Category Archives: #StopIran

38 Text Messages

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Protests planned across US to back Apple in battle with FBI

  • SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ” Protesters are preparing to assemble in more than 30 cities to lash out at the FBI for obtaining a court order that requires Apple to make it easier to unlock an encrypted iPhone used by a gunman in December’s mass shootings in Southern California.

This site has posted at least one previous article on the Islamic strain on Tablighi Jamaat, which is at the core of mosques throughout the United Kingdom and the United States.

It also must be noted that while there is an epic debate on the matter of Apple writing code to gain access to the Farook cell phone, the matter goes deeper with regard to the pathway and destination of the data on the phone meaning to iCloud and perhaps even iTunes.

REVEALED: San Bernardino Terrorist’s Mosque Cleric Exchanged ​38​ Texts With Terrorist, Claimed ‘Casual’ Relationship

The mosque at the centre of the San Bernardino terrorist attack is back in the spotlight after one of the organisation’s clerics, Roshan Abbassi, was found to have had repeated contact with terrorist Syed Farook in the months before the deadly attack which left 14 people dead and 24 people injured.

Breitbart: Mr. Abbassi and his fellow teachers at the mosque had previously claimed that they barely knew Mr. Farook, despite his repeat attendance at the Dar al Uloom al Islamiyyah mosque in San Bernardino.

The mosque is now believed to be a haven for Tablighi Jamaat activists – a fundamentalist, proselytising Islamic sect known in some circles as the “Army of Darkness”.

The New York Post reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has found repeated phone contact between Mr. Abbassi and Mr. Farook, dating back to a two week period in June – coinciding with the terrorist attack on two military sites in Chattanooga.

Mr. Abbassi – when not dodging difficult questions from Breitbart News journalists – emphasised to reporters during a press conference held just two days after attacks that he only knew Mr. Farook very casually.

He said at the time that he only exchanged pleasantries with Mr. Farook when they both attended the mosque.

“Hello, goodbye, how are you… just casual conversation… nothing more than that,” insisted Mr. Abbassi.

But FBI agents are now investigating at least 38 messages that were allegedly exchanged between the pair during a two week span in June 2015.

Mr. Abbassi was unusually hostile with reporters of all stripes when he was quizzed on radical Islam, FBI investigations, and his relationship with Mr. Farook on December 4th. When Breitbart News asked Mr. Abbassi whether he believed in an Islamic Caliphate, he refused to answer on multiple occasions.

***

When asked at the time if the FBI was investigating anyone else at the mosque, he replied, “No comment” before giving reporters a wry smile. He was then asked to clarify, to which he replied, “No comment”. After being pushed a third time, he responded brusquely: “You guys are our guests. If we have no comment, you cannot force us to have a comment thank you very much”.

***

And the stories between Mr. Abbassi and his fellow mosque leaders didn’t stack up either. One claimed that Syed Farook hadn’t attended the Dar al Uloom Islamiyah in a year, whereas Mr. Abbassi later revised this figure down to “a month”.

Mr. Abbassi also tried to blame the terrorist attack on “workplace anger”, stating: “Radicalisation? Never. In Islam there is no such thing as a radical Islam. There’s proof it was workplace anger. Proof. And everyone knows the argument that he got in with one of his people and why don’t they ever tell us what the argument was about”.

It was later reported that the argument between a coworker and Mr. Farook may indeed have been about the State of Israel, and Islam.

Speaking to other local imams, Breitbart News found a real fear of the Tablighi Jamaat sect, with one leader at the Corona-Norco mosque just a few miles away telling Breitbart reporters that the group was “dangerous” – especially for those who don’t know what they are getting involved in when attending such mosques.

“The Tablighi thing could get out of hand,” he said. “[They] sleep in the mosque… they have… the beards,” he dragged his hand further down his chin, widening his eyes.

Now, U.S. government officials think there could be up to 50,000 Tablighi Jamaat members across the United States.

Evidence from the United Kingdom, where the group practices aggressive tactics in their quest to build mega mosques across Britain suggests that security services and journalists may have ignored this ultra-orthodox sect – linked in numerous cases to terrorism – for too long.

