Iran opposition figures arrested after protests

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A number of opposition figures have been arrested in Iran, a day after at least eight people died during the most violent protests for months.

Those detained include aides to opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and former President Mohammad Khatami.

Mr Mousavi's nephew, Seyed Ali Mousavi, was among those killed on Sunday.

State media said authorities were doing forensic tests on his and four other bodies, preventing the rapid burials that are usual under Islamic tradition.

The bodies had been "retained in order to complete forensic and police examinations and find more leads on this suspicious incident", the Irna news agency reported.

The Mousavi family had said earlier that Seyed Ali's body had been taken without their permission from the hospital where it was being held.

RECENT UNREST IN IRAN

19 Dec: Influential dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri dies aged 87

21 Dec: Tens of thousands attend his funeral in Qom; reports of clashes between opposition supporters and security forces

22 Dec: Further confrontations reported in Qom

23 Dec: More clashes reported in city of Isfahan as memorial is held

24 Dec: Iran reportedly bans further memorial services for Montazeri except in his birthplace and Qom

26 Dec: Clashes reported in central and northern Tehran

27 Dec: At least eight dead following anti-government protests in Tehran; 300 reported arrested

Opposition sources said the body had been taken by government agents in order to prevent his funeral becoming a rallying point for more protests.

An opposition website, Norooz, said police had fired tear gas on Monday to disperse a group of Mousavi supporters who were demonstrating outside the hospital.

According to Mr Mousavi's website, Seyed Ali Mousavi was shot in the back on Sunday as security forces fired on demonstrators in Tehran.

Intermittent protests in Iran following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial re-election in June have represented the biggest challenge to the government since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Foreign media face severe restrictions in Iran, making reports hard to verify.

BBC Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne, reporting from London, says the government's immediate response to the latest confrontation has been to arrest senior opposition figures, as it did after protests against the disputed presidential elections in June.

The authorities are blaming troublemakers for the violence, our correspondent says, with the police denying that security forces are responsible for any deaths and suggesting that protesters may have shot each other.

The majority hardline block in the Iranian parliament called on "security and judiciary authorities to firmly deal with those who mock Ashura", referring to the Shia Muslim festival that reached its climax on Sunday.

But members of the opposition believe Seyed Ali Mousavi was deliberately targeted by the government in an attempt to intimidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Our correspondent adds that the government will be doing itself no favours if it has taken his body because this would outrage religious conservatives, as well as the opposition.

'Shameless act'

Among those reported arrested on Monday were opposition politician Ebrahim Yazdi, a foreign minister after the 1979 revolution and now leader of the Freedom Movement of Iran, his nephew, Lily Tavasoli.

Mr Yazdi's son Khalil, who lives in the US, told the BBC's World Today programme he believed the Iranian authorities wanted to close down all opposition groups.

"It is a shameless and irresponsible act," he said.

"Any opposition now, they want to shut [it] down. We're going down a one-way street that's now going downhill."

The Parlemannews website reported that three aides to Mir Hossein Mousavi had been arrested.

It also named two aides to reformist former President Mohammad Khatami as being among those rounded up by the authorities.

Mousavi Tebrizi, a senior cleric from the holy city of Qom who is close to Mr Mousavi, is also reported to have been arrested, as is human-rights campaigner and journalist Emeddin Baghi.

International condemnation

After Sunday's clashes, police fired tear gas to disperse crowds of demonstrators in various parts of Tehran overnight, according to reports.

On Monday, state-owned English-language Press TV said eight people had died. Earlier, Persian state television had reported at least 15 people killed.

The official death toll for Sunday's confrontation is the highest since June, and police said about 300 people had been detained.

Unconfirmed reports, later denied by a local prosecutor, said four people also died in protests in the north-western city of Tabriz. Clashes were also reported in Isfahan and Najafabad in central Iran and Shiraz in the south.

Moderate cleric Mehdi Karoubi, who came fourth in last June's election, criticised Iran's rulers for Sunday's violence, an opposition website reported.

The US, the UK, France, Germany and Canada have all condemned the violence.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said it was "particularly disturbing to hear accounts of the lack of restraint by the security forces" on a day of religious commemoration and reflection.

In a strongly-worded statement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticised the "unacceptable actions of the security forces" and urged Tehran to respect civil rights.

Iranian security forces have been on alert since influential dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri died a week ago aged 87.

His funeral attracted tens of thousands of pro-reform supporters, many of whom shouted anti-government slogans.

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• Iran holds seven opposition activists (guardian.co.uk)
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• Iran cleric condemns 'killing of innocent people' (msnbc.msn.com)

EBO Funds to Target Migrants and IDPs

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By SAW YAN NAING

Friday, December 4, 2009

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The Euro-Burma Office (EBO) will focus funding on Burmese migrant workers and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in ethnic areas where armed conflicts are active, according to the organization's Executive Director, Harn Yawnghwe.

The decision came after the meeting between the Brussels-based EBO and Burmese opposition, civil society groups and ethnic groups in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand from Dec. 1 to 2.

Yawnghwe said his organization wants to strengthen civil society groups assisting migrant workers and IDPs because such people are in need.

Any group wanting to assist migrant workers or IDPs in armed conflict zones in eastern Burma can submit proposals to the EU donors.

“Euro Burma want to set up committees to assist these groups and want to give funds to them. Those who are interested are asked to submit proposals,” said Dr. Thiha Maung, who attended the meeting and is the director of the National Health and Education Committee's (NHEC) health program.

It is likely that the EBO will secure some funding for exile-based aid groups as funding for cross-border activities is unstable and many Western government donors are not willingly providing further cross-border aid to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in exile, he added.

Founded in 1997, the Brussels-based EBO helps the Burmese democracy movement prepare for transition to democracy and keeps the international community informed about the situation in Burma.

Transparency and accountability of funding among border-based NGOs were also discussed at the meeting.

