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6Dec/10Off

Iran talks: Strong rhetoric, low expectations

GENEVA -Iran and six world powers are heading into negotiations about the country's nuclear program Monday with low expectations, at odds on what to talk about and with tensions high over the assassination of one of Tehran's most prominent scientists.
The talks in Geneva — the first in over a year — are meant to ease concerns over Iran's nuclear agenda. Tehran says it does not want atomic arms, but as it builds on its capacity to make such weapons, neither Israel nor the U.S. have ruled out military action if Tehran fails to heed U.N. Security Council demands to freeze key nuclear programs.
Iran's bold stance was highlighted Sunday, when it announced it had delivered its first domestically mined raw uranium to a processing facility, claiming it is now self-sufficient over the entire nuclear fuel cycle.
A senior diplomat in Vienna who is familiar with the issue said the move was expected and mainly symbolic. Still, the timing of the announcement was significant in signaling just a day ahead of the Geneva talks that Tehran was unlikely to meet international demands that it curb its nuclear activities.
Over two planned days, Saeed Jalili, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, will meet with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, with Ashton's office saying she will act "on behalf" of the U.S., China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany. In fact, senior officials for those six powers will attend and do much of the talking with Tehran.
Chances of meaningful progress were low even before the assassination late last month of a prominent nuclear scientist and the wounding of another further clouded hopes of success at the talks.
Jalili called the killing a "disgrace" for the Security Council on Saturday, claiming the attacks were linked to efforts to implement international sanctions. He did not elaborate.
Still, the expected presence of Ali Bagheri reflects the importance Iran attaches to the meeting. Officials familiar with the composition of the Iranian delegation say Bagheri has a direct line to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Western officials urged Tehran to meet international concerns about its nuclear activities.
Invoking possible military confrontation over Iran's nuclear defiance, British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said Saturday that the Geneva talks need to make a serious start toward resolving the issue.
"We want a negotiated solution, not a military one — but Iran needs to work with us to achieve that outcome," he said. "We will not look away or back down."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was up to Iran to restore trust about its nuclear intentions, urging it to come to Geneva prepared to "firmly, conclusively reject the pursuit of nuclear weapons."
But for Iran the main issues are peace, prosperity — and nuclear topics only in the context of global disarmament.
"Iran has not and will not allow anybody in the talks to withdraw one iota of the rights of the Iranian nation," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said before the scheduled talks, warning the other nations at the table to "put aside the devil's temper" and negotiate in good faith.
Expectations are suitably low, even allowing for the fact that both sides are likely talking tough going into the talks with the purpose of maximizing their starting negotiating positions.
Glyn Davies, the chief U.S. delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the talks were meant to shape conditions for "a new start," even while insisting that Iran's nuclear program "has to be first and foremost on the agenda."
Other officials from the four Western nations coming to the table acknowledge that the six powers are coming without a firm agenda. One of them used freestyle wrestling as an analogy of what to expect.
"Think of this as a sort of catch-as-catch can," said the official, a senior diplomat who asked for anonymity because he was briefing The Associated Press on privileged information. "I don't think we are going to get into any kind of substantive discussions — the best we can hope for is a second round of meetings."
Such caution is understandable.
The last Geneva meeting of the seven nations in October 2009 appeared to put Iran nuclear talks back on track after a four-year hiatus, but Tehran and the six powers began to quibble about what was agreed on only days after they ended.
Iran initially seemed to accept a plan to export 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium to be made into special fuel for a Tehran reactor making medical materials — a move that would have stripped it of much of the material it then had stockpiled that could have been turned into a bomb.
But it then started putting conditions on the deal, which unraveled, deepening mistrust between the two sides.
A fourth set of U.N. Security Council sanctions because of Tehran's continued expansion of uranium enrichment has further burdened relations.
Nations have a right to enrich domestically and Iran insists it is doing so only to make fuel for an envisaged network of reactors and not to make fissile warhead material. But international concerns are strong because Tehran developed its enrichment program clandestinely and because it refuses to cooperate with an IAEA probe meant to follow up on suspicions that it experimented with components of a nuclear weapons program — something Iran denies.