Assistant FBI Director Michael Heimbach has said: “We have significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States,” adding that Al Qaeda has “used them for recruiting.”

Mr. Abbassi, who is of Pakistani origin, denies involvement in the San Bernardino terrorist attack, and has claimed that he was only discussing food donations for the mosque in his text exchanges with Mr. Farook.

Tablighi Jamaat members across the world are encouraged to lead extremely austere lifestyles, with members often sleeping in their mosques, and only eating food that has been donated by other followers.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security whistleblower – Philip Haney – told Breitbart News Daily that he was involved in an investigation that might have stopped the San Bernardino attack, but was stopped by the Obama administration in the name of political correctness.

Haney said: “Civil Rights and Civil Liberties shut the case down because we were focusing on individuals who belong to Tablighi Jamaat… This case actually took six years to develop… It started in 2006, and it gradually gained momentum over time. By 2008, I was interviewing twenty, thirty people a month sometimes.”

“It was exactly what DHS was created to do… We were doing what we took our oath of office to do. We were well-trained, capable subject matter experts, focused like a laser beam on a trend that was putting our country at threat.”

Earlier this month Breitbart London revealed that a family in Britain who claimed “Islamophobia” after being banned from the United States were too linked to the Tablighi Jamaat mosque in San Bernardino. Britain’s security services have yet to comment on the suspicions surrounding the family.

Pentagon Reveals SpecOps Locations in Syria to Russia

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If Russia say we are in a new Cold War, should the West believe that? Ukraine, Poland, Baltics, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua.

Warsaw-Reuters: In an interview with Reuters, Duda hit back at comments by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who last week described East-West relations as descending “into a new Cold War” and said NATO was “hostile and closed” toward Russia.

“If Mr Medvedev talks about a Cold War, then looking at Russian actions, it is clear who is seeking a new Cold War,” Duda, allied to Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) said in an interview in his presidential palace in Warsaw.

“If someone is undertaking aggressive military activities in Ukraine and Syria, if someone is bolstering his military presence near his neighbors … then we have an unequivocal answer regarding who wants to start a new Cold War. Certainly, it is not Poland or the NATO alliance.”

The West says it has satellite images, videos and other evidence that show Russia is providing weapons to anti-government rebels in Ukraine, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Russia denies such accusations.

Poland has long been one of the fiercest critics of Russian actions and PiS is especially mistrustful. It wants a summit in Warsaw this year to bolster NATO’s presence in central and east Europe by positioning troops and equipment on Polish soil.

Duda reiterated Polish ambitions for an “intensive” NATO presence on its territory to be agreed at the July summit, which would be “tantamount to a permanent presence” — an arrangement that would be assured by troop rotations. Some NATO allies are reluctant, out of concern over the cost and the further deterioration with Moscow that would be likely to result.

U.S. quietly tells Russia where American troops are located inside Syria

MilitaryTimes: The Pentagon told the Russian military where U.S. Special Forces are located in Syria with the hopes that Russian aircraft will steer clear of that area and not risk bombing American service members, top military officials said Thursday.

The disclosure reveals an expanded level of military–to-military communication and cooperation between the two countries beyond the basic “memorandum of understanding,” or MOU, that was signed in October and focused on safety protocols for air crews operating in Syrian air space.

“We provided a geographical area that we asked them to stay out of because of the risk to U.S. forces,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters Thursday.

“This was a step we took to try to maintain their safety in a dangerous situation and this was a request that we made to the Russians outside the scope of the” memorandum of understanding, Cook said.

“Up to this point, [the Russians] have honored this request,” Cook said.

The official memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Russia came in October after Russia began daily airstrikes in Syria. The agreement was limited in scope because the U.S. and Russia have sharply different military goals in Syria. The U.S. is focused on defeating Islamic State militants while Russia is conducting airstrikes mainly in support of the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In December, the U.S. began sending teams of up to 50 special operations troops into northeastern Syria to support Syrian rebel groups fighting the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

About that same time, the U.S. told Russian military officials the general location of those troops, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Brown Jr., head of U.S. Air Forces Central Command.

