The European Union said on Friday Iran had to choose between EU assistance for peaceful development of nuclear power or tougher sanctions if it failed to abandon its suspected atomic weapons programme.

“If they are ready to engage with us, we are ready to cooperate with them. If they decide to go for confrontation, then confrontation will happen,” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country holds the EU presidency, told reporters.

“We have a very generous offer on the table. We want cooperation with Iran on quite a number of things including the development of civilian nuclear technology,” he told reporters at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Stockholm.

On Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed any threat of new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, a day after world powers pressed Tehran to meet them this month for talks on the nuclear dispute.

Other Iranian officials said separately Iran would soon put forward its own “package”, referring to unspecified proposals to world powers, which Tehran has talked about for months as a way to help resolve international issues of contention.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who has led Western negotiating efforts with Iran, said he had yet to see the proposals. “Let’s see when we see it.”

Solana said he had not been told by the Iranians when to expect the document but hoped to speak to them in coming hours.

OBAMA DEADLINE

Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb said he hoped Iran would respond to overtures from US President Barack Obama.

“Obama has set a deadline for discussions with Iran … if we get no progress in the negotiations on nuclear proliferation then there will be more sanctions — it’s quite clear.”

Stubb said North Korea’s announcement on Friday that it had successfully tested uranium enrichment, taking it closer to a second way of making nuclear weapons, added to the urgency.

“We all know that parts of the world … the Middle East, Persia (Iran), and then parts of Asia, including North Korea, are probably the most dangerous places in the world right now,” he said. “The news that we got from North Korea is not going to facilitate things, that’s for sure.”

Obama has given Iran until this month to take up an offer by six world powers of talks on trade if it shelves nuclear enrichment, or face harsher penalties.

Iran, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, has rejected demands to halt uranium enrichment, which can have both civilian and military purposes. Tehran says its programme is for peaceful power generation but the West believes it is aimed at making bombs.

On Wednesday, Germany hosted a meeting of officials from the six powers — including also the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China — to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme.

Berlin said it expected Iran to respond to the powers’ offer of talks by agreeing to meet before the annual UN General Assembly meeting later this month.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said France had been attempting to talk to Iran for three years, without success, but would keep trying.

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was quoted by state television on Tuesday as saying Iran was ready to talk to the major powers and that Tehran had prepared “an updated nuclear proposal”, without giving details of its content.

Another senior official suggested any such talks would not address the Islamic state’s nuclear work, but instead focus on international and regional issues. China Daily.

Iran warned the U.S. and Israel on Monday it will repel any attack — while also tamping down tensions by agreeing to meet with Washington and other world powers more than a year after talks broke down over Tehran’s refusal to curb its nuclear activities.

The U.S., Iran and European Union expressed hope the Oct. 1 talks could lead to substantive negotiations — despite Iranian warnings it would not even discuss meeting U.N. Security Council demands that it freeze uranium enrichment.

But White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said enrichment — which can make both nuclear fuel and fissile warhead material — ”would be part of the discussion,” along with Tehran’s ”illicit nuclear weapons program.”

The prime minister of Israel, Iran’s most bitter foe, was quoted as urging tougher action, including additional sanctions to cripple Tehran’s economy and turn Iranians against the government.

Iran also sounded a tough note — accusing the U.S. of amassing ”frightening and dreadful weaponry in . . . the Persian Gulf” and warning Israel and the United States that it is ready to defend itself against any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

The EU’s chief diplomat, Javier Solana, announced Iran’s readiness to follow up an offer last week from the six powers for a new round of talks. Solana said the meeting could set the stage for progress in resolving the standoff over the Islamic Republic’s refusal to freeze uranium enrichment and heed other U.N. Security Council demands.

Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akhbar Salehi, who issued the warning over military action, was more moderate in later comments, telling reporters that Iran is ”open to discussion” on nuclear rights and obligations in a general context, even though it would not bargain over enrichment, which he called ”our sovereign right.”

In an allusion to President Barack Obama’s stated goals of global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament, and offer to negotiate with Iran without conditions, Salehi said that if those aspirations ”are translated into deeds, then the environment will be conducive to future dialogue.”

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu confirmed the U.S. would be sending a representative to the meeting with Solana and Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.

”This is an important first step,” Chu said in Vienna for the general conference of the 150-nation International Atomic Energy Agency, which began Monday.

Solana spokeswoman Cristina Gallach said representatives of Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany are also expected.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country heads the rotating EU presidency, warned against undue expectations, considering the divide between Tehran and the six nations on nuclear and other issues. ”The meeting itself is a positive step, yes, but how positive it remains to be seen,” he said.

The talks would be the first since a 2008 session in Geneva foundered over Iran’s refusal to discuss nuclear enrichment — despite a U.S. decision to send a representative to the talks in a break with past policy.

