News Update Place

Updated at : Tuesday, January 08, 2008   JERUSALEM: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Tehran in an interview published on Tuesday that it should cease its “provocations” after Iranian vessels confronted US warships in the Gulf.

“Iran should not engage in such provocations,” Rice said in an interview to a
newspaper and website in Israel after Washington said armed Iranian speedboats had threatened three US warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

“That’s what it was and it needs to stop. The US is going to defend its interests. It’s going to defend its allies,” Rice was quoted as saying.

Iran is “the single greatest threat to the kind of Middle East we all want to see,” she added.

The weekend incident, in which the Iranian boats radioed a threat to blow up the US ships, according to US officials, sent tensions rising ahead of the US President George W. Bush’s visit to the region.

“It was provocative, and that kind of provocation is dangerous,” Rice also told the BBC’s Arabic service. “I would sincerely hope that the Iranians would refrain from any such activity.”

The Strait of Hormuz is a crucial energy supply route, with about 20-25 per cent of the world’s crude oil passing through from Gulf oil producers.

The US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain and US Navy officials say about three dozen US and coalition warships are in the region at any one time. The aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman currently is in the Gulf.

“The United States under this president has sent a very strong signal that America has strong interests in the Gulf, that the United States will continue to defend its interests in the Gulf, and this goes back for decades,” Rice told the BBC.

Updated at : Tuesday, January 08, 2008   VIENNA: The head of the UN atomic watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, is to visit Tehran at the end of this week to try and clear up some of the outstanding issues surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme, an agency spokeswoman here said.

“The Director-General (ElBaradei) will visit Tehran on January 11 and 12,” said International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman, Melissa Fleming.

“During the visit (ElBaradei) will meet with a number of high officials. He hopes that the visit will develop ways and means to enhance and accelerate implementation of safeguards in Iran, with a view of resolving all remaining outstanding issues and enabling the agency to provide assurance about Iran’s past and present nuclear activities.”

COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan government minister was killed Tuesday in a powerful roadside bomb attack by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels near the island’s capital and international airport, officials said.

D. M. Dassanayake, the 51-year-old minister for nation building, suffered severe head injuries and died while undergoing surgery, said doctor Lalini Gunasekera at the Ragama hospital here.

Officials said one other person died and nine were wounded in the attack, the second such bombing in the Colombo area since the government abandoned a ceasefire with the ethnic Tamil rebels last week.

Police said a fragmentation mine — a device frequently used by the Tamil Tigers — was detonated as the minister’s convoy passed the town of Ja-Ela, between Colombo and the international airport.

“The minister was on his way to parliament when his white Toyota Land Cruiser vehicle was hit by a Claymore… his vehicle has been badly damaged,” military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said
Updated at : Tuesday, January 08, 2008