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Prayer Time (Tehran)
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Dawn: 5:45
Sunrise: 7:14
Noon: 12:09
Evening: 17:23
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Weather Guide
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TUE |
FRI |
Tehran: |
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High: |
-1 oC |
-2 oC |
Low: |
-7 oC |
-3 oC |
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Athens |
12 |
11 |
Ankara |
0 |
-1 |
Cairo |
19 |
19 |
Copenhagen |
-1 |
0 |
Frankfurt |
1 |
3 |
Karachi |
21 |
21 |
Kuwait City |
19 |
17 |
London |
3 |
7 |
Madrid |
14 |
12 |
Moscow |
-15 |
-15 |
New Delhi |
22 |
23 |
Paris |
6 |
8 |
Riyadh |
22 |
24 |
Rome |
8 |
13 |
Vienna |
-4 |
-5 |
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Identification
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Published by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA)
Address:
Iran Cultural & Press Institute, #212 Khorramshahr Avenue Tehran/Iran
Executive Editor:
Editorial Dept. Tel: 88755761-2
Editorial Dept. Fax: 88761869
Advertising Dept. Tel: 88500616,88500617
Internet Address:
www.iran-daily.com
E-mail Address:
iran-daily@iran-daily.com
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Leader:
Elect the Best Candidates
Avoid Electoral Accusations
YAZD, Jan. 2--Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said people's efforts should be aimed at electing the best candidates and having proper electoral conduct.
Speaking at a huge public gathering in Yazd, the leader referred to elections as the most important issue that the Iranian nation should take into account, ISNA reported
"Self-confidence of people is the main cause of success of Iranians," he said.
He pointed out that elections provide a suitable opportunity for the Iranian nation to demonstrate their will, national growth and insight.
Referring to the efforts by enemies to prevent elections in the Islamic system, Ayatollah Khamenei noted that the enemy will not succeed.
"People's all-out presence in the next parliamentary elections slated for March 14, 2008, is very important. Another point which is also important is that people should do their best to identify the best lawmakers," he said.
The leader noted that residents of different cities should elect candidates who are superior in terms of faith, piety and preparedness to work.
"People should vote for those who are familiar with the people's needs," he said.
Emphasizing that the candidates should avoid accusing other candidates, Ayatollah Khamenei stressed that character assassination of other candidates in newspapers and Internet is not acceptable.
"I strongly request the supporters of candidates to merely speak in favor of their candidates while avoiding speaking against other candidates," he said.
Referring to the enemyÕs hue and cry on different issues such as religious democracy, women's rights and foreign policy, the leaded said the great nation of Iran should not be deceived by such hue and cry.
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Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei met with peopleÕs enthusiastic welcome in Yazd on Jan. 2.
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Nozari Reflects on Gas Disruptions
Shell Urged
To Provide
Plan of Action
TEHRAN, Jan. 2--Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari assured Iranians that they need not worry about gas shortage in the coming days, referring to the shortage of gas in some northern and western cities.
Nozari told IRNA on the sidelines of a weekly Cabinet session on Wednesday that the Oil Ministry has supplied more than 1,200 tons of liquefied gas to those provinces.
Asked about the reason for halting Turkmenistan's gas exports to Iran, Nozari said, "They have told us the problem had been technical."
Turkmen officials have not set any date for resumption of gas exports to Iran, however.
As for Iran's gas exports to Turkey, Nozari said Iran is continuing gas exports to Turkey.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the minister said that Shell oil company should present to IranÕs Oil Ministry the outline of its project for development of phases 13 and 14 of South Pars gas field by September 2008.
Nozari also that Iran has given a deadline to Shell to this effect.
He said if Shell's comprehensive plan is accepted, the Oil Ministry will decide on continuing cooperation with the company.
Nozari said his ministry had over the past few weeks signed two big contracts for development of Yadavaran oilfield as well as the Golshan and Ferdowsi gas fields.
He said based on the contract, about 16 billion dollars will be invested in the upstream, downstream and LNG sectors of Golshan and Ferdowsi gas fields.
"Since I took up the ministerial post, I have said we shall not be kept waiting by any company and efforts are underway to finalize all the development projects," he said.
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Budget Bill Next Week
TEHRAN, Jan. 2--President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Cabinet has worked out the budget plan for the next Iranian year.
The president told reporters after the weekly Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that the government will present the budget bill to Majlis early next week, IRNA reported.
