Talks On Iraq.

On the other hand, officials say the US does want to talk to Iran, but about Iraq, not about Iran's nuclear programme. They say, though, that a firm decision to pursue such talks has not been made.

The US and EU are trying to iron out differences among themselves and with the Russians and the Chinese. The American and European objective is to enhance the offer of incentives to Iran, so as to overcome Russian and Chinese opposition to punitive action if Iran rejects the incentives. But the Bush administration does not want to promise any commercial benefits, whether in helping construct a light-water nuclear reactor or in selling airplanes to Iran, if they involve an immediate lifting of US sanctions on companies engaging in such activities.

In addition, the administration is concerned about the European proposal to establish a security framework in the region which, at least in some fashion, would guarantee protection from attack or overthrow of government. The US, with a long and bitter history of conflict with Iran, finds such an idea distasteful.

US Vice President Dick Cheney leads the charge for regime change in Tehran, including support of dissident groups. But Europeans contend that, without the US participating in a security guarantee, Tehran will not abandon the option of pursuing a nuclear weapons programme - even though Iran officially denies that it has embarked on such a programme.

Visiting Bahrain, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on May 24 said: "The media has repeatedly described the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions as a showdown between Tehran and Washington, when in fact competent international organisations and the global community are involved and concerned. It is not a specific Iranian-American conflict, but rather a conflict between the international community and Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN Security Council have already stated their opposition".

Steinmeier, on a six-country tour in the Gulf to bolster pressure on Tehran, said diplomacy and concerted efforts were significant. "The international community expects Iran to dispel all doubts that its programme will not be used for military purposes", he said at the end of talks with the Bahraini Foreign Minister, Shaikh Khaled bin Ahmad al-Khalifa. Steinmeier added that all countries needed to work together to ensure that Iran did not develop nuclear military capabilities that could lead to further escalation and insecurity.

Asked by a German reporter if Bahrain's Shi'ites supported the Iranian nuclear weapons, Shaikh Khaled dismissed the reflection, saying "if there were an atomic bomb in the region, it would make no distinction between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Everyone in Bahrain is against the possibility of an atomic bomb in the region".

Visiting Baghdad on May 28, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki ruled out talks with the US over Iraq "for the time being", saying Tehran's decision to accept Washington's offer had been exploited for "propaganda" and that the US had "raised other issues" without specifying what they were.

The proposal was made in March by US Ambassador to Iraq Zilmay Khalilzad and accepted by Iran once endorsed by Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and a key Shi'ite ally of Tehran. But the prospect drew strong criticism in both Washington and Tehran from opponents of direct talks between the two countries. In April, the US said the idea was on hold until a new Iraqi government was formed.

Potential dialogue over Iraq has been complicated by manoeuvring among the US, Europe, Russia and China as they try to agree a common policy towards Iran's nuclear programme.

Mottaki was speaking at a press conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. In a sign of improved relations between the two neighbours since the overthrow in April 2003 of Ba'thist dictator Saddam, Zebari said Baghdad accepted Iran's right to "scientific and technological abilities to research in the field of nuclear energy for peaceful uses" and praised "the wisdom of the leadership of the Islamic Republic in handling this subject".

While the US and British have accused Iran of backing some Iraqi insurgents, Tehran has claimed that Washington and London have been involved in provoking violence among Iran's ethnic minorities, including the Arabs of the oil-rich south-western province of Khuzistan. Iraqi politicians have long called for talks between the US and Iran to ease regional tension and improve Iraq's security. Ahmad Chalabi, the influential Iraqi Shi'ite, said last year Baghdad could not "sit idly by while other people fight on our territory".

Mottaki later met with Iraq's Kurdish President Jalal Talabani and new Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The two countries are seeking to extend co-operation in transport and energy, to expand trade, and to improve security for Iranian pilgrims visiting Iraq's Shi'ite holy sites. On May 27, Mottaki visited Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf.

Iran's Restive Provinces: One of Iranian President Ahmadi-Nejad's election promises was that he and his ministerial team would visit all of Iran's 30 provinces within their first year in office. The idea, wrote Iranian journalist Amir Taheri on May 27, was to settle long-standing local problems "in a single sitting of the cabinet". However, as Ahmadi-Nejad prepares to mark the first anniversary of his presidency "it looks increasingly unlikely that he could keep that promise".

