TEHRAN, July 22--President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday the pursuit for development should play a pivotal role in educational affairs.
Speaking in the 24th Meeting of Education Directors in Tehran, the chief executive noted that seeking development is crucial and remaining silent equals to remaining backward, IRNA reported.
Noting that humans are not alive without development, Ahmadinejad pointed out that all humans should constantly invigorate themselves.
“Different areas of education should undergo changes,“ he said.
The president opined that the future he envisages is the global ideal, on which all objectives should be based.
Noting that he is conveying God’s message for all humans to return to the path of prophets, Ahmadinejad pointed out that development should be based on such an attitude.
“The main duty of education is to train teachers who respect human values. We should know what kind of people should be trained and what characteristics they should have,“ he said.
In another development, President Ahmadinejad visited the ailing Experts Assembly Chairman Ayatollah Ali Meshkini in a Tehran hospital on Sunday.
The ayatollah, in his 80s, was confined to a hospital in northern Tehran last week for suffering from pulmonary disease.
He is being held in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.
Ayatollah Meshkini has penned many books on Islamic jurisprudence and other issues.
President Ahmadinejad was briefed by the medical team on the cleric’s physical condition.
The president wished Ayatollah Meshkini a speedy recovery.
Since in hospital, several senior officials, including Chairman of State Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Majlis Speaker Gholamali Haddad Adel, have visited Ayatollah Meshkini.

Turkish supporters of Turkey's ruling party AKP acclaim Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as they hold Turkish and AKP's flags during a rally in Ankara.

ANAKARA, Turkey, July 22--Turkish voters turned out in force Sunday for snap elections pitting the Islamist-rooted ruling party against an opposition that suspects it of undermining the Muslim country’s secular traditions.
Most pre-poll surveys predicted Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would win a comfortable second mandate in the polls, sparked by a crisis over the ruling party’s efforts to install a former Islamist as president.
Erdogan, 53, made no comment as he voted under the glare of the cameras in Istanbul, dressed casually in a blue shirt and dark trousers.
Voters in Ankara formed long queues at polling stations even before they opened, in part to catch the cooler hours of a sweltering day.
Media reports said more than a quarter of Turkey’s 42 million registered voters had traveled across the country to return to their electoral districts in time to cast their ballots.
With voting in Turkey compulsory and participation traditionally high, some media predicted a turnout of more than 90 percent.
The voting was relatively calm although 17 people were hurt in election-related scuffles in the south and southeast of the country, officials said.
The Turkish army, which usually tops opinion polls as the country’s most trusted institution, has toppled four governments since 1960 and recently warned it would not stand idle if the government trampled on secular tradition.
Erdogan rejects charges that his Justice and Development Party (AKP) is not committed to secularism and argues that he has disowned his radical past.
The issue came to a head earlier this year when the AKP tried to install a former Islamist as president, prompting the military brass to threaten to intervene.
Erdogan’s campaign focused on his government’s impressive economic achievements since sweeping to power five years ago. His government has kept inflation in check while maintaining strong overall growth and attracting record foreign investment. It has also launched membership talks with the European Union.
If reelected, it has promised to expand individual rights, introduce a new and more liberal constitution and tackle rampant unemployment.
Most opinion polls predict the AKP will do better than the 34 percent it won in 2002, with the main opposition Republican People’s Party in second place and the right-wing Nationalist Action Party making a comeback to the house after a five-year absence.

TEHRAN, July 22--Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said on Sunday the exact date for holding the second round of talks with the US on Iraq is still unknown, but negotiations will focus on the same topics as before.
Speaking in his weekly press conference, Hosseini pointed out that Iran will use all its potentials to free the five diplomats abducted in Iraq’s Irbil in January.
Asked whether the Foreign Ministry has a specific program on Palestine, Hosseini pointed out that Iran has always reiterated on consensus of Palestinian groups and a peaceful solution.
Commenting on a new gas cooperation deal between Iran and Turkey, he said the agreement secures the interests of both the countries.
“Iran welcomes the role of supplying energy to Turkey,“ he said.
Referring to Iran-Turkey friendly ties, the spokesman noted that the two countries can realize their interests and cooperation based on mutual interests.
“The US government invaded Iraq with the purpose of increasing its control over the energy resources of that country,“ he said.
The spokesman further said that Washington is against development of regional countries.
“Iran was the only country that expressed its opposition to US interference in Iraq,“ he said.
Asked whether Iran and the US will also discuss Afghanistan in their new round of talks, Hosseini noted that Iran and the US will discuss Iraq’s security issues and Washington has not offered to discuss Afghanistan.

TEHRAN, July 22--South Korea edged past three-time champion Iran in the penalty shootouts 4-2 at the 14th Asian Cup quarterfinals in Bukit Jalil National Stadium in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on Sunday.
The two sides struggled to a draw in the drizzling rain.
In another game, the woodwork and a linesman’s flag helped Saudi Arabia beat Uzbekistan 2-1 in the Asian Cup on Sunday and sneak into the semifinals.
The unlucky former Soviet Republic clattered the frame of the goal five times and had a goal wrongly ruled out for offside as they crashed out to the oil-rich kingdom in a thrilling contest.