Gibbs, the White House spokesman, suggested any Iranian refusal to discuss demands that it curb enrichment or address concerns about its alleged weapons program could backfire.

”If it’s something they don’t want to talk about, I think that will speak volumes around the world,” he told reporters. By George Jahn, Ohio.com.

Political violence in Iraq killed 456 Iraqis in August, the highest monthly death toll since July 2008. And with the United States showing no sign it plans to reverse the troop withdrawal that is now well underway, numerous struggles for power are shaping up inside Iraq.

They involve both competing factions within the country and also, perhaps more ominously, several neighboring countries. These levels of violence are deeply entwined, as was shown by the aftershocks of the most deadly of August’s acts of violence: on August 19, unknown parties, suspected to be disgruntled Sunnis, detonated large vehicle bombs outside three Iraqi ministries, killing 95 people and injuring more than 600.

Shortly afterwards, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki accused Syria of giving safe haven to the men who masterminded the bombings, whom he identified as followers of Iraq’s former Ba’athist rulers. (Close observers of the Iraqi scene are divided on the authenticity of the televised “confessions” on which he based this charge.)

As the heat of Maliki’s accusations rose, he withdrew his ambassador from Syria. That decision was all the more notable since just days earlier he had made a very friendly state visit to Damascus, where he and his hosts signed several important agreements. In preceding months, Syrian officials had repeatedly stressed that they saw a strong interest in Maliki’s government successfully stabilizing its rule throughout Iraq. (Syria also started to work semi-quietly with US military planners to help achieve this.)

But as Maliki escalated his accusations against Syria, the previously burgeoning cooperation between the two governments lay in ruins. Syria, which had been one of the earliest Arab states to recognize Maliki’s government, also withdrew its ambassador from Baghdad.

The August 19 bombings were timed, perhaps deliberately, to be carried out on the anniversary of the massive truck bomb that in 2003 wrecked the United Nations mission in Baghdad, killing its head and many of his staff members.

That earlier bombing marked a turning point in Iraqi affairs. Before it, many non-Iraqis and even many Iraqis hoped that somehow, with the UN’s help, Iraq could emerge fairly peacefully from the devastation that the US military had inflicted in its assault and invasion of the country just five months earlier. After the August 2003 bomb, that hope lay in tatters – and the UN greatly downgraded its engagement in Iraqi affairs.

After the August 19 bombings of this year, the hope that Iraq might emerge fairly peacefully from the six-year-long US occupation has been similarly seriously dented. The three ministries targeted were each known to fall more thoroughly under the sway of Iraq’s big ethnosectarian factions than under Maliki’s direct control. (That was one result of the system of “apportionment” of state positions and patronage among Iraq’s sects and ethnicities that was introduced by the US occupation.)

So it is plausible that strong Iraqi nationalists, whether Ba’athists or others, who have been very disturbed by the emergence of these factions may have been behind the bombings. Another possibility, mentioned by more than a few Iraqis, is that forces near to Maliki himself may have had a hand in them, in an attempt to cut down the factions’ power.

In the same period the August 19 bombs were being planned, all the other Shi’ite factions that in 2006 had helped boost Maliki to power formed a new coalition – but

without him, or his Da’awa Party. Indeed, Maliki’s party and its non-Shi’ite allies did much better in last January’s provincial election than any of the other Shi’ite parties with which it was previously aligned.

“Right now, Maliki seems much happier hanging out people from the Sunni party he’s allied with than with his previous allies in the Shi’ite parties,” veteran Iraqi-American political scientist Adeed Dawisha told Inter Press Service.

There are further wrinkles in the story. Maliki is very close to the Iranians and receives strong backing from them – but so do just about all the other factional leaders who he is now opposing.

Iran has been a powerful player inside Iraqi politics ever since the US toppled Saddam Hussein. Now, as the US military footprint in the country contracts, Iran’s power there is growing very visibly. This has greatly concerned all Iraq’s Arab neighbors – including Syria, despite the Damascus government’s lengthy de facto alliance with Tehran.

So one possible explanation for the vehemence with which Maliki accused Syria may be the Iranians urged it on him, in an attempt to deny the Syrians any potential influence over the Baghdad regime. One notable aspect of the political tempests now swirling around Iraq is that neither in Iraq nor in the US has there been any significant movement calling for the US to delay or reverse its continuing pullout. In the US, much more attention is now being paid to the military’s deeply troubled engagement in Afghanistan.

Under the Withdrawal Agreement that president George W Bush concluded with the Maliki government last November, all US troops should be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. But significant voices inside and outside the Pentagon are now urging the US to speed up that timetable, to free up additional troops for Afghanistan.

When US commentators refer to the ongoing violence among Iraqis, which is not often, they express some mild regret. But none go on to urge that the US military there should do something active to bolster Iraqi security. “There really is nothing the US can do in the security sector, at this point,” said Dawisha, whose latest book is Iraq: A political history from independence to occupation. He also judged there is very little the US – or any other outside powers – can do to intervene at the political level, to help Iraq’s 30 million people meet the many other political challenges that lie ahead.

