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. | On Tuesday, western media published excerpts from the IAEA director general’s confidential report, due to be officially presented in Vienna on September 10 to the IAEA’s Board of Governors. The document calls Tehran’s consent to answer questions on its nuclear program a considerable step forward, but says Iran should make additional efforts to prove that the program has peaceful goals. |
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. | A US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of Iraqi women and children during an alleged massacre in Haditha that left 24 people dead, a military court heard Thursday.
The testimony came in the opening of a preliminary hearing for Marine Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who faces 17 counts of murder over the Haditha killings, the most serious war crimes allegations faced by US troops in Iraq. |
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. | Azerbaijan’s growing ties with Israel illustrate the extent to which this Caspian Sea energy player is striving to keep the options open for regional alliances.
On August 15-18, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Liberman paid an official visit to Azerbaijan to explore what were termed mutual political and economic interests. |
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. | A Marine testified Thursday that he saw a roomful of frightened women and children moments before they were killed by his squad mates in Haditha, Iraq, but said he did not see who killed them. |
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. | Lebanon’s opposition has dropped its demand for a national unity government ahead of an upcoming presidential election, Nabih Berri, parliament’s speaker, said.
The parliamentary speaker said on Friday that if the country’s political rivals could find a consensus candidate the opposition parties would take part in the vote. |
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. | Azerbaijani language rights activist Amir Abbas Banayi Kazimi was beaten and detained on 14 May at his home in Tabriz: he was reportedly first held at a Ministry of Intelligence detention centre, then moved on around 1 August to Tabriz’s central prison, where his mother was able to visit him. She told an interviewer from the Voice of America (VOA) Azerbaijani-language radio station that he had been tortured. The following day he was apparently moved to a Ministry of Intelligence detention centre somewhere in Tabriz, where he is at grave risk of torture. He has not been formally charged with any offence. |