“International donor countries such as Sweden, Norway, Canada and Australia are hoping for change in Burma in 2010 and want to focus aid directly inside Burma if the situation improves after 2010 election,” Thiha Maung said.

Harn Yawnghwe also said the EBO will provide financial supports to opposition parties or ethnic groups that will contest in the general elections in 2010 if they need support. This should not be misconstrued as EBO support for the Burmese regime 2008's constitution and planned 2010 elections, he said.

The aim of supporting those groups is to let them strive for democracy and ethnic rights within any political space that might be opened up by the Burmese regime, he added.

Observers said international donors indicated they want to focus humanitarian assistance directly inside Burma after they identified problems with cross-border aid.

However, observers said both internally-based aid and cross-border aid are needed since both reach different target populations, whether deep inside Burma or on the Thai-Burmese border.

Due to international donors reducing their funding and distancing themselves from cross-border aid projects, Mae Sot-based Mae Tao Clinic is concerned about funding, which has been cut and reduced.

The number of outpatients coming to the clinic has grown by about 20 percent per year, however.

The clinic, which treats Burmese migrants, refugees and Burmese people who cross the border for medical treat, is struggling with a “major funding crisis.” It faces a predicted shortfall of about US $750,000 in 2010, amounting to 25 percent of its operating budget, according to Dr Cynthia Maung writing on the clinic's Web site on Oct. 27.

Other border-based NGO aid groups are also struggling with the funding crisis, which has resulted in anomalous situations across the border. Schoolteachers in Mon State being provided for by funding from donors such as the NHEC, for example, have been working without salaries since June.

Clashes in Iran on Anniversary of Embassy Takeover - NYTimes.com

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By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iran’s beleaguered opposition movement struggled to reassert itself on Wednesday, as tens of thousands of protesters braved police beatings and clouds of tear gas on the sidelines of a major, government-sponsored anti-American rally.

The protests — in Tehran and several other cities — were the opposition’s largest street showing in almost two months, and came on the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the United States Embassy in 1979, a day of great symbolic importance for both Iran and the United States. Although a huge deployment of police beat back and scattered many of them, the protesters took heart at their ability to openly challenge the government despite a stream of stark warnings from all levels of Iran’s conservative establishment.

Protesters openly flouted the day’s official anti-American message, with about a thousand people, many wearing clothing and accessories in the opposition’s signature bright green color, gathering outside the Russian Embassy in Tehran and chanting, “The real den of spies is the Russian embassy.”

The American embassy has been called the “den of spies” in Iran for decades. But many opposition supporters were angered by Russia’s early acceptance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed victory in Iran’s June presidential elections.

It was a day of scattered protests and violence across central Tehran, and even some government authorities seemed to grudgingly concede that the opposition had — for the first time — disrupted the annual anti-American rally. The official IRNA news agency reported in midafternoon that “rioters,” many wearing the opposition’s green symbols, had gathered in front of its offices on Valiasr Street chanting “Death to the Dictator” and other anti-government slogans.

At the same time, a new theme emerged on Wednesday, with many protesters declaring their impatience with President Obama’s policy of dialogue with the Iranian government. Many could be heard chanting: “Obama, Obama — either you’re with them or you’re with us,” witnesses said.

President Obama released his own statement on Wednesday to mark the 30th anniversary of the embassy takeover, repeating his appeals to move beyond the two countries’ mutual distrust. The statement expressed sympathy for Iran’s opposition movement, and suggested that time was running out on a United Nations-backed plan that is aimed at averting a showdown over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“The world continues to bear witness to their powerful calls for justice and their courageous pursuit of universal rights,” the statement said of the Iranian people. “It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.”

On Tuesday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave an angry speech accusing the United States of dictating the terms of the nuclear deal, and suggested that Mr. Obama was no different from his predecessor.

There were reports of several dozen arrests in Wednesday’s protests, including some outside Tehran, and many injuries. The reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi, who has become the government’s most outspoken critic, narrowly avoided injury when pro-government forces fired a tear gas cylinder at him as he marched with protesters in Tehran, according to Radio Farda. Two of his guards leapt to defend him and were hospitalized for their wounds, the station reported.

Mir-Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader who was Mr. Ahmadinejad’s main challenger in the elections, was prevented from attending the protests by security men on motorbikes who arrived at the Cultural Center in central Tehran, where he has his offices, Radio Farda reported.

Overall, the police appear to have fought back protesters more aggressively than they did in September, when opposition supporters came out in much larger numbers and virtually hijacked another state-sponsored rally known as Jerusalem Day.

On Wednesday, the streets of central Tehran were lined with police and Basij militia men starting early in the morning, witnesses said, and in the subways, officers singled out people wearing green armbands, bracelets or head scarves and ripped them off. The protest turnout may also have been limited by the fact that it took place on a workday, unlike the Jerusalem Day protest.

One young man who had been leading anti-government chants in Valiasr Square summed up the day’s events like this: “One day we come out and it’s our day, another day they suppress us. Today, we did not get to have our say, but it was good enough that we brought them out onto the streets.”

Still, the day was a tonic to the opposition, which has struggled to maintain its momentum since the June election set off the country’s worst domestic unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The authorities have brutally suppressed the movement in recent months through a combination of arrests, show trials and intimidation. Many leading reformist figures remain in jail, and while some detainees have been released, the government continues to arrest more every week.

The protests in Tehran began in Haft-e-Tir square, where crowds began forming in mid-morning and chanting “Death to the Dictator!” and other anti-government slogans. Many of them wore surgical masks in anticipation of tear gas. As their numbers grew, riot police and Basij militia members fired tear gas and lunged periodically into the crowd to beat or arrest protesters.

A disorderly march began, moving westward toward Valiasr Square, the scene of many earlier protests. The government’s official rally was taking place on a parallel route to the south, and a deployment of police and militia men prevented protesters from reaching it. By mid-afternoon, both demonstrations appeared to be ending.

