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As the row with Britain continued, Iran's guardian council, the country's top legislative body, confirmed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory in the disputed poll after a partial recount, finally dashing hopes of a different outcome.

Iran's foreign ministry had earlier appeared to respond to the warning by saying it did not wish to damage or downgrade relations with the UK, after a telephone conversation yesterday between David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and his Iranian counterpart, Manuchehr Mottaki. Miliband had demanded the immediate release of the embassy staff.But the fear in London is that the foreign ministry is not in control, with regime hardliners from the interior ministry and intelligence service calling the shots as part of a campaign to pin the blame for the unrest on foreign governments.

Attacks like these -- or U.S. awareness of them -- appear to have escalated in the past six months, said one former official briefed on the matter.

while the spies were able to download sizable amounts of data related to the jet-fighter, they weren't able to access the most sensitive material, which is stored on computers not connected to the Internet.

Former U.S. officials say the attacks appear to have originated in China. However it can be extremely difficult to determine the true origin because it is easy to mask identities online.

A Pentagon report issued last month said that the Chinese military has made "steady progress" in developing online-warfare techniques. China hopes its computer skills can help it compensate for an underdeveloped military, the report said.

The Chinese Embassy said in a statement that China "opposes and forbids all forms of cyber crimes." It called the Pentagon's report "a product of the Cold War mentality" and said the allegations of cyber espionage are "intentionally fabricated to fan up China threat sensations."

The U.S. has no single government or military office responsible for cyber security. The Obama administration is likely to soon propose creating a senior White House computer-security post to coordinate policy and a new military command that would take the lead in protecting key computer networks from intrusions, according to senior officials.

The Bush administration planned to spend about $17 billion over several years on a new online-security initiative and the Obama administration has indicated it could expand on that.

The Joint Strike Fighter, also known as the F-35 Lightning II, is the costliest and most technically challenging weapons program the Pentagon has ever attempted. The plane, led by Lockheed Martin Corp.

Six current and former officials familiar with the matter confirmed that the fighter program had been repeatedly broken into. The Air Force has launched an investigation.

Foreign allies are helping develop the aircraft, which opens up other avenues of attack for spies online. At least one breach appears to have occurred in Turkey and another country that is a U.S. ally, according to people familiar with the matter.

Joint Strike Fighter test aircraft are already flying, and money to build the jet is included in the Pentagon's budget for this year and next.

Computer systems involved with the program appear to have been infiltrated at least as far back as 2007, according to people familiar with the matter. Evidence of penetrations continued to be discovered at least into 2008. The intruders appear to have been interested in data about the design of the plane, its performance statistics and its electronic systems, former officials said.

The intruders compromised the system responsible for diagnosing a plane's maintenance problems during flight, according to officials familiar with the matter. However, the plane's most vital systems -- such as flight controls and sensors -- are physically isolated from the publicly accessible Internet, they said.

The intruders entered through vulnerabilities in the networks of two or three contractors helping to build the high-tech fighter jet, according to people who have been briefed on the matter. Lockheed Martin is the lead contractor on the program, and Northrop Grumman Corp. and BAE Systems PLC also play major roles in its development.

The spies inserted technology that encrypts the data as it's being stolen; as a result, investigators can't tell exactly what data has been taken. A former Pentagon official said the military carried out a thorough cleanup.

Investigators traced the penetrations back with a "high level of certainty" to known Chinese Internet protocol, or IP, addresses and digital fingerprints that had been used for attacks in the past, said a person briefed on the matter.

As for the intrusion into the Air Force's air-traffic control systems, three current and former officials familiar with the incident said it occurred in recent months. It alarmed U.S. national security officials, particularly at the National Security Agency, because the access the spies gained could have allowed them to interfere with the system, said one former official. The danger is that intruders might find weaknesses that could be exploited to confuse or damage U.S. military craft.

In his speech in Austin, Mr. Brenner, the U.S. counterintelligence chief, issued a veiled warning about threats to air traffic in the context of Chinese infiltration of U.S. networks. He spoke of his concerns about the vulnerability of U.S. air traffic control systems to cyber infiltration, adding "our networks are being mapped." He went on to warn of a potential situation where "a fighter pilot can't trust his radar."

"Unless the U.N. Security Council immediately apologizes, we will have no choice but to take inevitable additional self-defense measures," a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman told the North’s state-run news agency, KCNA. "This will include a nuclear test and a test of a intercontinental ballistic missile."

