WASHINGTON, May 3 (UPI) -- As the international standoff over Iran's nuclear program continues Teheran announced that it has managed to enrich uranium up to 4.8 percent purity.
Iran's Atomic Energy Organization head, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, told the ISNA student news agency, "Enrichment of more than 5 percent is not on Iran's agenda and this level suffices for making nuclear fuel."
The Journal Turkish Weekly reported on May 2 that in April Iran announced that it had enriched uranium to 3.6 percent purity, sufficient to produce reactor fuel. Weapons-grade U-238 is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran is enriching its uranium with cascades of centrifuges based on Pakistani design.
Iran insists it is only interested in producing fuel for civilian nuclear reactors.
Aghazadeh reiterated that Iran intends to upgrade its enrichment facilities, telling reporters, "Construction work and preparation of centrifuge machines are being done to create a 3,000-centrifuge cascade." Iran is currently using a cascade of 164 centrifuges in a pilot plant in Natanz.
On Sunday Pakistani militants protested the establishment in Chitral of a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation office.
Dawn reported on May 1 that on April 30 Jamaat-i-Islami members led a procession, which concluded with a mass rally to protest the move.
National Assembly members MNA Shabbir Ahmed Khan and Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali and Jamaat-i-Islami district Amir Maulana Sher Aziz led the procession. The rally concluded at Atalique Chowk.
Jamaat-i-Islami is the most organized and most powerful member of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, the United Action Front. The MMA is an alliance of four conservative Muslim parties -- Jamaat-i-Islami, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan. The MMA is strongly opposed to the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan and believes that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has become merely a tool of U.S. foreign policy.
During its electoral campaigns the MMA promised voters to enforce Muslim Sharia law and work for the withdrawal of U.S. forces based in Pakistan involved in the campaign against international terrorism.
Jamaat-I-Islami told the rally that Musharraf's subservient role to the U.S. harmed the country's sovereignty and said that the setting up of the FBI office in Chitral was a glaring example of Pakistan's loss of sovereignty.
The Netherlands is purging suspected Muslim radicals from the country's armed forces.
The move has created controversy. Pravda reported on May 2 that the retiring head of the country's military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Bert Dedden, said that there was enough evidence against at least one recruit to charge him with criminal acts while separating another from service.
In the ensuing media uproar Defense Ministry Roger van de Wetering said that the ministry denies Dedden's assertion.
Van de Wetering told journalists there had been sufficient evidence against "around 10" servicemen to launch investigations, but that the government took no action against them. Military investigators determined that the servicemen were believed to follow a radical fundamentalist Islamic ideology that authorities felt might bring their loyalty to the military into question. Further investigation concluded that none of the servicemen under scrutiny was found to have committed criminal or acts meriting termination from the service.
The Netherlands sent 1,400 soldiers to assist coalition peacekeeping forces in Iraq for 18 months. Their deployment ended in March 2005. The Netherlands is also contributing a new 1,400-man contingent to NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces in southern Afghanistan.
Van de Wetering assured reporters that the investigations were not linked to two incidents of weapons theft in the Dutch military in 2005, which he labeled "common criminality," or to several incidents involving the disappearance of classified military documents.
A raid last week by Filipino police forced an Abu Sayyaf Group sleeper cell to abandon its base in metropolitan Manila.
INQ7.net reported on May 2 that Police Intelligence Group Senior Superintendent Romeo Ricardo told reporters, "The group who owned the grenades and explosive materials in Marikina is out of Luzon at the moment. We see no specific threat from this group. Most of them have left Luzon ... There are one or two members left but they cannot act by themselves."
U.S. and Filipino intelligence specialists believe that the ASG has close ties to al-Qaida.
Ricardo refused to say where the ASG members went.
On April 27 Criminal Investigation and Detection Group members raided a suspected ASG safe house in Manila's Marikina City, seizing quantities of explosives, which officials at the time said could have been used to bomb May 1 Labor Day rallies.
Ricardo told reporters that a bomb plot was not mentioned in documents and computer disks captured along with the explosives. "Nothing was detailed regarding targets and plans. There is nothing in the diskette," Ricardo said.
Criminal Investigation and Detection Group believes that Manila's ASG cell had about 10 members.
When asked if the ASG was planning future attacks, Ricardo replied, "That's quite possible. What else will they do but plan?"
When asked about the possibility of imminent ASG attacks Ricardo observed, "None at the moment, in Metro Manila, none at the moment, but (there are) standing threats in major cities in Mindanao like Zamboanga and Davao."
