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Strategies & Market Trends : Three Amigos Stock Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ken W who wrote (8661)	9/11/1998 7:18:00 AM
From: LTK007	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29382

Ken-- Regards both oil and gold here is a news story I have been tracking-- here is the latest----- AP Headlines Friday September 11 5:10 AM EDT Iran, Afghan's Relations Strained DOUG MELLGREN Associated Press Writer ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Tense relations between Afghanistan and neighboring Iran have been strained further by the Taliban religious militia's admission that its troops killed a group of missing Iranian diplomats. For weeks, Iran has been pressing the Taliban though diplomatic channels and with shows of military force over the fate of the 11 Iranians. The group vanished Aug. 8 during a battle in which the Taliban, which controls 90 percent of Afghanistan, seized the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The Taliban said Thursday that the bodies of nine of the Iranians were found this week, and admitted that they had been killed by the religious army's own troops. The Taliban made the disclosure in a letter from their supreme leader, Mullah Omar, to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The U.N. condemned the killings. Iran called the killings ''a shocking and horrifying atrocity which is contrary to international codes and norms.'' Iran also said it plans new, massive military exercises on the Afghan border in what outside experts fear could be a prelude to military retaliation. The nine Iranians ''either intentionally or unintentionally, have been killed by unidentified soldiers'' of the Taliban, Omar's letter said. He stressed that the soldiers acted on their own. There was no word on the fate of the other two Iranians. The Taliban denied any knowledge of the missing diplomats for weeks, suggesting that they fled or were with the troops of the northern alliance fighting the Taliban. Hours before Omar admitted the killings, a top Taliban official told The Associated Press in Islamabad that the envoys had been killed by opponents wanting to sour relations between Iran and the Taliban. The Taliban accuses Iran of supporting the northern alliances in Afghanistan's civil war. Iran's state-controlled television claimed to have evidence that Omar personally ordered the storming of the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, but did not present proof. However, Omar has said the battle for Mazar-e-Sharif was so fierce that the Taliban had no time to consider the Iranian diplomats. ''It was a big offensive,'' the reclusive leader said in a rare radio interview broadcast by the BBC on Aug. 31. ''Neither my military commanders or I paid attention to ... whether the Iranian diplomats were there ... (or) our reaction to them.'' Iran's Foreign Ministry said it ''reserved the right to defend its people against aggression'' without saying what action it would take. It demanded the immediate return of the diplomats' bodies and the release of all Iranians held in Afghanistan. Omar promised to cooperate in returning the bodies. Iran conducted a massive exercise on the Afghan border last week, with 70,000 troops, warplanes and tanks. No date for the new exercises was announced.