Iran talks: Strong rhetoric, low expectations

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30Nov/10Off

WikiLeaks release sparks alarm over diplomacy

JERUSALEM -Is diplomacy in danger?
The torrent of condemnation heaped on WikiLeaks from around the globe did suggest a widespread sense — among the great and the good, but also among the sometimes more jaded observer and analyst class — that in releasing U.S. diplomatic documents the group crossed a dangerous line.
The prime minister of Israel, a man hardly accustomed to representing global consensus, on Monday found himself in lockstep with most of his peers as he warned that statecraft itself was imperiled by a reality in which no secret is safe if it is written.
"It will be more difficult for talented American diplomats to put into cables and reports things they once would have," Benjamin Netanyahu said. Governments would more likely hoard information, he warned, restricting the circle of people in the know to minimize the chances of a leak.
It is a delicate message for elected leaders to make, of course, because it depends on the proposition that there is a limit to what the people should know, or at least when they should know it.
Netanyahu argued that the ability to communicate under a cloak of secrecy was critical to Israel's ability to reach a peace deal with Egypt in 1979. Had the Israeli public known that Prime Minister Menachem Begin was preparing to cede the entire Sinai desert, captured in 1967, the foment might have scuttled the emerging agreement, Netanyahu suggested.
"Transparency is fundamental to our society, and it's usually essential — but there are a few areas, including diplomacy, where it isn't essential," he said.
But that time-honored government effort to control transparency took a massive hit this weekend, when WikiLeaks began publishing more than 250,000 leaked United States embassy cables — a cache it described as the largest set of confidential documents ever released into the public domain.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asserted Monday that WikiLeaks acted illegally in posting the material. She said the administration was taking "aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information."
As world reaction poured in, the condemnation was nearly universal.
Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said "the perpetrators of these leaks may threaten our national security." In Switzerland, the Basler Zeitung newspaper called it a "diplomatic disaster." The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry called it illegal and harmful.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle was a tad more diplomatic, proposing that was hardly "an altruistic act."
Indeed, it was remarkable how absent was the halo that tends to accompany WikiLeaks — that sense among pockets in the public that the exposure, while perhaps illegal and indiscreet, while damaging to certain interests to be sure, served the greater purpose of casting light on an important truth.
Instead there was a sense that a time-honored way of doing things was being challenged for the sake of the challenge itself. And that the art of diplomacy — often seen as a force for good in the world, for avoiding war and resolving conflict — was under attack.
The Italian newspaper La Repubblica lamented that "the history of diplomacy ... must start over on a new basis, knowing that there can always be a pair of electronic eyes looking over the shoulders of the person who is writing." Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini called it a "watershed" and reportedly urged world leaders to stand united "without backtracking on the way of diplomacy."
The United States has certainly used the cloak of secrecy for diplomatic ends: President Nixon's historic opening to China in 1972 was preceded by secret talks in which Pakistan was an intermediary. At one point, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, while on a trip to Islamabad, feigned illness and made a secret trip to Beijing.
But more common, of course, are the reports that diplomats send home — on political issues, key players, economic matters, even gossip.
