Eye On U.K

[Rasputin]

The UK foreign secretary says military action is still inconceivable against Iran and he hopes diplomacy can solve deadlock over its nuclear programme.
US President George W Bush has refused to rule out military strikes against Iran, which Washington accuses of wanting to develop nuclear weapons.

"It is not on the agenda, I happen to think that it is inconceivable," Jack Straw told BBC radio.

Iran insists its nuclear activities are purely peaceful, to produce fuel.

Last week the United Nations nuclear watchdog passed a resolution that took Iran a step closer to sanctions if it did not ease suspicions about its intentions.

The International Atomic Energy Agency resolution orders Iran to suspend enrichment activities, stop building its heavy water nuclear reactor and open up to inspections.

Mr Straw said that European negotiators - with US backing - had "left the door open for further diplomatic action with Iran and I hope that they take this opportunity".

Snap inspections

Iran has rejected the IAEA vote, with its foreign minister calling it "political, illegal and illogical".

Tehran is threatening to cease application of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's additional protocol, which allows snap inspections of nuclear sites, if the IAEA reports Tehran to the Security Council.

A bill has been presented to the Iranian parliament aimed at suspending implementation of the additional protocol until Iran completes the nuclear fuel cycle.

So far, parliament only voted to consider the bill as an urgent piece of legislation and now it goes to several committees.

The BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says it is not clear how long the process will take, but if put to a vote in parliament it is certain to be passed.

Iran has signed - but not ratified - the additional protocol.

Tehran recently restarted work on the early stages of uranium enrichment.

Such work had been suspended since November 2004 while talks were held with the UK, France and Germany about its long-term nuclear plans.

Iran hid an uranium enrichment programme for 18 years until its activities were exposed in 2002.

[Rasputin]

Eye On U.K

In an exclusive guest blog for Soul Bean Café, The Westminster Mole offers an insiders’ view of the ongoing tussle between the Blair and Brown camps


“A handful of ministers decided to write letters to Blair asking him to resign. Unsurprisingly, he said no and they resigned before the Prime Minister could sack them.”


The week before last, Tony Blair gave an extremely ill-judged interview to the London Times. He basically refused, again, to name a date for his departure and said that all those calling for his resignation should shut up and take him at his word that he’s going to go and leave ample time for his successor.

The Prime Minister said this after an unseasonably tough few weeks, during which he was seen by many to be offering yet more craven support for George Bush and the Israeli government during the conflict with Lebanon. To make things worse this all carried on into the parliamentary recess. Blair’s interview came just as most MPs returned from holiday.

They already had post bags full of vitriol about Lebanon from constituents of all political persuasions and the man responsible for much of this was blithely stating that any discussion about when he might quit was ridiculous and bad for the country (always a tricky one to float that).

Most MPs look forward to the summer being a time of intensive constituency-based work, a holiday of a week or two, and a selection of national policy issues that are little more challenging than whether Big Brother really has “gone too far this time”. When they come back from recess, they talk to each other. A lot. They do this because talking forms a large part of their job.

More bad press for UK foreign policy (synonymous with Blair), promising – yet, for Labour, hardly disastrous – opinion polls putting the Conservative opposition leader David Cameron’s popularity ahead of Blair’s (and his Chancellor and rival Gordon Brown’s for that matter) and post-vacation blues, reignited the Westminster village in a way that took any control of the news agenda straight out of Number 10’s hands. A crisis ensued.

For Labour supporters, this is where it gets really depressing. Again, to defuse things, the secretary of state for environment and rural affairs David Milliband announced Blair would be gone in a year. A handful of ministers decided to write letters to the PM asking him to resign. Unsurprisingly, he said no and they resigned before the Prime Minister could sack them. About 70 other MPs (enough to trigger a leadership contest) signed a letter saying that they were glad that Blair, through Milliband, had said he will not stay more than a year and that we should all get back to the business of doing what we were elected to do. It was hardly a ringing endorsement but it was a welcome post-holiday reality check.



The whole issue has been played out in the press as a battle of Blair v Brown. This is wrong and more than a little lazy. It is more a question of how and indeed when he is going to go. Everyone knows that Tony has become a liability and the game is up. He is supported by a group of loyal and noisy friends – just like the Chancellor – but for the vast majority of Labour MPs, regardless of who they are instinctively incline to support, the debate rests on when and how he should go.

Most of them realise that foreign policy has often coloured a reasonable domestic performance and although they are behind a revived Tory Party in the polls, the lead is hardly massive (nor indeed sufficient to gain power) and Cameron, whose deeply held regard for the way Blair operates could land him in trouble later, has no policies to speak of rather than going round getting photographed being nice to ‘the ethnics’.

Given all this, a descent into backstabbing and infighting (beyond the normal) is the last thing any MP wants. Gordon Brown knows this even though he came perilously close to looking like the Thane of Fife wielding the knife last week. He avoided this – just – and happily for him has almost certainly extracted a precise window during which Blair will announce his resignation.

This is about as much as he could have hoped for. The slightly resigned nature in which Blair was speaking at Quinton Kynaston School in north London last week made that clear. He even sounded a bit teary. Nevertheless, Brown is still mistrustful of the Blair hardcore who seem determined to put a credible alternative in place for next May (John Reid? too angry; Charles Clarke? too bitter; Alan Milburn? – Milburn’s friends wouldn’t even vote for him as PM). He also has to convince many of his fellow Labour MPs that what they have lost in Blair’s undoubted charisma and electoral appeal will be matched under his leadership. The challenge now is whether Gordon feels confident enough or, more likely, willing to hold a robust leadership election to exorcise the ghost of Blair and leave him with sufficient momentum to beat the Tories’ Blair MkII at the next general election.

