Iran to Answer UN Nuclear Questions as Deal Talks Near End

VIENNA — 

Iran has agreed to supply answers long sought by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Tehran and the U.N. agency said Saturday, as talks in Vienna over its tattered atomic deal with world powers appear to be coming to an end.

A joint statement by Mohammad Eslami, the head of the civilian Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy, came hours after the two met in Tehran.

It envisions the issue of the discovery of uranium particles at former undeclared sites in the country being wrapped up by June — a move that is separate from the talks over the nuclear deal but could help push them to a conclusion.

But meanwhile, Russia’s foreign minister for the first time linked American sanctions on Moscow over its war on Ukraine to the ongoing Iran nuclear deal talks — adding a new wrinkle to the delicate diplomacy.

Grossi said in Tehran that “it would be difficult to believe or to imagine that such an important return to such a comprehensive agreement like the (nuclear deal) would be possible if the agency and Iran would not be seeing eye to eye on how to resolve these important safeguards issues.” Safeguards in the IAEA’s parlance refer to the agency’s inspections and monitoring of a country’s nuclear program.

Grossi for years has sought for Iran to answer questions about human-made uranium particles found at former undeclared nuclear sites in the country. U.S. intelligence agencies, Western nations and the IAEA have said Iran ran an organized nuclear weapons program until 2003. Iran long has denied ever seeking nuclear weapons.

Eslami said the men had reached an “agreement” that would see Iran “presenting documents that would remove the ambiguities about our country.” He did not elaborate on what the documents would discuss.

The later joint statement said that Eslami’s agency will by March 20 give the U.N. nuclear watchdog “written explanations including related supporting documents to the questions raised by the IAEA which have not been addressed by Iran on the issues related to three locations.”

Within two weeks, it said, the IAEA will review that information and submit any questions, and within a week of that the two agencies will meet in Tehran to address the questions.

Grossi will then aim to report his conclusions by the time the IAEA board of governors meets in June.

The nuclear deal saw Iran agree to drastically limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of crushing economic sanctions. But a 2018 decision by then-President Donald Trump to unilaterally withdraw America from the agreement sparked years of tensions and attacks across the wider Middle East.

International Atomic Energy Organization, IAEA, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, left, and Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian shake hands prior to their meeting in Tehran, March 5, 2022.

Today, Tehran enriches uranium up to 60% purity — its highest level ever and a short technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90% and far greater than the nuclear deal’s 3.67% cap. Its stockpile of enriched uranium also continues to grow, worrying nuclear nonproliferation experts that Iran could be closer to the threshold of having enough material for an atomic weapon if it chose to pursue one.

Undeclared sites played into the initial 2015 deal as well. That year the IAEA’s then-director-general also came to Tehran and visited a suspected weapons-program site at Parchin. Inspectors also took samples there for analysis.

Grossi’s inspectors also face challenges in monitoring Iran’s current advances in its civilian program. Iran has held IAEA surveillance camera recordings since February 2021, not letting inspectors view them amid the nuclear negotiations.

In Vienna, negotiators appear to be signaling a deal is near — even as Russia’s war on Ukraine rages on. Russia’s ambassador there, Mikhail Ulyanov, has been a key mediator in the talks and tweeted Thursday that negotiations were “almost over.” That was something also acknowledged by French negotiator Philippe Errera.

“We hope to come back quickly to conclude because we are very, very close to an agreement,” Errera wrote Friday on Twitter. “But nothing is agreed until EVERYTHING is agreed!”

British negotiator Stephanie Al-Qaq simply wrote: “We are close.”

But comments Saturday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for the first time offered the suggestion that the Ukraine war — and the stinging sanctions that Americans and others have put on Moscow — could interfere.

“We need guarantees these sanctions will in no way affect the trading, economic and investment relations contained in the (deal) for the Iranian nuclear program,” Lavrov said, according to the Tass news agency.

