Bin-Laden’s Son Would Like UN Job

The son of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, Omar, has told a British magazine that he would like to promote peace and work for the United Nations.

“I do not believe that I would be a good politician – I have a habit of speaking the truth, even when it does not serve me well. But I would like to be in a position to promote peace. I believe that the United Nations would be ideal for me,” said Omar Bin-Laden.

Last year in November, Omar requested asylum in Spain, but his application was refused.

He was traveling on a Saudi Arabian passport and was detained at Madrid’s Barajas Airport after arriving on a flight from Egypt.

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Suspicious White Powder Sent to 3 U.N. Missions

Decontamination centers have been set up outside the French And Austrian Missions, as well as the Uzbekistan Consulate near the United Nations in response to the discovery of  letters containing a suspicious white powder at each location.

Authorities are investigating some suspicious letters containing white powder that were sent to three foreign-government missions to the United Nations in Manhattan.Letters arrived at the missions of Uzbekistan, Austria, and France Monday, police said.At the Uzbekistan mission, on 2nd Avenue, two people were decontaminated as a precaution.

Eight people at the Austrian mission, on 3rd Avenue, were decontaminated. Meantime, at the French mission, on 2nd Avenue, 15 people were decontaminated, the NYPD said.Preliminary tests on the powder sent to the Uzbekistan mission came back negative for anthrax or any other dangerous substance, the NYPD said.All three envelopes had Dallas postmarks, the AP reported.No one was hurt, police said, and the missions weren’t evacuated. The NYPD and the FBI are investigating.

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Terrorists in Kabul Attack UN Guesthouses and Hotel

UPDATE: Insurgents Wednesday morning attacked two guesthouses and a hotel in downtown Kabul that housed United Nations and other international staff, in one of their most daring attacks on the Afghan capital.

According to the Associated Press, at least seven people were killed in the guesthouse attacks, including three United Nations staff.

There also were sounds of explosions elsewhere in the city, suggesting a large-scale, coordinated attack on the capital.

The assailants managed to take over one of the guesthouses, Bakhtar, but were repelled by security guards at another, the Imperial. According to a U.N. spokesman in Kabul, three U.N. staff members were killed in the Bakhtar attack, and an unknown number was injured.

By midmorning the hostage crisis appeared to be over and the building secured, with firemen trying to extinguish fire amid billowing smoke on the roof.

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UN staff killed in Kabul attack

The attack began at dawn on Wednesday

At least three UN employees have been killed in an attack in the centre of the Afghan capital Kabul, the UN says.

Heavy gunfire and an explosion were heard at a guesthouse used by the UN, after militants entered the building.

An Afghan official later told the BBC that six foreigners and three gunmen were killed in the attack for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.

There are also reports of rockets being fired at the Serena Hotel in the city, which is used by diplomats.

There is no information yet on whether anyone has been injured or killed at the hotel, but about 100 people inside at the time were taken to secure rooms.

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Afghan forces exchanged gunfire with a group of terrorists holed up inside an international guest house in the centre of Kabul on Wednesday, police said.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said it was possible some of its staff and other foreigners were inside.

Intense automatic weapons fire and an explosion resounded in the capital, and plumes of black smoke rose above buildings.

A Reuters witness said a number of streets had been cordoned off by the police as the gunfire continued, and sirens reverberated across the city.

“There are five or six terrorists inside,” said Waheed Sadiqi, a policeman at the scene.

An increasingly resurgent Taliban have vowed to stage attacks ahead of a second-round run-off in Afghanistan’s presidential election on Nov. 7.

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AFP reprts

Afghan police were locked in a stand-off with a “group of terrorists” holed up in an apartment building in central Kabul on Wednesday, a police officer at the scene said.

The police officer told AFP that one of the group detonated an explosives vest before the rest of the group fled into the apartment building in a crowded neighbourhood near Kabul’s Chicken Street.

“We don’t know how many of them there are,” he said.

An AFP reporter and photographer saw a number of wounded being taken from the area to a local hospital, including at least two foreigners.

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Does Iran Have A Second Uranium Enrichment Plant?

This won’t be good if true. Fox news reports in a breaking news headline that Iran apparently has a second uranium enrichment plant. Not good news.
Apparently the second plant may only be under construction however. Harretz.com reports a senior Iranian atomic official said on Sunday that Iran has chosen the site, for and started designing a new 360 megawatt nuclear power plant.

You can read that story at here.

Another story is here

IAEA Denies Report Iran Has Ability To Create Nuclear Bomb

The U.N. nuclear agency has no proof that Iran has or once had a covert atomic bomb program, it said on Thursday, dismissing a report that it had concluded Iran was on its way to producing nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency reaffirmed IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei’s September 9 comment that allegations the agency was sitting on evidence of Iranian bomb work were “politically motivated and baseless.”