Michael McKinley, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, said the vulnerability of diplomatic correspondence does "immense damage ... to U.S. diplomats' ability to engage in frank, confidential dialogue not just with government officials but with all manner of politicians and non-governmental actors."
For the system to work, diplomats need their contacts to trust in their discretion.
"Valuable contacts who provide useful understanding and context may now be reluctant to speak candidly in confidence to U.S. officials for fear their comments could reach the media, and political rivals or partners," agreed Ali Engin Oba, a Turkish strategic analyst and his country's former ambassador to Congo and Sudan. It's "a dreadful development for diplomacy."
Echoing a popular view, he said that "the leaks have to usher in a revolution in the way diplomatic cables are sent and archived. There has to be a new technological breakthrough."
It was a recurrent theme in Monday's discussions: Over the years, the diplomatic pouch has been largely replaced by e-mails and phone conversations — sometimes over encrypted lines and sometimes not.
What to do?
Stelian Tanase, a Romanian political analyst, said diplomats will learn to speak in code, "using double-language and metaphors."
Aaron David Miller, former State Department Mideast negotiator, predicted the encryption process is likely to become more elaborate.
Sergio Romano, an Italian analyst and former ambassador to Moscow, told state-run Italian radio that "the first reaction of all governments will be to make the confidentiality rules more strict." "Without confidentiality, diplomacy doesn't work," he said.
Elliot Abrams, a former National Security Council official under President George W. Bush, predicted diplomats would increasingly use secure e-mail, which can be sent to a select audience, instead of traditional diplomatic cables, which routinely reach dozens, even hundreds, of people.
He warned, however, that this could have a price: "Some of the people who need to know are going to end up not knowing," he said.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden agreed people will "put a lot less in cables now" and stick to phone calls — which could deprive not just policymakers of information but historians of an understanding of what happened as cables are eventually declassified.
For many, it is ironic that the breach of security affected the United States — a country seen as often questioning the security systems of others.
"In the past, it was always the case that the Americans worried about the security of their allies, now it's America's allies who worry about the security of the United States" said Anthony Glees, Director of the Center for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham in Britain. "This is very big ... (It) shifts the relationship with America's allies."
Among the most damaging revelations involved a major ally: the king of Saudi Arabia supposedly urged the United States to attack Iran to wipe out its nuclear weapons program — comments supported in other cables by Jordan and Bahrain.
The remarks are important because they suggest that Arab states had privately supported such a strike, despite what might have been said in public about the program.
Beyond that were some revelations of undiplomatic behavior by diplomats: That some were being asked to gather biometric data on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other diplomats shocked the United Nations — as it goes beyond what is considered the normal run of information-gathering expected in diplomatic circles. A cable urging diplomats to collect passwords and details of computer system also prompted unease.
"What worries me is the mixing of diplomatic tasks with downright espionage. You cross a border ... if diplomats are encouraged to gather personal information about some people," Ban said.
Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli deputy foreign minister, was among the few who kept an even keel through Monday's tumult: "People will be careful for two to three months and then they will return to their old behavior," said Beilin, whose diplomatic success, the 1993 Israel-PLO Oslo Accords, was the fruit of months of secret talks.

