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Mrs. Clinton also said the United States handed the Iranian delegation a letter requesting its intercession in the cases of two American citizens who are being held in Iran and another who is missing.

Some officials, including Mrs. Clinton, are skeptical that Iran’s leaders will ever embrace the American overtures. But reaching out, analysts say, keeps Iran on the defensive by demonstrating to the Europeans, the Russians and others that the United States is sincerely trying. And talking about Afghanistan is easier than confronting more divisive issues, especially Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Mrs. Clinton also reacted warmly to remarks delivered by Mr. Akhondzadeh about what Iran would do to aid reconstruction in Afghanistan and to cooperate in regional efforts to crack down on the booming Afghan drug trade, which is spilling across the Iranian border.

“The fact that they came today, that they intervened today, is a promising sign that there will be future cooperation,” she said. “The Iranian representative set forth some very clear ideas that we will all be pursuing together.”

Iran cooperated with the United States on Afghanistan in the days after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and administration officials still view it as one of the most promising avenues for a reconciliation. Mrs. Clinton had pushed for Iran to be included on the invitation list for the United Nations-sponsored conference.

Iran, which was a no-show at the last Afghanistan conference, in Paris, did not send an official of Mrs. Clinton’s level, unlike most participants. But by sending Mr. Akhondzadeh, a former ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, it was clearly not trying to avoid contact.

At the conference, Iran offered support and criticism of the Obama administration’s new policy on Afghanistan. It praised the focus on regional cooperation, but it argued that sending more foreign troops to Afghanistan would be ineffective.

But UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the BBC that it was not "business as usual" with Moscow. Mr Miliband said the resumption of ties would provide an opportunity to engage with Moscow "in a hardheaded way". He said "the invasion of Georgia and continuing infringement of its sovereignty" could not be "swept under the carpet".

Mrs Clinton added that Nato "should continue to open Nato's door to European countries such as Georgia and Ukraine and help them meet Nato standards".

Earlier, Russia's envoy to Nato defended the war against Georgia and said any new relationship with Nato would be on Moscow's own terms.

Some, like Germany and France, had long been pressing for the resumption of ties with Russia, arguing that their suspension has been counter-productive.

Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's permanent envoy to Nato, predicted an outcome of the Brussels talks "that should, on the whole, satisfy Russia" but made clear he saw Moscow negotiating from a position of strength. "We came out of the crisis that we had after the August 2008 events [the war with Georgia], the crisis in the South Caucasus, stronger," he told Russian channel Vesti TV. "Our Western colleagues saw in Russia a partner that one cannot wipe one's feet on. We are strong... and we are restoring cooperation, including on our terms."

Iranian state media said 457 people were detained over Saturday's violence.

International campaign group Reporters Without Borders says 23 local journalists and bloggers have been arrested over the past week.

The BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, who is in Tehran, says this crisis has highlighted divisions within Iran's ruling elite.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday, foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi accused Western governments of explicitly backing violent protests aimed at undermining the stability of Iran's Islamic Republic. "Spreading anarchy and vandalism by Western powers and also Western media... these are not at all accepted," he said.

Iran has strongly criticised the US and UK governments in recent days, and Mr Qashqavi reserved special scorn for the BBC and for the Voice of America network, which he called "government channels".

"They [the BBC and the VOA] are the mouthpiece of their government's public diplomacy," Mr Qashqavi said. "They have two guidelines regarding Iran. One is to intensify ethnical and racial rifts within Iran and secondly to disintegrate the Iranian territories." "Any contact with these channels, under any pretext or in any form, means contacting the enemy of the Iranian nation. "How can they say they are unbiased when their TV channel is like a war headquarters and in fact they are blatantly commanding riots. Therefore their claims are absolutely wrong. Their governments have ratified decisions so that they can act in this way."

Witnesses said there were no rallies in the capital on Sunday, a day after 10 people were reported killed in clashes between police and protesters.

On Thursday, visiting British lawmakers met with the head of Hezbollah's 12-member bloc in parliament, Mohammed Raad. Britain's Foreign Office announced in March that it has contacted Hezbollah's political wing in an attempt to reach out to its legislators. It said its ultimate aim is to encourage the militant group to turn away from violence and become a positive force in Lebanon's politics.

Britain's Foreign Office announced in March that it has contacted Hezbollah's political wing in an attempt to reach out to its legislators. It said its ultimate aim is to encourage the militant group to turn away from violence and become a positive force in Lebanon's politics.

Swine flu can be caught through contact with infected animals, but it is unclear if contact with flies or excrement has the same effect.

The outbreak of respiratory illness in the area of the Granjas Carroll plant was first detected at the beginning of this month by Veratect, a company based in Washington state which monitors the spread of disease and pandemics around the world for corporate clients.

