Iran test-fires long range missiles on last day of Gulf war games: navy commander

Iran said on Monday it has successfully test-fired two long-range missiles during its naval exercise in the Gulf, the official IRNA news agency reported.

A Qader ground-to-ship cruise missile and a Nour surface-to-surface missile were launched in the tests, which came after the test-firing on Sunday of a medium-range ground-to-air missile in the area, according to Commodore Mahmoud Mousavi.

A shorter-range Nasr missile able to hit targets up to 35 kilometers (22 miles) away was also to be tested Monday, he said.

Iran has been holding the 10-day naval exercise at a time of increased tension with Western powers over its nuclear programme, according to Reuters.

Iran has long-range missile systems, which could reach Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East.

The Qader cruise missile “built by Iranian experts successfully hit its target and destroyed it,” Mousavi was quoted as saying by the IRNA news agency.

He said it was “the first time” a Qader missile had been tested, according to AFP.

Hours later a Nour missile “was also fired from a vessel in the sea today,” he told the state broadcaster IRIB.

Tehran threatened last week to stop the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz if it became the target of an oil embargo over its nuclear ambitions. The European Union has said it is considering a ban -- already in place in the United States -- on imports of Iranian crude.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet said it will not allow any disruption of traffic in the vital oil shipping route.

The United States and Israel say they have not ruled out military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to resolve a dispute over the nuclear programme, which Tehran says is peaceful but the West believes is a cover for trying to build atomic bombs.

On Sunday, Iran successfully test-fired a medium-range surface-to-air missile during navy war games taking place near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, Mousavi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

“This medium-range surface-to-air missile is equipped with the latest technology to combat radar-evading targets and intelligent systems which try to disrupt missile navigation,” Mousavi said earlier.

He said it was the first time Iran had tested the missile, which was “domestically designed and built,” according to AFP.

The missile’s launch and the war games are meant to show Iran’s military capabilities at a time that the United States and other Western nations are increasing pressure over Tehran's nuclear program.

Twenty percent of the world’s oil passes through the strait, making it the “most important chokepoint” globally, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Egypt’s trial of Mubarak, two sons and top security aides, resumes in Cairo

The trial of Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak, his two sons Gamal and Alaa, former interior minister Habib al-Adly and six top police officers, was resumed on Monday at a Cairo court.

Mubarak was wheeled into court on a stretcher, live footage broadcast by state television showed.

The 83-year-old strongman is being treated in a military hospital for a heart condition between sessions of the trial. His lawyer Farid al-Deeb says Mubarak suffers from stomach cancer.

Mubarak and his aides are accused of ordering the killing of protesters during the Jan. 25 revolution. If convicted, Mubarak could face the death penalty.

Mubarak’s trial was resumed on Wednesday after a three-month hiatus that saw the ousted strongman’s fate eclipsed by deadly clashes and an Islamist election victory, but later an announcement from the Egypt court said that the trial would be postponed and will take place on Monday instead.

In early December, the court turned down an appeal for a new judge which was filed by lawyers representing the victims’ families to change Judge Ahmed Refaat.

Television cameras, which were allowed in for the opening sessions, will not be allowed in court when the trial resumes.

Mubarak is the first leader to be toppled in the so-called Arab Spring uprisings to appear before a court. The first hearing on Aug. 3 was broadcast live on television, but Refaat soon ordered the cameras out.

Egypt’s military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi testified in Mubarak’s trial on Sept. 24 under a total media blackout. Leaks of his testimony suggested that he sought to absolve Mubarak of any responsibility for the killing of nearly 850 protesters during the 18-day uprising that forced him to step down on Feb. 11.

Ever since the trial began in August, many in the country have been riveted by the sight of their ailing former ruler of nearly 30 years lying in a hospital bed inside the courtroom’s cage, where defendants traditionally sit during trials in Egypt.

During early sessions, the trial was bogged down by frequent commotion and arguments in the courtroom between the defense and the lawyers representing the protesters.

Lawyers supporting the former president are hoping to clear his name.

Yussri Abdul Razek, who heads the defense committee -- which includes four Kuwaiti lawyers -- said last week he had obtained “new documents that will prove Mubarak’s innocence.”

Presidential polls process to begin April

Meanwhile, a report by state-run al-Ahram newspaper on Sunday said that the door for presidential candidature applications will open in April following the public referendum on the new constitution.

The report quoted Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Judge Mohammed Attiya as saying that the presidential elections will be held after the referendum on the new constitution, adding that the constituent assembly that will draft the constitution will be formed after both houses of parliament are seated end of March.

