Germany To Support Loan to Iran Despite US Opposition, Reuters, July 19 

The German Economics Ministry said on Saturday it would support a German bank in a dispute with a U.S. senator over refusing to withdraw a loan it granted to Iran's Offshore Engineering and Construction Company….

WestLB belongs to a bank consortium that has lent the state-owned Iranian company $90 million. WestLB's share of the loan is $40 million….

In a letter sent last week to WestLB chief executive Friedel Neuber, New York Republican Senator Al D'Amato said the deal was a clear violation of ILSA….

D'Amato said the scheme would be nothing more than an effort to willfully circumvent ILSA….

He also said that if WestLB went ahead with the loan it would become a "pariah company known for supporting rogue states."

Plans for the loan have also been condemned by the German office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Economically Bankrupt Mullahs Plan To Export Fundamentalism to the Philippines, Reuters, July 20 

TEHRAN—Iran plans to invest $4 billion in industrial ventures on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, the ancestral home for Philippine Moslems, the official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday.

IRNA said the investments by industrial and commercial companies were part of an agreement signed earlier this week in Manila….

Iran Court Fines Publisher, Suspends Magazine, Reuters, July 20 

A Tehran court has fined a publisher for "scandalous reporting" about a cabinet minister and suspended his magazine for a month, Iran's official news agency IRNA said on Sunday.

The report did not name the publisher of the hardline Islamic weekly Sobh (Morning), who it said was fined five million rials ($1,666) for an article about Post and Telecommunication Minister Mohammad Gharazi….

The magazine had accused Gharazi of favoritism in delivering telephone services to officials, breach of budgetary guidelines, questionable practices in granting foreign contracts and wasting ministry funds on chartered planes and helicopters….

FEATURE

It is 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The sun shines its 50-degree heat over this camp, north of Baghdad. Except for the thin Eucalyptus trees which surround a little garden full of yellow bushes, it is plain desert as far as eyes can see.

At the same time, Maryam, 31, a former office employee in Tehran, speaks delightfully of her arrival three months ago in the Zahra Rajabi camp: "The first thing I did was to sing aloud. Then I picked up a little stone and kissed it."

The camp which is to train the new arrivals and the special forces, belongs to the National Liberation Army of Iran, the armed branch of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. It is not clear how many of these camps exist along the 1,200-km Iraqi border with Iran, and how many men and women fighters make up this armored army which seems very well equipped at first glance...

Whatever the figures, this is a unique army. Women and men are in contact. All the jobs are done while complete equality is observed, and the hierarchy in this army has been reduced to the lowest level necessary.

Married life is banned in this army and children have been sent away. Every one eats together, and all the services are provided by men....

In a word, this army is amazingly calm. Its members are so content that not even a single person is found to be critical of anything or complain about all the emotional and material deprivations of life in this desert land.

After a two-day trip —waiting at the border and 1000-km travel by car (due to the sanctions) in a desert land where nothing exists but sand and stones— have we arrived in a strange, utopian city?

At any rate, every one here, is busy learning and practicing for a hopeful tomorrow, when the Mojahedin will replace the mullahs' regime and establish democracy in Iran where women play a prominent role...

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