Lavrov said he wanted “guarantees at least at the level of the secretary of state” that the U.S. sanctions would not affect Moscow’s relationship with Tehran. There was no immediate American response to Lavrov’s comments.

Meanwhile on Saturday, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard unveiled what it described as two new underground missile and drone bases in the country. State TV said the bases contained surface-to-surface missiles and armed drones capable of “hiding themselves from enemy radar.”

Veeduría questions the inauguration of the Villavicencio-Yopal road without finishing - Other Cities - Colombia

The Citizen Oversight Office via Villavicencio Yopal questioned that the President of the Republic, Ivan Dukewould have inaugurated 150 kilometers of the road, this Wednesday, without the work being completed in its entirety, which is 68 percent complete.

The legal representative of the Oversight Office, Néstor Restrepo Roldán, maintains in a letter sent to the president of the National Infrastructure Agency (ANI), Manuel Francisco Becerra, “that We do not understand how the President of the Republic himself, surely misinformed, with the Ministry and the Agency, proposed to deliver 150 kilometers of road improvement without the works having been completed. and you know it”.

The road includes the construction of 39 kilometers of double lanes between Villavicencio and Cumaral in Meta, and Aguazul and Yopal, in Casanare, as well as the expansion and improvement of the 178-kilometer route between Cumaral and Aguazul.

Inauguration of the Villavicencio-Yopal road was attended by President Iván Duque and the Minister of Transportation.

Photo:

Presidency of the Republic

And the road improvement sections that are divided into functional units have not been completed. Functional unit two, between Cumaral-Paratebueno, shows a work progress of 67 percent and the construction of the bridge over the Guacavía river has not been completed. The sectors of Chepero, Boquerón, Santa Cecilia, La Guala and ElJapan are still being improved. In addition, the extension of the bridge over the river Humea has not been completed.

Functional unit three, between Paratebueno-Villanueva, presents a work progress of 72 percent; section four, between Villanueva-Monterrey, is at 88 percent; five, between Monterrey-Tauramena, is at 84 percent; and the sixth, between Tauramena and Aguazul, is at 72 percent.

Via Villavicencio-Yopal.

Photo:

Citizen Oversight

Restrepo Roldán assures that the desire to inaugurate the work is not understood and ends by acknowledging that “this government was the one that unlocked all the problems that affected the continuation of the works and as the Minister of Transport, Ángela María Orozco, said: ‘They began to regain confidence.’ But today, that recovery is declining again, because as the president said, the object is ‘Conclude, Conclude, Conclude,’ says the citizen observer.

“These works do not belong to politicians, but to the citizenry, precisely the same one that today runs with all the inconveniences of time and inconvenience to be able to reach their destinations,” concludes the inspector’s office.

VILLAVICENCIO

Beijing Olympics Get Political with Taiwan, Uyghur Questions

BEIJING — 

For two weeks and more, China’s stance on questions about its politics and policies has been straightforward: It’s the Olympics, and we’re not talking about these things.

That changed at the Beijing organizing committee’s last regularly scheduled daily news conference Thursday, three days before the end of the Games. The persistent and polite refusal to answer such questions gave way to the usual state of affairs at news conferences with Chinese officials — emphatic, calibrated answers about the country’s most sensitive situations.

Taiwan? An indivisible part of China. The Uyghur population of the Xinjiang region? Not being pushed into forced labor. China’s sovereignty? Completely unassailable under international norms.

“What I want to say is that there is only one China in the world,” organizing committee spokesperson Yan Jiarong said, calling it “a solemn position” for China. She referred to other assertions about China’s treatment of Uyghurs and living conditions in the northwestern region of Xinjiang as “based on lies.”

It was only a matter of time before these topics burst at the seams. The run-up to the Games was overshadowed by a diplomatic boycott led by the United States, which centered on China’s human rights record; China was determined to keep the focus only on sports but is also very committed to vigorously defending its stances publicly. In the final regularly scheduled briefing before the Games close on Sunday, Yan and IOC spokesperson Mark Adams were peppered with questions about Taiwan, Xinjiang and the safety of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai.

