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Thursday, November 05, 2009 PARIS: Former French President Jacques Chirac said he was ready to appear in court over accusations of embezzlement during his time as mayor of Paris and was determined to clear his name.Chirac, 76, was ordered last week to stand trial over allegations that when he was mayor, the Paris City Hall handed out contracts for non-existent jobs as a favor to people who were politically useful."I want to be able to establish the reality of the facts rapidly so that this page can be turned definitively," Chirac said in an interview to be published in Thursday's edition of the daily Le Figaro.No former French head of state has been prosecuted for corruption and the case has stirred huge media interest in France.The Paris prosecutor's office, which had opposed the decision to send Chirac to trial, said Wednesday it would not appeal the judge's decision, removing a potential obstacle to a court hearing.The center-right Chirac, 76, was mayor from 1...

Thursday, November 05, 2009 LISBON: A strong 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck Wednesday hundreds of kilometres off Portugal's Azores Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, US and Portuguese geologists said.The US Geological Survey said that the quake struck 445 kilometres (277 miles) south of the islands at a depth of 10 km at 4:41 pm (1841 GMT), but it was not felt in the region.The remote islands form a quake-prone Portuguese archipelago located some 1,500 kilometres from Lisbon and are home to some 240,000 Azoreans. "The event was not felt in the region," said the Azores's volcanic and seismic activity institute, CIVISA.

Thursday, November 05, 2009 AMMAN: Jordan has granted citizenship to the wife and sons of Iraq's jailed former deputy premier Tareq Aziz, who have lived in the kingdom since the 2003 US-led invasion, an official said on Tuesday."The council of ministers granted Jordanian citizenship on Monday to Saddam Tareq Aziz and his mother Violet Yusef Nobud," the official told media."The elder son, Ziad Tareq Aziz, and his wife, Seba Mzaffar Antwan, have been granted citizenship recently, upon their request," he said.He gave no further details. Named foreign minister in 1983 and then deputy prime minister in 1991, Aziz, 73, turned himself into US forces in April 2003 after Saddam Hussein was overthrown.Aziz, who has been convicted for crimes against humanity, was from a Chaldean Catholic family.One of a handful of long-term senior survivors of Saddam's regime, Aziz is reported to have suffered two heart attacks in custody.About 4.4 million Iraqis have fled their homes...

Thursday, November 05, 2009 KABUL: Five British soldiers were killed yesterday in a shooting at an Afghan police base in Helmand province, the Ministry of Defence said on Wednesday. The soldiers are believed to have been shot by a "rogue" Afghan policeman who opened fire in a police compound, Lieutenant Colonel David Wakefield, a military spokesman, told media. The British soldiers were living and working in the compound in the Nad-e’Ali district as part of an assignment to train Afghan national police officers, Wakefield said. The gunman and a possible accomplice escaped and a search is under way, Wakefield said. Three of the soldiers were from the Grenadier Guards and two from the Royal Military Police, the ministry said. Next of kin have been informed, it added. "The death of five brave soldiers in a single incident is a terrible loss," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in an e-mailed statement.

Thursday, November 05, 2009 NEW YORK: Many of the Middle East's most intractable problems could be solved if Iran accepts a proposed resolution for its controversial nuclear program, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency said Wednesday. "Iran could be the door to a stable Middle East," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei told a think tank in New York. "I think it's very clear if we succeed on that, it would open the way, finally, to a new era, when Iran and the US... can work together," ElBaradei said at the Council on Foreign Relations, listing Iraq and Afghanistan as two areas where Iran could play a hugely constructive role. He said there was "a unique opportunity. I see it (for) the first time..., a genuine desire on both sides to seriously engage." However, ElBaradei warned this optimistic scenario depended on Iran signing up to the proposed deal and on Western powers sticking to diplomatic dialogue. If Israe...

TEHRAN: Iran's state news agency says an earthquake has injured at least 700 people in the country's south. Local news agency reported Wednesday that 100 of the injured had been hospitalized while the rest were minor cases. The 4.9-magnitude quake struck the southern port city of Bandar Abbas at 2:56 a.m. local time, cutting power and telephone lines and sending residents streaming into the streets. The broadcast said there were no reports of deaths in the quake, which hit 850 miles (1,367 kilometers) south of the capital. Bandar Abbas is one of Iran's key ports and home to a large oil refinery that primarily serves the domestic market.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009 WASHINGTON: Iran "must choose" whether to open the door to opportunity and prosperity, President Barack Obama said Wednesday in a statement marking 30 years since the storming of the US embassy in Tehran. "We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for," Obama said. "It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity and justice for its people."Radical Islamist students captured the city-center US embassy on November 4, 1979 just months after the Islamic revolution toppled the US-backed shah. The students, who took 52 American diplomats hostage and held them for 444 days, said they were responding to Washington's refusal to hand over the deposed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.