SPIEGEL Interview with Argentina 's President: 'We Are Slowly Starting To Enjoy Greater Trust'

'We Are Slowly Starting To Enjoy Greater Trust'

Argentina is the guest country at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair, which opens this week. In a SPIEGEL interview, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, 57, discusses her country's path away from the military dictatorship of the 1970s, the economic crisis of 2002 and her country's relations with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

SPIEGEL: President Fernández de Kirchner, on Tuesday evening, you will attend the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair. Argentina is the guest country this year. Which book are you reading at the moment?

Fernández de Kirchner: A historical book about a hero from our independence movement from the Spanish colonial bosses 200 years ago. It is so good that my Venezuelan colleague Hugo Chávez nabbed it from me. I read it in New York, where I took part in the Millennium Summit of the United Nations.

SPIEGEL: At the book fair you will be accompanied by a group of exciting young authors, but you seem to have a more strained relationship with journalists. You have just presented a controversial media law to the parliament. Do you want to keep the press on a short leash?

Fernández de Kirchner: No, absolutely not. We advised all parties in advance and extensively. We also oriented ourselves based on US legislation.

SPIEGEL: But you want to centrally regulate the distribution of paper for newspapers. In that way, the government is going to be able to put pressure onto them.

Fernández de Kirchner: La Nacion and Clarín, the two biggest newspaper companies, have a monopoly on paper production. The state only holds a minority stake. The two can access the paper at special prices while the others are forced to pay more. That is unfair competition!

SPIEGEL: Is that not just a pretext to discipline Argentina's biggest newspaper, Clarín? It has been criticising your government for years.

Fernández de Kirchner: All governments had a problem with Clarín. A former associate of the paper has admitted that they always support a president in the first few years to take advantage of them. In the last two years they punish them -- in the hope that a new president will take office and the cycle will be repeated. Now, for the first time it has come to light that Clarín has downplayed the crimes of the military dictatorship.

SPIEGEL: You and your husband have tried to encourage a process of working through the crimes committed under the military dictatorship. What experiences did you have then?

Fernández de Kirchner: My husband and I were arrested several times. We weren't allowed to work as lawyers in the civil service, but, luckily, we could work as independent attorneys. We were in a sort of internal exile, far from the capital, in Patagonia. One time a bomb was planted in my office, but it didn't explode. Another time my office was set on fire. I was never tortured. We were lucky. But we always felt an obligation to the victims of the dictatorship.

SPIEGEL: Were you a member of the left-wing guerrilla movement, the Montoneros?

Fernández de Kirchner: No. When I was a student, I belonged to the Peronist Youth, but I never fought with a weapon in my hand.

SPIEGEL: One of the biggest idols in Argentina is Che Guevara. He tried to bring the Cuban revolution to the rest of the world and was murdered in Bolivia in 1968. What does he mean to you?

Fernández de Kirchner: For those who stand up for their ideals, things often end tragically. Che is a man who fought unconditionally for his ideas and died for them. We will send an exact copy of his diaries, which has been made available to us by the Bolivian government, to the book fair in Frankfurt. The original lies in a vault in the central bank in Bolivia.

SPIEGEL: Is Evita Perón your personal role model?

Fernández de Kirchner: I probably identify much more with Evita because I am a woman and a Peronista. But you have to see it in the historical context, to understand that she caused her own revolution inside the Peronist revolution. At that time, in the 1940s, women weren't allowed to vote in Argentina, and artists like her were viewed as prostitutes. She was an illegitimate child and poor. Actually, she would have been destined to be shut out of society, but instead she remains worshipped to this day around the world.

SPIEGEL: Che and Evita are tragic heroes, and tragedy appears to be a constant in Argentine history. Until the middle of the last century, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. Then a descent began that has already lasted for decades.

Fernández de Kirchner: That is the lasting result of the military coup of March 24, 1976. The military destroyed our local industry with their neoliberal politics. What ruined us in the end was the coupling of our currency, the peso, with the US dollar in the 1990s.

SPIEGEL: Carlos Menem, a Peronist like you and your husband, was responsible for that.

Fernández de Kirchner: I don't have a "Peronometer," or a yardstick for how bound someone is to the ideals of Juan Domingo Perón. At any rate, he was elected president two times. In order to keep the exchange rate parity with the dollar, the state had to go further and further into debt. And, naturally, exports suffered. We weren't able to compete.