Matilda Gifford, 24, said she recorded the meetings in an attempt to expose how police seek to disrupt the legitimate activities of climate change activists. She met the officers twice; they said they were a detective constable and his assistant. During the taped discussions, the officers:• Indicate that she could receive tens of thousands of pounds to pay off her student loans in return for information about individuals within Plane Stupid.• Say they will not pay money direct into her bank account because that would leave an audit trail that would leave her compromised. They said the money would be tax-free, and added: "UK plc can afford more than 20 quid."• Accept that she is a legitimate protester, but warn her that her activity could mean she will struggle to find employment in the future and result in a criminal record.• Claim they have hundreds of informants feeding them information from protest organisations and "big groupings" from across the political spectrum.• Explain that spying could assist her if she was arrested. "People would sell their soul to the devil," an officer said.• Warn her that she could be jailed alongside "hard, evil" people if she received a custodial sentence.

In a statement last night, assistant chief constable George Hamilton said the force had "a responsibility to gather intelligence", and such operations were conducted according to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). The force would not comment on the identity of the officers.

"Officers from Strathclyde police have been in contact with a number of protesters who were involved with the Plane Stupid protests including Aberdeen airport," he said. "The purpose of this contact has been to ensure that any future protest activity is carried out within the law and in a manner which respects the rights of all concerned."

More broadly, both Americans and Iranians must recognize that, even as they seek to address specific issues, dialogue should be about more than political elites making deals. Dialogue, instead, should be about these two great societies coming to terms and developing a real rapprochement. Scholarly, cultural, and sporting contacts will help. Westerners should also bear in mind that it may well be the Iranian leadership that will be most suspicious of these openings, fearing that the revolution could be imperiled by such contacts.

U.S. negotiators should be under no illusions. The idea that Iran should have some form of fuel cycle commands broad consensus within its current political system. The reasons why have as much or more to do with a very hardheaded analysis of Iran's security needs as with any ideological questions. It is not a matter of waiting for the present political order to throw up a leader who sees differently. That is not going to happen.

Those on both sides who seek to make the nuclear question the only issue, and who frame it in absolute terms and argue that it must be addressed before anything else can be considered, are not serious. This need to address other matters, even as the nuclear question is discussed, may have the effect of playing into Iran's hands as to the timing of its nuclear program, but it is a reality anyway.

And, finally, U.S. officials must realize that real dialogue, improved relations, and broader rapprochement mean more to Iran's elite than a simple thawing of relations. For Iranian hard-liners, all this heralds the end of a central tenet of the revolution -- that Iran must guard against contamination by, and collaboration with, the decadent West, and especially the United States. The Iranian people want a new relationship with the West. They are tired of being isolated. But in many ways, discussions between Tehran and Washington will be more of a watershed for their leaders than they will be for us.

BERR officials passed a strategy document belonging to the "environmental protest community" to E.ON, saying: "If you haven't seen this then you will be interested in its contents."• Government officials forwarded a Metropolitan police intelligence document to E.ON, detailing the movements and whereabouts of climate protesters in the run-up to demonstration.• E.ON passed its planning strategy for the protest to the department's civil servants, adding: "Contact numbers will follow."• BERR and E.ON tried to share information about their media strategies before the protest, and civil servants asked the energy company for press contacts for EDF, BP and Kent police.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said the sharing of police intelligence between BERR and E.ON was a serious abuse of power. "The government is in danger of turning police constables into little more than bouncers and private security guards for big business. Police should be used to protect potential victims but also to facilitate people's right to protest," she said.

One email from E.ON to BERR on 24 July gave details of the company's security strategy. In another, sent on 28 July, BERR forwards intelligence from the PNICC, detailing activists' movements, listing times, dates and numbers involved.

Obama has already expressed a readiness to have face-to-face diplomatic contacts with Tehran, a major shift from former President George W. Bush's policy of trying to isolate a country he once branded part of an "axis of evil".

Mohammad Hassan Khani, assistant professor of international relations at Tehran's Imam Sadiq University, described Obama's appeal as a positive gesture but noted it came only a week after the extension of US economic sanctions. "This is somehow conflicting and making people here confused," he said. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has demanded Washington say sorry for decades of "crimes" against the Islamic Republic. Tehran also says it cannot let down its guard as long as US troops are posted on its borders in Iraq and Afghanistan. Analysts have said that Iran is setting tough conditions for dialogue with the United States to buy time for its ponderous and opaque decision-making process, which is facing a dilemma on whether or not to open up.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he hoped Iran would pay close attention to Obama's appeal. "I hope that that will open a new chapter in relations with Iran," he told reporters before going into an EU summit. To stress the seriousness of Obama's overture, the White House distributed the videotape with Farsi subtitles and posted it on its website to coincide with Iranian observance of the ancient festival of Nowruz, celebrating the arrival of spring. But his appeal was not shown nor mentioned on Iran's main 2pm state television news, although it was reported by Iranian news agencies including the official agency IRNA.

Last month, sources told the BBC's Panorama programme that conservative Muslims who teach that Islam is incompatible with Western democracy will be challenged as part of a new approach. A senior Whitehall source said that Muslim leaders who urged separation would be isolated and publicly rejected, even if their comments fell within the law.

The strategy also puts a renewed emphasis on the extreme risks from chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons if they get into the hands of terrorists.

