Iran MPs condemn US 'terrorists',Iranian MPs have voted to classify the US armed forces and the CIA as terrorist groups. A statement signed by 215 Iranian MPs cited the bombing of Japan during World War II, and the invasions of Vietnam and Iraq, as "terrorist actions".

The largely symbolic move comes days after the US Senate urged the White House to brand Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation.

The foreign ministry in Tehran said it backed the MPs' motion.

Correspondents say the ministry's support is significant because government bodies are generally not as hardline as the parliament.


REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS
Officially the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)
Formed after 1979 revolution
Loyal to clerics and counter to regular military
Estimated 125,000 troops
Includes army, navy, air force, intelligence and special forces
Iran President Ahmadinejad is a former member
Source: Globalsecurity.org
While the Iranian motion is seen as largely symbolic, the labelling of a group as a terrorist organisation by the US could have financial implications for the guards.

Any assets within US jurisdiction would be frozen and the US Treasury Department could move against firms subject to US law that do business with the guards.

The Revolutionary Guards force was established after the Islamic revolution toppled the Shah and brought hard-line clerics to power in Iran in 1979.

It is estimated to have 125,000 active members and operates separately from Iran's main armed forces.

Blackwater denies Iraq smuggling,A US company that provides security for US diplomats in Iraq has denied as "baseless" allegations that it was involved in weapons smuggling.
Blackwater's statement follows reports of a US investigation into allegations that some employees sent unlicensed weapons and equipment to Iraq.

The weapons could have been used by a group labelled as terrorist by the US.

Blackwater has been blamed by Iraqi officials for a Baghdad gunfight in which 11 civilians died last Sunday.

The North Carolina-based company - which has been hired by the US state department to guard American diplomatic staff in Iraq - has said its employees acted in self-defence.

Blackwater had its licence to operate in Iraq withdrawn by the Iraqi authorities following the shootout, but resumed limited operations on Friday.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi interior ministry said it was also investigating if Blackwater had been involved in six other violent incidents in Iraq that left at least 10 people dead.

'Hazy situation'

The weapons smuggling allegations were reported by the News and Observer newspaper in North Carolina.

It quoted two unnamed sources as saying US federal prosecutors were investigating whether any Blackwater staff had shipped weapons, night-vision scopes, armour, gun kits and other equipment to Iraq, without the required permits.

The newspaper said that in January two former members of staff with the firm had pleaded guilty in Greenville, North Carolina, to weapons charges and the pair were now co-operating with federal investigators.

In Saturday's statement, Blackwater said the allegations that it was "in any way associated or complicit in unlawful arms activities are baseless".

"The company has no knowledge of any employee improperly exporting weapons."


BLACKWATER USA FACTS
Founded in 1997 by a former US Navy Seal
Headquarters in North Carolina
One of at least 28 private security companies in Iraq
Employs 744 US citizens, 231 third-country nationals, and 12 Iraqis to protect US state department in Iraq
Provided protection for former CPA head Paul Bremer
Four employees killed by mob in Falluja in March 2004

The statement did not refer to Iraq.

But it confirmed that two members of staff had been sacked for stealing company property, without specifying when the action was taken.

"When it was uncovered internally that two employees were stealing from the company, Blackwater immediately fired them.

"The employees, who were former marines and law enforcement, have been convicted and are currently negotiating sentencing in Raleigh [North Carolina] with federal prosecutors," the statement said.

Responding to allegations that Blackwater employees were the subject of an Iraq arms smuggling probe, the spokeswoman told the BBC News website: "We are aware of that report and we have yet to see definitive proof that the firm in question is Blackwater.

"I'm not saying it's not, as sometimes these things can happen, but it's a hazy situation."

The allegations of arms smuggling in Iraq by a North Carolina firm came to light earlier this week in a written statement from the state department's inspector general, Howard Krongard.

In July, Turkey complained to the US that they had seized American weapons from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), designated a terrorist organisation by Washington.

Investigators are reportedly attempting to determine if any Blackwater weapons could have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of the PKK.

Iranian President Lashes Out at U.S., A day before flying to New York to speak directly to the American people, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck a confrontational tone Saturday with a parade of fighter jets and missiles and tough warnings for the United States to stay out of the Mideast. Sanctions will not succeed in stopping Iran's nuclear progress, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday.

Three new domestically manufactured warplanes streaked over the capital during the parade marking the 27th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Iran, which sparked a 1980-88 war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The parade also featured the Ghadr missile, which has a range of 1,120 miles, capable of reaching Israel.

Some of the missile trucks were painted with the slogans "Down with the U.S." and "Down with Israel." The parade also featured unmanned aerial surveillance drones, torpedoes, and tanks.

Tensions are high between Washington and Tehran over U.S. accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and helping Shiite militias in Iraq that target U.S. troops. Iran denies the claims.

Washington has said it is addressing the Iran situation diplomatically, rather than militarily, but U.S. officials also say that all options are open.

"Those (countries) who assume that decaying methods such as psychological war, political propaganda and the so-called economic sanctions would work and prevent Iran's fast drive toward progress are mistaken," Ahmadinejad.

