Month: July 2009

Gardez, July 05: Unidentified gunmen have kidnapped 16 Afghans working for a United Nations-sponsored demining agency in eastern Afghanistan, U.N. officials and police said on Sunday.

The Afghan deminers work for the Mine Detection and Dog Center (MDDC), part of the overall U.N. mine clearing agency in Afghanistan known as UNMACA. They were seized while traveling between Khost and Paktia provinces late on Saturday, Paktia’s police chief said.

“We do not know who kidnapped them and why. We are investigating,” Azizullah Wardak told reporters in the Paktia provincial capital Gardez.

Abu Dhabi, July 05: Heavy vehicles weighing 2.5 tones will be off Abu Dhabi roads from Sunday between 6am and 8am and from 1pm and 3pm.

Restrictions are also applied on them on entering the city from the Al Raha Beach.

This was announced by the Ministry of Interior.

Drivers caught in violation of the rule will be fined Dh1, 000 in addition of having their vehicles impounded for seven days.

Repeat violations will result in another Dh1, 000 fines and a 14-day impoundment.

Tehran, July 05: A senior Iranian commander says much of the groundwork has been laid to retain the ownership of the Qolhak Garden in Tehran which is now ‘illegally’ under British control.

“Effective measures have been taken to materialize this legitimate right of the Iranian nation and retake the compound,” Head of the Foundation for the Remembrance of the Holy Defense, Brigadier General Mir-Faisal Baqerzadeh, commented on Saturday according to the Fars news agency.

Beirut, July 05: Lebanon’s prime minister-designate Saad Hariri rules out rumors that his cabinet will be formed under foreign influence, reports say.

“The cabinet will be 100 percent Lebanese-made, anything else is not true,” Hariri said after a Saturday meeting with President Michel Suleiman in the presidential palace on the outskirts of Beirut, stressing that ‘things are moving on the right track’, local Elnashra website reported.

Last week Suleiman tasked Hariri with forming a new cabinet, after his party won a majority of seats in the June 7 parliamentary elections.

Washington, July 05: US President Barack Obama says Washington will remain a strong partner to Baghdad in the face of the ‘difficult days’ awaiting Iraq.

Obama, who was speaking to military families at the White House on Saturday, hailed Iraq’s independence adding that “Iraq’s future now rests in the hands of its own people.”

He made the remarks days after US combat troops pulled out of Iraqi cities as part of an interim security pact, which also calls for a full withdrawal by the end of 2011.

Tehran, July 05: Iran has urged Pakistan to speed up its efforts for the release of its kidnapped commercial attaché Heshmatollah Attarzadeh Niyaki.

During a meeting with Interior Ministry Chief Rehman Malik, the Iranian ambassador to Pakistan Mashaallah Shakeri expressed concerns over the slow progress made by Pakistani security agencies for the release of the missing Iranian diplomat who was kidnapped some seven and a half months ago from the provincial capital Peshawar of troubled north western Pakistan.

Khartoum, July 05: Sudanese authorities are trying to establish contact with kidnappers who snatched two foreign aid workers from their offices in the Darfur region.

Gunmen kidnapped an Irish and a Ugandan woman from the office of the Irish aid group Goal in the North Darfur city of Kutum on Friday night. A Sudanese watchman was also seized before being released later.

“We have not established contact yet,” said Ali Yusef, Director of Protocol at the Foreign Ministry. “Normally in this situation they move away from the scene before making contact.”