SPIEGEL: The Menem years culminated in the financial crash of 2001.

Fernández de Kirchner: When my husband, Néstor Kirchner, took over the government in 2003, debt amounted to 260 percent of gross domestic product, and there was a poverty rate of 50 percent. It was a catastrophe. Of course, we still have many disparities, but since then we have made great strides in all areas. We have record reserves in the government coffers. Since 2003, we have had six years with about 8.5 percent economic growth, the highest growth rate in the last 200 years.

Part 2: 'I Maintain Very Good Relations with all Governments'

SPIEGEL: Hasn't the high inflation eaten away at wage increases and limited the purchasing power of the middle class?

Fernández de Kirchner: We have more consumption than ever before. Our shopping centers are flourishing. And wages have risen higher than inflation.

SPIEGEL: According to information from private economic institutes, you have cooked those numbers. Inflation is actually twice as high, at 25 to 30 percent.

Fernández de Kirchner: Those are one-sided critics.

SPIEGEL: Haven't you arbitrarily changed the basket of goods to suit your purposes?

Fernández de Kirchner: The method of measurement was always being changed. We have now eliminated
absurd categories for comparison and simplified them, so that they now play a real role in the life of an industrial worker.

SPIEGEL: Argentina is still considered a pariah in the financial world. Will you pay your creditors back so you can get access to credit again?

Fernández de Kirchner: In 2005 my husband began rescheduling the debt. We have strictly adhered to all the maturities despite the onset of the financial crisis.

SPIEGEL: But you have still not reached an agreement with the international creditors, the Paris Club.

Fernández de Kirchner: In New York, I met with an important group of investors. They are offering money at a sensible price. We are slowly starting to enjoy greater trust.

SPIEGEL: What did you do to cushion the impact of the crisis?

Fernández de Kirchner: We invested in infrastructure and incentives for small- and medium-sized businesses so that they didn't have to fire any personnel.

SPIEGEL: Could troubled European countries like Greece learn anything from Argentina?

Fernández de Kirchner: I certainly think so. When Greece crashed, it still had a better rating with the agencies than we had, even though it had long been dragged down by its problems. Ratings are of no use in helping assess the real substance of an economy. The measures have to be tuned to the necessities of the individual country. The medicine which helps one country can prove life-threatening to another.

SPIEGEL: Argentina is booming largely because of its agricultural exports. Why have you started to fight with the very farmers who helped underpin Argentina's growth?

Fernández de Kirchner: The agricultural businesses have never had things as good as they are now.

SPIEGEL: Argentina has only fallen behind when it comes to its most famous export, steaks. Now even its small neighbor Uruguay exports more meat.

Fernández de Kirchner: That is due to the dreadful drought in the past year, which meant that hundreds of thousands of cattle had to be culled. But now global market prices are so low that it is more profitable for us to consume our meat at home. We are definitely not turning vegetarian.

SPIEGEL: In truth you ought to thank Venezuela's leader, Hugo Chávez. He helped Argentina twice out of a credit crunch by buying up Argentine bonds for $5 billion (€3.6 billion). Are you financially dependent on Chávez?

Fernández de Kirchner: He stepped in at a time when nobody else was willing to help us. But we don't depend on him and he doesn't depend on us. I maintain very good relations with all governments in the world, especially within South America.

SPIEGEL: Did Chávez support you financially in your electoral campaign? It is said that Argentine civil servants took a suitcase full of money back from Venezuela ...

Fernández de Kirchner: President Chávez came to visit one day later. Why did the president not transport the money in his own airplane, which would not be checked? In an election, €800,000 is a laughable sum. It almost looks like a satire manipulated from the outside by vested interests.

SPIEGEL: While Argentina and Brazil were once rivals on an equal footing, Brazil now overshadows your country. Are you jealous of Lula's success?

Fernández de Kirchner: You cannot compare Argentina and Brazil. We have 40 million inhabitants, they have almost 200 million. We maintain a close and solid cooperation with Brazil within Mercosur. The relations between the two countries were never better. This development can only be measured if you consider that the provinces neighboring Brazil do not have a gas network because Argentina's rulers used to fear a war with Brazil.

SPIEGEL: The rivalry between the two nations continues in football, however. But the two countries both failed at the 2010 World Cup. Diego Maradona stepped down as trainer of the national team. Are you going to offer him a post as a minister for sport?

