Russian lower house backs bill to allow Putin to pick candidates to lead regions

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's parliament has given preliminary backing to a bill that would enable the country's 83 regions to scrap popular elections of their leaders in favor of a system that would let President Vladimir Putin choose candidates instead.

Opponents said the bill, approved in a 403-10 vote late on Wednesday after the first of three readings in the lower house would be a step backwards for democracy in Putin's new term. The lower house is dominated by Putin's United Russia party.

Putin scrapped popular elections of regional governors as part of a drive to tighten his grip on the political system in his initial 2000-2008 presidency.

The elections were reintroduced last year amid a wave of opposition protests that drew tens of thousands of Russians tired of Putin's dominance and eager for a stronger political voice.

Critics of Putin say the rules favor United Russia as it is, and its candidates won all five governorships at stake in elections last October.

The proposed law would allow each region to abandon direct elections and put in place a system under which Putin would name three candidates and the regional legislature would elect one of them as governor.

Backers of the bill suggest it is mainly intended as a means to scrap popular elections in regions with ethnically mixed populations, such as the mostly Muslim provinces of the insurgency-plagued North Caucasus.

The Kremlin is concerned that votes in those regions could involve candidates whose loyalty is in question or spark unrest.

The financial daily Vedomosti reported on Thursday that Putin wants to use the legislation to choose the leaders of the North Caucasus provinces of Dagestan and Ingushetia, bordering war-scarred Chechnya, this autumn. The Kremlin declined immediate comment.

Critics of the president suspect the law will be used in any region where United Russia, which is far less popular than Putin himself and saw its Duma majority sharply reduced in the December 2011 parliamentary election, fears it could face a strong challenge.

Dmitry Gudkov, an opposition lawmaker and a leader of the protests against alleged fraud on behalf of United Russia in that election, called the proposed law undemocratic and discriminatory.

"What has happened to make you think that citizens of certain regions do not deserve direct elections of their governors, and why are you also trying to guarantee that United Russia candidates will take power in regions where its level of support has fallen?" he said during the Duma debate.

Putin has said he is improving democracy in his new six-year term, which began last May, citing plans for a system under which half the Duma's 450 deputies would be elected directly, instead of from party lists. Critics say the initiative will favor United Russia because it holds the levers of power nationwide.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

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Insight: In Amenas attack brings global jihad home to Algeria

LONDON (Reuters) - A photo circulating on jihadi online forums says it all: a plane flying into the Eiffel Tower with September 11 written in Arabic in red letters alongside.

The French military intervention in Mali and an Islamist militant attack on the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria in which at least 38 workers died have re-energized international jihad.

These events also closed a loop which many thought had frayed over recent years linking North African insurgents with al Qaeda's central leadership and ideology.

It is those links, spanning regions and times, connected through the shadowy career of Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, which are now coming under fresh scrutiny to assess whether the west underestimated the resilience of global jihad.

Back in 1994, Algerian militants fighting the French-backed government in Algiers hijacked an Air France plane. Though it was successfully stormed by French forces in Marseille, French intelligence believed they planned to fly it into the Eiffel Tower, foreshadowing the September 11 attacks on the United States.

But that Algerian phase of the jihad was overlooked by a focus on post September 11 history, by hopes that Osama bin Laden's death in Pakistan in 2011 had fatally wounded al Qaeda, and, crucially, by a view that Belmokhtar had drifted away into making money from smuggling and seizing hostages.

"There have been a lot of debates over whether Belmokhtar is a criminal or a jihadist, but this overlooks the possibility to be both," said Stephen Tankel, a professor at American University and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment and the author of a forthcoming book on the evolution of jihadist groups since 9/11.

SOPHISTICATED PLANNING

Algerian and western intelligence had been watching Afghan war veteran Belmokhtar for years, but they either misread his intentions or underestimated his capacity for the kind of sophisticated planning required to pull off the most dramatic terrorist act since the 2008 attack on Mumbai by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.

Yet the signs were there for all to read. In a post on the authoritative Jihadica website, North African specialist Andrew Lebovich noted that when Belmokhtar announced in December the creation of a new combat unit, al-Mouwakoune Bi-Dima ("Those Who Sign with Blood"), he threatened both France and Algeria.

The name he chose for his new combat unit was also the same one originally used by a group of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) behind the hijacking of the Air France plane.

In a video in December, when he allegedly "split" from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Belmokhtar also pledged his loyalty to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri, without mentioning the AQIM leadership.

"He gave me the impression that he now was working independently and behaving as though he is the true emir of AQ-linked groups in the Sahel," said Camille Tawil, a journalist at al Hayat and a leading authority on north African jihadism.

