Enthusiastic crowds greeted the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in Fars province.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said justice is the yardstick of all economic activities.
“Investments and entrepreneurship is a momentous task and a kind of worship. However, the three branches of government should beware that justice is not enfeebled or overlooked in the process,“ he told over 20,000 professors and students of Fars province’s universities on Saturday, Fars News Agency reported.
Ayatollah Khamenei underlined that correct judgment about the track record of the Islamic Revolution requires a macro analysis of its objectives, internal and external barriers as well as accomplishments of the Islamic Republic.
“Resistance, painstaking efforts, unity, continuation of the drive for overcoming barriers and concentrating on targets will definitely result in fulfillment of all ideals of the Islamic Revolution,“ he said.
The leader referred to problems such as intellectual weakness, slack attitude, avoiding challenges, non-preparation for confronting obstacles as well as poor habits remaining from the former monarchical regime like absence of self-confidence and wrong interpretation of religious teachings as internal barriers.
“Many obstacles have been removed due to the efforts of the people and officialdom, but some of them still linger,“ he said.
Commenting on external barriers, Ayatollah Khamenei said, “Confrontation of counter-revolutionary forces and people who suffered losses from the victory of the Islamic Revolution and also the eight years of the imposed war are among external barriers. People transformed this great threat into a huge opportunity for growth and advancement. But, at any rate, imposition of a long war on the nation inflicted huge losses.“
Referring to the plots masterminded by world powers and the persistent US drive to undermine the Islamic Revolution as another external barrier, he said, “The US is confronting the nation by mobilizing all its political, economic and propagandist might. Besides being rooted on the White House’s policy of creating an external enemy for diverting the public opinion from its domestic failures, the confrontation is rooted in the fact that the Iranian nation has endeavored to make other nations vigilant about the US hegemonic policies,“ he said.
Ayatollah Khamenei declared that national unity in its various facets, especially the student body, is one of the factors that can help overcome barriers and fulfill the targets of the Islamic Revolution.

A member of Iran’s Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission said George W. Bush is the weakest US president in living memory.
Elham Aminzadeh also said Americans are facing many problems that they had not experienced during the terms of previous presidents.
“Threats and sanctions of the US and the West against Iran will have no impact on Tehran. Iran’s diplomatic consultations with various countries will thwart Washington’s plots against the Islamic Republic,“ the MP told IRNA on Saturday.
The US uses the language of threats and sanctions against Tehran as a means of achieving its own demands, she stated, adding that the White House would fail to obtain its goals.
Also on Saturday, another MP said the US pressure on the Iranian nation has resulted in the development of young talents in all fields.
Deputy head of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Mohammad Nabi Roudaki, also told IRNA that despite sanctions against Iran and the 1980-88 Iraq-imposed war, the Islamic Republic made great progress over the past 28 years in many fields, including development of domestic industries and access to peaceful nuclear technology.
“The US intends to impose more sanctions on Tehran but sanctions will have no impact on the development and progress of the country. Iran has achieved great success in producing state-of-the-art weapons,“ he said.
Roudaki said Iran is currently self-sufficient in meeting its domestic needs, pointing out that progress in the defense, cultural and industrial sectors is the only way to encounter the US pressures and threats.

Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Hossein Saffar Harandi said broad-based ties between Iran and Algeria are rooted in religious and historical relations between the two countries.
The Iranian minister made the statement in a meeting with his Algerian counterpart Khalida Toumi in Tehran on Saturday, IRNA reported.
He expressed hope that the two countries would be able to broaden all-out ties in the cultural, art, cinema, media and cultural heritage fields by organizing cultural weeks as well as film festivals.
The Algerian culture minister, who is in Tehran to attend Algeria’s Cultural Week, expressed satisfaction with her current visit to Tehran and voiced her country’s firm determination to broaden cultural and arts cooperation with Iran.
“Algeria loves nations who never yield to superpowers and regards Iran as its brother and friend,“ she said, adding that cultural facilities in the two countries could help further broaden ties between the two nations.

