"Today the Iranian Navy has the necessary skill and proficiency to maintain the sovereignty and integrity of the country's coastal waters," said Sayyari.

"Following calls by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Iran has successfully manufactured stealth military hardware and has lavished the Navy with groundbreaking equipment," he continued.

Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on Saturday called for the production of military hardware exclusive to Iran, asserting that in order to counter a possible attack, Tehran should employ weapons unfamiliar to aggressors.

"Iranian naval forces are poised to counter any threats arriving from sea lanes in the region," added the Iranian Navy commander.

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar announced on Tuesday that Iranian military experts had produced new stealth micro submarines, vessels, and lightweight aircraft to boost the country's awareness and vigilance.

The Islamic Republic has taken steps to improve its defense capabilities and has announced the development of 109 pieces of innovative military equipment over the past two years.

The remarks by the naval official come as Israel is intensifying war preparations and lobbying world powers for anti-Iran sanctions as well as the receipt of aggressive weapons.

According to a late September report by The Guardian, Tel Aviv had long been serious about launching airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities but failed to receive the green light from President George W. Bush in May.

Pentagon officials revealed in mid June, however, that Israeli warplanes had taken to the skies in the first week of June in what was later cited to be a 'dress rehearsal' for an attack on Iran.

The Israeli Air Force employed over a hundred F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, tactical bombers in the maneuver held 900 miles west of Israel off the southern Mediterranean island of Crete, roughly covering the distance from Israeli airfields to an Iranian uranium enrichment facility in Natanz.

The US then revealed that it would equip Israel with advanced weapons, including a powerful missile radar system.

In September, the US Defense Department also agreed to equip Tel Aviv with the Guided Bomb Unit-39 (GBU-39), a form of 'bunker-buster' bomb, designed to penetrate fortified constructions deep underground - such as Iran's nuclear facilities.

Tel Aviv and its staunch ally, the US, have also vocally threatened to attack Iran, claiming that Tehran's nuclear program poses an existential threat to Israel.

Ex-KGB General Cautions US Against Iran war

A former KGB general and Russian prime minister says a war on Iran would produce a question mark over the Republican Party's sanity.

In a televised interview on Monday, Yevgeny Primakov downplayed the prospects of a US- or Israeli-waged war on Iran over its nuclear program.

"I doubt Republicans would commit themselves to such an imprudent measure," said Primakov.

His remarks come shortly after Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak claimed on Friday that 'Iran continues to try to build a nuclear weapon'.

"We don't rule out any option. We recommend others don't rule out any option either," added Barak referring to US president-elect Barack Obama's plans to engage Iran with direct diplomacy over the country's nuclear program.

Tehran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), denies the Israeli claim, insisting that its enrichment program is solely directed at the civilian applications of the technology.

An unnamed senior European Union diplomat revealed last week that the bloc is concerned with Tel Aviv's contention that the use of military force is a legitimate option in retarding Iran's nuclear progress.

"Israelis would consider a move such as this before Bush and Cheney leave," said the EU diplomat, adding that once Obama takes office, Israel's chances of striking Iran would become meager.

Russia supports negotiations between Iran and the West in order to peacefully resolve the nuclear dispute.

Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said in mid-October that Moscow would maintain its support for Iran if the country continues on a logical path regarding its nuclear program.

In the Monday interview, Primakov said the Republicans - who have often supported Israel's claims and plans against Iran - should be written a 'medical prescription' if they agree to a war on the oil-rich Middle Eastern country.

Energy Body Warns On Oil Prices

One of the world's leading authorities on energy supply says the era of cheap oil is over and prices could soon be back up to $100 a barrel.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), in its World Energy Outlook for 2008, says prices could soar as high as $200 a barrel by 2030.

The immediate risk to supply, it says, is not one of a lack of global resources.

Instead, it points to a lack of investment where it is needed.

Rising costs

The world, the report's authors conclude, is not running out of oil just yet - indeed, there is enough of it to supply the world for more than 40 years at current rates of consumption.