True to Belmokhtar's words in that video, the hostage-takers at In Amenas made the classic demands of al Qaeda's central leadership - for the release from U.S. prisons of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheikh jailed for involvement in a 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, and Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, whose uncle by marriage was September 11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammad.

And while it is possible the In Amenas attackers hoped to escape with foreign hostages who could be traded for money, it is equally plausible the primary motive was to re-energize global jihad at a time when French military intervention in Mali provides a powerful magnet for Islamist militants worldwide.

HOSTAGE-TAKING

"In both the Air France attack and last week's assault, hostage-taking may have been an ancillary instead of a primary goal," wrote Lebovich.

"In the Air France hijacking ... it later emerged that their true goal was always to detonate the plane over Paris," he said. At In Amenas, "Algerian authorities have said the group's goal was to destroy the facility, though they may have also hoped to escape with at least some hostages."

Whatever the truth, the relationship between Belmokhtar and global jihad goes back more than 20 years. Some time after the death in Pakistan in 1989 of Palestinian scholar Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden's mentor, he left Algeria for Afghanistan.

"We were able to confirm, from a reliable source, his presence in the (training) camps which the Pakistanis were running in Peshawar," wrote the former French intelligence analyst who blogs at Le Monde newspaper under the pen-name Abou Djaffar. "There, towards the end of the 1980s, or the beginning of the 1990s, he received paramilitary training which would be very useful to him in Algeria."

By the mid-1990s he was back in Algeria, part of the Armed Islamic Group which goes by its French acronym GIA and which had sprung up to fight the government after it suppressed elections in 1992 which the Islamists were poised to win.

"The GIA quickly emerged as the most potent insurgent force in the country and the cause célèbre for many in the international jihadist movement who initially saw great promise for the Algerian jihad," said Tankel.

BIN LADEN

Bin Laden - who by then had moved from Afghanistan to Sudan - sent several emissaries to the GIA to discuss whether they wanted to join up with his then still struggling al Qaeda.

Lawrence Wright, author of "The Looming Tower", claimed in his book that bin Laden sent $40,000 to the GIA before regretting it as Algerian group's reputation suffered because of its appetite for mass killing during the civil war which would eventually claim up to 200,000 lives.

With the GIA discredited, infiltrated by Algerian security services and looked upon with distaste even by the global jihadi movement, the group splintered. Its most successful offshoot became the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which eventually merged into al Qaeda as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in 2007.

Over the years, the trail linking Algerian militants to core al Qaeda runs hot and cold, but recurs often enough to suggest a resilience in a movement which was deliberately designed with horizontal networks and an emphasis on unity of ideology which would allow it to survive the decapitation of its leadership.

According to al Hayat's Tawil, bin Laden sent an envoy, Ahmed Alwan, also known as Abu Mohamed Al-Yemeni, to the GSPC in the summer of 2001. Among the GSPC leaders he met in Algeria was Belmokhtar. "The aim of bin Laden envoy's visit was to establish links between AQ and the Algerian jihadi groups," he said.

With the GSPC running powerful networks among the North African diaspora in Europe, they may also have been linked to the assassination of Afghan Tajik anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud two days before the September 11 attacks. His killing was seen as a present from al Qaeda to the Taliban then in power in Kabul, meant to undercut their opponents ahead of the expected U.S. counter-attack.

The exact links between the GSPC and Massoud's assassination by two Belgian Tunisians remain murky, though they were connected to the same network through a mosque in Paris.

In a sign of the ties that bind across regions and across years, another member of that network was Willy Brigitte, a Frenchman later convicted of planning attacks for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. His minder in Pakistan was Sajid Mir, a man who Indian authorities say was also involved in the Mumbai attacks, which killed 166 people.

"All of these guys were floating around in the same milieu at the same time," said Tankel.

STRAINED, NOT SEVERED

The massive intelligence crackdown which followed September 11 largely broke apart the European networks; but then a new link was built - between al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was killed in 2006, and GSPC leaders, which eventually convinced them to join al Qaeda.

The chaotic aftermath of the fall of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 - which helped AQIM acquire weapons and exploit discontent among Tuareg tribals in the region - allowed them to expand their operations, particularly in neighboring Mali.

But it would be a mistake to suggest they suddenly appeared out of nowhere as a new al Qaeda threat, given their long history with the group.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, author of a book on bin Laden's legacy, noted on U.S. security website Gunpowder and Lead that documents captured from bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad showed communications between AQIM and al Qaeda's leadership over four years, including discussion of strategic and operational issues.