The spokesman also said North Korea has decided to build new nuclear power plants. "And as the fist step of that process, we will without delay start technological development to secure our own supply of nuclear fuel," he said, referring to its intention to enrich uranium. Engineers use the same technology to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombs.

Pyongyang had earlier accused the Security Council of a "wanton violation of the United Nations charter." It insisted that when it launched its rocket on April 5, it intended to put a communications satellite into orbit, and that it was the first country to be denied a peaceful space program by the United Nations.

But Washington and its allies say the rocket launch was a ruse for testing the North’s latest ballistic missile technology and a violation of the 2006 Security Council resolution. That document was adopted after North Korea tested a ballistic missile in July 2006 and conducted its first nuclear test three months later.

Washington has long suspected North Korea of pursuing a separate program based on enriched uranium. The international agreement to freeze and eventually dismantle the plutonium-based Yongbyon program in return for providing the North with aid and diplomatic recognition faltered last year in a wrangling over how to verify the North’s past atomic activities, especially whether Pyongyang was running a clandestine uranium enrichment program.

Often using the detainee's own words, the report offers a harrowing view of conditions at the secret prisons, where prisoners were told they were being taken "to the verge of death and back," according to one excerpt. During interrogations, the captives were routinely beaten, doused with cold water and slammed head-first into walls. Between sessions, they were stripped of clothing, bombarded with loud music, exposed to cold temperatures, and deprived of sleep and solid food for days on end. Some detainees described being forced to stand for days, with their arms shackled above them, wearing only diapers. "On a daily basis . . . a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room," the report quotes detainee Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Walid Muhammad bin Attash, as saying. Later, he said, he was wrapped in a plastic sheet while cold water was "poured onto my body with buckets." He added: "I would be wrapped inside the sheet with cold water for several minutes. Then I would be taken for interrogation."

President George W. Bush acknowledged the use of coercive interrogation tactics on senior al-Qaeda captives detained by the CIA in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but he insisted that the measures complied with U.S. and international law. Former CIA director Michael V. Hayden confirmed last year that the measures included the use of waterboarding on three captives before 2003. President Obama outlawed such practices within hours of his inauguration in January. But Obama has expressed reluctance to conduct a legal inquiry into the CIA's policies.

Abu Zubaida was severely wounded during a shootout in March 2002 at a safe house he ran in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and survived thanks to CIA-arranged medical care, including multiple surgeries. After he recovered, Abu Zubaida describes being shackled to a chair at the feet and hands for two to three weeks in a cold room with "loud, shouting type music" blaring constantly, according to the ICRC report. He said that he was questioned two to three hours a day and that water was sprayed in his face if he fell asleep. At some point -- the timing is unclear from the New York Review of Books report -- Abu Zubaida's treatment became harsher. In July 2002, administration lawyers approved more aggressive techniques. Abu Zubaida said interrogators wrapped a towel around his neck and slammed him into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was also repeatedly slapped in the face, he said. After the beatings, he was placed in coffinlike wooden boxes in which he was forced to crouch, with no light and a restricted air supply, he said. "The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful," he told the ICRC. After he was removed from a small box, he said, he was strapped to what looked like a hospital bed and waterboarded. "A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe," Abu Zubaida said. After breaks to allow him to recover, the waterboarding continued.

Netanyahu, in an address seen as his response to Obama, refused to heed the U.S. call for an immediate freeze of construction on lands Palestinians claim for their future state. He also said the holy city of Jerusalem must remain under Israeli sovereignty.

''I call on you, our Palestinian neighbors, and to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority: Let us begin peace negotiations immediately, without preconditions,'' he said, calling on the wider Arab world to work with him. ''Let's make peace. I am willing to meet with you any time any place -- in Damascus, Riyadh, Beirut and in Jerusalem.''

''Our right to form our sovereign state here in the land of Israel stems from one simple fact. The Land of Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people,'' he said.

''In my vision, there are two free peoples living side by side each with each other, each with its own flag and national anthem,'' he said.Netanyahu has said he fears the West Bank could follow the path of the Gaza Strip -- which the Palestinians also claim for their future state. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and Hamas militants now control the area, often firing rockets into southern Israel.''In any peace agreement, the territory under Palestinian control must be disarmed, with solid security guarantees for Israel,'' he said.