[Rasputin]

In early 1999, Paddy Ashdown, then the leader of Britain's Liberal Democratic Party (and since then, as Lord Ashdown, Europe's envoy in Bosnia), was found with a woman not his wife and forced to resign his post. In his diaries, he describes calling on Prime Minister Tony Blair to inform him in advance of his intention to quit: "Blair said: 'Going is the most difficult thing to do in politics. Too many people stay for too long. I would rather stop when people said, 'Why is he going?' than when they said, 'Why isn't he going?' Or, even worse, 'When is he going?' I hope I will be able to do it the same way.'"

This leaves us with an enduring mystery. Britain's most adept and skillful politician has evidently known for years exactly what not to do about arranging his departure, and yet he has chosen to ignore his own advice.

The mystery deepens when we recall that this consideration has been a part of Blair's calculations ever since he became leader of the Labour Party in 1994. At a dinner in a London restaurant named Granita, in what has since become the best-known coffee-stage chat in British history, Blair made a proposal to Gordon Brown, his rival for the leadership. That proposal fell in two parts. He, Blair, was demonstrably more "electable," and should lead Labour in deposing the ramshackle Tory regime of John Major. Then, with Labour in power, Brown could expect in due time to receive the mantle. On this condition, Brown agreed to give Blair a clear run.

THAT WAS three elections ago. What has kept Blair going? When I called on him in January this year, his press officer advised me not to bring up the obvious question. (I readily agreed, since an unanswerable question is a waste of time.) But no sooner had I asked the Prime Minister how he was than he replied with a grin: "It's nice to know one doesn't have to fight another election."

So there was the topic, inescapably, right in the middle of the room. For the rest of the conversation, and on the trip to the outs***ts of London that I also took with him, Blair talked and acted as if he had a full Prime Ministerial agenda on everything from global warming to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. He also behaved, when talking to voters and citizens, as if he was tirelessly running for office for a fourth time.

Some of the motivations for this are purely human: he likes being Prime Minister and is good at it. Moreover, next year he will have been prime minister for a decade, longer than any previous Labour leader. A little longer, and he would outlast Margaret Thatcher's record-breaking tenure, which must have been a temptation.

But Blair inexplicably chose to compound the mistake he had made with Brown, by announcing publicly, after having defeated the Tories for the third straight time, that he would not stand again. From then on, there was really only one question on peoples' minds, and it was the third - the worst - of the three questions he had mentioned to Ashdown: "When is he going?"

Blair ought to have known that politics is a pitiless business. For years, his backbench members of parliament kept quiet because they knew that they owed their seats, and their majority, to him. Now, with the country insisting on an answer to the question he posed, they see him as a liability. And the trade unions, whose power he has done so much to reduce, have been open in saying that they want a new party leader. Thus, his announcement that he will leave Downing Street next year is no more than a reluctant acceptance of what has been reality for some time.

[Rasputin]

NO POLITICIAN is free from a sense of destiny, and I think that Blair's got the better of him. In the decision to send British forces to defend Sierra Leone from a barbaric invasion from Liberia, he faced down all those who warned of disaster and won great moral credit. In deploying soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq, he was convinced that he was both morally correct and politically right to stand by Britain's main historic ally, the United States. (It is reasonably certain that he would not have trusted Brown to do any of these things in the face of any serious opposition, and also reasonably certain that he was correct to think so.) When I first interviewed Blair, as newly elected Labour leader in 1994, he answered my question about the role of his Christianity in his politics by saying, "I can't stand politicians who go on about religion."

If I had to date the moment when my own misgivings about him began, it would be the time - starting after September 11, 2001 - when he began to emphasize his own "faith" as a motivating factor in his moral stand.

A saving element in British politics is that such appeals are usually considered embarrassing. They may also suggest a slight tendency, on the part of those uttering them, to believe in some kind of supernatural endorsement. So Blair's concession that he must leave office, a decision so long postponed and so disastrously protracted, represents among other things a triumph of the mundane over the permanent temptation to believe that politics is about anything else.

The writer's most recent book is Thomas Paine's Rights of Man.

https://www.project-syndicate.org

[Rasputin]

Blair may stay until next summer

Tony Blair is likely to stay as prime minister longer than some had expected, Education Secretary Alan Johnson said.
Buoyed by Mr Blair's final conference speech as leader, his supporters want him to stay until next summer.

Mr Blair has said he will quit within a year, but there had been calls for him to go by next May at the latest.

Mr Johnson said the fact Mr Blair said he would focus on Middle East troubles before stepping down "suggests he's not thinking about a couple of weeks".

LABOUR WEEK AHEAD
WEDNESDAY: Alan Johnson, David Miliband, Patricia Hewitt all take to the platform and Bill Clinton is the guest speaker
THURSDAY: John Reid, Peter Hain and John Prescott all take to the stage


Blair rejects blame for terror
Conference: At-a-glance

And he agreed, during an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today, with the suggestion that Mr Blair would stay on longer than many had expected at the start of the party conference in Manchester.

He said: "If the prime minister says: 'I want to use the rest of my time to try to resolve the Middle East problem in the same way we tried to tackle the Northern Ireland problem', I think it suggests he's not thinking about a couple of weeks. It's a big problem.

"But I really think people now are saying: 'Tony, the date you step down is a matter for you and it would be crazy to name a date."

Clinton speech

Mr Johnson, one of the possible contenders to succeed Mr Blair, told the conference he wanted to improve the experience of children in care saying the state too often showed a "chill indifference".

