TEHRAN, May 23--Researchers at the University of Tehran have built two types of micro-submarines, the project director said Wednesday.
Aqil Yousefi-Koma added that the two submarines can be used in reconnaissance and rescue operations as well as for monitoring the health of marine structures and suicide bombing, ISNA reported.
Yousefi-Koma said these submarines can also simulate the movement of marine animals.
“Today, robots and underwater vehicles are devised by simulating aquatic animals. This simulation will boost the efficiency of robots and reduce the possibility of interception by enemy radars,“ he said.
The researcher noted that advanced software programs were used for simulating the movements of sharks, adding that the project is aimed at building unmanned submarines with a lower probability of interception.
Yousefi-Koma noted that each submarine weighs 1,100 grams and has been tested successfully.

BIRJAND, South Khorasan,
May 23--An official said on Wednesday the Mil-78 border checkpoint between Iran and Afghanistan has been recognized as their official border checkpoint, which will be opened on May 27.
Mohammad Ali Bijari, director general of the provincial Economic Planning Office, also told IRNA that the decision followed a series of meetings between officials of the two countries.
“An official Afghan delegation, including the governor general of Farah province, will visit Iran next week to inaugurate the border checkpoint,“ he said.
The 18,000-sq. meter-wide province of Farah makes it the biggest neighboring province of Iran. Bijari noted that a 25-kilometer-road has been built in Afghanistan for improving transportation, adding that funds have been allocated for establishing more asphalt roads near the border.
“Iran’s Road and Transportation Ministry will cooperate with Farah Governor’s Office to build roads in Afghanistan,“ he said, noting that the ministry and Afghanistan’s Reconstruction Fund will provide the funds.

Iranian combatants celebrate their victory in KhorramshahrÕs Grand Mosque, after liberating the city from Baathist occupation on May 24, 1982. (IRNA File Photo)

TEHRAN, May 23--Majlis Speaker Gholamali Haddad Adel said the auspicious day marking the liberation of the city of Khorramshahr from Iraqi occupation in 1982 is a manifestation of national unity.
Addressing an open Majlis session on Wednesday, Haddad said the Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has invited all Iranians to reinforce national unity and Islamic solidarity, IRNA reported.
The speaker paid tribute to martyrs and champions of Khorramshahr’s liberation.
He called on the government to pay due attention to the reconstruction of regions devastated in the course of the 1980-88 Iraq-imposed war.
May 24, 1982, is one of the most important days in Iran’s history. On this auspicious day, after 578 days of occupation, Khorramshahr was liberated by the Iranian combatants and the flag of Iran was again hoisted on Khorramshahr’s Grand Mosque.

Frans van Anraat

TEHRAN, May 23--Governmental and non-governmental activists following up the legal status of the dossier of Iranians chemically wounded during the Iraq-imposed war do not have a clear picture about the issue of compensation.
A press conference held in Tehran explored different aspects of the trial of a Dutch businessman, Frans van Anraat, who sold banned chemical weapons to Iraq during the rule of the former Iraqi despot, Saddam Hussein.
Anraat was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Netherlands’ National Tribunal at The Hague in 2005 for complicity in Saddam’s war crimes during the 1980-88 war. However, his jail term was increased to 17 years after his lawyers objected to the verdict.
An eyewitness who attended Qaderi’s court sessions told Fars News Agency that when Anraat’s lawyers complained in the appeals court that their client cannot pay the cash fine, the court added another two years in lieu of the cash fine.
Elham Aminzadeh, a member of Majlis Foreign Policy Commission, Mohammad Reza Soroush, managing director of the Society for Supporting Victims of Chemical Weapons, Badri, representative of the Presidential Office’s Center for Legal and International Affairs, Meshkan Mashkour, former director of the center, and Mohammad Ali Pour-Mokhtar, representative of the Foundation for Martyrs and Sacrificers’ Affairs, attended the seminar.
Aminzadeh noted that Anraat procured raw materials for the production of chemical weapons that are called TDG from the US and transferred them to Iraq via Singapore and the Netherlands.
She noted that Anraat spent 13 years in Iraq and Saddam had ordered a series of forged identification documents and he lived under the pseudonym of Al-Mansour.
Soroush said Iran’s most important weakness is that no Iranian institution has legally followed up Anraat’s case.
“This is while special teams should have been set up in universities to follow up this case. However, we are facing problems in answering the simplest of questions concerning Anraat’s case,“ he said.