Fernández de Kirchner: No, he doesn't need that. While other icons are controversial, we remain unanimous regarding Diego. He is and remains a great joy to the Argentine people.


Interview conducted by Jens Glüsing and Helene Zuber

Ecuadorean troops stormed a hospital in Quito late on Thursday and rescued President Rafael Correa

Troops storm Ecuador hospital, free Correa

By Hugh Bronstein and Alexandra Valencia



Ecuadorean army soldiers stand on the runway of the military airbase
of the Mariscal Sucre International Airport
to force its closure, in Quito September 30, 2010.



(Reuters) - Ecuadorean troops stormed a hospital in Quito late on Thursday and rescued President Rafael Correa, who had been holed up surrounded by renegade police protesting against government austerity measures.

Correa arrived back at the presidential palace in the capital, where local TV images showed a large crowd of supporters cheering and waving Ecuador's flag.


Amid heavy gunfire, he had been freed after soldiers raided the building where he had spent most of the day.


Dissident police had earlier attacked Correa, prompting the 47-year-old leftist leader to seek refuge in the hospital, where he accused rivals of trying to topple him in a coup.


The U.S.-trained economist and friend of Venezuela's socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez took power in 2007, alienating foreign investors but winning approval ratings with populist policies like greater state control over natural resources.


The United Nations and governments across the Americas threw their support behind Correa, with the White House backing him and calling for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.


Global oil prices rose to a seven-week high of near $80 a barrel, partly due to the turmoil in OPEC's smallest member.

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KUHNER: President's socialist takeover must be stopped

By Jeffrey T. Kuhner

President Obama has engaged in numerous high crimes and misdemeanors. The Democratic majority in Congress is in peril as Americans reject his agenda. Yet more must be done: Mr. Obama should be impeached.

He is slowly - piece by painful piece - erecting a socialist dictatorship. We are not there - yet. But he is putting America on that dangerous path. He is undermining our constitutional system of checks and balances; subverting democratic procedures and the rule of law; presiding over a corrupt, gangster regime; and assaulting the very pillars of traditional capitalism. Like Venezuela's leftist strongman, Hugo Chavez, Mr. Obama is bent on imposing a revolution from above - one that is polarizing America along racial, political and ideological lines. Mr. Obama is the most divisive president since Richard Nixon. His policies are Balkanizing the country. It's time for him to go.

He has abused his office and violated his oath to uphold the Constitution. His health care overhaul was rammed through Congress. It was - and remains - opposed by a majority of the people. It could only be passed through bribery and political intimidation. The Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, the $5 billion Medicaid set-aside for Florida Sen. Bill Nelson - taxpayer money was used as a virtual slush fund to buy swing votes. Moreover, the law is blatantly unconstitutional: The federal government does not have the right to coerce every citizen to purchase a good or service. This is not in the Constitution, and it represents an unprecedented expansion of power.

Yet Obamacare's most pernicious aspect is its federal funding of abortion. Pro-lifers are now compelled to have their tax dollars used to subsidize insurance plans that allow for the murder of unborn children. This is more than state-sanctioned infanticide. It violates the conscience rights of religious citizens. Traditionalists - evangelicals, Catholics, Baptists, Muslims, Orthodox Jews - have been made complicit in an abomination that goes against their deepest religious values. As the law is implemented (as in Pennsylvania) the consequences of the abortion provisions will become increasingly apparent. The result will be a cultural civil war. Pro-lifers will become deeply alienated from society; among many, a secession of the heart is taking place.

Mr. Obama is waging a frontal assault on property rights. The BP oil spill is a case in point. BP clearly is responsible for the spill and its massive economic and environmental damage to the Gulf. There is a legal process for claims to be adjudicated, but Mr. Obama has behaved more like Mr. Chavez or Russia's Vladimir Putin: He has bullied BP into setting up a $20 billion compensation fund administered by an Obama appointee. In other words, the assets of a private company are to be raided to serve a political agenda. Billions will be dispensed arbitrarily in compensation to oil-spill victims - much of it to Democratic constituents. This is cronyism and creeping authoritarianism.