"Instead of bringing them up, we let them down," he said.

Mr Johnson promised to unveil plans next month to get in-care children into the best schools and put an extra £100 into their child trust funds for their future.

He also confirmed there would be no more coursework for GCSE maths and in other subjects it would be supervised to ensure people did not copy off the internet.

Reforms under-fire

Earlier, the conference heard from poverty campaigner Bob Geldof, who called for more aid funding in next year's comprehensive spending review.

Ex-US President Bill Clinton paid glowing tributes to Mr Blair and Mr Brown during a speech to conference which also warned that Labour's biggest problem was that people would take their achievements for granted.

But it has not all been plain sailing with the Labour leadership losing a vote when delegates backed a motion demanding the government provides more money for council houses "as a matter of urgency".

And the party hierarchy suffered a second defeat over a motion criticising health reforms.

During that debate Dave Prentis, leader of public service union Unison, accused the government of pursing a gratuitous privatisation agenda "driven by dogma".

He applauded Labour's extra investment in health but said there had been a dangerous change in direction which left the NHS "threatened as never before".

Mr Prentis urged delegates: "Set the clear red line between us and the Tories: this is their agenda, not ours."

There was angry heckling when the conference chairman turned off Mr Prentis' microphone, saying he had been warned he had gone over his allotted time.

Market limits

But Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said the reforms were putting the patients centre stage.

She insisted she could not turn her back on £1bn of savings from the controversial sell-off of NHS Logistics when the money would be reinvested in the NHS.

"After 60 years when the NHS has always used different providers it would be just as wrong to say no private involvement in the NHS as it would be to say only private involvement," she argued.

"Of course there are limits to the role of the markets in the NHS."

[Rasputin]

Press applaud Blair's final address

With the exception of the Mail and the Express, the papers are full of praise for Tony Blair's final speech to a Labour Party conference as prime minister.



The Times described the address as "highly emotional", and emphasised what it said was Blair's "severe warning" to Gordon Brown to carry on reforming, show courage and avoid caution, and never move the party to the sidelines if it was to stay in power.



In its leading article, the paper said: "We witnessed the artistry of a political master whose powers are undiminished...The nation, though, is not an extension of a Labour Party conference.



The paper's praise was mitigated with the conclusion: "Mr Blair's distinction between a Britain virtually in the midst of the Black Death before May 1997 and the New Jerusalem that it has become, will not be universally accepted.



"The prime minister's undoubted ability to see the big picture has not always been matched by a mastery of detail."



Contrast with Brown


Meanwhile, the Telegraph chose to contrast Blair's "political courage, leadership skills and personal rapport" with Gordon Brown, and said the prime minister's was "a speech that outclassed the chancellor's conference performance 24 hours earlier."



It was a theme the paper took up in its leading article, in which it said Blair was a "damnably hard act to follow."



"Tony Blair's last conference speech as party leader was everything that Gordon Brown's the day before had not been: sharp in its political critique, humanly engaging, witty without being frivolous, and sufficiently original in its insights to be genuinely interesting," The Times said.



Power extended?


The Independent stressed that the "rapturous" reception that greeted Blair's speech should enable him to stay in power for another nine months until after May's various elections.



This will worry supporters of Brown who believe that the prime minister will use the time to groom an alternative leadership candidate to the chancellor, claimed the paper.



In its leading article the Independent said: "Blair managed to make an address that was both valedictory and yet conveyed a sense that his job was not yet done.



"After this speech it will be harder for the Conservatives to decouple Mr Blair from the Labour Party.



"Mr Blair's last speech to Labour's conference was his best," it concluded.



Commanding


The Guardian was even more effusive in its praise for the outgoing leader.



"In one of the most commanding speeches he has delivered to conference, Mr Blair said winning the next election was the only legacy he wanted and promised to try to heal divisions at the top of the party after 'a lot of talk about lies and truths these past few weeks'", the paper's political editor wrote in his description of the address.



And its leading article said that Blair managed to win back many in the party who had become disillusioned with his leadership and wanted him to go as soon as possible.



It said: "Shining the bright beam of his oratory and intellect across Labour's decade in power, Tony Blair yesterday astounded his party with a speech that impressively illuminated New Labour's achievements, while leaving its weaknesses and failures in the shadows.



"He swept back into Labour hearts with an elegant and emotional explanation of his political purpose, a speech that placed him in history, but left no one doubting that his ambitions for change run deep into the future".


Stark staring mad

Long a Blair-, as opposed to a strictly Labour-supporting paper, the Sun described the party as "ungrateful" for forcing the leader who had won for them three elections in a row, from office before his time of choice.



"Has Labour gone stark staring mad? It is hard to reach any other conclusion after seeing the party stand and cheer the most successful leader they’ve ever had - the man they've forced out of office.



"In what will go down as the speech of his life, Tony Blair spelled out what he has done for his party - and what they have done to him."



The paper's leader went on: "There was no endorsement of Gordon as successor - and no handshake afterwards. Worse, he utterly eclipsed the chancellor's own low-key speech the previous day.



"While Mr Brown was perfectly competent, the PM was the maestro, pitch perfect with lots of funny lines between the serious stuff. In half a dozen searing sentences, he tore the Tories and David Cameron to pieces - although Cameron was the only man breathing a sigh of relief yesterday".



The Mirror lead on Blair's rallying of the party to "crush the Tories", emphasising Blair's desire for his legacy to be a fourth defeat for the party.



"He was funny, emotional and showed how he has changed Britain largely for the better over the past nine years," their leader said.



Damning


The Mail, long an enemy of Blair's, was predictably damning in its assessment.



