Sunday Times: It was just after 11pm and the shopkeeper was closing up for the night when a van screeched to a halt outside. The back doors flew open. Someone inside threw a woman onto the street, he said. She was lying on the road but she was still alive. A man lent out and shot a machine-gun into her body.
Tossed from a car and shot in cold blood
I felt a new terror on Basra’s streets
Sunday Times: As one of the first journalists to visit Basra without military protection in recent years, Marie Colvin finds Islamic militias are waging a brutal campaign for control in Iraqs second city.
Iraqi FM: U.S, Iran postpone talks on Iraqi security
Xinhua: Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari confirmed Saturday that U.S and Iranian officials had postponed their talks on Iraqi security, Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported.
Germany expelled Iran diplomat for atomic work – Spiegel
Reuters: Germany expelled an Iranian diplomat in July after he tried to acquire components for the Islamic Republic’s disputed nuclear programme, a magazine reported on Saturday.
All mixed up over Iran
Washington Times: Last week’s U.S. National Intelligence Estimate states, with “high confidence,” that Iran quit trying to get a nuclear bomb in late 2003. That’s exactly the opposite of what the NIE reported just two years ago, when it claimed Iran’s ruling mullahs were still developing nuclear weapons.
Forget the mullahs it’s time to engage with Iran’s opposition
The Scotsman: Britain must lift its ban on the country’s resistance, says LORD WADDINGTON, and strive for sanctions against the regime.
With spies like these . . .
Washington Post: The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran appears to rely heavily on notes from a discussion between Iranian military officials involved in that country’s nuclear weapons development program. What if, instead of such easily manipulated documentary evidence, the CIA’s National Clandestine Service had been able to recruit a spy at the highest reaches of the Iranian government, someone who could just tell us what the country’s nuclear capabilities and plans were? It wouldn’t have made any difference.
Kosovo and Iran dominate Brown’s first Brussels visit
Guardian Unlimited: Gordon Brown will concentrate on foreign policy on his first, brief, official visit to Brussels as prime minister.
UK govt loses bid to keep Iran opposition group outlawed: ministry
AFP: The British government lost a bid Friday to keep an Iranian opposition group on its list of proscribed terrorist organisations, the Home Office announced.
UK court denies government appeal vs end to Iran opposition group ban
Dow Jones: A U.K. court Friday refused the government’s appeal against the court’s order to the home secretary to lift a six-year ban on an Iranian opposition group, taking the group one step closer to official legitimacy in the U.K., a lawyer assisting the legal team said.
