Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that the solution to the Middle East crisis was to destroy Israel, state media reported.
In a speech during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Malaysia, Ahmadinejad also called for an immediate ceasefire to end the fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah.
"Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate ceasefire must be implemented," Ahmadinejad said, according to state-run television in a report posted on its Web site yesterday.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev accused Ahmadinejad of trying to rally the region to support Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
"Our operation in Lebanon is designed to neutralize one of the long arms of Iran, Hezbollah," Regev said. "Hezbollah is their proxy, being used as an instrument of Teheran to advance their extremist agenda and the blow to Hezbollah is a blow to Iranian interests and a blow to all extremist jihadist forces in the region."
Ahmadinejad called on all Muslim states to "cut their open and secret political and economic ties with the fake and outlawed Zionist regime" in response to its attacks against Lebanon.
He also urged Muslim states to "isolate" the US and Britain for supporting Israel's military attacks against Lebanon.
Ahmadinejad also rejected deploying international forces on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
"Peace and security in Lebanon and its borders has to be preserved by the Lebanese government and people. Deployment of foreign forces is not acceptable in any shape unless it is just, based on UN rules and preserves the unity and territorial integrity of Lebanon," he said.
Meanwhile, a German newspaper reported on Wednesday that Iran had freed a son of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from house arrest,
Die Welt said the Iranian Revolutionary Guard released Saad bin Laden on July 28 with the aim of sending him to the Syria-Lebanon border. It linked the reported move to the outbreak of war between Israel and Lebanese-based Hezbollah.
"From the Lebanese border, he has the task of building Islamist terror cells and preparing them to fight together with Hezbollah," Die Welt said, quoting intelligence information.
"Apparently Tehran is counting on recruiting Lebanese refugees in Syria for the fight against Israel, using bin Laden's help," it added in a preview of yesterday's report.
China deployed a record number of coast guard, scientific research and other ships near Taiwan’s waters last month, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said, as Beijing dials up pressure on Taipei. The coast guard warned of an increasingly severe situation, as analysts say the increased activity is part of China’s bid to map the region for submarine warfare. The number of Chinese ships detected around Taiwan proper soared to a record 244 last month — an average of nearly eight every day, official data showed. That compares with 55 ships detected in June and 30 in May, and 58 in July last year. In
Taiwan is bracing for heavy rain in the south and rough seas around outlying Lienchiang County (Matsu), as Typhoon Saudel passes north toward eastern China, with forecasters yesterday warning of localized flooding over the next two days. Saudel is expected to pass closest to Taiwan today, when its outer rain bands are forecast to brush past Matsu, before making landfall at about noon in China’s Zhejiang Province and weakening significantly, the Central Weather Administration said. The storm’s outer bands, combined with strengthening southwesterly winds, are expected to bring heavy rain to southern and southeastern Taiwan today, it said. As the storm approaches Matsu,
LIMITED: The bill’s NT$40bn annual spending cap would prevent Taiwan from effectively building up its drone combat capabilities, National Defense Minister Wellington Koo said The legislature yesterday rejected the Executive Yuan’s NT$210 billion (US$6.62 billion) special budget proposal to buy military drones and instead passed its own plan, which earmarks NT$40 billion per year over six consecutive years. The Executive Yuan said its plan to buy about 210,000 drones by 2031 could not wait, as the wars in Ukraine and Iran showed the importance of uncrewed systems in modern warfare amid a rising threat from China. However, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their opposition majority to pass a bill providing NT$240 billion through annual budgets over six years, with annual
INCREASING IMBALANCE: The percentage of working-age people is expected to shrink to 42.3% of the population, while older people would comprise 52.9%, the agency said Taiwan’s population is projected to shrink by almost half over the next five decades, intensifying labor shortages and placing a growing drag on economic growth as the technology-intensive economy confronts a rapidly aging workforce. The population is expected to fall to 12.15 million by 2075, a 48 percent decline from this year, National Development Council projections released yesterday showed. The decline would fundamentally alter Taiwan’s workforce. From 2037, more than half of the working-age population is projected to be aged between 45 and 64, signaling the end of an era when the economy could rely on a relatively large labor force. The shift
RSS