TEHRAN, Feb. 12--President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will attend an open Majlis session on Wednesday to defend the 2008-9 Budget Bill, Majlis first vice speaker, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, said on Tuesday.
This is the first time President Ahmadinejad will be attending a Majlis session to defend the outlines of the budget bill, Fars News Agency reported.

TEHRAN, Feb. 12--Iran’s satellite pursues scientific, commercial and research purposes, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said on Tuesday.
“The research rocket, Explorer 1, is gathering information in preparation for sending a satellite into space,“ IRNA quoted Hosseini as saying.
The spokesman made the remark while commenting on the nature of the Iranian satellite ’Omid’.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the massive gathering at Azadi Square on Monday that Explorer 1 has been successful and Iran will launch two more explorers ahead of sending the indigenous satellite into space.
Reacting to the US concern about Explorer 1 launched last week, Hosseini said those comments arise from the political hostility of US officials toward Iran.
The research rocket was sent into orbit on February 4, on the order of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to mark the inauguration on the same day of Iran’s first space center established by Iranian aerospace scientists.
Hosseini also rejected reports linking the launch of Explorer 1 to a row between Russia and the US over the former’s plans to set up a missile shield in eastern Europe.
“Delegating the question of deterrence between the two powers (the US and Russia) to a third country is considered by strategists as an unrealistic and completely fabricated measure,“ he said.
He stressed that the launch of Explorer 1 was in line with the recent achievements of Iran’s aerospace scientists.
Hosseini noted that Iran’s aerospace achievements are not only a threat to the world, but also a chance for establishing better interaction with other countries in the field of aerospace.

MOSCOW, Feb. 12--The latest round of talks between US and Iranian officials on Iraqi security will get underway in the next few days, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said Tuesday.
US and Iranian officials met several times last year in Baghdad to discuss security in Iraq in talks arranged by the Iraqi government, Reuters reported.
“We’re putting all our efforts into organizing the next round of Iranian-American talks in Baghdad. We expect the next round of these talks will start literally in the next few days,“ Zebari told a news conference during a visit to Moscow.
The talks eased a diplomatic freeze between Iran and the US that has lasted almost three decades, though the two countries are currently embroiled in a row over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Zebari also said that Iraq’s government is confident a visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will go ahead in early March.
“There is an invitation to President Ahmadinejad to visit Iraq. There is every reason to believe the visit will take place sometime at the beginning of March,“ Zebari added.
Both Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have visited Iran, which some Middle East analysts say exerts greater influence in Iraq than the United States.
Zebari also said Sunday that cooperation between his country and neighboring Iran and Syria has improved and that the overall situation within Iraq had improved noticeably.
“In the course of the past few months, we have noticed an improvement in cooperation in the areas of security with Iran’s neighbors, particularly with Syria and Iran,’’ Zebari was quoted by Interfax and RIA-Novosti as saying.
“We have succeeded on several levels in curbing terrorism in the country, and in particular, in Baghdad,“ he added.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Government spokesman, Ali Al-Dabbagh, said Monday that Baghdad is pursuing establishment of “special“ relations with Tehran.
He told reporters that Baghdad is interested in expansion of ties with various world countries.
He made the remarks on the threshold of the Iranian president’s visit to Iraq.
Terming President Ahmadinejad upcoming visit as important, he said the visit will take place at the official invitation of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

DAMASCUS, Syria, Feb. 12--Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal has played down threats by the Israeli occupying regime to oust the resistance movement in Gaza, saying Hamas will not yield to pressures.
Speaking to Alalam satellite TV, Mashaal said the hostile Israeli measures in the Gaza Strip fall within the framework of the regime’s policy of terrorism, threats and occupation.
The Hamas leader stressed that Palestinians, “whose sanctities and rights are being trampled“, are not afraid of Israeli attacks and would not abandon resistance in the face of the occupying regime’s belligerent policies.
On Monday, Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert renewed his declaration of the Gaza Strip as “hostile territory“, supporting war minister Ehud Barak’s stepped-up aggression against Palestinians locked up in the coastal enclave.
Barak told the Knesset foreign affairs and war committee on Monday that one of the goals of the Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip was to topple Hamas in the territory.
Laying out the general outlines of Israel’s plan of action in the Gaza Strip, Barak said the first priority was to contain the Qassam rocket fire and then to destabilize Hamas’ hold on the territory, possibly even bring it down.