The only outside power Dawisha saw as potentially able to make a small difference for the better was Turkey. He was very dismissive of the idea that the UN could do anything useful. Right now, two major issues top the country’s political agenda. One is the still-simmering contest between ethnic Kurds and ethnic Arabs over Kirkuk, an oil-rich region long coveted by the Kurds. The other is the next round of national elections, scheduled for January 2010.

Dawisha noted that not all the news from inside Iraq is bad. He pointed in particular to signs that new cross-sectarian and cross-ethnic alliances are now emerging. “One of the most interesting is the ‘Hadba’ alliance that’s being built around the list of that name that did very well in the provincial elections in the northern city of Mosul,” he said. “And now, they’re making plans to field candidates in a number of other provinces, too, in the January elections.”

But the situation remains precarious. “The reconstituted Iraqi security forces have the numbers they need now, and much of the training,” Dawisha said. “But there is still a real risk they could implode if the internal politics can’t be stabilized.” By Helena Cobban

A Taiwan court imposed a life sentence on former President Chen Shui-bian after convicting him of corruption Friday, marking a watershed in the island’s turbulent political history.

A strong advocate of Taiwanese independence, Chen was hated by China, which claims the island, and despised by the long-dominant Nationalist Party, which called his pro-independence policies dangerous and misguided. A nervous U.S. also thought his push went too far.

Chen served two terms as president in 2000-2008. He was only Taiwan’s second directly elected president after decades of one-party rule, and is the first to be indicted and convicted. Most Taiwanese were convinced he was guilty of at least some of the charges he faced, though some supporters believe his anti-China views played a role in his prosecution.

Chen’s wife, Wu Shu-chen, was also convicted of corruption and received the same life sentence.

“Chen Shui-bian and Wu Shu-chen were sentenced to life in prison because Chen has done grave damage to the country, and Wu, because she was involved in corruption deals as the first lady,” Taipei District Court spokesman Huang Chun-ming said.

The two were also fined a total of NT$500 million ($15.2 million), Huang said. The verdicts were announced as hundreds of Chen supporters demonstrated outside, holding flags and banners saying, “Free him” and “Chen’s innocent.”

Chen, 58, was charged with embezzling $3.15 million during his presidency from a special presidential fund, receiving bribes worth at least $9 million in connection with a government land deal, laundering some of the money through Swiss bank accounts, and forging documents.

Wu was charged with money laundering and other graft offenses. Chen chose not to attend Friday’s proceedings. He has been confined to a suburban Taipei jail since late December, after prosecutors persuaded judges not to free him following his indictment.

Chi Yen-lieh, an official at Chen’s jail, said he seemed calm after hearing the verdict. “His mood was stable and there was no emotional change,” Chi said. Wu, who has been free on her own recognizance, was not in court. Chen spokesman Chiang Chih-ming criticized the verdicts as unjust.

“We have expected heavy sentences, but we cannot accept these because this panel has violated … procedural justice,” he said. Chen’s son and daughter-in-law were also convicted on money laundering charges. They were sentenced to 2 1/2 and one-year terms, respectively.

Chen’s legal problems have riveted the island of 23 million people, which held its first direct presidential election in 1996, less than a decade after it began dismantling four decades of strict one-party rule.

Some of his supporters say he was unfairly confined to jail during his trial. They point to a decision to change the three-judge Taipei District Court panel after it originally freed him on his own recognizance following his indictment last December. The new judges accepted the prosecutors’ argument that he constituted a flight risk.

President Ma Ying-jeou and senior Justice Ministry officials have repeatedly rejected charges of unfairness, saying Chen’s prosecution represents a validation of the democratic principle that no one, regardless of rank, stands above the law.

But political scientist Hsu Yung-ming of Taipei’s Soochow University blasted Chen’s sentence as too severe, saying the trial was tainted by political considerations.

“The life term was handed down long after the media began buzzing with that possibility,” he said. “That makes it seem that there was a lot of politics behind the sentence.”

Chen was Taiwan’s first non-Nationalist Party leader since Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists in 1949.

Chen rode to power in 2000 on a promise to clean up decades of Nationalist corruption and to deepen Taiwan’s de facto independence. But he quickly fell afoul of the Nationalists’ majority in the legislature and his alleged tendency to play fast and loose with accepted procedures.

Complicating matters was China’s hostility, based on Chen’s pro-independence views – it called him “the scum of the nation” – and his tense relations with the United States, Taiwan’s most important foreign partner.

Washington saw Chen’s support for independence as raising the possibility of a war with Beijing, and pressured him to desist _ with only limited success.

After Chen left office, Ma quickly tossed out his anti-Beijing policies and made improved relations with Beijing the hallmark of his administration. The Star.