Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei addressing a group of religious instructors, researchers and preachers from Qom, Mashhad and Isfahan, in Tehran, on Thursday.

TEHRAN, Nov. 30--Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on Thursday underlined the need for reforms in Iran’s theology schools and centers of religious learning.
In a meeting with a group of religious instructors, researchers and preachers from Qom, Mashhad and Isfahan, he called on the theology centers to focus on future vision, foresight, managing reforms, textbook revision, open debate and introducing policy in tandem with the needs of the day, IRNA reported.
“Considering the huge responsibility of the seminaries and instructors vis-a-vis faith and relevant issues, foresight becomes all the more important. Change (at the teaching centers) is inevitable.“
The leader added that “Negligence toward reform would be tantamount to elimination and isolation. So, we hould admit the need for reforms and guide the same on the proper track.“
Ayatollah Khamenei also highlighted the importance of proper management and implementation of reforms .
He recommended the theology schools to set up efficient planning councils and employ sophisticated and scientific methods for their plans and programs.
In the four-hour meeting, Ayatollah Khamenei also called for creating high-level expert teams at religious schools to deal with different branches of science.

MOSCOW, Nov. 30--Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Friday finished sealing uranium fuel that Russia intends to send to Iran’s first atomic power station, Russia’s state nuclear fuel producer said.
Now the fuel is sealed, Russia could swiftly ship it to Iran’s Bushehr power station, which Russia is helping to build, Reuters reported.
Russia has given no date for delivering the fuel, but says it would need to be shipped to Bushehr six months before the plant’s repeatedly delayed start-up.
The IAEA team arrived at the plant on Nov 26 and confirmed that the fuel is Uranium-235 enriched to less than 5 percent, state nuclear fuel producer, TVEL, said in a statement.
“The IAEA team together with representatives of the Federal agency for atomic agency, the Iranian customer and the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrate Plant examined the nuclear fuel and sealed the containers,“ TVEL said in the statement.
“The containers with the fuel were sealed with special IAEA metal seals with numbers,“ it said.
“The IAEA inspectors made no criticisms about the quality of the nuclear fuel and the conditions of its storage,“ Konstantin Grabelnikov, deputy head of the Novosibirsk Plant, was quoted as saying by TVEL in the statement.
Grabelnikov said the delivery of the fuel “will be made when there is a technological need at the plant and when a corresponding order is made.“

The joint border with Afghanistan runs across 272 kilometers of hostile territory and rugged terrain.

ZAHEDAN,
Sistan-Balouchestan, Nov. 30--Almost half of Iran’s joint border with Afghanistan has been barricaded, a police official said.
Border Police chief of the province, Colonel Mehrdad Moshveq told IRNA on Thursday that Iran has set up barriers across 112 kilometers of borders with the war-torn neighbor.
“Effective control and supervision of frontiers can help augment security and economic growth in the border regions,“ he said.
The new barriers will also help police and border patrols to better control drug and fuel smuggling, the officer said, and noted that bandits and crime syndicates have been a permanent danger to the security or Iran’ eastern borders.
The joint border with Afghanistan runs across 272 kilometers of hostile territory and rugged terrain.
Iran has launched a major plan-of-action under which its eastern frontiers with Afghanistan and Pakistan will be fully barricaded by the end of the Fourth Economic Development Plan (2005-10).
The strict measures were announced after several cases of brutal crime, including killings and kidnappings in Sistan-Balouchestan area, by bandits and terrorists many of whom enter the border province from the two neighboring countries “Implementation of this plan demands comprehensive collaboration of the people and relevant organizations,“ Moshveq was quoted as saying.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

