Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a congratulation message to the new Pope on Sunday stressed that international structures need to be reformed in a move to protect global peace and justice.
This was mentioned in the Iranian president’s congratulation message to “Pope Francis I” on his election as the new World Catholic Leader.
In his message, the Iranian President referred to the current crises the world is facing, stressing that the today world is in dire need of reforms in the unfair international structures.
He further said the common mission of all prophets of divine religions is to invite people to fight oppression and administer justice.
The President further hoped the world would witness peace and justice.
In relevant remarks in August, President of the UN General Assembly Nasser Abdulaziz also stressed the necessity for reforming the world body’s structure.
“The UN Security Council (UNSC) needs reforms to adapt itself to the new realities in the world,” Abdulaziz said, addressing the inauguration ceremony of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran at the time.
He added that the UN General Assembly has already discussed the need for restructuring the UNSC, and reached some results.
He noted that the UN General Assembly can provide a better room for international cooperation among members.
His remarks came after Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei also said that “the UN Security Council has an illogical, unjust and completely undemocratic structure and mechanism.”
“This is a flagrant form of dictatorship, which is antiquated and obsolete and whose expiry date has passed. It is through abusing this improper mechanism that America and its accomplices have managed to disguise their bullying as noble concepts and impose it on the world,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, addressing the inauguration ceremony of the NAM summit in August.
via Ahmadinejad Calls for Reformed Int’l Structures in Letter to New Pope.
Iran, World Powers’ Experts to Meet in Istanbul Sunday to Set Agenda for Fresh Talks
TEHRAN (FNA)- Expert delegations from Iran and the Group 5+1 are due to meet in Istanbul, Turkey, on Sunday to discuss the agenda for the next round of talks between the two sides.
The two sides’ experts are slated to outline topics of the upcoming talks between the chief negotiators of Iran and the G5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) due to be held in Almaty, Kazakhstan in April.
The two sides will likely issue a statement at the end of their two day talks in Istanbul on Monday.
Iran has called on the US and other western states to use the upcoming talks in Kazakhstan as an opportunity to build Tehran’s confidence and prove their honesty.
The last round of the talks between Tehran and the Group 5+1 ended in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on February 27.
During the talks Iran and the world powers agreed to hold an experts meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, on March 17-18 and then continue their talks at the level of their top negotiators in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on April 5-6.
Before the Almaty talks, Iran and the G5+1 had held three rounds of negotiations in Geneva, two rounds in Istanbul, one round in Baghdad and one round in Moscow in June.
Last week, diplomatic sources in Europe said that the grounds are now ready to lift part of the current economic sanctions on Iran in the next round of talks between Tehran and the six world powers.
According to a report by Norway’s Radio Austin, diplomatic circles in Europe have announced that the next meeting between Iran and G5+1 will witness a real change in the Iran-West nuclear standoff and at the end of the day “the Europeans will announce a partial removal of economic sanctions against Iran”.
The report said that Europeans have realized that softening Iran’s economic sanctions is a must since they have failed to prevent Iran from installing thousands of new generation centrifuges and the economic sanctions have left no impact on the activities of Iranian scientists.
The report came after Iran voiced optimism about the removal of the West’s unjust sanctions in the new Iranian year (to start March 21).
The announced was made by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi in a joint press conference with his Benin counterpart Nassirou Arifari Bako in Tehran.
Based on the latest information, the next Iranian year will be promising for lifting the sanctions, the Iranian minister said.
He said that the time is ripe to resolve the nuclear dispute with the western governments.
via Fars News Agency :: Iran, World Powers’ Experts to Meet in Istanbul Sunday to Set Agenda for Fresh Talks.
TEHRAN – Iranian and Turkish private sectors can help streamline the bilateral trade through removing the problem of money transferring between the two countries, IRNA quoted Iranian deputy trade minister Hamid Safdel as saying.
In an interview with the Turkish newspaper Dunya, he referred to the current level of bilateral trade, which stands at $20 billion, as insignificant, and added that a preferential trade agreement will be signed in the current year between the two neighbors.
He pointed to the establishment of 2,300 Iranian companies in Turkey, and said, “The visit by about two million Iranian tourists to Turkey is also a good sign of tourism cooperation between Iran and Turkey, but it cannot be said that in spite of this potential, the tourism between the two countries is assessed as quite satisfactory.”
On January 1, IRNA cited data by Turkey’s statistics center, indicating that the value of trade between Iran and Turkey surpassed $20.8 billion in the first 11 months of 2012, showing around 40 percent rise compared to the same period in 2011.
