Tuesday, October 20, 2009 TEHRAN: Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki Tuesday stepped up pressure on Islamabad, saying the group accused of launching a deadly suicide attack in the country is based in Pakistan.Mottaki said members of the group regularly violate the Iran-Pakistan border and launch attacks inside the Islamic republic."They cross into Iran illegally. They are based in Pakistan," Mottaki said without naming the group, as he ramped up pressure on Iran's friendly neighbour."The hands of those behind the crimes in southeast Iran must be cut," he added.A suicide bomber on Sunday blew himself up at a meeting between commanders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards and local tribesmen in the town of Pisheen in Iran's restive Sistan-Baluchestan province, bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.Seven Guards commanders and dozens of other people were killed in the attack which Iranian officials allege was carried out by the shadowy Jundallah group that is waging a rebellion against the rule from Tehran.Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday urged his Pakistani counterpart to confront the rebels, saying the "presence of terrorist elements in Pakistan is not justifiable.""The Pakistani government should help to quickly arrest these criminals so they can punished," Ahmadinejad told Asif Ali Zardari during a telephone call received from the Pakistani leader.The head of the Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, said on Monday that Tehran will demand that Pakistan hand over Jundallah leader Abdolmalek Rigi, who is accused of being the mastermind of the bombing.Jafari said a Tehran delegation will head to Pakistan to deliver "proof to them so they know that the Islamic Republic is aware of its (Pakistan's) support" to the group led by Rigi.Iranian officials have also accused Britain and the United States of involvement in the attack. Both countries have denied the allegations.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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