"Oozing sincerity, the prime minister switched from that gap-toothed smile of charm to lachrymose emotion.



"Tony Blair's farewell speech to a rapt Labour conference was a vintage performance from the greatest actor-politician of our time.



"What a pity so much of it was utter, Alice in Wonderland make-believe," its leader concluded.



Likewise the Express, which switched allegiance to the Tories before the last election, was unimpressed.



Its leader read: "He had his audience in the palm of his hand.



"There was just one small problem. Not a word that Mr Blair said in his speech yesterday represented one iota of truth."

[Rasputin]

Blair is 'true friend' of Israel

Almost two-thirds of Israelis believe that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a "true friend of Israel," according to a recent poll by TNS Teleseker on behalf of the British Embassy in Tel Aviv.

When asked to what extent they agreed that Blair is a true friend of Israel, 51 percent said they agreed with the statement and 12 percent of respondents said they strongly agreed with it.

In his final speech as Prime Minister to the Labour Party Conference in Manchester on September 26, Blair promised, "From now until I leave office I will dedicate myself, with the same commitment I have given to Northern Ireland, to advancing peace between Israel and Palestine. I may not succeed. But I will try because peace in the Middle East is a defeat for terrorism."

The survey of Israeli perceptions of Britain also found that Britain is seen by Israelis as the European country that is friendliest towards Israel. Respondents were asked at the start of the survey to spontaneously name the European countries they believe are friendly towards Israel. A quarter of respondents mentioned Britain first, and 34 percent overall said Britain is friendly towards Israel.

As for British policy towards Israel, 40 percent of those polled said that British policy was pro-Israeli, 27 percent said it was neutral, and 25 percent thought it was pro-Arab. The majority of the Israeli public (68%) believes that Britain's policy in the Middle East is based on current interests, rather than historical considerations.

When asked whether Israel could rely on Britain as a political ally, 7 percent said it 'definitely could,' 16 percent said it 'could' and 37 percent said it 'could to some extent.'

The first thing that springs to the Israeli mind when asked about Britain is royalty: 24% of respondents mentioned the royal family, palaces, servants, changing of the guard, etc. when asked what they associate with the UK. The next most popular associations were football (15%), London landmarks like Big Ben and the Tower of London (12%), and the British Mandate / War of Independence (10%).

Most Israelis see Britain as both a culturally diverse society (72%) and a tolerant society (63%). Just over half of Israelis see Britain as an important source of creative ideas (52%), while a third of Israelis have visited Britain at least once.

A total of 625 Israelis adults were polled for the survey, which was conducted between 30 July - 1 August 2006, during the hostilities between Israel and Lebanon. Interviewing was conducted in three languages (Hebrew, Arabic and Russian). The maximum margin of error in the survey was +/- 3.9%.

[Rasputin]

Tony Blair has voiced his support for Jack Straw in his opposition to Muslim women wearing veils by saying it was "perfectly sensible" to discuss the issue in the context of breaking down barriers between communities.



Many Muslims have reacted angrily to Mr Straw's disclosure last week that he asks women to remove their veils when they attend weekly surgeries in his Blackburn constituency.

His comments drew both support and opposition from his party colleagues and provoked a heated debate on civil liberties and the possible impact on Britain's 1.6 million Muslim population.

Today, the Prime Minister added his voice to the debate by backing Mr Straw saying that it was important that issues surrounding religion and diversity were raised and that Mr Straw had done so in a sensible way.

"I don't think anyone is suggesting it's not a matter of personal choice in the end, for people to do what they want.

"But actually what Jack Straw was saying was perfectly sensible, which is that if we want to break down the barriers between people and between different cultures and religions, then it is important these issues are raised and discussed.

"I see nothing wrong with that and I think it is perfectly sensible if you raise it in a measured and considered way to have a proper public discussion about it, he told BBC Breakfast.

Mr Blair managed to sidestep a question as to whether in the same situation he would ask a Muslim woman to remove her veil and said: "It's a difficult, tricky debate to enter into, as we can see over the past few days, but he raised it in a very sensible and measured way."

Last week, Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland secretary, raised his opposition by saying he would never ask a woman to remove her veil however uncomfortable it made him feel. He said Mr Straw was entitled to his view, but that women had the right to dress as they chose.

But yesterday, John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, said Mr Straw had been right to raise the issue, insisting it should not be a "no-go area for debate", but he also voiced concern that it could lead to "considerable difficulties" in terms of community relations.

Mr Straw, a former Foreign Secretary, said that the veil can be regarded as a visible statement of "separation and difference". Some Muslim scholars do not believe it is obligatory.

In his weekly column in the The Lancashire Telegraph he expressed concern that "wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult".

Mr Straw said he had been mulling over the issue ever since a veiled woman attended his surgery and said she was pleased to meet him face to face at last.

[Rasputin]

تونی بلر، نخست وزیر بریتانیا گفته است که پوشیدن روبنده توسط زنان مسلمان به معنای جدایی آنها از جامعه است.
آقای بلر همچنین از تصمیم مقامات محلی یک شهر بریتانیا برای تعلیق یک دستیار آموزشی مسلمان برای اصرار بر پوشیدن روبنده در کلاس حمایت کرده است.

اظهارات نخست وزیر بریتانیا می تواند به بحث های بیشتری منجر شود که با اظهارات جک استراو، وزیر خارجه پیشین بریتانیا شروع شد.

تونی بلر افزوده است که پوشیدن روبنده، باعث می شود افراد در خارج ار جامعه مسلمانان، احساس راحتی نکنند.

