Middle Orient

TEHRAN (FNA) President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday toured areas of northern Iran hard hit by a cold snap and heavy snowfalls that have even led to some deaths.

TEHRAN (FNA) Iran’s cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog has entered a “new phase”, a top Iranian nuclear official said Friday after International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, arrived in Tehran for talks concerning Iran’s nuclear program.

TEHRAN (FNA) Iran’s oil trade is unaffected by West’s banking pressure and the country is exporting just over 2.4 million barrels per day of crude, a senior Iranian oil official said yesterday.

LAHORE, Pakistan – A suicide bomb attack killed at least 22 people, most of them policemen, in Pakistan on Thursday, deepening a sense of insecurity weeks before an election that could weaken President Pervez Musharraf’s grip on power.

BAGHDAD – U.S. warplanes dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs on more than 40 targets on Baghdad’s southern outskirts on Thursday in a major strike on al Qaeda safe havens, the military said in a statement.

TEHRAN (FNA) Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said massive participation of the public in 28 state elections since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (in 1979) has proved the populist system of the Islamic Republic.

TEHRAN (FNA) A senior commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) dismissed Pentagon’s so-called documented footages claiming to show Iranian speedboats swarming US ships in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, describing it as a “clumsy fabrication”.

TEHRAN (FNA) A spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency Wednesday said that the UN nuclear watchdog chief, Mohamed ElBaradei is hopeful about resolving all issues remaining between Iran and IAEA during his upcoming visit to Tehran.

TEHRAN (FNA) Iran’s defense minister dismissed White House claims about a hostile confrontation between Iranian and US navy vessels in the Persian Gulf, describing US allegations as a plot to make regional and world countries fearful of Iran.

TEHRAN (FNA) Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Alireza Sheikh Attar said that an upcoming visit to Tehran by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei will be aimed at resolving the issues remaining between the two sides.