LONDON, Nov. 17--Deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Javad Vaeedi, will meet European Union’s deputy foreign policy chief, Robert Cooper, in Vienna on Wednesday.
According to Mehr News Agency, the two sides will make preparations for the upcoming meeting between Solana and SNSC Secretary Saeed Jalili.
Meanwhile, Iran’s top nuclear official said the IAEA will send a delegation to Iran in two weeks to discuss nuclear contamination at an Iranian university.
“IAEA officials will come to Iran to discuss contamination in one of Tehran’s universities in two weeks,“ Gholamreza Aqazadeh, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told the ISNA on Saturday.
The visit is part of a deal Tehran agreed on a timetable with the IAEA in August to answer outstanding questions concerning its nuclear program.
The IAEA wants a response from Iran on “the origin of the uranium particle contamination found in a technical university in Tehran,“ according to a series of questions put to the Islamic Republic by the agency in September.
He noted that IAEA inspectors will also begin preparatory work on Nov. 26 until Nov. 29 on a shipment of nuclear fuel bound from Russian state-owned nuclear fuel producer TVEL for the Bushehr nuclear plant.
“We are ready to provide IAEA specialists with all the conditions they need to do their work,“ Konstantin Grabelnikov, deputy head of Russia’s Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrate Plant, which is preparing the fuel, said in a statement.
In related development, Iran on Saturday warned the United States and some of its allies against damaging “productive cooperation“ between Iran and the IAEA, IRNA reported.
Abbas Araqchi, deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, made the remark in his meeting on Saturday with foreign ambassadors based in Tehran.
“Iran’s nuclear case is moving on the right course and the IAEA is the only legal body entitled to follow up the issue,“ he said.
Araqchi stressed that there were only six questions that remained unanswered about Iran’s nuclear program.
“Iran has so far answered three main questions about its peaceful nuclear activities, particularly those related to its P1 and P2 centrifuges, the responses to which were consistent with the IAEA findings,“ he said.
Also, Ali Akbar Soltanieh, Iran’s permanent representative to IAEA, told ISNA on Saturday that Non-Aligned Movement countries will issue a statement in support of Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities in the upcoming IAEA meeting on Friday.
On Friday, Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman of European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, said he would table a report on Iran’s attitude to engagement in nuclear talks whether or not there will be a new meeting with Iran’s nuclear envoy.
Gallach told reporters that Solana would prefer to make his evaluation at the end of November to the five UN Security Council members and Germany “after a second meeting with Iranian negotiators“.
“If that’s not possible, he will do so without one,“ she said.
Solana met Iranian top nuclear negotiators, Saeed Jalili and his predecessor Ali Larijani, on Oct. 23 in Rome and tried in vain so far to arrange another meeting with them before the end of this month, when he must present a report to the UN Security Council for discussion.
On Thursday, the UN’s nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency published a positive report into Iran’s nuclear program, which the officials had been expected to discuss at the meeting.
It said Iran had taken important steps in revealing the extent of its nuclear program, which it says is for civilian purposes, but was still defying UN demands that it suspend enrichment.

Majlis vice speaker, Mohammad Hassan Abutorabi-Fard (c), attends the opening ceremony of the Asian Parliamentary Association in Tehran on Saturday.

TEHRAN, Nov. 17--A senior lawmaker said the global economic domination of the United States is withering.
Speaking in the opening ceremony of the Asian Parliamentary Association in Tehran on Saturday, Mohammad Hassan Abutorabi-Fard added that recent political developments at the international level have created a new global order, IRNA reported.
He said the United States is facing tough economic challenges that can have a remarkable impact on global relations in future.
Abutorabi-Fard, who is the second vice speaker and chairman of the executive council of Asian Parliamentary Association, said inflation related to rising oil prices will negatively impact developed nations whose economic infrastructure is based on energy and oil.
He said developed nations are economically dependent on the markets and human resources of developing states.
Referring to the formation of Asian Parliamentary Association, Abutorabi-Fard called for solidarity among Asian parliaments.
He said the US is trying to monopolize new sciences and technologies so that it can maintain its political, economic and military supremacy.
Representatives from member countries are due to make speeches and discuss the APA’s agenda at the four-day event.
The APA, which currently has 40 member-states, was formed to pave the way for forging unity among Asian countries and the establishment of an Asian union. The organization’s General Assembly started work in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in September 1999.

