We are following very closely with the organization for the Defence of Human Rights, Secondo Protocollo, a matter that concerns an Italian citizen (Gaetano Sparti) held against each other two years of international rule in the Emirate of Dubai (UAE) . Because we are following although not our field? Simple, because that seems to be a murky story of interest far more effectively hides the truth and what they discovered and are discovering those Secondo Protocollo goes far beyond appearances.

First they found a system called Rak Free Zone (Article here) that allows anyone to open a few hours, even without being physically in the United Arab Emirates and without much formality, a company operating in all respects able to market anyone with any product, including weapons and weapon systems. Secondo Protocollo Just a few months ago he reported to a United Nations arms smuggling from Iran to Sudan who was passing through a company that was owned by two leaders of the Iranian Pasdaran created through the system of Rak Free Zone. The two men, Saeid Mousaei and Mojtaba Sadegbi had opened the Millennium Product Company LLC (Article complaint here) only as a cover for selling prohibited material to Sudan. Then the UN inspectors had moved very quickly, but not enough to stop the two Iranians who, informed by someone, were rescued in Tehran. In any case, the illegal activity was discovered. But that earlier had raised the antennae of the Secondo Protocollo to the researchers involved, as mentioned, in difficult and troubled history that involves her in spite of an Italian citizen. And since the history of the Italian national side from a company just opened Rak Free Zone through the system to circumvent the embargo with Iran (but not only), research has quickly assumed the characteristics of a real intrigue International.

We do not want, of course, get into specifics of the case followed by the Italian NGO, as the rights of Italian citizens abroad do not compete, but in the spirit of close cooperation that binds us to them we had access to confidential documents relating to the different If they are following and so there was some doubt. For example (and this falls to us) by reading the documents we have seen that there are some Italian companies producing weapons that are selling military equipment and military technology to the UAE to a much higher than that which would require an army like that of the UAE. Always read the research done by the Secondo Protocollo, we learned that this is possible thanks to an agreement between Italy and the United Arab Emirates on cooperation in the defense sector, an agreement drawn up December 13, 2003 but signed and made operational until September 2, 2009 with a special decree law (Law 23 December 2009, No. 204) of which you will find details here. The question we ask is simple: if all those weapons and all those weapon systems do not go to the UAE, who are they going?

We leave the task to Friends of Secondo Protocollo quibble that the agreement also covers the sale of mines and what type of mine concerned, if that is included among those for which it is prohibited the production and sale, we have focused on destination of the weapons, weapon systems and spare parts for aircraft and means compatible with the Iranian weapons systems. Well, surprises are not lacking. For example, we learned that several Western intelligence are wondering whether some types of anti-vehicle mines made in Italy do not end up, through Iran, Afghanistan, that if weapons produced in Italy, killing the Italian soldiers. One thing is certain, there are companies based in the UAE and are part of the circuit Rak Free Zone, thanks to this deal are buying a lot of anti-vehicle mines made in Italy. The suspect, very strong and concrete, is that those weapons end up in Iran and from there to Afghanistan. Certainly (there is evidence) a batch of Italian arms sold to a Dubai company was shipped by sea to Karachi, Pakistan, and that alone should prick up their antennas to several people.

What is emerging from different files (one of which is confidential and sensational in his hand to the Federal Bureau of Investigation) is a web of interests pursued without scruple and with the active support (whether conscious or not it will evaluate in the coming weeks) institutions Italian and taken only by cooperation agreements (and thus the gain) are not so appropriate to the consequences of these agreements. So it can happen that a lynx jump on a landmine in Afghanistan produced close to Rome. If this were proved it would be really a paradox than a sensational auto-goal for Italy.

By Saeed Ghasemzadeh – The Jews and the Iranians have a long history of understanding and peaceful relations. The most notable aspect of this long history is the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the great who is mentioned in the Old Testament many times. He released the Jews, facilitated their return to the Holy Land, to Jerusalem and helped them rebuild the Temple of Solomon.

