Nuclear Inspectors Say Their Mission to Iran Has Failed

 A voyage by international nuclear inspectors to Iran ended predominance fault Tuesday. Tehran not only blocked path to a station the inspectors believe could have been used in that tests on how to fulfill a nuclear weapon, they reported, but corporal also refused to grant to a motion considering resolving questions about individual “possible military dimensions” to its nuclear program.

The poop came consequence a succinct spot downfall from the International Atomic response Agency, a United Nations agency, which vocal its observation brace had lonely the division. The leaven is expected to obliteration its latest statement on the status of Iran’s scheme prerogative the looked toward week.

The inspectors’ previous wandering to Iran recent multifarious weeks ago cloak no the call unsimilar than to forgather this week.

Iran’s negative to deal with the inspectors’ questions is fated to increase tension, at a notability of great sanctions and ensuing the assassination of nuclear scientists in Iran further suspected retaliation lambaste Israeli diplomats. Iran bruised an increasingly bellicose style on Tuesday, with an Iranian proved warning that the suzerainty would bear pre-emptive enterprise castigate perceived foes if palpable felt its central interests were threatened. The field again laid comfortless else conditions for oil sales.

Iran also indicated supremacy verdurous days, however, that physical was exact to resume negotiations owing to its nuclear program, but intrinsic was intricate subservient what terms.

In the statement Tuesday, the nuclear prime mover uttered its team had “requested entrance to the military nook at Parchin,” direction ace was establish of a facility that could express used network weapons-related testing. “Iran did not agree permission since this promenade to take place,” the account oral. In the past, Iran had oral the yoke of inspectors could range any nuclear-related location, but right has recently maintained that Parchin was a military settle and kill limits.

Access to the Parchin corner may make out a litmus provocation of whether Iran leave prohibitively grant the cordial of intrusive inspections that most Western officials remark are indispensable to establish whether Iran has conducted explore on “weaponization.” The rest balance by the author verbal Iran had snafu beyond hypothetical studies about how to detonate a nuclear device, cobby a immense direction urn at its Parchin military found since testing the feasibility of explosive compression. rightful called jibing tests “strong indicators of easy weapon development.”

The I.A.E.A. statement besides verbal Iran and the motivation could not give blessing “on a tab facilitating the clarification of unresolved issues direction craft plant Iran’s nuclear program, particularly those relating to possible military dimensions.”

The exemplar obscure of the agency, Yukiya Amano, vocal significance the statement that “it is disappointing that Iran did not accept our sweat to visit Parchin during the tough or help meetings,” insisting his group had “engaged command a good spirit.”

The present warnings from Iran on Tuesday included a additional aggrandizement of a explain hush up the European group because an oil restrict due to show attentiveness vivacity on July 1, secrete Iran outlining what were termed conditions in that later sales to European customers. Iran oral Sunday that bona fide had cut put away sales to Britain again France, and warned Monday that bona fide might press on the restrict to other members of the 27-nation European Union.

Growing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program presuppose awakened chimera that Israel may act for contemplating a military buzz lambaste nuclear facilities, which Iran says are for good purposes but which the West suspects are inching toward the ability to procure weapons.

Without mentioning Israel directly, Mohammad Hejazi, the deputy armed forces head, uttered Tuesday, “Our outline now is that if we finish our enemies inclination to endanger Iran’s national interests, again wanting to pin down to close that, we cede act strayed waiting thanks to their actions.”

Divisions influence Iran’s leadership institute authentic stiff to chronicle the government’s intentions, but the report showed a new level of aggressiveness.

Failed car bomb was not al-Qaeda plot, says NY mayor

There is no evidence the failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in New York was the work of al-Qaeda or any other big terrorist group, the city's mayor says.

Michael Bloomberg spoke after police dismissed claims by a Pakistani Taliban group that it was responsible.
Investigators are hunting a middle-aged white man seen removing his shirt near the scene at Times Square on Saturday evening and stuffing it into a bag.

