Photo by Ali Mohammadi

Iran urged OPEC member-states again to convert their cash reserves into a basket of currencies instead of the tumbling US dollar.
Speaking at a ceremony to open the 29th ministerial meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his proposal made about six months ago in a summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ heads of states.
“The fall in the value of US dollar is one of the pressing problems of the world today,“ warned the Iranian president at the conference in Isfahan on Tuesday, IRNA reported.
He further expressed concern over the adverse effect of the greenback depreciation on the international community, especially energy exporting countries, as it also increased the price of commodities like wheat, rice and oilseeds.
Ahmadinejad had warned six months ago in the summit conference in Riyadh that there were many indications pointing to the continued fall in the value of the greenback.
“And we see that this is still the case. The resources and wealth of OPEC member-states have been hugely damaged. I again repeat my previous proposal: we should have a basket of different hard currencies as the basis or the member countries should produce a new hard currency for petroleum contracts,“ he said.
Ahmadinejad declared that producers are getting “a worthless piece of paper“ against their oil.
The comments by the Iranian president gained backing from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as he said at the same event that “the empire of the dollar has to come to an end“.
However, on the soaring oil prices, Ahmadinejad said, “At a time when consumption growth is lower than production growth, and the market is full of oil, prices are rising, which trend is absolutely fake and imposed.“
“As you know the drop in the dollar’s value and the rise in energy prices are two sides of the same coin being introduced as factors behind the recent global instability,“ he said.
Speaking in the same conference on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the OPEC Fund needs new strategies to face current economic challenges.
He said that new strategies are needed for fostering the active participation of the organization in global development programs.
The foreign minister also said assistance rendered by the OPEC fund has helped remove a part of economic and social problems of countries, but requires new methods to tackle new challenges.
“Current crises, including energy crisis and price hikes, are not the result of the real performance of global markets, but according to experts, they are due to counterfeit deals and demands for oil,“ he said.
Mottaki called on international organizations and charity groups to help underdeveloped nations overcome the difficult situation.

Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan on Tuesday denied selling blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon to Iran or North Korea, telling AFP that western countries were to blame.
Khan’s comments came a day after a former arms inspector said in a report that the United States and the UN atomic watchdog must be allowed to question Khan to learn if he sold the plans.
“This is all a lie, there is no truth in this. It is total bullshit,“ Khan told AFP by telephone from his Islamabad villa, where he has been kept under house arrest since confessing to proliferation activities in 2004.
“The western countries are suppliers of the technology, they sold it, they are the proliferators ... Why don’t they publish juicy stories about Israel. There is not a single word about Israel on the nuclear issue,“ he said.
Former UN arms inspector David Albright said on Monday, after details of his draft report appeared in US newspapers, that there was a danger that Khan might be released without having to answer questions about the sensitive blueprints.
Khan was pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf in 2004 after making a televised statement admitting to passing nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya, but has not been allowed out in public.
However, after Musharraf’s allies lost general elections in February, Khan retracted the confession and said that it was forced, while asserting he merely gave Tehran and Tripoli advice on where to get atomic know-how.
“The statement is just aimed at putting pressure on (the) Pakistan government. The story came when there were talks about removing restrictions on me,“ said Khan, who was diagnosed with cancer two years ago.

The Israeli premier has voiced his willingness to evacuate Israeli troops from Shebaa Farms to hand the area to the UN, an Israeli report said.
Ehud Olmert is ready to cede the farms to the UN as early as July, Israeli website Debkafile reported on Monday.
Olmert informed the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about his decision when they met in Al-Quds on Sunday, the report added.
Rice took the news to Beirut on Monday at the end of her talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
“The United States hopes for an early settlement to the Shebaa Farms issue,“ she told Lebanese President Michel Sleiman and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
Israel occupied the Shebaa Farms, a 25-square-kilometer (10-square-mile) area of land on the Israel-Lebanon-Syria border, during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani called for the expulsion of the anti-Iran terrorist Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO) from his war-torn country.