1037 GMT: Foreign Affairs Watch (Syrian Front). Senior Revolutionary Guards official Hossein Taeb has declared that Iran has a responsibility to back the Assad regime, "We all have a responsibility to support Syria and not allow the line of resistance to be broken."
Taeb, a former head of the Basij militia, said a legislative committee would visit Syria to strengthen bilateral relations and consult officials.
1030 GMT: The House Path. The Green Messengers of Hope is the latest group of activists to call on delegates attending the Non-Align Movement summit to raise the case of detained opposition figures Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, asking Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi --- the nominal head of this week's proceedings --- to enquire about the situation of the two men.
Mousavi and Karroubi have been held under strict house arrest since February 2011. On Thursday, Mousavi was hospitalised for 24 hours with heart problems, returning to his detention after a stent was put in a heart vein.
1000 GMT: Iran has been signalling for weeks that it will use the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran, scheduled for 26-31 August, as the display case for its leadership. The Islamic Republic --- facing the economic tensions at home, pressure over its nuclear programme, and the effects of the Syrian crisis --- is trying to counter its isolation with the message that it is in the vanguard of the fight against Western domination.
This morning's headline is the statement by Mohammed Reza Forghani, the official supervising the preparations for the Summit, that "senior experts" will arrive today, with Foreign Ministers showing up on Mondays and some heads of states making an appearance on Wednesday. He emphasised that the Presidents of Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Ghana and the Indian Prime Minister would be among those attending.
Forghani was so keen to emphasise the high level of the delegates that he declared that the head of state of North Korea would be present. However, this is not the country's leader Kim Jong-Un, who was wrongly said by Iranian media to have accepted an invitation, but the head of Parliament.
The challenge for the Islamic Republic, however, is to convert next week's show into something more than short-term propaganda, and other headlines point to the scale of the task. Beyond the rather mundane "NAM Set to Put Economic Role on Agenda" and "NAM Summit, Chance to Resolve Regional, Global Issues", Press TV gives away Iran's concern: "US [Has] Failed to Make Changes in Syria".
Posted via email from lissping
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