UN Team to Access Myanmar's Rakhine for 1st Time

Rohingya Muslims, who recently crossed over from Myanmar, carry food items across from Bangladesh's border towards no man's land where they have set up refugee camps, in Tombru, Bangladesh. AP
Rohingya Muslims, who recently crossed over from Myanmar, carry food items across from Bangladesh's border towards no man's land where they have set up refugee camps, in Tombru, Bangladesh. AP
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UN Team to Access Myanmar's Rakhine for 1st Time

Rohingya Muslims, who recently crossed over from Myanmar, carry food items across from Bangladesh's border towards no man's land where they have set up refugee camps, in Tombru, Bangladesh. AP
Rohingya Muslims, who recently crossed over from Myanmar, carry food items across from Bangladesh's border towards no man's land where they have set up refugee camps, in Tombru, Bangladesh. AP

Representatives of UN agencies will be permitted to visit Rakhine state in Myanmar on Thursday for the first time since the start of a massive exodus of minority Rohingya Muslims in August.

"There will be a trip organized by the government, probably tomorrow, to Rakhine," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.

"We hope above all that it is a first step toward much freer and wider access to the area," he said at his daily news briefing.

He said the chiefs of UN agencies would take part in the trip.

The UN has drawn up a contingency plan to feed up to 700,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, and warned that those who fled will not be returning home soon.

"All the UN agencies together have now set a plan for a new influx of 700,000. We can cover if the new influx reaches 700,000," the World Food Program's deputy chief in Bangladesh, Dipayan Bhattacharyya, said on Wednesday.

UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi said that for those who have fled to Bangladesh - nearly half a million Rohingya refugees - "return will take time, if it happens, if the violence stops."

The International Organization for Migration has estimated that there are more than 800,000 Rohingya currently in Bangladesh, including those who fled Myanmar before the latest crisis.  

Desperately needing more help, Bangladesh’s junior health minister Zahid Malek said Dhaka has sought US$250 million from the World Bank to provide healthcare to the Rohingya.



French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
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French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)

France's intelligence chief said on Tuesday that all aspects of Iran's nuclear program have been pushed back several months after American and Israeli air strikes, but there is uncertainty over where its highly-enriched uranium stocks are.

"The Iranian nuclear program is the material, it is highly-enriched uranium, it is a capacity to convert this uranium from the gaseous phase to the solid phase. It is the manufacturing of the core and it is the delivery," Nicolas Lerner, who heads the DGSE intelligence service, told LCI television.

"Our assessment today is that each of these stages has been very seriously affected, very seriously damaged and that the nuclear program, as we knew it, has been extremely delayed, probably many months."

Lerner, who was speaking for the first time on national television, said a small part of Iran's highly-enriched uranium stockpile had been destroyed, but the rest remained in the hands of the authorities.

"Today we have indications (on where it is), but we cannot say with certainty as long as the IAEA does not restart its work. It's very important. We won't have the capacity to trace it (the stocks)," Lerner said.

Other intelligence assessments have also suggested that Iran retains a hidden stockpile of enriched uranium and the technical capacity to rebuild.

Lerner echoed those comments saying there was a possibility Iran could press ahead with a clandestine program with smaller enrichment capacities.

"That's why France is so attached to finding a diplomatic solution to this nuclear crisis," he said.