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Parliament Speaker to Visit Ireland
$30 Billion Barter Plan With Turkmenistan
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali
Larijani plan to pay an official visit to the Republic of Ireland on Monday to hold talks on a range of issues, including ways to promote parliamentary ties between the two
countries. Heading a high-ranking delegation, Larijani
will leave Tehran for the Irish capital of Dublin on June
15 at the invitation of the parliament speaker of the North
Atlantic country. During his three-day visit, Larijani will
meet with senior Irish officials, and discuss mutual cooperation between the Iranian and Irish parliaments.
TEHRAN (Press TV) -- Iran said on Sunday that it plans
to offer a barter scheme to Turkmenistan through which it
would pay for natural gas imports by gas industry equipment as well as technical services. Muhammad-Taqi Amanpour, an advisor to the petroleum minister of Iran on exports of equipment and technical services, told a forum in
capital Tehran that the value of the barter scheme will be
$30 billion for a period of 10 years. Amanpour also said
that Iran has so far paid a maximum of $3 billion per year
for importing natural gas from its northern neighbor.
VOL NO: LV 9781 TEHRAN / Est.1959
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Viewpoint
By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer
Sponsoring Terrorism
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Tajik President Orders
Renaming Districts,
Centers Into Farsi
ISIL Losses in Syria
Frustrate Turkey
AKCAKALE, Turkey (Dispatches) -- After receiving a crush
of 13,000 Syrian refugees in less
than a week, Turkey closed a key
border crossing to Syria and complained that a combined U.S.Kurdish offensive against the ISIL
was driving Arabs and Turkmens
out of Syria.
With Kurdish forces reported
closing on ISIL-controlled Tal
Abyad, the Syrian town across
from Akcakale, Turkey, the apparently successful offensive against
the extremists has laid bare the
clash of interests that has vexed
the campaign against the Takfiris
in Syria.
On Thursday, Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in one of
first public appearances since his
party lost its majority in parliamentary elections, accused “the West”
of killing Arabs and Turkmens in
Syria, and replacing them with
Kurdish militia affiliated with the
banned Kurdistan Workers Party,
or PKK by its initials in Kurdish.
“The West, which has shot Arabs
and Turkmens, is unfortunately
placing the PYD and PKK in lieu
of them,” Erdogan said.
The PYD, or Democratic Union
Party, is a Syrian Kurdish political party affiliated with the PKK,
which has been declared a terrorist group by both Turkey and the
United States. The PYD’s armed
wing, the People’s Protection Unit,
or YPG, is credited, along with an
intensive U.S. bombing campaign,
with holding off the ISIL at Kobani after a four-month siege.
Arabs and Turkmen who’ve fled
Syria use more caustic terms to
condemn the Kurdish offensive,
which also is backed by U.S. airstrikes. They charge that YPG militias have stolen their homes and
livestock, burned their personal
documents and claimed the land as
theirs.
“They forced us from our village
and said to us ‘this is Rojava’,”
the term the YPG uses to describe a swath of territory it claims
across northern Syria, said Jomah
Ahmed, 35, a member of the al
Baggara tribe. He arrived from the
village of Al- Fwaida with dozens
of members of his extended family
before Turkey closed the border.
“They said ‘Go to the al Badiya
desert, go to Tadmur, where you
belong’.” Tadmur, captured last
month by the ISIL, is more than
100 miles to the southeast of Tal
Abyad.
Tal Abyad won fame in recent
months as one of the most important crossing between Turkey and
the ISIL.
It was at Tal Abyad that Hayat
Boumedienne, the wife of the
shooter who killed four Jews in
a Paris grocery in January, disap-
Monday, June 15, 2015, Khordad 25, 1394, Sha’ban 27, 1436, Price 10000 Rials
peared after fleeing France. It was
also the place where the ISIL delivered 46 Turkish diplomats and
three Iraqi employees that its terrorists had taken hostage during
the capture of Mosul in Iraq a year
ago.
Akcakale and the surrounding
area has become a key transit point
for those seeking to join the ISIL,
despite claims by Turkish officials
that they are trying to stanch the
flow.
But the push on Tal Abyad by
Kurdish forces with U.S. assistance is exacerbating long held
ethnic resentments. Kurdish residents of northern Syria have long
accused the government in Damascus of taking their land to accommodate Arab settlers. As long
as two years ago, Kurdish activists
who took power when the government of President Bashar Assad
withdrew vowed to push the Arabs
out.
Non-Kurdish Syrians say that
campaign is now under way. They
say that the Kurds are trying to
create an autonomous state in
northern Syria and that the United
States is helping.
“They told us ‘We have been
here 20,000 years. You came only
recently from the desert. Go back
to your desert,’ ” said Ibrahim al
Khider, an Arab prince who leads
a tribe of 16,000 in Deir al-Zour
province.
Equally bitter, Tarik Sulo, the
spokesman for the Syrian Turkmen
community in northern Syria, said
the U.S. bombing support and the
YPG ground forces “are changing
the demography of the area in an
ethnic cleansing”. He said Turkmen, an ethnic Turkish minority in
Syria, “are losing lands where they
have been living for centuries”.
The YPG captured two Turkmen villages on Thursday out of
20 with a total population of more
than 40,000. On Saturday, its forces were reported to have advanced
to the outskirts of Tal Abyad.
During an interview in Ankara,
Sulo showed a McClatchy special
correspondent a photograph now
circulating on social media that
shows uniformed YPG fighters
forcing an Arab captive to kiss the
YPG flag.
The Syrian Opposition Coalition, the exile grouping the United
States once recognized as the leading anti-Assad political force, also
has accused the YPG of “violations against civilians” in Syria’s
Hasaka province. It said these included systematic displacement of
civilians, compulsory military service for young residents, and kidnapping civilians “to spread terror
among the population”.
