Aresu Eqbali

Parliament speaker Ali Larijani, Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator, accused United States President Barack Obama of state terrorism on Wednesday.

Iran's embattled President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appealed to Parliament on Sunday to approve his new Cabinet.

Defeated Iran presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has appeared in public for the first time since an election that has divided the nation.

An Iranian court began hearing an appeal on Sunday by jailed US-Iranian reporter Roxana Saberi who has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Iran was not to blame for the disappointment expressed by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana after key talks in London on the nuclear crisis failed, chief negotiator Saeed Jalili said on Saturday. Solana said on Friday he was ''disappointed'' after the last-ditch talks in London failed to produce a breakthrough.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Holocaust may have been invented by the victorious Allied powers in World War II to embarrass Germany, the semi-official news agency Mehr reported on Monday.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday his country would not bow to pressure over its nuclear programme, implicitly rejecting international calls to suspend enrichment. ''The Islamic Republic of Iran will not bend to these pressures,'' he said, referring to proposals drawn up to defuse the nuclear crisis.

Iran said on Thursday it is open to nuclear talks with the West but that technology was not up for discussion, amid rising hopes for a breakthrough in the stand-off over its controversial nuclear aims. "We will negotiate about common concerns and for clearing up misunderstandings in the international atmosphere," said hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A landmark letter from Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to United States President George Bush carries with it little hope of an end to decades of animosity, many ordinary Iranians commented on Tuesday. Several people believed the content of the message may only make matters worse.