But, they point out, field by field, declines in oil production are accelerating and more money will be needed in research and development to extract the oil there is.

While world oil supply will rise, the report's authors predict that massive investments in energy infrastructure will be needed - an eye-watering $26 trillion dollars up to 2030.

A significant amount of this money - $8.4 trillion - will need to be spent on oil and gas exploration and development.

In one scenario considered by the IEA, China and India will account for just over half of the increase in world primary energy demand between 2006 and 2030, and much of the increase in world oil demand.

But despite the agency's assessment of oil and gas reserves, the report contains a stark warning of the consequences of continuing to rely on fossil fuels.

The consequences for the global climate of policy inaction when it comes to decarbonising the world economy are "shocking", according to the report.

"Strong, co-ordinated action is needed urgently to curb the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting rise in global temperatures," it said.

Taiwan's Ex-President In Custody

Taiwan's ex-President Chen Shui-bian, who faces corruption allegations, has been formally taken into custody.

Mr Chen, an independence activist and staunch critic of China, was taken to jail after his detention was approved by a court overnight.

It came at the end of a dramatic 24 hours, during which police led a defiant Mr Chen away in handcuffs.

Mr Chen, who stepped down in May, denies all the graft charges and claims they are politically motivated.

He has been taken to Tucheng prison in the suburbs of the capital, Taipei. He can now be held for up to four months, despite not yet having formally been charged.

Police have reportedly tightened security around the jail amid threats from his supporters.

Muscle tear

The BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei says the authorities want to avoid the type of demonstrations seen last week during a landmark visit by a high-ranking Chinese Communist official to Taiwan.

Mr Chen and his supporters - who see closer ties to Beijing as a threat to Taiwan's sovereignty - opposed that visit.

Court proceedings had to be suspended on Tuesday night, when Mr Chen said he needed hospital treatment after being pushed outside the court building.

He was returned to court for an overnight sitting after doctors found he had only a minor muscle tear.

Mr Chen is accused of money laundering and illegally using a special presidential fund.

But the outspoken nationalist accuses the new administration of persecuting him "as a sacrifice to appease China".

Mr Chen is an ardent supporter of Taiwanese independence, and a trenchant critic of President Ma Ying-jeou's Kuomintang (KMT) administration, which he accuses of pandering to China.

But China has termed accusations that his detention is a plot between Beijing and President Ma's administration "pure fabrication".

President Ma has also denied intervening in the case.

Opposition damaged?

Mr Chen and his family have been mired in corruption allegations since 2006, when his son-in-law was charged with insider trading on the stock market and then jailed for seven years.

The charges have damaged the reputation of the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), observers say, which may now face a rough ride in next year's local elections.

aiwan has been ruled separately since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

The defeated Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan to create a self-governing entity.

But Beijing sees the island as a breakaway province which should be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Obama 'To Curb Role Of Lobbyists’

US President-elect Barack Obama will introduce rules to restrict the role of lobbyists as he shapes his administration, says a senior official.

Transition chief John Podesta said Mr Obama would introduce "the strictest and most far reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history".

He promised the "most open and transparent" ever handover of power.

Mr Obama's defeated Republican rival John McCain, meanwhile, cracked jokes about his defeat on a US talk show.

In his first post-election TV interview, Arizona Senator McCain said that since being trounced by Mr Obama in last week's election he had been "sleeping like a baby".

"I sleep two hours, wake up and cry," he added, repeating a gag he made after losing to George W Bush during the Republican primaries in 2000.

Appearing on NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Mr McCain ruled out another run for the presidency, saying: "I wouldn't think so, my friend. It's been a great experience and we're going to have another generation of leaders come along."

He also said his running mate Sarah Palin inspired people and predicted she "would play a big role in the future of this country".

Both Mr Obama, who takes office on 20 January, and Sen McCain railed against lobbyists during the election campaign, accusing them of peddling favours and influence to sway Capitol Hill lawmakers in a culture of corruption.

