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Tuesday, December 24, 1996

Headlines:

-- Would you support FBIS?
-- China reaffirms cancelation of nuclear deal
-- Majlis wants review of ties with Bonn
-- Electronic Resaleh

From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood@igc.apc.org> via Gary G Sick <ggs2@columbia.edu>

The following is passed along for your information:

Subject: solicitation of FBIS endorsements

The news from CIA about the future of Foreign Broadcast Information Service continues to be grim. A panel convened by the Directorate of Science and Technology is said to have affirmed recently that a few overseas bureaus should be closed in 1998.

At the same time, the nomination of a new Director of Central Intelligence potentially creates an opening for a broad-based expression of concern about FBIS and for a reconsideration of the proposed moves against FBIS.

With that in mind, we are seeking endorsements of the following Federation of American Scientists statement which will be used in pro-FBIS advocacy efforts on the Hill and in the media...

_______________

"Since 1941, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) has monitored, translated and published foreign broadcasts and press reports from around the world, covering over 3500 publications in 55 foreign languages. This service has been of inestimable value to Executive and Legislative Branch analysts and policy makers, and has been an indispensable resource for scholars, journalists, and non-governmental organizations."

"The importance of FBIS products for members of the public will only increase as our post-cold war society interacts directly, across an ever broader front, with the world FBIS covers."

"Accordingly, we would urge that the FBIS operating budget be increased rather than decreased. Indeed, at a time when the U.S. intelligence community is groping for a vision of its future, the success of the FBIS model suggests that the intelligence community ought to be giving higher priority to serving society as a whole, with a significantly expanded line of unclassified analytic products."

Endorsements of this statement (including name and affiliation) are broadly solicited, and should be sent to Steven Aftergood at

saftergood@igc.apc.org

Letters in support of FBIS can also be sent directly to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at 202-224-1772 (fax).

Steven Aftergood Project on Government Secrecy Federation of American Scientists

//www.fas.org/sgp/

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From: Reza F. Bourghani <davood@ix.netcom.com>

China to Halt Nuclear Deal With Iran, US Officials Say

Jonathan S. Landay, Staff writer The Christian Science Monitor Dec 19, 1996

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration's pursuit of improved relations with Communist China appears to be bearing fruit.

Beijing has quietly told the United States it is canceling the sale to Iran of a plant that could be used in the production of nuclear weapons, administration officials say. In return, Beijing expects the White House to move toward allowing it to buy civilian nuclear technologies from US firms.

China's decision to cancel the sale of the uranium hexifloride conversion plant would constitute a major success for the Clinton administration's effort to seek improved relations with the Asian economic and military power. It would also represent a significant achievement in the administration's efforts to block transfers of nuclear technologies to Iran's Islamic regime, which the US accuses of supporting terrorism and pursuing a secret atomic-weapons program. Iran denies the charges.

"The Chinese have told us that based on their expectation that we would be able to build on our nuclear cooperation program, they will not execute this contract [with Iran]," says an administration official. "We believe that if we can continue to work together on nuclear issues and nonproliferation issues, this is something we can address."

US officials have been pressing China for months to cancel its deal with Iran. Uranium hexifloride conversion plants are an important step in the process of enriching uranium for use as fuel for nuclear power plants or material for atomic weaponry...

***

To see full text, go to:

//www.csmonitor.com/todays_paper/graphical/today/us/us.4.html

NOTE: This link may change on Friday. If so, go to:

//www.csmonitor.com/

and do a search for the article.

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From: Kourosh Parsa <kxp1@nynexst.com>

From wire service December 18, 1996

Iran Parliament Calls For Review Of Relations With Germany

TEHRAN -- The Iranian parliament has called on the government to review relations with Germany, where a terrorism trial has infuriated Iranian leaders, newspapers reported Wednesday.

A statement issued by the Majlis, or parliament, Tuesday, calls for a government report within two months, the newspapers said.

The report, commissioned by the Majlis Foreign Policy Commission, should look into the presence of Iranian dissidents in Germany and Bonn's refusal to return those 'terrorists' to Iran for trial, the papers said.

The statement also accused Germany of selling arms and chemical weapons to Iraq during the 1980-88 war between Iran and Iraq, and called on the government to look into the matter.

The Majlis also wants examined Germany's failure to finish the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which was abandoned by the German firm Siemens during the war with Iraq, the newspaper said.

Relations between Tehran and Bonn, its largest Western trade partner, plummeted last month, after German prosecutors accused Iran's top leaders of complicity in the 1992 murders of dissidents in Berlin.

German prosecutors have recommended that Kazem Darabi, an alleged member of the Iranian intelligence, and another suspect be sentenced to life terms for the killings of a Kurdish opposition leader and three aides.

In March, German prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Iran's intelligence chief, Ali Fallahiyan, on charges that he ordered the assassinations.

The prosecutors have said they would wait until after the Berlin verdict - expected in January - before deciding whether to open an investigation against Iran's President Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's top religious and political authority.

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From: Ali Yazdian via Ali Sheikhzadeh <sheikh@is3.nyu.edu>

On behalf of the Imam Reza Research Organisation, I would like to inform you about the availability of windows based Resaleh program. This program has been provided by this research organisation along with other Islamic programs for promoting Islamic culture. The authors and their organisation are in Teheran, Iran and unfortunately they have no direct access to Internet (as far as I know till a few months ago)...

The program originally was provided for Persian windows. Therefore, the menu font is not readable on Win95 or Win3.1x (I mean you'll see some funny characters (ASCII 128+). However, the rest of program will be in right and readable Persian font (AMIR similar to CheeChest).

Download the programs from:

ftp://ftp.monash.edu.au on /pub/win3/misc/

Or if you are using Netscape or MS Explorer use following links:

ftp://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/win3/misc/resaleh1.zip

ftp://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/win3/misc/resaleh2.zip

ftp://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/win3/misc/resaleh3.zip

ftp://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/win3/misc/resaleh4.zip

Or see:

//elecpc37.elec.uow.edu.au/

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