So far Ahmadi-Nejad has a record of visiting nearly half of the provinces and is determined to do some more soon. Nevertheless, Taheri said, "quite a few provinces have become no-go areas for the president". The reason is increasing ethnic and sectarian tensions in parts of the country.

The latest province to be affected is East Azerbaijan, which Iranians refer to as "Iran's head". Tabriz, capital of East Azerbaijan, recently was the scene of big anti-government demonstrations which, despite claims by some exile groups, were largely spontaneous. The trigger was a cartoon published in a government-owned newspaper depicting Azeris, Iran's largest ethnic and linguistic minority, as "dumb cockroaches".

Official statistics indicate that Azeris form a majority in four provinces: East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Ardebil and Zanjan. Taking into account Azeris living in other provinces, at times for generations, the community may be 15 million strong, according to Taheri, who noted: "For centuries, Azeris have played a leadership role and served as the vanguard of such historic events as the 1906 Constitutional Revolution". Their Shi'ite faith and passionate attachment to Iranian nationhood have made them "the backbone of the modern Iranian nation-state".

Azeris played a crucial role in sweeping the late Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1979. Immediately after the revolution, however, Khomeini moved to stop the rise of Azeri influence in his newly created theocracy. One such move was to defrock Grand Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari, an eminent Azeri theologian and one of the most respected Shi'ite leaders of the last century.

Most Azeris saw the move as a direct attack on themselves. As Taheri put it, they were "outraged by the fact that Khomeini had forgotten that he owed his own title of ayatollah to a decree signed by Shariatmadari in 1963".

What was perceived as the theocracy's anti-Azeri stance came into sharper focus in 1989 when the then President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani flew to Baku, capital of Soviet Azerbaijan, to call on the population not to seek independence from the USSR. Rafsanjani's visit came at a time when Baku was still trying to recover from a crackdown launched by Soviet troops, including naval units, on Mikhail Gorbachev's orders.

Iranian Azeris had expected Tehran to support their fellow-Shi'ites in Soviet Azerbaijan rather than invite them to remain under Soviet colonial yoke. In the years that followed matters worsened, as far as Azeris were concerned. In the war over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabagh, the theocracy supported Christian Armenia against Shi'ite Azerbaijan.

Tehran incited the Sunni minority in the Talesh area of the former Soviet Azerbaijan against the Shi'ite government in Baku.

There is tension in the province of Kurdistan, on the border with Iraq, and the Kurdish-majority districts of West Azerbaijan. Some Kurdish opposition groups, including an outfit known as Pejak and an older Communist group known as Komaleh have already embarked on a guerrilla campaign against the theocracy. Both groups maintain bases inside the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, and are believed to have ties with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), a guerrilla movement fighting Turkey.

However, what worries Tehran most is the rising tide of protest by unarmed populations in some Kurdish cities. During the past six months, at least 30 people have been killed by the security forces during anti-regime demonstrations in various Kurdish cities. Taheri quoted "Kurdish opposition sources" as saying "hundreds of people" had been "arrested, often without charge". The government has closed many Kurdish language publications.

In most cases, the protests appear to have been spontaneous or locally organised. But they have been deemed promising enough for some Kurdish parties to try to assume their leadership. One is the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran whose leader Ghani Bolourian has just left Europe for Iraq and is busy setting up a co-ordination committee to lead what Taheri described as "a burgeoning popular revolt".

President Ahmadi-Nejad, according to Taheri, is unable to visit any of the three provinces where ethnic Kurds form either a majority or a substantial segment of the population. Overall, ethnic Kurds account for 9% of Iran's population of almost 70m.

Another area facing increasing unrest is Khuzistan which produces almost 80% of Iran's oil. The province is home to most of Iran's estimated 3.2m ethnic Arabs. Although Arabs account for fewer than 40% of the province's population, there are districts, such as Dasht Mishan and Susangerd, where they represent up to 80%. There, too, ethnic and linguistic grievances, combined with dissatisfaction with Tehran's economic and social policies, have created an explosive situation, which the authorities have tried to control by force. Over the past six months at least 18 people have been killed by security forces and hundreds injured.

Khuzistani opposition groups claim that over 400 people have been abducted by government forces and taken to unknown destinations. Militants in Khuzistan include the Front for the Liberation of Al-Ahwaz (FLA), the Ahwaz Human Rights Association and the Khuzestan Prosperity Party. But it is not clear whether such groups can provide overall leadership for what is a largely spontaneous local revolt against oppressive policies and economic hardship.