Anti-Semitism in Iran is a new obsession. Literature is a mirror which reflects the thoughts of a nation during its history. In Persian literature the Jews are not the bad characters. To be more precise Persian literature does not really speak about the Jews as much. Anti-Semitic thoughts began to become popular in Iran some years before the Second World War. It can be said that anti-Semitism in Iran has four roots.

1-      German and French Fascism:

Many students were sent to Europe, mostly Germany and France, a few years before the beginning of the Second World War. These students became the architects of new Iran. Unfortunately one of the things they brought back as a gift was anti-Semitism which was widespread in Germany and France then. Ahmad Fardid was a good example of such students. He went to France and came back a disciple of Heidegger, a fascist and an anti-Semite. After the Islamic revolution in 1979 he became the spiritual guide of Islamist and anti-Semite militia-intellectuals and tried to justify ayatollah Khomeini’s anti-Semitic and anti-liberal efforts by combining Islam and fascism.

2-     Conflict between the holy Prophet of Islam and the Jewish tribes of Medina:

The wars between Muhammad and the Jewish tribes of Medina ended horribly. In the most famous one, the battle of Banu Qurayza, 700 Jewish men and boys who had surrendered themselves were executed and the Jewish girls and women were given to Muslims as slaves. As we know after these wars the Jewish tribes of that region were wiped out from the existence. The fundamentalists always refer to these wars as a sign of eternal and long-standing enmity of Jews toward Muslims. In fact, the Jews were attacked by Muslims in this episode. As I see it, the Jews do not speak much about this whereas in Islamic societies this part of history seems to be alive and inspirational.

3-     Russian Communism:

Russian communism and Stalinism had important anti-Semitic aspects. The leftist groups in Iran were largely under the influence of Stalinism and Stalin. The Doctors Plot[i] is a well-known story which shows Stalin’s anti-Semitic views. Stalin blended Russian nationalism with Bolshevism. One important feature of Russian nationalism was its deep-rooted anti-Semitism. In a letter in 1907, Stalin mentioned the difference between a “Jewish faction” and a “true Russian faction” in Bolshevism. As it is obvious the “Jewish faction” in Bolshevism was annihilated by Stalin.

4-     Tier-Mondism:

Tiers-Mondism and its most important feature the Palestinian movement was another root of anti-Semitism in Iran. Tier-Mondism was spread by Jalal Al Ahmad, Ali Shariati, Ehsan Naraqi, Dariush Shayegan and others. These Iranian intellectuals viewed Israel, the Middle Eastern Jews and Middle-Eastern people who had this opportunity to join the West and being baptized as a western country at  the heart of Middle-East as traitors.  The 1979 Islamic revolution had many important anti-Semitic aspects and most of its leaders were anti-Semite figures. So, when they came to power they made this the official policy of the new regime. It is amusing that both the new revolutionary government and its opposition – except the Monarchists and Nationalists – were stubbornly anti-Israeli groups.

But that is the story of the old generation. The new generation in Iran has a different theme. Even though they are the children of the 1979 revolution and have been raised and indoctrinated by it, they along with many similar groups are not anti-Semite. In fact, they believe in peace, and that both parties in the conflict should have their own country and that they should live together in peace. They do not believe that Israel is an enemy of Iran. They do not even believe in Islamic internationalism but that Iran should pursue its own national interest.

[i] On January 13, 1953, TASS news agency announced “the unmasking of a terrorist group of doctor-poisoners”. Satire magazine Krokodil published anti-Semitic feuilletons and caricatures, Pravda published materials on arrested “spies”, almost all of whom were Jews.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, recent presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, and a number of sitting and retired judges and officials, including former head of the Supreme Court, Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardebili, are all liable to arrest under international law for complicity in the murder of thousands of political prisoners at the end of the Iran/Iraq War. This is the conclusion of a 145-page report  by Geoffrey Robertson QC, who urges the Security Council to set up a special court, along the lines of the International Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, to try these men “for one of the worst single human rights atrocities since the Second World War”.