Following up on a question about Taiwan’s reported attempt to skip the opening ceremony, Yan asked for extra time to address the status of the self-governing island, which China views as its sovereign territory.

“Mark, could I just make some supplementary remarks?” Yan said, continuing: “Taiwan is an indivisible part of China and this is a well recognized international principle and well recognized in the international community,” she said. “We are always against the idea of politicizing the Olympic Games.”

Adams was immediately questioned by a non-Chinese reporter who suggested that Yan, herself, had “politicized” the Games by raising China’s stance on Taiwan. Adams dodged the question.

“There are views on all sorts of things around the world, but our job is to make sure that the Games take place,” Adams said.

A Games volunteer, a young Chinese woman named Wei Yining, got a question she did not expect when a reporter asked if she knew who Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai was and, further, did she believe Peng was safe.

Peng, once the world’s top-ranked doubles player, three months ago accused a former high-ranking politician of sexual assault. Peng’s comments were immediately scrubbed from China’s censored internet.

“Well, I am sorry,” the young women replied. “I don’t really know that.”

One reporter asked Adams directly about the IOC’s position on the reported existence of “concentration camps” in Xinjiang, and whether China was using forced labor there. Adams suggested the question was not “particularly relevant’ to the briefing, and then went on to praise the power of the Olympics to unite people.

Yan again made sure China’s view was heard.

“I think these questions are very much based on lies,” she said. “Some authorities have already disputed this false information. There is a lot of solid evidence. You are very welcome to refer to all that evidence and the facts.”

US Inspector Questions Top Ghani Aide on Corruption, Collapse of Afghan Government

A former senior Afghan official says he has answered questions in a U.S. inquiry into allegations that former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani took $150 million in cash with him when he abruptly left Kabul last year as the Taliban took control.

Hamdullah Mohib, who served as Ghani’s national security adviser, says he voluntarily met with John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in December at his office in Arlington, Virginia, to answer questions about corruption in the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

“I also gave [SIGAR] my bank accounts and details of all my assets,” said Mohib, who left Afghanistan in the same plane with Ghani and stayed with him in Abu Dhabi for a while. He told VOA that he would continue to cooperate with SIGAR investigations.

The U.S. was the largest donor to the Afghan government until it collapsed, and SIGAR has been tasked by Congress to investigate allegations that Ghani took millions in cash as he fled Afghanistan last August.

“The fact that we’re looking at those allegations doesn’t mean that they’re true or not,” Sopko said at an Atlantic Council event last week.

In addition to the cash flight allegations, which were first reported by the Russian Embassy in Kabul, Sopko said his investigators were looking into several related issues. “Why did the government of Afghanistan fall so quickly? Why did the military collapse so quickly? What happened? All the weapons? What happened to all the money that we were sending right up to the end — money, fuel, things like that.”

SIGAR is expected to find answers to these questions and present a classified report to Congress in March or April this year. There will also be a public report which will be released later, Sopko said.

FILE – Hamdullah Mohib, who served national security adviser to former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, speaks at a meeting in an undated photo at an unidentified location. (Source – former Afghan government)

Ghani not interviewed

Fazel Fazly, another close aide to Ghani who fled with him in the same convoy and now lives in Sweden, told VOA the former Afghan president has not yet been interviewed by SIGAR. “I’ve been in touch with the president,” said Fazly, adding that he also had not yet received inquiries from SIGAR.

In a video message released three days after he left Afghanistan, Ghani strongly rejected the reports that he took cash with him, and later called on the United Nations to launch an independent investigation into the matter.

Like Mohib, Fazly said he is willing to cooperate with SIGAR to prove he was not involved in any corruption, while at the same time admitting corruption infested all layers of the former Afghan government.