At a briefing in Washington, Mr Podesta told reporters Mr Obama had "pledged to change the way Washington works and curb the influence of lobbyists".

Interest groups have been offering recommendations on cabinet-level appointments to the Obama transition team.

But Mr Podesta gave no indication of when the key posts of treasury secretary and secretary of state would be filled.

Under the new measures, Mr Obama will not allow lobbyists actively petitioning the federal government to work with the transition, said Mr Podesta.

The guidelines will also prevent anyone who has acted as a lobbyist over the last 12 months from working on any policy area in the transition in which they had been active.

He added that anyone who works on the transition and then becomes a lobbyist will be barred from approaching the administration for 12 months in the area in which they worked.

New details emerged, meanwhile, in Mr Bush's first post-election interview, of Monday's visit by Mr Obama and his wife Michelle to the White House to meet the outgoing president and first lady.

Mr Bush told CNN that after their policy discussion, his successor had wanted to check out the future bedrooms of his two daughters.

"It was interesting to watch him go upstairs, and he wanted to see where his little girls were going to sleep," Mr Bush said.

Mr Bush also told CNN: "I know I'll miss certain things about the presidency. I also know I'm looking forward to getting home, so I've got mixed emotions."

Meanwhile the Associated Press news agency reported First Lady Laura Bush was in the early stages of talks with publishers about penning a memoir on her t

Rwanda Expels German Ambassador

Rwanda has expelled Germany's envoy and recalled its own ambassador amid a row over a detained presidential aide.

Foreign Minister Rosemary Museminali said the German envoy would not be welcome until the arrest of protocol chief Rose Kabuye was resolved.

Ms Kabuye was detained in Frankfurt on Sunday in connection with a killing that triggered the 1994 genocide.

She is one of nine senior officials wanted over the shooting down of former President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane.

His murder is widely seen as the spark that led to the deaths of some 800,000 people in Rwanda.

Ms Museminali told Reuters news agency that the action did not mean a cut in diplomatic ties.

"It's not a permanent move ... we've called our ambassador in Berlin to come for consultations, and we've asked the German ambassador to leave until this matter is resolved," she told the agency.

Earlier in the day, President Paul Kagame denounced Ms Kabuye's arrest as a violation of Rwandan sovereignty.

The Rwandan leader is in Frankfurt for a series of meetings with business leaders. Ms Kabuye was detained under a French arrest warrant when she arrived ahead of him to prepare for his visit.

Mr Kagame, who visited his aide in Preungsheim women's prison, argued that she should not have been arrested because her trip was made in an official capacity.

He called her arrest "a violation of the sovereignty of Rwanda".

In a statement, the African Union expressed "dismay and concern" over Ms Kabuye's arrest, saying she should have been entitled to immunity as she was on official business.

German authorities said they had no choice but to arrest the aide under the warrant issued two years ago by a French judge.

A state prosecutor, Hildegard Becker-Toussaint, emphasised that the charges against Ms Kabuye were very serious.

"When there's an arrest warrant out in France, we have no reason to doubt it," she said.

"We had no reason to believe that she had diplomatic immunity because she explicitly travelled privately."

Ms Kabuye denies any role in Mr Habyarimana's death but is likely to be extradited to France soon, German officials and her lawyer say.

French legal authorities have been investigating Mr Habyarimana's death because his aircraft had a French crew.

The arrest warrants led to an immediate break in diplomatic relations between Paris and Kigali, and tensions that have continued ever since.

On Monday, thousands of people turned out in the Rwandan capital to protest against the arrest of Ms Kabuye, a former guerrilla fighter with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), now Rwanda's ruling party.

The plane carrying Mr Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down on 6 April 1994, at a time of uneasy peace between Mr Kagame's Tutsi rebels and the Kigali government.

The radical Hutu government accused the RPF of carrying out the assassination. Within hours, militias set up roadblocks and started to systematically murder any Tutsis or moderate Hutus they could find.

The RPF has always accused the Hutu extremists of shooting down the plane to provide a pretext for carrying out their genocidal plans.

