Iran possesses Russian air defence system

Iran’s Defence Minister says Islamic republic is now equipped with strategic S-300 system which serves its air force's counterattack command.

US and Israel have criticised Russia for the sale of the S-300 system to Iran TEHRAN - Iran's army is now equipped with a Russian air defence system after a long and controversial delivery process, Defence Minister General Hossein Dehghan was quoted as saying Tuesday. "I inform our people that... we are in possession of the strategic S-300 system" and that it "serves our air force's counterattack command," Dehghan said, according to ISNA news agency. Parts of the system, including missile tubes and radar equipment, were displayed on April 17 during a military parade in southern Tehran. The United States and Israel have criticised Russia for the sale of the S-300 system to the Islamic republic. Tehran says it is needed to strengthen its air defence against possible attacks, including on its nuclear facilities. Iran and Russia originally signed a contract for its delivery in 2007, but in 2010 Moscow suspended the sale after the UN Security Council issued a resolution against Iran's nuclear programme. In 2015, shortly before the conclusion of an international agreement on Tehran's nuclear programme, Moscow re-authorised the delivery. The two countries are also in talks for delivery to Iran of Sukhoi SU-30 fighter jets, a deal also criticised by Washington. Dehghan also announced that Iran will start manufacturing this year an air defence system, Bavar 373, "capable of destroying cruise missiles, drones, combat aircraft and ballistic missiles." "This long-range system is able to destroy several targets at once," he added.

Aleppo truce extended by 48 hours

Syrian army says truce in Aleppo between regime forces and rebels that was due to expire late Monday has been extended by 48 hours.

Two more days of truce ALEPPO - A truce in Aleppo in northern Syria between regime forces and rebels that was due to expire late Monday has been extended by 48 hours, the army command said. "The 'regime of silence' in Aleppo and its province has been extended by 48 hours from Tuesday 01:00 am (local time) to midnight on Wednesday," a statement said. The temporary truce, initially for two days and then prolonged until Tuesday at 00:01 am (21:01 GMT Monday), was decided after fighting killed nearly 300 people since April 22 in Aleppo, where some areas are held by rebels and others by government forces. The announcement came as Russia and the United States agreed to boost efforts to find a political solution to Syria's five-year war which has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions. The two powers also agreed to extend a truce across the whole of the country. "The Russian Federation and United States are determined to redouble efforts to reach a political settlement of the Syrian conflict," according to a joint US-Russian statement published by the Russian foreign ministry. To this end, Russia "will work with the Syrian authorities to minimise aviation operations over areas that are predominantly inhabited by civilians or parties" to the ceasefire, it said. The two powers brokered a February 27 ceasefire between regime forces and the armed opposition that did not, however, include jihadist fighters such as the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate, Al-Nusra Front. On Sunday, Syrian rebels fired rockets into a regime-held district of Aleppo, killing five civilians including two children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The Britain-based monitor also reported 10 civilians killed on Monday by regime bombardment in the northwestern province of Idlib which is controlled by Al-Nusra Front.

US and Afghan forces find kidnapped son of Pakistani PM: govt

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - 

US and Afghan forces have found the kidnapped son of a former Pakistani prime minister alive in an operation in Afghanistan, the Pakistani foreign ministry said in a statement issued Tuesday.

Ali Haider Gilani, son of Yousaf Raza Gilani, "has been recovered today in a joint operation carried out by the Afghan and US security forces in Ghazni, Afghanistan", the statement said, three years after he was kidnapped by suspected Taliban militants in Pakistan.

© 2016 AFP

Brexit camp says Berlin vetoed UK's EU reform plans

LONDON (AFP) - 

Germany vetoed key parts of British Prime Minister David Cameron's attempted EU reforms before he called a referendum on Britain's membership, an ex-cabinet minister said in an interview published Tuesday.

Eurosceptic veteran Iain Duncan Smith, who quit as work and pensions secretary in March, told The Sun newspaper that a key demand for an emergency brake on mass immigration was ditched at the last minute at Berlin's behest.

The prime minister's Downing Street office insisted Cameron had decided against the demand himself.

Cameron sought reforms to the UK's relationship with the European Union before calling the June 23 in-or-out referendum on Britain's membership of the bloc.

Duncan Smith, a former Conservative Party leader, said the migration brake call was to have been in a speech by Cameron on November 27.

"I saw the draft. I know that right up until the midnight hour, there was a strong line in there about restricting the flow of migrants from the EU -- an emergency brake on overall migration," he said.

"It was dropped, literally the night before. And it was dropped because the Germans said, 'if that is in the speech, we will have to attack it'."

He said Berlin "had a de facto veto over everything".

The referendum campaign has kicked into full swing following Thursday's regional and local elections in Britain.

On Monday, Cameron, who wants Britain to stay in a reformed EU, said that a British exit from the 28-country bloc would threaten peace on the continent.

Conservative former London mayor Boris Johnson dismissed the claims and said Brexit was now the "great project of European liberalism".

Duncan Smith's intervention was likely only to worsen the Conservative rift over the EU. Only around half of the party's MPs have joined Cameron in the "Remain" camp.