Ahmadinejad clarified that the budget plan has been drawn up after expert studies away from political and factional considerations.
"We welcome the views and analyses of experts about the budget plan to be released soon," he said.
President Ahmadinejad said the Majlis and government enjoy close and very friendly ties and the two sides express their views about different issues very frankly.
ÒBoth the Majlis and government seek the interest of nations and never let anyone muddy the water,Ó he said.
ÒSome individuals try to distort realities in a bid to suppress the government.Ó
The president regretted that the international community is suffering from occupation, vandalism, assassination and terrorism.
The president expressed outrage over the Israeli attempt to assassinate Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and said the decision of occupiers and their supporters proves that they do not believe in democracy.
"A prime minister who has been elected in a democratic election (in January 2006) by the Palestinian people has become the target of Israeli state terrorism. Let's see what the Israeli supporters think about the perception of democracy," he said.
He also denounced the assassination of former Pakistani Premier Benazir Bhutto.
President Ahmadinejad deplored the fact that one of the permanent member of United Nations Security Council has not allowed a UN inquiry into Benazir's assassination.
"It indicates who are the real supporters of such crimes," he said.
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Iran Interaction
Will Help Foil Plots
Syria Ends France Contacts
On Lebanon
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Bashar Assad
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DAMASCUS, Syria, Jan. 2--Syrian President Bashar Assad said the increasing exchange of views between Iranian and Syrian officials will help foil the enemies' plots to sow discord between the two countries.
Making the remark in a meeting with Iranian Ambassador to Syria Mohammad Hassan Akhtari on Wednesday, the Syrian president said certain countries have tried to mar the friendly Tehran-Damascus relations, IRNA reported.
Describing bilateral ties as stable, he called for upgrading economic cooperation to the level of their political relations.
The outgoing Iranian ambassador expressed Iran's readiness to expand mutual economic ties in various fields.
Akhtari noted that an economic exhibition will be held in Damascus in the near future.
The Iran-Syria Friendship Association will organize the solo exhibition, which will be held from January 24 to February 1. More than 100 Iranian companies have expressed interest in participating in the exhibition.
Also on Wednesday, Syria said it was suspending diplomatic cooperation with France on ending the political crisis in Lebanon after similar action by Paris.
Paris has accused Damascus of not promoting a deal that could fill a vacuum in the Lebanese presidency and end an opposition boycott of the government, Reuters reported.
"It seems that the French want to blame Syria for their failure...to reach a solution to the crisis," Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualem told reporters.
"Accordingly, Syria has decided to stop cooperation."
Moualem said Syria had contributed to efforts to reach consensus, including convincing opposition politicians to accept Army General Michel Suleiman as president, a post that has been vacant since November.
Syria, he said, had agreed with France on a compromise that would give the opposition veto power in a new cabinet but that Saad Al-Hariri, who leads a majority parliamentary bloc, refused to sign on.
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Energy Ties Discussed With Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 2--Ambassador of Iran Mashallah Shakeri discussed with PakistanÕs Minister for Petroleum Ahsanullah Khan promotion of bilateral cooperation in oil and gas sectors, an official statement said.
During the meeting on Wednesday, both sides expressed satisfaction over the pace of progress on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project and reiterated the desire of their leaders for its early implementation, IRNA reported.
The Pakistani petroleum minister said the government is taking concrete steps for exploiting the untapped hydrocarbon resources which span over 627,000 sq. km.
ÒThe sedimentary onshore and offshore blocks would be opened for enhancing oil and gas exploration activities in the country which would provide enormous investment opportunities to investors,Ó he said.
Khan added that there exists tremendous scope for promoting Pak-Iran ties in the oil, gas and mineral sectors, and invited Iranian companies to participate in the upcoming energy projects for benefiting from each otherÕs experience.
Shakeri said that IPI gas pipeline project would not only open up new avenues of cooperation among the states concerned, but would also help bring the regional countries closer.
PakistanÕs Petroleum Secretary Farrakh Qayyum was also present during the meeting.
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24,000 Iraqi Civilians Killed in 2007
WASHINGTON, Jan. 2--The US military and paramilitary forces in Iraq were responsible for some 24,000 violent civilian deaths in 2007, according to an independent group monitoring casualties in the war-ravaged country.
The Iraq Body Count (IBC) whose figures are tallied from media reports, morgue and hospital data, non-governmental and other sources, said in a report on Tuesday that there were between 22,586 and 24,159 violent civilian deaths in Iraq during the past year, AP reported.
