NEW YORK (Dow Jones)-[off the wire, no link]-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday weapons from Iran are being brought into Iraq and that's a problem for the Iraqi government, the coalition forces in the country "and ultimately, it's a problem for Iran."
Asked at a news briefing in Washington to explain what he meant, Rumsfeld replied, "They (the Iranians) live in the neighborhood" and the people "in that region want this situation stabilized with the exception of Iran and Syria."
In remarks aired by cable news outlets, Rumsfeld said, "Weapons clearly, unambiguously from Iran have been found in Iraq... It's notably unhelpful for the Iranians to allow weapons of those types to cross the border."
Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.(AP-DJ)--08-09-05 1446EDT |
I think "notably unhelpful" qualifies for understatement of the year. Is that like Saddam "notably disliked" the Kurds, or Bill Gates has a "notable sum of money," or Al Gore is "notably dead from the neck up"?
And to further piss us off they decide to up and start enriching uranium again for "strategic energy" purposes... also known as the "strategic elimination of Israel by nuking them back to the stone age along with the rest of the infidels purposes".
LONDON (AP)-[no link off, the wire]-The British government on Monday said it was "deeply concerned" by Iran's decision to restart work at a uranium conversion facility.
British Foreign Office Minister Ian Pearson said in a statement that the government regretted Iran's decision to reject European proposals for economic incentives in return for limiting its nuclear activities and said the decision was "damaging."
"We will discuss the next steps in the IAEA Board of Governors (Tuesday)," Pearson said in the statement.
The U.S. and Europe have warned that Iran's decision to resume work at the plant at Isfahan will prompt them to seek U.N. sanctions.
The resumption strikes a blow to European efforts to convince Iran to rein in a program that the U.S. says is intended to develop nuclear weapons. Over the weekend, Iran, which says it aims only to produce energy, rejected European proposals.
"The E3's proposals represent a serious attempt to find a way forward that would benefit Iran and the international community. We made them in good faith," Pearson said. The E3 are the U.K., Germany and France.
Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.(AP-DJ)--08-08-05 1356EDT |
Yeah I know the Brits are representing a more hard-line approach in these ass-backward diplomatic negotiations, and they've been much tougher on terror since the London bombings (I dig the idea of kicking out extremists who preach hatred). But when the French get involved, I always get a little skeptical. That last paragraph in the article screams "please don't get pissed at us we're trying to be as impotent as the UN... really." |
