Iranian Leader Says He'll Free Britons

Apr 4, 9:14 AM (ET)

(AP) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad waves to the media as he arrives at a press conference in...
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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he has pardoned and will free the 15 British sailors and marines detained in the Gulf last month.

Ahmadinejad also gave medals of honor to the Iranian coast guards who intercepted the 15 British sailors and marines in the Gulf, saying Iran will never accept tresspassing of its territorial waters.

"On behalf of the great Iranian people, I want to thank the Iranian Coast Guard who courageously defended and captured those who violated their territorial waters, the president told a press conference.

He then interrupted his speech and pinned medals on the chests of three Coast Guard officers involved in capturing the British sailors and marines in the northern Gulf on March 23.

"We are sorry that British troops remain in Iraq and their sailors are being arrested in Iran," Ahmadinejad said.

He criticized Britain for deploying Leading Seaman Faye Turney, one of the 15 detainees, in the Gulf, pointing out that she is a woman with a child.

Also Wednesday, Iran's state media reported that an Iranian envoy will be allowed to meet five Iranians detained by U.S. forces in northern Iraq since January.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said, however, that American authorities were still considering the request. The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William C. Caldwell, said an international Red Cross team, including one Iranian, had visited the prisoners but he did not say when.

North Korea's Nodong ballistic missiles

Pakistan on brink of disaster as Karachi burns

By Isambard Wilkinson and Massoud Ansari in Karachi, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:37pm BST 12/05/2007

In pictures: Violence in Karachi

Chaos gripped the streets of Karachi yesterday as gun battles left at least 31 people dead and hundreds more injured, threatening a complete breakdown of law and order in Pakistan's largest and most volatile city.

With plumes of black smoke billowing over the city of 12 million people, there were extraordinary scenes as gunmen on motorbikes pumped bullets into crowds demonstrating against Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, while police stood by and watched.

     
Gun battles left at least 31 people dead and hundreds more injured

In images more reminiscent of Baghdad, bloodstained corpses lay where they had fallen in the streets and bodies piled up in hospital morgues. As the sense of crisis deepened, a crisis meeting between Gen Musharraf and the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, resolved to send in paramilitary troops to restore order, and to place the army on standby. The men agreed that a state of emergency would be imposed if the first two options failed.

It was the bloodiest escalation of the two-month long saga which began when the president attempted to sack the country's chief justice in March. The ensuing challenge by lawyers and opposition parties to Gen Musharraf's eight-year rule has left the president - a key Western ally in the "war on terror" - desperately clinging to power.

Opponents believe he had hoped to create a compliant judiciary ahead of elections which he has promised to hold later this year. But what started as a political confrontation has now lit Karachi's tinderbox of ethnic rivalry.

Yesterday's violence erupted as Iftikhar Chaudhry, the suspended chief justice, flew in to Karachi Jinah International Airport to address a rally.

Many of the 15,000 police and security forces deployed in the city stood idly by as armed activists from Karachi's ruling party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a coalition ally of Gen Musharraf, blocked Mr Chaudhry's exit from the airport and took control of the city's central district.

The movement's leader, Altaf Hussain - who lives in self-imposed exile in London - co-ordinated opposition to Mr Chaudhry's arrival and addressed crowds gathered on the streets of Karachi in a mobile phone call relayed by loudspeakers.

He called on supporters to be peaceful but to show whose city it was. Instead, violence reigned.

Gunmen tore off on motorbikes after brazenly firing AK-47 rifles at opposition supporters. One report described MQM gunmen exchanging gunfire for an hour with activists from the exiled former premier Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party.

Road blocks, including trucks with deflated tires, prevented most of Mr Chaudhry's supporters from reaching the airport to greet him. But a few dozen lawyers who reached there on foot chanted, "We are with you. Down with Musharraf." Dozens of vehicles and petrol pumps were set alight by the angry mobs.