The "Remain" and "Leave" campaigns are locked on 50 percent each, according to the What UK Thinks website's average of the last six opinion polls.

Instead of being able to impose an emergency brake on immigration, Cameron won a concession to control access to in-work welfare for new EU immigrants for four years.

A Downing Street source told The Sun: "The prime minister made clear at the time that the government had looked at an emergency brake but he decided it was not the most effective way forward.

"That is why he decided to impose restrictions on benefits instead to end the something-for-nothing culture."

© 2016 AFP

‘Islamist motive’ suspected in deadly Munich knife attack

A man killed one person and wounded three others in a knife attack at a German railway station Tuesday that prosecutors said had “an apparent Islamist motive”.

It is Germany’s third knife attack with an apparent Islamist motivation since September.

Police said they had arrested a 27-year-old German man who had slashed four people around 5 am (0300 GMT) at the station in the small town of Grafing, east of Munich.

One of the victims, a 50-year-old man, later died of his wounds in hospital, said Ken Heidenreich, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office.

The others wounded were men aged 43, 55 and 58, Heidenreich said.

“Around 5 am this morning a 27-year-old German attacked four people with a knife,” Heidenreich told AFP.

The “assailant made remarks at the scene of the crime that indicate a political motive—apparently an Islamist motive."

“We are still determining what the exact remarks were.”

Local media reported that witnesses had said the man had yelled “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) during the attack.

A police spokesman earlier said that “a political background cannot be ruled out”, adding that the man arrested was “not very cooperative”.

The railway station was closed after the man’s arrest.

“There is no longer any threat to the population,” said another police spokeswoman, Michaela Gross.

Threat against ‘unbelievers’

Last August, two jihadists claiming to belong to the Islamic State group threatened Germany with attacks in an online execution video.

In the rare German-language video they urged their “brothers and sisters” in Germany and Austria to commit attacks against “unbelievers” at home.

Since then Germany has seen at least two bloody knife assaults blamed on Islamists, before Tuesday’s attack.

In February a 15-year-old girl identified as Safia S. stabbed a policeman in the neck with a kitchen knife in what prosecutors later said was an IS-inspired attack.

She attacked the officer during a routine check at Hanover train station in the country’s north before being overpowered by another police officer.

Federal prosecutors later said the teenager had “embraced the radical jihadist ideology of the foreign terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” and was in contact with an IS fighter in Syria.

Last September a 41-year-old Iraqi man identified as Rafik Y. stabbed and seriously wounded a policewoman in Berlin before another officer shot him dead.

The man had previously spent time in jail for membership of a banned Islamist group and had been convicted in 2008 of planning an attack in Berlin against former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi.

(AFP)
 

Brazil house speaker reverses opposition to Rousseff impeachment

The interim speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress on Tuesday said he had reversed a decision to annul the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

Waldir Maranhao said in a statement that he “reversed the decision” on Monday to cancel the April vote by lawmakers that launched the process, a formality that clears the way for Rousseff’s impeachment to go ahead, Brazilian media reported.

His move comes after Senate president Renan Calheiros on Monday dismissed Maranhao’s annulment, saying the Senate would still go ahead with the impeachment.

The vote against Rousseff is back on track after descending into confusion Monday with Congress’s two leaders arguing over whether it should continue.

Rousseff faces being suspended from office if the Senate votes—as now appears likely—to open an impeachment trial at a session starting Wednesday.

However, in a stunning twist of events on Monday, Maranhao had declared that the whole process was flawed and should be brought back to square one.

The original vote by lower house deputies sending Rousseff to face the Senate had “prejudged” the president and denied her “the right to a full defense,” Maranhao said.

He called for the Senate to halt proceedings and for the lower house to hold a new vote.

The order prompted consternation in the capital, with Rousseff’s allies seeing a possible escape route for the president and her opponents reacting furiously.

Rousseff huddled in an emergency meeting with ministers and all eyes turned to see how the Senate would react.

Calheiros did not take long.

“I ignore” the order, Calheiros said in a nationally televised session to raucous applause and angry shouting from rival senators on the floor.

Calheiros called Maranhao’s intervention in the impeachment drama “absolutely untimely” and “playing with democracy.”

(AFP)

Iran to sue US over court seizure of $2 bn in frozen funds

TEHRAN (AFP) - 

Iran is preparing international legal action to recover nearly $2 billion that the US Supreme Court has ordered be paid as compensation to American victims of terror attacks, President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday.

"We will soon take the case of the $2 billion to the international court," Rouhani said in a televised speech.

"We will not allow the United States to swallow this money so easily," the president said to a crowd of thousands in the southeastern city of Kerman.

The US Supreme Court ruled on April 20 that Iran must hand nearly $2 billion in frozen central bank assets to the survivors and relatives of those killed in attacks it has been accused of organising.

The attacks include the 1983 bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

The Supreme Court ruling affects some 1,000 Americans.

It came despite hopes for better relations between Tehran and Washington, after a landmark nuclear deal last July between Iran and major powers led by the United States.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said he is ready to help settle the dispute over the assets, but only if both governments make that request.

© 2016 AFP