Cook said high-level U.S. Defense Department officials shared the information with their counterparts in the Russian Ministry of Defense. He declined to say whether the U.S. and Russia had any formal written agreement.

The U.S. has rejected some similar requests from Russia. “There have been requests made by the Russians that we have not been willing to agree to,” Cook said.

The Air Force commander said the agreement is informal.

“I don’t have any assurances, really, from the Russians. But we told them … these general areas where we have coalition forces. And we don’t want them to strike there because all it’s going to do is escalate things,” Brown told reporters in a briefing from his office in Qatar.

“The Russians have actually outlined some areas — some of the airfields that they’re worried about, that they don’t want us flying close to, and really, typically, we don’t fly there anyway. So, that hasn’t been an issue.”

The Defense Department has repeatedly cited operational security and declined to say publicly where the U.S. special operations troops are in Syria.

Several local news reports say the U.S. forces have taken over an airfield in northeastern Syria, Rmeilan Air Base in the Syrian Kurdish region near Syria’s Iraqi and Turkish borders.

In January American helicopters were at the base as local workers expanded the runway, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The airfield was until recently under control of the Syrian Kurdish forces, known as the YPG, but was turned over to the U.S. to help expand American support for the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is the loose-knit coalition of American-backed militants fighting the Islamic State group.

Hillary – Sid: There is a Hezbollah Base in Cuba

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Just for collaboration on the matter, the Justice Department published a 2014 report.

Additional Hezbollah facts.

A few years before the Obama administration removed Cuba from the U.S. list of nations that sponsor terrorism Hezbollah established an operational base on the communist island, according to intelligence received by Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State.

This Sid fella is good, but why didn’t  Hillary get the intelligence from her own State Department ops department? Did she ever really have security clearance or did she waive it and hand it over to Sidney Blumenthal? (snarky)

JW: The information comes straight from electronic mail released by the State Department over the weekend as part of ongoing litigation from several groups, including Judicial Watch, and media outlets surrounding Clinton’s use of a private server to send and receive classified information as Secretary of State. This alarming information has been ignored by the mainstream media, which served as the president’s most vocal cheerleader when he established diplomatic ties with Cuba last summer. After appearing for decades on the U.S. government’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism, the Obama administration officially removed it to lay the groundwork for a full renewal of diplomatic ties.

Nevertheless, the administration knew that the radical Lebanon-based Islamic group Hezbollah had opened a base in Cuba, just 90 miles from the U.S, a few years earlier. In a cable dated September 9, 2011 Clinton is informed that “extremely sensitive sources reported in confidence that the Israeli Intelligence and Security Service (Mossad) has informed the leadership of the Israeli Government that Hezbollah is establishing an operational base in Cuba, designed to support terrorist attacks throughout Latin America.” The cable goes on to say that “the Hezbollah office in Cuba is being established under direct orders from the current General Secretary Hasan Nasrallah, who replaced Musawi in 1992. According to the information available to this source, in preparation for establishment of the base, Nasrallah, working from inside of Lebanon, carried out secret negotiations with representatives of the Cuban Government, particularly the Cuban Intelligence Service (General Intelligence Directorate — DGI), agreeing to , maintain a very low profile inside of Cuba. Nasrallah also promised to take measures to avoid any trail of evidence that could lead back to Cuba in the event of a Hezbollah attack in Latin America.”

Obama’s report to Congress indicating his intent to rescind Cuba’s State Sponsor of Terrorism designation included a certification that Cuba had not provided any support for international terrorism during the previous six-months. It also claimed that Cuba had provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future. This was May, 2015 when the State Department announced the island nation was officially off the terrorist list because it “meets the statutory criteria for rescission.” In the announcement the agency also wrote this: “While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a State Sponsor of Terrorism designation.” The new Clinton email creates a number of questions relating to the agency’s abrupt move to clear Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism.