Iran launched an arms development program during its war with Iraq to compensate for a U.S. weapons embargo. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own jets, torpedoes, radar-avoiding missiles, tanks and armored personnel carriers.

"Those who prevented Iran, at the height of the war from getting even barbed wire must see now that all the equipment on display today has been built by the mighty hands and brains of experts at Iran's armed forces," Ahmadinejad said.

He is expected to address the American people directly in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" airing Sunday, and through appearances at the U.N., Columbia University and several other events.

His request to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site was denied and condemned by Sept. 11 family members and politicians. Protests against his Columbia appearance are planned at the university and the United Nations by demonstrators angry at his questioning of the Holocaust and declarations that Israel will cease to exist.

Iran and the U.S. have not had diplomatic ties since militants took over the U.S. Embassy following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Since then, the cleric-led regime has vilified the United States as the "Great Satan."

Despite Ahmadinejad's frequent anti-U.S. rhetoric, he has tried to appeal to the American people before. Recently, he told a live satellite television show that his country wanted peace and friendship with the U.S. Since coming to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad has also sent letters to the American people in which he criticized Bush's Mideast policy.

He is scheduled to address the General Assembly on Tuesday - his third time attending the New York meeting in three years. Last year, Ahmadinejad was harshly critical of U.S. policies in Iraq and Lebanon and insisted that his nation's nuclear activities were "transparent."

At the parade, Ahmadinejad repeated his demand for foreign forces to leave the region and urged the United States to acknowledge it has failed in Iraq. Outside the 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, there are 40,000 troops on U.S. bases in Persian Gulf countries and another 20,000 in Mideast waters.

"Nations throughout the region do not need the presence of the foreigners to manage their own needs. Foreign presence is the root cause of all instability, differences and threats," he said.

On the sidelines of the parade, the head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, said the event highlighted the "might of Iran's armed forces to its enemies," adding that Iran is ready to retaliate if attacked.

"Iran has drawn up plans to confront enemies in the face of any possible attack," the official IRNA news agency quoted Jafari as saying.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also issued a warning against any launch of a limited strike on Iran.

"Military aggression against Iran in the form of a hit-and-run attack is not possible anymore," he was quoted on television as saying to the nation's top military leaders. "Anybody attacking us will become entangled with grave consequences."

The Bush administration is expected to soon blacklist a unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial penalties. The step would be in response to Iran's involvement in Iraq and elsewhere.

The U.S. is also leading a push in the U.N. Security Council for a third round of economic sanctions against Iran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes including generating electricity. The Security Council is not expected to take up the issue before October.

"Learn lessons from your past mistakes. Don't repeat your mistakes," he said in a warning to the United States over its push to impose more sanctions

n the opening years of this century, the world was presented with a historic confrontation between the West and Islamic and Arab worlds. This confrontation has been used in the pursuit of imperial agendas. American failure in Iraq has left underlying reasons exposed. Can the damage done be repaired?

Losing hearts and minds

In its attempts to counter the backlash from its policies, Washington has failed to draw Arabs to its side,It is virtually axiomatic that the major trends of US policy in the Middle East today are directly linked to the aftermath of 11 September, 2001. The war against terrorism, the invasion of Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq, the policies of regime change and promoting democratisation in the Arab world have shaped the political scenery of the Middle East and have led the US to become the major player in one of the world's tensest and most trouble-ridden regions. Has this superpower succeeded, in the course of the past six years, in safeguarding its interests and eliminating what it regards as its main potential threats? Otherwise put, in political-strategic terms, is Washington better off today in the Middle East than it was before September 2001?

There is no need to recapitulate the developments during this period to determine that the balance sheet of gains and losses clearly shows that the threats to American interests are much graver and more diverse than they were before 2001. Indeed, for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the beginning of the 1990s there has emerged a regional axis, lead by Iran, antagonistic towards the US and keen to defy the American enterprise for regional and international hegemony.

No less dismal a failure is the Bush administration's attempt, in the aftermath of September 2001, to reshape Arab public opinion of the US and of US policy in the Middle East through the exercise of so-called instruments of "soft power". The energetic public diplomacy programme, as epitomised by the establishment of Al-Hurra, or "Freedom TV", and Sawa Radio using native Arabic speakers, fell a long way short of winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the Arab people. Recent opinion polls, many conducted by American research centres, reveal that these television and radio stations attracted only a smattering of Arab audiences and that from Morocco to Bahrain, Arab opinion of US policy is more negative than ever.

In large part this failure of public diplomacy is the product of an inappropriately designed approach, based almost exclusively as it was on the concept that governed Washington's media and propaganda campaign targeting the socialist bloc during the Cold War. Whether out of naiveté or pure ignorance, the architects of this project ignored the fundamental difference between the people of Eastern Europe, the majority of whom were fascinated by the Western way of life and who would tune into Radio Free Europe and seize whatever opportunities they could to read American and Western European publications, in spite of the considerable risks they faced in their police states, and the people of the Arab world who, when thinking about America, are concerned above all about American policies towards the Middle East and who regard these policies as hostile to Arab rights and causes and relentlessly biased in favour of Israel. Any media directed towards Arab audiences that could not address this concern, simply because it could not alter the facts, was doomed to lack credibility.