WikiLeaks release sparks alarm over diplomacy

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24Sep/10Off

US walks out on Ahmadinejad’s UN speech

UNITED NATIONS -Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked yet another controversy Thursday saying a majority of people in the United States and around the world believe the American government staged the Sept. 11 terror attacks in an attempt to assure Israel's survival.
The provocative comments prompted the U.S. delegation to walk out of Ahmadinejad's U.N. speech, where he also blamed the U.S. as the power behind U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used as fuel for electricity generation or to build nuclear weapons.
Delegations from all 27 European Union nations followed the Americans out along with representatives from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Costa Rica, an EU diplomat said.
Ahmadinejad said the U.S. has allocated $80 billion to upgrade its nuclear arsenal and is not a fair judge to sit as a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council to punish Iran for its nuclear activities. Iran denies it is seeking a nuclear weapon.
The Iranian leader — who has in the past cast doubt over the U.S. version of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — also called for setting up an independent fact-finding U.N. team to probe the attacks. That, he said, would keep the terror assault from turning into what he has called a sacred issue like the Holocaust where "expressing opinion about it won't be banned".
Ahmadinejad did not explain the logic behind blaming the U.S. for the terror attacks but said there were three theories:
_That a "powerful and complex terrorist group" penetrated U.S. intelligence and defenses, which is advocated "by American statesmen."
_"That some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view."
After Ahmadinejad uttered those words, two American diplomats stood and walked out without listening to the third theory: That the attack was the work of "a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation."
Mark Kornblau, spokesman of the U.S. Mission to the world body, issued a statement within moments of the walkout.
"Rather than representing the aspirations and goodwill of the Iranian people," he said, "Mr. Ahmadinejad has yet again chosen to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable."
Ahmadinejad said the U.S. used the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people. He argued that the U.S., instead, should have "designed a logical plan" to punish the perpetrators and not occupy two independent states and shed so much blood.
He boasted of the capture in February of Abdulmalik Rigi, the leader of an armed Sunni group whose insurgency in the southeast of Iran has destabilized the border region with Pakistan. He praised Iranian security forces for capturing him in an overseas operation without resorting to violence. Rigi was later hanged.
Ahmadinejad's attacks on the United States and the dispute over Iran's nuclear program dominated the opening of the General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned kings, prime ministers and presidents in his keynote address of the growing political polarization and social inequalities in the world and implored U.N. members to show greater tolerance and mutual respect to bring nations and peoples together.
"We hear the language of hate, false divisions between `them' and `us,' those who insist on `their way' or `no way,'" he said.
In times of such polarization and uncertainty, Ban said, "let us remember, the world still looks to the United Nations for moral and political leadership."
President Barack Obama, speaking soon after, echoed the secretary-general, warning that underneath challenges to security and prosperity "lie deeper fears: that ancient hatreds and religious divides are once again ascendant; that a world which has grown more interconnected has somehow slipped beyond our control."
The U.S. president's 32-minute speech — more than twice the allotted 15 minutes — covered global hotspots from Iran and Afghanistan to the Mideast and North Korea.
Obama said Iran is the only party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "that cannot demonstrate the peaceful intentions of its nuclear program" and as a result the U.N. Security Council has imposed four rounds of increasingly tough sanctions.
"The United States and the international community seek a resolution to our differences with Iran, and the door remains open to diplomacy should Iran choose to walk through it," he said. "But the Iranian government must demonstrate a clear and credible commitment, and confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear program."
Ahmadinejad, speaking in the afternoon session, stressed that Iran will never submit "to illegally imposed pressures" from the U.N. nuclear agency which has been demanding that Tehran halt enrichment, a key Security Council demand as well.
"Iran has always been ready for a dialogue based on respect and justice," he said.
But the Iranian leader said sanctions imposed by the Security Council were illegal and disrespectful.
The General Assembly hall was packed for Obama's speech, with leaders and diplomats, including Iran's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee, listening carefully, some snapping photos with cell phone cameras. Obama was interrupted twice by applause and received a prolonged and warm response at the end of his remarks.
Just ahead of Obama's speech, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorin sharply criticized the United States, saying that the 2003 invasion of Iraq demonstrated that the "blind faith in intelligence reports tailored to justify political goals must be rejected."
"We must ban once and for all the use of force inconsistent with international law," Amorin told the General Assembly, adding that all international disputes should be peacefully resolved through dialogue.
Qatar's Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani declared that terrorism "should not be treated by waging wars."
He blamed wars fought to combat terrorism for spreading destruction, causing the death and displacement of millions of people "as well as economic and financial crises that shook the stability of the world and undermined the efforts made in dialogue among cultures.
"What we fear is for the war on terrorism to turn into commercial transactions, financial contracts and armies of mercenaries who kill outside of any international and human legitimacy," the emir said. "These are all very dangerous things."

