Iran told the visiting head of the UN nuclear watchdog that Tehran’s cooperation in clarifying the scope of its atomic work will show the West is wrong in accusing the Islamic state of having military aims.
   ‘Iran insists on its obvious right to nuclear technology,’ chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili told International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei on Saturday.
   ‘Clarifying Iran’s nuclear activities ... will show that (they) are peaceful and that their (the West’s) claims about these activities were baseless,’ the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
   ElBaradei met Jalili and other Iranian leaders to push for swifter cooperation in resolving questions about Tehran’s atomic activity, which the West fears will be used to make warheads.
   He also held talks with the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and will, for the first time, meet Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on nuclear policy.
   A senior Iranian official said on Friday the meeting with Khamenei would involve an ‘important exchange of information’. He did not elaborate.
   The IAEA chief, seeking to defuse a standoff that has helped send oil prices to record levels and sparked fears of a military confrontation, is expected to hold a news conference before returning to Vienna early on Sunday morning.
   His two-day trip to Tehran, which began on Friday, coincides with renewed tension between Iran and the United States over a naval incident in the oil-rich Gulf last Sunday.
   Washington is seeking to isolate Iran over atomic activities it suspects have military aims. Iran says it only wants to generate electricity and has refused to heed demands to halt sensitive nuclear work despite two rounds of UN sanctions.
   The IAEA has sought to verify that Iran’s uranium enrichment programme is geared solely to producing civilian energy.
   A diplomat close to the IAEA said before ElBaradei’s visit that an agency inquiry stonewalled by Iran for years until August had entered a final phase with Iran addressing US intelligence about past attempts to ‘weaponise’ atomic material.
   Iran said in August it would answer outstanding questions about its nuclear past but an end-of-year target for completing the process passed with the sensitive issues still unresolved.
   Ahmadinejad, who has taken a hardline stand in the nuclear row, told ElBaradei he hoped the work of the IAEA would not be affected by ‘the pressure of big powers’, Fars News Agency said.
   ‘Some countries think that the IAEA has been founded to implement their policies. Iran recognises the agency as the only party to discuss Iran’s nuclear issue,’ Ahmadinejad said.
   ElBaradei’s visit coincides with a Middle East tour by the US president, George W Bush, who has called Iran a ‘threat to world peace’ and is seeking Arab support to rein in Iran.

Benazir Bhutto’s niece described as ‘dangerous’ the idea that the Pakistan People’s Party must be led by a member of the family in an interview published Saturday.
   Fatima Bhutto, 25, is still seen by some in Pakistan as a potential heir to the family dynasty, although her cousin, Benazir’s son Bilawal, was named PPP co-chairman after his mother’s assassination on December 27.
   Fatima told the Times newspaper in London that she might be interested in a career in politics, although would not be ‘a symbol’ for anyone, and denounced the PPP as ‘desperate to cash in on her (Benazir’s) blood’.
   ‘It’s become in a sense the family business, like an antique shop where it’s just ‘So and So and Sons,’ and then grandsons and great grandsons. It just gets handed down,’ she said.
   ‘The idea that it has to be a Bhutto, I think, is a dangerous one.
   ‘It doesn’t benefit Pakistan.
   ‘It doesn’t benefit a party that’s supposed to be run on democratic lines and it doesn’t benefit us as citizens if we think only about personalities and not about platforms.’
   At a London press conference earlier this week, Bilawal strongly denied a suggestion from a journalist that his role had been handed down to him ‘like some piece of family furniture’.
   Fatima’s father was Benazir’s younger brother Murtaza, killed in mysterious circumstances in Karachi 12 years ago while Benazir was in power.
   Her side of the family was subsequently locked in a feud with Benazir, but joined in the mourning after the former premier’s assassination.
   ‘Ultimately, the party workers believe that nobody can head the party but a Bhutto, but I don’t think the workers believe that on whomever you put the Bhutto name can lead,’ Fatima told the Times.
   ‘They seem to be a party in a hurry and they seem to be desperate to cash in on her blood.
   ‘There was a certain coterie around her that benefited richly from her government and they plan, it seems, to benefit richly from her death as well.’

Taiwan’s opposition nationalist Kuomintang, which favours closer ties with China, on Saturday declared a landslide victory in the island’s parliamentary election.
   The Kuomintang and its allies have secured a more than two-thirds majority of 86 seats in the 113-seat legislature, KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung told a press conference at party headquarters televised live island wide.
   ‘We give our deepest appreciation for today’s election result,’ Wu said with other party leaders at his side, including presidential hopeful Ma Ying-jeou.
   ‘We understand that you have put your faith in us, but our joy should last for only one night. Starting tomorrow, we will have more responsibilities to undertake.’
   ‘I promise we will not abuse the power of the majority but we will use it to stabilise society and unite people, and we will respect the minority in parliament,’ Wu said.
   The election commission has not yet released its official results. An announcement was expected at 10:30pm (1430 GMT).

The health of Indonesia’s ex-dictator Suharto improved Saturday, a day after he suffered multiple organ failure, as workers scurried to prepare for his possibly imminent burial.
   The octogenarian former president was forced to ignominiously step down a decade ago amid violent riots and an economic crisis after 32 years of repressive and often brutal rule in the world’s fourth most populous nation.
   He was admitted to hospital on January 4 with heart, kidney and lung problems and his condition fluctuated daily before dramatically worsening on Friday evening, when he was connected to a ventilator to stay alive.
   But Marjo Soebiandono, one of the doctors in the large team of experts assembled to treat Suharto, said that by Saturday morning, his general condition was better and he had regained consciousness.
   Later Saturday, another doctor, Satyanegara, told ElShinta radio that the former president’s condition ‘is the same as this morning’.
   Meanwhile, workers scurried to spruce up the Suharto family mausoleum, located outside the ancient Central Java city of Solo, an AFP photographer saw.

As adult obesity balloons in the United States, being overweight has become less of a health hazard and more of a lifestyle choice, the author of a new book argues.
   ‘Obesity is a natural extension of an advancing economy. As you become a First World economy and you get all these labour-saving devices and low-cost, easily accessible foods, people are going to eat more and exercise less,’ health economist Eric Finkelstein said.
   In ‘The Fattening of America,’ published this month, Finkelstein says adult obesity more than doubled in the US between 1960 and 2004, rising from 13 per cent to around 33 per cent.
   Globally, only Saudi Arabia fares worse than the United States in terms of the percentage of adults with severe weight problems – 35 per cent of people in the oil-rich desert kingdom are classified as obese, the book says, citing data from the World Health Organisation and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
   With the rising tide of obesity come health problems and an increased burden on the healthcare system and industry.

Kenya’s feuding factions came under fresh diplomatic pressure Saturday to give mediation another chance, after the opposition threatened mass rallies to protest disputed presidential polls.
   Meanwhile, the UN warned Friday that half a million people in Kenya would need humanitarian assistance in the coming weeks and months.
   The tourism industry, Kenya’s main source of foreign currencies, has been badly hit, with 90 per cent of January bookings cancelled.
   While a lull in the violence has allowed road transport companies to resume deliveries to the entire region, experts fear that Kenya may lose future investments if political instability remains.
   The UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, warned the president, Mwai Kibaki, and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who claims he was robbed of the presidency in the December elections, that the absence of a negotiated solution would be disastrous.
   ‘The potential for further bloodshed remains high unless the political crisis is quickly resolved,’ Ban said in a statement.
   His predecessor at the UN, Kofi Annan, who was expected in Kenya to take over mediation efforts from the Ghanaian president, and the African Union chairman, John Kufuor, also appealed for restraint.
   He called on ‘all Kenyan leaders, government as well as the opposition in the country, to avoid any measures or steps that would further compromise the search for an amicable solution to the country’s crisis.’
   On Friday, Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement called for three days of mass rallies across the country, starting Wednesday. The protests were promptly banned by Kenyan authorities.
   The announcement set up a fresh showdown between opposition protestors and police, barely two weeks after Kibaki’s re-election triggered a wave of clashes and tribal killings that left at least 600 people dead and a quarter of a million displaced.
   ‘Police think it is not appropriate at this time,’ police chief Major General Mohamed Hussein Ali told journalists, shortly after ODM called for demonstrations in some 30 towns across the country.
   Odinga cancelled previous protest plans as international envoys toiled to broker a political settlement, but when African Union-mediated talks ended in failure on Thursday, the ODM reverted to its initial strategy.
   Mediators had hoped to clinch a power-sharing deal following the dispute over the December 27 polls, which sparked claims of rigging from the opposition and widespread international concern.
   But Kibaki has pressed on with his agenda, taking the oath as president less than an hour after the electoral commission announced the result on December 30 and naming a partial cabinet earlier this week.
   The 76-year-old Kibaki, who is Kenya’s longest serving parliamentarian, described the cabinet line-up as ‘broad-based’ and appointed opposition presidential candidate Kalonzo Musyoka as vice president.
   But ODM charged the cabinet was ‘a joke’ and labelled Kibaki ‘an eminent thief’ who was running away with a stolen election.
   No foreign power has come out strongly against Kibaki, with mediation efforts focusing on urging Odinga to rein in his supporters and guarantee that violence will not flare up afresh.
   Washington, whose top Africa diplomat Jendayi Frazer has spent more than a week in Kenya to find a solution to the crisis, was expected to step up the pressure on both sides to avert further unrest.
   Washington will ‘be pushing people to get serious with talks started by the Ghananian leaders,’ a US diplomat said.

Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton on Friday proposed $70 billion in emergency spending to stave off a possible US election-year recession, upstaging Republican rivals who clashed over the economy but offered few specifics.
   The New York senator, who hopes to become the Democratic nominee in the November election, proposed $30 billion to help low-income families hit by the mortgage crisis and $40 billion in other spending, mainly for the poor and unemployed.
   The former first lady, trying to build momentum after her narrow New Hampshire primary victory over Illinois senator Barack Obama, also urged Congress to prepare an additional $40 billion in tax rebates for low- and middle-income families to be implemented if the initial stimulus fails.
   Hillary released her economic proposals amid warnings that a recession is increasingly likely. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke hinted on Thursday at ‘substantive’ interest rate cuts and the president, George W Bush, is considering his own economic stimulus package.
   ‘I don’t think we can wait. ... Too many people will be hurt, too many jobs will be lost, too many homes will be foreclosed on,’ Hillary said, urging the Congress to work with the president to avert a slide toward recession.
   Republicans criticised the plan.

Protesters in prisoner-style orange boiler suits staged demonstrations around the world Friday to mark six years since the US prison camp opened at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
   From London to Sydney, activists mobilised by human rights organisation Amnesty International and others called for the camp to be shut, six years to the day since it received its first prisoners seized in the ‘war on terror.’
   Around 200 people turned out in the drizzle in Washington for a march from the US Congress to the nearby Supreme Court, called by numerous rights groups.
   ‘Shut down Guantanamo, counter terror with justice,’ they chanted.
   The Supreme Court is to rule in the coming months on whether prisoners at Guantanamo Bay can challenge their detention in civilian courts. Currently they face special military tribunals at the base, outside US soil.
   In London, about 100 people assembled near the US embassy, wearing the orange suits similar to those worn by detainees. Protesters took turns overnight in steel cages before the heavily-fortified embassy.
   ‘Guards’ in military uniform, some with dogs, barked orders at the ‘detainees.’
   ‘This is really to show our rage against the fact that this black hole facility continues to exist, that there are still 275 people outside any rule of law, and to demand its immediate closure,’ Amnesty’s international campaigns director, Sarah Burton, said.
   Hundreds have been released from Guantanamo to various countries after being seized abroad in operations sparked by the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
   Some 275 remain, according to the US Department of Defence.

Rival accounts and videos of an incident between Iranian and US military boats have sowed confusion over the gravity of the confrontation and exactly what happened in the Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz.
   The January 6 incident took place before the president, George W Bush, left on a Middle East tour, raising already high tensions between Washington and Tehran as the US government lodged a formal protest on Thursday.
   The US Defence Department also disclosed Friday that Iranian speedboats interfered with the passage of US warships in Hormuz on two other occasions in December.
   The department, meanwhile, released an unedited 36-minute videotape of the January 6 incident following Iranian charges that it had faked an earlier edited version that showed Iranian speedboats racing around US warships.
   The 36-minute version aired Friday included the material contained in the earlier version, plus extended and largely uneventful footage of Iranian boats following the US ships at some distance.
   It includes a shot of a dark object floating in the water, but it could not be determined whether this was one of the box-like objects that the Pentagon claims were dumped in the path of a US warship by two speedboats.
   The videotape did not include a previously released audiotape of a threat to blow up the ships made in a radio transmission that the Pentagon says was received during the incident.
   A voice on the audiotape is heard to say in accented English: ‘I am coming to you ... You will explode in a few minutes.’
   But Pentagon officials now say they do not know the source of the radio transmission, backing off a previous claim that it came from one of the boats.
   Iran, which has described the encounter as routine and ordinary, has aired its own video showing an Iranian commander in a speedboat contacting an American sailor via radio, asking him to identify the US vessels and state their purpose.
   Amid the conflicting accounts, US Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a stern warning to Iran, saying American warships would defend themselves.
   ‘We’re not anxious to see a miscalculation here which could occur, and certainly not anxious to get into combat with them,’ Mullen told reporters on Friday.

The US president, George W Bush, arrived on Saturday in Bahrain, his second stop in a tour of US-allied Gulf Arab monarchies aimed at drumming up support against what he calls an Iranian ‘threat’.
   Bush was greeted at the airport by King Hamad, who led a red-carpet welcome for the first US president to visit the tiny Gulf kingdom which serves as home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. He flew in from Kuwait on board Air Force One.
   Tight security measures were evident in Manama as Bahraini police and Special Forces deployed along the main roads festooned with US and Bahraini flags. ‘This visit will enhance relations between the United States and Bahrain,’ said Bahrain’s official television.
   Bahrain is a major non-NATO ally of Washington. It is also one of few Middle East countries to have a free trade agreement with the United States. In Kuwait, Bush reiterated US accusations to Iran and Syria of supporting insurgents in Iraq, saying that Tehran’s role in ‘fomenting violence’ there has been exposed.