Mr. Obama's multicultural socialism seeks to eradicate traditional America. He has created a command-and-control health care system. He has essentially nationalized the big banks, the financial sector, the automakers and the student loan industry. He next wants to pass "cap-and-trade," which would bring industry and manufacturing under the heel of big government. The state is intervening in every aspect of American life - beyond its constitutionally delegated bounds. Under Mr. Obama, the Constitution has become a meaningless scrap of paper.

To provide the shock troops for his socialist takeover, Mr. Obama calls for "comprehensive immigration reform" - granting amnesty to 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens. This would forge a permanent Democratic electoral majority. It would sound the death knell for our national sovereignty. Amnesty rewards lawlessness and criminal behavior; it signifies the surrender of our porous southern border to a massive illegal invasion. It means the death of American nationhood. We will no longer be a country, but the colony of a global socialist empire.

Rather than defending our homeland, Mr. Obama's Justice Department has sued Arizona for its immigration law. He is siding with criminals against his fellow Americans. His actions desecrate his constitutional oath to protect U.S. citizens from enemies foreign and domestic. He is thus encouraging more illegal immigration as Washington refuses to protect our borders. Mr. Obama's decision on this case is treasonous.

As president, he is supposed to respect the rule of law. Instead, his administration has dropped charges of voter intimidation against members of the New Black Panther Party. This was done even though their menacing behavior was caught on tape: men in military garb brandishing clubs and threatening whites at a polling site. A Justice Department lawyer intimately involved in the case, J. Christian Adams, resigned in protest. Mr. Adams says that under Mr. Obama, there is a new policy: Cases involving black defendants and white victims - no matter how much they cry for justice - are not to be prosecuted. This is more than institutionalized racism. It is an abrogation of civil rights laws. The Justice Department's behavior is illegal. It poses a direct threat to the integrity of our democracy and the sanctity of our electoral process.

Corruption in the administration is rampant. Washington no longer has a government; rather, it has a gangster regime. The Chicago way has become the Washington way. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is a political hit man. He is an amoral, ruthless operator. It was Mr. Emanuel who reached out to Rep. Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania Democrat, offering a high-ranking job in the hopes of persuading Mr. Sestak to pull out of the primary against Sen. Arlen Specter. It was Mr. Emanuel who offered another government position to Andrew Romanoff to do the same in the Colorado Democratic Senate primary. And it was Mr. Emanuel - as the trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has revealed - who acted as the go-between to try to have Valerie Jarrett parachuted into Mr. Obama's former Senate seat. The only question was: What did Mr. Blagojevich want in exchange?

This is not simply sleazy Chicago machine politics. It is the systematic breaking of the law - bribery, attempt to interfere (and manipulate) elections using taxpayer-funded jobs, influence peddling and abuse of power.

The common misperception on the right is that Mr. Obama is another Jimmy Carter: an incompetent liberal whose presidency is being reduced to rubble under the onslaught of repeated failures. The very opposite, however, is true. He is the most consequential president in our lifetime, transforming America into something our Founding Fathers would find not only unrecognizable, but repugnant. Like all radical revolutionaries, he is consumed by the pursuit of power - attaining it, wielding it and maximizing it. Mr. Obama's fledgling thug state must be stopped.

If Republicans win back Congress in November, they should - and likely will - launch formal investigations into this criminal, scandal-ridden administration. Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has promised as much. Mr. Obama has betrayed the American people. Impeachment is the only answer. This usurper must fall.

If Republicans win back Congress in November, they should - and likely will - launch formal investigations into this criminal, scandal-ridden administration. Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has promised as much. Mr. Obama has betrayed the American people. Impeachment is the only answer. This usurper must fall.


Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute, a Washington think tank. He is the host of "The Kuhner Show" on WTNT 570-AM (www.talk570.com) from 5 to 7 p.m.

Hezbollah builds a Western base

Hezbollah builds a Western base

From inside South America’s Tri-border area, Iran-linked militia targets U.S.

 

 

By Pablo Gato and Robert Windrem

Telemundo and MSNBC.com

 

 

CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay — The Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has taken root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals boiling with hatred for the United States and ready to die to prove it, according to militia members, U.S. officials and police agencies across the continent.

From its Western base in a remote region divided by the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina known as the Tri-border, or the Triple Frontier, Hezbollah has mined the frustrations of many Muslims among about 25,000 Arab residents whose families immigrated mainly from Lebanon in two waves, after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and after the 1985 Lebanese civil war.

