Iran's Ahmadinejad rejects Western nuclear proposal
Mon May 25, 2009 11:15am EDT

"Our talks (with major powers) will only be in the framework of cooperation for managing global issues and nothing else. We have clearly announced this," Ahmadinejad said."The nuclear issue is a finished issue for us," he told a news conference.

By Parisa Hafezi and Zahra Hosseinian

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday rejected a Western proposal for it to "freeze" its nuclear work in return for no new sanctions and ruled out any talks with major powers on the issue.

The comments by the conservative president, who is seeking a second term in a June 12 election, are likely to further disappoint the U.S. administration of President Barack Obama, which is seeking to engage Iran diplomatically.

The United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain said in April they would invite Iran to a meeting to try and find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear row.

The West accuses Iran of secretly developing atomic weapons. Iran, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, denies the charge and says it only wants nuclear power to generate electricity.

Breaking with past U.S. policy of shunning direct talks with Iran, Obama's administration last month said it would join nuclear discussions with Tehran from now on.

Ahmadinejad proposed a debate with Obama at the United Nations in New York "regarding the roots of world problems" but he made clear Tehran would not bow to pressure on the nuclear issue.

"Our talks (with major powers) will only be in the framework of cooperation for managing global issues and nothing else. We have clearly announced this," Ahmadinejad said.

"The nuclear issue is a finished issue for us," he told a news conference. "From now on we will continue our path in the framework of the (U.N. nuclear watchdog) agency."

He was asked about a so-called "freeze-for-freeze" proposal first put forward last year under which Iran would freeze expansion of its nuclear program in return for the U.N. Security Council halting further sanctions against Tehran.

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Netanyahu: No new W. Bank settlements
May. 24, 2009 THE JERUSALEM POST

Amid a flurry of comments among politicians regarding the possible evacuation of numerous unauthorized outposts in the West Bank, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday not to build new settlements while assuring that "natural growth" will not go unanswered.

"We are obliged to protect the law," he said during the weekly cabinet meeting. "We won't establish new settlements, but there is no logic in not providing an answer to natural growth."

Prior to the meeting, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that nearly two dozen illegal outposts in the West Bank will be dismantled, with force if necessary.

"There are 26 illegal outposts - declared as such by the Talia Sasson Commission - which the [Ariel Sharon] government promised the Americans would be evacuated," he told ministers. "But this isn't the issue between us and the Americans, and us and the Palestinians, rather first and foremost amongst ourselves.

"This is an issue of the rule of law in the state, and the authority of the law over its citizens," Barak continued. "We have evacuated three outposts, come to an understanding with another, and have not allowed any additional outposts to be constructed.

"The 22 additional outposts must be taken care of now, and in a responsible and correct way," the defense minister said, "first by trying to work something out with negotiations, and if that's not possible, through unilateral means, including the use of force."

Arrested Islamists planned to attack Jews in Morocco

May 21, 2009 Agence France Presse

RABAT (AFP) — A group of alleged Islamists recently arrested in Morocco planned to attack Jewish interests in the country, a court source said Thursday, citing the charges against them.

The suspects, alleged to be members of a cell that was part of the radical Islamist movement Salafia Jihadia, were also preparing attacks against Moroccan security services, the source said.

Details of the alleged attack plans were not available.

The cell -- Jamaat Al Mourabitine Al Jodod, or New Fighters Group -- allegedly began operating in March 2008 in southern Morocco and sought to recruit militants from Koranic schools with the intention of infiltrating political parties.

Authorities announced their arrest on May 12 and they face charges including forming a criminal gang with the aim of carrying out "terrorist" acts. They are being held in jail.

"Police dismantled the cell as part of a regular operation in the battle against terrorism," the court source said.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

Brazilian police thwart neo-Nazi plot to bomb synagogues

May 22, 2009

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Brazilian police said they thwarted a plan by neo-Nazis to bomb two synagogues.

Police arrested 14 men and released them pending an investigation into a plot to bomb the synagogues in the city of Porto Alegre, spokesmen said on Thursday.

Police seized explosive devices, knives and Nazi literature in the operation.

“I have no doubt that we have aborted a major tragedy,” Paulo Cesar Jardim, an inspector, was quoted as saying by The Associated Press. Police said the men belonged to a group, “Neuland,” established in 2002 and comprising about 50 people.

Jardim described the members as “extremely intelligent, well-organized and very dangerous criminals who prey on Jews and gays in the name of racial purity.”

Bronx terrorists ‘wanted to commit jihad’
May 21, 2009

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The four men who planned to blow up two synagogues in the Bronx and shot down U.S. military planes said they "wanted to commit jihad," the New York Police Commissioner said.

James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh 60 miles north of New York, were arrested Wednesday night. Payen is a native of Haiti. All four of the men are Muslim, and three are recent converts to Islam, according to reports.

“They stated that they wanted to commit jihad,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Thursday morning during a news conference at the Riverdale Jewish Center. “More information about their motives I’m sure will be developed as the case progresses, but right now, they stated they wanted to make jihad. They were disturbed about what was happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that Muslims were being killed. They were making statements that Jews were killed in this attack and that would be all right — that sort of thing.”