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Vehicles were set alight as clashes broke out between political activists

Inside Mr Chaudhry's intended destination, Sind's high court, hundreds of lawyers, some of them bloodied after being beaten up by MQM supporters, milled about chanting slogans and receiving news on their mobile phones about the trouble engulfing them. Outside, MQM activists with pistols tucked into their jeans, blocked the entrance.

Lawyers railed against the government. "This is a shocking attempt by the government to suppress the people," Iqbal Haider, a human rights lawyer and former senator, told The Sunday Telegraph. "Musharraf is making all sorts of mistakes to save himself from sinking."

As fans stirred the humid air, news poured in of unrest spreading to other parts of the country. Convoys of buses, cars and rickshaws festooned with flags of political parties careered through Karachi's main thoroughfares.

Tension has been simmering in Karachi for the past week, with rumours swirling round that Mr Musharraf had allowed conflicting rallies to go ahead to create the requisite level of disorder to justify the declaration of an emergency. The prelude to violence was familiar to Karachi, where hundreds of people were killed in ethnic violence in the 1990s.

Exacerbating the political furore in Karachi over the sacking of Mr Chaudhry is a decades-old and simmering feud between the MQM, a movement supported by the city's mohajir population who migrated from India at Partition in 1947, and ethnic Pathans, who were originally from Pakistan's North West Frontier province.

Opponents of the MQM claim that its actions yesterday were ordered in micro-detail by the movement's autocratic leader, via telephone, from Edgware in north London.

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Lawyers surround suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry

Altaf Hussain wields great influence from afar over Karachi, a city of 15 million. Amid the chaos and bloodshed, the MQM chief addressed tens of thousands of his followers gathered along one of Karachi's main streets.

As his speech echoed over its audience, in other parts of the city gunmen from both heavily armed factions took up positions on rooftops and sprayed streets with automatic gunfire. Dozens of wounded were treated in hospitals.

Last night paramilitary troops were preparing to be deployed in the city as the possibility of a curfew being imposed grew.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=U2LRYNC1TKAKZQFIQMFSFFWAVC...

Doctors Without Borders staffer plotted to kill Olmert
By YAAKOV KATZ
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A Palestinian from the Gaza Strip who works for the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, has been arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed Thursday.

Mazab Bashir, 25, from Deir el-Balah began working with Doctors Without Borders five years ago.

On April 19, he confessed during a Shin Bet interrogation that for months, he had been collecting intelligence on senior Israeli officials, including Olmert and a number of Knesset members.

Bashir met with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in September 2006, and said that the killing was meant to avenge the deaths of Palestinian civilians. He said that he collected information on the Internet to use to target MKs, but then realized that the MKs in question did not live in Jerusalem, the only Israeli city to which his permit granted him access.

Bashir also underwent arms training with the PFLP, and was picked to carry out the planned assassination.

According to the officials, after the doctor realized that the security surrounding Olmert was impenetrable, he began planning the assassination of other Israeli officials, including the head of the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem.

While the decision to target an archeologist may appear strange, the IAA recently found itself in the midst of a bitter struggle over excavations at the Mughrabi Bridge, near the Temple Mount compound.

www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/07/10/pakistan.mosque/index.html#cnnSTCPhoto



ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Eight Pakistani commandos and 50 student militants are dead after Pakistani security forces stormed an Islamabad mosque compound Tuesday morning, minutes after negotiations fell through between a government delegation and radical Islamic students inside, military sources said.


An army armored vehicle moves towards the Red Mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan on Tuesday.

Gunfire erupted moments after an announcement from the government's chief negotiator, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, that talks to end the standoff had failed. As dawn broke over the Pakistani capital, heavy black smoke rose from the site of the mosque and the death toll began to rise.

Dozens of ambulances were parked near the site, waiting for the area to be safe enough to enter.

"After 11 hours of negotiations, we are deeply disappointed that the talks did not succeed," Hussain said, adding that Abdul Rashid Ghazi -- the cleric leading the stand-off inside -- said "no" to every offer from the government.