'If we get this guarantee for demilitarization and necessary security arrangements for Israel, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, we will be willing in a real peace agreement to reach a solution of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state,'' he said.

Netanyahu gave no indication as to how much captured land he would be willing to relinquish. However, he ruled out a division of Jerusalem, saying, ''Israel's capital will remain united.''

''We have no intention to build new settlements or expropriate land for expanding existing settlements. But there is a need to allow residents to lead a normal life. Settlers are not the enemy of the nation and are not the enemy of peace -- they are our brothers and sisters,'' he said.

Netanyahu also said the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinians have refused to do so, fearing it would amount to giving up the rights of millions of refugees and their descendants and discriminate against Israel's own Arab minority.Although the Palestinians have agreed to demilitarization under past peace proposals, Erekat rejected it, saying it would cement Israeli rule over them.

The president added: "We are facing a real window of opportunity for peace in the Middle East, despite the many problems and difficulties; there is still the chance for a significant change for the better.  "The peace process demands concessions, but both sides know there is no choice but to get the process moving and make difficult changes and lead to a breakthrough."

Peres lauded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the "important steps" taken with the policy speech he delivered at Bar Ilan University last month, and his success in "uniting the people under the slogan of two states for two peoples, despite the coalitional demands.'  

Regarding post-election developments in Iran, Peres said, "The world has opened its eyes to the Iranian regime's true intentions as a state sponsoring global terror.

While President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to make belligerent noises about Israel and the West, others in Tehran have hinted that they're ready for a change. In a Mar. 21 speech, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei trotted out standard anti-American rhetoric but also indicated a willingness to talk. And Ahmadinejad's probable opponent in the June presidential election, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Moussavi, favors negotiations with the US. "Obama has prompted Iranians to have an open debate about the relationship they want to have with the US," says Gary Sick, an Iran specialist at Columbia University in New York. "This is something that hasn't been seen in 30 years."

Most Iranian executives seem to be rooting for Moussavi. Although he is an old-guard leftist, businesspeople hope he would lead a reform-minded administration that could ease Iran's isolation. "Ahmadinejad has done serious damage to Iran's reputation and the reputation of Iranian business," says Mohammad Reza Behzadian, a former head of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce who runs Tondar Middle East, a trading company in Tehran.

Facing pressure from Washington, major European banks have stopped doing business in the country. So Iranians must pay exorbitant rates for trade financing from second- and third-tier banks in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Some Iranians work around the restrictions by setting up subsidiaries in the United Arab Emirates and playing cat-and-mouse with American inspectors. But such solutions are expensive, adding billions of dollars to Iran's soaring import bill-$57 billion for the year that ended in March. "It's a challenge finding banks that we can trust," says Parviz Aghili, CEO of Karafarin Bank in Tehran.

Sanctions also restrict the development of Iran's vital energy reserves. Tehran wants to boost oil production capacity by 25 percent, to 5 million barrels a day, but with little foreign help and aging fields in rapid decline, it's tough even to maintain current output. That's one reason Iranian oil officials are quick to say they want American help. "We don't have any problems with US investment," says M.A. Khatibi Tabatabaei, Iran's representative on OPEC's board of governors.

Ahmadinejad's erratic policies make things worse. The populist President has spent freely on everything from loans to small businesses of questionable viability to imported food and cash handouts for the poor. And he has pressured banks to shovel out easy credit, leading to a real estate boom. But worried that oil earnings will start to peter out, the central bank has tightened up, starving factories of capital and prompting a sharp fall in property prices.

Last year, when oil prices surged, the Iranian economy could shrug off its problems. With oil's steep decline and the global financial crunch, though, some fear social unrest. Many factories are months behind on salaries, says Ali Reza Mahjoub, a member of Parliament and head of Workers' House, a labor group. He estimates that unemployment, officially 12.5 oercent, is really closer to 17 oercent. As financing dries up, building is grinding to a halt, says developer Amir-Mohamad Mazaheri. "This is a very dangerous situation," he says, puffing on a cigarette in a new tower in North Tehran. "There will be 3-4 million construction workers looking to any activity to support themselves."