"While it is possible that after bin Laden's death, when Ayman al Zawahiri became ... emir, these communications were crippled or otherwise ceased, there's no reason that this should be our a priori assumption," he wrote.

In an interview given to the Mauritanian news agency in 2011, Belmokhtar himself noted that GSPC member Younis al-Mauritani, arrested in the Pakistani city of Quetta in Sept 2011, had been sent to hold talks with al Qaeda leaders.

In the shadowy and often shifting alliances of global jihad, it will take time to trace all the different threads behind the attack on In Amenas.

For now though, the In Amenas raid has brought together two quite different decades - the 1990s attacks on French interests which included bombings in Paris and the Air France hijack, and the post September 11 U.S.-led assault on al Qaeda's capabilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"Maybe the leadership approved it, maybe not," Lebovich said in a phone call from Dakar. "Al Qaeda core has been quite slow in their statements recently. It will be interesting to see if there is a statement from al Zawahiri."

(Editing by Giles Elgood)

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North Korea to target U.S. with nuclear, rocket tests

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Thursday it would carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test that would target the United States, dramatically stepping up its threats against a country it called its "sworn enemy".

The announcement by the country's top military body came a day after the U.N. Security Council agreed to a U.S.-backed resolution to censure and sanction North Korea for a rocket launch in December that breached U.N. rules.

"We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States," North Korea's National Defence Commission said, according to state news agency KCNA.

North Korea is believed by South Korea and other observers to be "technically ready" for a third nuclear test, and the decision to go ahead rests with leader Kim Jong-un who pressed ahead with the December rocket launch in defiance of the U.N. sanctions.

China, the one major diplomatic ally of the isolated and impoverished North, agreed to the U.S.-backed resolution and it also supported resolutions in 2006 and 2009 after Pyongyang's two earlier nuclear tests.

Thursday's statement by North Korea represents a huge challenge to Beijing as it undergoes a leadership transition with Xi Jinping due to take office in March.

China's Foreign Ministry called for calm and restraint and a return to six-party talks, but effectively singled out North Korea, urging the "relevant party" not to take any steps that would raise tensions.

"We hope the relevant party can remain calm and act and speak in a cautious and prudent way and not take any steps which may further worsen the situation," ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular press briefing.

North Korea has rejected proposals to restart the talks aimed at reining in its nuclear capacity. The United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas are the six parties involved.

"After all these years and numerous rounds of six-party talks we can see that China's influence over North Korea is actually very limited. All China can do is try to persuade them not to carry out their threats," said Cai Jian, an expert on Korea at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Analysts said the North could test as early as February as South Korea prepares to install a new, untested president or that it could choose to stage a nuclear explosion to coincide with former ruler Kim Jong-il's Feb 16 birthday.

"North Korea will have felt betrayed by China for agreeing to the latest U.N. resolution and they might be targeting (China) as well (with this statement)," said Lee Seung-yeol, senior research fellow at Ewha Institute of Unification Studies in Seoul.

U.S. URGES NO TEST

Washington urged North Korea not to proceed with a third test just as the North's statement was published on Thursday.

"Whether North Korea tests or not is up to North Korea," Glyn Davies, the top U.S. envoy for North Korean diplomacy, said in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

"We hope they don't do it. We call on them not to do it," Davies said after a meeting with South Korean officials. "This is not a moment to increase tensions on the Korean peninsula."

The North was banned from developing missile and nuclear technology under sanctions dating from its 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.

A South Korean military official said the concern now is that Pyongyang could undertake a third nuclear test using highly enriched uranium for the first time, opening a second path to a bomb.

North Korea's 2006 nuclear test using plutonium produced a puny yield equivalent to one kiloton of TNT - compared with 13-18 kilotons for the Hiroshima bomb - and U.S. intelligence estimates put the 2009 test's yield at roughly two kilotons

North Korea is estimated to have enough fissile material for about a dozen plutonium warheads, although estimates vary, and intelligence reports suggest that it has been enriching uranium to supplement that stock and give it a second path to the bomb.

According to estimates from the Institute for Science and International Security from late 2012, North Korea could have enough weapons grade uranium for 21-32 nuclear weapons by 2016 if it used one centrifuge at its Yongbyon nuclear plant to enrich uranium to weapons grade.

North Korea gave no time-frame for the coming test and often employs harsh rhetoric in response to U.N. and U.S. actions that it sees as hostile.

Its long-range rockets are not seen as capable of reaching the United States mainland and it is not believed to have the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile.

The bellicose statement on Thursday appeared to dent any remaining hopes that Kim Jong-un, believed to be 30 years old, would pursue a different path from his father Kim Jong-il, who oversaw the country's military and nuclear programs.

