Back to Brief on Iran
In a letter to the United Nations Secretary General yesterday in response to the clerical regime's false claims that the operations of the just Resistance of the Iranian people "originate from Iraqi territory" and that "this is a serious violation of the cease-fire agreement between the two countries," Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, challenged the Iranian regime to prove its charge in an international tribunal under the auspices of the United Nations. He asked Mr. Kofi Annan to distribute the letter among member states' delegations at the United Nations headquarters.
The NCR President warned that the mullahs' claim is intended precisely to prepare the grounds for military attacks on the bases of the National Liberation Army of Iran. Mr. Rajavi said: The Iranian regime has conducted 65 military strikes and terrorist assaults on the bases, centers and members of the Mojahedin on Iraqi soil in the past five years. They include four air raids, the launching of three proscribed Scud-B missiles, two attacks by 320 mm supermortars and many more mortar, rocket and terrorist assaults. As a result of a bomb they detonated in Baghdad on August 7, a four-year-old girl, a 15-year-old boy and a 65-year-old man - all Iraqi civilians - were killed. Eleven more were wounded.
Pointing to the martyrdom of Mojahed Ali Akbar Akbari under torture and the arrest of a number of people after the bringing to justice of the "Butcher of Evin," Assadollah Lajevardi, in Tehran's Grand Bazaar on August 23, Mr. Rajavi urged the UN Secretary General to spare no effort to save the lives of the detainees and to pressure the mullahs to give them an open trial in the presence of a jury and international journalists and lawyers as well as a representative of the Mojahedin.
The henchmen in the mullahs' Ministry of Intelligence must not be allowed to get away with their usual practice of covering up their atrocities, such as the mutilation and murder of detainees, by churning out false reports and lies, the NCR President said. He added that the UN Security Council's deterrent warnings to the mullahs' regime against making preparations to launch air and ground attacks on the Iranian Resistance's bases in the Iran-Iraq border region would be most necessary and urgently-required.
Iran Stages Maneuvers Near Afghan Border , Persian
Gulf, Reuter, September 2
Some 70,000 Iranian troops staged attacks on mock enemy positions near the border with Afghanistan on Wednesday, amid mounting tension between the two states.
As the war games went into full swing in an area 60 km (40 miles) from the Afghan border, Revolutionary Guards, tanks and armored carriers advanced towards "enemy" lines softened by air attacks and heavy artillery, Tehran radio reported.
The Ashoura-3 maneuvers, the largest in northeastern Iran either before or since the 1979 Islamic revolution, come amid heightened tensions between Tehran and the Afghan Taleban.
Iran on Wednesday also launched war games in the Gulf, in which naval units of the Revolutionary Guards on dozens of vessels practiced landing troops on shores near the Iranian port of Bushehr, the radio said.
Iran Has 1.2 Million Drug Addicts, Official Says, Reuter, September 2
There are some 1.2 million drug addicts among Iran's 60 million people, a senior official said in remarks published on Wednesday.
Iranian police killed seven armed drug smugglers in two separate clashes near the Afghan border in the last week, newspapers reported.
[The government constantly executes political prisoners under the guise of punishing drug-related offenders.]
N.Korea Missile "Dangerous Development", Reuter, September 2
BEIJING—Israel Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai said on Wednesday that North Korea's test-firing of a ballistic missile was a "dangerous development" in light of Pyongyang's close ties with Israeli foes Iran and Syria.
"There is no doubt that this development and this capability is a dangerous development," Mordechai said after a 90-minute meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
Israeli intelligence officials have said North Korea is helping Iran develop ballistic missiles through the transfer of technology.
During his meeting with President Jiang, Mordechai asked China to refrain from passing on dangerous weapons technology to Iran.