Post-election violence in Iran is “deeply shocking”, but G8 leaders nevertheless want to pursue talks to end the nuclear standoff with Tehran, French President Nicolas Sarkozy says, warning Iran that the international community was determined to make progress.

“We want to give negotiation every chance. If that works, then great. If that leads nowhere, then that won’t be without consequences,”

Speaking after a dinner with fellow Group of Eight leaders at which Iran was discussed, Sarkozy condemned what he called Tehran’s “blackmail” over its holding of Western prisoners arrested following a post-election crackdown.

Referring to international attempts to bring the Islamic republic to the negotiating table over its alleged plans to develop nuclear weapons, Sarkozy said :

“The statement of the G8 is unequivocal,”

“Between August and September it’s for them to decide how they want things to evolve. Pittsburgh is the date,”

Indicating Iran had been set an informal deadline to respond to Western overtures before the next G20 summit.

“The Iranian regime refuses all hands offered to them.”

Sarkozy also demanded Iran immediately release 23-year-old researcher Clotilde Reiss, a French citizen arrested in Tehran on July 1 and accused of “spying” over an email she sent to friends describing street protests.

Technorati Tags: French President, G8, iran, Nicolas Sarkozy

The wife of the next head of Britain’s spy agency has posted pictures of her husband, family and friends on the social networking site Facebook, details which could compromise security, a newspaper said on Sunday.

Sir John Sawers is due to take over as head of the Secret Intelligence Service in November. The SIS, popularly known as MI6, is Britain’s global intelligence-gathering organisation.

In what the Mail on Sunday called an “extraordinary lapse“, the new spy chief’s wife, Lady Shelley Sawers, posted family pictures and exposed details of where the couple live and take their holidays and who their friends and relatives are.

The paper said the Facebook page had “virtually no privacy protection” and could therefore be viewed by any of the many millions of Facebook users around the world. They were swiftly removed once authorities were alerted by the newspaper’s enquiries.

Though the Facebook profile for Sir John Sawyers has now been removed, this brings up an interesting question of whether we all have to officially declare what social networks we belong to.

Sir John Sawers, who will be known by the code-name “C” when he takes up his new post, currently serves as Britain’s Ambassador to the United Nations.
The newspaper said:

“There were fears that the hugely embarrassing blunder could have compromised the safety of Sir John’s family and friends,”

Publishing the story on its front page and the pictures on a double-page spread, the Mail on Sunday said the information

“could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists”.

It was the latest in a string of security blunders, lapses and leaks by British officials that have embarrassed the government of embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Technorati Tags: Ambassador to the United Nations, Facebook, Gordon Brown, Lady Shelley Sawers, MI6, Secret Intelligence Service, Sir John Sawers, SIS

Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews just released. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as “a zealot” and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.

Saddam, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the “fanatic” leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a “security agreement with the United States to protect it [Iraq] from threats in the region”.

The then US president George Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq six years ago on the grounds that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to international security. At the time Bush administration officials strongly suggested Iraq had significant links to al-Qaeda, which was responsible for the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001.

Saddam, who during the interviews was often defiant and boastful, at one point wistfully acknowledged he should have permitted the United Nations to witness the destruction of Iraq’s weapons stockpile after the 1990-91 Gulf War.

The director of the archive, Thomas Blanton, said he could conceive of no possible national security reason to keep Saddam’s conversations with the FBI secret. An FBI spokesman, Paul Bresson, said he could not immediately explain the reason for the redactions.

The 20 formal interviews took place in 2004, between February 7 and May 1, followed by the casual conversations between May 10 and June 28.

Saddam was later transferred to Iraqi custody, and hanged in December 2006.

Technorati Tags: george bush, Paul Bresson, saddam hussein, Thomas Blanton, WMD

Buckingham Palace says public funding for the Queen and the royal family cost British taxpayers the equivalent of 69 pence each last year.

The Queen’s office published her latest accounts on Monday. It showed that the costs incurred by the royal family were 41.5 million pounds in the year to March 31, an increase of 1.5 million pounds on the previous year.

Public money is used to pay the costs of travel and running homes used by the royal family, including the Queen’s Buckingham Palace residence.

The accounts don’t include the cost of security provided by the police and army.

Figures showed travel costs rose to 6.5 million pounds from 6.2 million pounds.

Technorati Tags: costs rising, Queen, The queen

The Islamic burka is “not welcome” in France because it is not a symbol of religion but a sign of subservience for women, President Nicolas Sarkozy says.

“We cannot accept to have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity,”

“That is not the idea that the French republic has of women’s dignity.”

“The burka is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience,”

“It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic.”

