TEHRAN, Jan. 19--President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stressed that the Iranian nation has the final say.
“Presidential elections are more than one and a half year away,“ said the president in a live interview with Al-Jazeera news channel, IRNA reported.
He said it was too early to say if he would stand again for president.
“Our country is a free country. They (the Iranian people) are very educated and have the final say,“ he said.
On the nuclear issue, the president reiterated that Iran’s nuclear activities are transparent.
“The Iranians have not deviated from regulations.
All our activities have complied with the regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). They have complete supervision over our activities,“ he said.
Elsewhere in his interview, Ahmadinejad said foreign interference is the cause of all problems in Iraq.
“Our dialogue with the US is aimed at helping Iraqi security,“ he said, stressing that the Iraqi people are cultured, civilized and educated.
He pointed out that the Iranian and Iraqi people have a common religion.
Ahmadinejad stressed that the Iraq-imposed war (1980-88) on Iran was provoked by the US.
“We wish Iraq would attain stability,“ he said, voicing his government’s readiness to render all possible assistance to the Iraqi nation.
Referring to developments in Lebanon, he said, “We believe problems stem from foreign interference in Lebanon.“
Ahmadinejad called on the Lebanese people to “join hands and unite“ in the interest of the nation.
Asked about Zionist threats, especially after test-firing a missile, the president said the Zionist regime does not have the courage to launch any strike against Iran.
He stressed that the Zionist regime would not gain legitimacy through its threats and these would not save it from the impending doom.
“This illegitimate regime is doomed to a rapid collapse,“ he said.
Ahmadinejad said the Zionists are a handful of criminals who are enemies of mankind.
Commenting on the Middle East tour of President George W. Bush, he said they want to encourage the Zionist regime to perpetrate further crimes.
“They wish to sow rift and division among people of the region. They also want to cover up,“ he said.
“The American people are against all these things,“ he said, adding that the advocates of war are losing voters.
Ahmadinejad said the visit to the region of Bush pursued a domestic agenda.

TEHRAN, Jan. 19--Iran received a third shipment of nuclear fuel from Russia on Friday for a power plant being constructed in the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr.
The 11-ton consignment arrived at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant on Friday morning and the remainder of the fuel will arrive in five separate shipments over the next months, the radio report said.
Iran received the first two shipments of nuclear fuel from Russia on Dec. 17 and Dec. 28 after months of dispute between the two countries, allegedly over delayed construction payments for the reactor, Alalam.ir reported.
Iran has said Bushehr, the country’s first nuclear reactor, will begin operating in the summer of 2008 and produce half its 1,000-megawatt capacity of electricity.
Tehran heralded the first shipment as a victory, saying it proved its nuclear program was peaceful and not a cover for weapons development as claimed by the US and some of its allies.
The US initially opposed Russian participation in building the Bushehr reactor and supplying it with fuel, but reversed its position about a year ago to obtain Moscow’s support for the first set of UN sanctions against Iran.
Iran has agreed with Russia to return the spent fuel to ensure it does not extract plutonium to build a bomb.
Iran insisted it would continue enriching uranium because it needed to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it was building in the southwestern town of Darkhovin.
Iranian officials plan to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear energy in the next two decades.
Russia’s decision to begin shipping nuclear fuel to Iran followed a US intelligence report released earlier this month that concluded Tehran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in late 2003 and had not resumed it since.
Iran says it never had a weapons program.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 19--Security forces on Saturday overran a mosque in southern Iraq where Shiites were holed up, ending two days of clashes in two cities that killed at least 70 people, police said.
The fighting came as millions of Shiites across Iraq marked the climax of 10-day Ashura rituals, which commemorate the killing of Imam Hussein by armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680, AFP reported.
Wearing yellow headbands, they attacked police simultaneously early Friday afternoon in the southern port city of Basra and in Nasiriyah, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) south of Baghdad.
Fighting raged in both cities through the afternoon, during which, according to officials, police posts and several Shiite processions marking Ashura were attacked with machine-guns and assault rifles.
The clashes died down in Basra during the night but continued sporadically in Nasiriyah.
A police official in Nasiriyah said Iraq’s security forces raided hideouts of militants at daybreak on Saturday, flushing them out of the mosque and houses they had occupied in Al-Salhiyah suburb.
“Some of the insurgents were killed and arrested while others fled during the raid,“ the police official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Police officials said at least 35 Shiites were killed in Basra and 18 in Nasiriyah. A total of 12 police, two Iraqi soldiers and three civilians were also killed, according to the latest police figures.
More than 120 Shiites were arrested in Nasiriyah, Basra and in a raid on Saturday in the town of Musayyib, 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Baghdad.
Followers of the group, led by Ahmed Al-Hassani Al-Yamani, seek to hasten the return of Imam Mahdi (AS), an eighth-century imam who vanished as a boy and whom Shiites believe will return to bring justice to the world.
Yamani has his own website on which he claims to be an ambassador for the Mahdi, who he says will reappear imminently.
Aziz Alwan, governor of southeastern Dhi Qar province of which Nasiriyah is the capital, told a news conference that modern weaponry had been seized from members of the group.
“They believed the Mahdi would appear on the evening of Ashura and that their leader (Yamani) would be his ambassador,“ Alwan said.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19--The United States on Friday played down the chance of major powers agreeing on new UN sanctions against Iran when ministers meet in Berlin next week, underlining discord over how to proceed with Tehran.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said there was still no agreement among major powers on a third UN Security Council resolution against Iran over its nuclear program, AP reported.
Russian and China have stiffened opposition to putting more pressure on Iran since a US intelligence report last month concluded Tehran halted its atomic weapons program in 2003.
McCormack said foreign ministers of the 5+1 group would keep working on the sanctions resolution during the talks on Tuesday.
The group consists of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- China, Russia, France, Britain and the US-- plus Germany.
Asked whether he was hopeful the ministers would agree on elements of a resolution during the Berlin talks on Tuesday, McCormack said: “It might take a little longer.“
McCormack has sought to lower expectations for the Berlin meeting in recent days, saying it would look not only at sanctions but at what the strategy should be going forward.
Since the US National Intelligence Estimate was released last month, a Western diplomat said the Russians and Chinese had become more difficult to handle in Iran negotiations.
“Draconian“ measures such as sanctions on Iran’s oil and gas sector were not an option, McCormack said this week.
Meanwhile, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili criticized a US drive to impose sanctions over its atomic program, while receiving support from Beijing.
Addressing reporters after talks with Chinese officials on Friday, Jalili said Iran and China, which has growing energy ties with the Islamic Republic, were both against sanctions. “US unilateral sanctions, you can say are only sanctions on themselves and their companies,“ Jalili said, in remarks through a Chinese translation.
“These proposals, plans and dramas are all for the US domestic elections and some nations are viewing these mistaken US unilateral actions with a cold eye.“
Jalili arrived in Beijing on Thursday in an apparent effort to get China’s support to reject any proposed resolution.
“The Iranian nuclear issue is now at a crucial moment,“ Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told Jalili in a meeting late Thursday, according to remarks posted by the foreign ministry.
“China hopes all concerned parties, including Iran, make joint efforts to resume negotiations as soon as possible in a bid to promote the comprehensive and proper settlement of this issue.“