Even with sanctions in place, savvy foreigners have managed to make a mark in Iran-though it takes persistence. Renault, for instance, has a $200 million joint venture to build the Logan compact. But late payments from the Iranians and difficulties training enough suppliers to meet a requirement of 60 percent local content have slowed progress, Renault says. The venture, Renault Pars, has cut its output target for the Logan by 25 percent, to 150,000 cars per year. "You need a lot of time and energy," says Renault Pars chief Jean-Michel Kerebel. "What takes five hours in Europe could take five days here."

Votes are being bought with cash or in-kind services. Candidates pay their competitors huge sums to withdraw. The price of favorable TV news coverage is rising, and thousands of expatriate Lebanese are being flown home, free, to vote in contested districts. The payments, according to voters, election monitors and various past and current candidates interviewed for this article, nurture a deep popular cynicism about politics in Lebanon, which is nominally perhaps the most democratic Arab state but in practice is largely governed through patronage and sectarian and clan loyalty.

Despite the vast amounts being spent, many Lebanese see the race — which pits Hezbollah and its allies against a fractious coalition of more West-friendly political groups — as almost irrelevant. Lebanon’s sectarian political structure virtually guarantees a continuation of the current “national unity” government, in which the winning coalition in the 128-seat Parliament grants the loser veto powers to preserve civil peace.

Still, even a narrow win by Hezbollah and its allies, now in the parliamentary opposition, would be seen as a victory for Iran — which has financed Hezbollah for decades — and a blow to American allies in the region, especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt. So the money flows.

“We are putting a lot into this,” said one adviser to the Saudi government, who added that the Saudi contribution was likely to reach hundreds of millions of dollars in a country of only four million people. “We’re supporting candidates running against Hezbollah, and we’re going to make Iran feel the pressure.”

As it happens, Lebanon has campaign spending limits this year for the first time, and the Arab world’s first system to monitor that spending, by the Lebanese chapter of Transparency International. But the limits — which are very loose to begin with — apply only in the last two months of the campaign. And they are laughably easy to circumvent, according to election monitors and Lebanese officials.

Reformers have tried and failed to introduce a uniform national ballot, which could reduce the influence of money and make the system less vulnerable to fraud. Currently, political parties or coalitions usually print up their own distinctive ballots and hand them to voters before they walk into the booth, making it easier to be sure they are getting the votes they have paid for.

Some voters, especially in competitive districts, receive cold calls offering cash for their vote. But mostly the political machines work through local patriarchs known as “electoral keys,” who can deliver the votes of an entire clan in exchange for money or services — scholarships, a hospital, repaved roads and so on.

In fact, many poorer Lebanese look to the elections as a kind of Christmas, when cash, health-care vouchers, meals and other handouts are abundant.

The largess extends across the globe. From Brazil to Australia, thousands of expatriates are being offered free plane trips back home to vote. Saad Hariri, the billionaire leader of the current parliamentary majority and a Saudi ally, is reputed to be the biggest election spender. It may not have helped that he kicked off his campaign with a gaudy televised event that resembled the set of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” But members of his movement say that the accusation is unfair, and that their own money is outmatched by the hundreds of millions of dollars Iran has given to Hezbollah over the years.

Christofias is secretary-general of AKEL, a Marxist-Leninist party, and is the EU's first communist head of state. He has good personal relations with the leader of the unrecognised "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" Mehmet Ali Talat, who is also a left-wing leader. 

The CTP, which bore the brunt of public discontent over a faltering economy and continued international isolation of the breakaway territory, took 29.25% of the vote. 

As Christofias recently told EurActiv in an interview, his message to the international community is to advise Turkey to be constructive and to refrain from meddling in the talks. 

The UBP advocates an outright two-state settlement on Cyprus, at odds with the federal model now being discussed by Talat and Greek Cypriot leader, President Demetris Christofias. 

In an earlier interview with Turkey's Zaman newspaper, Eroglu was quoted as saying: "Everything will be easier if it is universally accepted that we [Turkish Cypriots] are a nation and that we have a state." 

Talat will retain his leadership of the territory, but his room for manoeuvre is likely to be limited by a parliament now dominated by the UBP.  The basis of the current talks is reuniting the island as a bizonal federation. The UBP says it wants a rethink of the process. 

"We will continue to support negotiations," said UBP leader Dervis Eroglu. "No-one should say we are against them. We will put forward our views and discuss them within the framework of Turkey's foreign policy on Cyprus." 