Sarkozy told a special session of parliament he was in favour of holding the inquiry sought by some French lawmakers into whether Muslim women who cover themselves fully in public undermine French secularism and women’s rights.

But the president added :

“we must not fight the wrong battle, in the republic the Muslim religion must be respected as much as other religions”

France has Europe’s biggest Muslim population estimated at several million.

The proposal to hold an inquiry has won support from many politicians from both the left and right, but France’s official Muslim council accused lawmakers of wasting time focusing on a fringe phenomenon.

Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM), said last week:

“To raise the subject like this, via a parliamentary committee, is a way of stigmatising Islam and the Muslims of France,”

Technorati Tags: Burka, France, Mohammed Moussaoui, Nicolas Sarkozy, Sarkozy

The Italian Government is bracing for a fresh of wave of scandal after prosecutors investigating a cash-for-contracts rort allegedly unearthed wiretaps suggesting payments to young women to attend Silvio Berlusconi’s house parties.

The investigators had been probing claims of favouritism and corruption in the awarding of lucrative public health-care tenders in the south-eastern port city of Bari and had focused attention on a company owned by two brothers who are well-known local entrepreneurs. The company, Tecnohospital, has won a series of important contracts in a relatively short time. One of the owner-brothers, Giampaolo Tarantini, is believed to have been heard on the phonetaps discussing the parties he had attended at the Prime Minister’s Roman and Sardinian residences.

Local investigators have now brought in several young women for questioning in a bid to work out if the taped discussions were purely boastful or serious inducements to prostitution.

News of the investigation has emerged at the same time as an explosive front-page interview with a young blonde, Patrizia D’Addario, who told Corriere Della Sera that she attended two parties at the Prime Minister’s Roman residence — one on the night that Barack Obama was elected US President.

Ms D’Addario claimed that she was offered the opportunity to stand in a local poll as a candidate for a party associated with Mr Berlusconi’s proposed new People of Freedom Party and that she has both proof of the trips — and tapes of the evenings. The newspaper itself urged readers to exercise caution when reading the interview.

But yesterday La Repubblica appeared to confirm that she was indeed a candidate for the Apulia First party, which fought a local election recently and published a series of photos of her campaigning alongside both the Prime Minister and one of Mr Berlusconi’s ministers, Raffaele Fitto, late last year.

Ms D’Addario, who does not state her age or occupation, said she had been asked to attend the dinner party at Palazzo Grazioli by a friend in Bari and had been introduced by a man called “Giampaolo”. She said she agreed to attend the event for payment and described the evenings in detail, saying she had worn a recording device on both occasions.

She said she was picked up from her hotel on both evenings by “Giampaolo” and she and two other young women travelled to the Prime Minister’s residence in a limousine with darkened windows.

There she was told she had to adopt the name Alessia and found another 20 or so young women drinking champagne. She said the Prime Minister sang, told jokes and showed videos including footage of his Sardinian villa and his meeting with George Bush. She described a second evening in which she spent the night and insisted she had recordings and proof of both encounters.

In a written statement issued yesterday, Mr Berlusconi has categorically denied the allegations saying he would not allow such “garbage” to distract him from the business of government. He bitterly attacked the newspaper – and Italian journalists – claiming the printed press was

“full of falsehoods and rubbish”.

“I will not be affected or moved by these assaults on me and will continue to work, as always, for the good of my country,”

Technorati Tags: house parties, Italian Government, Silvio, Silvio Berlusconi, young women

Air France has replaced the air speed sensors on its entire fleet of Airbus A330 and A340 long-haul aircraft, a pilots’ union official says. The company had been under pressure from pilots who feared the devices could be linked to the crash of Flight 447.

In the deep waters of the mid-Atlantic, a Dutch ship began trolling with a high-tech US Navy listening device on Monday in search of the flight data and voice recorders. Investigators say information from those black boxes may be key to determining what caused Flight 447 to crash into the ocean with 228 people on board.

Experts looking into the May 31 crash of the four-year-old Airbus A330 jet have so far focused on the possibility that external speed monitors – called pitot tubes – iced over and gave false readings to the plane’s computers.

Air France had begun replacing the tubes on its A330 and A340 jets before the accident, but had not yet changed them on the plane that crashed.

After pilot complaints, the airline pledged to speed up the switch and it has now equipped all planes with the new sensors, said Erick Derivry, a spokesman for the SNPL pilots’ union.

Derivry stressed it is still “not proven or established” that the old sensors caused the accident.

Airbus chief executive Tom Enders defended the A300 on Monday as his company sought to sell more of the planes at the Paris Air Show.

“Their record is very, very impressive,”

“(They have) more than 16 million flight hours, more than 3 million flights, and this is so far one of the safest commercial aircraft built.”