The older Kim died in December 2011.

"The UNSC (Security Council) resolution masterminded by the U.S. has brought its hostile policy towards the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) to its most dangerous stage," the commission was quoted as saying.

(Additional reporting by Christine Kim in SEOUL, Ben Blanchard and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Burkinabe troops join French-led push against Mali rebels

MARKALA, Mali (Reuters) - A contingent of 160 soldiers from Burkina Faso has deployed to Markala in central Mali, becoming the first West African troops to link up with French and Malian forces moving against al Qaeda-allied Islamist rebels occupying the north.

A Reuters correspondent in Markala, 237 km (147 miles) from the capital Bamako, saw the Burkinabe soldiers on Thursday near a military base in the dusty town of crumbling colonial era buildings and mud huts on the banks of the Niger River.

For nearly two weeks, French aircraft have been bombarding rebel positions, vehicles and stores in the centre and north of the West African state as a ground force of African troops assembles to launch a U.N.-backed military intervention against the Islamist fighters.

This force, expected to eventually number more than 5,000, is comprised mostly of units from member countries of the West African regional grouping ECOWAS, but also includes soldiers from Chad who are experienced in desert warfare.

"Depending on logistics, we could have more ECOWAS deployments soon," said Aboudou Toure Cheaka, ECOWAS special envoy to Mali.

Western and African leaders have expressed strong support for the currently French-led campaign to expel the al Qaeda-allied Islamist fighters from northern Mali, amid fears they could use this vast lawless zone as a launchpad to carry out international terrorist attacks.

From January 11, France has sent aircraft and more than 2,000 troops into its former French colony to help the Malian army beat back a surprise offensive by the Islamist rebels which threatened the capital Bamako in the south. French and Malian troops have retaken a number of central towns.

But serious questions have arisen over whether the African force being deployed has the weapons, equipment and training needed to maintain a sustained campaign against the rebels in a desert and mountain battleground the size of Texas.

Fears of reprisal attacks by Islamist extremists in Africa and the West have also been sharply raised by last week's brief but bloody seizure of a gas plant in neighboring Algeria by al Qaeda-linked guerrillas opposing the French action in Mali. At least 37 foreign hostages were killed in the incident, which ended when Algerian forces stormed the plant.

International donors are due to meet in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on January 29 to discuss the African military operation in Mali, and France said they would be asked to provide about 340 million euros ($452 million.

The Islamist alliance in the north holds the major towns of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal. It groups al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM and the Malian militant groups Ansar Dine and MUJWA.

Military experts say a fast, efficient deployment of the African ground force is essential to sustain the momentum of the French operations in Mali, and the issue will be high on the agenda of an African Union summit in Addis Ababa this weekend.

(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis; Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Pascal Fletcher)

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Russia says U.S. rights law "odious" but wants constructive ties

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia wants constructive relations with the United States despite disputes over U.S. legislation designed to punish Russian human rights abusers and other difficulties in ties, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Lavrov spoke during an annual news conference after a year during which relations between the former Cold War foes have deteriorated following improvements under U.S. President Barack Obama's "reset" policy.

A major irritant has been the Magnitsky Act, a law signed by Obama last month that denies visas to Russians accused of human rights violations and freezes their assets in the United States.

Russia President Vladimir Putin has responded by signing a law that imposes similar measures on Americans it says have abused the rights of Russians and also bans adoptions of Russian orphans by Americans, further increasing tension.

Lavrov called the Magnitsky Act "odious" and also criticized a U.S. judge's recent ruling in a dispute over a collection of Jewish writings held in Russia. He also said the sides remain at odds over U.S. plans for a anti-missile shield in Europe.

However, he said, "We are interested in constructive dialogue and the development of stable, mutually beneficial cooperation, particularly in the area of investment, in trade and economic relations and in contacts between people."

(Reporting by Timothy Heritage; Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Douglas Busvine)

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North Korea to boost nuclear deterrent after U.N. rebuke

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned North Korea's December rocket launch and expanded existing U.N. sanctions, and Pyongyang reacted with a vow to boost the North's military and nuclear capabilities.

While the resolution approved by the 15-nation council on Tuesday does not impose new sanctions on Pyongyang, diplomats said Beijing's support for it was a significant diplomatic blow to Pyongyang.

The resolution said the council "deplores the violations" by North Korea of its previous resolutions, which banned Pyongyang from conducting further ballistic missile and nuclear tests and from importing materials and technology for those programs.

It also said the council "expresses its determination to take significant action in the event of a further DPRK (North Korean) launch or nuclear test".

North Korea reacted quickly, saying it would hold no more talks on the de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula and would boost its military and nuclear capabilities.