Many protesters seemed acutely conscious of the government’s vulnerability, after a week during which Mr. Ahmadinejad often seemed to be alone in his support for concluding a nuclear deal with the West.

“They should get rid of all this ‘death to, death to’ — death to what?” said one middle-aged woman who was marching with her two daughters. “On the one hand they shout ‘Death to America’ and on the other hand they go and make deals with them.”

The anniversary of the embassy takeover underscored a broader unease about relations with the West. The day has long been a touchstone for Iran’s revolutionaries, but Mr. Obama’s outreach has complicated the state’s reflexive anti-Americanism. One of Iran’s leading reformist voices, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, surprised many of his compatriots by declaring on Tuesday that the seizure of the embassy in 1979 was “not the right thing to do.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad himself has argued that Iran has tamed the West’s arrogance and should now agree to the proposed nuclear deal, under which Iran’s uranium would be shipped abroad for processing and eventually returned in the form of fuel rods for a reactor producing medical isotopes.

But his political enemies, both conservative and reformist, have seized on an opportunity to humiliate him, and have assailed the nuclear plan as a surrender to the West — much as he did to them in years past. The status of the plan remains unclear, with Western leaders showing signs of impatience over Iran’s delays.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris, and Helene Cooper from Washington.

Rebel soldiers back ‘Chiz’ - Manila Times

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Military troops accused of plotting coups against President Gloria Arroyo endorsed the candidacy for president in the 2010 elections of opposition Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero. Escudero himself has not officially declared that he will join the race to Malacañang next year although his party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition, picked him weeks ago as its standard-bearer.

“We are supporting the presidential bid of Sen. Escu-dero. The decision of the group to back the senator is a product of a thorough and comprehensive consultation among our members nationwide,” Francisco Ashley Acedillo, the Magdalo Party’s secretary general, said over the weekend.

According to Acedillo, the Magdalo Party chose to support Escudero over other presidential candidates because he possesses the character, vision and leadership ability that the group is looking for.

Reacting to the endorsement, the senator, in a statement, said, “I am honored by the overwhelming support I have received from [Magdalo], a group I consider to have consistently represented the people’s burning desire for change in our country.”

“To me, they are patriots. Their love for this country is only paralleled by their passion for fighting for genuine reforms in government,” Escudero added.

Magdalo was also the name bannered by the rebel soldiers, including officers, in at least three attempts to unseat President Arroyo since she became president in 2001.

The soldiers’ party, Acedillo said, will also back the 2010 senatorial bids of Army Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim and Marine Col. Ariel Querubin, both Magdalo members accused of plotting the coups.

Querubin was detained after figuring in a standoff at Marines headquarters in Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City (Metro Manila) in February 2006.

The Magdalo Party claims to have more than 40,000 members nationwide representing 375 chapters at the provincial, city and municipal levels.

Four other members of the rebel military group would also enjoy the backing of the party in their bids for public office in next year’s balloting.

Three of them are seeking a seat at the House of Representatives and they are Air Force 1st Lt. Acedillo for the Second District of Cebu City, Navy Lt. Senior Grade James Layug for the Second District of Taguig City and Army Capt. Dante Langkit for the Lone District of Kalinga province.

Marine Capt. Gary Alejano will be running for mayor of the city of Sipalay in Negros Occidental province.

Once their party is accredited, Acedillo said, they might run under the party-list system. In which case, he added, the party members would have to run as independents, not under the Magdalo Party.

He announced that the party would hold a national convention next month to decide on the party-list option and possible nominees, and who among the members will run under the party.

Acedillo said that they are talking with the political opposition for possible alliances.

Sen. Antonio Trillanes 4th from the Philipine Navy and a leader of the Magdalo group that took over the Oakwood Hotel in July 2003 to press their demand for reform in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, was the first rebel soldier to win a slot in the Senate.

Significantly, Trillanes pulled off the feat while he was under detention, his cell serving as campaign headquarters.

Despite his victory, the senator has not been allowed to sit in the Senate because of charges he is facing in connection with the Oakwood siege and the more recent Manila Peninsula standoff in November 2007 that he and Lim led.

Lim is detained at Camp Crame, the police headquarters in Quezon City, for rebellion charges in connection with the Manila Peninsula siege.

The endorsement of Escudero was made through a resolution letter that was signed by Trillanes, also the chairman of the Magdalo Party.

“Now therefore be it resolved, that the Magdalo Party, together with its entire membership and its network of supporting individuals and organizations, hereby endorses the candidacy of Sen. Francis Escudero for President of the Republic of the Philippines in the May 2010 elections,” the resolution read.

In thanking the Magdalo group for supporting his presidential bid, Escudero reciprocated by declaring his “unqualified support for [the group], its leaders and the ideals and principles the group stands for.”

“We are no different from each other as I, too, advocate change. With our new-found unity, it is my fervent hope that we will usher in a new brand of leadership in the country. One that will be more responsive to the needs of the people. One that will put an end to a cycle of corruption and exploitation,” he said.

Jefferson Antiporda and Michael D. Tanaotanao

Opposition figure Maksharip Aushev gunned down in Russia's North Caucasus - washingtonpost.com

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By Philip P. Pan
Sunday, October 25, 2009 4:58 PM

MOSCOW -- A popular opposition figure in Russia's restive Ingushetia province was gunned down Sunday morning in the latest killing of a government critic in the North Caucasus, prompting outrage from human rights groups and raising fears of further violence in the region.

Maksharip Aushev, a businessman who had led mass protests against abuses by the government's security forces, was driving on a major highway in the neighboring province of Kabardino-Balkaria when a passing vehicle sprayed his car with more than 60 bullets, authorities said. The attack also seriously wounded a passenger.

Colleagues condemned the slaying as an attempt to silence voices critical of the authorities, and said it sent an especially chilling message because Aushev held a post on a human rights council established by Moscow and enjoyed the support of Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the local governor appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev last year.

