Iran had given the assurance that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors would be given access to the new plant which is being built in a mountain near the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, ElBaradei told a news conference in Tehran.

“There are concerns about Iran’s future intentions and this is not a verification thing,” he said. “We are concerned but we are in no way panicking about Iran’s nuclear programme.”

For a public already inundated with broken-up terror plots, antigovernment sentiment, and partisan pundits ready to use the case for their own ideological ends, the lack of any word from police has led to rampant speculation about why he died.

Mr. Sparkman’s son, Josh, can’t understand why police are reluctant to call it a homicide.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, said the disclosure was a “firm blow” to Western powers opposed to Tehran’s atomic work.

“This site will be under the supervision of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and will have a maximum of five percent (uranium) enrichment capacity,” Iran’s atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said on state television.

The second attack in Pakistan’s northwest city of Peshawar ripped through a crowded area near banks, shops and a wedding hall on a road leading to the army cantonment, hours after a similar attack outside a police station in Bannu.

Ten people were killed in Peshawar and another five on the outskirts of Bannu in a district close to the rugged tribal region of North Waziristan where Washington says Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are plotting attacks on the West.

Obama also denied that “paranoid” Russian objections had dictated his decision to abandon a US missile shield in Eastern Europe and said North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il seemed “healthy” and in “control” of his impoverished, isolated nation.

The president’s media offensive came a day before he is due to head to New York for his debut United Nations general assembly as president, and the G20 economic crisis summit of developed and developing nations later in the week in Pittsburgh.

He said General Stanley McChrystal completed the document this week, setting out exactly how many U.S. and NATO troops, Afghan security force members and civilians he thinks he needs.

“We’re working with Washington as well as the other NATO participants about how it’s best to submit this,” said the spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Tadd Sholtis, declining to give details of the contents.

The purchase of Lehman’s assets in Asia, Europe and the Middle East transformed Nomura into a top global player and marked a sea change for Japan’s once risk-averse banks, just emerging from their own financial crisis.

What made Nomura’s move almost a year ago all the more remarkable was that it came on the same day that Japan’s top bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group announced it would buy a slice of troubled US giant Morgan Stanley.

Afghanistan is mired in a drawn-out dispute over election fraud that could test the patience of U.S. President Barack Obama and other Western leaders contemplating whether more troops are needed to defend its government.

Attacks took place in all corners of the country, not only in southern and eastern areas that have long been violent but also in the north and west, which had been comparatively quiet until recent weeks.