An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South American officials.

U.S. officials fear that poorly patrolled borders and rampant corruption in the Tri-border region could make it easy for Hezbollah terrorists to infiltrate the southern U.S. border. From the largely lawless region, it is easy for potential terrorists, without detection, to book passage to the United States through Brazil and then Mexico simply by posing as tourists.

They are men like Mustafa Khalil Meri, a young Arab Muslim whom Telemundo interviewed in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay’s second-largest city and the center of the Tri-border region. There is nothing particularly distinctive about him, but beneath the everyday T-shirt he wears beats the heart of a devoted Hezbollah militiaman.

“If he attacks Iran, in two minutes Bush is dead,” Meri said. “We are Muslims. I am Hezbollah. We are Muslims, and we will defend our countries at any time they are attacked.”


Straight shot to the U.S.


U.S. and South American officials warn that Meri’s is more than a rhetorical threat.

It is surprisingly easy to move across borders in the Triple Frontier, where motorbikes are permitted to cross without documents. A smuggler can bike from Paraguay into Brazil and return without ever being asked for a passport, and it is not much harder for cars and trucks.

The implications of such lawlessness could be dire, U.S. and Paraguayan officials said. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Hezbollah militiamen would raise no suspicions because they have Latin American passports, speak Spanish and look like Hispanic tourists.

The CIA singles out the Mexican border as an especially inviting target for Hezbollah operatives. “Many alien smuggling networks that facilitate the movement of non-Mexicans have established links to Muslim communities in Mexico,” its Counter Terrorism Center said in a 2004 threat paper.

“Non-Mexicans often are more difficult to intercept because they typically pay high-end smugglers a large sum of money to efficiently assist them across the border, rather than haphazardly traverse it on their own.”
 
 
Deadly legacy of a lawless frontier



Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Tri-border has become a top-level, if little-publicized, concern for Washington, particularly as tension mounts with Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor. Paraguayan government officials told Telemundo that CIA operatives and agents of Israel’s Mossad security force were known to be in the region seeking to neutralize what they believe could be an imminent threat.

But long before that, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies regarded the region as a “free zone for significant criminal activity, including people who are organized to commit acts of terrorism,” Louis Freeh, then the director of the FBI, said in 1998.

Edward Luttwak, a counterterrorism expert with the Pentagon’s National Security Study Group, described the Tri-border as the most important base for Hezbollah outside Lebanon itself, home to “a community of dangerous fanatics that send their money for financial support to Hezbollah.”

“People kill with that, and they have planned terrorist attacks from there,” said Luttwak, who has been a terrorism consultant to the CIA and the National Security Council. “The northern region of Argentina, the eastern region of Paraguay and even Brazil are large terrains, and they have an organized training and recruitment camp for terrorists.”

“Our experience is that if you see one roach, there are a lot more,” said Frank Urbancic, principal deputy director of the State Department’s counterterrorism office, who has spent most of his career in the Middle East.


A mother lode of money


Operating out of the Tri-border, Hezbollah is accused of killing more than 100 people in attacks in nearby Buenos Aires, Argentina, during the early 1990s in operations personally masterminded by Hezbollah’s military commander, Imad Mugniyah.

Mugniyah is on the most-wanted terrorist lists of both the FBI and the European Union, and he is believed to work frequently out of Ciudad del Este.

For President Bush and the U.S.-led “war on terror,” the flourishing of Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere demonstrates the worrying worldwide reach of Islamist radicalism. In the Tri-border, Hezbollah and other radical anti-U.S. groups have found a lucrative base from which to finance many of their operations.

Smuggling has long been the lifeblood of the Tri-border, accounting for $2 billion to $3 billion in the region, according to congressional officials. Several U.S. agencies said that Arab merchants were involved in smuggling cigarettes and livestock to avoid taxes, as well as cocaine and marijuana through the border with Brazil on their way to Europe. Some of the proceeds are sent to Hezbollah, they said.


Many Arabs in the Tri-border openly acknowledge that they send money to Hezbollah to help their families, and the man in charge of the local mosque in Ciudad del Este, who asked not to be identified by name, declared that Shiite Muslim mosques had “an obligation to finance it.”

But the U.S. government maintains that the money ends up stained with blood when it goes through Hezbollah, which is blamed for the bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in the 1980s, as well as the kidnappings of Americans, two of whom were tortured and killed.