The Greek Cypriots represent Cyprus in the European Union and say they will block Turkey's admission to the EU as long as the island remains divided. Turkey is currently in entry negotiations, but there is strong resistance to Ankara's entry among several member-states.

Greek Cypriots refuse to discuss Turkish Cypriot sovereignty, and say a deal should see the evolution of the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus into a federation, rather than a loose association of two states.  Greek Cypriots issued a chilly response to the election result. "We will have bigger problems, that is my prediction," Christofias said, referring to the election. 

Analysts said Turkey, which supported a UN peace blueprint for Cyprus rejected by Greek Cypriots in 2004, would not want a disruption of settlement talks.  "Turkey is going to continue on its EU path and wants [Northern Cyprus] to do the same," said Ahmet Sozen, a lecturer in international relations at the Eastern Mediterranean University. "Turkey has sent a message to all political players in northern Cyprus that a no-solution policy is not a policy any more." 

The United Nations envoy for Cyprus, Alexander Downer, said last week the negotiations had been making "steady progress". 

Dutch MEP Joost Lagendijk  (Greens/European Free Alliance), who chairs the European Parliament's delegation to the EU-Turkey joint parliamentary committee, said EU member states have the ability to do "behind-the-scenes" work to make sure that there is a solution on the divided island of Cyprus as soon as possible, but that some of them are not willing to do this.  "Some countries like to hide behind the Cyprus problem - for example, the French government and the Austrians. The majority of the EU states who are in favour of Turkish accession should make it clear within the EU, to the French, to the Austrians and, of course, to the Cypriots, that it is in the EU's interest to have this issue solved," he said in an interview published by the Turkish daily Zaman. 

The outbreak has been dubbed swine flu — now officially called influenza A(H1N1) — because scientists believe it started in pigs, but they do not know if that was recently or years ago. The name change was designed to allay fears about pigs and eating pork.

The great majority of Egyptians are Muslim and do not eat pork because of religious restrictions, but about 10 percent of the population is Coptic Christian. As a result, Egyptian pig farmers are overwhelmingly Christian. And although some of the country’s Christians are middle class or wealthy, the Christian farmers are generally poor.

On Thursday, several urban pig farmers in Cairo said they see the government’s decision as just another expression of Egyptian Muslims’ resentment against Christians. Last year, there were several violent incidents that some believed were aimed at Christians, including the kidnapping and beating of monks. The Egyptian government denied the incidents had sectarian overtones, saying they were each part of other disputes, including a fight over land.

Mr. Girgis lives with his extended family, about 30 people, in the first two floors of a building that leans against a cliff. His 60 small pigs live on the ground floor. They have dark, furry skin, and their squeals can be heard a block away from Mr. Girgis’ home.Many of Cairo’s pig farmers live in similar conditions, sharing their small spaces in the teeming city with their animals. After international health officials criticized Egypt’s decision to kill about 300,000 pigs, the Agriculture Ministry’s head of infectious diseases, Saber Abdel Aziz Galal, explained that the cull was “a general health measure,” according to Agence France-Presse."It is good to restructure this kind of breeding in good farms, not on rubbish," the agency quoted him as saying.“We will build new farms in special areas, like in Europe,” he said. “Within two years the pigs will return, but we need first to build new farms."

Ten techniques are approved, listed as: attention grasp, walling (in which the suspect could be pushed into a wall), a facial hold, a facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box (the suspect had a fear of insects) and the waterboard. In the latter, "the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet. The individual's feet are generally elevated. A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner........produces the perception of 'suffocation and incipient panic'."

'Walling' involved use of a plastic neck collar to slam suspects into a specially-built wall that the CIA said made the impact sound worse than it actually was. Other methods include food deprivation.

The Bush administration, in particular former vice-president Dick Cheney, claimed that waterboarding did not amount to torture but the Obama adminstration has ruled that it is. Obama ordered the closure of Guantánamo and the CIA secret detention sites abroad.

Spanish human rights lawyers last month asked Judge Baltasar Garzón, who indicted the former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet in 1998, to consider filing charges against the former US attorney-general, Alberto Gonzales, and five others.

civil rights organisations have been disappointed by a series of rulings by the Obama administration that have protected a lot of material relating to Guantánamo and the sites abroad. The release of the memos today reversed that trend, though there will be unhappiness over the immunity from prosecution.

