Freed writer tells Iran agency: I was duped by U.S.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A Canadian-Iranian writer freed after four months in an Iranian jail for allegedly endangering state security was quoted by an Iranian news agency on Thursday as saying he had been duped into aiding U.S. organisations.

"I used to write articles about Iran bband the Middle East in some Web sites which I was not aware were linked to intelligence services," Ramin Jahanbegloo, 46, told Iran's student news agency ISNA shortly after his release on Wednesday.

"While in prison, I reached the conclusion that the American organisations involved me in an affair which it was not my intention to get involved in," ISNA quoted him as saying.

He was not available for comment on Thursday. Several dissidents have in the past made apparent confessions to Iranian media during or after their detention.

Jahanbegloo was released from Iran's notorious Evin prison on Wednesday. He was arrested at the end of April for having contacts with foreigners and undermining state security.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has wbarned against a "velvet revolution," a supposed U.S. plot to use intellectuals and others inside the country to bring about "regime change."

A senior judiciary official was quoted as saying this month that Jahanbegloo had confessed to trying to undermine the Islamic Republic's system of clerical rule and had apologized.

"I have accepted the charge of acting against national security ... but I did not know my activities were endangering state security," Jahanbegloo told ISNA.

Jahanbegloo, author of some 20 books, has lectured on democracy in Iran and how Tehran can engage with the West. He has written on the importance of acknowledging the Holocaust, which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hasb

ISNA quoted Jahanbegloo as saying many Iranian intellectuals were in danger of being tricked into "acting against national security" by "a network that was active overseas."

Jahanbegloo's case strained Iran's relations with Canada, which have been icy since Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died in detention in Iran in 2003 after being arrested for photographing Evin prison.

Western diplomats said Jahanbegloo's detention was aimed abt intimidating and silencing critics.

The European Union, which had criticized Jahanbegloo's treatment, welcomed his release and urged Iran to free "all human rights defenders."

"The Presidency expects that Professor Jahanbegloo can continue his personal life and exercise his profession without any harassment," said a statement by Finland, current holder of the European Union's rotating presidency.

Jahanbegloo said he was not put under pressure to speak.

"The first month (in detention) was very difficult for me," he told ISNA. Then for three months I was in a solitary cell, with a television ... I was not under physical and psychological pressure. But I would not wish anyone to experience the same thing."

"Why was I attracted by such organisations? Why did I want to get scholarships? As an intellectual, when you can't even teach at (an Iranian) university, then you become attracted by such offers," he said.

(Additional reporting by Mark John in Brussels)

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South Korea bars sex expo lingerie models

SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean sex trade show promised foreign women in steamy underwear, striptease acts and sex seminars but had to cancel the performances after losing its lingerie models to immigration laws, organizers said on Thursday.
The 2006 Seoul Sex Education Expo, dubbed Sexpo, opened on Thursday, however, with plenty of sex toys, lotions and audiovisual material.

"Immigration officials warned us if the models performed without having obtained the appropriate visa, they could be subject to deportation," a Sexpo official said.

An immigration official said models from places such as Australia were planning to enter the country on tourist visas, but they needed performance visas.

The event, which runs through Sunday, had been heavily advertised.

Several male visitors were angry about seeing so many inflatable plastic women on display and no real ones.

"I came here for a show and all I have is this leaflet about sex toys. What's going on here?" said one man in his mid-60s who asked not to be identified.

Sexpo has been held in other parts of Asia but civic groups in South Korea had pressed authorities to close the show on the grounds that it was offensive.

South Korea, however, already has a large and vibrant sex industry.

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Iran defies U.N.; sanctions possible

NASSER KARIMI and GEORGE JAHN,

Associated Press Writers

Iran defied a U.N. deadline Thursday to stop enriching uranium, opening the door for sanctions, but U.S. and other officials said no action would be sought before a key European diplomat meets with Tehran's atomic chief next week to seek a compromise.
ran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, lashed out at the United States, calling it "tyrannical" and insisting Tehran would not be "bullied" into giving up the right to use nuclear technology. Other Iranian officials said the country could withstand any punishment.

President Bush called for "consequences to Iran's defiance," saying the "world now faces a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran."

"We must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," Bush said in a speech in Salt Lake City. He said Washington hoped for a diplomatic solution, but insisted "it is time for Iran to make a choice" whether to cooperate with the United Nation John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the Security Council would wait to consider possible actions until after the European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, met with Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, sometime in the middle of next week.

"We're certainly ready to proceed here in New York when we're given the instructions to do so," Bolton said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also was expected to raise the issue during a visit to Tehran this weekend.

Midnight Thursday — the last day of the Security Council deadline — passed with no change in the Iranian position.

The formal trigger for possible sanctions was provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency based in Vienna, Austria.

In a report Thursday, the U.N. agency confirmed Tehran had not halted uranium enrichment as demanded by the Security Council and said three years of IAEA probing had been unable to confirm "the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program" because of lack of cooperation from Tehran.

Iran denies it is trying to acquire atomic weapons in violation of its commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Tehran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, with the sole aim of producing electricity with nuclear reactors.

The Security Council voted July 31 to impose the Thursday deadline for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and asked the IAEA to report on Tehran's compliance, dangling the threat of sanctions if Iran refused.