نخست وزیر بریتانیا گفته است که موضوع روبنده زنان مسلمان نشان داده است که باید بیشتر درباره ادغام گروه های مختلف جامعه بحث شود.

آقای بلر از تصمیم مقامات مدرسه ای در يورکشاير غربی در شمال انگلستان دربرکناری عایشه اعظمی کاملا حمایت کرده است.

تونی بلر همچنن گفته است که باید درباره اسلام و نحوه تعامل آن با جهان مدرن و ادغام گروه های مختلف جامعه در بریتانیا نیز بحث و گفتگو شود.

نخست وزیر بریتانیا به خبرنگاران گفته است که هیچ کس به زنان مسلمان نمی گوید که آنها حق پوشیدن این روبنده ها را ندارند اما مساله مهم، ادغام مناسب با جامعه بریتانیایی است.

پیش از این یک مقام محلی بریتانیا گفته بود که عایشه اعظمی، دستيار آموزشی مسلمان که به دليل امتناع از برداشتن روبنده خود در داخل کلاس از کار معلق شده، باید از سمت خود برکنار شود.

فیل وولاس، یک مقام محلی بریتانیا به هفته نامه "ساندی میرور گفته بود که خانم اعظمی خود را در موقعیتی قرار داده که دیگر نمی تواند به شغل خود ادامه دهد.

دبستان مورد بحث که در يورکشاير غربی در شمال انگلستان واقع شده، شکايت کرده بود که وقتی خانم اعظمی روبنده دارد و صورتش پوشيده است، بچه ها نمی توانند به درستی متوجه صحبت های او شوند.

بحث روبنده زنان مسلمان

جک استرا، رهبر جناح اکثريت در مجلس عوام و وزير خارجه سابق بريتانيا، اخيرا در مقاله ای که در يک روزنامه محلی منتشر شد به زنان مسلمان محجبه در حوزه انتخابيه خود توصيه کرد تا هنگام ملاقات و طرح مشکلات خود با وی از استفاده از روبنده خودداری ورزند.

اين اظهارات جک استرا باعث بروز بحث هايی در مورد استفاده زنان مسلمان از روبنده شد.

آقای استرا گفته بود هنگام صحبت کردن با کسی که نمی تواند صورت او را ببيند، راحت نيست.

آقای استرا نماينده مجلس عوام از حوزه انتخابيه بلاکبرن است که حدود سی درصد جمعيت آن را مسلمانان تشکيل می دهند.

وی در مقاله خود نوشت که به نظر وی، زدن روبنده بر چهره باعث تشديد حس "جدايی" و انزواطلبی می شود.

اين مقاله با انتقاد اليور لتوين، مدير سياستگذاری حزب محافظه کار، حزب اصلی مخالف دولت، مواجه شد که گفته است اين توصيه می تواند آغازگر ترويج "دکترينی خطرناک" در مورد جلوگيری از حق افراد در انتخاب نوع پوشش آنان باشد.

در مقابل، يکی از اعضای ارشد شورای مسلمانان بريتانيا گفت درک می کند آقای استرا هنگام گفتگو با زنی که تمامی چهره خود را پوشانده احساس آسايش نمی کند و افزوده است که زنان مسلمان مجاز هستند که روبنده خود را بردارند.

مسلمانان بريتانيا در انتخاب نوع پوشش خود با محدوديتی مواجه نيستند و برخی زنان مسلمان از انواع پوشش های اسلامی، از جمله پوشش کامل استفاده می کنند.

[Rasputin]

Britain has now become the number one target for a "resurgent" Al Qaeda, according to British intelligence officials. The Guardian reports that Al Qaeda has regrouped and presents "even a greater threat then ever before."

Intelligence chiefs with access to the most comprehensive and up to date information have told the Guardian that Al Qaeda has substantially recovered its organization in Pakistan, despite a four-year military campaign to seek out and kill its leaders. In that time, the organization has become much more coherent, with a strong core and a regular supply of volunteers.

More worrying, officials say, is evidence of new techniques that would-be terrorists within the UK have adopted. The structure of individual Al Qaeda-inspired groups is much more like the old Provisional IRA cells, with self-contained units comprising a lead organizer/planner, a quartermaster in charge of weapons and explosives acquisition and training, and several volunteers.

The Herald reports that Al Qaeda is recruiting specifically among disaffected Muslim youths. Another important factor is Britain's longtime tie with Pakistan. British citizens make over 400,000 trips to Pakistan each year, and security officials believe that a "radicalized minority" use the trips to maintain connections with Al Qaeda.


The security services also believe at least 20 universities and polytechnics across the UK play unwitting host to radical Islamic groups dedicated to radicalizing Muslim students.

"They start out innocently, targeting those interested in learning more about Islam, and then sifting out the most promising candidates for indoctrination in anti-Western politics," one source said.

The Scotsman reports that these Al Qaeda cells have now spread to every part of Britain, as the network shifts its focus outside of London.

The BBC reports that the situation has "never been so grim."

BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said the view was Britain was particularly vulnerable because "it may be easier for al-Qaeda to strike the UK than other targets". He said these views were "based on activity they are actually seeing. Plots they're disrupting, trials which might be coming up soon".

"There is hard evidence behind it, rather than just theories," said our correspondent.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that the Blair government is trying to use the recent disappearance of two terror suspects to increase support for a forthcoming plan for a national ID card. The Blair government has come in for heavy criticism from the opposition in parliament for the escapes, and for keeping them quiet for so long. In en effort to try and turn the tables on critics, Home Secretary John Reid slammed his critics for not "voting for every tough measure" brought forward to "combat crime."

