Joschka Fischer

BERLIN, March 5--German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer warned against a deterioration of situation in the volatile Middle East region, if talks between Europe’s Big3 and Iran over the latter’s nuclear activities were to fail.
“If our discussions with Iran prove a success, then there is hope that we are moving in the right direction and the region’s future prospect is promising,“ Fischer told the Saturday issue of the Frankfurter Rundschau.
He said the Middle East situation will reach either of the extreme ends by the yearend.
“The situation in the Middle East remains a global challenge and I have never before experienced such a challenge in this region,“ he said.
Emphasizing that conditions are highly unpredictable, the German minister said no one could imagine France and the US working so closely and forming a united front vis-ˆ-vis Syria and have Germany’s unconditional support.
Fischer said there is a possibility of the Israel-Palestine conflict resuming and recent developments in Lebanon and Iraq taking a turn for the worse.

ZAGREB, Croatia, March 5--Iranian President Mohammad Khatami is to visit Croatia and Bosnia next week, officials said Friday.
During his two-day visit to Croatia, due to start on Monday, Khatami will hold talks with his Croatian counterpart, Stipe Mesic, who visited Iran in June 2001, and other officials, AFP reported.
Accords on economic, scientific and cultural cooperation are expected to be signed during the visit, in which Khatami is scheduled to give a lecture at the Croatian academy of sciences and arts.
Khatami would then travel to the neighboring former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia, although details of this trip have not been announced.

WASHINGTON, March, 5--United States is considering a more aggressive effort to foster opposition inside Iran and seeking ways to use a new $3-million fund to support activists without exposing them to the risk of arrest.
The approach would represent a change since President George W. Bush’s first term, when the administration was more wary of such moves, officials said, Latimes.com reported.
“We can now be much more aggressive [about Iran] than we had been,“ a senior official said, hailing the arrival of Condoleezza Rice at the State Department as invigorating the president’s push for democracy.
“The guys at the State Department were too afraid to try anything during the first term,“ the official said on condition of anonymity. “They were extremely cautious about angering the system in Tehran.“
The more aggressive approach is being considered even while Bush moves toward supporting a plan created by France, Germany and Britain to offer Iran economic incentives to forgo nuclear weapons. Bush discussed the issue with Rice on Thursday.
Iran contends that its nuclear energy program is peaceful, but the US and European officials have charged that it may be reserving a nuclear weapons option.
Among the proposals being floated by some inside and outside government is one to fund activists in Iran who want to start opposition parties and labor unions, or people who are able to travel in and out of the country. Also under consideration is increasing funding for pro-democracy broadcasts.
The question of how to implement Bush’s inaugural pledge to spread freedom has taken on urgency since Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) added $3 million to a recently approved spending bill specifically to promote democracy in Iran. Officials are weighing ideas for the money, a State Department official said.
“There are some that want to engage in a more confrontational democratization effort within Iran,“ he said.
Moreover, the CIA has been reluctant to get involved in covert action there, he said. “They’ve gone down that road before, and it’s been a mixed bag.“
The United States is already spending $14.7 million a year to broadcast Persian-language radio and television programs into Iran, and the White House is seeking a sharp increase in such funding.

TEHRAN, March 5--Head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) Gholamreza Aqazadeh said on Saturday gaining access to nuclear technology and its development are unavoidable.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the International Conference on Nuclear Energy and Sustainable Development, Aqazadeh added that human prosperity in the coming decades depends upon correct use of modern knowledge and resources.
“Self-deprivation is not approved by any criterion,“ he said, stressing the use of nuclear technology in medical, agricultural and industrial fields.
He pointed to exploitation of national resources, development of nuclear energy, production and supply of nuclear fuel and construction of heavy-water reactors for production of electricity and medical isotopes as the main requirements of the country for achieving sustainable development in 20 years.
He referred to gaining self-sufficiency in all aspects, particularly in the modern technology sector, as the main factor behind sustainable and long-term development.
Aqazadeh noted that development of nuclear technology in the current decade has been the result of efforts made by Iranian intellectuals.
The ceremony was attended by Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rohani, ambassadors in Tehran and foreign nuclear experts.
The conference, which is held at State Expediency Council’s Strategic Research Center, will conclude its work on Sunday with the delivery of the closing speech by SEC Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Rachel Mayanja