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, July 22--Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel will have to withdraw from many areas in the West Bank.
Speaking at a collective farm on Sunday, Olmert stressed that Israelis will have to leave quickly, QODSNA reported.
“Anyone living with some kind of dream detached from reality that we can keep all the (occupied) territories isn’t making a correct assessment,“ he said.
He noted that Israel was willing to discuss such a settlement with the Western-backed administration of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, who dismissed the Cabinet formed by the elected government of Hamas.
“Abbas’s new Cabinet represents the government with which we can negotiate,“ Olmert said.
The premier’s comments contrasted with the stance of Israeli officials announced last week that Israel was not yet ready to negotiate core issues for a Palestinian state.
Olmert was elected last year on a pledge to remove isolated Jewish settlements from the territory Israel captured in a 1967 war. But he later backed away from a plan to dismantle some settlements
unilaterally.

LONDON, July 22--Gordon Brown was urged to pull out of Iraq immediately last night after Army Chief Sir Richard Dannatt warned Britain had almost run out of troops.
The general revealed emergency cover in the Army is now “almost nonexistent“, with only one battalion of 500 troops immediately available, Daily telegraph reported.
In a memo to senior officers, he said almost every unit was now committed to operations, training for war in Iraq or Afghanistan, or on leave.
Liberal Democrat defense spokesman Willie Rennie called yesterday for troops to be withdrawn.
“What more evidence does Gordon Brown need to pull the troops out of Iraq and focus on Afghanistan? Richard Dannatt has repeatedly warned of overstretch. It’s now time for the government to act,“ he said.
Dannatt’s leaked memo said, “We now have almost no capability to react to the unexpected.“
He noted that the army needed 2,500 troops from other units to bring the forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to the 13,000 required.
“The number of troops deployed was far higher than we ever assumed and was stretching the army at a time when it is 3,500 people below full strength,“ he said.
Browne this week gave his backing to an MPs’ report calling on Britain’s NATO allies to supply more troops.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 22--General Pervez Musharraf’s hopes to have himself reelected as Pakistan’s president in uniform later this year have been plunged into doubt by the Supreme Court’s 10-3 decision to reinstate Pakistan’s most senior judge, Iftikhar Chaudhry.
“He can no longer be sure that the Supreme Court will be a doormat,“ G. Parthasarathy, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, says. “His plan to wear a uniform indefinitely is as good as over.“
The Supreme Court’s verdict that Musharraf acted illegally in summarily suspending Chaudhry from his duties as chief justice on March 9 marks a historic moment for the Pakistani judiciary, lawyers were quoted as saying by FT.com.
“It’s what the nation wanted,“ Salman Akram Raja, a partner at the Lahore law firm, Zafar, Iqbal & Raja, says. “Throughout Pakistan’s history, we’ve been waiting for this institution to stand up for itself. This is the biggest judgment in our history.“
Over the past four months, by refusing to bow to the military, Chaudhry has become a popular hero in Pakistan, where the judiciary has lost prestige by providing a legal cloak to successive coups d’Žtat and by legitimizing the army’s role in politics.
“This judgment is going to go a long way to restore confidence of the common man in the judiciary,“ Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui, a former chief justice, says. “It is a turning point perhaps for the judiciary as an independent organ of the government.“
Asma Jehangir, a leading human rights lawyer and co-founder of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, says the country has regained a sense of dignity and shown that “guns and intimidation“ would not cow a nascent civil society.
“This verdict presents a very new direction for Pakistan, a welcome direction for Pakistan. There is also encouragement for political parties to stop backing Musharraf and to force him to leave his uniform.“
The return of the independent-minded chief justice could thwart Musharraf’s plans to circumvent constitutional provisions requiring him to step out of uniform by the end of the year. Rules in the constitution that Musharraf has either ignored or circumvented since his 1999 coup include those barring a serving army chief from holding public office and from standing for election within two years of giving up the post.
Opposition politicians and Chaudhry’s lawyers say that by changing the chief justice, the military had hoped to pack the court with dependable judges who would reject legal challenges to Musharraf’s plan to be reelected president. They say the military wanted a new chief justice to give his reelection a veneer of constitutionality, enabling a US administration that has made democracy the cornerstone of its foreign policy to continue backing a military dictatorship.

MOSCOW, July 22--The diplomatic war over Russia’s refusal to extradite the chief suspect in Alexander Litvinenko’s killing last year in London has experts wondering just how far Moscow’s relations with the West will slide.
As a result of that refusal, Britain expelled four Russian diplomats this week, and Russia ordered four British envoys out of Moscow. The Russians also sent bombers toward British airspace, in a gesture chillingly reminiscent of the Cold War.
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday dismissed these events as amounting to no more than a “mini-crisis“, but others worry that the conflict over the Litvinenko case added to rising tensions on other fronts.
While Russia and the West are at odds on many issues, the current conflict is over Britain’s demands that Russia hand over Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer who now runs a number of successful businesses.
“I hope we can still contain this crisis,“ Dmitry Trenin, of the Moscow Carnegie Center, told the Associated Press on Saturday.
The US$14 billion (-10 billion) in annual trade between Russia and Britain should act as a brake on both sides, he said. So should the Russian tycoons who own property in Britain and send their children to school there.
But so far neither Britain nor Russia has shown signs of yielding.
Britain will continue to press Russia to hand over Lugovoi, a spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested the US would back London up, saying a “terrible crime“ was committed and the perpetrators could be brought to justice only with “the full cooperation of Russia“.
Putin, meanwhile, will not extradite Lugovoi under any circumstances, Trenin said. “To do that after everything that’s happened would be a loss of face, which will be totally incomprehensible“ to the Russian public, he said.
The Kremlin could try to compromise, Trenin said, by accelerating its own investigation into Litvinenko’s murder, which has made little apparent progress. Judging by the public statements of prosecutors, Russian investigators have so far focused exclusively on the billionaire Boris Berezovsky.