Mr. Reid said the upcoming national ID card vote would be a "litmus test" for the opposition. He called the cards "crucial in the fight against terrorism." But critics point out that the IDs have not worked to prevent terrorism in other countries that currently use them, such as Spain.

The Times of London reports that the British government charged a dangerous Al Qaeda suspect with being an illegal immigrant in order to hold him in the prison where he has spent the last six years.

Abu Doha, whose various aliases include �The Doctor�, has been in Belmarsh highsecurity jail for almost six years facing extradition to the United States on charges of running a jihad training camp in Afghanistan and plotting to blow up Los Angeles airport. But the US has been forced to drop the case against him after an informer refused to give evidence.

A British judge called the terrorist network created by Mr. Doha as "one of the most significant groups of terrorist in Britain." But since the British government can no longer hold him on terrorist charges, it had to resort to the immigration charge while it attempts to deport him to his native Algeria.

British police are already preparing for the 2012 Olympics which will be held in Britain. Sir Ian Blair, the head of London's Metropolitan police, says 2012 is "a huge terror target." Undercover officers posing as builders and security officers will spy on fellow workers and a huge 3-D database of Olympic venues. All 200,000 people working at the Olympics will have their passports and fingerprints checked in advance.

[Rasputin]

British official: Veil row may spark violence

The head of Britain's race relations watchdog committee warned over the weekend that the "row" over some British women wearing the veil could spill into violence.

In a piece in The Sunday Times entitled "Talk now or reap the whirlwind," Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), wrote that the debate was becoming polarized between those who want an "auto-de-fe of all Muslims" and the defensiveness of some Muslim communities who turn "the most neutral of comments" into another act of persecution. Mr. Phillips said people "need to chill."

All the recent evidence shows that we are, as a society, becoming more socially polarized by race and faith. The only place where this may not be true is in our schools and the main reason is that in many of our cities things cannot get any worse. Many of our schools are almost mono-ethnic and white flight is entrenching these damaging patterns.

Add to that the rapid change in the composition of our communities; the faces we see in the high street are changing colour; the accents in the shops are more varied. It's unsettling and there are people, notably the far right, ready to poison the communal well with sly attacks on anyone who can be painted as a "foreigner". Even the "white" incomers bring their problems; the CRE is already receiving reports of eastern Europeans bringing pre-1960s attitudes from countries pervaded by deep racism, attacking black and Asian people in our streets.

The real problem that Britain faces is not Muslims' way of life. Nor is it Islamophobia, poverty or foreign policy, although all these things are contributing to the turmoil. The real crisis is our failure to adjust to change in our society and our failure to find a civilized way of talking about our diversity.

Britain's row over the veil was sparked by Member of Parliament Jack Straw, when he made a request for some Muslim women at a constituency meeting to remove their veils so he could see their faces when he talked to them. The Daily Telegraph reported that Mr. Phillips, who supported Mr. Straw, said in a radio interview on the BBC that he would not want to be Muslim in Britain today.

The Telegraph also quotes Muhammad Abdul Bari, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, as saying the debate has become "increasingly ugly and shrill." He said that some Muslim women who wear the veil have had it forcibly torn off, and that some Muslim religious leaders had been beaten up by gangs of thugs. Labor Party MP Shahid Malik, voicing strong support for Phillips's call for dialogue, warned that extremists on both sides could be taking advantage of the current "crisis."

In an opinion piece about women and Islam, Cathy Young, a contributing editor for Reason magazine, writes Monday in The Boston Globe that support must be given to Muslim feminists who are struggling to "reform Islam and separate its spiritual message from the human patriarchal baggage." Young also writes that using the language of tolerance to justify oppressive practices "a grotesque perversion of liberalism."

The veiling debate is a case in point. No amount of rhetorical sleight of hand can disguise the fact that the full-face veil makes women, literally, faceless. Some Muslim women in the West may choose this garb (which is not mandated in the Koran), but their explanations often reveal an internalized misogynistic view of women as creatures whose very existence is a sexual provocation to men. What's more, their choice helps legitimize a custom that is imposed on millions of women around the world who have no choice.

But in the Israeli daily Haaretz, columnist and blogger Bradley Burston writes a stinging indictment of the hypocrisy of some attitudes in the West entitled "Targeting Muslims – the new Inquisition." He writes that, even before 9/11, law-abiding Muslims had been "scorned for their faith, shunned for their piety, falsely condemned for dual-loyalty, blamed for the crimes of terrorists they abhor." For instance, he says, some critics of Islam say its values are incompatible with those of the West.
And what Western values might these be? Are they the time-honored Western values of intolerance for people of color, suspicion and marginalization of non-Christians, fear and loathing of non-Whites? Exploitation of and contempt for the residents of former imperial possessions and colonies?

At this point, there will be a pause for the springloaded Islamophobes among us to suggest that it is any society's right and duty to protect itself against elements that may foment terrorism. There will be those who will argue that the veil may both mask and encourage extremism.

Perhaps it is time for us in the Western world to declare that Islam has a right to exist.

Perhaps it is time for us to recognize that non-violent, non-Judeo-Christian religious observance is a right, not an act of war.

Scarves don't explode. Veils do not kill. The niqab does not incite.

In a unique approach to encouraging dialogue with Muslims outside Britain, The Daily Telegraph reports that the British Council [of the arts] is sending comedian Shazia Mirza to India to make "jokes about the veil." The idea is to show Muslims in other countries that "Britain is a free and civilized society" and to build bridges with Muslim communities, Ms. Mirza came to prominence after 9/11 and is best known for the opening line of her comedic act, "My name's Shazia Mirza – at least, that's what it says on my pilot's licence."