Palestinian youths look at a destroyed building that was used by Hamas as Interior Ministry following an Israeli air strike on Gaza City, Jan. 18.

GAZA CITY,
Occupied Palestine,
Jan. 19--Israel kept up its bloody strikes against Gaza people on Saturday, killing at least two in a new aggression, as its lockdown of the impoverished Palestinian territory started to take its toll on residents.
A predawn air strike north of Gaza City killed two Palestinians, medics said, AFP reported.
A second strike there left no casualties.
Israel has escalated aggressions in Gaza, killing at least 36 people since Tuesday in the biggest flare-up of violence since Hamas took power.
On Thursday, Israel announced it would close all crossings into and out of Gaza for several days to all but essential humanitarian aid, intensifying its almost two-year siege of the territory.
A senior official from the UN agency for refugees, which on Friday was prevented from bringing in a shipment of humanitarian aid, warned about the impact of the closures on the deepening poverty in the coastal strip.
“At the UN we only provide 61 percent of the daily calories for the people that are relying on us,“ John Ging, the UNRWA’s Gaza director, told AFP.
More than a million people in Gaza--two-thirds of the territory’s total population--rely on the UNRWA food system, which Ging warned only provides basic staples such as oil, lentils and rice.

WASHINGTON,
Jan. 19--Apparent gaps in White House email archives coincide with dates in late 2003 and early 2004 when the administration was struggling to deal with the CIA leak investigation and the possibility of a congressional probe into Iraq’s intelligence failures.
The gaps--473 days over a period of 20 months--are cited in a chart prepared by White House computer technicians and shared in September with the House Reform and Government Oversight Committee, which has been looking into reports of missing emails, AP reported.
Among the times for which emails may not have been archived from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office are four days in early October 2003, just as a federal probe was beginning into the leak of Valerie Plame’s CIA identity, an inquiry that eventually ensnared Cheney’s chief of staff.
Contents of the chart--which the White House now disputes--were disclosed on Thursday by Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who chairs the House committee, as he announced plans for a Feb. 15 hearing.
Waxman said he decided to release details from the White House-prepared chart after presidential spokesman Tony Fratto declared “we have absolutely no reason to believe that any emails are missing“.
Not archived by the office of the vice president are emails for Jan. 29-31, 2004, according to chart information released by Waxman.
US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, the third-highest diplomat in the State Department, is to resign for personal reasons, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday.
Rice told reporters: “He (Burns) decided it was time for him to retire from the Foreign Service,“ adding that Burns will keep working in his current post until March.