PRETORIA (IRNA) -- South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is the only specialized body eligible to ensure that Iranian nuclear program is for civilian purpose.

"At the board of governors we consistently argued that we have not exhausted the IAEA processes. Indeed, they sent the issue to the Security Council before even Mr. ElBaradei presented his report. We were arguing that this is an unnecessary haste.

"Our argument was that we should give more time for the Iranians to comply with the remaining issues, since they had complied already. We cannot say that the remaining two issues cannot be resolved. We think that they can be resolved," he told IRNA.

"Of course, we defend the right of all the signatories to NPT to have the right to use nuclear power for peacefully means. We ourselves are working on that program, but, at the same time we understand that a climate of mistrust has been created and so we should now try to see what we can do within the rights of Iran's sovereignty and its right to have civilian nuclear technology to build confidence and I believe this is a big challenge for Iran to build that confidence, so that we don't allow the Security Council process to escalate.

"We have to wait and see if the Russians and the Chinese are going to allow the Security Council to pass the latest resolution on that issue."

FORT TARIK, Iraq -- They look more like motels in rural America than forts in a war zone, but a string of low concrete structures are the U.S.-led coalition's first line of defense against foreign fighters trying to sneak into Iraq from Iran and Syria.

The United States has built or renovated nearly 260 forts along Iraq's borders, and installations like Fort Tarik south of the Iranian city of Mehran have taken on new importance because of the showdown with Tehran over its disputed nuclear program.

The small fort sits within sight of two Iranian border outposts, and a tour of Tarik on Sunday showed just how tough it can be for coalition forces to adequately patrol a remote desert landscape without a nearby town or village.

Border patrols based at Fort Tarik recently captured several suspected Iranian intelligence agents who had crossed into Iraq, a U.S. official said.

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US President George W. Bush isn't known for his willingness for giving interviews, but he recently sat down with German TV presenter Sabine Christiansen for 30 minutes. He answered her questions readily -- but also showed that he's become little more than a spectator of his own political decline.

A man and a woman sit in front of an unlit fireplace in the White House. The woman is Germany's most well known TV presenter. The man is the most powerful man in the world -- or at least that's how he's introduced before the interview begins. And yet what we're shown on German ARD public television Sunday night is really a trans-Atlantic misunderstanding. Sabine Christiansen, who asks George W. Bush about one pressing global issue after another -- and who is relatively insistent when it comes to human rights issues -- isn't really talking to the most powerful man in the world at all. In the spring of 2006, one-and-a-half years after Bush's triumphant re-election, she may in fact be speaking to the most powerless US president of all time.

In the past 60 years, only one American president had worse poll ratings 18 months after his election: Richard Nixon at the end of his stint in office. Bush could safely ignore those polls if everything else were okay -- but at the moment nothing is. For some time now, the president has become an observer of his own political decline. But the world of television often has little to do with reality and Bush's plunge was hardly an issue in the interview.

Iraq is a long way from developing into the model democracy that Bush wanted to create by toppling Saddam Hussein. Iran is pressing ahead with its nuclear program, unimpressed by Washington's threats. Compared to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad and his fantasies about the annihilation of Israel, Saddam Hussein was a tinhorn despot.

From hawk to dove?

Bush's answer to the question of how he will respond to the threats from Tehran is a far cry from the hawkish rhetoric we've grown used to. Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy -- that's what he's betting on, at least for now. The hawks in Washington are burned out; they have no answers to what's happening in Iran. Oh wait, there's also Latin America, where they're electing one leftist government after another. What would once have given rise to crisis meetings and secret military plans doesn't even seem to be worth a question anymore.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, sent a letter yesterday to George Bush - the first such communication for 27 years - offering an analysis of global issues and "new ways of getting out of the current delicate situation in the world".

The US last night rejected the letter as having no relevance. A US state department spokesman said: "Nothing in the letter addresses the issues on the table between Iran and the world, whether on the nuclear issue, terrorism or human rights."

