LCCC NEWS BULLETIN
June 4/2006

Below News From miscellaneous sources for 4/06/06
Canada nabs 17 terror suspects in Toronto-AP
Iran welcomes unconditional talks on nukes-AP
Russia building naval base in Syria - report-Ynetnews
Islamists attempt Syria TV attack-Times Onlin
The slow burn of Syria-Telegraph.co.uk
Assad State of Affairs-The Weekly Standard
US intel.: Hizbullah could become threat alongside Iran-Jerusalem Post
Store explosion in South Lebanon-Kuwait News Agency
Karami's 1987 Killing Turns into Attack on GeageaNaharnet
US studying Iran's retaliation options-Seattle Post Intelligencer
Moussa to Visit Beirut and Damascus Soon In a Bid to Ease Tension-Naharnet
A Look at the Leader of Hezbollah-Houston Chronicle
Families of the disappeared push for answers in Lebanon-YubaNet

Canada nabs 17 terror suspects in Toronto
By BETH DUFF-BROWN, Associated Press Writer
TORONTO - Canadian police foiled a homegrown terrorist attack by arresting 17 suspects, apparently inspired by al-Qaida, who obtained three times the amount of an explosive ingredient used in the Oklahoma City bombing, officials said Saturday.
The FBI said the Canadian suspects may have had "limited contact" with two men recently arrested on terrorism charges in Georgia. About 400 regional police and federal agents participated in the arrests Friday and early Saturday.
"These individuals were allegedly intent on committing acts of terrorism against their own country and their own people," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement. "As we have said on many occasions, Canada is not immune to the threat of terrorism." The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested 12 adult suspects, ages 43 to 19, and five suspects younger than 18 on terrorism charges including plotting attacks with explosives on Canadian targets. The suspects were either citizens or residents of Canada and had trained together, police said.
The group acquired three tons of ammonium nitrate — three times the amount used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injured more than 800, said assistant Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner Mike McDonell. The fertilizer can be mixed with fuel oil or other ingredients to make a bomb.
"This group posed a real and serious threat," McDonell said. "It had the capacity and intent to carry out these attacks."
Luc Portelance, assistant director of operations with Canada's spy agency, CSIS, said the suspects "appeared to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by al-Qaida" but that investigators have yet to prove a link to the terror network.
Five of the suspects were led in handcuffs Saturday to the Ontario Court of Justice, which was surrounded by snipers and bomb-sniffing dogs. A judge told the men not to communicate with one another and set their first bail hearing for Tuesday.
Alvin Chand, a brother of suspect Steven Vikash Chand, said outside the courthouse that his brother was innocent and authorities "just want to show they're doing something.""He's not a terrorist, come on. He's a Canadian citizen," Chand said. "The people that were arrested are good people, they go to the mosque, they go to school, go to college."
FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said in Washington there may have been a connection between the Canadian suspects and a Georgia Tech student and another American who had traveled to Canada to meet with Islamic extremists to discuss locations for a terrorist strike. Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, U.S. citizens who grew up in the Atlanta area, were arrested in March.
Officials at the news conference displayed purported bomb-making materials including a red cell phone wired to what appeared to be an explosives detonator inside a black toolbox. Also shown were a computer hard drive, camouflage uniforms, flashlights and walkie-talkies. A flimsy white door riddled with bullet holes was on display but no details about it were available.
According to a report Saturday in The Toronto Star citing unidentified police sources, the suspects attended a terrorist training camp north of Toronto and had plotted to attack the Canadian spy agency's downtown Toronto office, among other targets in Ontario province. Authorities refused to confirm those reports.
The suspects lived in either Toronto, Canada's financial capital and largest city, or the nearby cities of Mississauga or Kingston.
Also at the court hearing was Aly Hindy, an imam of an Islamic center that houses a school and a mosque and has been monitored by security agencies for years. He said he knows nine of the suspects and that Muslims once again were being falsely accused. "It's not terrorism. It could be some criminal activity with a few guys, that's all," said Hindy. "We are the ones always accused. Somebody fakes a document and they are an international terrorist forging documents for al-Qaida."
Rocco Galati, lawyer for two suspects from Mississauga, said his client Ahmad Ghany, 21, is a health sciences graduate from McMaster University in Hamilton. He was born in Canada, the son of a medical doctor who emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago. Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, is a computer programmer who emigrated from Egypt 20 years ago with his father, now an engineer with a nuclear utilities services company, the lawyer said.
The charges came under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act, which was passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks — and after Osama bin Laden named Canada as one of five "Christian" nations that should be terror targets. The other countries — the U.S., Britain, Spain and Australia — have all been targeted.
Portelance, of Canada's spy agency, said it was the nation's largest counterterrorism operation since the adoption of the act and that more arrests were possible.
The adult suspects from Toronto are Chand, alias Abdul Shakur, 25; Fahim Ahmad, 21; Jahmaal James, 23; and Asin Mohamed Durrani, 19. Those from Mississauga are Ghany; Abdelhaleen; Zakaria Amara, 20; Asad Ansari, 21; Saad Khalid, 19; and Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43. Mohammed Dirie, 22, and Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, are from Kingston.
Iran welcomes unconditional talks on nukes By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer

