Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today that UN Security Council resolutions against Tehran would not affect Iran's nuclear policies even if 10 more of them were passed.
The UN Security Council passed a sanctions resolution on December 23rd against Iran, calling for the suspension of Iran's nuclear program, which the U.S. fears is aimed at making nuclear weapons. Iran has always denied the charge.
"The (UN) resolution was born dead and even if they issue 10 more of such resolutions it will not affect Iran's economy and policies," Mr Ahmadinejad said in a speech to parliament broadcast live on state television.
"They want to say, through a psychological war, that the resolution has been very effective ... Falsely, they want to say that Iran has paid a price," the president said.
"We have become a nuclear country today without promising anything to the major powers and this is a great victory that belongs to the people and the parliament," he added. Although the resolution targeted sensitive aspects of Iran's nuclear programme, businesses say investors are being scared off because of the fear of escalation and already meagre investment flows are drying up.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a German magazine that companies should beware of doing business with Iran and think about the possibility of more sanctions.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is expected to move the hands forward on its Doomsday clock at the University of Chicago, a symbolic act reflecting nuclear risk in the world. Atomic experts say they feel the world is nearer to a nuclear disaster than it has ever been.
The symbolic timepiece counts down the minutes to a possible nuclear Armageddon and at 14:30 GMT simultaneous events in London and Washington on Wednesday will see the clock moved forwards from its current time of seven minutes to midnight. The scientists have not said how much it will be moved.
The clock was created by the board of directors of the Chicago-based magazine in 1947 and set to seven minutes to midnight. The hands were last moved forward two minutes in 2002 with the heightened security after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The board of directors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, has not specified which way the hands will move, but in a news release about Wednesday's event they cited "worsening nuclear and climate threats" to the world for changing the clock.
When it was created by the magazine's staff in 1947, it was initially set at seven minutes to midnight and has moved 17 times since then.
It was as close as two minutes to midnight in 1953 following US and Soviet hydrogen bomb tests, and as far away as 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 after the superpowers reached agreement on nuclear arms reductions.
Saddam Hussein's half-brother was decapitated in a horrific execution blunder yesterday.
News that the tyrant's feared intelligence chief's head was ripped clean off by the noose as he plunged from the gallows caused anger among Sunni Arabs, still outraged by the taunting of Saddam at his hanging.
Terror chief Barzan Ibrahim al- Tikriti was hanged alongside former Iraqi judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar.
Government officials showed journalists film of the men side by side in red jumpsuits on the scaffold, looking fearful before they were hooded and nooses were placed around their necks.
There was no disturbance in the execution chamber at the same former secret police base where Saddam died on December 30. Bandar muttered the prayer: "There is no god but God."
Barzan, 55, vocal during the year-long trial for crimes against humanity, appeared to tremble quietly. At 3am Iraqi time (midnight GMT), as the bodies fell, Barzan's head flew off and came to rest by his body. The empty noose hung above him. Bandar swung dead on his rope. Officials said they would not release the film publicly.
Barzan ran the Mukhabarat intelligence service from 1979 to 1983 and personally oversaw torture. During his trial over the 1982 killings of 148 Shias from Dujail, north of Baghdad, a witness said his agents put people in a meat grinder.
Hangmen gauge the length of rope needed to snap the neck without creating enough force to sever the head.
Saleem al-Jibouri, a senior Sunni Arab lawmaker, said Barzan's body may have been weakened by cancer.
Relatives of New Jersey Army National Guard soldiers who will be staying in Iraq four months longer than expected are voicing their anger and disappointment to state officials.
One of their biggest complaints is that soldiers in Iraq learned of the extension either through the media or through family members, who were alerted Thursday.
But Governor Jon Corzine told relatives it was "unacceptable" that the soldiers had not yet received the news and said he would discuss the matter with Pentagon officials.
The extension is part of President Bush's plans to increase troops strength in Iraq. The 159 Guardsmen affected are from New Jersey, Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania.
20000+ More U.S. Troops Get Free Plane Ride To Iraq
Moving along not pressured by public doubts, President George W. Bush plans to announce that he will send about 20000+ more US troops to Iraq as part of a long-delayed new plan for the unpopular war.
There are around 132,000 troops now in Iraq. Bush plans to send more to Baghdad in an effort to stem growing sectarian violence, as well as the western Anbar province, a base of the Sunni insurgency and foreign al-Qaida fighters.
