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Posts Tagged ‘Iran’

Pakistan, Iran sign ‘peace pipeline’ deal

June 13th, 2010 | No Comments


TEHRAN (AFP/Reuters) – Iran and Pakistan formally signed on Sunday an export deal which commits the Islamic republic to supplying its eastern neighbour with natural gas from 2014.
The contract is the latest step in completing a $7 billion “peace pipeline” deal between Iran and Pakistan within the next four years.
“This is a happy day,” Iran’s Deputy Oil Minister Javad Ouji told reporters at the contract signing ceremony in Tehran.
“After decades of negotiations, we are witnessing today the execution of the agreement… to export more than 21 million cubic metres (742 million cubic feet) of natural gas daily from 2014 to Pakistan,” he added. He said that from Monday, Iran will start building the next 300-kilometre leg of the pipeline from the southeastern city of Iranshahr to the Pakistani border, through the Iranian port of Chabahar.
Iran has already constructed 907 kilometres of the pipeline between Asalooyeh, in southern Iran, and Iranshahr, which will carry natural gas from IranÂ’s giant South Pars field.
PakistanÂ’s Deputy Energy Minister Kamran Lashari, who was present at the signing ceremony, said that Islamabad will conduct a one-year feasibility study for building its section of the pipeline.
It will then “take three years for constructing the 700-kilometre pipeline” from the Iranian border to the Pakistani city of Nawabshah, he added.
Pakistan plans to use the gas purchased from Iran for its power sector.
Ouji said that Iran, which has the second largest gas reserves in the world, currently produces 600 million cubic metres of natural gas, of which 430 to 440 million cubic metres is consumed domestically.
It plans to raise output to 900 million cubic metres over the next three years with the expansion of South Pars and hopes to further hike it to 1,100 million cubic metres by 2015.
Dubbed the “peace pipeline,” the project has been planned since the 1990s and originally would have extended from Pakistan to India. But New Delhi pulled out of the project last year.
The United States has tried to discourage India and Pakistan from any deal with Iran because of TehranÂ’s disputed nuclear programme, which the West fears is a cover to build bombs.
Iran, hit by a fourth round of UN sanctions on Wednesday over its refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, denies any such ambitions.

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Israel lobbied China over Iran sanctions

June 11th, 2010 | No Comments

In the months leading up to the UN Security Council’s vote imposing new sanctions on Iran, Israel had been working to convince China to vote for the measure. Israel argued that Tehran’s nuclear program poses a threat to the oil supplies that Beijing needs to fuel its economy.

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Rethinking the “third world”: Seeing the world differently

June 10th, 2010 | No Comments

The poor world has changed fundamentally. Others are barely coming to grips with the implications

EARLIER this year, Bob Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, grandly declared that “2009 saw the end of what was known as the third world”—that is, the end of a distinct, separate section of humanity that is poor, aid-dependent and does not matter very much. Is he right?

Suppress, for a moment, the thought that the term itself went out of fashion long ago. This still seems a plausible time to consider the idea. While the rich world stumbles out of recession, Asia, Africa and Latin America are accelerating and contributing more than ever to world output. Two fast-growing countries, Turkey and Brazil (“powers of the future”, says Iran’s president), struck a deal in May that was intended to break the deadlock over Iran’s nuclear programme. Though less than meets the eye, the agreement was still an intriguing case of emerging-nation diplomacy. And the football World Cup gets under way this week in South Africa, arguably the poorest country to host the event. …

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U.S. blames EU for Turkey drift

June 10th, 2010 | No Comments

Turkey’s growing hostility to Israel may have been partly caused by its effective rejection by the EU, the U.S. defense secretary said, the BBC reports. Robert Gates said Turkey may have been “pushed by some in Europe” away from the EU and into closer partnerships with states like Iran.

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UN adopts new round of Iran sanctions

June 10th, 2010 | No Comments

The UN Security Council has adopted a fourth round of tough new sanctions aimed at halting Iran’s suspect nuclear program. The resolution was approved Wednesday with 12 countries voting for, two against and one abstention, reflecting some division among the 15-member council.

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Iran prepares to send aid ships to Gaza

June 8th, 2010 | No Comments

Iran’s Red Crescent Society will attempt to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza in the next few days. This comes following deadly clashes last week between aid workers and Israel’s military, VOA reported.

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Russian president warns Iran to heed international advice

June 6th, 2010 | No Comments

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is downplaying the existence of tensions between Tehran and Russia in an interview with Lebanon’s LBC TV Saturday. His words follow a warning by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that Iranian leaders must “listen to the voice of the world community,” or face new sanctions.

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The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Consensus costs

June 3rd, 2010 | No Comments

Broad agreement, but little achieved in taming the menace of nuclear proliferation

THEY didn’t come to unseemly diplomatic blows. Perhaps they should have. After four weeks of haggling the 189 members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) unanimously reaffirmed their support for the battered document at a five-yearly review that ended on May 28th. Even usually truculent Iran endorsed a lengthy declaration upholding the NPT’s goals: getting the nuclear powers to give up their bombs; preventing others from acquiring them; and promoting nuclear power for peaceful uses only. But the NPT’s problems are no closer to solution.