Mir Hossein Moussavi

The report concludes that the leaders were guilty of implementing a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in July 1988, which sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death without a trial. At Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison and twenty other prisons throughout Iran, dissidents who had previously been sentenced to various prison terms and had refused to recant their religious beliefs were blindfolded and paraded before judges who directed thousands to the gallows. “They were hung from cranes, four at a time, or in groups of six from ropes hanging from the stage of the prison assembly hall. Their bodies were doused with disinfectant, packed in refrigerated trucks, and buried by night in mass graves, the locations of which are still withheld from their families.”

Mr Robertson concludes that the leaders of Iran planned for this “final solution” when it became clear that they would have to accept a truce with Iraq. Death committees (a religious judge, a prosecutor and an intelligence official) were sent to prisons to arrange the extermination of steadfast sympathizers of Mojahedin Khalq Organization. Then came the turn of the Marxists and atheists who were born in Muslim families and were declared apostates. The men were hanged and the women were tortured until they repented.

The evidence set out in the report shows that the victims were killed because of their beliefs about religion – because they were atheists or because they were Muslims who opposed the Ayatollah’s version of Islam (the “Guardianship of the Jurist”) that had been adopted by the theocratic state. Mr Robertson points out that the crime of genocide includes the destruction of groups because of their religious beliefs or non-beliefs and that those who implemented the fatwa,which directed the extermination of prisoners because of their different religious beliefs, were committing genocide. The significance of this finding is that it would give the international community a legal basis for arresting many of the present leadership of Iran.

The report uncovers official statements justifying the slaughter and identifies those present leaders who are suspected of participating in its implementation and cover-up. The best known are the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Commander of the Armed Forces at the time, who would have dispatched the killing squads. The report uncovers hitherto unknown statements by Mir Hossein Moussavi justifying the action, the then Prime Minister and now one of the leaders of the reform movement. Mr Robertson says “he has not given any account of his role at the time, or his reaction to it today, although he is frequently asked. His statements at the time were part of the cover-up”.

Mr. Robertson names other currently powerful judges as being complicit in the killings. He says that the scale and cold-bloodedness of these killings, and the fact that they were carefully planned, makes them of greater infamy that the slaughter at Srebrenica and the allied prisoner death marches by Japan at the end of World War II.

The report accuses Tehran of continuing to deny relatives of the victims their right to know where their loved ones are buried. Some months after they were killed, the families were given plastic bags containing their belongings, but were refused all information about their burial places. The location of mass graves has been established in Tehran’s cemetery area, but attempts by families to gather there to mourn on anniversaries of the massacre have been dispersed by the authorities.

The situation in Iran today, the report argues, illustrates the consequences of impunity for crimes against humanity that have never been properly investigated or acknowledged. Some of the leaders who engaged in such a level of lawlessness and barbarity against their own people and their acolytes remain in powerful positions in the judiciary and the state, whose Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has in the past year called upon the Revolutionary Guards to use violence against peaceful protests. “Those staged television show trials of the 1980s, with televised ‘confessions’ by leftist prisoners wracked by torture and fear for their families, writes Geoffrey Robertson, re-emerged in 2009, this time featuring ‘Green Movement’ reformists confessing to participation in an international conspiracy. Once again, dissidents are being prosecuted for being moharebs (“warriors against God”) and some are being sentenced to death”.

Mr Robertson argues that the Security Council has the power and the duty to set up a special court to prosecute those responsible for the massacre “because there is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity”.

The inquiry was conducted for the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, an NGO concerned with human rights and democracy in Iran.

Source: http://www.iranrights.org/english/newsletter-14.php

The entire 145 pages report:

http://www.iranrights.org/english/document-1380.php

US President Barack Obama has warned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that failure to resume direct peace talks with Israel could undermine US-Palestinian ties, Palestinian officials said on Saturday.