Yevkurov has reached out to human rights activists and the opposition, offering them a degree of protection, but Aushev's killing suggests that he, and by extension the Kremlin, may be losing control over the overlapping law enforcement agencies fighting an growing Islamist insurgency in the region.

In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Aushev accused the security forces of conducting an indiscriminate campaign of abductions, torture and killings in Ingushetia that had only strengthened the rebels. He singled out the powerful Federal Security Service, one of the successors of the KGB, as well as local police controlled by Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin's strongman in neighboring Chechnya.

"I don't consider them officers. I consider them bandits," he said, over dinner during the wedding of one of his sons.

Two years ago, another son and a nephew were abducted, taken to Chechnya and tortured. Aushev blamed the FSB and won their release by organizing huge street protests, emerging as one of the most outspoken leaders of the opposition to Ingushetia's governor at the time, Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB officer and an ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

After another opposition figure, Magomed Yevloyev, was shot to death in police custody last year, Aushev agreed to take over his Web site, a news operation that infuriated the authorities with its reports on corruption and human rights violations. He later led protests that helped persuade the Kremlin to fire Zyazikov and bring in Yevkurov.

In a show of support for the new governor, Aushev said he retired from politics and no longer considered himself a member of the opposition. But he had no illusions about the new governor's ability to rein in the security forces. "From day one, they've been sabotaging him, undermining his authority and continuing with the illegal executions and torture," he said.

Aushev added that the FSB still considered him "enemy number one."

A month ago, the security forces stopped his car and attempted to take him into custody after he left a meeting with the government. He escaped only because a crowd of motorists, including an aide to the governor, surrounded him.

"If I had been a half-meter closer, they would have tied me up and I would have disappeared without a trace," he told Caucasian Knot, a Web site that covers the region.

In a statement Sunday, Yevkurov described Aushev's slaying as a "heinous crime intended to destabilize the region" and vowed to do everything in his power to punish the killers.

One of the governor's aides, Musa Pliyev, a former member of the opposition who had worked closely with Aushev, said there was little doubt "the murder was a political one" but stopped short of blaming the security services.

"If the authorities who should guarantee the freedom and safety of their citizens fail to do this, then they must be blamed for Aushev's death and many other human rights activists and journalists who have been killed recently," he added.

The shooting follows the execution-style killings of two charity workers in the Chechen capital of Grozny in August and of Natalya Estemirova, Chechnya's most prominent human rights activist, whose body was found in Ingushetia in July.

Iran Said to Arrest Prominent Detainees’ Wives - NYTimes.com

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By NAZILA FATHI

Iranian authorities arrested the wives and family members of a number of high-profile political detainees at a religious ceremony in Tehran, several reformist Web sites reported Friday.

The raid happened Thursday after the family members of one detainee, Shahab Tabatabee, announced on the Web site Norooz News that they were holding a prayer ceremony for his release. Mr. Tabatabee, a member of the reformist party Islamic Iran Participation Front, was sentenced to five years in prison last week.

The police raided the ceremony at a private home a few minutes after it began, according to a relative of some of the people who were arrested.

Officers arrested nearly all the guests except for several young women who were attending with infants and toddlers.

There were conflicting reports on the Web sites as to the number arrested. The relative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said 60 people had been arrested, which would make it the largest mass arrest in recent months.

Two senior clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri and Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, denounced the raid, opposition Web sites reported. At least three opposition Web sites reported the arrests, each citing witnesses.

The wife of Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, a prominent prisoner who was the government spokesman under former President Mohammad Khatami, and the wives of several former members of Parliament were among the detainees.

About 10 people were released Friday. About a dozen others were transferred to the notorious Evin prison, the relative said.

He said the raid had been carried out under a warrant issued by the prosecutor general.

The arrests appeared to be a warning to the families of the detainees, who have been vocal in their opposition to the arrests.

Many reformist politicians were arrested immediately after the disputed June 12 elections, in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed a landslide victory.

His re-election set off some of the largest protests since the 1979 revolution, and his opponents have accused him of rigging the results.

More than 100 people, including reform activists and journalists, are still in jail, and their relatives have said most were being held in solitary confinement with limited access to their families or lawyer.

The government has been unable to extinguish the protests despite mass arrests and a violent crackdown. The opposition has hijacked government-backed rallies and religious ceremonies in the past months as an opportunity to stage protests.

Authorities hinted this month that they might try to arrest the opposition leaders Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi in an effort to stop the protests.

Some 100 hard-line members of Parliament signed a petition last week against Mr. Moussavi, laying the groundwork for his arrest. One of the signers, Mohammad Taqi Rahbar, told state-run television that the complaint was aimed at stopping Mr. Moussavi from planning a protest scheduled for Nov. 3.

The Special Court of Clergy also said last week that it was looking into charges against Mr. Karroubi.

On Friday, Mr. Karroubi was attacked by baton-wielding vigilantes when he visited a media exhibition in Tehran, the student Web site Advarnews reported.

Mr. Karroubi’s white turban was knocked off, and the official Fars news agency carried a photo showing a shoe being tossed at him.

Lone Cleric, Mehdi Karroubi, Emerges to Defy Iran’s Leaders - NYTimes.com

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By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A short midlevel cleric, with a neat white beard and a clergyman’s calm bearing, Mehdi Karroubi has watched from his home in Tehran in recent months as his aides have been arrested, his offices raided, his newspaper shut down. He himself has been threatened with arrest and, indirectly, the death penalty.

His response: bring it on.

Once a second-tier opposition figure operating in the shadow of Mir Hussein Moussavi, his fellow challenger in Iran’s discredited presidential election in June, Mr. Karroubi has emerged in recent months as the last and most defiant opponent of the country’s leadership.

The authorities have dismissed as fabrications his accusations of official corruption, voting fraud and the torture and rape of detained protesters. A former confidant of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and a longtime conservative politician, he has lately been accused by the government of fomenting unrest and aiding Iran’s foreign enemies.