TEHRAN, Nov. 30 -- The Annapolis Middle East conference was a “hue and cry“ at which the key problems of the Palestinian nation were shunned, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said here Friday.
“So long as the rights of Palestinians are not restored, it would be impossible to solve the Palestine problem,“ he told the weekly congregation at Tehran University premises, IRNA reported.
Stressing that the oppressed Palestinians gained nothing from the high-profile one-day meeting in Maryland, the former president recommended the big powers and the masterminds behind the illegal founding of Israel to acknowledge and uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.
On the expected prudence of the Arab League recommending member states not to offer the Palestinian refugees other nationalities, he said the rights of the five million Palestinian refugees scattered across the world due to the Israeli lawlessness should be respected.
Dismissing the Bush regime’s hypocrisy, Rafsanjani said “the Americans gave a lot of publicity to the conference and claimed they are going something big in the interest of peace in Palestine. True, they were successful in bringing together countries for the parley. But the Palestine problems are so big and complicated that they cannot be solved at such gatherings.“
Recalling the non-stop construction of illegal Zionist settlements in the West Bank, the head of the powerful Experts Assembly asked “Can you make peace with these settlements near the houses of Palestinians?“
“They (West and Israel) think they can disregard these issues, but anything based on oppression and tyranny cannot last long,“ Rafsanjani said.
Elsewhere in his remarks, he cautioned the West against any adventurism over Iran’s nuclear program.
“If the (western) aim in talks (with Iran) is adventurism, they must rest assured that their fate in Iran would be worse than in Afghanistan and Iraq,“ the interim prayer leader said.
He hoped the West would choose the path of wisdom and logic after talks between Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and the EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana in London on Friday.
“We hope that after the talks a right path will be chosen by those who so far have been bullying Iran, and that they not subject Iran and the region to trouble.“
The nuclear issue is historical case and of itself a disclosure of facts, the worshippers were told.
“It is an injustice committed against the oppressed, revolutionary and Muslim country (Iran) by Western powers.“

TEHRAN, Nov. 30--A top Iranian diplomat has called on the international community to fulfill its obligations regarding immigration.
Iran’s envoy to the UN’s European Headquarters in Geneva, Alireza Moayyeri said migration is an international issue with political, economic and social implications for the whole world, Fars News Agency reported.
“Thus we need international cooperation for controlling migration,“ he said in an address to a meeting of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Referring to the deepening gulf between the developing and developed nations in most sectors, he said problems related to and emanating from migration of millions people each year should be studied by experts in the interest of the developed and developing countries.
“It is apparent that without discussing all the key factors related to migration we cannot reach a lasting solution“ to one of the most serious international problems of the past several decades, he said.
He urged the developing nations to get their acts together, boost technical and scientific cooperation and further build capacities for sustainable development.
There is a strong need for also “creating a balance between rights and duties of countries with respect to immigration issues,“ the news agency quoted him as saying.
Highlighting the IOM role in controlling and supporting immigrants, Moayyeri stressed the necessity of closer cooperation among international bodies to control and curb illegal immigration.

TEHRAN, Nov. 30-- A conference of judiciary officials from Islamic countries will be held here on December 14, an official said here Wednesday.
Ebrahim Raisi, the first deputy judiciary chief told reporters the three-day event will be attended by judiciary chiefs, heads of supreme courts, public prosecutors and justice ministers from the 56 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Fars News Agency reported.
“Muslim nations can an should play an effective role in discussing and spreading awareness about the challenges and opportunities of globalization.“
The conference, a first of its kind, will seek to bolster promote judicial and legal cooperation among Islamic countries and establish systems for combating organized crime, money laundering, terrorism, human trafficking, drug trafficking and put in place agreements for the extradition of criminals.
“The conferees will also exchange views on ways to conform judicial procedures to Islamic covenants and international treaties, and elaborate the role and influence of Islamic culture and civilization in upholding human rights,“ Raisi said.

KARLSRUHE, Germany, Nov. 30--Prosecutors said Thursday they had arrested a German-Iranian businessman on suspicion of attempting to supply Iran with components “for military or nuclear purposes“.
The 48-year-old man, identified only as Mohsen V., was arrested in the western city of Frankfurt on Tuesday and is “strongly suspected“ of breaking German laws covering foreign trade, according to a statement from the federal prosecutor’s office, AFP reported.
He was accused of arranging deals in breach of German export control laws.
Investigators searched the man’s business premises in Frankfurt and the offices of an unidentified German company in the nearby city of Ludwigshafen, the statement added. It gave no further details of the nature of the components in question. Germany places strict restrictions on the goods that can be exported to Iran.