Friday, September 11, 2009 WASHINGTON: Iran has proposed a global system to eliminate nuclear weapons as well as cooperation on Afghanistan, fighting terrorism and energy projects but is not willing to discuss halting its uranium enrichment program, an Iranian official told a US daily on Thursday.Iran is proposing to set up an international system to scrap and prohibit nuclear weapons worldwide, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's senior adviser said in an interview published Thursday. Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi told a US daily that the Iranian package of proposals submitted Wednesday to the United States and other powers calls for the elimination of existing weapons and measures to prevent countries without weapons from acquiring them.But he stopped short of promising that Iran would bow to international demands and halt its uranium enrichment program, which Washington fears is aimed at building a nuclear bomb but Tehran insists is for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. "The methods of preventing development of nuclear weapons and a widespread system for preventing the multiplying and the proliferation of nuclear weapons are a part of the package," Hashemi said. "Since nuclear weapons are an international threat, with the cooperation of all countries we can design an international framework that, basically, prevents research, production, multiplying and keeping nuclear weapons and also moves toward destruction of present nuclear weapons," he was quoted as saying. "Iran is ready in this path to offer any and every kind of cooperation and effort. No country must be exempt from this international framework against nuclear weapons," Hashemi told the daily. Iran has long called for Israel to abandon a stockpile of nuclear weapons it is widely believed to possess. Hashemi gave no direct reply when asked repeatedly if the Iranian package contains a promise to stop uranium enrichment. He appeared to reply affirmatively when asked if the proposal for a new framework aimed not only at eliminating existing nuclear stockpiles but also at clearing up doubts that countries like Iran aimed to build such weapons. "Since today the threat of nuclear weapons comes from countries that have them, and to be secure and safe from future activities of countries that in the future will join the nuclear club, this framework must be widely implemented from now on," he said.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in
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