Echoing the president, the attorney-general, Eric Holder, reiterated that there would be no prosecution of CIA operatives working within the guidelines set by the Bush administration."It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the justice department," Holder said.

The director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, told CIA employees that "this is not the end of the road on these issues", apparently in expectation of Congressional inquiries and court actions abroad. He promised legal and financial help for any CIA employees who faced such action.

In Spain, the chances of court action against six senior Bush administration members over the torture receded today after a ruling by the attorney-general, Candido Conde-Pumpido.He said that any such action should be heard in a US court rather than a Spanish one, and that he would not allow Spain's legal system to be used as a plaything for political ends.

In the first of the memos, dated 1 August 2002, the justice department gave the go-ahead to John Rizzo, then acting general counsel to the CIA, for operatives to move to the "increased pressure phase" in interrogating an al-Qaida suspect.

Obama, in a statement from the White House, said: "In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carrying out their duties relying in good faith upon the legal advice from the department of justice that they will not be subject to prosecution."

What Moldovans think about Romania and Russia depends entirely on whom you ask, even among the 76 percent of the population that, according to the 2004 census, identify themselves as ethnically Moldovan.

Moldova is the poorest country in Europe, with remittances from workers abroad making up 36.5 percent of its gross domestic product, according to the World Bank

Vasile Botnaru, a journalist, has a different perspective. He was 13 when he stumbled across Romanian books in his father’s attic and realized, to his astonishment, that the language was so close to Moldovan that he could read it without a dictionary. Everything he had learned in Soviet schools — that Moldovans were ethnically and linguistically distinct from Romanians — was wrong, he said.

As the Soviet Union entered its final years, a movement to reconcile the two countries burst into the mainstream. Moldova’s Parliament switched to the Roman alphabet, and Romanian replaced Russian as the state language. Clocks changed from Moscow to Bucharest time, and the government introduced a new flag virtually identical to Romania’s.

Unification with Romania became a high-profile political cause. Its splashy figurehead, Iurie Rosca, spoke beside huge maps of a “greater Romania” that included most of Moldova.

But the notion was anathema to Russian-speaking Moldovans, the Soviet-era elites who made up about a quarter of the population. And in 2001, after a decade of unruly capitalism had left the country bankrupt, there was a swing back to the old order. Voters elected the Communist government of Mr. Voronin, who promised to restore the Soviet-era safety net and join a union with Russia and Belarus.

Speaking of the development and deployment of a nuclear weapon, he said, “We’re not going to create a situation in which talks become an excuse for inaction while Iran proceeds.” Mr. Obama added that he intended to “gauge and do a reassessment by the end of the year” on whether the diplomatic approach was producing results.

He said he expected international talks with Iran, involving six nations including the United States, to begin shortly after the Iranian elections in June, with the possibility of “direct talks” between the United States and Iran after that.

“The logic of Netanyahu’s argument is, ‘What do you do if your power of diplomacy and toughened sanctions doesn’t work?’ ” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator in both Democratic and Republican administrations. “Anyone who was expecting a major rift in the U.S.-Israeli relationship is going to be disappointed.”

Mr. Netanyahu did not explicitly embrace a two-state solution, as Mr. Obama had hoped. Rather, he said, “I want to make it clear that we don’t want to govern the Palestinians; we want to live in peace with them.”

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, pressed Mr. Netanyahu to freeze the construction of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. “Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s a difficult issue. I recognize that. But it’s an important one, and it has to be addressed.”

Mr. Miller, the former Middle East negotiator, characterized the session as “President ‘Yes We Can’ sitting down with Prime Minister ‘No You Won’t.’ ”

“I tell people who worry about Lieberman that I worry too,” a senior Israeli diplomat said, requesting anonymity to speak freely of his boss.

Mr. Lieberman is one of the strongest advocates for rethinking Israel’s approach and rejecting what he views as failed past formulas. He wants tough sanctions against Iran as the first step. He told The Jerusalem Post in an interview published last week that the aim of the policy review was to make progress on Palestinian economic and political developments and “to take the initiative” in the region.

“People try to simplify the situation with these formulas: land for peace, two-state solution,” Mr. Lieberman told the newspaper. “It’s a lot more complicated.” He added that the real reason for the deadlock “is not occupation, not settlements and not settlers.” Nor, he said, is it the Palestinians. The biggest obstacle, he said, is “the Iranians.”

