On missile defence, Mr Putin said that if the Bush administration installed elements of a missile shield in eastern Europe, Russia would retaliate by training nuclear missiles on European targets. Russia has not specifically aimed its missiles at Europe since the end of the cold war but, asked if it might do so again if the US missile shield went ahead, Mr Putin said: "Of course we are returning to those times. It is clear that if a part of the US nuclear capability turns up in Europe, and, in the opinion of our military specialists will threaten us, then we are forced to take corresponding steps in response.""What will those steps be? Naturally, we will have to have new targets in Europe."He said: "We want to be heard, we want our position to be understood. But if that does not happen, we lift from ourselves any responsibility for the steps we take in response, because we are not the ones who are initating the arms race in Europe."

U.S. President Barack Obama earlier Tuesday rebuffed suggestions that Washington had given Israel a green light to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, in an interview with CNN. Asked by CNN whether Washington had given Israel approval to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, Obama answered: "Absolutely not."

"We have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and resolve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East," Obama said in reference to Iran's contentious nuclear program. Advertisement In the interview broadcast from Russia where he is on an official visit, Obama added, however: "We can't dictate to other countries what their security interests are. "What is also true is, it is the policy of the United States to try to resolve the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities," Obama said. This would be achieved "through diplomatic channels," he added.

Sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told The Washington Times that the premier is hesitant to request formal U.S. approval to launch military operations against Iran for fear that Washington would turn him down, according to a report which appeared in Tuesday editions.

ranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose re-election last month led to massive protests, on Tuesday called the balloting "the most free election anywhere in the world."

"It was a great event," he said in a nationally televised address.

The president, who said voter turnout was 85 percent, said opponents "did not provide even one piece of document regarding irregularities or vote fraud." Without specifically mentioning the post-election violence, Ahmadinejad said criticism of government "is the key to the success of a nation."

Syria's president said Tuesday that there is no "real partner" in Israel to make peace, stressing that a halt to Jewish settlements is essential to restart peace talks with the Jewish state.

Syria has said it is willing to resume indirect peace talks mediated by Turkey as long as they focus on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is not willing to cede the territory Syria wants. He has also refused U.S. demands to halt settlement construction in the West Bank, hampering efforts to resume peace negotiations.

A Lebanese army colonel suspected of collaborating with Israel fled to the Jewish state last week, a Lebanese security source said on Tuesday.   Two other Lebanese army colonels have been detained in a probe into spying for Israel that has led to more than 50 arrests. Around 20 of those detained have been formally charged.

The wave of detentions began in April with the arrest of a former brigadier general of the General Security directorate.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, has called for the execution of those convicted. At least one of the suspects was involved in the 2004 assassination of Hezbollah commander Ghalib Awali, security officials have said. He was killed by a bomb in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The United States will call for "even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a TV interview broadcast in Venezuela.

Washington remained concerned about what she called Iran's "pursuit of nuclear weapons," which could "be very destabilizing in the Middle East and beyond," Clinton told the private television network Globovision.

"We would ask the world to join us in imposing even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime," Clinton said in the interview, which was broadcast late Tuesday.

A military strike to thwart Iran's nuclear weapons capability remains on the table but could have grave consequences and would be "very destabilizing," the top U.S. military officer said Tuesday. "I worry a great deal about the response of a country that gets struck," said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It is a really important place to not go, if we can not go there in any way, shape or form."

Iran is perhaps one to three years away from getting the bomb, leaving a small and shrinking opening for diplomacy to avert what he said could be a dangerous nuclear arms race in the Middle East, Mullen said. Advertisement "I think the time window is closing."

Obama told The Associated Press last week that persuading Iran to forgo nuclear weapons has been made more difficult by the Iranian government's handling of claims that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole re-election.

Barack Obama today set out his vision for a new post-cold war world, and urged Russia not to interfere in neighbouring states and to move on "from old ways of thinking".

In a keynote speech during his first trip to Russia as US president, Obama called on Moscow to stop viewing America as an adversary. The assumption that Russia and the US were eternal antagonists was "a 20th-century view" rooted in the past, he said.

Obama delivered a tough, though implicit, critique of Kremlin foreign policy, rejecting the claim it has "privileged interests" in post-Soviet countries. He said the 19th-century doctrine of spheres of influence and "great powers forging competing blocs" was finished."In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonising other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over," he said, speaking to graduates from Moscow's New Economic School.

Silvio Berlusconi has attempted to fend off allegations that preparations for the G8 summit have been so chaotic that Italy's membership of the group was being called into question.The Italian prime minister said a report in the Guardian, citing senior western officials as saying the US had taken the lead in managing the agenda for the summit, was "a colossal blunder by a small newspaper".