The Air-Strikes Continue "One Al-Qa'ida Leader Down?"
U.S. air-strike on al-Qa'ida targets in southern Somalia continued last night as a Somali government official confirmed that a senior al-Qa'ida suspect wanted for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania was killed in Monday's attack.
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists who has evaded capture for eight years, was killed in the U.S. air-strike early on Monday morning local time, according to a U.S. intelligence report passed on to the Somali authorities. He was allegedly harboured by the Council of Islamic Courts movement that had challenged Somalia's Ethiopian-backed government for power.
Note:Those Claims of a Al-Qa'ida leader killed have since been dismissed as being false, by the U.S. intelligence, they really don't kow who they have killed.
On Tuesday, U.S. helicopter gunships attacked suspected al-Qa'ida fighters in the south, a day after U.S. forces staged airstrikes in the first offensive in the African country since 18 U.S. soldiers were killed there in 1993.
In Washington, an intelligence official said the U.S. forces killed five to 10 people in the attack on a target in southern Somalia believed to be associated with al-Qa'ida. However, a Somali MP said at least 31 civilians, including a newlywed couple, had been killed in the strikes.
The U.S. launched at least two air-strikes on different locations against terror targets in Somalia, hunting down suspected terrorists from Canada, Britain, Pakistan and elsewhere have been among those taken prisoner or injured in military operations in Somalia.
Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia last month to prevent an Islamic movement from ousting the weak, internationally recognised government from its lone stronghold in the west of the country.
The US and Ethiopia both accuse the Islamic group of harbouring extremists, among them al-Qaida suspects.
Along with air-strikes a US AC-130 gunship attacked suspected al-Qaida terrorists near Ras Kamboni in southern Somalia.
Somalia’s president said the US was right to launch air-strikes against al-Qaida suspects in his country.
“The US has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies Kenya and Tanzania,” President Abdullahi Yusuf told the world press in the capital, Mogadishu.
It is the first overt military action by the US in Somalia since the 1990s and the legacy of a botched intervention, known as Black Hawk Down, that left 18 US servicemen dead.
Meanwhile, the US military today said it had sent an aircraft carrier to join three other US warships conducting anti-terror operations off the coast.
US warships have been seeking to capture al-Qaida members thought to be fleeing Somalia in the wake of Ethiopia’s December 24 invasion.
The US attacks took place yesterday afternoon in Badmadow island.
The area is known as Ras Kamboni and is believed to be a suspected terror training base.
The United States' decision to bomb Islamists holed up in a corner of Somalia near the border with Kenya is a high-risk tactic which could ignite an Iraqi-style insurgency across a swathe of East Africa, analysts and regional experts say.
Two of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants were taken from their cells and told they were going to be hanged on the same day the former dictator was executed, their lawyer said Sunday.
But the two condemned men still await death as Iraqi officials decide how to avoid the kind of outcry that followed Saddam's hanging on Dec. 30, over the mobile phone footage being released all over the internet.
Also on Sunday, the US military announced the deaths of five more American troops and at least 14 Iraqis died in bombings and shootings.
Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, were sentenced to hang. They were convicted along with Saddam of involvement in the killings of nearly 150 Shiites in the town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt there against Saddam.
Their executions were postponed, however, until after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha which ended five days ago.
Authorities also decided to give Saddam his own "special day," National Security adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie said at the time of his execution.
Now Iraqi officials must decide how to carry out a second round of executions in the face of worldwide criticism over their handling of Saddam's death. In the final moments of his life, Saddam was taunted by some of those present in the execution chamber as he stood with a noose around his neck.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair criticized the way in which Saddam was executed, his office said Sunday.
"He believes that the manner of the execution was completely wrong, but that should not lead us to forget the crimes that Saddam Hussein committed, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis," a spokeswoman for Blair's office said on condition of anonymity in line with policy.
The United Nations has investigated more than 300 members of UN peacekeeping missions for alleged sexual exploitation and abuse during the past three years and more than half were fired or sent home, according to a senior UN official.
The Daily Telegraph report alleged UN personnel in southern Sudan were involved in sexual exploitation and abuse of more than 20 children.
With close to 200,000 people representing more than 100 countries rotating through the peacekeeping missions every year, some people "are going to behave badly," Jane Holl Lute told a news conference. "What's different now is our determination to stay with this problem and constantly improve our ability to deal with it."
