could stymie a grand bargain, we contend that the path to Iran’s full return to the oil market remains quite perilous,” Mahesh said. The failure of the talks prompted December Brent crude futures to climb 1.2 percent […]
Iran Talks Face Resistance in U.S. Congress
WASHINGTON — After having come tantalizingly close over the weekend to an agreement to freeze Iran’s nuclear program , the Obama administration is gingerly weighing a threat to the talks potentially more troublesome than the opaque leadership in Tehran: Congress. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet behind closed doors on Wednesday afternoon with members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee to try to head off a new round of stiff sanctions on Iran that administration officials fear could derail the talks in Geneva. In addition, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; Mr. Kerry; Wendy R. Sherman, the administration’s chief negotiator; and David S. Cohen, under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, are scheduled to brief Senate Democratic leaders that day in a full-court press to win backing of the diplomatic initiative. But the administration is running headlong into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu […]
Iran is negotiating with the wrong US officials
John Kerry To understand the dynamics involved in U.S. policy on Iran, it is important to mark the difference between direct and indirect economic sanctions. Direct sanctions bar specific individuals and companies from conducting international trade, using the global banking system or traveling abroad and in some cases result in asset freezes. Most direct sanctions are established and enforced by executive order, and the president has some leeway in easing these sanctions. However, they are not the sanctions that are allegedly crippling Iran’s economy. Indirect sanctions, on the other hand, are based in U.S. law and cannot easily be offered up as bargaining chips in the current negotiations. These sanctions are sometimes called business-choice sanctions or extraterritorial sanctions. They are meant to affect Iran’s overall economy rather than punish or stop illicit proliferation activities, which is the focus of direct sanctions. Indirect sanctions work by offering firms a choice […]
Iran Says It Has Agreed to ‘Road Map’ With U.N. Agency on Nuclear Inspections
PARIS — The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday that Iran had agreed to resolve all outstanding issues with the agency and would allow international inspectors “managed access” to two important nuclear facilities that have not been regularly viewed. But the promise of wider scrutiny did not extend to one of the most contentious locations: the Parchin military site southwest of Tehran. Inspectors from the agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, have been trying for months to see selected areas of that site, where they suspect that Iran at one time tested triggering devices for nuclear weapons. “This is an important step forward to start with, but much more needs to be done,” Yukiya Amano, the director general of the agency, told reporters in Tehran. The agreement came on the heels of talks between Iran and six world powers over Iran’s nuclear program. Those talks ended without an […]