Iran has seized a foreign ship that smuggled fuel in the Persian Gulf waters. An official told IRNA on Saturday on condition of anonymity that the ship was transferred to one of the harbors for further investigation.
The official did not reveal the ship’s identity.
Earlier, Government Spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said fuel smuggling poses a threat to the national economy and creates social and financial dilemmas.
Elham, who was speaking in West Azarbaijan province, stated that one of the important challenges facing the government is fuel smuggling.
“Supporting the private sectors can help put an end to fuel smuggling,“ he said, urging related body to overcome the challenges through a comprehensive and national approach.
Increased fuel smuggling not only had adverse impacts on the economies of Iran and regional states, but has also helped create an ’artificial’ crisis.
The wide gap between prices of oil derivatives in Iran and regional states has caused a fuel crisis in neighboring states, which has made Iranian fuel products a top commodity smuggled out of the country.

Anti-Drug Police Chief Brigadier General Hamid Reza Hosseinabadi said the new phase of confronting drug dealers and addicts in 2008-9 will start next week.
Speaking to Fars News Agency on Saturday, the brigadier general said, “We have identified these people and are currently making judicial coordination about implementing the plan, which will start in Tehran next week and gradually in all other parts of the country.“
He noted that the success of the plan last year is the driving force behind the new phase.
Hosseinabadi also said that the police will take drug addicts, who do not have drug rehab center cards, to such centers.
“Implementation of the plan will result in more drug addicts undergoing treatment in rehab centers,“ he said.

Iraq has not reopened the Shalamcheh border checkpoint with Iran yet, a senior official with Iran’s Haj and Pilgrimage Organization said.
Hossein Akbari also told Fars News Agency on Saturday that negotiations are underway to reopen the border checkpoint, but talks have not borne fruit yet.
“The Shalamcheh border checkpoint was sealed due to the unrest and instability in Iraq, particularly in the country’s Basra province. Now it seems that the situation has calmed down considerably, but they (Iraqi officials) believe some problems still remain unresolved,“ he said.
In late March, Mohammad Reza Amlazadeh, governor of the southwestern Iranian city of Khorramshahr, had said that the border crossing was still blocked due to continuing skirmishes in Iraq’s southern areas.
“The Shalamcheh border checkpoint would remain closed until the Iraqi government announces its official reopening,“ he said.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad congratulated Silvio Berlusconi on his reelection as Italian prime minister.
In his message on Saturday, the Iranian president expressed hope that Tehran-Rome cooperation would further bolster in all areas through the greater efforts of the two countries’ officials, IRNA reported.
President Ahmadinejad also felicitated the Italian government and nation over the event.
Conservative billionaire Silvio Berlusconi won a third term as Italy’s prime minister on April 14 by an unexpectedly wide margin after his center-left rival Walter Veltroni conceded defeat in general elections. Berlusconi is expected to be sworn in on May 9.

Wrecked ambulances sit at the site of a US air strike in BaghdadÕs Sadr City on May 3.

A senior member of Iran’s negotiating team with the United States on Iraqi security demanded a halt to US attacks in Iraq before any new round of talks with Washington.
“If the US savage attacks against the Iraqi people are stopped, we will examine the US request for a fourth round of talks,“ the unnamed official was quoted as saying by Fars News Agency.
Iran and the United States held three rounds of talks on Iraq last year.
Iran, whose ties with Washington have been severed since 1980, strongly opposes the US military presence in Iraq.
An Iranian delegation traveled to Baghdad in March expecting a new round of talks which never took place. Iran said the United States cancelled the talks at the last minute, but US officials said a date was never set.
“The Iraqi government and the United States have officially invited Iran for the fourth round,“ the Iranian official said.
“Under the current circumstances and given the US widespread attacks on the Iraqi people in different cities, Iran does not feel these negotiations are necessary.“
In early April, the United States said it had informed the Iraqi government it was prepared to resume the long-delayed talks with Iran.
US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Kazemi Qomi held face-to-face talks in May and July 2007, in the highest level public contact between the two sides for 27 years.
Officials from the two countries also met at the experts’ level last August.