Obama made the warning in a letter to Abbas but also pledged to rally Arab, European and Russian support for the Palestinians if direct negotiations resume, a Palestinian official told AFP speaking on condition of anonymity.

“In the letter, President Barack Obama warned President Mahmoud Abbas that his refusal to enter into direct negotiations with Israel next month will have consequences for American-Palestinian relations,” the official said.

The 16-point letter had a “carrot-and-stick approach”, he added.

Obama stressed “it is high time to resume direct negotiations with Israel” and told Abbas that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is ready to resume direct negotiations”.

The letter warned that “Obama will absolutely not accept the rejection of his recommendation to move to direct negotiations and that there will be consequences for such a rejection in the form of a lack of trust in President Abbas and the Palestinian side”, the official said.

Obama pledged that his administration would work to extend a partial Israeli moratorium on Jewish settlements due to expire in September if Abbas resumes direct negotiations, he added.

“But in case of a refusal its assistance on that issue will be very limited,” he said, quoting from the letter in Arabic.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat confirmed to AFP that Abbas received a letter from the US president on July 16.

In the letter Obama “assured Abbas that the US administration will strive to put an end to [Jewish] settlements if direct peace talks go under way but that its role would be less if this does not happen”, Erekat said.

The revelation comes after the Arab League agreed in principle on Thursday to the resumption of direct Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, stressing however that Abbas had the final word on when they should start.

The Palestinian official who declined to be named said Obama expects direct peace talks to begin at the onset of August and to address thorny issues such as borders and Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.

Abbas, who is holding US-brokered indirect talks with Israel, has conditioned going into face-to-face talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a raft of demands rejected by Israel.

He wants a complete end to settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which Israel occupied in 1967, and has said negotiations on a Palestinian state’s borders must be based on the pre-1967 borders.

He has threatened to turn to the UN Security Council if there is no progress on his demands by September, when the four-month indirect talks with Israel are due to end.

Air strikes

Hamas vowed revenge on Saturday after Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip killed a senior fighter and wounded eight other people.

The overnight Israeli raids came after a rocket fired from the strip hit a southern Israeli city.

One Hamas fighter was killed in an air strike on a caravan near the Magazhi refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian enclave, a Hamas official said. The Israeli military said the site was “a weapons manufacturing warehouse”.

In a statement on Saturday, the military wing of Hamas identified the man as Issa Al Batran, 40, and said he was a senior field commander.

“These new Zionist crimes will not pass without answer,” the statement said.

Israel has tried to kill Batran in the past. His wife and five sons were killed in an attack on his house during Israel’s three-week offensive on the territory in December 2008.

Aircraft also fired at least four missiles at buildings used by Hamas security forces in Gaza City, wounding eight people, several of them seriously, said Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services.

The site targeted used to house the offices of Abbas before his Western-backed Fateh Party was ousted from Gaza by the Islamist Hamas in 2007.

Fearing further strikes, Hamas ordered the evacuation of all its security offices, a security source told AFP.

Warplanes also hit smuggling tunnels on the border with Egypt without causing casualties, witnesses said.

Also on Saturday, two Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire while searching for scrap material near the Gaza border fence, Hassanein said.

Israel has published detailed intelligence information that military chiefs say is proof of a massive build-up of Hizbullah firepower deep inside the Lebanese villages close to Israel’s northern border.

Israel says that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which ended the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war and banned the transfer of rockets and weapons to Hizbullah has been largely ineffective. Israeli intelligence says the Shia group now has an arsenal of more than 40,000 rockets supplied via Syria and Iran and thousands of fighters deployed along the border.

As an example, Israeli intelligence officials showed reporters maps and aerial surveillance images showing specific buildings in the village of Al-Hiyam that Israel says are being used as military facilities for weapons and missiles.

Col Ronen Marley revealed previously classified photographs to show what he said was a unit of 90 Hizbullah militants operating in Al-Hiyam, where they were storing weapons close to hospitals and schools.