PARIS, May 23--France rebuffed the head of the UN nuclear watchdog on Wednesday over comments he made about Iran’s nuclear program, saying the agency had backed a US complaint against him for suggesting that Tehran could retain some parts of its uranium enrichment program.
American officials urged allies Tuesday to back a formal protest against Mohamed ElBaradei, saying his comments could hurt UN Security Council efforts to pressure Tehran over its enrichment program, AP reported.
“We were indeed surprised by several comments from Mr. ElBaradei over the weekend,“ said French Foreign Ministry Spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei.
“We share the gist of concerns expressed by our American partners--along with several other partners, for that matter.“
Over the past two weeks, ElBaradei has publicly said he believes it is too late to force Tehran to scrap its enrichment program as demanded by the Security Council, and argued instead for implementing inspection safeguards to prevent an expansion of the program.
“I can confirm that our permanent representative in Vienna will take part in the American initiative,“ Mattei said, referring to the Austrian capital where the International Atomic Energy Agency is based.
Mattei also took issue with ElBaradei’s recent reference to French intelligence about the speed of Iran’s nuclear program, without providing details.
“In addition, the IAEA director general referred, in one of his public statements, to analyses from French intelligence services over the time that it would take Iran to have access to a nuclear weapon,“ Mattei said.
“We aren’t in the habit of releasing national intelligence analyses publicly--much less through an international organization.“

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, May 23--Israeli troops killed more than 650 Palestinians last year--half of them unarmed civilians and including some 120 children--a threefold increase from 2005, a leading human rights group said on Wednesday.
In its annual 2007 global report, Amnesty International also criticized Israel for deepening the poverty in Palestinian territories by withholding customs duties, and widening a network of blockades and other travel restrictions, AP reported.
The group accused soldiers and settlers of committing “serious human rights abuses, including unlawful killings, against Palestinians, mostly with impunity“. No such killings were documented in the report.
The number of Israelis killed by Palestinian armed groups diminished by half last year to 27, including 20 civilian adults and one child, the report said.
By the Associated Press’ count, 580 people were killed on the Palestinian side and 34 on the Israeli side in 2006.
Amnesty reported a “significant increase“ in the launching of homemade rockets by Palestinian armed groups from Gaza into southern Israel, in which two Israeli civilians were killed. But the report gave no number for rockets fired and did not quantify the increase.
Amnesty accused Israel for violating the economic and social rights of Palestinians by restricting passage within Palestinian territories and keeping vital cargo and passenger crossings closed for large chunks of time.
Israel says it closes the passages because of security concerns, but the closures grew much more frequent after the soldier, who remains in captivity, was seized.
Israel’s withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax duties to the Palestinians caused humanitarian conditions in the West Bank and Gaza to deteriorate “to an unprecedented level,“ the report said.
Poverty, food aid dependency, health problems and unemployment have reached “crisis levels,“ it added.
Amnesty criticized Israel for the continued expansion of Jewish settlements and stepped-up construction of a West Bank barrier. Israel says it is building the enclosure to keep out attackers, but the barrier places about 10 percent of the West Bank on the ’Israeli’ side.
The report also restated Amnesty’s earlier finding that Israeli forces committed war crimes and other “serious violations of international humanitarian law“ in their 33-day campaign against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas last summer.

VATICAN CITY, May 23--Pope Benedict XVI, who has been criticized by Indian rights groups, insisted on Wednesday that the church does not gloss over the injustices that accompanied the Christian colonization of Latin America.
Addressing English-speaking pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square as he talked about his trip to Brazil earlier this month, the pope lamented that indigenous peoples’ basic rights were often trampled upon by missionaries. “While we do not overlook the various injustices and sufferings which accompanied colonization, the Gospel has expressed and continues to express the identity of the peoples in this region and provides inspiration to address the challenges of our globalized era,“ he said.
Benedict said that his visit to Brazil, his first papal voyage to Latin America, “embraced not only that great nation, but all Latin America, home to many of the world’s Catholics“.
He described the trip as being “above all a pilgrimage of praise to God for the faith which has shaped their cultures for over 500 years“.
“Certainly, the memory of a glorious past cannot ignore the shadows that accompanied the work of evangelizing the Latin American continent,“ the Pope said.
Benedict’s remarks to Italian-speaking pilgrims at his general audience in the square were even stronger than the comments in English.
“It is not possible, indeed, to forget the sufferings and injustices inflicted by colonizers on the indigenous populations, whose fundamental human rights were often trampled on,“ Benedict said.
The pontiff said he was making a “dutiful mention of such unjustifiable crimes“ and said some missionaries and theologians in the past had condemned them.
Indian rights groups in Brazil criticized Benedict for his insistence that Latin American Indians wanted to become Christian before European conquerors arrived centuries ago.
During the trip, the pontiff told a regional conference of bishops in Brazil that pre-Columbian people of Latin America and the Caribbean were seeking Christ without realizing it.
Marcio Meira, in charge of Brazil’s federal Indian Bureau, said Indians were forced to convert to Catholicism as the result of a “colonial process“.
The Pope in Brazil told the bishops that, “the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture“.

Iran Daily staff pose for a photograph on the occasion of the newspaper°fs 10th anniversary.