Iran welcomes unconditional talks on nukes-AP
TEHRAN, Iran - A breakthrough in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program is possible, the republic's president told the U.N. chief Saturday while welcoming unconditional talks with all parties, including the United States.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech later Saturday that his government would not rush to judge an incentives package offered by Western countries to persuade Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program.
State television reported that Ahmadinejad spoke by phone to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and told him the crisis could be settled as long as the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency preserved Tehran's right to use atomic energy.
A U.S. offer for negotiations is conditioned on Iran suspending uranium enrichment — a process that can produce both fuel for nuclear reactors that generate electricity and the material for atomic warheads — and allowing international inspections to prove it.
"A breakthrough to overcome world problems, including Iran's nuclear case, would be the equal implementation of the law for all," state TV quoted Ahmadinejad as telling Annan.
Ahmadinejad alluded to the fact that Iran has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which allows signatories to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful uses while promising not to acquire atomic weapons.
The United States and other Western nations suspect Iran's nuclear program is intended to produce weapons. Tehran insists it is only for generating electricity.
In a major policy shift, the United States agreed this week to join France, Britain and Germany in talks with Iran, provided Tehran suspends all suspect nuclear activities. It would be the first major public negotiations between Washington and Tehran in more than 25 years.
Six world powers agreed Thursday to offer Iran a new package of incentives if it gives up uranium enrichment and to impose sanctions if it refuses. Washington warned Friday that Iran does not have much time to respond, suggesting the window could close and be replaced by penalties.The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, is to hand deliver the proposal to Iranian officials in the next few days. "We won't make any prejudgement about the proposal to be presented to us ... we won't be in haste to judge it," Ahmadinejad told thousands of people in Iran's capital, Tehran.
"We are after negotiations, but fair and just negotiations. They must be without any conditions," he said in a speech marking the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
The incentive package, agreed on by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, carries the threat of U.N. sanctions if Iran remains defiant over continuing uranium enrichment.
"The Iranian nation won't give in to talks that contain threats or conditions that seek to deprive our definite right," Ahmadinejad said. At an Asian security conference, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Washington was hoping for a positive Iranian response to the incentives package. The Pentagon chief said he hoped Iran would "recognize the seriousness and substance" of the offer. He added that the United States agreed to the proposals because progress in talks involving Iran and Europe had gotten to a point where they did not seem to be moving forward.
The Vatican, meanwhile, insisted that diplomacy is the only option for resolving the crisis.
The Holy See "is firmly convinced that even the present difficulties can and must be overcome through the diplomatic path, using all means which diplomacy can avail itself of," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement.
Iran announced April 11 that it had enriched uranium for the first time, using 164 centrifuges. Enrichment can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or material for a warhead — but tens of thousands of centrifuges are needed to do either on a large scale. Iran has said intends to move toward large-scale enrichment involving 3,000 centrifuges by late 2006 but also indicated it might suspend large-scale uranium enrichment to ease tensions.