Four months after mass protests erupted in response to the dubious victory claims of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the opposition’s efforts have largely stalled in the face of unrelenting government pressure, arrests, long detentions, harsh sentences, censorship and a strategic refusal to compromise.

But for all its success at preserving authority, the government has been unable to silence or intimidate Mr. Karroubi, its most tenacious and, in many ways, most problematic critic. While other opposition figures, including Mr. Moussavi and two former presidents, Mohammad Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, are seldom heard now, Mr. Karroubi has been unsparing and highly vocal in his criticism of the government, which he feels has lost all legitimacy.

Last week, a special court for the clergy began to consider whether Mr. Karroubi, 72, should face charges. His response, in a speech to a student group that was reported on a reformist Web site, was withering.

“I am not only unworried about this court,” he wrote. “I wholeheartedly welcome it since I will use it to express my concerns regarding the national and religious beliefs of the Iranian people and the ideas of Imam Khomeini, and clearly reveal those who are opposed to these concerns.”

Despite such provocations, Iran’s conservative leadership has so far not arrested him, apparently fearful of making a powerful symbol of a man so closely associated with the founding of the Islamic republic.

“His potential arrest is an acid test of the internal meltdown of the upper echelon of the regime and the final breakdown in its legitimacy facade,” said Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University. “We had heard that revolutions eat their own children, but his seems to be a case of revolutionary parricide.”

Mr. Karroubi works from a villa on a quiet street in Tehran that ends at a rundown palace once occupied by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. It is one of the many symbols of his standing among the revolutionary elite. He was jailed nine times by the shah and spent years in prison, where he grew close to inmates of widely different political persuasions: nationalist, socialist, Islamist, said Rasool Nafisi, an Iran expert based in Virginia.

“These forced companionships, Karroubi wrote in his autobiography, made him aware of the pain of the others, and relieved him from sectarian behavior,” Mr. Nafisi said.

After the overthrow of the shah, Ayatollah Khomeini put Mr. Karroubi in charge of the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee and the Martyrs Foundation, two of the nation’s most important and wealthiest institutions. He also served twice as speaker of Parliament, where he earned a reputation as a conciliator; served on the powerful Expediency Council; and was appointed adviser to the subsequent supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

So it was hard for the leadership to brand him an enemy of the state when he posted on his Web site last month an impassioned, unyielding and damning letter to the nation, written in response to the judicial finding that his allegations of the rape of imprisoned protesters were unfounded.

“The ugliness has reached the point that instead of the perpetrators and propagators and people behind this oppression, it is Mehdi Karroubi whom they want to put on trial,” he wrote. “I take refuge with you, oh God, from these catastrophes which some are causing and are not only a disgrace to the Islamic republic, but a disgrace to Iran.”

Mr. Karroubi’s disenchantment with the revolution he helped create began not with the elections in June, but with the balloting that brought Mr. Ahmadinejad to office four years ago. Mr. Karroubi was a candidate then, too, and late into the night after the polls closed, he was running second, behind Mr. Rafsanjani.

A few days later, he talked about election night during an interview in his villa, still angry and surprised at what had happened. He said he had gone to sleep and when he woke, he was in third place, behind Mr. Ahmadinejad and out of the race.

Mr. Ahmadinejad won a runoff, and Mr. Karroubi wrote an open letter of protest to the supreme leader charging vote fraud. There was no investigation, however, and Ayatollah Khamenei chastised Mr. Karroubi. He dropped his protest, but quit the Expediency Council and started his own political organization, the National Trust Party.

Of course, much the same thing happened again in June, when Mr. Ahmadinejad supposedly won with 63 percent of the votes cast — including 71 percent of the votes cast in Mr. Karroubi’s home province, Lorestan.

If Mr. Karroubi had restricted his complaints to the vote tally, he might have been ignored. But he has gone far beyond that with his accusations that state security officers raped, sodomized and tortured men and women who were arrested for taking part in the protests. The allegations have unnerved the leadership, threatening its legitimacy and religious standing far more than images of the police beating protesters in the streets.

After the government dismissed those allegations last month, Mr. Karroubi was summoned to appear before a three-judge panel investigating his actions. He welcomed the invitation. “It will be a good opportunity for me to talk again about crimes that would make the shah look good,” he said, according to the Green Freedom Wave Web site.

As calls for his arrest grow louder, he remains defiant.

“If only I were not alive and had not seen the day that in the Islamic republic, a citizen would come to me and complain that every variety of appalling and unnatural act would be done in unknown buildings and by less-known people: stripping people and making them face each other and subjecting them to vile insults and urinating in their faces,” he wrote in his letter to the nation. “I said to myself, ‘Where indeed have we arrived 30 years after the revolution?’ ”

Pakistan Attacks Show Tighter Militant Links - NYTimes.com

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By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A wave of attacks against top security installations over the last several days demonstrated that the Taliban, Al Qaeda and militant groups once nurtured by the government are tightening an alliance aimed at bringing down the Pakistani state, government officials and analysts said.

More than 30 people were killed Thursday in Lahore, the second largest city in Pakistan, as three teams of militants assaulted two police training centers and a federal investigations building. The dead included 19 police officers and at least 11 militants, police officials said.

Nine others were killed in two attacks at a police station in Kohat, in the northwest, and a residential complex in Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province.

The assaults in Lahore, coming after a 20-hour siege at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi last weekend, showed the deepening reach of the militant network, as well as its rising sophistication and inside knowledge of the security forces, officials and analysts said.

The umbrella group for the Pakistani Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attacks in Lahore, the independent television news channel Geo reported on its Web site.

But the style of the attacks also revealed the closer ties between the Taliban and Al Qaeda and what are known as jihadi groups, which operate out of southern Punjab, the country’s largest province, analysts said. The cooperation has made the militant threat to Pakistan more potent and insidious than ever, they said.

