TEHRAN: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday said his US counterpart Barack Obama would find it hard to deliver his much-promised change due to "Zionist" pressure, a foreign news agency reported. Speaking by telephone to Tehran's close ally President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, the hardline Iranian leader said the "US president came to power by campaigning under the slogan of change, but I find it remote that the Zionist leaders (Israeli officials) will allow him to do his job," the report said. Tehran does not recognise Israel and the Iranian president has sparked global outrage for his hardline anti-Israeli stance. Ahmadinejad's latest comment came a day after he said that Tehran was prepared to talk to Washington on the basis of mutual respect and equality. His readiness to talk was a reaction to Obama's comment that in the coming months Washington would be ready to hold "face-to-face" talks with Tehran.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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