"We will take measures to boost and strengthen our defensive military power including nuclear deterrence," its Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency KCNA.

The United States' special envoy on North Korea, arriving in Seoul on Wednesday to meet his South Korean counterparts, urged Pyongyang to back down from further provocative actions but left the door open for dialogue.

"If they can... begin to take concrete steps to indicate their interests in returning to diplomacy, they may find willing partners in that process," Glyn Davies told reporters.

Six-party talks aimed at halting North Korea's nuclear program have involved North Korea, the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. They have been held intermittently since 2003 but have stalled since 2008.

Russia's foreign minister said on Wednesday that North Korea should pay heed to the international community and adhere to limits on its missile and nuclear programs.

South Korea says the North is technically ready for a third nuclear test, and satellite images show it is actively working on its nuclear site. However, political analysts said they viewed a test as unlikely in the near-term.

"North Korea will likely take a sequenced strategy where the first stage response would be more militarily aggressive actions like another missile launch," said Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

There are concerns that North Korea could stage a test using highly enriched uranium for the first time, which would give it a second path to a nuclear bomb and enable it to preserve its stocks of plutonium, which are believed to be sufficient for about 12 nuclear devices.

The U.N. resolution added six North Korean entities, including Pyongyang's space agency, the Korean Committee for Space Technology, and the man heading it, Paek Chang-ho, to an existing U.N. blacklist.

BLACKLISTED

The firms and individuals will all face an international asset freeze, while Paek and the others blacklisted by Tuesday's resolution -- the manager of the rocket launch center and two North Korean banking officials -- will face a global travel ban.

In addition to the space agency, the council blacklisted the Bank of East Land, Korea Kumryong Trading Corp., Tosong Technology Trading Corp., Korea Ryonha Machinery Joint Venture Corp., and Leader (Hong Kong) International.

Leader, based in Hong Kong, is an agent for KOMID, a North Korean mining and trading company that was sanctioned in 2009 and is the North's main arms dealer, the resolution said.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice welcomed the resolution, describing it as introducing "new sanctions" against North Korea. "This resolution demonstrates to North Korea that there are unanimous and significant consequences for its flagrant violation of its obligations under previous resolutions," she said.

Other diplomats, however, said on condition of anonymity that describing the measures in Tuesday's resolution were new sanctions would be an exaggeration.

China, the North's only major diplomatic ally, said on Monday the Security Council needed to pass a cautious resolution on North Korea, adding that this was the best way to ensure regional tensions did not escalate further.

Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong said certain elements in the resolution's original draft, which in China's view would "jeopardize" normal trade between North Korea and other countries, had been removed, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

"Sanctions and resolutions alone do not work," Xinhua quoted him as saying. "Resolutions must be completed and supplemented by diplomatic efforts."

Several diplomats said Beijing's decision to back the resolution sent a strong message to Pyongyang.

"It might not be much, but the Chinese move is significant," a council diplomat told Reuters. "The prospect of a (new) nuclear test might have been a game changer (for China)."

The United States had wanted to punish North Korea for the rocket launch with a Security Council resolution that imposed entirely new sanctions against Pyongyang, but Beijing rejected that option. China agreed to U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang after North Korea's 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.

December's successful long-range rocket launch, the first to put a satellite in orbit, was a coup for North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong-un.

North and South Korea are still technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty.

(Additional reporting by Jumin Park, David Chance and Jack Kim in SEOUL, and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Russia warns Israel, West against attack on Iran

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia warned Israel and the West on Wednesday against any military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities but suggested Tehran should be quicker to cooperate over inspections of its nuclear sites.

Speaking at his annual news conference, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov mixed words of caution over isolating Iran or attacking it with a gentle nudge to Tehran over the inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"Attempts to prepare and implement strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and on its infrastructure as a whole are a very, very dangerous idea. We hope these ideas will not come to fruition," Lavrov said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted strongly at possible military action to stop Iran from developing an atomic bomb. In an election victory speech on Wednesday, he said preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons would be the main challenge for a new government.

Referring to talks in which the IAEA has been trying to negotiate an agreement for inspectors to gain access to sites, officials and documents, Lavrov said: "The Iranians have said they want this document to be agreed in full. We think our Iranian colleagues could do this a little bit faster."

Speaking of separate negotiations between Iran and six world powers that are trying to ensure it does not pursue a nuclear weapons program, Lavrov said he was confident a new round of talks would be held but said a venue had not yet been agreed.

Iran denies it is trying to develop a nuclear arsenal and says its nuclear program has only peaceful purposes.

(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; and Steve Gutterman, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

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