- TEHRAN, Iran -- An individual
arrested in connection with Saturday's twin bombings in the south-western
city of Ahwaz has confessed to have received British training in Iraq to
carry out the attacks, the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) deputy for the oil-rich
city announced on Monday.
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- "The arrested individual is a deceived person who
received the necessary training in Iraq", Nasser Soudani told the
Fars news agency, close to the office of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei.
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- "Foreign agents, led by treacherous and criminal
Britain, have trained teams in Iraq to create insecurity and an air of
fright and terror in the province of Khuzestan", Soudani said, referring
to the ethnic Arab-dominated province whose capital is Ahwaz.
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- Saturday's twin bombings in a central Ahwaz shopping
centre left at least six people dead and over 100 injured.
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- Soudani said that two British intelligence agents arrested
last month in the southern Iraqi city of Basra had ties to both the bombings
on Saturday and a similar spate of bombings in the volatile city earlier
in June.
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- British officials have said that the pair were MI5 agents
working to uncover Iranian support for the insurgent attacks against British
troops in southern Iraq.
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- Iranian officials and state-run press have been advertising
the idea that Britain was behind Saturday's bombings, a charge denied by
the British embassy in Tehran. On Sunday, hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad told the state-run ISNA news agency that he suspected British
involvement in the attacks. "We are very suspicious about the role
of British forces in perpetrating such terrorist acts", Ahmadinejad
said.
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- "Our people are used to these kind of incidents,
and our intelligence agents found the footprints of Britain in the same
incidents before", Ahmadinejad said, adding "We think the presence
of British forces in southern Iraq and near the Iranian border is a factor
behind insecurity for the Iraqi and Iranian people".
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- A demonstration has been planned to take place this morning
outside the British embassy in Tehran against London's position regarding
the Islamic Republic's suspected nuclear weapons programme at the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
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- Some analysts see a link between the spate of recent
attacks on British forces in southern Iraq and the hardening anti-British
voices in Tehran.
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- "Iranian rulers are clearly fuming over what they
perceive as Tony Blair's government coaxing the European Union towards
a tougher position on Iran's nuclear program", said Simon Bailey of
the London-based Gulf Intelligence Monitor. "They hope to isolate
the British position within the EU by linking it to bombings in Ahwaz,
but no one is buying this".
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- http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4031
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