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Iran's Larijani heads conservative MP bloc
May 9 – AFP – Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani has taken over as head of the conservative bloc which dominates the new parliament, the Mehr news agency reported on Friday.
He was chosen as the president of the bloc at a meeting of conservative MPs who cemented their hold on parliament during legislative elections in March and April, it said.
Conservatives won 69 percent of the 290 seats in parliament, while reformists took only 16 percent.
In recent days the local media has reported that Larijani would like to become speaker of the new parliament, which is due to hold its first session on May 27.
Current speaker Gholam Ali Hadad Adel has also expressed interest in staying on in the job.
Larijani last year stepped down as Iran's top nuclear negotiator, admitting that policy differences between himself and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were so great they could no longer work together./-
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Iran says April mosque blast a bombing, suspects held
May 7- Iran said on Wednesday that a blast in a mosque that killed 13 people in the southern city of Shiraz last month was indeed a bombing and that suspects believed to have links with the country's Western foes had been arrested.
"Through the efforts of the law enforcement forces... the main person involved in the Shiraz mosque explosion was arrested in one of the northern cities of the country," the Fars news agency quoted Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei as saying.
"The main agent, who was directly an accomplice in the bombing, was arrested during an attempt to leave the country. The person was armed when arrested," Mohseni-Ejei said.
After initial reports that the April 12 explosion, which also wounded more than 200, was the result of a bombing, officials had insisted that it was accidental.
An interior ministry body said the blast was set off by munitions on display in the mosque as part of an exhibition commemorating Iran's 1980-1988 war with Iraq.
Mohseni-Ejei said that five other suspects had also been detained and that explosives and cyanide had been confiscated from them, the report said.
"This terrorist group had relations with Britain and the United States and these countries were notified about this matter by the foreign ministry.
"But they did not take any measure to prevent (this group's) terrorist actions and rather supported them," the minister said.
"These people are all Iranians," he said adding that the group had plans to carry out similar operations in different places after the Shiraz bombing.
The blast ripped through a packed mosque during an evening prayer sermon by a prominent local cleric.
There have been deadly attacks in border provinces with significant ethnic minority populations in recent years, for which Iran has blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the strike in Shiraz was the first in decades in Iran's Persian heartland. The normally placid city is not in a border zone, nor is it home to any significant ethnic or religious minority population.
One of Iran's most famous tourist cities, Shiraz is popular because of its proximity to important ancient sites from the Achaemenid Empire that ruled much of central and southwest Asia from 550 to 331 BC./-
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Big powers say nuclear treaty at risk, cite Iran
May 9 – Reuters – The five major nuclear-armed powers said on Friday the Non-Proliferation Treaty was under threat and cited Iran's uranium enrichment campaign in a rare joint call for action to shore up the NPT.
North Korea's nuclear test blast in 2006, Iran's pursuit of potentially bomb-capable enrichment and new allegations Syria covertly tried to build an atomic reactor with North Korean help spotlight growing challenges to the treaty, many analysts say.
"The proliferation of nuclear weapons constitutes a threat to international peace and security," the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France said in a joint address on the final day of a two-week meeting of 106 NPT member nations.
"This ... imperils prospects for progress on other NPT goals such as nuclear disarmament and hurts prospects for expanding international (civil) nuclear cooperation," said British chief delegate John Duncan, speaking on behalf of the five.
"The proliferation risks presented by the Iranian nuclear programme continue to be a matter of ongoing serious concern to us." Tehran is under U.N. sanctions for refusing to suspend the work and curbing U.N. inspections meant to verify its nature.
Iran says it wants only electricity from enrichment, which can also produce atom bomb fuel if the process is adjusted.
The five said they stood squarely behind a revised packet of economic incentives which they, along with Germany, plan to present to Iran soon to shelve its uranium enrichment programme.
The four Western powers and Russia and China have often struggled to agree on a mix of carrots and sticks for dealing with Iran. But they told NPT members they aimed to resolve the standoff with Iran "innovatively through negotiations".
Iran denounced their surprise statement as "destructive and counterproductive" and said it "seriously questions their political will for the negotiated solution they call for".
"We will never bow to threats and definitely not give up our inalienable right" to peaceful nuclear energy under the NPT, Iranian Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said, his voice rising.
The powers urged North Korea, which bolted from the NPT in 2003, to carry out a now-stalled six-party accord to disarm./-
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Dealers blamed for rice price jump in Iran
May 7– The price of some local rice varieties has more than doubled in Iran in the last 10 days, a daily reported on Wednesday, and one official blamed dealers creating artificial shortage by storing the grain.
Rice is a staple food in Iran and higher prices could cause problems for ordinary people, already reeling from steadily climbing inflation of more than 20 percent annually.
Asian rice prices have almost trebled this year as export restrictions by leading suppliers, fuel insecurity over supplies.
Iran, a country of 70 million people straddling Asia and the Middle East, imports some rice as it does not produce enough to meet domestic demand.
The Etemad-e Melli daily said so-called smoked rice, from northern Iran, had jumped to 50,000 Rials per kg (around $5.4) from 19,000 Rials in 10 days. The price of another Iranian variety rose to 45,000 from 18,000 Rials, it said.
Iranian experts and officials say unusually cold winter weather and drought in some parts of the country have helped push up prices, the English-language Iran daily said.
But a member of the state rice research centre, Gholamreza Khankeshipour, was quoted by the Fars News Agency as also blaming investors who he said were seeking to capitalise on reduced availability of rice on world markets to make profits.
Supply curbs, for example from India and Vietnam, have spooked importers at a time when global stocks have halved since hitting a record high in 2001.
"Despite production of over 2 million tonnes of rice in the country as well as importing some rice, some dealers have created a fake shortage and by storing rice have caused price increases," Khankeshipour said, without specifying whether he was referring to annual production.
"Concerning the decrease of international rice resources some investors are trying to store rice and earn a lot of money," he told Fars in a report carried by Iranian newspapers. He gave no figures for the price rises.
He said farmers faced problems growing rice this year, in part due to the drought, but that the authorities had taken the necessary steps to ensure production did not decline. /Reuters
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