Patrick M. O’Brien, the assistant secretary of the Treasury in charge of fighting terrorist financing, acknowledged flatly that “we are worried.”

“Hezbollah has penetrated the area, and part of that smuggling money is used to finance terrorist attacks,” he said.


In Paraguay, looking the other way


The biggest obstacle in the U.S. campaign to counter Hezbollah close to home is Paraguay, whose “judicial system remains severely hampered by a lack of strong anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism legislation,” the State Department said in a “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report.

Since 2004, a draft bill to strengthen money laundering laws has been stalled in the Paraguayan legislature, and the government of President Nicanor Duarte has introduced no draft legislation of its own.

Hampering reform efforts is an endemic reluctance in Paraguay to acknowledge the problem.

Interior Minister Rogelio Benitez Vargas, who supervises the national police, claimed that Hezbollah-linked smuggling was a relic of the 1980s. Today, he said, the Triple Frontier is a safe and regulated “commercial paradise.”

But authorities from the U.S. State and Treasury departments to Interpol to the front-line Paraguayan police agencies all paint a different picture. Eduardo Arce, secretary of the Paraguayan Union of Journalists, said the government was widely considered to be under the control of drug traffickers and smugglers.

Without interference, thousands of people cross the River Parana every day from Paraguay to Brazil over the Bridge of Friendship loaded with products on which they pay no taxes. As police look the other way, he said, some smugglers cross the border 10 to 20 times a day. Earlier this year, Telemundo cameras were present as smugglers in Ciudad del Este loaded trucks headed for Brazil. They could have been laden with drugs or weapons, but no authorities ever checked.


Direct link to Iran alleged


José Adasco knows better than most why Hezbollah has the region in a grip of fear.

In 1992 and 1994, terrorists believed to be linked to Hezbollah carried out two attacks against Jewish targets in Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital. In the first, a car bomb exploded at the Israeli Embassy, killing 29 people. Two years later, a suicide bomber attacked the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, a Jewish community center, killing 85 more.


Adasco, who represents the Jewish association, has never been able to forget that day and the friends he lost.

“Really, to see the knocked-down building, [to hear] the screams, the cries, people running — it was total chaos. Chaos, chaos. It is inexpressible,” he said.

An investigation by Interpol and the FBI found not only Hezbollah’s involvement, but Iran’s, as well. The Argentine prosecutor’s office said the Iranian president at the time, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, ordered the attack to retaliate against Argentina for suspending nuclear cooperation with Iran.

A warrant for Rafsanjani’s arrest remains outstanding, and the prosecutor’s office continues its investigation 13 years later.


Hezbollah tells its story


Alberto Nisman, the Argentine district attorney leading the investigation, said the connection between the Hezbollah attack and the Tri-border is unquestionable. Among other things, he said, the suicide bomber passed through the area to receive instructions.

In the intervening years, Hezbollah has spread throughout Latin America.

On their Web page, local Hezbollah militants in Venezuela call their fight against the United States a “holy war” and post photographs of would-be suicide terrorists with masks and bombs. There are also Web sites for Hezbollah in Chile, El Salvador, Argentina and most other Latin American countries.

“The Paraguayan justice [ministry] and the national police have found propaganda materials for Hezbollah” across the hemisphere, said Augusto Anibal Lima of Paraguay’s Tri-border Police.

And it is not only propaganda. In October, homemade bombs were left in front of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, which is next to a school.

Police arrested a student carrying Hezbollah propaganda in Spanish. One of the pamphlets showed a picture of children and said, “Combat is our highest expression of love and the only way to offer a healthy and uncorrupted world.”

Caracas police were able to detonate the bombs safely. Police Commissioner Wilfredo Borras said they appeared to be “explosive devices made to make noise and publicity” — very different from what would be used if the United States attacked Iran.

“In [the] United States, there are many Arabs — in Canada, too,” said Meri, the Hezbollah member who spoke with Telemundo. “If one bomb [strikes] Iran, one bomb, [Bush] will see the world burning.

“... If an order arrives, all the Arabs that are here, in other parts in the world, all will go to take bombs, bombs for everybody if he bombs Iran.”



Pablo Gato is a correspondent for Telemundo. Robert Windrem is an investigative producer for NBC News. Alex Johnson of MSNBC.com contributed to this report.