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TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday it would press ahead with its nuclear program despite an "illegal" U.N. resolution imposing new financial and arms sanctions.
"Iran will not stop its peaceful and legal nuclear trend even for one second because of such an illegal resolution," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on his Web site www.president****.
The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved the sanctions against Tehran on Saturday for its refusal to suspend a nuclear program, but major powers also offered new talks and renewed an economic and technological incentive package offer.
"The Iranian nation will not forget those who backed and those who rejected (the resolution), while adjusting its international relations," he said without indicating what that adjustment in ties would entail.
The sanctions would stay in place until Iran halts the enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, which can be used to make a bomb or to generate power. Iran has 60 days to comply or face possible new sanctions.
Major powers have previously said negotiations on Iran's nuclear program could not begin until Tehran halts uranium enrichment.
A government spokesman said Iran would limit its cooperation with the U.N. watchdog, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.
The adoption of the resolution will affect Iran's cooperation with the so-called "subsidiary arrangements" with the IAEA, spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said on state television.
A senior Iranian nuclear official told Reuters these arrangements, accepted by Iran in 2002, meant Iran would declare any plans it had to build new atomic-related facilities.
By suspending its cooperation with this agreement, it would inform the IAEA only six months before introducing nuclear material into any new facility, said the official, who asked not to be identified.
The U.N. resolution goes beyond the nuclear sphere by banning Iranian exports of conventional arms and freezing financial assets abroad of 28 individuals and entities, including state-owned Bank Sepah and the commanders of the Revolutionary Guards. Some of those affected are said to be involved in supporting militant movements abroad.
NEW TALKS?
The new measures are a follow-up to a resolution adopted on December 23 banning trade in sensitive nuclear materials and ballistic missiles, as well as also freezing assets of individuals and institutions associated with atomic programs.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters at an EU summit in Berlin he would contact Ali Larijani, Iran's main negotiator on nuclear issues, "to see whether we can find a route to negotiations."
A spokeswoman for Solana said he would try to reach Larijani by telephone later on Sunday or Monday.
Also in Berlin, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the 15 British sailors and marines seized by Iran on Friday were captured in Iraqi waters and that Tehran must understand its action was "unjustified and wrong."
"They should not be under any doubt at all about how seriously we regard this act, which was unjustified and wrong," Blair told a news conference.
Britain is seeking access to the 15, whom Iran says were seized in Iranian waters. Iran is considering charging the sailors with illegally entering Iranian waters, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said.
The foreign ministers of countries that drafted the sanctions resolution -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany -- proposed further talks with Iran "to see if a mutually acceptable way can be found to open negotiations," according to a joint statement read by British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry.
U.S. representative Alejandro Wolff warned that adoption of the resolution sent "a clear and unambiguous message to Iran" that the pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability "will only further isolate Iran and make it less, not more, secure."
Western diplomats believe the new bans, and those imposed in December, are having an impact on curtailing new investments in Iran but leave the country's oil industry intact.
But Iran's Mottaki, noting the scope of the sanctions, told the Security Council, "What can harming hundreds of thousands of depositors in Bank Sepah, with a 80-year history in Iran, mean other than confronting ordinary Iranians?"
گفته می شود عکس پایینی حاصل دستکاری عکس بالایی است
ایران متهم شده است که تصویر آزمایش موشکی تازه خود را احتمالا برای اغراق در مورد توانایی های نظامی اش دستکاری کرده است.
ایران روز چهارشنبه اعلام کرد که 9 موشک را به طور آزمایشی پرتاب کرده است از جمله موشک شهاب 3 که اسرائیل در تیررس آن است.
در یکی از تصاویر وبسایت سپاه پاسداران ایران به نظر می رسد که چهار موشک از سکویی صحرایی درحال صعود به آسمان هستند.
اما تصویر مشابهی ظاهر شده است که یک موشک را ظاهرا پس از آتش نگرفتن چاشنی، هنوز در سکوی پرتاب نشان می دهد.
تحلیلگران گفتند که در تصویری که ظاهرا پرتاب چهار موشک را نشان می دهد، یکی از موشک های پرتابی با استفاده از رد دود و غبار خاک بلنده شده از دو موشک دیگر که با موفقیت پرتاب شد، به عکس اضافه شده است.
'دستکاری شده'
این تصویر - با چهار موشک در حال پرتاب - که گفته می شود به صورت دیجیتالی دستکاری شده است توسط خبرگزاری فرانسه توزیع و توسط سازمان های خبری سراسر دنیا منتشر شد؛ از جمله توسط سایت خبری بخش انگلیسی بی بی سی که بعدا پس از پیدا شدن تردیدها در مورد اصالتش آن را برداشت.
خبرگزاری فرانسه گفت که این عکس را روز چهارشنبه از وبسایت خبری سپاه پاسداران ایران برداشته بود.
روز پنجشنبه، خبرگزاری آسوشیتدپرس عکسی را توزیع کرد که به نظر می رسید نمونه عینا مشابه از همان منبع باشد، اما بدون آنکه موشک چهارم در حال پرتاب باشد.
خبرگزاری فرانسه متعاقبا هشداری برای مشتریان خود صادر کرد.
فیل کومز، ادیتور عکس سایت خبری بی بی سی، گفت: "با معاینه عکس خبرگزاری فرانسه، می توان دید که بخش هایی با استفاده از رد دود ادیت شده و بخش هایی از زمینه عکس عینا کپی شده است."