US walks out on Ahmadinejad's UN speech

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31Aug/10Off

Obama to honor troops as Iraq combat mission ends

WASHINGTON -As President Barack Obama prepares to officially end the lengthy and divisive U.S. combat operation in Iraq, he'll personally thank some of the soldiers who fought there for their service to a mission he forcefully opposed from the start.
Many of those soldiers deployed from Fort Bliss, the sprawling Army base in El Paso, Texas, that Obama will visit Tuesday. After speaking with the troops, Obama will return to Washington to address the nation and formally end a combat mission in Iraq that lasted more than seven years, leaving more than 4,400 U.S. troops dead and thousands more wounded.
Obama was an early critic of the war, speaking out against it during the U.S. invasion in early 2003 and promising during his presidential campaign to bring the conflict to an end. The White House sees Tuesday's benchmark as a promise kept and has gone to great lengths to promote it as such, dispatching Vice President Joe Biden to Iraq to preside over a formal change-of-command ceremony and raising Tuesday night's remarks to the level of an Oval Office address, something Obama has only done once before.
Among Obama's goals on Tuesday is honoring those who have served in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, many returning to the battlefield for multiple tours of duty. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday that while the Iraq war would have never happened had Obama been commander in chief at the time, the president holds the service and sacrifice of the troops in high regard.
Appearing on nationally broadcast interviews Tuesday morning, Gibbs repeatedly brushed aside questions about whether Obama would credit President George W. Bush's troop surge with helping to pave the way for the withdrawal.
Top Republicans, however, were in no doubt. "Some leaders who opposed, criticized, and fought tooth-and-nail to stop the surge strategy now proudly claim credit for the results," House GOP leader John Boehner said, in excerpts of a speech he was to give to the American Legion convention in Milwaukee. "Today we mark not the defeat those voices anticipated — but progress."
In Gibbs' appearances, he said it's "not up for question" that candidate Obama agreed sending 30,000 more troops to Iraq would bolster security. But "a number of things" brought the United States to this point, including the move toward greatrer political accommodation among the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions, the spokesman said.
Pressed on this point, Gibbs said, "Again, I think the president has always stated, and always believed" that adding significant numbers of American troops would stabilize the security environment, "but obviously the leaders in Iraq had to make some political accommodation to move that nation forward."
Asked if Obama would support sending combat troops back if new waves of violence threatened the country, Gibbs said that Obama had been assured recently by commander Gen. Ray Odierno that such a scenario would be very unlikely.
"This is not a victory lap," he said. "You're not going to see any 'Mission Accomplished' banners that will be unfurled. "
Since the start of the war, 200,000 personnel from Fort Bliss have deployed to Iraq, serving in every major phase of the war. Fifty-one soldiers from the base died there and many more were wounded.
Last week, some 600 soldiers from the 1st Brigade Combat Team returned to the base as part of Obama's self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline for having all U.S. combat troops out of Iraq. Just about 50,000 U.S. troops will remain, down from a peak of nearly 170,000 in 2007. U.S. troops will no longer be allowed to go on combat missions unless requested and accompanied by Iraqi forces.
Administration officials have been careful to avoid equating the end of the combat mission with a mission accomplished. That was the phrase on the now-infamous banner that flew on an aircraft carrier seven years ago when Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, a symbol the Bush White House came to deeply regret as the war dragged on.
"You won't hear those words coming from us," Gibbs said Monday. "Obviously tomorrow marks a change in our mission. It marks a milestone that we have achieved in removing our combat troops. That is not to say that violence is going to end tomorrow."
Under a security agreement signed between the U.S. and Iraq before Obama took office, all U.S. forces must leave Iraq by the end of 2011. But the Obama administration insists the U.S. is not abandoning Iraq and is ramping up a diplomatic corps to help stabilize the country's government and economy over the coming years.
"This redoubles the efforts of the Iraqis," Gibbs said. "They will write the next chapter in Iraqi history, and they will be principally responsible for it. We will be their ally, but the responsibility of charting the future of Iraq first and foremost belongs to the Iraqis."
Ahead of Tuesday night's remarks, Obama also planned to speak with Bush. While Bush's decision to invade Iraq was criticized by many, the troop surge Bush ordered in 2007 has been credited with tamping down violence in Iraq and helping keep the country from falling into a civil war.
Gibbs was interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America," NBC's "Today" show, CBS's "The Early Show," CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and National Public Radio.