WASHINGTON,
Nov. 17--Democratic lawmakers on Friday warned the Bush administration was “beating the drums for war“ with Iran, and vowed to wield constitutional powers to thwart any US military strike.
Their comments, in a Capitol Hill press conference, came as President George W. Bush fired off a fresh warning that international pressure would grow on the Islamic Republic, unless Tehran agreed to suspend enriching uranium, AFP reported.
“It’s an open secret that Dick Cheney is agitating for a preemptive attack on Iran,“ said Democratic Congressman Peter DeFazio.
“It would be disastrous to the United States, disastrous to the region, disastrous for our armed forces in Iraq,“ he said.
Democratic Representative Jim McDermott accused the Bush administration of “beating the drums for war“ with Iran.
“We, under the Constitution, have the right to declare war, to send troops into battle, not the president--we are the ones, the Constitution in Article I gives us the power. That means we have to look at what the options are.“
A total of 12 bills are pending in the House of Representatives and the Senate, designed to throw up roadblocks to any decision by the Bush administration to take military action against Iran’s nuclear program.
Several are intended to prohibit the government funds to attack Iran, others demand the president to ask Congress to authorize any strikes against the Islamic Republic.
Others state that resolutions permitting the use of force against Iraq in 2002 cannot be used to justify any action against Tehran.
Bush said earlier on Friday after talks with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda that pressure on Iran “must, and will, grow“ if Tehran refuses to freeze sensitive nuclear work.
“The prime minister and I agree that a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten the security of the Middle East and beyond,“ he claimed.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been sharply ramping up their rhetoric about Iran, leading some critics to draw parallels with the late 2002 verbal escalation against Iraq.
But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied on Sunday the United States was bent on war with Iran.

TEHRAN, Nov. 17--An official said according to a new Cabinet ratification, executive bodies will not be authorized to set up news agencies.
Addressing a closing ceremony of the 4th International Conference on Public Relations on Saturday, Mohammad Paryab, secretary of Government Information Dissemination Council, also said executive bodies will not be authorized to set up news agencies to compete with non-government news agencies, Fars News Agency reported.
The official noted that the government has identified problems in order to promote the public relations sector.
He stated that information dissemination activities are not centralized, adding that when the government took office, public relations offices did not manage the websites of 14 ministries, while it is their responsibility.
Paryab noted that earlier state bodies had no plans in the fields of information dissemination and public relations, but the government enacted the first comprehensive bylaw of public relations in 10 articles.
“The government named May 17 as the Communications and Public Relations Day,“ he said.

Mohammad Ali Hosseini

TEHRAN, Nov. 17--Iran condemned the continuing violation of the rights of immigrants by the Canadian police.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said some Canadian organizations have devised an anti-immigrant policy, reported the ministry’s statement faxed to IRNA.
The comment pertained to a rampage at Vancouver airport last month when a Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, was tasered by police, went into convulsions and died.
The incident, which was captured on video, is being investigated.
Hosseini noted that the Canadian police previously committed the same crime against Iranian national Keyvan Tabesh.
An off-duty Port Moody B.C. police officer in plainclothes opened fire at two Iranian teenagers--Keyvan Tabesh and Amir Aqaei--in Vancouver on July 14, 2003.
Tabesh was killed and Aqaei, who was shot in the leg, remains paralyzed.
Meanwhile, Hosseini extended condolences on Saturday to the Bangladesh’s government, people and families over deaths caused by a cyclone.
Cyclone Sidr smashed into Bangladesh’s southern coastline on Thursday night with 250-kph (155 mph) winds that whipped up a 5-meter tidal surge, IRNA reported.
According to reports, at least 900 people were killed in the cyclone. It was the strongest cyclone since a 1991 storm killed some 143,000 people in this country.

TEHRAN, Nov. 17--Science Minister Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi said Iran will be among the top 15 in the field of science within the next decade.
Talking to Mehr News Agency on Saturday, he said postgraduate levels should be developed and improved.
“The incumbent government’s support for researchers and scientists is the main factor behind the scientific breakthroughs of Iran,“ he said.
According to the minister, the number of researchers has increased in the past three years such that currently Iran boasts of nearly 1,200 researchers per one million.
According to the United Nations Development Programme, there were 467 researchers per one million during 1990-2003.
Zahedi said great breakthroughs will materialize in the science and technology sector in the next decade in view of the increasing number of researchers.
“Iranian researchers have submitted more than 8,000 scientific documents to ISI publications in 2007,“ he said.