Sergei Lavrov

Russia on Saturday said world powers are asking Tehran only to suspend uranium enrichment during the period of talks.
Following a meeting on Iran in London of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said no mention had been made of new sanctions and Tehran must be made to see the advantages of cooperation.
“Our first conditions are the freezing, suspension of uranium enrichment. The approach of the six (powers) is that Iran should suspend enrichment only for the period in which talks continue,“ Lavrov told the Interfax and ITAR-TASS news agencies.
“There wasn’t anything about new sanctions although our American colleagues take the view that pressure on Iran must be maintained.“
Lavrov further said it is necessary to explain to Iran the advantages of agreeing to start talks on the basis of one condition--the freezing of uranium enrichment.
The Islamic Republic insists its nuclear drive is peaceful and solely aimed at generating electricity for a growing population.
The six have been using a mix of incentives and sanctions to try to persuade Iran to rein in its nuclear work.
Following Friday’s talks in London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the powers had “reviewed and updated“ an offer made to Iran in June 2006, but that the contents of the new proposal would only be disclosed to the Islamic Republic.
“The proposals are in the areas of energy, trade, investment and regional security,“ he said.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Friday the proposals were more “precise and detailed“ than before.
The six powers have offered technical, political and economic rewards to Tehran for suspending its nuclear program.
At the same time, the UN Security Council has adopted three resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran for its refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.
Russia has relatively close ties to Iran and has generally taken a softer approach on the sanctions issue than the United States.
It is building Iran’s first nuclear power station at Bushehr under a deal by which Moscow has supplied enriched uranium and will remove the fuel after use.
Deliveries of the enriched fuel were started last December and completed in January, based on an agreement that obliges Iran to return spent fuel after uranium enrichment.

Iran and the UN nuclear agency will resume talks on enhancing cooperation, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
Ali Asghar Soltanieh told IRNA that the second series of discussions that started last week for three days will resume in the next ten days.
Iran said the talks should be interpreted in the context of developing Iranian nuclear program, especially the fuel cycle and the agency’s systematic monitoring.
Western scientists, who have seen slides of Iranian nuclear sites broadcast on national media, admired Iranians for the modern fuel cycle and the advanced centrifuges.
Soltanieh made no mention of an agreement announced by the IAEA after the first round that Iran would answer the allegations during May and instead said the latest meetings were in line with a more general accord from August 2007.
“Iran responded to all the ambiguities mentioned by the IAEA in line with the agreement (of August 2007) and is ready to respond to all the questions and ambiguities as part of its cooperation with the agency like any other state,“ he said.
The latest talks involved Soltanieh and other top officials from Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.
The IAEA was represented by its deputy director general, Olli Heinonen, while other officials remained to continue the discussions.
Iran got a clean health bill from the UN’s nuclear agency on February 22 after Tehran reached an agreement on a Modality Plan according to which the agency had undertaken to verify the civilian nature of Iran’s program upon answers to be provided by Iran to the outstanding issues during a specified time.
“The agency verifies that the answers provided by Iran supports the documentation,“ the IAEA report said.

IRNA’s correspondent in Vienna was not allowed to take part in an anti-Iran conference that opened on Saturday.
Simone Dinah Hartmann, an official in charge of the conference, while denying permission to IRNA’s reporter said, “The news agency belongs to the Islamic Republic of Iran, so its correspondent is not allowed to attend.“
In response to the IRNA reporter’s argument that it was against the right to information, Hartmann added that “she had no permission to attend the gathering even as an independent participant and without the title of reporter“.
Meanwhile, several reporters also withdrew from the event in protest at the refusal to allow the IRNA correspondent in.
By sending emails to the secretariat, the Vienna University and union of reporters in Vienna, the reporters regretted the creation of obstacles in the way of free flow of information by the conference’s officials.
Since the issue of human rights is one of the main topics on the event’s agenda, the reporters said free dissemination of news and information is one of the primary rights of human beings.
They added that it was a shame that such a conference, which is to focus on human rights and freedom, prevented reporters from covering the event.
The reporters also said that preventing the correspondent from attending the confab because of her nationality was ’surprising’.
Announcing their withdrawal from the conference, the reporters reiterated that the conference’s move was against press freedom.