“We are supporting the investigation as much as we can and we very much hope that the recorders will be found soon, so that we find out what really happened,”

At sea, searchers began towing a US Navy Towed Pinger Locator in a grid pattern in hopes of detecting emergency beacons from Flight 447′s black boxes, which could be lying thousands of metres below the ocean surface. The sounds begin to quickly fade 30 days after a crash.

The initial search spans 5,200 sq km of the Atlantic, said US Air Force colonel Willie Berges, commander of the American military forces supporting the search.

French military officials also are using nuclear submarine to hunt for the black boxes and a second Dutch ship carrying another pinger locater was to arrive on Monday afternoon.

“We have a limited amount of time to cover the search area,”

Berges said, but added the hunt will go on even if no pings are detected beyond the 30-day timeframe.

In Geneva, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said French president Nicholas Sarkozy assured him the French government would compensate the families of crash victims. The two leaders were attending the International Labour Conference.

Silva told reporters, speaking through a translator:

“He (Sarkozy) said that they will take the responsibility to pay the indemnity for all the families that suffered with the crash, the Brazilian and French families and of other countries,”

An Air France spokesman, however, said the airline and its insurance company – not the government – are handling compensation. The official, who declined to name the insurance company, spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorised to discuss the matter.

A spokeswoman for the French transport ministry also denied the government would pay compensation, saying this would be handled by Air France’s insurance. She was speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with ministry policy.

The French presidential palace in Paris and the French mission in Geneva would not immediately comment.

Experts say the evidence uncovered up until now points to at least a partial midair break-up of the plane, with no evidence so far of an explosion or terrorist act.

French ambassador Pierre-Jean Vandoorne, a liaison between the victims’ families and authorities, said on Monday he met in Recife with leaders of Brazil’s search effort and was told they were keeping up their effort.

He said Brazilian and French aviators have spent 1,000 flight hours looking for victims and debris.

Brazilian authorities say they have recovered 43 bodies and another six have been found by French ships.

Vandoorne would not comment on the nationality or any other details of the bodies pulled from the ocean. Coroners say victims’ dental records and DNA samples from relatives will be needed to confirm the identities of the 16 bodies examined so far.

Technorati Tags: A330, a340, Air France, airbus, speed sensors

An Air France passenger jet with 215 people on board has gone missing after dropping off the radar over the Atlantic off the Brazilian coast Monday, a Paris airport official said.

“The plane disappeared from the screens several hours ago. It could be a transponder problem, but this kind of fault is very rare and the plane did not land when expected.”

“We are very worried,”

Air traffic control lost contact with the Airbus A330 at 0600 GMT after it took off from Rio de Janeiro bound for Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, where it had been due to land at 0910 GMT.

Technorati Tags: A330, Air France, Jet

A royal chauffeur was suspended on Sunday after reportedly giving two undercover journalists a tour of the Queen’s official cars in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, a spokeswoman said.

The News Of The World tabloid newspaper said its reporters, posing as wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen, paid the chauffeur £1000 to let them in, after making contact through his prostitute girlfriend.

The Queen was in residence at the time of the alleged security breach on Friday, said the paper, which published photos of one of its reporters sitting in a royal Bentley, as well as video of the illicit tour.

“We can confirm an individual has been suspended pending an investigation,” a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said after the alleged incident, which follows a number of similar security gaffes in recent years.

London’s Metropolitan Police also said they were worried by the report.

Scotland Yard said in a statement:

“We are naturally concerned about the issues raised by this story and are liaising with palace officials about their staff security arrangements,”

The two journalists got into the palace grounds without being searched or checked, despite walking right past a uniformed police officer in a security booth, the newspaper reported.

As well as the Bentley, which is used for state occasions, the chauffeur also showed the reporters the Queen’s personal car, a 2005 V8 Daimler with a floor specially raised to suit the monarch, it reported.

The paper quoted the chauffeur as saying:

“She’s got slightly short legs, so the floor has been raised to suit her. It’s kind of built around her. It’s tailor-made for her,”

“She only uses it because it’s British and she got it at a discounted rate,”

He added, before also showing the undercover reporters Princess Anne’s green Bentley.

The royal driver, Brian Sirjusingh, originally from Trinidad, also gave sensitive information including code names for two of the vehicles, pointed out security weaknesses in the cars, and revealed the Queen’s private travel plans for the weekend.

The tour was arranged after the newspaper contacted the chauffeur’s 21-year-old girlfriend, described as a £200-an-hour Lithuanian prostitute, and then pretended they were interested in seeing the royal cars.

The chauffeur did not know that his girlfriend worked as a prostitute, it added, quoting her as saying:

“I’m sure he wouldn’t be happy to know it but he can’t really help me financially, so … “

The incident would not be the first time security at Buckingham Palace and other royal palaces has been violated in recent years.