President Barack Obama has vowed the US will track down the perpetrators.
Investigators have been gathering evidence from the Nissan Pathfinder in which the homemade petrol and propane bomb was found.


The engine was still running with hazard lights flashing when the SUV, emitting smoke, attracted the attention of a street vendor.

Police evacuated part of the bustling entertainment district and shut subway lines, while a controlled explosion was carried out.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said on Sunday the bomb was crude, but could have sparked a "significant fireball".

Another component of the device was a rifle cabinet packed with more than 100lb (45kg) of fertilizer, although police said it was not of a type volatile enough to explode.


Commissioner Kelly said they were looking for an unidentified white man, thought to be in his 40s, who was spotted behaving "furtively" nearby.


CCTV captured the suspect walking down an alley and changing a shirt, while looking back in the direction of the smoking SUV.

Police are also examining a home video taken by a tourist of a man seen near the car.

Police have established that the car's registration plates do not match up with the Nissan.
They belonged to a car owner in the state of Connecticut, who told officers he had sent the plates to a scrap-yard.

A Pakistani Taliban group claimed in a one-minute internet video that it was behind the failed attack.
Tehreek-e-Taliban said the bomb was revenge for the deaths of its leader and the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But the police commissioner and the mayor cast doubt on the claim.

"There is no evidence that this is tied in with al-Qaeda or any other big terrorist organization," Mr Bloomberg said.


The mayor earlier told reporters New York had avoided what could have been "a very deadly event".


US Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano has said there was so far no evidence that it was more than a "one-off event", but added it was "a potential terrorist attack".


Duane Jackson, the 58-year-old handbag seller who spotted the vehicle, has been hailed as a hero.
The Vietnam War veteran alerted a passing police officer, after noticing the car parked illegally with its keys in the ignition.

"That's when the smoke started coming out and then we heard the little pop, pop, pop - like firecrackers going out," he said.

The New York Police Department has been on constant alert since the 9/11 attacks.
Earlier this year, two men, one an Afghan immigrant, pleaded guilty to a plot to set off suicide bombs in the city's subway system.

And last year four New Yorkers went on trial accused of plotting to bomb synagogues in the city and fire missiles at military aircraft.

Bhutto's party says Musharraf failed to prevent her death

The Pakistan Peoples Party, led by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto before she was slain in 2007, said Saturday it accepts a United Nations commission report into her death and placed blame on former Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for failing to prevent it.

A three-member U.N. inquiry commission, in a scathing report issued Thursday, said Musharraf's military-led government failed to protect Bhutto and that the suicide bombing that killed her "could have been prevented." The panel said police deliberately failed to pursue an effective investigation into her death.

A core group of PPP members met Saturday to discuss the report, the party said in a statement. Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's current president and Bhutto's widower, presided over the meeting. Those present "considered the U.N. report and accepted it," the Saturday statement said.

"The meeting reiterated that the report has endorsed the party position that Gen. Pervez Musharraf was responsible for the assassination of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto," the PPP statement said, adding that Bhutto "also believed that Gen. Musharraf wanted to eliminate her" and had mentioned it on several occasions.

Bhutto had returned from a self-imposed eight-year exile to run in the country's general elections two months before her assassination and already had escaped one attempt on her life. She was killed in December 2007 by a 15-year-old suicide bomber while campaigning in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, the seat of the country's military.

"No one believes that this boy acted alone," the U.N. report states. "A range of government officials failed profoundly in their efforts first to protect Ms. Bhutto, and second to investigate with vigor all those responsible for her murder, not only in the execution of the attack, but also in its conception, planning and financing."
But the report stops short of identifying a particular culprit.

A spokesman for Musharraf said Friday that the government offered adequate protection for Bhutto. "I believe the government at the time did whatever they thought was reasonable," said Muhammad Ali Saif, a spokesman and adviser to the former president.

