No progress in Taliban hostage talks

Talks Thursday between Afghanistan's Taliban and a South Korean delegation trying to free 19 hostages ended with the militants reporting no progress.The two sides met for three hours in the small town of Ghanzi, south of Kabul, said a Taliban spokesman and a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross that has been facilitating the meetings.Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP that representatives of his militant movement had demanded the release of eight Taliban prisoners."But so far our demands have not been accepted and there has been no development in the negotiations," Ahmadi said.A Red Cross official said it was not immediately clear if there would be a new round of discussions on Friday.The Taliban have killed two of the 23 South Korean aid workers they abducted July 19 and threatened to kill more. On Monday they released two women hostages as a "gesture of goodwill."

US likely to declare Iranian guards a terrorist outfit

The Bush administration reportedly is about to add Iran's Revolutionary Guard to a “specially-designated global terrorist” list.The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has close ties to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the top echelon of his regime.Citing unnamed US officials, the Washington Post and New York Times reported that the administration is about to crack down on the IRGC. Designation under the post-9/11 executive order 13224 cuts off organisations and individuals from the US financial system and authorises the administration to freeze its financial assets.The US government can also confiscate assets of those who provide support to such groups and their subsidiaries, front organisations, agents and associates.Those blacklisted in recent years include Al Qaeda-affiliated groups and individuals in Libya and Southeast Asia, Saudi “charities” in Indonesia and the Philippines, radicals operating in the tri-border region between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, and — just this week — the Lebanon-based Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam.If the terrorist designation of the IRGC goes ahead it will, significantly, target an agency of a foreign government.US Iran experts claim that the Iranian government is using subsidiaries associated with the IRGC to protect some oil projects from possible UN-backed sanctions.The IRGC, also known as the Pasdaran was set up as the “guardian of the Islamic Revolution” after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. Three years later, a 1,500-strong IGRC force was sent to Lebanon, where it oversaw the establishment of Hezbollah, the terrorist group that the following year was the principal suspect in deadly bombings of the US Embassy and US Marines barracks in Beirut.Over the past decade and more, that State Department's annual reports on global terrorism have consistently reported on Iran's key involvement in state-sponsored terror.Washington links the IRGC, estimated to be 120,000-125,000-strong, to much of that activity. They claim that its corps Quds Force oversees terrorism abroad.Recently, US officials also have begun to link the IRGC to anti-US violence in Iraq.In the State Department's annual terrorism reports covering 2005 and 2006, the IRGC is accused of supplying lethal assistance, including armour-piercing explosives, to Iraqi militant groups fighting US forces.US military experts blame the IRGC for supply Explosively Formed Penetrators to anti-US groups in Iraq.Armour-penetrating EFPs are a particularly effective type of improvised explosive device — a shaped charge capable of penetrating most armour used by coalition forces in Iraq, with deadly results.

London bombing plot foiled

Police defused a car bomb packed with petrol, gas and nails in London’s busy theatre district on Friday, foiling an attack that could have killed many people and which echoed a previous Al Qaeda plot, police said.Police also sealed off two more central London streets — Park Lane and Fleet Street — as they investigated other suspicious vehicles.The bomb was found in a green Mercedes parked outside a night club shortly after 1am, when hundreds of people were packed in the busy night-life district 1km from the prime minister’s Downing Street residence.The police, alerted by ambulance workers who thought they saw smoke inside the car, defused the bomb, which Sky News said was rigged to detonate with a mobile-phone-triggered device.Authorities said they did not know who left the bomb but they had begun a counter-terrorism investigation.“It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been significant injury or loss of life,” said Peter Clarke, the head of London’s anti-terrorist police.He said there were similarities between Friday’s incident and an earlier plot, uncovered in 2004, in which an Al Qaeda militant planned to detonate gas-fuelled bombs inside limousines in London, among other targets.It might also have echoes of another recent plot to attack targets including a high-profile nightclub, Clarke said.Prime Minister Gordon Brown, facing a major challenge two days after succeeding Tony Blair, convened Britain’s top security committee, Cobra.

SECOND BOMB:Police found a second car bomb near Park Lane, a senior officer said, saying the two were “clearly linked.”The Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism chief Peter Clarke said the second vehicle, a blue Mercedes which was taken to a car pound after being discovered near the first one, contained similar material to the first, including nails