The drive for unanimity, after the 2005 review meeting ended in a bad-tempered stalemate, meant that Iran had a potentially consensus-blocking veto. It used it to escape all censure. Yet Iran has been a serial breaker of the treaty’s anti-nuclear rules. The UN Security Council has censured it repeatedly for violating nuclear safeguards and for refusing to halt its enrichment of uranium and other sins. …

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UN talks back conference on nuclear-free Middle East

May 29th, 2010 | No Comments

Signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) have agreed to work towards a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. The members, meeting at the UN in New York, called for a conference in 2012 attended by Middle Eastern states – including Iran – to establish the zone.

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Yusuf Islam should be denied visa unless he repudiates threats against Rushdie, says Oz MP

May 28th, 2010 | No Comments

A Victorian MP has said that singer and songwriter Yusuf Islam formerly known as Cat Stevens, should be denied visa unless he retracts his threats against author Salman Rushdie.
“He said that Salman Rushdie should be killed,”” The Herald Sun quoted the Democratic Labor Party MP, Peter Kavanagh as saying.
“He later said that he was just [...]

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Reports: U.S. expands secret military missions

May 25th, 2010 | No Comments

The U.S. has reportedly expanded clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats, RFE/RL says. This is related to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and other countries in the region.

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Ahmadinejad on ties with Serbia

May 24th, 2010 | No Comments

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated on Monday that there are no obstacles to the expansion of the ties between Iran and Serbia. He called for strengthening of cooperation between the two countries, said reports from Tehran.

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“UN discussions shouldn’t stop uranium swap deal”

May 20th, 2010 | No Comments

Russian FM Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that UN SC talks on new sanctions against Iran should not hamper the implementation of an uranium swap agreement. The agreement was signed by Iran, Brazil, and Turkey.

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Brazil, Turkey and Iran: Not just any deal will do

May 20th, 2010 | No Comments

Have Brazil and Turkey helped solve a brewing nuclear crisis, or made it worse?

TO IRAN’S irrepressible president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the deal was a triumph for the powers of the future over “the tyrant powers [who] belong to the past”. Others, tyrannically minded or not, have yet to see whether Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (flanking Mr Ahmadinejad above), really have succeeded in enticing Iran a step in from the cold in its row with the UN Security Council over its nuclear ambitions. Several years of on-off talks (mostly off, at Iran’s insistence) between Mr Ahmadinejad’s government and six other countries, America, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, have failed to budge Iran from its insistence that its suspect nuclear work will continue, no matter what.

Under the May 17th deal, Mr Ahmadinejad is to send abroad some of his low-enriched uranium stocks, in return for higher-enriched fuel rods Iran needs to replenish an ageing medical-research reactor. On the face of it, that resembles a bargain Iran had first struck last October with America, Russia, France and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear guardian, before it backed off. But the fear is that, well-meaning as the leaders of Turkey and Brazil may be, Iran is abusing their efforts to get out of a fix. …

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U.S. presents Iran sanctions draft

May 19th, 2010 | No Comments

The U.S. presented to the UN Security Council a draft resolution containing a fourth round of tough new sanctions aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear activities. The draft is the product of weeks of negotiation among the five permanent veto-wielding members of the council plus Germany. And comes just a day after Iran agreed to a deal brokered by council members Brazil and Turkey to export some of its enriched uranium in return for fuel for a medical research reactor.

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US: Iran nuclear deal won’t slow sanctions

May 18th, 2010 | No Comments

The United States is skeptical of the nuclear fuel swap agreement announced on Monday in which Iran says it will ship enriched uranium to Turkey. President Barack Obama’s spokesman says the agreement will not slow the drive for a new U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution.

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The Tehran tango

May 17th, 2010 | No Comments

The Turkish-Brazilian deal leaves Iran enriching uranium and is unlikely to satisfy the West

TWO leaders from two big regional powers, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, took a risk in travelling to Iran and negotiating over the country’s contentious nuclear programme. Many said they would fail. Instead the two announced triumph on Monday 17th May, clutching hands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president. But will Western leaders, pressing for new sanctions on Iran, see it as enough?

Under the new deal, Iran says it would send 1,200 kg of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Turkey. In exchange it wants 120 kg of uranium enriched to a higher level (around 20%) for a research reactor which produces isotopes that can be used in medicine (typically for the treatment of cancer), within a year. …

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Iran, Brazil, Turkey tied over nuclear swap agreement

May 17th, 2010 | No Comments

On Monday Iran, Brazil and Turkey agreed over a nuclear fuel swap deal with a motive to relieve international concern about the Islamic Republic’s atomic ambitions.
Iran has agreed to swap 1,200 kg of its low-enriched uranium in exchange of higher-enriched nuclear fuel that can be utilized in a medical research reactor. This deal of exchange [...]

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France denies Iran “spy-deal”

May 16th, 2010 | No Comments

France has denied it made a secret pact with Iran to secure the release of a French lecturer charged with spying after last June’s disputed election. Clotilde Reiss has now arrived in Paris following a flight from Tehran.

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Shahid gets a marriage proposal from his Iranian fan

May 14th, 2010 | No Comments

Bollywood chocolate boy Shahid Kapoor who has smashed the box office with his recent film ‘Badmaash Company’ has a huge fan following that is not just limited to the country but also the overseas audiences are his big fans. This fact has just been proved when an Iranian fan of Shahid came down to Mumbai [...]

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