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INTERNATIONAL EDITION
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2012
109TH YEAR I ©2012 THE MIAMI HERALD
Iran defiant as IAEA visit fails
MCT FILE, 2011
Investigators examine an elaborate cross-border drug smuggling tunnel that was discovered inside a warehouse near San Diego.
constitution allows legal action against former Communists. On Sunday, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel nominated as the next president a former pastor and East German activist, Joachim Gauck, who turned the
VIENNA — (AP) — The U.N. nuclear agency acknowledged renewed failure Wednesday after a trip to probe suspicions of covert Iranian nuclear weapons work, in a statement issued just hours after an Iranian general warned of a pre-emptive strike against any foe threatening the country. The double signs of defiance reflected Tehran’s continued resistance to demands that it defuse suspicions about its nuclear activities despite a growing list of international sanctions. The International Atomic Energy Agency made little progress in talks that ended just three weeks ago, and hopes had been low that the visit by IAEA experts to Iran that ended late Tuesday would be any more successful even before the agency issued its statement. It was issued early Wednesday, shortly after midnight and just after the IAEA experts left Tehran, reflecting the agency’s urgent wish to tell its side of the story. As the two-day trip was winding down, Iranian officials sought to cast it in a positive light, with foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast telling reporters that “cooperation with the agency continues and is at its best level.” Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, insisted the Islamic Republic is not seeking nuclear weapons, saying they are “useless, harmful and dangerous,” but did not mention the visit by the IAEA experts. The IAEA team had hoped to talk to key Iranian scientists suspected of working on the alleged weapons program, break down opposition to their plans to inspect documents related to nuclear work and secure commitments from Iranian authorities to allow future visits. Mission head Herman Nackaerts, in comments after landing at Vienna airport, said his team “approached this trip in a constructive spirit” but “could not find a way forward” in negotiations with Iranian officials. It would now be up to the 35-nation IAEA board to decide on a response at a meeting starting March 5, he added. The language of the IAEA communique clearly — if indirectly — blamed Tehran for the lack of progress.
• TURN TO EUROPE, 2A
• TURN TO IRAN, 6A
Going
underground MARIJUANA-SMUGGLING TUNNELS IN TIJUANA GROW MORE ELABORATE
McClatchy News Service
TIJUANA, Mexico — When smuggling goes smoothly for the marijuana division of the huge Sinaloa Cartel, cross-border deliveries unfold with clockwork precision. Harvested marijuana arrives in plastic-wrapped bales to a depot hidden among the rundown warehouses on the Mexican side of the concrete U.S. border fence. Once enough marijuana is collected, workers drop the vacuumpacked bales through shafts leading to the ever-more-elaborate tunnels that cross under the border through the clay-laden soil. U.S. agents have been waging
cluded railways. The bales move on electric mining carts with hand throttles that roll at up to 15 mph. “A tunnel represents an incursion into the U.S., and it’s a national security event,” said Jose Garcia, who oversees the federal multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force. The location of the tunnels helps explain why agents have such difficulty finding them. The most advanced tunnels have been found near the Tijuana international airport. “All that noise from the airport is a great advantage to them,” said Victor Clark Alfaro, an
A Homeland Security agent enters a drug tunnel near the border in which over 30 tons of marijuana was found.
BY TIM JOHNSON
SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP-GETTY IMAGES FILE, 2010
war against the tunnels for years, using a range of high-tech devices from ground-penetrating radar to seismic sensors to find and destroy them. But despite the efforts, drug smugglers continue to
build the tunnels, often spending $1 million to dig a single pathway equipped with lighting, forced-air ventilation, water pumps, shoring on walls and hydraulic elevators. Lately, new tunnels have in- • TURN TO TUNNELS, 2A
Wave of communist-era reckoning sweeping Europe BY NICHOLAS KULISH
New York Times Service
WARSAW — For all that Poland has accomplished since the fall of the Iron Curtain, it has long resisted coming to terms with its Communist past — the oppression, the spying, even the massacres. Society preferred to forget and move on.
So it may come as a surprise that Poland and many of its neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe have decided it’s time to deal with the unfinished business. Suddenly there is a wave of accounting in the form of government actions and cultural explorations, some seeking closure, others payback.
Two Western journalists among dead in Syria shelling BY ROD NORDLAND AND ALAN COWELL New York Times Service
by tracing satellite signals. Experts say such tracking is possible with sophisticated equipment. Activists, civilian journalists and foreign correspondents who have snuck into Syria have infuriated authorities and foiled government’s efforts to control the coverage of clashes, which have claimed thousands of lives in the past year and which Assad portrays as caused by an armed insurgency. Quoting a witness reached from neighboring Jordan, Reuters said the two journalists died after shells hit the house in which they were staying and a rocket hit them when they were trying to escape. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of The Sunday Times, saluted Colvin as “one of the most outstanding
CAIRO — Syrian security forces shelled the central city of Homs on Wednesday, the 19th day of a bombardment that activists say has claimed the lives of hundreds of trapped civilians in one of the deadliest campaigns in nearly a year of violent repression by the government of President Bashar al Assad. Among the 20 people that activist groups reported killed, two were Western journalists: U.S. veteran war correspondent Marie Colvin, who had been working for The Sunday Times of London, and a young French photographer, Remi Ochlik. The two had been working in a makeshift media center that was destroyed in the assault, raising suspicions Syrian security forces might have identified its location • TURN TO SYRIA, 2A
CHAVEZ HEADS FOR MORE SURGERY, PUTTING REELECTION BID IN DOUBT, 4A
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A Polish court last month found that the Communist leaders behind the imposition of martial law in 1981 were part of a “criminal group.” Bulgaria’s president is trying to purge ambassadors who served as security agents. The Macedonian government is busy hunting for collaborators, and Hungary’s new
In GOP race, a new breed of superdonor BY NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, MICHAEL LUO AND MIKE McINTIRE
Sheldon Adelson and his family have given over $10 million to Winning Our Future, the group supporting Newt Gingrich.
New York Times Service
Last June, Harold Simmons, a wealthy Texas businessman, sent a $100,000 check to Americans for Rick Perry, a super PAC preparing for Perry’s entry into the presidential race. A few months later, he donated $1 million to a different pro-Perry group through his company. In December, as Perry’s fortunes waned, Simmons wrote another check, this one for $500,000, to Winning Our Future, a super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich. But Simmons was not done. In mid-January, as Gingrich was headed toward a victory in the South Carolina primary, Simmons wrote a $100,000 check to Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney. And toward the end of the month, as Restore
8 MORE BODIES FOUND IN COSTA CONCORDIA WRECKAGE, 6A
MIKE CLARKE/AFP-GETTY IMAGES
Our Future used his money to help bludgeon Gingrich with attack ads in Florida, Simmons sent yet another $500,000 check to Gingrich’s super PAC. “He generally supports con-
OBAMA SEEKS 28 PERCENT CORPORATE TAX RATE, BUSINESS FRONT
servative Republican candidates,” said Chuck McDonald, a spokesman for Simmons. “I assume he was just trying to be helpful.” • TURN TO SUPERDONORS, 2A
BASEL STUNS BAYERN IN CHAMPIONS LEAGUE, SPORTS FRONT
INDEX NEWS EXTRA..............3A U.S. NEWS ...................5A OPINION........................7A COMICS & PUZZLES ..6B
2/23/2012 5:44:19 AM