"Perhaps the most accurate description of the security situation for Iraqi civilians in the past year is that it was less bad than if the worst of the late 2006 levels had been sustained throughout 2007," the group said in a statement.
The IBC lamented security that "remains at an abysmally low level" in much of the country.
"For some 24,000 Iraqi civilians, and their families and friends, the year was one of devastating and irreparable tragedy," the IBC said.
The body count project was founded in January 2003 by volunteers from Britain and the US who sought to quantify the human consequences of the US-led military invasion of Iraq.
The group said that as of January 1, 2008, the total for violent civilian deaths to the end of 2007 in Iraq was between 81,174 and 88,585.
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Jorge Appointed Iran Coach
TEHRAN, Jan. 2--Artur Jorge, former coach of Portugal and Switzerland, has been appointed as the National Football Team's head coach on Wednesday.
According to IRNA, he was named as Iran's coach following the transitional committee's meeting in the football federation.
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US Elections
By Armin Hedayati
The Iowa presidential caucuses on Thursday will launch the state-by-state contest to find the final candidate from each party in the latest race for the White House. It is time to start whittling down the large number of candidates in the running -- a process which will wind up next summer. Democratic and Republican voters must decide who they consider their party's best and brightest and send him/her for the top job.
Key figures in the Democratic fold are New York senator Hillary Clinton, her colleague from Illinois, Barak Obama who would be the first Afro-American to occupy the Oval Office if elected; and former North Carolina senator John Edwards -- who tried but failed to become vice-president in 2004.
The Republican camp is dominated by former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, a Baptist preacher; former governor of Massachusetts, the Mormon Mitt Romney; and former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani.
With the start of inter-party picking process, Republican presidential hopefuls have tended, not surprisingly, to intensify their war of words and rhetoric against the embattled George Bush over his disastrous Iraq policy.
Romney has accused him of mismanaging the Iraq conflict and Huckabee has singled out the Bush's dangerously pro-Israeli foreign policy as authoritarian. John McCain has also condemned the president's foreign policy, and said that Donald Rumsfeld (the disgraced former US defense secretary) engineered the Iraqi quagmire.
Such lethal criticism of a sitting president from the Republican enclave has been described by many as "insurgencies" in the making. The Republican infighting will get more nasty in the coming weeks and at a time when the likes of Clinton, Obama and Edwards will hardly spare any effort to grill Bush for taking the ageing giant into the two failed military conflicts (Iraq and Afghanistan) that have generated unprecedented revulsion against the United States.
It is apparent that the Republican hopefuls hope to increase their chance of victory in the elections upping the ante against the lame duck president's systemic blunders in the Iraq theater.
Bush's approval ratings have taken a solid thrashing and plummeted to below 30 percent -- a sharp decline compared to the poor ratings of his predecessors. To make matters worse for the neocon ruling clique, anti-war protests, attended also by several Republicans, have become a near regular, if not daily, affair.
It is believed that like in the past foreign policy issues, this time topped by Bush's seven years of deception and corruption, will be high on the minds of American voters irrespective of their political leanings.
Although other issues such as economic downturn, the subprime scandals, high taxes, deteriorating health and other services, immigration and the variety of social ills will also decide what way the vote goes, the failed policies and prescriptions of the Bush White House with respect to Iraq will have the greatest impact on this year's US elections.
It is precisely for this reason Romney, Huckabee, McCain and Giuliani are for now united in their condemnation of Bush and his war planners who have made the world more not less unsafe under the nonsensical "war on terror" banner.
The four claim they will turn things around and repair the colossal damages the Bush regime inflicted on America and whatever is left of its credibility in the world, Muslim states in particular. But how they intend to put the house in order, stabilize Iraq, and restore their country's tattered image is a trillion dollar question.
Despite all their clumsy rhetoric, none of Republican hopefuls have really been able to extricate themselves from the Iraqi imbroglio. After all, they too have a terribly big share in the Bush policies since 2001 that will continue to haunt the US powerhouses and upstart politicians for years to come.
Of course this is not to say that Hillaries and Obamas are of a different stock or truly fond of peace and prosperity for the world at large. The former is infamous for her support of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The only "problem" she had with Bush was the way the bloody war was conducted.
But given the fast fading fortunes of the neocon-based Republicans and their bankrupt foreign/domestic polices, the Dems seemingly will have a better chance of occupying the White House after the long-awaited Bush departure.
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