Hezbollah’s involvement in Latin America is nothing new and in fact Judicial Watch has been reporting it for years. In 2013 JW published a story about Hezbollah infiltrating the southwest U.S. border by joining forces with Mexican drug cartels that have long operated in the region. The recently released Clinton email, states that a “particularly sensitive source” confirmed that in the 1980s Hezbollah carried out similar contingency casing operations against U.S., British, and Israeli facilities and businesses in Latin America, Europe and North Africa. In 1992 Islamic Jihad, acting on behalf of Hezbollah, bombed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina in retaliation for the death of Hezbollah General Secretary Abbas al-Musawi, the email says.

A few years before the Obama administration removed Cuba from the U.S. list of nations that sponsor terrorism Hezbollah established an operational base on the communist island, according to intelligence received by Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State.

The information comes straight from electronic mail released by the State Department over the weekend as part of ongoing litigation from several groups, including Judicial Watch, and media outlets surrounding Clinton’s use of a private server to send and receive classified information as Secretary of State. This alarming information has been ignored by the mainstream media, which served as the president’s most vocal cheerleader when he established diplomatic ties with Cuba last summer. After appearing for decades on the U.S. government’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism, the Obama administration officially removed it to lay the groundwork for a full renewal of diplomatic ties.

Nevertheless, the administration knew that the radical Lebanon-based Islamic group Hezbollah had opened a base in Cuba, just 90 miles from the U.S, a few years earlier. In a cable dated September 9, 2011 Clinton is informed that “extremely sensitive sources reported in confidence that the Israeli Intelligence and Security Service (Mossad) has informed the leadership of the Israeli Government that Hezbollah is establishing an operational base in Cuba, designed to support terrorist attacks throughout Latin America.” The cable goes on to say that “the Hezbollah office in Cuba is being established under direct orders from the current General Secretary Hasan Nasrallah, who replaced Musawi in 1992. According to the information available to this source, in preparation for establishment of the base, Nasrallah, working from inside of Lebanon, carried out secret negotiations with representatives of the Cuban Government, particularly the Cuban Intelligence Service (General Intelligence Directorate — DGI), agreeing to , maintain a very low profile inside of Cuba. Nasrallah also promised to take measures to avoid any trail of evidence that could lead back to Cuba in the event of a Hezbollah attack in Latin America.”

Obama’s report to Congress indicating his intent to rescind Cuba’s State Sponsor of Terrorism designation included a certification that Cuba had not provided any support for international terrorism during the previous six-months. It also claimed that Cuba had provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future. This was May, 2015 when the State Department announced the island nation was officially off the terrorist list because it “meets the statutory criteria for rescission.” In the announcement the agency also wrote this: “While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a State Sponsor of Terrorism designation.” The new Clinton email creates a number of questions relating to the agency’s abrupt move to clear Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism.

Hezbollah’s involvement in Latin America is nothing new and in fact Judicial Watch has been reporting it for years. In 2013 JW published a story about Hezbollah infiltrating the southwest U.S. border by joining forces with Mexican drug cartels that have long operated in the region. The recently released Clinton email, states that a “particularly sensitive source” confirmed that in the 1980s Hezbollah carried out similar contingency casing operations against U.S., British, and Israeli facilities and businesses in Latin America, Europe and North Africa. In 1992 Islamic Jihad, acting on behalf of Hezbollah, bombed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina in retaliation for the death of Hezbollah General Secretary Abbas al-Musawi, the email says.

 

c 05782918 – FOIA State Cuba Hezbollah by Jason I. Poblete

Libya: Operation Sophia, When?

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Operation Sophia

Tackling the refugee crisis with military means

by Thierry Tardy

The EU anti-migrant smuggling operation in the Mediterranean sea – known as ‘EUNAVFOR Med’ or ‘Operation Sophia’ – is now entering its operational phase, aimed at boarding and seizing on the high seas vessels suspected of being used for human smuggling and trafficking. This follows a first phase of intelligence gathering on smuggling networks and is intended to precede operations due to take place within the territorial waters of Libya as well as coercive actions against the smugglers – including on Libyan soil.

This military component of the EU response to the migrant and refugee crisis is innovative in different ways. Following the anti-piracy operation in the Gulf of Aden (Atalanta), EUNAVFOR Med confirms the maritime dimension of CSDP in the management of new types of security threats. The operation also brings CSDP closer to the EU internal security portfolio and its Freedom, Security and Justice (FSJ) agenda. Full document here.

