Transcript
1. Iran to withdraw funds from EU over new sanctions
In light of the newly EU tightened sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, deputy foreign minister Mahdi Safari said today that Iran is going to withdraw its money and invest it elsewhere. Safari said: “We have gas and oil resources that the whole world wants to buy from us.”
In a statement in the International Herald Tribune, British Foreign Minister David Miliband reaffirmed his confidence in the “dual track” approach to resolving the nuclear standoff with Iran. This involves combining increasingly intensified sanctions with the prize of economic, political, and technological incentives if Tehran complies, reports Reuters.
However, the Speaker of the Majlis, Ali Larijani, warned the west today against provoking Iran and criticized the stronger sanctions in conjunction with the proposed incentives.
2. Iran disbands Association of Iranian Journalists
Iran yesterday announced that it was disbanding a prominent organization of Iranian journalists, stirring up protests from members of the group.
Iran’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs wrote that the Association of Iranian Journalists, a 4,000-member union for the country’s journalists, was no longer officially recognized and that it could not continue its activities.
The Ministry says the decision to disband the group is based on the opinion of the Justice Administration Court concerning a dispute over the legality of elections held by the organization in 2006.
But Masha-ollah Shamsol-Vaezin, a member of the association’s board of directors, said the move was politically motivated. He said it was the association’s refusal to give in to pressures from the government to allow conservative journalists to join the organization that resulted in its closure.
Badr-ul-Sadat Mofidi, head of the association, called the Ministry’s move “illegal” based on the International Labor Organization Treaty, which says that workers’ organizations cannot be shut down by the administration.
3. UN-EU-US-Russian support for Palestinian security services
Following a German sponsored conference on Palestinian security and the rule of law, held for one day in Berlin yesterday, the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and Russia called for “Robust donor support to offer assistance to Palestinian police and courts in preparation for an independent Palestinian state.”
Participants from more than 40 countries pledged $242 million to improve Palestinian security services. The Quartet also urged the participants to fulfill an earlier pledge to donate $7.4 billion dollars to the Palestinian Authority.
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