Iran Focus: London, Mar. 01 – Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator struck a defiant cord in Moscow on Wednesday as he insisted that there was no need for the Islamic Republic to suspend uranium enrichment despite repeated requests by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Russia which has a proposal aimed at breaking the impasse.

Iran Focus: Paris, Mar. 01 – Iran’s Interior Minister invited his German counterpart to visit Tehran and called on the German minister to considering forging a partnership with Iran for the upcoming 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Mar. 01 – Textile workers from the central Iranian city of Isfahan blockaded a major highway from the city to the Iranian capital Tehran on Monday and Tuesday in protest to not being paid their salaries.

Iran Focus: London, Mar. 01 – The deputy governor of the Iraqi province of Saladin, where the holy city of Samarra is situated, said preliminary investigation was pointing to Iran’s role in the bombing of the city’s revered Shiite shrine last week.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Mar. 01 – The Supreme Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi appointed on Wednesday a senior commander in the Bassij as the new head of the IRGC’s secretive Ansar-ol-Mahdi Protection Corps.