“It’s insane to say there was no corruption,” Fazly said. “We expect SIGAR to do objective, comprehensive and meaningful investigations to uncover the truth about corruption in Afghanistan.”

Mohib and Fazley, widely reported to be closer to Ghani than any other Afghan officials, both said allegations that Ghani fled with sacks of dollars were aimed at maligning the former Afghan president as a corrupt U.S. ally.

“Moscow’s relations with President Ghani were terrible and even some Central Asian leaders called him a Western imperialist,” Fazley said.

The Cash

Fazly and Mohib both said they were unaware ofthe existence of large volumes of cash in the Afghan Presidential Palace.

While Ghani’s predecessor, Hamid Karzai, confirmed that his office received bags of cash from the CIA and from the Iran government, Ghani said on multiple occasions that his office never received cash from the CIA or any other intelligence agency.

Ghani claims he had transferred his executive authority over state funds to a government committee and had no power over U.S. and NATO contracting processes for Afghan military funding, according to Mohib.

Others say the president did not need to personally receive the assistance funds in order to make use of them.

“There was money in the Afghanistan Bank,” said Sayed Ikram Afzali, director of a local corruption watchdog Integrity Watch Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan Bank building — headquarters of the state-run central bank — is adjacent to the Presidential Palace compound in central Kabul where all funds, liquidities and highly valuable items were stored.

Fazel Fazly, another close aide to former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, speaks in an undated photo at an unidentified location, with a portrait of Ghani behind him. (Source – former Afghan government)

“Moving cash from the central bank to the palace was not a hard thing to do, especially when the governor of the bank was a Ghani henchman,” said Afzali, adding that Ghani had kept Ajmal Ahmady, a U.S. citizen, as governor of the central bank even after his nomination to the post was repeatedly rejected by parliament.

Ahmady, now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School who leads a study group entitled “Afghanistan—What Happened & How to Engage the Taliban,” did not respond to an email inquiry.

“Corruption in Afghanistan did not take place only for one day, and we must not be solely fixated on what happened on August 15. Large amounts of money were taken out of Afghanistan for so many years and those involved in high-level corruption were not waiting until the last day of the republic to move physical currency out of the country,” Afzali said.

Accountability

From 2001 to the end of 2021, the U.S. spent more than $2 trillion on the Afghan war, including some $140 billion spent on development projects, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs.

At least $15.5 billion of the U.S. development funds went to “waste, fraud and abuse,” SIGAR’s investigations have found.

“Systemic corruption perpetuated an implosion of the system in Afghanistan,” conceded Hamdullah Mohib.

Like others, Mohib said he was concerned that “truly corrupt” individuals who enriched themselves through the U.S.-bankrolled funding and contracting systems in Afghanistan now roam free in different parts of the world.

Since the fall of the Afghan government, tens of thousands of Afghans, among them former government officials and contractors, have sought refuge outside Afghanistan.

There are now growing calls, even by officials of the former Afghan government, for some sort of accountability by their own former colleagues.

“[Former government officials] must be held accountable and tried,” Naseer Ahmad Faiq, chargé d’affaires of Afghanistan’s mission at the United Nations, told a Security Council meeting last week. “It is not fair that 38 million people [in Afghanistan] are starving and mothers sell their children to survive but these corrupt former government officials live in luxurious houses and villas in different countries in Europe and the U.S.”

SIGAR’s investigations have led to criminal charges and trials of some individuals and companies, both U.S. and Afghan, in U.S. federal courts. It’s unclear whether SIGAR would press criminal charges against former Afghan officials, who were previously commended as U.S. partners, if found guilty of fraud and corruption.

“We’re looking at more people than President Ghani about taking money out of the country at the end,” John Sopko said in response to a VOA question.

The Buga massacre: questions and investigation after a year - Cali - Colombia

the five friends, Sara Maria Garcia Rodriguez, Valentina Arias Gonzalez, Juan Pablo Marin, Nicolas Suarez Valencia Y Jacobo Alberto Perez Vasquez they had laughed, played frog and had bathed in the pool and in the jacuzzi.