 

New Leak Expose EU Plan For Military Engagment In Libya

According to the operation’s commander, it’s a question of when, not if, the EU will enter Libya.

MintPress/Vice: The European Union is planning an extension of its military operation against human traffickers, known as Sophia, which could eventually include sending ground troops to war-torn Libya. According to a confidential document shared with VICE Alps and with Wikileaks by a highly-placed source in a EU member nation, who requested anonymity, the Sophia mission is ready to move into Libyan territorial waters to stop people smugglers there, but it will not do so until it is invited by Libyan authorities.

However, Libya does not have a unified national authority that can extend such an invitation, torn as it is between two rival governments and other armed groups.

The document, a report addressed to the European Union Military Committee as well as the Political and Security Committee and written by the Italian officer commanding the Sophia force, also makes mentions of a “phase 3” of the operation. That may refer to the eventual presence of EU troops in Libya — again, once a national government to work with has been estabilished.

The report by rear admiral Enrico Credendino, dated January 29, explains that the mission has been since last October in phase 2A, using 16 ships and aircraft from various EU nations to stop smugglers in international waters. Credendino calls that mission a success, saying his force has arrested 46 smugglers and destroyed 67 boats. People on the boats are rescued and taken to refugee centers generally located in Italy.

46 smugglers in custody may not seem like a large number in a crisis that has brought almost a million people to Europe last year, but according to the report, the Sophia operation has had a profound effect. Smugglers now choose to transport most people towards the European Union from the east through Greece instead of Libya, where Sophia is focused.

“Prior to the start of the operation there was an even split between the people using the central route and the eastern route, whereas now 16% (of) migrants use the central route, with almost 83% of migrants using the eastern route,” the report says, referencing the smuggling corridors through Libya and Southeastern Europe respectively.

“From a military perspective, I am ready to move to phase 2B in Libyan Territorial Waters,” Credendino wrote in the report. That would mean moving closer to the Libyan coast to arrest smugglers, “but there are a number of political and legal challenges that must be addressed before I can recommend such a transition,” the officer wrote.

Until there is a legal decision on “our powers to apprehend suspected smugglers in Territorial Waters and who will prosecute any suspected smugglers detained there,” the European forces (22 out of 28 EU nations are contributing) will stay out of Libyan waters.

According to the operation’s commander, it’s a question of when, not if, Sophia will move to Libya.

“When Operation SOPHIA progresses into phases 2B and 3, the smugglers will again most likely adapt quickly to the changing situation,” Credendino wrote. “Following the progress of Op SOPHIA into Libyan TTW or onto Libyan soil there will possibly be a greater risk of smugglers trying to counter the operation’s efforts in order to secure in their income from the activity,” he added, indicating that there are indeed plans for a possible move onto Libyan soil.

But the operation cannot do that until it has more ships and aircraft — which Credendino wrote in the report he would request this month — and most of all until there’s a government with the authority to ask the European forces to come to Libya.

Right now there are two rival bodies in the country, resulting from the 2014 election that has followed the toppling of Muammar Ghadafi’s regime in 2011. The internationally-recognized parliament is based in Tobruk, in the east, while the capital Tripoli hosts another one where Islamist factions dominate and which also claims to be the legitimate parliament. Adding to those entities and the forces they control is the Islamic State group, which has existed in Libya since 2014, originally in Derna where local militias pledged allegiance to it, and now in Sirte, a major city which the group now says is its Libyan capital. The United Nations has brokered a peace deal between the two rival parliaments, but a national unity government is nowhere near yet.

An image of the Sophia report from EUNAVFOR MED, the acronym of “European Union Naval Forces in the Mediterranean”  

According to the EU source, both combating local authorities have said they would not tolerate a possible European operation on Libyan soil.

A way to get an invitation would be, the report said, to offer training for the Libyan Navy and Coast guard, through which “we will be able to give the Libyan authorities something in exchange for their cooperation in tackling the irregular migration issue. This collaboration could represent one of the elements of the EU comprehensive approach to help secure their invitation to operate inside their territory during Phase 2 activities.”