مارک فیتزپاتریک تحلیلگر نظامی موسسه بین المللی مطالعات استراتژیک در لندن به خبرگزاری فرانسه گفت: "کاملا به نظر می رسد که ایران عکس را دستکاری کرده تا آنچه که ظاهرا گیر کردن یکی از موشک هاست پنهان شود."
وی افزود: "تمام هدف این آزمایش ارسال یک پیام بود، بنابراین ایران هم در گفتار، توانایی های موشکی اش را اغراق کرده و هم ظاهرا عکس ها را دستکاری کرده است."
Iran has test launched a rocket it plans to use to carry a research satellite into orbit, state television reported Sunday.
Saturday's test of the two-stage rocket, called the Safir-e Omid, or Ambassador of Peace, was successful, state TV said, broadcasting images of the nighttime launch.
The rocket released equipment that beamed flight data back to ground control, said Reza Taghipoor, the head of Iran's Space Agency, in a live television interview.
Iran has long held the goal of developing a space program.
In 2005, it launched its first commercial satellite on a Russian rocket in a joint project with Moscow, which appears to be the main partner in transferring space technology to Iran.
Iran first tested a rocket it said was capable of delivering a satellite in February, saying that trial was also successful. It said then that it planned two more test launches before attempting to put its first domestically built satellite into orbit.
The country's fledgling space program, like its nuclear program, has provoked unease abroad. The same technology used to put satellites into space can also be used to deliver warheads.
The United States called the Feb. 4 launch "just another troubling development," saying it was a cause for concern about Iran's continuing development of medium- and long-range missiles.
Despite the anxiety over Iran's space program, it is not exactly clear how developed it is.
Iran has said it wants to put its own satellites into orbit to monitor natural disasters in the earthquake-prone nation and improve its telecommunications. Iranian officials also point to America's use of satellites to monitor Afghanistan and Iraq and say they need similar abilities for their security.
Iran hopes to launch four more satellites by 2010, the government has said.
Iran also announced on Sunday that it had extended the range of its military aircraft to just over 1,800 miles without refueling.
The television report, which quoted Iranian Air Force chief Gen. Ahmad Mighani, did not specify what kind of aircraft or how the range was extended. Such a feat could be accomplished, however, by adding extra fuel tanks to the plane which are dropped when empty.
Israel, which is about 600 miles away, from Iran, has often traded threats with the Islamic republic.
Iran said it test-fired a new generation of surface-to-surface missile on Wednesday and that the Islamic Republic was ready to defend itself against any attacker.
Iran's latest missile test followed persistent speculation in recent months of possible U.S. or Israeli strikes against its nuclear facilities, which the West suspects form part of a covert atomic weapons program, a charge Tehran denies.
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, like outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush, has not ruled out military action although he has criticized the Bush administration for not pursuing more diplomacy and engagement with Tehran.
Washington said the test highlighted the need for a missile defense system it plans to base in Poland and the Czech Republic to counter threats from what it calls "rogue states."
Iranian Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said the Iranian-made surface-to-surface Sejil missile had "extremely high capabilities" and was only intended for defensive purposes.
He said it had a range of close to 2,000 km (1,200 miles), almost as far as another Iranian missile, Shahab 3. That would enable it to reach Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf.
"This missile test is in the framework of Iran's deterrent doctrine," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
"It will only land on the heads of those enemies ... who want to make an aggression and invade the Islamic Republic," said Najjar, who did not mention any country by name.
Iran's English-language Press TV said the Sejil missile had two stages and was of a type that used combined solid fuel.
A missile was shown soaring from a platform in desert-like terrain, leaving a long vapor trail.
"Honor"
It came a day after media said the Revolutionary Guards had test-fired another missile called Samen near the Iraqi border.
"They do it all the time. It's Iranian machismo," said Tim Ripley, an analyst at Jane's Defence Weekly.
Two stages could increase a missile's range, he said, noting that Iran had in the past borrowed technology from North Korea although he said he could not say if that was true this time.
The United States accuses Iran of seeking to build atomic bombs, while Iran says it only aims to generate electricity.
Iran has said it would respond to any attack by targeting U.S. interests and America's ally Israel, as well as closing the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for world oil supplies.
The United States is planning to install a defensive shield in central Europe against missiles it says could be fired by states such as Iran.
"We've consistently pointed out that Iran's missile program is a concern and this testing is another reminder of the importance of establishing a missile defense site in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend the U.S. and Europe against a threat that is developing in Iran," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.
Moscow on Wednesday rejected U.S. proposals intended to allay its concerns about the system.
Senior officials from the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China and Germany were due to meet in Paris on Thursday to discuss their next steps in their nuclear showdown with Iran.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West, told a provincial rally Iran would defeat its enemies.
"The Iranian nation defends its honor and whichever power that wants to stand against the movement of the Iranian nation, the Iranian nation will crush it under its foot and slap it on the mouth," he said in a speech broadcast live on television.
Last week, Iran's military said U.S. helicopters had been seen flying close to Iran's border and that it would respond to any violation, a message analysts said seemed directed at Obama more than American troops in Iraq.
It followed a cross-border raid in October by U.S. forces into Syria, a move that was condemned by Damascus and Tehran.
Instead spending money to develop killing machines they should give more freedom to Iranian. It is ridicules, that they spend oil money for military when they have millions of hungry children on the streets of Tehran.
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