Venezuela Issues ‘Reciprocal’ Measures against U.S. Officials in Caracas

These include a requirement that Americans wishing to enter Venezuela have visa approval prior to their arrival in the country, and that the U.S. reduce its diplomatic delegation in Caracas to 17 officials

CARACAS – The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry has issued on Monday the U.S. Embassy in Caracas with a series of “reciprocal” measures, according to what President Nicolas Maduro announced last weekend.

These include a requirement that Americans wishing to enter Venezuela have visa approval prior to their arrival in the country, and that the U.S. reduce its diplomatic delegation in Caracas to 17 officials.

The measures deliver another blow to already fragile relations between the two states.

The two have been without high level diplomatic representation since 2010, and developments of the last few days suggest a situation far from settled.

The new measures were announced last weekend by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who also ordered that any meetings that American diplomats intend to conduct in Venezuela will require the Government’s prior consent, and would have to comply with the Vienna Convention governing diplomatic relations.

Maduro’s decision follows an accusation that the United States masterminded both an alleged coup attempt in cahoots with the Venezuelan opposition, and an alleged attempt on his life.

Washington described the allegations as “false.”

The Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez informed the Chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Lee Clenny, that he had 15 days to present the credentials of the officials who will remain in the country.

Maduro said that current U.S. diplomatic representation in Venezuela numbers over a 100, but that number will be reduced to 17 to match the number of Venezuelan diplomats in Washington.

Rodriguez, who described the meeting with Clenny as cordial and agreeable, argued that the measures are consistent with actions “framed in public international law, the purposes and principles of the United Nations and in principle concerning the governing reciprocity between sovereign states.”

Relations between Venezuela and the United States continue to deteriorate, with neither country having ambassadorial representation since 2010 when the Government of then President Hugo Chavez rejected the appointment of Larry Palmer as head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Caracas over a statement he made in the U.S. Senate about Venezuela.

In response, Washington revoked the visa of Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez.

A constant stream of accusations and cross-accusations have followed, with the Venezuelan Government expelling U.S. officials alleging their interference in and destabilization of the country, and Washington responding with its own expulsions.

Relations again worsened after Washington issued a series of sanctions against Venezuelan officials, most recently in early February.

Washington accused the officials of violating human rights during protests in Venezuela in early 2014.

The sanctions include bans on travel to the United States and the freezing of any assets held under U.S. jurisdiction.

Iran news in brief, 2 March 2015

Ukraine's Luhansk republic completes heavy weapons withdrawal from contact line — militias

LUHANSK, March 2. /TASS/. The militia of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) in the south-east of Ukraine has completed the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the contact line, deputy chief of staff of the LPR people’s militia corps Igor Yashchenko said on Monday.

According to him, "As of March 1, all units of LPR people’s militia have completed the withdrawal of heavy weapons and equipment in accordance with the Minsk agreement."

"All heavy weapons have been withdrawal from the line specified in the Minsk agreements." The withdrawal was monitored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) representatives and media, he said.

Nigeria - A crowd beat to death a teenage girl accused of planning to be a suicide bomber

BAUCHI, Nigeria (AP) — A crowd beat to death a teenage girl accused of planning to be a suicide bomber and then set her body ablaze Sunday, according to police and witnesses at a northeastern Nigerian market.

A second suspect, also a teenage girl, was arrested at Muda Lawal, the biggest market in Bauchi city.

A spate of suicide bombings has been blamed on Nigeria's home-grown Boko Haram Islamic extremist group, which wants to enforce strict Islamic law across Nigeria. The group has threatened to disrupt Nigeria's March 28 presidential and legislative elections, saying democracy is a corrupt Western concept.

In Bauchi, the two girls aroused suspicion by refusing to be searched when they arrived at the gate to the vegetable market, said yam vendor Mohd Adamu. People overpowered one girl and discovered she had two bottles strapped to her body, he said. They clubbed her to death, put a tire doused in fuel over her head and set it on fire, he said.It seems doubtful the girl was actually a bomber as she did not detonate any explosives when she was attacked, said Police Deputy Superintendent Mohammad Haruna. He described her as the victim of "mob action carried out by an irate crowd."