“Moreover, training together during phase 2 could also be a key enabler to build confidence and facilitate the conduct of Phase 3 operations jointly with the Libyan authorities,” Credendino wrote.

The EU source claimed, however, that according to Frontex, the European Union agency in charge of the EU’s external borders, training Libyan naval forces and the local Coast Guard would actually mean training the leaders of the smuggling networks.

Spy Service: North Korea is Preparing Attacks

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Washington (AFP) – US President Barack Obama on Thursday signed off on new sanctions against North Korea to punish the reclusive Asian nation for its provocative recent nuclear test and rocket launch.

The White House said Obama had signed measures passed by Congress, tightening sanctions on anyone importing goods or technology related to weapons of mass destruction into North Korea, or anyone who knowingly engaged in human rights abuses.

“The administration is deeply concerned about North Korea’s actions and their recent provocations,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest before Obama signed the legislation.

Earnest said the White House hoped the sanctions will “serve to increase pressure on North Korea. That is a goal that Congress stated and it’s a goal that we share.”

The measure also heaps additional financial pressure on the already-sanctioned regime of leader Kim Jong-Un, by aiming at cutting down on money laundering and narcotics trafficking, two major illicit activities believed to be funneling millions of dollars into Kim’s inner circle.

Pyongyang shocked the world last month and earned a global rebuke when it announced it had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.

On Sunday, it defiantly launched a satellite-bearing rocket, a move the West sees as a cover for a ballistic missile test in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

Under the bill, penalties for the sanctionable activities would include the seizure of assets, visa bans and denial of government contracts.

Seoul’s spy service says North Korea is preparing attacks

Stripes: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently ordered preparations for launching attacks on South Korea, the South’s spy agency disclosed Thursday, as worries about the North grow after its recent nuclear test and rocket launch.

In a closed-door briefing to ruling Saenuri Party members, the National Intelligence Service said Kim’s spy agency has begun work to implement his order to “actively muster capabilities” to carry out cyber and other attacks on South Korea, according to one Saenuri official who attended the meeting.

North Korea has a history of attacks on South Korea, such as the 2010 shelling on an island that killed four South Koreans and the 1987 bombing of a South Korean passenger plane that killed all 115 people on board. But it is impossible to independently confirm claims about any such attack preparations.

The Saenuri official refused to say whether the briefing discussed how the information was obtained. The NIS, which has a mixed record on predicting developments in North Korea, said it could not confirm its reported assessment.

During the briefing, the NIS, cited studies on past North Korean provocations and other unspecified assessments and said the attacks could target anti-Pyongyang activists, defectors and government officials in South Korea, the Saenuri official said requesting anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to media publicly.

Attacks on subways, shopping malls and other public places could also happen, he said.

The official quoted the NIS as saying North Korea could launch poisoning attacks on the activists and defectors, or lure them to China where they would be kidnapped.

The current North Korea standoff isn’t expected to calm down soon, as Seoul and Washington are discussing deploying a sophisticated U.S. missile defense system in South Korea that Pyongyang warns would be a source of regional tension.

The allies also say their upcoming annual springtime military drills will be the largest ever. The North says the drills are preparation to stage a northward invasion.

  

Seoul defense officials also said that they began preliminary talks on Feb. 7 with the United States on deploying the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, the same day North Korea conducted what it said was a satellite launch but is condemned by Seoul and Washington as a banned test of missile technology.

The talks are aimed at working out details for formal missile deployment talks, such as who’ll represent each side, according to Seoul’s Defense Ministry.

The deployment is opposed by China and Russia too. Opponents say the system could help U.S. radar spot missiles in other countries.

The United States on Wednesday flew four stealth F-22 fighter jets over South Korea and reaffirmed it maintains an “ironclad commitment” to the defense of its Asian ally. Last month, it sent a nuclear-capable B-52 bomber to South Korea following the North’s fourth nuclear test.

Foreign analysts say the North’s rocket launch and nuclear test put the country further along it its quest for a nuclear-armed missile that could reach the U.S. mainland.