“With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapons program in Iran,” an IAEA statement said.

The IAEA received information from a variety of sources that might be relevant to verifying that a state was not hiding nuclear bomb research or development, it said.

All information on Iran that the IAEA had vetted has already been shared with its 35-nation Board of Governors in reports by ElBaradei.

Diplomats close to the IAEA have told Reuters it has no “smoking gun” evidence of Iran currently trying to apply nuclear technology to its ballistic missile program. Two diplomats repeated that position after Thursday’s media report.

via IAEA denies report it is sure Iran seeking atom bomb | International | Reuters.

However… There Is This Story

Experts at the IAEA are in agreement that Teheran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead, according to a secret report seen by The Associated Press on Thursday.

The document drafted by senior officials at the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency is the clearest indication yet that the agency’s leaders share Washington’s views on Iran’s weapon-making capabilities. It appears to be the so-called “secret annex” on Teheran’s nuclear program that Washington says is being withheld by the IAEA’s chief.

According to the document, the Islamic republic has “sufficient information” to build a bomb. Iran is likely to “overcome problems” on developing a delivery system, according to the report.

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Extremists Who Raided U.N. Offices Not Considered a Terror Group

The extremist group al-Shabaab raided three U.N. offices in Somalia last week in a campaign to rid the volatile African nation of all “enemies of Islam,” and the world body can’t do a thing about it — yet.

Though the U.S. State Department designated al-Shabaab a foreign terrorist organization in March 2008, the U.N. has yet to add the Islamic militia to its list of terrorist groups whose members face international sanctions and travel bans.

While the U.S. has been cracking down on the Al Qaeda-linked group’s recruitment efforts at home, the lack of an international standard has allowed al-Shabaab to channel its funds — much of which come from piracy along Somalia’s lengthy coast — through banks in the Arabian Gulf.

“There are millions and millions and millions of dollars coming into this organization. It’s being funneled in banks in Qatar and other places — that’s pretty well documented — yet nobody’s really doing anything about it,” said Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas.

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Navy Tracking Possible North Korean Nuke Shipment

The Navy is tracking a North Korean cargo ship suspected of carrying illegal weapons, equipment or nuclear fissile material that North Korea has been prohibited from transporting by the U.N. Security Council, top U.S. defense officials said Thursday.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon that “clearly, we intend to vigorously enforce the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874,” although the Navy cannot use force to stop or board the vessel suspected of carrying the contraband.

A U.S. warship could hail the North Korean ship and ask to search it, and if the ship’s crew didn’t comply, the U.S. sailors could order the vessel to sail to the nearest port and request officials in that port to do the search — although the U.S. ship couldn’t use force for that, either.

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Mullen, who briefed reporters with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, gave few details about how the Navy was tracking the North Korean ship — whether U.S. warships or aircraft were shadowing it — and what led U.S. officials to believe it was carrying contraband material.

The U.N. Security Council voted to place additional strictures on North Korea after the country detonated a nuclear bomb May 25 and launched ballistic missiles into the ocean off Southeast Asia. One of the restrictions was that North Korean ships suspected of carrying nuclear material would be interdicted at sea, but the North has said it would consider the boarding of any of its ships as an act of war.

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Senior U.N. Official Kidnapped in Pakistan

A senior U.N. official was kidnapped in southwest Pakistan and his driver was shot dead, a U.N. information officer told CNN.

The official’s name has not been released because his family has not been officially informed, said Ishrat Rizvi, a U.N. information officer in Islamabad.

The official was kidnapped in the town of Chaman, near the city of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan. The exact time of the incident is unknown. Law enforcement agencies are investigating.

New Crisis Over North Korea’s Nuclear Plans

North Korea has triggered a new crisis over its nuclear ambitions by expelling UN inspectors and pledging to resume plutonium reprocessing – a precursor to producing atomic weapons.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, confirmed yesterday that it had, at Pyongyang’s request, removed seals and surveillance equipment from the Yongbyon plant, delivering a blow to the 2007 deal scrapping its atomic weapons programmes.

In a closed session of the IAEA’s board in Vienna, the deputy director-general, Olli Heinonen, said North Korea had informed the inspectors that it planned to “introduce nuclear material to the reprocessing plant in one week’s time”.

The move cast new doubt on years of attempts to denuclearise the isolated state at a time of deepening uncertainty abut the health of its reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il. Six-party disarmament talks stalled last month when North Korea stopped disabling Yongbyon in protest at delays in being removed from a US blacklist of states supporting terrorism.

The White House called the latest development “very disappointing”. Any resumption of reprocessing would “further isolate North Korea”, said a spokesman. But Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, insisted that negotiations were still alive even if they appeared to be unravelling. “We’ve been through ups and downs in this process before,” she said. “But this is a six-party process, and that means that there are other states that are carrying the same message to North Korea about their obligations.”

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