Attiya also said that cabinet will discuss the presidential elections law next Wednesday before presenting it to Egypt’s military rulers for final approval.
Al-Ahram quoted Attiya as saying that the process of electing a new president will be organized by a committee similar to the Supreme Electoral Commission which managed the recent parliamentary elections.

This committee will organize the voting process through election sub-committees in Egypt’s 27 governorates and will set rules on issues related to funding and campaigning.

Amongst the presidential contenders are former U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohammed ElBaradei; former Arab League chief Amr Moussa; opposition figure Ayman Nour who also ran in the 2005 presidential race against Mubarak and Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party representative Mohammed Selim al-Awa.

Tahrir Square celebrates New Year’s Eve

By 8:30pm Tahrir Square was packed. The flag-bearers were back. The neon pink standard of the candy-floss man could be spotted again, bobbing over people’s heads in the crowd. The men with their fireworks had also returned.

People were handing out stickers calling for the release of detained blogger Maikel Nabil and carrying posters of shohadaa(martyrs) commemorating the dead.

Groups huddled together to keep warm.

On the stage the poet Abdel Rahman Youssef was speaking beautifully about the continued fight for freedom. Had this been a few weeks ago, we would have been facing bullets and tear gas. But last night, for the first time in months, it was a celebration.

“I wanted to be here, to see the New Year in the square. It’s important,” Magdy, 54, tells me as he stands next to his daughter who is beaming. “Next year will be good, I hope, but we are in the process of getting freedom, we have a long way to go.”

I bumped into Ramy Essam before he was due to go on stage. Dubbed the singer of the revolution, Ramy was detained and tortured by the Egyptian military back in March. The photos of Ramy’s whipped and beaten back became one the iconic images of the revolution.  

“I’m not sure 2012 will be better than 2011, but we will do our best to make it better. We will keep fighting... Right now, everyone here is very happy.” Ramy sang “Irhal” (Leave) to ecstatic crowds, a song he penned in the 18 days and initially dedicated to Mubarak.

Gamila Ismail, who ran as a arliamentary candidate for the constituency surrounding Tahrir Square and one of the organisers of the event, spoke on the stage with a mother of a boy who had died in the clashes. Candles were lit for the martyrs while people spontaneously chanted “Down, down with the military regime.”  Intermingled in the candlelit crowds were people in party hats waving flags.  

A service was held at nearby Qasr El-Dobara church, a place that had become a makeshift field hospital during the November and December clashes. Groups of youth made a human shield around the church to protect it from attack – reminiscent of scenes during many battles when Christians have guarded Muslims as they prayed.

At 10pm the worshippers marched from the Church to join the square. They were met with applause and chants of “Muslims and Christians are one hand.” A flag of Mina Danial, the Copt socialist activist who was shot dead by the Egyptian security forces during the Maspero protest, headed the march. There were signs saying “Blessed be Egypt – Our people.”

“The government tries to set Muslims and Christians against each other,” explains Eman, a Christian doctor who was on the march, “It’s divide and rule. But we are one.”  The celebrated Sufi singer Sheikh Ahmed El-Touny sang in the background. Later a Muslim wedding was announced on the overhead speakers by a Coptic MC, the happy couple joined the stage, hugged and danced. 

At midnight, large bouquets of balloons in the Egyptian flag colours were released into the sky.

Tahrir, the heartbeat of the revolution, a home for many sit-ins, a battleground in the clashes and occasionally a badly organised roundabout showed the wear and tear of a long and incredible but difficult year. The central circle, once a garden now a sandy tent city, was full of families gathering in groups to keep warm. Revellers in homemade fez hats were chanting outside the Hardees burger restaurant, where the pavement has been broken up for rocks in the battles. There are now four walls built by the army, blocking Tahrir’s surrounding streets.

“It’s very different in comparison to last year,” adds Eman who was reflecting on 2011’s New Year’s Day which saw the bombing of the Two Saints church in Alexandria. Large gatherings in a public space like Tahrir were not allowed under Mubarak’s regime; this event would have been impossible to organise then. “In the end we are all Egyptian. The people are together, both Christians and Muslims, we will stay until we reach out goals. No one can stop that.”

Arab Parliament calls on Arab League monitors to withdraw from Syria ‘promptly’

An Arab League advisory body called on Sunday for the immediate withdrawal of the organization’s monitoring mission in Syria, saying it was allowing Damascus to cover up continued violence and abuses.

The Arab League has sent a small team to Syria to check whether President Bashar al-Assad is keeping his promise to end a crackdown on a nine-month uprising against his rule.

