Tehran, June 16
Iran is ready to resume stalled nuclear talks with major powers if conditions Tehran will announce soon are met, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said a week after the country was hit by new UN sanctions.

Ahmadinejad made clear today that Iran’s “nuclear path” would not be negotiable in any discussions, highlighting Tehran’s defiance despite growing international pressure over atomic activities the West suspects are aimed at making bombs.

In a sign of the Islamic state’s anger at the June 9 vote by the UN Security Council to impose a fourth round of punitive measures against the oil producer, he warned the country could “react firmly” when its rights were violated.

Iran’s determination to press ahead with nuclear work it says is mainly aimed at generating power was underlined by an official announcing plans to build more research reactors.

The government said in February it had launched higher-grade uranium enrichment to provide fuel for its existing medical research reactor in Tehran, sparking alarm in the West because it brought it closer to the level needed for a bomb.

In tandem with moves to tighten restrictions on Iran, the United States and European Union have also increased efforts to engage with Tehran and try to get it back to negotiations.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, with the backing of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, is hoping to meet Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in the weeks ahead to see if any progress can be made.

Ahmadinejad said Iran was in favour of talks but “you have made your move and it is now our turn to make a move to force you to behave” in any future dialogue. “If they think they can use sticks to pressure Iran, we say that the Iranian nation will break all of their sticks,” he said in a televised speech in the western city of Shahr-e Kord.

Iran, the world’s fifth-largest oil producer, says its nuclear programme is a peaceful bid to produce electricity. But its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a process which can have both civilian and military uses, has drawn four rounds of UN sanctions as well as separate US measures.

Ahmadinejad said Iran would not “withdraw from our nuclear path even one iota” because of sanctions. “We are ready to resume talks with them ... but we have conditions that will be announced soon,” he said.

Last year, hopes of a breakthrough in the dispute were dashed after Western diplomats said Iran back-tracked on a nuclear fuel swap plan tentatively agreed in Geneva in October.

It had been seen as a way to ease tensions as Iran would remove an amount of low-enriched uranium that could have been used for an atomic bomb, if enriched to high levels, and receive 20 per cent fuel in return for the Tehran research reactor.

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, said on Wednesday the Islamic Republic would construct four new research reactors, state television reported. — Reuters 

Dubai, June 16
The case of 17 Indians sentenced to death for killing a Pakistani man in Sharjah was today adjourned for a second time by an appeals court due to lack of a translator fluent in Hindi, Punjabi, Arabic and English.

The Sharjah Court of Appeals has “decided to respond to the request of those present on behalf of the defendants in terms of providing them with a translator who understands their language,” the judge said.

The lawyer handling the case on behalf of the Indians, Bindu Suresh Chettur, said: The case of finding the right translator came up again and the court decided to postpone the hearing to July 14 for the lack of translators who were equally fluent with Hindi, Punjabi, Arabic and English.

The 17 defendants, 16 from the Punjab and one from Haryana, only understand Punjabi. The Indian consulate had provided a Punjabi-English translator, but the court proceedings are held in Arabic, so an Arabic-Punjabi translator is needed.

Earlier, the Sharjah Court of Appeals had adjourned the case on May 19 on similar grounds. However, Chettur said the adjournment could have taken place because the main judge was on leave.

“The main judge who heard the case last time was not available. That could have been the main reason behind the adjournment,” she told PTI.

She expressed satisfaction with the progress being made in the case and added: “It is going according to plan. All accused were present in the court except one individual who is ill and is in hospital. Even he could have been brought in but I am not sure why the police did not do so.” “How would you get to this stage and call for executing 17 people without providing them with a translator?” one of the defendants’ lawyers, Abdullah Salman was quoted as saying by the AFP.

A Sharjah court of First Instance had earlier found 17 Indians, mostly from Punjab, guilty of beating a Pakistani man to death and wounding three others when a fight involving dozens of bootleggers broke out in the Saaja industrial area in January last year. — PTI 

The government of Punjab province of Pakistan gave more than Rs 8.2 crore to the Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) during the last fiscal year, according to budget documents for 2010-11.

The JuD, led by Hafiz Saeed, was formed after Pakistan banned its fore-runner, Lashkar-e-Toiba, in 2003. However, the JuD was also declared a terrorist outfit by the United Nations Security Council in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

India accused Hafiz Saeed of masterminding the attacks that killed 166 people and demanded legal action against him. The Pakistan government put Hafiz Saeed under arrest twice, but he was freed by courts for lack of evidence.

The supplementary budget for the past fiscal tabled in the Punjab assembly for approval revealed that the provincial government made a grant of over Rs 7.9 crore to the Markaz-e-Tayyaba, the JuD headquarters in Muridke near Lahore. Another Rs 30 lakh was given as grants to schools run by the JuD in different districts of Punjab, according to the budget documents for 2009-10.

Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah Khan admitted that the money had been given to the JuD. He told Dawn News Channel that the money was given to these institutions after the organisation was banned and the Punjab government appointed an administrator for the organisation.

The purpose of giving these grants was to continue welfare services provided by the JuD's schools, dispensaries and hospitals, Sanaullah said.

The JuD headquarters, built over 200 acres, are situated near Muridke, around 30 km from Lahore. However, after the UN action, its main offices were shifted to Chauburji Markaz in Lahore. 

Foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India will meet here on June 24 to discuss the modalities for bridging the trust deficit that has bedevilled relations, especially after the Mumbai attacks.Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao will be the most senior Indian official to visit Pakistan since the multiple terrorist strikes on Mumbai in November 2008.

The visit, which was earlier scheduled for June 26, was advanced by two days because the date clashed with Rao’s visit to Canada for the G-20 summit.

The foreign secretaries’ meeting is preparatory to the foreign ministers’ talks on July 15 in Islamabad. The two secretaries are expected to discuss proposals for overcoming mistrust and reviving the peace talks, suspended since late 2008.

Prime Ministers Yousuf Raza Gilani and Manmohan Singh had, at their meeting in Thimphu (Bhutan) in April, agreed to restart the stalled peace process.

They had tasked their foreign ministers and secretaries to work out a roadmap for re-engagement by bridging the trust gap. The two sides had last month agreed on a phased process under which meetings of foreign secretaries and interior ministers, leading to the foreign ministers’ dialogue, was planned.

Indian Home Minister P Chidambram is visiting Pakistan in the last week of June to attend the meeting of interior ministers of South Asian Association for Regional Conference (SAARC). He is likely to have bilateral meetings with Pakistani leadership during his stay in Islamabad. 

Washington/Venice, June 16
British energy giant BP Plc today agreed to President Barack Obama's demand to place about $20 billion in a special fund to pay damage claims from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

A source with knowledge of the agreement confirmed to Reuters the preliminary deal, which followed talks between Obama and top BP executives, their first since the start of the 58-day-old crisis.

Obama told Americans in a televised speech on Tuesday he would demand at Wednesday's White House meeting that BP set aside the money in an independently administered fund to pay for the claims, although he did not specify an amount.

Lawmakers though had called for $20 billion to be set aside. BP shares trading in New York initially rose more than 1 per cent on news of the agreement after falling 5 percent in morning trade. However, they dipped again as an administration official said the $20 billion would not cap the amount BP is responsible for paying.

"It takes a little bit of pressure off BP," Iain Armstrong, an oil analyst at brokerage Brewin Dolphin in London, said of the news of the escrow agreement. "If it gets Obama off their back, it can't be that bad."

What remains unclear is how BP would pay for the fund, also known as an escrow account, and how its quarterly dividend might be affected.

Some US lawmakers have called on the company to suspend payment of the dividend to ensure it has enough money to pay for damages, unnerving investors.

On recent visits to the US Gulf coast, Obama has heard complaints from residents that the claims process is too long and complicated and that BP is paying out too little money.

BP executives, including Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, CEO Tony Hayward and BP U.S. boss Lamar McKay, filed into the West Wing of the White House just before 10 a.m. ET (1400 GMT) for talks with Obama, their first since the crisis began.

The talks were due to last for about two hours, a White House official said. Kenneth Feinberg will administer the BP escrow fund, according to the source. Feinberg was the "pay czar", the official who oversaw compensation for executives at companies that received federal bailout funds. — Reuters

Washington, Jun 16
India had assured the US that then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson would not be subjected to “any actions” during his visit to Bhopal after the 1984 incident, a former top American diplomat said today.

Gordon Streeb, who was the deputy chief of the American mission in New Delhi in 1984, also said he never met then PM Rajiv Gandhi or the Foreign Minister on the issue. He said the US’ request to the Indian government to allow Anderson into the country and his safe return was a "one time affair" and there was no similar request sought for any future legal action against him.

“It (the request) was strictly for this visit. I think, what I am beginning to get a sense of from some of the questions that I am being asked and few of the reports that I have seen is that people are trying to mix together this particular visit and the assurances that he would be allowed to leave to go back home,” Streeb told PTI. Streeb said as far as he could recollect the Union Carbide contacted the US Embassy in New Delhi and said Anderson would like to come to India to access the situation and to show Union Carbide’s concerns at the highest levels for the victims.

He said he got in touch with the External Affairs Ministry and then Foreign Secretary MK Rasgotra and told them about Union Carbide's interest and the US’ concerns that Anderson be assured that he would be able to come and move about freely and be able to leave again without any difficulty. — PTI