“Hizbullah is establishing itself with increasing strength in the villages,” said Col Marley.

“Every day they are collecting significant intelligence on our forces along the border and every day they are engaged in digging, building and laying communications infrastructure to prepare themselves for war.

Lieut Col Avital Leibovitch, an Israeli military spokesperson said: “We are talking about more than 100 villages that have become military camps for Hizbullah and we see that civilians in these villages have become Hizbullah’s human shields if there is war in the future.”

There are fears that growing tensions along the Lebanese border could spark a repeat of the month-long 2006 Lebanon war in which more than 1,100 Lebanese and 159 Israelis were killed as Israeli troops invaded southern Lebanon and Hizbullah rained up to 300 rockets a day on northern Israel.

That war was triggered by a Hizbullah cross-border attack on an Israeli patrol in which eight soldiers were killed and two captured, accompanied by co-ordinated rocket fire on nearby Israeli towns. The two soldiers were returned, dead, two years later in return for a Lebanese prisoner.

“I don’t think Israel has any interest in launching a war against Hizbullah – just the opposite,” said Prof Gerald Steinberg, head of the project on conflict resolution at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv.

“This reminds me very much of spring 2006, when Israeli military commanders held a series of briefings for foreign diplomats in which they analysed the Hizbullah threat in very similar terms and warned that Israel would not sit idly by if attacked.

“Hizbullah failed to understand that message, and when it launched an unprovoked attack across the border in July 2006, the Israeli army unleashed the battle plan it had previewed. Later, Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah admitted that if he had heeded Israel’s warnings, he would not have started that war. This time, it looks like Israel is determined to dissuade Hizbullah from using its huge rocket arsenal again, and so the Israelis are sending this very clear deterrent message.”

The three men, whose names were not released, had been under surveillance for more than a year. Officials believe they were planning attacks with portable but powerful bombs like the ones at the heart of last year’s thwarted suicide attack in the New York City subway.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has called that one of the most serious terrorist plots since 9/11. On Wednesday, prosecutors revealed the existence of a related plot in Manchester, England. Officials believe the Norway plan was organized by Salah al-Somali, al-Qaida’s former chief of external operations, the man in charge of plotting attacks worldwide.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case. The Norwegian Police Security Service said only that the three were arrested on suspicion of “preparing terror activities.”

Al-Somali, who was killed in a CIA drone airstrike last year, has been identified in U.S. court documents as one of the masterminds of the New York subway plot. Two men have pleaded guilty in that case, admitting they planned to detonate explosives during rush hour. A third man awaits trial.

A news conference was planned for later Thursday.

Officials said it was not clear the men had selected a target for the attacks but they were attempting to make peroxide bombs, the powerful homemade explosives that prosecutors say were attempted in both New York and England.

U.S. and Norwegian counterterrorism officials worked closely together to unravel the Norwegian plot, officials said. Janne Kristiansen, the head of the Police Security Service, traveled to the U.S. this spring to discuss some of the closely held intelligence that been gathered in the case.

In Washington, Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd had no comment.

Officials did not say why Norway was a target, but al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri has called for attacks on Norway, among other countries.

Magnus Norell, a terrorism expert at the Swedish Defense Research Agency, said Norway’s 500 troops in Afghanistan could be a factor, as could the 2006 controversy sparked by a Danish newspaper’s publication of 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Norell said the controversy has extended to neighboring Norway and Sweden after newspapers there republished the cartoons and later published similar cartoons. Images of Muhammad, even favorable ones, are considered blasphemous by many Muslims.

The EU version will not be like Hollywood.

Ms Ashton will not have an army or a “European Intelligence Service” to send into action. The centre-left British politician, a former activist in the anti-nuclear CND group, is said to distrust military types and her first priority is the kitchen-sink construction of the European External Action Service (EEAS).