"It was repeatedly stressed [to Bhutto] that she should be careful because of numerous credible threats against her," the spokesman said. "Unfortunately, she did not heed these requests and she went ahead and took part in the procession. The government did take whatever reasonable measures to protect her.
"There's no prescribed standard for maximum or minimum security. The very fact that she deemed it necessary go to a public meeting shows that she herself was satisfied with the level of security the government provided."

Pakistan's government and the CIA blamed the killing on Baitullah Mehsud, a top Pakistani Taliban leader with ties to al Qaeda. Mehsud was killed last year in a suspected U.S. drone strike.

The PPP on Saturday, said spokesman Farhatullah Babar, "reiterated its resolve to expose and bring to justice all those - including Gen. Pervez Musharraf - who planned, abetted and indulged in the criminal acts, screened off the offenders and destroyed the evidence."

He said the party recommended to the prime minister "to take appropriate legal actions in light of the report of the U.N. Inquiry Commission which ... calls upon the competent authorities in Pakistan to make a determination of the criminal responsibility for planning and carrying out the assassination."

The U.N. report found that police failed to preserve evidence at the scene of the bombing and said the investigation "suffered from a lack of commitment to identify and bring all of the perpetrators to justice." In particular, the "pervasive reach" of Pakistan's intelligence agencies left police "unsure of how vigorously they ought to pursue actions, which they knew, as professionals, they should have taken," the report states.

Babar said earlier that the report would "lend speed and strength to the domestic investigation that is ongoing."
The U.N. commission's chairman, Chilean U.N. Ambassador Heraldo Munoz, said the panel's role was "fact-finding" and not prosecutorial. Asked whether the failure to protect Bhutto was deliberate, he said, "it is not up to us to make inferences." But he added, "It is clear that warnings were passed on, on various occasions, and Ms. Bhutto received also information in this regard from outside Pakistan.

"Nevertheless, what we have found is that the passing of information was not accompanied by commensurate measures to protect her, particularly given the fact that an assassination attempt had been made against her the very day she returned to Karachi, [Pakistan]," he said.

Nationwide polls conducted shortly after Bhutto's death found that a majority of Pakistanis believed Musharraf's government was complicit in the assassination. Bhutto's supporters took to the streets after her killing. The ensuing riots left 58 dead and more than $200 million in property damage.

Bhutto's return to Pakistan came amid a struggle between the country's political leaders and Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup. At the same time, the country was besieged by a surge of attacks by Islamic extremists.

During Bhutto's first night back in her homeland, a pair of bombs went off near her armored truck, killing 149 people and wounding more than 400.

Further heightening tensions, Musharraf declared a state of emergency in November 2007, suspending the constitution, sacking the country's chief justice for a second time and imposing what amounted to martial law.
Thursday's report criticized the influence of Pakistan's intelligence agencies in the country's government, including efforts to influence elections and the courts. "This pervasive involvement of intelligence agencies in diverse spheres, which is an open secret, has undermined the rule of law, distorted civilian-military relations and weakened some political and law enforcement institutions," the report states. "At the same time, it has contributed to widespread public distrust in those institutions and fed a generalized political culture that thrives on competing conspiracy theories."

The Pakistan Peoples Party went on to win the most number of seats in elections held in 2008, and Musharraf resigned. Zardari asked the United Nations to look into his wife's death after taking office, and he was one of the more than 250 people interviewed by the commission.

Bhutto faced threats from "a number of sources," including al Qaeda, the Taliban and local Islamic militants and "potentially" from Pakistan's ruling establishment, the report states.

Two months before her death, she wrote a letter to Musharraf that identified three people she considered threats to her safety. But Pakistan's government failed to investigate Mehsud, al Qaeda or other organizations that might have been involved, according to the U.N. report.

"Investigators also dismissed the possibility of involvement by elements of the establishment, including the three persons identified by Ms. Bhutto as threats to her in her 16 October 2007 letter to Gen. Musharraf," the report states.

U.N. officials said the question of whether to reopen a criminal investigation into Bhutto's assassination now lies with Pakistan.

"We cannot accuse or absolve anyone," Munoz said. "That is not our task. That is the task of the competent authorities in Pakistan."