But the architects of policies that gave rise to Al-Hurra TV and Sawa Radio overlooked a more glaring difference between socialist Eastern Europe and the Arab world. In Poland and East Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, people had only the choice between their own state-run media and the more enticing state-run media from the West. Arab audiences at the beginning of the 21st century are inundated with choices, not only from land-based broadcasting stations in Cairo, Riyadh and Amman, but also from satellite networks. Al-Hurra and Sawa could not even begin to compete on the open airwaves with such much more attractive and sophisticated stations as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.

But there is also a technical reason for this failure. As though it was not a difficult enough task to improve the image of the US in the Arab world at a time when this superpower has forces occupying an Arab country that is undergoing horrifying tensions and upheavals, and at a time when it encouraged its Israeli ally to go on the offensive against another Arab country in the hope of altering the map of regional alliances, the American media targeting the Arab world was consistently poorly managed. Programming and the substance of programmes never went beyond the blatantly propagandistic campaign to vindicate American policies. How could it possibly succeed?

The Bush administration lost the battle to win Arab hearts and minds. It is difficult to foresee any reversal of US fortunes any time in the near future.

The cost of saying Mubarak is ill,, Rumours about the health of President Hosni Mubarak continue in the Egyptian capital, despite assertions from the authorities that he is fit and well.
When Mark Twain read that his own obituary had been published he cabled the newspapers to assure them that he was still in fact alive, famously remarking that "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated".


President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt might consider a similar tack.

For weeks now Cairo has been full of rumours about the president's health, or lack of it.

The news came at me from all angles, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, friends of colleagues, even wives of colleagues.

"Have you heard?" they would ask. "The president is ill."

On a few occasions I was even told in hushed tones that the president was, in fact, dead and had been for weeks.

'Silly season'

These stories can be hard to resist. Firstly, because death is news.

The media love to ruminate about and rehearse for the death of important figures - monarchs, religious leaders, actors - and of course presidents.

The other reason this story proved hard to resist was because it happened in the 'silly season', that time of year when very little happens in the world - when people go on holiday - including presidents.

But papers must publish and the media must broadcast.

So the threshold for what constitutes a real story plummets.

This summer in Cairo one of the silly stories was about President Mubarak's health.


Now, I am not saying that the president's health is not a story.

Hosni Mubarak is perhaps the most important political figure in the Arab world.

He has been the leader of the region's most populous country for more than a quarter of a century - a pivotal ally of the West and an influential figure in the politics of the Middle East.

He is approaching 80 years old and has had health problems in the past.

But just because we hear he is at his summer retreat and is not appearing in public every day does not mean he must be dead, especially when every journalist in Cairo knows that we are ambling along a well-trodden path.


Sure enough, Hosni Mubarak was there, waving and smiling and alive
Last April the city was also abuzz with rumour that the president was unwell or dead. I telephoned a senior government contact to check.
I only got as far as: "Hi, it is Ian Pannell from the BBC. Can I ask..." when I was cut off with a loud and firm:

"It is not true."

To reassure everyone we were told that the president would appear at an important football game that evening to be broadcast live on Egyptian television. It was the best watched match of the season.

And sure enough, Hosni Mubarak was there, waving and smiling and alive.

Punishing rumours

So, when a similar story does the rounds just a few months later the wise option would be to steer well clear of it.

But a number of Egyptian newspapers - in particular the opposition and independent ones - did not, choosing to run stories about the rumour, in some cases on the front page, all to the intense irritation of the presidency.


The official response has been robust.

First came the very public and protracted photo opportunity to prove that the president was in fact alive and well.

Then Hosni Mubarak himself spoke out.

In an interview with a pro-government newspaper he accused "illegitimate movements" of being behind the rumours, a not very veiled reference to the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most powerful opposition group.

Then the first lady, Suzanne Mubarak, in a rare television appearance said that journalists who published the rumours deserved to be punished.


And that of course was the next move. Singling out one newspaper and one editor, among many, for trial.
But by responding in this way the presidency and its supporters have turned what began as a rumour into a real story.

They have also illustrated two important things about the country.


Firstly, Mr Mubarak will not go on forever and there is no obvious successor.

Most here assume it will be the president's son, Gamal, who will take over.

But there is anxiety about who and what comes next.

Secondly, the capacity to tolerate criticism and critics has slumped to a new low in Egypt.

For example, the man who dared to challenge Hosni Mubarak for the presidency languishes in jail.

The group that dared to challenge the ruling party in parliamentary elections has its members routinely rounded up.

And internet bloggers, vociferous in their opposition, have also been detained, beaten, and had some websites blocked.

So, to be clear, President Mubarak is alive and well, again.

And there is another Mark Twain quote that the President might like to consider the next time he reads that he is unwell or dead.

The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.