The US President George W. Bush administration reiterated its belief on Wednesday that senior al-Qaeda leaders were in Iran and called on the Tehran government to act against them.
"Whether they are there with permission, not with permission, or what, it's the responsibility of the government to prevent those kind of people from coming to their country," the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said.
In their public remarks Wednesday, Boucher and other administration officials declined to say whether a clear connection had been established between the al-Qaeda leaders they say are in Iran and last week's bombing attacks in Saudi Arabia. But the tenor of their comments echoed what other administration officials, speaking privately, have described as deep concern about intercepted communications strongly suggesting that the al-Qaeda leaders said to be in Iran played a role in directing the bombings in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, that killed 34 people, including eight Americans.
In Tehran, an Iranian spokesman said his government would expel any Qaeda operatives found in the country, but he said Iran had no knowledge that any were there.
"The only al-Qaeda members that we know of are the ones that have been expelled from Iran," the spokesman, Abdollah Ramazanzadeh, said. "If any exist in Iran they have entered illegally and we have no information about them."
"Any Iranian citizen or foreign security organization which has information about the presence of people suspected of having links to al-Qaeda in Iran should provide us with that information and we will immediately take action and expel them quickly," he added.
American officials have said it is hard to believe that the al-Qaeda presence was not known to at least some elements of the Iranian government, including the hard-line Revolutionary Guards and the security services.
In messages sent through the British and Swiss governments as well as the UN, the US has demanded that Iran provide an explanation for what it says was al-Qaeda's presence, according to administration officials. The officials said that, in a gesture of protest, an American envoy canceled a planned discussion Wednesday with an Iranian counterpart on Iraq, Afghanistan and other matters.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion