“I would like to be beside the Iranian athletes at the Olympic Games in London to support them, but (the British) have issues with my presence,” Ahmadinejad said, without offering further explanation.

“The enemies do not want our athletes to win medals, but our young people shall be present at the Olympic Games and, like Arash, give new reasons to take pride in Islamic Iran,” he said, quoted by the official news agency IRNA.

In London, Junior Foreign Office Minister Henry Bellingham said invitations to the Olympic Games were issued by countries’ sports officials.

Answering a written parliamentary question, he said: “Heads of State and Government are invited to attend the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympics Games by their national Olympic and Paralympic committees.

“It is not yet clear which Heads of State and Government will attend and we do not expect to have this information until closer to the Games.”

Meanwhile, spokesmen for both the Foreign Office and Home Office in London declined to discuss “individual cases” but a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Ahmadinejad was not subject to any official travel ban by Britain.

Relations between Tehran and London are at an all-time low. (AFP)

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Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault earlier said the top item on the meeting’s agenda would be the salary cut, a Hollande campaign promise that the premier said was about “setting an example” for France.

The move was aimed at drawing a clear distinction between Hollande and former president Nicolas Sarkozy, whose salary famously increased by 170 percent to 19,000 euros ($24,000) per month after he took office in 2007.

Hollande, who defeated right-winger Sarkozy in a May 6 vote, on Wednesday unveiled a government of mainly moderate Socialists and longtime allies.

The new line-up met a promise to appoint an equal number of men and women in Hollande’s cabinet, a first for France, although most of the senior posts went to men.

It is also a cabinet with little experience — only five of its 34 members have served previously in government and seven are under the age of 40. (AFP)

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The cabinet approved the signing of the Gas Sale and Purchase Agreement as well as the payment of a transit fee to Afghanistan and Pakistan for allowing the pipeline to pass through their territory, the Press Trust of India reported.

The 1,735-kilometre (1,078-mile) pipeline is likely to be operational by 2016, the news agency said, quoting a government official.

The announcement comes after New Delhi said this week it would cut purchases of Iranian oil by 11 percent following US pressure to isolate the Islamic republic over its disputed nuclear programme.

Washington favours the Turkmenistan pipeline and has pressured both India and Pakistan to hold off on a pipeline deal with Tehran.

Energy-scarce India, which imports four-fifths of its crude, says it shares the US anti-nuclear proliferation goals but it views Iran as an important source of oil to feed its economy’s fast-growing needs. (AFP)

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During a daily press briefing, US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland denied that Washington was playing any role in arming the rebels. “With regard to any assertions with regard to lethal (aid), we are not involved in that,” she said.

“The United States has made a decision to provide nonlethal support to civilian members of the opposition. This is things like medical equipment. This is communications, things to help them, first of all, deal with the humanitarian aspects but also to help them to communicate better so that they can plan and be ready for the period of transition that we expect and want to see in Syria,” she said.

So is Washington helping to coordinate arms shipments?

“We are obviously consulting with various states about the decisions that we’ve made, that they’ve made,” Nuland said, declining repeated opportunities to explicitly criticise countries that have opted to help arm the opposition. “This is a loose coordination mechanism.”

The US daily newspaper Washington Post had said in a report that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other gulf states were providing “millions of dollars in funding each month” to arm the opposition. (Monitoring Desk)

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Iran, like Russia, is one of Syria’s few allies as it presses ahead with a 14-month old assault on opposition forces determined to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

News of the panel’s report came as Tehran and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency try narrow their differences on how to tackle concerns over Iran’s atomic program, and as Iran prepares for talks with the five permanent council members and Germany in Iraq next week.

The new report, submitted by a panel of sanctions-monitoring experts to the Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee, said the panel investigated three large illegal shipments of Iranian weapons over the past year.

“Iran has continued to defy the international community through illegal arms shipments,” it stated. “Two of these cases involved (Syria), as were the majority of cases inspected by the Panel during its previous mandate, underscoring that Syria continues to be the central party to illicit Iranian arms transfers.”

The third shipment involved rockets that Britain said last year were headed for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

“The Panel recommends the designation (blacklisting) of two entities related to these interdictions,” it said. “The report also takes note of information concerning arms shipments by Iran to other destinations.”

The kinds of arms that Iran was attempting to send to Syria before the shipments were seized by Turkish authorities included assault rifles, machine guns, explosives, detonators, 60mm and 120mm mortal shells and other items, the panel said.

The most recent incident described in the report was an arms shipment discovered in a truck that Turkey seized on its border with Syria in February. Turkey announced last year that it was imposing an arms embargo on Syria.

Diplomats told Reuters that the panel’s draft report may be changed by the Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee before it is submitted to the council itself for consideration.

It was unclear how long it would take the committee to pass the report to the Security Council. Last year’s expert panel report on Iran was never made public because Russia blocked its publication. (AFP)

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“If we participate in the negotiations… it is because of our resistance (to Western powers). Thanks to our resistance, we have defended the rights of the Iranian people,” Saeed Jalili said in a speech broadcast on local television.

“The Iranian people will never give up even an iota of their rights,” Jalili added, in reference to the Islamic republic’s nuclear drive which the West suspects is masking a weapons programme. Tehran vehemently denies the charge.

After a 15 month hiatus, Iran and the P5+1 powers — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany — held their first talks in Istanbul in mid-April, which were described as “positive.”

The parties agreed to more in-depth discussions in Baghdad on May 23.

“I advise Western officials against making calculated mistakes. In Baghdad, we can negotiate for cooperation on the basis of respect for Iran’s undeniable rights,” Jalili said.

“The path chosen by our country is a path of no return. The (West) would like to block Iran’s progress in the nuclear domain, but they have failed. Iran today has become a nuclear power,” he added.