But she has already told EU leaders that she wants a “single crisis response centre” under her direct command and internal discussion on the Ashton situation room is at an advanced stage.

One scenario under consideration is a crisis directorate run by a director general and situated close to Ms Ashton’s office in the EEAS headquarters, most likely in the so-called “Triangle” building facing the EU Council in the heart of the EU quarter in Brussels. It would have a staff of some 160 people and a modest budget of €10 to €20 million a year.

The situation room itself would have a conference table and banks of monitors showing breaking news and commercial satellite pictures of hotspots.

In the back-rooms, the crisis directorate would have a team of IT experts, scientists and tacticians scouring open source data in search of emerging conflict threats, such as plans by UK private security firm Saracen International to build a pirate-fighting base in Somalia.

Ms Ashton’s exclusive information would come from officials manning 24/7 hotlines to the EU’s 136 foreign delegations and 14 civilian and military missions. Another unit would send people to crisis zones at short notice on fact-finding missions. A cell of secret-service agents seconded from key EU states would pass Ms Ashton’s queries to spy agencies such as the UK’s MI6 or France’s DGSE and file replies.

The European Commission’s existing Crisis Room and the EU Council’s Joint Situation Centre (SitCen) are to form the backbone of the crisis directorate. SitCen already sends people into the field. When war broke out in Georgia in 2008 it dispatched two analysts to “re-inforce the EUSR [the EU special envoy to the South Caucasus] with reporting,” a contact familiar with SitCen operations told this website.

In an insight into the opaque bureau’s work, the source added: “These are fairly normal people who have perhaps in their lives had some experience of being out in the field in a place less comfortable than Washington. They are not spooks by any means. We avoid anybody who even looks like one. They are people who can write reports. Who do not mind not staying in five star hotels. Who know how to take precautions when they go out at night.”

The new set-up is to see Ms Ashton pick up the phone or walk down the hall and “task” people directly to go overseas or to query EU countries’ secret services. Current bureaucracy means that 27 EU ambassadors in the Political and Security Committee first hold a debate before tasking SitCen.

The idea is to give the EU foreign relations chief a powerful asset when she asks EU foreign ministers to deploy an EU battle-group or if she decides to send an EEAS diplomat, or even a prominent MEP, on a peace mission.

“Today, if you go through the normal channels to make a threat assessment in Kosovo, for example, by the time the [SitCen] officer gets to Pristina, it’s all over,” one PSC ambassador told this website.

“Imagine how effective the high representative could be if the new SitCen was to function like her shadow cabinet,” a contact in the EU institutions said. “Member states are afraid to give away power. But this could be the new mega-commodity in Brussels.”

Wider or deeper?

One question is whether the crisis response centre will handle man-made conflicts only, or natural disasters and pandemics also.

The wider portfolio could provoke turf wars between Ms Ashton and aid and development commissioners Kristalina Georgieva and Andris Piebalgs. It could also dilute EEAS resources, perpetuating the problems of overlooked and forgotten conflicts.

But the big question is: who will be Ms Ashton’s right-hand man?

Former UK soldier and diplomat William Shapcott, who built SitCen, walked away in June to a new post in the EU Council administration, creating a risk that his successor might take a minimalist approach to the job.

One candidate for the post is French diplomat Patrice Bergamini, who worked close to Ms Ashton’s predecessor, Javier Solana, and helped draft the EU’s first security strategy in 2003.

His appointment would give France a monopoly on the EEAS security side, however. French diplomat Christine Roger is to be the new PSC president. French official Claude-France Arnould is the new head of the EU Council’s civilian-military crisis planning office. A French secret service agent runs SitCen’s intelligence-sharing cell. And French diplomat Pierre Vimont is tipped to become EEAS secretary general, in charge of the body’s internal security structures.

“It would be good to have a German appointment to make sure that Germany is engaged at the highest levels. Somebody with a diplomatic and a security or intelligence background,” the source in the EU institutions said.