Some 800,000 people were slaughtered in just 100 days before Mr Kagame's forces ousted the Hutu government.

Mr Kagame has long accused France of complicity in the genocide by arming Hutu militias.

World Recalls End Of World War I

Ceremonies have been held across the globe to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I.

At a service in Verdun, north-east France, President Nicolas Sarkozy paid tribute to the millions who died during the four-year conflict.

French and German troops fought for eight months at Verdun in the longest battle of a war that reshaped Europe.

In the US, politicians took part in the annual Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington cemetery, near Washington.

Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Robert Gates were among those to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the national cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns to honour those who have died in service to the US.

President George W Bush marked his final Veterans Day as commander-in-chief with a speech at a decommissioned aircraft carrier, the USS Intrepid, in New York.

He paid tribute to the armed forces and thanked veterans across the US for "standing up when your nation needed you the most".

President-elect Barack Obama, meanwhile, honoured fallen troops by laying a wreath at a memorial in Chicago's Soldier Field.

Earlier in London, three of the four surviving British World War I veterans attended a ceremony at the Cenotaph.

Henry Allingham, 112, Harry Patch, 110, and Bill Stone, 108, represented the Royal Air Force, Army and Royal Navy respectively.

At 1100 GMT, a two-minute silence was observed, marking the time - at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month - when the Armistice Treaty came into effect to end the war.

Earlier on Tuesday, President Sarkozy took part in an Armistice Day service in Verdun, and paid tribute to those who had died.

"France will never forget the children who have fought for her," he said.

He paid respect to the soldiers from Europe, North America, Africa and Australasia "who died far away from their countries to defend our liberty".

Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, and the Duchess of Cornwall were guests of honour at the event.

But no French or German veterans were in attendance, says the BBC's Europe correspondent, Jonny Dymond. Not one member of the two huge armies that clashed on the fields of Verdun survives.

Only the dead were left to be remembered, and the backdrop of the service was a huge stone ossuary, containing the remains of tens of thousands of men from both sides who died in the fighting.

Mr Sarkozy, Prince Charles, Australia's Governor-General Quentin Bryce and Peter Mueller, president of the German Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, laid wreaths in a field of 15,000 graves in front of the building.

A respectful silence was held and the bell tolled inside the ossuary, where Mr Sarkozy lit a memorial flame and a male choir sang the French national anthem.

Since the war, Verdun has become a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation.

But its hillside has come to symbolise World War I's awful savagery, says our correspondent. During the fighting, more than 60 million shells fell on the land, transforming it into a pitted piece of hell on earth.

As well as services across Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan, remembrance ceremonies have been held in Australia, which lost 60,000 men in the conflict.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd used a speech at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra to issue a call for peace.

"We have all endured a most bloody century," he said.

"Let us resolve afresh at the dawn of this new century... that this might be a truly pacific peaceful century."

A lone bugler then played the Last Post, which is used to to commemorate the war dead in Commonwealth countries.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was in Warsaw to mark the anniversary of Poland's independence - which also came on 11 November 1918.

World War I was the world's first industrialised war.

Probe Ends Historic Mars Mission

Nasa says its Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars has gone silent and is almost certainly dead.

Engineers have not heard from the craft since Sunday 2 November when it made a brief communication with Earth.

Phoenix, which landed on the planet's northern plains in May, had been struggling in the increasing cold and dark of an advancing winter.

The US space agency says it will continue to try to contact the craft but does not expect to hear from it.

"We are actually ceasing operations, declaring an end to operations at this point," Phoenix mission project manager Barry Goldstein said at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"However, since we've been surprised by the robustness of this vehicle, we're going to keep listening. As the orbiters fly overhead every two hours, we'll constantly turn on the radio and try to hail Phoenix to see if it is alive."

Launched from Earth in August 2007, the robot arrived on Mars on 25 May, landing further north than any previous mission to the Martian surface.