Turkey’s exports to Iran amounted to $7 billion in the mentioned period, mainly due to the exports of gold to Iran.
Oil, gas, and petrochemicals account for a lion’s share of Iran’s exports to Turkey.
On December 11, 2012, Iran’s Ambassador to Turkey Bahman Hosseinpour said the trade volume between Tehran and Ankara can potentially increase fivefold to as high as $100 billion a year.
The Iranian ambassador added that ample investment opportunities await Turkish investors in Iran.
via Iran, Turkey can streamline bilateral trade through private sectors: official – Tehran Times.
Turkish intelligence officials provided important explanations on a variety of issues including the presence of foreign intelligence units
The National Intelligence Organization (MIT) gave striking answers to the questions of parliamentarian members of the Parliament’s Wiretapping Commission. The MIT responses are summarized as follows:
VULNERABLE TO HACKING
If the necessary measures are not taken in today’s world, all kinds of hardware and software means of communication are be monitored by means of technology. In addition transactions conducted over computer networks can be accessed and hacked from remote locations or infiltrated from within through cooperative methods. While such infiltration can occur through vulnerabilities at the institutional level, it can also result from personal mistakes and negligence.
SEND TO THOSE WHO MUST BE INFORMED
Formerly named the GES Command, the newly named SIB Electronic Intelligence and Communication executed the task of submitting the obtained information the relevant MIT and Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) units according to the “those who need to know principle.”
OUR SATELLITES CAN BE MONITORED
It is possible through technical mean for another country to monitor the communications transmitted through the country’s satellite and so on., and the communications that go or come from abroad independent of the transmission medium.
While it is important from a strategic perspective that systems using satellite communication are located on national and ground stations in Turkey, due to communications being conducted via air, there is always a risk of being tapped by countries that have the necessary technology.
WE DO NOT USE TROJAN
We do not use the Trojan email virus software in our activities. Generally we use open source software in the development of software.
CIA, MOSSAD HAVE TURKISH OFFICES
(Can foreign intelligence services open offices in Turkey?) When necessary MIT cooperates with the intelligence services of foreign countries. In this sense, just as our organization has offices in other countries, the offices of other countries can be found in ours.
BE CAREFUL WITH PROMOTIONAL DEVICES
It should be taken into consideration that all kinds of electronic devices can be used by hostile elements for hidden listening and monitoring. On a personal basis, the necessary measures should especially be taken with promotional devices.
THREATS TO NATIONAL PROJECT PERSONNEL
(How do you assess plot initiatives toward the MILGEM, Milli Geni, and HAVELSAN projects?) We have started implementing the Counter Intelligence concept in order to detect and prevent potential threats to the national projects developed in strategic sectors, and the critical personnel working on said projects.
via CIA and MOSSAD have offices in Turkey | Politics | World Bulletin.
Kerry calls Turkish counterpart, asks for Ankara’s help in restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace process; Ankara turns down request.
US Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, March 1, 2013. Photo: REUTERS/Jacquelyn Martin/Pool
US Secretary of State John Kerry called his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu, last week, asking for help in restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Hurriyet daily reported on Saturday.
Turkey turned down the request citing bad relations between Ankara and Jerusalem and saying the responsibility to fix the murky relations between the two countries falls on Israel.
Relations between Jerusalem and what was once its only Muslim ally crumbled after Israel Navy commandos raided the Mavi Marmara ship in May 2010 to enforce a blockade of the Gaza Strip and killed nine Turks on board after they attacked the commandos.
“Turkey is always ready to do whatever it needs for a fair two-state solution based on the 1967 borders,” Davutoglu said during a joint press conference with Kerry in Ankara on March 1.
“If Israel wants to hear positive statements from Turkey, it needs to review its attitude. It needs to review its attitude toward us, and it needs to review its attitude toward the people in the region and especially the West Bank settlements issue,” the Turkish foreign minister said.
A Turkish official speaking to Hurriyet has accused Jerusalem of blocking attempts to restore relations with Ankara.
Kerry is scheduled to arrive in Israel to promote the peace process shortly after US President Barack Obama finishes his visit to Israel on Friday.
Reuters contributed to this report.
via US asks Turkey for help with ME peace process | JPost | Israel News.
Nuclear experts from Iran and six world powers head to Istanbul next week to discuss a revised international proposal that Iranian officials welcomed as a “turning point” at a meeting in Kazakhstan last month.