“Nationality can be overplayed. Intel is sensitive, so in that sense you do not want to play up the [director's] national connections,” the contact familiar with SitCen’s work said.

The Iranian News Agency is reporting on IDF activity on Saudi Arabian soil. According to the report, whose reliability remains unclear, Israel Air Force planes have been landing at a Saudi Arabian military base in the last few days to unload military equipment. According to the Iranian agency, the base in the city of Tabuk will become Israel’s front base for attacking Islamic countries.

The report, that came from the Iranian News Agency Fars, quotes an Islamic website that reported Israeli plans landing in the city of Tabuk, in northwest Saudi Arabia. According to the Iranians, the one responsible for Tabuk and directing its cooperation with Israel is Prince Fahd bin-Sultan. “The secret relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia have become the talk of the town among Tabuk’s residents,” the Agency reported.

Also according to the report, at the time of the landing, civilian flights in the area were cancelled. A passenger on one of the flights recounted that no one provided an explanation for the cancellation, and noted that the authorities provided the passengers with financial compensation, and even put them up at four star hotels.

Some days ago: Reports on American Warships in the Persian Gulf

The reports on the Israeli planes’ landing come along with reports emerging last weekend about unusual American military activity in the area of the Persian Gulf. The London Based Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper reported on the movement of large US Army forces across the Persian Gulf which took place 24 hours beforehand in the afternoon.

According to the report, 12 American warships crossed the Suez Canal last Friday on their way to the Persian Gulf via the Mediterranean Sea. Eyewitnesses even told the paper that the naval convoy also included an American aircraft carrier.

It was also relayed that during the time the ships were crossing the Suez, civilian boat traffic was halted and Egyptian police were stationed on the canal’s banks to secure their passage. According to additional reports, along with American military forces, eye witnesses identified an Israeli warship escorted by the convoy.

Evil will Come from the North for Iran?

On the 16th of June, the Iranian Press TV Agency reported that the Revolutionary Guards have moved military forces to the northeastern Iranian border, since they suspect a concentration of Israeli and American forces in Azerbaijan near the Iranian border there.

According to the report, the Revolutionary Guards fear a combined American-Israeli attack on Iran which may also come from the border with Azerbaijan. The report bases itself on statements made by General Mahdi Mo’ini of the Revolutionary Guards, who said that America and Israel are concentrating military forces in western Azerbaijan.

In Ankara, President Abdullah Gul chaired an emergency security meeting, attended by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and military leaders, as pressure mounted for the government to rein in violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast.

State news agency Anatolian said elite troops rappelled down from helicopters and poured out of mechanised infantry units to surround Kurdish rebels in an operation along the Iraqi border. Kurdish rebels have bases in northern Iraq.

Helicopter gunships bombed suspected positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrilla group in the mountains in the provinces of Hakkari and Sirnak, security sources said.

More than 40,000 people, mainly Kurds, have been killed since the PKK took up arms in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast.

“A review of intelligence and the structure of personnel in the region was discussed,” a statement from Gul’s office said after the security summit.

In late 2007, a similarly deadly PKK attack on a military unit in Hakkari was followed in early 2008 by a cross-border Turkish land offensive against rebel targets in northern Iraq.

Erdogan, who has said Kurdish militants would “drown in their own blood”, faces mounting criticism for his government’s failure to stop the escalation in violence.

Images of soldiers’ coffins, draped in red-and-white Turkish flags, have raised tension in Turkey, with relatives of dead soldiers chanting slogans against the government at funerals.

Erdogan has granted more political and cultural rights to minority Kurds in an effort to end separatist violence.

But his “Kurdish initiative” floundered after it was poorly received in the rest of the country and following a decision by the Constitutional Court late last year to ban the largest Kurdish political party in parliament for its links to the PKK.

SABOTAGE CHARGE

The presidential statement said: “It was stressed that coordinating anti-terrorism activities with neighbouring and relevant countries should be made more effective”.