They were on that weekend of January 23 and 24, 2021, at Jacobo’s farm, where they used to meet, as they did on other days off. They saw each other in that or in some other of the houses of the other young people in Buga, his native land.

Santiago Tascón came to the meeting because he was a friend of Sara María.

And it was in the early hours of January 24 that death surprised the five young people, in that property, half an hour from the town of Buga, in the Cerro Rico village of the Chambimbal district, after bursts of gunfire that took away their dreams of fall in love, be professionals and form families.

Santiago Tascón and the butler Ramiro Martínez, 61, were injured and survived the attack.

(Also read: Controversy returns for murals painted on the bridge: now by Cali fans)

Sara María, Valentina, Juan Pablo and Nicolás died at the scene. Jacobo died the following Sunday at the San José hospital due to an impact on the head.

The families point out that there are still no convictions, despite findings of evidence and arrests last year.

“We don’t want it to be just another piece of news without action,” the parents and other relatives and relatives of the young victims in this raid that shook the entire country have been repeating since last year, submerged in a simple question: Why what?

That is the same question that the families ask themselves today, which is why they undertook a crusade with two objectives: first, that the five murdered young people are not forgotten and second, that there be justice.

Carlos Alberto Arias, Valentina’s father, pointed out that despite the clamor to the National Government and the announcements and measures, this crime He is unpunished, although the authorities offered a reward of up to 250 million pesos.

The father recalled the words of President Iván Duque and Defense Minister Diego Molano last year, between television cameras and photographs from dozens of media outlets with journalists who gathered in Buga due to the shock of a slaughter that years before had never lived in this population that does not exceed 130,000 inhabitants.

The families consider that the crime was more than a mistake and that it would have been a planned armed raid.

Funeral moments, a year ago.

Photo:

Santiago Saldarriaga. Archive THE TIME

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They have the information that the judicial process continues. In 2021 there were 12 captured, the first three were identified as allegedly responsible for the attack on a humanitarian demining unit of the army and the ambush of a patrol Police, time ago.

Despite the hypotheses that were raised at the time as an attempted theft, this was discarded, because the area of ​​the farm has not been characterized as a robbery area.

The hypothesis of an attempted kidnapping of Jacobo Pérez was also raised, and an extortion of 12 million pesos from his father remains in the pipeline.

In addition, complaints that landowners made a year ago about threats and possible extortions in the region before the Buga Personería increased the alert among inhabitants of the high mountainous area, in Havana and in El Placer, added to the murder of former Buga councilor Carlos Erlid González Cortés, of the Cambio Radical party.

That crime happened on January 10, 2021, that is, 14 days before the massacre. The politician was in a farm in the La Carolina site, in the same Cerro Rico village.

Given these facts and despite the fact that the murder of the former lobbyist and the massacre were not related, there are peasants who fear the return of armed groups, such as paramilitaries that 20 years ago were the authors of one of the largest massacres in Colombian history.

At that time, members of the Calima Bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia assassinated 24 peasants in Havana, in Buga, and provoked a gigantic exodus of other plot owners.

According to the authorities, although in the urban area of ​​Buga there are armed groups dedicated to distributing drugs and committing other crimes, such as robbery, the discovery of a cell phone from an older model and a suitcase with a cord with adhesive tape fed the hypothesis of an attempted kidnapping of Jacobo, who was 18 years old.

In turn, according to the Police and the Army, the residual group of the Farc ‘Left Adam’ It has a presence in the upper part of where the farm is located.

At the time of the massacre, Jacobo’s father and some friends from the same family were present, and they were unharmed. Jacobo’s mother was not at the time.

Two hours after the event, at about 4 in the morning on Sunday, January 24, the Police called the families of Sara, Juan Pablo and Nicolás to inform them of the tragedy.