“To those who say that time is running out for dialogue, I reply: What is running out is the policy of pressuring Iran, because this strategy has not yielded the results” expected by world powers.

The United States and the European Union have tightened economic sanctions on Iran, imposing tough restrictions on its vital oil industry, to pressure it over its disputed uranium enrichment programme.

US President Barack Obama warned Iran in March that time was running out to resolve the standoff through diplomacy.

But Jalili was defiant on Thursday, insisting that sanctions and international pressure were not affecting Iran’s determination.

“Those who think they can pressure Iran with these sanctions are wrong… because the sanctions have allowed us to make progress,” he said.

He argued that the conditions imposed on Iran at talks in Geneva in 2009 for the delivery of uranium enriched to 20 percent for its Tehran research reactor had in fact forced it to produce the nuclear fuel itself.

“We told them: ‘If you do not give us the fuel, we will produce it ourselves.’ I will never forget the smiles from certain members of the P5+1. “But in less than two years we produced the fuel, and we are using it today.”

Iran currently enriches uranium to 3.5 percent and to 20 percent. The former it says is to power its Bushehr nuclear electricity plant and the latter it says is to generate medical isotopes in its Tehran research reactor.

Uranium has to be enriched to 90 percent or above for use in an atomic bomb.

Several Iranian officials have in recent weeks hinted that Tehran may under certain conditions suspend its drive of enriching uranium to the 20 percent level.

Tehran says it wants international acceptance of its right to peaceful nuclear activities, for sanctions to be lifted and for the threat of US and Israeli military action to disappear. (AFP)

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The temporary team led by 67-year-old Panagiotis Pikrammenos, the head of Greece’s top administrative court, is made up of mainly prominent university professors, a retired general and a respected diplomat.

Greece’s political limbo has sent the euro and European stock markets plunging, with little guarantee that the new vote set for June 17 will produce a viable government that will implement a massive EU-IMF rescue package.

European markets were mainly lower again early Thursday, with Athens down 1.2 percent, although the euro recovered from four-month lows hit Wednesday.

Officials from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, which are all that stands between Greece and a disorderly debt default — and a possible exit from the euro currency zone — have warned that no new funds will be released if progress on pledged reforms falters.

Greece’s new cabinet was sworn in Thursday, with George Zannias, formerly head of the state’s council of economic advisors and a key negotiator in Greece’s landmark debt rollover, appointed finance minister.

Petros Molyviatis, an 83-year-old retired diplomat, returns to head the foreign ministry after a stint in 2004-2006, while Greece’s former head of the army general staff Frangos Frangoulis has been named defence minister.

The caretaker administration was appointed after Greece’s political parties failed to cobble together a coalition following the May 6 elections which saw a voter backlash against austerity and in which no clear victor emerged.

“The new battle begins,” conservative New Democracy chief Antonis Samaras told party cadres. “It will determine whether Greece will remain in Europe, a Europe that is itself changing.”

Many Greeks are in dispair after two years of salary and pension sacrifices which have failed to bring the promised economic benefits, triggering strikes and sometimes violent protests.

Radical left-wing party Syriza, which is vehemently opposed to what it brands “barbaric” austerity measures and has threatened to tear up the bailout deal, is a favourite to win after coming second in the May 6 election.

Syriza’s 37-year-old leader Alexis Tsipras on Wednesday accused the EU and Chancellor Angela Merkel of European paymaster Germany of “playing poker with European people’s lives”.

Tsipras told the BBC that if the “disease of austerity destroys Greece, it will spread to the rest of Europe”.

The turmoil has raised fears among Greece’s international creditors that structural reforms pledged in return for the latest 240-billion euro ($300 billion) bailout will delayed or even scuppered. (AFP)

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The shell hit near the Karni crossing east of Gaza City, according to the medics.

But Israeli security officials said that no tank shells were fired in that area this morning.

An Israeli army spokesman said that “a short while ago, Israeli soldiers identified several terrorists approaching the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip, in an area that is used by terror organisations to lay explosive devices.”

“The soldiers fired toward the terrorists (and) the suspects distanced themselves from the fence,” he told.

The Israeli military maintains an exclusion zone inside the Gaza Strip along the border and regularly carries out military activities in the area. (AFP)

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Like Israel, the United States has said it considers military force a last resort to prevent Iran using its uranium enrichment to make a bomb. Iran insists its nuclear programme is for purely civilian purposes.

“It would be preferable to resolve this diplomatically and through the use of pressure than to use military force,” Ambassador Dan Shapiro said in remarks about Iran aired by Israel’s Army Radio on Thursday.

“But that doesn’t mean that option is not fully available not just available, but it’s ready. The necessary planning has been done to ensure that it’s ready,” said Shapiro, who the radio station said had spoken on Tuesday.

The United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany have been using sanctions and negotiations to try to persuade Iran to curb its uranium enrichment, which can produce fuel for reactors, medical isotopes, and, at higher levels of purification, fissile material for warheads.

New talks opened in Istanbul last month and resume on May 23 in Baghdad.

Israel, which is widely assumed to have the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal, feels threatened by the prospect of its arch-foe Iran going nuclear and has hinted it could launch preemptive war.

But many analysts believe the United States alone has the military clout to do lasting damage to Iran’s nuclear programme.

In January, Shapiro told an Israeli newspaper the United States was “guaranteeing that the military option is ready and available to the president at the moment he decides to use it”.

US lawmakers are considering additional legislation that would increase pressure on Iran, with further measures to punish foreign companies for dealing with Iran in any capacity. (Reuters)

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“Four suicide attackers who stormed the governor’s compound exchanged gunfire with the police. All four attackers were killed by the police. There were no casualties among police or civilians,” the governor’s spokesman Naqeebullah Farahi told. (AFP)

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