Recently some girls as young as 10 years old have been used to carry explosives that detonated in busy markets and bus stations, raising fears that Boko Haram may be using some of its hundreds of kidnap victims in bomb attacks. It's unclear whether such girls detonate explosives themselves or whether the bombs are controlled remotely.

President Goodluck Jonathan last week condemned the Boko Haram insurgents for choosing soft targets and said the series of bombings are a response to the Nigerian military's recent success in seizing back a score of towns that had been in the hands of the extremists for months.

A multinational military force including Nigeria's neighbors is being formed to stop Boko Haram's attacks outside Nigeria's borders.

Some 10,000 people died in Nigeria from Boko Haram's violence last year, compared to 2,000 in the first four years, according to the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, and some 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes.

Rice: An Iran with nuclear weapon would threaten Israel, U.S

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- An Iran with a nuclear bomb would threaten Israel and the United States, an adviser to President Barack Obama said Monday, amid a crisis between Washington and Israel over Tehran's atomic ambitions.

"Given their support for terrorism, the risk for a nuclear arms race in the region and the danger to the entire global nonproliferation regime, an Iran with a nuclear weapon would not just be a threat to Israel, it is also an unacceptable threat to the United States of America," said US National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

NCRI's revelation of new nuclear site a major blow to Iranian regime’s efforts in acquiring nuclear bomb

Interview with Mr. Mohammad Mohaddessin, Chairman of NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee

Q: The Iranian Resistance has had many revelations about the Iranian regime's nuclear activities. What is the significance of the recent revelation of the Iranian Resistance about the top secret site of Lavisan-3?

Mohammad Mohaddessin: The revelation of the Lavisan-3 site, as is evident from the reactions of the regime, was a huge blow to the Iranian regime's efforts to obtain the nuclear bomb. This site was kept secret for more than a decade and they were working on excessive enrichment experiments, with advanced centrifuges.

The project on the one hand showed the level of secrecy and deception of the regime and on the other hand, its disclosure was a turning point in exposing the deception and secrecy. The parallel project to enrich uranium not only violates the Non-Proliferation Treaty and UN Security Council resolutions, but it was also is in full and continuous violation of the Geneva Agreement of December 2013 and the joint action plan that the regime signed with the P5+1 countries.

The Iranian Resistance, however, informed the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna about the Lavisan-3 project, like other revelations that had been made in the past, with all its details, and we had called for an immediate inspection of this site of the regime.

At the press conference in Washington DC by the National Council of Resistance of Iran Representative Office, the Iranian Resistance emphasized that the IAEA and the P5+1 countries, especially the US government, must act immediately to inspect the site.

Once again, I am warning that no opportunity should be provided to the Iranian regime to clean up its criminal footprint to clean up the traces of its illegal nuclear activities in Lavisan-3, like it had done in the case of Lavizan Shian.

Lavizan Shian was revealed in March 2003 by the Iranian Resistance and the IAEA went to inspect the site in June 2004, i.e. 14 to 15 months later, and the regime had destroyed all its facilities. It had changed the soil. It had replaced 4 meters of soil to eliminate any traces, but traces were still found.

It should also be noted that this revelation is very important for another reason too. The western countries in the midst of negotiation with the regime, while seeking a kind of compromise and coming to terms with the regime, are reluctant to face these things.

That is why the Iranian Resistance doubly and urgently saw this as a nationalistic and patriotic necessity and a necessity for the peace and security of the region and the world and for the Iranian nation, to reveal this secret project as soon as possible.

Rouhani, the clerical regime’s President, who some thought was a moderate, ten days before the revelation of Lavisan-3, officially said in his speech that nobody should think that we are now negotiating and that means we have abandoned our projects or we are not continuing our scientific advances in nuclear field.

But he did not think that the Iranian Resistance and the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and NCRI’s Strategic Studies and Security committees, relying on the extensive popular network of this resistance and their constant work, would expose his deceptions as such.

Q: In your view, what is the cause of a flurry of reactions of the regime that we are witnessing?