Evo Morales

LA PAZ, Bolivia, Feb. 12--President Evo Morales of Bolivia has declared a US Embassy security officer “persona non grata“ (an undesirable person), a term used for espionage activities.
Morales made the remark after reports said the officer asked an American scholar and 30 peace corps volunteers to pass along information about Cubans and Venezuelans working in Bolivia, Reuters reported.
It was not immediately clear whether Morales intended to seek the expulsion of the official, Vincent Cooper, who according to the US Embassy was recalled to Washington for consultations.
Morales said Cooper is, “for Bolivia, for the government, an undesirable person,“ and accused him of sending US citizens in Bolivia out as spies.
The president said, “I feel that this man has not only violated the rights of these citizens, but also violated, offended and attacked Bolivia.“
The embassy released a statement on Monday explaining that Peace Corps volunteers had been mistakenly given a security briefing meant only for embassy staff, asking them to report “suspicious activities.“
During a flood relief visit to the eastern city of Trinidad, US Ambassador Phillip Goldberg said: “Nobody at the embassy has ever asked American citizens to participate in intelligence activities here.“
“But I want to say that I greatly regret the incident that was made known this weekend,“ he added.
The ambassador’s statement referred only to the peace corps briefing in July.
Embassy officials said they could not confirm whether Cooper also gave improper instructions to a Fulbright scholar in a one-on-one briefing in November.
Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said he would seek a meeting with Goldberg to discuss recent tensions over intelligence operations in Bolivia, but the embassy has yet to receive a formal summons.
On Friday, Fulbright scholar Alex van Schaick said Cooper, the embassy’s assistant regional security officer, asked him to pass along the names and addresses of any Venezuelan and Cuban workers he might encounter in the country.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb. 12--Kenya’s main opposition has proposed that it share power for two years with the president’s party, and that the country then hold fresh elections, a top negotiator from each side said on Tuesday after weeks of post-election violence.
The statements are reason for hope for many Kenyans, who have seen more than 1,000 die and some 600,000 flee their homes in fear since the dispute over who won the Dec. 27 presidential elections sparked violence, much of it pitting ethnic groups linked to particular politicians against one another, AP reported.
Opposition legislator William Ruto said, “We put forward our proposal to the other side, which among other things, include forming a broad-based government that lasts for two years ... We are going to agree on how are we going to work together in governance.“
Government negotiator Mutula Kilonzo confirmed that the president’s party had received the proposition and would debate them “to see if we can reach an agreement“. He added in an interview with AP that the current constitution gives the president the power to appoint opposition members to his Cabinet.
Ruto said that during the two years his party proposes leaders share power, they should concentrate on reforming the constitution and electoral commission and establishing a plan to rebuild parts of the country destroyed by violence. He also suggested a truth and justice commission to look into land disputes that have contributed to the violence.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 12--Pakistani authorities searched for the country’s abducted ambassador to Afghanistan and two kidnapped nuclear experts on Tuesday as insecurity mounted ahead of crucial elections next week.
The abductions took place on Monday near the country’s rugged northwestern border with Afghanistan, where Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants are waging an insurgency against the US-allied government in Islamabad, AFP reported.
The Pakistani envoy, Tariq Azizuddin, was heading to the Afghan capital Kabul with his driver on Monday when they disappeared in the lawless Khyber tribal district, officials said.
“We have launched efforts for his recovery. It now appears clear that he has been kidnapped,“ Rasool Khan Wazir, chief administrative official in Khyber, told AFP.
“We are trying to collect information... We cannot disclose our strategy but we are hopeful we will find out where he has been kept and who is involved.“
Security officials said tribal authorities were scouring the rugged area, the site of the famed Khyber Pass linking Afghanistan and Pakistan, and had closed the main road between the two countries.
Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul said it last had contact with the ambassador on Monday morning as he traveled from the northwestern city of Peshawar into the tribal area.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday he hoped for Azizuddin’s quick rescue from ’terrorists’.

LONDON, Feb. 12--Amnesty International on slammed the special military courts in which six alleged September 11, 2001, co-conspirators will face trial, and called on the United States not to seek the death penalty.
The London-based human rights group questioned the fairness and impartiality of the special military commissions in which the six will appear, and said it feared that information obtained under torture would be used, AFP reported.
In a statement, amnesty’s United States researcher Rob Freer called on the international community to “challenge the USA to drop these military commissions and conduct trials in front of independent and impartial courts, without resort to the death penalty.“
The Pentagon announced in Washington on Monday that it will seek the death penalty against the six, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the attack on the United States.
All six were charged with conspiracy, murder in violation of the laws of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property, terrorism, and material support for terrorism.
Four were charged with hijacking or hazarding an aircraft.
The charges were unveiled only a week after the CIA admitted that Mohammed and two other Al-Qaeda detainees were subjected to ’waterboarding’, a form of simulated drowning widely denounced as torture.
According to Brigadier Thomas Hartmann, a legal adviser to the Pentagon official in charge of overseeing the trials, the admissibility of evidence obtained under duress will be determined by the military judge hearing the cases.
Hartmann insisted that every “piece of evidence, every stitch of evidence, every whiff of evidence that goes to the finder of fact, to the jury, to the military tribunal will be reviewed by the accused, subject to confrontation, subject to cross-examination, subject to challenge.“
Amnesty, however, questioned the impartiality of the commissions, with Freer noting: “The Pentagon, along with the president (George W. Bush), has overarching influence over the operation of military commissions. In other words, these substandard tribunals lack independence from the same executive branch that has authorized and condoned systematic human rights violations committed against these detainees.“