In 2003, a journalist from the Daily Mirror newspaper got a job as a footman at Buckingham Palace – the monarch’s London residence – with a false reference.

This allowed him access to the Queen’s breakfast table and the bedroom where then US president George Bush and his wife were due to stay on an imminent state visit.

At Windsor Palace – the Queen’s favourite home, just west of London – two journalists from The Sun newspaper claimed to have smuggled a fake bomb past security days before the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles in the town in 2004.

And in 2003, Aaron Barschak, a comedian dressed as Osama bin Laden, gatecrashed Prince William’s 21st birthday party at Windsor.

Technorati Tags: Buckingham Palace, chaffeur, prostitute, The queen

US President Barack Obama says North Korea’s reported nuclear and missile tests today are “a threat to international peace” and warrant “action by the international community”.

“These actions, while not a surprise given its statements and actions to date, are a matter of grave concern to all nations,” Obama said in a written statement.

“North Korea’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons, as well as its ballistic missile program, constitute a threat to international peace and security.”

He said further that “the danger posed by North Korea’s threatening activities warrants action by the international community.’

North Korea said it carried out its second and more powerful nuclear test today, defying international pressure to rein in its nuclear programmes after years of six-nation disarmament talks.

The hardline communist state, which stunned the world by testing an atomic bomb for the first time in October 2006, had threatened another test after the UN Security Council censured it following a long-range rocket launch in April.

The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said:

“The North successfully conducted one more underground nuclear test on May 25 as part of the measures to bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defence in every way,”

“The current nuclear test was safely conducted on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology,”

The United States, Britain, the European Union and others expressed concern about the test, which was confirmed by Russia’s defence ministry, according to the ITAR-TASS news agency.

A US State Department official said:

“We are gravely concerned by North Korea’s claims,”

“We are consulting with our six-party and UN Security Council partners on next steps.”

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak convened an emergency National Security Council meeting and both South Korea and Japan announced the formation of government crisis teams.

Japan said it would seek an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council, which imposed sanctions on the North for its first test.

Takeo Kawamura, the chief cabinet secretary said:

“It is absolutely unacceptable. Japan will take stern action against North Korea,”

The KCNA report did not say where the test was conducted. South Korean officials said a tremor was detected around the northeastern town of Kilju, near where the first was staged.

The Korea Meteorological Administration said the tremor measured 4.5 on the Richter Scale compared to 3.6 in October 2006.

Yonhap news agency said the North also appears to have test-fired a short-range missile Monday from its launch site at Musudan-ri near Kilju. There was no immediate confirmation of that report.

China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have been negotiating since 2003 to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear programmes in exchange for energy and security guarantees.

The negotiations led to an agreement signed in 2007, under which the North said it would dismantle its nuclear facilities. The deal bogged down last December over ways to verify the North’s declared nuclear activities.

In April the North irked the international community with a long-range rocket launch, a move that many nations said was actually a ballistic missile test.

After the Security Council condemned the launch and tightened sanctions, the North vowed to conduct a second nuclear test as well as ballistic missile tests unless the world body apologised.

It also announced that it was quitting the six-way talks, which are hosted by its closest ally China, and would restart its plutonium-making program.

Analysts believe the North has stockpiled enough plutonium for six to 12 small nuclear bombs. Its first test was seen as only partially successful, with a yield of less than one kiloton.

KCNA said today’s test had resolved

“scientific and technological problems arising in further increasing the power of nuclear weapons and steadily developing nuclear technology.”

North Korea has frequently said it needs a nuclear deterrent to prevent any attack.

It said today’s test would “contribute to defending the sovereignty of the country and the nation and socialism and ensuring peace and security on the Korean peninsula and the region around it with the might of Songun (the army-first policy).”

The North has expressed disappointment at the new US administration of President Barack Obama, calling it no better than its predecessor.

Kim Yong-Hyun of Seoul’s Dongguk University said:

“The second test was earlier than expected and reflects the North’s growing anger at Washington,”

“Or some internal problems may be forcing Pyongyang to take a strong attitude.”

Leader Kim Jong-Il, 67, was widely reported to have suffered a stroke last August, prompting speculation overseas about the succession. The North’s position has noticeably hardened since then.

Today’s test was staged while South Korea was in mourning for former president Roh Moo-Hyun, who leapt to his death Saturday after being questioned in a corruption probe.

Roh had always championed engagement with the North, and Kim Jong-Il sent condolences to his family.

Technorati Tags: barack obama, KCNA, Kim Jongil, Korean Central News Agency, North Korea, nuclear tests