The U.S. team to the Istanbul talks, to be held March 18, includes two veteran State Department arms control negotiators, Robert Einhorn and Jim Timbie, as well as Jofi Joseph, an Iran director in the White House WMD shop, US officials told the Back Channel Thursday. Einhorn and Timbie previously attended technical talks with Iran held in Istanbul last July, along with then White House WMD czar Gary Samore, who left the administration in January for Harvard.
Iran’s delegation to the technical talks in Istanbul next week is expected, as last July, to be led by Hamid-Reza Asgari, a longtime member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, who multiple Iranian sources tell Al-Monitor is an Iranian intelligence officer who has been involved in Iran’s international arms control discussions for over a decade. Iran’s team to Istanbul last July also included Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
(A revealing detail on their dynamic comes from a late 2009 US cable, released by Wikileaks, and written by then US envoy to the IAEA Glyn Davies. It describes Soltanieh as having moved to shake US Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Poneman’s hand at a 2009 Vienna meeting, “necessitating Iranian Legal Advisor Asgari to pull him [Soltanieh] away from” the U.S. delegation, Davies wrote.)
American and Iranian officials had fairly extensive discussions at the last technical meeting in Istanbul last July, a senior US official, speaking not for attribution, told journalists at P5+1 talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan last month.
“There’s a little heightened hope that Iran will respond in a meaningful way when they meet,” Mark Fitzpatrick, a former State Department arms control official now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, told the Back Channel Thursday. “If Iran comes back engaging in the details…if they are talking the same language…it would be very much progress.”
President Obama, speaking on Wednesday ahead of his first presidential trip to Israel next week, said that the United States currently assesses it would be at least a year before Iran could manufacture a nuclear weapon if it decided to do so, and the United States and international partners had been intensifying efforts to reach a diplomatic resolution in that window because it would prove more durable.
“Right now, we think it would take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon, but obviously we don’t want to cut it too close,” Obama told Israel’s Channel 2 Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.
“So when I’m consulting with [Israeli Prime Minister] Bibi [Netanyahu], my message to him will be the same as before,” Obama continued. “If we can resolve it diplomatically, that is a more lasting solution. But if not, I continue to keep all options on the table.”
Arms control experts said calculating such a time line involves a complicated set of likely and unlikely assumptions. “If Iran decided today to build nuclear weapons, it would require years, not weeks or months, to deploy a credible nuclear arsenal,” Greg Thielmann, a former US intelligence analyst now with the Arms Control Association, told the Back Channel Thursday.
The Istanbul experts level talks come as Iranian leaders have intensified debate on the pros and cons of direct talks with the United States in recent days, suggesting Tehran may be mulling whether to take President Obama up on the offer and under what conditions.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s official website this week posted previously unreleased photos of Iranian and American officials meeting in Iraq in 2007, as well as interviews with Iranian officials involved in the talks, Al-Monitor reported Thursday. Then US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker told Al-Monitor Friday that he found Tehran’s publication of the photos “interesting,” and said they were of meetings he attended in Iraq in 2007, when he served as the US envoy to Baghdad.
Two Iranian presidential candidates close to the Supreme Leader also weighed in on prospects for US-Iran talks in Iranian media interviews this week.
Ali Akbar Velayati, the Supreme Leader’s longtime foreign policy advisor and a former Iranian foreign minister, speaking to Iranian journalists Wednesday, “said that as long as Americans have not changed their behavior and methods of conduct with Iran, the stance of the Islamic Republic of Iran will remain unchanged,” the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Thursday.
But former Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani said there were situations when the Supreme Leader would endorse talks with the Americans, as he has on certain occasions in the past.
“It is not the Supreme Leader’s view that Iran and the United States should not have negotiations and relations until the Day of Judgment,” Rowhani, the Supreme Leader’s representative to the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, was cited by Iranian media Thursday.
“If there is a situation where the country’s dignity and interests are..served, he will give permission for dialogue…as…negotiations have been held between the two countries on issues related to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the nuclear (issue),” Rowhani continued.
(Hamid-Reza Asgari, top right, a senior advisor in Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, is pictured with Iran’s envoy to the IAEA Ali Ashgar Soltanieh (left, with beard), attending a meeting in Vienna with French, Russian and American diplomats October 21, 2009. REUTERS/Herwig Prammer.)
This was mentioned in the Iranian president’s congratulation message to “Pope Francis I” on his election as the new World Catholic Leader.