The counter-terrorism document, being published by the Home Office, will go into more detail than ever before, with Ms Smith saying counter-terrorism was "no longer something you can do behind closed doors and in secret". It will reflect intelligence opinion that the biggest threat to the UK comes from al-Qaeda-linked groups and will also take into account recent attacks on hotels in the Indian city of Mumbai. The paper - called Contest Two - will update the Contest strategy developed by the Home Office in 2003, which was later detailed in the Countering International Terrorism document released in 2006. By 2011, Britain will be spending £3.5bn a year on counter-terrorism, the Home Office has said. The number of police working on counter-terrorism has risen to 3,000 from 1,700 in 2003.

Diplomats said the accord and the talks in Geneva tomorrow could pave the way for the Obama administration to press ahead with a common agenda with Russia which would entail talks on nuclear arms control and on Russian co-operation with US policy on Afghanistan and Iran.The new White House team are clearly hoping to bypass the prime minister and former president, Vladimir Putin, and focus its diplomacy on President Dmitry Medvedev.

For any big shifts in the Russian-­American relationship, Moscow would insist on the shelving of the Pentagon's missile shield project in Poland and the Czech Republic and a freeze in the ­prospects for Ukraine and Georgia joining Nato.

The US and Germany tabled a joint proposal for yesterday's Nato meeting, leaving the contentious issue of Ukraine's and Georgia's membership chances open and urging greater co-operation with Russia "as equal partners in areas of common interest". It went on: "These include: Afghanistan, counter-terrorism, counter-piracy, counter-narcotics, non-proliferation, arms control and other issues."

"Russia is a global player. Not talking to them is not an option," said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato secretary-general.

In the first big foreign policy speech from the Obama administration, in Munich last month, the vice-president, Joe Biden, said the White House wanted to "press the reset button" in relations with Moscow after years of dangerous drift.

The agreement today was held up for several hours by Lithuania, which strongly opposed the resumption of dialogue with the Kremlin.France and Germany, keen to develop close links with Moscow, threatened in turn to cancel scheduled meetings last night between Nato and Ukraine and Georgia if "the opening with Russia" was not given a green light, diplomats said.

And he claims that interacting "in person" has an effect on the body that is not seen when e-mails are written. "When we are 'really' with people different things happen," he said. "It's probably an evolutionary mechanism that recognises the benefits of us being together geographically.

Dr Sigman also argues using electronic media undermines people's social skills and their ability to read body language. "One of the most pronounced changes in the daily habits of British citizens is a reduction in the number of minutes per day that they interact with another human being," he said. "In less than two decades, the number of people saying there is no-one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled."

Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge, and Yoo, now a law professor in California

The legal analysis on interrogation prepared by a third former chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, Steven G. Bradbury, also was a subject of the ethics probe. But in an early draft, investigators did not make disciplinary recommendations about Bradbury.

Among other things, the draft report cited passages from a 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation and cast doubt on the effectiveness of the questioning techniques, which sources characterized as far afield from the narrow legal questions surrounding the lawyers' activities.

Last year, for instance, Mr. Obama was quick to distance himself from Robert Malley, an informal adviser to his campaign, when reports arose that Mr. Malley, a special adviser to Mr. Clinton, had had direct contacts with Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and that controls Gaza. Similarly, he distanced himself from Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser who was often critical of Israel, after complaints from some pro-Israel groups.

And Mr. Obama offered no public support for the appointment of Mr. Freeman to a top intelligence post in March after several congressional representatives and lobbyists complained that Mr. Freeman had an irrational hatred of Israel. Mr. Freeman angrily withdrew from consideration for the post.

But Mr. Freeman, in a telephone interview last week, said he still believed that Mr. Obama would go where his predecessors did not on Israel. Mr. Obama’s appointment of Gen. James L. Jones as his national security adviser — a man who has worked with Palestinians and Israelis to try to open up movement for Palestinians on the ground and who has sometimes irritated Israeli military officials — could foreshadow friction between the Obama administration and the Israeli government, several Middle East experts said.

The same is true for the appointment of George J. Mitchell as Mr. Obama’s special envoy to the region; Mr. Mitchell, who helped negotiate peace in Northern Ireland, has already hinted privately that the administration may have to look for ways to include Hamas, in some fashion, in a unity Palestinian government.

Pakistan objects to missile strikes by pilotless U.S. drones on militants in Pakistan, saying they violate its sovereignty and are counter-productive in fighting terrorism. Pakistan has also been angered by U.S. accusations elements in its military's Inter-Services Intelligence agency had contact with, or even provided support to, militants.

Pakistan for years used Islamists to further objectives in Afghanistan and Kashmir, which both Pakistan and India claim, but it has denied accusations it has maintained support.

Pakistan's Dawn newspaper said recently a condition would be included in the U.S. aid bill requiring Pakistan to stop support to any person or group aiming to hurt India.

Another condition to be included in the U.S. aid bill, Dawn reported, was that Pakistan ensures access to individuals suspected of involvement in nuclear proliferation.

The Americans' closest ally, Britain, is already allowing its diplomats to hold official contacts with Hezbollah's "political wing", although the movement is still shunned by Washington as a "terrorist" group.