Fifteen commandos and 20 militants have been wounded in fresh fighting, the military said. Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad told CNN that 50 militants had surrendered by late morning.

Twenty children escaped the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, as fighting began around 4 a.m. Tuesday (11 p.m. GMT Monday), a Pakistani army spokesman said, adding that the children were safe and in the custody of the Pakistan Rangers, a paramilitary organization.

Nine hours later, about 20 women left the mosque, CNN's Syed Mohsin Naqvi said. The fate of scores more hostages held by the militant students is still unknown.

The week-long standoff between Pakistani security forces and the students has left at least 77 people dead with government forces facing heavy resistance from students seeking Taliban-style rule in Islamabad, an army spokesman said.

"The security forces are facing stiff resistance from the militants, but we are making tangible progress," said Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad of the Pakistani armed forces.

Arshad said the operation was aimed at clearing the militants out of the mosque, and he expected the operation would last four to five hours, adding that the militants were barricaded in several parts of the compound, including the basement.

"The militants are quite well armed," he said. "They have small arms, they have rockets, they have grenades."
Pakistani Information Minister Tariq Azim Khan told CNN that there were 300 hostages inside the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, and the government hoped to get them out safely. Watch Pakistan's interior minister discuss the mosque raid

"We have tried our very best to settle this matter amicably," he said. "... We have no choice but to use force, which we always maintained as a last option."

Khan said that between 40 and 60 "hardcore militants" were inside the mosque.

"Hopefully this operation can be concluded pretty shortly," he said. "We will try to keep casualties at a minimum."

Tensions had been simmering for months between police and the students at mosque, who are blamed for a string of recent kidnappings of civilians, Chinese nationals and Pakistani police.

The government has been investigating the activities of the mosque, whose students who are demanding that Taliban-style rule be imposed in the city.

Two students trying to surrender Friday were shot dead by other students in the mosque, intelligence sources said, but gave no additional details of how the shootings occurred.

Ghazi claimed more than 300 people have been killed since Tuesday, but an interior ministry spokesman said the ministry completely rejects that claim.

The violence began Tuesday when about 150 militant Islamic students attacked a police checkpoint close to the mosque. Street clashes quickly erupted, with police firing tear gas at the students and the students fighting back with guns and sticks. They then took refuge in the mosque and an adjoining women's seminary, which the troops subsequently surrounded.

More than 1,200 people, mainly students from the mosque's two Islamic schools, have already fled the compound, but officials don't know exactly how many remain.

Ghazi has said there are 1,900 still in the compound. Meanwhile his brother, Maulana Abdul Aziz, said there are only about 850 inside. Other intelligence sources have told CNN that there are about 800 to 900.

Aziz, the top cleric at the Red Mosque, was captured Wednesday while trying to slip out of the mosque disguised in a burqa -- the head-to-toe covering worn by some Muslim women.

At least 50 of those still inside are well-armed hard-liners, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said Friday.

Although conditions inside the mosque are unknown, friends and relatives outside the mosque are worried for their loved ones.

"I ask these people to leave my son. We are even ready to pay. My son! My son!" said Mozamil Shah, the father of one young boy still holed up inside the mosque.

In efforts to oust the group, officials have cut off water, gas and electricity to the compound. Officials also disconnected 12 telephones Sunday, but an Interior Ministry official told CNN they had no way of shutting down cell phone service from within the mosque.

CNN.com
The House of Representatives voted 223-201 Thursday to require most U.S. troops to leave Iraq by April 1, 2008.

President Bush vetoed a war-spending bill with a similar withdrawal date in May, and has threatened to spike any new effort to set a timetable for a U.S. pullout. His Republican allies in the House said the new measure has no chance of passage.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said Thursday's mixed report on the progress of war shows it's time for American troops to come home.

"President Bush continues to urge patience, but what is needed -- and what the American people are demanding -- is a new direction," she said.