The Arab Parliament, an 88-member advisory committee of delegates from each of the League’s member states, on Sunday said the violence was continuing to claim many victims.

“For this to happen in the presence of Arab monitors has roused the anger of Arab people and negates the purpose of sending a fact-finding mission,” the organization’s chairman Ali al-Salem al-Dekbas said.

“This is giving the Syrian regime an Arab cover for continuing its inhumane actions under the eyes and ears of the Arab League,” he said.

The Arab Parliament was the first body to recommend freezing Syria’s membership in the organization in response to Assad's crackdown.

An Arab League official, commenting on the parliament’s statement, told Reuters it was too early to judge the mission’s success, saying it was scheduled to remain in Syria for a month and that more monitors were on their way.

The parliament called on the League’s Secretary-General Nabil Elarabi to convene a meeting of Arab foreign ministers to adopt a resolution to withdraw the mission immediately.

The continued abuse and killing of innocent Syrian civilians was a “blatant violation to the Arab League’s protocol”, Dekbas said.

New year, more violence

Syrian pro-democracy protesters saw the New Year in with demonstrations in several flashpoint centers, activists said Sunday, as more deaths were reported in the regime’s crackdown on dissent.

Arab League officials monitoring violence meanwhile appeared to be in conflict over whether government snipers are perched on rooftops in the southern protest hub of Daraa, where the uprising started in mid-March.

“The youth of the revolution held huge and simultaneous protests overnight to welcome the New Year” across Syria, said the Local Coordination Committees (LCC) network of activists.

Protesters took to the streets in Daraa, Idlib and Aleppo in the north, in the mostly Kurdish city of Qamishli in the northeast and in Zabadani near Damascus, the LCC said in a statement received by AFP in Nicosia.

“May 2012 bring us all peace, safety and a promise of a free Syria,” the LCC said after more than nine months of anti-regime protests and a lethal regime crackdown on dissent that has killed thousands of people.

“The Local Committees corroborated in the year 2011, exactly 5,862 martyrs, including 321 male children, 74 female children and 146 women,” the group said in another statement.

United Nations estimates unveiled in early December had also put the death toll in Syria at more than 5,000.

On Saturday three more civilians were reported killed by gunfire from regime forces, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday, including two shot dead by snipers in the flashpoint province of Homs.

Activists have accused the regime of posting snipers on rooftops as part of their brutal crackdown on dissent, in which government forces have also been accused of firing tear gas, stun grenades and on Friday “nail bombs.”

But the issue of snipers appears to have triggered a dispute among the Arab League observers deployed since last Monday in Syria to implement a peace plan to end the bloodshed.

In a video released by the Observatory, a man wearing an orange vest with the Arab League logo said in Daraa: “There are snipers; we have seen them with our own eyes.”

“We ask the authorities to remove them immediately; if they don’t remove them within 24 hours there will be other measures,” the unnamed speaker in the video, which was dated Friday, told a crowd of people.

But veteran Sudanese military intelligence officer General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, who is heading the observer mission, said the official seen in the video was making a hypothetical remark.

“This man said that if he saw ─ by his own eyes ─ those snipers he will report immediately,” Dabi told the BBC’s Newshour program. “But he didn’t see (snipers).”

Arab monitors are on a month-long mission to implement a plan calling for the withdrawal of the military from towns and residential districts, a halt to violence against civilians and the release of detainees.

A first deployment of 50 monitors have been touring since Tuesday protest hubs but their mission has been cloaked in controversy, with some Syrian opposition activists critical of Dabi.

For some the general is a controversial figure because he served under Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes allegedly committed in the Darfur region.

The general ruffled opposition feathers by saying Syrian authorities were so far cooperating with the mission and by describing his visit to the flashpoint city of Homs as “good.”

Rights activists have urged the Arab monitors to do more to protect civilians from regime forces.

Meanwhile two key Syrian opposition factions ─ the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change (NCB) ─ have inked a deal to bolster a united front against the regime.

Friday’s agreement also lays the ground rules for a transitional period as dissidents eye the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

A statement by the NCB said the agreement would be submitted to the Arab League ahead of a congress of Syrian opposition forces to be held later this month under the aegis of the pan-Arab bloc.

The Britain-based Observatory reported that Syrian forces on Friday used “nail bombs” to disperse anti-regime rallies, and fired live ammunition, tear gas and stun grenades at tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters.

The U.N. estimates that more than 5,000 people have been killed in the regime’s crackdown on dissent since March. Assad’s government insists the violence has been instigated by “terrorist armed gangs” with foreign help.