Obama to honor troops as Iraq combat mission ends

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21Aug/10Off

Iran begins fueling first nuclear reactor

BUSHEHR, Iran -Iranian and Russian engineers began loading fuel Saturday into Iran's first nuclear power plant, which Moscow has promised to safeguard to prevent material at the site from being used in any potential weapons production.
After years of delays, the fueling of the Bushehr plant in southern Iran marks the startup of a facility for energy production that the U.S. once hoped to block as a way to pressure the country to stop separate nuclear activities of far greater concern.
There have not been strong objections to the Bushehr plant itself as there have been with Iran's separate efforts at other sites to accelerate uranium enrichment — a process that makes the fuel for power plants but which can also be used in weapons production.
Even as Iran's nuclear chief said the plant demonstrated the country has only peaceful aims, he celebrated it as a defiant "symbol of Iranian resistance and patience" in the face of Western pressure.
"Despite all pressure, sanctions and hardships imposed by Western nations, we are now witnessing the startup of the largest symbol of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities," Ali Akbar Salehi told reporters inside the plant.
Washington and other nations do not oppose Iran's stated aim of producing nuclear energy, but are concerned that if Iran masters the enrichment cycle it would have a pathway to weapons production under the convenient cover of a peaceful energy program. Iran denies such an intention.
It is the enrichment work that has been the target of four rounds of U.N. Security Council sanctions.
Russia, which helped finish building Bushehr, has pledged to prevent spent nuclear fuel at the site from being shifted to a possible weapons program. After years of delaying its completion, Moscow says it believes the Bushehr project is essential for persuading Iran to cooperate with international efforts to ensure Iran does not develop the bomb.
The United States, while no longer formally objecting to the plant, disagrees and says Iran should not be rewarded while it continues to defy U.N. demands to halt uranium enrichment.
On Saturday, a first truckload of fuel was taken from a storage site to a fuel "pool" inside the reactor building under the watch of monitors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency. Over the next two weeks, 163 fuel assemblies — equal to 80 tons of uranium fuel — will be moved inside the building and then into the reactor core.
Workers in white lab coats and helmets led reporters on a tour of the cavernous facility.
It will be another two months before the 1,000-megawatt light-water reactor is pumping electricity to Iranian cities.
The Bushehr plant is not considered a proliferation risk because the terms of the deal commit the Iranians to allowing the Russians to retrieve all used reactor fuel for reprocessing. Spent fuel contains plutonium, which can be used to make atomic weapons. Additionally, Iran has said that IAEA experts will be able to verify that none of the fresh fuel or waste is diverted.
Of greater concern to the West, however, are Iran's stated plans to build 10 new uranium enrichment sites inside protected mountain strongholds. Iran said recently it will begin construction on the first one in March in defiance of the U.N. sanctions.
Nationwide celebrations were planned for Saturday's fuel loading at Bushehr.
"I thank the Russian government and nation, which cooperated with the great Iranian nation and registered their name in Islamic Iran's golden history," Salehi said. "Today is a historic day and will be remembered in history."
He spoke at a news conference inside the plant with the head of Russia's state-run nuclear corporation, Sergei Kiriyenko, who said Russia was always committed to the project.
"The countdown to the Bushehr nuclear power plant has started," Kiriyenko said. "Congratulations."
Iran's hard-liners consider the completion of the plant to be a show of defiance against U.N. Security Council sanctions that seek to slow Iran's other nuclear advances.
Hard-line leader Hamid Reza Taraqi said the launch will boost Iran's international standing and "will show the failure of all sanctions" against Iran.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated Friday that Tehran was ready to resume negotiations with the six major powers trying to curb Iran's enrichment work — the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany.
Ahmadinejad, however, insisted Iran would reject calls to completely halt uranium enrichment, a key U.N. demand. The president had earlier said the talks could start in September, but in an interview with Japan's biggest newspaper, The Yomiuri Shimbun, he said the talks could start as early as this month.
Russia signed a $1 billion contract to build the Bushehr plant in 1995 but has dragged its feet on completing the work.
Moscow had cited technical reasons for the delays, but analysts say Russia used the project to try to press Iran to ease its defiance over its nuclear program.
The uranium fuel Russia has supplied for Bushehr is well below the more than 90 percent enrichment needed for a nuclear warhead. Iran is already producing its own uranium enriched to the Bushehr level — about 3.5 percent. It also has started a pilot program of enriching uranium to 20 percent, which officials say is needed for a medical research reactor.
The Bushehr plant overlooks the Persian Gulf and is visible from several miles (kilometers) away with its cream-colored dome dominating the green landscape. Soldiers maintain a 24-hour watch on roads leading up to the plant, manning anti-aircraft guns and supported by numerous radar stations.
There are several housing facilities for employees inside the complex plus a separate large compound housing the families of Russian experts and technicians. The site is about 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) south of Tehran.
Russians began shipping fuel for the plant in 2007 and carried out a test-run of the plant in February 2009.
Iran says it plans to build other reactors and says designs for a second rector in southwestern Iran are taking shape.
The Bushehr project dates backs to 1974, when Iran's U.S.-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi contracted with the German company Siemens to build the reactor. The company withdrew from the project after the 1979 Islamic Revolution toppled the shah.
The partially finished plant later sustained damages after it was bombed by Iraq during its 1980-88 war against Iran.
Before making the Russian deal to complete Bushehr, Iran signed pacts with Argentina, Spain and other countries only to see them canceled under U.S. pressure.

