Iran: 3 Americans to go on trial

TEHRAN, 9th May: Iran will put three Americans facing espionage charges on trial on Wednesday 11th May, the state IRIB TV website has reported.

"If there is no problem, and if there is no request from the lawyer of detainees (to postpone), the trial session will be held on time," said Iranian Judiciary spokesman Gholm-Hossein Mohseni- Ejei.

In February, an Iranian court held a close-door trial of three detained Americans, Josh Fattal, Sarah Shourd and Shane Bauer, who were arrested in Iran on 31st July 2009 for illegally entering Iran 's western border and were later charged with espionage. The U.S. government considered the charges totally unfounded.

Iran and Russia - cooperation on Afghanistan

Iran and Russia have underlined the need for joint cooperation to help restore stability in Afghanistan ahead of a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on the war-ravaged country.

Head of the Iranian Foreign Ministry's Afghanistan Headquarters Mohsen Pak-Ayin and Russian president's special envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov met and held talks on Afghanistan, Mehr news agency reported Tuesday.

In the meeting, the two officials called for more cooperation in the campaign against drug trafficking and terrorism to help bring back security to Afghanistan. 

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British SAS seize Iranian rockets

British Special Forces in Afghanistan have seized a cache of 48 powerful Iranian rockets in an ambush from Taliban fighters. The discovery adds strong evidence of increasing support from Iran to the Taliban.

The cache of 48 rockets was hidden in three trucks and was seized after a fierce fire fight which left several insurgents dead in the remote southern province of Nimroz, on the Iran border, last month, following an intelligence tip- off.

The 122mm rockets, which were seized with 1000 rounds of rifle ammunition and 49 rocket mortars and fuses, have twice the range and twice the blast radius of the 107mm missiles used previously by the Taliban.

The rockets, which have an 80ft blast area, were analysed last week by UK specialists.

Their ID marks had been deliberately removed but the experts found they were identical to Iranian-built rockets seized in Iraq in 2007, British newspaper, The Sun, reports. 

NATO has revealed that there have been more than 1,600 anti-Taliban operations in the last month, with 1,800 insurgents captured, 500 killed and 1,005 arms caches uncovered.