Middle Orient

India should increase its offered price to secure a major contract for liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries signed two years ago, a senior Iranian oil official said on Sunday.

Iran has built a new longer-range missile named “Ashura” with a range of 2,000 kilometers, (1,240 miles), the defense minister announced on Tuesday.

Inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog on Monday began examining uranium fuel that Russia is likely to send to Iran’s first atomic power station, a Russian nuclear official said.

Lebanon’s opposition groups voiced strong opposition to the attendance of the country’s prime minister at the so-called Middle-East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, warning that Siniora’s participation in the US meeting would serve the interests of the Israeli regime.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a meeting with his Sri Lankan counterpart Mahinda Rajapaksa here on Monday, said Tehran believes that Sri Lanka’s progress and mightiness would serve interests of regional countries.

Vowing to go on fighting the “Zionist enemy”, Hamas called Mahmoud Abbas the worst leader in Palestinian history on Monday and said he had no right to make concessions to Israel at the Annapolis peace conference.

Israeli army reservist Haim Gottfried and Palestinian security officer Samir al-Shakhshir are committed to fighting for their people’s security but both long for the day they can lay down their arms.

Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa, heading a high-ranking delegation arrived here in Tehran on Monday.

Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said that his country’s oil revenues are projected to hit US$60 billion this year.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Sunday that Tehran hopes to resolve a decades-old dispute with neighboring Kuwait over their maritime border before the end of the year.