UPI NewsTrack TopNews - December 31, 2007 : General

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30
Iran building first nuclear plant
TEHRAN, Dec. 30 Iranian Energy Minister Parviz Fattah said Sunday construction has started on the nation's first nuclear power plant to be built by domestic experts.

Vice President Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh said the nuclear plant being built under supervision of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization in the Khuzestan Province could be operational within four to five years, Alalam Satellite TV reported Sunday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nuclear fuel produced at his country's Natanz facility eventually would be used by the power plant.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Sunday the country's first nuclear power station, being built by Russian contractors, will be operational as soon as the middle of 2008.

"The Bushehr nuclear power station will launch at a capacity of 50 percent next summer," Mottaki said.

Alalam said the foreign minister's comments appeared optimistic compared to those of the site's Russian contractors, who said it would not go online until late 2008.

Bhutto denied foreign security detail
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 30 Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf reportedly barred Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated Thursday, from hiring foreign bodyguards.

The Sunday Telegraph said Bhutto talked with security firms in London and the United States, but Musharraf would not let foreign contractors operate in Pakistan.

A spokeswoman for Blackwater USA confirmed it had been "approached to provide Prime Minister Bhutto's security, but an agreement was unfortunately never reached." She did not offer further details, the British newspaper said.

"She asked to bring in trained security personnel from abroad," Bhutto's U.S. spokesman, Mark Siegel, told the newspaper. "In fact she and her husband repeatedly tried to get visas for such protection, but they were denied by the government of Pakistan."

The U.S. government responded to an Oct. 19 bombing attack by providing Bhutto with intelligence about threats against her life, but was reluctant to push Musharraf on the security issue, U.S. spokesman Husain Haqqani said.

McCain, Huckabee hit Romney on honesty
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Sunday defended the use of the term "phony" in his campaign advertising to describe GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney.

Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, called the ad -- which included the "phony" designation used by the Concord Monitor in its editorial supporting McCain -- a "nasty" personal attack. McCain, appearing on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," refrained from calling Romney a phony during the telecast but said Romney has switched positions on issues and it is OK to use what others have said about Romney in his advertising.

"I paid for the ad that put up the words of the respected newspapers here in the state of New Hampshire and I think that's perfectly appropriate," McCain said. "I think he's a person who's changed his position on many issues and the voters know that and they'll decide that, but that's what I will continue to quote from ... ."

GOP rival Mike Huckabee said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Romney is showing signs of desperation by attacking him and McCain.

"Mitt Romney is running a very desperate and, frankly, a dishonest campaign," Huckabee said. "And then the things where he's made up these visions that he's had of marching with Martin Luther King and his dad marching with him, you know ... if you aren't being honest in obtaining the job, can we trust you to be honest if you get the job?"

Clinton, Obama push readiness
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Sunday brushed aside assertions she only has sidelines experience, not game experience, in facing presidential issues.

Speaking on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," the presidential hopeful said the criticism emanating from the rival campaign of Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. -- that her years as first lady while her husband was president are irrelevant -- is to be expected in the final run-up to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

"But I think the reality and the evidence is far different," she said. "I was intimately involved in so much that went on in the White House, here at home, and around the world."

Democratic rival Barack Obama said Sunday he has enough experience to be entrusted leading the world's pre-eminent power.

Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," the freshman Illinois senator said voters "recognize that the real gamble is for us to keep on doing the same thing over and over again, accept the conventional Washington wisdom, expect that somehow we are going to get different results from them."

"They understand that if we want to solve health care, if we want to do something to make college more affordable, if we want a new foreign policy, then we have to have somebody who has a new vision for how we are going to move the country forward ... ."

Copyright 2007 by UPI