He added: "Instead, it is a broad historical, philosophical exposition."
The 18-page letter, which did not directly mention the nuclear dispute but ranges over issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, came as the foreign ministers of the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China met in New York to discuss tabling a United Nations security council resolution against Iran.

The meeting marked the international debut of Margaret Beckett, the new foreign secretary. She met Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, for a one-on-one at the Waldorf hotel before sitting down to dinner with representatives from France, Germany, Russia and China.

Caracas: Venezuela is seeking to raise income tax on Orinoco Belt heavy crude upgrading projects to 50 per cent from 34 per cent, President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday.

"Income tax on oil operations is 50 per cent, and they are still paying less than 50 per cent," said Chavez during his weekly Sunday broadcast. "They are at ... 34 [per cent]. We're going to take that to 50 per cent."

Four joint ventures with state oil giant PDVSA currently process some 600,000 barrels per day of heavy crude. Partner companies include Chevron, ExxonMobil, Norway's Statoil and France's Total.

Venezuela's Seniat tax authority earlier this year proposed a reform of the nation's income tax law to raise taxation on all upstream oil production to 50 per cent.

Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez, who is also president of PDVSA, told reporters in March he agreed with the proposed increase for Orinoco projects.

Venezuela's Congress will have to approve a reform of the income tax law

According to this op-ed article from Mexico's La Jornada, since the 1840s, Washington has tried and failed to hinder Mexicans and Latin Americans from entering what was once Mexican territory. Today Hispanics are regaining control - through the ballot box.

Mexico was not very populated when it gained its independence in 1821. Only 6 million inhabitants resided within its territory of over 4 million square kilometers [1,544,408.63 square miles]. Mexico's northern neighbor, [the U.S.] then of a similar size, had a population twice that of Mexico. Thanks to the reports provided to President Thomas Jefferson by Baron Alexander Von Humboldt during his stay in Washington, the Americans were well informed of the situation in the northern regions of New Spain. Despite their great natural resources, these immense territories, encompassing Texas, New Mexico and California, and lands as far north as the 42nd parallel, were nearly unpopulated. Only indigenous groups and close to 40,000 mestizos and descendants of the Spaniards lived there.

[Editor's Notes: Mestizos are people of mixed European and indigenous - Indian - ancestry. Baron Alexander Von Humboldt  was a German scientist who was stranded in Mexico when his ship ran aground].

Joel R. Poinsett, the first American ambassador to newly independent Mexico, made an offer to purchase these northern regions. The response of the Minister of Foreign Relations, Lucas Alaman, was that Mexico was not for sale. Alaman also succeeded in getting the United States to ratify the Treaty of Limits that Mexico had signed with Spain in 1819. This was achieved in 1833. However, this didn't end the ambition of the Americans. Anglo-Saxon colonists, many of whom had settled in Texas, sought to separate themselves from Mexico until they achieved their real goal: the annexation [of this territory] to the United States in 1845.

Two years later, this country began a war of conquest against Mexico. A new Treaty of Limits followed that war. Mexico lost half of its territory, one of the largest takeovers in world history.

[Editor's Note: The most important consequence of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) was the resulting "sale" of the Mexican territories of California and New Mexico to the U.S. and recognition of the annexation of Republic of Texas. ].

Certainly it is true that Mexico had not been able to populate this enormous territory. But history often surprises us. What didn't happen then, in fact, happened much later. Just as in other countries, Mexico experienced a baby boom after the 1940's. Before that, the United States, thanks to the immigration of millions of Europeans and, on a smaller scale, Asians, had managed to populate its enormous territory. Soon, thousands of Mexicans were also attracted, hoping to take a stab at the American Dream. As time went on, this attraction grew to an extent that could no longer be contained.

Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Monday that "the president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map."

"Teheran is making a mockery of the international community's efforts to solve the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear program," Peres told Reuters, adding that "Iran presents a danger to the entire world, not just to us."