Mirza was born and brought up in Birmingham, England, by parents who emigrated from Pakistan. In an interview, she said that when she was growing up, in her neighborhood "nobody wore the veil, burkha, dustbin liner, whatever, and now when I go back, everyone's wearing it. Muslims feel threatened and this is their way of surviving."

[Rasputin]

MI5 tracking '30 UK terror plots'

MI5 knows of 30 terror plots threatening the UK and is keeping 1,600 individuals under surveillance, the security service's head has said.
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller warned the threat was "serious" and "growing".

She said future attacks could be chemical or nuclear and that many of the plots were linked to al-Qaeda.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said the terrorist threat was "very real" and spoke of "poisonous propaganda" warping the minds of young people.

Hard choices

MI5 has increased in size by nearly 50% since 9/11 and now stands at roughly 2,800 staff.

But according to Dame Eliza the current terror threat will "last a generation" and her concern is that even with MI5's rapid growth, the security service will not be able to investigate nearly enough of activities it deems to be suspicious.

She said hard choices would have to be made about resources.

"I wish life were like Spooks [the TV series] where everything is, a, knowable, and, b, soluble by six people," she explained.

Tomorrow's threat may - I suggest will - include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller


Dame Eliza's terror warning
Send us your comments

Dame Eliza's warning comes days after a UK man was sentenced to at least 40 years in jail for planning a series of attacks.

Attacks planned by Dhiren Barot, 34, from London, included using a so-called "dirty bomb" using radioactive material.

Mr Blair also said he agreed with Dame Eliza's comments that the terrorist threat would last for a generation.

"I've been saying, as you know, for several years that this terrorist threat is very real, it's been building up over a long period of time.

"It's not just in this country, as we've seen recently from incidents in India, France, other parts of the world. This is a threat that has grown up over a generation."

Attacks thwarted

In response to Dame Eliza's warning, Massoud Shadjareh, of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said he accepted there was a terrorist threat but it had to be put into perspective.

"Over 1,000 arrests have been made under anti-terrorism since 9/11 and out of those, 27 have been found guilty. Out of those 27, only nine have been Muslims," he said.

Dame Eliza, who rarely speaks in public, gave a speech to a small audience on Thursday, detailing what she believes her organisation and the UK is facing.

She said that, since the 7 July bombings, five further major conspiracies in the UK had been thwarted.

"Today, my officers and the police are working to contend with some 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1,600 identified individuals - and there will be many we don't know - who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas," she said.

"Today we see the use of home-made improvised explosive devices.

"Tomorrow's threat may - I suggest will - include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology."

'British foot soldiers'

Out of the 200 or so groups being watched by MI5, a smaller subset are of the highest priority because it is feared that they are plotting actual attacks.

"We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy. What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten?

"No, nearer 30 that we currently know of.

"These plots often have linked back to al-Qaeda in Pakistan and through those links al-Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale."

She added that of the 30 plots some may turn out to be less credible or advanced but it would be hard to be sure until they are fully investigated.

Tory security spokesman Patrick Mercer echoed her call for more resources, saying "we just don't have enough spooks and secret agents to make sure that our country is as safe as it could be."

[Rasputin]

Blair will urge US to talk to Syria and Iran

Tony Blair is to urge the US administration next week to open talks with its great adversaries Syria and Iran, as a way to break the impasse in Iraq and the wider middle east.
He is due to give video link-up evidence to the independent bipartisan panel in Washington headed by James Baker, seen as the vehicle whereby George Bush can change course on Iraq. The evidence, on Tuesday, is regarded as a vital opportunity for the prime minister to influence thinking in Washington at a rare time of flux.

Mr Blair will not call for rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, but believes that Mr Bush is genuinely open to a change of strategy and tone following the US president's reverses in the midterm elections, a UK government official said.
British officials are not expecting the Baker panel, headed by the Republican former secretary of state but also made up of senior Democrats, to propose a volte face when it reports in a few months' time, but forecast it will call for measures to speed up the "Iraqi-isation" of the police and army. It will also propose greater political co-operation within Iraq.

Mr Blair will also press the panel to recommend that progress in Iraq depends on making a re-energised push for peace in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the official said. British officials also believe that the panel, and the Bush administration, are open to the principle of dialogue with Syria, but Britain is hoping that the panel will be explicit in stating what the content of such talks should be.

The new US defence secretary, Robert Gates, nominated by Mr Bush to replace Donald Rumsfeld, is a member of the Baker panel and a long standing advocate of opening US contacts with Iran. Mr Baker himself "believes in talking to your enemies".

Number 10 confirmed Mr Blair would give evidence next week, but said it would not brief on the discussions until afterward. British diplomatic sources have been told by Basher Assad, the Syrian president, that he wants to be a constructive player in the Middle East.

Mr Blair's senior foreign policy advisor, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, travelled to Damascus three weeks ago. It is thought the US administration was supportive of his visit, and Downing Street awaits a fuller response from Syria.

Both Iran and Syria have an interest in preventing civil war in Iraq, since they oppose its break-up and do not want to see permanent sectarian warfare that might spread. Speaking separately to a British diplomat and a British business mission in recent weeks, Mr Assad affirmed that he wanted "to come in from the cold". But both sources formed a clear impression that, while this was what he personally would like to do, his freedom of action was limited by factions inside his government. One faction, emboldened by the success of the Lebanese-based Hizbullah militia against Israel this summer, argues this is a time to maintain pressure on Israel, not negotiate.

