BAGHDAD, Iraq — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has secured a pledge from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to help cut off weapons, funding and other support to militiamen in Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Saturday.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said it was too early to tell whether there has been a real reduction in Iranian support since the deal was reached last month.
“The president of Iran pledged to Prime Minister Maliki during a recent meeting that he would stop the flow of weapons, the training, the funding and the directing of these militia extremists that have been such a huge problem really for Iraq,” Petraeus said.
He reiterated charges, that Iran has denied, that Iran is supplying rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, large rockets and armor-piercing bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, which have been used in attacks against U.S. forces.
Iranian officials have made no announcement of such a commitment and could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Iran: CIA, U.S. Army ‘terrorists’
Iran’s parliament voted Saturday to designate the CIA and the U.S. Army as “terrorist organizations,” a largely symbolic response to a U.S. Senate resolution seeking a similar designation for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The parliament said the Army and the CIA were terrorists because of the atomic bombing of Japan; the use of depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq; support of the killings of Palestinians by Israel; the bombing and killing Iraqi civilians and the torture of imprisoned terror suspects.
Mexico: Storms fade and form
Floodwaters from Hurricane Lorenzo were receding in Veracruz on Saturday after rains caused mudslides and floods that killed at least five people and drove tens of thousands from their homes in eastern Mexico. Meanwhile, a new tropical storm, Melissa, formed in the eastern Atlantic, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. It posed no immediate threat to land In the eastern Pacific, a tropical depression was upgraded to Tropical Storm Juliette but remained hundreds of miles off the coast of central Mexico. Atlantic Tropical Storm Karen faded into a tropical depression and was likely to dissipate soon.
Japan: WWII textbook protest
@1. a BODY STYLES:More than 100,000 people protested Saturday in southern Japan against the central government’s order to modify school textbooks that say the Japanese army — faced with an impending U.S. invasion in 1945 — handed out grenades to residents in Okinawa and ordered them to kill themselves rather than surrender to the Americans at the end of World War II. Accounts of forced group suicides on Okinawa are backed by historical research, as well as testimonies from victims’ relatives.
India: ‘Idol’ remark sets off mob
An angry mob set dozens of vehicles ablaze in riots after a radio host made derogatory comments about the winner of the popular television show “Indian Idol,” officials said Saturday. More than 60 people were injured. Supporters of Prashant Tamang, the recent winner of the TV singing competition, took to the streets of the town of Siliguri to protest against what they perceived as a radio show host’s ethnic slur against Tamang, said state police official R.J.S. Nalwa. Tamang is an Indian citizen of Nepalese origin.
D.C.: EPA after fewer polluters
The Environmental Protection Agency’s pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new investigations and total convictions all down by more than a third, according to Justice Department and EPA data. The number of civil lawsuits filed against defendants who refuse to settle environmental cases was down nearly 70 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, compared with a four-year period in the late 1990s, according to those same statistics. Critics of the agency say its flagging efforts have emboldened polluters to flout U.S. environmental laws, threatening progress in cleaning the air, protecting wildlife, eliminating hazardous materials and countless other endeavors overseen by the EPA.
Calif.: DDT, breast cancer study
Women heavily exposed to the pesticide DDT during childhood are five times as likely to develop breast cancer, a new research by the University of California at Berkeley suggests. The research, based on a small number of women, tested a theory that the person’s age during exposure was critical. The women in the top third of DDT concentrations who were exposed before age 14 were five times as likely to get breast cancer as the women with the lowest levels, according to the study. No relationship between cancer and the insecticide was found in the women born before 1931, who would have been older during any exposure.
From Herald news services
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