The government has tolerated the Punjabi groups, including Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, for years, and many Pakistanis consider them allies in just causes, including fighting India, the United States and Shiite Muslims. But they have become entwined with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and have increasingly turned on the state.

The alliance has now stepped up attacks as the military prepares an assault on the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, where senior members of the Punjabi groups also find sanctuary and support.

“These are all Punjabi groups with a link to South Waziristan,” Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, a former interior minister, said, explaining the recent attacks.

In a rare acknowledgment of the lethal combination of forces, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that a “syndicate” of militant groups wanted to see “Pakistan as a failed state.”

“The banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi are operating jointly in Pakistan,” Mr. Malik told journalists, pledging a more effective counterstrategy.

In Washington, senior intelligence officials said the multiple coordinated attacks were a characteristic of operations influenced by Al Qaeda. But the officials said they were still sifting through intelligence reports to determine whether the attacks indeed marked an attempt by Al Qaeda to assert more influence over the Pakistani Taliban’s operations.

They said the assaults also might have been orchestrated by the Taliban to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader, and send a stark message that the insurgents could still carry out daring attacks without him.

The fresh violence highlights the expanding challenges as the Obama administration tries to bolster Pakistan’s civilian government and encourage the military to press its campaign against the Taliban.

On Thursday, President Obama signed a civilian aid package for Pakistan of $7.5 billion over five years. The package has prompted friction over conditions for the aid — like greater civilian oversight of the military and demands that Pakistan drop support for militant groups — which army officers and politicians considered infringements on Pakistan’s sovereignty.

The White House issued a statement on Thursday noting the shared interests of the countries. However, in a sign of scant sympathy for the unappreciative reaction to the money, there was no signing ceremony.

The rise in more penetrating terrorist attacks may now add its own pressure on the Pakistani government to crack down on the Punjabi militants. It is time for the government to come out in public and explain the nature of the enemy, said Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of North-West Frontier Province.

“The national narrative in support of jihad has confused the Pakistani mind,” Mr. Aziz said. “All along we’ve been saying these people are trying to fight a war of Islam, but there is a need for transforming the national narrative.”

The jihadi groups were formally banned by the former president, Pervez Musharraf, after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Pakistan joined the United States in the campaign against terrorism.

But the groups have entrenched domestic and political constituencies, as well as shadowy ties to former military officials and their families, analysts said. Even since the ban, they have been allowed to operate in Punjab, often in the open.

Punjab is the major recruiting center for the Pakistani Army and it hosts more army divisions than any other province. Yet “these groups proliferate and operate with impunity, literally under the nose of Pakistan’s army,” said Christine Fair, assistant professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

A large congregation of jihadi groups, including Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, met six months ago in Rawalpindi, the city where the army headquarters was attacked last Saturday, said Mr. Sherpao, the former interior minister.

The nature of the Lahore attacks drove home the point that the “war has come to Punjab,” and that the government can no longer hide the alliance between the Taliban in South Waziristan and the forces in Southern Punjab, said Zaffar Abbas, a prominent journalist at the English-language newspaper Dawn.

Until the people are told the real situation, the government will never win the support of the people “to fight this bloody war,” Mr. Abbas said.

In fact, many Pakistanis do not see the jihadi groups as the enemy, said Farrukh Saleem, the executive director for the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. “They feel America is in the region and the Pakistani Army is fighting for an American army and the jihadis have a right to retaliate,” he said.

The senior personnel in the security forces seem to understand the gravity of the militants’ strength and the durability of their network, Mr. Saleem said. But they cannot bring themselves to say publicly that those whom they created are coming back to bite them, he said.

The ringleader of the assault on the army headquarters on Saturday, identified as Muhammad Aqeel, was a member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, according to the military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas. Mr. Aqeel, who was captured alive, is also a former soldier in the Army Medical Corps, a background that appeared to have helped in planning the attack.

Two of the facilities attacked in and near Lahore on Thursday — the six-story building of the federal investigations agency, and a police training unit in the suburb of Manawan — were hit by militants in deadly assaults in 2008 and earlier this year.

The coordination of the attacks by three teams between 9 and 10 a.m. startled police officials as they scrambled to send commandos to each of the sites.

The raid on the headquarters of the Punjab elite police training school was seen as particularly insulting because its graduates, trained in counterterrorism techniques, are considered the pride of the province.

Five militants scaled a wall of the elite training school, where more than 800 recruits had just started classes, said Maj. Gen. Shafqat Ahmed, the officer commanding security forces in Lahore.

Six police officers were killed and seven were wounded in a gun battle that lasted more than two hours, police officials said. All five of the attackers were killed, they said.

Reporting was contributed by Salman Masood from Islamabad, Waqar Gilani from Lahore, Pakistan, Pir Zubair Shah from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Riots Rattle Ancient French Town - washingtonpost.com

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Lawmakers Denounce Weekend Disturbances by Self-Styled Anarchists in Poitiers

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 15, 2009

POITIERS, France -- Under a bright autumn sun, the narrow lanes of ancient Poitiers teemed with families enjoying a lighthearted celebration of street theater. Suddenly, a knot of black-clad youths emerged from the crowd. They donned plastic masks, pulled up their hoods and started destroying everything in sight.

In what police described as an organized attack, the band shattered store windows, damaged the facades of several banks and spray-painted anarchist slogans on government buildings. Aiming even at the historical heritage of this comfortable provincial town 200 miles southwest of Paris, they fractured a plaque commemorating Joan of Arc's interrogation here in 1429 and -- in Latin -- scrawled "Everything belongs to everybody" on a stone baptistery that is one of the oldest monuments in Christendom.

The wanton destruction, which lasted for about 90 minutes early Saturday evening, was a dramatic reminder that France and other European nations, below their surface of stability and wealth, harbor tiny bands of ultra-leftist activists who still want to combat the market economies and parliamentary democracies on which the continent's well-being is founded.

