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/ 22 August 2006

Iran seen rejecting key demand in atomic package

Iran is due to give its reply on Tuesday to a package backed by six world powers that aims to end a nuclear stand-off with the West and Iranian officials say Iran does not accept the key demand to suspend uranium enrichment. Refusing to suspend the work that has both military and civilian uses would be tantamount to rejecting the package of incentives offered in return, Western diplomats say.

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/ 20 July 2006

Iran determined to stick with nuclear programme

Iran said on Thursday it was determined to produce nuclear fuel on its territory in defiance of international calls to halt the work, and accused the United States of trying to prevent a negotiated solution to its dispute with the West. ”Based on law, Iran has planned to produce 20 000MW of nuclear electricity in the next 20 years,” chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said.

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/ 2 July 2006

Iran rejects deadline for nuclear response

Iran on Sunday rejected a deadline to respond to an international offer aimed at resolving a nuclear stand-off, saying it would answer during the next Iranian month which begins July 23. ”A deadline is not an issue. We think such statements are not constructive and they will not help resolve the problem,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

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/ 26 June 2006

Iran: More money needed to fight drugs … or else

Iran has threatened to allow traffickers to flood Europe with narcotics unless its costly border-security operation is given a massive hike in United Nations funding. The Islamic republic’s new anti-drugs head said Iran had asked the UN Office on Drugs and Crime for a hefty -million in order to combat smugglers from neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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/ 15 June 2006

Iran’s Khamenei rejects nuclear suspension

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.

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/ 10 June 2006

Iraq tries to mediate in Iran nuclear crisis

Iraqi Vice-President Adel Abdel Mahdi has met Iran’s top nuclear negotiator in Tehran in a bid to help mediate an end to Iran’s nuclear crisis, a source close to the Iraqi leader said on Saturday. He said the meeting with Ali Larijani took place on Friday, a day after Abdel Hadi met in Baghdad with the ambassadors of Britain, France and Germany.

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/ 18 May 2006

Iran: Countries opposing us have ‘mental problems’

Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday mocked countries that are against Iran’s controversial nuclear programme as suffering from mental problems, the ISNA student news agency said. ”Those [countries] who get upset at the happiness and progress of others are suffering from a mental problem and should find a way to cure themselves,” Ahmadinejad said.

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/ 17 May 2006

Iranian president ridicules European nuclear offer

Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday ridiculed a European Union plan to offer trade and technology incentives in exchange for his country agreeing to halt sensitive nuclear work. ”They think they can take away our gold and give us some nuts and chocolate in exchange,” Ahmadinejad told a rally in the town of Arak.

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/ 14 May 2006

Iran to reject any offer to halt nuclear programme

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday said that any new deal offered by European powers to halt Iran’s civilian nuclear activities will be rejected, state news agency Irna reported. ”Any offer which requires us to halt our peaceful nuclear activities will be invalid,” Ahmadinejad said after returning from a five-day visit to Indonesia.

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/ 2 May 2006

Iran achieves higher uranium enrichment level

Iran has managed to enrich uranium up to 4,8% purity, the head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization said on Tuesday, as envoys of the main world powers met in Paris to discuss how to halt the sensitive nuclear fuel work. Iran had already announced last month that it had enriched uranium to 3,6% purity, sufficient to produce reactor fuel.

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/ 26 April 2006

Iran: Single women still barred from sporting events

A senior Iranian sports official said on Wednesday that a presidential order to end a ban on women spectators in stadiums did not apply to unmarried females. ”The plan to have women in stadiums is merely for families. It does not consider single women. They are still banned from entering stadiums,” said Mohammad Aliabadi, the head of Iran’s physical education organisation.

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/ 24 April 2006

Iran defies UN on nuclear drive

Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday rejected a United Nations Security Council demand to halt sensitive nuclear work and warned that the Islamic republic could quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In a show of defiance just days away from a Friday deadline set by the Security Council for Iran to freeze uranium enrichment, Ahmadinejad confidently dismissed the threat of sanctions.

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/ 24 April 2006

Iran: US attack would end in ‘disgraceful defeat’

Iran’s defence minister warned the United States on Monday it would suffer a ”disgraceful defeat” if it took military action against the Islamic republic, the official Irna news agency reported. ”If the US chooses the military option, a disgraceful defeat worse than the failure in Tabas desert awaits them,” Mostafa Mohammad Najar said, referring to a failed US attempt in 1980 to rescue American hostages in the seized US embassy in Tehran.

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/ 11 April 2006

Iran will ‘soon join’ world nuclear club

Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that the Islamic republic will ”soon join the club of countries that have nuclear technology”, state television reported. The announcement came 15 days before the expiry of a United Nations Security Council deadline for Iran to slam the brakes on its uranium enrichment programme.

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/ 31 March 2006

Iran successfully tests new missile

Iran’s paramilitary revolutionary guards (IRGC) said on Friday that a new missile was successfully tested during a naval manoeuvre, the news network Khabar reported. The IRCG air-force commander, General Hossein Salami, told Khabar that the new missile was among ”Iran’s new missile generation” and more modern than the previous Iranian missile types.

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/ 31 March 2006

Several deaths reported in Iran quake

At least 38 people were killed when a powerful earthquake struck western Iran before dawn on Friday, wiping out villages and sending panicked residents fleeing from their homes. Another 700 people were also injured in the quake, which hit the province of Lorestan near the border with Iraq with a force of six on the Richter scale, officials said.

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/ 2 March 2006

Two hanged publicly in Iran

Two men convicted of carrying out a deadly a bomb attack in Iran’s restive oil city of Ahvaz were executed in public early on Thursday, state media announced. The two men — Ali Affrawi and Mehdi Navasseri — were hanged at the scene of their crime, committed last October.

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/ 31 January 2006

Iran warns of end to nuclear diplomacy

Iran warned on Tuesday that the referral of a dispute over its nuclear programme to the United Nations Security Council will bring ”an end to diplomacy”, saying the move had no legal justification. Foreign ministers of the five permanent UN Security Council members agreed in London on Monday to bring Iran before the council over its nuclear programme.

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/ 25 January 2006

German, French pair get 18 months in Iran jail

An Iranian court has jailed two men from France and Germany for 18 months for illegally entering the Islamic republic’s Gulf waters, as the government insisted the case was not linked to mounting tensions with Europe. ”The verdict is imprisonment. They also face another accusation,” said Justice Minister Jamal Karimi-Rad.

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/ 24 January 2006

Bombs kill six in south-western Iran

Bombs killed six people and wounded several others in the south-western city of Ahvaz on Tuesday, Iranian state television reported. Fire engines and ambulances rushed to the site of the explosions, a state environmental agency building and a bank in Ahvaz, the capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province.

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/ 10 January 2006

Iran resumes nuclear research work

Iran on Tuesday reopened nuclear research centres to resume sensitive work after a two-year suspension despite warnings from the West of possible United Nations sanctions. In Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran removed seals at its Natanz atomic research facility.