Iran

Kidnappers holding a Japanese student taken hostage in Iran are still holding him outside the Islamic republic in the border zone between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the judiciary said on Tuesday.

Tehran dismissed the recent statements made by the French defense minister about Iran’s nuclear activities, saying that such meaningless remarks which bear no value undermine France’s international status.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is scheduled to arrive here in Tehran Tuesday night.

Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned Portugal’s ambassador to Tehran to voiced Iran’s strong protest at a recent statement issued by his country as the current EU presidency in support of anti-Iran terrorists.

The visit to Tehran by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his private meetings with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei brought further development to Tehran-Moscow relations, Russian envoy to Tehran said.

 Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is due to pay a daylong visit to Baghdad on Wednesday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here on Tuesday dismissed US decision to cut off financial relations with his country’s banks as meaningless.

 Iran’s foreign minister said that his country’s cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog has made the US change the game and create another problem for the Islamic Republic as it perceives the pending solution of Tehran’s nuclear issue.

The United States’ new sanctions against Iran show that Americans are not at all interested in the prevalence of peace and tranquility in the region and world, Iranian Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel said.

Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency started a second day of their last round of talks on issues related to the Islamic Republic’s P1 and P2 centrifuges here on Tuesday.