"We will destroy your morbid world," one of the Poitiers protesters sprayed-painted on a wall near the city's landmark Notre Dame Cathedral.

Based on politics of violent rejection dating from the 1970s, the groups have been largely overshadowed in recent years by the more mundane violence of big-city drug gangs and disaffected immigrant ghettos, particularly in France. But they have surfaced recently in dramatic ways. French, German and other European ultra-leftists set fire to a customs shed and a hotel during the NATO summit in Strasbourg in April, and others launched violent attacks that marred an otherwise joyous music festival this summer in the streets of Paris.

The outburst in Poitiers was particularly shocking to its 90,000 residents, most of whom traditionally regard themselves as comfortably distant from the political tensions of Paris and the world. Shop owners and local political leaders voiced astonishment that police were caught by surprise and wondered who the violent protesters were and where they came from.

"It's really strange," said Christine Simon, whose little shop hawking New Age spirituality lost a display window and several art works in the rampage. "Here in Poitiers, there is never anything like this. I don't mean nothing ever happens. We have a cultural life and all. But nothing like this."

Mayor Alain Claeys, from the opposition Socialist Party, suggested to Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux that his ministry's intelligence agents should have picked up signals that the ultra-leftists were planning something. Joining many other Poitiers residents, he said those who organized the destruction must have come from outside the city, perhaps even outside France.

"Extremism and violence struck brutally in the heart of the regional capital," said former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who represents the area in the Senate. He vowed to meet with Hortefeux to "draw conclusions from these sad and unacceptable events."

Police acknowledged to local reporters that they had no idea who the ringleaders were. They took 18 people into custody Saturday evening and Sunday and, in a show of firmness, put eight of them on immediate trial Monday. Defense lawyers argued the eight were just locals swept up in the movement, however, and judges sentenced only three to prison terms, from one to four months.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's political coalition, the Union for a Popular Movement, urged harsh punishment for the rioters despite the difficulty in finding who was responsible. "Prosecutions must be organized, and we expect the strongest possible firmness from the courts," said Frédéric Lefebvre, the coalition spokesman.

Sarkozy, a former interior minister known as an advocate of no-nonsense law enforcement, repeatedly has urged tougher tactics to combat crime and suburban unrest. He was elected in 2007 in part because his hard line captured support from voters who traditionally had cast their ballots for the far-right National Front.

Hortefeux flew down from Paris for a one-hour appearance Monday to show government solidarity and vow that something would be done. "I hope the courts will crack down, and severely," he said.

A law is before Parliament that will give police new powers to monitor such groups, he said. But he added that it might also be necessary to use another law, dating from the 1930s, to disband them before they can cause further trouble.

Claeys, however, asked how Hortefeux would disband the groups if his ministry does not know who they are or where they come from.

The violence seemed to have been carefully planned, police said. They discovered caches of masks, hammers, batons and smoke bombs at several points in the city center, apparently hidden in advance for use during the riot. Once it broke out, police said, the protesters used canvas tarps to protect themselves from rubber anti-riot projectiles used by police.

The number of rioters involved in the destruction was estimated at 150 to 300, some of whom waved the black flags often associated with anarchist groups. Their tactics were particularly successful, officers said, because they grafted their riot onto a protest that was being staged by local opponents to a new prison. Organizers of the prison protest issued statements dissociating themselves from the violence.

Merchants, festival-goers and others who witnessed the rampage said the rioters apparently did not aim to injure bystanders. Two policemen were lightly injured during the violence, authorities said. And while the protesters spray-painted anarchist appeals on buildings, they did not shout slogans or otherwise explain their acts.

"Objective: destroy, destroy, frighten the bourgeois, then disappear," commented Hervé Cannet, an editorialist whose local New Republic newspaper office was one of the buildings vandalized.

Democrats Fire Back at Health Industry - washingtonpost.com

Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr

By Lori Montgomery and David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 15, 2009

Days after the insurance lobby began an aggressive campaign against a Senate plan to overhaul the nation's health-care system, senior Democrats fired back, threatening Wednesday to revoke the industry's long-standing antitrust exemption.

Health insurance is one of only a few industries exempted from certain federal antitrust regulations, and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the exemption was "one of the worst accidents of American history. It deserves a lot of the blame for the huge rise in premiums that has made health insurance so unaffordable."

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) joined Schumer in a stinging denunciation of health industry practices, but the insurance lobby dismissed their threat as "a political ploy."

The dispute came as House leaders pushed off a vote on health care until the first week in November and as Reid and other Senate leaders met for the first time with senior White House officials to discuss how to craft compromise legislation. High on their agenda was the array of contentious matters that must be resolved before a bill can come before the full Senate.

Among them is whether to create a government-run insurance plan, whether to fine people who do not purchase insurance and whether to require employers to offer coverage to their workers.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats sought Wednesday to shore up the support of a critical player in the health-care debate: the American Medical Association.

Senate leaders met with representatives of the AMA and other doctors' groups, then said they would press to repeal within days a decade-old law that subjects physicians who treat Medicare patients to regular pay cuts. The repeal would increase the federal budget deficit by nearly $250 billion over the next decade, but the influential organizations, whose members will face a 21 percent pay cut in January, had demanded a resolution to the issue as part of any health-care overhaul.

"It wipes the slate clean," said one representative from the medical groups who participated in a meeting Wednesday with Reid, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.). Instead of fighting pay cuts, the participant said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting, doctors could pursue pay "updates."

The first of those updates -- giving Medicare doctors a 0.5 percent pay increase in 2010 -- will remain in the Senate health-care bill, Democratic aides said. But by repealing future pay cuts before the debate reaches the floor, the chamber's leaders hope to short-circuit any Republican plans to add the expensive repeal to the larger bill, which could threaten its prospects for passage.

The move could, however, trigger a fight with House leaders, who want the Senate to approve strict pay-as-you-go budget rules before consenting to such a large increase in future deficits.