Zahra Shojaei

TEHRAN, March 5--Iran has endeavored to improve women’s conditions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution without waiting to join the UN Women’s Convention, the presidential advisor on women issues said on Friday.
In a meeting with Rachel Mayanja, UN secretary-general’s advisor on gender issues and advancement of women, Zahra Shojaei elaborated on improvement of women’s status in the post-revolution era, especially after President Khatami’s landslide victory in May 1997, IRNA reported.
Asked about violence against Iranian women, Shojaei said Iran’s national body in charge of women is seriously following up cases of violence against women.
“One of our efforts is to institutionalize women’s affairs and oblige governments to follow up women-related issues,“ she said.
Mayanja, for her part, expressed her readiness for mutual collaboration between the UN and Iran.
Shojaei attended the 49th meeting of UN Commission on Status of Women in New York.

NEW DELHI, India, March 5--Three Iranian nationals were arrested at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi on Friday for allegedly smuggling saffron, Press Trust of India reported.
The men were detained by Indian Customs officials last evening when they arrived on a flight from Dubai, IRNA reported.
They were trying to smuggle 118 kilograms of saffron, whose market value is 4 million Indian rupees in the international market, through the Green Channel.
The Indian authorities have remanded the accused in custody.

TEHRAN, March 5--President Mohammad Khatami said the experience of Islamic Revolution proved that democratic Islam provided a safe haven for the Iranian nation to attain freedom, independence and progress.
In his message to the International Seminar on Women in Iran’s Contemporary History which opened in the northwestern provincial capital city of Zanjan Saturday, President Khatami stated that Iranian women proved themselves to be talented and capable human beings by relying on their Islamic identity, IRNA reported.
He described holding of the seminar as an appropriate and scientific measure that focused on the role of Iranian women at the two significant junctures of Constitutional Movement and Islamic Revolution in the country’s history.
The president also regretted that though Iranian women have manifested their capabilities and strength, they have suffered different forms of discrimination.
Khatami further said the present growth rate enjoyed by Iranian Muslim women will move the country toward all-out and sustainable development.

BERLIN, March 5--A former German general warned the United States against attacking Iran, pointing to Iran’s military strength in withstanding a military aggression.
“The Americans are hopefully wise enough to know that they should not get involved in a warlike confrontation with a powerful country like Iran,“ said retired German general Manfred Eisele in an interview with IRNA in Berlin on Saturday, IRNA reported.
“Therefore, the Americans will do everything to avoid what could lead to the entry of American soldiers into Iranian territory. I am sure that military and political advisors in Washington are urgently dissuading against a military action in Iran,“ he added.
Asked about NATO’s possible support for a US attack on Iran, Eisele said he could not imagine that the western defense pact would join a possible US attack on Iran.
American President George W. Bush has continuously refused to rule out the military option in Iran.
Meanwhile, the Neath branch of Stop the War Coalition (SWC) in Wales is holding a meeting next Tuesday to add its local voice to the international opposition to US-led military threats against Iran.
“The US administration has piled the pressure on both Iran and Syria while Israel, already a nuclear weapons power, has threatened Iran,“ said Alan Thompson of Neath SWC, IRNA reported.
In a letter to the local Evening Post in south Wales, he also warned that former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has already claimed Bush had “signed off“ plans to bomb Iran in June.
“All this makes the March 19 global day of protest against the occupation of Iraq all the more crucial,“ Thompson said in reference to the mass peace rallies being held around the world to mark the second anniversary of the US-UK invasion.
SWC, which organized the biggest-ever anti-war demonstration in London two years ago, wants the US stopped in its relentless war drive as well as for the US and UK to withdraw their troops from Iraq.
“The US war drive goes on regardless. In Iraq, US troops have surrounded the city of Ramadi pending a full-scale assault,“ Thompson warned.
SWC is calling on supporters in the network of peace groups to make the demonstration in the British capital as big as possible later this month.
“With rumors of an attack on Iran in June and the demonstration being a matter of weeks before the general election, it would be fantastic to have many hundreds of thousands of people expressing their anti-war sentiments,“ it says on its webpage.