He, like the entire Israeli leadership, argues that since Iran sponsors Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, both of which reject Israel’s existence and seek its destruction, the key to the Palestinian solution is to defang Iran and stop it from acquiring the means to build a nuclear weapon.

Increasingly, the Arab world — especially Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan — seems worried about Iran as well. American officials who have recently visited those countries said that their leaders spoke about Iran in ways that were almost identical to what they heard from officials in Jerusalem. Therefore, the opportunity for a regional alliance against Iranian influence is great. But, they say, for Arab leaders to work alongside Israel on this, even quietly, requires demonstrable Israeli movement on ending its occupation of the West Bank by freezing or reducing settlements and handing over more power to the Palestinians.

Israel dislikes that formulation, arguing that the two issues need to be addressed separately. If they are linked, it is in the opposite way from what the West says. In other words, Israel says the occupation can be ended most easily once Iran is put in its place because then there will be much less risk of Iranian weapons being used against Israel from neighboring territory. Meanwhile, Israel says it cannot be expected to freeze settlement growth entirely.

Obama today said that indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay and the prison's harsh interrogation methods had undermined the rule of law, alienated America from the rest of the world, served as a rallying cry and recruiting symbol for terrorists, risked the lives of American troops by making it less likely enemy combatants would surrender, and increased the likelihood American prisoners of war would be mistreated. The camp's existence discouraged US allies from cooperating in the fight against international terrorism, he said."There is also no question that Guantánamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world," he said. "Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al-Qaida that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law."

Obama said his administration would try in US courts those who had violated US criminal laws; try in military commissions those who violated the laws of war; free those ordered released by US courts; and transfer at least 50 people to foreign countries for detention and rehabilitation.

He noted that an estimated 14% of suspects freed from Guantánamo returned to the battlefield, but blamed that on the Bush administration's slipshod process of selecting which to let loose.

Meanwhile only three people had been tried by the Bush military commissions in seven years, but Bush had released 525 detainees from the prison.

He acknowledged that a number of Guantánamo prisoners could not be prosecuted yet posed a clear threat to the US: those who had trained at al-Qaida camps, commanded Taliban troops, pledged loyalty to Osama bin Laden and sworn to kill Americans."These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States," he said.

Obama defended his decision to release justice department memos detailing the Bush administration's legal rationale for waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other harsh interrogation techniques. He said those techniques had already been publicised and he had already banned them."In short, I released these memos because there was no overriding reason to protect them," he said. "And the ensuing debate has helped the American people better understand how these interrogation methods came to be authorised and used."He defended his decision not to release photographs of US-held prisoners similar to those taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He said he feared they would inflame world opinion against the US and endanger US troops.

During the presidential campaign of 2005, the supreme leader endorsed Mr. Ahmadinejad because the humble son of a blacksmith appeared to be just such an obscure candidate. But he entered the presidency with a coterie of veterans and ideologues shaped by the Iran-Iraq war who were conservative, religious, largely populist and disdainful of the old guard from the 1979 revolution.

Today, these allies, many of them former midlevel Revolutionary Guard officers in their 50s, run the Interior, Intelligence and Justice Ministries. They also include the commander of the Basij popular militia, the head of the National Security Council and the head of state-run broadcasting. They are aligned with another member of their generation who has emerged as the most important figure in the Khamenei camp, the spiritual leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has also changed all 30 of the country’s governors, all the city managers and even third- and fourth-level civil servants in important ministries like the Interior Ministry. It was Interior that announced that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won the June 12 election with just 5 percent of the votes counted, analysts pointed out, and it is the Intelligence Ministry that has been rounding up scores of supporters of the reform candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, and other dissidents.

At the same time, Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s spiritual mentor, runs three powerful educational institutions in the holy city of Qum, all spun off from the Haqqani seminary, which teaches that Islam and democracy are incompatible. The ayatollah favors a system that would preserve the post of supreme leader and eliminate elections. The Ahmadinejad administration has provided generous government subsidies to the seminary, and its graduates hold significant government posts nationwide.

Perhaps the most important media organization to spread the government’s message is the hard-line Kayhan newspaper. Its general director, Hossein Shariatmaderi, in recent days has resurrected a standard accusation: that foreign governments were manipulating the demonstrations on Iran’s streets.