A new U.S. intelligence review that concludes Iran stopped developing a nuclear weapons program in 2003 is consistent with the U.N. atomic watchdog agency’s own findings and “should help to defuse the current crisis,” the organization’s chief said Tuesday. “Although Iran still needs to clarify some important aspects of its past and present nuclear activities, the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran,” International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohamed ElBaradei said in a statement.
Kidnappers of five Britons seized in May in a raid on a government office demanded that Britain pull its forces from Iraq in a video broadcast Tuesday that showed a haggard man sitting under a sign reading “the Islamic Shiite Resistance in Iraq.” The purported hostage, bearded and speaking in a clearly British accent, said the video was made Nov. 18. A written statement featured on the video, aired by Al-Arabiya television, accused Britain of plundering the wealth of Iraq and demanded the British troops leave within 10 days.
The Afghanistan military needs more trainers and equipment in order to gain control of the country’s security, President Hamid Karzai and his defense chief told Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on Tuesday. Karzai said he was satisfied with the quality of training of the Afghan army, but he said he hoped that the U.S. and its NATO allies would expedite the delivery of air transportation and other assets, which could include planes and helicopters needed to fight al-Qaida and Taliban forces.
Israel said Tuesday it is seeking bids to build more than 300 new homes in a disputed east Jerusalem neighborhood, drawing Palestinian condemnations that the move is undermining the newly revived peace talks held last week in Annapolis, Md. A Housing Ministry spokesman said 307 units would be built in Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem. Israel captured the eastern part of the city in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed the area. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
The leader of the central Pacific island nation of Bali spoke via videotape Tuesday in a stepped-up campaign to win greater international aid to deal with rising seas, drought and other likely impacts of global warming. A two-week global warming conference in Bali, considered pivotal to efforts to reduce industrial and other emissions warming the planet, will also likely decide on the future of the “Adaptation Fund,” being developed under U.N. agreements to enable poorer countries to adjust to climate change.