Iran says it’s produced its first nuclear fuel rod against backdrop of U.S. sanctions

Iran has successfully produced and tested fuel rods for use in its nuclear power plants, state television reported on Sunday, in a snub to international demands that it halt sensitive nuclear work.

The rods, which contain natural uranium, were made in Iran and have been inserted into the core of Tehran’s research nuclear reactor, the television reported.

Nuclear fuel rods contain small pellets of fuel, usually low-enriched uranium, patterned to give out heat produced by nuclear reaction without melting down.

“This great achievement will perplex the West, because the Western countries had counted on a possible failure of Iran to produce nuclear fuel plates,” the Tehran Times newspaper said.

The development was announced at a time of growing tension between Western powers and Iran after the U.N. nuclear agency reported in November that Tehran appeared to have worked on designing a nuclear weapon. Secret research to that end may be continuing, it said.

The United States and its European allies have increased the sanctions pressure on Iran, one of the world’s largest oil producers, to push Tehran to halt the enrichment.

U.S. President Barack Obama signed more sanctions against Iran into law on Saturday, shortly after Iran signaled it was ready for new talks with the West on its nuclear program and said it had delayed long-range missile tests in the Gulf.

Gain leverage

Western analysts say Iran sometimes exaggerates its nuclear advances to gain leverage in its stand-off with the West.

In April, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization announced that the installation of the machinery needed for producing nuclear fuel plates had started. The nuclear plant for converting enriched nuclear fuel into fuel rods was inaugurated in 2009.

“Currently, the rod is also undergoing rays at Tehran’s Research Reactor to examine its long-term performance,” Iran’s English language Press TV reported.

Iran says only a few countries are capable of making both the fuel “plates”, used in the Tehran reactor, and nuclear fuel rods, which are used in power stations.

Enriched uranium can be used to fuel power plants and other types of reactors, which is Iran's stated aim, or to provide material for atomic bombs if processed much further, which the West suspects is the country’s ultimate intention.

Tehran says it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity.

Iran’s decision last year to raise the level of some enrichment from the 3.5 percent purity needed for civilian power plant fuel to 20 percent worried Western states that feel this will bring Tehran much closer to the 90 percent suitable for an atomic bomb.

Tehran has so far refused to change its nuclear course but is ready to hold new talks to resolve the dispute. Negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council ─ the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - plus Germany (P5+1) stalled in January.

Mortar shells fired from Gaza land in Israel

Two mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel on Sunday, causing no damage or injuries, an Israeli police spokeswoman said.

"Two mortar shells fired from the northern Gaza Strip fell this morning in the Eshkol district, there was no damage or injuries," Luba Samri told AFP.

The Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees militant group later claimed responsibility for firing the shells.

On Saturday, Israeli troops at the frontier with Gaza shot and wounded a Palestinian man near the border fence.

And on Friday, an Israeli air strike killed a senior militant in Gaza, whom the Israeli military said was suspected of involvement in planning an attack from Egypt.

Israel said the strike targeted a "terrorist squad that was identified moments before firing rockets at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip."

The strike came after two days of increased rocket fire from Gaza, with at least seven rockets being fired from the territory into Israel in the space of 48 hours, according to the Israeli military.

"We will not recognise criminal Israel," says Brotherhood leader

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) will not recognise the State of Israel, Brotherhood leader Rashad Bayoumy told London-based Al-Hayat Arabic daily.

“Is it a pre-condition to recognise Israel in order to govern?” asked Bayoumy. “This is not possible, no matter what the circumstances are. We do not recognise Israel at all. It is a criminal enemy occupier.”

Bayoumy, the deputy to the group's supreme guide, underlined that no member of the MB will ever sit with an Israeli. “I will not allow myself to sit with a criminal,” Bayoumy said. “We will not deal with them in any way.”

Bayoumy also noted that the Brotherhood may hold a national referendum to measure public opinion before taking a decision about the 1979 Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel.

“We will take all the correct legal procedures with the treaty. It is not binding for me. The people will give the opinion about it,” he said.

Bayoumy added that the Brotherhood usually respects international agreements, but everyone has the right to reconsider a treaty and the Egyptian people were never asked their opinion in the first place.

“We did not agree to the peace treaty. We will take all respectable legal procedures towards it,” Bayoumy said. “We have the right to present it to the people and the elected parliament so that they can come to a decision about it.“

The Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), won around 50 per cent of the seats in the first two phases of three-stage parliamentary elections.