Highlights of Ettela’at newspaper on Nov. 23

♦ The violent crimes of terrorist groups have nothing to do with Islam, said the Supreme Leader in a meeting with Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.

The Leader further said that security, welfare and progress in neighboring countries and Islamic states serve the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ayatollah Khamenei: The brutal crimes committed by the terrorist groups, including beheading or burning people alive, show that they are detached from Islam.

♦ The volume of trade between Iran and Turkmenistan will hit the $ 60b mark, said President Rouhani in a joint meeting of Iran-Turkmenistan high-ranking officials.

Iran and Turkmenistan can have more cooperation in the fight against terrorism, drugs trafficking and organized crime.

♦ The electoral process for the Assembly of Experts and the Islamic Consultative Assembly will open on December 11.

Secretary of the Electoral Commission Ali Pour-Ali Motlagh has said that registration for the Assembly of Experts and parliament starts on December 17 and 19 respectively.

♦ Iran will stage a massive naval drill – codenamed Velayat – in winter.

Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari has said that the Iranian naval forces have successfully countered pirates and protected the country’s tankers and cargo ships in high seas.

♦ A commemoration ceremony was held in Kerman to honor Ata Ahmadi [a philanthropist who has built more than 250 schools, old people’s homes and residential centers and contributed to road projects in Kerman Province].

Messages by Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, Seyyed Mohammad Khatami and the education minister were read out in the ceremony. Ata Ahmadi was a no-show in the ceremony because he did not approve of the event in the first place.

Mahmoud Doaei [the head of Ettela’at newspaper]: If I wanted to follow the example of certain individuals, Ata would be one of them.

♦ The number of divorced women who have turned into breadwinners of their family is on the rise, said the State Welfare Organization.

A deputy director of the Welfare Organization has said that there are as many as 1,500 hotbeds in the country for which only 170 social centers are active.

♦ A deputy health minister has said that a diabetes academy will be launched [in the country] in the near future.

Mohammad Bagher Larijani further said that diabetics account for six percent of the country’s population.

♦ Iran’s principles to solve the Syrian crisis

Recent developments, including two conferences in Vienna, Austria, have put the Syrian crisis on a new track, creating a ray of hope for the first time that one of the biggest human tragedies of our time might come to an end.

Respect for the nations’ right to self-determination, opposition to imposition of the will of foreign players on independent nations, and opposition to arbitrary use of terrorism as a means to secure political objectives are the guiding principles of Iran’s Syria policy, said Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in an opinion piece Ettela’at daily published on Monday November 23.

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