The criticism by Arabs, Turkmens
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Iran, Georgia Ink
MoU to Boost Sports,
Cultural Cooperation
Infighting Leaves
29 Takfiris Dead in
Northern Syria
President: We Will Have Sanctions Lifted
President Rouhani waves to the crowd in Iranian city of Bojnourd.
TEHRAN (Press TV) – President
Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday the
Islamic Republic will get the UN Security Council, which has imposed
restrictions on Tehran over its nuclear program, to lift sanctions.
“We will not allow foreigners to
proceed with the sanctions which
amount to cruelty and crime and we
will not allow the Iranian nation’s
rights to be trampled upon,” Rouhani said in an address to people of
the northeastern Iranian province of
North Khorasan.
Noting that his administration
would resist the enemy’s efforts to
paralyze the nation, he said the Iranian nation will strengthen its unity
and cohesion to work towards national development and economic
prosperity.
He said Iran will continue to enrich uranium on its soil and will
also boost its economy at the same
time.
Iran and the P5+1 group of countries on Sunday continued their sensitive talks in the Austrian capital of
Vienna for the fifth consecutive day
over the text of a possible comprehensive deal on Tehran’s nuclear
program.
Iranian deputy foreign ministers,
Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht-eRavanchi, sat down with European
Union deputy foreign policy chief,
Helga Schmid, who represents the
P5+1 countries, in Vienna.
The director general for political
and international security affairs
at Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Hamid
Baeidinejad, and Stephen Clement,
aide to Schmid, led the expert-level
talks.
The Iranian deputy foreign ministers, who have been holding talks
since Wednesday, are set to return
to Tehran. However, the technical
teams of Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security
Council plus Germany will continue consultations for the next two
days.
On Saturday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Tehran is doing its
best to reach an agreement with the
P5+1 that abides by all the red lines
and that safeguards all the interests
of the Iranian nation.
Speaking in a press conference in
Tehran, he added that Iran is very
serious in the negotiations and,
while it is in no rush for an agreement, it will draw on all of its capabilities to achieve one.
The Iranian president also said the
talks are progressing in general, although there are disagreements.
Iran and the P5+1 group of coun-
tries – the United States, Britain,
France, China and Russia plus
Germany – are seeking to finalize
a comprehensive deal on Tehran’s
nuclear program by June 30.
Iran and its negotiating partners
have been working on the text of a
final agreement since they reached
a mutual understanding on the key
parameters of a final deal in the
Swiss city of Lausanne on April 2.
Defense Minister Brigadier General Hussein Dehqan saidthe ongoing developments in the Middle
East are the result of efforts made
by certain powers to strengthen
their grip on the region.
“They are seeking to spread
threats across the region and prepare the ground for their presence
in the region,” he said in the southern city of Shiraz.
He added that the present upheavals in the region have led to the destruction of all financial resources
and infrastructure in Muslim countries, noting that “in all such events
the hands of the U.S. and the occupying regime of Israel can be
clearly seen”.
Dehqan said enemies are ramping
up pressure on the Islamic Republic
to prevent the country from making
progress.
Despite the ongoing situation in
the region, Iran is a completely safe
country and everything is under its
control, he said.
The Iranian defense minister further said Tehran holds negotiations
with the P5+1 group of countries
about its nuclear program “from a
position of power”.
He said the six global powers’
agreement to sit at the negotiating
table with Iran indicates the “position, significance and strength of
Islamic Iran”.
He added that the enemy pressured Iran by imposing sanctions in
an attempt to regain the foothold it
lost in the Islamic Republic following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Zionist Regime Okays Force-Feeding Palestinians
TEL AVIV (Dispatches) – The occupying regime of Israel’s cabinet on Sunday approved a proposed law authorizing the force-feeding of Palestinians who
are on hunger strike in Zionist jails.
The bill, promulgated under the title “Prevention of Damage by Hunger
Strikers”, was adopted by the Zionist cabinet. It has yet to be endorsed by
the Knesset before being signed into law.
Proposed by public security minister Gilad Erdan, the legislation says Palestinian prisoners will be fed forcibly if their life is in danger. The bill also
states that a doctor can apply the force-feeding measure upon the approval
of a district court judge.
The occupying regime’s cabinet first sought in vain in June 2014 to adopt
a similar bill.
The World Medical Association as well as the Israel Medical Association
(IMA) have condemned the proposed law.
The Physicians for Human Rights, an NGO, described the bill as a “disgraceful” move, saying the Zionist cabinet “has again proposed a disgraceful law that was condemned from the medical community in Israel and the
world, and which will legalize torture and gross violations of medical ethics
and international conventions”.
“Instead of force-feeding prisoners who are humiliated and whose lives
are in danger, Israel should deal with the demands of the hunger strikers –
through the ending of administrative detentions,” the NGO added.
Administrative detention is a sort of imprisonment without trial or charge
that allows the occupying regime of Israel to incarcerate Palestinians for up
to six months. The detention order can be renewed for indefinite periods
of time.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) also released a statement, condemning the bill. The rights group said that force-feeding violates
“the autonomy of their bodies and dignity”.
It also slammed administrative detention by the Tel Aviv regime, describing the practice as “one of the gravest injustices of the military rule in the
(Palestinian) territories”.
Force-feeding is considered a grave breach of World Medical Association’s guideline on a treatment for hunger strikers.
Khader Adnan, a Palestinian prisoner, has gone on hunger strike in an
Israeli jail to protest against his imprisonment conditions.
A father of six, Adnan was arrested in July 2014 and was sentenced to socalled “administrative detention” for the 10th time in his life. His ongoing
hunger strike has been described as one of the longest in history, with
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