President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (l) and the Algerian Minister of War Veterans Mohamed Cherif Abbas in Tehran on Sunday.

TEHRAN, Jan. 20--President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the policies of arrogant powers have failed in different regions of the world.
During a meeting with Algerian Minister of War Veterans Mohamed Cherif Abbas on Sunday, the president stressed that the signs of ousting hegemonic powers are visible worldwide.
Ahmadinejad said all Muslims are duty-bound to resist bullying powers by following the genuine Islamic culture, IRNA reported.
“Policies of bullying powers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Sudan, Lebanon and Latin American countries have failed,“ he said, adding that they have no other choice but to get rid of such a dilemma.
Appreciating veterans and martyrs of the two countries, Ahmadinejad said imperialist systems are always targeting unity of nations.
“Bullying powers oppose culture, dignity and independence of world nations, but today masses call for justice, honesty and brotherhood,“ he said.
Ahmadinejad also called for boosting ties between the two Muslim countries.
Cherif Abbas, for his part, noted that the Iranian nation have always won against arrogant powers in the past.
“Iran and Algeria can materialize their revolutionary targets by having close relations in the economic and political fields,“ he said.
The Algerian minister arrived in Tehran on Sunday for a four-day official visit.
Abbas’s visit is taking place at the invitation of vice president and head of Martyr Foundation, Hossein Dehqan.
Abbas and Dehqan will review avenues to bolster bilateral cooperation.
During his stay in Tehran, the Algerian minister will also visit medical centers.

TEHRAN, Jan. 20--Deportation of illegal Afghan migrants from Iran has been halted until the end of winter, the Iranian Interior Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
Referring to Iran’s friendly policy on persuading Afghan refugees to return to their homeland, the statement reiterated that deportation operations have been stopped and Iranian border officials only prevent illegal travelers from entering Iran, IRNA reported.
The Interior Ministry’s Bureau of Aliens and Foreign Immigrant Affairs has rejected media reports that the deportation of illegal Afghan migrants from Iran is continuing in winter.
The bureau also announced that it is committed to agreements with the Afghan government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, stressing that Iran has halted its measures because of humanitarian considerations.

A satellite image of Bushehr nuclear plant near the coast of Persian Gulf

TEHRAN, Jan. 20--Russia has delivered more than half the fuel for Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, after a fourth consignment arrived on Sunday.
“The fourth consignment of fuel arrived on Sunday morning, weighing 11 tons at the Bushehr site“ in southern Iran, IRNA quoted the Organization for Production and Development of Nuclear Energy as saying in a statement.
Russia has so far delivered 44 tons of fuel, following shipments on December 17, 28 and January 18.
The remainder of the fuel, about 40 tons, is scheduled to arrive in four separate shipments in the coming months, the report said.
Iran has said Bushehr, the country’s first nuclear reactor, will begin operating in the summer of 2008, producing half of its 1,000-megawatt capacity of electricity.
Tehran heralded the first shipment as a victory, saying it proved its nuclear program was peaceful.
Iran has agreed with Russia to return the spent fuel to ensure it does not extract plutonium to build a bomb.
Iran insists on continuing uranium enrichment because it needs to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it was building in the southwestern town of Darkhovin.
Iranian officials have said they 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.
The Bushehr plant is being built under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog.

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan. 20--An Azerbaijani officer was killed in a gun-battle with a group of people who were trying to cross into the country illegally from Iran, Azerbaijan’s border patrol service said on Saturday.
Border guards drove the group back into the Iranian territory, but one officer was wounded in the exchange of gunfire and died in a hospital, the border service said, AP reported.
It did not say why the armed group may have been seeking to enter Azerbaijan, which lies north of Iran.
The border is a smuggling route for narcotics from Iran and Afghanistan to western Russia and Europe.

TEHRAN, Jan. 20--Iraq reveals the duplicity of the United States and Britain, according to a recent book.
Hossein Amir-Abdollahiyan, Iran’s ambassador to Bahrain, outlines the above in a book titled “Contradictory Democracy of the United States in New Iraq“.
In his book, Amir-Abdollahiyan has analyzed US strategies in the Iraq war, security in the Persian Gulf, role of Iraq in the failed Greater Middle East Initiative and the US role in the execution of Saddam Hussein.
The book elaborates on the international and regional problems caused by Iraq’s occupation and the extent to which the US-launched war on Iraq in the Middle East impacted political, military, security, economic, social and cultural developments of the whole strategic region.
The presence of the US and multinational military forces has inflicted huge costs and casualties: the war in Iraq has a monthly bill of $20 billion; more than 1,000 American and British forces are killed on a yearly basis in Iraq; and claims the lives of some 150,000 Iraqi civilians.