Experts differ as to how much latitude the antitrust exemption gives health insurers.

To the extent that it provides insurers with market clout, repealing the exemption could shift power to doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers, potentially leading to higher premiums, some experts said.

A repeal, said lawyer Richard T. Greenberg of the firm McGuire Woods, would allow the federal government to regulate arrangements by which insurers steer their customers to particular hospitals and other health-care providers.

David Dranove, a professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said the exemption permits health insurers to exchange information about potential customers' medical risk before issuing policies.

Robert Zirkelbach, press secretary for the industry group America's Health Insurance Plans, said, "The health insurance industry is one of the most regulated industries in America," subject to regulators at the federal and state levels. "The focus on this issue is a political ploy designed to distract attention away from the real issues in this debate."

Staff writer Shailagh Murray contributed to this report.

Pakistanis Balk at U.S. Aid Package - washingtonpost.com

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By Karen DeYoung and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 8, 2009

The Obama administration's strategy for bolstering Pakistan's civilian government was shaken Wednesday when political opposition and military leaders there sharply criticized a new U.S. assistance plan as interfering with the country's sovereignty.

Although President Obama has praised the $7.5 billion, five-year aid program -- approved by Congress last week -- Pakistani officials have objected to provisions that require U.S. monitoring of everything from how they spend the money to the way the military promotes senior officers.

Their criticism threatens to complicate the administration's efforts in the region, where Pakistan's assistance is seen as crucial to the war in Afghanistan.

"Obviously, it demonstrates we've still got work to do," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said of the Pakistani criticism.

On Wednesday, Obama convened his top national security officials to discuss policy in Pakistan and its role in the developing strategy in Afghanistan. A senior administration official described the three-hour White House meeting, which coincided with the eighth anniversary of the Afghanistan war, as "a comprehensive update on the situation" in Pakistan, including an "intelligence and counterterrorism assessment, as well as an assessment of the political and diplomatic situation."

With Taliban attacks on U.S. and NATO forces planned and launched from within its borders, an al-Qaeda sanctuary in its tribal areas and a nuclear arsenal whose security is of international concern, Pakistan is the most strategically important country in the region.

When Obama concluded his first strategy review in March, he praised Pakistan's newly elected civilian government and proposed a sharp increase in military and civilian aid. Since then, the administration has tried to overcome decades of mistrust between the two countries, to calm Pakistan's fractious politics and prop up its faltering civilian institutions. U.S. military officials have carefully cultivated their counterparts in the country's politically powerful military, encouraging them to fight militants with whom they have long been allied and to submit to democratic rule.

The White House has been encouraged by the Pakistani government's decision to challenge the Taliban within its borders. The Pakistani army fought the Taliban this spring as the group pushed toward the capital, Islamabad. It then pursued the fighters into the Swat Valley. The army also has been preparing for a push into al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries along the border in South Waziristan. With the government's tacit approval, U.S. missile attacks launched from unmanned aircraft against high-value insurgent targets in the border area have brought what a senior administration official called "a real degradation of al-Qaeda."

As White House strategy sessions on Afghanistan began last week, administration officials contrasted what they described as a worsening situation there with a better-than-expected one in Pakistan, which has been rattled by one political crisis after another in recent years.

"Many in Washington were not prepared for this," one senior official said of Wednesday's outbursts in Islamabad.

A senior U.S. military official said that the relationship with Pakistan is "still positive" but that "we need to understand the sensitivities better." The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The Pakistani media reported mounting anger over the aid bill within the military on Tuesday, when Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, the army chief, met in Islamabad with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. The terms set in the bill were described as "insulting and unacceptable" by one publication. On Wednesday, the dispute was the subject of a special debate in the Pakistani Parliament.

"Not a single Pakistani can accept the [aid legislation] in its current form," said Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan of the Pakistan Muslim League, a leading opposition party.

In a statement issued after a meeting with top military commanders, Kiyani expressed "serious concerns" over the legislation and said that Pakistan had the right to analyze and respond to all threats "in accordance with her own national interests."

For its part, the cash-strapped Pakistani government of President Asif Ali Zardari appears caught between its desire for closer relations with the United States -- and the resources that relationship promises -- and the political liability it entails.

Pressed during the debate, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani said the aid provisions should be discussed "as long as desired" by Parliament. Saying he was closely consulting with the military, Gillani declared that the aid package "is neither a contract signed with the U.S. administration, nor is it binding on Pakistan. It is the legislation of the U.S. Congress, and it is we who have to decide whether to accept it or not."

U.S. and Pakistani officials said that the government was on board with the aid package and that accommodation could be reached with the political opposition. They suggested that the criticism was part of what one senior Pakistani official close to Zardari called an "orchestrated campaign" by elements within Pakistan's military and its intelligence service opposed to civilian control of foreign and defense policies. The army had been "completely briefed" in advance about all elements in the aid package, the official said, describing the military's alarm this week as disingenuous.

Pakistani political analyst Hasan-Askari Rizvi said that the language in the legislation could have been "more diplomatic and softer" but that the bill had become a vehicle for unrelated disputes. "If the Pakistani government, the opposition and the military cannot come to a consensus," Rizvi said, "then it is going to create problems for the ties between the U.S. and Pakistan."

The bill, named after its chief sponsors, Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, triples the amount of U.S. economic assistance to Pakistan, which has long been overshadowed by military aid.

Obama was an original sponsor of the measure, first introduced when he served in the Senate, and the bill is the centerpiece of his administration's development efforts in Pakistan. Its passage this year was stalled when House members, recalling a lack of supervision over billions of dollars given to Pakistan during the Bush administration, insisted on stricter monitoring provisions. The version that ultimately emerged from a conference committee and was approved last week mandates regular administration certification that Pakistan is adhering to a wide range of requirements.

Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and staff writer Ben Pershing in Washington contributed to this report.