This explains the prosecution

The Prosecutor’s Office spoke about the case and what has been done in the last year and indicated: “Continuing with the investigation against this organization, it is possible to obtain from a guarantee control judge, 12 arrest warrants, among which was that of the second ringleader alias Hugo or Camilo”.

The investigative body adds: “In order to materialize and make effective the aforementioned orders, coordination is carried out with the Military and Police Forces, for which there is knowledge of several military operations in the rural area of ​​the department of Valle, mainly between the municipalities of Seville and Tuluá”.

“In an operation carried out by the National Army, on November 5, 2021, Leiton García Uragama or alias Kevin was neutralized, on whom it was possible to establish the quality of material author of the act,” they say in the Prosecutor’s Office.

Likewise, it was reported that on the 9th of the same month and year, in the village of Ceilán, in the municipality of Bugalagrande, two presumed members of the company ‘Adan Izquierdo’ were neutralized, among them the second ringleader alias Camilo or Hugo, who for the investigation was determinative of the unfortunate event.

“On the part of the Prosecutor’s Office, a response has been given to various letters sent by the relatives of the five victims, as well as meetings with some of them, who have been informed of these results and of the investigative actions carried out” , they argued in the body, in a statement.

They celebrated farewell and the beginning of a new stage of life

The five young people, aged between 17 and 18, have known each other since they were very young, most of them since kindergarten.

As on other occasions, the meeting of these friends between January 23 and 24, 2021 was organized for a special reason.

They were celebrating their high school degrees, but above all, they were saying goodbye to Juan Pablo Marín, because the following week he was going to Medellín, in love, because his girlfriend was in the capital of Antioquia, with whom he had a relationship of two and a half years.

I was going to study law there. Although Juan Pablo, 18, had already started this career, in the second semester and under the virtual modality at the Santiago de Cali University, he enrolled at a university in Medellín.

His mother, Gabriela Pérez, who is a dentist with the Artillery Battalion No. 3 Battle of Palacé de Buga, was proud of the person who told her that he wanted to be the best lawyer in Colombia and that is why she supported him in this dream of making his way in other land.

He was Jacobo Pérez Vásquez.

They were children and members of professional families.

Juan Pablo was the son of a civil engineer and planned to follow in his father’s footsteps. His dream of entering the first semester at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana was frustrated.

Nicolás, for his part, wanted to be a mechanical engineer. Nicólas and Jacobo graduated from the same school, the Liceo de los Andes, and then undertook study trips abroad.

Nicolas Suarez Valencia.

Jacobo was in 2020 in an exchange in Canada, and Nicolás, who had turned 18, had returned to Buga, after a stay in Australia. His fondness for hockey on skates he also united these two youngsters and they did so since they were in kindergarten, representing Buga in departmental and national tournaments as members of the Hurricanes Sports Club.

Valentina Arias was the youngest of the group.

Sara was an animal lover and, like the other friends, had values, said relatives of the young woman.

She was Sara María García Rodríguez.

(Also read: What is behind the crime of indigenous leader Albeiro Camayo?)

Nicolás, also the son of a dentist, was very close to Valentina, who was the youngest of the group at 17 years old and was the last to receive her bachelor’s degree.

Valentina and Nicolás arrived at around 7 pm on Saturday, January 23, at Jacobo’s meeting to go down to Buga again on Sunday night.

(Also: Camayo, a man who gave his life to defend his territory and his people)

Juan Pablo Marin was 18 years old.

Valentina dreamed of being an architect at the University of San Buenaventura, in Cali.

She was the niece of businessman Nicanor González, founder in 1954 of the company Transportes González, in Sincelejo, Sucre.

Although Valentina and Juan Pablo Marín were initially at the Liceo de los Andes de Buga, they finished their studies at other schools in that city.

Juan Pablo graduated from Las Marianas, from Buga.

In the case of Sara María García, she was the daughter of the doctor César Iván García.

Sara was going to start her second semester of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechnics at the Technological University of Pereira in the first week of February 2021.

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CALI