"I hope that the Guardian is expelled from the great newspapers of the world," said the foreign minister, Franco Frattini. "What the Guardian says is a joke – nonsense."The defence minister, Ignazio La Russa, suggested a boycott of the paper because of the report.

Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China. It is strategically located at the borders of Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region.

Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between many Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han migrants who now are the majority in most key cities, including Urumqi. There were attacks in the region before and during last year's Summer Olympics in Beijing.

But controlling the anger on both sides of the ethnic divide will now make controlling Xinjiang, with its gas reserves and trade and energy ties to central Asia, all the more testing for the ruling Communist Party.

Thousands of security forces have been deployed in the city of Urumqi in China's Xinjiang region to try to end deadly ethnic clashes.

The BBC's Quentin Sommerville, reporting from Urumqi's Uighur neighbourhood, says there are thousands of paramilitary police in the city in a situation he says is martial law in all but name.

Reporters from the AFP news agency said they had seen fresh violence on Wednesday, including one attack on a Uighur man by about 20 Han Chinese.

The city of Urumqi will adopt a curfew Tuesday night to avoid further chaos amid the unrest, said Wang Lequan, secretary of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), on Tuesday.

Riot police on Tuesday fired tear gas to try to break up rock-throwing Han and Uighur protesters who clashed in the capital of China's Muslim region of Xinjiang two days after bloody clashes killed 156 and wounded more than 1,000. Hundreds of protesters from China's predominant Han ethnic group, many clutching meat cleavers, metal pipes and wooden clubs, smashed shops owned by Uighurs, a Turkic largely Islamic people who share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia.

Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China and in both places the government has sought to maintain its grip by controlling religious and cultural life while promising economic growth and prosperity.

Xinjiang has long been a hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by a yawning economic gap between Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han Chinese migrants who now are the majority in most key cities. Beijing has poured cash into exploiting Xinjiang's rich oil and gas deposits and consolidating its hold on a strategically vital frontierland that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, but Uighurs say migrant Han are the main beneficiaries.

Groups of ethnic Han Chinese have marched through the city of Urumqi carrying clubs and machetes, as tension grows between ethnic groups and police.Security forces fired tear gas to disperse the Chinese, who said they were protesting against violence carried out by ethnic Muslim Uighurs.

Officials say 156 people - mostly ethnic Han Chinese - died in Sunday's violence that erupted when Uighur protesters attacked vehicles before turning on local Han Chinese and battling security forces in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province.

More than 1,000 were injured. Uighur groups say many more have died, claiming 90% of the dead were Uighurs

Hundreds of Egyptians took part Monday in the funeral of Marwa Sherbini, an Egyptian woman who was stabbed to death last week in the German city of Dresden in a crime believed to be racially motivated.

Sherbini, 33, was stabbed to death Wednesday in a courtroom as she prepared to give testimony against a German man of Russian descent whom she had sued for insult and abuse.

The man, identified in German media as Alex A., 28, was convicted of calling Sherbini, who wore a headscarf, "terrorist," "bitch" and "Islamist" when she asked him him to leave a swing for her 3-year-old son Mustafa during an August 2008 visit to a children's park.

Police fired tear gas Tuesday to try to restore order as hundreds of Han Chinese armed with clubs marched through the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi, smashing shops and knocking over food stalls run by Muslims.

The city, where rioting and ethnic clashes killed 156 people two days ago, was extremely tense, with security officials breaking up a separate protest by the train station. Also, Muslim women in traditional headscarves faced off with armed Chinese police, wailing for the release of their sons and husbands detained after the riots.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has branded a top US envoy "an idiot" with a condescending attitude.He said that Johnnie Carson, US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, wanted to dictate what Zimbabwe could and could not do.

Mr Mugabe told The Herald newspaper in Zimbabwe that nothing came out of his talks with Mr Carson - his first meeting with a US government official for many years. "You would not speak to an idiot of that nature," he said. "I was very angry with him, and he thinks he could dictate to us what to do and what not to do."

Mr Mugabe was also not fond of Mr Carson's predecessor, Jendayi Frazer, who is also black. In May last year he described her as "a little American girl trotting around the globe like a prostitute" after she suggested that the then-opposition Movement for Democratic Change had won the disputed presidential election.

Canada is reportedly to use the upcoming Group of Eight summit to push fellow industrialized nations to forge a unified position on Iran's nuclear program. Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper is to take the issue to the G8 summit in a bid to "come out with a coherent position to deal" with Tehran, Dimitri Soudas -- a spokesman for the premier -- said on Tuesday.

The spokesman went on to label the Islamic Republic as an "extremely dangerous" serious threat", which possesses "a nuclear proliferation program with a clear objective".