Between January 2004 and the end of November 2006, Lute said, the UN investigated allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse involving 319 peacekeeping personnel "in all missions," from East Timor, the Middle East and Africa to Kosovo and Haiti.
This resulted in the summary dismissal of 18 civilians and the repatriation of 17 international police and 144 military personnel, she said.
According to the Department of Peacekeeping, during the first 10 months of 2006, 63 percent of all misconduct allegations involving peacekeeping personnel were related to sexual exploitation and abuse, a third of them to prostitution.
While allegations of abuse have dogged peacekeeping missions since their inception more than 50 years ago, the issue was thrust into the spotlight after the United Nations found in early 2005 that peacekeepers in Congo had sex with Congolese women and girls, usually in exchange for food or small sums of money.
Jordan's UN Ambassador Prince Zeid al Hussein wrote a report several months later that described the UN military arm as deeply flawed and recommended withholding the salaries of the guilty and requiring nations to pursue legal action against perpetrators. It said abuses had been reported in missions ranging from Bosnia and Kosovo to Cambodia, East Timor, West Africa and Congo.
Anger swept Sunni Muslim strongholds in the Middle East over mobile phone footage that shows Saddam Hussein being taunted by officials moments before he is seen dangling, neck broken and eyes open, from the gallows. The images show moments edited out of official images, adding to anger among Sunnis who claim the former leader faced not justice but a vendetta by the Shiite-dominated Government.
Saddam was buried in the dead of night in a domed, marble-floored hall in the village of Awja, after it was handed over to Sunni tribal leaders from his nearby home town of Tikrit on Saturday. His extended family plans to found a presidential library and religious school at the site.
Iraqi government officials, facing a surge of violence because of the way the execution was handled, insist it was not an act of revenge. "This whole execution is about justice," said Hiwa Osman, an adviser to the Iraqi President.
The hanging showed the 69-year-old Saddam in a favourable light, dressed in a tailored white shirt and black coat and surrounded by burly executioners wearing masks. But there was criticism of the process that allowed observers to shoot scenes of the killing on their mobile phones and hurl insults at the former Iraqi leader.
Syria's Information Minister, Mohsen Bilal, said: "The terrifying images of the execution of Saddam Hussein are a violation of the most basic principles."
Exiled members of Saddam's Baath party appeared on Arab satellite television to denounce the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, as a puppet and ally of the militant Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
Mr Maliki added insult to injury by attending a family wedding the same day. After witnessing the dawn hanging, a few hours later Mr Maliki presided as father of the groom at a ceremony in Baghdad.
The coincidence heightened anger that Saddam had been killed during preparations for Eid, a time when pleas for clemency are heard by even the grimmest Muslim dictators. Mr Maliki is accused of ramming through the year-end execution order in an attempt to improve his grip on power. He moved after an appeals court upheld a November sentence on Saddam over the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims from the town of Dujail in 1982.
PressRoom5 didn't and will not link to mobile video of execution, because it is wrong to show a person being killed by execution. That right to view is only given to victims not the general public, we are way past the Roman Gladiator Days of public deaths, no matter how evil a person may have been. We will link to what was released by the Iraq government and World News Organizations.
The number of American deaths in the Iraq war has reached the milestone of 3,000 as the Bush administration seeks to overhaul its strategy for an unpopular war that shows little sign of ending.
The latest death came during one of the most violent periods during which the Pentagon says hate and revenge killings between Iraq's sects are now a bigger security problem than ever.
The death of a Texas soldier, announced yesterday by the Pentagon, raised the number of US military deaths in Iraq to at least 3,000, according to an Associated Press count, since the war began in March 2003.
President George Bush is struggling to salvage a military campaign that, more than three-and-a-half years after US forces overran the country, has lost support from the American public. Largely because of that discontent, voters gave Democrats control of the new Congress that convenes this week. Democrats have pledged to focus on the war and Bush's conduct of it.
Three thousand deaths are tiny compared with casualties in other protracted wars America has fought in the last century. There were 58,000 Americans killed in the Vietnam War, 36,000 in the Korean conflict, 405,000 in the Second World War and 116,000 in the First World War, according to US Defence Department figures.
Even so, the steadily mounting toll underscores the relentless violence that the massive US investment in lives and money surpassing $380billion U.S. Dollars has not stabilized the country, and may still be getting worse.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today that UN Security Council resolutions against Tehran would not affect Iran's nuclear policies even if 10 more of them were passed.