Still, with permanent council members Russia and China opposed to quick and harsh penalties, the council appeared ready to delay such action. Senior U.N. diplomats told The Associated Press that Iran had agreed to meet with European negotiators to try to find a compromise.

Confirming the plans, Bolton said the Security Council would wait to consider any action until after European Union envoy Javier Solana met with Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, sometime next week.

An official from one nation on the council said the meeting was tentatively set for Tuesday in Berlin. The official said senior officials from the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany would meet in the German capital the following day. Those six nations offered rewards to Iran in June if it gave up enrichment — but warned of U.N. sanctions if it didn't.

Bolton told the AP that while Washington "has extensive thoughts on what a possible U.N. resolution would look like, such discussion will await the outcome of the Solana meeting with Iran."

Still, he said the IAEA report added further weight to suspicions Iran is "engaged in activities that are only consistent with a weapons program."

Bolton declined to specify what sanctions the U.S. might seek. But U.S. and European diplomats have said they are focusing on low-level punishment at first to win backing from Russia and China. Proposals include travel bans on Iranian officials or a ban on the sale of dual-use technology to Iran.

More extreme sanctions would be a freeze on Iranian assets or a broader trade ban, but those would likely be opposed by Russia, China and perhaps others, particularly since it could cut off badly needed oil exports from Iran.

On Friday, Russia said it "regrets" Iran's decision not to halt uranium enrichment by the deadline, Russian news agencies reported. The response underscored Russia's growing impatience with Iran, which is building an atomic power plant with Moscow's help.

In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi shrugged off the possibility of sanctions, telling state-run television that Iran "will find a way to avoid pressure eventually."

Ahmadinejad denounced the United States, accusing it of trying to impose its will on Iran.

"They claim to be supporting freedom but they support the most tyrannical governments in the world to pursue their own interests," he told a crowd of thousands in the northwestern town of Orumiyeh.

"The Iranian nation will not succumb to bullying, invasion and the violation of its rights," Ahmadinejad said.

While stating "Iran has not suspended its enrichment activities," the restricted IAEA report, obtained by AP, did not specifically say Iran was carrying out enrichment Thursday. It said only that Tehran started work on a new batch Aug. 24.

But a senior official close to the agency said Iran's pilot centrifuge plant was processing small quantities of uranium gas for enrichment as late as Tuesday, the last day IAEA inspectors reported back to headquarters on Tehran's nuclear program.

Iran says it wants to develop a full-scale enrichment program to produce reactor fuel, but there is growing suspicion the oil-rich country wants to use enrichment to create fissile material for nuclear warheads.

The rest of the IAEA's report essentially documented a protracted stalemate between agency inspectors trying to determine if Tehran is seeking to make weapons and Iranian officials who have repeatedly refused to provide information.

While the findings on enrichment were expected, they were important because they provided the formal trigger needed for the Security Council to take up sanctions.

IAEA officials said the six-page report was hand-carried to the council chambers at the same time it was posted on the agency's intranet site for the 35 nations on the IAEA's board of governors.

Other key findings in the report from IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei:

• New findings of minute particles of highly enriched uranium at an Iranian technical university implicated in possible military work, although the report did not specify whether the level was weapons-grade.

• A decision by the Iranians to cut off IAEA access to suspicious diagrams apparently showing how to mold fissile material into the shape of a warhead and to destroy notes taken on the document by agency inspectors.

• The temporary barring of U.N. inspectors from an underground facility being built to house tens of thousands of centrifuges, the backbone of Iran's future enrichment program.

• Protracted delays in granting multiple entry visas to IAEA inspectors.

U.N. officials told AP that even Olli Heinonen, deputy IAEA director-general in charge of the Iran investigation, was left dangling. In an unprecedented move, Iranian officials initially issued him only a one-month visa before relenting and giving him the usual one-year entry pass Wednesday, a day before the report was released.

___

Nasser Karimi reported from Tehran and George Jahn from Vienna. Associated Press writers Lee Keath in Cairo, Egypt, and Nick Wadhams at the United Nations contributed to this report

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UN Chief to Meet Friday With Syrian President

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is due to meet Friday with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in hopes of shoring up an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire.

Mr. Annan is expected to push Mr. Assad to end Syria's support for Hezbollah. Syria is suspected of funneling arms to the terrorist group.

On Thursday, the U.N. chief met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mualem in Damascus.

During the talks, Syria expressed support for the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah and called for Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon.b

The official Syrian news agency said Mualem also told Mr. Annan the U.N. should work for a comprehensive Middle East peace. Syria wants a peace deal that would restore the Israeli occupied Golan Heights to Syria.

Mr. Annan is visiting Syria as part of a Middle East tour. He is also expected to travel to Iran, another major supporter of Hezbollah.

Israel has said it will not withdraw from Lebanon until the U.N. ceasefire is fully implemented and international troops are able to prevent the rearming of Hezbollah.

Israel also insists on the release of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah on July 12.

Mr. Annan says Israel should withdraw from Lebanon once five thousand international troops are deployed in southern Lebanon. Up to one thousand Italian soldiers are due Saturday in Lebanon. France says its troops will leave for Lebanon in a few days.

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