"The real no-go area" for Ahmadi-Nejad, Taheri says, is the south-eastern province of Sistan and Balochistan, a vast region of mountains and deserts bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Tehran they call it "the wild frontier" as it has been the scene of frequent battles between security forces and armed insurgents. In April alone 20 Iranian security men were killed by what Tehran has called "bandits", said to be operating from Pakistan.

Some of the violence in Sistan and Balochistan may be the work of armed drug smugglers and contraband networks backed by local tribes. At least two groups, the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF), a leftist outfit, and the Baloch Protection Council claim to be active in the province. Both had headquarters in Baghdad before 2003 and may now have transferred to Pakistan.

A flash point is an arc of steppes on Iran's north-east frontier with Turkmenistan. There, ethnic Turkmen representing 2% of Iran's population form a majority and, being Sunni, have never warmed up to a government set up by Shi'ite mullahs. Iran's Turkmen were the first to rise against the Islamic republic in 1979 when, with the help of a Marxist-Maoist guerrilla group known as People's Fedayeen, they set up a short-lived people's republic of their own. The "people's republic" was crushed by Khomeini at the cost of hundreds of Turkmen lives.

The other flash point is the Iranian Talesh on the Caspian Sea. There Sunnis speaking non-Persian dialects form a majority of the 1.5m population. They never warmed up to the Shi'ite theocracy and have staged periodical revolts which often provoked a harsh response from Tehran.

Taken together, Taheri says, Iran's ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities account for some 40% of the population. Most are strategically located along Iran's long borders, and thus vulnerable to outside manipulation. While in Indonesia this month, President Ahmadi-Nejad spoke of his ambition "to unite and lead the Muslim world in a 'clash of civilizations' against the 'infidel'". As Taheri put it: "Many in Iran believe that he should first address the grievances that have made it impossible for him to visit so many provinces, and before it is too late".

President Ahmadi-Nejad on May 24 accused the US and its allies of trying to destabilise Iran through ethnic unrest. His remarks followed large demonstrations in the Azeri north-west, and as Iranian forces carried out exercises in the mainly Balochi south-east.

Iranian officials have expressed concern in recent months at reports of US support for separatist groups among Iran's minorities. Many separatist groups have offices in the US or Europe, and US government agencies are researching Iran's ethnic make-up. In a speech in the mainly Arab south-western city of Khoramshah, Ahmadi-Najad said: "They [the US and its allies] must know they will not be able to provoke divisions among the dear Iranian nation".

About 3,000 troops took part last week in operation "Authority" in Sistan and Balochestan province following the deaths of 12 civilians this month in violence officials blamed on Jundallah, a militant Balochi group.

Akbar Alami, a Tabrizi deputy, on May 24 said Azeris, who speak a Turkish dialect, were frustrated at being the butt of jokes, adding: "As long as...stupid and na?ve people are shown in films speaking with a Turkish accent...there are hidden wounds that suddenly open and burst in flames".

Underlining concerns among the political elite, Expediency Council Chairman Rafsanjani on May 24 said "national solidarity" was "very important for Iran when we are more than ever faced with threats".

Dress Code To Mark Religious Minorities: In a press release dated May 24, journalist Taheri (of Benador Associates) said: "Regarding the dress code story it seems that my column was used as the basis for a number of reports that somehow jumped the gun. As far as my article is concerned I stand by it.

"The law has been passed by the Islamic Majlis (parliament) and will now be submitted to the Council of Guardians. A committee has been appointed to work out the modalities of implementation.

"Many ideas are being discussed with regard to implementation, including special markers, known as zonnars, for followers of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, the only faiths other than Islam that are recognized as such.

"The zonnar was in use throughout the Muslim world until the early 20th century and marked out the dhimmis, or protected religious minorities. (In Iran it was formally abolished in 1908).

"I have been informed of the ideas under discussion thanks to my sources in Tehran, including three members of the Majlis who had tried to block the bill since it was first drafted in 2004. I do not know which of these ideas or any will be eventually adopted. We will know once the committee appointed to discuss them presents its report, perhaps in September.

"Interestingly, the Islamic Republic authorities refuse to issue an official statement categorically rejecting the concept of dhimmitude and the need for marking out religious minorities.

Taheri concluded by explaining: "I raised the issue not as a news story, because news of the new law was already several days old, but as an opinion column to alert the outside world to this most disturbing development".