Mohammad Mohaddessin: As soon as Hassan Rouhani [the regime's president] found out that the PMOI was planning to have a new revelation on a parallel project, panicked and said the day before the conference in a public speech that when they say in the nuclear issues we have secrecy, this is a big lie. Rouhani forgot that 10 days earlier, he had said himself that we were continuing these projects.

When the NCRI representative office in the U.S. revealed Lavisan-3, rather than responding to this rational and logical question, the regime resorted to lies and deception.

The regime’s representative to the United Nations as well as Vice Chair of Security and Foreign Policy Commission at the regime’s Parliament, the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), they all came on and tried to skirt the issue with profanity and downplaying this revelation. What's interesting is that these statements by the regime officials and state media showed that revelations of the Iranian Resistance have hit the mark. The PMOI, as always, like in the case of Natanz and Arak sites, like Lavizan Shian site, like Lavizan-2, like the Mojdeh site, like Kala Electric,like the regime’s nuclear site in Qom known as the Fordow site, have hit the mark and have created a big crisis for the regime.

When the regime saw that these profanities were no longer effective, it resorted to other lies such as claiming that some information about the latest revelations by the PMOI has been obtained from a company's website. The NCRI’s representative office in U.S. published a response to these banal statements which includes more revelation.

The NCRI Representative office, based on the information from the Security and Strategic Studies committees of the NCRI and the PMOI, made a new revelation that the company known as GMP was indeed a state company that essentially was involved in all these nuclear projects of the regime in past years.

Q: Mr Mohaddessin, isn’t the reaction of the regime due to the fact that the regime's deception in the negotiations has been revealed?

Mohammad Mohaddessin: You mentioned a very important point. Let me go back to Rouhani’s statements in his book titled “National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy”. He said in his book that everything was going well regarding the nuclear activities but in August 2002, with the PMOI’s revelation, everything was messed up, and he presented statistics and figures there that is for 2002 which demonstrates that if it was not for the PMOI’s revelation, and if the PMOI did not reveal the Natanz and Arak sites, the regime would have reached bomb making capacity years ago and it was PMOI's revelation that created that crisis
.
Now, it is again facing the same crisis and the same problem. Because the Iranian Resistance has revealed a secret and parallel enrichment project, that technically puts the regime in a difficult situation, and from a political and international aspect ties the hands of those who wanted to give unwarranted concessions to the regime.

A note: This is a translation of excerpts of an interview with Simay-e Azadi which was in Persian.

Mexico Asks U.S. Justice Department to Investigate Deaths of Mexicans

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican Government has asked the U.S. Justice Department to “accompany the investigation” into the deaths of three Mexicans at the hands of American police in less than a month.

In a statement issued Monday, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the recent killings of Ernesto Javier Canepa Diaz, Antonio Zambrano Montes and Ruben Garcia Villalpando all “presumably involved an excessive use of force” and hence could not be seen as isolated cases.

It urged that the Justice Department follow the investigations of these cases to “provide assurances that they are conducted with transparency, and, if necessary, that civil and criminal responsibilities are established.”

“In these three unfortunate cases, the Mexican Government will use all available resources to ensure the protection of the victims’ families so that they have complete access to justice in accordance with the applicable laws,” the Ministry declared.

“At the same time, Mexico joins several civil society organizations in their urgent call to move forward the review of use of force policies and practices,” it continued.

The Mexican government strongly condemned the killing last Friday of Canepa Diaz by the California’s Santa Ana police, an incident that it said was “deeply troubling and causes us great concern.”

The Mexican consul in Santa Ana had written to the local police department and the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, expressing his deep concern for what had occurred and asked for an in-depth investigation and measures to prevent more such incidents, the statement added.

The Ministry said that it had met with Canepa Diaz’s family and lawyer on Sunday and offered any assistance needed, including “close support throughout the investigation process and legal representation.”

In addition to regular diplomatic channels, the Mexican Government has also asked MCRAG (a consultative group for civil rights of Mexicans in the U.S.) to explore legal responses to such incidents.

It also asked the organization to suggest strategies to raise public awareness on the need for a review of the policies and practices regarding use of force by the polic