Mr Blair faces an uphill battle to persuade Mr Bush to include a big initiative on Palestine in any revised Iraq strategy. The resurgent Democrats are as supportive of Israel as the Republicans, and there is little support in Israel for talks with Syria, seen as Hamas puppet masters. Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert is due in Washington next week. He rejected offers by Mr Assad after Israel's invasion of Lebanon to relaunch long-suspended peace talks, saying Syria must first stop sponsoring Palestinian militants and Hizbullah, whose military force Israel attempted to destroy in Lebanon.

At the time Mr Bush did not press Israel to take up Mr Assad's offer, but may now feel negotiations with Syria would help. Among the Palestinians, talks are in progress for a national unity government led by technocrats, seen as a way for Europe, including Britain, to legitimately enter dialogue with the Palestinians.

If Mr Baker does propose talks with Syria and Iran, British diplomats could help. Britain has embassies in Damascus and Tehran, though the ambassador to Iran, Geoffrey Adams, enjoys only limited access to its government.

The US has no embassy in Tehran, and withdrew its ambassador to Damascus early last year to protest against the assassination of the Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, in which a UN inquiry has implicated Syrian senior security officers, and even interviewed Mr Assad himself. Its report is due next month.

[donsaeid]

يك مقام دولتي انگليس:

برخوردهاي نژادي با دانش آموزان مسلمان در حال افزايش است



يك مقام دولت كارگري در انگليس اذعان كرد برخوردهاي نژادي عليه دانش آموزان مسلمان در مدارس مختلف سراسر اين كشور در حال افزايش مي باشد.



(جيم نايت) معاون امور مدارس در وزارت آموزش و مهارتها عصر دوشنبه در يك سخنراني در لندن افزود، مديران مدارس اختيار كامل براي جلوگيري از برخوردهاي قلدرمآبانه با دانش آموزان متعلق به اقليتهاي قومي دارند و از آنها نيز براي مقابله با اين پديده حمايت مي شود.
وي گفت، در ماه مارس گذشته (اسفند) براي اولين بار وزارت خانه متبوع وي يك دستورالعمل جديد در اختيار مدارسي كه با مشكل برخوردهاي داخلي مذهبي مواجه بودند گذاشته است.
وي اين مطالب را در همايش اتحاديه معلمان و مديران انگليس موسوم به (ناسوت) مطرح كرد. اين همايش به مناسبت شروع (هفته ضد قلدري در مدارس) برگزار شد.
موضوع سخنراني نايت نحوه مقابله با قلدري در مدارس بود. اين پديده بصورتي گسترده در زمينه هاي مختلف مراكز آموزشي را در انگليس تحت الشعاع قرار داده و مسولان آموزشي در اين كشور با نگراني روند افزايشي آن را نظاره مي كنند.
سخنگوي امور آموزشي در (شوراي مسلمانان بريتانيا) گفت برخوردهاي اسلام هراسانه بطور مرتب در مدارس بريتانيا در حال افزايش هستند.
(طاهر علم) امروز به خبرنگاران گفت، در واقع با توجه به اين كه اسلام ترسي در جامعه رواج داده شده است اگر چنين مساله اي در مدراس نيز رشد نمي كرد بايد متعجب مي شديم.
با اين حال وي مديران مدارس را مسول مستقيم روند افزايشي برخوردهاي نژادي عليه دانش آموزان مسلمان در مدارس توصيف كرد و گفت كه اغلب مديران به اندازه كافي با اين پديده مبارزه نمي كنند.
به علاوه وي برخوردهاي نامناسب از سوي مسولان مدارس نظير پرسشهاي بي مورد از والدين دانش آموزان مسلمان در خصوص دلايل نماز خواندن دانش آموزان در مدارس و يا وادار كردن دانش آموزان دختر در برخي مدارس براي برداشتن روسري خود در كلاسهاي درس را از جمله مواردي اعلام كرد كه تشويق كننده برخي دانش آموزان براي هدف قرار دادن دانش آموزان مسلمان مي باشد.
نهاد مدني (ائتلاف ضد قلدري) در انگليس اخيرا هفت مورد از شيوه هاي جديد در برخوردهاي تخريبي با دانش آموزان از سوي گروههاي بذهكار (گنگها) در مدارس را منتشر كرده كه متداولترين آن ارسال پيامهاي كتبي تهديد آميز از طريق تلفنهاي همراه يا ايميل و يا تماسهاي تلفني تهديد كننده مي باشد.
بر پايه يك گزارش جديد حداقل يك پنجم از دانش آموزان انگليسي اعلام كرده اند با مشكل قلدري گروههاي بزهكار دانش آموزان مواجه بوده اند.
در همايش امروز گفته شد وزارت آموزش و مهارتها برنامه هايي را براي مبارزه قطعي با قلدري در مدارس در نظر گرفته است كه در خلال هفته ضد قلدري در مدارس جزييات آن اعلام مي شود

[Sepideh_UK]

PM tells Iran: Turn back on terror


Prime Minister Tony Blair will present Iran with a blunt choice - come into line on Iraq or face international isolation.

Mr Blair will also accuse Tehran of backing extremists and terrorists in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine in the hope of thwarting international efforts to block its programme to acquire nuclear weapons.

In a high-profile foreign policy speech to the Lord Mayor's Banquet in the City of London, he will set out what he terms a "whole Middle East strategy" to resolve conflicts across the region.

And he will say that Iran has "a clear strategic choice" on whether it will assist the Middle East peace process, stop supporting terrorism in Iraq and Lebanon and abide by its international obligations on nuclear non-proliferation.

"In that case, a new partnership is possible," he will say. "Or alternatively they face the consequences of not doing so: isolation."