WSHINGTON -- When the tall, black-haired, energetic man entered my office in downtown D.C., a flood of long-lost memories swept in with him: screaming Iranian mobs overthrowing the "Peacock Throne," a homeless emperor sent to a bitter and fatal exile, dozens of Americans held hostage in the American Embassy in Tehran . . . "What shall I call you?" I asked my visitor. "Call me anything," Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah of Iran, answered simply and apparently seriously. ... more

WASHINGTON –– The State Department's annual human rights report criticizes the rights performances of countries friendly to the United States but some of its harshest judgments are reserved for Iran, Iraq and North Korea. These are the same countries President Bush said were part of an "axis of evil" because of their presumed propensity for terrorism or weapons proliferation activities. ... more

WASHINGTON –– Vice President Dick Cheney defended the Bush administration's worldwide strategy against terrorism from Democratic critics Monday night and said American casualties in Afghanistan are lamentable but their cause is a just one. Twice, Cheney refused to say who he had in mind. But Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has recently criticized President Bush for not defining the parameters of the war, even as it expands to include more countries. ... more

Tehran, March 5, IRNA -- US warships in the Persian Gulf intercepted an oil tanker, leased by the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), on Sunday for the third time in the past three months, press said Tuesday. ... more

Tabriz, March 5, IRNA -- Renowned political activist and economist Fariborz Raees-Dana called here Monday for people to get more united in actions and measures against the United States which he said has targeted Iran's national security and stability. ... more

Tehran, March 5, IRNA -- President Mohammad Khatami on Tuesday stressed that the world needs a culture of peace and prevalence of logic on international relations ... ... more

KHATAMI: AL-QAEDA COULD BE HERE. Tehran initially denied that any Al-Qaeda or Taliban entered Iran, but as the search for Osama bin Laden and other members of Al-Qaeda continues, Tehran is admitting that the terrorists could have crossed the border. ... more

A hardline Islamic group in Iran has vowed to relaunch its website recruiting volunteers to carry out worldwide suicide attacks. The group's leader, Hamid Ustad, has vowed to start a new site after its previous one was shut down by an internet service provider in Canada. ... more

Shiraz (South Iran), March 5, IRNA -- The meeting of the Office to Foster Unity ( a student nationwide organization) under the title of "The Majlis of Reforms, Fears and Hopes" that was supposed to be held in Shiraz on Monday evening was cancelled. ... more

HAMBURG Although the allies still have no unified strategy on Iraq, some of the United States' European partners are signaling an easier, less daggers-drawn approach to working together on the peace-and-war implications of President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech. In recent days, and with different tonalities, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany have emphasized the quality of their consultations with the Bush administration. ... more

At least eight Americans were killed in fighting in eastern Afghanistan yesterday, the biggest loss of American life on the battlefield on any single day since the fiasco in Somalia in 1993. The fighting will go on for days, said Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, and may intensify. So far, the Americans have given few details of the "Anaconda" offensive at Gardez, 90 miles south of Kabul. ... more

WASHINGTON - The deployment of 800 to 900 US ground troops in a remote mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan is an acknowledgment that air power alone will not finish off Al Qaeda fighters, say US military officials, including a special forces team member who has fought there. ... more

New York: A month after the September 11 terrorist attacks, senior Bush Administration officials received an intelligence report that terrorists had obtained a 10-kilotonne nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal and planned to smuggle it into New York. ... more

Iran and the UK on Monday settled a long-standing dispute over pre-revolutionary debts owed by Iran to the UK Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD) that will result in normalisation of ECGD medium-term cover for the Islamic republic. ... more

JERUSALEM (March 5) - Negotiations with the Palestinian Authority cannot begin until the Palestinians are hit hard enough so they realize they cannot achieve anything through terrorism, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters at an impromptu briefing in the Knesset cafeteria yesterday. IAF planes and helicopter gunships last night attacked PA headquarters in Gaza City ... ... more

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is preparing to provide U.S. military advisors, weapons and special training to governments in Central Asia, the Mideast and Africa over the next six months as part of an expanded effort to mount proxy fights against terrorists in more than half a dozen countries, administration officials say. The administration has sought a 27% funding increase for a federal program designed to bolster militaries in other countries. ... more

Those of us who opposed the bombing of Afghanistan warned that the war between nations would not stop there. Now, as Tony Blair prepares the British people for an attack on Iraq, the conflict seems to be proliferating faster than most of us predicted. But there is another danger, which we have tended to neglect: that of escalating hostilities within the nations waging this war. The racial profiling which has become the unacknowledged focus of America's new security policy is in danger of provoking the very clash of cultures its authors appear to perceive. ... more

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - (AP) -- A former Pakistani nuclear scientist suspected of links to Islamic extremists met Osama bin Laden twice in Afghanistan but did not reveal any nuclear secrets, the scientist's son asserted Monday. Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood, who retired from Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission in 1999, did not tell his family that he had met with bin Laden in 2000 and 2001, his son, Dr. Asim Mehmood, told The Associated Press. ... more

Saddam Hussein is pressing ahead with the development of a nuclear bomb and would already have one were it not for sanctions imposed by the United Nations, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, warns today. Mr Straw's tough rhetoric is designed to increase the pressure on Baghdad ahead of the prime minister's talks in Washington next month with George Bush. Tony Blair warned at the weekend that Britain is preparing to join the US in a military confrontation with Baghdad. He will also meet US vice president Dick Cheney for talks on Iraq next week in London, it was reported last night. ... more

MASLACH CAMP AND KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Even as American troops and allied Afghan fighters conduct their heaviest assault so far this year against a determined group of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces, surging ethnic tensions and jockeying warlords are undermining dreams of unity and peace elsewhere in Afghanistan. The UN-brokered interim government of Hamid Karzai, in Kabul, is struggling to contain growing ethnic violence and turf battles in the north and east. ... more

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says he will invite Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to meet to discuss ways of reviving the Middle East peace process. In a CNN interview Monday, Mr. Mubarak said he hopes to convince both sides to accept a Saudi proposal for Arab recognition of Israel as a basis for more talks. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah has proposed full Arab diplomatic and economic ties with Israel if it pulls back from Arab lands seized since the 1967 war. Mr. Mubarak said he just wants the two men to sit and talk with the hope of changing the atmosphere and making a good impression on the Israeli and Palestinian people. ... more