Intelligence-sharing with the United States, which brands the PKK a terrorist group, has helped Turkish bombing raids on rebel targets in northern Iraq, both in the past and since Saturday’s attack.

“The PKK is a common enemy of Turkey and of the United States,” said U.S. Ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey in a statement. “There is no change to the level of our intelligence-sharing with Turkey regarding PKK activities in northern Iraq.”

Erdogan has said the latest wave of attacks was an attempt to sabotage efforts by his ruling AK Party to end the 25-year conflict. He faces an election before July 2011.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the opposition People’s Republican Party, has said political decisions have weakened the struggle against the PKK, while Devlet Bahceli, leader of the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party, has called for early elections and the return of emergency rule in the southeast.

The PKK said this month it had scrapped a year-old unilateral ceasefire and resumed attacks against Turkish forces because of military operations against it.

Separatist violence generally increases in southeast Turkey in the spring as the guerrillas cross the border from Iraq.

Thirty-two year old Françoise Muhorakeye is an early example of success. Ms Muhorakeye previously worked alone, selling fruit and vegetables at Kamuhanda market, a half-hour drive from the Rwandan capital, Kigali. She earned enough to sustain her family, but she was inspired to form a cooperative after attending a training programme aimed at empowering entrepreneurs.

Now as part of a ten-woman cooperative, she says her earnings have dramatically improved. Registering the cooperative as a formal business helped the women apply for a loan of one million Rwandan francs (about US$ 1,700) with which they plan to expand their business further.

Suzan Nyirangwije who sells products imported from Dubai, has also seen positive returns since registering her business and receiving a loan. “When I was running an informal business by myself, my daily turnover was very low but with my colleagues the shop now does over 300,000 Rwf [US$ 500] worth of business every day,” she said.

Strengthening woman-owned businesses
Eraste Kabera, senior registrar at the agency tasked with the registration process, the Rwanda Development Board, told ‘IPS’ the business registration system will benefit those who wish to access bank loans and micro-finance and those who wish to protect their intellectual property.

“We have seen that once they have experienced successful business performance, people in the informal sector almost always want to extend their activities,” Ms Kabera explained.

Women comprise 54 percent of Rwanda’s population of nine million. Although there are no statistics available for women-owned businesses, the Rwandan government acknowledges that the majority of employees in both the formal and informal sectors are women.

The registration effort focuses on enterprises earning a minimum daily income equivalent to US$ 20 and makes the process of registering as short and simple as possible. The costs have also been drastically reduced, from the equivalent of about US$ 600 to just US$ 43.

One of the key objectives of the Rwanda Development Board, the agency tasked with the registration process, is the sensitisation and mobilisation of women to invest in doing business.

But registration does not automatically guarantee loans for women-owned businesses. Many women in rural areas complain they still face difficulties in accessing loans under the Women’s Guarantee Fund, established last year.

Officials have dismissed the women’s concerns. “The government has established the necessary mechanism on micro loans for all financial institutions that lend to female entrepreneurs,” François Kanimba, the governor of the Central Bank told ‘IPS’ in a 2009 interview. At the time, the Central Bank reported that 6,568 women had benefitted from the credit scheme, drawing loans from US$ 900,000 provided by government, international donors and NGOs.

Strengthening the economy as a whole
The Rwandan government also plans to use the business registration scheme to develop a database of business activities that will contribute to economic planning. A key Rwanda government target under its economic roadmap, Vision 2020, is to reduce the country’s dependency on aid by increasing tax revenue.

When the Foreign Investment Advisory Service, a joint service of the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank, assessed Rwanda in 2005, the country’s 400 large firms and 3,000 registered small enterprises were hugely outnumbered by the estimated 900,000 firms in the informal sector. Registering these firms is one of the avenues government is using to boost the tax base.

But many informal sector workers find the prospect of paying taxes intimidating and it remains to be seen to what extent the business registration scheme will convince women in the informal sector to formalise their businesses.