Iran begins fueling first nuclear reactor

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10Jul/10Off

6 US troops, 12 civilians killed in Afghan attacks

KABUL, Afghanistan -Six American service members and at least a dozen civilians died in attacks Saturday in Afghanistan's volatile east and south, adding to a summer of escalating violence as Taliban militants push back against stepped-up operations by international and Afghan forces.
NATO said four U.S. service members died in the east: One as a result of small-arms fire, another by a roadside bomb, a third during an insurgent attack and the last in an accidental explosion. Two other U.S. troops died in separate roadside bombings in southern Afghanistan. Their deaths raised to 23 the number of American troops killed so far this month in the war.
Also, unknown gunmen killed 11 Pakistani Shia tribesmen in the east and at least one person died when a bomb planted on a motorbike exploded in Kandahar city in the south, officials said.
Explosions also hit two convoys of international troops in different parts of the country, with Germany saying two of its troops were wounded by a roadside bomb in the northern province of Kunduz. Another explosion targeted NATO troops in Khost in the east, but the alliance said there were no casualties.
Afghan and international forces also said a combined commando unit killed a Taliban operative and captured eight others in an overnight raid in Paktia province in the east, though local villagers claimed the men were innocent civilians. In the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, thousands of Afghan's staged an anti-U.S. protest over another night raid that killed two security guards.
Insurgent attacks have intensified across the country and the international coalition has been stepping up raids to root out militant leaders as 30,000 more American troops arrive to try to turn around the war and build a stable Afghan government nine years after U.S.-backed forces toppled the Taliban's hard-line Islamist regime.
Last month was the deadliest of the war for the multinational force, with 103 international troops killed, 60 of them Americans.
A remotely detonated motorcycle bomb killed one person Saturday in Kandahar city, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, authorities said.
The blast set cars ablaze and shattered windows at a popular shopping center. One man was killed as he drove by in a car just as the bomb exploded, the provincial government said in a statement.
The province is the site of a U.S.-led military operation to strengthen government control.
In the eastern border province of Paktia, unidentified gunmen killed 11 Pakistanis who had crossed into Afghanistan to buy supplies, according to Rohullah Samon, spokesman for the provincial governor.
Samon said 11 Shia minority Muslim tribesmen died and three people, including a child, were wounded in the ambush of their minibus in Chamkani district.
Elsewhere in Paktia, a combined Afghan-coalition commando force raided a compound in Ahmad Abad district overnight, killing one person and arresting nine others, officials said.
The Ministry of Defense said the elite force killed an insurgent operative and captured eight others with weapons. The ninth person arrested was determined to be a civilian and turned over to local authorities, it said in a statement.
Paktia spokesman Samon complained that local authorities were not informed of the raid. He said villagers protested outside government offices Saturday, saying the dead man and those captured were innocent civilians. They promised a larger demonstration the next day if the eight prisoners were not released.
Combined coalition and Afghan forces have been stepping up night raids across the country trying to break up Taliban leadership and operations capability.
In the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, more than 1,000 people protested Saturday against the deaths of two security guards in another night raid near a market.
The crowd chanted "Death to America! Long live Islam!" Protesters said the security guards were unjustly killed when combined Afghan and international forces landed by helicopter at the bazaar before dawn Wednesday.
NATO spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said the two guards were shot when they raised their weapons at the commandos and refused orders to put them down. He said the raid succeeded in capturing a Taliban operative who supplied bomb-making material.
The coalition says the new wave of raids has captured more than 100 senior- and midlevel Taliban figures since April and killed dozens more. But the success rate has not made much of a dent in insurgent attacks.
On Saturday, an explosion tore through a NATO convoy traveling in the eastern province of Khost, though no one was killed. The German army later said two of its soldiers were slightly wounded by a roadside bomb in the northern province of Kunduz — the second homemade explosive attack on German troops in the area that day.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force has been in Afghanistan since shortly after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, when U.S.-backed forces toppled the regime that sheltered the al-Qaida terrorist leadership following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
—
Associated Press Writer Mirwais Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

6 US troops, 12 civilians killed in Afghan attacks

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