Kelly said the men, who are scheduled to be arraigned Thursday morning in Federal District Court, were not acting on behalf of any terrorist organizations and described them as "petty criminals" with multiple arrests for minor crimes.

According to the U.S. attorney’s statement, an informant working with the FBI this month provided the four men with a disabled anti-aircraft missile launcher and disabled explosives. The men on Wednesday planted the fake explosives, which they believed to be real, in cars parked outside Riverdale Temple, a Reform synagogue, and the Riverdale Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue.

Last month, according to the statement and to the criminal complaint, the defendants photographed several synagogues and a Jewish community center in the Riverdale section of the Bronx as well as the Air National Guard Base at Newburgh.

Cromitie, who according to the complaint told the informant that his parents once lived in Afghanistan, allegedly expressed an interest in working with the Pakistan-based Islamist terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed.

“While the weapons provided to the defendants by the cooperating witness were fake, the defendants thought they were absolutely real," said acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin said in the statement. "The defendants planned to strike military planes with surface-to-air guided missiles and to destroy a synagogue and a Jewish community center with C-4 plastic explosives.”

NBC: 4 arrested in plot to bomb NYC targets
Suspects were under heavy surveillance, authorities say

WASHINGTON - Four men have been arrested in a plot to attack several targets in the New York City area, including synagogues, federal and local authorities told NBC News Wednesday.

Authorities said the four men have long been under investigation and there was little danger they could actually have carried out their plan, NBC's Pete Williams reported.

Investigators say the four, described as Black Muslims from the Bronx, had planned to place bombs at various targets. But New York city police and federal agents got wind of the plot and kept the men under careful surveillance.
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In fact, officials say, the men recently bought what they thought were explosives, which they put in storage lockers outside the city. But what the men did not know is that the material they bought was actually harmless, sold to them by informants posing as explosives dealers.

Officials emphasize that the men never had actual bombs and could not have pulled off any attack.

Two years ago, two Muslims pleaded guilty to plotting to attack synagogues in Los Angeles. But officials said that they knew of no connection between those arrests and this latest plot in New York.

This breaking news story will be updated.

Peace isn't Arab goal

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | May 20, 2009

WHO FAVORS a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict?

President Obama does, of course, as he made clear in welcoming Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House on Monday. So does former president George W. Bush, who began advocating Palestinian statehood in 2002 and continued until his final days in office. The Democratic Party's national platform endorses a two-state solution; the Republican platform does, too. The UN Security Council unanimously reaffirmed its support a few days ago, and the European Union is strongly in favor as well.

Pope Benedict XVI called for a Palestinian state during his recent visit to the Holy Land, thereby aligning himself - on this issue, at least - with the editorial boards of The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. And, for that matter, with most Israelis. A new poll shows 58 percent of the Israeli public backing a two-state solution; prominent supporters include Netanyahu's three predecessors - former prime ministers Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Barak - as well as president Shimon Peres.

The consensus, it would seem, is overwhelming. As Henri Guaino, a senior adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, put it on Sunday: "Everyone wants peace. The whole world wants a Palestinian state."

It isn't going to happen.

International consensus or no, the two-state solution is a chimera. Peace will not be achieved by granting sovereignty to the Palestinians, because Palestinian sovereignty has never been the Arabs' goal. Time and time again, a two-state solution has been proposed. Time and time again, the Arabs have turned it down.

In 1936, when Palestine was still under British rule, a royal commission headed by Lord Peel was sent to investigate the steadily worsening Arab violence. After a detailed inquiry, the Peel Commission concluded that "an irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country." It recommended a two-state solution - a partition of the land into separate Arab and Jewish states. "Partition offers a chance of ultimate peace," the commission reported. "No other plan does."

But the Arab leaders, more intent on preventing Jewish sovereignty in Palestine than in achieving a state for themselves, rejected the Peel plan out of hand. The foremost Palestinian leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, actively supported the Nazi regime in Germany. In return, Husseini wrote in his memoirs, Hitler promised him "a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world."

In 1947, the Palestinians were again presented with a two-state proposal. Again they spurned it. Like the Peel Commission, the United Nations concluded that only a division of the land into adjacent states, one Arab and one Jewish, could put an end to the conflict. On Nov. 29, 1947, by a vote of 33-13, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, partitioning Palestine on the basis of population. Had the Arabs accepted the UN decision, the Palestinian state that "the whole world wants" would today be 61 years old. Instead, the Arab League vowed to block Jewish sovereignty by waging "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre."

Over and over, the pattern has been repeated. Following its stunning victory in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel offered to exchange the land it had won for permanent peace with its neighbors. From their summit in Khartoum came the Arabs' notorious response: "No peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel."

At Camp David in 2000, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians virtually everything they claimed to be seeking - a sovereign state with its capital in East Jerusalem, 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, tens of billions of dollars in "compensation" for the plight of Palestinian refugees. Yasser Arafat refused the offer, and launched the bloodiest wave of terrorism in Israel's history.

To this day, the charters of Hamas and Fatah, the two main Palestinian factions, call for Israel's liquidation. "The whole world" may want peace and a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians want something very different. Until that changes, there is no two-state solution.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com