To make it down, the probe had to survive a fiery plunge through the Red Planet's thin atmosphere, releasing a parachute and using thrusters to control its descent.

The mission was scheduled to last just three months on the surface, but continued to work for more than five months.

During its ground operations, the robot dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and tasted the Martian soil to test whether it has ever been capable of supporting life.

Phoenix's major achievement was in becoming the first mission to Mars to "touch water" in the form of the water-ice it found just centimetres below the topsoil. Chunks of ice were seen to vaporise before the lander's cameras.

"This was quite a thrill for everybody and it has been the study of that ice that has kept us busy for the last five months," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

"We've excavated that ice, we know its depth, we know how it changes over the surface; we've seen different types of ice."

The spacecraft found the Martian soil to be mildly alkaline, quite different from the acidic soils seen by previous missions to other parts of the planet.

Other key results included the identification in the soil of calcium carbonate, which on Earth is a chief component of limestone rock.

Phoenix also detected sheet-like particles, which were probably clays of some kind.

The significance of both minerals is that they form only in the presence of liquid water - which could have supported life.

The lander also detected perchlorate (an ion containing chlorine and oxygen) which is an oxidising chemical and, on Earth, can sustain some microbes.

Phoenix even recorded snowfall; and took more than 25,000 pictures, from the panoramas of its Arctic landing site to the atomic scale images of dust grains delivered to its microscope.

"Right now at this epoch in Martian history it is certainly too cold for organisms to be alive, certainly in the sense of Earth organisms," said Peter Smith.

"But we do think that over time as the Mars climate changes that it can get warm enough that, perhaps, we are getting at least films of liquid water or dampness in the soil; and that could create an environment where life could exist. That would be in the last few million years; very recent in Mars history."

The Phoenix mission scientists have a mass of data that will keep them busy for decades. They have not yet given up hope of seeing a signature in the data for organics, the carbon-rich molecules that can be considered the "feedstock" of biochemistry.

One disappointment, however, from the final days of the mission was the failure to get a microphone on the lander to work. This would have returned the first sounds of Mars.

Overall, though, the US space agency is delighted with the achievements of the mission.

"This is an Irish wake rather than a funeral," commented Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars exploration programme at Nasa Headquarters in Washington DC.

"We should celebrate what Phoenix and the Phoenix team has done and where it is going to take us in the future. [There were] a lot of lessons learned in this mission for us that will feed forward to future missions. We learned a lot about handling of soils, soil consistency, and how difficult it can be."

Phoenix was never expected to be a long mission. At its high latitude (68 degrees North), it was always destined to be starved of light as the Arctic winter deepened.

In the end, though, the demise of Phoenix was hastened by a dust storm which obscured the Sun's precious rays still further.

With so little energy getting into its solar panels, the batteries on Phoenix were regularly going flat, preventing the robot from heating its systems in temperatures that were heading down to minus 100C.

Nevertheless, Nasa says its Mars Reconnaissance and Odyssey satellites will continue to listen for Phoenix for a further three weeks, until Solar Conjunction, when Mars moves behind the Sun as viewed from Earth.

As winter progresses, Phoenix will be covered in a thick layer of carbon dioxide frost. As the ice builds up on the solar arrays, they are likely to crack and fall off. The electronics will also break up in the cold that could see temperatures go down to minus 180C.

Phoenix had risen from the ashes of two previous failures.

In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft crashed into the Red Planet following a navigation error caused when technicians mixed up "English" (imperial) and metric units.

A few months later, another Nasa spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL), was lost near the planet's South Pole.

Phoenix used hardware from an identical twin of MPL, the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander, which was cancelled following the two consecutive failures.

Nasa's robot rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, continue to work at their equatorial landing sites five years after arriving at the planet.

The next mission to the surface of Mars is due to leave Earth next year. The Mars Science Laboratory is a "smart" rover that will be dropped on to the surface of the Red Planet by a rocket-powered "skycrane".

At almost three metres in length and weighing 850kg, MSL is considerably bigger than the current rovers.

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